Quote of the Day (Thomas Henry Huxley, on People’s Labels)

“Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to presume to go about unlabelled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control.”—Thomas Henry Huxley, Aphorisms and Reflections From the Works of T. H. Huxley, selected by H.A. Huxley (London: MacMillan & Co, 1907), CCLVI [C. E. ix 134], published online at The Huxley File.

(Huxley offers this as the rationale for his coining of the term “agnostic.” The idea, while one I can certainly respect, is also not one in which I ultimately believe. But the quotation points to the vigor – a kind of liveliness missing from most scientific or even philosophical writing nowadays—that made Huxley one of the most powerful essayists of the Victorian Era, as well as a foremost defender of Charles Darwin. It also, of course, says something about the universal need for those wretched things called stereotypes.)