An unexpected conclusion this, and widely different, I confess, from that to which I was myself looking forward at the outset of the discussion; yet, at the same time, one of which there is the best possible proof in the impossibility of conceiving its contrary. It is besides a conclusion to which not only ought Descartes in consistency to have come, but at which both Locke and Berkeley, though advancing from opposite points of the compass, did very nearly arrive; nay, which the latter did almost touch, and must apparently have grasped, had not his hands been already full of other things. It is, moreover, one from which I do not apprehend that Professor Huxley himself will seriously dissent. Indeed, I almost hope that he may object chiefly to its having been moved by me as an amendment on his original motion, and that he may be disposed to claim it for himself as a portion of genuine Huxleyism. If so, I shall readily recognise the claim so far as to admit that things very similar to many of those said by me above had already been said by Professor Huxley; though, in justice to myself, I must add that their complete opposites had likewise been said by him. But the office which I here proposed to myself was mainly that of an eclectic, who, going over a field which another husbandman has tilled, separates the wheat from the tares, and binds up the former into shapely and easily portable sheaves; and no more satisfactory assurance can be given of my having been usefully employed in such subordinate capacity than that Professor Huxley, who, amongst all his numerous admirers, has not one sincerer than myself, should welcome me as a coadjutor, instead of repelling me as an antagonist. FOOTNOTES: [32] Archimede, pour tirer le globe terrestre de sa place et le transporter en un autre lieu, ne demandait rien qu'un point qui fut ferme et immobile: ainsi j'aurai droit de concevoir de hautes esperances si je suis assez heureux pour trouver seulement une chose qui soit certaine et indubitable.--Descartes, _Meditation Deuxieme_. [33] Lay Sermons, xiv. 'On Descartes' Discourse;' also an article by Professor Huxley, on 'Berkeley and the Metaphysics of Sensation,' in 'Macmillan's Magazine' for June, 1871. [34] Article on 'Berkeley and the Metaphysics of Sensation,' in 'Macmillan's Magazine' for 1871, pp. 152 et seq. [35] The quotations, of which those in the text are abridgments, will be found in 'Lay Sermons,' xiv. pp. 364-7. CHAPTER V. _RECENT PHASES OF SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM._ 'Wonder is the basis of worship. That progress of science which is to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute mensuration and numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdroeckh, much as he otherwise venerates those two latter processes.'--_Sartor Resartus._ I.