Teachings of Thomas Huxley 59 



except veracity of thought and action; and the 

 resolute facing of the world as it is when the 

 garment of make-believe by which pious hands 

 have hidden its uglier features is stripped off." 

 Not a very full creed, one might say, yet it 

 embodies a whole world of ideas, a lifetime of 

 sacrifice for and devotion to duty, an eternity 

 of impossibilities in solving the unknowable. 



FAITH WITHOUT WORKS. 



There are those among men whose chief 

 pleasures lie in the fragile and foundationless 

 edifices of the imagination. Who indulge in 

 stuporous thought by day, and are beset by 

 ominous and wonderful dreams by night con- 

 cerning what they might have been or may 

 yet become if conditions were only different. 

 They neglect the tangible and real of the ever- 

 fleeting present for some fetish of the irre- 

 vocable past or uncertain future. They fail 

 to see that the two things needful for success, 

 and even these sometimes fail, are wholesome, 

 deliberate thought concerning the things nearest 

 at hand, followed up by spontaneous, concen- 

 trated action. Thought and action are the in- 

 separable elements which form the keystone of 

 the arch through which men pass to success. 

 If the thought or the action or both be of an 

 improper nature or are ill-timed the result is 



