:£mile boutroux 



quate for all things human and divine, a 

 science before which man, as man, could not 

 pretend to take anj^ attitude but one of obed- 

 ient submission — complete and absolute. 



Once more man protested. Every one 

 knows with what eloquence that protest is ex- 

 pressed by Goethe's Faust: 



Was man nicht weiss, das eben brauchte man, 

 Und was man weiss, kann man nicht brauchen. 



Weh! Stech' ich in dem Kerker noch? 



Fliehl Auf! Hinaus in 's weite land! 



The works of a Rabelais or a Montaigne are 

 nothing else but a continual revindication of 

 the rights of culture and of life, in the pres- 

 ence of the tyranny of abstract science, 

 y "Knowledge without conscience," said Rabe- 

 lais, "is simply the ruin of the soul." And 

 Montaigne: "Science without judgment is the 

 destruction of the mind." 



Finally, with Descartes, the principle of cul- 

 ture triumphed, and triumphed, moreover, in 

 such a way as, at the same time, to maintain 



