

XIII 

 HUMISM AND HUMANISM 



ARGUMENT 



I. Humanism resembles Humism in being an anti - apriorist, pragmatist 

 empiricism ; but II. differs in being neither scepticism nor intellectualism. 

 Nor does it surrender to Hume s criticism of Causation and Activity. 

 III. Cleverness of Hume s criticism of the Volitional theory of Causa 

 tion. IV. Its unsoundness and inconclusiveness. V. Inability of 

 Rationalism to refute Hume : Voluntarism as the alternative. 



THE human mind, by nature, abhors novelties far more 

 than a vacuum, and when they are forced upon it by the 

 course of its experience, its natural instinct is to close its 

 eyes to their existence or to explain them away. Now 

 this is as easy as it is natural. For nothing is absolutely 

 new. Everything, therefore, can always be conceived as 

 an old thing in a new guise, and, with a little stretching 

 of the one and carving of the other, be classified under 

 the existing rubrics. In this way we are enabled to 

 blind ourselves to the vicissitudes of science and to retain 

 our comfortable belief in the uniformity of nature. 



But though it is practically certain that, so soon as 

 it is seriously attempted, accommodation will always be 

 found (or made) for novelties within the fabric of any 

 science, their classification at first is somewhat uncertain 

 and goes frequently astray. It behoves, therefore, those 

 who are interested in them to see to it that they are 

 classified correctly. 



Hence it will be useful and enlightening to discuss the 

 attempt to classify the new Humanism as an extended 



1 Republished with a few additions from the Proceedings of the Aristotelian 

 Society, 1907. 



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