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[Illustration: T. H. Huxley]
APHORISMS
AND
REFLECTIONS
From the Works of
T. H. HUXLEY
Selected by
HENRIETTA A. HUXLEY
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1908
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
_First Edition, 1907._
_Reprinted, 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-coloured 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 motherwit, 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
We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain
duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can
influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was
before he entered it.
XIV
The man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry,
slides from these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood
by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the
mathematician, who should mistake the _x_'s and _y_'s with which he
works his problems for real entities--and with this further
disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of
the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of
systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty
of a life.
XV
There are some men who are counted great because they represent the
actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was
Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said, "he expressed
everybody's thoughts better than anybody." But there are other men who
attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day,
and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will
be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such an one was
Descartes.
XVI
"Learn what is true, in order to do what is right," is the summing up of
the whole duty of man, for all who are unable to satisfy their mental
hunger with the east wind of authority.
XVII
When I say that Descartes consecrated doubt, you must remember that it
was that sort of doubt which Goethe has called "the active scepticism,
whose whole aim is to conquer itself"; and not that other sort which is
born of flippancy and ignorance, and whose aim is only to perpetuate
itself, as an excuse for idleness and indifference.
XVIII
What, then, is certain?... Why, the fact that the thought, the present
consciousness, exists. Our thoughts may be delusive, but they cannot be
fictitious. As thoughts, they are real and existent, and the cleverest
deceiver cannot make them otherwise.
XIX
Thought is existence. More than that, so far as we are concerned,
existence is thought, all our conceptions of existence being some kind
or other of thought.
XX
It is enough for all the practical purposes of human existence if we
find that our trust in the representations of consciousness is verified
by results; and that, by their help, we are enabled "to walk
sure-footedly in this life."
XXI
It is because the body is a machine that education is possible.
Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial
organisation upon the natural organisation of the body; so that acts,
which at first required a conscious effort, eventually became
unconscious and mechanical.
XXII
I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think
what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a
sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I
should instantly close with the offer.
XXIII
The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to
do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who
will take it of me.
XXIV
Whatever evil voices may rage, Science, secure among the powers that are
eternal, will do her work and be blessed.
XXV
There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own
mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of
real power and grasp, who have considered it from a totally different
point of view.
XXVI
The parallax of time helps us to the true position of a conception, as
the parallax of space helps us to that of a star.
XXVII
[If animals are conscious automata with souls] the soul stands related
to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, and consciousness
answers to the sound which the bell gives out when it is struck.
XXVIII
Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise
men.
XXIX
The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any
honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.
XXX
Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the
demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about
the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the
still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that
there is no God.
XXXI
That which is to be lamented, I fancy, is not that society should do its
utmost to help capacity to ascend from the lower strata to the higher,
but that it has no machinery by which to facilitate the descent of
incapacity from the higher strata to the lower.
XXXII
Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against
truth.
XXXIII
Misery is a match that never goes out.
XXXIV
Genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge,
which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not
small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes.
XXXV
Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect, are
the qualities which make a real gentleman, or lady, as distinguished
from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name.
XXXVI
The higher the state of civilisation, the more completely do the actions
of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less
possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering,
more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens.
XXXVII
I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man,
of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the
happiness of his fellow men.
XXXVIII
Education promotes peace by teaching men the realities of life and the
obligations which are involved in the very existence of society; it
promotes intellectual development, not only by training the individual
intellect, but by sifting out from the masses of ordinary or inferior
capacities, those who are competent to increase the general welfare by
occupying higher positions; and, lastly, it promotes morality and
refinement, by teaching men to discipline themselves, and by leading
them to see that the highest, as it is the only permanent, content is to
be attained, not by grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of
sense, but by continual striving towards those high peaks, where,
resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright ideal
of the highest Good--"a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night."
XXXIX
Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of religion, rarely make rapid
way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the
multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a
stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still
larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite
certain they want a great deal.
XL
Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his
brother.
XLI
There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical
politics--none in which there is more need of good pilotage and of a
single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.
XLII
The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time,
free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.
XLIII
For the welfare of society, as for that of individual men, it is surely
essential that there should be a statute of limitations in respect of
the consequences of wrong-doing.
XLIV
"Musst immer thun wie neu geboren" is the best of all maxims for the
guidance of the life of States, no less than of individuals.
XLV
The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no
political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of
the terrible monster, over-multiplication, all other riddles sink into
insignificance.
