xi a Mental Natiwe in other Men. 223 



similar to ourselves ; and, when once formed, all 

 experience confirms and justifies it. But how did 

 the capacity for such a belief originate ? The capacity 

 for conceiving, and believing in as existent, a being 

 with sensations and thoughts like one's own, yet not 

 oneself, is not implied in the discovery either of the 

 existence of self or of the external world ; it appears 

 to be a distinct endowment, unique in kind ; and I 

 maintain that the existence of this endowment con- 

 tains the refutation of the entire system of dogmatic 

 Agnosticism. 



If Agnosticism means only that we have in fact 

 attained to no knowledge transcending our experience 

 of the things made known by sensible perception, 

 this is not a theory or system of doctrine at all, but 

 only a provisional conclusion or a provisional sus- 

 pension of judgment. But Agnosticism, as a reasoned 

 system, goes beyond this, and asserts not only that 

 we have attained to no such knowledge, but that the 

 constitution of our faculties is such as to make any 

 such knowledge necessarily and for ever impossible of 

 attainment by us. 



The data of all our knowledge, according to this 

 theory, consist exclusively of sensible perceptions, 

 and the conclusions cannot belong to a world 

 altogether transcending their data. Now it is true 

 that in reasoning on merely physical subjects, the 

 conclusions always remain, as it were, on the same 

 plane of thought with their data. A planet may be 

 discovered before it has been seen, but none the less it 



