principles, closed
systems, and pretended absolutes and origins.' One is delighted to hear
it; but it is perhaps the course of prudence for most of us to doubt our
power of getting entirely clear of inveterate habits.[3] Scrutiny of
philosophic literature fails to reveal any one who entirely succeeded in
it, even slowly. A constant concern for revision, then, would seem to be
forced upon the professed rationalist, who knows how often the appeal to
reason has yielded mere modifications of error, one unjustifiable
credence ousting another. 'Knows,' one says, because the error is
provable to the satisfaction of the judgment which seeks certainty.
Such negative knowledge is the promise of positive.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] 'Pragmatism' soon becomes 'she' in Professor James's hands. Mr.
Schiller seems to prefer 'it'; but he too makes much play with
pragmatism as an entity. Whatever be the amount of 'abstraction'
involved, the verbal method savours of very old-established
malpractices.

Sec. 3. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE

It is fitting, then, at the very outset to make a critical scrutiny of
the implications of our term. Rationalism, broadly, implies the habitual
resort to reason, to reflection, to judgment. The rationalist, in
effect, says, 'That which I find to be incredible I must disbelieve,
whatever prestige may attach to its assertion; that which I find to be
doubtful or inconceivable I will so describe. Finding the practice of
prayer to be incompatible not only with any sincere belief in natural
law, but with the professed religious beliefs of the more educated of
those who resort to it, I will not pray. Seeing all religions to be but
halting manipulations of the guesses and intuitions of savages, to be
still as uncritically credulous in their affirmations as they are blind
in their denials, and to be thus mere loose modifications of older
beliefs felt to be astray, I will go behind them all for my own theory
of things, getting all the help I can alike from those who have reasoned
most loyally on the deeper problems involved, and from those who have
striven most circumspectly to understand the process of causation in
the universe.'

So far, the procedure is one of rejecting demonstrably fallacious
beliefs in regard to the general order of things, substantially on the
lines on which tested and testable conclusions have been substituted for
old delusions in what we term 'the sciences.' At every step the
rationalist is