CHAPTER I. 

 THE RIGHT OF SEARCH. 



" GOD created man " ? No such thing ! The 

 monads developed him. "The heavens declare 

 the glory of God " ? Far from it : " they de- 

 clare only the glory of the astronomer !" " We 

 have now no need of the hypothesis of God." 



These utterances, and such as these, startling 

 alike to reverence and to faith, are the merest 

 common places of modern agnosticism. In- 

 stead of being, as once they were regarded, the 

 terminus ad quern, the ultimate goal, to which 

 unbelief was tending, tlfey have long since been 

 left behind as a mere terminus a quo, a tempo- 

 rary station for a new point of departure. The 

 scepticism which doubted has given place to the 

 dogmatism which denies. " Honest doubt" has 

 been supplanted by the clamour of a positive 

 self-assertion. A positivism of which Comte 

 knew nothing has usurped the authority, while 

 renouncing the functions, of scientific enquiry. 



