90 SCEPTICISM. 



is the more real ; from that of sense, the less uni- 

 versal. If, therefore, we could attain the ideal of 

 science, and derive all things in the world from the 

 action of a single law, that law would ipso facto 

 be most unreal, i.e., furthest removed from reality. 

 How can we expect, then, that our results should 

 come out right, if in our inquiry we deliberately 

 walk away from reality ? And after this can we be 

 any longer astonished to find that all proof should 

 be perversion (§ 15), and that all science should end 

 in mythology (§ 5) ? 



§ 19. And so the Sceptic will conclude that 

 knowledge originated in a process which seems to 

 have arisen amid the animal beginnings of man, 

 — perchance from one of those fortuitous variations 

 to which modern science professes itself indebted 

 for so many interesting and important phenomena 

 — but which is historically inexplicable and logically 

 indefensible ; that it progresses by shamelessly 

 ignoring patent differences ; and that it results in 

 principles which after all prove false and incom- 

 petent to grasp the reality of things. He will agree 

 with Heraclitus of old in thinking that not even 

 a grunt can be truthfully uttered concerning the 

 Becoming of things, and will claim to seal the mouth 

 of the defenders of knowledge, until they can show 

 how thought can harmonize with feeling, or our 

 conceptions correspond with facts. And this he 

 knows can never be, for since the equivalence of 

 thought and feeling has been denied, no reasoning 

 which assumes it can avail against Scepticism ; the 

 proof of their correspondence would have to be 

 derived from thought alone or feeling alone. And 

 yet feeling alone Is inarticulate, while thought alone 

 is vain, and has no contact with reality; they cannot 



