A LIST OF WORKS HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. AUTHOR OF "BENJAMIN JOWETT : A PERSONAL MEMOIR." [Fourth Edition, Revised, with Portrait. 35. 6d. Edward Arnold] ; " TALKS WITH MR. GLADSTONE," &c. WITH TABLE OF CONTENTS, AND SOME OPINIONS OF THE Pit ESS, ETC. "One of the most stimulating writers of the day." TIMES. " Mr. Tollemache is a born raconteur." EVENING STANDARD. "Truly these are delightful tomes." Tff QUEEN. "A manner unique among present-day writers." 5 T. JAMES'S GAZETTE. " Since the death of Hay ward, we know of no English litterateur who has, in the same degree as Mr. Tollemache, the happy knack of recollecting or collecting the characteristic sayings and doings of a distinguished man, and piecing them together in a finished mosaic." DA1L Y CHRONICLE. " The recollections of personal friends are so vividly realistic that the reader feels himself drawn into the inner privileged circle of these lofty congenial spirits, and shares familiarly their exalted fellowship and delightful interchange of thought and feeling." PALL MALL GAZETTE. " Mr. Tollemache is one of the wisest as well as most charming writers left to us." LIVERPOOL DAIL Y POST. LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, E.G. NOTICE. -- These ESSAYS, RECOLLECTIONS, AND CAUSERIES, by the HON. LIONEL TOLLEMACHE, were collected in their original form [which, of course, did not contain the Patt'son Recollections] at Mark Pattison's request. Seventh Edition. With Photogravure Portrait of Hon. Lionel A. Tollemache. From Negative taken in 1890 by Melhuish & Gale for the "British Museum of Portraits" [South Kensington Art Library] ; and Photogravure Portrait of Hon. Mrs. L. A. Tolle- mache. From Negative taken in 1899. Demy 8vo, pp. 460, cloth elegant, gilt top, price 75. 6d. SAFE STUDIES. Contents : HISTORICAL PREDICTION. Sir G. C. LEWIS and LONGEVITY. LITERARY EGOTISM. CHARLES AUSTIN. RECOLLECTIONS of Mr. GROTE and Mr. BABBAGE. Mr. TENNYSON'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. PHYSICAL and MORAL COURAGE. THE UPPER ENGADINE. NOTES and RECOLLECTIONS of Sir CHARLES WHEATSTONE, DEAN STANLEY, and CANON KINGSLEY. THE EPICURIST'S LAMENT. POEMS by B. L. T. (Hon. Mrs. L. A. TOLLEMACHE). INDEX to the CLASSICAL and other QUOTATIONS, with ENGLISH RENDERINGS. Fifth Edition, Demy 8vo, pp. 262, cloth elegant, gilt top, price 35. 6d. STONES OF STUMBLING. Contents : THE CURE FOR INCURABLES. THE FEAR OF DEATH. FEARLESS DEATHS. DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. Appendices : RECOLLECTIONS of MARK PATTISON. Mr. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. NEOCHRISTIANITY and NEOCATHOLICISM : a Sequel. I N UEX to the CLASSICAL and other QUOTATIONS, with ENGLISH RENDERINGS. These Books are issued at COST PRICE. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON, One of the Appendices to " Stones of Stumbling," is also published separately. Demy 8vo, cloth, One LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROAIUVAY, LUIXJATE HIM., E.G. a 2 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 7 HE TIMES [October 25th, 1895] says of Mr. Lionel Tollemache : " One of the most stimulating writers of the day, especially in the sketch-portraits of the people who have influenced him. His essay on Mark Pattison is not likely to be forgotten by any Oxford man, or, indeed, by any student of modern letters who has chanced to read it, and it is safe to foretell that the same will be the case with the ' Personal Memoir ' in which he has enshrined his recollections of the late Master of Balliol. "TIMES. And in an earlier issue " Mr. Tollemache's essays seem to us to possess literary merit of a rare and high order. He is not only pleasantly anecdotic ; he is eminently sympathetic, ingenious, thoughtful, and appreciative, and many of these qualities are also exhibited in his more speculative and less personal papers. His recollections of Grote, Charles Austin, and Pattison are full of interesting anecdote and suggestive com- ment, while those of Babbage, Sir Charles Wheatstone, Dean Stanley, and Canon Kingsley belong to the same order. We can best enforce our favourable judgment of these remarkable volumes by quoting a passage from a letter received from Pattison, to whom he had sent the privately printed edition, which of course did not contain the paper on Pattison himself: ' I should say that the papers on the whole show a union, which is very uncommon, of two opposite qualities viz., a dominant interest in speculation of a wide and human character, with vast re- sources, in the memory, of single facts, incidents, or mots of famous men. How, with your eyesight, you ever compassed such a range of reading as is here brought to bear at all points of your argument must l)e a matter of wonder. It seems as if you could draw at pleasure upon all literature, from the classics down to Robert Montgomery and Swin- burne.' In this judgment we cordially concur. It should be added that the larger volume, entitled ' Safe Studies,' contains a series of graceful poems by Mrs. Tollemache. . . . The ' Recollections of Patti- son ' are very charming." The PALL MALL GAZETTE of July 8th, 1896, in a lengthy review of " Safe Studies" and " Stones of Stumbling," says : " Every cultured reader will find in these [the articles of a literary and remi- niscent character] much to inform, to stimulate, and^delight so varied and comprehensive is Mr. Tollemache's reading, and so apt the anecdote and striking and uncommon the quotation from ancient and modern writers with which almost every page is lighted up. The recollections of personal friends are so vividly realistic that the reader feels himself drawn into the inner privileged circle of these lofty congenial spirits, and shares familiarly their exalted fellowship and delightful interchan ^ of thought and feeling. Were we to single out of this gallery of worthies LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, E.C. any particular characters for illustration, we should say that this is experienced in a peculiar degree in looking upon the features as here delineated, and listening to the talk reported, of Austin, Pattison, and Tollemache himself." The same review refers to the Poems with which " Safe Studies" con- cludes as : " The tender and beautiful production of the author's wife." The LITERARY WORLD of October i6th, 1896, in a review of " Stones of Stumbling," says: "Mr. Lionel Tollemache's essays are replete with interest. They deal with some of the profoundest subjects which can engage the attention of a serious mind. He writes in such a charming style that he seems almost to converse with his readers. The titles of the essays undoubtedly claim attention from a certain class of readers ' The Cure for Incurables,' ' The Fear of Death,' ' Fearless Deaths,' ' Divine Economy of Truth.' This writer has not only allowed his studies to undergo what he terms ' a long process of incubation, or rather of domestic rearing,' but he has given to them the large benefits of his refined wit, his wide reading, and his scholarly tastes. The longest chapter in the present volume, which stands as an appendix to the first edition, is very nearly a model of what such writing should be. It comprises recollections of Mark Pattison, the brilliant Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and is reprinted from the Journal of Educa- tion for June, 1885. Mr. Tollemache and Mr. Pattison were personally acquainted only during the last two years of the life of the latter. They made one another's acquaintance at Biarritz, in March, 1882 ; in the June of the following year they met for the last time ; and they bade one another a touching farewell by letter in the early part of 1884. It will not be surprising to any clear-minded reader of this and its com panion essays that, in Pattison's final letter to his friend from Oxford, he should have finished it with the following words : ' For my part I cannot expect ever to see you again, and I must be content with here recording my experience that your conversation was to me more stimu- lating than that of any man I ever met. ' These essays must have a striking resemblance to that conversation." "The 'Safe Studies' are those to which it is impossible for any human creature to raise the smallest objection on any ground whatever, and they are about four times as long as the ' Stones of Stumbling. ' These stumbling-blocks may possibly at some period or other have given scandal to a part of the population by no means likely to read them ; but in these days the public has swallowed so many camels that we do not think Mr. Tollemache's gnats would even make any consider- able portion of them cough. . . . We propose to make some observa- tions on the most important of these charming essays. They are all singularly well worth reading, and may be described as the works of a most ingenious, accomplished, and cultivated man of leisure, who writes in order to fix recollections and systematize speculations which interest LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, E.C. him, and not for the purpose of advocating particular views in the spirit of a partisan or propagandist. . . . The only likelihood of Charles Austin being remembered at all lies in the chance of the survival of the touching and striking account given of him by his accomplished, grate- ful, and most appreciative pupil." The late Mr. Justice Fitzjames Stephen, in THE ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE. " These very interesting and, in part, very amusing volumes. . . . Altogether, we can give very hearty praise to the book, and that is something in the case of matter which has not the charm of novelty to the reviewer, and with a good deal of which he disagrees in opinion. Mr. Tollemache can tell an excellent story (such as that of the young lady who, having spoken enthusiastically about a clergyman, and being asked if she referred to any sermon of his, said, ' No ; oh ! no. But he hates mayonnaise, and so do I.'). He manages, though he himself is very frequently in presence, and the subject of discussion, never to be unpleasantly egotistic. His work has the literary flavour throughout, without being merely bookish, and he can argue a thesis like a crafts man and a master of his craft." SATURDA Y REVIEW. " The essays are mainly biographical, and are full of wit and humour. They abound in good stories of all kinds. Every page shows the classical humanist, the man of taste and scholarly refinement ; but, like the essays of Montaigne, of whom Mr. Tollemache is almost an English counterpart, there is a richer vein of thought and of philosophy run- ning through all this lighter matter." ANGLICAN CHURCH MAGAZINE. "Mr. Tollemache is one of a fortunate few with whom a certain kind of memory may be said, as Rossetti said of beauty, to be a genius itself. . . . Even the anecdotes, good as they are, have scarcely the same literary value as his rare power of making men and women live before us with all their human charm and weakness, the charm the more real for the supplementary weakness, and the weakness itself winning our attachment in the light of the charm. His truly marvellous memory for details of speech and character may yet keep for us many a little trait, or passing word, which will hereafter be precious. " SPEAKER. " The writer who, in one of the April magazines, laments the decay of ihe art of classical quotation surely cannot be acquainted with the works of the Hon. Lionel Tollemache, from whose pen apt illustrations from the Greek and Latin classics flow as readily, and it is scarcely too much to say as pleasantly, as they did from the pens of Montaigne and Burton. A recently published fourth edition of Mr. Tollemache's 'Stones of Stumbling' has reached us, and we welcome it as reviving recollections of essays brightened by a daring and sometimes whimsical learning unusual in our times, but chiefly because it contains in an appendix a reprint of a most admirable article upon Mark Pattison, LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, E.G. quite as delightful in its way as the Recollections of Dr. Jowett which we had the privilege of reviewing some six months ago. Persons not acquainted with Mr. Tollemache's views and methods would do well to read the ' Stones of Stumbling ' before attacking the ' Recollections of Pattison.' The phrase which Mr. Tollemache applies to Pattison, ' utt homme serieux malgre /?',' may be attached with much appropriateness to the biographer himself. He hides beneath a playful manner an intense earnestness of purpose, which is allied with a determination to see things as they are, more courageous and indomitable than that of Matthew Arnold. The result, as might be expected, of this unusual union of qualities is a philosophy of life shocking to the commonplace mind, not always acceptable to the enlightened thinker, but invariably- interesting, honest, and acutely reasoned. It is nearly a quarter of a century since the plea for Euthanasia startled the readers of the Fortnightly Review, and, re-read after such an interval, its arguments appear still fresh and adroit, and its conclusions just as unsatisfactory. We mention this remarkable effort of controversy that readers max remember that the author of the ' Recollections of Pattison,' on which we are about to comment, was also the author of the suggested ' Cure for Incurables.' "LIVERPOOL DAILY POST. "He [the author] jxjssesses in a high degree the first requisite of a biographer, the culmiratio Boswelliana, and he combines with the exact memory of Mr. Hayward some of the sympathetic appreciativeness of Lord Houghton. . . . This [" Stones of Stumbling"] includes the ' Recol- lections of [Mark] Pattison,' which attracted so much attention on their first appearance in thejouma! of Education. Together with the notice of Charles Austin (in ' Safe Studies'), it must also possess a permanent value, as an unrivalled example of Boswellian portraiture with the added interest that, in recording the traits of his friends, the author is half-unconsciously revealing some of his own." ACADEMY. "Since the death of Hayward, we know no English litterateur who has, in the same degree as Mr. Tollemache, the happy knack of recollecting or collecting the characteristic sayings and doings of a distinguished man, and piecing them together in a finished mosaic.'' DAILY CHRONICLE. " Mr. Tollemache has at last overcome his dislike to publicity, an. has given the world at large a series of delightful studies which might otherwise have been well-nigh lost in the sombre and dissipated retire- ment of a bound periodical. ... An atmosphere of soft melancholy envelops his treatment ; and this melancholy is perhaps the can- yet another charm. His studies are not only full of ' unfamiliar ((nota- tions from familiar authors,' but abound in pleasant and witty di^io- sions. n NA TIONAL OBSER VER. " The Hon. Lionel Tollemache abounds in witty sentences, and exec > in theart of stringing together good things." WHITEHALL RE VIE I! '. LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, F.C " The books, as a whole, give in an agreeable form an outline or suggestion of all that has been most prominent and characteristic for the past twenty or thirty years in the leading currents of speculative thought in England. Though they deal with thorny problems, and sometimes argue closely enough to be hard reading, the essays have the charm which the judicious use of a wide learning gives, and the book is attractive as well as thoughtful and suggestive." SCOTSMAN. " That Mr. Tollemache has an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes is not saying much ; but what is remarkable is the skill, the aptness, the felicity with which he applies them. . . . Mrs. Tollemache' s poems are penetrated with a love of nature truly Wordsworthian. ... It has been long since we read anything so interesting, amusing, and delightful as ' Safe Studies.'" GALIGNANPS MESSENGER. " The essays include 'Mr. Tennyson's Social Philosophy,' 'Charles Austin,' ' Physical and Moral Courage,' ' Recollections of Dean Stanley,' and other papers, making one of the most interesting of books. Even more interesting, if possible, are the ' Recollections of [Mark] Pattison,' which form part of the companion volume. . . . There are enough good stories in Mr. Tollemache's Recollections to fill half-a-dozen columns." STAR. " Both these volumes have been previously printed for private circula- tion, and in this form have found their way to the British Museum and other great libraries. They have now been reprinted and published ' at cost price,' and may almost be said to mark an epoch in the history of cheap books. ... In all these essays Mr. Tollemache shows himself to be a worthy follower of Boswell, and is content for the most part to allow his characters to reveal themselves by the anecdotes and frag- ments of conversation which he is able to report. These are mostly well told and to the point, and make the essays very pleasant reading." GUARDIAN. " The studies are intensely interesting, as all know who have at all followed the movement of thought in the last twenty or twenty-five years. [" Stones of Stumbling "] A dainty dish relished by intellectual epicures." ANTI-JA CO BIN. " Many years ago the Hon. Lionel Tollemache printed two volumes of essays, entitled ' Safe Studies ' and ' Stones of Stumbling,' which he gave away to his friends. When it was known that