But we need not go beyond the first chapter of “An Agnostic’s Apology” to find an illustration of my argument. Leslie Stephen there absolves himself from giving heed to the conclusions of philosophers, because there are none on which all philosophers are agreed, none on which there is even a clear preponderance of opinion. On the other hand, he is ready to agree with astronomers, because astronomers, “from Galileo to Adams and Leverrier,” substantially agree with each other. Agreement among experts is, in his opinion, a guarantee of truth, and disagreement a proof of error. But then he forgets that these distressing differences among philosophers do not touch merely such entities as God and the soul, or the other subjects with which agnostics conceive man’s faculties are incapable of dealing. They are concerned (among other things) with the presuppositions on which our knowledge of “phenomena”—including, of course “astronomy from Galileo to Adams and Leverrier,” is entirely constructed. What, in these circumstances, is Locke’s “sincere lover of truth” to do? How is he to avoid “entertaining propositions with greater assurance than the proofs they are built on will warrant”? Where will he find a refuge from the “pure scepticism” which is, in Leslie Stephen’s opinion, the natural result of divided opinions? How is he to get on while he is making up his mind whether any theory of the world within his reach will satisfy unbiased reason? The fact is that the adherents of this philosophic school apply, quite unconsciously, very different canons of intellectual probity to themselves and to their opponents. “Why,” asks Mr. Stephen, “should a lad who has just run the gauntlet of examination and escaped to a country parsonage be dogmatic?” If to be dogmatic is to hold opinions with a conviction in excess of any reason that can be assigned for them, there seems to be no escape for the poor fellow. The common lot of man is not going to be reversed for him. Though he abandon his parsonage and renounce his Church, though he scrupulously purify his creed from every taint of the “metempirical,” though he rigidly confine himself to themes which his critics declare to be within the range of his intellectual vision, fate will pursue him still. He may argue much or argue little; he may believe much or believe little; but, however much he argues and however little he believes, his beliefs will always transcend his arguments, and to faith, in his own despite, he must still appeal.