UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. GIFT OF GEORGE MOREY RICHARDSON. Received, ^August, 1898. y r-> 9 . B ^Accession No. /$ ty^OO Class No. m I ' fesT^rlirJliiJr^r^'^Itifr^^ ^ DIVERSITY Demy 8vo, pp. xxiv., 430 cloth, 55. SAFE STUDIES. By the Hon. Mr. and Mrs. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. Contents : HISTORICAL PREDICTION. Sir G. C. LEWIS and LONGEVITY. LITERARY EGOTISM. CHARLES AUSTIN. RECOLLECTIONS of Mr. GROTE and Mr. BABBAGE. Mr. TENNYSON'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. PHYSICAL and MORAL COURAGE. THE UPPER ENGADINE. NOTES and RECOLLECTIONS of Sir CHARLES WHEATSTONE. DEAN STANLEY and CANON KINGSLEY. THE EPICURIST'S LAMENT. TRANSLATIONS and POEMS. Demy 8vo, pp. 238, cloth, 2s. 6d. STONES OF STUMBLING. By the Hon. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. Contents : THE CURE FOR INCURABLES. THE FEAR OF DEATH FEARLESS DEATHS. DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. Appendices : RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON.* Mr. ROMANES'S CATECHISM. NEOCHRISTIANITY and NEOCATHOLICISM : a Sequel. This is also published separately, demy 8vo, cloth, is. "The essays are mainly biographical, and are full of wit and humour. They abound in good stories of all kinds. Every page shows the classical humanist, the man of taste and scholarly refinement ; but, like the essays of Montaigne, of whom Mr. Tollemache is almost an English counterpart, there is a richer vein of thought and of philosophy run- ning through all this lighter matter." ANGLICAN CHURCH MAGAZINE. " Mr. Tollernache's essays seem to us to possess literary merit of a rare and high order. He is not only pleasantly anecdotic ; he is emi- nently sympathetic, ingenious, thoughtful, and appreciative, and many of these qualities are also exhibited in his more speculative and less personal papers. His recollections of Grote, Charles Austin, and Pattison are full of interesting anecdote and suggestive comment, while those of Babbage, Sir Charles Wheatstone, Dean Stanley, and Canon Kingsley belong to the same order. We can best enforce our favour- able judgment of these remarkable volumes by quoting a passage from a letter received from Pattison, to whom he had sent the privately printed edition, which of course did not contain the paper on Pattison himself : ' I should say that the papers on the whole show a union, which is very uncommon, of two opposite qualities viz., a dominant interest in speculation of a wide and human character, with vast re- sources, in the memory, of single facts, incidents, or mots of famous men. How, with your eyesight, you ever compassed such a range of reading as is here brought to bear at all points of your argument must be a matter of wonder. It seems as if you could draw at pleasure upon all literature, from the classics down to Robert Montgomery and Swin- burne.' In this judgment we cordially concur. It should be added that the larger volume, entitled ' Safe- Studies,' contains a series of graceful poems by Mrs. Tollemache." TIMES. "Altogether, we can give very hearty praise to the book, and that is something in the case of matter which has not the charm of novelty to the reviewer, and with a good deal of which he disagrees in opinion. Mr. Tollemache can tell an excellent story (such as that of the young lady who, having spoken enthusiastically about a clergyman, and being asked if she referred to any sermon of his, said, ' No ; oh ! no. But he hates mayonnaise, and so do I.'). He manages, though he himself is very frequently in presence, and the subject of discussion, never to be unpleasantly egotistic. His work has the literary flavour throughout, without being merely bookish, and he can argue a thesis like a crafts- man and a master of his craft." SA TURD A Y RE VIEW. " Mr. Tollemache is one of a fortunate few with whom a certain kind of memory may be said, as Rossetti said of beauty, to be a genius itself. . . . Even the anecdotes, good as they are, have scarcely the same literary value as his rare power of making men and women live before us with all their human charm and weakness, the charm the more real for the supplementary weakness, and the weakness itself winning our attachment in the light of the charm. His truly marvellous memory for details of speech and character may yet keep for us many a little trait, or passing word, which will hereafter be precious." SPEAKER. "The 'Safe Studies' are those to which it is impossible for any human creature to raise the smallest objection on any ground whatever, and they are about four times as long as the ' Stones of Stumbling.' These stumbling-blocks may possibly at some period or other have given scandal to a part of the population by no means likely to read them ; but in these days the public has swallowed so many camels, that we do not think Mr. Tollemache's gnats would even make any consider- able portion of them cough. . . . We propose to make some observations on the most important of these charming essays. They are all singu- larly well worth reading, and may be described as the works of a most ingenious, accomplished, and cultivated man of leisure, who writes in order to fix recollections and systematize speculations which interest him, and not for the purpose of advocating particular views in the spirit of a partisan or propagandist." S7 1 . JAMES'S GAZETTE, "He [the author] possesses in a high degree the first requisite of a biographer, the admiratio Boswelliana, and he combines with the exact memory of Mr. Hayward some of the sympathetic appreciativeness of Lord Houghton. . . . This (Stones of Stumbling] includes the ' Recol- lections of [Mark] Pattison,' which attracted so much attention on their first appearance in \h& Journal of Education. Together with the notice of Charles Austin (in Safe Stiidies], it must also possess a permanent value, as an unrivalled example of Boswellian portraiture with the added interest that, in recording the traits of his friends, the author is half-unconsciously revealing some of his own." ACADEMY. " Since the death of Hayward, we know no English litterateur who has, in the same degree as Mr. Tollemache, the happy knack of recollecting or collecting the characteristic sayings and doings of a distinguished man, and piecing them together in a finished mosaic." DAIL Y CHRONICLE. " Mr. Tollemache has at last overcome his dislike to publicity, and has given the world at large a series of delightful studies which might otherwise have been well-nigh lost in the sombre and dissipated retire- ment of a bound periodical. . . . An atmosphere of soft melancholy envelops his treatment ; and this melancholy is perhaps the cause of yet another charm. His studies are not only full of ' unfamiliar quota- tions from familiar authors,' but abound in pleasant and witty digres- sions. "-NA TIONA L OBSER VER. " Both these volumes have been previously printed for private circu- lation, and in this form have found their way to the British Museum and other great libraries. They have now been reprinted and published ' at cost price,' and may almost be said to mark an epoch in the history of cheap books. ... In all these essays Mr. Tollemache shows himself to be a worthy follower of Boswell, and is content for the most part to allow his characters to reveal themselves by the anecdotes and fragments of conversation which he is able to report. These are mostly well told and to the point, and make the essays very pleasant reading." GUARDIAN. "The books, as a whole, give in an agreeable form an outline or suggestion of all that has been most prominent and characteristic for the past twenty or thirty years in the leading currents of speculative thought in England. Though they deal with thorny problems, and sometimes argue closely enough to be hard reading, the essays have the charm which the judicious use of a wide learning gives, and the book is attractive as well as thoughtful and suggestive." SCOTSMAN. "That Mr. Tollemache has an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes is not saying much ; but what is remarkable is the skill, the aptness, the felicity with which he applies them. . . . Mrs. Tollemache's poems are penetrated with a love of nature truly Wordsworthian. ... It has been long since we read anything so interesting, amusing and delightful as ' Safe Studies.'" GALIGNANPS MESSENGER. " The Essays include * Mr. Tennyson's Social Philosophy,' 'Charles Austin,' ' Physical and Moral Courage,' ' Recollections of Dean Stanley,' and other papers, making one of the most interesting of books. Even more interesting, if possible, are the ' Recollections of [Mark] Pattison,' which form part of the companion volume. . . . There are enough good stories in Mr. Tollemache's Recollections to fill half-a-dozen columns." STAR. " I find your article [Fortnightly Review, July, 1892] charming, and your Whiggism mild. Neither epithet is, I think, exaggerated." Letter from Mr. GLADSTONE. LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 86 FLEET STREET. [Sold by BRENTANO, 17 Avenue de 1'Opera, Paris, and 5 Union Square, New York.] STONES OF STUMBLING. BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. ti " Jerusalem est sortie plus brillante et plus belle du travail en ap- parence destructeur de la science moderne. Les pieux recits dont on ber$a notre enfance sont devenus, grace a une saine interpretation, de hautes verites ; et c'est a nous qui voyons Israel dans sa reelle beaute, c'est a nous autres critiques qu'il appartient vraiment de dire : Stantes erant pedes noatri in atriis tuis, Jerusalem." KENAN. WITH TWO APPENDICES. LONDON : WILLIAM RICE, 86 FLEET STREET, E.G. 1893. LONDON I PRINTED BY C. F. HODGSON & SON, NEWTON STREET, HOLBORN, W.C. 73 UNIVERSITY PREFACE TO THE FIRST PUBLISHED EDITION. 2/j.ucpbs e|ap/ce7 \6yos. SOPHOCLES. ("A short account suffices.") IN the Preface to the Published Edition of "Safe Studies" I have alluded to the conditions under which my two volumes, after a long process of incubation, or rather of domestic rearing, have been suddenly left to make shift for themselves. Readers of this volume are referred to that Preface, which contains some needful explanations, and is, in fact, an Apologia pro scriptis LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. ATHENAEUM CLUB, PALL MALL, S.W. 1891. PREFACE TO THE SECOND PUBLISHED EDITION. "In poetry, a certain faith in the impossible, and in religion, a like faith in the unknowable, must have a place." GOETHE. IN the Preface to the First Published Edition of this volume, it is stated that the Preface to Safe Studies " contains some needful explanations, and is, in fact, an Apologia pro scriptis meis" As, however, I find that many persons who have read Stones of Stumbling have not seen Safe Studies, or at least have not sought out the " needful explanations," I subjoin, with a few 11 PREFACE. corrections and additions, the passage in Safe Studies to which I chiefly refer : "The last time that Mr. Matthew Arnold wrote to me was after his perusal of my Mr. Romanes's Catechism. His letter contains these words: 'I consider myself, to adopt your very good expression, a Liberal Anglican ; and I think the times are in favour of our being allowed so to call ourselves.' On the other hand, Mr. Hamerton, in his French and English, has expressed some friendly surprise at my calling myself an Anglican of any sort. His surprise will doubtless be shared by many readers of Stones of Stumbling. Let me, therefore, explain that my Divine Economy of Truth was written before the reaction from my Evan- gelical education had subsided, and before the Anglican Gospel had suddenly and, as it were, unwittingly changed from tidings of unspeak- able sadness to tidings of unspeakable joy, inasmuch aj that ghastly nightmare, the belief in unending torments, then weighed on the English Church, as it still weighs on the Roman Church. The result is that this Essay contains several expressions which I should not use now, and is marked by a combativeness and even a bitterness which are, I hope, laid aside in my somewhat similar Essay written ten years later under the title of Neochristianity and Neocatholicism. It should, however, be noted that the main contention of those articles has now been practically admitted by Canon Cheyne in his Bampton Lectures, by the Principal of Pusey House in Lux Mundi, and, more recently, by those official repre- sentatives of orthodox learning in our two Universities, Canon Driver and Canon Kirkpatrick. " To me certainly it seems that one who accepts and assimilates the results of criticism is more and more disposed to give a response to the grand utterances of the Hebrew Scriptures to that amazing confidence which has been so abundantly justified, and to those more amazing prophecies which have been almost literally fulfilled. Thus we are in a manner led to share the confidence shown in such texts as : ' pray for the peace of Jerusalem ; they shall prosper that love thee. The Lord hath chosen Zion to be an habitation for himself ; he hath longed for her.'* And we can, at least, put our own construction perhaps a wider and deeper <>ne than was originally intended on the prophecies : ' The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and Icings to the brightness of thy rising. In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying : We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you? " If I were now to rewrite my article on the Divine Economy of Truth, I should leave its main scope and argument as they stand, PREFACE. Ill but should profoundly modify its tone, and, in particular, I should omit certain passages which may have had their use when Neochristianity was still militant, or rather when it was regarded as a sort of rebel with no claim to belligerent rights, but which would now be wholly superfluous ; and, having made these alterations, I should be disposed to call the volume, not Stones of Stumbling, but Bulwarks of Belief. Charles Austin was fond of quoting the passage in Absalom and Achitophel in which Dry den adverts to the change wrought by the Reformation in the relative position of Catholics and Protestants, whom he respectively designates as Jebusites and Israelites : " The inhabitants of old Jerusalem Were Jebusites ; the town so called from them ; And theirs the ancient right. But, when the chosen people grew more strong, The rightful cause at length became the wrung." May not the new and greater Reformation have now proceeded so far that the wrongful cause, as it was but lately thought, is fast becoming the right one ? In illustration of the gradual but complete change that has been coming over men's minds during the last two centuries, I will quote Mark Pattison's comment on the theology of Paradise Lost: "It would have been a thing incredible to Milton that the hold of the Jewish Scriptures over the imagination of English men and women could ever be weakened. This process, however, has already commenced. The demonology of the poem has already, with educated readers, passed from the region of fact into that of fiction. Not so universally, but with a large number of readers, the angelology can be no more than what the critics call machinery." "Well might Sophocles exclaim : vei ' Vast and measureless time brings to light all that is hidden, and \ hides all that has been brought to light." IV PREFACE. But, if haply we are oppressed with the sense of the universal flux of things spiritual as of things physical with something of Tennyson's foreboding that our religious systems " have their day and cease to be " let us fortify ourselves by recalling Matthew Arnold's paraphrase of Monica's last prayer, his rendering of that prayer into its modern equivalent : " Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole. Yet we her memory, as she prayed, will keep, Keep by this: Life in God and union there.' 1 '' LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. March, 1893. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. TeXeiW ecr-riv f) o-repea rpocfirj. Heb. V. 14. ALL these articles are reprinted from the Fort- nightly Review. It is with some hesitation that I include in the volume the plea which, eleven years ago (calidd juventd), I set up on behalf of Euthanasia. In the additions which are now made to the article, and especially in the Note at the end of it, I endeavour to explain that I am merely expounding and defending against logical objections Sir Thomas More's summary proposal for the Relief of Incurables in Utopia. He assuredly sought not to naturalize his scheme among the subjects of Henry VIII. ; and I, too, am in nowise ambitious of introducing it among the subjects of Queen Victoria ! The reform, if ever it is to be, " lies so far away, Not in our time, nor in our children's time, 'Tis like the second world to us that live." Let it therefore be understood, once for all, that VI PREFACE. my article is philosophical discussion it is not a revolutionary propaganda. The article on Physical Courage in my other series, and those on The Fear of Death and Fear- less Deaths in this one, together made up in their original form the single article on Courage and Death (Jan. 1876) ; they are, however, reprinted with considerable additions. L. A. T. 1884. The Second Edition is a reprint of the First, with the Recollections of Pattison added as an Appendix. 1885. Mr. Romanes's Catechism and Neo Christianity and Neocatholicism have been added more recently. 