266 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



trial, they are ndmirable. Perhaps the 

 best of the essavs are those on "The 

 Gorge of the Niagara," "Alaska," 

 " The Catskill Mountains," " Coal," and 

 " The Tulip-Tree." As the club grows 

 older, the thought of its members will 

 no doubt be more concentrated upon 

 objects within their immediate field of 

 observation, and these will become the 

 subjects of exposition at the winter 

 meetings. It wonld be well, indeed, if 

 members would take up lines of obser- 

 vation to be pursued during the sum- 

 mer, with special reference to their dis- 

 cussion at the winter gatherings of the 

 club. By taking notes and reading up 

 on the subject chosen, and doing the 

 literary part at convenient intervals, 

 the work would be deliberately and 

 carefully done, and, while the student 

 carried on his own self -instruction, the 

 club would be a gainer by improving 

 the standard of its winter performances. 



AGNOSTICTSM AT ITAEVAED. 



The students of Harvard Univer- 

 sity have been canvassed to ascertain 

 their religious opinions. It has been 

 suspected that this institution, so long 

 the headquarters of Unitarian liberal- 

 ism, has become pervaded by atheism 

 and agnosticism. But it is now found 

 that the believers in these doctrines are 

 virtually nowhere in this great estab- 

 lishment, and that in fact it is drifting 

 away from rationalistic Unitarianism in 

 the direction of pronounced orthodoxy. 



There is a great propensity in this 

 country to count up and see who is 

 ahead. Next to the prime national 

 question, "How many dollars?" the 

 American soul yearns to know "How 

 many votes? " Wherever two or three 

 are gathered together, just before elec- 

 tion, they are sure to count noses on 

 the nominations. That there should 

 also be a curiosity to know who is los- 

 ing, who is gaining, and who leads, in 

 the sphere of religious rivalry, is not sur- 

 prising, for with our people, next after 



money-getting and politics, sectarian 

 concernments have the most urgent 

 claims. So the Harvard students were 

 questioned as to their spiritual prefer- 

 ences, with the following results : " Col- 

 lege and Law School, 972 men; agnos- 

 tics, 26 ; atheists, 7 ; Baptists, 42 ; Chi- 

 nese, 1 ; Christians, 2 ; Dutch Reform- 

 ers, 2 ; Episcopalians, 275 ; Hebrews, 

 10; Lutheran,!; Methodists, 16 ; non- 

 sectarian, 97; orthodox Congregation- 

 al, 173 ; Presbyterians, 27 ; Quakers, 2 ; 

 Roman Catholics, 33 ; Swedenborgians, 

 20; Unitarians, 214; Universalists, 18 ; 

 not seen, 6." There has been a great 

 deal of comment and no little congrat- 

 ulation on these unexpected results, but 

 there is one aspect of the matter that 

 we have not seen noticed. 



From the point of view of agnosti- 

 cism there are but two parties in the col- 

 lege, the 26 adherents to that view, and 

 the 940 who do not accept it. The ag- 

 nostic ground is that religion, in so far 

 as it is supernatural, transcends human 

 intelligence, so that man can really Tcnow 

 nothing beyond the phenomenal and 

 the finite. He may imagine much, and 

 believe much, and fancy that he knows, 

 but strictly tested it turns out that his 

 conjectures are not knowledge in the 

 true and proper sense. The position 

 of the agnostic, in short, in regard to 

 other worlds or spheres of existence be- 

 yond time, space, and the course of nat- 

 ure, is briefly this: "I know nothing 

 and you know nothing, we neither of us 

 can know anything, and we had better 

 modestly confine our thoughts to the 

 universe which we can know." 



Now, as there are only 26 that take 

 this ground, it is only fair to suppose 

 that the other 940 take other and op- 

 posite ground ; that is, they claim to 

 I'now in regard to the religious matters 

 of which they profess belief claim, in- 

 deed, that their religious knowledge is 

 the most clear and certain of all their 

 knowledge. 



The Harvard agnostic replies: "The 

 condition and course of things in our 



