\ 
 
 A\S 
 
SELECTIONS FROM THE UNPUBLISHED PAPERS 
 
 SYDNEY DOBELL. 
 
THOUGHTS 
 
 ON 
 
 Art, Philosophy, and Religion 
 
 SELECTED FROM THE UXPUBLISHED PAPERS 
 
 OF 
 
 SYDNEY DOBELL. 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY 
 
 JOHN NICHOL, M.A. Oxon., LL.D. 
 
 PKOFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 
 UNIVEKSITY OF GLASGOW. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE. 
 
 1876. 
 
 \,All rights reserved.'^ 
 
, -2. 
 
 n 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The following pages, which — {with the exception of 
 Letters and critical notes more properly belonging to a 
 Biography) — contain all the unpublished Prose writings 
 of Mr. Dobell likely to be of general interest, embrace 
 two comparatively finished Essays and numerous sug- 
 gestions or outlines for more elaborate treatment. 
 
 The Pamphlet on Parliamentary Reform — the only 
 portion of this volume previously printed — was issued in 
 1865, and shortly afterwards reached a second edition. 
 From this several paragraphs have been omitted, in some 
 instances because a clearer statement of the same view 
 appears to be found in the subjoined political notes, in 
 others because they have seemed to be digressions 
 detracting from the force of the argument. Con- 
 siderable omissions are indicated by asterisks. The 
 Editors have assumed the responsibility of a few minor 
 changes, affecting the expression, never the sense of the 
 
 889 
 
VI INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 author's view ; the pressure under which the pamphlet 
 was composed, with unfavourable conditions of health, 
 having led, here and there, to an excessive involution of 
 style. 
 
 The Lecture on Poetry addressed to the members of 
 the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution (session 1856-57) 
 is published as it was delivered, with no further change 
 than has been involved in the insertion of a few quota- 
 tions referred to. A large proportion of the notes which 
 follow were marked as illustrative of the Lecture : others 
 have been brought together from various manuscripts. 
 These sections will be read with the interest attaching to 
 a genuine artist's review of his own art. They convey 
 witli lucid and logical eloquence a clearly conceived 
 theory, and are adorned by some of the most subtle 
 passages — see especially the admirable analysis of Thor- 
 waldsen's ' Night ' — to be found in English criticism. 
 
 The Sketches from Nature, scattered among a multi- 
 tude of note-books running over more than fifteen years 
 and embracing almost every variety of subject, have been 
 collected and reproduced, with rare omissions, as they 
 were found. Several of these are mere fragments, gems 
 of which a single facet has been cut, or half-finished 
 cameos ; none it has appeared to us without some 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Vll 
 
 peculiar suggestiveness which justifies its insertion. 
 Mr. Dobell was emphatically a poet of Nature, in whose 
 sole society, outside his inner circle, perhaps too much 
 of his life was spent. He physically saw more of the 
 external world than other men, his eye had grown fine 
 to her forms and tints, his ear to her voices. He had 
 made himself, by study, a capable naturalist, and though 
 looking on all things ' in the light that never was on sea 
 or shore ' his descriptions of plants, birds, the lustres on 
 moor and hill, and the radiances of sun and cloud are 
 conspicuously accurate. The incompleteness even of 
 those sketches is not without its advantage ; in recording 
 first impressions his imagination is kept within limit, we 
 escape the occasional excess of his detail. They have 
 the charm of the first outlines for an artist's gallery. 
 
 The selection of the remaining — among them some 
 of the most valuable — fragments has been a work of 
 graver responsibility demanding a greater amount of 
 discrimination. They have been gathered from a chaos 
 of Memoranda,' — thrown together with no attempt at 
 method and of various date — and arranged under heads 
 
 ' I must disclaim any share in this work, beyond the labor linKV 
 necessary for farther condensation, and testify to the unwearied 
 industry and devoted zeal of my co-editor (Mr. Dobell's literary 
 executrix), by which it has been accomplished. 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 as they have seemed to be naturally associated, /. e. to 
 relate to the same class of subjects or train of thought. 
 In cases where one idea reappears under several forms 
 that held to be the maturest or best expression of the 
 author's mind has been made to stand for the rest. It is 
 hoped that, as a result of this process — which has elimi- 
 nated about half the matter at our disposal — nothing is 
 here presented which (allowing for the conditions of the 
 composition) will do injustice to the writer, or be without 
 some claim on the reader's attention. 
 
 The concluding section of this volume has a special 
 interest as containing the results of many years' inevit- 
 ably intermittent thought on the continuation of the 
 work which — in spite of manifest incongruities — must be 
 regarded as Mr. Dobell's masterpiece. One of its radical 
 defects, an utter want of unity, unfortunately appears in 
 the conception of what remains to represent this con- 
 tinuation. The first impression will be one of disap- 
 pointment. We come to hear the Play, and are put off 
 with a performance before the curtain : we want to learn 
 how the essence of egotism whom we know as Balder is 
 to be humanised, and we find him hidden. It is evident 
 that the poet had been constrained to postpone the exe- 
 cution of his portentous plan. The Epic Drama of Life 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. IX 
 
 — for a mere interlude in which these notes were, in the 
 tirst instance, intended as a mere outline — was cast on a 
 scale too colossal for execution. The torso left attests in 
 scope and detail the vast compass of the author's mind 
 and his lack of the sense of proportion. He never 
 seems to have heard of the Statute of limitations imposed 
 on all who desire to leave a definite and abiding mark on 
 an age so manifold as ours, and he aspired in the nine- 
 teenth to the universal views of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The dramatic sketch in the following pages is given 
 as nearly as possible in the words of the memoranda. It 
 has been thought desirable in some instances considera- 
 bly to condense the original ; the headings of scenes 
 which must have owed their interest to expression in a 
 completed form have been occasionally omitted, together 
 with passages of prose and verse too fragmentary to 
 stand by themselves ; but the substance of all that is 
 essential to the plot, the deUneations of the chief actors, 
 and all details that appear at once intelligible and in- 
 teresting have been preserved. 
 
 The scene of the Play ^ is laid in some undetermined 
 
 ' Mr. Dobell had abandoned the idea of making it an Interlude, 
 and, had time and strength permitted, would have wrought it out as 
 a separate and substantive Drama. 
 
X INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 locality, toward the close of the first half of the fifteenth 
 century, i.e. the period of the general councils, the Hussite 
 War, the last of the Antipopes of Avignon, and the begin- 
 nings of that Art which was destined to strike a deadlier 
 blow against an irresponsible Priesthood than had been 
 possible to the great German Emperors. The strife — 
 perhaps the most momentous in modern history — of the 
 House of Hohenstaufen with the Church of Hildebrand 
 was about to be renewed under changed conditions. The 
 poet had it in his mind to celebrate one of the later phases 
 of the war of Guelf and Ghibelline, and that he did not 
 approach his task ^nthout adequate preparation the 
 copious historical, biographical, antiquarian and literary 
 references in his common-place book abundantly attest. 
 He had studied the leading characters, the prevalent 
 superstitions — the Alchemy, Astrology, and Demonolog}' — 
 all the salient manners and customs of the age, and made 
 himself master of the issues at stake with an amount of 
 research and judgment which might have qualified him 
 to wTite a great historic poem. That he would ultimately 
 have more closely associated his imaginary with real 
 events and persons is probable. To the Plot, as it exists 
 in germ, there attaches a degree of ideal vagueness. The un- 
 named city on the plain, the knight's castle on the hill, the 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. XI 
 
 loves of Heretica and the Cardinal, and the disguise of 
 the Secretary are Hke elements of an ecclesiastical Faery- 
 Tale. But, under the masks of representative men and 
 situations, we are presented with a substantially accurate 
 and vivid picture of the conflicting passions, principles 
 and interests of the age. The poet's love of liberty on 
 the one hand, his deep religious sympathies on the other, 
 vetoing an absolute adhesion to either party in the 
 struggle, enable him to pronounce on each in turn an 
 impartial verdict. The Cardinal — until his whole nature 
 is dismantled by the catastrophe — is a noble type of a 
 good Priest — a brave champion of what is best in the 
 old order of things. The Chancellor — (as seems to us 
 the authoi"'s most dramatic conception) is a corrupt and 
 scheming statesman. But we are made to realize that 
 the latter is on the side of the Future. Of the other 
 ' dramatis personge ' few are sufficiently developed to 
 afford much scope for criticism. Grand or striking 
 thoughts are hung upon their lips : they are hardly, as 
 yet, articulated into relationship or set in motion. The 
 Duchess is a shadowy Cleopatra ; Heretica a ray of 
 white light ; the Abbot a zealot, made the vehicle for 
 numerous parodies (one of which it has been thought 
 suflicient to present) of mediaeval pedantry and fanati- 
 
XU INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 cism culminating in frenzy. The Philosopher is the 
 spokesman of the early science which, previously repre- 
 sented only by Roger Bacon, the Alchemists, the 
 Arabians, and at the half eastern court of Frederick II., 
 was about to have a new dawn in Germany and Florence. 
 Embodying ' the spirit of the years to come,' we may 
 imagine (as indeed appears from the Memoranda), that 
 he would have been made the mouth-piece of much of 
 the author's own Philosophy. Of that philosophy 
 some indications are given in the extracts under the 
 three headings of the present volume which precede 
 the Play. In pronouncing on these the reader will con- 
 stantly revert to the manner in which they were written, 
 and the form in which they have been found : but, with 
 all deductions, it is believed they will be received by 
 more than the poet's personal friends as acceptable 
 memorials of a singularly comprehensive mind, un- 
 weariedly active in the search after Beauty and Truth, — 
 qualities which he identified in the meeting point of a 
 Religious Ideal, and with which, in the spirit of a philan- 
 thropy to which the merely sensuous school of Art is a 
 stranger, he desired to permeate the world of his in- 
 fluence. 
 
 No compact system of thought is to be looked for in 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. XIU 
 
 these pages. Like Coleridge's * Aids to Reflection,' or 
 his 'Confessions/ they set forth the imperfectly formularized 
 sometimes imperfectly consistent conclusions of an 
 enquiring spirit. Nor is the manner in which they are 
 expressed invariably faultless. Books are written to be 
 read, or to be reviewed, or because their ideas have come 
 to the writer, like the numbers to a poet. To the last 
 category the bulk of our author's prose belongs : and to 
 it adhere the advantages and drawbacks of such a 
 manner of composition. More of a thinker than an 
 orator, he seldom had his audience in view : but if 
 criticism failed to prune his exuberance, neither did he 
 suffer from its torpedo torch. He may claim place with 
 those 
 
 ' Children of the second Birth 
 Whom the world could not tame,' 
 
 spoken of by I\Ir. Arnold in his verses on ' Ober- 
 mann.' 
 
 The range of Mr. Dobell's general reading was 
 limited ; he preferred to wander in comparatively pathless 
 fields : he fell in love with strange conceptions, and had 
 a weakness for coining curious words ; his book learning 
 was quaint and peculiar. Hence it not unfrequently 
 occurs that he unconsciously reproduces results more 
 
XIV INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 or less familiar to students of the ancient and modern 
 classics; he constructs what has been long ago constructed, 
 and slays the slain. But he arrives at his conclusions in 
 an original manner by processes demonstrably his own. 
 His speculations have thus a special interest, as showing 
 how much a powerful mind can achieve without the 
 modem Historical method, which when exclusively em- 
 ployed is apt to rob our thought of freshness and vitality. 
 He often conveys to us the impression of a man trans- 
 planted from that old age which is the youth of the world 
 restoring our jaded senses with legends of the prime. 
 Mr. Dobell's style is unequal : admirably clear and 
 forcible at its best, it is occasionally the involved record 
 of super-subtle dialectic, overlaid with thick coming 
 fancies and defaced by Latinisms. Of the Pedantry 
 which consists in the desire to dignify platitudes by old- 
 fashioned dress he had no share, but he is at intervals led 
 astray by an anatomical Philology, or a Nominalism like 
 that of Plato's Cratylus. In argument he never knows 
 when to have done. His composition is apt to resemble 
 that of the Chinese puzzles where one elaborate ivory box 
 is oirved inside of another. His illustrations are excellent, 
 but the illustrations of the illustrations are confusing. 
 His mental analysis often reminds us of the reported 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. XV 
 
 exordium of one of Fichte's lectures ' Think the wall : 
 think the thinker of the wall : — think the mind that 
 thought the thinker of the wall.' 
 
 When travelling in those regions where Truth as well 
 as Error resides in a maze he doeS'not always succeed in 
 finding the clue, or at all events in leading others through 
 the labyrinth. In the purely speculative fragments, some 
 of which have been gathered from MS. headed notes for 
 a work on the Physiology of Nations, he mixes physics 
 and metaphysics in a fashion for which we may find 
 parallels in Browne or Burton, — in the otherwise oppo- 
 site schools of Descartes and of Hartley. In one pas- 
 sage he adopts without knowing its source or realizing its 
 consequences, the view of the Will which identifies it Avith 
 Desire : in another he elevates it into an independent and 
 main factor of life, and propounds theories of the origin 
 of Knowledge which recall those of the German Idealists. 
 His abstract thoughts are those of a man talking to him- 
 self and refuting objectors in an inner Socratic dialogue. 
 (') fjiiv it'Tug liaXoyoQ ixi'tv (ptorfjc yei'Ofxei'og. But even his 
 fantasies are instructive ; however abrupt or startling, his 
 conclusions are invariably genuine and often luminous. 
 Academic witlings whose being is a grin e^ prcEterea nihil 
 may isolate passages of his writing and subject them to the 
 
XVI INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 ridicule which they conceive to be the test of Truth ; 
 but when read with their context they will be found to 
 form part of an intelligible though scarce fulfilled design, 
 and, though sometimes beneath crude forms, to teem with 
 the wisdom which justifies itself. The poet's expression 
 is vivid and his judgment sound on all that his eye sees 
 or his soul feels ; he fails when he becomes technical or 
 leans upon erudition. 
 
 The connecting link and concentrating aim of his 
 Philosophy is the search after an Ideal which he finds 
 realized in the Perfect Man — according to his belief the 
 only practical standard for the Race — of primitive Christi- 
 anity, and so rises or passes from Theory to Faith. His 
 views on this head are partially developed in the Religious 
 Fragments which will probably be to many readers the 
 most interesting in the volume. 
 
 For various reasons it is impossible here to supplement 
 what is wanting to the exposition of a Creed which, even 
 in some of its essentials, Mr. Dobell himself hesitated to 
 formularize. A more truly religious man never lived, 
 every action and thought of his life was pervaded by the 
 spirit of reverence — but he adhered to no sect, and no 
 form of so-called orthodoxy could claim his allegiance. 
 He was equally antagonistic to what he conceived to be 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. XVll 
 
 the enervating ecclcsiasticism of Rome and to the Jug- 
 gernaut worsliip which is most consistently expounded 
 in Calvinism. But he dwelt more on the affirmative than 
 on the negative side of his belief, and was as averse to 
 dogmatic denial as to blind credulity. Attaching himself 
 to a liberal but careful interpretation of Gospel History, 
 his sympathies probably lay more with the broadest 
 section of the broad Church of England than with any 
 other recognized denomination. 
 
 Our author's Politics, as his Theology, were marked 
 by that absolute independence which in Art would accept 
 no copies but Nature, in life no guides but Duty and the 
 Graces. The views in the Reform Pamphlet are in general 
 accord with those of Mr. Mill (with which it may be re- 
 marked he was unfamiliar), but they are obviously devel- 
 oped from the writer's mind. They are infected with his 
 prejudices — (<;'.^. his extreme intolerance of American in- 
 stitutions, his comparative ignorance of the Teutonic, his 
 love of the Latin races, only restrained by his equal 
 abhorrence of the Cloister and the Commune between 
 which those races oscillate)— and by the historical in- 
 completeness of a view which in contrasting Republics 
 and Hereditary Monarchy forgets the record of Athens 
 on the one side and that of later Spain on the other. 
 
 a 
 
XVIU TNTRODUCTORY NOTE, 
 
 But they are inspired by exhilarating aspirations and 
 often marked by shrewd common sense. 
 
 At a time when the desire for literary completeness is 
 justly stimulated by daily accumulating masses of incom- 
 petence, it may be objected that in the publication of 
 these fragments we are bringing unripe fruit into a 
 glutted market. Our hope is rather to have offered a 
 handful of good seed that, scattered in various soils, 
 may spring to various richness of bloom. We trust, at 
 all events, to have enabled the reader to judge for 
 himself regarding some leading features of a notable 
 figure in the recent history of English thought. 
 
 J.N. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introductory Note . . . . . v 
 
 ARTISTIC. 
 
 Lecture on the 'Nature of Poetry' . . . 3 
 
 Illustrative Notes on Poetry and Art . . 66 
 
 Sketches from Nature . . . . . 76 
 
 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 Search for the Ideal . . . . . 96 
 
 Relation of Imperfect to Ideal Action and 
 
 Expression . ..... 107 
 
 Beauty, Love, Order, Unity , . . . 113 
 
 Origin of Rhythm, Sleep, &c. .... 128 
 
 Notes on Langu.'vge and Thoughi . . . 135 
 
 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Theoretic ....... 147 
 
 Ethical . . . . . . . 181 
 
 POLITICAL. 
 
 Pamphlet on Reform ..... 197 
 
 Social Notes . . . . , , . 233 
 
 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED 
 PLAY. 
 
 Plan and Design . . . . . , 255 
 
 Memoranda and Fragments concerning Char.\ct£Rs 287 
 
 Miscellaneous Memoranda for the Drama . 335 
 
ARTISTIC 
 
 / 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OE POETRY.' 
 
 Delivered in the Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh, 
 April 8, 1857. 
 
 The temper in which we perceive a fact to be accounted 
 for is very different from that in which we construct a 
 theory to explain it. 
 
 Looking at this Book, for instance, I may assert with 
 some confidence that I see such and such a shape and 
 colour ; but I should speak in a different tone if I had to 
 treat of the cause of colour or to answer the old vexed 
 questions of form and substance. So I may have the 
 greatest certainty that such and such works of a great 
 Poet are Poems ; but those of you who have the deepest 
 intimacy with those works, and have gone nearest to the 
 hidden qualities which make them what they are, will 
 understand most thoroughly in how different a mood I 
 shall enter this evening upon an enquiry as to the Nature 
 of Poetry. 
 
 1 would meet on the threshold of the subject some 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ARTISTIC. 
 
 objections that may arise in the course of what I have to 
 say. Those of you who are aheady well exercised in such 
 enquiries may perhaps complain that I have not com- 
 pressed into my space as much detail as it might have 
 held, and that throughout I have not dealt so much with 
 the metaphysics of the question as was due to my audience. 
 
 I would answer to the first objection that as this is 
 not an essay but a lecture, some repetitions may occa- 
 sionally be necessary to keep up an easy continuity of 
 Thought ; and to the second that I have intentionally 
 avoided what is commonly called metaphysics because 
 as I have to-night, as far as regards the mind, to do more 
 with phenomena than essences — with the quomodo than 
 the cur sit — I wish to keep my subject as clear as possible 
 from all unnecessary controversies. 
 
 As Poetry is a product of mental functions I have to 
 deal vidth those functions ; but I am concerned rather 
 with the science of their activity, on which we can all 
 agree, than with the philosophy of it, on which each of 
 us should probably differ. I have therefore carefully 
 abstained from the use of such words as — implying more 
 than is needful for my purpose — raise unnecessary ques- 
 tions in the hearer, questions of the highest interest 
 in themselves, but not vital to what we are about to 
 consider. 
 
LECTURE ON THE * NATURE OF POETRY.' 5 
 
 Lastly, and most emphatically, I would ask of you all 
 that if in some portions of my remarks I appear to claim 
 more for the character of the Poet than Biography will 
 justify, you will be good enough to suspend your judg- 
 ments till you arrive at that part of my theory in which I 
 endeavour to reconcile the Poet in the exercise of his 
 vocation with the same Man — often as we knoAv a very 
 erring miserable man — under the ordinary circumstances 
 of Life. With this brief preface I proceed at once to 
 examine the Nature of Poetry. 
 
 In one of the books attributed to Aristotle we are 
 told that artists should follow Zeuxis. You may remem- 
 ber that this great artist having promised to paint the 
 Greeks an Helen, demanded to study from all the most 
 beautiful women in Greece ; and choosing from each 
 the beauty wherein she excelled, combined their charms 
 into a total perfection more beautiful than any. This 
 consummate whole would be thenceforth the standard of 
 female form ; as a woman was more or less beautiful she 
 would more or less resemble this incarnate Beauty, and 
 for ever)' portion of a female figure there would be one 
 infallible criterion. If it could congruously make part of 
 this perfect whole, it must be held perfect ; and if it 
 would be incongruous with that faultless shape, it must 
 be considered in the same degree failing of perfection. 
 
6 ARTISTIC. 
 
 This gives us a tolerable notion of the judgment by 
 ideals — so called of course not because the standard 
 cannot really exist, but because this real perfection if 
 truly built up of separately perfect parts may be supposed 
 to agree as a whole with what Plato has called t]ie idea — 
 or that immaterial model in the Divine Mind after which 
 each of God's works is created. 
 
 It is only by this judgment from ideals that we can, in 
 anything, judge at once largely and accurately. In every 
 reality there are, because it is imperfect, things which 
 are not accounted for by its own individual instance, 
 things inadequate and superadequate, questions without 
 answers, and answers without questions. It is only in the 
 Ideal Model that Perfection justifies itself, and the in- 
 soluble problems of each imperfect copy of it uncoil and 
 join in beautiful and harmonious solution. It is only by 
 attaining a just idea of the perfect Man that we can 
 understand the World-old conflict concerning such ques- 
 tions as 'what is Truth,' ' w hat is Goodness,' ' what is 
 Beauty.' It is only by associatmg such ideal men into 
 the ideal of human society that one can graduate all the 
 opposing theories of morahty and ])olitics, and see all 
 their wrongs and contradictions conterminating in a central 
 Right and Truth. 
 
 Nay, it is only by recognising this unattained ideal^ and 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 7 
 
 the distance from it of our highest real, that we understand 
 the ethical office of Rehgion and demonstrate the moral 
 necessity of Revelation itself My answer, therefore, to 
 our question of to-night ' what is Poetry? ' is this : Poetry 
 is whatever can congruously form part of a Poem : Per- 
 fect Poetry is whatever can congruously form part of a 
 Perfect Poem. Our real business is therefore to enquire 
 ' What is a Perfect Poem ? ' 
 
 Now since, for obvious reasons, we cannot literally 
 imitate Zeuxis and combine the perfect portions of imper- 
 fect Poems into something from which we might deduce 
 the laws of a perfect whole, we must carry the enquiry a 
 step further back. I shall do so by laying down a postu- 
 late which I shall ask you to take awhile for granted, and 
 I shall then, in the first part of this lecture, work out an 
 hypothesis from this premiss : and in the second part of 
 the lecture I shall adduce examples of existing poetry, 
 and proceed to justify my hypothesis by showing that it 
 explains the phenomena and is not inconsistent with 
 established truths. In reply then to the question what is 
 a Perfect Poem I answer a perfect Poem is the perfect ex- 
 pression of a Perfect Hiunan Mind. Not only an ex- 
 pression, but a perfect expression, of not only a Mind, but 
 a human Mind, and not only a human Mind, but a perfect 
 human Mind. To show, by careful generalizations from 
 
8 ARTISTIC. 
 
 the facts of History and Biography, the true character of a 
 perfect human Mind, would in itself be a task not for 
 one lecture but a series of lectures ; and I shall therefore 
 content myself to-night with an authority which, while 
 higher than any human induction, is, as I need not tell 
 such an audience as this — the very short-hand and brief 
 of all Philosophies, and assume that ' in the Image of God 
 made He man.' To discover the characteristic features 
 of the Image we must therefore enquire the Attributes of 
 the Original. 
 
 Now the manifestations by which the Supreme is best 
 known to us are those of to Know, to Love, and to Make. 
 And since a human mind can have no notion of the cre- 
 ation of Something out of Nothing, to Make, so far as we 
 are concerned, must be understood as to Order. Order 
 being that collocation of things which to the Divine Mind 
 seems fit : and which we humanly express when we say 
 that Order is a certain position of things with regard to 
 each other regulated by the nature of the things : which 
 state of position we call relation because each of the 
 posited things refers the mind to the other. 
 
 An ideal Man, therefore, must by virtue of his Image- 
 ship be a Knower, a Lover, and a Maker. But since he 
 is Image and not Original, created and not Creator, he 
 must be something besides. 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 9 
 
 There must be that in him which expresses the 
 relation of the thing made to the Maker. 
 
 Now that which in the less recognizes tlie greater, in 
 the vassal acknowledges the Suzerain, the Saxons termed 
 Worthschipc, from Worth, the residence of a Manorial 
 Lord. Hence (and I must beg you to bear in mind the 
 wide interpretation of the words) our verb ' to Worship.' 
 The Ideal Man must, then, be a Worshipper. 
 
 The primary attributes of a perfect human Mind 
 are, therefore, to Know, to Love, to Worship and to 
 Order. 
 
 ' To Know,' implies things that can be known. Exist- 
 ing in midst of those things, the ideal mind is roused to 
 activity by them with the following results. 
 
 The things which it knows are true. The things 
 which it loves are Beautiful. The things which it 
 worships are sublime. The things which it ' makes ' 
 are ordered : order being that position of things re- 
 garding each other with which an ideal mind is pleased. 
 
 The ideal mind identifies Beauty and Sublimity as 
 the magnetic needle identifies the North. The North is 
 not the North because the needle points to it : but mean- 
 while it is sufficient for us to know that we can depend 
 upon the needle. 
 
 The ideal mind receives Truth as a perfect eye 
 
lO ARTISTIC. 
 
 receives form and colour. What relation form and colour 
 bear to the Absolute we cannot tell : it is sufficient that 
 they are Truths to Beings organized as we are. 
 
 The ideal mind weaves order as a loom weaves a 
 fabric. There is a higher reason why the fabric is what 
 it is than the mechanism of the loom ; yet that lower 
 reason is sufficient for practical purposes — and would 
 perhaps be more useful than the higher if— as in the case 
 of Man explaining Man — one loom had to account for 
 the products of the other. And here let us again notice 
 the importance of dealing with ideals when we arrive at 
 the large simplicities of Nature. There can be no doubt 
 that Love is the test of the Beautiful ; but if I had said 
 the Beautiful is what a human being loves, a thousand 
 facts would rise to contradict me. But though many 
 minds love what is not beautiful, we all must notice that in 
 proportion as a mind is high in the scale of humanity the 
 objects of its Love are certain to graduate towards Beauty. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Worship is the test of 
 the Sublime, though some nations bow down before the 
 horrible and the ugly. But these fetish-worshippers are 
 known to be, in every sense, the lowest form of humanity ; 
 and in those nations where the human Nature is in other 
 respects more highly developed we find the objects of 
 reverence more and more sublime. 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' I I 
 
 There can be no doubt that to make, in the sense of 
 to order, is a power common to the human mind, though 
 the result of its feebler exercise be too often but a com- 
 plicated confusion — 'non bene junctarum discordia semina 
 rerum.' But as we rise to stronger characters we find 
 them reducing those 'discordia semina' to a partial order 
 or a forced consistency, resulting in systems each com- 
 plete in itself, even though perhaps mutually irrecon- 
 cilable. And as we still rise to yet higher minds we find 
 a more and more general harmony and cosmos of 
 thought, because both a clearer perception of separate 
 things as they are and a correcter power of distributing 
 them according to relations. 
 
 Thus ascending through the various grades of the 
 real, and i)erceiving how at every step certain Laws have 
 a wider and directer efficacy, we learn that to understand 
 the full and true operation of those Laws (whose impeded 
 and uncertain results in this our imperfect state perplex 
 and puzzle us) we must rise still higher in the same 
 direction, and look to that perfect type of the Ideal in 
 which alone their action is general, simple, congruous, 
 and infallible. Arriving there we find Love consecrated 
 to the Beautiful, Worship intuitively loyal to the Sublime, 
 Knowledge accepting only the True, and Order spon- 
 taneously co-ordinating the Related. 
 
12 ARTISTIC. 
 
 Here let no one found an objection on the ground of 
 that Christian Charity which we owe to all Men, for on 
 closer examination he will perceive that the true exercise 
 of that universal I>ove depends on the very principle I 
 have laid down. He who detects those elements of 
 Beauty which exist beneath the ugliness of every sinner 
 is exercising one of the most ennobling privileges of 
 Christianity : but he who loves the faults even of his 
 dearest friend is destroying, by that amiable vice, one of 
 the Divinest safeguards of his own virtue. And let no 
 man take exception to what I have said of Worship from 
 any fear that it infringes on the first Commandment. In 
 the first place I beg such an objector to notice that large 
 significance of tlie term which I have pointed out when 
 mentioning its derivations ; and in the second place it 
 would be easy to show, by applying certain Laws which 
 I shall presently have to indicate, that those material 
 things which we call sublime are but the visible expres- 
 sions of the Invisible, and that when by the impulse of his 
 reverence the Poet instinctively recognizes the Sublimities 
 of this Universe, he is really but repeating in his own 
 appointed fashion the great saying ' All Worship be to 
 God alone.' 
 
 A perfect mind, then, possesses, in due proportion, 
 every human quality, and is especially characterized by 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 1 3 
 
 the powers to love, to worship, to know, and to order. 
 And a perfect Poem is the perfect expression of such a 
 mind. 
 
 To express is to carry out. To express a mind is to 
 carry out that mind into some equivalent. And here I 
 must beg you to observe carefully the sense in which I 
 shall have to use this term ' equivalent,' because, as will 
 be shown by-and-bye, the peculiar meaning attached to 
 it is important to the whole theory. By an ' equivalent ' 
 I mean that product of an active mind, which being 
 presented to the same mind when passive, would restore 
 the former state of activity. I say not which being pre- 
 sented to another mind, but ' which being presented to 
 the same mind.' For instance, the full verbal expression 
 of a feeling of mine would be such words as if I heard 
 them in a tranquil mind would excite that feeling into 
 the same state of activity. 
 
 There is no essential difference in the forms of Poetic 
 expression, but they may be conveniently divided, for our 
 present purpose, into simple and compound. 
 
 Simple, as when the state of mind in the E.xpressor is 
 directly succeeded by some external act, as of speech. 
 As if, feeling Love, I should say, ' I love.' Compound, 
 as when the mental activity is directly succeeded by 
 such facts of the iittagmation as are its equivalents, which 
 
14 ARTISTIC. 
 
 facts it has to express by such other equivalents as being 
 equivalent to them are thus indirectly equivalent to itself. 
 As if I should express the feeling of Love not by saying 
 ' I love,' but by calling up in the imagination some 
 beautiful object which is the equivalent of Love — that is, 
 which would rouse my Love into activity — and finding 
 for that object some equivalent in words — that is, such 
 words as when the object has disappeared from my 
 inward sight would make it reappear. 
 
 A compound or indirect expression is therefore a 
 succession of direct expressions, and is, of course, more 
 or less compound according to the number in the series 
 between the original mental activity and the final external 
 act, as of speech, for instance, which is its ultimate out- 
 come. For example, in the illustration I have just given 
 of the indirect expression of Love, the feeling finds its 
 equivalent in the image of something beautiful, and this 
 image finds its equivalent in words. This is the simplest 
 form of compound. But, as we shall see by-and-bye, it 
 may happen that there are no verbal equivalents for that 
 ' something beautiful ' which is the equivalent of the 
 feeling, and that the ' something ' must itself be expressed 
 by another and equivalent beautiful image for which 
 there happen to be adequate words. This, which I hope 
 to illustrate presently, is the next form of compound. 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 15 
 
 In either case the verbal signs, the words, are the indirect 
 expression of Love ; and the compound act will be 
 perfect in proportion to the perfection of each of the 
 simple acts whereof it is composed. It will be seen at a 
 glance that no full utterance of a total human mind is 
 likely to be wholly simple or wholly compound ; but as 
 the one or the other predominates, the character of the 
 total expression will be direct or indirect. 
 
 In a perfect Poem, therefore, the perfect mind may 
 be said either to utter itself directly in a truthful and 
 orderly expression of Love and Worship, or indirectly 
 in a loving and worshipfd expression of ordered Truth. 
 The first may be called Lyrical, the second Epical 
 Poetry ; though, as the peculiar forms of each became 
 occasionally adopted for the other, the popular use of 
 these names has lost sight of the original and essential 
 distinctions. I do not mention the Drama among the 
 great separate forms of Poetry, because the Drama is 
 merely an Epic produced under compulsory external 
 conditions that interfere with the natural laws of epical 
 production. Much that I should wish to say on this 
 most interesting of hybrids I am compelled by time and 
 space to omit from the present enquiry. 
 
 The two great forms of Poetic expression, then, — the 
 Epical and Lyrical — are governed by the same laws, and 
 
1 6 ARTISTIC. 
 
 we will proceed therefore to investigate the one which, 
 more or less, contains the other, and to enquire into the 
 conditions of a Perfect Epic. We ha%-e seen that it is a 
 perfect expression of a perfect human mind, — that is, 
 something which being brought into contact \\ath a 
 perfect mind would rouse into action its characteristic 
 and other qualities in due proportion ; and that it is an 
 indirect expression — that is, such an equivalent as is not 
 a simple utterance. 
 
 We have first, therefore, to find an equivalent not in 
 words but in things for a mind possessing many faculties, 
 of which what are popularly called the feelings are repre- 
 sented by to love and to worship, and the other functions 
 by to know and to order. The problem is not to find 
 an equivalent for either of these functions separately, but 
 to produce a total that shall answer to them all. The 
 faculty to know might perhaps find its equivalent in a 
 chaos of Truths : the faculty to order in an arrangement 
 of them : but to love and to worship exact that those 
 Truths shall be either beautiful or sublime. 
 
 But we seek something more than even an orderly ar- 
 rangement of things true, beautiful, and sublime : for the 
 mind that has to find an equivalent is stated in the pre- 
 miss to be not only a mind but a human mind. To 
 those conditions, therefore, that are imposed by the 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' I 7 
 
 faculties in which it is the Image of God we must add 
 the conditions by which it is specially marked and limited 
 as Man. And, since it is looking for an equivalent to 
 itself among things other than itself, one primary condi- 
 tion of expression by such an equivalent must be the 
 laws by which the human mind perceives — or the laws 
 of what, to avoid metaphysical disquisitions, I will call 
 the inivard eye. And this familiar term is no mere figure 
 of speech, for the body is so much the Poem and homo- 
 logue of the soul that the laws of the inward eye may be 
 illustrated by those of the outward. The outer eye has 
 to do with the universe of external things ; the inner eye 
 has to do with that inner universe of facts which memory 
 has stored and perception supplies, and with such new 
 combinations of these as may take place under the 
 direction of the other functions of the mind. 
 
 Now the great law of outward sight is that we per- 
 ceive but one thing at a time. A combination of things 
 is perceived by rapid discursions of the eye from the 
 object which it principally regards to the surrounding 
 objects, which become accessories to the object of princi- 
 pal attention and are united with it by an act of optical 
 memory. The mental vision obeys the same law. The 
 Truth on which the inward eye is chiefly fixed becomes 
 a solar centre and other truths are apprehended by rapid 
 
 c 
 
l8 ARTISTIC. 
 
 excursions from this central point — to which they become, 
 therefore, accessories ; each accessory (in proportion to 
 the attention paid to it) itself the centre of still subordi- 
 nate excursions. And as the bodily eye in perceiving a 
 cluster of objects will do so more felicitously and per- 
 fectly if the object on which it chiefly rests be one of 
 such size and position as to be a favourable centre for 
 excursion, and of such general character as shall not 
 conflict with the impressions of the others, so the mental 
 eye for the perfect exercise of its powers needs that its 
 principal Truths shall be central and generic, and by 
 the — as it were mechanical — conditions of its functions 
 requires for its happiest exercise to move under the 
 direction of order. 
 
 Let us notice, for instance, the mode of the outer eye 
 in dealing with facts which the Divine order has already 
 regulated — an organized being. It strikes upon the most 
 important portion, and by rapid unconscious excursions 
 to the subordinate parts brings them into optical relation 
 with the central fact : and in these unconscious excur- 
 sions, however rapid, the same law prevails, and the 
 members are perceived as wholes with regard to their 
 parts by the same process whereby the total being is per- 
 ceived as a whole with regard to its members. And it is 
 because in an organized being the Divine order has 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 1 9 
 
 arranged the facts of which it is composed that the eye 
 can more rapidly get a true perception of such a being 
 than of a chaotic mass of the same number of constituents. 
 So with the eye of the mind. It fixes on some fact 
 among the multitude of inner existences — some natural 
 centre of many relations — and relates all referable facts 
 to it by rapid unconscious excursions. In the same 
 manner these subordinate facts are themselves made 
 centres for their own appropriate relations, and the pro- 
 cess extends do^vTiwards as far as perception goes. The 
 mind is naturally disposed, therefore, to perceive a whole — 
 something made up by the reference of many things to 
 some one principal thing — and the perception will be 
 felicitous and perfect (that is, the mind will use its 
 natural functions with ease and advantage) in proportion 
 as that great 'WTiole and all its constituents are ordered. 
 
 I might have reached the same conclusions by a 
 scrupulous analysis of our notion of ' order 3 ' but as it 
 would demand a closer consequence of thought than the 
 present method, I shall content myself this evening with 
 this argument — and it seems to me a sufficient argument 
 — from analogy. 
 
 The hypothesis that a perfect Poem is the expression 
 of a perfect Human Mind conducts us therefore to these 
 primary laws for the construction of an Epic : that it 
 
 c a 
 
20 ARTISTIC. 
 
 must be an ordinated thing : that as to this arrangement 
 it must be that of one subject with that subject's con- 
 gruous accessories : and that such subject and acces- 
 sories must be of a nature to satisfy Love (and its modi- 
 fications) Worship and Knowledge ; must be generically 
 True and specifically Beautiful and Sublime. And that 
 the foregoing laws apply not only to the principal 
 subject and its accessories, but to every part of which 
 that whole is made up ; i.e. that the Great Poem is an 
 organized aggregation of small Poems ; with this dif- 
 ference, that whereas the sine qua non of the principal 
 Truth in the Poem is its sublimity or beauty the sine qua 
 non of the principal Truth in the passage is its relation- 
 ship, near or remote, to the central truth of the Greater 
 Whole. 
 
 To which central truth it is related either directly, as 
 in the cardinal portions, or as in the subordinate mem- 
 bers — by virtue of its relationship to some other Truth 
 still more nearly related than itself. 
 
 But we have said that a Perfect Epic is the perfect 
 expression of a perfect human mind : and though we have 
 now reached some notion of the equivalent of such a 
 mind, we have not reached that of its expression because 
 
 an expression is a given species of equivalent an 
 
 equivalent and something more. To express is, as we 
 
LKCTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 2 1 
 
 saw, to carry out. An expression therefore is an equiva- 
 lent that can exist out of the mind. We have gone so 
 far on our journey outward as to reaUze for the active 
 faculties of the mind an ecjuivalent in the facts of the 
 imagination ; let us take the last stage which crosses the 
 boundaries of the inner and outer worlds and examine 
 the vehicle in which this final carrying out is to take 
 place. The mind may be ' carried out ' more or less 
 perfectly by bodily movement, by the inflexion and com- 
 bination of inarticulate sounds, by the design of visible 
 shai:)es and by the utterance of words. Hence we have 
 Action, Music, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and 
 Poetry. Of these methods our subject confines us to the 
 last. It will be perceived that practically that ' last ' 
 contains all the others, since the Poet by means of words 
 can evoke those others in the imagination of his hearer 
 and really therefore express himself by all the arts at 
 once : but we are now to consider the physical and 
 external means by which he obtains possession of these 
 and all other modes of expression, and must examine the 
 conditions of Poetic human Speech. Those conditions 
 must be, of course, the laws which govern the medium 
 through which sound is produced, the organs by which 
 we produce it, and the mind to which things are to be 
 conveyed by means of it. As to the first, we know that 
 
22 ARTISTIC. 
 
 sound is the result of undulations of air, and that to the 
 shape of those undulations it is necessary there should 
 be no collision between them. We find therefore siic- 
 cession to be a first condition of verbal sounds, we know 
 that the same condition is that of the organs of utterance, 
 and, as we have already noticed that law of the mind by 
 which it perceives perfectly but one thing at a time, we 
 know that succession is also the condition of perfect 
 mental reception. But succession is the general con- 
 dition of all verbal utterance, and we are now enquiring 
 concerning a specific fonn of it — Poetic utterance — and 
 shall expect therefore to discover some specific form of 
 that general condition which shall produce perfect, as 
 distinct from imperfect, utterance. It would be easy to 
 show, and I will by-and-bye proceed to show, that the 
 necessary conditions of such perfect utterance could be 
 deduced from those higher data of the mind from which 
 we have drawn the principles of the Poem to be uttered : 
 but because I wish to demonstrate the thorough humanity 
 of Poetry — that it not only answers to our Divinest 
 faculties but is actually in tune with our material flesh 
 and blood, we will again, if you please, turn to the laws 
 of that body by which the mind receives and conveys 
 sensation. I need only refer you to the science of 
 acoustics to recall the well-known fact that the difterence 
 between a mere noise — or an imperfect and indistinct 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 
 
 23 
 
 auditor}' sensation — and musical sounds— or a perfect 
 and distinct sensation — depends on the degree to which 
 the vibrations of air obey the laws of oscillation and in- 
 terference ; those laws that result in imdulation and pro- 
 vide that in a perfect sound the vibrations must recur 
 after regular intervals of time. Whether in one of the 
 original vibrations that make up the note, — where the 
 interval may be but the 24,000th part of a second — or in 
 the notes themselves, — between which the intervals are 
 so much longer — the law is the same that the succession 
 must have definite relations to a certain beaten time. (I 
 need only refer you to the science of Harmony for illus- 
 trations of this familiar position. ) 
 
 Now a succession of such a kind is a rhythmic suc- 
 cession. And since such a succession is the most perfect 
 manner of propagating sound through air, and receiving 
 it from air, it must also be the most perfect manner of 
 communicating it to air. And since our organs are all 
 constituted with special aptitude for their peculiar tasks, 
 a rhythmic succession must be what it is best for the 
 mouth to produce and the ear to receive. 
 
 Nay I think we might go further : for remembering 
 
 those beautiful experiments by which Chladni,' Savart, 
 
 ' The reader may perhaps remember, among the discoveries 
 relating to phonics made by Chladni or Chladenius, the curious 
 result of one of his experiments on plates of glass or metal -that a 
 sonorous plate, fixed horizontally, having its upper surface regvdarly 
 
24 ARTISTIC. 
 
 and Wheatstone have shown to what a wonderful extent 
 vibrations are propagated through matter, and when once 
 set in motion are repeated by sympathetic and other 
 action in innumerable reflexes, each bearing computable 
 relations to the original impulse ; remembering, too, that 
 the laws of oscillation and interference are so wide as to 
 extend from Chladni's grains of sand to Sun, Moon, and 
 stars, and remembering that the two great sources of 
 bodily sensation — sound and light — are already shown to 
 be results of undulations that obey these laws, we shall 
 be prepared, I think, to expect in the human body a 
 genei-al submission to principles to which it shows itself 
 amenable in the external organs of hearing and seeing. 
 
 And turning to that body what do we find to confirm 
 that expectation? 
 
 One of the most notable and well-known facts re- 
 garding that body is that its vitality depends upon the 
 motion of an organ, the heart, whose motion is, in health, 
 peculiar for its most accurate proportions. The interval 
 of time between every healthy heart-throb is precisely 
 equal to that of the throb itself. Physiology has already 
 shown that other recognisable organic motions of the 
 body — for instance, the action of the lungs— bear definite 
 
 strewed with sand, on being struck at the edge with a violin bow, 
 not only gave a peculiar sound, but also exhibited a corresponding 
 arrangement of the sand. — Ed. 
 
LFXTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 25 
 
 relations to this motion of the heart : and in all modesty 
 I would suggest to the great Physiologists here present 
 whether there be not reason to infer that every portion of 
 the incessant vital action of the system is keeping 
 measured dance to that great beater of time ? If so it 
 follows that any thoroughly congruous and felicitous 
 outcome of functions so proportional in their action must 
 be itself proportional, and that in so far as anything 
 which those functions are called on to take up and 
 convey is proportional it will be easily and harmoniously 
 accepted. Perfect utterance, therefore, whether as a 
 thing to be performed or as a thing to be received by 
 those functions, must occur in a succession bearing pro- 
 portional relations to a time marked by a series of equal 
 intervals, that is, to the time beaten by a healthy heart. 
 
 Now rhythm, or musical time, is, as we all know, a 
 succession of this nature, and we arrive therefore at the 
 second condition of poetic utterance, that it shall be a 
 rhytJimic succession. And thus from the lower data — 
 those of the body — we have reached the same condition 
 for the physical utterance which from the higher data — 
 of the mind — we have before deduced as one of the 
 primary conditions of the ideal Poem to be uttered — 
 Proportion. And by applying to this proportioned suc- 
 cession of utterance those same conditions concerning 
 
26 ARTISTIC. 
 
 Truth, Beauty, Sublimity, and Relationship, which ordi- 
 nate the character and proportions of the Poem, we com- 
 plete our definition of the perfect Epic as the expression 
 of a perfect human mind by means of one beautiful 
 or sublime truth, and other essentially related truths, 
 arranged according to their essential relationship, vi a 
 proportioned succession of words true and congruous, and 
 therefore sublime or beautiful. A perfect Poem would be 
 therefore a miniature of the Creation not in its matter 
 but its principles ; the Kosmos not of God but Man ; 
 the humanization of abstract Truth ; the soul, as it were, 
 become concrete ; the word of Man made flesh and 
 dwelhng amongst us ; and being the expression of the 
 highest state to which the whole human mind can attain 
 on Earth it would be limited to no era or nation but 
 would be accepted and understood in its fullness when- 
 ever, at however vast an interval of history, another 
 human mind anywhere attained the same elevation, and 
 less and less partially and obscurely as each of us in the 
 development of our best qualities rose nearer to the 
 hopeless pinnacle of that supreme immaculate height. 
 
 Having ascertained the principles of a Perfect Poem 
 we may safely lay down of Poems that they are right in 
 so far as they consist with this type and wrong in so far 
 as they recede from it : and of poetry that it is excellent 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 27 
 
 in SO far as it could form part of such perfect Poem 
 and imperfect in so far as it is incongruous therewith. 
 
 Before proceeding to a closer investigation of some of 
 the separate parts of which Poetry — perfect or imperfect 
 — is composed, two questions naturally present them- 
 selves which it will be well to answer here where they 
 arise. The one is ' if a perfect Poem be the outcome of 
 a perfect mind what chance is there of our ever having 
 such a Poem ? ' 
 
 The other ' how is it that men who have written un- 
 questionable poetry have been as men so very far from 
 perfection ? ' 
 
 The answer to these questions brings us, I believe, to 
 the secret of all great Poems and of some of the most 
 perplexing problems of Poetry. There are among men 
 an order of minds gifted with the power of — I am of 
 course using the word with no reference to its Scriptural 
 meaning — transfiguration. 
 
 We are familiar with an inferior form of the gift in the 
 bodily transformation of which some men are capable, so 
 as to assume, as it were, the features and gait of another : 
 and we see a subordinate manifestation of the gift itself 
 in the case of the great Actor, and a diseased and invol- 
 untary exhibition of its phenomena in the hallucinations 
 of the Lunatic. 
 
25 ARTISTIC. 
 
 The higher forms of this gift enable the possessor to 
 re-construct (so to speak) his whole character into that 
 of some other mind. 
 
 In such persons the process is instinctive, and as the 
 Actor cannot tell you by what laws he reproduces the 
 face and manner of his hero, neitlier can he who has in 
 the highest form the gift whereof we speak explain the 
 process of its action. 
 
