As between Mr. Spencer and myself, the question is not one of “a dividing line,” but of entire and complete divergence as soon as we leave the foundations laid by Hume, Kant, and Hamilton, who are my philosophical forefathers.  To my mind the “Absolute” philosophies were finally knocked on the head by Hamilton; and the “Unknowable” in Mr. Spencer’s sense is merely the Absolute redivivus, a sort of ghost of an extinct philosophy, the name of a negation hocus-pocussed into a sham thing.  If I am to talk about that of which I have no knowledge at all, I prefer the good old word “God”, about which there is no scientific pretence.

To my mind Agnosticism is simply the critical attitude of the thinking faculty, and the definition of it should contain no dogmatic implications of any kind.  I, for my part, do not know whether the problem of existence is insoluble or not; or whether the ultimate cause (if there be such a thing) is unknown or not.  That of which I am certain is, that no satisfactory solution of this problem has been offered, and that, from the nature of the intellectual faculty, I am unable to conceive that such a solution will ever be found.  But on that, as on all other questions, my mind is open to consider any new evidence that may be offered.

[And later:—­]

I have long been aware of the manner in which my views have been confounded with those of Mr. Spencer, though no one was more fully aware of our divergence than the latter.  Perhaps I have done wrongly in letting the thing slide so long, but I was anxious to avoid a breach with an old friend...

Whether the Unknowable or any other Noumenon exists or does not exist, I am quite clear I have no knowledge either way.  So with respect to whether there is anything behind Force or not, I am ignorant; I neither affirm nor deny.  The tendency to idolatry in the human mind is so strong that faute de mieux it falls down and worships negative abstractions, as much the creation of the mind as the stone idol of the hands.  The one object of the Agnostic (in the true sense) is to knock this tendency on the head whenever or wherever it shows itself.  Our physical science is full of it.

[Nevertheless, the doctrine seemed to take almost everybody by surprise.  The drift of the lecture was equally misunderstood by critics of opposite camps.  Huxley was popularly supposed to hold the same views as Mr. Spencer—­for were they not both Evolutionists?  On general attention being called to the existing difference between their views, some jumped to the conclusion that Huxley was offering a general recantation of evolution, others that he had discarded his former theories of ethics.  On the one hand he was branded as a deserter from free thought; on the other, hailed almost as a convert to orthodoxy.  It was irritating, but little more than he had expected.  The conditions of the lecture forbade any reference to politics or religion; hence much had to be left unsaid, which was supplied next year in the Prolegomena prefacing the re-issue of the lecture.