1887. CONTENTS. PAGE THE CURE FOR INCURABLES 1 THE FEAR OF DEATH 32 FEARLESS DEATHS 51 DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH 66 APPENDIX I. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON 119 APPENDIX II. MR. ROMANES'S CATECHISM 207 NEOCHRISTIANITY AND NEOCATHOLICISM : A SEQUEL ... 228 STONES OF STUMBLING. THE CURB FOR INCURABLES.* KpCL otLer form of severity and gloom are the legitimate conse- quences. There is much ready declamation in these days .against the spirit of asceticism and against zeal for doctrinal conversion ; but surely the macerated form of a Saint Francis, the fierce denunciations of a Saint Dominic, the groans and prayerful wrestlings of the Puritan who seasoned his bread with tears and made all pleasurable sensation sin, are more in keeping with the contemplation of unending anguish as the destiny of a vast multitude whose nature we share, than the rubicund cheerfulness of some modern divines, who pro- fess to unite a smiling Liberalism with a well-bred and tacit, tut unshaken confidence in the reality of the bottomless pit." NOTE. It must be owned that Lucretius represents an intense fear of death as prevailing among his countrymen. But Macaulay thought, probably with reason, that his statements are exag- gerated. The exaggeration (if such it was) was no doubt designed as an excuse for the arguments with which he assailed his national theology, and which are so unfortunately applicable to other theologies that (in the delicious phrase lately used in Parliament) his poetry is " only less objection- able than Mr. Bradlaugh's writings." The only classical writing, so far as I am aware, which represents the modern aspect of the fear of death, is the pseudo- Platonic dialogue called Axiochus. This dialogue, though written in late Greek, is undoubtedly pagan ; it pro- bably belongs to the time of which we have spoken, when paganism was giving way by reason, not of Christianity, but of " those more general causes which predispose men's mincls to receive Christianity." The argument is briefly as follows : Axiochus, an old man on his death-bed, loses his nerve and sends for Socrates to comfort him, just as a dying Christian would now send for a clergyman. Socrates tries to console him 64 STONES OP STUMBLING. with dialectical quibbles, such as that death has to do neither with the dead nor with the living. The poor old man com- plains that these subtleties are all very well for young men, but they are cold comfort in the hour of death. Thereupon, Socrates changes his theme, and assures Axiochus that his soul is merely escaping out of prison into a land where sorrow and old age will be replaced by a philosophic calm ; and he adds a sort of apocalyptic myth, to the effect that after death the righteous will be received into Elysium, while the wicked will be removed to a place of torment where their devouring wild- beast dieth not and their fire is not quenched (Xa/x-Trao-tv eTTi/xoi/tos Trvpov/jLcvoL ttt'Stots rtfuapiaes Tpu^ovTat). On hearing these gladdest of glad tidings, the old man straightway casts asidehis fear, and has even a desire to depart. It may be worth while to compare this singular dialogue, so far as it reveals the future of the righteous, with the famous epitaph in the Greek anthology, of which the subjoined hexameters are but a free and feeble paraphrase : Ov/c e0av5, Ilpam?, jurrc/^s 8' ? Kat vatets ^a/capon/ v^crovs 6a.\irj cvi TroAA/yJ "Ev$a KOT' 'HAimW TreSiW o-Kiprwo-a *Av0s rots Xeyovcrtv. j" "iS/xev i^euSea TroXXa Atyctv. DIVINE ECONOMY OP TRUTH. 91 tions as this last are to be found. The Bible, we have shown, speaks of God as deceiving. In another place, God declares himself to be fallible, and even provides against the contingency of his having been misinformed.* Either this Divine statement is true, or it is not. If it is, cadit quaextio : if it is not, God is convicted of misre- presentation in this case, and capable of it in others. Of course, it may be contended that God is infallible in himself, but that, when speaking down to our faculties, He has to depict himself as fallible. I do not mean to contest this explana- tion ; for, in conceding that God as revealed to us is fallible, it concedes all that my argument re- quires. A different class of objectors may urge that God did not declare himself to be fallible, but was misrepresented by the author of Genesis. This solution, however, only throws the difficulty farther back : for the Founders of Christianity asserted, or rather assumed, the Divine authority of the Pentateuch ;t so that, if the author of Genesis was mistaken, they were mistaken also. And this brings us to a remark about verbal in- * Gen. xviii. 21. In 1 Kings xxii. 20-22, God is repre- sented as at a loss for an expedient and as seeking counsel in the art of deception. f See Mark xii. 26. It is clear that the general state of opinion the suppressed major premiss, as we may call it 92 STONES OF STUMBLING. spiration. St. Paul believed in the verbal inspira- tion of the Old Testament.* Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that Jesus held the same view. Also, He promised his disciples that his teaching should be supernaturally brought to their remembrance ; and that, when taken before judges, they should be verbally inspired.! These and similar passages serve to explain the de- sperate efforts that were made to defend verbal inspiration. In a work whose perfect accuracy is divinely guaranteed, even a minute error in fact involves a grave error in doctrine ; for it proves that inspiration did not know its own limits. Extremes in theology sometimes meet; and I am glad to find that the views here enunciated may be confirmed by a quotation from Dr. Wordsworth. After rightly premising that the promise of verbal inspiration must be regarded as extending to St. Stephen, he goes on to comment on allega- tions that the proto-martyr's speech contains errors : " The allegations in question, when re- wliicli is involved in the assumption that the Divine words spoken in the burning bush were genuine, will cover the assumption that the Divine words confessing fallibility were genuine. * Gal. iii. 16. f Mark xiii. 11. How is this to be reconciled with Acts xxiii. 5 ? What would be thought of a modern witness who was affirmed to be infallible, but who, on entering the Court, failed to distinguish between judge and jury ? DIVINE ECONOMY OF TEUTH. 93 duced to their plain meaning, involve the assump- tion, that the Holy Ghost speaking by St. Stephen (who was 'full of the Holy Spirit') forgot what He himself had written in the book of Genesis, and that his memory is to be refreshed by Biblical commentators of the nineteenth century/' This trenchant logic may be fitly coupled with Cow- per's sneer at geologists, who " drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there Extract a register, by which we learn That He who made it, and revealed its date To Moses, was mistaken in its age !" One has only to confront Dr. Wordsworth's logic with Alford's correct statement that St. Stephen's speech contains " at least two demonstrable his- torical inaccuracies " ; and to confront Cowper's sneer with the first principles of modern geology ; and one perceives what an edged tool every such reductio ad anti-Christianum is. But what con- cerns us is to note that, as we have said, rational Christians now-a-days admit that the Scriptures contain mistakes. Whence it follows that the Founders, who believed that the Scriptures (or large portions of them) were free from mistakes, were in that very belief themselves mistaken. Moreover, the fallibility of Christ may be dis- tinctly inferred from the Gospels. He is repre- sented "as growing" (and therefore as at one 94 STONES OF STUMBLING. time deficient) " in wisdom." He sought theolo- gical instruction from the Jewish doctors. Unless this instruction was a mere farce, He was then, if not fallible, at least inferior in knowledge to his fallible teachers. Also, in mature manhood, He knew not the day or the hour of his coming.* Hence his knowledge on some subjects was im- perfect. And from imperfect knowledge to falli- bility the step is a slight one ; for, when a Being has imperfect knowledge, how can we be sure that his knowledge is perfect as to the limits of its own imperfection ? But, as regards the falli- bility of Christ, we are not left to mere conjec- ture. He " marvelled at the centurion's faith." Now, it is obvious that an infallible being could not marvel. When we say that a man marvels, we imply that his expectation fell short of the * Mark xiii. 32. This and similar passages are explained away by some Catholics. Thus Pius IX. (quoted by Mr. Gladstone) has pronounced that Christ's increase in wisdom was " only apparent " : whereunto a Neochristian might re- spond that future punishment will be "only apparent." So, again, the Dublin Eeview (September, 1865) says that "the Church imperatively requires her children to understand Mark xiii. 32 in some very unobvious sense." If the Church may take this liberty with plain texts in the New Testament, the Scribes and Pharisees (who sat in Moses' seat") must have had a like authority over plain texts in the Old Testament. Why, then, were the Jews blamed for giving a " very unobvious sense " to the Fifth Commandment (Mark vii. 9-13) ? DIVINE ECONOMY OP TRUTH. 95 reality, and was therefore erroneous. And thus, when we are told that Jesus marvelled at the centurion's faith, we infer that his previous estimate of that faith had been unduly low. Again : a Being conscious of infallibility would be free from doubt and misgiving. Yet Jesus was uncertain respecting his death ; and, when dying, He feared that God had forsaken him.* In case this demonstration (for such it is) should be pain- ful to any reader, I would fain offer a word of comfort. The great Catholic commentary of Cornelius a Lapide states that, " esto Christus non creverit sapientia et gratia habitual!, crevit tamen actuali et practica." This reasoning is just as applicable to Christ's fallibility as to his youthful deficiency in knowledge ; and hence a liberal Chris- tian who clings to the belief in his Lord's Divinity, may plausibly urge that the Saviour (as was inevitable) held some errors of his time, but that in respect of those errors it was only his " actual and practical wisdom," not his " habitual wisdom," that failed him. Having thus sought to disarm prejudice, we can more freely comment on a few out of the many erroneous statements reported in the Gospels statements that may, as it were, keep in coun- * Matt. xxvi. 39 ; xxvii. 46. See the Note at the end of the article yb STONES OF STUMBLING. tenance the reported statements about hell ; and, in making the selection, we will mainly confine our view to errors that have been practically acknowledged by Christians of note. We will begin with an example that perplexed Mr. Maurice. The Master is said to have prophesied that He would " be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Now, the interval from Friday evening to Sunday morning is only one day and two nights. Hence, in the prophecy, as reported by St. Matthew, there is as open a breach with arithmetic as in the three f ourteens in the same Evangelist's genealogy ; and, we may add, as in his strange narrative (evolved out of a misunderstood prophecy) concerning the ass and the colt, on both of which (aurwv) Jesus rode into Jerusalem.* Again, Jesus said that David ate the shewbread " in the high priesthood of Abiathar" :f the event really occurred in the high priesthood of Ahimelech. Once more : an excel- lent religious journal has courageously proposed " to explain, once for all, that the theological and * By the other three Evangelists, the supernumerary ass is suppressed. St. Matthew and the fourth Evangelist quote Zech. ix. 9 differently, so as to make it support their differ- ing accounts. The fourth Grospel elsewhere furnishes a striking example of a myth deposited from a misunderstood text (xix. 23, 24). f Mark ii. 26. I adopt Alford's translation, as the dim- DIVINE ECONOMY OF TEUTH. 97 historical library popularly called the 'Bible' contains some errors."* Now, the " error " that is chiefly referred to occurs in the Fourth Com- mandment. Did God give the Ten Command- ments, or did he not ? If he did, the " error " was a Divine one, and the thunders on Sinai were so many seals to that error. If he did not, the Master, who clearly believed the Decalogue to be from God, was himself in error on a fundamental point. The gravity of such an error may be best shown by an illustration. In the parable of Dives and Lazarus that tremendous parable, as Charles Austin called it, which implies that all who receive their " good things " on earth, all whom a Jew of the Christian era would have counted rich, will be " tormented," t greater value is attached to the testimony of Moses and the Prophets than to that of one risen from the dead.J culty is slurred over in the authorised version. Alford com- ments on the instructive fact that a good and learned divine has persuaded himself that this text "rather suggests that he (Abiathar) was not the High Priest then " : nanum Atlanta vocavit, Mihiopem cygnum. As for me, I forbear to waste words on the ingenious disingenuousness of harmonists : for I cannot even understand the notion that it is honest to apply to the Bible a mode of interpretation which would be dis- honest if applied to any other book ; and that orthodoxy, like Sigismund, is supra grammatic,am. * Spectator, August 28, 1875, p. 1091. t Luke xvi. 25. + In like manner the writer calling himself St. Peter attributes greater probative force to the enigmatical pro- II 98 STONES OF STUMBLING. Now, if one of the bystanders had suggested that one risen from the dead would appeal directly to the senses, whereas the passages in Moses and the Prophets (even assuming those passages to be genuine and rightly interpreted) might figure among the " errors " in " the theological and his- torical library popularly called the ' Bible,' " if one of the bystanders (say the virtuous and en- lightened St. Thomas) had suggested this, would not the remonstrance, " Be not faithless, but believing," have been the very mildest that would have been addressed to him? Again, not only did Jesus accept the entire narrative of the Pen- tateuch, but on the details of that narrative he founded important rules of conduct. In treating of the right of divorce, he appealed to the insti- tution that was " from the beginning " ; primitive institutions he assumed to be ideally the best. His reasoning suggests two reflections. First, "Whatever the primitive form of marriage was, strict monogamy it .was not. Secondly, The question as to primitive marriage, though in- directly full of instruction, has no direct bearing on conduct. As soon as science shall have de- termined how far primitive societies were endoga- phecies of the Old Testament than to the evidence of St. Peter's own eyes and ears. (2 Peter i. 18, 19.) This ten- dency of the early Christian mind is suggestive. DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 99 mous or exogamous, modern communities will not be constrained to adapt their marriage laws to the primitive model : any more than those of us who believe slavery and cannibalism to have been primitive institutions, are therewithal bound to become slaveholders and cannibals. These illustrations are given in no captious spirit, but in order to show how hollow is the truce that has been patched up between ortho- doxy and modern research. Especially hollow is the truce between orthodoxy and Biblical criticism. For example : Jesus ascribed the 110th Psalm to David;* and the context shows that, in so as- cribing it, he was not adapting himself to con- ventional phraseology, but that he thought that it was verily and indeed spoken by David. On the other hand, the " Four Friends " deny that it was by David ; indeed, it was manifestly spoken not by, but to, a Hebrew ruler .f The " Four Friends," who write in a thoroughly Christian spirit, forbear to point the moral of their state- menu ; but they can hardly have been ignorant * Matt. xxii. 43, 44 ; comp. Acts 11. 34, 35. t I say " ruler " (not " king") since there is a great diffe- rence of opinion as to when this psalm was written. It is stated in the Psalms by " Four Friends," that it was written during the monarchy ; while our best Biblical critic, Dr. Davidson, is inclined to relegate it to the time of the Maccabees. H 2 TOO STONES OF STUMBLING. that, in making the statement at all, they were charging their Master with error. It is yet more obvious that their interpretation of the contemp- tuous apostrophe, " Ye are gods," is at variance with the amazing interpretation reported in the Fourth Gospel. Indeed, according to modern criticism, hardly one of the texts quoted from the Old Testament is rightly interpreted in the New. " Of prophecies in the sense of prognostication" says Coleridge, " I utterly deny that there is any instance delivered by one of the illustrious Diadoche whom the Jewish Church comprised in the name Prophets and I shall regard Cyrus as an exception, when I believe the 137th Psalm to have been composed by David." In effect, this remarkable passage denies that the so-called Hebrew prophecies were predictions. On the other hand, Jesus believed them to be, not merely predictions, but predictions so plain that the Jewish nation was held guilty for not discerning their fulfilment. Thus, on so vital a question as prophecy, the opinion of the chief Christian philo- sopher of our century was diametrically opposed to the opinion of Christ. Other Christian writers follow Coleridge's lead. For instance : the Mas- ter is alleged to have foretold that a prophecy of Daniel was about to be fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem, which was to be "immediately" fol- DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 101 lowed by the end of the world.