 A single look often suffices to give the actor his 
 bodily cue : a word, a thought, a feeling may be suffi- 
 cient for the mental transformation of the Poet. In this 
 transformation the proportionate activity of his various 
 qualities is so much altered that the proportion of the 
 inherent qualities themselves seems, for the time being, 
 changed : attributes that were large and notable become 
 insignificant, and those that were in comparative abeyance 
 during ordinary life arise into signal and masterful 
 exercise. The possession of this gift does not make a 
 man a Poet, but I think no imperfect Man can be a great 
 Poet without possessing it. When possessed by one 
 otherwise fitted to be a Poet it has two principal modes 
 of manifestation. The one — and primary — is that at any 
 beautiful or sublime influence it transfigures the mind 
 towards Perfection — approaching the perfect state in pro- 
 portion to its own power in the given mind and the 
 
LECTURE OX T^HE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 29 
 
 nature of the mental materials on which it has to work : 
 — in this state the Poem is designed. The second is 
 that in representing the human characters of the Poem it 
 transfigures the mind into those characters for the time 
 being — and by a succession of such states the characteriz- 
 ation of the Poem is executed. The amount of com- 
 pleteness in this second transfiguration makes one 
 difference between the Epic and the Drama. 
 
 The Epic being like some Dramatic story told by a 
 great Tragedian wherein his successive but partial im- 
 personations of the different characters meet in the per- 
 manent unity of himself, the one narrator ; and the 
 Drama the action of the same story enacted by him en 
 costume, without the narrative, and with no central 
 figure of himself in which the various dissimilar personi- 
 fications might unite and cohere. A Poet has therefore 
 a world — the world of imagined facts — of infinite possible 
 variety, and an inexhaustible stock of men and women in 
 the transmutable substance of his own character : and by 
 the peculiarity of his nature the environments of this 
 imaginary world affect him as actual circumstances affect 
 ordinary men, and he lives, for a time, in these men and 
 women as naturally as in his own personality. Out of 
 this world and from these men and women he has to 
 select and construct his Poem. The primary character 
 
30 ARTISTIC^ 
 
 of the individual Poet and the degree to which he 
 possesses the transfiguring power will determine the 
 character of the Poem andjoegulate its approach to per- 
 fection. Where Love predominates the Lyric will be its 
 expression in modes of predominating Beauty, and in the 
 Epic the main subject will be Beautiful : where Worship 
 the Lyric will be reverent and sublime and the Epic will 
 take a subj ect of awe or terror : and in proportion to the 
 sense of truth and relation the materials of the Poem will 
 be more or less just and the ordination of it more or less 
 perfect. In the highest type of Poet the Lyric will be 
 the expression of combined Love and Reverence, and the 
 subject chosen for the Epic will be at once Beautiful and 
 Subhme. 
 
 Having thus come down from the heights of that 
 perfect Ideal which we are not likely to see realized, 
 to those regions of the possible which human poets 
 may hope to chmb, and to the topmost ledges of 
 which they have now and then ascended, let us look, 
 in the light of the general principles I have been 
 endeavouring to set forth, more minutely at some of 
 the peculiarities of all poetic expression. We have seen 
 that as a Poem is the expression of a Poet's mind, every 
 portion of a Poem, from the Epic to the single passage, is 
 the result of the same principles, almost as we see in the 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 31 
 
 beautiful science of crystallography that the whole crystal 
 is but a larger atom. Let us take one of the poetic 
 atoms for analysis. We shall be met at the onset by the 
 question ' how if the whole Poem be but an equivalent 
 to the Poet's mind, can the single passage be an equiva- 
 lent to the same characteristics ? ' 
 
 This is readily explained by an inward glance at the 
 manner of our mental activities. 
 
 Take for instance our whole power to love. 
 
 We shall find the total Love of which we are capable 
 to be like the Ocean, which though it be one water yet 
 by meeting and incalculably crossing forces — invariable 
 sway of the rolling globe, variable beat of all manner of 
 winds, Sun-stroke, and Moon-stroke, actions, reactions, 
 and interactions, multiplied past mortal skill, of waves, 
 tides, shores, promontories, reefs, and rivers, — is roused 
 into innumerable apparitions of the same substance, each 
 having the form of separation without the power thereof, 
 each diverse as to its momentary manifestation but 
 indifferent as to its permanent nature, and holding, for 
 its own space and season, the same shapeless, motionless, 
 colourless, general element in a special moving, figured, 
 coloured individuality. Now these billows, ripples, 
 flakes and drops of a great general feeling or other attri- 
 bute have, when they can be expressed at all, each for 
 
32 ARTISTIC. 
 
 itself correlatives in the external world, and by the serial 
 expression of this temporary persoiice the great flood 
 linds, as it were, its narrow way by the straits of succes- 
 sional utterance. And thus, though no single fact of 
 the imagination may be able, in the words of our great 
 Poet, to 'take up the whole of Love and utter it,' the 
 Poet, through his ordinating power, creates by the 
 ordered assemblage of forms individually beautiful, an 
 organized whole of Beauty sufficient for the Whole of 
 Love, and corresponding in its parts to the vibrations 
 of its successional activit}^ What is true in the case of 
 Love, has analogous truth in the activity of the other 
 mental powers. 
 
 Let us therefore out of that organized imaginative 
 Whole which the Poet has produced take any one of the 
 complete facts of Imagination whereof it is made up, and 
 examine its constituents. Under the simplest conditions 
 of expression, the expressed fact must consist of itself and 
 the words that express it. As we have seen that it must 
 itself be either beautiful or sublime, it corresponds to the 
 Poet's love or worship. Proceeding outwards from the 
 mind, you have therefore, first the fact, the equivalent of 
 a feeling, and then the words, the equivalent of the fact. 
 
 And as the truth of the fact is the equivalent of the 
 faculty to know, and the relationship of the fact to the 
 
LECTURE ON THE * NATURE OF POETRY.' 33 
 
 feeling and the words to the fact, the equivalent of that 
 sense of relation which is the characteristic of the power 
 to order, you have in the single expressed fact what you 
 had in the great combination of such facts, the Poem, an 
 equivalent for to feel, to know, and to order. 
 
 This is an instance of the simplest kind : proceed 
 to one more difficult. Suppose the fact of the im- 
 agination is one that has no equivalent in words, or that 
 from familiarity, popular misuse, or double meanings, 
 its original verbal signs are no longer poetic equivalents. 
 Suppose you have to express such a fact. You must find 
 for that fact an equivalent in some other fact that has an 
 equivalent in words. An equivalent is, as we have seen, 
 something which being presented to the quiet mind will 
 produce there the thing of which it is the equivalent 
 You require therefore a fact that shall produce in the 
 mind another fact ; you require something more, a fact 
 that shall produce a beautiful or sublime fact ; and yet 
 something more, a fact that shall produce such a fact in 
 a mind whose primary characteristics are a sense of truth 
 and a sense of relation. Your equivalent, therefore, 
 must truly and essentially correspond to the beautiful or 
 sublime fact for which it stands. That it does so makes 
 it not only an equivalent for that' fact but for your sense 
 of truth and relationship. And as that first fact was an 
 
34 ARTISTIC. 
 
 equivalent to certain feelings, this second fact not only 
 stands for the first, but stands also for your characteristics 
 of feeling, knowing and ordering. Now a fact that thus 
 stands for another is its metaphor. We have arrived 
 therefore at this law of all metaphor — that every true 
 metaphor is not only a metaphor of the thing for which it 
 stands but of the Poet who placed it. 
 
 Time does not allow me to multiply instances and 
 to carry out the principle into still more minute detail, 
 but I think, if at leisure you examine any variety of ex- 
 amples, you will find that this is the law of all poetic 
 equivalents and that it explains those erroneous figures of 
 speech which are so often mistaken for Poetry. What 
 are critically called concetti, or conceits, and those mis- 
 perceptions of Nature which arise from what an eminent 
 writer has lately denominated ' the pathetic fallacy,' and 
 those substitutions of horrors for terrors and the carnal for 
 the human which we call melodrama, are the equivalents 
 of minds in whom, either constitutionally, or for the time 
 being, there is something wrong in the kind or the balance 
 of the powers to love, to worship, to know and to order. 
 
 Having formed our poetic passage in the imagination — 
 having found for our feelings metaphors in facts and for 
 our unspeakable facts metaphors in facts that have corre- 
 sponding words, the remainder of the act of expression 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 35 
 
 would not need examination if words were arbitrary signs. 
 But, as we all know, (however much philologers may 
 differ about the precise primitive roots and their values,) 
 there can be no doubt that in the first origin of language 
 all words were metaphors— that is had an essential re- 
 lationship to the facts for which they stood. And since 
 every word of our modern languages is the result of some 
 modification, combination, and recombination of those 
 primitives, something of the essential relationship must 
 still exist. But since those modifications and combin- 
 ations have often taken place under the control of very 
 artificial conditions, and since in the lapse of ages the 
 various conditioning forces have crossed and recrossed 
 into a complexity not often to be unravelled, the con- 
 sciousness of original relation is so far lost that the words 
 of a modern language are neither algebraic signs nor 
 metaphorical equivalents, but range between these ex- 
 tremes and frequently approach either. In such a 
 language (since he must not create a new one) the Poet 
 has to express himself. In it he must find an equivalent 
 for his imagined facts. AVe have seen the law-s of poetic 
 equivalents. An arbitrary sign does not fulfil those laws. 
 The Poet requires his equivalent to be not a sign but a 
 metaphor, and the whole action of his mind on language is 
 therefore to elevate it from the sign toivards the metaphor. 
 
36 ARTISTIC. 
 
 The first result of this action is to instinctively select 
 from the mass of verbal signs those words that retain most 
 of their old essential relation to the thing signified. The 
 next is to impart to them what shall, as far as may be, 
 restore what is lost of that relation : to make them 
 essentially akin to the facts they represent. Now one of 
 the proofs that two apparently different things agree is 
 the identity of their effects. If I strike you, successively, 
 with a rod of iron, of silver, and of gold, it will seem at 
 first sight indeed that one effect is produced by very 
 different causes : but on closer enquiry we shall see that 
 the pain produced was neither because the producing rod 
 was iron, silver, or gold, but because it was hard, and 
 that the iron, silver, and gold produced the same pain 
 because they agreed in being hard. Identical effects are 
 therefore evidence of relationship in the causes, and when 
 such effects occur in such a mind as we are investigating 
 identical effects are the evidence of essential relationship. 
 The Poet therefore adds to his selected words something 
 which by having the same effect as the fact for which they 
 stand shows itself to be essentially related to that fact. 
 That ' something ' is rhythm. 
 
 Words rhythmically combined affect the feelings of the 
 poetic hearer or utterer in the same way as the fact they 
 represent : and thus by a reflex action the fact is repro- 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 37 
 
 duced in the imagination. By instinctive selection and 
 rhythmic combination the verbal utterance is thus eleva- 
 ted from a sign to or towards a metaphor, and becomes, 
 like other metaphors, not only a metaphor of the proxi- 
 mate poetic fact but of the characteristics of the Poet. 
 
 We saw a little while ago that the law of the whole 
 Epic, that it is one subject with its congruous accessories, 
 must apply to every passage of which the Epic is made 
 up. We have now seen by an analysis of one such pas- 
 sage that the other law of the whole Epic, that it should 
 be a metaphor of the Poet's characteristics, is not only 
 fulfilled in every passage, but in every cardinal portion of 
 a passage : in every complete act of expression and in the 
 sub-acts of which it is composed. Carrying out the 
 homology of the whole and the parts, let us now, reason- 
 ing from the less to the greater, by one more examination 
 of the passage explain a diftkulty in the Epic. ' Select a 
 complete expression and pull it to pieces. I will take a 
 well-known saying of Shakspeare because it not only 
 illustrates what I am going to say, but also happens to 
 be exemplary of a truth I have just now been bringing 
 before you. Othello, bending over Desdemona and pre- 
 figuring what he is going to do, says not, ' when I have 
 killed thee,' but • when I have plucked thy rose." 
 
 Here you have an instance in which the fact of the 
 
38 - ARTISTIC. 
 
 imagination had no equivalent in words, and had to be 
 expressed by another fact for which such an equivalent 
 existed. That somewhat by which the living differed 
 from the dead, — that wonder of vital form and colour, 
 that visible presence of thought and passion, that fragrant 
 atmosphere of sweet influences, that spiritual mystery of 
 an incarnate soul by which she was not a corpse but 
 Desdcmona, had not — and will never have — a name or 
 phrase among men. But in the language of God there 
 was a fact essentially akin to it for which we had a human 
 sign ; the Poet instinctively turned to that equivalent, 
 and the ineffable became effable in a Rose. But I quote 
 this sentence ' when I have plucked thy rose ' that having 
 perceived its surpassing beauty as a whole you may take 
 it in pieces and so, to use its own metaphor, ' pluck the 
 rose ' of it. For that somewhat by which the whole sen- 
 tence lives, and the parts live while forming a whole, is 
 like the living Desdemona, something not to be defined. 
 ' When I have plucked thy rose,' separate those words 
 altogether from the general idea and restrict them to 
 their several utterly independent meanings. You will find 
 that they have all expired a something with which they 
 before were v/arm, and that some of them, 'when' and 
 'have ' for instance, are almost without any life or signifi- 
 cance at all. Look out ' when ' and the auxiliary verb 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 39 
 
 ' to have' in the Dictionary and see how empty and effete 
 they are. Now reunite the sentence, and behold the 
 same 'when ' and the same ' have ' full, and brimming over, 
 with the life, colour, and beauty of the whole. 
 
 Now this circulation of vitality and beauty from the 
 whole into its parts which you have seen in the single 
 sentence, takes place also in the total Epic and explains 
 how some members of a great Poem— as it were the pre- 
 positions and conjunctions of that mighty syntax — which 
 taken separately do not seem to express either the Love 
 or Worship of the Poet are, nevertheless, by their essential 
 union with wholes of which they are perceived by his 
 peculiar gifts to be necessary parts, and of whose essence 
 they are therefore partakers, as truly the fulfilment of the 
 great primary Poetic Law as the most dazzling centres of 
 the Beautiful or the Sublime. 
 
 We have now in endeavouring to find the principles 
 of Perfect Poetry investigated a perfect Poem in its origin, 
 its wholes, and its parts. We have enquired into the 
 Principles of the producing Mind, into the Principles of 
 the total thing produced, and all the members which 
 compose it, and we have discovered the human means 
 by which its production becomes possible to imperfect 
 humanity. We have found a Poem to be from first to 
 last, in things and in words, the manifold vidaphoi- of a 
 
40 ARTISTIC. 
 
 human mind, and to approach perfection ^nthin and 
 without, in spirit and in matter, in design and execution, 
 in the ratio wherein the mind of whose activity it is the 
 equivalent is at the time of its production perfect. 
 
 To elaborate these general truths into all their com- 
 pleteness would require a whole season of Lectures, but 
 I would remind you, in passing, that whereas we have been 
 compelled to confine ourselves this evening to a mere 
 sketch of the main characteristics of the Poet and of his 
 work, the perfect Poem should really be the equivalent of 
 his whole nature, the expression of every quality by which 
 he is truly, though ideally, human. 
 
 I have explained at the commencement of these re- 
 marks why in proposing a standard of Poetry I chose the 
 ideal and perfect Poet and Poem as they might exist in- 
 stead of the real and imperfect Poet and Poem as they are 
 actually known to us. But it may be asked why, instead 
 of going into the principles of such Ideals, have I not 
 contented myself with bringing before you such selected 
 passages from existing poems as may be held faultless, or 
 with giving a brief sketch of such Poems as I supposed 
 to be most nearly perfect ? To this I answer that inas- 
 much as the value of a just notion of Poetry is not only 
 that we may be able to identify it Avhen seen in full 
 flowered Perfection, but that as Critics we may be able to 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 4 1 
 
 estimate it rightly when — as in themajority of instances — 
 we catch it in manifestations not wholly mature, the know- 
 ledge of Principles is even of more importance than that 
 of their supreme results. For as in morals so in Poetry 
 it is not he who mechanically copies the actions, but he 
 who vitally — in the best mode possible to his given stage 
 of development — applies the principles of the Perfect 
 Character that really most resembles it in nature. 
 
 There is a poetical as well as a moral hypocrisy : and 
 it is possible for the literary as well as the moral Pharisee 
 to make void the living Law through dead tradition. 
 You remember some Sir Galahad or Sir Tristram of old 
 who passed in armour his years of heroic gentleness and 
 sought, sword in hand, the sangreal of Purity and Truth. 
 Some Knight without fear and without reproach, who 
 met his enemy as a brother, and nursed him with a 
 Lover's chivalrous devotion, and who falling himself after 
 a thousand triumphs had such words as these said over 
 his noble corse : 
 
 ' Thou wert the courteousest Knight that ever bore 
 shield ; thou wert the truest friend that ever bestrode 
 horse ; thou wert the truest Lover that ever loved woman; 
 thou wert the kindest man that ever struck with sword ; 
 thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among 
 press of Knights ; thou wert the meekest man and the 
 
42 ARTISTIC. 
 
 gentlest that ever ate in hall with ladies ; and thou wert 
 the sternest Knight to thy mortal foe that ever laid lance 
 in rest.' 
 
 You can also perhaps remember (he was to be found, 
 occasionally, a year or two back), some nineteenth 
 century advocate of philosophical pacification, who loves 
 God with JP^. s. d. and his customer as himself, who 
 answers with a perverted text the cry of the weak and 
 the oppressed, and refutes the Patriot's heart with irre- 
 fragable arithmetic ; who is so jealous of his country's 
 blood that he would keep it for her blushes ; and — hold- 
 ing Life more precious than all that is beautiful to live 
 for— would fill his pockets in the name of Christian amity 
 with that worst bribe of Tyrants, the prosperity of dis- 
 honour. There can be no doubt which of these two is 
 the least warHke ; but I ask you which is really nearer to 
 the Gospel of Love and Peace ? 
 
 It was necessary, therefore, in order to estimate 
 imperfect Poets and Poetr}^, that we should investigate 
 the principles even more than the practice of the Perfect. 
 Having dealt in what is past ^vith the ideal, I purpose in 
 the short remainder of this lecture to glance briefly at the 
 real. I have developed the premiss with which we 
 started, that ' a perfect Poem is the perfect expression of 
 a perfect human mind,' into an hypothesis as to perfect 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 43 
 
 Poetry and perfect Poets ; I will now, if you please, pro- 
 ceed to illustrate the principal propositions of that hypo- 
 thesis by the acknowledged facts of Poetry and Poets as 
 they exist. As that hypothesis was, I think, a sober and 
 legitimate deduction, I shall by demonstrating its con- 
 clusions, arrive at something like a proof of the premiss. 
 My first proposition was, in effect, that a perfect Poet is 
 a man possessing in the highest degree these gifts — to 
 love, and its accompaniment the sense of Beauty, to 
 worship, and its accompaniment the sense of the 
 Sublime, to order, and its accompaniment the sense of 
 Relation, and to know, or that ability of perceiving 
 Truth without which the other gifts would have no 
 proper objects of exercise. Now let us see what, by 
 universal consent, have been the characteristics of im- 
 perfect Poets who have actually existed, and see how fixr 
 they go towards our theory of the perfect. But you may 
 meet me by the objection that common consent is value- 
 less with regard to qualities that are supposed to be 
 beyond the judgment of the majority of mankind. The 
 objection, if valid, is valid also, more or less, with 
 regard to all the highest and rarest objects of human 
 thought. But I would suggest in the present case a 
 mode of arriving at truth which, while neither wholly 
 popular nor wholly private, combines the advantages of 
 
44 ARTISTIC. 
 
 both without the evils of either, and unites that guarantee 
 of general humanity which is only contained in common 
 consent with those advantages of special aptitude, which 
 by the fact of its speciality, must always in all cases, be 
 the privilege of the few. 
 
 The process is based on the general facts, admitted 
 on all sides, that however different in amount and inten- 
 sity our different mental powers may be in different indi- 
 viduals, they are possessed in some degree by the whole 
 of IMankind : and that, as resulting from this community, 
 there are some things on which the whole race are agreed. 
 
 The process in its most familiar form is this, — and 
 in the less familiar form in which it can be publicly used, 
 it is essentially the same. Taking one of these common 
 consents — as that grass is green, or sunshine beautiful, 
 consider who among your friends seems most — and most 
 continually — impressed with this fact on which all agree. 
 Ask that person whom, of all he knows, he considers a 
 greater judge of green, or of beauty, than himself Apply 
 to that third for his superior in the same line, and so per- 
 severe till from the base of a common consent you rise 
 to the pinnacle of a consummate individual knowledge. 
 
 This is the true intellectual democracy, wherein the 
 many are made not the judge, but the means of discovering 
 the judge. 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 45 
 
 , It does not follow that it is also the tnie political 
 democracy, because, for one reason among others — 
 aesthetics seeks the perennial and absolute best, and 
 politics has to do with the relative and the temporary. 
 
 Now applying this method to -the enquiry in hand, 
 and leaving, of course, the sacred Writers out of the 
 question, whom should we discover by this graduated 
 ascent to be the ultimate supreme appeal in all questions 
 of the Beautiful ? Undoubtedly, in every land where 
 Poetry has existed, some Poet. 
 
 Of the Sublime ? Some Poet. 
 
 Of Truth — in that sense wliereof we have been 
 speaking — from the time when the Greek said aiicu> — 
 I see intensely - for ' I sing,' to the day that Wordsworth 
 saw and sang the Celandine and the Daisy ? Some Poet. 
 
 Of order— that harmony and melody which in their 
 best known manifestation of Music have taken their very 
 name from the Muse, — that proportion which has made 
 ' to lisp in numbers ' a proverb for Poetry, that ordinated 
 Wholeness which gave title alike to the Greek 7roa;r//c, 
 and the Scottish Makar, and which has lent us the phrase 
 of Epic Unity as our highest expression of a multiform 
 One} Some Poet. 
 
 And what process do we need for arriving at the 
 testimony to that worship by which, in every land, the 
 
46 ■ ARTISTIC. 
 
 Poets have filled earth, air, and sky, with mythologies ; 
 peopled at once Asgard, Hades, and Olympus, crowded 
 on the heights of Bifrost the sons of Muspel and the 
 einheriar of Odin, drawn round the violet-crowned city 
 its thirty thousand gods — gods that this day and while 
 the world lasts, hold for awful Pallas the siege with time 
 and Ruin — or 
 
 Dum Capitolium 
 Scandet cum tacita virgine Pontifex, 
 
 have seated Jove on the eternity of his consecrated hill ? 
 And we need no formal evidence of that universal Poet's 
 Love, high as Heaven, deep even as Hell, wide not only 
 as Creation, but as the difference between Created and 
 Creator: — that Love which, whether singing least or 
 greatest, first or last, matter or spirit, temporal or eternal — 
 the dewdrop or the ocean, the flower or the star, the 
 glint of a glowworm or the splendour of Noon, the 
 choir of Angels or the minstrelsy of Birds, the beauty ot 
 the loftiest Queen of Sheba, or the eyes of the poorest 
 outcast that ever trembled with a penitent tear, the 
 coloured glory of the summer world, or the incandent 
 Wonder of the Great White Throne, the robe of morn- 
 ing, buckled with the Sun, or those other skirts ' dark 
 with excess of light ' — so sang that Prophets have been 
 content to set their message to such music, and that 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY. 47 
 
 wherever since Men were upon Earth, love to God or 
 love to man has been bursting a human bosom, the dumb 
 humanity that must speak or die, has snatched some 
 Poet's harp and saved itself in Poetry. 
 
 I could have wished to exemplify these qualities to 
 which tlie consent of Mankind testifies, ty reading from 
 the works of ancients and moderns, some of those many 
 specimens of tlie Sublime and Beautiful on which we are 
 agreed. 
 
 But time compels me to hasten on. 
 
 Before illustrating the proposition that a perfect Poem 
 is the perfect expression of such a mind as we have been 
 examining, let me draw your attention for a moment to 
 the other truths regarding expression itself ; and first that 
 a perfect expression is that product of an active and 
 perfect mind, which, being brought into contact ivith the 
 same tnind in a passive state, would restore the state of 
 which it is the expression. 
 
 At first sight I know you would be inclined to say 
 ' that product of an active mind which being brought into 
 contact with another mind, would produce that state 
 whereof it is the expression : ' but a little examination will 
 show us that as soon as the expressor leaves the test of 
 his own consciousness he loses the ground of all certi- 
 tude, and not only subjects himself to a gamut of criteria 
 
48 ARTISTIC. 
 
 wide as the space between a European and a Bosjesman, 
 and among Europeans between a Newton and a gamin, 
 but has no power even to ascertain in any precise manner 
 whether he answers those criteria or not. And a Httle 
 further consideration will show us that the value of that 
 ideal and perfect standard we have taken depends on its 
 being the common measure of every part of that to which 
 we apply it : and we shall perceive that the characteristic 
 homogeneity of a perfect Poem, and of perfect Poetry, is 
 the result of its conformity — intrinsic and extrinsic — to 
 this single standard. 
 
 These facts afford a solution to the long vexed problem 
 of the difference between Rhetoric and Poetry, That 
 difference has puzzled the majority of investigators, 
 because they have sought it not in cause but in effect, — 
 in the thing produced and not in the mode of produc- 
 tion. The things produced sometimes, in given selected 
 instances, do not differ : the invariable difference is in the 
 mode of production. Poetiy is, as we have seen, the 
 expression of a mind according to its own laws. Rhetoric 
 is the expression of a mind according to the laws of its 
 Hearer. 
 
 Poetry is the human embodiment of Truth in that 
 form which is essentially tmest to the Truth embodied. 
 
 Rhetoric, even in the best sense, is the embodiment 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 49 
 
 of it in that form which is most affecting to certain 
 Beholders. The Rhetor addresses his audience ; and 
 is estimated by his power over them at a given time and 
 place. 
 
 The Poet addresses no audience, and is known by his 
 power, in every age and land while mankind exists, over 
 minds that approach the type of his own representative 
 Humanity. 
 
 It may happen regarding the works of the Rhetor 
 and the Poet, that at certain points their orbits intersect, 
 but watch them awhile, and as surely as in obedience to 
 inexorable causes, two stars meet, pass, and depart on 
 opposite paths, you shall see that they deviate into wide 
 and wider separation — ay, and perhaps that, like those 
 stars, the fact of their momentary conjunction was an 
 evidence of the contrariety of the forces by which they 
 moved. 
 
 A perfect poetic expression then is, that which being 
 brought into contact with the passive mind of the ex- 
 pressor, will restore the state of which it is the expres- 
 sion — and this I have called an equivalent. That things 
 may be the equivalents of feelings is proved by examples 
 which will occur spontaneously to the minds of all of us. 
 Merely glancing at those innumerable instances which 
 might be drawn from the plastic arts, from Religious and 
 
 E 
 
50 ARTISTIC. 
 
 Other ceremonies, from devotional and monumental 
 architecture, and all the other visible representatives of 
 the passions, let me draw your notice a moment to a 
 well known illustration in modern sculpture — Thor- 
 waldsen's famous marble of ' Night.' You remember 
 the great Mother flying in her sleep, with vast wings and 
 drooping head; bearing two sleeping babes, like two 
 poppy buds, in her breast, and followed by an owl. The 
 four are Night ; not either one but the total four. There 
 is no phenomenal likeness to Night in the group, and if 
 you try to separate them the resemblance is, if possible, 
 less. For Night is motionless, — but the Woman is evi- 
 dently moving : nevertheless, her bent head and the gravi- 
 tating lines in the Babes, so visibly heavy with slumber, 
 neutralize the sense of motion and make it seem a less 
 effort to move than to sta?id still. Again Night is silent, 
 yet those giant pinions of hers cannot surely flap without 
 a rush of noise ; but the owl behind them, ' the muffled 
 bird of noiseless flight,' whose large wings wifl pass your 
 ear as silent as a butterfly, takes out, as it were,the sound 
 from the whole sculpture, and reduces it to a total of Truth. 
 But how *a total of Truth,' for Night is black and 
 they are whitest marble : Night is shapeless and they are 
 all exquisite shapes : Night is mainly negative and they 
 are positive throughout. 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 5 1 
 
 A total Truth nevertheless, because, phenomenally 
 different as the things may be, you feel when looking on 
 the Sculpture as you y^<:/ when looking upon Night. The 
 Sculpture is the equivalent of your feeling, your feeling 
 — on the principle I explained in treating of rhythm — 
 creates by reflex action, the fact of Night in the imagina- 
 tion ; Night and the Sculpture are metaphors of each 
 other by being common metaphors of a single state 
 of mind. Did time permit I might illustrate the equiva- 
 lence of things to feelings in another department of Art 
 by reading an exquisite song of Tennyson's which you all 
 remember — ' Break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, 
 oh sea ! ' : a song which is, as a whole, the mere meta- 
 phor of a mental attitude that every one can understand, 
 that no one could scientifically define, but that is" more 
 or less reproduced in the reader by the images which 
 the Poet sets afloat in the imagination. 
 
 My proposition that the great law of Poetic equiva- 
 lents is this, that every Poetic metaphor is not only a 
 metaphor of the thing metaphorized but of the Poet, in 
 other words, that every metaphor must be essentially, and 
 not merely accidentally, related to the thing for which it 
 stands, and that every perfect Poetic Metaphor must also 
 be either beautiful or sublime, you may readily illustrate 
 by a comparison between the art and the symbolism ot 
 
52 ARTISTIC. 
 
 various times and peoples. The Christ of mediaeval 
 Religious Art was the victapho?; and the well-known fish- 
 symbol — chosen, you know, because the word \yjdvc, 
 was supposed to contain the initial letters of His titles — 
 was not the metaphor of the Saviour because one had 
 essential and the other only accidental relations to Him. 
 
 The Ceres of Greek art was, and the many-breasted 
 goddess of Hindoo symbolism was not, the poetic meta- 
 phor of fruitful Nature, because the first was true and 
 beautiful, the second only similar and ugly. 
 
 The Snowdrop, because it fulfils all the poetic laws, 
 is a metaphor of maidenhood ; but a ring on the first 
 finger is only the sign of it, because it arises out of other 
 than essential relations. In the same way compare as 
 equivalents of Love the Venus of Melos or of Medici, 
 with some Indian Image of Kam Deo or with the 
 symbolism of a Valentine. Or compare the ancient 
 hieroglyphic writing, in which the sign pictured the thing 
 signified, with the later hieroglyph in which the sign 
 stood not for the thing but for the first sound in the 
 name of the thing, or with the alphabet of modern times, 
 in which almost the last trace of metaphor is lost. 
 
 Finally, compare the sublime metaphor of Scripture, 
 ' God IS Light,' with those effigies of the Deity which 
 shock us in some mediaeval paintings, and with those 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 53 
 
 mathematical definitions within which the ancient Scho- 
 lasticism sought to shut up Him Whom the Heaven of 
 Heavens cannot contain. 
 
 In these true metajihors, and in all other cases of 
 true poetic metaphor, we shall find a recognition of 
 something more than a phenomenal similarity ; we shall 
 find the type and antitype, like two lines that meet 
 somewhere but not here, slanting towards some common 
 truth far back in the profounds of causation, — some truth 
 in its unity unseen and for ever invisible, but, in the 
 relationship of its remote diverging issues, felt, as the 
 blind needle feels the pole, by the total perception of a 
 consummate human mind. Recognizing thus the deep 
 mystery that is in every true metaphor we raise it from 
 the rank of ornament to a solemn significance, and 
 understand the wisdom of the saying of Aristotle — 
 ' the greatest thing is to employ metaphors well for this 
 alone cannot be acquired from another but is an indi- 
 cation of an excellent Genius.' And perceiving more- 
 over that the law of the metaphor is really that of all 
 poetic expression, and that the Poem is therefore a 
 metaphor of the human soul, we recognize in Poetry that 
 reconciliation of Spirit and Matter, of the inward and the 
 outward, which no effort of voluntary reason can achieve, 
 but w^hich is accomplished, as all our necessities that 
 
v 
 
 54 ARTISTIC. 
 
 transcend the powers of reason are accomplished, by an 
 instrument specially created for that end. 
 
 Viewing the Poet as that instrument, that great and 
 curious Divine Machine, strong as the forces of Nature, 
 but more sensitive than any ^olian string that ever 
 trembled to an imperceptible wind, one is reminded of 
 the old Ptolemsean story of the Gygonian rock which 
 could not be removed from its place by any human 
 power, but could be stirred, therein, by the stalk of an 
 Asphodel. And when perplexed for the secondary 
 causes by which the instrument performs its God-ap- 
 pointed Work one turns involuntarily to other mysteries 
 of Providence and recalls such natural marvels as Pro- 
 fessor Wilson showed us, not long since, in his lecture 
 upon colours, when rays so apparently different as the 
 chemical and the luminous — rays that even to the delicate 
 nerves of the eye gave nothing but symptoms of diversity 
 — were discovered by a still finer test to be essentially the 
 same, and that which had passed through ordinary sub- 
 stances as darkness in one specially-adapted medium 
 became light. 
 
 In treating of that last stage of poetic expression by 
 which things have their equivalents in 7i'ords, I proposed 
 to you that the necessary effect ofwhat we had recognised 
 as the Poet's characteristics would be the elevation of 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 55 
 
 even the words of poetic speech towards the rank of 
 vietaphor, by securing an essential likeness between the 
 sign and the thing signified : and that one of the great 
 means of this elevation was rhytJnn. That certain 
 quantities and accents in connected words — certain 
 modes of verbal motion, involving a certain direct action 
 of the organs of speech and hearing, and a sympathetic 
 action in the rest of the system — bodily and mental — in 
 other terms that certain rhythnis and measures are 
 metaphors of ideas and feelings I will illustrate by a few 
 well-known examples, which I have taken chiefly from 
 Authors not English in order that you may the more 
 readily forget — as I must request you to forget — alto- 
 gether the sense of the individual words and attend 
 only to the effect of the rhythmic combination. 
 
 The first is the famous line from Homer in which the 
 heavy stone that has been rolled to the hill-top rebounds 
 to the bottom 
 
 Any one who has sat on a hill and pushed a stone 
 over the precipitous brow will recognize in the marvellous 
 measure of this line the whole history of the descent. 
 Avne — it rolls lazily over the brow, — tVEira — stung by the 
 first jag of rock it leaps from the earth ; — rebounding from 
 
56 ARTISTIC. 
 
 a midway ledge — iricovct — it has sprung like a planet 
 into mid-air : — now touching the first slopes of the plain 
 see how — round and hardly visible — it whirls like a wheel 
 in KvkivctTo — ; and thrown back, like a cannon shot from 
 yonder strong wall in the flat, finishes at last inXdae aieil^q. 
 Take the contrary fact in Milton's description of the 
 toilsome upheaval of the great Mass from the hill-foot to 
 the top. 
 
 So he with difficulty and labour hard 
 Toiled on with difficulty and labour he. 
 
 I would refer you at your leisure to the celebrated bow- 
 shot in Homer, the fall of the bull, and the labour of the 
 Cyclops in Virgil, the flight of Alcyone in Ovid and the 
 dancing measures of the Greek Tragedians. 
 
 "^KKayi^av 5' &p oiaToi eV &)x(i>v xoio/xeVoio. 
 
 AeivT] Se KXa^yri yever apyvpeoio fiiolo. 
 
 Sternitur exanimisque tremens procumbit humi bos. 
 
 Illi inter sese magna vi brachia toUunt. 
 
 Percutiensque levem mode natis aera pennis, 
 Stringebat summas ales miserabilis undas. 
 
 Met. b. xi. 733-34. 
 
 I quote the Schoolboy's favourite line of the galloping 
 Horse in Virgil, 
 
 Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum. 
 
 because it has a modern parallel in the marvellous rhythm 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 57 
 
 of our own Laureate in which the Hght cavalry still 
 gallop to glory at Balaclava. 
 
 Haifa league, half a league, half a league onward. 
 
 The fall of Lucifer in Dante's Purgatorio is a noble 
 example 
 
 Giu dal cielo 
 Folgoreggiando scendere, da un lato. 
 
 And the fall of a body in the Inferno in which the 
 heavy helpless clamp with which a corpse falls flattened 
 on a floor tells its story in utter independence of the 
 literal sense. 
 
 E caddi, come corpo morto cade. 
 
 And as an example of an opposite kind I will beg you to 
 read, what I wish time permitted me to quote, and to 
 surrender yourselves, irrespective of the sense, to the 
 bacchanalian rhythm of Francesco Redi's ' Bacco in 
 Toscana.' 
 
 Among other means of elevating the verbal sign to 
 the rank of metaphor the choice of words iii which there 
 is a relation of sound and sense is frequent in the Poetry 
 of every language. That this choice is governed by the 
 same laws that rule all other metaphors — that the resem- 
 blance must be one not of mere sensuous similarity but 
 of essential relation — I would illustrate by referring you to 
 
58 ARTISTIC. 
 
 the suggestions ot the cries of animals and birds in 
 Beethoven's pastoral symphony, and in Meyerbeer's Pre- 
 lude to the Prophet, and to imitations of the same things 
 by birdcalls and other mimetic machinery ; and by con- 
 trasting Milton's trumpet line — 
 
 Sonorous metal blowing martial sound, 
 
 with Swift's 
 
 Tantara, tantara, while all the boy's holloa, 
 
 or by opposing Virgil's cooing line of turtle doves. 
 Nee tamen interea raucre, tua cura, palumbes — 
 
 or verses in Shelley's Skylark and Coleridge's Nightingale 
 to the more phenomenally accurate, but less essentially 
 true, representation of the thrush and blackbird in the 
 clever jeux d'esprit of William Allingham. 
 
 My propositions as to the unity of subject in a perfect 
 Poem, and as to the (to use a physiological term) 
 homotypy of every natural member of that Poem, are the 
 necessary results of what I have taken to be the condi- 
 tions of human perception. Those conditions are not 
 inconsistent, I think, with either of our foremost systems 
 of philosophy, are supported by that congruity of mind 
 and body which science and Philosophy alike demon- 
 strate, and have the unconscious testimony of the idiom 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 59 
 
 of all ages and languages. I think, therefore, I need not 
 here enter into proof of that congruity, and may assume 
 the conditions as already proved. As both my proposi- 
 tions are the logical inferences from these conditions, 
 and as the first of them merely accounts for facts on 
 which we are all agreed (for the unity of the epical 
 subject has been the axiom of all criticism), I will leave 
 you to test them at your leisure, by any number of 
 examples — especially as they apply to all human expres- 
 sion, and only in a peculiar manner to Poetry as it should 
 be the most perfect form of that expression. 
 
 The proposition which contains the modus operandi\ty 
 which the imperfect Poet rises on the one hand towards 
 the ideally perfect mind and descends on the other to 
 the varieties of common human character, is also not of 
 a nature to need detailed demonstration here. Though 
 verj' important in itself the facts for which it accounts 
 are at once too numerous and too well-known for 
 quotation. 
 
 The means by which Poets of no wide external 
 experience, and few opportunities, therefore, of taking 
 the moral portraits, line by line, of men as they are, 
 can fill their scenes with every type and variety of 
 Mankind, astonish the traveller, the soldier, the states- 
 man, the physician, by pictures as accurate as their own 
 
6o ARTISTIC. 
 
 eyesight, and startle the highest King or the lowest 
 Beggar, the sturdiest Manhood, or the tenderest Woman, 
 with the very inmost revelations of themselves, is a 
 problem which each of us must often have tried to solve. 
 The hypothesis that the Poet has the power to become, 
 for the time, King or Beggar, Man or Woman, and, when 
 thus transformed, to feel imagined scenes as the rest of 
 US feel actual circumstances, accounts, I think, for the 
 phenomena to be explained, and is not inconsistent with 
 other established truths. From the boys who erred on 
 one side when they cried after Dante, ' lo the man who 
 was in Hell,' to the passer-by who erred as far on the 
 other when he fancied he saw the Poet of the Lakes in 
 that William Wordsworth who was chaffering for a penny 
 with the carrier at his door, all Poetical Biography has 
 been one long perplexing contrast of the Man and the 
 Artist, and all Poems have been, more or less, untrue to 
 that poor mortal whose name men saw upon the title 
 page. 
 
 We have at length done with the Poet's mind, and 
 the nature and laws of its expression. 
 
 I now, in conclusion, briefly proceed to the proposi- 
 tion that a Poem is the characteristic expression of such 
 a mind, and that Poetry is that which can congruously 
 form part of such a Poem. As it would take many 
 
LECTURE ON THE 'NATURE OF POETRY.' 6r 
 
 lectures to array before you the great Poems of the 
 World, and so illustrate my case, I will take a method 
 more manageable, and I think sufficiently convincing, and 
 let you see with your own eyes the dry bones of fact 
 become the living Apollo of Poetry. 
 
 Taking an acknowledged Poetic subject, the Coli- 
 seum at Rome, I will read to you first the simple 
 statistics of its shape, size, et cetera. I will then read a 
 description of the same object by a poetic but not a 
 Poet's mind, in which the bare statistical skeleton is 
 clothed upon with some beauty, sublimity, and relation ; 
 and finally I will read Byron's memorable lines, in which 
 feelings, facts, and relationships have arranged themselves 
 in rhythmical equivalents at once, in idea and in word, 
 true, beautiful, and sublime. 
 
 Here are the statistics. 
 
 ' This Ampitheatre is in form an ellipse. Its super- 
 ficial area is nearly six acres : its major axis 620 feet, its 
 minor axis 513 : the present height of its outer wall 157. 
 Of this circuit scarcely a half presents its original height, 
 and throughout a great portion of it the travertine 
 arcades are demolished, and the rough wall inside, 
 partially erect, is overgrown with grass and shrubs and 
 covered by a modem support. The centre is occupied 
 by the oval arena 287 feet long by 180 wide. 
 
62 ARTISTIC. 
 
 ' Round the arena, and resting on a huge mass of 
 arches rising on arches, the sloping seats for the specta- 
 tors (of which the building could contain 87,000) ascend 
 towards the summit of the external wall.' 
 
 Here the same thing with a sense of something more 
 than the physical facts. (From Joseph Forsyth ' On 
 Antiquities, Arts and Letters in Italy.') 
 
 ' As it now stands, the Coliseum is a striking image 
 of Rome itself: decayed — vacant — serious — yet grand; — 
 half grey and half green — erect on one side and fallen on 
 the other, with consecrated ground in its bosom — in- 
 habited by a beadsman; visited by every caste; for 
 moralists, antiquaries, architects, devotees, all meet here 
 to meditate, to examine, to draw, to measure, and to 
 pray. " In contemplating antiquities," says Livy, " the 
 mind itself becomes antique." It contracts from such 
 objects a venerable rust, which I prefer to the polish and 
 the point of those wits who have lately profaned this 
 august ruin mth ridicule.' 
 
 Here the Poetry of the whole. 
 
 * The stars are forth, the moon above the tops 
 Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful ! 
 I linger yet with Nature, for the night 
 Hath been to me a more familiar face 
 Than that of man ; and in her starry shade 
 Of dim and solitary loveliness, 
 I learn'd the language of another world. 
 
LECTURE ON THE ' NATURE OF POETRY.' 63 
 
 I do remember me, tliat in my youth, 
 
 When I was wandering — upon such a night 
 
 I stood within the Coliseum's wall, 
 
 Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome. 
 
 The trees which grew along the broken arches 
 
 Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars 
 
 Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar 
 
 The watch-dog bay'd beyond the Tiber ; and 
 
 More near from out the Ciesar's palace came 
 
 The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly, 
 
 Of distant sentinels the fitful song 
 
 Began and died upon the gentle wind. 
 
 Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach 
 
 Appear'd to skirt the horizon, yet they stood 
 
 Within a bowshot. Where the Caesars dwelt, 
 
 And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst 
 
 A grove which springs through levell'd battlements, 
 
 And twines its roots with the imperial hearths. 
 
 Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth : — 
 
 But the gladiator's bloody Circus stands, 
 
 A noble wreck in ruinous perfection ! 
 
 While Caesar's chambers and the Augustan halls. 
 
 Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. 
 
 And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon 
 
 All this, and cast a wide and tender light, 
 
 Which soften'd down the hoar austerity 
 
 Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up, 
 
 As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries ; 
 
 Leaving that beautiful which still was so, 
 
 And making that which was not, till the place 
 
 Became religion, and the heart ran o'er 
 
 With silent worship of the great of old ! 
 
 The dead, but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule 
 
 Our spirits from their urns.' — Manfred. 
 
 I would recommend you to try a similar experiment with 
 the death of Kin^; Arthur in the glorious old le2;end and 
 
64 ARTISTIC. 
 
 Tennyson's wonderful idealization of it in the ' Morte 
 d' Arthur.' ^ 
 
 Having thus in the course of this Lecture descended 
 from a general primary hypothesis to its detailed in- 
 ferences and, afterwards, from an observation of facts, 
 ascended through those details to the origin of the hypo- 
 thesis — having endeavoured to show that it is consistent 
 with itself, that it explains the phenomena to be ac- 
 counted for, and is not incongruous with established 
 truths, — I will close by pointing out in very few words, 
 two particulars wherein, as it seems to me, this hypothesis 
 is singularly fortunate. The first is that while, so far as 
 I know, wholly contained by no previous theorj', it 
 admits, explains and unites into itself the best theories of 
 the best Authorities, ancient and modern : the other is 
 that by recognising Poetry as— in the manner I have 
 endeavoured to describe — the true carrying out and efflo- 
 rescence of a human soul, according to its owti larus, this 
 theory assigns to Poetry its due position among the 
 Works of that Creator Who, by what we call secondary 
 causes and effects, evolves the graduated succession of 
 relations, and by the harmony of each with each insures 
 the unison of each with all — suns with far solar centres, 
 worlds with suns, inhabitants with worlds, trees with the 
 
 ' See also Layamon's version as approaching in some of its 
 details to Tennyson's. — J. N. 
 
LECTURE ON THE * NATURE OF POETRY.' 65 
 
 soil, leaves and blossoms with the tree, Man with his 
 place, Man's works with man, and all things with Himself 
 — and shows the perfect human Poem to be a word in 
 the eternal utterance of the One Almighty Poet — a con- 
 gruous passage in that Poem of the Universe which is 
 the ordered expression of His Wisdom and His Love. 
 
66 ARTISTIC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES ON POETRY 
 AND ART 
 
 WHY POETRY SHOULD BE RELIGIOUS, AS DISTINCT FROM 
 METAPHYSICAL. 
 
 A Truth is not Religious unless its analogues, homo- 
 logues, or other congruous types can be understood in all 
 other great departments of Thought : i.e. unless it will 
 form part of a congruous system that shall comprehend 
 all the chief interests of Mankind. 
 
 Whatever mode of thinking is necessarily confined to 
 one or two points of the mental compass may be true but 
 is not Religious. 
 
 Whatever form of a truth is incongruous with anything 
 insuperable in the constitution or action of the human 
 mind is not a Religious form. 
 
 Poetry therefore should be always Religious as 
 distinct from Metaphysical. Because the Religious 
 statement of Truth is such a version of it in any one 
 department as can be congruously carried out into all 
 
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES ON POETRY AND ART. 67 
 
 Others without anywhere beuig inconsistent with the con- 
 stitution of Man. 
 
 FOOT-NOTES FOR LECTURE. 
 
 Science (see Newton) says (as its fundamental axiom) 
 we are to apply terrestrial principles to celestial pheno- 
 mena — i.e. that the universe is one idea. Poetry acting 
 on this is employed in showing the relations of its parts. 
 
 De CandoUe tells us that a tree is a confederation of 
 little trees. Human Physiology seems to indicate that the 
 nervous system is an association of men, and the tendency 
 of all science is to reduce phenomena to the varied appli- 
 cation of one Principle. 
 
 A tree. is a good illustration (remembering De Can- 
 doUe's version of a tree) of the Law of a Poem, but the 
 higher forms of creation are better, inasmuch as that is 
 the finest work in which the greatest variety of application 
 is consistent with unity in the Principle applied. 
 
