Mankind
is not a mere collection of detached individuals, or man could possess
no knowledge of any unity of scientific truth. If men are really only
many, and if they have no such unity of conscious experience as loyalty
everywhere presupposes, then the cause of science also is a vain
illusion, and we have no unified knowledge of nature, only various
private fancies about nature. If we know, however ill, nature's
mechanism, we do so because human experience is not merely a collection
of detached observations, but forms an actual spiritual unity, whose
type is not that of a mechanism, whose connections are ideally
significant, whose constitution is essentially that which the ideal of
unified truth requires.
So, then, I insist, the dilemma is upon our hands. Either the sciences
constitute a progressive, if imperfect, insight into real truth--and
then the cause of the unity of human experience is a real cause that
really can be served exactly as the lover means to be loyal to his
friendship and the patriot to his country; and then also human life
really possesses such unity as the loyal presuppose--or else none of
this is so.
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