THEIR DIVERGENCE MAKES KNOWLEDGE IMPOSSIBLE. 85 



§ 16, It follows from this divergence between 

 thought and reality, that our thought can only 

 symbolize things, and from the extent of that diverg- 

 ence, that it can only symbolize them imperfectly, 

 and in such a way that upon all the critical ques- 

 tions the disagreement between thought and reality 

 is hopeless. Thought can neither grasp the indi- 

 viduality of the Real, which it fails to define as 

 particularity, nor its Becoming, which it fails to 

 describe by the categories of Being and Not- Being 

 {v. § 13), nor the exuberant abundance of sense 

 perception, which it fails to express in terms of 

 thought-relations, and' cuts away as irrelevant to 

 the abstractions with which alone it can work. 

 Thought and feeling thus speak in different tongues, 

 as it were, and where is the interpreter that can 

 render them' intelligible to each other ? 



And yet knowledge consists only in their har- 

 mony, in the conformity of truth and fact, in the 

 correspondence of our thought-symbols, with which 

 we reason, with the reality which we feel. If then 

 such harmony cannot be attained, our reasonings 

 may be perfectly valid within their own sphere, and 

 our feelings perfectly unquestionable within theirs, 

 and yet knowledge will be impossible. For we 

 cannot bestow the title of knowledge on an inequit- 

 able adherence to one side : neither reasoning 

 which can attribute no meaning to facts, nor un- 

 reasoning acceptance of facts whicb have no mean- 

 ing, deserves the name of knowledge. And yet it 

 would seem that to one or other of these alternatives 



logical certainty in the ecstasy of Neoplatonism* In the one 

 case it sacrifices the theory of Ideas,, in the other the sensible 

 world, but in no case does it so solve the. problem as~ to make 

 knowledge possible. 



