26 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [it. i. 



possible devices of attack had proved fruitless, that we could 

 realize the truth that we had been assailing an inexpugnable 

 fortress. Had we not been taught by many a bitter defeat, 

 we should never have learned the real extent of our powers. 

 Had not metaphysics reared many an apparently-solid edifice, 

 which fell into unshapely ruin at the first rude blast of 

 criticism, psychology might never have troubled itself to 

 examine the soil upon which all such edifices must be 

 founded. Nay, it may be truly said, that though philosophers 

 have failed in what they have consciously attempted, they 

 have nevertheless unwittingly achieved a result greater 

 than any of those which they have sought to obtain. By 

 their long career of heroic defeat, they have furnished us 

 with a concrete demonstration, almost superfluously ample, ol 

 the relativity of human knowledge. By exhausting all 

 possible hypotheses respecting the objective reality, they have 

 made it apparent that no tenable hypothesis can be framed. 

 In the very failure to obtain one kind of truth, they have 

 demonstrated for us a truth of another sort, — a truth which 

 must for the future lie at the bottom of all successful research. 

 Is not this then a worthy result ? Remembering how steep 

 and laborious is the path of human progress, is not the 

 definite establishment of one fundamental truth like the 

 Relativity of Knowledge an achievement worthy to crown 

 the efforts of twenty-five centuries ? Shall it take two or 

 three generations of weary experimenting to bring into 

 existence some incarnation of material force like the steam- 

 engine, and may it not take a hundred generations for the 

 human mind to ascertain for itself experimentally what it can 

 know and what it cannot know ? 



To the second accusation we may return a straightforward 

 denial. In asserting the impossibility of acquiring absolute 

 knowledge, or of ascertaining aught respecting the nature of 

 mind and matter and the origin of the universe, we do not 

 dethrone Philosophy ; we do not condemn it as antiquated 



