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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

-Thomas Huxley

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The Antagonism Between Science

Thomas Huxley

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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

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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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

The Bible Has Been The Magna Charta Of The Poor And Of The Oppressed.

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.

Every Philosophical Thinker Hails It [the Origin Of Species] As A Veritable Whitworth Gun In The Armoury Of Liberalism.

Skepticism Is The Highest Duty And Blind Faith The One Unpardonable Sin.

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

The Clergy Are At Present Divided Into Three Sections: An Immense Body Who Are Ignorant; A Small Proportion Who Know And Are Silent; And A Minute Minority Who Know And Speak According To Their Knowledge.

The Foundation Of All Morality Is To Have Done, Once And For All, With Lying; To Give Up Pretending To Believe That For Which There Is No Evidence, And Repeating Unintelligible Propositions About Things Beyond The Possibilities Of Knowledge.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

It Is Better To Read A Little And Thoroughly Than Cram A Crude Undigested Mass Into My Head, Though It Be Great In Quantity.

The Only Objections That Have Occurred To Me Are, 1st That You Have Loaded Yourself With An Unnecessary Difficulty In Adopting Natura Non Facit Saltum So Unreservedly. . . . And 2nd, It Is Not Clear To Me Why, If Continual Physical Conditions Are Of So Little Moment As You Suppose, Variation Should Occur At All. However, I Must Read The Book Two Or Three Times More Before I Presume To Begin Picking Holes.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best.

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.

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

People Never Will Recollect That Mere Learning And Mere Cleverness Are Of Next To No Value In Life, While Energy And Intellectual Grip, The Things That Are Inborn And Cannot Be Taught, Are Everything.

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.

It Is One Of The Most Saddening Things In Life That, Try As We May, We Can Never Be Certain Of Making People Happy, Whereas We Can Almost Always Be Certain Of Making Them Unhappy.

Time, Whose Tooth Gnaws Away Everything Else, Is Powerless Against Truth.

Whatever Evil Voices May Rage, Science, Secure Among The Powers That Are Eternal, Will Do Her Work And Be Blessed.

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.

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

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

[scientists] Have Learned To Respect Nothing But Evidence, And To Believe That Their Highest Duty Lies In Submitting To It However It May Jar Against Their Inclinations.

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

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!'

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

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

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

That Which Lies Before The Human Race Is A Constant Struggle To Maintain And Improve, In Opposition To State Of Nature, The State Of Art Of An Organized Polity; In Which, And By Which, Man May Develop A Worthy Civilization

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.

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

The Known Is Finite, The Unknown Infinite; Intellectually We Stand On An Islet In The Midst Of An Illimitable Ocean Of Inexplicability. Our Business In Every Generation Is To Reclaim A Little More Land, To Add Something To The Extent And The Solidity Of Our Possessions.

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.

And You Very Soon Find Out, If You Have Not Found It Out Before, That Patience And Tenacity Of Purpose Are Worth More Than Twice Their Weight Of Cleverness.

Rome Is The One Great Spiritual Organisation Which Is Able To Resist And Must, As A Matter Of Life And Death, The Progress Of Science And Modern Civilization

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

Mathematics May Be Compared To A Mill Of Exquisite Workmanship, Which Grinds Your Stuff To Any Degree Of Fineness.

Agnosticism Simply Means That A Man Shall Not Say That He Knows Or Believes That For Which He Has No Grounds For Professing To Believe.

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.

As If To Demonstrate, By A Striking Example, The Impossibility Of Erecting Any Cerebral Barrier Between Man And The Apes, Nature Has Provided Us, In The Latter Animals, With An Almost Complete Series Of Gradations From Brains Little Higher Than That Of A Rodent, To Brains Little Lower Than That Of Man.