these volumes contained pleasant recollections of Mark Pattison, Dean Stanley, George Grote, and other well-known men, to say nothing of singularly felicitous criticisms upon Tennyson, &c. , it was natural that even those who were not personal friends should inquire about the books, and to each and all of the inquirers, I believe, Mr. Tollemache presented the pair of handsome volumes. The result was that almost every news- paper reviewed the books, although they boasted no publisher and were not on sale in the bookshops. Now, therefore, when the time seems LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, B.C. to have come for publication, Mr. William Rice, of Fleet Street, who has the task in hand, is able to lead off with quite a chorus of acclama- tions from the daily and weekly press, beginning with the Times, which refers to the ' literary merit of a rare and high order ' which is to be found in these essays, and ending with the New York Nation, which tells us that the ' Recollections of Pattison ' are ' thoroughly delightful ' as indeed they are. Mark Pattison has received rather brutal treat- ment lately at the hands of Mr. Swinburne ; but it is pleasant to turn to him here as a scholar in an age of superficiality, as a genuinely learned bookman at a time when so many of us are merely veritable butterflies, sipping a smattering of knowledge from every passing volume. Then Mr. Tollemache's anecdotes are so good. One can never forget the dying Pattison asking for some of his favourite volumes, stroking them lovingly, and pondering whether he will have his books in heaven. And then there is the story of the young lady who, having spoken enthusiastically of a certain clergyman, and being asked if she referred to any sermon of his, said : ' No ; oh, no. But he hates mayonnaise, and so do I.' Truly these are delightful tomes." THE QUEEN. " Two admirable volumes. . . . Mr. Tollemache is a most accom- plished and attractive writer. He is a man of philosophic insight and culture, his information is large and various, and his imaginative and humorous powers are considerable, and are frequently displayed with effect. ... It is a misfortune for English literature in its higher and more serious departments that bad health should have prevented Mr. Tollemache from contributing to it with greater constancy and copious- ness than he has been able to do. The opinion which was evidently entertained of him by many men of extraordinary mental power and consummate learning would then undoubtedly have been more gener- ally shared." THE WORLD. " [" Mr. Tennyson's Social Philosophy"] in an admirable volume of Essays I have just read, 'Safe Studies.'" TRUTH. " A volume of essays that is remarkable, as in each case the person- ality of the writer is ever before us, and one can but recognize in him a gentleman of experience. The anecdotes of and concerning great men are told in a fascinating way and are always apropos. Throughout tht- book is interspersed with quotations, those from Kenan predominating. We are especially pleased with the notes and recollections of Dean Stanley, Canon Kingsley, and Sir Charles Wheatstone ; while the essay on Charles Austin is replete with interest. The article on ' Sii G. C. Lewis and Longevity ' is one which has already attracted a great amount of attention." VANITY FAIR. "It is well that they should be put in the way of a wide circulation for they contain much of unquestionable interest and value. . . . Mr. Tollemache's range of subject is toleiably large. His method of LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, E.G. 10 treatment is agreeably individual honest, frank, and direct to the point." THE GLOBE. " We know of no book in the English language more interesting when considered from the point of view from which it is written. As a story-teller Mr. Tollemache is unrivalled, and his knowledge of men and things is almost marvellous. He has also the happy knack of gathering into a beautiful mosaic the sayings and doings of distinguished men." THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH. " One of the most delightful papers in these fruity books is that on Mark Pattison, but all of the writing impresses one as the overheard talk of a delightful conversationalist, whose memory is stored with riches, and who knows the best society in men and books." - ATLANTIC MONTHLY. " The volumes are witty and interesting, and besprinkled throughout with the dew of wide and unusual reading. Particularly in his resort to apt classical quotation does Mr. Tollemache preserve an honourable literary tradition in a way which now seems a little old-fashioned, though agreeable from its very quaintness as well as its frequent pungency. . . . The ' Recollections of Pattison ' are thoroughly delightful. Based upon a long friendship, and upon a certain affinity, they are altogether charming in their mingled analysis and reminiscence, narrative and anecdote. . . . We take pleasure in commending these books for their biographical interest, which in parts is of the greatest, as well as for the refinement and learning that pervade them throughout." THE NATION (New York). " These books contain biographical papers that, in form and impor- tance, rank with the best work of their class in the English language. The author has the rare gift of being able to paint portraits instead of making photographs, and he has cultivated this now almost lost art until it has reached perfection. . . . The vein of deep philosophy that runs through these essays is made most attractive by the wit that sparkles in every line." BOOK CHA T (New York). "The special quality in these essays which makes them worthy of preservation and continuance is the quality which Mr. Matthew Arnold used to call 'sweet reasonableness.' Here is an Englishman without insularity, a writer on theological topics without prejudices, a gentle- man without undue exclusiveness,' a classicist without over-punctilious- ness. . . . The most abiding impression 4 that one receives from the reading of all these delightful personal sketches is that of the personality of the author himself. He has made his characters live before us, and his own figure is among them long to be remembered." THE OUTLOOK, or CHRISTIAN UNION (New York). "I find your article [Fortnightly Review, July, 1892] charming, and your Whiggism mild. Neither epithet is, I think, exaggerated." Letter from Mr. GLADSTONE. LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, E.G. STONES OF STUMBLING. STONES OF STUMBLING. HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. " Jerusalem eet eortie plus brillante et plus telle du travail en ap- parence destructeur de la science moderne. Les pieux recits dont on berc,a notre enfance eont devenus, grace a une eaine interpretation, de hautes verites ; et c'est a nous qui voyons Ifrael dans Fa reelle beaute. c'est a nous autres critiques qu'il appartient vraimtnt de dire : Stante* erant pedes nostri in atriis tttis, Jerusalem.'" EENAN. FIFTH EDITION, WITH TWO APPENDICES. LONDON : WILLIAM KICE, 3 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, B.C. 1902. PREFACE TO THE FIRST PUBLISHED EDITION. \6yos. SOPHOCLES. (" A short account suffices.") IN the Preface to the Published Edition of "Safe Studies," I have alluded to the conditions under which my two volumes, after a long process of incuhation, or rather of domestic rearing, have been suddenly left to make shift for themselves. Readers of this volume are referred, to that Preface, which contains some needful explanations, and is, in fact, an Apologia pro scriptis meis. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. ATHEN.EUM CLUB, PALL MALL, S.W. 1891. PREFACE TO THE SECOND PUBLISHED EDITION. " In poetry, a certain faith in the impossible, and in religion, a like faith in the unknowable, must have a place." GOBTHE. IN the Preface to the First Published Edition of this volume, it is stated that the Preface to Safe Studies " contains some needful explanations, and is, in fact, an Apologia pro scriptis meis." As, however, I find that many persons who have read Stones of Stumbling have not seen Safe Studies, or at least have not sought out the " needful explanations," I subjoin, with a few b 11 PREFACE. corrections and additions, the passage in Safe Studies to which I chiefly refer : " The last time that Mr. Matthew Arnold wrote to me was after his perusal of my Mr. Romanes's Catechism. His letter contains these words: ' I consider myself, to adopt your very good expression, a Liberal Anglican ; and I think the times are in favour of our being allowed so to call ourselves.' On the other hand, Mr. Hamerton, in his French and English, has expressed some friendly surprise at my calling myself an Anglican of any sort. His surprise will doubtless be shared by many readers of Stones of Stumbling. Let me, therefore, explain that my Divine Economy of Truth was written before the reaction from my Evan- gelical education had subsided, and before the Anglican Gospel had suddenly and, as it were, unwittingly changed from tidings of unspeak- able sadness to tidings of unspeakable joy, inasmuch h,j that ghastly nightmare, the belief in unending torments, then weighed on the English Church, as it still weighs on the Roman Church. The result is that this Essay contains several expressions which I should not use now, and is marked by a combativeness and even a bitterness which are, I hope, laid aside in my somewhat similar Essay written ten years later under the title of Neochristianity and Neocatholicism. It should, however, be noted that the main contention of those articles has now been practically admitted by Canon Cheyne in his Bampton Lectures, by the Principal of Pusey House in Lux Mundi, and, more recently, by those official repre- sentatives of orthodox learning in our two Universities, Canon Driver and Canon Kirkpatrick. " To me certainly it seems that one who accepts and assimilates the results of criticism is more and more disposed to give a response to the grand utterances of the Hebrew Scriptures to that amazing confidence which has been so abundantly justified, and to those more amazing prophecies which have been almost literally fulfilled. Thus we are in a manner led to share the confidence shown in such texts as : ' pray for the peace of Jerusalem ; they shall prosper that love thee. The Lord hath chosen Zion to be an habitation for himself; he hath lonyed for her." 1 And we can, at least, put our own construction perhaps a wider and deeper Jne than was originally intended on the prophecies: ' The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying : We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.' " To the pessimism of Schopenhauer I feel each year a stronger aver- sion. My views on this matter may be least egotistically shown by means of a literary criticism, or, rather, conjecture. An eminent writer [Walter PREFACE. 11! Pater] has lately suggested that Lucretius may have written the by-no- means Lucretian exordium of his poem before he meditated his attack on the Roman Pantheon. It may be BO ; but at any rate, after adopting his later opinions, he published that seemingly devout Address to Venus, who is there represented as the source of all life, virtue, and happiness. Can some religious need in the poet, some craving for the ideal, have found satisfaction in those verses ? Can their publication have arisen from the undefined and unacknowledged hope which lurks often in the minds even of the most sceptical, the hope that, though Nature is red in tooth and claw with ravin (tantd stat prcedita culpd), yet Supreme Goodness directs and sustains the Cosmos, and (in the language of theology) God is Love ? " If I were now to rewrite my article on the Divine Economy of Truth, I should leave its main scope and argument as they stand, but should profoundly modify its tone, and, in particular, 1 should omit certain passages which may have had their use when Neochristianity was still militant, or rather when it was regarded as a sort of rebel with no claim to belligerent rights, but which would now be wholly superfluous ; and, having made these alterations, I should be disposed to call the volume, not Stones of Stumbling, but Bulwarks of Belief . Charles Austin was fond of quoting the passage in Absalom and Achitophel in which Dryden adverts to the change wrought by the Reformation in the relative position of Catholics and Protestants, whom he respectively designates as Jebusites and Israelites : " The inhabitants of old Jerusalem Were Jebusites ; the town so called from them ; And theirs the ancient right. But, when the chosen people grew more strong, The rightful cause at length became the wrong." May not the new and greater Reformation have now proceeded so far that the wrongful cause, as it was but lately thought, is fast becoming the right one ? In illustration of the gradual but complete change that has been coming over men's minds during the last two centuries, I will quote Hark Pattison's comment on the theology of Paradise Lost : " It would have IV PEEFAOE. been a thing incredible to Milton that the hold of the Jewish Scriptures over the imagination of English men and women could ever be weakened. This process, however, has already commenced. The demonology of the poem has already, with educated readers, passed from the region of fact into that of fiction. Not so universally, but with a large number of readers, the angelology can be no more than what the critics call machinery." Well might Sophocles exclaim : a.Tra.v& < o fjiaKpos Ka.vapiOfJ.'rjTOs xpdvos vfi T' aSr]Xa KOI (fravtma icp&rrerat. "Vast and measureless time brings to light all that is hidden, and hides all that has heen brought to light." But, if Imply we are oppressed with the sense of the universal flux of things spiritual as of things physical with something of Tennyson's foreboding that our religious systems " have their day and cease to be " let us fortify ourselves by recalling Matthew Arnold's paraphrase of Monica's last prayer, his rendering of that prayer into its modern equivalent : " Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole. Yet we her memory, as she prayed, will keep, Keep by this : Life in God, and union there." LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. March, 1893. NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION. As non-classical readers have often complained of being baffled by my classical quotations, I have thought it better in bringing out a new edition of my volumes to subjoin an Index, with translations, of those quotations. L. A. T. 1895. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. TeAeiW 3 other form of severity and gloom are the legitimate conse- quences. There is much ready declamation in these days against the spirit of asceticism and against zeal for doctrinal conversion ; but surely the macerated form of a Saint Francis,- the fierce denunciations of a Saint Dominic, the groans and prayerful wrestlings of the Puritan who seasoned his bread with tears and made all pleasurable sensation sin, are more in keeping with the contemplation of unending anguish as the destiny of a vast multitude whose nature we share, than the rubicund cheerfulness of some modern divines, who pro- fess to unite a smiling Liberalism with a well-bred and tacit, but unshaken confidence in the reality of the bottomless pit." NOTE. It must be owned that Lucretius represents an intense fear of death as prevailing among his countrymen. But Macaulay thought, probably with reason, that his statements are exag- gerated. The exaggeration (if such it was) was no doubt designed as an excuse for the arguments with which he assailed his national theology, and which are so unfortunately applicable to other theologies that (in the delicioiis phrase lately used in Parliament) his poetry is " only less objection- able than Mr. Bradlaugh's writings." The only classical writing, so far as I am aware, which represents the modern aspect of the fear of death, is the pseudo-Platonic dialogue called Axiochus. This dialogue, though written in late Greek, is undoubtedly pagan ; it pro- bably belongs to the time of which we have spoken, when paganism was giving way by reason, not of Christianity, but of " those more general causes which predispose men's minds to receive Christianity." The argument is briefly as follows : Axiochus, an old man on his death-bed, loses his nerve and sends for Socrates to comfort him, just as a dying Christian would now send for a clergyman. Socrates tries to console him 54 STONES OP STUMBLING. with dialectical quibbles, such as that death has to do neither with the dead nor with the living. The poor old man com- plains that these subtleties are all very well for young men, but they are cold comfort in the hour of death. Thereupon, Socrates changes his theme, and assures Axiochus that his soul is merely escaping out of prison into a land where sorrow and old age will be replaced by a philosophic calm ; and he adds a sort of apocalyptic myth, to the effect that after death the righteous will be received into Elysium, while the wicked will be removed to a place of torment where their devouring wild- beast dieth not and their fire is not quenched (XdfjLTramv cTTi/zovws -n-vpovfjicvoi, dt'Stois Ti/Awpiais Tpv^ovTai) . On hearing these gladdest of glad tidings, the old man straightway casts asidehis fear, and has even a desire to depart. It may be worth while to compare this singular dialogue, so far as it reveals the future of the righteous, with the famous epitaph in the Greek anthology, of which the subjoined hexameters are but a free and feeble paraphrase : QVK Waves, Tlpwnrj, yucre/S^s S' es d/xaVova Kal vaiets //.a/capon/ vrj(Tovv crKipTc "AvOecrw ev /xaXaKoicrt KOLKWV tKroo-dev a Ov ^eifjiwv XvTret, cr' ov /caiyx' ov voOcros Ov Treats, ov Su/'os e^ci cr'- dXX' oiiSe 'Av^pwTTwv en crot ;StOTOS' we<.s yap d Auyats ev Ka^apatcriv 'OXu/xTrov TrXr/crtov Dying, thou art not dead ! thou art gone to a happier country, And in the Isles of the Blest thou rejoicest in weal and abun- dance. There, Prote, is thy home in the peace of Elysian meadows, Meadows with asphodel strewn, and peace unblighted with sorrow. Winter molests thee no longer, nor heat nor disease ; and thou shalt not Hunger or thirst any more ; but, unholpen of Man and un- heedful. FEARLESS DEATHS. 