xviii INTRODUCTION 



spirited writing. They are not represented in this book, 

 however, for, as Huxley said, "few literary dishes are less 

 appetising than cold controversy." 



Although the principle of agnosticism made accep- 

 tance of orthodox religion impossible for Huxley, he 

 was not without what he considered true religion, 

 "the reverence and love for the ethical ideal, and 

 the desire to realise that ideal in life, which every 

 man ought to feel." To religion of this sort he held as 

 firmly as to his ideal of truth, with which it is perhaps 

 identical. 



In the field of morals Huxley was therefore convinced 

 that to " 'learn what is true, in order to do what is right,' 

 is the summing up of the whole duty of man, for all 

 who are unable to satisfy their mental hunger with the 

 east wind of authority." But where is moral truth to 

 be found? Not in nature any more than in religious 

 authority. Huxley found no evidence of moral and 

 benevolent government in the universe. The governing 

 principle of nature, by which he meant the "sum of the 

 'customs of mattery he regarded as "intellectual and 

 not moral." Yet he was disposed at times to find in 

 nature one moral quality, justice. "The more I know 

 intimately the lives of -other men (to say nothing of my 

 own), the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does 

 not flourish nor is the righteous punished. But for this 

 to be clear we must bear in mind . . . that the re- 

 wards of life are contingent upon obedience to the whole 

 law physical as well as moral and that moral 

 obedience will not atone for physical sin, or vice versa" 

 This is perhaps less a description of a moral quality 

 than a recognition of the operation in nature of the laws 

 of cause and effect. 



At any rate Huxley habitually regarded nature as the 

 enemy of morality and of the society in which morality 



