reasonably asked for, on the evidence as it stands, is suspension of judgment.  And, on the necessity for even that suspension, reasonable men may differ, according to their views of probability.

     [60] Yet I must somehow have laid hold of the pith of the
          matter, for, many years afterwards, when Dean Mansel’s
          Bampton Lectures were published, it seemed to me I
          already knew all that this eminently agnostic thinker
          had to tell me.

     [61] Kritik der reinen Vernunft.  Edit.  Hartenstein, p. 256.

     [62] Report of the Church Congress, Manchester, 1888, p. 252.

     [63] Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1889.

VIII:  AGNOSTICISM:  A REJOINDER

[1889]

Those who passed from Dr. Wace’s article in the last number of the “Nineteenth Century” to the anticipatory confutation of it which followed in “The New Reformation,” must have enjoyed the pleasure of a dramatic surprise—­just as when the fifth act of a new play proves unexpectedly bright and interesting.  Mrs. Ward will, I hope, pardon the comparison, if I say that her effective clearing away of antiquated incumbrances from the lists of the controversy, reminds me of nothing so much as of the action of some neat-handed, but strong-wristed, Phyllis, who, gracefully wielding her long-handled “Turk’s head,” sweeps away the accumulated results of the toil of generations of spiders.  I am the more indebted to this luminous sketch of the results of critical investigation, as it is carried out among these theologians who are men of science and not mere counsel for creeds, since it has relieved me from the necessity of dealing with the greater part of Dr. Wace’s polemic, and enables me to devote more space to the really important issues which have been raised.[64]

Perhaps, however, it may be well for me to observe that approbation of the manner in which a great biblical scholar, for instance, Reuss, does his work does not commit me to the adoption of all, or indeed any of his views; and, further, that the disagreements of a series of investigators do not in any way interfere with the fact that each of them has made important contributions to the body of truth ultimately established.  If I cite Buffon, Linnaeus, Lamarck, and Cuvier, as having each and all taken a leading share in building up modern biology, the statement that every one of these great naturalists disagreed with, and even more or less contradicted, all the rest is quite true; but the supposition that the latter assertion is in any way inconsistent with the former, would betray a strange ignorance of the manner in which all true science advances.