65 Spotless and fearless of sin, thouexultest in view of Olympus; Yea, and thy Gods are thy light, and their glory is ever upon thee." May ifc not be said of these lines and of Aziochus, that they are (as it were) missing links between Paganism and Catholicism, and that their creed is Christianity without Christ? DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH,* os, oi> SOPHOCLES, 0. T. 296. " SUPPOSE," says Mr. Mill, " that certain un- known attributes are ascribed to the Deity in a religion, the external evidences of which are so conclusive to my mind as effectually to convince me that it comes from God. Unless I believe God to possess the same moral attributes which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good man, what ground of assurance have I of God's veracity ?"f In other words, if God's justice and mercy are not as our justice and mercy, what guarantee have we that his truth is as our truth ? And, conversely, are not orthodox reasoners, who start with the assumption that God's truth is as our truth, likewise bound to assume that his justice and mercy are as our justice and mercy r We propose to discuss this question at some length ; for it seems to suggest the most easily stated and, so to say, handiest reply to the * Fortnightly Review, Dec., 1877. f Professor Newman, I think, has said to the same effect : " If God may be what we should call cruel and unjust, why may He not be what we should call a liar ?" DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 67 familiar platitude, that the only legitimate exer- cise of reason in these matters is to convince us of the reality of the Christian miracles, and that, being once convinced, we ought straightway to accept any doctrines, however seemingly im- moral, which the recorders of those miracles have preached. This subject has lately been brought under my notice by Father Oxenham's work on " Catholic Eschatology and Universalism." In that work the doctrine of eternal punishment is upheld ; and it is not thought blasphemous to represent God as the author of hell. Yet the same work, referring to some one who has suggested that the accounts of eternal punishment in the Gospels may have been exaggerated for a moral end, pro- nounces that suggestion to be " little short of blasphemous." In short, God is too good to deceive, but not too good to damn. Now, if Mr. Oxenham were alone in maintaining this paradox, I should not be at the pains to controvert it ; for, differing from him toto caelo (totdque, let me add, gehennd), I feel that between him and me, except on some minor topics, there is no common ground for argument. But, unfortunately, there are many Protestants and even nibblers at Liberalism who hold vaguely and perhaps unwittingly what this able writer F 2 68 STONES OF STUMBLING. lias stated clearly and forcibly : it is mainly with these, and wholly for their sake, that my present discussion is set on foot. In fact, my article is a plea for that generally valuable yet generally unvalued body, the Neochristians those trans- formed and regenerate Ishmaels, whose hand is against no man, though every man's hand is against them. And the motive of this plea is an earnest desire that the religious reform which is inevitable, should be kept as far as possible within the Christian lines. Still, a measure of reform which is to avail against revolution has often to be somewhat drastic ; and the first advice which should be offered to our JSTeochristian friends is, that they should at once give up the old founda- tion, for which their modest structure is unfitted, and on which Pandemonium may so easily be built. But, before entering on their defence, a word of personal explanation is required. Mr. Mill certainly held that a Being who could create hell would be, strictly speaking, not a " Grod," but the very reverse. Yet, in the chapter by him from which I have quoted, the popular language is repeatedly adopted for the sake of clearness ; and to the supposed author of hell the name " God " is applied. In the present article that example will be followed. It will also be found convenient to assume, unless when the contrary DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 69 is specified, that the Church is right in pro- nouncing certain writings to be genuine and certain marvels to be historical. But it must be understood that I am not bound by these assump- tions. It should, moreover, be explained that, zealous though I am on behalf of the Neochris- tians, I in nowise commit myself to either of the recognised forms of Neochristianity, either to Mr. Tennyson's Christianity without hell, or to Mr. Arnold's view, which, as Comtism *has been called " Catholicism minus Christianity," may not unfairly be entitled " Christianity minus Theism." My position will be rendered yet clearer by my adding that I expect the various orthodox sects, with their chronic civil war, to continue in a state of heedlessness not wholly unlike that which the Gospel attributes to the antediluvian world : they will preach, they will write, they will cavil, they will give in to cavils, till science comes and de- stroys them all. Wherefore, of the Catholic and the orthodox Protestant it may be said, as of Lausus and Pallas, that neither is destined to overwhelm the other, but that mox illos sua fata manent majore sub hoste. Doubtless, to satisfy Mr. Oxenham personally, the foregoing explanation was not needed ; for he clearly thinks me an honest (if somewhat rave- nous) wolf in wolf's clothing, and has even singled 70 STONES OP STUMBLING. me out as the representative of the common enemy into whose hand timid or treacherous friends (seemingly Broad Churchmen) are playing. It is possible that the simplest way of opening our inquiry will be to quote and expand, from a former article, a passage from which he has made an ex- tract. " The wiser among us," I said, " are seek- ing to drop hell out of the Bible as quietly, and about as logically, as we already contrive to dis- regard the plain texts forbidding Christians to go to law, and Christian women to plait their hair," : or, it might have been added, to be unveiled in Church; bidding all Christians work miracles on pain of damnation ;f bidding them choose psalms and spiritual songs as a vent for their mirth ; * P. 49. f Mark xvi. 1618. Nothing can be more arbitrary than the way in which orthodox Christians, especially Protestants, make v. 16 refer to all believers, v. 17-18 only to some. The plain sense is this : " Who will be saved ? Only believers. How are believers to be recognised ? By their miracles." Compare the reproachful tone of Matt. xvii. 1721, where it is clearly implied that the miraculous power was to be per- petual. In Acts ii. 17-20, St. Peter (misquoting Joel) ex- pressly states that this power was to be abundant " in the last days." " Bunyan," says Macaulay, " was disturbed by a strange dilemma. ' If I have not faith, I am lost ; if I have faith, I can work miracles.' He was tempted to cry to the puddles between Elstow and Bedford, ' Be ye dry,' and to stake his eternal hopes on the event." Of a not dissimilar state of mind some of us have had ex- perience, DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 71 forbidding them to jest ;* to take judicial oaths ; to hope for exemption from " persecution "f (in the plain sense which the early Christians at- tached to that word) ; to receive interest for loans, or even to receive back the principal ;J to be rich, or to ask rich people to dinner ; to re- ceive an unorthodox person into their house, or even to wish him " God speed." That this last prohibition was meant literally is proved by the tradition about St. John and Cerinthus ; and I have heard an Evangelical divine, only too plau- sibly, adduce the passage to prove the sinfulness of entertaining Catholics. That some of the other texts I have referred to were not meant literally, is commonly and conveniently assumed. Personally, I could never take this view not even in my orthodox boyhood, when such texts made life a burden to me ; so that my judgment was then vehemently biassed, not against, but in favour of, the traditional interpretation of them. That the literal meaning of each of those passages is the true one, still seems to me probable. At any rate, it is certain that, taken collectively, they * Eph. v. 4. Cf. Matt. xii. 36. f 2 Tim. iii. 12. J Luke vi. 34, 35. These and the other texts against usury were taken literally, until the needs of civilisation refuted them. Luke xiv. 12, 13. 72 STONES OF STUMBLING. breathe an ascetic spirit which is in glaring con- trast to the smooth and polished Christianity of our day. A popular preacher, complaining of Rationalists that they had no moral standard, once said to me, " When I am in doubt, I refer to my Bible " : almost as if his Bible was unlike other Bibles ; certainly as if the Bible was a lucid Encyclopaedia of doctrine and morals. Nor did my friend herein go far beyond what is held by most orthodox Protestants. They have forged a vast shield of texts, which they use to their own satisfaction against Romanists (Ingentem clipeum informant, unum omnia contra Tela Lati- norum) ;* and wherewith they hope to quench the fiery darts of the combined wicked of Romanists and Rationalists together. Our object, on the other hand, has been to show that the Bible is not such a handbook as they suppose ; and that, in fact, if the way of doctrinal transgressors is hard, that of Bibliolaters is not easy. And if, con- sciously or unconciously, orthodox Christians exercise the right of " dropping " inconvenient texts " out of the Bible," they should not be wroth with their Liberal brethren who do like- wise ; for the game, in very truth, is one at which two can play. Here, then, is our point : If the Bible contains plain commands which we have a . viii. 447, DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 73 right to disobey, may it not contain plain asser- tions which we have a right to disbelieve?* Thus the Neochristian would be in no lack of orthodox precedents if he contended that the statements about hell were Oriental hyberboles ; or that they were an extra deterrent mercifully given to the Jews in their low state of piety, or rather of cul- ture and civilisation an adaptation to the hard- ness of their hearts, or perhaps to the softness of their brains ; or that they were a needful conces- sion to a prevailing superstition: for the Bible was written a Judceis, ad Judceos, apud Judceos ; and superstition, like nature, non nisi parendo vincitur. Nay, further : the Neochristian may express his view by a phrase which has lately bsen invented, or rather revived, by orthodox divines ; for he may maintain that such an ac- commodation to human ignorance as I have just indicated is not, strictly speaking, deceit; it is merely a judicious husbanding (oucovo/ua) or " economy of truth." Perhaps, indeed, it will be objected that our * Mr. Justice Stephen says (Liberty, Equality, and Fra- ternity, p. 315) that some scriptural commands are " under- stood by those who believe in the supernatural authority of Christ as a pathetic overstatement of duties .... pecu- liarly liable to be neglected." Every argument that can be used to justify such a " pathetic overstatement " of duties, will serve to justify a pathetic overstatement of the penalties whereby those duties were enforced. 74 STONES OF STUMBLING. analogy between disobeying Divine commands and disbelieving Divine assertions does not hold. Let us, then, give an example of each kind. It is plainly declared that the observance of the Sabbath an observance binding in regard to the day, the obligations, and the penalties was to be "perpetual," and "for ever."* And this per- petual ordinance, originally imposed on Israel, extends to all who have adopted Israel's law.f It is also affirmed that the " house," " kingdom," and " throne " of David should be " established for ever." Compare these two statements with the statement that hell is to be perpetual. If, by a prophetic license, perpetual means transitory in regard to the Sabbath and the House of David, why not in regard to hell ? Or (what is much the same thing), if we may give a non-natural interpretation to two of these propositions, $ why not to the third ? Impartial readers will probably think that I * Ex. xxxi. 16, 17. f Matt. v. 18. Of. Matt. xxiv. 20. J Thus, it is commonly maintained that the throne of David spiritually survives in Christianity^. To test this interpretation, let us put a parallel case, which we can con- sider impartially. One was told at school that Virgil's Imperium sine fine dedi is a signal instance of an uninspired prophecy failing. Yet it might be at least as plausibly urged that the Roman dominion survives in the Papacy, as that the Davidic throne survives in Christianity. But, to any such pitiful misinterpretation of Virgil's words, a sufficient DIVINE ECONOMY OP TRUTH. 75 have already made out my case; but, as the subject is very important, and as the prejudice about it is inveterate, I will carry the inquiry somewhat deeper. To reasonings like the above it is commonly objected that (according to the Bible) God can neither " lie " nor " repent." Now, it is obvious that this objection is at once refuted by the fact that it proves the biblical veracity from the Bible, making the Bible arbiter in its own cause. But I will let this pass, as I wish as far as possible to meet orthodoxy on its own ground : t'/c rou aropaToq dfjiv eoi/cos dyu, aSifcy fjLaf4/j,a>va frurrol OVK eyevecrde, TO a\T]6ivov T/5 vpiv TTia-revcrei ;" He therefore intended to send the revised lecture to a popular magazine, but his intention seems to have been relinquished through failing health. This sounds very mercenary ; but, 178 KECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. if lie had not been a eavrbv rt/iwpov/ievo? and a KaTijyopwv, he would have said, and with substantial truth, that his reason for declining the request was a desire to exert an influence over the greatest possible number of readers. I do not blame him for thus writing to me in the cynical dialect, as he knew that I should translate his words into the vernacular. But it is certainly unfortunate that he often used the same dialect, a dialect very open to misconstruction, in addressing persons almost certain to misconstrue it. A former pupil of Pattison, an orthodox divine, who, though very well off, continues to take an active part in education, told me that the Rector once said to him, " You are the most ungrateful man in the world. Providence has given you the opportunity of being idle, and you won't take advantage of it." I am sorry that I never asked Pattison whether, in giving this most uncharac- teristic advice, he was not thinking of Gibbon's paradox that the vices of the clergy are less dangerous than their virtues whether, in fact, he was not resorting to an " economy of truth" in the hope of inducing his very ecclesiastical friend to leave education alone. If this was not his meaning, the admonition must have been one of those counsels of imperfection to which I have alluded. It is simply impossible that the advice RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 179 to seek delights and shun laborious days would be given by the censor who has denounced the entire generation of middle-aged Oxford dons as stricken with intellectual palsy. His state of mind was, perhaps, similar to Kenan's : " Tout en etant fort applique, je me demande sans cesse si ce ne sont pas les gens fri voles qui ont raison." I call atten- tion to this passage, as it is about as good an example as could be given of that importunateness of memory and reflection which is (so to say) the presiding demon of analytical thought. The gospel of idleness is merely a part of the gospel of self-indulgence ; and the grain of salt which is needed to make the former gospel pala- table, or even tolerable, must now be added for the seasoning of the latter. If the following say- ing of Pattison, the most cynical that I shall quote, can be more or less satisfactorily interpreted, all his cynical sayings can be so interpreted. In Safe Studies, p. 187, I enunciate the truism that husband and wife should comfort and sustain one another in struggling for the good of all men. In page 116, I quote with disapproval a strange assertion of Montaigne, " He who abandons his own healthful and pleasant life to serve others, takes, in my opinion, a course that is wrong and unnatural." Concerning these contradictory maxims Pattison wrote : " In page 187, will you J80 RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. stand to the words ' for the good of all men ' ? Do you not much rather incline to endorse Mon- taigne's opinion, p. 116, a refreshing passage, to which I wish I had the reference in the original?" in this frank avowal we seem to hear an echo of the " Unjust Voice " in the Clouds : /cei'ai yap, a> />t,pa/aov, ev T( "Avecmv, rySovtov $' ocroui/ /xeXXets ai ITcuStoVj yWaiKOJV, KOTTci/3(OV } ctyan/, TTOTWV, KamH Tt trot tyv aiov, TOVTWV lav (TTeprjOrjg Neph. 10715. But, on the other hand, Pattison was often on the side of the Just Voice, sometimes in an ex- treme degree. I remember pleading for that modified eccentricity, that social independence, which was so dear to the heart of Mill. Pattison, himself not the most conventional of men,* sur- prised me by objecting, " Eccentricity seems to me a form of egoism, and all egoism ought to be discouraged." This little sermon of his may help us to draw the sting from his Apology for Montaigne. Let us observe that in that Apology he uses the word " refreshing," which shows that * For example : after lie had only once met Miss Swan- wick, he (having, I suppose, chanced to dine in the neigh- bourhood) sent up his card one evening between 9 and 10, .and asked if she could receive him. She was glad to avail herself of the opportunity to renew their classical discussions, but was amused at the hour chosen by her untimely guest. EECOLLECTIONS OF FATTISON. 