* Yet, not only has a certain interval already elapsed between the destruction of Jerusalem and that of the world ; but we learn, even from Christian autho- rities, that the passage attributed to Daniel had no reference to the sack of Jerusalem by Titus that it was not by Daniel that it was not a pro- phecy, but a forgery. Hence, the book of Daniel furnishes a crucial test of rationalism. Laodicean liberals sometimes boast that they have given up their orthodoxy concerning the Old Testament, but that their orthodoxy concerning the New remains unimpaired. Now, if there is a point whereon rational critics from Porphyry to Zeller are agreed, it is that the prophecy in Daniel is un- authentic. If there is a point which lukewarm liberals are loth to give up, it is that every word of Christ came from God. To what, then, does their theory amount? Even to this shocking conclusion : that God professed to have inspired the pseudo- Daniel ; and thus became accessory after the fact to a forgery. A similar mode of reasoning applies yet more directly to the theory of " inspired per- sonation," a theory which seems to find favour with the accomplished divine who has written the article " Bible" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, * Matt. xxiv. 15, 29. 102 STONES OF STUMBLING. and who has justly been described in a religious journal as the most orthodox of Biblical critics. That theory practically is, that the author of Deuteronomy, who was not Moses, was inspired to say that he was Moses (Deo per mendacium gratificari) . Yet, peradventure, for this theory something may be said. We have seen that, on the orthodox hypothesis, St. Stephen's speech was verbally inspired. Yet, when professing to give the very words of Amos, he quietly substituted "Babylon" for "Damascus"; in fact, he mani- pulated the prophecy, so as to make it seem to have been fulfilled by the captivity.* It follows, then, that he was verbally inspired to misquote. If St. Stephen was inspired to misquote, why may not the Deuteronomist have been inspired to mis- report ? But this is not all. A distinguished living clergyman told me that he considered the strongest passage in the Bible to be one where God, by the mouth of Jeremiah, disowned the entire ceremonial law.f The explanation of this * Acts vii. 43. This practice was after the manner of the age. In Isaiah ix. 12, the LXX did not scruple to render "Philistines" by "EAA^ves: their object being, according to a high authority, to make the prophecy refer to the Ptolemies and Seleucidae. See MACKAY'S Progress of the Intellect. f Jer. vii. 22. DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 103 passage probably is, that Jeremiah, like Ezekiel, felt that the Mosaic law contained statutes which, according to the moral standard of his own age, " were not good " ; but that, whereas Ezekiel concluded that those unworthy statutes were given by God penally, Jeremiah more rationally concluded that they were not given by God at all. At any rate, Jeremiah's statement is incompatible with the divine authorship of the Pentateuch. How, then, is it to be reconciled with Christ's observance of the Passover, and his injunction to " offer the gift that Moses commanded " ? But I refrain from pressing this difficulty. Enough has been said to explain why it is that, on the approach of sound criticism, the orthodox land- marks, which but lately seemed so steadfast, are one by one being removed : just as oftentimes, when air and light are admitted into the abode of the dead, the form which had been, and at first sight appeared still destined to be, long preserved, crumbles speedily away. A Greek sage once laid down three rather sweeping propositions. (1) Nothing exists. (2) If anything exists, it may not be known. (3) If anything exists and may be known, the knowledge may not be communicated. Now, if in these pro- positions for "thing" be substituted "good argu- ment against orthodoxy," they will be found to 104 STONES OF STUMBLING. correspond to three objections commonly urged against inquiries like the present. With the first class of objectors those who deny the existence of plausible arguments for rationalism we have already dealt. There remain the other two sets of objectors. There are those who maintain that such plausible arguments exist indeed, but exist only to try our faith ; the fruit of this tree of knowledge should be eschewed on pain of death. And there are those who complain that, in imparting to them this fruifc, we have made them unhappy, and have driven them, as it were, out of Paradise : we have taken away their Lord, and they know not where we have laid him. This last objection shall be discussed first, and very briefly. That the popular creed is in itself not a happy one, we have shown. Indeed, the applica- tion of the name " Gospel " to a system contain- ing such doctrines as the imputation of Adam's guilt "th 5 enormous faith of many" damned " for one " may be called the irpurov favSoq of orthodoxy ; insomuch that it is the Christian Universalists who are on the side of the angels ; and this time it is the popular theology which, in representing itself as having received from the angels the glaring misnomer of " good tidings of great joy," suggests what is " little short of blasphemous." Still, although that theology is in DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 105 itself a very Kakangel, there is no doubt that by many the /ca/ca-yyfXroc ayji is unfelt. Our " sister while she prays " is generally able to enjoy " her early heaven, her happy views," and blissfully to ignore her early hell and most depressing views. And this is a reason against heedlessly airing modern opinions in general con- Tersation, when one's hearer is almost at one's mercy. But it is not a reason against putting forth those opinions in writings, which no one is compelled to read. Moreover, the orthodox, who practise self-deception as to the unsound portions of their creed, will find their task daily more dif- ficult, and therefore more demoralising. As we said in a former article, " the bracing intellectual air that we now breathe will bring the latent diseases of our religion out "; and perchance, if we limit overmuch the action of that bracing air, it will work unmixed harm it will have time to bring the diseases out, but not time to cure them. It is on this account that too mild a treatment of those diseases may be perilous to the entire body of Christian sentiment and practice not merely to the letter that killeth, but to the spirit that giveth life : if thine hand or thy foot offend thee, says the Scripture, cut it off. And thus, when we exhorted Christians manfully to renounce the devil and all his angels, and to drop hell out of 106 STONES OF STUMBLING. the Bible, we acted under a Conservative impulse : for we doubted whether to Christianity itself the presence of those nether flames, if they were suffered to go on smouldering, would be wholly free from risk. Behold, how great a matter a little fire Jcindleth. The other objection is, in effect, that " man is not made to question, but adore": it is safer to accept undoubtingly whatever our Bible or Church tells us of G-od, even if the evidence for those statements be inconclusive; nay, had the evidence been conclusive, where would be the room for our faith ? Of this faith unfaithful we might summarily dispose, by observing that its possessors are liable to Coleridge's censure they prefer Christianity to truth. They might, in a word, be designated by saying that Malunt err are cum Ghristo quam nobiscum vera sentire. And they might be encountered with the reverent, yet conclusive, answer, Amicus Chris tus, magis arnica veritas. But it will serve our purpose to meet these objectors on their own ground, and to fight them with their own weapons. Is it, then, quite certain that a good Being, who on one or more occasions affirmed himself to have ordained Tophet, would wish his affirmation to be always believed? The answer to this question may be sought in human analogies. Malcolm in order to DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 107 test the fidelity of Macduff, charged himself with grievous faults. It was with hearty satisfaction that Macduff at length discovered that Malcolm had been deceiving him. Nor can we doubt that, when the discovery was made, his satisfaction was shared by Malcolm himself; for the latter would prefer that his friend should regard him as an occasional liar, rather than as a perpetual villain.* A yet closer parallel may be drawn from classical mythology. Mr. Symonds has well observed that an enlightened Pagan would feel about the cannibal repasts attributed to hi gods, much as an enlightened Christian feels about eternal punishment. This parallel (Mr. Symonds's critics notwithstanding) holds perfectly ; for the analogical device which is used to defend, and the allegorical device which is used to explain away, the belief in a divine torture-house, may just as * Perhaps a similar lesson may be gathered from the Gospels. We may be sure that the father whose son refused to go into the vineyard, but afterwards repented and went, was better pleased than if the son had kept his word and not gone had been more truthful, but less obedient. The moral of Jephthah's story is less satisfactory ; and the frantic efforts that are now- a- days made to explain away this simple narrative to make believe that Jephthah broke his vow and did not commit murder are among the many proofs that the religious instinct of modern times is in some respects healthier than that of the Old, and seemingly of the New, Testament. (Heb. xi. 32.) 108 STONES OF STUMBLING. readily be applied to the belief in divine cannibal- ism. It is, therefore, worth while to consider the sort of language which devout but enlightened Pagans Pagan Broad Churchmen, in fact held concerning this unsavoury dogma of Pagan orthodoxy. In a passage translated and justly praised by Bacon, Plutarch observes : " Surely, I had rather a great deal men should say, there was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as they were born ; as the poets speak of Saturn ; " the gods, he infers, have a similar preference, and hate super- stition worse than Atheism. This principle is fruitful of consequences. Let us suppose that Plutarch would have accepted them : in that case, if Kronos or Zeus could have been shown to have pleaded guilty to revolting cruelty, Plutarch would have judged it right to disbelieve the Divine confession. And he might fairly have hoped that such a judgment would find an echo amid the peaks of Olympus ; for, would not the Olympian father more bitterly resent the charge of murdering his own children, than that of, humanly speaking, either deceiving, or being deceived (KJOHTTOV S'iXlaOai i/>uSoc ij aArjOec K.CLKOV) ? Nay, further, Zeus was the father " of men " as well as " of gods," the father " whose offspring DIVINE ECONOMY OF TRUTH. 109 1 we are ";* and the foregoing argument would as clearly apply to his treatment of his human, as to his treatment of his divine, children. Wherefore Plutarch might have thought it, not merely un- scientific, but irreligious, to doubt that, " As for the dog, the furies, and their snakes, The gloomy caverns and the burning lakes, And all the vain infernal trumperj, They neither are, nor were, nor e'er can be."f In other words, he might have clung to his belief in the divine mercy, even though the divine mercy had to be upheld at the cost of lesser divine attributes ; even though, with the voracity of Tartarus, he gave up the veracity of Zeus. Another Neopagan has dealt with divine cannibalism in a manner whereon Neo Christians would do well to meditate. To Pindar it seemed hardly credible that the gods should have eaten up Pelops. He granted, indeed, that very strange things sometimes happened; and he thought that, in this particular case, the final * See Acts xvii. 28. Epictetns says, " If a man could fully realise this doctrine, that we are all in a special manner born of God, and that God is the father, both of men and of gods, I suppose that he would never have any ignoble or mean thoughts about himself. If Caesar adopted you, your arrogance would be insufferable ; and, when you know that you are the son of Zeus, will you not be elated ? " t Lucretius, translated by Dryden 110 STONES OP STUMBLING. decision might be reserved for posterity; but, provisionally, he deemed it safer to reject the story.* It is remarkable that here the poet uses the same sort of prudential weapon that orthodox Christians use ; but he uses it on the opposite side he employs it in defence, not of faith, but of scepticism. And this should show us what a two-edged weapon it is. Pindar, indeed, probably regarded the gods as having been misrepresented, not as misrepresenting themselves. But we have shown that, for practical purposes, these two forms of misrepresentation differ less than at first sight appears ; and, indeed, that the distinction between gods who misreport themselves, and gods who are misreported by verbally inspired reporters, is a distinction without a difference. But Pindar haply did not regard the misreporters as verbally inspired, f If so, his view exactly * dyu,pcu croa>Ta.TOi. COTI S'dvSpl however, stuck to his opinion that the Agamemnon is " the grandest work of creative genius in the whole range of literature," and added that, the oftener he read it, the more he admired it. Others of his friends besides Miss Swanwick had experience of his attempts to break the social ice by plunging headlong into a discussion. A very shy young lady, paying him a first visit, was startled by the question : " Which is your favourite English sonnet ? " He himself was especially Pond of Wordsworth's sonnet on Westminster Bridge, and of Blanco White's only sonnet. I am told that he sometimes asked ladies what they thought of this last sonnet, as a sure test of their literary judgment. He cared little for John Inglesant. To a lady who inquired whether he liked it, he gave what in the Art of Pluck is called the answer indirect : " You are asking me what everybody asks me everywhere." I am now bordering on a province of my subject which I enter with some trepidation. " Like ail good men," says Mr. Leslie Stephen,. " [Samuel] Johnson loved good women, and liked to have on hand a flirtation or two, as warm as might be within the bounds of due decorum." It o is undeniable that this somewhat exclusive test of RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISOff. 135 goodness would not exclude Pattison, who at times seemed to agree with the hero of Amours de Voyage, that V-ir sum, nildl fceminei a me alienum puto. To speak more seriously, he sought and obtained what has been called the one compensa- tion of growing old. The praise which Words- worth bestowed on Nature, may more truly be applied to a good woman she never yet betrayed the heart that loved her; and Pattison stood in special need of that restful sympathy which women know how to give, which good women will give when they feel that it is valued, but which men can neither give nor take away. Yet he learnt by experience that even this rose is not thornless. In particular, he found that the art of instructing and correcting women without affronting them is not easily acquired. The mode of its acquisition, like everything else in which he took an interest, he subjected to critical analysis. " The art of pleasing," I heard him say, " consists in entire self-effacement." This opinion is sanctioned by the high authority of Rochefoucauld (Maximes, 139); yet, for all that, it represents only a half-truth. Those who are always taking their own line whose individuality asserts itself in their own despite often make the deepest im- pression on the world. This quality is noticed by Goethe as the chief characteristic of Englishmen : 136 EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. " Their deportment in society is as full of confidence, and as easy as if they were lords everywhere and the whole world belonged to them. This it is which pleases our women. . . . They [Englishmen] have the courage to be that for which nature made them. There is nothing vitiated or spoilt about them, there is nothing half-way or crooked ; but, such as they are, they are complete men. That they are also sometimes complete fools, I allow with all my heart ; but that is still something, and has still always some weight in the scale of nature."