226 HUXLEY 



generation has the advantage of being better provided 

 with the means of freeing itself from the tyranny of 

 certain sham solutions. 1 



What Renan says of Marcus Aurelius applies to 

 Huxley : " he resolutely severed moral beauty from all 

 definite theology ; he did not permit duty to depend 

 on any metaphysical opinions concerning a First 

 Cause." Hence his opposition to the theory of 

 morals as innate, and as of supernatural origin. 

 Every man, it is held by the intuitive school, is born 

 with the faculty of discerning right from wrong, 

 while, superfluous as this would seem, the declaration 

 of what actions are right and what actions are wrong 

 is to be found in divinely given codes, of which that 

 of the Ten Words or Commandments is cited as an 

 example. Hence springs the well-nigh universal be- 

 lief in the interdependence of morals and dogma; the 

 belief that to err in the one is to err in the other. 

 Hence, also, the historical accuracy of the narrative 

 being assumed, the belief that man's power of choice 

 as a free agent between good and evil was first exer- 

 cised in Eden. 2 Less momentous, according to cur- 



1 Huxley's chapter in Darwin's Life and Letters, ii. p. 203 ; and 

 cf. ii. p. 302. 



2 The essence of that which is improperly called the freewill 

 doctrine is that occasionally, at any rate, human volition is self- 

 caused, that is to say, not caused at all ; for to cause oneself one 

 must have anteceded oneself — which is, to say the least of it, diffi- 

 cult to imagine. — Coll. Essays, ix. p. 142. 



