38 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



arm themselves with arguments drawn from 

 natural knowledge, but the real fight which they 

 were fighting was, in his opinion, one against the 

 validity of natural knowledge itself when in con- 

 flict with the authority of the Church. 



To this conflict Huxley girded himself with all 

 his might on the side of natural knowledge. To 

 understand his attitude it must be remembered 

 how strong, as I have already said, was his con- 

 viction that natural knowledge and natural know- 

 ledge alone is to be trusted as the ultimate guide 

 of man in the conduct of life. The efficacy of 

 the guidance must be measured by the fulness of 

 the knowledge; and Huxley's knowledge was 

 great enough to make him see how imperfect was 

 natural knowledge in its present stage when 

 called upon to rule the conduct of even physical 

 life, and how infinitely more imperfect when 

 appealed to as a guide of the conduct of moral, 

 social life. The welfare of mankind was, in his 

 eyes, indissolubly bound up with the advance, the 

 steady, nay, the rapid advance of natural know- 

 ledge. Any hindrance to that advance was, to 

 his mind, a wrong to mankind. What hindrance 

 could be more hurtful than the contention that 

 natural knowledge was not master of its own 

 domain, but must bow its head and keep silence 

 when even in its own field it came into conflict 

 with the master of another land? The call to 

 strive for the doing away of that hindrance rang 

 loud in Huxley's ears. 



