26 APRIL 1902, Page 32

PROFESSOR HUXLEY AND THE TERM " AGN OSTIC."

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPROTATOR.1 Snt,—As considerable speculation has been rife in the columns of a daily paper as to the use by the late Professor Huxley of the word "agnostic," and more especially with regard to the question whether the Professor had the sect of the Gnostics in his mind; and, further, as the name of the late editor of the Spectator has been introduced into the discussion, you may be interested to be referred to a decisive pasage, which has hitherto been overlooked,—viz.: "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" ("Coll. Essays," Vol. V.,