6 HUMANISM x 



or continually recrudescent phenomenon of the moral 

 consciousness, the persistent vogue of which it has always 

 been hard to explain. It is ably and brilliantly exemplified 

 at the present day by Mr. Balfour i s Foundations of Belief, 

 and, in an extreme and less defensible form, by Mr. 

 Benjamin Kidd. And if, instead of denouncing it, we try 

 to understand it, we shall not find that it is entirely 

 absurd. At bottom indeed it indicates little more than a 

 defect in the current rationalism, and a protest against 

 the rationalistic blindness towards the non- intellectual 

 factors in the foundation of beliefs. And Common Sense 

 has always shown a certain sympathy with all such 

 protests against the pretensions of what is called the pure 

 intellect to dictate to man s whole complex nature. It 

 has always felt that there are reasons of the heart of 

 which the head knows nothing, postulates of a faith that 

 surpasses mere understanding, and that these possess a 

 higher rationality which a narrow intellectualism has 

 failed to comprehend. 



Now if one had to choose between Irrationalism and 

 Intellectualism, there would be no doubt that the former 

 would have to be preferred. It is a less violent departure 

 from our actual behaviour, a less grotesque caricature of 

 our actual procedure. Like Common Sense, therefore, 

 Pragmatism sympathises with Irrationalism in its blind 

 revolt against the trammels of a pedantic Intellectualism. 

 But Pragmatism does more ; it not only sympathises, it 

 explains. It vindicates the rationality of Irrationalism, 

 without becoming itself irrational ; it restrains the ex 

 travagance of Intellectualism, without losing faith in the 

 intellect. And it achieves this by instituting a fundamental 

 analysis of the common root both of the reason and of 

 the emotional revulsion against its pride. By showing 

 the pure reason to be a pure figment, and a psychological 

 impossibility, and the real structure of the actual reason 

 to be essentially pragmatical, and permeated through and 

 through with acts of faith, desires to know and wills to 

 believe, to disbelieve and to make believe, it renders 

 possible, nay unavoidable, a reconciliation between a 



