A GNOS TIC ISM A ND E VOL UTION. 259 



of philosophy, or be capable " of reduction to an 

 ultimate and absolute truth." The only response 

 that may be given to our inquiries, " the only voice 

 which sounds back from the abyss where dwells the 

 Being whom we designate as the Absolute and the 

 Infinite, is a solemn warning that we possess no 

 faculties which qualify us for the attainment of any 

 knowledge of God." 



This, in brief, is Manselism, the elimination of 

 God from the domain of human knowledge, and a 

 substitution, in its place, of a dreary, hopeless, de- 

 risive skepticism ; the abolition of theology as an 

 aimless, bootless pursuit, and the virtual recognition 

 of a dark, blighting, forbidding Atheism. 



Mansel, Huxley and Romanes. 



There is every reason to believe that Mansel 

 never apprehended the full significance of the de- 

 structive principles enunciated in his Bampton 

 lectures. Not so, however, with the enemies of 

 Christianity. They saw, at a glance, the real bear- 

 ing of the Oxford professor's teachings, and were 

 not slow to give them all the publicity possible. 



Spencer quotes from him, at length, in his" First 

 Principles," and makes his declaration the basis of the 

 agnostic philosophy. Huxley, Romanes and others 

 followed in the wake of Spencer, and were not long 

 in bringing the principles of Mansel, as expounded 

 by Spencer, within the comprehension of the general 

 reading public. 



Huxley, indeed, has done more, probably, than 

 anyone else to popularize Agnosticism, and by the 



