knowledge. T.H. HUXLEY.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] 1889-1891. See the next Essay (VII) and those which
follow it.

[47] _Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding_, p. 5;
1748. The passage is cited and discussed in my
_Hume_, pp. 132, 133.

[48] The story in John vi. 5-14 is obviously derived from
the "five thousand" narrative of the Synoptics.

[49] Matthew xvi. 5-12; Mark viii. 14-21.

[50] Hume, _Inquiry_, sec. X., part ii.

VII: AGNOSTICISM

[1889]

Within the last few months, the public has received much and varied
information on the subject of agnostics, their tenets, and even their
future. Agnosticism exercised the orators of the Church Congress at
Manchester.[51] It has been furnished with a set of "articles" fewer,
but not less rigid, and certainly not less consistent than the
thirty-nine; its nature has been analysed, and its future severely
predicted by the most eloquent of that prophetical school whose Samuel
is Auguste Comte. It may still be a question, however, whether the
public is as much the wiser as might be expected, considering all the
trouble that has been taken to enlighten it. Not only are the three
accounts of the agnostic position sadly out of harmony with one
another, but I propose to show cause for my belief that all three
must be seriously questioned by any one who employs the term
"agnostic" in the sense in which it was originally used. The learned
Principal of King's College, who brought the topic of Agnosticism
before the Church Congress, took a short and easy way of settling the
business:--

But if this be so, for a man to urge, as an escape from this
article of belief, that he has no means of a scientific
knowledge of the unseen world, or of the future, is
irrelevant. His difference from Christians lies not in the
fact that he has no knowledge of these things, but that he
does not believe the authority on which they are stated. He
may prefer to call himself an Agnostic; but his real name is
an older one--he is an infidel; that is to say, an
unbeliever. The word infidel, perhaps, carries an unpleasant
significance. Perhaps it is right that it should. It is, and
it ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to say
plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ.[52]

So much of Dr. Wace's address either explicitly or implicitly concerns
me,