PREFACE xvii 



any eternal and non-human truths to prohibit us from 

 adopting the beliefs we need to live by, nor any infallible 

 a priori tests of truth to screen us from the consequences 

 of our choice.&quot; Similarly Professor James, in reviewing 

 Personal Idealism^ pointed out that &quot; a re-anthropo- 

 morphised universe is the general outcome of its philo 

 sophy.&quot; Only for re-anthropomorphised we should hence 

 forth read re-humanised. Anthropomorphism is a term of 

 disparagement whose dyslogistic usage it may prove 

 difficult to alter. 2 Moreover, it is clumsy, and can hardly 

 be extended so as to cover what I mean by Humanism. 

 There is no need to disclaim the truth of which it is the 

 adumbration, and a non-anthropomorphic thought is sheer 

 absurdity ; but still what we need is something wider and 

 more vivid. 



Similarly I would not disclaim affinities with the great 

 saying of Protagoras, that Man is the Measure of all 

 things. Fairly interpreted, this is the truest and most 

 important thing that any thinker ever has propounded. 

 It is only in travesties such as it suited Plato s dialectic 

 purpose to circulate that it can be said to tend to 

 scepticism ; in reality it urges Science to discover how 

 Man may measure, and by what devices make concordant 

 his measures with those of his fellow-men. Humanism 

 therefore need not cast about for any sounder or more 

 convenient starting-point. 



For in every philosophy we must take some things for 

 granted. Humanism, like Common Sense, of which it 

 may fairly claim to be the philosophic working out, takes 

 Man for granted as he stands, and the world of man s 

 experience as it has come to seem to him. This is the 

 only natural starting-point, from which we can proceed in 

 every direction, and to which we must return, enriched 



1 Mind for January 1903 (N.S. No. 45, p. 94). 



2 I tried to do this in Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. v. 6-9. But I now think 

 the term needs radical re-wording. 



