I 



POSITIVISM IMPRACTICABLE. 1 3 



solidarity of knowledge. For in the subsequent 

 course of its development knowledge did not belie 

 its origin. There has been no age when the Sphinx 

 could be evaded, when the answers to her riddles 

 were not of transcendent importance to life. To 

 escape these questions proves neither possible, nor 

 perhaps, right. For if there is any meaning at all 

 in life, the philosophic impulse also cannot be devoid 

 of its significance, nay, of a significance proportionate 

 to its antiquity, its persistence, and its vital import- 

 ance. 



To the question, therefore, of Positivism — Why 

 should you seek to know ? — we may give the answer 

 — Because we must and ought. It Is futile to bid 

 us confine ourselves to this present world of phen- 

 omena, and to assure us that the question as to the 

 nature of God and of our future need not be raised. 

 The world of phenomena, the sphere of positive 

 science, is not self-supporting, self-sufficing, and self- 

 explaining, it points beyond itself to a reality which 

 underlies it, back to a past from which It is de- 

 scended, and forward to a future It foreshadows. 

 Man can not understand his own nature and that of 

 his existing environment, the twofold aspect of a 

 single fact, except by a reference to their previous 

 and prospective conditions. Life cannot be lived 

 now except in connexion with its past and future. 

 And this, we shall see, is literally true, since the 

 consistent attempt to take the world as it Is, to con- 

 fine ourselves to the given, to exclude all ulterior 

 inquiries, inevitably leads to pessimism, i,e., to the 

 utter neoration of life. 



Positivism, therefore, i.e., the assertion that philo- 

 sophy Is unnecessary and useless, cannot maintain 

 Its position : It must either vanish or transform Itself. 