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

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 That There Are A Great Many People In The World Who Are Just As Clever As You Are. You Learn To Put Your Trust, By And By, In An Economy And Frugality Of The Exercise Of Your Powers, Both Moral And Intellectual; And You Very Soon Find Out, If You Have Not Found It Out Before, That Patience And Tenacity Of Purpose Are Worth More Than Twice Their Weight Of Cleverness.

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.

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

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.

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

Science Is Organized Common Sense Where Many A Beautiful Theory Was Killed By An Ugly Fact.

It Is Given To Few To Add 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.

The Vast Results Obtained By Science Are Won By No Mystical Faculties, By No Mental Processes Other Than Those Which Are Practicedby 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.

Scientific Method

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

Sit Down Before Fact As A Little Child, Be Prepared To Give Up Every Conceived Notion, Follow Humbly Wherever And Whatever Abysses Nature Leads, Or You Will Learn Nothing.

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

Authority And Power

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

I Have Endeavoured To Show That No Absolute Structural Line Of Demarcation, Wider Than That Between The Animals Which Immediately Succeed Us In The Scale, Can Be Drawn Between The Animal World And Ourselves; And I May Add The Expression Of My Belief That The Attempt To Draw A Physical Distinction Is Equally Futile, And That Even The Highest Faculties Of Feeling And Of Intellect Begin To Germinate In Lower Forms Of Life.

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

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.

For These Two Years I Have Been Gravitating Towards Your Doctrines, And Since The Publication Of Your Primula Paper With Accelerated Velocity. By About This Time Next Year I Expect To Have Shot Past You, And To Find You Pitching Into Me For Being More Darwinian Than Yourself. However, You Have Set Me Going, And Must Just Take The Consequences, For I Warn You I Will Stop At No Point So Long As Clear Reasoning Will Take Me Further.

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.

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.

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.

Try To Learn Something About Everything And Everything About Something.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

In The World Of Letters, Learning And Knowledge Are One, And Books Are The Source Of Both; Whereas In Science, As In Life, Learning And Knowledge Are Distinct, And The Study Of Things, And Not Of Books, Is The Source Of The Latter.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Economy Does Not Lie In Sparing Money, But In Spending It Wisely.

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.

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

I Am Too Much Of A Sceptic To Deny The Possibility Of Anything...

Life Is Too Short To Occupy Oneself With The Slaying Of The Slain More Than Once.

Life Is Too Short

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Social Progress Means A Checking Of The Cosmic Process At Every Step And The Substitution For It Of Another, Which May Be Called The Ethical Process; The End Of Which Is Not The Survival Of Those Who May Happen To Be The Fittest, In Respect Of The Whole Of The Conditions Which Obtain, But Of Those Who Are Ethically The Best.

The Dogma Of The Infallibility Of The Bible Is No More Self-evident Than Is That Of The Infallibility Of The Popes.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Irrationally Held Truths May Be More Harmful Than Reasoned Errors.

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

Science Commits Suicide When It Adopts A Creed.

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

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

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.

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.

A Man Who Speaks Out Honestly And Fearlessly That Which He Knows, And That Which He Believes, Will Always Enlist The Good Will And The Respect, However Much He May Fail In Winning The Assent, Of His Fellow Men.

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.

Only A Scientific People Can Survive In A Scientific Future.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It Seems Safe To Look Forward To The Time When The Conception Of Attractive And Repulsive Forces, Having Served Its Purpose As A Useful Piece Of Scientific Scaffolding, Will Be Replaced By The Deduction Of The Phenomena Known As Attraction And Repulsion, From The General Laws Of Motion.

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

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

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.

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.

The Whole Analogy Of Natural Operations Furnishes So Complete And Crushing An Argument Against The Intervention Of Any But What Are Termed Secondary Causes, In The Production Of All The Phenomena Of The Universe; That, In View Of The Intimate Relations Between Man And The Rest Of The Living World; And Between The Forces Exerted By The Latter And All Other Forces, I Can See No Excuse For Doubting That All Are Co-ordinated Terms Of Nature's Great Progression, From The Formless To The Formed From The Inorganic To The Organic From Blind Force To Conscious Intellect And Will.

