Science is useful--but she need not pretend to truth. She cannot know what truth is, she can only accumulate universal laws. Whereas there are, and always have been, non-scientific ways of searching for truth, ways which lead, if not to the innermost secrets, yet to the threshold. These roads, however, we have let fall into ruin whilst we followed our modern methodologies, so now we dare not even think of them. What gives us the right to assert that astrologers, alchemists, diviners, and sorcerers who passed the long nights alone with their thoughts, wasted their time in vain? As for the philosopher's stone, that was merely a plausible excuse invented to satisfy the uninitiated. Could an alchemist dare to confess openly that all his efforts were towards no useful or utilitarian end? He had to guard against importunate curiosity and impertinent authority in outsiders. So he lied, now frightening, now alluring the mob through its cupidity. But certainly he had his own important work to do: and it had only one fault, that it was purely personal to him. And about personal matters it is considered correct to keep silent.... Astonishing fact! As a rule a man hesitates over trifles. But it does sometimes occur that a moment arrives when he is filled with unheard-of courage and resolution in his judgments. He is ready to stand up for his opinions against all the world, dead or living. Whence such sudden surety, what does it mean? Rationally we can discover no foundation for it. If a lover has got into his head that his beloved is the fairest woman on earth, worth the whole of life to him; if one who has been insulted feels that his offender is the basest wretch, deserving torture and death; if a would-be Columbus persuades himself that America is the only goal for his ambition--who will convince such men that their opinions, shared by none but themselves, are false or unjustifiable? And for whose sake will they renounce their tenets? For the sake of objective truth? that is, for the pleasure of the assurance that all men after them will repeat their judgment for truth? They don't care. Let Don Quixote run broadcast with drawn sword, proving the beauty of Dulcinea or the impending horror of windmills. As a matter of fact, he and the German philosophers with him have a vague idea, a kind of presentiment, that their giants are but mill-sails, and that their ideal on the whole is but a common girl driving swine to pasture. To defy such deadly doubt they take to the sword or to argument, and do not rest until they have succeeded in stopping the mouth of everybody. When from all lips they hear the praise of Dulcinea they say: yes, she is beautiful, and she never drove pigs. When the world beholds their windmilling exploits with amazement they are filled with triumph; sheep are not sheep, mills are not mills, as you might imagine; they are knights and cyclops. This is called a proven, all-binding, universal truth. The support of the