What is Agnosticism ? This is a frequent question at the present time by those who have realized the fact that a new religion has arisen amongst us, which has taken a violent hold upon the intelligence of the world and of England in particular.
And indeed a religion which numbers such mighty brains as those of Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, Thomas H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, John Tyndall, Moncure Conway, Robert Ingersoll, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Lady Winifred Robinson, George Eliot, Professor W. Kingdon Clifford, Edith Saville, and numerous others of like calibre cannot by any means be ignored. It is a power of the age, and as such it is natural that the community should feel curious as to its principles, tenets, and morals ; whether they be practical or visionary, right or wrong.
The term Agnosticism is claimed by Professor Huxley as his invention, in the following words, written in 1883 : "Some twenty years ago, or thereabout, I invented the word "Agnostic" to denote people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatise with the utmost confidence, and it has been a source of some amusement to me to watch the gradual acceptance of the term and its correlate, "Agnosticism" (I think the Spectator first adopted and popularised both), until now Agnostics are assuming the position of a recognised sect, and Agnosticism is honored by especial obloquy on the part of the orthodox."
Few Agnostics are entirely satisfied with this cognomen, because, although partly descriptive of their position, it is very incomplete, and has been misunderstood by many outside the movement; while for antagonistic purposes dishonest opponents persist in endeavouring to mislead the public as to the real meaning of the term. In consequence, the popular idea has arisen that an Agnostic is either a timid Atheist or a contented ignoramus, nothing being farther from the truth than such a conclusion. One writer has differentiated Agnostic from Atheist by saying that Agnostic is merely Atheist writ respectable, and Atheist Agnostic writ aggressive.—Witty, but not true.
To the vulgar crowd the modest I do not know is not so attractive as the arrogant assertion of the conceited dogmatist, I do know. The ordinary sheep-like man, who, unable or unwilling to think for himself, pays another to think for him and to preach to him the result, does not get enough for his money in an honest expression of incomplete knowledge. Those who cannot know when paid for knowing, on the other hand, must pretend to know.
Agnosticism distinctly avers that our ignorance on certain great questions is absolute ; such as—Who or what is God ? What is matter ? Is the soul a separate entity ? In the words of Simmons it "affirms that the problem of the universe is entirely outside the circle of man's gnosis; that the 'First Cause ' is within the sphere of the 'Unknowable,' wrapped in impenetrable mystery, and that all current theories of the origin of things are absolutely untenable." Herbert Spencer says, "The power which the universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable," and this is the basis of the Agnostic position.
" Who dares to name his name,
Or belief in him proclaim ?
Veiled in mystery as he is, the All-enfolder.
Gleams across the mind his light,
Feels the lifted soul his might,
Dare it then deny his reign, the All-upholder."
—Goethe.
Sir Isaac Newton writing long ago of God says, "He is similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act ; but in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things."
The true reverence of the Agnostic's mind is well illustrated in Professor Tyndall's "Fragments of Science." "When I attempt to give the power which I see manifested in the universe an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun " he" regarding it ; I dare not call it a "mind;" I refuse to call it a "cause." Its mystery overshadows me ; but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames which some of my neighbors try to make it fit, seem to me to distort and desecrate it."
The professed Agnostic is not singular in his ideas of the great 'First Cause,' for Lord Brougham remarked that theology was the art of teaching what nobody knows, and even Martin Luther admitted that God was like a blank sheet upon which every man wrote according to his own fancy.
With regard to the origin of life the Agnostic approaches it with modest reserve. He goes back, clinging to the skirts of science, into the remote centuries of our race's history ; thousands, tens of thousands, yes, millions of years, but finds that the origin is yet far remote in the dim vista of obscurity, and,in fact, absolutely inconceivable. What is Life? Whence is Life? To these questions he is dumb. The greater his sum of knowledge, the more profound becomes the great mystery of origin and existence.
Agnosticism is the very essence of science; it is in agreement with, and, in fact, is the outcome of modern science. It ignores all theological conclusions and dogmas as the superstitions speculations of imaginative men, yet Agnosticism is not a system of negative theology, but of positive philosophy.
Philosophy is completely-unified knowledge becoming more complete with each new fact that science elucidates from the region of the unknown. This region is divisible into two sections ; that which can be known, and that which never can be known—the great and mysterious "Unknowable." The latter is the 'God'—the 'First Cause' of the Agnostic, and without it Agnosticism could not exist. Science teaches us every day, more and more that all phenomena are effects of the " Unknowable Cause," In the words of Herbert Spencer, "it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as the Unknowable."
