The influence exerted among the cultivated

[213] classes by the aesthetic movement (Ruskin, Morris, the Pre-
Raphaelite painters; then Pater’s Lectures on the Renaissance, 1873) was
also a sign of the times. For the attitude of these critics, artists,
and poets was essentially pagan. The saving truths of theology were for
them as if they did not exist. The ideal of happiness was found in a
region in which heaven was ignored.

The time then seemed opportune for speaking out. Of the unorthodox books
and essays, [2] which influenced the young and alarmed believers, in
these exciting years, most were the works of men who may be most fairly
described by the comprehensive term agnostics—a name which had been
recently invented by Professor Huxley.

The agnostic holds that there are limits to human reason, and that
theology lies outside those limits. Within those limits lies the world
with which science (including psychology) deals. Science deals entirely
with phenomena, and has nothing to say to the nature of the ultimate
reality which may lie behind phenomena. There are four possible

[214] attitudes to this ultimate reality. There is the attitude of the
metaphysician and theologian, who are convinced not only that it exists
but that it can be at least partly known. There is the attitude of the
man who denies that it exists; but he must be also a metaphysician, for
its existence can only be disproved by metaphysical arguments. Then
there are those who assert that it exists but deny that we can know
anything about it. And finally there are those who say that we cannot
know whether it exists or not. These last are “agnostics” in the strict
sense of the term, men who profess not to know. The third class go