Mr. Gladstone and Genesis | Page 3

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Mr. Gladstone and Genesis by Thomas Henry Huxley This is Essay #5
from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"

In controversy, as in courtship, the good old rule to be off with the old
before one is on with the new, greatly commends itself to my sense of
expediency. And, therefore, it appears to me desirable that I should
preface such observations as I may have to offer upon the cloud of
arguments (the relevancy of which to the issue which I had ventured to
raise is not always obvious) put forth by Mr. Gladstone in the January
number of this review,<1> by an endeavour to make clear to such of
our readers as have not had the advantage of a forensic education the
present net result of the discussion.
I am quite aware that, in undertaking this task, I run all the risks to
which the man who presumes to deal judicially with his own cause is
liable. But it is exactly because I do not shun that risk, but, rather,
earnestly desire to be judged by him who cometh after me, provided
that he has the knowledge and impartiality appropriate to a judge, that I
adopt my present course.
In the article on "The Dawn of Creation and Worship," it will be
remembered that Mr. Gladstone unreservedly commits himself to three
propositions. The first is that, according to the writer of the Pentateuch,
the "water-population," the "air-population," and the "land-population"
of the globe were created successively, in the order named. In the
second place, Mr. Gladstone authoritatively asserts that this (as part of
his "fourfold order") has been "so affirmed in our time by natural
science, that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and

established fact." In the third place, Mr. Gladstone argues that the fact
of this coincidence of the pentateuchal story with the results of modern
investigation makes it "impossible to avoid the conclusion, first, that
either this writer was gifted with faculties passing all human experience,
or else his knowledge was divine." And having settled to his own
satisfaction that the first "branch of the alternative is truly nominal and
unreal," Mr. Gladstone continues, "So stands the plea for a revelation
of truth from God, a plea only to be met by questioning its possibility"
(p. 697).
I am a simple-minded person, wholly devoid of subtlety of intellect, so
that I willingly admit that there may be depths of alternative