 Language when analyzed is more than even a com- 
 bination of words in literal senses. 
 
 Examine any passages of ordinary prose and you find 
 that element by which the unseen is expressed — the meta- 
 phorical element. The Poets are the source of all this. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 ARTISTIC. 
 
 Again the expressiveness of nouns, etc., of physical 
 meaning is due to certain intimate relations between sign 
 and thing signified. The Poets determine this. 
 
 Few words are used in their cetitral sense : in innumer- 
 able cases an accidental sense having become the accepted 
 meaning. Poets restore the central sense. " 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY. 
 
 Go through a series of events under the constraining 
 conditions of ordinary life. Remember and recount them 
 accurately in the acted series. Prose. 
 
 Now tell the same story with such differences as 
 result from allowing the facts to perfect themselves in- 
 dividually and to follow the order of essential association. 
 Poetry. 
 
 Take a specimen of faulty prose and subtract froni it 
 all that is inconsistent with the qualities of an ideal man — 
 e.g. his Love, Worship, Knowledge — and with those things 
 which those qualities necessitate in their expression — e.g. 
 Beauty, Sublimity, Order — and the quotient, if any, will 
 be Poetry — the zero of Poetry, may be. 
 
 As an illustration of the axiom that Poetry is what 
 
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES ON POETRY AND ART. 69 
 
 will congruously form part of a Poem take the Scriptural 
 passages adapted into Milton's seventh Book. 
 
 Contemplate a thing with all your powers — intellectual 
 and moral — at once, and find a word or phrase that is 
 the algebraic expression of that combination of forces and 
 you speak Poetry, which is good in proportion to the 
 degree in which your mind— at that time — is perfect. 
 
 NECESSITY OF RHYTHM. 
 
 The unity of Law which has been shown to be 
 essential to a Poem is as essential to the whole body of 
 sound in which the inaudible materials are incorporated 
 as to those materials. The total sound in the Poem may 
 be taken as a great organized corpus. 
 
 Now whether we consider sound, per se, as an unor- 
 ganized thing to be measured by quantity, or as a succes- 
 sion of impulses to the ear, or of efforts by the organs of 
 speech, and therefore as consisting of numbers, the first 
 necessity of reducing it to proportion must be a standard 
 unit of measure. This being fixed a subordination of 
 parts to the Law of a whole becomes possible. 
 
 Hence feet and metre : and rhythm which is a com- 
 position of the standard of measure whereby the standard 
 itself is nevertheless suggested by the proportions borne 
 to it. 
 
70 ARTISTIC. 
 
 Rhythmus — rest and action occurring at intervals 
 either pre-expected or self-justificatory by perceptible 
 relation to the previous intervals. 
 
 All co-operative movements of many things that are 
 obliged to conform to one time-beater, like the heart, 
 must be rhythmic in order to avoid collision. 
 
 As a piece of Art how fine are those two verses — the 
 last of John vii. (' and every man went unto his own 
 house') and the first of John viii. (' Jesus went unto the 
 Mount of Olives ') — in which, out of the dispersion and 
 confusion of the scene, the principal Figure comes into 
 principality by the size and dignity of ' Mount of Olives ' 
 as compared with 'own house.' 
 
 METAPHOR. 
 
 A great part of the Poet's work is the making of 
 equations. He finds ' A ' to be the equivalent of ' B ' 
 -^i. e. ' A ' being presented to his balanced mind would 
 induce the same change therein as the presentation of 
 'E.' Metaphor in a true Poet is not a work of conscious 
 human intellect at all : it is the perfunctory work of a 
 piece of Divine machinery which produces the alter ego 
 of a fact involuntarily. A Poet therefore must describe 
 what he sees in Imagination (whether the images there 
 
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES ON POETRY AND ART. 7 1 
 
 be simply remembered or also reconstructed) for the 
 P^niotions produced in his mind by positive Things would 
 usually be so exquisite as to make any verbal equivalent 
 impossible. 
 
 Nevertheless the verbal equivalents which he finds 
 for Memories and Imaginations appear to the rest of 
 mankind equivalents for Things. We understand there- 
 fore how much beyond the ordinary race are the per- 
 ceptions of the Poet and comprehend Tennyson's 
 
 ' Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
 The love of love.' 
 
 CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 Every grown up full-functioned Human Being comes, 
 more or less theoretically, to believe in an outside world 
 of what he calls things, or facts, and an inner world which 
 he calls himself 
 
 Things in himself which he calls wishes or desires 
 make him attempt to change the status quo of external 
 things : to bring those together which were apart and 
 separate those which were together. In this attempt he 
 finds certain hindrances from ' properties ' or conditions 
 of outward and inward things ; and finds that realization 
 of his wishes is possible only by a selective compliance 
 
72^ ARTISTIC. 
 
 with these ' properties ' and that execution of the attempt 
 becomes easy in proportion as he conforms to the 
 necessities these impose. 
 
 He whose activities have so wisely compHed as to 
 change the manner in which any set of ' external ' things 
 stand to each other has produced a iruii^fxa — his doing is 
 ■KoirjaLi^ and himself a ttoujd'ic. 
 
 ART AN INSTRUMENT OF PROGRESS. 
 
 A Logician, per specialite, can seldom be a good (and 
 is always a dangerous) man of action, because he will 
 absolutely deduce frOm premises which, since perceived 
 by imperfect men, are, by necessity, partly false. 
 
 Other men may 'happen' upon a feHcitous entirety 
 of temporary right, but he, in some part of his work, and 
 often in the whole, must be consistently and inevitably 
 wrong. 
 
 The harmony and consistency of every organism that 
 is to live and act — whether political or otherwise — must 
 not be that of Logic but of Art. 
 
 The great progress of things takes place by the passage 
 
 of the highest /^r/;; of each thing into the thing above it. 
 
 Art should be an instrument of this progress by 
 
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES ON POETRY AND ART. 73 
 
 always selecting the best i)hase of every individual, the 
 best form of every type — i.e. the Ideal. 
 
 A WORK OF ART NEVER STRICTLY TELEOLOGIC. 
 
 That work of Art which in construction is strictly 
 teleologic — in'which every part is essential to the whole 
 — is artificial not natural, architecture not Nature. 
 
 A work of Art should be a part — a membmm — of the 
 great Coi'pus Natiirce ; a whole in so far as a member is a 
 whole quoad itself, but containing many things which are 
 not essential to that whole insomuch as they have relation 
 to the greater whole whereof it is a part. 
 
 By omitting those things, in the attempt at a theo- 
 retical completeness, the work falls from Art to me- 
 chanics. Hence the lifelessness and undivineness of 
 much that is called Art. 
 
 (The sculptor knows that he can destroy the life of 
 the most lovely marble face by simply making its two 
 sides geometrically equal.) 
 
 HIGH ART NOT LITERAL. 
 
 As an unliving thing, absolutely still — having not one 
 of the infinitesimal motions that are incessant in the 
 living surface — would, if an exact form-and-colour like- 
 ness of life, produce, in a few minutes in the beholder, 
 
74 ARTISTIC. 
 
 an instinctive horror, may it not be a primary condition 
 of all ' ocular ' Art that it shall demonstrate its non- 
 reality by some radical ' manque ? ' That colour should 
 not have substance, or substance colour ? 
 
 Art, though it cannot hope to produce Truth, is an 
 aspiration and effort towards Truth, and must therefore 
 be essentially uncongenial with lying. 
 
 Is not the lie of the marble Venus, with skin of ex- 
 quisite colour and all that should result from a substance 
 of organic life, but whose interior is a dead mass of in- 
 organic stone, a greater lie than the almost nothing of 
 canvas ? 
 
 IN WHAT MANNER ART SHOULD RE-PRESENT NATURE. 
 
 There are a thousand primroses on yonder Bank. 
 What do I want Art to do for me ? To reproduce the 
 Bank as it is ? That may be worth doing if practicable, 
 but, for my part, I would rather wait the next Spring and 
 see the Bank itself at the right season. 
 
 What I want Art to do is to bring a mind specially 
 gifted to perceive among that thousand of Primroses the 
 most typical Primrose — the auro KaOavroj — and to per- 
 petuate f/iaf for me, so that looking at any time on that 
 special Perfection I may not only receive the accom- 
 panying enjoyment but rise towards Perfection Universal. 
 
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES ON POETRY AND ART. 75 
 
 ART SHOULD TAKE POSSESSION OF MENTAL HADITS. 
 
 In Art we should take possession of mental habits, 
 inveterate ideas, invariable experiences, and natural 
 functions : e.g. when Domenichino makes the nymph's 
 foot look elastic the unconscious logic of the mind supplies 
 motion : when the Apollo Belvedere is seen at that in- 
 finitesimal point of rest which must intervene in steps, 
 the same logic takes the step : &c. &c. 
 
 MEMORY. 
 
 It is probable that human Memory, in all cases, 
 follows, with more or less ability, the laws of Poetic 
 Imagination — omitting and rearranging according to 
 Unity. 
 
 We see this on the large scale in the National 
 Memory wherein facts become congruous and beautiful. 
 I am not now alluding to the grotesque elements in 
 Mythology which are due to another process. 
 
76 ARTISTIC. 
 
 SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 
 
 THE WORLD IN EARLY SUMMER. 
 
 Who sees and feels it ? A few poets. 
 
 Are the rest of mankind unmoved ? No ; but how 
 much ? As much as by food or wine ? No. In the 
 next ages it shall be as delightful to them as a dinner. 
 In ages after as friendship, heroic war, manly exercise, a 
 good action. In ages after as the rarest ecstasy of 
 Devotion or of Love. 
 
 Our savage ancestors and the classic masters of the 
 world saw the same Nature that meets our eyes. The sky 
 and clouds were the same. The trees no higher, and in 
 spring and autumn their leaves came and v/ent with the 
 same colours and the same miracle of perfection. And, 
 however rude the walls they built, ferns, ivies, mosses, and 
 leaning traceries beautified them as exquisitely as now. 
 They lived among a prophecy of more ideal generations. 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 77 
 
 APRks? (memorandum for a little poem.) 
 
 Thou that deUghtest in Spring — that feelest what is 
 the Primrose — the Summer can bring thee nothing. Thou 
 foreknowest all it can give and art not moved. 
 
 Yet still this delight ? 
 
 T'herefore thou must be created to delight in it. 
 
 What then — art thou part of all ? or Whom dost thou, 
 ignorant, acknowledge ? 
 
 Or is it but the memory of that early time when Hope 
 promised everything in every year ? And Hope like 
 Love hath brightest visions just before he waketh. 
 Hath he not yet quite awakened and dreams the dream 
 of youth? 
 
 bells at night. 
 
 If without human agency such a sound undulated out 
 of the earth what inferences of life and soul should we 
 draw ! Yet a more exquisite music is always making 
 thereby which we hear with the eye. 
 
 I perceive in the organs of the senses, from touch up 
 to and including sight, but various modes of hearing — 
 the eye being the most exquisite ear. 
 
 The true eye has yet to be opened. 
 
78 ARTISTIC. 
 
 SPRING. 
 
 The springness of a very early spring-evening, while 
 as yet the earth is unchanged, as if spring odours could 
 be discerned by the eye. 
 
 (In spring- twilight.) Soft, palpitating, crepuscular, — 
 as if the shadows of the leaves to come were flickering 
 in the air. 
 
 The first green on the trees — like a green haze, or 
 cloud, self-sustained. 
 
 The opening of the Hawthorns — like a slow dawn in 
 the Moon that takes a week of earthly days. 
 
 Effect of extreme quiet on a spring evening. The 
 trees so still that the air between them seems to move. 
 What was mere space and division becomes the active 
 world and the substantial subsides into the demarcations 
 that divide a world of spirits. 
 
 The Spring Orchards— As though the children of the 
 year, in masquerade, played at their parents : and one 
 was Grandsire Winter with his snows ; another Dawn ; 
 the starry Meadows Night : but, by the family likeness, 
 all so transposed and transfused that Night was a very 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 79 
 
 Day, Winter a miracle of Summer, and Uawn half hidden 
 in the golden hair of that Noon on whom she leaned. 
 
 While on the melting sense, above, around. 
 Warm, green, and golden, through the trembling air 
 Spring, like a dropping splendour of the Morn, 
 Silent as gums and odours, slow distilled 
 From the embowering trees. 
 
 SUNSET, DAWN, ETC. 
 
 After sunset in June — the sky from North-East to 
 South-West like a harvest-kingdom of red wheat. 
 
 Dawn — In a cloudless dawn over the sea a red (from 
 deep-red to rose-red and then to red-golden) and golden 
 glory twenty degrees wide and in the midst of the rose- 
 red of it the Morning star. 
 
 Summer Lightning at Night — Rosy, like sudden 
 Dawns. Sometimes iridescent, like the iridescence of 
 hot metal 
 
 THE MORNING STAR. 
 
 Full of day, 
 And through the stellar people of the night 
 
8u ARTISTIC. 
 
 walking like one awake 
 Amid a world of sleepers. 
 
 THE EVENING STAR. 
 
 And as an eye moistened by some sweet thought 
 
 Glistens, dissolves its light, and overfills, 
 
 And drops a tear and shines, 
 
 And, by this rise and fall exstils 
 
 The lustrous April of its smiling grief — 
 
 THE MOON. 
 
 Some warm cloud immaculate 
 
 Doth take the cold moon, which more white or less, 
 
 (As virtue in a vestal and a bride 
 
 Wears here or here the sweet comparative. 
 
 As we conceive of Virtue) 
 
 Lies in the hand of morning like a pearl 
 
 And by dead beauty doth secern and mark 
 
 The supersubtle difference, which, being Life, 
 
 Is all Divine. 
 
 THE WINTER MOON. 
 
 The waning white of a disastrous moon 
 On ghastly snows and haggard in the sea. 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 8 1 
 
 NUCLEI. 
 
 A Bunch of field-flowers — May 22, — Varieties of 
 green. Delicate green of new fern, shadowed by creases 
 on each side the chief vein of the pinnce (creases as by 
 the touch of an elastic finger in clay) and by the down- 
 curling of the pinncB themselves, and by the incipient 
 seeds on their undersides. 
 
 Misty green of the upside, and grey of the downside 
 of the new and veined leaf of the service tree : one side 
 of each sulcus shadowed when the upside of the leaf faces 
 the sun, and the veins looking dark when seen from 
 beneath in that position, but when the underside faces 
 the sun the veins shining, transparent, a golden green. 
 The stem grey with fairy fogs of down. 
 
 Spurge, carrying golden crescents, a little ball of 
 sovereignty and two bells — as it were insignia — in bronze 
 salvers. 
 
 Red campion with its purple green, as if the blood of 
 \h^ flower shone in passing through it upwards. 
 
 The yellowish green of the yellow wood nettle — as if 
 refraction from that fire the flower. 
 
 The strong tenderness and rough softness of the 
 fresh-grown shoot of the hazel-nut — with its yellow-green 
 leaf browned with a nutty promise of sun and weather. 
 
82 ARTISTIC. 
 
 The Solomon-seal leaf, with its many silver veins, a 
 mere coloured net to catch light, which one sees alive 
 within its exquisite meshes, — the whole now greener, now 
 brighter, as the white captive moves or is quiet. And 
 the flower-bud where the colour of the green stem seems 
 to have trickled down the ivory and to hang at the top 
 ready to fall in a green drop. 
 
 And the sweet-brier from which, as from a key-note, 
 all the others make their ' differences.' 
 And the young shoot of the yew — 
 
 As if the woody heart of some brown oak 
 — Like a 5tem ancient that, unapt to change. 
 Looks with another Nature on the young, 
 Yet in a fine decorum, with no joy. 
 Fits to his time, and takes the passing mode 
 Of the new world — had fallen at season due 
 Into a leafy fashion. 
 
 The Bramble — in his innocent complexion — 
 
 That like the infant Martyr of the tale 
 Bears now the fated blood that he must shed 
 In purple Autumn. 
 
 The Oak — bom old, that but in manhood green. 
 Comes from the womb the presage of that self 
 Whose yellow front shall stay the ravenous face 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 83 
 
 Of hollow winter, and with threatening arms 
 And flattering gold cover the shrieking flight 
 Of the dishevelled year. 
 
 In a night journey June 14, observed the following 
 symptoms of the dissolution of Night in the following 
 order : — 
 
 I. The vegetation on the banks of pools was re- 
 flected — not in colours but in shadowy somewhats — in 
 the water. 
 
 II. The tufts of grass or weeds in fields were visible 
 as tufts, by being lighter on one side than the other — or 
 rather lighter above than below. 
 
 III. The willows were perceptible as willows (being 
 silvery-leafed.) 
 
 IV. Vegetation grew green. 
 
 V. Mists began to rise from all waters and waste 
 places. I. and II. were noticeable before any notable 
 change had taken place in the apparent darkness oT 
 the air. 
 
 Nature provides two climacterics — one of flowers for 
 the soul, one of fruits for the body ; and each interde- 
 pendant like soul and body. 
 
84 ARTISTIC. 
 
 A nosegay should be as if what perfect order had 
 arranged a wind of variety had touched into lovely dis- 
 composure. 
 
 Mountain Paths that lead where ? 
 
 Into the Spring, into the Morning, into young Love, 
 into old Memory — wherever one may enter into pure 
 beauty and colour as a bee into a flower. 
 
 A Royal Scion — the autocracy of a thousand years 
 looked out of him in unutterable pathos. The race had 
 learned ' vanity of vanities ' though the individual was 
 still in the excitement and joy of youthful hope. 
 
 In sudden rain after great sunshine the leaves of 
 sycamore and beech lift their sides so as to produce a 
 temporary cup to catch it. 
 
 In ploughed or broken-up fields, without turf but 
 waste, daisies have a larger stem than ordinary, to lift the 
 flower above the knobs of mould. 
 
 When a mist comes up the glen, the insects flee before 
 and on each side — and the swallows. These fugitives 
 devour each other. The analogue of an invading army 
 and contending civil factions. 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 85 
 
 At Sunset. — The shadows of the breakers in the wet 
 sand. The manifold motions, simultaneous and not 
 incongruous, the roll of the tide, the diagonal of the 
 ripple, the transverse of the footsteps of the wind. 
 
 An old unsatisfactory existence. 
 As in a showery summer the dull brown overcast 
 covers all the sky. But rains fall, and along the summit 
 of the hills the blue empty sky appears, like a pause in 
 great Music, and tears clear the whole vacant heaven — 
 And, lo, above the hill-tops, white and slow, 
 Immaculate, unhasting, undelayed, 
 In form an Alp, .... 
 
 a great cloud majestical 
 Into the unpossessed and favouring Heaven 
 Rises to occupation, like the grand 
 New Life. 
 
 The Dawn, 
 
 Like a celestial countenance, made holy 
 By an Almighty Knowledge of sweet Things, 
 Looks in its calm content of happy promise 
 Upon the advancing Earth. 
 
86 ARTISTIC. 
 
 As when the Dawn 
 
 Glows o'er the glowing Deep, and sea and sky- 
 Are but asunder as a two-leaved book, 
 All of one story, and the Ocean-Heaven 
 And Heavenly Ocean seem as when at first, 
 Like a ripe fruit, in twain dki God divide 
 The waters from the waters. 
 
 .... As when the wave that drowns a ship, 
 And callous as a sexton's hand, lets down 
 The mighty coffin, and heaves on its way 
 Shoreward, and coming is long seen far off, 
 
 Darker than Death, remorseless as the Grave, 
 
 Mounting and falling — 
 
 And from its pitiless bulk of rolling gloom 
 The sudden axe of some avenging rock, 
 
 Hews out a passionate heart, whiter than snow, 
 
 And tenderer than the lilies. 
 
 The innumerable roar 
 
 Of that one multiform sea, that all life long 
 
 Divides the time with thunders. 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 87 
 
 Men who plough the sea, 
 
 And feed the sincAvy might of knotted Hnibs 
 
 Upon its toilsome harvests. 
 
 To the wide serene 
 Of whose uncut existence, this our world, 
 And all its peopled water-drop of air, 
 And all our fretful pulse of night and day, 
 Marked nothing — .... 
 
 As w'hen 
 The fairy eft that thro' Italian boscage 
 Darts his small lightning of thin shade from bosc 
 To bosc, or stopping midway shows a heart 
 Swift as the buzzing flitter of a fly. 
 Doubtless a heart, but yet to us with hearts 
 No heart that can be lived by, yet no less 
 To the poor petty tenant of the dust, 
 The rhythm of being and the clock of life. 
 
 COLOUR. (CANNES.) 
 
 * Illustration of congruity in Natural Phenomena, due 
 to essential causes. 
 
 All the colours of the sea and of fish : which can only 
 be expressed one by the other. 
 
6Q ARTISTIC. 
 
 The colours of insects and vegetation : only to be 
 , expressed one by the other. 
 
 After hours of intense light cover your eyes with a 
 white bandage. You will see a species of green, a species 
 of ' lake ' (madder lilac), and a species of blue. 
 
 Open your eyes and look. You will find this green 
 under the wings of this Cleopatra butterfly : pull open, 
 for the first time, the great nozzle of that Aloe, you will 
 find it within. You wall see it, less exquisitely the same, 
 in all the corn of the South, and in the leaves of many 
 plants. 
 
 You Avill find that ' lake ' tinting the tenderest edges 
 of the young vine leaves and shoots, those of the oak, 
 and of other unfolding trees and plants, and in every 
 dilution see it in the anemones, the peach-orchards, the 
 edges of clouds, tlie evening sky. 
 
 You w'ill find the blue in the flax blossom in this 
 field ; it bears the same relation to primitive blue that 
 this green and ' lake ' bear to green and red. 
 
 The difference puts them in relation with the grey of 
 the Olive, the colour of whose fruit is the lake condensed, 
 and whose youngest leaves show the green. 
 
 Observe those Olives against the south-eastern sky in 
 winter just after sunset, when the under-sides of their 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 89 
 
 leaves are turned up and visible and lose themselves in 
 the identical grey of the lower sky, which passes higher 
 up into dove-colour. Bring down your eyes and find this 
 unspeakable dove-colour in the palm-leaves and observe 
 that they bear the relation to yellow which the green, 
 lake, and flax-blue bore to their bases. 
 
 The anemone that is of the ' lake ' described, is 
 nearest in colour to lilac or musk geranium. 
 
 EVENING AT SAN REMO. 
 
 The Sun being lower than the promontories, the sea 
 smooth ; a blue evening is in the bay, having a sharp 
 line of limit from promontory to promontory. 
 
 Between this line and an horizon of purple, upper- 
 edged with crimson-amber, the sea one pearl, one 
 welfare, as might be the seas of Heaven, where milky 
 light not yet fired into immateriality lay in an ocean of 
 potential Good, ready to lave and nourish, or to bear the 
 happy ships (with sails of live gold) without eftbrt of 
 their own or upper wind. 
 
 Indeed the unshaped substance of a possible uni- 
 verse of bliss, only as yet showing its irepyeta by that 
 action. 
 
90 ARTISTIC. 
 
 JANUARY 17th. (at SAN REMO.) 
 
 In the midst of eastern clear Heaven, over the 
 Mediterranean, a heavy island of snow cloud, black with 
 substance and livid with cold, touching the sea sometimes 
 by great roots (with intervals), sometimes by a rolling 
 smoke, as of battle, and leadening it into the deadly 
 coma of the weaker possessed by the stronger. 
 
 The Sea (at San Remo) in undulating calms. The 
 nautili and pearl, and every tinted secret of inner shells, 
 and every shelly phantasy of million-minded colour, 
 existing beforehand in solution. 
 
 In great heat the leaves of the Olive rise till the 
 points are nearly vertical. At this time if the wind is 
 opposite the sun a brilliant shimmer as of diamonds 
 (without iridescence) or of dew. If the wind is with the 
 sun, or in calm, the special grey. 
 
 Moonlight in the Bay of Naples. Half-past three a.m. 
 April 10, 1865. 
 
 The line of mountains on Sorrento-shore visible to the 
 end. 
 
SKETCHES FROM NATURE. 91 
 
 Full moon setting west. 
 
 In the sky overhead a rose and consciousness, and a 
 sense like the remembrance of exquisite greenery, but no 
 hint of sunrise or of eastward-dawn. 
 
 Westward, towards moon-set, a warmer light than 
 moonlight — like a feminine reflection of sunset-after- 
 glow — 
 
 As though dreaming Dian 
 Through the white virgin of her maiden sleep 
 Takes the forbidden sweet. 
 
SPECULATIVE 
 
SPECULATIVE. 
 
 Like Zaccheus small of stature I make this Igdrazil of the Universe 
 the Sycamore whereinto I climb to see Christ. 
 
 [N. B. As in all other instances, the passages collected under 
 this heading are memoranda made in different note-books, and at 
 very different dates, now first brought together. It is thought better 
 on the whole that slight inconsistencies and occasional repetitions 
 should occur rather than that any effort should be made to recast the 
 original matter into more finished form : but with regard to these 
 passages more than to any other part of the volume, it is felt im- 
 portant that the reader should be requested to bear in mind the 
 manner in which they were found — as Fragments, the intention of 
 which could only have been fully understood had the writer been 
 able to carry out the Design which, fitting them into their destined 
 places, would have shown their proportionate relation as parts to a 
 whole. — Ed.] 
 
96 SPECULATIYE. 
 
 SEARCH FOR THE IDEAL. 
 
 In thinking of Truth it is to be borne in mind 
 that we have nothing to do with things as they are., but 
 with Things as they would appear to a perfect and perfectly 
 healthy human Being. 
 
 This is Truth : and it may happen therefore that a 
 nearer knowledge of the absolute nature of things may be 
 a deviation from the Truth, so far as we are concerned, 
 because different from that knowledge of them which the 
 Creator has assigned to an ideal Humanity. 
 
 Philosophy is not a statement of things as they are, 
 but a physiological biography of the human soul under the 
 exciting causes of the Universe. Its results merely give 
 us the present physiology, morphology, and dynamics of 
 the soul. 
 
SEARCH FOR THE IDEAL. 97 
 
 Suppose man to be instead of the creation of a 
 Superior, the better result of a process of an inferior — a 
 spirit evolved in the substance of fermenting matter, — a 
 product of growth. 
 
 But this presupposes an enormous petitio principii. We 
 have no proof that growth itself, or any material evolu- 
 tion of the better from the worse, could take place in the 
 absence of a still Higher Perfection ; that any movement 
 of the grosser towards the fine would be possible, but 
 that gross and fine are alike held in solution by a still 
 subtler and finer — the Alkahest of God. 
 
 Granted that to determine the existence of an Ideal 
 is difficult. But there are other things equally difficult 
 to identify, which, nevertheless, no one scruples to erect 
 as standards : — Health, for instance. 
 
 There is a tendency in all things — in the whole 
 Cosmos and in its individual constituents — to struggle 
 towards health. Hope, in the soul, seems the unconscious 
 witness of this principle of things. 
 
 It is to the necessity, arising from the constitution of 
 the Human Mind, for an Ideal of Humanity, that we owe 
 those resemblances in Mythology to the Ideal Man 
 
98 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 Christ, which have been misunderstood to be traditionally 
 derived. 
 
 Anaxagoras and Protagoras arrived at false conclu- 
 sions, because when laying down that ' whatever seems is 
 true,' they left out the conditioning clause — ' to the Ideal 
 iVIan.' 
 
 The Ideal standard (of the Ideal ^ylan) is more than 
 ever (artistically) necessary, now that microscopes and 
 photography are vitiating the consistency of human per- 
 ceptions. 
 
 In the Ideal Human Being — Image of God — the 
 Human Differentia is no longer in qualit}^ but in 
 quantity, and in him therefore takes place the /caraWay// 
 — atonement, as Shakspeare always uses the word or its 
 derivatives — of the Race. 
 
 The Ideal is not a mere algebraic power of the 
 Imperfect. There is an Embryolog)- of the moral 
 Nature. Examine the Embr}'ology of the physical in 
 animal and vegetable ; show how the phases of develop- 
 ment are Jwt miniatures of the ultimate phase : that in 
 some cases the progress appears deviation. Apply this 
 
SEARCH FOR TIIR IDEAL. 99 
 
 to mental developments, wliere a simulacrum of the 
 ultimate perfection is not so near it as apparent variation, 
 e.g. the premature destruction of human feeling — as in 
 monastic and fakir discii)line — further from the mental 
 ■cosmos of Perfection than the exuberance of unsubordi- 
 nated emotions : c.i;. (also) the despotism of husband 
 over wife, nearer to the ideal of union than the crude 
 equality of ordinary modern theorists. 
 
 If this earth were inhabited by perfect bodies and 
 perfect souls its evils would be at zero. 
 
 It is for Science to superintend the attainment of one 
 desideratum, and Religion of the other. 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven may be so much of Earth 
 ^s is making itself Divine, as distinguished from the 
 rest. 
 
 The truth as to Ideals was perceived separately in 
 two halves by Greek and Christian. The Greek saw in 
 the world and the body the possibilities of ideal perfec- 
 tion, and sought to realize it in Art by combining its 
 elements. 
 
 The Christian saw only the imperfe ction, and seeing 
 this, without also seeing the relation to the perfect, and 
 

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SEARCH FOR THE IDEAL. 1 01 
 
 COMPARATIVE IDEOLOGT. 
 
 In considering the sources of all ideas we have 
 
 A. The physical world, not human, but with dL potential 
 Jiutnanity. 
 
 B. The mental world, not physical, but with z. potential 
 physia. 
 
 The interaction of B with A has this among other 
 modes : some portion of B embodies itself in some 
 portion of A — attracted thereto not by the whole of that 
 portion of A, but by the special affinities in that portion. 
 But once embodied it remains as that whole portion, the 
 non-affinities of the portion included. This resultant 
 B X A is again received by B as objective knowledge. 
 More of the potential humanities in the .\ of this B x A 
 are assimilated by B than those which were the original 
 special affinities, and the given B that originally embo- 
 died itself in the given A, is now increased by the addi- 
 tion of these new extractions. Thus increased it once 
 more seeks embodiment in an ampler portion of A (the 
 former having become effete in the same way that a 
 metaphor becomes at length literal and is then disused 
 for other figures), which in turn goes through the same 
 process.' 
 
 ' See H^el and Malthas on the eA-oIati<Mi of mind from matter- 
 -J. X. 
 

 s^.r -«: 43J. -333aT5«t -snt 
 
 j'xins."' 
 
 
 -J Jar :iit JBDC -rrafrm^ ai :te- 
 
 
SEARCH FOR THE IDEAL. 103 
 
 The testimony to an Ideal can be inferred by all of 
 us frorn the fact that of things of the same kind we 
 ajjprove individuals more or less, and by admitting a 
 better imply the possibility of a Best. 
 
 This Best it would be easy to discover if we were all 
 of one mind. But our differing powers produce dif- 
 ferent judgments. All search for an ideal therefore, pre- 
 necessitates the search for an ideal percipient — an ideal 
 Man. 
 
 Again we may say an ideal thing is that which 
 best fulfils its Law, is in the most perfect grammatical 
 construction. 
 
 But if reason be the grammar of that construction, we 
 require first to find and apply the grammar. And man 
 is the highest reason which we humanly can imvestigate 
 or ajjply, and a perfect Man the highest form of that 
 highest Reason. 
 
 If there existed but one specimen of each type, no 
 notion of an ideal would be suggested. In speaking of a 
 Better, we mean either one more suited to certain wants 
 in us (which ' Better ' does not suggest an Ideal), or one 
 more truly realizing a Design or Pattern perceptible in 
 each imperfect specimen. By observing many imperfect 
 specimens — e.g. of an animal — ^the nature of the bones, 
 
I04 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 muscles, tS:c., more or less eminent in them suggests 
 the object the animal is to effect. But this suggestion 
 does not furnish the Ideal, for Nature is never finitely 
 teleologic. 
 
 But by crossing a specimen by another wherein the 
 deficiencies of each are compensated, a progeny results 
 wherein Nature in her own way — {i.e. with many other 
 accomplishments included) remedies those defects. And 
 by a repetition of this process a being results by whom 
 the recognized object \s perfectly effected. 
 
 But this Being will contain many qualities, as Beauty 
 and variety of function, which could not have been fore- 
 seen by a study of the imperfect specimen. An ideal 
 therefore cannot be theoretically arrived at, it must be 
 found in existence, and the existence of such Ideals 
 might be reasoned, a priori, either on ancient or modern 
 principles. 
 
 Now if Science wishes by dissection or examination 
 of a specimen to understand the laws of any Being, she 
 would choose one of these perfect examples — sure that 
 in such she shall find the fulfilment and rationale of 
 functions and facts that in the imperfect were incomplete 
 and perplexing. 
 
 Since the Perfect and imperfect specimen difter not 
 
SEARCH FOR THE IDEAL. 105 
 
 radically but in degree it must be always unsafe to reason 
 from the phenomena of the Imperfect, because we have 
 no guarantee that in sucli a specimen any given pheno- 
 menon is truly accounted for. Whatever is fragmentary 
 — i.e. is separated from its co-ordinates — must, if it is 
 organic, contain focts that exist in relation to others not 
 contained in the specimen — causes without effects, e.g. 
 desire without fruition, — and what under other conditions 
 we should term effects appearing without their explana- 
 tory antecedents — e.g. a beautiful eye but no optic nerve. 
 (The cruder species of vegetable genera offer illustrations 
 of the same truth.) 
 
 This which applies to all organized Beings applies 
 l^re-eminently to Man. 
 
 The principles of Humanity, or the rationale of 
 Human functions, must therefore be investigated in the 
 Perfect Man— the Human Being as he w^ould be if all 
 his powers and functions were arrived at that positive 
 ■and relative state, that singular quality and quantity, and 
 that proportional combination, wherein, most favourably 
 to the welfare of the parts and of the whole, they could 
 realize a composite existence and activity. Such a 
 Being, passive and active, is the standard of everything 
 Human. He is the living Law, the concrete Logos, the 
 pure Human Good. 
 
Io6 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 TO FIXD THE IDEAL MAN. 
 
 We have all some qualities common to the Perfect 
 IVIan, which, by the sensations they give us, testify of 
 themselves (/. e. secure an involuntary respect from our ego) 
 and by other external facts get their testimony ratified, 
 as being 'better' than the rest. The lowest human 
 being is, therefore, a sufficient basis for the operation of 
 search. But during many stages of the process, after 
 leaving that first starting-point, we shall seem little 
 nearer to our end — nay often retrograding, but the sum 
 of all the zigzags will be an upward movement, and 
 when they are once surmounted the way is easy and 
 direct. 
 
 Process. Ask your lowest human being whom he 
 considers a model man. Ask the same question of his 
 model and so forwards. 
 
 The difficulty at first will arise from the large admix- 
 ture of other than ideal qualities in the given models, 
 and the certainty that some one in the series may refer 
 you to another his superior only in the lower attributes ; 
 but the general law will vindicate itself in the long run, 
 and by sufficient patience in tracing from link to link the 
 chain will again slant upwards. 
 
 As you reach the nobler types the experiment more 
 
SEARCH FOR THK IDEAL. I07 
 
 rai)idly culminates and witli l)ut one result. Wherever 
 
 t'ied, in -whatever age and country, there is one sentence 
 
 which is the shorthand of all the verdicts of the World — 
 
 ' In the image of God made He man.' 
 
 RELATION OF IMPERFECT TO IDEAL ACTION AND 
 EXPRESSION. 
 
 The Ideal Man must not only exist but express his 
 existence. 
 
 He does this by yiuxric, and by -o/>;(7(c— whether of 
 gesture, action, poems, painting, architecture, etc. 
 
 Poetry therefore comprehends nearly the whole 
 expression of a perfect human Being, .... but it 
 may be asked, if Poetry be the language of a perfect 
 World — (speech as it would spontaneously exist among 
 perfect human beings) of what value to imperfect Hu- 
 manity could be the discovery of its nature. 
 
 The too-ready answer of some idealists would be that 
 it is the whole duty of the imperfect humanity to copy 
 the actions of the Perfect. But since in an imitation of 
 this kind action would cease to be expression^ and, 
 therefore, would cease to be truth, such uTrtk-ptafc 
 whether in the moral or intellectual functions is alike 
 destructive. 
 
 The true answer implies a principle of curious 
 
io8 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 importance which I hope at some other time to 
 illustrate more at large — the principle of mental em- 
 bryology. 
 
 It is ascertained that in the prenatal development 
 of organized bodies the phases of the foetus, instead of 
 being a gradual epiphany of the final shape, are forms of 
 types of being utterly different in powers and functions 
 from that which the embryon is nevertheless steadily 
 approaching. 
 
 The development of the human character exhibits a 
 similar law, and is often nearer to its final type when 
 apparently diverse from it than when exhibiting the 
 appearance of similitude. 
 
 But there is something quoad which the outward signs 
 •of the imperfect man may, without untruth to himself, be 
 ruled by those of the perfect. It is the qualities which 
 they express : e.g. the quality of Love, little or great, of 
 Justice, Httle or great, &c., <S:c. 
 
 That is absolutely — quoad hominem — right or wrong, 
 which would be done or lived by the Ideal Man under 
 the given circumstances — a system of perfect morality 
 therefore would be merely a chronicle of his sponta- 
 neities. 
 
 But for the imperfect humanity to do or say what 
 would be the true expression of the perfect would be false, 
 
SEARCH FOR THE IDEAL. lO(^ 
 
 a systematized hypocrisy : e.i^^. to say for his Httle love^ 
 little gratitude, litde perception, the words which were 
 the exact impersonation of the great : and so of all 
 deeds, — which are but language. 
 
 True morality, therefore, is a system of principles — ■ 
 the formulae of those qualities which under every varia- 
 tion of circumstances would move the perfect man ; 
 qualities to become action according to the sfaf//s of the 
 agent. 
 
 Duty therefore, in any given case, is the existence of 
 that qicality which would act in the perfect man, and that 
 expression thereof which is true to the then status of the 
 agent. This applies to men in their corporate as well 
 as individual capacity. 
 
 Therefore Christianity cannot work without human 
 nature, nor human nature without Christianity. Chris- 
 tianity supplies the Principles, the human being is the 
 measure of their application. The two together being a 
 perfect system, and, when so united, throughout Divine. 
 The constitution of each man detemiines his vocation, 
 Christianity furnishes the principles of all vocations, the 
 two together constitute the autonomy of the individual. 
 In other words a perfect principle applied to the best of 
 an imperfect ability. 
 
 These principles can only be learned in the person of 
 
no SPECULATIVE. 
 
 ■an absolutely perfect Alan because in any lower grade of 
 progress some of them exist in an embryonic form which 
 either appears to be antagonistic to the final or is super- 
 fluous to it. 
 
 In illustration of foregoing — suppose a man bursting 
 with reverent gratitude throws himself on his face. But 
 suppose a man with little gratitude or reverence to do 
 the same. 
 
 Is the posture of the body acceptable to God ? 
 
 But it may be objected that, by the congruities of 
 nature, a given bodily posture is likely to stimulate a 
 given mental attitude, and that he who kneels being 
 irreverent may gradually become reverent. 
 
 It may be true that some small spiritual effect may 
 take place through the external pose, and it may be also 
 true that a general course of hypocrisy may involuntarily 
 induce an inner change for the better, but the fact re- 
 mains the same that a more truthful expression of devo- 
 tion, under the existing state of feeling, would be still 
 more certain to culture that feeling into strength, and 
 that the unmistakeable evils of hypocrisy are greater than 
 its concealed and questionable good. 
 
 It is not enough, under given circumstances, to show 
 that a benefit takes place. You require to show that it 
 is the greatest possible under them. 
 
SEARCH FOR THK IDKAL. Ill 
 
 The soul must act — the soul's action is alone true 
 action — and the soul's action must take that bodily action 
 which is congruous w?th it, and no other. 
 
 The foregoing notions of Duty are not inconsistent 
 with the doctrine of obedience. The obedience required 
 by God is the soul's obedience. Bodily obedience takes 
 its nature from the nature of the simultaneous spiritual 
 action : e.g. to give alms to him one hates is not charity ; 
 it may be piety and self-sacrifice. To abstain from her 
 one lusts after is not purity : and so of other examples — 
 e.g. ' though I give all my goods to feed the poor and 
 have not chanty — ' 
 
 A pious man, therefore, may do the deeds of all the 
 virtues — not, however, exactly as the virtuous do them — 
 without possessing any virtue but one. His value (in 
 relation to other virtuous men) must depend on Avhatever 
 proportion the value of so much of this one virtue may 
 bear to the accumulated value of the absent virtues. 
 And this sum no mortal judge can do. 
 
 But I think the sound procedure for a pious man 
 deficient in the other virtues is not to perform the acis of 
 those virtues on the scale, or in the manner of the perfect 
 man, but to stimulate the germs of these virtues within 
 him and let their acts follow the law I have previously 
 suggested. 
 
112 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 ' Be ye perfect.' Not seem ye. 
 
 As regards Duty it is probable mat each increase of a 
 beautiful function is accompanied with a reaction on the 
 intellect (imagination) by which is created a higher notion 
 of the possible exercise of the functions than its then 
 powers can spontaneously realize, and that, therefore, a 
 duty- standard on sliding scale may never cease. 
 
 I think, however, that such artificial function can 
 only be requisite till the congenial co-operation of all 
 mental functions is attained: after which exercise would 
 be the sole education. 
 
 For textual support of this theory of duty, &c., see 
 Luke vi. 40, ' The disciple is not above his master : but 
 everyone that is perfect shall be as his master.' 
 
 Now this formula of Duty applies as much to the 
 intellectual as the moral province. 
 
 The Principles of Perfect Human Speech given, in 
 varying application, to all human speech whatever, and 
 those Principles, which applied by the imperfect Being 
 result in a prose that more or less expresses his imperfec- 
 tion, applied by the Perfect have their produce in Poetry. 
 
BEAUTY, LOVE, ORDER, UNITY. 1 13 
 
 BEAUTY, LOVE, ORDER, UNITY. 
 
 ]\Iany psychical things — e.g. feehngs — can only be under- 
 stood by ascertaining the attributes of their ideal or 
 perfect state. 
 
 Beauty is that which is loved to delight (by the Ideal 
 ]\Ian). Beauty is the harmony oi x\\y\\\vi\\z parts. Is not 
 Beauty visible Love ? 
 
 Love is an effort of the soul towards unity ; the oscil- 
 lation of the soul between the desire for identity and the 
 necessity for difference ; that broad affection of the jMind 
 (or of a mental function) which has its apex and climax in 
 Delight (or any motion of the soul in that series whose 
 top and climax is Delight). It begins in choice. There- 
 fore, as from the ephemera we go back stage by stage and 
 find the same being under different forms, as from the 
 flower we trace backwards to the germen, as from the 
 crisis of disease Ave see phase by phase along its unity to 
 a comparatively inert incipience, so we would identify as 
 
 I 
 
114 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 Love whatever by natural order can intensify and cul- 
 minate into Delight, however little like that ultimate 
 efflorescence its given state may appear. 
 
 The first motions of Life show a power of choice — to 
 attract and repel — to attract the congruous and repel the 
 incongruous — to bring sameness of essence into same- 
 ness of place. (Congruous — i.e. that which has potential 
 unity. In the action of living matter this congruity is 
 between matter and matter. Matter attracts to itself that 
 which is capable of unification; the nature of the activity — 
 the vis — by which the attraction is made is inappreciable 
 by us. So far vegetation. In the first examples of higher 
 life we have evident cJioicc directing the attraction. An 
 instinct for ' sameness ' exists in forms of life too crude to 
 allow of comparison or conscious intelligence.) 
 
 Tracing this attraction and repulsion upward we find 
 it rising in the higher animals to what we call love and 
 disgust. 
 
 Love is the form in higher grades of life of that which 
 in lower grades is shown by choice, which attracts the 
 congruous : therefore the primary principles of Love being 
 unity and order that which excites it must have unity and 
 order. Love will then make it part of a new order and 
 unity. 
 
BEAUTY, LOVE, ORDER, UNITY. 115 
 
 The primary principles of Beauty are, therefore, order 
 ■and unity. But it is not enough for Beauty tliat it em- 
 body the primary principles. Human Love acts through 
 material functions. As these are finite they cannot /rr- 
 sisf : as feeble they are unfit for violent change. The 
 material in which Beauty exists has many modes of hurt- 
 ing them. 
 
 But when an object, having order and unity, has a 
 variety that needs no persistence and a graduation of 
 •change that can be perceived without violent action, 
 when, besides, it is free from any of those attributes of 
 matter which hurt the sensorium, that sum-total excites 
 the entire unobstructed unsubtracted perfection of Love — 
 Delight — and is Beauty. 
 
 Love is — I. Accompanied with a tendency to fusion — • 
 as in friendship and some other passions. 
 
 2. Accompanied by the tendency to comprehend — as 
 in the love of man for woman. 
 
 3. Accompanied by the tendency to be compre- 
 bended — as in the love of woman for ^Nfan, and of Man 
 for God. * 
 
 No. 2 responds to the Beautiful. 
 No. 3 responds to the Sublime. 
 
Il6 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 Sorrow is Love No. 2 under conditions unfavourable 
 to satisfaction. (It includes compassion or pity.) 
 Terror is Love No. 3 under such conditions. 
 
 The Love of Woman to Man is (similar to) the love 
 of Man to God. 
 
 The Love of Man to Woman the Love of God to 
 Man. 
 
 The fact that one is a perfect specimen of its type and 
 the other for ever and necessarily an imperfect perhaps- 
 gives equality to the two. 
 
 Anger is a passion of immature Love, excited by con- 
 tact with what is not beauty. When Love is full-grown 
 and affixed this passion ceases — non-Beauty being merely 
 ignored — but while immature it is necessary to its gi'owth, 
 as an elastic force to clear away unfavourable conditions. 
 
 The sensuous element of Love provides for such a 
 general value of the body as is necessary to keep the other 
 faculties from their native tendency to forsake it — (and,, 
 in pursuance thereof, to despise, ill-use, and degrade it). 
 
 That element cannot be absent without a consequent 
 loss of equilibrium among the general scheme of faculties. 
 
P.EAUTV, LOVE, ORDER, UNITY. II7 
 
 (e.j^. the various extremes of eastern and Avestern as- 
 ceticism.) 
 
 On the other hand its presence in the most refined, 
 ideahzed, and exquisite form— a form in which it can 
 hardly be recognized as of the same genus with the lower 
 manifestations — is all that is necessary for this provision. 
 
 Love, the passion towards unity, is a direct agitation 
 in the thing seeking unity, and differs, therefore, in its 
 diagnosis as the thing differs. 
 
 A dull tendenc}', a furious appetite, a mild yearning, 
 a strong ache, a grasping joy, a steady-burning happiness, 
 a climacteric delight, and many other signs, being the 
 Love-signs of these different substances, and existing in 
 us simultaneously or consecutively as a different portion 
 of the soul tends towards what seems good to it. 
 
 As in imperfect natures the tendencies of some of 
 these ' different portions ' may be inconsistent with others, 
 the whole Love of that organic unity the total soul may 
 require the sacrifice of some of those partitive ' loves,' or a 
 substitution, in respect to them, of a tendency to union 
 with the educational benefactor instead of the natural 
 tendency of like to like, or apt to apt. 
 
 The union between apt and apt is the highest kind of 
 
Il8 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 unity, because, while like and like united have (virtually 
 in their different relations to space) a numeric difference, 
 the new total of apt and apt united is a unity possible to 
 neither separately, appertaining equally to both, and 
 divisible by no defining lines. 
 
 The union of like and like though it produces a third 
 thing, inasmuch as the whole is not the parts, has merely 
 produced the fact of wholeness ; while the union of apt 
 and apt has not merely so done but has added a new 
 creature besides. 
 
 ORDER. 
 
 Form is the condition of Phenomena : Order is the 
 construction of them : Reason is the syntax of that con- 
 struction. 
 
