The Star in the West

282 THE STAR IN THE WEST The Agnostic principles of Crowleyanity may briefly be summed up as follows : Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself. Say not “ I have a soul,” before you feel that you have a soul . Say not “ There is a God," before you experience that there is a God . You can never understand until you have experi enced . You can never experience until you have got beyond reason . Those five paths lead us to one road , the road of “ Knowledge and Doubt " ; beyond which to the inept there is impenetrable night , and to the adept undying brilliancy . “ Know or Doubt ! is the alternative of highwayman Huxley ; ' Believe'is not to be admitted ; this is a fundamental ; in this agnosticism can never change ; this must ever command our moral , as our intellectual assent. Thus Reason ends by whispering : “ I am agnostic ; I cannot answer ea or nay .” This is the crowning triumph of the nineteenth century ! Kant has proved beyond all doubt , that by empirical means we can never hope to penetrate beyond the tremendous night of Reason ; then came Fichte , Schelling , and Hegel , they , peering into the depths of the Darkness , here and there saw some fleeting asteroid ; after them came Huxley , who glooming into the depths , far in the distance , saw the whirling cloud of stars , still beyond him must we go , beyond that trembling cloud which hovers as some tired dove on the horizon of our minds , past nebulæ of stars and molten suns singing " 1 1 The Sword of Song , vol . ii, p . 208 .