That method logically concludes nothing for or against any belief, but may be made to seem to support almost any. It posits, in effect, that true beliefs are those by which men can successfully live, but offers no test of the reality of any alleged grounding of life upon a belief. Empirically, the negative of any opinion may thus be as easily substantiated as the affirmative, since the naturalist and the supernaturalist may alike claim individual success and satisfaction; and the adherents of the different faiths may do as much. For the "Pragmatist" of this order, accordingly, two contraries may be equally "true." Any resort to objective tests, the method of science, puts that of Pragmatism (of this order) out of action. It has thus no philosophic significance save as a quasi-philosophical reaffirmation of the pietist claim of "experience," and leaves religion as it found it. Other quasi-philosophical defences of Christianity are even less durable. A considerable amount of temporary favour has been won by what may be termed the Irrationalist defence, typified by the works of Mr. Benjamin Kidd and Mr. A. J. Balfour. As put by the former, it is a suicidal process of reasoning against reliance on reason, the necessary effect being to discredit the verdict claimed, as being attainable only through the very act of reason that is condemned. As more subtly handled by Mr. Balfour, the Irrationalist case takes the form of a denial that scientific beliefs, so-called, are any more capable of "ultimate proof" than the beliefs which constitute religion. We have here a very modern reversion to the orthodox forensic method anciently pursued by Cicero, and in later times employed by Huet, Pascal, and Berkeley. Its complete practical failure in all ages might serve to indicate its necessary nugatoriness to those who most affect it. Were the central thesis true, there is obviously no more warrant on that basis for any one creed than for any other; and a "solipsism" which warrants any and every claim alike is of no use to the Christian Church, which seeks to warrant a given revelation. Whatever be their abstract right to certainty, most men in search of it inevitably test the less certain proposition in the light of the more certain: and this bias, bound up with all sincere mental life, is as fatal to anti-critical defences as it is vital to all scientific advance. An inquiring age is not to be made credulous by the argument from nescience. § 3. Biblical and Historical Criticism Most men, in short, accept or reject religious creeds on the strength not of any systematically philosophic reasoning, but of either emotional bias or common-sense examination of concrete evidence. The former is as a rule, though not always, susceptible of influence from the latter. Thus the main instruments in turning men from Christian credences have been the documentary and historical forms of criticism.