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Common Sense Is Science Exactly In So Far As It Fulfills The Ideal Of Common Sense; That Is, Sees Facts As They Are, Or At Any Rate, Without The Distortion Of Prejudice, And Reasons From Them In Accordance With The Dictates Of Sound Judgment. And Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best, That Is, Rigidly Accurate In Observation, And Merciless To Fallacy In Logic.

-Thomas Huxley

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Common Sense Is Science

Thomas Huxley

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Common Sense Is Science Exactly In So Far As It Fulfills The Ideal Of Common Sense; That Is, Sees Facts As They Are, Or At Any Rate, Without The Distortion Of Prejudice, And Reasons From Them In Accordance With The Dictates Of Sound Judgment. And Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best, That Is, Rigidly Accurate In Observation, And Merciless To Fallacy In Logic.

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The Only Medicine For Suffering, Crime, And All Other Woes Of Mankind, Is Wisdom. Teach A Man To Read And Write, And You Have Put Into His Hands The Great Keys Of The Wisdom Box. But It Is Quite Another Thing To Open The Box.

To Persons Uninstructed In Natural History, Their Country Or Seaside Stroll Is A Walk Through A Gallery Filled With Wonderful Works Of Art, Nine-tenths Of Which Have Their Faces Turned To The Wall.

No Delusion Is Greater Than The Notion That Method And Industry Can Make Up For Lack Of Mother-wit, Either In Science Or In Practical Life.

The Question Of All Questions For Humanity, The Problem Which Lies Behind All Others And Is More Interesting Than Any Of Them, Is That Of The Determination Of Man's Place In Nature And His Relation To The Cosmos.

In Matters Of Intellect, Follow Your Reason As Far As It Will Take You, Without Regard For Any Other Consideration.

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 Applications To Nations; And It Is Futile To Expect A Hungry And Squalid Population To Be Anything But Violent And Gross.

Do What You Can To Do What You Ought, And Leave Hoping And Fearing Alone.

Genius, As An Explosive Power, Beats Gunpowder Hollow.

It Is A Popular Delusion That The Scientific Enquirer Is Under An Obligation Not To Go Beyond Generalisation Of Observed Facts...but Anyone Who Is Practically Acquainted With Scientific Work Is Aware That Those Who Refuse To Go Beyond The Facts, Rarely Get As Far.

The Man Of Science Has Learned To Believe In Justification, Not By Faith, But By Verification.

All Knowledge Is Good. It Is Impossible To Say Any Fragment Of Knowledge, However Insignificant Or Remote From One's Ordinary Pursuits, May Not Some Day Be Turned To Account.

The Besetting Sin Of Able Men Is Impatience Of Contradiction And Of Criticism. Even Those Who Do Their Best To Resist The Temptation, Yield To It Almost Unconsciously And Become The Tools Of Toadies And Flatterers. "authorities," "disciples," And "schools" Are The Curse Of Science And Do More To Interfere With The Work Of The Scientific Spirit Than All Its Enemies.

Friendship Involves Many Things But, Above All The Power Of Going Outside Oneself And Appreciating What Is Noble And Loving In Another.

As To Sagacity, I Should Say That His Judgement Respecting The Warmest Place And The Softest Cushion In A Room Is Infallible, His Punctuality At Meal Times Is Admirable, And His Pertinacity In Jumping On People's Shoulders Till They Give Him Some Of The Best Of What Is Going, Indicates Great Firmness.

Every Great Advance In Natural Knowledge Has Involved The Absolute Rejection Of Authority.

Authority And Power

A Good Man: Body Serves His Will And Enjoys Hard Work, Clear Intellect That Understands The Truths Of Nature, Full Of Passion For Life But Controlled By His Will, Well-developed Conscience, Loves Beauty In Art And Nature, Despises Inferior Morality, Respects Himself And Others.

I Have Always Been, Am, And Propose To Remain A Mere Scholar. All That I Have Ever Proposed To Myself Is To Say, This And This I Have Learned; Thus And Thus Have I Learned It; Go Thou And Learn Better; But Do Not Thrust On My Shoulders The Responsibility For Your Own Laziness If You Elect To Take, On My Authority, Conclusions The Value Of Which You Ought To Have Tested For Yourself.

All Truth, In The Long Run, Is Only Common Sense Clarified.

It Is Wrong For A Man To Say That He Is Certain Of The Objective Truth Of Any Proposition Unless He Can Produce Evidence Which Logically Justifies That Certainty. This Is What Agnosticism Asserts; And, In My Opinion, It Is All That Is Essential To Agnosticism. That Which Agnostics Deny And Repudiate, As Immoral, Is The Contrary Doctrine, That There Are Propositions Which Men Ought To Believe Without Logically Satisfactory Evidence; And That Reprobation Ought To Attach To The Profession Of Disbelief In Such Inadequately Supported Propositions.

