■fniversity of Csailornia^ 
 s._ IRVINE
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 AND OTHER ADDRESSES
 
 THE CONDUCT OF 
 LIFE 
 
 AND OTHER ADDRESSES 
 
 By viscount HALDANE 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
 1914
 
 
 [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED].
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 1. The Conduct of Life. 
 
 An address delivered to the Associated Societies 
 of the University of Edinburgh on 14th November 
 1913 I 
 
 2. The Meaning of Truth in History. 
 
 The Creighton Lecture delivered before the 
 University of London on 6th March 1914 29 
 
 3. The Civic University. 
 
 An address delivered to the Citizens of Bristol on 
 Installation as Chancellor of the University of 
 Bristol in October 1912 63 
 
 4. Higher Nationality : A Study in Law and 
 
 Ethics. 
 
 An address delivered before the American Bar 
 Association at Montreal on ist September 1913 ... 97
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 An Address delivered to the Associated Socie- 
 ties of the University of Edinburgh on 
 lOfth November, 19 13.
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 I HAVE chosen a theme on which I should not 
 have ventured had I not in days gone by been 
 one of yourselves, and intimately acquainted 
 with the ups and downs which beset those who 
 were then struggling along the path to a degree. 
 
 My recollection of my undergraduate Ufe 
 forty years since, and of the obscurities and 
 perplexities of that time, is still vivid; and with 
 your permission I wish to speak to-day of how 
 some of the old difficulties appear to one look- 
 ing back on them with the light which experience 
 of life has brought. 
 
 Before I enter on my topic, I may just refer 
 to a difference that in such a meeting as this 
 distinguishes the present from the past. I 
 touch the topic not without trepidation, but I 
 will take my life in my hands. I am to-day 
 addressing women just as much as men. For 
 a change has come over the University since 
 my time, a change of which I have the temerity 
 to say at once that I am glad. Women have 
 an access to academic life which in my student 
 days was practically denied to them. And this 
 is a sign of the times. It is part of a movement 
 which is causing the world slowly to alter its 
 point of view, and which is, I think, making for
 
 4 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 the principle of general equality, in the eye of 
 the law and the constitution, of women with 
 men. The differences of temperament and 
 ability which nature has established even an 
 omnipotent Parliament can never alter. But 
 Society, whatever Parliament may say, appears 
 to be making progress towards a decision to 
 leave it to nature and not law to set the limits. 
 It is therefore obvious that in what I have to 
 say before a University which is full of the 
 spirit of the age, I must speak to all of you 
 without much regard to your sex. And if I 
 divine aright the mood of those of the gentler 
 sex here present, they will not take it amiss if 
 I address all who are present as though they 
 were men. 
 
 Well, hastening away from this merely intro- 
 ductory point, let me relieve your minds by 
 saying that it is my purpose neither to indulge 
 in introspection, nor to betake myself to the 
 region of reminiscence. It is not the past that 
 interests me. I wish rather to speak of aspects 
 of life which at one period in it are very much 
 the same for most of us. These aspects of life 
 present themselves irresistibly when we enter 
 the University. It is then that we students 
 become anxious about many things. These 
 things include, for some at all events, the 
 outlook on existence and doubt about its mean- 
 ing. Then there is concern as to the choice of 
 a career, and as to success in it or failure. 
 There is the sense of new responsibilities which 
 press themselves on us as we enter upon man-
 
 THE LARGE OUTLOOK 5 
 
 hood, and the feeling that everything is difficult 
 and illusive. We may be troubled about our 
 souls, or again, we may be keenly concerned 
 as to how we can most quickly become self- 
 supporting and cease to be a burden on others 
 ill able to bear it. All these topics, and others 
 besides of a less high order, crowd on the 
 undergraduate as he finds that he has parted 
 with his irresponsible boyhood, and has to think 
 for himself. He feels that he can no longer 
 look to others for guidance. He knows that 
 he must shape his own destiny and work out 
 his own salvation. The situation has its special 
 temptations. He is in danger of some evils 
 against which the Prophets have warned us all, 
 and especially of a morbid concentration on 
 his own private concerns, a concentration that 
 is apt to result in a self-consciousness which 
 may amount to egotism and impair his strength : 
 
 *' The man," Wordsworth tells us, " whose eye 
 Is ever on himself doth look on one. 
 The least of Nature's works, — one who might move 
 The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds 
 Unlawful ever." 
 
 Now from this danger every one of us, young 
 or old, has got to guard himself. In life we 
 are subject to all sorts of reverses, great and 
 small. There is only one way of providing 
 against the depression which they bring in their 
 train, and that is by acquiring the large outlook 
 which shows that they are not the most impor- 
 tant things in life. The undergraduate may 
 find himself ploughed in an examination, or in
 
 6 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 debt, or for that matter, and do not let us 
 overlook its possibility, hopeless in a love affair. 
 Or he may suffer from the depression which is 
 deepest when it arises from no external cause. 
 If he would escape from the consequent sense 
 of despair he must visualise his feelings and 
 set them in relief by seeking and searching out 
 their grounds. It is probably his best chance 
 of deliverance. For these feelings often turn 
 out on resolute scrutiny to arise from the 
 obsession of his own personality. This obses- 
 sion may assume varied forms. It may become 
 really morbid. There is a remarkable book by 
 a modern man of genius, one whom Nietzsche 
 and Ibsen both held in high esteem — the 
 Inferno of August Strindberg — where you may 
 read with advantage if you would be warned 
 against a self-concentration that verges on the 
 insane. There is another and better-known 
 book, which in my time at the University was 
 much read, and which is, I think, still much 
 read, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. There you 
 have an analysis of the very process of deliver- 
 ance of which I am speaking. The hero works 
 out his own relief from the burden of his 
 own depression. It is not exclusively a 
 Christian book; indeed I doubt whether in his 
 heart Carlyle called himself a Christian. But 
 it exhibits certain features of the way by which, 
 in substance and in reality, men are required 
 by all the greatest religions to seek their salva- 
 tion. These features Carlyle describes in his 
 pictorial fashion. Teufelsdrock, weighed down
 
 TO SEEK BLESSEDNESS 7 
 
 by depression, but never wholly losing courage, 
 is one hot day toiling along the Rue St. Thomas 
 de I'Enfer, when the light flashes on him, and 
 he puts to himself this : — "What art thou afraid 
 of . . . Hast thou not a heart; can'st thou not 
 suffer whatever it be; and as a Child of 
 Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself 
 under thy feet, while it consumes thee." Then 
 through his soul, Carlyle tells us, rushed a 
 stream of fire, and he shook fear away from 
 him forever. The Everlasting No had said 
 " Behold thou art fatherless, outcast, and the 
 Universe is mine (the Devil's)"; to which his 
 whole Me made answer — " I am not thine, but 
 Free, and forever hate thee." Later on, the 
 diagnosis of his malady becomes clear to him. 
 The source of the disease of his spirit has been 
 vanity and the claim for happiness. This he 
 has now been taught to do without. For he 
 has learned that the fraction of life can be 
 increased in value, not so much by increasing 
 the numerator as by lessening the denominator. 
 He finds, indeed, that unity itself divided by 
 zero will result in infinity : Let him make his 
 claim of wages a zero, and he has the world 
 under his feet. For it is only with renunciation 
 that the world can be said to begin. He must, 
 as Carlyle puts it, close his Byron and open his 
 Goethe. He must seek blessedness rather than 
 happiness — love not pleasure but God. " This 
 is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradic- 
 tion is solved ; wherein who walks and works 
 it is well with him."
 
 8 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 That was what Carlyle used to teach us 
 students forty years ago, and I doubt not that 
 he teaches the same spiritual lesson to many 
 of you to-day. It is not, as I have already 
 said, in form the language of Christianity. 
 None the less, it substantially agrees with much 
 in the doctrine of the Gospels. It gives us, 
 in Carlyle's particular style, the highest spiritual 
 expression at the highest level that man has 
 reached. The form matters little. Everyone 
 must express to himself these things in the 
 fashion that best suits his individuality. It is 
 a question of temperament and association. 
 Yet we all assent in our hearts, whatever be the 
 form of our creed, to such doctrine, whether it 
 be given in the words of the Founder of 
 Christianity or of modern thinkers. Professor 
 Bosanquet worked it out in a new shape in the 
 Gifford Lectures which he delivered in this 
 University last year. There he sought to 
 exhibit the world as a " vale of soul-making," 
 to use the phrase which he borrowed from 
 Keats, in which the soul reached most nearly 
 to perfection by accepting without hesitating, 
 the station and the duties which the contingen- 
 cies of existence had assigned to it, and by 
 striving to do its best with them. Looked at 
 in the light that comes from the Eternal within 
 our breasts the real question was not whether 
 health or wealth or success were ours. For the 
 differences in degree of these were but droplets 
 in the ocean of Eternity. What did matter, 
 and what was of infinite consequence, was that
 
 THE VALE OF SOUL-MAKING 9 
 
 we should be ready to accept with willingness 
 the burden and the obligation which life had 
 cast on us individually, and be able to see that 
 in accepting it, hard as it might be to do so, we 
 were choosing a blessedness which meant far 
 more for us than what is commonly called 
 happiness could. We should rather be proud 
 that the burden fell to us who had learned how 
 to bear it. It thus, I may add by way of illus- 
 tration of Mr. Bosanquet's words, was no sense 
 of defeat, no meaningless cry of emotion, which 
 prompted Emily Bronte when she defined her 
 creed : — 
 
 " And if I pray the only prayer 
 
 That moves my Hps for me, 
 Leave me the heart that now I bear 
 
 And give me Hberty : 
 Yes, as my swift days near their goal 
 
 'Tis all that I implore, 
 In life and death a chainless soul, 
 
 With courage to endure." 
 
 There is a passage in the fifth of the second 
 series of these Gifford Lectures which expresses 
 the other aspect of this great truth : — 
 
 "If we are arranging any system or enter- 
 prise of a really intimate character for persons 
 closely united in mind and thoroughly pene- 
 trated with the spirit of the whole — persons not 
 at arm's length to one another — all the presup- 
 positions of individualistic justice at once fall 
 to the ground. We do not give the ' best ' man 
 the most comfort, the easiest task, or even, so 
 far as the conduct of the enterprise is concerned,
 
 10 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 the highest reward. We give him the greatest 
 responsibihty, the severest toil and hazard, the 
 most continuous and exacting toil and self- 
 sacrifice. It is true and inevitable, for the 
 reasons we have pointed out as affecting all 
 finite life, that in a certain way and degree 
 honour and material reward do follow on merit 
 in this world. They follow, we may say, mostly 
 wrong; but the world, in its rough working, by 
 its own rough and ready standards, thinks it 
 necessary to attempt to appraise the finite 
 individual unit; this is, in fact, the individualistic 
 justice, which, when we find it shattered and 
 despised by the Universe, calls out the pessim- 
 ism we are discussing. But the more intimate 
 and spiritual is the enterprise, the more does 
 the true honour and reward restrict itself to 
 what lives 
 
 " In those pure eyes 
 And perfect witness of all judging Jove." 
 
 I am probably addressing at this moment 
 some of you who have come to our University 
 of Edinburgh from the great but far distant 
 country of India. There your wisest and 
 greatest thinkers have expressed a similar truth 
 in a similar way. Some of your best teachers 
 of Eastern philosophy have lately been among 
 us and have spoken to us in Great Britain. 
 The response of their hearers has been a real 
 one. For the greatest sayings about the mean- 
 ing of life come to the same thing, however and 
 wherever they have been uttered. Perhaps
 
 THE vSHADOW OF SELF ii 
 
 nowhere more than in the East has the language 
 of poetry and philosophy been wonderfully 
 combined. This blending of Art with Thought 
 has enabled master minds to shake themselves 
 free of the narrowing influence of conventional 
 categories, and has thereby made philosophy 
 easier of approach. The thinkers of the East 
 have been keenly aware of the chilling influence 
 of the shadow of self. I will cite to you some 
 words from the Gilanjali of a prominent and 
 highly-gifted leader of opinion, Rabindranath 
 Tagore, who has been recently preaching and 
 teaching in this country : — 
 
 " I came out alone on my way to my tryst. 
 But who is this that follows me in the silent 
 dark? I move aside to avoid his presence, but 
 I escape him not. He makes the dust rise 
 from the earth with his swagger; he adds his 
 loud voice to every word that I utter. He is 
 my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame ; 
 but I am ashamed to come to the door in his 
 company .... 
 
 " Prisoner, tell me, who was it that bound 
 you? It was my master, said the prisoner. I 
 thought I could outdo everybody in the world 
 in wealth and power, and I amassed in my own 
 treasure house the money due to the King. 
 When sleep overcame me I lay on the bed that 
 was for my lord, and on waking up I found I 
 was a prisoner in my own treasure-house. 
 Prisoner, tell me who it was that wrought this 
 unbreakable chain. It was I, said the prisoner, 
 who forged this chain very carefully. I thought
 
 12 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 my invincible power would hold the world 
 captive, leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. 
 Thus night and day I worked at the chain with 
 huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at 
 last the work was done, and the links were 
 complete and unbreakable, I found that it held 
 me in its grip." 
 
 What is the lesson of it all ? It is that you 
 must aim at the largest and widest view of life, 
 and devote your highest energies to attaining 
 it. This view of life, with its sustaining power, 
 will come to you if you strive hard enough, in 
 one form or another, according to temperament, 
 intellectual and moral. To some it will come 
 in the form of Christianity, to others in that of 
 some other high religion, it may be one origina- 
 ting in the East. To yet others it will come in 
 more abstract form, in the shape of philosophy. 
 To yet others Art will bring the embodiment 
 of the truth that the ideal and the real, the 
 infinite and the finite, do not really exist apart, 
 but are different aspects of a single reality. 
 Such a faith, if it comes, will, as the experience 
 of countless thousands in different ages has 
 shown, help you in sickness or in health, in 
 poverty or in wealth, in depression or in exalta- 
 tion. Only this faith must be a real faith. No 
 mere opinion, still less mere lip service, can 
 supply its place. It necessitates renunciation 
 of the lower for the higher, and the renunciation 
 must be a real renunciation — extending, if need 
 be, to life itself. " Life itself is not the highest 
 good " : " Das Leben ist der Giiter hochstes
 
 ORTHODOXY 13 
 
 nicht," says Schiller in the end of a great poem. 
 The line became at one time deeply familiar to 
 the students at Heidelberg, because of an 
 incident which was dramatic in its suddenness. 
 One of their great teachers, Daub, the theolo- 
 gian, at the end of a lecture sank dead in his 
 professor's chair with these words of Schiller 
 on his lips. 
 
 In my time we were troubled about our 
 orthodoxy more, I think, than you are to-day. 
 It was in the Victorian period, a period in which 
 we seemed to be bidden to choose between the 
 scientific view of life and the religious view. 
 We are told by high authorities that both could 
 not be true, and that we must make our election. 
 But the outlook has widened since those days, 
 and you have a greater freedom of choice. 
 Men of science have seen their conceptions 
 subjected to searching examination and critic- 
 ism. Whether they hold with M. Bergson, or 
 whether they hold with the Idealists, or whether 
 they pledge themselves to no philosophy, but 
 simply aim at believing in all the phases of the 
 world as it presents itself, the best equipped 
 investigators no longer jump to the assumption 
 that the Universe is a substance existing wholly 
 independently of mind, and organised in rela- 
 tions that are limited to those of mechanism. 
 W^e look nowadays to mind for the interpreta- 
 tion of matter, rather than to matter as the frius 
 and source of mind. We seek for God, not 
 without, but within. And this attitude is 
 reflected in that of the Church. For the Church
 
 14 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 no longer sets up in pulpits the sort of spiritual- 
 ism which was little else than a counter- 
 materialism to that of the men of science. The 
 preachers are less exclusively concerned with 
 the old and crude dogmas, and are more 
 occupied with the effort to raise the thought and 
 feeling of their hearers to a level higher than 
 that of the ordinary abstractions of science and 
 of everyday hfe itself. And so it has come 
 about that you to-day are delivered from some 
 at least of the perplexities which beset us, your 
 predecessors, as we walked on the Braid Hills 
 and endeavoured to find spiritual ground on 
 which we could firmly plant our feet. The 
 hindrances to spiritual life are to-day of a 
 different order. They are moral rather than 
 intellectual. They arise more from a lessened 
 readiness to accept authority of any kind than 
 was the case two generations ago. But at least 
 your task is freed from a set of obstacles which 
 in those days were serious. You may find it 
 hard to take the same interest in the letter of 
 the creeds as we did. But the spirit remains 
 the same, under whatever form religion attracts 
 you, and the spirit is to-day more easy of 
 approach and provokes less readily to rebellion. 
 What I would urge upon you is that you 
 should avoid the practice, one that is not 
 uncommon among young men, but is really 
 unnatural, of affecting indifference or cynicism 
 about these things. They are of the last 
 importance, and it is of practical importance to 
 have the habit of so regarding them. For
 
 HOW TO PREPARE? 15 
 
 without them but few will be steeled against 
 the misfortunes of which life is full for nearly 
 all of us, and the depressing uncertainties which 
 render its conduct difficult. To those who are 
 worth most there comes home early in life the 
 conviction that, in the absence of a firm hold on 
 what is abiding, life becomes a poorer and 
 poorer affair the longer it lasts. And the only 
 foundation of what is abiding is the sense of 
 the reality of what is spiritual — the constant 
 presence of the God who is not far away in the 
 skies, but is here within our minds and hearts. 
 That is what I wished to say to you about 
 what seems to me the deepest-lying and most 
 real fact of life. I now turn to quite another 
 phase of the question of its conduct. How is 
 the student, with or without the supreme source 
 of strength of which I have spoken, to prepare 
 himself so that he will have the best chances of 
 success? To me this question does not seem 
 a difficult one to answer. I have seen some- 
 thing of men and of affairs. I have observed 
 the alternations of success and failure in various 
 professions and occupations. I have myself 
 experienced many ups and downs, and in the 
 course of my own life have made abundant 
 jmistakes. It always interests me to look back 
 and observe in the light of later and fuller 
 knowledge how I came to fail on particular 
 occasions. And the result of the scrutiny has 
 been to render it clear that the mistakes and 
 failures would nearly always have been avoided 
 had I at the time been possessed of more real
 
 i6 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 knowledge and of firmer decision and persist- 
 ence. We all, or nearly all, get a fair number 
 of chances in life. But we often do not know 
 enough to be able to take them, and we still 
 more often pass them by, unconscious that they 
 exist. Get knowledge and get courage. And 
 when you have come to a deliberate decision, 
 then go ahead, and go ahead with grim and 
 unshakable resolution to persist. It is not 
 everyone who can do this. But everyone can 
 improve his quality in this respect. It is partly 
 matter of temperament, but it is also largely 
 matter of acquired habit of mind and body. 
 You can train yourself to increased intellectual 
 and moral energy as you can train yourself for 
 physical efficiency in the playing field. Both 
 kinds of training turn largely on self-discipline, 
 abstention, and concentration of purpose, 
 following on a clear realisation of exactly what 
 it is that you have set yourself to accomplish. 
 But there is an insidious temptation to be 
 avoided. Few things disgust his fellow men 
 more, or render them more unwilling to help 
 him, than self-seeking or egotism on the part of 
 a man who is striving to get on. A thoroughly 
 selfish fellow may score small successes, but he 
 will in the end find himself heavily handicapped 
 in the effort to attain really great success. 
 Selfishness is a vice, and a thoroughly ugly one. 
 When he takes thought exclusively of himself, 
 a man does not violate only the canons of 
 religion and morality. He is untrue to the 
 obligations of his station in society, he is
 
 SELFISHNESS AND HUMILITY 17 
 
 neglecting his own interests, and he will 
 inevitably and quickly be found out. I have 
 often watched the disastrous consequences of 
 this sin, both in private and in public life. It 
 is an insidious sin. It leads to the production 
 of the hard small-minded man, and, in its milder 
 form, of the prig. Both are ill-equipped for 
 the final race; they may get ahead at first; but 
 as a rule they will be found to have fallen out 
 when the last lap is reached. It is the man who 
 possesses the virtue of true humility, and who 
 thinks of his neighbours, and is neither critical 
 nor a grumbler if they have good fortune, who 
 has his neighbours on his side, and therefore 
 in the end gets the best chance, even in this 
 world, assuming always that he puts his soul 
 into his own work. Therefore avoid the exam- 
 ple of poor Martha. Her sister Mary loved to 
 sit at the feet of Jesus and to hear His word. 
 The burden of the household work, doubtless, 
 for the time fell rather heavily on Martha. 
 Instead of being cheerful and glad at what had 
 come to her sister she got into a complaining 
 mood. She was cumbered about with much 
 serving, and she grumbled : " Lord, dost thou 
 not care that my sister hath left me to serve 
 alone?" But the Master answered, "Martha, 
 Martha, thou art careful and troubled about 
 many things. But one thing is needful, and 
 Mary has chosen that good part." There are 
 a good many Marthas in our Universities, and 
 they belong to both sexes. How common it is 
 to hear grudging praise given, and the student
 
 i8 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 complaining of the better luck which has given 
 undue advantage to his neighbour. Now, there 
 may be undue advantage in circumstances, and 
 there often is. But according to my experience 
 it makes far less difference in the long run than 
 is popularly supposed. What does make the 
 difference is tenacity of purpose. A man 
 succeeds in four cases out of five, because of 
 what is in him, by unflagging adhesion to his 
 plan of life, and not by reason of outside help 
 or luck. It is rarely that he need be afraid of 
 shouldering an extra burden to help either 
 himself or a neighbour. The strain it imposes 
 on him is compensated by the strength that 
 effort and self-discipline bring. And therefore 
 the complaints of our Marthas are mainly beside 
 the point. They arise from the old failing of 
 self-centredness — the failing which has many 
 forms, ranging from a mild selfishness up to 
 ego-mania. And in whatever form the failing 
 may clothe itself it produces weakness. 
 
