[Gutenberg 4754] • The Philosophy of Despair

In the presence of the infinite problem of life, the voice of Science is dumb, for Science is the coördinate and corrected expression of human experience, and human experience must stop with the limitations of human life. Man was not present "When the foundations of the Earth were laid," and beyond the certainty that they were laid in wisdom and power, man can say little about them. Man finds in the economy of nature "no trace of a beginning; no prospect of an end!" He may feel sure, with Hutton, that "time is as long as space is wide."