Page:Humanism; philosophical essays (IA cu31924029012171).pdf/19
smoothing over of an unfaced scepticism, or at best a pallid fungus that, lurking in the dark corners of the mind, must shun the light of truth and warmth of action. In contrast with it a genuine faith is an ingredient in the growth of knowledge. It is ever realising itself in the knowledge that it needs and seeksto help it on to further conquests. It aims at its natural completion in what we significantly call the making true or verification, and in default of this must be suspected as mere make-believe. And so the identity of method in Science and Religion is far more fundamental than their difference. Both rest on experience and aim at its interpretation: both proceed by postulation; and both require their anticipations to be verified. The difference lies only in the mode and extent of their verifications: the former must doubtless differ according to the nature of the subject; the latter has gone much further in the case of Science, perhaps merely because there has been so much less persistence in attempts at the systematic verification of religious postulates.
III
It is clear, therefore, that Pragmatism is able to propound an extensive programme of problems to be worked out by its methods. But even Pragmatism is not the final term of philosophic innovation there is yet a greater and more sovereign principle now entering the lists of which it can only claim to have been the fore- runner and vicegerent. This principle also has long been working in the minds of men, dumb, unnamed and unavowed. But the time seems ripe now formally to name it, and to let it loose in order that it may receive its baptism of fire.
I propose, accordingly, to convert to the use of philosophic terminology a word which has long been