A GNOS TIC ISM A ND E VOL U TION. 263 



becomes all the more remarkable when we find, that 

 the very men who tell us that we are not one with 

 anything above us, are the same who insist that we 

 are one with everything beneath us. Whatever 

 there is in us or about us which is purely animal, we 

 may see everywhere; but whatever there is in us 

 purely intellectual, or moral, we delude ourselves if 

 we think we see it anywhere. There are abundant 

 homologies between our bodies and the bodies of 

 beasts ; but there are no homologies between our 

 minds and any Mind which lives and manifests itself 

 in nature. Our livers and our lungs, our vertebrae 

 and our nervous systems, are identical in origin and 

 in function with those of the living creatures around 

 us; but there is nothing in nature, or above it, which 

 corresponds to our forethought or design or purpose, 

 to our love of the good, or our admiration of the 

 beautiful, to our indignation with the wicked, or to 

 our pity for the suffering or the fallen. I venture to 

 think that no system of philosophy that has ever 

 been taught on earth, lies under such a weight of an- 

 tecedent improbability ; and this improbability in- 

 creases in direct proportion to the success of science 

 in tracing the unity of nature, and in showing step 

 by step, how its laws and their results can be 

 brought into more direct relation with the mind and 

 intellect of man." ' 



Agnosticism as a Via Media. 



Agnosticism professes to be a kind of via media 

 between Theism and Atheism. It does not deny 



1 P. 166. 



