ABSTRACT
Huxley's ideas have been subjected too much criticism. Those which have been most criticized deal with religion; they have been attacked not only by the critics who have been disturbed by their religious and philosophical implications, but by those who have been bored by Huxley's occasionally excessive didacticism. There is the difficulty in trying to grasp Huxley's attempts to reconcile religion with philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, and government. There is also the problem of endeavoring to find a relationship between religion considered as a metaphysical concept and religion considered as ritual and as a practical guide to mundane problems. Huxley's attitudes toward religion up to the time he embraced mysticism: despite his declaration that he was "officially an agnostic," his comments indicate more skepticism than agnosticism. Huxley's soul was always the battleground between the challenging barks of "Darwin's bulldog" and the melancholy promptings for withdrawal of his maternal granduncle, Matthew Arnold.
