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.

[As for the dialectical powers he displayed in the debates, it was generally acknowledged that in this, as well as in the power of conducting a debate, he shared the pre-eminence with W.G.  Ward.  Indeed, a proposal was made that the perpetual presidency in alternate years should be vested in these two; but time and health forbade.

His part in the debates is thus described in a letter to me from Professor Henry Sidgwick:—­

Dear Mr. Huxley,