Aphorisms and Reflections, cccxviii (1908, Henrietta Huxley, ed.)

"Teach a child what is wise, that is morality.  Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion."

T. H. Huxley

from "Jesting Pilate" (1926)

"Our sense of values is intuitive. There is no proving the real existence of values in any way that will satisfy the logical intellect.  Our standards can be demolished by argumentation, but we are nonetheless right to cling to them.  Not blindly, of course, nor uncritically.  Convinced by practical experience of man's diversity, the traveller will not be tempted to cling to his own inherited national standard, as though it were necessarily the only true and unperverted one.  He will compare standards; he will search for what is common to them all; he will observe the ways in which each standard is perverted, he will try to create a standard of his own that shall be as far as possible free from distortion.  In one country, he will perceive, the true, fundamental standard is distorted by an excessive emphasizing of hierarchic and aristocratic principles; in another by an excess of democracy.  Here, too much is made of work and energy for their own sakes; there too much of mere being.  In certain parts of the world he will find spirituality run wild; in others a stupid materialism that would deny the very existence of values.  The traveller will observe these various distortions and will create for himself a standard that shall be, as far as possible, free from them---a standard of values that shall be as timeless, as uncontingent on circumstances, as nearly absolute as he can make them.  Understanding diversity and allowing for it, he will tolerate, but not without limit.  He will distinguish between harmless perversions and those which tend to actually deny or stultify fundamental values.  Towards the first he will be tolerant.  There can be no compromise with the second."

Aldous Huxley

from "Science and Religion" (1859)

"I have said that our faith in the results of the right working of the human mind rests on no mere testimony. But there is One that bears witness to it, and He the Highest. For, the winning of every new law by reasoning from ascertained facts; the verification by the event, of every scientific prediction is, if this world be governed by providential order, the direct testimony of that Providence to the sufficiency of the faculties with which man is endowed, to unravel, so far as is necessary for his welfare, the mysteries by which he is surrounded. Donati's comet lately blazing in the heavens above us at its appointed time; the first quiver which betrayed to the anxious watcher of the telegraphic needle on the other side of the Atlantic, that an electric current would follow, even under such strange conditions, the laws which man's wit and industry had discovered; the bone which, laid bare by Cuvier's chisel, justified his trust in the law of organic correlation which he had discovered; all these, and hundreds of other like cases which I might cite, are to my mind so many signs and wonders, whereby the Divine Governor signifies his approbation of the trust of poor and weak humanity, in the guide which he has given it."

T.H. Huxley

from "Evolutionary Humanism" (1953)

"There should  no longer be any talk of conflict between science and religion.  Between scientific knowledge and certain religious systems, yes: but between science as an increasing knowledge of nature and religion as a social organ concerned with destiny, no.  On the contrary, religion may ally itself wholeheartedly with science.  Science in the broad sense is indispensable as the chief instrument for increasing our store of organized knowledge and understanding.  Through evolutionary biology it has already indicated the nature of human destiny.  Scientific study is needed to give religion a fuller understanding of destiny and to help in devising methods for its detailed realization.  Meanwhile, science must not allow any ancient prejudices against certain aspects of previously established religions to hold it back from giving its aid when called upon."

Julian Huxley

from "Science, Liberty, and Peace" (1946)

"In the years ahead it seems that satyagraha may take root in the West---not primarily as the result of any "change of heart," but simply because it provides the masses, especially in the conquered countries, with their only practicable form of political action.  The Germans of the Ruhr and Palatinate resorted to satyagraha against the French in 1923. The movement was spontaneous; philosophically, ethically, and organizationally, it had not been prepared for.  It was for this reason that it finally broke down. But it lasted long enough to prove that a Western people---and a people more thoroughly indoctrinated in militarism than any other---was perfectly capable of non-violent direct action, involving the cheerful acceptance of sacrificial suffering.  Similar movements of satyagraha (more conscious of themselves this time, and better prepared for) may again be initiated among the masses of conquered Germany.  The impracticability of any other kind of political action makes it very possible that this will happen sooner or later.  It would be one of the happier ironies of history if the nation which produced Klausewitz and Bernhardi and Hitler were to be forced by history to be the first large-scale exponent in the West of that non-violent direct action which has become, in this age of scientific progress, humanity's only practical substitute for hopeless revolution and self-stultifying and suicidal war."

Aldous Huxley

from "Economists, Scientists, and Humanists" (1933)

"Our present troubles are not due to Nature.  They are entirely artificial, genuinely home-made. The very arts and sciences which we have used to conquer nature have turned on their creators and are now conquering us. The present crisis is of our own making; we have brought it on ourselves by allowing our mechanical and agricultural science to develop more rapidly than our economic science. We cannot buy what we produce and are therefore compelled to keep our factories idle and let our fields lie fallow. Millions are hungry, but wheat has to be thrown into the sea.  This is where, and the moment, science has brought us.

