Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/benjaminjowettmaOOtollrich BENJAMIN JOWETT UASTER OF BALLIOL ^' ^,'% LOTJDON.EDWAKD ARNOLD BENJAMIN JOWETT MASTER OF BALLIOL BY THE HON. LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE AUTHOR OF 'SAFE STUDIES,' ETC. FIFTH IMPRESSION LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD ^uJblwher to tht Ixibm (Omce 1904 iK PKEFACE TO THE FOUBTH EDITION. On pag^ 81 and 82, I have mentioned a report that Freeman, after receiving a summary invitation from Jowett, was unceremoniously bowed out — I had almost said ' nodded out ' — of the room. So com- plete an illustration of poetical justice by the inflic- tion of great rudeness on the very rude seemed to me almost too good to be authentic ; and I therefore hinted that the narrative might be apocrypha l. A friend has since assured me that he heard the story from Freeman's own lips. Would that I, too, had heard him tell the tale in his own way, or, better still, that I had seen his countenance just after the inhospitable door had closed upon him. On page 117, I report three paradoxical sayings which Jowett, without mentioning the name of their author, had quoted to me with approval. I have since learnt that their author was the late Sir Charles Trevelyan. My critic in the Edinburgh Review has taken me to task for putting so much of my own philosophy into my Memoir of Jowett. I tried to deal with this objection by anticipation in the Preface to the 261430 N VI PREFACE First Edition. But it may strengthen my case if I now add a supplementary remark to what is there urged. Mill, looking forward with confidence to the ultimate triumph of his own views, insisted that the more complete that triumph, the greater will be the need of the countervailing influence of Wordsworth. He might have added that the greater also will be the need of the beautiful, if unsub- stantial, religion — the theological rainbow — of Jowett. The nature and origin of this latter need are touched upon in the present Memoir. The fact is that, when the subtle and Protean spirit of evolu- tion has filled every cranny of thought, a continually increasing proportion of educated men will be dominated by scientific ideas, and will become, as Coleridge would have said, Aristotelian. I call attention to this point in vindication of those seem- ingly discursive comments of mine which are on Jowettism rather than on Jowett, nay, which have reference to the effect produced by the revered Master on at least one of his disciples. For, by analysing the influence of this typically Platonic teacher on a typically Aristotelian pupil, I have tried to catch a glimpse of the light and colour which he and his fellow-craftsmen may one day be found to have shed over the flat and dreary outlook of an Aristotelian world. L. A. T. Athen^um Club, February Uth, 1899. BENJAMIN JOWETT, MASTER OF BALLIOL. I. • I cannot hide that some have striven, Achieving calm, to whom was given The joy that mixes man with heaven. Who, rowing hard against the stream, Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, And did not dream it was a dream ; ♦ * * * ♦ "Which did accomplish their desire, Bore and forebore, and did not tire, Like Stephen, an unqueiiched fire.' Tennyson. When I went up to Balliol in 1856, 1 became a pnpil of Jowett. The class which I obtained in 1860 was in the main due to his assiduous and discerning care. He helped me both directly and indirectly. ' Little time is lost through ill-health,' he once said to me, ' though much is lost through idleness.' Doubtless this was an exaggeration, but it was the sort of friendly exaggeration which stimulated me to 1 2 BENJAMIN JOWETT struggle against physical disadvantages. Nor did the stimulus which he thus applied bring with it a sense of irritation. The despotic side of his char- acter, of which some of his pupils complained, seldom or never showed itself m my presence — at any rate, in relation to myself. On the contrary, when beset by trials and difficulties, I found him generally a wise and always a sympathetic coun- sellor. And thus it was that, though I am not given to the expression of strong emotion, yet, when in 1893 the news reached me of the sad event which deprived me of my oldest and truest friend and Oxford of her brightest ornament, the words rose unbidden to my lips, * I feel that there has gone a glory from the earth.' I will begin with a few of my early recollections of Jowett, reserving to a later stage those of his early sayings which have a special bearing on my estimate of his character. It is necessary, however, to note one circumstance which renders every written 1/ account of him incomplete. The voice was tJie^ vian . To say this of Jowett is a pardonable^exaggeration, and is at once felt to be so if we observe how in- evitably his friends, when repeating his sayings, fall — into his peculiar accent. Would that his cher ubic chirp (so to call it), when he was at his ease and at his l)'est, had been embalmed in a phonograph — embalmed so as to be a vox verisimilis, though, alas, a vox et prcBterea nihil ! Let me add that his peculiar charm, a charm springing in great part A PERSONAL MEMOIR ' 3 from incongruity, was brought home to one when- ever one saw him (0 qualis fades et quali digna tabelld), with his commanding forehead and his infantine smile ; but especially was it brought home to one when one heard him giving utterance to genially cynical sentiments in his pleasantly falsetto voice. -In consequence of my evangelical training, I fell under his influence with extreme reluctance; for I firmly believed that his pupils ran great risk of becoming strangers to the household of faith, and of denying the Lord that bought them. Yet I could not help cross-questioning him. One remark, in particular, which I drew from him gave me a great shock. He was in favour of the right of divorce, \ and I asked him how he reconciled that right with certain passages in the Gospels. He turned sud- denly round, and asked : * What do you make of the \ text, " Swear not at all " ?' * Does not this text apply to profane swearing?' *No,' was his short answer. His point obviously was that, as we / habitually disregard one plain utterance of Christ, why may we not disregard another? I was not prepared for this reasoning, and its immediate effect on me was to make me feel scruples about taking judicial oaths. Jowett perceived that a bfelief in eternal torment, as taught by my early pastors and masters, had made a great impression on me. He remarked that this belief, when fully realized, becomes insupport- able ; and he added that Dr. Pusey had once 4 BENJAMIN JOWETT preached on the subject with so much energy thai \ some of the congregation had to leave the church. I asked him whether, when John the Baptist said, * He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none ; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise,' the command was not meant to be taken literally ; if the Baptist had merely been giving utterance to an Oriental hyperbole, he would hardly have gone out of his way to add the clause about the meat. Wishing to allay my scrupulousness, Jowett laughingly exclaimed: * This is just the sort of remark that I should have expected to find in an Alexandrian commentator.' But in saying this he was, perhaps unconsciously, veiling his real opinion ; for long afterwards, when I had been weaned from my early Bibliolatry, he said to me : * There seemsl to me to be much more in the New Testament inl praise of poverty than we like to acknowledge.' | When I had become thoroughly his disciple, I once called his attention to the strange shifts to which moral progress reduced some of the prophets in their dealings with the barbarous portions of the Mosaic law; insomuch that one of them declared that God had given to His people statutes that were not good. Jowett replied that the strongest passage of the sort was that in which Jeremiah (vii. 22) represents God as disclaiming the authorship of the entire Ceremonial Law : * I spake not unto your fathers nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egj^pt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.' A PERSONAL MEMOIR 5 I asked Jowett whether too much importance is not attached to the rule of criticism, that, where there are two readings, the worse, or at any rate the less obvious of them, is to be preferred; may not textual errors have arisen as often from the negli- gence of copyists as from their misplaced zeal ? He replied that he agreed with me; but it seemed to him'i to be a safe rule that, where there are v..rious read- j ings in the New Testament, the least orthodox of I them ought to be preferred. He doubtless thought that the early Christian copyists did not often err through lack of care; while, on the other hand, familiar examples tend to show that the besetting sin of those copyists was pious disingenuousness. I inquired what sort of efficacy he attributed to Baptism. * Surely,' he replied, * you and I are the better for having been born and brought up in the Christian fellowship; and Baptism is the sign of that fellowship.' T, — * But suppose the case of an infant dying before Baptism, or of a person who, through some negligence of the priest, has not been duly baptized, but who passes through life believing that he has been duly baptized. Surely the Catholic doctrine is, or used to be, that such a person is in peril of being damned.' «7. — * That is a revolting doctrine. The Fathers thought it, though.' George Sand has declared the practice of praying for temporal blessings to be * sheer idolatry.' Jowett went so far in this direction as to affirm the practice 6 BENJAMIN JOWETT . to be a superstition. But he thought that prayers for spiritual blessings may have an objective as well as a subjective effect — may have, that is, an effect which is not dependent on the nervous con- dition of him who prays and who expects his prayers to be answered. I asked him whether he did not think that St. Paul was referring to the entire Israelite nation w^hen he said : * My heart's desire and i)rayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.' If so, it seems to follow that, when he goes on to say that all Israel shall be saved, he means to affirm that all persons of Plebrew descent will go to heaven. Jowett agreed with me in thinking that St. Paul was speaking of the Hebrew nation ; but it seemed to him that the words * shall be saved ' may mean * shall be restored to Palestine.' It must (I may note in passing) have been after pondering on this embarrassing text that the youthful Bunyan began to scrutinize his own pedigree in the manner (somewhat un sympathetically) mentioned by Macaulay : ' At one time he took it into his head that all persons of Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out that he partook of that blood ; but his hopes were speedily destroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambition to be regarded as a Jew.' Jowett went on to say that St. Paul inclined to Universalism in the text, * God hath concluded them all in unbelief that He might have mercy upon them all.* * But would he/ I asked, * have extended this A PERSONAL MEMOIR 7 hope to Elymas the sorcerer and Alexander the coppersmith ?' Jowetfc intimated that the Apostle's verdict on such men would have depended on the frame of mind in which he happened to be, and he characteristically added : * I doubt whether, when the Jews sought to slay him, he would have said : " All Israel shall be saved." ' This was certainly a view of inspiration very different from that in which I had been brought up. I asked him whether it was not certain that the -p ^ Scarlet Woman in the_Agocalypse was meant to designate Pagainome. He Surprised me by answering that the city represented was a mystical compound of Babylon, Rome, and Jerusalem (* where also our Lord was crucified ' — Eev. xi. 8). On my inquiring whether he attached great historical value to the fourth Gospel, he replied that it was incredible that Christ should, during long conversations occurring at different dates, have habitually spoken in the style attributed to him by the Synoptists, and should also have habitually spoken in the very different style attributed to him by the fourth Evangelist. In my undergraduate days I drew from him the admission that he disbelieved in the story of Jonah and the Whale, but that he kept his judgment in suspense as to whether the Law had or had not been given from Sinai. He told me at the same time that, even when he had felt most sceptical, his belief in immortality had never wavered. It may serve to mark the difference between a Platonist'a 8 BENJAMIN JOWETT and an Aristotelian's point of view if I mention that, on my speaking of this unfaltering conviction of his to Charles Austin, the latter dryly remarked : ' If I had that conviction, I could believe all the rest.' It will be gathered from the foregoing examples that I was in the habit of cross-examining Jowett freely, and that he bore the cross-examination with admirable patience. Once, however, when towards the end of a walk I proposed launching out on a new topic of discussion, he laughingly protested ; * I must make a bargain with you that, when we take & walk together, you don't put more than one of your stodgy questions !' From these theological utterances of his I pass on to his views on matters connected, in some instances, with University studies. He complained to me long ago that greater academical results had not been obtained from the ablest of the wealthy undergraduates of Christ Church. On those favourites of Nature and Fortune the stimulus of ambition might, he thought, be made to act powerfully, if only it were skilfully applied. This recalls what he once said to a pupil : * Young men want ambition. You want ambition. This sounds like devil's advice, but I give it !' He told me that undergraduates fresh from public schools often write better essays than when they have passed a term or