1. Knowledge of Nature and Knowledge of the Mind

But that is only one of the cornerstones. The other cornerstone was provided not by a natural scientist but by a historian, the famous Leopold von Ranke. And again it was an Ignorabimus, a “We cannot and will not know!” Ranke, the great historian, tried with all objectivity to find his way into the course of human development that can be traced through historical documents. And he stated that what we see as the most far-reaching event in the course of the development of the earth, the event of the founding of Christianity, the appearance of Christ Jesus in the course of human development, reaches into this historical becoming. Ranke does not deny that this event was world-shaking in historical evolution; but he asserts that the historical approach must stop at the cause of the origin of Christianity, just as Du Bois-Reymond asserted that science must stop at the supersensible. That which flowed into historical development through the founder of Christianity – says Ranke, for example – belongs to the primal elements of historical becoming – so he expresses it – which methodical historical research cannot approach. Of course, many such primal elements could be pointed out. I have only emphasized the most important one for the Western world in the sense of Leopold von Ranke. That is the other cornerstone. It was erected for the reason that in the course of the 19th century, the education that scientific humanity has received over the last four to five centuries has also developed its powers in other scientific considerations. And even if Leopold von Ranke was far from combining his own historical perspective with natural science, it must be said that natural science, with its great and mighty triumphs and its rightful place in the modern intellectual development of humanity, has also asserted its authority in other fields. These had to, if I may say so, “resemble” it. And so, in essence, Leopold von Ranke's ignorabimus is nothing other than the historical answer to Du Bois-Reymond's scientific ignorabimus.