Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley Part 18

I cannot conceive of my personality as a thing apart from the phenomena of my life. When I try to form such a conception I discover that, as Coleridge would have said, I only hypostatize a word, and it alters nothing if, with Fichte, I suppose the universe to be nothing but a manifestation of my personality. I am neither more nor less eternal than I was before.

CCXCIX

I do not know whether the animals persist after they disappear or not. I do not even know whether the infinite difference between us and them may not be compensated by _their_ persistence and _my_ cessation after apparent death, just as the humble bulb of an annual fives, whilst the glorious flowers it has put forth die away.

CCC

My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

CCCI

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of G.o.d. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow numbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

CCCII

There are, however, other arguments commonly brought forward in favour of the immortality of man, which are to my mind not only delusive but mischievous. The one is the notion that the moral government of the world is imperfect without a system of future rewards and punishments.

The other is: that such a system is indispensable to practical morality.

I believe that both these dogmas are very mischievous lies.

With respect to the first, I am no optimist, but I have the firmest belief that the Divine Government (if we may use such a phrase to express the sum of the "customs of matter") is wholly just The more I know intimately of 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 what almost all forget, that the rewards 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_.

CCCIII

The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has the balance of his operations paid over to him at the end of every minute of his existence.

Life cannot exist without a certain conformity to the surrounding universe--that conformity involves a certain amount of happiness in excess of pain. In short, as we live we are paid for living.

CCCIV

It is to be recollected in view of the apparent discrepancy between men's acts and their rewards that Nature is juster than we. She takes into account what a man brings with him into the world, which human justice cannot do. If I, born a bloodthirsty and savage brute, inheriting these qualities from others, kill you, my fellow-men will very justly hang me, but I shall not be visited with the horrible remorse which would be my real punishment if, my nature being higher, I had done the same thing.

CCCV

The absolute justice of the system of things is as clear to me as any scientific fact The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth to the sun, and more so--for experimental proof of the fact is within reach of us all--nay, is before us all in our own lives, if we had but the eyes to see it.

CCCVI

Not only do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this life leads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.

CCCVII

If the expectation of h.e.l.l hereafter can keep me from evil-doing, surely _a fortiori_ the certainty of h.e.l.l now will do so? If a man could be firmly impressed with the belief that stealing damaged him as much as swallowing a.r.s.enic would do (and it does), would not the dissuasive force of that belief be greater than that of any based on mere future expectations?

CCCVIII

As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, "If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and n.o.blest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in b.e.s.t.i.a.lity? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.

CCCIX

He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly, and force of character to do it; which of us dare ask for a higher summary of his life than that? For such a man there can be no fear in facing the great unknown, his life has been one long experience of the substantial justice of the laws by which this world is governed, and he will calmly trust to them still as he lays his head down for his long sleep.

CCCX

Whether astronomy and geology can or cannot be made to agree with the statements as to the matters of fact laid down in Genesis--whether the Gospels are historically true or not--are matters of comparatively small moment in the face of the impa.s.sable gulf between the anthropomorphism (however refined) of theology and the pa.s.sionless impersonality of the unknown and unknowable which science shows everywhere underlying the thin veil of phenomena.

CCCXI

I am too much a believer in Butler and in the great principle of the "a.n.a.logy" that "there is no absurdity in theology so great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity of Nature" (it is not commonly stated in this way), to have any difficulties about miracles. I have never had the least sympathy with the _a priori_ reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school.

CCCXII

This universe is, I conceive, like to a great game being played out, and we poor mortals are allowed to take a hand. By great good fortune the wiser among us have made out some few of the rules of the game, as at present played. We call them "Laws of Nature," and honour them because we find that if we obey them we win something for our pains. The cards are our theories and hypotheses, the tricks our experimental verifications. But what sane man would endeavour to solve this problem: given the rules of a game and the winnings, to find whether the cards are made of pasteboard or gold-leaf? Yet the problem of the metaphysicians is to my mind no saner.

CCCXIII

I have not the smallest sentimental sympathy with the negro; don't believe in him at all, in short. But it is clear to me that slavery means, for the white man, bad political economy; bad social morality; bad internal political organisation, and a bad influence upon free labour and freedom all over the world.

CCCXIV

At the present time the important question for England is not the duration of her coal, but the due comprehension of the truths of science, and the labours of her scientific men.

CCCXV

It is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.

CCCXVI

A good book is comparable to a piece of meat, and fools are as flies who swarm to it, each for the purpose of depositing and hatching his own particular maggot of an idea.