two at Oxford. I am re- minded of this when golf -players say that a person playing at golf for the first time often succeeds better than in his (or her) second attempt. Is it whimsical A PERSONAL MEMOIR 9 to suggest that, in the two histances, the explanation may be the same ? In the one case, as in the other, a novice who has just ceased to be a beginner is, as it were, dazzled by the increasing light. He seeks prematurely to attain hard and complicated results : copia mopemfaciU My father, who thoroughly disliked Proude's championship of Henry YHI., complained especially that the historian sets so much value on the pre- ambles of Acts of Parliament ; and he added that the most iniquitous Act of Parliament is sure to have a plausible preamble. I asked Jowett whether he, too, did not think that the stress laid by Froude on those preambles is unwarrantable. * It's a craze,' was the characteristic answer. On my praising Shelley to Jowett at Byron's expense, he answered : * I think that Byron was/ altogether a finer man than Shelley.' I drew his attention to a passage in which Voltaire foreshadowed the principle of free trade. He ob- served, in reply, that a similar anticipation is to be found in Plato's * Laws ' : in the ideal State no duty was to be levied either on exports or on imports. Plato, however, was, I think, for imposing restric- tions on the exportation of arms. In the hope of improving my Latin style, I at one time studied Muretus ; and I asked Jowett what he thought of him. * The best thing in him,' he replied, * is where he praises the massacre of St. Bartholomew — *0 prseclarum ilium diem!' Of course, he was not quite serious in what he then 10 BENJAMIN JOWETT said, any more than in what he implied when, on my asking him long ago whether he wished to give the franchise to women, he merely answered, with a radiant smile : * I have a friend who says that he ) would rather see England governed by her five most i incapable men than by her five ablest women.' The « view indicated in this last utterance of Jowett — a view which he seems to have modified in later life — may be well illustrated by a remark of Amiel : Peut-etre n'est-il pas bon qu'une femme ait Tesprit libre ; elle en abuserait tout de suite. Elle n'entre pas en philosophie sans perdre son don special qui est le cults de I'individuel, la defense des usages, des moeurs, des croyances, des traditions. Son r61e est de ralentir la combustion de la pensee. II est analogue a celui de I'azote dans I'air vital. . . . Capable de tous les devouements et de toutes les trahisons, ' monstre in- comprehensible ' a la seconde puissance, la femme fait lea delices de I'homme et son efiroi. Jowett once said in his odd way : * I thought once of giving myself up to political economy, but I happened to become Professor of Greek.' But, though he spoke thus jestingly, he of course took the professorial duties most seriously. It may be instructive to contrast the way in which he regarded those duties with the way in which they were some- times regarded in the last century. The delicious suggestion which was made by Lord Chesterfield to his son, then a lad in his sixteenth year, may illus- trate this : * What do you think of being Greek professor at one of our universities? It is a very pretty sinecure, and requires very little knowledge A PERSONAL MEMOIR 11 (much less than, I hope, you have already) of that language.' He is well known to have been an economist of the old school, and an unwavering disciple of Eicardo. How thoroughly this was the case may be shown by some remarks addressed by him to a friend, who has reported the conversation to me, and who is himself at once a man of business and a man of letters. My friend told Jowett that, during the American Civil War, 100 dollars in gold sometimes equalled 240 in greenbacks, and sometimes 280. Once, on the occasion of a Northern victory, the change was from 280 to 255 in one day. * I think you must be mistaken,' said Jowett; 'this doesn't square with Kicardo.' The friend explained that Eicardo's principles would be strictly applicable to practice if man were a mere automaton, unaffected by sudden impulses of hope or fear. Jowett at first seemed a little provoked, but at last exclaimed with his beaming smile, * I am certainly right in theory, but perhaps you are right as to the facts.' And then he added, * But read Eicardo.' The same friend tells me that, on his speaking to Jowett of Eousseau as a great intellectual force, a momentary flash of asperity shot forth from his placid eye, and he exclaimed, * No ; he was a mere sentimentalist !' It was certainly strange that the Master was not attracted to Eousseau by the charm of his diction ; for in general he had a keen sense for style. He once read to me Bacon's famous sentence, Men fear deaths as children fear to go in 12 BENJAMIN JOWETT the dark; and then he added, *Men can't write like that now.' Two pieces of advice given me by Jowett, with a view to the formation of my style, may be worth recording. First, he wished me to take great pains about the right use of connecting particles ; and, in general, to be careful about the orderly and * logical ' arrangement, and, as it were, dovetailing of sentences. Secondly, he told me to try to write with * feeling.' This latter advice he himself put into practice. Indeed, the practice of it came naturally to him. It is sometimes possible to pick holes in the construction of his sentences, but in feeling his style is seldom or never deficient. Let me add that the word * feeling ' seems to denote the quality which especially marks the passages of poetry which he used to quote — the quality, more- over, which, when he quoted them, he brought out by the peculiar music of his voice. I seem at this moment to hear that very peculiar music just as I heard it more than thirty years ago, when he re- peated to me the grim consolation which Achilles offered to a son of Priam, whom he had known and liked in days gone by, and for whom he seems to have still retained as much affection as was com- patible with his determination to kill him : 'AXXA, 0iXos, Odye kjI ping must needs be something of a daub. An extreme example of this confusion is furnished by Ebers, who represents the Egyptian doctors, in the time of Moses, as exercising their minds over the morality of vivisection. I shall have occasion to recur to this mode of playing tricks with history further on. At present I will illustrate my meaning by saying that I called Jowett 's attention to Walter Scott's statement, in * Kenilworth,' that Varney lulled himself through Atheism into complete moral in- sensibility. Scott seems to imply that the use of this moral narcotic was not uncommon in those days. On the other hand, it seemed to me that, in Elizabethan times, Atheism must, to say the least, have been extremely rare ; and that, even in our own day, villains nearly always find it easier to disregard 16 BENJAMIN JOWETT religious sanctions than to disbelieve in them. Jowett in the main agreed with me ; but he thought that to the general rule there have been exceptions. One such exception he believed to have been Philippe le Bel. Of Scott's novels his favourite was * The Bride of Lammermoor.' This preference was shared by Matthew Arnold, who says that Falkland 'has for the imagination the indefinable, the irresistible charm of one who is and must be, in spite of the choicest gifts and graces, unfortunate — of a man in the grasp of fatality. Like the Master of Eavenswood, that most interesting by far of all Scott's heroes, he is surely and visibly touched by the finger of doom.* Jowett would, in the main, have sympathized with this striking passage, though he would doubtless have felt that Falkland's death at Newbury was a mere accident, and that it can therefore give no colour to the belief that men of his temperament are generally fated to die young. It is sometimes said that Jowett, though Professor of Greek, was an indifferent scholar. Two facts bearing on this question may be worth mentioning. In my Oxford days I met a great Cambridge scholar who, shortly afterwards, was made a Bishop. On hearing that I was a pupil of Jowett, he talked to me about him, and declared, half in jest, that at Cambridge they could more easily forgive his heresy than his bad scholarship. When next I saw Jowett,^ I told him of my meeting with tlie distinguished Cantab, and asked his opinion of his scholarship. A PERSONAL MEMOIR 17 * It seems presumptuous in me,' replied Jowett (in effect), ' to criticise his scholarship. But he does not seem to me to understand St. Paul. St. Paul's style is so peculiar that the ordinary rule of scholar- ship seemed to me to be not quite applicable to him.' According to this view, the Apostle's words are to be interpreted by reference to his modes of thought, and not merely his modes of thought by reference to his words. I speak subject to correction, but I think that Jowett, in tlie words just quoted, laid his finger on a line of demarcation which divides Oxford scholars as a class from Cambridge scholars as a class. My impression that this is so is confirmed by a letter which I have just received from a Cambridge schohir who is even more distinguished than the one already referred to, and who writes to me of Jowett : * I always was grieved by the indefiniteness of his scholarship. He seemed to think that words and phrases had no particular meaning, while I was taught, and with all my heart believe, that " there is a mystery in every syllable " of St. Paul (say) or St. John.' The other fact bearing on the question is this : That admirable scholar. Professor Conington, once said that Arthur Stanley came to him in sore dis- comfiture at the severity with which the critics had handled his edition of the Epistles to the Corinthians. With the frankness due from one old Kugbeian to another, he told Stanley that in some cases he had not a leg to stand upon, and must not think of reply- ing to his critics. Of Jowett's scholarship Conington 2 18 BENJAMIN JOWETT took a more favourable view. Personally, he might differ from some of Jowett's translations; but he thought that in every instance Jowett could make out a good case for himself. A lady asked why it is that boys are so much slower in learning Latin and Greek than girls are in learning French and German; is it because Latin and Greek cannot be picked up in conversation? Jowett replied that the chief cause of the anomaly seems to be that the classical languages are so * difficult * — difficult, that is, by reason of their un- likeness to English. One odd classical judgment of his may be worth mentioning. He did not_-Care much for Demosthenes, though he admitted that Demosthenes had more of the ars celare art em than Thucydides had. But he seemingly thought that the great orator did not possess this art of conceal- ment in its completest form. The art with which! he concealed his art was not so perfect as to conceal! itself. At any rate, Jowett preferred the rugged simplicity of the speeches reported or composed byl^ Thucydides. I Shortly after I went up to Oxford, Jowett spoke to me slightingly of the usefulness of memory. He quoted Eochefoucauld's saying : * Tout le monde se 'v^ plaint de sa memoire, personne ne se plaint de son I jagement ;' and he went on to say that nearly every- one has a memory good enough for the ordinary •^ purposes of life, while in judgment nearly everyone is deficient. Afterwards he seemed to modify this view. I asked him whether Arthur Stanley's versa- A PERSONAL MEMOIR 19 tile and, as it were, ubiquitous memoiy was not unrivalled. * No,' he replied ; * Conington has a better memory than Stanley, but Stanley has a more useful memory.' He said that the memory of the man who could repeat a book of * Paradise Lost,* after once reading it over, was simply a disease ; but he thought that a memory powerful within reasonable limits — such a memory as Macaulay's — was of great value. A lady once asked him whether he thought that a good memory can be acquired. Pointing to a former pupil, who had and still has an abnormally retentive memory, he answered : * A good memory may be often acquired, but not such a memory as he has.' It may be worth adding that a memory which is thus slow in losing, is sometimes also slow in acquiring. For example, the former pupil indicated by Jo wet t has no whist-memory. By taking pains, he could contrive to remember the trump-card of the first deal and his own cards, and he would remember them for a long time. But these fourteen cards would in a manner crowd out the cards of the subsequent deals, and, long before they had worked their way into his memory, his friends would be impatient for him to play. In a trifling matter Jowett once showed a want of moral courage most unusual with him. When I was young I shared Kingsley's liking for a bracing air ; and I perturbed my friends by telling them that I should beseech Jupiter to let east winds blow unceasingly over the Elysian fields ! On my saying something of the sort to Jowett, he replied, with a 20 BENJAMIN JOWETT langh : * I also like east winds ; but I am afraid to confess it, for no one would believe me.' Having thus trespassed into the hygienic province, I am tempted to do so again. When I stayed with Jowett at Freshwater, one of the party, recovering from an illness, had the appetite of a convalescent. * You eat more,' said Jowett, ' than anyone I ever knew, except a young lady who was told that if she didn't eat eight mutton-chops a day she would die. So she was brave, ate the eight mutton-chops, and lived !' Many years later, when Jowett himself was ailing and depressed, the friend to whom he made this remark tried to cheer him by expressing a hope that he would live to emulate the green and sprightly old age of Dr. Lee, the Master of Balliol, about whom Mrs. Thrale wrote to Dr. Johnson : * Are you not delighted with his gaiety of manners and youthful, vivacity now that he is eighty- six years old ? I never