8 The iScope and Principles 



children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. 

 He, like every otlier man, may properly consider himself 

 as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the 

 Unknown Cause ; and when the Unknown Canse produces 

 in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorized to profess 

 and act out that belief. For, to render in their highest 

 sense the words of the poet, 



' . . . Nature is made better by no mean, 

 But Nature makes that mean ; over that art 

 Which you say adds to Nature, is an art 

 That Nature makes.' 



"Xot as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man re- 

 gard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he sees he 

 will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of 

 it, he is thus playing his right part in the world ; know- 

 ing that if he can effect the change he aims at well : if 

 not, well also, though not so well." * 



This passage is noteworthy not only for the nobility of 

 its thought and the transparent clearness of its diction, 

 but also because it suggests some of the foremost questions 

 involved in the discussion of the evolution philosophy. In 

 naming the Power which works in the thoughts of men as 

 well as in the processes of external Nature, ''the Unknown 

 Cause," Mr. Spencer brings us face to face with the funda- 

 mental problem of the nature of our knowledge and 

 with that mental attitude which is popularly termed Agnos- 

 ticism, the hete-noire of this philosophy in the minds of its 

 orthodox critics, as well as those of the extreme radical or 

 materialistic school of thought. In the misconception and 

 denunciation of the doctrine of the relativity of knowl- 

 edge which constitutes the philosophical breastwork of the 

 agnostic's posi^on, extremes meet, and the Catholic Mal- 

 lock, the anti-Christian realist Francis Ellingwood Abbot, 

 and the materialist, ably represented last season on this 

 I)latform by Mr. Starr H. Nichols,t clasp hands, and mingle 

 their otherwise inharmonious voices. Leaving the fuller 

 explanation and illustration of the doctrine of the rela- 

 tivity of knowledge to my able successor in this course, 

 I shall endeavor hereafter briefly to define philosophical 

 agnosticism ; to show that its attitude is neither idealistic, 

 strictly speaking, nor irreligious ; that it is not inconsistent 



First Principles, p. 123. 



fThe Philosophy of Evolution, Evolution Essays, pp. 343-3G1. 