"What is the remedy?  Tolstoyans and Gandhi-ites tell us that we must 'return to Nature'---in other words,  abandon science altogether and live like primitives or, at best, in the style of our medieval ancestors.  The trouble with this advice is that it cannot be followed---or rather that it can only be followed if we are prepared to sacrifice at least eight or nine hundred million human lives.  Science, in the form of modern agricultural and industrial technique, has allowed the world's population to double itself in about three generations. If we abolish science and 'return to Nature,' the population will revert to what it was---and will revert, not in a hundred years, but in as many weeks.   Famine and pestilence will do their work with exemplary celerity.  Tolstoy and Gandhi are professed humanitarians; but they advocate a slaughter, compared with which the massacres of Tinur and Jinghiz Khan seem almost imperceptibly trivial.

"No, back to Nature is not practical politics. The only cure for science is more science, not less. We are suffering from the effects of a little science badly applied. The remedy is a lot of science, well applied."

Aldous Huxley

from "Man and Reality" (1933)

"Life may be a consciously planned experiment on the part of a divine mind----or it may not.  But in any case it is legitimate for us to say, on the basis of the known history of life, that mind has become the great progressive feature of life's evolutionary trend. So that, even if our art and religion and science are only our own ways of arranging the jumble of experience, yet in attempting these arrangements we carry on with the main trend of evolution. The biologist finds it exceedingly difficult to believe with the pessimists and sceptics  that human life means nothing. It is part of a larger whole, and of a whole with a main upward movement. To continue that trend is to fulfill our evolutionary destiny."

Julian Huxley

from "Miracle in Lebanon" (1956)

"White sand is clean, but sterile. If you want a herbaceous border, you must mulch your soil with dead leaves and, if possible, dig in a load of dung. Shall we ever see in religion the equivalent of hydroponics---spiritual flowers growing without benefit of excrement or decay, in a solution of pure love and understanding?  I devoutly hope so, but, alas, have my doubts.  Like dirtless farming, dirtless spirituality is likely to remain, for a long time, an exception.  The rule will be dirt and plenty of it.  Occult dirt, bringing forth, as usual, a few mystical flowers and a whole crop of magicians, priests, and fanatics."

Aldous Huxley

from "Ideology and Scientific Knowledge" (1950)

"The question of course remains . . . how the evolutionary concept of man's destiny can come to affect that destiny.

"What celebrations will be devised of human achievement and human possibilities, what pilgrimages and gatherings, what ceremonies of participation, what solemnizations of the steps in individual lives and personal relations? What rituals and techniques of 'salvation', of self-development and self-transcendence will be worked out, what new incentives and new modes of education, what methods for purgation and for achieving freedom from the burdens of guilt and fear without inflicting harm on oneself and others, what new formulations of knowledge and consequent belief? What modes will the future find of distilling its ideas of its destiny into compelling expression, in drama or architecture, painting or story, or perhaps wholly new forms of art?"

Julian Huxley

from a Letter Henrietta Heathorn, September, 1851

"Of one thing I am more and more convinced---that however painful for oneself this destruction of things that have been holy may be---it is the only hope for a new state of belief . . . That a new belief---through which the faith and practice of men shall once more work---is possible and will exist---I cannot doubt. At any rate, what am I, that I should not be content even by negation to help in the 'Forderung der Tag'* as the great poet has it?

". . . Fear no shadows---least of all that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy. They say 'how shocking, how miserable to be without this or that belief!' Surely that is little better than cowardice and a form of selfishness. The Intellectual perception of truth and the acting up to it---is so far as I know the only meaning of the phrase 'one-ness with God.' So long as we attain to that end does it matter whether our small selves are happy or miserable?"

T. H. Huxley

*  Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forderung des Tages.   But what is your duty? What the day demands.         Goethe—Sprüche in Prosa. III. 151.

from "Evolution and Ethics" (1894)

"It strikes me that men who are accustomed to contemplate the active or passive extirpation of the weak, the unfortunate, and the superfluous; who justify that conduct on the ground that it has the sanction of the cosmic process, and is the only way of ensuring the progress of the race; who, if they are consistent, must rank medicine among the black arts and count the physician as a mischievous preserver of the unfit; on whose matrimonial undertakings the principles of the stud have the chief influence; whose whole lives, therefore, are an education in the noble art of suppressing natural affection and sympathy, are not likely to have any large stock of these commodities left. But without them, there is no conscience, nor any restraint on the conduct of men, except the calculation of self interest, the balancing of certain present gratifications against doubtful future pains; and experience shows us how much that is worth. Every day, we see believers in the hell of the theologians commit commit acts by which, as they believe when cool, they risk eternal punishment; while they hold back from those which are opposed by the sympathies of their associates."