 There is another aspect germane to it about 
 which, speaking to you as one who has seen a 
 good deal of affairs and of the world, I wish 
 to say something. Independence of character 
 is a fine thing, but we are apt to mistake for it 
 what is really want of consideration for others. 
 If we do not impose on ourselves a good deal 
 of self-restraint we may readily jar on other 
 people. We may be unconscious of the jarring 
 manner. That is very common. But it ought 
 to be avoided. It is worth the while of every- 
 one, and from every point of view, that of his
 
 SELF-RESTRAINT AND COURTESY 19 
 
 own worldly interest included, to practise 
 himself in the social virtue of courtesy and 
 urbane manners. But it is more than a social 
 virtue. In its best form it arises from goodness 
 of heart. Some of the finest manners I have 
 met with I have met with in cottages, because 
 there I have found some of the most considerate 
 of people. Courtesy is an endowment which 
 men can acquire for themselves, and it is an 
 endowment which is well worth acquiring. I 
 have, to put its utility at its lowest, seen many 
 instances of gifted men ruining their chances 
 of getting on in life simply from want of 
 manners. It is well worth while to try to act 
 naturally and without self-consciousness, and 
 above all, kindly. That is how dignity is best 
 preserved. Some men have a natural gift for 
 it. All ought to try to acquire it. Emerson 
 has written an admirable essay on manners 
 which I advise you all to read. " Defect in 
 manners," he says, "is usually defect in fine per- 
 ceptions." He, like Goethe, laid great stress 
 on urbanity and dignity. These two great critics 
 of life were both keenly aware of what injustice 
 people do to themselves and to their prospects 
 in life by not attending to the graces, which in 
 their best form come from goodness of heart 
 and the fine perceptions which accompany that 
 goodness. It makes a great difference to 
 ourselves if we are careful in considering the 
 feelings and repugnances of other people in 
 small things as well as in great. Let us try to 
 be too large-minded to resent an apparent want
 
 20 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 of consideration for ourselves which really 
 comes, in most cases, from defective manners 
 in those with whom we may have to deal. Let 
 us accept what comes to us undisturbed. Given 
 the same qualities, a man will be stronger as 
 well as better, and will have more power of 
 influencing circumstances as well as other 
 people, if he is resolute in accepting without 
 complaint what comes to him, and remembers 
 the duties of his station in life, and thinks of 
 others as much as of himself. It was something 
 of this sort, I think, that Cromwell really had 
 in his mind when he said to Bellievre, the 
 French Ambassador, that " no man rises so 
 high as he who knows not whither he is going." 
 No doubt Cromwell thought also of the great 
 gift of the objective mind, the mind that has 
 no illusion, because it always turns to a great 
 purpose, and is not deflected by its conscious- 
 ness of self. But what he said applies to a less 
 unusual type of mind just as much. It is the 
 man who accepts his obligation to those around 
 him, and who does his work in his station in 
 life, great or small, whatever that station may 
 be, with indifference as to the consequence to 
 himself and without thought of what may 
 happen to him individually, who makes the real 
 impression on his fellow competitors. First, 
 think it all out to the best of your ability, and 
 then go straight forward on the principles and 
 with the objects on which you have fixed, look- 
 ing neither to the right nor to the left. Your 
 principles and your objects must be high — the
 
 I'RINCIPLEvS AND PURrOvSIi 21 
 
 higher the better. And when you have grasped 
 them resolve to hold to them tenaciously and 
 over a long period. It matters less whether 
 you have hit initially on the plan that is theo- 
 retically perfect than whether you throw your- 
 self into it unswervingly and stick to it with all 
 your might. Unswerving purpose and concen- 
 tration are of the last importance. Stick to 
 plans once formed, and do not let yourself 
 think of changing them unless for the clearest 
 reasons. It is firmness and persistence that 
 bring success in the end probably more than 
 anything else. You may be beaten at first; 
 you may have to wait. But the courage that is 
 undaunted and can endure generally at last 
 prevails. 
 
 When my relative and predecessor in the 
 office of Lord Chancellor, John Scott, Lord 
 Eldon, was asked what was the real way to 
 insure for young men success at the Bar, he 
 replied : — " I know no rule to give them but 
 that they must make up their minds to live like 
 a hermit and work like a horse." He had 
 himself, in a notable fashion, put his precept 
 into practice. But here again I must utter a 
 word of warning about the precept of my 
 distinguished relative. The rule of practice 
 which I have quoted from him I believe to be 
 indispensable, whatever career you choose. 
 But in carrying it into effect you must guard 
 against the temptation to become what is called 
 too practical, that is to say, narrow and unin- 
 teresting. Youth, with its elasticity and bound-
 
 22 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 less energy, is the time to lay the foundations 
 of wide knowledge and catholic interests. The 
 wider and more catholic these are the better, 
 provided that they do not distract you from the 
 necessary concentration on your special object. 
 They need not do so. Time is infinitely long 
 for him who knows how to use it, and the mind 
 is not like a cubic measure that can contain 
 only a definite amount. Increase, therefore, 
 wherever you can, without becoming amateurs 
 in your own calling, the range of your interests. 
 Every man and woman is, after all, a citizen 
 in a State. Therefore let us see to it that there 
 is not lacking that interest in the larger life of 
 the social whole which is the justification of a 
 real title to have a voice and a vote. Litera- 
 ture, philosophy, religion, are all widening 
 interests. So is science, so are music and the 
 fine arts. Let everyone concern himself with 
 these or such of them as he thinks can really 
 appeal to him. So only will his outlook be 
 wide enougB to enable him to fill his station and 
 discharge his duties with distinction. He ought 
 to be master of much knowledge besides that 
 of his profession. He must try to think greatly 
 and widely. So only will he succeed if he is 
 called to the higher vocations where leadership 
 is essential. For there is a lower class, a 
 middle class, and an aristocracy of intelligence. 
 The lower class may do some things better 
 than the intellectual aristocrat. I have known 
 Senior Wranglers who would have been below 
 par as bank clerks. Again, there is a large
 
 EXPERTS AND RESPONvSIBILITIES 23 
 
 class of skilled work, some of it requiring long 
 training and even initiative, which is done better 
 by competent permanent officials than by states- 
 men even of a high order. But when we come 
 to the highest order of work it is different. 
 There is a common cry that this, too, should 
 be left to the expert. There is no more com- 
 plete misinterpretation of a situation. The 
 mere expert, if he were charged with the devis- 
 ing and execution of high aims and policy, 
 would be at sea among a multitude of apparently 
 conflicting considerations. What is the relation 
 of a particular plan to a great national policy 
 and to far-reaching principles and ends? 
 Questions like these must always be for the 
 true leader and not for the specialist. But if 
 the former is wise, as soon as he has made up 
 his mind clearly as to what he wants, he will 
 choose his expert and consult him at every 
 turn, and entrust him freely with the execution 
 of a policy for which he himself will remain 
 responsible. Such a course requires capacity 
 of a high kind and the widest sort of knowledge. 
 But without it success is impossible. No man 
 can know or do everything himself, and the 
 great man of affairs always knows how and what 
 to delegate. The procedure of such men in 
 their work is instructive as to other and less 
 responsible situations. They are never over- 
 whelmed with that work, because their know- 
 ledge and their insight enables them to sift out 
 what they themselves must do, and to entrust 
 the rest freely to picked subordinates. For
 
 24 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 the spirit that is necessary to develop this gift 
 in the higher caUings in Hfe, the wide outlook, 
 the training in which can be commenced in the 
 University better than anywhere else, is of vital 
 importance. Whether a man is to be teacher, 
 or doctor, or lawyer, or minister of religion, it 
 is width of outlook that for most men in the 
 end makes the difference. Of course for genius 
 there is no rule, and great natural talent of the 
 rarer order can also dispense with much. But 
 I wish to say to you emphatically that it is just 
 here and now, in your student years, that you 
 make yourselves what you will be, and that you 
 are, nearly all of you, most responsible for your 
 failure or success in later life. It is not that I 
 think a purely intellectual life something of 
 which everything else must fall short; far from 
 it. You have only to read the Gospels to find 
 the conclusive demonstration that this is not so. 
 But I do think that the atmosphere of intelli- 
 gence is the atmosphere where the inner life, 
 whatever it may be, most completely expands 
 and culminates. 
 
 Bacon, in his essay on " Studies," uses some 
 words which we do w^ell to bear in mind if we 
 would keep our sense of proportion : "Studies," 
 he says, " serve for delight, for ornament, and 
 for ability. Their chief use for delight is in 
 privateness and retiring; for ornament is in 
 discourse; and for ability is in the judgment 
 and disposition of business. For expert men 
 can execute, and perhaps judge of, particulars 
 one by one. But the general counsels and the
 
 CONCENTRATION AND WILL 25 
 
 plots and marshalling of affairs come best from 
 those that are learned. To spend too much 
 time in studies is sloth. To use them too much 
 for ornament is affectation; to make judgment 
 wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar. 
 They perfect nature and are perfected by 
 experience." They perfect nature, for they 
 provide an atmosphere in which natural gifts 
 grow and expand. They are perfected by 
 experience because their gaps are filled up by 
 what we can learn in practical life alone, and 
 the life of theory and the life of practice by 
 reacting on and penetrating each other, form a 
 truly proportioned entirety. The strength of 
 men like Cromwell, like Napoleon, like Lincoln 
 and like Bismarck, is their grasp of great 
 principles and their resoluteness in carrying 
 them into application. For even where great 
 men have not been of the scholar class they 
 have been under the domination of beliefs 
 which rested on a foundation of principle, and 
 were inspired to the extent of becoming suffused 
 by passion. And without passion nothing great 
 is or ever has been accomplished. I do not 
 mean by passion violent or obvious emotion. 
 I mean the concentration which gives rise to 
 singleness of purpose in forming and executing 
 great plans, and is, in fact, a passion for excel- 
 lence. And if this exists enough in you to 
 bring you into leadership of any kind at the 
 University it will probably again bring you into 
 leadership later on in life, provided always that
 
 26 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 you select your line of action with prudence 
 and hold to it undeviatingly. 
 
 I have not said to you anything particularly 
 new or much that you have not often heard 
 before in different words. But I did not come 
 here to say new things. The obvious is what 
 is generally neglected. I have come here as 
 an old student to speak to students who are not 
 yet old, and to act the part of a friend by trying 
 to point out the character of the road ahead of 
 them, and the places that are difficult. It is 
 because I have traversed some of these difficult 
 places myself that I have not hesitated to speak 
 to you. It is so that we can most readily be 
 helpful to each other. I have no longer a great 
 number of years to look forward to, but I have 
 a great many to look back upon. And I am 
 myself an old alumnus of this University who 
 remembers well the days when he would have 
 given a good deal to know the real experience 
 and conclusions of those who had gone before 
 him along the road he had to follow. 
 
 This is what I would say to you in conclusion. 
 It is not true that with the increase of numbers 
 and competition life offers fewer prizes in 
 proportion to the multitude who are now striving 
 for them. With the progress of science and 
 the advance in the complicated processes of 
 specialisation and distribution of function, there 
 are arising more and more openings, and more 
 and more chances for those who aspire to 
 succeed in the competition which exists every- 
 where. I believe that the undergraduates whom
 
 WITH WHAT IS ABIDING 27 
 
 I see before me have better prospects than 
 existed forty years ago. There are far more 
 possible ways of rising. But the standards are 
 rising also, and high quality and hard work are 
 more than ever essential. The spread of 
 learning has had a democratic tendency. 
 Those who are to have the prizes of life are 
 chosen on their merits more than ever before. 
 It must, however, always be borne in mind that 
 character and integrity count in the market 
 place among these merits as well as do know- 
 ledge and ability. For the man who possesses 
 both capacity and character, and who, having 
 selected his path, sticks to his plan of life 
 undeviatingly, the chances of success seem to 
 me to-day very great. But wisdom means more 
 than attention to the gospel of getting on. Life 
 will at the end seem a poor affair if the fruits 
 of its exertions are to be no more than material 
 acquisitions. From the cradle to the grave it 
 is a course of development, and the develop- 
 ment of quality as much as quantity ought to 
 continue to the last. For it is in the quality of 
 the whole, judged in all its proportions and in 
 the outlook on the Eternal which has been 
 gained, that the test of the highest success lies, 
 the success that is greatest when the very 
 greatness of its standards brings in its train a 
 deep sense of humility. That was why Goethe, 
 in a memorable sentence, said something with 
 which I will conclude this address : — " The 
 fashion of this world passes away, and it is with 
 what is abiding that I would fain concern 
 myself."
 
 THE MEANING OF TRUTH IN 
 HISTORY. 
 
 The Creighton Lecture delivered before the 
 University of London on 6th March, 1914.
 
 THE MEANING OF TRUTH IN 
 HISTORY. 
 
 The occasion on which it is my privilege to 
 address you is one which is associated with the 
 name of a remarkable man. He possessed 
 gifts of intellect and of character which would 
 have made him eminent in careers other than 
 the one he chose for himself. But he held 
 tenaciously the principle, adherence to which 
 is essential for a man who genuinely aspires to 
 accomplish anything lasting. He knew that 
 he must concentrate, and he did so. He lived 
 a dedicated life — dedicated to the service of 
 his God and his Church, as he conceived them. 
 Such were his gifts that his work deeply 
 impressed with the sense of its reality those 
 who were permitted to come near him. The 
 impression he made was heightened by his 
 obvious conviction that he could best render 
 the service to which he had consecrated his life 
 by following truth unswervingly, and seeking 
 as well as he could to extend the province of 
 genuine knowledge. The result of an unfal- 
 tering adhesion to this principle was that his 
 writings produced on the public an impression 
 of sincerity and thoroughness, an impression 
 which deepened as time went on. In so far 
 
 31
 
 32 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 as he devoted his gifts to the study of history, 
 it was therefore natural that his integrity of 
 purpose and his desire for the truth should lead 
 to his becoming known and trusted as an 
 historian of a wide and searching outlook. 
 
 It accords with what is fitting that among the 
 memorials erected to him there should have 
 been included this lectureship. To me it has 
 fallen to be the lecturer this year, and to choose 
 a topic that is appropriate. What Bishop 
 Creighton cared for in historical work was, 
 above all, to treat the facts justly, to see things 
 not merely on the side that is external and 
 superficial and therefore transitory, but in their 
 fuller and more enduring significance. It is 
 out of a feeling of respect for this characteristic 
 of his life and writing that I have selected for 
 my subject "The Meaning of Truth in History." 
 
 'But the subject is full of difficulty. As 
 decade succeeds decade, we in this country are 
 learning more and more, in science, in art, and 
 in religion alike, that the question, " What is 
 Truth ? " is a question of far-reaching signifi- 
 cance, a significance that seems to reach farther 
 the more we reflect. And the perplexity of the 
 question extends not least to the case of the 
 historian. For it seems to-day that the genuine 
 historian must be more than a biographer or a 
 recorder. The field of his enquiry cannot be 
 limited by the personality of any single human 
 being, nor can it be occupied by any mere 
 enumeration of details or chronicle of events. 
 A great man, such as Caesar or Charlemagne,
 
 WHAT IS TRUTH? 33 
 
 may stand for a period, but his personality is, 
 after all, a feature that is transitory. The 
 spirit of the age is generally greater and more 
 lasting than the spirit of any individual. The 
 spirit of the age is also more than a mere 
 aggregate of the events that a period can 
 display, or than any mere sum of individual 
 wills. What, then, is to be the standard of 
 truth for the historian.-^ The analogy of the 
 artist who paints a portrait may prove not 
 without significance for the answer to this 
 question. The great artist does not put on 
 canvas a simple reproduction of the appearance 
 of his subject at a particular moment; that is 
 the work of the photographer. Art, in the 
 highest sense, has to disentangle the signifi- 
 cance of the whole from its details and to 
 reproduce it. The truth of art is a truth that 
 must thus be born again of the artist's mind. 
 No mere narration of details will give the whole 
 that at once dominates these details and yet 
 does not exist apart from them. But art, with 
 its freedom to choose and to reject, selects 
 details and moulds them into a shape that is 
 symbolic of what is at once ideal and real. In 
 art, thouo^ht and sense enter into the closest 
 union, or rather they form an entirety within 
 which both are abstractions from an actual that 
 does not let itself be broken up. 
 
 Now the historian surely must resemble the 
 portrait painter rather than the photographer. 
 The secret of the art of a Gibbon or a Mommsen 
 seems to lie in this : that they select their details,
 
 34 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 select those that are relevant and that can be 
 moulded into a characteristic setting without 
 sacrifice of integrity or accuracy, a setting which 
 is typical of a period. At some point or other 
 we may w^ant to have the details which have 
 been passed by. We may w^ant them for a 
 picture of the period under another aspect. 
 But we do not always want all the details. "Le 
 secret d'ennuyer c'est tout dire." Carlyle 
 passed much by when he wrote his French 
 Revolution, and it is well that he did. We find 
 what he left alone in other historians w^ho 
 present the story from a different standpoint. 
 Just as there may be several portraits, all of 
 superlative excellence, while differing in details 
 and even in their presentation of actual features, 
 so there may be several histories, equal in value, 
 but differing in a similar fashion. 
 
 To judge, then, of excellence in the historian 
 we must possess a standard not wholly dis- 
 similar from that by which we judge of excel- 
 lence in the artist. In the case of the artist, 
 there can be little doubt about one point, at all 
 events, in that standard. Whether it is nature 
 or man that he presents, the image must interpret 
 character. It does not detract from the truth 
 of the work of the artist that the cottage and the 
 figures in his landscape never existed exactly 
 as he has painted them, or even at all. What 
 is important is that they should suggest the 
 deeper and more enduring meaning of what is 
 actual, in the fullest and most important sense. 
 The expression which the portrait painter has
 
 THE HISTORIAN AND THE ARTIST 35 
 
 put on canvas may be a rare one — the expres- 
 sion, perhaps of an individuality seized at a 
 unique moment of existence. But all the more 
 does that expression stand out as the truth about 
 the real life of the man whose portrait is there. 
 Now, the historian also is concerned with what 
 is ideal. He is concerned with this just because 
 it is only through the ideal that what has 
 happened can be lifted above the particularity 
 of the events that obscure its meaning. M. 
 Renan has put this point admirably : — 
 
 "Iln'yaguere de details certains en histoire; 
 les details cependant ont toujours quelque 
 sisfnification. Le talent de I'historien consiste 
 a faire un ensemble vrai avec les traits qui ne 
 sont vrai qu'a demi." And again : — " L'his- 
 toire pure doit construire son edifice avec deux 
 sortes de donnees, et, si j'ose le dire, deux 
 facteurs; d'abord, I'etat general de I'ame 
 humaine en un siecle et dans un pays donnes; 
 en second lieu, les incidents particuliers qui, se 
 combinant avec les causes generales, ont deter- 
 mine le cours des evenements. Expliquer 
 I'histoire par des incidents est aussi faux que de 
 I'expliquer par des principes purement philo- 
 sophiques. Les deux explications doivent se 
 soutenir et se completer I'une I'autre." ^ 
 
 The work of the historian and that of the 
 artist seem to be so far analogous. Both are 
 directed to finding the true expression of their 
 subjects. Neither is concerned with accidents 
 
 I. 'Vie de Jesus', Preface de la treizieme edition.
 
 36 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 of detail that are fortuitous. But the analogy 
 extends only a Httle way, for the subjects are 
 very different. That of a portrait is, after all, 
 a single and isolated personality. It is the 
 business of the artist to express this personality, 
 and to express it as a work of art in which 
 thought and feeling are blended in a unity that 
 cannot be broken up. But the historian is not 
 concerned with any single personality. His 
 work seems rather to be to display the develop- 
 ment of a nation or of a period, and to record 
 accurately, and in the light of the spirit of the 
 nation or period, the sequence of events in 
 which its character has manifested itself. Like 
 the artist, the historian may omit many details. 
 But he does not possess the freedom of the 
 artist. What we ask from the great painter is 
 his interpretation of a personality, and he may 
 take liberties in imagining costume and back- 
 ground. Indeed, he often must take liberties, 
 for the expression counts for more than circum- 
 stances which obscure rather than assist in 
 revealing it. But the picture created by the 
 historian, though it, too, can only be created by 
 his genius and must be born of his mind, is of 
 a different order. The presentation of the 
 whole and the description of actual facts are 
 here more closely related. Literal accuracy 
 counts for much, for others than himself will 
 claim the liberty to refer to his book for actual 
 facts, and to interpret them, it may be, differ- 
 ently from his rendering. Thus the historian 
 is under restrictions greater than those of the
 
 RESTRICTIONS 37 
 
 artist. If he uses as complete a liberty as the 
 artist claims, he is reckoned as belonging to 
 quite a different profession, that of a writer of 
 historical romance, such as the romances of Sir 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 But this is not all. The artist depicts as 
 what is characteristic an expression that may 
 have been found only at one moment in the 
 history of his subject. The historian has to 
 present events and their meaning over a period 
 that is often long. Even occurrences that seem 
 isolated, like the execution of Charles I., or the 
 taking of the Bastille, or the Battle of Waterloo, 
 have to be shown as culminating events in a 
 course of development which must be recorded 
 because apart from it they lose their significance. 
 It is only by tracing the genesis not merely of 
 culminating events but of national institutions, 
 and by exhibiting them as the outcome and 
 embodiment of the genius of the people to 
 whom they belong, that in many cases they can 
 be made intelligible. This principle is the 
 foundation of the historical method. It is a 
 principle which to-day seems almost a common- 
 place, but it has not always been so. It is 
 striking to observe how really great writers 
 suffer when they violate it. Some extreme 
 instances are to be found among the historians 
 of Jurisprudence. I will take two cases of the 
 kind, and I offer no apology for turning aside 
 for a moment to the highly specialised branch 
 of history from which I take them. For they 
 are admirable examples of the fault in method
 
 38 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 which I wish to illustrate. Moreover, I am a 
 lawyer whose almost daily duty it is to ascertain 
 the reasons why the law has become what it is, 
 because unless I can do so I am bound to fail 
 in the interpretation of its scope and authority. 
 There has thus been forced on me direct 
 experience of the embarrassment which the 
 fault of which I am speaking causes. Those 
 who have to consult almost daily otherwise 
 great books dealing with the history of legal 
 institutions encounter this fault in its worst 
 form. 
 
