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Culture and Restraint 
 
CVLTVRE 
 
 AND 
 
 RESTRAINT 
 
 HVGH BLACK 
 
 Author of 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 NEW YORK . CHICAGO . TORONTO 
 
Copyright, 1901, by 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 (October) 
 
 GENERAL 
 
TO 
 
 MY MOTHER 
 
 WHO BY HER SILENT SERVICE 
 
 SHOWED HER CHILDREN 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF 
 
 SACRIFICE 
 
Thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece. 
 
 — Zechariah ix. 13. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 I 
 
 ZION AGAINST GREECE — THE PROBLEM STATED . 1 3 
 
 II 
 
 THE ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 38 
 
 III 
 
 DEFECTS OF THE AESTHETIC IDEAL 66 
 
 IV 
 
 CULTURE AS RELIGION 92 
 
 V 
 THE PERFECT MAN • * * • 121 
 
 VI 
 
 THE ASCETIC IDEAL — RESTRAINT 147 
 
 VII 
 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF ASCETICISM I76 
 
 7 
 
8 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 206 
 
 IX 
 
 THE MEDIEVAL CONCEPTION OF SAINTHOOD . . 236 
 
 X 
 
 THE PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 LIFE 265 
 
 XI 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS ON ASCETICISM . . . 294 
 
 XII 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 32 1 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE problem suggested by the opposing ideals 
 of culture and self-denial is no academic 
 one, but in some form or other is a very 
 real and practical difficulty, which demands 
 some solution from every one. Should a man obey his 
 nature or thwart it, seek self-limitation or self-expan- 
 sion? In some moods it appears to us as if the best 
 attitude, as it is certainly the easiest way to peace, is 
 to accept simply what seem the surface facts of our 
 nature, and give up the long passion of the saints after 
 the unattainable. Yet in other moods we recognise 
 that life gains in dignity and solemn grandeur, when 
 a man realises even once that for him in the ultimate 
 issue there are in all the world only God and his own 
 soul. We no sooner take up one of the positions than 
 doubts pervade the mind as to its sufficiency. If we 
 say that the secret of life is just to accept our nature, 
 and seek its harmonious unfolding, immediately the 
 question arises, whether self-culture is not only a 
 subtle form of self-indulgence. If again we make re- 
 nunciation the infallible method, we cannot keep out 
 the question, whether it is not moral cowardice, that 
 we refuse to live the larger life and to wield the wider 
 power which culture seems to offer. 
 
 The counsels of the great teachers also are varied 
 and conflicting on this problem. Some say with as- 
 surance that " self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neg- 
 
 9 
 
10 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 lecting," and that no human capacity was given to be 
 renounced ; others declare passionately, " Thou must go 
 without, go without — that is the everlasting song 
 which every hour all our life through hoarsely sings 
 to us." Even if we do not trouble much about the 
 general statement of the problem, and are not con- 
 cerned about a plan of life that shall commend itself 
 to reason and to conscience, we do not escape the many 
 practical difficulties in many things on the border-line 
 about which there is often no clear guidance, such as 
 amusements, and our attitude towards certain kinds of 
 art and literature. 
 
 Needless to say, the two voices represent the prob- 
 lem of all religion, namely, how faith stands to the 
 world, with its ordinary life, and ties, and business, 
 and pleasures. The problem varies with the ages with 
 their different tone and quality, and varies even with 
 each separate soul with its special temperament and 
 environment, but it is an everpresent problem. If we 
 are to follow Christ and do His will, what does that 
 mean as to our relation to the common pursuits and 
 human connections? Must we in any sense cut adrift 
 from them, and even renounce the natural bonds which 
 unite us to the general social organism of our day ? Is 
 renunciation the keynote of the faith, and the ac- 
 credited method of entering into the fullest Christian 
 life? The problem comes to every earnest mind in 
 some form or other; and nothing represents such a 
 difficulty to young people as this, when they first re- 
 spond to the claims of religion over their lives. What 
 are they to give up of the many fascinating pleasures 
 of the world ? What are they to deny themselves, and 
 why? If renunciation is the very root of the faith, is 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 not the giving up of everything the better part? The 
 Christian life is often presented to them in the great 
 devotional classics as demanding the curbing of every 
 instinct and the sacrifice of every natural joy. The 
 thought cannot but arise, if the way of the cross is the 
 way to life, the more complete the sacrifice, the better. 
 Should not the ideal then be, whether we can realise 
 it or not, rigorous mortification, even complete with- 
 drawal from the entanglements of the world? 
 
 On the other hand, is not the very existence of 
 powers and capacities a tacit argument for their de- 
 velopment? Can self-denial be an adequate ideal, in 
 face of the overwhelming natural instincts which de- 
 mand satisfaction? 
 
 Both sides seem to represent facts of human nature 
 and of history, and claim to be considered in any com- 
 plete plan of life. This book is an attempt to do jus- 
 tice to both, and to find a great reconciling thought 
 which may combine both, while at the same time it 
 saves them from the inevitable failure which awaits 
 them when each is taken by itself. 
 

 Culture and Restraint 
 
 ZION AGAINST GREECE— THE PROBLEM 
 STATED 
 
 TWO opposing methods present themselves to 
 us as the secret of life, which may be indi- 
 cated by the words, self-expression and self- 
 repression ; or the method of Culture and the 
 method of Restraint. They are usually set against each 
 other in irreconcilable opposition, making a clear line 
 of cleavage inflexibly dividing history and life : on one 
 side the method of the world which appeals instinct- 
 ively to man, the full-blooded gospel of the natural joy 
 of Hfe; on the other side the method of religion, with 
 its pale and bloodless creed, with the essence of its doc- 
 trine popularly summed up in the rule, that the whole 
 duty of man is to find out what he does not like and 
 do that. The one is the life of nature, a broad and 
 beaten path which invites the feet, where the self is 
 enriched by all the manifold experiences of the way; 
 the other is the selfless life, and its eternal symbol is a 
 cross. The watchword of the one is perfection through 
 joy; of the other, perfection through suffering. The 
 contrast can be elaborated and extended in many ways 
 — and exaggerated, for that is what it usually means; 
 
 13 
 
14 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 but we cannot leave it in this hopeless antinomy. Such 
 clean-cut divisions are usually artificial, and as a mat- 
 ter of fact we find on both sides facts of human nature 
 and of experience, which are assuredly facts, and can- 
 not be left to stand in isolation. There must be some 
 point of reconciliation, some higher unity, which com- 
 bines them both. There is indeed a line of cleavage 
 which divides men, but it is one of spirit, and not of 
 method. The failure of each of the methods by itself 
 shows that there must be some solution, or at least 
 that the contrast has been wrongly stated. 
 
 This latter is certainly part of the explanation; and 
 we can easily see the strong temptation to exaggerate 
 one of the sides at the expense of the other. A nar- 
 row and partial view of truth always leads to error in 
 the statement of even the one side; and much more is 
 this the case when we are dealing, not with theories 
 of truth, but with life itself, where the difficulty is in- 
 creased by the disturbing elements of temperament, 
 inclination, passion, and all the moral temptations 
 which menace life. Thus, it is natural to meet from 
 the side of culture the temptation to make the desire 
 for self-expression the most unblushing selfishness, 
 and to meet from the side of religion the temptation to 
 enthrone a morbid form of self-repression as the ideal, 
 and to trample on the legitimate claims of the other. 
 In either case we suffer from a partial view of the 
 facts of human nature, as when we find culture travers- 
 ing all the lower reaches of man's powers, and refusing 
 even to consider the higher sphere of the spiritual; or 
 when we find religion depreciating things which are 
 the very glory of the race, in the strange thought of 
 honouring God by denying some of God's gifts to men. 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 15 
 
 We must be willing to suffer the fate of all mediators, 
 who see the truth on both sides, and who refuse to 
 become partisans. The two extremes appeal most 
 readily to men, and so there is seen in human history 
 the strange rhythmical tendency, which makes an 
 epoch alternate with its opposite, a time of reforming 
 zeal succeeded by a period when the fire seems burned 
 out, license following restriction, and w^ versa. 
 
 The instinct which seeks self-expression is innate 
 in us, and no theory, economic or religious, can de- 
 stroy the individualism of man. " I am I " is the first 
 equation of all knowledge; for it is the statement of 
 self-consciousness. It is often asserted that progress 
 is towards similarity and social equality, and it is true 
 in a sense that progress will mean something like 
 equality of opportunity; but it is far nearer the truth 
 to say that progress is towards divergence. The 
 higher the life, the greater is the complexity of 
 function, and this is the case with society as well as 
 the single organism. Even equality of opportunity in 
 education only develops individuality, and creates dif- 
 ference. Many amiable attempts have been made to 
 eliminate the Ego from man by external means, but they 
 could only succeed by eliminating man himself. Be- 
 ing such persons as we are, with this craving for self- 
 expression and self-satisfaction, it is to be expected 
 that at all times there should be a philosophy which 
 teaches the duty of satisfying the instinct. This phil- 
 osophy has sometimes been stated in very unworthy 
 forms, in morals an Epicureanism which easily became 
 the grossest self-indulgence, in economics a scramble 
 of competition, every man for himself and the devil 
 
1 6 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 take the hindmost. The besetting danger of all efforts 
 after self-expression lies on the surface. Self-love is 
 a root-principle of human nature, but when it is seen 
 degraded and running riot in animaHsm, a protest be- 
 comes inevitable. But the philosophy, which takes ac- 
 count of the natural demand of our being for self-satis- 
 faction, can be set forth in high and refined forms. 
 
 Culture is an attempt to do this from a high stand- 
 point. It declares that the purpose of life is that we 
 should come into the full realisation of our powers; 
 and this is to be achieved, not by limitation, but by ex- 
 pansion, by obeying our nature fearlessly. It carries 
 with it the sacred duty to develop all the faculties, to 
 train the mind, to attempt to reach a complete and well- 
 balanced state of existence, to become all that it is 
 possible for each individual to become. It is the duty 
 of a man, not only to enrich his nature through all the 
 experiences and from all the sources possible, but to 
 use these as opportunities to unfold himself without 
 fear and without doubt. Emerson, who was an idealist 
 in every fibre of his mind, and could have no sympathy 
 with any form of moral laxity, preaches this creed with 
 intense earnestness. In some of his essays, notably the 
 one on Self-Reliance, he asserts the right and duty of 
 the individual to live his own life to the best advantage. 
 " Trust thyself," he is ever saying ; " no law can be 
 sacred to me except that of my own nature." He pro- 
 tests against conforming to any custom, or tradition, or 
 prejudice, that would hinder full self-realisation. He 
 protests even against the idea that a man must be con- 
 sistent with himself, in so far as anything in the past 
 would be a restraint on present self-expression. 
 ** Speak what you think now in hard words, and to- 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 17 
 
 morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words 
 again, though it contradict everything you said to- 
 day." 
 
 This demand for self-expression seems to justify 
 itself by its success, and by its necessity for greatness 
 in any branch of activity. " Be yourself " is the first 
 lesson of every teacher of every art, and the last lesson 
 also. The mere imitative artist, without distinctive 
 creative power, who only repeats past forms and types, 
 is a cumberer of the ground. Art is vital, not mechan- 
 ical, a putting forth of the inner life, not an exercise of 
 technique. Art demands from her disciples that they 
 should be original in the true sense, that they have 
 made their own the truth they utter in whatever form, 
 so that it come forth formed by their mind and per- 
 sonality, coloured by the red blood from their own 
 heart. The teaching of culture in the great art of 
 living is similar, — Be yourself; express yourself; be- 
 come what you may be ; reach out to your possibilities ; 
 live the fullest, richest life you may. 
 
 Over against this there is the other method, which 
 claims more distinctively to be the religious method, 
 that of self-repression. It sees that selfishness is the 
 bitter root of life, and that the efforts of man after 
 self-expression have often ended in a revel where all 
 evil passions have been awakened, and that men have K 
 failed utterly in reaching even happiness by their eager 
 search for it. So it makes sacrifice the secret of life. 
 Not the masterful men, but the meek, inherit the earth. 
 It carries the war into the enemy's territory, and asserts 
 that even for a rich vital culture the gate to self-knowl- 
 edge is self-distrust. The sanctuary of truth is only 
 entered by worshippers. For success in work there 
 
1 8 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 must be genuine self-repression ; a man must lose him- 
 self in his work, or his very shadow will prevent him 
 from reaching the highest. Self-conscious work, es- 
 pecially in art, is bad work. To be his true self, a 
 man must suppress himself ; to be a perfect instrument 
 of high thought, to be in vital correspondence even 
 with nature, there must be suppression of impulses 
 and sensibilities, which only dim the mirror through 
 which truth reflects itself to us. 
 
 All these considerations make it natural that, when 
 the world's philosophy of satisfying self has failed, the 
 other extreme should be tried. It glorifies self-denial, 
 and points resolutely to a strait gate and a narrow way, 
 and does not hesitate to denounce as self-indulgence the 
 aim of culture, to perfect the nature by the varied 
 channels v/hich the wbrld affords. Only in sacrifice 
 is life perfected. It speaks of restraint, denying one- 
 self, and giving up, cutting off a right hand, and pluck- 
 ing out a right eye. In the passion of sacrifice it 
 seems to make the ideal an emasculated life, anaemic, 
 impoverishing the nature, cutting off the sources of joy, 
 reducing the scope of the powers, and narrowing down 
 the whole horizon. It is the way of the cross, and to 
 the eye of culture it looks like madness, ever meddling 
 with the free play of human instincts, ever silencing 
 the voice of nature, leaving a poor mutilated life. Not 
 " Be yourself " is the watchword, but Give up, go 
 without, renounce the natural, put a check upon the 
 normal and spontaneous outflow of vital energies, tame 
 and subdue the high heart of man. 
 
 The two theories are vaguely called by the names 
 of Hellenism and Hebraism, as suggesting the two 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 19 
 
 gr eat streams of influence, which have made modern 
 Europe what it is. The names are not quite appro- 
 priate, though we can see how it came about that 
 they should have such a significance. The words, 
 which have suggested the title of this chapter, are 
 taken from the Prophecies of Zechariah, and seem to 
 imply that the particular section of the book in which 
 they occur must in all probability be dated near the 
 closing era of Old Testament religion. In the early 
 prophecies, Greece is hardly ever mentioned, and only 
 as one of the far-away heathen countries at the ends 
 of the earth from Israel; for of course at that time 
 Greece did not really exist for the Jews, and never 
 came into contact with them. The peoples, which then 
 loomed large in the horizon, were Egypt, and the 
 Asiatic Empires of Assyria and Babylon, and latterly 
 Persia. These each in turn represented the scourge 
 of God for poor Israel, the hammer that broke them, 
 or the anvil on which they were broken. With none 
 of these great world-empires could Israel cope, and 
 all that she could ever hope for was to be let alone, 
 and be left to work out her own higher destiny. The 
 struggle for Israel was not that of war, but a struggle 
 to preserve her own peculiar treasure. Each external 
 conflict, through which the Jews came, was only part 
 of a deeper problem, representing a sorer internal con- 
 flict, to keep from being lowered down religiously to 
 the level of paganism around them. 
 
 In the decay of the Persian Empire the opportunity 
 came for Greece, which brought her into contact with 
 Israel. Alexander the Great began his wonderful con- 
 quests in Asia, beginning with Syria, when he took 
 Damascus, Tyre, and Gaza ; then conquered Egypt and 
 
20 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 founded Alexandria; and then overthrew the great 
 Persian Empire, and ultimately carried his arms to In- 
 dia. Everywhere he was irresistible, and swept huge 
 armies out of his path, overturning the crumbling 
 Oriental empires. It boded no good for Israel, so far 
 as national hopes went. To the prophet the mighty 
 Greek conquest meant only the old story of danger and 
 menace to Jerusalem, with which past records were full. 
 We have said that the great danger, which ever threat- 
 ened the true Israel, was the danger to religion. For- 
 eign rites and worship and faith, a lower type of re- 
 ligion, and a lower level of life, were ever being forced 
 on the people from without, and easily found allies to 
 support them from within. The danger to religion be- 
 came greater when, as was the case with Persia and 
 Greece, a very attractive and dominating civilisation 
 was added to the military ascendancy. Especially was 
 this so with Greece, which then stood for culture, and 
 all that makes for knowledge, and beauty in art and 
 poetry, and grace in life. Alexander's great conquests 
 were not merely military. He established Greek col- 
 onies and Greek kingdoms all over Asia, and extended 
 the Greek language and civilisation. All this repre- 
 sented a force subtler, and more insidious, and more 
 difficult to combat, than mere brute force of arms. The 
 Jewish people were in spite of themselves drawn into 
 contact with the great influences, which sprang from 
 Greece, and which were changing the world. Alex- 
 ander's dream was to found a universal empire, which 
 would be held together by unity of language and civi- 
 lisation. The great intellectual force, which Greece 
 represented, was to weld the diverse nations of Asia 
 into one. That is why he took such care to plant 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE it 
 
 Greek colonies everywhere. Wherever his armies 
 passed, there followed the establishment of Greek cities, 
 to saturate the whole East with Hellenic culture. It 
 was a bold scheme, which showed Alexander to be a 
 great statesman, as well as a great soldier; and the 
 scheme was to a large extent successful, as is seen from 
 the place which towns like Alexandria took in the 
 future of the world. All over Asia Minor these Greek 
 influences were especially powerful, and even in Pales- 
 tine itself Greek ideas grew so strong, that there arose 
 a fierce struggle among the pious and patriotic Jews 
 against Hellenic culture. The network of Greek cities 
 all around Israel exerted a constant influence to break 
 down the exclusive religion of Israel, as well as the 
 exclusive manners and customs. 
 
 Out of this struggle arose the two parties among 
 the Jews, so much heard of in the ministry of Jesus, 
 the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees, 
 largely composed of the upper classes, affected not 
 only the Greek language, but also the laxer religious 
 views and practices of Greece. Hellenism was eating 
 like an acid into the fabric of the old Jewish faith, and 
 if allowed would have destroyed all essential distinc- 
 tions between the religion of Israel and the paganism of 
 Greece ; but the very attempts, both from without and 
 from the Sadducees within, to accelerate the gradual 
 infection of Greek culture, brought about a revival of 
 Jewish feeling; and this revolt against the dominant 
 Hellenism of the time was largely carried out by the 
 Pharisees. In a true sense they were the legitimate 
 successors of the reformers of the time of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah. That work, which was then begun, of 
 codifying and establishing Jewish law and making the 
 
22 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Jews religiously more exclusive than ever, was neces- 
 sary and inevitable, and really meant the idea ot a 
 Church within the nation. The Pharisees exaggerated 
 it, and made the rules, which had been formed to pre- 
 serve the faith, vexatious and in the long-run even 
 harmful to true religion. Their ecclesiastical regula- 
 tions swallowed up the plain precepts of the moral law ; 
 but all the same the Pharisees were the saviours of the 
 state, and were the patriots of the troublous time of the 
 Maccabsean wars. They were narrow and bigoted, and 
 were what we would call the obscurantist party oppos- 
 ing the culture and light of Greece ; but the Sadducees, 
 who were broader minded, and who were tinged v/ith 
 Greek art and literature, and advocated the introduc- 
 tion of Greek customs, were lax and irreligious, and had 
 ceased to be true Jews without becoming even decent 
 Greeks. To fall thus between two stools is always the 
 special danger of the broad-minded party. It would 
 have been a calamity beyond words, if Israel at this 
 time had been wiped out as a force of religion : the time 
 had not come when she could afford to cease to be ex- 
 clusive. She had her contribution to make to the world, 
 and had to be kept select after Ezra's somewhat ex- 
 ternal fashion. She had to give to the world religion, 
 which could take the culture of Greece, and afterwards 
 the power of Rome, and elevate and inspire them. The 
 Hellenising influences were needed to prepare the way 
 for the coming of the great Reconciler, who would 
 make religion life, and make life religious for both 
 Jew and Greek ; and the fanaticism of the ultra- Jewish 
 party, with its stern legalism and exclusive creed, was 
 needed to guard the deposit, till the fulness of time had 
 come. But the struggle was fierce, and at one time, 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 23 
 
 just before the rising under the Maccabees, it seemed 
 as if the Hellenising party would carry everything 
 before them, and sweep the old Jewish faith of the 
 prophets, and martyrs, and saints, out of the land. 
 Fiercer than any mere struggle of arms was the strug- 
 gle of ideas, and the words of the prophet had a keener 
 significance for the time to come than their first mean- 
 ing. " Thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece." 
 The part which these two small countries played in 
 the history of the human soul was conditioned by their 
 history, and even by the geography. Among the 
 strongest antipathies of the Jews, amounting almost 
 to terror, was that of the desert and of the sea.. 
 Though originally a nomadic race, whose natural 
 home was the desert, they had learned to dread it, as 
 " the great and terrible wilderness." ^ Their long wan- 
 dering in it, their privations and struggles before they 
 were securely planted in Canaan, burned in on them 
 hatred of the pathless, arid waste. Drought was the 
 constant menace of Palestine, but in the desert drought 
 was chronic : the desert could swallow up a river, as it 
 swallows up Abana the river of Damascus, and still 
 have its thirst unappeased. Israel dwelt always on the 
 confines of the desert, in a land that seemed to be 
 snatched from its greedy maw, and never could forget 
 it. On the other side was the sea, but with a barren, 
 forbidding coast. There are no creeks and inlets, no 
 promontories or rivers or bays, that afford a natural 
 harbour. A ledge of cliff runs along almost unbroken, 
 with no place where a great port could be established, 
 and it is nearly always a lee shore, as the prevailing 
 winds are westerly. The sea to the Jews on that side 
 
 *Deut. i. 19. 
 
24 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 was the end, the unknown, and was accepted as the 
 limit of their possible dominion to the west, — " As for 
 your western border, ye shall have the great sea for a 
 border." 1. The charm of the sea, its joyous fascina- 
 tion, was unknown to the Jews. It was a limitation 
 due to geography. 
 
 How different this is from Greece, which has given 
 its name to the rival power, which contests the do- 
 minion of the heart and mind of man with the Hebrew. 
 Greece is cut up into promontories, and peninsulas, and 
 bays, and islands. 
 
 The sprinkled isles, 
 Lily on lily, that o'erface the sea. 
 And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps 
 " Greece." ' 
 
 The Greeks were born sailors, open on every side to 
 the intercourse of foreign nations, susceptible to all 
 varied influences, which helps to explain their light- 
 ness and charm of character, their free, joyous views 
 of life, their wide culture, which blossomed into art 
 and literature. They represent the highest develop- 
 ment of man through intercourse with men; while 
 the Jew was shut in by the desert and the sea, to work 
 out his destiny with God, to grapple with the prob- 
 lems of the moral Hfe. So, from Greece came art and 
 poetry to the world : from Israel came religion. When 
 the time came, the sea would be the great means of com- 
 munication, as the Greek language itself also was, for 
 turning the world into the kingdom of God, but mean- 
 while the sea was the great barrier to keep the treasure 
 from being lost. When Greece by wisdom was failing 
 
 Num. xxxiv. 6. ' Browning, Cleon. 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 25 
 
 to find out God, a few tribes forced out of the desert, 
 and beaten back by the sea, were learning on the hills 
 of Canaan the laws of God, which are the laws of life. 
 Israel and Greece have stood for the two great 
 forces that have moulded Western history, and still 
 dominate modern life. They have usually been stated 
 as opposite prmciples, waging endless warfare against 
 each other: Hebraism representing the sterner view 
 of Hfe as duty, righteousness, the demand of a higher 
 law ; Hellenism representing as the ideal an easy, har- 
 monious development of all the natural instincts and 
 capacities of man. Before the age of historical criti- 
 cism, St. Paul made the distinction, so specially em- 
 phasised in our day, between the Hebrew spirit and the 
 Gentile, particularly the Greek, spirit when he says that 
 the Gentiles followed not after righteousness, but that 
 Israel did follow after the law of righteousness.^ 
 Whatever might be said about the Jews, it could not be 
 said that levity and carelessness were their character- 
 istics, or that they were indifferent to moral issues. 
 There was a strenuous earnestness in the race, so that 
 Hebraism has been aptly enough incorporated into our 
 language to stand for the serious view of life as a 
 discipline, the conception of true happiness lying along 
 the line of duty, and self-control, and sacrifice. St. 
 Paul, even when recording their failure, bore them 
 witness that they had a zeal for God.^ History fully 
 bears out St. Paul's contrast between the Jew and the 
 Greek. The Jews did understand that God requireth 
 righteousness as indispensable for life. The law 
 flashed out its solemn warnings before their eyes. The 
 necessity for righteous living, as an article of faith, 
 
 * Rom. ix. 30, 31. *Ibid. x. 2. 
 
26 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 was more truly theirs than any other people's. The 
 sense of sin, the need of redemption, the lawlessness 
 of human nature when it is not under subjection to 
 the law of God, the necessity for restraint of even 
 natural powers and impulses, are all postulates of the 
 Bible. 
 
 With the Gentiles it was not so. In Greece the 
 highest form of pagan life was reached, and there life 
 was designed on the plane of nature. There was a 
 frank worldliness, the acceptance of the visible world, 
 making the best of it in every sense, so that the art of 
 living was carried to its furthest point. The cross, 
 and the message of the cross, might be a stumbling- 
 block to the Jews, with their glowing hopes of a Mes- 
 sianic King ; but St. Paul knew well that to the Greeks 
 the cross could only be foolishness,^ with their keen 
 zest of life, their pride of knowledge, their love of the 
 beautiful in nature, their whole conception of morality 
 as the harmonious development of the powers existing 
 in man. Greek life was run on a totally different level, 
 where a portent like the cross was sadly out of place. 
 Not self-sacrifice, but self-realisation was the highest 
 word of Greek thought. Every natural impulse was 
 justified, and had the sanction of religion, and even had 
 a special deity assigned to it. The highest human aim 
 came to be the cultivation of the natural, the beautiful, 
 the graceful in the world and human life, the due bal- 
 ance and harmony of all the powers and capacities of 
 man, the fulfilment of the whole nature, the develop- 
 ment of all sides of life. Pagan religion was nature- 
 worship, the worship of what is, not the vision of the 
 glory and holiness of God which drove the Jews to 
 
 * I Cor. i. 23. 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 27 
 
 their knees. Sin therefore was not the transgression 
 of a holy law, but merely the failure to make the most 
 of life. 
 
 The contrast can be worked out in detail in many 
 lines, but it is evident how the two ideals differ, and 
 how it is true that Zion must be against Greece. The 
 one stood for Religion, and the beauty of holiness : the 
 other for Culture, and the love of beauty. The one 
 was sensitive to the moral purity of God, and therefore 
 to the moral sanctions of life: the other was sensitive 
 to aesthetic beauty, and therefore to the natural glory 
 of life. Hebraism adored, and glorified God: Hel- 
 lenism deified the world, and glorified man. So that, 
 unless the morality of the Decalogue, with its re- 
 straints and repression of the evil taint in human na- 
 ture, and unless religion, as the prophets of Israel con- 
 ceived it, were to be lost to the world, the conflict of the 
 two opposing ideals could not be avoided. Hebraism 
 therefore stands to us for moral discipline; Hellenism 
 for the culture of the human, the sensitive love of the 
 beautiful, and the joy of living. 
 
 We are tempted to make this antithesis more abso- 
 lute than it really is. In such a hard-drawn contrast 
 there is omitted on the one side the higher morality of 
 the Greek philosophers and poets, in spite of its mani- 
 fest imperfections, and the more spiritual conception 
 of the divine which they attained; and also there is 
 omitted the practical reaction against the popular re- 
 ligion and the popular moral standard, which was made 
 by the followers of Pythagoras, a reaction which in- 
 cluded strict asceticism of life, as well as mystical 
 speculations. And on the other side the contrast is 
 
28 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 stated, as if all the art, and literature, and intellectual 
 advance were found only in Greece and not in Israel. 
 It is true that the Jews never did show any proficiency 
 in the plastic arts, a characteristic which they have 
 shared with the Semitic race generally ; but the Jewish 
 religion fostered arts like architecture, music, poetry; 
 and their sacred literature in all its varied forms, nar- 
 rative, prophetic, lyric, dramatic, judged even as litera- 
 ture, is unrivalled for sublimity and for power over 
 the mind and heart of man. There is omitted also the 
 tremendous intellectual advance to the whole people, 
 caused by the monotheistic creed of Israel. This is 
 seen most markedly not only in the prophets' condem- 
 nation of idolatry as moral evil, but in their derision 
 and scornful laughter at it as grotesque ignorance. 
 The intellectual superiority of their attitude is too pal- 
 pable to be missed, as for example in Elijah's mockery 
 of the frantic Baal worshippers, " Cry aloud ; for he is 
 a god : either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on 
 a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be 
 awaked," ^ words which cut deeper with their keen edge 
 of scorn, than the knives and lancets, with which they 
 cut themselves. A striking proof of the mental superi- 
 ority of Monotheism is the attitude of Judah in the 
 exile, when the feeble nation, broken by the barbaric 
 might of Babylon, having lost everything but her faith 
 in the One God, held her head high in scornful pride, 
 as she dwelt captive among idolaters. There is no 
 more piercing satire in literature, than that of the 
 prophet's description of the making of a god — the 
 planting of an ash tree ; the felling it when grown ; 
 the kindling of a fire with part of the wood to roast 
 
 * Kings xviii. 27. 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 29 
 
 meat on, and with the rest of the wood making a god 
 to grovel before ; the smith fashioning it with hammers, 
 fainting with the fatigue of working it on the hot coals, 
 the carpenter carefully measuring his part of the work 
 with a rule, using compass and planes/ 
 
 The idea of One God is on a level of thought, high 
 as the heavens above the idea at the root of Polytheism ; 
 for it gave unity to the world, and to man, as well as 
 to God. A moral law, universal in its working, bind- 
 ing for all, and binding even for God, is impossible in a 
 system with many gods of varying temperament and 
 conflicting principles, as everything would depend on 
 the special character and tastes of the particular deity, 
 whose influence was supposed to preponderate in any 
 given time and locality. The basis for moral conduct 
 is taken away, if it is even conceivable that a thing 
 could be right in one place and wrong in another, right 
 for one deity and wrong for another, right even for the 
 same deity at one time and wrong at another, if he can 
 be persuaded by gifts and prayers and sacrifices to 
 make right wrong on any occasion and for any con- 
 sideration. We know in the direction of human affairs 
 that many masters end in confusion, and we can 
 imagine the moral confusion introduced by the con- 
 ception of Lords many and Gods many, who ruled 
 over a distracted earth. Faith in one God was needed 
 before consistency in the moral life of man was possible. 
 The world is indebted to the Jews for the moral law, 
 not merely the Ten Commandments, but the idea of 
 law, the possibility of any commandments, based not 
 on caprice or external authority, but on the eternal 
 essence of things. 
 
 *Isa. xliv. 9-20. 
 
30 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 The result of this moral advance was an infinite in- 
 tellectual advance also, which brought reason and 
 order into the world. There could be nothing but 
 mental confusion, so long as the universe was supposed 
 to be governed haphazard and by piecemeal, here the 
 domain of one deity, there of another. Consistent 
 thought about nature, or human history, was impos- 
 sible; and so we find the great thinkers of Greece 
 striving to express the idea of unity. While not re- 
 nouncing polytheism, they sought to introduce order; 
 some by conceiving of a God who was above the other 
 gods as a sort of ultimate appeal ; others by imagining 
 a dread impersonal power like Fate, which even all the 
 gods had to obey; others denying that the gods inter- 
 fered with the world at all. Science in its modern 
 sense had its birth in Monotheism. The idea of the 
 uniformity of nature, which is the first principle of 
 science, was impossible till the human mind swept 
 aside the intellectual confusion of Polytheism, and 
 through the conception of law saw the world to be 
 consistent, with unbroken continuity. Jewish religion 
 is the cradle of science. This intellectual superiority, 
 which was not confined to an isolated thinker, as 
 might be the case in Greece, but which belonged to the 
 nation, needs to be taken into account in all the con- 
 trasts, which are drawn between Hellenism and He- 
 braism. 
 
 For all the reasons stated above it is seen that these 
 contrasts are usually overdrawn as history; and this 
 particular contrast, which we are specially considering 
 in what may be called their various theories of life, has 
 also been exaggerated, and is only borne out by special 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 31 
 
 definitions of the two terms to suit the particular thesis ; 
 but there is enough truth in the opposition to make it 
 worth stating. The contrast is exaggerated, as if they 
 were irreconcilable opposites, as if there could be no 
 higher unity which could combine the two. As a 
 matter of fact they must be combined for a complete 
 solution of the difficulty they undoubtedly represent; 
 for they are both facts of human life. Still the con- 
 trast is a true one so far as it goes, and represents a 
 division among men, which lasts to this day. There 
 are the two types of mind, to whom one or other of the 
 alternatives makes its insistent appeal. The two forces 
 seem to play shuttlecock right through history, divid- 
 ing epochs and men. They are seen rather as ten- 
 dencies, than as deliberate theories, formulated com- 
 pletely and logically carried out; but even as theories 
 they are ever to be found, and seem fated to stand 
 apart, though we do see them sometimes fused together 
 in more or less measure in a great man like Dante or 
 Spenser or Milton, or even in a great epoch like the 
 Elizabethan, the fruit of the twin forces of the Re- 
 naissance and the Reformation. But almost always 
 one of the theories appeals more strongly to each of the 
 two families of minds, and men seem to fall naturally 
 into one of the two great parties. We find it in litera- 
 ture and art, as well as in theology and practical life. 
 The one speaks in the name of religion and asserts 
 that the highest life is reached through sacrifice, and 
 therefore advocates stern self-repression as the true 
 method. It appeals to the heroic vein, throws con- 
 tempt on all things of earth, and deliberately refuses 
 them for the sake of the deeper life of the soul. It 
 glows with unearthly beauty in its divine passion of 
 
32 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 renunciation. It bases its verdict on the experience 
 that all forms of worldliness, however refined and 
 cultured, end in disillusionment and despair, and can 
 never satisfy the deep heart of man. The doom of 
 death is on them, open, as they are like other earthly 
 treasures, to the bite of the moth and the waste of the 
 rust ; so that even the perfecting of one's own existence 
 by the ordinary means of culture, though it may be 
 free from all gross evil, is a barren task, unworthy of 
 our exclusive regard. Everything must be sacrificed 
 to the soul. The way to save the life is to lose it, to 
 give it up, to throw it away in the devotion of a great 
 aim. Men thrill, as they have ever done, to the high 
 passion of the counsel. It has made saints, and mar- 
 tyrs, missionaries, and philanthropists. It is indeed at 
 the root of all religion, that a man should not count 
 his life dear, and should sit loosely to all worldly pos- 
 sessions, and when the call comes should be willing to 
 give up all that the world counts most precious. The 
 story of Buddha, with its voluntary renunciation, 
 driven by the sting of soul and by divine pity for suf- 
 fering men, has false views of God and of human life, 
 but it has a heart of truth in it, and the instinct of the 
 race pronounces its majesty. 
 
 On the other side, calmly waiting for its opportunity, 
 is the opposite method, which speaks not of self-re- 
 pression, but of self-expression. It bases itself quietly 
 on the natural instincts and needs of man, and 
 makes as its ideal the healthful outgoing of all the 
 activities of human nature. These suggest and 
 determine the life man was meant to live, so 
 let him live that life fearlessly, unfolding him- 
 self as best he can. The soul is larger, it declares, than 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 33 
 
 the ascetic would allow, and has room for all the world 
 of beauty, and thought, and art, and knowledge, which 
 man has been conquering for himself through the cen- 
 turies. The ascetic method, if carried out logically, 
 would make life colourless, and would result in the 
 loss of individuality, and therefore in the loss of the 
 highest capacity of service. Besides, it is an impos- 
 sible ideal for all men, for if rigidly pursued it would 
 bring society to an end, and the race itself to an end. 
 The natural ideal, says this calm voice — calm because 
 it knows what weight of facts is on its side — is a fully 
 developed and all-round health of the whole individual. 
 It has support not only from the nature of man, but 
 from the teaching of religion, which points to perfection 
 as its end ; so that culture can be even made a religious 
 duty, and it has certainly often been elevated into a re- 
 ligious cult. The strength of its religious appeal is 
 felt in the question. Are we not called on to make 
 the best of God's gifts to us in nature, as well as in 
 providence? It cannot be that having eyes we should 
 refuse to see, and having ears we should refuse to hear, 
 and having brains we should refuse to think, and hav- 
 ing capacities of work and joy we should refuse to 
 exercise them. 
 
