92 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV 



same thing as to oifer scientific proof, refers to an 

 article in the Church Quarterly for October called 

 "Truthfulness in Science and Religion," evoked 

 by Huxley's Nineteenth Century article on " Science 

 and the Bishops." 



Nov. 27, 1888. 



Dear Lady Welbt — Many thanks for the article in 

 the Church Quarterly, which I return herewith. I am 

 not disposed to bestow any particular attention upon it ; 

 as the writer, though evidently a fair-minded man, appears 

 to me to be entangled in a hopeless intellectual muddle, 

 and one which has no novelty. Christian beliefs profess 

 to be based upon historical facts. If there was no such 

 person as Jesus of Nazareth, and if His biography given 

 in the Gospels is a fiction, Christianity vanishes. 



Now the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of a 

 matter of history is just as much a question of pure 

 science as the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of a 

 matter of geology, and the value of evidence in the two 

 cases must be tested in the same way. If any one tells 

 me that the evidence of the existence of man in the 

 miocene epoch is as good as that upon which I frequently 

 act every day of my life, I reply that this is quite true, 

 but that it is no sort of reason for believing in the 

 existence of miocene man. 



Surely no one but a born fool can fail to be aware that 

 we constantly, and in very grave conjunctions, are obliged 

 to act upon extremely bad evidence, and that very often 

 we suffer aU sorts of penalties in consequence. And 

 surely one must be something worse than a born fool to 

 pretend that such decision under the pressure of the 

 enigmas of life ought to have the smallest influence in 

 those judgments which are made with due and suflBicient 

 deliberation. You will see that these considerations go 

 to the root of the whole matter. I regret that I cannot 



