Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Huxley's argument that science adds a dimension of intellectual sublim-
ity to the uninstructed observer's intuitions of beauty is also a transition
from analogy into myth. The ground of his analogy now shifts from biologi-
cal evolution to the evolution of science itself, and the evolutionary moun-
tain that grew up to become humanity now transforms into something even
higher, the scientific enterprise that stands atop this summit.
Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the
knowledge that Man is, in substance and in structure, one with the brutes;
for, he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and ratio-
nal speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly
accumulated and organised the experience which is almost wholly lost
with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that, now,
he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his
humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting,
here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.
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The scientific lesson of Huxley's topic, that even human beings are prod-
ucts of natural evolution, has given way as he closes this chapter to the
notion that science is in fact the end of this evolutionary epic. Science
is both the prophet of evolution and its chosen one; it has discovered an
answer to the mystery of mysteries, and a key part of this answer is that sci-
ence itself is the protagonist of evolutionary history.