XLVI
The "Law of Nature" is not a command to do, or to refrain from doing,
anything. It contains, in reality, nothing but a statement of that which
a given being tends to do under the circumstances of its existence; and
which, in the case of a living and sensitive being, it is necessitated
to do, if it is to escape certain kinds of disability, pain, and
ultimate dissolution.
XLVII
Probably none of the political delusions which have sprung from the
"natural rights" doctrine has been more mischievous than the assertion
that all men have a natural right to freedom, and that those who
willingly submit to any restriction of this freedom, beyond the point
determined by the deductions of _a priori_ philosophers, deserve the
title of slave. But to my mind, this delusion is incomprehensible except
as the result of the error of confounding natural with moral rights.
XLVIII
The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of
it tacitly admits that he is not the exclusive possessor of himself, and
that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act,
to some extent, as his master.
XLIX
Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's
own way at all hazards.
L
Individualism, pushed to anarchy, in the family is as ill-founded
theoretically and as mischievous practically as it is in the State;
while extreme regimentation is a certain means of either destroying
self-reliance or of maddening to rebellion.
LI
A man in his development runs for a little while parallel with, though
never passing through, the form of the meanest worm, then travels for a
space beside the fish, then journeys along with the bird and the reptile
for his fellow travellers; and only at last, after a brief companionship
with the highest of the four-footed and four-handed world, rises into
the dignity of pure manhood.
LII
Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or
plant, but the very plants are at war.... The individuals of a species
are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a
chance of reaching the land.
LIII
When we know that living things are formed of the same elements as the
inorganic world, that they act and react upon it, bound by a thousand
ties of natural piety, is it probable, nay is it possible, that they,
and they alone, should have no order in their seeming disorder, no unity
in their seeming multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the
discovery of some central and sublime law of mutual connection?
LIV
The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the
more conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial
miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of
admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its
embryo.
LV
Matter and force are the two names of the one artist who fashions the
living as well as the lifeless.
LVI
There is not throughout Nature a law of wider application than this,
that a body impelled by two forces takes the direction of their
resultant.
LVII
Orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither
can it forget.
LVIII
Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the
days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their
good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters? Who shall count
the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the
effort to harmonise impossibilities--whose life has been wasted in the
attempt to force the generous new wine of Science into the old bottles
of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party?
LIX
When Astronomy was young "the morning stars sang together for joy," and
the planets were guided in their courses by celestial hands. Now, the
harmony of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation according to
the inverse squares of the distances, and the orbits of the planets are
deducible from the laws of the forces which allow a schoolboy's stone to
break a window.
LX
The lightning was the angel of the Lord; but it has pleased Providence,
in these modern times, that science should make it the humble messenger
of man, and we know that every flash that shimmers about the horizon on
a summer's evening is determined by ascertainable conditions, and that
its direction and brightness might, if our knowledge of these were great
enough, have been calculated.
LXI
Why should the souls [of philosophers] be deeply vexed? The majesty of
Fact is on their side, and the elemental forces of Nature are working
for them. Not a star comes to the meridian at its calculated time but
testifies to the justice of their methods--their beliefs are "one with
the falling rain and with the growing corn." By doubt they are
established, and open inquiry is their bosom friend.
LXII
Harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress--the web and
woof of matter and force interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken
thread, that veil which lies between us and the Infinite--that universe
which alone we know or can know; such is the picture which science draws
of the world, and in proportion as any part of that picture is in unison
with the rest, so may we feel sure that it is rightly painted.
LXIII
Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere
natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the
grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten
minutes.
LXIV
Elijah's great question, "Will you serve God or Baal? Choose ye," is
uttered audibly enough in the ears of every one of us as we come to
manhood. Let every man who tries to answer it seriously ask himself
whether he can be satisfied with the Baal of authority, and with all the
good things his worshippers are promised in this world and the next. If
he can, let him, if he be so inclined, amuse himself with such
scientific implements as authority tells him are safe and will not cut
his fingers; but let him not imagine he is, or can be, both a true son
of the Church and a loyal soldier of science.
LXV
Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth.
LXVI
If the blind acceptance of authority appears to him in its true colours,
as mere private judgment _in excelsis_, and if he have the courage to
stand alone, face to face with the abyss of the eternal and unknowable,
let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the good things
promised by "Infallibility," but even to bear the bad things which it
prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and honesty
of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of
honest men will, to him, be more endurable than a paradise full of
angelic shams.