 And so the two tendencies, which we can call He- 
 braism and Hellenism if we will, oppose each other 
 and make their clamant appeal to us all. The con- 
 troversy is perennial, though its forms change. The 
 problems which divided men into Cavalier and Puritan 
 have lost their point to us to-day but the distinction 
 made th-en finds copious illustration in every stage of 
 human history, and the same swing of the pendulum 
 from the Commonwealth to the Restoration can be 
 
34 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 paralleled again and again, though not perhaps in such 
 dramatic completeness. There must be some solution 
 of the seeming antithesis; for wherever one side has 
 full sway, unhindered by the other, it only prepares 
 for a strong reaction. This is so conspicuous in his- 
 tory, and is such a regular phenomenon, that it seems 
 as natural as the systole and diastole of a rhythmically 
 pulsating vessel, like the heart. 
 
 Florence, when dominated by the preaching of 
 Savonarola, became transformed; high-born ladies 
 threw aside their jewels and finery; men turned from 
 evil ways into sobriety and godliness of life; all the 
 forms of devoted piety were observed, the churches 
 were crowded with all classes of the people from 
 nobles to peasants, dishonest tradesmen under the 
 awakening of conscience restored ill-gotten gains; the 
 Carnival, which before had been an occasion for un- 
 bridled passions, wild revelry, drunkenness, and de- 
 bauchery, became almost like a fast instead of a ca- 
 rousal; the famous burning of the "Vanities" took 
 place, when men gave up to the flames all books and 
 pictures calculated to have an evil influence, all carnival 
 masks and costumes, and things associated with the old 
 orgies ; the very children were turned into instruments 
 of the good work, going through the streets in proces- 
 sion, singing hymns, and collecting money for the poor 
 — and then the tide turned, and, when Savonarola was 
 in the crisis of his struggle with the pope, almost the 
 whole city rose against him ; a mob attacked his con- 
 vent of San Marco; and the great Friar went to his 
 martyrdom, with the sorer martyrdom of his heart at 
 the thought that all his work was overturned. 
 
 In the individual life also it is common to find a 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 35 
 
 similar revolt from the strictness of early training, and 
 from a crabbed, narrow faith. Just when life seems 
 completely confined by a cast-iron system of repression, 
 there comes a revulsion of man's intellect to freedom, 
 which too often degenerates into license. 
 
 The Renaissance was, among other things, a re- 
 action against asceticism; as the Reformation was 
 also in a more religious sphere, the recoil of the heart 
 from a system that crushed healthy instincts. A 
 theory, which made duty consist in uprooting the innate 
 powers, must provoke reaction ; and sooner or later the 
 instinct of beauty, which is native to man, will find 
 outlet. The Renaissance was the swing of the pendulum 
 long held back, and its very excesses were due to 
 the previous excess. If men rushed from the old dis- 
 cipline and rigid regime to the other extreme of license, 
 it was the expected result at the breaking of the bonds 
 which formerly held them; just as th-e license of the 
 Restoration in England, after the iron hand of the 
 Commonwealth was removed, is explained in the same 
 way. At the Renaissance the new delight in nature, 
 in art, in all the beauty and charm of the world, burst 
 the bands of the old theory of life. Interest in the 
 rediscovered classical literature, the revival of learning, 
 all the varied culture of Humanism, came with the en- 
 largement of mind, which saw the world and life to be 
 larger in their many-sided interests than the mediaeval 
 Church had allowed. In the ferment of the time, paint- 
 ing, architecture, literature opened up new worlds, and 
 with these manifestations there appeared also a new 
 love of natural beauty. Petrarch's description of the 
 Valley of Vaucluse would have been impossible in 
 Italy before his time. Sometimes the revival degen- 
 
36 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 erated into naturalism in its gross forms, when men 
 threw aside all restraints, and the excess brought its 
 own revenge to the destruction of art itself; but Hu- 
 manism, as it appeared in history, was an inevitable 
 reaction from asceticism, and illustrated once more the 
 old lesson that the nature of man cannot be thwarted 
 and distorted with impunity. 
 
 These then are the two opposing elements, plainly 
 traced in broad lines in history, both of them facts 
 of human nature clamorously appealing for recogni- 
 tion, but it is not easy to do justice to both sides, 
 either in a philosophical theory which will give each 
 its proper place, or as a practical solution for the re- 
 spective difficulties each side creates in our own daily 
 lives. It is easier to take sides, to call Savonarola a 
 fanatic monk, who tried to plunge the Renaissance 
 back into the gloom of the Middle Ages ; or to exag- 
 gerate the grotesque side of Puritanism, as Butler does 
 in Hudibras, and Scott does with the Scotch Covenan- 
 ters, underlining the scrupulosity of the precision, and 
 the passion of the fanatic: as on the other hand it is 
 easier to assume that every cavalier was a roystering 
 swaggerer ; or to mock at the pretension of all forms of 
 culture, as if to sweeten the surface of life were the 
 same as to save it ; or to sneer at all attempted revivals 
 of Hellenism in our own time, with their aesthetic crazes 
 and endless affectations. It is useful enough that the 
 faults and failures of both sides should be pointed out ; 
 but mutual recriminations, which end there, do not help 
 much towards a solution. The first principle of any 
 attempted irenicon between the two forces, represented 
 by Zion and Greece, is that it must include both, as 
 
ZION AGAINST GREECE 37 
 
 can be proved from the undoubted dangers which beset 
 each of the two tendencies when left to itself. 
 
 Culture is tempted to be blind to the tragic facts 
 of human nature, and to smother the soul in external 
 forms and objects. This carries with it also the con- 
 stant danger of moral relaxation; for if all that is in 
 man only needs unrestrained development, life can be 
 made, as it has often on these lines been made, a dance 
 of devils. Even if this moral catastrophe be avoided, 
 culture, separated from the serious temper of religion, 
 grows shallow, if not base, in its tendency. With all 
 possible grace and charm a literature, which has lost 
 touch with strength and seriousness, dwindles into 
 frivolity or grossness. 
 
 The opposite danger on the side of religion is a 
 morbid introspection, which dwarfs life and leads to 
 atrophy of the natural powers. All wilful mutilation 
 of life, all refusal of the wide and spacious inheritance 
 to which we have been bom as men, is tacit unbelief. 
 It throws the whole providence of God into confusion, 
 to make nature a satanic contrivance, as if it were 
 outside of the divine government. The ideal thus must 
 include both elements, each being needed to save the 
 other from the defects of its quality. If the Greek 
 spirit is needed to broaden the life of a people, the He- 
 brew spirit is needed to deepen it, and indeed to give 
 it the solid foundation on which alone beauty can be 
 permanently built. 
 
II 
 
 THE ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 
 
 IT may seem like pronouncing on the futility of cul- 
 ture at the very start to associate it with the very 
 word aesthetic, as giving a dog a bad name is a 
 preparation for hanging it. It is, however, with 
 no controversial intention we use the word, but partly 
 because the name need not be relegated to an unworthy 
 use, and partly because of the difficulty of finding a 
 better word. ^Esthetic, from its derivation, means 
 perception, or what is perceptible by the senses, but it is 
 narrowed further to apply to the science of beauty and * 
 to matters of taste. In its best sense it means the love 
 of poetry and art and all works of imagination, de- 
 manding a cultivated mind to appreciate the shades of 
 beauty in these subjects ; and, while culture may claim 
 a wider sphere, still it chiefly works by means that may 
 be called aesthetic, seeking to ripen, and sweeten, and 
 enlarge our appreciation of the best things in the 
 world and human life. In its worst sense the word 
 has an unfortunate suggestion of affectation and pose, 
 implying a superfine and exaggerated devotion to petty 
 details on the surface of art, and a supercilious con- 
 tempt for the practical affairs of the world. 
 
 The word culture itself does not escape this diffi- 
 culty of having various meanings. It too has been 
 debased to mean the same sort of affectation and ped- 
 antry, as if it stood for the multifarious scraps of in- 
 
 38 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 39 
 
 formation about literature and art, which are accepted 
 as passwords by the select cliques. Addington Sy- 
 monds ^ complained that a reviewer of one of his books 
 sneered at him for travelling around Europe with a 
 portmanteau full of culture on his back, and this set 
 him to reflect that his reviewer must have had a differ- 
 ent conception of culture from himself, and must have 
 imagined it to consist of certain select views about art 
 and pieces of literary information, which could be 
 hawked about the country as a pedlar takes his pack. 
 This is a common enough view, for which some apostles 
 of culture, who rave periodically about some obscure 
 picture or some newly discovered book, are responsible, 
 a view which has become so ingrained in the public mind 
 that it is difficult to speak seriously of culture and the 
 aims of culture at all. But in spite of the deterioration 
 of the word in popular usage, the thing it stands for is 
 too important and vital to be dismissed with a sneer. 
 
 In addition also to this varied use of the word there 
 is still another element of confusion in the fact that, 
 besides its natural uses in the unmetaphorical sense, 
 culture can mean either a process, as in the phrase the 
 culture of the mind, that is, its training, or it can mean 
 a product, the result of the process, as when we speak 
 about a man of culture. In the first case it suggests 
 the machinery of education, the appropriation of learn- 
 ing, a system by means of which the understanding and 
 the taste are cultivated ; and, as it is a common failing 
 to exalt the means unduly, this is how the suggestion 
 that it is something artificial has crept in. Professor 
 Seeley* is so concerned about this that he thinks it a 
 
 */n the Key of Blue, p. 195. 
 * Natural Religion, Part ii. chap. ii. 
 
40 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 misfortune that those who say * culture ' do not say 
 instead * rehgion/ since culture does certainly convey 
 the idea of being merely a direction given to the de- 
 velopment of life, while religion is the principle of Ufe 
 itself, and he is jealous for the honour and high place 
 of culture. We shall see^ that this would be to de- 
 nude religion of its hitherto recognised significance, 
 and would be piling upon culture a weight of meaning 
 its foundation could not bear, and would leave it, like 
 a pyramid, standing on its apex. It must be content 
 with its honourable position as a force that gives a 
 very effective direction to life, and is a very valuable 
 instrument of religion. In this chapter, in which we 
 speak of its great value and the truth that is in it as 
 an ideal, we will see how it moves to some extent con- 
 currently with religion, reserving to a future chapter 
 any consideration of its weakness, and the causes of its 
 failure when taken by itself. 
 
 Culture begins with accepting the Christian ideal,, 
 which aims at perfection of life, and thus, with all 
 its incompleteness, it is in some form necessary to every 
 man who has ideals at all. It emphasises the duty, 
 which a man owes to himself to be what it is in him to 
 become, the duty to use all means to attain a full de- 
 velopment of all his powers. It includes, therefore, 
 the careful cultivation of every capacity, the ripening 
 of the nature by the slow processes of growth, the 
 effort after self-realisation, which produces artists in 
 every sphere of creative energy. It is the conscious 
 training, in which a man makes use of every educa- 
 tional means within his reach, feeding his inner life by 
 every vital force in history and experience, and so ad- 
 
 * Vide below, chap. iv. " Culture as Religion." 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 41 
 
 justing himself to his environment that he shall absorb 
 the best products of the life of his time, thus making 
 his personality rich and deep. Starting from this high 
 ground it is not enough to wave it aside with a ref- 
 erence to the lowest types of the cult, the terrible 
 prigs it has fostered, the superior persons who speak 
 mellifluously of sweetness and light, and who look 
 with contempt on the Philistines; or to the aesthetic 
 coteries, who worship the bizarre and the uncommon, 
 who rave about the ethical value of blue china and 
 white plates of Nantgarw, and hold strong opinions 
 about Botticelli, or somebody else, according to the 
 prevailing fashion; the elect people who have the 
 only true views about wallpaper and Oriental rugs. 
 It would be easy to refer to the crowd, which sham 
 culture has let loose *' to rave, recite, and madden 
 round the land." That would be the poor device of 
 the controversalist, who takes the weak exaggera- 
 tions of those he marks out as opponents and trans- 
 fixes them with his easy scorn. 
 
 In cheap sneers at culture we forget that every 
 great man has set it before himself in some form or 
 other, and that it is no broad and flowery path on 
 which a man can gaily walk, but a narrow one 
 through a strait gate. We forget that it was not a 
 light task, for example, which Goethe presented to 
 himself, when he made it his aim in life to develop 
 his every capacity, till he died, after a long life of 
 strenuous mental activity, with the words on his Hps, 
 " More light." What has made Goethe the representa- 
 tive man of culture was that he resolutely set aside 
 all extraneous interests, and calmly gave himself to 
 his engrossing idea; that he was, as Mr. Hamilton 
 
42 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Mabk puts it in one of his cultured and suggestive 
 essays, " a man who discovered in youth that life 
 ought not to be a succession of happenings, a matter 
 of outward fortunes, but a cumulative inward growth 
 and a cumulative power of productivity." ^ We forget 
 also the moral qualities involved in the tremendous 
 course of study, which a man like Gibbon set before 
 himself as preparation for the writing of the Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is a long and 
 arduous task to master even a branch of literature; 
 for it requires not only almost sleepless toil to over- 
 take the immense field, but also asks for imaginative 
 reconstruction of the historical conditions, and^ 
 sympathetic insight into the character and tempera- 
 ment and situation of the various authors, before 
 their place in the republic of letters can be deter- 
 mined. And most of all we forget that, whatever 
 follies may be committed in its name, culture as an 
 ideal means a vision of unrealised perfection, and a 
 steadfast pursuit of it, demanding intelligent grasp 
 of the laws of growth, and resolute self-mastery, and 
 unflinching effort. 
 
 It comes even with a religious force to a man, who^ 
 feels the sacredness of life, and realises his obligation 
 to make the most of life in the best sense. Most of 
 the failures of life are due to want of a real aim; we 
 pursue our course so much by drifting rather than by 
 sailing. Men are so concerned about living, that 
 they lose sight of life. The act of living, the means 
 of living, the details of living, absorb us almost ex- 
 clusively, and we rarely try to co-ordinate all our 
 scattered activities into a large consistent plan. Of 
 ^Essays on Nature, p. 15. 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL —CULTURE 43 
 
 course we have petty practical plans, such as to make 
 a position in our profession, to make money in our 
 business, or to get pleasure in our life, but as likely 
 as not we have just drifted into these plans also. 
 With all our activity in living, the great judgment of 
 life goes against us by default. As far as the indi- 
 vidual is concerned, the net gain of life must be a 
 gain in character; we are judged^ even by men in 
 the long-run, not by what we get, but by what we 
 become: the fruits of life are seen, not in what we 
 have, but in what we grow to. If this be so, we need 
 a large plan with some more pretensions to philo- 
 sophical completeness than the small partial aims we 
 set before us. It must take into account the whole 
 life, every part of our being, every power and faculty, 
 Man has a duty to himself, to attain and preserve the 
 integrity of his whole being. Jfe fc as c crtaitr g ift 
 capacities, tastes ; and the very p^???J^oi tlie§^,4B!lii 
 plies oblicfation to mak'c the best of them, so far as 
 li-est liiis is the demand of both culture and 
 
 religion, however t heir various methods may seem to 
 differ* If culture is, as it has so often l)een defined, 
 
 the study of perfection, then it gives itself over to the 
 religious ideaU The narrowness of some forms of 
 religion, with their one-sided development, is responsi- 
 ble for protests in the name of culture, which should 
 have the result of bringing back religion into line with 
 its whole duty. 
 
 There is a legitimate self-love, not mereb 
 preservaS on ot 551f, Wlildl w e Ul'^ ^^^^ ,, }^ ^ ^^^ Q^ Q^^ 
 nature, DuTlni^ cot Tgideratjg|^ fo^^^^jp^ ^Y^"^ 
 
 good._ TTTeTfflSI^Te^^nises the rights of selfhood, 
 aSTeven makes these rights the standard of duty to 
 
44 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 others, — " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." 
 This necessary self-love is taken for granted, as with 
 a shafp'"stroke of logic the human instinct is tumeT 
 into a divine duty. Personality is the fact of life. 
 Christ's teaching, even His teaching on sacrifice, is 
 based on the sacredness of the individual life. The 
 inalienable rights of personality got a new and 
 commanding sanction from the whole trend of His 
 teaching. In a sense He enunciated the doctrine of 
 individuality with a force so new, that He may be 
 said to have discovered to man the single soul. He 
 placed the worth of a life against that of the whole 
 world. Each soul was called out in splendid isolation 
 to enter into relationship with God separately; each 
 was endowed with sacred rights, and had a priceless 
 value put on it. He liberated the energies, and en- 
 riched the capacities, bringing a reinforcement of the 
 natural powers. The promise of the faith was ever 
 life, and life more abundantly. It was a new doctrine 
 of personality, which gave a slave the dignity of a 
 free spiritual being, though in the eyes of the law he 
 was a chattel. " Stand fast in the liberty wherewith 
 Christ hath made us free " ^ was the watchword of the 
 days to come, sounding in the ears of the early believers 
 as a battle-cry, summoning them to assert their rights 
 as living souls. 
 
 Of course, duty to self must be distinguished from 
 selfishness, which is the abuse of this inherent self- 
 regard. True self-love is not desire for the pleasure 
 of s elf, but for the highest good of self. It is here, 
 it may be said in passing, that there is room for 
 sacrifice, which is left out in all selfish schemes of 
 
 *Gal. V. I. 
 
THE ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 45 
 
 culture; for a man's highest good may be to give up 
 something which his lower self desires and craves. 
 To leave out of account the moral discipline of life, 
 the supremacy of the conscience, the imperious claims 
 of service, the calls to self-sacrifice that come to every 
 man, is to mutilate life, a^ surely as the ascetic 
 does in his rage for renunciation for its own sake.. 
 Still, even if it be found that complete renunciation 
 is the ultimate demand of conscience as asceticism 
 claims, if the test of life be not getting, but giving up, 
 it will still remain true that the more a man's per- 
 sonality is strengthened and enriched, the more 
 precious is his contribution. True humility indeed 
 implies self-respect: to give yourself up worthily you 
 must feel yourself worthy to give* The rights of self- 
 hood interpreted truly means duties, and chiefly the 
 duty of self-realisation, which sums up all the others* 
 The ground of the duty is the recognition of how much 
 can be done by sustained education, how much the 
 varied forces and rich influences of the world can 
 effect when allowed to play freely on a receptive 
 nature J the recognition that, as Edmund Burke de- 
 clared, Tt» the prerogative of man to be in a great 
 degree a creature of his own making,** 
 
 According to the contents and spirit of our scheme 
 of culture, so will be the strength of the moral claim 
 it makes on us, and the depth of its moral basis as an 
 adequate plan of life. Without moral sanctions, it 
 could have no permanent elements for a human ideal. 
 Self-preservation as a mere instinct would work au- 
 tomatically, and we could not speak of it as a moral 
 duty. Duty comes in when we enlarge and deepen the 
 idea of self. If by it we mean more than just keeping 
 
46 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 existence going, if we mean the preserving of all that 
 makes us men, the maintaining of all that it is in our 
 nature to be, then moral obligation enters into it, and 
 gives it a new and added value. Culture aims at a 
 complete full-orbed existence, not cramped and one- 
 sided through exclusive regard of a section of life. If 
 then no other and higher moral obligation conflicts 
 with it, we must admit the duty to seek the fulfilment 
 of all the human possibilities which lie in us, the duty 
 to attain and preserve utter health of nature and the 
 complete integrity of our whole being^ and to let 
 growth reach its maturity in us.^ This is the demand 
 of culture, and in this it surely joins hands with 
 religion, which asserts that man should be integer 
 vitcB seel eris que pur us. We must accept the truth of 
 the words, which Browning makes part of Bishop 
 Blougram's Apology, whatever we may say to the rest 
 of that Laodicean's philosophy, 
 
 " My business is not to make myself, 
 But make the absolute best of what God made." 
 
 The first step in such a comprehensive scheme is 
 self-knowledge, and this too is the religious method. 
 Culture is possible, and is a duty, because we are 
 able to look in on ourselves, able to compare the 
 present with the past, to find out what our tastes, and 
 temperament, and capacities, and weaknesses are. In 
 consequence of this, we are able also to forecast to 
 some extent what we can ba. and can thus formu- 
 late an ideal towards which we can grow.. Without 
 a resolute attempt at self-knowledge, all efforts at 
 culture will be largely misdirected. This self-knowl- 
 edge means, not only the recognition of the general 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 47 
 
 possibilities of human nature, but th-e more exact 
 appreciation of personal qualities, and so will show 
 how the best may be made of these^. A false esti- 
 mate of self may lead a man to attempt what is beyond 
 his powers, vainly straining after distinction of work, 
 when in a humbler sphere he might have achieved 
 much. In every sphere of art and knowledge, as well 
 as in practical business, how often we jfind men wasting 
 their energies, and spending powers that in the right 
 lines would produce great results for themselves and 
 the world. Or what is worse, may fritter away their 
 years without a thought beyond the mere externals of 
 life, never conscious of the possibilities of their own 
 nature, hardly aware that a whole world of beauty and 
 joy and wisdom and truth lies open for them, if they 
 will but enter it. Many doors remain shut that would 
 unfold almost to the touch, if we but realised that we 
 too had the right to go in, if we took a larger and 
 braver conception of our birthright as men. 
 
 Jake the simplest of the senseS| for example^^ 
 sight. As a rule we just take it for granted, and 
 leave it to artists as men of special capacity, or to 
 men of science whose business it is, to use their eyes 
 with trained judgment, and to educate their gift of 
 sight. Observation, whether artistic or scientifics 
 needs an intellectual effort, and the mass of men go 
 through the world with their eyes shut, because they 
 do not realise that they in their measure can cultivate 
 the gift. We will not look long enough to notice 
 form and colour, and as a result of neglect both 
 nature and art are to a large extent sealed books to 
 us. Indeed it may be said that of all the recognised 
 instruments of culture the one which is most often 
 
4S CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 overlooked is the faculty of observation. There are 
 many more men who read than think, and there are 
 more still who think than observe ; for it is much easier 
 both to read, and to think after a fashion, than to 
 observe. Observation in this sense is something 
 different from the sense of sight. It implies atten- 
 tion, keenness of perception, and power of associa- 
 tion to identify and classify. In the course of a 
 country walk one man will see nothing, and remember 
 nothing, but the obtrusive objects of the landscape, 
 hedges, and fields, and farmhouses; another will have 
 noted endless varieties of flower, and weed, and bird, 
 and insect; or found full delight in some patch of 
 colour, the graceful swaying of a branch, the tracery 
 of a cloud; or will have had thoughts suggested, and 
 remembered, that made his walk a mental refresh- 
 ment. Just as in the region of sound, during the same 
 walk, one man with uncultured ear hears nothing or 
 only an indistinguishable blur, while another hears all 
 sorts of tones and half-tones and harmonies and melo- 
 dies, and even when sound itself seems dead, as on 
 rare occasions happens, he hears what Keats calls 
 
 " A little noiseless noise among the leaves, 
 Born of the very sigh that silence heaves." ^ 
 
 Observation is a trained faculty, a disciplined mind 
 using the gate of the eye, and it is astonishingly 
 rare in any maturity of power. 
 
 Even in the natural sciences, which are based on 
 observation, men usually find it easier to theorise, and 
 speculate, and make hypotheses, than to observe 
 patiently and accurately. So rare is it that, when 
 
 * Early Poems. — " I stood tip-toe upon a little hill." 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 49 
 
 a man observes the simple facts around him and 
 records lovingly and faithfully the actual things he 
 sees day by day, he creates a masterpiece, as Gilbert 
 White did in The Natural History of Selborne. In his 
 preface he declares that he will be quite satisfied, if 
 by his book he induces any readers to pay a more ready 
 attention to the wonders of creation too frequently 
 overlooked as common occurrences, or if he should 
 have lent a helping hand towards the enlargement of 
 the boundaries of historical and topographical knowl- 
 edge, or if he had thrown some light on ancient 
 customs and manners ; but he did more than all that, as 
 he has often given eyes to the blind, and ears to the 
 deaf, the next time they took a country walk after 
 knowing White of Selborne. 
 
 The kind of culture which is required for scientific 
 work, is diiferent from the usual meaning put into 
 the phrase *' culture of the eye." By it we mean a 
 trained capacity to see beauty, and to intelligently 
 appreciate it. It is an aesthetic thing rather than 
 a scientific, but it is the same faculty nevertheless, 
 trained in a different line. It also needs attention, 
 keen perception, and power of association. For 
 instance, before a painter can paint colour he must 
 be able to see colour, able to recognise it where duller 
 eyes miss it, see that a bare grey rock is not grey at 
 all, but with shades of purple, it may be, and tones of 
 blue and red. Of course this trained eye, even when 
 joined to a trained hand, will not make an artist. 
 For that, there is needed also the creative imagina- 
 tion, the soul to combine forms of beauty and body 
 forth an image, for the production of which the eye 
 and the hand are only the instruments. Still this 
 
50 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 culture of the eye at least makes it possible for us 
 to enjoy beauty whether of nature or art, and will 
 unlock the sealed books. 
 
 This example we have taken of the faculty of 
 sight is only an illustration of the training which 
 culture would apply all along the line of man's 
 powers, bringing them into self-consciousness, and 
 so creating duty regarding them. Anything which 
 will make men take an intelligent view of their 
 powers, and which will give them a larger and deeper 
 conception of the opportunities of life, is to be wel- 
 comed as an ally of religion, the greatest obstacle to 
 which is just that men will not think, will not consider, 
 and only live lightly on the surface of things, never 
 awed with mystery, or inspired with worshipful won- 
 der. Nothing truly human lies outside the Christian 
 sphere. If it puts the first emphasis on duty, on 
 morality, on righteous living, that is because it must 
 put first things first, as the necessary foundation for all 
 else. Only on a firm moral basis can a harmoniously 
 compacted life, such as culture aims at, be built ; only 
 on such a stable basis can there be the equipoise of 
 human powers, which the aesthetic ideal seeks to reach. 
 That ideal is therefore not essentially opposed to re- 
 ligion ; rather it is bound to fail, if it is divorced from 
 religion. 
 
 It is because the word culture has been degraded 
 to mean a dilettante interest in art, and a taste for 
 the " precious " style in literature, that we find it 
 difficult to give it this high place. But the word 
 itself does not refer to the graces and accomplish- 
 ments of good taste, nor even the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge. It meaais the constant and careful tillage, 
 
THE .ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 51 
 
 needed to give the fit environment for something to 
 grow, and that something is man himself, with his 
 complete powers and faculties* In its full breadth of 
 meaning, it seeks to raise all human capabilities to the 
 highest potency by conscious education^ to enable a 
 man to come to his true self. It aims at training all 
 sides of a man's nature to make him as perfect, as 
 finished a human being as possible. If so^ then religion 
 c laims it as an instrument for its great work. 
 
 It is true that the word~m~coffim5n speechlFusually 
 confined to the intellectual sphere, and perhaps it 1 
 should be limited to this, to avoid the confusion of / 
 thought due to the double meaning; but even in this/ 
 limited sense of seeking to train the mind by known 
 edge and to increase susceptibility to beauty, its value\ 
 is great ; and to this value we will now try briefly to \ 
 do justice. 
 
 First of all, the aesthetic ideal, in even its narrow 
 sense, has been useful as a necessary protest against 
 any form of asceticism, which' willfully limits or muti- 
 lates human life. By bringing into prominence a side 
 of ethics often overlooked, and by refusing to allow 
 the legitimate claims of man's nature to be ruthlessly 
 set aside, it has proved a valuable corrective of error 
 in morals, even when it disclaims to have anything 
 to do with morality. Sacrifice or self-denial must 
 always have a place in a true life, but it is never to be 
 sought for its own sake, as if there were any merit 
 in the mere form of denial. This has ever been a 
 besetting temptation of religion, to put a magical value 
 on ascetic practices, and to conclude that the simple 
 secret of attaining spiritual heights was to renounce 
 
52 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 the natural, and to trample on one side of human 
 nature. This rival ideal will be more fully treated 
 hereafter, but culture does useful work in pointing 
 with unwavering insistence to spheres of activity that 
 demand scope, and to instincts whose very existence 
 is a prophecy of fulfilment. Nature has stamped her 
 work with the indelible mark of beauty, and it is dis- 
 ease, not health, when a man refuses to respond to it, 
 and smothers his heart lest it leap up, with Words- 
 worth, when he beholds a rainbow in the sky. This 
 response to nature is the birth of art, which is at its 
 highest pure praise, the expression of man's joy in the 
 beauty of creation. There is a Mysticism (the sworn 
 foe of culture) which dallies with the ascetic creed, 
 and which degrades the material in the supposed 
 interests of the spiritual. The mystic Tauler, we 
 are told, used to draw his cap over his eyes when 
 in the country, that the violets might not withdraw 
 him from his inward communion. That is the weak- 
 ness of his school, a mistake with him, an affectation 
 in the weaker men who followed the great mystics. 
 A higher and healthier mysticism would be that 
 which would see God in the violets, and have de- 
 lighted in them, and have made them an occasion for 
 adoration and praise. The absorbed, abstracted look, 
 under the drawn cap to avoid the violets, may be but 
 the evidence of a subtler un faith, the un faith which 
 would empty the world of God. 
 
 The aesthetic ideal is also useful to-day as entering 
 a caveat to all socialistic schemes, which would ne- 
 glect to provide full scope for the individual Culture, 
 even as a pseudo-gospel, has value as a protest against 
 all materialistic ideals, socialist or otherwise, which 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL —CULTURE 53 
 
 seem to think that man can live by bread alone. What- 
 ever its shortcomings, it believes with all its soul that 
 life is more than meat. It points to spheres as essen- 
 tial to the true well-being of man as the state of out- 
 ward prosperity, to which the grumbling Israelites 
 looked back with regret, — " then had we plenty of 
 victuals, and were we well." ^ It lays emphasis on 
 the higher reaches of man's life, and judges a civilisa- 
 tion by larger tests than ordinary commercial ones. 
 It looks to the quality of a nation's life, as well as to 
 the evidences that most appeal to the eye, and if it 
 perhaps exaggerates the worth of literature, and music, 
 and art, it helps to redress the balance, which weighs 
 heavily on the other side. Its teaching is a variant of 
 the great word, that the life of a man consisteth not 
 in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, 
 a lesson which men have at all periods needed, but 
 which has seldom been so necessary as in our day, 
 when the first of all problems is, how to protect the 
 higher Ufe of man against secularity. Our age is so 
 severely and intensely practical that many have little 
 patience with anything which is not suffused with the 
 same spirit. 
 
 This has been due partly to the rapid advance of 
 natural science, which has dazzled us by the wonder- 
 ful discoveries which enable us to use material forces. 
 The keenest and finest brains have been directed to 
 scientific investigations, and science takes the place in 
 the estimation of mien which formerly philosophy 
 held. Then, along with the advance of science, and as 
 a consequence of it, there has been as great an advance 
 of industry in the application of the forces of nature, 
 *Jer. xliv. 17. 
 
54 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 till machinery is sometimes more important in modem 
 conditions of manufacture than the labour which 
 directs it. A material invention for saving labour is 
 of much more moment, than any amount of abstract 
 thought. Everything has its market value — even a 
 quality of brain can be classified, according to the 
 wages it can demand. Naturally enough^, in the opin- 
 ion of the mass, the active energetic life takes prece- 
 dence over the contemplative life, and the temptation is 
 a very real one to look upon everything, which cannot 
 be rated in the money market, as mere idleness. In 
 some business circles, for a boy to wish to be an 
 artist is to blast his character with a lasting disgrace, 
 and a father would not dream of encouraging his son 
 to become a minister, or enter into a life of study, and 
 would be alarmed and shocked to know that he wrote 
 poetry, though he might forgive him if he could write 
 popular novels and make plenty of money by it. This 
 false and vulgar standard of judging life plays endless 
 mischief ; it even ruins our industry, and is responsible 
 for the ugliness and poor quality of so njuch pro- 
 duction. The artistic spirit is killed in the sordid at- 
 mosphere, which appraises everything by its price. 
 There are many virtues in the eager, practical, utili- 
 tarian spirit of our age, and it carries much hope in 
 its bosom for an ultimate social condition juster than 
 any hitherto reached, but this need not blind us to the 
 dangers and faults of our type of life. However we 
 are taught the lesson, it is well to learn that the world 
 will not be saved by machinery and electrical appli- 
 ances, that these may be developed to an undreamt 
 of degree and yet leave man essentially where he is, 
 lower indeed in the scale of life instead of higher. 
 
THE ESTHETIC IDEAL— CULTURE 55 
 
 The end of civilisation is not money but men, and 
 there is a higher standard by which to judge things 
 than the standard of utiHty, since in Victor Hugo's 
 pregnant phrase the beautiful is as useful as the useful. 
 In a slightly different sphere also, the aesthetic ideal 
 even in its narrowest sense is a protest against scientific 
 narrowness. It points to a world of thought and 
 beauty beyond facts of observation, and will not be 
 hampered by the limits of scientific evidence, which 
 science sometimes dogmatically lays down. Art and 
 science may think they have had more than once a 
 just cause of quarrel with religion, but often they have 
 a fiercer quarrel with each other. Science may nar- 
 row the boundaries of Hfe unduly, by insisting on 
 everything being submitted to the one invariable test. 
 Goethe saw this, when he said that the constant use 
 of the microscope interferes with the normal use of 
 the eye, by which he suggests an explanation of the 
 failure of so many scientists as philosophers. It is 
 easy to become absorbed in details and forget unity, 
 to be so concerned with analysis that there is no room 
 for the idea of synthesis. In addition to the parts 
 there is the whole, and the whole is more than a sum- 
 mation of the parts. Culture demands room for the 
 intuitional as well as the rational faculty, room for 
 imagination and poetry, and is a witness to the unseen 
 and eternal ; for it affirms a soul of beauty and truth 
 behind and within all material appearance. 
 
 It follows from this that certain advantages accrue 
 to the individual, who opens his mind to the aesthetic 
 ideal; though it is only possible to touch lightly on 
 the more palpable of these advantages. It saves 
 
56 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 him from vulgar standards; for in the personal life 
 of men culture dares to criticise success. It shows 
 its disciples that there are larger things in the world 
 than getting on, and more worthy things to worship 
 than the great goddess of prosperity. Its eyes are 
 open to the defects of the quality, which the world 
 acclaims and loads with honour and wealth. In the 
 man of culture, as in the saint on another level of 
 things, we find an abstraction from common-place 
 ways, a point of view 'vhich somehow puts things in 
 a different perspective than the usual one. They look 
 at events without being absorbed in the mere mass. 
 They come to the ordinary affairs of life as from a 
 high platform of thought, from a serener air, and put 
 them in their right place of precedence, and by their 
 very manner we are able to see the smallness of the 
 small and the greatness of the great. - To them truth 
 even on the scaffold is still truth, and wrong even on 
 the throne is still wrong, however many voices shout 
 the contrary. • They classify according to a finer scale 
 of judgment, and it is good to be reminded of the true 
 proportion of things. Such men of ripe nature and 
 poised mind may be practically wrong, so far as their 
 verdict on an outward event seems to go, but they 
 are aesthetically right, and at least we are forced to 
 acknowledge the loftiness of their standard. We 
 need some of this calm self-command, which will keep 
 us from being rushed off our feet by the brute force 
 of outside opinion or feeling or passion. 
 
 A cognate benefit is that culture saves from provin- 
 cialism and narrowness of interest, to which we are 
 so prone. It suggests catholic ideas, and gives to 
 every subject a touch of the universal, which will at 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 57 
 
 least often preserve us from dogmatism. The attitud<i 
 of mental hospitality, which opens the door to large 
 thoughts and receives them as welcome guests, tends 
 to evict the prejudices and narrowness, which would 
 otherwise dwell securely in the mind. Life needs new 
 vistas to be ever opening up, to save it from atrophy of 
 its best powers. To create intellectual alertness and 
 enlarge the radius of interest is no small boon, as we 
 see if we think of the common conversation among 
 people even in educated circles, how limited it is, work- 
 ing over a few threadbare topics with hardly an idea 
 in them, concerned chiefly with personalities. When 
 the weather and a few kindred subjects are exhausted, 
 with some people, the possibilities are exhausted, 
 till one sometimes feels that if expression were given 
 to a great vital thought in ordinary society, it would 
 be like the bursting of a bomb-shell in their midst. In 
 a country place we know how refreshing it is, and 
 how rare, to talk to a man whose horizon is not 
 bounded by his village, and whose conversation is 
 larger than the doings and sayings of the few families 
 who make up what is called society there; and the 
 same provincialism is to be found in cities, in kind 
 if not in degree. Culture, by training powers of 
 thought and observation, at least gives a man a wider 
 outlook. 
 
 Thus, it broadens a man's judgments, as well as his 
 interests. He gradually gains capacity to see round a 
 subject, which keeps him from onesidedness, before 
 coming to a final judgment. The world would have 
 been saved from many a silly theory, many a crude 
 system, many a delirium of passion, if more men were 
 able through training to come to an informed, and 
 
58 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 therefore a calm, decision. This indeed is the chief 
 value of the best education, not the amount of informa- 
 tion in itself which has been gathered in the course of 
 the education. The mere mass of knowledge in sci- 
 ence, or mathematics, or classical learning, retained in 
 after-life from an ordinary university course, is in 
 itself in most cases not much. The worth of it lies 
 in the intellectual outlook it has given, the habits ot 
 thought and attention it has formed, the standards of 
 comparison and judgment it has implanted in the mind. 
 
