Page:Humanism; philosophical essays (IA cu31924029012171).pdf/21

any eternal and non-human truths to prohibit us from adopting the beliefs we need to live by, nor any infallible a priori tests of truth to screen us from the consequences of our choice." Similarly Professor James, in reviewing Personal Idealism, pointed out that "a re-anthropomorphised universe is the general outcome of its philosophy." Only for re-anthropomorphised we should henceforth read re-humanised. 'Anthropomorphism' is a term of disparagement whose dyslogistic usage it may prove difficult to alter. Moreover, it is clumsy, and can hardly be extended so as to cover what I mean by Humanism. There is no need to disclaim the truth of which it is the adumbration, and a non-anthropomorphic thought is sheer absurdity; but still what we need is something wider and more vivid.

Similarly I would not disclaim affinities with the great saying of Protagoras, that Man is the Measure of all things. Fairly interpreted, this is the truest and most important thing that any thinker ever has propounded. It is only in travesties such as it suited Plato's dialectic purpose to circulate that it can be said to tend to scepticism; in reality it urges Science to discover how Man may measure, and by what devices make concordant his measures with those of his fellow-men. Humanism therefore need not cast about for any sounder or more convenient starting-point.

For in every philosophy we must take some things for granted. Humanism, like Common Sense, of which it may fairly claim to be the philosophic working out, takes Man for granted as he stands, and the world of man's experience as it has come to seem to him. This is the only natural starting-point, from which we can proceed in every direction, and to which we must return, enriched

Mind for January 1903 (N.S. No. 45, p. 94).

2 I tried to do this in Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. v. $$ 6-9. But I now think the term needs radical re-wording.