Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - In Vain.djvu/51

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In Vain
39

everything from the time of Hippocrates downward reposed on experience. Seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling are the only criteria on which the whole immense structure stands even in our day.

So men believe, especially young men, as the most different in everything from their elders. All that has come to science by ways aside from experience, is doubtful. Each man judges according to his own thought the ideas of others. The hypothesis of anything existing outside of experience, even if true, seems through such a glass frivolous. "Only investigated things have existence. The connection between cause and effect is a necessity of thought, but only in man. History is a chronicle more or less scandalous; law rests on experience of modes of living in society, speculation is a disease of the mind."

Yosef did not ward off these thoughts, since they did not hinder him in advancing.

As to the rest he worked on.