MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM 95 



empirical science, confined to Nature as its proper 

 object, can legitimately assert the theory of pan- 

 theism ? 



With regard now, first, to the argument drawn 

 with such apparent force purely from the method of 

 natural science, it will be plain to a more scrutinising 

 reflexion, that shifting from the legitimate disregard 

 of a supersensible Principle — a disregard in which 

 the empirical method is entirely within its right — to 

 the denial or the doubt of it because there is and 

 can be no scientific evidence for it, is in fact an abuse 

 of the scientific method, an unwarrantable extension 

 of it to decisions lying by its own terms beyond its 

 reach. The shift is made upon the assumption that 

 there can be no science — no exact and conclusive 

 knowledge — founded on any but empirical evidence. 

 Now, that there is no science deserving of the name 

 except such as follows the empirical method of 

 natural science is a claim which experts in natural 

 science are rather prone to make ; but the pro- 

 foundest thinkers the world has known — such as 

 Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, 

 Kant, and Hegel- — have certainly pronounced the 

 claim unfounded; indeed, a sheer assumption, con- 

 tradicted by evidence the clearest, if oftentimes 

 abstruse. When instead of blindly following expe- 

 rience we raise the question of the nature and the 

 sources of experience, and push it in earnest, it then 



