I72 HUXLEY 



cause the " Naturall seed of Religion" as Hobbes 

 calls it, ! is the product of roots that lie too deep 

 down for discovery. They are intertwined with 

 man's psychical development; they are fed from the 

 same sources whence arise the psychical faculties of 

 animals ; and as the student of comparative mythology 

 and comparative theology must take counsel with the 

 anthropologist and folk-lorist, so must all of them 

 take counsel with the comparative psychologist and 

 the comparative physiologist. 



In such spirit, then, Huxley advanced to an exam- 

 ination of the " venerable record of ancient life, mis- 

 called a book," 2 on which clericalism rests its claims 

 and its creeds. A quarter of a century earlier there 

 had been talk about prosecuting Jowett for the heret- 

 ical article in Essays and Reviews wherein he laid 

 down what seemed the irreverent canon, " Interpret 

 the Scripture like any other book." 3 It would be 

 difficult to say in what other way the Bible could be 

 interpreted, and, since i860, the comparative method, 

 which has yielded valuable results in all departments 

 of research, has been applied unchallenged to the 

 sacred text : — 



From my present point of view [said Huxley, in 

 the opening pages of his essays on the " Evolution of 



1 Leviathan : " Of Man," ch. xii. pt. i. 



2 Coll. Essays, iv. p. 289. 3 P. 377 (1861 edition). 



