Leslie Stephen, a consistent agnostic, and a believer in the slow evolution of morals, in his "Science of Ethics," naturally holds, like Herbert Spencer, to the gradual development of the custom of truthfulness, as a necessity of society.

One is that there are among us to-day thousands of intelligent and refined agnostics who are utter strangers to all religious emotions, just as there are thousands of men and women who have never known and never will know the emotions of sentimental love.

If not and any notice is given of subscriptions as I see you are doing, I beg it may be notified that I send this mite as a reverent agnostic to our common cause of humanity.

Hence some of our more thoughtful agnostics, however unable themselves to find support in what they deem an illusion, are quite willing to acknowledge the part religion has played in the past in the evolution of rational life, and to look upon it as a necessary factor in the earlier stages of that process whose place is to be taken hereafter by some as yet undefined substitute.