134 SCIENCE AND MORALS. ra 



wrong; and age and experience have not weakened 

 that conviction. In following these lines of specu- 

 lation I am reminded of the quarter-deck walks of 

 my youth. In taking that form of exercise you 

 may perambulate through all points of the com- 

 pass with perfect safety, so long as you keep with- 

 in certain limits: forget those limits, in your ar- 

 dour, and mere smothering and spluttering, if not 

 worse, await you. I stick by the deck and throw 

 a life-buoy now and then to the struggling folk 

 who have gone overboard; and all I get for my 

 humanity is the abuse of all whenever they leave 

 off abusing one another. 



Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of 

 the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, 

 is for a man to presume to go about unlabelled. 

 The world regards such a person as the police do 

 an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control. I 

 could find no label that would suit me, so, in my de- 

 sire to range myself and be respectable, I invented 

 one; and, as the chief thing I was sure of was that I 

 did not know a great many things that the — ists 

 and the — ites about me professed to be familiar 

 with, I called myself an Agnostic. Surely no de- 

 nomination could be more modest or more appro- 

 priate; and I cannot imagine why I should be every 

 now and then haled out of my refuge and declared 

 sometimes to be a Materialist, sometimes an Athe- 

 ist, sometimes a Positivist; and sometimes, alas and 

 alack, a cowardly or reactionary Obscurantist. 



