+Nietzsche: His Life and Works.+ By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI. +Bergson.+ By JOSEPH SOLOMON. +Rationalism.+ By J. M. ROBERTSON. +Lucretius and the Atomists.+ By EDWARD CLODD. * * * * * RATIONALISM By J. M. ROBERTSON AUTHOR OF 'A SHORT HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT' 'LETTERS ON REASONING,' ETC. LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD 1912 CONTENTS PAGE Sec. 1. THE TERM 1 Sec. 2. THE PRACTICAL POSITION 7 Sec. 3. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 12 Sec. 4. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGE 20 Sec. 5. THE SKEPTICAL RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 27 Sec. 6. THE MEANING OF REASON 37 Sec. 7. THE TEST OF TRUTH 47 Sec. 8. ULTIMATE PROBLEMS 62 Sec. 9. IDEALS 76 RATIONALISM Sec. 1. THE TERM The names 'rationalist' and 'rationalism' have been used in so many senses within the past three hundred years that they cannot be said to stand quite definitely for any type or school of philosophic thought. For Bacon, a 'rationalist' or _rationalis_ was a physician with _a priori_ views of disease and bodily function; and the Aristotelian humanists of the Helmstadt school were named _rationalistas_ about the same period by their opponents. A little later some Continental scholars applied the name to the Socinians and deists; and later still it designated, in Britain, types of Christian thinkers who sought to give a relatively reasoned form to articles of the current creed which had generally been propounded as mysteries to be taken on faith. The claim to apply 'reason' in such matters was by many orthodox persons regarded as in itself impious, while others derided the adoption of the title of 'rationalist' or 'reasonist' by professing Christians as an unwarranted pretence of superior reasonableness. Used in ethics, the label 'rationalism' served in the earlier part of the eighteenth century to stigmatise, as lacking in evangelical faith, those Christians who sought to make their moral philosophy quadrate with that of 'natural religion.' Later in the century, though in England we find the status of 'rational' claimed for orthodox belief in miracles and prophecies as the only valid evidence for Christianity,[1] rationalism became the recognised name for the critical methods of the liberal German theologians who sought to reduce the supernatural episodes of the Scriptures to the status of natural events misunderstood; and several professed histories of modern 'rationalism' have accordingly dealt mainly or wholly with the developments of Biblical criticism in Germany.