Rationalism

Part 1

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PHILOSOPHIES ANCIENT AND MODERN

RATIONALISM

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RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN

+Animism.+ By EDWARD CLODD, author of The Story of Creation.

+Pantheism.+ By JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, author of The Religion of the Universe.

+The Religions of Ancient China.+ By Professor GILES, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge.

+The Religion of Ancient Greece.+ By JANE HARRISON, Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge, author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion.

+Islam.+ By the Rt. Hon. AMEER ALI SYED, of the Judicial Committee of His Majesty's Privy Council, author of The Spirit of Islam and Ethics of Islam.

+Magic and Fetishism.+ By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cambridge University.

+The Religion of Ancient Egypt.+ By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S.

+The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria.+ By THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, late of the British Museum.

+Early Buddhism.+ By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The Royal Asiatic Society.

+Hinduism.+ By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed Books and MSS., British Museum.

+Scandinavian Religion.+ By WILLIAM A. CRAIGIE, Joint Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

+Celtic Religion.+ By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University College, Aberystwyth.

+The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland.+ By CHARLES SQUIRE, author of The Mythology of the British Islands.

+Judaism.+ By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cambridge University, author of Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.

+The Religion of Ancient Rome.+ By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.

+Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan.+ By W. G. ASTON, C.M.G.

+The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru.+ By LEWIS SPENCE, M.A.

+Early Christianity.+ By S. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University.

+The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion.+ By Professor J. H. LEUBA.

+The Religion of Ancient Palestine.+ By STANLEY A. COOK.

+Manicheeism.+ By F. C. CONYBEARE. (Shortly.)

PHILOSOPHIES

+Early Greek Philosophy.+ By A. W. BENN, author of The Philosophy of Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century.

Part 2

+Stoicism.+ By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of Deductive Logic, editor of the Apology of Plato, etc.

+Plato.+ By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University, author of The Problem of Conduct.

+Scholasticism.+ By Father RICKABY, S.J.

+Hobbes.+ By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.

+Locke.+ By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.

+Comte and Mill.+ By T. WHITTAKER, author of The Neoplatonists, Apollonius of Tyana and other Essays.

+Herbert Spencer.+ By W. H. HUDSON, author of An Introduction to Spencer's Philosophy.

+Schopenhauer.+ By T. WHITTAKER.

+Berkeley.+ By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER, D.C.L., LL.D.

+Swedenborg.+ By Dr. SEWALL.

+Nietzsche: His Life and Works.+ By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.

+Bergson.+ By JOSEPH SOLOMON.

+Rationalism.+ By J. M. ROBERTSON.

+Lucretius and the Atomists.+ By EDWARD CLODD.

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RATIONALISM

By J. M. ROBERTSON

AUTHOR OF 'A SHORT HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT' 'LETTERS ON REASONING,' ETC.

LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD 1912

CONTENTS

PAGE § 1. THE TERM 1

§ 2. THE PRACTICAL POSITION 7

§ 3. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 12

§ 4. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGE 20

§ 5. THE SKEPTICAL RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 27

§ 6. THE MEANING OF REASON 37

§ 7. THE TEST OF TRUTH 47

§ 8. ULTIMATE PROBLEMS 62

Part 3

§ 9. IDEALS 76

RATIONALISM

§ 1. THE TERM

The names 'rationalist' and 'rationalism' have been used in so many senses within the past three hundred years that they cannot be said to stand quite definitely for any type or school of philosophic thought. For Bacon, a 'rationalist' or rationalis was a physician with a priori views of disease and bodily function; and the Aristotelian humanists of the Helmstadt school were named rationalistas about the same period by their opponents. A little later some Continental scholars applied the name to the Socinians and deists; and later still it designated, in Britain, types of Christian thinkers who sought to give a relatively reasoned form to articles of the current creed which had generally been propounded as mysteries to be taken on faith. The claim to apply 'reason' in such matters was by many orthodox persons regarded as in itself impious, while others derided the adoption of the title of 'rationalist' or 'reasonist' by professing Christians as an unwarranted pretence of superior reasonableness. Used in ethics, the label 'rationalism' served in the earlier part of the eighteenth century to stigmatise, as lacking in evangelical faith, those Christians who sought to make their moral philosophy quadrate with that of 'natural religion.' Later in the century, though in England we find the status of 'rational' claimed for orthodox belief in miracles and prophecies as the only valid evidence for Christianity, rationalism became the recognised name for the critical methods of the liberal German theologians who sought to reduce the supernatural episodes of the Scriptures to the status of natural events misunderstood; and several professed histories of modern 'rationalism' have accordingly dealt mainly or wholly with the developments of Biblical criticism in Germany.

