266 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



We may obtain some light on the question by asking, 

 first, what is irrational? Two types readily suggest them- 

 selves. There is, first, the inconsistent. It is irrational to 

 maintain contradictory positions. There is, secondly, the 

 arbitrary, and of this we may distinguish two cases. Nega- 

 tively it is irrational to maintain a position without reason 

 assigned. Positively it is irrational to maintain it on 

 grounds of emotional feeling, because we choose to main- 

 tain it, or from any cause proceeding from our own peculiar 

 mental make-up rather than on account of the intrinsic 

 character or relations of the conduct asserted. Both these 

 rules, however, present great difficulties. To the first it 

 may be held that there are at least some exceptions. It is 

 a possible view that there are some self-evident truths 

 truths, therefore, which may be maintained on no other 

 ground but that of their inherent character, and it may be 

 urged that the bare conception of a c ground ' implies truths 

 of this nature. For let us admit that it is unreasonable to 

 make or maintain any statement or position for which no 

 grounds could be assigned. Then if any proposition is 

 not self-evident, the * grounds ' on which it is asserted must, 

 it would seem, involve something further than anything 

 contained in the original position. This is as much as to 

 say that what is maintained must be somehow connected 

 with what is otherwise known or thought, and that to 

 reason is, in the very broadest sense, to interconnect. But 

 this at once raises the question of the ultimate goal of inter- 

 connection. If it be admittedly arbitrary and irrational to 

 advance proposition A without some ground, is it made 

 reasonable when such a ground is discovered in proposition 

 B ? Does not B in turn require justification, or if we take 

 the two propositions A and B as now forming a connected 

 whole, does not this whole stand equally in need of some- 

 thing further to substantiate it? If so, we shall need a 

 third proposition C, and we shall be no better off, since as 

 soon as C is asserted the same question will revive. Thus 

 we are threatened with an endless series in which, though 

 always proving, we never get any nearer to the grounds of 

 proof. From this there are two possible ways of escape. 

 One is frankly to admit exceptions to the general require- 



