"COWARDLY AGNOSTICISMS 231 



is the meaning attributed to it not only by the world at large, bnt 

 in reality by Prof. Huxley also quite as much as by anybody. I 

 will not lay too much stress on the fact that, in the passage just 

 quoted, having first fiercely declared agnosticism to be nothing 

 but a method, in the very next sentence he himself speaks of it 

 as a " faith." I will pass on to a passage that is far more unam- 

 biguous. It is taken from the same essay. It is as follows : 



" ' Agnosticism [says Mr. Harrison] is a stage in the evolution of religion, an 

 entirely negative stage, the point reached by physicists, a purely mental conclu- 

 sion, with no relation to things social at all.' I am [says Prof. Huxley] quite dazed 

 by this declaration. Are there then any ' conclusions ' that are not ' purely men- 

 tal ' ? Is there no relation to thiDgs social in ' mental conclusions ' which affect 

 men's whole conception of life ? . . . ' Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of 

 religion.' If . . . Mr. Harrison, like most people, means by ' religion ' theology, 

 then, in my judgment, agnosticism can be said to be a stage in its evolution only 

 as death may be said to be the final stage in the evolution of life." 



Let us consider what this means. It means precisely what 

 every one else has all along been saying, that agnosticism is to 

 all intents and purposes a doctrine, a creed, a faith, or a philoso- 

 phy, the essence of which is the negation of theologic religion. 

 Now the fundamental propositions of theologic religion are these : 

 There is a personal God, who watches over the lives of men ; and 

 there is an immortal soul in man, distinct from the flux of mat- 

 ter. Agnosticism, then, expressed in the briefest terms, amounts 

 to two articles — not of belief, but of disbelief. I do not believe in 

 any God, personal, intelligent, or with a 'purpose; or, at least, with 

 any purpose that has any concern with man. I do not believe in 

 any immortal soul, or in any personality or consciousness surviv- 

 ing the dissolution of the body. 



Here I anticipate from many quarters a rebuke which men of 

 science are very fond of administering. I shall be told that ag- 

 nostics never say " there is no God," and never say " there is no 

 immortal soul." Prof. Huxley is often particularly vehement on 

 this point. He would have us believe that a dogmatic atheist is, 

 in his view, as foolish as a dogmatic theist ; and that an agnostic, 

 true to the etymology of his name, is not a man who denies God, 

 but who has no opinion about him. But this — even if true in some 

 dim and remote sense — is for practical purposes a mere piece of 

 solemn quibbling, and is utterly belied by the very men who use 

 it whenever they raise their voices to speak to the world at large. 

 The agnostics, if they shrink from saying that there is no God, at 

 least tell us that there is nothing to suggest that there is one, and 

 much to suggest that there is not. Surely, if they never spoke 

 more strongly than this, for practical purposes this is an absolute 

 denial. Prof. Huxley, for instance, is utterly unable to demon- 

 strate that an evening edition of the " Times " is not printed in 



