88 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



striving and sufferings of our ancestors, and run 

 the risk of relapse into a state of barbarism. 



I think we may in this matter see clearly the 

 contrast between the rationalist and the scientific 

 tendencies in the remoulding of society. In the 

 French Revolution, for example, the guiding 

 principle was a regard for certain assumed human 

 rights. In order to secure those rights every- 

 thing was thrown into the melting pot. No doubt 

 the world learned a great deal of wisdom from 

 the reckless experiments of those stormy days. 

 But to what did they lead ? To Napoleon, and a 

 militarism which deluged Europe with blood, and 

 brought upon France a depression from which 

 she has not yet recovered. The custom of 

 science when it sees things going amiss, is not to 

 leap like Curtius into the opening gulf, but to 

 interrogate history and experience, to see when 

 such evils before existed, and how they were met, 

 where such evils are in our day not to be found, 

 and the reason why. This method requires 

 patience both passive and active, passive patience 

 to bear the evils until we have fair prospect of a 

 remedy, and active patience or persistence to 

 bring together all the facts, to examine theory 

 after theory and make experiment after experi- 

 ment on a small scale, until we find a way which 

 is certainly a thoroughfare. A science which is 

 at home amid the facts of geology and of past 

 history will strongly believe in the possibilities 

 of progress; but it will also be very anxious not 