The Bible Account Of The Creation Of Eve Is A Preposterous Fable.

My Business Is To Teach My Aspirations To Confirm Themselves To Fact, Not To Try And Make Facts Harmonize With My Aspirations.

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.

The Secret Of Genius Is To Carry The Spirit Of Childhood Into Maturity.

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.

A Drop Of Water Is As Powerful As A Thunder-bolt.

Mathematics May Be Compared To A Mill Of Exquisite Workmanship, Which Grinds You Stuff Of Any Degree Of Fineness; But, Nevertheless, What You Get Out Depends Upon What You Put In; And As The Grandest Mill In The World Will Not Extract Wheat-flour From Peascods, So Pages Of Formulae Will Not Get A Definite Result Out Of Loose Data.

Make Up Your Mind To Act Decidedly And Take The Consequences. No Good Is Ever Done In This World By Hesitation.

Self Confidence

It Does Not Matter How Many Tumbles You Have In This Life, So Long As You Do Not Get Dirty When You Tumble; It Is Only The People Who Have To Stop To Be Washed And Made Clean, Who Must Necessarily Lose The Race. And I Can Assure You That There Is The Greatest Practical Benefit In Making A Few Failures Early In Life. You Learn That Which Is Of Inestimable Importance

It Is An Error To Imagine That Evolution Signifies A Constant Tendency To Increased Perfection. That Process Undoubtedly Involves A Constant Remodeling Of The Organism In Adaptation To New Conditions; But It Depends On The Nature Of Those Conditions Whether The Direction Of The Modifications Effected Shall Be Upward Or Downward.

I Am Content With Nothing, Restless And Ambitious... And I Despise Myself For The Vanity, Which Formed Half The Stimulus To My Exertions. Oh Would That I Were One Of Those Plodding Wise Fools Who Having Once Set Their Hand To The Plough Go On Nothing Doubting.

Of The Few Innocent Pleasures Left To Men Past Middle Life, The Jamming Of Common Sense Down The Throats Of Fools Is Perhaps The Keenest.

It Is Not To Be Forgotten That What We Call Rational Grounds For Our Beliefs Are Often Extremely Irrational Attempts To Justify Our Instincts.

Only A Scientific People Can Survive In A Scientific Future.

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 Alive An Hour Hence.

Nothing Great In Science Has Ever Been Done By Men, Whatever Their Powers, In Whom The Divine Afflatus Of The Truth-seeker Was Wanting.

If Every Man Possessed Everything He Wanted, And No One Had The Power To Interfere With Such Possession; Or If No Man Desired Thatwhich Could Damage His Fellow-man, Justice Would Have No Part To Play In The Universe.

People May Talk About Intellectual Teaching, But What We Principally Want Is The Moral Teaching.

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.

Unity Of Plan Everywhere Lies Hidden Under The Mask: Of Diversity Of Structure-the Complex Is Everywhere Evolved Out Of The Simple.

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.

Mr. Darwin's Hypothesis Is Not, So Far As I Am Aware, Inconsistent With Any Known Biological Fact; On The Contrary, If Admitted, The Facts Of Development, Of Comparative Anatomy, Of Geographical Distribution, And Of Palaeontology, Become Connected Together, And Exhibit A Meaning Such As They Never Possessed Before; And I, For One, Am Fully Convinced That If Not Precisely True, That Hypothesis Is As Near An Approximation To The Truth As, For Example, The Copernican Hypothesis Was To The True Theory Of The Planetary Motions.

The Facts Of Variability, Of The Struggle For Existence, Of Adaptation To Conditions, Were Notorious Enough; But None Of Us Had Suspected That The Road To The Heart Of The Species Problem Lay Through Them, Until Darwin And Wallace Dispelled The Darkness.

As I Have Already Urged, The Practice Of That Which Is Ethically Best - What We Call Goodness Or Virtue - Involves A Course Of Conduct Which, In All Respects, Is Opposed To That Which Leads To Success In The Cosmic Struggle For Existence. In Place Of Ruthless Selfassertion It Demands Self-restraint; In Place Of Thrusting Aside, Or Treading Down, All Competitors, It Requires That The Individual Shall Not Merely Respect , But Shall Help His Fellows. It Repudiates The Gladiatorial Theory Of Existence. Laws And Moral Precepts Are Directed To The End Of Curbing The Cosmic Process.

I Have Never Been Able To Understand Why Pigeon-shooting At Hurlingham Should Be Refined And Polite, While A Rat-killing Match In Whitechapel Is Low.