New connotations, however, began to accrue to the terms in virtue of the philosophical procedure of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, though his Religion within the Bounds of Simple [blossen] Reason went far to countenance the current usage; and when Hegel subsequently proceeded to identify (at times) reason with the cosmic process, there were set up implications which still give various technical significances to 'rationalism' in some academic circles. In the brilliant work of Professor William James on Pragmatism, for instance, the term is represented as connoting, in contrast to the thinking of 'tough-minded' empiricists, that of a type or school of 'tender-minded' people who are collectively--

'Rationalistic (going by "principles") Intellectualistic Idealistic Optimistic Religious Free-willist Monistic Dogmatical.'

Yet it is safe to say that in Britain, for a generation back, the name has carried to the general mind only two or three of the connotations in Professor James's list, and much more nearly coincides with his contrary list characterising 'the tough-minded':--

'Empiricist (going by "facts") Sensationalistic Materialistic Pessimistic Irreligious Fatalistic Pluralistic Skeptical'

--though here again the item 'pluralistic' does not chime with the common conception, and 'pessimistic' is hardly less open to challenge. 'Intellectualistic' appears to be aimed at Hegelians, but would be understood by many as describing the tendency to set up 'reason' against 'authority'; and Professor James's 'rationalists,' who would appear to include thinkers like his colleague Professor Royce, would not be so described in England by many university men, clergymen, or journalists. The name 'rationalist,' in short, has come to mean for most people in this country very much what 'freethinker' used to mean for those who did not employ it as a mere term of abuse. It stands, that is to say, for one who rejects the claims of 'revelation,' the idea of a personal God, the belief in personal immortality, and in general the conceptions logically accruing to the practices of prayer and worship.

Perhaps the best name for such persons would be 'naturalist,' which was already in use with some such force in the time of Bodin and Montaigne. Kant, it may be remembered, distinguished between 'rationalists,' as thinkers who did not deny the possibility of a revelation, and 'naturalists' who did. But though 'naturalism,' has latterly been recognised by many as a highly convenient term for the view of things which rejects 'supernaturalism,' and will be so used in the present discussion, the correlative 'naturalist' has never, so to speak, been naturalised in English. For one thing, it has been specialised in ordinary language in the sense of 'student of nature,' or rather of what has come to be specially known as 'natural history'--in particular, the life of birds, insects, fishes, and animals. And, further, the term 'naturalism,' like every other general label for a way of thinking, is liable to divagations and misunderstandings. Some thinkers (known to the present writer only through the accounts given of them by others) appear to formulate as a philosophic principle the doctrine that the best way to regulate our lives is to find out how the broad processes of 'Nature' is tending, and to conform to it alike our ideals and our practice. The notion is that if, say, Nature appears to be making for the extermination of backward races, we should try to help the process forward. It is doubtful whether more than a very small number of instructed men have ever entertained such a principle. It is certainly not the expression of the philosophy of those ancients who sought to 'live according to Nature'; and it would certainly not have been assented to by such modern 'naturalists' as Spencer and Huxley and Mill. But if the principle is current at all, it makes the name of 'naturalist' as ambiguous philosophically as 'rationalist' can be.

And similar drawbacks attach to another set of terms which have much to recommend them--'positive,' 'positivist,' and 'positivism.' They stand theoretically for (1) the provable, (2) the attitude of the seeker for intelligible proof in all things, (3) the conviction that the rights of reason are ultimate and indefeasible. But here again, to say nothing of the equivoque of 'positive,' we are met by a claim of pre-emption, the claim of Comte to associate the 'ism' specifically with his system, theoretic and practical. And for the majority of men with positivist proclivities, the gist of the 'practical application' of Comte is incompatible with the positive spirit. Positivism with a capital P is thereby made for them, as it was for Littré, something alien to positivism as the free scientific spirit would seek to shape it. And a wrangle over the ownership of the word would be a waste of time.

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