 I will refer first to the shortcoming of a really 
 remarkable Englishman. The case of Jeremy 
 Bentham is notable. He ignored the light 
 which history had to throw on the institutions 
 about which he was writing, and his reputation 
 thereby suffered. He rendered great services 
 to the cause of law reform in England and 
 elsewhere by the force of his destructive 
 criticism. The very abstractness of his 
 methods added to the incisiveness of this 
 criticism. But when he describes, and even 
 where he brings an indictment that is obviously 
 true, he is, generally speaking, utterly defective 
 as an historian. His unconsciousness of the 
 genesis of the facts with which he is dealing is 
 extraordinary in a man of such acuteness. He 
 attributes the continued existence of bad laws 
 to the unscrupulousness of contemporary rulers 
 and judges, as if they had individually devised 
 them. When, for 'example, with admirable 
 insistence, he denounces the existence of the
 
 JEREMY BENTHAM 39 
 
 rule which, contrary to what we now regard as 
 plain common-sense, used to prevent a party 
 to a suit from giving evidence in it, he is 
 apparently unconscious of the fact that there 
 was once a stage in the evolution of public 
 opinion at which it was inevitable that the rule 
 should be what it was/ While religious 
 opinion dominated in matters secular, it was 
 almost universally held that to allow an 
 interested party to give evidence on his own 
 behalf was to tempt him to perjury, and 
 perjury, which meant everlasting damnation, 
 seemed to our forefathers a more disastrous 
 result than the loss of property. It was, in 
 such a period, quite natural that public opinion 
 should prefer spiritual safety to secular justice, 
 and fashion law accordingly. We have to 
 understand that this was so, if w^e would under- 
 stand the history of the rules which restricted 
 the admission of evidence in the Courts of 
 England. That we have now passed to a dif- 
 ferent standpoint does not lessen the necessity. 
 Bentham again, to take another example, 
 denounced the Roman law as being a parcel 
 of dissertations badly drawn up ! He knew 
 nothing of its history or of the circumstances 
 of its development. He had not heard of the 
 work of the g:reat historical school of Roman 
 law which Savigny was even then leading. His 
 method was always to assume certain abstract 
 
 I. See his remarks on Blackstone and the Judges in his 
 'Rationale of the Judicial Evidence,' Book IX, C 5 (Vol. 7 
 of Bowring's Edition of his Works).
 
 40 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 principles, and to judge everything in their 
 light without regard to time or place. He 
 insisted on immediate codification, just as 
 Savigny, on the other hand, insisted on the 
 postponement of codes until the common law 
 had completed a full course of natural growth. 
 But Savigny himself, to take my second illus- 
 tration, at times incurred the perils which are 
 inseparable from occasional lapses into abstrac- 
 ness of mind. Although he was an apostle of 
 the historical method, and, in general, took far 
 more account of history than did Bentham, he, 
 too, at moments, made what to a later generation 
 have become mistakes. For example, he 
 attacked the code which Napoleon had enacted 
 for France. He attacked it on the ground 
 that to enact such a code was unscientific.^ He 
 was probably right in desiring that the spirit of 
 the great Roman lawyers should continue, at 
 least for a time, to work throughout Germany, 
 where it held sway, unobstructed by the rules 
 of a rigid code. In that country, where the 
 tradition of the Roman law actually occupied 
 the field, the provisions of a code might well 
 have proved not only unduly rigid, but also 
 artificial. Yet his attack on Napoleon's great 
 Code did not do justice to the overwhelming 
 reasons for enacting it in France. France, 
 unlike Germany, had, before Napoleon's time, 
 no general body of laws. The different parts 
 
 I. See the section headed ' Die drei neuen Gesetzbiicher', 
 in his book ' Vom Beruf unsrer Zeit fur Gesetzgebung und 
 Rechts-wissenschaft. '
 
 SAVIGNY 41 
 
 of the country were subject to utterly divergent 
 systems, such as were the Customs of Paris and 
 of Normandy. It was remarked by Voltaire 
 that a man travelling in France in his own time 
 changed laws as often as he changed horses. 
 The rough common-sense of Napoleon saw 
 that a general code was a necessity. He 
 framed one that was not ideal, judged by the 
 high standards of Savigny, but it was the best 
 he could frame at a time when nothing was to 
 be hoped for in the way of development on the 
 basis of the prevailing laws. Gradual reform 
 of this kind might well have been possible had 
 the Roman law been the general foundation of 
 a single system of jurisprudence in France. 
 But it was not so, and Napoleon therefore took 
 the course which the necessities of the time 
 dictated. 
 
 I have cited these examples of the desirability 
 of the historical spirit in estimating legal institu- 
 tions, partly because they illustrate admirably 
 the truth of the saying of Balduinus, a great 
 jurist of the sixteenth century, " Sine historia 
 caecam esse jurisprudentiam." But I have 
 cited them also because they illustrate the wider 
 proposition that no event in history of any kind 
 can be judged without full knowledge of its 
 context and of the spirit of its particular age. 
 The execution of Charles I. has been the 
 subject of the hottest controversy. Did the 
 tribunal which decreed it sit wholly without 
 constitutional warrant, and was the trial con- 
 ducted quite illegally? Probably both ques-
 
 42 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 tions must be answered affirmatively from the 
 standpoint of the common law. But this does 
 not conclude the discussion. It is true that 
 acts of the kind — that is, revolutionary acts — 
 are outside the provisions of ordinary law. 
 And yet they may be justified under what is 
 called martial law, but is, in our country, only 
 an application of the maxim, " Salus populi 
 suprema lex." Had Cromwell not put Charles 
 to death, it was more than merely possible that 
 Charles would have seized the first chance of 
 putting Cromwell himself to death and of 
 upsetting the new order of government. As 
 Lord Morley, in his " Life of Cromwell," has 
 pointed out, the real justification of Cromwell 
 must depend on the question whether what can 
 only be justified as an act of war, was or was 
 not a public necessity. And the answer to this 
 question requires that the problem should be 
 approached as a large one, and in the spirit 
 which demands a survey of the events of the 
 periods both before and after the year 1649. 
 The judgment of posterity upon the act of 
 Oliver Cromwell must turn, not on what he was 
 as an individual, but on the extent to which he 
 was the representative figure in a movement 
 which must be judged before he can be 
 approved or condemned. 
 
 Now it is just this obligation of the historian 
 that makes his work so difficult. Like the 
 portrait painter, he has, in his search after 
 expression, to select details, but he has to select 
 them under far more stringent conditions as to
 
 CHARACTERISTlCvS OF THE AGE 43 
 
 completeness and accuracy. Exact these de- 
 tails must be, but complete they cannot be. 
 Much must be rejected as irrelevant. The test 
 of relevancy is the standard of what is neces- 
 sary, not merely for exactness, but for the 
 adequate portraiture of the spirit of the time. 
 And this test necessitates great insight into the 
 characteristics of that spirit. Otherwise mis- 
 leading details will be selected, and undue 
 prominences and proportions will be assigned. 
 The historian must be able to estimate what are 
 the true and large characteristics of the age, 
 and one test of his success will be, as in the 
 case of the artist, the test of his stature. Can 
 he rise high enough to present the truth in what, 
 almost as it were by direct perception, w^e seem 
 to recognise as a great form of deep signifi- 
 cance.'^ I say almost by direct perception, for 
 the analogy of the intuition of art and literature 
 appears to come in here. One recognises the 
 quality of size in a Gibbon or a Carlyle, as one 
 recognises it in the great portrait painter and the 
 great dramatic poet. But in the domain of 
 history the predominance of this quality is 
 conditioned by the imperative duty to be 
 accurate to an extent that is incumbent neither 
 on the painter nor on the poet. The historian 
 who has a whole period to describe must be 
 more than exact; he has to be lord over his 
 details. He must marshal these details and 
 tower above them, and reject and select in the 
 light of nothing less than the whole. He must 
 not let his view of that w^hole, as has been the
 
 44 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 case with both a Bossuet, on the one hand, and 
 a Buckle, on the other, be distorted by a priori 
 conceptions that are abstract and inadequate to 
 the riches of the facts of hfe. He must frame 
 his estimate after a study of the whole sequence 
 of events, of those events which throw light on 
 the conduct and characteristics of a nation in 
 the variety of phases in its existence. It is just 
 here that he is apt to be beset by obsessions 
 that come from unconscious pre-judgments. 
 
 I wish to try to say something about the origin 
 of this kind of temptation to pre-judgment — a 
 temptation to which a long list of historians 
 have succumbed in a greater or less degree. 
 Indeed no one can wholly escape it. But it 
 has various forms, some of which are worse 
 than others. In those that are most misleading 
 it seems to arise from an insufficiently con- 
 sidered application of the conceptions under 
 which the observer searches after facts, concep- 
 tions which are often too narrow for the facts 
 themselves. It appears as exactly the same 
 kind of temptation as that into which in various 
 forms students of the exact sciences have been 
 prone to fall. I will therefore ask you to bear 
 with me while I touch on the general subject of 
 scientific method. For in every department of 
 science just the same difficulty arises as arises 
 in that of the historian, and the source of these 
 difficulties in some branches of science can be 
 easily traced. Facts are apt to be distorted in 
 the mind of the observer by preconceived 
 hypotheses of which he is hardly conscious.
 
 LOYALTY TO TRUTH 45 
 
 The attempts which have been made to exhibit 
 the Hfe of an organism as the result of physical 
 forces operating from without on an aggregate 
 of minute mechanisms or chemical compounds, 
 have, notwithstanding their usefulness from the 
 point of view of physics and chemistry, fallen 
 short as regards the nature of life itself. When 
 we are confronted with the unquestionable facts 
 of reproduction and heredity, these attempts 
 have always broken down. We are driven to 
 admit, not the existence of a special vital force 
 controlling development from without, but the 
 conception of something in the nature of an end 
 realising itself, a whole which exists only in 
 what it controls, but which, while it may still 
 fall far short of conscious purpose, is not on 
 that account less real. We may, indeed, dislike 
 expressions which suggest abstract or even 
 conscious purpose, and prefer, with the author 
 of that remarkable book, " Creative Evolution," 
 to speak of what is realised as a tendency rather 
 than an end. But one thing is clear, however 
 w^e may express ourselves. We must not let 
 the terror of theology and the supernatural, 
 which often afflicts men of science with fears, 
 deflect us from our duty to be true in our 
 descriptions to actual experience, and drive us 
 by way of reaction into purely mechanistic 
 theories which are inadequate to explain it. 
 The history of biology seems to have been at 
 times as sad an illustration of the dangers of 
 anti-theoloQfical doemas as it has at other
 
 40 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 periods been of the dangers of those of a 
 theological teleology. 
 
 In the same way, if we would know the truth 
 about men and affairs, we must learn to study 
 their history quite simply and with minds as 
 free as we can make them from prejudice. Our 
 preconceptions generally arise from our having 
 unconsciously become metaphysicians. We do 
 not need to be metaphysicians at all, except to 
 the modest extent of knowing how to guard 
 ag"ainst falling" without being aware of it into 
 bad metaphysics. Unconscious prejudice is 
 apt to tempt us to deny the reality of much of 
 the world as it seems, and seek to stretch that 
 world on the rack of some special principle of 
 very limited application. The only w^ay of 
 safety is to train the mind to be on the watch 
 for the intrusion of limited and exclusive ideas. 
 If to yield to such intrusion is dangerous in the 
 field of biology, the danger becomes still more 
 apparent when we are confronted with the 
 phenomena which belong to the region of 
 human existence. We can neither deny the 
 reality of the moral and intellectual atmosphere 
 in which, as persons, we live and move and have 
 our being, nor resolve it into the constructions 
 which represent the utmost limits attainable by 
 the mathematical and physical sciences. Of all 
 that really lives, Goethe's well-known criticism 
 appears to be true : — 
 
 " Wer will was Lebendig's erkennen und beschreiben 
 Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu treiben, 
 Dan hat er die Theile in seiner Hand, 
 Fehlt leider nur das geistige Band."
 
 THK RIGHT USE OF WORDS 47 
 
 In point of fact, the warning which Goethe 
 gave to the biologist of his time is not less 
 important for the student of history. The 
 latter, also, must refuse the injunctions to limit 
 his outlook which come from the materialist, 
 and he must refuse not less sternly the counter- 
 materialism of those who would seek in the 
 events of the world only for the interference 
 and mechanical guidance of a Power operating 
 from without. He must recognise, too, the 
 reality of social wholes, outside of which 
 individuals cannot live — social wholes which 
 are actual just in so far as the individuals who 
 compose them in some measure think and will 
 identically. For, apart from his social sur- 
 roundings, the individual appears to have no 
 adequate life. Such social wholes cannot be 
 satisfactorily described in biological language. 
 The practice of attempting so to express them 
 is a very common one. People talk of social 
 organisms and their development by means of 
 natural selection. But in speaking of the 
 organisation of society and of its development, 
 we have passed into a region where the cate- 
 gories of biology are not adequate. In this 
 region we only darken counsel by using phrases 
 drawn from the vocabulary of a branch of 
 knowledge that does not take account of 
 conscious purpose and of the intelligence and 
 volition which are characteristic of persons as 
 distinguished from organisms. No doubt 
 human beings are organisms. But they are 
 also much more than oro-anisms. The biological
 
 48 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 method in history and sociology is therefore 
 unsatisfactory. It may be and sometimes must 
 be used, just as are the methods of physics and 
 chemistry in biology itself. But its application 
 ought always to be a restricted and guarded 
 one, because, if the application is made uncriti- 
 cally, the reality of much that is actual in 
 present and past alike will inevitably be ignored. 
 Darwinian methods and conceptions avail here 
 only to a very limited extent. For the social 
 wholes with which history has to deal are 
 conscious wholes representing intelligence and 
 volition. 
 
 And this is why the historian is not only at 
 liberty but is bound to recognise in the spirit 
 of an age something of which he can legiti- 
 mately take account. It is also the reason why 
 he can never be a mere recorder, and why he 
 must always be a man of Art as well as of 
 Science. For Art alone can adequately make 
 the idea of the whole shine forth in the 
 particulars in which it is immanent, and this is 
 as true of the history of a period as it is of a 
 moment in the life of a man. 
 
 In saying these things, I am far from sug- 
 gesting that the historian should become a 
 student of philosophy with a view to having a 
 standpoint of his own. I have touched on the 
 topic for a directly contrary purpose. I am 
 anxious that he should not unconsciously 
 commit the fault of a Bossuet or a Bentham or 
 a Buckle by slipping into a philosophical 
 attitude without knowing it. It mav well be
 
 AN OPEN iMIND 49 
 
 that he cannot avoid placing himself at some 
 particular standpoint for the purposes of his 
 review. Most historians seem to me to do so 
 to a greater or less degree. What I am con- 
 cerned about is simply to make it plain that the 
 choice of such a standpoint is no easy matter, 
 or one that a man dare lightly adventure. And 
 I have said what I have, simply for the purpose 
 of laying emphasis on the need, in making such 
 a choice, of knowledge of the alternatives and 
 consciousness of the magnitude of the field of 
 controversy. The historian has to approach 
 the records of the experience of nations with 
 a mind sufficiently open to enable him to attach 
 weight to ever)- phase of that experience. His 
 conception of it must be sufficiently wide to 
 enable him to take account of every aspect 
 which he may encounter. He must exclude 
 neither rationality nor irrationality. Now, if 
 experience thus conceived be the material on 
 which the historian has to operate, his method 
 must not be either to search for and record 
 isolated facts which can never really be inter- 
 preted apart from their context, or to set out 
 abstract principles. The very width of his field 
 of research must necessitate the selection of his 
 facts, and their relation to each other and to the 
 particular system in which alone they have their 
 meaning. For meaning is the foundation of 
 system in history. The sense of this, and the 
 extraordinary difficulty which the historian has 
 in determining what is relevant and what is not 
 relevant to a true interpretation, has caused
 
 50 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 some critics to despair of history, and others to 
 try to confine its task in a fashion which, if 
 strictly carried out, would deprive the historian 
 of the chance of calling to his aid the method 
 of the artist. It is interesting to observe to 
 what lengths these two divergent tendencies 
 have been carried. 
 
 I will refer first to the criticism which rejects 
 the possibility of reliable history altogether. 
 In his " Farbenlehre," Goethe makes an obser- 
 vation on the value of exact records. " We 
 are told," he says, " to look to the spirit rather 
 than to the letter. Usually, however, the spirit 
 has destroyed the letter, or has so altered it that 
 nothing remains of its original character and 
 significance." He puts the same thought in 
 another fashion when he makes Faust say to 
 Wagner, in an often-quoted passage : — 
 
 " Mein Freund, die Zeiten der Vergangenheit, 
 Sind uns ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln ; 
 Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst. 
 Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist 
 In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln." 
 
 This seems a highly sceptical utterance. The 
 historian is told that he can succeed neither in 
 recovering the spirit of the past, nor in discover- 
 ing its letter. And if the historian were faced 
 with the dilemma Goethe puts to him, his case 
 would indeed be a difficult one. But is it so? 
 Let us look at the case of records. Goethe 
 was no doubt right in his scepticism about mere 
 records. For if a man indulges himself with 
 the belief that in quoting records accurately he
 
 NECESvSARY MATERIAL 51 
 
 is collecting the truth about the history of a 
 period, he is indulging- himself rashly. What 
 do such records consist of? Biographies 
 written at the time, letters, and State papers 
 are their main forms. As to the biographies, 
 they are often valuable as presenting a fine 
 portrait of their subject; and the narrative and 
 the correspondence quoted are, of course, of 
 much use. But they are almost invariably 
 coloured. The selection of material is neces- 
 sarily dependent on the object with which the 
 selection is made, and that is the biography of 
 one man. You have only to read another 
 biography, that of his political rival, in order, 
 if they were both famous men, to realise that 
 whatever value the story possesses as por- 
 traiture, it is by no means to be relied on 
 implicitly for a scientific record of the facts. 
 Lord Morley, in his " Notes on Politics and 
 History," quotes Bismarck on this point. 
 Reading a book of superior calibre, that 
 remarkable man once came, so Lord Morley 
 tells us, on a portrait of an eminent personage 
 whom he had known well. " Such a man as 
 is described here," he cried, " never existed. 
 It is not in diplomatic materials, but in their 
 life of every day that you come to know men." 
 So, remarks Lord Morley, does a singularly 
 good judge warn us of the perils of archivial 
 research. 
 
 As to isolated letters, there again colour is 
 inevitably present. The writers, however inti- 
 mately acquainted with the facts, are too near
 
 53 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 to see them in their proper perspective. From 
 their correspondence many fragments of soHd 
 and useful fact may be extracted ; but the bulk 
 of what is there is, taken by itself, unreliable 
 material for the historian. It is only by careful 
 selection from a variety of sources, and by 
 recasting — that is, by following the method of 
 Art rather than that of Science— that he can 
 produce the true expression of the period as a 
 living whole. 
 
