for a conceivable if very far off reconciliation, than as an argument to dissuade those who may think that they can go further than the author, from proving in a philosophical fashion whatever they can prove. Such people may manage to interpret many of the negations that occur in these pages as directed against an inadequate form, or imperfect understanding, of their more elaborate creed. If they can do so, no one will be more heartily delighted than the author, although he may not agree with them.
As to the relation of this book to what is called modern doubt, it is a relation neither of blind obedience nor of unsympathetic rejection. The doctrine of philosophic idealism here propounded is not what in these days is popularly called Agnosticism. Yet doubting everything is once for all a necessary element in the organism of philosophic reflection. What is here dwelt upon over and over again is, however, the consideration that the doubts of our time are not to be apologetically “refuted,” in the old fashioned sense, but that taken just as they are, fully and cordially received, they are upon analysis found to contain and imply a positive and important religious creed, bearing both upon conduct and upon reality. Not to have once thoroughly accepted as necessary the great philosophic doubts and problems
