Quote

The doctrine of transmigration… was a means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the cosmos to man … none but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the grounds of inherent absurdity.

Thomas Huxley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Huxley
Age: 70 †
Born: 1825
Born: May 4
Died: 1895
Died: June 29
Anatomist
Anthropologist
Biologist
Carcinologist
Ichthyologist
Linguist
Naturalist
Paleontologist
Philosopher
Photographer
Physiologist
Lexington
Kentucky
T. H. Huxley
Huxley
Men
Rejects
Plausible
Inherent
Thinkers
Doctrine
Grounds
None
Reincarnation
Ways
Absurdity
Transmigration
Means
Reject
Vindication
Mean
Cosmos
Constructing
Way
Thinker
Hasty

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

Image
There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
Thomas Huxley
Image
I'd rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.
Thomas Huxley
Image
It is a popular delusion that the scientific enquirer is under an obligation not to go beyond generalisation of observed facts...but anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond the facts, rarely get as far.
Thomas Huxley
Image
The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Veracity is the heart of morality.
Thomas Huxley
Image
What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Elohim was, in logical terminology, the genus of which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, and Jahveh were species. The Israelite believed Jahveh to be immeasurably superior to all other kinds of Elohim. The inscription on the Moabite stone shows that King Mesa held Chemosh to be, as unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh.
Thomas Huxley
Image
There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp, who have considered it from a totally different point of view.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.
Thomas Huxley
Image
It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say that he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
Thomas Huxley
Image
No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.
Thomas Huxley
Image
No mistake is so commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent, nonsensical
Thomas Huxley
Image
Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow.
Thomas Huxley
Image
To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.
Thomas Huxley
Image
The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of himself, and that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act, to some extent, as his master.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Not only do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this lifeleads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.
Thomas Huxley