 Further, a steadfast pursuit of some such ideal is 
 the truest recreation. Our work often narrows us. 
 fti many cases under present industrial conditions 
 this cannot be helped, as the best commercial results 
 are produced by specialism, not only in manual labour, 
 but in every branch of activity. We ought therefore to 
 try and adjust the balance somewhat, by entering into 
 the wider world of the best human thought. It is the 
 finest recreation; for it restores the mind to healthy 
 conditions and enlarges the vision. The result will be 
 even beneficial to the particular work, since whatever 
 enriches and reinforces the complete nature will affect 
 each part. Such is the aim of all true recreation, to 
 so recuperate the life that it will restore vigour every- 
 where. It is the quality of life to spread its power 
 to the utmost limits of its confines, as health tingles to 
 the very finger-tips. For the sake then of the very 
 capacity to produce, on which the modern world lays 
 so much stress, it is well to have such an unfailing 
 source of refreshment and recreation as the ideal of 
 culture offers. 
 
 Much of the moral evil, which is associated with 
 methods of recreation, is due to the miseries of a 
 
THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 59 
 
 vacant life, that has no other outlet to hand when 
 the daily tasks are done. Many of the sins of youth 
 are fostered by emptiness of mind, by sheer lack of 
 intellectual interests. They can only be driven out and 
 kept out, by claiming the whole territory of the mind 
 for higher things. A young man cannot expect to 
 be saved from the crowding seductions of the streets, 
 which pluck him by the elbow at every turn, if he has 
 no interests that fill his thoughts, and is living an 
 aimless mental life. Mark Rutherford, in a chapter ^ 
 wonderful for its delicate psychological study, tells 
 how he overcame the temptation which wine had grad- 
 ually assumed over him. He had been led into it by 
 physical weakness and the more stubborn weakness of 
 hypochondria, and when he felt his misery insupport- 
 able he turned to the bottle. When he wakened up to 
 the fact that the craving for it was getting the better 
 of him, he resolved never to touch it except at night, 
 but the consequence of this was that he looked for- 
 ward to the night with such eagerness, that the day 
 seemed to exist only for the sake of the evening. 
 The thought of the degradation this implied, and es- 
 pecially the knowledge that his intellectual interests 
 were suffering from his temptation, spurred him to the 
 determination that he would not allow his life to be- 
 come thus debased. He played his love of reading 
 and thinking over against the tempter, and drove him 
 out; and so conquered not by brute strength but by 
 strategy.' The most powerful inducement to absti- 
 nence in his case was the interference of wine with 
 what he really loved best, and the transference of de- 
 sire from what was more desirable to what was 
 * The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, chap. iii. 
 
6o CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 sensual and base. What enabled him to conquer 
 was not so much heroism as a susceptibility to 
 nobler joys. So potent a motive in his particular 
 experience was this, that he thinks the difficulty 
 which must be encountered in the same task by a man 
 who is not susceptible to these intellectual pleasures, 
 must be enormous and almost insuperable. It is not 
 too high a claim, therefore, to make for culture that 
 it sometimes offers a purifying power, by which a 
 man rises above meaner pleasures through the wide 
 expansion of life, and that it gives the promise of a 
 rich and full nature, which can give the autumnal 
 felicity of men of letters, to which Gibbon ^ looked 
 forward for the evening of his days. 
 
 Again, whatever be its danger of a subtler egotism 
 which we shall notice in next chapter, culture at its 
 best corrects the ordinary vanity of ignorance, and 
 it should not be forgotten that " the pride of science 
 is humble compared with the pride of ignorance." 
 The man of one idea, of one subject, unless it be 
 the subject which includes all and attempts to take 
 within its scope all life, loses the power of comparison, 
 and in his zeal for his fragment of truth obscures the 
 proportions of truth, and even runs the risk of be- 
 coming inflated with personal vanity. If he had the 
 true balance he could not be vain, and the balance 
 can only come from a larger variety of interest and a 
 wider range of thought. Culture would show him 
 how large the universe is and would save him from 
 himself. It is something to know that there were 
 kings before Agamemnon, and that everything that 
 exists can only be explained with reference to what 
 
 ^Memoirs, last page. 
 
NIVER 
 
 THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 6i 
 
 has gone before. A surface study of history may 
 indeed tend to the lowering of conviction and the im- 
 poverishing of moral energy, by revealing the slow 
 growth of opinions and habits and all human insti- 
 tutions; but it should at least impress some lesson 
 of humility. Intellectual culture, if conducted on a 
 broad enough scheme, should be an antidote to nar- 
 row conceit. True knowledge of the world, of men, 
 of books, of history, of thought, can hardly consist 
 with an inflated opinion of one's own importance. 
 Egotism is an unfailing sign of insufficient culture ; for 
 true culture makes a man bigger than his habitat. ^ It 
 is ignorance, not knowledge, which makes rash judg- 
 ments, and which settles things by prejudice, v 
 
 We have spoken of culture, rightly understood, 
 as the servant of religion, and if it even tends to 
 foster the virtues mentioned above it must be so; 
 but in addition it should be the servant of religious 
 people in other ways, if only by widening the out- 
 look. Many of the mistakes of religion are due to 
 the lack of it, due to the failure to claim every 
 region of man's life for religion. Culture, for one 
 thing, would preserve from zeal without knowledge. 
 It is often thought that zeal is a sufficient excuse 
 for almost anything; but there is hardly a cruelty, 
 or uncharitableness, or loveless intolerance, or arro- 
 gance, which could not be justified on the same 
 score. Largeness of view, breadth of interest would 
 save from the petty narrowness which disfigures so 
 many religious characters. Culture also would keep 
 a man from going to Genesis for his science, or to 
 the modern novel for his theology. It should make 
 us appreciate even opponents, by giving us insight 
 
62 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 into their standpoint and sympathy with their very 
 mistakes. A broad culture, which enters with insight 
 into all human life, and into the great causes that have 
 moved men, should result in an enlargement of sym- 
 pathy; though this is often sadly lacking in some, 
 from whom we expect sufficient knowledge to give the 
 large vision. M. Arnold asks us to imagine Shake- 
 speare or Virgil on board the Mayflower, and sug- 
 gests what strange unsympathetic fellow-travellers 
 they would make with the Pilgrim Fathers. He has 
 made surely a singularly inappropriate choice of ex- 
 amples. Dante at least thought that Virgil's spirit 
 was so akin to his, that he made him the guide 
 through Purgatory, and classed him as near a Chris- 
 tian as any pre-Christian man could be. It may be 
 that the Puritan fathers, who sailed on the Mayflower, 
 might not completely appreciate Shakespeare, though 
 it must be remembered that the Puritan objection to 
 the drama was not necessarily due to want of appre- 
 ciation of dramatic literature, but due to the recog"- 
 nition of the evil conditions that have too often been 
 associated with the theatre. But in any case even 
 though the Puritan fathers might not have appre- 
 ciated Shakespeare, there is no doubt that Shake- 
 speare would have appreciated them. As a fact there 
 are many evidences to a diligent and keen reader of 
 his works that he did appreciate the truths, which after 
 all, in spite of any possible extravagances, are at the 
 bottom of the Puritan faith. It is not a very prom- 
 ising sign for the existence of the true culture, if a 
 man cannot enter with some sympathy into the heroic 
 aspiration,, which has embalmed the Mayflower in 
 history. As a question of mere sensibility to human 
 
THE iESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 63 
 
 achievements, there are some things, which have no 
 seeming art about them, which should inspire as much 
 admiration as the finest picture ever painted. 
 
 It has to be recognised that even as a self-sufficient 
 ideal claiming to represent man's chief end, culture is 
 a much higher ideal than many which have appealed 
 to men, such as the philosophy, both speculative and 
 practical, which makes happiness the end. Culture 
 looks to pecomincr, not to having, or enipyipg" merely. 
 It sees that life only truly maintains itself in any 
 sphere through growth; arid it would use growth to 
 reach as full a maturity and ripeness of character as 
 possible. It makes deliberate choice of the materials 
 f or gro wthrin ^r3er to attain complete self-develop- 
 ment . It would appropriate its share of the common 
 
 wealth of the world, to enrich the personality, and to 
 educate all the faculties^ So far as it goes, this is a 
 noble ideal, and should be looked on not merely as a 
 right, which may be claimed for self, but as a duty 
 which should be imposed on self* To be sensitive to 
 all the influences of the beauty of the world, and 
 susceptible to all life's sweetest music, and responsive 
 to all the enriching and enlarging thoughts of the 
 race, must always be. marks of the highest mind$^ 
 There may bejgood reasons, either personal to oneself- 
 or due to special social conditions, why it may be 
 necessary to pass a self-denying ordinance regarding 
 some legitimate item of the programme of culture. It 
 may be necessary for some to live as though art. or 
 literature, or music did not exist, and there will al- 
 ways be occasions when duty will point to some form 
 of renunciation, when the culture of soul will take 
 
64 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 precedence of every other thing, or when the imperi- 
 ous call to service will make all else become as dross in 
 value. 
 
 But such occasions do not invalidate the claim of 
 culture, that these fruits of the human spirit are good, 
 and that Beauty and Truth are rightful objects for 
 men to put before themselves. Otherwise, art and 
 science could only exist on sufferance in a world, 
 which they are engaged in interpreting to men, the 
 one in terms of beauty, the other m terms of truth. 
 Science may be misused as an instrument of secu- 
 larity, and art may be degraded into a " procuress to 
 the lords of hell," but it seems to be of the very nature 
 of the best gifts that they easily lend themselves to 
 abuse, as the history of all human institutionsj and 
 even the history of religion itself, show — corruptio 
 optimi pessima. 
 
 Nothing can permanently take from man the convic- 
 tion that he was meant to possess these fields which 
 culture offers, to master them for his own best life and 
 for the world's true joy. To ban the love of beauty, 
 to stifle inquiry mto truths to be blind to the fascina- 
 tion of art and letters, is in the ultimate issue 
 infidelity, though it seem sometimes to be in the inter- 
 est of faith. Faith cannot be made perfect, till she 
 accepts the divine self-revelation through beauty, and 
 through law, as well as through love. Though it may 
 be that now we see many points of conflict, yet it 
 must remain the deepest faith that, when the full 
 yision is reached, nothing that is true in science, or 
 beautiful in art, will need to be sacrificed in the com- 
 plete round of religion. Even now, when faith opens 
 
THE iESTHETIC IDEAL — CULTURE 65 
 
 the ears, how often it is that the very prophets of 
 nature can speak to us a lasting inspiration, and the 
 masters of culture can — 
 
 Instruct us how the mind of man becomes 
 
 A thousand times more beautiful than the earth. 
 
Ill 
 
 DEFECTS OF THE ESTHETIC IDEAL 
 
 IN spite of the great truth of the aesthetic ideal, 
 and the distinct value it has both as a theory of 
 life and as a practical scheme for enriching the 
 whole nature of man, when taken by itself it has 
 always failed in the long run, not only in making life 
 nobler and sweeter, but has failed even in keeping it- 
 self true to its own best self. The causes of its failure 
 are not far to seek, when we realise some of the be- 
 setting temptations which ever attend it. Culture, 
 when it takes the highest footing as a self-sufficient 
 ideal claiming to cover all the ground, starts from the 
 position that all that is needed to reach the perfect 
 man is the consistent and persistent cultivation of all 
 the powers and tendencies already existing in human 
 nature; it seeks to give full play to all sides of life, 
 and hopes to arrive at a harmonious balance of all the 
 innate capacities. We can see how easily this can 
 degenerate into base compliance with personal lean- 
 ings, and how even it can be made an excuse for all 
 forms of selfishness, sometimes indeed going so low 
 as to offer a justification for the most heart-withering 
 sensualism. If the one aim of life is that a man should 
 unfold himself, he can argue that he is only following 
 his nature, by tasting every sort of experience, and 
 giving full play to every impulse. From such a creed 
 
 66 
 
DEFECTS OF THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL 67 
 
 he can cozen himself with the thought that he is 
 learning life and fulfilling himself, by indulging every 
 instinct which he finds within him. We often find a 
 bluntness of moral sense and a deep-seated selfishness 
 of life, combined with a high degree of intellectual 
 training. This of course could not be laid to the 
 charge of culture, except in so far as it claims to be 
 a sufficient guide to life, and yet does not adequately 
 safeguard life from the moral dangers that menace it. 
 We are beset with the temptation to give way at the 
 point of least resistance, and if we have no moral 
 sanctions, no imperial note of conscience, other than is 
 contained in a scheme of natural culture, it is diffi- 
 cult to get firm ground in maintaining an ethical stand- 
 ard, that will not be pliable in the presence of keen 
 personal tastes, not to say even in the presence of any 
 overmastering temptation. When a man begins with 
 the theory that every impulse only needs its due culti- 
 vation to make it contribute to a fulness of life, he is 
 easily deceived into giving way to what he likes best, 
 and defending it as part of his plan to develop himself 
 along the line of his nature. 
 
 It would be untrue to suggest that moral laxity 
 is a feature of character to be discovered in the lives 
 of the men who have rigorously pursued a large 
 scheme of culture — rather we have admitted that such 
 a scheme should save the life from grosser pleasures 
 and meaner sins — at the same time, if accepted gen- 
 erally without modifications as a theory of life, it 
 offers very evident opportunities for great abuses. It 
 may of course be asserted that it is only when the 
 theory is falsely viewed and wrongly used that it seems 
 to open the door to these darker excesses. It may be 
 
68 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 asserted that a complete scheme of culture would pro- 
 vide moral and spiritual training, and would make a 
 man susceptible to all noble influences, and would in 
 any moral crisis call for adherence to the good, even 
 though it promise to bring only unhappiness ; but this 
 after all is imported into the theory and is an arbitrary 
 standard, and does not spring naturally out of the 
 original position. From the premises stated we are 
 not justified in condemning another, because he 
 chooses for himself a lower type of experience and 
 a grosser form of pleasure than we perhaps would 
 approve for ourselves. There will always be a moral 
 danger attached to culture as a system, when it is 
 not regulated and restrained by deeper sanctions. We 
 easily enough fall into its plan of seeking experiences 
 and an ampler sphere of thought and emotion, but for 
 safety this natural craving needs to be under the firm 
 rule not only of enlightened reason but also of self- 
 controlled will. 
 
 So real is this danger that Walter Pater, who is a 
 foremost apostle of the new Hellenism, left out of 
 the second edition of his Renaissance the chapter in 
 which he summed up the creed of culture, because 
 he conceived it might possibly mislead some of those 
 young men into whose hands it might fall — and with 
 some reason, as the chapter, restored with some 
 changes in subsequent editions, still testifies. It states 
 very frankly his philosophy, which is worked out in 
 his brilliant study of the sensations and ideas of 
 Marius the Epicurean. It is a restatement in artistic 
 form and beautiful language of the old " sensational " 
 philosophy. To him our physical life is a perpetual 
 motion of impressions with some exquisite intervals, 
 
DEFECTS OF THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL 69 
 
 and the inward world of mind consists of a drift of 
 momentary acts of sight and passion and thought, so 
 that life is like a flame eagerly being devoured, or like 
 the race of a swift stream on which a tremulous wisp 
 forms and reforms itself as it breaks into conscious- 
 ness. All our knowledge is not of solid subjects as 
 common speech puts it, but of impressions unstable, 
 flickering, which burn and are extinguished at the 
 precise moment we know them. These impressions are 
 in constant flight, sensations that hardly exist before 
 they cease to be. The service of speculative culture 
 towards the human spirit in such a plight is to rouse, 
 to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. 
 The true purpose of life is not to gain the fruits of ex- 
 perience to be stored up in character, but experience 
 itself is the only and sufficient end, to attain to some 
 attractive mood of passion, or insight, or intellectual 
 excitement. In the quick pulsation of this evanescent 
 life, the great aim should be to pass most swiftly from 
 point to point, and if possible contrive to " be present 
 always at the focus where the greatest number of vital 
 forces unite in their purest energy. To burn always 
 with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, 
 is success in life." The stereotyped, the fixed, the 
 formation of habits, settled theories of knowledge, or 
 systems of morality, all are signs of failure. There is 
 a great deal to be taken out of life, gathering all we 
 are into one desperate effort to see and touch, and we 
 have a tragically short time to do it in. " While all 
 melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exqui- 
 site passion, or any contribution to knowledge that 
 seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a 
 moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, 
 
70 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the 
 artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. . . . What 
 we have to do is to be ever curiously testing new 
 opinions and courting new impressions. . . . The 
 theory or idea or system which requires of us the 
 sacrifice of this experience, in consideration of some 
 interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract 
 theory we have not identified with ourselves, or of 
 what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us." ^ 
 In plain English it amounts to the well-worn philos- 
 ophy of a short life and a merry one, more high- 
 toned than the common quality, because it puts the 
 emphasis on the higher pleasures of the mind, and 
 believes that the truest and best things to seek are 
 wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, love 
 of art for its own sake. But if there be no other 
 foundation for life but this, if the only ideal is how 
 to make the most possible of the interval before the 
 flame burns itself out, does it follow that it is so very 
 much wiser to spend the time in art and song, than 
 to spend it as some do in listlessness, and others in 
 high passion? What is to be said to the man who 
 adopts the creed, but prefers the more vulgar way of 
 getting as many pulsations as possible into the given 
 time, if he thinks the pursuit of art too attenuated a 
 point of sensation, and too exquisite for his coarser 
 grain of nature? There is nothing to be said to him, 
 except that it might have been wiser to have tried for 
 the higher sort of pulsation. It has been a common 
 but a puerile thought of modern Hellenism that we 
 might reach the fruits of early Greek culture by emu- 
 lating the idle curiosity of the Athenians of St. Paul's 
 
 * Pater, Renaissance, last chap. 
 
DEFECTS OF THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL 71 
 
 day,^ who spent their time in nothing else but either to 
 tell or to hear some new thing ; but it is forgotten that 
 there was no culture in Athens at that time; art and 
 literature, and thought, and political life were at their 
 lowest, swallowed up in a great degradation. The 
 real truth is that on Pater's basal philosophy there is 
 no adequate foundation even for a permanent culture, 
 to say nothing of a foundation for life. 
 
 It may be said at this point that alongside of such 
 a creed of despair the religious man has a far grander 
 conception of even culture, not limited to a hurried 
 grasp at all sorts of experience, in case he might 
 miss some interesting one that might set his spirit free 
 for a moment. To him it is not experience that is 
 the end (that can only result in Epicureanism), but 
 the fruit of experience in a wise mind, a ripened char- 
 acter, a sanctified spirit. So he is not exclusively con- 
 cerned about gathering all his energies into one des- 
 perate effort to see and touch, and he is even willing 
 to sacrifice some part of his possible experiences in 
 consideration of a higher interest. Living in the 
 power of an endless life, he accepts the world as a 
 school of discipline, in which he is to become some- 
 thing, as well as enjoy something. The greatest agent 
 for enlargement of life is true religion, which Pater 
 leaves out of account. It includes culture, and tran- 
 scends it ; for it assures a man that these experiences, 
 which enter into character, and which make him the 
 man he becomes, do not break like bubbles on a stream. 
 It lifts a man among the infinities and immensities, 
 bringing reverence, and education of heart, and the 
 wide vision. 
 
 * Acts, xvii. 21. 
 
11 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 From Pater's position we can see why he should 
 deprecate the making of theories about the things we 
 see and touch, holding, as he does, that all our time 
 should be given to actually entering into the expe- 
 riences open to us ; though the position is not quite log- 
 ical, as this conclusion is itself built on a theory, 
 namely, that all our knowledge is confined to impres- 
 sions. But this attitude of despair regarding the pos- 
 sibilities of man's mind would result in the death of 
 even intellectual culture, which could only look for 
 nimbleness of mind in laying hold of the prominent 
 features of a subject, but without capacity of long 
 sustained thought. Even in intellectual circles it is 
 common to find men who think keenly of each thing 
 as it comes, but who never seem to feel the need of 
 co-ordinating their thinking and finding a unity. 
 They look at things closely and critically, but in a 
 disconnected way. No doubt they are saved from 
 much of the pain of thought, as they are saved from 
 the malady of the ideal, but it is at the expense of the 
 highest power in man. Man can only resign this 
 necessity, by at the same time resigning himself to 
 conscious smallness. We need not underline also the 
 distinct moral danger, apart altogether from the possi- 
 bility of gross abuse. The attempt to put into life as 
 much as possible, to value it by the number of pulsa- 
 tions of sensation, to keep in touch with all sorts of 
 varied interest, carries with it the temptation to seek 
 this in excitements, in distractions, and to grow only 
 on the surface without the steady deep virtues. This 
 is a temptation to which all forms of culture taken by 
 itself are liable, giving a lack of moral perspective, if 
 not of moral appreciation itself. 
 
DEFECTS OF THE .ESTHETIC IDEAL 73 
 
 An illustration of the way in which the things of 
 conscience are made light of, in comparison with some 
 supposed more attractive development, is found in 
 Pater's treatment of Winckelmann in his studies on 
 the Renaissance. Winckelmann was chosen by him 
 as the most typical modern, who showed as in an after- 
 glow the spirit of the Renaissance by his enthusiasm 
 for the things of the intellect and the imagination, by 
 his Hellenism, his life-long struggle to attain to the 
 Greek spirit. When the Saxon Court turned Roman 
 Catholic, the way to favour at Court was through the 
 Roman ecclesiastics ; and Winckelmann, in the hope 
 of a place in the Pope's library, and thus getting an 
 opportunity of visiting Rome on which he had set his 
 heart, became a Roman Catholic against his belief. 
 Pater thinks he may be absolved at the bar of the high- 
 est criticism for the deceit, and defends the insincerity 
 of his religious profession as " only one incident of a 
 culture in which the moral instinct, like the religious 
 or political, was merged in the artistic." ^ He sug- 
 gests that Winckelmann was making a renunciation of 
 moral candour for the sake of the higher life, which 
 to him meant the artistic interest, and that thus in 
 reality he was true to himself. There is no word to 
 designate this defence but the ugly word " cant," of 
 which there are various kinds as well as the distinct- 
 ively religious type. To speak of the renunciation of 
 conscience for the sake of the higher life, to be ad- 
 vanced by selling himself in exchange for an oppor- 
 tunity of examining the art treasures of Rome, is to 
 play with words. Far truer is Pater's earlier judg- 
 ment, with which he might have left the incident, that 
 
 ^Renaissance, p. 198. 
 
74 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 to a transparent, simple nature like Winckelmann* s the 
 loss of absolute sincerity must have been a real loss. 
 We admit and reverence the high artistic aim which 
 made Winckelmann say, " It will be my highest reward 
 if posterity acknowledges that I have written worthily," 
 but the mistake which many culturists make is to sup- 
 pose that the life of man can be cut up into sections, 
 making the intellectual stand by itself apart from the 
 moral; whereas each part affects the whole, and the 
 whole affects each part. The theoretic isolation from the 
 moral side of life is impossible in practice. Indiffer- 
 entism, probed to the heart, invariably means the ad- 
 herence to a lower creed, and the choice of a lower 
 plane of thought and life. There never was a more 
 inept and foolish remark than the common one, that 
 it does not matter what a man believes. A man's faith 
 is the vital principle which moves his life, and infalli- 
 bly shows the lines on which it is run. The liberality 
 of mind and width of tolerance, which are due to moral 
 indifference, mean facile acceptance of any creed, and 
 result practically in acquiescence in the present state 
 of the public conscience. 
 
 Judged from the standpoint of the higher ethics 
 any theory, which makes self-culture the absolute ideal, 
 cannot be acquitted also of selfishness, which comes 
 from the lack of moral perspective. To take another 
 concrete illustration from the life of a great man of 
 culture, the charge of selfishness, which has some- 
 times been made against Goethe, is perhaps hardly a 
 fair one in the usual acceptance of the word; for 
 he was generous by nature, was habitually kind in a 
 somewhat cold way, was genial in all his relations, 
 though he never forgot himself, and indeed systemat- 
 
DEFECTS OF THE .ESTHETIC IDEAL 75 
 
 ically cultivated the sympathetic feelings as part of 
 his scheme, because he saw from his large keen view 
 of life that these also were essential to the complete cul- 
 ture he aimed at ; but he allowed no thought of others 
 to interfere with his serene scheme of self-culture, and 
 warded off as much as possible every uncomfortable 
 contact. He suffered from the temptation to look 
 upon everything in human life as artistic material, or 
 as means towards self-realisation. He expresses his 
 great purpose in a letter to Lavater, " The desire to 
 raise the pyramid of my existence, the base of which 
 is laid already, as high as possible in the air absorbs 
 every other desire, and scarcely ever quits me." ^ It 
 was a noble aim, demanding self-restraint and many 
 moral qualities, but it led him to accommodate him- 
 self not only to the limitations of life, but also to many 
 things which could not be justified. He never quite 
 lost self-consciousness, so flagrantly evident in Ecker- 
 mann's Conversations with Goethe; and in all his life 
 he never knew the passion of self-forgetful devotion. 
 He avoided committing himself to anything or to any- 
 body outside of himself, or to anything that he thought 
 would hinder his own development. Some of this cau- 
 tion was necessary to one who had determined never to 
 spend time over what, he very soon discovered by his 
 quick insight, was foreign to his own nature. In the 
 art of life, as in all arts, there must be selection of 
 material, and no man can safely wear his heart on his 
 sleeve. But it may well be asserted that Goethe would 
 have been a deeper and larger man, and would even 
 have aided his great design of total self-development, 
 if he had not shrunk from taking on him more man- 
 
 * Lewes, Life of Goethe, vol. ii. ch. i. 
 
76 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 fully the burden of other lives. He might liave re- 
 tained his wonderful intellectual truthfulness, his mag- 
 nificent self-mastery, his unswerving fidelity to his 
 great purpose, and all the essential qualities of his 
 broad culture, even if he had submitted himself to the 
 common limitation of the ordinary relationships. It 
 would have given him a keener insight, and a larger 
 outlook, and a fuller all-round development. In any 
 case his attitude led him into many great errors, some 
 of which, like his treatment of Frederika and of 
 women generally, have laid him open to the charge of 
 callous selfishness, and even of moral poltroonery. 
 
 Something of the same moral lack is reflected in 
 his work. If we leave out of account his early and 
 noble drama Got 2 von Berlichingen, he has not created 
 a single man with grandeur of moral character and 
 unselfish devotion. There is some truth in Mazzini's 
 criticism of Goethe, standing aloof from the great 
 causes that throbbed through the world of his day, 
 when questions of life and death for millions were 
 agitated round him, when Germany re-echoed to the 
 war-songs of Korner, when Fichte and the best spirits 
 took their share of the burden; the criticism that 
 Goethe looked on unmoved and drew aside from the 
 current, that he saw the French Revolution, the rise 
 and fall of Napoleon, the reaction of down-trodden 
 nationalities, and remained ever a cold spectator. To 
 the ardent Italian prophet of a new age his attitude 
 seemed inhuman, and his conclusion is " he had neither 
 learned to esteem men, to better them, nor even to 
 suffer with them." ^ The criticism is one-sided, and 
 there is something to be said for the artistes impassive 
 
 ^Mazzini, Essay on Byron and Goethe, 
 
f UNlVt.KOii 
 
 V ^^ 
 
 DEFECTS OF THE ESTHETIC IDEAL 77 
 
 calm; but it is only a further illustration of our pres- 
 ent point of the danger to which an exclusive scheme 
 of self-culture leads. 
 
 The theory, as claiming to be a sufficient guide to 
 life, fails by taking a shallow conception of life and 
 of the needs of life, however wide be its programme 
 of general culture. It shuts its eyes to the darker 
 side, to sin and the moral twist in man. It does not 
 take into account all the facts, and so fails to provide 
 an adequate motive. It has no heroic remedy for 
 the desperate disease; and many a time, in view of 
 that disease, the schemes of culture strike us as ludi- 
 crous as the application of rose-water to stay the 
 plague. As we look on history and life, we see the 
 pathetic mixture of good and evil, we see how true it 
 is of men that " the angel has them by the hand, the 
 serpent by the heart " ; and culture has nothing to say 
 to the serpent, except to suggest a process of gentle 
 eviction. It neglects moral discipline, which alone can 
 co-ordinate all the powers of a man's nature and give 
 a centre of unity. It does not present the motive 
 of an overmastering passion such as religion gives, 
 which sees the need for sacrifice, and which makes sac- 
 rifice easy. It follows that culture is blind to the 
 place of suflFering in the perfection of man, and to the 
 necessity of sacrifice in the making of a noble life. If 
 it be replied that culture does not claim such a large 
 sphere, and contents itself with presenting an intel- 
 lectual and artistic ideal, without attempting to save 
 the whole man or to save society, the answer to that 
 is that in that case its failure is even more disastrous, 
 the more narrow it is in its aims, the more one-sided 
 its conception of life becomes. By spending all its 
 
78 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 energies on one side of human nature, it becomes the 
 more untrue to its own ideal, which is proportional 
 development, complete symmetry of life. 
 
 We have already seen that one of the difficulties 
 of our subject is that culture changes its ground so 
 often, and appears at one time as a theory of life con- 
 taining the whole duty of man, and at another time 
 professes to limit itself to the cultivation of one sec- 
 tion of the field of life. But even on its chosen ground 
 as pre-emiently an intellectual scheme culture is lia- 
 ble to stumble. First of all, it naturally enough over- 
 estimates the particular corner which it has claimed 
 for itself. If we give ourselves up exclusively to intel- 
 lectual pursuits, we come to lay more stress than is 
 warranted on the paramount claims of mind. Ruskin, 
 describing his change from his work on art to his work 
 on social reform, and as a moral and religious teacher, 
 attributed the change to his disillusionment about the 
 value of the long years he gave to make the public 
 understand the worth and beauty of Turner's paint- 
 ing. He began, he tells us,^ by believing that men just 
 needed to know, just needed to have the beauty pointed 
 out to them to see and appreciate; but he found out 
 from the public apathy that it was not so, and further 
 began to realise how little effect would be produced, 
 even if the people generally did learn to value his 
 favourite artist at his right worth. This is the con- 
 stant mistake of the gospel of culture. When Matthew 
 Arnold defines culture as " pursuit of our total perfec- 
 tion by means of getting to know, on all matters which 
 
 * Lecture on * The Mystery of Life and the Arts,' included 
 in Complete Edition of Sesame and Lilies. 
 
DEFECTS OF THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL 79 
 
 most concern us, the best that has been thought and 
 said in the world," he assumes that we might reach 
 total perfection if we only got to know. Life is big- 
 ger and more complex, than that would make out. So 
 much even of our education is useless and barren, be- 
 cause it looks no further afield than the training of the 
 mind. Mere cultivated intelligence is no safe guide, 
 as could be illustrated from the biographies of the most 
 eminent apostles and the most diligent disciples of 
 culture. In finding our way about amid the mysteries 
 of the world and the practical problems of life, merely 
 through getting to know what others have thought and 
 said, though it be the choicest thought and the noblest 
 speech, there is no guarantee that our acquired inform- 
 ation will avail much for our particular difficulties. 
 And even the light that is in us may be darkness. 
 
 The aesthetic ideal itself in some of its branches 
 admits that there are other organs of knowledge than 
 intellect; for it makes much of artistic taste, and of 
 qualities that are rather intuition than reason. If we 
 could lay bare all the mental processes, by which we 
 come to a decision or express a preference, we would 
 be surprised how little reason entered into it. The 
 way in which beauty affects us is not settled by crit- 
 ical principles, and is not reached by a knowledge of 
 canons of taste however correct. Indeed, except in 
 pure demonstrations we are influenced by far more del- 
 icate inherent qualities than reason — by faith, by taste, 
 by personal sympathy. Any fairly extensive culture 
 will itself teach us the necessity of guarding against 
 the particular mental bias encouraged by our special 
 studies; as for example the scientific mind is inclined 
 to rule out of court everything which is not scientific 
 
8o CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 evidence, the philosophic mind is tempted to deal only 
 with abstractions, with vague principles and tendencies. 
 The limitations of intellect are most distinctly seen 
 in connection with our relations to people. Truth 
 about the character of other men is impossible with- 
 out s}Tnpathy. This is why so much of our literature 
 is only superficial cleverness, a mere gift of describ- 
 ing from the outside with no real understanding. A 
 man may set out to write a realistic sketch of the poor 
 and the quarters they live in, a sketch which may be 
 quite true so far as it goes. He may give a tale of 
 mean streets, the sordid trappings of the life he has 
 gone to observe, which will be called strong writing 
 and a transcript from life, if he only writes in what is 
 called a realistic way. With all its appearance of 
 truth it may be essentially false, simply because the 
 author has never entered into the heart of the people 
 he tries to describe. His book may run to mammoth 
 editions, and may be praised as a study of a great 
 problem, and the whole result be a colossal waste of 
 clean paper and printer's ink. We will get more true 
 knowledge of the problem from the humble city mis- 
 sionary or the sister of mercy, whose hearts are full 
 of pity and love, and who see past the trappings and 
 the mean streets to the pathos and the tragedy, the 
 human sorrow and joy, the hopes and despairs, the 
 struggles with sin and the triumphs of grace. ^ In our 
 ordinary intercourse with men how often we blunder 
 about character, or mistake motives, or misunderstand 
 words and acts, because we are not in tune with one 
 another, have never plumbed the depths of their mind, 
 and never been ushered into their holy place. It is 
 only love which can give this insight, and can let us 
 
DEFECTS OF THE iESTHETIC IDEAL 8i 
 
 see a little into the poetry as well as the penury of 
 life, the glory as well as the burden of the earth. 
 " Truly they who know," says Maeterlinck,^ " still know 
 nothing, if the strength of love be not theirs; for the 
 true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the 
 farthest, has the deepest love for mankind. He who 
 sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the 
 darkness." "• 
 
 This leads us to say that there is here the explana- 
 tion, why intellectual culture so often undervalues 
 religion, because it fails to take note of the necessary 
 instruments of entering into spiritual truth. It is well 
 to realise the essential limitation of intellect and of 
 the whole sphere of knowledge. Reason demands 
 clearness of ideas, but life is not ruled and guided by 
 clear ideas. No truth is cut off in the clear sharp out- 
 lines which we for convenience sake attribute to it; 
 even in the exact sciences, as we call them, which deal 
 with facts, we touch forces we cannot understand. 
 And in the sphere of action and motives the greatest 
 of our ideas and principles of action are not clear, and 
 cannot be completely stated in words at all. It is 
 good to clarify our thoughts, but many of the princi- 
 ples of our moral life are necessarily obscure in their 
 origin and vague in their nature, and this is just be- 
 cause they are so big. Conscience, duty, generosity, all 
 the things that compose the spiritual riches of man, 
 have the vagueness of greatness about them. 
 
 Even when the intellectual effort is genuine and con- 
 sistently carried out, we often see in the result a strange 
 and almost pathetic narrowness of life. Mark Pat- 
 tison say in his Memoirs, " I have really no history 
 * Wisdom and Destiny, 
 
82 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 but a mental history. . . . All my energy was directed 
 upon one end, to form my own mind, to sound things 
 thoroughly, to free myself from the bondage of un- 
 reason and the traditional prejudices which, when 1 
 began first to think, constituted the whole of my intel- 
 lectual fabric." ^ That he was successful in his aim 
 every one who knows his work will admit. His Me- 
 moirs is a record of long and strenuous mental devel- 
 opment. He gained his highest ambition, and became 
 the head of an Oxford College, and was the possessor 
 of unrivalled academic leisure which he used consist- 
 ently for his great end of ever enlarging and expand- 
 ing his mental horizon; and yet in reading his frank 
 book of memoirs we are touched by a strange sense of 
 the narrowness of his life, by a lack of the large human 
 interests. His judgments on other men are often so 
 peculiarly intellectual that we feel instinctively that 
 we cannot trust them. The same sense of ultimate 
 failure comes upon us as we read the lives of men of 
 similar type. 
 
