ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 BERNARD BOSANQUET, M.A. 
 
 Formerly Fellow of University College, Oxford 
 
 SECOND 
 
 EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1891
 
 BUTLER & TANNER, 
 
 THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS. 
 
 FROME, AND LONDON.
 
 PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 r I S HE Essays and Addresses contained in this volume are 
 -L arranged with reference to their subject-matter, and not 
 in the order in which they were written or delivered. 
 
 I have to thank the publishers of Time for permission to 
 reprint the paper on " Social and Individual Reform," and the 
 publishers of Mind for permission to reprint the paper on 
 "The Philosophical Importance of a true Theory of Identity." 
 The essay " On the true Conception of another World " formed 
 the introduction to my translation of a portion of Hegel's 
 " ^Esthetic," and is now reproduced as throwing some light 
 on the subjects of which the present volume treats. The 
 occasions on which the several addresses were delivered are 
 indicated in footnotes to each of them. 
 
 It may be of interest to some readers to know that l.'ie 
 Ethical Society, on behalf of which four of the addresses were 
 given, is a small association in London, modelled on the 
 more powerful Ethical Societies of the United States, which 
 have for their object to contribute by precept and in practice 
 to spreading moral ideas and strengthening moral influences 
 on a non-dogmatic basis.
 
 IV PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 I am well aware that I may incur a charge of presumption 
 by enunciating definite views on certain social problems, 
 without possessing an appreciable fraction of the practical 
 experience which gives weight to the words of such author- 
 ities as Mr. and Mrs. Barnett, of Whitechapel. I can only 
 plead that to me, as to others, there comes in various ways a 
 definite though not extensive acquaintance with social facts, 
 while those better instructed than myself are always willing 
 to supply the deficiencies of my limited knowledge. I cannot 
 think that any man with open and attentive eyes, and with 
 confidence in his own impartiality, as based upon a rational 
 view of life, does wrong in uttering the best reflections he can 
 make on the way in which things are going, or the way in 
 which he thinks they should go. 
 
 I should feel less diffidence in repelling any similar charge 
 that might be brought on the score of the paper, " How to 
 read the New Testament." 
 
 It is true that I have not a wide acquaintance with apologetic 
 literature ; but the demand for such an acquaintance as the 
 condition of competence in dealing with these subjects may 
 rest perhaps on a petitio principii^ depending as it does on an 
 isolation of phenomena which belong primafacit to the general 
 province of philosophy and critical history. And the thought 
 will not be entirely banished, that if those who are set down 
 as mere dabblers in apologetic literature were to retort in kind 
 and on their side to erect tests of competence, the tables 
 might conceivably be turned. Moreover, in dealing with a 
 positive question, we have nothing to do with sects and parties. 
 I am not bound to know whether, in reading Reuss or Keim,
 
 PREFATORY REMARKS. V 
 
 I am reading apologists or assailants; these labels have no 
 positive import, and are relative to the ideas of the partizans 
 who assign them. As a matter of fact, so far as the dates 
 and discrepancies of writers are concerned, I could accept 
 without any sacrifice of principle, statements which are to be 
 found in the " Speaker's Commentary." 
 
 The three more strictly philosophical papers, V., VIII., and 
 IX., offer some considerations respecting the true nature of the 
 " Idealist" revival in Germany and in England. As a return 
 to the human and the concrete, finding its supra-sensuous 
 world in the mind and activities of man, this intellectual 
 impulse has been active amongst other vital forces in the 
 nineteenth century movement. But like every great origination 
 Christianity is a case in point it has developed a wealth of 
 conceptions and formulas which have tended to become hostile 
 to the spirit which generated them, and has thus made foes of 
 friends, and friends of foes. Like Christianity, also, it has 
 produced its effect in spite of misconceptions, and has every- 
 where carried with it the organic ideas of an enlarged and 
 purified Hellenism. 
 
 I will take the freedom to insist a little upon this aspect 
 of the so-called German Idealism, because, owing in a large 
 measure to the abundance and energy of its achievements, 
 which needed for their expression an elaborate philosophical 
 terminology, the enlightened public is hardly, perhaps, aware 
 to how great an extent, as a mere matter of fact, it originated 
 in a human enthusiasm wholly antagonistic to remote Ontology. 
 It is quite true that the form taken by the revolutionary effort 
 was that of transferring ontology and orthodoxy into a sphere 
 
 b
 
 VI PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 and medium in which they should have real significance, rather 
 than that of making a clean sweep of them altogether. It is 
 impossible to estimate the positive and negative aspects of such 
 a transformation in a few sentences ; but I wish to express my 
 conviction, in contrast with the views which underlie certain 
 recent criticisms of Hegel, that the human and vital import of 
 his philosophy is its element of permanent value; and that 
 the recognition of the human spirit as the highest essence of 
 things, which is a stumbling-block to those whose hearts are 
 with the orthodoxy which Hegel revolutionized, is the true and 
 enduring result of the great epoch currently symbolized by his 
 name. I will quote two passages from letters written by Hegel 
 at the age of twenty-five ; not that such letters, displaying as 
 they do hesitation on essential matters, can be in any way 
 decisive of controverted points in the philosopher's matured 
 system of thought, but because they are startling illustrations 
 of what, on reviewing the whole matter, I firmly believe to 
 have been his dominant temper and purpose. 
 
 HEGEL* TO SCHELLING. 
 
 "January, 1795. 
 
 "... What you tell me of the theological and Kantian 
 march of philosophy at Tubingen causes me no surprise. 
 Orthodoxy cannot be shaken as long as its profession is inter- 
 woven with worldly advantage, and bound up with the structure 
 of the State. An interest like this is too strong to be readily 
 surrendered, and has an effect as a whole of which people are 
 
 1 Rosenkranz's "Life of Hegel," p. 66 ff; and Hegel's "Briefe, Heraus- 
 gegeben von Karl Hegel," p. 1 1 ff.
 
 PREFATORY REMARKS. Vll 
 
 hardly aware. While this is so, it has on its side the whole troop 
 ever the most numerous of clamorous devotees, void of 
 thought and of higher interests. If a mob like this reads 
 something opposed to their convictions (if one is to do their 
 pedantic jargon the honour of calling it by that name), the 
 truth of which they cannot deny, they will say, c Yes, I suppose 
 it is true,' and then go to bed, and next morning drink their 
 coffee as if nothing had happened. Besides, they will lay hold 
 of anything that presents itself, which will maintain them in 
 their old routine. But I think it would be interesting to 
 molest, in their ant-like industry, the theologians who are 
 fetching up critical [Kantian] materials to prop their Gothic 
 temple, to whip them out of all their refuges, till they could 
 find no more, and should have to reveal their nakedness before 
 the sun. Still, among the timbers which they drag off the 
 Kantian bonfire in trying to arrest the conflagration of their 
 fabric of dogmas, they will carry home with them some burning 
 embers ; they are bringing the terminology into general cir- 
 culation, and are facilitating the general dispersion of philo- 
 sophical ideas. I shall do all I can ; I am convinced that 
 nothing but perpetual shaking and shocking on all sides gives 
 a chance of any ultimate effect of importance ; something will 
 always stick, and every contribution, even if it contains nothing 
 new, has its value as encouraging and reinforcing intercom- 
 munication and sympathetic labour. Let us often repeat your 
 appeal, 'We do not mean to be behind.' . . . Our watch- 
 word shall be Reason and Freedom, and our rallying-point 
 the invisible Church."
 
 V1U PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 April, 1795. 
 
 " . . . Frorn the Kantian system and its final completion 
 I expect a revolution in Germany, starting from principles 
 which are already present, and which only need to be system- 
 atised and applied to existing knowledge as a whole. No 
 doubt there will always be an esoteric philosophy, and the idea 
 of God as the absolute Ego will belong to it. In my most 
 recent study of the " Postulates of Practical Reason " [Kant] I 
 had had forebodings of what you plainly expounded to me in 
 your last letter, and what Fichte's "Grundlage der Wissen- 
 schaftslehre " will completely open up to me. The conse- 
 quences which will issue from these ideas will astonish a good 
 many people. They will be dazzled at this supreme elevation 
 by which man is so greatly exalted ; yet why have people 
 been so slow to form a higher estimate of man's dignity, and 
 to recognise his capacity of freedom, which places him on a 
 par with any spiritual beings ? I think that there is no better 
 sign of the times than this, that humanity is represented as so 
 estimable in itself; it is a proof that the halo round the heads 
 of the oppressors and gods of this world is disappearing. The 
 philosophers will prove man's dignity, the people wi 1 ! learn to 
 feel it, and will not demand, but simply appropriate their 
 trampled rights.* Religion and politics have played each 
 other's game ; religion has taught what despotism desired, con- 
 tempt for the human race, its incapacity for all good, its 
 powerlessness to be anything in its own strength. But with 
 
 * Almost the same expressions occur in the fifth of Schiller's letters on 
 /Esthetic Education, which are expressly referred to as a masterpiece in 
 this same letter of Hegel. Hegel continued to consider these letters of 
 Schiller as marking an epoch in the history of philosophy.
 
 PREFATORY REMARKS. IX 
 
 the spread of ideas as to how all should be, the nonchalance 
 of respectable people in accepting all as it is, will vanish. 
 . . . I constantly exhort myself out of [Hippel's] ' Lebens- 
 laiife,' 'Strive upwards to the sun, my friends, that the 
 welfare of humanity may ripen soon. What matter for the 
 hindering leaves and branches ! Struggle through to the sun, 
 and if you are weary, never mind ! You will sleep all the 
 better.'" 
 
 Now I am convinced that the feeling which blazes out in 
 these letters persisted through Hegel's life as the fusing heat 
 of his system. It is improbable that he was in all respects 
 consistent ; and no sensible man, above all, no Hegelian, 
 could suppose that the main work of philosophy, after the 
 lapse of half a century, is to repeat the formulae in which his 
 views were cast. But I believe that in the papers on philo- 
 sophical questions which are printed in this volume I have 
 rather understated than overstated the elements by which 
 recent idealism is bound up with the humanising movement 
 of this century, and will consequently affect the future of 
 English philosophy. 
 
 BERNARD BOSANQUET.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Two MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS i 
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM 
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES 
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION 
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD . 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH 
 
 How TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT .... 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF A TRUE THEORY 
 OF IDENTITY 162 
 
 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN "KNOW- 
 LEDGE" AND "OPINION" 181
 
 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 i. 
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS* 
 
 THIS lecture is not exactly about a great man, or great 
 men.f The men of whom I am going to speak are two 
 very respectable tradesmen. Very likely there have been people 
 counted as heroes, who were much less noble and much less 
 useful than either of them. But what I should like would be 
 not so much to make heroes of them as to try and understand 
 their lives, not only their successes but their failures, and see 
 why and how they were useful, and what teaching we ought 
 to get from the way in which they were useful. The two 
 philanthropists whom we are to talk about are the Englishman, 
 George Moore, and the Frenchman, Jean Leclaire. I came 
 to think of taking them for a subject in this way. Just a day 
 or two before I was asked to lecture here, I had the good luck 
 to listen to a lecture from a friend who was speaking about the 
 religion of people who try to do good to others, about their 
 real notions and beliefs as to their duties, and as to what sort 
 of men they ought to be. And he said what a sad thing it 
 
 * A lecture given at a workman's club in London. 
 f The lecture was one of a series on great men. 
 
 * B
 
 2 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 was to see a man full of strength, energy, courage, and 
 religious feeling, after he had made a large fortune and begun 
 to give up his life to good works, just lose his way in a fog. 
 The man he was speaking about was the merchant, George 
 Moore, who spent the best part of half a century, an immense 
 quantity of money, and enormous labour in trying to do all the 
 good he could think of to all who needed help and teaching. 
 So I thought I would read his life carefully, and see how it 
 came out when one looked close at it. And then I thought I 
 might put alongside it the life of another tradesman, who also 
 made a big fortune (not so big as Moore's), and who also 
 spent the best part of half a century, a great deal of money, 
 and untiring energy in trying to help those who live by their 
 labour. 
 
 This man was a Frenchman, and his name was Leclaire. 
 He was born in 1801, five years before Moore, and died in 
 1872, four years before him. Each of them lived just about 
 seventy years, and very nearly the same seventy years. They 
 might have met after the siege of Paris, when Moore was in 
 Paris, relieving the starving French (he took seventy tons of 
 food there) ; but we do not hear that they did meet. Very 
 likely they never knew each other's names. 
 
 These two men lived through a time of greater change, 
 perhaps, than there has ever been before. In different ways 
 they played their parts in this change ; and the interest we 
 have in them is to see how their work looks now, as time is 
 making clearer what direction the changes have really been 
 taking. It seems pretty plain now that all through Europe 
 the great business of this century has been to arrange society 
 m a more human way than before. I mean by arranging it 
 in a human way, arranging it so that every man should be 
 treated as a human being, capable of doing a man's work and
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 3 
 
 of exercising a man's will. The old arrangements, which some 
 people say were better in their time than there have been 
 since, the small workshop, and the personal loyalty to the 
 master, were broken down, both by new ideas of human rights 
 and duties, and also by new facts such as the growth of the 
 industrial class, so that some changes had to come. 
 
 Carlyle says the French Revolution was really a revolution 
 in men's minds, every one getting new thoughts as to what he 
 ought to put up with, and what he might expect to do ; and so 
 every change in society is really a change in men's minds and 
 characters ; and the object in making social arrangements is, I 
 suppose, just to give people the rights and duties which belong 
 to their characters, and which will therefore preserve and 
 strengthen the whole foundation of society. For the whole 
 foundation of society is character. That is what we have to 
 rely upon in employers and employed, in our fellow-citizens 
 and in our children. If we cannot rely on a person's character, 
 we do not know where to have him, and we cannot make a 
 contract with him, or depend upon him in any way. So when 
 there are a new set of ideas and new circumstances, when you 
 have enormous masses of people, and these people have quite 
 new claims and ideas in -jtheir minds, then there must be a 
 time of great change, until their minds are suited to new 
 arrangements, and new arrangements suited to their minds. 
 This was what so many good men, who used to be called 
 philanthropists, only learnt very slowly and in part Their 
 idea was rather to patch up the old machinery and not to 
 think of what men's characters demanded ; or rather, it was like 
 as if you had a machine beginning to break down, and instead 
 of renewing it out and out, you set another machine to help it. 
 These philanthropists make one think of the captain of a ship 
 who should come to one and say, " Look at my splendid pumps
 
 4 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 pouring out thousands of gallons in the hour." " Yes," we 
 should say; " but what a leak you must have in the ship. Can't 
 you stop the leak?" And the illustration falls short, for our 
 social pumps make the leak worse. I mean in this way. Sup- 
 pose there is a trade which is very much underpaid or very 
 irregular, so that every year a great many people in it are left 
 without anything, or die, or leave widows and children without 
 anything. What I call patching, or tinkering, or setting up 
 pumps, is to establish a big charity to look after these people, 
 to provide for the children, and to help the men who fall out 
 of work. What you really want is to get the trade better 
 arranged, so that the men in the trade shall have the right and 
 the duty of providing for themselves and their families, and 
 shall be able to carry it out. That is stopping the leak. 
 We have all heard that prevention is better than cure ; but 
 the truth is, that in these great social matters there is no cure 
 except prevention. London is all full of great machines for 
 doing good, great societies for relieving people in distress ; but 
 their work does not come to an end. It goes on, and they are 
 rather proud that it goes on. George Moore was one of these 
 philanthropists, and had to do with starting numbers of these 
 great machines. 
 
 His life is shortly told in outline ; it is one of those lives of 
 which in England we are rightly proud the life of the self-made 
 man. Generally, 1 think, these lives are more interesting for 
 the first half than for the second, more interesting before he 
 marries his master's daughter they always marry their master's 
 daughter than after ; but with George Moore the interest is 
 kept up. He was not a commonplace man. He was born in 
 1806, in Cumberland, son of a small landowner who farmed 
 his own land, what they call in Cumberland a " statesman.'' 
 He was a bold, strong boy, and soon became a tremendous
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 5 
 
 wrestler, which was the fashion in Cumberland. At thirteen 
 he was apprenticed to a provincial draper, but he was deter- 
 mined to get to London, and at nineteen he got up to London, 
 having learnt all he could in Cumberland about the draper's 
 business. He was a week without finding work, but he did 
 pretty well in a public wrestling match, and I should say he 
 was pretty near becoming a professional wrestler. Then at 
 last a Cumberland man, who knew about his father, gave him 
 a place in his big shop. Moore at once put himself to the 
 evening school, for he was terribly ignorant Education was 
 scandalous in Cumberland, as Moore remembered when he 
 became a rich man. But he did not like the retail work in the 
 draper's, and in a year's time he got a place in a big wholesale 
 lace house (1826). 
 
 Then it came out what he really was fit for. He was the 
 most tremendous commercial traveller that ever was seen. 
 They soon began to call him the Napoleon of travellers, the 
 great general of salesmen, who could conquer and capture 
 any customer. He was a little more like Napoleon than one 
 can quite approve. " George * once met Groucock at a town 
 in the North of England. Groucock invited him to sup with 
 a friend after the day's work was over. The invitation was 
 accepted. In the course of the evening their plans were 
 discussed. George openly mentioned the town to which he 
 was next due, and at what hour he would start. He after- 
 wards found that Groucock had started the day before him, 
 reached Belfast, and taken up all the orders for lace in the 
 place. This caused some bitterness of feeling between the 
 two travellers. But George, not to be outdone, immediately 
 left Ireland for Liverpool. He worked the place thoroughly, 
 
 Smiles' " Life of George Moore," page 79.
 
 6 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 then started for Manchester, and travelled through the great 
 northern towns, working night and day, until he had gone 
 over the whole of the ground, and returned to London full 
 of orders. This in its turn greatly chagrined Groucock, who 
 had intended to take Lancashire on his way home." " Many * 
 are the stories still told by commercial travellers about George 
 Moore's determination to get orders. He would not be 
 denied. If refused at first, he resorted to all sorts of ex- 
 pedients until he succeeded. On one occasion he sold the 
 clothes off his back to get an order. A tenacious draper 
 in a Lancashire town refused to deal with him. The draper 
 was quite satisfied with the firm that supplied him, and he 
 would make no change. This became known amongst the 
 commercial travellers at the hotel, and one of them made 
 a bet of ^5 with George Moore that he would not obtain 
 an order. George set out again. The draper saw him 
 entering the shop, and cried out, ' All full ! all full, Mr. 
 Moore ! I told you so before !' ' Never mind,' said George ; 
 'you won't object to a crack.' 'Oh, no!' said the draper. 
 They cracked about many things, and then George Moore, 
 calling the draper's attention to a new coat which he wore, 
 asked, 'What he thought of it?' 'It's a capital coat,' said 
 the draper. 'Yes, first-rate; made in the first style by a 
 first-rate London tailor.' The draper looked at it again, 
 and again admired it. ' Why,' said George, ' you are exactly 
 my size ; it's quite new. ' I'll sell it you.' ' What's the 
 price?' 'Twenty-five shillings.' 'What! that's very cheap.' 
 ' Yes, it's a great bargain.' ' Then I'll buy it,' said the 
 draper. George went back to his hotel, donned another 
 suit, and sent the ' great bargain ' to the draper. George 
 
 * Smiles' " Life of George Moore," pages 86, 87.
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 7 
 
 calling again, the draper offered to pay him. ' No, no,' 
 said George, ' I'll book it ; you've opened an account.' Mr. 
 Moore had sold the coat at a loss, but he was recouped by 
 the $ bet which he won, and he obtained an order besides." 
 The draper afterwards became one of his best customers. 
 He fairly beat every one else off the road. I'll say a word 
 later on about this part of his life. However, the result was 
 that Groucock offered him a high salary to leave the house 
 he was travelling for, and travel for them. Moore stood out 
 for a partnership, and got it. This was in 1830, and this 
 was the beginning of the great house in Bow Churchyard, 
 Groucock, Moore & Copestake. 
 
 Then began Moore's hardest struggle ; for eleven years he 
 did not take a day's rest, and hardly a decent night's rest, 
 travelling for the house all the time. And by about 1840 
 the house was thoroughly established, had three town travellers 
 and ten country travellers. In 1841 he married his former 
 master's daughter; in 1845 they set up a lace factory in 
 Nottingham ; in 1854 he took a big private house in Ken- 
 sington Palace Gardens ; in 1858 he bought an estate in 
 Cumberland, including the place where he was born. Now 
 we have seen him safe through ; and if he had been a 
 common man, he would have become an M.P. and a baronet, 
 and perhaps we should have lost our interest in him. He 
 was not a common man. He was asked to go into Parliament 
 for Nottingham, and later on even for the city of London, 
 and he refused. He thought he was not educated enough ; 
 and, besides, his time was quite full. 
 
 He had been a philanthropist as soon as he had any money 
 at all, by subscribing to the Cumberland Society, a society 
 for helping Cumberland men who fell into poverty in London. 
 After 1841, when he lived more in London, and did not travel
 
 8 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 so hard, he became what one might call a professional 
 philanthropist. He had a sort of rage for collecting money 
 for charitable and religious institutions ; he collected for 
 them just as he used to canvass customers for his firm. He 
 said he wore out a pair of boots in collecting for one charity. 
 He gave very large sums of money himself, and forced his 
 friends to give large sums. In 1858 he was connected with 
 thirteen institutions ; and he worked hard, as a rule, for 
 all institutions he was connected with. Now I want you 
 to look at the chief things he did ; and then afterwards we 
 will try to make out the rights and wrongs of it. 
 
 First, in private life he put an immense number of young 
 men in good situations, where they did well. Especially 
 he made it his business to look after young Cumberland 
 men when they came up to London. 
 
 Secondly, he paid great attention to the welfare of his 
 employe's in the warehouse. He insisted on their insuring 
 their lives, and he was very anxious to provide religious 
 services and religious instruction for them. I shall have a 
 word to say about this. 
 
 Thirdly, he did a really great work in reforming education 
 in Cumberland, his native county. He had .suffered by the 
 scandalous education in Cumberland in his boyhood. He 
 got new schools built, new masters appointed, the endowed 
 schools better managed. He went down and presided at the 
 examinations, and gave prizes for them. And he arranged 
 what he called a "walking library"; a library kept up by 
 the subscriptions of nine villages, to which the books were 
 taken round by a walking messenger. He did this a good 
 deal because he felt the need we feel so strongly now, for 
 helping people to carry on some sort of education after 
 leaving school.
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 9 
 
 Fourthly, he started or kept going a great number of 
 London charities. I will mention a few. The Cumberland 
 Benevolent Society, which I have spoken of already. The 
 Commercial Travellers' Schools, for the maintenance and 
 education of the orphan children of commercial travellers. 
 The Royal Free Hospital, for destitute cases only, and with- 
 out letters of recommendation. He had a great deal to do 
 with the Ragged Schools Movement, and started a Refor- 
 matory for discharged prisoners. And alongside of this it 
 is most noticeable that he started in Cumberland the system 
 of boarding out children instead of keeping them crowded 
 together in workhouses. These things are only a few speci- 
 mens of the work done by his restless energy. He also 
 built a church and schools at Somers Town. 
 
 If we look back now at his long life, devoted to work of 
 this kind, it seems to me that we must think that he had only 
 mastered half the lesson of the nineteenth century. Of course 
 such a life shows a great awakening in society a real convic- 
 tion of sin a conviction that some attempt must be made to 
 set things straight. And, further, it shows an immense advance 
 in everything where what was wanted could easily be seen, 
 and only better machinery was required. The improvement 
 of education is the plain example of this. 
 
 Moore did a great deal, as a man of business, to reform 
 Christ's Hospital (the Blue-coat School), as well as the Cum- 
 berland Schools. And then his energy in helping young 
 men privately, and using his influence to keep them straight, 
 was admirable. And, again, thorough religious principle was 
 the motive of his action, and gave him his extraordinary faith 
 and power. But here we must pause a moment and reflect. 
 His religion was thoroughly genuine and earnest. But we 
 might perhaps do well to ask one question : Did this religion
 
 IO TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 really mean a practical belief in the best human life ? I 
 suppose a man's religion is what he really believes in what 
 governs him from head to foot what he thinks the only thing 
 worth having and the only thing worth giving. 
 
 Now, what Moore was especially ready to give was, on the 
 one hand, money and charitable machinery, and, on the other 
 hand, religious instruction by books and missionaries. We 
 can hardly help smiling when we hear that he bought hundreds 
 and thousands of copies of religious books to send about the 
 country, and he was a great supporter of home missions. The 
 other practical duty constantly present to his mind was that 
 of giving money. "What I gave, I have," was his favourite 
 motto ; that is, what he gave was not a loss to him. He felt, 
 indeed, that all was worthless without sympathy; but still we 
 must admit that his sympathy was not thoroughly thought out, 
 and his religious work and his charitable work seemed to be 
 separate. His charitable work did not consist in the attempt 
 to build up a life, to arrange men's places and duties so as to 
 meet the powers and needs of human character. And this 
 building up is what I suppose is going to be the second half 
 of the lesson of the nineteenth century. Take, for instance, 
 his treatment of his own clerks and workmen in Bow Church- 
 yard and in the factory at Nottingham. He was eager to give 
 them daily prayer and religious instruction, and he was both 
 just and benevolent in the way he paid them. But it is 
 curious that in the last year of his life he suddenly gave away 
 some ,40,000 among them, feeling that they had done so 
 much to make his fortune. This was tremendously munificent ; 
 but it occurs to one that it seems just to have struck him then 
 that they had something to do with making his fortune, 
 and money given like that is not as wholesome as what you 
 earn.
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. II 
 
 There is a story of his old porter which rather annoys me.* 
 Amongst those who were invited to the Hallt were the porters 
 from Bow Churchyard. Some of the elder porters came first, 
 amongst them John Hill, the oldest in the establishment 
 During their visit, Mrs. Moore went out one morning, and was 
 crossing the park, when she came upon a venerable person, 
 standing on a rising ground, staring about him with astonish- 
 ment at the gardens and buildings. "Are you looking for 
 somebody ? " asked Mrs. Moore. " No," he said ; " I am just 
 looking round about, and thinking what a fine place it is, and 
 how we helped to make it I have really a great pride in it ! " 
 With tears in his eyes, old Hill told how he had worked forty 
 years for the firm ; how they had all worked hard together. 
 " I was the only porter then," he said. " All has changed 
 now. We are the biggest firm in the city. And yet/' he 
 continued, "those days do not look so far off either." John 
 went up to the top of the Peel Tower and the Harbybrow. 
 He looked along the valley to Whitehall, and round the 
 surrounding hills. It was a grand estate, " Yes," he said, 
 " we did it" 
 
 It seems to have been a sort of accident that Moore 
 thought of treating the people as if they had something to do 
 with the money they made. The old porter ought to have 
 felt that he had made his own fortune too. And, again, 
 observe Moore's tricks as a commercial traveller. They were 
 not dishonourable ; he never lost a friend by them ; but they 
 mean that trade was like war to him. All's fair in war, they 
 say. He would do anything to sweep all the customers into 
 his own net. His ideas were all in patches and scraps. He 
 never thoroughly brought his religion to bear upon his trade. 
 
 * Smiles' " Life," page 287. t The house in Cumberland.
 
 12 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 Take another question. His favourite institution was the 
 Commercial Travellers' Schools. His very reason for urging 
 their claims was that the Commercial Travellers were so badly 
 paid; he said so in so many words. He fought like a lion 
 for these schools, simply compelling people to subscribe. He 
 said in his speeches he knew of cases of destitution among 
 the travellers merely from being underpaid. He did tell the 
 employers they should pay their men more ; but if he had 
 fought for that, as he fought for the charity, he might have 
 saved these men from the prospect of their children having to 
 depend on charity at all. I think that charity might very 
 likely keep down their wages. The Royal Free Hospital is 
 another case worth considering. We ought to know why it 
 was established. "The Royal Free Hospital,* to which atten- 
 tion has been called, was founded in this way. In the winter 
 of 1827, a wretched girl, under eighteen years of age, was seen 
 lying on the steps of St. Andrew's churchyard, Holborn Hill, 
 after midnight, actually perishing from disease and famine. 
 All the hospitals were closed against her, because at that time 
 letters of recommendation were required before patients could 
 be admitted to the public hospitals, and then only on certain 
 specified days. The girl died two days after, unrecognised by 
 any human being. This distressing event being witnessed 
 by the late Mr. W. Marsden, surgeon, he at once set about 
 founding a medical charity, in which destitution and disease 
 should alone be the passport for obtaining free and instant 
 relief. On this principle the Free Hospital was established 
 in 1828. Look at me ! I am sick, I am poor, I am helpless, 
 I am forlorn ! such were the patient's credentials." "If 
 have continued to stick to it because it is free to all who are 
 
 * Page 211. t Page 212.
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 1 3 
 
 poor and destitute, without any order of admittance. I am 
 sure this hospital is less abused than any other in London 
 as every applicant undergoes a strict ordeal of inquiry into his 
 circumstances and position ; whereas, at other hospitals the 
 orders from governors get sadly abused, and many people who 
 are able to pay get their medical attendance for nothing ; the 
 tendency of this arrangement being to pauperise the popula- 
 tion." Moore collected immense sums of money for this. It 
 was in begging for this that he wore off the soles of a pair of 
 boots. Now, of course, there ought to be hospitals, because 
 they can give treatment, skill, and attendance which people 
 cannot get in their own homes, and also because they give 
 experience to the doctors ; and so it was very likely a right 
 thing to do to set up this hospital. But we must notice that 
 this is not quite the reason why the Royal Free was set up. 
 It was set up not merely to relieve disease, but to relieve 
 disease and destitution. This was his idea of not permitting 
 it to be abused, to confine it to the destitute. But a free 
 hospital is no cure, though it may be a relief for destitution. 
 On the contrary, demand creates supply. If you put up a 
 big house for destitute cases, you will have destitute cases to 
 put in it. It was a simple, straightforward thing to do, to set 
 up a great hospital ; but it was not really even the beginning 
 of the work of preventing the cases that it was meant to 
 relieve. That requires arrangements to be made which go 
 much deeper into people's circumstances, and put their life 
 on a solid foundation which cure by prevention. Another 
 example. The Reformatory for Discharged Prisoners was a 
 plan in which Moore took a great interest. This broke down; 
 no satisfactory manager could be got. Here I think the 
 reason is plain, and is shown by the way in which the same 
 work is done more successfully now. I heard a letter read
 
 14 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 only the other day from the Secretary of the Discharged 
 Prisoners' Aid Society, which does a very good work now. 
 He said,* " The length of time it takes to set discharged 
 prisoners on their legs again is the length of time it takes 
 to get them mixed up in common society, and their past 
 forgotten." So that having an institution was absolutely op- 
 posed to the object to be attained. In a reformatory they 
 were all kept together, and marked men for so much longer. 
 Contrast with this Moore's very wise steps for boarding-out 
 workhouse children.f To quote his own wise words : 
 " The leading principle of the boarding-out system is to restore 
 the child to family life, to create around it natural relations 
 and natural ties. Under these conditions physical and moral 
 health is improved, the natural affections are brought into 
 play, and the child enjoys the liberty and variety of a home 
 life. Thus sympathy is produced, the true basis for religious 
 principles in after life. Family life is the means which God 
 has instituted for the training of the little ones, and in so far 
 as we assimilate our method to His, so far will be our success." 
 This just shows how he hit on a truth where he had a simple 
 experience to go upon. He knew what family life was, and 
 that children ought to have it ; but to deal by natural means 
 with those other evils, pauperism, criminal class, underpaid 
 labour, was what he did not think of. I ought to say that 
 he set up the Porters' Benevolent Society, which was partly a 
 charity, but I suppose a great deal supported by the trade. 
 That was a step towards organising a trade. 
 
 Thus, though it is very dangerous to try and make general 
 criticisms on a life so full of all kinds of good work, I would 
 suggest that we should think of the time of Moore's life as a 
 
 * He was writing against any system of watching people by the police. 
 Quoted from memory. t Page 371.
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 1 5 
 
 philanthropist in England, from 1841 about to 1876, as a time 
 in which people were being awakened to their duties, and were 
 trying to do what was necessary by money and machinery. 
 For I think even the spread of religious knowledge is mere 
 machinery, if it does not mean a religious life, a good, solid, 
 honest life, thoroughly carried out through all its duties. But 
 of course immense good was done both by obvious reforms in 
 repealing bad laws, in starting education, in waking up the 
 clergy George Moore was a great hand at waking up the 
 clergy, and also by the failures or doubtful successes. To go 
 back to the illustration I used, when you see the pumps pour- 
 ing out their thousands of gallons an hour, you know there is 
 a leak somewhere ; and it is something to know that. When 
 a man builds a reformatory for prisoners, and it breaks down, 
 because no one can manage them, at least it shows that there 
 is something to be done. But what was not on the whole 
 grasped by the English religious philanthropists was that 
 institutions have a tendency to take the place of duties ; just 
 as where rich people used to get their old servants into the 
 charities which received candidates by votes. If they want to 
 pension their old servants, let them do it themselves. Or, to 
 put the same thing in other words, the real thing to work for 
 is that every private person, and every trade, and every place 
 or district, shall do his or its duties in a thorough and well- 
 considered way, dealing with people who are their own 
 belongings as really belonging to them. This life, in which 
 your duties and purposes bind you together with other people, 
 is, I suppose, what we ought to mean by the religious life or 
 the best life ; and it might be said that a philanthropist or 
 reformer can do nothing at all unless he has this life himself, 
 and sees how to make it possible for others. Of course you 
 must have machinery, you must have hospitals and convalescent
 
 1 6 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 homes, and perhaps endowed schools, but all these things 
 ought to be merely instruments in the hands of men and of 
 bodies of men, who do not forget their own immediate duties, 
 and all that springs out of these duties. 
 
 Now I want to give you a sketch of a very different man. 
 Leclaire was the son of a village shoemaker in France, born 
 1 80 1. He left the village school at ten, and could then hardly 
 read or write. He looked after cattle in the fields till he was 
 twelve, and was sometimes mason and sometimes agricultural 
 labourer for five years more. Then, at seventeen, he saw some 
 haymakers returning to Paris and joined them, and on arriving 
 in Paris, got a place with a house-painter as apprentice. He 
 had a hardish time as apprentice, but in three years he seems 
 to have become principal workman. Then, as soon as he got 
 regular pay, he had to provide against being drawn for a 
 soldier; that cost him ^24, which he managed to save out of 
 his first year's wages. Then, at about twenty, just as George 
 Moore put himself to school, Leclaire got hold of books and 
 taught himself all he could. And at twenty-six he set up for 
 himself as painter and glazier, and two years later he got a 
 contract to paint and glaze seven houses. He worked with 
 his men, and paid them above the current rate of wages, and 
 the work was unusually well and quickly done. In three or 
 four years' time he had sorrfe large contracts, and his fortune 
 was made, and soon after 1835 he was employing three 
 hundred workmen. It was soon after this that he took the 
 first step towards profit sharing, unless we call it profit sharing 
 when he paid his men above the current rate. People are 
 fond of asking where a man got his ideas. Where did Leclaire 
 get the idea of profit sharing ? In the first place Leclaire had 
 a hard apprenticeship, and found it difficult to make his 
 master pay him fairly ; but I suppose many men have gone
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 17 
 
 through that experience without becoming social reformers 
 in consequence. But no doubt that helped to fix it in 
 Leclaire's mind that as things then stood the workman and 
 master had opposite interests. Then, of course, at that time 
 France was full of all sorts of theories. It is curious that 
 Thomas Carlyle was writing to old Goethe, the German poet, 
 in 1830, and he asks Goethe about the Saint Simonians, a 
 society of people in Paris who were full of ideas about the 
 right way of distributing the produce of labour. Carlyle says 
 to Goethe what you may also read in " Sartor Resartus," last 
 page but one : " Here also are men who have discovered, not 
 without amazement, that Man is still Man ; of which high, 
 long-forgotten Truth you already see them make false applica- 
 tion." Leclaire seems to have been influenced by the writings 
 of their founder St. Simon, and Leclaire's application of the 
 truth that Man is still Man was not a false application. He 
 took up their inspiration without their nonsense. Besides this 
 he studied both books and men ; and they say that it was an 
 economist who gave him the first hint that profit sharing was 
 the only way to make the men's interest agree with the 
 employer's. The first idea,* it seems to me, was to divide the 
 extra profit among them ; i.e., all the profit they could make 
 after the employer had had what he thought fair ; and then 
 later on, to make the workmen themselves gradually owners 
 of the business, which they are now. This was about 1835. 
 But we must remember that before he tried even the first step, 
 Leclaire had already won the confidence of his men, and got 
 a good set of men round him. In 1838 he started a Mutual 
 Aid Society, something like one of our clubs, which the men 
 subscribed to. The subscription was about 1*. Sd. a month, 
 
 * The details of Leclaire's work are largely drawn from Miss Hart's 
 pamphlet on Leclaire. 
 
 C
 
 1 8 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 and the sick pay is. 8</. a day for three months. Well, this 
 Society had a rule that the members might break it up and 
 divide the money belonging to it at the end of fifteen years ; 
 that would be in 1853. We shall see the end of that In 
 1842 he began regular profit sharing ; that is, he divided a 
 share of the profits of the year among his forty-four best work- 
 men, about ;io a head, and the profits went on increasing. 
 He had a good deal of trouble about introducing this ; once 
 the government would not let him have a meeting of his 
 men ; they thought it too much like Socialism : and the 
 men, before the first year's profits were paid them, were 
 inclined to think it was all a humbug, to bring wages down. 
 He overcame their doubts by paying the money. 
 
 Then another difficulty came ; the year 1853 came round the 
 end of the fifteen years and the Mutual Aid Society was 
 broken up, and the money divided, according to the rule. Each 
 member got about 21. This was not at all what Leclaire 
 wanted ; he wanted the money kept together, and pensions 
 paid out of it to men past work, and its capital to become 
 part of the capital of the business. So the Society was started 
 again next year, for another fifteen years, that would be till 
 '69, but without any subscription from the men. Leclaire gave 
 it a share of the profits instead ; and this enabled him, six 
 years later, in 1863, to get rid of the rule which permitted the 
 Society to be broken up ; because he threatened to stop the 
 share of profits. In 1863, when the Society was made perma- 
 nent, he did what he had no doubt intended all along, he made 
 the Mutual Benefit Society a partner in the firm, and paid it 
 5 per cent, on its capital, and a share of the profits, the work- 
 men also receiving a share of the profits directly, paid to each 
 man. From this time the men began to own a part of the 
 business, because the Society legally represented them. In
 
 handing over the new statutes in 1864, Leclaire said to the 
 men: "You are no longer day-labourers, working like machines, 
 leaving off work when the hour has done striking. You are 
 partners, working on your own account, and, as such, nothing 
 in the workshop can be indifferent to you. Every one of you 
 ought to look after the plant and the materials as if you had 
 been especially appointed guardians of them." This was all 
 settled in 1864, and then Leclaire retired to his country house 
 near Paris, in order to let the men learn to manage without 
 him ; and some more changes were made, after the workmen 
 had been consulted about them, in 1869. After 1869 Leclaire 
 himself only drew 5 per cent, on his capital and took no profits; 
 so that since that the men have really been owners of the 
 business. Of course all this sounds a little as if it was just the 
 fancy of a rich man to let them have his capital cheap and a 
 share of his profits. But Leclaire always said it was not so, 
 and that he would not have done as well for himself if he had 
 kept on the common way of working. He said it was like 
 earning ,4 and giving 2 to his workmen, instead of earning 
 only ;i and keeping it all to himself. Certainly the success 
 of the house was extraordinary; it now employs some 1,100 
 workmen. 
 
 Now I will explain very shortly what the arrangements of 
 the business are. There are two chief points in a business 
 of this kind : who has the management, and what sort of 
 position and prospects does the profit sharing give to the men. 
 The concern is governed by the workmen, but not by the 
 whole mass of them. There is a nucleus of picked men, 
 some three hundred in number at present (the number is not 
 fixed) which is the governing body. These men in their meet- 
 ing elect the foremen every year, and when either of the two 
 managing partners dies or resigns, they elect his successor.
 
 2O TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 The management of the business is left with these partners. 
 The nucleus or " noyau " elects its own members, on recom- 
 mendation of its own committee, and subject to the rules. 
 Candidates must have worked five years for the house, and be 
 between twenty-five and forty years of age. 
 
 The Mutual Aid Society contains about two hundred mem- 
 bers, who must belong to the nucleus. It is managed by 
 a committee of its own members. There is no subscription 
 from the men, but it gets its funds from a share of the profits 
 of the house. It has now an enormous reserve fund, and 
 gives very high benefits to its members : life pensions of ^48 
 to workmen over fifty, who have worked twenty years for the 
 house, and half the pension continued to their widows. I am 
 not quite sure rf they give anything to workmen who are not 
 yet members of the Society, except in case of accidents. In 
 the ordinary course a workman may expect to be elected a 
 member, and the number may increase. 
 
 The profit sharing is managed like this. First, the workmen 
 have their regular wages. Five per cent, is paid on capital as 
 a first charge, I presume after wages are paid, then the net 
 profits are divided into one half and two quarters. The one 
 half is divided among all the workmen employed by the firm 
 in proportion to their wages. This has been of late years 
 pretty near twenty per cent, that is 4^. on every pound of 
 wages. One of the two quarters of the profits goes to the 
 two managing partners ; and I must explain here, that the man- 
 aging partners must have some capital in the business. So you 
 may ask, How can a working man be elected managing partner, 
 seeing that he will not have any capital ? It is arranged in 
 this way : the outgoing partner is not allowed to realize his 
 capital till the incoming partner has bought him out, by means 
 of his share of the profits. So this is a genuine arrangement.
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 21 
 
 It is really the fact that there is nothing to prevent quite a 
 poor man from being elected partner, if his mates think him 
 the best man. 
 
 Then there is still one quarter of the profits to account for ; 
 this goes to the Mutual Aid Society. So it comes to this, that 
 three-quarters of the profits go to the workmen, directly and 
 indirectly. There are about 1,100 workmen altogether. And 
 beyond that, they can have capital in the business, and if so, 
 the interest on capital so far goes to them. The Mutual Aid 
 Society has about half its capital in the business, about 
 ^20,000, and some of the workmen have capital in it. They 
 just get five per cent, on that. Capital gets no profits, only 
 interest. 
 
