and publicly defined until, in the debates of the Metaphysical Society founded in that year, he invented for himself the label of Agnostic.  The Society was composed of distinguished men, representing almost every shade of opinion and intellectual occupation; University professors, statesmen, lawyers, bishops and deans, a Cardinal, a poet; men of science and men of letters; Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Unitarians, Positivists, Freethinkers.

The story is told in his article on “Agnosticism,” written in 1889 (Collected Essays, v, 237).  After describing how it came about that his mind “steadily gravitated towards the conclusions of Hume and Kant,” so well stated by the latter as follows:—­

The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of pure reason is, after all, merely negative, since it serves not as an organon for the enlargement (of knowledge), but as a discipline for its delimitation; and, instead of discovering truth, has only the modest merit of preventing error—­

he proceeds:—­

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected the less ready was the answer, until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations except the last.  The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them.  They were quite sure they had attained a certain “gnosis”—­had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.  And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion....

This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical Society.  Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were _-ists_ of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions.  So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of “Agnostic.”  It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the “Gnostic” of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society to show that I, too, had a tail like the other foxes.  To my great satisfaction, the term took; and when the Spectator had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in the minds of respectable people that a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened was, of course, completely lulled.

Of his share in the debates the late Prof.  Henry Sidgwick gives the following account:—­