AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 447 



universities and higher technical schools. Its effect, as far as one 

 can judge, has been to make boys aspire after the better things 

 of life. 



I have read that Pestalozzi, in his eager enthusiasm, used to 

 find many things in his little school which less partial though 

 not less careful observers failed to discover. I should be sorry to 

 repeat his mistake in connection with the manual training school. 

 I have tried, therefore, to so temper my praise with criticism 

 that both the beauty of the system and its danger should be 

 fairly represented. The view taken might still be too favorable, 

 if it were given as the veritable history of a single school. The 

 spirit of manual training, to which I have tried to give expres- 

 sion, represents rather an ideal, which in moments of extreme 

 hopefulness we are tempted to believe that we have partially 

 realized, and in moments of discouragement we still hold to be 

 worthy of our effort. 



•»»» 



AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 



Bt Pbof. T. H. HUXLEY, E. E. S. 



Nemo ergo ex me scire quaerat, quod me nescire scio, nisi forte ut nescire discat.* 



Augustincs, Be Civ. Dei, xii, 1. 



CONTROVERSY, like most things in this world, has a good 

 and a bad side. On the good side, it may be said that it 

 stimulates the wits, tends to clear the mind, and often helps those 

 engaged in it to get a better grasp of their subject than they had 

 before ; while, mankind being essentially fighting animals, a con- 

 test leads the public to interest themselves in questions to which, 

 otherwise, they would give but a languid attention. On the 

 bad side, controversy is rarely found to sweeten the temper, and 

 generally tends to degenerate into an exchange of more or less 

 effective sarcasms. Moreover, if it is long continued, the original 

 and really important issues are apt to become obscured by dis- 

 putes on the collateral and relatively insignificant questions 

 which have cropped up in the course of the discussion. No doubt 

 both of these aspects of controversy have manifested themselves 

 in the course of the debate which has been in progress, for some 

 months, in these pages. So far as I may have illustrated the 

 second, I express repentance and desire absolution; and I shall 

 endeavor to make amends for any foregone lapses by an en- 

 deavor to exhibit only the better phase in these concluding 

 remarks. 



* Let no one therefore seek to know from me what I know I do not know, except in 

 order to learn not to know. 



