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 AGNOSTICISM 165 questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its belief. In the ’seventies and eighties this way of solving, depth. And again, to the same correspondent, 5th May or rather passing over, the ultimate problems of thought 1863^ had many followers in cultured circles imbued with I have never had the least sympathy with the ci priovi reasons the new science of the day, and with disgust for the against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the dogmatic creeds of contemporary orthodoxy; and its outgreatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. spoken and even aggressive vindication by physicists of Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the eminence of Huxley had a potent influence upon the the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in attitude taken towards metaphysics, and upon the form calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomenon of which subsequent Christian apologetics adopted. As a the universe stands to us in the relation of a leather—loves us and nickname the term agnostic was soon misused to cover cares for us as Christianity asserts. So with regard to the other any and every variation of scepticism, and just as popular great Christian dogmas, immortality of soul and future state of preachers confused it with atheism in their denunciations, rewards and punishments, what possible objection can I—who am so the callow freethinker—following Tennyson’s path of compelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force, and in a very unmistakable present state of “ honest doubt ” — classed himself with the agnostics, rewards and punishments for our deeds—have to these doctrines ? even while he combined an instinctively Christian theism Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them. with a facile rejection of the historical evidences for Of the origin of the name “ agnostic ” to cover this atti- Christianity. tude, Huxley gave {Coll. Ess. v. pp. 237-239) the followHuxley’s agnosticism was a natural consequence of the ing account:— intellectual and philosophical conditions of the ’sixties, AVhen I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask when clerical intolerance was trying to excommunicate myself whether I _was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist, a scientific discovery because it appeared to clash with the materialist or an idealist, a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the book of Genesis. But as the theory of evolution did its answer. The one thing on which most of these good people were work, a new spirit was gradually introduced into Christian agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They theology, which has turned the controversies between were quite sure they had attained a certain “gnosis”—had more religion and science into other channels, and taken most of or jess successfully solved the problem of existence ; while I was quite sure that I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the wind out of the sails of agnosticism. A similar effect the problem was insoluble. This was my situation when I had has been produced by the philosophical reaction against the good fortune to find a place among the members of that remark- Herbert Spencer, and by the perception that the canons of able confraternity of antagonists, the Metaphysical Society. Every evidence required in physical science must not be exalted ' j^riety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there ; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another ; into universal rules of thought. It does not follow that and I, the nian without a rag of a belief to cover himself with, justification by faith must be eliminated in spiritual could not fail to.have some of the uneasy feelings which must have matters, where sight cannot follow, because the physibeset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated cist’s duty and success lie in pinning belief solely on companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived verification by physical phenomena, when they alone are to be the appropriate title of “ agnostic.” It came into my head in question; and for mankind generally, though possibly as suggestively antithetic to the “gnostic ” of Church history, who not for an exceptional man like Huxley, an impotent professed to know so much about the very things of which I was suspension of judgment on such issues as a future life or ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took. the Being of God is both unsatisfying and demoralizing. This account is confirmed by R. H. Hutton, who in It is impossible here to do more than indicate the 1881 wrote that the word “ was suggested by Huxley at a path out of the difficulties raised by Huxley in the letter meeting held previous to the formation of the now defunct to Kingsley quoted above. They involve an elaborate Metaphysical Society at Mr. Knowles’s house on Clapham discussion, not only of Christian evidences, but of the Common in 1869, in my hearing. He took it from St. entire subject-matter alike of Ethics and Metaphysics, of Paul s mention of the altar to the Unknown God.” Philosophy as a whole, and of the philosophies of inHutton here gives a variant etymology for the word, dividual writers who have dealt in their different ways which may be therefore taken as partly derived from with the problems of existence and epistemology. It is, ayj/wo-Tos (the “unknown” God), and partly from an however, permissible to point out that, as has been exantithesis to Gnostic; but the meaning remains the same haustively argued by Professor J. Ward in his Gifford in either case. The name, as Huxley said, “ took ”; it lectures for 1896-98 {Naturalism and Agnosticism, pubwas constantly used by Hutton in the Spectator, and lished by A. & C. Black, 1899, London), Huxley’s became a fashionable label for contemporary unbelief in challenge (“I know what I mean when I say I believe in Christian dogma, particularly during the ’seventies and the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life eighties. Hutton himself frequently misrepresented the and my hopes upon weaker convictions”) is one which a doctrine by describing it as “ belief in an unknown and spiritualistic philosophy need not shrink from accepting unknowable God ” ; but agnosticism as defined by Huxley at the hands of naturalistic agnosticism. If, as Huxley meant not belief, but absence of belief, as much distinct admits, even putting it with unnecessary force against rom belief on the one hand as from disbelief on the himself, the immortality of man is not half so wonderful other; it was the half-way house between the two, as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of where all questions were “ open.” All that Huxley asked matter,. the question then is, how far a critical analysis of tor was evidence, either for or against; but this he our. belief in the last-named doctrines will leave us in a eheved it impossible to get. Occasionally he too mis-stated position to regard them as the last stage in systematic the meaning of the word he had invented, and described thinking. It is the pitfall of physical science, immersed agnosticism as meaning “that a man shall not say he knows as its students are apt to be in problems dealing with or believes what he has no scientific ground for professing to know or believe.” But as the late Rev. A. W. Momerie tangible facts in the world of experience, that there is a tendency among them to claim a superior status of remarked, this would merely be “ a definition of honesty; objective reality and finality for the laws to which their in that sense we ought all to be agnostics.” Agnosticism rea y stands or falls by the doctrine of the Unknowable, data are found to conform. But these generalizations are tne assertion that concerning certain objects—among them not ultimate truths, when we have to consider the nature he Deity—we never can have any “scientific” ground for of experience itself. “ Because reference to the Deity will not serve for a physical explanation in physics, or a