 When a workman joins such a society, his future is, humanly 
 speaking, in his own hands, and in the hands of all his mates. 
 His profits depend upon how he works, and upon how they 
 work ; and his prospects depend upon his own good conduct, 
 and upon the justice of the others I mean their justice as 
 to the rules about the benefits of the society, and as to his 
 election into the nucleus, or to be foreman, or to the partner- 
 ship. Of course, if the men are not wise and just, they will 
 wreck the concern, and they will deserve to. And of course 
 a business like this may fail, just as any business may fail, 
 from ill-fortune, though I think it is not likely to fail from 
 incautious speculation. All one can say in general is, that in 
 a society like this, bar accidents, every man has open to him 
 a really human life, in which the welfare of all depends on the 
 heartiness and on the wisdom with which every man works 
 for the common purpose, that is to say, does his duty. 
 
 I am not here to preach co-operation or profit sharing. I 
 am merely speaking of the way in which Leclaire looked at 
 the great duty of making a good solid life possible for the
 
 22 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 people in his trade. There may be other ways of doing the 
 same thing, and there are very great difficulties in doing it in 
 this way. But I think every one must agree so far as this, 
 that Leclaire had the right object before him, and went to work 
 in the right spirit in the only spirit in which a man can do 
 any good, and in a spirit which always does good in any walk 
 , of life ; that is to say, he made his reform by living his own 
 life and doing his own duties with good heart and good sense, 
 and contriving from time to time the arrangements which came 
 naturally out of his relations in the way of business, when 
 he looked at his business as a duty towards human beings. 
 In his whole life nothing strikes me more than the singleness 
 of his purpose and his extraordinary patience and foresight. 
 It was forty years' persevering work from 1829, when he first 
 paid his men more than the current rate of wages, till 1869, 
 when he signed the last rules of the house. How thoroughly 
 he saw that the whole success depended on intelligence and 
 character ; and what faith he had in producing them by edu- 
 cation and habit ! How gradually he began his work, higher 
 wages, then the Mutual Aid Society, then profit sharing, then 
 the Mutual Aid Society broken up he had to let them get 
 confidence in the thing then another Mutual Aid Society, 
 which he at last persuaded them not to break up ; and then 
 finally, when he was over sixty, the putting the Society on a 
 legally permanent footing, so that there should be pensions for 
 every one. And then what foresight and self-denial, which 
 shows the greatness of his character more than anything, in 
 retiring from the direction of the business in 1864, so that 
 they might learn to go on without him. After retiring in 
 1864, he wrote to the managing partner, "Every time that you 
 see me in Paris say to me, ' What do you come here for ? We 
 don't want you ; you forget that you are sixty-five years of age,
 
 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 23 
 
 and that it is indispensable that we should learn to go on with- 
 out you.' " But it is touching that in the time of the Com- 
 mune, at the beginning of 1871, he went back to Paris. He 
 said, " If Paris is blown up, I will be buried in its ruins with 
 my workmen." He died in 1872, but till now the house has 
 gone on prosperously under the management of the men. 
 
 This was what seems to me to be a thorough and single- 
 hearted religious life, a life good in itself, and good in its 
 effects on others. Leclairq's dream was, he said, " that a 
 workman and his wife should in their old age have the where- 
 withal to live in peace, without being a burden upon any one." 
 His life is not split up, not feverish, not patchy, like the other 
 life we were speaking of. He was before his age ; he grasped 
 the true direction of the nineteenth century. His influence may 
 seem at first sight narrower than that of our worthy George 
 Moore, who had his finger in every pie, and was so devoted 
 to missionaries. But think of this, 1,100 workmen for several 
 years without a case of drunkenness ! A great many hospitals 
 might be built, and many hundreds and thousands of religious 
 books might be distributed, without even beginning to lay the 
 foundation of the good, self-supporting, well-arranged life which 
 this son of a village shoemaker was able to bring into existence 
 by straightforwardly managing the business of a painter and 
 decorator as a duty towards human beings.
 
 II. 
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM* 
 
 MY object in speaking here this evening is twofold. It 
 is in the first place to illustrate, by two or three 
 examples, what I take to be the true connection between the 
 reform of individual life by individual exertions and the 
 reform of social arrangements by the power of society ; and in 
 the second place, while discussing these examples, to indicate 
 what seem to me to be some chief elements in a not remotely 
 practicable social ideal. 
 
 I hope no one will think that I intend to disparage one of 
 these kinds of reform in order to exalt the other. There are 
 people whose minds are like a pair of scales : they can only 
 hold two things at a time, and if one of the things goes up, the 
 other must go down. I had better say plainly at once, that 
 what I want to plead for is just the opposite of such an atti- 
 tude. What has always impressed me as the most striking 
 feature of social progress is the inseparable identity between 
 these two aspects of reform. The operation of law seems to 
 me to consist in ratifying by the sanction of the public power 
 certain expressions and resolutions of the public mind ; and 
 the public mind is the mind of individuals, in so far as they 
 co-operate for social judgment or for social action. Laws may 
 be compared to the wood of a tree, or the skeleton of an 
 
 * An address given for the Ethical Society, and subsequently published 
 in lime.
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 25 
 
 animal, each of which is indeed a rigid framework, but has 
 been entirely moulded by the growth of the flexible parts 
 which seem to hang upon it. But the illustration is not 
 strong enough. Wood or bone may die, and yet retain its 
 strength ; but a dead law has no strength at all, and a law can 
 be a dead letter without being repealed. Law has its strength 
 as well as its birth in the public will. Thus the process which 
 I want to look at is the process by which changes in the life 
 of a people find their expression and completion in the acts 
 of the public power, and by which, also, the acts of the public 
 power are able to strengthen and support the life of a people. 
 And the light in which I want to consider this process is that 
 of a single movement and development, which takes the shape 
 of law, or of public opinion, or of individual initiative, accord- 
 ing to the needs of the moment ; but is always in reality a 
 growth of moral life, an extension and animation of our ideas 
 of social duty. 
 
 I shall be sorry if the first example which I want to consider 
 appears too trivial to bring before this audience. I confess that 
 I do in part wish to insist on the enormous importance of cer- 
 tain duties and capacities that we are apt to regard as trivial. 
 
 On any Friday evening during the past winter you might 
 have seen in a room, not five minutes' walk from this hall, 
 two or three volunteer teachers, ladies, one of them a member 
 of the Ethical Society, instructing six or eight lads in the 
 elements of woodcarving. In Stepney and Ratcliff you might 
 have seen similar classes, and others in a good many quarters 
 of London. The teaching is not meant to be a preparation 
 for the woodcarver's trade ; it is less than that in one way, and 
 more in another. It is less, because it does not aim at turning 
 out finished workmen who could compete with professionals 
 in fact, the lads who are taught are already 'occupied in other
 
 26 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 trades. It is more, because it does aim at awakening the 
 more general interests and enjoyments of artistic knowledge, 
 and at pointing out some of the features which constitute 
 beauty in art and in nature. Of course there are many 
 failures, and there are not any very grand results. Still, if a 
 pupil is able to attend for any length of time, a certain change 
 is produced in his mind ; a new perception is awakened, a 
 new interest is acquired ; he sees things to which he was blind 
 before, and enjoys things to which he was insensible before. 
 
 This is a small affair, and it does not seem very gigantic 
 when we say that in Great Britain and Ireland there are more 
 than four thousand such pupils undergoing such instruction, 
 which is sought by the pupils and imparted by the teachers 
 purely for love of the subject. In some cases these teachers 
 are labouring men, who give their evenings to the work with 
 that devotion which characterises hard-working men when 
 their interest is awakened. Of course woodcarving is not the 
 only subject taught. All the decorative, or lesser arts, find a 
 place, and the nature of beauty and some idea of design is 
 meant to be taught along with all of them. 
 
 Now I want first to look back ten years in the history of 
 this movement, and then to look forward ten years. 
 
 Ten years ago there was nothing of all the teaching I have 
 referred to, except just one lady in Shropshire, teaching one 
 or two classes of country lads round her own home. Go a 
 few years further back still, and there was not even this. 
 There was nothing then but the writings and influence of Mr. 
 Ruskin, and perhaps, for all I know, of Mr. William Morris, 
 working on the genius of this lady, whose mind was being 
 filled with the belief in the moral and educational value of 
 beautiful handicraft. Gradually she set to work, gathered 
 friends round her, adopted suggestions from others, formed a
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 27 
 
 small society. Three years ago this society took root in 
 London, and it has now reached about six times the extent 
 which it had then attained. " Good seed flies on the wings 
 of the wind " ; and the ideas of a great art-critic, and the daily 
 toil of one woman in a remote country district, have already 
 developed into a practical influence that is brightening thou- 
 sands of lives. 
 
 But now suppose we look forward ten years. This is a 
 more varied problem, because almost every plant branches 
 out as it grows up. I will select three out of many possible 
 ways in which I hope that this advance in educational practice 
 will affect our institutions, and even our statute book. 
 
 i. Every one is crying out in his own particular language, 
 whether with prayers or with curses, for educational reform. 
 At the same time we all desire, I suppose, and it seems that 
 we are to have, something or other in the way of local self- 
 government. Now I do trust all this will end in throwing on 
 the citizens of every locality the main power and reponsibility 
 with regard to the education of their children, and of their 
 lads and girls, who are growing up to manhood and woman- 
 hood. This is a branch of administration upon which the 
 moral and material welfare of the people of these islands 
 absolutely depends. Who is going to look after this branch 
 of administration ? There is only one answer. If you want 
 a thing well done, do it yourself. I will quote the last words 
 on education of a great man recently dead, who was for five- 
 and-thirty years an English inspector of schools. Matthew 
 . Arnold wrote in February, 1888 : 
 
 " I wish to indicate certain points to which those for whose 
 use the Report* is now designed will do well, I think, to 
 
 * " Special Report on certain points connected with Elementary Educa- 
 tion in Germany, Switzerland, and France."
 
 28 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 direct their minds. The first of these points is the need that 
 those who use the popular school should arrive at clear and 
 just notions of what they want their own school to be, and 
 should seek to get it made this. At present their school is 
 not this, but it is rather what the political and governing 
 classes, establishing a school for the benefit of the working 
 classes, think that such a school ought to be. The second 
 point is, that our existing popular school is far too little for- 
 mative and humanising, and that much in it, which ad- 
 ministrators point to as valuable results, is in truth mere 
 machinery." 
 
 Therefore I say, that to create in every quarter of our large 
 towns, and in every country district, a circle of men and 
 women of the wage-earning class, who have had something of 
 a humanising and formative training, and who are, as is always 
 the result of such a training, enthusiasts for education in the 
 largest sense, is a work of paramount importance for the future 
 of our popular schools. It is a work which in ten years' time 
 will leave a deep mark on our educational code, on our school 
 buildings, and on our system of school management. And I 
 will venture to say that no other equality of chances has a 
 tenth part of the importance that belongs to equality in 
 education. 
 
 You can secure this by taking in hand the management of 
 the popular schools, and you cannot secure it in any other way. 
 
 2. I pass to another point of social equality. The dis- 
 tinguishing mark of social equality is, to my mind, identity 
 of enjoyments. We used to be told by the good old school 
 that the hunting-field and the racecourse kept English society 
 together ; and perhaps, before the growth of the great towns 
 with their highly educated workmen, there was something in 
 this. But of course the poorer people were lookers-on at these
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 29 
 
 things, rather than participators ; they are not really amuse- 
 ments for the million, except in as far as the million take to 
 betting. Now no doubt we all hope that, with proper pro- 
 vision of open spaces and public buildings, games and gym- 
 nastics will be more and more generally practised ; but I want 
 to refer now to other forms of enjoyment. 
 
 One is rather disinclined to say very much about museums 
 and picture galleries and public libraries as means of enjoy- 
 ment, because these places are now apt to be so very doleful 
 and unattractive. This is partly the fault of the management, 
 and partly the fault of the visitors. But when our common 
 education gives us a little more feeling and insight for the 
 human side of art and craftsmanship, then I think we shall 
 care more to become acquainted with the history and fortunes 
 of arts and crafts, the products of which are the direct outcome 
 and record of the lives and feelings and labours of unnamed 
 millions of our race. This is a point of view which we owe 
 largely to Mr. Morris. Then I think the management, which 
 will depend upon the local authority, will become more ener- 
 getic and zealous, and the visitors will be more interested ; 
 and this will have the effect of making the museums and 
 galleries less desolate and more hospitable and cheerful ; and 
 perhaps some day we may get as far as to have a public 
 orchestra playing in some public room. When an interest like 
 this becomes common and natural, it will no longer be thought 
 priggish to care about these things, and they will be an im- 
 portant feature of our holiday life. This would be the begin- 
 ning of a great social change, because all sensible people would 
 more and more tend to spend their Sundays and holidays in 
 the same way, and the rich people might lose something of 
 their vulgar exclusiveness, and the poorer people something of 
 their enforced narrowness of outlook. And a certain social
 
 3<D INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 pride, in a citizenship that means a common life worth living, 
 will grow up, and replace the brutal exclusiveness of classes. 
 We should all feel that the best things were now for all, and 
 not for the few, and that this was enough to prove that they 
 were really the best things, because it is only the best things 
 that can be for all. And this social pride would react on the 
 administrative work of the local authority, and increase its 
 energy, its thoroughness, and its public spirit. 
 
 And the same influences would leave their mark on a pri- 
 vate life the life of the family. I know quite well that the 
 wealthy and orthodox infidel will say, with an affectation of 
 practical insight, that people whose lives are a struggle cannot 
 be expected to take pleasure in beauty and knowledge. And 
 I agree so far as this that they cannot be expected to take 
 such pleasure. All I know is, that they do take it. I con- 
 stantly hear and see conclusive proofs of this. A lady de- 
 scribed to me the other day the resolution and enjoyment with 
 which an Irish lad pursued his woodcarving in a mud cabin, in 
 county Limerick ; and it is not long since I heard how some 
 Scotch lads actually preferred decorating their own homes to 
 turning a penny by selling their work. This sounds like a 
 miracle, but has the advantage of being a fact. 
 
 3. And these educational influences will ultimately produce 
 an effect on the organisation of industry itself. The mere fact 
 that the two greatest English writers on art of this or of any 
 century have found it necessary to become writers on social 
 economy, is enough to prove, if it wanted proving, that the 
 national appreciation of workmanship and the national organi- 
 sation of industry are but two aspects of the same thing. If I 
 were to venture in passing to criticise the ideas of John Ruskin 
 and of Mr. William Morris, I should say that the lifework of 
 these two great men, co-operating with other influences, has
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 31 
 
 done more for us than they are themselves aware. It is our 
 duty, I admit, at least to listen with respect to those from 
 whom we have already learnt so much ; but it is my own firm 
 conviction that there is far less to be gained from their detailed 
 speculations in social economy than from the nineteenth- 
 century renaissance, the new birth, which they have been the 
 chief agents in bringing about. Such teaching operations 
 as those to which I have referred in the beginning of this 
 lecture are merely an attempt to popularise what these great 
 men have done, and belong, in a humble way, to the same 
 line of advance. After all, no progress is isolated. The 
 awakening of Europe is continuous, from the time of Goethe 
 till to day. 
 
 The organisation of industry will be affected by educational 
 progress in various ways. 
 
 First, the public mind will learn to see in the productions 
 of handicraft the expression of the life of the craftsmen, and 
 will realize that a sense of beauty or fitness in the production 
 cannot be divorced from a sense of duty towards the producer. 
 Only health and happiness can produce sound workmanship 
 and pleasant decoration. It is a saying of the fishermen's 
 wives in Scotland when they are selling the fish, " It's no fish 
 you're buying ; it's men's lives." This is what we all must 
 come to feel. In all the transactions of industry we are 
 trafficking in the lives of men and women ; and therefore we 
 shall be ready to give aid and encouragement to organising 
 their lives, we shall be ready and willing to legislate for their 
 better health and comfort, and, above all things, we shall insist, 
 for their sakes as for our own, that the workmanship shall be 
 good and sound. 
 
 Secondly, then, I look for a change in the dignity of the 
 craftsman. The old economy said that a respectable calling
 
 32 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 was apt to be underpaid, because it took out part of its wages 
 in public esteem. This view has its truth ; but I feel sure 
 that in the long-run public esteem promotes material welfare. 
 Public opinion can strengthen organisation, and can to some 
 extent prohibit unjust terms of partnership, though it cannot, 
 of course, determine shares of profit in particular cases. It 
 can confer importance and eminence, and these things react 
 upon material welfare. At present I have no doubt that the 
 skilled workman is under-esteemed and underpaid by com- 
 parison with persons of financial or secretarial skill, or with 
 the so-called designer or architect. The reason is in part that 
 the craftsman himself is not what he should be, is not an 
 artist or a man of science, but is a mere mechanic ; and then, 
 as always happens, he is not expected to be more than this, 
 and, because he is not expected to be, he is not. Two 
 changes must come together : the craftsman must assert him- 
 self by becoming an artist, and the public must recognise him 
 if he is, and condemn him if he is not. As a detail, I may 
 say, in all high-class work, the workman should have the credit 
 of what he makes with his own hands. His mark should be 
 on it. I am told that an excellent start in this direction is 
 being made at Toynbee Hall. 
 
 And further, the terrible problem of unskilled labour would 
 not be left untouched. The range of skilled hand labour 
 would be vastly extended ; the field of unskilled labour might, 
 in a corresponding proportion, be left to machinery. I can- 
 not enter into this at length. It seems plain that the worst 
 pinch is in the long hours of monotonous, soul-destroying, un- 
 skilled labour. I hope much from supplanting a good deal 
 of this by interesting skilled labour, and frankly helping out 
 the rest by machinery and shortening its hours. 
 
 These are the changes which we see before us, when we
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 33 
 
 look forward ten years from the educational point of view 
 alone. It is impossible to draw the line between the indi- 
 vidual and the social character of such reforms. The move- 
 ment in question will, e.g., probably affect the drafting of the 
 Technical Education Bill ; it will certainly affect its working. 
 Converging results will spring from other influences. And it 
 is as certain as any human prospect can be, that if we jointly 
 and severally do our duty as friends, parents, electors to the 
 local authority, managers of evening and of primary schools, 
 and as human beings with humanising interests of our own, 
 we can bring about changes of this kind in our social, edu- 
 cational, industrial, and recreative organisation, which will 
 amount, in their cumulative effect, to no small instalment of a 
 social revolution. 
 
 Now I turn to a subject which apparently differs from the 
 last, in as far as the attempt to initiate progress has arisen 
 more distinctly from legislation. But here, too, we shall find 
 that we are really dealing with a thoroughgoing advance in 
 the mind and character of the people. 
 
 It is only within the last half-century that the public atten- 
 tion has been given to the dwellings of the wage-earning class 
 with the definite purpose of improving their condition. The 
 statement needs this qualification, because the danger and 
 misery of a mass of overcrowded tenements were observed in 
 London as early as the time of Elizabeth. 
 
 The confluence of the people to London was even then 
 
 largely caused by the unwise charity of the Londoners ; and 
 
 the growth of the population outside the city gates frightened 
 
 the city for its trade, and the government both for health and 
 
 4br order. 
 
 But their remedy was not what we should call a construc- 
 tive remedy. It consisted in proclamations against fresh 
 
 D
 
 34 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 buildings within three miles of the city gates, and against 
 overcrowding, and against inhabited cellars. People living in 
 cellars in London are first mentioned about 1640, and Irish 
 poor in St. Giles' in that year. 
 
 These proclamations did no good. London went on grow- 
 ing, and becoming more and more unhealthy. A writer about 
 two hundred years ago says, "One way with another, a plague 
 happeneth in London every twenty years." 
 
 There was more regulation within the city walls, but chiefly 
 to secure cleanliness in the streets, and to provide against fire. 
 
 So it remains true that there was no attempt to improve the 
 people's dwellings till half a century ago. In fact, there were 
 no sanitary principles recognised in any dwellings before that 
 time. I should suppose that our sanitary discoveries and 
 legislation, and therefore our future system of local govern- 
 ment, largely owe their origin to the labours of the men of 
 science who perfected the compound microscope between 
 1820 and 1830. We may call to mind that the Prince Con- 
 sort died of typhoid fever, and the Prince of Wales narrowly 
 escaped a similar death. So our negligence in purely sanitary 
 matters was tolerably impartial. 
 
 But a variety of philanthropic and political motives contri- 
 buted in the years following 1832 to push forward this ques- 
 tion. In particular, the outbreak of cholera in 1831, with a 
 terribly unhealthy year in 1837, when a return of cholera was 
 dreaded in London, acted strongly on the minds of reformers, 
 which were then directed to the condition of the working 
 classes. A whole heap of public inquiries were instituted, 
 one of which resulted in Mr. Chadwick's report of 1842, "On 
 the Condition of the Labouring Classes of Great Britain." 
 
 It is from about this time, in the Forties, that we must date 
 the effective growth of public interest in the problem. This
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 35 
 
 interest, and the action taken in consequence of it, shows a 
 pretty marked development, which it is worth while to glance 
 at, although it is so complicated a subject that one can only 
 touch a few typical points here and there. 
 
 To begin with, the movement has left its record in forty 
 years of legislation, from 1845 to 1885. This legislation 
 shows on the whole two tendencies : first, a tendency to widen 
 the conception of the problem ; and, secondly, as a result of 
 this widening conception, to rely increasingly upon local 
 authorities. The widening of the problem shows itself in the 
 advance from legislation directed to removing a nuisance, an 
 annoyance, or danger to the neighbours, to legislation directed 
 to clearing whole areas that were unhealthy, ajid rebuilding on 
 them to the best advantage ; that is to say, recognising the pro- 
 vision of dwellings as a matter of public policy. 
 
 The Nuisance Removals Acts begin, I believe, in 1846. In 
 1855 the meaning of a "nuisance" is extended to include 
 anything dangerous to the inhabitants of the house itself > such 
 as overcrowding ; in 1868, Torrens' Act marks a turning-point, 
 because it provides for demolishing unsanitary houses, and 
 rebuilding on their sites ; and Cross's Act of 1875 applies- the 
 same principle to large areas. Both of these Acts attempt 
 to keep the compensation down in the public interest ; and 
 Cross's Act forces the public authority to incur loss, if neces- 
 sary, in selling the sites for the purpose of dwellings. This 
 means that the public mind has passed from a negative to a 
 positive idea of the remedy for the evil of bad dwellings. 
 
 There was one curious exception to this order of advance. 
 In 1851 Lord Shaftesbury carried an Act which enabled the 
 local authority to construct and hold buildings for lodging the 
 wage-earning class. It did not give compulsory powers, but 
 much could have, been done without them. But the public
 
 36 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 interest was not then awakened ; no one stirred up the local 
 authorities ; and four years ago Lord Shaftesbury said he sup- 
 posed no one but himself knew that the Act existed. It has 
 been an absolute dead letter. 
 
 But on the whole the conception of the problem steadily 
 widened from 1845 to 1875, and we may even say to 1885 
 considering that the commission which reported in that year 
 took evidence on the question of the relation between rent 
 and wages. The Charity Organisation Society's Committee 
 of 1 88 1 had previously gone into this difficult question. This 
 shows that the mere sanitary problem had expanded into 
 a set of problems affecting the whole position of the working 
 class. 
 
 As to reliance upon local authorities, not to speak of the 
 abortive Act of 1851, we may remember that the Metropolitan 
 Board of Works was created in 1855. The vestries were 
 enabled by that Act to appoint medical officers of health, and 
 were given enormously important powers of making bye-laws 
 under an Act of 1866. Torrens' Act of 1868 depended on the 
 vestries ; and Cross's of 1875 on the Board of Works. 
 
 Now I turn to the other side of the subject. Who were at 
 work in and under all this legislation, and what did they effect ? 
 There have been, roughly speaking, four classes of reformers, 
 beginning one after the other, but going on together. 
 
 First came a band of experts and philanthropists, like Lord 
 Shaftesbury and Mr. Chadwick. It was they, I think, who 
 set the ball rolling, partly as public men, by blue-books and 
 Acts of Parliament. I do not think they can have effected 
 very much before 1855; but they did slowly arouse public 
 opinion, being ably seconded by three fearful visitations of 
 cholera. 
 
 Secondly, as a first result of the wider public interest, came
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 37 
 
 the Model Dwellings Companies, started by people like Lord 
 Shaftesbury, but consisting of middle-class citizens and men of 
 business, who wanted to thrash out the question practically, 
 and see what could be done by ordinary decent landlords. 
 The first societies were more experimental and charitable ; 
 then, as the work was shown to be possible, they got bigger 
 and more commercial. The first block of model dwellings 
 was opened in London in 1847, the second in 1850 ; six more 
 companies were formed in the next twelve years. In 1862, 
 Mr. Peabody's first gift of ,150,000 gave an impetus to the 
 movement. Still the actual work done by all the societies 
 together was in itself next to nothing. They housed about 
 17,000 individuals by 1868, over 30,000 by 1873, and 40,000 
 or 50,000 by 1 88 1. 
 
 The population of London is supposed to increase by 65,000 
 i every year, of whom 40,000 are of the wage-earning :lass, and 
 the total number of houses built since 1848 is said to be hard 
 upon half a million. So that, considered as a supply of dwell- 
 ings, the work of the companies is a drop in the ocean. It 
 has some uses, which I will speak of later. 
 
 Then, thirdly, the problem deepened as there arose a simpler 
 and a deeper view of it. It is strange, but true, that in moral 
 matters the simplest view comes last. Everything else catches 
 our eye before our own most obvious duties, and they often 
 have to be suggested to us by a great genius. It was, I 
 believe, in the first instance, John Ruskin to whom the idea 
 was due, in about 1864, of what is now known as the Octavia 
 Hill system, which depends on the simple but not familiar 
 idea that a landlord has a moral duty to his tenant. The 
 system consists in the employment of trained women as agents 
 and rent-collectors, who manage the property as any decent 
 owner ought to manage it, but with a good deal of individual
 
 38 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 supervision. This system is not essential or even desirable 
 for the houses of first-rate artisans, but it is absolutely indis- 
 pensable for the houses of people who have lost the habit of 
 living in comfort and cleanliness. Without such a system no 
 house that can be built would remain sanitary for a month 
 with inhabitants of this class. This is not now a mere philan- 
 thropic experiment. It is a mode of managing house property 
 extensively applied, under which probably several thousand 
 families live decently and with a tendency to improve, who 
 would otherwise live miserably with a tendency to deteriorate. 
 
 Lastly, about the same time a chance was given to the local 
 authorities to do their duty, of which excellent use was made 
 in two or three cases. The power to make bye-laws for 
 inspection and registration of tenement houses under the Act 
 of 1866 afforded the most simple means of controlling the 
 state of the dwellings supply in every district. Down to 1884, 
 however, only two districts had thoroughly gone into this work, 
 with the result that in one district ten thousand persons, and 
 iii another thirty thousand were living in houses inspected and 
 warranted as in fair sanitary condition. I am quite unable to 
 understand why the ratepayers have not insisted on this simple 
 process being adopted in every district of London. It costs 
 the public nothing, so far as I know. 
 
 And under the head of the practical moral reformers I may 
 mention the work familiar to most of us as that of the Com- 
 mittee of the Mansion House Council. 
 
 The connection between the reformers and the reforms is 
 curious and interesting. It is a perpetual meeting of ex- 
 tremes. The private enterprise dwellings companies find they 
 can build tenements, but they want cheap sites. The very 
 unsocialistic Charity Organisation Society, five years after its 
 foundation, examines into this question by its committee of
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 39 
 
 1873, an d does much to procure Cross's Act of 1875, which 
 deals with the problem of procuring cheap sites ; and from 
 the working of that Act the more drastic ideas now current 
 have largely sprung. For instance, the Birmingham improve- 
 ments were carried on under that Act. But these more drastic 
 ideas, as represented in the Commission of 1885, have again 
 forced us back to the conclusion that we must have more 
 public interest, and a public authority more in touch 
 with the public interest. The Act of 1885 says I am not 
 speaking in legal phrase that it is the duty of the local 
 authority to do its duty ; and that is about the practical con- 
 clusion to which forty years of legislation have brought us. 
 Just as private enterprise led up to legislation, so legislation 
 leads up to individual duty. When you have not a good 
 local authority with good servants, your law is a dead letter 
 When you have, there is little, though there is something, to 
 be desired. 
 
 Thus it seems that the widening and the deepening of the 
 problem are not antagonistic to one another. The legislative 
 reformer of to-day knows well that he is only arming with the 
 public power a spirit and a purpose which the community 
 must supply. The private enterprise reformer of to-day is not 
 the laissez-faire economist, but is the citizen actuated by 
 moral claims, and determined, whenever it is useful or needful, 
 to transform his private action into that of the public power. 
 The only question that arises is concerned with the precise 
 degree of this use and need In my opinion, such a matter of 
 degree can only be determined in detail. I will illustrate the 
 difference and the coalescence of the two points of view by read- 
 ing some answers given by Miss Hill before the Commission of 
 1885 (p. 296). Miss Hill had been saying that she thought 
 the ground landlord should be taxed, especially in view of the
 
 40 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 enormous increase of value which he gets when his leases fall 
 in. Lord Salisbury, in consequence of this answer, asks : 
 
 Q. " You have not much sympathy for the ground land- 
 lord ? " 
 
 A. " I have great sympathy for the ground landlord ; he is 
 a man whose power for good I believe in, and I have spent 
 much of my life in getting people to become ground land- 
 lords." 
 
 Q. " You wish to multiply him, but to tax him ? " 
 
 A. " Yes, and to see him tax himself" 
 
 It is fair to say that this has been done by the Duke of 
 Westminster and others who have let land at reduced rates for 
 dwellings. The line which she takes throughout is that only 
 when private action runs against a barrier, it must have the 
 power of transforming itself into public action. She thinks 
 private action more flexible and more adapted to the particular 
 problems with which she has to do. It is a question of effi- 
 ciency, of setting forces at work on which you can really rely 
 to produce the required effect. 
 
 I will not discuss these questions in general, but will say at 
 once what sort of solution will, in my opinion, probably be 
 found adequate. 
 
 The required agency is the performance of social duty, both 
 on a large scale and in very minute matters of every-day life, 
 guided by intimate local knowledge, inspired by neighbourly 
 friendliness, and in case of necessity employing the public 
 power. The agents in such an activity would naturally be the 
 people of the community, in their various relations as neigh- 
 bours, landlords, and tenants, or as builders, buyers, and 
 sellers of houses ; but the community must be able, in case 
 of necessity, to transform itself into the public power that is, 
 in other words, it must enjoy an efficient system of local self-
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 4! 
 
 government. This Is the expression, the outward and visible 
 sign, of the relations of neighbours with one another; and it 
 will be what it deserves to be just as good or as bad as the 
 people themselves choose to make it. 
 
 To a really efficient government of this type very stringent 
 powers might be entrusted, which it would be madness to en- 
 trust to any ill-informed or over-centralised authority. 
 
 Powers connected with building divide themselves into 
 destructive and constructive powers. There are also important 
 preventive powers, regulating the structure and surroundings 
 of neiv houses. These preventive powers are pretty well 
 agreed upon, I believe, and I need say no more about them 
 except that they ought to be exercised. So, too, with the 
 destructive powers. We are all of one mind that bad, unim- 
 provable houses should be stamped out, without compensation 
 to the owners for the buildings (the words of the Act of 1879 
 seem to me sufficient), and that bad but improvable houses 
 should be inspected, and improved at the owner's expense, 
 and kept under inspection. We start from this. What 
 supply of houses there ought to be, admits of some question ; 
 but that bad houses should no more be tolerated than food 
 unfit for human consumption admits of no question. The 
 present law, if consolidated and acted upon, is sufficient to 
 secure this. 
 
 The question of constructive powers is more difficult. I 
 may put my view most clearly by saying that the local authority 
 should have power to construct and manage dwellings for the 
 working class ; but that if I were elected on such an authority, 
 I should strenuously oppose the use of the power except in 
 extreme cases that is to say, in order to disconcert anything 
 like a ring or combination against the public interest. 
 
 The Glasgow improvers, whose work is the most successful
 
 42 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 that has been done, had the power to build, but did not find 
 any need to exercise it. The objections to exercising such a 
 power largely are twofold : 
 
 (i) If the public authority takes much of the burden, it 
 must take it all, because it will drive private enterprise out of 
 the field ; and private enterprise can do the easy part of the 
 work providing high-class dwellings as well as the public 
 authority, and the hard part of the work housing the classes 
 who require Miss Hill's system much better. Thus the 
 community would be taking on itself a needless burden, and 
 destroying a useful work. (2) The desirable course is to 
 house in London only those people who must be there. To 
 do this you must adjust the dwellings supply very carefully 
 to the absolute need. If you build on a large scale at an 
 artificially lowered rent, you actually subsidise employers 
 of labour by building barracks for their employes. There are 
 three hundred policemen and a number of letter-carriers living 
 in the Peabody dwellings. This makes their pay equivalent 
 to a higher pay, I suppose, and helps to induce them to stay 
 in London or come to London. 
 
 Some clearances under Cross's Act are said to have cost 
 ^250 per family to be housed on them. No doubt this was 
 very ill-managed. But if one was going to spend anything like 
 that sum of money, would it not be better to get some em- 
 ployer to set up his trade in the country, and build him a nice 
 healthy village away from London? You can build a beautiful 
 four-roomed house for ^250 in the country. I cannot doubt, 
 though these things are hard to prove, that any really large 
 operations in supplying dwellings under cost price in London 
 must lower wages, and aggravate the congestion of population. 
 We must make a stand some time, and say, " This area is 
 full " ; and I do not see why we should wait to do this until
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 43 
 
 we have massed the population in six-storey blocks to the 
 verge of possible existence. The densest population in ordi- 
 nary houses is two hundred and fifty per acre ; the blocks 
 house near a thousand. 
 
 Between destruction and construction there is the link of 
 replacement. I said I would not encourage congestion ; but 
 I certainly would not permit forcible depopulation. At this 
 moment the population of Central London is supposed to be 
 decreasing. This is in part a healthy movement. The nearer 
 the country the better for the wife and children. All one can 
 say in general, is that the local authority should have stringent 
 and flexible powers to take sites for necessary improvements, 
 and to forbid demolition, or to annex conditions to it, or to 
 enforce replacement, and perhaps to impose conditions on the 
 laying out of new estates. 
 
 I will give as an illustration the way in which this system 
 would have affected the person who projected the late demoli- 
 tions in Chelsea. I am informed that over two hundred small 
 houses were demolished on two sites, which do not comprise 
 all the land that was cleared. Between one and two thousand 
 persons must have been displaced. The rent of the smaller 
 houses in Chelsea must rise in consequence, unless a large 
 migration is caused. The owner may be about to replace, but 
 I see no signs of it. Now he would have had to come to the 
 local authority for permission, simply on the public ground that 
 he was projecting an alteration in the dwellings supply of 
 London. He might then have been forbidden to make his alter- 
 tion, or some public improvement might have been exacted as a 
 condition ; all that depends on the circumstances of the case, 
 as they might appear to persons with intimate local knowledge. 
 
 One word as to the rights of property. I would substitute 
 for this rigid conception the more flexible conception of the
 
 44 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 "continuity of society," meaning by this that you and I are 
 bound to recognise in a reasonable way what your father and 
 mine permitted to exist. How far, in what special degree, you 
 recognise it is a question of detail. The things to be avoided 
 are the sudden dislocation of life, and measures aimed at indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 The present state of things is this the model dwellings 
 companies and Miss Hill's system house altogether somewhere 
 near a hundred thousand individuals not less, maybe more. 
 Their function is not to provide the dwellings supply of Lon- 
 don. Private builders and workmen's building societies are 
 well able to do this in the ordinary way. 
 
 What the model dwellings and Miss Hill's system can do is 
 to extirpate, or make it possible to extirpate, the very worst 
 plague-spots of London, because they attend to the needs of 
 the class too troublesome for the private builder, and build on 
 sites too awkward for the private builders. They have also 
 shown the way to adapt buildings to the needs of various 
 classes ; the successive sets of dwellings are more cheaply 
 built and better adapted to their purpose. 
 
 We must remember how influences radiate from every 
 centre. Twenty thousand decent dwellings, a great part of 
 which are in place of thoroughly bad ones, have a good deal 
 of importance even in London. 
 
 The private builders have in part learnt their lesson, and 
 are beginning to compete with the model dwellings. When 
 they can do so successfully the main problem is really solved.* 
 
 * In so far as the low dividends of dwellings companies are caused, as 
 has been recently in part the case, by the competition of private builders 
 erecting houses of the same class, this lowness goes to show, not that the 
 problem is insoluble, but that, in the quarter of London in question, it is 
 solved, supply exceeding demand.
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 45 
 
 They and the companies can replace the unimprovable houses; 
 it is for the local authority, aided and incited by private 
 citizens, to demolish these, and to force improvement of the 
 improvable houses. The worst pressure, due to the neglect 
 of generations, ought never to recur. The worst faults of the 
 old houses ought to be now impossible. A terrible amount 
 remains to be done, but nothing which cannot be done by the 
 due execution of the law, backed by the sympathy and activity 
 of individual citizens. 
 
 Thus our two examples coalesce in a practical and practi- 
 cable ideal ; we look forward to a society organised in con- 
 venient districts, in which men and women, pursuing their 
 different callings, will live together with care for one another, 
 and with in all essentials the same education, the same enjoy- 
 ments, the same capacities. These men and women will work 
 together in councils and on committees ; and while fearlessly 
 employing stringent legal powers in the public interest, yet 
 will be aware, by sympathy and experience, of the extreme 
 flexibility and complication of modern life, which responds so 
 unexpectedly to the most simple interference ; they will have 
 a pride in their schools and their libraries, in their streets and 
 their dwellings, in their workshops and their warehouses. In 
 such a society it appears to me to be a mere question of 
 practical efficiency how far the organisers of labour should be 
 the salaried servants of the State, or, as they are now, its moral 
 trustees. This presents itself to me simply as a question of 
 the amount of line, the degree of initiative, which the com- 
 munity allows to its agents in the performance of their duties. 
 The only thing that I dread in the system known as Socialism 
 is the cutting off individual initiative outside certain duties 
 specified by rule. I do not see how either of the two great 
 movements of which I have spoken this evening could have
 
 46 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 
 
 made its way under a rigidly socialist regime. In England 
 and perhaps we differ in this from the Continent our way of 
 showing that a thing can be done is simply to go and do it. 
 I do not see how Mr. Morris's influence could have reached 
 its present extent if he had had to begin by knocking at the 
 doors of a Science and Art Department, or of a School Board. 
 On the other hand, of practical Socialism, i.e., of the work- 
 man's ownership of the means of production, we cannot have 
 too much. 
 
 But though our judgment may differ on such questions as 
 these, I wish to conclude by insisting that all I have said to- 
 night remains true notwithstanding. If Socialism is to come, 
 it will come quicker in this way ; and neither it nor any other 
 system can be good unless these things are done. If we 
 simply stick to our work, the children who are born this year 
 will be educated on a better system, and will find themselves, 
 as they grow up, in a revolutionised society. Not that the 
 revolution is something now future, which will one day be past. 
 The revolution always has been going on, always is going on, 
 and, above all, always will be going on. But there are critical 
 moments when the public mind matures rapidly, and perhaps 
 this is one of them. Our birthright is within our grasp, if we 
 choose to grasp it. What is wanted is the habituation of the 
 English citizen to his rights and duties, by training in organi- 
 sation, in administration, in what I may call neighbourly public 
 spirit. If, for example, London had the same traditions of 
 public service as Berlin, we should have (allowing for the 
 difference of size) an army of 7,200 citizens engaged in the 
 administration of poor law relief as unpaid officials, with public 
 authority, and with individual discretion. Unless we ap- 
 prentice ourselves to the trade of citizenship, the days that are 
 coming in England may show more disastrous specimens of
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 47 
 
 municipal government than New York itself has displayed. 
 Warnings are not wanting. Such as the citizen is, such the 
 society will be ; and the true union of social and individual 
 reform lies in the moulding of the individual mind to the 
 public purpose.
 
 III. 
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF 
 ANCIENT SOCIETIES* 
 
 IT always appears to me that the ideal of modern life may 
 be simply summed up in the phrase "Christian Hellenism," 
 or if this is ambiguous, then " humanised Hellenism." 
 
 I will begin by quoting, in the words of the greatest Greek 
 statesman, reproduced by the greatest Greek historian, a de- 
 scription of Hellenism at its best. My quotations are drawn 
 from the famous speech of Pericles, delivered 430 years before 
 Christ, at the funeral of the Athenian citizens who fell in the 
 first year of the war between Athens and Sparta. There is 
 little doubt that Thucydides, who probably heard the speech, 
 has fairly represented the topics and the spirit of it. 
 
 f " Before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by 
 what principles of action we rose to power, and under what 
 institutions and through what manner of life we became great. 
 For I conceive that such thoughts are not unsuited to the 
 occasion, and that this numerous assembly of citizens and 
 strangers may profitably listen to them. 
 
 " Our form of Government does not enter into rivalry with 
 the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, 
 but we are an example to them. It is true that we are called 
 
 * A lecture delivered for the Ethical Society. 
 t Jowett's Thucyd. ii. 35 ff.
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 49 
 
 a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the 
 many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal 
 justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excel- 
 lence is also recognised ; and when a citizen is in any way 
 distinguished, he is preferred to the public service not as a 
 matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit Neither is pov- 
 erty a bar, but a man may benefit his country, whatever be the 
 obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our 
 public life, and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious 
 of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what 
 he likes ; we do not put on sour looks at him, which, though 
 harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained 
 in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our 
 public acts ; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect 
 for authority and for the laws, having an especial regard to 
 those which are ordained for the protection of the injured, as 
 well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the trans- 
 gressor the reprobation of the general sentiment. 
 
