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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/331

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LAST WORDS ABOUT AGNOSTICISM.
317

"hope anything of the Unknowable or find consolation therein?" (p. 503); and to a grieving mother he represents me as replying to assuage her grief, "Think on the Unknowable" (p. 503). Similarly in his second article he writes, "to tell them that they are to worship this Unknowable is equivalent to telling them to worship nothing" (p. 357); "the worship of the Unknowable is abhorrent to every instinct of genuine religion" (p. 360); "praying to the Unknowable at home" (p. 376); and having in these and kindred ways fashioned for me the observances of a religion which he represents me as proposing," he calls it "one of the most gigantic paradoxes in the history of thought" (p. 355). So effectually has Mr. Harrison impressed everybody by these expressions and assertions, that I read in a newspaper—"Mr. Spencer speaks of the 'absurdities of the Comtean religion,'but what about his own peculiar cult?"

Now the whole of this is a fabric framed out of Mr. Harrison's imaginations. I have nowhere "proposed" any "object of religion." I have nowhere suggested that any one should "worship this Unknowable." No line of mine gives ground for inquiring how the Unknowable is to be sought "in a devout way," or for asking what are "the religious exercises;" nor have I suggested that any one may find "consolation therein." Observe the facts. At the close of my article "Religion; a Retrospect and Prospect," I pointed out to "those who think that science is dissipating religious beliefs and sentiments," "that whatever of mystery is taken from the old interpretation is added to the new;" increase rather than diminution being the result. I said that in perpetually extending our knowledge of the Universe, concrete science "enlarges the sphere for religious sentiment;" and that progressing knowledge is "accompanied by an increasing capacity for wonder." And in my second article, in further explanation, I have represented my thesis to be "that whatever components of this [the religious] sentiment disappear, there must ever survive those which are appropriate to the consciousness of a Mystery that can not be fathomed and a Power that is omnipresent." This is the sole thing for which I am responsible. I have advocated nothing; I have proposed no worship; I have said nothing about "devotion," or "prayer," or "religious exercises," or "hope," or "consolation." I have simply affirmed the permanence of certain components in the consciousness which "is concerned with that which lies beyond the sphere of sense." If Mr. Harrison says that this surviving sentiment is inadequate for what he thinks the purposes of religion, I simply reply—I have said nothing about its adequacy or inadequacy The assertion that the emotions of awe and wonder form but a fragment of religion, leaves me altogether unconcerned: I have said nothing to the contrary. If Mr. Harrison sees well to describe the emotions of awe and wonder as "some rags of religious sentiment surviving" (p. 358), it is not incumbent on me to disprove the fitness of his expression. I am respon-