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Updated: May 5, 2025
It was in no spirit of irony that I began this essay by expressing the lively interest with which I learned that Mr. Wells was setting out on the quest for God. The dogmatic agnosticism which declares it impossible ever to know anything about the whence, how and why of the universe does not seem to me more rational than any other dogma which jumps from "not yet" to "never." Mr. Wells himself disclaims that dogma. He says: "It may be that minds will presently appear among us of such a quality that the face of that Unknown will not be altogether hidden" (p. 108). And in another place (p. 15) he suggests that "our God, the Captain of Mankind," may one day enable us to "pierce the black wrappings," or, in other words, to get behind the veil. There is nothing, then, unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable inquisitiveness as to God, in the non-Wellsian sense of the term. God simply means the key to the mystery of existence; and though the keys hitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round without unlocking anything, it does not follow that no real key exists within the reach of human investigation or speculation. Therefore one naturally feels a little stirring of hope at the news that a fresh and keen intellect, untrammelled by the folk-lore theologies of the past, is applying itself to the problem. It is always possible, however improbable, that we may be helped a little forwarder on the path towards realization. One comes back to the before-mentioned analogy of flying. We had been assured over and over again, on the highest authority, that it was an idle dream. When we wanted to express the superlative degree of the impossible, we said "I can no more do it than I can fly." But the irrepressible spirit of man was not to be daunted by
There is, perhaps, one other topic on which agnosticism may be professed, and that is in connection with the question of what is known as the problem of existence. We may profess our belief in the reality of an external world, but deny that any knowledge of it is possible. Here we assert that what "substance," or "reality," or "thing in itself," is we do not know and cannot know.
That sympathy is consistent with the blessedness of God. Even in the pain of our human sympathy there is a kind of joy, and we may be sure that in His nature there is nothing else. Contrast with other thoughts about God. The vague agnosticism of the present day, which knows only a dim Something of which we can predicate nothing.
"You don't believe in this nonsense?" I smiled. Certainly the man was perverse in his agnosticism; he was stubborn in disbelief. It was on his nerves; on his conscience; he was afraid. "I believe nothing," I answered; "neither do I disbelieve. I know all the story that has been told or written. I am a friend of Watson. You need not scruple in making me out a bill of sale. It's my own funeral.
Modern Confucianism and the revival of Chinese learning, resulted in eighteenth century scepticism and in nineteenth century agnosticism. The New Buddhism. In our day and time, Japanese Buddhism, in the presence of aggressive Christianity, is out of harmony with the times, and the needs of forty-one millions of awakened and inquiring people; and there are deep searchings of heart.
He represents, in an age, the intellectual powers of which tend strongly to agnosticism, that class of minds to which the supernatural view of things is still credible. "Men are what they are," and are not wholly at the mercy of formal conclusions from their formally limited premises.
Materialism is decidedly out of fashion, and agnosticism is less in vogue than a decade or two ago.
Such agnosticism we may all respect, for it is very different from the noisy, clamorous thing which, aping in name the humility of greater men, insists that the sense limitations imposed upon its own intelligence shall forthwith be erected into a dogma to be accepted as infallible by everybody else's intelligence.
"Don't! don't! for Heaven's sake!" cried the struggling wretch, "I'll stop it! I will!" Bill at once lowered him and set him on his feet. "All right! Shake!" he said, holding out his hand, which the other took with caution. It was a remarkably sudden conversion and lasting in its effects. There was no more agnosticism in the little group that gathered around The Pilot for the nightly reading.
The Warwickshire alchemist invariably throws across his scenes and to the centre, a glare, a strong ray, which burns to the water-line the barque of Agnosticism.
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