The Star in the West

THE NEW WINE 273 AGNOSTICISM Ex Oriente Lux . As old as the Vedas is the idea of Agnosticism , though in name it is not yet forty years of age . Everywhere we look we find the 'Ayvborq Oeq of Paul , midst the Greeks , the Egyptians , the Hebrews , the Chaldeans , the Aryans , and the Chinese , and its light is focussed in the greatest of the great : Socrates and Plato , Malebranche and Descartes , Locke and Spinoza , Hume and Berkeley , Swedenborg and Kant , Hegel and Comte , Tyndall , Spencer , and Huxley . Declining the mimetic , seeking the idiosyncratic , and standing by the eclectic , it has stood and grown a Colossus of Thought , ever young , ever virile , as age after age has gathered round it, and as the years have swept by it on their path to oblivion . Between the theist and the atheist stands the agnos tic , and as the most vital point of attack is that which lies nearest to the object to be attacked , the great danger to theistic churches was threatened not from the atheistical extremity , but from the Agnostic frontier . The Agnostic said , “ I do not know ," the theist said , “ I do," hence the uninterrupted warfare of 3,000 years or more , in which the priest has ever been ready to lie for the greater glory of his God , as S'afi well said : Then speak the truth , if so a priest May tune his tongue to anything but lies .' And of the gods of this greater glory , Amenhatep a few lines further on informs us : 1 The Fatal Force , vol . i, p . 142 . T