But imagine a youth in the
courtroom trying cases with his abstract notion of 'the' law, or a
censor of speech let loose among the theatres with his idea of 'the'
mother-tongue, or a professor setting up to lecture on the actual
universe with his rationalistic notion of 'the Truth' with a big T,
and what progress do they make? Truth, law, and language fairly boil
away from them at the least touch of novel fact. These things MAKE
THEMSELVES as we go. Our rights, wrongs, prohibitions, penalties,
words, forms, idioms, beliefs, are so many new creations that add
themselves as fast as history proceeds. Far from being antecedent
principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but
abstract names for its results.
Laws and languages at any rate are thus seen to be man-made: things.
Mr. Schiller applies the analogy to beliefs, and proposes the name
of 'Humanism' for the doctrine that to an unascertainable extent our
truths are man-made products too. Human motives sharpen all our
questions, human satisfactions lurk in all our answers, all our
formulas have a human twist. This element is so inextricable in the
products that Mr. Schiller sometimes seems almost to leave it an
open question whether there be anything else.
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