Sick at heart, I turn away and ask myself what is this system which, in the words of Richter, makes the universe an automaton, and man’s future—a coffin! Is this the cold region to which thought, as it moves in its orbit, has brought us in the nineteenth century? Is this the germ of the “Philosophy of the future”—the exponent of our “advanced ideas,” the “new light” of which our age so uproariously boasts? Nay rather is not this monstruum horrendum of our day but a renewal of the empiricism and skepticism of the days of Voltaire? Here was undoubtedly the nucleus of the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, which went on increasing in bulk and blackness till it seemed destined to enshroud earth and heaven in the gloom of hell.
David Hume, who, though seventeen years younger than Voltaire, died in 1776 just two years before the great French skeptic, taught skepticism in England on purely metaphysical grounds. Hume knew little or nothing about natural science; but held that what we call mind consists merely of successive perceptions, and that we can have no knowledge of anything but phenomena. His system afterwards passes through France, is borrowed and filtered through the brain of a half crazy French schoolmaster, Auguste Comte, who thus becomes the founder of the Comtist school of Positivism or Nescience or Agnosticism as it is variously called. The adherents of his school admit neither revelation, nor a God, nor the immortality of the soul. Comte held, among other things, that two hours a day should be spent in the worship of Collective Humanity to be symbolized by some of the sexe aimant. On general principles it is not quite clear which is the sexe aimant. But as Comte proceeds to mention one’s wife, mother, and daughter as fitting objects of religious adoration because they represent the present, past and future of Humanity—one is left to infer that he considered the female the loving sex and the ones to be worshipped; though he does not set forth who were to be objects of woman’s own adoring worship. In this ecclesiastical system which Prof. Huxley wittily denominates Romanism minus Christianity, Comte made himself High Pontiff, and his inamorata, the widow of a galley slave, was chief saint. This man was founder of the system which the agnostic prefers to the teachings of Jesus! However, had this been all, the positivist would have been as harmless as any other lunatic. But he goes a step farther and sets up his system as the philosophy of natural science, originating in and proved by pure observation and investigation of physical phenomena; and scoffs at as presumptuous and unwarrantable all facts that cannot be discerned through the senses. In this last position he is followed by John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, G. H. Lewes, and a noble army of physicists, naturalists, physiologists, and geologists. Says one: “We have no knowledge of anything but phenomena, and the essential nature of phenomena and their ultimate causes are unknown and inscrutable to us.” Says another: “All phenomena without exception are governed by invariable laws with which no volitions natural or supernatural interfere.” And another: “Final causes are unknown to us and the search after them is fruitless, a mere chase of a favorite will-o-the-wisp. We know nothing about any supposed purposes for which organs ‘were made.’ Birds fly because they have wings, a true naturalist will never say—he can never know they have wings in order that they may fly.”
And Mr. Ingersoll, the American exponent of positivism, in his “Why I Am an Agnostic,” winds up a glittering succession of epigrammatic inconsistencies with these words: “Let us be honest with ourselves. In the presence of countless mysteries, standing beneath the boundless heaven sown thick with constellations, knowing that each grain of sand, each leaf, each blade of grass, asks of every mind the answerless question; knowing that the simplest thing defies solution; feeling that we deal with the superficial and the relative and that we are forever eluded by the real, the absolute—let us admit the limitations of our minds, and let us have the courage and the candor to say: we do not know.”
It is no part of my purpose to enter into argument against the agnostics. Had I the wish, I lack the ability. It is enough for me to know that they have been met by foemen worthy their steel and that they are by no means invincible.
“The average man,” says Mr. Ingersoll, “does not reason—he feels.” And surely ’twere presumption for an average woman to attempt more. For my part I am content to “feel.” The brave Switzer who sees the awful avalanche stealing down the mountainside threatening death and destruction to all he holds dear, hardly needs any very correct ratiocination on the mechanical and chemical properties of ice. He feels there is danger nigh and there is just time for him to sound the tocsin of alarm and shout to his dear ones “fly!”
For me it is enough to know that by this system God and Love are shut out; prayer becomes a mummery; the human will but fixed evolutions of law; the precepts and sanctions of morality a lie; the sense of responsibility a disease. The desire for reformation and for propagating conviction is thus a fire consuming its tender. Agnosticism has nothing to impart. Its sermons are the exhortations of one who convinces you he stands on nothing and urges you to stand there too. If your creed is that nothing is sure, there is certainly no spur to proselytize. As in an icicle the agnostic abides alone. The vital principle is taken out of all endeavor for improving himself or bettering his fellows. All hope in
