"The
General idea is always an
abstraction and, for that very reason, is some sort of
negation of
real life...human
thought, and in consequence of this,
science, can grasp and name only the general
significance of real facts, their relations, their laws - in short, that which is
permanent in their continual transformations - but never their material, individual side, palpitating, so to speak, with
reality and
life, and therefore fugitive and
intangible...
science comprehends the thought of the reality, not reality itself; the thought of life, not life. That is its limit, its only really
insuperable limit, because it is founded on the very nature of thought, which is the only organ of science."
--Mikhael Bakunin, God and the State (NY : Dover, 1970)