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, David Hume, particularly imbued with
physical science? Supposing physical science to be non-existent, would
not the agnostic principle, applied by the philologist and the
historian, lead to exactly the same results? Is the modern more or
less complete suspension of judgment as to the facts of the history of
regal Rome, or the real origin of the Homeric poems, anything but
agnosticism in history and in literature? And if so, how can
agnosticism be the "mere negation of the physicist"?
"Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of religion.
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