“There is a wider teleology,” Huxley wrote, “which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based on the fundamental proposition of evolution.  This proposition is that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed.  That acute champion of teleology, Paley, saw no difficulty in admitting that the ’production of things’ may be the result of mechanical dispositions fixed beforehand by intelligent appointment and kept in action by a power at the centre.”

CHAPTER XIV

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

Authority and Knowledge in Science—­The Duty of Doubt—­Authority and Individual Judgment in Religion—­The Protestant Position—­Sir Charles Lyell and the Deluge—­Infallibility—­The Church and Science—­Morality and Dogma—­Civil and Religious Liberty—­Agnosticism and Clericalism—­Meaning of Agnosticism—­Knowledge and Evidence—­The Method of Agnosticism.

In the practice of modern law-courts, a witness rarely is allowed to offer as evidence any statement for which he himself is not the direct authority.  What he himself saw or heard or did with regard to the matter at issue—­these, and not what others told him they had seen or heard or done, are the limits within which he is allowed to be a competent witness.  As a matter of fact, in the business of life we have to act differently.  A large proportion of our opinions, beliefs, and reasons for conduct must come to us on the authority of others.  We have no direct experience of the past; of the present we can see little and only the little immediately surrounding us.  In a multitude of affairs we have to act on authority, to accept from books or from persons what we have not ourselves the opportunity of knowing.  It would seem, then, to be a primary duty to learn to distinguish in our minds those matters which we know directly from those matters which we have accepted on trust; and, secondly, to learn and to apply the best modes of choosing the good and of rejecting the bad authorities.  The work of the scientific man is a lifelong exercise of these primary duties.  From the first moment he begins to observe living things or to dissect their dead frameworks, to mix chemical substances, to make experiments with magnets and wires, he begins to build, and as long as he continues to work he continues to build for himself a body of first-hand knowledge.  But, however he work arduously or through long years, he can visit only the smallest portion of the field of nature in which he is working.  It is necessary for him to employ the work of others, submitting, from time to time such accepted work to the tests suggested by his own observations.  He learns to regard in a different light all knowledge taken on the authority of others; to distrust it a little until he has learned to weigh its general credibility by his own standards, and its particular credibility by subjecting portions of it to his own tests; to distrust it still more when even small portions fail to answer his tests, and to reject it altogether when the percentage of detected error is large.  He learns, in fact, what Huxley called the duty of doubt.