their nominal founder—­these were based upon assumptions for which the seeker after reasoned evidence could find no valid support.  Ten years before he coined the word “Agnostic” to label his attitude towards the unproved, whether likely or unlikely, in contradistinction to the Gnostics, who professed to “know” from within apart from external proof, Huxley described the Agnostic position he had already reached—­the position of suspending judgment where actual proof is not possible; the attitude of mind which regards the words “I believe” as a momentous assertion, not to be uttered on incomplete grounds.  Writing to Charles Kingsley in 1860, he says:—­

    I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man.  I see no
    reason for believing in it; but, on the other hand, I have no
    means of disproving it.

Pray understand that I have no a priori objections to the doctrine.  No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori difficulties.  Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing anything else, and I will believe that.  Why should I not?  It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force, or the indestructibility of matter.  Whoso clearly appreciates all that is implied in the falling of a stone can have no difficulty about any doctrine simply on account of its marvellousness.  But the longer I live the more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act of a man’s life is to say and to feel, “I believe such and such to be true.”  All the greatest rewards, and all the heaviest penalties of existence, cling about that act.  The universe is one and the same throughout; and if the condition of my success in unravelling some little difficulty of anatomy or physiology is that I shall rigorously refuse to put faith in that which does not rest on sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on other terms.  It is of no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities.  I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse square, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions.  I dare not if I would.

From such a point of view intellectual veracity takes on a moral aspect; indeed, it is a pillar of morality.  Disregard of it has led to incalculable social wrong and individual suffering, oppressions and persecutions, unprogressive obscurantism, joined with perverted ideals and intellectual arrest.  “Ecrasez l’infame,” cried the reforming Voltaire; his “infamous” was very much this perverting influence, exaggerated and armed with power, which had made the great organization of the Roman Church in his time a monstrous instrument of autocratic tradition, cruel, rapacious, blindly intolerant, jealous of light and liberty.  In England the growth of political liberty had deprived the darkest lights of the Church of almost all power for active interference in the administration of the State, though the pressure of traditionalism exercised itself less crudely, if scarce less surely, in the Universities, the Press, religious opinion, and the army of conventional respectability.  So strong was it in social influence that a man, openly professing to make a guide of his reason instead of his parson, was liable to be pushed outside the pale.