 State papers, again, are written by Ministers, 
 or by diplomatists, or, more often, by their 
 officials under somewhat loose inspiration. 
 They embody the view of the moment. Their 
 value is mainly a passing one. They may 
 contain documents of more than passing value, 
 treaties or agreements or plans which have 
 subsequently been translated into action. But 
 as material out of which a scientific and lasting 
 account of the facts can be reconstructed, they 
 suffer from inevitable because inherent defects. 
 Ambassadors' letters and the letters written to 
 them are documents in which the impressions 
 of the moment are recorded, impressions which 
 are very often evanescent. Such documents 
 are, from the circumstances in which they are 
 composed, almost always fragmentary and in- 
 complete. In public life the point of view is 
 constantly changing. If a hundred years after 
 this an historian, desiring to describe the 
 relations between Great Britain and Germany, 
 or between the former country and France, in 
 the commencement of the twentieth century,
 
 DIFFICULTIEvS OF THE HISTORIAN 53 
 
 were to confine himself to the State papers of 
 particular years, he would be misled. He 
 would see little to explain the rapid evolution 
 and change that had taken place within a very 
 brief period. Nor could he ever discover the 
 traces of almost imperceptible and rarely 
 recorded influences and incidents which had 
 stimulated the development. This is true of 
 the evolution of policy at home as well as 
 abroad. Speaking with some knowledge of 
 what has gone on from day to day during the 
 last eight years of the public life of this country, 
 my experience has impressed me with a strong 
 feeling that to try to reconstruct the story from 
 State papers or newspaper accounts or letters 
 or biographical sources would be at present, 
 and must for some time remain, a hopeless 
 attempt. And I know from my conversations 
 with men of still longer and greater experience 
 that they hold this view as strongly as I do. 
 The materials so afforded must be used at a 
 later period by a man who possesses the gifts 
 requisite for presenting the narrative as that of 
 an oroi'anic whole, and that ororanic whole must 
 in its expression be born afresh in his mind. 
 So only will he present a picture of what 
 actually happened in a period of history. The 
 historian will fail hopelessly if he seeks to be 
 a mere recorder. For the truth about the 
 whole, the expression of which is what matters, 
 was not realised in its completeness until time 
 and the working of the spirit of the period had 
 enabled the process developed in a succession
 
 54 TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 of particular events to be completed. It is a 
 mistake to suppose that statesmen are always 
 conscious of the ends which they are accom- 
 plishing. It is not by the piecing together of 
 mechanical fragments, but by a process more 
 akin to the development of life, that societies 
 grow and are changed. 
 
 There is thus, if I am right, an inevitable 
 element of what seems at first sight to be 
 unreality in even the best work of historians. 
 But this need not discourage us if our notion 
 of reality, and therefore of our standard of 
 truth, is something more than the mere corres- 
 pondence of isolated images and facts. If the 
 test of truth in history must be the presentation 
 of an expression, true at least in the sense in 
 which we use the word about a great portrait, 
 then the recording of the chance fragments of 
 isolated facts which alone have survived for us 
 is quite inadequate to the fulfilment of the test. 
 All the historian writes ought to be true in the 
 sense of being a faithful and accurate account 
 of what has happened. But that does not mean 
 that he should record every detail of what has 
 happened. If he tries to do this he will lose 
 both his real subject and himself. His business 
 is to select in the light of a larger conception of 
 the truth. He must look at his period as a 
 whole and in the completeness of its develop- 
 ment. And this is a task rather of the spirit 
 than of the letter. Those who furnish him with 
 the materials have not, and cannot have, the 
 insight which is requisite for him, if he is to be
 
 THE INTRUSION OF ART 55 
 
 a great historian of reality. And yet, of course, 
 their work^ if it is well done, is indispensable. 
 It is indispensable, only it is not history until 
 it has been re-fashioned in the mind of the 
 historian. When a really competent historian 
 has done this we may fairly think, Goethe's 
 scepticism notwithstanding, that real history is 
 possible, inasmuch as we see before us the 
 picture of the spirit of the past. 
 
 I now turn to a second form of criticism, that 
 which would reject as inadmissible the intrusion 
 of art into the domain of history. Two well- 
 known authorities on its study, M. Langlois and 
 M. Seignobos, some fifteen years ago published 
 a joint book for the purpose of warning their 
 students at the Sorbonne what the study of 
 history ought not to be. It was in effect an 
 essay on the method of the historical sciences. 
 It is interesting to observe the result at which 
 they arrived, for this result shows the difficulties 
 into which anyone is bound to get who adopts 
 their conception of the subject. Broadly stated, 
 their conclusion is, that while up to about the 
 middle of last century history continued to be 
 treated as a branch of literature, a change has 
 now taken place, and scientific forms of 
 historical exposition have been evolved and 
 settled, based on the general principle that the 
 aim of history must be, not to arouse the 
 emotions or to give moral guidance, but to 
 impart knowledge pure and simple. They 
 admit that for many form still counts before 
 matter, and that consequently a Macaulay or a
 
 56 TRUTH IN HLSTORY 
 
 Michelet or a Carlyle continues to be read, 
 although he is no longer on a level with current 
 knowledge. But such writing is not, according 
 to them, history proper. What is justified in 
 the case of a work of art is not justified in a 
 work of science. And the methods of the older 
 historians cannot, they therefore hold, now be 
 justified. Thus, they say, Thucydides and 
 Livy wrote to preserve the memory and propa- 
 gate the knowledge of glorious deeds or of 
 important events, and Polybius and Plutarch 
 wrote to instruct and give recipes for action. 
 Political incidents, wars, and revolutions were 
 in this fashion the main theme of ancient history. 
 Even in our own time they think that the 
 German historians have adopted the old rejected 
 habits. Mommsen and Curtius they instance 
 as authors whose desire to make a strong im- 
 pression has led them to a certain relaxation of 
 scientific vigour. Speaking for myself, I 
 should not have been surprised had they, on 
 the assumption that their severe standard is to 
 be adopted, put Treitschke in particular into 
 the pillory, for he was a very great offender 
 against their precepts. According to them, 
 history ought to be in the main a science and 
 not an art. It is only indirectly that it should 
 possess practical utility. Its main object 
 should be accuracy in recording. It consists 
 only, so they say, in the utilisation of docu- 
 ments, and chance therefore predominates in 
 the formation of history, because it is a matter 
 of chance whether documents are preserved or
 
 INFERENCE BEFORE OBSERVATION 57 
 
 lost. But they admit that the work of the 
 historian cannot be Hmited by the bare docu- 
 mentary facts which he collects himself. To 
 an even greater degree than other men of 
 science he works with material which is to a 
 large extent collected by others. These may 
 have been men who devoted their energies to 
 the task of search and collection, whose work 
 has merely been what is called " heuristic." 
 Or they may have been previous historians. 
 The point is that, as the knowledge of the 
 historian is only partially derived from his own 
 direct research, his science is one of inference 
 rather than of observation. 
 
 It is a corollary from the view of truth in 
 history which I have just been quoting that it 
 should reject, not merely all efforts to look for 
 the hand of Providence as the interpretation of 
 human development, but also the attempts 
 which have been made in philosophies of 
 history to see in it the evolution of forms of 
 mind. Bossuet and Hegel come alike under 
 condemnation. " On ne s'arrete plus guere 
 aujourd'hui a discuter," says M. Seignobos, 
 " sous la forme theologique la theorie de la 
 Providence dans I'histoire. Mais la tendance 
 a expliquer les faits historiques par les causes 
 transcendantes persiste dans des theories plus 
 modernes, 011 la metaphysique se deguise sous 
 des formes scientifiques." Now there is no 
 doubt much to be said for the resolute spirit in 
 which the two professors of the Sorbonne set 
 themselves to eliminate all prejudices and
 
 58 TRUTH IN HIvSTORY 
 
 theories and methods which can distract from 
 
 impartiaUty and exactness of description. But 
 
 their own admissions, as I have just quoted 
 
 them, about deficiency in material, and the 
 
 impossibiUty of history being a science of pure 
 
 observation as distinguished from inference, 
 
 deprive their protest of a good deal of its value. 
 
 Without oroinof as far as Goethe went in his 
 
 • • 1 • 1 1 
 scepticism about records, it is plam that the 
 
 business of selection must bulk largely in every 
 
 historical undertaking. And that is why, while 
 
 rules as to historical evidence such as the two 
 
 authors lay down are of use and should be 
 
 adhered to wherever it is possible, the historian 
 
 who confined himself within what alone these 
 
 rules allow would produce little or nothing. 
 
 The necessity of artistic selection from materials 
 
 which are admittedly imperfect, not to speak of 
 
 the personal equation of the writer, would make 
 
 a history founded on merely scientific methods 
 
 a mockery. History belongs to the region of 
 
 art at least as much as it does to that of science, 
 
 and this is why, face M. Seignobos, we shall 
 
 continue to delight in Michelet and Macaulay 
 
 and Carlyle, and to insist on regarding their 
 
 books as among the world's most valuable 
 
 records. They are presentations by great 
 
 artists of the spirit of a period, and the artists 
 
 are great because with the power of genius they 
 
 have drawn portraits which we recognise as 
 
 resembling the results of direct perception. 
 
 Genius has been called the capacity for taking 
 
 pains that is infinite, and these men have taken
 
 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT 59 
 
 immeasurable pains and have been inspired by 
 a passion for truth according to their lights. 
 Of course, they have selected and refashioned 
 the materials which through close research were 
 first collected, as great artists always must. 
 Doubtless, too, there are aspects which they 
 have left out or left over for presentation by 
 other artists. But portraits may, as we have 
 seen, vary in expression and yet be true, for the 
 characteristic of what is alive and intelligent 
 and spiritual is that it may have many expres- 
 sions, all of which are true. With what is inert 
 and mechanical it is for certain purposes 
 different, but what is inert and mechanical is 
 the subject neither of the artist nor the historian. 
 It is because they let themselves go in bringing 
 out the expression of life and personality that 
 we continue to cling to Gibbon and Mommsen. 
 Their problem is to display before us the course 
 of the lives of men and of nations. Men and 
 nations cannot be estimated through the medium 
 of the balance and the measuring-rod alone, nor 
 are these the most important instruments for 
 estimating them. The phenomena which belong 
 to the region of the spirit can be interpreted 
 only through the medium of the spirit itself. 
 We cannot interpret by mechanical methods a 
 play of Shakespeare or a sonata of Beethoven. 
 In the regions of life and personality the 
 interpretation must come through life and 
 personality, and the mind recognises the truth 
 of their interpretation when it recognises in it 
 what accords with its own highest phases.
 
 6o TRUTH IN HISTORY 
 
 History is not mere imagination. It must 
 always rest on a severely-proved basis of fact. 
 But no mere severity of proof will give the 
 historian even this basis. The judgment of 
 truth implies a yet higher standard of complete- 
 ness and perfection. 
 
 I am therefore unable to agree with those 
 who think that history must be either exclusively 
 a science or exclusively an art. It is a science 
 to the extent to which what are commonly 
 known as scientific methods are requisite for 
 accuracy and proper proportion in the details 
 used in the presentation. But the presentation 
 must always be largely that of an artist in whose 
 mind it is endowed with life and form. Truth 
 in history requires, in order to be truth in its 
 completeness, that the mind of the reader 
 should find itself satisfied by that harmony and 
 sense of inevitableness which only a work of 
 art can give. Abstractness of detail and 
 absence of coherence offend this sense of 
 harmony, and so offend against truth by incom- 
 pleteness of presentation. The reader feels 
 that the facts must have appeared, at the period 
 in which they did really appear, in a fashion 
 quite different. Unless the history which he 
 reads gives him something of a direct sense of 
 the presence of the actual, his assent will be at 
 the most what Cardinal Newman called notional 
 as distinguished from real. To define the 
 meaning of truth in history thus becomes a 
 problem that is difficult, because it is complex. 
 But this at least seems clear, that some notions
 
 THE ESSENTIAL 6i 
 
 about this meaning that have been current in 
 days gone by, and are still current, ought to be 
 reconsidered. A clear conception of first prin- 
 ciples is essential in most things, and not least 
 in the writing of history. If I have succeeded 
 in rendering plain to you the reasons which 
 make me feel this need strongly, I shall have 
 accomplished all that I ventured to hope for on 
 the present occasion.
 
 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY. 
 
 An address delivered to the Citizens of Bristol 
 on Installation as Chancellor of the Uni- 
 versity of Bristol in October, 191 2.
 
 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Your University has done me the honour of 
 choosing me for its Chancellor. I have asked 
 leave to express in person before you, the 
 citizens of Bristol, my gratitude for this high 
 distinction. Such title as I possess to it is that 
 I have cared for the cause of University 
 Education in the great cities of the kingdom. 
 I have believed in this cause and have striven 
 for it. And it is with a sense of real pleasure 
 that I find myself privileged to be closely 
 associated with the new University life of your 
 community. 
 
 Of this new life I wish to say something to 
 you on the present occasion. It is a charac- 
 teristic development of our time that the great 
 cities of England should have asked for, and 
 in rapid succession obtained, the concession of 
 their own Universities. In Scotland, Edin- 
 burgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen have for cen- 
 turies possessed such Universities, to the great 
 profit of themselves and the Scottish nation. 
 Dundee has recently followed their example 
 by entering into fellowship with St. Andrews. 
 In Ireland, Dublin has lately got a second 
 teaching University, and Belfast has secured a 
 University of her own. In England the pro- 
 
 6^
 
 65 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 gress has recently been rapid — London made 
 her foundation of a teaching University under 
 the Act of 1898. Birmingham followed suit, 
 and was herself quickly followed by Man- 
 chester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Sheffield, and 
 then by Bristol. Newcastle has recognised the 
 example of Dundee by entering into partner- 
 ship with Durham. 
 
 There were not wanting those who took a 
 gloomy view of the new development. The 
 standard of University life and of University 
 degrees must, they said, inevitably be ruined. 
 The level of Oxford and Cambridge could 
 never be reached, and these old Universities 
 might even be damaged. To this it was replied 
 that no one aimed at an imitation of Oxford and 
 Cambridge. These Universities possessed an 
 historical tradition of their own which was a 
 great asset to the country. No wise person 
 would wish to alter their special atmosphere. 
 They could, after all, provide for only a limited 
 number of students; what had to be provided 
 for elsewhere was the very much larger number 
 whom they did not reach. It was pointed out 
 that Germany possessed a greater number of 
 Universities in proportion to her population 
 than we did, and that there were certainly no 
 grounds for saying that their number had either 
 lowered the standard of University education 
 in that country, or that Berlin or Munich or 
 Leipzig or Breslau afforded the least indication 
 that a University could not flourish exceedingly 
 in a great city. Moreover, experience had
 
 GROWTH OF EFFORTS 67 
 
 shown that the very competition of Universities 
 tended to bring about a stingless rivalry in 
 keeping standards high. These arguments 
 prevailed with Governments and Parliaments. 
 But the victory was not won without a struggle. 
 What was probably the final battle was fought 
 out in the end of 1902 before a very impressive 
 tribunal, in the form of a Special Committee of 
 the Privy Council. I make no apology for 
 referring to this battle of the experts, for by 
 some chance even historians of education in 
 this country seem to know little of it. Liver- 
 pool had by 1902 awakened to the sense of her 
 necessities, and, stimulated by the success of 
 Mr. Chamberlain's effort for Birmingham, had 
 petitioned for a University Charter. She 
 possessed a University College. She was sure 
 she could develop this greatly in both money 
 and men if the city felt that it was considered 
 worthy to have a University of its own, instead 
 of a College federated with those of Man- 
 chester and Leeds under the Examining Board 
 at Manchester, which then possessed the title 
 of the Victoria University. She complained 
 that the federal system was subordinating 
 education to examination, instead of putting 
 examination in its proper place as a means to 
 the end of testing teaching — that teaching 
 which ought to be the supreme object of the 
 existence of a University. Manchester, a little 
 half-heartedly, concurred in the Liverpool 
 view; Leeds opposed strongly, and was backed 
 up by a mixed but powerful assemblage of
 
 6B THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 witnesses, which included some opponents of 
 what were nicknamed LilHputian Universities, 
 and by some advocates of external examination. 
 The petition of Liverpool was referred by the 
 Crown to a Committee of the Privy Council, 
 and eminent lawyers argued the case for and 
 against it and called their witnesses. The 
 Committee was presided over by the distin- 
 guished statesman who was then President of 
 the Council, the late Duke of Devonshire, and 
 he had as his colleagues Lord Rosebery, the 
 ex-Prime Minister, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, 
 who was then Secretary for Scotland, Lord 
 James of Hereford, and one whom we in Bristol 
 know well, and hold in admiration and affec- 
 tion, Sir Edward Fry. The hearing occupied 
 three days : the 17th, i8th, and 19th of Decem- 
 ber 1902. The Committee after deliberation 
 reported, and an Order in Council, dated the 
 loth of February 1903, gave effect to the report. 
 It was pronounced that Liverpool and Man- 
 chester had made out their case for the grant 
 of University Charters. It was added that the 
 step of granting the Charters involved issues of 
 great moment which should be kept in view, and 
 for the solution of which due preparations 
 should be made, especially in respect to those 
 points upon which, having regard to the great 
 importance of the matter, and the effects of any 
 changes upon the future of higher education in 
 the North of England, co-operation was expe- 
 dient between Universities of a common type 
 and with cognate aims.
 
 BAvSES OF THE UNIVERvSITY 69 
 
 The date of this Order in Council is, I think, 
 a memorable one. It gave State recognition 
 to a new policy, but for which we might not 
 have been assembled here to-night. The 
 principle was accepted that the number of the 
 English Universities was to be increased, and 
 their headquarters were to be in cities. The 
 conditions were that the chief responsibility was 
 to be entrusted to the cities themselves, and that 
 the cities should be large enough and keen 
 enough to ensure that the requisite local 
 resources for the maintenance and development 
 of the Universities should be forthcoming. It 
 is about the Civic University which has thus 
 been born that I have come to speak to you. 
 Such a University presupposes for its existence 
 not only sympathy but enthusiasm on the part 
 of the citizens. Without such enthusiasm it 
 cannot grow or become a source of credit and 
 advantage, moral, intellectual, or material, to 
 the city. But such experience as we have had 
 shows the city, by taking thought in this fashion, 
 in process of adding a cubit to its stature. The 
 other thing needful is that the education given 
 should be of the very highest type practicable. 
 It must not be merely technical or designed as 
 a means to material ends. That is a narrow 
 aim which in the end defeats its own accom- 
 plishment. The appeals to the King in 
 Council, on the great occasion to which I have 
 alluded, breathed a wholly different spirit. It 
 was then declared that the great communities 
 of the kingdom would be content with nothing
 
 70 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 short of the highest. They had, of course, to 
 make a beginning; they could not accomphsh 
 everything at once — University institutions can 
 only obtain their full stature as the result of 
 long growth. But the mediaeval cities of Italy, 
 cities such as Bologna, had set to the world a 
 great example. They found a home, as 
 students of books such as that of Dr. Rashdall 
 on the Universities of the Middle Ages know, 
 for guilds of students, who established them- 
 selves there to the great fame and profit of the 
 city. They became conscious of their own 
 individuality, and they assisted in giving to the 
 world University teaching and University work 
 of the highest kind. What, to go still further 
 back, did not Athens owe to the fact that the 
 highest learning was developed and put by the 
 people themselves in the highest place among 
 Athenian institutions.^ Such ancient cities are 
 a model for us; they influenced not only their 
 own countrymen but the whole world for good. 
 The chance has come to us in England to 
 accomplish something of the same kind, and 
 with us, as with them, it is to the enthusiasm 
 and resources of our great urban communities, 
 never, when once convinced, wanting in faith, 
 that we have to look. 
 
