214 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on 

 the brink of destruction. 



" Assuredly, if I believed that any of the schemes hitherto 

 proposed for bringing about social amelioration were likely to 

 attain their end, I should think what remains to me of life well 

 spent in furthering it. But my interest in these questions did not 

 begin the day before yesterday ; and, whether right or wrong, it 

 is no hasty conclusion of mine that we have small chance of 

 doing rightly in this matter (or indeed in any other) unless we 

 think rightly. Further, that we shall never think rightly in 

 politics until we have cleared our minds of delusions, and more 

 especially of the philosophical delusions which, as I have en- 

 deavoured to show, have infested political thought for centuries. 

 My main purpose has been to contribute my mite towards this 

 essential preliminary operation. Ground must be cleared and 

 levelled before a building can be properly commenced; the 

 labour of the navvy is as necessary as that of the architect, how- 

 ever much less honoured ; and it has been my humble endeavour 

 to grub up those old stumps of the a priori which stand in the 

 way of the very foundations of a sane political philosophy. To 

 those who think that questions of the kind have merely an 

 academic interest, let me suggest once more that a century ago 

 Robespierre and St. Just proved that the way of answering them 

 may have extremely practical consequences." 



A sermon published by Canon Liddon upholding the 

 authority of such portions of the Old Testament as are 

 quoted by Christ in the New, led to the writing of an 

 article, " The Lights of the Church and the Light of 

 Science," for the July number of the Nineteenth Century 

 (Coll. Essays, iv, p. 2oi). The essay agrees with the 

 conclusion that there is a vital relation between the New 

 and Old Testaments : — 



" I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a 

 moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall 

 with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures." 



There is no reason why one particular group of 

 historical writings should be exempt from the methods 



