Appendix 5.

(453) [Philosophy and mysteries]

Philosophy sometimes holds back from mysteries, and sometimes leads to them. Is philosophy, therefore, opposed only to certain mysteries and not to them all? I am speaking, of course, only of a tendency shown by a certain kind of philosophy - a tendency which to a great extent is independent of the individuals professing the philosophy. When I give my adhesion to a school or method of philosophy, I absorb its spirit without discerning clearly the nature of this spirit, which I follow blindly in the hope of reaching a happy conclusion. I say this in order to be fair to everyone, even while I indicate the nature and tendency of a certain kind of philosophy to avoid some mysteries and embrace others.

The mysteries it avoids are those which suppose the existence of something spiritual. Imagine now what happens when such a philosophy reaches a point beyond which it cannot go without recurring to something spiritual. It declares, 'No progress can be made here,' and creates a mystery by positing an inexplicable difficulty. At this point, our philosopher is quite capable of praising his own modesty, and of accusing others of presumption. He is governed, however, by a secret prejudice which excludes spirit as unnecessary, and reduces everything to matter.

What happens if a person begins from an unproven proposition which he accepts and loves absolutely to the exclusion of its contrary? He will proceed freely without turning to any 'elevated' notions until he can no longer advance without admitting something spiritual. Then he stops, and says that philosophical prudence requires him to retreat. Arbitrary, voluntary and humiliating limits of this nature, dependent upon a blind belief that what is disliked is unintelligible, first limits knowledge by forbidding human beings the free use of their reason, their highest faculty. They then go on to destroy philosophy and science by rendering human knowledge impossible. The more we meditate, the more we see that eliminating 'spirit' from the universe renders human wisdom vain and absurd. Intelligence, cut off from the divine, loses its human quality. Modern scepticism, indifference, selfishness and epicureanism are the inevitable result of the philosophy we are speaking of. But even as they boast of their status, sceptics reason, cynics feel, egoists love and Epicureans rise from their baseness. Caught in this appalling contradiction, human beings stand self-condemned. Human nature, and the truth which mingles with it, cannot be filed away and forgotten.