The evening light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1881-1883, 1882-06-06
Tuesday. June 6. 'S2.
CONCERNING AGOSTICISM.

the Agnostic was simply a theology
cal and philosophical Know Nothing,
and had accepted the term as an indl'
cation that the pulpit divine was about
to emulate the scientist in making his
old rubbish attractive under new names,
when we found ourselves invited to in
crease our stock of learning concerning
agnosticism, by DR.. Learned's two COL
umns discourse in the St. Louis Globe
Democrat. We went eagerly with the
Doctor, and found our little excursion
delightful and profitable, butmust con.
TESS to having discovered our delight
and profit in other fields of thought,
and to having gathered considerably
more perplexity than knowledge con-
corning the agnostic. We always re-
garded the Know Nothing as a politi-
cal hereto and were pleased to see the
discourse start by pitching into 1.-The
new faith" as 1.-The heresy of boastful
ignorance in an age of knowledge"
But it wanders over acres of abstrac-
tons more or less remote from agnos-
ticism, adorns itself with endless dec
orations from many foreign treasure
houses of literature and learning, and
is alive with native curiosities of liter
allure, yet its agnosticism we find Incl
dent to the thought rather than the
thought itself, and under such varying
aspects as to bewilder rather than in
struct. The discourse tells us that what
we need is a "Grammar of Knowl-
edge" to teach us the meaning and use
of the word know" that when we
push the simple inquiry: what do we
know! it plows deep into foundations
that have been held to be immutable,
and that we learn by it that the pro-
vince of certainty is little and that of
opinion large. Yet it had denounced
agnosticism for its heresy in affirming
against all certainty. don't know, ex-
claims the obdurate agnostic and am
not afraid not to know. Again it as
sails L1cke who, in his famous essay,
defines the degrees of knowledge, at.
frming that knowledge is not thing
of degrees know or we don't
know. "To know anything imperfect
ly" saith the discourse, "is simply not
to know it, for where knowing stops
there conjecture, or belief, or ignor.
ance comes in" This is its agnosticism
in one of its aspects.
Now as an example of its native
curiosities of literature, to which we re-
ferred, and, at the same time, as an
argument fatal to the "heresy," we
must find space for the following pas
sage:
Put an atheist on witness stand in a court
of justice. Can he honestly say that he knows
nothing of God, of future state of rewards
and punishments, of immortality? Can he be
in state of ignorance and uncertainty, not to
say of denial Of these facts, and yet testify to
what he saw and heard yesterday bearing on
the prisoners crime! Is not the testimony of
the spiritual nature first to be taken to test the
mans soundness and veracity, and if he have
not that regulative knowledge fundamental to
all the rest, shall we not eject him from the
court? What shall we say of a man who
thinks he knows phenomena, yet disclaims, or
perhaps scouts the very idea. of knowing the
absolute notions that underlie them Can you
put any confidence whatever in man who
says that he doesn't know God, but comes for
ward to repeat the sounds that fell upon his
ear, or to describe the sights that passed be-
fore his eye, or the sensations that affect his
body?
Now none of this do we dispute as
truth, and call it curiosity only on &C
count of its novelty. The law expels the
witness because he does not believe in