AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 449 



proven, mil vary according to the knowledge and the intellectual 

 habits of the individual agnostic. I do not very much care to 

 speak of anything as unknowable. What I am sure about is 

 that there are many topics about which I know nothing, and 

 which, so far as I can see, are out of reach of my faculties. But 

 whether these things are knowable by any one else is exactly one 

 of those matters which is beyond my knowledge, though I may 

 have a tolerably strong opinion as to the probabilities of the 

 case. ^Relatively to myself, I am quite sure that the region of un- 

 certainty — the nebulous country in which words play the part of 

 realities — is far more extensive than I could wish. Materialism 

 and idealism ; theism and atheism ; the doctrine of the soul and 

 its mortality or immortality — appear in the history of philoso- 

 phy like the shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally slaying one 

 another and eternally coming to life again in a metaphysical 

 " Nif elheim." It is getting on for twenty-five centuries, at least, 

 since mankind began seriously to give their minds to these topics. 

 Generation after generation, philosophy has been doomed to roll 

 the stone up hill ; and, just as all the world swore it was at the 

 top, down it has rolled to the bottom again. All this is written in 

 innumerable books ; and he who will toil through them will dis- 

 cover that the stone is just where it was when the work began. 

 Hume saw this; Kant saw it; since their time, more and more 

 eyes have been cleansed of the films which prevented them from 

 seeing it ; until now the weight and number of those who refuse 

 to be the prey of verbal mystification has begun to tell in practi- 

 cal life. 



It was inevitable that a conflict should arise between agnosti- • 

 cism and theology ; or rather I ought to say between agnosticism 

 and ecclesiasticism. For theology, the science, is one thing; and 

 ecclesiasticism, the championship of a foregone conclusion * as to 

 the truth of a particular form of theology, is another. With 

 scientific theology, agnosticism has no quarrel. On the contrary, . 

 the agnostic, knowing too well the influence of prejudice and* 

 idiosyncrasy, even on those who desire most earnestly to be im- 

 partial, can wish for nothing more urgently than that the scien- 

 tific theologian should not only be at perfect liberty to thrash out 

 the matter in his own fashion, but that he should, if he can, find 

 flaws in the agnostic position, and, even if demonstration is not 

 to be had, that he should put, in their full force, the grounds of 

 the conclusions he thinks probable. The scientific theologian 

 admits the agnostic principle, however widely his results may 

 differ from those reached by the majority of agnostics. 



But, as between agnosticism and ecclesiasticism, or, as our 



* " Let us maintain, before we have proved. This seeming paradox is the secret of 

 happiness." (Dr. Newman, " Tract 85," p. 85.) 

 vol. xxsv. — 29 



