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Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews

Chapter 45: FOOTNOTES:
By Thomas Henry Huxley
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Essays, Letters & SpeechesScience - Biology

About This Book

This volume gathers public lectures, critical reviews, and popular essays that advocate improving natural knowledge, discuss scientific and liberal education, and argue for rigorous observation and reasoning in biological and geological inquiry. It presents a plain account of the physical basis of life and addresses the concept of protoplasm while cautioning against crude materialism; offers responses to positivist and mathematical critiques; argues for geological reform and persistent types in the fossil record; includes an early, vigorous critique of the theory of evolution by natural selection; and reflects on scientific method through engagement with Cartesian ideas and contemporary social topics such as emancipation and access to learning.

"Quest' è colei, ch'è tanto posta in croce
Pur da color, che le dovrian dar lode
Dandole biasmo a torto e mala voce.
Ma ella s' è beata, e ciò non ode:
Con l' altre prime creature lieta
Volve sua spera, e beata si gode:"[78]

so, whatever evil voices may rage, Science, secure among the powers that are eternal, will do her work and be blessed.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] I forget who it was said of him: "Il a plus que personne l'esprit que tout le monde a."

[69] "Discours de la Méthode pour bien conduire sa Raison et chercher la Vérité dans les Sciences."

[70] "Eine thätige Skepsis ist die, welche unablässig bemüht ist sich selbst zu überwinden, und durch geregelte Erfahrung zu einer Art von bedingtrer Zuverlässigkeit zu gelangen."—Maximen und Reflexionen, 7 Abtheilung.

[71] "Au milieu de toutes ses erreurs, il ne faut pas méconnaître une grande idée, qui consiste à avoir tenté pour la première fois de ramener tous les phénomènes naturels à n'être qu'un simple dévelloppement des lois de la mécanique," is the weighty judgment of Biot, cited by Bouillier (Histoire de la Philosophie Cartésienne, t. i. p. 196).

[72] "Traité de l'Homme" (Cousin's Edition), p. 347.

[73] Descartes pretends that he does not apply his views to the human body, but only to an imaginary machine which, if it could be constructed, would do all that the human body does; throwing a sop to Cerberus unworthily; and uselessly, because Cerberus was by no means stupid enough to swallow it.

[74] "Traité de l'Homme," p. 427.

[75] Compare "Traité des Passions," Art. XIII. and XVI.

[76] Bouillier, into whose excellent "History of the Cartesian Philosophy" I had not looked when this passage was written, says, very justly, that Descartes "a merité le titre de pére de la physique, aussi bien que celui de pére de la métaphysique moderne" (t. i. p. 197). See also Kuno Fischer's "Geschichte der neuen Philosophie," Bd. i.; and the very remarkable work of Lange, "Geschichte des Materialismus."—A good translation of the latter would be a great service to philosophy in England.

[77] For all the qualifications which need to be made here, I refer the reader to the thorough discussion of the nature of the relation between nerve-action and consciousness in Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Psychology," p. 115 et seq.

[78]

"And this is she who's put on cross so much,
Even by them who ought to give her praise,
Giving her wrongly ill repute and blame.
But she is blessed, and she hears not this:
She, with the other primal creatures, glad
Revolves her sphere, and blessed joys herself."
Inferno, vii. 90-95 (W.M. Rossetti's Translation).