Another graphomaniac, the author of that imbecile book, _Rembrandt as Educator_, drivels in almost the same way. ‘Interest in science, and especially in the once so popular natural science, has widely diminished of late in the German world.... There has been to a certain extent a surfeit of induction; there is a longing for synthesis; the days of objectivity are declining once more to their end, and, in its place, subjectivity knocks at the door.’[111] Edouard Rod[112] says: ‘The century has advanced without keeping all its promises’; and further on he speaks again of ‘this ageing and deluded century.’ In a small book, which has become a sort of gospel to imbeciles and idiots, _Le Devoir présent_, the author, M. Paul Desjardins,[113] makes continual attacks on ‘so-called scientific empiricism,’ and speaks of the ‘negativists, the empiricists, and the mechanists, whose attention is wholly taken up with physical and inexorable forces,’ boasting of his intention ‘to render invalid the value of the empirical methods.’ Even a serious thinker, M. F. Paulhan,[114] in his investigation of the basis of French neo-mysticism, comes to the conclusion that natural science has shown itself powerless to satisfy the needs of mankind. ‘We feel ourselves surrounded by a vast unknown, and demand that at least access to it should be permitted to us. Evolution and positivism have blocked the way.... For these reasons evolution could not but show itself incapable of guiding the mind, even if it left us great thoughts.’