44 Selections from Huxley 



our minds by the improvement of natural knowledge. 

 Men have acquired the ideas of the practically infinite 

 extent of the universe and of its practical eternity; they 

 are familiar with the conception that our earth is but an 



5 infinitesimal fragment of that part of the universe which 

 can be seen ; and that, nevertheless, its duration is, as com- 

 pared with our standards of time, infinite. They have 

 further acquired the idea that man is but one of innumer- 

 able forms of life now existing in the globe, and that 



10 the present existences are but the last of an immeasurable 

 series of predecessors. Moreover, every step they have 

 made in natural knowledge has tended to extend and rivet 

 in their minds the conception of a definite order of the 

 universe which is embodied in what are called, by an 



15 unhappy metaphor, the laws of Nature and to narrow 

 the range and loosen the force of men's belief in spon- 

 taneity, or in changes other than such as arise out of 

 that definite order itself. 



Whether these ideas are well or ill founded is not the 



20 question. No one can deny that they exist, and have 

 been the inevitable outgrowth of the improvement of natu- 

 ral knowledge. And if so, it cannot be doubted that 

 they are changing the form of men's most cherished and 

 most important convictions. 



25 And as regards the second point the extent to which 

 the improvement of natural knowledge has remodeled 

 and altered what may be termed the intellectual ethics of 

 men, what are among the moral convictions most fondly 

 held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? 



30 They are the convictions that authority is the soundest 

 basis of belief; that merit attaches to a readiness to 

 believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and 

 skepticism a sin; that when good authority has pro- 



