Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
a manifestation of the central theological polarity that was more broadly at
issue in the Reformation. True science bore witness to natural revelation,
and thus it stood with the Protestants against all those idols of human sub-
jectivity that had corrupted Catholicism. Empirical science had expressed
the same ethic of faithful reading that was advancing the Reformation.
Huxley was now merely mapping the same narrative onto scientific history,
enlarging the older polarity between faithful and idolatrous Christianity,
through which Bacon had made sense of the struggle between scholasti-
cism and the new science, into a more general polarity between faith and
reason. But because this new representation still engaged the narrative form
in which Bacon had embedded it, which Huxley was calling a “new reforma-
tion” in this 1860 lecture, it likewise retained the thematic aura of historical
providence.
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So what had Darwin's theory to do with this new reformation? Framed
now within this larger narrative, its scientific truth was no longer the issue. Its
value was derived from the fact that it symbolized, as no other scientific idea
could, the naturalistic apocalypse that Huxley was proclaiming. Conversely,
resistance to Darwin's claims symbolized the tragic lot of those who dared
resist the march of history—which now had become the march of nature.
But to those whose life is spent, to use Newton's noble words, in picking
up here a pebble and there a pebble on the shores of the great ocean of
truth—who watch, day by day, the slow but sure advance of that mighty
tide, bearing on its bosom the thousand treasures wherewith man enno-
bles and beautifies his life, it would be laughable, if it were not so sad, to
see the little Canutes of the hour enthroned in solemn state, bidding that
great wave to stay, and threatening to check its beneficent progress. The
wave rises and they fly but unlike the brave old Dane, they learn no lesson
of humility—the throne is pitched at what seems a safe distance, and the
folly is repeated.
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The King Canute of legend symbolized the philosophical humility that Eng-
land's clerical administrators now lacked. To confute the flattering asser-
tion of his courtiers that he could still the ocean's waves by royal command,
this Christian monarch had made a public demonstration of his incapac-
ity to rule over nature, thereby affirming the separation of temporal and
spiritual powers. Inverting this somewhat, Huxley's “little Canutes” are the
ecclesiastics who continue to suppose that their spiritual authority extends
into nature. Lacking that humility of place that this ancestral king had
shown, they were doomed by the rising tide of naturalistic science that was
