12 LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. I. 



which are inevitably false nny, avowed inanities. Of course 

 it is open to any Agnostic to employ language for the purpose 

 of showing that the use of language leads us inevitably to 

 necessary contradictions ; but the effect of such a demonstra 

 tion, if it could be made, would be not to establish any positive 

 system whatever, but to land us in utter and hopeless scepti 

 cism, and to invalidate every argument even of the Agnostic 

 himself. Every writer, then, who professes seriously to 

 dispute concerning metaphysical problems, thereby tacitly 

 avows that his mental conceptions can be validly expressed 

 by his spoken (or written) words. He shows by his invita 

 tion to discussion, not only that he believes himself to have 

 attained philosophical conceptions which seem to him sound 

 and true, but also that he believes himself capable of con 

 veying those truths, by language, to the apprehensions of his 

 fellow-men since any one who invites to any inquiry is 

 bound to have first satisfied himself that such inquiry can 

 in fact be made. An argumentum ad hominem may then be 

 well addressed to any Agnostic who objects to his own refuta 

 tion on the ground of the necessary inadequacy of language. 

 Having, then, noticed these three preliminary considera- 

 The teaching tions, we may proceed to test some of the utterances 

 Agnostic as of prominent leaders of the philosophy of nescience 

 ledge of our on a point of the highest importance to us, namely, 



own exist- . J 



ence. our own existence. Professor Huxley not long ago * 



expressed himself as follows : &quot; Now, is our knowledge of 

 anything we know or feel, more or less than a knowledge of 

 states of consciousness ? And our whole life is made up of 

 such states. Some of these states we refer to a cause we call 

 self; others to a cause or causes which may be compre 

 hended under the title not-self. But neither of the exist 

 ence of self, nor of that of not-self, have we, or can we by 

 any possibility have, any such unquestionable and immediate 

 certainty as we have of the states of consciousness which we con 

 sider to be their effects.&quot; They are &quot; hypothetical assumptions 



* Lay Sermons, Descartes, p. 359. 



