Those of you
who have attended my lectures have heard me call myself the
material idealist. I am a mystic sensationalist. I believe that we
can derive nothing from pure contemplation. There is mystery and
wonder in the veil of the occult. The earth, our life, is merely a
vestibule of the universe. Contemplation alone will hold us all as
inapt and as impotent as the old Monks of Athos. We have mountains
of literature behind us, all contemplative, and whatever its
wisdom, it has given us not one thing outside the abstract. From
Plato down to the present our philosophy has given us not one
tangible proof, not one concrete fact which we can place our hands
on. We are virtually where we were originally; and we can talk,
talk, talk from now until the clap of doomsday.
"What then?
"My friends, philosophy must take a step sidewise. In this modern
age young science, practical science, has grown up and far
surpassed us. We must go back to the beginning, forget our
subjective musings and enter the concrete. We are five-sensed, and
in the nature of things we must bring the proof down into the
concrete where we can understand it. Can we pierce the nebulous
screen that shuts us out of the occult? We have doubted, laughed
at ourselves and been laughed at; but the fact remains that always
we have persisted in the believing.
"I have said that we shall never, never understand infinity while
within the limitations of our five senses.
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