 " And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits 
 many relaxations from toil ; we have regular public competi- 
 tions [dramatic, musical, and athletic] and religious ceremonies 
 throughout the year ; at home the style of our life is refined ; 
 and the delight which we daily feel in these things helps to 
 banish melancholy." " We are lovers of the beautiful, though 
 simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of 
 manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, 
 but when there is a real use for it. To avow poverty with us 
 is no disgrace ; the true disgrace is doing nothing to avoid it. 
 An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he 
 takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who 
 are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We 
 alone regard a man who takes no share in public business not 
 
 E
 
 50 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 as a harmless but as a useless character ; and if few of us are 
 originators, we are all sound judges of a policy. The great 
 impediment to action is in our opinion, not discussion, but the 
 want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion prepara- 
 tory to action." " We alone do good to our neighbours not 
 upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of free- 
 dom and in a frank and fearless spirit. To sum up : I say 
 that Athens is the school of Greece, and that the individual 
 Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of 
 adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the 
 utmost versatility and grace." " Such is the city for whose sake 
 these men nobly fought and died ; they could not bear the 
 thought that she might be taken from them ; and every one of 
 us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf." 
 
 These pretensions were not too highly pitched. In the year 
 in which this speech was delivered, the roll of Athenian citi- 
 zens, numbering not more than 20,000 men capable of bearing 
 arms, included not one or two only, but several of the greatest 
 men of all time. Socrates was entering upon his missionary 
 activity. Thucydides was gathering the ideas which were to 
 be embodied in his immortal history. Pericles was ruling the 
 fierce democracy by his intellect and his eloquence. Three of 
 the world's greatest poets, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristo- 
 phanes, were moving the Athenians to tears and laughter. 
 ^Eschylus had passed away just a quarter of a century before. 
 Plato was to be born within two years after. Not six years 
 had elapsed since those inimitable works of sculpture, which 
 by an extraordinary chance have found their last refuge within 
 a mile of this lecture-hall, had been hoisted into their places 
 on the temple of Athene. Other buildings and their orna- 
 ments, hardly less splendid, were still in the minds or under 
 the hands of Athenian artists. It is worth while to visit the
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 51 
 
 Elgin marble room at the British Museum, and to look at the 
 majestic female figure which with five others was erected in 
 the year 409 before Christ to support an Athenian temple 
 roof, and to reflect on the high-minded energy of a people 
 which could enrich the world by such a monument, after the 
 first twenty years of a desperate struggle for existence. 
 
 Pericles was well within the mark when he called Athens 
 the school of Greece. Not only was it the school of Greece, 
 but it was the nursery of Europe. If we hold sacred the 
 earliest source of that "virtue," or manliness, which is the 
 morality of the free European citizen, it is not to Palestine 
 but to Athens that we should make our pilgrimage. For the 
 first time in the history of the world, so far as we know or can 
 conjecture, the problem of uniting public authority with indi- 
 vidual freedom was solved, and magnificently solved, in the 
 free commonwealths of Greece. And when Socrates and his 
 followers had expressed in undying language the essence of 
 the civic life of their time, the moral consciousness of Europe 
 had received the general outline and impress which, in spite of 
 qualitative and quantitative variations, it still retains. I will 
 read on this subject the words of a \\uriter, who, whatever 
 honour he might pay to Greece, stood second to none in his 
 recognition of the peculiar claim of Christianity. The late 
 Professor Green wrote in his work on Ethics : 
 
 * " The habit of derogation from the uses of ' mere philoso- 
 phy,' common alike to Christian advocates and the professors 
 of natural science, has led us too much to ignore the immense 
 practical service which Socrates and his followers rendered to 
 mankind. From them in effect comes the connected scheme 
 of virtues and duties within which the educated conscience of 
 
 * "Prolegomena to Ethics," pp. 269-276.
 
 52 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 Christendom still moves, when it is impartially reflecting on 
 what ought to be done. Religious teachers have no doubt 
 affected the hopes and fears which actuate us in the pursuit 
 of virtue, or rouse us from its neglect. Religious societies 
 have both strengthened men in the performance of recognised 
 duties, and taught them to recognise relations of duty towards 
 those whom they might otherwise have been content to treat 
 as beyond the pale of such duties ; but the articulated scheme 
 of what the virtues and duties are, in their difference and in 
 their unity, remains for us now in its main outlines what the 
 Greek philosophers left it. 
 
 "When we come to ask ourselves what are the essential 
 forms in which, however otherwise modified, the will for true 
 good (which is the will to be good) must appear, our answer 
 follows the outlines of the Greek classification of the virtues. 
 It is the will to know what is true, to make what is beautiful, 
 to endure pain or fear, to resist the allurements of pleasure 
 (i.e.y to be brave and temperate), if not, as the Greek would 
 have said, in the service of the State, yet in the interest of 
 some form of human society; to take for one's self, and to give 
 to others, of those things which admit of being given and 
 taken, not what one is inclined to, but what is due." 
 
 This, then, is Hellenism, perhaps the most splendid product 
 of any single epoch in the world's history. But Hellenism 
 alone will not suffice for us. For Hellenism was founded on 
 slavery ; and the curse of this slavery may be seen in its 
 philosophy, and even in its perfect art, exhibiting as it does a 
 rigid severity in those ornaments and accessories which are the 
 vehicle, for the free workman, of his humorous and inventive 
 enjoyment. We demand, then, a human or Christian Hel- 
 lenism ; a Hellenism which shall realise the true freedom of 
 every human being, not merely as the Greek thinker would
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 53 
 
 say, if his nature were unfit for slavery, but because his nature 
 is unfit for slavery. It was Christianity that first in principle 
 and then in practice broke down the distinction between Jew 
 and Greek, between slave and free, and in so doing not only 
 enlarged the area, but transformed the quality of virtue. My 
 duty to humanity is not only something wider, but also some- 
 thing higher than my duty to my own class in my own country. 
 If the higher standard set by our duty to man were as magnifi- 
 cently achieved as the Athenian of the great time achieved the 
 lower standard of his duty to the body of Athenian citizens 
 the ideal of Christian Hellenism, or Periclean Christianity, 
 would be attained. 
 
 Now we have a tolerably complete knowledge of the legal 
 and economical system of this brilliant community ; and with- 
 out for a moment supposing that we can transfer laws or 
 usages directly from an ancient State inhabited by, say 120,000 
 free persons and 380,000 slaves, to a modern nation consisting 
 of thirty million persons, all nominally free, yet there are certain 
 points in their mode of attacking their social problems which 
 still have instructiveness for us. 
 
 Socialism in the technical modern sense, that is, the com- 
 plete collective ownership of the means of production, did not 
 exist, I believe, in any ancient State ; but socialistic features, 
 in the way of a very positive relation, not a merely protective 
 relation, between the life of the private citizen and the action 
 of the public authority, were for good and for evil essential to 
 ancient communities. 
 
 Now I do trust that no one will imagine that I want to cut 
 the knot either for or against socialistic ideals by a reference 
 to ancient history or to ancient authority. I am not so foolish. 
 What I do think important is this : we cannot, it seems to me, 
 at any moment, consciously determine more than the next
 
 54 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 step in politics. But yet we who now live are shaping the 
 whole future course of society ; we are shaping it to some end 
 which will be different from anything that we can predict, but 
 will be the outcome, now unknown, of the progressive moral 
 ideals which for a few short years are entrusted to our keeping. 
 It is our duty therefore, not merely to do all we know, but to 
 know all we can. Our action is continually altering the cir- 
 cumstances of life ; the unknown future will be the result of 
 the new circumstances combined with the ideas which men 
 bring to meet them. And therefore, I think, it is not well 
 that we should always be proposing definite plans or preaching 
 definite crusades. It is useful too, just to let our minds be 
 brought to bear upon each other, to give and take ideas about 
 important interests of life, to teach ourselves not to shy at the 
 newness of a new name, but to observe how, under conditions 
 other than ours, human nature has succeeded or has failed in 
 its great continual task. We thus gain practice in distinguish- 
 ing the undying purposes of humanity from those methods and 
 rules and customs which in our own country, or nation, or rank 
 of life, have become perhaps too rigid, and appear inevitable. 
 To discriminate the means from the end, the accidental from 
 the essential, is the highest task of theoretical as of practical 
 judgment. 
 
 I said that some socialistic features were essential to all 
 ancient communities : I mean especially the Greek commu- 
 nities, and to some extent Latin communities. I am not 
 speaking of what might be called primitive communism, al- 
 though in Sparta, for instance, it seems as if that had joined 
 hands with constitutional enactment : I am speaking of the 
 conscious legislative and administrative policy of very highly 
 civilised communities. 
 
 The truth of our assertion appears to some extent if we
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 55 
 
 merely call to mind what is rather a twice-told tale, the 
 peculiar meaning which the term city or state bore for a Greek. 
 The word which they employed was that from which our term 
 politics is derived, but the city or state did not mean to a 
 Greek merely the executive power, nor did politics mean the 
 mere machinery of government or of legislation. To cut this 
 matter short, I will say that whenever, in our highest mood, 
 we speak of England or of Great Britain not only as our home 
 and kindred, but as a historic force and as an ideal that 
 claims our devotion, then we may have some conception ot 
 what a Greek meant when he spoke of my city or my country. 
 The thousand complications or institutions which fill our lives 
 with other purposes did not exist for him. It was to the 
 state or city that he looked for his main Activities and his main 
 enjoyments. If, for example, we think of our great Church 
 Societies and voluntary schools, or public charities, or again 
 of the development of music or the drama, the activities which 
 are thus brought to our minds would to a Greek be closely 
 associated with the State. 
 
 And this tendency received a peculiar cast from the 
 economic basis of the ancient commonwealth, as regarded its 
 public revenue. On the whole and in ordinary times, the 
 ancient commonwealth expected to pay its public expenses 
 out of its public property, just like an Oxford College or a 
 City Company. For example, the famous silver mines in 
 Attica were the property of the State, which let them to private 
 lessees under various kinds of agreement, but always, I think, 
 so that a good part of the unearned increment would come 
 back to the public. I am afraid that the extreme convenience 
 of having silver mines at home led the State to look with 
 covetous eyes at certain gold mines abroad, which were not its 
 property. But if you are to plunder other nations, perhaps
 
 56 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 it is as well to do so in the interests of the public as in the 
 interests of private individuals. Or you may more truly say : 
 it is better for the public to have clean hands, as, on the 
 whole, I believe that the people now wish to have, whatever 
 may be done in their name. And by this high standard we 
 may judge that we are perhaps a little purer than the 
 Athenians. However, my immediate point is that the ancient 
 State had its own property, such as these silver mines, and did 
 not rest principally upon taxation. To be taxe.1, on the other 
 hand, was the mark of an alien, who paid for the protection 
 which a citizen had of right. Indirect taxation, again, grew up 
 in the great trading States, but was not, as with us, a natural 
 and essential source of revenue. 
 
 Thus the citizen felt himself in the position of a man 
 administering a trust fund for the common good, rather than 
 in that of a man contributing more or less reluctantly to 
 expenses which he would therefore wish to cut down. This 
 feature gave a distinct impress to ancient finance ; but the old 
 system tended to break down under the stress of war and 
 commerce, and then showed its vicious side in the tendency 
 to throw the burden on others than the citizens by exacting 
 tribute from dependencies and by making war self-supporting. 
 At the same time, in case of actual need, the State would levy 
 percentages on the citizens' property without any scruple what- 
 ever. I think it is acknowledged to-day that we do not 
 justify the exaction of tribute from dependencies, however we 
 may practically oppress them by our commercial arrangements. 
 The tribute paid to Athens, however, was at first a very 
 reasonable contribution by the Confederacy to the common 
 defence ; it was the pressure of later circumstances that made 
 it more or less a mark of t) ranny. 
 
 This economic self-dependence of the State, if it had a
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 57 
 
 selfish aspect, had also a very noble aspect. The organized 
 community was there, as a material fact, to represent the 
 higher life of the whole body of citizens : and no one could 
 mistake it for a mere police organization maintained by 
 reluctant contributions. And in Athens, under Pericles, this 
 general characteristic of ancient communities took a marked 
 and impressive form. 
 
 A word of digression may be permitted here. 
 
 I speak of Athens under Pericles. What does this mean ? 
 I answer with a quotation from Hegel.* "To be the first in 
 the State among this noble, free, and cultivated people of 
 Athens, was the good fortune of Pericles ; which raises our 
 estimate of his individuality to a level on which few human 
 beings can be placed. Of all that is great for humanity the 
 greatest thing is to dominate the wills of men who have wills of 
 their own ; for the dominating individuality must be both the 
 deepest and the most vital ; a destiny for a mortal man which 
 now can hardly be paralleled." The second part of the defining 
 sentence is what Carlyle invariably forgot ; there is nothing 
 great in ruling, if those who are ruled have no wills of \heir 
 own ; or in plain English, " any fool can govern with a state 
 of siege." We will now look at the institutions of those who 
 were governed by Pericles. 
 
 We have all heard, I think, Aristotle's pregnant summary of 
 the origin and purpose of society. It originates, he said, for 
 the sake of life, but is for the sake of good life; or in modern 
 phrase, its origin or root is in necessity, but its purpose or its 
 flower is perfection. I will mention a few of the Athenian 
 civic institutions, separating them so far as is possible accord- 
 ing to this natural distinction. 
 
 i 
 * "Hist, of Phil.," i. 350.
 
 58 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 First, then, as to the material or economic basis of life. 
 
 In the time I speak of, there was at Athens no complete 
 Poor Law. Slavery dispenses with a Poor Law. If a citizen 
 fell into wretched poverty, I do not know that it was any one's 
 duty to relieve him. But of constructive legislation to avert 
 citizen pauperism there was a good deal, and I believe that, 
 in the time I speak of, citizen pauperism was almost unknown. 
 The constitutional history of Athens opens with a compre- 
 hensive agrarian reform, a hundred and fifty years before the 
 speech of Pericles, which, whatever its details were, arrested 
 the growth of serfdom, removed the immediate burden of debt 
 from the cultivators of the soil, and succeeded by legislative 
 enactment in effectually limiting the size of landed estates. I 
 say " effectually," because nearly two hundred years later, after 
 an enormous commercial and industrial development, we find 
 that two-thirds of the citizen body were owners of land. 
 
 Further, it was according to law the duty of every citizen 
 to teach his son a trade. Aliens who practised a trade were 
 exceptionally permitted to become citizens, an early and most 
 sagacious law, intended to encourage the introduction of new 
 industries. And any citizen who had no visible occupation or 
 means of subsistence was liable to be summoned and punished. 
 This is quite just, if occupations are to be had. The children 
 of citizens who fell in war were brought up at the public 
 charge, and public support was extended to citizens crippled 
 in war, and, probably later, to all citizens incapable of gaining 
 a livelihood. But this was not done by a self-acting law, but 
 by a special investigation in every case. 
 
 Another aspect of material life is the health of the people. 
 Of course there was none of what we call sanitary science; 
 but the direct common sense of the Greeks seems to have 
 shown them the value of good air and good water. Athens
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 59 
 
 itself had been rebuilt hurriedly after the Persian War, with 
 many narrow streets which were very likely wretched enough ; 
 but the harbour town, like many later Greek towns, was laid 
 out on a comprehensive plan under professional advice, with 
 a view to beauty and convenience, and no doubt also to air 
 and light. The system of water-courses, public baths, drinking- 
 fountains, gardens, gymnasia, concert-rooms, were all works of 
 the State for the material good of the citizens in general. The 
 terrible plague which desolated Athens in the Peloponnesian 
 War was favoured by the over-crowding of the city with the 
 country population that took refuge in it, and is no indication 
 of the normal sanitary state of Athens. 
 
 If, again, we look at the industrial aspect of Athenian life, 
 we find that the State not* only encouraged industry by its 
 general legislation, but in particular expended enormous sums 
 on the harbour, the commercial harbour as well as the war 
 harbour, with all its docks, warehouses, and fittings. One 
 particular set of buildings, in which ships were laid aside for 
 the winter, cost, we are told, a quarter of a million sterling, 
 corresponding to an enormously greater sum to-day. This was 
 a very large and very successful manipulation of capital in the 
 interest of the economic development of the community. But 
 the State did not, I think, carry on commerce or industry 
 itself, it stopped short of organising labour, but rather 
 supplied these general utilities to individuals, recouping itself 
 to some extent by rates and tolls. The ancient State, we 
 should observe, usually farmed out the public revenue and 
 property, a very easy plan of management, and one which 
 preserves the unearned increment for the public; but it leaves 
 the task of organising industry to private enterprise, and is 
 now regarded as a primitive method and as a mark of deficient 
 organising power, although applicable in some particular de-
 
 60 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 partments, for instance, in dealing with land. I fear, too, that 
 somewhat tyrannous navigation laws and commercial laws 
 were employed in order to force the trade of the Eastern 
 Mediterranean into the harbours and markets of Athens, and 
 with notable success. I do not think that expedients of this 
 kind are entirely strange to the modern world. 
 
 Another contrivance for the benefit of Athenian citizens 
 came to be felt as tyrannical. It had several times happened 
 that the conquered lands of uncivilised people had been 
 annexed and distributed among Athenian citizens, who did not 
 cease to be citizens, and therefore formed valuable garrisons 
 in important trading districts, and thus were themselves pro- 
 vided for. But the land-hunger growing, this was done more 
 than once with the lands of Greek commonwealths which had 
 offended the powerful city. Now, as we all know, there is 
 no harm in plundering uncivilised nations, but it is a serious 
 matter to plunder a civilised community that has powerful 
 friends and knows how to make an outcry. So that this 
 measure did bring Athens into conflict with the moral feeling 
 even of that age. There is a joke in Aristophanes which 
 represents the Athenian farmer as quite ready to believe that 
 the whole world is going to be measured out and given to 
 Athenian citizens. These things are just the seamy side of 
 the single-hearted determination of the Athenians that their 
 city should be prosperous. I think that modern democracies 
 are a little more scrupulous, if they know what is going on. 
 
 Such are some of the principal ways in which the State 
 cared for the necessities of life or the material welfare of its 
 members. While I am writing this I see published in an 
 evening paper the opinion of an American observer on the 
 municipal activity of Glasgow, which appears in some respects 
 to illustrate what the Athenian spirit might do to-day. But of
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 6l 
 
 course the economical problem is very different for us from 
 what it was for a slave state, although, to meet the want of 
 slaves, we have machinery j and if we can get no good results 
 out of the productivity of labour increased by this means, the 
 fault must lie somewhere in our arrangements. 
 
 Now I go on to ask what the Athenian State did for the 
 moral welfare of its citizens, with a view to the purpose of 
 good life involved in the continued existence of society, as 
 distinct from the material necessity in which its roots are 
 planted. 
 
 The larger part of what the State thus did for the citizens 
 consisted in its being for them what it was. I said that the 
 State was to them all and more that, when we are at our best, 
 our country is to us. We ourselves, Pericles says, have created 
 a large portion of our country's greatness. The pronoun "we" 
 is so often loosely employed, that it is hard to realise that these 
 words were literally accurate. It is only the citizens of a small 
 Sovereign State who can use such an expression with literal 
 truth. No political interest known to us can compare with 
 this intensity of direct relation. Whether, however, we may 
 not, by a re-animation of the civic ideal, and the organization 
 of municipal duties, regain the Greek solidarity in the spirit, 
 though we cannot in the letter, is a question worth pondering. 
 
 But I will pass to more specific matters. It was obviously 
 the distinct determination of Pericles and his age that at any 
 cost and the cost, both moral and material, was great 
 every Athenian citizen, rich or poor, leisured, professional, or 
 wage-earning, should be able to exercise the essential functions 
 of a citizen, and should share in the essential culture and 
 recreations of a citizen. Citizenship to them was a life, not 
 one or two rights or duties. We must remember that repre- 
 sentative government was unknown, and therefore, if the
 
 62 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 citizen was to share in political functions, his personal parti- 
 cipation was necessary, in a degree which we have supposed 
 to be entirely superseded by our representative institutions. 
 Whether our representative institutions have not a little bit 
 played us a trick in this matter, and whether, though we 
 cannot all sit in the Imperial Parliament, yet some form of 
 personal participation in the management of affairs is not 
 necessary to the true life of a citizen these are issues which 
 are coming upon us again, and in the decision of which the 
 spirit of the Greek ideal may possibly re-assert itself. 
 
 The conception of office or government to a Greek included 
 all definite exercise of political power. To take part in the 
 general assembly of the citizens, or in the proceedings of any 
 Council or Board possessing executive authority, was thought 
 of as an office or function of government, just as was the 
 function of general or of magistrate. There was the more 
 truth in this feeling because the executive officials were not 
 a responsible ministry, but simply carried out the decrees 
 of the assembly, so that any citizen might initiate some very 
 important resolution. When it happened that a trusted adviser 
 of the people was also an official, then he was rather like a 
 powerful Prime Minister. But this was only a coincidence. 
 
 Now no doubt a great number of citizens did actually serve 
 as officials in our sense of the term, all the lower offices at 
 least being paid offices, and most of them annual offices, 
 and moreover being in the shape of Boards or Commissions 
 composed of a great number of members. It is curious that 
 the more democratic way of appointing officials was always 
 taken to be appointment by lot rather than election by vote. 
 I suppose the feeling was that you want to get one of your- 
 selves, and not the nominee of a party, nor necessarily a 
 very distinguished man. It reminds one of our question
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 63 
 
 about labour representation ; do we want a distinguished 
 advocate briefed with labour views, or a genuine type of the 
 labour class? I should think the advocate more effective 
 for a particular measure, but the genuine man more trust- 
 worthy all round. It is best to have both, I should imagine. 
 Election by vote was applied to a few skilled officials, but 
 the ordinary officials were appointed by lot No one would 
 stand who was ridiculously incompetent ; public opinion 
 would take care of that in so small a society. And this 
 custom alone was enough to give great reality to the political 
 power of the citizens. If you stood for an office which went 
 by lot, no insignificance of your own and no organised opposi- 
 tion could -prevent your getting it. 
 
 We shall never introduce the lot in modern life ; but we 
 might introduce the system of serving the State in rotation, 
 which has much the same effect in pressing ordinary people 
 into the public service, and often discovering them to be 
 much more competent than they knew. Besides, this makes 
 it a duty to be competent for the public service, which is a 
 duty worth enforcing, and makes the mass of citizens more 
 careful and more expert as critics of what is done. 
 
 The ordinary Athenian, therefore, who could dispense with 
 or intermit the exercise of his trade on condition of receiving 
 a small salary for his year of office, was pretty certain, if 
 he wished, to hold actual executive office several times in 
 his life. 
 
 But this was not the burning question of the fully de- 
 veloped democracy. The burning question was whether the 
 State was to take special precautions in order that the mass 
 of citizens should practically be able to exercise two general 
 governmental functions ; that of sitting as jurymen, in the 
 huge popular juries of 500 persons or more which were the
 
 64 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 supreme tribunals of Athens, and that of speaking and voting 
 in the popular assembly, which, assisted by certain officials 
 and committees, actually conducted the affairs of the State. 
 And the tremendous step by which Pericles determined the 
 future of the democracy was the decision to pay the jury- 
 men about 4\d. every day that they served, and to make 
 another kind of payment with reference to the religious 
 festivals, which I will mention directly. These were followed 
 up on the proposal of some other politicians by the payment 
 of the citizens whenever they attended the popular assembly. 
 
 It is worth while to pause for a moment here, and to con- 
 sider the amount of these payments in relation to the wages 
 or salaries customary at Athens. 
 
 Each of them did not, in the time I speak of, exceed half 
 the day's wage of an ordinary workman. Even if earned 
 every day, they would not suffice to support a family in 
 comfort, and the popular assembly only took place as a 
 rule four days in the month, so that it at least could not 
 tempt a man to desert his trade. The juries, indeed, sat 
 nearly every day, and a citizen who was on the panel for 
 the year would hardly be able to exercise his trade that year. 
 But most citizens had some little property, and therefore 
 would be enabled by the payment to discharge their public 
 function, though at a slight sacrifice. The idea was not that 
 a man should live on his public function, but that, if anxious 
 to discharge it, he should not be absolutely prevented by 
 having to work. The risk was, of course, that the idle and 
 incapable people should fasten on this occupation as a means 
 of livelihood, and in time this evil did spring up. 
 
 We can hardly compare the actual wages or incomes of 
 that time with our own ; they all appear to us extraordinarily 
 small, partly because of the enormously different purchasing
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 65 
 
 power of money ; partly because of a real simplicity of life. 
 We can, however, see that relatively speaking there was a far 
 greater equality in the means of existence than there is to-day. 
 Property was widely distributed, and regular wages or salaries 
 were tolerably uniform through society, in spite of the de- 
 pressing effect which slave labour must have produced on 
 the payment of manual industry, and on its reputation. The 
 Athenians were comparatively free from the prejudice against 
 manual labour, as the speech of Pericles shows. The senator, 
 the architect, the stone-cutter, the citizen soldier all received 
 their ninepence a day. But members of some fashionable 
 professions commanded fancy prices, i.e., actors, singers, 
 painters, and above all, teachers of oratory and politics. An 
 ambassador, on the other hand, seems to have been thought 
 highly salaried at half a crown a day. The truth is, that 
 regular cuizen callings were pretty uniformly paid from high 
 to low; the "stars," especially travelling artists, secured higher 
 remuneration. 
 
 This equality of wages is a very striking fact, and points 
 to a healthy state of things. I suppose that no one no\v-a- 
 days would grudge a certain recognition of special excellence 
 in work, which in fact the great Greek artists and teachers 
 did secure, in spite of prejudice and custom. But in the 
 first place, the gigantic differences of remuneration now 
 customary in society do not represent a proportional difference 
 in merit, but on the contrary, are often quite fatal to excellence 
 by changing art and science and technical skill into mere 
 money-making ; and, secondly, I must and will reiterate with 
 the philosophers and moralists, and against, if necessary, all 
 the existing appearances of society, that wages or property, 
 one's share of the produce of society, is not there to reward 
 one for doing work, but either to give one work to do, or 
 
 F
 
 66 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 to enable one to do it; and it is by that standard alone 
 that its adequacy must be judged. I am not saying that 
 this can be secured, except by a more enlightened public 
 opinion ; I only say that in the highly refined society of 
 Athens, in spite of considerable inequalities of wealth and 
 much class feeling, it was much more nearly secured than 
 now, and that the state of things in which it is secured is 
 far more healthy and more noble than that in which it is 
 not. 
 
 This was a digression. However this may be, it is certain 
 that in the later age of Pericles about half a good day's wage 
 was paid to every citizen who applied for it every time he 
 attended the public assembly or served on a jury. And we 
 see that as regards the assembly the purpose was achieved, 
 and all citizens were able to attend it. Socrates was once 
 encouraging a young man who was nervous about speaking 
 in public, and asked him, " Why, are you afraid of the fullers, 
 and shoemakers, and carpenters, and smiths, and peasants, 
 and merchants, and shopkeepers ? for these are the sort of 
 people who compose the assembly." Of course the political 
 experiment was precarious, and if you like, you may infer that 
 in the end it failed. That is to say, the city was defeated in 
 a disastrous war, which is admitted not to have been well 
 managed after the death of Pericles ; the empire, upon which 
 the Athenians had come to depend for their trade, was lost ; 
 pauperism appeared in the ranks of citizens, and all the in- 
 herent selfishness of the ancient commonwealth came to the 
 surface. Whether a different development might not have 
 led to equal failure, without equal achievement, is a question 
 that cannot now be answered. We have inherited from that 
 democracy an imperishable legacy of history, of morality, of 
 science and of beauty ; and those who have most deeply
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 67 
 
 studied the connection between a nation's reflective thought 
 and its political and social life, will be slowest to assert that 
 even Plato, or Demosthenes, or Aristotle could ever have 
 existed apart from the great democratic commonwealth in 
 which they found so much to condemn. 
 
 One more analogous institution remains to be spoken of. 
 The speech of Pericles alludes to games or competitions, and 
 sacred ceremonies. Probably we have all heard something of 
 the importance which the public religious festivals had in the 
 public culture of a Greek State. The plays which were per- 
 formed in the great open-air theatre were a part of these 
 festivals, and were full of the sort of interest which appealed 
 to the people, being sometimes splendid political' satire and 
 broad farce, and sometimes great tragedies turning on moral 
 problems which excited and interested the Greek mind. In 
 fact, these tragedies were not only great poems, but played 
 the part of sermons and lectures and musical performances as 
 well They correspond to our Church services, only they 
 were thoroughly popular, and yet on a much higher intellec- 
 tual level. The citizens, when they attended these great shows, 
 felt they were enjoying and profiting by something which 
 belonged to them as citizens, and was a part of their citizen 
 life. Therefore, just as we think that every one should be 
 educated, and the Church should be open to any one who 
 wants to go there so long as it is a National Church so it 
 was the determination of Pericles that no citizen should be 
 prevented by poverty from attending these performances. He 
 might have opened the theatre free, but, I suppose in order 
 to make the richer people pay, without having any invidious 
 distinction between free seats and seats that were not free, he 
 proposed to require a small entrance payment, but to furnish 
 the entrance money from the public treasury to all citizens who
 
 68 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 applied for it. This payment was at first about ^d. of our 
 money ; it was, like the others, a strictly denned payment, in 
 order to make possible a distinct function essential to citizen- 
 ship, just like our grants in aid of education, or still more, like 
 the remission of school fees. The consequence, indeed, or at 
 least the end of it, was that in the next century, when the citizen 
 spirit had degenerated, they simply, under the pretext of a pay- 
 ment like this, divided among themselves the revenues which 
 should have adorned the State in peace, or protected it in war. 
 People will tell you that Peric'es introduced the thin end of the 
 wedge of this bad habit. Perhaps he did ; all one knows is 
 that great results were obtained by his measures, and might 
 or might not have been obtained by any other measures. 
 
 I certainly think that no harm could be done if our muni- 
 cipalities were, for example, to maintain or subsidise first-rate 
 public orchestras under really skilled direction. This would 
 have an effect in the long run of which we can, under present 
 conditions, have no conception. 
 
 On the same principles, again, rested the enormous expendi- 
 ture upon the architecture of the city. I alluded to this in 
 speaking of the sanitary and of the commercial foresight of 
 the administration ; but the most remarkable feature of all is 
 the artistic decoration of the public buildings. One particular 
 building, which took five years in erection, cost half a million, 
 sterling, and there are many more of equal splendour. The 
 largest private properties we hear of at Athens are of nothing 
 like the amount which was spent on a single public building 
 not a tenth part of it, I should suppose. This outlay may 
 have been extravagance, and I fear it was partly drawn from 
 the tribute of subject States ; on the other hand, it was for 
 the enjoyment and education of the whole citizen body, who 
 thus walked about among new and complete works of art, the
 
 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 69 
 
 "weather-stained fragments of which our best art students are 
 glad to copy laboriously. If the public was extravagant, the 
 individual was simple in his tastes ; and this concentrated 
 magnificence was far less costly to the community than is to- 
 day the luxurious and tasteless ostentation of the individual 
 millionaire. I will read a passage from Demosthenes, delivered 
 just eighty years after the speech of Pericles, in which he con- 
 trasts in this respect the age of Pericles with his own degener- 
 ate days.* 
 
 " Moreover, former times were times of national prosperity 
 and splendour ; no man then stood out above his fellows. 
 The proof of it is this. Some of you may know the style 
 of house of Themistocles or Miltiades, or of the illustrious 
 men of that day ; you see it is no grander than the mass of 
 houses. On the other hand, the public buildings and edifices 
 were of a magnificence and beauty such that posterity cannot 
 surpass them the gateway of the Acropolis yonder, the 
 docks, the porticoes, and other permanent adornments of 
 Athens. To-day your statesmen have vast fortunes ; some of 
 them have built for themselves houses grander than many 
 of the public edifices ; some, again, have bought up more land, 
 than all of you who are here together hold. As for the public 
 buildings which you erect and whitewash, I am ashamed to 
 tell of their meanness and squalor." 
 
 Thus we have seen that to a very great extent, by adminis- 
 tration and by custom and sentiment, essential social equality 
 and refinement, with a general simplicity of individual life, 
 were secured for a time at Athens. It is just worth mention- 
 ing, moreover, that special burdens were imposed in rotation 
 on the wealthier citizens, but always conjoined with oppor- 
 tunities of distinction and good service. A man might be 
 * Butcher, " Demosthenes," p. 15.
 
 70 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 
 
 called upon to fit out a ship of war, but then he would com- 
 mand it ; or to bear the cost of the performance of a play, 
 but then he would have credit for his taste and his liberality. 
 So long as there was a genuine public spirit, I think this was a 
 noble relation between the State and the individual. The 
 idea of compulsory volunteer service is one that might be 
 worth reviving. 
 
 One remark must be made with reference to the rapid 
 decay of the system which I have briefly sketched. Economi- 
 cal socialism is no bar against moral individualism. The 
 resources of the State may be more and more directly de- 
 voted to the individual's material well-being, while the indi- 
 vidual is becoming less and less concerned about any well- 
 being except his own. It is in this change that the decay of 
 Periclean Athens consists, and that the hazard lies of all posi- 
 tive relations between the public authority and the necessities 
 of individual life. The careful adjustment of means to ends, 
 and of advantages to the functions which demanded them, 
 did not save the Athenian commonwealth from a degradation 
 which depended perhaps on the deeper tendencies of the age. 
 But to this careful adjustment the measure of success that 
 was achieved was undoubtedly owing, and after all that can 
 be said against it, the system must in many respects command 
 our grateful admiration. 
 
 I have tried to suggest here and there how an analogous 
 spirit might embody itself to-day; but even if no special 
 lessons are deducible from this glorious past for our very 
 different conditions, it still is encouraging to know that a 
 series of great statesmen did once succeed by a definite legis- 
 lative and administrative policy in realizing such an ideal as. 
 Pericles describes, within a very highly civilized industrial and 
 commercial society.
 
 IV 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION* 
 
 MANY influences combine at the present moment in 
 favour of educational reform in a certain definite 
 direction the direction of what is sometimes called manual 
 instruction. 
 
 First among these influences we might reckon the " Kinder- 
 garten" movement, tracing its descent from Frobel, and 
 through him, perhaps, from Rousseau, Schiller, and Goethe. 
 The principle of this movement is, in Frobel's own words, to 
 impart "a human education by the appropriate training of the 
 productive or active impulses." A fine and complete school 
 on this principle not a mere kindergarten is Dr. Adler's 
 school in New York, which our technical commissioners refer 
 to as based on a method of " creative " education. 
 
 The idea of calling into play the productive impulse was 
 not in itself new the teaching of Latin versifying might be 
 defended on this ground but in its application to manual 
 work, and to the early training of children, it was practically a 
 new departure. The kindergarten employments, especially 
 Frobel's highest employment, clay-modelling, are closely akin 
 to, and an excellent basis for, the kind of teaching which I 
 am to discuss to-day. 
 
 * An address delivered before the Self-Help Society, at Oxford, on 
 behalf of the Home Arts and Industries Association. This Association 
 has no connection with any other Society for which I have lectured.
 
 72 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 
 
 Another influence at work in a. similar direction is that of 
 the demand for natural-science teaching. The direct contact 
 with objects letting the boy feel, as Professor Huxley has 
 said, the pull of the magnet for himself the work of the 
 microscopical or of the physical laboratory, and the elementary 
 handwork required of the student in such laboratories, all tend 
 to confer an instinctive grasp of principle, and a habitual 
 accuracy of perception. 
 
 And, thirdly, we have to grapple with the urgent problem 
 of what is known as technical education that is, education in 
 applied science and art, and in the use of tools. It is all- 
 important that this problem should be rightly understood, and 
 to a great extent I think that it is rightly understood. Assist- 
 ance even in our commercial perplexities cannot be obtained 
 from education which is not educational. In the Finsbury 
 Technical College, under Professor Silvanus Thompson, no 
 trades are taught. Sir Philip Magnus lays most stress on 
 teaching the use of tools. On such teaching and such prin- 
 ciples as are represented by him and by Professor Silvanus 
 Thompson I have only to say that, although excellent, they 
 depend for their efficiency on the material delivered to them 
 by the elementary school, and on the faculties awakened by 
 still more purely educational methods. We do not know of 
 what British workmen are capable till we have seen a genera- 
 tion thoroughly educated from the first by vital and plastic 
 methods. 
 
 In presence of these new influences there is a certain danger 
 that the attitude of reformers to existing educational methods 
 should be unduly hostile. The three movements to which I 
 have referred are each of them capable of being regarded as a 
 revolution against mere book-learning. With any such atti- 
 tude those who care for education can have no sympathy;
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 73 
 
 unless mere book-learning means book-learning which is not 
 intelligent, and which arouses no interest. The cure for that 
 defect would be, not less book-learning, but more. A pupil 
 who in a true sense has learnt to read, has mastered a more 
 valuable art than any handicraft. I do not say that there are 
 very many such pupils in our elementary schools. But educa- 
 tional reform, as I understand it, aims, by a more vital and 
 active instruction, at arousing the interest of the pupils, and 
 at stimulating their craving for knowledge. We should regard 
 the educational movement of this century as a single, many- 
 sided progress. I am impatient when I hear our own faults 
 laid at the door of our zealous and progressive educationists. 
 Our own grudging spirit towards elementary education, our 
 own cast-iron regulations, and our own demand to see some- 
 thing for our money, are the main causes of its mechanical 
 character. I have spoken to an energetic teacher in a London 
 school, skilled in kindergarten methods, and when I asked 
 her, "Can you use kindergarten employments in your 
 school ? " she replied, " I do all I can with a division of sixty 
 children." All work of this type needs separate and distinct 
 preparation for each single pupil. If we are tempted to fancy 
 that our educationists have no zeal for improved educational 
 methods, we should bear in mind that the London School 
 Board has tried to set up a carpenter's shop, but was promptly 
 surcharged for it by the auditor; that this same Board employs 
 a most efficient kindergarten instructress to supervise its infant 
 schools ; that in some large Board Schools, especially in 
 Bradford and Birmingham, there is excellent elementary 
 science teaching, all of which is training of hand and eye ; 
 and that an exhibition of appliances for improved geographical 
 instruction has been held "under the auspices of the Bradford 
 School Board, at which there were shown models of the sur-
 
 74 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN BDUCATION. 
 
 rounding district made by local schoolmasters, that prove their 
 will and capacity to teach, by the modelling process, the 
 structure of hill and valley in that beautiful region of York- 
 shire. I may add that Her Majesty's Inspector at Bradford 
 himself devotes two evenings in the week to holding a class in 
 joiners' work in a cellar under a Board School, at which he is 
 assisted by elementary teachers ; and one teacher, he hopes, 
 will shortly open a class for drawing, followed by construction 
 of objects. I call that pretty good for a man who actively 
 superintends the education of 80,000 children. America, too, 
 affords good examples of the solidarity of the educational 
 movement. Manual instruction is there becoming well estab- 
 lished, and is splendidly successful. There is a fine Manual 
 School in Chicago, established by the Commercial Club (a 
 dining club of leading citizens) out of their own pockets, and 
 worked with the best results. At the great Pullman works the 
 woodcarving is all artistic handwork of a high class ; and the 
 decorative design throughout the States is said to be superior 
 to what we have in England. " Oh, yes," it may be said, "this 
 is the commercial and industrial acuteness of the Americans ; 
 no doubt they organize their education with a special view to 
 industrial aptitude." But I believe that is just the reverse of 
 the truth. The success of their education is due, I am in- 
 formed, to the large ideas with which it is organized, and to 
 their constantly aiming, as their central purpose, at the moral 
 development of citizens. 
 
 In treating of the requirements of educational reformers, I 
 have thus far spoken simply of instruction in the principles of 
 industrial handicrafts. No one would deny the value of such 
 training the system known as "Slojd" is a very valuable 
 form of it and I hope to see a carpenter's shop attached to 
 every elementary school throughout the country.
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 75 
 
 But there is something more that can be done, and that has 
 been done, and this is, to combine with instruction in the 
 general elements of handicraft a training in some branch of 
 work that has artistic quality. We are not now speaking of 
 great art ; not of picture painting, for instance, or of any art 
 that deals directly with human action and passion. We are 
 speaking of what are called the lesser arts. It is not quite 
 easy to define them. They might be called the decorative 
 arts, but they include, for instance, glass blowing and pottery, 
 which are not merely decorative, because the whole object has 
 to be made in beautiful form. But all the lesser arts are 
 decorative in the widest sense, that is to say, they are not 
 independent ; they have something to do with useful objects. 
 They do not make a thing like a picture or a statue, having its 
 whole reason of existence in its artistic value ; at least, it is my 
 feeling that when they try to do this, they are beginning to go 
 astray. But yet, though not wholly independent, these arts 
 are in some degree independent or free, and if they were not, 
 they could not be fine art at all. It must be possible in a fine 
 art for the craftsman to indulge himself, and express his enjoy- 
 ment and his fancy, in the lines of the form or in the patterns 
 and colours of the surface. This freedom has many degrees, 
 and it is true that fine art is rooted in sound workmanship and 
 fitting construction, and it is a little dangerous to distinguish 
 fine art from handicraft. Still the distinction must be made, 
 although it must be cautiously handled. Common joiners' 
 work has not the same capabilities of expression as decorative 
 carving, although, of course, a box or a door may be turned 
 out in a pleasing way or in an ugly way. 
 
 Then, before going further, we must take notice of the point 
 we have reached ; that is to say, that the lesser fine arts are 
 handicrafts, although they are something more. In learning
 
 76 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 
 
 one of these arts, the pupil is trained from the beginning in 
 the care of tools, the use of tools, precise measurement, certain 
 and accurate cutting or modelling, and, above all, in the love of 
 true and good execution, and I suppose this love of truth, if 
 I may call it so, is the meeting-point of handicraft and fine art. 
 
 And then, moreover, these lesser arts, still considered as 
 mere handicrafts, exercise those mental qualities which we call 
 physical, aptness and precision of hand and eye, with great 
 economy of muscular labour. The work is less of a mechani- 
 cal toil, and more of a plastic training, than is the case, for ex- 
 ample, with the blacksmith's trade. And this is of the utmost 
 importance when we remember that we are speaking of evening 
 classes for lads who will have been all day in the field or in 
 the workshop. Great versatility and flexibility of talent is found 
 to be imparted by training in these arts. Of course, however, 
 there should be at the root of the whole system instruction 
 in carpentering and in the way objects are put together. 
 
