To-day they defend scientific knowledge; to-morrow they will attack it. Indeed, it so happens that the very belief in the causal law begets a great disquiet and turmoil in the soul, which finally produces all the horrors of chaos and madness. The certainty that the existing order is immutable is for certain minds synonymous with the certainty that life is nonsensical and absurd. Probably the disciples of Christ had that feeling when the last words of their crucified Master reached them from the cross: 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' And the modern theorists may explain triumphantly that when the law became the instrument of chaos and madness, it was _ipso facto_ abolished. 'Christ has risen,' say the disciples of Christ. I have said that the theorists may triumph; but I must confess that I have not found in any of them an open glorification of such an obvious proof of the truth of their teaching. Of the resurrection of Christ they say not a word--on the contrary, they make every effort to avoid it and pass it by in silence. And this circumstance compels us to pause and think. A dilemma arises: if you grant that the law of causation suffers no exception, then your soul will be eternally haunted by the last words of the crucified Christ; if you do not, then you will have no science. Some assert that it is impossible to live without science, without knowledge, that such a life is horror and madness; others cannot be reconciled to the thought that the most perfect of men died the death of a murderer. What shall we do? Without which thing is it impossible for man to live? Without scientific knowledge, or without the conviction that truth and spiritual perfection are in the last resort the victors of this world? And how will the theory of knowledge stand with regard to questions such as these? Will it still continue its exercises in apologetics or will it at last understand that this is not its real problem, and that if it would preserve the right to be called philosophy, it will have not to justify and exalt the existing science, but to examine and direct some science of its own. It means above all to put the question: Is scientific knowledge really perfect, or is it perhaps imperfect, and should it therefore yield its present honourable place to another science? Evidently this is the most important question for the theory of knowledge, yet this question it never puts. It wants to exalt existing science. It has been, is now, and probably will long continue to be, apologetics. _Truth and Utility_