248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



duty of ethics and of religion is to draw a distinction between two 

 states of emotion and two courses of action — to elevate the one 

 and to degrade the other. But the argument we are now consid- 

 ering, though undoubtedly true in itself, has no bearing on this 

 distinction whatever. It is invoked to show that religion and 

 duty remain spiritual in spite of all materialism ; but it ends, 

 with unfortunate impartiality, in showing the same thing of vice 

 and of cynical worldliness. If the life of Christ is elevated by 

 being seen in this light, so also is the life of Casanova ; and it is 

 as impossible in this way to make the one higher than the other 

 as it is to make one man higher than another by taking them both 

 up in a balloon. 



I have now gone through the whole case for duty and for re- 

 ligion, as stated by the agnostic school, and have shown that, as 

 thus stated, there is no case at all. I have shown their arguments 

 to be so shallow, so irrelevant, and so contradictory, that they 

 never could have imposed themselves on the men who condescend 

 to use them, if these men, upon utterly alien grounds, had not 

 pledged themselves to the conclusion which they invoke the argu- 

 ments to support. Something else, however, still remains to be 

 done. Having seen how agnosticism fails to give a basis to either 

 religion or duty, I will point out to the reader how it active- 

 ly and mercilessly destroys them. Religion and duty, as has been 

 constantly made evident in the course of the foregoing discussion, 

 are, in the opinion of the agnostics, inseparably connected. Duty 

 is a course of conduct which is more than conformity to human 

 law ; religion consists of the emotional reasons for pursuing that 

 conduct. Now these reasons, on the showing of the agnostics 

 themselves, are reasons that do not lie on the surface of the mind. 

 They have to be sought out in moods of devoutness and abstrac- 

 tion, and the more we dwell on them, the stronger they are sup- 

 posed to become. They lie above and beyond the ordinary things 

 of life ; but after communing with them, it is supposed that we 

 shall descend to these things with our purposes sharpened and in- 

 tensified. It is easy to see, however, if we divest ourselves of all 

 prejudice, and really conceive ourselves to be convinced of noth- 

 ing which is not demonstrable by the methods of agnostic science, 

 that the more we dwell on the agnostic doctrine of the universe, 

 the less and not the more shall duty seem to be binding on us. 



I have said that agnosticism can supply us with no religion. 

 Perhaps I was wrong in saying so, but if we will but invert the 

 supposed tendency of religion, it can and it will supply us with a 

 religion indeed. It will supply us with a religion which, if we 

 describe it in theological language, we may with literal accuracy 

 describe as the religion of the devil — of the devil, the spirit which 

 denies. Instead of telling us of duty, that it has a meaning which 



