i86o.] MR. HUXLEY'S LECTURE. jj 



avail is his honest speech, if ignorance is the assessor of the 

 judge, and prejudice the foreman of the jury ? I hardly know 

 of a great physical truth, whose universal reception has not 

 been preceded by an epoch in which most estimable per- 

 sons have maintained that the phenomena investigated were 

 directly dependent on the Divine Will, and that the attempt 

 to investigate them was not only futile, but blasphemous. 

 And there is a wcnderful tenacity of life about this sort of 

 opposition to physical science. Crushed and maimed in every 

 battle, it yet seems never to be slain ; and after a hundred 

 defeats it is at this day as rampant, though happily not so 

 mischievous, as in the time of Galileo. 



"But to those whose life is spent, to use Newton's noble 

 words, in picking up here a pebble and there a pebble on the 

 shores of the great ocean of truth — who watch, day by day, 

 the slow but sure advance of that mighty tide, bearing on its 

 bosom the thousand treasures wherewith man ennobles and 

 beautifies his life — it would be laughable, if it were not so 

 sad, to see the little Canutes of the hour enthroned in solemn 

 state, bidding that great wave to stay, and threatening to 

 check its beneficent progress. The wave rises and they fly ; • 

 but, unlike the brave old Dane, they learn no lesson of hu- { 

 mility : the throne is pitched at what seems a safe distance, 

 and the folly is repeated. 



" Surely it is the duty of the public to discourage anything 

 of this kind, to discredit these foolish meddlers who think 

 they do the Almighty a service by preventing a thorough study j 

 of His works. 



" The Origin of Species is not the first, and it will not be 

 the last, of the great questions born of science, which will 

 demand settlement from this generation. The general mind 1 

 is seething strangely, and to those who watch the signs of the 

 times, it seems plain that this nineteenth century will see revo- 

 lutions of thought and practice as great as those which the 

 sixteenth witnessed Through what trials and sore contests 

 the civilised world will have to pass in the course of this new 

 reformation, who can tell ? 



