was not improper for her sex. By her thirteenth year she
had acquired Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, German and other
languages. Two years later her father began to assemble in
his house at stated intervals a circle of the most learned
men in Bologna, before whom she read and maintained a series
of theses on the most abstruse philosophical questions.
Records of these meetings are given in de Brosse's Lettres
sur l'Italie and in the Propositiones Philosophicae, which
her father caused to be published in 1738. These displays,
being probably not altogether congenial to Maria, who was of a
retiring disposition, ceased in her twentieth year, and it is
even said that she had at that age a strong desire to enter a
convent. Though the wish was not gratified, she lived from that
time in a retirement almost conventual, avoiding all society
and devoting herself entirely to the study of mathematics.
The most valuable result of her labours was the Instituzioni
analitiche ad uso della gioventu italiana, a work of great
merit, which was published at Milan in 1748. The first volume
treats of the analysis of finite quantities. and the second of
the analysis of infinitesimals. A French translation of the
second volume by P. T. d'Antelmy, with additions by Charles
Bossut (1730-1814), appeared at Paris in 1775; and an English
translation of the whole work by John Colson (1680-1760),
the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was
published in 1801 at the expense of Baron Maseres. Madame
Agnesi also wrote a commentary on the Traite analytique des
sections coniques of the marquis de l'Hopital, which, though
highly praised by those who saw it in manuscript, was never
published. She invented and discussed the curve known as
the ``witch of Agnesi'' (q.v.) or versiera. In 1750, on
the illness of her father, she was appointed by Pope Benedict
XIV. to the chair of mathematics and natural Philosophy at
Bologna. After the death of her father in 1752 she carried
out a long-cherished purpose by giving herself to the study of
theology, and especially of the Fathers. After holding for
some years the office of directress of the Hospice Trivulzio for
Blue Nuns at Milan, she herself joined the sisterhood, and in
this austere order ended her days on the 9th of January 1799.
Her sister, MARIA TERESA AGNESI (1724-1780), a well-known
Italian pianist and composer, was born at Milan in
1724. She composed several cantatas, two pianoforte
concertos and five operas, Sofenisbe, Ciro in Armenia,
Nitocri, Il Re Pastore and Insubria consolata.
See Antonio Francesco Frisi, Eloge historique de
Mademoiselle Agnesi, translated by Boulard (Paris, 1807);
Milesi-Mojon, Vita di M. G. Agnesi (Milan, 1836); J.
Boyer, ``La Mathematicienne Agnesi'' in the Revue Catholique
des revues francaises et etrangeres (Paris, 1897).
AGNEW, DAVID HAYES (1818-1892), American surgeon, was born
in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, on the 24th of November
1818. He graduated from the medical department of the
university of Pennsylvania in 1838, and a few years later set
up in practice at Philadelphia and became a lecturer at the
Philadelphia School of Anatomy. He was appointed surgeon at
the Philadelphia Hospital in 1854 and was the founder of its
pathological museum. For twenty-six years (1863-1889) he
was connected with the medical faculty of the university of
Pennsylvania, being elected professor of operative surgery
in 1870 and professor of the principles and practice of
surgery in the following year. From 1865 to 1884--except
for a brief interval --he was a surgeon at the Pennsylvania
Hospital. During the American Civil War he was consulting
surgeon in the Mower Army Hospital, near Philadelphia, and
acquired considerable reputation for his operations in cases
of gun-shot wounds. He attended as operating surgeon when
President Garfield was fatally wounded by the bullet of an
assassin in 1881. He was the author of several works, the
most important being The Principles and Practice of Surgery
(1878-1883). He died at Philadelphia on the 22nd of March 1892.
AGNI, the Hindu God of Fire, second only to Indra in the
power and importance attributed to him in Vedic mythology.
His name is the first word of the first hymn of the Rig-veda:
``Agni, I entreat, divine appointed priest of sacrifice.''
