ions of Hume and
Kant," so well stated by the latter as follows:--

The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of
pure reason is, after all, merely negative, since it serves
not as an organon for the enlargement (of knowledge), but as
a discipline for its delimitation; and, instead of discovering
truth, has only the modest merit of preventing error--

he proceeds:--

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask
myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a
materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I
found that the more I learned and reflected the less ready was
the answer, until, at last, I came to the conclusion that
I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations
except the last. The one thing in which most of these good
people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed
from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain
"gnosis"--had, more or less successfully, solved the problem
of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a
pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.
And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself
presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion....

This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a
place among the members of that remarkable confraternity
of antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and
pious memory, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of
philosophical and theological opinion was represented
there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my
colleagues were _-ists_ of one sort or another; and, however
kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of
a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of
the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox
when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he
presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So
I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the
appropriate title of "Agnostic." 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; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading
it at our Society to show that I, too, had a tail like the
other foxes. To my great satisfaction,