etaphysical system and a
religious dogma are both attempts to explain the incomprehensible
secret to human reason. The negro solves the riddle of the musical-box,
believing that a spirit is inside it, which gives forth musical sounds
at the white man's command; and that is precisely what priests and
philosophers do when they explain the great workings of the universe by
a God, or a principle, or whatever they call their fetich. Human nature
always wants to know the why and wherefore of things. When we are not
sure of our ground, we help ourselves by conjectures, or even by
imagination. These conjectures are senseless or reasonable, according
to whether our knowledge is insufficient or comprehensive. Men are
satisfied in their childhood with stories as explanations of the
world's mysteries, in their maturity they advance to plausible
hypotheses: the stories yield to theology, hypotheses to philosophy.
Religion presents a fictitious solution to the riddle in a concrete
form, and metaphysics in an abstract form; the one relates and asserts,
the other argues and avoids the improbable. It is only a difference of
degree, not of character."

"That is just so," cried Wilhelm. "Metaphysics are as incapable as
religion of disclosing what lies behind the phenomenal world, and I
cannot conceive (forgive me, Dorfling, if I say straight out what I
mean), I cannot conceive how a philosopher can really take his own
system in earnest. He must know that his explanation is only a
conjecture, a possibility at the best, and he actually has the temerity
to preach it as a fixed truth. No, my friend, I do not expect anything
from metaphysics. It only interests me as a means for studying
psychology. The history of philosophical systems is a history of the
development of the mind of humanity. The systems are only valuable as
testimonials to the endless extent and possibility of human thought.
All the systems put together do not contain a spark of objective truth."

"That is upon the whole the difference between natural science and
metaphysics," said Schrotter. "Science regulates the boundary between
what is known and what is not known, and declares when the limit is
reached. Our knowledge has attained to a certain point, and beyond that
we know and understand nothing, absolutely nothing. Metaphysics will
not stop at that limit. It confuses knowledge and dreams together, and
manufactures out of the two something quite worthless. It explains
thi