That particular form of mental life which rejects in principle what
is not perceptible to sense, thereby of necessity is confined to
the re-actual world. If it seeks to encroach upon actual processes,
it must arbitrarily leave out of consideration that in them which
is _essential_, the forces at work in them,--whereby it falls into
absurdities that speedily take their revenge by raising problems that
are insoluble.
This form of mental life is universally called “_science_,” whereby,
it must be admitted, the more or less active counter-currents--those
of the teleological conception of things--are passed over unnoticed.
Science, properly speaking, is always _materialistic_, and its
conception of the play of world-events always strictly _mechanical_.
For it the adequate cause of each occurrence is simply another
occurrence. Adequate causes remain perceptible to sense.
Opposite to it stands faith.
Faith is that particular form of mental life which recognizes an
“imperceptible to sense in itself,” _i.e._ _believes_, and so doing,
assumes a universal “adequate cause in itself” for the entire play of
world-events. From this it follows that the living processes are the
true province of all faith. In them alone are actual forces, _i.e._
that which is imperceptible to sense, actively at work.
As soon as faith seeks to make use of its intuition, _i.e._ seeks
to supply a world-view, it finds itself in the same predicament as
science. Just as this latter, as world-theory, is obliged to read the
actual processes according to the scheme of the re-actual, so faith as
world-theory is obliged to read the re-actual processes according to
the scheme of the actual; in other words, it must represent the world,
even to the extent that it represents itself as purely a falling, as
guided by a divine force. Here not a hair can drop from my head, not
a stone fall to the ground, without a divine decree having taken an
active part therein as adequate cause, an idea which, thought out,
leads to the absurdity of the doctrine of predestination, with which
doctrine faith robs herself of the possibility of her own existence.
For, where there is predestination, there is no free will; where there
is no free will there is no soul; and where there is no soul there is
no God.
That which, in being thought out, deprives itself of the possibility of
existence is contrary to sense, and as such, a nescience, like illusion
and error.
Between and raised above both these opposed positions stands the Buddha.