234 HUMANISM xm 



may be reduced to feeling, which can be equated with 

 sensation, which, again, can be taken as purely cognitive, 

 whenever it is convenient, until every trace of man s free 

 and self-directive activity is wiped out from the philosophic 

 picture. Hence, both intellectualisms can agree on the 

 essential points that (i) intellection is the only philo 

 sophically valuable human function ; that (2) nothing but 

 intellection is necessary to cognition ; that (3) the purer 

 the intellection, the less alloyed with whatever other 

 elements are reluctantly admitted into our nature, the 

 truer and more trustworthy its results ; that (4) cognition 

 means rendering the mind passively receptive of an already 

 determined, rigid and independent object, variously 

 denominated reality or truth ; that (5) in consequence 

 of all these considerations, anything in the nature of 

 human activity or initiative can only (if it exists) exercise 

 a malign and disturbing influence on our cognitive pro 

 cedure, and must therefore be abstracted from in scientific 

 theory, and repressed in practice. 



Humanism, on the contrary, maintains (i) that intellec 

 tion is not the only valuable function in human life, nor 

 the source of its value ; (2) that not merely does intellec 

 tion not suffice to explain cognition, but that it does not 

 even explain itself, for the reason that real knowing is 

 never a purely intellectual process, but essentially pre 

 supposes such non-intellectual aspects as desire, interest, 

 and purpose, which enter into and control all cognitions ; 

 that (3) it is frequently not true to say that the purer 

 the intellection, the more valuable the results ; that (4) in 

 consequence cognition, whether perceptual or conceptual, 

 is never a merely passive recognition of an already made 

 object, but always an interaction with a reality which is 

 still capable of being moulded to some extent by our 

 action ; (5) that human activity, therefore, is nothing 

 science need be ashamed of or metaphysics frown upon, 

 but is rather the fountain-head of philosophic understand 

 ing, which can neither be ignored nor repressed. It will 

 subsequently appear that this difference of attitude 

 towards human activity, which is deducible from the 