LXVII
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as
heresies and to end as superstitions.
LXVIII
The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the
physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to
exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its
rivals.
LXIX
The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and
irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
LXX
Every belief is the product of two factors: the first is the state of
the mind to which the evidence in favour of that belief is presented;
and the second is the logical cogency of the evidence itself.
LXXI
Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
LXXII
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of
the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode
in which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact.
LXXIII
There are men (and I think Priestley was one of them) to whom the
satisfaction of throwing down a triumphant fallacy is as great as that
which attends the discovery of a new truth; who feel better satisfied
with the government of the world, when they have been helping Providence
by knocking an imposture on the head; and who care even more for freedom
of thought than for mere advance of knowledge. These men are the Carnots
who organise victory for truth, and they are, at least, as important as
the generals who visibly fight her battles in the field.
LXXIV
Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress.
Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on
ten thousand a year, has its application to nations; and it is futile to
expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and
gross.
LXXV
If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be
because there are among us men who walk in Priestley's footsteps. But
whether Priestley's lot be theirs, and a future generation, in justice
and in gratitude, set up their statues; or whether their names and fame
are blotted out from remembrance, their work will live as long as time
endures. To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been
increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehood and injustice will
be the weaker because they have lived.
LXXVI
Science is, I believe, nothing but _trained and organised common sense_,
differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw
recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far
as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a
savage wields his club.
LXXVII
The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties,
by no mental processes, other than those which are practised by every
one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective
policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a
mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct
animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.
LXXVIII
There is no side of the human mind which physiological study leaves
uncultivated. Connected by innumerable ties with abstract science,
Physiology is yet in the most intimate relation with humanity; and by
teaching us that law and order, and a definite scheme of development,
regulate even the strangest and wildest manifestations of individual
life, she prepares the student to look for a goal even amidst the
erratic wanderings of mankind, and to believe that history offers
something more than an entertaining chaos--a journal of a toilsome,
tragi-comic march nowhither.
LXXIX
I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and
evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his
own share with more courage and submission; and will, at any rate, view
with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the Divine government,
which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake,--to
be corrected by and by. On the other hand, the predominance of happiness
among living things--their lavish beauty--the secret and wonderful
harmony which pervades them all, from the highest to the lowest, are
equally striking refutations of that modern Manichean doctrine, which
exhibits the world as a slave-mill, worked with many tears, for mere
utilitarian ends.
LXXX
To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side
stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art,
nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. Teach him
something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of
those which are worth turning round. Surely our innocent pleasures are
not so abundant in this life that we can afford to despise this or any
other source of them. We should fear being banished for our neglect to
that limbo where the great Florentine tells us are those who, during
this life, "wept when they might be joyful."
LXXXI
No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the
master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
LXXXII
Compare the average artisan and the average country squire, and it may
be doubted if you will find a pin to choose between the two in point of
ignorance, class feeling, or prejudice. It is true that the ignorance is
of a different sort--that the class feeling is in favour of a different
class--and that the prejudice has a distinct savour of wrong-headedness
in each case--but it is questionable if the one is either a bit better,
or a bit worse, than the other. The old protectionist theory is the
doctrine of trades unions as applied by the squires, and the modern
trades unionism is the doctrine of the squires applied by the artisans.
Why should we be worse off under one _regime_ than under the other?
LXXXIII
The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more
or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing
something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and
complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold
ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game
of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the
phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the
laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know
that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our
cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance
for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid,
with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows
delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste,
but without remorse.
LXXXIV
Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature,
under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men
and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will
into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws.
LXXXV
To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. And
then, long before we were susceptible of any other mode of instruction,
Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought its
educational influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance with
Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross
disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past
for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man the world is as fresh
as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who
has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her patient
education of us in that great university, the universe, of which we are
all members--Nature having no Test-Acts.
LXXXVI
Those who take honours in Nature's university, who learn the laws which
govern men and things and obey them, are the really great and successful
men in this world. The great mass of mankind are the "Poll," who pick
up just enough to get through without much discredit. Those who won't
learn at all are plucked; and then you can't come up again. Nature's
pluck means extermination.
LXXXVII
Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience--incapacity meets
with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a
word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It
is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed.
LXXXVIII
All artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural
education.