If A Man Cannot See A Church, It Is Preposterous To Take His Opinion About Its Altar-piece Or Painted Window.

I Know Of No Department Of Natural Science More Likely To Reward A Man Who Goes Into It Thoroughly Than Anthropology. There Is An Immense Deal To Be Done In The Science Pure And Simple, And It Is One Of Those Branches Of Inquiry Which Brings One Into Contact With The Great Problems Of Humanity In Every Direction.

I Have No Faith, Very Little Hope, And As Much Charity As I Can Afford.

The More Rapidly Truth Is Spread Among Mankind The Better It Will Be For Them. Only Let Us Be Sure That It Is The Truth.

Though Under-instruction Is A Bad Thing, It Is Not Impossible That Over-instruction May Be Worse.

True Science And True Religion Are Twin Sisters, And The Separation Of Either From The Other Is Sure To Prove The Death Of Both. Science Prospers Exactly In Proportion As It Is Religious; And Religion Flourishes In Exact Proportion To The Scientific Depth And Firmness Of Its Basis.

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. Nevertheless I Know That I Am, In Spite Of Myself, Exactly What The Christian Would Call, And, So Far As I Can See, Is Justified In Calling, Atheist And Infidel.

. . . I Fail To Find A Trace [in Protestantism] Of Any Desire To Set Reason Free. The Most That Can Be Discovered Is A Proposal To Change Masters. From Being A Slave Of The Papacy, The Intellect Was To Become The Serf Of The Bible.

Our Reverence For The Nobility Of Manhood Will Not Be Lessened By The Knowledge That Man Is In Substance And In Structure, One With The Brutes; For He Alone Possesses The Marvellous Endowment Of Intelligible And Rational Speech Whereby He Has Slowly Accumulated And Organized The Experience Which Is Almost Wholly Lost With The Cessation Of Individual Life In Other Animals; So That He Now Stands Raised Above It As On A Mountain-top, Far Above The Level Of His Humble Fellows, And Transfigured From His Grosser Nature By Reflecting, Here And There, A Ray From The Infinite Source Of Truth.

If Individuality Has No Play, Society Does Not Advance; If Individuality Breaks Out Of All Bounds, Society Perishes.

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.

You May Read Any Quantity Of Books, And You May Almost As Ignorant As You Were At Starting, If You Don't Have, At The Back Of Yourminds, The Change For Words In Definite Images Which Can Only Be Acquired Through The Operation Of Your Observing Faculties On The Phenomena Of Nature.

The Chess-board 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.

Extinguished Theologians Lie About The Cradle Of Every Science, As Strangled Snakes Beside That Of Hercules

Irrationally Held Truths May Be More Harmful Than Reasoned Errors.

We Are Prone To See What Lies Behind Our Eyes, Rather Than What Apprears Before Them.

Misery Is A Match That Never Goes Out.

To Say That An Idea Is Necessary Is Simply To Affirm That We Cannot Conceive The Contrary; And The Fact That We Cannot Conceive The Contrary Of Any Belief May Be A Presumption, But Is Certainly No Proof, Of Its Truth.

The Birth Of Science Was The Death Of Superstition.

A Man Has No Reason To Be Ashamed Of Having An Ape For His Grandfather. If There Were An Ancestor Whom I Should Feel Shame In Recalling It Would Rather Be A Man Who Plunges Into Scientific Questions With Which He Has No Real Acquaintance, Only To Obscure Them By An Aimless Rhetoric.

Of Moral Purpose I See No Trace In Nature. That Is An Article Of Exclusively Human Manufacture And Very Much To Our Credit.

The Sceptics End In The Infidelity Which Asserts The Problem To Be Insoluble, Or In The Atheism Which Denies The Existence Of Any Orderly Progress And Governance Of Things: The Men Of Genius Propound Solutions Which Grow Into Systems Of Theology Or Of Philosophy, Or Veiled In Musical Language Which Suggests More Than It Asserts, Take The Shape Of The Poetry Of An Epoch.

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.

In Truth, The Laboratory Is The Forecourt Of The Temple Of Philosophy, And Whoso Has Not Offered Sacrifices And Undergone Purification There Has Little Chance Of Admission Into The Sanctuary.

The World Is Neither Wise Nor Just, But It Makes Up For All Its Folly And Injustice By Being Damnably Sentimental.

Science Is Nothing But Trained And Organized 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 As Far As The Guardsman's Cut And Thrust Differ From The Manner In Which A Savage Wields His Club.

I Am Not Afraid Of The Priests In The Long-run. Scientific Method Is The White Ant Which Will Slowly But Surely Destroy Their Fortifications. And The Importance Of Scientific Method In Modern Practical Life--always Growing And Increasing--is The Guarantee For The Gradual Emancipation Of The Ignorant Upper And Lower Classes, The Former Of Whom Especially Are The Strength Of The Priests.

