174 W. lL. COURTNEY, M.A., LU.D., ON 
this kind produce scepticism? Let us first determine 
what we mean by the word, for, hke many other of the 
current terms in contemporary ar uments, it is used in a 
variety of different senses. Scepticism means, in the first 
place, a protest against dogmatism. <A protest against 
dogmatism can be ‘made from different motives; it may be 
that we desire to confine ourselves entirely within the range 
of phenomena, abjure, once and for all, any consideration of 
onta, or,as Kant calls them, noumena—in which case we are 
adopting the principles of positivism. Or our motive may 
be a protest against dogmatism on the ground of the 
illimitable liberty of the human spirit. In illustration of 
the second sense observe that we are always cramping 
ourselves by the conceptions of an age into which we were 
not ourselves born. We accept our doctrines from our 
forefathers, and then attempt to pour into the old bottles 
the new wine of modern discoveries. We ought, however, 
to protest against any narrowing impulse of this kind; all 
conceptions which have upon them the stamp of human 
handiwork necessarily fail im corresponding to every aspect 
or element of the subject with which they deal. Our 
position is that they ot not, therefore, to be held in a 
rigid and immobile fashion, but should be kept, as it were, 
in amore or less fluid condition, capable of more than one 
interpretation, and with potentialities of future development. 
In both senses to which I have alluded, scepticism is a 
characteristic of our contemporary age, for, as I have 
already pointed out, in the first sense of the word, we 
become positivists and followers of Auguste Comte, while, i in 
the second sense, as J understand the matter, we have 
accepted Kant as our intellectual father, although, in the 
spirit of his own teaching, we refuse to be bound by some of 
his pedantic and scholastic technicalities. 
In neither of these senses, however, is scepticism used by 
many of those to whom it stands for all that is repellent in 
thought and practice. Scepticism is often taken to mean a 
blank denial of the possibility of knowledge, and when we 
contrast scepticism with philosophy, we generally mean that 
the second bids us hope that something can be attained of 
lasting and permanent value, which will throw hght upon 
the vexed problems that have beset the mind of man, 
throughout the whole course of his turbid career; while 
scepticism erects as an absolute dogma, that, homens we 
may strive, or whatever we may think we attain, knowledge, 
