ioo 'IGNORABlAfUS ET RESTRL\GAMUR. 



overlooked in admiration of the brilliant accessories of 

 the essay. Indeed this frequently happens with Du 

 Bois-Eeymond's articles, for he knows too well how to 

 conceal the weakness of his argument and evidence, 

 and the shallowness of his thought, by striking images 

 and flowery metaphors, and by all the phraseology of 

 rhetoric in which the versatile French nature is so 

 superior to our sober German one. It is all the more 

 important that we should not let ourselves be dazzled 

 by these seductive tricks, and particularly by adduced 

 i'acts which bear upon the most important and funda- 

 mental questions of human science, but that we should 

 extract the hard kernel from the savoury and fragrant 

 fruit. In the preface to my " Evolution of Man," and 

 in the notes 2 2 and 2 3 of my Munich address, I have 

 already incidentally alluded to the chief weaknesses 

 of the " Ignorabimus-speech ; " but I must here return 

 somewhat more fully to the subject. 



There are, as is well known, two problems which Du 

 Bois-Reymond propounds as the impassable boundary 

 of human knowledge of nature ; limits which indeed 

 the human mind is not only incapable of passing at 

 the present stage of its development, but which it 

 never can be capable of passing in any more advanced 

 stage. The first problem is the nature and connection 

 of matter and force ; the second is human conscious- 

 ness. Xow, first of all, as has already been said in 



