How To Be An Agnostic

An A–Z

return the climber to a place of solitude that modern life has
otherwise banished.

The qualities which strike every sensitive observer are impressed

upon the mountaineer with tenfold force and intensity. If he is

accessible to poetical infl uences as his neighbours – and I don’t

know why he should be less so – he has opened new avenues

of access between the scenery and his mind. He has learnt a

language which is but partially revealed to ordinary men.

Stephen emphasises the importance of experiencing the moun-
tain, not just seeing it from afar, even less reading about it –
echoing, perhaps, the Socratic insight that philosophy must be
lived and not merely spoken.

I might go on indefi nitely recalling the strangely impres-

sive scenes that frequently startle the traveller in the waste

Illus. 8.1: Leslie Stephen’s agnosticism found expression in his love of the
Alps.