It is hard to see why either Mr. Bradley’s own logic or his metaphysics should oblige him to quarrel with this conception.  He might consistently adopt it verbatim et literatim, if he would, and simply throw his peculiar absolute round it, following in this the good example of Professor Royce.  Bergson in France, and his disciples, Wilbois the physicist and Leroy, are thoroughgoing humanists in the sense defined.  Professor Milhaud also appears to be one; and the great Poincare misses it by only the breadth of a hair.  In Germany the name of Simmel offers itself as that of a humanist of the most radical sort.  Mach and his school, and Hertz and Ostwald must be classed as humanists.  The view is in the atmosphere and must be patiently discussed.

The best way to discuss it would be to see what the alternative might be.  What is it indeed?  Its critics make no explicit statement, Professor Royce being the only one so far who has formulated anything definite.  The first service of humanism to philosophy accordingly seems to be that it will probably oblige those who dislike it to search their own hearts and heads.  It will force analysis to the front and make it the order of the day.  At present the lazy tradition that truth is adaequatio intellectus et rei seems all there is to contradict it with.  Mr. Bradley’s only suggestion is that true thought ’must correspond to a determinate being which it cannot be said to make,’ and obviously that sheds no new light.  What is the meaning of the word to ‘correspond’?  Where is the ‘being’?  What sort of things are ‘determinations,’ and what is meant in this particular case by ’not to make’?

Humanism proceeds immediately to refine upon the looseness of these epithets.  We correspond in some way with anything with which we enter into any relations at all.  If it be a thing, we may produce an exact copy of it, or we may simply feel it as an existent in a certain place.  If it be a demand, we may obey it without knowing anything more about it than its push.  If it be a proposition, we may agree by not contradicting it, by letting it pass.  If it be a relation between things, we may act on the first thing so as to bring ourselves out where the second will be.  If it be something inaccessible, we may substitute a hypothetical object for it, which, having the same consequences, will cipher out for us real results.  In a general way we may simply add our thought to it; and if it suffers the addition, and the whole situation harmoniously prolongs and enriches itself, the thought will pass for true.