Agnostic... coined by Spencer?

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

OK, now I get to correct myself before some other smarty nats chimes in. 
Not only did I misremember the Economist article, I positively misread
it.  A fuller context, without distorting ellipsis, follows:

"[Huxley] believed in progress, and was a friend of such avant-garde
thinkers as George 
Eliot, John Stuart Mill and The Economist's Herbert Spencer. He
popularised the term 'agnostic' to describe his moderate position between
radical atheism and reactionary religiosity."

Although not altogether free of syntactical ambiguity, the passage does
not even suggest that Spencer even popularized the term.  The "He"
clearly refers to Huxley as the straw that stirs the drink not Spencer. 
In my haste, I robotically looked to the last mentioned person for an
antecedent.  

The ministry apologises for any inconvenience occasioned by its
now-demoted minister.  

In confirmation of Mark's correction, I offer this snippet from a Paul
Edwards piece in _Free Inquiry._  10/1/98.

"T. H. Huxley has given us a full account of how he came to coin 
the term agnosticism. "When I reached intellectual maturity," he 
wrote in an article entitled "Agnosticism":

  'I . . . began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or 
a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a 
freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less 
ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I 
had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the 
last.'

  All these "good people" were quite sure that they had attained a
certain "gnosis, had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of
existence; while I was quite sure 
that I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem 
was insoluble.

  Huxley coined the term agnostic as suggestively antithetic to the
"Gnostic" of Christian history, who professed to know so much about the
very things of which I was 
ignorant.

  Huxley noted that "to his great satisfaction" the term took. 
Indeed it did, and not only among scientists and philosophers but 
also among educated people generally.

___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]