The men who achieved the greatest advances in the mental exploration of space were of many kinds, but they had two characteristics in common: doubt and faith. They doubted enough to keep their minds from being blocked by cherished ideas that might be antithetical to what they were trying to discover. They believed with all their might that the universe was subject to laws of perfect order, and that any appearances of caprice could be resolved. They worked hard to achieve this, struggling with their own prejudices as well as with other people’s old ideas and incorrect observations. And they emerged triumphant, reaping rewards greater than any of the creature comforts that they denied themselves for the sake of their cause. They discovered planets.

Lecture V. Light and Heat, the Ether and the Air, the Formation of Seeds

In Religion Without Revelation Julian Huxley asserts that religion without revelation not only can but does exist. Certain social organs, he claims, which cope with the problem of man’s destiny and which orient man’s ideas and emotions and construct attitudes of mind and patterns of belief and behavior in relation to his destiny, can be and properly are included under the title, religions.1 Certain of these are exceedingly primitive and involve magic rituals, while others are highly developed and claim rationality. Haitian voodoo, neolithic fertility religions, Marxian Communism, Roman Catholicism constitute religions to Huxley. They all are concerned with one central function—that of man’s maintenance of his position and fulfillment of his role in the universe.