THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTIOiV 1 5 



itself, when those of the agnostic party go on to 

 declare that the Reality beyond phenomena — which 

 they insist exists as an " immutable datum of con- 

 sciousness " — must be regarded as permanently the 

 Unknowable. The dispute gets to its keenest when 

 they base this agnostic dogma on the claim that 

 nothing deserving the name of knowledge is attain- 

 able in any way except the method of natural 

 science. To this extravagant estimate of scientific 

 method, to the superficial philosophy of this method 

 which it implies, and to the consequent construing 

 of the Noumenon as unknowable, the pantheistic 

 idealists demur, and go on to vindicate the complete 

 knowableness of the Reality at the basis of experi- 

 ence by attempting to show Reason itself to be that 

 Reality, which as perfectly self-knowing must be per- 

 fectly knowable to reason in men. The issue thus be- 

 comes implacable between the agnostics and these 

 affirmative idealists; and it is only just to say that 

 in the demurrer to the overestimate of natural 

 science and its method, in the criticism of the shal- 

 low analysis of the method, and in the protest 

 against the finality of agnosticism, historic philos- 

 ophy sides with these qtiasi-t\\e\?,\.s. The agnostic 

 position, the largest historic view of philosophy would 

 say, is an unwarrantable arrest of the philosophic 

 movement of reason; and its unjustifiable char- 

 acter appears in the fact, which can clearly be 



