Thomas Henry Huxley’s essay is now what I consider as one of the world’s best essays and one of my favorite essays. Though Huxley was an agnostic, it did not occur to me that he was any less of a virtuous and pious man. I certainly believe that a person’s religion does not define his/her character. It does not necessarily mean that when a man does not believe in God, people can directly condemn him for not having what most of us call as “faith” which comes from and directs to a Divine source. Yes, one person may be agnostic but we may not know that this person is way more religious and virtuous in his own ways. I believe that such a person just wants to live his life in ways how he knows he should. This person might just be more saint-like than those who are daily churchgoers. One can never really tell. No one can simply sum up the personality of a particular human being. As what I have discussed in my previous oral recitation in our class, I firmly believe that what and who we are at this moment is different as to what and who we are an hour ago. People are subject to change. As can be heard from most sayings, change is something constant in this world. Each and every individual is a product of nature and nurture. Nature, here, is what I refer to the innate qualities of a person when he came into the planet. We therefore cannot do anything to change our genes. On the other hand, nurture is one which involves the environment and the conditioning it offers to every man. Conditioning here may come in various shapes and forms. One example of conditioning is the parenting or the rearing of our parents to us. There is what we call as classical conditioning which pertains to the relationship of a stimulus and a response. What may have been our behavior a while ago can still be altered. In connection with this, we must all learn to refrain from the habit of prejudice. We must not judge a person right away. Some people always seem to find themselves judging the people around them. But these people do not exclude me. I humbly admit that there were also times when I have been given in to the temptation of making up my own assumptions about individual. This, I then realized, was wrong. Just like what stated in the Holy Bible’s parable of the weeds, man should not judge a certain individual in its most immediate sense. And when I relate this one to the discussion of Huxley’s way of defining liberal education, the term “education” means a whole different concept beyond what we perceive it to be. A man becomes educated when he learns of the rules of nature and knows how to resist doing willful disobedience. I was deeply struck when the essayist stated that ignorance was just as good as willful disobedience. I agree to this because when a person is ignorant, it is something in himself which he should be working on. The worse thing that can happen to this kind of person is when he knows that he is ignorant and yet still chooses to remain ignorant instead of doing all means to acquire the necessary knowledge he must gain from his nature and surroundings. On a different angle Huxley’s essay, he has made a metaphor in life and in education. He believed that the world is a chessboard, the phenomena of the universe are the pieces and the laws of nature can be likened to the rules of the chessboard game. Let me just link this to my previous experience last July. This day was a Saturday. I came to school because I had to do some projects of different sorts. I just happened to work in the Pavilion in our campus. Never had I expected that this day would be one of the most reflective days of my life. I was doing something on the table I have chosen. The table beside me was occupied by a group of male student playing chess. There was one student who kept on instructing the others on the rules and the strategies of the game. I think this student was their chess mentor. While I shook my shoulder and sighed from the exhausted I got from what I was doing that time, I overheard the chess mentor who was in maroon shirt, saying “Dili tanan ‘atake’ direct. Naay silent attack. Mao ni ang mas delikado. Kanang abi nimo na ordinary ra siya na move, basin wala ka kabalo sikreto ra diay to. Mahibal-an na lang dayun nimo na gaikaon na ka, mabungkag dayon ang tanan. I-consider ninyo ang mga ‘what if’s…”Indeed, the real university, as what Huxley states, is the universe.
from Mary Tess Alombro