T. H. Huxley

from a letter to Julian Huxley, December, 1946

". . . [I]t is perfectly obvious that atomic energy, being generated from uranium, which is a natural monopoly, is a power-source no less politically unsatisfactory than petroleum. Like petroleum, uranium may occur within the territories of powerful nations---in which case it increases their power and their tendency to bully others; or it may be found within the borders of weak nations---in which case it invites aggression and international chicanery, as is now the case with the oil of the Middle east. If they chose, technologists could bypass the whole difficulty by concentrating on the development of a source of power which is not a natural monopoly---and which, also, is not a wasting asset, like uranium, or petroleum, or even coal. The most obvious power source hitherto inadequately exploited is wind. I gather that the experimental wind turbine which has been producing fifteen hundred kilowatts in Maine has proved entirely satisfactory. If scientists genuinely want to contribute to peace and well being, they can collectively and intensively consider the yet more efficient development of such wind turbines and thereby end natural monopolies and remove one of the standing temptations to aggression, war and foreign burrowing from within. But they prefer to concentrate on atomic power, which creates unparalleled temptations in the political sphere."

Aldous Huxley

from a letter to Naomi Mitchison, December, 1939

"The philosophy of Buddhism, which is the most thoroughgoing and consistent of all religious philosophies is merely an extended utilitarianism. It points out that, if you want something appreciably superior to the human activities of past and present, Bondage must be given up for Freedom. It further points out that, where Freedom has been attained by an appropriate exercise of the personality (just as skill in piano playing can be attained by appropriate exercise of the muscles and aesthetic sensibilities) the Free person will be, to a large extent, master of his circumstances and independent of his environment. (It is worth remarking that the term 'Progress' in evolution is applied to the gradual achievement of increasing independence from the environment). Having said this, the Buddhist philosophy goes on to state that, as a matter a matter of fact, very few people care for Freedom enough to take the trouble to attain it. (Christianity asserts the same.) Therefore, it says, there seems little likelihood of the world at large becoming appreciably better than it has been. It has, of course, nothing to say against socialism (whatever that abstraction may mean)."

Aldous Huxley

from "Population and Human Fulfillment" (1957)

"Most foreign residents prophesy that Bali's vital culture is doomed, and will wither and die within ten or fifteen years. This may be over-gloomy, but certainly Balinese culture is in danger, and will die out or be debased by bastardized westernization unless something is done to check its decline. The question is what, and how? I can only hope that the Indonesian government will realize the value, to its own country and to the world, of this rich product of the centuries, and that Unesco will justify the 'C' in its name---C for Culture---and do all in its power to help. No one wants to keep the Balinese in a state of ill-health and ignorance: but instead of being pushed by well-meaning but ill-considered efforts of overzealous missionaries and administrators and 'scientific' experts to believe that their traditional culture is a symbol of backwardness, to be sacrificed on the twin altars of Christian doctrine and technological advance, they could be encouraged in the truer and profounder belief in the essential validity of their indigenous arts and ceremonials, and helped in the task of adapting them to modern standards. A traditional culture, like a wild species of animal or plant, is a living thing. If it is destroyed, the world is the poorer; nor can it be artificially re-created. But being alive, it can evolve to meet new conditions. It is an urgent but sadly neglected task of the present age to discover the means whereby the flowerings of culture shall not be extinguished by the advances of science and technique, but shall cooperate with them in the general enrichment of life. And in coping with this task we must not forget that population increase can make it more difficult, by forcing people to think of how merely to stay alive, less of how to live."

Julian Huxley

from "What Dare I Think?" (1931)

". . . [T]he explorations of pharmacology are discovering many remarkable effects of chemical substances. Out of coal the pharmacologist can prepare acetanilide which will bring down the temperature; with other substances he can send the temperature up. Out of raw liver he gets a substance that will build blood; out of a Mexican cactus he can extract a drug which will promote the strength of visual imagery in thinking and will make some people hallucinate; he can manufacture out of ordinary materials in his laboratory the thyroxin with which the thyroid gland stimulates the body to new activity; he can reduce or increase the blood pressure at will. But again, the results have solely been applied to set right something which has gone wrong, not to open new doors."