The sacrifices made to Agni pass to the gods, for Agni is a
messenger from and to the gods; but, at the same time, he is
more than a mere messenger, he is an immortal, for another
hymn runs: ``No god indeed, no mortal is beyond the might of
thee, the mighty One. . . .'' He is a god who lives among men,
miraculously reborn each day by the fire-drill, by the friction
of the two sticks which are regarded as his parents; he is
the supreme director of religious ceremonies and duties,and
even has the power of influencing the lot of man in the future
world. He is worshipped under a threefold form, fire on earth,
lightning and the sun. His cult survived the metamorphosis
of the ancient Vedic nature-worship into modern Hinduism,
and there still are in India fire-priests (agnihotri) whose
duty is to superintend his worship. The sacred fire-drill for
procuring the temple-fire by friction--symbolic of Agni's daily
miraculous birth--is still used. In pictorial art Agni is
always represented as red, two-faced, suggesting his destructive
and beneficent qualities, and with three legs and seven arms.
See W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology (London, 1900);
A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (Strassburg, 1897).
AGNOETAE (Gr. agnoeo, to be ignorant of), a monophysite
sect who maintained that Christ's human nature was like other
men's in all respects, including limited knowledge. Its
founder was Themistius, a deacon in Alexandria in the 6th
century. The sect was anathematized by Gregory the Great.
AGNOIOLOGY (from Gr. agnoi-a, ignorance), the science or
study of ignorance, which determines its quality and conditions.
AGNOSTICISM. The term ``agnostic'' was invented by Huxley
in 1869 to describe the philosophical and religious attitude
of those who hold that we can have scientific or real
knowledge of phenomena only, and that so far as what may lie
behind phenomena is concerned--God, immortality, &c.--there
is no evidence which entitles us either to deny or aflirm
anything. The attitude itself is as old as Scepticism
(q.v.); but the expressions ``agnostic'' and ``agnosticism''
were applied by Huxley to sum up his deductions from those
contemporary developments of metaphysics with which the
names of Hamilton (``the Unconditioned'') and Herbert Spencer
(``the Unknowable'') were associated; and it is important,
therefore, to fix precisely his own intellectual standpoint
in the matter. Though Huxley only began to use the term
``agnostic'' in 1869, his opinions had taken shape some time
before that date. In a letter to Charles Kingsley (September
23, 1860) he wrote very fully concerning his beliefs:--
``I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I
see no reason for believing it, but, on the other hand,
I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori
objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily
and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori
difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify
me in believing in anything else, and I will believe
that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the
conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter. . . .
``It is no use to talk to me of analogies and
probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe
in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest
my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions. . . .
``That my personality is the surest thing I know may be true.
But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal
subtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego
and the non-ego, noumena and phenomena, and all the rest of it,
too often not to know that in attempting even to think of these
questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its depth.''
And again, to the same correspondent, the 5th of May 1863:--
``I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons
against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the
greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel
school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself,
exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can
see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel. l cannot
see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown
underlying the phenomenon of the universe stands to us in the
relation of a Father--loves us and cares for us as Christianity
asserts. So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas,
immortality of soul and future state of rewards and punishments,
what possible objection can I--who am compelled perforce to
believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force,
and in a very unmistakable present state of rewards and
punishments for our deeds--have to these doctrines? Give me
a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them.''
Of the origin of the name ``agnostic'' to cover this attitude,
Huxley gave (Coll. Ess. v. pp. 237-239) the following account:--
``When I reached intellectual maturity, and 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. The one thing on which most of these good
people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from
them. They were quite sure 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.
This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a
place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of
antagonists, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of
philosophical and theological opinion was represented there;
most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and
I, the man without a rag of a belief to cover himself with, could
not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have
beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which
his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated
companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived
to be the appropriate title of `agnostic.' It came into my head
as suggestively antithetic to the `gnostic' of Church history,
who professed to know so much about the very things of which
I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.''
This account is confirmed by R. H. Hutton, who in 1881 wrote
that the word ``was suggested by Huxley at a meeting held
previous to the formation of the now defunct Metaphysical
Society at Mr Knowles's house on Clapham Common in 1869, in my
hearing. He took it from St Paul's mention of the altar
to the Unknown God.'' Hutton here gives a variant etymology
for the word, which may be therefore taken as partly derived
from agnostos (the ``unknown'' God), and partly from an
antithesis to ``gnostic''; but the meaning remains the same
in either case. The name, as Huxley said, ``took''; it was
constantly used by Hutton in the Spectator and became a
fashionable label for contemporary unbelief in Christian
dogma. Hutton himself frequently misrepresented the doctrine
by describing it as ``belief in an unknown and unknowable
God''; but agnosticism as defined by Huxley meant not belief,
but absence of belief, as much distinct from belief on the
