Human nature always wants to know the why
and wherefore of things. When we are not sure of our ground, we help
ourselves by conjectures, or even by imagination. These conjectures
are senseless or reasonable, according to whether our knowledge is
insufficient or comprehensive. Men are satisfied in their childhood
with stories as explanations of the world's mysteries, in their
maturity they advance to plausible hypotheses: the stories yield to
theology, hypotheses to philosophy. Religion presents a fictitious
solution to the riddle in a concrete form, and metaphysics in an
abstract form; the one relates and asserts, the other argues and
avoids the improbable. It is only a difference of degree, not of
character."
"That is just so," cried Wilhelm. "Metaphysics are as incapable as
religion of disclosing what lies behind the phenomenal world, and I
cannot conceive (forgive me, Dorfling, if I say straight out what I
mean), I cannot conceive how a philosopher can really take his own
system in earnest. He must know that his explanation is only a
conjecture, a possibility at the best, and he actually has the
temerity to preach it as a fixed truth. No, my friend, I do not
expect anything from metaphysics. It only interests me as a means
for studying psychology.
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