government, and the complete
responsibility of governors to the people as its means; and that
the dependence of natural phenomena in general on the laws of
action of what we call matter has become an axiom."

The common ground of those who advocate the duty of belief and those
who insist on the duty of doubt is clear. Both are agreed as to the
necessity of accepting whatever has sufficient evidence to support it;
both agree that there is room for doubt though not necessarily for
rejection in cases where the evidence is contaminated or insufficient.
It is in the application that the difference lies. The scientific
theologian admits the agnostic principle, however widely his results
may differ from those reached by the majority of agnostics. "But, as
between agnosticism and ecclesiasticism, or, as our neighbours across
the Channel call it, clericalism, there can be neither peace nor
truce. The cleric asserts that it is morally wrong not to believe
certain propositions, whatever the results of a strict scientific
investigation of the evidence of these propositions. He tells us that
"religious error is, in itself, of an immoral nature" (Newman). It
necessarily follows that, for him, the attainment of faith, not the
ascertainment of truth, is the highest aim of mental life."

Huxley helped largely in the modern movement which has made it
impossible to blame people for doubt, and this was what he strove for
most strenuously. Freedom of thought, like freedom of the Press, by no
means implies that what is free must necessarily be good. In both
cases there may be a rank growth of weeds, nurtured in vicious
imagination, and finding a ready market with the credulous mob. For
the detection and rejection of these, the critical method of science
serves as well as it does against the loftier errors supported by
authority.

It was on Descartes and on Hume that Huxley founded the precise form
in which he urged the duty of doubt, and his exact words are worth
quoting.

"It was in 1619, while meditating in solitary winter quarters,
that Descartes (being about the same age as Hume when he wrote
the _Treatise on Human Nature_) made that famous resolution, to
"take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such,"
the great practical effect of which is the sanctification of
doubt; the recognition that the profession of belief in
propositions, of the truth of which there is no