SCIENCE AND MORALS: A REPLY. 493 



And the question may well seem reverent when we think how men 

 talk of the Absolute and Eternal as if he were altogether such a one 

 as themselves, as if he were the man in the next room. Let us cele- 

 brate that higher ignorance, that docta ignorantia, as the mystics 

 speak, which is the last word alike of physics, of philosophy, of re- 

 ligion : " Deveni in altitudinem maris et silui." — Fortnightly Review. 



SCIENCE AND MORALS : A EEPLT. 



By Professor T. H. HUXLEY. 



IN spite of long and, perhaps, not unjustifiable hesitation, I begin to 

 think that there must be something in telepathy. For evidence, 

 which I may not disregard, is furnished by the last number of the 

 " Fortnightly Review," that, among the hitherto undiscovered endow- 

 ments of the human species, there may be a power even more won- 

 derful than the mystic faculty by which the esoterically Buddhistic 

 sage " upon the farthest mountain in Cathay " reads the inmost 

 thoughts of a dweller within the homely circuit of the London postal 

 district. Great, indeed, is the insight of such a seer ; but how much 

 greater is his who combines the feat of reading, not merely the 

 thoughts of which the thinker is aware, but those of which he knows 

 nothing ; who sees him unconsciously drawing the conclusions which 

 he repudiates, and supporting the doctrines which he detests ! To re- 

 flect upon the confusion which the working of such a power as this 

 may introduce into one's ideas of personality and responsibility is 

 perilous — madness lies that way. But truth is truth, and I am almost 

 fain to believe in this magical visibility of the non-existent when the 

 only alternative is the supposition that the writer of the article on 

 "Materialism and Morality" in the current number of the "Fort- 

 nightly Review," in spite of his manifest ability and honesty, has 

 pledged himself, so far as I am concerned, to what, if I may trust my 

 own knowledge of my own thoughts, must be called a multitude of 

 errors of the first magnitude. 



I so much admire Mr. Lilly's outspokenness, I am so completely 

 satisfied of the uprightness of his intentions, that it is repugnant to 

 me to quarrel with anything he may say ; and I sympathize so warmly 

 with his manly scorn of the vileness of much that passes under the 

 name of literature in these times, that I would willingly be silent 

 under his by no means unkindly exposition of his theory of my own 

 tenets, if I thought that such personal abnegation would serve the 

 interest of the cause we both have at heart. But I can not think so. 

 My creed may be an ill-favored thing, but it is mine own, as Touch- 

 stone says of his lady-love, and I have so high an opinion of the solid 

 virtues of the object of my affections that I can not calmly see her 



