



Produced by David Widger






APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS

FROM THE WORKS OF T. H. HUXLEY


Selected By Henrietta A. Huxley


1908



PREFACE

Although a man by his works and personality shall have made his mark
upon the age he lives in, yet when he has passed away and his influence
with him, the next generation, and still more the succeeding one, will
know little of this work, of his ideals and of the goal he strove to
win, although for the student his scientific work may always live.

Thomas Henry Huxley may come to be remembered by the public merely as
the man who held that we were descended from the ape, or as the apostle
of Darwinism, or as the man who worsted Bishop Wilberforce at Oxford.

To prevent such limitation, and to afford more intimate and valuable
reasons for remembrance of this man of science and lover of his
fellow-men, I have gathered together passages, on widely differing
themes, from the nine volumes of his "Essays," from his "Scientific
Memoirs" and his "Letters," to be published in a small volume, complete
in itself and of a size that can be carried in the pocket.

Some of the passages were picked out for their philosophy, some for
their moral guidances, some for their scientific exposition of natural
facts, or for their insight into social questions; others for their
charms of imagination or genial humour, and many--not the least--for
their pure beauty of lucid English writing.

In so much wealth of material it was difficult to restrict the
gathering.

My great wish is that this small book, by the easy method of its
contents, may attract the attention of those persons who are yet
unacquainted with my husband's writings; of the men and women of
leisure, who, although they may have heard of the "Essays," do not care
to work their way through the nine volumes; of others who would like to
read them, but who have either no time to do so or coin wherewith to buy
them. More especially do I hope that these selections may attract
the attention of the working man, whose cause my husband so ardently
espoused, and to whom he was the first to reveal, by his free lectures,
the loveliness of Nature, the many rainbow- rays of science, and
to show forth to his listeners how all these glorious rays unite in the
one pure white light of holy truth.

I am most grateful to our son Leonard Huxley for weeding out the
overgrowth of my extracts, for indexing the text of the book and seeing
it through the press for me.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, June 29th, 1907.




APHORISMS and REFLECTIONS


I

There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity
of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is
when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its
uglier features is stripped off.


II

Natural knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas
which can alone still spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge,
in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to
discover those of conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality.


III

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge
authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind
faith the one unpardonable sin.


IV

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by
faith, but by verification.


V

No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make
up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.


VI

Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their
powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.


VII

In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human
activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is
only in one or two of them.


VIII

Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets
with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a
third.


IX

Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware
that those who refuse to go beyond fact, rarely get as far as fact; and
anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every
great step therein has been made by the "anticipation of Nature."


X

There are three great products of our time.... One of these is that
doctrine concerning the constitution of matter which, for want of a
better name, I will call "molecular"; the second is the doctrine of the
conservation of energy; the third is the doctrine of evolution.


XI

M. Comte's philosophy, in practice, might be compendiously described as
Catholicism _minus_ Christianity.


XII

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty
shadow of my own mind's throwing?


XIII

