t of quick-silver
in the Arabian fashion; leaves of orange-trees and pomegranates placed
alternately; overhead the bluest of skies and the mellowest of suns;
great long-nosed greyhounds should be sleeping here and there; from time
to time barefoot negresses with golden ankle-rings, fair women servants
white and slender, and clad in rich strange garments, should pass
between the hollow arches, basket on arm, or urn poised on head._[19]
_Three things give me pleasure, gold, marble, and purple--brilliance,
mass, and colour. These are the stuffs out of which my dreams are made;
and all my ideal palaces are constructed of these materials._'[20] What
answer could Professor Huxley make to this that would not seem to the
other at once barbarous and nonsensical? The best answer he could make
would be simply, '_I do not agree with you_.' And to this again the
answer would at once be, '_That is because you are still hampered by
prejudices, whose only possible foundations we have both removed; and
because I am a man of culture, and you are not._'

Let us also consider again that other utterance of Professor Huxley's,
with which I began this chapter. According to the positive view of
morals, he says, those special sets of happiness that a moral system
selects for us, have no more to do with any theory as to the reason of
their selection, than a man's sight has to do with his theory of vision,
or than the hot taste of ginger has to do with a knowledge of its
analysis. That is a most clear and succinct statement of the whole
positive position; and we shall now be able to profit by its clearness,
and to see how all that it does is to reveal confusion. In the first
place, Professor Huxley's comparisons really illustrate the very fact
that he designs them to invalidate. It is precisely on his theory of
vision that a man's sight practically does depend. All sight, so far as
it conveys any meaning to him, is an act of inference; and though
generally this process may be so rapid that it is not perceived by him,
yet the doubt often felt about distant or unusual objects will make him
keenly conscious of it. Whilst as to ginger and the taste produced by
it, the moral question is not whether it is hot or not; but whether or
no it will be for our advantage to eat it; and this resolves itself into
two further questions; firstly, whether its heat is pleasant, and
secondly whether its heat is wholesome. On the first of these Professor
Huxley throws