Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 25 - A-AUS.pdf/188

 164

AGADES — AG

and grandfather. This blending of the two systems of education has produced the happy result of fitting this Moslem chief in an eminent degree both for the sacerdotal functions which appertain to his spiritual position and for those social duties of a great and enlightened leader which he is called upon to discharge by virtue of that position. He has travelled in distant parts oi the world to receive the homage of his followers, and with the object either of settling differences or of advancing their welfare by pecuniary help and personal advice and guidance. The distinction of a Knight Commander of the Indian Empire was conferred upon him by Queen Victoria in 1897, and he has received like recognition for his public services from the German Emperor, the Sultan of Turkey, the Shah of Persia, and other potentates. (m. m. Bh.)

NOSTICISM known as Jasmin. Population (1881), 17,098; (1891), 18,463; (1896), 18,389. Aggregation, States Of. See Condensation of Gases. Agira, formerly San Filippo d’Argir6, a town of the province of Catania, Sicily, Italy, 9 miles S.E. from Nicosia, standing 2133 ft. above sea-level, with sulphur mines and flour-mills. It is the ancient Argyrium, one of the oldest of the Sikelian towns, and was colonized by Timoleon, the liberator of Syracuse, in 339 b.c. It was the birthplace of the historian Diodorus Siculus (1st cent. b.c.). Population 13,498 (1881); 17,749 (1901).

Agnew, David Hayes (1818-1892), American surgeon, was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, on 24th November 1818. He graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1838, and Agades. Bee Sahara. a few years later set up in practice at Philadelphia and became Agassiz, Alexander (Emanuel) (1835- a lecturer at the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. He was American scientist, son of Louis Agassiz, was appointed surgeon at the Philadelphia Hospital in 1854, and born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, 17th December 1835. was the founder of its pathological museum. For twenty-six He came to the United States with his father m 1846; years (1863-89) he was connected with the medical faculty graduated at Harvard in 1855, subsequently studying of the University of Pennsylvania, being elected professor engineering and chemistry, and taking the degree oi of operative surgery in 1870 and professor, of the bachelor of science at the Lawrence Scientific School of principles and practice of surgery in the following year. the same institution in 1857 ; taught for a time in his From 1865 to 1884—except for a brief interval—he was father’s school for girls in Cambridge^ and m 1859 a surgeon at the Pennsylvania Hospital. During the entered upon his scientific career by becoming an assistant American Civil War he was consulting surgeon in the in the United States Coast Survey. Thenceforward he Mower Army Hospital, near Philadelphia, and acquired became a specialist in marine ichthyology, but devoted considerable reputation for his operations in cases of gunmuch time to the investigation, superintendence, and shot wounds. He attended as operating surgeon when exploitation of mines, being superintendent of the Calumet President Garfield was fatally wounded by the bullet of an and Hecla copper mines, Lake Superior (the richest in assassin m 1881. He was the author of several works, the the world) from 1866 to 1869, and afterwards, as a most important one being a three-volume, The Principles stockholder, acquiring a fortune, out of which he gave to and Practice of Surgery. He died at Philadelphia on Harvard for the Museum of Comparative Zoology and 22nd March 1892. other purposes, some $500,000. In 1875 he surveyed Agnosticism.—The term “agnostic” was inLake Titicaca, Peru; examined the copper mines of Peru vented by Huxley in 1869 to describe the philosophical and Chile; and made a collection of Peruvian antiquities and religious attitude of those who hold that we can for the museum, in which he had been an assistant, under have scientific or real knowledge of phenomena only, and his father, from time to time, and of which he was curator that so far as what may lie behind phenomena is con1874-85, when he resigned. He assisted Sir Wyville cerned—God, immortality, &c.—there is no evidence which Thomson in the examination and classification of the entitles us either to deny or affirm anything. The attitude collections of the Challenger exploring expedition, and itself is as old as Scepticism (g.v.) ; but the expressions wrote the Review of the Echini (2 vols., 1872-74) in the “ agnostic ” and “ agnosticism ” were applied by Huxley to reports. Between 1877 and 1880 he took part in the sum up his deductions from those contemporary developthree dredging expeditions of the steamer Blake, of the ments of metaphysics with which the names of Hamilton United States Coast Survey, and presented a full account (“the Unconditioned”) and Herbert Spencer (“the Unof them in two volumes (1888)._ Of his other writings knowable ”) were associated; and it is important, thereon marine zoology most are contained in the bulletins and fore, to fix precisely his own intellectual standpoint in the memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, but he Though Huxley only began to use the term published in 1865 (with Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, his matter. “agnostic” in 1869, his opinions had taken shape some father’s wife) Seaside Studies in Natural History, a work before that date. In a letter to Charles Kingsley at once exact and stimulating, and in 1871 a volume on time (23rd September 1860) he wrote very fully concerning his the Marine Animals of Massachusetts Bay. beliefs:— I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no Aged, chief town of department Lot-et-Garonne, for believing it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of France, 380 miles S.S.W. of Paris, on railway from Bor- eason isnroving it. I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. JN o deaux to Cette. The Garonne is here crossed by a suspen- ran who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble sion and two stone bridges ; one of the latter, a fine structure limself about a priori difficulties. Give me such evidence as of twenty-three arches, carries the lateral canal. Amongst ,-ould justify me in believing in anything else, and I will believe Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the the public buildings are the cathedral of St Caprais (who hat onservation of force or the indestructibility of matter. ... introduced Christianity in the 3rd century), parts of which It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I date from the 12th and 13th centuries., and the ancient mow what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse church of the Jacobins. The industries include the manu- quares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker ..., . T, , facture of drugs and pottery, and there are phosphate and mivictions. That my personality is the surest thing I know may be true. dye works. Agen is noted for fine prunes, in which, as 3ut the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verba well also in other fruits, it carries on considerable trade. mbtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego and It was the birthplace of Joseph Scaliger the philologist, ;he non-ego, noumena and phenomena, and all the rest oi it, too the naturalist Lacepede, and the poet Jacques Boe, better >ften not to know that in attempting even to think of these