312 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix 



is far more extensive than I could wish. 

 Materialism and Idealism ; Theism and Atheism ; 

 the doctrine of the soul and its mortality or 

 immortality appear in the history of philosophy 

 like the shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally 

 slaying one another and eternally coming to life 

 again in a metaphysical " Nifelheim." It is 

 getting on for twenty-five centuries, at least, since 

 mankind began seriously to give their minds to 

 these topics. Generation after generation, phil- 

 osophy has been doomed to roll the stone uphill ; 

 and, just as all the world swore it was at the top, 

 down it has rolled to the bottom again. All this 

 is written in innumerable books ; and he who will 

 toil through them will discover that the stone is 

 just where it was when the work began. Hume 

 saw this; Kant saw it; since their time, more and 

 more eyes have been cleansed of the films which 

 prevented them from seeing it; until now the 

 weight and number of those who refuse to be the 

 prey of verbal mystifications has begun to tell in 

 practical life. 



It was inevitable that a conflict should arise 

 between Agnosticism and Theology ; or rather, I 

 ought to say, between Agnosticism and Ecclesias- 

 ticism. For Theology, the science, is one thing; 

 and Ecclesiasticism, the championship of a fore- 

 gone conclusion ] as to the truth of a particular 



1 '"'Let us maintain, before we have proved. This seeming 

 paradox is the secret of happiness" (Dr. Newman : Tract 85, p. 85) 