 To order is to make multiplicity into unity. 
 
 Order is the co-existence of things according to their 
 mutual fitness : (e.g. ball and socket and their moral 
 analogues.) 
 
 This seems to render the idea of the whole unnecessary,, 
 because it may be said that an infinite variety of forms, 
 exist, and that in an infinite succession of changes those 
 cohere that can adhere. 
 
BEAUTY, LOVE, ORDER, UNITY. 1 19 
 
 As order is a co-existcncc of parts according to an 
 overruling Law, the phenomenal exhibition of order re- 
 quires a perceptible equivalent for that insensible Law. 
 
 It requires among co-existing parts a part of more dig- 
 nity, or force, or size, as the bodily residence of that Law. 
 
 Suppose your Law is the Wrath of Achilles, the mo- 
 ment that Wrath is more than a formula it comes under 
 the conditions of time and place, becomes incorporate, 
 and must enter on relations with other bodies. 
 
 Again, as Order, in the abstract, is the regulation of 
 many by One the concrete presentment of it must have 
 the metaphors of these and of the intercourse between 
 them. It may be that as the ' One' is the ' Law of the 
 Whole,' and that as the whole consists of its parts, no 
 ' one ' can absolutely stand for the Law : but it can stand 
 for it as much as phenomena ever do stand for forces. 
 As much as what we call matter stands for motion. It 
 cannot contain motion but it is our only and necessary 
 means to an idea of it. And indeed what in a simple and 
 mechanical manner is found to exist in crystallography 
 may, in some more subtle fashion, exist in more complex 
 combinations, and there may be a part in every structure 
 which does truly concrete the Law of the ^^'hole and 
 wherefrom the Whole may be worked al> intra. 
 
-r- V=:. JT Jl ^Zj: 
 
 j::^_ -^ttt: .tT'^MV-.. IST: 
 
 -TTTT offi^an:^ 
 
 SJE. 
 
 \ IT HUM iinr;!,-^ 
 
 3. ~ ilf I -*'ll'— 4I'T- 
 
 i:.-n»!! V~ 
 
 
 .ail'' 
 
 r'u;!!t jam ^- ^: 
 
 ri!^ "TTTt Vi »- 1 f~T-'^ " 
 
 ^ -^f' ' - 
 
II 
 
 Ei-ATTl , LOVE. C'SX'ER, TTXITT. ^ZZ 
 
 Nor of origin — ^for where is cri^n ? Xor a previous 
 existence in unity; for to be in tmirj" fhfngs innsr be 
 related. 
 
 In that continual change of unitr to nmkipEcirr 
 and miutiplicitT to imitv -vriiich is in the process of 
 things, are there not snccessional grades and mar not 
 co-esistence in a preceding i7-j.:V cf unity be the test of 
 rdationship ? 
 
 The various multiplicity of Tn.-. -n co-existed in the phe- 
 nomenal unity of the anteembiyonic state. So that of 
 the tru in the seed. This phenomenal tmiry ■was doubt- 
 less multiplicity but (to human senses) prephenomsnal 
 multiplicity. 
 
 The multiplicity therefcc-e that has ever existed in this 
 unity is capable of being composed into another kind of 
 unit\- — ^is rebted. Germinal unity, Isospennism, or some 
 similar name, should be given to that feet to irhich 
 rdatum is due. 
 
 VNITY, 
 
 We arrive at Man in irbam, among animals. Love takes 
 its highest formsi. ^^"hetbe^ the soul be an unjuhxian of 
 the Infinite Oneness — a ripple that cannot return to the 
 unit)- of the Sea — and haA-ing theTefore the arrractjon of 
 
12 2 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 the stone towards the Mountain for the Unity out of which 
 it came — we do not enquire, because we seek for practi- 
 cal knowledge : but we know that, among the prim- 
 ordial qualities of the Soul, the difference by Avhich we 
 first show that infinitude is lost is a desire towards unity. 
 To choose, to like, to love— thus it desires (wrestling 
 with the necessity to be individual) to end multiplicity by 
 unity. But that desire must be intelligence to know the 
 other and executive force to compose the two into unity. 
 
 To know things in that way which best helps to unity 
 is to know their essentials. 
 
 When mentally we abstract qualities from anything 
 till that quality which if abstracted would leave' no dif- 
 ference between the thing and another thing, we have 
 found its essential quality. Or, we may say, when, 
 substance, which quoad our perceptions is as nothing,, 
 begins to have qualities and to be something, there are 
 primary ' qualities ' by which the something has separ- 
 ated itself from the nothing — i.e. the qualities and the 
 quality Avhich is nearest in order of phenomena to the 
 nothing. Or, again, we may say, in those acts of intelli- 
 gence by which we touch substance there are primary 
 acts, cardinal motions, capable of certain variations. 
 within an autonomy. 
 
 But whatever be the soul it is so beset vrith matter 
 
\ 
 
 BEAUTY, LOVE, ORDER, UNITY. 1 23. 
 
 that it cannot move without causing material change ; to 
 cause change it must overcome inertia, change is the 
 measure of expended force ; if the soul had endless 
 force it would be infinite, but it is finite, therefore its 
 force is finite and can come to an end ; but he who 
 expends what can come to an end must needs husband. 
 Therefore we may conclude there is a thrift in the self- 
 preservation of the soul. If so, in using the material 
 instrument it will spend no more force than needful to 
 the fulfilment of desire; /.e. it will act with the least 
 difterence consistent with that varidy which is necessary 
 to the material function. 
 
 We find man with a soul that cannot be in direct 
 contact with the outer world and which requires there- 
 fore a copy of that outer world- — a representation — as the 
 object of knowledge. 
 
 ' To know ' represents, then, a double action, of re- 
 presentation and cognizance. The conditions of his 
 knowledge, therefore, are not only those of the perceiv- 
 ing but also of the representing function. 
 
 Whatever be ' to know ' — whether 
 
 I St. The combined action of a mental function which 
 merely mirrors — represents — the world, and a mental 
 percipient that touches the representation, or 
 
124 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 2nd. Whether the transmission of motion from the 
 without to and through the within, or 
 
 3rd. Whether the reaction of a such and such force 
 from within meeting and counteracting such and such a 
 force from without, or 
 
 4th. Whether a change in, as it were, the shape of the 
 soul, corresponding to the mould of external things — in 
 any case knowledge in the perfect man has arrived at its 
 best state. In any case it has the intervention of 
 a ' material ' machine, ' the body,' the possibilities of 
 which condition for it the outer universe : i.e. the 
 ■question of the nature of that universe becomes a 
 question of the nature — i.e. the functional abilities — of 
 that transmitting medium. 
 
 We find man in a body ruled by a heart that, in 
 health, marks an exactly equal beat of time, and equally 
 alternates rest and action, and the functions of which 
 must, therefore, bear some proportionate relation to that 
 time-keeper. 
 
 We find him acting by material functions — e.g. 
 brain. Matter acting — i.e. moving — within limited space 
 must move by oscillation — up and down or to and fro. 
 If this oscillation is out of proportion to the proportions 
 of those functions ruled by the heart, we should have 
 
REAUTV, LOVE, ORDER, UNITY. 125 
 
 obstruction and neutralization — lethargy or death. But 
 we have total activity and life : — therefore the oscillation 
 is continually proi)ortionate. 
 
 But in what manner can solid matter, within limits 
 of space which it can but a little transgress, move ? We 
 see in a field of wheat, under the wind, or in the waves 
 of a lake : by undulation of contiguous particles. The 
 principles of our undulatory oscillation must, therefore, 
 be continuity and polarity. The movement of the heart 
 is in accordance with these principles. 
 
 As a finite being man's activities are a succession 
 of means to ends or temporary rests. His thinking 
 activity is, of course, of this kind. By the constitution of 
 it he can arrive at absolute rest but in one idea — the idea 
 of One. Here is rest because it is the end of all think- 
 ing, the result of the smallest division and the largest 
 compound, of all analysis and synthesis. To his thinking 
 function it must therefore be the siimmum boiuun and 
 final cause. 
 
 ■ Discovering the condition of perfect rest we shall 
 expect that less perfect rests shall be in the ratio of their 
 condition to that condition, and to find the intellect a 
 machine (among other things) for composing multiplicity 
 to unity. 
 
126 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 Whatever be the soul, we know it acts by a body that 
 needs alternations of rest. This applies to the whole 
 machine and its parts — to the sensorium as one, and to 
 each sensorial organ. You may tire the sensorium by 
 simultaneous actions without tiring either organ : you 
 may spoil a single organ without spoiling the sen- 
 sorium. 
 
 Both to do and to suffer are kinds of action — i.e. 
 transmission. Whatever the nature of force, therefore, it 
 is limited in exercise by the necessity of the body for 
 rest. This necessity is found to be, in the same body, 
 directly as the quantity of force expended. 
 
 Change is the measure of force. Much simultaneous 
 change is therefore, as an index, equivalent to less 
 change in longer time. The conditions which oblige 
 absolute rest after a certain expenditure begin to 
 be felt long before that limit. There is an instinctive 
 economy in the sense, that shuns exhaustion and Death. 
 It shrinks from approaching its limit of action — as it 
 shrinks from the longer rest of Death. 
 
 There is, therefore, but a small point in time during 
 which sensation is at its best, and the sense is unwilling to 
 undertake any act that diminishes the size of that point : 
 ■i.e. the mind avoids unnecessary eff'o?-t — shuns ' fatigue.' 
 
BEAUTY, LOVE, ORDER, UNITY. 127 
 
 As this 'point' is diminished by perceiving two instead 
 of one it more wilUngly perceives one. 
 
 Though the Ideal Man constructs the many into the 
 one, there still remains unanswered the how and why of 
 this construction — the how and why of Proportion, 
 Order, Harmony, Symmetr}^, Koct/^joc 
 
 This is the problem insoluble by reason, and if 
 reason alone could help us the standard of the Ideal 
 would be practically useless. 
 
 On what then rely ? 
 
 On a power in Man of which says Aristotle — (' a 
 special power of the immortal Gods ') of which says 
 Christianity (Faith ?).^ 
 
 What is that power ? 
 
 Though man in ordinary is chaotic and imperfect, 
 there are men whom a power of temporary transfigura- 
 tion recomposes towards the Perfect (Man). 
 
 Quoad Religious Truths, this new proportion of the 
 functions is Wianq. 
 
 Towards other truths Genius. 
 
 [' Word omitted in MS. — Ed.] 
 
128 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 ORIGIN OF RHYTHM, SLEEP, &-£ 
 
 ORIGIN OF RHYTHM. 
 
 TvIan is distinguished by two cardinal attributes : 
 
 I St. That everyone says ' I,' and is conscious of unity 
 in that which so says, however much he may be con- 
 scious of multiphcity in his attributes — in qualities 
 necessary to ' I.' 
 
 2nd. That his animal life is a systole and diastole — 
 ?".6'. that no healthy man can persevere in action without 
 sleep, or in sleep without action. 
 
 To these cardinal conditions all his mechanique 
 conforms, and by them are his notions of externals 
 governed. 
 
 From which mechanique come the reasons of 
 Rhythm, of Art, and of Speech. 
 
 Whether this need (of Sleep) be imposed on the 
 * soul ' by the body, ' or Avhether some quality of the 
 princijDle of life necessitates it in the higher forms of 
 
ORIGIN OF RHYTHM, SLEEP, ETC. 1 29 
 
 Incarnation I will not here enquire. I may point out 
 its correspondence with the recurrence of Night and 
 Day, Summer and Winter, and with the undulatory 
 systems of Light, Heat, and Motion. 
 
 One result of this principle of alternate action and 
 rest is, that the heart of the higher classes of animals — 
 the most obviously governing organ of the animal body — 
 accomphshes its work by a series of actions and sub- 
 actions, occurring in Man at equal intervals. From this 
 equidistant recurrence of action and sub-action in the 
 dispenser of vivifying blood, it results that the corporeal 
 means by which the ' mind ' (or ' soul ') acts must, — visibly 
 or not, — accomplish their work in time with the great 
 beater of time : the external and internal organs of 
 sense, for instance, must transact sensation, the mind 
 (or soul) must be affected by the ' outer world,' in a 
 series of actions and sub-actions correlated to those of 
 the heart. 
 
 We must keep in mind the great distinction between 
 the organs — as the heart and lungs — in which the 
 collapse answers to true sleep, and those which enjoying 
 what we call ' sleep,' remain so furnished with life-power 
 by the action of heart and lungs as to be able still to act 
 during their quasi-sleep. But these though not ' sleep- 
 ing ' with them, must nevertheless sustain a plus and 
 
 K 
 
130 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 minus of active ability corresponding with the systole 
 and diastole of the others. 
 
 One result of this corjDoreal pvdfioQ is, that ' external ' or 
 internal objects presenting themselves to this equi-beating 
 sensorial action and sub-action should present themselves 
 with their emphatic portions corresponding to the action- 
 beat, or, if in a multiplicity of various values, with 
 their more valuable (emphatic) multiples harmoniously 
 related to the arsis of the beat. Here is the origin of 
 compound rhythm — a motion in which minor motions are 
 contained in a major — and of the simplest relation of 
 parts to a whole. 
 
 SLEEP — CHANGE. 
 
 "WTiatever accounts for the need of sleep operates 
 before sleep-point is reached, and all races of men have 
 expressions equivalent to our ' fatigue,' ' weariness,' ' to 
 be tired,' ' to tire,' &c. 
 
 All men have also discovered by experiment that the 
 need of sleep comes most quickly upon that kind of 
 doing which we call ' doing exactly the same ' and have 
 instinctively lengthened the ability to act by a ' change ' 
 of activity. 
 
 The originative activity, and its proximate media, 
 
ORIGIN OF RHYTHM, SLEEP, ETC. 131 
 
 are found to ' tire ' most rapidly in actions that are at 
 once sudden and contrary : they seem like a pianist who 
 is relieved by a change of fingering, but who would be 
 exhausted had he to turn from his keyboard to keys 
 behind him. 
 
 The law of ' change,' therefore, which dictates relief 
 by ' doing ' through media wholly or partially fresh is 
 controlled by other laws. The change must be neither 
 sudden nor contrary, i.e. you have the laws of contitiuity 
 and gradation. 
 
 As the ' originative activity ' and its proximate media 
 ' tire ' more slowly than the subordinate media, their 
 tendency to change does not arrive till after many changes 
 of those subordinates : i.e. you have a principle of perse- 
 verance. 
 
 The need of Rest is the final cause of pvd/uoQ — undu- 
 latory rhythm — beats the time of the Beauty music. 
 
 The need of change is the final cause of those modi- 
 fications of undulation which are conditions of higher 
 Beauty. 
 
 PERCEPTION AND FEELING. 
 
 A Being is that which can be the object of sense (i.e. 
 thought or feeling). 
 
 K 2 
 
132 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 The question 'to be ' is, therefore, already answered 
 before we can know of its occasion. 
 
 For us, therefore, a ' being ' is a ' perceptible.' 
 
 And the question is not 'existence,' but perceptibility. 
 
 Are not all notions of quantity derived from quantity 
 of feeling ? ' I feel ' may stand for any point between 
 these, and would, nevertheless, but for memory^ be con- 
 ditioned by no sense of quantity. But the sensorium 
 (limited by its mortality, ' rest-need ' and ' change-need ') 
 furnishes data to experience which react in vague ideas of 
 sensational limits, and thence of sensational quantity : 
 i.e. of the relation of a given ' I feel ' to the whole possible 
 ' I feel.' 
 
 PERSONAL IDENTITY. 
 
 Every man is, in time present, personally identical 
 ■with a given person in past time who is, according to the 
 ordinary process of nature, the lineal representative of 
 that person's body and mind — i.e. who is, by what is 
 natural to an individual in a given time, the last of an 
 unbroken series of facts of which the first is 'that person.' 
 
ORIGIN OF RHYTHM, SLEEP, ETC. 1 33 
 
 THE WILL. 
 
 In action there are two parts — that which originates 
 the act and that which performs it. 
 
 May not Will be defined as an attitude of the originating 
 part? 
 
 The Will, therefore, is the total attitude of the whole 
 Originator in Man. It is thus distinct from Desire 
 which 7nay exist without any motion of the first portion 
 of action. 
 
 As trees with leaves should a life show and hide the 
 skeleton principles that shape it. 
 
 Of to create in the sense of to be a first cause of sub- 
 stance we have no idea. 
 
 Time is the expression of a compound perception of 
 existence and change. 
 
 Perhaps the soul is a clear drop of conscious existence 
 capable of various motions. 
 
 Perhaps what we call the feelings are a corpus to that 
 soul, bearing the relation to it that the body bears to 
 them — acting on it as the body acts on them. 
 
134 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 Perhaps this corpus dies at Death and the soul, though 
 potoitially all that it was before, ceases to be actively, 
 because having nothing to put it in relation with exciting 
 causes. 
 
 Perhaps resurrection from the Dead is a reconstruction 
 of this corptis. 
 
 Perhaps the soul is as a dewdrop, having no light or 
 colour in itself but receiving the Light of God which it 
 reflects and refracts. That Light, contained and reflected 
 by it, is at once not its own absolutely and its own 
 relatively, and though not caused by it is influenced in 
 manifestation by the state and size of the dewdrop. 
 
135 
 
 NOTES OA THE RELATION OF 
 LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 [The greater bulk of the Philological Memoranda left by Mr. Dobell 
 are too merely memoranda for the writer's own use, data for his 
 further study and observation, to be available for printing. The 
 few that have been selected are brought together from various note- 
 books.— Ed.] 
 
 I seem to see a homology between some of the deeper 
 morphological truths — animal and vegetable — and the 
 mutations and essential laws of language. 
 
 Suppose Creation to be, as it were, an involuntary 
 Act, bearing, like language, impress of the idiosyncrasy 
 of What secerned it ? 
 
 That is true Speech, heard or seen, which produces 
 V in the percipient the attitude of mind produced by the 
 thing spoken of 
 
 Is not this the secret of spoken language? 
 
 In such language the resemblance of 'sound to sense' 
 
136 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 is not primarily in the sound but in the organic action by 
 which the sound is produced and which produces in him 
 who acts a certain attitude of mind. And he who heais 
 undergoes the same attitude by virtue of his knowledge — 
 (unconscious — and by experience) — of the action by 
 which the sound he hears would be produced if he had 
 uttered it. 
 
 In the formation and transmutation of words we have 
 to consider two systems of causes. 
 
 I. Physical, calculable from physical conditions in the 
 organs of Language — cerebral and oral : from this are 
 deducible general laws of origin and change. 
 
 II. Metaphysical, — the motive forces of the human 
 soul : from these are deducible the specific disturbances 
 of general laws. 
 
 PHYSICS OF SPEECH. 
 
 By external visible bodily gesture men can express 
 themselves. Why? Because certain movements of the 
 body are accompanied by movements of the mind, 
 and the ' hearer '• — i.e. the observer^knowing what these 
 are in himself understands what they express from 
 another. 
 
 But there is an invisible, yet physical, gesticulation, 
 
NOTES ON RELATION OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 1 37 
 
 having an intimate co-action of the soul, and capable of 
 subtleties so fine that the eye, at a little distance, could 
 hardly detect and with certainty discriminate them. This 
 is the gesticulation of the organs of the throat and 
 mouth. It is indicated by sounds produced by it, but 
 the value of those sounds is not as sounds, but as 
 indices of organic motions which answer to mental 
 movements. 
 
 As these organs are part of the body the principles of 
 the physics of speech nuist be, primarily, those common 
 to the whole body in its interaction with the soul. 
 Secondarily those deducible from the nature of the organs 
 themselves. Thirdly any disturbances of these resulting 
 from any of the properties of sound. 
 
 SPEECH VERBAL. 
 
 Man puts the ideas of things into words like them- 
 selves — i.e. like things. But how can words be like things. 
 By imitative sound ? 
 
 No. This could apply but to few things, and even 
 in regard to them would be a mean imitation — not art. 
 
 Things have either size, shape, weight, colour, &:c., 
 rapidity, &c. These attributes are associated in our 
 minds not only with their visual images (where visual) 
 but with certain feelings — e.g. weight with difficulty, 
 
138 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 size with comprehension, shape with pleasure, when easy 
 of perception, (et per contra), colour with more complex 
 emotions. 
 
 It is in so far as the positions and action of the organs 
 of speech produce in us the sensations which suggest the 
 attributes of the things signified by words that words re- 
 semble things. 
 
 This they do both by imitating those attributes, where 
 imitable, and by so moving or posing themselves as to 
 produce in us the associated feelings. 
 
 Sense is represented by sound in various ways. 
 
 I. Imitation, the lowest of all because substituting an 
 untruth (as an end) for the Truth, instead of suggesting 
 the actual Truth by some non-truth as a means, 
 
 II. By producing the same state of mind as the thing 
 represented would produce— and this is done in various 
 ways — by sounds that have essential connection with cer- 
 tain attitudes of mind, or by sounds that, by suggesting 
 certain acts of the organs of utterance, influence the feelings, 
 or by rhythm that, through various laws, affects the whole 
 human system. 
 
 After a language has been formed on the principles of 
 dumb-show it becomes an object of tuition (oral or 
 
NOTES ON RELATION OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 1 39 
 
 graphic) and thus of those physical principles which 
 modify bodily action and interaction (inertia, &c., &c.), 
 and those mental principles which modify the ideas which 
 are expressed by bodily action. 
 
 We must not, therefore, always expect to find the word 
 that answers to an idea in a cultivated language (or one 
 received by conquest et hoc genere) the best dumb-show 
 representative of that idea ; but on investigation we shall 
 find that it represents some word that has been such 
 dumb-show representative. 
 
 PERMUTATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 In the Sacred Language of the far east Ahm-an — , an 
 audible sigh, is the word for the soul. 
 
 Hear the same sigh in c'tre/xoc — the Ahm no wider or 
 longer than a : v the mouth subsiding towards rest — 
 £ the smaller spiration of the remaining breath through 
 the narrow aperture — /x the close of the lips. 
 
 Ahm becomes, therefore, avt[i (o? being added for 
 case- ending). I perceive the law of permutation is in 
 the direction from action towards inaction : but action is 
 change, change is a measure of force. The law, therefore, 
 is in the direction from more force to less — from strength 
 to weakness. 
 
140 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 What the strong do from indolence we may study in 
 what the weak do from incapacity. 
 
 By physiological causes it is probable that the de- 
 scendants of a nation that said aham for I, would con- 
 tinue to gesticulate similarly for similar expressions, 
 because of inheriting a similar brain, and a gesticula- 
 ting machine apt, by special development, to such 
 gesticulation. 
 
 That, to speak popularly, the true object of the speak- 
 ing mind in putting in motion the speaking machine is 
 not the production of audible sounds but the satisfaction 
 of certain dispositions to gesticulate with the organs of 
 speech which follow certain agitations of the human con- 
 sciousness, produced by the same originative action, 
 cerebral, nervine and muscular, as commences all bodily 
 violence. 
 
 May not the causes which limit transmutation of 
 Species be analogous to those which determine the inter- 
 mutations of language ? A given word undergoes modi- 
 fications limited by the mutability of its letters, and that 
 mutability depends on the shape and character of the 
 organs which produce the Sounds they represent. 
 
 Memorandum. — To apply that principle, regarding 
 
NOTES ON RELATION OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 141 
 
 compounds, &c., which proves Sanscrit to be the oldest of 
 known Languages, to systems of ideas. In doing so re- 
 member Chavier's description of the effect upon speech 
 of the change from the Sanscrit to the Chaldaic mode of 
 writing — and remember that the Etruscan plan of ^vriting 
 was from left to right. 
 
 FIRST PERSONAL PRONOUN. 
 
 ' I ' is the unknown antecedent of consciousness, and 
 being entirely unknown is, like a mathematical point, 
 destitute of all parts and of all qualities except such as 
 we infer of it from its effects. The reactionary result of 
 these is, therefore, a quasi-notion of ' I ' as a simple 
 unit. 
 
 Its name in most languages expresses the beginner, 
 usually the beginner of motion—' iyw ' ' ego ' — /. e. that 
 which says g-hard — the strongest expulsory movement of 
 the speech-machinery — ' ich ' — (the next strongest) — ' je ' 
 formerly, doubtless, j, being pronounced as Spanish j. 
 The Italian lo, is not an original creation, being molli- 
 fied ego — ' I ' is the same. 
 
 Taking as postulate that man is a sentient being I do 
 not define ' to feel.' 
 
 Of ' I ' as merely existence, I at rest, we can know 
 
142 SPECULATIVE. 
 
 nothing. Our knowledge commences at ' I feel ' and 
 ' I do.' 
 
 MYTHS. 
 
 That part of a Myth which contains a human faculty 
 is its root-stem. 
 
 After tracing the root- stems of all Myths to the uni- 
 versal human faculties there will, in any non-indigenous, 
 remain terminations, suffixes and affixes, not accountable 
 by the constitution of the people or the nature of the 
 indigenous external world. 
 
 {The province of Poetry.) All Language is an ex- 
 pression of relation : every generic noun, every adjective, 
 which recognizes a quality already known. But as lan- 
 guage is for ordinary minds it expresses obvious relations. 
 You require a language for extraordinary perceptions and 
 that language is Poetry. 
 
 The truest analogue to those unteleogic facts in the 
 Natural World which modern science is continually dis- 
 covering is to be found in the facts of human language as 
 brought into light by such men as Grimm, Bopp, &c. 
 
 Is then the universe a Divine Language amenable to 
 
NOTES ON RELATION OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. 1 43 
 
 conditions similar in nature though differing in time and 
 space ? 
 
 If so, do the Functions of God answer to the races of 
 Men, the inferior borrowing, as it were, a grammar from 
 the higher and using it under the modifications of other 
 spheres of action ? 
 
RELIGIOUS 
 
RELIGIOUS} 
 
 Whatsoever things are true for Man tlie Immortal I call Reli- 
 gion, and, in this sense. Religion is the only worthy object of human 
 Study. 
 
 THEORETIC. 
 
 Supposing there were no such thing as words what idea 
 should we have of an Invisible God ? 
 
 We should have ideas of His effects and of sucli of 
 the Attributes producing such effects as we could feel in 
 ourselves by our possession of the same. 
 
 But of the Total Agent what ? 
 
 I think only a dim Image, the reflection of our con- 
 sciousness of our oti'u existence: or the result of the effort 
 of the mind to conceive, which effort may produce the 
 
 ' It has been judged fitting to publish, in such a volume as the 
 present, only a small proportion of the comments on texts, &c., 
 contained in Mr. Dobell's notebooks. It may be interesting to 
 some readers to know that Mr. Dobell's study of the Bible, espe- 
 cially in early life, had been so close and constant as to have made 
 his memory master of the whole of the New Testament. — Ed. 
 i, 2 
 
148 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 vague figure of its own action ; a shape on the cor- 
 rugating brain; an impression on the soul, Hke that of 
 the wind on water. Therefore in reahty none. 
 
 A spiritual world, then, could only be directly appre- 
 hended in so far as it agi-eed with our own faculties and 
 experience. 
 
 Dismissing, therefore, as mere shadows and reflections 
 of ourselves, all intellectual notions of the spiritual world, 
 Avhat, apart from words, remains as testimony to it ? 
 
 This : that from the top and culmen of all perception 
 the mind as it were stretches up arms into vacancy, 
 desires towards — what ? 
 
 The testimony therefore to the unknown is oifaiitig. 
 
 Does not each Divine Dispensation contain in addi- 
 tion to its own economy a IMember of the economy that 
 is to succeed it ? 
 
 I am not speaking of prefigurements, but of some fact 
 only to be explained by the context of the succeeding 
 system and, therefore, rightly viewed, a guarantee of that 
 successor. A member by which the one is to be 
 morticed to the other. The}', therefore, who attempt (as 
 the Trinitarians) to tlieorize these facts, and bend what 
 
THEORETIC. I4«> 
 
 was intended as a projcciion into the framework of the 
 economy cannot succeed; and, in the attempt, do 
 violence to the Divine Scheme of Progression. Tlic 
 Unitarians, on the other hand, are apt to ignore the 
 historical connection. 
 
 THE FIRST ADVENT. 
 
 For any fact of History to be seen and understood 
 truly, it must be contemplated from at least two points of 
 view. 
 
 One. the human, Avhich has its locus standi before the 
 catastrophe, in \\\'ifons and origo of the action ; and the 
 other, that of the Philosophy of History, which has its 
 locus long afterwards. 
 
 In the case of remote facts the first of these points of 
 view is often altogether lost, and our idea of the fact 
 becomes necessarily hemispheric. 
 
 This has doubtless happened with the great fact of 
 the first Advent. We see it solely from the optimist and 
 philosophical stand-point and have almost lost what was 
 to its contemporaries its chief practical character — an 
 appeal to the suft'rages of the Jewish people. An appeal 
 which, like all such appeals, must be made, and — what- 
 ever His prescience — was made, on the hypothesis of 
 success. 
 
150 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 The refusal of those suffrages (in any National com- 
 pleteness) is (in its effect upon the Action) one of the. 
 most important facts of the Gospel- History. 
 
 Christ did not, humanly speaking, comclo be rejected, 
 crucified, raised. ' If thou couldst have known in this 
 thy day t/ie things pertaining to thy peace. ^ 
 
 If the princes of this world had known the true 
 mystery of the Gospel 'they ivoiild not have crucified the 
 Lord of Glory.' 
 
 We should expect therefore to find this system con- 
 structed on the hypothesis of a present Lord. A Gospel 
 of Life and "Work, not of Death and disappointment. 
 
 In the case of a blight we do not take the blighted 
 product to be the law of the fruit. 
 
 FALSITY OF ARGUMENT FRO]M SUCCESS. 
 
 The acknowledgment that Christianity is Divine 
 because it has proved Itself the mode by Avhich God 
 governs is really valueless, because it is an argument from 
 Success (which could be used in other C3.stsad absiirdiini) 
 and because, like all arginnents from success, it furnishes 
 no claim on Human acceptance before the era of success. 
 
 We require a proof that would be equally a proof ia 
 the first }-ear of Evangelism. 
 
THEORETIC. i^i 
 
 ABSOLUTENESS OF RELIEF, IN THE APOSTLES, TESTIFIED 
 TO BY MANNER OF THEIR ARGUMENT. 
 
 One of the intrinsic testimonies to the truth of what 
 the Apostles behaved is the non-demonstrative and im- 
 probative manner in which they argued for it. 
 
 By being nearly always rhetoricians, and using evi- 
 dence not for what it is worth but for what it will fetch, 
 they demonstrate beyond all other means of proof the 
 confidence of their own belief 
 
 They speak as men so absolutely certain, in virtue of 
 other evidence, that the kind of proof adducible by 
 wTiting is merely valuable in so far as it uses predisposi- 
 tions of the hearers and persuades them, being blind, to 
 yield to the men who see. 
 
 DEVELOPABLE NATURE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 If it had been intended at the introduction of Chris- 
 tianity to institute a permanent undevelopable outward 
 system foi it, would not the first 'care of the Apostles 
 have been to engrave the formula on tables of stone ? 
 
 That the formula, if made, has //of come down to us is 
 no argument against the above intention, but the evi- 
 dence w-e have that //(' such formula was made or thought 
 of seems a strong argument. It is not merely that the 
 
152 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Apostles seem to have taken insufficient means to eave 
 such a formula but the case is more than negative : — the 
 means taken to send down their doctrine — and manifestly- 
 taken under the impression that they were sufficient — are 
 inconsistent with the possibility of such formula. 
 
 THE CATHOLIC THEORY OF A SUCCESSIONAL CHURCH. 
 
 If Christ intended ' the Church ' to be His embodied 
 word He must have intended its principles and practice 
 to change or not. If not to change then the Catholic 
 Church is invalid. If to change then to change according 
 to mere natural process or by special Divine guidance. 
 If the first [by mere natural process?] then all the 
 various heresies and perversions authentic. If the 
 second [by special Divine guidance?] reformation is 
 impossible. 
 
 protesta:;t theory of a scriptural creed. 
 
 Does God design such a creed ? 
 
 God is always consistent with Himself. 
 
 Design is evidenced by adaptation of means to ends 
 and, in the natural world therefore, is shown by the selec- 
 tion of ' means ' which, according to His own Natural 
 ordinances, will be followed by those ends. 
 
 It may be said, God designs the special sanction of 
 
THEORETIC. 1 53 
 
 this miracle of preservation. But it may be answered 
 that this would apply to Catullus, the Pandects, Plautus, 
 the preserved books of Livy, &c., &c. 
 
 It may be said God designs each soul to find its own 
 creed out of the Record. If so we are safe in deposing 
 to what we find and ?io viore. 
 
 Does not a collation of every creed bring one to ihat 
 conclusion which, according to my theory, is the true 
 result of a true study of the written Gospel, and show- 
 therefore the congruity of the written and the embodied 
 Word? 
 
 V^LUi: OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT IN SCRIPTURE 
 READING. 
 
 Does not the value of Scripture reading to the 
 ordinary mind depend on the absence of any search for 
 Doctrinal discovery ? 
 
 On mental repose as to the credenda ? 
 . This repose is only possible on such a neutral creed 
 as above suggested. 
 
 Textual support of theory (negative creed et cetera) ^ 
 to be found — 
 
 * One of the fundamental distinctions of this ' negative or neutral 
 Creed ' would have been the absence of any attempt to dogmatize, 
 or even to theorize, as to the ' exact nature ' of Christ. — Ed. 
 
154 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Luke X. 22. 'No man knoweth who the Son is, but 
 the Father.' 
 
 John X. 29 et seq. : 'My Father, which gave them 
 me, is greater than all : and no man is able to pluck 
 them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are 
 one.' 
 
 John xi. 15. '/ was not there' 
 
 John xii. 45. ' And he that seeth me, seeth him that 
 sent me.' 
 
 John xiv. from 7 to i r. 'If ye had known me, ye 
 should have known my Father also : and from hence- 
 forth ye know him, and have seen him.' 
 
 CATHOLICISIM AND PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 CathoHcism is (potentially) great, beautiful, wise 
 powerful, one of the most consistent and congruous 
 constructions man has made ; but it is not educational 
 and will, therefore, die ; nay, must be killed as })erni- 
 cious in proportion to its excellence. 
 
 Protestantism is narrow, ugly, impudent, unreasonable, 
 inconsistent, incompatible : a babel of logomachy and 
 literalism : a wrangling club of half-thinking pedants, 
 half- taught geniuses, and untaught egotists of ever}' type : 
 the nursery of conceit and fanaticism : the holiday 
 ground of all the ' fools that rush in.' 
 
IHEORF.TIC. 15 J 
 
 But it is educational and tlierefore it will live ; nay, 
 must be fed and housed, cared for and fought for, as the 
 sine qua non of the spiritual life of Man. 
 
 LOGOS. 
 
 The Chaldee paraphrasts use Memra in many of those 
 places -where Moses says God : e.g. those wherein God 
 is said to have created, appeared, or spoken. In all 
 such cases God was expressed; and Memra (the word) 
 was well put for that phenomenon which was His expres- 
 sion. 
 
 In the total universe He is also expressed, doubtless; 
 but only organically in any one oi'xl'i parts : but in these 
 miraculous appearances He, as distinct from any one or 
 more of His Attributes, is represented, as in a focus or 
 miniature. 
 
 The pagans saw the same truth when they spoke of 
 Cosmos and Microcosmos. 
 
 It is a noble testimony to the profoundness with 
 which tlie Paraphrasts believed in an . Invisible God 
 that they found themselves compelled to use another 
 name when He was spoken of as perceptible to the 
 senses. 
 
 Whoever endeavours to follow out the subtle relation- 
 ship of a Divine Phenomenon and its imperceptible 
 
156 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Siibstans will understand why the sayings of Christ of 
 Himself can never be apprehended, and could not, 
 nevertheless, have been other than they are. 
 
 There may be a unity of the Memra, Logos, or 
 Expression, but a variety and individuality in the several 
 acts of it. As my voice to-day and yesterday is the 
 same, but the utterances are distinct. 'O Xoyoc deov 
 created the Worlds, u Xoyog Qeou was crucified on Cal- 
 vary, but it by no means follows that Christ is that 
 utterance of the Xuyoi: at which the worlds came into 
 being. 
 
 ' Ambassadors are the Word of the Prince who sends 
 them. ' — Afontcsquieu. 
 
 May not John i be thus explained. 
 
 '() Xoyoc is the Divine function of Language. That 
 Attribute or Quality whereby the Divine Nature is 
 utterable. In the universe It expressed Itself: but in 
 those later days It had used the perfect language of 
 an ' Express Image,' — the visible and audible Son of 
 God. 
 
 As Plato had used 'O Xoyoc there may be an allusion 
 to his doctrine and an indication of the portion of Truth 
 contained in it. 
 
THEORETIC. 
 
 157 
 
 COMMENTS ON CORINTHIANS I. 
 
 In I Corinthians i. — The distinction between the two 
 methods by which Truth can be received is made strong. 
 Revelation and Deduction. 
 
 Verse 2.- — 'With all that in every place call upon the 
 name of Jesus Christ.' Note the comprehensiveness of 
 the tolerated variety. 
 
 Verse ic— ' I beseech you — that ye all speak the same 
 thing.' Note, at the same time, the unity of the ideal 
 standard. 
 
 Verses 20 (' Hath not God made foolish the wisdom 
 of this world ? ') 21, 26, 27, and 28, ' and base things of 
 the world, and things which are despised, hath God 
 chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought 
 things that are : ' 
 
 It requires to bear in mind the ' World ' of which this 
 is spoken. Of a different world (in the sense of non- 
 church) it might not be true. 
 
 Verse 23. 'But we preach Christ crucified, unto the 
 
 Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.' 
 
 The Philosophies of Heathendom had not perceived that 
 
 not a Theorem but a Mmi was the moral desideratum of 
 
 Mankind : i.e. (verse 24) — ' Christ the power of God and 
 
1 58 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 the wisdom of God.' The (:///^c^///c'^ Wisdom of God : in 
 whom (verse 30. ' But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, wlio 
 of God is made unto us wisdom ') — Man and God at one. 
 
 Chap. ii. 8. ' For had they known it they would 
 not hai'c crucified the Lord of Glory. ^ What becomes 
 then of the suffering and expiation of Christ as the sine. 
 4jnd lion of the Providential Scheme ? 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES CONTAINED 
 IN SPECIAL APPLICATIONS. 
 
 Compare Luke xii. 22 to 40 (' Therefore I say unto 
 you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat : 
 neither for the body, what ye shall put on),' with the 
 texts concerning diligence in business and providing 
 for your own household, and St. Paul's exhortation as to 
 'working with our hands.' 
 
 Compare Luke xiv. 12 (' When thou makest a 
 dinner or a supper call not thy friends, nor thy brethren),' 
 with the many exhortations to hospitality and community 
 quoad friends and brethren elsewhere. 
 
 Compare Luke xiv. 20 (in which ' I have married a wife 
 and therefore I cannot come,' is given as one of the con- 
 demned excuses) with Christ's dictum concerning matri- 
 mony and Paul's description of conjugal love. 
 
THEORETIC. 1 59 
 
 In stating one principle out of many the statement 
 should be absolute and ideal. The limitations will come 
 by the modifying action of other co-equal principles. ' If 
 any man will take thy coat let him take thy cloak also,' 
 so far a%f?-ccdoin in giving and absence of malice are con- 
 cerned. But not interdicting that controlling power of 
 other principles which would never allow the full action 
 of this. 
 
 As scientific illustration of application of principles 
 take undulatory rectitude, in light, sound, &c. As familiar 
 illustration of the mode in which general principles are 
 specifically applicable, take Dress. Each rank and occu- 
 pation should dress in different forms, but the Principles 
 of cleanliness, grace, harmony, congmity, are common to 
 all those special applications, and are more obeyed in 
 the variety of application than in a uniformity. 
 
 ARE GENERAL PRINCIPLES INTENDED FOR UNIVERSAL 
 APPLICATION ? 
 
 * God willeth not the death of a sinner but rather 
 that he should turn to Him and live?' Therefore the 
 Principles must be such as if uni\ersally applied would 
 be for the universal benefit of society. 
 
 But perhaps, in the event of such application, a 
 
l6o RELIGIOUS. 
 
 miraculous interposition would adapt the material 
 world to the new wants of mankind ? 
 
 Would God frame a material Cosmos on such elabo- 
 rate and well-estabHshed 'Laws,' and frame a moral 
 Cosmos that should need the abrogation of those Laws ? 
 
 THEOCRACY. 
 
 As it is when the common flesh and blood has sub- 
 tilized into brain that the Spirit can alone dwell therein, 
 may it not be that the fine perfection of human institu- 
 tions will be the event and sitie qua Jioii at which Theo- 
 cracy shall commence ? 
 
 . THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 To understand tlie double sense in Avhich the title is 
 used in Scripture must Ave not remember that every 
 human congeries before it can become objective must first 
 exist subjectively ? Conversion which is internal must 
 precede, singularly and without ' observation,' the external 
 ai^pearance and action of a body of converts, and this 
 applies especially to such an Impcrium in Iniperio as the 
 Kingdom of God. Keeping this in mind read and com- 
 pare the following — 
 
 Luke xix. ii — 'And as they heard these things, he 
 added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to 
 
THEORETIC. l6l 
 
 Jerusalem, and because they thought that the Kingdom of 
 God should vn mediately appear.' 
 
 I Aike xxii. 1 6. ' For I say unto you I will not any 
 more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the Kingdom of 
 God,' et seq. : 
 
 Luke ix. 2. 'And he sent them to preach the 
 Kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.' (And observe 
 how minute the instructions, as to material things, which 
 follow. We may conclude thence that if anything 
 spiritually important had been included in them it would 
 have been recorded, and may infer, tlierefore, that the 
 Gospel they were to preach was not a Gospel of doctrine, 
 but, like the Evangel of the seventy — ' the Kingdom of 
 God is at hand.') 
 
 Luke X. II — 'Even the very dust of your city, which 
 cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you : notwithstand- 
 ing be ye sure of this, that the Kingdom of God is come 
 nigh unto you.' 
 
 xiii. 21. 'It (the Kingdom of God) is like leaven, 
 which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, 
 till the whole was leavened.' 
 
 ' For I tell you of a truth there be some standmg here 
 which shall not taste of Death //// they see the Kingdom 
 of God.' Luke ix. 27. 
 
 It is evident therefore that the ' Kingdom ' which 
 
 M 
 
1 62 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 the Apostles proclaimed was a future Kingdom, and 
 that when we are told the ' Kingdom of God is within 
 us,' the whole Kingdom is not meant,, or the word is used 
 in another sense. 
 
 See also Luke xi. 20 : ' if I with the finger of God 
 cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God hath covie 
 upon you.' 
 
 ' HARD SAYINGS ' OF CHRIST. 
 
 As an example of the ' hard sayings ' spoken by- 
 Christ, with intention to perplex and thus winnow his 
 hearers, take John vi. 35, to 58 — (beginning ' I am the 
 bread of life, he that cometh to me shall never hunger ; 
 and he that believeth on me shall never thirst,' ending 
 ' he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever ') — and 
 find the principle of solution in v. 63 — ' It is the spirit 
 that quickeneth : the flesh profiteth nothing : the words 
 that I speak unto you they are spirit, and they are life.' 
 
 NOT^. INSPIRATION, &C. . 
 
 The state of mind in Men indubitably ^inspired' 
 should be carefully studied in St. Peter's own account of 
 the mental process by which he arrived at his duty 
 towards the friends of Cornelius. It is singularly 
 different from what would be popularly expected. 
 
THKOREIIC. 165 
 
 To speak of being saved through the blood of Christ 
 is to use tliat common figure by which the part is put for 
 tlie whole, ^^'e are saved through that Life which \vould 
 not have been perfect but for the Death ; the Death there- 
 fore is that essential part which in using such a figure 
 must be employed. 
 
 Observe the remarkable truth evidently to be inferred 
 from Luke xix. 42. ' If thou hadst known, even thou, at 
 least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy 
 peace ' and i Corinthians ii. 8, ' which none of the 
 princes of this world knew : for had they known it, they 
 would not have crucified the Lord of glory ' — that if 
 Israel had received Him, and He had not been crucified. 
 His mission would have been no less fulfilled. 
 
 The statement that to him who hath shall be given is 
 explicable by Luke's version of the Parable. All the 
 servants started with one talent — the ultimate difference 
 Avas due to individual merit — ' They say unto him Lord 
 ho. /lath ten talents.' The answer is ' to him ' i.e. of those 
 servants — ' that hath ' i.e. so hath, by meritorious exer- 
 tion — ' shall be given.' 
 
 Luke xxii. 35. 'When I sent you without purse, and 
 scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything?' Is not this the 
 
164 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 point of departure for the new Life of the Apostles, when 
 no longer associated with their Lord? Does He not 
 here indicate that, whereas their previous state with Him 
 had been superhuman and exceptional, henceforth they 
 were remitted to the common life of man? Hitherto 
 they had, doubtless, eaten of the miraculous Loaves and 
 Fishes ; but henceforth they were to consider the power 
 of miracle as sacred to impersonal and non-selfish uses. 
 
 Was not this new line of demarcation necessary in. 
 leaving them to themselves ? And did they ever after- 
 wards transgress it? 
 
 This view of the significance of these verses seems 
 confirmed by the injunction respecting the swords being 
 sufficiently fulfilled (' it is enough ') by the ' two swords ' — ■ 
 i.e. by two of the company being armed. 
 
 The injunction had no relation to aggressive or ex- 
 ceptional action, but merely to that state of defence which 
 was necessary to the safe conduct of life — e.g. to secure 
 travelling in a countn,- of banditti, (S:c., &c. 
 
 The preamble to Christ's command quoad the Swords 
 'when I sent,' &c. is invaluable as shoeing the limit to a 
 previous command that had, /;/ se, all the appearance of 
 universality. 
 
 Christ's mode of reasoning with the Jews is a demon- 
 
THF.ORKJIC. 165 
 
 stration founded on their own axioms and postulates ; 
 using them logically 7iu'f/ioi/l iJicrcby auihoriziiig them as 
 iniths. And we shall see that this mode was unavoidable, 
 for had He to establish His own Premisses He would 
 never (in the allotted time and space) have reached any 
 conclusions at all. And this mode would appear the 
 more eligible to one who could perceive the absolute 
 Truth of things and know, therefore, the necessary fallacy 
 of the truest human statement — e.g. answers about John 
 the Baptist : healing on Sabbaths : David and the Shew 
 Bread : Beelzebub. 
 
 The fiict that he whom the Ajiostles took for Christ 
 (after the Crucifixion) did and obtained nothing whicli 
 would recomi)ense an impostor for the pains and hazard 
 of simulating Him is weighty evidence that their belief was 
 just. Viewed thus the poverty of the post-mortem portion 
 of the History — so far as acts and teachings are con- 
 cerned — is among the most powerful proofs of its truth. 
 
 Christianity does not ignore or disclaim the ' natural ' 
 virtues : on the contrary they are the egg and bud out of 
 which the others are to develoj) and effloresce. 'Jhe 
 new birth is a Transfiguration. 
 
 As the mens sana to the corpus saniini, so should the 
 
1 66 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Christian grace be to the ' natural ' virtue it warms and 
 lights. 
 
 They therefore who take on a grace specifically Chris- 
 tian without that natural quality which is its natural ante- 
 cedent, which is, in fact, itself in a lower stage, are guilty 
 
 of vrroupimc. 
 
 He who is just, generous, brave, may rise to Christian 
 honour, to the love and charity of Christianity, and to its 
 most exalted heroisms. But the appearance of these 
 climacteric graces without the co-existence of the others. 
 is morbid and unreal. 
 
 Christ illustrates the necessity of the moral arr/^us 
 samim as an antecedent when He chose the hearty 
 fishermen of Galilee, and left the Pharisees of Jerusalem. 
 
