Wuey philosophers differ they often shew as much temper as ordinary folk. If their quarrel is of matters of faith or unfaith their language about each other is likely to be very sharp dispute between Mr. Frederic Harrison, the leading Comtist in England, and Professor Huxley, the inventor of the term Agnosti very keen encounter between two thoroughly trained intellectual gladiators. Mr. Harrison began the assault in the Fortnightly Reciew by drawing the future of Agnosticism, and pronouncing it to be a failure and sure to suffer extinction at no very distant date. It is probable that Mr. A. J. Balfour's address to the Church Congress at Manchester last autumn was the real origin of Mr. Harrison's paper, for although he had already published what was really a reply to the Irish Secretary, but which evaded direct reference to him, it had not made any impression on the public. Also, he wished to make it clear that Positivism had a living and active faith which would reclaim a world in which religion was decaying, if not already in the article of death. "And as much of the evil plight in which religion was said to be was owing to the prevalence of what is cism, it was natural that he should examine the claims of the latter to the adherence of the world. He describes Agnosticism in plain terms which he evidently did not intend to pleasing to its adherents. It, he says, may embrace a variety of opinions, for it includes in the widest sense all those who consciously avow Lynorance—the italics are not ours—to be the sum of their reflections on the origin of the world, the moral government of the world and the future of the spirit after death. In one sense this represents the conclusion of Auguste Comte; it was that of Charles Darwin; it is certainly that of Herbert Spencer, and of most of those who rest in a philosophy of evolution. Comte however was convinced that everything solid in the spiritual world must rest on belief, not on negations; on knowledge, not on ignorance. As proof that. is now held by what we may call the higher Agnostics, Mr. Harrison adduces Mr. Herbert Spencer's weak attempt to develop the Unknowable into an Infinite and Eternal Energy, by which all things are created and sustained, which he contemptuously called " the abortive paradox ofan eminent thinker." Agnosticism, Mr. Harrison says, is merely a stop-gap, an indispensable step in the evolution of religion, though by its very nature a step on which it is impossible to rest. "Intellectually it is quite as impossible to remain an Agnostic as politically it would be to remain an anarchist; it has no future, unless it will carry out its scientific principles to their legitimate conclusion, that is be absorbed in a religious belief which will be at once positive, scientific, socio~ logic, and evolutionary and historical." Once again the italics are not ours, As Mr. Harrison pathetically said in his diary it affords no permanent cousola+ tion to the mind, and is continually melting away under the stress of powerful sympathies. All this might have A been borne by eminent Agnostics, but not so the assertion that the Darwins, Huxleys, and Tyndalls were mere specialists, and that their unfaith is rested on an almost total ignoring of history. Mr. Herbert Spencer is an exception, "as he has insisted on the supreme place held in the intellect tual synthesis by social science. Yet without a systematic conception of history, a synthetic philosophy of human nature is as utterly futile as a synthetic philosophy of physical nature would be without biology."
This aspersion of his acquirements and philosophy was too much for Professor "Huxley, who defends both and the position and tenets of agnosticism in the February number of the Vineteenth Century. He opens witha fling at the last meeting of the Church Congress, thereby revealing where the galled jade winced, and, passing on, atta miracles follows. defence of his knowledge of something more, and beyond his special studies that it becomes interesting. As a boy, whose education had been interrupted, avd who, intellectually, was left for some years altogether to his own devices, he was a voracious and omnivorous reader and a speculator and dreamer of the first water. Gnuizot's History of Civilisation and Sir William Hamilton on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned made a great impression on his youn; mind. The turn for philosophical anc historical reading which these books gave him, has filled, he says, many leisure hours, and they not unfrequently disputed his proper time for work with his liege lady—Natural Science. On examining into the state of his mind afterwards he
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.