 There was a time when men of business, 
 accustomed to see closely to profit and loss, 
 used to think that the work of a University was 
 worth effort and expenditure only in so far as 
 it produced aptitude for industrial and com- 
 mercial production. Traces of this view are
 
 SPECIALISTS 71 
 
 Still apparent in the foundation deeds of some 
 of the older University Colleges of our munici- 
 palities. But this idea is now discredited, and 
 the part played by science and by general 
 learning in the production alike of the captain 
 of industry and of the extension of invention 
 is far greater than was the case even a few 
 years ago. Applied science is in its best form 
 only possible on a wide foundation of general 
 science. And the fruitful scientific spirit is 
 developed to-day on a basis of high intellectual 
 training, the training which only the atmosphere 
 of the fully developed University can com- 
 pletely provide. What is true of science in the 
 narrower sense is also true of learning generally. 
 It is only by the possession of a trained and 
 developed mind that the fullest capacity can, 
 as a general rule, be obtained. There are, of 
 course, exceptional individuals with rare natural 
 gifts which make up for deficiencies. But such 
 gifts are indeed rare. We are coming more 
 and more to recognise that the best specialist 
 can be produced only after a long training in 
 general learning. The grasp of principle which 
 makes detail easy can only come when innate 
 capacity has been evoked and moulded by high 
 training. Our engineers, our lawyers, our 
 doctors, our administrators, our inventors, 
 cannot keep in front in the race, or hold their 
 own amid the rivalry of talent, unless their 
 minds have been so widely trained that the new 
 problems with which the ever-increasing com- 
 plications and specialisations of modern condi-
 
 72 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 tions confront them, present nothing more 
 formidable than new appHcations of first 
 principles which have been thoroughly assimi- 
 lated. Without having reached this level they 
 cannot maintain their feet. The competition 
 is not merely with their fellow-countrymen; it 
 is with the trained minds of other countries. 
 These other countries are, some of them, 
 advancing at least as rapidly as we are. An 
 enlightened policy in education is the order of 
 the day over most of the civilised world, and 
 if we are to hold our own, even in the making 
 of money, we dare not fall behind or lag in the 
 endeavour to increase our efforts. I see no sign 
 that we Britons are diminishing one whit in our 
 really great capacity. In many respects, 
 notably in certain of our public institutions, we 
 are advancing so rapidly that w^e continue to 
 lead the way, and our production of wealth is 
 not falling off. Moreover, I do not believe 
 that we are really losing what is equally neces- 
 sary — that spirit of respect to the laws which 
 we have made for ourselves that has been one 
 of our chief glories. But we have more than 
 ever before to see to it that we keep at least 
 abreast in science, and science means far more 
 now than technical training, or the mere applica- 
 tion of special knowledge to industry. It rests 
 on a foundation of general culture which is vital 
 to the maintenance of its standards, and it can 
 develop only if the population has the fullest 
 chance of an intellectual and moral training 
 which goes deeper than mere science strictly
 
 COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS 73 
 
 SO called. It is the power of the highly-trained 
 mind that is required, and the full development 
 of this trained mind can only be given by the 
 highly organised Universities. 
 
 This brings me to my next point. It is said 
 that it is only the comparatively few that can 
 attain to this level. That is quite true. And 
 it is neither requisite nor possible that everyone 
 should be trained up to it. If we had all the 
 Universities in the world concentrated in 
 England, we should find that it was only a 
 limited percentage of the population which 
 would be fitted by natural aptitude to take full 
 advantage of them. What is really essential 
 is that everyone should have a chance, and that 
 there should be the nearest possible approach 
 to equality of educational opportunity. With- 
 out this the sense of injustice will never be 
 eliminated, and w^e shall in addition fail to 
 secure for our national endeavours the help of 
 our best brains. There is sitting at the present 
 time an important Royal Commission. The 
 Civil Service, which is the permanent element 
 in the government of the country, has been 
 recruited in various ways. The prevailing but 
 not the only test has been examination. The 
 civil servants are, however, divided into higher 
 and lower divisions. The lower division, which 
 is much the larger, does the great bulk of the 
 routine and less difficult w'ork. Its members 
 enter by competitive examination at the age of 
 about eighteen. They spend but a short time, 
 as a rule, in the secondary school, which they
 
 74 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 leave early to prepare for the examination. 
 The higher division, which is much smaller, 
 consists of those who succeed in a competitive 
 examination, passed when they are about 
 twenty-two. For the most part they have 
 started at a University, the object being to 
 secure candidates who have had the benefit of 
 a full University training, and, if possible, such 
 as have taken honours. After appointment 
 they do work which is, some of it, of a highly 
 responsible character, requiring both general 
 education and the capacity of taking the 
 initiative and of managing men. In my opinion 
 this is a most valuable type of public servant. 
 I was the head, for over six years, of a great 
 administrative department, and I formed the 
 opinion that this class of men, with a broad 
 general foundation of education of the higher 
 type, was essential in the interests of the State, 
 and, after all, the consideration to be placed 
 foremost. But the mode of election has given 
 rise to dissatisfaction. It is felt, and felt 
 rightly, that a very large class is shut out from 
 any chance of entry, and that the Universities 
 of Oxford and Cambridge have had an undue 
 advantage. They continue to fill a very large 
 proportion of the vacancies. The fact that this 
 is because Oxford and Cambridge until now 
 have proved to be the best training places for 
 the candidates is not altogether an answer to 
 the complaint. Education quite as good for 
 the purpose might be given elsewhere. But 
 such education, to be sufficient, must be of a
 
 TRUE OBJECT OF EDUCATION 75 
 
 high order. After a good deal of observation, 
 both while I was at the Bar and while I was in 
 charge of an administrative department, I have 
 come to the conclusion that, as a general rule, 
 the most stimulating and useful preparation for 
 the general work of the higher Civil Service is 
 a literary training, and that of this a classical 
 education is for most men the best form, though 
 not exclusively so. No doubt men vary, and 
 science or modern literature may develop the 
 mind, in the case of those who have aptitude 
 for them, better than Latin or Greek literature. 
 But, as Goethe said long ago, the object of 
 education ought to be rather to form tastes 
 than simply to communicate knowledge. The 
 pedant is not of much use in the conduct of 
 public affairs. For the formation of tastes and 
 of the intellectual habits and aptitudes which 
 the love of learning produces, the atmosphere 
 of a highly organised University life is a tre- 
 mendous power, and we cannot do without it. 
 And, therefore, while I am not without sym- 
 pathy with the complaint of democracy that the 
 entrance to the higher positions in the Civil 
 Service is by far too much the monopoly of a 
 class, I reply that a highly educated official is 
 essential for a particular kind of work which the 
 State needs. The remedy must not be to 
 displace the class which alone furnishes the 
 supply. Democracy is apt in its earlier stages 
 to be unduly jealous, and to try to drag things 
 down to a level which, because it is the general 
 level, is in danger of being too low to provide
 
 76 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 the highest talent. The remedy for what is a 
 real grievance appears to me to be that demo- 
 cracy should add a new plank to its platform, 
 and insist on equality of opportunity in educa- 
 tion as something that should be within the 
 reach of every youth and maiden. That more 
 than a comparatively small minority will prove 
 capable of taking advantage of the highest 
 education is unlikely. We are not all born 
 with the same capacity. But that many will 
 seize on a new opportunity who are at present 
 shut out, is to my mind certain. And if 
 democracy will abandon the suggestion that the 
 highest work can be done without the highest 
 educational preparation for it, I shall be the 
 most whole-hearted supporter of the inaugura- 
 tion of a new democratic campaign. There are 
 those who possess the inborn initiative and 
 capacity which can do without the ordinary 
 educational avenues. They have existed at all 
 times and they exist to-day. They must be 
 taken into account and provision made for them 
 by special promotion. But these are nature's 
 aristocrats, and the number of true aristocrats 
 is always very small. We have to legislate for 
 the ordinary man and woman, and we cannot do 
 more than make provision for that equality of 
 opportunity in the higher education of which I 
 have spoken. 
 
 Elementary education is now the right of all, 
 and since the passing of the Education Act of 
 igo2, an Act the immense advantages of which 
 have always appeared to me to outweigh certain
 
 DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 77 
 
 awkward blemishes which have still to be got 
 rid of, the clever boy or girl can generally, by 
 means of a scholarship or a free place, get to 
 the secondary school. But the chances for the 
 poor scholar to get from the secondary school 
 to the University, although they exist, are still 
 far too few. The Labour leaders are quite 
 right when they complain that the prizes of the 
 State are in reality far too much reserved for 
 the upper classes. Where they are wrong, I 
 think, is in the remedy they propose. The 
 State will suffer badly if the level of its civil 
 servants is lowered, and it will be lowered if the 
 qualifications for all positions are lowered to 
 the educational equipment possessed by a youth 
 who has ceased his studies at eighteen. The 
 true remedy is to break down the class barrier 
 by making provision for enabling the youth of 
 eighteen to go on, if he is fit to do so, and to 
 qualify himself more highly. Now here is 
 where the Civic University has a great part to 
 play. It is idle to say, as is sometimes said, 
 that Oxford and Cambridge include the 
 democracy. Theoretically they do, but not one 
 child of the people out of a thousand has a 
 real chance of becoming an undergraduate 
 there. More accessible Universities are re- 
 quired, and these new Universities, I am careful 
 to add, will only successfully compete with 
 Oxford and Cambridge in serving the require- 
 ments of the State if they keep their level very 
 high. A University to be a true University 
 must be a place where the spirit is more
 
 78 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 important than the letter. In the elementary 
 schools, and to a great extent even in the 
 secondary schools, the teacher is in a position 
 of authority. What he says is accepted by the 
 pupil as truth without inquiry. But in a true 
 University, where the problems are higher and 
 more difficult, the professor as well as his 
 student is making his voyage of discovery. 
 Both must avoid dogmatic slumber or even 
 supineness. They must in all reality investi- 
 gate — and be content to investigate. This 
 inevitable feature of the higher work, even 
 where it is primarily educational, has always 
 been recognised by those whose names we 
 reverence most. Lessing meant it when he 
 declared almost passionately that if the 
 Almighty w^ere to offer him the truth in one 
 hand and the search after the truth in the other, 
 he would choose the hand that held the search 
 after truth. It is this that Goethe had in mind 
 when he said what I have already quoted about 
 the real object of education being to form tastes 
 and not to impart knowledge. Of course, 
 knowledge must be imparted. But it comes 
 fully to those and to those alone who are able 
 to realise its necessity and to desire it with all 
 their souls for its own sake, and not as a means 
 to any end. As Aristotle long ago declared, 
 the foundation of wisdom is the awakening of 
 the sense of wonder. The spirit of the Univer- 
 sity is thus the co-operation of professor and 
 student in a common endeavour to learn. The 
 former is further on than the latter and can
 
 THE PROFESSOR MUST INSPIRE 79 
 
 impart to him stimulation and guidance. But 
 they are both searchers after truth, and the 
 dominance of the letter over the spirit, which is 
 of necessity more present in the school, ought 
 to be remote from both. A University is a 
 place where the most valuable advantage the 
 student has is contact with an inspiring per- 
 sonality. That is why nothing short of the 
 best level among the professors is enough for 
 success. The professor must inspire. His 
 labour must be one of love if he is to succeed. 
 And if he is a great teacher he will have 
 moulded the lives and tastes of the best of his 
 students for the rest of their existence. 
 
 Here, then, is a new object of ambition for 
 you, the citizens of Bristol. You have it in 
 your power now, if you so choose, to make it 
 possible for the son or daughter of every poor 
 man in this city, be he high or be he low, to 
 attain to this splendid advantage in life. Only 
 few can be chosen; that results from the fact 
 that the order of nature does not permit us to 
 be born equal. But the many may and ought 
 to be called, even if the few are chosen. Let 
 us turn to the practical application to the affairs 
 of your city of this great gospel of educational 
 opportunity. Those who believe in democracy 
 have not yet awakened to its significance. 
 When they do they may come to think that 
 here lies the most direct path to the attainment 
 of their end. 
 
 Your elementarv schools are excellent, and 
 are still improving; all children must go to
 
 8o THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 them. When they leave they are apt to forget 
 what they have learned. The working classes 
 are growing more keen about keeping their 
 children on at the schools instead of taking 
 them away to earn money. They endure a 
 heavy burden to do this, and I sometimes think 
 that one of the reasons for the growth of a 
 discontent which has somewhat of the divine 
 in it, is a sense of the growing burden of the 
 indirect cost of education. Any rise in wages 
 is balanced and more than balanced by the rise 
 in standards of living, and this is true not only 
 of England but of most other highly civilised 
 countries. Even, however, if the child stays on 
 to fourteen, it leaves school only to forget much. 
 I used, when I was at the War Office, to be 
 struck by the comparatively large percentage of 
 soldiers who could not read or write. The 
 Education Acts had been in force since 1870, 
 and the fact at first sight seemed difficult to 
 understand. The explanation was that the 
 young soldiers had learned to read and write, 
 but had left school and forgotten, so that we 
 had to educate them over again. 
 
 Now in Bristol you have a good proportion 
 of excellent secondary schools. The boy or 
 girl can in many cases get there from the 
 elementary school. But not in all cases, nor 
 in enough of cases. And when I turn to the 
 further chance of the University, the same thing 
 is true, and true in a more marked form. There 
 are chances offered to clever young men and 
 women of reaching your University. But there
 
 SCIENCE AND ORGANIZATION 8i 
 
 are not enough of such chances for the estab- 
 Hshment of anything Hke the standard of 
 equahty in educational opportunity. It is the 
 attainment of this standard, this high and true 
 ideal, that I wish to-night to commend to the 
 citizens of Bristol without distinction of rank 
 or occupation. The inhabitants of this great 
 city are all of them directly interested in it. 
 To possess in Bristol a real system of graduated 
 education, within the reach of all who are 
 endowed by nature with the talent to take 
 advantage of it, would make Bristol the first 
 city in the Empire as regards education, for it 
 would have what the other cities do not now 
 possess. And it would mean much for this 
 city as regards other things. The experience 
 of our own nation, and perhaps still more that 
 of other countries, has shown the power of 
 expansion and influence which a complete 
 system of education can give. The most 
 important result is not money-making. But 
 even in money-making, in these days when 
 science and organisation are becoming dominat- 
 ing influences in commercial undertakings, 
 success seems certain to depend more and more, 
 as time advances, on their possession. And 
 therefore I appeal to all of you, to workmen 
 and employers, to the man who can just manage 
 to educate his children and to the wealthiest 
 alike, to concern yourselves in a great civic 
 cause. Do not let yourselves be influenced by 
 the criticism that is sometimes made even to-day 
 by those whose ideas about University influence
 
 82 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 are entirely derived from the contemplation of 
 the older Universities. No one is more keenly 
 conscious than I am that there has grown up 
 around Oxford and Cambridge an atmosphere 
 which it is impossible to reproduce elsewhere. 
 It has been the growth of the tradition of 
 centuries. It has developed the finest qualities 
 in scholarship. But, as a detached observer, I 
 must add that this atmosphere and the habits 
 which it has developed in us have hindered as 
 well as helped. 
 
 When Francis Bacon wrote his Advancement 
 of Learning, and was laying the foundations of 
 his great discoveries in inductive logic and 
 scientific method, he turned sharply on the 
 teaching of the English Universities. At one 
 of them, Cambridge, he had been a distinguished 
 student. Yet his biographers tell us that while 
 he was " commorant " at the University at the 
 age of sixteen, he " first fell into dislike of the 
 philosophy of Aristotle, not for the worthless- 
 ness of the author, to whom he would ever 
 ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruit- 
 fulness of the way, which seemed to him only 
 strong for disputations and barren of the 
 production of works for the life of man." It 
 was not that he disliked the University system ; 
 on the contrary in the Advancement of Learn- 
 ing, Bacon says : " We highly approve of the 
 education of youth in colleges, and not wholly 
 in private houses or schools, for in colleges 
 there is not only a greater emulation of youth 
 among their equals, but the teachers have a
 
 BACON AND ARISTOTLE 83 
 
 venerable aspect and gravity, which greatly 
 conduces towards insinuating a modest beha- 
 viour, and the forming of tender minds from the 
 first, according to such example, and besides 
 these there are many other advantages of a 
 collegiate education." From various passages 
 in the Advancement we gather that his con- 
 demnation arose from the unintelligent fashion 
 in which the Dons of his time taught abstract 
 rules to those who had not yet gathered what 
 he calls, quoting Cicero rather oddly, " 'Sylva ' 
 and ' Siipellcx' and then Matter and Fecun- 
 dity." To begin with these rules is, he declares, 
 as though one were " to paint or measure the 
 wind." 
 
 Now in the Advancement of Learning my 
 great predecessor in the office of Lord Chan- 
 cellor was hardly just to Aristotle. We have 
 at last learned to understand Aristotle's words 
 because we have been at pains to understand 
 his thoughts. Aristotle's logical methods were 
 not what Bacon took them to be. They were 
 far more searching and much nearer to the 
 truth about the processes of acquiring know- 
 ledge. But it is one of the great reproaches 
 against the English Universities that they 
 dragged the name of Aristotle down into the 
 mud. Their verbal scholarship left little to 
 be desired. But they stretched Greek thought, 
 that of Plato hardly less than that of Aristotle, 
 on the rack of their own provincial ideas, until 
 the vitality had disappeared out of it. It was 
 not until less than fifty years ago that any
 
 84 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 decent exposition of the philosophy of Aristotle 
 was produced at an English University. In 
 September 1866, the late T. H. Green, a great 
 thinker, wrote an article on the subject in the 
 North British Review, in which he made a new 
 departure for Oxford, and raised the study of 
 Aristotle to a higher plane by showing that his 
 metaphysics and his logic must be read as one 
 whole, and in the light which modern idealism 
 had cast on them. It was not through Locke 
 and Berkeley and Hume alone that Aristotle 
 and Plato could be made intelligible. The 
 study of other modern thinkers was an essential 
 preliminary. When we consider that the first 
 edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason 
 appeared in 1781, it is not creditable to the 
 English Universities that, in a subject of which 
 their teachers were never tired of discoursing, 
 they should have remained for eighty-five years 
 in ignorance of the only method of penetrating 
 its real meaning. And they had the less excuse 
 because during this time the work was being 
 rapidly completed on the Continent. Had the 
 Dons been acquainted with modern languages 
 instead of with dead tongues exclusively, they 
 could hardly have failed to be conscious of the 
 work which well-known foreign commentators, 
 such as Schwegler and Carl Prantl and Zeller, 
 were erecting on the foundation first laid by 
 Kant. What is true of Greek thought is also 
 in a measure true of modern science. The 
 awakening has come to the old Universities late. 
 They are now doing very fine work, but they
 
 COMPARISON WITH GERMANY 85 
 
 ought to have been able to develop it much 
 sooner. Some stimulus has been wanting. 
 Had their students lived under a national system 
 where there were many Universities, and where 
 the scholar was free to move from one to 
 another to seek the professor of his choice, 
 instead of being tied up in his academic domicile 
 of origin, the teachers would have been stimu- 
 lated, and things would probably have moved 
 far more rapidly under the development of the 
 rivalry of talent. But the dominant atmosphere 
 was that, not of the laity, as in Germany, but 
 of the Church, and the result was somnolence. 
 There was lacking the alertness which comes 
 from the supervision of the keen mind and 
 practical instinct of the nation's great men of 
 business. The latter may not know much of 
 literature or science or philosophy, though 
 among them there will always be those who do 
 know. But they recognise quality when they 
 see it, and they are jealous lest the institutions 
 for which they are responsible should be out- 
 distanced in foreign countries. If the new 
 English Universities can keep their level high, 
 they may be able to develop a certain advantage 
 over the older English Universities. When I 
 compare the state of things in Oxford and 
 Cambridge with that in the Universities of 
 Germany, I am impressed with one point in 
 particular in which the latter seem to me 
 superior. In Germany the student is free to 
 go from time to time, in the course of his under- 
 graduate career, to study under a professor of
 
 86 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 his own choice in another University. This 
 freedom, of course, imphes that much respon- 
 sibihty for the shaping of his own academic 
 career is placed on the shoulders of the student. 
 But it stimulates his intelligence and tends to 
 save him from getting into a rut. The English 
 tutorial system does not afford the same 
 opportunities for bringing him into stimulating 
 contact with the greatest academic personalities 
 of his day. This matters less, as it seems to 
 me, to the student of exceptional keenness and 
 ability than it does to the merely average 
 undergraduate. And it is perhaps the reason 
 why the typical average undergraduate in 
 England, as one sees him after he leaves the 
 University, appears to bear the marks of a 
 training which has been social rather than 
 intellectual, and to be somewhat lacking in 
 awareness of his own limitations. 
 
