PROFESSOR HUXLEY AS AUTHOR OF THE TERM "AGNOSTIC."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") Sin,—Your correspondent in the Spectator of April 26th relieves me personally from an embarrassment. I did not think it fair to trouble the Times further with a discussion which had changed its character since it started with Mr. Rhodes and " Agnosco," yet as the Master of the Temple had sent me the substance of the letter which Mr. Hunt has now addressed to you, I thought I was bound in honour to acknowledge that he (Canon Ainger) had better ground than I had believed for supposing that Mr. Huxley was intending to play on the term "Gnostic" in adopting the phrase "Agnostic." I submit, however, that the important point in the matter is—what was the nature of the discussions for which he adopted the term ? Now at the Metaphysical Society various phases of thought were represented. There was at least one convinced and earnest atheist avowing that position and arguing on it strenuously with strong belief in the impregnability of his thesis. Almost all phases of Christian belief were also strongly represented. The situation was perhaps somewhat quaintly expressed one day by Cardinal Manning, who, meeting my father in the street, said to him, "I wish you would come to our meetings. We have much need of Theists,"—meaning to include in that term all who had any form of belief in a personal Governor of the World. Now, between Cardinal Mannirg, Dr. Martineau, Mr. Hutton and my father, and other defenders of various forms of faith on the one side, and the equally convinced atheists on the other, Mr. Huxley represented throughout a middle position. In many conversations he had used the expression, "I do not know," "I hold my mind in a state of suspense." Both of the two passages that have been quoted from him leave the date at which be adopted the term quite uncertain, but I think that Mr. Hutton's conviction that the word was first adopted in the conversation to which I referred in a letter to the Times, noticed by your correspondent, shows that the term had not been till then used in the discussions in the Society. The point of real interest is therefore that, however much Mr. Huxley wished to toy with the phrase "Gnostic," what he intended to include under it were all forms of Christian faith whatever. To all alike he applied the phrase, "I do not know." I submit that that does, as I previously contended, carry back the human mind to the position in which it stood when it bowed before the Unknown in Athens.—I am, Sir, &c.,
F. MAURICE.
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