181 he stood in need of refreshment that, in fact he relished Montaigne's aphorism as an anodyne under an oppressive sense of the social martyrdom to which ethical logic might lead. In practice, no doubt, he would have differed from Mill in assigning the limits of self-sacrifice ; but, theore- tically, his paradoxical words perhaps mean no more than Mill would have expressed by saying that, in our present low state of civilization, we cannot ignore the necessity of loving ourselves and those near to us better than those more re- mote. They certainly mean no more than Pro- fessor Bain (on The Study of Character) has expressed by saying that disinterestedness is " an exception to the only sane principle of conduct, which is, for every being to look to its own pleasures and pains a brilliant exception, it is true, something of the splendide mendax, but never to be made the rule without even suicidal consequences." We may sum up our view of the Rector's cynicism by affirming that he " laughed that any one should weep In this disjointed world for one wrong more." Or, more shortly, we may say of him, as of Be- rn ocritus, that he laughed to prevent weeping. Mr. Greg has quaintly remarked that hardly any 182 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. one can afford to keep a conscience, that is, a strictly logical one. He might have maintained that no one can afford such a luxury. Clough, whose poetry the Eector (strange to say) did not appreciate, puts the case yet more strongly : " We cannot act without assuming x, And at the same time y, its contradictory ; Ergo, to act."* To a sensitive nature like Pattison's, these Antinomies of the Practical Reason are at times not a curious enigma, but a painful reality. A person thus constituted can enter into Scherer's experience that Nous cotoyons I'abime, gare au vertige. He has learnt that the strivings of his abnormal conscience towards its goal often need, not stimulating, but checking; and his cynical utterances, harsh and unnatural in their tone, are naught but the grating sound of the drag which is put on the wheel. In referring to the father of all sceptics, whose treatise by means of a felicitous forgery has made its way into the Canon of Scripture, Renan oddly remarks : " La bonte du sceptique est la plus solide de toutes ; elle repose sur un sentiment profond * See also the fifth stanza of The Higher Courage. In The Latest Decalogue, the contrast is marked between ideal and conventional morality : " Thou shalt not covet, but tradition Approves all forms of competition." EECOLLECT10NS OP PATTISON. 183 de la verite supreme, Nil ezpedit."* I pointed out this sentence to Pattison, who seemed to regard it with something of approval. But he would doubtless have admitted that the word bonte must be referred rather to private than to public virtue must be taken to denote not heroism, but kindliness. So interpreted, the words may be applied to Pattison himself. Charles Austin was fond of a saying of Voltaire to the effect that, if one would fain work for man- kind, one must avoid being disgusted with man- kind, and must therefore forbear seeing too much of ordinary men and women. It is perhaps safer to assert that some who devote their time and sympathy to public objects, and all who thirst after a wide popularity, impair their capacity for contracting close friendships for making a few men and women feel that they take a personal * Again, in L'Antechrist, p. 101, he describes Ecclesiastes as a " livre charmant, le sen! livre aimable qui ait ete com- pose par un Juif ;" and adds (p. 102), " Nous ne comprenons pas le galant homme sans un peu de scepticisme ; nous aimons que I'homme vertueux dise de temps a autre, Vertu, tu n'es quun mot." He goes on to say that the power of smiling at one's own work is " la qnalite essentielle d'une personne distinguee," and maintains that this quality was strikingly exemplified in Christ. I wish that some reader would inform me what saying or sayings of Christ, Renan could possibly have had in his mind when he made this startling assertion. O 184 EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. interest in them. Pattison achieved this, though he laboured under a great drawback. Study engrossed much of his time and interest; and, perhaps on that account, he was at the close of his life lacking in power of sympathy. May it not have been because his small disposable fund of time and sympathy was seldom drawn upon for mankind in the aggregate, that he had any time or sympathy to spare for the few women and fewer men whom he really valued ? At any rate, his misanthropy, or rather his apliilanthropy , freed him from that last infirmity of noble re- formers intolerance of human frailty. Other causes might be mentioned; but the foregoing may serve to explain how it was that the Rector enjoyed the privilege a privilege rarely vouch- safed to such a hard student of inspiring the few whom he admitted to his friendship with a larger measure of, not admiration merely, but affection. It may not be amiss to record a curious instance of the enthusiasm which he once excited in an unexpected quarter. One of his old pupils writes : " For part of my time, Pattison's scout was also mine. He was the only honest, manly, true-hearted man as a college scout that I ever knew, and he almost adored Pattison." One fact may serve to explain the scout's devotion to his master. Pattison strongly disapproved of the complete separation which, in English households RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 185 especially, subsists between masters and servants. When sociably inclined, he made spasmodic at- tempts to break through the barrier. It was with some surprise that I learnt at Biarritz how unknown Pattison was, even by name, to most of the travelling English. There was something at once instructive and humbling in the question that I heard asked, " Do you know that there is a brother of Sister Dora in the hotel ?"- implying that he was doomed to Lethe, and that no one but his sister could rescue him even for a short space (Juturnam misero sue- cur r ere fratri). Being* consulted by an under- graduate as to what he should do in the way of study, Pattison startled his questioner by answer- ing (in effect), " Take care of what you are, and what you do will take care of itself." The world is happily determined to apply this principle to Pattison, to judge him, not by what he did, but by what he was, and not to let him be written down even by himself. One of his kinsfolk, who had ample means of judging, assures me that his disappointment in 1851 " weighed upon his memory " far more during his last illness than it had done for many years before. He had, in fact, lived to become a mere ov yap 877 rdS' ap^alov 8cfia?. o 2 186 BECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. This may partly explain the defects of his Memoirs; for it is, I think, just as well as generous to refer in great measure to his morbid condition the de- plorable domestic and academic disclosures, and the more deplorable exaggerations about Conington which deface that unfortunate volume.* " If 't be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged, His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy." The Rector was never very misanthropical when talking to me ; perhaps he thought misanthropy would not be good for me. Shortly after we parted at Biarritz, he wrote about me to a lady friend (the inscription is bilingual, being on a post-card) : " Pray present my compliments to our philosophe errant, and prevail upon him to se * So far from becoming a bigoted Puseyite after his "con- version," Conington was to the last very tolerant. I asked him (in or about 1857) what he thought 1 of a contemptuous attack on Mr. Congreve which had recently appeared in the Times. He replied that he liked far better an article in the Saturday Review, which, while differing from the great Posi- tivist, treated him with consideration. On another occasion, one of his Liberal friends (some of his friends were strong Liberals) informed him in my presence that I had ventured to tell that Tory assembly, the Oxford Union, that we owed a debt of gratitude to Carlyle for importing into England a taste for German theology. Conington merely looked at me and said, with an amused smile, " Really, really." I have elsewhere recorded his great admiration for Mill. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 187 detendre un peu plus, if he wishes to keep the machine in good order." It may have been with a like feeling of goodwill that, knowing or fancy- ing that I am wont to take too grave and sad a view of human life, he put (so to speak) into his conversation with me little of the spirit of Timon and much of the spirit of Montaigne ; just as Horace infused into Odes addressed to the com- rades of his youth a mild Epicureanism as an antidote to Republican zeal. Thirteen years ago, I asked a distinguished Oxonian to tell me whom he thought the foremost man in the University. " Jowett," he replied, " has a touch of genius, which Pattison has not ; otherwise, taking him all round, Pattison is the first man in Oxford." I would venture to add that (still perhaps excepting Mr. Jowett) he was the first clergyman of our time. Not, of course, that his tastes were those of his clerical brethren. A Scotch book called Natural Law in the Spiritual World, which has had a " mad success " with old maids, clergymen, and homoeopathic doctors, was sent to him, perhaps in order to convert him. Not relishing its author's naive attempt to keep the newest wine in cracked bottles, and also to found on the wholesale immorality of natural forces analogies such as might more consistently be used to defend the religion of Juggernaut than 188 EECOLI ACTIONS OF PATTISON. the religion of Jesus, he said drily to a friend, " I don't think this book will suit us," and con- temptuously threw it aside.* In talking with him one day, I expressed surprise at the almost universal obscurantism of the Bishops. " It is quite natural," he said. " After a man has been consecrated ten years, he loses all sympathy with the modern spirit. No ; there is one exception. Bishop Fraser sometimes sits next me at luncheon at the Athengeum,f and asks simple questions, just like a little boy, about evolution and other modern speculations. This Bishop really tries to keep pace with the modern spirit ; but he is the only one." He, however, emphati- cally pronounced Dean Stanley to be a " thorough Liberal," a circumstance which seemed to sur- prise him on account of the Dean's imaginative and perhaps unscientific cast of mind. Pattison's summary condemnation of the Anglican Bishops was probably meant to be taken more or less in jest. But he was speaking quite seriously when * A writer in the Contemporary Review for March passes a yet severer judgment on the book; he stigmatizes its author's theory as " neither science nor theology, but a bastard Cal- vinism of which Scotland ought to be ashamed." Is legiti- mate Calvinism much better ? t The Rector said that the library of the Athenjeum " is the most delightful place in the world especially on a Sun- day morning." BECOLLECT10NS OF PATTISON. 189 he pronounced a very similar judgment on a far more formidable body of ecclesiastics. I asked him whether he did not expect that, at no distant period, some wise Pope and Cardinals will (by a now familiar device) seek to disburden Catholicism of the belief in hell whether, in fact, they will not demonstrate that the Popes who sanctioned that unsavoury doctrine were not speaking ex cathedra, or were misreported, or that the ques- tion lies beyond the province of Papal Infalli- bility; or, at any rate, that Nullum tempus oc- currit Deo (see 2 Peter iii., 8), and that every expedient which is used to show that the numerous plain texts which seem to predict the immediate end of the world do not really mean what they seem to mean, will equally show that the texts and other Catholic authorities which seem to pre- dict the endlessness of hell need not mean what they seem to mean.* " No," replied he ; " Catho- licism will not change. The Cardinals have no conception whatever of the intellectual changes going on in the world. They often show ability in diplomatic matters, but in nothing else." Yet, though untainted by the ecclesiastical virus, he was to the last a clergyman in the best sense. * Tillotson (Z.c.), after quoting Jonah iii. 10, to prove that God may be better than his word, raises the delicious ques- tion : Would he also be better than his oath (Ps. xcv. 11) ? 190 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. He rather surprised a friend by making the broad statement that mankind will never be able to dis- pense with religious observances. He was there- upon reminded that "never" is a far-reaching word, and was asked whether he did not think that, at some very remote epoch, the temptations to crime may be so much lessened, and public opinion may be so much better organized, that morality will be able to stand on its own bottom. t( I accept the correction," he answered frankly; " such a time may come ; but, if it ever is to come, it is now so extremely distant that we and our children will only get into trouble by taking it into practical consideration." My readers may remember Pattison's observa- tion that the idea of Deity has now been " defe- cated to a pure transparency."* This queer metaphor will serve as an introduction to his views on the two foundation-stones of Natural Theology. I asked him whether he j thought that either Mr. Stopford Brooke or Mr. Voysey is likely to have much permanent influence. He answered in the negative ; in the present state of opinion, most of those whose temperament leads them to reject what Mr. Stopford Brooke and Mr. Voysey agree in rejecting, will not accept what * Quoted by Mr. Harrison, Nineteenth Century, Yol. xv., p. 496. KECOLLEOTIONS OF PATTISON. 191 they agree in accepting. In short, the stream of tendency is towards Agnosticism. I asked what he thought of the logical strength of Agnosticism; and, by way of drawing him out, I stated as forcibly as I could the argument which Mr. Grote the " rigid Atheist," as he was called in Ben- thamite circles would certainly have used against it. Mr. Grote would have insisted that there is not a tittle of evidence to show that fairies do not exist, and yet that, as soon as it became manifest that there is no evidence to show that they do exist, the case went against them by default; we do not merely doubt their existence, we deny it. In like manner, Mr. Grote applied to all spiritual beings the maxim that Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, and he would have contended that, just as Unitarianism has been called a feather bed to catch a falling Christian, even so Agnosticism is a feather bed to catch a falling Theist.* When I laid this reason- * An eminent jurist [Fitzjames Stephen], after reading this paragraph, asked me how we could possibly deny the exist- ence of fairies. I answered that by the word " fairies " I mean spiritual beings able and willing to act in a specified manner on human affairs. If junkets mysteriously disappear, their owner unhesitatingly attributes the disappearance to thieves, mice, or some other natural agency ; in other words, he denies that there exists any " fairy Mab " able and willing to steal junkets. In like manner, we may confidently deny that there exists a Spiritual Being who is able and willing 192 KECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. ing before Pattison, I found to my amazement that it was quite unfamiliar to him. In answer to it, he merely quoted with approval the words of a Greek sage (I think Protagoras) : Oeol el eurlv rj el fjir} elcrlv aSr)\ov. An Oxford contemporary and friend of Patti- son's, the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, used to quote approvingly a very similar passage from Faust : " Wer darf ilm nennen ? Und wer bekennen : Ich glaub' ihn ? Wer empfinden Und sich unterwinden Zu sagen : Ich glaub' ihn nicht ?" It may serve to throw light on the Rector's state of mind, and perhaps, too, on the theological tendencies of the University, if I advert for a moment to Brodie's opinions on these subjects. He called himself an A. L. (Advanced Liberal). Like Pattison, he was sceptical about miracles. In rebuking a friend whom he deemed too cre- dulous, he exclaimed, " You'll tell me next that you believe that the serpent climbed up the tree and began talking to Eve." Yet he told me that Comte's Positive Philosophy seemed to " throw a wet blanket '' over him ; and he rather startled to modify Natural Laws, even with a view to the prevention of sin and sorrow. