November 29, 1900J 



NATURE 



117 



No one, indeed, I think, who has kept and studied pets, even 

 if they be only ants and bees, can bring himself to regard them 

 as mere machines. 



The foundation of the Metaphysical Society led to the inven- 

 tion of the term " Agnostic." 



" When I reached intellectual maturity," Huxley tells us, "and 

 began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist or a 

 pantheist, a materialist or an idealist, a Christian or a freethinker, 

 I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was 

 the answer ; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had 

 neither art nor part with any of these denominations except the 

 last. The one thing in which most of these good people were 

 agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They 

 were quite sure they had attained a certain " gnosis " — had, 

 more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence ; while 

 I vvas quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction 

 that the problem was insoluble . . . ." 



These considerations pressed forcibly on him when he 

 joined the Metaphysical Society. 



I' Every variety," he says, " of philosophical and theological 

 opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire 

 openness ; most of my colleagues were " ists " of one sort or 

 another ; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the 

 man without a rag of a habit to cover himself with, could not 

 fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset 

 the historical fox when, after leaving the trap, in which his tail 

 remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated com- 

 panions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to 

 be the appropriate title of agnostic. It came into my head as 

 suggestively antithetic to the gnostic of Church history, who 

 professed to know so much about the very things of which I was 

 ignorant ; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at 

 our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail like the other foxes." 



Huxley denied that he was disposed to rank himself either as 

 a fatalist, a materialist, or an atheist. " Not among fatalists, 

 for I take the conception of necessity to have a logical, and not 

 a physical, foundation ; not among materialists, for I am utterly 

 incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no 

 mind in which to picture that existence ; not among atheists, 

 for the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which 

 seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers." 



The late Duke of Argyll, in his interesting work on "The 

 Philosophy of Belief," makes a very curious attack on Huxley's 

 consistency. He observes that scientific writers use '* forms of 

 expression as well as individual words, all of which are literally 

 charged with teleological meaning. Men even who would 

 rather avoid such language if they could, but who are intent on 

 giving the most complete and expressive description they can of 

 the natural facts before them, find it wholly impossible to 

 discharge this duty by any other means. Let us take as an 

 example the work of describing organic structures in the science 

 of biology. The standard treatise of Huxley on the ' Elements 

 of Comparative Anatomy,' affords a remarkable example of 

 this necessity, and of its results. . . . 



" How unreasonable it is to set aside, or to explain away, the 

 full meaning of such words as 'apparatuses' and 'plans,' comes 

 out strongly when we analyse the preconceived assumptions 

 which are supposed to be incompatible with the admission of 

 it. . . . 



"To continue the use of words because we are conscious that 

 we cannot do without them, and then to regret or neglect any 

 of their implications, is the highest crime we can commit against 

 the only faculties which enable us to grasp the realities of the 

 world." Is not this, however, to fall into the error of some Greek 

 philosophers, and to regard language, not only as a means of com- 

 munication, but as an instrument of research. We all speak of 

 sunrise and sunset, but it is no proof that the sun goes round 

 the earth. The Duke himself says elsewhere : — 



"We speak of time as if it were an active agent in doing 

 this, that and the other. Yet we are quite conscious, when we 

 choose to think of it, that when we speak of time in this sense, 

 we are really thinking and speaking, not of time itself, but of 

 the various physical forces which operate slowly and continuously 

 in, or during, time. Apart from these forces, time does nothing." 



This is, it seems to me, a complete reply to his own attack on 

 Huxley's supposed inconsistency. 



Theologians often seem to speak as if it were possible to believe 

 something which one cannot undeirstand, as if the belief were a 

 matter of will, that there was some merit in believing what you can- 

 not prove,and that if a statement of fact is put before you,you must 



NO. 1622. VOL. 63I 



either believe or disbelieve it. Huxley, on the other hand, like 

 niost men of science, demanded clear proof, or what seemed to 

 him clear proof, before he accepted any conclusion ; he would, 

 I believe, have admitted that you might accept a statement which 

 you could not explain, but would have maintained that it was 

 impossible to believe what you did not understand ; that in such 

 a case the word "belief" was an unfortunate misnomer ; that it 

 was wrong, and not right, to profess to believe anything for which 

 you knew that there was no sufficient evidence, and that if it is 

 proved you cannot help believing it ; that as regards many matters 

 the true position was not one either of belief or of disbelief, but 

 of suspense. 



