Foreword 



Strictly speaking, there is nothing that is unknowable. 

 That which is called the region of the unknowable is 

 continually being lessened as evolution proceeds. The 

 simplest metereological laws were unknowable to our 

 cave-dwelling ancestors; the laws of gravitation, the 

 physical constitution of the stars, and the origin of animal 

 species were unknowable before the development of 

 modern science. It must be the same for the great 

 laws of life and destiny, whether of the universe or of 

 the individual. 



As for the problems which are necessarily still above 

 all attempts at explanation, they can be resolutely and 

 systematically put aside; they will constitute the philos- 

 ophy of a more highly and ideally evolved humanity. 



The sacrifice which modern scientific philosophy 

 makes in thus limiting its aims to that which falls within 

 the bounds of reason, has great compensating advantages. 



To begin with, this sacrifice, resolutely and courage- 

 ously accepted, clears out of our way those two stones 

 of stumbling mysticism and despondency which en- 

 cumber the path of idealism. The thinker will avoid 

 mysticism, for he will be able to avoid that intoxication 

 of the personal imagination which is always most 

 luxuriant when dealing with the subliminal. He will 

 be released from ancient and modern forms of dogmatism, 

 and will no longer look for a Messiah or a Magus to 

 guide him, nor yield to the puerile attractions of so-called 

 initiations into occult mysteries. 



He will be saved from despondency, and will not 

 be led to say, like Herbert Spencer, who has paraphrased 

 and extended a celebrated dictum of Pascal : 



* Then comes the thought of this universal matrix, 

 itself anteceding alike creation or evolution, whichever 

 be assumed, and infinitely transcending both, alike in 

 extent and duration; since both, if conceived at all, 

 must be conceived as having had beginnings, while 



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