that has become a mere intellectual pastime or amateurish agnosticism,
we likewise have some knowledge; but the evil side of this tendency
has seldom been put more forcibly, I think, than in this stanza
from Lanier's `Acknowledgment':

"O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,
Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,
And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,
Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!
Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir,
Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,
Blinking at o'er-bright Science, smit with desire
To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime.
Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street,
Thy halfness hot with his rebuke would swell;
Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat
His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell."*

--
* `Acknowledgment', ll. 1-12.
--

More hurtful than agnosticism, because affecting larger masses of people,
is the rapid growth of the mercantile spirit during the present century,
especially in America. This evil the poet saw most clearly
and felt most keenly, as every one may learn by reading `The Symphony',
his great poem in which the speakers are the various musical instruments.
The violins begin:

"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!