Given such a general attitude, then, to what philosophic form is it justifiably to be reduced? Those who have longest meditated the question will perhaps be the least quick to give a precise and confident answer. If training in the scrupulous use of reason sets up any mental habit in face of large problems, it is the habit of tentative approach; and the rationalist of to-day should be a much less readily self-satisfied thinker than the former claimants to the name. Professor James, indeed, is able to reconcile an ostensible certainty of rightness of method and result with much experience in investigation. 'A pragmatist,' he tells us, 'turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins.' One is delighted to hear it; but it is perhaps the course of prudence for most of us to doubt our power of getting entirely clear of inveterate habits.[3] Scrutiny of philosophic literature fails to reveal any one who entirely succeeded in it, even slowly. A constant concern for revision, then, would seem to be forced upon the professed rationalist, who knows how often the appeal to reason has yielded mere modifications of error, one unjustifiable credence ousting another. 'Knows,' one says, because the error is provable to the satisfaction of the judgment which seeks certainty. Such negative knowledge is the promise of positive. FOOTNOTE: [3] 'Pragmatism' soon becomes 'she' in Professor James's hands. Mr. Schiller seems to prefer 'it'; but he too makes much play with pragmatism as an entity. Whatever be the amount of 'abstraction' involved, the verbal method savours of very old-established malpractices. Sec. 3. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE