THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 231 



Mr. Walden also quotes De Quincey as saying : 



In my opinion the Greek, word metanoia concealed a most profound meaning — 

 a meaning of prodigious compass — which tore no allusion to any ideas whatever 

 of repentance. The meta carried with it an emphatic expression of its original 

 idea — the idea of transfer, of translation — or, if we prefer a Grecian to a Roman 

 appareling, the idea of a metamorphosis. And this idea, to what is it applied ? 

 Upon what object is the idea of spiritual transfiguration made to "bear? Simply 

 upon the noetic or intellectual faculty — the faculty of shaping and conceiving 

 things under their true relations. The holy herald of Christ, and Christ himself, 

 the finisher of prophecy, made proclamation alike of the same mysterious sum- 

 mons, as a baptism or rite of initiation, namely, Meravoelre — henceforth transfig- 

 ure your theory of moral truth ; the old theory is laid aside as infinitely insuffi- 

 cient; a new and spiritual revelation is established. Metanoeite! Contemplate 

 moral truth as radiating from a new center ; apprehend it under transfigured rela- 

 tions. 



No exhibition of blank power — not the arresting of the earth's motion — not 

 the calling back of the dead to life, can approach in grandeur to this miracle 

 which we daily behold — namely, the inconceivable mystery of having written and 

 sculptured upon the tablets of man's heart a new code of moral distinctions, all 

 modifying — many reversing — the old ones. "What would have been thought of 

 any prophet, if he should have promised to transfigure the celestial mechanics; if 

 he had said : I will create a new pole-star, a new zodiac, and new laws of gravi- 

 tation; briefly, I will make a new earth and new heavens? And yet a thousand 

 times more awful it was to undertake the writing of new laws upon the spiritual 

 conscience of man. Metanoeite ! (was the cry from the wilderness). "Wheel into 

 a new center your moral system — geocentric has that system been up to this hour 

 — that is, having earth and the earthly for its starting-point ; henceforth make it 

 heliocentric (that is, with the sun, or the heavenly, for the principle of motion). 



In an appendix Mr. Walden also prints an extract from a let- 

 ter of Rev. Philip Schaff, D. D., in which the latter expresses 

 " cordial approval " of the " able, excellent, and truthful article 

 on the meaning of metanoia" and states that " conservatism pre- 

 vented a change, and the difficulty of substituting a precise equiva- 

 lent word," doubtless referring to the proper substitute in the 

 new version for the word " repentance." 



Attention may here be called to the fact that Hamilton says, 

 " I would employ the word noetic to express all those cognitions 

 which originate in the mind itself." Why not rather employ the 

 words metanoetic or metagnostic for that purpose ? It is to be 

 remembered also that Lewes, in the Foundations of a Creed, says 

 that he found it necessary to invent the new word metempirical, 

 to " clearly designate " the " province where sense has no footing, 

 where experiment can exercise no control, and where calculation 

 ends in impossible quantities," the region of the " supersensible " ; 

 and to distinguish it from the province of the empirical, the region 

 of the sensible and the extrasensible. But that word does not 

 seem to have been generally accepted, and is not adequate for our 

 purpose. 



