580 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



uncertainties of language and the limitations of human thought and 

 understanding will not serve to explain it. It could not really have 

 been asked or expected that the entire essence of the principle should 

 have been compressed into one concise definition or even into one formal 

 or rigid statement. As its protagonist himself has said in an article 

 entitled "Humanism and Truth Once More," published in Mind for 

 April, 1905 : 



As I apprehend the movement toward humanism, it is based on no particular 

 discovery or principle that can be driven into one precise formula which 

 thereupon can be impaled upon a logical skewer. It is much more like one of 

 those secular changes that come upon public opinion over-night, as it were, 

 borne upon tides "too full for sound or foam," that survive all the crudities 

 and extravagances of their advocates, that you can pin to no one absolutely 

 essential statement, nor kill by any one decisive stab. 



In the same article he says : 



The one condition of understanding humanism is to become inductive- 

 minded oneself, to drop rigorous definitions, and follow lines of least resistance 

 " on the whole." 



It would seem that this was expecting entirely too much. He had 



also said in The Journal of Philosophy for March 2, 1905 : 



It is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. 

 It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear 

 as from a new center of interest or point of sight. Some writers are strongly 

 conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though their own vision 

 may have undergone much change. The result is no small confusion in debate, 

 the half-conscious humanists taking part against the radical ones, as if they 

 wished to count upon the other side. 



I am inclined to think that its very simplicity has been the chief 



barrier in the way of its acceptance. " Unto the Jews a stumbling 



block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." Has it not ever been so in 



both the philosophical and religious worlds? Would it not find more 



ready acceptance if it required " some great things " ? Perhaps, one 



barrier in the way of those who have " seriously tried to comprehend 



what the pragmatic movement may intelligibly mean" is mental 



myopia, which- prevents them from assuming the proper attitude in 



order to gain the right point of view. They are too wedded to their 



idols of dogma and authority to experience that change of heart which 



would enable them to break the shackles which bind them to "abso- 



lutistic hopes " and acquire the freedom which would permit them 



to enter into such " conditions of belief." Dr. Schiller has said : 



Concerning any considerable novelty of thought the prediction may be made 

 that hardly any one above thirty will be psychologically capable of adopting 

 it, unless he had previously been looking for just such a solution. 



Whether this be true or not, many have failed to understand it 

 simply for the reason that they have not really tried to do so. They 

 " have boggled at every word they could boggle at, and refused to 



