AGNOSTICISM 321 



He, however, ignores this great fact in history, 

 namely, that the human race has universally and per- 

 sistently attributed intelligence to their objects of 

 worship. It is just as natural for man to attribute in- 

 telligence to his god, of whatever kind, as it is to 

 worship at all. Why eliminate this universal testi- 

 mony of humanity in formulating a creed? The 

 belief in a God with attributes is not opposed to 

 science. Science may not affirm the existence of such 

 a God, but it cannot deny it, and, therefore, there 

 can be no conflict. 



By the. Agnostic creed man's duty is as follows: 

 " By continually seeking to know and being continu- 

 ally thrown back with a deepened conviction of the 

 impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the con- 

 sciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our 

 highest duty to regard that through which all things 

 exist as The Unknowable."* 



The highest wisdom and the highest duty of our 

 lives is to continually strive to know " The Unknow- 

 able," with the ever-growing consciousness that the 

 task assigned is utterly impossible to be accomplished. 

 Why this hopeless task should be regarded as the 

 highest wisdom and duty of humanity I feel sure that 

 the great mass of the race will never be able to com- 

 prehend. 



Mr. Spencer admits that "An immense majority 

 will refuse, with more or less of indignation, a belief 

 seeming to them so shadowy and indefinite, "f 



Also that "Very likely there will ever remain a 

 need to give shape to that indefinite sense of an Ulti- 

 mate Existence which forms the basis of our intelli- 

 gence. We shall always be under the necessity of 

 contemplating it as some mode of being; that is, of 

 representing it to ourselves in some form of thought, 



* Synthetic Philosophy, First Principles, p. 113. t Ibid, 



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