250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Let us see what this repudiation amounts to, and we shall then 

 realize what, in the present day, is the intellectual basis which 

 theologic religion claims. Theologic religion does not say that 

 within limits the agnostic principle is not perfectly valid and has 

 not led to the discovery of a vast body of truth. But what it does 

 say is this : That the truths which are thus discovered are not the 

 only truths which are certainly and surely discoverable. The 

 fundamental principle of agnosticism is that nothing is certainly 

 true but such truths as are demonstrated or demonstrable. The 

 fundamental principle of theologic religion is that there are other 

 truths of which we can be equally or even more certain, and that 

 these are the only truths that give life a meaning and redeem us 

 from the body of death. Agnosticism says nothing is certain 

 which can not be proved by science. Theologic religion says, 

 nothing which is important can be. Agnosticism draws a line 

 round its own province of knowledge, and beyond that it declares 

 is the unknown void which thought can not enter, and in which 

 belief can not support itself. Where Agnosticism pauses, there 

 religion begins. On what seems to science to be unsustaining 

 air, it lays its foundations — it builds up its fabric of certainties. 

 Science regards them as dreams, as an " unsubstantial pageant " ; 

 and yet even to science religion can give some account of them. 

 Prof. Huxley says, as we have seen, that "from the nature of 

 ratiocination," it is obvious that it must start " from axioms which 

 can not be demonstrated by ratiocination " ; and that in science 

 it must start with "one great act of faith" — faith in the uni- 

 formity of nature. Religion replies to science : " And I, too, start 

 with a faith in one thing. I start with a faith which you, too, 

 profess to hold — faith in the meaning of duty and the infinite im- 

 portance of life ; and out of that faith my whole fabric of certain- 

 ties, one after the other, is reared by the hands of reason. Do 

 you ask for proof ? Do you ask for verification ? I can give you 

 one only, which you may take or leave, as you choose. Deny the 

 certainties which I declare to be certain — deny the existence of 

 God, deny man's freedom and immortality, and by no other con- 

 ceivable hypothesis can you vindicate for man's life any possible 

 meaning, or save it from the degradation at which you profess to 

 feel so aghast." " Is there no other way," I can conceive science 

 asking, " no other way by which the dignity of life may be vindi- 

 cated except this — the abandonment of my one fundamental prin- 

 ciple ? Must I put my lips, in shame and humiliation, to the cup 

 of faith I have so contemptuously cast away from me ? May not 

 this cup pass from me ? Is there salvation in no other ? " And 

 to this question, without passion or preference, the voice of reason 

 and logic pitilessly answers " No." 



Here is the dilemma which men, sooner or later, will see before 



