Later on, you will reject all their truths, with horror, perhaps with indignation and disgust, even with utter indifference. You will not consent to accept that our life is only a shadow of actual reality, you will revolt against Spinoza's God, who cannot love, yet demands love for himself, Kant's categorical imperative will seem to you a cold monster,--but you will never forget Plato, or Spinoza, or Kant, and will for ever keep your gratitude to them, who made you believe that authority is given to mortals. Then you will understand that there are no errors and no truths in philosophy; that errors and truths are only for him above whom is set a superior authority, a law, a standard. But philosophers themselves create laws and standards. This is what we are taught by the history of philosophy; this is what is most difficult for man to master and understand. I have already said that the historians of philosophy draw quite a different moral from the study of the great human creations. _Science and Metaphysics_ In his autobiography Spencer confesses that he had really never read Kant. He had had _The Critique of Pure Reason_ in his hands, and had even read the beginning, the Transcendental Aesthetic, but the beginning convinced him it was no use for him to read further. Once a man had made the unconvincing admission which Kant had made, by accepting the subjectivity of one form of perception, of space and time, he could not be seriously taken into account. If he is consistent, all his philosophy will be a system of absurdity and nonsense; if he is inconsistent,--the less attention does he deserve.