In science we know that though the edifice of fact is enormous, 

 the fundamental problems are still beyond our grasp, and we 

 must be content to suspend our judgment, to adopt, in fact, the 

 Scotch verdict of " not proven," so unfortunately ignored in our 

 law as in our theology. 



Faith is a matter more of deeds, not of words, as St. Paul 

 shows in the Epistle to the Hebrews. If you do not 

 act on what you profess to believe, you do not really and 

 in truth believe it. May I give an instance ? The Fijians 

 really believed in a future life, according to their creed, 

 you rose in the next world exactly as you died here — young if 

 you were young, old if you were old, strong if you were 

 strong, deaf if you were deaf, and so on. Consequently 

 it was important to die in the full possession of one's faculties, 

 before the muscles had begun to lose their strength, the eye to 

 grow dim, or the ear to ;wax hard of hearing. On this they 

 acted. Every one had himself killed in the prime of life ; and 

 Captain Wilkes mentions that in one large town there vvas not 

 a single person over forty years of age. 



That I call faith. That is a real belief in a future life. 



Huxley's views are indicated in the three touching lines by 

 Mrs. Huxley, which are inscribed on his tombstone : — 



Be not afraid, ye wailing hearts that weep, 

 For still He giveth His beloved sleep, 

 And if an endless sleep He wills — so best. 



That may be called unbelief, or a suspension of judgment. 

 Huxley doubted. 



But disbelief is that of those who, no matter what they say, 

 act as if there was no future life, as if this world was every- 

 thing, and in the words of Baxter in " The Saints' Everlasting 

 Rest," profess to believe in Heaven, and yet act as if it was to 

 be " tolerated indeed rather than the flames of Hell, but not to 

 be desired before the felicity of Earth." 



Huxley was, indeed, by no means without definite beliefs. 

 " I am," he said, "no optimist, but I have the firmest belief 

 that the Divine Government (if we may use such a phrase to 

 express the sum of the ' customs of matter ') is wholly just. The 

 more I know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing 

 of my own), the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does 

 not flourish nor is the righteous punished." 



One of the great problems of the future is to clear away the 

 cobwebs which the early and mediaeval ecclesiastics, unavoid- 

 ably ignorant of science, and with ideas of the world now known 

 to be fundamentally erroneous, have spun round the teachings of 

 Christ ; and in this Huxley rendered good service. For instance, 

 all over the world in early days lunatics were supposed to be 

 possessed by evil spirits. That was the universal belief of the 

 Jews, as of other nations, 2000 years ago, and one of Huxley's 

 most remarkable controversies was with Mr. Gladstone and 

 Dr. Wace with reference to the "man possessed with devils," 

 which, we are told, were cast out and permitted to enter into a 

 herd of swine. Some people thought that these three dis* 

 tinguished men might have occupied their time better than, as 

 was said at the time, " in fighting over the Gaderene swine." But 

 as Huxley observed : — 



" The real issue is whether the men of the nineteenth century 

 are to adopt the demonology of the men of the first century as 

 divinely-revealed truth, or to reject it as degrading falsity." 



And as the first duty of religion is to form the highest con- 

 ception possible to the human mind of the Divine Nature, 

 Huxley naturally considered that when a Prime Minister and a 

 Doctor of Divinity propound views showing so much ignorance 

 of medical science, and so low a view of the Deity, it was 

 time that a protest was made in the name, not only of science, 

 but of religion. 



Theologians themselves, indeed, admit the mystery of exist- 

 ence. "The wonderful world," says Canon Liddon, "in which 

 we now pass this stage of our existence, whether the higher world 



