Nobody can possibly imagine what would happen if agnostics really became agnostic. No one can say, that is, what would happen if the modern skeptical mind ceased to be quite certain about everything. Genuine agnosticism would no doubt make a very great revolution in the tradition of our lives; but what would be the bold and general features of that great revolution it is very difficult to predict with certainty. One thing, however, may be considered as fairly certain. If agnosticism came properly into play, one thing or class of things would at any rate happen. We should have ghost stories in every street in London; we should have fairy stories in every village in England; we should have the cry of the witches in every high wind, and the grin of Robin Goodfellow in every act of the household, from the breakfast service to the pleasant taste of the supper. This is real agnosticism, to be attracted to elves and afraid of specters. For precisely the thing which has always made these notions important, precisely the thing which has always made fairies attractive and ghosts disquieting, has been the eternal attitude of man, the eternal attitude of agnosticism. Once admit that we do know that fairies are, and they are no more attractive than elves; once admit that we do know that a ghost can walk, and he becomes a good deal less dangerous than any harmless old vicar dawdling about in the moonlight. The thing which has given life to all the superstitions is this ancient and mystic thing, agnosticism. Peasants and old women can frighten us with their tales precisely because they are philosophically right; they do not know why such things should not be, but yet do not absolutely know that they are. Modern agnostics summarize the views of the peasants and old women by saying that they are beliefs born of ignorance. Ignorance is a Latin word, which means agnosticism.
-"Black and White"
[Reprinted in Current Opinion: A Magazine of Record and Review, volume XXXVI, January-June 1904]
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