236 PIONEERS Of EVOLUTION 



them to speak with authority in philosophy and reli- 

 gion.' In a letter to the present writer, wherein Huxley 

 refers to his retirement from official life, he says : 



I was so ill that I thought with Hamlet, ' the rest is 

 silence.' But my wiry constitution has unexpectedly 

 weathered the storm, and I have every reason to believe 

 that with renunciation of the devil and all his works (i.e. 

 public speaking, dining, and being dined, etc.) my faculties 

 may be unimpaired for a good spell yet. And whether 

 my lease is long or short, I mean to devote them to the 

 work I began in the paper on the ' Evolution of Theology.' 



That essay was first published in two sections in 

 the Nineteenth Century r , 1886, and was the sequel 

 to the eighth chapter of his Hume. The Romanes 

 Lecture supplemented the last chapter of that book. 

 All these are accessible enough to render superfluous 

 any abstract of their contents. But the tribute due 

 to David Hume, who may well-nigh claim place 

 among the few but fit company of Pioneers, war- 

 rants reference to his anticipation of accepted 

 theories of the origin of belief in spiritual beings in 

 his Natural History of Religion, published in 1757. 

 He says : ' There is an universal tendency among 

 mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and 

 to transfer to every object those qualities with which 

 they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they 

 are intimately conscious. . . . The unknown causes 

 which continually employ their thought, appearing 

 always in the same aspect, are all apprehended to 

 be of the same kind or species. Nor is it long 

 before we ascribe to them thought, and reason, and 

 passion, and sometimes even the limbs and figures 

 of men, in order to bring them nearer to a resem- 

 blance with ourselves.' In his address to the Sor- 



