VII 



AGNOSTICISM 239 



wood, or find there is no other side to it, at least, 

 none attainable by me. 



This was my situation when I had the good 

 fortune to find a place among the members of that 

 remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since 

 deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Meta- 

 physicial Society. Every variety of philosophical 

 and theological opinion was represented there, and 

 expressed itself with entire openness ; most of my 

 colleages were -ists of one sort or another ; and, 

 however kind and friendly they might be, I, the 

 man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, 

 could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings 

 which must have beset the historical fox when, 

 after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, 

 he presented himself to his normally elongated 

 companions. So I took thought, and invented 

 what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 

 " agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively 

 antithetic to the " gnostic " of Church history, who 

 professed to know so much about the very things 

 of which I was ignorant ; and I took the earliest 

 opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show 

 that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To 

 my great satisfaction, the term took; and when 

 the Spectator had stood godfather to it, any 

 suspicion in the minds of respectable people, that 

 a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened 

 was, of course, completely lulled. 



That is the history of the origin of the terms 



131 