I heard a more excellent ur perfect pun than his, when someone told him how, in a late dispute among the Privy Councillors, the Lord Chancellor struck the table with such violence that he split it. " No, no, no," replied the Master dryly ; " I can hardly per- suade myself that he split the table, though I believe he divided the hoard /" ' On the occasion of my visit to Jowett at Fresh- water, I heard him pass judgment on Browning. He came across a statement in the Saturday Ileview that we had one poet of the first order, but that we had scarcely another who could be ranked even in the second class. Ha stopped, looked straight before A PERSONAL MEMOIR 21 him for a second, and then said: * I think that Browning deserves a shady first.' To another friend Jowett admitted Browning's power, but said that he thought his style needlessly cumbrous and distorted. In truth, the relation between the two men seems to have been peculiar. Browning expressed great affection for Jowett, but complained that Jowett would never let him hear him preach. When he was staying with Jowett one Sunday, Jowett slipped away after breakfast and preached to the college servants, but gave Browning no hint. Browning said : * He will let me talk to him and dine with him, but he will not let me pray with him.' Another incident which occurred during my stay at Freshwater may be worth mentioning. Jowett took me to dine with the famous amateur photo- grapher, Mrs. Cameron. He was in a taciturn mood ; and it fell to my lot to do my full share of the talking and to draw out our hostess. As Jowett and I were walking home, he suddenly exclaimed : * You asked too many questions.' As I was of full age, and thought myself capable of discerning between *a time to keep silence and a time to speak,' I inquired : *Did I ask too many questions ?' * Far too many,' was the laconic answer. I forbore to press the matter further ; but his censure wrought in me a mood similar to that which prompted Benjamin Franklin to say: *As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.' It is well known that, in his old age, Jowett came 22 BENJAMIN JOWETT round to something like Franklin's opinion — came,^ in fact, to think that, if silence is silver, good dis- course is golden. He exhorted some of his pupils' to keep commonplace books, and especially to jot down in them the best anecdotes that they heard ; and he is said to have himself put these rules into practice. He had a yet quainter method of showing how completely he had faced round. With the zeal of a proselyte, this late convert from silence to sociability wrote a sermon on the art of conversa- tion. The sermon was preached in Westminster Abbey and, less appropriately, in the wilds of I Scotland. More strangely still, he took for his text : ' Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth.' Ear- witnesses tell me that he sometimes gave the text in this form, and sometimes added the concluding words, * of God.' In all cases, however, those words, so full of significance in the original text, were practically dropped out of the sermon. In fact, the * ingenious Frenchman ' who, according to Fitz- james Stephen, described that text as cette helle et touchante parole de Chateaubriand y can scarcely have done greater violence to its true meaning and mani- fold associations unconsciously than Jowett did con- sciously and deliberately. A French writer has said that, ' On ne fait bien que ce qu'on fait habituellement.' It was not to be expected that Jowett would ever excel in conversation as some men excel in it who have made it the business of their lives. But undoubtedly he infused into it an A PERSONAL MEMOIR 23 ingredient which the most highly trained of mere talkers has not at his command ; he seasoned it with his potent and penetrating personality. Hence arose the influence and the fascination which he exercised over the best women. Of the incidents that are reported in reference to his friendships with good women, only one need be here mentioned. The sister of an undergraduate who was ill at Balliol went to stay with the Master, and received from him the utmost kindness and attention. When she was taking leave, she first hesitated, and then said that before parting she would venture to ask a very particular favour. As she again hesitated, the Master grew uneasy and looked interrogative. At last, out came the request : * Will you marry me T He paced up and down, and blushed deeply as he replied : * That would not be good either for you or for me.* It was now the young lady's turn to blush. * Oh — oh — I meant to say I am going to be married, and would you perform the service T Poor girl ! she had been refused by Jowett without having pro- posed to him ! To some of my readers the foregoing anecdote may be familiar, but I repeat it, not merely because I find that it is less widely known than I imagined it to be or than it deserves to be, but also because it is in its main outlines authentic, and I wish to rescue it from the rising flood of scepticism which threatens to submerge all the good stories about Jowett. Nearly all the Jowett-tradition, so dear to undergraduates and gossips, is discovered to be little 24 BENJAMIN JOWETT better than a Jowett-legend, and, in Sir Thomas Mora's phrase, * many well counterfeit jewels make the true mistrusted.' *\Yell counterfeit' some apocryphal stories about Jowett certainly are : so much so that, if judged of merely by internal evidence, the best of them would be pronounced genuine. For instance : there is an old anecdote that an examiner put the question, * Why did the\ Athenians condemn Socrates ?' Some such answer was given as that he was believed to be corrupting ! the youth and undermining the national religion, j * No. He was put 1.0 death for being a bore.' The terse irony of this saying has a Jowettian flavour about it, but Jowett himself told me of the saying, and it was to a Cambridge don that he ascribed it. In 1891, after an absence of twenty years, I revisited Oxford. It was hard for me to realize that many of the undergraduates whom I saw around me had not been born when I was last in the place, and that none of them had been born when I took my degree thirty-one years before. I learnt by degrees how completely I was looking at the University system from the outside, and, at last, it was only by a strong effort that I could feel myself to be in any sense an Oxford man. And thus it was with a mingled pride and sadness that I found myself exclaiming : * Stantes erant pedes nostri in atriis tuis, Oxonia.'* Such reflections as these were brought home to * Ps. cxxii. 2 (adapted). The Vulfj^ate, I believe correctly, here employs the past tense instead of the futuie {stood mstead of shall stand). A PEKSONAL MEMOIR 25 me by renewing my intercourse with Jowett. I took some notes of a conversation which I had with him that year, but those notes have been mislaid, and I must therefore confine myself to giving one or two points from memory. It was in that conversation that, as I mention further on, he surprised me by remembering some particulars of the visit that I had paid him twenty years before. We talked about Mr. Francis Newman's recently published work concerning John Henry Newman — a work so well intended, and yet (as it were) so fratricidal, that, if Lady Byron could be called tlte moral Clytemnestra of Iter lordj Mr. Francis Newman might at least as justly be entitled the moral Timoleon of his brother. Jowett seemed to me not wholly to disagree with the view taken by Mr. F. Newman. The two brothers appeared to Jowett to present a striking contrast. He regarded Mr. F. Newman as almost * pedantic ' in his strictness about literal truth. On the other hand, he described the Cardinal as comparatively * indifferent to truth and morality ' in the province of religion. At first this accusation startled me ; but presently he so manipu- lated it that it lost much of its sting. The accusa- tion, as^I understood it, amounted merely to this : When he represented Newman as more or less indifferent to truth in theology, he merely meant that the Cardinal did not apply to the sacred history and literature of Palestine, and to the history and literature of the Church, the same canons of criticism 26 BENJAMIN JOWETT which he would have applied to any other history or literature. But what shall we say of the charge of indifference to morality in religious matters ? An extreme instance will best show what that charge really meant. To the respectable burghers of Jericho it would have seemed incredible that their disesteemed countrywoman, who, besides corrupting their private morals, gave treacherous aid to the public enemy, should have been singled out among all the inhabitants as the recipient of Divine favour. To Jowett, too, it was evidently incredible that so anomalous a selection could have been made. And what he complained of in Newman was that con- siderations of this sort, considerations involving a charge of injustice against God, produced less effect on him : not, indeed, than they have produced on the vast majority of Christians in all ages, but than they ought to have produced on a man of his ability in the nineteenth century. On the whole, I gathered that Jowett had little sympathy with the Cardinal. Let me add that my general impression is confirmed by a friend who has told me that he heard Jowett complain of the large space which, in the * Apologia,' is taken up with the "^^ _iiotives which induced Newman to quit the Church of England for that of Kome ; and that Jowett characteristically added : * Not, I should have thought, a very important question.* I expressed regret that Catholicism seemed unable, at present, at any rate, to shake off the belief in eternal punishment. Jowett replied that the A PERSONAL MEMOIR 27 Catholics have a safety-valve in their doctrine of Purgatory.* I reminded him that, according to their belief, Hell lies below Purgatory, and that the poor wretches who are consigned to this nether region will not be suffered to rise vid Purgatory to Heaven, t Enlightened Catholics, he rejoined, would reserve Hell * for a few very wicked people ' ; all persons whom they or we care about would be started on the upward track. I asked whether he did not think that all Anglicans and other Pro- testants would shortly rid themselves of that spiritual anachronism, that interesting but repulsive survival of devil-worship. * Voltaire,' he answered, ' declared that anyone who openly spoke or wrote against morality would be pelted. And one might almost say the same of any clergyman who should now preach in favour of eternal punishment.' The reference to Voltaire tempts me, by way of digression, to mention that a friend tells me that he heard Jowett say that civilization owes more to * Jowett seemed to me to be not wholly destitute of sym- pathy with Catholicism. I once expressed to him strong indignation at the Catholic practice of withholding the Bible from the people. Jowett replied that he regarded that practice as a mistake, but not as an unmixed evil ; he added : • It prevents the people from perplexing their minds with the Colenso difficulties.' t A Catholic priest, after reading the passage in the text, writes to me : ' Did I ever tell you of a saying of Cardinal Manning on the hell question? A friend suggesting that it was a place of eternal suffering eternally untenanted, he answered : " If one did not hope that it was so, who could endure life ?" ' If ever Professor Mivart should relapse into his amiable heresy, let us hope that the spirit of the defunct Cardinal will be present among his judges I 28 BENJAMIN JOWETT Voltaire than to all the Fathers of the Church put together. In my orthodox days I was struck by the glaring contrast between the asceticism of the early Christians and the luxurious living of our upper classes ; and, in my intercourse with Jowett, I gave expression to the compunctions which the contrast aroused in me. Eegarding me as habitually over-scrupulous, he replied : * The life of the early Christians was not very like your life at Peckforton, but it was not therefore better.' On my once reminding him of the zeal with which Voltaire took up the cause of such victims of in- justice as Lally Tollendal and Admiral Byng, he observed with a smile : * That quite makes up for his being an infidel.' I remember telling him that I had been assured that Miss Martineau, who was then living, not merely disbelieved in immortality, but gloried in the disbelief. * It seems to me,' he said, * very strange and unnatural, but she may be a good woman for all that.' In 1892 and 1893 I again called on Jowett. My notes of what passed between us on these two latter occasions have been preserved, and I now publish them, premising that, as I am naturally anxious to ascribe nothing to him which he did not say, I have probably omitted much that he did say, and the result has been that I have not assigned to him his due share in the conversations. May 80, 1892. — In reference to one of the most distinguished of living men, the remark was made A PEKSONAL MEMOIR 29 that he could see only one side of a question, and that this limitation implies much self-deception. Adverting to the danger of self-deception, I quoted from Bacon's * Essay on Truth ' : * 'Tis not the lie that passeth through the mind, hut the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt/ Jowett replied that he would rather make a friend of\ a man who practised self-deception than of one who / consciously deceived others. I s[)oke of difTerent' forms of deception. Jowett objected to deception for a man's own interest. I replied that it was hard to define what would be directly or indirectly for a man's own interest. lie explained that he did not mean * for a man's highest interest.