AGNOSTICISM. 769 



obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to convic- 

 tion. Agnostics who never fail in carrying out their principles 

 are, I am afraid, as rare as other people of whom the same con- 

 sistency can be truthfully predicated. But, if you were to meet 

 with such a phoenix and to tell him that you had discovered that 

 two and two make five, he would patiently ask you to state your 

 reasons for that conviction, and express his readiness to agree 

 with you if he found them satisfactory. The apostolic injunction 

 to " suffer fools gladly," should be the rule of life of a true ag-= 

 nostic. I am deeply conscious how far I myself fall short of this 

 ideal, but it is my personal conception of what agnostics ought 

 to be. 



However, as I began by stating, I speak only for myself ; and 

 I do not dream of anathematizing and excommunicating Mr. 

 Laing. But, when I consider his creed and compare it with the 

 Athanasian, I think I have, on the whole, a clearer conception of 

 the meaning of the latter. " Polarity," in Article viii, for exam- 

 ple, is a word about which I heard a good deal in my youth, when 

 " Naturphilosophie " was in fashion, and greatly did I suffer i^>^ 

 from it. For many years past, whenever I have met with " po- 

 larity" anywhere but in a discussion of some purely physical 

 topic, such as magnetism, I have shut the book. Mr. Laing must 

 excuse me if the force of habit was too much for me when I read 

 his eighth article. 



And now, what is to be said to Mr. Harrison's remarkable 

 deliverance " On the future of agnosticism " ? * I would that it 

 were not my business to say anything, for I am afraid that I can 

 say nothing which shall manifest my great personal respect for 

 this able writer, and for the zeal and energy with which he ever 

 and anon galvanizes the weakly frame of positivism until it looks 

 more than ever like John Bunyan's Pope and Pagan rolled into 

 one. There is a story often repeated, and I am afraid none the 

 less mythical on that account, of a valiant and loud-voiced cor- 

 poral, in command of two full privates, who, falling in with a 

 regiment of the enemy in the dark, orders it to surrender under 

 pain of instant annihilation by his force ; and the enemy surren- 

 ders accordingly. I am always reminded of this tale when I -read 

 the positivist commands to the forces of Christianity and of Sci- 

 ence ; only the enemy show no more signs of intending to obey 

 now than they have done any time these forty years. 



The allocution under consideration has the papal flavor which 

 is wont to hang about the utterances of the pontiffs of the Church 

 of Comte. Mr. Harrison speaks with authority, and not as one 

 of the common scribes of the period. He knows not only what 



* "Fortnightly Review," January, 1889. 

 VOL. XXXIV. — 49 



