256 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



the term took, and soon found a recognized position 

 in the languages of all civilized nations. 1 



Late Developments of Agnosticism. 



As a creed, or system of philosophy, Huxley 

 derives Agnosticism from the teachings of Kant, 

 Hume and Sir William Hamilton. At an early age 

 his mind, he informs us, " steadily gravitated towards 

 the conclusion " of Kant, who affirms, in his " Kritik 

 der reinen Vernunft," that " the greatest and per- 

 haps the sole use of all philosophy of pure reason is, 

 after all, merely negative, since it serves not as an 

 organon for the enlargement (of knowledge), but as 



1 Father Clarke, S. J., in a note to an interesting series of 

 articles on Agnosticism in The Month, for June, July and 

 August, 1882, declares that the term Agnosticism is " an impos- 

 tor from the Greek vocabulary," and further that " the analogy 

 of other Greek formations is fatal to its claims of recognition." 

 " The word Agnosticism," he tells us, " is founded on a false 

 analogy to Gnosticism. Gnosticism is the doctrine of those 

 who are yv&xmKot, men professing yv<r<f, or knowledge. In the 

 same way Agnosticism would be the doctrine of ayvuG-tnot, or 

 those who profess ayvuaia, or ignorance. But ayvwariKos is an im- 

 possible Greek word. The Greeks never prefix the privitive a, 

 or av, to the adjective expressing the possession of a faculty 

 to indicate its absence. If we are reminded of anaesthetic, 

 avaicQrjTiKds, as formed on the analogy of agnostic, we answer (i) 

 that it is not a classical Greek word at all ; (2) that it means not 

 men who profess want of perception, but that which tends to 

 destroy perception. By a parity of reasoning, agnostic would 

 mean that which tends to destroy or banish knowledge. In this 

 sense we admit the appropriateness of the name." 



"Greek philosophers," says Max Miiller, "called it [Agnos- 

 ticism] with a technical name, Agnoia, or if they wished to 

 express the proper attitude of mind towards transcendental ques- 

 tions, they called it Epoche, i. e., suspense of judgment. Dur- 

 ing the Middle Ages, exactly the same idea which now goes by 

 the name of Agnosticism, was well known as Docta Ignorantia, 

 i. e., the ignorance founded on the knowledge of our ignorance 

 or impotence to grasp anything beyond what is phenomenal." 

 See Nineteenth Century, for Dec., 1894, pp. 892-95. 