The Science, The Art, The Jurisprudence, The Chief Political And Social Theories, Of The Modern World Have Grown Out Of Greece And Rome-not By Favour Of, But In The Teeth Of, The Fundamental Teachings Of Early Christianity, To Which Science, Art, And Any Serious Occupation With The Things Of This World Were Alike Despicable.

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 Posession, However Infinitesimal Its Quantity May Be. Indeed, If A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous, Where Is A Man Who Has So Much As To Be Out Of Danger?

The Rung Of A Ladder Was Never Meant To Rest Upon.

Unfortunately, It Is Much Easier To Shut One's Eyes To Good Than To Evil. Pain And Sorrow Knock At Our Doors More Loudly Than Pleasure And Happiness; And The Prints Of Their Heavy Footsteps Are Less Easily Effaced.

It Is The First Duty Of A Hypothesis To Be Intelligible.

The Great End Of Life Is Not Knowledge But Action.

It Is Not What We Believe, But Why We Believe It. Moral Responsibility Lies In Diligently Weighing The Evidence. We Must Actively Doubt; We Have To Scrutinize Our Views, Not Take Them On Trust. No Virtue Attached To Blindly Accepting Orthodoxy, However 'venerable'.

The Very Existence Of Society Depends On The Fact That Every Member Of It Tacitly Admits 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.

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 Anyone." 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 As One Was Descartes.

Science And Literature Are Not Two Things, But Two Sides Of One Thing.

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.

I Wish You Would Let An Old Man, Who Has Had His Share Of Fighting, Remind You That Battles, Like Hypotheses, Are Not To Be Multiplied Beyond Necessity.

Deduction, Which Takes Us From The General Proposition To Facts Again-teaches Us, If I May So Say, To Anticipate From The Ticket What Is Inside The Bundle.

Life Is Like Walking Along A Crowded Street--there Always Seem To Be Fewer Obstacles To Getting Along On The Opposite Pavement--and Yet, If One Crosses Over, Matters Are Rarely Mended.

Extinguished Theologians Lie About The Cradle Of Every Science As The Strangled Snakes Beside That Of Hercules; And History Records That Whenever Science And Orthodoxy Have Been Fairly Opposed, The Latter Has Been Forced To Retire From The Lists, Bleeding And Crushed If Not Annihilated; Scotched, If Not Slain.

What Men Of Science Want Is Only A Fair Day's Wages For More Than A Fair Day's Work.

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 Riddle Sink Into Insignificance.

Elohim Was, In Logical Terminology, The Genus Of Which Ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, And Jahveh Were Species. The Israelite Believed Jahveh To Be Immeasurably Superior To All Other Kinds Of Elohim. The Inscription On The Moabite Stone Shows That King Mesa Held Chemosh To Be, As Unquestionably, The Superior Of Jahveh.

There Are Savages Without God In Any Proper Sense Of The Word, But None Without Ghosts.

Let Us Have "sweet Girl Graduates" By All Means. They Will Be None The Less Sweet For A Little Wisdom; And The "golden Hair" Will Not Curl Less Gracefully Outside The Head By Reason Of There Being Brains Within.

It Ought Not To Be Unpleasant To Say That Which One Honestly Believes Or Disbelieves. That It So Constantly Is Painful To Do So, Is Quite Enough Obstacle To The Progress Of Mankind In That Most Valuable Of All Qualities, Honesty Of Word Or Of Deed.

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.

My Experience Of The World Is That Things Left To Themselves Don't Get Right.

Cherish [science], Venerate Her, Follow Her Methods Faithfully ... And The Future Of This People Will Be Greater Than The Past.

If Then, Said I, The Question Is Put To Me Would I Rather Have A Miserable Ape For A Grandfather Or A Man Highly Endowed By Nature And Possessing Great Means And Influence And Yet Who Employs Those Faculties For The Mere Purpose Of Introducing Ridicule Into A Grave Scientific Discussion-i Unhesitatingly Affirm My Preference For The Ape.

History Warns Us That It Is The Customary Fate Of New Truths To Begin As Heresies And To End As Superstitions.

Surely There Is A Time To Submit To Guidance And A Time To Take One's Own Way At All Hazards.

The Known Is Finite, The Unknown Infinite; Spiritually We Find Ourselves On A Tiny Island In The Middle Of A Boundless Ocean Of The Inexplicable. It Is Our Task, From Generation To Generation, To Drain A Small Amount Of Additional Land.

