230 HUMANISM xin 



truths, but puts them forward tentatively as practically 

 efficient working principles, which are worthy of being 

 tried but susceptible, nevertheless, of unceasing improve 

 ment. And to a dogmatic metaphysician this hardly 

 seems to be claiming truth for them at all. He finds 

 it easy, therefore, and natural to treat Humanism as a 

 mode of scepticism, and as involving a denial of truth 

 altogether. Then again the humaneness and urbanity of 

 allowing every one a vote in the making of truth, of 

 allowing every mode of experience and of aspiration to 

 count for what it may turn out to be worth, seem 

 monstrous laxity, which must be fatal to the discipline 

 of the intellectual world, and can proceed from nothing 

 but infamous indifference to the sanctity of truth. 

 Thus Humanism, to dogmatically biassed eyes, not only 

 seems to introduce universal suffrage into the philosophic 

 world, but to enable Plato s democratic man to usurp 

 the throne of the Philosopher-King. 



So, however strenuously Humanists may disclaim evil 

 designs, there is one belief which they can hardly hope to 

 eradicate all at once, viz. the hoary tradition that universal 

 experience shows that relativism and subjectivism must 

 end in scepticism and anarchism. 



Such are, I believe, the feelings and reasonings of 

 those who, without being hopelessly committed to some 

 self-contradictory and untenable form of intellectualism, 

 look upon the new philosophy with suspicion, and conceive 

 it as a revival of Humism. And yet, now that we have 

 indulged their misgivings to this extent, we may fairly 

 call upon them to notice in their turn the important and 

 deep-seated differences, both in attitude and in doctrine, 

 which exist between the theories they are seeking to 

 classify together, (i) For one thing, the Humanists are 

 not distinguished amateurs, concerning themselves with 

 philosophy only to clear out of the way an obstacle to 



