§ 2. THE PRACTICAL POSITION
The usages being so, most of us who can answer to the term ‘rationalist’ may reasonably let its general force be decided for us by the stream of tendency in ordinary speech; and, recognising the existence of other applications, one may usefully seek to give a philosophic account of what its adoption seems to involve. That is to say, the present treatise does not undertake to present, much less to justify, all the views which have ever been described as ‘rationalistic,’ but merely to present current rationalism in the broad sense indicated, as on the one hand an outcome of tendencies seen at work in the earlier movements so named, and on the other hand as apparently committing its representatives to a certain body or class of conclusions. For there is this capital element in common for all the stirrings known by the name of rationalism, that they stand for ‘private judgment’ as against mere tradition or mere authority. Early ‘rationalists’ might indeed seek to put a quasi-rational form upon tradition, and to give reasons for recognising authority. But in their day and degree they had their active part in the evolution of the critical faculty, inasmuch as they outwent the line of mere acquiescence; and views which to-day form part of uncritically accepted creeds were once products of innovating (however fallacious) reasoning. There is no saltum mortale in the evolution of thought. The very opponents of the rationalist often claim to be more rational than he, and must at least use his methods up to a certain point. This is done even by the quasi-skeptical school, of whom some claim to subordinate reason to some species of insight which they either omit to discriminate intelligibly from the process of judgment, or do not admit to need its sanction.
‘Rationalism,’ then, is to be understood relatively. To be significant to-day, accordingly, it should stand first and last for the habit and tendency to challenge the doctrines which claim ‘religious’ or sacrosanct authority—to seek by reflection a defensible theory of things rather than accept enrolment under traditional creeds which demand allegiance on supernaturalist grounds.
Of such thinkers the number is daily increasing. There are now, probably, tens of thousands of more or less instructed men and women in this country who would call themselves rationalists in the broad sense above specified as now generally current. They are all, probably, Darwinians or evolutionists, mostly ‘monists’ in Spencer’s way, ‘determinists’ in the philosophic sense of that term if they have worked at the ‘free-will’ problem at all, and non-believers in personal immortality. Very few, at least, bracket the term ‘rationalist’ with ‘spiritualist’ in describing themselves: the two tendencies nearly always divide sharply, though it cannot be said that in strict logic they are mutually exclusive. Of most, the philosophic attitude approximates broadly to that of Spencer, though many recognise and avow the inexpertness of Spencer’s metaphysic. Only a few, probably, if any, could properly be termed ‘skeptics’ in the strict philosophic sense of doubters of all inferences. That is a mental attitude more often professed by defenders of ‘revelation,’ as Pascal and Huet, who seek to make the judgment despair of itself in preparation for an act of assent which is already discredited by such despair. Yet it belongs to the rationalistic attitude to be ready, in consistency, to analyse all one’s own convictions and listen candidly to all negations of them. A belief in the possibility of rational certitude is implicit in every process of sincere criticism; but the discrimination or gradation of certitudes is the task of rational philosophy.
As we shall see, quasi-rational certitude as regards the process of evolution is challenged from two points of view by professed believers in the reality of that process. One school argues that scientific conclusions are all uncertain because the ultimate assumptions of science are unverifiable, and that, accordingly, religious assumptions, being neither more nor less rational than others, may ‘reasonably’ stand. Others argue that the process of judgment or reasoning which is held to establish scientific truth is not adequate to any theory of interpretation; and that, accordingly, some species of divination—which in the terms of the case eludes judgment—is to be relied on. Such thinkers ostensibly profess to ‘reason’ to the effect that reasoning is invalid. Against them, those who claim to hold by reason as the totality of judgment may fitly call themselves by the name ‘rationalist.’
Given such a general attitude, then, to what philosophic form is it justifiably to be reduced? Those who have longest meditated the question will perhaps be the least quick to give a precise and confident answer. If training in the scrupulous use of reason sets up any mental habit in face of large problems, it is the habit of tentative approach; and the rationalist of to-day should be a much less readily self-satisfied thinker than the former claimants to the name. Professor James, indeed, is able to reconcile an ostensible certainty of rightness of method and result with much experience in investigation. ‘A pragmatist,’ he tells us, ‘turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins.’ One is delighted to hear it; but it is perhaps the course of prudence for most of us to doubt our power of getting entirely clear of inveterate habits.[3] Scrutiny of philosophic literature fails to reveal any one who entirely succeeded in it, even slowly. A constant concern for revision, then, would seem to be forced upon the professed rationalist, who knows how often the appeal to reason has yielded mere modifications of error, one unjustifiable credence ousting another. ‘Knows,’ one says, because the error is provable to the satisfaction of the judgment which seeks certainty. Such negative knowledge is the promise of positive.