d not find it "very unpleasant" to disbelieve
in the Prophet of Islam.

From what precedes, I think it becomes sufficiently clear that Dr.
Wace's account of the origin of the name of "Agnostic" is quite wrong.
Indeed, I am bound to add that very slight effort to discover the
truth would have convinced him that, as a matter of fact, the term
arose otherwise. I am loath to go over an old story once more; but
more than one object which I have in view will be served by telling it
a little more fully than it has yet been told.

Looking back nearly fifty years, I see myself as a boy, whose
education has been interrupted, and who, intellectually, was left, for
some years, altogether to his own devices. At that time, I was a
voracious and omnivorous reader; a dreamer and speculator of the first
water, well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking any and
every subject, which is the blessed compensation of youth and
inexperience. Among the books and essays, on all sorts of topics from
metaphysics to heraldry, which I read at this time, two left indelible
impressions on my mind. One was Guizot's "History of Civilization,"
the other was Sir William Hamilton's essay "On the Philosophy of the
Unconditioned," which I came upon, by chance, in an odd volume of the
"Edinburgh Review." The latter was certainly strange reading for a
boy, and I could not possibly have understood a great deal of it;[60]
nevertheless, I devoured it with avidity, and it stamped upon my mind
the strong conviction that, on even the most solemn and important of
questions, men are apt to take cunning phrases for answers; and that
the limitation of our faculties, in a great number of cases, renders
real answers to such questions, not merely actually impossible, but
theoretically inconceivable.

Philosophy and history having laid hold of me in this eccentric
fashion, have never loosened their grip. I have no pretension to be an
expert in either subject; but the turn for philosophical and
historical reading, which rendered Hamilton and Guizot attractive to
me, has not only filled many lawful leisure hours, and still more
sleepless ones, with the repose of changed mental occupation, but has
not unfrequently disputed my proper work-time with my liege lady,
Natural Science. In this way I have found it possible to cover a good
deal of ground in the territory of philosophy; and all the more easily
that I have never cared much about A's or B's opinions, but have