LAW; — ITS DEFINITIONS. 89 



is indicated by the irresistible tendency which we 

 observe in the language of Science to personify 

 the Forces, and the combinations of Force by which 

 all natural phenomena are produced. It is a great 

 injustice to scientific men — too often committed 

 — to suspect them of unwillingness to accept the 

 idea of a Personal Creator merely because they 

 try to keep separate the language of Science from 

 the language of Theology.* But it is curious to 



* A remarkable instance of this injustice has been lately brought 

 to light. Professor Huxley, in an article in the Fortnightly 

 Review, had used one of those vague phrases, so common with 

 scientific men, about the "unknown and the unknowable" being 

 the goal of all scientific thought, which not unnaturally suggest the 

 notion that all idea of a God is unattainable. A writer in the 

 Spectator accordingly dealt with Professor Huxley as avowing Athe- 

 ism, and was rebuked by the Professor in a letter published in the 

 Spectator of Feb. 10, 1866. Professor Huxley says, "I do not 

 know that I care very much about popular odium, so that there is 

 no great merit in saying that if I really saw fit to deny the existence 

 of a God I should certainly do so, for the sake of my own intellec- 

 tual freedom, and be the honest Atheist you are pleased to say I 

 am. As it happens, however, I cannot take this position with 

 honesty, inasmuch as it is, and always has been, a favourite tenet 

 of mine, that Atheism is as absurd, logically speaking, as Poly- 

 theism." On the subject of miracles, in the same letter, Professor 

 Huxley says, that " denying the possibility of miracles seems to me 

 quite as unjustifiable as speculative Atheism." The question of 

 miracles seems now to be admitted on all hands to be simply a ques- 

 tion of evidence. 



