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Page 14
The paper to be read at each meeting of the Society was printed
and circulated in advance, so that all might be prepared with their
arguments. Discussion followed the dinner at which the members met.
Of these papers Huxley contributed three, the titles of which
sufficiently indicate the fundamental points on which his criticism
played, questioning current axioms in its search for trustworthy
evidence of their validity. The first (1869) was on "The Views of
Hume, Kant, and Whately on the Logical Basis of the Doctrine of
the Immortality of the Soul," showing that these thinkers agreed in
holding that no such basis is given by reasoning apart, for instance,
from revelation. The argument is summarized in the essay on Hume
(_Coll. Ess._, vi, 201; 1878).
The second was "Has a Frog a Soul? and if so, of what Nature is that
Soul?" (1870), a physiological discussion as to the seat of those
purposive actions of which the animal is capable after it has lost
ordinary volition and consciousness by the removal of the front part
of its brain. Are these things attributes of the soul, and are
they resident not even in the brain, but in the spinal marrow? If
metaphysics starts from psychology, psychology itself depends greatly
upon physiology; current theories need reconsideration. This paper
was the starting-point for his larger essay on "Animals as Automata,"
delivered as an address before the British Association in 1874.
The third paper (1876) was on "The Evidence of the Miracle of the
Resurrection," as to which he, so to say, moved the previous question,
arguing that there was no valid evidence of actual death having taken
place. The paper was the result of an invitation on the part of some
of his metaphysical opponents. As he rejected the miraculous, they
asked him to write on a definite miracle, and explain his reasons for
not accepting it. He chose this subject because, in the first place,
it was a cardinal instance; and, in the second, that as it was a
miracle not worked by Christ himself, a discussion of its genuineness
could not possibly suggest personal fraud and so inflict gratuitous
pain upon believers in it. The question of the fundamentals of
Christian evidences had long been in his mind; it was no new subject
to him when in the eighties, debarred by his health from physiological
researches, he extended his work on Biblical studies.
If the Metaphysical Society effected nothing else, it brought about
a personal _rapprochement_ between the representatives of opposing
schools of thought. It became clear to the older school that the new
thinkers had by no means failed, as they suspected, to examine the
older doctrines. Theirs was not dishonest doubt, but a strong demand
for better evidence. If the Society itself "died of too much love," it
may well have contributed to the greater amenity of public discussion
as the years passed, and the diminution of the former rabid
denunciations which waned as the new doctrines spread, and were even
absorbed and digested by their former antagonists.
VII
CONTROVERSY AND THE BATTLE OF THE "ORIGIN"
The piercing clearness of mind described by Prof. Sidgwick, which
could not express itself otherwise than trenchantly and drove straight
at the heart of the subject, gave Huxley the popular reputation of
being above all things a controversialist. Naturally enough, the
public knew little and cared less for the unspectacular researches
among the Invertebrates, which had won such high scientific fame.
They were only stirred when the results of study in geology, in
fossil forms and simian anatomy, clashed with long-established
popular conceptions. There was also a gladiatorial delight in watching
controversy not simply abstract, but fanned by personal conviction,
which marked the champions above all as good fighters.
It must be noted, however, that, vigorous as he was in carrying war
into the enemy's country, on two occasions only did Huxley set forth
without being first personally attacked. One was his review of
the _Vestiges of Creation,_ when he was irritated by the writer's
"prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind."
If it had any influence on me at all [he writes], it set me
against Evolution; and the only review I ever have qualms of
conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery, is one I
wrote on the _Vestiges_ while under that influence (1854).
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