Page:The Idealistic Reaction Against Science (1914).djvu/41

 planation for physical phenomena and for the physiological processes of the brain, seeing that we are organically so constituted as to be unable to intuit and conceive the world of phenomena in any other way. There is, however, something which eludes all and every explanation, and this something is the origin of our physiological constitution; thought, no matter what efforts it may make, will always be brought up short by the limiting concept of the thing in itself, a difficulty which it utterly fails to surmount. It cannot even ascertain whether it actually corresponds to anything real or is not rather an illusion born of our special organisation. May not the dualism of phenomenon and noumenon be due to faulty perspective?

This doubt cannot be dispelled by the intellect; poetic imagination alone can guide us beyond the limits of experience. One thing only is certain: that man feels the need of supplementing reality by an ideal world of his own creation, and this creative work brings into play the loftiest and noblest functions of his intelligence. Speculation must not claim to be rational and demonstrative; the more theoretical it is, the more it would compete with science in certainty, the less important will be its part in life; if, on the other hand, it is content to bring the world of actualities into relationship with the world of values, and rises in its conception of phenomena to a moral action, mastering matter by means of form without doing violence to facts, it will raise a temple built up of its ideas meet for the worship of the eternal and divine. Peace will never be attained, the conflict between science and the highest human aspirations will never cease, until the transient character of all that is fictitious in art, religion, and philosophy be recognised.

3. Criticism of the Physiological Interpretation of the a priori and of the Poetic Intuition of the Absolute. — To Lange belongs the credit of having asserted loudly the rights of mind as opposed to vulgar materialism; but by thus relegating to the domain of poetry the