TH'E MAN 55 



widest knowledge and most varied experience were to 

 be used in applying the doctrine of evolution to the 

 demolition of beliefs which, in the degree that they 

 are untrue, must be mischievous. But he was not 

 merely critical and destructive : he razed only that he 

 or others might raise. In the Prologue to his Essays 

 on Controverted Questions he says that — 



The present incarnation of the spirit of the Renas- 

 cence differs from its predecessor in the eighteenth 

 century, in that it builds up, as well as pulls down. 

 That of which it has laid the foundation, of which it 

 is already raising the superstructure, is the doctrine of 

 Evolution, ... a doctrine which is no specula- 

 tion, but a generalisation of certain facts which may 

 be observed by any one who will take the necessary 

 trouble. 1 



Hence the inclusion therein of all that is of deepest 

 import to man. Hence the inevitable, however tardy, 

 supersession of theology as a body of speculative 

 dogma by a religion having correspondence with the 

 constitution and needs of human nature ; and the 

 gradual displacement of ethics resting on ancient and 

 shifting codes and conventions by ethics founded on 

 what, after ages of sore testing, man has proven to be 

 best for the welfare of society, and, therefore, as a 

 social being, for himself. 



Huxley's health, however, remained so indifferent 

 that he needed stimulus to work. It came in unusual 



1 Coll. Essays, v. pp. 41, 42. 



