222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ligion, meaning the religion of our civilization, as well as the 

 religion of evolution and the future. 



The evidence is abundant that even in the domains of science 

 and philosophy the word agnosticism does not and can not express 

 in full the idea or system for which it stands representative. Mr. 

 Huxley, the inventor of it, is, as we all know, in a state of con- 

 stant warfare over it ; and as to Mr. Spencer, it is sufficient to 

 refer to his controversy with Frederic Harrison and his " x u " as 

 the appropriate symbol " for the religion of the Infinite Unknow- 

 able." 



With both of these men — the acknowledged leaders among 

 agnostics — and with all their followers, the trouble is that at 

 present they are compelled to seek to accomplish the practically 

 impossible by attempting to read a positive and affirmative mean- 

 ing into a word that is and can be only indefinite and negative. 

 And the words meta-gnosticism and meta-gnostic are proposed 

 for the purpose of meeting precisely that difficulty, and for the 

 reason that they are positive and affirmative. 



Mr. Huxley really found the word agnostic, or its root, already 

 in use in the Greek language, and borrowed and used it for the 

 want of a better one, little thinking, doubtless, how important it 

 would become. It is believed that the time has now arrived for 

 importing another word, cognate in origin and affirmative in 

 meaning, into our language, if it be found by competent authority 

 to meet the requirements of the case. 



In his essay entitled Retrogressive Religion, in reply to Harri- 

 son, Spencer says (p. 68, Appletons' edition) : 



" I might enlarge on the fact that, though the name Agnos- 

 ticism fitly expresses the confessed inability to know or conceive 

 the nature of the Power manifested through phenomena, it fails 

 to indicate the confessed ability to recognize the existence of that 

 Power as of all things the most certain. I might make clear 

 the contrast between that Comtean Agnosticism which says that 

 ( theology and ontology alike end in the Everlasting Wo with 

 which Science confronts all their assertions/ and the Agnosticism 

 set forth in First Principles, which, along with its denials, em- 

 phatically utters an Everlasting Yes. And I might show in 

 detail that Mr. Harrison is wrong in implying that Agnosticism, 

 as I hold it, is anything more than silent with respect to the 

 question of personality ; since, though the attributes of person- 

 ality, as we know it, can not be conceived by us as attributes of 

 the Unknown Cause of things, yet ' duty requires us neither to 

 affirm nor deny personality/ but 'to submit ourselves with all 

 humility to the established limits of our intelligence ' in the con- 

 viction that the choice is not 'between personality and some- 

 thing lower than personality/ but e between personality and some- 



