LIMITS TO INTELLECTUAL EXPANSION 501 



cannot explain the Wherefore of suffering, which is the condition 

 of progress ; all these, and many others, are things which illus- 

 trate the truth of Goethe's words when he told us that " wir 

 still verehren diirfen, was unerforschlich ist." As Weismann 

 has admirably said -.^ 



"If we follow up the truth without fear, we wiU always corns to the 

 conclusion, ahke now and in the future, that a limit is set to our know- 

 ledge by the very constitution itself of our own mind, and that beyond 

 this limit lies the domain of belief, which every one is free to conceive in 

 the manner which he deems best. With regard to these ultimate factors, 

 Goethe has given us the true formula when he let the Nature Spirit cry 

 out to Faust : ' Thou dost resemble the spirit which thou oonoeivest, but 

 not me.' Man must at all times repeat this to himself, but none the less 

 does the necessity of an ethical system, of a religion, remain. The latter 

 must only change its forms according as our knowledge of the world 

 progresses." 



These are not the words of a metaphysician, but of the greatest 

 biologist which Europe has produced since Darwin. The progress 

 of science has not annihilated reUgious belief, as some appear 

 to think ; but religion is the complement of that expansion of 

 life which science has done so much to stimulate and develop. 

 It is rehgion which enables us to cross the frontier where science 

 ends, which alone is capable of quenching that thirst for know- 

 ledge which science only renders more painful by awakening in 

 us hopes which it is unable to fulfil. If the Wherefore of all 

 that conflict and suffering which is the primary condition of 

 progress cannot be answered by science, perhaps it can be 

 answered by religious belief, which transcends the domain of 

 science ; if the desire for expansion cannot find its reahsation 

 in science, perhaps it can find satisfaction in reUgious belief .^ 



1 Yortrdge uber Deszendenztheorie, ii. 331. Jena, 1904. 



2 It may not be out of place, as we have quoted Weismann, to quote 

 another master, who is as far apart from Weismann as the poles are 

 asunder, but whom, nevertheless, we recognise as being in many ways our 

 teacher in things philosophical. We refer to Nietzsche. No one was 

 a greater adversary of Materialism than the author of Zarathustra. 

 His attacks on Christianity spring from his great idealism. He writes 



