fer somewhat;
but they are correct, so that any one can see, that, if the whole is
carried out in accordance with the calculations, the building will be
erected. Along come people, and assert that the chief point lies in
having no estimates, and that it should be built thus--by the eye. And
this "thus," men call the most accurate of scientific science. Men
repudiate every science, the very substance of science,--the definition
of the destiny and the welfare of men,--and this repudiation they
designate as science.
Ever since men have existed, great minds have been born into their midst,
which, in the conflict with reason and conscience, have put to themselves
questions as to "what constitutes welfare,--the destiny and welfare, not
of myself alone, but of every man?" What does that power which has
created and which leads me, demand of me and of every man? And what is
it necessary for me to do, in order to comply with the requirements
imposed upon me by the demands of individual and universal welfare? They
have asked themselves: "I am a whole, and also a part of something
infinite, eternal; what, then, are my relations to other parts similar to
myself, to men and to the whole--to the world?"
And from the voices of conscience and of reason, and from a comparison of
what their contemporaries and men who had lived before them, and who had
propounded to themselves the same questions, had said, these great
teachers have deduced their doctrines, which were simple, clear,
intelligible to all men, and always such as were susceptible of
fulfilment. Such men have existed of the first, second, third, and
lowest ranks. The world is full of such men. Every living man propounds
the question to himself, how to reconcile the demands of welfare, and of
his personal existence, with conscience and reason; and from this
universal labor, slowly but uninterruptedly, new forms of life, which are
more in accord with the requirements of reason and of conscience, are
worked out.
All at once, a new caste of people makes its appearance, and they say,
"All this is nonsense; all this must be abandoned." This is the
deductive method of ratiocination (wherein lies the difference between
the deductive and the inductive method, no one can understand); these are
the dogmas of the technological and metaphysical period. Every thing
that these men discover by inward experience, and which they communicate
to one another, concerning their knowle
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