# Huxley's garment conceals uglier features, not every feature

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH06.P008](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH06.P008/#char=1115,1164): "the garment of make-believe woven by pious hands,"

The second agnostic is Thomas Henry Huxley. Near the end of his *Autobiography*, he describes stripping away ‘the garment of make-believe’ through which religious people have concealed the world's unpleasant aspects. Chesterton retains that metaphor but inserts ‘woven’; his quotation marks therefore enclose an adaptation rather than an exact transcription. The inspected [Huxley File transcription](https://cs.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/AutoB.html), headed *Autobiography* (1890), preserves the pagination of *Collected Essays*, I, pp. 16–17. The essay's date and the later collected witness should be distinguished.

The original also qualifies Chesterton's account. Huxley says that the world has ‘uglier features,’ rather than that Nature as a whole is ugly. He presents truthful inquiry and action as means of relieving suffering, so his attack on consolation includes a constructive hope. This passage supports the charge that comforting religion can conceal reality; it does not itself establish Chesterton's additional assertion that freedom is impossible. The rhetorical opposition here is stronger and more comprehensive than this particular source warrants.

## Sources

- [Thomas Henry Huxley, Autobiography (1890), The Huxley File](https://cs.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/AutoB.html), Collected Essays I, pp. 16–17; paragraph beginning ‘But if I may speak of the objects’ and following paragraph

Revision 1 · 2026-11-07 · https://glosses.org/a/a_p7skvhzl/