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATT1SON. 193 me by expressing regret at the line taken by Professor Tyndall in the Belfast Address. He insisted that Berkeley's Theory has never been refuted (though I doubt whether the Bishop would have acknowledged him as a disciple). His meaning probably was that, while believing in the absolute uniformity of Natural Laws, he yet thought (as Mr. Komanes thinks) that the ultimate causa causarum, the basis of phenomena, may be Spiritual and Intelligent. " The real puzzle is," he used to say, " how anything comes to exist," anything whatever, either Mind or Matter. He once expressed a belief or hope that the course of Nature is directed by " Infinite Wisdom " ; and, on being asked how he recon- ciled Infinite Wisdom with the existence of evil, he replied that we do not quite know what the word " infinite " means. These opinions of the late Professor of Chemistry are more optimistic than those commonly expressed by Pattison ; but they may illustrate them by pointing to a modus vivendi seemingly the only one between Theism and modern science. Though I could not per- suade either Brodie or Pattison to expound their views fully, I should conjecture that they were something of this sort : " Nature, indeed, is profoundly immoral ; with reckless impartiality, she gives her sun- 194 EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISOtf. strokes to the evil and to the good, and causes her floods to descend on the just and on the un- just. Yet it is this same immoral agent which, by yielding suitable conditions, has led to the evolution of all our moral sentiments, and may lead to the evolution of yet higher moral sentiments among posterity. For aught we know, those moral sentiments could not have been evolved by any less painful process." Yet, though Pattison refused to acquiesce in Grote's dogmatic negation, he relinquished a belief which was till lately regarded as a necessary adjunct of Theism, but which some disciples of Dr. Martineau are now prepared to give up. I reminded him of the havoc which the modern belief in the absolute uniformity of Natural Law is making with the older belief, the belief in supernatural interven- tion ; and I asked him whether he did not feel a difficulty in reconciling the modern belief with the belief in the greatest of all 4 miracles, the Miracle of Creation.* " Yes," he answered- thoughtfully, " I suppose that Pantheism is the only form of Theism which can be reconciled with Evolution." Pantheism is an ugly word, and also a very vague one. I imagine that, in using it, * In my Safe Studies, pp. 390, 391, this argument is stated more fully, almost in the words in which it wa addressed to the Rector. EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 195 Pattison merely meant to express a view identical with Goethe's : " Was -war' em Grott, der nnr von aussen stiesse, Im Kreis das All am Finger lanfen liesse, Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zn hegen, So dass, was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, Kie Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermisst." As in regard to Theism, so in regard to the belief in immortality, Pattison (like Renan) de- clined to deduce the negative conclusion which some might have drawn from his premisses. He spoke indeed differently at different times. Some- times his view seemed to be a depressing one. For instance, he once startled me with the query, " Shall I have my library in heaven ?" a question in reply to which I certainly was unable to give more definite information than he himself pos- sessed, but which somehow conveyed the notion that he regarded a posthumous library and a posthumous life as equally improbable, or at any rate that he would find the latter tedious without the former. So, again, in a touching and mourn- ful letter which he wrote to me three weeks before he died, he said, " I am approached very near now to the ' fabulae Manes et domus exilis Plutonia.' ' And we learn with pain that, as his end drew near, the shadows became yet darker. 196 RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. But he would assuredly have maintained that his real views were those which he held in the fulness of health, though even in health a man of his temperament may have forebodings that the ghost of his old belief will haunt him in the last scene, " Pale and pitiful now, but terrible then to the dying " ; in other words, that posthumous fears will over- whelm him in the sad hour when the impressions of childhood are often relatively the strongest, and when the nerves are so weakened and the thoughts are so uncontrolled that even the mightiest of spiritual reformers are tempted to utter the cry of loneliness and despair, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? "* When Pattison was at his best, his anticipations in re- * Suppose an angel (or devil) were to offer us the choice between painless annihilation and the necessity of drawing from a prophetic lottery containing 1000 tickets marked heaven and one ticket marked hell : most o 4 us, I conceive, would prefer the euthanasian alternative to the risk, the extremely small risk, of everlasting torments. And may not a dying philosopher, whose nerves have been unstrung by illness, be excused if he shudders at the very barest possibility that the belief in posthumous discomfort, a belief held by some persons as honest and as learned as he is, may be well founded, and if he is tempted to follow the example of the numerous penitents, from Cephalus to Littre, who at the eleventh hour " advertunt animos ad religionem, . . . Aeternas quoniam pcenas in morte timendum est " ? EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 197 gard to immortality were such as might be re- solved into the formula, Aut caelum aut nihil ; he refused to close the door on religious hope. Goethe has well said that Man is always more anthropomorphic than he thinks. It is equally true indeed, it is another aspect of the same truth that Man is always more optimistic than he thinks. And perhaps it was in consequence of an irrepressible aspiration that a passage of Ten- nyson which exactly expressed Pattison's own relation to those whom he had loved and lost, suggested itself, when the news of his death came, to one at least of his sorrowing friends : : " It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles whom we knew." In conclusion, we will turn from this cheerless subject to one or two of the Hector's criticisms on life, which show him at his best. To a friend who complained that old age made our pleasures less numerous and less vivid, he answered, in a spirit worthy of Cato Major : " What we lose in the number and vividness of our pleasures, we gain in Sidvoia : we set a juster value on those which remain to us." When I saw Charles Austin for the last time, he was less of a pessimist than I had ever known him ; and likewise to Pattison, just before his 198 KECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. fatal illness began, there was vouchsafed a sort of Indian summer. He was more cheerful than usual, and yet he had a presentiment that his days were numbered. " I never," he said, " felt life to be so precious as now when it is ebbing away."* He was talking to one whom he had every reason to love and value ; so he laid aside reserve and took a retrospect of his career. En- larging on a topic which cannot but recall the choice of Solomon, he gave reasons for thinking that, if he had coveted wealth or worldly distinc- tion, he might have secured either or both. But he had preferred the path of knowledge. " I am glad," he concluded, " that I made this choice ; and, if with my present experience I could live my life over again, I would lay it out on the same lines." Adapting his Master's words, he might have said: Unum est necessarium. Optimam partem elegi, quae non anferetur a me. * He was thns confirming from personal experience a saving of Goethe's which he used often to quote : " Life resembles the Sibylline book ; it becomes dearer the less there remains of it." Does not this explain the anomaly, that some per- manent invalids say that they would willingly live their lives over again, while many strong persons foolishly declare that they would not ? He who knows that his life is precarious, feels that it is priceless. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 199 NOTE. "They also serve who only stand and wait." MILTON. IN reference to the observations made in this article as to the interest taken by Pattison in Amiel's Journal Intime, M. Scherer published in the Times (June 2, 1885) the following letter addressed by Pattison to himself : "Richmond, Yorkshire, July 9, 1883. " Dear Sir, It is so long since we met that I have felt some hesitation as to addressing you by letter, lest in the crowd of new faces and figures your memory should fail to recognize me. " The occasion of my writing is the Journal of Amiel, of which you are the editor. I wish to convey to you, Sir, the thanks of one at least of the public for giving the light to this precious record of a unique experience. I say unique, but I can vouch that there is in existence at least one other soul which has lived through the same struggles, mental and moral, as Amiel. In your pathetic description of the " volonte qui voudrait vouloir, mais impuissante a se fournir a elle-meme des motifs " of the repugnance for all action the soul petrified by the sentiment of the infinite, in all this I recognise myself ! " ' Celui qui a dechiff re le secret de la vie finie, qui en a lu le mot, est sorti du rnonde des vivants, il est mort de fait.' " I can feel forcibly the truth of this, as it applies to myself ! '' It is not, however, with the view of thrusting my ego- tism upon you that 1 have ventured upon addressing yon. As I cannot suppose that so peculiar a psychological revela- tion will enjoy a wide popularity, I think it a duty to the editor to assure him that there are persons in the world whose souls respond, in the depths of their inmost nature, to P RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. the cry of anguish which makes itself heard in the pages of these remarkable confessions. " Believe me to be, dear Sir, yours faithfully, " MARK PATTISON." I am tempted to follow M. Scherer's example by inserting a letter written by Pattison to me on receipt of my " Safe Studies." Having regard to the too friendly comments with which it concludes, it is with much hesitation that I now give it to the world. But the whole letter seems to me instructive and characteristic of its author, and, as I have already quoted its most paradoxical and cynical expressions it is perhaps fair to show from the context that Pattison at times used language far removed from paradox and cynicism. " Lincoln College, Oxford, January 13, 1 884. " My dear Sir, The literary event of the week has been yonr book a stirring event to a sick man almost confined to his sofa. I have been reading, reading for three days, and have gone through the whole (except the Engadine), much of it more than once. The level of the collected papers stands so high, that I now regret the volume was not published for your credit that is, since, as a collector, an unpublished volume is five times as precious to me. The material aspect of the book is worthy, in binding, paper, and .type, of its author. But how could you give in to the American plan of cutting down the margin ; a plan which makes it impossible to have a book bound, when its cloth cover shall be used up ? " If I may venture on a general remark, I should say that the papers, as a whole, show a union which is very uncom- mon, of two opposite qualities, viz., a dominant interest in speculation of a wide and human character, with vast re- sources in the memory, of single facts, incidents, or mots, of famous men. How, with your eyesight, you ever compassed such a range of reading, as is here brought to bi-ar at al) points of your argument, must be matter of wondor. Ifc EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 20 j. seems as if you could draw at pleasure upon all literature, from the Classics down to Robert Montgomery and Swin- burne. In this respect, I desiderate references in the foot- notes to the sources, that one might have the great pleasure of turning out the citations in their original place. But no doubt it would have been difficult for you, where you are, destitute of books, to have supplied these in many cases. Had I been in health I could have revelled in a notice, through many columns of the Academy ; but, in my present condition, it is not possible for me to undertake any literary work, even of the lightest kind. If I now venture upon making some small notes upon single passages, you must not suppose that I am setting up to correct you, but am only desirous to show "with what attention I have read you. In page 12, I feel a slight difficulty with the sentence which begins with the words, ' As the confusion.' The two ' its ' must be relative to the noun ' confusion ' ; then, what is the opinion meant in the concluding words of the sentence ? In page 27, I am brought up by Grote saying that the ' Geocentric theory was once as firmly held as ' Grote surely could not mean that firmly held is the smallest evidence of truth ? The transmutation of metals and the powers of witches were equally firmly held ; and we believe, or accept, the Heliocentric theory on its own evidence, and because the Geocentric theory has been proved* to be false, and not be- In what sense " proved " ? In scientific matters, the very few experts of each generation form their own judgment indeed, but form it in accordance with the canons of evidence which are deemed conclusive in that generation. The very numerous inexperts, if they are sensible, follow the judgment of the experts : they follow it, however, not as infallible, bat as less likely to be wrong than the judgment of any one else. This is true of the nineteenth century as well as of th sixteenth. [L. A. T.] 202 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. cause it is firmly and universally held. Tn page 187, will you stand to the words of the bottom line, 'for the good of all men ' ? Do you not much rather incline to endorse Mon- taigne's opinion, quoted in page 116, a refreshing passage, to which I wish I had the reference in the original ? In page 194, would not Disraeli's mot have gained in effect by giving it to him by name ? In page 172, Chevalier Ramsay is injured by the prefix ' A certain ' ; he was a very well- known man iL. his day, just before or contemporary with Hume, and his books were the popular books of his day, especially ' Les Voyages de Cyprus,' an imitation of Tele- machus, which was translated into all the languages on the Continent. He had an Oxford D.C.L. conferred upoa him, but probably more in consideration of his Jacobitism he was at one time tutor in the Pretender's family than his literary repute. All that is related of Grote is most inter- esting ; but I cannot forgive him for stigmatizing Paley as disingenuous, one of the most honest clergymen of the period. In page 209 the phrase ' more mature thinkers ' implies that Tennyson is a thinker at all. Is he so ? Is he not a poet, and are not poet and thinker incompatibles ? In page 165, any young Curate or Priest who pronounced the Benediction over the head of his Bishop would be committing a gross breach of clerical etiquette. In page 180, did you notice that you were speaking of the Quarterly Review as a con- temporary, though I suppose you intended to discard in what are now ' Studies ' the original form of article ? In page 223, ' the saying of a great orator ' (who ?) of the House of Lords that it is ' not made for perpetuity,' had already appeared on page 175. " By this time I must have tired your patience with my trivial remarks, of which I hope you will take as little notice as they deserve. I have had to explain to everyone, to whom I have shown the book, the meaning of the title ' Safe.' It is, I say, a vox praegnans, immo gravida, e cujus inu proles altera, prodigiosa, periculosa, damnosa, exitura RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 203 tit! As for those people whose feet were cold because they washed them, it is no doubt quite true, but then they washed them in warm water ; had they bathed them every morning in cold water, they would have been as warm as the dirty man's. That is a melancholy sentence with which your preface concludes. Though it is by no means my view that a man should be always producing books, or putting his thoughts in print, yet he cannot renounce a life which has hitherto been one of moral and philosophical discussion, without falling to a lower grade in the rational scale. For my part, I cannot expect ever to see you again ; and I must be content with here recording my experience that your conversation was to me more stimulating than that of any man I ever met. With kind regards, " Believe me to be, *' Sincerely yours, " MARK PATTISON." Even the far too friendly expression of opinion in the con- cluding sentence has a biographical value as testifying to its author's sympathetic kindliness a quality for which, among men at least, he had little credit. In reply, I ven- tured to point out what seemed to me one or two oversights. For example, I explained that, when I spoke of a young Curate pronouncing the Benediction in the presence of an Archbishop, I was assuming the Archbishop not to be taking any part in the service, but merely to be one of the congregation. I touched also on private matters ; and at last, with real emotion, I thanked Pattison for all his kind- ness and bade him farewell . . . spar gens fares et funcitts inani Munere. APPENDIX IL ME. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. (Reprinted from the "Journal of Education" for December, i8Sf t with Additions and Sequel.) MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. " There are only two true religions : one which worships, without any symbol, the Holy that is within us and around us ; another which represents it by the most beautiful of symbols. Every other religion ia idolatry." GOETHE. Mr. G-EORGE J. ROMANES, while engaged in col- lecting materials for a forthcoming work on the Evolution of Man, drew up and distributed ex- tensively the following minute and searching interrogations. It has seemed to me that my friends, and possibly others, will be interested in reading a full and candid confessio fidei on a subject which is generally avoided the personal view of death. 1. Do yon regard the prospect of your own death (A) with indifference, (B) with dislike, (C) with dread, or (D) with inexpressible horror ? 2. If you entertain any fear of death at all, is the cause of it (A) prospect of bodily suffering only, (B) dread of the unknown, (C) idea of loneliness and separation from, friends, or (D), in addition to all or any of these, a peculiar horror of an indescribable kind ? 3. Is the state of your belief with regard to a future life that of (A) virtual conviction that there is a future life, (B) suspended judgment inclining towards such belief, (C) suspended judgment inclining against such belief, or (D) virtual conviction that there is no such life ? 4,-*-Is your religious belief, if any, (A) of a vivid order, Q 208 MR. KOMANES'S CATECHISM. or (B) without much practical influence on your life and conduct ? 5. Is your temperament naturally of (A) a courageous, or (B) of a timid order, as regards the prospect of bodily pain or mental distress ? 6. More generally, do you regard your own disposition as (A) strong, determined, and self-reliant ; (B) nervous, shrinking, and despondent ; or (C) medium in this respect ? 7. Should you say that in your character the intellectual or the emotional predominates ? Does your intellect incline to abstract or concrete ways of thought ? Is it theoretical, practical, or both ? Are your emotions of the tender or heroic order, or both ? Are your tastes in any way artistic, and, if so, in what way ? And with what strength ? 8. What is your age or occupation ? Can you trace any change in your feelings with regard to death as having taken place during the course of your life ? 9. If ever you have been in danger of death, what were the circumstances, and what your feelings ? 10. Remarks. Es sagen r s aller Orten Alle Herzen unter dem himmlischen Tage, Jedes in seiner Sprache ; Warum nicht ich in der meinen ? FAUST. As my experiences are very peculiar, and are indicated in a veiled form in my writings, I hope I may be excused if I make frequent reference to those writings, and at the same time withdraw the veil. This remark applies especially to my Recollections of Pattison. In seeking to ex- plain his cynicism, I have used myself as a key, insomuch that the general reflections contained in ME. BOMANES'S CATECHISM. 209 the part between pages 25 and 69* give a rather minute autobiography. There is, however, the difference between his case and mine, that my ideal has always been stoical rather than saintly, and that, happily for me, no troubles have em- bittered my life like those that embittered his. 1 and 2. When I am well, I regard the pros- pect of being dead with feelings bordering on in- difference. But I feel a great dread of the bodily suffering of dying, and a still greater dread (as my temperament is extremely nervous) of my nerves becoming unstrung, and of my then being unmanned by the prospect of the unknown (Pattison, p. 78, especially footnote). The dread of " loneliness and separation from friends" affects me in regard to their death, not mine. As a child, I used to let spiders and wasps crawl about me ; but I always felt a repugnance to touching any dead animal. 3. " II y a un esoterisme inevitable, pnisque la culture critique, scientifique, philosophique n'est a la portee que d'une minorite. La foi nouvelle devra trouver ses symboles. Pour le moment, elle fait plut6taux amespieuses 1'effet profane. . . . L'illusion n'est-elle pas indispensable ? n'est-ce pas le precede providentiel de 1'education ? " AMIEL. In dealing with this question, I propose to * This corresponds to the part between pp. 143 and 187 in Stones of Stumbling, second edition. As many of my frtends have my Pattison in the separate form, I shall hereafter refer to it in that form. Q2 210 ME. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. inquire whether the conception of a future life is not being gradually modified so as to suit the needs of a scientific age. Two centuries ago, the eminently devout author of Religio Medici felt a difficulty in believing in the Judgment Day as commonly understood. It must be owned that this difficulty is increased by modern astronomy ; for the apostolic belief in a sudden, immediate, and supernatural Second Advent, to be followed by a reign of the saints on earth, is hard to reconcile with the scientific belief in the future extinction, by a slow, natural process, of all life on our planet. In short, at least one early Christian doctrine is virtually assailed by Tennyson, in his regretful lines : " Many an ^Bon moulded earth, before her highest, man, was born, Many an ^Eon too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn." This change of opinion may explain my seeming paradox when I say that I am sometimes em- barrassed by the present meaning of the term " future life." What are the conditions of that life, and what sort of Ego is to survive ? One scholar represents heaven as consisting " Of sexless souls, ideal choirs, * Unuttered voices, wordless strains." Another (the author of The Kernel and the Husk) ME. BOMANES'S CATECHISM. 211 after premising that the three lowest senses (smell, taste, and touch) are already banished from heaven, insists that sight and hearing must be banished too ; but that withal the capacity of loving will be preserved. If we still retain our mental faculties, is there not a fear that, after a few billions of years, we shall grow tired of this very unearthly and inconceivable mode of existence ? Or, again, if death annihilates the senses, will it leave the emotions unimpaired ? In other words, if (as Dr. Maudsley, and even Professor Huxley, maintain) mind is a " function of brain," is it not as hard to suppose the individual mind surviving the decomposition of the brain, as to suppose, I will not say fire burning after the exhaustion of its fuel, but the eyesight continuing after the destruction of the optic nerve ? In fact, is not modern scientific opinion tending towards the conclusion of Lucretius that, even as trees cannot live in the sky, nor fishes in the fields, " Sic animi natura nequit sine corpore oriri Sola, neque a nervis et sanguine longiter esse " ? It is perhaps needless to dwell on the difficulty of conceding a soul to Bushmen, and denying one to our semi-human ancestors, to gorillas, to. jelly fish ; or on the difficulty of expecting that our 212 ME. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. posthumous selves will be better able to remember our present selves, than we are to remember our antenatal selves. I will, however, remark that the latter difficulty reaches further than at first sight appears. According to the philosophy of Lucretius,* it follows from the law of chances that the particles of matter which now compose my body may, at some inconceivably remote period, fall again into shape, and constitute another living man ; but this alter ego will not be a revival of my present self, for he will not remember my present self. That is to say, the power of recollection, the repetentia nostri, is a necessary condition of per- sonal identity. f Yet this necessary condition, this condition which alone prevented the apostle of annihilation from believing literally in the Resur- * Lucretius III., 847861. f Clough, in his fifth Sonnet, On the Thought of Death, suggests that some dim hope might be drawn from a yet stranger hypothesis the hypothesis apparently that, by the operation of natural laws through countless ages, worlds will be made and unmade, until, at last, Alter ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo. According to this weird supposition, there will haply be another England (an exact counterpart of the present), another Victorian Jubilee, and another Mr. Romanes perplexing our future namesakes with his Mortuary Cate- chism ! Assuming the principles of Evolution, together with infinite time and the subjection of volition to law, few mathe- maticians would pronounce the recurrence of such a cycle to be quite incredible ; but where will be the repetentia nostri i MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. 213 rection of the Body, Tennyson, in The Two Voices, is prepared to throw overboard : " Some draught of Lethe might await The slipping thro' from state to state." Indeed, if I rightly interpret the preceding stanza, " It may be that no life is found, Which only to one engine bound Falls off, but cycles always round" the poet has for a moment found himself on a standpoint not wholly unlike the Epicurean one. A few examples will serve to show the sort of influence that such considerations as the above are exercising over Liberal Christians. An eminent Broad Church clergyman, writing to me about The Service of Man, says, " The religion of a people stands in a definite relation to its culture," and adds the remark (in which I heartily agree) that it is generally safer to let science and criticism work the needful changes in the national creed, than to attempt an iconoclastic subversion. Another Liberal divine tells me that he is little troubled by the mistakes which seem to be con- tained in the conversations reported in the Gospels; for he looks forward to a future revelation which will modify and complete Christianity, as Chris- tianity has modified Judaism. Fourteen years ago, when I was writing my article on Tennyson's social philosophy, I talked the matter over with 214 ME. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. Principal Tulloch. He called my attention to the doubts expressed by the poet as to whether Christianity is intended to be the ultimate phase of religious belief. I asked whether he was re- ferring to the mention of " the Christ that is to be," and to the statement that " our little systems " of religion are but " broken lights," and that " they have their day and cease to be." He replied that, besides these passages, there are others that convey the same impression. My own comments on this topic have been made elsewhere.* I will now merely observe that, though 1 have no sym- pathy with the critic who satirised the " demi- semi- Christianity " of In Memoriam, I cannot but feel that the difference is fundamental between those who regard the value of religious dogmas as absolute and permanent, and those who regard it as merely relative and temporary. In fact, the difference is closely connected with the gradual transition (noticed by Pattison in his Assize Sermon) from the subordination of morality to re- ligion, to the subordination of religion to morality. The less orthodox view has lately been upheld with rare honesty and courage by Canon Fremantle, who goes the length of maintaining that statements about God and the soul are mostly to be understood in a " literary," not a scientific * Safe Studies, pp. 204^210. MR. BOMANESV CATECHISM. 215 or even a " quasi-scientific " sense. To those who censure such a symbolical exegesis as un- candid, I answer that the beginning of Genesis is commonly explained in a manner which, fifty years ago, would have been thought blasphemous ; and all that enlightened Conservatives desire is that the same mode of interpretation which clergyman after clergyman applies to the first two chapters of the Bible should also be applied to the last two that a spiritual, as opposed to a materialistic, conception should be extended from the past Paradise of Adam to the future Paradise of God. Let me add that such writers as Arthur Stanley, when speaking of the beatitude of heaven, decline to make any confident assertions about it, save that it involves Rest in God and post- humous influence for good. I lately asked a very learned and not unorthodox clergyman, whether this tendency to throw posthumous per- sonality into the background, and to regard heaven as union with God, did not seem to him a striking peculiarity of our time. " Substantially," he re- plied, " this has always been the creed of Christian mystics, whether Catholic or Protestant."* The assertion surprised me; but perhaps, when one reflects on it, it throws light on the state of mind * Compare the poem called A Sea-change (Safe Studies, p. 413). 216 MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. winch. Christian self-abnegation, carried to its furthest point, tends to produce. " The end and aim of our life," says Kingsley, "is not happiness, but goodness. If goodness comes first, then happiness may come after ; but, if not, something better than happiness may come, even blessed- ness." The remark clearly applies to the com- parative value of happiness and blessedness, or rather of enjoyment and blessedness (these two being parts or modes of happiness), beyond the grave. Faciam voluntatem tuam, sicut in terra, et in caelo, might serve as a counterpart to the most comprehensive petition in the Lord's Prayer, and ought to satisfy, and is beginning to satisfy, our spiritual needs. Hence it appears that, as culture advances, our conception of heaven slowly changes its character ; the notion of enjoyment fades into the notion of blessedness. For while, on the one hand, biology obscures our belief in posthumous enjoyment, spiritual religion, on the other hand, sets little value on enjoyment and great value on blessedness. Thus it is in such ideals as the blessedness of self-devotion, and as the Present Heaven of the Fourth Gospel, that a bond of sympathy is found between religious natures otherwise the most opposed.* Amem te * Tauler, the fourteenth century mystic, after quoting the remarkable saying of Jesus (a saying all the more remarkable MK. ROMANES'S CATECHISM 217 plus quamme, neque me nisi propter te, are words which express the aspirations of the greatest of Christian mystics; they also express the aspirations of Comte, whose favourite motto they were. " Ye are dead," says St. Paul, " and your life is hid with Christ in God." In the same spirit, a Neo-Christian might apostrophize the wise and good who have passed away : "Ye are not dead, for your life is hid with Christ in God." To each of them he might apply (in a spiritual sense) the words addressed by Beatrice to Dante : " Sarai meco senza fine cive Di quella Roma onde Cristo e Romano." The most extreme view of the ultimate tendency of spiritual Christianity is embodied in a passage by James Hinton (a spiritual Christian if ever there was one) : " Surely the desire of personal immortality is not truly a noble or worthy attitude of humanity. At least, it is not the highest. Granted it \vas an advance in humanity to attain to it, but may it not be a greater to give it up ? Man rose to it from less, from indifference ; he should give it up for more, for self-sacrifice." Personally, in spite of logic, and as an aid to my spiritual life, I try to maintain a beatific vision because reported by a Synoptist), " The kingdom of God is within you," asks : " If, now, the being and essence of our soul is in heaven, and God is in it, what is to blame that we have not this heaven here, and do not know God ? " 218 MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. which from the nature of the case is such that, if it be an illusion, I shall never be undeceived. Let me add that, in thus walking by faith., I am follow- ing the example of Clough, who, while admitting that " wishes vain appear," yet, on the strength of those wishes, determines to believe in a vague something, a something in which posthumous usefulness is seemingly the chief ingredient : " Ah yet, when all is thought and said, The heart still overrules the head ; Still what we hope we must believe, And what is given us, receive ; Must still believe, for still we hope That, in a world of larger scope, What here is faithfully begun Will be completed, not undone." It is, I suppose, in this limited sense the sense of being not logical overmuch nor overwise that Goethe understands his sweeping proposition, Wen Gott betriigt, ist wohl betrogen. Elsewhere he says that " Only what is fruitful is true"; * that the art of living consists in "turning the problems of life into postulates " ; and that " Man must in some sort cling to the belief that the unknowable is knowable, otherwise specu- * This and some other sayings of Goethe recall Keats's lines : " .Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." ME. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. 219 lation would cease ; " or rather, there would be no modus vivendi for philosophers with the vast majority of good men and women. (Patti- son, p. 79.) 4. " On ne brise pas avec le passe sans y laisser le meilleur de soi. . . . Le mythe et le rite sont 1'alliage a la fois des- nonorant et indispensable, sans lequel le metal serait trop pur pour servir aux usages des homines." SCHERER. I call myself a philosophical Anglican. Stan- ley's very remarkable exposition of the Apostle's Creed (in Christian Institutions) has hardly a sentence which I should wish to see altered. Also, I have long since been so far a Hobbist as to think that most men, and (perhaps) all women, need religious observances (Pattison, p. 72), and that a philosopher's creed consists, not of the extreme conclusions to which his principles might lead, but of the sentiments and symbols with which he clothes his aspirations after the ideal, and which connect him with the poetry of the past and the present modes of thought of the religious world. "Entre tous ceux qui croient a 1'ideal," says Renan, " quelles que soient leurs apparentes divergences, il n'y a qu'une difference dans la maniere de parler." Our notions about man's origin and destiny are merely symbolical and relative ; and, in dealing with such questions, I, as an Englishman, choose Liberal Anglicanism as 220 ME. ROMANES'S CATEUHISM. the most helpful and edifying of the seemingly conflicting, but really harmonious, answers that are given by the good men and women in the many mansions of our Father's house. This very spiritualised religion has no very direct or con- scious influence on my life; but, of course, the fact of belonging to a Christian community has a great indirect influence. 5. I am very sensitive to pain. In my youth I suffered much from nervous weakness due wholly to physical causes, and have always been obliged to take great care of my health. 6. Owing to my nervous temperament, I am unreasonably pained if my friends disapprove of my opinions and conduct. But, being aware of this weakness, I struggle against it. Friends have sometimes said that I am one of the most cheerful persons they ever met. They saw me, I suspect, under favourable circum- stances. 7. My mind is abnormally analytical. It in- clines to abstract ways of thought. It is strictly theoretical; but the consciousness of this one- sidedness throws me on my guard and makes me willing to take advice, and I thus become to a certain extent practical. Doctors say that I am the MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. 221 best patient they ever had. My temperament is not heroic, but inclined to a stoical love of justice. I am " the one in a thousand " who, according to Bagehot (Pattison, p. 32), takes the world too much au serieux; and, indeed, the pages 32 36 in Pattison are strictly autobiographical. In pages 46 to 51, I have tried to show the steps by which I have come, if not to a mild form of Pyrrhonism, at least to ethical views closely allied to those of Edmond Scherer (quoted in Pattison, p. 49, foot-note). When unwell, I am troubled rather than amused by such ethical puzzles as those mentioned in pp. 47, 48, and by others equally grave (Stones of Stumbling, p. 20). In con- sequence of this abnormal tendency, or rather of the need of struggling against it, I am by degrees caring less and less for Juvenal, and even Lucretius, and more and more for Horace. And, if I am sometimes afraid of becoming too partial to works written more or less in a Horatian spirit such works as Erasmus's Laus Stultitiae I console myself with the thought that, although Luther was a far greater man than Erasmus, a nation with one Luther and fifty Erasmuses would be in less imminent danger of a revolution than a nation with one Erasmus and fifty Luthers. I feel very strong sympathies, though only with comparatively few persons. I am much affected 222 MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. by the painful in fiction. I have vowed never again to see " Othello " acted, and I much dislike even reading it. I feel each year an increasing need of the sympathy of good women (Pattison, pp. 16, 17).* I do not know one tune from another, and (perhaps owing to my eyesight) care little about pictures. But I am fond of poetry, and I am especially fascinated by the music of Shelley. My ear is fastidious about the cadence of sentences in prose. 8. Forty -nine. --Anthropology, including Gynaecology (Pattison, p. 22). As a writer, I am thoroughly handicapped by the causes mentioned in the preface to Safe Studies. I am thus constrained to concentrate my efforts on an end which seems to me too limited and self -regarding, but which Goethe extols as the sum and sub- stance of all wisdom : Die Welt zu kennen tmd sie nicht verachten. Pattison called me a " philosophe errant " (p. 68, to end of paragraph). In my Calvinistic boyhood, * A traveller in Egypt tells me that, among the random inscriptions with which tourists have defaced the monuments of antiquity, only one struck him as at all witty. A French- man had scrawled on one of the tombs of the kings, at Thebes, " La vie est un desert" ; to which was added, by a later hand, " et la femme le chanieau." MB. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. 223 though I was thoroughly in earnest, I had not much spiritual enthusiasm. Still less was I animated by the hope of what may be called the honours and rewards of other-worldliness a patent of posthumous nobility and a pension from the funds of eternity. On the contrary, as I vainly endeavoured to love the Author of Hell, I expected to become one of its inmates (" they that love Thee not Must burn eternally "). I am less afraid of death now than I then was ! (Stones of Stumbling, pp. 39, 40.) 9. I never have been in serious danger. Though sometimes very unwell, I have not spent a day indoors for twenty-six years. 10. " Le ciel n'a rien de local, et n'est antre chose que 1'nnion avec Dieu et avec tons lea etres bons et grands." RENAN. It is instructive to observe that Reuss and others give to the word " materialism " a meaning the opposite of its popular one ; they use the word to denote belief in a material kingdom of God. Even Stanley has employed the word in this sense. Mr. Matthew Arnold rarely, if ever, employs it in any other sense ; he even stretches the term " materialism of the Apocalypse" so as seemingly to make it cover the belief in any conceivable form of posthumous joy or sorrow. Possibly this 224 ME. BOMANES'S CATECHISM. novel use of the term may be connected with the fact that some philosophers, and even divines,* are unable to accept the popular doetrine in its literal sense ; and, I will add, they are not un- able only, but unwilling. For such unwillingness two reasons may be given. In Safe Studies (bottom of p. 389) I have hinted at the difficulty of believing that the Universe will ever be exempt from evil. More recently, Mr. Froude (in Oceand) has expressed a similar fear : " If the Devil had been capable of redemption, he wouldhavebeen redeemed before he had been allowed to do so much mischief." Now, if Evil is to last as long as Good, the popular doctrine becomes simply appalling. Bee-fanciers use a net-work of wire with holes just big enough to let the working bees into the hive, and just small enough to exclude the drones. It is very hard to devise a philosophical net-work which will let in even a minimum of posthumous hope, and yet keep out even a minimum' of posthumous * See the extremely spiritualised account of Christ's con- tinual presence in the Church, in Stanley's Christian Insti- tutions, pp. 37, 38. Stanley insists that one's best and inmost self is not the mere conscious Ego, and confirms his opinion by the weighty text, " The flesh profiteth nothing, the words that I speak uiito you they are spirit and they are life." MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. 225 fear ;* and even a very small fear of " boundless worse " is enough to poison a very ample hope of " boundless better " (Partisan, p. 78, foot-note). Sir James Fitzjames Stephen hints that God may be a Being of limited benevolence, or at least of limited philanthropy. From this unpleasing hypothesis might it not follow that we may, here and hereafter, be made to suffer for the welfare of other beings, higher and more numerous than we are; and that this welfare may be of a kind which we can no more fathom than a guinea-pig * The doubt as to whether Ahriman will be less able to hold his own in the next world than in this, is expressed by Clough in the melancholy lines : " Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle, Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them ? Are they upborne from the field on the slumberous pinions of angels Unto a far-off home, where the weary rest from their labour And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moisture Wiped from the generous eyes ? Or do they linger, unhappy, Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavour ? Whither depart the brave ? God knows ; 1 certainly do not." R 2 226 MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. can appreciate the far-sighted beneficence that dooms him to vivisection ? Or, to put a less extreme case, even the sanguine Goethe dreaded the prospect of perpetual ennui. After all, is not the Nox est perpetua una dormienda of Catullus less dispiriting than the Pallidula, rigida, nudula of Hadrian ? And this brings me to my second point. The spiritual conception of heaven, as neither more nor less than union with Grod, -is not really depressing if taken in its entirety. The same may be said even of the negations of Lucretius, as he himself has well pointed out. But, practically, it is hard to think of the loss of personal consciousness without thinking also that we shall be personally conscious of the loss. Even Pattison spoke with dismay of being deprived of his library by death, as if he expected after death to feel the deprivation. An aged kinswoman of mine expressed dread of being buried in a damp family- vault ; whereupon a privileged butler broke in with the remark, " Indeed, ma'am, you needn't be the least afraid ; I was down there myself the other day, and it's quite dry and comfortable." The old servant was right. If his mistress was afraid of posthumous rheumatism, it was wise to tell her that her resting-place would be dry. The same principle holds in regard to more serious con- MB. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. 227 solations * Unconscious or impersonal blessed- ness, if presented to the imagination without being foreshortened, is seen wholly out of perspective ; it seems like consciousness of unconsciousness, or rather of impotence a sort of perpetual night- mare. And thus, if it is impossible to help trying to conceive the inconceivable, the least misleading course may be to think and speak in metaphor, so that our heaven may be defined a state of blessed- ness symbolised as a place of enjoyment. * See Matthew Arnold's Sonnet on The East End, which concludes with the line : " Thon mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home." Perhaps it is in a sense not wholly unlike this that Renan makes the broad, if not cynical, assertion: " La religion n'est pas senlement philosophic, elle est art ; il ne faut done pas lui demander d'etre tropraisonnable." Does he mean that religion is no more than a politic gilding of morality and a poetic gilding of the tomb ? I am tempted to add the name of another very able writer who seems to value the hope of a future life chiefly as giving a higher pulsation to the present life. It would be an exaggeration, but a pardonable one, to extract from Marius the Epicurean the moral, "Let us dream of immortality, for to-morrow we die." NEOCHRISTIANITY AND NEOCATHOLIdSMi A SEQUEL. " TJngefalir sagt das der Pfarrer auch, Nur mit ein bischen andern Worten." Faust. AFTER I had replied to Mr. Romanes's Catechism, my attention was called to Mr. Mivart's most interesting and surprising article on The Catholic Church and Biblical Criticism,* an article which may serve to explain the Neochristian tone of my answers. To my amazement, I find that portions of those answers, and the chief arguments in my Divine Economy of Truth, are in accordance with the latest phase of Catholic orthodoxy. Mr. Mivart courageously exhorts his fellow- Catholics to lay aside all dogmatic bias in dealing with the results of Biblical criticism. He does not, indeed, commit himself to all the conclusions of such writers as Colenso and Kuenen ; but he quotes those conclusions with sympathy, and thinks that " there can be little doubt that, in the main, * Nineteenth Century, July, 1887. NEOCHRISTIAN1TY AND NEOCATHOLICISM. 229 they represent the truth." Among the opinions that he thus quotes are the following : " The account, as we read it, of the deliverance from the Egyptian captivity is unhistorical, although it is not doubted that Moses existed and did lead the Israelites from Egypt. But it is not deemed probable that a line of the Bible was written by him," (what then, I would ask, becomes of the popular view of the Decalogue ?) " and the whole Levitical legislation is regarded as an invention which dates from the Babylonian Captivity and times more recent." The year of Jubilee " was utterly unpractical, and was never practised." The first chapter of Genesis was written after the Captivity. The story of Jacob wrestling with God is " gross mythology " (is not, I ask, the belief in eternal punishment yet grosser?). "When I was a boy, at Oscott, I was taught that the book of Jonah was only a parable." " It is thought to be in the highest degree unlikely that Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob ever really existed, and no passage of the history of any one of them is of the slightest historical value in the old sense ; though, of course, every old writing has historical value in some sense. Similarly, Daniel, dating, as it has long been concluded to do, only from about B.C. 164, is, of course, thought quite untrustworthy, and little more than a mass of fiction." " "Who, 230 NEOCHEISTIANITT AND NEOCATHOLICISM. in the sixteenth century, would have deemed it possible for the Church to allow that her doctrines concerning the Biblical narrative of the creation of Adam, and the miraculous formation of Eve from his rib, could accord with a belief that the ribs of both Adam and Eve were formed by natural generation in the womb of some non- human animal ? Yet we have lived to witness this event." " If any Scripture narrative is de- tailed and distinct, it is that of the Deluge, which is also referred to in the New Testament. Never- theless, no one now, of any account, even pro- fesses to believe the truth of the narrative we read, although it may be based on a tradition of some considerable local inundation." The author adds, in a foot-note : " I well recollect dining at a priest's house (in or about 1870), when one of the party, the late accomplished Mr. Richard Simpson, of Clapham (a most piqus Catholic and weekly communicant), expressed some ordinary scientific views on the subject of the Deluge. A startled auditor asked anxiously, ' But is not, then, the account in the Bible of the deluge true?' To which Mr. Simpson replied, 'True! of course it is true. There was a local inundation, and some of the sacerdotal caste saved themselves in a punt, with their cocks and hens/ ' I forbear to inquire in what relation Mr. Mivart NEOCHRISTIANITT AND NEOCATHOLICISM. 231 stands towards Biblical criticism as applied to the New Testament. It is enough, for my present purpose, to observe that Christ always assumed the Scriptural narratives to be in the literal sense accurate. In proof of my assertion, I will remind my readers of the reference in the Gospels to the gift which Moses commanded, and to the abomi- nation of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet. To the same effect are such texts as the following : " As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man." "Remember Lot's wife." " Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day." " Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me ; for he wrote of me." " If they hear not Moses and the pro- phets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." It is manifest that the general view expressed in these and other passages is utterly opposed to the conclusions of Biblical critics, which are slowly leavening the educated world, and which Ganon Fremantle and Mr. Mivart have quoted with substantial approval. The fact is, that enlightened Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, are beginning to learn that their religion must adjust itself to the new conditions, and must rest rather on the spirit than on the letter of their Master's teaching. In short, we must needs admit that errors are to be 232 NEOCHRISTIANITY AND NEOCATHOLICISM. found in the words, even in the plainest words, of Christ, as reported by the Evangelists.