Julian Huxley

from "The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study" (1886)

"I suppose that, as long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of shadow-worship as the nescience of ignorant ages.  The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and careless take them for adequate expressions of reality.  So, it may be, that the majority of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier by the use of theological symbols.  And unless these are converted from symbols into idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the practice, except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty is laid upon men of science to show that these dogmatic idols have no greater value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and the stones, which they have replaced."

T. H. Huxley

from a Letter to Julian and Juliette Huxley, August 9th, 1962

"I have been ruminating the possibility of writing a kind of contrapuntal phantasy. On one level there would be a kind of science fiction vision of what might be, if we used our resources with intelligence and good will.On another level it would be an account of what is actually happening at the present time. On a third level it would be another science fiction vision of what may be expected to happen if we don't behave with intelligence and good will. I can't yet envisage the form of such a book; but if I find a satisfactory form and can work it out in an interesting way, the result might be significant and important. In the mean time I must wait around like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up---or, romantically, like the scholar gipsy, for the spark from heaven to fall."

Aldous Huxley

from "The ABC of Reading" (1934)

"The most useful living member of the Huxley family has emphasized the fact that the telescope wasn't merely an idea, but that it was very definitely a technical achievement."

Ezra Pound

from a Letter to Philip Whalen, March, 1954

". . . Rexroth has stomach trouble and his wife Marthe is pregnant again. But he still happily holds forth on KPFA & has managed to insult virtually everyone in the Bay Area now; he has the university here positively frothing. & a recent flaying of Huxley's Vedanta business and of southern California orientalists has won him a pack of enemies. He said, roughly, 'The only living member of the Huxley family who can think with even moderate clarity is Julian.'"

Gary Snyder

from " On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge" (1866)

"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.  And, it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest skepticism, the annhilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature---whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation---Nature will confirm them."

T. H. Huxley

from a letter to Martha Voegeli, May 3rd, 1961

"The only kind of religion, so far as I can see, that is compatible with scientific thought is a religion of mystical experience---not a Nirvana outside the world but within it . . . The ethical corollary of mystical experience (which involves a sense of solidarity with all beings) is compassion and ultimately ahimsa, with the paradoxical combination of working for the cause of goodness and at the same time obeying the injunction of Jesus (and all mystics) 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' Mystical experience is no more incompatible with science than aesthetic experience. Incompatibility arises when metaphysical interpretations are made."

Aldous Huxley

Aphorisms and Reflections, clxvii (1908, Henrietta Huxley, ed.)

"Of all the most dangerous mental habits, that which schoolboys call 'cocksureness' is probably the most perilous; and the inestimable value of metaphysical discipline is that it furnishes an effectual counterpoise to this evil proclivity. Whoso has mastered the elements of philosophy knows that the attribute of unquestionable certainty appertains only to a state of consciousness so long as it exists; all other beliefs are merely probabilities of a higher or lower order. Sound metaphysic is an amulet which renders its possessor proof alike against the poison of superstition and the counterpoison of shallow negation; by showing the affirmations of the former and the denials of the latter alike deal with matters which, for lack of evidence, nothing can be either affirmed or denied."


T. H. Huxley

from "Ideology and Scientific Knowledge" (1950)

"The scientific method of the working hypothesis, as the only gateway to the erection of comprehnsive theories, laws, and principles, to the establishment of further knowledge, and to the securing of more successful practice and better control of nature, can and should be utilized in other spheres---in morals, in politics, in social affairs, in religion.

"In other words, any new ideology must not be dogmatic, and must refrain from any claim to absoluteness or completeness; it must utilize scientific method, so as to be expansive, flexible and unitive instead of rigid and eventually restrictive and divisive. Tolerance, respect for cultural and individual variety, acceptance of difference---these are some of the counterparts to the scientific method in other fields. However, they themselves should not be employed rigidly or in any absolute sense, but in the same sort of way that the principle of the working hypothesis is applied in the natural sciences"

Julian Huxley

from "Time Must Have a Stop" (1944)

"To the surprise of Humanists and Liberal Churchmen, the abolition of God left a perceptible void. But Nature abhors vacuums. Nation, Class, and Party, Culture and Art have rushed in to fill the empty niche. For politicians and for those of us who happen to have been born with a talent, the new pseudo-religions have been, still are and (until they destroy the entire social structure) will continue to be very profitable superstitions. But regard them dispassionately, sub specie aeternitatis. How unutterably odd, silly and Satanic!"

