Excerpt from Outre-Mer: Impressions of America The positive benefit bestowed by Science is a more adroit treatment of nature, known at last with precision; but it is dearly bought, if it be true that philosophical nihilism is the last outcome of this gigantic attempt to ask questions that have no possible solution. Brought face to face with the Unknowable, and constrained to acknowledge that its method is powerless ever to reach the. Causes that lie back of phenom ena and the substance that lies behind accidental circum stance, what aliment can Science give the soul, except the bread of bitterness and the waters Of death? Developing to the highest degree in the man of to-day the spirit of experi ment and of criticism, it has made faith in the supernatural almost impossible to an innumerable multitude of average consciences, and it is the sum of the average consciences that makes what we call the national conscience. Hence, what a loss of the Ideal in contemporary Europe! What uncertainty of conviction, and, as a natural consequence, what incoherent feebleness of will, what weakening of character, what ill regulated energy, what moral maladies, forever recurring in ever-new complications, in these last years of this end of a century, which has so longed to do well! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.