We in the West have "followed our reason
as far as it would go," and our reason has led us to things that
nearly all the rationalists would have thought wildly irrational.
Science was supposed to bully us into being rationalists;
but it is now supposed to be bullying us into being irrationalists.
The science of Einstein might rather be called following our
unreason as far as it will go, seeing whether the brain will crack
under the conception that space is curved, or that parallel
straight lines always meet. And the science of Freud would make it
essentially impossible to say how far our reason or unreason does go,
or where it stops. For if a man is ignorant of his other self,
how can he possibly know that the other self is ignorant?
He can no longer say with pride that at least he knows that
he knows nothing. That is exactly what he does not know.
The floor has fallen out of his mind and the abyss below may
contain subconscious certainties as well as subconscious doubts.
He is too ignorant even to ignore; and he must confess himself
an agnostic about whether he is an agnostic.
That is the coil or tangle, at least, which the dragon has reached
even in the scientific regions of the West.
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