82 NATURAL SCIENCE. August. 



apprehension. We do not dispute that Huxley Avas a man of 

 unusual and commanding ability, who, in whatsoever environment he 

 had chanced to live, would have been conspicuous among his fellows. 

 But a considerable part of his culture arose from a necessary conse- 

 quence of his scientific pursuits. Most scientific men, like most 

 educated people, have an acquaintance with Latin and Greek. But 

 it is also necessary that they should make themselves familiar with 

 French and German. There are very few who do not in addition 

 acquire a working knowledge of Italian : a large number can read 

 Russian and a Scandinavian language in addition. We venture 

 to think that among the educated classes generally, among parsons, 

 journalists, lawyers, bankers, and even men of letters, there are very 

 few possessed of this ordinary equipment of scientific men. Although 

 the languages are acquired as a professional necessity, often as a 

 distasteful task, ther<e are few who confine their reading to foreign 

 scientific memoirs. Speaking of our own acquaintances among men 

 living in London occupied in one branch of science, we know one 

 who has amused himself by translating into English verse German 

 and Norwegian poetry ; another Russian and French ; another who 

 is an authority upon Spanish dramatic literature ; yet another whose 

 daily companion is Machiavelli. And if it came to a contest in Con- 

 tinental light literature, we could make up a scientific eleven in whom 

 we should have every confidence. 



Huxley and Agnosticism. 



To a large section of the public, Huxley was most conspicuous 

 as what it thought a militant scientific infidel, who had invented 

 for himself the euphemistic appellation *' agnostic." We cannot 

 enter into religious controversy here ; but one or two things may be 

 worth pointing out. Huxley's rehgious views had no direct con- 

 nection with his acceptance of Darwinism. He himself states that 

 before 1859 he had abandoned belief in the Christian traditions ; and 

 he also insisted that there was no logical difficulty in the "recon- 

 ciliation " of Christian theology with an evolutionary view of creation. 

 With so rigid a theologian as the late Canon Aubrey Moore and with 

 Paley himself, he held that the argument from design lost nothing of 

 its logical force, although the organic world had come into existence 

 slowly as a result of variation, inheritance, and selection. It was 

 only the literal acceptance of Genesis as an inspired account of 

 actual events that was overthrown by evolution. 



Huxley's agnosticism was the lineal descendant of Descartes' 

 philosophy. Descartes in 1619, as Huxley recalls in his preface to 

 " Hume," made the famous resolution to " take nothing for truth 

 without clear knowledge that it is such." This was Huxley's 

 attitude to religious dogma, as indeed to every other dogma, 

 scientific, political, or philosophical. It led him to decide against 



