THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



have agreed that evidence, which logically justifies, 

 is dependent on the fallibility of human reason. It 

 would seem, then, that the Agnostic in his definition 

 of Agnosticism departs from his unbiased critical at- 

 titude and assu??ies positive knowledge just as is the 

 habit in all other schools of philosophy. 



Huxley, himself, is as emphatic in his belief in the 

 certainty of natural law, as he is in his scorn of the 

 preacher who holds that he knows God. He says: 

 "Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Ne- 

 cessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's 

 throwing'?"^ In the same volume, he states very em- 

 phatically that what he is considering is the superi- 

 ority of science over metaphysics. He thus defines, on 

 page 60, the method of science: "All physical science 

 starts from certain postulates" ; and on the next page : 

 "Physical science therefore rests on verified or un- 

 contradicted hypotheses." Now physical science may 

 rest on one of these bases, but it obviously cannot on 

 both, as even the most unlearned knows that a pos- 

 tulate and an hypothesis are very different things. 

 Let us pass by this objection, and glance at merely 

 one or two Facts and Laws of physics. 



As a Fact or postulate, let us take the simple one, 

 that the straight line is the shortest distance between 

 two points. This is generally assumed to be a neces- 

 sary postulate, which cannot be proved logically or 



''Method and Results, p. 161. 



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