 In some even we find their culture ending in empty 
 pride of intellect, forgetting that such capacity as they 
 have is not of merit after all, but theirs " through 
 heaven's grace and inborn aptitudes.'' It is true that 
 this pride is due to an incomplete culture, which has 
 not been carried far enough till self-consciousness has 
 reached the point of self-forgetfulness. All education 
 must begin in self-consciousness, in acquiring mastery 
 over the instruments. A man must first of all bring 
 what is in him out into consciousness, must learn to 
 know himself, his powers and limitations. The artist 
 must know the exact technique of his art, the musi- 
 
 * Memoirs, p. i* 
 
DEFECTS OF THE ^ESTHETIC IDEAL 83 
 
 cian the quality of each note, just as in all work the 
 worker must know what effects will be produced by 
 every cause he sets in motion, and must have acquired 
 power over his tools. So culture demands patience, 
 and study, and discipline, and all this can only come 
 from courageous self-scrutiny. But the perfect fruits, 
 either in the quality of work produced, or in the qual- 
 ity of character, can never be reached until this process, 
 which began in self-consciousness, is lost in self-for- 
 getfulness. The things which were at first painfully 
 acquired, become organised into habit, and the meth- 
 ods, which before had to be carefully scanned and con- 
 sciously selected, are now used by instinct. Self-con- 
 scious oratory, for example, must always miss the 
 mark; the audience can never forget the speaker, till 
 he has forgotten himself in the great truth which bums 
 and flames into sight. The culture, which remains 
 self-conscious, has not attained to its fruition. Even 
 the conscious intellectual superiority, which culture 
 cannot but create, needs to be swallowed up in some 
 larger sense of humility. In Matthew Arnold's poems, 
 with all their wonderful interpretation of the modern 
 mood of mind, and their deeply expressed sorrow that 
 faith should be lost, there is also, as Mr. R. H. Hut- 
 ton pointed out,^ a constant tincture of pride in his 
 confessed inability to believe, a self-congratulation that 
 he is too clear-eyed to yield to the temptations of the 
 heart; and this limits their scope and their power of 
 appeal as poetry. 
 
 As an almost necessary corollary from the fact that 
 culture as an intellectual scheme is liable to overesti- 
 mate its sphere of influence, it follows also that it is 
 * Literary Essays — * The Poetry of Matthew Arnold.* 
 
84 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 always inclined to make too much of the mere means 
 it employs. For example, in any full scheme of cul- 
 ture books will take a place, as being the record of 
 what the best brains have thought and the finest hearts 
 have felt, but these are only methods, means to be used. 
 We know how such a valuable instrument of mental 
 culture, as books undoubtedly are, can be grossly over- 
 valued. Nothing needs more serious discrimination, 
 even in the interests of true culture, and nothing gets 
 less, as a rule. There can be omnivorous reading 
 without any real grasp of thought, or balance of judg- 
 ment, or self-possession of mind ; and there can be gen- 
 uine culture, fineness of feeling, depth of insight, 
 knowledge of the laws of life, without many of the 
 ordinary educational advantages. All the essentials of 
 culture will sometimes be found among humble peo- 
 ple, with no knowledge of many books, though with 
 supreme knowledge possibly of one or two; for it is 
 not literature or art, as such, which brings culture, but 
 the ripening of thought and of nature, producing nobil- 
 ity and elevation of mind. A rich culture is evidenced, 
 not so much by the ready absorption into the mind of 
 multifarious thoughts, as by the habit of thinking. 
 The inclination to place an undue estimate on books 
 is not confined to readers, but is often found in writers, 
 with detriment to their own life, as in the danger to 
 which Hare refers in Guesses at Truth, " an author's 
 blood will turn to ink. Words enter into him and take 
 possession of him; and nothing can obtain admission 
 except through the passport of words." 
 
 Or take another of the supposed instruments of cul- 
 ture — travel. It assuredly affords opportunities of 
 comparison and contrast with home, opportunities for 
 
DEFECTS OF THE ESTHETIC IDEAL 85 
 
 enlarging and increasing knowledge and ideas; but 
 sometimes it only hardens prejudice and blinds the 
 eyes, so that an Englishman can return from the Grand 
 Tour more insular than before. There is an old Latin 
 proverb about those who run across the sea and only 
 change their sky, not their mind, not their real self. 
 The man is not rare, whose knowledge of famous 
 places he has visited consists in a knowledge of 
 hotels and their menu. Emerson had some cause for 
 his advice to his countrymen to try and extract the 
 tapeworm of Europe from their brain, though he knew 
 he would be accused of saying captious things about 
 travel. Travel will not fill an empty mind: here, too, 
 we see only what the heart gives us the power to see. 
 It is a common human failing to set store on the means, 
 and to forget the end. The workman, who thinks 
 more of his tools than of his work, will do no work 
 worth doing. This tendency to over-estimate the in- 
 struments of culture, or its external results, is responsi- 
 ble for the sham culture, which makes good taste the 
 standard of life, and so contents itself with a veneer 
 of accomplishments, a dilettante knowledge of lit- 
 erature and art, a social polish of manner which does 
 come from handling the tools of culture. It is this 
 side, so often presented to the world — the empty smat- 
 tering of so-called attainments, the amenities of refine- 
 ment, serene elegance of life, suavity of manner, and 
 sometimes an indifference to moral issues which mas- 
 querades in the garb of large-minded tolerance — which 
 makes the very name of culture almost stink in the nos- 
 trils of every earnest man. 
 
 A still further evidence of the narrowness of such 
 culture lies in its exclusiveness. It is, confessedly 
 
86 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 according to its own high-priests, at present the prop- 
 erty of a small and select coterie, and instead of mis- 
 sionary zeal to enlighten others it often breeds a more 
 fastidious exclusiveness. It recalls the arrogance of 
 the early world, which drew a line of demarcation be- 
 tween Greeks and all other races, the criterion being a 
 higher civilisation, which classed every one not a Greek 
 as a barbarian.^ When the Romans absorbed the civ- 
 ilisation of Greece, they adopted the same classification, 
 and slumped all outside races as beyond the pale : as in 
 Cicero's remark *' not only Greece and Italy, but also 
 all Barbary " (sed etiam amnis Barbaria) . A similar 
 exclusiveness is the curse of sestheticism. It is on a 
 par with the religious exclusiveness of the Pharisees, 
 who looked down with contempt on all outside their 
 own caste. We remember Matthew Arnold's famous 
 division of the population of England into Barbarians 
 the aristocratic class, Philistines the middle class, and 
 Populace the vast residuum, sullen, soulless, half-hid- 
 den amidst its poverty and squalor, the sterner part 
 of it given over to bawling, hustling, and smashing, 
 the lighter part given over to beer; and in addition 
 to these comprehensive classes a few cultured individ- 
 uals, who have sweetness and light.^ Out of these 
 three hopeless classes emerge an elect few, who fol- 
 low humanity, who love perfection, and are nursed by 
 culture. We must not blame him for this frank classi- 
 fication; for it is a logical conclusion from his posi- 
 tion. Naturally and inevitably, if the standard is made 
 an aesthetic one, the great mass of men are disfran- 
 chised. When the emphasis is laid on the accomplish- 
 
 * Ttag jurf''EA.Xyv /SdpfSapoi. 
 * Culture and Anarchy, ch. iii. 
 
DEFECTS OF THE ESTHETIC IDEAL 87 
 
 ments necessarily confined to a few, it is to be expected 
 that these should develop an exclusiveness of spirit. 
 
 Even the Freemasonry, which similar studies pro- 
 duce, often means a thinly disguised contempt for out- 
 siders. Emerson declared that one of the benefits of a 
 college education was to show the boy how little it 
 availed, but this negative value is not always seized; 
 and Emerson himself could be quoted to show the 
 intellectual hardness, if not the exclusiveness, which 
 culture induces on men. In the essay on Self-Reli- 
 ance, where he preaches the creed that a man should 
 insist on himself and not imitate, he states what he calls 
 the Doctrine of Hatred, to counteract the puling, 
 whining doctrine of love. There is a class of persons, 
 to whom by all spiritual affinity he is bought and sold, 
 but " do not tell me,'* he says, " as a good man did to^ 
 day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situa- 
 tions. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish phi- 
 lanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent 
 I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom 
 I do not belong." Emerson was personally saved from 
 all that this seems to mean by his temper of mind, his 
 idealism, his gentleness of heart. He was a generous, 
 large-hearted man, but it can be seen what consis- 
 tency to such a creed would be, when Emerson declares 
 it is with shame he confesses he sometimes succumbs, 
 and gives the dollar to the philanthropist. In another 
 essay ^ he says, " The worst of charity is that the lives 
 you are asked to preserve, are not worth preserving. 
 Masses ! the calamity is the masses. I do not wish 
 any mass at all." When he speaks of the mass of men 
 existing only to be tamed, drilled, divided, and broken 
 
 * * The Conduct of Life ' — Considerations by the Way. 
 
88 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 up, and all in order that certain individuals, select 
 specimens made possible by the otherwise useless 
 seething mass, may be formed out of them, we see that 
 it is with the intellect, and not with the heart, that he 
 approaches the sore problem of the world's misery and 
 sin. Culture as an intellectual scheme can only appeal 
 to a section. It is not given to all men to possess the 
 artistic temperament, or even the capacity to appreciate 
 poetry and art to any great extent ; and though all men 
 might become wise up to the limits of their nature, 
 they could not all become learned. The work of the 
 world for daily bread has to go on, and if the aesthetic 
 ideal be the highest, the great bulk of mankind would 
 necessarily be cut off from all hope of any realisation 
 of it. Like Plato's mechanics, who, he declared, had 
 no time to be ill and therefore demanded short shrift 
 from their doctors when they consulted them at all, the 
 mass of men have no time to be so enormously culti- 
 vated. They have to make their living, and are beset 
 by physical needs. 
 
 It is not necessary to stop to show how different 
 from this the Christian ideal is, how it broke down 
 the old barriers, which divided men according to Greek 
 culture, and substituted the word brothers for the word 
 barbarian; and how it rebukes to-day all exclusive- 
 ness. The religious ideal has to do with character, and 
 character is produced from the ordinary material of 
 life, by duty, by service, by faith, by love, by good- 
 ness. If character be the ultimate test, mere refine- 
 ment of intellect is nothing except an added and valu- 
 able instrument, which a man is called on to use to 
 ennoble life. Like every gift, it carries its own tempta- 
 tion to abuse it; and probably strength of character, 
 
DEFECTS OF THE .ESTHETIC IDEAL 89 
 
 and true wisdom, will be found among the unlettered, 
 among the handicraftsmen, as often as among the most 
 highly educated; for the deepest culture of life is 
 achieved by the ordinary labour, by the common tasks, 
 by the daily work of the world. This practical educa- 
 tion is often overlooked by those who lay such stress 
 on books. It is not through abstract thought, but 
 through action, through practical life, that even the 
 deepest truth is discovered. There is no education like 
 that which comes from genuine work, done in a work- 
 manlike manner and in a sincere spirit. Goethe points 
 the distinction in his well-known lines — 
 
 Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, 
 
 Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.* 
 
 Everything in the long-run must be known by its fruits, 
 and must be tested by how it fits in with, and affects, 
 the vital relations in which men stand. The true life 
 of a man or a nation does not consist in a taste for 
 the fine arts, or the spinning of either words or theo- 
 ries, but in the moral qualities which go to the forma- 
 tion of character. Alfred de Musset's saying that it 
 takes a great deal of life to make a little art is a true 
 one: great art is the distillation of life, compressing 
 in precious essence all that is implied in the larger 
 material; but that is because, after all, Hfe is larger 
 than art, and life has so many interests to conserve, and 
 chiefly its own continuance. The Renaissance, with 
 all its wonderful resurrection of art, did not save Italy 
 from decadence. All art must be grounded on the solid 
 root-virtues of the people's character. 
 
 * " Talent is formed in solitude ; character in the stream of 
 the world." 
 
I 
 
 90 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 We are thus led, approaching the question from 
 another point, to see the danger to which culture 
 exposes itself by any short-sighted exclusiveness. Just 
 because it is tempted to stand off in haughty isolation 
 from the vital interests and movements that make his- 
 tory, it sometimes seems anti-social in its tendency, 
 with a disguised selfishness as its sole motive. That 
 way is death to itself, and wrong to the world. It 
 becomes enfeebled in its petty cliques and castes, with- 
 out a breath from the real world of men and action to 
 vitalise it. If divorced from the movements and broad 
 life of its time, it loses all power of creative work, con- 
 cerning itself with peddling criticisms and empty eru- 
 dition, and the result on men of culture is disastrous, 
 leading to poverty of soul in the long-run. So strong 
 is this temptation that John Morley, himself a distin- 
 guished man of letters, writing of a man of letters, sug- 
 gests that the only possible safeguard is for such to 
 seek to do some social work. " Active interest in pub- 
 lic affairs is the only sure safeguard against this in- 
 human egotism, otherwise so nearly inevitable, and in 
 any wise so revolting, of men of letters and men of 
 science." ^ After all, it is a narrow sort of culture 
 which shuts itself off from life, and it could be easily 
 shown that such will destroy itself, and must ulti- 
 mately make the very aesthetic ideal itself impossible. 
 All true development must be social, and must affect 
 the whole of society, as nothing else can be permanent. 
 This is necessary for the sake of the individual, quite 
 apart from any higher ideal of service of others. The 
 culture of the ancient world lacked durability, just 
 because it did not extend down far enough, and because 
 
 'Morley, Voltaire. 
 
DEFECTS OF THE iESTHETIC IDEAL 91 
 
 it thus made the social state top-heavy by being exclu- 
 sively lavished on a few. The palace is not safe, when 
 it is surrounded by nothing but hovels. Culture is not 
 safe, when it sits aloof in scorn of the hustling, bawling 
 populace. If it has any sweetness and light, the only 
 way, even as a practical policy, to secure them ulti- 
 mately for the cultured class, is to diffuse them right 
 through the social organism. It is because society is 
 an organism, and the head suffers with the hand, and 
 the foot suffers with the eye, that no scheme which 
 concerns itself solely with the individual, can be a final 
 one. 
 
 The conclusion we arrive at, from all that has been 
 advanced above, is that, while self-culture is a legit- 
 imate and necessary aim, it is not a complete end for 
 human life. It is only one side, though a very import- 
 ant one, and needs to be supplemented and raised to a 
 higher point, and used as a means for a larger end 
 than itself. Only this can save it from the inevitable 
 degradation that must befall it, if it remain on the 
 lower level as an ideal for self. Not even its achieve- 
 ments and conquests, not even creative genius in art, 
 and brilliant discoveries in science, can suffice for life, 
 if there be not an inspiring force grander than the 
 desire to reach self-development. 
 
IV 
 
 CULTURE AS RELIGION 
 
 RELIGION is a natural outgrowth in man. 
 When man began to think and wonder and 
 feel, he began to have a religion. It is a 
 universal fact of history, because it is a fact 
 of human nature. Wherever there is man, there is re- 
 ligion. The dawn of social life among men is the 
 dawn of religion. It has been asserted by some, that 
 they have not been able to recognise any sort of re- 
 ligion in certain savage tribes, very low down in the 
 scale of civilisation, though the evidence for this asser- 
 tion is by no means conclusive; but even if it should 
 prove to be correct, it will mean that only the most 
 degraded and lowest savages, those least like men, are 
 destitute of religion ; so that want of religion is a sign 
 of lack of civilisation. No theory of the universe can 
 hope to live unless it satisfies, or satisfactorily disposes 
 of, the facts of human nature on which religion is 
 based. Of course some materialists get rid of the sub- 
 ject altogether by flatly denying that there is a place 
 for religion, and it must be admitted that in their 
 scheme of things there is not much room for anything 
 which can with decency be called religion. But in any 
 case we have the fact of religion as an existing reality, 
 and as far as history goes back, a universal reality. 
 That man is incurably religious is as much a scientific 
 fact as any fact can be, proven from observation and 
 
 92 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 93 
 
 history. The mere blunt denial of the spiritual in man 
 is not sufficient, even though the denial be accom- 
 panied by a sentimental regret that man's life should 
 be so grievously curtailed, like Professor Clifford's 
 sad confession of a godless creed, " We have seen the 
 spring sun shine out of an empty heaven to light a soul- 
 less earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the 
 Great Companion is dead." That dreary view, how- 
 ever, cannot be the permanent one, even with those 
 who refuse the consolations of religion, and so we find 
 even materialism seeking to find a substitute for 
 religion. 
 
 The need for some sort of religion for any theory, 
 which claims to cover all the ground, arises also from 
 the difficulty of getting men to rest in negations for 
 very long. There must be something to gain prose- 
 lytes, and to have a centre for a system, which can 
 supply the want created by the loss of the old. After 
 negation has done its work of dissolving the old faith, 
 what then? All power of infidelity lies in its criti- 
 cism of faith, not in its preaching of unfaith. Sec- 
 ular lecturers may catch fire, as they denounce what 
 they conceive to be the falsehood and hypocrisy in pres- 
 ent-day religion, but atheism as a creed, or want of 
 creed, cannot captivate the imagination, and infuse 
 thought with emotion, and inspire missionaries. Only 
 a religion can uproot a religion. It has been so all 
 through history, and human nature has not changed, 
 nor human needs been abolished. Only the passion of 
 a new faith can displace an old one. From history 
 also we see that religion has exercised hitherto the 
 supreme influences on man; and that the nobler and 
 purer the religion of a people is, the grander are their 
 
94 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 works and life. So much is this the reading of the 
 facts, that all who are concerned about the future of 
 the race admit that the greatest of all questions is the 
 religious one; for they see that if our civilization is 
 to live at all it can only be by religion, since there is 
 nothing else that can save it from the dangers that 
 menace it. So strong is this assurance that we find 
 men, who have given up the Christian faith, and even 
 the faith in a personal God, seeking for some religion 
 to take the place of the one which they have dispos- 
 sessed ; Comte and the positivists substituting the wor- 
 ship of humanity for the worship of God; some cul- 
 turists making culture itself religion ; even some mate- 
 rialists offering, as a fit object of worship, the uni- 
 verse, the grand sum total of the order of things. 
 
 It is with the claim of culture that we have to do 
 at present, though it is difficult to get the claim put 
 into plain English, as sometimes it is represented as 
 chiefly a scientific conception of the grandeur of law, 
 and sometimes as a literary and artistic reverence, and 
 again it is a glorified self-worship, slipping indeed 
 sometimes into a sort of vague spiritualism — the one 
 unvarying element being that they are all attempts to 
 have a religion without God. The ablest of these 
 attempts on behalf of culture is perhaps Professor See- 
 ley's in his Natural Religion, and it is the most inter- 
 esting as coming from the author of Ecce Homo. His 
 thesis is that for modern conditions religion to the indi- 
 vidual may be identified with culture, and in its pub- 
 lic aspect, as a sort of national or international religion, 
 it may be identified with civilisation. He begins with 
 the definition that religion in its root idea is admiration. 
 Religion in the Christian sense is to him too lim- 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 95 
 
 ited, too exclusively concerned with the contemplation 
 of the good, given up to the exercises of the benevolent 
 affections and the moral virtues, all well enough in 
 their way, but making up only a fragment of life. He 
 would not displace that altogether, but would merely 
 supplement it with two other elements, which demand 
 the same worshipful contemplation, the beautiful and 
 the true, in all making a threefold religious cord strong 
 enough for modern life to hang by, though he thinks 
 they need not be combined in every individual. Since 
 the artist admires beauty and may be said to worship 
 it, and the naturalist admires truth and is bowed in 
 awe before the mystery and order of physical law, these 
 are to be elevated into the place of conscious and ac- 
 cepted religion, on a level with the other worship of 
 goodness. 
 
 The religion which is to inspire our civilisation is 
 that threefold devotion: first, of science, which is con- 
 cerned with eternal law, and which has many intel- 
 lectual virtues, such as definiteness of conception, ac- 
 curacy of observation, conscientiousness, and patience ; 
 then the spirit of humanity, with all the practical vir- 
 tues of honesty, help to the weak, respect for women, 
 and love of liberty, which is the fragment saved from 
 the wreck of Christianity; and lastly, the enjoyment / 
 of nature, a legacy from Greece, and preserved to the • 
 world by artists and poets, a fragment saved from the 
 wreck of Paganism. We are not to expect these three 
 strands united in one character — indeed Professor See- 
 ley is led to make this distinction in modern religion 
 from the common experience of finding only one of 
 them in different men. He finds the artist cherishing 
 a secret grudge against morality, and believing that 
 
96 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 our morality prevents us from rivalling the arts of 
 Greece, and convinced that on his deathbed he would 
 rather be able to reflect that he had painted a really 
 good picture, or written a really good poem, than that 
 he had done his duty under great temptations and at 
 great sacrifices. He finds the scientific investigator 
 living a life to which the platitudes current about vir- 
 tue have no application; with the gradual disuse of all 
 habits except the habit of thought and study, instead 
 of the gradual formation of virtuous habits which mor- 
 alists demand; with perpetual self-absorption, without 
 what is commonly called selfishness; total disregard 
 of other people, along with unceasing labour for the 
 human race ; a life free from gross evil, yet without any 
 love or heavenly communion in it. He too would 
 rather have advanced our knowledge of the laws of the 
 universe if only by a step, than have lived the most 
 virtuous life, and died the most self-sacrificing death. 
 The two ideals of art and science are simply out of rela- 
 tion to what we call morality, virtue and vice, right 
 and wrong; yet these two ideals, Seeley thinks, may 
 truly be called religious, because both produce elevated 
 feelings — feelings that lift a man above himself, admi- 
 ration become habitual, and raised into a principle of 
 life. Instead of the religion of right to which the 
 moralist subscribes, one has the religion of beauty, the 
 other the religion of law and truth ; and both join with 
 the moralist in denouncing the mere worldling, the man 
 who does not know any exalted feeling of admiration, 
 who is devoted to nothing, without soul for beauty or 
 for truth, and therefore without religion. 
 
 To be quite fair to Seeley's position we must remem- 
 ber that it is offered in the interests of what he thinks 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 97 
 
 the higher life, as opposed to the dominant secular tend- 
 encies of our age, and because he feels that there has 
 never been a time when the necessity of religion, in 
 the broad sense of the word, has been so clear. He is 
 concerned that so many artists should paint falsely, 
 and so many literary men write hastily, for money ; and 
 that men born to be philosophers, or scientific discov- 
 erers, or moral reformers, should " end ignominiously 
 in large practice at the bar." He would recall men in 
 all these spheres to the religious sacredness of their 
 work. He looks to an ideal community, where the cares 
 of livelihood would not absorb the mind, taming all 
 impulse, and depressing the spirit with a base anxiety ; 
 a community which will learn to reason with scientific 
 rigour, and at the same time hope with Christian 
 enthusiasm, and also enjoy with Pagan freshness. The 
 art and science, to which he looks as opponents of 
 secularity, are not of the world, though they may be 
 corrupted by the world. The feelings they arouse 
 have the nature of religion, different from the religion 
 which has hitherto been associated chiefly with moral- 
 ity, manifesting itself in other ways than ordinary mor- 
 als, but truly religious and essential to the higher life 
 of man. It is really religion revived under the new 
 name of culture, leading to a life inspired by what can 
 be called religious admiration and devotion. It is a 
 larger conception of religion which he seeks to 
 expound, and the three forms in which it manifests it- 
 self constitute culture, summed up by Goethe as life in 
 the Whole, in the Good, in the Beautiful, which Seeley 
 identifies with science, morality, and art. 
 
 We must also grant, and gladly grant, a truth in 
 Professor's Seeley's argument, that the pursuit of the 
 
9S CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 beautiful in art, and of the true in science, are right 
 ends to be followed by men who are endowed in these 
 branches, and are well worthy to be classed as aspects 
 of religion; and we gladly admit that men may be 
 brought into a religious mind through these spheres — 
 nay, further, may be brought to God, through the 
 works of beauty and of order, which do reveal Him- 
 self. But there is some looseness of language in the 
 definition. There is in all religion an element of wor- 
 ship, of adoration, but there is a distinction between 
 that and admiration. It is true that irreligion may 
 fairly be defined as life without worship, but it is to 
 empty the word of its meaning to make worship merely 
 the possession of some object of habitual contempla- 
 tion, which makes life rich to a man, and of which 
 he thinks and speaks with ardour. It is not necessa- 
 rily religious to admire a picture, however beautiful, or 
 a landscape, or even the planets in their orbits, which 
 illustrate the wonder and order of law. It is only by 
 a poetic licence that we can speak of adoring these 
 things, because we happen to admire them very much ; 
 but we can be said — and this is the religious aspect of 
 both art and science — ^through the admiration of these 
 works of God's hands, to adore Him, whose admira- 
 ble qualities are revealed by them. Admiration stops 
 at the object admired, and is limited to the finite; 
 adoration goes past the object to the infinite. So while 
 admiration may lead to adoration, the distinction be- 
 tween the two attitudes is not one merely of degree. 
 Admiration could never inspire such an attitude of self- 
 prostration and self-surrender, as is implied in an act 
 of prayer. It is a confusion of thought to make 
 admiration, however sincere and ardent, equivalent to 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 99 
 
 adoration. Admiration carries with it a certain as- 
 sumption of equality and almost self-esteem, as when 
 we admire a picture, we put ourselves in the position 
 of a critic, and compare it with our own ideal; while 
 worship is the prostration of the soul in self-forgetful 
 adoration before something, which transcends all 
 human criticism and all standards of comparison. We 
 feel the full force of the distinction if we transpose the 
 terms, and speak of " admiring " God, and " adoring " 
 a man. To use the two words as synonymous, or as if 
 they were on the same level, is to confuse the plain 
 meaning of words. 
 
 Further, in the three forms of religion which are 
 supposed to constitute culture, we might object that 
 the Christian faith is set down in impossibly narrow 
 terms, making it mean what it has never meant in 
 all its history to any soul that has accepted it. It is 
 stated as if it implied opposition to the other spheres 
 of beauty and truth, as if an artist or a scientist could 
 not also at the same time be a Christian, which is 
 absurd, seeing that the greatest of both spheres have 
 been, and are, sincere believers, in spite of the blatant 
 screaming of a noisy few. The Christian religion is 
 more than admiration of the good in the sense of the 
 moral. It is inclusive in its scope. Some apostles of 
 culture speak with great condescension, as if they tol- 
 erated religion as a graceful addition to life, a possi- 
 ble ornament and charm to a man, an extra element 
 of culture, a delightful development of the aesthetic 
 side, when such is possible without passion and too fer- 
 vent zeal, which would mar the sweet harmony. They 
 would tolerate even a little harmless superstition that 
 would be consistent with a graceful bearing. Relig- 
 
100 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 ion can never accept the position of a sort of super- 
 numerary, an extra pinch of salt to give piquancy to 
 life. That is to dethrone religion, and to empty the 
 word of all significance: it is not what religion has 
 hitherto meant in all its history. Religion claims to be 
 life itself, covering all the ground of life, so much so 
 that even the so-called culture must justify itself 
 according to how it ministers to that life. Religion is 
 not the narrowing, the impoverishment of life, as if 
 either art, or science, or any other human activity were 
 outside its scope; it claims to glorify every region it 
 touches, making the very body a holy thing, conse- 
 crating mind, and imagination, and heart. Historic- 
 ally, Christianity brought expansion of thought, and 
 feeling, and life; and it brings the same expansion 
 still, whenever a man opens his eyes to the wonder and 
 his heart to the love of God. 
 
 Going still deeper into this proposed religion of cul- 
 ture, we must condemn it as a religion on the ground 
 that it cannot be made a universal ideal. Professor 
 Seeley does valiantly strive to show how it might be 
 made an ideal for all, and even how it might be made 
 a missionary religion, with real zeal for the enlighten- 
 ment of heathen races abroad, as well as the benighted 
 Philistines and Barbarians at home. He pleads for 
 some organisation of the new religion to carry on the 
 vast work ready to its hands, and almost calls for mis- 
 sionary volunteers to do for it what was done for 
 Christianity by St. Paul, and Gregory, and Xavier, 
 and Eliot, and Livingstone. What is the message the 
 missionaries are supposed to take? It is almost too 
 funny for a comedy, though it is unkind to laugh at 
 zeal of any sort. Let us carry the true view of the 
 
G UNIVER 
 
 CULTURE AS RELIGION riH:-25 
 
 Universe, the true astronomy, the true chemistry, and 
 the true physiology to polytheists still lapped in my- 
 thological dreams; let us carry progress and free-will 
 to fatalist nations, and to nations cramped by the 
 fetters of primitive custom; let us carry the doctrine 
 of rational liberty into the heart of Oriental despot- 
 isms ; in doing all this — not indeed suddenly, or fanat- 
 ically, nor yet pharisaically, as if we ourselves had 
 nothing to learn — we shall admit the outlying world 
 into the great civilised community, into the modem 
 City of God.' ^ It is a strange missionary programme 
 to speak of to men who have known, by hearsay at 
 least, of the passion of the missionaries of the cross; 
 and we may well conclude that it will not be done 
 either suddenly or fanatically. Seeley's missionary 
 enthusiasm is, as a matter of fact, like much else of 
 our modern sentiment, part of the unconscious influ- 
 ence of Christianity. For the ideal of culture is from 
 the nature of the case an impossible one for all, being 
 intellectual and aesthetic, and the majority of men 
 would necessarily be excluded by their inhospitable en- 
 vironment from partaking in it. 
 
 So much is this the case that, as we saw in a pre- 
 vious chapter, the prevailing temptation of the very 
 high priests of the new religion, the artists and scien- 
 tists, is that of contempt for the outside mass who can- 
 not appreciate or understand their special subjects. 
 That contempt of, or impatience with, the unlearned 
 has always been the great temptation of intellect. 
 Plato, who makes the philosopher the ideal man, and 
 speaks of him with a religious enthusiasm equal to 
 Professor Seeley's, had, however, a calmer judgment 
 
 * Natural Religion, Part n. ch. iv. 
 
102 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 of the facts, for he confesses that there must always 
 be few of them. " Every one will admit that a nature 
 having in perfection all the qualities which are re- 
 quired in a philosopher, is a rare plant which is seldom 
 seen among men." ^ The basis of the new creed is 
 wholly an intellectual one, and it is farcical to speak 
 of it as a possible religious ideal. Celsus, who has 
 been aptly called the Voltaire of the second century, 
 in his polemic against Christianity, made this a point, 
 rightly enough from his standpoint, that a universal 
 religion, such as Christianity claimed to be, was im- 
 possible. " If any one supposes that it is possible that 
 the peoples of Asia, and Europe, and Africa, Greeks, 
 and Barbarians, should agree to follow one law, he 
 is hopelessly ignorant." ^ He was judging from the 
 standpoint of the schools, and, imagining Christianity 
 to be only another intellectual system, he put his finger 
 on the weak spot of all such systems. 
 ^Christianity, however, begins from another direc- 
 tion, begins with the recognition of human worth, and 
 puts a new value on human nature as such, just because 
 it did not make an intellectual standard for religion; 
 and for the same reason it recognised no distinction 
 of race, or class, and made its appeal to all, irrespect- 
 ive of status, and condition, and place in the scale of 
 culture. It took for granted that in every man there 
 was the capacity for the divine, dwarfed and distorted 
 but indestructible. It appealed directly to the primary 
 instincts, to the innate moral element as being capable 
 of growth. The present state of the conscience and 
 the soul might be rudimental, but infinite possibility 
 
 ^ Republic, vi. 491. 
 ' Celsus, Ap. Orig. c. Gels. viii. 72. 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 103 
 
 lay there. Thus it stamped human nature with in- 
 herent nobility and grandeur. It brought a man past 
 all disabilities of station, or culture, or race, right into 
 the presence of God, opening up to him complete fel- 
 lowship, giving him all the rights of a man, though 
 he had been the poorest slave or the most despised 
 outcast. No chemistry, or astronomy, or physiology, 
 however true as compared with his own blind notions 
 of such things, could have brought such expansion of 
 life, such accession of human dignity, such redemptive 
 power, as that assurance that God cared for him and 
 claimed him as a son. Any form of culture turned into 
 a religion is bound to become an esoteric creed, and 
 since it is an intellectual religion it must receive the 
 fate of all philosophies. That can never be religiously 
 true, which condemns the great mass of men to a state 
 of spiritual serfdom for the benefit of the favoured 
 few. 
 
 The attempt is due to a meagre view of human na- 
 ture, which looks upon intellect as the highest flower 
 of man. But the highest kind of knowledge, which is 
 peculiarly religious, is not reached by pure reason, by 
 intellect carefully balancing probabilities of evidence, 
 as the mind must do in the chemistry and physiology 
 of the new missionary programme. /The highest kind 
 of knowledge is the fruit of intuition, and imagination, 
 and feeling, and mind combined in one fervid glow, 
 intellect gleaming with inspiration, though suffused 
 with emotion. In other words, it takes all the faculties 
 of man together to grasp truth at its highest. Intel- 
 lectualism, that is any method which approaches the 
 problems of life otherwise than by moral and spiritual 
 means, can never oust religion from its place. It does 
 
104 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 not touch the centre of life. It would seek to regener- 
 ate man and make him moral, or get the same results 
 as morality, by enlightening him. Religion enlightens 
 him by regenerating him. And, therefore, the methods 
 of the two are as different as their aims. 
 
 Intellectualism works by brain, religion by heart: 
 the one appeals to knowledge, the other to love. 
 Reason is a destructive and critical, not a constructive 
 power; but the human relations are built on feeling, 
 not on reason or knowledge. We are not bound to 
 each other as a nation, as a family, as a church, or in 
 any association and relationship, by abstract principles 
 of thought. Good reasons may be found out why we 
 should be so bound together, but the reasons are only 
 an afterthought, an explanation of the actual state of 
 affairs. All the permanent relations of life have other 
 sanctions besides reason. No association of men can 
 be kept vital, and even long kept together at all, on 
 merely prudential and reasonable grounds. Men are 
 united by ties of blood, and brotherhood, and common 
 faith, and common love. No church could be kept to- 
 gether for a month on an intellectual basis merely. It 
 is bound by memory, and by association, by a faith that 
 transcends reason, by sacred mysteries, by love, and 
 service, and worship, independent of the sanctions of 
 logic. If then the human relations are built on feeling, 
 religion, the fount and spring of which is love, is in 
 the very citadel of life. 
 
 The real crux of the question raised by the claims 
 of culture is that man needs not enlightenment merely, 
 but redemption. In the ultimate issue the question is 
 one of education versus regeneration. It is naively 
 assumed that men will be elevated into newness of 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 105 
 
 life, if only they can be brought into contact with what 
 has been best said and imagined by poets and writers 
 and artists, as one school of culture insists ; or if they 
 can be got to listen to the clear teaching of the best 
 thinkers about the laws of nature, as another school 
 puts it. The world is not so sure as it has sometimes 
 been that crime would disappear, if only we had better 
 machinery of education; yet it is the constant mistake 
 of humanism that intellectual emancipation is enough, 
 as if enlightenment, the teaching of art and science 
 and the sum total of what is vaguely called civilisation, 
 were enough to save the world. It cannot even save 
 the individual. Philosophy is a feeble antagonist be- 
 fore passion. Even when its teaching is correct, it 
 cannot give an adequate motive in the presence of 
 temptation, such a motive as the love of Christ and the 
 passion for His purity has been in countless lives. In 
 the period of Greek decadence we see how weak the 
 most elaborately reasoned philosophy is before even 
 much lower forms of thought. The idea of God, 
 reached by the great poets and thinkers of Greece, was 
 infinitely higher than that of the local superstitions or 
 of the foreign mysticisms, and yet these latter com- 
 pletely submerged the higher idea. The nobler thought 
 only appealed to men as an intellectual apprehension, 
 and never sent its roots deep into the conscience and 
 heart. Any so-called religion of culture is really a 
 philosophy in disguise, taking as its method education 
 of mind. 
 
 The deepest point at issue is the question of sin, 
 which is quietly ignored in the religion of culture. 
 There is no mention of sin. It is overlooked as if no 
 such thing existed even as a question, though sin is a 
 
io6 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 common factor of all religious experience known in 
 history, as the almost universality of sacrifice in some 
 form proves. It makes no attempt to explain the con- 
 sciousness of guilt, in which omission culture is not 
 alone. It is a necessity for any theory, which attempts 
 a naturalistic explanation of the world and man, to 
 eliminate the question of sin; for to admit sin is to 
 admit something outside the great chain of cause and 
 effect, something which is not strictly natural. To 
 them, what we call sin is not the fruit of an evil but 
 free will; it is a natural appearance, neither in itself 
 to be praised or blamed, like acorns on an oak. We 
 are justified in asking from any system of thought, 
 which claims to unseat religion from its supremacy, 
 first of all an adequate treatment of the fact we call 
 sin. A religion of culture without God must either 
 deny the reality of sin at all, or define it as simply the 
 imperfection involved in finite being. This has the 
 effect of destroying the moral view of evil, and it only 
 explains a very few of the facts which the conscience 
 of man classes as sins. It may cover faults of igno- 
 rance and mistakes that could not be avoided, but it has 
 nothing to say to the real sins of life, the fruit of evil 
 will. The long blacklist which St. Paul gives as the 
 works of the flesh ^ cannot be dismissed as shortcom- 
 ings and deficiencies. A theory, which thus volatilises 
 evil by calling it imperfection, and which thus empties 
 sin of any moral significance, cannot command our 
 adherence. Its standards of human perfection are 
 purely artificial. At bottom there is the tacit denial of 
 the spiritual element in man; for, of course, if man's 
 being is limited to the finite, then a life lived on the 
 
 *Gal. V. 19-21. 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 107 
 
 plane of nature, satisfying sense and impulse, cannot 
 know sin. It is neither moral nor immoral, but only 
 unmoral. 
 
