Rationalists so-called. As always, incoherences in the pioneers led
to retorts which made for rectification. One of the errors of bias
of the early naturalists, as we have noted, was their tendency to
take every religious document as genuine and at bottom trustworthy,
provided only that its allegations of miracles were explained away
as misinterpretations of natural phenomena. So satisfied were many
of them with this inexpensive method that they positively resisted
the attempts of supernaturalists, seeking a way out of their special
dilemma, to rectify the false ascriptions of the documents. Bent solely
on one solution, they were oddly blind to evidential considerations
which pointed to interpolation, forgery, variety of source, and error
of literary tradition; while scholars bent on saving "inspiration"
were often ready in some measure for such recognitions. These arrests
of insight took place alternately on both sides, in the normal way of
intellectual progress by alternate movements. All the while, it is the
same primary force of reason that sets up the alternate pressures,
and the secondary pressures are generated by, and are impossible
without, the first.