Nevertheless,
as those words were the words of Christ, they were a thunderbolt which
reverberates through all time and space, and still makes Pharisees of
every name and nation tremble. Huxley's Irenicum will not do. Men who
are assiduously poisoning the fountains of religion, morality, and
social order, cannot be let alone.
Haeckel's Irenicum amounts to much the same as that of Professor Huxley.
He forbids the right to speak on these vital subjects, to all who are
not thoroughly versed in biology, and who are not entirely emancipated
from the trammels of their long cherished traditional beliefs.[45] This,
as the whole context shows, means that a man in order to be entitled to
be heard on the evolution theory, must be willing to renounce his faith
not only in the Bible, but in God, in the soul, in a future life, and
become a monistic materialist.[46]
It is very reasonable that scientific men, in common with lawyers and
physicians and other professional men, should feel themselves entitled
to be heard with special deference on subjects belonging to their
respective departments. This deference no one is disposed to deny to men
of science. But it is to be remembered that no department of human
knowledge is isolated. One runs into and overlaps another. We have
abundant evidence that the devotees of natural science are not willing
to confine themselves to the department of nature, in the common sense
of that word.
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