CHAPTER VI. 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE OF PHILOSOPH?. 



OUE outline-sketch of the Cosmic Philosophy based on the 

 Doctrine of Evolution would remain seriously defective with- 

 out some account of its critical bearing with reference to 

 past and present religious beliefs and social institutions. 

 Since the reception of a number of definite opinions con- 

 cerning man in his relations to the universe and to his 

 fellow-creatures must leave their possessor in a certain cha- 

 racteristic attitude, — aggressive or sympathetic, iconoclastic 

 or conservative, — toward the multitude of opposite or con- 

 flicting opinions by which he is surrounded, it becomes 

 desirable for us to ascertain whether the critical temper of 

 our Cosmic Philosophy tends toward the subversion or the 

 conservation of that complex aggregate of beliefs and ordi- 

 nances which make up the social order amid which we live 

 Our object will be best attained, and our results wiU be 

 most clearly presented, if we begin by considering some of 

 the philosophic contrasts between the statical and dynamical 

 habits of thinking, to which attention was called in an earlier 

 chapter. 



A statical view of things, as I have above defined it, is 

 one which is adjusted solely or chiefly to relations existing in 

 the immediate environment of the thinker. Certain groups 



