Only Connect! An Introduction What is humanism?" That is the question posed, in David Nobbs''s 1983 comic novel Second from Last in the Sack Race, at the inaugural meeting of the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society-"bisexual" because it includes both girls and boys. Chaos ensues. One girl begins by saying that it means the Renaissance''s attempt to escape from the Middle Ages. She is thinking of the literary and cultural revival conducted by energetic, free-spirited intellectuals in Italian cities such as Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But that''s not right, says another of the society''s members. Humanism means "being kind, and nice to animals and things, and having charities, and visiting old people and things." A third member replies scathingly that this is to confuse humanism with humanitarianism. A fourth complains that they are all wasting time.

The humanitarian bristles: "Do you call bandaging sick animals and looking after old people and things a waste of time?" The scathing one now puts forward a different definition altogether. "It''s a philosophy that rejects supernaturalism, regards man as a natural object and asserts the essential dignity and worth of man and his capacity to achieve self-realisation through the use of reason and the scientific method." This is well received, until someone else raises a problem: some people do believe in God, yet they call themselves humanists. The meeting ends with everyone more confused than they were at the start. But the Thurmarsh students need not have worried: they were all on the right track. Each of their descriptions-and more-contributes to the fullest, richest picture of what humanism means, and of what humanists have done, studied, and believed through the centuries. Thus, as the student who spoke about the non-supernatural vision of life knew, many modern humanists are people who prefer to live without religious beliefs and to make their moral choices based on empathy, reason, and a sense of responsibility to other living creatures. Their worldview has been summed up by the writer Kurt Vonnegut: "I am a humanist," he said, "which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I''m dead.

" Yet the other Thurmarshian was also right to say that some of those considered humanists do have religious beliefs. They can still be described as humanists, insofar as their focus remains mostly on the lives and experiences of people here on Earth, rather than on institutions or doctrines, or the theology of the Beyond. Other meanings have nothing to do with religious questions at all. A humanist philosopher, for example, is one who puts the whole living person at the center of things, rather than deconstructing that person into systems of words, signs, or abstract principles. A humanist architect designs buildings on a human scale, in ways that do not overwhelm or frustrate those who have to live in them. Similarly there can be a humanist medicine, politics, or education; we have humanism in literature, photography, and film. In each case, the individual is kept at the top of the list of concerns, not subordinated to some grander concept or ideal. This is closer to what the "humanitarian" student was getting at.

But what about those scholars of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy and beyond-the ones the first Thurmarsh speaker was talking about? These were humanists of another type: they translated and edited books, taught students, corresponded with their clever friends, debated interpretations, advanced intellectual life, and generally wrote and talked a lot. In short, they were specialists in the humanities, or the studia humanitatis, meaning "human studies." From this Latin term, they became known in Italian as umanisti, and so they are humanists, too; American English usage still calls them humanists today. Many have shared the ethical interests of the other kinds of humanists, believing that learning and teaching the human studies enables a more virtuous and civilized life. Humanities teachers still often think this, in a modernized form. By introducing students to literary and cultural experiences, and to the tools of critical analysis, they hope to help them to acquire extra sensitivity to the perspectives of others, a subtler grasp of how political and historical events unfold, and a more judicious and thoughtful approach to life generally. They hope to cultivate humanitas, which in Latin means being human, but with added overtones of being refined, knowledgeable, articulate, generous, and well mannered. Religious, non-religious, philosophical, practical, and humanities-teaching humanists-what do all these meanings have in common, if anything? The answer is right there in the name: they all look to the human dimension of life.

What is that dimension? It can be hard to pin down, but it lies somewhere in between the physical realm of matter and whatever purely spiritual or divine realm may be thought to exist. We humans are made of matter, of course, like everything else around us. At the other end of the spectrum, we may (some believe) connect in some way with the numinous realm. At the same time, however, we also occupy a field of reality that is neither entirely physical nor entirely spiritual. This is where we practice culture, thought, morality, ritual, art-activities that are (mostly, though not entirely) distinctive to our species. Here is where we invest much of our time and energy: we spend it talking, telling stories, making pictures or models, working out ethical judgments and struggling to do the right thing, negotiating social agreements, worshipping in temples or churches or sacred groves, passing on memories, teaching, playing music, telling jokes and clowning around for others'' amusement, trying to reason things out, and just generally being the kinds of beings that we are. This is the realm that humanists of all kinds put at the center of their concern. Thus, whereas scientists study the physical world, and theologians the divine one, humanities-humanists study the human world of art, history, and culture.

Non-religious humanists make their moral choices based on human well-being, not divine instruction. Religious humanists focus on human well-being, too, but within the context of a faith. Philosophical and other kinds of humanists constantly measure their ideas against the experience of real living people. The human-centered approach was conveyed in a remark made some two and a half thousand years ago by the Greek philosopher Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things." That may sound arrogant, but there is no need to take it as meaning that the whole universe must conform to our ideas, still less that we are entitled to lord it over other life-forms. We can read it as saying that, as humans, we experience our reality in a human-shaped way. We know and care about human things; they are important to us, so let''s take them seriously. Admittedly, by this definition almost everything we do can seem a bit humanistic.

Other proposed definitions have been even more all-embracing. Here is the novelist E. M. Forster-a deeply "human" writer, and a paid-up member of humanist organizations-replying to a question about what that term means to him: Humanism could better be honoured by reciting a list of the things one has enjoyed or found interesting, of the people who have helped one, and of the people whom one has loved and tried to help. The list would not be dramatic, it would lack the sonority of a creed and the solemnity of a sanction, but it could be recited confidently, for human gratitude and human hopefulness would be speaking. This is irresistible, but it also comes close to giving up on definitions entirely. Yet Forster''s refusal to say anything abstract or dogmatic about humanism is, in itself, a typically humanist thing to do. For him, it is a personal matter-and that is the point.

Humanism often is personal, since it is about persons. It is personal to me, too. I am a lifelong humanist in the non-religious sense. I''ve become more and more of a humanist in my philosophy and politics, prizing individual lives more than the big ideas that I used to find exciting. And, after years of reading and writing about historical humanists of the "humanities" type, I have become fascinated by this foundation that they all share in the human studies. I am lucky in that I have been able to live out my humanism without much interference. For many people, humanism is something for which they risk their lives-and it doesn''t get more personal than that. And where humanism is not well understood, such risks can be exacerbated, as is shown by the recent experience of one young humanist in Britain.

Hamza bin Walayat comes from Pakistan, but in 2017 he was living in the UK and applied for permission to remain, on the grounds that his humanist beliefs and his break with Islam had brought threats against his life in his home country, notably from his own family. He feared that, if deported, he could be killed. This was a reasonable fear; humanism is outlawed as blasphemy in Pakistan (as in several other countries) and can even be punished by execution. In practice, Pakistani humanists have been killed mostly by vigilante mobs, with the authorities looking away. A notorious case occurred in that same year, 2017: the student Mashal Khan, who posted on social media as "The Humanist," was beaten to death by fellow students. When British Home Office staff interviewed Hamza to assess his application, they asked him to justify his fear of being persecuted as a humanist by giving a definition of th.