WHAT IS AN AGNOSTIC?
An Agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life
with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least
impossible at the present time.
The thing that above all others I have been concerned to say is that because of fears that once
had a rational basis mankind has failed to profit by the new techniques that, if wisely used,
could make him happy.
Of all the studies by which men acquire citizenship of the intellectual commonwealth, no single one is so indispensable as the study of the past.
Mankind is in mortal peril, and fear now, as in the past, is inclining men to seek refuge in God.
Everybody knows Wells’s Time Machine, which enabled its possessor to travel backwards or forwards in time, and see for himself what the past was like and what the future will be.
The decay of traditional religious beliefs, bitterly bewailed by upholders of the Churches,
welcomed with joy by those who regard the old creeds as mere superstition, is an undeniable
fact. Yet when the dogmas have been rejected, the question of the place of religion in life is by
no means decided.
THE FOLLOWING SELECTIONS—“What Makes People Unhappy?” “Is Happiness
Still Possible?” “Zest,” “Work,” and “The Happy Man”—are taken from just
a few of the many essays in Conquest of Happiness.
Teaching, more even than most other professions, has been transformed during the last hundred years from a small, highly skilled profession concerned with a minority of the population, to a large and important branch of the public service.
In relation to any political doctrine there are two questions to be asked: (1) Are its theoretical tenets true?
(2) Is its practical policy likely to increase Human happiness?
The philosophy which has seemed appropriate to science has varied from time to time. To Newton and most of his English contemporary’s science seemed to afford proof of the existence of God as the Almighty Lawgiver: He had decreed the law of gravitation and whatever other natural laws had been discovered by Englishmen.