sb. and a. [f. Gr. ἄγνωστ-ος unknowing, unknown, unknowable (f. ἀ not + γνο- know) + -IC. Cf. GNOSTIC; in Gr. the termination -ικός never coëxists with the privative ἀ-.]
A. sb. One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena is unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable, and especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are subjects of which we know nothing.
[Suggested by Prof. Huxley at a party held previous to the formation of the now defunct Metaphysical Society, at Mr. James Knowles’s house on Clapham Common, one evening in 1869, in my hearing. He took it from St. Paul’s mention of the altar to ‘the Unknown God.’ R. H. Hutton in letter 13 March 1881.]
1870. Spect., 29 Jan., 135. In theory he [Prof. Huxley] is a great and even severe Agnostic, who goes about exhorting all men to know how little they know.
1874. Mivart, Ess. Relig., etc., 205. Our modern Sophists—the Agnostics,—those who deny we have any knowledge, save of phenomena.
1876. Spect., 11 June. Nicknames are given by opponents, but Agnostic was the name demanded by Professor Huxley for those who disclaimed atheism, and believed with him in an ‘unknown and unknowable’ God; or in other words that the ultimate origin of all things must be some cause unknown and unknowable.
1880. Bp. Fraser, in Manch. Guardn., 25 Nov. The Agnostic neither denied nor affirmed God. He simply put Him on one side.
B. adj. Of or pertaining to agnostics or their theory.
1873. Q. Rev., CXXXV. 192. The pseudo-scientific teachers of what has … been termed … the Agnostic Philosophy.
1876. Principal Tulloch, Agnosticism, in Weekly Scotsm., 18 Nov. The same agnostic principle which prevailed in our schools of philosophy had extended itself to religion and theology. Beyond what man can know by his senses or feel by his higher affections, nothing, as was alleged, could be truly known.
1880. Birdwood, Ind. Arts, I. 4. The agnostic teaching of the Sankhya school is the common basis of all systems of Indian philosophy.
1882. Froude, Carlyle, II. 216. The agnostic doctrines, he [Carlyle] once said to me, were to appearance like the finest flour, from which you might expect the most excellent bread; but when you came to feed on it, you found it was powdered glass, and you had been eating the deadliest poison.