Missionaries, Whether Of Philosophy Or Religion, Rarely Make Rapid Way, Unless Their Preachings Fall In With The Prepossessions Ofthe 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.

If The Perpetual Oscillation Of Nations Between Anarchy And Despotism Is To Be Replaced By The Steady March Of Self-restraining Freedom, It Will Be Because Men Will Gradually Bring Themselves To Deal With Political, As They Now Deal With Scientific Questions.

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.

Action Is The Catalyst That Creates Accomplishments. It Is The Path That Takes Us From Uncrafted Hopes To Realized Dreams.

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

Absolute Certainty

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

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.

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.

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.

That Mysterious Independent Variable Of Political Calculation, Public Opinion.

The Improver Of Natural Knowledge Absolutely Refuses To Acknowledge Authority, As Such. For Him, Skepticism Is The Highest Of Duties; Blind Faith The One Unpardonable Sin.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Claiming My Right To Follow Whethersoever Science Should Lead... It Is As Respectable To Be Modified Monkey As Modified Dirt.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Science Is Nothing, But Trained And Organized Common Sense.

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

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.

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'.

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

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.

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.

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

No Slavery Can Be Abolished Without A Double Emancipation, And The Master Will Benefit By Freedom More Than The Freed-man.

Double Standard

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

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

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.

It Is Not Who Is Right, But What Is Right, That Is Of Importance.

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.

The Foundation Of Morality Is To Have Done, Once And For All, With Lying.

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.

Each Such Answer To The Great Question, Invariably Asserted By The Followers Of Its Propounder, If Not By Himself, To Be Complete And Final, Remains In High Authority And Esteem, It May Be For One Century, Or It May Be For Twenty: But, As Invariably, Time Proves Each Reply To Have Been A Mere Approximation To The Truth Tolerable Chiefly On Account Of The Ignorance Of Those By Whom It Was Accepted, And Wholly Intolerable When Tested By The Larger Knowledge Of Their Successors.

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.

. . . 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.

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.

From The Dawn Of Exact Knowledge To The Present Day, Observation, Experiment, And Speculation Have Gone Hand In Hand; And, Whenever Science Has Halted Or Strayed From The Right Path, It Has Been, Either Because Its Votaries Have Been Content With Mere Unverified Or Unverifiable Speculation (and This Is The Commonest Case, Because Observation And Experiment Are Hard Work, While Speculation Is Amusing); Or It Has Been, Because The Accumulation Of Details Of Observation Has For A Time Excluded Speculation.

Protoplasm, Simple Or Nucleated, Is The Formal Basis Of All Life. It Is The Clay Of The Potter: Which, Bake It And Paint It As Hewill, Remains Clay, Separated By Artifice, And Not By Nature From The Commonest Brick Or Sun-dried Clod.

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.

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

Better Live A Crossing-sweeper Than Die And Be Made To Talk Twaddle By A "medium" Hired At A Guinea A Seance.

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

Veracity Is The Heart Of Morality.

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.

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.

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

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

What Would Become Of The Garden If The Gardener Treated All The Weeds And Slugs And Birds And Trespassers As He Would Like To Be Treated, If He Were In Their Place?

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.

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.

For Myself I Say Deliberately, It Is Better To Have A Millstone Tied Round The Neck And Be Thrown Into The Sea Than To Share The Enterprises Of Those To Whom The World Has Turned, And Will Turn, Because They Minister To Its Weaknesses And Cover Up The Awful Realities Which It Shudders To Look At.

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.

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.

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 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

It May Be Well To Remember That The Highest Level Of Moral Aspiration Recorded In History Was Reached By A Few Ancient Jews--micah, Isaiah, And The Rest--who Took No Count Whatever Of What Might Not Happen To Them After Death. It Is Not Obvious To Me Why The Same Point Should Not By And By Be Reached By The Gentiles.

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.

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.

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