 But now we go a step further. I said that these arts are 
 something more than handicrafts ; however humble, yet they 
 are branches of fine art, and are capable of beauty. I need 
 not spend time in proving, here in Oxford, that the enjoyment 
 of beauty is a good thing. I may assume, I think, not only 
 that it is one of the best things in life, but that it is eminently 
 wholesome for everybody. But I had better just point out 
 how, in particular, the enjoyment and perception of beauty 
 display their value in the sort of education which is our subject 
 to-day. I am not going to say that beauty is valuable because 
 it is useful ; but I should like to point out how it becomes 
 useful by reason of being so valuable. 
 
 The perception of beauty implies, above all things, an 
 awakened mind. It consists in an active sympathy and in- 
 sight, a fresh and vigorous spirit, that apprehends the expres-
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 77 
 
 sion, and the life, or truth, of all that it meets with, just as a 
 great portrait-painter seizes a face or a figure. And so, when 
 the sense of beauty is ever so little aroused, the mind has 
 acquired a new organ. Nature, in the first place, with all its 
 forms and movements and colours, becomes an endless source 
 of interest. Experience shows, what we should expect, that 
 plain country boys can thus have their eyes opened and see 
 what they never saw before. You have a country wheelwright, 
 who can carve a panel of oak leaves from nature, and who 
 becomes an enthusiast for naturalistic design. This means 
 that he has acquired the love of form, and the world is a 
 different place to him after his eyes are thus opened. And, 
 in the second place, this same awakening of the mind involves 
 an appreciation of beauty in art. To begin with, the work of 
 good art-workmen of to-day is put before the pupil as a model ; 
 and then his attention can be and should be gradually directed 
 to the work of craftsmen belonging to other times and 
 countries. It is something, for example, to open the eyes ot 
 Englishmen to the beauty of the stone or wood-carving of 
 their Cathedral Churches ; and we can hardly suppose that 
 this beauty can be felt without strengthening the sense of a 
 human and national inheritance, which is worth preserving 
 and ennobling. And when we have, in every locality, those 
 perfectly arranged and bounteously-filled museums of beautiful 
 work, which are among the dreams that demand to be realized, 
 then we may come to see what a force of interest and 
 sympathy is implied in the awakened sense of beauty in art. 
 
 So far, then, we may fairly conclude that the lesser arts, not 
 to speak of their advantages as handicrafts, are, as fine art, 
 capable of doing for those whose education is necessarily 
 short and practical, something analogous to what great litera- 
 ture ought to do for those whose education is longer and more
 
 78 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 
 
 general. I am not admitting, of course, that any education 
 ought to be wholly without literature. 
 
 It is my conviction that a Self-Help Society, in as far as it 
 operates by educational means, will attain its purpose more 
 successfully the more definitely it adheres to the largest view 
 of education. And I mean by the largest view of education 
 the persuasion that there is no form of training, the value of 
 which is not ultimately moral. To aim in education at quick 
 returns, at results commercially available, is simply to court 
 failure. What can certainly I had almost said easily be 
 done by a training in some branch of art, is to intensify the 
 sense of the value of life. This sense, I take it, is the very 
 root and spring of Self-Help. To heighten it, is to make life 
 more worth living, and therefore more worth developing. I 
 am anxious to make this point quite clear. Of course, in a 
 society such as the Home Arts and Industries Association, 
 many purposes and feelings are legitimately represented. But 
 I think that I am justified in disclaiming for the Association 
 any main intention of training professional art-workmen, or of 
 encouraging amateurs of any class to gam a livelihood by the 
 production of knick-knacks to sell at exhibitions or bazaars. 
 The object of the Association, as I understand it, is educa- 
 tional in the largest sense. That is to say, its efforts are 
 directed towards developing a capacity which is the birthright 
 of a civilized human being. And this purpose is general, 
 dealing with the leisure time of all working people, and not 
 chiefly or exclusively with those who are engaged in the 
 decorative trades. 
 
 Of course we are glad enough that men or boys should 
 earn something in their evening hours, and we earnestly 
 desire that local industries should be revived, and that the 
 whole trade of decoration and design in this country should be
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 79 
 
 set upon the only solid foundation, that of a genuine love of 
 beauty, and habit of beautiful production, engrained in the 
 national mind. But none of these results can be securely 
 attained except by a thorough-going devotion to the perception 
 of beauty as one of the best things in life. If we teach in any 
 other spirit than this, we instil the principles of ugliness in 
 imparting the principles of beauty. Speaking for myself alone, 
 the sort of tidings from our classes which I am glad to hear 
 is, not that a lad is making a lot of money by selling his 
 carving or his brass work, but, as I heard this spring, that a 
 pitman in Midlothian walks a couple of miles to the class in 
 the evening, because he enjoys the work ; or that a gardener 
 says he has been a gardener all his life, but he never knew 
 the beauty of flowers till he was taught it in the Home Arts 
 Class ; or that the boys of a club in Whitechapel have made 
 a bit of clay modelling or a window box of mosaic tiles to 
 decorate their clubhouse; or that an Irish lad pursues his 
 wood-carving, literally through thick and thin, in an Irish 
 cabin where there is hardly a clean place to lay it down. 
 
 It was, I believe, in the simple determination to do 
 something towards reviving the love of beauty among the 
 people, that a lady several years ago established some small 
 classes in wood-carving near her country home. At a later 
 time these classes were united with others in different parts 
 of England, Scotland, and Ireland for the purpose of sharing 
 the use of models and designs, and generally with a view to 
 the interchange of experience. The name first adopted was 
 Cottage Arts Association ; but by the time that, in the begin- 
 ning of 1885, the London studio and office were established, the 
 present name, " Home Arts and Industries Association," had 
 been adopted. Three annual exhibitions have been held in 
 London, the first in the summer of 1885, the third in the summer
 
 So ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 
 
 of 1887. In the interval between these two dates the classes 
 increased from 60 to about 200, and the number of pupils from, 
 I suppose, 400 or 500 to about 2,000. (Now, January, 1889, 
 there are over 4,000 pupils.) 
 
 The Association, as it stands at present, consists of two 
 parts : 
 
 1. Its actual mission is carried out by means of little 
 evening classes, held chiefly by lady volunteers, also by many 
 clergy and working men in various places throughout Great 
 Britain and Ireland. In these classes the different branches 
 of artistic handwork are taught to working lads and men, and 
 I daresay to some girls, all of whom are simply attracted by 
 the love of the pursuit. No previous knowledge is demanded 
 of the pupils, and if any charge is made, it is very trifling. 
 
 2. These classes, however, would be of comparatively little 
 value, but for the operations of the London centre. The office 
 and studio there are in charge, not of mere letter-writing 
 secretaries, but of ladies who thoroughly understand the various 
 branches of the work, and are practically skilled in them. 
 Advice and guidance, which are perpetually needed, go from 
 there constantly to the little classes in London and the 
 country, and more especially the entire artistic nutriment is 
 supplied from that centre that is to say, there is a special 
 committee which collects and selects and produces designs 
 such as seem good in themselves and suitable for instruction. 
 These designs are circulated among the classes, just as if the 
 office was a large circulating library of these things. And 
 equally important .with the designs are the models : bits of 
 work of different kinds actually carried out by a good work- 
 man, and sometimes with part of the work only just begun, so 
 as to show the process. These models are sent about by post, 
 with the corresponding designs, and they show the pupils not
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 8 1 
 
 only how to set to work upon a particular design, but how to 
 interpret outline designs in general, and what good work looks 
 like. They are unanimously said to have a most inspiring 
 effect on the pupils. It is exceedingly hard to meet the 
 demand of the classes for supplies of these things ; it is a 
 question partly of money and partly of labour labour so 
 highly skilled as not to be reducible to a question of money. 
 The society has had a roughish time of poverty, during which 
 it has depended for its daily work mainly on the self-sacrificing 
 labour of a band of good women. There can be no doubt 
 whatever, although invaluable help has been given by men, 
 that from the very beginning of the work the burden and heat 
 of the day has been borne by women. The Society, though by 
 no means wealthy, has now a certain breathing time, which it 
 will use in placing itself fully on a level with all demands that 
 can be made upon it. 
 
 Then, further, besides all this correspondence and supply of 
 nutriment, the London studio organizes training classes, where 
 intending teachers are trained in the work by professional 
 instructors. And, also, all the appliances for work being there, 
 and competent teachers on the spot, class-holders who come 
 up to town for a day or two can go there and get special 
 difficulties solved, and can have a single lesson in their subject, 
 which is often of the very greatest use to them. These lessons, 
 I ought to say, have to be paid for, and so have the courses of 
 training at the studio. I believe zs. 6d. a lesson is the fee. 
 
 It is this constant communication with a centre where work 
 is being carried on, and where competent and energetic 
 workers are collecting experience and gathering stores of 
 designs, that forms the distinctive merit of the Home Arts 
 Association. But this subject of centralization raises some 
 more questions of great interest which I will touch on very 
 
 G
 
 82 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 
 
 shortly, viz., centralization in the supply of designs, in finance, 
 and in control over the goodness of the class-work. After 
 speaking shortly of these questions, I will return to what is 
 perhaps of most immediate interest, the work of the little 
 classes scattered up and down throughout the country. 
 
 I listened the other day to a most excellent paper upon 
 Technical Education, read by a working man a compositor 
 by trade and I was much struck by his horror of centraliza- 
 tion. Whatever you do, he said in effect, for Heaven's sake do 
 not centralize. Leave the localities free to find out the educa- 
 tion that suits themselves. Don't let them be hampered with 
 a board of theorists in London. His anti-governmental ardour 
 was partly explained by the fact that he had been reading 
 Herbert Spencer. 
 
 But the existence of this strong and healthy local self- feeling 
 illustrates the point which I want to make about centralization 
 in the supply of designs. I ought to observe, however, that 
 our centre is not managed by theorists, but is a working 
 school, which makes a great difference. Apart from this, the 
 function of the centre, as I think we all understand it, is to be 
 the focus of the capacities and resources of the Association. 
 Of course, it must also keep the Society in contact with all 
 other sources of help ; it has books and museums within reach, 
 and it welcomes the aid of men practically skilled in artistic 
 subjects, but not exclusively devoted to Home Arts work. So 
 that, especially in the beginning, the centre does seem a little 
 independent, even despotic, and it will always have certain 
 advantages in this way from its position in a metropolis. 
 Merely to have the South Kensington Museum at command is 
 an enormous advantage. Still, all the branches ought, as they 
 come to have any independent ideas or talents, to re-act upon 
 the centre. They ought all to help in the collection of
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 83 
 
 designs, which is a most laborious task. They can send up 
 pieces of good work on loan ; they can send up drawings, 
 photographs, rubbings of beautiful things hidden away in 
 country houses or in local museums. They can hunt up local 
 carvers, and help in the laborious and costly work of providing 
 models. And I hope, speaking for myself,. that there is more 
 than all this in the future. If the teaching given falls on good 
 ground, if the love and perception of beauty revive throughout 
 the country, together with a common practice of art, there will 
 be some minds in which the perception will assume a creative 
 form, and the practice of art will lead to the progress of design. 
 If the movement has life in it, I think this must happen. 
 Already some localities, especially Scotland and Ireland, have 
 preferences for this or that class of design^ These local 
 preferences show the frame of mind out of which local schools 
 might spring, and will at any rate influence in their degree the 
 work of the whole Society. Centralization in this sense, an 
 interchange of influences throughout the whole country by 
 means of the centre, is the very life of an organization. 
 
 I just allude to the matter of finance, because it is- ana- 
 logous to that of design. At present the Society gets its 
 money, as to some extent it gets its designs,, wherever it 
 can from the general public ; and it expends on the nutri- 
 ment supplied to the classes immensely more than the 
 minimum subscription covers. This must be so at first, and 
 while the work is, as at present, rapidly progressing, because 
 the classes are naturally poor when they first start, and have 
 enough to do to meet their own expenses. But when classes 
 become rich by sale of work, which is made possible for 
 them by the assistance they receive at so very cheap a rate 
 (5*. a year for each class), it will obviously become a recog- 
 nised obligation that they should tax themselves to help in
 
 84 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 
 
 extending to others the advantages by which they have so 
 largely profited. This has, in fact, been done in some few 
 cases ; and such cases should supply a large item in the 
 revenue of the Society, as the proportion of well-established 
 classes to new ones increases. It should not be all giving 
 on the side of tke Central Society, either in the work of 
 furnishing designs, or in the matter of expenditure. One- 
 sidedness is equally unhealthy in both concerns. 
 
 I may be asked, Then why do you not have a higher 
 subscription for the classes ? This subscription was originally 
 2s. 6rf., but has been raised to 5^., and I think, personally, 
 that there is an unanswerable reason for raising it no higher. 
 You cannot have a tariff according to the wealth of your 
 locality ; many localities are very poor ; your teachers, when 
 they start a class, may be put to the expense of a pound 
 or two for materials and tools; and it may often happen 
 that they have not at first been able to interest many friends. 
 Obviously the classes would often not be started at all if 
 you asked for half-a-guinea or a guinea from a teacher who 
 is to do hard work as a volunteer, and may besides be 
 involved in some slight expense. On the other hand, I feel 
 strongly that those who wish well to the cause, and whose 
 locality is profiting in this way, ought to think about be- 
 coming ordinary guinea subscribers to the Association. 
 
 Then again : I have been asked at one of these lectures 
 whether the Society has any control over the competence of 
 the volunteer teachers throughout the country, and over the 
 way in which they do their work. Well, the genius loci 
 suggests the idea of an examination, but there is no entrance 
 examination in which an intending teacher could be ploughed ! 
 But there is much more control in practice than one might 
 think possible when any one can take or leave the work at
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 85 
 
 pleasure. The root of all the control is that most people 
 who take up this work are in earnest and mean to do their 
 best. . That being so, the mere fact of receiving good designs 
 and models, which they are glad to accept if only because 
 they do not know where else to get any, has from the 
 first an educating influence. Many volunteers, of course, are 
 highly competent -teachers when they begin; but nearly all 
 are glad to receive advice and criticism from the studio ; 
 they appeal to it in their perplexities ; and if they show 
 work at the Exhibition, which they are eager to do, they 
 find that it has to stand beside really good productions, of 
 which I am happy to say there is now a pretty large supply. 
 The work is judged, and obtains or does not obtain a certifi- 
 cate; the teacher is perhaps taken round the Exhibition 
 by some competent person, or has a letter of criticism written 
 to him or her. I do not speak as an expert ; but I am 
 informed that it is really wonderful to see the improvement 
 which is thus effected in the work of a class. And, of 
 course, the teachers are very eager, too eager, to sell ; and 
 on the whole, the best work sells best. When you see it all 
 in a room together, the difference is striking even to a not 
 highly-trained eye. I do not doubt that some horrors are 
 perpetrated in the dark places of the land ; we can only 
 say that a steady pressure is kept up, which gradually raises 
 the level of the work. Such a movement as this is essentially 
 two-sided. A good teacher, it is said, will always be a 
 learner ; and it most be brought home to all of us who 
 are interested in the progress of education, that in the mission 
 which we find so fascinating, of educating the working classes, 
 there is involved the corresponding mission of educating 
 ourselves. 
 
 And now I will return to the point at which the organiza-
 
 86 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION, 
 
 tion actually performs the function for the sake of which 
 it exists ; that is, to the little evening classes in London and 
 the country, in which different branches of art are taught 
 to working lads and men. 
 
 First, I will speak very shortly and generally of what is 
 necessary in order to start a class, and then a little more 
 fully of what, as it seems to me, should* be the teacher's 
 point of view in the education that is given. 
 
 In order to start a class, I believe that very little is wanted 
 besides pupils and a teacher. You may ask me, with Scott's 
 Antiquary, " And a little money would be necessary also, 
 would it not?" and I should reply, with Hermann Douster- 
 swivel, " Bah ! one trifle, not worth talking about, might be 
 necessaries." It is necessary to raise enough money to start 
 with tools and materials, and to supply the class with them 
 for some little time ; because the work done at first will 
 not be saleable. This may cost from i to ^3 for a small 
 class ; the subscription to the Society for one branch of 
 woik is 5*. a year. This class ought to be small, especially 
 if the pupils are all new to the work ; some say four pupils, 
 some say six ; that is for one evening a week, and one 
 teacher. The lesson is usually two hours; even that time 
 is not too much to give the pupils the constant individual 
 attention which they require. Of course, when some of them 
 are a little advanced, more can be taken. The smallness 
 of the class makes it easier to get a room. It is not difficult, 
 as a rule, to get such a room for nothing, as will hold 
 ten or a dozen pupils ; many ladies hold classes at their 
 own houses; many are held at mission rooms, or parish 
 rooms, or working men's or boys' clubs. If there is rent, 
 that is the most serious expense. Otherwise the expense 
 is trifling. When work becomes saleable, a percentage should
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 87 
 
 be taken from the proceeds for the expenses of the class. 
 On determining to start a class, the intending teacher should 
 consult our secretary at the Royal Albert Hall, mentioning 
 what branch of work is to be adopted, and will then receive 
 instructions as to tools and materials, and leaflets of instruc- 
 tions in the process. 
 
 Of course there is the further question of what training 
 the teacher may have had. I believe that any one who cares 
 for the subject, and has a sound knowledge of drawing, can 
 acquire the capacity of teaching one of these arts without 
 any very lengthy training. But people differ immensely in 
 the rapidity with which they learn. I should say that any one, 
 even if familiar with the work already, would do very well 
 to go through some lessons at the studio in order to become 
 familiar with the way in which our teaching is usually carried 
 on ; or, it is possible to have a trained instructor down to 
 start the class and prepare the teachers ; and if a number 
 of teachers or amateurs combine to take lessons, this need 
 not be costly. Help can often be obtained from a local 
 carver or metal-worker, who can ground the class thoroughly 
 in the handicraft part of the work. It is really wonderful 
 what has been done in remote classes by help of local pro- 
 fessional teachers, and by something of a gift and strenuous 
 self-education on the part of the class-holder. A great deal 
 can be done by any one who will really take pains. 
 
 I ought to say that there are no general rules as to making 
 the pupils pay for the lessons ; personally, I am a strong 
 charity organizationist, and I think that every one should 
 be made to pay wherever it is possible. But I believe the 
 classes are generally free, or the payments of id. a week or 
 so are counted as instalments by which the pupils buy their 
 tools.
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 
 
 The pupils are chiefly lads between thirteen and eighteen, 
 some adult working-men, and some girls. It is particularly 
 noticeable that the Association is as much, I had almost said 
 more, for the roughest unskilled class than for the skilled 
 mechanics. The classes include agricultural labourers (here is 
 a beautiful piece of work by a country cowboy), shoeblacks, 
 carmen, bricklayers, country carpenters, pitmen, as well as 
 brass founders, watchmakers, and other town mechanics. All 
 the instruction being evening and amateur, it interferes in no 
 way with apprenticeship. On the contrary, it may be worked 
 along with a gymnastic room or musical drill, to the extreme 
 benefit of town lads. The Corstorphine class of twenty-eight 
 boys, from which I have some beautiful brass work here, is 
 worked in that way. The arts taught are wood carving, metal 
 repoussd (brass, copper, or silver) and incised work, bent iron- 
 work, sheet ironwork, clay modelling, carving in hardened 
 chalk, mosaic of broken china or of tesserae, and leather work. 
 The report gives a tabular list of the classes, with their number 
 and the kind of work. 
 
 The mode of teaching is hardly for me to speak of; but I 
 will venture on one or two generalities which seem pretty 
 clear. The object, of course, is not recreation, but yet the 
 classes must be recreative in the sense that the pupils must 
 come because they enjoy coming, and this, I believe, is one 
 reason for beginning, as our teachers do, at once with manual 
 work proper, and not, for example, with freehand drawing. 
 Any boy likes to cut wood, or handle clay or cement, but the 
 elementary part of drawing is less immediately attractive. And 
 I believe this plan to be fight in theory also. I do not think 
 that design can be rightly created or rightly interpreted except 
 through a mastery over the material for which it is intended. 
 Of course, when the instinct of form is aroused, it demands
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 89 
 
 further cultivation by means of drawing, and in my view, the 
 carving or modelling classes ought to act as feeders to any 
 drawing classes within reach. This has actually happened in 
 one case. A drawing class that was languishing was revived 
 by the establishment of a carving class in the same locality. 
 That is the ideal, I think. 
 
 I understand, too, that our elementary designs, even those 
 which are little more than exercises, aim at showing beauty of 
 outline, and some element of style. The boys are not kept at 
 mere tool exercises in surface modelling, so as to acquire skill 
 in finish before they go on to cut complete patterns. In short, 
 the pupils are carried on rather fast, and taken into the spirit 
 of the thing, rather than worried about pure mechanical finish. 
 This does not mean that they are not made to cut their curves 
 true and clean ; if the workman fails in this, the spirit is gone 
 at once. And I understand it to be the distinct duty of the 
 teacher to labour at awakening the perception of beauty, to 
 point out what is true and beautiful in design and what is not, 
 to communicate, as occasion serves, something of the great 
 ideas which govern such a writer as Mr. Ruskin, or, in art 
 only,- Mr. William Morris, and to explain, or at least to make 
 familiar by well-chosen examples, the modifications undergone 
 by the beauty of nature in passing into the beauty of decora- 
 tive art. Here, for instance, is a description which I hav,e 
 .heard of a lesson given by a lady who has a singular faculty of 
 teaching. She used to show her pupils a drawing of a flower 
 in a botany book (the class was held in winter she would 
 prefer to use the flower itself), and obtain their suggestions as 
 to conventionalising it into a decorative design ; she criticised 
 their suggestions, made suggestions .of her own, and at last de- 
 cided upon a form which she drew on the blackboard ; the 
 class then moulded it in clay, and finally carved it in wood.
 
 90 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 
 
 As to the results obtained, I wish to speak chiefly of the 
 educational results pure and simple. But I will just say that 
 in the first place the purely moral results of the mode in which 
 the work is done is striking and obvious. The influence of 
 the teacher, through perfectly natural intercourse, reaches the 
 pupils without any admixture that might make them kick. 
 The wholesome and interesting occupation, besides its positive 
 value, is a substitute for things that are not desirable. I don't 
 want to talk too like a missionary magazine, but I could tell 
 you cases of parents' anxiety removed, and of lads kept straight 
 and set straight, by the combined influence of the work and 
 the teacher. Economically, in trades like the joiner's, of 
 course a thoroughly neat-handed workman, who has taste and 
 can do a nice bit of carving, is a valuable man, and the amateur 
 workers make something by their work. They also acquire 
 the habit of decorating their own homes, which is what we 
 particularly wish. And then, educationally, with reference to 
 the work itself, it is very hard to give a fair idea of the average 
 productions, because they vary enormously. Not all the pro- 
 ductions are in any way equal to the best of the exhibits here 
 to-day, but it is obvious that the same teaching which produces 
 excellent work from a man who has the gift, will produce work 
 of the right spirit from a man of less natural talent. We must 
 face the fact that we are speaking of purely amateur work, and 
 we must not look to the mechanical perfection of things, but 
 the training which is implied in the power and habit, acquired 
 by rough working lads, of producing such things in their 
 leisure time. 
 
 Before I sit down, I have just two more things to say. The 
 first is, that it is all-important in any particular locality to 
 make a beginning. The occupation of teaching is attractive, 
 and is soon felt to be of extreme value. The relation to the
 
 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 91 
 
 pupils is exceedingly civilizing for them, and does quite unob- 
 trusively produce an enormous effect on their manners and on 
 their lives. It is therefore, as a rule, not very hard to get 
 helpers when a class is once seen at work. But some one, of 
 course, must take the plunge and set the matter going. It is 
 very easy to set going ; the arrangements could not be more 
 simple than they are. But if the first step is not taken by 
 some one, of course there can be no result. 
 
 And the last thing I have to say is this. Do not let us 
 imagine our efforts superfluous, from the idea that the State or 
 the locality may shortly take up this task with larger means 
 than ours. Whatever form the new system may assume, its 
 actual working must depend on the material with which it has 
 to work. Education does not consist in buildings, not even in 
 workshops, nor in grants of money from Parliament, or out of 
 the rates ; it consists in the desire and the capacity of human 
 minds to teach and to be taught. To awaken this desire, and 
 to create this capacity, in a new direction, is the achievement 
 not of years but of generations. Methods have to be evolved, 
 and to become easy and familiar to teachers ; an order of 
 teachers has to be created, uniting experience with enthu- 
 siasm ; the mind of the upper classes, as of the lower, has to 
 be penetrated with a new sense of what makes life worth living. 
 This, and nothing less, is the work in which we have the 
 chance of helping, and any future organization must entirely 
 depend for its efficiency on the progress which this work shall 
 have made.
 
 V. 
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER 
 WORLD* 
 
 " With such barren forms of thought, that are always in a world be- 
 yond, Philosophy has nothing to do. Its object is always something con- 
 crete, and in the highest sense present." Hegel's " Logic," Wallace's 
 translation, p. 150. 
 
 IT will surprise many readers to be told that the words which 
 I have quoted above embody the very essence of Hegel- 
 ian thought. The Infinite, the supra-sensuous, the Divine, are 
 so connected in our minds with futile rackings of the imagina- 
 tion about remote matters which only distract us from our 
 duties, that a philosophy which designates its problems by such 
 terms as these seems self-condemned as cloudy and inane. 
 But, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Hegel is 
 faithful to the present and the concrete. In the study of 
 his philosophy we are always dealing with human experience. 
 "My stress lay," says Mr. Browning, f "on the incidents in 
 the development of a soul ; little else is worth study." For 
 "a soul "read '"'the mind," and you have the subject-matter 
 to which Hegel's eighteen close-printed volumes are devoted. 
 
 * This Essay has been previously published as the introduction to a 
 translation of a fragment from Hegel's " ^Esthetic." 
 
 + Preface to " Sordello."
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 93 
 
 The present remarks are meant 'to insist on this neglected 
 point of view. I wish to point out, in two or three salient 
 instances, the transformation undergone by speculative notions 
 when sedulously applied to life, and restrained from generating 
 an empty " beyond," or other world, between which and our 
 present life and knowledge there is a great gulf fixed. That 
 the world of mind, or the world above sense, exists as an actual 
 and organized whole, is a truth most easily realized in the study 
 of the beautiful. And to grasp this principle as Hegel applies 
 it is nothing less than to acquire a new contact with spiritual 
 life. The spiritual world, which is present, actual, and con- 
 crete, contains much besides beauty. But to apprehend one 
 element of such a whole must of course demand a long step 
 towards apprehending the rest. It is for this reason that I 
 propose to explain, by prominent examples, the conception 
 of a spiritual world which is present and actual, in order to 
 make more conceivable Hegel's views on the particular sphere 
 of art. So closely connected, indeed, are all the embodiments 
 of mind, his " Philosophy of Fine Art " may be said to contain 
 the essence of his entire system. 
 
 We know, to our cost, the popular conception of the 
 supra-sensuous world. Whatever that world is, it is, as com- 
 monly thought of, not here and not now. That is to say, if 
 here and now, it is so by a sort of miracle, at which we are 
 called upon to wonder, as when angels are said to be near us, 
 or the dead to know what we do. Again, it is a counterpart 
 of our present world, and rather imperceptible to our senses, 
 than in its nature beyond contact with sense as such. It is 
 peopled by persons who live eternally, which means through 
 endless ages, and to whose actual communion with us, as also 
 to our own with God, we look forward in the future. It even, 
 perhaps, contains a supra-sensuous original corresponding to
 
 94 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 
 
 every thing and movement in this world of ours. And it 
 does not necessarily deepen our conception of life, but only 
 reduplicates it. 
 
 Such a world, whatever we may think about its actual ex- 
 istence, is not the " other world" of philosophy. The "things 
 not seen" of Plato or of Hegel are not a double or a projec- 
 tion of the existing world. Plato, indeed, wavered between 
 the two conceptions in a way that should have warned his 
 interpreters of the divergence in his track of thought. But in 
 Hegel, at least, there is no ambiguity. The world of spirits 
 with him is no world of ghosts. When we study the embodi- 
 ments of mind or spirit in his pages, and read of law, property, 
 and national unity, of fine art, the religious community, and 
 the intellect that has attained scientific self-consciousness, we 
 may miss our other world with its obscure " beyond," but we 
 at any rate feel ourselves to be dealing with something real, 
 and with the deepest concerns of life. We may deny to such 
 matters the titles which philosophy bestows upon them ; we 
 may say that this is no " other world," no realm of spirits, 
 nothing infinite or Divine ; but this matters little, so long as we 
 know what we are talking about, and are talking about the 
 best we know. And what we discuss when Hegel is our guide, 
 will always be some great achievement or essential attribute of 
 the human mind. He never asks, "Is it?" but always, "What 
 is it ? " and therefore has instruction, drawn from experience, 
 even for those to whom the titles of his inquiries seem fraudu- 
 lent or bombastic. 
 
 These few remarks are not directed to maintaining any 
 thesis about the reality of nature and of sense. Their object 
 is to enforce a distinction which falls within the world which 
 we know, and not between the world we know and another 
 which we do not know. The distinction is real, and governs
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 95 
 
 life. I am not denying any other distinction, but I am insist- 
 ing on this. No really great philosopher, nor religious teacher, 
 neither Plato, nor Kant, nor St. Paul can be understood, 
 unless we grasp this antithesis in the right way. All of these 
 teachers, have pointed men to another world. All of them, 
 perhaps, were led at times by the very force and reality of 
 their own thought into the fatal separation that cancels its 
 meaning. So strong was their sense of the gulf between the 
 trifles and the realities of life, that they gave occasion to the 
 indolent imagination in themselves and in others to trans- 
 mute this gulf from a measure of moral effort into an inacces- 
 sibility that defies apprehension. But their purpose was to 
 overcome this inaccessibility, not to heighten it. 
 
 The hardest of all lessons in interpretation is to believe that 
 great men mean what they say. We are below their level, and 
 what they actually say seems impossible to us, till we have 
 adulterated it to suit our own imbecility. Especially when 
 they speak of- the highest realities, we attach our notion of 
 reality to what they pronounce to be real. And thus we baffle 
 every attempt to deepen our ideas of the world in which we 
 live. The work of intelligence is hard ; that of the sensuous 
 fancy is easy \ and so we substitute the latter for the former. 
 We are told, for instance, by Plato, that goodness, beauty, 
 and truth are realities, but not visible or tangible. Instead of 
 responding to the call so made on our intelligence by scruti- 
 nizing the nature and conditions of these intellectual facts 
 though we know well how tardily they are produced by the 
 culture of ages we apply forthwith our idea of reality as some- 
 thing separate in space and time, and so " refute " Plato with 
 ease, and remain as wise as we were before. And it is true 
 that Plato, handling ideas of vast import with the mind and 
 language of his day, sometimes by a similar error refutes him-
 
 96 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 
 
 self.* He makes, for instance, the disembodied soul see the 
 invisible ideas. Thus he travesties his things of the mind as 
 though they were things of sense, only not of our sense there- 
 by destroying the deeper difference of kind that alone enables 
 them to find a place in our world. That his doctrine of ideas 
 was really rooted, not in mysticism, but in scientific enthu- 
 siasm, is a truth that is veiled from us partly by his inconsis- 
 tencies, but far more by our own erroneous preconceptions, f 
 
 There is, however, a genuine distinction between " this " 
 world and the "other" world, which is merely parodied by 
 the vulgar antitheses between natural and supernatural, finite 
 and infinite, phenomenal and noumenal. We sometimes hear 
 it said, " The world is quite changed to me since I knew 
 such a person," or " studied such a subject," or " had suggested 
 to me such an idea." The expression may be literally true ; and 
 we do not commonly exaggerate, but vastly underrate its im- 
 port. We read, for instance, in a good authority, " These twenty 
 kinds of birds (which Virgil mentions) do not: correspond so 
 much to our species as to our genera ; for the Greeks and 
 Romans, I need hardly say, had only very rough-and-ready 
 methods of classification, just as is the case with uneducated 
 people at the present day." J Any one may verify the same 
 fact as regards the observation of flowers. Every yellow 
 ranunculus is called a " butter-cup," every large white umbel- 
 lifer a " hemlock." These, with hundreds of other differences 
 
 * " Endless duration makes good no better, nor white any whiter," is 
 one of Aristotle's comments on Plato's "eternal" ideas, and is just, unless 
 " eternal " conveys a difference of kind. 
 
 t We are apt to misinterpret Plato's language about astronomy in this 
 sense. Plato is not decrying observation, but demanding a theoretical 
 treatment of the laws of motion a remarkable anticipation of modern 
 ideas. 
 
 J " A Year with the Birds," by an Oxford Tutor.
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 97 
 
 of perception, affect the surroundings in which men con- 
 sciously live, at least as much as a considerable degree of 
 deafness or blindness. It is no metaphor, but literal fact, to 
 say that man's whole environment is transformed by the train- 
 ing even of his mere apprehension of natural objects. But 
 there is more in the matter than this. Without going into 
 metaphysics, which I wish to avoid, I cannot, indeed, main- 
 tain that mind "makes" natural objects, although by enabling 
 us to perceive them, it unquestionably makes our immediate 
 conscious world. My individual consciousness does not make 
 or create the differences between the species of ranunculus, 
 although it does create my knowledge of them. But when we 
 come to speak of the world of morals, or art, or politics, we 
 may venture much further in our assertions. The actual facts 
 of this world do directly arise out of and are causally sustained 
 by conscious intelligence; and these facts form the world 
 above sense. The unity of a Christian church or congrega- 
 tion is a governing fact of life ; so is that of a family or a 
 nation ; so, we may hope, will that of humanity come to be. 
 What is this unity ? Is it visible and tangible, like the unity 
 of a human body ? No, the unity is " ideal ; " that is, it exists 
 in the medium of thought only ; it is made up of certain senti- 
 ments, purposes, and ideas. What, even of an army ? Here, 
 too, an ideal unity is the mainspring of action. Without 
 mutual intelligence and reciprocal reliance you may have a 
 mob, but you cannot have an army. But all these conditions 
 exist and can exist in the mind only. An army, qua army, is 
 not a mere fact of sense ; for not only does it need mind to 
 perceive 'it a heap of sand does that but it also needs mind 
 to make it 
 
 The world of these governing facts of life is the world of 
 the things not seen, the object of reason, the world of the 
 
 H
 
 98 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 
 
 truly infinite and Divine. It is, of course, a false antithesis to 
 contrast seeing with the bodily eye and seeing with the mind's 
 eye. The seeing eye is always the mind's eye. The distinc- 
 tion between sense and spirit or intellect is a distinction with- 
 in the mind, just as is St. Paul's opposition between the spirit 
 and the flesh. Nevertheless the mind that only sees colour 
 sense or sense-perception is different from the mind that sees 
 beauty, the self-conscious spirit. The latter includes the for- 
 mer, but the former do.'s not include the latter. To the one 
 the colour is the ultimate fact ; to the other it is an element in 
 a thing of beauty. This relation prevails throughout between 
 the world of sense and the world above sense. The " things 
 not seen," philosophically speaking, are no world of existences 
 or of intelligences co-ordinate with and severed from this pre- 
 sent world. They are a value, an import, a significance, super- 
 added to the phenomenal world, which may thus be said, 
 though with some risk of misunderstanding, to be degraded 
 into a symbol. The house, the cathedral, the judge's robe, 
 the general's uniform, are ultimate facts for the child or the 
 savage ; but for the civilized man they are symbols of domestic 
 life, of the Church, and of the State. Even where the supra- 
 sensuous world has its purest expression, in the knowledge 
 and will of intelligent beings, it presupposes a sensuous world 
 as the material of ideas and of actions. "This" world and 
 the " other " world are continuous and inseparable, and all 
 men must live in some degree for both. But the completion 
 of the Noumenal world, and the apprehension of its reality 
 and completeness, is the task by fulfilling which humanity ad- 
 vances. 
 
 I pass to the interpretation, neither technical nor contro- 
 versial, of one or two of Hegel's most alarming phrases. 
 
 The " infinite " seems to practical minds the very opposite
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 99 
 
 of anything real, present, or valuable. As the description of 
 life, it is the mere negation of the life we know ; as the de- 
 scription of a purpose, it is the very antithesis of any purpose 
 that we can conceive to be attainable ; as the description of 
 a being, it appears to be formed by denying every predicate 
 which we attach to personality. And I could wish that Hegel 
 had not selected this much-abused term as the distinctive 
 predicate of what is most real and most precious in life. He 
 adhered to it, no doubt, because his infinity, though different 
 in nature to that of common logic, yet rightly fills the place 
 and meets the problem of that conception. I will attempt to 
 explain how this can be, and what we are discussing when we 
 read about infinity in the Hegelian philosophy. 
 
 It is an obvious remark, that infinity was a. symbol of evil 
 in Hellenic speculation, whereas to Christian and modern 
 thought it is identified with good. Much idle talk has arisen 
 on this account, as to the limitation of the Hellenic mind. 
 For, in fact, the Finite ascribed to Pythagoras, and the idea 
 of limit and proportion in Plato or in Aristotle, are far more 
 nearly akin to true infinity than is the Infinite of modern 
 popular philosophy. Infinite means the negation of limit. 
 Now, common infinity, which may be identified in general 
 with enumeration ad infiniturn the false infinity of Hegel 
 is the attempt to negate or transcend a limit which inevitably 
 recurs. It arises from attempting a task or problem in the 
 wrong way, so that we may go on for ever without making any 
 advance towards its achievement. All quantitative infinity 
 which of course has its definite uses, subject to proper reser- 
 vations is of this nature. A process does not change its 
 character by mere continuance, and the aggregate of a million 
 units is no more free from limitation than the aggregate of ten. 
 A defect in kind cannot be compensated by mere quantity.
 
 100 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 
 
 We see the fallacious attempt in savage, barbaric, or vulgar 
 art. Meaningless iteration, objectless labour, enormous size, 
 extravagant costliness, indicate the effort to satisfy man's need 
 of expression by the mere accumulation of work without ade- 
 quate idea or purpose. But such efforts, however stupendous, 
 never attain their goal. They constitute a recurrent failure 
 to transcend a recurrent limit, precisely analogous to enumera- 
 tion ad infinitum. A hundred thousand pounds' worth of 
 bricks and mortar comes no nearer to the embodiment of 
 mind than a thousand pounds' worth. To attempt adequate 
 expression by mere aggregation of cost or size is therefore to 
 fall into the infinite process or the false infinity. 
 
 Another well-known instance is the pursuit of happiness in 
 the form of "pleasure for pleasure's sake." The recurrence 
 of unchanging units leaves us where we were. A process which 
 does not change remains the same, and if it did not bring 
 satisfaction at first, will not do so at last.* We might as well 
 go on producing parallels to infinity, in the hope that some- 
 how or somewhere they may meet. An infinite straight line 
 may serve as a type of the kind of infinity we are considering. 
 
 Infinity in the Hegelian sense does not partake in any way 
 of this endlessness, or of the unreality which attaches to it. 
 Its root-idea is self-completeness or satisfaction. That which 
 is " infinite " is without boundary, because it does not refer 
 beyond itself for explanation, or for justification; and there- 
 fore, in all human existence or production infinity can only be 
 an aspect or element. A picture, for instance, regarded as a 
 work of fine art, justifies itself, gives satisfaction directly and 
 without raising questions of cause or of comparison, and is in 
 this sense i.e. in respect of its beauty regarded as "infinite." 
 
 * See note above, p. 96.
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. IOI 
 
 When, on the other hand, we consider this same work of art 
 as an historical phenomenon, as a link in a chain of causation 
 e.g., as elucidating the development of a school, or proving 
 the existence of a certain technical process at a certain date 
 then we go beyond itself for its interest and explanation, and 
 'depress it at once into a finite object. The finite is that which 
 presents itself as incomplete ; the infinite, that which presents 
 itself as complete, and which, therefore, does not force upon 
 us the fact of its limitation. This character belongs in the 
 highest degree to self-conscious mind, as realized in the world 
 above sense ; and in some degree to all elements of that world 
 for instance, to the State in as far as they represent man's 
 realized self-consciousness. It is the nature of self-conscious- 
 ness to be infinite, because it is its nature to take into itself 
 what was opposed to it, and thus to make itself into an orga- 
 nized sphere that has value and reality within, and not beyond 
 itself. If false infinity was represented by an infinite straight 
 line, true infinity may be compared to a circle or a sphere. 
 
 The distinction between true and false infinity is of the 
 profoundest moral import The sickly yearning that longs 
 only to escape from the real, rooted in the antithesis between 
 the infinite and the actual or concrete, or in the idea of the 
 monotonous "irtfini" which is one with the "abime" or the 
 "gouffre," is appraised by this test at its true value. It is 
 seen to rest on a mere pathetic fallacy of thought and senti- 
 ment. So far from the infinite being remote, abstract, unreal, 
 nothing but the infinite can be truly present, concrete, and 
 real. The finite always refers us away and away through an 
 endless series of causes, of effects, or of relations. The infinite 
 is individual, and bears the character of knowledge, achieve- 
 ment, attainment. In short, the actual realities which we have 
 in mind when, in philosophy, we speak of the infinite, are
 
 102 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 
 
 such as a nation that is conscious of its unity and general will, 
 or the realm of fine art as the recognition of man's higher 
 nature, or the religious community with its conviction of an 
 indwelling Deity. 
 
 Now, whether we like the term Infinite or not, whether or 
 no we think that man's life can be explained and justified 
 within the limits of these aims and these phenomena, there is 
 no doubt that these matters are real, and are the most mo- 
 mentous of realities. In acquainting ourselves with their 
 structure, evolution, and relation to individual life, we are at 
 least not wasting time, nor treating of matters beyond human 
 intelligence. 
 
 There is a very similar contrast in the conception of human 
 Freedom. " Free will " is so old a vexed question, that, 
 though the conflict still rages fitfully round it, the world hardly 
 conceives that much can turn upon its decision. But when in 
 place of the abstract, " Is man free ? " we are confronted with 
 the concrete inquiry, " When, in what, and as what, does man 
 carry out his will with least hindrance and with fullest satis- 
 faction?" then we have before us the actual phenomena of 
 civilization, instead of an idle and abstract Yes or No. 
 
