Читать книгу The Kernel and the Husk: Letters on Spiritual Christianity онлайн

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Perhaps your conclusion from all this is that I am proving that we can know nothing? Not in the least. What I am saying does not prove that we know less or more than we profess to know at present. I am merely showing that our knowledge comes to us from sources other than those which are ordinarily assumed.

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My dear ——,

You ask me to pass to the consideration of knowledge of a new kind, knowledge of mathematical truth. “Here at least,” you say, “severe reasoning dominates supreme, and Imagination has no place.” “Two and one make three,” “The angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal:” “surely we may assume that Imagination has nothing to do with these propositions. They must be decided by pure Reason.” Never was assumption more grotesque. Excuse me; but by what other adjective can I characterize the statement that the Imagination has “nothing to do with” propositions for the very terms of which we are indebted to the Imagination? I maintain without fear of contradiction that the knowledge of these propositions requires an effort of the Imagination so severe that the very young and the completely untrained cannot attain to it.