If a reasonable sceptic says that
such things do not exist, he can only mean to say that they do not exist
relatively to his knowledge ; because, to deny the possibility of the existence
of anything of which we know nothing would imply that we imagined ourselves to
be in possession of all the knowledge that exists in the world, and believed
that nothing could exist of which we did not know.
A person who peremptorily denies the
existence of anything which is beyond the horizon of his understanding because
he cannot make it harmonise with his accepted opinions is as credulous as he
who believes everything without any discrimination. Either of these persons is
not a freethinker, but a slave to the opinions which he has accepted from
others, or which he may have formed in the course of his education, and by his
special experiences in his (naturally limited) intercourse with the world.
If such persons meet with any
extraordinary fact that is beyond their own experience, they often either regard
it with awe and wonder, and are ready to accept any wild and improbable theory
that may be offered to them in regard to such facts, or they sometimes reject the
testimony of credible witnesses, and frequently even that of their own senses.
They often do not hesitate to impute the basest motives and the most silly
puerilities to honourable persons, and are credulous enough to believe that
serious and wise people had taken the trouble to play upon them "practical
jokes/' and they are often willing to admit the most absurd theories rather
than to use their own common sense.
It seems almost superfluous to make
these remarks, as perhaps none of our readers will be willing to be classified into
either of these two categories ; but nevertheless the people to whom they may
be applied are exceedingly numerous, and by no means to be found only among the
ignorant and uneducated. On the contrary, it seems that now, as at the time of
the great Paracelsus, the three (dis)graces of dogmatic science self-conceit,
credulity, and scepticism go still hand in hand, and that their favourite
places of residence are public auditories and the private visiting-rooms of the
learned.
It is difficult for the light of
truth to penetrate into a mind that is crammed full of opinions of which it
tenaciously clings, and only those who accept the opinions of others, not as
their guides, but only as their assistants, and are able to rise on the wings
of their own unfettered genius into the region of independent thought, may
receive the truth. Our modern age is not without such minds.
The world is moving in spirals, and
our greatest modern philosophers are nearing a place in their mental orbit where
they come again into conjunction with minds like Pythagoras and Plato. Only the
ignorant schoolboy believes that he knows a great deal more than Socrates and
Aristotle because he may have learned some modern opinions in regard to a few
superficial things, or some modern inventions, with which the philosophers of
old may not have been acquainted ; but if our modern scientists know more about
steam-engines and telegraphs than the ancients did, the latter knew more about
the powers that move the world, and about the communication of thought at a
distance without the employment of visible means.
If the anatomist of to-day knows
more about the details of the anatomy of the physical body than the ancients, the
ancients knew more about the attributes and the constitution of that power
which organises the physical body, and of which the latter is nothing more than
the objective and visible representative. Modern science may be successful in
producing external appearances or manifestations with which the ancients were
not acquainted ; the initiates into ancient sciences could create internal causes
of which modern science knows nothing whatever, and which the latter will have
to learn if it desires to progress much further.
The Life and Doctrines of Paracelsus (1887)
Preface v-vi
