Page 80 Note 1 Prof. Huxley, the inventor of the term, has given us his explanation of it."Agnosticism," he says, "in fact, is not a creed but a method, tins essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. . . . Positively, the principle may be thus expressed: in matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And, negatively, in matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are ant demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the Agnostic faith, which, if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not heashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him."--"Agnosticism," in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1889. This, however, us evidently not a "faith," but, as he says, a "method," which in its application may yield positive or negative results, as the ease may be. Behind it, at the same time, lies, in his ease, the conviction that real answers to the greater questions of religions are "not merely actually impossible, but theoretically inconceivable."--Ibid. p. 182.
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Page 81 Note 1 John i. 18.
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Page 82 Note 1 Cf. First Principles, pp. 74, 75, 110.
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Page 82 Note 2 First Principles, p. 88.
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Page 82 Note 3 First Principles, pp. 87--92. "Still more manifest," he says, "will this truth become when it is observed that our conception of the Relative itself disappears, if our conception of the Absolute is a pure negation. . . .What, then, becomes of the assertion that 'the Absolute is conceived merely by a negation of conceivability,' or as 'the mere absence of the conditions under which consciousness is possible'? If the Non-relative or Absolute is present in thought only as a mere negation, then the relation between it and the Relative becomes unthinkable, because one of the terms of the relation is absent from consciousness. And if this relation is unthinkable, then is the Relative itself unthinkable, for want of its antithesis; whence results the disappearance of all thought whatever."--P. 91.
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Page 82 Note 4 First Principles, pp. 89, 91, 94--97. Cf. Nineteenth Century, July 1884, p. 24.
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Page 82 Note 5 First Principles, pp. 78, 79, 81. This is qualified in other places by such phrases as "possible existence out of all relation" (Mansel), and "of which no necessary relation can be predicted," pp. 39, 81. But this qualification seems unnecessary, for it is only as out of relation that by definition it is the Absolute.
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Page 82 Note 6 Even in thus passage above quoted, we have the contradictio in adjecto of "the relation between it (i.e. the Non-Relative) and the Relative."--P. 91.
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Page 83 Note 1 Eccles. Instit. p. 839.
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Page 83 Note 2 E.g. Eccles. Instit. p. 843.
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Page 83 Note 3 First Principles, p. 189; cf. Eccles. Instit. p. 843.
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Page 83 Note 4 First Principles, p. 99.
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Page 83 Note 5 Eccles. Instit. p. 843.--"But one truth," he says, "must grow ever clearer --the truth that there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to which he can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty that he is ever in presence of one Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed."
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Page 83 Note 6 "I held at the outset, and continue to hold, that this Inscrutable Existence which science, in the last resort, is compelled to recognise as unreached by its deepest analysis of matter, motion, thought, and feeling, stands towards our general conception of things in substantially the same relation as does this Creative Power asserted by Theology."--Nineteenth Century, July 1884, p. 24. Mr. Spencer tells us that the words quoted in the last note were originally written--"one Infinite and Eternal Energy by which all things are treated and sustained."--Ibid. p. 4.
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Page 84 Note 1 Eccles. Instit. pp. 839, 841.
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Page 84 Note 2 Mr. Spencer, when pressed in controversy by Mr. Harrison, takes great pains to show how positive his conception of the "Unknowable"is. He is astonished that his opponent should assert that "none of the positive attributes which have ever been predicated of God can be used of this Energy"; maintains that, instead of being an Everlasting No, Agnosticism is "an Everlasting Yea". denies that Agnosticism is "anything more than silent with respect to personality," seeing that "duty requires us neither to affirm nor deny personality"; holds that the Unknowable is not an "All nothingness" but the "All- Being," reiterates that this Reality "stands towards the universe and towards ourselves in the same relation as an anthropomorphic Creator was supposed to stand," and "bears a like relation with it not only to human thought, but to human feeling," etc.--Nineteenth Century, July 1884, pp. 5-7,25. Mr. Harrison has no difficulty in showing in what contradictions Mr. Spencer entangles himself by the use of such language.--Ibid. Sept. , pp. 358, 359.
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Page 85 Note 1 Cosmic Philosophy, ii. p. 470: Idea. of God, Pref. p.28.
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Page 85 Note 2 Job xi. 7.
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Page 85 Note 3 Rom. xi. 33.
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Page 85 Note 4 1 Cor. xiii.12.
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Page 85 Note 5 "God." says Augustine. "is more truly thought than He is uttered and exists more truly than He is thought."--De Trinitate. Book vii. ch. 4. "Not the definitely-known God, " says Professor Veitch, "not the unknown God, is our last word, far less the unknowable God, but the ever-to-be-known God."--Knowing and Being, p. 323.
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Page 86 Note 1 Letter to Oldenburg, Epist. xxi.
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Page 86 Note 2 First Principles, pp. 159�171.
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Page 86 Note 3 Cf. Fiske, Idea of God, Pref. p. 15; and Chapman's Pre-Organic Evolution, p. 254.
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