 Man's Freedom, in the sense thus contemplated, lies in the 
 spiritual or supra-sensuous world by which his humanity is 
 realized, and in which his will finds fulfilment. The family, 
 for example, property, and law are the first steps of man's 
 freedom. In them the individual's will obtains and bestows 
 recognition as an agent in a society whose bond of union is 
 ideal i.e., existing only in consciousness ; and this recognition 
 develops into duties and rights. It is in these that man finds 
 something to live for, something in which and for the sake of 
 which to assert himself. As society develops he lives, on the 
 whole, more in the civilized or spiritual world, and less in the
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 103 
 
 savage or purely natural world. His will, which is himself, 
 expands with the institutions and ideas that form its purpose, 
 and the history of this expansion is the history of human free- 
 dom. Nothing is more shallow, more barbarously irrational, 
 than to regard the progress of civilization as the accumulation 
 of restrictions. Laws and rules are a necessary aspect of 
 extended capacities. Every power that we gain has a positive 
 nature, and therefore involves positive conditions, and every 
 positive condition has negative relations. To accomplish a 
 particular purpose you must go to work in a particular way, 
 and in no other way. To complain of this is like complaining 
 of a house because it has a definite shape. If freedom means 
 absence of attributes, empty space is " freer " than any edifice. 
 Of course a house may be so ugly that we may say we would 
 rather have none at all. Civilization may bring such horrors 
 that we may say, " Rather savagery than this " ; but in neither 
 case are we serious. Great as are the vices of civilization, it is 
 only in civilization that man becomes human, spiritual, and 
 free. 
 
 The effort to grasp and apply such an idea as this can 
 hardly be barren. It brings us face to face with concrete facts 
 of history, and of man's actual motives and purposes. True 
 philosophy here, as everywhere, plunges into the concrete and 
 the real ; it is the indolent abstract fancy that thrusts problems 
 away into the remote "beyond," or into futile abstraction. 
 Plato, the philosopher, knows well that the mind is free when 
 it achieves what, as a whole, it truly wills. But Plato, the 
 allegorist and imaginative preacher, refers the soul's freedom 
 to a fleeting moment of ante-natal choice, which he vainly 
 strives to exempt from causal influence. Pictorial imagination, 
 with its ready reference to occurrences in past and future, is 
 the great foe to philosophic intelligence.
 
 104 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 
 
 Finally, it is impossible to omit all reference to the notion 
 of an immanent Deity, which forms the very centre of Hegel's 
 thought. When an unspeculative English reader first meets 
 with Hegel's passionate insistence that God is not unknowable," 
 that He necessarily reveals himself as a Trinity of persons, 
 and that to deny this is to represent men as "the heathen 
 who know not God," he feels as if he had taken sand into his 
 mouth. He is inclined to ask what these Neo-Platonic or 
 mediaeval doctrines are doing in the nineteenth century, and 
 why we should resuscitate dead logomachies that can have no 
 possible value for life or conduct. Now, I must not attempt 
 here to discuss the difficult question of Hegel's ultimate con- 
 ception of the being of God, and I am bound to warn any one 
 who may read these pages that I only profess to reproduce 
 one though by far the most prominent side of that concep- 
 tion. But, subject to this reservation, I have no hesitation in 
 saying, that our own prejudices form the only hindrance to our 
 seeing that Hegel's subject-matter is here, as elsewhere, human 
 life. He gives us what he takes to be the literal truth, and 
 we will have it to be metaphor. Verbally contradicting Kant, 
 he accepts, completes, and enforces Kant's thought. " Reve- 
 lation can never be the true ground of religion," said Kant ; 
 " for revelation is an historical accident, and religion is a 
 rational necessity of man's intelligent nature." " Revelation 
 is the only true knowledge of God and ground of religion," 
 says Hegel, "because revelation consists in the realization rf 
 God in man's intelligent nature." We are, however, not unac- 
 customed to such phrases, and our imagination is equal to its 
 habitual task of evading their meaning. We take them to be 
 a strong metaphor, meaning that God, who is a sort of ghostly 
 being a long way off, is, notwithstanding, more or less within 
 the knowledge of our minds, and so is "in " them, as a book
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 105 
 
 which is actually in London may be in my memory when I 
 am in Scotland. Now, right or wrong, this is not what Hegel 
 means. He means what he says ; that God is spirit or mind,* 
 and exists in the medium of mind, which is actual as intelli- 
 gence, for us at any rate, only in the human self-consciousness. 
 The thought is hard from its very simplicity, and we struggle, 
 as always, to avoid grasping it We imagine spirits as made 
 of a sort of thin matter, and so as existing just like bodies, 
 although we call them disembodied. And then we think of 
 this disembodied form as an alternative to human form, and 
 suppose spirit to have somehow a purer existence apart from 
 human body. This error really springs from imagining the 
 two as existences of the same kind, and so conflicting, and 
 from not realizing the notion of spirit as mind or self-con- 
 sciousness, which is the only way of conceiving its actual 
 presence in our world. Mind uses sensuous existence as its 
 symbol ; perhaps even needs it. The poet who has hit Hegel's 
 thought so nearly,f fails here : 
 
 " This weight of body and limb, 
 Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?" 
 
 Here we leave the track of the higher Pantheism for that of 
 vulgar mysticism. Spiritual being is conceived as somehow 
 incompatible with bodily shape, either because incapable of 
 any concrete embodiment, or because it has a quasi-material 
 shape of its own. Now, this is just the reverse of the Hege- 
 lian idea. According to Hegel, it is only in the human form 
 
 * The fusion of these meanings in the German " Geist " gives a force to 
 his pleading which English cannot render. He appeals, e.g., triumphantly 
 to " God is a Spirit," i.e. not " a ghost," but " mind." 
 
 f See Tennyson's " Higher Pantheism," especially the fine lines : 
 " Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with spirit can meet, 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."
 
 106 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 
 
 that intelligence can for us find its full expression. The 
 notion of a spiritual body other than and incompatible with 
 the natural body does not arise. Spirit exists in the medium 
 of consciousness, not in a peculiar kind of matter. The 
 spiritualization of the natural body is not to be looked for in 
 an astral or angel body, but in the gait and gesture, the signifi- 
 cance and dignity, that make the body of the civilized man 
 the outward image of his soul, and distinguish him from the 
 savage as from the animal. The human soul becomes actual 
 itself, and visible to others, only by moulding the body into 
 its symbol and instrument. It ought to have been an axiom 
 of physiology, Hegel says, that the series of animated forms 
 must necessarily lead up to that of man. For this is the only 
 sensuous form in which mind could attain adequate manifesta- 
 tion. Thus anthropomorphism in fine art is no accident, nor 
 an unworthy portrayal of Divinity. If the Deity is to be 
 symbolized to sense, it must be in the image of man. The 
 symbol is not, indeed, the reality, as the sensuous image 
 is not conscious thought ; but this is a defect inherent in 
 artistic presentation, and not attributable to anthropomor- 
 phism in particular. 
 
 It is obvious that, in the light of such a conception, a 
 speculative import can be attached to the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation, and Hegel's reading of Christian ideas is, in fact, 
 to be interpreted entirely in this sense. This is not the place 
 to go deeper into such views, which, however profound, may 
 perhaps continue to seem non-natural expositions of Christian 
 dogma. I am only concerned to show how here, also, the 
 speculative idea, operating upon the concrete and actual, 
 generates a fresh and inspiring insight into life and conduct. 
 Few chapters of anthropology are more thorough, profound, 
 and suggestive than Hegel's account of the "actual soul";
 
 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. lO^ 
 
 i.e.y of the habits and attributes which make the body dis- 
 tinctively human by stamping it with the impress of mind. 
 Nor has philosophic insight ever done better service to the 
 history of religion than in grasping the essence of Christianity 
 as the unity (not merely the union) of the Divine and human 
 nature. 
 
 Among the things which are spiritually discerned, an im- 
 portant place belongs to beauty. As a boundary and transi- 
 tion between sense and thought, it is peculiarly fitted to 
 illustrate the reality which we claim, in contradistinction to 
 mere sensuous appearance, for what is best in life. Many 
 who distrust Hegelian formulae are convinced that beauty at 
 least is real. They will admit that fine art and the recogni- 
 tion of beauty are not trifles, not amusements, but rank high 
 among the interests that give life its value. All such will 
 find themselves in sympathy with the purpose of a great 
 philosopher who has bent all the power of his genius and his 
 industry to vindicating a place for art as an embodiment of the 
 Divine nature, that is to say, of the fundamental purpose which 
 reveals itself in the history of the human spirit.
 
 VI. 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH* 
 
 MUCH is said in the New Testament, with very various 
 meanings, about the Kingdom of Christ or the King- 
 dom of God. I want to consider, this evening, some of the 
 forms which this idea has taken in the New Testament and 
 elsewhere, and what meaning it can have for us to-day. 
 
 I. "Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou 
 shalt have treasure in heaven." "Grant that we may sit, the 
 one on Thy right hand, and the other on Thy left, in Thy 
 kingdom." "Now he is comforted, and thou art tormented." 
 In such passages as these we think that we find two ideas 
 which have had enormous influence on the world. 
 
 i. Heaven is to right the wrongs, and to compensate the 
 injustices of this world. " Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy 
 good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things ; but now he is 
 comforted, and thou art tormented." Part of this natural con- 
 ception has been a comfort to those for whom the world 
 seemed to have nothing but misery, and part has rudely 
 represented a wild feeling of justice. But at all times, and 
 especially in modern times, it has had another and a very 
 mischievous influence. It can be turned round the other way. 
 God, we think, will look after those who are ill-off on earth, 
 * An address given for the Ethical Society.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. IOQ 
 
 and therefore we need not trouble ourselves about them. 
 Heaven becomes a sort of poor-law, to which we refer the 
 cases of distress that we do not know how to deal with. We 
 even feel very virtuous in doing this. It is so humble of us 
 to be content with this world's goods, and to leave the next 
 world to our poorer neighbours. And it makes everything 
 easy ; it cuts the knot of all those troublesome questions, how 
 every member of a great nation can have a man's share in the 
 work and knowledge of the world. Let him read his Bible 
 and believe what he is told, and then, after a few years, which 
 do not much matter, he will be as well off as an emperor; or 
 perhaps better, for he will go to heaven, and many emperors 
 will not. 
 
 This belief has great power for good and for evil. It has 
 raised men's estimate of their dignity, and has made them feel 
 the value of a soul. But it has made them careless of the 
 world in which they live, and has narrowed their notions of 
 duty and of manliness. Life must not be split up into a 
 present of endurance, and a future of enjoyment. Injustice 
 must be redressed, beauty enjoyed, knowledge won, and good- 
 ness attained, here on this earth of ours. 
 
 2. Then there is the other common idea, very like the 
 last. "Great is your reward in heaven." "Thy Father 
 which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." This is the 
 notion, not very marked, I think, in the New Testament, of a 
 moral government of the world by rewards and punishments. 
 The Churchmen who write about religion have made a fatal 
 delusion out of this conception too. But I do not think that 
 sensible people have taken it very seriously. We all know 
 that we are not to do good for the sake of what we expect to 
 get by it ; and if a preacher tells us that we are to be good 
 Christians in order to go to heaven and keep out of hell, we
 
 IIO THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 think that he does not quite understand what he is saying. A 
 man who tells you that is mixing up two notions. One notion 
 is that you are to obey God's will in order to gain the pleasure" 
 of heaven and escape the pains of hell. And the other 
 notion is that you are to obey God's will, because in doing 
 that you get rid of the bad in your own heart, and make your 
 will rest or repose in the good will. This hope of finding 
 peace, of resting your will in something greater than yourself, 
 of being at one with the good purpose of humanity, is the very 
 mainspring of life. But it is here on earth that we want our 
 will to be good, and to get rid of the bad in our own hearts. 
 There is no reason in putting it off to a future life, of which 
 we know nothing. If we must have something future to hope 
 for, let us put our hopes on our children, and do something 
 to carry them out. However, this desire to be good and to 
 be at one with a society of good people is the root of our 
 life. But that other notion, that we are to be good in order 
 to gain the pleasures of heaven, is very wrong, or rather, it is 
 absolute nonsense. I should like to explain why I say that 
 it is absolute nonsense. 
 
 A man is good when his will is good, and bad when his 
 will is bad. It all depends upon what kind of thing he really 
 has at heart when he acts. It does not depend on what he 
 does, if you look at it from the outside. If a man says he 
 meant well, when he did not, then he is a hypocrite. But we 
 all know that a man may really mean well, and yet may make 
 a mistake and do great harm. Then we do not call him a 
 bad man, though we may call him a fool. This shows that it 
 is the will which makes a man good or bad,' and a man's will 
 is his choice ; it is what his heart is really set on when he acts. 
 So, when we talk of being good or doing good, for the sake of 
 what we can get by it, this can only be a pretence of being or
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. Ill 
 
 doing good. You may do, for reward, something that on the 
 outside looks like doing good, but it is not doing good, 
 because the will is selfish your heart is set on your own 
 pleasure or comfort, and not on a substantial good for its own 
 sake. A man who really thought of nothing but getting safe 
 to heaven would be as bad as a man in a shipwreck who 
 thought of nothing but getting himself safe into a boat. There 
 are a few such people, I daresay. But of course most people 
 are better than they make out. When they speak of reward 
 and punishment, they do not mean merely pleasures and pains ; 
 they mean, in part at least, the goodness which causes the 
 pleasure, and the badness which causes the pain. We can see 
 that true Christians have never thought the reward the chief 
 thing. St. Paul was ready to give up his own reward, to be 
 accursed from Christ, if that would save the souls he loved. 
 And to go from great things to small, there is a fine scene in 
 a novel which I once read. A young man is afraid to go to 
 the rescue of some people in a flood, because he has a con- 
 viction that if he is drowned then, he will go to hell. And 
 the old man, an old Scotchman, to whom he tells this, shouts 
 out to him in reply, " Better be damned doing the will of God 
 than saved doing nothing." This is the instinct of true religion 
 revolting against the false doctrine of rewards ; and I believe 
 that this revolt has the sympathy of all true Christians. 
 
 Of course this fancy of rewards and punishments has had 
 its uses. It has enabled people to believe against appear- 
 ances that good was stronger than evil. And it has helped to 
 make good stronger than evil. We cannot judge these old 
 beliefs fairly, unless we think of the power they had and the 
 way in which they were used. In rough ages it was a gain 
 that men should recognise anything as above themselves. 
 There is a striking picture in a poem of Longfellow's of a
 
 112 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 monk forcing a Norman Baron in England, on his death-bed, 
 to set his serfs free. 
 
 " In his chamber, weak and dying, 
 
 Was the Norman Baron lying ; 
 * * * * 
 
 And, as on the sacred missal, 
 He recorded their dismissal, 
 Death relaxed his iron features, 
 And the Monk replied, ' Amen. ' " 
 
 I do not say that this picture represents a fact ; but no one 
 can doubt that the thought of heaven and hell must often have 
 reinforced the appeal of conscience, and kept alive the per- 
 suasion that there was a power higher than the sword. 
 
 These were the old convictions about heaven and the 
 kingdom of God, that it was an invisible future world, in 
 which wrong was to be righted, and good and bad men re- 
 warded and punished. These fancies have not in reality a 
 great place in the New Testament ; but they were known to the 
 Greeks and to many other nations. Plato speaks with scorn 
 of the priests and charlatans of his time, four centuries before 
 Christ, who go about telling men that they can make it all safe 
 for them in the next world by their prayers and ceremonies. So 
 these notions are as old as civilized mankind ; and the right 
 way to look at them is to see that people naturally came upon 
 them when they felt sure that there was a right somewhere, and 
 that it was better to be good. The last thing people under- 
 stand is what is before their eyes. It is so much easier just 
 to fancy that something used to be, or that something will be, 
 instead of looking patiently at what actually is. Men look 
 round them and see that the world seems very bad, but they 
 feel sure that there is a real good somewhere ; and so they 
 make up a story that it was all very good once, and then the 
 devil put it wrong ; but God will put it all right again some
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 113 
 
 day, at least for some of us. It is just as people say, " How 
 do there come to be so many kinds of plants and animals?" 
 And they answer that God created them a long time ago, and 
 Adam gave them names. Well, of course, if we look care- 
 fully at what is under our eyes, we see that this is a fantastic 
 idea. The kinds of plants and animals are always changing 
 now, precisely as they always have been changing since they 
 began. 
 
 Just in the same way, when you look patiently and carefully 
 at the world we live in, you see that those ideas of another 
 world are nothing but imperfect explanations or reflections of 
 the good that is being worked out in this world, and are of no 
 value, excepting as they contribute to the furtherance of this 
 real good. Good is not a thing which can be made up by 
 deferred payments. 
 
 3. In the same way, again, God has been thought of as a 
 king or master, somewhere outside the world we live in, and 
 the Bible as the book of his decrees ; as if God could make 
 anything right by choosing to command it. This is the old 
 meaning of revelation ; that man had no way of knowing God's 
 will, and so God had this book written to tell us what his will 
 was, and we have to do everything that is commanded in this 
 book. Of course this idea turns things upside down. Things 
 are not right because the Bible says them, but the Bible says 
 them, if it dots say them, because they are right. And when 
 W2 say now that anything is God's command, we ought to 
 know that we are using a figure of speech, which means some- 
 thing quite different from the command of a person outside 
 ourselves and having power over us. 
 
 4. And this makes an enormous difference; because, if you 
 have a master in heaven, whose orders you must obey, and if 
 he has had a book written to tell you what to do, then the 
 
 i
 
 114 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 ipost important people in the world are the people who spend 
 their lives in interpreting this book. And in fact, as you and I 
 have not time to be studying a book written in Hebrew and 
 Greek all our lives, we should be under the thumb of these 
 gentlemen, who say they know all about it, and some of them 
 even say they have a special commission from God to tell us 
 about it, and we are not to listen to any one else. This is 
 plainly a mere dream. There is no great harm in talking of a 
 revelation, but it means nothing in the world but our own 
 common sense and reason, dealing with the circumstances of 
 our lives. 
 
 All these ideas, compensation, rewards and punishments, 
 God's commands in the Bible, the authority of the clergy, are 
 closely connected together. They are all fancies that men 
 have had, just as though they were children, and being 
 children, knew that they must be treated like children. 
 Children do things because they are told, until they have learnt 
 to behave themselves. And so men had to learn to behave 
 themselves, only they had to fancy that there was a parent or 
 schoolmaster looking after them. They naturally invented the 
 only sort of instruction they could receive. 
 
 II. But then, in the New Testament we find yet other ideas 
 mixed with those which we have been speaking of. The 
 kingdom of God is within you (or perhaps "among you"); it is 
 like leaven ; it is like a seed ; it is not of this world. This 
 might mean it is in heaven, but I do not think it does ; I 
 think it means that the kingdom of God is not what people in 
 this world call a kingdom. The New Testament writers did, 
 in fact, think that the next world was to be on earth, and that 
 it was to begin soon, and had in truth begun already. But we 
 must not count this altogether on our side, because there was 
 to be a miraculous end to the old earth, and a new one was to
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 11$ 
 
 be made. Still, we may fairly say that they thought the 
 kingdom of God was a moral kingdom ; that it was to come on 
 earth; that it was something quite close to them ; and that it 
 had partly begun with Christ's life. The idea of the Church 
 grew up in place of this conviction, when the belief in Christ's 
 coming gave way. 
 
 This moral kingdom of God is what is meant in the prayer, 
 "Thy kingdom come," which is explained by the next 
 petition, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 
 Most of the New Testament writers, and, it would seem, 
 Christ himself, expected this kingdom to come within a man's 
 lifetime. We may leave out these words, "as in heaven," 
 which belong to the fancies of which we have been speaking, 
 fancies that the good which we do not see here is real some- 
 where else. 
 
 But the kingdom of God on earth, is here, as the Lord's 
 prayer implies, in as far as what we call God's will is done on 
 earth. But now there is a question which stares us in the 
 face. 
 
 What have we men to do with God's will ? The question 
 has two forms : 
 
 1. How are we to know what is God's will ? and 
 
 2. Why should we do God's will when we do know it ? 
 
 We have destroyed the vulgar answers to these two ques- 
 tions. I will repeat briefly how we have destroyed them. 
 They were "We are to know God's will from his inspired 
 revelation in the Bible," or " from the Catholic Church "a 
 very mischievous doctrine ; and " we are to do God's will 
 because he will reward or punish us according as we do it or 
 not." The first of these answers is a mistake, because books 
 and men are just books and men, and they cannot have 
 authority except by convincing our own minds. And the
 
 Il6 THE KINGDOM Of GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 second is an absurdity, because the nature of what we do 
 depends upon our will in doing it ; and if what we will is to 
 get a reward, then our action is not good. Rewards and 
 punishments are legal sanctions and not moral influences. 
 
 There is only one true way of answering these questions. 
 We must know what is right, what we call God's will, by find- 
 ing it in our own will. And we must do what is right, what 
 we call God's will, because we find that it is our own will. 
 We must look at it in this way. 
 
 If we come to think over our lives, and to ask ourselves 
 what fills up the greater part of our thoughts and purposes, we 
 shall find, if we are decent people, that it mostly comes back 
 to our station in life,* and the duties that are recognised by 
 ourselves and by others as belonging to it ; and also in certain 
 duties and interests, usually connected with our station, which 
 we have taken up and made our own. A man can hardly live 
 without something or other which is required of him by others, 
 and which he requires of himself. Those whom we call idle 
 people have their duties, but partly they are mistaken about 
 them, partly they neglect them. In judging morally you must 
 take a man's own point of view, at least in part. You and I 
 may think fox-hunting a waste of time and money; but a 
 master of fox-hounds does not think himself an idle or useless 
 man. He does what he and all his friends believe to be a 
 social duty ; and it is very necessary that we should recognise 
 this, because it helps us to see that man really does not exist 
 as man without some station and duties. Our station and its 
 duties are the greatest part and the simplest part of the right 
 will or the good will, which is also our own will. Without 
 
 * This portion of the address consists in the main of an attempt to 
 popularise the ideas contained in Mr. F. H. Bradley's "Ethical Studies," 
 and especially in Essay V. of that work, " My Station and its Duties."
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 117 
 
 this object and interest in life, a man is like a boat without 
 sail or helm. This sounds rather commonplace, and it is 
 rather commonplace. If it were not, in a sense, known to 
 every one, I do not see how it could be imagined to be every 
 one's guide through life. If a preacher should come here and 
 tell us that he had a brand-new set of duties, which we never 
 heard of before, that we ought to do, I should myself be in- 
 clined to vote for sending him away again. Still, most things 
 that we know have a good deal in them that we do not notice. 
 And I will try to point out some truths about our station and 
 its duties which we are apt to forget. 
 Our station and its duties : 
 
 1. Tells us what to do, for it is the very heart and spirit of 
 our little individual life ; and 
 
 2. It gives the reason for doing what we ought to do ; for, 
 just because it is the heart of our individual life, it raises our 
 weak and ignorant will into the good will, which is the real 
 will that unites mankind together. 
 
 i. Our station and its duties is the heart and spirit of our 
 own little life. I may say that I make no distinction, morally, 
 between rights and duties. That which our station demands 
 of us is a duty, if the difficulty in doing it is in ourselves, and 
 a right if the difficulty is in some one else. Suppose you are 
 the head of a family. That is part of your station. It is the 
 duty of the head of a family to rule and educate his children ; 
 and it is the right of the head of the family that his children 
 should obey him, and that they should attend to their school- 
 ing ; and it is his right, moreover, that society should provide, 
 somehow, that there shall be schools and teachers. Then, 
 again, it is the right of the children to be properly ruled and 
 taught to behave, and to be educated ; and it is the duty of 
 the children to obey the head of the family, and to make the
 
 Il8 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 best use of their schooling. It is the dnty of society to see 
 that there shall be schools and teachers, and it is the right of 
 society that both the head of the family and the children shall 
 do their part in making proper use of the schools and teachers. 
 The same social good or social purpose is a right or a duty, 
 according to the source of the opposition it meets with. 
 
 Now these requirements or demands, which are recognised 
 by society, and which we recognise in our turn, make us what 
 we are. Apart from them we should be nothing at all. 
 Suppose a man has a brain fever, and all these ideas and 
 purposes are wiped out of his mind. Suppose he forgets that 
 he has a wife and children, forgets how to do his daily work, 
 and does not know his friends when he meets them, does not 
 remember the kindnesses which have been done him, nor the 
 services which he owes to others ; the man may still be alive, 
 and you may know his face, but his own self, all that made up 
 his individual life, is lost and has vanished. I have heard of 
 some one to whose wife this happened ; and when, two years 
 after the loss of her mind, the poor lady died, her husband 
 said, " In fact, I lost my dear wife two years ago." 
 
 This helps to show how we ourselves are really made up of 
 all these ties and relationships, all these rights and duties, pur- 
 poses, feelings, and hopes. We spoke about people's ideas of 
 the invisible world. Here is the invisible world which really 
 does concern us, which is our own very self, which we and all 
 others recognise, and which has its existence simply in this 
 invisible fact, that it is so recognised. And this, our own 
 self, is what makes up our own will, by giving us something 
 definite to do, which is the particular purpose of our own 
 particular self. This is the chief thing that tells us what to do. 
 
 Perhaps this seems too simple, and it may be said, " Every 
 decent man does the duties of his station ; cannot something
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. lip 
 
 be suggested which is higher and harder than that?" I 
 shall try to answer this question in part, presently, but first 
 I must confess that the whole principle of what I am saying 
 is against overmuch dictating and giving moral advice. I 
 know well enough what / ought to do ; but it is very diffi- 
 cult to talk about what other people ought to do, because 
 one does not know the ins and outs of their station. But 
 if any one says that he habitually does all the duties of his 
 station, thoroughly, with good heart and good sense, one 
 would be inclined to suspect in one's own mind that his stan- 
 dard is rather low. A few points may be enumerated, by 
 way of illustrating what one's station really means. There 
 are the simple duties of honesty and thoroughness in all 
 work ; there is education ; there is wise and painstaking help 
 of our neighbours ; there is wise management of societies 
 or clubs which we have to do with ; there is forming an en- 
 lightened judgment on trade questions and on questions that 
 concern us as citizens ; and there is the attempt to make the 
 tone of our society a little higher, more full of real interests, 
 more free from vice and vulgarity. Every man is responsible 
 for the tone of the society in which he moves, and for the 
 influence which he spreads round him, hour by hour. 
 
 I do not know whether all this is really so simple, when you 
 come to act upon it. Plato wrote an account of an imaginary 
 commonwealth, in which goodness was to be the ruling prin- 
 ciple. And the one great root of all virtue in this common- 
 wealth was simply this, that in it every one was to mind his 
 own business. Plato thus thought one's station and its duties 
 the root of all the virtues. And he was right. But Plato's 
 commonwealth, in which every one was to mind his own busi- 
 ness, has become a by-word for an impossible imagination. 
 
 2. Then, again, I said our station and its duties give the
 
 120 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 reason for doing right. It not only gives us something to do, 
 but it makes us feel that what we do is right. This is the very 
 root of the matter. 
 
 There are two ways of doing what you have to do. You 
 may do it like a machine, or you may do it like a man. If 
 you do it like a machine, that is not really doing the duties of 
 your station, for our station is, above all things, to be men. 
 He who is a machine has no heart in his work. His family 
 and his country mean nothing to him. Most likely it is not 
 his own fault, but all the same this is very sad. But now I 
 want to speak of the other way of working. We all know 
 what it is to feel that we are not alone in our work ; that we 
 are working together with others for a common good, and each 
 doing the best he can. One who feels this about the duties of 
 his station is a man, and not a machine. He knows, indeed, 
 that he can do very little with his single arm. Even a great 
 statesman or a great poet is merely guiding the forces or 
 uttering the feelings of mankind. If a man thinks of the com- 
 mon purpose, of the good cause, and knows his will and 
 effort are devoted to it, then he will not complain because he 
 can do so little. The great thing is that his will is at one with 
 the real will or the right will ; and because it is so, he is con- 
 tent in the common work, and knows he is doing right. Think 
 of a family all working hard to make their living. One of the 
 children will earn only a little compared with the father ; but 
 if the child does his best, and puts his heart into it for the 
 common good, then he has a right to be satisfied in the happi- 
 ness of the family as the achievement of his purpose. A man 
 who does the duties of an undistinguished station with good- 
 will is just the same in society as such a child is in a family. 
 He is not a wheel in a machine, nor an animal trying to get 
 food ; but he is a man whose will is inspired by the common
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 121 
 
 purpose of mankind, and whose little private piece of work is 
 a pledge to him that the general purpose is his purpose. 
 
 This, then, is why we should do God's will, that is, why we 
 should do our duty. If " why " meant a reason outside the 
 duty, like a reward or punishment, then it would be nonsense, 
 as we saw, to ask why we should do our duty. But the reason 
 why we do it is that we find the good will to be really and at 
 bottom our own will. That is to say, it is through our station 
 and its duties that we take hold of our humanity and bring it 
 home to our particular selves. On the one hand, the good 
 will is ourself ; and on the other hand, it is the common aim 
 and spirit of society and of mankind. The goodness of our 
 own particular private will consists in grasping this common 
 aim and spirit, and applying it in the particular duties of our 
 daily life, which gains all its reality and vigour from its par- 
 ticular form of this aim or purpose, and vanishes, as we saw, if 
 the common purpose is entirely destroyed in us if a man 
 forgets his family, and his work, and his friends. 
 
 All that we mean by the kingdom of God on earth is the 
 society of human beings who have a common life and are 
 working for a common social good. The kingdom of God 
 has come on earth in every civilized society where men live 
 and work together, doing their best for the whole society and 
 for mankind. When two or three are gathered together, co- 
 operating for a social good, there is the Divine Spirit in the 
 midst of them. 
 
 And there is something more, which may meet a difficulty 
 that I mentioned just now. A man may be a good doctor or 
 a good painter, or a good engine-driver, and yet he may be a 
 brute, or a liar, or a cheat. How will the duties of his station 
 prevent this ? First, we saw just now that there is a good 
 deal belonging to our station which we are apt to forget. A
 
 122 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 man's station is not merely his trade. His family and his 
 neighbours and the commonwealth are part of it. If he does 
 his duty to all of these with sense and goodwill, there will not 
 be room for very much vice. But then, secondly, we must 
 bear in mind that he is to make his own particular will har- 
 monize with the purpose of society ; now any vice or sin 
 would so far cut him off from that, and make a contradiction 
 between the spirit in which he seeks his own particular pleasure, 
 and the spirit in which he seeks the common good. No man 
 can serve two masters. The bad will is our own particular 
 will, when it rebels against the moral spirit of society. 
 
 And this common spirit or conviction of society explains 
 another difficulty. It may be asked, Are we to stand still for 
 ever ? Are we not to try to be better than people are now ? 
 Are we to obey society, and never to reform it ? I do not 
 think that this difficulty really perplexes any one, though it 
 sounds very formidable. Of course every society is moving, 
 and has a spirit of reform in it, and an ideal before it. We 
 can only live by striving after an ideal ; but our ideal must 
 not be a whim of our own vanity, not something all for our- 
 self and by ourself. It must be a social ideal, rooted in and 
 founded upon what is real. Every sound ideal grows out of 
 something real. For we saw that our very self, our life, is a 
 purpose ; and this purpose is the ideal which is in great part 
 real as well as ideal. Thus a great nation, such as England, is 
 a living real purpose, which exists, and prescribes our ideal to 
 us. To-day is real and to-morrow is ideal, but you cannot 
 draw a line between them. Our own life, and still more the 
 life of a nation, is something that goes beyond the present 
 moment ; and so, in trying to be better and to do better, we 
 are only carrying out the higher mind of society. We are 
 born into our ideal, just as we are into our actual life. Of
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 123 
 
 course the reformer does not in truth invent his ideal ; it is 
 " in the air." 
 
 I do not think it matters whether we call the community in 
 which we have our station a Christian community. If we keep 
 the substance of Christianity, we may let the shadow, the 
 name, take care of itself. 
 
 III. Is the kingdom of God on earth a Church? I will say 
 a very few words about this. Wherever there is a community 
 of persons working together for a social good, there is a 
 portion of the kingdom of God on earth. A visible Church, 
 like the Church of England, or of Rome, if it is useful for good 
 life, may be a part of the kingdom of God on earth. But a 
 family, or a nation like the English nation, is a far more sacred 
 tiling than any Church, because these are what prescribe our 
 duty and educate our will. 
 
 What we are to remember about a visible Church, like the 
 Church of England, is this. It is a good thing if it makes our 
 wills good, and points out, or helps us to feel, duties which 
 form a part of the good will. We judge whether a Church is 
 a useful society just as we judge any other society. " By their 
 fruits ye shall know them." But we must remember that no 
 visible Church, Christian or Comtist, has any authority ; and 
 no church service is a duty, except in as far as it makes us 
 better. 
 
 On the other hand, we may say if we like, that the kingdom 
 of God on earth is the same thing as the invisible Church ; 
 " the blessed company of all faithful people." I will explain 
 directly what I mean by faithful. The invisible Church, like 
 true religion, is wide enough for all mankind. It is invisible, 
 not because it is in heaven for it is on earth, but because 
 it extends so far in past and future, and is bound together 
 not by such symbols as buildings or creeds, or books, but by
 
 124 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 the great achievements and purposes which form the life of 
 mankind. 
 
 IV. I wish, before I conclude, to say something of what we 
 mean by religion. I have been speaking about the duties of 
 our station and the spirit in which we ought to do them. I 
 said that we ought to feel that we are not alone in our work, 
 and that the good purpose which others achieve is ours, just as 
 our good purpose is theirs. This is, so far, morality. 
 
 Even this morality requires some faith. It is not possible 
 to act, unless you believe that what you are trying to do can be 
 done. In every-day life we do not trouble ourselves with a 
 general belief; but we never doubt that the particular aim 
 which we have in view is possible in the nature of things. If 
 we did not believe this, we should be paralysed. We should 
 not even eat, if we did not believe that food would sustain life. 
 
 Thus, in every-day life we need the belief that the good is 
 a reality. If we hold this belief more distinctly and more 
 intensely, it amounts to this, that nothing but good is a. reality. 
 
 This faith is what people mean by religion. Of course it is 
 a faith in spite of appearances. But it does not recognise the 
 appearances against it as worth noticing. A man, in as far as 
 he has this faith, does not admit that the bad in his own heart 
 is his real self at all, and so he does not admit that the bad 
 in the world is the reality of the world. This has been twisted, 
 like everything, as if religion could mean that you were to be 
 indifferent to sin, because you say, " It really does not belong 
 to me." That is sham religion. The truth is that nothing 
 gives such force in getting rid of evil as this belief that the 
 good is the only reality. Nothing gives such confidence in 
 a battle as thinking that your enemy is only a sham. Stopping 
 short of the good seems something mad and incredible, when 
 you believe that nothing else is real. Yet, on the other hand,
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 125 
 
 the man who has this faith is not worried or uneasy. He 
 knows that he is on the side of the reality, and his heart is 
 one with it, and he is not afraid of anything. Even his own 
 wickedness is like something that comes to nothing, and is 
 sure to fade away, as long as his heart is really and truly set 
 right. 
 
 The difference between morality and religion seems then to 
 be that in morality we know that the good purpose is real, in 
 religion we believe that nothing else is real. It is the same 
 faith, differently held. 
 
 An all-important truth follows from this from religion and 
 morality being the same in principle. The duties of religion 
 are the same as the duties of morality. If we speak of duties to 
 God, we mean the same duties as duties to man. Worship or 
 prayer, in the sense of meditation, are good things if they help 
 us to do our real duties. But it is a sad degradation of words 
 to speak of a ceremony in a church as Divine Service. 
 
 And it follows from this that there is only one religion ; 
 though there are many creeds, and for every creed a particular 
 book and tradition. All these creeds and Churches and 
 ecclesiastical precepts are mere vehicles of one religion, and 
 what each of them superadds in forms, ceremonies, and doc- 
 trines are mere historical accident, and belong to the child- 
 hood of humanity. 
 
 These ideas are not new. It would be ridiculous to try and 
 invent new ideas about what men are to find in their inmost 
 hearts. European morality, in all its essentials, was built 
 up in life and expressed in language more than two thou- 
 sand years ago, by men who lived and spoke and wrote in 
 the cities of ancient Greece. One of such men, the story 
 goes, being asked by another, " How shall I educate my 
 son ? " replied, " Make him a citizen of a city that has good
 
 126' THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH 
 
 laws." And when three hundred citizens of Sparta had fallen 
 before overwhelming numbers in a battle that largely con- 
 tributed to save Europe from an Asiatic despotism, a great 
 Greek poet could devise for their grave no better epitaph than 
 the two simple lines which say, " Go, you who pass by, and 
 tell the Spartans that we lie here in obedience to their com- 
 mands." 
 
 And the citizen of Athens, when he attained the age of 
 eighteen, and his name was entered on the civic register, 
 received in an ancient temple the shield and spear which 
 symbolised his entrance into the citizen army, and publicly 
 made oath to the following effect : " I will not dishonour my 
 sacred shield. I will not abandon my fellow-soldier in the 
 ranks. I will do battle for our altars and our homes, whether 
 aided or unaided. I will leave our country not less but 
 greater and nobler than she is now entrusted to me. I will 
 reverently obey the citizens who shall act as judges. I will 
 obey the l~ws which have been ordained, and which in time 
 to come shall be ordained, by the national will. And whoever 
 would subvert the laws, or would disobey them, I will not 
 suffer him, but I will do battle for them, whether aided or 
 unaided. And I will reverence our ancestral temples. Of 
 which things the gods are my witness." This formula errs, 
 to our minds, both by omission and commission,* yet the root 
 of the matter is in it, and I have always regarded it with 
 reverence as, to the best of my knowledge, the earliest 
 European creed. 
 
 The Christian religion deepened and widened these con- 
 victions, and proclaimed that the freedom of living well was 
 the birthright of humanity, and not merely of the noble, the 
 
 * The word translated "greater" means in the first instance "larger," 
 and I fear that this meaning was realized in the Athenian disposition.
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 1 27 
 
 citizen, the wealthy, or the wise. For Divinity, the Christian 
 religion said, was to be looked for in the spirit of man, implying, 
 as we now see, that it need be looked for nowhere else. This 
 was the distinct announcement of what had really been working 
 in the mind of Greece and Rome. I should like to read you 
 a paraphrase of some verses by Lucan, written, I suppose, a 
 few years before the date at which the Gospel of Matthew was 
 composed. The hero of his poem, Cato, had been asked by 
 a friend to make some inquiry of the oracle of Jupiter Ammon 
 in Africa, which they passed in their march. And Cato, in 
 the poem, answers thus : 
 
 " What wouldst, my friend, that Cato should inquire ? 
 Needs he be told what conscience bids desire ? 
 Whether 'twere better die in arms, and free, 
 Than see Rome sink into a tyranny ? 
 If man's mere life be nought that merits praise, 
 And to live long but lengthens out his days ?* 
 If that the just can fear no violence, 
 Nor fortune against virtue do offence ? 
 If 'tis enough that men will what they should, 
 And triumph adds no lustre to the good ? 
 All this we know, nor is our certain sense 
 One jot more sure for Ammon's evidence. 
 Heaven lies about us, and we do its will, 
 Not uninspired, though all the shrines be still ; 
 God needs no language, for at birth he taught 
 All man can know, and that is all he ought : 
 Nor has Jove willed in Afric's burning zone 
 To preach his truth to wandering tribes alone; 
 Nor buried here, amid the shifting sands, 
 That revelation all the world demands ; 
 For where is God, but in the earth and sea, 
 And clouds and sky and truth and purity ? 
 Why blindly seek we other gods to know ? 
 God is where'er we look, where'er we go." 
 
 * He implies that life is desirable not for its length, but only for its 
 nobleness.
 
 128 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 And if I may conclude with a further quotation for I think 
 that it strengthens us to feel that we are not alone I will read 
 an extract from a work written one hundred years ago by a 
 man whose name is honoured wherever the great thinkers of 
 Europe are known. By this work, the philosopher Kant 
 sounded the death-knell of European superstition in a deeper 
 strain than his contemporaries Hume or Voltaire. And the 
 new reformation which began in that springtime of genius has 
 advanced steadily during the present century, which it will un- 
 doubtedly characterize in history. Kant wrote as follows 
 in his work entitled, " Religion within the Limits of Pure 
 Reason " : 
 
 " The moral capacity of man is the foundation and the 
 interpreter of all religion. Religion, for this reason, must 
 come to be gradually liberated from all arbitrary ordinances, 
 from all commands which rest merely on history, and which 
 unite men in the advancement of the good for a time only, and 
 by means of the creed of a Church. . . . The leading 
 strings of sacred tradition, with its appurtenance of rules and 
 observances, which did good service in their time, gradually 
 become superfluous, and even become a bondage when man 
 approaches years of discretion. When he was a child he 
 understood as a child, and he found that scriptural learning 
 and even a sort of church-philosophy agreed very well with 
 commands imposed upon him from without. But when he 
 becomes a man, he puts away childish things. The degrading 
 distinction between layman and priest disappears. True free- 
 dom demands equality. But equality is not anarchy, because 
 every one obeys the law not a command imposed upon him, 
 but the law which he dictates to himself. This law he cannot 
 but regard at the same time as the will of the Ruler of the 
 world, presented to man by his own reason. And this will
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 1 29 
 
 unites all men invisibly into a community, which before was 
 very meagrely represented and foreshadowed by the visible 
 Church." (The conception of a Ruler of the world, apparently 
 external to the spirit of man, and of a future life, continued in 
 Kant's philosophy as survivals, though they are, in my judg- 
 ment, quite unessential to it.) " All this is not to be expected 
 from an external revolution " (Kant was writing during the 
 French Revolution), "which is attended with storm and violence, 
 and yet has an effect largely dependent upon chance. In 
 a new constitution thus created, any maladaptation has to be 
 reluctantly borne with for centuries, because it could not be 
 altered without another equally dangerous revolution. 
 
 " The transition to a new order of things ought rather to be 
 effected by the principle of a pure religion according to reason, 
 considered as a Divine revelation constantly being made to all 
 men through their reason only. Such a principle, when once 
 grasped by mature consideration, will be realized by gradually 
 progressive reform, in so far as its realization depends upon 
 human intelligence; revolutions are providential, and you can- 
 not reckon on their results. 
 