* The Rector, however, might fairly have re- joined that, now at any rate, the ordinary John Bull is not a favourite with Germans, and that a few lessons in self-effacement would do him no harm. I drew Pattison's attention to a statement which he had made in an article in the Academy, that " it is difficult to be loved too much by one sex and enough by the other " ; and I asked how he explained the anomaly. He answered that it is not so much that a lady's man (in the best sense of the term) excites jealousy in other men, but rather that there is something in his temperament by which they are repelled. May not the fact be that all women, except the very best, like " more self- effacement " in men, than men like in each other ? Goethe has noted how hard and important it is in friendship to avoid being either too confidential or * Eckermann's Conversations (Oxenford's translation). Compare Sterne's Sentimental Journey, Character Versailles BECOLLECT10NS OF PATTISON. 137 too reserved. The difficulty is closely allied to one pointed out by Horace to that of hitting the exact mean between Scurrantis species and Aspe- ritas agrestis et inconcinna, the mean between being hypocritical and hypercritical, or rather be- tween an excessive desire to please and a blunt- ness which degenerates into brutality. Unfortu- nately, women, as a rule, like the mean to incline towards the former of these extremes, while men like it to incline towards the latter. In support of this view, I will remark that women are pleased by a man who keeps conversation going, whereas men prefer one who seldom speaks unless he has something to say. The Eector once reminded me what a different thing it is to understand a subject and to be able to teach it. He said this with special reference to the difficulty of teaching women unofficially. The social superiority of their sex has, as he expressed it, " passe dans les mceurs." And this superiority is wont to clash with the instructor's superiority in age and in knowledge. Female pupils do not receive the moral tonic which is given to male pupils. If they are silly or obstinate, their teacher seldom contradicts them sharply, and never ridicules them. The anomaly of this rela- tion was felt by Pattison all the more, because he had rather strong views as to the intellectual L2 138 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. inferiority of the average woman to the average man. Indeed, his love of paradox led him to speak as if he imagined Ens rationale to be the definition, not of Homo, but of Vir. I asked him what he thought of the unchivalrous remark attributed to Disraeli, that all women require flattery : did the author of this remark merely use the word flattery as a satirical equivalent to egards ? did he merely mean that women receive and expect, in compensation for their weakness, a deferential homage from men not wholly unlike that which a Prime Minister pays to a constitu- tional Sovereign? "What Disraeli calls flattery," replied Pattison, " I call economy of truth. I feel that, when I, an old man of seventy, am talking on intellectual subjects to a young girl of seventeen, she and I are on quite different planes of thought ; and it is necessary to translate my ideas into her language. If she talks nonsense, I take refuge in flight. I always agree ; but, when she thinks that her prejudices are quite secure, I slowly try to undermine them." (He emphasized the word undermine by moving his out-stretched hand diagonally downwards.) Of his tendency to self -caricature of his seeming to take the in- verted motto, Video pejora proboque, without adding, Sed meliora sequor more will be said presently. I will now merely observe that such RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 139 utterances of his as the above are to be taken cum grano salis, or rather cum pleno salino. The truth which probably underlies his exaggeration is that, in arguing with women (always excepting the very best), it is hard for men to maintain the same perfect frankness, or rather directness, which they maintain in arguing with each other. The Rector, so far from being a dissembler or even a self-effacer, was in reality somewhat over-frank. He was visited by a young lady who wrote well, but who in his opinion talked less well. He resolved to admonish her of this defect; but, instead of trying in any of the thousand-and-one possible ways to hint, while commending her writings, that more was now expected of her dis- course laudando prcecipere, as Bacon would have said, he embarrassed her by the blunt rebuke : " Your conversational utterances are feeble." The following abridgment of an account which lie gave of his meeting an American young lady at a foreign table d'hote, reproduces his character- istic sayings almost, if not quite, verbatim : " She was only nineteen, but she knew everything. She told me the exact amount of affection which the Princess C. has for her future husband; and she gave me a full account of the divorce laws in all the States of America. She appealed to me some- times ; of course I agreed. At last, she asked 140 RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. whether I did not think she could write a book ; and I told her that she was the most ignorant girl I ever met ! But I took care to say so in such a way that she couldn't mind it." I doubt not that in this description the Rector was jocularly over- stating both the parts which he acted the part of assentator and the part of candid friend. Still, after making allowance for such exaggeration, I wonder whether in the latter character he was quite as agreeable to the young lady as he imagined. I asked him whether he agreed with Sainte-Beuve in thinking that the advice contained in Lord Ches- terfield's Letters was such as Horace might have given to his son, if he had had one. The only answer which I could get from him was, " Horace would have thought a son a great bore." Yet he regarded Chesterfield's Letters as a repertory of maxims which might be useful to the social tac- tician. Indeed, he himself (as we have seen) was theoretically an adept in gyncecology the science of womankind. But I doubt his being equally successful in the practical application of that science. A lady once complained, " The Rector treats me like an intellectual machine." And I suspect that in general, when he had but just removed the scales from a female pupil's eyes, he was too apt to shed on her a dry (or rather an achromatic) light thought uncoloured by feeling. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISOff. 141 On the whole, I am less disposed to think that he was much liked by all, or by most women, than that he was very much liked by a few. Biography is sometimes autobiography in dis- guise. The following extract from the Life of Milton is obviously founded indeed, its author admitted that it is founded more or less on per- sonal experience : " Milton longed to be loved that he might love again. But he had to pay the penalty of all who believe in their own ideas, in that their ideas come between them and the persons that approach them, and constitute a mental barrier which can only be broken down by sympathy. And sympathy for' ideas is hard to find, just in proportion as those ideas are profound, far reaching, the fruit of long study and medita- tion. Hence it was that Milton did not associate readily with his contemporaries, but was affable and instructive in conversation with young persons, and those who would approach him in the attitude of disciples." More than once, when " disciples " were staying with the Rector, he and they together concocted a translation which was sent in for the Prize offered by the Journal of Education. I was startled when he told me that one of these joint productions ob- tained only a 4th Class. At first I conjectured that this was a practical illustration of the maxim Ov/c aya0ov iro\vKoipaviT] a mishap , such as often befalls a plurality of generals in the waging of war or a plurality of cooks in the making of broth. But 142 RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. I found that this explanation would not serve : the Rector assured me that he revised the transla- tion so thoroughly as to make it virtually his own. I was therefore still more amazed when I heard from a sleeping partner, so to say, in the transla- tors' firm, that one of their compositions fell as low as the 7th Class. But my surprise was les- sened when my informant added that Pattison's translation was a very free one so free, indeed, that, finding sentiments or metaphors in the original which were not to his liking, he took upon himself to be wise above that which was written, and to idealise instead of reproducing ! * This masterful mode of translating tallies well with his strong desire that his pupils and friends should always use the best phrases and forms of speech. He protested even against the common error of calling a sarcastic smile a sardonic one. He and I once talked over the old tradition a tradition mentioned, I think, by a Scholiast on Homer from which the word " sardonic " is said to have sprung. In very early times the natives of Sardinia were wont to eat such of their country- men as were worn out by age. But, as manners grew milder, it was not thought seemly that a patriarch should be thus doomed without his own * Pattison would doubtless have endorsed Moritz Haupt's paradox, " Translation is the death of understanding." RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 143 consent ; and, in proof that his consent was freely given, he was himself chosen to bid the guests. Such, however, was the force of public opinion (opponents of euthanasia should make a note of this) that the veteran always issued the invita- tions to the supper where, in Hamlet's phraseo- logy, he would not eat but be eaten. The courteous smile which beamed on the old gentleman's coun- tenance as he was doing this last act of hospi- tality e/ccov aetcovri 76 dv^w is the prototype of all sardonic smiles. For the truth of this ghastly story the Rector would not vouch ; but he insisted that the word " sardonic " should be used in the sense which the story indicates. In short, he wished his pupils to remember that a sardonic laugh is a laugh at one's own expense, and on the wrong side of one's mouth. From the following remarks, it will appear that he himself laughed sardonically at the world. The passage chosen as motto for this article has been severely condemned by Mazzini, and to many it may appear cynical. But I have chosen it as putting into a clear light the point of view from which Pattison should be judged. He once remarked to me emphatically, " There has only been one Goethe." Yet, on another occasion, he protested against the attempts that are often made 144 EECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. to exalt Goethe into a moral hero, and even described him as stamping morality under his feet. This censure is doubtless exaggerated, and indeed was probably not meant to be taken lite- rally. Yet the Rector's judgment of Goethe, both on its favourable and on its unfavourable side, has much in common with the following extract from a famous writer : " Chaque ordre de grandeur a sa maitrise a part et ne doit point etre compare a d'autres. Un philanthrope qui, ayant a j Tiger Goethe, le mettrait en parallele avec Vincent de Paule, se trouverait amene a ne voir dans le plus grand genie des temps modernes qu'un egoiste qui n'a rien fait pour le bon- heur et I'amelioration morale de ses contemporains."* I quote this passage because Pattison, as well as Goethe, has been accused of moral insensibility. The charge against the Rector is unjust, but not wholly inexplicable. He was, at least in his later years, essentially a scholar, valuing the spread of knowledge more " Than aught, divine or holy, else enjoyed In vision beatific." The French employ their barely translatable term I'ideal to include le vrai, le beau, and le bien. It would seem that many persons who devote * A similar sentiment is expressed by Mommsen when contrasting the merits of the Romans with those of the Greeks. The passage is quoted in Safe Studies, p. 278, Note. KECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 145 themselves to seeking V ideal through le beau or through le vrai, have a special difficulty in seeking it through what in the narrower sense may be called le bien : in other words, scholars and philo- sophers often lack the enthusiasm of humanity. This is one reason why saints and sages so seldom quite understand one another. Dean Church can as little do justice to Bacon as Bacon could have written the Life of St. Am elm. In order to illustrate further our view of Patti- son's ethical languor, it will be needful to dwell at some length on his scepticism and cynicism. He told me that he objected to auricular confession chiefly because it made people examine themselves too closely. He expressed this opinion in reply to a question as to what he thought of the following sentiment of Goethe : "It has at all times been said and repeated that man should strive to know himself. This is a singular requisi- tion, with which no one complies, or indeed ever will comply. ... I know not myself, and God forbid I should." How was it that, whereas the greatest moral teacher of antiquity took as his motto, " Know thyself," this great modern teacher virtually said, "Know not thyself"? Are the two maxims as much opposed to one another as at first sight appears ? The answer probably is that they are not; for, while Socrates addressed his exhorta- 146 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. tion to the mass of men, Goethe limited his admo- nition to the few who are possessed with the demon of self -consciousness. Our meaning will be made clearer by an illustration. Aurora Leigh says, of one whom she elsewhere calls a " good " man, that " He sets his virtues on so raised a shelf, To keep them at the grand millennial height, He has to mount a stool to get at them ; And, meantime, lives on quite the common way, With everybody's morals." Now, it is plain that, when this " good " man acquiesced (as almost everyone acquiesces) in the moral code of those around him, more qualms would be felt by him than by men whose ideal was less exalted ; and also that, if he was given to honest introspection, those qualms might become very inconvenient. It is indeed possible that, by fostering this introspection, he would be converted into a hero. But it is quite as likely that he would be unfitted for action, would become power- less to prevent the pale cast of his thoughts from discolouring resolution and enthusiasm faXo- aofalv avev paXa/clas. The fact seems to be that, while most good men require the brightest ideals of character and conduct to light them on the road to virtue, the too clear sight of some philosophers is dazzled by the contrast between the brightness RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 147 of those ideals and the dark shade of the actual. Cynicism is, as it were, the smoked glass which these latter employ to prevent being dazzled over- much. We never, says Goethe, feel so much at ease with our own consciences as when we are dwelling complacently on the faults of others. And it is by reason of the restlessness of the intellectual conscience that the intellectual man of the world is tempted to use cynical language, which shocks and startles unintellectual men who are not a bit less worldly than himself.* We thus understand why Talleyrand, being informed of two faults of a lady of his acquaintance, exclaimed, " Elle est detestable, elle n'a que ces deux fautes-la " ; why Disraeli, if rightly reported, censured a Liberal statesman as not having even " a redeeming vice " ; why Goethe maintained that Spinozism, when manipulated by reflection, becomes Machiavellism ; and why Gibbon seems happier when discovering the sins of the good and the follies of the wise, even than when relating the murder of a priest. It is probable that one cause of the strange * It is my experience that, while most intellectual men prefer Thackeray to Dickens, nearly all women prefer Dickens to Thackeray. If this is so, is it not because women, being rarely troubled with self-knowledge, have no. relish for cynicism ? 143 KECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. repugnance which such men as these feel for heroic virtue, is to be found in their sympathy with those whose welfare has been more or less directly, more or less completely, sacrificed with the sons of Brutus and the brother of Timoleon. But a more important cause is, that a degree of disinterestedness, of which introspective minds are even too apt to think themselves incapable, is contemplated in others only with pain. These considerations are meant to explain, not to justify, the ordinary type of cynicism. They must be pushed somewhat further to cover the case of Pattison. A distinguished pupil of his assures me that, at the time of the Tractarian movement, he had a high spiritual ideal, that he lost that ideal when he changed his views, and that he keenly felt the loss of it.* At this crisis of his life, he had much in common with the exiled Psalmist, whose affections would not take root in a strange country, and who looked wist- fully back on the days when Stantes erant pedes * This paragraph had been written before I had read the Memoirs ; I leave it in its original form as an independent testimony. To Pattison may be applied some of Macaulay's remarks about Shrewsbury, who, after a long and painful struggle, shook off the yoke of his early Catholic training : " The shock which had overturned his early prejudices had -at the same time unfixed all his opinions " [and some of his principles]. History, Vol. ii., p. 128, ed. 1866. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 149 nostri in atriis tuis, Jerusalem. To the typical scholar of our generation may be applied the words of its typical poet : " Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope, We are most hopeless, who had once most hope, And most beliefless, that had most believed." It is not impossible that the line preceding these, " Eat, drink, or die, for we are souls bereaved," would express the despairing state into which he fell. A great writer has remarked that we feel what our ancestors thought, and that posterity will feel what we think. May not much of the spiritual anguish of our generation be due to the fact that many of us think with philosophers, while feeling with theologians ? It was perhaps through being in this condition that Pattison con- tinued long in the Slough of Despond. There is even reason to fear that, for some years, the loss of the ideal had on him a natural but melancholy effect, similar to that which (in the fable) the loss of the tail had on the fox. It is, however, right to mention that his mental struggles affected his nerves, and that these reacted on his mental con- dition. Speaking of his state at this time, my friend writes : " What his physical condition was then, without being ill, may be judged from one fact. He most kindly gave 150 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. me a private lecture in Magna Charta ; we both adopted the position of seekers. During an animated discussion of Hallam's views, I turned aside to collate some reading. On looking round, Pattison was fast asleep ; and this is how he often seemed in those years, wearied out with vexations, and as if he might sink into an exhausted sleep at any moment." It should also be stated that my informant was intimate with Pattison chiefly when he was smart- ing under a sense of grievous injustice after the failure of his first candidature for the Rectorship ; and it is thought that haply, for some years, the loss of his ideal and the loss of his election com- bined to give bitterness to his conversation. This is important as throwing light both on the origin and on the original form of his cynicism. But, when I knew him, his state of mind was different. I never detected in him the least re- semblance to the esprit fort (or faible) who- exclaimed : " Lord, I cannot believe ; help thou mine unbelief." His cynicism seemed to me to- be the outcome of deliberate reason, and to have become a second nature to him : and as such I shall attempt to describe it. " It is not desirable," says Bagehot, " to take- this world too much au serieux ; most persons will not; and the one in a thousand who will,, should not." In other words, a man of that abnormal type ought to make a conscious effort, if not to become what the French call a farceur* RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 151 and what Bacon in his essay on Fortune calls poco di matto, at least to avoid being righteous over-much, and being over-wise. This was just the sort of exhortation which Pattison needed, which he knew that he needed, and which he tried, not very successfully, to follow : he was, as it were, an homme serieux malgre lui. If I were asked to what he owed this peculiarity of temperament, I should say that it was partly due to his retentiveness of memory, or rather to his inability to forget. Darwin, in explaining the genesis of morals among primitive men, attributes much to the influence of memory. When the best of our early ancestors saw a neighbour suffering, they were haunted by the recollection of what they themselves had suffered. When they were tempted to do wrong, they could not always banish the thought of their own resentment when injured. This importunateness of memory, arising under different conditions and associated (as it often is) with nervous weakness, contributes much both to the merits and to the defects of such men as the Rector: they cannot get rid of their former selves. Of the many illustrations of my mean- ing, the most obvious must suffice. When a man labours to avert or to postpone a change which he regards as hurtful or premature, it is 152 EEOOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. hardly possible for him to avoid exaggerating the evils of that change, and thus becoming an alarmist. When another or the same man seeks to evolve the energy needful for carrying out some great reform or establishing a scientific truth, it is perhaps impossible for him to avoid greatly exaggerating the importance of his un- dertaking, and thus becoming a strong optimist. It is through this and other causes that nearly every one of us oscillates between a modified pessimism (or at least uneasiness about the future) and a decided optimism ; and during these oscil- lations an ordinary Philistine, however strong his affirmations may be on either side, has an enviable faculty of believing in himself. To Pattison and his peers this convenient self-decep- tion is impossible. Their Liberal zeal is checked by the unwelcome memory of their fits of pessi- mism, and their Conservative zeal by the memory of their fits of optimism. No doubt, they are thus preserved from much extravagance ; but they tend, in the phraseology of Burns, to become " tideless blooded." This word exactly expresses Pattison' s chief fault, or rather his misfortune; for it was his misfortune that states of feeling which appear to ordinary men as a series of dis- solving views, each distinct in itself, blended themselves before his mind's-eye and made a sort RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. 153 of blur.* Renan has said, "Presque tons nous sommes doubles," and has somewhere maintained the paradox : " Woe to the man who does not contradict himself at least once a day."t In a like spirit, Pattison, when reminded that some principle or policy which he was upholding was opposed to principles laid down in his writings, used to exclaim jestingly, "It is more than five minutes ago that I wrote that," or again, " Who ever dreamt of reconciling practice and theory ?" Yet, while thus professing indifference, he was really anxious, perhaps over-anxious, to see prac- tice and theory fitting one another like hand and glove. To quote again from the writer who so well illustrates this subject : " The man," says Goethe, " who would do all that is expected of him, must overrate himself a little perhaps more * Since writing this, I have learnt that he once quoted the following passage (from Lewes's Life of Goethe) in explanation of his own character : " There is in men of active intellects, and especially in men of imaginative, apprehensive intellects, a fluctuation of motives keeping the volition in abeyance, which practically amounts to weakness. This is the weak- ness of imaginative men." This reminds one of Macanlay's character of Halifax. f Mr. Maurice notes " one important quality of Boswell. He never stumbled at contradictions. Johnson often said things directly inconsistent with each other. Most thought- ful men who speak what they mean, and feel strongly at any given time, do." M 2 154 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. than a little, if lie thinks about himself at all." And, on the other hand, he who dwells constantly on the seamy side of his own work, needs to be reminded that there is just as seamy a side to the work of others, or he will think himself the worst sempster in the world. In the phrase of the eminent Oxonian who is now, as he was thirty years ago, the greatest teacher in the University, such a man is too much " under the dominion of logic." Pattison was under that dominion ; and, when logical power, mnemonic power, and ner- vous weakness are combined as they were in him, they indicate a person to whom, not indeed pecca fortiter, but pdOe nrai^eiv would be wholesome advice : " amara lento Temperet risu ; nihil est ab omni Parte beatum." Such a man as we have described could hardly fail to be given to paradoxes ; and, in fact, as we have already intimated, Pattison revelled in them. Sometimes he was paradoxically sceptical. I once asked him whether it is not certain that we owe much to the Catholic Church for the wisdom with which in the Middle Ages she insisted on the celibacy of the priests, as the only means of securing their independence of the barons. " We always say so," was his characteristic rejoinder, RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 155 " but I don't know on what evidence." On one occasion, his paradoxical temper found vent in an anti-Liberal ebullition worthy of Carlyle : "I should like to see the anniversary of the day on which Cromwell closed the door of the House of Commons kept as the greatest day of our calen- dar." This, however, seems to have represented a passing phase of his opinions ; for I am assured that he sometimes defended constitutional govern- ment as the least unsatisfactory of all forms of government. I once discussed with him the sin- gular superiority, in point of ability, of the Liberal to the Conservative party in the House of Com- mons, " Yes," he observed, " the best thing about parliamentary government is that it tends to bring the ablest men to the front." I spoke to him about the last patriarch of Benthamism, Mr. George Norman, who, like his friend, Mr. Grote, inclined to Conservatism in his old age. Mr. Norman once said to me, " I only wish that Gladstone would leave us without organic changes for the next forty years " (a sen- timent which sounds very like " Apres moi et mon fils le deluge ") : and, on another occasion, lie made the gloomy prediction : " Sooner or later, there must be a struggle between those who have got and those ivho want, and I don't see how it is to be settled except by the sword. But I sup- 156 BECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. pose that those who have got will win." " True," said Pattison, when this augury of ill was re- peated to him ; " in the end those ivho have got will win. But, in the meantime, everything will have been lost which had been gained during the half -century before ; and, soon after the civil strife is settled, it will be ready to break out again." The halting attitude which he was wont to assume when confronted by wide generalizations, may be illustrated by his view of the great prin- ciple that representation ought to be coextensive with taxation. It is plain that, as every one, directly or indirectly, pays taxes, the principle, pressed to its extreme conclusions, would give manhood and womanhood, if not what may be termed childhood, suffrage to every inhabitant, civilized or uncivilized, of our entire Indian and Colonial empire ; and that it would lead to the parcelling out of the empire into equal electoral districts. It will doubtless be objected that the franchise should not be given to incompetent per- sons. But, in truth, this qualification is an all- important one. That, in strict theory, the fran- chise ought to .be given to every taxpayer, but that, in practice, it should be withheld from unfit persons, and that the present holders of poiver are to be judges of their unfitness, this is a principle to which the highest Tory need not demur. BECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 157 After we had touched on these points, Pattison said thoughtfully : "In fact, it comes to this, the principle will not bear examination." Never- theless, he doubtless thought that the old Whigs acted wisely in assuming the correctness of this exaggerated ideal as a basis for carrying the Reform Bill, and that future reformers will have to follow their example. Indeed, he approvingly quoted an Aristotelian maxim to the effect that, when we would obtain a little from mankind, it is often needful to ask for a great deal. He brought a like spirit to bear on the ques- tion of nationality. " The age of patriotism," he said, " is passing away, and the age of cosmopo- litanism is taking its place." Irish Home Rule was not to his liking ; and he regarded the cry " Egypt for the Egyptians " as, if not a reductio ad absurdum, at least a natural sequel of the cry " Ireland for the Irish." On my asking whether he was not of opinion that the Irish Land Bill was opposed to the principles of political economy, as those principles used to be commonly under- stood, he interrupted me by saying, " Of course, it is confiscation." Yet he was not prepared to deny that, in the present state of public opinion, the Bill was inevitable. It should be added that he regretted the sympathy shown by some Oxford Liberals for Lord Beaconfield's foreign policy. 158 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. In a word, lie was a Whig, and not a Jingo. It may be instructive to observe that between Pattison and Charles Austin there were many points of comparison and a few of contrast. The chief difference between them was, that Pattison had far less political and patriotic enthusiasm than Austin had. Austin (as his brother told me), shortly before he died, went to a public meeting at St. James's Hall, where the band suddenly struck up the Marseillaise. He had long since laid aside his juvenile sympathy with the French Revolution ; yet, on hearing the old familiar strain, he rose from his seat (old and infirm as he was), and the tears came to his eyes. Personally I never saw him thus give way to his feelings ; but I remember his saying that he pitied the man whose spirit was not stirred by the cry for deliverance in the Per see : *fi TratSes 'EAA^ywv, ITC, cAcuflepovre TrarptS', eAev^epoure Se watSas, ywaucas, 0eojf T Trarpaxov ecfy. Pattison, so far as I could judge, had hardly a spark of this patriotic zeal. His want of interest in the politics of the day is well shown by a habit of his, which is reported to me at first hand. He never turned to the newspapers till 9 p.m., and RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 159 then chiefly from a sense of duty.* Generally, instead of reading them himself, he would lie down on his sofa, take out his watch, and shut his eyes, while his niece looked down the columns, and gave him the shortest possible epitome of the Times. If she got through it in less than twenty minutes, she was commended. But he liked to hear, at least, the heading of everything ; and, if any event was afterwards mentioned which she had overlooked, he would say reproachfully, "I suppose that was not in our copy." We once talked over the romantic visit paid to Greece by the statesman whom the Greeks called <5 (f)t,\e\\7jv teal TreptyrjfjLos rXaoVro^. In the conversa- tion, a passage from the Acharnians was applied to the visit , /3povra, VVKVKO. rrjv 'EAAaSa. Pattison seemed pleased with the quotation, and begged to hear it again. In referring to the modern Pericles (scholar, orator, reformer), he acknowledged that he had little sympathy with him ; adding, " It is strange that he is the living representative of the Liberal cause, the cause of * He told a friend that lie did not like to have the news " hot " he preferred giving it time to cool. According to Goethe, you may often with advantage delay reading newspapers, as to-morrow's news may correct to-day's. 160 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. wisdom and righteousness throughout all time." On my asking whether some share of the credit was not due to the Conservative party on the ground that it cunctando restituit rem, he merely answered, " Sir Stafford Northcote is the repre- sentative of everything which distinguishes Eng- lishmen from Americans." This damning with faint praise may prepare my readers for his having said, in his half -jesting way, " Though I am always abusing the Liberals, I call myself a Liberal, and I am one." He expressed his regret at the death of the Prince Consort by saying that it was as great a misfortune as a ten-years'* innings of the Conservative party. He was told of a very lukewarm Liberal who said that, so far as the society is concerned, he would rather belong to the Carlton than to the Reform Club. "He is quite right," said the Rector; "Reformers are gener- ally so rough and rude. Of course, the Whigs of Holland House were exceptions. But, as a general rule, my advice is to live with the Tories and to vote with the Whigs." A cynic might add that those who purpose following this advice, would be wise in taking full advantage of the Ballot, and not letting their High Tory friends suspect that they vote against them. His Liberalism did not incline him to what is called the Birmingham School. In reference to* RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 161 an eminent writer and editor who has become a strong Radical, he said : " He has taken so much pains about Vart d'ecrire, that he lias not left himself time to acquire Vart de vivre. The two arts are very different, and the one often unfits a man for the other." I asked him whether De Tocqueville had not stated too broadly that the advent of democracy was inevitable. " Since he died," answered the Eector, " everything seems to be fulfilling his predictions. Nothing can stop the movement. The more you give the people, the more they will want." I called his attention to an assertion of Mr. Herbert Spencer to the effect, that the time will come when one man will not be suffered to enjoy, without working, that which another man works for without enjoy- ing ; and I asked him whether such a state of public opinion would not exclude domestic ser- vice, and, indeed, all social inequalities. " I fear it must be so," he replied. " Everything seems to be tending towards Socialism. I hate it" I asked why, if so great an evil is approaching, he and those who think with him do not try to stop it. " Look there," he said, pointing to the sea at Biarritz. " Just as men can construct moles and breakwaters against the waves, so individuals can, in some slight degree, modify passing events. They are as powerless against the tide of history, 162 EECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. as they are against the tide of the ocean. No ; what is to be, will be, in spite of you and me." It may be well to insert the epitome of a con- versation which sets forth the Rector's manner of dealing with this subject, though it shows him in an unusual attitude an attitude of defence. I reminded him that in one of his writings he had expressed a view (seemingly shared by Hallam) that Englishmen were, on the whole, better off in the reign of George II. than either before or since. He told me that he had been taken to task for this assertion, but he seemed prepared to defend it, and also to predict that England would go on declining. I insisted that, in discussing the question, we must start with the assumption that there is more good than evil in life. " I don't see," he exclaimed, " why I should assume anything of the sort ; I think I shall take up the view of Schopenhauer." I recalled to him some of the conclusions that may be drawn from that wildly anti-social theory such conclusions, for instance, as the following : Ought not these very numerous persons who say that they would not, if they could, live their lives over again in other words, that, so far as their experience goes, the good of life is a minus quantity, ought not these Schopenhauerites to rejoice instead of sorrowing at the sight or news of a shipwreck ? " Well," he EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 163 said, " suppose I grant that life is a good, what has that to say to human progress ? " " For con- venience of figures," I answered, "let us com- pare the present time with a time when the popu- lation of England was one-third of what it now is, and let us suppose that the average Englishman was twice as happy as now even on this extreme supposition, the aggregate of happiness in England would be half as great again now as then ; English- men, in tripling their numbers, would have gained more collectively than they have lost individually.'