individuality and freedom, of
its incomparability with all that is beneath it, is far too constant and
genuine to admit of its being put into a difficulty by a doctrine which it
has itself established. And this doctrine has far too much the character
of a "fixed theory" to carry permanent inward conviction with it. Here
again, the mistake made is in starting with scepticism and with the fewest
and simplest assumptions. It is by no means the case that in order to
discover the truth we must start always from a position of scepticism,
instead of from calm confidence in ourselves and in our conviction that we
possess in direct experience the best guarantee of truth. For we
experience nothing more certainly than the content and riches of our own
mind, its power of acting and creating, and all its great capacities. And
it is part of the duty laid upon us by the religious conception of the
universe, as well as by all other idealistic conceptions, to follow this
path of self-assurance alone, that is, through self-development and
self-deepening, through self-realisation and self-discipline, to use to
the full in our lives all that we have in heart and mind as possibilities,
tendencies, content, and capacities, and so practically to experience the
reality and power of the spiritual that the mood of suspicion and distrust
of it must disappear. The validity of this method is corroborated by all
the critical insight into the nature of our knowledge that we have gained
in the course of our study, and it might be deepened in regard to this
particular case. For here, if anywhere, we must recognise the limitations
of our knowledge; the impossibility of attaining to a full understanding
of the true nature and depths of things applies to the inquiring mind and
its hidden nature. From Descartes to Leibnitz, Kant, and Fries, down to
the historian of materialism itself, F. A. Lange, it has been an axiom of
the idealistic philosophy, expressed now in dogmatic, now in critical
form, that the mathematical-mechanical outlook and causal interpretation
of things, not excluding a naturalistic psychology, is thoroughly
justifiable as a method of arranging scientifically the phenomena
accessible to us and of penetrating more deeply towards an understanding
of these. It is, indeed, justifiable, so long as it does not profess to
reveal the true nature of things, but remains conscious of the free
spirit, whose own work and undertaking the whole is.

Yet