Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work

by Sir P. Chalmers Mitchell

With the most voluminous detail, he proceeds to shew that there is no possible relation between the order implied by the narrative and the order as revealed by science. Let us sum up, by two quotations, the result of the whole controversy. First, the literal meaning is untenable.

"The question whether the earth and the immediate progenitors of its present living population were made in six natural days or not is no longer one on which two opinions can be held. The fact that it did not come so into being stands upon as sound a basis as any fact of history whatever. It is not true that existing plants and animals came into being within three days of the creation of the earth out of nothing, for it is certain that innumerable generations of other plants and animals lived upon the earth before its present population. And when, Sunday after Sunday, men who profess to be our instructors in righteousness read out the statement, 'In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is,' in innumerable churches, they are either propagating what they may easily know, and, therefore, are bound to know, to be falsities; or, if they use the words in some non-natural sense, they fall below the moral standard of the much abused Jesuit."

The attenuated meaning equally must be given up.

"Even if they (the reconcilers) now allow that the words 'the evening and the morning' have not the least reference to a natural day, but mean a period of any number of millions of years that may be necessary; even if they are driven to admit that the word 'creation,' which so many millions of pious Jews and Christians have held, and still hold, to mean a sudden act of the Deity, signifies a process of gradual evolution of one species from another, extending through immeasurable time; even if they are willing to grant that the asserted coincidence of the order of nature with the 'fourfold order' ascribed to Genesis is an obvious error instead of an established truth, they are surely prepared to make a last stand upon the conception which underlies the whole, and which constitutes the essence of Mr. Gladstone's 'fourfold division, set forth in an orderly succession of times.' It is that the animal species which compose the water-population, the air-population, and the land-population, respectively, originated during three distinct and successive periods of time, and only during these periods of time.... But even this sublimated essence of the Pentateuchal doctrine remains as discordant with natural science as ever."

There remains the third, or evolutionary hypothesis regarding the origin of the existing order of nature. As Huxley held it, it was rigidly limited within the possibilities afforded by the agnostic attitude. With regard to the real nature, the origin and destiny of the whole universe, there was not sufficient evidence before the human mind, if indeed the human mind were capable of receiving such evidence, to come to any conclusion. For the rest, for the actual condition of the earth itself, science was gradually accumulating overwhelming evidence in favour of a continuous evolution, under natural agencies, from the beginning of life to the existing forms of animals and plants, and the actual origin of life from inorganic matter under similarly natural agencies was becoming more and more a legitimate inference.

Huxley's relation to the New Testament may be summed up in few words. It was simply that there was not sufficient evidence for ascribing to it the supernatural sanction demanded for it by dogmatic theology.

"From the dawn of scientific Biblical criticism until the present day, the evidence against the long-cherished notion that the three synoptic gospels are the work of three independent authors, each prompted by Divine inspiration, has steadily accumulated, until, at the present time, there is no visible escape from the conclusion that each of the three is a compilation consisting of a groundwork common to all three—the three-fold tradition; and of a superstructure consisting, firstly, of matter common to it with one of the others, and, secondly, of matter common to each."

Again:—"There is no proof, nothing more than a fair presumption, that any one of the gospels existed, in the state in which we find it in the authorised version of the Bible, before the second century, or, in other words, sixty or seventy years after the events recorded." These considerations with slight differences in details are now practically admitted among the abler apologists, with the result that, as Huxley claimed, the New Testament, like the Old, must be treated as literature rather than as Dogma. As Literature everyone has the right to examine the contents critically, and, considering the importance attributed to the contents, the right becomes a duty. No doubt, had Huxley not lived there would have been others equally ready and equally able to gain the battle for freedom of thought in its special application to the claim of the Bible to stand in the way of the advance of scientific knowledge; but as it is, it cannot be denied that the existing prevalence of liberal views, inside and outside the churches, on the nature and interpretation of the Scriptures is largely due to him.

After the question of inspiration, the most striking feature of the Bible is its appeal to miracles and the miraculous element. It is now necessary to examine the position assumed by Huxley towards these. Two great a priori difficulties have been brought against accepting any record of miracles as true. The first of these is very simple, depending on the history of all times and peoples. It is that the human race has shewn itself universally credulous in this matter. It has cried "Wolf!" so readily, so honestly, and on so many occasions that the cry has ceased to carry conviction with it. Every religion has its series of miraculous events; every savage tribe and every uneducated race has its miracle-workers implicitly accepted. In mediæval and modern Europe up to our own times, miracles have been so constantly recorded on testimony of such undoubted integrity that we must either believe that miracles can be performed by numberless persons with no other claim to special regard, or that it is singularly easy to get false but honest evidence regarding them. Huxley supported the latter alternative strongly, and held the view that to believe in any particular miracles would require evidence very much more direct and very much stronger than would be necessary in the case of inherently probable events.