agnetism, I have shut the book. Mr. Laing
must excuse me if the force of habit was too much for me when I read
his eighth article.

And now, what is to be said to Mr. Harrison's remarkable deliverance
"On the future of agnosticism "?[63] I would that it were not my
business to say anything, for I am afraid I can say nothing which
shall manifest my great personal respect for this able writer, and for
the zeal and energy with which he ever and anon galvanises the weakly
frame of Positivism until it looks, more than ever, like John Bunyan's
Pope and Pagan rolled into one. There is a story often repeated, and I
am afraid none the less mythical on that account, of a valiant and
loud-voiced corporal in command of two full privates who, falling in
with a regiment of the enemy in the dark, orders it to surrender under
pain of instant annihilation by his force; and the enemy surrenders
accordingly. I am always reminded of this tale when I read the
positivist commands to the forces of Christianity and of Science; only
the enemy show no more signs of intending to obey now than they have
done any time these forty years.

The allocution under consideration has a certain papal flavour. Mr.
Harrison speaks with authority and not as one of the common scribes of
the period. He knows not only what agnosticism is and how it has come
about, but what will become of it. The agnostic is to content himself
with being the precursor of the positivist. In his place, as a sort of
navvy levelling the ground and cleansing it of such poor stuff as
Christianity, he is a useful creature who deserves patting on the
back, on condition that he does not venture beyond his last. But let
not these scientific Sanballats presume that they are good enough to
take part in the building of the Temple--they are mere Samaritans,
doomed to die out in proportion as the Religion of Humanity is
accepted by mankind. Well, if that is their fate, they have time to be
cheerful. But let us hear Mr. Harrison's pronouncement of their doom.

"Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of religion, an entirely
negative stage, the point reached by physicists, a purely mental
conclusion, with no relation to things social at all" (p. 154). I am
quite dazed by this declaration. Are there, then, any "conclusions"
that are not "purely mental"? Is there "no relation to things social"
in "mental conclusions" which affect men's whole conception of life?
Was that prince of agnostics, Davi