A GNOS TIC ISM A ND E VOL UTION. 261 



that the being of God is not merely now unknown, 

 but must always remain unknown." 



Docta Ignorantia. 



The agnostic creed, then, is a creed based on ig- 

 norance rather than on knowledge. We can know 

 nothing that does not come within the range of 

 sense; nothing which we cannot observe with our 

 microscopes, spectroscopes and telescopes, or exam- 

 ine with our scalpels, or test in our alembics and 

 crucibles. Our knowledge is and must be, by the 

 very nature of the case, limited to things material 

 and phenomenal. Every attempt to fathom the 

 mysteries of the super-sensible or spiritual world, if 



1 Contemporary Review, vol. L, p. 59. In his posthumous 

 " Thoughts on Religion," Romanes distinguishes two kinds 

 of Agnosticism, pure and impure, the former held by Huxley, 

 the latter by Spencer. "The modern and convenient term 

 'Agnosticism,' " writes Romanes, "is used in two very different 

 senses. By its originator, Professor Huxley, it was coined to 

 signify an attitude of reasoned ignorance touching everything 

 that lies beyond the sphere of sense-perception, a professed in- 

 ability to found valid belief on any other basis. It is in this, its 

 original sense, and also, in my opinion, its only philosophically 

 justifiable sense, that I shall understand the term. But the 

 other, and perhaps more particular sense, in which the word is 

 now employed, is as a correlative of Mr. H. Spencer's doctrine 

 of the unknowable. 



"This latter term is philosophically erroneous, implying 

 important negative knowledge, that if there be a God, we know 

 this much about him, that He cannot reveal Himself to man. 

 Pure Agnosticism is as defined by Huxley." Pp. 107-108. 



It is a matter of regret that "the lamented author of these 

 " Thoughts on Religion," did not live to complete his work. 

 Not long before his premature death, it is pleasing to record, he 

 recognized the weakness and fallacies of Agnosticism, and re- 

 turned to " a full and deliberate communion " with the Church 

 of England, from which he had so long been separated. " In 

 his case," writes Canon Gore, " the ' pure in heart ' was, after a 

 long period of darkness, allowed in a measure, before his death, 

 to ' see God.' " 



