LAST WORDS ABOUT AGNOSTICISM. 315 



"notamment Tiele, 'Manuel de I'Histoire des Religions,' traduit par M. Maurice 

 Vernes, Liv. II, et dans la ' Revue de I'Histoire des Religions,' la ' Religion de 

 I'ancien empire Chinois' par M. Julius Happel (t. IV, no. 6). "J 



Whether Mr. Harrison's opinion is or is not changed by this array 

 of counter-opinion, he may at any rate be led somewhat to qualify his 

 original statement that " Nothing is more certain than that man every- 

 where started with a simple worship of natural objects." 



I pass now to Mr. Harrison's endeavor to rebut my assertion that 

 he had demolished a simulacrum and not the reality. 



I pointed out that he had inverted my meaning by representing as 

 negative that which I regarded as positive. What I have everywhere 

 referred to as the All-Being, he named the All-Nothingness. What 

 answer does he make when I show that my position is exactly the re- 

 verse of that alleged ? He says that while I am " dealing with trans- 

 cendental conceptions, intelligible only to certain trained metaphysi- 

 cians," he is " dealing with religion as it affects the lives of men and 

 women in the world ; " that " to ordinary men and women, an un- 

 knowable and inconceivable Reality is practically an Unreality ; " and 

 that thus all he meant to say was that the " Everlasting Yes " of the 

 " evolutionist," " is in effect on the public a mere Everlasting No " 

 (p. 354). Now compare these passages in his last article with the fol- 

 lowing passages in his first article : — " One would like to know how 

 much of the Evolutionist's day is consecrated to seeking the Unknow- 

 able in a devout way, and what the religious exercises might be. How 

 does the man of science approach the All-Nothingness " (p. 502) ? 

 Thus we see that what was at first represented as the unfitness of the 

 creed considered as offered to the select is now rej^resented as its un- 

 fitness considered as offered to the masses. What were originally the 

 " Evolutionist " and the " man of science " are now changed into 

 " ordinary men and women " and " the public ; " and what was ori- 

 ginally called the All-Nothingness has become an " inconceivable 

 Reality." The statement which was to be justified is not justified, 

 but something else is justified in its stead. 



Thus it is, too, with the paragraph in which Mr. Harrison seeks to 

 disprove my assertion that he had exactly transposed the doctrines of 

 Dean Mansel and myself, respecting our consciousness of that which 

 transcends perception. He quotes his original words, which were, 

 " there is a gulf which separates even his all-negative deity from Mr. 

 Spencer's impersonal, unconscious, unthinkable Energy." And he then 

 goes on to say : " I was speaking of Mansel's Theology, not of his On- 

 tology. I said ^ deity, ^ not the Absolute." Very well ; now let us 

 see what this implies. Mansel, as I was perfectly well aware, supple- 

 ments his ontological nihilism with a theological realism. That which 

 in his ontological argument he represents as a mere " negation of con- 

 ceivability," he subsequently reasserts on grounds of faith, and clothes 



