62 HUXLEY 



knowledge, whatever may have been the aims of 

 those who began it, has not only conferred great 

 material benefits on men, but has, at the same time, 

 effected a revolution in their conceptions of the 

 universe, and has profoundly altered their modes 

 of thinking, and their views of right and wrong. " I 

 say that natural knowledge seeking to satisfy natural 

 wants has found the ideas which alone can still 

 spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, 

 in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has been 

 driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the 

 foundations of a new morality. ... If the religion 

 of the present differs from that of the past, it is 

 because the theology of the present has become 

 more scientific than that of the past; because it 

 has not only renounced idols of wood and idols of 

 stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in 

 pieces the idols built up of books and traditions 

 and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs ; and of cherish- 

 ing the noblest and most human of man's emotions, 

 by worship ' for the most part of the silent sort ' at 

 the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable." 



The next chapter in this volume of Huxley's works 

 is entitled " Emancipation — Black and White." It 

 is really concerned not \^'ith the doctrine of natm-al 

 rights of the black man or the slave, but -^-ith that 

 very modern question — the rights of women. At 

 this time of day it is really very interesting to look 

 back to what Huxley said in the Reader in 1865, 

 and to note how far public opinion and thought have 

 travelled since that time. There are various ques- 

 tions of emanciiJation, he says, stirring the world, 

 one of the most important of which " is that which 

 daily tlu-eatens to become the irrepressible woman 



