364 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix 



debarred from freely following out scientific 

 methods to their legitimate conclusions, whatever 

 those conclusions may be. If I may borrow a 

 phrase paraded at the Church Congress, I think it 

 " ought to be unpleasant " for any man of science 

 to find himself in the position of such a teacher. 



Human nature is not altered by seating it in a 

 professorial chair, even of theology. I have very 

 little doubt that if, in the year 1859, the tenure 

 of my office had depended upon my adherence to 

 the doctrines of Cuvier, the objections to them set 

 forth in the " Origin of Species " would have had 

 a halo of gravity about them that, being free to 

 teach what I pleased, I failed to discover. And, 

 in making that statement, it does not appear to 

 me that I am confessing that I should have been 

 debarred by " selfish interests " from making 

 candid inquiry, or that I should have been biassed 

 by " sordid motives." I hope that even such a 

 fragment of moral sense as may remain in an 

 ecclesiastical "infidel" might have got me through 

 the difficulty ; but it would be unworthy to deny, 

 or disguise, the fact that a very serious difficulty 

 must have been created for me by the nature of 

 my tenure. And let it be observed that the 

 temptation, in my case, would have been far 

 slighter than in that of a professor of theology ; 

 whatever biological doctrine I had repudiated, 

 nobody I cared for would have thought the worse 

 of me for so doing. No scientific journals would 