* I spoke of self-deception as being especially a feminine quality, and illustrated my meaning by a jocular example. If a man looked at a negro (or morally black man) who wished to be thought white, he, knowing all the time that he was speaking falsely, might tell him that he was not so very black. A woman would scruple to do this, but, after putting on a white veil, would first persuade herself, and then tell the negro, that he was not black at all. Jowett doubted whether there was much difference between an average man and an average woman in this respect. , Tollemache, — * Many of my best friends are women ; but I am bound to add that women seem to me less accurate than men, and they are said to be less trustworthy witnesses in a court of justice.' He seemed doubtful whether this is so. At this moment the Yice-Master came in, and 80 BENJAMIN JOWETT asked Jowett to propose a subject for the weekly essays. The Master suggested ' Authority in Matters of Science and Opinion,' and said to me : * I think it good that the undergraduate should get clear ideas on this question.' T. — * Will one essay do this for them ?' ./. — * At any rate it will set them thinking about it. Didn't you write on this ?' r.^* Indeed I did. It reminds me of old times.' He said, with his Platonic irony : ' You have risen a great deal above this ; but I am still trudging on in the old path.' When the Vice-Master had left the room, a new subject was opened. T, — *Why is it that many happy men are pessimists? Men often declare that they would not live their lives over again, and yet almost any man of thirty would prefer living another thirty years to being extinguished at once.' J. — * Would he not find it rather monotonous ?' T. — *Iussame the second peiiod of thirty years to be equally happy with the first period, but not to be identical with it. If you put the case of a man living his life exactly over again, you must suppose him to be dipped in Lethe before he runs the course a second time. Is it not because most people do not realize this that so many declare that they would at once refuse such an offer? A day which has one moment of acute pain, but is in all other respects to one's liking, would, if unforeseen, be justly counted a happy day. But if such a day A PERSONAL MEMOIR 81 were foreseen, the prospect of the moment of acute pain would cast its shadow over the fair prospect of the rest of the day. In like manner, if a man tries to conceive what it would be to live his life over again, his imagination insensibly turns to the painful or blameworthy episodes in that life.' Jowett showed some impatience at this mode of reasoning ; indeed, he generally set his face against discussions not bearing on practice. Wishing, however, to draw from him his real opinion on the saddening and deadening philosophy of Schopenhauer, I went on to defend optimism by giving such examples as the following : If life is not worth living, ought not the present inhabitants of Smyrna to set up a statue to Tamerlane, in recollec- tion of the wholesale and somewhat picturesque beneficence wherewith he relieved eighty thousand of their predecessorb of the burden of existence, and made a pyramid of their skulls ? Nay, further, we are Justly incensed at the brutal Eoman who caused his infirm slaves to be eaten by his lampreys. But the mode of death to which these poor wretches were subjected was probably not more painful than that which Nature would otherwise have had in store for them. All, therefore, that the tyrant did for them was to shorten their span of life. So that, when we execrate him and pity his victims, we virtually imply that even the decrepit old age of a Koman slave contained a plus quantity of happiness — that it was a boon rather than the reverse. Hence I concluded that, 'unless a man is meditating 32 BENJAMIN JOWETT suicide, he implies in every act of his life that he thinks his life worth living.' J, (with deliberation and earnestness). — 'Why yes, yes, we imply this always. In brief, we may say that a disciple of Schopenhauer is a sort of ysJwuld-be suicide, or, rather, that the whole question sulci tur vivendo.' lie urged me to go on writing, and advised me to write on * Popular Fallacies.' I asked him whether he meant something in the style of Charles Lamb. J. — ' No, I mean something more serious than that.* Something in the style of S.ydney Smith's ■*■ paper on "The Fallacies of Bentham." ' The mention cf Sydney Smith suggested a question on the difference between wit and humour. I quoted the view of a living writer, that wit consists in seeing analogies, and humour in seeing contrasts. J. — * I do not think this will hold. The difference seems to be that wit consists in a number of points, while humour is continuous.' T. — ' Might not 3-our view of wit and humour be otherwise expressed by saying that wit is humour crystallized, and humour is wit in solution?' j._^ Possibly.' T.-^* Would you not say that Sydney Smith has wit, and not humour?' J.—' He has both.' A phrase which Sydney Smith himself used * Jowett once intimated to me, and he seems to have said plainly to at least one other pupil, that he had no great admiration for the writings of Lamb. A PERSONAL MEilOIR 83 virtually ascribed to Maria Edgewortli humour in Jowett's sense of that word : * She does not say witty things, but there is such a perfume of wit runs through all her conversation as makes it very brilliant.' In consideration of my bad eyesight, he accom- panied me downstairs. In doing so he leant on my arm, and quoted the couplet from the 'Anthology': Xvipa Tis \Lir(yyvLOV virip uiL'tolo XtTrairyrjs * No,' he added, with a smilo, ' we are not quite the lame man riding on the blind man, for you can see a little and I can walk a little.' May 7, 1893. — Jowett said that England seemed to him to run great risk of an invasion in the next fifty years; he thought there might be peril from Ptussia. 2\ — * Is not Russia weakened by Nihilism?' J. — *Not so much by Nihilism as by corruption. But even so, the mass would obey the Czar. He will in a few years be able to put live million in the field.' r.— * That is like Xerxes/ J. — * Yes, but they will be very different men from the Persians.' T. — ' Shall not we be supported by Germany, Austria, and Italy?' He seemed doubtful about * Once did a strong blind man set a man that was lame on his shoulders ; Feet to the cripple he lent, borrowing eyes in return. B 54 BENJAMIN JOWETT ] Austria and Italy. He spoke of China as another '^i source of danger to Western civilization, adding -Jf ^hat, with its vast numbers and indifference to life, ' it has the making of a great military power. We spoke of the recently- published ' Life of Lord Sherbrooke' (Lowe), to which both he and I had contributed reminiscences. J. — *Lowe was in reality a thorough Liberal to the last.' T. — * Not, surely, a democratic Liberal !' J. — * No, but a philosophical Liberal. He had been on bad terms with the clergy, and was to the last anti-ecclesiastical.' He went on to intimate that Lowe was not wholly in the wrong ; all history shows that religions become corrupt if they cease to keep ^1 terms with morality ; if we are to tolerate the Church, ' she must be tolerant. T. — 'Have not Evolution and Biblical Criticism thrown the Church on the defensive, and made her more tolerant than she ever was before ?' J. — * Look at the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed. If the clergyman who repeats them regards them as a mere dead letter, his con- duct is not favourable to a high morality. If he believes in them, he imputes to God a very low T. — * I tell my American friends that when they discard the damnatory clauses they imply that the rest of the Creed is to be taken literally ; and that thus, in the true sense of the saying, they make the exception prove the rale,' A PERSONAL MEMOIR 85 J, — * I would give up the Creed altogether.' T, — ' Then would you not imply that the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds are to be taken literally ?' J, — * Every Church or Dissenting body must use compromise a little.' T. — * People call the Broad Church clergy dis- honest. But they praise Marcus Aurelius up to the skies. And yet did not he, the Pontifex Maximus, the Pope of paganism, practise conformity as com- pletely as any Broad Church clergyman does now ?' Jowett assented, but pointed out that, on the other hand, some philosophers tried to spiritualize pagan- ism ; and this he considered the nobler course. He quoted the example of Socrates. I remarked that Socrates poured a libation to the Sun, and vowed a cock to iEsculapius. Not only did he thus cause the death of the poor little cock, but he implied that iEsculapius took pleasure in its sacrifice. This was giving countenance to vulgar superstition. J, — * Yes, I suppose this might be called an eccentricity. Perhaps he would not have much liked to be cross-questioned as to why he did it.' I hinted that he might have thought, as many Broad Churchmen now think, that a certain alloy of super- naturalism is the only way in which spiritual truths can be made to pass as current coin among the masses ; or (to vary the metaphor) spiritual food should be not raw, but cooked for the infirm digestions of the multitude. J, — * I think that in the present day a religion without miracles would suit many people better than 86 BENJAMIN JOWETT a religion with miracles.' I hinted that he was falling back on the theology of James Martineau, and that this stronghold is commonly thought to be not im- pregnable. It is open to attack from the disciples of Butler. If there is so much evil in the scheme of Nature, why not in that of Eevelation ? If in this life, why not in the next ? J, — * This seems to me to be taking the question entirely at the wrong end.' I wished to cross- question him, but I was not sure whether he was not thinking of himself when he said that Socrates would not have liked to be cross-questioned. I therefore restrained the impulse; and especially I avoided expressmg surprise that a severe criticism on the practice of economy of truth should have pro- ceeded from an ultra Broad Church clerg^^man — from one, that is, who in his official character had to be practising economy of truth continually. I asked him how he explained the word * but ' in the last line of the stanza wherein Tennyson ex- presses his trust : * That not a worm is cloven in vain ; That not a moth with vain desire Is slirivelled in a fruitless tire. Or hut subserves another's gain.' He regarded * or but subserves ' as equivalent to * without subserving.' I,, on the other hand, insisted that the word * but ' must mean * only,' and that the whole passage implies a hope that there will be a heaven even for the moths and worms. J. — * Would not that be an extravagant view to A PERSONAL MEMOIR S7 take ?' Extravagant it may be, but it is hardly unin- telligible, especially in a poet. Whenever a poet or a sentimentalist argues from the Divine Love that all human suffering must be designed for the good of the sufferer, he is apt to be met with the objection : * If this argument is worth anything, it must be applicable to the lower animals. Are you prepared to contend that all animal suffering makes for the good of the sufferer?' To which objection the heart rather than the head is fain to make answer : * Is such an aspiration wholly inadmissible ? Is it quite impossible that the involuntary suicide of a shrivelled moth may have been ordained for the ultimate good of that moth, which must mean for its posthumous good ?' It seems to me that some such vague hope as this may have been present to the poet's mind when he wrote the line in question.* Jowett, as we have seen, thought otherwise. He however, seemed to modify his opinion, for he said * I somef iines think that the lower animals bear the same sort of relation to Man that the Apocrypha bears to the Bible. Theologians are apt to re<»ard the human soul and the Bible as having a right (so to speak), each in its own way, to say ' NoU me tangere ' to science. The lower animals and (though in a very dilTerent manner) the Apocrypha bar such exorbitant claims. They serve as intermediate links, and thus tend to evolutionize lleligion. In other words, the lower animals are half human, just as the Apocrypha is half Biblical. The diffi- culty connected with the lower animals is noted in the text. As regards the Apocryphal writings, it is enough to remark that the very late Book of Enoch is quoted as authentic by tSt. Jude. In my youth I asked Jowett whether the Book of Enoch is not believed to have been discovered. ' There is no doubt whatever that it has been discovered,' he replied, with a certain heterodox zest. 88 BENJAMIN JOWETT that Tennyson probably wrote that under the influ- ence of some of the writers of the last century. T, — * Do you mean the Cambridge Platonists ?' J. — * No ; I am chielly thinking of Butler ; but it will never do to apply such logic as yours to the words of the poet.' As I rose to take my leave, he said : * I believe that a great deal more is to be done to improve the condition of mankind, and that the great comfort for each of us is to feel that he has done, and is doing, something towards it.' Of course I assented, but I recalled Tennyson's counsel to beware lest * In seeking to nndo One riddle and to find the true I knit a hundred others new,' and hinted that a somewhat similar warning should be addressed to enthusiastic reformers and world- betterers of all sorts. J. — * Well, well, perhaps you're right. Good-bye.' These are the last words I heard him utter. n. * Eqiiidem, ex omnibus rebus, quas mihi aut Fortuna ant Natura tribuit, nihil habeo quod cum amicitid Scipionis possum comparare.' — Cicero. (Of all the benefits which Nature or Fortune has conferred on me, none can I compare with the friendship of Scipio.) In my Oxford days I was struck by a comment on Jo\N ett which was made to me by one* who had long been in close relations with him, and whose praise carries with it all the more weight because he him- self was of the opposite party. After the lapse of more than thirty years, I feel confident that I can give the exact sense of what was said to me, though not in general the exact words ; the few expressions that I can quote verbatim shall be printed in italics. * There are two things in Jowett,' said my friend, * besides the beautiful purity of his moral character, which I especially admire : first, his power of seeing through and through a philosophical question, and, secondly, his power of stimulating men to work. In these tu'O qualities he is facile princeps of all men that I ever knew. But I distrust his judgment of men. Some men, when writing for him their weekly • The late Archdeacon Palmer. 