The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Interpreters of Genesis and the
Interpreters of Nature, by Thomas Henry Huxley

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Title: The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature
Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"

Author: Thomas Henry Huxley

Posting Date: December 3, 2008 [EBook #2630]
Release Date: May, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE

ESSAY #4 FROM "SCIENCE AND HEBREW TRADITION"

By Thomas Henry Huxley

Our fabulist warns "those who in quarrels interpose" of the fate which
is probably in store for them; and, in venturing to place myself between
so powerful a controversialist as Mr. Gladstone and the eminent divine
whom he assaults with such vigour in the last number of this Review, [1]
I am fully aware that I run great danger of verifying Gay's prediction.
Moreover, it is quite possible that my zeal in offering aid to a
combatant so extremely well able to take care of himself as M. Reville
may be thought to savour of indiscretion.

Two considerations, however, have led me to face the double risk. The
one is that though, in my judgment, M. Reville is wholly in the right
in that part of the controversy to which I propose to restrict my
observations, nevertheless he, as a foreigner, has very little chance of
making the truth prevail with Englishmen against the authority and the
dialectic skill of the greatest master of persuasive rhetoric among
English-speaking men of our time. As the Queen's proctor intervenes, in
certain cases, between two litigants in the interests of justice, so
it may be permitted me to interpose as a sort of uncommissioned science
proctor. My second excuse for my meddlesomeness is, that important
questions of natural science--respecting which neither of the combatants
professes to speak as an expert--are involved in the controversy; and
I think it is desirable that the public should know what it is that
natural science really has to say on these topics, to the best belief
of one who has been a diligent student of