Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/800

782 to be the cause of his hostile attitude; he believed it to be the justification of even his bitter polemics.

But while on the objective side his scientific mode of thought thus made him a never-failing opponent of theologic thought of every kind, a common tie on the subjective side bound him to the heart of the Christian religion. Strong as was his conviction that the moral no less than the material good of man was to be secured by the scientific method alone, strong as was his confidence in the ultimate victory of that method in the war against ignorance and wrong, no less clear was his vision of the limits beyond which science was unable to go. He brought into the current use of today the term "agnostic," but the word had to him a deep and solemn meaning. To him "I do not know" was not a mere phrase to be thrown with a light heart at the face of an opponent who asks a hard question; it was reciprocally with the positive teachings of science the guide of his life. Great as he felt science to be, he was well aware that science could never lay its hand, could never touch, even with the tip of its finger, that dream with which our little life is rounded, and that unknown dream was a power as dominant over him as was the might of known science; he carried about with him every day that which he did not know as his guide of life no less to be minded than that which he did know. Future visitors to the burial place on the northern heights of London, seeing on his tombstone the lines—

 And if there be no meeting past the grave, If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest. Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep, For God 'still giveth his beloved sleep,' And if an endless sleep he wills—so best"—

will recognize that the agnostic man of science had much in common with the man of faith.

There is still much more to say of him, but this is not the place to say it. Let it be enough to add that those who had the happiness to come near him knew that besides science and philosophy there was room in him for yet many other things; they forgot the learned investigator, the wise man of action, and the fearless combatant as they listened to him talking of letters, of pictures, or of music, always wondering which delighted them most, the sure thrust with which he hit the mark, whatever it might be, or the brilliant wit which flashed around his stroke. And yet one word more. As an object seen first at a distance changes in aspect to the looker-on who draws nearer and yet more near, features unseen afar off filling up the vision close at hand, so he seemed to change to those who, coming nearer and nearer to him, gained a happy place within his innermost circle; his incisive thought, his