* " Yes, yes," he said, with amused impatience, " but this is not what is generally meant by pro- gress." I never could draw him further than this on the optimistic path. Indeed, he seemed gene- rally half to expect, as the most eminent of French critics half expects,* that, when reformers have done their perfect work, the world, destitute of variety and originality, will become a sort of universal China a lubberland of lotos-eaters. Nor could he fail to see the inferences that might be drawn from such a prognostication. A great living philologist has expressed the opinion that the classical languages and literatures paid for their temporary splendour by their premature * Scherer Etudes, Vol. v. pp 316, 317 (on Kenan), and Vol vn. p. 64 (on Carlyle). 164 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. decay. If it is likewise true that all civilization tends to decay, analogy might "warrant the con- jecture that patriotic and philanthropic zealots are, so to say, making the world live its life too fast, and hurrying it on to its senile decrepitude. If so, it is not a mere counsel of imperfection fitted for men of the world, a mere concession to the hardness of their hearts, but the highest Utili- tarian ideal, that is embodied in the suggestion >of the most philosophical of our judges, that perhaps " the respectable man . . . who led an easy life will turn out to have been right after all, .and enthusiastic believers of all creeds to have been quite wrong." I enunciate this violent paradox, not as expressing the settled convictions of any one, but as furnishing a sample of a class of doubts which, more or less consciously, present themselves to men like Pattison, and effectually deprive them, if not of the enthusiasm of humanity, at least of what may be termed the enthusiasm of progress. "We have before stated that Pattison was not, as indeed no one can be, a consistent pessimist. By urging on education and other reforms, he showed that he was practically a believer in progress. Yet, even as a believer in progress, he was per- plexed by ethical puzzles which differ from the ^pessimistic ones, but are hardly less embarrass- RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 165 in of. He was amused or troubled amused as the only alternative of being troubled by sucli a-jropiai as the following : Would not an ideal philanthro- pist allow himself only the minimum of relaxation that might be necessary for the greatest efficiency of his work ? Would he not sell his gold watch and take third-class railway tickets, so as to have more money to spare for the Anti-Mendicity Society and the Cancer Hospital ? Ought not the passionate lover, before putting the momentous question, to satisfy himself, not merely that he has the means to support a family, but also that the population of the world stands in need of an increase ? Ought we not, when ill, to forsake the medical Philistine who would treat us simply with a view to our own cure, and to resort to the nobler practitioner who would experiment on us for the good of posterity ? To this last question, Pattison laughingly objected that the " neigh- bour " whom we are commanded to love as our- selves, cannot mean the unborn ; but he knew full well that to laugh was not to solve the riddle. He knew also that these difficulties are increased (or nullified) by a further one, which may be re- garded as a phase of pessimism, though it repre- sents a novel aspect of that Protean creed. Mill insists that the Utilitarian principle should be applied, not to man only, but to the entire sentient 166 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. universe ; and certainly it is less easy to show that the principle ought not to be so extended, than that, if so extended, it might involve a reductio ad euthanasiam. May it not be argued that, from the philozoic point of view, the existence of the human race is altogether a mishap? Does the Unconstitutional Monarchy of Man minister to "the greatest happiness of the greatest number " of sentient beings (including earwigs and animal- cules) ? "I never could see," said the Rector, when dealing seriously with such questions, " any way of disposing of extreme cases, except by taking the matter at the other end, and asking : What reason can you allege for the obligation of self-sacrifice ? " Perhaps it was in consequence of this fundamental doubt that he disliked, as he informed me, to label himself a Utilitarian. His friend, Henry Smith, told me that he also demurred to the designation, and for a similar reason. But, after all, the question is one of words. Charles Austin, the Utilitarian par excellence, sometimes avowed a logical scepticism as complete as Patti- son's ; more often, he expressed an opinion dif- ferent in appearance, but substantially the same. Goethe has observed that a universal scepticism always takes refuge in a qualified belief. And thus there was, in fact, a latent scepticism in a remark which Austin once made : "I know of na RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 167 olbiometer: so we must take the conventional estimate of what leads to pleasure or pain."* In other words, we must not be too logical, but must acquiesce in the moral standard of the good men and women among whom we live. This, I repeat, was Pattison's view; and, if I describe his ethical creed as Utilitarianism tempered by Pyrrhonism, I must be understood to mean no more than this. After all, if he was wrong, he was kept in coun- tenance by the virtuous, nay, over-scrupulous poet who was remarkable for what Bagehot has called a " pleasant cynicism," and who gave a cynical turn even to such pathetic self -revelations as DipsychuSj Amours de Voyage, and In the Great Metropolis. Mr. Jowett, too, in his strictures on Casuistry, adopts a view similar to that of the best of the Questioned Spirits, the Spirit who cut ethical knots by exclaiming, " I know not, I will do my duty " ; and whose note was at times saddened into " I know not, I must do as other men are doing." * A similar view is very strongly expressed by Scherer, in Etudes, VI., p. 213 (on Sterne), and in the introduction to A-miel's Journal, pp. Ixvi., Ixvii. (" La vie exige des menage- ments, j'allais dire des ruses L'art de vivre, c'est de se faire une raison, de souscrire aux compromis, de se preter aux fictions La vie ne supporte pas d'etre serree de [tout] pres. C'est une croute mince sur laquelle il faui N 168 RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. The application of this principle may be shown by an example. " Pattison," writes one who knew him well, " was very fond of fishing, but he had grave misgivings as to the moral character of the amusement. He confessed to these, but I do not know that he allowed them to interfere with his practice." Likewise, Austin doubted the morality of field sports, and yet he preserved game for his guests. It is probable that both of these philoso- phers were acting against what may be termed their logical conscience ; but they were not, in any ordinary sense of the word, unconscientious. The worst that can be said about them is, that they were of the marble of which sages are made, but not of the gold of which saints are made. Might they not have contended that they were merely conforming to a custom likely to be considered barbarous by a remote posterity, and that, if we would conform to no custom likely to be so re- garded, we (in St. Paul's phrase) " must needs go out of the world " ? It will now be understood what I meant when I represented the Rector's cynicism as wholly unlike the vulgar cynicism of less analytical minds. marcher sans appuyer ; donner du talon dedans, vous ferez un trou ou vous disparaitrez.") * My view is further illustrated in Safe Studies, pp. 230 234. See also p. 287, note. . RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 169 From the premise, Omnia exeunt in absurdum, lie drew the conclusion, Omnia vanitas. He feared moral and religious enthusiasm, for he knew not whither it might lead. In the " Memoirs "he remarks quaintly very quaintly for a clergyman that " Eeligion is a good servant, but a bad master," which is the exact equivalent of Goethe's famous aphorism : " Religion is not an end, but a means, to lead us through the purest tranquillity of mind to the highest culture." In like manner, he felt that Imperat aut servit recti mens conscia unique. He was (to use his own phrase) " haunted by the ideal, and baffled by philosophical perplexi- ties," haunted and baffled all the more painfully, because others, far inferior to him in intellect, rose, through being unweighted by those per- plexities, to a somewhat Pharisaical ideal be- cause they, not having tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, ate and condemned him for not eating of the Tree of Life. This being duly considered, it will be found that his sceptical, caustic, and jaunty sayings generally leave in the mouth no taste save that of a tonic bitter. "We may, there- fore, without scruple, give a few more examples of the cynicism which so belonged to him that one almost missed it if ever he laid it aside. We will begin with an aphorism of his which may have been suggested by Mill's well-known N2 170 KECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. statement that in England the upper classes for the most part do not lie, and that the lower classes, though almost habitually liars, are gene- rally ashamed of lying. " Englishmen," said Pattison, " lie as much as foreigners ; but En- glishmen have a dim consciousness that they are lying, while foreigners believe all the while that they are telling the truth." This preferring of conscious guilt to guilt born of self-deceit, will at once recall Aristotle's comparison between a/cpaala and a/co\ao-ia 9 and perhaps is not wholly unlike St. Paul's comparison between doing wrong things and having pleasure in them that do them. I re- member asking Charles Austin if he did not think that too much fuss was made when a late Bishop of Durham appointed a highly respectable son-in- law to a good living. Being in a paradoxical vein, he answered: "What I mind is, not the thing that was done, but the sanctimonious way in which it was done. If Ben Stanley had done anything of the kind, he would have written in big letters in his diary, This is a job, and that would not have been half as bad. I should not hate Torquemada so much if I did not know that he was thoroughly convinced that he was doing his duty." Carlyle has paid Frederic the equivocal compliment that, although he often deceived others, he never deceived himself. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 171 Pattison was coaching an undergraduate in the ffithics. The pupil, perplexed by Aristotle's rea- soning, embarrassed his teacher by his importunate desire to understand it. At last Pattison said tartly: "Never mind understanding it, only get it up." The pupil was naturally hurt by this unpleasant rebuke; which, however, probably meant that the time was short, and that, if the pupil insisted on discussing first principles, instead of merely learning the answers which would satisfy the examiners, he might be disap- pointed in his degree, as Pattison himself had been. Nevertheless, Pattison' s impatience may have been partly due to want of sympathy with the subject. When I knew him, and when he wrote his Memoirs, he was an Aristotelian. But he was originally a Platonist, and it was only by slow degrees that the influence of Oxford wrought the change in him. Many years ago, when speaking of the late Dr. Jeune as a successful man of the world whom he disliked, he said, "I divide men into those who love Plato and those who do not ; Jeune, I am certain, does not." When a new edition of Shakespeare came out, lie said to a friend, " Instead of bringing out these old plays, why don't the editors write new ones?" My informant understood him to mean that the prevalent Shakespearolatry is a mere 172 RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. delusion. If lie really held this opinion, he had given it up when he wrote his Life of Milton, and when I knew him. He told me, however, that he thought that there is much exaggeration in the popular judgment on the subject, and that the great excellence of Shakespeare is to be sought in the beautiful passages that abound in his plays, rather than in his power of delineating character. He took greater delight in reading the Sonnets than the Plays ; he found fault with Romeo and Juliet, and even The Tempest was not one of his favourites. Every old man, says Goethe, is a King Lear. It is characteristic of Pattison that he regarded King Lear and Pere Goriot as superior in tragic interest to any other modern works of fiction. He certainly used odd language about poets. In an article on Tennyson, I had contrasted the poet with more mature thinkers. Pattison wrote to me: "The phrase, 'more mature thinkers,' implies that Tennyson is a thinker at all. Is he so? Is he not a poet, and are not poets and thinkers incompatibles ?" This can only have meant that a poet, qua poet, is not a thinker, and that it would go hardly even with the greatest poets if we subjected their reasoning to the severe test which we apply to the reasoning of philoso- phers. Hamlet's soliloquy assuredly could not bear that test. EECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. 