Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley Part 21

2. The Church that did make its way and coalesced with the State in the 4th century had no more to do with the Church founded by Jesus than Ultra-montanism has with Quakerism. It is Alexandrian Judaism and Neoplatonistic mystagogy, and as much of the old idolatry and demonology as could be got in under new or old names.

3. Paul has said that the Law was schoolmaster to Christ with more truth than he knew. Throughout the Empire the synagogues had their cloud of Gentile hangers-on--those who "feared G.o.d"--and who were fully prepared to accept a Christianity, which was merely an expurgated Judaism and the belief in Jesus as the Messiah.

4. The Christian "Sodalitia" were not merely religious bodies, but friendly societies, burial societies, and guilds. They hung together for all purposes--the mob hated them as it now hates the Jews in Eastern Europe, because they were more frugal, more industrious, and lived better lives than their neighbours, while they stuck together like Scotchmen.

If these things are so--and I appeal to your knowledge of history that they are so--what has the success of Christianity to do with the truth or falsehood of the story of Jesus?

CCCLIV

It is Baur's great merit to have seen that the key to the problem of Christianity lies in the Epistle to the Galatians. No doubt he and his followers rather overdid the thing, but that is always the way with those who take up a new idea.

CCCLV

If a man cannot do brain work without stimulants of any kind, he had better turn to hand work--it is an indication on Nature's part that she did not mean him to be a head worker.

CCCLVI

It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

CCCLVII

Even the best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express my opinion that, if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of Want, with its concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the ma.s.ses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation.

What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?

CCCLVIII

No induction, however broad its basis, can confer certainty--in the strict sense of the word. The experience of the whole human race through innumerable years has shown that stones unsupported fall to the ground, but that does not make it certain that any day next week unsupported stones will not move the other way. All that it does justify is the very strong expectation, which hitherto has been invariably verified, that they will do just the contrary.

Only one absolute certainty is possible to man--namely, that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.

All other so-called certainties are beliefs of greater or less intensity.

CCCLIX

Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture--and very much to our credit.

CCCLX

There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections), nothing that satisfies quiet reflection--except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light, to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts. That was the lesson I learned from Carlyle's books when I was a boy, and it has stuck by me all my life.

You may make more of failing to get money, and of succeeding in getting abuse--until such time in your life (if you are teachable) you have ceased to care much about either.

CCCLXI

The doctrine of the conservation of energy tells neither one way nor the other [on the doctrine of immortality]. Energy is the cause of movement of body, i.e. things having ma.s.s. States of consciousness have no ma.s.s, even if they can be conceded to be movable. Therefore even if they are caused by molecular movements, they would not in any way affect the store of energy.

Physical causation need not be the only kind of causation, and when Cabanis said that thought was a function of the brain, in the same way as bile secretion is a _function_ of the liver, he blundered philosophically. Bile is a product of the transformation of material energy. But in the mathematical sense of the word "function" thought may be a function of the brain. That is to say, it may arise only when certain physical particles take on a certain order.

By way of a coa.r.s.e a.n.a.logy, consider a parallel-sided piece of gla.s.s through which light pa.s.ses. It forms no picture. Shape it so as to be a bi-convex, and a picture appears in its focus.

Is not the formation of the picture a "function" of the piece of gla.s.s thus shaped?

So, from your own point of view, suppose a mind-stuff--[--Greek--]--a noumenal cosmic light such as is shadowed in the fourth gospel. The brain of a dog will convert it into one set of phenomenal pictures, and the brain of a man into another. But in both cases the result is the consequence of the way in which the respective brains perform their "function."

CCCLXII

The actions we call sinful are as much the consequence of the order of nature as those we call virtuous. They are part and parcel of the struggle for existence through which all living things have pa.s.sed, and they have become sins because man alone seeks a higher life in voluntary a.s.sociation.

Therefore the instrument has never been marred; on the contrary, we are trying to get music out of harps, sacbuts, and psalteries, which never were in tune and seemingly never will be.

CCCLXIII

I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, this and this I have learned; thus and thus have I learned it: go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, conclusions, the value of which you ought to have tested for yourself.

CCCLXIV

There is endless backwoodsman's work yet to be done. If "those also serve who only stand and wait," still more do those who sweep and cleanse; and if any man elect to give his strength to the weeder's and scavenger's occupation, I remain of the opinion that his service should be counted acceptable, and that no one has a right to ask more of him than faithful performance of the duties he has undertaken. I venture to count it an improbable suggestion that any such person--a man, let us say, who has well-nigh reached his threescore years and ten, and has graduated in all the faculties of human relations.h.i.+ps; who has taken his share in all the deep joys and deeper anxieties which cling about them; who has felt the burden of young; lives entrusted to his care, and has stood alone with his dead before the abyss of the eternal--has never had a thought beyond negative criticism. It seems to me incredible that such an one can have done his day's work, always with a light heart, with no sense of responsibility, no terror of that which may appear when the fact.i.tious veil of Isis--the thick web of fiction man has woven round nature--is stripped off.

CCCLXV

If the doctrine of a Providence is to be taken as the expression, in a way "to be understanded of the people," of the total exclusion of chance from a place even in the most insignificant corner of Nature, if it means the strong conviction that the cosmic process is rational, and the faith that, throughout all duration, unbroken order has reigned in the universe, I not only accept it, but I am disposed to think it the most important of all truths. As it is of more consequence for a citizen to know the law than to be personally acquainted with the features of those who will surely carry it into effect, so this very positive doctrine of Providence, in the sense defined, seems to me far more important than all the theorems of speculative theology. If, further, the doctrine is held to imply that, in some indefinitely remote past aeon, the cosmic process was set going by some ent.i.ty possessed of intelligence and foresight, similar to our own in kind, however superior in degree, if, consequently, it is held that every event, not merely in our planetary speck, but in untold millions of other worlds, was foreknown before these worlds were, scientific thought, so far as I know anything about it, has nothing to say about that hypothesis. It is, in fact, an anthropomorphic rendering of the doctrine of evolution.

It may be so, but the evidence accessible to us is, to my mind, wholly insufficient to warrant either a positive or a negative conclusion.

CCCLXVI

It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews--Micah, Isaiah, and the rest--who took no count whatever of what might or what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.

CCCLXVII

Belief in majorities is not rooted in my breast, and if all the world were against me the fact might warn me to revise and criticise my opinions, but would not in itself supply a ghost of a reason for forsaking them. For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at.

CCCLXVIII