40 BEN'JAMIJ^ JOWETT essays, manage to bring into tliem some of hia opinions expressed in his own peculiar way. These men he overrates ; and, by comparison, he under- rates others. His geese are sometimes swans, and his sivans are sometimes great geese.' This candid, and, at the same time, kindly, criticism may serve as a sort of text for the following remarks. I will provide myself likewise with another help towards my attempted explanation of Jowett's character and opinions. A friend tells me that, when examined viva voce by Jowett, he sought to embellish one of his answers with some curious information. Jowett stared at him for a few moments, and then chirped : * That's very true, but I don't see what it has to say to my question.' At the risk of incurring a like charge, the charge of irrelevance, I will seek to illustrate Jowett's modes of thought and feeling by comparing and contrasting the ground taken by him with the ground taken by Pattison — the standpoint of a modern Zwingli with the standpoint of a modern Erasmus. The most obvious point of contrast between the two men is one which, being an admirer of Pattison, 1 approach with uneasiness, and, indeed, by a circuitous path. Mr. Mill, in 1864, told me that he (lid not know Jowett personally, but added with emphasis that he felt the greatest admiration for him. He went on to say that he had come to take a hopeful view of the method of teaching which then prevailed at Oxford ; but that he had regarded the method which formerly prevailed there with strong A PERSONAL MEMOIR 41 dislike ; nay, I think he said, with * abhorrence.' In saying this, he seemed to me to be implying that the improvement was in great measm-e due to Jowett, partly, that is, to his direct action, and partly to his example. It must be candidly admitted that this praise could not have been bestowed on Pattison, who, his enemies declared, threw his Rectorial duties to the winds. I once spoke on this unpleasant subject to Matthew Arnold, who thereupon reminded me that in Patti- son's youth public opinion expected far less from the Head of a college than it now does. I am only too glad to plead this apology for him, but I must take leave to remark that Pattison' s excuse is Jowett's praise. The two men were contemporaries, and if the standard recognised in their youth was such that Pattison did not fall below it, what shall we say of Jowett, who rose so enormously above it ? In justice to Pattison, it should be added that this difference between his standard and Jowett's is con- nected with their conceptions of what a University should be. Jowett held that a University should be, above all things, a place of tuition. On the other hand, Pattison wished to model Oxford after the fashion of a German University — to make it a sort of nursery-garden, b, p^piiiierey of research. Did not Pattison, both directly and indirectly, help on this ideal of research ? What he achieved in that direc- tion should count for much in his favour ; what he would have achieved, if his life had been prolonged, should count for more. If he had written a work 42 BENJAMIN JOWETT likely to endure, it would, at the not over-moral bar of posterity, have atoned for his educational sins not less fully and far more reasonably than * Go, lovely Kose,' has atoned for the sins of Waller.* But this was not to be. He was to die, as he wrote to a friend, 'leaving " Scaliger" unfinished.' Yet, even as it is, even in spite of those educational sins of his, and in spite also of literary incompleteness, he stands forth conspicuous as the great Eector of Lincoln — scarcely less conspicuous, indeed, than Jowett stands forth the great Master of Balliol. ^ It need hardly be said that Jowett's suprem^ success as a teacher was in great part due to thai strong personal interest which he felt in his pupils, and which he made them feel that he felt. That', interest extended even to their games. Of course he i would never have allowed the Balliol eleven to seek ) delights and shun laborious days, nor, indeed, would he have let cricket or any other game interfere with the discipline of the college. Still, he was in a * Macaulay, it is true, denies that "Waller, by writing a few flowing lines, has given a sufficient bribe to induce posterity to condone the delinquencies of his public Hfe. But, in truth, has not the bribe been effectual ? Would not a Waller of the present day prefer having the picture or autograph of Edmund Waller to having the pictures or autographs of any number of Wallers who lived and died in respectable insignificance ? Nay, further ; Burke, writing to a friend, remarked, with evident satisfaction, that his residence at Beaconsfield ' was formerly the seat of Waller the poet, whose house, or part of it, makes at present the farmhouse within an hundred yards of me.' There were probably not a dozen of Waller's contem- poraries in regard to whom that most high-minded of politicians would have felt a like satisfaction. Truly, the irony of fate, or, as we may say, the irony of fame, is a queer thing. A PERSONAL MKMOIR 43 certain sense a p hil athlete , which was all the more creditable to him because he was himself the very reverse of athletic. Once I walked with him near where some men were practising cricket, and a ball fell near his feet. He tried to throw it back to the bowler, but he threw it with very little force and considerably above an angle of forty-five degrees. I hope he did not hear the ill-repressed titter which arose from the ground, or the exclamation, * Do look at Jowler shying!' to which some rude man gave utterance. Incidents of this sort make us wonder what Jowett can have been like as a young man» Our first impression is that he must have been a mere recluse. But this impression is erroneous. One who knew him as an undergraduate says that he was generally popular, and was a genial, if not jovial, companion. It appears that he was in the quadrangle when he heard of his election to his Fellowship. He at once testified his joy by leaping as high as he could, and he was carried round the quadrangle on the shoulders of his friends. It is well known that, as Master, he subscribed a large sum (I think ^3,000) to the purchase of the Balliol cricket ground, which, as he told me, he wished to save from the builder ; and during his last summer, when he could take very little exercise, he would often go and look on at the cricket matches. In matters of this sort Patti- son was the very antipodes of Jowett. If any student whom he thought worth anything devoted himself to games beyond what was absolutely neces* 44 BENJAMIN JOWETT sary, he would probably have said that such devotion was, in fact, to misconceive or disregard the true end of recreation — was propter ludum hidendi perdere causas. At any rate, he would not have shared the sympathetic glow with which Jowett saw his pupils make the best of the spring- time of life ; nor could he, if he would, have given the same hearty response to the wise man's exhorta- tion, * Eejoice, young man, in thy youth.' A letter which I have received from an able pupil of Jowett' s contains some suggestive remarks bear- ing on this subject : * I was always struck with his desire to bring (as Disraeli would have said) the peer and the peasant together. When he sent me his appeal for " Balliol Field," the new college cricket ground, the bringing of all classes of undergraduates together was one of the avowed motives. As a host he used to mingle his guests on this principle, and I do not think it proved successful. The social extremes, so marked under him at Balliol, led to its sets and cliques being strongly marked.' But assuredly it was not only or chiefly by en- couraging the college games that Jowett showed the deep interest which he felt in his pupils. His in- terest in them was manifold, and often took unex- pected forms. Sometimes he surprised them by his memory of small particulars concerning them. A trifling instance of this came early under my notice. When I got the Balliol scholarship in 1856, the subject given us for Latin verses was a singular one : * The Britannia Tubular Bridge.' On this A PERSONAL MEMOIR 45 Bpirit-stirring theme I wrote some rhapsodical non- sense about a Cambrian nymph bewailing the un- sightly desecration of her solitude, and I was foolish enough to expect Jowett to admire what I had written, and I even fished for a compliment from him. He cut me short by exclaiming, with a provoking smile : * You had one good line : " Atque suum pontinomen posuere Britanni." ' At the time I felt crestfallen, but afterwards I became crest-risen as I wondered how Jowett's well-stored memory had found room for this commonplace hexameter. Another and far more striking instance of Jowett's friendly memory, as I may call it, fell under my observation much later, when, in 1891, I revisited Oxford after an absence of twenty years. On seeing me, Jowett remarked how long it was since 1 had last paid him a visit, and then said : * I think it is about twenty years,' and went on to mention some of those whom I had met at his house. A memory of this sort is occa- sionally found among men of leisure, though even among them it seems to be unusual ; but that a busy man like Jowett should accomplish such a feat is as amazing as, to me certainly, it was flattering. The cultivation of this power of recalling minute details about friends was recommended by Lord Chester- field to his son as an important factor in what he considered the art of arts — the art to please. This personal memory, therefore, of Jowett was at once an effect and a symptom of the devoted interest which he took in his pupils, and may have helped to produce that unrivalled power of stimulating men to 46 BENJAMIN JOWETT work which was noted by his friendly critic. Can that devoted interest have been connected with the propensity to confound geese and swans which was ascribed to him by the same critic ? For myself, I should have placed more reliance on Pattison'a judgment than on Jowett's in determining whether this or that able youth was ever destined to do great things. Pattison was a more dispassionate observer. In reply to a question of mine about a man who had not fulfilled the promise of his early days, he said, not over kindly : * He coached with me. He didn't want my help, and I was ashamed to take his money. I saw at once that he was a dead first. But he has never made an original remark, or said anything worth listening to.' And he gave me to understand that he had foreseen his pupil's life-long sterility of ideas as soon and as surely as he had foreseen his first class. In fact, an able undergraduate was to Pattison a sort of intellectual silkworm — a slow, narrow, unattractive creature which must be tended for what may some day be drawn from it. A silkworm fancier, let me add, in forming an opinion as to what sort of silk- worm will yield the best cocoon, is not likely to have his judgment warped by personal predilection in favour of any individual silkworm or class of silk- worms. This may serve to illustrate the impartial discernment of Pattison. In seeking to find a hidden intellectual treasure he could wield the divining rod more skilfully than Jowett. Also, he was more concentrated on the quest. The professors at\ Leipsic or Vienna owe some of their success in A PERSONAL MEMOIR 47 •^ casting the musical horoscope of their pupils to the fact that they limit their attention to the best pupils, and consider, in repjard to each pupil, not whether he will play well enough to give pleasure in a draw- ing-room, but whether he has a chance of rising to high rank as a professional. In like spirit, Pattison desired that some of his pupils should become highly distinguished. Jowett, on the other hand, was more anxious that as many pupils as possible should stand on the second or third plane of culture than that the very few should stand on the first plane. Com- jmratively few, however, were the pupils who en- grossed his interest, for, in truth, he was in his way an intellectual aristocrat. As Sydney Smith suc- ceeded in naturahzing the mongrel and ungracious word foolometer, I hope I may express my meaning by saying that Jowett was anything but a foolophilist. I remember being somewhat shocked when Henry Smith told me that Jowett, speaking of a very amiable young man who at first showed small signs of ability, observed : * That man ought never to have been let into the college.' In justice to the Master, and also in confirmation of what was said of the untrust- worthiness of his judgments upon men, I will mention that he afterwards found that he had been mistaken, and frankly acknowledged his error. Still, the severity of his original remark shows wherein, as an educator, he differed from Dr. Arnold. Dr. Arnold was able to cast a spell over a large number of morally earnest pupils who were willing to resign themselves to his ascendancy, and who were what 48 BENJAMIN JOWETT Montaigne would have called instruisahles^ and what Sydney Smith would have called j)/M7omaf/is. Jowett, on the other hand, could exert an influence only through sympathy ; and between him and unin- tellectual persona (at least of the male sex), sympathy, as a rule, there was none. I heard him say in onej of his lectures that Plato sometimes seems to havej been not far from the kingdom of heaven ; but that Plato's heaven was not a spiritual, but an intellectual one. This remark of