Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/230

218 true meaning of the word used by Paul, but first used by the one whom he preached and followed, as the central and supreme word in his system of salvation for the world and for mankind; or, cooperatively with science and philosophy, for the purpose of securing their powerful aid for its work in the world?

November 20, 1889.

I beg the privilege of presenting hereby, for your consideration and determination, a question of seemingly universal importance, that has arisen in the course of our work in the Brooklyn Ethical Association.

As far as possible I have sought to so present it as to limit your labors therein to yea, yea, or nay, nay.

The question relates to the selection and adoption of words for general use in the new philosophy, and as substitutes for the words agnostic and agnosticism, to express the affirmative side of the agnostic conception.

As a result of our experience of nearly two years in attempting to popularize evolution views, we find that just there our greatest obstacle is to be found, and our time and labor are most occupied and consumed, and increasingly so as we approach the popular mass.

The object of this communication is to propose as such affirmative substitutes the words metagnosticism and metagnostic, or metanosticism and metanostic, and to ask therefor your own approval and also that of Prof. Huxley—in concert, if possible.

My own view is that the new or substitute words involve no surrender or concession, but, on the contrary, if adopted would mark an advance in the nomenclature of the agnostic philosophy.

The accompanying statement was made by me as part of the discussion following the reading of the essay of Dr. Lewis G. Janes, on The Scope and Principles of the Evolution Philosophy, the first of the current series of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, on the evening of October 13, 1889, and it will explain itself.

I also hand you herewith a list of words and their definitions, derived or derivable from the Greek verbs gignoskein and noein, in composition with the preposition meta, the imperative form of which was used, according to the Greek Testament, by John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, in that passage in which they are made in the Douay Bible to say, "Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," following the Latin Vulgate; and in King James's and later English versions, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."