 Marcellus built a temple to Virtus approached through, 
 a Temple to Honour. 
 
 The spontaneities (as well as duties) of the Christian 
 should act in a continual consciousness of the cJiaradcr 
 of God. This action under patronage — to adapt the 
 vulgar phrase — saves the spontaneities from egotism. 
 
 {Baptism) Observe in Acts vi. that the possession 
 of the Holy Spirit /?vYYv/r^ tlie imposition of the Apostle's 
 Jiands. Observe, also, that the possession of it in the case 
 
THEORETIC. 1 67 
 
 of the friends of Cornelius, and in the preceding cases, 
 was so externahy evident as to be unmistakable. Also 
 that the Descent of the Spirit preceded baptism. Baptism 
 therefore can have no essential necessity. 
 
 Christianity had to supersede two great Pagan sys- 
 tems — the morality of the Philosophers — teleologic and 
 material — and the sensuous worship of the popular Reli- 
 gion. It was opposed to both, but more essentially to 
 the former. It had nearer relation to the immorality of 
 natural aberration than to the artificial distortions and 
 essential selfishness of Phariseeism. 
 
 It is important to perceive that some facts to-day 
 stand for difterent things from those signified in Apostolic 
 times — e.g. v. Luke xiv. — we give a feast now not as a 
 virtuous action in the sense of charity but as an expression 
 of certain things. Such a feast comes under entirely new 
 principles. 
 
 So of Dress which having become a language is 
 amenable to those princij^les which govern all virtuous 
 expression. 
 
 The Jews had exalted the machinery of spiritual 
 education from a means to an end : they therefore counted 
 
1 68 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 the reward of every action. We look for ' reward ' from 
 the end, not the means, from what we are not what 
 we do. 
 
 This difference explains many difficulties in Christ's 
 teaching, — which had to deal with the Jewish mistake. 
 
 NOTES ON ROMANS, 
 
 Chaps, i. and ii. The Apostle sets forth that, though 
 misbelief is generally followed by misconduct, goodness, 
 the i^roper consequence of orthodoxy, may exist without 
 its usual antecedent ; see also Chap. iii. 29, 'Is He the 
 God of the Jews only ? is He not also of the Gentiles ? ' 
 Wherefore since the end and not the means is the sine 
 qua 11071 there is no necessary inequality between Jew and 
 Gentile. And since, whether with the means or without 
 the means, the end has generally been missed, it is evident 
 that all existing means have been insufficient and that 
 both provinces of Mankind are in need of something 
 new. 
 
 That ' something new ' is the substitution of Principle 
 for Law, and the acceptance of a faithful Ego, devoted to 
 God, instead of that harmonious federation of human 
 faculties, bodily and mental, which, as an obedient total, 
 was the only human Being previously acceptable — i.e. 
 justification by Faith instead of by Works. 
 
THEORETIC. 1 69 
 
 In Chap. iv. The Apostle proceeds to show that this 
 acceptance was anterior to the Law, and of a wider and 
 higher originality, since Abraham himself was by it first 
 united to God. That the Law therefore was a decadence 
 from a higher, nobler and older mode of intimacy between 
 God and ]\ran : and therefore that Faith is not, as the 
 Jews would be likely to claim, an exclusive result and 
 privilege of Judaism. 
 
 In Chap. V. The Apostle points out the jo)ful and 
 thankful attitude of a soul united to God by Faith. 
 
 In Chap. vi. He provides against the antinomian 
 dangers of the Doctrine of Faith — showing ' after the 
 manner of men ' (verse 19) by the allegory of Death and 
 Servitude the obligations of the Justified. 
 
 In Chap. vii. verse 15 to the end — the Apostle seems 
 to set forth the great truth of the federal nature of the 
 Human Mind. The Ego is recognised as distinct (see 
 especially verse 1 5, ' For that which Idol allow not ; 
 for Avhat I would, that I do not ; but what I hate that I 
 do ; ' and 22 ' For I delight in the law of God after the 
 inward man ; ') from many of its faculties, as a head is 
 distinct from its members. 
 
 The recognition of this impcrium in inipcn'o, this 
 sanctuary within unclean outer courts, this just man in 
 Sodonij this irmer saint in the outward sinner must have 
 
lyo RELIGIOUS. 
 
 changed the whole theory of Divine Government. If 
 there be Human Beings in whom it does not exist this 
 difference would afford a criterion by which Humanity 
 could be divided in two classes : those in whom the 
 Divine element having a ttou (ttCj — could eventually leaven 
 the evil, and those who, humanly speaking, are hopeless. 
 In Chap. -viii. The same idea continued. 
 In these chapters the theory by which the sinner 
 can grow into the saint is for the first time opened to 
 mankind. 
 
 All other moralities, viewing him as a unity, hand him 
 over to the vengeance of the violated Law. Here, by 
 recognizing a * spirit which is life because of righteousness ' 
 even when the rebellious body is ' dead because of sin,' 
 we have the first condition of growth — i.e. a nucleus that 
 may, with time, assimilate the incongruous elements. 
 
 For the first time Hope is held out to the unsuccessful 
 aspirant for Goodness, and a life outwardly sinful is 
 brought within the pale of Virtue. 
 
 From verse 28 ' and we know that all things v.'ork 
 together for good to them that love God ' — to the end, a 
 paean of that gratitude natural to a soul so delivered. 
 
 In Chap. ix. A further demonstration of what was 
 shown in Chap. iv. — that even in the chosen seed the 
 secret of Divine choice was ;//c'Az-physical : that God has 
 
THEORETIC. J "J I 
 
 always vindicated a Prerogative above the Law of Human 
 Works. And a justification of God therein. Also an 
 implied admission that election — e.g. verse 23 — ('and that 
 He might rriake known the riches of His glory on the 
 vessels of mercy, which He had before prepared unto 
 glory,') \x\\o\\Q.% prcparatio7i : i.e. is not arbitrar}-. 
 
 A great deal of the quaint and struggling expression 
 of these two chapters resolves itself into the endeavour to 
 enunciate for the first time an unrecognised distinction — 
 i.e. that between a Life according to Principles {e.g. Chap. 
 \ iii. verses 6 ' For to be carnally minded is death ; but 
 to be spiritually minded is life and peace,' and 1 1 ' But if 
 the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell 
 in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also 
 quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth 
 in you,') and a Life according to Law, 
 
 Verses 29, beginning ' For whom He did foreknow,' 
 30? 33? of Chap. viii. and 9-19 of Chap. ix. are easily 
 explicable when once we divest criminality of those 
 attributes which are the mere reflexes of our exclusively 
 Human instincts, look on it with those faculties only 
 which we have in common with God, and recognize the 
 purely emendatory nature of Punishment.' 
 
 When ' Punishment ' is seen as merely a creative pro- 
 cess it falls into the categor}-' of all the other second-causes 
 
1^2 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 of development : and ' election ' and ' joredestination ' 
 explain themselves. 
 
 In Chaps, x. and xi. the Apostle works to show that 
 the suppression of Israel is temporary, and indeed — xi. 
 J 6-2 5 — more apparent than real, inasmuch as though a 
 generation is cast away the unchangeable root remains in 
 the earth and supports the Modern Church. 
 
 Nota bene Chap. x. 9, the Golden Fonnula of Faith. 
 ' If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, 
 and shalt beheve in thine heart that God hath raised 
 Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.' 
 
 The argument in Chap. vii. 17, (' Now then it is no 
 more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me,') is that 
 of Shakespeare in Hamlet Act V. Scene II. ' was't 
 Hamlet wronged Laertes ? ' 
 
 Running through the Avhole Letter is, as it were, an 
 underplot of argument to show that though the creed of 
 Israel has lapsed Israel Itself is undegraded. 
 
 Chap. xii. Having previously set forth the ' IMercies 
 of God ' the Apostle claims the ethical results of gratitude. 
 And what Religion or Philosophy can shoAv such a chapter 
 of Morals on considerations so pure ? 
 
 Chap. xiii. verses i, 2, 3, 4, 6, beginning 'Let every 
 soul be subject unto the higher powers,' i)robably are 
 specific and refer to the Roman ruler of the day. If not, 
 
THEORETIC. 1 73 
 
 nota bene i\\Q '■ poivers that be' are 'ordained' — not the 
 simulacra thereof. And, in any wise, bring me tlie ' power ' 
 that answers the definition in verse 3, 4, and 6, and I will 
 admit all the rest concerning him. 
 
 [The following passage on the snme subject occurs among the 
 historical notes for the Drama. —Ed.] 
 
 {False Claims.) ' The powers that be.' 
 The quotation of Boniface VIIL, in the Bull Unarn 
 Sanctam, of Romans xiii. ' The powers that be are 
 ordained of God,' in the sense of ordinated., is proved to 
 be a mis-construction by the verse, and succeeding 
 verses, in which -atrmu is used ni various forms and eom- 
 binations all indicating its primitive sense to be to place 
 or set (without rclalioii). 
 
 ATemoranduiii on f/iaf z'crse. It had relation to a 
 pagan Emperor with whom Christians could have no 
 political relation pro or con. These Emperors were not 
 hereditary. It might have been Avritten in Nero's five 
 first (good) years. Whatever its meaning the Prince 
 who fulfils Sf. PauTs description {' not a terror to good 
 works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of 
 the power ? do that which is good, and thou shalt have 
 praise of the same. For he is the minister of God to thee for 
 good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid ; for 
 
174 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 he beareth not the sword in vain : for he is the minister 
 of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him tliat 
 doeth evil.' 'For they are God's ministers, attending 
 continually upon this very thing,') will be worthy of 
 allegiance : and to no other can it apply. 
 
 Chap. xiii. 8 to lo, beginning 'owe no man anything, 
 but to love one another,' ending ' therefore love is the 
 fulfilling of the law.' This simple exhortation of a uni- 
 versal principle is a worthy sequitur to the intellectual 
 exposition of government by Principles wherewith the 
 first part of the Epistle is occupied. 
 
 Chap. xiv. This invaluable chapter sets forth that 
 ■sliding scale oi practice which is the inevitable result of a 
 Life from Principle. 
 
 Chap. XV. Beginning 'AVe then that are strong 
 ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to 
 please ourselves.' Inestimably expounds that sympathy 
 by which alone the embryologic Law is consistent witli 
 social action. 
 
THKORETIC. I75 
 
 * SACRIFICE.' 
 
 Is there a case in the Old Testament wherein the 
 thing sacrificed did not belong to the person who was to 
 benefit by the offering ? 
 
 The emendatory theory of Punishment is inconsistent 
 with a Vicar. 
 
 The idea of substitution is founded (in Greeks and 
 others) on the behef that the effect of sacrifice is upon 
 God instead of upon Man. 
 
 If the offering were a debt to God, valuable to Him 
 ^cr se, of course it could be paid by substitution. 
 
 In rising up the scale of human ^^erfection we come 
 to the perfect character, but, magnify the qualities of this 
 as we will, the human intellect can still conceive of them 
 only as within limits, e.g., as Immense Goodness, Immense 
 Power. 
 
 To reach not the Idea but the nearest that we have 
 to an Idea of God, we have, as it were, to remove the 
 bounds of these Qualities, and try in vain to think of 
 unbounded Power — unbounded Goodness. We can, as 
 it were, destroy the bound, but we cannot follow the 
 disbounded Attribute in its expansion. 
 
176 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 The first is Christ, the Second God. 
 
 Christ, therefore, is God made flesh — i.e. God within 
 the bounds of Iniman idea — the bounds which, hke a 
 mould, the human mind imposes on Infinite Substance. 
 
 MEMORANDA CONCERNING THE TRINITY. 
 
 First. That if the pre-existence of Christ could be 
 proved, it wouhl have nothing to do witli His Godhead. 
 
 Second. All sects agree that the Jews did not believe 
 in a Trinity. 
 
 Therefore if Christ intended to introduce so great, so 
 vital, so wonderful a change of belief, He would have 
 made it the most striking and often repeated doctrine of 
 His teaching. He would have given us the plainest and 
 most frequent declarations, not left it to be inferred from 
 a few scattered and ambiguous passages. 
 
 Thirdly. He has Himself been at pains to explain 
 most lucidly the way in which He was one with His 
 Father. See John xvii. 11, 22, 23, 'that they maybe 
 one even as (in the manner in which) We are one.' 
 
 A spiritual oneness. A oneness in object and love. 
 
 Fourth. Our English Version was made by men who 
 already hciia'cd in the Trinity. All the passages which 
 (as in all Classic Languages) were susceptible of two inter- 
 pretations were of course, therefore, translated according 
 
THEORETIC. 
 
 177 
 
 to that reading which best agreed with their preconceived 
 Ideas. 
 
 Fifth. The translation (therefore) of those passages 
 which are quoted in favour of the Unity cannot be, and 
 never has been, disputed, because they were translated 
 by the Trinitariafis themselves. 
 
 Sixth. But there are more than fifty (fifty-eight I 
 think) other passages which if translated and read pro- 
 perly would be in favour of the Unity. 
 
 And these fifty include every passage quoted by the 
 Trinitarians in favour of the Trinity. 
 
 FRAGMENTARY iNIEMGRANDA CONCERNIXG BAPTISM. 
 
 Baptism has nothing to do with water. 
 
 If literal Baptism had been an ordinance we should 
 have had all detail. 
 
 If it mattered whether water or spirit, then it also 
 mattered how administered. 
 
 ' I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance,' 
 ' He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with 
 fire.' Matthew iii. 11. 
 
 ' The same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost' 
 John i. II. 
 
 We must, therefoje, look for a spiritual sense. 
 
 ' The like figure whereunto baptism doth also now.save 
 
1 78 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 US, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the 
 answer of a good conscience toward God.' i Peter iii. 21. 
 
 ' John baptized with the baptism of repentance.' Acts 
 xix. 4. 
 
 ' According to his mercy he saved us by the washing 
 of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.' Titus 
 iii. 5. 
 
 ' Ye have put off the old man with his deeds.' Colos- 
 sians iii. 9. 
 
 [Baptism, therefore, repentance, regeneration, putting 
 off of old man, shown to be synonymous terms.] 
 
 Now what can this belief do ? ' Then said he to the 
 multitude that came forth to be baptized, bring forth 
 therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to 
 say ^vithin yourselves, we have Abraham for our father : 
 for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to 
 raise up children unto Abraham.' 
 
 ' The axe is laid unto the root of the trees: ' a selection 
 even from the select. 
 
 John's knowledge of his mission — 
 
 ' I indeed baptize you with water,' ' he shall 
 baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.' 
 
 [Quotations giving various uses of the word ' bap- 
 tized.'] 
 
THEORETIC. 1 79 
 
 'The mind is enlarged by labours suited to its 
 ■strength, but is baptized by such as exceed its power.' — 
 Plutarch. 
 
 * On account of the abundant supply from these 
 sources, they do not baptize the people with taxes.' — 
 JDiodonis. 
 
 ' I am one of those who have been baptized by that 
 •great wave of Calamity.' — Libafi. 
 
 ' And baptized with the Calamity.' — Hcliodorus. 
 
 ' Iniquity baptizes (ovenvhelms) me.' — Isaiah. 
 
 'He who bears with difficulty the burden he already 
 has, would be entirely baptized by a small addition.' — 
 Liban. 
 
 FRAGMENT OF A ' CREED.' 
 
 That in a certain age of the World appeared a Per- 
 sonage. 
 
 ' No man knoweth who the Son is .' 
 
 That He was surrounded by attestation from the 
 External World. 
 
 That He was also attested by His own Perfection, 
 which would have lacked (and, therefore, not existed) 
 had He yielded to human force and failed to fulfil His 
 Work, even at the cost of torture and Death. 
 
 Moreover that not undergoing Death He could not 
 
 N 2 
 
l8o RELIGIOUS. 
 
 give the crowning evidence of his Nature and Mission,, 
 and the highest guarantee of our hope — His Resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 [It is believed that this fragment, found pencilled on a loose 
 sheet of paper, between the leaves of a note-book containing exclu- 
 sively religious memoranda, ^^■as one of many attemjits made by Mr. 
 Dobell to draw up (in what to himself should appear a satisfactory 
 form) a ' neutral ' or ' negative ' creed. To the desirability of such 
 a Creed allusion is several times made, as will have been seen, in 
 the course of these 'Notes and Memoranda.' — Eu.] 
 
i8i 
 
 ETHICAL. 
 
 See this small beetle feeling its way with palpi. — So I 'feci 
 ■after, if haply I may find,' through the unseen of Truth : so tardily, 
 warily, in doubt — suspecting, trying, re-trying, turning, retrogi'ading, 
 
 progressing. 
 
 [From notes and memoranda concerning 'Philosopher' of the 
 Drama.] 
 
 It may be argued in defence of Religious fallacies thai 
 ^God Himself sanctions the principle involved in them by 
 never permitting us to know absolute Truth. 
 
 May it not be answered to this that those phenomena 
 Avhich we are compelled to take for truths all bear rela- 
 tions to Truth absolute, and, however apparently diverse 
 from it, are but versions, in various tongues, of the same 
 original, dilutions, more or less rare, of the same 
 essence. 
 
 But not so with the artifices and mistakes of Alan- 
 icind. 
 
 Religion the huinanization of God. In order to a 
 
l82 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 correct hurnanization, a standard necessary, and a living 
 standard — hence Immanuel. 
 
 Christ manifests in flesh and blood all attributes that 
 Man can positively know, and leaves the remaining Deity 
 to the infinite and immaterial suggestions of negatives. 
 
 The various ascetic and similar errors of Mankind 
 have arisen from an ignorance that the object of Religion 
 is the attainment of ideal Hinnaiiity — not the super- 
 human, if such there be among finite Beings. 
 
 Love of God and love of our neighbour. As we see- 
 in a grain of corn that sends down a life earthward, which 
 we call the root, and sends up a life Heavenward, which 
 we call leaf and flower, both lives being the same being, 
 so perhaps the love of our neighbour is but a mode of 
 the love of God. 
 
 Sin, in action, is that action which either indicates the 
 activity of mental qualities that should be inactive, or the 
 inactivity of such as should be active. 
 
 ' Abstain from every shape of evil,' — i.e. from evil in 
 every shape, even though it take the form of an ' Angel 
 of Light.' 
 
ETHICAL. 183 
 
 Whether good should be welcomed even if coming in 
 horns and cloven hoofs— /.f. actions essentially good 
 should take place irrespective of appearances — must be 
 decided by the force of controlling principles on the 
 merits of each case. 
 
 In the daily casuistries of conscience there is a right, 
 as high as most of those with which they are conversant, 
 that is too frequently forgotten. 
 
 It is the right of each member of the Cosmos of 
 Human Duties to its share — and its proportionate share — 
 of the limited sum total of each man's vital energy. 
 
 When that share has been spent on the given vexata 
 questio no more can be given without a moral fraud upon 
 other problems. 
 
 {^ Piety J) The God of every man is modified by his 
 o^vn nature — in many men has no existence but in them- 
 selves. There may be cases, therefore, in which the 
 more pious a man the worse his morality. 
 
 HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE. 
 
 If one defines happiness as the pleasure of all such 
 moral functions as have more than terrestrial fields of 
 
184 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 action is it not to say the pleasure of Love — for which 
 other has more than mortal scope ? 
 
 But to limit true happiness to the exercise of those 
 immortal functions is to produce in the mortal man a 
 partial and fragmentary activity, and to discourage 
 corporate and harmonious life. 
 
 Yet we say that self-sacrifice, the denial of ' pleasure ' 
 et hoc gcnics is the means of true happiness. But is not 
 this because thus we make that internal ^//c?j-/-silence in 
 which alone, in most men, as yet, the pleasure of the 
 higher functions can be heard ? And because herein we 
 have the readiest means of exercise (exercise being 
 necessary to pleasure) for some of those functions which 
 do not readily find objects of use? 
 
 Is not Happiness rather the harmonious pleasure of 
 all the functions in their ideal proportions ? 
 
 Fully to understand moral principles and their appli- 
 cation it is necessary to realize a chaotic state of pan- 
 cratic, or other, aboriginal society, and to realize their 
 action there. 
 
 This applies to moral principles and qualities whence 
 ever their origin. See how the good man must needs 
 act under these conditions. The truths deducible from 
 
ETHICAL, 185 
 
 that experiment serve as a body for the subtler soul 
 of the moral theory and practice of a hypercivilized 
 time. 
 
 The nature of the virtues is such that, though each 
 does not the function of the other, those things which 
 are most consistent Avith all are specifically most con- 
 gruous with each. 
 
 Goodness is the highest terrestrial Beauty of which 
 we know, because Goodness is Beauty expressed in the 
 highest terrestrial substance of which we know — i.e. 
 Human Nature. 
 
 There is a certain familiarity with sacred things which 
 may arise from the very completeness of reverence. 
 Mens sibi coiiscia of a veneration beyond suspicion will 
 allow itself a lightness which to the careless eye looks 
 like the result of opposite causes. 
 
 Was not Neoplatonism the result of a new cerebral 
 excitement introduced from the East and till then un- 
 known ? 
 
 The phenomena of ecstasy &:c., may be accounted for 
 by the fact that the faculty of the brain by which it prays 
 and venerates is of more endurance in some natures tlian 
 
l86 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 the other faculties and still vibrates when they are en- 
 feebled past action. 
 
 TWO VIEWS OF SOCIAL DUTY. 
 
 One : ' resist not evil,' give up the good and beautiful 
 to the evil and ugly and thus, as it were, force the Divine 
 Interposition of a miraculous government of this World. 
 
 The other : let the social conscience make itself 
 objective in laws and their consequences, for the sake of 
 those to whom personal conscience is insufficient ; and 
 by a terrestrial and present (necessarily gross and ma- 
 terial) imitation of a celestial and future, supply for 
 common natures the defect of imagination. 
 
 PRIEST. 
 
 The office of Priest has been, in all ages and peoples, 
 to ofler sacrifice — i.e. expiation, compensation (so to 
 speak) — (that Avhich pays the debt and releases the 
 debtor, by a loss on his part, and atones him) and to 
 pronounce absolution — i.e. this release. 
 
 If the two have not always gone together /// format 
 they have done so implicitly by irresistible logic. 
 
 It is by this office of pronouncing absolution that 
 they are the strongest and most terrible tyrants of man- 
 kind ; and it is by the absence of this that the clergy of 
 
ETHICAL. 187- 
 
 the English Churches cease to be priests or tyrants and 
 merely rank with other machineries, more or less useful 
 for enlightenment. 
 
 PROPHET. 
 
 He wlKDse ear and eye (the finer ear), external and 
 internal, are able to receive and to repeat voices within 
 and without : i.e. 
 
 I. To percei\'e the agreement of facts and processes 
 not- human with human facts and processes, or with facts 
 and processes possible to the limited mind of man, and 
 therefore communicable, by some means, from man to 
 man. 
 
 II. To experience in reaction to some not-human 
 fact or system of facts some new sensation or notion, 
 congruous with it, and communicable. 
 
 It might be theorized that a hierarchy of Priests, 
 depositaries of recognized Truth, and censors of new 
 utterances, might be the right corrective of Prophets. 
 
 But who have killed the Prophets ; who slew the 
 Holy and the Just and desired a murderer? 
 
 Not the ' common people,' not the civil power, but 
 they who followed Caiphas. 
 
1 88 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 THE EVIL OF A PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 Christianity gives Ideas and Principles as perceptible 
 to the perfect human mind — as Divinely revealed — to be 
 rendered into practice by the imperfect human mind, 
 sdo?i son possible. 
 
 The evil of a Priesthood is that it must make one of 
 two mistakes — must impose on the imperfect the practice 
 congruous with the perfect, or must think down to the 
 imperfect. Either mistake equally fatal to the subtlest 
 values and processes of Christianity. A Man who would 
 judge men must live the life of men. Otherwise he no 
 .longer sees human facts as they are. The blood no 
 longer in the flesh what is it but dust ? Therefore to 
 Priestly eyes the passions of Mankind cannot be seen 
 truly. The precaution taken to secure truth makes truth 
 impossible. 
 
 The immense danger of symbolical forms or cere- 
 monies is that they may be misunderstood for what they 
 symbolize. The further the symbol deviates from true 
 metaphor the more mortal this danger. 
 
 Vide Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Mexican worship : 
 in the latter note the sacrifice of liviji^ hearts. 
 
ETHICAL, 189 
 
 The ready reception of mythological solutions illus- 
 trates the action of instinct in the imperfect human 
 nature. 
 
 A heap of stones is found on a hill. The instinct 
 that asks a cause for every effect becomes active. But 
 when tradition declares that the devil threw them from 
 the opposite hill the satisfied instinct is at rest. 
 
 DEMONOLOGV. 
 
 We think our science disproves demon ology by as- 
 signing the nature and succession of facts called by 
 scientific names. 
 
 But how if we be but anatomizing not disproving it ? 
 
 Therefore the ancients said of such intelligences that 
 they had three names — for earthly, Heavenly, and in- 
 fernal use. 
 
 Quoad foregoing. 
 
 If we use ' Law ' (of Nature) in the sense of a formula 
 of Will, only, demonology is the inevitable consequence, 
 for that which is conscious and obedient is an intelligence. 
 
 If we use ' Law ' for 0?'do — a foniiula of perfonnance, 
 only, then the Sole Doer is responsible for all facts. 
 
.19° RELIGIOUS. 
 
 WAR. 
 
 Memoranda of facts aiding towards enquiry if it can be 
 C/iristian. 
 
 The principle ' Do unto others ' does not militate 
 against it, inasmuch as I respect the antagonist for doing 
 to me what I intend to do to him. 
 
 Both parties meet under an implied permission to 
 destroy. 
 
 But the permission of a co-agent with regard to 
 actions quoad se does not necessarily make them lawful — 
 e.g. fornication. 
 
 The permission of the Faticns, however, legalizes any 
 action not culpable per se — /. e. not expressing a quality 
 that should be silent or evidencing the silence of one 
 that should be expressed — e.g. amputation. 
 
 The question therefore of whether War can be 
 Christian turns on the qualities which it necessarily 
 expresses ? Not the qualities that are usually expressed 
 by it but those without the action of which it cannot take 
 place ? 
 
 A Christian's action must usually indicate the mean 
 resulting force of various qualities. The application of 
 one Principle is always open to the modifying power of 
 another Principle. 
 
ETHICAL. 191 
 
 * Render to no man evil for evil.' But evil depends 
 not on the action but the quality expressed by it. To cut 
 off my neighbour's arm in hate is evil. To do so in love is 
 surgery. (The second clause, 'but contrariwise blessing,' 
 is in complete keeping with this deeper interpretation of 
 evil.) 
 
 ' Love your enemies. Do good to them that hate 
 j'ou.' The first clause is the principle of which the second 
 is one application. That apj^lication presupposes the 
 proper time and place. There are circumstances to 
 Avhich it is impossible it can apply — because no specific 
 kind of action can be incessant — other duties counteract- 
 ing. Ergo it is not universal. If not universal then to 
 be applied according to circumstances. 
 
 What if I remember my duties to my enemies at the 
 time proper to those to my friends ? 
 
 On what principle do we act in meeting the other 
 difficulties of life ? Is it by 'prayer and trust without 
 action or prayer and trust upon action ? And surely the 
 Christian modus operandi should be consistent imder all 
 circumstances. 
 
 Violence to the soul is admitted, on all sides, to be 
 occasionally justifiable (Rebuke, (Sec. &c.) Is it possible 
 that violence to the body can be worse ? 
 
 Since in the Mosaic Dispensation we know that 
 
192 RELIGIOUS. 
 
 Warriors were ' after God's own heart ' there must, if 
 War is now unlawful, be some Differentia of Christianity 
 which makes it so. That difference is usually supposed 
 to be contained in the sayings commencing ' it hath been 
 said of old time thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate 
 thine enemy ' — ' an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' 
 But, carefully examined, are not these purely applicable 
 X.0 vengeance? And no more relative to 'War 'than to 
 ' Peace ? ' It is not the prevention of violence by violence 
 but i\\Q piinis/ivient of successful violence that the illustra- 
 tion exposes, and the principle ' hate thine enemy ' con- 
 cords with the illustration. Surely a Differentia more 
 unmistakeable is required to set aside the precedent of 
 Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and David. 
 
 Hate seeks the injury of the object as an end. By 
 whatsoever means (however pleasant) such end unlawful. 
 
 'Your powers are given you for the benefit never 
 the injury of others.' But may I not benefit through 
 pain — e.g. surgery ? ' Yes, but that is pain for the benefit 
 of the sufferer.' But if I may lawfully so benefit this 
 wretch who for a shilling to drink with is trying to murder 
 me, may I not yet more virtuously benefit through his 
 ^ain those lovely and good beings whose welfare depends 
 on mine ? 
 
 ' Do unto others as you would have them do to you ' — 
 i.e. as you being you would have them do to you if yojc 
 
ETHICAL. 193 
 
 were they. If I — being what I now am — were doing to 
 me what my murderer is doing I would wish that he 
 should make the stoutest resistance possible. Therefore 
 if a murderer attacks me I should make such resistance. 
 
 * Love your enemies ' — i.e. love ei^en your enemies. 
 
 Let your Sun of love be so warm and light that having 
 heated and lit its solar system a large nebula of super- 
 abundant light califies the cold dark beyond. 
 
 ' If you love them that love you what thank have ye ' — 
 for you must be below the beasts to do less. Humanity 
 excels the brutes in those things wherein brutes are virtuous; 
 and Christian humanity is conterminous with the perfection 
 of the natural human virtues, begimiiug at their culmination. 
 
 With what a love shall he love his friends who is able 
 to love even his enemies ! This is Christianity in accor- 
 dance whereto says St. Paul ' do good to all — specially 
 to the household of Faith.' 
 
 He who loves his enemies without loving his friends 
 is not Christianized but diseased. 
 
 We find it difficult to love our enemy from a fault 
 rather of perception than of feeling. 
 
 If we truly /^;rmr^ the Being in the midst of dis- 
 torted passions, &:c. we should pulse with sach an emotion 
 as at seeing a victim in the flames, or an annual agonizing 
 in the toils. 
 
 o 
 
POLITICAL 
 
PAMPHLE7 ON REFORM} 
 
 England ; 
 
 That holy island of the temperate seas 
 \Vhei-e Man and Nature keep the sweet degrees 
 Of modest seasons, that in mild advance 
 Measure with changing step the time and dance 
 Of sacred Order, ever new and old. 
 
 I\Iv di:ar friend, — You wish me to set forth in a 
 Pamphlet-letter the scheme of enfranchisement to \^-\\z\v. 
 I alluded in our late conversation on Parliamentary Re- 
 form. Even yotir flattering request would not compel me 
 to what must necessarily be a brief and insufficient expo- 
 sition of that scheme, if I did not care more for its prin- 
 ciples than for tlie machinery by Avhich I propose to apply 
 them ; and if I did not believe that the question of Re- 
 form will retain its troublesome Premier- haunting charac- 
 ter, till we answer it on principles more organic, expressed 
 in machinery more natural, than those of that provisional 
 
 ' The first edition of tliis Pamphlet was published in 1865. 
 
19^ POLITICAL, 
 
 and temporary reply which in 1S32, was the best tliat 
 state exigencies allowed. 
 
 I am the less willing to wait for greater leisure to either 
 of us, because a great national contro\ersy on the subject 
 of Reform seems presaged pretty plainly for the coming 
 year ; and as Parliamentary Reform has come in our day 
 to mean reform of the popular branch of Parliament, and 
 the i)atient is not usually the best judge of his own case, 
 one is glad to expect that, in this age of journalism, a 
 large part of the discussion will be outside the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 Rut if Parliament has special difficulties in discussing 
 Parliamentary Reform, arising from the retrospective self- 
 conscious character of the investigation, the non-parlia- 
 mentary world has also special difficulties, resulting from 
 an opposite cause. If the legislature, with its eyes turned 
 inward, is unlikely to get a just notion of its own objective 
 personality, we who regard it from Avithout are too much 
 impressed with the characteristics of its bodily presence. 
 And that bodily presence is, at this point in our histor}-, 
 precisely of the kind on which it is most dangerous to 
 reason,' because it assimies and has assumed for more than 
 thirty years (that is to say, during the political life of those 
 Avho will be most likely to examine it) the shape of a 
 hybrid. A hybrid, as most of us are aware, may be verv 
 
PAMPHLKT ON REFORM. 1 99 
 
 safe and useful in action, l)ut it is singularly untractablc 
 and misleading as an object of scientific en([uiry, especi- 
 ally when that inquiry is for the discovery of organic 
 principles. 
 
 As we all know, the Parliament of England was, up 
 to times quite recent, a means of assisting a governing 
 sovereign, or a governing oligarchy, with what wisdom 
 might be in the nation ; and the theory of parliamentary 
 representation, as understood by our earlier jurists, was 
 the rationale of a method for eliminating that wisdom 
 and presenting it to the ruler. When, however, in process 
 of time the sovereign reigned without governing, when 
 England, gradually and unconsciously, became the only 
 safe republic that ever existed (because a republic wherein 
 the highest prize in social rank is impossible to the am- 
 bition of any citizen). Parliament virtually assumed to be 
 the alter c^o of the governing nation, and by parliamentary 
 representation the nation sought to epitomize itself in 
 microcosm. 
 
 But as this change in the problem, and in the 
 desideratum, was never theoretically stated, and as (faith- 
 ful to that peculiarity in all our English changes by which 
 we avoid the break of continuity that is mortal to all, 
 except the lowest, living bodies) the modern Parliament 
 and the ancient Parliament differed little in appearance 
 
200 POLITICAL. 
 
 and materials, it was natural that many observers should 
 ignore what had essentially taken place. We had turned 
 the old wisdom-making machine into a kind of demo- 
 meter, but the two natures refused to mix ; we had com- 
 pounded without transubstantiation. Therefore, while 
 the popular politician honestly discerns in the resulting 
 institution only one modern version of democracy, the 
 conservative eye as honestly perceives only the last form 
 of 'Witena Gemot.' According to the Witena-gemotic 
 system, the principles on which Parliament should, if 
 needful, be further modified, would seem, at first glance, 
 to be simple. Whenever a non-electing class in the 
 nation can demonstrate its share in whatever qualities are 
 expressed by 'Witena' in equal degree with an) class 
 already possessing the electoral franchise, that non-elect- 
 ing class has proved its right to share the possession. 
 But further consideration will show that this simple 
 formula is not sufficient to the practical case where every 
 accession of numbers is apt to consist mainly of those 
 possessing a minimum of the qualifications. Now to 
 increase the number of inferior choosers is, of cours:-, 
 where majorities are to decide, to deteriorate the chances 
 of the choice. But who will ever convince the excluded 
 class of the justice of their exclusion? Or who can 
 wonder that the denial of claims which, to the claimants, 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFORM. 20I 
 
 must appear irresistible, arouse those heartburnings which, 
 when inflaming great masses of jjhysical force, end in 
 rebeUion and revohition ? I will not pause upon these 
 and other difficulties, in any theory of parliamentary 
 representation that has ' rcis^/o/f/,' in the popular sense, 
 for its final cause, because we have to seek in our modern 
 Parliament rather those vital principles by which it may 
 subserve present and future necessities than those by 
 Avhich, however beautifully and beneficially, it connects 
 the present with the past. 
 
 By the ' Reform Act,' and by the Parliamentary policy 
 that has succeeded it, we practically gave up the ad- 
 vantages of being governed by others wiser than ourselves 
 (as under our original Parliaments) for certain other 
 advantages supposed to result from sclf-govcriimcnt. But 
 the amount of advantage from self-government — whether 
 individual or national — is in proportion to its genuine 
 thoroughness. Experience shows that the mistakes and 
 ill-doings of self-government are, in the long run, more 
 advantageous to the governed, because more conducive 
 to real progress, than the sage anachronisms and out-of- 
 place wisdom of governors whose mental and moral rank 
 is, for other purposes, far superior to their own. But for 
 the errors of self-government to be salutary they must 
 be genuine : for the sins we commit under partial com- 
 
2 02 POLITICAL. 
 
 pulsion have little, if any, therapeutic effect upon us ; and 
 good deeds mechanically done are nearly useless to moral- 
 development. 
 
 By partial self-government we lose, at once, the. 
 specific advantages of nationality and bureaucracy — the 
 educational effects of our own right and wrong, and 
 the temporary and superficial benefits which might accrue 
 from a perfunctory subservience to others. It seems 
 to me therefore that, in endeavouring to represent the 
 British people in Parliament, you must, at the stage of 
 national life to which we are arrived, endeavour towards 
 whatever may {in the truest, completest, and most living 
 manner) realize self-government; — Avhatever will, in such 
 time and place as is consistent with unity of action, re- 
 present that British nation which, in a manner inconsistent 
 with such unity, is spread abroad over these islands. 
 
 Now, in representing an individual, whether man or 
 nation, so that it may virtually be and act, cii pa-7nancnccy 
 in a place where it is not, how must you represent it ?■ 
 Neither at its best nor its worst ; but at the best which 
 it can healthily and continuously maintain. Represent 
 a man in that state wherein he says his prayers, or makes 
 love, or reads poetry, or enjoys fine pictures, or performs- 
 an heroic action, and your representation is, for practical 
 purposes, untrue ; because no man can healthily main- 
 
PAMPHLET ON RKFORM. 203 
 
 tain himself in that key throu!j;h all the liours of every 
 day. Represent his lowest possibilities, and you are still 
 more perniciously false. Represent him even at a 
 vulgar mean, below what his qualities can healthily, 
 harmoniously, and continuously reach, and your repre- 
 sentation, if he is bound to realize it (and parhamentary 
 representation is, as we have seen, a representation we 
 are bound to realize), is untrue, and morally deleterious. 
 ]]ut represent him at the highest moral, intellectual, 
 spiritual, and physical degree, which, with no more 
 strain than is healthy stimulus, he can consistently and 
 effectively maintain, and your representation, being true 
 to the essential and persistent characteristics of the 
 original, will not only represent him fairly, honestly, and 
 efficiently to others, but, if he is to back it by personal 
 action, will place himself under exactly those fortunate 
 conditions of present exercise which are also the happiest 
 guarantees of beneficial development. If these things be 
 true of just representation when the individual to be 
 represented is a man, they will be found, I think, equally 
 true when the original to be reproduced is that large 
 man a nation. I assume, therefore, that a just national 
 representation is such as represents the nation at its 
 EFFICIENT DURABLE BEST. Granted this kind of repre- 
 sentation to be desirable, by what machinery can it be 
 
204 POLITICAL. 
 
 accomplished ? Xot by such as should merely represent 
 numbers ; for numbers, inspired by something that is not 
 due to number, are capable of a higher national life than 
 they could themselves originate. These flesh and bones 
 of the state depend, and seem likely long to depend, for 
 their noblest national character, on the vital life supplied 
 by other functions. Yet numbers must not be unrepre- 
 sented. You cannot appraise a man's total nature by his 
 bodily weight and forces, but in representing his sum of 
 ability you omit them at your peril. Nor, for similar, but 
 not identical, reasons, is it sufficient to represent property. 
 We want not a democracy — in the modern sense — nor a 
 plutocracy, but a nation : and not only a nation, but, as 
 I have already suggested, a nation at its efficient durable 
 best. Extremes are comparatively easy, and so is vulgar 
 mediocrity ; but tlie healthy best has always been the 
 crucial difficulty of portrait-painter, moralist^ and psycho- 
 logist. And if to create this kind of other-he is difficult 
 when the primary self is an individual man, hovr much 
 more difficult when it is a nation^! 
 
 I think there are four obvious methods in which, vv-ith 
 more or less success, it might be attempted, (i) One, 
 but the least desirable, would be to represent classes in- 
 stead of places. You might so represent classes as to 
 ■create an assembly of intensely typical men, whose corre- 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFORM. 205 
 
 lation offerees might result in such a dynamical mean as 
 should give the strength and direction of thinking and 
 feeling England. The highest philosophy, the merest 
 heroism, the widest knowledge, might leaven the grosser 
 representatives of the (so to speak) popular flesh and 
 blood, to a total that should express the nation at its 
 ' efficient durable best.' But, apart from the fact of our in- 
 stinctive English dislike to class representations, by adopt- 
 ing this mode we should be guilty of a great waste of mental 
 power. We do not want philosophers in the legislature. 
 Their function is to prepare governors and governed for 
 a better than the present best ; and their legislation would 
 always, therefore, be that most pathetic kind of failure, 
 the impractability of beautiful anachronism. Discarding 
 this method, I see three others. (2) You might en- 
 deavour so to modify the franchise as to favour a practical 
 union of all the aristocracies — the aristocracy of blood, of 
 talent, of land, of wealth, of science, and of skill — e.^. the 
 hereditary ' nobility and gentry,' the chief thinkers, artists 
 and learners, the exceptional traders, and the skilled 
 artisans, against the dead weight of mere numbers and 
 .stupid weliare. (3) Or you might, by slightly altering 
 our present modes, make a Parliament of political phy- 
 sicians, able in popular diagnosis, who should do as a 
 legislature what journalism does in another fashion — 
 
2o6 POLITICAL. 
 
 xeproduce, to the best of their power, that which tact, talent, 
 and study teach them to be ' Pubhc opinion.' (4) Or 
 you might create a self-adjusting electoral machine to do 
 ■that work in a less conscious and voluntary manner. Of 
 the second and third of these methods I say nothing here, 
 -except that I would rather not depend on them till the 
 fourth has proved impossible. And of the self-adjusting 
 .self-registering machinery for that fourth ? Towards some 
 mechanism of this sort I would, with much diffidence, 
 offer the following suggestions : — 
 
 The thing of which you would create such another 
 .self as you can bring into the palace of Westminster, is 
 not a nomadic or stationary crowd, but that unity a 
 nation. Therefore, in representing its constituent parts, 
 you must represent them in their constituent character. 
 That is to say, in representing the proportionate value of 
 •each constituent, you must estimate his part in the size, 
 shape, and weight of that unity, his formative share in 
 the national whole;— z.e. you must represent him not as 
 the man but as the citizen. This large One a nation, is, 
 :so to speak, a great Chinese puzzle, made up of different 
 parts, each part differing in size and shape; and in esti- 
 mating the political value of a man, you rec^uire to know 
 not what and how much he is, per sc\ but what and how 
 much of him goes to the puzzle. You are going to make 
 
PAMrilLET ON REFORM. 207 
 
 an enormous national tvV'/j-, and you must make it by 
 aggregating not men but citizens. You //tusf, therefore, give 
 to each voter who co-ads with his fellow-citizois in choosing 
 a representative, such an anionnt of influence in that choice 
 as shall express his comparative value as a citizen. The 
 •special characteristics of a citizen are, I think, those 
 which relate him to his compatriots (including in that 
 term his sovereign and his fellow-citizens) and those 
 which relate him to a certain quantity of the earth and 
 its goods — social relations and ' vested interests.' If it is 
 answered that, inasmuch as relations may exist without 
 corresponding virtues, and interests without adequate 
 rights, the representation of relations and interests would 
 not necessarily reach our standard of ' efficient durable 
 best ' I would reply that, in the present state of our 
 laws, and of their administration, the maintenance of 
 interests and relations is, taken getwally and for practical 
 purposes, sufficient proof and measure of the virtues that 
 should actuate and the lights that should justify them, e.g. 
 that out of a given number of masters and heads of 
 families there will be a large majority in whom those 
 relations indicate the presence of an average amount of 
 the appropriate magisterial and paternal qualities. There- 
 fore, if you represent social relations and vested interests, 
 you are not only representing the outward configuration of 
 
2o8 POLITICAL. 
 
 the citizen, his civic size, shape, and weight, and conse- 
 quently his constructional value in the national form, but 
 you also represent, in as accurate a way as is usually 
 possible to great human estimates, the virtues and the 
 rights which are his quota in the total heart, soul, and 
 conscience, of the living body-politic. Which of the 
 social relations should represent themselves — which of a 
 man's social conditions as subject, husband, father, 
 master, servant, artisan, tradesman, ratepayer, landlord, 
 tenant, dealer, capitalist, graduate in-arts, and the like, 
 should separately represent itself by an electoral vote, 
 and should therefore add to that sum of votes by which 
 I would express his comparative importance as a citizen, 
 is a matter of detail that may be left to another time and 
 place. But I would indicate a distinction between 
 relations and interests, which seems of vital moment. 
 Objectors demur to the enfranchisement of interests, on 
 the plea that (inasmuch as interests always involve rela- 
 tions) — ' property has its duties as well as its rights ' — 
 to enfranchise an interest, in sc, ^\•ould be to give an 
 undue preponderance to property. Social liclafions 
 should be counted in estimating the citizen as a compo- 
 nent part of the state, because each new social office 
 which a man fills binds him to his fellows by a new 
 kind of social obligation. It is the kind and not the 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFORM. 209 
 
 quantity of the obligation that the relation expresses, and, 
 in the majority of cases, it is the kind rather than the 
 quantity that affects his value and character as a citizen. 
 A man with his third wife may be no more husbandly 
 than with his first; and the fathers of a dozen children 
 and of one may be equally paternal. But when we come 
 to deal with Interests^ expressing rights, the case is 
 different, because it is not so much the kind as, so to 
 speak, the quantity of right that expresses a man's shape 
 and weight as a citizen. That the widow's mite when 
 she gives it up to the state may represent as much 
 patriotism as the million pounds of the millionaire is 
 quite true ; but in this it is the measure of a virtue and 
 not of a right ; — and a measure so difficult of use and 
 gauge as to be unavailable for the rough purposes of 
 human government. Every man not a felon or a pauper 
 has, viewed as a subject for legislation, a dual existence — 
 he exists /(?r se, and by the proxy of his goods. Legisla- 
 tion cannot move Avithout impinging on goods ; but as it 
 never affects them as possessions of tenants in common, 
 or as a copartnery of equal shares, the size of that second 
 existence is a quantity diftering in every citizen. A 
 statute that impartially levies so much in the hypothetical 
 pound practically means that, though I and my neigh- 
 bour look so much alike^ I am to pay a trifle and he is to 
 
 p 
 
2IO POLITICAL, 
 
 bleed thousands a year, but it it evident that my neigh- 
 bour's real personality is, as regards this law, greater than 
 mine. While, therefore, the real self of one man so 
 differs from that of another, self-government requires a 
 rei^resentative expression of that difference ; whether 
 that difference consist in the differing number of functions 
 whereby a man assists in composing that total citizen the 
 state, or in the differing size of his share in that great 
 partnership, whereby this political corporation holds its 
 lands and goods. And those who propose to find that ex- 
 pression in a plurality of votes, ai'e ofily adopting, for 
 parliamentary elections, a machinery which, in regard to 
 the smaller elections for parochial parliaments, has 
 already the assent of the country. The idea of plural 
 voting has been recognized in English political life from 
 time immemorial, and the facts that some districts 
 return one and some two members to Parliament — i.e. 
 that each elector in the one has double the choosing 
 power of his compatriot in the other — and that the same 
 elector may have a vote for more than one locality — i.e. 
 that as concerns the result of an election his power may 
 be multiplied to any extent of which locomotion will 
 allow — so far nullify the entire electoral equality that 
 has been claimed for the present system as to throw 
 doubt on its fundamental character. I am aware of the 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFOR^r. 211 
 
 objections which will spring to the imagination of many 
 ])ohticians, when I propose that tJic 7'otc of every British 
 subject, unconvicted of c/iine, shall be taken at the elections 
 of mcnibcis to serve in Parliament, but shall be reckoned 
 (according to some scale to be fixed after due parlia- 
 mentary inquiry) at a value commensurate with the number 
 of his social relations and the extent of his rights of pro- 
 perty :— counting one for the man, if any such exist, who 
 is only a subject, and so on, upwards, for every other 
 (qualification. 
 
