Men are satisfied in their childhood with stories as explanations of the world's mysteries, in their maturity they advance to plausible hypotheses: the stories yield to theology, hypotheses to philosophy.
Religion presents a fictitious solution to the riddle in a concrete form, and metaphysics in an abstract form; the one relates and asserts, the other argues and avoids the improbable.

It is only a difference of degree, not of character." "That is just so," cried Wilhelm.

"Metaphysics are as incapable as religion of disclosing what lies behind the phenomenal world, and I cannot conceive (forgive me, Dorfling, if I say straight out what I mean), I cannot conceive how a philosopher can really take his own system in earnest.

He must know that his explanation is only a conjecture, a possibility at the best, and he actually has the temerity to preach it as a fixed truth.

No, my friend, I do not expect anything from metaphysics.