Jowett's might, in some degree, be taken as a parable applicable to himself. But I hasten to add that, though his influence could hardly ever be brought to bear except on a nature with which he was in sympathy, yet, when once called into activity, it penetrated and leavened the disciple's whole being, moral as well as intellectual. I have insisted at length on the limitations of Jowett's direct influence, because those limitations serve to explain one special turn which that influence took. He is reproached with having unduly courted the society of the great. Is there any ground for this reproach? Well, let us at once aclaiowledge that he saw more of a few pupils who united great ability with high rank, than of many other pupils \^ho had the ability without the rank. But those who urge this preference against him as a reproach would do well to add that, if he sought the company of the great men of this world, he did innumerable acts of kindness to the small men of this world ; h helped needy students by gratuitous tuition as wel as in more direct ways. It would seem, moreover, A PERSONAL MEMOIR 49 that the stress laid on this charge of tuft-hunting is indirectly a compliment to Jowett, for it shows that he is judged by an ideal standard. George Eliot, after referring to the single shortcoming of Eufus Lyon's life, remarks that a specially severe * penalty will remain for those who sink from the ranks of the heroes into the crowd for whom the heroes fight and die.' In fact, no man who has once stood on the heroic pedestal can step down from it with impunity ; to the sinning saint a double portion of blame is meted out. This may explain w4iat has befallen Jowett. So bright and radiant is the surface which his whole character presents to view, that the smallest speck on it, nay, the merest shadow cast on it from without, at once attracts notice. The great men of this world are generally the best able to help one in time of need ; they are also able to talk at first hand of truly great men and great actions ; and in their company truly great and wise men will sometimes be met. So manifest is all this, that the courting of such profitable acquaint- ances is generally thought to be, at worst, venial. Of all the men who lived and died many centuries ago, there is perhaps none whom we regard with a feeling so akin to personal friendship as Horace. And yet he frankly proclaimfi that to have given pleasure to princes is no small credit to a man; and he adds that he himself, though ^peor.-and the son of a freedman, had found favour with generals and statesmen, and indeed that, upborne on mighty wings, he had risen high -abowe Ahe -nest in which 50 BENJAMIN JOWETT he first saw the light.* We are none of us disposed to judge Horace severely, because he was unflinch- ingly loyal to his republican friends, and also because, if he tuft-hunted, he carried on the embarrassing chase, not through a dark and tortaous alley, but along the highroad and in broad daylight. Still, he pursued the quarry for its own sake ; he had not, and never pretended to have, any ulterior motive of philanthropy. In this respect his case was wholly unlike that of Jowett. If Jowett made friends with men of station, he did so with a very distinct ulterior object— with the object of doing them good, and V doing others good through them. We have seen'i that be had no power to act directly on the masses ; but he thought it his duty to act on them somehow, and therefore he acted on them indirectly. Hifr^Baa^gi, vy/^ it-Iu^ aim to guide the leaders of the people and toj ^ v^rain their teachers — custodire custodes et docere doctor es. With this view he brought his strong personality to bear on men of intellectual eminence, and especially on men who combined intellectual with social eminence ; for he held that social eminence is an instrument wherewith, even at the present day, the masses may be moved. The decrepit and dying hand of the old aristocracy still rests on the political lever ; and he probably feared ♦ * Principibus placuisse viris non ultima laus est. ■K- * * * * Me libertino natum patre, et in tenui re Majores pennas nido extendisse loqueris. ***** Me primis urbis belli placuisse domique.' A PERSONAL MEMOIR 51 that, as soon as that hand falls from it, then, instea'l of ceasing to act, the irrepressible lever will be manipulated by demagogues, and the last state of the community will be worse than the first. I say that he probably feared this, because, on the issue in question, which is practically the issue between modern Conservatism and modern Liberalism, he seems to have wavered in judgment; but, as will . appear further on, in his later years he inclined to / j Conservatism. At present, it is enough to repeat f^ that, if he ever did anything which even malice \ could misconstrue into tuft-hunting, he did it with a good object. He seems also to have done it with a good eiTect. One who ought to be well informed tells me that he believes that, when the private Memoirs of our time are brought to light, it will appear that Jowett, through his friends, compassed results in which he is now thought to have had no share; and, in particular, that he may thus have touched secret springs which carried his wishes to dispensers of patronage in high places, without, per- adventure, those dispensers suspecting from what quarters the original impulse came. A Basque proverb reminds us that ' The needle, itself naked, clothes others.' It is possible that Jowett's career was a practical comnientary on this. Can the irony \ of his situation have been such that he, to whom no j Government gave, or, probably, dared to give, even a • Canonry, may yet have been able with unseen hand I to give a lift to the fortunes of others ? ( I have thus attempted to show that what is some- 62 BENJAMIN JOWETT times represented as a defect in Jowett's character ma,y have arisen from his moral earnestness. Can he have drawn any intellectual defect from the same source ? This question was to some extent answered when it was contended above that his opinion of his pupils and friends was warped by his ardent sym-) palhy; and that, in respect of such judgments, Fattison, with his impartiahty, born of comparative indifference, may have had an advantage over him. Other considerations point to the same con- clusion. In my ' Kecollections of Pattison,' I sug- gested that the Lector's moral apathy may have been partly due to his resolution to see things exactly as they are. One passage, illustrative of my argument, I wdll venture to quote : ' When a man labours to avert or to postpone a change which he regards as hurtful or premature, it is hardly possible for l)im to avoid exaggerating the evils of that change, and thus becoming an alarmist. When another or the same man seeks to evolve the energy needful for carrying out some great reform or estabhshing a scientific truth, it is perhaps impossible for him to avoid greatly exaggerating the importance of his under- taking, and thus becoming a strong optimist.' The view here expressed marks the difference between the sage's and the saint's way of looking at things. The sage may be said to see the moral world represented in an ordinary map, in which the mountains and valleys are merely indicated. The saint, on the other hand, has before him a relief-map, in which the mountains and valleys — the ups and downs, that is, of human life and of human conduct — are represented bo that they cun be felt, and are A PERSONAL MEMOIR 53 represented also on a disproportionate scale. Vol- taire, in one of his romances, tells how a gigantic native of Sirius chanced to stray on to our earth and with difficulty descried the puny race of men, whose tiny voices he managed to hear hy means of an ear- trumpet, made of the paring of one of his own nails, and whose language he somehow understood. He- deigned to interrogate one of those miserable beings, as he called them, whom God in His inscrutable wisdom had made so near to nothingness. In reply to his questions, one of the pigmies explained that it was for his own sake and that of his fellow-pigmies that the universe and all that therein is, including the people of Sirius, had been called into being. Whereupon the giant laughed so immoderately that the priggish little company who were assembled on his hand fell off and disappeared in the recesses of his clothes.* Has Voltaire, in concocting this tale, transgressed the bounds of legitimate caricature? Is it not the case that all saints, unconsciously or half unconsciously, conceive human weal to be the pivot round which all things turn? A hard blow was dealt to the old order of beliefs when our little planet was dislodged from the centre of the universe ; and ft is hardly too much to affirm that every saint, nay, every ardent moralist, is a would-be disciple of * In a like spirit Eenan has more than once compared man- kind to an ants' nest. The following passage is characteristic : * Soyons tranquilles : si nous sonimes de ceux qui se trompent. qui travaillent 4 rebrousse-poil de la volonte supreme, cela n'a pas grande consequence. L'humanite est une des innombrables fourmilieres ou se fait dans I'espace Texp^rience de la raison ; si nous manquons notre partie, d'autres la gagneront.! 54 BENJAMIN JOWETT Ptolemy.* Now, not only was Jowett an ardent moralist : he was a devoted teacher of the young. And, like other teachers of the young, he had to keep his eye fixed on those small faults to which the young are specially liable, and which, if not rooted out, threaten to become serious. Persons who through long years dwell on those small faults are in danger of becoming living illustrations of the truth of that weighty and suggestive saying of Goethe, that the continuous use of the microscope interferes with the normal use of the eye. They are apt to become morally penny -wise, if not farthing-wise. Thus, to the Epicurean philosopher who regards the Stoical moralist as transforming molehills into real hills, the pedagogue must seem to exalt them into mountains of the Himalayan range. Jowett was far too much of a philosopher to be a pedagogue of this sort. But herein lay his ^weakness as well as his strength. He tried to be a philosopher, moralist, and preceptor all at once. As a philosopher, he looked at the world from the outside ; and, so looking, he dimly perceived — or (what is much the same thing) he was conscious of trying not to perceive — that all is vanity. As a moralist, he looked at the world from the inside, and almost convinced himself that all is an intense * Some confirmation of this view is contained in the in- genious work which Dr. "VVhewell oddly entitled ' The Plurality of Worlds.' In seekinjsf to batter down the belief in that plurality, the author was evidently, nay, avowedly, anxious to show that man is the head of the imiverse, and the climax of the creation of God. A PERSONAL MEMOIR 65 reality. I hope it is not an over- strained meta- phor to add that, if he looked at the world with one eye, as it were, from the outside, and with the other eye from the inside, the result could^- hardly fail to be an occasional obliquity of mental vision. After bringing this somewhat paradoxical charge against Jowett, the least I can do is to try to sub- stantiate it at once. The means of substantiating it would seem to be afforded by his unfriendly attitude towards Evolution. The future fame of Darwin, indeed, he foresaw at a time when the Newton of biology was thought ridiculous, or worse, by the religious world.* I had heard the concluding speech which Cockburn, as Attorney- General, made at the trial of William Palmer for poisoning. The speech so impressed me that, with youthful impetuosity, I thought that so great an orator could do anything ; and I naively expressed regret to Jowett (in or about 1860) that Cockburn had not devoted himself to science ; would he not, as a lawyer, leave behind him a posthumous reputation less enduring than Darwin's ? * A great deal less,' replied Jowett ; ' but you cannot expect a man, in choosing his line of success in life, to think only of his reputation after death.' The remark was obvious enough ; but I quote it partly because, seasoned as it was with his * An example of this may be worth mentioning. A guest of my father's reminded me in his presence that I had promised to lend her the ' Origin of Species.' ' If I were Lady ,' he said, ' I should first borrow it and then bum it. It seems to me so unscriptural.' 68 BENJAMIN JOWETT peculiar mode of utterance, it had a slight flavour of the worldly wisdom which was sometimes discernible in what he said to his pupils, and partly because it showed that, when first the * Origin of Species ' ap- peared, he foresaw its great vogue. But his behef in Evolution did not grow as the belief of others in it grew. Perhaps the ' Descent of Man ' gave him a shock. Shortly after that volume appeared I tallied to him about Evolution. He at once ad- mitted that he believed the origin of all species to have been due to natural causes. But in regard to 1^ Darwinism he added : * I own that I feel rebellious. -^How did the monkeys get rid of their hairs? It w^ould be absurd to suppose that they pulled them out one by one.'