Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/40

 AND REASON. 37

nnqueetionable truth comprehensible to every man who lives in the spirit.

This is what I wanted to add.

That which we have indubitably ascer- tained concerning the super-sensuous is, that in addition to what we have come to know with our five senses — in addi- tion to having learnt the limits of our being through contact with other beings who surround us, we are inevitably brought to the acknowledgement of the existence of something uncognisable through the senses, but undoubtedly existent ; this is true to such an extent that without the recognition of this exis- tence we cannot explain to ourselves the existence of anything (for instance, the Ether, the calculable vibrations of which give us the idea of light, warmth, elec- tricity). There is, therefore, something besides that which our senses give us, but the existence of which we acknow- ledge, not because it has been shown to us by any of our senses breaking those laws concerning them which we have deduced and accepted, but on the con- trary by our being brought to a reoog nition of the existence of this by reason; and this recognition not only does not violate the laws of relationship which we have discovered, but, on the contrary, institutes a yet more reasonable connec- tion between these relations.