the thaumaturgic nature of the Biblical miracles
provided him with additional reason for refusing to attach any
extrinsic value to the contents of the book.

On the other hand, although he declined to accept the Bible as a
miraculous and authentic revelation, again and again he expressed
himself in the strongest terms as to its value to mankind, and as to
the impossibility of any scientific advance diminishing in any way
whatsoever that value.

"The antagonism between religion and science, about which we hear
so much, appears to me to be purely factitious--fabricated, on
the one hand, by shortsighted religious people who confound a
certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the
other, by equally shortsighted 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."

And again;

"In the eighth century B.C., in the heart of a world of
idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a
conception of religion which appears to me to be as wonderful an
inspiration of genius as the art of Pheidias or the science of
Aristotle. 'And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?' If
any so-called religion takes away from this great saying of
Micah, I think it wantonly mutilates, while if it adds thereto, I
think it obscures, the perfect ideal of religion."

CHAPTER XVI

ETHICS OF THE COSMOS

Conduct and Metaphysics--Conventional and Critical Minds--Good
and Evil--Huxley's Last Appearance at Oxford--The Ethical Process
and the Cosmic Process--Man's Intervention--The Cosmic Process
Evil--Ancient Reconciliations--Modern Acceptance of the
Difficulties--Criticism of Huxley's Pessimism--Man and his
Ethical Aspirations Part of the Cosmos.

We have seen that Huxley refused to acquiesce in the current orthodox
doctrine that our systems of morality rested on a special revelation,
miraculous in its origin, and vouched for by the recorded miracles of
its Founder, or by those entrusted by the Founder with miraculous
power. He supported the view that, historically and actually, there is
no necessary connection between religion and mo