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Rh reservation, as evolution implies the principle of continuity (l.c. p. 55). Later he stated his belief even more absolutely: “If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the universal validity of the law of causation, but that universality cannot be proved by any amount of experience” (Essays, ix. 121). The assertion that “There is only one method by which intellectual truth can be reached, whether the subject-matter of investigation belongs to the world of physics or to the world of consciousness” (Essays, ix. 126) laid him open to the charge of materialism, which he vigorously repelled. His defence, when he rested it on the imperfection of the physical analysis of matter and force (l.c. p. 131), was irrelevant; he was on sounder ground when he contended with Berkeley “that our certain knowledge does not extend beyond our states of consciousness” (l.c. p. 130). “Legitimate materialism, that is, the extension of the conceptions and of the methods of physical science to the highest as well as to the lowest phenomena of vitality, is neither more nor less than a sort of shorthand idealism” (Essays, i. 194). While “the substance of matter is a metaphysical unknown quality of the existence of which there is no proof the non-existence of a substance of mind is equally arguable;  the result  is the reduction of the All to co-existences and sequences of phenomena beneath and beyond which there is nothing cognoscible” (Essays, ix. 66). Hume had defined a miracle as a “violation of the laws of nature.” Huxley refused to accept this. While, on the one hand, he insists that “the whole fabric of practical life is built upon our faith in its continuity” (Hume, p. 129), on the other “nobody can presume to say what the order of nature must be”; this “knocks the bottom out of all a priori objections either to ordinary ‘miracles’ or to the efficacy of prayer” (Essays, v. 133). “If by the term miracles we mean only extremely wonderful events, there can be no just ground for denying the possibility of their occurrence” (Hume, p. 134). Assuming the chemical elements to be aggregates of uniform primitive matter, he saw no more theoretical difficulty in water being turned into alcohol in the miracle at Cana, than in sugar undergoing a similar conversion (Essays, v. 81). The credibility of miracles with Huxley is a question of evidence. It may be remarked that a scientific explanation is destructive of the supernatural character of a miracle, and that the demand for evidence may be so framed as to preclude the credibility of any historical event. Throughout his life theology had a strong attraction, not without elements of repulsion, for Huxley. The circumstances of his early training, when Paley was the “most interesting Sunday reading allowed him when a boy” (Life, ii. 57), probably had something to do with both. In 1860 his beliefs were apparently theistic: “Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God” (Life, i. 219). In 1885 he formulates “the perfect ideal of religion” in a passage which has become almost famous: “In the 8th century in the heart of a world of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a conception of religion which appears 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’&#8202;” (Essays, iv. 161). Two years later he was writing: “That there is no evidence of the existence of such a being as the God of the theologians is true enough” (Life, ii. 162). He insisted, however, that “atheism is on purely philosophical grounds untenable” (l.c.). His theism never really advanced beyond the recognition of “the passionless impersonality of the unknown and unknowable, which science shows everywhere underlying the thin veil of phenomena” (Life, i. 239). In other respects his personal creed was a kind of scientific Calvinism. There is an interesting passage in an essay written in 1892, “An Apologetic Eirenicon,” which has not been republished, which illustrates this: “It is the secret of the superiority of the best theological teachers to the majority of their opponents that they substantially recognize these realities of things, however strange the forms in which they clothe their conceptions. The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man and the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a benevolent Almighty, who has only lately revealed himself, faulty as they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the ‘liberal’ popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so; that it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if he will only try; that all partial evil is universal good, and other optimistic figments, such as that which represents ‘Providence’ under the guise of a paternal philanthropist, and bids us believe that everything will come right (according to our notions) at last.” But his “slender definite creed,” R. H. Hutton, who was associated with him in the Metaphysical Society, thought—and no doubt rightly—in no respect “represented the cravings of his larger nature.”

