strongly, or when other faiths came which
served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.

The needs were always many, and the tests were never sharp. So the
reproach of vagueness and subjectivity and "on the whole"-ness, which
can with perfect legitimacy be addressed to the empirical method as we
are forced to use it, is after all a reproach to which the entire life
of man in dealing with these matters is obnoxious. No religion has
ever yet owed its prevalence to "apodictic certainty." In a later
lecture I will ask whether objective certainty can ever be added by
theological reasoning to a religion that already empirically prevails.

One word, also, about the reproach that in following this sort of an
empirical method we are handing ourselves over to systematic skepticism.

Since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our sentiments
and needs, it would be absurd to affirm that one's own age of the world
can be beyond correction by the next age. Skepticism cannot,
therefore, be ruled out by any set of thinkers as a possibility against
which their conclusions are secure; and no empiricist ought to claim
exemption from this universal liability. But to admit one's liability
to correction is one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt is
another. Of willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot
be accused. He who acknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument,
and makes allowance {326} for it in discussing his observations, is in
a much better position for gaining truth than if he claimed his
instrument to be infallible. Or is dogmatic or scholastic theology
less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point
of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this
kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she
only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions? If WE claim
only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the
truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were
unconscious of our liability to err.

Nevertheless, dogmatism will doubtless continue to condemn us for this
confession. The mere outward form of inalterable certainty is so
precious to some minds that to renounce it explicitly is for them out
of the question. They will claim it even where the facts most patently
pronounce its folly. B