same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with its existing implications, does him gross injustice.

ΙΟ

If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do not 5 know; that neither I, nor any one else, have any means of knowing; and that, under these circumstances, I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, 10 I conceive that I am simply honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially questions 15 of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work to do in the world. And he thus ends one of his essays:

"If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school 20 metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

25

Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? We live in a world which is 5 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. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully pos10 sessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of events.

15

Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths. If we find that the ascertainment of the 20 order of nature is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols.

In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property of matter - each state- 5 ment has a certain relative truth. But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those 10 physical conditions, or concomitants of thought, which are more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought, as we already possess in respect of the material world; 15 whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas.

Thus there can be little doubt that the further science advances, the more extensively and consist- 20 ently will all the phenomena of nature be represented by materialistic formulæ and symbols.

But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulæ

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 5 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 paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of 10 a life.

NOTES

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

"A man

THE immediate cause of this autobiography is given in a letter Huxley wrote to his wife, March 2, 1889. who is bringing out a series of portraits of celebrities, with a sketch of their career attached, has bothered me out of my life for something to go with my portrait, and to escape the abominable bad taste of some of the notices, I have done that. I shall show it you before it goes back to Engel in proof."

This sketch is found in his Collected Essays, Vol. I, 1–17. It is scarcely an autobiography in the true sense of the word, for it tells but little of a life filled with scientific activity and association with the highest intellects of his age. For a fuller account of his life, read Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley, by his son, Leonard Huxley.

1 vi. Butler, Joseph, Bishop of Durham (1692-1738). An English clergyman and theologian. Two years before his death he wrote the famous Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. This Analogy is still read as one of the strongest books of Christian apologetics, or defence of the Christian faith. It was a book with which Huxley was familiar, and is frequently mentioned in his letters.