 We see how wide of the mark is the idea that 
 science or art can be made a religion for the heart of 
 man ; for neither of them touch the deepest things, and 
 neither of them have anything to say to sin, and thus 
 practically, through omitting the fact of sin, they mini- 
 mise or omit the ethical. The religious view of human 
 nature seems to collide with the natural tendency of 
 the artistic mind, which is easily blinded to the ugly 
 facts represented by the term sin, the discord in the 
 universal harmony, and which loves to dwell on the 
 beauty and grace of the world, and the achievements 
 of the human mind. Similarly, the religious view of 
 human nature seems at complete variance with the 
 natural tendency of the scientific mind, which seeks to 
 find everywhere the ordered march of evolution with- 
 out any hiatus in the steps. The existence of sin, a 
 state of revolt against the true order of man's life, the 
 consequent need of redemption, all the facts and forces 
 which make up the Christian view, suggest a system, 
 which seems the obtrusion of an alien force into the 
 realm of law. But this is due to a too exclusive con- 
 sideration of one set of facts, looking to Nature as if 
 man were not a part of it, forgetful that the facts of 
 man's life must also be included among the facts to be 
 explained. 
 
 Let us suppose a scientific culture so profoundly 
 worshipful that it can be called religion, which is the 
 contention — science raised to the religious pitch, so to 
 speak. Such a science must have something to say 
 about the nature within, as well as the nature without. 
 
io8 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 It would accept the moral standards already attained 
 by man ; it would admit that a man must have his pas- 
 sions in curb, that he should be of strong will and sus- 
 ceptible conscience, should have a high standard of 
 probity in his dealings with others, even should love 
 others as himself. But it kicks away the ladder by 
 which man rose to this, and does not reveal any means 
 of rising higher, to say nothing of how he is to main- 
 tain his ground already won. It is by moral discipline 
 that man has come to such virtues, a moral discipline 
 wielded by the strong hand of religion. It has to be 
 proved that men can even stand in the position of 
 morality, which Christian ethics enjoins, if you take 
 away the force of the Christian motive. Assuming, 
 however, that all these moral qualities could have come 
 without the long religious training of the race, imagine 
 a man who may be called a religious man on this scien- 
 tific basis. He will have complete respect to the laws 
 of the world, will admire the order of things to such 
 an extent that he may be said to worship the Power 
 behind all physical phenomena ; and in addition he will 
 possess some of the highest qualities of human nature, 
 be sensitive in feeling and conscience, choosing right 
 and loving right. If he thinks there can be no corre- 
 spondence between what is best in himself and the Su- 
 preme Power, no real response to his own noblest attri- 
 butes, nothing that can be called sympathy between his 
 highest moral nature and the non-moral Power that 
 rules by law, how can he possibly have towards such a 
 scheme of things feelings, that by any meaning that 
 can be put into language can be termed worship, or that 
 are worthy to be called religion? It is playing with 
 words. A man's religion must represent the highest 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 109 
 
 he knows, and in this case the highest he knows is in 
 himself, not in the Supreme Power he yet is supposed 
 to worship. 
 
 Such a view of the universe puts the highest quali- 
 ties of man at a discount, and on such a purely natural- 
 istic basis it is difficult to see how morality could ever 
 get above the level of prudence, and worldly wisdom, 
 and the guarded acceptance of some occult moral cause 
 and eflfect, which a wise man will see does not come 
 into collision with himself. Not so has man hitherto 
 come to his noblest; not so have earth's greatest sons 
 suffered sorrow, and borne the burden of being men. 
 They have attained to the moral heights by a conscious- 
 ness of the divine presence, and by a calm acceptance 
 of the divine will, which has had nothing of pruden- 
 tial morality in it. They have been enabled to endure 
 and make sacrifice by the thought that, though possibly 
 misunderstood on earth, they are understood in heaven, 
 and have the sympathy and smile of God^ The sense 
 of God's presence has done for them what no worldly 
 motive could do. As a matter of fact, true science does 
 not arrogate to itself this high claim of being a religion 
 in itself, made on its behalf. When it is unbelieving, 
 it simply ignores religion, and goes on ploddingly col- 
 lating, and observing, and deducing. When it is be- 
 lieving, it knows that religion has higher sanctions 
 than those that can be gathered from the knowledge of 
 material forces. The man of science who is religious, 
 is religious in the same way as his humblest brother, 
 who has also seen the vision. It has not been through 
 his science, though that can give him ampler thoughts 
 and deeper reverence. It is because he too has opened 
 his heart to God, and submitted his will and life to the 
 
no CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Highest. It is because he too has come into relation 
 with the God of his being, and made submission of 
 heart and obedience of will. 
 
 A similar criticism can be passed on art raised to 
 the religious pitch. That also is to play with words; 
 for the keenest enjoyment of beauty, ;and the deepest 
 feelings that can be stirred by it, cannot be called re- 
 ligious, unless a man gets past the beautiful things to 
 the ideal beauty behind them. The so-called religion 
 of science treats of the universe apart from man, and 
 the highest moral and spiritual qualities in man. And 
 the so-called religion of art treats of man apart from 
 God. It is bound to degenerate into a vague poetry 
 of nature, an aesthetic appreciation of beautiful forms ; 
 and to attempt to make a religion of it would mean the 
 sickening repetition of the cult of the aesthete, with 
 their esoteric doctrines about art, which result in the 
 death of art itself. It must be reasserted that the moral 
 basis of life is necessary, if only to give the foundation 
 on which anything permanent in art, or in any other 
 region of man's activity, can be securely built. When 
 intellect in Greece was at its keenest, and art at its 
 best, and political life was organised to its highest, 
 there was in Greek society a corroding evil, which 
 sapped the foundations, and hurled the whole beautiful 
 superstructure to the ground. Matthew Arnold is 
 nearer the truth than Professor Seeley in the emphasis 
 he put on righteousness, on conduct, as three-fourths 
 of life. Artistic culture by itself, even if dignified by 
 being called a religion, becomes at best a dainty selfish- 
 ness, and at worst a blighting egotism. It puts the 
 emphasis on self, makes self-improvement the only end, 
 which carries with it the temptation of self-absorption, 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION iii 
 
 and the darker temptation ever lurking near of pander- 
 ing to every taste and impulse. Religion puts the em- 
 phasis on God, reaches out towards the altogether 
 lovely, and so reacts to make a sweeter and deeper 
 selfhood. And, of course, such a conception of religion 
 takes no account of revelation, of God making Himself 
 known to man in the world of beauty, and of law, and 
 of moral good. It imprisons God, and makes Him 
 dumb and blind; and really calls upon man to worship 
 an abstraction. 
 
 ^ Further, in keeping with the position which makes 
 God an abstraction, and which makes sin a strange 
 myth which somehow has afflicted men, it takes away 
 any moral meaning from human life. The Christian 
 faith at least sees discipline in life, and has glimpses 
 of a great end which partly explains suffering and sor- 
 row, and can even see how man is being made perfect 
 through suffering. No man has a rich, deep life but 
 has known pain in himself, or through others. The 
 mystery of evil in the world, the mystery of sorrow in 
 life, imply that sacrifice must be in every noble soul. 
 To say then that there is no meaning in suffering, but 
 blind strokes of fate, the cruel crushing of the wheels 
 of law, without purpose, without intelligence, and 
 without pity, makes the heart revolt. The world is full 
 of sorrow. There is a divine meaning in it to the re- 
 ligious soul, and even when he cannot explain, he can 
 believe; but what has this new religion to offer to the 
 children of affliction? In the face of the deep human 
 necessities, to speak of the religious consolations of a 
 cultivated intelligence in art or science is cruel mock- 
 ery. It suggests the irony of Hotspur, who describes 
 how a certain lord came on the field after the battle, 
 
112 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 perfumed like a milliner, daintily handling his pouncet- 
 box between finger and thumb, and, as the soldiers 
 bore the dead bodies past, called them unmannerly 
 knaves to bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse betwixt 
 the wind and his nobility. 
 
 He made me mad, 
 To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, 
 And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman 
 Of guns, and drums, and wounds, (God save the mark!) 
 And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth 
 Was parmaceti for an inward bruise/ 
 
 We can see the desperate inadequacy of this refined 
 religion, when we bring it face to face with the needs 
 of man, and find that for the sorrow of life, and the 
 mystery of death, and the passion and the tears, it 
 offers '' parmaceti for an inward bruise." 
 
 We must therefore respectfully refuse to let such an 
 emasculated religion displace the faith on all these 
 several counts — first that it is not and cannot be a uni- 
 versal ideal, but could only be reserved for some 
 spiritual aristocracy ; that it does not give an adequate 
 moral motive, nor offer a stable moral foundation for 
 life; and that it does not satisfy the facts of our na- 
 ture, nor make provision for either sin or sorrow. 
 And all its failure is due to the fact that it tries to 
 have a religion without God. 
 
 Religion is born of need, an upward longing look, 
 a cry, an unsatisfied desire. The heart, awakened to 
 this sense of need, can only find peace in fellowship 
 with God. Religion has its roots here, and needs the 
 personal element. Only thus can it be made a uni- 
 
 * First Part of. King Henry iv.. Act i., Sc. 3. 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 113 
 
 versal ideal, open to every child of need ; and only thus 
 can it give the adequate motive, and only thus can it 
 satisfy the facts of our nature. A profounder philoso- 
 phy, therefore, than the specious abstraction of culture 
 is it to say with Martineau, " By religion I understand 
 the belief and worship of Supreme Mind and Will, 
 directing the universe and holding moral relations 
 with human life." ^ To raise morality into religion, 
 and thus conserve morality itself, we need a personal 
 God in whom the moral law is enshrined. So the 
 New Testament connects all the transforming power 
 of religion, not with moral commandments and pre- 
 cepts, but with a Personality. It centralises every- 
 thing in a Person, and brings to bear the highest and 
 strongest motives possible. Where love is absent or 
 impossible, adoring worship in the highest sense is im- 
 possible. So that, while man has the capacity to love, 
 no religion is worthy of him which does not demand 
 from him supreme love; and only love can call forth 
 love. Religion is impossible to the man, whose highest 
 thought about the world is that it is ruled by blind 
 force, unconscious, unthinking, unmeaning power; for 
 the worshipper would be higher than the object of wor- 
 ship, since he possesses consciousness, and personality, 
 and will, and is able to think, and know, and love. 
 
 For the loving worm within its clod 
 Were diviner than a loveless God 
 Amid His worlds, I will dare to say. 
 
 Religion, if it is to express the highest capacity of 
 
 adoration and worship, demands the concrete, and 
 
 cannot be put off with an abstraction; and so needs 
 
 * J. Martineau, A Study of Religion, i. 15. 
 
114 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 the personal element, which indeed we find in every 
 deeply religious utterance, as that of the Psalmist, " O 
 Lord, Thou art my God," ^ — Jehovah the eternal, self- 
 existent. Supreme God, with moral qualities, merciful, 
 just, loving, and above all holy; and revealing Him- 
 self as such to men. 
 
 We can see also what a powerful motive this brings 
 to man, lifting thought, and feeling, and life to high 
 levels. There can be no such motive as this personal 
 one of love ; and that is the deathless grip which Jesus 
 has taken of the world. So strong is it, that John S. 
 Mill confesses, though he weakens the motive by mak- 
 ing it an imaginative one. " Nor even now would it be 
 easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation 
 of the rule of virtue from the abstract to the concrete, 
 than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve 
 our life." ^ And when the motive is no supposititious 
 case, but expresses a real state of feeling and of fellow- 
 ship, what can surpass it as a motive? The conscious- 
 ness of a relation with God, acquiescence in the su- 
 preme will, endued with eternal hope through faith in 
 eternal love, the consciousness of serving Him whose 
 service is perfect freedom, evokes the highest in man, 
 and gives an adequate support even for the possible 
 calamities of mortal life. Faith in God is the only 
 defence against affliction, because the only explanation 
 of it. 
 
 This heart-hunger for God, which is the deepest 
 reading of human history, is a tacit argument for that 
 which will supply it. We expect correspondence be- 
 tween an instinct and that which will satisfy it, between 
 
 * Psalm Ixiii, i. 
 •J. S. Mill, Theism, p. 255. 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 115 
 
 a faculty and its object, between a need and its fulfil- 
 ment. We were made for God; it is written in every 
 aspiration, and breathed in every prayer ; we were born 
 for the love of God. No work, no engrossment, or 
 culture of natural powers, will satisfy a man who has 
 once wakened to his heart-need. Only a faith like that 
 expressed in the great words of St. Augustine ^ can 
 satisfy : " Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our 
 heart is restless till it finds rest in Thee." 
 
 We hear much every now and again of a recru- 
 descence of the Higher Paganism, of Hellenic revivals, 
 of attempts to reintroduce an outworn manner of life 
 with its affected simplicity, the " healthy sensuality'' of 
 the Greek, as it has been admiringly called. It is the 
 stupidest of all affectations to imagine that we can roll 
 back the tide of the years, and denude ourselves of 
 what the centuries have brought. It was impossible 
 for the ancient Greeks to live a life built on the plane 
 of nature; but before we could do it we would need 
 to empty ourselves of all our past ethical and spiritual 
 education. Even on their own principles of pseudo- 
 science, the religion we are now oflFered is a foolish 
 one. Even in the name of natural religion we can 
 never go back to the religion of nature, y The watch- 
 word of modern science is evolution, which implies the 
 progress from the simple to the more complex; so on 
 that principle religion, like all else, should evolve and 
 become more articulate; as indeed has been the case.^ 
 The world has surely not come thus far in the matter 
 of religion to have to turn back empty-handed, hav- 
 ing gained nothing spiritually from the past. The old 
 
 * Confessions, I. i., * Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor 
 nostrum donee requiescat in Te.' 
 
ii6 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 problem of the whence and the whither and the where- 
 fore still tortures the mind of man, and he cannot for 
 long find peace in merely shutting his eyes. Bacon ^ 
 said he would rather believe all the fables of the Tal- 
 mud or the Koran than deny the being of the Universal 
 Mind — that is, he thought better religion, even with 
 the danger of superstition, than the hopeless darkness 
 of unbelief. But the alternatives are not only supersti- 
 tion or practical atheism. We are asked to accept the 
 evidences of our own spiritual nature and its needs, 
 and to seek, and not to be content without, an ade- 
 quate supply for the needs. Any form of nature- 
 worship is a reversion to an outworn type. A frank, 
 sprightly worldliness, such as we are told satisfied the 
 Greek, can never again satisfy men, who have seen the 
 vision. The glad natural joys, which could satiate 
 pagan hearts, will ever be as ashes to the taste of 
 those who have known higher joys and loved a higher 
 love. No contemplation of beauty, no skill in art, no 
 enthusiasm about the progress of the race, no accept- 
 ance of scientific triumphs in manipulating mechanics 
 and harnessing natural powers to the use of man, can 
 fill up the empty heart. We have known better things, 
 believed larger things, dreamed nobler dreams, and 
 " an eye shall haunt us, looking ancient kindness on our 
 pain." The malady of the ideal is ours ; and the mem- 
 ory of lost love is enough to turn everything to dust. 
 
 We have seen that to take culture out of its legiti- 
 mate place and elevate it to a religion is to produce only 
 a sham religion ; yet those who have made the attempt 
 have been moved by a sense of the necessity of religion. 
 Lange, the historian of materialism, speaks of the dan- 
 
 * Essays, xvi.. Of Atheism. 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 117 
 
 ger to our modem civilisation, because the ideal has 
 such limited currency among us ; and all who know the 
 tendencies of to-day must feel the truth of this. They 
 are right, who think that only religion can avert the 
 danger, but in the days of its power religion was 
 always connected with the idea of a personal God; so 
 that religion in all languages means fellowship of some 
 sort with God; and the worth of the religion depends 
 on the quality and character of the fellowship. Relig- 
 ion, according to itself, is the nexus between the human 
 soul and the divine spirit. This is the consistent view 
 of the Bible, till it culminates in the Christian faith, 
 with its pure spiritual communion through Jesus 
 Christ, who is the perfect way of access to the Father. 
 The religious man always speaks in language of per- 
 sonal relationship with God, and the value of it as 
 religion depends on the meaning which he can put into 
 this relationship, and that again is conditioned by the 
 character of the God he worships. 
 
 According to the nature of a man's faith in God, so 
 is his religion. If the conception of the divine be low 
 and unworthy, the religion which is built on that con- 
 ception can only be like it. This is to be expected, and 
 indeed history reveals it to be a fact. We can easily 
 see how it should work out so. If a man believes that 
 the world is the sport of chance, there is no room for 
 principle to be solidly built. If he believes that the 
 world is governed by law, his life must conform to 
 some fixed principles, if he is to be true to his faith. 
 Then, everything will depend on what his idea of law 
 is. If it is viewed as blind force, the relentless work- 
 ing-out of cause and effect, his whole attitude will be 
 different to that of the man who looks upon the law 
 
ii8 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 as the beneficent will of a just and gracious law-giver. 
 Our life is bound to follow the fortunes of our faith. 
 Similarly, we can see how religion will be different 
 with men who each believe in a personal God. It 
 will be affected by the character of the God. If He is 
 to us as an hard man reaping where he has not strawed, 
 it is natural to do as the man in the parable, who hid 
 his talent in the earth. Different qualities of fear, and 
 reverence, and love, come in and colour the particular 
 worship, according to the light in which God is re- 
 garded. If He be to us the Father whom Jesus 
 revealed, we must stand to Him as children, and the 
 richer our thought of the Heavenly Father is, the 
 \^ richer will be the filial relationship in which we stand. 
 Everything depends on what we make the word God 
 connote. Our worship, our fellowship, the faith by 
 which we live, the terms of the communion, will all be 
 determined by that. 
 
 Alongside of such a powerful motive as any true 
 personal relationship gives, we can see the futility of 
 a vague abstraction like culture. "' Ideas and sacri- 
 fices," says Lange, " may still save our civilisation and 
 change the path of destructive revolution into a path of 
 beneficent reforms." But the ideas and sacrifices, 
 which can save a people, have hitherto been only born 
 of religion; and culture has no real religion to offer, 
 to save the world from the doom of itself. It cannot 
 be done by a weak sestheticism, which seeks salvation 
 in what is a mere sensuous enjoyment in natural 
 beauty. Life must base itself on moral sanctions, 
 must have the idea of duty for one thing embedded 
 in it, must be capable of sacrifice for noble ends and of 
 the love which transcends self. This is the conscious 
 
CULTURE AS RELIGION 119 
 
 or unconscious faith of every noble soul. Huxley 
 closes his lecture on ' Evolution and Ethics," with this 
 strident note, though it is really a contradiction of his 
 position in many respects. He declares that if we may 
 permit ourselves any large hope of abatement of the 
 essential evil of the world, " I d^em it an essential 
 condition of the realisation of that hope that we should 
 cast aside the notion that the escape from pain and sor- 
 row is the proper object of life." ^ 
 
 The moral sanctions, the idea of duty, the capacity 
 for sacrifice and love, which are needed, are at the 
 foundation of the religion of Christ. He touches the 
 highest and the deepest chords in the nature of man. 
 He reveals God in nature, interpreting afresh to us 
 what psalmists and poets have seen in the sky, and 
 the mountains, and the clouds, and the sea, giving a 
 new -colour to the world, with a light that never was 
 on sea or land. He reveals God in history, filling up 
 the past with meaning and purpose, a meaning of love, 
 a purpose to redeem. He reveals God to us in our life 
 to-day, glorifying the meanest lot, making life to all 
 an arena for discipline of character, and prepara- 
 tion for larger life, and for the display of virtues and 
 powers which claim and receive the interest of heaven. 
 We live not by bread alone but by every word that 
 proceeds out of the mouth of God, and He is the Word, 
 making the world and life intelligible. To follow 
 Him is to fulfil our own highest destiny. To love 
 Him is to love all that is lovely and beautiful and true 
 and of good report in the world and man, and if there 
 be any virtue and any praise to think of these things. 
 His faith alone makes any adequate provision for that 
 
 *The Romanes Lecture, 1893. 
 
120 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 dread fact of sin which has blighted life and burdened 
 the conscience; it sets a man in the love of God, and 
 when he enters there he finds that he is pardoned, and 
 reconciled, and dowered with peace. If it is a fact 
 that man is by nature and instinct religious, it is no 
 less a fact that the religion of Jesus is the only religion 
 which is at the bar of the world's judgment to-day. 
 
V 
 
 THE PERFECT MAN 
 
 ALTHOUGH we cannot allow art or science to 
 dethrone religion from its pre-eminent place, 
 yet the emphasis put upon these sides of life 
 is useful in compelling religion to take her 
 sovereign power and to reign. It has done much to 
 bring religion into line with her whole duty, which 
 is to put a new sacredness on every sphere of human 
 activity. Culture at its best, and religion, both alike 
 see that the main purpose of life is education in the 
 broadest sense, creating character, letting a man 
 become. Life from this high standpoint is the history 
 of a soul in its progress through the world, meeting 
 adventures and experiences, and through them grow- 
 ing to full maturity. The vision of unrealised perfec- 
 tion, which is the deepest thing in both culture and 
 religion, is a tribute to the idealism, which seems imper- 
 ishable in human nature. 
 
 The old and stubbornly fought battle between ideal- 
 ism and realism in art and in life is largely due to con- 
 fusion of meaning about what the two words at their 
 best stand for. De Quincey said he was seldom dis- 
 posed to meet any sincere affirmation by a blank un- 
 modified denial, since all errors arise in some narrow, 
 partial, or angular view of truth; and this is certainly 
 the case in the long quarrel between idealism and real- 
 ism. They often have to state their side in an extreme 
 
 121 
 
122 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 form to counterbalance each other's exaggeration. 
 When idealism is looked on as the home of all vagrant 
 visionaries, and sets its seal on every vague roman- 
 ticism, and every unintelligible speculation, and every 
 vapoury mysticism — all with the one essential qualifi- 
 cation of being absolutely unhampered by facts and 
 unrelated to life — it is natural to expect the protest, 
 which impatiently pushes aside the nebulous, the occult 
 in all its forms, all traffic with mystery, all that sounds 
 like rhapsody to the cold ear, all " striving to attain by 
 shadowing out the unattainable." The transcendental 
 is dismissed, as either the self-delusion of the dreamer, 
 or the deceit of the charlatan. Realism asks for defi- 
 niteness of conception, and for precision of statement. 
 It pins us down to the crude, naked fact. It has no 
 sympathy with the inexpressible and the undefinable — 
 if there are such things they can be let alone. Its great 
 virtues are intellectual veracity, and lucid, accurate 
 account of facts. Let us see the thing as it is, and if it 
 has to be described or painted, let it be done as it is 
 seen. This appears a very reasonable demand, and 
 seems to settle the question at once on the side of real- 
 ism, but the demand which looks so simple only brings 
 the difficulty into focus; for two men do not see the 
 same scene alike. Art is more than transcription, as 
 realism declares — it is interpretation; but even if it 
 were only transcription, no two men could make the 
 same transcript. Fuseli, painter and art critic, said he 
 only wished he could paint up to what he saw. The 
 same thing will appeal differently to different people 
 according to capacity, sensibility, experience. One 
 may look on a flower with the eye of a florist, another 
 of a market-gardener, another of a botanist, another 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 123 
 
 of an artist. William Blake saw angels amid the sway- 
 ing corn or nestling in a tree. A scene, which is dull 
 and uninteresting to the listless eye, may be trans- 
 formed by a touch of creative and interpretative imag- 
 ination, as James Smetham says Gerhard Dow threw a 
 glory over our very pickled cabbage. 
 
 Besides, there is an utterance of truth which asks, 
 not for admiration or approval or even intellectual 
 agreement, but for spiritual assent, the thrill of soul 
 which recognises the truth and bends to its dominion. 
 All truth cannot be put into the form of mathematical 
 propositions, which if they are accepted at all must 
 be accepted in the same way, as a straight line must 
 be the same practically to all men however they may 
 prefer to define it. The interpreter of nature or life 
 or the soul of man cannot receive the same immediate 
 and identical response and acceptance as a mathe- 
 matical proposition requires. He must expect some- 
 times to meet with blank unintelligence, or with 
 complete misunderstanding, because it is a matter 
 of inward apprehension, spiritual susceptibility to 
 the impression, and sometimes even moral adjust- 
 ment to the truth. Strict realism would rule out of 
 court everything which is not, or could not be, com- 
 pletely elaborated in outward expression, and would 
 discount all appeal to feeling and imagination. The 
 protest of realism, which comes at stated intervals, has 
 had a wholesome effect in all forms of art, in insist- 
 ing on the final reference to reality, by forcing men to 
 relate imagination to life and theory to fact. The 
 true idealism is not found in the baseless visions of a 
 heated imagination. It may have its head in the 
 clouds, but its feet are on the solid ground. The im- 
 
124 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 agination must correspond to the external form in 
 which it is made to manifest itself. The ideal must 
 not be cut off from fact, a castle in the air without 
 foundation in the homely earth : it is the house of life, 
 beautified and adorned as a palace. The ideal is the 
 real seen not merely as it is, but as it should be, as 
 it shall be. It sees the parts, but knows that the parts 
 cannot be put into their proper place without some 
 idea also of the whole. The ideal is the real extended, 
 carried out into its true fruition, the real seen sub specie 
 ceternitatis and not merely from the point of view of 
 the moment. It is imagination working on the tem- 
 poral and material, projecting it into the future, and 
 connecting it with the complete round of which it is 
 but a broken arc. It is but an anticipation of results ; 
 so that we can say with Browning in Paracelsus, that 
 " he who tastes a crust of bread tastes all the stars and 
 all the heaven." The prophets were idealists when 
 they insisted on the relation of religion to history and 
 experience and the whole outward life of man, when 
 they saw it to be the spring of conduct, the source of 
 morality, and that thus in the long-run it fixes destiny 
 for men and nations. 
 
 Disillusionment comes when the connection is 
 thought to be too visionary, or at least too distant, 
 to be considered. What we call the real world is so 
 present, so persistent, so palpable to the senses, that 
 the ideal may be easily neglected. The material runs 
 no risk of being overlooked ; but the ideal cannot com- 
 mand the same insistent instruments. It works by 
 slower means ; it asks to be spiritually discerned ; and 
 the world dulls the faculty of seeing that which is 
 invisible. The ideal, however, always reasserts itself 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 125 
 
 sooner or later; for it is an ineradicable element in 
 human nature. Wordsworth in his introduction to his 
 Ode on Immortality tells us how impossible it was for 
 him in his youth to disbelieve in the spiritual, because 
 of the immediate sense he had of the indomitableness 
 of the spirit within him. So exalted sometimes was 
 his thought, that he was often unable to think of 
 external things having an external existence at all, 
 which is ever the pitfall of idealism. 
 
 ** Many times," he says, " while going to school 
 have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from 
 this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I 
 was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I 
 have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjection 
 of an opposite character." The experience is a com- 
 mon one, though not perhaps in the same form, or 
 with the same vividness, yet in some kindred way ; and 
 the sceptical mood, which follows in later life and is 
 inclined to limit reality to the material, is also a com- 
 mon one. To the eager soul entranced by the splen- 
 dour of a great ideal comes a moment of disillusion- 
 ment, when a cold hand is laid on his pulse, and a cur- 
 tain seems drawn over his eyes, and sadly he can say — 
 
 Whither is fled the visionary gleam? 
 Where is it now, the glory and the dream? 
 
 We see the tragedy being enacted every day in the 
 young man, who began the world with fresh enthusi- 
 asm, being subdued to the level of his environment; 
 and worst of all, unlike Wordsworth who deplored 
 the change, sometimes he looks back with shame or 
 even contempt to his first high thoughts. To be sorry 
 that the vision faileth, is a nobler state than to deny 
 
126 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 that there was a vision at all. When the reality seems 
 so different to the vision, and the lack-lustre eye no 
 longer sees the flaming of the advent feet, the tempta- 
 tion comes to deride the past. This stage of some- 
 thing like disillusionment seems almost inevitable, and 
 should be accepted as part of the discipline of life, as 
 a call not to renounce the ideal but to make it truer and 
 larger. Moral life, the life of tempted beings capable 
 of falling and rising, of doubting and believing, in- 
 volves this process, which to so many brings disillusion- 
 ment at least for a time. It is the great test of life, 
 trying of what stuff it is made ; and its full purpose is 
 achieved when a man is sent back to his life with a 
 sweeter, more patient humility. 
 
 Idealism, in spite of the disasters that overtake it, 
 is indestructible in man, and the high claim made 
 by many to-day on behalf of culture is but an- 
 other proof of this. They are attesting to the 
 innate faith of man in his destiny. The ideal, 
 which culture sets before itself of a perfect man 
 — a full-grown, finished, complete man — lies at the 
 heart of the race. A yearning for some unattained 
 perfection is the root of all human progress. Even if 
 it be illusion, even if man be haunted by the dream 
 of a past that has never been, tortured by the vision 
 of a future that will never be, it is only a witness of 
 the truth of the unquenchable thirst of man for the 
 infinite. It is as if he knew that he once dwelt in 
 Eden, and can never quite adjust himself to any other 
 imperfect environment. Is it a memory, as in the 
 thought of the Neo-Platonists to which such beautiful 
 expression has been given by Wordsworth in his great 
 Ode; or is it an anticipation, a prophecy deep in the 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 
 
 © 
 
 secret soul of man of a destiny that shall satisfy his 
 every power, a goal he shall yet reach which now he 
 only dimly sees? At any rate it is a fact, the fact on 
 which depends all progress in art, and knowledge, and 
 civilisation. The true artist paints with a vision in 
 his soul of beauty hitherto unrealised; the thinker in- 
 vestigates and studies, if by any means he may touch 
 the hem of the radiant garment of truth ; man in every 
 branch of human activity is in pursuit of an ideal, 
 reaching forward to things that are before, to appre- 
 hend that by which he is apprehended, '^f we have 
 not a City of God which we seek, we are at least 
 haunted by a city of dream. But for this divine dis- 
 content, the race would settle and sink towards a centre 
 of stagnation and death. It is this discontent, born 
 of the sense of weakness, of failure, of imperfection, 
 of sin, which is the spur to all endeavour and the inspir- 
 ing impulse of life. 
 
 In this broad earth of ours, 
 
 Amid the measureless grossness and the slag. 
 Enclosed and safe within its central heart, 
 Nestles the seed perfection.^ 
 
 J 
 
 Culture, which aims at complete self-realisation and 
 seeks to produce the finest results possible from the 
 human material at its disposal, has as its inciting 
 motive an ideal, however shadowy, of the perfect man. 
 It looks beyond the conflicting details to an end, which 
 will bring into harmony every section of life. In 
 speaking of the possibility of perfection, however, we 
 need to avoid some of the misconceptions which have 
 gathered round the word. In anything which admits 
 
 *Walt Whitman, Song of the Universal. 
 
128 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 of growth, perfection can only be a relative thing, in 
 its kind and according to its degree, as when we speak 
 of a perfect bud, a perfect flower, a perfect fruit. 
 That is to say, we can only speak of these things in 
 their particular stage, and in relation to other speci- 
 mens of their class. Further, even with this it is only 
 popular language, as botanists tell us there never was 
 a perfect flower, except in the arbitrary botanical sense 
 in which a flower is defined as perfect in having both 
 stamens and pistils; but every florist has in his mind 
 an ideal of the perfect flower, towards which he is 
 working to produce. So with man; the qualities that 
 are most attractive in childhood, and later on in boy- 
 hood, are not those we look for in manhood. It is no 
 imperfection in the child as such, that he has not the 
 powers and capacities of man. Each kind of created 
 being is imperfect compared with those above them in 
 the scale, and all kinds of created being are imperfect 
 compared with the infinite. Childhood is imperfect as 
 compared with the maturity of manhood, but it has an 
 ideal of its own. Just because man admits of growth, 
 perfection in the absolute sense is impossible; still, as 
 with the florist, though in none of the stages do we find 
 perfection, yet the ideal is there in the heart of the race. 
 This question of human perfection is further com- 
 plicated by the complexities of our powers. It is not 
 only that there is growth, but that growth is possible 
 in so many different directions, physical, mental, 
 moral, spiritual. These different spheres need to be 
 put into their proper place and order. In speaking 
 of a perfect man, we must decide what place to give 
 each function. We need true proportional develop- 
 ment, and most of all we need recognition of the ele- 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 129 
 
 merit of growth, not only in the individual, but also 
 in the social organism; and growth implies change, 
 a readjustment to the new conditions. This great 
 thought of the change inherent in growth applies to all 
 spheres, whether of knowledge or of social life. 
 Luther said, " I see something which the blessed Au- 
 gustine saw not, and those that come after me will see 
 that which I see not," — a confession which was the 
 mark of a great mind. Thus our ideal of the perfect 
 man will include his relations to the social and political 
 life of his time, as well as the steady unfolding of his 
 innate powers to maturity. This social side of a full 
 culture is very often omitted from the aesthetic ideal, 
 and the omission explains most of its failures. 
 
 It gets its true place in the Christian ideal, as in the 
 great passage ^ where St. Paul is driving home the 
 duties, which devolve upon Christians as members of 
 the Church, to use all the variety of gifts and graces 
 for mutual edification in the forbearance and tactful 
 spirit of love. The purpose of the varied working, the 
 ideal end, is that all together should come unto a per- 
 fect man. He points to the progressive attainment of 
 an ideal. The master-thought of the passage is 
 growth, growth in faith and knowledge and love, not 
 only increase in the amount of these, but improvement 
 in the quality of them, the deepening and enrichment 
 of their meaning and scope to each. We see this from 
 the very word, which is translated " perfect." ^ It 
 means adult, full-grown, and is distinguished from 
 
 * Eph. iv. 13-16. 
 
 • reXftoi (a) complete, full, as in Mat. v. 48. ededBe ovv 
 vjiisis TkXetot=comp\ete (in love) not exclusive, but all-em- 
 bracing, (b) adult. And used as metaphor=f ull-grown in 
 mind and understanding. 
 
130 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 childhood, the period of immaturity. It means man- 
 hood, strength, ripeness of character. His argument is 
 that, as the natural life should grow towards fulness 
 of stature and strength, so the spiritual life should 
 grow towards unity of faith and knowledge, and the 
 fulness of Christ. We see the meaning of the word 
 brought out in another passage where St. Paul writes, 
 " Be not children in understanding ; howbeit in malice 
 be children, but in understanding be men." ^ The word 
 here translated " men " is the same word which before 
 was translated " perfect." He asks his readers to have 
 the child-nature by being free from all wicked thought 
 and deed, and in that respect to be children; but in 
 intellect and judgment to be men, grown up, of full 
 age. So in the previous passage from Ephesians the 
 state of unity of faith and knowledge is looked on as 
 full maturity, manhood as opposed to the immature 
 period of childhood. St. Paul looks forward to this 
 maturity for the whole Church — looks forward, that is, 
 to progressive Christian development. There are de- 
 grees of perfection, stages of growth, from childhood 
 to the maturity of manhood, " till we all come into a 
 full-grown, a perfect man . . . that we may be no 
 longer children . . . but may grow up in all things 
 into Him who is the Head, even Christ." 
 
 This magnificent ideal of the Apostle makes us think 
 of the Greek conception, seen at its best in Plato. His 
 ideal is the absolutely fit man, of developed physical 
 form, disciplined in mind and in character, perfectly 
 poised in his complete nature, each part adjusted to the 
 whole. The word balanced expresses the thought per- 
 haps best of any single word. Moral beauty was im- 
 
 j Cor. xiv. 20, 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 131 
 
 plied as well as physical, and with a thinker like Plato 
 nobility of soul took the first place, though, like the 
 Greek he was, beauty of all sorts attracted him; and 
 what he asked for was a due proportion of all the dif- 
 ferent spheres. The Greek did not think, like the 
 Hebrew, of holiness as such. The good and the beau- 
 tiful made up one idea to him, barely separable. The 
 way the two words good and beautiful were combined 
 into one word,^ as if they just implied sides of the same 
 thing, shows this. There is a deep truth in this com- 
 bination of the two ideas, but the danger which lurked 
 in it, when looked at from the side which appealed 
 naturally to the Greek temperament, was indeed that 
 before which the Greek race succumbed. When the 
 fine instinct was blunted, mere pleasure of the senses 
 became the end ; and with the decay of the good came 
 the loss of the beautiful also. 
 
