nd gratuitous. We have seen that
science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent,
common-sense rounded out and minutely articulated. It is therefore as
much an instinctive product, as much a stepping forth of human courage
in the dark, as is any inevitable dream or impulsive action. Like life
itself, like any form of determinate existence, it is altogether
autonomous and unjustifiable from the outside. It must lean on its own
vitality; to sanction reason there is only reason, and to corroborate
sense there is nothing but sense. Inferential thought is a venture not
to be approved of, save by a thought no less venturesome and
inferential. This is once for all the fate of a living being--it is the
very essence of spirit--to be ever on the wing, borne by inner forces
toward goals of its own imagining, confined to a passing apprehension of
a represented world. Mind, which calls itself the organ of truth, is a
permanent possibility of error. The encouragement and corroboration
which science is alleged to receive from moment to moment may, for aught
it knows, be simply a more ingenious self-deception, a form of that
cumulative illusion by which madness can confirm itself, creating a
whole world, with an endless series of martyrs, to bear witness to its
sanity.

To insist on this situation may seem idle, since no positive doctrine
can gain thereby in plausibility, and no particular line of action in
reasonableness. Yet this transcendental exercise, this reversion to the
immediate, may be recommended by way of a cathartic, to free the mind
from ancient obstructions and make it hungrier and more agile in its
rational faith. Scepticism is harmless when it is honest and universal;
it clears the air and is a means of reorganising belief on its natural
foundations. Belief is an inevitable accompaniment of practice and
intent, both of which it will cling to all the more closely after a
thorough criticism. When all beliefs are challenged together, the just
and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and to re-establish
themselves alone. The doubt cast on science, when it is an ingenuous and
impartial doubt, will accordingly serve to show what sort of thing
science is, and to establish it on a sure foundation. Science will then
be seen to be tentative, genial, practical, and humane, full of ideality
and pathos, like every great human undertaking.

[Sidenote: Arriere-pensee in transcendentalism.]

Unfortunately a