Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Agnosticism; Miracles; Religion and science
It is needless to extend further the present excursus on the origin
and history of modern pseudo-science. Under such high patronage as it
has enjoyed, it has grown and flourished until, nowadays, it is
becoming somewhat rampant. It has its weekly "Ephemerides," in which
every new pseudo-scientific mare's-nest is hailed and belauded with
the unconscious unfairness of ignorance; and an army of "reconcilers,"
enlisted in its service, whose business seems to be to mix the black
of dogma and the white of science into the neutral tint of what they
call liberal theology.
I remember that, not long after the publication of the "Vestiges," a
shrewd and sarcastic countryman of the author defined it as "cauld
kail made het again." A cynic might find amusement in the reflection
that, at the present time, the principles and the methods of the
much-vilified Vestigiarian are being "made het again"; and are not
only "echoed by the dome of St. Paul's," but thundered from the castle
of Inverary. But my turn of mind is not cynical, and I can but regret
the waste of time and energy bestowed on the endeavour to deal with
the most difficult problems of science, by those who have neither
undergone the discipline, nor possess the information, which are
indispensable to the successful issue of such an enterprise.
I have already had occasion to remark that the Duke of Argyll's views
of the conduct of controversy are different from mine; and this
much-to-be lamented discrepancy becomes yet more accentuated when the
Duke reaches biological topics. Anything that was good enough for Sir
Charles Lyell, in his department of study, is certainly good enough
for me in mine; and I by no means demur to being pedagogically
instructed about a variety of matters with which it has been the
business of my life to try to acquaint myself. But the Duke of Argyll
is not content with favouring me with his opinions about my own
business; he also answers for mine; and, at that point, really the
worm must turn. I am told that "no one knows better than Professor
Huxley" a variety of things which I really do not know; and I am said
to be a disciple of that "Positive Philosophy" which I have, over and
over again, publicly repudiated in language which is certainly not
lacking in intelligibility whatever may be its other defects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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