Undoubtedly, harlotry
and intemperance are sore evils, and starvation is hard to bear, or
even to know of; but the prostitution of the mind, the soddening of
the conscience, the dwarfing of manhood are worse calamities. It is a
greater evil to have the intellect of a nation put down by organized
fanaticism; to see its political and industrial affairs at the mercy
of a despot whose chief thought is to make that fanaticism prevail; to
watch the degradation of men, who should feel themselves individually
responsible for their own and their country's fates, to mere brute
instruments, ready to the hand of a master for any use to which he may
put them.
But that is the end to which, in my opinion, all such organizations as
that to which kindly people, who do not look to the consequences of
their acts, are now giving their thousands, inevitably tend. Unless
clear proof that I am wrong is furnished, another thousand shall not
be added by my instrumentality.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. H. Huxley.
[245]
NOTE.
An authoritative contemporary historian, Matthew Paris, writes thus of
the Minorite, or Franciscan, Friars in England in 1235, just nine
years after the death of Francis of Assisi:--
"At this time some of the Minorite brethren, as well as some of the
Order of Preachers, unmindful of their profession and the restrictions
of their order, impudently entered the territories of some noble
monasteries, under pretense of fulfilling their duties of preaching,
as if intending to depart after preaching the next day.
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