the world must have felt at one time the mad desire to unriddle the universe. Even the stodgy philosophers who invented the theory of knowledge have at times made surreptitious sorties, hoping to open a path to the unknown, in spite of their own fat, senseless books that demonstrate the advantages of scientific knowledge. Man either lives in continuous experience, or he frees himself from conclusions imposed by limited experience. All the rest is the devil. From the devil come the blandishments with which Karamzin charmed himself and his readers.... Or is it the contrary? Who will answer! Once again, as usual, at the end of a pathetic speech one is left with a conjecture. Let every man please himself. But what about those who would like to live according to Karamzin, but cannot? I cannot speak for them. Schiller recommended hope. Will it do? To be frank, hardly. He who has once lost his peace of mind will never find it again. 17 Ever since Kant succeeded in convincing the learned that the world of phenomena is quite other than the world of true reality, and that even our own existence is not our real existence, but only the visible manifestation of a mysterious, unknown substance (substantia)--philosophy has been stuck in a new rut, and cannot move a single millimetre out of the track laid out by the great Königsbergian. Backward or forward it can go, but necessarily in the Kantian rut. For how can you get out of the counterposing of the phenomenon against the thing-in-itself? This proposition, this counterposing seems inalterable, so there is nothing left but to stick your head in the heavy draught-collar of the theory of knowledge. Which most philosophers do, even with a glad smile, which inevitably rouses a suspicion that they have got what they wanted, and their "metaphysical need" was nothing more than a need for a harness. Otherwise they would have kicked at the sight of the collar. Surely the contraposition between the world of phenomena and the thing-in-itself is an invention of the reasoning mind, as is the theory of knowledge deduced from this contraposing. Therefore the freedom-loving spirit could reject it in the very beginning--and _basta!_ With the devil one must be very cautious. We know quite well that if he only gets hold of the tip of your ear he will carry off your whole body. So it is with Reason. Grant it one single assumption, admit but one proposition--and _finita la commedia_. You are in the toils. Metaphysics cannot exist side-by-side with reason. Everything metaphysical is absurd, everything reasonable is--positive. So we come upon a dilemma. The fundamental predicate of metaphysics is absurdity: and yet surely many positive assertions can lay legitimate claim to that self-same, highly-respectable predicate. What then? Is there means of distinguishing a metaphysical absurdity from a perfectly ordinary one? May one have recourse to criteria? Will not the very criterion