 It is to the production by the Civic University 
 of the quality of alertness in the average as well 
 as in the exceptional student that I look with 
 hope for the future. There will be many 
 mistakes of detail made in the government of 
 the new University. But that government is 
 likely to compensate for such shortcomings by 
 its vigour and keenness. What is requisite for 
 the sustaining of that vigour and keenness is 
 that the city should be proud of its University, 
 and should feel that it is its own child in whose 
 future the citizens are profoundly concerned, 
 and whose glory will lend support and strength 
 to the renown of the parents. I can see no limit
 
 THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY S7 
 
 to what may be the development of the Civic 
 University within the next hundred years. I 
 look to its becoming- the dominant and shaping 
 power in our system of national education. We 
 have got into all sorts of difficulties, religious 
 and otherwise, from beginning too low down. 
 We could not help ourselves; we had no 
 University system, spread over the country, to 
 lay hold of and shape into one whole the 
 teachers and the taught alike. In the elemen- 
 tary schools rigid rule and abstract principle 
 are apt to become ends in themselves instead 
 of means to ends. In a system which is merely 
 a vast assemblage of schools in which children 
 must be taught according to a common scheme, 
 the " either or " of the abstract understanding 
 is far more difficult to escape from than it is in 
 the University, where freedom to teacher and 
 student alike in the shaping of educational 
 ideals is of the essence of University life. In 
 the latter the religious difficulty tends to 
 disappear. We see how it has disappeared 
 to-day even at Oxford and Cambridge, where 
 the Church once dominated. And we see that 
 the attainment of freedom and elasticity in 
 regions of religion has not made Oxford and 
 Cambridge really less religious. Now, if the 
 community would be in earnest in setting 
 educational ideals at the top, and in letting its 
 educational system be permeated from the 
 upper stratum downwards, I should have much 
 hope that the controversy about the lower 
 schools would disappear in the pursuit of larger
 
 88 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 ends. But this implies that the Universities 
 should take a large part in shaping the spirit 
 and endeavour of the secondary and elementary 
 schools, and, as a condition of this, that the 
 entire organisation of education should be 
 shaped by Parliament into a comprehensive and 
 connected system. In 1908, by passing the 
 Scotch Education Act of that year. Parliament 
 took a step in this direction for Scotland. But 
 in England the work has yet to be done, and it 
 may well be that the new University spirit in 
 our great cities will compel its commencement. 
 For there is already a new University spirit 
 in these cities. A distinguished friend of mine, 
 who has occasion to know England well, 
 remarked to me recently that when he goes on 
 official visits to the North he finds Universities 
 becoming increasingly prominent in all muni- 
 cipal functions of a public character. These 
 new Universities stand, and are put forward 
 more and more naturally as standing, for the 
 highest life of the places where they have taken 
 root. Yet these new Universities are only in 
 their infancy. What they may become and 
 what influence they may wield we cannot fore- 
 see. What we do know is that they have made 
 a profound appeal to what is best and most 
 characteristic in the communities in which they 
 flourish. They are supported by these commu- 
 nities with far less aid from the State than is 
 the case abroad. And this is the source of 
 their strength. By degrees the principle of 
 learning for learning's sake will become their
 
 TECHNICAL COLLEGES 89 
 
 accepted foundation. It is of the nature of the 
 case that certain sides of this new academic Ufe 
 should have most support, the sides which 
 furnish the supply of what business men feel to 
 be most required. But they are rapidly out- 
 growing the stage in which the technological 
 departments were almost exclusively predo- 
 minant. Their faculties of art are still weak, 
 but as the demand for an art training grows, as 
 grow it must, for the sake of such vocations as 
 teaching and theology, of administration and of 
 law and other learned callings, this kind of 
 faculty will develop. The example of Ger- 
 many shows how Hterature and philosophy may 
 flourish in a University which has the busiest 
 civic surroundings, and there is no reason why 
 that example should not be followed in this 
 country. Time and the growth of enlighten- 
 ment are what is requisite. 
 
 One characteristic feature they possess, and 
 I think to their advantage. In Germany the 
 Technical Colleges have been sharply divided 
 from the University and given a separate 
 existence. This is partly due to the division and 
 separation in character of the great secondary 
 schools in Germany. The resulting separation 
 of the Technical College from the University 
 has been deplored by some of the most distin- 
 guished authorities on German Education, 
 notably by the late Professor Paulsen. If this 
 be a thing to be avoided, we have avoided it. 
 We have made our start by treating education 
 as a single and indivisible whole — and by
 
 90 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 trying to keep the different kinds of students 
 in one organisation. How powerful this ten- 
 dency is we may see by the example of Cam- 
 bridge, which has yielded to it, and has gone 
 to an extent in extending the ambit of its 
 activities to technical training which would be 
 looked on askance by many University 
 authorities in Germany. We have done even 
 more, for we have developed in connection with 
 our new Universities a system of evening teach- 
 ing for a separate class of student, which has 
 enabled them to bring their influence to bear 
 on those who during the day are engaged in 
 earning their livelihood by manual or other 
 work. That the tendency to recognise this 
 kind of instruction as legitimate for the British 
 University is increasing appears when we look 
 at such cases as those of Glasgow and Man- 
 chester, where the great Technical Colleges of 
 these cities are being brought into the closest 
 relation with their Universities. I beheve this 
 to be entirely right, and I am glad that you in 
 Bristol took the same course at the beginning 
 when you brought the Merchant Venturers' 
 College, with its evening teaching, into your 
 new University organisation. There is no 
 reason why a step of this kind should debar you 
 from setting before yourselves compliance with 
 the great test that the education given to all 
 those who can take advantage of it should be 
 of the highest academic type. And there is 
 this of gain, that you give a direct interest in 
 the University of the city to its working-class
 
 SPECIALISATION 91 
 
 citizens, and encourage them to take advantage 
 of the great instrument for their own advance- 
 ment which Hes to hand. 
 
 Speciahsation in each city University there 
 will be and ought to be. Non omnia fossumus 
 omnes. In one place the distinctive strength 
 will be in chemistry — general and applied — 
 for, exist without each other they cannot. In 
 another, as in Sheffield, it will be the metallurgy 
 of iron and steel — and it is not unimportant in 
 this connection that Sheffield is the chief centre 
 for the manufacture of the national guns and 
 steel plates, an industry in which we dare not 
 dispense with high science. In another place, 
 as in the case of the Imperial College in 
 London, we should have the great training 
 place in the metallurgy of the precious metals 
 for the students of a people which leads the 
 world in their production. Some Universities 
 will be strong in engineering, civil and mechani- 
 cal or, it may be, marine. But the one thing 
 requisite is that the broad foundations of the 
 highest general knowledge should be there in 
 each University, and that all specialisation 
 should rest on these foundations. You cannot, 
 without danger of partial starvation, separate 
 science from literature and philosophy. Each 
 grows best in the presence of the other. 
 
 Another essential feature is adequate provi- 
 sion for the post-graduate student — that is, the 
 student who, having taken his degree, has in 
 him the passion for excellence sufficiently 
 strong to desire to continue in the University
 
 93 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 as a place of research, and of the still higher 
 learning which is inseparable from research. 
 Such students may not be numerous, but when 
 they are present they leaven the whole lump, 
 and by their presence give a distinction to the 
 University and to the professors under whom 
 they work which could not be possible in their 
 absence. 
 
 Finally, it is one of the characteristic features 
 of the new Universities that they are freely 
 opened to w^omen as well as to men. This is 
 an advance which it is difficult to overrate, and 
 in days to come its influence for good may prove 
 to be very great. 
 
 I have endeavoured, how imperfectly I know, 
 as the Chancellor of your new University, to 
 place before you as citizens of Bristol some 
 account of the aims and aspirations of those 
 who are now working among you, and working, 
 not as a foreign body imported from without, 
 but as a new development of the civic commu- 
 nity. Your University is now bone of your 
 bone and flesh of your flesh. What you are 
 concerned to see is that it grows, and grows in 
 no slavish way. Now the idea of such a place 
 of learning has become much enlarged in our 
 own time. Not only is the class to which it 
 appeals wider, but its conception of its work is 
 wider. It aims at producing the esprit de corps 
 among its pupils. The Union and the Common 
 Room are growing up. Then there are other 
 features, to one of which I refer with something 
 of paternal affection. The Officers' Training
 
 OFFICERS' TRAINING CORPS 93 
 
 Corps differs widely from the old Volunteer or 
 Cadet Corps, which used to be all that our 
 Universities contributed to the defence of their 
 country. Five years ago, when I was at the 
 War Office, we came to see that it was waste 
 of splendid material to aim at the production of 
 nothing higher than this from among University 
 students, and that what we needed most was to 
 get from them a Reserve of educated men who 
 had had sufficient training as officers to be 
 available in the event of war. We appealed 
 to the Universities, new and old, but not until 
 we had carefully prepared our plans. The 
 Officers' Training Corps of the modern Univer- 
 sity is wholly different from the old University 
 Volunteer Corps. And the reason is twofold. 
 It has now been shaped for the accomplishment 
 of a definite end, the training for the duties of 
 command in great emergency of educated 
 young men who will, even in time of peace, put 
 their obligations to their country before their 
 love of ease and amusement. The second 
 reason is that this training is given, not as of 
 yore under the drill sergeant, not even under 
 the ordinary officer, but under the direction and 
 supervision of the picked brains of the British 
 Army — the new General Staff. Such training, 
 based on the best scientific methods, therefore 
 takes its place naturally within the sphere of 
 work of the University, and expands and 
 completes the work of that University. 
 
 I have referred to the Union and to the 
 Officers' Training Corps as signs of the times,
 
 94 THE CIVIC UNIVERSITY 
 
 as indications of the way in which the conception 
 of University Hfe is being widened. Other 
 indications there are of the extended scope 
 which is visible in several directions of the 
 meaning of academic Hfe and training. But it 
 is enough to say that this hfe and training have 
 no hmits set for them except the insistence that 
 the work must be educational, mentally and 
 spiritually, and educational in a high sense. 
 The test of University work is, after all, like 
 that of literature — size and level. I have faith 
 that this truth has now been realised, and that 
 among the Civic Universities, the centres be it 
 observed of guidance and the higher teaching 
 for the districts which are assigned to and 
 surround them, the duty of maintaining a high 
 level is one which will be seen to jealously. 
 The professors have a deep responsibility in 
 this respect, and the general body of citizens 
 have a responsibility hardly less. Nothing is 
 more encouraging than the way in which co- 
 operation in the joint endeavour has been 
 visible up to now in the proceedings of the 
 governing bodies, and there is no reason to 
 anticipate that the future will be less encourag- 
 
 This is what I wish to say in conclusion. Do 
 not let us be discouraged by apparent slowness 
 in progress. It is only when a long tract of 
 time has been covered that the full character 
 of the movement forward that has taken place 
 within it can be seen. Much has been done 
 within the short period since the University of
 
 YOUTH AND THE FUTURE 95 
 
 Bristol came into existence. Much remains to 
 be done. But if the great city becomes more 
 and more proud of its University, and more and 
 more conscious of the nature of the young Ufe 
 that has been born to it, then there will not be 
 wanting the conditions that are requisite for 
 growth to full maturity. The day may come 
 when the citizen of Bristol will be able to look 
 back on his life as made up of distinct phases 
 which have this in common, that he owes all of 
 them to his native place. He may as now look 
 to the city as the place of his birth, the place 
 where he lived with his parents, and with which 
 his earliest associations are connected. He 
 may look to it as the place where he grew up 
 from youth to manhood, and where, by virtue 
 of the strength that was in him, he made con- 
 quest for himself of wealth and reputation. He 
 may look to it as the arena in which he threw 
 himself into an honourable rivalry for success 
 in public life, and in the endeavour to do the 
 utmost that within him lay to benefit his fellow 
 human beings. And, last but not least, he may 
 look to it as the home of the University which 
 gave him his great impulses, which moulded his 
 soul, and imparted to him not only the know- 
 ledge that was the source of strength, but the 
 most glorious inspirations of his youth. 
 
 If you, in whose hands rests the making of 
 the future, accomplish the task of rendering 
 this and perhaps even more than this possible 
 in your own city, you will have deserved well 
 of the nation of which you form a part.
 
 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 
 
 A Study in Law and Ethics. 
 
 An Address delivered before the American Bar 
 Association at Montreal on \st September, 
 
 1913-
 
 HIGHER NATIONALITY. 
 
 It is with genuine pleasure that I find myself 
 among my fellow-lawyers of the New World. 
 But my satisfaction is tempered by a sense of 
 embarrassment. There is a multitude of topics 
 on which it would be most natural that I should 
 seek to touch. If, however, I am to use any 
 purpose the opportunity which you have 
 accorded me, I must exclude all but one or two 
 of them. For in an hour like this, as in most 
 other times of endeavour, he who would accom- 
 plish anything must limit himself. What I 
 have to say will therefore be confined to the 
 suggestion of little more than a single thought, 
 and to its development and illustration with 
 materials that lie to hand. I wish to lay before 
 you a result at which I have arrived after 
 reflection, and to submit it for your considera- 
 tion with such capacity as I possess. 
 
 For the occasion is as rare as it is important. 
 Around me I see assembled some of the most 
 distinguished figures in the public life of this 
 Continent; men who throughout their careers 
 have combined law with statesmanship, and 
 who have exercised a potent influence in the 
 fashioning of opinion and of policy. The law 
 
 99
 
 lOO HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 is indeed a calling notable for the individualities 
 it has produced. Their production has counted 
 for much in the past of the three nations that 
 are represented at this meeting, and it means 
 much for them to-day. 
 
 What one who finds himself face to face with 
 this assemblage naturally thinks of is the future 
 of these three nations, a future that may depend 
 largely on the influence of men with opportu- 
 nities such as are ours. The United States and 
 Canada and Great Britain together form a 
 group which is unique, unique because of its 
 common inheritance in traditions, in surround- 
 ings, and in ideals. And nowhere is the 
 character of this common inheritance more 
 apparent than in the region of jurisprudence. 
 The lawyers of the three countries think for the 
 most part alike. At no period has political 
 divergence prevented this fact from being 
 strikingly apparent. Where the letter of their 
 law is different the spirit is yet the same, and it 
 has been so always. As I speak of the his- 
 torical tradition of our great calling, and of 
 what appears likely to be its record in days to 
 come, it seems to me that we who are here 
 gathered may well proclaim, in the words of the 
 Spartans, " We are what you were, we shall be 
 what you are." 
 
 It is this identity of spirit, largely due to a 
 past which the lawyers of the group have 
 inherited jointly, that not only forms a bond of 
 union, but furnishes them with an influence that 
 can hardly be reproduced in other nations. I
 
 A POSvSIBLE DEVELOPMENT loi 
 
 will therefore venture to look ahead. I will 
 ask you to consider with me whether we, who 
 have in days gone by moulded their laws, are 
 not called on to try in days that lie in front to 
 mould opinion in yet another form, and so 
 encourage the nations of this group to develop 
 and recognise a reliable character in the obliga- 
 tions they assume towards each other. For it 
 may be that there are relations possible within 
 such a group of nations as is ours that are not 
 possible for nations more isolated from each 
 other and lacking in our identity of history and 
 spirit. Canada and Great Britain on the one 
 hand and the United States on the other, with 
 their common language, their common interests, 
 and their common ends, form something 
 resembling a single society. If there be such 
 a society, it may develop within itself a founda- 
 tion for international faith of a kind that is new 
 in the history of the world. Without interfer- 
 ing with the freedom of action of these great 
 countries or the independence of their constitu- 
 tions, it may be possible to establish a true 
 unison between Sovereign States. This unison 
 will doubtless, if it ever comes into complete 
 being, have its witnesses in treaties and written 
 agreements. But such documents can never of 
 themselves constitute it. Its substance, if it is 
 to be realised, must be sought for deeper down 
 in an intimate social life. I have never been 
 without hope that the future development of 
 the world may bring all the nations that com- 
 pose it nearer together, so that they will
 
 I02 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 progressively cease to desire to hold each other 
 at arm's length. But such an approximation 
 can only come about very gradually, if I read 
 the signs of the times aright. It seems to me 
 to be far less likely of definite realisation than 
 in the case of a group united by ties such as 
 those of which I have spoken. 
 
 Well, the growth of such a future is at least 
 conceivable. The substance of some of the 
 things I am going to say about its conception, 
 and about the way by which that conception 
 may become real, is as old as Plato. Yet the 
 principles and facts to which I shall have to 
 refer appear to me to be often overlooked by 
 those to whom they might well appear obvious. 
 Perhaps the reason is the deadening effect of 
 that conventional atmosphere out of which few 
 men in public life succeed in completely escap- 
 ing. We can best assist in the freshening of 
 that atmosphere by omitting no opportunity of 
 trying to think rightly, and thereby to contribute 
 to the fashioning of a more hopeful and resolute 
 kind of public opinion. For, as someone has 
 said, " L'opinion generale dirige I'autorite, 
 quels qu'on soient les depositoires." 
 
 The chance of laying before such an audience 
 as this what was in my mind made the invitation 
 which came from the Bar Association and from 
 the heads of our great profession, both in 
 Canada and in the United States, a highly 
 attractive one. But before I could accept it I 
 had to obtain the permission of my Sovereign; 
 for, as you know, the Lord Chancellor is also
 
 MESSAGE FROM THE KING 103 
 
 Custos Sigilli, the Keeper of that Great Seal 
 under which alone supreme executive acts of 
 the British Crown can be done. It is an instru- 
 ment he must neither quit without special 
 authority, nor carry out of the realm. The 
 head of a predecessor of mine, Cardinal Wolsey, 
 was in peril because he was so daring as to take 
 the Great Seal across the water to Calais, when 
 he ought instead to have asked his Sovereign to 
 put it into Commission. 
 
 Well, the Clavis Regni was on the present 
 occasion put safely into Commission before I 
 left, and I am privileged to be here with a 
 comfortable constitutional conscience. But the 
 King has done more than graciously approve of 
 my leaving British shores. I am the bearer to 
 you of a message from him which I will now 
 read : 
 
 " I have given my Lord Chancellor per- 
 mission to cross the seas, so that he may 
 address the meeting at Montreal. I have 
 asked him to convey from me to that great 
 meeting of the lawyers of the United States 
 and of Canada my best wishes for its success. 
 I entertain the hope that the deliberations of 
 the distinguished men of both countries who 
 are to assemble at Montreal may add yet 
 further to the esteem and goodwill which the 
 people of the United States and of Canada 
 and the United Kingdom have for each 
 other." 
 
 The King's message forms a text for what I
 
 104 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 have to say, and, having conveyed that message 
 to you, I propose in the first place to turn to the 
 reasons which make me think that the class to 
 which you and I belong has a peculiar and 
 extensive responsibility as regards the future 
 relations of the three countries. But these 
 reasons turn on the position which Courts of 
 Law hold in Anglo-Saxon constitutions, and 
 in entering on them I must recall to you the 
 character of the tradition that tends to fashion 
 a common mind in you and me as members of 
 a profession that has exercised a profound 
 influence on Anglo-Saxon society. It is not 
 difficult in an assemblage of lawyers such as 
 w^e are to realise the process by which our 
 customary habits of thought have come into 
 being and bind us together. The spirit of the 
 jurisprudence which is ours, of the system which 
 we apply to the regulation of human affairs in 
 Canada, in the United States, and in Great 
 Britain alike, is different from that which 
 obtains in other countries. It is its very 
 peculiarity that lends to it its potency, and it 
 is worth while to make explicit what the spirit 
 of our law really means for us. 
 
 I read the other day the reflections of a 
 foreign thinker on what seemed to him the 
 barbarism of the entire system of English juris- 
 prudence, in its essence judge-made and not 
 based on the scientific foundation of a code. I 
 do not wonder at such reflections. There is a 
 gulf fixed between the method of a code and 
 such procedure as that of Chief-Justice Holt in
 
 THE LIFE OF THE LAW 105 
 
 Coggs V. Bernard, of Chief-Justice Pratt in 
 Armory v. Dclambie, and of Lord Mansfield 
 when he defined the count for money had and 
 received. A stranger to the spirit of the law 
 as it was evolved througrh centuries in England 
 will always find its history a curious one. 
 Looking first at the early English Common 
 Law, its most striking feature is the enormous 
 extent to which its founders concerned them- 
 selves with remedies before settling the sub- 
 stantive rules for breach of which the remedies 
 were required. Nowhere else, unless perhaps 
 in the law of ancient Rome, do we see such a 
 spectacle of legal writs making legal rights. 
 Of the system of the Common Law there is a 
 saying of Mr. Justice Wendell Holmes which 
 is profoundly true : " The life of the law has 
 not been logic; it has been experience. The 
 felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral 
 and political theories, intentions of public 
 policy, avowed or unconscious, even the preju- 
 dices which judges share with their fellow-men, 
 have had a good deal more to do than the 
 syllogism in determining the rules by which 
 men should be governed. The law embodies 
 the story of a nation's development through 
 many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as 
 if it contained only the axioms and corollaries 
 of a book of mathematics." As the distin- 
 guished writer whom I have quoted tells us, we 
 cannot, without the closest application of the 
 historical method, comprehend the genesis and 
 evolution of the Enelish Common Law. Its
 
 io6 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 paradox is that in its beginnings the forms of 
 action came before the substance. It is in the 
 history of Enghsh remedies that we have to 
 study the growth of rights. I recall a notable 
 sentence in one of Sir Henry Maine's books. 
 " So great," he declares, " is the ascendancy of 
 the Law of Actions in the infancy of Courts of 
 Justice, that substantive law has, at first, the 
 look of being gradually secreted in the inter- 
 stices of procedure." I will add to his 
 observation this : that all our reforms notwith- 
 standing, the dead hands of the old forms of 
 action still rest firmly upon us. In logic the 
 substantive conceptions ought of course to have 
 preceded these forms. But the historical 
 sequence has been different, for reasons with 
 which every competent student of early English 
 history is familiar. The phenomenon is no 
 uncommon one. The time spirit and the spirit 
 of logical form do not always, in a world where 
 the contingent is ever obtruding itself, travel 
 hand in hand. The germs of substantive law 
 were indeed present as potential forces from 
 the beginning, but they did not grow into life 
 until later on. And therefore forms of action 
 have thrust themselves forward with undue 
 prominence. That is why the understanding 
 of our law is, even for the practitioner of to-day, 
 inseparable from knowledge of its history. 
 
