2 So Thomas Henry Huxley 



"A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former 

 age — I mean Francis Bacon — said that truth came out of error 

 much more rapidly than out of confusion. There is a wonder- 

 ful truth in that saying. Next to being right in this world, the 

 best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because 

 you will come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about be- 

 tween right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come 

 out nowhere ; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and 

 persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the ex- 

 treme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and 

 that sets you all straight again. So I will not trouble myself as 

 to whether I may be right or wrong in what I am about to say, 

 but at any rate I hope to be clear and definite ; and then you 

 will be able to judge for yourselves whether, iu following out 

 the train of thought I have to introduce, you knock your heads 

 against facts or not." 



The particular suggestions to which these remarks 

 were the characteristic introduction related to definite 

 problems of education, that is to sa}', to questions upon 

 which some action was urgent. It was in all cases 

 of life, in science or affairs, that Huxley was resoltite 

 for clear ideas and definite courses of conduct. As a 

 matter of fact, no one ever took greater care to satisfy 

 himself as best he could as to what was right and what 

 was wrong ; but where action rather than reflection 

 was needed, then his principle was to act, and to know 

 definitely and clearly why you acted and for what j'oti 

 acted. In matters of opinion, on the other hand, he 

 was all for not coming to a definite opinion when the 

 facts obtainable did not justif}^ such an opinion. In 

 thought, agnosticism, the refusal to accept any ideas 

 or principles except on sufficient evidence ; in action, 

 po.sitivism, to act promptly in definite and known 

 directions for definite and known objects : these were 

 his principles. 