* Whether, or how far, Jowett was serious when he talked thus extravagantly, I no more know than I know whether the Platonic Socrates was serious when he talked no less ex- travagantly about the properties of the perfect number, or whether Plato's conscience was at ease when he ascribed to his revered master opinions which, he well knew, were not his master's, but his own. But, at all events, Jowett was serious when, in 1889, he wrote me the letter from which I give the * Since writing the above, I have learnt that Jowett told Dean Fremantle that he considered the ' Origin of Species ' one of the greatest and most far-reaching books that had appeared in this century ; but that, when the * Descent of Man ' came out, he said : ' I don't believe a word of it,' without giving any reason for the opinion thus confidently expressed. It sounds as if he had taken for a motto : ' Sic volo, sic credo.' How strange that such a man should have thought to oppose his non ^ossiimus Qv non volumus to the plain evidence of science I A PERSONAL MEMOIR 57 following strange extract. I omit the name of the distinguished evolutionist to whom he refers : • I have read some part of 's writings, and do not think much of them. That which I read seemed to me only to say that the brain, as seen through the microscope, is infinitely complex; and the mind, of which we are conscious, is also infinite in complexity. This is not much to tell us. I think that physiologists, instead of boasting about Darwinism, which pre- tends so much and adds so little to our knowledge, have reason to feel rather humiliated at the faint light which they are able to throw on the relation of mind and body ; nothing to explain the memory, which seems most allied to sense, nothing to assist in regulating the passions.' In rex)ly, I suggested to him that the evolutionist in question probably meant to point out how completely that complex thing the mind seems dependent on that complex thing the brain ; if part of the brain is removed, the mind is liable to be impaired in a more or less ascertained way. Whence follows the obvious question : How is it possible that consciousness can survive the decomposition of the brain? But of this difficulty, which I w^as and am most anxious to see removed, he never at any time offered a solution. Pattison, on the other hand, accepted Evolution, and mastered its prmciples as completely as an un- scientific man can hope to master them. Probably he regarded Evolution as a convenient stone to throw at his orthodox antagonists and would-be persecutors. I had almost said that he would have liked to throw the stone at Stoical moralists. At any rate, I feel convinced that it was as a Stoical moralist that Jowett was so repelled by Parwinism. How is this 58 BENJAMIN JOWETT repulsion to be explained ? Was it merely that to the ear of the Stoical moralist, as well as to that of the devout Christian, the evolutionary beatitude, * Blessed are the strong, for they shall prey on the weak,' rings with a jarring note? Probably this was one cause of Jowett's repulsion ; but it was not, I think, the only cause. The word * religion ' wa^ meant to include the higher morality as well as theology when I said not long ago that religion widens, while science narrows, the gulf between man and brute. The theological aspect of this question has already been touched on, for it has been con- tended that the view of the Divine goodness, on which alone can rest the * trust that good will be the final goal of ill' to each individual man, will equally support the trust that good will be the final goal of ill to each individual moth or worm ; and it has been mentioned that Jowett held, as most Theists w^ould doubtless hold, this pressing home of logic to be extravagant. To the higher morality a somewhat similar mode of reasoning may be applied. The higher morality enjoins us to feel tender compassion for human suffering, and burning indignation against human wrong. But our sympathy is a limited quantity ; and in order to be spread over all sentient beings it has to be beaten out very thin. The pity which a philanthropic cab-taker on a wet day feels for the drenched cabman is at once weakened if diluted with the thought of the lifelong toil and the frequent whippings of the cab-horse. And thus, if, with the melancholy Jaques, one for a moment A PERSONAL MEMOIR 59 regards the deer as the lawful owners of their native forests, or if, like a modern Xenophanes, one tries to look on morality and religion from the point of view of the lower animals, human progress will seem to one a sorry achievement. It will appear that philanthropists and reformers have indirectly stimu- lated the increase of population, and have thus riveted the chains on the necks of the lower animals ; that more and more species that cannot, either living or dead, minister to man's needs, are exterminated as his rivals for food ; and that, to speak roughly, we are nearing the point at which he will feel with regard to his mute fellow-creatures that — * They cannot live but to his shame, unless It be to do him service.' So, again, indignation at the wrongs inflicted by man on man tends to be lessened if weighed in the balance with the habitual treatment of the brutes by man and by each other. Compared with their treat- ment of each other, the worst offences of man come to be considered as a sort of animal survival, as unsightly traces of the past — piiscce vestigia fraudis — which development has not been able wholly to obliterate. Thus, to put an extreme case, the in- gratitude of Joash in slaying the son of Jehoiada will appear, not perhaps less horrible, but certainly less unnatural, if viewed side by side with the undutiful requital which, through an instinct im- planted by Nature herself, the young cuckoo accords to the hospitality of its foster-parents. Hence, to a cynical naturalist human ingratitude might appear 60 BENJAMIN JOWETT a regrettable but instructive example of atavism. Such a reversion to a primitive type (like the admonitory excrescence which, as if expressly de- signed to be a memento originiSf so often plants itself on the human ear) may serve as proof that our paltry tenement of clay and nerves has not been adequately swept and garnished by natural selection — not wholly cleared of the leavings of our pre- human ancestors.* Such are the stumbling-blocks with which the contemplation of the mutual relations of the lower animals may impede the pilgrim's progress towards an ethical paradise. I have called attention to those stumbling-blocks because they are not obvious. More obvious by far, but at the same time more important, are the difficulties connected with the treatment of the lower animals by man. Those difficulties are now exercising, and are likely more and more to exercise, an increasingly disturbing influence on ethical speculation ; and, what is more to the point, I can record at first hand their disturb- ing influence on Jowett. A Greek sage has re- marked that a man can say his say once, but not twice (St9 Be ovk ivSix^rai), So I will venture, instead of recasting, to quote with additions some * The hero of • Maud,' after resolving to leave the world to its own devices, applies the queer gomgs on of the lower animals as a salve to his uneasy conscience : ♦ For Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal ; The mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the shrike, And the whole little world where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.' A PERSONAL MEMOIR 61 sentences of my own which appeared in former articles, and which substantially represent the argu- ment which I stated both to Pattison and to Jowett. In justice to myself, I should explain that I laid it before those distinguished men in no captious spirit, ])ut because in my youth I was seriously troubled by Mill's astounding proposition that morality is bound to seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number of sentient beings. My contention was and is as follows : ' Mill insists that the Utilitarian principle should be applied not to man only, but to tlie entire sentient universe; and cer- tainly it is less easy to show that the principle ought not to be so extended than that, if so extended, it might involve a rcd'uctio ad euthanatiiam. May it not be argued that, from the philozoic point of view, the existence of the human race is altogether a mishap ?* Does the unconstitutional monarchy of man minister to "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" of sentient beings, including earwigs and animalcules — including, let me add, hunted foxes, skinned eels, and vivisected guinea-pigs? We rightly condemn slavery, and we rightly think vegetaiianism ridiculous ; but a pitiless logician * An ingenious poet has represented the squinancj'-wort as lamenting tliat, afcer she had flourished for ages in peace, her otiurn curn dignitate was torn from her 'by the liuman op- pressor. She is now liable to be pluckefi, and, worse still, she is called by a name which she regards as an insult I She concludes in a more cheerful toiftc^ ' Yet there is hope:: I have seen Many changes since life began; ^ "Web-ifooted beasts have been (Dear beasts 1) and gone. Being part of eome wider plan : Perhaps in His infinite mercy God will remove tbis— M«wi 1' 62 BENJAMIN JOWETT might ask : Why is it worse to domesticate our thousandth cousin than to kill a/tid eat our millionth ? The argument, commonly employed by uncompromising utilitarians, that, as a matter of fact, we should never dream of keeping sheep and oxen alive except for our own ends, is practically identical with the argument which used to be employed in defence of slavery. If we loved all sentient beings as ourselves, should we not wish all alike to partake of our gratuitous beneficence ? Moreover, the argument in question cannot be applipd to the case of wild sentient beings, great or small. Mill's view of utilitarianism is hardly reconcilable with the use of insecticide powder. In brief, might not a cynic, weighing human joys and sorrows in the balance against the joys and sorrows of the entire animal kingdom, satirize our morality as a mere ^goisme a Vhumanite ?'* In my * Eecollections of Pattison ' I have men- tioned that, when confronted with arguments of this sort, the Eector took refuge in good-humoured scepticism. He even reHshed the arguments, for they seemed to him to afford one among many proofs that the principle of rigid Stoicism may be pressed to absurd conchisions, and that the logic of martyr- dom has a flaw in it. He doubtless thought that high ethical ideals have, for practical purposes, a positive and definite value, but that, when pressed by analysis, they disappear. Very different was the view taken by Jowett. On my asking him whether Mill's view, as expounded by me, did not seem logical, he answered, with some warmth, that it seemed to him very irrational. His excited voice and manner showed that the whole subject was dis- * See * Stones of Stumbling' (W. Eice), pp. 164-167, and ' Safe Studies ' (W. Kice), pp. 231, 232. A PERSONAL MEMOIR 63 tasteful to him. The region was evidently one which lay outside the range of his ordinary mental processes and appliances ; and he was as bewildered as an ant shorn of its antennas. To me, he showed the greatest sympathy and concern — the more so, perhaps, because he seemed to be afraid that I was taking leave of my senses. He hinted at a fear that I might turn vegetarian. Then, on my stating my views more clearly, he exclaimed, with evident relief : * Oh ! I understand it now — it merely is that you are under the dominion of logic' Of course, Jowett was too righteous a man not to be merciful to beasts. A quaint example of his tenderness to them has been mentioned to me by a kinswoman of Pattison. The Eector — thinking, perhaps, with Charles I., that cats and parliaments grow curst with age — had doomed a mother cat, which had long been domesti- cated in his house, to be supplanted by one of her daughters. But the decree was communicated to Jowett, who seems to have thought that the principle of the Fifth Commandment should govern our deal- ings even with cats. Might not so seductive a maxim as juniores priores spread its infection from feline to human relations ? At the Master's entreaty the claims of age and intimacy were preferred to the playful attractiveness of youth. The W^^'T:^iT:'^J"^^-. t^ ^^^^1 "^^<^^ Jh^ (^p-pnininn of logic_was one frequently given by Jowett to his pupils. What did he exactly mean by the phrase, and under what circumstances did he wish them, aa it were, to spike logic ? Probably he never formu- 64 BENJAMIN JOWETT lated a distinct answer to such questions ; but his general view is tolerably clear. Professor Henry Smith, who, outside the domain of physical science, cherished the same voluntary vagueness* that characterized Jowett, once told me tJ^at Guizot, after saying that St. Augustine forbore to press his principles to their conclusions, praised this forbear- ance, and Smith praised Guizot for praising it.f I have not verified the passage in St. Augustine, but I should doubt whether his spiking of logic was of the same kind as Jowett's. The saint probably meant to warn human reason to stick to its own province, and not to trespass on the kingdom of God. Jowett had, sometimes at any rate, an idea quite different from this. At such times his idea probably w^as that most ethical assumptions are not strictly correct, and that, therefore, the more logically we reason from these assumptions, the more certainly will the initial error (like a stitch dropped in knitting) vitiate the whole process. Such a view necessarily implies something of what the French cq1\ sce2:)ticisme — a quality which consists rather in ethical and philosophical than religious scepticism, and which, * Freeman, who took an extreme line with regard to the Bulgarian atrocities, appears to have thought Henry Smitli somewhat hikewarm oai this srubject, and, when asked to sup- port him in iiis election for -Pa.rliainajat, he replied that Smith ought rather to sit in the TuiJkish Parliament as member for Laodicsea. f Guizot's words are curious. Speaking of the Pelagian controversy, he says:'*:La sijperioirite d'esprit de St. Augustin le sauva en cette occasion /des erreurs lou I'eut precipite h\ logique, et41iut.iacoiiseg[uant prmsemeut:^ caruee de sa. haute A PERSONAL MEMOIR 65 moreover., serious French writers do not disavow. For example, even so earnest a moralist as Scherer ascribes this sort of scepticism to his friend Sainte- Beuve, and also, by implication, to himself. Thus, when he says, *La vie exige des menagements, j'allais dire des ruses,', his meaning must be inter- preted by the light of the following sceptical utter- ance of his : * L'humoristo n'en veut pas a*trement a la nature humaine de repondre si pen a un id^al arhitraire iieid-etre ajpres tout,' Jowett'is defiance of logic is in part due to a similar scepticism. But the word scepticism has an evil sound to English ears, and Jowett shared in the national repugnance to it. More than thirty years ago an article appeared in the Saturday RevieiVy bitterly condemning the bigots who refused to in- crease his salary, but containing some such sentence as, * Mr. Jowett seems to us to revel in doubt and scepticism.' Jowett spoke to me about the article, and, accustomed as I was to hear him described as the most sceptical of men, I was surprised to find how much annoyed he was by the charge being brought against him. To Pattison, on the other hand, such a charge would have caused no uneasi- ness whatever. It is probable, therefore, that in this respect the standpoints of the two men were less far asunder in reality than in appearance. Pattison was consciously not very unlike what Jowett was half consciously. Each of them dealt summarily with inconvenient ethical knots, while Jowett tried to persuade himself that he was untying them. 5 66 BENJAMIN JOWETT I am reminded of a famous controversy in Queen Anne's reign, wherein Addison and Steele took up opposite sides. *It seems to us/ says Macaulay, * that the premises of both the controversialists were unsound, that, on those premises, Addison reasoned Avell and Steele ill, and that consequently Addison brought out a false conclusion, while Steele blundered on the truth.' If, on the principle here indicated, ethical disputants could roughly be divided into Addisons and Steeles, Jowett's sympathy would have been on the side of the Steeles. Pattison's sym- pathy would have been on the side neither of the Addisons nor of the Steeles. He would have wished philosophers to follow the rule which has been laid down by Pascal, and which is especially noteworthy as coming from that anti- Jesuitical moralist : * II faut avoir une pensee de derriere et juger de tout par la, en parlant cependant comme le peuple.