The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature
by Thomas Henry Huxley
This is Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"




Our fabulist warns "those who in quarrels interpose" of the fate
which is probably in store for them; and, in venturing to place
myself between so powerful a controversialist as Mr. Gladstone
and the eminent divine whom he assaults with such vigour in the
last number of this Review,<1> I am fully aware that I run great
danger of verifying Gay's prediction. Moreover, it is quite
possible that my zeal in offering aid to a combatant so
extremely well able to take care of himself as M. Reville may be
thought to savour of indiscretion.

Two considerations, however, have led me to face the double
risk. The one is that though, in my judgment, M. Reville is
wholly in the right in that part of the controversy to which I
propose to restrict my observations, nevertheless he, as a
foreigner, has very little chance of making the truth prevail
with Englishmen against the authority and the dialectic skill of
the greatest master of persuasive rhetoric among English-
speaking men of our time. As the Queen's proctor intervenes, in
certain cases, between two litigants in the interests of
justice, so it may be permitted me to interpose as a sort of
uncommissioned science proctor. My second excuse for my
meddlesomeness is, that important questions of natural science--
respecting which neither of the combatants professes to speak as