Teachings of Thomas Huxley 11 



to other objects in the universe; and if he 

 thought about the matter at all it was to won- 

 der or to admire, not to search or to study into 

 the cause of the existence of things. For long 

 years the explanation of the origin of the world 

 lay deeply rooted in the soil of tradition, and 

 so completely had human thought been imbued 

 with ancestral beliefs that anything approach- 

 ing a rational inquiry was deemed the rankest 

 heresy, and was likely to be punished by a de- 

 mand for the blood of the apostate. And 

 this, too, not among the Medes or the Persians 

 or the Babylonians or the Assyrians but even 

 among the Pilgrim forefathers who first set 

 foot on Plymouth Rock in the year 1620, A. D., 

 establishing in the New World a reverence for 

 the ancient order of things that in some ways 

 has been of the most beneficial type ; but which 

 in others has bound down rational philo- 

 sophic inquiry with the strongest of fetters. 



Among advanced thinkers the Biblical inter- 

 pretation of Creation has become no longer ten- 

 able, and even the most conservative have been 

 obliged to admit its untrustworthiness. In the 

 light of all the evidence poured in from every 

 source this truth is little less than overwhelm- 

 ing in its unity however impotent it may be to 

 aid in postulating new theories. Some have 

 attempted to show that the story of Creation 

 as given in Genesis is true, but that it has been 

 wrongly interpreted, and that the six day limit 