* It was, indeed, unfortunate for Jowett that his sallies against logic often reached the ears of persons who had no notion of the source whence his severity had arisen. He was, in reality, combating that grim spectre of narrow logic whose haunt is in the abode of pedants. But to those pedants themselves, and to all whose eyes were holden that they could not see the ungainly apparition, the exorcist's gaze must have seemed idly bent on the air, ' And his vain words malicious mockery.* Such vain words were attributed to him when he was reported to have said that he wished to see * a desolating scepticism spread over the logic schools.' A PERSONAL MEMOIR 67 And the report had at least verisimilitude, as some of his authentic sayings will show. Dean Fremantle tells me that, the question being discussed whether logic is a science or an art, he heard Jowett say : * It is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge.' I acquired the knack, when I had to read essays to Jowett, of bringing into them now and then a reference to his favourite theories. Accordingly, in' an essay on the province of logic, I said that the use of logic is * less for the discovery of truth than for the detection of error, and less for the detection of error than for its exposure '; and from Jowett's strong expression of approval I saw that I had hit off his view exactly. He once spoke to me about Buckle's assertion that the English mind is, in the main, inductive, and the German mind deductive. He said, on the authority of a scientific friend, that this statement is absurd ; if Buckle had been accustomed to per- form scientific experiments, he would have known that the inductive and deductive processes are com- monly combined. To me this reasoning seems in- conclusive. If induction and deduction are mutually dependent, so also are thought and language. And yet an able thinker is often a clumsy and obscure writer, and a clear and attractive writer is often a shallow thinker. And, in like manner, though induc- tion and deduction are commonly intertwined, this is no reason why one mind, and, indeed, one science, should not be in the main inductive, and another mind and another science in the main deductive. C8 BENJAMIN JOWETT While praising Mill's * Logic,' he told me that he wished that the author had broken off completely from formal logic. He seems to have cared less for Mill's later works. The peculiarities of some of those works he explained as most of us explain them. Most of us have long since come to the conclusion that to Mill might be applied the quaint remark which Herodotus made about Candaules of Lydia : he was madly * in love with his own wife ' {rjpdo-dn rjjf; ecouTov yvvaiKo^;), Yet, however strongly Jowett may have shared this judgment and regretted the philosopher's uxoriousness, he yet regarded with grave disquietude the intellectual revolution which occurred some thirty years ago, the revolution by which Mill was dethroned at Oxford, and Hegel the German reigned in his stead.* Concerning Jowett' s peculiar attitude towards German thought in general, and Hegelianism in particular, a few words must suffice. When I went up to Oxford, it was reported that a former Eector of Lincoln had expressed a wish, in a University sermon, that * German theology and German literature were at the bottom of the German Ocean.' It can hardly be doubted that, if the good * A singular criticism on Mill's ' Logic ' was made in my hearing by the late liev. W. E. Jelf. That famous Censor of Christ Chui'ch complained that Mill, in his classification of modes of existence, did not refer to the change wrought in infants by Baptism. Mr. Jelf might plausibly and consistently have maiutained that Baptism introduces the most important of all factors uito human life. And yet I suspect that Jowett would have regarded him as 'under the dominion of logic,' with a vengeance I So hard it is for the two hostile parties to iind any common ground. A PERSONAL MEMOIR G9 Eector's real wish (or that of his spiritual descendants) could have taken effect, Jowett's writings, if not their author, would have been included in the general submersion. For, in my Oxford days, Jowett was considered as the representative of German heresy at Oxford. I certainly entertained this view ; and especially I should have thought th&t the voluntary vagueness of which I have spoken would have placed him in sympathy with Hegel.* What he said to me about Hegel confirmed me in this opinion. At the time of our conversation my own knowledge on the subject was chiefly derived from the lines (written by Mansel) which satirize Germany as '1 * The land which produced one Kant with a ! * And many Cants with a ; "Where Hegel taught to his profit and fame That sometliing and nothing are one and the same, The absolute difference never a jot being 'Twixt having and not having, being and not being ; But wisely declined to extend his notion To the finite relations of thalers and groschen.* Jowett tried to explain to me what amount of truth is contained in this satire. He made me under- * It has always seemed to me a happy thought of a recent romancist, when introducing a character which was clearly meant for Jowett, to represent that character as wishing that an obscure utterance ascribed to our Lord by both the Clements had made its way into the canon of Scripture. The passage referred to is as follows : • The Lord, being asked when His kingdom should come, said: "When two shall be one, and that which is without as that which is within, and the male with the female neither male nor female." ' Would not this passage have obtained admission if there had been a Gospel according to Jowett ? 70 BENJAMIN JOWETT Btand what Hegel did not mean. Borrowing, I think, Hegel's own illustration, he said that Hegel did not mean that having a horse is the same thing as not having a horse. But what Hegel actually did mean Jowett himself perhaps understood, but certainly did not make me understand. The point, however, is, that he seemed to speak with sympathy of Hegel. Why, then, was he afterwards averse to Hegelianism ? To this question I reply with diffidence. They say at Oxford that both Jowett and T. H. Green plunged into the whirlpool of German metaphysics, that Green was permanently engulfed, but that Jowett at last made his escape. I therefore conjecture that, if Jowett seemed to me in some sort to cling to Hegel, the reason may have been that at that time he had not reached terra Jirma, Likewise, when I was at Oxford, the Newmanite movement had not quite passed away. Jowett probably regarded Hegelianism as a less evil than Newmanism — indeed, as an antidote to Newmanism. He also probably regarded it as a less evil than Positivism, and he knew that towards Positivism I myself was inclined. I think it was in the conversation just referred to that I praised Comte's hierarchy of the sciences ; whereto he rejoined that Hegel had also done good service to science. I doubt, however, whether he really rated Hegel more highly than Comte. A friend writes to me : * Once when I came back from a holiday and told him [Jowett] I had been reading \ Hegel, he said, "It's a good thing to have read , Hegel, but now that you've read him, I advise you ^ A PERSONAL MEMOIR 71 to forget him again." ' In fact, he had no great liking for science, or, indeed, any toleration of the truly catholic — I had almost spelt the word with a capital letter — claims which science has begun to put forward. He seemed to think that the men of science are now as likely to take too much upon them as the sons of Levi or their modern counter- parts ever were. * Depend upon it,' he once said, ! * scientific men have prejudices of their own quite as much as other people.' One cause of his strong . opposition to the Positivists may have been the way I in which they make science their prop. Another cause may have been his dissent from them as to the primitive form of religion. In an essay that I read to him, I referred to the controversy as to whether the first men ' were cannibals and bar- barians, or whether they lived in a golden age of primseval simplicity.' *I don't believe that either view is right,' interrupted Jowett. In another essay I spoke of fetichism as the earliest form of religion. Jowett cut me short by declaring that comparative philology made against that view. Surely he must afterwards have learnt that the point of time to which comparative philology reaches back is far|\ later than the beginning of human society, while, on the other hand, the Stone Age bears emphatic testi- mony to the ascent of man. Altogether, it is not easy to see why, as he liked Mill's logic, he sol disliked Positivism.* Perhaps, however, he let the) * I wUl remark in passing that, on my asking him what he thought of the discussion between Mill and Mansel as to tho r 72 BENJAMIN JOWETT cat out of the bag when he once said to me, * Positivism seems to me to lead to Atheism.' Obviously, a philosopher, pure and simple, would have concluded that, if Comte's princii^les are sound, and if they lead to Atheism, then — So much the worse for Theism ! In other words, when Jowett spoke as he did, the philosopher in him was overmastered by the divine, or (let us say) by the moralist. But whatever may have been Jowett's dislike of the Positive philosophy, no Positivist could have surpassed him in the scorn with which he sometimes spoke of Metaphysics. lie quoted to me Voltaire's definition of Metaphysics as ' beaucoup de grand noms qu'on ne peut pas expliquer pour ce qu'on no comprend pas,' a definition w^hich cannot but recall the praise which its author bestowed on Zadig : * II savait de la metaphysique ce qu'on a su pendant tous les ages — c'est a dire, fort peu de chose.' Meeting me in the street after one of Mansel's Bampton Lectures, he turned upon me and said : * How much have you learnt about the uncondi- tional?' and passed on, laughing, without waiting for a reply. But the quaintest thing that he said was to a pupil who had been reading him an essay] with a strong metaphysical flavour : * It is remark- able what a fascination metaphysics seems to possess' ^^ for the human mind. It is like falling in love. But origin of the peculiar certainty which we ascribe to mathe- matical truths, he answered (not very relevantly) : ' Isn't there another way of explaining the origin of our belief in mathe- matical truths ? We believed them in the first instance be* cause we were taught them V A PERSONAL MEMOIR 73 V you get over it after a time.'* Was it not Bishop Berkeley, himself om* greatest metaphysician, who said of metaphysicians in general that they first kick up the dust and then complain that they cannot see? So thoroughly did Jowett concur with this weighty and unexpected admission, that he some- times spoke slightingly even of Berkeley himself. From metaphysics proper, the science of Abso- lute Being, I pass on to psychology, which is often confounded with metaphysics, but which rests on far surer foundations. Can Jowett in any sense be called a psychologist ?t "VVe must remember that psychology is now closely connected with physiology; and that of the pro- cesses of physiology Jowett knew little or nothing ; nay, even of the results of physiology and of its general aspects he knew far less than is known by many unscientific students. He, therefore, could not deal with psychology through the physiological method. But psychology has another method — the interrogation of consciousness. Buckle has argued (not perhaps very conclusively) that such interroga- tion has little value, for an object cannot be scienti- ^ fically examined unless it remains passive ; but tho y act of examination implies activity ; therefore con- * This reminds me of what Jowett is reported to have said in a sermon : ' The choice of a profession is Uke the choice of > a wife. It does not so much matter what you choose, so lon