LXXXIX
That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained
in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with
ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of;
whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of
equal strength and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine,
to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as
forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of
the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her
operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but
whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the
servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty,
whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others
as himself.
XC
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of
mankind, is wisdom.
XCI
Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be
clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere. If
you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating,
you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and
persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good
fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all
straight again.
XCII
No man ever understands Shakespeare until he is old, though the youngest
may admire him, the reason being that he satisfies the artistic instinct
of the youngest and harmonises with the ripest and richest experience of
the oldest.
XCIII
It is not a question whether one order of study or another should
predominate. It is a question of what topics of education you shall
select which will combine all the needful elements in such due
proportion as to give the greatest amount of food, support, and
encouragement to those faculties which enable us to appreciate truth,
and to profit by those sources of innocent happiness which are open to
us, and, at the same time, to avoid that which is bad, and coarse, and
ugly, and keep clear of the multitude of pitfalls and dangers which
beset those who break through the natural or moral laws.
XCIV
Writing is a form of drawing; therefore if you give the same attention
and trouble to drawing as you do to writing, depend upon it, there is
nobody who cannot be made to draw, more or less well.... I do not say
for one moment you would make an artistic draughtsman. Artists are not
made; they grow.... You can teach simple drawing, and you will find it
an implement of learning of extreme value. I do not think its value can
be exaggerated, because it gives you the means of training the young in
attention and accuracy, which are the two things in which all mankind
are more deficient than in any other mental quality whatever.
XCV
If a man cannot get literary culture of the highest kind out of his
Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Hobbes, and Bishop
Berkeley, to mention only a few of our illustrious writers--I say, if he
cannot get it out of those writers, he cannot get it out of anything;
and I would assuredly devote a very large portion of the time of every
English child to the careful study of the models of English writing of
such varied and wonderful kind as we possess, and, what is still more
important and still more neglected, the habit of using that language
with precision, with force, and with art.
XCVI
I fancy we are almost the only nation in the world who seem to think
that composition comes by nature. The French attend to their own
language, the Germans study theirs; but Englishmen do not seem to think
it is worth their while.
XCVII
Many of the faults and mistakes of the ancient philosophers are
traceable to the fact that they knew no language but their own, and were
often led into confusing the symbol with the thought which it embodied.
XCVIII
If the time given to education permits, add Latin and German. Latin,
because it is the key to nearly one-half of English and to all the
Romance languages; and German, because it is the key to almost all the
remainder of English, and helps you to understand a race from whom most
of us have sprung, and who have a character and a literature of a
fateful force in the history of the world, such as probably has been
allotted to those of no other people, except the Jews, the Greeks, and
ourselves.
XCIX
In an ideal University, ... the force of living example should fire the
student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men,
and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of
knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that
enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater
possession than much learning; a nobler gift than the power of
increasing knowledge; by so much greater and nobler than these, as the
moral nature of man is greater than the intellectual; for veracity is
the heart of morality.
C
Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing
alone.
CI
On the face of the matter, it is absurd to ask whether it is more
important to know the limits of one's powers; or the ends for which they
ought to be exerted; or the conditions under which they must be exerted.
One may as well inquire which of the terms of a Rule of Three sum one
ought to know in order to get a trustworthy result. Practical life is
such a sum, in which your duty multiplied into your capacity, and
divided by your circumstances, gives you the fourth term in the
proportion, which is your deserts, with great accuracy.
CII
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
CIII
Medicine was the foster-mother of Chemistry, because it has to do with
the preparation of drugs and the detection of poisons; of Botany,
because it enabled the physician to recognise medicinal herbs; of
Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, because the man who studied Human
Anatomy and Physiology for purely medical purposes was led to extend his
studies to the rest of the animal world.
CIV
A thorough study of Human Physiology is, in itself, an education broader
and more comprehensive than much that passes under that name. There is
no side of the intellect which it does not call into play, no region of
human knowledge into which either its roots, or its branches, do not
extend; like the Atlantic between the Old and the New Worlds, its waves
wash the shores of the two worlds of matter and of mind; its tributary
streams flow from both; through its waters, as yet unfurrowed by the
keel of any Columbus, lies the road, if such there be, from the one to
the other; far away from that North-west Passage of mere speculation, in
which so many brave souls have been hopelessly frozen up.
