234 Thomas Henry Huxley 



and perhaps not susceptible to, the kind of testing 

 employed in science. Around these doctrines there 

 grew, in time, a body of traditions, customs, new dog- 

 mas, and fantasies ; and the duty of belief in the first 

 was extended to cover the whole system, the central 

 jewel as well as the accretions and encrustations of 

 time. The domain of religious authority was extended 

 to the whole field of human thought and of human 

 action, and the more unreasonable the dominion be- 

 came, the more strenuously was the duty of belief 

 urged. The Protestant Reformation was one of the 

 great stages in the conflict for freedom against the 

 universal tyranny that had arisen, but the reformers 

 very naturally retained a considerable portion of the 

 bias against which they had fought. In Protestant 

 countries, in the first half of this century, the duty of 

 belief in the Protestant doctrines, traditions, philo- 

 sophy, historj', and attitude to science reigned supreme, 

 and all weapons, from legitimate argument to abusive 

 invective and social ostracism, were employed against 

 those who acted in accordance with the duty of doubt. 

 Allegations of " unsoundness " or of " free thinking " 

 became barriers to success in life, and those against 

 whom they were made became lowered in the esteem 

 of their fellows. 



At the present time, when the advance of science 

 and of civilisation has almost won the battle for free- 

 dom of thought, it is difficult to realise the strength of 

 the forces against which Huxley and manj^ others had 

 to fight. Huxlej' himself said with perfect justice : 

 " I hardly know of a great physical truth whose uni- 

 versal reception has not been preceded by an epoch in 

 which most estimable persons have maintained that the 

 phenomena investigated were directly dependent on the 



