rather sought to know what answer he had to give to the questions I
had to put to him--that of the limitation of possible knowledge being
the chief. The ordinary examiner, with his "State the views of
So-and-so," would have floored me at any time. If he had said what do
_you_ think about any given problem, I might have got on fairly well.

The reader who has had the patience to follow the enforced, but
unwilling, egotism of this veritable history (especially if his
studies have led him in the same direction), will now see why my mind
steadily gravitated towards the conclusions of Hume and Kant, so well
stated by the latter in a sentence, which I have quoted elsewhere.

"The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of pure
reason is, after all, merely negative, since it serves not as an
organon for the enlargement [of knowledge], but as a discipline for
its delimitation; and, instead of discovering truth, has only the
modest merit of preventing error."[61]

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I
was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an
idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I
learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last,
I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of
these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of
these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed
from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain
"gnosis,"--had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of
existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong
conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on
my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that
opinion. Like Dante,

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

but, unlike Dante, I cannot add,

Che la diritta via era smarrita.

On the contrary, I had, and have, the firmest conviction that I never
left the "verace via"--the straight road; and that this road led
nowhere else but into the dark depths of a wild and tangled forest.
And though I have found leopards and lions in the path; though I have
made abundant acquaintance with the hungry wolf, that "with privy paw
devours apace and nothing said," as another great poet says of the
ravening beast; and though no friendly spectre has even yet offered
his guida