A GXOS TIC ISM A Nt> E VOL tTtlOti. 255 



ultimate analysis, however, Agnosticism as well as 

 Monism issues in a practical denial of a personal 

 God, the Creator of the universe, and relegates 

 Providence, the immortality of the soul, and the 

 moral responsibility of man to a Divine Being, to 

 the region of fiction. 



Again, Agnosticism, like Monism, is peculiarly 

 and essentially the product of a combination and a 

 succession of causes and conditions. As no one 

 individual can be pointed to as ther father of Mon- 

 ism, so no one person can be singled out as the 

 founder of Agnosticism. Both may have, and have 

 had, their recognized exponents ; both, like a Greek 

 drama, have their choragi and coryphei, but these 

 exponents, these choragi and coryphei, are not spon- 

 taneous growths. They do> not, Minerva-like, leap 

 suddenly into the intellectual arena, fully developed 

 and armed cap-a-pie. On the contrary, they are 

 the product of their environment, as affected by a 

 series of antecedent factors and influences. They 

 had their predecessors and prototypes; those who 

 planted the seeds which lay dormant until new con- 

 ditions favored germination and development. Then 

 the fruit contained in the germ was made manifest, 

 and the poison which had been so surreptitiously 

 instilled, was discovered when it was too late to 

 administer an antidote. 



The word "agnostic" was invented by the late 

 Prof. Huxley in 1869. He took it from St. Paul's 

 mention, in the Acts of the Apostles, of the altar 

 erected by the Athenians " to the unknown God," 

 few, and, to the inventor's great satisfaction, 



