Lectures on Evolution | Page 3

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Lectures on Evolution This is Essay #3 from "Science and Hebrew
Tradition" by Thomas Henry Huxley

I THE THREE HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE HISTORY OF
NATURE
We live in and form part of a system of things of immense diversity
and perplexity, which we call Nature; and it is a matter of the deepest
interest to all of us that we should form just conceptions of the
constitution of that system and of its past history. With relation to this
universe, man is, in extent, little more than a mathematical point; in
duration but a fleeting shadow; he is a mere reed shaken in the winds of
force. But as Pascal long ago remarked, although a mere reed, he is a
thinking reed; and in virtue of that wonderful capacity of thought, he
has the power of framing for himself a symbolic conception of the
universe, which, although doubtless highly imperfect and inadequate as
a picture of the great whole, is yet sufficient to serve him as a chart for
the guidance of his practical affairs. It has taken long ages of toilsome
and often fruitless labour to enable man to look steadily at the shifting
scenes of the phantasmagoria of Nature, to notice what is fixed among
her fluctuations, and what is regular among her apparent irregularities;
and it is only comparatively lately, within the last few centuries, that
the conception of a universal order and of a definite course of things,
which we term the course of Nature, has emerged.
But, once originated, the conception of the constancy of the order of
Nature has become the dominant idea of modern thought. To any
person who is familiar with the facts upon which that conception is

based, and is competent to estimate their significance, it has ceased to
be conceivable that chance should have any place in the universe, or
that events should depend upon any but the natural sequence of cause
and effect. We have come to look upon the present as the child of the
past and as the parent of the future; and, as we have excluded chance
from a place in the universe, so we ignore, even as a possibility, the
notion of any interference with the order of Nature. Whatever may be
men's speculative doctrines, it is quite certain that every intelligent
person guides his life and risks his fortune upon the belief that the
orderof Nature is constant, and that the