 " But we may reasonably say that the kingdom of God is 
 come on earth, as soon as ever the principle has taken root, 
 generally, and in the public mind, that the creeds of the 
 Churches have gradually to pass into the universal religion 
 of reason, and so into a moral, that is, a Divine community 
 on earth ; although the establishment of such a community 
 may still be infinitely remote from us. For this principle, be- 
 cause it contains the motive force of a continual approach to 
 perfection, is like a seed which grows up, and scatters other 
 seed such as itself ; and it bears within it invisibly the whole 
 fabric which will one day illuminate and rule the world. 
 Truth and goodness have their basis in the natural disposition 
 
 K
 
 1 30 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 
 
 of every human being, both in his reason and in his heart. 
 And because of this affinity with the moral nature of rational 
 beings, truth and goodness will not fail to spread in every 
 direction. Hindrances arising from political and social causes, 
 which may from time to time interfere with this expansion, 
 serve rather to draw closer the union of hearts in the good. 
 For the good, when once 'it has been clearly perceived, never 
 abandons the mind. 
 
 "This, then, though invisible to the human eye, is the con- 
 stantly progressive operation of the good principle. It works 
 towards erecting in the human race, as a community under 
 moral laws, a power and a kingdom which shall maintain the 
 victory over evil, and secure to the world under its dominion 
 an eternal peace." 
 
 These words were published in 1793, and in consequence of 
 the book which contained them, the veteran philosopher, then 
 in his seventieth year, received a warning from the Prussian 
 Governruv.-nt, and had to undertake to teach no more about 
 religion. And we may be glad that they now appear to us to 
 be no dangerous speculation, but the utterance of the most 
 sober common sense ; for it is none the less true that they 
 contain the essence of European civilization, a hard-won in- 
 heritance, which it is our duty, in the words of the Athenian's 
 oath, to leave to others, "not less, but greater and nobler, 
 than it is now intrusted to us."
 
 VII. 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.* 
 
 I HAVE planned this lecture in the hope that I may, 
 perhaps, interest or help some among us by explaining 
 some considerations which have forced themselves on my 
 mind in my own attempts to understand the New Testament. 
 I am not a theologian or critic by profession, but I claim that 
 we all have a right to apply our intelligence to these questions, 
 using such books as are generally accessible ; and I believe 
 that in this way, if we are fairly cautious, we may attain to 
 substantial knowledge and ideas valuable for our lives. 
 
 The volume which we are accustomed to call the New 
 Testament is a collection of twenty-seven separate writings by 
 a variety of authors. The title which is still given to it (as I 
 have it here on the title-page of the Revised Version), " The 
 New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," indi- 
 cates the light in which the volume is regarded. 
 
 It is regarded, by all who think of it according to the 
 description I have quoted, as a book written by a special 
 inspiration for the instruction of later ages, containing an 
 authentic history and a systematic doctrine revealed as the 
 official charter of the Christian Church. And the book is 
 therefore employed for the purpose of establishing certain 
 matters of history and doctrine forming the faith and the creed 
 
 * An address given for the Ethical Society 
 131
 
 132 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 of a certain set of Churches which are founded on this sup- 
 posed historical revelation. 
 
 If we wish ever to understand the New Testament, we must 
 put away from us all these ideas. We must not regard it as 
 written by a special inspiration in order to reveal the truth to 
 later ages. We must not regard all the twenty-seven books 
 as of equal value. We must not suppose that all the writers 
 of these books had the same principles, or the same purposes, 
 or the same capacity, or the same nearness to the time and 
 ideas of Jesus Christ. We must not think that the language 
 of these writings has a supernatural depth, which in theory is 
 too profound for human apprehension, and in practice admits 
 of any interpretation we may choose. We must not, above 
 all, clog ourselves in reading the New Testament with the 
 theological ideas of the Catholic or Protestant Church, which 
 are wholly strange to the grand and simple sentiments that 
 .influenced the Apostolic age. We must not, in short, consider 
 the New Testament as the Holy Scripture of a Church. His- 
 tories and letters which are used as the sacred books of a 
 Church can never be understood in their actual meaning. A 
 Church must have a theology, and its theology must grow with 
 its necessities. And all the theology which its requirements 
 force upon it will certainly be proved out of its Holy Scriptures, 
 if it has any. 
 
 I have one word of explanation to offer before I go further. 
 It is often said that we should avoid negative teaching ; that 
 we should never pull down, but only build up. I accept the 
 spirit of this precept, which appears to me to contradict its 
 letter. Denial, a wise writer * has said, is the rejection of a 
 lesser truth in favour of a greater, and at least in presence of 
 
 * Oliver Wendell Holmes.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 133 
 
 doctrines which bar us out from a spiritual treasure, it has 
 Ipeen my own experience that a few plain denials are welcome, 
 because they alone can open the avenues of hope. Nor, 
 perhaps, is this explanation necessary here to-night. The 
 idols which we must gently push out of our way are sadly 
 timeworn, and I doubt if they are held very precious. 
 
 So I want you to accompany me to-night in casting a glance 
 at the writings of the New Testament in the time of their 
 origin, before any one thought of them as an official revelation 
 or as the charter of a new religion. 
 
 I will read from a very respectable and popular work an 
 extreme statement of the ideas which make havoc with popular 
 interpretation of the New Testament, both orthodox and 
 hostile. We must remember this ; these unwarranted ideas 
 shut up this book against thousands who might find it a help 
 to right feeling and to good conduct 
 
 " * Now, again (when the New Testament was written), holy 
 men are moved by the Holy Ghost, and their office in connec- 
 tion with this latter revelation is first to record, in the four 
 Gospels, the life, death, and resurrection of the Word who was 
 made flesh and dwelt among us; secondly, in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, to narrate some results of His servants' 'testifying to 
 him in Jerusalem, in Judea, and in Samaria, and in the utter- 
 most parts of the earth ' ; then, ' in their Epistles, to unfold the 
 truths respecting Him ' in all the fulness of the blessing of the 
 Gospel of peace ' ; and finally, in the Apocalypse, ' to show 
 unto His servants the things which must shortly come to pass 
 in relation to the destinies of His kingdom in the world.' This 
 part of Holy Scripture (i.e. the New Testament) is therefore 
 emphatically the revelation of Jesus Christ." 
 
 * Paragraph Bible, Pref. Remarks. The italics are mine.
 
 134 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 Fewwriters now, I am well aware, would put forward such con- 
 ceptions as these in such guileless innocence. Yet their main 
 result and purport lingers even where we least expect to find it. 
 All who shrink from handling the New Testament as they would 
 handle any other book are in some degree the heirs of this false 
 tradition. Not only in orthodox literature, but in Unitarian 
 writings and in works of the advanced Continental school I 
 find a tendency to substitute unintelligent praise for appreci- 
 ative study, and to treat the character of Jesus as something 
 so high that it is beyond the reach of human apprehension. 
 
 But, it may be asked, are we not to study a great character, 
 and the records of a great age, with reverence? The question 
 is rather, to my mind, have we earned the right to be reverent ? 
 Reverence is not a cheap and easy frame of mind ; it is the 
 hard-earned privilege of worshipping the greatness which we 
 have trained ourselves to know. It is easy to say to Jesus, 
 " Lord, Lord ; " it is not so easy to learn the lessons which 
 Jesus taught. Let us handle the New Testament fearlessly ; 
 let us enter into its spirit thoroughly ; and then we shall have 
 the right to reverence its greatness. 
 
 Now I turn to glance at the origin and leading ideas of the 
 New Testament, and first a few words about the name New 
 Testament itself. 
 
 The name New Testament, or new Covenant Testament 
 is probably a mistranslation indicates the idea of a single 
 revelation, the charter of a new religion. This idea grew up 
 by degrees in about 150 years after the death of Jesus.* It 
 was not till after that interval of time that a collection of 
 writings was called " The New Testament," and was reckoned 
 as standing on the same level with the law and prophets of 
 the Old Testament scriptures. There are only two places in 
 * Reuss, "Gesch. d. Kanons," sect. 217.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 135 
 
 the New Testament writings where the name "Scripture" 
 seems to be given to any New Testament book. One of these 
 is in the 2nd Epistle of Peter,* a late and not very valuable 
 writing; the other is in i Timothy, also a very late book, 
 where the word scripture probably applies only to the quotation 
 from the Old Testament. The name New Testament was no 
 doubt derived from the words of Jesus, which really rest on 
 the authority of Paul (i Cor. xi. 23), followed by Matthew 
 xxvi. 28, "This is my blood of the covenant" (or new cove- 
 nant) the idea. being worked out by Paul in Galatians iv. 
 24, in an argument which compares the new covenant of 
 Christ's Gospel with the old covenant of the law given from 
 Sinai. Then, as the writings that concerned Christ's life and 
 teaching came to be collected and appealed to, first by heretics 
 and then by the orthodox, as evidence of what the original 
 gospel was, these writings very gradually became an authority 
 on matters of belief. Then and it is just an instance of the 
 strange legal, literal interpretation of those days these books 
 were sometimes called the " deed " of the new covenant, as 
 if you were speaking of a memorandum of a lease, or perhaps 
 of a treaty between two nations. And then, for shortness sake, 
 instead of " the deed of the new covenant," the collection of 
 books was called the new covenant, or, probably by a mis- 
 translation, the New Testament! or will. This was, as I said, 
 150 years after the death of Christ, and it was about the same 
 time that the writings began to be called Scripture, which is 
 the word for inspired or infallible writings. " Scripture " in the 
 New Testament itself, except in the places I mentioned, always 
 refers to the law and the prophets of the Old Testament. The 
 
 * 2 Pet. iii. 16; I Tim. v. 18. 
 
 t "Novum Testamentum " first in Tertullian (d. about 223 A. D.). Reuss, 
 " Geschichte des Kanons," sect. 303
 
 136 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 New Testament writers regarded the law and the prophets as 
 inspired, and interpreted them quite as badly as the later 
 Church interpreted the New Testament writers. It might be 
 possible to think for a moment that i Cor. xv., " Christ died 
 Tor our sins 'according to the Scriptures,'" referred to the 
 Gospel history, standing as the Gospels do in our New Testa- 
 ment before the Epistles ; but of course the Gospels were not 
 written till after Paul's death. "According to Scripture" 
 means "in fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies." * 
 
 Thus, by the time when the writings of which we are 
 speaking had come to be called the New Testament, being 
 thus put on a level with the Old Testament, and to be treated 
 as Holy Scripture, the ideas of the age of Jesus and of Paul 
 had passed away, the theologians, both heretic and orthodox, 
 had begun their work, and the New Testament record had 
 become their battle-field. From this time forward the New 
 Testament became more and more the official charter of a 
 Church, its dignity and authority increased, and the possibility 
 of understanding it diminished. 
 
 If we want to come to close quarters with the New Testa- 
 ment writings, we must first of all get some idea (I.) Of the 
 dates at which, and of the order in which they were written, 
 and then (II.) we must go on to put together, chiefly out of 
 the books themselves, the general movement of ideas and 
 lentiments which they share, in spite of the very different 
 purposes with which they were severally written. 
 
 I. The production of the more important books of the New 
 Testament began about twenty years after the death of Jesus ; 
 and extended over a period of about a century. I may divide 
 this period for convenience sake into four lesser periods. 
 
 i. The first period is from about 54-55 A.D., when the first 
 
 * Isaiah liii. 9, 10 ; Hosea vi. 2.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 137 
 
 of Paul's Epistles which we have was written, to Paul's death, 
 probably in 64 A.D., in the persecution under Nero, at Rome. 
 In this ten years, there were written, for certain, the four great 
 Epistles of Paul, Galatians, two to Corinthians, and Romans, 
 in this order. The historical notices in these Epistles are the 
 earliest and most certain records about Christianity. Espe- 
 cially, the first two chapters of Galatians are of surpassing 
 historical interest. 
 
 On the other hand, it is quite certain that the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews was not written by Paul, and it probably does not 
 belong to this ten years. 
 
 All the other Epistles are doubtful in various degrees, which 
 we need not enter into now. Any one who wants to enter 
 into the mind of Paul, should certainly go first to the four 
 undoubted Epistles, and of these, first to Galatians. 
 
 2. The second period may be taken as from the death of 
 Paul to the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans ; six years, 
 64-70, A.D. This capture is a great landmark in the history 
 of the New Testament writings, because it put an end to all 
 present hope of a triumphant restoration of the Jewish 
 monarchy. In that way it did much to spread the' true inter* 
 pretation of Christ's gospel of the kingdom ; and in judging 
 of the date of any New Testament writing, it is always an 
 important question whether that writing seems to assume that 
 the temple services, which ceased after 70 A.D., are still going 
 on at Jerusalem. The two important writings that clearly 
 belong to this time are the Epistle to the Hebrews and the 
 Revelation of St. John, both of them in different ways being 
 full of allusions to Jerusalem and the temple-worship, and the 
 Revelation recording the history of a particular time in the 
 war. 
 
 3. The third period we may take from the destruction of
 
 138 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 Jerusalem (A.D. 70) to the writing of the fourth Gospel. In it, 
 first of all, there grew up gradually the first three Gospels, 
 Luke being decidedly later than Matthew and Mark.* The 
 Acts of the Apostles followed not very long after Luke, and 
 the Gospel called St. John's was very likely later still. The 
 Epistles called St. John's seem of the same time as the Gospel 
 called St. John's. As to the date of this Gospel, we really do 
 not know it. No one thinks of placing it much before 100 
 A.D., and some think it was more nearly 150. These dates 
 make no difference of principle. Even if it was written in the 
 year 100 A.D., John, the disciple of Jesus, did not write it. It 
 was not written by an old man of 90 or 100. We see, then, 
 that the history and philosophic divinity come last in order of 
 time, as the need for them begins to be felt. 
 
 4. And then we may just notice a fourth period, which may 
 fall within the last, because the end of the last is uncertain ; 
 but I have made it sequent, because we can fix the beginning 
 of this by the persecution under Trajan. It extends from the 
 first systematic persecution, beginning soon after 100, to the 
 organization of the Catholic Church as a kingdom of this 
 world, i Peter and 2 Timothy seem to allude to the per- 
 secution, while Titus and i Timothy show the later growth of 
 Church and creed, i Timothy iii. 16 reads like the fragment 
 of a liturgy. 
 
 We see, therefore, how very gradually the New Testament 
 writings came into being ; and we must remember that they 
 came into general knowledge still more gradually. There is, 
 as a rule, no trace of any care on the part of the writer or of 
 the congregation for the preservation of his writings, for public 
 instruction in them, or for their collection into a volume. The 
 writers of the New Testament, at least the earlier ones, treated 
 * Internal evidence is in favour of regarding Mark as the latest of the three.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 139 
 
 their books as carelessly as Shakespeare treated his plays. 
 Some of Paul's letters are certainly lost. Among " spiritual 
 gifts," such as prophecy and exhortation, no place is given to 
 teaching by means of the pen. The great Church Historian 
 writes (* Euseb., "Hist. Eccles." iii. 24, quoted in Reuss, 
 "Histoire du Canon," p. 21) : "Guided by the Holy Spirit and 
 endowed with miraculous power, the apostles carried every- 
 where the tidings of the kingdom of God, taking very little care 
 to communicate it in writing because they had to fulfil a more 
 exalted task. . . . Paul, the first of them in power of speech 
 and truth of ideas, left behind him only a very few letters, and 
 those exceedingly short, although he might have said much 
 more which had been revealed to him alone. The other com- 
 panions of the Lord, the twelve apostles and the seventy 
 disciples, were just as well informed as those who made written 
 records, and yet only two did this, and they for special reasons." 
 And a very early writer says (Papias, first half of second cen- 
 tury, in Euseb. Reuss, $.), "I did not think that the books 
 were so valuable to me, as what I learnt from a living and 
 abiding voice" (i.e. from tradition). And so we find that 
 letters belonging to the early part of the second century seem 
 to quote these books as a matter of convenience, but without 
 assigning them any authority whatever. 
 
 From all these dates and facts we see how hopelessly unreal 
 is the notion of a systematic inspired revelation, built upon a 
 solid historical basis. There was no system. There was no 
 idea of a special inspiration like that ascribed to the Old Testa- 
 ment prophets. Paul, at any rate, went on no solid historical 
 basis. The order of the books was not Gospels first as foun- 
 dation of fact, then Epistles as commentary on Gospels, then 
 prophecy to complete the book by a revelation of the future. 
 * Euseb. d. 340 A.D.
 
 140 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 The real succession of the writings was less simple, but more 
 natural. First there came the fiery letters of the missionary 
 to the Gentiles, with few or no facts and confused artificial 
 reasonings, but glowing with the first flush of a great human 
 idea ; then came the prophecy of the Jewish believer, ex- 
 pressing his hope even in the crisis of his country's agony, 
 which he took to be the sign of the Lord's immediate return ; 
 and at last, after this hope had proved a delusion, came the 
 late and gradual attempts to commit to writing, and to in- 
 terpret worthily, the fragmentary tradition of the life that was 
 beginning to seem distant after the interval of more than half 
 a century. 
 
 II. And now we must attempt to sketch some growth of 
 ideas in the first age of Christianity, such as to be in harmony 
 with the true arrangement and fair interpretation of the New 
 Testament writings. We shall again, as it happens, take four 
 periods, but they are not the same that we took in speaking 
 of the books ; because now we have to begin with the preach- 
 ing of Jesus, which was, of course, not recorded in a book 
 at the time. It is worth mentioning, as regards the relation 
 of the books to any general ideas or doctrines, that nearly all 
 of the books, especially the earlier ones, were written on par- 
 ticular immediate occasions, and in no sense for the benefit 
 of posterity. The exceptions are, perhaps the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, certainly Luke's Gospel, and "John's " Gospel, both 
 of which profess to be written with a view to instruction. 
 (Westcott, " Social Aspects of Christianity," p. 179.) "The 
 Epistles to the Thessalonians were due to an exceeding desire 
 to learn something of the state of the Church from which Paul 
 had been suddenly hurried away, when ' once and again Satan 
 had hindered him ' * from visiting them. The Corinthians, 
 
 I Thess. ii. 18.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 14! 
 
 by their divisions and disorders, no less than by their ques- 
 tions, drew from him the portraiture of love and the apostolic 
 statement of the gospel of the resurrection. The apostasy of 
 the Galatians stirred him to a burning denunciation of legal 
 righteousness. Even the studied exposition of the Faith to 
 the Romans was due, in part, to the frustration of his purpose 
 to visit them." * 
 
 We shall see, moreover, that the New Testament writers 
 lived entirely in the belief that Christ's second coming was 
 at hand, which prevented any suggestion of the need for a 
 written revelation from ever entering their minds, at least until 
 after the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 
 I will divide the early Christian movement, for mere con- 
 venience sake, into four epochs, to which we may give the 
 following names, from their principal characteristics. Of 
 course, such divisions and names are only meant to give a 
 clue in reading ; they cannot help leaving out a very great 
 deal. 
 
 1. The principle. " The kingdom of God is within you " 
 (Luke xvii. 21). Christ's Gospel of the Kingdom. From 
 about 33 A.D. 
 
 2. Its application. " Whether Jews or Greeks, whether 
 bond or free"(i Cor. xii. 13). Paul's Gospel of Humanity. 
 Paul's Mission to Gentiles. From about 40 A.D. 
 
 5. The Divine ideal. " God is a Spirit, and they ihat 
 worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth." " Ye shall 
 know the truth, and the truth shall make you free " (John 
 iv. 24, and viii. 32). "John's" Gospel. 130 (?) A.D. 
 
 4. The worldly reality. " The Church of the living God, 
 the pillar and ground of the truth" (i Tim. iii. 15). The 
 Catholic Church. 150 A.D. and later. 
 * Rom. i. 13.
 
 142 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 i. The teaching of Jesus is described in Matthew's Gospel 
 as preaching the gospel of the kingdom, which is more fully 
 called either the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. 
 This gospel or message, though perfectly simple and straight- 
 forward, was so thorough and so true, that it affected at once 
 the two chief aspects of human life man's own heart and his 
 relations in society. 
 
 We must clear away from our minds all such ideas as that 
 the kingdom of heaven means a future life in Paradise, that 
 salvation means being saved from eternal punishment, that 
 eternal life means living for ever in another world, or that 
 forgiveness of sins means the doctrine of the atonement by 
 the merits of Christ. Jesus may have had some ideas which 
 we must pronounce quite unreasonable, but tradition con- 
 stantly misunderstood him, so that it is impossible to say 
 exactly, for example, how far he believed in his own miraculous 
 second coming to judge the world, or in eternal punishment. 
 It is quite possible that he did more or less accept these 
 ideas. But of course he did not say what is put in his 
 mouth about the siege of Jerusalem, and so the sayings about 
 his second coming and the judgment may not be authentic 
 either. 
 
 We must go upon the bulk of the simple sayings and 
 parables, which there is no special reason to doubt, in the 
 first three Gospels ; and if any one persists that we cannot 
 really tell what Jesus said, then I can only answer that it does 
 not really very much matter, for in that case we must con- 
 gratulate ourselves that the Gospel-writers were so lucky as to 
 invent these things. A schoolboy once said that it was not 
 at all certain whether Homer's poems were written by Homer 
 or by another person of the same name. So I do not much 
 care whether Christ's sayings were said by Christ or by another
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 143 
 
 person of the same nature. But the tremendous contrast of 
 the first three Gospels with the fourth makes us think the first 
 three historical by comparison. 
 
 Take as the key to the whole, the words (Luke xvii. 21) 
 "The kingdom of God is within you," or "is already among 
 i you." Remember that this expectation of a kingdom was the 
 form under which the Jews were familiar with the notion of 
 a good time coming, and some of them no doubt thought of 
 it more as a time of greatness and glory, others as a time of 
 reform and righteousness. Kingdom of "heaven" is the 
 same as kingdom of God ; it was only used, I believe, because 
 the Jews did not like mentioning the name of God, just as 
 people say, "Thank Heaven," instead of "Thank God." 
 Salvation, eternal life, the world to come, forgiveness of sins, 
 must all be interpreted in the same way as the kingdom of 
 heaven ; partly meaning a state of mind which begins at once 
 and is the essential change, and partly certain consequences, 
 such as being fit for the miraculous community of the saints 
 on earth. The new Jerusalem in John's Revelation is on 
 earth ; it comes down from heaven. This was the universal 
 expectation. When Jesus says, " Thou art not far from the 
 kingdom of God," it is just like saying, You have very nearly 
 obtained salvation or eternal life, or forgiveness of sins. You 
 have nearly brought yourself to the true will to be righteous 
 which is eternal life. And consequently the world to come 
 does not mean a life in heaven ; it means the whole good 
 time which had begun with Christ's first coming. Then, starting 
 from this centre, the idea of a good time, or time of reform, 
 which was coming and had already begun, you find it naturally 
 involving two sides, which cannot really be separated. One 
 of these you have in the sermon on the mount, and the other 
 especially in the parables that deal with the kingdom of heaven,
 
 144 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 especially the parables of the grain of corn and the mustard 
 seed (Mark iv. 26 ; Matt. xiii.). 
 
 That is to say, the good time, on the one hand, is to con- 
 sist in righteousness of heart and life, in genuine human 
 morality, in putting away the selfish will. " He that loseth 
 his life shall find it." And it is to consist, for this very 
 reason, on the other hand, in a purification of human society 
 and the formation of a righteous community not restricted 
 to any nation, rank, or creed. John the Baptist strikes the 
 note to begin with. " Think not to say within yourselves, 
 We have Abraham to our father; for I say unto you, God 
 is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." 
 If human righteousness and love are the one thing needful, 
 then all the barriers of class and of caste and rank and creed 
 are condemned already, and must go. It is again impossible 
 to make out how far Jesus threw away the national pre- 
 tensions of the Jews. It was a question that split the 
 Apostolic society to its foundation, and the tradition of 
 what Jesus did and said flatly contradicts itself* It con- 
 stantly happens that a man stops short in the application 
 
 * Matt. x. 5,6. Instructions to the Twelve not to go to Samaritans 
 or Gentiles. (This in Matthew only.) 
 
 Matt. xv. 24. Jesus says he was only sent to the lost sheep of the 
 house of Israel , and in Mark vii. 24, there is the same story, without 
 those words, but still bearing strongly against helping the heathen ; but 
 the moral of the story is that the faithful heathen may be accepted. 
 According to Luke, which is supposed to be the Pauline Gospel, Jesus 
 went through Samaria (so, too, in John), and Luke alone gives the famous 
 parable of the Good Samaritan. The idea of preaching to all nations is 
 in all the Gospels, but, so far as the Synoptics are concerned, in the most 
 legendary part of them. Of course you may say that it only means the Jews 
 in foreign countries, but I do not know that any one will believe you. And 
 then there are the para.b!es of the Vineyard ant the Marriage Feast, in- 
 volving the rejection of the Tews.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 145 
 
 of his own principles in what a looker-on thinks quite an 
 unaccountable way. And Jesus may have stopped short in 
 this way. At best he cannot have said quite plainly how far 
 he went, or the disciples could hardly have quarrelled about 
 it afterwards ; and the one thing we know for certain is that 
 they did. 
 
 But there is one set of Jesus' sayings which leave no 
 mistake about the two aspects of his gospel and these are 
 his indignant sayings. Indignation is not compatible with 
 Divinity ; if Christ knew that he was God, and had created 
 these poor priests and pedants, it would have been a bit 
 of stage- play to be indignant against them. But apart from 
 this question, the point is that a spiritual religion, which 
 demands Tightness of heart and character as the only law, 
 can make no truce wkh idle forms and ceremonies, or with 
 the orthodoxy of a priestly caste, or with the selfishness of 
 classes, or the exclusiveness of nations. The kingdom of 
 heaven, which is a kingdom of the heart and mind, must 
 xlso, and for that reason, be founded on freedom, and be as 
 wide as humanity. Take such a saying as " Not that which 
 goes into the mouth defiles a man "; or again, " The Sabbath 
 was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath"; "who 
 devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long 
 prayers " ; " love to pray in the synagogues or in the corners 
 of the streets." " Why do ye transgress the commandments 
 of God because of your tradition?" And consider the act 
 of cleansing the Temple, which was a direct defiance to the 
 priestly system. All these things show just how a moral or 
 rational religion must be free and universal. They carry out 
 John the Baptist's saying, mentioned above, that it is no use 
 claiming to be Abraham's children ; for " God is able of 
 these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." 
 
 L
 
 146 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 I do not speak of the whole morality of Christ's gospel, 
 simply because we have no time to-night, and I only hope 
 to give a clue to the main idea of it. But in order to show 
 what I mean by handling the New Testament fearlessly, I 
 will say that one great sentiment of Jesus runs very near to 
 sentimentalism. I mean the warnings against worldliness. 
 Nothing, indeed, was ever more brilliantly true than the say- 
 ing about the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of 
 riches, which choke the word, so that men's lives become 
 barren. It means, I suppose, much what I heard a friend say 
 the other day, when he observed of a particular class of 
 persons in a particular town, " Those respectable people are 
 the very devil." Still I say that it is a perilous position to 
 go about telling people to take no thought for the morrow, 
 and to sell all they have and give to the poor. The spirit 
 of it is that they should give themselves and all they have to 
 the good cause ; but here, as elsewhere, the letter killeth. If 
 there is nothing baser than a life of decorous self-indulgence, 
 there is nothing nobler than a life of thoughtful and dutiful 
 citizenship ; and here I think that Jesus had something to 
 learn from Pericles. Hear what the greatest of Greek states- 
 men says : " We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in 
 our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manli- 
 ness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but 
 when there is real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no 
 disgrace ; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. 
 An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he 
 takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who 
 are engnged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We 
 alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs 
 not as a harmless but as a useless character ; and if few of us 
 are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy." To my
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 147 
 
 ear there is a manliness in these words which just at some 
 moments I could fancy that I miss in the sermon on the mount. 
 
 I repeat before going further ; the principle of Jesus was 
 certainly hostile to the exclusiveness of the Jews, and implied 
 that his religion was a religion for the whole world. And he 
 evidently made this plain to his enemies. The suggestion 
 that was fatal to him was that he would destroy the Temple. 
 Probably he had said that the Temple service was doomed. 
 There is no reason to suppose the witnesses against him were 
 false witnesses, except in the sense that they were hostile 
 witnesses. On the other hand, he started on a reform of 
 Judaism, and there is no sign that he meant to found a new 
 religion. There were no Christians in Jesus' lifetime. It 
 makes one think of John Wesley, who was for the greater 
 part of his life under the delusion that he could avoid break- 
 ing from the Church of England. In both cases it was the 
 necessities of the foreign missions that brought about the 
 decision. 
 
 2. Now we go on to the second period, the application of 
 the principle, and what we find at first is, that though Christ 
 had been put to death as a heretic, yet the community of 
 disciples, not yet called Christians, were able to continue at 
 Jerusalem after his death. This must mean that they had 
 fallen back into a more liberal sect of Jews ; there were 
 plenty of sects among the Jews, and one more was nothing 
 remarkable. This is not at all unlikely ; it is rather the 
 more likely thing. A new movement would tend to attract 
 numbers of people who did not know really what it meant, 
 and when the great leader was taken away, their common- 
 place ideas would assert themselves. We can see that neither 
 the disciples nor the Gospel-writers understood Jesus. Even 
 the author of the fourth Gospel explains the saying about
 
 148 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 destroying the Temple by a forced interpretation about the 
 resurrection (John ii. 19). 
 
 But, in a short time, at Jerusalem, some events happened 
 which the Book of Acts written sixty years or more afterwards 
 has evidently confused and disguised. Some of the Jews 
 belonging to Greek towns, who were in Jerusalem, could not 
 agree with the old Jewish congregation ; the historian puts it 
 down to a complaint about the distribution of the charity. 
 Well, most of us know what a quarrel is ; it is seldom on one 
 point only. But you will observe that the men who were 
 appointed in consequence of the dispute do not merely look 
 after the charity, but evidently initiate a religious advance, in 
 which Stephen's preaching is a chief element. And then, im- 
 mediately, a persecution begins, just on the same charge that 
 was fatal to Jesus. The false witnesses (there is no reason to 
 suppose they did not tell the truth) affirmed they had heard 
 Stephen say that " Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place 
 (the temple), and change the customs which Moses delivered 
 us." And the speech ascribed to Stephen confirms the charge 
 in effect. "The Most High," he says, "dwelleth not in a 
 temple made with hands " (a quotation from i Kings viii. 36). 
 Then Stephen was put to death and the disciples had to leave 
 Jerusalem, and some of them went to Antioch and, apparently, 
 preached to the Greeks (not merely Grecian Jews) there ; and 
 we are told the name " Christians " arose there (it is a Latin 
 name, but might easily be introduced there). 
 
 This account in the Acts leaves not much doubt as to what 
 had really happened. The Greek- speaking Jews, compared to 
 the orthodox Hebrew disciples, were like English-speaking 
 members of some little Welsh or Irish congregation ; they 
 spoke the tongue of the civilized world, and were accustomed 
 to its life and thought. Such men would naturally seize on
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 149 
 
 the universal side of the gospel, and say, " This is not an 
 affair of reforming your little local Church ; it is a matter for 
 the whole world, and we shall go and preach it to everybody." 
 (Just notice the exact point here ; the Jews were always willing 
 to receive Gentiles who would become Jews, and their prophets 
 had prophesied that all the world would come into the 
 kingdom of the Messiah. What the Jews could not endure 
 was preaching that men might enter into the Kingdom of God 
 without becoming Jews.) And further ; of course Jesus and 
 Paul are both hard on the wisdom of this world ; and it is true 
 that simple straightforward minds are specially accessible to 
 new truths. Nevertheless, Greek was the language of Christi- 
 anity. Jesus no doubt spoke a dialect of Hebrew, but the 
 Roman world could no more be converted in Hebrew than the 
 world of to-day could be converted in Welsh. Christianity 
 became a universal religion when it was preached in Greek ; 
 and it gained by the change, in capacity of development and 
 application, if it lost in becoming subject to theological super- 
 stition. The fourth Gospel could not have heen written in 
 Hebrew, and I question if Paul's noblest ideas could have 
 been thought or expressed in Hebrew. 
 
 It is clear that Stephen and his party to some extent 
 anticipated the ideas of Paul, drew upon themselves a furious 
 persecution, and in their dispersion gave rise to Gentile 
 Christianity (that is, to Christianity as a new religion). These 
 events might be perhaps two years after the death of 
 Jesus. 
 
 Then happened what, second to the ministry of Jesus, 
 is the most important event in the history of the world 
 the conversion of Paul. His own plain story of this and of his 
 conduct in consequence is in Galatians (first two chapters), 
 and we should put together with that his account of the
 
 150 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 appearances of Jesus in i Cor. xv., of the Lord's Supper in 
 i Cor. xi. 23, and the passage in 2 Cor. xii., which shows that 
 he was subject to trances. The account in the Acts is in- 
 tended to represent Paul as always guided by the old Church 
 at Jerusalem, and to give Peter an equal initiative in preaching 
 to the Gentiles. It is quite unhistoncal. 
 
 What forces itself upon us as the true account is this : Paul, 
 when he used to persecute the Christians, of course had heard 
 their story about the resurrection and the appearances, and we 
 must suppose did not believe it. Then he had a trance or 
 vision in which he thought he saw Christ, and that turned him 
 round and made him believe it was all true. That explains 
 how he persists in saying apparently, that he received all his 
 gospel, facts and all, directly from the Lord. This is not 
 certain of i Cor. xv. about the death and resurrection of Jesus, 
 but comparing the other places it is far the most natural 
 interpretation ; and anyhow he says it of the Lord's Supper. 
 One does not like to suppose that this account was a mere 
 hallucination, and passed from Paul into the Gospels, but if he 
 never heard it from anybody, it must have been so. 
 
 But, however he came to his views, we have his own writings 
 to tell us what they were, and so far we are better off than 
 trying to learn about Christ. The centre of his doctrine was 
 what I have ventured to call the Gospel of Humanity, and 
 was implied rather than affirmed in Christ's gospel of the 
 kingdom. The extraordinary force of this gospel is shown by 
 the hold which the new religion gained in Paul's lifetime on 
 the very centre of the civilized world. 
 
 The central doctrine of Paul had, like all sound moral con- 
 ceptions, a double aspect, just as was the case with the gospel 
 of the kingdom, and I may add, just as was the case with 
 Plato's idea of righteousness. I suppose we might speak of
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 151 
 
 Paul's central idea as "justification by faith only."* To 
 mention this doctrine fills the mind with echoes of theological 
 dispute. I will only make two suggestions with a view to 
 helping any one who is reading St. Paul. First : he says in so 
 many words f what the faith is a belief in the risen Christ 
 and in his Divinity and secondly, if you ask what that belief 
 means, for Paul, you must look for the answer in his idea of 
 the spiritual oneness of all believers in and with Christ. These 
 in and with Christ are the two aspects of Paul's doctrine. 
 Being one with the risen Christ, means that the particular 
 believer has put away his bad will, is dead to sin, and has 
 thoroughly submitted his heart and soul to the dominion of the 
 good will, that is, the mind of Christ. % Being one in the risen 
 Christ means that the society of believers form what Paul 
 calls the " body of Christ," that is, a spiritual unity which is 
 Divine and yet human, and as wide as humanity. Faith 
 means realizing this oneness in and with Christ. This great 
 comparison of the relation between human beings in society 
 to that between the parts of a living body was introduced 
 into moral thought by Plato, and has been, perhaps, the 
 most fruitful of all moral ideas. I will put side by side a 
 text from Plato and one from Paul. Plato writes in his 
 dialogue about a Commonwealth (notice that his principle, 
 like Paul's and Christ's, is two-sided ; he starts to show what 
 righteousness is, and embodies it in the form of a society) : 
 " Is not that the best-ordered State which most nearly ap- 
 proaches to the condition of the individual, as in the body, 
 when but a finger is hurt, the whole frame, drawn towards 
 the soul and forming one realm under the ruling power 
 thereof, feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with 
 
 * e.g. Rom. iii. 28. t Rom. x. 9. 
 
 J 2 Cor. iv. 10 ; Rom. vi. 5. Republic, v. 462.
 
 152 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 the part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in his' 
 finger ; and the expression is used about any other part, which 
 has a sensation of pain at suffering, or of pleasure at the 
 alleviation of suffering? Very true, he replied, and I agree 
 with you that in the best-ordered State there is the nearest 
 approach to this common feeling which you describe. Then, 
 when any one of the citizens experiences any good or evil, 
 the whole State will make his case their own, and either re- 
 joice or sorrow with him? Yes, he said, that is what will 
 happen in a well-ordered State." Compare with this i Cor. 
 xii. 12. "For as the body is one and hath many members, 
 and all the members of the body, being many, are one body, 
 so also is Christ. For in one spirit were we all baptized into 
 one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and 
 were all made to drink of one spirit. . . . And whether 
 one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it ; or one 
 member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now 
 ye are the body of Christ and severally members thereof." 
 Plato was speaking of a very limited visible community, Paul 
 of the invisible community of all faithful people. Those 
 splendid words, " whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or 
 free," just make all the difference. They are the war-cry of 
 the enthusiasm of humanity. And the battle which Paul 
 fought so hotly against Judaism or " the law,''' in phrases and 
 arguments very strange to our ears, about the works of the 
 law and the two covenants, and the circumcision, and the 
 gospel preached to Abraham this was our battle, the battle 
 of freedom for all time. " Ye, brethren, were called for free- 
 dom for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, 
 ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " (Gal. v. 13). I do 
 not know how a man could speak plainer than Paul speaks in 
 that particular text.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 153 
 
 Thus I need hardly go back to say that justification by faith 
 does not mean salvation from eternal punishment by believing 
 historical facts. It means, as Paul says elsewhere, a new 
 creation of the man, a conviction that right is the law of the 
 world, and an entire devotion to this law which gives strength 
 for or rather is a complete victory over sin (Gal. vi. 15). I 
 do not suggest that any one can now believe these doctrines as 
 Paul believed them, encumbered with the resurrection of the 
 body and the Divinity of Christ, and with a sort of general 
 imputation against human nature, what he calls the flesh, 
 which implies a confusion between tsvo different things, natural 
 impulse, and wilful selfishness. We cannot believe these 
 things, but any one who reads carefully will find that they are 
 a very small proportion of Paul's convictions, in comparison 
 with the simple human truth of his gospel. 
 
 3. Now I have hardly enough time to speak of the two re- 
 maining periods. But I will just point out with regard to the 
 Divine ideal, the fourth Gospel, that it is not a pwe advance 
 on Jesus and Paul. It gives in one sense the most rational 
 account of religion ; but it also shows a beginning of theologi- 
 cal superstition, and, in addition, it shows a very coarse and 
 material fancy, a heightening of the miraculous details which 
 is almost painful to read. The most startling miracle, the 
 raising of Lazarus, is in it only, and is exaggerated by the 
 allusion to the time the body had been in the grave. And at 
 Cana, " Thou hast kept the good wine until now," is a coarse 
 exaggeration. The fourth Gospel is wholly unhistorical in the 
 narrative, and the Divinity of Christ, which originates in the 
 Messiahship of Jesus, is here represented in an extreme, far 
 beyond even Paul's idea of it, as something which Christ re- 
 membered himself to have had before he came on earth. 
 
 On the other hand, " John " treats all the disputes of Paul's
 
 154 HOW T O READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 time as settled and done with. The universal destiny of 
 Christianity is a simple fact with him.* Instead of the second 
 coming of Christ to judge the world, Paul's idea of spiritual 
 oneness is carried out in the notion of the Holy Spirit, which 
 is to represent Christ and God in the mind of man. The 
 intellectual position of Christianity is quite new, and much 
 bolder than it was ; it stands complete as the absolute truth 
 and freedom, with a calm acceptance of what Paul seemed to 
 puzzle out with pain and labour. 
 
 This ideal marks the turning-point of Christian thought ; in 
 one sense it brings insight into the spirit of Christ to its highest 
 perfection ; in another sense it begins the degeneration of 
 spiritual religion into theological superstition ; a doctrine 
 something like that of the Trinity begins to show its head, 
 and the whole simplicity of the life of Jesus is destroyed. We 
 do not realize the enormous gulf between the fourth and the 
 first three Gospels, because, in reading the first three, we start 
 with ideas which we, or others for us, have drawn from the 
 fourth.-}- I will read a striking passage from a good orthodox 
 critic (Westcott, v. n). 
 
 " The first three Gospels differ at first sight as to the time, 
 the scene, the form, and the substance of the Lord's teaching. 
 If we had the first three Gospels alone, it might be supposed 
 that the Lord's ministry was completed in a single year ; that 
 it was confined to Galilee till the visit to Jerusalem, at the 
 Passover, by which it was terminated ; that it was directed in 
 the main to the simple peasantry, and found expression in 
 
 * The great text in St. John, and in many ways the greatest in the New 
 Testament, is iv. 23, " The hour cometh, and now is, when the true vor- 
 shippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. God is a spirit, 
 and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.' 1 
 
 t Westcott in "Speaker's Commentary," Introduction to St. Jolia's 
 Gospel, p. 77 ; quotation is from p. 79.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 155 
 
 parables and proverbs, and clear, short discourses which reach 
 the heart of the multitude ; that it was a lofty and pure, yet 
 practical exposition of the law by One who spake as man to 
 men. [I may say plainly that all this is just what I do be- 
 lieve.] But, if we look at St. John, all is changed. In that, 
 we see that the public ministry of Christ opened as well as 
 closed with a Paschal journey; that, between these journeys, 
 there intervened another Passover and several visits to Jeru- 
 salem ; that He frequently used modes of speech which were 
 dark and mysterious, not from the imagery in which they 
 were wrapped, but from the thoughts to which they were 
 applied ; that, at the outset, he claimed in the Holy City the 
 highest prerogatives of Messiah, and, at later times, constantly 
 provoked the anger of His opponents by the assumption of 
 what they felt to be Divine authority." And then he goes on 
 to show that the first three Gospels and the fourth have, even, 
 very few facts in common. 
 