CV
You know that among the Bees, it depends on the kind of cell in which
the egg is deposited, and the quantity and quality of food which is
supplied to the grub, whether it shall turn out a busy little worker or
a big idle queen. And, in the human hive, the cells of the endowed larvae
are always tending to enlarge, and their food to improve, until we get
queens, beautiful to behold, but which gather no honey and build no
comb.
CVI
Examination, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master; and there
seems to me to be some danger of its becoming our master. I by no means
stand alone in this opinion. Experienced friends of mine do not hesitate
to say that students whose career they watch appear to them to become
deteriorated by the constant effort to pass this or that examination,
just as we hear of men's brains becoming affected by the daily necessity
of catching a train. They work to pass, not to know; and outraged
Science takes her revenge. They do pass, and they don't know.
CVII
A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
CVIII
There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite.
CIX
It is given to few to add to the store of knowledge, to strike new
springs of thought, or to shape new forms of beauty. But so sure as it
is that men live not by bread, but by ideas, so sure is it that the
future of the world lies in the hands of those who are able to carry the
interpretation of nature a step further than their predecessors.
CX
Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.
CXI
Whatever practical people may say, this world is, after all, absolutely
governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical
ideas. It is a matter of the very greatest importance that our theories
of things, and even of things that seem a long way apart from our daily
lives, should be as far as possible true, and as far as possible removed
from error.
CXII
All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
CXIII
You may read any quantity of books, and you may be almost as ignorant as
you were at starting, if you don't have, at the back of your minds, the
change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through
the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.
CXIV
The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind,
a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not
believe that it is other than a very valuable possession, however
infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is
dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
CXV
Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight
of cleverness.
CXVI
The body is a machine of the nature of an army.... Of this army each
cell is a soldier, an organ a brigade, the central nervous system
headquarters and field telegraph, the alimentary and circulatory system
the commissariat. Losses are made good by recruits born in camp, and the
life of the individual is a campaign, conducted successfully for a
number of years, but with certain defeat in the long run.
CXVII
So far as the laws of conduct are determined by the intellect, I
apprehend that they belong to science, and to that part of science which
is called morality. But the engagement of the affections in favour of
that particular kind of conduct which we call good, seems to me to be
something quite beyond mere science. And I cannot but think that it,
together with the awe and reverence, which have no kinship with base
fear, but arise whenever one tries to pierce below the surface of
things, whether they be material or spiritual, constitutes all that has
any unchangeable reality in religion.
CXVIII
Just as I think it would be a mistake to confound the science, morality,
with the affection, religion; so do I conceive it to be a most
lamentable and mischievous error, that the science, theology, is so
confounded in the minds of many--indeed, I might say, of the majority of
men.
CXIX
My belief is, that no human being, and no society composed of human
beings, ever did, or ever will, come to much, unless their conduct was
governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.
CXX
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make
yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether
you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned;
and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last
lesson that he learns thoroughly.
CXXI
The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is, as
much knowledge as they can assimilate and organise into a basis for
action; give them more and it may become injurious. One knows people who
are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning as others are from
over-fulness of meat and drink.
CXXII
There is no mode of exercising the faculty of observation and the
faculty of accurate reproduction of that which is observed, no
discipline which so readily tests error in these matters, as drawing
properly taught. And by that I do not mean artistic drawing; I mean
figuring natural objects. I do not wish to exaggerate, but I declare to
you that, in my judgment, the child who has been taught to make an
accurate elevation, plan and section of a pint pot has had an admirable
training in accuracy of eye and hand.
CXXIII
Accuracy is the foundation of everything else.
CXXIV
Anybody who knows his business in science can make anything subservient
to that purpose. You know it was said of Dean Swift that he could write
an admirable poem upon a broomstick, and the man who has a real
knowledge of science can make the commonest object in the world
subservient to an introduction to the principles and greater truths of
natural knowledge.
CXXV
My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get
right.
CXXVI
I remember somewhere reading of an interview between the poet Southey
and a good Quaker. Southey was a man of marvellous powers of work. He
had a habit of dividing his time into little parts each of which was
filled up, and he told the Quaker what he did in this hour and that, and
so on through the day until far into the night. The Quaker listened, and
at the close said, "Well, but, friend Southey, when dost thee think?"
CXXVII
The knowledge which is absolutely requisite in dealing with young
children is the knowledge you possess, as you would know your own
business, and which you can just turn about as if you were explaining to
a boy a matter of everyday life.
