'"
One of the few things that we may know in life is this, that it is
impossible for man to know anything absolutely. The power of reasoning
is a mere "by-product in the process of Evolution." It is but an
instrument to help out the confusion of the senses, and it is
conditioned by the accuracy of the sense-perceptions with which it
deals. There is no appeal from experience to reason, for reason is
powerless to act save on the facts of human experience. Speculative
philosophy can teach us nothing. The senses and the reason are intensely
practical and all, our faculties are primarily adapted to immediate
purposes. Instruments such as these cannot serve to probe the nature of
the infinite. But no other instruments lie within reach of man. If we
cannot "reach the heart of reality" by reason, what indeed can we reach?
What right have we to know or to believe? And if we can know or believe
nothing, what should we try to do? And how indeed can we do anything?
Every man's fate is determined by his heredity and his environment. In
the Arab proverb he is born with his fate bound to his neck. In the
course of life we must do that which has been already cut out for us.
Our parts were laid for us long before we appeared to take them. He is
indeed a strong man who can vary the cast or give a different cue to
those who follow. Nature is no respecter of persons, and to suppose that
any man is in any degree "the arbiter of his own destiny" is pure
illusion.
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