173 " The religion of uneducated [unphilosophical] persons is the same everywhere, and has been the same since the foundation of the world." This oracular sentence was addressed by Pattison to a brother clergyman who, though a Broad Church- man, was rather shocked by it. Its meaning (so far as it has any) probably resembles that of Charles Austin's favourite quotation the line in which the Tory and orthodox Dry den affirms that " priests of all religions are the same." One is sometimes startled, after knowing one corner of a great man's mind well, to find how many corners there are of which one knew nothing. In my intercourse with Pattison, I never sus- pected that he took an interest in otter-hunting and horse-racing. The latter taste is well illus- trated by the following anecdote, communicated to me by one of his pupils : " The year of the great match between Voltigeur and Flying Dutchman, he suddenly asked me, which horse wonld win. I answered calmly : ' It depends on the state of the ground ; the Dutchman is the faster horse, but, if the ground is heavy, Voltigeur will win.' He seemed delighted with such an answer from a ' slow ' man, but the question followed, ' How did you learn that ?' ' Oh, I talked it over with the coach- man on the box as I came up,' and his countenance fell." During his lifetime I never dreamt that his proficiency in croquet was such that he aspired to 174 EECOLLEOTIONS OF PATTISON. become Champion of all England. But I knew that he took an interest in the game. This came out in an odd way. On my mentioning the name of a lady who is a strong advocate of Women's Eights, he exclaimed eagerly, " I know something of Miss . She was playing at croquet, and I was acting as head of the side. When it was her turn, I told her not to try to go through the hoop, but merely to place her ball in front of it. She replied stiffly, ' Thank you, I would rather play my own game.' She tried to go through the hoop, missed it, and the game was lost. I said to myself, That girl has an undisciplined mind." One evening, the Rector, as he was wishing me good-night, told me rather mysteriously that lie was going the next day to call on the Editor of the Times (Mr. Chenery). I asked whether he thought him an able man. Not being in a com- municative mood, he answered, " Do you know that you are putting a very hard question ? It is just as if you asked me well whether I think Jupiter clever," and he laughed as he hurried away. He liked novel reading, and it was a sort of affectation with him to seem to like it a great deal (as might perhaps have been inferred from the last sentence in the Life of Milton). Being asked whether a former pupil, who was making RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 175 his mark in the world, kept up his taste for litera- ture, he answered, " Yes, he reads all the novels that come out, and lie remembers them too." He declared (how seriously I know not) that he pre- ferred contemporary French literature (including novels) to contemporary English literature. Nor was this the only respect in which he was wont to depreciate the intellectual atmosphere of England. A friend writes : " He spoke once somewhat bitterly of the treatment of public men, and men of energy, in England. He said, ' If a man was a country squire and did nothing, just lived an easy, good-tempered sportsman's life, all men spoke well of him, and he was popular, and life was made pleasant for him; immediately a man showed energy and worked, he was thwarted, calumny begun, and he became unpopular. It was so with statesmen, and so with the Bishops. The Bishops who did nothing were liked; Wilberforce (then of Oxford, about 1849-50), who showed some energy, was calumniated and hated by many, and anything was believed against him.' " Was Pattison also thinking of the contrast between the French admiration for Richelieu and the English abhorrence of Straff ord ? A trifling incident may show how strong was his antipathy to the narrow classical instruction which used to form the chief staple of our public school education. I had been talking about my own school-time at Harrow. He turned round 176 EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. and asked abruptly, " Did you learn anything there?" I hesitated. "Answer me. Yes or No. Can you recall a single thing worth remembering that you learnt during all the years that you spent there ?" I replied that, owing to my extreme short sight and consequent slowness in looking out words in a dictionary, I was not a good sample of a Harrow boy, but that some of my schoolfellows certainly learnt much. "Yes," he said, doubtfully, " perhaps you may be right." He upbraided me in a sort of semi-banter,, because in the Fortnightly Review I praised Charles Austin for continuing, when failing health drove him from the Bar, to do what active work he could as Chairman of Quarter Sessions. " Do- you know, I feel quite hurt by your saying this ? Can you seriously mean that the /3/o? 7rpa/m*;o? is superior to the /3/09 QecopyriKos? I can hardly conceive anything more dreadful than for such a man as Austin to have wasted his time over the drudgery of Quarter Sessions." This is pitched in the same key as the opinion of Goethe, quoted both by Hay ward and by Pattison, that " a purely poetical subject is as superior to a political one, as the pure everlasting truth of Nature is to party spirit." I called the Rector's attention to a very Patti- sonian confession of Sainte-Beuve, who seemed RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 177 to limit his moral aspirations to " un compose de bonnes habitudes, de bonnes manieres, d'honnetes precedes, reposant d' ordinaire sur un fonds plus ou moins genereux, sur une nature plus ou moins bien nee ;" and I asked him whether the last two words mean well constituted (in the sense which Mr. Galton deems so important) or well-born (as opposed to risen from the ranks). He answered that the latter was the meaning; and, after men- tioning a very distinguished self-made man (lately deceased), he put the query, " Could anything have turned him into a gentleman ?" After he had delivered his lecture at Bedford College in 1883, I suggested that he should send it to a new and struggling periodical with which I knew that he warmly sympathized. He answered that the application had already been made by the editor : "It was asking me to make him a present of 25, to which my peyaXoTrpeTreia was not equal. I know I ought to be content with the approval of the Dean of St. Paul's, who wrote to me, e Nothing so true and so real has been said for a long time ' ; but I also remember the text, El eV TW a$licq> fj^a^wva Triarol OVK e>yevecr0, TO a\rj0Li>bv r/9 v/jLiv iricTTvo-L ;" H.G therefore intended to send the revised lecture to a popular magazine, but his intention seems to have been relinquished through failing health. This sounds very mercenary ; but, 178 BECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. if he had not been a eavrbv ri/juwpov/jievos and a KarTjyopwv, he would have said, and with substantial truth, that his reason for declining the request was a desire to exert an influence over the greatest possible number of readers. I do not blame him for thus writing to me in the cynical dialect, as he knew that I should translate his words into the vernacular. But it is certainly unfortunate that he often used the same dialect, a dialect very open to misconstruction, in addressing persons almost certain to misconstrue it. A former pupil of Pattison, an orthodox divine, who, though very well off, continues to take an active part in education, told me that the Rector once said to him, " You are the most ungrateful man in the world. Providence has given you the opportunity of being idle, and you won't take advantage of it." I am sorry that I never asked Pattison whether, in giving this most uncharac- teristic advice, he was not thinking of Gibbon's paradox that the vices of the clergy are less dangerous than their virtues whether, in fact, he was not resorting to an " economy of truth " in the hope of inducing his very ecclesiastical friend to leave education alone. If this was not his meaning, the admonition must have been one of those counsels of imperfection to which I have alluded. It is simply impossible that the advice RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 179 to seek delights and shun laborious days would be given by the censor who has denounced the entire generation of middle-aged Oxford dons as stricken with intellectual palsy. His state of mind was, perhaps, similar to Eenan's : " Tout en etant fort applique, je me demande sans cesse si ce ne sont pas les gens frivoles qui ont raison." I call atten- tion to this passage, as it is about as good an example as could be given of that importunateness of memory and reflection which is (so to say) the presiding demon of analytical thought. The gospel of idleness is merely a part of the gospel of self-indulgence ; and the grain of salt which is needed to make the former gospel pala- table, or even tolerable, must now be added for the seasoning of the latter. If the following say- ing of Pattison, the most cynical that I shall quote, can be more or less satisfactorily interpreted, all his cynical sayings can be so interpreted. In Safe Studies, p. 187, I enunciate the truism that husband and wife should comfort and sustain one- another in struggling for the good of all men. In page 116, I quote with disapproval a strange assertion of Montaigne, " He who abandons his own healthful and pleasant life to serve others, takes, in my opinion, a course that is wrong and unnatural." Concerning these contradictory maxims Pattison wrote : " In page 187, will you 180 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. stand to the words e for the good of all men ' ? Do you not much rather incline to endorse Mon- taigne's opinion, p. 116, a refreshing passage, to which I wish I had the reference in the original?" In this frank avowal we seem to hear an echo of the " Unjust Voice " in the Clouds : [j,ipa.Kiov, ev TW *Ai/ecmv, ^Sovoji/ & OCTWJ/ /xeAAe IlatSwv, ywatKtoi', KOTra/3o>y, oi^cov, TTOTOJV, Katrot rt CTOL fjv aiov, TOVTWV lav crTeprjOfjs ; Neph. 10715. But, on the other hand, Pattison was often on the side of the Just Voice, sometimes in an ex- treme degree. I remember pleading for that modified eccentricity, that social independence, which was so dear to the heart of Mill. Pattison, himself not the most conventional of men,* sur- prised me by objecting, " Eccentricity seems to me a form of egoism, and all egoism ought to be discouraged." This little sermon of his may help us to draw the sting from his Apology for Montaigne. Let us observe that in that Apology he uses the word " refreshing," which shows that * For example : after lie had only once met Miss Swan- wick, lie (having, I suppose, chanced to dine in the neigh- bourhood) sent up his card one evening between 9 and 10, and asked if she could receive him. She was glad to avail herself of the opportunity to renew their classical discussions, >but was amused at the hour chosen by her untimely guest. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 181 he stood in need of refreshment that, in fact he relished Montaigne's aphorism as an anodyne under an oppressive sense of the social martyrdom to which ethical logic might lead. In practice, no doubt, he would have differed from, Mill in assigning the limits of self-sacrifice ; but, theore- tically, his paradoxical words perhaps mean no more than Mill would have expressed by saying that, in our present low state of civilization, we cannot ignore the necessity of loving ourselves and those near to us better than those more re- mote. They certainly mean no more than Pro- fessor Bain (on The Study of Character) has expressed by saying that disinterestedness is "an exception to the only sane principle of conduct, which is, for every being to look to its own pleasures and pains a brilliant exception, it is true, something of the splendide mendax, but never to be made the rule without even suicidal consequences." We may sum up our view of the Rector's cynicism by affirming that he " laughed that any one shonld weep In this disjointed world for one wrong more." Or, more shortly, we may say of him, as of De- mocritus, that he laughed to prevent weeping. Mr. Greg has quaintly remarked that hardly any 182 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. one can afford to keep a conscience, that is, a strictly logical one. He might have maintained that no one can afford such a luxury. Clough, whose poetry the Eector (strange to say) did not appreciate, puts the case yet more strongly : " We cannot act without assuming a?, And at the same time y, its contradictory ; Ergo, to act."* To a sensitive nature like Pattison's, these Antinomies of the Practical Reason are at times not a curious enigma, but a painful reality. A person thus constituted can enter into Scherer's experience that Nous cotoyons VaMme, gare au vertige. He has learnt that the strivings of his abnormal conscience towards its goal often need, not stimulating, but checking; and his cynical utterances, harsh and unnatural in their tone, are uaught but the grating sound of the drag which is put on the wheel. In referring to the father of all sceptics, whose treatise by means of a felicitous forgery has made its way into the Canon of Scripture, Renan oddly remarks : " La bonte* du sceptique est la plus solide de toutes ; elle repose sur un sentiment profond * See also the fifth stanza of The Higher Courage. In The Latest Decalogue, the contrast is marked between ideal and conventional morality : " Thou shalt not covet, but tradition Approves all forms of competition." EECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. 183 de la verite supreme, Nil expedit."* I pointed out this sentence to Pattison, who seemed to regard it with something of approval. But he would doubtless have admitted that the word bonte must be referred rather to public than to private virtue must be taken to denote not heroism, but kindliness. So interpreted, the words may be applied to Pattison himself. Charles Austin was fond of a saying of Voltaire to the effect that, if one would fain work for man- kind, one must avoid being disgusted with man- kind, and must therefore forbear seeing too much of ordinary men and women. It is perhaps safer to assert that some who devote their time and sympathy to public objects, and all who thirst after a wide popularity, impair their capacity for contracting close friendships for making a few men and women feel that they take a personal * Again, in L'Antechrist, p. 101, lie describes Ecclesiastes as a " livre charmant. le seul livre aimable qui ait ete com- pose par un Juif ;" and adds (p. 102), "Nous ne comprenons pas le galant homme sans un peu de scepticisme ; mous aimons que I'homme vertuenx dise de temps a autre, Vertu, tu n'es qu'un mot." He goes on to say that the power of smiling at one's own work is " la qualite essentielle d'tme personne distinguee," and maintains that this quality was strikingly exemplified in Christ. I wish that some reader would inform me what saying or sayings of Christ, Renan could possibly have had in his mind when he made this startling assertion. 184 KECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. interest in them. Pattison achieved this, though he laboured under a great drawback. Study engrossed much of his time and interest; and, perhaps on that account, he was at the close of his life lacking in power of sympathy. May it not have been because his small disposable fund of time and sympathy was seldom drawn upon for mankind in the aggregate, that he had any time or sympathy to spare for the few women and fewer men whom he really valued ? At any rate, his misanthropy, or rather his (^philanthropy, freed him from that last infirmity of noble re- formers intolerance of human frailty. Other causes might be mentioned; but the foregoing may serve to explain how it was that the Rector enjoyed the privilege a privilege rarely vouch- safed to such a hard student of inspiring the few whom he admitted to his friendship with a larger measure of, not admiration merely, but affection. It may not be amiss to record a curious instance of the enthusiasm which he once excited in an unexpected quarter. One of his old pupils writes : " For part of my time, Pattison' s scout was also mine. He was the only honest, manly, true-hearted man as a college scout that I ever knew, and he almost adored Pattison." One fact may serve to explain the scout's devotion to his master. Pattison strongly disapproved of the complete separation which, in English households RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 185 especially, subsists between masters and servants. When sociably inclined, he made spasmodic at- tempts to break through the barrier. It was with some surprise that I learnt at Biarritz how unknown Pattison was, even by name, to most of the travelling English. There was something at once instructive and humbling in the question that I heard asked, " Do you know that there is a brother of Sister Dora in the hotel?" implying that he was doomed to Lethe, and that no one but his sister could rescue him even for a short space (Juturnam misero sue- currere fratri). Being consulted by an under- graduate as to what he should do in the way of study, Pattison startled his questioner by answer- ing (in effect), " Take care of what you are, and what you do will take care of itself." The world is happily determined to apply this principle to Pattison, to judge him, not by what he did, but by what he was, and not to let him be written down even by himself. One of his kinsfolk, who had ample means of judging, assures me that his disappointment in 1851 "weighed upon his memory " far more during his last illness than it had done for many years before. He had, in fact, lived to become a mere aOXiov /, ov yap 817 ro'S' o 2 186 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. This may partly explain the defects of his Memoirs; for it is, I think, just as well as generous to refer in great measure to his morbid condition the de- plorable domestic and academic disclosures, and the more deplorable exaggerations about Conington which deface that unfortunate volume.