
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that
unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?  Is it
not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?  We are a company of ignorant
beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only be
incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling
into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily
needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate
origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that
we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infintesimal
parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all
eternity for his faithlessness.
		-- Leslie Stephen, "An Agnostic's Apology",
		   Fortnightly Review, 1876