 That is to say, I would propose that the total of votes 
 at a general election should represent the total of civic 
 functions that make up that vast civis the nation, and 
 the total of lands and goods which he rightfully possesses; 
 and that the number of these votes given by any one 
 ■dviculus (so to speak) should indicate the value of him 
 and his in the composition of those national wholes. 
 Believing that a plan of this kind is hkely to secure the 
 end I have ventured to propose as the object of all 
 beneficial representation — the representation of the 
 thing represented 'at its efticient durable best ' — I would 
 beg the further patience of yourself and your friends 
 while I point out some other advantages which seem to 
 inhere in such a system. 
 
 I. To ascertain the electoral qualifications of an 
 
212 POLITICAL. 
 
 elector would require no new or inquisitorial machinery.. 
 As I propose to enfranchise not moral or intellectual 
 qualities, but the civic functions which, on the average 
 (and an average quite as high as that of the political 
 ability indicated by tenancy of a lo/. house), are their 
 social signs, not abstract rights, but those possessions 
 which, when unquestioned by the law, are their suffi- 
 ciently accurate evidence, the new franchise would have 
 to take cognizance of nothing tliat was not already 
 recognized and identified by title-deeds, diplomas, tax- 
 receipts, licences, parish-registers, apprenticeship-inden- 
 tures, and the like unmistakable testimony. It is not 
 amenable, therefore, to the strong arguments that have 
 been urged against a metaphysical franchise. 
 
 2. As comprehensive and self-adjusting, it would be 
 likely to save us from those eras of organic change which, 
 viewed from within or without, have hitherto been the 
 great perils of constitutional peoples. Making the 
 personnel of the constitution commensurate with the 
 nation, you rest it on that immoveable basis of the earth 
 whereon terrestrial things can alone be permanent, 
 instead of poising it on a seething mass of incongruous 
 life, — like those cai^ved Italian pulpits whose supports 
 are running beasts and fighting men. By such a system, 
 the passage of the ' lowest ' classes in the State to great 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFORM. 213 
 
 political power would lia])pen, without convulsion or 
 organic strain, in proportion as they added to their 
 numerical force those civic functions which raise them in 
 the scale of virtual citizenship, — that is to say, in pro- 
 portion as they became part of the nation's ' efticient 
 ■durable best.' 
 
 3. It would save us from universal suffrage, popularly 
 so called. To resist that most mortal of all enemies to 
 human progress without denying any claims that can, by 
 proving themselves consistent with that progress, show 
 presumptive proofs that they are rights, is surely among 
 the first present duties of British statesmanship. By 
 enfranchising every non-criminal British subject, and 
 ending that indefinite consciousness of half-understood 
 Avrong which must exist in every man whose political 
 existence is denied, you relieve the State for ever from 
 a great chronic danger which any lassitude or incom- 
 petence in those who, from time to time, adjust the 
 political safety-valves, may convert into the most active 
 iTialeficent force. ' Universal suffrage ' — the plan, i.e. of 
 ringing up the servants to settle your vexed questions of 
 .philosophy, art, and morals — has too little attraction for 
 the Enghsh order of mind to be ever an indigenous 
 danger ; but as it is in full force in nations with whom 
 -every day is bringing us into more sympathetic union, we 
 
214 POLITICAL 
 
 are like!}-, without preventive care, to receive, by infec- 
 tion, a disease not congenital to British common sense. 
 For that preventive care no mere theoretical demonstra- 
 tion will suffice. To convince the reason that ' universal 
 suffrage ' is unreasonable will be useless, so far as the 
 excluded classes are concerned, while feeling answers 
 that its denial involves the refusal of a right, and its 
 establishment the removal of a wrong. To show that 
 Avhat is called ' universal suffrage ' is iiot ' universal ' at 
 all (since the suffrage of the beaten minority is not repre- 
 sented in the result), but really means absolute choice by 
 whatever party happens to be the most numerous; that, in 
 the present (and every other immature) state of the 
 world, the condition of mind which chooses ill, under 
 difficulties, is more common than the condition which 
 chooses well; that therefore, when mere numbers choose, 
 their choice (deducting for exceptions) will be erroneous;. 
 that the knowledge of this will deter the best men from 
 offering themselves to electors who are known to prefer 
 the inferior ; to show that an assembly, from which the 
 better elements had been eliminated or in which their 
 influence was hopelessly overborne, so far from realizing 
 that ' efficient durable best ' which is the necessary condi- 
 tion of collective progress, must degrade its own individu- 
 ality and, withdrawing it more and more from partnership in. 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFORM. 2x5 
 
 the community of peoi)lcs, — eventually make its political 
 existence a menace to the civilized world ; to show all 
 this, and conclude that such an electoral system is one 
 of the most preposterous mistakes and deceptions by 
 which the half-thinking of sentimental or passionate 
 theorists, and the policy or profligacy of astute or 
 desperate adventurers, ever caught the multitude, will 
 avail nothing to convince that very multitude, while 
 the grievance of an exclusion, which no reasoning can 
 disprove, is agitating their passions by the ignominy of 
 odious comparison. Nor will it avail much more to point 
 across the Atlantic, where, with a thousand exceptional 
 conditions to favour the experiment, the system, even 
 thus early in the national history, has notoriously shut 
 out the best minds of America from politics, and set 
 nearly every tuning-fork of public opinion to the lower 
 key-notes of the country : nor across the Channel, where, 
 with whatever apparent temporary success, the worst 
 evils of the machine are corrected by Imperial mter- 
 ference, and to show that this mode of amendment is as 
 faulty in principle as we know it to be demoralising in 
 practice. If, in the countries of universal suffrage, the 
 heads of the State are not such men as universal suffrage 
 would naturally select, they have, by their own hypo- 
 thesis, no right to govern. If, on the other hand, 
 
2l6 POLITICAL. 
 
 they are truly the exponents of that suftrage, their inter- 
 ference in the further action of the electoral machine 
 merely completes the vicious circle of that pernicious 
 consistency whereby the higher arc of the national whole 
 is perpetually wheeling under, and the upward shoots 
 of popular life are continually contorted towards the 
 ground. In such a State the virtues and abilities which 
 are the natural captains of progress are incessantly 
 reduced to the ranks, and the nation which, by en- 
 couraging what is best, highest, and most beautiful 
 within it, should be a vast school of human and national 
 advancement, is converted (by deliberately making a goal 
 of zero, a lesson of ignorance, and a standard of ' ipsis- 
 simiim vu/giis,') into an enormous engine of personal, 
 social, and political retrogression. 
 
 These argumeiita ad homines are useless, because they 
 appeal to precisely that knowledge of human character, 
 and to that political wisdom, which the classes addressed 
 are certain not to possess. To the ploughman, the 
 difference in statesmanship between Lord Palmerston 
 and Mr. Stanton is inappreciable ; but he perceives c^uite 
 well, that while he had no vote for the one, any plough- 
 man in America might have voted for the other. 
 
 By representing every man's comparative weight in 
 the state, instead of enfranchising a mere unit of number, 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFORM. 217 
 
 I believe that you would satisfy whatever may be just in 
 the claims of numbers as numbers, while you counteract 
 the possibility of a numerical despotism ; and you, 
 therefore, attain the advantages of universal suffrage 
 without those evils by which it has been the bane of 
 politics, and which must rank it as an electoral system— 
 whether such system be considered as an engine of 
 present welfare or as a progress-machine — among tl-ie 
 least rational adaptations of means to ends, by wliich 
 those semi-passions that so often pass for reason ha\ e 
 humoured the desires, apologized for the foregone con- 
 clusions, and hocused the conscience of mankind. 
 
 4. It is favourable to hereditary monarchy. By the 
 polarity of things, democracy — when it means the rule of 
 the multitude — must always be liable to Cresarism, and 
 that Csesarism may virtually include the four-year king, 
 called president, late American events have suggested. 
 I need not here go into the argument by which it would 
 be easy to prove that elective monarchy — called by what- 
 ever name — is as incompatible with the political ma- 
 chinery of a true republic as it is injurious to the moral, 
 spiritual, and artistic life of the people who create it; 
 and that the only royalty which consists with the necessities 
 of constitutional freedom is a function of the body-politic 
 too fine to be made and remade periodically by the rude 
 
2l8 POLITICAL. 
 
 hands of voting millions. That positive of so many 
 negations, that aureole of reflex rays and refracted 
 colours, that cerebral plexus of converging and reverting 
 nerves and forces, is impossible to the turbulence of 
 popular change ; only m the unshaken quiet of absolute 
 security can the undisturbed elements take the fortunate 
 concurrence. But though the argument for hereditary 
 monarchy is so well understood in England that I may 
 assume its conclusions for granted, it may be well to 
 point out that hereditary monarchy, to be a political 
 success, must find among the people consistent habits of 
 thought and congruous social institutions. If not, the 
 gilded car of royalty ballooning in mid-air above the 
 levels of ' Liberte, Egalite',' will become an idol or a 
 popinjay ; or the king, standing in midst of those levels, 
 will soon, since a king's stature is not necessarily greater 
 than a subject's, be run down by the contempt of multi- 
 tudinous familiarity. In other words, royalty in the one 
 case, too far removed from the common people to be the 
 object of useful criticism, and surrounding itself — since 
 kings are men, and have men's necessities of love and 
 friendship — with a self-created cabal of favourites, would 
 become a peril to liberty, or an exasperating mark for 
 popular passions : in the other case, the exigencies of 
 daily life would so vulgarise the king and his function^ 
 
PAMPHLET ON RKFORM. 219 
 
 tliat the idea of the function would be lost in that of the 
 ,nan — a loss mortal to hereditary rule unless in those 
 exceptional kingdoms founded, so to speak, by demigod;:-, 
 Avhose superhuman longevity is represented by their heirs. 
 The present French empire is an instance of this rare 
 kind, and should never be counted among elective 
 monarchies. You remember the guardsman's answer to 
 the news that the first Napoleon was dead, — ' Lui mort ! 
 A'ous le connaissez bien ! ' That touching answer, un- 
 surpassed in histor}', was really the answer of France. 
 It was as vicegerent of this unconquerable immortality 
 that Louis Napoleon came to power, the patent by 
 which he took it was signed and dated in St. Helena. 
 
 In ordinary kingdoms, it is the monarchy rather than 
 the monarch that is, and ought to be perennial; and that 
 part of the popular imagination which conceives general 
 notions has so little native force, that it requires to be 
 protected from the competition of those keen personal 
 images which, though they may occasionally dignify the 
 ideas they represent, may also degrade or supersede 
 them. I believe that some such electoral system as that 
 which I have ventured to propose Avould favour among 
 the people those habits of thought and that social attitude 
 which would furnish a new safeguard to the great mon- 
 archical abstraction. By associating with the ^otular 
 
220 POLITICAL. 
 
 notion of progress the notion of constitutional permanence^ 
 and with the popular idea of liberty and civic fraternity 
 the idea oi personal and poUticaliiieqiiality, and by creating 
 among citizens the recognition and the exercise of a 
 graduated order of power, I think it would prove not only 
 the best expositor of popular rights, but would tend also 
 to conserve that hereditary royalty without which (or its 
 yet unknown substitute) no true republic can long exist. 
 
 5. It is at once Protestant and Catholic, and a 
 guarantee, therefore, against the extension of Roman 
 Catholic influence. Protestantism, of all varieties, must 
 -always rely upon the thinking and half-thinking classes ; 
 while, if the papacy is to exist, its future strength must 
 be the millions. It must always rule through the very 
 high or the very low. It is too well read to believe 
 immediately that new facts are endurable ; but when 
 ■changes evidently irresistible show that power is never 
 more to be won from the fears and hojDes of a king, it 
 will try the other pole of the same magnet and find it in 
 the depths of the people. Hitherto its political strategy 
 has been the mastery of an exceptional {q.\n of peculiar 
 position, education, and resulting character, whose royal 
 desire for the privilege of sinning safely, and known 
 ability to pay for it royally, made them the special 
 customers of ' St. Peter.' Henceforth the one prince is 
 
PAMPHLET ON RKl'ORM. 221 
 
 carved into ten or twenty million ; and since, in the 
 nature of things, a like entourage of cardinals, bishops^ 
 confessors, or what not, can no longer be spent in the 
 reduction of each unit in this multitude, the deficiency in 
 available force will suggest a change in the character of 
 the campaign. Twenty cacciatori may hardly manage a, 
 tiger, but one may suffice for a whole parish of sparrows. 
 By a change in the nature, not of the sportsman but of 
 the game, and a slight corresponding modification in the 
 weapons, the disposable power of the Roman hierarchy 
 may still do immense execution. Prey, adequately weak 
 however, can usually be found only among the least 
 intelligent of mankind ; but as in the countries of uni- 
 versal suffrage, these classes must, for the next half- 
 century, have a vast majority, it is exactly they who A\'in 
 be the possessors of sovereign power. The pai-ti pretrc 
 will soon perceive that in those countries universal 
 suffrage means the despotism of the masses, and that the 
 despotism of the masses means the despotism of those by 
 whom the masses are swayed ; that is to sa}-, that the prob- 
 lem of obtaining political influence there, is the problem 
 of obtaining personal and individual influence over the 
 most ignorant and least able men and women in them. 
 That personal and individual influence, entirely inde- 
 pendent of reason or virtue, the wise machinery of the 
 
22 2 POLITICAL. 
 
 Romish Church precisely enables it to acquire, and its- 
 admirable adaptivity will soon devise some such further 
 instruments of popularity as may enable it for a time to 
 besiege its enemies with the very troops they had mus- 
 tered for its destruction. It may be said that these 
 considerations apply to the continents of Europe and 
 America, but are foreign to British interests. Without 
 pointing to Ireland as a fulcrum for any papal Archi- 
 medes, I would suggest that at the present era it may 
 be wise to foreclose the possibilities of any class by 
 which Romanism may exercise pressure upon Parliament. 
 The Church of England will probably exist as a person- 
 ality long after, through that irresistible endosmosis and 
 exosmosis whereby her ablest thinkers are already assimi- 
 lating her to the heterodoxy of the external world, her 
 present creed has passed into the next forward stage of 
 spiritual transformation. When Parliament, in due 
 season, has to formularize that change, it will be of the 
 gravest importance that its action be purely expository, 
 and that no temporary exertions of a party should put an 
 institution so powerful for good or evil, and so certain — 
 from the stability of its wealth, honours, and influence — 
 to rouse all sacred and mundane ambitions, out of 
 harmony with ' the efficient durable best ' of the nation 
 to which it belongs. 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFORM. 223 
 
 6. It would give a higher sanction to the action of 
 Government on minorities. 
 
 When we say that a nation electing its representatives 
 by this or that kind of franchise would be self-governed, 
 we mean, of course, that the dominating party or parties 
 in it would be self-governed. However much you may 
 attempt to ' represent minorities,' there must always be a 
 residue of unrepresented nonconformity, who must 
 submit to a government in the making of which the/ 
 have had no direct share. Towards such minorities, 
 whether large or small, the party or union of parties, 
 which is politically, for the time being, the nation, acts 
 as man to man. It may, therefore, be of the greatest 
 importance that the title of the one to temporary empire 
 should be such as commands the conscience of the other. 
 In quiet times the more conventional and superficial 
 considerations for which the loser submits to the winner 
 (as, for instance, the compact to abide by the results of 
 an appeal to numl^ers, which is implied by electoral 
 coaction) are sufficient to insure the good-humour of the 
 game ; but in great crises it may be of vital consequence 
 that the few thinkers who, in all parties, control the 
 many workers, should be able to recognize more radical 
 claims to respect. Now, in actions between individual 
 men, an agent's highest claim to act is, that he acts in his 
 
224 POLITICAL. 
 
 moral right. The highest presumptive evidence that he 
 is in his moral right is, therefore, the best available 
 evidence of his title to act. That the proof of his title to 
 act would not necessarily be proof of his title to act 
 unopposed, may be very true ; but if it immensely in- 
 creases the gravamen and responsibilities of opposition, 
 its political value is nearly as great. Now a nation 
 acting by an organism that represents its efficient durable 
 best, offers the highest presumptive evidence that it acts 
 in its moral right ; and comes therefore to a dissident 
 minority, with the highest available title to empire. 
 
 Man is not an unreasoning creature, unconsciously 
 developing and ignorantly realizing that ' relative good ' 
 by which he will attain perfection. He is a mens sibi con- 
 scia recti, — a self-conscious mind, not only doing and 
 being good, but having ideas of it and of himself in rela- 
 tion to it. These ideas shape his moral right. The 
 mental function concerned with them seems to be that 
 plexus of abilities commonly called ' conscience.' This 
 plexus seems to have two signal characteristics : the 
 aptitude to receive moral ideas al> extra, whether as ab- 
 stractions or as images ; and the i:)ower to secern a mirage 
 of them, when deprived of the natural object. Now edu- 
 cation, anthropology, or howsoever you would name that 
 
PAMPHLET ON REFORM. 225 
 
 branch of embryology, the science of developing-man, 
 shows that in the diagnosis of his mental and moral 
 progress there are some cardinal signs. Among these 
 are : the content by the conscience of the highest notions 
 of human perfection which it can, at the given time, 
 honestly hold : the best conformity thereto which the 
 remainder of his abilities can honestly, consistently, and 
 healthily maintain. Turning from the science to the art 
 of education, we may say, therefore, that these are the 
 most flivouring conditions of his good. A man is most 
 likely to be relatively good and morally right when his 
 powers and qualities are co-existing at their efficient 
 durable best, and to establish that co-existence is to 
 establish the highest probability of that good and right. 
 Therefore, (gi-anting that what is true for that human 
 multiplicity in unity, the individual man, is true for that 
 human multiplicity in unity, the individual nation), a 
 people represented at its efficient durable best, and act- 
 ing by that representation, offers to all challengers, and 
 among others to any dissident minority that for the time 
 may separate itself from the national whole, the highest 
 attainable guarantee that it acts in its moral right, and, 
 therefore, the most authoritative human claim to the 
 respect of moral beings. 
 
 Q 
 
226 POLITICAL. 
 
 7. It offers the best securities to liberty. What is 
 true hberty ? 
 
 The being raid doing of a perfect human being, 
 whether man or nation, furnish the standard of absolute 
 human good ; relative human good is such being and 
 doing as are, for the given creature, in the order of pro- 
 gress towards perfection. True liberty is the freedom for 
 such being and doing. Now if, as we may safely take for 
 granted, in a society of imperfect, perfectible beings, the 
 relation of no two beings to perfection is exactly the 
 same, the good of each must differ from that of his 
 neighbour, and his liberty must therefore differ also. 
 There may be those whose liberty is a freedom nearly 
 absolute, and there may be those, on the other hand, 
 whose truest liberty is little more than the freedom of 
 willing not to be free. But if a million citizens have a 
 million differing liberties, how are they to be harmonized? 
 Organize the milUon, and apply to that complex human 
 unit the organized million what you have found to be 
 valid for that complex human unit the individual man. 
 The million-fold unit may exact from the units which 
 compose it what each of these units may exact from its 
 constituents — ^just so much and no more subordination 
 of the autonomy of each part as is necessary for the 
 autonomy of the whole ; i.e. just so much modification 
 
rAMPHI.F/r ON RKI'ORM. 22/ 
 
 of its perfectiouating order as a whole as may l)e neces- 
 sary to ' perfectionate ' it as a part ; i.e. so much personal 
 sacrifice in each of the milhonas may put the miUion-fold 
 person in the order of its perfection, and may reahzc for 
 it, therefore, the conditions of its moral good. Now we 
 have found that any human being, man or nation, gives 
 the highest presumptive evidence that he is in his per- 
 -fectional order when he shows that he is and does at liis 
 efficient durable best. Therefore, a nation represented 
 at its efficient durable best offers the highest proof that 
 liuman fallibility permits of its right to control the personal 
 liberty of every citizen who is a constituent of that repre- 
 sentation. On such citizens as, not being represented, 
 form part of a minority in such a state, I have already 
 shown that the dominant majority have the highest 
 attainable claims to respect. I think, therefore, I may 
 fairly claim that, whether as regards the ruling majority 
 or the dissentient minority, a nation so represented offers 
 the highest guarantees for true constitutional liberty. 
 Indeed may it not almost be said that a just realization 
 x)f true liberty — i.e. of such relative liberty as is true to a 
 .given point in human progress— is only probable to a 
 nation so organized : because no other nation is likely, as 
 .a nation, to have such ideas of right and wrong as are 
 ^exactly congruous with its place in human history, or, 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 POLITICAL. 
 
 dealing with events as they arise, could so completely 
 embody or concentrate the un\\Titten law existing at the 
 time and place in the given phase of the national con- 
 science ? 
 
 I believe that, in our own day, for example, Ave hardly 
 guess how much such a people might safely simplify 
 legislation, or how modest and sparse might be that well- 
 placed and little-seen police of law, enforcing merely the 
 primary and necessary conditions of all progress, by whose 
 agency the great human concourse of moral liberties might 
 march at all paces, in all measures, (in how many abemi- 
 tions, and to what discordant tunes,) along the mighty 
 highway of poli'.ical freedom. 
 
 8. By representing property— /.r. by establishing a 
 ratio between a man's legislative power and the extent of 
 his liability to legislation— you subserve the principle of 
 self-government, while by ballasting the restlessness 
 of discontent with the salutaiy inertia of those who are 
 satisfied, and exposing the cheap courage which risks the 
 goods of others to the cautious censorship of self-interest, 
 you make change sufficiently laborious to guarantee the 
 safety of progress. And by thus giving a legal existence 
 to the just influence of property, you starve out tliose 
 illegal forms of political corruption by which at present it 
 so balefully asserts itself, and which show such tenacity of 
 
rAMi'HLirr ox rkp'orm. 279 
 
 injurious lite because they have root in one of those 
 liah'-rights which no law dares authorize, but which no 
 large justice can absolutely condemn. At the same time, 
 by representing numbers, intelligence, and character, you 
 insure us against ' Plutocracy ' — which, as has been well 
 said, is of all ' cracies ' the most intolerable to a noble 
 nation, — and provide us with a political body, which, 
 while sufficiently coarse to incorporate, in good healthy 
 workable bulk, the subtle forces of the national soul, and 
 preserve us from the dangers of ' ideal ' politics, shall be 
 true to those organic principles whereby, in all living 
 things whose arena is the earth, the obstruction of matter 
 is informed with the immateriality of life, and finally, 
 opened to the access and control of ideas. 
 
 9. By representing ' character ' and ' intelligence,' you 
 satisfy the cry for enfranchising intelligence and character; 
 but by increasing the electoral value of each man in pro- 
 portion as he is mental, moral, and serviceable, instead 
 of endeavouring to give form and political activity to such 
 abstractions as ' intelligence,' ' virtue,' or any other con- 
 cept, you avoid the danger of creating monsters (for every 
 human function or attribute dissected out from the rest, 
 and invested with separate and active existence is mon- 
 strous) which must sooner or later evince their abnor- 
 mity — as in historical precedents they have evinced 
 
230 POLITICAL. 
 
 it — by preying on the wholesome com])lexities of natural 
 life. 
 
 10. Combining the advantages without the dangers of 
 democracy, oHgarchy, and monarchy, Ave sliall maintain 
 tb.at position by Avhich it seems to be the vocation of our 
 race to assist the education of mankind. Such an in- 
 carnation of an autonomy as, if not the final perfection 
 of the creature, shall be a natural phase of the ordered 
 change that culminates in perfection, sliould be the object 
 of every one Avho, in any department of constructive art, 
 endeavours to follow the Divine process of creation. Any 
 nation realizing its 'efficient durable best' would certainly 
 be such an incarnation; and whatever nation first achieved 
 it would have the right, dc facto, to expect a great formative 
 influence on all the future political changes of the World. 
 If that nation were British, the event Avould be addition- 
 ally significant, because precisely one of those comple- 
 mentary facts that — like a half-discovered planet, guaran- 
 teed, while yet invisible, by the necessities of an extant 
 solar system — complete the consistency of things already 
 established. The more intimately we know the other 
 tribes of civilized men, the more we must perceive that,, 
 though they are likely to excel us in particular functions 
 of human genius, the special conditions of our origin and 
 growth have given the body corporate of the British 
 
PAMPHLET ON REKOR.M. 23! 
 
 jjcople that truth to all manhood, that generic humanity 
 of intense anthropomorphism (as opposed to the dis- 
 embodied notions of speculators, or the characterless 
 indifterentism of weak races), which fit it not only to 
 expound the total i)rpgress of Europe, but to bo the pivot- 
 man, time-keeper, pitch-pipe, root-stem, or by whatever 
 other metaphor from the arts you may express a living and 
 dominating foct to ^^•hich none of them have a precise 
 analogue, of that slow universal transfiguration which is 
 working out the destiny of man. By a self-sustaining, 
 self-adapting, self-registering political organization, which 
 shall amply, freely, and accurately give eftcct to our. 
 compound nationality, we shall best fulfil this splendid 
 office, and best, therefore, insure that permai>ence therein 
 whereby the system of nature rewards all special aptitudes. 
 Qualifying ourselves for this proud position towards the 
 world at large, by measures primarily taken with no 
 ambition to that end, but honestly chosen for their sup- 
 posed subservience to our most direct and personal duties, 
 who knows that we may not unconsciously attain to the 
 mysterious splendour of something even yet more sacred? 
 The day may be far distant, and its supreme glory may 
 not be for these latitudes, when a nation of perfect men 
 and women, perfectly expressing itself, may be, the 
 natioilal Atiyog of social and political truth ; but — as the 
 
232 POLITICAL. 
 
 clean hands and pure heart, even of men still imperfect, 
 have before now dispensed the Divine Spirit — who shall 
 say how soon, or how often, in the intervening future, a 
 noble and Christian people, true, within and without, to 
 its ' efficient durable best,' might utter by its legislation, 
 and exemplify by its practice, a Z't'.r/^?^//// as yet unknown 
 in the modern world — a voice that should prove the 
 hackneyed adage to have been like many another bad 
 proverb, the prophecy of those who, out of due time, 
 perceived as accomplished fact the inevitable though it 
 may be the distant goal. 
 
 Believe me, yours affectionately 
 
 Sydney Dobell. 
 
233 
 
 SOCIAL NOTES. 
 
 LAW. 
 
 The imagination of every time raises for itself a statue, 
 expressed in Law, of a Righteous Man. 
 
 The law of the imperfect is that which in tlie indi- 
 vidual and in the race shall advance it towards the 
 perfect — i.e. which is educational in practice. 
 
 Action is language. Language has a certain value 
 j[>cr se but is chiefly valuable for what it conveys : action 
 is therefore important chiefly as expressing its (not final 
 but) motive cause. In ' supplementing his imperfection ' 
 by Laws the imperfect therefore must deal primarily not 
 with action but Agents. The imperfection to be supple- 
 mented is mental, and action must be controlled by Law 
 Avith a primary view to mental results. Mental functions 
 grow by direct exercise, therefore Law is not tliat which 
 compels a simulacrum of the Perfect, but"^ that which best 
 
234 POLITICAL. 
 
 Stimulates and exercises the Principles of the Perfect irk 
 the Imperfect. 
 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 The fact that the whole humanity is necessary to the 
 human Ideal by no means collides with the desire of 
 progress in the scale of being, but is rather the condition 
 of that progress, and the guarantee against such a de- 
 struction of balance as would make the disorganized 
 progress other than true progress [in the scale of being]. 
 
 No one can perceive (till the case reaches the ex- 
 tremes that -are past cure) how, in a system of qualities 
 so co-ordinated as the human, the advance of the 7^'/ioIe 
 is, by the mutual relations imposed on the constituents 
 of it, the condition of the right advance of every fa rf. 
 
 The various analogies by which the nature of Progress 
 is expressed seem all liable to serious objection : ' de- 
 velopment,' 'evolution,' beg the question: 'growth' is 
 insufficient inasmuch as it may be fflfilled by increase of 
 quantity, whereas all thinkers seem to mean by progress 
 not merely a change from less than man can be to all 
 that he can be, but a change under overruling conditions, 
 such as would formerly have been expressed by the 
 change of a being towards its ' final cause.' 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 23 5 
 
 * Progress,' in which the -world professes to believe^ 
 seems to be a promorphosis or maturation of Mankind : 
 {i.e. the breed of man, not necessarily the 'mankind' of 
 any one era) : and as a corollary from this maturation of 
 Man-the-Species, may be demonstrated the maturation 
 of Man-the-individual, either by a change in existing 
 individuals or in their progeny. 
 
 I am not bound to define progress, except in so 
 far as that, by common consent, the word is to express 
 some change in the Human Being, by which his present 
 condition will be left behind that of the Man that 
 shall be. If this is a change the Mankind and the 
 Men that shall be will differ from the ^Mankind and 
 the Men of now : if, as the world agrees, this change is 
 desirable, we of to-day must be inferior to the future 
 men ; if this maturing change is ever to reach an end 
 the mature Man will be the perfect Man. And as 
 one cannot think defect or excess in absolute Good- 
 ness, Truth, or Beauty, what he perceives will be True, 
 what he is, feels, and does will be Good: /. r. , accord- 
 ing to the sphere of existence or exercise, perfect 
 Science, perfect Virtue, perfect Art. 
 
 But if the perfect Man has but attained to Truth and 
 Goodness it follows that in the inferior states of mankind 
 and men, v>hat man perceives is erroneous, what he is. 
 
236 POLITICAL. 
 
 feels and does, sinful. And as, by common consent, 
 the larger number of men are less mature than the excep- 
 tional few, it would seem that to put power in the hands 
 of the many is to increase sin and falsehood. 
 
 But the majority of men desire to know truly, and 
 desire either that themselves or their neighbours should 
 be good : by common consent, therefore, it is desirable 
 to iiasten ' progress,' and the great problem, therefore, is 
 to find what sorts of sin, error, and ugliness are in that 
 order of which the final change is to goodness. 
 
 As Man the race is a convention of individual men, 
 and as no programme of ' progress ' completes it within 
 the life of our generation, this problem requires an 
 examcii of change, as it occurs in j\Ian the individual, 
 and as it occurs in that succession of individuals, by 
 which the race protends itself through ' Time.' 
 
 To examine how modern notions of government are 
 or may be made consistent with progress notwithstanding 
 the foregoing truths is one great object of this essay.* 
 
 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 There will always be many in a nation whose 
 ' healthy durable best ' is above and below the mean 
 
 ■ On 'the Physiology of Nations,' among notes for which tlie 
 foregoing passages cccur. — Ed. 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 237 
 
 * healthy durable best ' of tlie Nation. These should 
 associate grade by grade. As the developing pro- 
 cess of society elevates a member of each grade 
 beyond the healthy permanent state of his fellows 
 he should pass into the grade above. This developing 
 process, acting on the unequally developable material 
 of minds apparently similar, will create an inequality 
 in the members of each grade long before the limits 
 of corporate unity are passed. These unequal ascend- 
 ing-members are the natural leaders and teachers of 
 their grade : and become afterwards the natural articu- 
 lations of grade with grade. 
 
 [deal Association. A number of ideal minds ex- 
 pressing themselves in action, ideal Societ}-. Association 
 being the necessary mixhauiquc of human develop- 
 ment Christianity as the ideal standard comes in the 
 form of ideal association, not as demanding a specific 
 Christian association but as furnishing the principles 
 of all association. 
 
 REPRESENTATION. 
 
 What is representation ? It is re- presentation — not 
 in the sense of presenting the identical thing — the corpus 
 ipsissiimun — twice over — but, that thing being in one 
 place, it is to present in another place such a copy — an. 
 
23S POLITICAL. 
 
 alter ^i,-,'?— either on a larger or smaller scale, as shall 
 have the same effect upon 3^our mind — shall be to all 
 intents and purposes the thing itself. 
 
 So we use the word in philosophy so in the practical 
 concerns of life. 
 
 HOW SHALL A NATION BE REPRESENTED? 
 
 I. As it is. The representation should be a micro- 
 cosm ; a miniature. But how ' as it is ' — for a nation, 
 like an individual man, not only is, at any given epoch, 
 but has phases of the same substantive existence ? 
 
 Represent its best phase. Not what it may become, 
 not its absolute ideal standard, but the best phase of its 
 given positive degree of development. How is this 
 to be distinguished ? As in the case of the individual. 
 That is the best phasis of the given state of an indi- 
 vidual in which his noblest faculties are in as hio-h 
 and his inferior faculties in as low, a state of activity 
 as is consistent with healthy perisianence : /. e. with 
 the permanence of those relations and the health 
 of the Whole. Any such excitement as cannot be 
 maintained may lead to reaction and ixongruity ; 
 and any under-activity— /. d'. below the healthy standard 
 —may lead to dangerous accumulations of energy or to 
 infective mortification. 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 259 
 
 So with the National Unit. 
 
 Let the noblest elements in a Nation — e.^. its intel- 
 lect, morals, Devotion — have as much influence (and no 
 aiiore) and the lowest — c.^. Labour, (which till guided by 
 ihe others is mere physique) as little (and no less), as 
 fulfils the foregoing Law. 
 
 Let the National forces appear in the political micro- 
 cosm not as they are potentially — /. e. as they would be if 
 roused into the highest action of which each is capable — 
 but as they should be decorously — i.e. in that state of 
 relative excitement which may best conduce to the 
 growth of the absolute National Ideal. What in Nations 
 is 'self-government' subserves the same Law and there- 
 fore national self-government is always ill-favoured by 
 high types of mind, because, the majority being always in 
 a lower grade of development, the national application of 
 principles is inconsistent with their application by those 
 exceptional minds. 
 
 Such national application may also be inconsistent 
 temporarily with apparent National Welfare, but is 
 nevertheless always true to a higher welfare. Self- 
 government therefore on the principles of Ideal Societv 
 is the nearest possible approach to Ideal Society. But 
 self-government, except on those principles, is inevitable 
 degradation. And as in the Individual the ideal prin- 
 
240 POLITICAL. 
 
 ciple should be applied by the best phasis of the then 
 status of him, so in Society it should be applied by a 
 large number of the Society's best Men, selected from 
 the mass and by the mass ad hoc. For these men are to 
 the Individual Society what his best phase is to the indi- 
 vidual Man. But there is this difference — that in the 
 individual Man all the qualities sympathetically share 
 that total attitude which is his ' best phase : ' whereas the 
 lower elements of society are not in rapport with the 
 best. Consequently even under these conditions Law is 
 still untrae, and the only perfect government that by an 
 angelic despotism, which could decide for each member 
 of Society his special application of Principle. 
 
 MAJORITIES. 
 
 Why should Majorities govern ? That they possess 
 more wisdom than the few ? But they have notoriously 
 less. That, right or wrong, wise or foolish, they, as 
 representing a larger modicum of the common will, 
 and a larger portion of the surface Avhereon govern- 
 ment acts, have claim to a proportionate (juauttim of 
 power ? 
 
 They — Majorities — might have such claims, dc jure, 
 if the problem of nation-making were simply to create a 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 24I 
 
 unit that should as nearly as possible resemble the 
 greatest number of its own atoms. 
 
 They might have it, d^ facto, if numbers ahvays ex- 
 pressed strength. 
 
 POLITICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 Political Liberty is freedom to live according to selt- 
 made Law. There can be no absolute Liberty except to 
 an Ideal Nation — i.e. a Nation of ideal Human Beings. 
 Liberty is the freedom to be absolutely spontaneous 
 when spontaneity is infallibly good — i.e. the spontaneity 
 of an ideal man — other freedom from all restrictions is 
 not Liberty. Liberty, therefore, to an imperfect nation 
 is to be found under the Law. Government should 
 prevent one (indi\"idual) from interfering with the other's 
 right practice. 
 
 THREE KINDS OF SOCIAL UNITY. 
 
 The dominant individual associating to itself inferior 
 individuals as accessories of its comprehending individua- 
 lity is Feudalism. 
 
 The many, either equal or of an inequality not 
 arising to obvious supremacy in any one section of the 
 community point to Nationalism. 
 
 Nationalism culminating in a chosen chief wlio 
 
 R 
 
242 POLITICAL. 
 
 Strikes the force downwards in a subtler feudalism — 
 the action of the two systems coinciding tends to Con- 
 stitutionalism.. 
 
 Despotism.' To those for whom Morality is fixed — 
 a system of mental and bodily actions, having relation to 
 external circumstances, and obligatory both in quantity 
 and quality on all men, there can be no reasonable social 
 organism but Despotism, civil and ecclesiastical. 
 
 Monarchy. There is this great advantage (among 
 many others) in a Monarchy that it creates a gradiis of 
 rank (and consequently of social ambitions) irrespective 
 of direct political poiuer. 
 
 Now that the Parliament of England is no longer 
 Christian— and rightly for the nation is not so — there is 
 new need for an ultimate authority, wholly Christian, in 
 which should reside the best sources of public opinion : 
 a sun to radiate that general body politic whose action is 
 through the heterogeneous jDarliament. ^ 
 
 1 Mr. Dobell evidently here alludes to that scheme for ' a new 
 round-table of Christian fellowship and activity,' which is so often 
 spoken of in his earlier letters, and which, as is well known to his 
 intimate friends, always occupied a large place in his thou"-hts : as 
 it has done in the thoughts of other modern Philosophers— notice- 
 able among whom is Dr. Arnold. — Ed. 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 243 
 
 MEMORANDA ON THE THEORY OF OUR TERRESTRIAL 
 LIFE. 
 
 That man or society who has every part of ' apostoHc ' 
 •character but the miraculous powers that alone can make 
 that character permanent in this world among lower 
 natures, is surely not the fittest to secure the progress of 
 good. 
 
 All permanent political or social institutions must 
 have a basis in the common qualities of mankind ; so that 
 no national retrogression and no degradation of the indi- 
 vidual should ever be able to get below that basis ; as 
 in the case of an ethical creed for the individual — a set of 
 moral motives — which must be such that his worst phases 
 cannot get below its control. A Peerage that should 
 be purely an aristocracy cannot be permanent ; but a 
 peerage built on wealth and acres — physical power — is 
 safe in the worst times. 
 
 May it not be shown that all great Reforms arise not 
 out of the good but bad qualities of the Reformers, — God 
 so working by the foolishness of men ? See the Reli- 
 gious Reformation grounded on the riches and wealth 
 and power of the monastic clerg}^, though those things 
 
244 POLITICAL. 
 
 ■were the great barrier against the barbarism of aristo- 
 cratic power, and were the means of enUghtenment as 
 compared with the lower clergy whom the Reformers 
 praised. So in political reform and Bacon's inroad on 
 Scholasticism. 
 
 MEMORANDA CONCERNING SPAIN. 
 
 A Nation should be one great Human Being, com- 
 posed of many individual human beings in such organic 
 relations as, without destroying numbers, render multi- 
 plicity into Unity. This is organic Unity. 
 
 Examining the conditions of organic unity in a smaller 
 and more elementary case — the individual man for 
 instance — we find among the primary principles of its 
 existence this — that its material has throughout certain 
 qualities which, whether in the given instance those of 
 homogeneity or not, agree with those observable in true 
 homogeneity ; the French express part of them when 
 they say connexiic (as distinct from connection), we 
 might still further express them by such a word as synti- 
 themic, but as their common sign is that they are the 
 products of one producing machine — e.g. nail is not flesh,, 
 hair is not nail, flesh is not bene, but nail, flesh, hair and 
 bone are produced by one digestive system — they might 
 perhaps be best indicated by /io;noJ>iVic. 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 245 
 
 Now the peculiarity of the tract of country called 
 Spain is that its inhabitants not only fail to be homopaic 
 but are to a greater extent than those of any other 
 civilized land in Europe Jieicropo^ic. Catalonia is not 
 Spanish but Spain. Not an organic part of the Spanish 
 ■whole, but nails, hair, flesh, bones, brain, heart, total 
 Spain. So of the other provinces. 
 
 Spanish Bigotry is not an intellectual or spiritual 
 preference for Papacy, but for a system that costs so 
 little work and uncertaint}' — Religion apart from morals. 
 Who would resign the comforts of such freedom for a 
 creed that tonsures the conscience and transfers the 
 endless casuistry of the schools to the centre of personal 
 life? 
 
 A Rei^ublic should never be so large that it can by 
 sudden action be dangerous to the rest of-the AVorld, nor 
 so small as not to be powerful if persistent. 
 
 1 think the medieval and post-medieval peoples 
 desired privilege rather than liberty : the Republics 
 being merely cities of nobles in relation to the rest 
 of mankind and desiring and comprehending nothing 
 
246 POLITICAL. 
 
 Other. When, then, and in what germinal form did the 
 first feehng for hberty arise in Modern Europe ? 
 
 It is curious to note that the gi^eat feudal Bishoprics 
 to which Papacy owed so much of that power by which 
 it controlled sovereigns were erected originally by 
 sovereigns as a means of subjugating the people. See, 
 Montesquieu's ' Esprit des Lois.' 
 
 MEMORANDA CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF FLORENCE. 
 
 It should be borne in mind — that the tendency to 
 over-individualism is the danger of small Republics : that 
 this danger had been special in Florence from the 
 special selfishness and turbulence of its citizens : that a 
 great statesman might fairly theorize on these two 
 memoranda with Medicean results ; for an unrecognized 
 Prince, unifying and subordinating by Monarchy without 
 destroying the machinery of individualism would seem, 
 in the given cases, to be the s///e qitCi non of political 
 welfare. Larger causes than Lorenzo had brought the 
 Tuscan people to the state described by Villari (page 
 416) and Lorenzo is to be judged only in relation to such 
 a moral condition of things. Granted the desideratum 
 -to maintain monarchy, without the forms of it, in 
 Elorence, and remembering the selfishness and turbu- 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 247 
 
 lence of its past history, a statesman might require to 
 regulate family alliances in the manner indicated. 
 
 PROPERTY AND COMMUNISM. 
 
 The question between Communism and Property is 
 one of Education. Communism inverts the order of 
 progress and demands the final result of Education. 
 Communism says the communistic exercise of labour for 
 all will develop love and delip-ht. But in the imperfect 
 what is to be the motive, before Love and Delight exist ? 
 Some compulsion. All compulsion acts on egotism. 
 
 Therefore }'ou cultivate egotism as to Property, with- 
 out the counteraction of the delight of giving. 
 
 Ephesians iv. 28 — ' let him labour ' — ' that he may 
 
 have to give' 
 
 2 Thessalonians iii. 8. ' Any man's bread.' 
 
 2 Thessalonians iii. 1 2. ' That with quietness they 
 work and eat their 07un brcad.^ 
 
 I Timothy iii. 4. ' his own house.' 
 
 I Timothy iii. 12. ' their own houses.' 
 
 ARE ' FIELD-SPORTS ' A BENEFIT TO SOCIETY ? 
 
 Before answering this question consider that in every 
 civilized community there must be a vast class of men 
 
248 POLITICAL. 
 
 ivealthy enough to choose their own occupations and 
 3-oung enough or stupid enough to choose only those 
 which please them. Then take some turns on the 
 Pincian Hill, or on the Corso, or in any Spanish 
 Alameda of a non-mountainous district, or on the Chiaja 
 of Naples, or even the Alices or Place of those towns in 
 France where Monsieur has no more fatiguing cJiasse 
 than that of little birds. I don't think that even the 
 cross between Sodom and Sacerdos, which you may see 
 by the score in the Priests' Colleges at walk in the same 
 places, is so hopeless a perversion of Manliness as you 
 may observ^e (again by the score) in the faces (for 
 instance) of young nobles in whom the fine facial lines, 
 inherited from some medieval king-maker, have been 
 emasculated by generations of effeminacy into the 
 record, the expression, and the prophecy of every meaner 
 vice. Then go to any great 'meet' of wealthy Englishmen 
 and note the wholesome hearty courageous human nature, 
 which, whatever their faults, distinguishes the face, make, 
 and bearing of four of such men out of five. 
 
 Cruelty is measured not by the amount of pain in- 
 flicted but by the number of good qualities violated, and 
 bad qualities encouraged, in a man by being the agent of 
 that infliction. 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 2.\^ 
 
 JOURNALISM. 
 
 Literature invoUmtarily divides itself into two kinds ; 
 the one written to be sold, the other written irrespective 
 of sale. In the polar extremes of each kind we shall 
 find the specific difference in its highest exaggeration : 
 and in the e(]uatorial border-land at its zero. The right 
 specimen of each being, of course, to be found where the 
 specific are in just proportion to the generic qualities. 
 
 The kind for sale must, to sell, be in sufficient 
 harmony with the buyers to be agreeable, and (to sell 
 persistently), in such harmony with their conscience and 
 intelligence as to be permanently agreeable. But con • 
 tinually to produce such requires higher intellectual 
 powers than requisite to read it and, on the average, such 
 intellectual po^vers imply a general mental congruity in 
 their possessor and therefore a total superiority. 
 
 The tendency of literature produced by superiors, 
 even though for the agrcnicnt of inferiors, is to represent, 
 intentionally or in\'oluntarily, that superiority. The 
 natural condition, therefore, of a literature written for 
 sale is such a mental superiority to the buyers as shall be 
 consistent with complete rapport. I.E. that the agree- 
 ment must always be greater than the difference. This 
 kind, whether in books or nev/spapers, is Journalism, 
 
250 POLITICAL. 
 
 and we see that it exactly fulfils one of the great condi- 
 tions of education. "WTiat at first sight seemed alarming- 
 and monstrous — that the instruction of the masses should 
 be done by teachers and primers chosen by themselves, 
 proves, therefore, to be one of the most necessary and 
 beneficial processes of Nature, 
 
 QU.iESITUM. 
 
 Something which shall stand to written Fine- Art in 
 the relation of the R.A. Exhibition to painted Fine-Art. 
 Something so far supported by the qualified few as to 
 make it representative of that fine minority, and so 
 crowned by the highest social sanction as to attract the 
 loyal observation of the People. 
 
 To the education of taste, national or individual, two 
 processes, at least, are necessary — nourishment, by exer- 
 cise and assimilation, and development by exercise and 
 stimulus. Our present literary system, which regulates 
 supply entirely by demand, provides for only one of 
 these processes. 
 
 The elevating stimulus to the taste of the less qualified 
 many should proceed from the taste of the more qualified 
 fev.-. Though the taste of those ' it^^ ' cannot personally 
 act upon those ' many ' it may do so through the repre- 
 sentative action of those works of taste which it enjoys^ 
 
SOCIAL NOTES. 25 I 
 
 Those works, always a little in advance of popular taste, 
 v.-ill themselves advance as the taste of the few advances, 
 and, slowly proceeding towards the great standards ot 
 literary excellence, should be followed by the national 
 l)rogress. ^^'hile we publish only what is certain to be 
 profitable to the Publisher — i.e. what is certain to be 
 largely jjopular — the taste of the few can have no such 
 representative in cuiTent Literature. There is this 
 difference between a rare picture and a poem : if there 
 1 e one person in the world with sufficient cash and taste 
 to appreciate it the picture sells, and the sale of it there- 
 fore does not necessarily prove a public up to its level : 
 but a poem can only be published in a book, a book can 
 only be published by editions, and editions cannot sell 
 unless a corresponding troop of readers exist to buy i 
 
MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS 
 
 PROJECTED PLAY 
 
MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PRO- 
 JECTED PLAY, 'THE COUNCIL OF .' 
 
 Introductory Note. — Among Mr, Dobell's papers have 
 been found a number of scattered memoranda and 
 fragments of the Drama originally intended to form a 
 prominent portion of the second part of Balder. It was 
 to have been performed before, or read to, Balder and his 
 friends, whose comments would have been introduced. 
 As the idea of the Play developed, and the materials for 
 its working out accumulated, this intention was abandoned, 
 
 and had ' The Council of ' ever been completed it 
 
 would have been published as a separate book. But it 
 may be well to remember that the purpose of the author 
 was, by means of this play, to represent another side of 
 that ' progress from Doubt to Faith, from Chaos to 
 Order,' one phase of which was shown in Balder, Part 
 the First. There is a memorandum of what is evidently 
 designed to follow the conclusion of the Drama, where 
 
256 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 Balder points out that ' it illustrates the contest between 
 the two poles, — the One and the Many : the only recon- 
 cihation of which is when the One is that One of whom 
 the Many is but the sub-division.' . . . Then, he is 
 asked — ' How came you by this Christianity ? — By vision, 
 by Ecstasy ? ' Balder answers, — ' Much more calmly and 
 surely. I was in tiie very dust, I had found — I will say 
 how another time — -the impotence of Philosophy. I 
 had trusted to the heart and found myself in the act of 
 Murder, 1 found my whole soul crying out for a reve- 
 lation of Truth, and I began to think that what was a 
 necessity of Nature must exist somewhere. The thirsty 
 e3"e sees water. The starving man beholds visible bread, 
 by the instinct of the body for its want.' 
 
