The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on Evolution, by Thomas Henry Huxley

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Title: Lectures on Evolution
Essay #3 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"

Author: Thomas Henry Huxley

Posting Date: December 3, 2008 [EBook #2629]
Release Date: May, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LECTURES ON EVOLUTION

ESSAY #3 FROM "SCIENCE AND HEBREW TRADITION"

By Thomas Henry Huxley

I. THE THREE HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE HISTORY OF NATURE

We live in and form part of a system of things of immense diversity
and perplexity, which we call Nature; and it is a matter of the deepest
interest to all of us that we should form just conceptions of the
constitution of that system and of its past history. With relation to
this universe, man is, in extent, little more than a mathematical point;
in duration but a fleeting shadow; he is a mere reed shaken in the winds
of force. But as Pascal long ago remarked, although a mere reed, he is
a thinking reed; and in virtue of that wonderful capacity of thought,
he has the power of framing for himself a symbolic conception of the
universe, which, although doubtless highly imperfect and inadequate as
a picture of the great whole, is yet sufficient to serve him as a chart
for the guidance of his practical affairs. It has taken long ages of
toilsome and often fruitless labour to enable man to look steadily at
the shifting scenes of the phantasmagoria of Nature, to notice what is
fixed among her fluctuations, and what is regular among her apparent
irregularities; and it is only comparatively lately, within the last few
centuries, that the conception of a universal order and of a definite
course of things, which we term the course of Nature, has emerged.

But, once originated, the conception of the constancy of the order of
Nature has become the dominant idea of modern thought. To any person who
is familiar with the facts upon which that conception is based, and
is competent to estimate their significance, it has ceased to be
conceivable that chance should have any place in the universe, or that
ev