Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/217

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THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
205

judgment. He could not, of course, become an expert in such matters, or qualified to take an authoritative part in the controversies of specialists. But he was fully competent to insist upon one essential point, and even bound to speak, if it be a duty to propagate what one believes to be a truth of vast importance. His articles converge upon a principle which, if fairly appreciated, explains and justifies his method. In the long war between faith and science, one favourite eirenicon has been a proposed division of provinces. Reason and authority may each be supreme in its own sphere. Huxley argues that this separation is radically untenable. A historical religion must rest upon evidence of fact; and the validity of evidence of fact is essentially a scientific problem. When Protestants appealed from the Church to the Bible, they pledged themselves unconsciously to defending the Bible in the court of reason, and the old apologetic writers frankly accepted the position. They tried to prove fact by evidence. Whether Noah's flood did or did not really happen is a question both for the geologist and for the historian. One relies upon what is called 'direct,' and the other upon 'circumstantial' evidence, but the canons of proof are