“That is just so,” cried Wilhelm.  “Metaphysics are as incapable as religion of disclosing what lies behind the phenomenal world, and I cannot conceive (forgive me, Dorfling, if I say straight out what I mean), I cannot conceive how a philosopher can really take his own system in earnest.  He must know that his explanation is only a conjecture, a possibility at the best, and he actually has the temerity to preach it as a fixed truth.  No, my friend, I do not expect anything from metaphysics.  It only interests me as a means for studying psychology.  The history of philosophical systems is a history of the development of the mind of humanity.  The systems are only valuable as testimonials to the endless extent and possibility of human thought.  All the systems put together do not contain a spark of objective truth.”

“That is upon the whole the difference between natural science and metaphysics,” said Schrotter.  “Science regulates the boundary between what is known and what is not known, and declares when the limit is reached.  Our knowledge has attained to a certain point, and beyond that we know and understand nothing, absolutely nothing.  Metaphysics will not stop at that limit.  It confuses knowledge and dreams together, and manufactures out of the two something quite worthless.  It explains things which it does not understand, and which cannot be understood, and offers us detailed descriptions of countries into which it has never traveled, and where mankind probably never will travel.”

“May I say a word in defence of your metaphysics?” said Dorfling, with a slight smile.

“Yes, go on,” cried Barinskoi.  He had drunk more than all the rest put together, and the serious conversation seemed to afford him great amusement.

“Look here, Eynhardt.  I cannot possibly uphold your statement that metaphysics do not contain a spark of objective truth.  To be certain of that, one must also be certain what objective truth is.  But you are not certain, as you very well know, and so logically you must admit the possibility that metaphysics can hold a spark of objective truth.  I am of an entirely different opinion on this point.  I believe that the science of the actual content of things, the foundation of all appearances, the laws of the universe, in short, everything which you call objective truth, is the property peculiar to the atoms, of which the world formerly existed.  Absolute science, I say, is inherent matter, like motion and gravitation.  Matter does not learn of them, it possesses them.  A cell has not studied chemistry, but with unfailing accuracy it executes its wonderful chemical operations.  Water knows nothing of physics and mathematics, but it flows from the spring, just as high as the laws of hydraulic pressure command.”

“Bravo,” interrupted Mayboom, “that explains at last something I never understood; and that is, why a flower pot should fall off a window straight on the heads of people in the street, with unfailing accuracy.”