in THE SCIENTIFIC MIND 45 



conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before 

 fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every pre-conceived 

 notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses 

 Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to 

 learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved, at all 

 risks, to do this. Huxley. 



Huxley's attitude towards the belief in a future life 

 was at one time the cause of much bitterness against 

 him ; yet it is only another illustration of his reluctance 

 to make a positive assertion about a subject upon which 

 no evidence, or rather evidence which appealed to him, 

 was available. The survival of the soul is beyond the 

 bounds of our terrestrial experience ; and much as 

 Huxley may have wished to believe in it, he could not 

 do so without being false to his personal convictions. 

 His position was beautifully expressed in a pathetic 

 letter which he wrote to Charles Kingsley in 1860, soon 

 after the death of his first child. 



My convictions, positive and negative, on all the matters of 

 which you speak, are of long and slow growth and are firmly 

 rooted. But the great blow which fell upon me seemed to stir 

 them to their foundations, and had I lived a couple of centuries 

 earlier I could have fancied a devil scoffing at me and them 

 and asking me what profit it was to have stripped myself of the 

 hopes and consolations of the mass of mankind ? To which my 

 only reply was and is, " Oh, Devil ! truth is better than much 

 profit. ' ' I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if 

 wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one 

 after the other as the penalty, still I would not lie. Huxley. 



What matters it if a man who will let such a creed as 

 this control his life does not accept the beliefs of parti- 

 cular sects ? Whether we are Christian or Moham- 

 medan, Buddhist or idolater, there is a heaven awaiting 

 us if we are faithful to the good that is in us. Speaking 

 to Mr. John Fiske on one occasion, Mr. Alexander 

 Macmillan said : "I tell you, there is so much real 