Aldous Huxley

from T.H. Huxley's Autobiography (1889)

"My mother was a slender brunette, of an emotional and energetic temperament, and possessed of the most peircing black eyes I ever saw in a woman's head. With no more education than other women of the middle classes in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity. Her most distinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity of thought. If one ventured to suggest she had not taken much time to arrive at a conclusion, she would say, "I cannot help it, things flash across me." That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full strength; it has often stood me in good stead; it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger. But, after all, if my time were to come over again, there is nothing I would less willingly part with than my inheritence of mother wit."

T. H. Huxley

"The Art of Fiction" an interview with Aldous Huxley (Paris Review, 1960)

" . . . I think fiction, and biography and history, are the forms. . . And I must say I think that probably all philosophy ought to be written in this form; it would be much more profound and much more edifying. It’s awfully easy to write abstractly, without attaching much meaning to the big words. But the moment you have to express ideas in the light of a particular context, in a particular set of circumstances, although it’s a limitation in some ways, it’s also an invitation to go much further and much deeper. I think that fiction and, as I say, history and biography are immensely important, not only for their own sake, because they provide a picture of life now and of life in the past, but also as vehicles for the expression of general philosophic ideas, religious ideas, social ideas. My goodness, Dostoyevsky is six times as profound as Kierkegaard, because he writes fiction. In Kierkegaard you have this Abstract Man going on and on—like Coleridge—why, it’s nothing compared with the really profound Fictional Man, who has always to keep these tremendous ideas alive in a concrete form. In fiction you have the reconciliation of the absolute and the relative, so to speak, the expression of the general in the particular. And this, it seems to me, is the exciting thing—both in life and in art."

Aldous Huxley

from "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

" . . . [N]o one man's belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone. Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live."

William K. Clifford

Aphorisms and Reflections, cxxxvii (1908, Henrietta Huxley, ed.)

"The most considerable difference I note among men is not their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses."

T. H. Huxley

Aphorisms and Reflections, cxxxiii (1908, Henrietta Huxley, ed.)

"Men can intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectively as with alcohol or with bang, and produce, by dint of intense thinking, mental conditions hardly distinguishable from monomania."

T. H. Huxley

from "The New Divinity" (1964)

"Let me remind my readers that the term divine did not originally imply the existence of gods: on the contrary, gods were constructed to interpret man's experiences of this quality."

Julian Huxley

from "Evolution and Ethics" (1894)

"As no man fording a stream can dip his foot twice in the same water, so no man can, with exactness, affirm of anything in the sensible world that it is. As he utters the words, nay, as he thinks them, the predicate ceases to be applicable; the present becomes the past; the 'is' should be 'was.'  And the more we learn of the nature of things, the more evident it is that what we call rest is only unperceived activity; that seeming peace is silent but strenuous battle. In every part, at every moment, the state of the cosmos is the expression of a transitory adjustment of contending forces; a scene of strife in which all combatents fall in turn. What is true of each part, is true of the whole. Natural knowledge tends more and more to the conclusion that 'all the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth' are transitory forms of parcels of cosmic substance wending along the road of evolution, from nebulous potentiality, through endless growths of sun and planet and satellite; through all varieties of matter; through infinite diversities of life and thought; possibly, through modes of being of which we have neither a conception, nor are competent to form any, back to the indefinable latency from which they arose."

T. H. Huxley

from "Science and Morals" (1886)

"Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to presume to go about unlabelled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control. I could find no label that would suit me, so, in my desire to range myself and be respectable, I invented one; and, as the chief thing I was sure of was that I did not know a great many things that the ---ists and the ---ites about me professed to be familiar with, I called myself an Agnostic. Surely no denomination could be more modest or more appropriate; and I cannot imagine why I should be every now and then haled out of my refuge and declared sometimes to be a Materialist, sometimes an Atheist, sometimes a Positivist; and sometimes, alas and alack, a cowardly reactionary Obscurantist."

T. H. Huxley

from "The Agnostic Razor" (1917)

"What the philosophers and theologians require is a razor. The absolute badly needs a haircut; at present he is too much like Paederewski—he has more nimbus than is necessary more even that [sic] is decent.  .  . As for God, he should really have his beard trimmed  .  .  ‘The Agnostic Razor’ would keep its edge indefinitely provided that it was regularly and properly stropped, the best materials for the strop being hard fact and experience."

Julian Huxley

 "The Agnostic Razor" (unpublished essay, Julian Huxley Papers at Rice University), 1917

from "Lessons in Elementary Psychology" (1866)

"How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djinn, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp."

T. H. Huxley

from "Agnosticism" (1889)

"Agnostisicm  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. This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that 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 justification of the agnostic principle lies in the success which follows upon its application, whether in the field of natural or in that of civil history; and in the fact that, so far as these topics are concerned, no sane man thinks of denying its validity."

T. H. Huxley