I am most grateful to our son Leonard Huxley for weeding out the overgrowth of my extracts, for indexing the text of the book and seeing it through the press for me. HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE, _June 29th, 1907._ APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS I There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off. II Natural knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone still spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality. III The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. IV The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification. V No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of motherwit, either in science or in practical life. VI Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting. VII In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them. VIII Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third. IX Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact, rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the "anticipation of Nature." X There are three great products of our time.... One of these is that doctrine concerning the constitution of matter which, for want of a better name, I will call "molecular"; the second is the doctrine of the conservation of energy; the third is the doctrine of evolution. XI M. Comte's philosophy, in practice, might be compendiously described as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity. XII Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing? XIII We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. XIV