* This admission impairs, to say the least, the import- ance of the obscure text " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." On what foundation, then, does the Papacy rest ? Whatever answer Mr. Mivart might give to this question, it seems to follow from his principles that the Catholic Church is a tree which must be judged by its fruits that she must stand or fall with her internal evidence, must be assailed and defended on Utilitarian grounds. And I am bound to add that, on those grounds, her case is, in many respects, a strong one, stronger than that of most Protestant sects, both because of her authority and universality, and also because she is less directly and obviously committed than they are to the belief in Scriptural infallibility. f Mr. * See Stones of Stumbling, pp. 90103. As an eminent living ecclesiastic has expressed it, the story of Jonah rests on the authority of the Incarnate God. Let me remind my readers that I am not calling in question the doctrine of the Incarna- tion. Orthodox divines, such as Jeremy Taylor and Frederick Robertson (Stones of Stumbling, p. 114), admitted that Christ, as a Man, might have been deceived. t Is Scherer right in maintaining that mythology and ritual are needful supports of religion ? If so, criticism, by weakening the first of these props, forces religion to lean heavily on the second. This may explain why Catholicism and Ritualism are suddenly renewing their strength. NEOCHRISTIANITY AND NEOCATHOLICISM. 233 Mivart insists that she will retain her jurisdiction over faith and morals. But, in regard to the latter, he is careful to point out that Popes and councils wrongly condemned usury ; and even in regard to the former he admits that the Councils of Trent and of the Vatican took an exaggerated view of Biblical inspiration. " Little by little," he says, " the invincible advance of historical, as of other, Science permeates and transforms the whole Catholic body, and ultimately reacts upon its supreme head. While the general sentiment of Catholics remains unchanged, the Holy See remains, as a rule, sympathetically unaltering in its action. But it follows with attention, though slowly and warily, the course of scientific thought and investigation. It cannot be expected to anticipate, by positive pronouncements, what is greatly in advance of general Catholic opinion. I have what seems to me suffi- cient evidence that broad views are not in disfavour at the Vatican, though sudden or abrupt action is neither to be expected nor desired. It is amply sufficient if a gradual change in the knowledge, the ideas, and the convictions of the Catholic body in due time overcomes a natural reluctance to forsake a beaten path, and, by degrees, induces conformity to a new environment. The slow, silent, indirect action of public opinion does in time infallibly produce its effect ; and if, now and again, authority has yielded unduly to retro- grade and obstructive influences, yet, as experience has shown us with respect to Copernicanism, it may end by thoroughly adopting what was at first resisted and denounced. No doubt it may astonish and vex some persons to be told that he who is officially the leader allows himself to be led. But he does so by a wise prescience, which is the ordinary characteristic of the supreme Pontiff." Eleven years ago, in Italy, a devout Catholic 234 NEOCHRISTIANITY AND NEOCATHOLICISM. said to me, of Pius IX., "In private, he is a gossiping old woman; but, for all that, as a Pope, he is infallible." Catholics seem now prepared to admit that the intellectual and moral infirmities of the Pope may affect even his public decrees, at least in regard to all matters that admit of veri- fication. Moreover, even the province in which he is held to be infallible the province of matters unverifiable, and yet knowable will seem to his educated followers to be continually lessening, insomuch that they will be more and more troubled by the question, If he tells us of earthly things and we believe not, how can we believe when he tells us of heavenly things?* To speak more precisely, does not the entire phe- nomenal world fall within the domain of the verifiable ? And, as to things that lie above and beyond that world, how can we hope to conceive them with human faculties, or to express them, save metaphorically and relatively, by means of the earth-born analogies of human language immortalia mortali sermone notare ? Is there, then, a single religious question on which the * I wonder whether, during the long misgovernment of the Papal States, pious Catholics were ever embarrassed by the text "If a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God ? " NEOCHRISTIAMITY AND NEOCATHOLICISM. 235 Holy See is the unerring exponent of abso- lute truth? Be this as it may, the passage above quoted from Mr. Mivart amounts to an admission that the Pope is becoming, in his relation to the Church, less and less like the rudder of a ship, and more and more like the tail of a kite ; or (to use an apter illus- tration), less of an Absolute and more of a Con- stitutional Sovereign. What, then, are likely to be his lasting prerogatives ? As an outsider, I, of course, speculate on the subject with extreme diffidence. But I venture to sugg'est that (on the hypothesis) he will retain complete control over ceremonies and discipline ; he will also pronounce, on matters of faith, decisions which the Catholic masses will accept as permanently and literally accurate ; while Catholic philosophers will con- sider them, if not as mere symbols and broken lights, at least as liable to revision by his suc- cessors. A very distinguished Catholic, writing to me last year, mildly intimated a hope that his Church would hereafter modify its views on eternal punishment ; but added that, at present, he could " see no footstep in that direction." This whispered protest is full of promise. One is tempted to infer from it that the time may come when (to put the matter somewhat brutally) an 236 NEOCHIUSTIANITY AND NEOCATHOLICISM. ordinary Catholic will say, " The Pope bids me accept this or that doctrine, so I accept it " ; whereas an intellectual Catholic will say (or think), " As I value religious unity, I will not curse what the Pope hath not cursed ; but I know he is wrong, and future Popes will agree with me." Such an application of Amiel's esoterisme inevitable * is open to grave and very obvious objections. But, at any rate, let us hope that Catholics are beginning to look upon religious truth as relative, and religious knowledge as pro- gressive. This, after all, is the fundamental point, and is especially desired by those who fear that religious evolution may be going on too fast, und who believe that a cultus is needful to almost every one ; and that, in the process (so to say) of Ecclesiastical Selection, an advantage will be enjoyed by the Church which is surrounded by the brightest halo of antiquity, and which can unite the greatest number of educated and unedu- cated minds by a common symbol. The en- lightened defenders of the faith, who think and feel thus, cannot but hope that the Catholic * See the mottoes prefixed to my answers 3 and 4, in pre- ceding article. A lady of orthodox tendencies, who was fresh, from the perusal of Literature and Dogma, suddenly exclaimed, when reading p. 49 of Mr. Mivart's article, " Why, this is Matthew Arnold over again ! " NEOCHRISTIANITY AND NEOCATHOLTCISM. 237 Church will now show that wisdom which has distinguished her in the chief crises of her long career. She took a great step when she consented to apply the principle of E pur si muove to our planet. She will take a greater step if she applies it to her own religious teaching. By thus taking part in the onward movement, she will give reality to an assertion which has little in common with sundry well-known utterances of Pius IX., but which is quoted approvingly by Mr. Mivart the tolerant and wisely catholic assertion that " this is a time of drawing together of all religions and philosophies, and of the rapid growth of a universal religious consciousness with the development of human introspection. We see, on all sides of us, that ceaseless, in visible magic of thought thought profoundly scientific, and no less profoundly spiri- tual which is casting its net over all religions." In this grouping together of " all religions," is it not implied that the difference between the great and good religions of the world, however prodigious in degree, is a difference in degree rather than in kind ? TRANSLATIONS OF GREEK, LATIN, GERMAN, AND ITALIAN SENTENCES. PREFACE TO FIEST EDITION. Page V. TeAetW But solid food is for full-grown men. calidd juventd, in my hot youth. TEXT. 1 . K/oeurcrov Better to die outright Than to be miserable all one's days. 6. Nequicquam Wise Providence in vain Has interposed the estranging main, If impious ships presume to leap Across the barriers of the .deep. 19. invalidi the happiness of the invalid is the concern of the invalid. 30. lestimmt ordained in God's counsels. 32. ! genus Unhappy race of mortals to assign Such crimes, such rage, to attributes divine I Self -torturers, what agonies your creed For us and for our progeny did breed ! TRANSLATIONS. 239 33. Ut puto, I think I am being made a god. 34. for tern animum, a brave heart that knows not fear of death. 39. ille crucem one gets a cross for guerdon, one a crown. 41. Beati The blessed in the kingdom of heaven will behold the punishment of the damned to add a zest to their bliss. 43. argumentum igneum, appeal to fire by way of argument. 49. strepitus roar of whelming Acheron. 50. Carpe diem, Enjoy to-day. Memento mori, Think of death. 52. Siforet Democritus, restored to earth, would laugh. 54. Beati Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. 64. Aa/i7rcunv constantly burned by torches, they are vexed with everlasting punishments. 66. O p.?) an Words will not fright the man who fears not deeds. 67. to to caelo by the whole extent of heaven and of hell. 69. mox illos their destined fate awaits them ere long at the hand of a greater foe. S 240 STONES OF STUMBLING. 72. Ingentem They weld a mighty shield to quench all the darts of the Latins. 73. a Judceis, hy Jews, for Jews, among Jews. non nisi is only conquered by obeying her. 74. Lnperium I have given a limitless empire. 75. e/c TOV crrd/iaTos (rou out of thy own mouth I will judge thee. 76. immortalia we convey immortal truths in the language of mortals. 79. Deusfallit God deceives through another. OiSev OIO/AOU I think it makes no difference whether we speak of Jupiter (i.e., God) as the Highest, or of Zeus, or Adonaius, or Sahaoth. 80. Deusfallit God deceives directly. at this place there is a hole in the sky. Hie est This is Jerusalem : I have set her in the centre of the nations, and I have set the countries round about her. 8 1 . oo"(ra All that with mortal men is reckoned a shame and dishonour, Theft and adulterous lust and lies and deceit of one's neighbour. TRANSLATIONS. 241 83. aTran/s God is not averse to just deceit. 84. ocrta iravovpyeiv, to commit a righteous crime. 85. splendide mendax, grand in her falsehood. 86. quod non What fails to prove the less proves the greater. 88. Numquid Was Paul crucified for you ? Or were ye baptised in the name of Paul ? 89. aiwvtov " eternal " for " hrief " or " none at all." 90. Oyu.oto)S Equally blasphemous are those who hold that gods are born with those that say they can die. 91. cadit qu&stio, there is an end of the question. 95. esto Christus though Christ did not grow in habitual, yet he did grow in actual and practical, grace and wisdom 97. nanum he called Atlas a dwarf, the ^Ethiopian a swan. supra grammaticam, superior to grammar. 102. Deo To please God by a lie. 104. TTpGirov j^evSos, the original falsehood. 105. KaKayycAros O^T/, the bad tidings of woe. 106. Malunt They had rather err with Christ than be right with us. 242 STONES OF STUMBLING. 106. Amicus We love Christ, but we love truth more. 108. KpflTTOV - it is better to choose a falsehood than a real evil. 110. a.p.f.pa.1 But future time is a wiser witness. For a mortal it is fitting to speak fair things concerning the deities, for the risk is less. They breathed into me a divine voice that I might unfold both the future and the past. 111. AOKCCOV Thinking that the messengers sent to consult the oracle were not telling the truth. 113. Incredibile est, It is incredible that God would have spoken to the people in words that would deceive them. Incredibilim est, It is more incredible that God will employ punish- ments against the people by which they will be tortured. 115. Quid enim For what ideas can be more remote, or wider apart, or more contradictory than what is mortal and what is immortal and eternal ? 125. Hand ignota loquor, I speak what I know. 127. OlKOVO/Al'ttS - the economy of salvation. 128. experimenta fidei^ trials of faith. 131. Sivos Hurly-burly is king and has expelled Zeus. TRANSLATIONS. 243 131. Usque adeo So tyrannously is poor mortality down-trodden by an unseen power. 132. Salve, Hail, land of Saturn, mighty mother thou Of fruits and mighty heroes ! 135. Vir sum, I am a man, and count nothing feminine foreign to me. 157. Scurrantis " An appearance of toadyism " and "Clownish and incultured bluntness." 138. Em rationale, "A rational being," the definition not of "man" (Mensch], but of " the man " (Mann). Video I see the worse and commend it, but I follow the better. (An inversion of Ovid's " I see the better and follow the worse.") 139. cum pleno salino, with a full salt-cellar. laudando pr&cipere, to admonish while praising. 141. OUK aya&ov It is not good for many to bear rule. 143. CKWV unwillingly willing. 146. tfXocro(f)fLV to live the philosopher's life without effeminacy. (Pericles' description of the Athenian character.) 148. Stantes Our feet were in thy courts, Jerusalem ! 151. poco di matto, a little of the fool. 244 STONES OF STUMBLING. 154. pecca fortiter, sin boldly. learn to be frivolous. amara lento and with a careless laugh The bitter potion quaff, Since none, not e'en the happiest, Is absolutely blest. 158. *O Traces Sons of Greece, arise ! Arise and liberate your fatherland, Your sons, your wives, the temples of your Gods ! 159. 6 ^tAe'AAijv The Philhellenic famous Gladstone. Olympian Pericles Thundered and lightened and confounded Greece. 160. cunctando by delaying restored the State. 165. a.Tropiai, knotty questions. 169. Omnia exeunt All things end in absurdity. All is vanity. Imperat Conscientiousness is in all cases either the master or the servant. 170. a.Kpa ~ j? i t ev TCO uo(KO) If ye were not faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches ? 178. eavrov Tifjuopov/j-evos a self-tormenter ... a self -accuser. 180. 2,Ktif/ai Consider, boy, what sober-living means, How many pleasures you will miss thereby Wine, women, dalliance, dicing, luxuries Is life worth living if you lack all these ? 183. Nil expedit^ Nothing matters. 185. Juturnam That Juturna should rescue her poor brother. aO\iov a shadow of myself, Not he in sooth who once was (Edipus. 189. Nullum tempua God is independent of time and opportunity. 191. Entia Existences are not to be unnecessarily multiplied. 192. col "Whether there are or are not gods is doubtful. Wer darf Who dares Him name ? Who dares proclaim : Him I believe ? Who that can feel His heart dare steel To say : I disbelieve ? 246 STONES OF STUMBLING. 195. Was war' ein Gott, What were a God, self-centred, free from change, Who watched the universe around him range ? Nay, interfused He permeates the whole. Nature the hody, God is nature's soul. Thus all that in Him lives and moves and is No instant can His quickening spirit miss. 196. advertunt they turn their minds to religion, Since there is fear of eternal punishment in death. 197. Aut caelum aut nihil, Either heaven or nothing. Siavoia, intelligence. 198. Uhum One thing is needful. I have chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from me. 202. vox prcegnans, a pregnant utterance, big with consequences, from whose womb will issue a second progeny, portentous, perilous, damnable. 203. spar g ens flores scattering flowers and paying a vain tribute of respect. 208. JEs sagen's So say All hearts in every clime beneath the sky ; Each in his several way ; And why not I in mine ? 211. Sic animi Thus mind cannot exist without a body, An entity divorced from nerves and blood. 212. alter ego, second self. TRANSLATIONS. 247 212. repetentia nostri, the re-collecting of ourselves. Alter ab integro " The -world's great age begins anew." Shelley. 216. Fadam I will do thy will in heaven as on earth. Amem May I love thee more than myself, and myself only for thy sake. 217. Sarai Thou shalt be with me for ever a citizen of that Rome of which Christ is a Roman. 218. Wen Gott "Whom God deceives is well deceived. 222. Die Welt To know the world and not despise it. 226. Nox est We must sleep through one never-ending night. Pallidula, Poor pallid, shivering, naked soul. 228. TTngefahr His Reverence says almost the same, Only he uses slightly different words. 234. immortalia to describe immortal things in mortal language. 237. E pur si muove, A.nd yet it moves. Printed by 0. F. Hodgson & Son, J Newton Street, Holborn, W.O. T