* " If 't be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged, His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy." The Rector was never very misanthropical when talking to me ; perhaps he thought misanthropy would not be good for me. Shortly after we parted at Biarritz, he wrote about me to a lady friend (the inscription is bilingual, being on a post-card) : " Pray present my compliments to our philosophe errant, and prevail upon him to se * So far from becoming a bigoted Puseyite after his "con- version," Conington was to the last very tolerant. I asked him (in or about 1857) what he thought of a contemptuous attack on Mr. Congreve which had recently appeared in the Times. He replied that he liked far better an article in the Saturday Review, which, while differing from Mr. Congreve's views, treated him with consideration. On another occasion, one of his Liberal friends (some of his friends were strong Liberals) informed him in my presence that I had ventured to tell that Tory assembly, the Oxford Union, that we owed a debt of gratitude to Carlyle for importing into England a taste for German theology. Conington merely looked at me and said, with an amused smile, " Really, really." I have elsewhere recorded his great admiration for Mill. EECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 187 detendre un peu plus, if he wishes to keep the machine in good order." It may have been with a like feeling of goodwill that, knowing or fancy- ing that I am wont to take too grave and sad a view of human life, he put (so to speak) into his conversation with me little of the spirit of Timon and much of the spirit of Montaigne ; just as Horace infused into Odes addressed to the com- rades of his youth a mild Epicureanism as an antidote to Republican zeal. Thirteen years ago, I asked a distinguished Oxonian to tell me whom he thought the foremost man in the University. " Jowett," he replied, " has a touch of genius, which Pattison has not ; otherwise, taking him all round, Pattison is the first man in Oxford." I would venture to add that (still perhaps excepting Mr. Jowett) he was the first clergyman of our time. Not, of course, that his tastes were those of his clerical brethren. A Scotch book called Natural Law in the Spiritual World, which has had a " mad success " with old maids, clergymen, and homoeopathic doctors, was sent to him, perhaps in order to convert him. Not relishing its author's naive attempt to keep the newest wine in cracked bottles, and also to found on the wholesale immorality of natural forces analogies such as might more consistently be used to defend the religion of Juggernaut than 188 RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. the religion of Jesus, he said drily to a friend, " I don't think this book will suit us," and con- temptuously threw it aside.* In talking with him one day, I expressed surprise at the almost universal obscurantism of the Bishops. " It is quite natural," he said. " After a man has been consecrated ten years, he loses all sympathy with the modern spirit. No ; there is one exception. The Bishop of sometimes sits next me at luncheon at the Athen^um,-^ and asks simple questions, just like a little boy, about evolution and other modern speculations. This Bishop really tries to keep pace with the modern spirit ; but he is the only one." He, however, emphati- cally pronounced Dean Stanley to be a " thorough Liberal," a circumstance which seemed to sur- prise him on account of the Dean's imaginative and perhaps unscientific cast of mind. Pattison's summary condemnation of the Anglican Bishops was probably meant to be taken more or less in jest. But he was speaking quite seriously when * A writer in the Contemporary Review for March, passes a yet severer judgment on the book; he stigmatizes its author's theory as " neither science nor theology, but a bastard Cal- vinism of which Scotland ought to be ashamed." Is legiti- mate Calvinism much better ? t The Rector said that the library of the Athenaeum " is the most delightful place in the world especially on a Sun- day morning." EECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. 189 he pronounced a very similar judgment on a far more formidable body of ecclesiastics. I asked him whether he did not expect that, at no distant period, some wise Pope and Cardinals will (by a now familiar device) seek to disburden Catholicism of the belief in hell whether, in fact, they will not demonstrate that the Popes who sanctioned that unsavoury doctrine were not speaking ex cathedra, or were misreported, or that the ques- tion lies beyond the province of Papal Infalli- bility; or, at any rate, that Nullum tempus oc- currit Deo (see 2 Peter iii., 8), and that every expedient which is used to show that the numerous plain texts which seem to predict the immediate end of the world do not really mean what they seem to mean, will equally show that the texts and other Catholic authorities which seem to pre- dict the endlessness of hell need not mean what they seem to mean.* " No/ 5 replied he ; " Catho- licism will not change. The Cardinals have no conception whatever of the intellectual changes going on in the world. They often show ability in diplomatic matters, but in nothing else." Yet, though untainted by the ecclesiastical virus, he was to the last a clergyman in the best sense. * Tillotson (I.e.), after quoting Jonah iii. 10, to prove that God may be better than his word, raises the delicious ques- tion : Would he also be better than his oath (Ps. xcv. 11) ? 190 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. He rather surprised a friend by making the broad statement that mankind will never be able to dis- pense with religious observances. He was there- upon reminded that " never" is a far-reaching word, and was asked whether he did not think that, at some very remote epoch, the temptations to crime may be so much lessened, and public opinion may be so much better organized, that morality will be able to stand on its own bottom. *' I accept the correction," he answered frankly; " such a time may come ; but, if it ever is to come, it is now so extremely distant that we and our children will only get into trouble by taking it into practical consideration." My readers may remember Pattison's observa- tion that the idea of Deity has now been "defe- cated to a pure transparency."* This queer metaphor will serve as an introduction to his views on the two foundation-stones of Natural Theology. I asked him whether he thought that either Mr. Stopford Brooke or Mr. Yoysey is likely to have much permanent influence. He answered in the negative ; in the present state of opinion, most of those whose temperament leads them to reject what Mr. Stopford Brooke and Mr. Yoysey agree in rejecting, will not accept what * Quoted by Mr. Harrison, Nineteenth Century, "Vol. xv., p. 496. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 191 they agree in accepting. In snort, the stream of tendency is towards Agnosticism. I asked what he thought of the logical strength of Agnosticism; and, by way of drawing him out, I stated as forcibly as I could the argument which Mr. Grote the " rigid Atheist," as he was called in Ben- thamite circles would certainly have used against it. Mr. Grote would have insisted that there is not a tittle of evidence to show that fairies do not exist, and yet that, as soon as it became manifest that there is no evidence to show that they do exist, the case went against them by default; we do not merely doubt their existence, we deny it. In like manner, Mr. Grote applied to all spiritual beings the maxim that Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, and he would have contended that, just as Unitarianism has been called a feather bed to catch a falling Christian, even so Agnosticism is a feather bed to catch a falling Theist.* When I laid this reason- * An eminent jurist and philosopher, after reading this paragraph, asked me how we conld possibly deny the exist- ence of fairies. I answered that by the word " fairies " I mean spiritual beings able and willing to act in a specified manner on human affairs. If junkets mysteriously disappear, their owner unhesitatingly attributes the disappearance to thieves, mice, or some other natural agency; in other words, he denies that there exists any " fairy Mab " able and willing to steal junkets. In like manner, we may confidently deny that there exists a Spiritual Being who is able and willing 192 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. ing before Pattison, I found to my amazement that it was quite unfamiliar to him. In answer to it, he merely quoted with approval the words of a Greek sage (I think Protagoras) : Seal el elvlv TI el /J,rj elalv a&r)\,ov. An Oxford contemporary and friend of Patti- son's, the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, used to quote approvingly a very similar passage from Faust : " "Wer darf ilm nennen ? Und wer bekennen : Icli glaub' ihn ? "Wer empfinden Und sich unterwinden Zu sagen : Ich glaub' ihn nicht ?" It may serve to throw light on the Rector's state of mind, and perhaps, too, on the theological tendencies of the University, if I advert for a moment to Brodie's opinions on these subjects. He called himself an A. L. (Advanced Liberal). Like Pattison, he was sceptical about miracles. In rebuking a friend whom he deemed too cre- dulous, he exclaimed, " You'll tell me next that you believe that the serpent climbed up the tree and began talking, to Eve." Yet he told me that Comte's Positive Philosophy seemed to " throw a wet blanket" over him; and he rather startled to modify Natural Laws, even with, a view to the prevention of sin and sorrow. EECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. 198 me by expressing regret at the line taken by Professor Tyndall in the Belfast Address. He insisted that Berkeley's Theory has never been refuted (though I doubt whether the Bishop would have acknowledged him as a disciple). His meaning probably was that, while believing in the absolute uniformity of Natural Laws, he yet thought (as Mr. Eomanes thinks) that the ultimate causa causarum, the basis of phenomena, may be Spiritual and Intelligent. " The real puzzle is," he used to say, " how anything comes to exist," anything whatever, either Mind or Matter. He once expressed a belief or hope that the course of Nature is directed by " Infinite Wisdom " ; and, on being asked how he recon- ciled Infinite Wisdom with the existence of evil, he replied that we do not quite know what the word " infinite " means. These opinions of the late Professor of Chemistry are more optimistic than those commonly expressed by Pattison ; but they may illustrate them by pointing to a modus vivendi seemingly the only one between Theism and modern science. Though I could not per- suade either Brodie or Pattison to expound their views fully, I should conjecture that they were something of this sort : "Nature, indeed, is profoundly immoral; with reckless impartiality, she gives her sun- 194 EECOLLEOTTONS OE PATTISON. strokes to the evil and to the good, and causes her floods to descend on the just and on the un- just. Yet it is this same immoral agent which, by yielding suitable conditions, has led to the evolution of all our moral sentiments, and may lead to the evolution of yet higher moral sentiments among posterity. For aught we know, those moral sentiments could not have been evolved by any less painful process." Yet, though Pattison refused to acquiesce in Grote's dogmatic negation, he relinquished a belief which was till lately regarded as a necessary adjunct of Theism, but which some disciples of Dr. Martineau are now prepared to give up. I reminded him of the havoc which the modern belief in the absolute uniformity of Natural Law is making with the older belief, the belief in supernatural interven- tion ; and I asked him whether he did not feel a difficulty in reconciling the modern belief with the belief in the greatest of all miracles, the Miracle of Creation.* " Yes," he answered thoughtfully, " I suppose that Pantheism is the only form of Theism which can be reconciled with Evolution." Pantheism is an ugly word, and also a very vague one. I imagine that, in using it, * In my Safe Studies, pp. 390, 391, this argument is stated more fully, almost in the words in which it wa addressed to the Rector. RECOLLECTIONS OP PATTISON. 195 Pattison merely meant to express a view identical with Goethe's : " Was war' em Grott, der nur von anssen stiesse, Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse, Ihni ziemt's die Welt im Innern zn bewegen, Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zn hegen, So dass, was in Ihm lebt nnd webt nnd ist, Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermisst." As in regard to Theism, so in regard to the belief in immortality, Pattison (like Renan) de- clined to deduce the negative conclusion which some might have drawn from his premisses. He spoke indeed differently at different times. Some- times his view seemed to be a depressing one. For instance, he once startled me with the query, " Shall I have my library in heaven ?" a question in reply to which I certainly was unable to give more definite information than he himself pos- sessed, but which somehow conveyed the notion that he regarded a posthumous library and a posthumous life as equally improbable, or at any rate that he would find the latter tedious without the former. So, again, in a touching and mourn- ful letter which he wrote to me three weeks before he died, he said, " I am approached very near now to the ' fabulae Manes et domus exili& Plutonia. 5 ' And we learn with pain that, as his end drew near, the shadows became yet darker. 196 RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. But he would assuredly have maintained that his real views were those which he held in the fulness of health, though even in health a man of his temperament may have forebodings that the ghost of his old belief will haunt him in the last scene, " Pale and pitiful now, but terrible then to the dying " ; in other words, that posthumous fears will over- whelm him in the sad hour when the impressions of childhood are often relatively the strongest, and when the nerves are so weakened and the thoughts are so uncontrolled that even the mightiest of spiritual reformers are tempted to utter the cry of loneliness and despair, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? "* When Pattison was at his best, his anticipations in re- * Suppose an angel (or devil) were to offer us the choice between painless annihilation and the necessity of drawing from a prophetic lottery containing 1000 tickets marked heaven and one ticket marked hell : most of us, I conceive, would prefer the euthanasian alternative to the risk, the 'extremely small risk, of everlasting torments. And may not a dying philosopher, whose nerves have been unstrung by illness, be excused if he shudders at the very barest possibility that the belief in posthumous discomfort, a belief held by some persons as honest and as learned as he is, may be well founded, and if he is tempted to follow the example of the numerous penitents, from Cephalus to Littre, who at the eleventh hour " advertunt animos ad religionem, . . . Aeternas quoniam pcenas in morte timendum est " ? RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 197 gard to immortality were such as might be re- solved into the formula, Aut caelum aut nihil; he refused to close the door on religious hope. Goethe has well said that Man is always more anthropomorphic than he thinks. It is equally true indeed, it is another aspect of the same truth that Man is always more optimistic than he thinks. And perhaps it was in consequence of an irrepressible aspiration that a passage of Ten- nyson which exactly expressed Pattison's own relation to those whom he had loved and lost, suggested itself, when the news of his death came, to one at least of his sorrowing friends : " It may be that the gulfs will wash, ns down, It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles whom we knew." In conclusion, we will turn from this cheerless subject to one or two of the Rector's criticisms on life, which show him at his best. To a friend who complained that old age made our pleasures less numerous and less vivid, he answered, in a spirit worthy of Cato Major : " What we lose in the number and vividness of our pleasures, we gain in iavoia \ we set a juster value on those which remain to us." When I saw Charles Austin for the last time, he was less of a pessimist than I had ever known him; and likewise to Pattison, just before his 198 EECOLLEOTIONS OF PATTISON. fatal illness began, there was vouchsafed a sort of Indian summer. He was more cheerful than usual, and yet he had a presentiment that his days were numbered. " I never," he said, " felt life to be so precious as now when it is ebbing away."* He was talking to one whom he had every reason to love and value ; so he laid aside reserve and took a retrospect of his career. En- larging on a topic which cannot but recall the choice of Solomon, he gave reasons for thinking that, if he had coveted wealth or worldly distinc- tion, he might have secured either or both. But he had preferred the path of knowledge. " I am glad," he concluded, " that I made this choice ; and, if with my present experience I could live my life over again, I would lay it out on the same lines." Adapting his Master's words, he might have said: Unum est necessarium. Optimam partem elegi, quae non auferetur a me. * He was thus confirming from personal experience a saying: of Goethe's which he used often to quote : " Life resembles the Sibylline book ; it becomes dearer the less there remains of it." Does not this explain the anomaly, that some per- manent invalids say that they would willingly live their lives over again, while many strong persons foolishly declare that they would not ? He who knows that his life is precarious,, feels that it is priceless. RECOLLECTIONS OF PATTISON. 199 NOTE. "They also