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....to All Eternity, The Sum Of Truth And Right Will Have Been Increased By Their Means; To All Eternity, Falsehoods And Injustice Will Be The Weaker Because They Have Lived.

The Only People, Scientific Or Other, Who Never Make Mistakes Are Those Who Do Nothing.

Making Mistakes

Education Is The Instruction Of The Intellect In The Laws Of Nature.

Can Any One Deny That The Old Israelites Conceived Jahveh Not Only In The Image Of A Man, But In That Of A Changeable, Irritable, And, Occasionally, Violent Man?

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 God. Sit Down Before Fact As A Little Child, Be Prepared To Give Up Every Preconceived Notion, Follow Humbly 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.

Surely It Must Be Plain That An Ingenious Man Could Speculate Without End On Both Sides, And Find Analogies For All His Dreams. Nor Does It Help Me To Tell Me That The Aspirations Of Mankind

... Our "physick" And "anatomy" Have Embraced Such Infinite Varieties Of Being, Have Laid Open Such New Worlds In Time And Space, Have Grappled, Not Unsuccessfully, With Such Complex Problems, That The Eyes Of Vesalius And Of Harvey Might Be Dazzled By The Sight Of The Tree That Has Grown Out Of Their Grain Of Mustard Seed.

A Well-worn Adage Advises Those Who Set Out Upon A Great Enterprise To Count The Cost, Yet Some Of The Greatest Enterprises Have Succeeded Because The People Who Undertook Them Did Not Count The Cost.

Ecclesiasticism In Science Is Only Unfaithfulness To Truth

I Conceive That The Leading Characteristic Of The Nineteenth Century Has Been The Rapid Growth Of The Scientific Spirit, The Consequent Application Of Scientific Methods Of Investigation To All The Problems With Which The Human Mind Is Occupied, And The Correlative Rejection Of Traditional Beliefs Which Have Proved Their Incompetence To Bear Such Investigation.

No Man Is Any The Worse Off Because Another Acquires Wealth By Trade, Or By The Exercise Of A Profession; On The Contrary, He Cannot Have Acquired His Wealth Except By Benefiting Others To The Extent Of What They Considered To Be Its Value.

Logical Consequences Are The Scarecrows Of Fools And The Beacons Of Wise Men.

Trust A Witness In All Matters In Which Neither His Self-interest, His Passions, His Prejudices, Nor The Love Of The Marvellous Is Strongly Concerned. When They Are Involved, Require Corroborative Evidence In Exact Proportion To The Contravention Of Probability By The Thing Testified.

Cosmic Evolution May Teach Us How The Good And Evil Tendencies Of Man May Have Come About; But, In Itself, It Is Incompetent To Furnish Any Better Reason Why What We Call Good Is Preferable To What We Call Evil Than We Had Before. Some Day, I Doubt Not, We Shall Arrive At An Understanding Of The Evolution Of The Aesthetic Faculty; But All The Understanding In The World Will Neither Increase Nor Diminish The Force Of The Intuition That This Is Beautiful And That Is Ugly.

No One Who Has Lived In The World As Long As You & I Have, Can Entertain The Pious Delusion That It Is Engineered Upon Principles Of Benevolence... The Cosmos Remains Always Beautiful And Profoundly Interesting In Every Corner-and If I Had As Many Lives As A Cat I Would Leave No Corner Unexplored.

I Cannot Say That I Am In The Slightest Degree Impressed By Your Bigness, Or Your Material Resources, As Such. Size Is Not Grandeur, And Territory Does Not Make A Nation. The Great Issue, About Which Hangs True Sublimity, And The Terror Of Overhanging Fate, Is What Are You Going To Do With All These Things?

A Man's Worst Difficulties Begin When He Is Able To Do As He Likes.

Only One Absolute Certainty Is Possible To Man, Namely That At Any Given Moment The Feeling Which He Has Exists.

Absolute Certainty

There Is No Sadder Sight In The World Than To See A Beautiful Theory Killed By A Brutal Fact.

Agnosticism Is Not Properly Described As A "negative" Creed, Nor Indeed As A Creed Of Any Kind, Except In So Far As It Expresses Absolute Faith In The Validity Of A Principle Which Is As Much Ethical As Intellectual.

'infidel' Is A Term Of Reproach, Which Christians And Mohammedans, In Their Modesty, Agree To Apply To Those Who Differ From Them.

It Is Because The Body Is A Machine That Education Is Possible. Education Is The Formation Of Habits, A Superinducing Of An Artificial Organization Upon The Natural Organization Of The Body.