 It is thought that there exists much that is of interest 
 and value, not only in the more finished passages of this 
 Play, but among some of the merely fragnjentary materials, 
 appreciation of which may be assisted by outlines (col- 
 lected and condensed from the memoranda) of the 
 scheme, principal characters, and scenes. 
 
 The main idea of the Play is the struggle between the 
 Church of Rome and the Secular Power, in the middle 
 ages. This is represented by an imaginary episode of 
 the long war betv/een Guelf and Ghibelline. The time 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 257 
 
 is about 1440. The scene, a plain in the South of 
 Europe on which stands a city, with a hill-countr)-, 
 liaving Northern geology and temperature, at the back 
 of the city. In this high hill-country stands the almost 
 impregnable castle and village of a Heretic Knight. The 
 whole countr}- forms part of a Duchy which has been 
 surrendered to the suzerainty of the Popes ; but the last 
 Duke, a profligate, has broken the fief, and his daughter, 
 the present Duchess, has not yet renewed it. 
 
 The Archbishop, brother of the Pope and an aged 
 devotee, has retired to a Monastery near the city. At 
 the instance of his ambitious Chaplain, who hopes to rise 
 in the overthrow of existing magnates, he has required 
 the Pope to send a Cardinal to hold a Council, reform 
 the Court, — where a Chancellor-Bishop reigns supreme, — 
 and purge the city and its schools of heresy. The Cardi- 
 nal comes with papal orders to this effect, but specially 
 enjoined, (in consequence of the present jealousy of the 
 Emperors in regard to papal fiefs) to obtain the voluntary 
 re-surrender of the Duchy, if possible, and armed with a 
 Bull to make him Sovereign-Nuncio in case of refusal. 
 
 The action of the play was designed to illustrate — 
 I St. the mistake of the Church of Rome in creating a 
 machinery more powerful for evil in the hands of bad, 
 than for good in the hands of good, men. This was to 
 
 s 
 
258 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 be shown by the contest bet\veen the Cardinal and the 
 Chancellor and the eventual triumph of the Chancellor. 
 2nd. — The Mistake of the Church of Rome in creating a 
 hierarchy of 'infallible' superiors to legislate for, and 
 govern, general mankind. This was to be shown by the 
 conflict between the Cardinal and the Philosopher, ^ a 
 Teacher of great influence and authority in the City, 
 v/hereby would be brought out the inconsistency of such 
 hierarchies with the true order of human growth and 
 progress, which requires j-^/^-government in vicAv of ideal 
 principles. 
 
 The Cardinal shows the best Roman Catholic theorv, 
 seen from the Catholic stand-point. The Chancellor 
 shows the inherent vices of that theory. The Philosopher 
 illustrates the essential warfare between Romanism and 
 'Knowledge ; as Heretica shows the warfare between it 
 and Truth. Other characters show various anti-papal 
 principles, including the involuntary antagonisms of 
 Science. 
 
 The Cardinal is noble and chivalrous ; gentle and 
 humble : losing himself in the being of the Church. 
 
 ^ No names had been decided on for any of the characters in 
 the play. Throughout the Memoranda they are designated in this 
 way. ' Forza ' and 'Heretica' would seem only temporary sub- 
 stitutes for names ultimately to be chosen. 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 259 
 
 But, as he is the Church, tlic Church on great occasions 
 becomes Jdm, and he speaks with her individuahty. 
 
 The Chancellor is wily, subtle, cynical, absolutely 
 unscrupulous ; — the type of clever, base, successful 
 worldliness. 
 
 The old Archbishop, a fierce imbecile, the victim of 
 his young and able Chaplain, is an illustration of the 
 devotee Monk; his morbid veneration giving rise to 
 endless and agonizing casuistries. The significant feature 
 of his character is Worship of Authority. 
 
 His Chaplain represents Ambition fighting its way 
 from the ranks ; glorying in the Church as the via sacra 
 for peasant to throne. 
 
 The Heretic Knight appears to be the embodiment 
 of the brave, wise, kindly soldier. 
 
 Heretica, the gouvernante of the Knight's daughter, 
 speaks for pure Christianity — the Religion of Love. 
 
 The Philosopher represents that indomitable spirit 
 of struggle and search for Truth, on which the higher 
 progress of the world depends, and he is therefore equally 
 antagonistic to the noble and spiritually-minded Cardinal 
 and to the corrupt and scheming Chancellor. 
 
 The first scene passes at the frontier of the Duch . 
 An escort of soldiers has been sent to meet the Cardinal, 
 
 S2 
 
2 6o MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 and while awaiting his arrival talk among themselves of 
 the Council, &c. • 
 
 The Cardinal and his young Secretary enter. — 
 Softened by memories, the Cardinal speaks in tender 
 confidence — thus indicating his paternal affection for his 
 devoted companion — of his own early youth and his lost 
 love. He tells the story of his loss. He, the studenf 
 son of a vassal, had raised himself to scholastic honours : 
 
 she, the only daughter of Count who had sided with 
 
 the serfs in a peasant war. War breaking out, the 
 student left his College to lead the peasants. They were 
 defeated. Her father's castle was stormed by the army 
 of the enraged nobles. The Tover, wounded, lying- 
 helpless within sight of the castle, saw Father, Mother, 
 Daughter, brought forth for instant execution. A faithful' 
 follower stole him, senseless, from the field and reported 
 him slain. He, recovering strength, sought a distant 
 country, concealed his name, now under the ban of 
 attainder, and entered the Church. He has not re- 
 entered that country till now, when he comes as a Prince 
 over its nobles. 
 
 When alone, the Cardinal, in apostrophe to his early 
 love shows how she is and has been, though ' dead,' an 
 abiding presence with him, and beseeches her whose 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 26 1 
 
 exquisite womanhood has been so long his proxy with 
 the virgin Perfection, to interpose for him constantly 
 (luring the great Task to which he is going. 
 
 ' I shone on her and, chaster than the moon, 
 She gave me back my light.' 
 
 Scene in Palace reception room. Nobles talking ot 
 the Cardinal and his INIission, the precise object of which 
 is yet unknown. Chancellor talking with Nobles subtly 
 suggests objects personal to each interlocutor as 
 menaced by the Mission. Cardinal enters and is 
 formally welcomed by Duchess, Chancellor and Nobles. 
 He declines the cold offer of the Duchess to sit by her, 
 saying that he must learn to know his colleagues — and 
 walks round the crowded room, pausing by each knot of 
 talkers and joining the argument. Passing by the 
 Duchess he is heard to say — 
 
 ' Quale manus addunt ebori decus, 
 Little th' old Roman wot whereof he spake.' — 
 
 She is pleased and sends fresh invitation to him ; he 
 sits in her circle and converses of feasting, dress, beauty, 
 &c. 
 
 Various remarks from knots of observers round the 
 room. 
 
262 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAV. 
 
 Chancellor (?) ' My Lord of 
 
 Riding his Pegasus, the chiirchly palfrey 
 Of my poor \\it capered to see him prance 
 As thus — nay, my good lord, as the fair jewel 
 Upon her royal breast, were there a touch 
 So blest as might essay it, would be found 
 To have drawn a vital joy from the warm white 
 It lies on, seems it not unto your eye 
 That yon poor toy doth milk a human light 
 From the rich hand that holds it ? ' 
 
 Scene in Casde of Heretic Knight. It is his 
 daughter's wedding day and he is surrounded by friends 
 and guests in the banqueting hall. Entrance of Heretica, 
 Avho tells him the Bride awaits his blessing and last 
 words. He suggests to each friend some amusement to 
 his taste — and shows to the philosopher a new improve- 
 ment in the Block-book which lies on the table, an 
 invention of one of the friends. Philosopher and 
 Heretica are left alone, and converse on the subject of 
 the Cardinal's mission. Philosopher tells her that tlie 
 Cardinal is to attend his next lecture in person. Shall 
 he give one that is negatively untrue to his real beliefs, 
 or one that embodies them ? He sets forth the whole 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 263 
 
 question of tests, &c., and asks Heretica's feeling. SIio 
 urges truths ■without ostentation or reserve. He promises 
 it. Then they speak of the Papacy and the intrinsic 
 antagonism between it and knowledge. He speaks of 
 his own outgrowing of the monastic forms ; and instances 
 the various modes in which the mind of tlie devotee 
 receives the jianie of God, whether s)-llabhng it, in 
 silence, or shutting all the eyes of the soul to fed it pass 
 as a spirit ; — of the festering of the galled brain ; of 
 yearnings towards a new devotion. They turn to Plato, 
 to explain her difficulty in a passage. Thence he brings 
 in theory of Ideals and the Democratic inferences there- 
 from. Thence — illustrating tlie varieties of human mind 
 in its gradations towards the ideal — to a system of 
 Divine Physiology. Thence to the consequent sacred- 
 ness of science, and — as consequent on this Divine 
 nature of the Universe, its progressive character, which 
 is inconsistent witli the stereotyped system of a Papal 
 Church. Heretica opposes to his metaphysics her own 
 simple faith. She is content to know the Beginning and 
 the End, — God and the sensible world. That is suffi- 
 cient for her. She seeks not to find out. Among the 
 wonderful and glorious non-intelligible, there is a 
 wonderful and glorious intelligible — Man. She is sure 
 that God will speak to her through that which can speak. 
 
264 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 Asked what is God she answers ' Love/ Certain of the 
 principle she is at rest as to its apphcation. The Philo- 
 sopher tries to show the essential agreement of his philo- 
 sophy — e.g. that the Universe in its beauty is Love 
 visible ; not a creature, but an action ; the Aoyoc is 
 Mankind. 
 
 Scene between Chancellor and Baron Forza, one ot 
 the most powerful nobles about the Court. The Chan- 
 cellor tells Forza that the chief object of the Cardinal's 
 jVIission is against t/icm ; that whoever escapes, they are 
 both too conspicuous for pardon. Pie gives evidence of 
 this which convinces the Baron, who asks what must be 
 done in defence, as time presses. The Chancellor 
 answers, for the present, nothing, — but find opportunity 
 for action. They two, wit and strength, must provide 
 the element most favourable to them— chaos and com- 
 motion. ' The powers of the world are Nature's ; we use 
 them and guide them. If the present order remains we 
 are unnecessary, but bring Chaos, and society cannot do 
 without us. The Cardinal, before the day of the Council 
 which is to try 71s, has appointed a day for the trial of 
 sundry small offenders. We must provide him with such 
 as shall turn the world upside down. V('i\\ any dare 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 265 
 
 toucli US till we have set it on its legs again ? And 
 before then, — what not ? ' 
 
 For the present, therefore, his object is to postpone 
 the meeting of the Council. Now, there is a band of 
 heretics among the liills so strong in numbers and in 
 popularity that the Church has not yet touched them, 
 nor the Knight, their beloved Chief. The Baron must 
 cause this Chief to be taken prisoner, ' by command of 
 the Cardinal ; ' seizing him in the midst of his retainers, 
 whose revenge will probably be fatal to the Cardinal. 
 Forza reminds the Chancellor of the Heretic Knight's 
 friend, the Philosopher, who is adored by the wild 
 students of the City, and asks if he, too, shall be taken ? 
 The Chancellor replies that nothing must be done against 
 him yet, as he is in league with a faction of Republican 
 artizans whom certain Plorentines have infected. 
 
 Baron. — ' So much the better! They will be raised 
 against the Cardinal, and can afterwards be crushed.' 
 
 Chancclhn-. — ' No ; the peasantry of the country are 
 too much in the power of their Lords to be useful to the 
 Church, but it is to the canailie of towns t>at the Church 
 must look for her future support. It is by creating a 
 new set of burgher-dignitaries, chosen by this civic mob 
 (a mob of freemen, not serfs) and gradually encouraging 
 this new order till it supplants that of the nobles, that 
 
2 66 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAV. 
 
 the Church can extend and keep her power. This 
 canaille must ahvays be in the hands of the Priests and 
 its voice, therefore, however apparently free, will be the 
 voice of the Church. But these boors can make no 
 distinction. Their whole being, beyond the born brute, 
 is a kind of canine habit. Therefore, if they once bark 
 at the Priesthood, our rule is over. Cardinal or Chan- 
 cellor is but Priest in their eyes, and to attack one is to 
 break loose from all. We must therefore use them, \mt 
 not in this way. How I see not yet, but shall see.' 
 
 Meanwhile, there must be some certain way of 
 knowing, in advance, the movements of the enemy. 
 The complicity of the new Chaplain must be secured. 
 Forza exclaims that it is he who has been the very means 
 of bringing about the Cardinal's Mission. The Chan- 
 cellor replies, he will be the less suspected. 
 
 The chivalrous Cardinal sends his Chaplain to the 
 Chancellor, with the items of accusation against him. 
 The Chancellor thus obtains the desired opportunity of 
 suborning the Chaplain,— who, putting all the various 
 temptations together on one side, and the chance of the 
 Cardinal's failure on the other, concludes that a game 
 may be played with both sides, by which in either event 
 he must win. IMeditates to himself, after the interview, 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 267 
 
 somewhat thus : — 'The wise man says, be prepared for 
 any fate. I say, be prepared for thy friend's fate also : 
 for how saith the Scripture, — " Do unto others," &c., if 
 "as they should do unto you," then surely as you would 
 do to yourself. Ergo, as I prepare for my own fate, I 
 prepare for my INIaster's. And surely it were ingratitude 
 to so good a Master to suffer his misfortunes to do me 
 harm.' 
 
 Battle scene. 
 
 FRAGMENT OF CAVALRY SONG. 
 
 The merry sun shines, the merry birds sing, 
 
 The merry leaves dance as we go; 
 Blow, trumpets, blow, to the clump, clamp, cling, 
 
 Blow, jolly tmmpets, blow ! 
 
 Heretic Knight addresses his men. — 'I am an old 
 man; who knows but in thrashing this hare-brain bounds- 
 breaker I may over-do myself and need to sleep? Take 
 my will to my son. If we are beaten you need say 
 nothing, the lands will go to Mother Church, and you 
 know what a landlady she is, by many a near example. 
 But tell him, if we conquer, — as, with God's help I 
 doubt not we shall, — that I hold every widow and 
 orphan made among us this day as children of the house. 
 
268 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 He shall be next of kin to every one of them. This is 
 
 my last testament made before all men. Now then ; 
 
 for Victory.' He goes on to speak scornfully of the 
 enemy. ' This Monster that moves up against us,— has 
 it a mouth like Hell ? does it puff with the bellows of 
 tempests ? will it drown us in the red rivers of its veins ? 
 The heart on't is no bigger than a man's ' . . . . Just 
 before the engagement, the Knight goes down his line of 
 adherents, speaking a word to each, calling to mind 
 some old deed of valour, some benefit given or received, 
 some trait of family story &c., &c. 
 
 [In the engagement that follows. Baron Forza is 
 killed— and the remainder of the Chancellor's schemes 
 connected with him fall to the ground.] 
 
 The Duchess, who has fallen in love with the Cardi- 
 nal, visits him, and, in royally equivocal language 
 acquaints him with her fancy. He takes the innocent 
 side of the equivoque, and she, puzzled, leaves him with 
 invitation to sup with her and to confess her. During 
 'Confession' Scene, he shows this wrathful, despotic Juno, 
 who professes to despise Duty, Obedience, and Virtue, that 
 her professions are false— that it is a Jove to master and 
 humble her whom she really needs. She admits this ; and 
 entreats him to be that Jove. He answers her so nobly— at 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 269 
 
 first with lofty indignation, and afterwards, in tender and 
 compassionate exhortation — leading her by questions, 
 through the memories of Child, Maiden, early love — that 
 he awes her, and then subdues her to a love that takes 
 the forni of penitence. [This, however, is but a transient 
 state of mind with her, and, later on, her vanity and c\il 
 passions are so artfully played on, directly and indirectly, 
 by the Chancellor, as to turn her so-called love to 
 a bitter and revengeful hatred, which is made one 
 of the many means Avhereby he secretly attacks the 
 Cardinal.] 
 
 The Trial Scene. "When the Heretic Knight is 
 brought before him, the Cardinal treats him with the 
 honour and consideration due to his years and bearing, 
 and to give him time to collect his thoughts for the 
 conflict of wits that must ensue, calls on the next case. 
 — Heretica enters, accompanied by her pupil, the 
 Knight's daughter, to whom she is talking with lofty 
 cheerfulness and courage. During the preliminaries of 
 her trial the Cardinal is quite silent. When she is called 
 on to address the Court, she begins to speak collectedly, 
 till after steadfastly regarding the Cardinal, she suddenly 
 breaks off — shrieks and turns away with a passionate 
 prayer to God to spare her from one last, worst agony. 
 
270 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 Thus madly crying out, she sinks insensible. The 
 Cardinal is silent, and remains silent while they bear her 
 away. After an interval, he gives orders that she shall be 
 brought in again, before the rising of the Court, and 
 commands that meanwhile the other cases shall proceed. 
 In judging them, he displays exquisite and unnecessary 
 ingenuity and hair-splitting subtlety of intellect, keen and 
 pitiless hardness, — alternating Avith curious mistakes and 
 momentary misapprehensions. When this change is 
 apparent in the Cardinal, the Chancellor instantly causes 
 the Philosopher and others who have escaped lightly 
 earlier in the day, to be re-arraigned, and so condemned. 
 The Prosecutor then, in a speech, accuses the Heretic 
 Knight, who requests to be assigned learned assistance. 
 The Cardinal assigns him his Chaplain, who makes a 
 defence of voluble casuistry. The Knight, interrupting, 
 addresses the Cardinal, disclaiming all such subtleties; and 
 himself replies to the accusation in a simple, noble speech, 
 conveying his own plain theory of Religion as distinct 
 from Philosophy, and giving Scripture for his authority. 
 He denies the Church as the medium of the Holy ^Spirit; 
 illustrating his view of the case by describing the sand 
 made vitreous, transparent and prismatic by fire, by 
 which change the opaque sand transmits and reflects the 
 light which was always round it, but wherewith its own 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN, 27 I 
 
 nature was incompatible ; pointing out that the sand has 
 risen in. the order of things, and but for having so risen, 
 the light could not have been within it and through it. 
 Yet sand and glass are not the light. Further he says 
 that 'the day may come when every jNIan shall be a 
 priest, and the Monarchs of the world shall be judged by 
 the Universal Church of Mankind.' 
 
 The Cardinal, in giving judgment, first demolishes 
 the Chaplain's defence by exposing its logical errors, then 
 with cold loftiness he answers the Knight, denouncing 
 the pursuit of 7)-///// and stating the mevitably evil 
 future results thereof Condemns him. 
 
 Heretica is then brought in again. During the pause 
 of expectation before her re-appearance, one of the spec- 
 tators asking another who she is, is answered that men 
 -whisper her to be the daughter of the good Count — the 
 Avell-remembered protector of the serfs. That she was 
 supposed to be killed, with her father and mother, when 
 their castle was taken and destroyed, but that though 
 carried thence, apparently dead, to the grave shown to 
 this day, as hers — she had been restored to life, and had 
 ever since been sheltered and protected in the family of 
 the Heretic Knight to whose daughtei she became 
 gouvcrnantc and friend. 
 
 Heretica is very calm and self-possessed. She 
 
272 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 speaks ; calling on the Cardinal to do what he knows to 
 be his duty, and showing how the warfare between them 
 must be to the death. He answers. They each address 
 the other in words enigmatical to the audience but com- 
 prehensible to themselves, and conveying the certainty 
 of doom. Then he condemns her. 
 
 Fresh spectators enter, and question — ' Which is the 
 Cardinal ? ' They are told. ' What ! Yonder grey- 
 haired man ? ' ' Grey-haired ! ' The fact is evident, 
 and gradually it circulates through the Court, and 
 murmurs of astonishment are heard. The Cardinal 
 inquires the reason of these murmurs and presently learns 
 wherefore all eyes are fixed on him in such amazement. 
 He rises with calm dignity and tells the wonderers that 
 since this great thing has happened even in their sight, 
 they should praise God for thus vouchsafing to him who 
 — young as to earthly years — comes as a Judge among 
 them, this sudden and visible crown of reverence and 
 authorit}'. 
 
 The populace recognize the Miracle, and the Court 
 rises. 
 
 After the Trial Scene, a brief interview takes place 
 between the Chaplain and Secretary, in which the former 
 says that Heretica has established her claim to the cha- 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 273 
 
 racter of Sorceress which popular report gives her, since 
 she evidently possesses the power of turning men's 
 hearts at her will, and has most certainly exercised this 
 power upon the Cardinal. 
 
 The Secretary, believing this and alarmed for his 
 master, is summoned to that master's presence. — The 
 Cardinal after many terrible hours of meditation has 
 resolved to make one supreme effort to save Heretica 
 from the destruction both bodily and spiritual which he 
 believes to be imminent. He will see her ; he will visit 
 her in her prison ; not as Prince and Judge, but disguised 
 in the dress of his youth, that he may appeal to her with 
 sacred memories of the look, the voice, the touch of 
 other times, and thus have power to change and save 
 her. He therefore bids the Secretary procure such a 
 disguise, and further charges him to go to the Governor 
 of the Castle, and, showing the official seal, give notice 
 that an old friend of Heretica's is to be admitted to 
 her cell, under authority of the Cardinal. 
 
 The Secretary goes to the Governor, but beseeches 
 him to refuse admission, notwithstanding the Cardinal's 
 order, to the mask who will that night come to see 
 Heretica, — on the ground of her well-known sorceries, and 
 his (the Secretary's) solicitude for the welfare of the masked 
 visitor. The Governor carelessly declines to interfere, and 
 
 T 
 
2 74 MEJiIORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 liie Other entreats with no effect, till at last, growing des- 
 perate, he lets fall the fact that it is a life of the utmost 
 value which is about to be exposed to these dangerous 
 arts. The Governor still expresses himself content 
 with the Cardinal's authority, as sufficient to save him 
 from all consequences. The Secretary, in final despera- 
 tion, confesses that the intending visitor to Heretica is. 
 the Cardinal himself. The Governor is aroused, and 
 perceives the situation. Like all the other existing 
 magnates of the Duchy, he is an enemy to the Cardinal 
 and his mission of reform, and he now bids the Secretary 
 wait while he considers, — and straightway goes to the 
 Chancellor, who is at that moment in consultation vrith 
 the Chaplain in another part of the Castle. The strange 
 intelhgence brought by the Governor is hailed by them 
 as a certain assistance to their machinations against the 
 Cardinal. The Chancellor orders that the Secretary 
 shall be blindfolded and brought before him, and he 
 himself questions him. The Secretary, almost frantic 
 Avith anxiety and fear, is an easy prey to this astute and 
 ' wily questioner, who soon draws from him all he needs 
 to know. Affecting disbelief, he asks what motive can 
 be assigned for the Cardinal's visit to Heretica ? The 
 Secretary answers, — he loves her. But this is scouted as 
 being beyond all reason. How can he love her whom 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN, 275 
 
 he never saw till she was placed before him on her trial ? 
 The Secretary declares that she is an Enchantress, and 
 
 has assumed the form of the good Count 's daugliter, 
 
 the Cardinal's early love, in order to bewitch and to destroy 
 !him. The Cliancellor is not to be beguiled by such 
 tales, and threatens his victim vv-ith flagellation — then 
 and there. The Secretary, in a passion of wild terror, 
 .and as a last resource, shows the Seal. The Chancellor 
 takes it for a moment, and with it affixes seal to a blank 
 parchment. Then restoring it, he orders the Secretary 
 to be released, having established his authority, and 
 promising to grant what he requires. The blind-folded 
 Secretary is taken away, therefore, still trembling, but 
 Tiappy ; and the Chancellor and Chaplain congratulate 
 one another. Directions are given that the mask is to 
 be admitted to Heretica's cell. This love-passage will 
 appeal to the Archbishop's ruling idea, and he must be 
 got to sign a letter to the Pope demanding the degrada- 
 tion of the Cardinal. Upon the parchment with the 
 Ducal Seal, another letter to the Pope must be written, 
 threatening to make over the Duchy to the Anti-pope 
 imless the Chancellor is appointed Nuncio in place of 
 the Cardinal. Within an hour must be provided the 
 swiftest horse and strongest man to ride for life or death 
 with these letters, and bring the answers back. The 
 
 T 2 
 
2-/6 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 Chaplain asks who shall be chosen for this momentous- 
 charge, and how best can they arrange for the needful 
 speed and security. The Chancellor rebukes him for his 
 folly in wasting thought on matters whereon others can be 
 made to think. The true wisdom of affairs is tO' 
 apply the motive power to machinery already made by 
 Nature. The Heretic Knight's son-in-law is, with his 
 Bride, under sentence to be burned. First pardon him,, 
 lest his selfishness get the better when the chance of 
 escape occurs, and then promise that if he can bring back 
 the answering letters from the Pope by a certain hour, his 
 Bride shall also be pardoned and set free. Nature will 
 do miracles of wit and labour, pricked by such spurs. 
 
 ' Cheer up my Chaplain — Bishop — what you will. 
 Now, for a wink, the world's ungoverned, 
 And I'll be Jove on't. . . . 
 
 '. . . . His {the CardinaVs) good saint nods ; 
 There is a gap in Fortune, and our wills 
 Must fill it ere he wakes.' 
 
 When the Cardinal returns from the interview with 
 Heretica, the Secretary— hoping to hear tliat no such 
 interview has taken place— eagerly asks if it has been 
 successful. The Cardinal answers mystically by a re- 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 277 
 
 ference to a passage from St. Augustine in \vhicli St. 
 Augustine speaks of the soul of St. Jerome as ha\'ing 
 appeared to him with ' grat lite and sweet savours and 
 words of swech comfort as St. Augustine would never 
 write,' but says he shall see her once again — who can tell 
 what Grace in the meantime may have done with his words? 
 
 [That this second interview did not take place we 
 learn from a memorandum which states tliat the Cardinal, 
 on his way to open the Council, meets the crowd return- 
 ing from the burning of Hcretica, which, at her own re- 
 quest, has taken place a day before the appointed time. 
 The reason of this, doubtless, Heretica's desire to spare 
 the Cardinal any further mental conflict. 
 
 The Cardinal, to gain breathing time, halts at the 
 shrine of the Madonna of .] 
 
 Last Scenes. — The Council, on the day of the 
 Chancellor's trial. Notwithstanding all efforts at further 
 postponement, the day and hour have arrived, before any 
 sign of the approach of the Envoy returning with letters 
 from the Pope. In the outer chamber there is a throng of 
 tsoldiers, guards and people — eager to hear what goes on 
 within the great Hall of the Council. ]\Iessengers come 
 in and pass out again, dropping items of news, — how the 
 Cardinal's speech of accusation proceeds, — how it is 
 
27S MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY, 
 
 received. From the movement, excitement, confusion, 
 and clash of voices of all this, the scene changes to the 
 grand Hall, where in solemn state and magnificence the 
 Council sits. The Cardinal having, at the beginning,. 
 stated that the disasters of the Duchy have chiefly arisen 
 from the incapacitating illness of the Archbishop, has 
 caused an empty chair, representing the absent Ecclesi- 
 astical Ruler, to be placed beside that of the Duchess, 
 while he himself takes his place in one of the side semi- 
 circles. Then, in a speech designed to rouse the Council 
 and stimulate it to its highest sense of justice, he states 
 the heads of the various charges against the Chancellor 
 which are to be proved by the evidence that is to follow. 
 Finally, he tells them that ' of great misfortunes there are 
 two kinds, — one, where the heart knoweth its own bitter- 
 ness, and the stranger doth not intermeddle therewith : 
 the other , v,'here the personal injury is also felt in its 
 rebound from the external world. Among states, these 
 are ensampled, the first, by such evils as are compatible 
 with respect abroad ; the second, by those which, like the 
 sores of Lazarus, attract the flies and dogs of foreign injury 
 and contempt. The wicked in high places are infallible 
 causes thereof. Therefore, in coming to purge your state 
 from this internal ill which is attracting so swarming an 
 outer exasperation, I am acting, not as a foreign protector,. 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 279 
 
 but as a humble and patriotic citizen. I am certain of 
 your hearty assistance in determining the Truth of the 
 things which witnesses shall depose. But, first, I v/ill 
 call on the accused to say whether he be content to be 
 judged by you.' 
 
 The Chancellor rises. [During his speech, IVIessengers 
 keep coming to him with whispered tidings,^ — ist. that 
 his Envoy is known, by signal, to be five miles off. 
 2nd. Crossing the ford, two miles off. 3rd. Carried 
 away by the cuirent. 4th. Escaped from the river lower 
 down, and again riding towards the city. 5th. Riding 
 lip the road to the city gate. 6th. At the gate. 7th. In 
 the street. 8th. At the great door of entrajice to the 
 Council Hall] As he begins, ist Messenger enters. He 
 bursts into an eulogium on the irresistible power of oratory, 
 and declares that though innocent of the things charged 
 against him, he wishes to be condemned, and will then do 
 all in his power by disclosing his knowledge of internal 
 affairs, to assist in the purification of the state. The 
 Cardinal, answering what he says of oratory, warns the 
 Council that there are two kinds of orators, one, by whom 
 it is well to be guided, who by his eloquence raises the 
 minds of his audience to their highest and noblest phasis ; 
 the other, against whom it is needful to be on guard, who 
 by subtle appeal to lower interests and passions would 
 
28o iSIEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 move his judges against their conscience. The Chan- 
 cellor resumes : He is sure that they, his judges, who 
 have so intimately shared in his past life, who have so 
 constantly acted with him in his official career, are con- 
 vinced against him. It is a terrible and curious fact that 
 sentence on an accused is not passed by the witnesses 
 against him, nor by his crimes, but by the judges who are 
 bound by no necessity to judge according to the evidence. 
 He has no hope, therefore. Nay, such is the power of 
 orator)', he has no care. Though innocent of everything 
 laid to his charge, his soul is convinced of sin. He is 
 weary of life and of himself. True, he is guiltless of the 
 crimes attributed to him, but there are other evil doings 
 heavy on his soul. He will make no defence. Condemn 
 him. The sentence will be unjust, quoad t\\Q. accusations, 
 but he will engage to justify it ; for he swears, that before 
 he leaves this tribunal for the cloister, he will disgorge his 
 memory of every unrighteousness, small and great. [Here, 
 there is some perceptible movement among certain 
 Bishops and Barons of the Council.] He is happy in 
 that some of his judges know so intimately the affairs of 
 the state, and how far corruption exists. If, in their 
 judgment, his fall can assist in the needful purgation, he 
 will rejoice to be the sacrifice ; nay, nothing that his 
 knowledge and experience can reveal shall be wanting 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 251 
 
 to assist so holy a work. Moreover, he could rejoice in 
 his own fall, from a higher than any temporal considera- 
 tion. It is held by some, to whose learning and ability 
 he humbly defers — that a time shall come in which the 
 Church will dominate the whole world, and temporal 
 princes be reduced to the mere sceptres in the hand of 
 ecclesiastical power. If, by this forcible assumption of 
 sovereign rights and the transfer of himself from the steps 
 of his sovereign's throne to the footstool of the Papal 
 Legate, he can be made a precedent whose glorious 
 .successions shall be a scala sanda to that Heaven to 
 which good churchmen aspire, he will be ready to bless 
 the sacrificial hand. . . . There is another possible 
 .benefit to the community of which he may be the un- 
 worthy instrument. It is held by some that the cities 
 are rising into dangerous prosperity and power, — that an 
 unordained and popular aristocracy is growing more and 
 more formidable. He confesses to have assisted towards 
 this — by measiu'es he has introduced or countenanced. 
 In his flill, the opposite party will perhaps gain a victory 
 that may compensate for the evil to which he has been 
 the unintentional accessory. 
 
 Thus, the Chancellor appeals alternately to each 
 class represented by the different IMembers of the 
 •Council. Finally, he dilates on the rapture which he, as 
 
282 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 a churchman, will feel in the elevation of the Church para- 
 mount. But there is one inevitable condition, — it must 
 be with the assent of all other classes. If, by their vote 
 to-day, they show their submission, how happy is he to 
 be the occasion thereof ! 
 
 The Duchess, perceiving the effect on the Council of 
 his speech, here interrupts with praise of the Chancellor 
 for his humility, and saying that, as yet, he is innocent 
 in the eyes of his judges, she calls him to the chair of 
 honour at her side. He deprecates ; but several voices 
 call on him to go up. Turning to the Council, he humbly 
 beseeches them not to let personal feelings interfere with 
 their conviction as to his deserts ; not to remember 
 (enumerating them) his services to the state. With these 
 great charges hanging over him he cannot ascend to that 
 seat. He knows the pain it must be to them to formu- 
 larize a painful verdict. He will give them no such pain. 
 Let him but remain in the place of the accused, and he 
 will accept it as a silent decision against him. 
 
 There are cries on all sides that he shall go up. 
 After more deprecation and feigned reluctance, [during 
 this 2nd Messenger enters,] he mounts the steps. 
 
 The Cardinal commands him to descend. He re- 
 mains. The Cardinal calls on one after the other of 
 those nobles on whom he had specially relied, to aid him 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 283 
 
 in the exercise of his rightful authority. One after the 
 other excuses himself. 
 
 The Cardinal then causes the Bill to be read by 
 which he is appointed Sovereign-Nuncio, and him- 
 self ascends to the vacant chair, calling on the Duchess 
 to order the removal of the Chancellor. On refusal, lie 
 threatens instant excommunication. The Chancellor 
 whispers to the Duchess that all depends on gaining 
 time — even one half hour. The Duchess demands that 
 if she is to be excommunicated it shall be in due form. 
 The Cardinal orders that the bells of interdict shall be 
 sounded, and proceeds to the ceremonies preparatory to 
 her excommunication. At the commencement of these 
 ceremonies the 3rd Messenger enters, announcmg that the 
 Envoy has been carried away by the current. The Chan- 
 cellor tells the Chaplain that all is lost miless the mob of 
 students, &c., is let in before the excommunication is 
 completed. 
 
 The ceremonies continue ; during which, in rapid 
 succession, enter the fourth and other messengers. On 
 the arrival of the eighth bearing the Papal letters, the 
 Chancellor shouts to the priests to hold — on peril of 
 their souls ! — and unfolds a heavy scroll before the Car- 
 dinal, with a torrent of invective ordering him to descend. 
 A Herald proclaims the Chancellor sovereign-nuncio. 
 
284 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 The Cardinal denounces the whole as a deceit of the 
 adversary ; shows that it is incredible, after being sent 
 especially to degrade the Chancellor, that he, the Chan- 
 cellor, should be thus exalted over him, and declares that 
 only force shall remove him from that chair. 
 
 Guards, at the command of the Chancellor, rudely 
 drag the Cardinal down, and disrobe him. Breaking 
 from them, he turns to the Council and in solemn protest 
 declares that nothing can take those thunders from his 
 hands which he holds as the Vicegerent of God, — de- 
 scribes how invisible powers are following the beck of 
 his naked finger .... 
 
 Duchess — to an attendant — * Here, fellow — take my 
 shoe and strike the blasphemer on the mouth. I would 
 I were a man to tread him in mine own person.' 
 
 The Chancellor, who is now invested with the robe 
 of office, rises and tells the Cardinal he must learn that 
 his boasted power will not so much as protect his lips 
 from retribution. Then, in a few stately words, he ad- 
 dresses the Council, saying that the Cardinal had already 
 told them it was a Court convened for great jjurposes, 
 and that the event would justify it, — but otherwise than 
 he supposed. The criminal is great indeed, — so great 
 that an hour since he held in his hand all the forces of 
 the Universe. Returning on the Cardinal, he passes 
 
PLAN AND DESIGN. 285 
 
 rapidly overall the charges against him, culminating in tliat 
 of Heresy, — Heresy in him who had caused Heretics to 
 burn like frankincense, — Heresy, evidenced by sympathy 
 and collusion with a known and condemned Heretic. 
 
 The Cardinal passionately demands who dares to 
 testify these things of him ? The Chancellor points to 
 the young Secretar}^, who, stricken with remorse and 
 despair, sinks at the Cardinal's feet. 
 Cardinal. — ' Thou — ? ' 
 
 Secretary. — ' Should I have left thee to Satan — to the 
 Sorceress ? ' 
 
 Cardinal. — ' TJiou — ? ' 
 
 Secretary bursts into more desperate justification — 
 but is still only answered by the one word — ' Thou — ? ' 
 He implores his master not to look on him .... 
 
 The mob of Students, &c. rush in — and a pike is 
 aimed at the Cardinal's back. The Secretary starts from 
 his knees and receives it in his breast, — the breast, un- 
 covered by one of the crowd in order to staunch the 
 blood flowing from the wound, is found to be a AVoman's. 
 Outcry, amid which the mob from without increases 
 in numbers and in fury — some crying ' Death to the 
 Murderer of the Heretic Knight ' — others, — ' Death 
 
 to the Murderer of the good Count 's daughter.' 
 
 The Cardinal is struck down and killed. 
 
286 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 The Chaplain suddenly enters with announcement of 
 the death of the Archbishop. 
 
 Chancellor orders guards to clear the Hall — they 
 disperse students, mob, &c. and remove the body of the 
 Cardinal. 
 
 Then the Chancellor solemnly calls on the Council to 
 proceed with its next business — the canonization of the 
 departed saint — the Archbishop. 
 
 Sacred music sounds — and procession of priests enters. 
 
287 
 
 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS CONCERN- 
 ING PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS. 
 
 THE CARDINAL. 
 
 [Memormida concerning his character and the theories 
 to be developed by him.] 
 
 His right 
 Points wrongly, like the mast of a stranded ship, 
 Less Heavenward for sheer rectitude. 
 
 Let the Cardinal describe a true gentleman—/, c. one 
 Avho in least things as in largest carries out the principles 
 of Christ's character. Pointing out that the Graces are 
 the Charities in Greek. 
 
 Let him describe the gradations by which he came to 
 sum up all wishes in to be good and to see others good. 
 
 Let him show that the great thing in Life is not to do 
 many things, but to do some things perfectly. 
 
2 8S MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 Let him describe true married Love after Paul's idea. 
 (' as Christ the Church'). 
 
 Let him show tvitlwi what Umifs only it is wise to 
 interpose between men and the * natural ' results of their 
 own imperfections. 
 
 Cardinal. — ' Discipline your bodily functions to the 
 truthful expression of your soul. Then he what you 
 would seem and you will seem it.' 
 
 NUCLEI. 
 
 {For the Cardinal, concerning ^ our terrestrial Life.') 
 
 Whatever is to exist healthily on the earth must have 
 its root therein and grow out thereof, even though its top 
 should reach to Heaven. 
 
 All earthly institutions must have the physical Laws 
 for Body wherein as Soul shall reside the higher Prin- 
 ciples. The more highly, subtly, elaborately, they are 
 exhibited and exercised in that Body the more freely, 
 joyously, gloriously will that Soul be active in it. 
 
 Those Principles are the corolla and fragrance of 
 those Laws, but no more to be expected in connection 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 289 
 
 with the lower and cruder manifestations of them than 
 the flower of the rose upon its root, or its perfume in the 
 vesicles of the stem. 
 
 Let the Cardinal show the need for Self-denial. 
 
 While the human being is so far from the Ideal, and 
 every lust is in ascendant by turns, we who set the 
 example to mankind must do it by self-denial — the 
 domination of theor)' — (ideal perceived by intellect) over 
 spontaneity. 
 
 A happier time may come when the good man may 
 live out an ideal life on earth, and may have as his highest 
 duty the impersonation of that beautiful idea — a life in 
 which every earthly good may be enjoyed as an ideal 
 man would enjoy it, and therefore be made holy 
 and beneficial, as contrasted with the same externalities 
 when possessed by the evil, and therefore degraded to 
 symbols of evil, — e.g. Beauty of tasteful environment as 
 distinct from ' the pomps and vanities of this wicked 
 world,' &:c. &c. When the rich man is as if he were 
 poor the precept against riches does not apply. AVhen 
 the fashion of mankind has changed the uses of wealth 
 from carnal corruption to aesthetic and philanthropic 
 
 u 
 
290 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 benefactions the rich man may be nearest the ' kingdom 
 of Heaven.' 
 
 Let the Cardinal set fo7-th the pattevji of a nohle human 
 life upon earth. A pyramid based upon earth. A con- 
 geries of excellencies : having no element not common 
 to all men and no element as common to all men. 
 A life such as every man mi_^^ht lead but no man does 
 lead. In which the things done are not those which 
 men do rarely, but the common acts of men done in 
 a rare spirit. In which the goods of Life are not ahened 
 from its own use for the use of others but distributed per 
 its own use to the use of others — and therein glorified, as 
 the tree exhales its saps in fruits and perfumes. Such a 
 life by keeping within the hope appeals to the ambitions 
 of all men, and being, like Man himself, a Divine within 
 a corporeal, reconciles a present and a future world and 
 the Word with the Work of God. 
 
 It agrees also with the arrangements of that Cosmos 
 in which the subtler is secerned from the grosser not 
 by separation but by union. 
 
 There are three modes of giving — the mechanical, 
 the physiological, the Theocratic. The second is that 
 for man, whose gifts should not be donation but com- 
 munication — which is the mode of animated Nature. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 291 
 
 Thou art a plant, thy neighbour is a bee. If he were 
 just Hke thee he would have been treated like thee. 
 Give him the dung that feeds thee, he starves. Digest 
 and convert it into honey, he is happy and fat. And 
 in the process thou hast also, out of what was to him 
 valueless, assimilated wood, leaf, flower, to thine own 
 beauty, the benefit of other neighbours, having yet other 
 wants, and the glory of God in His World. 
 
 The Eucharist is an analogue of Life, which should be 
 •not to eat but to eat ivith. Eat thy bread and let thy 
 neighbour starv^e — thy God is thy belly. Starve thyself 
 •by giving thy bread to thy neighbour — perchance be^ng 
 full he says ' who is the Lord ? ' Communicate — break 
 thy bread with thy neighbour and by the thanksgiving 
 and the sweet graces of that soul of thine which thy 
 bread strengtheneth he, enjoying with thee, receives a 
 •charity more precious than bread. 
 
 Live therefore a life in which all thy good wants shall 
 be exquisitely — not riotously — gratified, but so gratified 
 that the gratification involves the welfare of others in the 
 means and a rc'/z/munication in the end. 
 
 When all the other wants are gratified there will 
 remain one, of all most exquisite in its exercise — the 
 want to give without even the semblance of return or 
 advantage. This also gratify as the flower of life, but 
 
 u 2 
 
292 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 see that thy behig is more than this flower, for a flower 
 hath no power to endure upon the earth and without 
 root and leaves perisheth swiftly, to the derision rather 
 than to the good example of men. 
 
 The moralist should understand the physiology of 
 virtue and what non-virtues are germs or cognates of 
 virtue. 
 
 A full human character must have all these as the 
 necessary sine qidbiis nan of the others — the origins or 
 nutritions or protections of them. A very complex corpus 
 of^uch is requisite before the virtues proper come into 
 place ; and it is an ignorance of this that starves and 
 deforms morals. 
 
 The Roman made his temple to Honour entered 
 through the temple of Virtue — and he did well, for to him 
 Honour was the ideal Virtus. We must (conversely) 
 make our temple to Virtue entered by the Prophylaea of 
 sacred Honour. These prophylaea are sacred because 
 the profanation of them weakens the safety of the sanctum 
 sanctorum. 
 
 Acting on the above let the Cardinal punish the lay- 
 man who is brought before him for insulting the dirt of 
 the Friars, and the Friars for being dirty. The one has 
 violated the reverence which protects more important 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC... CONCERNING CHARACTERS. ::g^ 
 
 things, the other the cleanhness which is a safeguard ot 
 ■virtue. 
 
 THE CARDINAL ON P'OREIDDIXG OF SCRIPTURES TO 
 LAITV. PRO. 
 
 The Church does well to deny the Bible to the world, 
 •since the New Testament records the application of Chris- 
 tian Principles to a transition time of exceptional circum- 
 stances, while the duty of the Christian requires the appli- 
 cation of them to noble and permanent life in the normal 
 circumstances of the World. 
 
 This Book has to be made a human institution, a 
 living flesh and blood. In such a transformation it is the 
 same in essence, different to the eye. 
 
 You ask for the Book ? I say behold it alive — trans- 
 lated into Islen. 
 
 The Commonality are not competent to know the 
 signs of such identity. Take Manna from Heaven, feed 
 upon it till it is living humanity. I say it is the jNIanna, 
 .and more really the INIanna than what is closer in phe- 
 nomenal likeness. 
 
 But will your clown say so? And will you suffer 
 him to compare the Manna with the flesh and blood ? 
 
294 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY, 
 RESULTS OF II^TRODUCTION OF PRINTING. 
 
 Cardinal to Secretary : vision of the new world that 
 must arise, of unforeseeable customs, opinions, feelings^ 
 if printing and other new powers raise the millions into 
 thinking and •willing Beings. 
 
 A forevision and prediction of the results of printing — 
 especially in its future evocation of a race of unconsecrated 
 preachers^ a renewal of the old Athenian Orators — and 
 demonstration of the vital necessity to extirpate it. 
 
 FOR cardinal's SPEECH ON RECEIVING SUBMISSION OF 
 TEMPORAL POWERS. 
 
 The ideal of the Race the ideal of an individual — 
 soul and body — brain, permeating nerves and senses ; 
 hands, arms, bones, muscles, ct viscera. Apply this to 
 the offices and ordo of Church and state. 
 
 Let the Cardinal dilate (to his secretary) on the 
 exquisite beauty of the Papal Church as the soul of 
 this body the world, the sun of the social system, &:c., 
 &c , &c., showing the analogies with physical arrange- 
 ments. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 295 
 
 After this scene let Balder make comments to Ins friends 
 shelving the truth in this and the fault in the application. 
 The round Table the Church to which it really applied. 
 
 cardinal's theory concerning church and state. 
 
 The Empire (and all temporal power) the represen- 
 tation of the Natural Man -.the Church the rejoresenta- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 If it be said that ' the powers that be are ordained 
 (set in place) of God,' so are the various members of the 
 human body, yet the Apostle shows the inferiority of 
 some and the Saviour commands the cutting off of others — 
 ay and casting into the fire. 
 
 That the Church did not immediately take her relative 
 place, and is right in the slow movement to assume it, 
 see even the chicken in the egg, where at first the disjecta 
 membra are disordered, and afterwards the head is below 
 the wing. 
 
 As the Individual Man is a federation of faculties so 
 must be that great man — the Race. The Greeks acted 
 on this Truth — as on all other Truths — without knowing 
 it, in their many states, but they failed to feel that there 
 must be a permanent head — that Athens or Sparta must 
 not dominate by turns. 
 
296 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 In justification of that last step of the Church by 
 Avhich Kings were equalized, quoad the Church, with 
 common men the Cardinal must take the allegory of the 
 body. 
 
 In the natural body of the natural man how awful and 
 sacred a summit is the head — draw the subjection and 
 reverence of the other pr.rts to it. Yet when one comes 
 to consider it the head is really the potential members, 
 and the members are but the head descending into action. 
 Consequently even the head when the natural man 
 becomes converted is subject to that Holy Spirit which 
 alights on it and dwells in it. We mark the forehead 
 with the Cross and shave and anoint the crown. 
 
 Let the Cardinal show the possibility that the Universe 
 is of Uivire substance, and yet is not God, by the human 
 mind in dreams, where every member of the dream Drama 
 is a modification of your substance yet cannot be addi-essed 
 as you, being often indeed in violent contrariety to you. 
 
