Critiques And Addresses By Thomas Henry Huxley Lld Frs

Author : Thomas Henry Huxley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (325 download)

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Download or read book Critiques and Addresses written by Thomas Henry Huxley and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critiques and addresses by Thomas Henry Huxley X PREFACE. opinions of Father Suarez has placed him. So much more, in fact, has Mr. Mivart's ingenuity impressed me than any other feature of his reply, that I shall take the liberty of re-stating the main issue between us; and, for the present, leaving that issue alone to the judgment of the public. In his book on the " Genesis of Species " Mr. Mivart, after discussing the opinions of sundry Catholic writers of authority, among whom he especially includes St. Augustin, St. Thoma-s Aquinas, and the Jesuit Suarez, proceeds to say: " It is then evident that ancient and most venerable theological authorities distinctly assert derivative creation, and thus their teachings harmonize with all that modem science can possibly require." By the "derivative creation" of organic forms, Mr. Mivart understands, ** that God created them by conferring on the material world the power to evolve them under suitable conditions." On the contrary, I proved by evidence, which Mr. Mivart does not venture to impugn, that Suarez, in his "Tractatus de Opere sex Dierum, " expressly rejects St. Augustin's and St. Thomas' views; that he vehemently advocates the literal interpretation of the account of the creation given in the Book of Genesis ; and that he treats with utter scorn the notion that the Almighty could have used the language of that Fook, unless He meant it to be taken literallv. 1 1 regret that ia one part of my essay on " Mr. Darwin's Critics/* I re the sense and not the very words of this passage, as a quotation; and that, by an oversight, the inverted commas rtmain in the present edition (see p. 267). PBEFACJS. xi Mr. Mivaxt, therefore, either has read Suarez and has totaUy misrepresented him-a hypothesis which. I hope I need hardly say, I do not for a moment en- tertain: or, he has got his information at second hand, and has himself been deceived. But in that case, it is surely an imprudence on his part, to reproach me with having ''read Suarez ad hoc, and evidently without the guidance of anyone familiar with that author." No doubt, in the matter of guidance, Mr. Mivart has the advantage of me. Nevertheless, the guides who supplied him with his references to Suarez' " Metaphysica/' while they left him in ignorance of the existence of the " Tractatus," are guides with whose services it might be better to dispense; leaders who wilfully shut their eyes, being even more liable to lodge one in a ditch, than blind leaders. Contents Administrative nihilism -- The school boards: what they can do, and what they may do -- On medical education -- Yeast -- On the formation of coal -- On coral and coral reefs -- On the methods and results of ethnology -- On some fixed points in British ethnology -- Palaeontology and the doctrine of evolution -- Mr. Darwin's critics -- The genealogy of animals -- Bishop Berkeley on the metaphysics of sensation.