LIMITS TO INTELLECTUAL EXPANSION 499 



limits set up by ignorance to recede ; however far it may cause 

 them to recede in the future ; there is, and will remaia, a frontier 

 which science can never cross. Of the existence of that frontier 

 humanity is well aware ; and it is destined to see all its efiorts 

 dashed to pieces against this brick waU, even as the waves of 

 the sea are dashed against the clifi and recede. We may call 

 the mystery which is shrouded behind this frontier the Unknow- 

 able ; but we know that there exists an Unknowable ; we know 

 that there exists a hmit to the expansion of our intellect ; and 

 this knowledge of the impotency of our efEorts, coupled with 

 the ardent thirst of our desire to unveil the mystery, must 

 cause us to despair. For we see that the power of man has a 

 limit ; and that, whUe our desire for expansion knows no bounds, 

 because it is the desire of hfe which is insatiable, nevertheless, 

 our power of expansion is ever confronted by a wall on which 

 is written, " Thus far and no further." 



M. Alfred Fouillee has well said that " Aucune formule de 

 mecanique ou de physiologic ne fera comprendre pourquoi je 

 jouis, soufEre, desire."^ And it is precisely this impotency of 

 science to explain the Wherefore of Ufe, of its desires and joys 

 and sufferings, which prevents science from being the only 

 factor which gives a value to life. Science does give a value 

 to Ufe, in that it enables life to reaUse its desire for expansion ; 

 but, on the other hand, it counterbalances the benefit which it 

 confers by preventing Hfe from reahsing all those hopes which it 

 has been the means of stimulating. As if in irony, science raises 

 our hopes, stimulates our expansion, and then condemns us to 

 see these hopes reduced to nothing, this expansion brought to 

 a standstill, before the impassable barrier of the Unknowable. 

 As Herbert Spencer has rightly said,^ it is not by dogmatic 

 assertions that science brings home to us the limits of the human 



1 A. Fouillee, La Psychdogie des Idees-Forces, i. 129. Paris, Alcan, 1893. 



2 Education : IrUdlectual, Moral, Physical, p. 39. Popular edition, Watta 

 and Co. 



32—2 



