210 HUXLEY 



belief that " the spiritual world comprises devils, who, 

 under certain circumstances, may enter men and be 

 transferred from them to four-footed beasts," 1 

 Huxley could but admire the courage, whatever might 

 be the opinion he held of the intelligence, of his 

 opponent. " Dr. Wace," he said, " has raised for 

 himself a monument cere perennius" Huxley was 

 charitably silent as to the appropriate inscription to be 

 put on it. 



In the attack upon agnosticism which led to the 

 controversy, Dr. Wace accused the agnostics of thus 

 dubbing themselves to avoid the " unpleasant signifi- 

 cance " attaching to the term " infidel," which, like 

 " freethinker," strange as it may seem in this 

 twentieth century, still appears to convey reproach. 

 And he added, in minatory tartness, that " it is, and 

 ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to 

 say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ." 2 

 Whatever vague threat the word "unpleasant' 

 might convey, whether hints of the secular arm, or 

 social ostracism, or eternal punishment, any possible 

 penalty was not likely to weigh with Huxley. He 

 retorted that the proposition 



that " it ought to be " unpleasant for any man to say 

 anything which he sincerely and, after due deliberation, 

 believes, is, to my mind, of the most profoundly 



1 Coll. Essays, v. p. 415. 3 Coll. Essays, v. p. 210. 



