206 HUXLEY 



baneful shape is book infallibility. For sacerdotal 

 corporations and schools of philosophy are able, under 

 due compulsion of opinion, to retreat from positions 

 that have become untenable ; while the dead hand of 

 a book sets and stiffens, amidst texts and formulae, 

 until it becomes a mere petrifaction, fit only for the 

 function of stumbling-block which it so admirably 

 performs. Wherever bibliolatry has prevailed, bigotry 

 and cruelty have accompanied it. It lies at the root 

 of the deep-seated, sometimes disguised, but newer 

 absent, antagonism of all the varieties of ecclesiasti- 

 cism to the freedom of thought and to the spirit of 

 scientific investigation. For those who look upon 

 ignorance as one of the chief sources of evil, and hold 

 veracity, not merely in act, but in thought, to be the 

 one condition of true progress, whether moral or in- 

 tellectual, it is clear that the Biblical idol must go the 

 way of all other idols. Of infallibility in all shapes, 

 lay or clerical, it is needful to iterate with more than 

 Catonic pertinacity, Delenda est} 



In the controversy over the Gadarene story, the 

 authenticity of which was defended by Dr. Wace and 

 Mr. Gladstone, Huxley raised the question whether 

 the ever-accumulating experience of mankind concern- 

 ing the non-intrusion of the supernatural in the se- 

 quence of phenomena was to be regarded as of no 

 account as against the story of demon-possessed pigs. 

 For history shows that all advance in knowledge has 

 caused recession of belief in miracle, and that the 

 farther back inquiry is pushed the more active is that 

 belief. And the argument that miracles ceased at a 



1 Coll. Essays, iv. p. IO. 



