THE WISDOM OF HUXLEY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9072, 12 February 1908, Page 7

THE WISDOM OF HUXLEY.

The following are taken from Huxley’s Aphorisms and Reflections, edited by the great scientist’s widow, and in dainty half-crown form by Messrs Macmillan. - : “Learn what is true, in order to do what is right,” is the summing up of the whole duty of man, for”all who are unable to satisfy their mental hunger with the east wind of authority. When I say that Descartes consecrated doubt, you must remember that it was that sort of doubt which Goethe has called “the active scepticism, whose whole aim is to conquer itself,” and not that other sort which is born of flippancy and ignorance, and whose aim is only to perpetuate itself, as an excuse for idleness and indifference, The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do (right; the freedom to do wrong I am" ready to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who will take it of me. Of all the senseless babble I hare ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of those philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers wno try to prove that there is no God, Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like. Witless will serve his brother. The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction. Individualism, pushed to anarchy, in the family is as ill-founded theoretically and as mischievous practically as it is in the State; while extreme regimentation is a certain means of either destroying self-reliance or of maddening to rebellion. Orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, either can it forget. Science is, I believe, nothing but trained 'and organised common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit; and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.