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$36.
Presidential Address
Not these, O Lord, We would not break the bars Thy wisdom sets about us; we shall climb Unfettered to the secrets of the stars In thy good time.”
IX But the general attiude of the modern mind, towards the great problems of Reality is neither one of impotent cry nor of patient resignation. It does not believe, as Comte believed, that Metaphysics is building castles in the air and then bombarding them; nor that Truth is thickly enveloped in impenetrable gloom, and all that is given to man is to cry for the light without any hope of finding it. Nor is it satisfied to sit at the gates of the castle and await the hour when the Lord of the castle will open the gates. It believes in its own effort and enjoys it. It is not crushed "with the weight of all this unintelligible world. ” “ For better or for worse ” says a modern writer, "we are caught in the grip of an immitigable will to know, a will to know which claims for its province the human soul and its limits, the entire range of its hitherto acquired experiences, the entire history of soul and its still unexhausted possibilities."
Even while contemplating immensity of Time and Space a scientist like Bertrand Russell feels that "there is no need to think of ourselves as powerless and small in the grip of vast cosmic forces. All measurement is conventional, and it would be possible to devise a perfectly serviceable system of measurement according to which man would be larger than the sun". Has not such a system of measurement
