It sustained its march of
codification and inquiry until it had made possible the great victories
of Darwin and Huxley and Wallace. If we take Macaulay at the beginning
of the epoch and Huxley at the end of it, we shall find that they had
much in common. They were both square-jawed, simple men, greedy of
controversy but scornful of sophistry, dead to mysticism but very much
alive to morality; and they were both very much more under the influence
of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was
much more a literary than a scientific man. It is amusing to note that
when Huxley was charged with being rhetorical, he expressed his horror
of "plastering the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic,
rhetoric," which is itself about as well-plastered a piece of rhetoric
as Ruskin himself could have managed. The difference that the period had
developed can best be seen if we consider this: that while neither was
of a spiritual sort, Macaulay took it for granted that common sense
required some kind of theology, while Huxley took it for granted that
common sense meant having none.
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