But he never dreamed it could be
accurate, knowing that words stand symbol for the indefinable. I
came to him once with a problem which had puzzled me out of
measure: what is a cause? why out of so many innumerable millions
of conditions, all necessary, should one be singled out and
ticketed 'the cause'? 'You do not understand,' said he. 'A cause
is the answer to a question: it designates that condition which I
happen to know and you happen not to know.' It was thus, with
partial exception of the mathematical, that he thought of all means
of reasoning: they were in his eyes but means of communication, so
to be understood, so to be judged, and only so far to be credited.
The mathematical he made, I say, exception of: number and measure
he believed in to the extent of their significance, but that
significance, he was never weary of reminding you, was slender to
the verge of nonentity. Science was true, because it told us
almost nothing. With a few abstractions it could deal, and deal
correctly; conveying honestly faint truths. Apply its means to any
concrete fact of life, and this high dialect of the wise became a
childish jargon.
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