Agnosticism is a religion of ethics and humanity, but it is without a creed, for credulity is the parent of error. Faith is absent and reason assorts sway. It is a condition of mind that implies modesty, candor, sympathy and reciprocity.
The Unknowable is worshipped by Agnostics, and it is the only kind of worship, to their way of thinking, that is rationally possible ; for every object that is known, every phenomenon that can be explained ceases to be regarded with religious awe. Agnostic worship is compounded of awe, wonder, reverence, humanity, gratitude, joy, submission and aspiration. The Agnostic Temple is the great blue arch of the heavens with the songs of birds, and the murmuring of the winds through the leaves for choir ; its drapery and furniture is the beauteous robe of vegetation.
With regard to a hereafter the Agnostic finds "his longest life is but an instant of eternity ; as in a day his puny body wastes and dies ; and in the cold embrace of relentless death he sleeps his last long sleep in the gloomy chamber of the tomb. And what beyond that dark impenetrable wall?" Is he wise who says, "Beyond is nothingness?" Is he not wiser who, standing on the threshold of the great Unknown, perceives a grand, an awe-inspiring mystery, and shunning dogmatism, reverently bows his head, and says, "I know not" ?
If Huxley baptized and named Agnosticism, and Herbert Spenser is the great elaborator and nourisher of the new philosophy, yet it was Charles Darwin who gave birth to it as a living power. Under the teaching of Sir Isaac Newton, the universe might well have been specially created by an almighty originator in the short space of time that theologians claim for it, but Darwin's elaborations and discoveries showed that aeons upon aeons of time had been agents conducive to the present condition of the universe.
Agnosticism is not a port, ever open to receive at once the doubting believer in supernatural revelation. You cannot be a Christian to-day and an Agnostic to-morrow. Agnosticism is no refuge for the ignorant and non-thinker. It is the goal of the earnest and unwearying searcher after truth, but it must be embraced slowly, deliberately, fearlessly, and after close reasoning and arduous study. The ethics of Agnosticism are, like those of other religions, essentially catholic. It culls, and is ever ready to cull, from every source, whether Confucian, Brahmin, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian or Mussalman, any and all teaching that has proved itself to be for the greatest happiness of the greatest number of of the community. All actions are considered good which lead to the happiness of the people. The definition of morality is that it is the science of conduct, or right living. Agnosticism knows naught of providential escapes, of blessed recoveries, of special mercies, of holy miracles. In the moral world, as in the material, nothing can change the relation of a cause to its effect. Agnosticism teaches men to live partially for self and partially for others. Pure Altruism is neither more tenable nor more tolerable than pure Egoism. When logically united the two form a coherent body of scientific and rational Ethics meeting all cases of life. The highest and first commandment of Agnosticism is the same as is claimed for Christianity—Love : the narrowing down of our natural egoism in favour of our fellows, for the good of that human brotherhood of which we are members, and no man can be a true Agnostic who is not prepared at all times to make sacrifices of egoism for the benefit of the community as a whole. Morality depends on and is created by the requirements of social exigencies, and it is in reality not connected with any form of ecclesiastical creed. The natural law of morals is far older than all the creeds of all the churches.
In conclusion, I will quote from Mrs. Lynn Linton's words in the Gentlemen's Magazine, "All bitterness and reproach, all persecution and scorn, are among the things dead and done with to the Agnostic. As little as he would curse the elements which wrecked his house and rained his land, would he curse—though he would prevent—the spiritual cruelties of his brother, acting according to the law of an uneducated mind.— a brutish nature, and walking by the dim light of that dawn which is not yet morning. He knows that humanity must fulfil the universal law, and from low amorphous beginnings, reach up to moral nobleness and spiritual beauty. He knows that all society is experimental, all laws are tentative ; that the stream of tendency does indeed make for righteousness, with many windings and much doubling back on its way, but always flowing onward from the darkness to the light—from the narrow rock in the mountain to the broad and infinite sea. In the abhorence which good men feel for crime he sees the ultimate destruction of crime ; in the great Man-God which forms the ideal of all religious he sees the projection of humanity itself on the screen of the future ; in the fact that this humanity has ever touched the level of Moses, Buddha, Christ, he sees the possibilities of the whole race. He knows and humbly confesses the great wall of the unknown between him and the ultimate verity. But in measuring where he stands now from that brutish primitive who was his ancestor, he sees no limit to farther infinite advance. He sees no limit save that of the individual. Every man must be born helpless, and if he lives to the end of his tether, he must die decayed, carrying his experiences with him. All the same the race survives."
COSMOS.
The West Australian 26 March 1888,
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