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