und, raise these entangling brambles to cover and protect them." In
these considerations he found reason not for leaving superstition in
possession of its ground, but for making a bold and arduous attack
upon it in its haunts. The great difficulty in the way of carrying the
war into the enemy's own camp was that in those days so-called science
was itself cumbered with many illogical and metaphysical ideas, and
for the first time in the present century the great advances of
physical science, and, in particular, the renewed life poured by
Darwin into the doctrine of evolution, made it possible to bring a new
series of exact arguments against hazy metaphysical dogmas. The
militant side of agnosticism was directed against the camp of
superstition and armed with the new weapons of exact science. Its
stern refusal of belief without adequate evidence was a challenge to
all the supporters of the sanguine philosophy which replaces proof by
assured and emphatic statement and restatement. It is possible,
although rare, for those who hold a positive belief upon evidence,
howsoever insufficient, to leave their doubting neighbours in peace,
and these neighbours, assured in their own beliefs, equally positive
and perhaps equally unfounded, may return the lazy tolerance. But the
agnostic position is at once a reproof and a challenge to all who do
not hold it. Perhaps no one has ever put the agnostic attitude more
clearly than Kant when he wrote that "the greatest and perhaps sole
use of all philosophy of pure reason, is, after all, merely negative,
since it serves, not as an organ on (for the enlargement of
knowledge), but as a discipline for its delimitation: and instead of
discovering truth has only the modest merit of preventing error." It
is precisely because it is addressed against error that agnosticism
brings not peace but a sword; precisely because, instead of adding to
the beliefs of the world, it seeks to examine them and perhaps by the
examination to diminish them, that it aroused passionate resentment.
In this respect it stands entirely separate and apart from any other
similar term, as all these implied a definite acceptance or rejection
of some definite propositions. Agnosticism means none of these things.
Huxley said of it:

"Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed but a method, the essence
of which lies in a rigorous application of a single principle.
That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Soc