Often, and with more ability than has been evinced by the Positive school of the present day, has this judgment been pronounced against metaphysics. But that judgment man's mind has never accepted, and never will accept; the great problems which pass beyond the finite world lie propounded before him; never will he renounce the attempt to solve them; he is impelled to it by an irresistible instinct, an instinct full of faith and of hope, in spite of the repeated failure of his efforts. {131} As man is in the sphere of action, so is he also in that of thought; he aspires higher than it is possible to achieve: this is his nature and his glory; to renounce his aspirations would be declaring his own forfeiture. But without any such abdication, it is still necessary that he should know himself, it is necessary that he should understand that his strength here below is infinitely less than his ambition, and that it is not given him to have any positive scientific knowledge of that infinite and ideal world towards which he dashes. The facts and the problems which he there encounters are such, that the methods and the laws which direct the human mind in the study of the finite world are inapplicable. The infinite is for us the object not of science but belief, and it is alike impossible for us either to reject or penetrate it. {132} Let man, then, feel a profound sentiment of that double truth: let him, without sacrificing the ambitious aspirations of his intelligence, recognise the limits imposed upon his achievements in science; he will not then be long in also recognising that, in the relations of the finite with the infinite--of himself with God--he stands in need of superhuman assistance, and that this does not fail him. God has given to man what man never can conquer, and revelation opens to him that world of the infinite over which, by its own exertions and of itself alone, man's mind never could spread light. The light man receives from God himself. {133} Fifth Meditation. Revelation. When it was objected to Leibnitz "that there is nothing in the intelligence that has not first been in the sense," Leibnitz replied, "if not the intelligence itself." [Footnote 25] [Footnote 25: Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.--Nisi intellectus ipse.] In the answer of Leibnitz I will change but a single word, and substitute for _intelligence, soul_. _Soul_ is a term more comprehensive and more complete than _intelligence;_ it embraces everything in the human being that is not body and matter; it is not the mere intelligence, a special faculty of man; it is all the intellectual and moral man. {134}