The confirmation would have three parts. In the first he might say: “I have sinned against myself in two ways: First, because I uttered assertions calculated to show that I am more credulous than those whom I reprehend. Now, if men are condemned by me on the ground that they believe ‘on good authority,’ what will be the sentence reserved for me, who believe on bad authority and on no authority? Secondly, because I put myself in an awkward position as a scientific man. The distance of the earth from the sun I hitherto admitted on authority; the specific weight of most bodies on authority; the discovery of certain geologic curiosities on authority; the ratio of the circumference to the diameter on authority, etc., etc. Verification would have taken too many years of work; and this seemed to me a good excuse for assuming that there was no harm in believing. But now, as I have declared ‘scepticism to be the highest of duties,’ to be consistent, I shall be obliged to appeal without intermission to experiment and observation, and even to calculation; ‘for the man of science has learned to believe in justification not by faith, but by verification.’ And so good-by to my lay sermons! It will be quite impossible for me, while calculating anew the basis of the Napierian logarithms or the circumference of the circle, or while testing Faraday’s discoveries by actual experiments, or travelling to verify the assertions of
geological writers, to dream of popular eloquence.”
After developing these or similar thoughts, he would pass to the second part and say: “I have sinned against you; for the principal aim of my sermon was to make you believe what I was then saying. How is it possible, dear friends, that I should have taken pleasure in thus treating you as barbarians or semi-barbarians? Civilized men, according to the theory which I then advanced, ‘refuse to acknowledge authority as such.’ ‘Scepticism,’ according to the same theory, ‘is the highest of duties,’ and ‘blind faith an unpardonable sin.’ Such was my doctrine on January 7. Yet this very sin, this unpardonable sin, I suggested to you on that same day, and you committed it! In fact, you have believed me.… Now, for this no one is more responsible than myself. I have been your tempter; I did my best to extort your belief; I caused you to believe on my authority, to believe as barbarians believe! I plead guilty. Still, as you are so kind, I hope that you will excuse me. I admitted, after all, that ‘there are many excellent persons who yet hold the principle that merit attaches to a readiness to believe,’ and therefore both you and myself, in spite of all that you have believed, may be excellent persons. Another very good reason in my favor is that the subject of that sermon was ‘the advisableness of improving natural knowledge’; now, our common fault is a very good demonstration of such an advisableness. I might add a third reason. I told you, and I trust that you have not forgotten it, that ‘we are still children.’ Now, children, when they err, deserve indulgence, etc., etc.”
In the third part he would say
something like the following: “I have sinned against mankind; for my sermon was calculated to create the impression that those who believe ‘when good authority has pronounced what is to be believed’ are all barbarians or semi-barbarians. This, I must be allowed to say, was a very great mistake, and perhaps an ‘unpardonable sin.’ The London plague is believed ‘on good authority,’ by all Englishmen at least, and yet—let me frankly say it—Englishmen are not all barbarians. All civilized nations believe that there has been a king called Alexander the Great, a mathematician called Archimedes, a woman called Cleopatra, an emperor called Caligula, and they believe it only ‘on good authority’; and how could this be, if belief were the lot of barbarous or semi-barbarous people? What I say of profane history must be said of the Biblical also, and even of the ecclesiastical. No doubt, dear brethren, there has been a man called Moses, who was a great legislator and prophet; there has been a man called Solomon, who was wiser than you and myself; there has been a man called Jesus, who wrought miracles in the very eyes of obstinate unbelievers, and rose from death (a thing which we, men of progress, have not yet learned to do), thereby showing that he was no mere man, but man and God. To say that this God is ‘unknown’ or ‘unknowable’ is therefore one of the greatest historical blunders. Men have known him, have loved him, and have obeyed him. Those who have believed in him became models of sanctity, of charity, and of generosity; millions among them were ready to die, and really died, for his honor, and many of them were the greatest and most cultivated
minds that have enlightened the world. We scientific infidels, as compared with them, ‘are still children.’ Our Newton believed, Galileo believed, Leibnitz believed, Volta believed, Galvani believed, Ampère believed, Cauchy believed, Faraday believed. These were men; these have created modern science. But what are we unbelievers? What have we done? Where are our creations?—creations, I say, not merely of modern time, but of unbelievers? ‘We are children’—I am glad to repeat it. We have invented nothing. We, in our capacity of unbelievers, are only parasitic plants which suck the sap of a gigantic tree—Christianity—and live upon it, and yet we have been so ill-advised as to call ourselves ‘improvers of natural knowledge,’ and, worse still, we have attached the name of barbarians to ‘excellent persons,’ even though we are no better than they, etc., etc.”
In the peroration he might say: “And now we come to our conclusion. The conclusion evidently is that true barbarians are not those who believe ‘on good authority,’ but those who endeavor to ‘still spiritual cravings’ with purely material objects. No, dear brethren, spiritual cravings cannot be stilled by knowledge of material things alone. Spiritual cravings imply the existence of a spiritual soul: and a spiritual being cannot be satisfied with the knowledge of matter alone, etc. etc. As for the idea of drawing ‘a new morality’ from the improved natural knowledge, I need scarcely tell you that it was only a joke. You know too well that morality transcends the physical laws, and cannot come out of matter; and you know also that a ‘new’ morality is as impossible as a new God, etc.” And here the orator
might give way to the fulness of his feelings, according to the penitent disposition of the moment.
Hitherto we have addressed ourselves to the lay preacher exclusively; we will now address a word to the man. We trust that Professor Huxley will not feel offended at our remarks and suggestions. It is true that unbelievers, whilst ready, and even accustomed, to attack all mankind, are often very sensitive when they themselves are either unmasked or criticised. But we feel persuaded that Professor Huxley will not be angry with us. Our reason is, first, that we might have smiled in secret at the lay sermon on the advisableness of improving natural knowledge by unbelief; and if we did it the honor of a lengthy refutation, we have given the orator a greater importance than he himself would have expected. On the other hand, we have been attacked; and, accordingly, we would have been cowards had we been afraid of answering. Moreover, we have treated him not only fairly, but with great indulgence. What we have said is only a small part of what we might have said. We made no remark on his proposition that “whether these ideas (which alone can still spiritual cravings) are well or ill founded, is not the question” (p. 636); and yet this assertion on account of its neutrality between truth and error, would have supplied abundant matter for criticism; but we abstained. We could have animadverted on the very phrase “natural knowledge,” which he takes as meaning the
knowledge of physical laws, and yet it is presented by him as comprehensive of all possible knowledge; whereas it is evident that natural knowledge extends far beyond physical things. We might have objected to the captious expression “blind faith,” on account of the latent assumption that faith is not prompted by reasonable motives and has no reasonable grounds. We might have pointed out the recklessness of the proposition: “There is but one kind of knowledge and but one method of acquiring it”—a proposition which, considering the general spirit of the sermon, would mean that philosophy, theology, and religion are a heap of impostures. We might have dwelt on the assertion that “verities testified by portents and wonders” are not to be admitted on this ground by the votary of science; as if portents and wonders were not facts, or as if the votary of science were obliged by his profession to blind himself to the natural evidence of supernatural facts.