[25] Huxley, Darwiniana, p. 361.
[26] Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, p. 205.
[27] Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, p. 121.
[28] Huxley, Method and Results, p. 61.
[29] Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, p. 243.
IX.
CONSEQUENCES
In the last chapter, impressed by the doctrine that there is no "source of truth save that which is reached by the patient application of scientific methods,"[30] we patiently applied those methods to the foundation of science itself; and we were rewarded by the discovery that scientific, like religious, truth has its source in Faith. But the end of our difficulties is not yet.
A man may put his faith in science, if he will, "but let him not delude himself with the notion that his faith is evidence of the objective reality of that in which he trusts."[31] About that we feel no difficulty: faith begins not merely with ignorance, but with the frank confession that we know we are ignorant, but we wish to believe, in spite of the absence of evidence. There is no evidence to show that Nature is uniform or science true, but we do not mind that: we are quite determined to believe, evidence or no evidence. That is easy enough for us, who are not scientific; but "scientific men get an awkward habit—no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit—of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral."[32] This is, if not awkward, at least puzzling, since science is based on a belief in the Uniformity of Nature, for which there is no evidence.