 Of course he has to demonstrate that both narratives are 
 historical ; I can only say that I am glad / have not the task 
 before me. The fourth Gospel was written, as we saw, from 
 forty to seventy years after Paul's death, and from seventy to 
 a hundred years after Christ's.* It belongs altogether to 
 another atmosphere from theirs. 
 
 I must point out one simple sign of increasing remote- 
 ness from history at this point. The story of the Ascension 
 is not in Matthew's Gospel. It is not in Mark's, if you omit 
 what is shown as a later addition in the Revised Version. 
 In Luke, the Ascension is the same day as the resurrection, 
 obviously, as Christ passed upwards from the place of departed 
 
 * Taking Westcott's date for the gospel, 97 A.D., the intervals would be 
 thirty-three years and sixty-two years respectively. Can this make any 
 di'V-e^ce of principle ?
 
 156 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 spirits to heaven. (Same belief explicitly in the " Ep. of Barna- 
 bas," Reuss, G. d. K. 234, n.) In John, if you omit chapter xxi., 
 which is late, Christ was on earth eight days after the resurrec- 
 tion, and taking chapter, xxi., more than eight days. In the 
 Acts of the Apostles, forty days is the interval. There is the 
 legend growing before your eyes. What did Paul think, being 
 the earliest of our witnesses ? I should imagine that he did not 
 distinguish the resurrection from the ascension, and that the 
 appearances of which he speaks took place from heaven ; he 
 does not distinguish them as different from his own vision. 
 
 4. This epoch had begun, of course, long before the fourth 
 Gospel was written ; in a sense, Paul writes about Church 
 discipline to the Corinthians. But if you look carefully at i 
 and 2 Timothy, which are not genuine letters of Paul, you will 
 agree, I think, that they attach enormously greater importance 
 to questions of organization, and belong to a quite new order 
 of ideas as compared with St. Paul, and a diver-gent order of 
 ideas as compared with the author of John's Gospel ; which 
 Gospel, however, does show, both in its systematic method and 
 in its theological substance, the influence of an organized 
 Church. Very likely both these books were written about the 
 same time as the fourth Gospel. 
 
 You will notice that in these books there is great anxiety 
 about " the faith," almost as if it were a creed ; I doubt if Paul 
 uses the word thus in the four certain Epistles ; in the begin- 
 ning of Galatians he says rather " the gospel," that is simply 
 the message he had preached, not anything traditional or fixed 
 in a Church. Instructions about the officers of the Church 
 are given in detail. That is to say, the distinction of clergy 
 and laity is beginning to show its head, which led to our hor- 
 rible use of" ecclesiastic " and even of " church " as confined to 
 the officials of the Church. Both Jesus and Paul would have
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 157 
 
 fought to the death against any distinction, except one of mere 
 convenience, between clergy and laity. And in the Second 
 Epistle of Peter, as we saw, Paul's letters are alluded to as 
 Scripture, which means that an official collection was becoming 
 recognised as an authority ; and the same Epistle shows that 
 Christ's second coming, or at least, the nearness of it, was be- 
 ginning to seem doubtful, and that it was also beginning to be 
 regarded as dreadful. Nothing could be more significant than 
 the loss of faith in the second coming, combined with turning 
 to a written record. 
 
 It is clear, too, from these Epistles, and from other history, 
 that the clamour of all sorts of wild theorizing became louder 
 and louder in the second century, and the Church organized 
 its theology in self-defence. Definitions and distinctions were 
 introduced quite foreign to the mind of Christ or Paul. Every 
 phrase that an Evangelist or St. Paul had used to force the 
 great facts of religion upon men's minds, was interpreted 
 coarsely and literally, or wildly and fantastically. Ideas of au- 
 thority, permanence, infallible tradition, scriptural inspiration, 
 took the place of the idea of membership in the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 Synods and councils came to be held, having authority in 
 matters of faith. Some of the earliest synods were about the 
 burning question when Easter was to be celebrated.* Paul 
 had had a word to say about such observances to the Gala- 
 tians : " Ye observe days and months and seasons and years. 
 lam afraid of you, lest by any means I have bestowed labour 
 upon you in vain " (Gal. iv. 10). 
 
 In short, the religion of the Catholic Church became a law, 
 like that against which Paul had fought, but no doubt with 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. ii., p. 193 (ch. 15). Guizot's note.
 
 158 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 larger and nobler elements ; and Christendom has lived under 
 this law and has called it Christianity to the present day. The 
 difference is, that the Church has preserved in its books the 
 principle of truth and freedom, and it has at some times and 
 in some degree borne witness to this principle. There is 
 nothing at all strange in the fact that we now, after seventeen 
 centuries, can see the meaning of the New Testament more 
 truly than it has been seen since it was written. It is quite in 
 accordance with experience that this should be so. The ideas 
 of great men are apprehended very slowly, and a free and 
 rational society must in part exist before the dream of such 
 a society can be rightly interpreted. This does not at all 
 deny that the earlier and less free interpretations of the New 
 Testament, with the imperfect societies in which they arose, 
 have been conditions of the more free and more rational 
 society of to-day. 
 
 Now I should like to sum up a few suggestions which I have 
 found useful. 
 
 (i.) We should read chiefly the chief books, the undoubted 
 letters of Paul, and the four Gospels. The other books 
 should be judged by these, and used to fill up our knowledge 
 of the age and its varying tendencies. Acts especially should 
 be carefully compared with what Paul's own letters say. It is 
 well to get hold of some of the books which are not in the 
 New Testament collection to see the same tendencies getting 
 more extravagant.* (No one doubts, I believe, that every 
 Gospel and Epistle in the New Testament is better than any 
 book of the same kind which was not received into the New 
 Testament. This is the sole foundation, in fact, for the 
 idea of inspiration. The first century was a great religious 
 epoch.) 
 
 * "Bible for Young People," vol. 5, p. 105.
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 159 
 
 (2.) We should read patiently, but not slavishly. If, after 
 giving careful attention, we fail to understand a passage, or 
 we think it is plainly wrong and foolish, let it be so. We 
 must not twist the meaning to make it come right. I hold 
 that the English intellect has been kept back a hundred years 
 by the habit of intellectual evasion, which has its roots in 
 our slavish fears of the Bible. We must. not go text-hunting ; 
 we must read continuously, and follow the writer's meaning. 
 
 (3.) We should bear in mind the order and something like 
 the dates of the books at least so as to know when they were 
 not written. More particularly, we must remember that all the 
 Gospels are later than Paul's letters ; that the Acts is very much 
 later than Paul's letters, and puts a gloss on the facts ; and 
 that John's Gospel belongs to quite a different age from the 
 other Gospels. We must not expect the same kind of thing 
 from the different books. If we ask the right questions they 
 will tell us no lies. 
 
 (4.) We must be on our guard against the language of our 
 own translation. Every important word in it (nearly every 
 word) is charged for us with the results of 1,700 years of con- 
 troversy, none of which could be in the minds of those who 
 used the words in the original. Learning to interpret is like 
 learning to draw ; we have to get rid of our acquired ideas, 
 and try only to see what is simply given to our eye. " Father" 
 and " Son " are simple words. But when I read them in the 
 New Testament I am assaulted by ideas about the Trinity ; 
 and so, too, when I read about the Holy Spirit, notions about 
 a per 'son come to my mind. Try as we may, we shall hardly 
 regain the simplicity of these ideas. On the other hand, it 
 is silly to speak as if writers meant nothing by their words : 
 yet their meaning was not, except in John, philosophical. 
 Their words were expressions for a fact, not definitions of
 
 l6o HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 a system. In R.V. Romans v. n, "reconciliation" now 
 stands in place of " atonement," a great gain. The idea of 
 expiatory sacrifice is much strengthened by Hebrews, which is 
 not Pauline. 
 
 (5.) I find it useful to read advanced criticism useful morally 
 as well as intellectually. It stimulates attention, strengthens 
 grasp, makes the writer's mind intelligible, and so brings it 
 near and enables us to enter into it. People call it " picking 
 holes "; but this is great nonsense. When we feel our writer 
 to be of like passions as we are, then it is, and not till then, 
 that we can sympathize and appreciate. Did you ever notice 
 that there are five warnings in dreams in the first two chapters 
 of Matthew ? or that in Luke the ascension is the same day 
 as the resurrection ? These little things, and others greater, 
 just take us into the heart of the world we are dealing with. I 
 would read Matthew Arnold's " Literature and Dogma " and 
 " St. Paul and Protestantism ; " and, if you can get them in a 
 library, "The Bible for Young People," or " The Protestant 
 Commentary." Of course you will find no book without faults. 
 
 (6.) And lastly, our power of understanding the New Testa- 
 ment will depend largely upon experience of other books not 
 specially critical books. Generally, we can only gain judgment 
 and insight by reading ; and specially, we must be familiar 
 with other great ages and great ideas if we want to understand 
 early Christianity. It is a remarkable and a noble admission 
 of the great orthodox divine whom I have quoted to-day, that, 
 in his account of the social gospel of the New Testament, he 
 has owed much to his study of Comtism. It would be a 
 shallow and ungenerous retort to suggest that Comtism might 
 have been enough for him without the New Testament. We 
 want all the light we can get ; there would be no sense in 
 casting aside a great religious record because a great writer has
 
 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. l6l 
 
 helped us to see its value. I would certainly read VVestcott's 
 "Social Aspects of Christianity." Where he says you must 
 believe in the Fall of Man and in the Resurrection, I should 
 simply say, " No, I must not." But it is a good book, with 
 especially interesting notices of Francis of Assisi, who was 
 never a priest, it seems, but a great secular reformer, and of 
 George Fox, the Quaker. 
 
 Robert Owen's clear views illustrate the opposition to reli- 
 gion as external law. He said the first condition of reform 
 was to put an end to all religions as diverting attention f.om 
 the real conditions which determine character ; he thought 
 this the only chance for religion. His view of human nature 
 was shallow ; but practically, as against the prejudices of his 
 time, his suggestions were almost entirely right. He wrote a 
 book called " The New Moral World " this name is a very 
 good equivalent for Christ's phrase The Kingdom of Heaven. 
 Mazzini, or any work dealing with his life or views, is also well 
 worth reading. 
 
 No one can feel more acutely the extreme difficulty of read- 
 ing the New Testament aright than one who has enjoyed 
 what is ironically called a good religious education. And I 
 have often wished, in the bitterness of my heart, that the New 
 Testament could be buried for a hundred years, and discovered 
 afresh in a wiser age. But man must untie, with patience and 
 labour, the knots which man has tied ; and it is our task, and 
 the task of a future moral education, to regain, for ourselves 
 and for our children, some clue to the religion of Jesus and of 
 Paul. 
 
 M
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF A 
 TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY.* 
 
 I SHOULD like to explain very shortly why I have chosen 
 this particular subject. Those of us who are especially 
 accused of being interested in German philosophy are tempted 
 either to give battle along the whole line, as by discussing the 
 nature of reality, or to make everything seem all the same in 
 all systems, as may easily be done by a sympathetic treatment 
 of any special subject. I was desirous, if I could, to select a 
 point which should be important in its bearings, but yet 
 perfectly definite, so as to be explained, I hope, with some 
 approach to precision. I believe myself that this is the only 
 fundamental question which is or ever has been at issue be- 
 tween distinctively English thinkers and German idealist 
 thinkers, as such ; but when I say the only question, of course 
 I include in it its consequences, and it is the object of this 
 paper to indicate very briefly how far-reaching these are. 
 Other alleged differences, such as the distinction between a 
 priori and experiential philosophy, or that between a belief 
 in the absoluteness and in the relativity of knowledge, I take 
 to be pure misunderstandings. 
 
 In order to state the question precisely, I will take it first 
 in its logical form, although in this particular form English 
 
 * Read before the Aristotelian Society, and subsequently published in 
 Mini.
 
 IMPORTANCE OF A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 163 
 
 writers have sometimes seen and satirised the absurdity of the 
 view which, in my opinion, they accept in all other provinces 
 of philosophy. 
 
 The logical law of Identity, A is A, is susceptible of many 
 interpretations ; but they all fall, 1 think, between two ex- 
 tremes. The one extreme is to take the principle as a 
 demand that in every judgment there shall be some identity 
 or positive connection between subject and predicate, which 
 is merely symbolised by the repetition of an identical letter. 
 This view we need not trouble ourselves with ; it is nothing 
 at all, unless further explained. But the other extreme is to 
 take A is A as a statement of the sort of identity which the 
 judgment aims at : i.e., as a type of the fullest, completest, 
 most thorough identity, compared with which the identity in 
 an ordinary intelligible judgment is incomplete and falls short 
 of being genuinely identity at all. Hamilton's statement 
 ("Logic," i. 80) is of this kind. The law of Identity means 
 " Everything is equal to itself." I should state the view, then, 
 which I propose to apply and to controvert as being that 
 perfect identity consists in the entire exclusion of difference. 
 
 The importance of this view consists in its atomic tendency. 
 If we were to attach moral implications to theoretical views, 
 this doctrine might be burdened, more fairly than materialism, 
 with the c'lief associations which are supposed to be objec- 
 tionable in materialistic conceptions. I say this by way of 
 illustration of its importance, and not in the least believing 
 that such associations ought to be introduced into philo- 
 sophical reasoning. But the ground for connecting any such 
 associations with this ideal of perfect Identity without differ- 
 ence lies in what Plato would have called its eristic character, 
 that is, its tendency to exclude from judgment, and therefore 
 from truth and knowledge, all ideal synthesis. Not, of course.
 
 1 64 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 that ideal synthesis ever has been or can be excluded from 
 judgment; less deception would be possible if this were so ; 
 but what may and does happen is that an arbitrary line is 
 drawn across various contents of knowledge, and their identity 
 is denied from the point at which some little effort or some 
 little education begins to be needed in order to recognise it. 
 In fact, all ideal syntheses which we can find out to be such 
 are pronounced to be fictions. 
 
 If we take A is A in the sense to which I object, as meaning 
 that the real type which underlies the judgment is an identity 
 without a difference, we simply destroy the judgment. There 
 is no judgment if you assert nothing; and if there is no 
 difference between predicate and subject, nothing is asserted. 
 Of course in " A man's a man ' we make some difference 
 between the two terms : one means man in his isolation, the 
 other man in his common nature, or something of that sort. 
 
 If I were asked how I should represent a true Identity, 
 such as a judgment must express, in a schematic form with 
 symbolic letters, I should say the problem was insoluble. 
 Every A is B would be much better than Every A is A ; but 
 as the letters are not parts in any whole of meaning, they are 
 things " cut asunder with an axe," and such a formula could 
 only correspond to a proposition like " London Bridge is one 
 o'clock," i.e., to a spurious judgment, which would be mere 
 nonsense. 
 
 One might try Every A is AB, which would be suitable in 
 some respects ; but then, what is the use of repeating the A 
 when you have it once already in the subject ? The whole 
 difficulty would arise again in endeavouring to explain the 
 connection between A and B in AB ; and besides, a qualifica- 
 tion in the subject would be demanded to account for the 
 qualification in the predicate, and we should have to recur to
 
 A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 165 
 
 AB is AB. In point of fact, the letters, taken as mere letters, 
 are atomic existences, and the judgment cannot be repre- 
 sented by their help. If they are used algebraically, /.<?., for 
 elements in a numerical whole, the question is different. 
 
 What, then, is Identity? The judgment is the simplest 
 and perhaps the ultimate expression of it. An identity is a 
 universal, a meeting-point of differences, or synthesis of differ- 
 ences, and therefore always, in a sense, concrete. Or we may 
 speak of it as the element of continuity that persists through 
 differences. We may illustrate this idea by comparing it with 
 Locke's notion of identity. " In this consists identity, when 
 the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they were 
 that moment wherein we considered their former existence, and 
 to which we compare the present" (" Essay," Bk. ii., ch. 27). 
 In spite of this demand for the exclusion of difference, Locke 
 gives a very fair working account of personal identity, by limit- 
 ing the points within the personality which do not vary, and 
 ascribing identity in virtue of them. But he forgets that the^e 
 points are not isolable from differences, and cannot be treated 
 as identities simply on the ground of their not varying. If a 
 thing is pronounced truly identical with itself only in as far 
 as we exclude the differences of its states, attributes and rela- 
 tions, identity falls into tautology, which is really incompatible 
 with it. 
 
 Let us take such a judgment as "Csesar crossed the 
 Rubicon." In order to give this its full meaning we must 
 not try to cut it down as Lotze in one place does (" Logic," 
 58), reducing Csesar to mean merely a creature that crossed the 
 Rubicon ; this would be A is A again. Precisely the point 
 of the judgment is that the same man united in himself or 
 persisted through the different relations, say, of being con- 
 queror of Gaul and of marching into Italy. The Identity is
 
 1 66 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 the Individual, or the concrete universal, that persists through 
 these relations. And if you ask what in particular this is, and 
 try to whittle away the differences and leave the identity, you 
 will find that when the differences are all gone the identity 
 is all gone too. In the case of two outlines which partly 
 coincide, you cannot speak of the coincident part as the same, 
 except by an ideal synthesis which identifies it first with one 
 of the two outlines and then with the other. 
 
 Identity, then, cannot exist without difference. In other 
 words, it is always more or less concrete ; that is to say, it 
 is the centre or unity or continuity in which different aspects, 
 attributes, or relations hold together, or which pervades those 
 aspects, or persists through them. It is quite accurately dis- 
 tinguishable from difference in known matter, but it is not 
 isolable from difference. The element of identity between two 
 outlines can be accurately pointed out and limited, but the 
 moment they cease to be two, it ceases to be an identity. 
 
 This is the most vital point of recent Logic. The universal 
 is no longer treated as an abstraction, but, so to speak, as a 
 concretion, so that violent hands are laid even on the inverse 
 ratio of intension to extension. We can no longer see why 
 the universal, within which a certain element falls, should be 
 more abstract than that element ; why, for example, the state 
 should be a more abstract existence than the citizen. 
 
 A very good instance of this way of looking at universals 
 is the treatment of proper names* as indicating universals, 
 because they indicate persistent subjects. Most people have 
 some sort of schema which helps them to handle their philoso- 
 phical ideas. The traditional schema of the universal even 
 Mill's, I should say, though he helped to show the way out 
 
 * E.g., Sigwart, "Logik," i. 83.
 
 A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 167 
 
 of it was, I suppose, extent of area. The greater universal 
 included the wider surface, and was more abstract. The 
 schema I should now use would be more like a centre with 
 radii, or simply a subject with attributes, the greater universal 
 having the more or more varied radii or attributes, and being 
 therefore the more concrete. Such a schema is particularly in 
 harmony with taking an individual as designated by a proper 
 name for the example of a universal. 
 
 The recognition that a universal is an identity, and vice 
 versa, is to be seen dawning on Mill, who usually denies the 
 operation of identity in inference, in a very interesting foot- 
 note in the "Logic" (i. 201) directed against Mr. Spencer, who 
 answers it in "Psychology" (i. 62, note). Mr. Spencer is more 
 of an atomist, I believe, than any one else has ever been, 
 for he says that the syllogism must have four terms; /.<?., the 
 middle term is not identical in its two relations, but only 
 similar. 
 
 The concrete view of the universal has a result antagonistic 
 to the whole tendency which began with the class-theory of 
 predication (closely connected with the law of Identity), and 
 ended with Quantification of the Predicate and Equational 
 Logic. Of course these researches have been both curious 
 and important; but in as far as they aim at reducing the judg- 
 ment to an identity without difference, they are off the track 
 of living thought. Jevons's idea of Identity is very difficult ; 
 I can hardly suppose it to be thought out. But what he says 
 ("Principles of Science," pp. 16, 17) about the negative symbol 
 which indicates difference, " or the absence of complete 
 sameness," means, I think, that he considers difference an 
 imperfection in identity. Jevons writes the judgment, "All 
 Dicotyledons are Exogenous," as " Dicotyledons = Exogens," 
 which he takes to mean, I suppose, that the two classes are
 
 1 68 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 composed of the same individuals ; i.e. their identity is in the 
 mere sameness of the individuals. What this judgment really 
 means is that in a particular kind of subject, a kind of tree, 
 the different attributes of having two seed-leaves and of making 
 fresh wood on the outside are conjoined, with a slight pre- 
 sumption of causality. The whole point and significance of 
 the identity depends on the depth of the difference. So that 
 though you can, under certain conditions, take the one term 
 and deal with it as if it was the other, yet that is only a 
 consequence of the real import of the judgment; the real point 
 and import is to look at the two together, as united in the 
 same subject 
 
 In Psychology the difference between the conception of 
 concrete and abstract identity shows itself in the theory of 
 Association, especially in the attitude taken up towards the 
 law of Association by Similarity. If Identity is atomic or 
 abstract, i.e., excludes difference, then you cannot speak of 
 your present impression as being identical, or having identical 
 elements with a former impression which, qu& former, is by 
 the hypothesis different ; and, consequently, you must say that 
 the first step in Association always is to go from your present 
 impression back to another impression which is like it, before 
 you can get to the adjuncts of that former impress'on, of which 
 adjuncts the revival by association is to be explained. This 
 first step is Association by Similarity, which, according to what 
 was till recently, I believe, the received English theory, must 
 always precede Association by Contiguity, that is, the transi- 
 tion to those adjuncts of the former impression, the recalling 
 of which by something in present consciousness is the problem 
 to be explained. The theoretical question at issue is mainly 
 the degree in which the processes of consciousness are homo- 
 geneous at its different levels. Association of particulars
 
 A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 169 
 
 might lead up to Inference from particulars to particulars, but 
 could never lead up to the activity of judgment and inference 
 considered as the interconnection of universals. 
 
 The question of fact which is involved in this quesuon of 
 theory is one of extreme interest. It is whether we do, in 
 what is called transition by association, go from the presented 
 element to the quite different context which it recalls, through 
 a distinct particular reproduction of a former impression 
 similar to that now presented. If this is so, we go to Con- 
 tiguity always through Similarity, and in doing so we revive 
 our former impression (I adopt the language of the theory, 
 though, if there is no identity, we cannot revive a former 
 impression, but only one like it) with complete exactness, just 
 as if we were taking a print out of a portfolio. And the idea 
 that we do this is attractive, because in some cases we appear 
 to be aware of doing it in a striking way of going right back 
 into a former and similar state of consciousness, before we go 
 on to the further adjuncts contiguous with that former state 
 of consciousness. 
 
 But I do not think that this popular idea will really bear 
 examination in the light of facts. It is plain that, as a rule, 
 the element in present perception which sets up an associa- 
 tion is not a particular complete in itself, and operative by 
 calling up a former separate or self-complete particular resem- 
 bling it. On the contrary, the element which sets up an 
 association can be seen very easily (if we think of hourly, 
 normal occurrences of the process, and not merely of striking 
 examples in which a picturesque memory is at work), to be 
 a characteristic in a present complex perception, not itself 
 sensuously isolable, but identical with something in a former 
 complex perception, and recalling directly, without interme- 
 diation of a similar particular, some adjunct of the former
 
 T.%0 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 complex perception. And this adjunct, the idea whose re- 
 production is to be explained, is not itself a particular, but is 
 a complex dominated by a type or rule of interconnection, 
 which does not appear in the mind with its old particular 
 content, but with a new one largely furnished and modified 
 by the present content of consciousness.* The more closely 
 we examine the matter, the less we shall think that contents 
 brought up by association reappear in their old form, like 
 prints out of a portfolio, or involve an intermediate repro- 
 duction of the old case similar to the new perception which 
 starts the process. The illusion comes from seeking out very 
 elaborate examples. The common cases in which association 
 and inference can barely be distinguished are perfectly good 
 instances, and show the continuity of the intellectual function. 
 I hear a rumbling in the street and think that an omnibus is 
 passing, or a double knock and know that the letters have 
 come. I do not go back to the last particular rumble or post- 
 man's knock, or expect letters like the last which came. 
 
 The interest of those who believe in concrete Identity, in 
 thus reducing the two " Laws of Association " to the one Law 
 of Contiguity, is to enforce the idea that the content of con- 
 sciousness is never merely simple or particular, and that in 
 association, as in judgment, the universal or meeting-point of 
 differences furnishes the true guide to the intellectual process. 
 
 This reduction is beginning to be accepted (e.g., Mr. Sully 
 mentions it, and Mr. Ward in some degree adopts it), not 
 perhaps in the full sense here claimed for it, but merely as a 
 preferable statement of the operation of ideas which are 
 particulars. I doubt, for example, whether Mr. Sully has 
 
 * It will be obvious to all who are familiar with the subject, that I am 
 borrowing largely from Mr. Bradley 's chapter on "Association "in " Prirn 
 ciples of Logic."
 
 A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 
 
 abandoned the Scotch or English ground of atomism in ideas. 
 But to recognise identity as the universal makes the associative 
 process far simpler, and homogeneous with the whole remain- 
 ing evolution of consciousness. 
 
 In Ethical Philosophy the desire to exclude difference from 
 identity produces analogous difficulties to those which we have 
 noticed in Logic and Psychology. If, in short, difference is 
 excluded from identity, how are you ever to get from one self- 
 identical particular to another, whether in inference, or in 
 association, or in moral purpose, or in political obligation ? 
 In the sciences that deal with human action the natural 
 atom to start from is, simply putting atom into Latin, the 
 individual human being. Of course an individual human 
 being is a concrete universal, as we saw in speaking of what is 
 meant by a proper name ; but as his unity is pressed upon us 
 by merely perceptive synthesis, we are apt to treat it as a 
 datum, or to draw a sharp line between the unity of the 
 individual human being, as a datum of reality, and the unity 
 of human beings in identical sentiments, ideas, purposes or 
 habits, as something not a datum, not real, the mere creation 
 of our comparing intelligence. A striking example of such a 
 point of view on Ethical ground is the passage in " Methods of 
 Ethics," p. 374, where Prof. Sidgwick speaks of testing the 
 feeling of common sense towards the sum of pleasure as an 
 ethical end, by supposing that there was only a single sentient 
 conscious being in the universe. Of course it is allowable to 
 suppose, for the sake of argument, alteration in a state of 
 things which we know to be actual ; but nobody least of all 
 so cautious a writer as Prof. Sidgwick would remove in his 
 supposition so enormous an element of the case as man's social 
 life, unless he supposed it to belong less really to the indi- 
 vidual's moral identity than his existence as a living body does.
 
 172 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OK 
 
 This is simply not the fact. Of course, if a plague carried off 
 all men in the world but one, that one might retain his social 
 consciousness and habit of mind. But apart from further 
 religious assumptions, that consciousness would be an illusion, 
 and the man's self would be a mutilated fragment for which no 
 real life was possible. The fairer case to put, which we can 
 observe in fact but too often, is to suppose that the body lives 
 on, but that the real identity with society and humanity the 
 universal consciousness is extinguished in that one body by 
 disease. Then we see that it was not in the least a metaphor, 
 but an absolutely literal truth, to say that the man's real self 
 what he was as a moral being and in part as a legal person 
 consisted in a system of universals, or identities including 
 difference viz., the consciousness of certain relations which, 
 as identities in difference, united him with family, friends and 
 fellow-citizens. "Identities in difference," such, e.g., as a man's 
 relation to his son ; it is like the case of the two outlines which 
 I mentioned. The two men are bound together by certain 
 facts known to both of them, certain sentiments and purposes, 
 all of which they both share, but in regard to which each of 
 them has a different position from the other, apart from which 
 difference the whole identity would shrink into nothing. 
 
 In Political Philosophy, again, we may notice Mr. Spencer's 
 social atomism, curiously doubled with a comparison of the 
 body politic to the living body, in which the state is taken, 
 roughly speaking, as a unit, among units, instead of being taken 
 as a real identity throughout the whole. It is a strange fate 
 for Plato's famous simile of the organism to have its contention 
 retorted in this way. A justification might be found for Mr. 
 Spencer by pressing home the idea of a spiritual identity as 
 against an external or legal one, and probably that is the sort 
 of meaning which he has in mind, but he is barred from saying
 
 A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 173 
 
 so by disbelieving in identity altogether; and it would not be 
 true, for a spiritual identity will always express itself as a legal 
 one. 
 
 I should like to try and illustrate this point of real identity 
 by one further example. We here, the members of the 
 Aristotelian Society, have in our minds, qua members, a 
 really identical purpose and endeavour, and consciousness 
 of certain facts, just as actually and truly as we are actually 
 and truly sitting round an identical table. It is not the fact 
 that we are a number of separate individuals or atoms, each 
 completely real in his sensuous identity, and merely cherish- 
 ing, in addition, certain ideas which happen to resemble 
 each other. In as far as this is fact, it is so in the sense 
 that our moral being has enough in other relations to fill 
 it up and make it real, apart from what we are and do as 
 members of this Society. But in as far as our membership 
 plays any part in our consciousness, so far this real identity 
 actually and in sober earnest forms a part of our being as 
 the individuals that we are, and our solidarity as a Society 
 is only another aspect of a real identity which is recognised 
 in a different form by each several member of the Society, 
 according to his individual relations to it. It may be said : 
 " But our ideas and purposes in respect of the Society are 
 not all the same ; they are probably not all even in agree- 
 ment." But our ideas of the table are not all the same; 
 our perceptions of it are certainly all different the different 
 angles at which we see it answer for that. No one can 
 prove that we all see it of the same colour, and if we do not, 
 our perceptions of it are even discrepant. Yet we say it 
 is the same table, because, in our worlds which we severally 
 construct and maintain, it fills a corresponding place, and so 
 we do not say that there are as many tables as people; but
 
 174 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 we call it one and the same table which we all perceive. 
 And so, because this Society to which we belong is recog- 
 nised by each of us in certain purposes which are relative 
 to the corresponding purposes of others, and which assign 
 different people the places necessary to common action, we 
 call it the same Society, which really exists in the ideal and 
 practical recognition of it by its members, and is something 
 in them which is the same in all of them, and without which 
 they would be so far devoid of a real solidarity which they 
 now possess. 
 
 If we once begin trying to exclude difference from identity, 
 we can never stop. The comparison of Locke's discussion 
 with Hume's is interesting in this respect. Hume follows 
 much the same lines as Locke, but bears more distinctly 
 in mind that in explaining an identity which includes differ- 
 ence e.g , personal identity he is not expounding a fact, 
 but is, according to his own principle, accounting for a 
 fallacy. The problem is, of course, as old as Heraclitus. 
 If we want to free identity from differences, we must go to 
 atomic sensation, and then we cannot Any limit which 
 we place upon real identity has only a relative value, de- 
 pending upon the aspect in which the terms are compared. 
 If we try to make such a limit absolute, it at once becomes 
 arbitrary. 
 
 And by accepting such a limit we may be driven into an 
 opposite extreme, through lumping together all that lies 
 beyond our limit. It seems to me that the Comtists do this 
 in erecting Humanity as an object of worship ; they know 
 that all ideas of solidarity or real identity among men are 
 apt to be taken as fiction, and they think it as cheap to 
 have a big fiction as a small one. So they take an object, 
 \ think, in which it is really very hard to show a centre
 
 A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 175 
 
 of identity. You can do something with an ideal human 
 nature embodied in an individual, or with a national con- 
 sciousness and history ; but is there really anything at once 
 definite and valuable that links together all humanity as 
 su:h, including the past? 
 
 It often occurs to one to ask oneself, whether all this 
 question is not largely verbal. Supposing we take identity 
 to exclude difference, and therefore practically banish identity 
 from the world altogether, and instead of it use the term 
 similarity or resemblance, and attach certain consequences 
 to certain degrees and kinds of similarity, would philosophy 
 suffer any loss ? When Hume explains continued identity 
 as a current fiction, does he not explain it quite as well as 
 any one could who called it a fact ? When Mill treats con- 
 sciousness as an ultimate inexplicability, does he not in that 
 very passage state the nature of consciousness as well as 
 any one could who professed to be able to explain it ? There 
 is something in this, in so far as we analyse contents, as 
 Locke and Hume do in their discussions, and distinguish 
 what consequences attach to what resemblances, or, as Hume 
 would call them under protest, identities. 
 
 This can be done, by the process of denning and precisely 
 limiting the points of resemblance in respect of which in- 
 ferences are drawn, such as those inferences which we draw 
 from what we call personal identity. An indiscernible re- 
 semblance between two different contents, in specified respects, 
 will do whatever identity will do, because it is identity under 
 another name. The self-contained identity of the separate 
 contents is broken down when you admit that one of them 
 can be indiscernibly like the other, and yet also remain differ- 
 ent from it. In that case the contents form a coherent system 
 or unity in multiplicity, which is the essence of identity.
 
 176 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 The only objection to this is the confusion of terminology, 
 and so of thought, which is involved in putting ordinary 
 similarity, the essence of which is not to be precisely analysed 
 and not to establish a middle term or centre, on the same 
 level as " exact likeness," which establishes a middle term 
 or centre of unity. We know that in ordinary similarity the 
 things pronounced similar remain separate, and you cannot 
 infer from one to the o<her. On the other hand, in indis- 
 cernible likeness or identity there is a systematic unity between 
 he elements in question, which is as real as the elements 
 themselves. Therefore, to dispense with concrete identity 
 involves a confusion of the case in which the transition 01 
 unity is "objective" i.e., as real as the content itself with 
 the case in which the content is self-contained and merely 
 has a certain echo of another content, so that the similarity 
 of the two may be called subjective; that is to say, thai 
 it is not precisely referred to any element in the content itself. 
 In the one case the unity of the contents is real, in the 
 sense that it is definitely a part of themselves ; in the other 
 case it is a fiction, in the sense of being somehow added 
 on to them by a confused perception. 
 
 It is quite possible to examine into the bearings and nature 
 of a fiction or artificial structure, and English philosophy, 
 from Hobbes to Mill, has done much good work in this 
 attitude. But putting aside the theoretical inconvenience, 
 which I have tried to point out in detail, of assuming the 
 wrong kind of unit, there is also an important practical effect 
 on the theoretical interest. People will not pay the same 
 attention to what they think secondary or artificial as to what 
 they think a reality in its own right. Reality means to us 
 something that resists efforts to destroy it, and refuses to to 
 remodelled at our pleasure, and everything which is artificial
 
 A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 177 
 
 or made up, though of course it exists, seems arbitrary and 
 capable of being remade in another way, especially if we 
 believe that the units when separated would retain a value 
 which, in fact, they only have in synthesis. And for that 
 reason anything artificial seems less fundamental, and less 
 worth detailed investigation, than what is thought to have a 
 nature that cannot be got rid of, and that includes all we 
 need care about. . 
 
 I should like, in conclusion, to illustrate this effect by more 
 general considerations. The effect is, I repeat, the outcome 
 or embodiment of an idea that difference is detrimental to 
 identity (the logical formulation of the doctrine is not, of course, 
 responsible for the whole effect or embodiment) ; and it con- 
 sists in a sceptical attitude towards the real unity of every 
 system or synthesis which can be seen to be a synthesis. 
 And by " real " I mean having equal reality with the in- 
 dividuals which enter into the synthesis, so as to form an 
 integral part of their nature, and not to rank as something 
 which may be thus or otherwise without fundamentally affect- 
 ing those individuals. 
 
 This feature is extremely remarkable in the otherwise bril- 
 liant history of British philosophy. I suppose that in the 
 theory of material evolution England stands unrivalled. In 
 the theory of spiritual evolution, apart from some excellent 
 recent treatises on the simpler phases of anthropology, and 
 apart from the recent Germanised movement itself, England 
 has not a single work of the first class, and hardly a single 
 work of the second class, to show. Of course Herbert Spencer 
 fills a large place in the world's eye, and has no doubt made 
 important general contributions to the theory of evolution. 
 But I think it would almost be admitted that he is more of a 
 theorist than of a historical inquirer, and at best his inquiries 
 
 N
 
 178 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF 
 
 are very limited in range. On the evolution of fine art we have 
 not merely no philosophy, but we have not the material for it ; 
 we have no native history of fine art of any distinction, if we 
 except the life-work of Mr. Ruskin. The history of religion, 
 of morals, of law, of philosophy, and also history as such, have 
 met with no complete philosophical treatment. I believe 
 there is no tolerably good edition of Plato's "Republic," or of 
 Aristotle's "Ethics" or "Politics" (till the.last few days),* that 
 has been made by an Englishman for the use of Englishmen. 
 The same is true of the New Testament, though there I am 
 told that other nations share our deficiency ; but they do not 
 share the deficiencies of our general treatment of theological 
 subjects, which till lately testified to the same curious apathy 
 on the part of philosophical students. 
 
 Our logic, even, has only of late I should say not till Mill's 
 "Logic" appeared -really attempted to assume a vital and 
 organic character as a genuine analysis of the intellectual 
 world. Our analytic psychology and metaphysic, while it has 
 from time to time shaken the world by the acuteness of its 
 questions, has, as it always seems to me, almost wilfully de- 
 clined to engage in the laborious task of answering them. 
 
 Such observations as these may be taken as an attack on 
 British philosophy. I do not mean them to be so ; I do not 
 doubt that the philosophy of Great Britain will creditably stand 
 comparison with that of any nation in the world, excepting 
 always, in my judgment, the ancient Greeks. But I do think 
 that not enough attention is usually paid to what is, so far as I 
 know, the wholly unparalleled fact, which a mere glance at a 
 bookshelf containing the works of the great British philosophers 
 will convince us of, that they have understood the limits of 
 
 * Mr. Newman's edition of the "Politics" was published shortly before 
 tliis paper appeared in Mimi.
 
 A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 179 
 
 their subject quite differently from the philosophers of other 
 countries. The qualities which have hitherto been displayed 
 in British philosophy I mean in the really effectual part of it 
 have been, as it seems to me, only a portion of the charac- 
 teristics of the race which has produced it. Penetration and 
 audacity, a power (so to speak) of leading the forlorn hope, 
 have been the characters by which British philosophy has at 
 times left a decisive mark on the thought of the world ; but 
 it has hardly shown the power of comprehensive organization 
 and continuous growth which in practical life, and I suppose 
 in physical science, put the British people at the head of the 
 nations. We do hear sometimes that even in practical organi- 
 zation, when it has grown so elaborate as to demand conscious 
 and reflective development, we tend to come short ; e.g., in 
 education and in the means of modern war. 
 
 This national peculiarity, which can hardly as a matter of 
 fact be denied, is no doubt a defect of our good qualities ; and 
 it is perhaps not fanciful to connect it with our insular 
 position, which may cut us off more than we are aware from 
 the impression of a real unity and continuity in a very various 
 life. No one can read Goethe's recollections of his boyhood 
 without feeling how, for example, the pageants of the empire 
 which he witnessed at Frankfort helped to call out his preg- 
 nant sense of organic continuity. More especially I suppose 
 that the secondary results of the Renaissance which led up 
 to the splendid development of genius in Germany, about a 
 hundred years ago, were choked in England largely by the poli- 
 tical causes which led to the victory of Puritanism. 
 
 It seems to me, therefore, that the recent interest in German 
 philosophy, which has shown itself in some meritorious and 
 perhaps in some rather laughable forms, is not an accident, 
 but is an aspect, however humble, in the great intellectual
 
 I So IMPORTANCE OF A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 
 
 movement of the nineteenth century, and brings with it, how- 
 ever awkwardly, an element in which the abstract thought of 
 this country has hitherto been deficient ; that is, a faith in 
 those higher forms of human solidarity which are only created, 
 maintained, and recognised by intelligent effort. We must 
 remember that while Kant and Hegel are annoying our philo- 
 sophers, Rousseau, Schiller, and Goethe, who have the same 
 ideas in their practical shape, are at the other extreme of 
 society, under the name of Froebel, reforming our infant and 
 elementary schools, and that perhaps our very economical and 
 commercial existence is at stake in the degree to which the 
 national mind can be awakened to the real value of the world 
 of truth and beauty. The actual history of the Germanising 
 movement in England would be well worth tracing. I sup- 
 pose Coleridge and Carlyle represent two early aspects in it ; 
 Carlyle's laborious historical work is quite as characteristic 
 of it as Coleridge's rather ineffective philosophising. 
 
 The logical aspect of such a movement as this is the tran- 
 sition from an idea of exclusive or abstract identity to one of 
 pregnant or concrete identity. I should say the transition 
 began in England between Hamilton and Mill. This idea 
 has not been overwhelmed by the reaction which has set in in 
 Germany against Hegelianism, but remains a permanent and 
 vital gain to logic. A nation does not lose what a teacher 
 like Goethe, not to speak of Hegel, has taught it ; and we 
 should be much mistaken if we fancied that our common logic 
 was already on a level with that of Prantl and Sigwart, because 
 it is innocent of Hegelianism, against which they are in re- 
 action. The reaction is simply a way of thoroughly appro- 
 priating what has been done, and making sure that we under- 
 stand it. The state of innocence is something very different 
 and inferior.
 
 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION BE- 
 TWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION."* 
 
 I AM privileged to speak this evening before a society of 
 philosophical students in the city which has been called 
 the modern Athens. It appeared to me, therefore, that I might 
 not inappropriately lay before the Society some thoughts on 
 that central question by the treatment of which in ancient 
 Athens the first foundations were laid of a European philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 The question, " Is there such a thing as knowledge, and, if 
 there is, by what features may we recognise it ? " had, I take 
 it, a far more radical bearing in Plato's time than in our own. 
 For us, it is a matter of extreme scientific and also of ethical 
 interest to define the grounds and principles on which, and 
 subject to which, human thought can claim to apprehend the 
 nature of things. The idea of the unity of the world is vital 
 even to those who think that they deny it. But, except in 
 some remote theoretical sense, no one does, or can deny it to- 
 day. The great inheritance of science and philosophy is to 
 logic, as civilized law and religion to moral reflection, or as 
 the fine art of the world to the perception of beauty. If any- 
 thing bewilders us in the proceedings of nature, we set it 
 down, as a mere matter of course, to our own ignorance. Nor 
 
 * An address given before the Edinburgh University Philosophical 
 Society.
 
