264 PIONEERS OF evolution: 



involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cher- 

 ishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of 

 the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary 

 of science holds his firmest convictions, not because 

 the men he most venerates holds them; not because 

 their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but 

 because his experience teaches him that whenever ■ 

 he chooses to bring these convictions into contact 

 with their primary source. Nature — whenever he 

 thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment 

 and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The 

 man of science has learned to believe in justification, 

 not by faith, but by verification." Therefore he 

 nursed no illusions; would not say that he knew 

 when he did not or could not know, and bidding us 

 follow the evidence whithersoever it leads us, re- 

 mains the surest-footed guide of our time. Such 

 leadership is his, since he has gone on " from strength 

 to strength." The changes in the attitude of man 

 toward momentous questions which new evidence 

 and the zeit-geist have efifected, have been approaches 

 to the position-fUken by Huxley since he first caught 

 the public ear. His deep religious feeling kept him 

 in sympathetic touch with his fellows. Ever present 

 to him was " that consciousness of the limitation of 

 man, that sense of an open secret which he cannot 

 penetrate, in which lies the essence of all religion." 

 In one of his replies to a prominent exponent of 

 the Comtian philosophy, that " incongruous mixture 

 of bad science with eviscerated papistry," as he calls 



