Huxley was not only a man of genius in logic and rhetoric; he was
a man of a very manly and generous morality. Morally he deserves
much more sympathy than many of the mystics who have supplanted him.
But they have supplanted him. In the more mental fashions
of the day, most of what he thought would stand has fallen,
and most of what he thought would fall is standing yet.
In the Gadarene controversy with Gladstone, he announced it
as his purpose to purge the Christian ideal, which he thought
self-evidently sublime, of the Christian demonology, which he thought
self-evidently ridiculous. And yet if we take any typical man
of the next generation, we shall very probably find Huxley's sublime
thing scoffed at, and Huxley's ridiculous thing taken seriously.
I imagine a very typical child of the age succeeding Huxley's may
be found in Mr. George Moore. He has one of the most critical,
appreciative and atmospheric talents of the age. He has lived in most
of the sets of the age, and through most of the fashions of the age.
He has held, at one time or another, most of the opinions of the age.
Above all, he has not only thought for himself, but done it
with peculiar pomp and pride; he would consider himself the freest
of all freethinkers.
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