350 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XVII 



Is this basis of ignorance broad enough for you ? If 

 you, theologian, can find as firm footing as I, man of 

 science, do on this foundation of minus nought there 

 will be nought to fear for our ever diverging. 



For you see I am quite as ready to admit your doctrine 

 that souls secrete bodies as I am the opposite one that 

 bodies secrete souls simply because I deny the possibility 

 of obtaining any evidence as to the truth and falsehood 

 of either hypothesis. My fundamental axiom of specu- 

 lative philosophy is that materialism and spiritualism are 

 opposite poles of the same absurdity the absurdity of 

 imagining that we know anything about either spirit or 

 matter. 



Cabanis and Berkeley (I speak of them simply as types 

 of schools) are both asses, the only difference being that 

 one is a black donkey and the other a white one. 



This universe is, I conceive, like to a great game 

 being played out, and we poor mortals are allowed to 

 take a hand. By great good fortune the wiser among us 

 have made out some few of the rules of the game, as at 

 present played. We call them " Laws of Nature," and 

 honour them because we find that if we obey them we 

 win something for our pains. The cards are our theories 

 and hypotheses, the tricks our experimental verifications. 

 But what sane man would endeavour to solve this 

 problem : given the rules of a game and the winnings, 

 to find whether the cards are made of pasteboard or gold- 

 leaf 1 Yet the problem of the metaphysicians is to my 

 mind no saner. 



If you tell me that an Ape differs from a Man because 

 the latter has a soul and the ape has not, I can only say 

 it may be so ; but I should uncommonly like to know 

 how [you know] either that the ape has not one or that 

 the man has. 



And until you satisfy me as to the soundness of your 

 method of investigation, I must adhere to what seems to 

 my mind a simpler form of notation i.e. to suppose that 



