6 LESSONS FEOM NATURE. [CHAP. I. 



out of their rational birthright. It is, of course, important 

 that men should not be permitted to build upon a fancied 

 knowledge which has not enough solidity to sustain the 

 philosophical edifice; but it is certainly no less important 

 that men should not be led to follow unsuspectingly an ignis 

 fatuus till it plunges them into a quagmire of &quot; universal 

 doubt.&quot; To exaggerate our powers is dangerous, but to be 

 possessed by a feeling of our utter impotence is fatal. 



Now there is a school of philosophy (by courtesy so called) 

 The Agnostic of considerable popularity, which is called by its 



osophy. O pp 0nen t s t ne philosophy of nescience &quot; a name, 

 however, which its supporters would hardly disclaim. They 

 would hardly disclaim it because some of them willingly 

 style themselves &quot; Agnostics,&quot; or &quot; know-nothings ;&quot; meaning 

 thereby that they know and can know nothing but appear 

 ances, and that nothing whatever can be really and absolutely 

 known. Yet, very irrationally these know-nothings or 

 Agnostics at the same time very confidently affirm that 

 they, by their ignorance, absolutely and infallibly know that 

 the healthy common sense of mankind has gone all wrong, 

 and, what is more extraordinary still, that the greatest 

 philosophers have perversely joined in accepting the common- 

 sense delusions of the vulgar, and gone wrong too. Such 

 philosophers have, indeed, agreed with the rest of mankind 

 in affirming the certainty of their own continued existence 

 and that of their fellow-men, together with an external world, 

 the shape, number, and extent of the parts of which they 

 declare they can really and absolutely know, in so far as such 

 parts can be brought under the observation of their senses. 



The Agnostics form a section of that school (including 

 Hamilton, Mansel, Mill, Lewes, Spencer, Huxley, and Bain) 

 which asserts the relativity i.e., the merely phenomenal 

 character of all our knowledge. 



But every philosophy, every system of knowledge, must start 

 Every phiio- with the assumption (implied or expressed) that 

 nescience something is really &quot; knowable &quot; that something is 



stultifies it- 111 5 i i 



&quot; absolutely true ; and by this Agnostic school it is 



