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