From 1880 onwards till the very end of his life, Huxley was continuously occupied in a controversial campaign against orthodox beliefs. As Professor W. F. R. Weldon justly said of his earlier polemics: “They were certainly among the principal agents in winning a larger measure of toleration for the critical examination of fundamental beliefs, and for the free expression of honest reverent doubt.” He threw Christianity overboard bodily and with little appreciation of its historic effect as a civilizing agency. He thought that “the exact nature of the teachings and the convictions of Jesus is extremely uncertain” (Essays, v. 348). “What we are usually pleased to call religion nowadays is, for the most part, Hellenized Judaism” (Essays, iv. 162). His final analysis of what “since the second century, has assumed to itself the title of Orthodox Christianity” is a “varying compound of some of the best and some of the worst elements of Paganism and Judaism, moulded in practice by the innate character of certain people of the Western world” (Essays, v. 142). He concludes “That this Christianity is doomed to fall is, to my mind, beyond a doubt; but its fall will neither be sudden nor speedy” (l.c.). He did not omit, however, to do justice to “the bright side of Christianity,” and was deeply impressed with the life of Catherine of Siena. Failing Christianity, he thought that some other “hypostasis of men’s hopes” will arise (Essays, v. 254). His latest speculations on ethical problems are perhaps the least satisfactory of his writings. In 1892 he wrote: “The moral sense is a very complex affair—dependent in part upon associations of pleasure and pain, approbation and disapprobation, formed by education in early youth, but in part also on an innate sense of moral beauty and ugliness (how originated need not be discussed), which is possessed by some people in great strength, while some are totally devoid of it” (Life, ii. 305). This is an intuitional theory, and he compares the moral with the aesthetic sense, which he repeatedly declares to be intuitive; thus: “All the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and this is ugly” (Essays, ix. 80). In the Romanes Lecture delivered in 1894, in which this passage occurs, he defines “law and morals” to be “restraints upon the struggle for existence between men in society.” It follows that “the ethical process is in opposition to the cosmic process,” to which the struggle for existence belongs (Essays, ix. 31). Apparently he thought that the moral sense in its origin was intuitional and in its development utilitarian. “Morality commenced with society” (Essays, v. 52). The “ethical process” is the “gradual strengthening of the social bond” (Essays, ix. 35). “The cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends” (l.c. p. 83); “of moral purpose I see no trace in nature. That is an article of exclusive human manufacture” (Life, ii. 268). The cosmic process Huxley identified with evil, and the ethical process with good; the two are in necessary conflict. “The reality at the bottom of the doctrine of original sin” is the “innate tendency to self-assertion” inherited by man from the cosmic order (Essays, ix. 27). “The actions we call sinful are part and parcel of the struggle for existence” (Life, ii. 282). “The prospect of attaining untroubled happiness” is “an illusion” (Essays, ix. 44), and the cosmic process in the long run will get the best of the contest, and “resume its sway” when evolution enters on its downward course (l.c. p. 45). This approaches pure pessimism, and though in Huxley’s view the “pessimism of Schopenhauer is a nightmare” (Essays, ix. 200), his own philosophy of life is not distinguishable, and is often expressed in the same language. The cosmic order is obviously non-moral (Essays, ix. 197). That it is, as has been said, immoral is really meaningless. Pain and suffering are affections which imply a complex nervous organization, and we are not justified in projecting them into nature external to ourselves. Darwin and A. R. Wallace disagreed with Huxley in seeing rather the joyous than the suffering side of nature. Nor can it be assumed that the descending scale of evolution will reproduce the ascent, or that man will ever be conscious of his doom.

As has been said, Huxley never thoroughly grasped the Darwinian principle. He thought “transmutation may take place without transition” (Life, i. 173). In other words, that evolution is accomplished by leaps and not by the accumulation of small variations. He recognized the “struggle for existence” but not the gradual adjustment of the organism to its environment which is implied in “natural selection.” In highly civilized societies he thought that the former was at an end (Essays, ix. 36) and had been replaced by the “struggle for enjoyment” (l.c. p. 40). But a consideration of the stationary population of France might have shown him that the effect in the one case may be as restrictive as in the other. So far from natural selection being in abeyance under modern social conditions, “it is,” as Professor Karl Pearson points out, “something we run up against at once, almost as soon as we examine a mortality table” (Biometrika, i. 76). The inevitable conclusion, whether we like it or not, is that the future evolution of humanity is as much a part of the cosmic process as its past history, and Huxley’s attempt to shut the door on it cannot be maintained scientifically.

.—Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, by his son Leonard Huxley (2 vols., 1900); Scientific Memoirs of T. H. Huxley (4 vols., 1898–1901); Collected Essays by T. H. Huxley (9 vols., 1898); Thomas Henry Huxley, a Sketch of his Life and Work, by P. Chalmers Mitchell, M.A. (Oxon., 1900); a critical study founded on careful research and of great value.

 HUY (Lat. Hoium, and Flem. Hoey), a town of Belgium, on the right bank of the Meuse, at the point where it is joined by the Hoyoux. Pop. (1904), 14,164. It is 19 m. E. of Namur and a trifle less west of Liége. Huy certainly dates from the 7th century, and, according to some, was founded by the emperor