change. The result is no small
confusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part
against the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other
side.[107]

If humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it
is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change in
some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their
foreground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not
keep just the same.[108] If such pervasive consequences be involved in
humanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers may take, first
in defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or steering its
progress, will be thrown away.

It suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most
systematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary
programs only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic problems has
not been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies in advance,
have showered blows on doctrines--subjectivism and scepticism, for
example--that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their
still greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed
the humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word 'truth.' It
is always good in debate to know your adversary's point of view
authentically. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the
word 'truth' signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have
to guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much beating
of the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps,
and it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage
which things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each
side of its central point of view.

Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure
of what's what and who is who. Anyone can contribute such a definition,
and, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own
provisional definition of humanism[109] now and here, others may improve
it, some adversary may be led to define his own creed more sharply by
the contrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general
opinion may result.

I

The essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is to
have seen that _though one part of our experience may lean upon another
part to make it what it is in any one of several aspects in which it