278 HUMANISM xv 



to be seen ; they have every motive to agree, and have 

 lost the strong stimulus they had to insist obstinately on 

 their individual infallibility. But, on the other hand, the 

 notion of agreement has itself become less exacting : men 

 can agree to differ ; they can maintain all individual 

 views which do not clash with those of others or lead to 

 social discord. In short, the existing situation will be 

 altered only by the infusion of a more tolerant temper 

 into all opinions. 



But has not all this carried us far away from the 

 Modernist movement in the Church of Rome ? Not at 

 all ; it has brought us to its core. Modernism, in its 

 philosophic forms, 1 is essentially the recognition by certain 

 more enlightened or sensitive clerics of the intellectual 

 forces which are drawing men in religion, as in science 

 and philosophy, towards the humanistic conception of 

 Truth which we have sketched. They have perceived at 

 last what the lives of laymen have always dumbly attested, 

 that religion is not primarily a matter of theology but of 

 religious experience, and is nowhere reducible to a rigid 

 chain of incontrovertible syllogisms. They have therefore 

 abandoned the intellectualistic travesties of religion, which 

 kill its spirit to embalm its letter, and offer long strings of 

 pseudo-rational propositions as a satisfaction to a reason 

 which easily detects their imposture and is itself seeking 

 for something more nutritious than pure intellect. But 

 such dogmas, as M. Leroy has shown, are utter failures as 

 purely intellectual propositions : they neither can nor do 

 compel assent ; as such, they can neither be defended nor 

 even made to mean anything that matters. So to under 

 stand the meaning of dogmas and the nature of religious 

 beliefs is a fatal mistake. They are not really intellectual 

 products at all, and therefore cannot be attacked (or 

 defended) as such. No religion really rests on the 



1 Its historical criticisms of ecclesiastical tradition are quite a different affair. 

 Here the trouble arises out of the attempt to reduce religious truth to historical, 

 and history to science. But historical truth differs fundamentally from scientific 

 in that the evidence on which it rests cannot be multiplied at pleasure. And to 

 assume that religious truth rests solely on historical testimony is to beg some vital 

 questions. 



