Aphorisms and Reflections from the works of T. H. HuxleyHuxley, Thomas Henry
Philosophy
Aphorisms and Reflections from the works of T. H. Huxley
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
The child who is impelled to draw as soon as it can hold a pencil; the
Mozart who breaks out into music as early; the boy Bidder who worked out
the most complicated sums without learning arithmetic; the boy Pascal
who evolved Euclid out of his own consciousness: all these may be said
to have been impelled by instinct, as much as are the beaver and the
bee. And the man of genius is distinct in kind from the man of
cleverness, by reason of the working within him of strong innate
tendencies--which cultivation may improve, but which it can no more
create than horticulture can make thistles bear figs. The analogy
between a musical instrument and the mind holds good here also. Art and
industry may get much music, of a sort, out of a penny whistle; but,
when all is done, it has no chance against an organ. The innate musical
potentialities of the two are infinitely different.
CLVI
It is notorious that, to the unthinking mass of mankind, nine-tenths of
the facts of life do not suggest the relation of cause and effect; and
they practically deny the existence of any such relation by attributing
them to chance. Few gamblers but would stare if they were told that the
falling of a die on a particular face is as much the effect of a
definite cause as the fact of its falling; it is a proverb that "the
wind bloweth where it listeth"; and even thoughtful men usually receive
with surprise the suggestion, that the form of the crest of every wave
that breaks, wind-driven, on the sea-shore, and the direction of every
particle of foam that flies before the gale, are the exact effects of
definite causes; and, as such, must be capable of being determined,
deductively, from the laws of motion and the properties of air and
water. So again, there are large numbers of highly intelligent persons
who rather pride themselves on their fixed belief that our volitions
have no cause; or that the will causes itself, which is either the same
thing, or a contradiction in terms.
CLVII
To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot
conceive the contrary; and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary
of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its
truth.
CLVIII
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