blem of existence; while I was quite
sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was
insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself
presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion. Like Dante,

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

but, unlike Dante, I cannot add,

Che la diritta via era smarrita.

On the contrary, I had, and have, the firmest conviction that I never
left the "verace via"--the straight road; and that this road led nowhere
else but into the dark depths of a wild and tangled forest. And though I
have found leopards and lions in the path; though I have made abundant
acquaintance with the hungry wolf, that "with privy paw devours apace
and nothing said," as another great poet says of the ravening beast; and
though no friendly spectre has even yet offered his guidance, I was, and
am, minded to go straight on, until I either come out on the other side
of the wood, or find there is no other side to it, at least, none
attainable by me.

This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place among
the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since
deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical Society. Every
variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there,
and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were
_-ists_ of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they
might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with,
could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset
the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail
remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So
I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate
title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to
the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the
very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity
of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the
other foxes. To my great satisfaction, the term took; and when the
_Spectator_ had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in the minds of
respectable people that a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened
was, of course, completely lulled.

That is the history of the origin of the terms "agnostic" and
"agnosticism"; and it will be