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