54 AGNOSTICISM. 



things appear as they are ? Why should not 

 appearances be true, or a sure basis whence to infer 

 the truth? Why should not *' things as they are" 

 be either nothing at all, or at least irrelevant 

 machinery intended to produce in us the spectacle 

 of the world ? The suggestion that appearances 

 are divided by an impassable gulf from the reality 

 of things is a mere prejudice, which may be left to 

 flounder in its own impotence. 



But, It is urged, Is it not a fact that appearances 

 are deceptive ? It is this that makes Agnosticism 

 plausible. 



But for this, but for the fact that appearances are 

 but the raw material of knowledge, there would be 

 nothing to suggest anything beyond what is given. 



Only the fact will not bear the inference the 

 agnostic seeks to put upon it. It does not justify 

 the assumption of a world of things '*as they really 

 are," opposed to a world of appearances. All it in- 

 volves is that the real and ultimate nature of things 

 must be inferred, that things do not yet appear 

 as they are. The known suggests an unknown, 

 but not an unknowable. And what is this but the 

 phenomenon of the growth of knowledge, what 

 but the fact that in a world not yet fully known, 

 the imperfection of our knowledge must suggest its 

 own defect, and cause things to appear at first 

 other than what they subsequently turn out to be ? 



The feeling, therefore, from .which Agnosticism 

 draws its force. Is an illusion incident to the growth 

 of knowledge. In a perfectly known world things 

 would appear as they were, and would be what they 

 appeared ; there would be no occasion to correct 

 the judgments of sense or to go beyond the given. 



Thus the same growth of knowledge which made 



