of Spencer's metaphysic. Only a few, probably, if any,
could properly be termed 'skeptics' in the strict philosophic sense of
doubters of all inferences. That is a mental attitude more often
professed by defenders of 'revelation,' as Pascal and Huet, who seek to
make the judgment despair of itself in preparation for an act of assent
which is already discredited by such despair. Yet it belongs to the
rationalistic attitude to be ready, in consistency, to analyse all one's
own convictions and listen candidly to all negations of them. A belief
in the possibility of rational certitude is implicit in every process of
sincere criticism; but the discrimination or gradation of certitudes is
the task of rational philosophy.

As we shall see, quasi-rational certitude as regards the process of
evolution is challenged from two points of view by professed believers
in the reality of that process. One school argues that scientific
conclusions are all uncertain because the ultimate assumptions of
science are unverifiable, and that, accordingly, religious assumptions,
being neither more nor less rational than others, may 'reasonably'
stand. Others argue that the process of judgment or reasoning which is
held to establish scientific truth is not adequate to any theory of
interpretation; and that, accordingly, some species of divination--which
in the terms of the case eludes judgment--is to be relied on. Such
thinkers ostensibly profess to 'reason' to the effect that reasoning is
invalid. Against them, those who claim to hold by reason as the totality
of judgment may fitly call themselves by the name 'rationalist.'

Given such a general attitude, then, to what philosophic form is it
justifiably to be reduced? Those who have longest meditated the question
will perhaps be the least quick to give a precise and confident answer.
If training in the scrupulous use of reason sets up any mental habit in
face of large problems, it is the habit of tentative approach; and the
rationalist of to-day should be a much less readily self-satisfied
thinker than the former claimants to the name. Professor James, indeed,
is able to reconcile an ostensible certainty of rightness of method and
result with much experience in investigation. 'A pragmatist,' he tells
us, 'turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate
habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction
and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from fixed