It is not an argument from common sense, as that phrase ought properly to be interpreted. It does not say to the opponents of Theism: “You accept current beliefs in science, in morality, in ethics. In some shape or other common sense has always accepted them, in some shape or other you cannot help accepting them. You do, in fact, probably accept them in the shape which finds favour with the ‘best thought of the age’ or what you conceive to be such. This is common sense. Why not do in the sphere of religion what you are admittedly doing in these other spheres of theory and practice? Would not this be common sense also? True, there is one important difference between the two cases. Theological beliefs are not inevitable—at least not at our present stage of culture. It is possible to be an atheist; and easy to be an agnostic. But inevitableness, in itself, is no ground of philosophic certitude. So this point may be ignored; and in all other respects the parallel seems to be complete. Some form of Theism has been prevalent from an immemorial past. It has strongly appealed to the needs and feelings of mankind. You do not pause before accepting beliefs about things and persons till philosophy has solved all the speculative doubts about them which philosophy itself has raised. Why, then, should you apply a standard of rationality to religion which, with general approval, you reject in the case of science?” Now I do not suggest that this is bad advice. Quite the contrary. Neither is it necessarily bad argument. But it is not the argument of these lectures. Whatever be its intrinsic merits, it has, from my point of view, the defect of implying a theory of knowledge—a very modest and unassuming theory indeed; but still a theory. And it therefore comes into competition with all other theories of knowledge—Absolutist, Empirical, Pragmatic, Neo-Kantian, Neo-Hegelian, Realist, New Realist, to say nothing of Professor Mach’s philosophy of science, or M. Bergson’s world-famous speculations. Now I preach no theory of knowledge; partly because I have none to preach, partly because, in these lectures, I desire to dogmatise as little as I can about fundamentals, and to be constructive rather than critical. If you ask me how it is possible to be constructive without first settling fundamentals, and how it is possible to settle fundamentals without first being critical, I reply that it is only possible if you start from premises which are practically accepted by both parties to the controversy, however little agreement there may be as to their speculative proof; and this is what I am trying to do.