CXXVIII
You may develop the intellectual side of people as far as you like, and
you may confer upon them all the skill that training and instruction can
give; but, if there is not, underneath all that outside form and
superficial polish, the firm fibre of healthy manhood and earnest desire
to do well, your labour is absolutely in vain.
CXXIX
Our sole chance of succeeding in a competition, which must constantly
become more and more severe, is that our people shall not only have the
knowledge and the skill which are required, but that they shall have the
will and the energy and the honesty, without which neither knowledge nor
skill can be of any permanent avail.
CXXX
It is a great many years since, at the outset of my career, I had to
think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to
the conclusion that the chief good, for me, was freedom to learn, think,
and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction,
and have availed myself of the "rara temporum felicitas ubi sentire quae
velis, et quae sentias dicere licet," which is now enjoyable, to the best
of my ability; and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I
should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results
of the line of action I have adopted.
CXXXI
The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of
probability.
CXXXII
It is a "law of nature," verifiable by everyday experience, that our
already formed convictions, our strong desires, our intent occupation
with particular ideas, modify our mental operations to a most marvellous
extent, and produce enduring changes in the direction and in the
intensity of our intellectual and moral activities.
CXXXIII
Men can intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as with alcohol
or with bang, and produce, by dint of intense thinking, mental
conditions hardly distinguishable from monomania.
CXXXIV
Demoniac possession is mythical; but the faculty of being possessed,
more or less completely, by an idea is probably the fundamental
condition of what is called genius, whether it show itself in the saint,
the artist, or the man of science. One calls it faith, another calls it
inspiration, a third calls it insight; but the "intending of the mind,"
to borrow Newton's well-known phrase, the concentration of all the rays
of intellectual energy on some one point, until it glows and colours the
whole cast of thought with its peculiar light, is common to all.
CXXXV
Whatever happens, science may bide her time in patience and in
confidence.
CXXXVI
The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those
who do nothing.
CXXXVII
The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their
readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge
these inevitable lapses.
CXXXVIII
Quite apart from deliberate and conscious fraud (which is a rarer thing
than is often supposed), people whose mythopoeic faculty is once stirred
are capable of saying the thing that is not, and of acting as they
should not, to an extent which is hardly imaginable by persons who are
not so easily affected by the contagion of blind faith. There is no
falsity so gross that honest men and, still more, virtuous women,
anxious to promote a good cause, will not lend themselves to it without
any clear consciousness of the moral bearings of what they are doing.
CXXXIX
This modern reproduction of the ancient prophet, with his "Thus saith
the Lord," "This is the work of the Lord," steeped in supernaturalism
and glorying in blind faith, is the mental antipodes of the philosopher,
founded in naturalism and a fanatic for evidence, to whom these
affirmations inevitably suggest the previous question: "How do you know
that the Lord saith it?" "How do you know that the Lord doeth it?" and
who is compelled to demand that rational ground for belief, without
which, to the man of science, assent is merely an immoral pretence.
And it is this rational ground of belief which the writers of the
Gospels, no less than Paul, and Eginhard, and Fox, so little dream of
offering that they would regard the demand for it as a kind of
blasphemy.
CXL
To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs
would be about as reasonable as to object to live one's life, with due
thought for the morrow, because no man can be sure he will be alive an
hour hence.
CXLI
I verily believe that the great good which has been effected in the
world by Christianity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent
doctrine on which all the Churches have insisted, that honest disbelief
in their more or less astonishing creeds is a moral offence, indeed a
sin of the deepest dye, deserving and involving the same future
retribution as murder and robbery. If we could only see, in one view,
the torrents of hypocrisy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the
violations of every obligation of humanity, which have flowed from this
source along the course of the history of Christian nations, our worst
imaginations of Hell would pale beside the vision.
CXLII
Agnostioism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which
lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle
is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer
who said, "Try all things, hold fast by that which is good"; it is the
foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that
every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him;
it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of
modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of
the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without
regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the
intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not
demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith,
which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look
the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.
CXLIII
The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest
blunders and commit the fewest sins.
CXLIV
That one should rejoice in the good man, forgive the bad man, and pity
and help all men to the best of one's ability, is surely indisputable.
It is the glory of Judaism and of Christianity to have proclaimed this
truth, through all their aberrations. But the worship of a God who needs
forgiveness and help, and deserves pity every hour of his existence, is
no better than that of any other voluntarily selected fetish. The
Emperor Julian's project was hopeful in comparison with the prospects of
the Comtist Anthropolatry.
CXLV