Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And WorkMitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Science
Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work
Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895
sources of knowledge--the facts of Nature, and the thoughts of
those wise men who for generations past have been her best
interpreters."
In the campaign for absolute freedom of thought, for the duty of not
believing anything except on sufficient evidence, Huxley was
frequently met by an argument of superficial strength, and which no
doubt was in the minds of many of his clerical opponents. In the minds
of a majority of people, it was said, and particularly of slightly
educated people, the reasons for right conduct and the distinctions
between right and wrong are firmly associated with the Bible and with
religion. If you allow doubts as to the absolute veracity of the
Bible, or as to the supernatural origin of religion to reach such
persons, you run a grave risk that they will reflect the uncertainty
on the canons of morality. In taking from them what you believe to be
false, inevitably you will unsettle their ideas on moral questions
although you might be in full agreement as to these moral questions.
Huxley refused to accept the asserted association between morality and
particular metaphysical or religious doctrines.
"Many ingenious persons now appear to consider that the
incompatibility of pantheism, of materialism, and of any doubt
about the immortality of the soul, with religion and morality is
to be held as an axiomatic truth. I confess that I have a certain
difficulty in accepting this dogma. For the Stoics were
notoriously materialists and pantheists of the most extreme
character; and while no strict Stoic believed in the eternal
duration of the individual soul, some even denied its persistence
after death. Yet it is equally certain, that, of all gentile
philosophies, Stoicism exhibits the highest ethical development,
is animated by the most religious spirit, and has exerted the
profoundest influence upon the moral and religious development
not merely of the best men among the Romans, but among the
moderns down to our own day."
He held the view now generally taken by students of the history of
man, that standards of conduct and religious beliefs arose in separate
ways and developed independently, and that it was only comparatively
recently that "religion took morality under its protection." But he
met the argument in a still more direct fashion by rejecting entirely
the possibility or advisability of founding any system of ethics upon
a false basis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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