to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence; and
that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in
such inadequately supported propositions. The justification of the
Agnostic principle lies in the success which follows upon its
application, whether in the field of natural, or in that of civil,
history; and in the fact that, so far as these topics are concerned,
no sane man thinks of denying its validity.

Still speaking for myself, I add, that though Agnosticism is not, and
cannot be, a creed, except in so far as its general principle is
concerned; yet that the application of that principle results in the
denial of, or the suspension of judgment concerning, a number of
propositions respecting which our contemporary ecclesiastical
"gnostics" profess entire certainty. And, in so far as these
ecclesiastical persons can be justified in their old-established
custom (which many nowadays think more honoured in the breach than the
observance) of using opprobrious names to those who differ from them,
I fully admit their right to call me and those who think with me
"Infidels"; all I have ventured to urge is that they must not expect
us to speak of ourselves by that title.

The extent of the region of the uncertain, the number of the problems
the investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven, will 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."[82] 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
uncertainty--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 philosophy like the
shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally slaying one another and
eternally coming to life again in a metaphysical "Nifelheim." 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