It May Be Quite True That Some Negroes Are Better Than Some White Men; But No Rational Man, Cognisant Of The Facts, Believes That The Average Negro Is The Equal, Still Less The Superior, Of The Average White Man. And, If This Be True, It Is Simply Incredible That, When All His Disabilities Are Removed, And Our Prognathous Relative Has A Fair Field And No Favour, As Well As No Oppressor, He Will Be Able To Compete Successfully With His Bigger-brained And Smaller-jawed Rival, In A Contest Which Is To Be Carried On By Thoughts And Not By Bites.

Not Only Do I Disbelieve In The Need For Compensation, But I Believe That The Seeking For Rewards And Punishments Out Of This Lifeleads Men To A Ruinous Ignorance Of The Fact That Their Inevitable Rewards And Punishments Are Here.

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.

Try To Learn Something About Everything And Everything About Something.

It Is Wrong For A Man To Say That He Is Certain Of The Objective Truth Of Any Proposition Unless He Can Produce Evidence Which Logically Justifies That Certainty.

Objective Truth

It Is Far Better For A Man To Go Wrong In Freedom Than To Go Right In Chains.

The Scientific Imagination Always Restrains Itself Within The Limits Of Probability.

I Am Too Much Of A Sceptic To Deny The Possibility Of Anything Especially As I Am Now So Much Occupied With Theology But I Don't See My Way To Your Conclusion.

I Took Thought, And Invented What I Conceived To Be The Appropriate Title Of 'agnostic'.

If A Man Cannot Do Brain Work Without Stimulants Of Any Kind, He Had Better Turn To Hand Work It Is An Indication On Nature's Part That She Did Not Mean Him To Be A Head Worker.

The Doctrine Of Transmigration Was A Means Of Constructing A Plausible Vindication Of The Ways Of The Cosmos To Man; None But Very Hasty Thinkers Will Reject It On The Grounds Of Inherent Absurdity.

The Ultimate Court Of Appeal Is Observation And Experiment... Not Authority.

Oh Devil! Truth Is Better Than Much Profit. I Have Searched Over The Grounds Of My Belief, And If Wife And Child And Name And Fame Were All To Be Lost To Me One After The Other As The Penalty, Still I Will Not Lie.

Creation,' In The Ordinary Sense Of The Word, Is Perfectly Conceivable. I Find No Difficulty In Conceiving That, At Some Former Period, This Universe Was Not In Existence, And That It Made Its Appearance In Six Days (or Instantaneously, If That Is Preferred), In Consequence Of The Volition Of Some Preexisting Being.

There Is Nothing Of Permanent Value (putting Aside A Few Human Affections) Nothing That Satisfies Quiet Reflection--except The Sense Of Having Worked According To One's Capacity And Light To Make Things Clear And Get Rid Of Cant And Shams Of All Sorts.

The Rung Of A Ladder Was Never Meant To Rest Upon, But Only To Hold A Man's Foot Long Enough To Enable Him To Put The Other Somewhat Higher.

Even In The Important Matter Of Cranial Capacity, Men Differ More Widely From One Another Than They Do From The Apes; While The Lowest Apes Differ As Much, In Proportion, From The Highest, As The Latter Does From Man.

Proclaim Human Equality As Loudly As You Like, Witless Will Serve His Brother.

The Mathematician Starts With A Few Propositions, The Proof Of Which Is So Obvious That They Are Called Self-evident, And The Rest Of His Work Consists Of Subtle Deductions From Them. The Teaching Of Languages, At Any Rate As Ordinarily Practiced, Is Of The Same General Nature Authority And Tradition Furnish The Data, And The Mental Operations Are Deductive.

Education Is The Instruction Of The Intellect In The Laws Of Nature, Under Which Name I Include Not Merely Things And Their Forces, But People 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.

The Results Of Political Changes Are Hardly Ever Those Which Their Friends Hope Or Their Foes Fear.

The Antagonism Between Science And Religion, About Which We Hear So Much, Appears To Me To Be Purely Factitiousfabricated, On The One Hand, By Short-sighted Religious People Who Confound A Certain Branch Of Science, Theology, With Religion; And, On The Other, By Equally Short-sighted Scientific People Who Forget That Science Takes For Its Province Only That Which Is Susceptible Of Clear Intellectual Comprehension; And That, Outside The Boundaries Of That Province, They Must Be Content With Imagination, With Hope, And With Ignorance

Tolerably Early In Life I Discovered That One Of The Unpardonable Sins, In The Eyes Of Most People, Is For A Man To Go About Unlabeled. The World Regards Such A Person As The Police Do An Unmuzzled Dog.

There Is No Greater Mistake Than The Hasty Conclusion That Opinions Are Worthless Because They Are Badly Argued.

If The Hypothesis Of Evolution Is True, Living Matter Must Have Arisen From Non-living Matter; For By The Hypothesis The Condition Of The Globe Was At One Time Such, That Living Matter Could Not Have Existed In It, Life Being Entirely Incompatible With The Gaseous State.

