We believe that failing to call a spade a spade is not scientific. - Leo Strauss

The sophist, in contradistinction to the philosopher, is not set in motion and kept in motion by the sting of the awareness of the fundamental difference between conviction or belief and genuine insight.

Science, as the positivist understands it, is susceptible of infinite progress. That you learn in every elementary school today, I believe. Every result of science is provisional and subject to future revision, and this will never change. In other words, fifty thousand years from now there will still be results entirely different from those now, but still subject to revision. Science is susceptible of infinite progress. But how can science be susceptible of infinite progress if its object does not have an inner infinity? The belief admitted by all believers in science today — that science is by its nature essentially progressive, and eternally progressive — implies, without saying it, that being is mysterious. And here is the point where the two lines I have tried to trace do not meet exactly, but where they come within hailing distance. And, I believe, to expect more in a general way, of people in general, would be unreasonable.

Passionately yes, passionately no” is the worst of all tastes. And now after one has overcome that, after one has followed this natural inclination, one must learn to put some art into one’s feelings and rather make an experiment with the artificial as distinguished from and opposed to the natural. That is what the true artists of life do. They do not follow the natural impulses, but experiment with the artificial.