And these limits, within which I say that human reason proves
this, are the limits of rationality, of what is known by demonstration.
Beyond these limits is the irrational, which, whether it be called the
super-rational or the infra-rational or the contra-rational, is all the
same thing. Beyond these limits is the absurd of Tertullian, the
impossible of the _certum est, quia impossibile est_. And this absurd
can only base itself upon the most absolute uncertainty.
The rational dissolution ends in dissolving reason itself; it ends in
the most absolute scepticism, in the phenomenalism of Hume or in the
doctrine of absolute contingencies of Stuart Mill, the most consistent
and logical of the positivists. The supreme triumph of reason, the
analytical--that is, the destructive and dissolvent--faculty, is to cast
doubt upon its own validity. The stomach that contains an ulcer ends by
digesting itself; and reason ends by destroying the immediate and
absolute validity of the concept of truth and of the concept of
necessity. Both concepts are relative; there is no absolute truth, no
absolute necessity. We call a concept true which agrees with the general
system of all our concepts; and we call a perception true which does not
contradict the system of our perceptions. Truth is coherence. But as
regards the whole system, the aggregate, as there is nothing outside of
it of which we have knowledge, we cannot say whether it is true or not.
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