That Mysterious Independent Variable Of Political Calculation, Public Opinion.

Whatever Part Of The Animal Fabric Whatever Series Of Muscles, Whatever Viscera Might Be Selected For Comparison The Result Would Be The Same The Lower Apes And The Gorilla Would Differ More Than The Gorilla And The Man.

God Give Me Strength To Face A Fact Though It Slay Me.

Not Far From The Invention Of Fire We Must Rank The Invention Of Doubt.

I Really See No Harm Which Can Come Of Giving Our Children A Little Knowledge Of Physiology. ... The Instruction Must Be Real, Based Upon Observation, Eked Out By Good Explanatory Diagrams And Models, And Conveyed By A Teacher Whose Own Knowledge Has Been Acquired By A Study Of The Facts; And Not The Mere Catechismal Parrot-work Which Too Often Usurps The Place Of Elementary Teaching.

Within The Last Fifty Years, The Extraordinary Growth Of Every Department Of Physical Science Has Spread Among Us Mental Food Of So Nutritious And Stimulating A Character That A New Ecdysis Seems Imminent.

Thoughtfulness For Others, Generosity, Modesty, And Self-respect Are The Qualities Which Make A Real Gentleman Or Lady.

A World Of Facts Lies Outside And Beyond The World Of Words.

Perhaps No Order Of Mammals Presents Us With So Extraordinary A Series Of Gradations As This [step By Step, From Humans To Apes To Monkeys To Lemurs] - Leading Us Insensibly From The Crown And Summit Of The Animal Creation Down To Creatures, From Which There Is But A Step, As It Seems, To The Lowest, Smallest, And Least Intelligent Of The Placental Mammalia. It Is As If Nature Herself Had Forseen The Arrogance Of Man, And With Roman Severity Had Provided That His Intellect, By Its Very Triumphs, Should Call Into Prominence The Slaves, Admonishing The Conqueror That He Is But Dust.

If A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous, Where Is The Man Who Has So Much As To Be Out Of Danger?

There Is No Absurdity In Theology So Great That You Cannot Parallel It By A Greater Absurdity In Nature.

As A Natural Process, Of The Same Character As The Development Of A Tree From Its Seed, Or Of A Fowl From Its Egg, Evolution Excludes Creation And All Other Kinds Of Supernatural Intervention.

Books Are The Money Of Literature, But Only The Counters Of Science.

Teach A Child What Is Wise, That Is Morality. Teach Him What Is Wise And Beautiful, That Is Religion!

I Do Not Say Think As I Think, But Think In My Way. Fear No Shadows, Least Of All In That Great Spectre Of Personal Unhappiness Which Binds Half The World To Orthodoxy.

When I Reached Intellectual Maturity And Began To Ask Myself Whether I Was An Atheist, A Theist, Or A Pantheist; A Materialist, Or An Idealist; A Christian, Or A Freethinker; I Found That The More I Learned And Reflected, The Less Ready Was The Answer; Until, At Last, I Came To The Conclusion That I Had Neither Art Nor Part With Any Of These Denominations, Except The Last.

In Fact A Favourite Problem Of Tyndall Is-given The Molecular Forces In A Mutton Chop, Deduce Hamlet Or Faust Therefrom. He Is Confident That The Physics Of The Future Will Solve This Easily.

I Know No Study Which Is So Unutterably Saddening As That Of The Evolution Of Humanity, As It Is Set Forth In The Annals Of History. Out Of The Darkness Of Prehistoric Ages Man Emerges With The Marks Of His Lowly Origin Strong Upon Him. He Is A Brute, Only More Intelligent Than The Other Brutes, A Blind Prey To Impulses, Which As Often As Not Led Him To Destruction; A Victim To Endless Illusions, Which Make His Mental Existence A Terror And A Burden, And Fill His Physical Life With Barren Toil And Battle.

Freedom And Order Are Not Incompatible... Truth Is Strength... Free Discussion Is The Very Life Of Truth.

In Scientific Work, Those Who Refuse To Go Beyond Fact Rarely Get As Far As Fact.

The Great Tragedy Of Science - The Slaying Of A Beautiful Hypothesis By An Ugly Fact.

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.

Science Commits Suicide When It Adopts A Creed.

The Medieval University Looked Backwards; It Professed To Be A Storehouse Of Old Knowledge. The Modern University Looks Forward, And Is A Factory Of New Knowledge.

My Belief Is That No Human Being Or 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.

No One Can Help Another Very Much In These Crises Of Life; But Love And Sympathy Count For Something.