 Still, we must not forget that Plato's ideal was a 
 spiritual one, and not a mere aesthetic one, though the 
 stress was laid on beauty. In his thought the lover 
 of beauty is led on and up to the region of spirit, if 
 he is true to his pure love of the beautiful. In words 
 which must ever remain the finest expression of the 
 quest after the beatific vision of perfect beauty, Plato 
 describes how the Sophron, the man of sound mind, 
 who follows reason, and restrains passion, and loves 
 the beautiful, is led to the goal, — " He who has been 
 instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has 
 learned to see the beautiful in due order and succes- 
 sion, when he comes to the end will suddenly perceive 
 a nature of wondrous beauty — a nature which in the 
 first place is everlasting, not growing, or decaying, or 
 
132 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 waxing, or waning; which is in the next place not 
 fair in one point of view, and foul in another . . . 
 but Beauty only, absolute, separate, simple, and ever- 
 lasting, which, without diminution, or increase, or any 
 change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perish- 
 ing beauties of other things. He who, under the 
 influence of true love rising upward from these things, 
 begins to see that Beauty, is not far from the end. 
 And the true order of going or being is to use the beau- 
 ties of earth as steps, along which one mounts up- 
 wards for the sake of that other Beauty; going to all 
 fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and 
 from fair practices to fair thoughts, until from fair 
 thoughts he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty. 
 . . . What if man had eyes to see the true Beauty, 
 the Divine beauty I mean, pure, and clear, and unal- 
 loyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and 
 the colours and vanities of human life?"^ Then he 
 goes on to show how a man holding communion with 
 that divine beauty brings forth and nourishes true 
 virtue, and becomes the friend of God, if mortal man 
 may. It is thus not a mere aesthetic ideal, but a spir- 
 itual one, which Plato puts before us for the perfect 
 man; though he states the ideal in terms of beauty, 
 rather than in terms of holiness. A man, in his prog- 
 ress towards this perfection, is to rise from the visi- 
 ble beauty of earth to the eternal beauty behind the 
 concrete manifestations, and through his spiritual con- 
 verse is to reach harmonious moral life. 
 
 St. Paul, in his great statement of the Christian ideal 
 to which we have referred, suggests the same thought 
 of growth towards a completeness and balance of 
 
 * Jowett's " Plato " — Symposium, 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 133 
 
 power. It is the beauty of holiness which entrances 
 him, also rising upward from the earth, mounting step 
 by step till it comes at last to the wondrous realisation 
 in Christ Jesus. It is an ascending scale of knowl- 
 edge, and truth, and goodness, and faith, and love; till 
 the perfect, the complete man is reached. With him 
 it is, in addition, a social development, each contrib- 
 uting to the good of the whole, and all simultaneously 
 arriving, through social discipline, at the goal. In St. 
 Paul's thought, therefore, the Christian life should not 
 only be progressive in the ordinary sense, with ever 
 new insight, and ever fuller communion, and ever fresh 
 discovery of the divine resources for life, but should 
 also be a service of love, wherein the whole Christian 
 community finds organic development. We have al- 
 ready seen many of the mistakes of culture, as it is 
 commonly understood, arise from the neglect of this 
 aspect. The passion for perfection, which we have 
 seen is inherent in man, the human quest after the 
 ideal, the vision of a perfect state for the individual 
 and for the society, find full expression in the Chris- 
 tian faith; and the emphasis is laid, where it must 
 be laid to satisfy us, on the spiritual. 
 
 The emphasis must be so laid on the spiritual, if 
 it is to satisfy our sense of the fitness of things, 
 even in the individual desire for a complete life. 
 We just need to look at our innate conception of 
 the perfect man to assure us of this. If we were 
 asked to draw a picture of the perfect man, what 
 would we consider the most important things? We 
 would at once agree, for example, that a man 
 might have the physical development and the beauty 
 of an Adonis, and yet if he had an undeveloped 
 
134 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 mind, he would not be a man in the sense that we 
 mean man. And a man might have a cultured mind, 
 enriched by the poetry, and art, and learning of the 
 ages, with fine discriminating taste for style, and with 
 capacity for profound thinking, but if his moral nature 
 be rudimentary, his great gifts of brain alone could 
 not put him into our highest class. Further, he might 
 even have a truly cultured conscience, and would yet 
 fall short of a complete man, if the spiritual side of his 
 nature be neglected. This scale of judgment is the 
 instinctive creed of mankind. Apart from all ques- 
 tions of origin, and all scientific theories, we classify 
 men in history and in life according to this standard 
 of values. From the animal to the intellectual, from 
 the intellectual to the moral, from the moral to the 
 spiritual, is the inevitable appeal, as from a lower to 
 a higher court. Whatever be our theory of the origin 
 of mind, or of conscience, or of religion, we feel each 
 step to be an advance. According to temperament and 
 the particular sphere which interests us most, or where 
 our special work lies, we will think one of the partic- 
 ular steps the most important, either the step from the 
 animal to the intellectual, or the step from intellect to 
 moral life, or from the moral to the spiritual; but the 
 order, and succession, and relative position of the dif- 
 ferent stages will remain. 
 
 Even the philosophy which makes happiness the end 
 of life, and which dismisses both conscience and soul 
 from the seat of authority, makes distinctions in the 
 quality of the happiness, and tries to safe-guard the 
 philosophy, and at the same time to safe-guard life, 
 by showing how much better and more lasting the 
 higher pleasures are than the lower ones. John Stuart 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 135 
 
 Mill gave a certain nobility to the theory that happi- 
 ness is our being's end and aim, by admitting grades 
 of pleasure, and by trying to show that a man who 
 knew the higher pleasure would not willingly give it up 
 for the lower; though at the same time Mill was de- 
 stroying the very principles on which his philosophy 
 was based. " It is an unquestionable fact," he says in 
 noble language, *' that those who are equally acquainted 
 with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoy- 
 ing both, do give a marked preference to the manner 
 of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few 
 human creatures would consent to be changed into any 
 of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allow- 
 ance of a beast's pleasures ; no intelligent human being 
 . would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would 
 be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience 
 would consent to be selfish and base, even though they 
 should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the 
 rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with 
 theirs. They would not resign what they possess more 
 than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all the 
 desires which they have in common with them. If they 
 ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappi- 
 ness so extreme, that to escape from it they would 
 exchange their lot for almost any other, however unde- 
 sirable in their own eyes. A being of high faculties 
 requires more to make him happy, is capable probably 
 of more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it 
 at more points than one of an inferior type ; but in spite 
 of these liabilities he can never really wish to sink into 
 what he feels to be a lower grade of existence." ^ All 
 this is true, but for other reasons than because the 
 
 ' Utilitarianism, p. 12. 
 
136 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 higher faculties give greater pleasure; and it may be 
 confidently affirmed that on Utilitarian principles man 
 would never have come to the higher faculties at all, 
 would never have possessed the intellect, and feeling, 
 and conscience, which can afford so much satisfaction. 
 We are not concerned in our present connection with 
 any criticism of Mill's fundamental position that pleas- 
 ure is the end of life, we are only concerned with the 
 admission that, even from that position, pleasures offer 
 a distinction in quality, and that therefore man ought 
 to seek satisfaction in the higher activities of his 
 nature. Every one practically recognises this distinc- 
 tion, that our estimation of a life, even from the point of 
 view of its happiness, must take into account the qual- 
 ity of the pleasures, as well as the quantity. Every one 
 agrees that the pleasures of a sot cannot be compared 
 with the pleasures of a philosopher ; as Heraclitus said, 
 a donkey would prefer hay to gold, since fodder gives 
 more pleasure to a donkey than any amount of gold 
 could. The distinction which Mill admits, is one ac- 
 cepted by most philosophers of whatever school from 
 the time of Aristotle, who very justly made the dis- 
 tinction a criticism of the theory that pleasure is the 
 chief end of life, since, as a matter of fact, we would 
 choose some of these higher activities, even if no pleas- 
 ure resulted from them. The passage from Mill which 
 we have quoted is a very eloquent extension of Aris- 
 totle's contention,^ that no one would choose to live 
 on condition of having a child's intellect all bis life, 
 though he were to enjoy in the highest possible degree 
 all the pleasures of a child; nor choose to gain enjoy- 
 ment by the performance of some extremely disgrace- 
 
 Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. x. 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 137 
 
 ful act, though he were never to feel pain. The truth 
 is that we do consider the higher faculties as intrin- 
 sically more valuable, especially when we find as a fur- 
 ther fact of practical life that a calculating pursuit 
 of pleasure defeats itself. It is the paradox of life that 
 the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very 
 first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should 
 be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self. 
 As a matter of experience, we find that true happi- 
 ness comes in seeking other things, in the manifold 
 activities of life, in the healthful outgoing of all hu- 
 man powers. 
 
 We thus come, by another road, back to our posi- 
 tion that the ideal of a perfect man must not only 
 include the development of the higher faculties, but 
 must lay stress on these, must rise in a crescendo from 
 sense to mind, from mind to the moral, from the moral 
 to the spiritual. As in the other spheres, we are forced 
 to make a distinction between morality and spirituality. 
 They are connected; they influence each other; but 
 they are not identical. Some men, whose lives are 
 governed by moral principles, are not, so far as we can 
 see, spiritually-minded men; and, on the other hand, 
 some truly religious men have not as enlightened con- 
 sciences as they should have, and as we hope they will 
 have before they die. The two spheres are as distinct 
 as mind and body, and as closely related. The bodily 
 state aflfects the mind, and mental conditions can affect 
 physical health. So the spiritual man cannot be essen- 
 tially an immoral man ; for, if he were, he would kill 
 his spiritual life. And the moral man will find that he 
 cannot become even the best of his kind, unless his 
 morality be vitalised by spirit. We see the same dis- 
 
138 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 tinction brought out in the different way in which men 
 look upon themselves; and here also we see why sin- 
 cere heart-religion is necessary to our thought of a 
 perfect man, even in the interests of true morality. A 
 man who never looks within, who regulates his conduct 
 by accepted rules, may be very complacent, and be 
 fairly satisfied with his attainments. He does not 
 feel the inward pressure of soul towards a higher per- 
 fection. He may be in all things of exemplary life, 
 and naturally does not see what more can be asked of 
 him. He does not hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness, and knows nothing of the passion of the saints, 
 who speak in a foreign tongue to him. He has neither 
 the depths nor the heights of a man who is God-pos- 
 sessed. Such an one, stung to madness, it may be, 
 by a sense of sin, allured by the vision of holiness, is 
 in the grip of powers unknown to the other; and yet 
 he may be, nay is, the more truly human, for his soul 
 has waked, and moved, and grows. 
 
 If the spiritual side of a man's nature be undevel- 
 oped, he is not truly full-grown. Since the ideal is 
 a complete development, full culture must mean that 
 no part of the being of man will be overlooked, and to 
 leave out the spiritual is like Hamlet with the part of 
 the Prince of Denmark left out. It makes no differ- 
 ence to the argument, whether we call the spiritual 
 qualities only the finer attributes of mind or not. If 
 the ideal implies spiritual communion with the divine 
 (as it does both in St. Paul's thought and in Plato's), 
 a man without it remains a case of arrested develop- 
 ment, with shrunken soul, never reaching complete 
 manhood, never attaining the true balance and fulness 
 of life. 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 139 
 
 Thus, if we carry culture as a theory of life far 
 enough up, and if in accordance with the facts of 
 human nature we accept the duty implied in the posses- 
 sion of spiritual capacity, we are led to the religious 
 position. It is inconsistent and illogical, to say the 
 least, to cover all the lower reaches of life with a 
 scheme of culture, and then to stop short, and deny 
 the higher demands, and refuse the consequences of 
 the very scheme itself. If we accept the facts of the 
 moral life, if we accept the testimony of history and 
 experience as to the spiritual possibilities of man, we 
 will be forced to admit the regal claims of religion. 
 Once we admit the facts of spiritual experience, what- 
 ever be our theory of their explanation, duty regarding 
 them emerges. It means that we should take seriously 
 this side of our nature, which indeed makes us men 
 in the true sense, able to live in the power of an end- 
 less life, with capacities that reach out to the unseen 
 and eternal. So that, beginning with culture and con- 
 sistently applying it, we come to religious duty. 
 
 And, on the other hand, beginning with religion, we 
 will be led to as wide a scheme of culture as is possi- 
 ble — indeed such a scheme gets a new sanction, for it 
 becomes a religious duty. Religion, too, will save 
 culture from its mistakes and the defects of its quality, 
 will save it from barrenness and selfish pre-occupation. 
 But just because of the sovereign place of the soul, 
 religion will make a man put first things first, and will 
 show him that character must come before accomplish- 
 ments, and the graces of the spirit before graces of the 
 mind. Still, religion accepted in its widest scope will 
 be the inspiring power for every region of life, setting 
 its seal of consecration on all human powers. It should 
 
140 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 radiate out as a centre of light and heat, giving energy 
 and vitality to every sphere. It is because the spiritual 
 in us is so overborne, so overweighted by the animal, 
 that we need to be continually recalled to the ideal of 
 the perfect man. The soul may be said to be in abey- 
 ance in us, in a state of suspended animation, when, 
 indeed, it is not in immediate danger of being asphyx- 
 iated for want of air; and so we need the reminder, 
 which every form of idealism brings, of the imperious 
 claims of soul. 
 
 If then a man is to develop the higher spiritual facul- 
 ties, he must not cling stubbornly to the organs of 
 knowledge suitable to lower spheres. When St. Paul 
 wrote, " Now the natural man receiveth not the things 
 of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness to him ; 
 neither can hr kno\; them, because they are spiritually 
 discerned," ^ his argument is that there is a special 
 organ of faith, or rather a spiritual sense, what may be 
 called the religious faculty, which a man must have 
 before he can have anything to say about the things of 
 the soul. They are to be discerned and judged, not by 
 the exercise of thought and reason, not by speculation 
 and theory, but by spiritual enlightenment, by inward 
 revelation ; because religion at its deepest means the 
 consciousness of contact with spirit. Religion, there- 
 fore, is not philosophy to be built up and logicated 
 about, but inspiration to be immediately felt and seen; 
 not something at second-hand, but something discern- 
 ible by the receptive heart. It follows, as St. Paul goes 
 on to show, that neither the spiritual man nor spirit- 
 ual things can be judged by the carnal mind. His 
 
 * I Cor. ii. 14. 
 
THE PERFECT MAN V^o^t^^^^ 
 
 judgment is vitiated by having no criterion within him- 
 self, so that he could not know spiritual things if he 
 saw them; he could not recognise them, for they do 
 not Hud him, to use Coleridge's word with which he 
 expressed the self-evidencing power of Christian truth. 
 " The man in the street " has nothing to say to religious 
 truth, which needs a prepared and sympathetic spirit. 
 This is unpalatable doctrine, for to-day the man in the 
 street claims to be the final judge of all things. But 
 unpalatable or not, it is true doctrine : we cannot go to 
 him to settle the great questions of religion, any more 
 than a scientific man would go to him with any fresh 
 scientific discovery he may imagine he has made: he 
 wants the approval and assent of the authorities on his 
 subject, the specialists in his branch of science. So in 
 religion, the man in the street is out of court, incom- 
 petent to judge, as the colour-blind is to test colours, 
 or the unmusical to pronounce verdict on a symphony. 
 Thus, this principle of St. Paul's is not an isolated 
 one, applicable only in a mysterious sphere called 
 religion ; it runs right through life in every region — 
 the things of sense are discerned by sense, the things 
 of intellect are discerned by intellect, the things of 
 spirit are discerned by spirit. There is nothing exclu- 
 sive about this law, though it excludes. If a man is 
 out of court in spiritual matters, it is not because of 
 some mechanical arbitrary decision that disfranchises 
 him. Just as an animal that lives a purely animal 
 existence cannot enter into the thoughts and reasonings 
 of a man, though the animal can see, and feel, and 
 enjoy, and lives a sentient life as truly as the man does ; 
 so the carnal mind cannot enter into the higher reaches 
 of spirit, though it can reason and think. As intellect 
 
142 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 is on a different range of things from sense, so the 
 spiritual is on a different range of things from intel- 
 lect. It uses the same powers of reason, and con- 
 science, and will, but these powers energised by spirit. 
 There are analogies in other spheres of the same dis- 
 tinction. The poet, for instance, does not come to 
 conclusions as the logician does ; he possesses the pen- 
 etrative imagination, which sees truth by instinct, so 
 that where another limps he soars, and hears the 
 angel's song, and sees the shining of the glory. 
 
 It is not a law of deprivation imposed on some men 
 from the outside, but a law of affinity, by which like 
 is attracted by like. " Among men," St. Paul asks, 
 " who knoweth the things of the man except the spirit 
 of the man that is in him ? " ^ Similarly, there is a 
 region of inner personal relationship with God, of con- 
 sciousness of God, in which a man can enter into the 
 things of God, can, when touched by the life-giving 
 Spirit, see and believe and humbly accept the wondrous 
 vision of love and mercy and forgiving grace. So that 
 what may seem foolishness to some may be the very 
 essence of wisdom; and what may be beyond knowl- 
 edge, outside the bounds of experience of some, may 
 be a first principle of the religious man, because these 
 things are spiritually discerned. The implication of 
 this is that ordinary methods of investigation, and ordi- 
 nary tests of evidence and ordinary means of knowl- 
 edge, are beyond the mark when they seek to limit the 
 soul of man. To insist on everything being brought 
 within the control of scientific evidence, is to cut off 
 from life more than most people imagine, and to limit 
 the sphere of man's power and interests to a very nar- 
 
 * I Cor. ii. II. 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 143 
 
 row one indeed. The organ of spiritual discernment 
 is faith, and faith is not just a blind plunge into the 
 unknown, but is a testing of the alleged spiritual facts, 
 in itself as reasonable a process as any other testing 
 of facts. Intellectual truth asks for intellectual verifi- 
 cation: spiritual truth asks for spiritual verification; 
 and the one demand is as reasonable as the other. Hux- 
 ley in his Lay Sermons says that faith has been proved 
 a cardinal sin by science, which is true about credu- 
 lity and superstition, where science has done nothing 
 but good ; but Romanes ^ shows that in this statement 
 Huxley falls into the common error of identifying faith 
 with opinion ; and with just cause he adds, " What a 
 terrible hell science would have made of the world, if 
 she had abolished the spirit of faith even in human 
 relations." 
 tThere is a region of life which lies beyond the rea- 
 soning faculty, a point of contact between the human 
 soul and the unseen universe, giving a possible inter- 
 course between our spirit and the divine. It may ap- 
 pear foolishness to the man who insists on examining 
 it by the ordinary critical instruments. Life is beyond 
 criticism, which can only touch the fringe, can only 
 work on the forms in which life manifests itself. The 
 methods and manner of appearing of life can be inves- 
 tigated, but life itself is inscrutable; it evades the 
 microscope and the test-tube. And what is true of 
 life is true of spiritual life, which is independent of 
 criticism. There are things which bafile analysis, the 
 mysteries which are only made more mysterious by all 
 our increase of knowledge. There are things which 
 pass knowledge, and yet are known ; and until we come 
 
 ^ Thoughts on Religion, p. 141. 
 
144 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 to this humbly, we are shutting ourselves out from a 
 world of beauty, and truth, and love, into which we 
 ought to have inlet, and we are wilfully impoverish- 
 ing our life. Demonstration is a different thing from 
 conviction. We might demonstrate till doomsday that 
 men are sinners, but that does not mean conviction of 
 sin as it is meant in religion. We might prove the 
 existence of God by abstract reasoning, but that is 
 another thing from the consciousness of God, the 
 knowledge of God, which must be a spiritual expe- 
 rience if it is to be anything. A recognition of this 
 puts criticism in its right place at once: it must stand 
 at the Temple-gate or the outer Court, it has no entry 
 to the Holy of Holies. Criticism cannot even paint a 
 picture, and if it makes us look upon a picture as some- 
 thing merely to be pulled to pieces and analyzed, it 
 may keep us from being able to enjoy a picture. We 
 must refuse to be jockeyed out of our larger life, and 
 to be dislodged from what we know to be facts of spir- 
 itual experience, as truly facts as any of observation. 
 We must assert the supremacy of the soul. Some have 
 in the interests of the soul denied and starved the body, 
 or the mind, or both; but it is a nobler error than to 
 deny and starve the soul in the interests of body or 
 mind. 
 
 The old false teachers, who at first seemed hard 
 
 To nature — bidding. Crucify the flesh 
 
 To save the soul, — were merciful to these; 
 
 For these would crucify the soul itself, 
 
 And stifle back upon itself the cry. 
 
 And deepest craving of the human heart, 
 
 The unutterable thirst of man for God.* 
 
 * Mrs. Hamilton King, The Disciples — Ugo Bassi, 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 145 
 
 The demand of a complete culture, which would be 
 true to its own principles, is for proportional develop- 
 ment. It should leave no part of the being of man out 
 of its scheme, and should aim at a complete balance 
 and poise of nature, a full-orbed life in the fullest 
 sense. While it concedes the duty of developing the 
 physical powers, it asks emphatically for mental 
 growth; and there it does not confine its attention to 
 one side of the intellect, but recognises the place of 
 imagination and the finer sensibilities that make the 
 poet and the artist. It also sees the important func- 
 tion of the emotions in the life of man, and therefore 
 must give room for culture of the heart; for as John 
 Selden says, " The diflference of men is very great (you 
 would scarce think them to be of the same species ) and 
 yet it consists more in the affections than in the intel- 
 lect." ^ Nothing is deeper and stronger in man than 
 the feelings, and any selfish scheme of culture con- 
 demns itself, by omitting scope for the play of the 
 tender sentiments, that indeed bind society together, 
 and make any kind of culture possible at all. 
 
 Further, there is the region of morals, the need of an 
 enlightened conscience and a disciplined will. This cul- 
 ture of character must take precedence of the finest cul- 
 ture of mind. Not even an exquisite taste for the fine 
 arts and an infallible judgment of literature can make 
 up for a life that is undeveloped in other lines. Such 
 aesthetic attainment cannot save a life from failure, 
 when there is at the back of it a weak character. 
 Charles I. was a man of taste and imagination and even 
 intellect, with great knowledge of art, and a genuine 
 love of literature. His collection of paintings was ad- 
 
 ' Table Talk. 
 
146 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 mired throughout Europe for the fine taste displayed in 
 the selection. When a captive awaiting judgment, he 
 devoted hours daily not only to Bishop Andrewes, and 
 Hooker's great book, but to Tasso, Ariosto, Spenser's 
 Faerie Queen, and Shakespeare. Yet he was of flighty, 
 and confused, and perverse brain, and was anything 
 but a wise king. He never seemed able to accept facts, 
 to say nothing of being able even dimly to read the 
 signs of the times, and staggered on to his doom 
 blindly and stupidly. 
 
 Finally, the perfect man must have a life above 
 sense and time, rising, as in Plato's ideal, from fair 
 forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair 
 thoughts, and from fair thoughts till he touches the 
 infinite region of spirit. Without this higher culture, 
 life must remain one-sided and disproportionate, with- 
 out the depth and richness of a complete nature. Thus, 
 step by step we have risen to the insistent demand of 
 religion, which claims to cover all the ground, conse- 
 crating every power and capacity, that they may be 
 used for a higher purpose than even their own best 
 perfection. Religion admits the truth and the duty 
 involved in the aesthetic ideal, but transcends that 
 truth with a higher truth, and includes that duty in a 
 wider duty still. What that is we will seek to dis- 
 cover in the Christian Solution, after we have consid- 
 ered the rival method which opposes self-culture by 
 self-restraint. 
 
VI 
 
 THE ASCETIC IDEAL — RESTRAINT 
 
 IN opposition to the theory of the natural culfetva- 
 tion of all human powers, the world has ever 
 had presented to it the rival theory, which works 
 by a rigorous method of self-repression. It 
 bases itself on the universal experience of tlie neces- 
 sity for self-denial and strict self-control. All the 
 great teachers of the world are agreed in protesting 
 against the dominion of appetite in the life of man. 
 The sort of life which naturally appeals to man can-^ 
 not have full sway unhindered. Progress in reform, I 
 in legislation, in social conditions, as well as in the per- • 
 sonal life, is founded on this necessity. The moral life 
 of man is possible, because he is able to refuse present 
 gratification for the sake of some larger good, is able 
 to postpone even clamant pleasure in view of some end 
 he sets before him. Self-control is the first lesson of 
 life. The quarrel which moralists have ever had with 
 what they call the worldly life, is just that it is blind to 
 results, that it prefers the present to the future, and 
 refuses to make any sacrifice of present good for the 
 sake of larger future good. It has not patience, which 
 is another name for self-control. The worldly man is 
 for a bird in the hand, says Bunyan. It is a marginal 
 note which he appends to a scene in the Interpreter's 
 House. " I saw in my dream that the Interpreter took 
 Christian by the hand and had him into a little room 
 
 147 
 
 1 
 
148 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 where sat two little children, each one in his chair. 
 The name of the eldest was Passion, and the name of 
 the other Patience. Passion seemed to be much dis- 
 contented; but Patience was very quiet. Then Chris- 
 tian asked, What is the reason of the discontent of Pas- 
 sion? The Interpreter answered. The Governor of 
 them would have him stay for his best things till the 
 beginning of the next year; but he will have all now; 
 but Patience is willing to wait. Then I saw that one 
 came to Passion, and brought him a bag of treasure, 
 and poured it down at his feet, the which he took up 
 and rejoiced therein, and withal laughed Patience to 
 scorn. But I beheld but awhile, and he had lavished 
 all away, and had nothing left him but rags." The 
 Interpreter expounds the matter by making Passion a 
 figure of the men of this world, and Patience a figure 
 of the men of that which is to come. It is Bunyan's 
 inimitably graphic way of drawing a distinction, which 
 all moralists make in some form or other. 
 
 The duty of self-control is further enforced, not 
 merely as a choice between two possible good courses, 
 the better of which is got through patience, but also 
 because of the actual existence of evil. The exist- 
 ence of evil is a fact of experience, whether we look 
 within or without; and men are face to face with the 
 practical problem how they are to deal with it, quite 
 apart from any theories about the origin of evil, and 
 the essential nature of evil, or any possible explanation 
 of its meaning. The different philosophical theories 
 on these points do affect the particular plan of life 
 adopted by different men, as we saw when dealing with 
 culture as a religion, and as we will further see in con- 
 sidering the conception of evil which underlies asceti- 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL -RESTRAINT 149 
 
 cism, but apart from any reference to such theories, 
 the mere fact of acknowledged evil creates the prac- 
 tical difficulty as to its treatment. It will not be 
 ignored for long, as so many aesthetic schemes ignore 
 it ; and it is at least the merit of the ascetic ideal that 
 it unflinchingly faces the problem. Its practical treat- 
 ment of the fact of evil is a demand from men for the 
 renunciation of personal gratifications that minister to 
 evil; and since it sees that the spiritual faculties must 
 be cultivated to some extent at the expense of the an- 
 imal instincts, it advocates even abstinence from law- 
 ful pleasures, and constant restraint of natural tastes 
 and propensities. The next step is a simple one, the 
 denial that what we call the blessings of life are good 
 in themselves, even the deliberate judgment that ordi- 
 nary human life militates against the higher instincts 
 of the soul; till the ideal becomes a mutilation of all 
 natural desires, and the cramping of all human powers. 
 It accepts with calm decision what George Meredith 
 calls the lesson of the flesh — 
 
 The lesson writ in red since first Time ran 
 A hunter hunting down the beast in man; 
 That till the chasing out of its last vice, 
 The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice.* 
 
 We will never make anything of the great problem 
 represented by the antithesis of Culture and Restraint, 
 till we accept the facts on both sides; and, as we 
 acknowledged the legitimate claims of culture, we 
 must recognise that the ascetic scheme is not just a 
 form of insanity, a blind fanaticism with no solid 
 groundwork of fact. It springs from facts and forces, 
 
 * Ode, France. 
 
150 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 which have their ultimate seat in the nature of man. 
 It may overstep the work of the necessary discipHne 
 required to keep the body in subjection, but it at least 
 honours human nature by demanding the ascendancy 
 of the higher instincts over the lower. The heart of 
 man has ever acknowledged the grandeur of this view, 
 inspired as it is with a deep sense of the solemnity of 
 human life. Even the monastic system, which is so 
 much discredited in modern thought, was a noble at- 
 tempt on a magnificent scale to purify the flesh of its 
 grossness, and to lift life to a higher level. It was the 
 expression of the need of discipline, and of the deep 
 thought of life as a vocation. To the first instinctive 
 method of the world it opposed the method, which 
 chooses poverty instead of riches, humility and resig- 
 nation of will instead of the pride of life. 
 
 The ascetic ideal gets much of its force from the 
 failure of the rival method for a satisfied life, which 
 has been for ages judged and for ages found want- 
 ing. It points to the testimony of blase world- 
 lings, who preach by their very faces the vanity 
 of vanities, the world-weariness of the world's 
 votaries. It has learned the truth of the strange 
 paradox that the most certain method of losing 
 happiness is to seek it, and from that palpable fail- 
 ure it feels justified in seeking to " crush that ever- 
 craving lust for bliss, which kills all bHss." So that 
 when the natural theory has had full sway in any 
 period of history, bringing its inevitable heartsickness, 
 we find a reaction towards a stricter manner of living. 
 The great movements towards ascetic practices, which 
 we see in history, are not chance phenomena, but are 
 related to eternal facts in man's life. As John Mor- 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 151 
 
 ley says of the Puritanism of Cromweirs time, " Puri- 
 tanism came from the deeps. It was like Stoicism, 
 Monasticism, Jansenism, even Mohammedanism, a 
 manifestation of elements in human nature which are 
 indestructible. It flowed from yearnings that make 
 themselves felt in Eastern world and Western; it 
 sprang from aspirations that breathe in men and 
 women of many communions and faiths; it arose in 
 instincts that seldom conquer for more than a brief 
 season, and yet are never crushed. An ascetic and 
 unworldly way of thinking about life, a rigorous moral 
 strictness, the subjugation of sense and appetite, a 
 coldness to every element in worship and ordinance 
 external to the believer's own soul, a dogma unyield- 
 ing as cast-iron — all these things satisfy moods and 
 sensibilities in man that are often silent and fleeting, 
 are easily drowned in reaction, but are readily respon- 
 sive to the awakening voice." ^ 
 
 It has to be noted that the finest religious and 
 ethical systems of the pre-Christian ages resulted in 
 forms of ascetic creed and practice, which were car- 
 ried much further than these have ever been in the 
 Christian Church. The asceticism of early Indian 
 religion has been perhaps the most thoroughgoing 
 mortification of the flesh ever tried by man. In fact 
 the consistent logical position of asceticism is only 
 found in Brahmanism, which associated evil not only 
 with the body of man but with everything finite, so 
 that the ideal became the complete absorption of all 
 individual life. Life was inherently evil; but their 
 doctrine of transmigration made it impossible to escape 
 from the evil by ruthlessly cutting the cord. That 
 
 ' Morley, Oliver Cromwell, p. 47. 
 
15* CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 would be only to prolong the agony, and the more 
 effectually to enmesh the soul in evil. The only way 
 for a man to escape from his fatal heritage was to 
 suppress at its source the fountain of desire, from 
 which life, and therefore evil, flows. The very soul it- 
 self had to die, by choking off its innate activities. The 
 soul was to be liberated from its deadly prison by at- 
 tenuating the link between it and existence as much as 
 possible. The aim was the extinction of desire, an 
 impassive state, where the natural appetites, and even 
 the natural affections, were reduced to a minimum. 
 
 Stoicism, which was the only Greek or Roman 
 philosophy that from its moral earnestness could be 
 at all a rival of Christianity, had for its ideal a similar 
 impassive calm. Starting from a different source, and 
 traversing different ground, it yet came to a some- 
 what similar end as Buddhism. The Stoic ideal was 
 passionlessness,^ a self-contained state, in which the 
 natural impulses were to be crushed, not merely chas- 
 tened into conformity with a higher law, and the social 
 affections were to be rooted out, not guided and 
 guarded from abuse. Two such great tendencies as 
 these could not converge to one point, in such dissim- 
 ilar conditions as India and Greece or Rome afforded, 
 without being expressive of facts of life. 
 
 Huxley even goes the length of drawing from this 
 the moral that modern thought about the ethical state 
 of man tends to move towards something like the same 
 result. He makes short work of those who think that 
 ethical evolution goes along the lines of the cosmic 
 evolution. He holds that moral development must be 
 
 ^aTCoBsta — implying the suppression of desire, as far as 
 possible. • 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 153 
 
 by different means from those which furthered phys- 
 ical development, not by such principles as the strug- 
 gle for existence and the survival of the fittest, but by 
 the restraint and overturning of these principles. Men 
 in society are subject to the cosmic process, by which 
 the strongest, the most self-assertive, tend to tread 
 down the weaker; but moral advance can only be by 
 restraining those instincts, and by struggling against 
 the natural tendency. " Social progress means a 
 checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the 
 substitution for it of another, which may be called the 
 ethical process; the end of which is not the survival 
 of those who may happen to be the fittest in respect 
 of the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those 
 who are ethically the best." ^ The practice of good- 
 ness or virtue, he asserts, involves a course of con- 
 duct, which in all respects is opposed to that which 
 leads to success in the ordinary struggle for existence, 
 and in place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self- 
 restraint. 
 
 It is a new scientific statement of an ascetic ideal, 
 which man must have if he will have moral progress. 
 The ethical progress of society in Huxley's judgment 
 depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, but in 
 combating it; and he thinks we have ground for a 
 certain measure of success in thus subduing nature to 
 man's highest ends. He foresees that we shall have 
 to count upon reckoning with a tenacious and power- 
 ful enemy as long as the world lasts, but on the other 
 hand he sees no limit to the extent in which true suc- 
 cess may be achieved. " Much may be done to change 
 the nature of man himself. The intelligence which 
 
 ^Evolution and Ethics (The Romanes Lecture, 1893). p. 33. 
 
154 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 has converted the brother of the wolf into the laith- 
 ful guardian of the flock, ought to be able to do some- 
 thing towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civ- 
 ilised men." ^ He calls on us in strong virile tone to 
 play the man, to attempt some work of noble note, to 
 cherish the good that falls in our way, to bear the evil 
 in and around us with stout hearts, striving ever to 
 diminish it. There could not be a more succinct state- 
 ment of some aspects of the ascetic ideal, such aspects 
 for example as that ethical nature has to struggle with 
 a tenacious and powerful enemy, has to use self-re- 
 straint in place of any form of self-assertion, and has 
 to oppose the cosmic process at every step. It cuts the 
 ground from Huxley's own philosophical position of 
 agnosticism; since he does not explain why we should 
 so run against nature and the great cosmic process, 
 which has evolved man from the animal; but it stands 
 to Huxley's credit as a courageous man, who accepted 
 the facts of moral life, as he accepted facts in scien- 
 tific observation. It does credit also to his large- 
 hearted and noble thought about duty, that he should 
 push the facts of moral life to their conclusion, in 
 summoning men to the great moral task to be 
 
 strong in will 
 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 
 
 The ascetic ideal, when rigidly pursued, has again 
 and again resulted in various forms of self-torture, and 
 mutilation, and withdrawal from the world. Many of 
 these forms found a home in the Christian Church, 
 solitary anchorites like the hermits of Egypt: pillar- 
 
 ' Evolution and Ethics, p. 36. 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 155 
 
 saints like St. Simeon Stylites; flagellants like An- 
 thony of Padua, who lashed themselves in public, 
 singing penitential Psalms: and the great Monastic 
 system generally, which ultimately spread throughout 
 the whole of Christendom. In the next chapter we 
 will trace the origin and growtli of Asceticism in the 
 Christian Church; but we would not be doing any- 
 thing like justice to their attitude, if we left it as if 
 their sole motive was an intense desire to keep them- 
 selves unspotted from the world, and to avoid tempta- 
 tion. There were two deeper objects in their attempts 
 at complete severance from the world's evil. 
 
 One was to reduce the rebellious flesh to subjection 
 to a higher law of holiness. They were on fire with 
 the passion for purity, and shrank from no sacrifice 
 which they thought would further it. They knew, as 
 all men discover, that it is easier to reform opinions 
 than to reform habits, and to change their creed than 
 to change their life. They were set upon the harder 
 task, only spurred on the keener by the difficulty. 
 They would tear up evil from their nature by the 
 roots, and enter the Kingdom maimed if need be, with 
 honourable scars of conflict, like the soldier's mutilated 
 limb, a royal seal signal of service. It became in later 
 times a formal method, and even a fashion, but the 
 great ascetics were moved by the profound longing to 
 have done altogether with sin, and to attain moral 
 purity. 
 
