KESULT. 353 



be rationally accomplished at present, not in any religious 

 reference pro, and still less, as I honestly believe, in any 

 religious reference contra, but only in an absolutely abstract 

 inquest, the determination of which, the bringing of which 

 to an ultimate result and to truth, shall depend on the 

 application of no principles but those of thought as thought, 

 witli an ear, if open to science on the one side, yet not 

 practically deaf to philosophy on the other. 1 



Now, religion apart, when we turn to Mr. Huxley in 

 that aspect which has Darwinianism in regard only as 

 it is in itself, only as it shows itself to thought, then, 

 plainly, it is no prone disciple that we have before us. 

 No ; Mr. Huxley stands sturdily on his own legs with 

 respect to infertility as a determining character of species, 

 maugre all the Gartners and Kolreuters Mr. Darwin 

 throws at him. The theory of Mr. Darwin shall be only 

 a "working hypothesis" to him; and he will be " indiffer- 

 ent" whether it prove "final" or not. In fact, there are, 

 as he is free to acknowledge, multitudes of phenomena 

 in organic nature which no " generalisations " have yet 

 reached. Of that multitude we may conjecture sex to be 

 one. Mr. Darwin, for his part, can welcome the original 

 hermaphrodite that gets cut in twain into a Deucalion on 

 the one side and a Pyirha on the other. But perhaps 

 Mr. Huxley does not see quite as easily as Mr. Dunviu, 

 that any such section in any way sunders the knot to 

 satisfaction, either forwards or backwards. The simple 

 fact of fertilisation, fecundation, may prove puzzling, too, 

 and the old problem, which is first, the hen or the 



1 Kind, in Ins Origen against Celsug, writing fairly on the 

 Pagan, but equally fairly on the Christian, has misled HHii-h 

 essayists, as aufgeJdart, to take the side of the Pagan only. It n>n- 

 cerns philosophy that he concludes thus: "The last wonl in 

 explanation of the productions of nature, it is for philosophy to 

 speak." 



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