 As with the Common Law, so it is with 
 Equity. To know the principles of Equity is 
 to know the history of the Courts in which it 
 has been administered, and especially the
 
 LAW AND EQUITY 107 
 
 history of the office which at present I chance 
 myself to hold. Between law and equity there 
 is no other true line of demarcation. The King 
 was the fountain of justice. But to get justice 
 at his hands it was necessary first of all to obtain 
 the King's writ. As Bracton declared, " non 
 potest quis sine brevi agere." But the King 
 could not personally look after the department 
 where such writs were to be obtained. At the 
 head of this, his Chancery, he therefore placed 
 a Chancellor, usually a bishop, but sometimes 
 an archbishop and even a cardinal, for in these 
 days the Church had a grip which to a Lord 
 Chancellor of the twentieth century is un- 
 familiar. At first the holder of the office was 
 not a judge. But he was keeper of the King's 
 conscience, and his business was to see that the 
 King's subjects had remedies when he con- 
 sidered that they had suffered wrongs. Conse- 
 quently he began to invent new writs, and finally 
 to develop remedies which were not confined 
 by the rigid precedents of the Common Law. 
 Thus he soon became a judge. When he 
 found that he could not grant a Common Law 
 writ he took to summoning people before him 
 and to searching their consciences. He 
 inquired, for instance, as to trusts which they 
 were said to have undertaken, and as the result 
 of his inquiries rights and obligations unknown 
 to the Common Law were born in his Court of 
 Conscience. You see at a glance how suscep- 
 tible such a practice was of development into a 
 complete system of Equity. You would
 
 io8 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 expect, moreover, to find that the ecclesiastical 
 atmosphere in which my official predecessors 
 lived would influence the forms in which they 
 moulded their special system of jurisprudence. 
 This did indeed happen ; but even in those days 
 the atmosphere was not merely ecclesiastical. 
 For the Lord High Chancellor in the household 
 of an early English monarch was the King's 
 domestic chaplain, and as, unlike his fellow- 
 servants in the household, the Lord High 
 Steward and the Lord Great Chamberlain, he 
 always possessed the by no means common 
 advantage of being able to read and write, he 
 acted as the King's political secretary. He 
 used, it seems, in early days to live in the 
 palace, and he had a regular daily allowance. 
 From one of the records it appears that his 
 wages were five shillings, a simnel cake, two 
 seasoned simnels, one sextary of clear wine, one 
 sextary of household wine, one large wax 
 candle, and forty small pieces of candle. In 
 the time of Henry H. the modern treasury spirit 
 appears to have begun to walk abroad, for in 
 the records the allowance of five shillings 
 appears as if subjected to a reduction. If he 
 dined away from the palace, si extra domum 
 comedcrit, and was thereby forced to provide 
 extras, then indeed he got his five shillings. 
 But if he dined at home, intra domum, he was 
 not allowed more than three shillings and six- 
 pence. The advantage of his position was, 
 however, that, living in the palace, he was 
 always at the King's ear. He kept the Great
 
 THE GREAT SEAL 109 
 
 Seal through which all great acts of state were 
 manifested. Indeed it was the custody of the 
 Great Seal that made him Chancellor. Even 
 to-day this is the constitutional usage. When 
 I myself was made Lord Chancellor the 
 appointment was effected, not by Letters 
 Patent, nor by writing under the Sign Manual, 
 nor even by words spoken, but by the Sovereign 
 making a simple delivery of the Great Seal into 
 my hands while I knelt before him at Bucking- 
 ham Palace in the presence of the Privy 
 Council. 
 
 The reign of Charles L saw the last of the 
 ecclesiastical chancellors. The slight sketch 
 of the earlier period which I have drawn shows 
 that in these times there might well have 
 developed a great divergence of Equity from 
 the Common Law, under the influence of the 
 Canon and Roman laws to which ecclesiastical 
 chancellors would naturally turn. In the old 
 Courts of Equity it was natural that a different 
 atmosphere from that of the Common Law 
 Courts should be breathed. But with the 
 gradual drawing together of the Courts of Law 
 and Equity under lay chancellors the difference 
 of atmosphere disappears, and we see the two 
 systems becoming fused into one. 
 
 The moral of the whole story is the hopeless- 
 ness of attempting to study Anglo-Saxon 
 jurisprudence apart from the history of its 
 growth and of the characters of the judges who 
 created it. It is by no accident that among 
 Anglo-Saxon lawyers the law does not assume
 
 no HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 the form of codes, but is largely judge-made. 
 We have statutory codes for portions of the 
 field which we have to cover. But those statu- 
 tory codes come, not at the beginning, but at 
 the end. For the most part the law has already 
 been made by those who practise it before the 
 codes embody it. Such codes with us arrive 
 only with the close of the day, after its heat 
 and burden have been borne, and when the 
 journey is already near its end. 
 
 I have spoken of a spirit and of traditions 
 which have been apparent in English law. But 
 they have made their influence felt elsewhere. 
 My judicial colleagues in the province of 
 Quebec administer a system which is partly 
 embodied in a great modern code, and partly 
 depends on old French law of the period of 
 Louis XIV. They apply, moreover, a good 
 deal of the public and commercial law of 
 England. The relation of the code to these 
 systems has given rise to some controversies. 
 What I have gathered, however, when sitting in 
 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 
 is that a spirit not very different from that of 
 the English lawyers has prevailed in Quebec. 
 The influence of the judges in moulding the 
 law, and of legal opinion in fashioning the 
 shape which it should take, seem to me to have 
 been hardly less apparent in Quebec than 
 elsewhere in Canada. Indeed the several 
 systems of our group of nations, however those 
 systems have originated, everywhere show a 
 similar spirit, and disclose the power of our
 
 INFLUENCE OF LAWYERS in 
 
 lawyers in creating and developing the law as 
 well as in changing it, a power which has been 
 more exercised outside the legislature than 
 within it. It is surely because the lawyers of 
 the New World have an influence so potent and 
 so easily wielded that they have been able to 
 use it copiously in a wider field of public affairs 
 than that of mere jurisprudence. It is very 
 striking to the observer to see how many of the 
 names of those who have controlled the currents 
 of public opinion in the United States and 
 Canada alike have been the names of famous 
 lawyers. I think this has been so partly 
 because the tradition and spirit of the law were 
 always what I have described, and different 
 from that on the Continent of Europe. But it 
 has also been so because, in consequence of 
 that tradition and spirit, the vocation of the 
 lawyer has not, as on the Continent of Europe, 
 been that of a segregated profession of inter- 
 preters, but a vocation which has placed him 
 at the very heart of affairs. In the United 
 Kingdom this has happened in the same fashion, 
 yet hardly to so great an extent, because there 
 has been competition of other and pow^erful 
 classes whose tradition has been to devote their 
 lives to a Parliamentary career. But in the 
 case of all three nations it is profoundly true 
 that, as was said by the present President of 
 the United States in 19 lo, in an address 
 delivered to this very ^Association, " the country 
 must find lawyers of the right sort and the old 
 spirit to advise it, or it must stumble through a
 
 112 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 very chaos of blind experiment." " It never," 
 he went on to add, " needed lawyers who are 
 also statesmen more than it needs them now — 
 needs them in its courts, in its legislatures, in 
 its seats of executive authority — lawyers who 
 can think in the terms of society itself." 
 
 This at least is evident, that if you and I 
 belong to a great calling, it is a calling in which 
 we have a great responsibility. We can do 
 much to influence opinion, and the history of 
 our law and the character of our tradition render 
 it easy for us to attain to that unity in habit of 
 thought and sentiment which is the first condi- 
 tion of combined action. That is why I do not 
 hesitate to speak to you as I am doing. 
 
 And having said so much, I now submit to 
 you my second point. The law has grown by 
 development through the influence of the 
 opinion of society guided by its skilled advisers. 
 But the law forms only a small part of the 
 system of rules by which the conduct of the 
 citizens of a state is regulated. Law, properly 
 so called, whether civil or criminal, means 
 essentially those rules of conduct which are 
 expressly and publicly laid down by the 
 sovereign will of the state, and are enforced by 
 the sanction of compulsion. Law, however, 
 imports something more than this. As I have 
 already remarked, its full significance cannot 
 be understood apart from the history and spirit 
 of the nation whose law it is. Moreover it has 
 a real relation to the obligations even of con- 
 science, as well as to something else which I
 
 THE GENERAL WILL OF SOCIETY 113 
 
 shall presently refer to as the General Will of 
 Society. In short, if its full significance is to 
 be appreciated, larger conceptions than those 
 of the mere lawyer are essential, conceptions 
 which come to us from the moralist and the 
 sociologist, and without which we cannot see 
 fully how the genesis of law has come about. 
 That is where writers like Bentham and Austin 
 are deficient. One cannot read a great book 
 like the Esfr'it des Lois without seeing that 
 Montesquieu had a deeper insight than Bentham 
 or Austin, and that he had already grasped a 
 truth which, in Great Britain at all events, was 
 to be forgotten for a time. 
 
 Besides the rules and sanctions which belong 
 to law and legality, there are other rules, with a 
 different kind of sanction, which also influence 
 conduct. I have spoken of conscience, and 
 conscience, in the strict sense of the word, has 
 its own court. But the tribunal of conscience 
 is a private one, and its jurisdiction is limited 
 to the individual whose conscience it is. The 
 moral rules enjoined by the private conscience 
 may be the very highest of all. But they are 
 enforced only by an inward and private tribunal. 
 Their sanction is subjective and not binding in 
 the same way on all men. The very loftiness 
 of the motive which makes a man love his 
 neighbour more than himself, or sell all his 
 goods in order that he may obey a great and 
 inward call, renders that motive in the highest 
 cases incapable of being made a rule of 
 universal application in any positive form.
 
 114 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 And so it was that the foundation on which one 
 of the greatest of modern moralists, Immanuel 
 Kant, sought to base his ethical system, had to 
 be revised by his successors. For it was found 
 to reduce itself to little more than a negative 
 and therefore barren obligation to act at all 
 times from maxims fit for law universal, maxims 
 which, because merely negative, turned out to 
 be inadequate as guides through the field of 
 daily conduct. In point of fact that field is 
 covered, in the case of the citizen, only to a 
 small extent by law and legality on the one 
 hand, and by the dictates of the individual 
 conscience on the other. There is a more 
 extensive system of guidance which regulates 
 conduct and which differs from both in its 
 character and sanction. It applies, like law, to 
 all the members of a society alike, without 
 distinction of persons. It resembles the 
 morality of conscience in that it is enforced by 
 no legal compulsion. In the English language 
 we have no name for it, and this is unfortunate, 
 for the lack of a distinctive name has occasioned 
 confusion both of thought and of expression. 
 German writers have, however, marked out the 
 system to which I refer and have given it the 
 name of " Sittlichkeit." In his book, Der 
 Zweck im Rechi, Rudolph von Jhering, a 
 famous professor at Gottingen, with whose 
 figure I was familiar when I was a student there 
 nearly forty years ago, pointed out, in the part 
 which he devoted to the subject of " Sittlich- 
 keit," that it was the merit of the German
 
 " vSITTLICHKEIT " 115 
 
 language to have been the only one to find a 
 really distinctive and scientific expression for it. 
 " Sittlichkeit " is the system of habitual or 
 customary conduct, ethical rather than legal, 
 which embraces all those obligations of the 
 citizen which it is " bad form " or " not the 
 thing " to disregard. Indeed regard for these 
 obligations is frequently enjoined merely by 
 the social penalty of being " cut " or looked on 
 askance. And yet the system is so generally 
 accepted and is held in so high regard, that no 
 one can venture to disregard it without in some 
 way suffering at the hands of his neighbours 
 for so doing. If a man maltreats his wife and 
 children, or habitually jostles his fellow-citizen 
 in the street, or does things flagrantly selfish or 
 in bad taste, he is pretty sure to find himself in 
 a minority and the worse off in the end. Not 
 only does it not pay to do these things, but the 
 decent man does not wish to do them. A 
 feeling analogous to what arises from the 
 dictates of his more private and individual 
 conscience restrains him. He finds himself so 
 restrained in the ordinary affairs of daily life. 
 But he is guided in his conduct by no mere 
 inward feeling, as in the case of conscience. 
 Conscience and, for that matter, law overlap 
 parts of the sphere of social obligation about 
 which I am speaking. A rule of conduct may, 
 indeed, appear in more than one sphere, and 
 may consequently have a twofold sanction. 
 But the guide to which the citizen mostly looks 
 is just the standard recognised by the commu-
 
 n6 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 nity, a community made up mainly of those 
 fellow-citizens whose good opinion he respects 
 and desires to have. He has everywhere round 
 him an object-lesson in the conduct of decent 
 people towards each other and towards the 
 community to which they belong. Without 
 such conduct and the restraints which it imposes 
 there could be no tolerable social life, and real 
 freedom from interference would not be en- 
 joyed. It is the instinctive sense of what to do 
 and what not to do in daily life and behaviour 
 that is the source of liberty and ease. And it 
 is this instinctive sense of obligation that is the 
 chief foundation of society. Its reality takes 
 objective shape and displays itself in family 
 life and in our other civic and social institutions. 
 It is not limited to any one form, and it is 
 capable of manifesting itself in new forms and 
 of developing and changing old forms. Indeed 
 the civic community is more than a political 
 fabric. It includes all the social institutions in 
 and by which the individual life is influenced — 
 such as are the family, the school, the church, 
 the legislature, and the executive. None of 
 these can subsist in isolation from the rest; 
 together they and other institutions of the kind 
 form a single organic whole, the whole which 
 is known as the Nation. The spirit and habit 
 of life which this organic entirety inspires and 
 compels are what, for my present purpose, I 
 mean by " Sittlichkeit." "Sitte" is the German 
 for custom, and " Sittlichkeit " implies custom 
 and a habit of mind and action. It also implies
 
 MORALITY AND LAW ill 
 
 a little more. Fichte^ defines it in words which 
 are worth quoting, and which I will put into 
 English : " What, to begin with," he says, 
 " does ' Sitte ' signify, and in what sense do we 
 use the word? It means for us, and means in 
 every accurate reference we make to it, those 
 principles of conduct which regulate people in 
 their relations to each other, and which have 
 become matter of habit and second nature at the 
 stage of culture reached, and of which, there- 
 fore, we are not explicitly conscious. Princi- 
 ples, we call them, because we do not refer to 
 the sort of conduct that is casual or is deter- 
 mined on casual grounds, but to the hidden and 
 uniform ground of action which we assume to 
 be present in the man whose action is not 
 deflected and from which we can pretty certainly 
 predict what he will do. Principles, we say, 
 which have become a second nature and of 
 which we are not explicitly conscious. We 
 thus exclude all impulses and motives based 
 on free individual choice, the inward aspect of 
 ' Sittlichkeit,' that is to say morality, and also 
 the outward side, or law, alike. For what a 
 man has first to reflect over and then freely to 
 resolve is not for him a habit in conduct; and 
 in so far as habit in conduct is associated with 
 a particular age, it is regarded as the uncon- 
 scious instrument of the Time Spirit." 
 
 The system of ethical habit in a community 
 is of a dominating character, for the decision 
 
 I. Grundzilge des Gegenwdrtigen Zeitaliers, Werke, Band 
 vii., p. 214.
 
 iiS HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 and influence of the whole community is 
 embodied in that social habit. Because such 
 conduct is systematic and covers the whole of 
 the field of society, the individual will is closely 
 related by it to the will and spirit of the com- 
 munity. And out of this relation arises the 
 power of adequately controlling the conduct 
 of the individual. If this power fails or 
 becomes weak the community degenerates and 
 may fall to pieces. Different nations excel in 
 their " Sittlichkeit " in different fashions. The 
 spirit of the community and its ideals may vary 
 greatly. There may be a low level of " Sitt- 
 lichkeit"; and we have the spectacle of nations 
 which have even degenerated in this respect. 
 It may possibly conflict with law and morality, 
 as in the case of the duel. But when its level 
 is high in a nation we admire the system, for 
 we see it not only guiding a people and binding 
 them together for national effort, but affording 
 the most real freedom of thought and action for 
 those who in daily life habitually act in harmony 
 with the General Will. 
 
 Thus we have in the case of a community, be 
 it the city or be it the state, an illustration of a 
 sanction which is sufficient to compel observance 
 of a rule without any question of the application 
 of force. This kind of sanction may be of a 
 highly compelling quality, and it often extends 
 so far as to make the individual prefer the good 
 of the community to his own. The develop- 
 ment of many of our social institutions, of our 
 hospitals, of our universities, and of other
 
 IDEALS AND CONDUCT 119 
 
 establishments of the kind, shows the extent to 
 which it reaches and is powerful. But it has 
 yet higher forms in which it approaches very 
 nearly to the level of the obligation of con- 
 science, although it is distinct from that form 
 of obligation. I will try to make clear what I 
 mean by illustrations. A man may be impelled 
 to action of a high order by his sense of unity 
 with the society to which he belongs, action of 
 which, from the civic standpoint, all approve. 
 What he does in such a case is natural to him, 
 and is done without thought of reward or 
 punishment; but it has reference to standards 
 of conduct set up by society and accepted just 
 because society has set them up. There is a 
 poem by the late Sir Alfred Lyall which exem- 
 plifies the high level that may be reached in 
 such conduct. The poem is called Theology 
 in Extremis, and it describes the feelings of an 
 Englishman who had been taken prisoner by 
 Mahometan rebels in the Indian Mutiny. He 
 is face to face with a cruel death. They offer 
 him his life if he will repeat something from the 
 Koran. If he complies, no one is likely ever 
 to hear of it, and he will be free to return to 
 England and to the woman he loves. More- 
 over, and here is the real point, he is not a 
 believer in Christianity, so that it is no question 
 of denying his Saviour. What ought he to do ? 
 Deliverance is easy, and the relief and advan- 
 tage would be unspeakably great. But he does 
 not really hesitate, and every shadow of doubt 
 disappears when he hears his fellow-prisoner,
 
 120 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 a half-caste, pattering eagerly the words 
 demanded. 
 
 He himself has no hope of heaven and he 
 loves life — 
 
 " Yet for the honour of English race 
 May I not live or endure disgrace; 
 Ay, but the word if I could have said it, 
 I by no terrors of hell perplext. 
 Hard to be silent and have no credit 
 From man in this world, or reward in the next ; 
 None to bear witness and reckon the cost 
 Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost. 
 I must begone to the crowd untold 
 Of men by the cause which they served unknown, 
 Who moulder in myriad graves of old ; 
 Never a story and never a stone 
 Tells of the martyrs who die like me 
 Just for the pride of the old countree." 
 
 I will take another example, this time from 
 the literature of ancient Greece. 
 
 In one of the shortest but not least impressive 
 of his Dialogues, the " Crito," Plato tells us of 
 the character of Socrates, not as a philosopher, 
 but as a good citizen. He has been unjustly 
 condemned by the Athenians as an enemy to 
 the good of the state. Crito comes to him in 
 prison to persuade him to escape. He urges 
 on him many arguments, his duty to his children 
 included. But Socrates refuses. He chooses 
 to follow, not what anyone in the crowd might 
 do, but the example which the ideal citizen 
 should set. It would be a breach of his duty 
 to fly from the judgment duly passed in the 
 Athens to which he belongs, even though he
 
 THE COMMON WILL I2l 
 
 thinks the decree should have been different. 
 For it is the decree of the estabhshed justice 
 of his City State. He will not " play truant." 
 He hears the words, " Listen, Socrates, to us 
 who have brought you up " ; and in reply he 
 refuses to go away, in these final sentences : 
 " This is the voice which I seem to hear mur- 
 muring in my ears, like the sound of the flute 
 in the ears of the mystic ; that voice, I say, is 
 murmuring in my ears, and prevents me from 
 hearing any other. And I know that anything 
 more which you may say will be vain." 
 
 Why do men of this stamp act so, it may be 
 when leading the battle line, it may be at 
 critical moments of quite other kinds? It is, 
 I think, because they are more than mere 
 individuals. Individual they are, but com- 
 pletely real, even as individual, only in their 
 relation to organic and social wholes in which 
 they are members, such as the family, the city, 
 the state. TBere is in every truly organised 
 community a Common Will which is willed by 
 those who compose that community, and who in 
 so willing are more than isolated men and 
 women. It is not, indeed, as unrelated atoms 
 that they have lived. They have grown, from 
 the receptive days of childhood up to maturity, 
 in an atmosphere of example and general 
 custom., and their lives have widened out from 
 one little world to other and higher worlds, so 
 that, through occupying successive stations in 
 life, they more and more come to make their 
 own the life of the social whole in which thev
 
 122 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 move and have their being. They cannot mark 
 off or define their own individuaUties without 
 reference to the individuaHties of others. And 
 so they unconsciously find themselves as in 
 truth pulse-beats of the whole system, and 
 themselves the whole system. It is real in them 
 and they in it. They are real only because 
 they are social. The notion that the individual 
 is the highest form of reality, and that the 
 relationship of individuals is one of mere 
 contract, the notion of Hobbes and of Bentham 
 and of Austin, turns out to be quite inadequate. 
 Even of an everyday contract, that of marriage, 
 it has been well said that it is a contract to pass 
 out of the sphere of contract, and that it is 
 possible only because the contracting parties 
 are already beyond and above that sphere. As 
 a modern writer, F. H. Bradley of Oxford, to 
 whose investigations in these regions we owe 
 much, has finely said^ : " The moral organism 
 is not a mere animal organism. In the latter 
 the member is not aware of itself as such, while 
 in the former it knows itself, and therefore 
 knows the whole in itself. The narrow external 
 function of the man is not the whole man. He 
 has a life which we cannot see with our eyes, 
 and there is no duty so mean that it is not the 
 realisation of this, and knowable as such. 
 What counts is not the visible outer work so 
 much as the spirit in which it is done. The 
 breadth of my life is not measured by the 
 multitude of my pursuit's, nor the space I take 
 I. Ethical Studies, p. 170.
 
 INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 123 
 
 Up amongst other men ; but by the fulness of 
 the whole life which I know as mine. It is true 
 that less now depends on each of us as this or 
 that man; it is not true that our individuality is 
 therefore lessened, that therefore we have less 
 in us." 
 
 There is, according to this view, a General 
 Will with which the will of the good citizen is 
 in accord. He feels that he would despise 
 himself were his private will not in harmony 
 with it. The notion of the reality of such a 
 will is no new one. It is as old as the Greeks, 
 for whom the moral order and the city state 
 were closely related; and we find it in modern 
 books in which we do not look for it. Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau is probably best known to 
 the world by the famous words in which he 
 begins the first chapter of the Social Contract : 
 " Man is born free, and everywhere he is in 
 chains. Those who think themselves to be the 
 masters of others cease not to be greater slaves 
 than the people they govern." He goes on in 
 the next paragraph to tell us that if he were 
 only to consider force and the effects of it, he 
 would say that if a nation was constrained to 
 obey and did obey, it did well, but that when- 
 ever it could throw off its yoke and did throw 
 it off, it acted better. His words, written in 
 1762, became a text for the pioneers of the 
 French Revolution. But they would have done 
 well to read further into the book. As Rous- 
 seau goes on we find a different conception. 
 He passes from considering the fiction of a
 
 124 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 Social Contract to a discussion of the power 
 over the individual of the General Will, by 
 virtue of which a people becomes a people. 
 This General Will, the Volonte Generate, he 
 distinguishes from the Volonte de Tous, which 
 is a mere numerical sum of individual wills. 
 These particular wills do not rise above them- 
 selves. The General Will, on the other hand, 
 represents what is greater than the individual 
 volition of those who compose the society of 
 which it is the will. On occasions this higher 
 will is more apparent than at other times. But 
 it may, if there is social slackness, be difficult 
 to distinguish from a mere aggregate of voices, 
 from the will of a mob. What is interesting is 
 that Rousseau, so often associated with doctrine 
 of quite another kind, should finally recognise 
 the bond of a General Will as what really holds 
 the community together. For him, as for those 
 who have had a yet clearer grasp of the prin- 
 ciple, in willing the General Will we not only 
 realise our true selves but we may rise above 
 our ordinary habit of mind. We may reach 
 heights which we could not reach, or which at 
 all events most of us could not reach, in isola- 
 tion. There are few observers who have not 
 been impressed with the wonderful unity and 
 concentration of purpose which an entire nation 
 may display — above all, in a period of crisis. 
 We see it in time of war, when a nation is 
 fighting for its life or for a great cause. We 
 have seen it in Japan, and we have seen it still 
 more recently even among the peoples of the
 
 POWER OF THE GENERAL WILL 125 
 
 .Balkan Peninsula. We have marvelled at the 
 illustrations with which history abounds of the 
 General Will rising to heights of which but few 
 of the individual citizens in whom it is embodied 
 have ever before been conscious even in their 
 dreams. 
 
 In his life of Themistocles Plutarch tells us 
 how even in time of peace the leader of the 
 Athenian people could fashion them into an 
 undivided community and inspire them to rise 
 above themselves. It was before the Persians 
 had actually threatened to invade Attica that 
 Themistocles foresaw what would come. 
 Greece could not raise armies comparable in 
 numbers to those of the Persian kings. But 
 he told his people that the oracle had spoken 
 thus : " When all things else are taken within 
 the boundary of Cecrops and the covert of 
 divine Cithaeron, Zeus grants to Athena that 
 the wall of wood alone shall remain uncaptured, 
 which shall help thee and thy children." The 
 Athenian citizens were accustomed in each vear 
 to divide among themselves the revenue of their 
 silver mines at Laurium. Themistocles had 
 the daring, so Plutarch tells us, to come forward 
 and boldly propose that the usual distribution 
 should cease, and that they should let him 
 spend the money for them in building a hundred 
 ships. The citizens rose to his lead, the ships 
 were built, and with them the Greeks were able 
 at a later date to win against Xerxes the great 
 sea-fight at Salamis, and to defeat an invasion 
 by the hosts of Persia which, had it succeeded,
 
 126 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 might have changed the course of modern as 
 well as ancient history. 
 
 By such leadership it is that a common ideal 
 can be made to penetrate the soul of a people, 
 and to take complete possession of it. The 
 ideal may be very high, or it may be of so 
 ordinary a kind that we are not conscious of it 
 without the effort of reflection. But when it is 
 there it influences and guides daily conduct. 
 Such idealism passes beyond the sphere of law, 
 which provides only what is necessary for mutual 
 protection and liberty of just action. It falls 
 short, on the other hand, in quality of the 
 dictates of what Kant called the Categorical 
 Imperative that rules the private and individual 
 conscience, but that alone, an Imperative which 
 therefore gives insufficient guidance for ordinary 
 and daily social life. Yet the ideal of which I 
 speak is not the less binding; and it is recog- 
 nised as so binding that the conduct of all good 
 men conforms to it. 
 
 Thus we find within the single state the 
 evidence of a sanction which is less than legal 
 but more than merely moral, and which is 
 sufficient, in the vast majority of the events of 
 daily life, to secure observance of general 
 standards of conduct without any question of 
 resort to force. If this is so within a nation, 
 can it be so as between nations? This brings 
 me at once to my third point. Can nations 
 form a group or community among themselves 
 within which a habit of looking to common 
 ideals may grow up sufficiently strong to
 
 GENERAL WILL OF NATIONS 127 
 
 develop a General Will, and to make the 
 binding power of these ideals a reliable sanction 
 for their obligations to each other? 
 
 There is, I think, nothing in the real nature 
 of nationality that precludes such a possibility. 
 A famous student of history has bequeathed to 
 us a definition of nationality which is worth 
 attention : I refer to Ernest Renan, of whom 
 George Meredith once said to me, while the 
 great French critic was still living, that there 
 was more in his head than in any other head in 
 Europe. Renan tells us that "Man is enslaved 
 neither by his race, nor by his language, nor by 
 the direction of mountain ranges. A great 
 aggregation of men, sane of mind and warm of 
 heart, creates a moral consciousness which is 
 called a nation." Another acute critic of life, 
 Matthew Arnold, citing one still greater than 
 himself, draws what is in effect a deduction 
 from the same proposition. " Let us," he says,^ 
 " conceive of the whole group of civilised 
 nations as being, for intellectual and spiritual 
 purposes, one great confederation, bound to a 
 joint action and w^orking towards a common 
 result; a confederation whose members have a 
 due knowledge both of the past, out of which 
 they all proceed, and of each other. This was 
 the ideal of Goethe, and it is an ideal which 
 will impose itself upon the thoughts of our 
 modern societies more and more." 
 
 But while I admire the faith of Renan and 
 Arnold and Goethe in what they all three 
 I. Preface to the Poems of Wordsworth.
 
 128 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 believed to be the future of humanity, there 
 is a long road yet to be travelled before what 
 they hoped for can be fully accomplished. 
 Grotius concludes his great book on War and 
 Peace with a noble prayer : " May God write," 
 he said, " these lessons — He Who alone can — 
 on the hearts of all those who have the affairs 
 of Christendom in their hands. And may He 
 give to those persons a mind fitted to under- 
 stand and to respect rights, human and divine, 
 and lead them to recollect always that the 
 ministration committed to them is no less than 
 this, that they are the Governors of Man, a 
 creature most dear to God." 
 
 The prayer of Grotius has not yet been 
 fulfilled, nor do recent events point to the 
 fulfilment as being near. The world is pro- 
 bably a long way off from the abolition of 
 armaments and the peril of war. For habits 
 of mind which can be sufficiently strong with a 
 single people can hardly be as strong between 
 nations. There does not exist the same extent 
 of common interest, of common purpose, and 
 of common tradition. And yet the tendency, 
 even as between nations that stand in no special 
 relation to each other, to develop such a habit 
 of mind is in our time becoming recognisable. 
 There are signs that the best people in the best 
 nations are ceasing to wish to live in a world 
 of mere claims, and to proclaim on every 
 occasion "Our country, right or wrong." There 
 is growing up a disposition to believe that it is 
 good, not only for all men but for all nations,
 
 THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS 129 
 
 to consider their neighbours' point of view as 
 well as their own. There is apparent at least 
 a tendency to seek for a higher standard of 
 ideals in international relations. The barbarism 
 which once looked to conquest and the waging 
 of successful war as the main object of states- 
 manship, seems as though it were passing away. 
 There have been established rules of Inter- 
 national Law which already govern the conduct 
 of war itself, and are generally observed as 
 binding by all civilised people, with the result 
 that the cruelties of war have been lessened. 
 If practice falls short of theory, at least there 
 is to-day little effective challenge of the broad 
 principle that a nation has as regards its neigh- 
 bours duties as well as rights. It is this spirit 
 that may develop as time goes on into a full 
 international "Sittlichkeit." But such develop- 
 ment is certainly still easier and more hopeful 
 in the case of nations with some special relation, 
 than it is within a mere aggregate of nations. 
 At times a common interest among nations with 
 special relations of the kind I am thinking of 
 gives birth to a social habit of thought and 
 action which in the end crystallises into a treaty, 
 a treaty which in its turn stimulates the process 
 that gave it birth. We see this in the case of 
 Germany and Austria, and in that of France 
 and Russia. Sometimes a friendly relationship 
 grows up without crystallising into a general 
 treaty. Such has been the case between my 
 own country and France. We have no conven- 
 tion excepting one confined to the settlement of
 
 130 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 old controversies over specific subjects, a con- 
 vention that has nothing to do with war. None 
 the less, since in that convention there was 
 embodied the testimony of willingness to give 
 as well as to take, and to be mutually under- 
 standing and helpful, there has arisen between 
 France and England a new kind of feeling 
 which forms a real tie. It is still young, and 
 it may stand still or diminish. But equally well 
 it may advance and grow, and it is earnestly to 
 be hoped that it will do so. 
 
 Recent events in Europe and the way in 
 which the Great Powers have worked together 
 to preserve the peace of Europe, as if forming 
 one community, point to the ethical possibilities 
 of the group system as deserving of close study 
 by both statesmen and students. The " Sitt- 
 Hchkeit " which can develop itself between the 
 peoples of even a loosely connected group 
 seems to promise a sanction for International 
 Obligation which has not hitherto, so far as I 
 know, attracted attention in connection with 
 International Law. But if the group system 
 deserves attention in the cases referred to, how 
 much more does it call for attention in another 
 and far more striking case ! 
 
 In the year which is approaching, a century 
 will have passed since the United States and 
 the people of Canada and Great Britain 
 terminated a great war by the Peace of Ghent. 
 On both sides the combatants felt that war to 
 be unnatural and one that should never have 
 been commenced. And now we have lived for
 
 A CENTURY OF PEACE 131 
 
 nearly a hundred years, not only in peace, but 
 also, I think, in process of coming to a deepen- 
 ing and yet more complete understanding of 
 each other, and to the possession of common 
 ends and ideals, ends and ideals which are 
 natural to the Anglo-Saxon group, and to that 
 group alone. It seems to me that within our 
 community there is growing an ethical feeling 
 which has something approaching to the binding 
 quality of which I have been speaking. Men 
 may violate the obligations which that feeling 
 suggests, but by a vast number of our respective 
 citizens it would not be accounted decent to do 
 so. For the nations in such a group as ours 
 to violate these obligations would be as if 
 respectable neighbours should fall to blows 
 because of a difference of opinion. We may 
 disagree on specific points and we probably 
 shall, but the differences should be settled in 
 the spirit and in the manner in which citizens 
 usually settle their differences. The new 
 attitude which is growing up has changed many 
 things, and made much that once happened no 
 longer likely to recur. I am concerned when 
 I come across things that were written about 
 America by British novelists only fifty years 
 ago, and I doubt not that there are some things 
 in the American Hterature of days gone past 
 which many here would wish to have been 
 without. But now that sort of writing is happily 
 over, and we are realising more and more the 
 significance of our joint tradition and of the 
 common interests which are ours. It is a
 
 133 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 splendid example to the world that Canada and 
 the United States should have nearly four 
 thousand miles of frontier practically unforti- 
 fied. As an ex- War Minister, who knows what 
 a saving in unproductive expenditure this 
 means, I fervently hope that it may never be 
 otherwise. 
 
 But it is not merely in external results that 
 the pursuit of a growing common ideal shows 
 itself when such an ideal is really in men's 
 minds. It transforms the spirit in which we 
 regard each other, and it gives us faith in each 
 other — 
 
 " Why, what but faith, do we abhor 
 And idoHse each other for — 
 Faith in our evil or our good, 
 Which is or is not understood 
 Aright by those we love or those 
 We hate, thence called our friends or foes." 
 
 I think that for the future of the relations 
 between the United States on the one hand and 
 Canada and Great Britain on the other, those 
 who are assembled in this great meeting have 
 their own special responsibility. We who are 
 the lawyers of the New World and of the old 
 mother country possess, as I have said to you, 
 a tradition which is distinctive and pecuharly 
 our own. We have been taught to look on 
 our system of justice, not as something that 
 waits to be embodied in abstract codes before 
 it can be said to exist, but as what we ourselves 
 are progressively and co-operatively evolving. 
 And our power of influence is not confined to
 
 REvSPONSIBILITIES OF LAWYERvS 133 
 
 the securing of municipal justice. We play a 
 large part in public affairs, and we influence 
 our fellow-men in questions which go far 
 beyond the province of the law, and which 
 extend in the relations of society to that " Sitt- 
 lichkeit " of which I have spoken. In this 
 region we exert much control. If, then, there 
 is to grow up among the nations of our group, 
 and between that group and the rest of civilisa- 
 tion, a yet further development of " Sittlich- 
 keit," has not our profession special opportu- 
 nities of influencing opinion, which are coupled 
 with a deep responsibility? To me, when I 
 look to the history of our calling in the three 
 countries, it seems that the answer to this 
 question requires no argument and admits of 
 no controversy. It is our very habit of regard- 
 ing the law and the wider rules of conduct 
 which lie beyond the law as something to be 
 moulded best if we co-operate steadily, that 
 gives us an influence perhaps greater than is 
 strictly ours, an influence which may in affairs 
 of the state be potently exercised for good or 
 for evil. 
 
 This, then, is why, as a lawyer speaking to 
 lawyers, I have a strong sense of responsibility 
 in being present here to-day, and why I believe 
 that many of you share my feeling. A move- 
 ment is in progress which we, by the character 
 of our calling as judges and as advocates, have 
 special opportunities to further. The sphere 
 of our action has its limits, but at least it is 
 given to us as a body to be the counsellors of
 
 134 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 our fellow-citizens in public and in private life 
 alike. I have before my mind the words which 
 I have already quoted of the present President 
 of the United States, when he spoke of "lawyers 
 who can think in the terms of society itself." 
 And I believe that if, in the language of yet 
 another president, in the famous words of 
 Lincoln, we as a body in our minds and hearts 
 " highly resolve " to work for the general 
 recognition by society of the binding character 
 of international duties and rights as they arise 
 within the Anglo-Saxon group, we shall not 
 resolve in vain. A mere common desire may 
 seem an intangible instrument, and yet, intan- 
 gible as it is, it may be enough to form the 
 beginnine of what in the end will make the 
 whole difference. Ideas have hands and feet, 
 and the ideas of a congress such as this may 
 affect pubhc opinion deeply. It is easy to fail 
 to realise how much an occasion like the 
 assemblage in Montreal of the American Bar 
 Association, on the eve of a great international 
 centenary, can be made to mean, and it is easy 
 to let such an occasion pass with a too timid 
 modesty. Should we let it pass now, I think a 
 real opportunity for doing goodwill just thereby 
 have been missed by you and me. We need 
 say nothing; we need pass no cut and dried 
 resolution. It is the spirit not the letter that 
 is the one thing needful. 
 
 I do not apologise for having trespassed on 
 the time and attention of this remarkable meet- 
 ing for so long, or for urging what may seem
 
 PRINCIPLES FOR PROGREvSS 135 
 
 to belong more to ethics than to law. We are 
 bound to search after fresh principles if we 
 desire to find firm foundations for a progressive 
 practical life. It is the absence of a clear 
 conception of principle that occasions some at 
 least of the obscurities and perplexities that 
 beset us in the giving of counsel and in follow- 
 ing it. On the other hand, it is futile to delay 
 action until reflection has cleared up all our 
 difficulties. If we would learn to swim, we 
 must first enter the water. We must not refuse 
 to begin our journey until the whole of the road 
 we may have to travel lies mapped out before 
 us. A great thinker declared that it is not 
 Philosophy which first gives us the truth that 
 lies to hand around us, and that mankind has 
 not to wait for Philosophy in order to be con- 
 scious of this truth. Plain John Locke put the 
 same thing in more homely words when he said 
 that " God has not been so sparing to men to 
 make them two-legged creatures, and left it to 
 Aristotle to make them rational." Yet the 
 reflective spirit does help, not by furnishing us 
 with dogmas or final conclusions, or even with 
 lines of action that are always definite, but by 
 the insight which it gives, an insight that 
 develops in us what Plato called the " synoptic 
 mind," the mind that enables us to see things 
 steadily as well as to see them whole. 
 
 And now I have expressed what I had in 
 my mind. Your welcome to me has been 
 indeed a generous one, and I shall carry the 
 memory of it back over the Atlantic. But the
 
 136 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 occasion has seemed to me significant of some- 
 tHing beyond even its splendid hospitality. I 
 have interpreted it, and I think not wrongly, 
 as the symbol of a desire that extends beyond 
 the limits of this assemblage. I mean the 
 desire that we should steadily direct our 
 thoughts to how we can draw into closest 
 harmony the nations of a race in which all of 
 us have a common pride. If that be now a 
 far-spread inclination, then indeed may the 
 people of three great countries say to Jerusalem, 
 " Thou shalt be built," and to the Temple, 
 " Thy foundation shall be laid." 
 
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 and instructive contributions towards the solution of specific prob- 
 lems of our national life that we should be glad to secure for Mr. 
 Haldane's addresses the widest possible circulation ; but rather 
 because they are throughout inspired by a great idea, and because, 
 while professedly dealing with only one or two aspects of the Im- 
 perial problem, they furnish us with a strong stimulus towards 
 the formation of loftier conceptions of our duty as citizens of the 
 Empire in every department of our Imperial life." — Morning I'ost. 
 
 UNIVERSITIES AND NATIONAL LIFE 
 
 Second Edition, with an added chapter entitled — Great 
 Britain and Germany : A Stidy In National Charac- 
 teristics. Crown 8vo., 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 "The subjects dealt with in these papers are of far wider scope 
 than would be imagined from this title. So far a.s it is possible to 
 summarise tiie lesson which they teach, they may be said to 
 describe from various standpoints the ideal character, and to 
 sketch out the best methods of developing it." — Spectator.
 
 THE TIMES Series of Reprints 
 of articles on subjects of popular interest. 
 
 For some time past there have appeared in The Times 
 various series of articles, on widely differing subjects, but 
 all of them questions of the day. These articles are 
 based not on mere arm-chair theory, or on other books, 
 but on personal study, and therefore contain information 
 which is not accessible elsewhere, and is of permanent 
 value. As a I'esult of numei'ous requests received from 
 readers, they are now issued in tastefully bound and well 
 printed volumes of a handy size — a list will be found on 
 the following pages. One Shilling net each. 
 
 A DICKENS PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 "The erudition and charm of the work are beyond question . . 
 There are probably not six people who could have written with 
 such profound knowledge and in such an alluring and allusive 
 way." — Westminster Gazette. 
 
 SOME FRENCH CATHEDRALS 
 
 "The articles of which it is composed struck us when read in 
 The Times as the work of one who knew everything that architec - 
 ture had to say on the subject, and had, on that foundation, 
 built a superstructure of testhetic appreciation permitted to few." 
 
 — The Athenceum, 
 
 THE POWERS AND AERONAUTICS. 
 
 The Secretary of State for AVar speaking in the House 
 OF Commons said: — "To those who took an interest in aeronautics 
 he recommended the reading of some remarkable articles in The 
 Times published a short time ago, and he said that without pre- 
 judice because The Times had not always supported his policy. 
 The articles contained a better and fuller statement of the pro- 
 gress in aviation of foreign countries than anything else he had 
 read on the subject." 
 
 LABOUR AND INDUSTRY IN 1913. 
 
 " This timely volume should be in the hands of any person who 
 really desires to know both sides of tlie case. No statesmanship 
 is possible on half-knowledge." — The Outlook. 
 
 LONDON: JOHN MURRAY.
 
 II l\ Jk V 
 
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 DEC 
 
 14 199u 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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