262 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



constitutes rationalism, in the sense in which that 

 term is a term of reproach. It is the refusal to 

 recognize as true anything which we cannot explain, 

 the self-sufficiency which sets up the reason in its 

 present stage of development as the measure of 

 truths actual or even possible. Hence the irrever- 

 ence and self-assertion of what is rightly called 

 rationalism. For when a man has come to assume 

 that human reason is the measure of all truth, it is 

 an easy step to the belief that of that reason he is 

 the truest if not the only exponent. 



The fact that rationalism implies a wrong atti- 

 tude of the will towards truth rather than any 

 method or manner of reasoning, explains the fact 

 that a theory which in one age is rejected as ra- 

 tionalistic may be accepted by a later age as true. 

 A theory or premature synthesis which has nothing 

 to commend it but its novelty, or its ingenuity, or 

 its apparent inconsistency with the received body 

 of doctrine of the day is rightly rejected, and the 

 defiant defender of it is rightly called a rationalist ; 

 yet the very same theory supported by new facts, 

 modified by wider knowledge, and championed by 

 men of other temper is afterwards received, with 

 whatever necessary readjustments, and fitted into 

 the growing body of religious truth. It is easy to 

 represent this as a triumph of rationalism, but it is 

 more truly represented as a triumph of faith. For 

 all that is rationalistic is gone, and what remains 



