say, "All this is nonsense; all this must be abandoned." This is
the deductive method of ratiocination (wherein lies the difference
between the deductive and the inductive method, no one can
understand); these are the dogmas of the technological and
metaphysical period. Every thing that these men discover by inward
experience, and which they communicate to one another, concerning
their knowledge of the law of their existence (of their functional
activity, according to their own jargon), every thing that the
grandest minds of mankind have accomplished in this direction, since
the beginning of the world,--all this is nonsense, and has no weight
whatever. According to this new doctrine, it appears that you are
cells: and that you, as a cell, have a very definite functional
activity, which you not only fulfil, but which you infallibly feel
within you; and that you are a thinking, talking, understanding
cell, and that you, for this reason, can ask another similar talking
cell whether it is just the same, and in this way verify your own
experience; that you can take advantage of the fact that speaking
cells, which have lived before you, have written on the same
subject, and that you have millions of cells which confirm your
observations by their agreement with the cells which have written
down their thoughts,--all this signifies nothing; all this is an
evil and an erroneous method.

The true scientific method is this: If you wish to know in what the
destiny and the welfare of all mankind and of all the world
consists, you must, first of all, cease to listen to the voices of
your conscience and of your reason, which present themselves in you
and in others like you; you must cease to believe all that the great
teachers of mankind have said with regard to your conscience and
reason, and you must consider all this as nonsense, and begin all