The sin I referred to is not the common one of declaring that to be true which you know to be untrue--that has long been known by an appropriate name, and does not require any new epithet to denote its scandalousness. The sin of pretension in question consists in assuming, or declaring that to be true, which one does not know to be true. Years ago this was a very common sin, and everybody committed it. You heard it in the pulpit more frequently than on the stage. Nobody complained of it, or rebuked it, or resented it. It was not until the middle of the last century that public attention was drawn to it. It was Huxley who first raised the question of intellectual veracity, and he devised the term Agnostic (which merely means limitation) to express it. Limitationism does not mean disbelief, but the limitation of assertion to actual knowledge. The theist used to declare--without misgiving--the absolute certainty of the existence of an independent, active Entity, to whom Nature is second-hand, and not much at that. The anti-theist--also without misgiving--denied that there was such separate Potentiality. The Limitationist, more modest in averment, not having sufficient information to be positive, simply says he does not know. He does not say that others may not have sufficient knowledge of a primal cause of things; but lacking it himself, he concludes that veracity in statement may be a virtue where omniscience is denied. There may be belief founded on inference. But inference is not knowledge. The Limitationist withholds assertion from lack of satisfying evidence. He is neutral--not because he wishes not to believe, or desires to deny, but because serious language should be measured by the standard of proof and conviction.