What, for instance, is more characteristic of our age than its tendency
to agnosticism? I pass by the manifestations of this spirit
in the world of religion, of which so much has been heard,
and give an illustration or two from the field of history and politics.
Picturesque Pocahontas, we are told, is no more to be believed in;
moreover, the Pilgrim Fathers did not land at Plymouth Rock,
nor did Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. Which way we turn
there is a big interrogation-point, often not for information
but for negation. Of the good resulting from the inquisitive spirit,
we all know; of the baneful influence of inquisitiveness
that has become a mere intellectual pastime or amateurish agnosticism,
we likewise have some knowledge; but the evil side of this tendency
has seldom been put more forcibly, I think, than in this stanza
from Lanier's `Acknowledgment':
"O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,
Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,
And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,
Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!
Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir,
Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,
Blinking at o'er-bright Science, smit with desire
To see and not to see.
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