 1 82 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION 
 
 does any one seriously dispute the main content of civilized 
 morality, or the universal value of beauty. Our theories are 
 tested by these things, and not these things by our theories. 
 But in Plato's time these great objective supports were largely 
 wanting to philosophy; though doubtless the civilization which 
 he knew seemed much larger to him than, by comparison, and 
 owing to our ignorance, it now seems to us. In the .way of 
 systematic knowledge, we think there was only a little mathe- 
 matics ; in the way of moral consensus, only the institutions, and 
 the not very stable convictions of his own small country, and 
 to some extent of the Hellenic world ; in the way of realized 
 beauty, the products of the short-lived maturity of one only, 
 though that the most gifted, among nations. I cannot but 
 think that the suggestion that these principles and activities 
 belonged to no coherent unity, and possessed therefore no 
 absolute and universal validity, was in his day a natural and 
 probable suggestion to a degree which we cannot for a moment 
 imagine. If now, for example, the mysterious debility were 
 to strike Great Britain, which has struck other nations that in 
 their time have led the world, we should look, I suppose, 
 with confidence to Europe and to America for successors who 
 could carry on the torch of science and of civilization. But if 
 in Plato's time the educated and politically civilized society of 
 Hellas, and more especially of Athens, was to be crushed, or, 
 as he clearly foresaw, to deteriorate, where was the philosopher 
 to look for the hope of humanity ? 
 
 Therefore, it seems to me, we should consider Plato's 
 account of scientific knowledge, although drawn from the 
 acutest analysis of experience, as in part a prophecy^ which the 
 later history of the world has wonderfully accomplished and 
 defined. To complain that Plato did not say, and did not 
 indeed know in precise detail, what he meant by his dialectic,
 
 BETWEEN Si KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION. 183 
 
 is to complain of a philosopher for possessing the genius that 
 could lay down the universal conditions of a science for which 
 the actual materials did not in his time exist. He had to 
 work with only a few fragments of organized experience, and 
 in face of a world apparently relapsing into moral chaos ; but 
 perhaps the difficulty thus occasioned is compensated not 
 only by his genius, but by the burning reality which the ques- 
 tions of philosophy thus acquired for him. 
 
 Of these burning questions the chief and typical one was 
 that which I mentioned : Is there such a thing as knowledge, 
 and what are its distinctive features ? 
 
 We all know how the question is introduced in the fifth 
 book of the " Republic." Politics, Plato says in effect, are a 
 science ; you will never get government properly organized 
 till it is in the hands of people who have some grasp of 
 principles. And in support of this suggestion he goes on to 
 explain where the distinction lies between the mind as grasp- 
 ing a unity of principle, and the mind as wandering through 
 a variety of particulars. I will not follow the discussion in 
 Plato's sense, but will merely mention what throws light on 
 the question before us. Plato draws many contrasts between 
 the world of opinion and the world of science ; but the cen- 
 tral contrast which is the focus of all the others is this, that 
 opinion may make a mistake, but science is infallible. And 
 the fundamental question which I should like to discuss this 
 evening is what we mean by any such conception as that of 
 the infallibility or necessity of science, and what limitations we 
 must observe in applying it. 
 
 In the main, we shall not improve much upon Plato. 
 According to him Opinion was liable to err because, in fact, 
 it constantly contradicted itself. And it contradicted itself 
 because its content was relative, but not defined. And its
 
 184 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION 
 
 content was not defined, because it was merely an aggregate 
 of perceptive or traditional judgments, which no attempt had 
 been made to analyse or to reconcile. The " many " or 
 " manifold," which is constantly recurring in Plato, as the 
 characteristic content of popular opinion, obviously means not 
 merely separate objects or sensations, but isolated and therefore 
 conflicting judgments. Thus we hear of the many popular for- 
 mulas, vo/xt/xo, of " beauty and justice," and again of " the many 
 justices," that is, cases of justice regarded as rules of justice ; 
 and so of the " many beauties," i.e. conflicting standards of 
 beauty. He is thinking of minds filled with unrationalised 
 instances which appear as fluctuating standards and conflicting 
 judgments. 
 
 And because its content is unrationalised, therefore the 
 world of opinion tends to coincide with the world of sense, 
 and is, of course, spoken of as the world of the things that are 
 seen in contrast with the world of the things that are under- 
 stood. The Greek expressions 86a and SoKet (" seeming," and 
 "it seems to me") lend themselves to this distinction. I do not 
 suppose that these words indicate sensuous appearance, as do 
 <j>aivco-6ai and <avTacria, but they do indicate a contrast with 
 active thought, a sort of personal acceptance as opposed to a 
 universal conviction. And Plato, in the " Republic," as we 
 know, sweeps into the category of opinion or fallacious appear- 
 ance even the representations of fine art, because they can be 
 considered as images or imagery, and therefore as sensuous. 
 
 Science, or knowledge, on the contrary, was infallible, in the 
 sense that its content was single, and its inmost nature there- 
 fore excluded the possibility of contradiction or fluctuation. 
 Not that its content was other than relative, but then, being 
 relative, it was defined. Of course there is no confusion or 
 contradiction in relativity when you know to what your terms
 
 BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION." 185 
 
 are relative. Relativity in this sense is the root of scientific 
 necessity. 
 
 And thus, moreover, being defined, the content of science 
 was necessarily intellectual. It is impossible to have a con- 
 nected system of conditions in the shape of unanalysed percep- 
 tion or traditional judgments. And so the object or content 
 of science was spoken of as the world of things understood, in 
 contrast to the world of things perceived by sense. We are 
 not here concerned with any materialising misconceptions, of 
 Plato's or of our own, respecting that intelligible world. There 
 is no question whatever that the unseen world which Plato 
 was labouring to describe was the world of science and of 
 morality the connected view which gives meaning at once 
 to nature and to human life. 
 
 I suppose that the account which we should now accept of 
 this distinction between knowledge and opinion would be es- 
 sentially founded on that of Plato; but the conditions of 
 modern thought have driven home one or two important points 
 on which his language is not and could not be absolutely un- 
 ambiguous. 
 
 In the first place, we must be very cautious in accepting the 
 opposition between the world of science and the world of 
 sense. We have not in exclusive use the convenient Greek 
 term, " it appears to me." We recognise no peculiar connec- 
 tion between opinion and sense. We speak without a blush 
 of " scientific opinion" and even of " scientific authority" Our 
 opinions are a sort of debris of antiquated science and political 
 or theological tradition, of general maxims and half-understood 
 principles. They have not, we are inclined to think, enough 
 immediate touch with the world of sense-perception. Their 
 fault is rather intellectual confusion than imperfect abstraction 
 from sense.
 
 1 86 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION. 
 
 Our science, on the other hand, seems closely bound up 
 with sense-perception. Nor, again, should we ever dream of 
 ranking Fine Art among unreal illusions, because it is, and 
 must be, largely sensuous. The extremes of our mental world 
 seem to have met, and even to have crossed. Our chaotic 
 opinion is intellectualised, and our coherent science is material- 
 ised. If we try to distinguish the world of things seen from 
 the world of things understood, where are we to bestow that 
 act of seeing which a distinguished microscopist begins by 
 describing as " an act of the pure understanding "? 
 
 The fact is, that there are correlative misapprehensions at- 
 taching to this idea of a world of sense-perception, which we 
 must take care to avoid. Sensation, we are too apt to say, is 
 illusory or false. This is incorrect. What we ought to mean 
 is that sensation is not true ; but for the same reason for which 
 it is not true, it is also not false ; for it is not a judgment at all, 
 and nothing but judgment can be true or false. On the other 
 hand, if we mean to say that sense-perception, such as human 
 seeing or hearing, is illusory, as Plato too often appears to 
 imply that mayor may not be ; these activities are judgments, 
 and may no doubt be false, but also may be true. 
 
 There is, indeed, a secondary difficulty affecting the truth 
 of any perceptive judgment which is bona fide a singular judg- 
 ment, because its subject is to some extent unanalysed, and 
 therefore not accurately conditioned. But when you are once 
 fairly started on the continuous evolution of judgment, you 
 will find it very hard to draw any intelligible line between 
 judgments affected by this secondary difficulty, and judgments 
 which are not so affected, or are so in a less degree. And 
 granting that judgments affected by it may intelligibly be called 
 " nearer to sense," it still remains quite -untrue that judgments 
 dealing with the determinate concrete objects of our perceptive
 
 BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION." 187 
 
 world are necessarily judgments thus near to sense. As Plato 
 says, our primary remedies against sensuous illusions are 
 number and measure ; and so-called sensuous objects, as they 
 exist for civilized and for scientific minds, are penetratingly 
 determined at least by measurement and enumeration. 
 
 Thus, we must clearly realize that knowledge and opinion 
 both exist in the medium of judgment, that is, of thought. 
 That marvellous dialectician, common language, forces us 
 most commonly to say, " I think," when a Greek would have 
 said, "It seems to me." And though one may be tempted in 
 a moment of irritation to exclaim with Dr. Whewell, " Do you 
 call that thinking ? " yet, philosophically speaking, if a judgment 
 is made, it ts thinking, and we must be quite clear that our 
 distinction between science and opinion is a distinction within 
 the world of thought, which is a single world, and to which the 
 objects of human sense-perception emphatically do belong. 
 
 Then, in the second place, and as a consequence of this 
 generic oneness of our world, we must guard ourselves against 
 finding the differentia of knowledge in any isolated principle 
 which may seem to commend itself to us as peculiarly intel- 
 lectual in origin or by contrast. We shall do no good by com- 
 paring one isolated judgment with another in order to accept 
 that which is more remote from experience or concrete reality. 
 We need not hope, that is to say, to distinguish part of know- 
 ledge as the content from part as the form of thought, or to 
 enumerate a list either of innate or of a priori principles of 
 the mind. It has been said, and by an illustrious Idealist 
 thinker, " Two pure perceptions, those of time and space, and 
 twelve pure ideas of the understanding, were what Kant 
 thought he had discovered to be the instruments with which 
 the human spirit is furnished for the manipulation of experi- 
 ence. Whence these strange numbers ? " Directly you men-
 
 188 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION 
 
 tion them, you feel that you cannot insist on them in that 
 rigid form. And if, or in as far as Plato meant that science 
 was in the long run to hit upon an abstract ultimate first 
 principle, or principle external to its content, from which 
 knowledge was to be suspended as a coat hangs from a peg, 
 then, and so far, he wavered in his conception of the nature 
 of truth. It might be questioned, for example, what he had 
 in his mind when he said of the mathematical sciences, " How 
 can the whole system amount to knowledge, when its begin- 
 ning, middle, and end are a tissue of unknown matters ? It 
 is, in fact, no more than an elaborate convention." We should 
 of course say, and should have expected him to say, that in 
 any conceivable system of knowledge the beginning, middle, or 
 end are only known by being in the system, and ipso facto be- 
 come unknown, if regarded in abstraction from it. And I do 
 not think this would be at variance with what he had in his 
 mind. Probably his difficulty was that, as he constantly hints, 
 the greater whole of knowledge was beyond his power to con- 
 struct ; there was, therefore, a saltus or discontinuity round 
 the edge of the mathematical sciences relatively to the whole 
 of knowledge. It was not that he expected to find some law 
 of Causation, or law of Uniformity, or Principle of Identity to 
 which they could all be attached. He evidently was convinced 
 that " the truth is the whole." 
 
 Thus we must look for the infallibility or necessity which 
 distinguishes knowledge from opinion, not in the distinc- 
 tion between intellect and sense, nor in the distinction between 
 an empirical and a necessary judgment (unless explained in 
 quite a peculiar way), but in the degree of that characteristic 
 which makes it in the first place thought, and in the second 
 place, knowledge, at all. 
 
 All thought is determination, or connection, or definition;
 
 BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION." 189 
 
 but popular thought is insufficient determination, and for that 
 reason is self-contradictory. Every judgment determines a 
 unity by a relation ; but as every unity is a centre of relations, 
 it is plain that until the unity has been exhaustively analysed, 
 all its different relations will seem to conflict, because each of 
 them will claim to include the whole of it. And the only 
 remedy for such conflicts is, accordingly, further determination, 
 as Plato explains with unsurpassed clearness in the seventh 
 Book. As determination progresses, then, the unity of thought 
 is maintained ; but its differences, which were at first merely 
 found together, come to be systematically arranged, and to 
 have their reciprocal bearings quite precisely defined. So then 
 every part of the system becomes charged with the meaning 
 of the whole, and the relativity of the different elements be- 
 comes a source of necessity, instead of a source of confusion. 
 Two terms are relative in this scientific sense when you can 
 tell what form the one will have, by looking at the form of 
 the other. Plato is apt to allude to the apparent contradiction 
 between the appearance of an object seen at a distance, and 
 that of the same object seen close at hand. But of course to 
 an educated eye there is no such contradiction ; the one ap- 
 pearance under one condition necessarily involves the other 
 under another condition. The contradiction would arise if 
 the angle subtended by the object were the same at two 
 different distances. The estimate of real size, as formed by an 
 educated eye, is a consequence or combination of the various 
 appearances combined with other evidence, and does not vary 
 with the distance at which the object happens to be seen. 
 We do not judge a man to be very small when we see him a 
 long way off, nor to grow bigger as he comes nearer. In fact, 
 we more generally make too much allowance for distance, and 
 think a man taller at a distance then he really turns out to
 
 190 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION 
 
 be when we see him near. The various angles subtended at 
 different distances do not contradict but confirm one another, 
 because their conditions are made explicit ; if we confuse 
 their conditions, they will contradict one another. A railway 
 engine coming towards one at full speed does seem to swell, 
 because one has no time to adjust the perception of distance 
 to the angle subtended by the object, i.e., to distinguish the 
 perception under one condition from the perception under 
 another. 
 
 Thus it results that the possibility of contradiction is removed 
 and turned into confirmation in as far as experience is organized 
 as a single system of determinations. It is in this sense alone 
 that science has a claim to be infallible or necessary. 
 
 But now, if this is so, how far does this kind of infallibility 
 take us ? To what extent does it justify us in even asserting 
 that we have knowledge at all ? 
 
 To begin with, we cannot show, strictly speaking, in this 
 way or in any other, that it is impossible for a change of 
 relations to occur without a change of conditions. We can 
 only say that the suggestion is unmeaning to us, as it involves 
 the saying and unsaying, or being and not-being of the same 
 matter in the same relation. To do and undo is for us simply 
 to leave nothing done ; we therefore disregard this contingency; 
 in other words, we assume the unity of reality, which assures 
 us that what is once true is always true, and that what turns 
 out to be not true never was true. Our problem is, how can 
 we be assured that we are making no mistakes ? We are 
 powerless if it is suggested that we may be making no mistake, 
 and yet may be in error. That falls outside our discussion 
 to-night. 
 
 But there are difficulties more relevant to our problem. 
 
 The necessity of science does not provide against our
 
 BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION.' 191 
 
 determinations being insufficient, as is plain from the pro- 
 gressive character of science. 
 
 There are at first sight two degrees of this insufficiency, 
 though ultimately they may have the same root. 
 
 First, there is confusion of conditions. That is to say, you 
 may lay down a connection between condition and consequent, 
 in which by some error of identification you have simply 
 placed one condition or consequent where you ought to have 
 placed another. I will give two examples, one of a more or 
 less debateable case, the other of an extreme case. 
 
 The old Wage-Fund theory said, as I understand it, that the 
 wages of labour with a given population depended on the 
 total amount of capital available, and destined in the minds 
 of capitalists, to be paid in the shape of wages. In one sense, 
 this is a truism, *.<?., on a given pay-day the whole amount paid 
 divided by the number of persons to whom it is paid, gives the 
 average wage. But in the more real sense, viz., that this 
 fund is a pre-existent fixed quantity, the amount of which 
 actively decides the rate of wages, the doctrine is now dis- 
 puted, and generally held, I believe, to have been overthrown. 
 Wages are paid cut of the produce of labour, and not out of a 
 pre-existing fund, and the capitalist very likely gets his hands 
 on the produce actually before he parts with the wages, which 
 therefore are not limited by the amount of a pre-existing fund. 
 The old Wage-Fund theory perhaps rested on a confusion 
 between the truism which I first mentioned, and the very real 
 connection that exists in various ways between the amount of 
 plant or stock in a country, which is Auxiliary capital, not 
 Wage-Fund capital, and the productivity and general employ- 
 ment of its labour, which in their turn affect the rate of 
 wages. 
 
 Now how, if at all, does the necessity of science maintain
 
 I9 2 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION 
 
 itself in the overthrow of this doctrine ? In some such way 
 as this, that the postulates and conditions which made such a 
 doctrine necessary to the scientific system, will continue after 
 its overthrow to be fulfilled by some more or less cognate 
 doctrine, liberated from the confusions which disfigured this 
 Dne. We shall still speak, I suppose, of the importance of 
 >aving. We shall still be aware that an undertaking like the 
 Forth Bridge could only be carried out by a country with an 
 enormous command of accumulated wealth, and that, with a 
 given population, the best chance of raising wages lies in 
 increasing the amount of capital productively employed. 
 Only we must not restrict capital to wage-fund capital, but 
 must include in it, for example, machines and materials. 
 
 Now the necessity of the science consisted in the demand 
 for a representation of all these relations and conditions, which, 
 as their determinations advance in accuracy, mould and re- 
 mould the doctrine that is to satisfy them, but without sacrific- 
 ing its identity of content or function. The alteration of such a 
 doctrine is like the transformation of gills into lungs, or the 
 substitution of a Westinghouse continuous brake for a hand- 
 brake on a train. You pass from one fulfilment of certain 
 organic demands to another. 
 
 As an extreme case, where the connection seems quite 
 irrational, I will just mention what Swift wrote, that once when 
 he was half-asleep, he fancied he could not go on writing un- 
 less he put out some water which he had taken into his mouth. 
 He was confusing between writing and speaking, of course. 
 There really is a necessity in the background even there. 
 
 In the second place, a science may be precise as far as it 
 goes, but may omit some entire sphere or branch of fact, as 
 Euclidean geometry is now said to omit certain kinds of space. 
 Against this possibility there, prima facie, is no theoretical
 
 BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION. 193 
 
 resource except in a postulate of exhaustiveness, viz., that our 
 knowledge bears some appreciable proportion to the whole of 
 Reality. I incline to think that we take this postulate on 
 ethical grounds, i.e., we are convinced that Reality will not so 
 far dwarf our knowledge as to annihilate our life or wholly 
 frustrate our purposes. It ought to be mentioned, too, that 
 probably a science which is not complete cannot be truly 
 systematic. 
 
 Of course you may cut the knot of all these discussions by 
 saying that sciences which make mistakes are not science. 
 But this would not help us, because then we should say 
 that our question is, how far the sciences are characterized by 
 science. 
 
 In the third place, the systematic character of scientific 
 necessity is in itself a limitation on the extent and application 
 of that necessity. For if and in as far as the systematic 
 character is lost, then and so far the necessity is lost too. It 
 has been said of political economy, that if you do not know it 
 all, you do not know it at all. This is true in strict theory of 
 every science and of all science. So that the scientific judg- 
 ment, transferred by the help of language into a mind not 
 equipped with the body of knowledge, is science no longer. 
 It has become mere opinion, mere authority. This explains 
 the curious contempt which practical men have, as a rule, for 
 the evidence of scientific experts. Scientific authority is a 
 contradiction in terms. Unhappily the scientific mind itself 
 often forgets this, and offers, like Thrasymachus, to put its 
 doctrine into men's souls by physical force. But this is im- 
 possible. Knowledge can only be communicated as know- 
 ledge. You cannot claim the necessity of science for a 
 scientific conclusion torn from its organism and hurled into 
 the sphere of opinion. Think of the popular interpretations 
 

 
 194 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION 
 
 of any such propositions as, " The soul is a substance," or, 
 " Sensation is subjective." 
 
 But here we have arrived at the end of our negatives, and 
 the balance begins to turn. 
 
 If, for the reason just stated, Knowledge cannot refute 
 Opinion ; neither, for the same reason, can Opinion refute 
 Knowledge. An individual judgment and a universal judg- 
 ment cannot be contradictory in the strict sense. The judg- 
 ment, " If A is B, then C is D," is not affected by the 
 judgment, " C is not D." They are in different planes, and 
 do not meet. Before you can bring the two into relation, 
 you must ascertain how A and B are behaving in the case, 
 when it is alleged C is not D. Then we shall find, in pro- 
 portion as the hypothetical judgment belongs to a thoroughly 
 organized body of science, that it is easy to incorporate the 
 new determination in the old system. I will once more take 
 an example from political economy. The economical doc- 
 trine says that prices determine rent, and rent does not 
 determine prices. But of course it is a common opinion that 
 a tradesman in a fashionable street is compelled to charge 
 higher prices than a tradesman in a less fashionable street, in 
 order to recoup himself for the higher rent which he has 
 to pay. If we put out of sight the alternative of his obtain- 
 ing a larger sale, I should suppose that this might be the 
 fact, although one would imagine that he would have fixed 
 his prices so as to obtain the greatest profit, even if his 
 profit was not to go in rent. But waiving this argument 
 again, and admitting the alleged fact, what does it amount 
 to ? What made his landlord ask for that high rent, and 
 what made the tradesman contract to pay it? Why, that 
 both of 'them thought that the prices necessary to pay this 
 rent could be got out of the public in that locality. You can-
 
 BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION." 195 
 
 not put up your prices just as you please ; and if you cannot 
 get the prices necessary to pay your rent, why, then you 
 cannot pay your rent out of the proceeds of the business, and 
 the rent must come down ; and, no doubt, if you are under 
 a lease, or competing for homeroom with other occupations 
 that pay better, you may say to the public, " Really I am 
 forced to try to keep my prices up." But strictly the reason 
 for this is not that the prices do not determine the rent, but 
 that they obviously do, and the tradesman is crushed between 
 two determinations of his rent, legal and economical; only, 
 being unable to revise his bargain, he may try to hold the 
 prices up with both hands, so to speak ; and with a friendly 
 circle of customers, or a circle who need him in their district, 
 to some extent he may succeed. But in some such way as 
 this the relation between the scientific doctrine and the popular 
 opinion is not, I think, very hard to see, when you look at the 
 matter all round. And of course it does modify the doc- 
 trine a little bit ; but on the whole, when you analyse the 
 alleged case, it joins on pretty easily to the science. The 
 science, of course, primarily considers what a man will freely 
 bargain to do j it never denies that a man may have a loss 
 thrown upon him by a bad bargain which he cannot revise, 
 and that so far his rent, which is naturally the consequent, 
 will become for him the condition, because he cannot alter it. 
 
 If, then, we try to state the positive value of the so-called 
 infallibility of science, it appears to reduce itself to this that 
 the organization of a province of experience is an affirmative 
 or actual achievement, which may be subsequently modified 
 or transformed, but cannot be lost or cancelled. We cannot 
 guarantee the particular formulation of an isolated principle ; 
 but then we know that identity does not depend on particular 
 formulation, but on continuity of function. I should be very
 
 196 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION 
 
 sorry to predict in what precise terms the Principle ot Sufficient 
 Reason may be stated by philosophers a hundred years hence. 
 But that the determinate relativity of the parts of experience 
 will be embodied in some principle or other, is as certain, 
 I think, as that there will be science at all. 
 
 It may be objected that we are guaranteeing the whole of 
 knowledge in general, but no element of it in particular, and 
 that this is illusory. To those who cannot conceive a con- 
 crete continuous identity I think it is illusory, and ought to 
 be. You cannot, as they would wish, fix and separate any 
 portion of knowledge. Every element of it must take its 
 chance in the systematic development of the whole. There- 
 fore, when speaking of knowledge in general, you can only 
 affirm its self-identity in general. But to any one who can 
 see a meaning in saying, for example, that Christianity to-day 
 is the same religion that it was 1,800 years ago, this idea of 
 continuous pervading identity will present no difficulty. A 
 substantive identity, we think, can persist through difference, 
 and, can indeed, only be realized in differences. 
 
 While, on the other hand, if a certain difficulty attaches to 
 this view, yet it throws an all- important light on the nature 
 of knowledge. It shows us that the necessity of knowledge 
 depends upon its vitality. Axioms and dogmas, traditions 
 and abstract principles, equally with unanalysed perception, are 
 not knowledge but opinion. The life of knowledge is in the 
 self-consciousness which systematically understands, and you 
 cannot have it cheaper. We know not "as much as is in 
 our memory," but "as much as we understand." A science 
 
 which accepts foreign matter, data to be learnt by heart, is 
 / 
 
 so far not a science. But one who has understood anything, 
 has a possession of which he cannot be deprived. 
 
 Any one who speaks thus confidently is sure to be asked,
 
 BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION." 197 
 
 " What are his metaphysical presuppositions ? " It would be 
 more to the point, in my judgment, to ask him if he has 
 obtained any metaphysical results. His only presupposition 
 is, I think, that there is something presented to him which 
 it is worth while to analyse. The principles involved in this 
 analysis, such as the unity of reality, are no doubt operative 
 from the first, but are only established in a definite form by 
 the analysis itself. And any view, more strictly metaphysical, 
 as to the precise ultimate nature of the unity of Reality, would 
 be a still further result, which may or may not be obtained. 
 That mind, in its essence, is one, and that the unity of man 
 with himself and with nature is a real unity, seem to be 
 principles demanded by the facts of science and of society. 
 It is also true that a reality which is not for consciousness is 
 something too discrepant with our experience to be intelligible 
 to us. But whether the human mind will ever form to itself 
 a conception that will in any degree meet the problem of a 
 total unity of Reality, is a question the answer to which must 
 lie in the result of analysis, and not in its presuppositions. 
 
 Thus we abide by the position that the characteristic in 
 which Knowledge differs from Opinion is the degree in which, 
 as a living mind, it has understood and organized its experi- 
 ence. The criticism of Goethe's Mephistopheles on the tra- 
 ditional logic is perfectly just. It is well to take every mental 
 process carefully to pieces ; but it is essential to bear in mind 
 that the pieces are elements in a living tissue, in a single 
 judgment, and that in their detachment as "one, two, and 
 three," they are not knowledge. So far from being a mechani- 
 cal science, logic is perhaps the most vital and scientific of all 
 the sciences. It accepts nothing from perception or from au- 
 thority, and gives nothing to learn by heart. It depends on no 
 intuition of space, and on no list ot elements. Its only task
 
 198 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION 
 
 is to understand the process of understanding, the growth and 
 transformations of thought. 
 
 This is the conception with which logic began in Plato, and 
 which has never been entirely lost. In the old Dominican 
 Church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence, there is a series of 
 frescoes illustrative of education, familiar to us through Mr. 
 Ruskin's description under the name of the Strait Gate. One 
 of these paintings has a peculiar attraction for the student of 
 modern logic. Next but two after the Narrow Gate itself, 
 which indicates the entrance to good life, there is placed over 
 a head of Aristotle the allegorical figure of logic. This 
 beautiful figure is drawn, as Mr. Ruskin points out, with 
 remarkable strength and grace ; it is most probably from the 
 pencil of Simone Memmi, of Siena, early in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. In her left hand the figure holds the scorpion with its 
 double nippers, emblem of the dilemma or more generally 
 of the disjunctive or negative power of thought; but in her 
 right hand she holds the leafy branch, symbolising the syllo- 
 gism, conceived as the organic or synthetic unity of reason. 
 This suggests an ideal worthy of the age of Dante, however 
 little it may have been attained in the explicit logical theory of 
 that time. 
 
 It is some such ideal of knowledge that has, as we may 
 hope, been making itself more and more imperatively felt 
 since the revival of letters in Europe ; and the view which it 
 involves, of the true distinction between Knowledge and 
 Opinion, is merely one branch of that principle of the unity of 
 mind, which is fraught with consequences of inestimable im- 
 portance for all aspects of life in the present day. We cannot 
 such is the lesson we have to learn we cannot elevate the 
 human mind by any fragmentary treatment, by any com- 
 munication or assistance which does not stimulate its healthy
 
 BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE" AND "OPINION." 199 
 
 growth as a single living thing. In fine art, in the province of 
 social rights and duties, in morality, in politics, and especially 
 in the interconnection of all these spheres, it is no less true 
 than we have found it to be in science, that the mind must grow 
 and advance either all together, or not at all. 
 
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 people." Athenceum. 
 
 2. Civilisation : its Cause and Core. EDWARD CARPENTER. 
 
 " No passing piece of polemics, bat a permanent possession." Scottish Review. 
 
 8. Quintessence of Socialism. Dr. SCHAFFLE. 
 
 " Precisely the manual needed. Brief, lucid, fair and wise." British Weekly. 
 
 4. Darwinism and Politics. D. G. RITCHIE, M.A. (Oxon. ). 
 
 New Edition, with two additional Essays on HUMAN EVOLUTION. 
 " One of the most suggestive books we have met with." Literary World. 
 
 5. Religion of Socialism. E. BELFOBT BAX 
 
 6. Ethics of Socialism. E. BELFOBT BAX. 
 
 " Mr. Bax is by far the ablest of the English exponents of Socialism." Wettmintter 
 Review. 
 
 7. The Drink Question. Dr. KATE MITCHELL. 
 
 " Plenty of interesting matter for reflection. ' Graphic. 
 
 8. Promotion of General Happiness. Prof. M. MACMILLAN. 
 
 " A reasoned account of the most advanced and most enlightened utilitarian doc- 
 trine in a clear and readable form." Scotsman. 
 
 9. England's Ideal, &c. EDWAKD CABPENTEB. 
 
 " The literary power is unmistakable, their freshness of style, their humour, and 
 their enthusiasm." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 10. Socialism in England. SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B. 
 
 " The best general view of the subject from the modern Socialist side." Athenaeum. 
 
 11. Prince Bismarck and State Socialism. W. H. DAWSON. 
 
 " A succinct, well-digested review of German social and economic legislation since 
 1870." Si.itu.rday Review. 
 
 12. Godwin's Political Justice (On Property). Edited by H. S. SALT. 
 
 " Shows Godwin at his best ; with an interesting and informing introduction." 
 
 Glasgow Herald 
 
 13. The Story of the French Revolution. E. BELFOBT BAX. 
 
 " A trustworthy outline." Scotsman. 
 
 14. The Co-Operative Commonwealth. LAURENCE GRONLUND. 
 
 " An independent exposition of the Socialism of the Marx school." Contemporary 
 Review. 
 
 16. Essays and Addresses. BERNARD BOSANQUET, M.A. (Oxon.). 
 
 " Ought to be in the hands of every student of the Nineteenth Century spirit" 
 Echo. 
 
 " No one can complain of not being able to understand what Mr. Bosanquet 
 means." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 16. Charity Organisation. C. S. LOCH, Secretary to Charity Organisation 
 
 Society. 
 
 " A perfect little manual." Athencewn. 
 " Deserves a wide circulation." Scotsman. 
 
 17. Thoreau's Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers. Edited by H. S. SALT. 
 
 " An interesting collection of essays." Literary World. 
 
 18. Self-Help a Hundred Years Ago. G. J. HOLYOAKX. 
 
 " Will be studied with much benefit by all who are interested in the amelioration 
 of the condition of the poor." Morning Pott. 
 
 19. The New York State Reformatory at Elmira. ALEXANDER WINTER. 
 
 With Preface by HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 " A valuable contribution to the literature of penology." Black and White.
 
 SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES (Continued). 
 
 20. Common Sense about Women. T. TV. HIOOINSI 
 
 " An admirable collection of papers, advocating in the most liberal spirit 1 
 emancipation of women." Woman's Herald. 
 
 21. The Unearned Increment. TV. H. DAWSC 
 
 "A concise but comprehensive volume." Echo. 
 
 22. Our Destiny. LAURENCE GRONLUI 
 
 " A very vigorous little book, dealing with the influence of Socialism on mor 
 and religion." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 SB. The Working-Class Movement In America. 
 
 Dr. EDWARD and B. MARX AVELI* 
 
 " Will give a good idea of the condition of the working classes in America, and 
 the various organisations which they have formed." Scots Leader. 
 
 24. Luxury. Prof. EMILE DE IJAVELBI 
 
 " An eloquent plea on moral and economical grounds for simplicity of life.' 
 
 Academy. 
 
 25. The Land and the Labourers. Rev. C. TV. STUBBS, M. 
 
 "This admirable book should be circulated in every village in the country. 1 
 
 Manchester Guardian. 
 
 26. The Evolution of Property. PAUL LAFAHGI 
 
 " Will prove interesting and profitable to all students of economic history.' 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 27. Crime and its Causes. W. DOUGLAS MORRISC 
 
 " Can hardly fail to suggest to all readers several new and pregnant reflections 
 the subject." Anti-Jacobin. 
 
 28. Principles of State Interference. D. G. BITCHIB, M. 
 
 " An interesting contribution to the controversy on the functions of the State.' 
 Glasgow Herald. 
 
 29. German Socialism and F. Lassalle. W. H. DAWSO 
 
 " As a biographical history of German Socialistic movements during this centu 
 it may be accepted as complete." British Weekly. 
 
 SO. The Purse and the Conscience. H. M. THOMPSON, B.A. (Cantab 
 
 " Shows common sense and fairness in his arguments." Scotsman. 
 
 81. Origin of Property in Land. FUSTEL DE COULANOES. Edited, with i 
 Introductory Chapter on the English Manor, by Prof. W. J. ASHLEY, M.. 
 " His views are clearly stated, and are worth reading." Saturday Review. 
 
 32. The English Republic. W. J. LINTON. Edited by KINETON PARKE 
 
 " Characterised by that vigorous intellectuality which has marked his long life 
 literary and artistic activity." Glasgow Herald. 
 
 33. The Co-Operative Movement. BEATRICE POTTE 
 
 " Without doubt the ablest and most philosophical analysis of the Co-Operati 
 Movement which has yet been produced." Speaker. 
 
 34. Neighbourhood Guilds. Dr. STANTON Coi 
 
 " A most suggestive little book to anyone interested in the social question." 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 85. Modern Humanists. J. M. BOBERTSO 
 
 " Mr. Robertson's style is excellent nay, even brilliant and his purely litera 
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 36. Outlooks from the New Standpoint. E. BKLFORT BA 
 
 " Mr. Bax is a very acute and accomplished student of history and economici 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 37. Distributing Co-Operative Societies. Dr. LUIGI PIZZAMIGLIO. Edited 1 
 
 F. J. SNEI 
 
 "Dr. Pizzamiglio has gathered together and grouped a wide array of facts a 
 statistics, and they speak for themselves." Speaker. 
 
 38. Collectivism and Socialism. By A. NACQUET. Edited by W. HEAFOK 
 
 " An admirable criticism by a well-known French politician of the New Socialii 
 of Marx and Lassalle." Daily Chronicle.
 
 SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES -(Continued). 
 
 89. The London Programme. SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B. 
 
 " Brimful of excellent ideas." Anti-Jacobin. 
 
 40. The Modern State. PAUL LEROY BEAULIEU. 
 
 " A ni<st interesting book ; well worth a place in the library of every social 
 inquirer." -V. 11. k't,vnomi*t. 
 
 41. The Condition of Labour. HENRY GEORGE. 
 
 " Written with striking ability, and sure to attract attention." Sewcastle Chronicle. 
 
 42. The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution. 
 
 FELIX KOCQVAIX. With a Preface by Professor HUXLEY. 
 " The student of the French Revolution will find in it an excellent introduction to 
 the study of that catastrophe." &COISHMU. 
 
 43. The Student's Marx. EDWARD AVELING, D.So. 
 
 "One of the most practically useful of any in the Series." Glasgow Herald. 
 
 44. A Short History of Parliament. B. C. SKOTTOWE, M.A. (Oxon.). 
 
 "Deals very carefully an.l completely with this side of constitutional history-" 
 Spectator. 
 
 45. Poverty : Its Genesis and Exodus. J. 6. GODARD. 
 
 " He states the problems with great force and clearness " N. B. Economist. 
 
 46. The Trade Policy of Imperial Federation. MAURICE H. HERVEY. 
 
 " An interesting contribution to the discussion ' Publishers' Circular. 
 
 47. The Dawn of Radicalism. J. BOWLES DALY, LL.D. 
 
 " Forms an admirable picture of an epoch more pregnant, perhaps, with political 
 instruction than any other in the world's history " Daily Telegraph- 
 
 48. The Destitute Alien in Great Britain. AUNOLD WHITE; MONTAGUE CRACKAN- 
 
 THOKPE, Q.C. ; W. A. M'ARTHL'R, M.P. ; W. H. WILKINS, &c. 
 "Much valuable information concerning a burning ciuestion of the day." Times. 
 
 49. Illegitimacy and the Influence of Seasons on Conduct. 
 
 ALBERT LEFFINGWELL, M.D. 
 
 We have not often seen a work based on statistics which is more continuously 
 interesting." Westminster Review. 
 
 50. Commercial Crises of the Nineteenth Century. H. M. HYXDMAN. 
 
 "One of the best and most permanently useful volumes of the Series." Literary 
 Opinion. 
 
 51. The State and Pensions in Old Age. J. A. SPENDER and ARTHUR ACLAND, M.P. 
 
 " A careful and cautious examination of the question. 'Times. 
 
 52. The Fallacy of Saving. JOHN M. ROBERTSON. 
 
 " A plea for the reorganisation of our social and industrial system ''Speaker. 
 
 53. The Irish Peasant. ANON. 
 
 ' A real contribution to the Irish Problem by a close, patient and dispassionate 
 investigator." Dailij Chronicle. 
 
 54. The Effects of Machinery on Wages. Prof. J. S. NICHOLSON, D.Sc. 
 
 "Ably reasoned, clearly stated, impartially written." Literary World. 
 
 55. The Social Horizon. ANON. 
 
 "A really admirable little book, bright, clear, and unconventional." Daily 
 Chronicle. 
 
 56. Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. FREDERICK ENGELS. 
 
 "The body of the book is still fresh and striking." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 57. Land Nationalisation. A. B. WALLACE. 
 
 "The most instructive and convincing of the popular works on the subject." 
 National Reformer. 
 
 58. The Ethic of Usury and Interest. . Eev. W. BLISSARD. 
 
 "The work is marked by genuine ability." Korth Britith Agriculturatitt. 
 
 59. The Emancipation of Women. ADELE CKEPAZ. 
 
 " By far the most comprehensive, luminous, and penetrating work on this question 
 that 1 have yet met with." Extract jrom Mr. GLADSTONES Preface. 
 
 60. The Eight Hours' Question. JOHN M. ROBERTSON. 
 
 "A very cogent and sustained argument on what is at present the unpopular 
 side." Time*. 
 
 61. Drunkenness. GEORGE R. WILSON, M.B. 
 
 " Well written, carefully reasoned, free from cant, and full of sound sense." 
 National Obsei-ver. 
 
 62. The New Reformation. RAMSDEN BALMFORTH. 
 
 " A striking presentation of the nascent religion, how best to realize the personal 
 and social ideal." Westminster Review. 
 
 63. The Agricultural Labourer. T. E. KEBBEL. 
 
 " A short summary of his position, with appendices on wages, education, allot- 
 ments, etc., etc." 
 
 64. Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer. . BERNSTEIN. 
 
 " A worthy addition to the Social Science Series." North British Economist.
 
 SOCIAL SCIENCE BEB1&* (Continued). 
 
 65. England's Foreign Trade in XlXth Century. A. L. BOWLIY. 
 
 " Full of valuable information, carefully compiled." Times. 
 
 66. Theory and Policy of Labour Protection. Dr. SCHAFFLE. 
 
 "An attempt to systematize a conservative programme of reform." Man. Guard. 
 
 67. History of Rochdale Pioneers. G. J. HOLYOAKE. 
 
 " Brought down from 1844 to the Kochdale Congress of 1892." Co-Op. A'ezos. 
 
 68. Rights of Women. M. OSTRAGOHSKI. 
 
 "An admirable storehouse of precedents, conveniently arranged." Daily Chron. 
 
 69. Dwellings of the People. LOCKE WORTHINGTON. 
 
 "A valuable contribution to one of the most pressing prcMerns of the day." 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 70. Hours, Wages, and Production. Dr. BRENTANO. 
 
 "Characterised by all Professor Brentano's clearness of style." Economic Review. 
 
 71. Rise of Modern Democracy. CH. BOBGEAUJD. 
 
 "A very useful little volume, characterised by exact research." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 72. Land Systems of Australasia. WM. EPPS. 
 
 " Exceedingly valuable at the present time of depression and difficulty." 
 Scots. Mag. 
 
 73. The Tyranny of Socialism. Y 'ES GUYOT. Pref. by J. H. LEVY. 
 
 "M. Guyot is smart, lively, trenchant, and interesting." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 74. Population and the Social System. Dr. NITH. 
 
 "A very valuable work of an Italian economist." West. Rev. 
 
 75. The Labour Question. T. G. SPYEBS. 
 
 " Will be foiind extremely useful." Times. 
 
 76. British Freewomsn. C. C. STOPES. 
 
 " The most complete study of the Women's Suffrage question." --English Worn. Rtv. 
 
 77. Suicide anb Insanity. Dr. J. K. STBAHAN. 
 
 " An interestesting monograph dealing exhaustively with the subject." Times. 
 
 78. A History of Tithes. Rev. H. W. CLARKE. 
 
 " May be recommended to all who desire an accurate idea of the subject." D. Chron. 
 
 79. Three Months in a Workshop. P. GOHP.E, with Pref. by Prof. ELY. 
 
 " A vivid picture of the statt uf mind of German workmen." Manc'h. Guard. 
 
 80. Darwinism and Race Progress. Prof. J. B. HAYCRAJT. 
 
 " An interesting subject treated in an attractive fashion." Glasgow Herald. 
 
 81. Local Taxation and Finance. G. H. BLUNDEN. 
 
 82. Perils to British Trade. E. BUBGIS. 
 
 83. The Social Contract. J. J. RUUSSEAU. Edited by H. J. TOZER. 
 
 84. Labour upon the Land. Edited by J. A. HOBSON, M.A. 
 
 85. Moral Pathology. ARTHUR E. GILES, M.D., B.Sc. 
 
 86. Parasitism, Organic and Social. MASSART and VANDERVELDE. 
 
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 of Socialism ". Dr. A. SCHAFFLE. 
 
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 3. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. FREDERICK ENGELS. 
 
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 4. The Principles of Social Economy. YVES GUYOT. 
 
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 5. Social Peace. Di SCHULZE-GAEVERNITZ. Euited by GRAHAM-WALLES. 
 
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 6. Handbook of Socialism. W. D. P. BLISS. 
 
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