 Found an argument for the Cardinal on puppets in a 
 Hand. The Hand does all, but what is done is modified 
 by the nature of the puppet. Ourselves, therefore, the 
 proximate cause of what happens to us, though we do 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 297 
 
 nothing ; and though God be, as Creator of tlie puppet, 
 the Primary Cause. 
 
 Let the Cardinal ilkistrate the archetypal world and 
 its action on matter by the inimersioii of a Mould in 
 water. 
 
 Let him show that Truths are usually accepted by 
 Mankind for wrong reasons. 
 
 Let the Cardinal show the necessary connection of 
 Papacy and Monarchy — and the same of political demo- 
 cracy with Religious Schism. 
 
 NUCLEI FOR CARDINAL. 
 
 Apart from all ecclesiastical considerations and argu- 
 ments if a Church (an organized Priesthood) is the em- 
 bodiment and extravasation of the conscience of Mankind 
 there can be no doubt it should take, among those forms 
 which embody the other mental qualities, that place 
 Avhich the thing it embodies takes among other things 
 embodied. 
 
 Since excommunication of Kings produced deposition 
 by virtue of its effect on the minds of subjects^ the Papal 
 
298 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 permission of Heresy would have been suicidal. And 
 the suppression of heresy depended for utility upon its- 
 C07npleteness, 
 
 Let the Cardinal (in reconstructing the Duchy) when 
 the Archbishop and clergy come before him impress on 
 them the importance of especially consecrating to their 
 flocks, and making absolutely vital, such portions of faith 
 and ceremony, however seemingly trivial, as make the 
 approval of the Church a necessity to the life or death of 
 every man however humble. Show that these things are 
 more important to the welfare of the flocks than larger 
 matters, because the means whereby the Church controls- 
 the powers of the world to the benefit of souls. 
 
 Point out that kings are powerful but hy peoples and 
 that it is there they must be countenvorked. 
 
 MEMORANDA ON 'AFFAIRS.' (fOR THE CARDINAL WHEN 
 REORGANIZING THE DUCHY.) 
 
 Military. Two great objects with the soldier — ta 
 make him feel himself a part in such manner as shall not 
 lower individual character. Uniforms appeal to the eye 
 on both these heads. He must see the great One. He 
 must see he is not a murderer. 
 
 To check the power of the Barons a standing army 
 must be created out of the lowest ranks. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 299 
 
 To make such men soldiers, and to use them after- 
 Avards as such, enact the principles of Hannibal's speech 
 to his amiy in Livy Book xxi. 
 
 Flag. The sign of the second great Commandment. 
 The algebra of all that is dearest in and out of oneself 
 
 The less selfish the patriot the more sacred to him 
 the flag, as the symbol of the rights of others. 
 
 The new means of destmction which, the Cardinal 
 foresees, are coming into use require new military princi- 
 ples to meet them. 
 
 The soldier has to unlearn and learn. 
 
 As man he is accustomed to act as a whole and with a 
 view to means and ends. 
 
 As soldier he must act as part and with view only to 
 means. He has been a being ; — he must learn to be a 
 function. The army is the Man ; each man in it is a 
 vital integer of that organic cosmos of nerves, fibres, and 
 atomic matter. The secret is for each integer to be no 
 more and no less in the moment of action ; and to pre- 
 serve not oiily his active but his organic integrity. 
 
 Diplomatic. Fallacy of the axiom concerning firing 
 one's own house. 
 
 If the state be an analogue of individual man, the 
 constitution is an analogue of the human constitution for 
 which the individual is not answerable. 
 
300 JIE]\IOUANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 ^l"le first duty of the Diplomate is to remember that he 
 is a servant and has not to teach the truth but to secure 
 a given result in a given Mind. 
 
 The first necessity of the Diplomate is to win the con- 
 fidence of him he would influence. This to be done by 
 being what men can trust : (as distinct from ordinary 
 diplomatic policy which, though more successful in a 
 given case, never can permanently succeed). 
 
 This confidence gained the various opinions to be 
 controverted are to be operated on scientifically. 
 
 In argument to remember that the error is to be con- 
 quered, not the errator. The mind in which it has 
 encamped is to be treated not as an enemy's army, but 
 as a country in possession of an invader. The invader 
 is to be expelled not the people. In this expulsion the 
 first step is to raise the populace. By patient dissemina- 
 tion of various incentives, ideas, and other leavening 
 matter, let spontaneous insurrection dispossess the 
 invader of the chief cities and strongholds and force him 
 into the field. 
 
 Then comes the attack of direct argument. 
 
 Let the Cardinal speak of that beautiful Heaven 
 below which the Catholic Church created, when on the 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CKARACTERS. 30I 
 
 one beautiful day of rest and peaceful equality, in a 
 beaiftiful edifice, in a Divine palace of visible, and amid 
 beautiful sounds of audible, music, the most beautiful 
 ideas and feelings were communicated to the most beau- 
 tiful powers of the human mind, by a priesthood conse- 
 crated in the Beauty of Holiness. 
 
 E. G. Tintcrn — dedicated to the Virgin. 
 
 Cai'dinal : How like the sure and solemn processes of 
 Nature is that beautiful evolution by which the ceorle and 
 soldier produced the haro minor, the barones minores 
 the great Lords, and those worldly chieftains excemed 
 those holy Sanctuaries where spotless hands and sainted 
 souls did the work and lived the life of Chastity, Devo- 
 tion, and Peace. 
 
 FOR USE IN MOUTH OF CARDINAL.^ 
 
 I see in the universe evidences of a superhuman 
 wisdom rather than of a Divine. Adaptations of means 
 to ends exquisite and wonderful indeed, but not infal- 
 lible and sometimes appearing to contravene themselves. 
 A plan of government incalculably beyond human 
 
 [' Compare a similar idea in ]Mr. Mill's 'Essays on Natui^e and 
 Theism.' — J. N.] 
 
302 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 amplitude in unity and omnipresence but curiously liable 
 to derangement either sponte sua ? or by such small causes 
 as, e.g. the ' free-will ' of man. 
 
 Cardinal to Secretary, (observing the various pro- 
 fessions of men around). 
 
 How these exist for the true man who is somewhat 
 but not totally each. Somewhat but not totally a soldier, 
 &c. &c. 
 
 Yet it is necessary that ordinary men should thus 
 incarnate vocations : for so the results of those voca- 
 tions can alone be carried through. 
 
 The ' true man ' is too rare to work, invent, discover 
 in them all. But they, working for him, prepare for him 
 the best fruits of each, to be in him combined. 
 
 FROM cardinal's INVOCATION TO HIS LOST EARLY 
 LOVE (hERETICA). 
 
 Farewell, till I may see thee once again, 
 In the clear overhead of my distress 
 And pitiless perdition, sweet in Heaven, 
 Like some bright constellation, nor even curse 
 The clouds that shut thee out, for joy that thou, 
 Unseen, canst smile no less. 
 
memoranda, etc., concerning characters. 303 
 
 the cardinal (in the height of his first 
 popularity). 
 
 Day by day 
 Round my vexed feet the rushing people swirl 
 And flap my tired eyes with the ragged foam 
 Of capped welcome. Day by day 
 I breathe a hotter and a thicker air 
 Foul with the tenth ten-thousandth reeking mould 
 Of leaky approbation ; night by night 
 My presence-chamber, like the sky to him 
 That climbs an Alp, doth flower a lordlier field 
 Of golden circlets, and the dust of my floors 
 Is farms and shires broken from jewelled knees 
 Unused to kneel. 
 
 I act, men say ' well done.' 
 I speak, and as the famished that draws in 
 The life draught, silent while his sucking heart 
 Drains the dry cup and, saved, a moment stands 
 Still, in a pause of utterless content, 
 Then leaps in gratulation, so between 
 IMy speech and the applause of Kings invenes 
 The thirsty silence and the full. 
 
304 MEMORANDA AND FRAaMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 HERETICA. 
 
 HERETICA SEEING THE CARDINAL. 
 
 She read his face as 'twere a sacred book, 
 And as in such a book we find a text 
 
 I'hat tells against us 
 
 till as flash from cloud 
 The fiery sense flames through the burning word, 
 The woman that she was in her full flower 
 Of mortal glory knew his fatal heart 
 And withered into nothing — 
 
 ON FORBIDDING OF SCRIPTURES TO LAITY, CON. 
 
 Herdica: The Church does ill to deny the Bible to 
 the People since It is so Divinely Written that every order 
 of mind, and every affection of individual mind, assimi- 
 lates therefrom that which is specific to it. 
 
 The Cardinal answers that the Church as depository 
 of the Holy Spirit is the means by which that specific is 
 eliminated and applied. Heretica replies by speaking 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 305 
 
 of the profundity of the human heart, and by an im- 
 l^assioned interrogative argument founded thereon. 
 
 Heretica : We say that tlie human quaHty which you, 
 the Church, assume to represent is too Divine to be enac- 
 ted by anything having tlie obstructions of a mortal body. 
 That, whereas, It should be the summit of us, you, 
 setting up yourselves to be the top of things, degrade us 
 subordinates by the whole measure of your own 
 inferiority. 
 
 (Let Heretica describe the soul and the highest 
 faculty of the soul, and show how under that rare 
 heaven of air the lower qualities expand and expire : 
 e^per contra.) 
 
 Let her, also, show the analogy of the effects of a 
 human priesthood on the general soul with those of a 
 pagan mythology' — a deification oimcii. 
 
 Heretica : You, the hierarchy, being uninspired, must 
 restrain and deform the growth of this still-young Being — 
 Man. The completeness of your system is the reason 
 for our war with it to the knife. It is a shirt of mail, the 
 size of the boy, in which you shut up the growing 
 creature. The exuberant life within has forced out at 
 
 X 
 
306 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 every cranny into monstrosities. (Describe the various 
 other effects on the incarcerated body.) We, therefore, 
 fight for life. Better be naked than in such raiment. 
 
 Heretica: We — the People — want this printing to 
 give us cheap knowledge, want this knowledge to give us 
 that power over matter which may stand in place of 
 riches and leisure. Want this freedom as the means to 
 that knowledge, &c. &c. 
 
 Therefore, our interest and yours are essentially and 
 throughout irreconcilable. 
 
 In the judgment scene Heretica must develop and 
 illustrate, by description and prediction, the advantages 
 and results of Human Government by Many — in oppo- 
 sition to the Cardinal's demonstration of the contrary — 
 foreshowing how all that we now most prize {e.g. self- 
 government of every kind) depends on the democratic 
 interpretation of a Church. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., COXCERNING CHARACTERS. 307 
 
 'THE PHILOSOPHER.' 
 
 [Miscellaneous notes and memoranda concerning ' the 
 Philosopher,' and the theories to be developed by him.] 
 
 The Philosopher's room and Pictures. 
 
 Pictures, &:c. so arranged that things (in different 
 departments of Art) that are closely analogous to each 
 other are associated. 
 
 Picture of the human soul — a crowd about a chief. 
 Of the crowd none wholly human — each an embodiment 
 of some functional humanity, or ^^//^jZ-brutality. 
 
 The chief alone human — but potentially rather than 
 actively — and with a co-morphology with all the crowd 
 plus something else. 
 
 Picture of temptation. Some of the crowd en- 
 deavouring to move by force, while others unsettle by 
 argimient that pale proud ' Chief 
 
 Picture of knowledge. A human being asleep : 
 
3oS MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAV. 
 
 myriads of strange shapes touching, biting, kissing^ 
 blowing, whipping, whispering about him. 
 
 INVISIBLE FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 Let the Philosopher illustrate by scholastic theory of 
 * intellectus agens et patiens species impressa et expressa/ 
 &c. his notion that the human body itself is a federal 
 unity of living constituents : thence let him branch to 
 the outer world and describe the picture he would draw,, 
 if he were a painter, wherein the substance of nature 
 should be made up of inextricably intertwined human 
 and other forms, with limbs and features — especially eyes 
 — interlaced, knotted and strained in infinite implication. 
 
 Let him also point out that the great Man the Race, 
 is federal, and infer thence in confirmation of his theory 
 concerning the individual : again illustrating the Race by 
 that theory. 
 
 For Philosopher. 
 
 Of my artist-friends one paints a Landscape, and 
 then disentangles from the duller dusker colours of it the 
 living essences which were their life, and makes them 
 blossom into the colours of figures and vestments : 
 another takes the skirt of his heroine and expands it into 
 a Landscape. One floats his figures /// dusky air, like 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 309 
 
 fish in black water — the water more or less drowning the 
 fish in proportion to its depth : another floats them on 
 the yielding water — which cuts a round floating body — 
 so that a man's flice stands out one-third beyond the 
 canvas. Again another mixes his shadow with his paints 
 so that the}' seem dulled with dirty oil or water and every 
 colour dirtied /// se, instead of dimmed by immersion. 
 
 RE GIFTS (in EANQUET-SCENE). 
 
 A gift expresses the donor and his idea of the donee. 
 It is sometimes easier to make a binary than a single gift, 
 because the two may modify and explain each other : e.g. 
 supposing a quality in one, good in itself, but liable to be 
 liked by common culture for second-rate reasons, }-ou 
 may fix your interpretation of it by something in the 
 other demonstrative of your order of mind. And each 
 may be so complementary and supplementary to the 
 other as to produce a married perfection. 
 
 Exempla. White elephant complimentar}^ as imply- 
 ing wealth in donee. 
 
 Cameleon — 'feeding on air' — (costing nothing)— 
 would be indelicate if this subtle immateriality did not 
 seem so necessary to those interesting peculiarities which 
 anake it curious and desirable. Being so, and, therefore. 
 
3IO MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAV. 
 
 not to be misunderstood, fhis costlessness becomes a 
 delicacy. 
 
 Philosopher in trial scene — re ' Statuce ?iuda.' 
 
 The Cardinal has laid down the principles of relative 
 (not absolute) indecorum — thus — ' impudicitia ' in the 
 body is unnecessarily to uncover those portions of it 
 whereof the mere act of uncovering produces, either in the 
 uncoverer or the uncovered, a form or phase of those sen- 
 sations which would result from utter divestment ; mental 
 impudicitia is the analogue of the physical; and im- 
 modesty, physical or mental, while the same everywhere 
 in principle, differs in practice with individuals, nations, 
 eras, &c. 
 
 It may be immodest in a Nun to show her eyes, and 
 he who makes her do so is therefore immodest. It may 
 be immodest in a recluse to let a stranger look him in 
 the face. So of mental Nuns and Hermits. 
 
 An Abyssinian woman is not immodest in her expo- 
 sure : an Abyssinian man might say to her many things, 
 intolerable to a European woman or from a Euroj^ean 
 man. So of and from mental Abyssinians. (Develop 
 these main principles to their details.) 
 
 That the Sculptor has exhibited his Venus is not fer 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 3II 
 
 s^ criminal, the question for the Court is whether criminal 
 in such and such a community. 
 
 The Cardinal in gentle and considerate language, 
 calls on the Sculptor for his defence, from his point of 
 view. 
 
 The Sculptor, saying that he speaks with his hands 
 not with his tongue, asks to be allowed to answer by his 
 friend the Philosopher. 
 
 Philosopher then, admitting the justice of the Car- 
 dinal's principles and their application to tinted statues 
 and the various forms of imitation, defends his friend by 
 reference to the Ideal as distinct from the imperfect. 
 Shows the mental effect of all Perfection and the im- 
 possibility that except through Art it can be known to 
 the Multitude or that, as regards human Nature, it can 
 be expressed by art except in the whole human body. 
 
 Speculation of Philosopher. 
 
 The shore that changes not must be more powerful 
 than the changing sea that cannot change it. Yet we 
 call the sea active and the shore passive. So, in the 
 universe, life, motion that produces change, may be less 
 alive than the motionless and unchanging — nay may be 
 an evidence of diminishing vitality — of being less than 
 Divinely alive. So that all 'living' things are mortal 
 
312 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAV. 
 
 and Death the re-absorption into the motionless of 
 Divine Life. 
 
 For PhilosopJier. ' The Poor and Ignorant' For 
 him in his normal conditions (of struggle, difficulty, 
 labour, subjection) all sympathy and every helping hand 
 and illuminating effort. For him a ' sovereign ' unit, a 
 dominating insubordinate individuality, a sledge-hammer 
 on his head and, during due season, hard labour and cat 
 when he comes to : collectively grape-shot followed by 
 the strong government of a many-classed society. For 
 thus only will he be in the condition wherein his best 
 faculties may have healthy exercise — i.e. exercise in due 
 relation to his worse. 
 
 THE OCCULTATION OF THE PHILOSOPHER'S STAR BY 
 THE MOON. 
 
 As the hour advances to the minute all mental ob- 
 scuration — commencing with the lighter shades of doubt 
 and difficulty — slowly thickens to an agony of blackness 
 coinciding with the moment of mid-occultation ; whence 
 a slow return to light by subtle gradations till, as the 
 edge of the star reappears, mental illumination com- 
 mences, with music of spheres and chorus of angels, and 
 so dawns into the glory of ^Morning. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 313 
 
 rJiilosophcr. But it may Ijc answered ' that an in- 
 fallible Church can best dictate to each man and nation 
 the precise application of principle appropriate to him 
 and them. 
 
 No : for the application to be virtue must be in the 
 belief that it is the best possible. And Divine Infallibility 
 cannot set forth two bests. Therefore Revelation de- 
 livers principles absolutely true and leaves imperfect man 
 to apply them. 
 
 THE HUMANITY IN BRUTES. 
 
 Philosopher. If the human soul is/<v sc an evidence 
 of immortality then also is my dog immortal. (Describe 
 the humanity perceived by intimate acquaintance with 
 the Brute. And perceived, also— as in the joy of the 
 Lamb, &c. &c. — by the keen eye without intimate ac- 
 quaintance.) 
 
 My hound lies on the wolf-skin and I doze on the 
 chair. Suddenly we hear, afar-off, the cries of unseen 
 Hunting— and the horn 
 
 That stirs delicious madness. In a moment, 
 Like as two dogs, I see the huntsman's passion 
 Within me and without : the sight within 
 
 [ ' Answered to the saying of the Cardinal that ' TnUlis are 
 usually accepted by Mankind for the wrong reasons?' — Ed.] 
 
314 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 Has scarce beheld it when the sense without 
 Sees, hears, and feels it from the empty wolf-skin 
 Rush to the door, in nose, eyes, mouth and ears 
 That shape it, with four legs to bear it up 
 From the drawing earth and push it to its will, 
 And so much body as may blood the whole 
 And engine it and skurry it on the prey. 
 Likeness ? if this is likeness and no more 
 Or less than kind for kind, then farewell faith 
 That makes us men with men, for, by my soul, 
 The eyes that we call human, and wherein, 
 Since men began, who calls himself a man 
 Says in his heart that he beholds mankind. 
 Are not so merely me. 
 
 For PJnlosophcr or Cardinal on Truth. 
 
 (In illustration of sub- truths and untruths in the 
 machinery of the spiritual and Social World.) 
 
 See the physical world : see the ambush of the car- 
 nivora — i.e. the practical assertion of their absence to the 
 victim. But you answer — * these things are the work of 
 ^z/^j-Z-humanity in them. They are actions of beings 
 Avho might act othenvise.' See the ant-lion in his pit, 
 Avith the circumvallation of moveable sand, and himself 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC, CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 315 
 
 expectant at the unseen bottom : or the spider's 
 treacherous mathematics. You say ' these works may be 
 the unconscious result of dispositions to move and act in 
 certain directions, and the baneful agency of them an 
 accident of their necessary properties.' But what do you 
 say to the Chameleon turning in the sun, in which he 
 delights with the delighting butterfly, into what tliat 
 butterfly must mistake for a patch of green and yellow- 
 flowers, and, so mistaking, come within range of that 
 spring-jack hand that will transfer it to a moth-hawk 
 ' gape.' In this case the bait is not an action commonly 
 so called, but a physiological change, occurring in the 
 sun whether with or without butterflies. 
 
 NOTES AND MEMORANDA CONCERNING 'THE 
 philosopher's ' LECTURES. 
 
 The Cardinal, wishing to spare the Philosopher, and 
 to conciliate the rising Learning, in order to turn rather 
 than to destroy it, orders that — as the Philosopher is 
 charged with heresies — he shall give his usual course of 
 Lectures, and clerical deputies, appointed by the 
 Cardinal, shall attend and report on them. The 
 Cardinal himself hearing that which is given at the mass- 
 hour on the trial-day. 
 
 The Philosopher has a struggle, whether to temporize. 
 
3l6 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 by suppressing ^vhat he would otherwise have said in 
 these Lectures, or to speak as usual. His interview with 
 Heretica confirms him in his resolution to be merely 
 true — neither ostentatious nor negative. 
 
 The Philosopher lectures on the Ideal, and, under 
 guise of sermon Eccc Homo, condensing his whole system 
 of ideals, moral and intellectual, exposes thence a theory' 
 of virtue, individual and national, essentially antagonistic 
 to despotic human authority, political or spiritual. 
 
 In this lecture let the Philosopher say — ' We want a 
 lilan — Christ should not be in the Heavens but on 
 Earth.' 
 
 Let him allude to Sebonde — (for extract from whom 
 see Historical Note-book.) ^ Let him also allude to the 
 Cardinal's description of an ideal world, which some of his 
 audience had heard, and show that it is deficient because 
 minus that Man. In it let him po' contra, allude to the 
 rule of the multitude as newly proposed in certain 
 meetings known to some of his audience and show that 
 it is equally deficient and for what reasons. 
 
 ' Extract from Sebonde, professor of IMedicine at Barcelona 
 before 1440 : — 
 
 ' Quam quidem sapientiam — {i.e. " sapientiam in creaturis scrip- 
 tam") nullus potest vid ere, neque legere perse in dicto libro semper 
 aperto [i.e. Nature) nisi fuerit a Deo illuminatus et a peccato origi- 
 nal! miindatus.' Till then he is merely 'aptus ad suscipiendum 
 earn,' but * nullam doctrinam neque sapientiam habeat actu.' 
 
BIEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 317 
 
 NOTES FOR philosopher's LECTURES ON THE IDEAL 
 AND 'JHE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 
 
 We, men, enquire the Philosophy of Man. Tlie 
 standard of each Being in Nature is its ideal specimen. 
 Of Man, therefore, the Ideal Man. 
 
 He has the power to express and this power being 
 perfect he does whate\'er precisely transfers the transfe- 
 rcuda. This transference is action. The perfect soul 
 acts through the perfect body. The body is ruled by a 
 heart beating exact intervals. Perfect bodily action 
 must be in times-bearing proportion to that central beat 
 — i.e. rhythmical. His actions, therefore, are rhythmical. 
 Rhythm is order in motion. 
 
 We see the perfect Man with Perfect Men. They 
 are equal by Nature, but, since no two can stand on 
 the same spot of the veritable earth, their circumstances 
 differ (age, place, accident, &c.) — and there is not 
 equality. 
 
 As all are good there can be no feeling but Love : 
 as all are spontaneous there will be freedom. Libert}^ 
 Order (since not equal). Fraternity, are therefore, the 
 principles of their social union. 
 
 The ideal Man being as aforesaid we have to view 
 
3l8 IMEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 the imperfect in relation to him. Those relations are of 
 two kinds. 
 
 I. The imperfect temporarily, and in special func- 
 tions, rises to (or near to) identity with the perfect. His 
 spontaneities herein are the Arts. 
 
 II. The imperfect supplements his imperfection by 
 Laws : hence morals, politics, rhetoric — (the persuasion 
 of imperfects) &c. 
 
 (Memorandum. The Greeks called all the fine Arts 
 Music, and threw the problem a grade further back by 
 saying that their cause was the Muses — nine beautiful 
 humanities.) 
 
 No Arts but Nature and that Nature j\Ian — who if he 
 were perfect would need no arts, but, being imperfect, 
 needs a thousand arts to compass the one Nature. 
 
 The perfect human Being is and does. The Arts 
 are of Being — and of Doing — other Arts are subdivisions 
 of these. 
 
 1. The Art of Being — is Love, with such functions 
 as are necessary to it. Love, the passion toward unity, 
 would cease in unity, and implies, therefore, individu- 
 ality. 
 
 2. The Art of Doing has three subarts, — the art of 
 knowing, the art of feeling, and the art of saying. All 
 other Arts of action are sub-divisions of these. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 319 
 
 To do is to move. To move from witliin towards 
 without is ' to feel.' To move from without towards 
 within is ' to know.' To move so, or so far, as to cause 
 motion in others is ' to say.' 
 
 To will ? To will is to feel the movement of whatever 
 function is concerned therein. (Throughout this investi- 
 gation we do not ask the what but the /uru'.) To will, 
 therefore, is a species of ' to feel.' 
 
 Memorandum. To begin the demonstration by 
 showing the Art of doing, with its subarts, in their ideal 
 specimens, (taking ' kno^ving and saying' and thence infer- 
 ring ' feeling ') and from thence deduce the art of Being. 
 
 Then to show Christianity's Love to be them all ; 
 inasmuch as Love is both Being and Doing. Thence 
 infer that He who both Hvcd and preached Love was 
 the Ideal which has been shown to be the living Eatio 
 quid of all Law — the Perfect who needs- no ' arts.' 
 
 FOR LECTURE ON CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Civilization is the process of development in Man- 
 kind. 
 
 To develop is to /^;/hide : ?/;/hide what ? Not 
 substance existing in the person or thing developed, for 
 
320 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 in the best known developments the matter is derived ab 
 extra. To unhide, therefore, an immaterial somewhat — 
 to realize a Law of change — ' Legc??i natia-m-c ' — that is 
 to show both the order and appearance of those ' neces- 
 sary ' varieties which a Unity exhibits in attaining its 
 ideal state. 
 
 Development, therefore, is a process of Creation, 
 Avhether in what we call an embryonic, or in that post- 
 ' Embryonic,' creature which is no less an embryon. 
 
 Growth is a change in bulk not idea. 
 
 To place things so that the Many become One is to 
 construct. 
 
 To place things so that the One become Many is to 
 destroy. 
 
 But a higher order may displace to better-place, 
 and temporary destruction may be a phase of construe - 
 tion. The higher the order the more temporary the 
 destruction. The displacement and replacement is 
 organic and is called development. 
 
 FOR LECTURE ON THEOLOGY. 
 
 Truth is things as perceived by the Perfect Man. 
 But we have seen that he himself is the One Standard of 
 
 all human things. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 32 1 
 
 How then, as truth is things as perceived by Him, 
 can we, who are imperfect, have the truth concerning 
 Himself? 
 
 Only through His own utterance : i.e. Revelation. 
 
 But why, on this head as on others, is not the tempo- 
 rarily transfigured INIan {i.e. genius) sufficient? Because 
 in the welfare of the soul we must have not approximate 
 truth, as in Art, but truth (humanly) absolute. 
 
 Fait/i. Since Truth is that which the ideal ]\Ian 
 Avould spontaneously receive. Religious Truth is incon- 
 gruous with the imperfect man and incomprehensible. 
 It is necessary, therefore, that there must be in the 
 Christian who would receive Religious Truth a recon- 
 struction of the moral and spiritual functions — a transfigu- 
 ration towards the Ideal Man. This, and the power to 
 undergo this, is TrtVrtc — the Platonic word being 
 borrowed by the Apostle as the most consistent term for 
 a fact new to Paganism. 
 
 TO BE DEVELOPED BY PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 In the high type and lower types of conscience we 
 have Christ, and the Kings, Priests, and Judges of 
 Judaism. 
 
 The first, in itself a revelation, testifying in the midst 
 
 Y 
 
323 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 of the Other mental functions, suggesting heights of 
 impossible virtue, finally rejected of them, crucified, 
 suffering a temporary abeyance, and rising shortly to a 
 Heaven of EKaramc, whence it returns to judge the 
 quick and dead actions of the rest and, at last, to rule in 
 the congruity of Millenium. 
 
 The other types, blindly and partially, by Urim and 
 Thummini, and other mediations gaining occasional 
 Messages from Heaven. 
 
 But because of these invisible Christs and Prophets 
 are the visible mythic? When I was on the north 
 coast a whale was cast ashore, and on cleaving its 
 paddle of blubber I found the human hand inside. 
 
 But because of that invisible hand has my visible 
 hand become mythical ? 
 
 It is in the nature of the truest facts, as facts, that 
 they exist in two or three regions of realization af once^ 
 and the existence in an invisible form is in itself an argu- 
 ment not against but for the existence elsewhere in a 
 visible. 
 
 If all the hungry were fed, the naked clothed, the 
 weeping comforted, how much time would remain for 
 Science and Philosophy? 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 323 
 
 But how if by Science I ensure food and clothing to 
 thousands unborn ? 
 
 How if by Philosophy I raise the souls of generations 
 of men to higher charities and, by their hands, am truly 
 jilmsgiving to nations of men ? 
 
 But how \i not? 
 
 Yet if a man till a field that shall support a parish, 
 and spend all his life and substance in the tillage, and 
 die ere harvest, and the enemy destroy his work, has he 
 jiot his reward ? 
 
 And shall not I also ? 
 
 In the will and motive the deed is done already. 
 
 But who shall certify of my will and motive? 
 
334 JIEJIORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAV, 
 
 THE CHANCELLOR. 
 
 The Chancellor and Baron in consultation [after the 
 arrival of the Cardinal to reorganize the DuchyJ. 
 
 Baron says that the Chancellor must act swiftly 
 and strongly — being in such peril. 
 
 Chancellor replies — No — that for the present all he 
 must do is to gain Time. All violent action — when the 
 end is not immediate — is dangerous, because it produces 
 reaction : Wisdom is to wait upon Nature and push her 
 just beyond her intention. Schemes that extend through 
 Time should never be positive, but negative, since the 
 chain may be broken by one of the Unforeseeables and 
 Inevitables, and the cause and effect be thus killed. 
 
 ]\Iaintain your inch of tcrra-finna footing, and wait 
 the opportunity. 
 
 Spend your time in waiting, but not in action. Let 
 the flower grow a year and blossom in a day. The wise 
 man attends upon the forces of Nature. 
 
 There are always imprisoned Spirits who can do all 
 but let themselves free. The wise man frees them. He 
 pushes the tottering stone from the wall. Cuts the string 
 of the hanging fruit. Slips the chained dog. Drives the 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNIN'G CHARACTERS. 325 
 
 prey into the Lion's sight. Waits till the Falcon is 
 hungry. 
 
 Nature, like the teeming Elephant, has her moments 
 of parturient weakness : watch for them and strike her 
 into meat, or bind her into service. 
 
 Never meet a wave at its flow — wait the reflux, 
 follow it and push it home. Prune a plant vigorously 
 once a year, it flourishes : hack it a little daily, it withers. 
 Plunge your enemy in water he glows to new strength ; 
 keep him damp, at half the expenditure of moisture, and 
 }ou soak out his rheum-sodden life. Nurse the purpose 
 of your enemy and overlay it. 
 
 In wrestling he the willow — wouldst thou throw back 
 the ball of thy foe's strength ? But if violence be needful, 
 let him sharpen the knife for thee, which wrest at the last 
 moment, and stab. 
 
 Men walk by nature differently — some erect in the sun; 
 others, like the toad, creep from shadow to shadow. 
 
 Never allow your enemy an advantage, however 
 small, it may be the tcrra-firnia of a more important 
 success. 
 
 Never wound a friend without killing him. 
 
 Trust not a dead snake till he stinks. Never forsake 
 a living friend, for while there is life there is hope : he 
 
326 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 may be again powerful, and you, then, lose not only him 
 but your character. 
 
 Chaplain : 'What a joke to think ' of one blood all 
 nations of men ! ' Thou and I for instance, and this fool 
 (the Cardinal) who sends me thus to thee whom he would 
 destroy ! 
 
 Chancellor : Do not brag out of thy belief. Man is 
 man : thou thyself, if thou lookest well into it, hast 
 known moments when thou wouldest have been almost 
 as foolish. 
 
 Chancellor: Do away Religion? Will you do away 
 with the human stomach- — put down hunger? No, we 
 will respect Bread while it is the necessity of Human 
 Nature. You and I may know it is but dung and dust — 
 the more likely that Dust should cry out for it ! but it is 
 only while the dung and dust are not perceptible that they 
 can be food of Man. Bah, Boy, take thy bread. Eat if 
 thou canst: sell for thou canst. Shall thy neighbour 
 starve because thou art nice ? Nay why not take thy 
 mess with the savoury difference? God save thee 
 from the gnawing of an empty belly — ay, though 
 thou make Him to the purpose ; and if the wafer be 
 matter or spirit — dirt or the flower of dirt — who cares ?" 
 Thou art filled and canst rot more passably. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., COXCERNIXG CHARACTERS. 327 
 CHANXEI.LOR AND CHAl'LArX. 
 
 C/iaphiin : Shall I give A so and so ? 
 
 Chancellor : No need to play so high. He covets Z's 
 barony. Moreover Y's brother shamed him before the 
 Court at . Give him 
 
 Chaplain : But why give at all ? — his grudges are 
 enough. 
 
 Chancellor : He hath a conscience, boy. Give him 
 
 . 'Tis a trille, but he Avill work like Apollyon and call 
 
 it all gratitude. Pay B so heavily that he shall feel if 
 I fall the gift will be resumed as self-shown corruption. 
 But make it not as a gift or he will hate me for the 
 obligation. Concede it as an old right recognized. D 
 hath in these six months had his honour kicked at 
 from every Court in Europe. Write and say I trust im- 
 phcitly to his honour. Yet — lest he feel it a jest — say 
 thy master grieveth that it is now two years since he hath 
 heard mention of his name. What a thing is Man ! I 
 know he loveth not me nor my cause, yet shall he give 
 his life for this breath — foul breath. 
 
 In indicating (to the Chaplain) the hidden motives of 
 the hante noblesse, among those to whom he wTites, let 
 the Chancellor point out the connection between King- 
 ship and the democratically-supplied Priesthood as his 
 support against the Nobles and the consequent vital 
 
328 ^MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 jealousy of the Nobles of the power of the Church. Also 
 the jealousy of the higher and monastic — and therefore 
 powerful priesthood — as compared with the lower clergy. 
 
 Chancellor to Chaplain : As sound out of a bell, as 
 pleasure in flesh, as insects in water, as mould upon all, 
 so God is a perturbation and ferment of the Soul. How 
 then create the Worlds ? Bah, nothing is but thinking, 
 and that thought which is the necessary First creates the 
 cogitated Universe. Set Him at nought ? By no means. 
 That single hair of one water-atom is not mould : that 
 unmet movement of one bell-atom is not sound. 
 
 The ideas Man discourses of and worships are the 
 creatures of his various faculties. Therefore turn from 
 the ideas to the faculties. The ideas are useful in their 
 effect on them, but he is a bungling workman who acts 
 by such reflexes. The true artist finds directer means. 
 
 This Me stands firm . . . 
 
 while faculties and passions, 
 Kneaded and modelled to a kind of man, 
 Like a tame monkey, antic in my tether 
 And ape the tricksey round of human change. 
 But at the check-string leap back to their place 
 Upon the master's poll. 
 
MEiMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 329 
 
 THE ABBOT, BROTHER TO THE POPE. 
 
 [The following passages are, it \\ill be seen, a parody on Ihe 
 super-subtleties of media-val monkish pedantry and fanaticism, and 
 an indication of the plircnzy in which tlicy frequently cuhninated. — 
 Ed.] 
 
 The Abbot : The world will be dissolved into the 
 invisible. We shall not see nor feel it ; yet we shall see 
 and feel. Therefore we shall see or feel as in a dream. 
 Dreamlife is the true life, therefore, and to be cultivated 
 by all who w ould prefer the permanent to the temporar)-. 
 
 The Abbot to his CJiaplain : Hearing is saying in- 
 verted. The mouth of the soul that emits each word with 
 its special shapes, receives with the same gesture. Thy 
 words are noise till I hand them into me as I should 
 hand them out if I spake. How am I the better then 
 for thy reading ? Nay, far worse. For the soul's mouth 
 in an ecstasy of action endeavours to adjust itself to thy 
 rapid utterance till the very strings of life are tangled 
 and split ; and if it be ill to hand out my words indeco- 
 rously, when, being out, they are no longer receiving my 
 ill-usage, how much worse to hand them in amiss, when 
 every thought I think is mere inextricably complicating 
 the blasphemy. 
 
 The Chaplain promises to think over this difficulty 
 
330 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 and at the next interview suggests. Chaplaiii : Thou 
 art wise and knowest, I am ignorant. Command me to 
 read to thee decorously. Thou art now free from my 
 disobedience. I, 'knowing not/ shall be beaten with 
 few stripes — i.e. it is a light ofience. Thou, therefore, 
 considering my occupations in the Church's affairs, do 
 penance for me daily. 
 
 [The Abbot is pleased : the experiment is tried : 
 when it ceases to satisfy, the Chaplain again suggests.] 
 
 Chaplain : Aristotle saith a thing consists of begin- 
 ning, middle and end. Therefore the whole possible 
 expression of any word hath these. Now let the 
 beginning be Divine — as indeed agreeth with that text 
 ' /// Principio ' — the middle half Divine half human — the 
 end human. Pronounce each word three times, appro- 
 priately, and as thou hast completed all expression thou 
 must have included every part of expression. 
 
 The Abbot is delighted, but soon again in despair. 
 For as three things cannot be said at once, and the 
 right expression is not given till the three are said, in 
 what case is he between the sayings, while the word is 
 said and not rightly ? Idolatry. Blasphemy. Hell. 
 
 The Chaplain again suggests. 
 
 Chaplain : These words are not yours but his who 
 wrote them to you — they are what he intended them, not 
 what they v^-ould otherwise mean. 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. 33 1 
 
 The Abbot: ^\'orsc and worse, for they arc the 
 Infallible Pope's and infallible. I— fallible — can no/ ^ 
 therefore mean the exact same. Wretched me ! 
 
 Chaplain : But the Pope is your brother — he com- 
 mences ' dear Brother.' Brother is convertible. 
 (Brethren are equal ; if he to you, you to him.) There- 
 fore if you are fallible, as you feel, the Pope indicates 
 that herein he speaks but as fallible man. 
 
 Abbot: But still the uncertainty remains as to his 
 precise meaning. 
 
 Chaplain: Which we will remedy thus. I write 
 his Holiness that you are too ill to read and crave him to 
 address his sacred epistle to inc. Now in writing to me 
 he will write as infallible. I,- fallible, cannot mean his 
 meaning. Consequently there is no sin in my mis- 
 reading. I then affix my misreading to each word — by 
 respective signs — and you shall read without difficulty 
 that to which I have affixed mine own significance, and 
 which can mean nor more nor less tlian I mean by it. 
 
 Abbot in infinite delight and reUef. 
 
 On the same principle of reasoning the Chaplain gets 
 the Abbot to sign a number of blank parchments in 
 order that he may fill them up. By this means he is able 
 to write as he will to the Pope with the appearance 
 of the Abbot's authority. 
 
;32 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 DEATH OF THE ABBOT. 
 
 I know you very well — you are ApoIIyon. 
 
 If you were not the wickedest Saint in Heaven 
 
 You well might be the ugliest. 
 
 This is hell then. 
 'And He descended into hell' 
 
 Which is the 'third day'? Call me on the third day: 
 
 Do you hear ? — I am a strong sleeper, — 
 
 Call me on the third day. As it began to dawn — 
 
 Ay, or a little earlier — for the journey — 
 
 The heart of the earth — 
 
 At present good night. Yes ; yes ; 
 
 Not so loud, not so loud. Who's there, who are you ? 
 
 I know your beak, friend, we have met before — 
 
 Let me see, let me see, — somewhere in Egypt — 
 
 You went to the wall — the weakest goes to the wall — 
 
 What, we have tussled then ? What, we have fought ? 
 
 I put you to the wall — you and your crew — 
 
 Flat as nailed kites squabbed by a thousand winters — 
 
 You and your crew, you and }our paunchless crew. 
 
 The cat-head and the fish-head and the dog-head — 
 
 AVhy here they are — I know you gentlemen — 
 
 Good-morrow, Baal, Bual, Beelzebub, Pol, Phoibus, 
 
 Lucifer — slip your names, you can't run justice — 
 
MEMORANDA, ETC., CONCERNING CHARACTERS. ;^2^ 
 
 Good morrow, Belial — Master IMolock God, 
 
 Give you good-day — youneed it by your looks. — 
 
 Oh ah ! I see you are the spirits in prison, 
 
 Well you are'white enough — You shake, sirs — what? 
 
 You have heard something lately ? Prcdicavit — 
 
 That's it ? Yes, yes this was no friar-preacher, 
 
 No louse-pate tickle-ear, — no, no mar text — 
 
 Credunt Diaboli — I give you joy, 
 
 I wouldn't believe so if I were all nails 
 
 And burnt as ill as leather — 
 
 I know your pitchfork, too, 
 Up there the sweet Provencal muck-masters 
 Are clawed in such a fashion. You smell like them — 
 Go to your gongs. Faugh, you are .nasty beauties 
 You dung your roses here. A)-, make hay, make ha}' ; 
 'Tis hot enough. 
 
 The Abbot, at his dying moments — being alone — 
 awakes to the remembrance of the )-outh that i^reccded 
 the long arid desert of life. 
 
 The clearing shapes are as forms out of a snowstorm, 
 or out of smoke as it clears. The strain of the mind to 
 grasp them. 
 
 The sense of distance, yet of decreasing distance — of 
 tv,-o entities (the present and the pa^t) that will bi one, 
 
334 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 as when by cross of eye two images of the same thing 
 are seen that come together, each on each, in one, not of 
 combination but of identity. 
 
 They come so near that only a diaphanous pane seems 
 to divide them, as the clear wall of a new honey-comb 
 divides honey from honey. 
 
 Another strain — something gives way — they are 
 passing through this wall as honey to honey. They move 
 more swiftly, as a dislocated bone that under the strain of 
 the surgeon nears the socket. 
 
 He forefeels the shock of re-union — another moment 
 — another moment— ah this deadly faintness ! they will 
 be one — they arc. 
 
 Oh thou that lookedst on me in those days 
 
 Look on me now ...... 
 
 lest I die. 
 
 My soul is sickened with a wild desire — 
 
 Thou shalt look on me ! 
 
 I see thee — as in a haze — 
 
 I strain as to move the world — 
 All the weight of all matter seems upon me — but I move 
 it, I move it ! 
 
 Thou art nearer— nearer — I see 
 
 Thou livest — I live — 
 
 Ah my heart — {dies.) 
 
MISCELLANEOUS MEMORANDA FOR THE DRAMA. 335 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS MEMORANDA FOR 
 THE DRAMA. 
 
 As the Evening Star, broadening its petals like a 
 flower and exhaling beyond the luminous visible a 
 fragrance of unseen light, if a cloud sail below it, without 
 any crest of mist that the eye can see, brails ^ its radiance 
 and draws in its rays till but a central disc remains, and 
 thus by its more delicate essence shows the impurity our 
 senses cannot perceive, so her shrinking nature closed 
 upon itself in presence of, to us, invisible unbeauty. 
 
 In a vision of Heaven. Let the process of the 
 season from earliest spring to midsummer be the ana- 
 logue to furnish principles for the description. Then 
 at culmination, when language has reached its utmost, 
 let the visionary be conscious of a sudden entry into 
 
 [ ' Drails, the small sails of a ship : to brail, to haul up, or draw 
 in, such small sails. — Ed.] 
 
;^2,0 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 something beyond, of which however, as an organ 
 changes its stops, he has no remembrance on returning 
 to the point of departure. 
 
 Draw the Daimons of Creation. Each not charged 
 Avith a particular Kingdom of Nature but a special 
 funclion : taking the human body as the type and ruling 
 the analogous provinces throughout Nature : e.g. the 
 manual cat'/Ltwi' &c. Each attended by their subordi- 
 nates. 
 
 Anacreon — 'E-l fjivprrlyaiQ renelyaLc — says ' why dost 
 thou anoint a stone, and pour gifts on the ground ? 
 Cease from vain oblation — rather anoint me while I 
 live.' Show that he was less wise than the blind 
 Idolater. 
 
 Mv a Horsy. ^ All Mankind is the Word of God — 
 the third person in the Trinity. "\Miat else in the 
 universe speaks ? 
 
 Found an argument {per eolloquiiim ? ) on ' present 
 [' See Hegel, &c.— J. X.] 
 
MiSCKLLANKOUS MKMORANDA FoR THE DRAMA. 337 
 
 your bcxlies a //"'///i,' sacrifice.* Saccr carries no necessary 
 idea of i^ain, death, or denial. 
 
 A CONDEMNED. 
 
 And these are so heedless of my dear flesh, so hartl 
 to me, as if I were wood or stone and had not these 
 exquisite nerves, these all-admirable conformations ! 
 These that once were so otherwise, so attendant on my 
 steps, so preventive of my every wish ! And yet then 
 in those days they seemed not to me one \\\\\\. too 
 gentle nor to have a grace or sweetness more than 
 was native and necessary to me. 
 
 DEMOS. 
 
 Depict a meeting of young enthusiasts in newly 
 liberated Thought setting forth their nascent systems 
 on every subject. 
 
 Proposed. A sitting of the Collegiate ' Demos.' 
 A picture of all the wild extravagancies of new-born 
 discovery, ambition, and speculation. 
 
 HYPOTHESES ON THEOLOGY (fOR DEMOs). 
 
 Is God, then, an Idea only, the abstraction and 
 synopsis of the principles of the Universe made by the 
 
 z 
 
338 MEMORANDA AND FRAGMENTS OF PROJECTED PLAY. 
 
 unifying human mind and possessing therefore all the 
 attributes of an idea — 'Wliom no man hath seen at any 
 time ' — ' A Spirit ' — ' Dwelling not in Temples made 
 with hands ? ' 
 
 It is not true to say that the Universe is God, because 
 the Universe which we perceive is only the eftect on our 
 perceptions of the Action of Somewhat we cannot 
 perceive. 
 
 The sensible universe is therefore ourselves. It is 
 true, therefore, to say God creates the universe, and 
 creates it out of nothing, in the sense in which our sensa- 
 tion of a blow is corporeally nothing. 
 
 To say the Universe is God is not to say that God 
 is subject to change, inasmuch as the essential Universe 
 may be unchangeable though producing changing sensa- 
 tions in us ; as God produces various emotions in our 
 souls. 
 
 The Universe of Matter is in a state, as it were, of 
 fermentation, whereby some portions thereof attain to a 
 subtler condition of greater mobility, which manifests 
 more apparently and readily the principles which in 
 
MISCELLANEOUS MEMORANDA F(^R THE DRAMA. 339 
 
 duller fashions, through due degrees, the rest observes. 
 These subtler portions are spirit. 
 
 Suppose the Universe to be an assemblage of living 
 souls of limited cognition, each able to perceive certain 
 others onl}-, and knowing and performing its Duties 
 towards these ? 
 
 Is God the Universal Doer, but has Man, neverthe- 
 less, a privilege oi dioice as to the action to take place? 
 
 ' How came you by this Christianity ? By vision, by 
 ecstasy ? ' 
 
 Balder : ' Much more calmly and surely, I was in 
 the very dust. I had found — I will say how another 
 time — the impotence of Philosophy. I had trusted to 
 the heart and found myself in the act of murder. I 
 found my whole soul crying out for a revelation of 
 Truth, and I began to think that what was a necessity of 
 Nature must exist somewhere. The thirsty eye sees 
 water. The starving man beholds visible bread, by the 
 instinct of the body for its want.' 
 
When it was known that the Ahnighty Lord who once 
 did walk in Jewry had returned to this world and had His 
 Throne in the City of David, and that all who were weary 
 and heavy laden came unto Him and had rest, then the 
 
 man who was once called Balder, but now , arose 
 
 with his wife to go unto the Lord that He might heal the 
 scar upon her breast. 
 
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