That science can furnish no real explanations she herself admits with her calculation of probabilities on the one hand and her philosophy of probabilities on the other. Both require compromises with actuality, the ignoring of minimum values, the equating of an endlessly great probability with truth itself: in fine, an intellectual act of violence. Whoever has his need of a world-theory satisfied by Herbert Spencer’s deductions, I should imagine he might also find it relieved by those of Thomas Aquinas. And if any one maintains with particular pride that his world-theory is based on strictly scientific axioms, he perpetrates an involuntary joke, inasmuch as he thereby says that his world-theory is based upon an exact calculation of probabilities; for, when all is said and done, the only exact thing about science is her calculation of probability--that is, the freedom she takes to herself to be inexact. “What of mathematics?” it may be asked. But the higher mathematics which, in the consideration of the world from the physical point of view, comes into question before everything else, is just the calculation of probabilities itself. And it is with no actualities that geometry and algebra deal, but with ultimate values--that is, values that are neither actual nor non-actual, but are given with actuality, as for example, the horizon and the ideal plane betwixt the air of the atmosphere and the surface of a sheet of water are neither actual nor non-actual, but merely things given with actuality. This is a point of the highest epistemological importance which, so far as my knowledge goes, has nowhere been taken into consideration; to go into it more fully, however, would here be out of place. The Euclidean instruments--point, line, superficies--are simply, ultimate values of like kind; hence, neither actual nor non-actual. To operate with such ultimate values where the problem of life, actuality, is concerned, and in such operations to set out from mathematical truths, as does the Kantian philosophy for instance--this just means that one has failed to understand actuality. Mathematics is only possible where there are identities. These, however, are to be found only in the realm of ultimate values. Actuality has no identities. Where there are nothing but combustion processes, there each moment of existence is a thing unique that never before has been and never again will be. Whoso has comprehended the play of world-events after the manner of the Buddha, to such an one it becomes ever more clear that science, with her pretensions to furnish us at some future date with a genuine world-conception, resembles that penniless wag who affixed a notice outside his door bearing the inscription: “To-morrow I will pay my debts.” Science, to the question as to when she finally means to pay what she owes to humanity, a genuine world-conception, has always but this _one_ answer, “To-morrow!”