The Darwinian Hypothesis | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Amy E. Zelmer. This etext is based on
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE2/Hypo.html

THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS*
by Thomas H. Huxley

[footnote] *'Times', December 26th, 1850.
DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
THERE is a growing immensity in the speculations of science to which
no human thing or thought at this day is comparable. Apart from the
results which science brings us home and securely harvests, there is an
expansive force and latitude in its tentative efforts, which lifts us out of
ourselves and transfigures our mortality. We may have a preference for
moral themes, like the Homeric sage, who had seen and known much:--
"Cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments";
yet we must end by confession that
"The windy ways of men Are but dust which rises up And is lightly laid
again,"
in comparison with the work of nature, to which science testifies, but
which has no boundaries in time or space to which science can
approximate.
There is something altogether out of the reach of science, and yet the
compass of science is practically illimitable. Hence it is that from time
to time we are startled and perplexed by theories which have no parallel
in the contracted moral world; for the generalizations of science sweep
on in ever-widening circles, and more aspiring flights, through a
limitless creation. While astronomy, with its telescope, ranges beyond
the known stars, and physiology, with its microscope, is subdividing
infinite minutiae, we may expect that our historic centuries may be
treated as inadequate counters in the history of the planet on which we
are placed. We must expect new conceptions of the nature and relations
of its denizens, as science acquires the materials for fresh
generalizations; nor have we occasion for alarms if a highly advanced
knowledge, like that of the eminent Naturalist before us, confronts us
with an hypothesis as vast as it is novel. This hypothesis may or may
not be sustainable hereafter; it may give way to something else, and
higher science may reverse what science has here built up with so much
skill and patience, but its sufficiency must be tried by the tests of
science alone, if we are to maintain our position as