Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
confessed to find “much to arouse the liveliest interest” in one like himself
who awaited the arrival of a new faith. As “one whose boat had broken away
from the old moorings,” he was now “content 'to lay out an anchor by the
stern' until daylight should break and the fog clear.”
Nothing could be more interesting to a student of biology than to see
the study of the biological sciences laid down as an essential part of the
prolegomena of a new view of social phænomena. Nothing could be more
satisfactory to a worshipper of the severe truthfulness of science than the
attempt to dispense with all beliefs, save such as could brave the light, and
seek, rather than fear, criticism; while to a lover of courage and outspo-
kenness, nothing could be more touching than the placid announcement
on the title-page of the “Discours sur l'Ensemble du Positivisme,” that its
author proposed
“Réorganiser, sans Dieu ni roi,
Par le culte systématique de l'Humanité.”
75
Huxley's objection was not to a positivist religion per se. What had disap-
pointed him was that the new God, the “Nouveau Grand-Être Suprême”
proposed by the French philosopher, was only “a gigantic fetish, turned out
brand-new by M. Comte's own hands,” in the image of the church of Rome.
“Roi” also was not heard of; but, in his place, I found a minutely-defined
social organization, which, if it ever came into practice, would exert a des-
potic authority such as no sultan has rivalled, and no Puritan presbytery,
in its palmiest days, could hope to excel. While as for the “culte systéma-
tique de l'Humanité,” I, in my blindness, could not distinguish it from
sheer Popery, with M. Comte in the chair of St. Peter, and the names of
most of the saints changed.
76
The Protestant character of his agnostic answer to Comte would become
explicit in later messages. The revolutionary movement of science into the
center of higher education that he celebrated in the 1874 address that
inaugurated his term as rector at the University of Aberdeen presents an
exact parallel to Comte's interpretation of cultural evolution, but now
with the Protestant Reformation playing the role that Comte had assigned
to the Catholic Church in this process. The scientific revolution in edu-
cation was an “act which commenced with the Protestant Reformation,”
which was now merely giving way through science to “a wider and deeper
change than that effected three centuries ago.”
77
Just as the Protestant
movement was launched when religious reformers began “to awake to the
