Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley Part 23

CCCLx.x.xI

There is such a thing as a science of social life, for which, if the term had not been so helplessly degraded, Politics is the proper name.

Men are beings of a certain const.i.tution, who, under certain conditions, will as surely tend to act in certain ways as stones will tend to fall if you leave them, unsupported. The laws of their nature are as invariable as the laws of gravitation, only the applications to particular cases offer worse problems than the case of the three bodies.

The Political Economists have gone the right way to work--the way that the physical philosopher follows in all complex affairs--by tracing out the effects of one great cause of human action, the desire of wealth, supposing it to be unchecked.

If they, or other people, have forgotten that there are other potent causes of action which may interfere with this, it is no fault of scientific method but only their own stupidity.

Hydrostatics is not a "dismal science," because water does not always seek the lowest level--e.g. from a bottle turned upside down, if there is a cork in the neck!

There is much need that somebody should do for what is vaguely called "Ethics" just what the Political Economists have done. Settle the question of what will be done under the unchecked action of certain motives, and leave the problem of "ought" for subsequent consideration.

For, whatever they ought to do, it is quite certain the majority of men will act as if the attainment of certain positive and negative pleasures were the end of action.

We want a science of "Eubiotics" to tell us exactly what will happen if human beings are exclusively actuated by the desire of well-being in the ordinary sense. Of course the utilitarians have laid the foundations of such a science, with the result that the nicknamer of genius called this branch of science "pig philosophy," making just the same blunder as when ne called political economy "dismal science."

"Moderate well-being" may be no more the worthiest end of life than wealth. But if it is the best to be had in this queer world--it may be worth trying for.

CCCLx.x.xII

Those who wish to attain to some clear and definite solution of the great problems which Mr. Darwin was the first person to set before us in later times must base themselves upon the facts which are stated in his great work, and, still more, must pursue their inquiries by the methods of which he was so brilliant an exemplar throughout the whole of his life. You must have his sagacity, his untiring search after the knowledge of fact, his readiness always to give up a preconceived opinion to that which was demonstrably true, before you can hope to carry his doctrines to their ultimate issue; and whether the particular form in which he has put them before us may be such as is finally destined to survive or not is more, I venture to think, than anybody is capable at this present moment of saying. But this one thing is perfectly certain--that it is only by pursuing his methods, by that wonderful single-mindedness, devotion to truth, readiness to sacrifice all things for the advance of definite knowledge, that we can hope to come any nearer than we are at present to the truths which he struggled to attain.

CCCLx.x.xIII

Dean Stanley told me he thought being made a bishop destroyed a man's moral courage. I am inclined to think that the practice of the methods of political leaders destroys their intellect for all serious purposes.

CCCLx.x.xIV

It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy.

CCCLx.x.xV

Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse-nervousness, a.s.s-stubbornness and camel-malice---with an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset, and when they can do exactly as they please, they are very hard to drive.