As For Your Doctrines I Am Prepared To Go To The Stake If Requisite ... I Trust You Will Not Allow Yourself To Be In Any Way Disgusted Or Annoyed By The Considerable Abuse & Misrepresentation Which Unless I Greatly Mistake Is In Store For You... And As To The Curs Which Will Bark And Yelp - You Must Recollect That Some Of Your Friends At Any Rate Are Endowed With An Amount Of Combativeness Which (though You Have Often & Justly Rebuked It) May Stand You In Good Stead - I Am Sharpening Up My Claws And Beak In Readiness.

The Quarrels Of Theologians And Philosophers Have Not Been About Religion, But About Philosophy; And Philosophers Not Unfrequently Seem To Entertain The Same Feeling Toward Theologians That Sportsmen Cherish Toward Poachers.

My Fundamental Axiom Of Speculative Philosophy Is That Materialism And Spiritualism Are Opposite Poles Of The Same Absurdity-the Absurdity Of Imagining That We Know Anything About Either Spirit Or Matter.

The Supernatural Is Being Swept Out Of The Universe In The Flood Of New Knowledge Of What Is Natural. It Will Soon Be As Impossible For An Intelligent, Educated Man Or Woman To Believe In A God As It Is Now To Believe That Earth Is Flat, That Flies Can Be Spontaneously Generated, That Disease Is A Divine Punishment, Or That Death Is Always Due To Witchcraft.

What Are The Moral Convictions Most Fondly Held By Barbarous And Semi-barbarous People? They Are The Convictions That Authority Is The Soundest Basis Of Belief; That Merit Attaches To Readiness To Believe; That The Doubting Disposition Is A Bad One, And Skepticism Is A Sin.

My Reflection, When I First Made Myself Master Of The Central Idea Of The 'origin', Was, 'how Extremely Stupid Not To Have Thought Of That!'

The Occurrence Of Successive Forms Of Life Upon Our Globe Is An Historical Fact, Which Cannot Be Disputed; And The Relation Of These Successive Forms, As Stages Of Evolution Of The Same Type, Is Established In Various Cases.

Any One Who Has Studied The History Of Science Knows That Almost Every Great Step Therein Has Been Made By The "anticipation Of Nature," That Is, By The Invention Of Hypotheses, Which, Though Verifiable, Often Had Very Little Foundation To Start With; And, Not Unfrequently, In Spite Of A Long Career Of Usefulness, Turned Out To Be Wholly Erroneous In The Long Run.

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.

I Would Rather Be The Offspring Of Two Apes Than Be A Man And Afraid To Face The Truth.

Nothing Can Be More Incorrect Than The Assumption One Sometimes Meets With, That Physics Has One Method, Chemistry Another, And Biology A Third.

Man's Place In Nature.

Men Can Intoxicate Themselves With Ideas As Effectually As With Alcohol Or With Bang And Produce, Be Dint Of Serious Thinking, Mental Conditions Hardly Distinguishable From Monomania.

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 Around. Surely Our Innocent Pleasures Are Not So Abundant In This Life, That We Can Afford To Despise This Or Any Other Source Of Them.

The Thief And The Murderer Follow Nature Just As Much As The Philanthropist.

Science Reckons Many Prophets, But There Is Not Even A Promise Of A Messiah.

The Man Who Is All Morality And Intellect, Although He May Be Good And Even Great, Is, After All, Only Half A Man.

There Is Far Too Much Of The Feeding-bottle In Education And Young People Ought To Be Supplied With Good Intellectual Food And Then Left To Help Themselves.

There Is But One Right, And The Possibilities Of Wrong Are Infinite.

The Doctrine That All Men Are, In Any Sense, Or Have Been, At Any Time, Free And Equal, Is An Utterly Baseless Fiction.

Without Seeing Any Reason To Believe That Women Are, On The Average, So Strong Physically, Intellectually, Or Morally, As Men, I Cannot Shut My Eyes To The Fact That Many Women Are Much Better Endowed In All These Respects Than Many Men, And I Am At A Loss To Understand On What Grounds Of Justice Or Public Policy A Career Which Is Open To The Weakest And Most Foolish Of The Male Sex Should Be Forcibly Closed To Women Of Vigor And Capacity.

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.

There Is The Greatest Practical Benefit In Making A Few Failures Early In Life.

Teach A Man To Read And Write, And You Have Put Into His Hands The Great Keys Of The Wisdom-box.

Size Is Not Grandeur, And Territory Does Not Make A Nation.

Every Living Creature Commences Its Existence Under A Form Different From, And Simpler Than, That Which It Eventually Attains.

To A Clear Eye The Smallest Fact Is A Window Through Which The Infinite May Be Seen.

Learn What Is True In Order To Do What Is Right.

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