The agnostic holds that there are limits to human reason, and that theology lies outside those limits.  Within those limits lies the world with which science (including psychology) deals.  Science deals entirely with phenomena, and has nothing to say to the nature of the ultimate reality which may lie behind phenomena.  There are four possible

[214] attitudes to this ultimate reality.  There is the attitude of the metaphysician and theologian, who are convinced not only that it exists but that it can be at least partly known.  There is the attitude of the man who denies that it exists; but he must be also a metaphysician, for its existence can only be disproved by metaphysical arguments.  Then there are those who assert that it exists but deny that we can know anything about it.  And finally there are those who say that we cannot know whether it exists or not.  These last are “agnostics” in the strict sense of the term, men who profess not to know.  The third class go beyond phenomena in so far as they assert that there is an ultimate though unknowable reality beneath phenomena.  But agnostic is commonly used in a wide sense so as to include the third as well as the fourth class—­those who assume an unknowable, as well as those who do not know whether there is an unknowable or not.  Comte and Spencer, for instance, who believed in an unknowable, are counted as agnostics.  The difference between an agnostic and an atheist is that the atheist positively denies the existence of a personal God, the agnostic does not believe in it.

The writer of this period who held agnosticism

[215] in its purest form, and who turned the dry light of reason on to theological opinions with the most merciless logic, was Mr. Leslie Stephen.  His best-known essay, “An Agnostic’s Apology” (Fortnightly Review, 1876), raises the question, have the dogmas of orthodox theologians any meaning?  Do they offer, for this is what we want, an intelligible reconciliation of the discords in the universe?  It is shown in detail that the various theological explanations of the dealings of God with man, when logically pressed, issue in a confession of ignorance.  And what is this but agnosticism?  You may call your doubt a mystery, but mystery is only the theological phrase for agnosticism.  “Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?  We are a company of ignorant beings, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don’t know the map of the Universe as well as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled,