Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3

by Thomas Henry Huxley

This movement, marked by the claim for the freedom of private judgment, which first came to its fulness in the Renascence, is here sketched out, rising or sinking by turns under the pressure of social and political vicissitudes, from Wiclif's earliest proposal to reduce the Supernaturalism of Christianity within the limits sanctioned by the Scriptures, down to the manifesto in the previous year of the thirty-eight Anglican divines in defence of biblical infallibility, which practically ends in an appeal to the very principle they reject.

But he does not content himself with pointing out the destructive effects of criticism upon the evidence in favour of a "supernature"—"The present incarnation of the spirit of the Renascence," he writes, "differs from its predecessor in the eighteenth century, in that it builds up, as well as pulls down. That of which it has laid the foundation, of which it is already raising the superstructure, is the doctrine of evolution," a doctrine that "is no speculation, but a generalisation of certain facts, which may be observed by any one who will take the necessary trouble." And in a short dozen pages he sketches out that "common body of established truths" to which it is his confident belief that "all future philosophical and theological speculations will have to accommodate themselves."

There is no need to recapitulate these; they may be read in "Science and Christian Tradition", the fifth volume of the "Collected Essays"; but it is worth noticing that in conclusion, after rejecting "a great many supernaturalistic theories and legends which have no better foundations than those of heathenism," he declares himself as far from wishing to "throw the Bible aside as so much waste paper" as he was at the establishment of the School Board in 1870. As English literature, as world-old history, as moral teaching, as the Magna Charta of the poor and of the oppressed, the most democratic book in the world, he could not spare it.] "I do not say," [he adds], "that even the highest biblical ideal is exclusive of others or needs no supplement. But I do believe that the human race is not yet, possibly may never be, in a position to dispense with it."

[It was this volume that led to the writing of the magazine article referred to above. The republication in it of the "Agnosticism," originally written in reply to an article of Mr. Frederic Harrison's, induced the latter to disclaim in the "Fortnightly Review" the intimate connection assumed to exist between his views and the system of Positivism detailed by Comte, and at the same time to offer the olive branch to his former opponent. But while gratefully accepting the goodwill implied in the offer, Huxley still declared himself unable to] "give his assent to a single doctrine which is the peculiar property of Positivism, old or new," [nor to agree with Mr. Harrison when he wanted:—]

to persuade us that agnosticism is only the Court of the Gentiles of the Positivist temple; and that those who profess ignorance about the proper solution of certain speculative problems ought to call themselves Positivists of the Gate, if it happens that they also take a lively interest in social and political questions.

[This essay, "An Apologetic Irenicon," contains more than one passage of personal interest, which are the more worth quoting here, as the essay has not been republished. It was to have been included in a tenth volume of collected Essays, along with a number of others which he projected, but never wrote.

Thus, begging the Positivists not to regard him as a rival or competitor in the business of instructing the human race, he says:—]

I aspire to no such elevated and difficult situation. I declare myself not only undesirous of it, but deeply conscious of a constitutional unfitness for it. Age and hygienic necessities bind me to a somewhat anchoritic life in pure air, with abundant leisure to meditate upon the wisdom of Candide's sage aphorism, "Cultivons notre jardin"—especially if the term garden may be taken broadly and applied to the stony and weed-grown ground within my skull, as well as to a few perches of more promising chalk down outside it. In addition to these effectual bars to any of the ambitious pretensions ascribed to me, there is another: of all possible positions that of master of a school, or leader of a sect, or chief of a party, appears to me to be the most undesirable; in fact, the average British matron cannot look upon followers with a more evil eye than I do. Such acquaintance with the history of thought as I possess, has taught me to regard schools, parties, and sects, as arrangements, the usual effect of which is to perpetuate all that is worst and feeblest in the master's, leader's, or founder's work; or else, as in some cases, to upset it altogether; as a sort of hydrants for extinguishing the fire of genius, and for stifling the flame of high aspirations, the kindling of which has been the chief, perhaps the only, merit of the protagonist of the movement. I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, this and this have I learned; thus and thus have I learned it: go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, conclusions, the value of which you ought to have tested for yourself.

[Again, replying to the reproach that all his public utterances had been of a negative character, that the great problems of human life had been entirely left out of his purview, he defends once more the work of the man who clears the ground for the builders to come after him:—]

There is endless backwoodsman's work yet to be done, If "those also serve who only stand and wait," still more do those who sweep and cleanse; and if any man elect to give his strength to the weeder's and scavenger's occupation, I remain of the opinion that his service should be counted acceptable, and that no one has a right to ask more of him than faithful performance of the duties he has undertaken. I venture to count it an improbable suggestion that any such person—a man, let us say, who has well-nigh reached his threescore years and ten, and has graduated in all the faculties of human relationships; who has taken his share in all the deep joys and deeper anxieties which cling about them; who has felt the burden of young lives entrusted to his care, and has stood alone with his dead before the abyss of the eternal—has never had a thought beyond negative criticism. It seems to me incredible that such an one can have done his day's work, always with a light heart, with no sense of responsibility, no terror of that which may appear when the factitious veil of Isis—the thick web of fiction man has woven round nature—is stripped off.