“The whole analogy of natural operations furnish so complete and crushing
an argument against the intervention of any but what are called secondary
causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe, that, in
view of the intimate relations of man and the rest of the living world,
and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can
see no reason for doubting that all are co-ordinate terms of nature’s
great progression, from formless to formed, from the inorganic to the
organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will.” _Huxley’s
Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature_, London, 1864, p. 107.
A writer in the _Spectator_ charged Professor Huxley with Atheism. The
professor replies, in the number of that paper for February 10, 1866,
thus: “I do not know that I care very much about popular odium, so there
is no great merit in saying that if I really saw fit to deny the existence
of a God I should certainly do so for the sake of my own intellectual
freedom, and be the honest Atheist you are pleased to say I am. As it
happens, however, I can not take this position with honesty, inasmuch as
it is, and always has been, a favorite tenet that Atheism is as absurd,
logically speaking, as Polytheism.” In the same sheet, he says: “The
denying the possibility of miracles seems to me quite as unjustifiable as
Atheism.” Is Huxley in conflict with Huxley?