 The other object was the ambition to penetrate the 
 secrets of the celestial light, to devote themselves to 
 divine contemplation that they might enter into a 
 fuller spiritual communion. " What is the reason," 
 asks Thomas A Kempis, " why some of the Saints were 
 
156 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 so perfect and contemplative? Because they laboured 
 to mortify themselves wholly to all earthly desires ; and 
 therefore they could with their whole heart fix them- 
 selves upon God, and be free for holy retirement." ^ It 
 was held that the heavenly vision could be expe- 
 rienced only through the practice of rigorous mortifi- 
 cation, interdicting themselves from all gratification, 
 making themselves pure channels, so to speak, of heav- 
 enly grace. This ideal of spiritual intuition to be 
 reached through moral purity represents an eternal 
 fact, which is verified in every religious experience. 
 Whether the ascetic method succeeds best, or even at 
 all, in attaining moral purity, is not at present our 
 point. Granting their premise that it was a method, it 
 was a true instinct which assured them that they would 
 therefore enter into a deeper religious communion. 
 This desire for God, to taste the joys of divine fellow- 
 ship, to be emptied of self and filled with the light of 
 God's presence, was the inspiring motive. We cannot 
 do justice to this phase of religious life, unless we see 
 in it more than mere protest against evil in the world, 
 but also a passionate desire to enter into divine mys- 
 teries. When they cut themselves off from the clogs 
 and distractions of earth, in order to give themselves 
 up to holy meditation, their ultimate purpose was spir- 
 itual exaltation. Tennyson with great insight ex- 
 presses this longing in his study of St. Simeon Stylites, 
 who is made to describe his terrible sufferings vol- 
 untarily endured, as he lay with his right leg chained 
 into the crag, before he changed it for his even more 
 uncomfortable posture on the pillar ; and in his descrip- 
 tion he reveals what led him to seek such hardships. 
 
 ^ Imitatio Christi, Bk. i., ch. xi. 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 157 
 
 Three winters, that my soul might grow to Thee, 
 I lived up there on yonder mountain side. 
 
 The object of the ascetic was, not merely to procure 
 the dominion of the good over the bad by the rigid 
 practice of self-denial, but thereby to use what was 
 believed to be the approved method of entering into 
 communion with God. 
 
 We need not now enter into the many grades of 
 asceticism, and the different shades of motive which 
 entered into the discipline, from the extravagances of 
 anchorites, to the little acts of self-sacrifice of daily life 
 which keep human life sweet. We will consider the 
 truth at the bottom of all asceticism, the necessity for 
 self-denial, and its ethical value. The very word 
 asceticism ^ shows from its derivation the truth, 
 which underlies even the extravagances which the 
 name now suggests. In ancient Greece, the word 
 meant the discipline undergone by athletes in the course 
 of their training; and quite naturally the word was 
 taken over into Stoic philosophy, to mean the disci- 
 pline needed in the practice of virtue in controlling the 
 appetites and passions. In the Christian Church it 
 had at first the same meaning, the exercise of absti- 
 nence and of restraint as religious means ; and then it 
 came to denote the attempt to attain holiness by self- 
 mortification, by the practice of all manner of bodily 
 austerities, and by generally starving out the evil 
 nature in man. It was originally discipline, which be- 
 gan as simplicity of living, the voluntary surrender of 
 ordinary comforts and possessions. The root princi- 
 
158 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 pie is the moral obligation which demands that a mfin 
 must have his nature under the curb, since, as Stoic 
 morality held, he who rules not himself is a slave. 
 Gradually asceticism came to look upon self-mortifica- 
 tion as a good in itself, not merely as a means towards 
 something which was considered worth the sacrifice; 
 but the thought was never quite lost, that the ascetic 
 exercises were to induce spiritual results. The com- 
 mon means were fasting, celibacy, solitude, refusing to 
 participate in the ordinary relationships and the ordi- 
 nary business of the world, inflicting various sorts of 
 penance; and ultimately this attitude to life led to 
 monasticism, as it was known in the mediaeval Church. 
 The great truth in all ascetic schemes lies on the sur- 
 face, namely, that as the Greek athlete submitted to his 
 askesis, the training needed to produce the best re- 
 sults, so there is needed for man self-control, disci- 
 pline, to make the best of his powers. 
 
 The word was quite naturally acclimatised in Chris- 
 tian thought, though the word itself only appears once 
 in the New Testament, where it is used as a verb ^ in 
 the general sense of exercising or working on oneself 
 as an artificer does on his material. But other refer- 
 ences to the Greek athletes are common, as in such a 
 phrase as * Every man that striveth for the mastery is 
 temperate in all things.' ^ where St. Paul uses an illus- 
 tration, which was well-known to his readers, taken 
 from the races of the Isthmian games. His Corin- 
 thian readers knew about the training of the runner, 
 and how candidates had to submit themselves to strict 
 discipline, a chief element of which was a carefully reg- 
 
 * Acts xxiv. 16, * Herein do I exercise myself.* 
 ' I Cor. ix. 25 — o ayooviiofievoi. 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 159 
 
 ulated temperance. Epictetus gives some of the rules 
 of Greek athletic training, which hold good to some 
 extent in the most scientific physical training to-day — 
 that a competitor must be regular and orderly in all his 
 habits, must abstain from wine and confections, must 
 not eat at random, and must exercise at the appointed 
 time in heat or cold, and in all things must give him- 
 self up entirely to his training master. The object of 
 the athletic askesis was to produce the best possible 
 results for the body, which was so rigidly exercised; 
 and this also is the first object designed, when the idea 
 is brought into the mental or moral sphere. That is 
 to say, that for the sake of these powers themselves, to 
 give them strength and perfection of nature, self-denial 
 is required. 
 
 Thus we come to the first point where the two 
 opposing ideals meet, and where we have a hint of a 
 possible synthesis, that restraint is needed in the very 
 interests of culture. This was well understood in the 
 best ethics of Greece. In Plato and Aristotle it is 
 laid down that man must acquire the habit of self- 
 mastery, if he is to live truly. Without such re- 
 straint, proportion and harmony in life, and there- 
 fore beauty also, would be lost. Until a man has 
 learned to avoid excess, he is throwing away all chance 
 of real happiness, and is meanwhile ruining his best 
 faculties. There can be no true culture without self- 
 denial. The doctrine of moderation springs directly 
 from Greek philosophy. A warning against excess 
 was usual even in the Epicurean philosophy, as excess 
 would inevitably ruin the end aimed at, happiness. 
 Quite apart from the question of happiness and pleas- 
 ure, the good or virtue or moral excellence, in typical 
 
i6o CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Greek thinking, lay in avoiding extremes. It might 
 be called the very central thought of Aristotle's Ethics 
 that virtue is moderation, not of course meaning mod- 
 eration in indulging in anything wrong, but that 
 wrong itself means either excess or deficiency. He 
 defines virtue as a habit or trained faculty of choice, 
 the characteristic of which lies in observing the mean. 
 '* And it is a moderation, firstly inasmuch as it comes 
 in the middle or mean between two vices, one on the 
 side of excess, the other on the side of defect; and 
 secondly, inasmuch as, while these vices fall short of, 
 or exceed, the due measure in feeling and in action, it 
 finds and chooses the mean, or moderate amount." ^ 
 This is a true principle of ethics, as can be seen in 
 almost every region of conduct. Take the matter of 
 giving money: virtue or moderation would be liber- 
 ality; the two corresponding vices would be excess, 
 which is prodigality, and deficiency, which is mean- 
 ness. Even in details of life like pleasant amusing 
 conversation, Aristotle would call wit or humour mod- 
 eration, undue excess of which would be buffoonery, 
 and undue deficiency, as of a man who frowned gloom- 
 ily on every innocent jest, would be boorishness. This 
 great principle of the mean is in keeping with the 
 whole Greek ideal of culture, as the harmonious devel- 
 opment of every part, without one-sidedness. 
 
 In every art in its highest flights there must be 
 moderation, the recognition of the limits within which 
 it must move. Exaggeration ruins effect. It is this 
 restraint whicTi gives great art of any kind its appear- 
 ance of simplicity, a mastery which deceives by its 
 apparent ease. Excess or defect each mean failure. 
 
 * Nicomachean Ethics, ii. 6, i6. 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT i6i 
 
 In speech or writing, where emotions are worked on, 
 unrestrained violence, which overleaps the modesty of 
 nature, misses the mark aimed at — as desperate unreg- 
 ulated vehemence in an orator only creates shame or 
 amusement in his audience. On the other hand, force 
 without exaggeration, power without noise, the dex- 
 terous ease of execution which hides all traces of ef- 
 fort, never fail of effect. This means always some 
 form of self-limitation, moderation, the practice of re- 
 straint. Thus culture implies restraint in every sphere 
 where cultivation is applied; and restraint is for the 
 sake of culture. 
 
 We accept this in education, and face to face with 
 the extended regions of knowledge to-day we are 
 forced to lay even increased stress on some forms of 
 self-denial. The student, who would enter into truth, 
 must be prepared to sacrifice much, and give up grati- 
 fications which are innocent and which appeal to his 
 tastes, all for the sake of the subject to which he would 
 bend his mind. He who would master any truth must 
 learn what a jealous mistress he serves. The ascetic 
 principle, which declares that man must renounce in 
 order to gain, is not a strange freak, a curiosity in 
 mental pathology ; but is a principle of life with univer- 
 sal application all along the line of life. From the ath- 
 lete to the student, and to the saint, renunciation is an 
 essential feature of their experience. Professor Tyn- 
 dall,^ speaking of scientific inductive research, said, " It 
 requires patient industry, and a humble and conscien- 
 tious acceptance of what nature reveals. The first 
 condition of success is an honest receptivity, and a wil- 
 lingness to abandon all preconceived notions, how- 
 * Vide Herbert Spencer, Education, p. 45 (pop. ed.). 
 
1 62 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 ever cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth. 
 Believe me, a self-renunciation which has something 
 noble in it, and of which the world never hears, is often 
 enacted in the private experience of the votary of 
 science." 
 
 Further, even without reference to what a man must 
 give up in order to gain any height in life or study, 
 it has to be noted that education itseU of any kind 
 worth the name, means restraint. In all schemes of 
 education subjects are prescribed, not only for their 
 own sake, but for the mental training the acquiring of 
 them brings. In addition to the particular worth they 
 may have to children in after years, there is the worth 
 they have as discipline. All educationalists take this 
 into account perhaps first of all. When boys are set 
 to learn Latin, or Mathematics, or Science, the first 
 consideration is not the information received in these 
 departments of knowledge, but the training of the 
 mind. Discipline means self-control, bringing the 
 mind under command. It is thus not confined to the 
 physical side of life, but is necessary throughout the 
 whole area. Intellect is only raw material, and needs 
 to be shaped and polished till it takes an edge. Uncon- 
 scious education begins very early, in which a child 
 learns some of the practical limitations and restraints 
 of life ; but culture, the making of mind, means delib- 
 erate effort, a persistent attempt after complete mental 
 development. 
 
 The making of character also is a task calling for 
 deliberate effort, and for the wise and courageous use 
 of the instruments; and here too it is found that, as 
 without training no power of man can be truly devel- 
 oped, so without self-denial the higher life of man 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 163 
 
 would be impossible. We can see how man would 
 cease to be man in all that truly makes him man, if he 
 allowed lower appetites, and ambitions, and desires, to 
 run riot. Without self-restraint the whole order, and 
 beauty, and worth of life are destroyed. A well-bal-j 
 anced character implies an all-round effective control] 
 One unbridled passion is not only failure at a single] 
 point, but is an indication of failure at the centre also. 
 In the best there are evil tendencies, and evil desires, 
 that are ever clamant ; so that in the ordinary conduct 
 of life the habit of self-restraint is essential, if a 
 straight course is to be steered, and even if fatal ship- 
 wreck is to be avoided. A weak, undisciplined nature, 
 however naturally sweet and gentle and pure, is sure 
 to meet some day a concourse of circumstances, or an 
 overwhelming temptation, which will end in moral dis- 
 aster. We constantly underestimate the power of a 
 trained and restraining will, not only over outside cir- 
 cumstances, but also over the inner nature, amending 
 constitutional defects, checking impulses, impelling to 
 right courses of action, and thus altering the very 
 character. Like every other faculty, the will needs to 
 be educated and strengthened by the exercise of 
 itself. 
 
 Of all the moral qualities there is nothing so import- 
 ant as the confirmed habit of self-restraint, and it is 
 a necessity, unless a man is to be at the mercy of every 
 wind and tide that tosses him at will. Our natural 
 appetites and desires require government. Being but 
 blind impulses, they need to be controlled and guarded 
 from an excess which would injure themselves, as well 
 as mar the complete life. Just because man lives on 
 another plane from the beasts, and possesses more 
 
i64 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 power of gratification, he cannot leave his animal in- 
 stincts undirected. For one thing, they grow by what 
 they feed on, until, if unrestricted, they would usurp 
 the whole life. There seems no limit to the degen- 
 eracy of human appetites ; and this is true of other than 
 mere animal passions, true of desires of the mind, such 
 as ambition, love of acquisition, desire for honour. 
 Indeed every capacity of our nature, however high, 
 may become over-stimulated, or depraved in its tend- 
 ency. The very powers of mind, and imagination, 
 and heart, and spirit, which are proofs of man's nobil- 
 ity, can become degraded. For the sake of these pow- 
 ers themselves, for their true culture and perfection of 
 working, there is needed an alert and strenuous 
 control. 
 
 The eternal truth of asceticism then is that a man 
 has to master himself, has to bring his being into sub- 
 jection to the laws of health, and to the higher laws 
 of holiness; that discipline is needed in every sphere; 
 that the energies and appetites must be subdued and 
 ruled. Virtue has its moral worth in the restraint 
 exercised, the effort put forth. /Meekness, which is 
 due to sluggishness of soul or feebleness of mind, is 
 nothing to the meekness of a man who has conquered 
 himself, who has controlled his passions, and put his 
 foot on the neck of his selfish ambitions. We must 
 bring into subjection everything that, if left alone, 
 would subject usj There is a price for all this, which 
 a man must pay if he would be perfect, if he would 
 maintain the complete integrity of his being. Disci- 
 pline means cost. For this a man must give up, go 
 without, renounce, refuse to be drawn away from his 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAIN' 
 
 purpose by any allurement. We are driven to use 
 almost the very language of the ascetics, when we 
 seriously consider duty in this moral region, as Huxley 
 was driven to use similar language, starting though 
 he did from the scientific principle of evolution. The 
 lower must be forced to give way to the higher, if 
 there is to be any moral progress — that is the first prin- 
 ciple of a true man's life; and that is just another way 
 of stating the duty which is at the root of all asceticism, 
 of denying self and taking up a cross, i The way to life \ 
 is ever a narrow way. Sincere self-denial is an essen- ', 
 tial element of a nobler life, without even taking into 
 account the sacrifices for the sake of others which 
 comes to every man. To choose the better part means 
 turning away from other ways that please the carnal 
 mind. There are desires, passions, tempers, that must 
 be fought, temptations to be overcome. Not without 
 watching, and prayer, and struggle, can the soul shake 
 itself free from earthly clogs, and liberate itself from 
 evil. Only by patient endurance can a man win his 
 soul.* .' It is the man, who knows himself best, who 
 knows that he must keep his foot on himself, in things 
 that no one else imagines, perhaps in some sting of 
 self-interest, some secret thought, some wounded pride, 
 some selfishness. ) Every life has its own battlefield, 
 where the lower wars against the higher. In that 
 warfare men are trained in character ; for only through 
 discipline is true virtue possible. 
 
 With all its faults, therefore — and these faults, as 
 we shall see, are terrible — asceticism even in its most 
 extreme forms was at least based on a solemn, seriou? 
 view of life, and manfully accepted life as discipline 
 
 *Luke xxi. 19, R. V. 
 
i66 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 It at least knew that a saint, any more than a scholar 
 in his sphere, is not made in a day; and it set its 
 heart on sainthood. Men of this high temper turned 
 in disgust from the levity, and frivolity, and corrup- 
 tion of the world, and hated the sins of their own 
 hearts and lives, as well as the sins of their social 
 environment, and in a stern passion for holiness did 
 not shrink from the knife. Asceticism, which was not 
 content with the ordinary opportunities for self-denial 
 which life offers, and added to it world-denial, did a 
 grievous wrong to the world, and to the Church, and 
 even in the long-run to the ascetics' own best Hfe; 
 but it had the merit of being in earnest. The method 
 was a mistake, but the spirit, which at first inspired it, 
 was noble and true. There is a puritan heart in all 
 real religion, an austere spirit which is always asso- 
 ciated in some measure with a lofty ideal. The aus- 
 terity is not formal, or assumed for its own sake, but 
 it is the necessary fruit of high thought and noble en- 
 deavour. The high demands the sacrifice of the low, 
 if only to maintain its own existence. The man who 
 has seen the vision will allow nothing to come in the 
 way, no craving of flesh, no desire of personal pleas- 
 ure; and this will be in proportion to the altitude 
 of the standard. Religion thus makes life strenuous. 
 This is indeed its great gift to life, to add point, and 
 passion, and directness to its aims, a gift which saves 
 human powers from decay. It gives the concentration 
 needed to make a life virile. Without the self-re- 
 straint, associated with the name of Puritanism, heroic 
 life is impossible either for a man or a nation. 
 
 Something of the same stiffening and hardening in- 
 fluence is needed by us as a society to-day, in our 
 
 / 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 167 
 
 flaccid, ease-loving, pleasure-seeking time. We may 
 bewail in sentiment the social sins, drunkenness, gam- 
 bling, vice ; but these cannot be cured by mere tinker- 
 ing methods of legislation or of education. We need 
 a breath of the old spirit of earnestness to sweep 
 through our midst. No process of self-culture, how- 
 ever wide its programme, which neglects the moral 
 needs of men, will avail much by itself. If we are to 
 be saved from these social sins, and saved from the 
 inevitable national weakness which they mean, it must 
 come from within, from a renewed ideal of duty. We 
 need Puritanism, made patient and made tender by 
 love, driving its power not into forms of repression 
 but into channels of service. Our Lord's word must 
 come with fresh force to us, to deny ourselves, to bend 
 to His yoke, and accept the full consequences of our 
 faith. 
 
 Any self-culture, which is only a subtle form of self- 
 indulgence, stands condemned before the high passion 
 of this other ideal, that enters into something of the 
 mystery of the cross. We feel instinctively that, in spite 
 of all mistakes, those who have renounced the world 
 and its enticements, who have trod with bleeding feet 
 the narrow way, who have denied themselves all in- 
 dulgence, have made a nobler choice, than those who 
 have never burned for perfection, and never known 
 the patience of the saints, but have weakly given in to 
 every impulse, and sought gratification in every easy 
 pleasure. If these two methods exhausted the alterna- 
 tives, if the choice were confined to these, every true 
 and earnest man would be compelled to accept even 
 the mutilation of life, rather than the degradation of 
 life; and sometimes indeed it has seemed to men that 
 
l68 CULTUkE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 there was no other choice, and at such periods the 
 noblest spirits are to be found among the fanatics. 
 There have been times when a serious man was shut 
 up to some form of abstinence, times even when, as 
 Dean Church says in his St. Anslem, ** That which of 
 itself presented itself to the thoughts of a man in 
 earnest, wishing not only to do right, but to do the best 
 he could to fulfil God's purpose and his own calling 
 by self-improvement, was the monastic profession." 
 Whole periods of the history of the Church and of 
 modern Europe will remain out of perspective to us, 
 and the very system of monasticism will look to us as 
 a sort of mysterious madness, unless we appreciate that 
 fact. Fanaticism may be, as Lamartine called it when 
 speaking of the Girondists, a delirium of virtue; but 
 its excesses are often due to the previous reign of evil, 
 due to the deadweight of the world's enmity not only 
 against God but against man's best life. 
 
 To-day there is a danger of ascetic reaction from 
 the practical materialism of modern life. It is a dan- 
 ger, because it is ever tempted to put the emphasis in 
 the wrong place; but some kind of reaction seems in- 
 evitable. Certainly, self-denial of some sort is nec- 
 essary as a protest against our modern gospel of com- 
 fort, as if man's chief end were to have plenty of 
 victuals. Better the sternness and rigour of Puritan- 
 ism, than the soft, flaccid accommodation to evil which 
 comes so natural in an easy civilisation. Brought face 
 to face with some of the evils of our city life, with 
 luxury and misery side by side, and with the expe- 
 rience of the emptiness of so many worldly ideals, the 
 stern word to flee these things seems to come to us. 
 At least we ought to be alive to the fact that with our 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 169 
 
 materialistic ideals of life we are preparing for another 
 protest in the name of the soul, which refuses to be 
 submerged by the details of living. When so much of 
 our life is irreligious and Godless, when so much stress 
 is laid on the outside of life, when the common cult 
 of the day is that a man should follow his impulses 
 without restraint, when evil is condoned as natural, 
 and unearthly ideals are mocked at as superstition, 
 men who are susceptible to spiritual influences are 
 tempted to advocate and practise the opposite as pro- 
 test. Perhaps even the monk is not such an extinct 
 species of the human family as Carlyle ^ thought, since 
 the great motive which led to monasticism lies deep 
 in human nature. It would probably surprise some to 
 know how deep and wide is this counter-current, 
 alongside of the more apparent stream of modern life. 
 Even in Protestant countries there has of late years 
 been a remarkable growth of monastic life, or at least 
 of kindred manifestations. " Among other strange 
 phenomena of the waning century, we see once more 
 rising among us, as if by enchantment, the religious 
 orders of the Middle Ages; Benedictines, Carmelites, 
 Dominicans; houses of monks and nuns, to which 
 American and English ladies and gentlemen are once 
 more gathering as of old, flying no longer from a 
 world 01 violence or profligacy, but from a world of 
 emptiness and spiritual death." ^ The increase of so- 
 called High-Church principles is only an evidence 
 of revolt against low ideals, a blundering revolt if we 
 like, but a very real one: the emphasis on fasting, re- 
 treats, and the contemplative life generally, the growth 
 
 ^ Past and Present, Bk. II. ch. i. 
 J. A. Froude, Short Studies, vol. iii. p. 6 (1888). 
 
170 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 of brotherhoods and sisterhoods, only follow the line 
 which history prepares us to expect. 
 
 We must sympathise with all serious attempts to 
 purify life; with everything which betokens a desire 
 after Godliness, even though its form may seem to us 
 to be mistaken or dangerous ; with every high endeav- 
 our to oppose, in Huxley's phrase, the cosmic process 
 at every step, in order to give the ethical process a 
 chance. We must sympathise with all such, if we 
 have ever thrilled to the high passion oi St. Paul, when 
 he wrote his burning words, " Mortify your members 
 which are on earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, 
 evil desire, covetousness ; for which things' sake the 
 wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, 
 in the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived 
 in them ; but now ye also put off all these." ^ Often we 
 must have longed for some touch of Puritanism to 
 move our modern life, and make it more strong and 
 pure and sweet. And it will. The high heart of man 
 will not rest for ever in the deeps of thought and deed, 
 but will reassert itself somehow. We must lay Qur 
 account to the fact that the nature of man has not 
 changed, and the needs of life are pretty much what 
 they have been throughout the centuries. In a very 
 real sense every good man has to practise some sort 
 of asceticism ; he must give up, if he would be true to 
 his ideal. It is a false culture which gives free play to 
 every instinct, and ends, as it must, in making life a 
 wilderness, not a garden. The very name culture im- 
 plies the hoe and the pruning-knife, for the perfect 
 cultivation of life's acre; as in gardening there must 
 be the suppression of the weeds to give the flowers 
 
 * Col. iii. 5. 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 171 
 
 room. In every true life there is sacrifice, struggle, 
 things to forsake in obedience to the heavenly vision, 
 at the call of the higher nature. When there is a con- 
 flict between a man's tastes and his duty — and these 
 conflicts come to all — he must refuse the cravings 
 which his conscience tells him to be lower. 
 
 The Christian Church has often played into the 
 hands of enemies by interpreting the command not 
 to love the world * as the denial of the work, and 
 duties, and obligations which devolve upon men, the 
 ordinary activities, and relationships, and business 
 which men transact for the upkeep of life; but there 
 is a true sense in which the command applies. The 
 world is a much less definite thing than that inter- 
 pretation makes out, even less definite than Huxley's 
 cosmic process, but it is as real as ourselves. How 
 indefinite it is we see when we try to make a list of 
 the things we would call worldly. We cannot draw a 
 line, and say about every occupation, or amusement, or 
 manner of living: This is Christian, and that is not; 
 This is worldly, and that is not. And yet we know 
 what worldliness is, and if we are sensitive to spiritual 
 suggestion we can recognise it when we see it. As a 
 general definition, it stands to us for the great mass of 
 things that organise themselves against God. It is a 
 spirit of enmity, all that in our environment is against 
 the life of the soul, the lower principle that stubbornly 
 resists the higher, the deadweight of evil or of oppo- 
 sition to good, the inertia that drags itself against 
 every upward pull. The spirit of the world seems a 
 vague, meaningless term, but it becomes an awful 
 
 1 John ii. 15. 
 
172 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 reality to the man who has run counter to it. If it 
 were just one thing, or one set of things, which we 
 could brand as evil, and then strenuously avoid; if it 
 meant just one earnest protest and defiance, the prob- 
 lem would be easy. But the foe is insidious ; it evades 
 the point of the sword, and changes shape and colour ; 
 and the fight is life-long. If one were to gibbet some 
 practice or habit as the enemy of soul, and made us 
 look at the hateful thing till the memory of it and 
 the hate of it burned into our brain, and then 
 summed up all moral duty in the command to flee from 
 that, it would be an easy task; but he might be only 
 gibbeting his world, and not coming within a thousand 
 miles of what our world means, and where the fight is 
 hot and fierce in our corner of the field. 
 
 This is one of the serious faults of all external 
 forms of morality, such as asceticism has commonly 
 signified, crystallising evil into one or two typical sin- 
 ful passions. The problem is far more complicated 
 than such methods can touch. This conspiracy against 
 the regal claims of the soul, which we sum up in the 
 word " world," is the secular spirit, diflferent at differ- 
 ent times and for different people, the great fascinatmg 
 scheme of things regarded as apart from Gk)d, the 
 inert but powerful antagonism of matter against spirit, 
 of sense against soul, of social conventions and preju- 
 dices against the new and the high. In every life, 
 and in every scene of history, there are two spirits 
 contending for masterdom, and one of them in 
 various guises is the world. It may be organised 
 force, as it was to the early Church, force materialised 
 in the Roman Empire with the Emperor enthroned as 
 God; it may be self-indulgence and countless appeals 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 173 
 
 to the lower instincts, as in every pagan and semi- 
 pagan civilisation ; it may be vulgar mammon-worship, 
 as perhaps with us, the sleek gospel of material 
 comfort. 
 
 To the individual in his particular sphere of work, 
 it is the conspiracy of conventions and precedents, 
 that keep him from realising his own highest ideal ; to 
 the artist the temptation to paint pot-boilers for a Phil- 
 istine market, since nobody seems to want anything 
 else; the author to write for money, or pander to the 
 taste of the crowd; the statesman to sacrifice principle 
 to expediency; the preacher to speak claptrap to tickle 
 the ears, rather than the dearly bought spiritual truth 
 to move hearts to nobler life. In every sphere, and 
 every calling, and every life, there are the two voices, 
 and the tug-of-war for masterdom, sense impinging on 
 soul, the ideal valorously struggling with the conven- 
 tional ; duty, " the stern daughter of the voice of God," 
 against pleasure with her siren song. It is an atti- 
 tude, a spirit — not the flesh or the eye or life as such, 
 but the lust of flesh or eye, and the pride of life. The 
 definition may be vague, but we know what the 
 world means to us, if we are honest with ourselves; 
 we know the weak spot where it strikes home to our 
 heart; as we know what Wordsworth meant when he 
 used the same word — 
 
 The world is too much with us, late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. 
 
 Whatever keeps us from being our best self, what- 
 ever is dwarfing us from our true stature, is the place 
 where we need to apply askesis, the discipline of a 
 
174 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 self-controlled will. The ascetic ideal has an element 
 of eternal truth, without which life can have no true 
 culture. 
 
 George Herbert, from his birth, and breeding, and 
 tastes, had some of the struggle implied in all renun- 
 ciation, after he gave up worldly hopes at court to 
 serve as a humble servant in the Temple. He de- 
 scribes the natural craving of human instincts for full 
 satisfaction, kicking against the pricks of duty; and 
 he reveals the ultimate result which made sacrifice 
 easy. This he does with wonderful art in The Collar, 
 the quaint title implying the restraint. It brings out 
 the first instinctive desire of nature for full and free 
 culture, and at the same time suggests the higher im- 
 pulse which holds it in check. The place and power 
 of the ascetic ideal, in face of the dominant appeal for 
 self-expression, are indicated in such subtle and yet 
 forceful manner in the poem that we cannot refrain 
 from quoting it, as it states the case for repression as 
 many pages of prose might fail to do. Just when the 
 argument for the world's joy seems complete, there 
 bursts out the imperial note of the higher nature silenc- 
 ing the voice of the lower. 
 
 I struck the board, and cried, " No more; 
 
 I will abroad. 
 What! shall I ever sigh and pine? 
 My lines and life are free; free as the road, 
 Loose as the wind, as large as store. 
 
 Shall I be still in suit? 
 Have I. no harvest but a thorn 
 To let me blood, and not restore 
 What I have lost with cordial fruit? 
 
 Sure there was wine 
 Before my sighs did dry it; there was com 
 
THE ASCETIC IDEAL— RESTRAINT 175 
 
 Before my tears did drown it. 
 
 Is the year only lost to me? 
 
 Have I no bays to crown it, 
 
 No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted. 
 
 All wasted? 
 Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, 
 
 And thou hast hands. 
 Recover all thy sigh-blown age 
 On double pleasures ; leave thy cold dispute 
 Of what is fit, and not ; forsake thy cage. 
 
 Thy rope of sands, 
 Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee 
 Good cable to enforce and draw, 
 
 And be thy law. 
 While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. 
 
 Away! take heed: 
 
 I will abroad. 
 Call in thy death's-head there: tie up thy fears. 
 
 He that forbears 
 
 To suit and serve his need 
 Deserves his load." 
 
 But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild 
 
 At every word, 
 Methought I heard one calling, " Child ! " 
 And I replied, " My Lord ! " 
 
VII 
 
 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF ASCETICISM 
 
 WHEN we think of how far the ascetic 
 ideal was pushed in the Church, the 
 extent to which various kinds of mor- 
 tification reached, self-torture carried 
 to its furthest extreme, the huge spread of the mo- 
 nastic system, we wonder how such forms of devotion 
 could come from the sweet, natural piety and gentle, 
 loving spirit of the Christian faith. In the earliest age 
 the strong, simple faith and the deep joy made life 
 easy; so that there is something of the wonder of 
 spring about the early Church, the miracle of effortless 
 growth, the rich exuberance of life, the entrancing 
 beauty of simplicity and naturalness. The birth of the 
 Church was like the birth of the year, with the exhil- 
 aration and graceful ease of spring. In the Acts of 
 the Apostles we do not find the same strenuous atti- 
 tude of protest against the world, which afterwards is 
 noticed in the Church. To go from the atmosphere 
 of the Acts of the Apostles to that of the Church 
 Councils is like going from the freshness of spring to 
 the heat and burden of summer. In the early Church, 
 with the dew of her youth on her, we notice an ease 
 and a naturalness which we miss in subsequent stages 
 of history. Life was pervaded with a wonderful joy, 
 and was not spoiled by anything sour, or morose, or 
 melancholy. Why should they be sad, when Christ 
 
 176 
 
\ OF 
 
 ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM^^^lf T^'^ 
 
 had come, and was their risen, and ascended, and liv- 
 ing Saviour? There was nothing strained, or ascetic, 
 or unnatural in their manner of life. In the flush and 
 fervour of their first love, life adjusted itself easily and 
 sweetly. Take such a picture as is seen in these 
 words, " Day by day, continuing stedfastly with one 
 accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they 
 did take their food with gladness and singleness of 
 heart, praising God, and having favour with all peo- 
 ple."^ The natural human virtues and the common 
 social joys flourished in their united brotherhood; and 
 the common things of every day were done with a 
 sweet and cheerful grace. The disciples' faith brought 
 an exultant sense of mastery over life, and of victory 
 over the world; and so love and the fruits of love 
 abounded. It was, perhaps, too idyllic a mood to last, 
 and it certainly did not last. The Church of the Apos- 
 tles became the Church of the Martyrs. The Chris- 
 tian converts, who only asked to be allowed to live 
 their gracious lives of love and service in peace, had 
 to go through the fire. The Church lost its early 
 gladness, and sometimes even its singleness of heart. 
 
 Apart from times of distress and persecution, the 
 Christian life generally became more of a struggle, as 
 the essential opposition to pagan life unfolded itself. 
 They were given as one of the tasks of religion to keep 
 themselves unspotted from the world, to conform to the 
 law of holiness, to regulate their lives by higher mo- 
 tives, and restraints, and sanctions. To the early 
 Christians the gulf fixed between the faith and the 
 ordinary pagan life was greater than could possibly be 
 to-day, in a civilisation softened, and to some extent 
 
 ' Acts ii. 46, R. V. 
 
178 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 formed, by Christianity. The world stood to them for 
 implacable enmity against God, and sleepless, unabated 
 protest became the necessary attitude ; so that the tem- 
 per of the Church was hardened in fibre, as it stood 
 against the prevailing corruptions. The garments 
 could be kept clean, and hearts remain unspotted, only 
 by sore struggle. To understand the beginnings of 
 the ascetic system, that seems so divorced from the 
 thought and example of Christ, we need to transplant 
 ourselves in imagination to the environment of the 
 early Church, though what the pagan environment 
 was at its worst it is happily impossible for us even to 
 imagine. 
 
 It is a common idea to assume that the sort of life, 
 briefly pictured in the words we quoted from the Acts 
 of the Apostles, is a feature of pagan life rather than 
 Christian. In books innumerable it is set forth that 
 this sweet, natural joy of living, with its instinctive 
 mirth, and its social pleasures, and its innocence of 
 heart, is the typical pagan life; whereas the typical 
 Christian life is bloodless, and unnatural, and courts 
 sorrow, and worships death. This is the groundwork 
 on which many of our poets and writers create their 
 contrasts ; and many poetic tears are shed that the pale 
 Galilean should have swept from the world Apollo 
 and the beautiful gods. The description of pagan life 
 as a genial, sprightly, poetic thing is false to fact, and 
 false to history except a very surface reading of history. 
 When the Christian faith entered the world, that 
 youthful stage of paganism had long passed ; and we 
 find a corruption and shame of life, a despair of truth, 
 a colossal selfishness, and a complete breakdown of 
 the sanctions of morality which keep society together. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 179 
 
 The condition of human society in Europe at the time 
 is beyond description, though outwardly social order 
 was maintained by the strong hand of the Roman 
 Empire. It is not only that the grossest evils were 
 rampant, but that the very source of life itself, even 
 religion, was turned into a corrupt influence. 
 
 If by typical we mean what a system results in, the 
 ultimate life which is its outcome, it seems a monstrous 
 absurdity to draw the contrast between the pagan and 
 the Christian life, to which we refer. If we want to 
 know the typical pagan life of the time of the early 
 Church, we must find it not in such dreams of groves 
 and nymphs about which our writers rave ; we will find 
 it in the terrible indictment of St. Paul in the first 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Romans ; we find it writ- 
 ten in terms of history in the annals of Tacitus, and 
 in terms of morals in the satires of Juvenal. We will 
 find it in the hopelessness of truth which oppressed 
 the best of men, the corruption of life which came 
 from the breakdown of the pagan faith, in the oppres- 
 sion and sorrow of the people, in the shame of courts, 
 in the despair of philosophy. Philosophers had de- 
 generated into rhetoricians. In the lecture-rooms 
 moral good and evil were as counters in an intellectual 
 game, with no practical bearing on life. The keenest 
 of Lucian's satires were levelled at the philosophers, 
 for the infamy of their lives, as well as the futility of 
 their hair-splitting speculations; and next to them his 
 bitter sarcasm struck at the priests of the pagan re- 
 ligion, who made the sacred Mysteries the grossest of 
 orgies. We have endless evidence of the degradation 
 of religion itself from sources that are not Christian, 
 to corroborate the testimony of men like St. Augus- 
 
i8o CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 tine, who writes, " I myself, when a young man, used 
 sometimes to go to the sacrilegious entertainments and 
 spectacles ; I saw the priests raving in religious excite- 
 ment, and heard the choristers; I took pleasure in the 
 shameful games which were celebrated in the honour 
 of gods and goddesses, of the virgin Ccelestis, and 
 Berecynthia, the mother of all the gods. And on the 
 day consecrated to her purification, there were sung 
 before her couch productions so obscene and filthy to 
 the ear — I do not say of the mother of the gods, but 
 of the mother of any senator or honest man — nay, so 
 impure that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed 
 players themselves could have formed one of the audi- 
 ence." ^ When religion was corrupt, the very foun- 
 tain of life was corrupted at its source; and the state 
 of society was such that the facts could not be written 
 in English and need to be left, as Gibbon declared he 
 left all the licentious passages in writing his history, 
 " in the obscurity of a learned language." ^ Suetonius, 
 Seneca, and every pagan writer who touches at all on 
 the social conditions, reveal the moral putrefaction that 
 existed. In the course of an argument about the lend- 
 ing of money, Seneca throws out some features of the 
 social state in dark silhouette by a casual illustration 
 in which he says that gentlewomen reckon their age 
 not by the number of their years but by the number 
 of their husbands, and that chastity was so rare that 
 it was counted only as an argument of deformity. The 
 chapter ^ is a lurid condemnation of the state of affairs, 
 more convincing because it is casually introduced 
 
 ^ Augustine, Civ. Dei, ii. 4. 
 
 'Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life (ed. 1900), p. 231. 
 
 ' Seneca, De Ben., iii, 17. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM i8i 
 
 merely as an illustration of another point. Mr. Lecky 
 in his History of European Morals records a simple 
 fact when he says that the pages of Suetonius are an 
 eternal witness of abysses of depravity, hideous and 
 intolerable cruelty, and hitherto unimagined extrava- 
 gances of nameless lust. There was a gangrene in the 
 heart of society. Matthew Arnold expresses the truth 
 in his strong lines, 
 
 On that hard pagan world disgust 
 And secret loathing fell. 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a hell. 
 
 A protest in the name of the soul was bound to be 
 made; and made it was, even before Christianity. 
 " The ancient world had arrived, by all the routes of 
 its complicated development, at the bitterest criticism 
 of, and disgust at, its own existence,'* ^ The protest 
 was a counsel of despair, and took the form of some 
 sort of asceticism; for men felt that the only policy 
 open to them was to cut connection with the world, 
 which was so evil. There are, as we shall see, specula- 
 tive and philosophic reasons why asceticism took such 
 strong hold of the world in so many different coun- 
 tries and different periods; but the practical motive is 
 ever the recognition of evil, which becomes intoler- 
 able, and which drives men into violent protest. The 
 complete ascetic separation from the world is not 
 peculiarly Christian — in fact it is not Christian at all. 
 Rather, in essence, it is opposed to the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity, which calls on believers to be leaven to leaven 
 the whole lump of society, salt to keep the earth pure, 
 
 ^Harnack, History of Dogma (Eng. Trans.), vol. iii. p. 123. 
 
i82 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 light to lighten the world. It is indeed the pagan 
 remedy for the pagan sins, but, as we must acknowl- 
 edge, it was a very natural remedy for earnest men to 
 adopt. It is found in other religions — in Buddhism, 
 for example, where it is a fundamental principle of the 
 religion. In Greece, though it was alien to the whole 
 Greek temperament, the followers of Pythagoras com- 
 bined asceticism of Hfe with mysticism of creed; and 
 the Cynics have been called the monks of Stoicism, 
 probably because they really put into practice the prin- 
 ciples of contempt for luxury and comfort, and absti- 
 nence from pleasure, which were often only items of 
 creed with Stoics. Even among the Jews, to whom 
 for other reasons than with the Greeks it was even 
 more alien, we find such manifestations as that of the 
 Essenes, who lived in renunciation of the world. 
 Pliny, referring to the growth of the Essenes, in spite 
 of the fact that they renounced marriage, and that 
 therefore the sect could only increase by making con- 
 verts, accounts for their numbers by the repentant dis- 
 gust which life itself breeds in men.^ 
 
 It was natural, when men were touched by the new 
 passion for purity which Christ brought, that they 
 should be filled even more with disgust and loathing. 
 Called out from an environment like that which we 
 have indicated, and with the personal struggle intensi- 
 fied by their own habits, and education, and inclina- 
 tions, we may well expect a certain austerity of tone, 
 which would justify even forms of violent protest. To 
 escape from the constant enticement of the world in 
 which they were compelled to live, might easily seem 
 to a man the only complete way of attaining mastery 
 
 * Tarn fcecunda illis alioriim vita pcunitentia est. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 183 
 
 over self. When we think of the whole situation of 
 men, who were set to keep themselves unspotted from 
 evil, we are not surprised to find early in the history 
 of the Church, ascetic exercises creeping in, due 
 chiefly to the necessary protest against the terrible 
 evils of pagan life. The process was slow and unequal 
 in diiferent places, but it was sure. In the earliest 
 records of the sub-apostolic age we see how the law 
 gradually came to mean, not the law of love, working 
 itself out amid all the relations of life, but the com- 
 mandments of ascetic holiness. We trace the slight 
 beginnings of this, even in such an early record as the 
 Didache, the Teaching of the Apostles. 
 
 Possibly the stage of austere asceticism was an in- 
 evitable one in the history of the Church; and cer- 
 tainly the austere view of life was a necessity at the 
 time. Before the Christian faith could lay hold of the 
 world for its own high mission, it had to begin with 
 negative work; it had to uproot the heathenish vices, 
 and brand sin as hateful in the conscience of men. This 
 involved the risk of the negative tendency being ex- 
 aggerated, as indeed turned out to be the case, but 
 the one-sidedness of the ascetic tendency was a natural 
 phenomenon. The disgust of pagan life led, as was 
 to be expected, to extravagances; but before spiritual 
 life was possible the long unclean list, which St. Paul 
 gives more than once in his Epistles, had to be put 
 off by Christian converts. At any and every cost they 
 had to mortify the evil passions and practices, in which 
 they had also walked. Self-denial was the first step, 
 and it was natural enough that the idea should grow 
 in men, who were face to face with the corruption and 
 depravity of pagan society, that the only course open 
 
i84 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 to them was as complete separation from the world as 
 possible. It is not enough to dismiss a great system, 
 which grew to such proportions as Monasticism did, 
 by Gibbon's explanation : '' These unhappy exiles from 
 social life were impelled by the dark and implacable 
 genius of superstition. Their mutual resolution was 
 supported by the example of millions, of either sex, 
 of every age, and of every rank; and each proselyte, 
 who entered the gates of a monastery, was persuaded 
 that he trod the steep and thorny path of eternal hap- 
 piness. But the operation of these religious motives 
 was variously determined by the temper and situation 
 of mankind. Reason might subdue, or passion might 
 suspend, their influence; but they acted most forcibly 
 on the infirm minds of children and females ; they were 
 strengthened by secret remorse, or accidental misfor- 
 tune; and they might derive some aid from the tem- 
 poral considerations of vanity or interest." ^ 
 
 Such a criticism is self-destructive; for, if it was 
 adopted by millions of either sex, and every age and 
 rank, there can be no explanation in the sneer about 
 the infirm minds of children and females. It is a 
 travesty of fact also; for the strongest and ablest men 
 of the early Christian centuries belonged to one or 
 other of the different grades of the ascetics, and de- 
 fended the system — men like Basil, Gregory of Nazian- 
 zen, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, 
 Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome. Besides, it is a false in- 
 terpretation of history to explain great and permanent 
 movements by the unworthy motives which always are 
 mixed up with human affairs ; for it is not these which 
 give it its power and its permanence. It is quite true 
 
 ^Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, chap, xxxvii. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 185 
 
 that less pure motives weighed with many, who em- 
 braced the monastic Hfe, especially when it became 
 popular, and was a recognised path to fame and power ; 
 but such a system must have justified itself to some 
 extent in what it actually achieved. And for some 
 centuries it did so justify itself, not only in the per- 
 sonal good that came to individual souls from their 
 sacrifice, but also in the services rendered to the whole 
 body politic, which we will consider briefly later on. 
 In many such criticisms, also, it is forgotten that the 
 whole movement was not a clerical one at all in its 
 origin, but began as a lay profession in the devotion 
 of self-sacrificing zeal of earnest men. Monasticism 
 was forced on the Church, which was compelled to 
 recognise it, so spontanteous and strong was the stream. 
 Indeed, by taking the movement in and regulating it, 
 the Church saved it from disrule and speedy degrada- 
 tion, and used it for centuries as a valuable engine 
 for the good of the world. 
 
 The real truth is that the spirit, which drove men 
 into such extreme forms of self-denial, as were prac- 
 tised by many, was only an exaggerated form of the 
 essential spirit which pervaded the whole Church. It 
 was an exaggeration of the normal moral earnestness, 
 which was a mark of a Christian, an earnestness taken 
 out of its true sphere, and thus running to inevitable 
 excess. One of the reasons which Gibbon himself 
 gives for the remarkable victory of the Christian faith 
 over the established religions of the earth at the time, 
 is the pure and austere morals of the Christians, though 
 he tries to show that these were largely due to the 
 laudable desire of supporting the reputation of the 
 Church. " Their serious and sequestered life, averse to 
 
1 86 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 the gay luxury of the age, inured them to chastity, tem- 
 perance, economy, and all the sober and domestic vir- 
 tues. As the greater number were of some trade or 
 profession, it was incumbent on them, by the strictest 
 integrity and the fairest dealing, to remove the suspic- 
 ions, which the profane are too apt to conceive against 
 the appearances of sanctity. The contempt of the 
 world exercised them in habits of humility, meekness, 
 and patience. The more they were persecuted, the 
 more closely they adhered to each other. Their mutual 
 charity and unsuspecting confi'dence has been remarked 
 by infidels, and was too often abused by perfidious 
 friends." ^ It is a good certificate of character. A cer- 
 tain austerity was natural in men, who were called as 
 part of the essence of their faith to put off the old 
 man with his deeds, and put on the new man with the 
 qualities of the new life — mercy, kindness, humbleness, 
 meekness, long-suffering, charity. Tertullian asks with 
 noble triumph whether among all the crowd of crim- 
 inals any Christians are ever arraigned for crimes of 
 violence, or theft, or sacrilege. He points with pride 
 to the fact that the only legal crime for v»rhich Chris- 
 tians are condemned is for being Christians.^ The 
 existence of this universal austere spirit implied the 
 danger of a strained condition of some; but, if this 
 austerity got out of its legitimate channel of the or- 
 dinary common life of the world, and rushed to fanati- 
 cal extreme in a wrong channel, it was largely due to 
 the violence of reaction, which we see so copiously 
 illustrated in all human history. 
 
 ^Decline and Fall, chap. xv. 
 "Tertullian, Apology, chap. xliv. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 187 
 
 In all the above statement we have merely given the 
 historical environment which affords to asceticism the 
 suitable conditions for increase; but before we con- 
 sider the speculative thought at the root of the ascetic 
 ideal, which is its principle of vitality, we will notice 
 the forms it took in the Christian Church in the process 
 of its growth. The ethical value, which Christianity 
 undoubtedly places on self-denial, was in the early 
 years never allowed to assume undue proportions. 
 Formal acts like fasting, or voluntary celibacy, were 
 not looked upon as meritorious in themselves, or as 
 necessary parts of religious duty. When there was re- 
 nunciation of any sort, it was kept in its true place, 
 as only a means of reaching a higher virtue. There 
 were no irrevocable vows taken or imposed, and it 
 was not supposed that the clergy were in a special 
 sense called to an ascetic life. Even clerical celibacy, 
 which ultimately became universal in the Church, was 
 the result of a slow and long process. Married bishops 
 are common even in the fourth and fifth centuries, as, 
 for example, the father of Gregory Nazianzen, and 
 Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, who is one of the char- 
 acters in Charles Kingsley's Hypatia. 
 
 Gradually, however, asceticism came more and more 
 to be valued for its own sake, and became more and 
 more fanatical. The early ascetics did not break away 
 from the world, but lived among the Christian com- 
 munity, only distinguished by special sanctity of life. 
 It is not till the third century that we find instances of 
 the hermit life, and this seems to have been occasioned 
 first of all by the persecutions which scattered believers, 
 and forced many to seek safety in desert places. The 
 
1 88 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 monastic system had its origin in these Hermits or 
 Anchorites, who lived as Solitaries, and found a 
 scanty subsistence in the wilderness, and gave them- 
 selves up to holy meditation and prayer. Persecution, 
 as it always does, fanned the flame of fanaticism, and 
 the temper of men grew hard in the fire. During the 
 persecution of Maximinus, the most famous of these 
 hermits, St. Anthony, came into notice, and found 
 many imitators. The Thebaid of Upper Egypt became 
 peopled by Solitaries, who increased enormously, and 
 it was there that the Coenobite life, or what we now 
 mean by the monastic, became an institution. It was 
 the gathering of the separate hermits into one house or 
 monastery, and so bringing them under a common rule ; 
 and it was this monastic form which proved itself the 
 fittest, by surviving and displacing the other. The 
 ordinary needs of the religious life made this inevitable 
 — the need of common worship and mutual edification, 
 the desire for the sacraments of the Church, and the 
 need of an outlet for faith in some form of social serv- 
 ice. Besides, it was soon seen that all sorts of ex- 
 travagances and eccentricities issued from the isolate 
 hermit state, in which each lived after his own fancy, 
 some choosing the tops of pillars, others living in trees, 
 some called Boskoi or Grazers, because they lived on 
 roots and herbs, some who practised mystic dances, 
 an ancient anticipation of the modern Shakers. The 
 whole system would have ended in madness, but for 
 the introduction of regular monasteries. In course of 
 time comprehensive rules were formed, as by Basil 
 the Great, and later on by the founders of the more 
 important orders. These, besides the vows of poverty, 
 chastity, and obedience, and the ordinary spiritual dis- 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCEllCISM 189 
 
 cipline, usually included instructions about labour, and 
 even, as in St. Benedict's rule, instructions regarding 
 the teaching of youth, copying manuscripts, and other 
 employments. The system was much slower in taking 
 root in Western Europe than it was in the more con- 
 genial soil of the East, but it did at last take firm 
 hold, till it ultimately was co-extensive with Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 In addition to the reasons already mentioned, such 
 as that it afforded for individuals escape from evil in 
 their environment, and offered opportunities for the 
 development of the contemplative life, the explana- 
 tion of such remarkable growth lay in the distinct serv- 
 ices to the Church and the world, which monasteries 
 were enabled at different periods to render. Its value 
 in the first centuries as a missionary agency was im- 
 mense, presenting to rude peoples the inspiring spectacle 
 of Christ-like men, who had given up all selfish am- 
 bitions, and who were not affected by the ordinary 
 motives. The early monks made a great moral im- 
 pression by the unselfishness and austerity of their 
 lives. Their sincerity and godly character influenced 
 the minds of barbarous tribes as nothing else could do, 
 and won their respect and confidence. Among heathen 
 people they were the most effective missionaries, and 
 carried the gospel into many dark places of the earth. 
 Unworldliness, the capacity for prolonged endurance, 
 a simple-hearted devotion to duty, will always com- 
 mand influence over men, quite apart from the ques- 
 tion whether these qualities are exercised for right or 
 wrong ends. This fact soon became known to Church 
 leaders, who sometimes used the system for Church 
 purposes, as for example when Basil established a com- 
 
I90 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 pany of monks in Cappadocia to counteract Arianism, 
 which had a stronghold there. Men, who are above 
 the common motives which sway others, have an em- 
 pire over hearts by virtue of their sacrifice. Sozomen ^ 
 states that the reason why the Arian and ApolHnarist 
 heresies had no permanent success in the Church, was 
 because the SoHtaries of the day took part against 
 them. The ascetics adhered to the Nicene creed, an<i 
 the people had such reverence for their character and 
 work, that they trusted their doctrine to be orthodox. 
 We cannot do anything like historic justice to the 
 monastic system also, without admitting the practical 
 good it achieved in various lines throughout the cen- 
 turies that followed. The monasteries in their pure 
 state were always schools of labour, in which the day 
 was divided into work and prayer. They were also 
 schools of charity, for the poor who lived within reach, 
 for travellers and pilgrims passing through. It can- 
 not be forgotten, also, that in some periods of Euro- 
 pean history they served a useful part in mitigating 
 the distresses of the time, as a refuge for the op- 
 pressed. Amid the wars and conquests of the Middle 
 Ages they remained inviolate among the wildest vio- 
 lence, on account of the sanctity attached to the char- 
 acter of the inmates, or to the place itself. They were 
 humanising centres, as they had been in pagan or semi- 
 pagan, so also in nominally Christian countries, con- 
 vincing men of the sincerity of the Religious by the 
 self-denial they practised. Especially was this the case 
 after the great religious revival, associated with the 
 name of the Franciscans at the beginning of the thir- 
 teenth century. It is an indication at once of the won- 
 
 * History, vi. 27. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 191 
 
 derful extension of the Franciscan order and of their 
 essential spirit, that in the next century after their foun- 
 dation, during the Black Death, more than a hundred 
 thousand Franciscans died through their nursing of 
 the sick and ministering to the dying. It was a new- 
 conception of monastic duty, which made the care of 
 others as important a feature of their work as the 
 personal spiritual sanctification, which had been the 
 first thought of the early monks. Mr. Lecky, who is 
 certainly not biassed in their favour, only does monks 
 fair justice when he states, — '' Every monastery became 
 a centre of charity. By the monks the nobles were 
 overawed, the poor protected, the sick tended, travellers 
 sheltered, prisoners ransomed, the remotest spheres of 
 suffering explored. During the darkest period of the 
 Middle Ages, monks founded a refuge for pilgrims 
 amid the horrors of the Alpine snows. . . . When 
 the hideous disease of leprosy extended its ravages 
 over Europe, and men's minds were filled with terror, 
 not only by its loathsomeness and its contagion, but 
 also by the notion that it was in a peculiar sense super- 
 natural, hospitals overspread Europe, and monks flocked 
 in multitudes to serve them." ^ 
 
 Some of these good results, however, must not be 
 laid to the account of asceticism, as they were due 
 rather to a neglect of the logical conclusions of their 
 creed. The great monastic orders, after all, made their 
 impress on the world, not through any individual as- 
 ceticism on the part of their members, but through 
 their useful labours as an order, through creating new 
 and better social conditions, or ameliorating conditions 
 that were hard, which really meant modifying the orig- 
 
 * Lecky, Hist, of European Morals, vol. ii. 
 
192 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 inal purpose of the system. The first great example 
 of such modification is found in the Benedictines, the 
 rules of whose order enjoined some useful employment 
 on every monk. With them a high place was given to 
 education; study was encouraged, and the copying of 
 manuscripts was an established practice, so that their 
 monasteries became repositories of learning. 
 
 It is quite true that we can find some historic causes 
 for the great extension of the system in unworthy mo- 
 tives, both on the part of some who entered, and on 
 the part of the Church which countenanced it. It is 
 quite true that the Church encouraged it latterly, even 
 after its most useful days were past, as a means of 
 securing her complete ascendancy. The submissive 
 spirit, which was held out as the ideal, and which 
 reached its limits in Monasticism, naturally suited a 
 dominant Church ; not to speak of the immense wealth, 
 which came into her hands in various ways, as well as 
 from those who adopted the monastic habit. But, as 
 we have had already occasion to show, all the unworthy 
 motives put together could not account for the vitality 
 and extent of any great organisation; and it must not 
 be forgotten that the monastic system had its roots in 
 a deeply religious instinct. 
 
 The hold it took on the mind of man for centuries 
 was immense; and it gave an ascetic colour even to 
 those who were in revolt against it, creating a peculiar 
 conscience, and an introspective habit of thought. This 
 is seen in a remarkable manner from a scene in the 
 life of Petrarch, who was a typical Humanist, and had 
 naturally little sympathy with the ascetic ideal. He 
 was a child of the Renaissance, and had a love of 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 193 
 
 natural beauty which was almost unique in his time. 
 On one occasion he climbed Mount Ventoux, and 
 describes his amazement at the wonderful view of hills 
 and valleys, land and sea; but just at the moment of 
 keenest enjoyment there came a revulsion of feeling, 
 which showed him to be a child of the monastic age, 
 as well as of the Renaissance. He writes : " Thus gaz- 
 ing, now singling out some single object, now letting 
 my sight range far into the distance, now raising eyes 
 and soul to heaven, I unconsciously drew out of my 
 pocket Augustine's Confessions, a book I always carry 
 with me, and it opened at this passage, ' Men go to 
 wonder at the peaks of the mountains, the huge waves 
 of the sea, the broad rivers, the great ocean, the circles 
 of the stars, and for these things forget themselves.' 
 I trembled at these words, shut the book, and fell into 
 a rage with myself for gaping at earthly things when 
 I ought to have learned long ago, even from heathen 
 philosophers, that the soul is the only great and as- 
 tonishing thing. Silent I left the mountain, and turned 
 my view from the things without me to that within." ^ 
 It is a false sentiment, but with a heart of truth, and 
 it graphically describes the inwardness, with which 
 the long history of monasticism penetrated the natur- 
 ally active and practical temper of Western Europe. 
 It also helps to explain some of the features of the 
 Renaissance, the queer mixture of sentimental religous- 
 ness combined with an absolute lack of moral perspec- 
 tive, seen in most glaring contrast in such a character 
 as Benvenuto Cellini ; and it helps to explain even the 
 
 ^Vide Van Dyke, Age of Renaissance, p. 28. (C3iarles 
 Scribner's Sons.) 
 
194 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 abnormal excesses of some Humanists, as due to an 
 uneasy conscience, which had been trained to consider 
 the ascetic ideal the highest. 
 
 All that we have hitherto urged does not explain 
 the firm grip which asceticism took of human life, but 
 only shows how it received the suitable environment. 
 It is not explained even by the undoubted sympathy 
 it has with some notes of the Christian faith, such as 
 the emphasis on heart-religion and on spiritual union 
 with God. It is too contradictory of other essential 
 marks of Christianity to be thus explained. Besides, 
 such considerations do not explain the existence of 
 asceticism in other and pre-Christian religions, where 
 it has been carried to greater extremes than in the 
 Church. We need to look beyond Christian history 
 for the root conception of asceticism, and this is found 
 in the Oriental answer to the problem of the origin 
 of evil. The deepest thought in all ascetic practice 
 is that sin is due to matter or to the body of man. 
 That this is so is further evidenced by the fact that 
 complete asceticism only entered the Church through 
 the Oriental admixture of ideas in Gnosticism, where 
 the supposed enlightenment, which Gnostics claimed 
 for themselves by special revelation, was dependent on 
 certain ascetic rites. It is difficult for us to realise the 
 terrible struggle which this heresy brought to the 
 Church of the second century, so apart is the type of 
 speculation from our modern view of looking at the 
 world. 
 
 Gnosticism got its name from laying emphasis on 
 supposed knowledge (gnosis), thinking more of in- 
 tellectual apprehension of spiritual truth than of faith. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 195 
 
 It was the influence of pagan speculation on the Chris- 
 tian faith. One of its purposes was an attempt to solve 
 the old riddle of the origin of evil; and this it did in 
 connection with its special doctrine of creation, which 
 meant practical dualisntj separating God from the 
 world, the one being the principle of good, the other 
 the evil principle. It thus accepted the common Ori- 
 ental position that evil is inherent in matter. It ex- 
 plained the creation of the world by a series of stages, 
 of emanations from God, each becoming less divine, 
 until matter (which was evil) was formed and made 
 the lowest link in the chain. Of course there is no 
 solution in this, even as a theory from their own prem- 
 ises ; but it is a common fallacy, to which some scientific 
 men of our own day have been prone, to imagine that 
 an explanation is reached by positing an endless series 
 either of time or of stages, to imagine that the descrip- 
 tion of a method explains a process or a cause. We 
 can see how the Gnostics were forced to some such con- 
 clusion as they reached ; as their starting-point was the 
 absolute antagonism between spirit and matter. Since 
 God could have no direct connection with what was 
 essentially evil, they interposed spiritual beings be- 
 tween God and man, who, as they were the means of 
 communication with God, naturally also became objects 
 of worship. All kinds of weird mysticism in various 
 Gnostic systems grew out of this theosophy, combining 
 in varjnng degree different elements of Christian truth ; 
 but the one common feature was a dualism, in which 
 the world of matter, as being evil, was opposed to 
 God. 
 
 The moral results of this creed ran in two opposite 
 directions which at first seem contradictory, but are 
 
196 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 seen to have the same source; one was towards asceti- 
 cism, the other towards license. It is not difficult to 
 understand how these two opposing ethical concep- 
 tions grew from the same root. ( i ) If matter be evil, 
 and man is bound up in matter, the spirit is to be 
 freed by as complete abstinence as possible, by having 
 as little to do with the physical as can be, by mortify- 
 ing the body. The more we reduce the contact, the 
 better chance we have of avoiding defilement : the more 
 the cord that binds soul and body is attenuated, the 
 purer the soul becomes. The way to attain spirituality 
 is to suppress and uproot the sensuous. 
 
 (2) But at the best this can only be partial. We 
 cannot altogether, do what we hke, escape the malig- 
 nant touch of surrounding evil, so long as we live. 
 So the opposite rule was arrived at, that matter does 
 not really count in the spiritual life of man, that 
 instead of fighting and trampling on it, the best way 
 to show contempt of it is to pay no heed to it. Let 
 a man just follow the bent of his nature ; let him treat 
 the evil matter as something outside of himself. The 
 world of sense is a thing apart, and has no claims over 
 the spirit. So, riotous libertinism was often the result 
 of the very theory, which also produced the fiercest 
 severity to the body; both alike due to the selfsame 
 thought of the essential contradiction of the sensuous 
 and the spiritual elements of human nature. 
 
 Still, though license of life was an inevitable eflFect 
 to many, as a matter of fact to the more serious and 
 religious minds the other alternative of asceticism was 
 the course chosen. The tendency to make religion a 
 mystery, as was the case with Gnosticism, is naturally 
 accompanied to a sincerely religious man with a tend- 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 197 
 
 ency to make morality ascetic. For, " just in pro- 
 portion as the divine is separated from the human, and 
 the Christian conception of their unity loses its direct 
 relation to life, salvation gets to be conceived as a 
 deliverance of man from the world, and not as a de- 
 liverance of the world from itself, or as the realisation 
 of the divine spirit in it. The idea that the natural is 
 essentially impure, and that the ideal life is, so far 
 as possible, to escape from it, is the necessary result 
 of a religious doctrine that breaks the bond between 
 God and His creatures." ^ 
 
 Against Gnosticism the Church of the second cen- 
 tury had to fight for very life, and she has since borne 
 the scars of the struggle both in creed and in prac- 
 tice. It was a formidable rival, partly because ascetic 
 tendencies were widely spread at the time, and partly 
 because the polytheistic instincts of pagan peoples 
 would be satisfied by angel-worship and similar fea- 
 tures. But the danger chiefly lay in the Church com- 
 ing to terms with it rather for the sake of the good 
 that was in it, and because to some extent the two 
 could go together a certain distance. Indeed, as we 
 have hinted, the Church did let herself be too much 
 influenced by philosophical speculations similar to 
 Gnosticism. The explanation why this Gnostic philos- 
 ophy grew to such proportions, and affected the Church 
 so much, lay in its points of contact with Christianity. 
 They both sought salvation from sin, and the union 
 of man with God; and even the rigorous asceticism 
 after all seemed only a more serious and determined 
 form of Christian morality. The widespread dualism 
 which is seen in so many forms in the ancient world, 
 
 * Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion, vol. ii. p, 284. 
 
198 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 was due to a religious instinct. The dualism of Greek 
 philosophy, with its attendant ascetic practice, was a 
 protest against the common Greek religion, which 
 deified nature and sanctioned all human impulses as 
 divine; and early Christianity, which had a thousand- 
 fold keener moral passion against the impurity of life 
 that was the fruit of pagan nature-religion, naturally 
 allied itself with the higher principle, and was in- 
 clined to fall into the same mistake of dualism. The 
 Church did not come out of this struggle without marks 
 of conflict. The victor was affected for good and 
 for evil; and one of the effects, for good and for 
 evil, was the ascetic bent given to the Christian life. 
 Many times in subsequent movements the Church 
 seems to hover on the brink of this dualism, which 
 so completely sanctions asceticism. Thus, we find 
 something almost like dualism in much of mediaeval 
 devotional literature, the same inevitable combination 
 of mystical speculation and practical asceticism. The 
 common depreciating of the body, the despising it as 
 the seat of sin, are symptoms of an underlying concept 
 tion similar to the Gnostic. The innate evil of the 
 body as such is often a presupposition, as could be 
 shown by countless quotations from almost any well- 
 known devotional book. " The devil sleepeth not," says 
 A Kempis, '' neither is the flesh yet dead ; therefore 
 cease not to prepare thyself to the battle." ^ Or take 
 such a saying as this from the teaching of Brother 
 Giles, one of the companions of St. Francis : " Our 
 wretched and weak human flesh is like the pig, that 
 ever delighteth to wallow and befoul itself in the mud, 
 deeming the mud its great delight. Our flesh is the 
 
 ^ Imitatio Christi, Bk. 11., chap. ix. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 199 
 
 devil's knight ; for it resists and fights against all those 
 things that are of God for our salvation." ^ 
 
 Alexandrian thought, which influenced the creed 
 of the whole Church so powerfully, was moved by the 
 attempt to mediate between Jewish Christianity and 
 Greek dualism, and was always inclined to look on the 
 body as a clog hindering the spirit; so that with it 
 the ideal came to be the uprooting of the physical 
 principle of life rather than the sanctifying of it. It 
 was through this strong impact of Gnostic influence 
 that the Church got the decided ascetic bent, which per- 
 sisted for centuries. Whatever other elements entered 
 into the various Gnostic systems, this one of the in- 
 herent sinfulness of matter was always present. This 
 attitude to matter as evil led some of the later Gnostics 
 to hold Docetic views of Christ's life; for, if matter 
 is evil, Jesus, they held, could never have taken a real 
 body. The earthly body in which He appeared to men 
 could only be an illusion, and His death also only an 
 appearance. From the austerity which we have seen 
 was natural to Christians in face of a corrupt civilisa- 
 tion, we can understand the points of contact such 
 speculations would have with the Christian faith; and 
 the Gnostic heresy would get foothold through the fact 
 that there were groups in the Church from the earliest 
 days, who tended towards a rigid practice of asceti- 
 cism, making vegetarianism, celibacy, renunciation of 
 worldly goods, rules of life. 
 
 We can see, for example, from the Epistle to the 
 Colossians, that St. Paul is there combating false 
 teachers, who seem to have been tainted with what 
 came afterwards to be known as Gnostic ideas. It 
 
 * Teaching of Brother Giles^ viii. 
 
200 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 is not to be supposed that St. Paul was confronted 
 with a completely formulated system. We do not 
 find in the epistle anything like the full Gnostic system, 
 which was a later growth, but we find symptoms similar 
 to those which later on developed into that heresy. 
 The indications are vague, because the system had not 
 been formulated with definiteness as it came to be in 
 the second century. It is rather a tendency of some- 
 what similar character. Phrygia was a hotbed of such 
 speculations, and gave a suitable climate for the Gnostic 
 leaven, though in all probability, when St. Paul wrote, 
 the Church was only troubled by a local form of the- 
 osophy, mixing the Christian teaching with Jewish and 
 Pagan elements. Orientalism was then, and increas- 
 ingly came to be, in the air, and there was a ferment 
 of mystical speculation; but whatever the other in- 
 gredients, this idea of matter as essentially evil seems 
 the constant factor, and that implied an extreme ascetic 
 morality. 
 
 The two chief characteristics of the false teachers 
 at Colossae certainly seem to have been similar errors 
 of speculation and practical errors. The speculative 
 errors included a worship of angels and intermediate 
 powers, dethroning Christ from at least His unique 
 place, as such references show as, " Let no man beguile 
 you of your reward in a voluntary humility and wor- 
 shipping of angels." ^ The indications suggest the be- 
 ginnings of the fantastic Gnostic system, in which the 
 creation of the world was looked on as a series of 
 divine emanations down through an almost endless 
 hierarchy of spiritual powers, in which Jesus took a 
 place, till at last matter, the lowest in the scale, was 
 
 * Col. ii. i8. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 201 
 
 reached. The practical error grew out of their view 
 of evil as a property of matter, which made asceticism 
 a necessity. So we find them recommending various 
 kinds of abstinence as methods of attaining perfection. 
 St. Paul ironically repeats their formula of prohibi- 
 tion, " Handle not, nor taste, nor touch." ^ They rec- 
 ommended austerities to check the indulgence of the 
 flesh, and part of St. Paul's argument is to point out 
 that such treatment is worthless for the purpose. The 
 severity to the body, which was part of their teaching, 
 failed to lift them out of the range of their dreaded 
 enemy. Their barren struggle against the things which 
 perish in the using, only obscured for them the real 
 problem of sin. A life swayed by a rigorous ascetic 
 motive may have no richness nor depth in it, and be 
 only external conformity to rules — " the precepts and 
 doctrines of men," as St. Paul calls them. All such 
 externalism in morality defeats itself. St. Paul, as 
 his argument shows, detected the danger in the incipi- 
 ent Gnosticism of the Colossians, a danger which after- 
 wards proved to be a very real one, of the faith be- 
 coming a sort of esoteric doctrine full of mystical 
 speculation, and at the same time losing all its ethical 
 hold on life. 
 
 Points of contact may also be noted with similar 
 manifestations on the Jewish side in the strange sect 
 of the Essenes, a sect not mentioned in the New Testa- 
 ment, but which influenced the early Church. Practi- 
 cally all our information about them comes from Jo- 
 sephus, and Philo of Alexandria, and a short note by the 
 Roman Pliny. Briefly, the Essenes seem to have been 
 a sect of Jews, practising a form of religious commun- 
 
 * Col. ii. 21. 
 
202 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 ism with no private property — on one side an exag- 
 gerated type of the Pharisee, with scrupulous washings 
 and strict keeping of the Sabbath ; but in addition they 
 lived with a strictness unknown to the ordinary Jew, 
 refused to drink wine or eat flesh, refused the use of 
 oil for anointing, excluded women, and prohibited mar- 
 riage. They had also secret doctrines of angels, and 
 mystical theories of the soul and the world. They 
 too seemed to have believed in the inherent evil of 
 matter, as they denied the immortality of the body, 
 while holding that of the soul. '' Their doctrine is," 
 writes Josephus, " that bodies are corruptible and that 
 the matter they are made of is not permanent ; but that 
 the souls are immortal, and continue for ever, and that 
 they come out of the most subtle air, and are united 
 to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn 
 by a certain natural enticement ; but that when they are 
 set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as re- 
 leased from a long bondage, rejoice and mount up- 
 ward." ^ This thought of the body as the prison of the 
 soul, existing only as a dreadful hindrance to the 
 spirit, is the conception which underlies all asceticism, 
 and means dualism in the world and life. When car- 
 ried to its logical conclusion, it ends in despair. In 
 the Christian Church it never was quite logical, and 
 could not be, if it were to retain any Christian features 
 at all. 
 
 Thus, even in the mediaeval Church, Christian as- 
 ceticism was saved from the worst results of such a 
 system by being looked on as a means to an end — 
 an end -which included the ultimate good of the body 
 itself. The Church never allowed dualism in its creed, 
 
 * Josephus, Wars of the Jews, ii^ viii, ii. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 203 
 
 and never accepted the idea that matter was essentially 
 evil. This is graphically seen in St. Augustine's Con- 
 fessions, where the greatest intellectual difficulty he 
 had in accepting Christianity was the attraction of 
 Manichaeism, a system which assumed the existence of 
 two rival powers antagonistic to each other, from 
 which all created things come. Augustine knew that 
 any such thought was radically opposed to Christi- 
 anity ; and afterwards, when he had rejected the heresy, 
 though naturally he was ascetic by temperament and 
 went as far as any in practical renunciation, yet in the 
 statement of his theology he denied dualism in the 
 world in any shape or form of the theory. This denial, 
 which is essential to all Christian theology, carried 
 with it the conclusion that the natural powers of man, 
 which are so often evil in tendency, can be turned into 
 good, indeed must be. Christian asceticism in its 
 deepest thought renounced the world in order to save 
 it : its purpose was to sanctify the physic.al nature, and 
 make it an instrument of spiritual good. It was not 
 an escape from the natural, but a conquest of it. Thus, 
 when the ascetic ideal had strongest hold of the Church, 
 the ultimate reconciliation was never quite lost sight 
 of; and this is why the idea of loving service of the 
 world, such as inspired the Franciscans, is a natural 
 development of Christian ascetic piety. Merciless to 
 itself it might be, but tender to others. 
 
 We must also remember that the thought of dualism 
 in the world is a very natural mistake, and may be 
 due to a very noble one. Whenever the soul awakes 
 in a man, depreciation of the body is a natural conse- 
 quence, since in the body the results of sin are most 
 manifest. It is through the body that man is seen 
 
204 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 to be vulnerable to evil. Physical transgression is pal- 
 pable and obtrusive, so that the body is recognised as 
 without doubt the occasion for sin, giving foothold for 
 evil in the life. It is a simple step from this to the 
 position that it is also the cause of sin. To the spiritual 
 man the body seems to humiliate the soul, and the first 
 impulse is to spend the strength in internecine war- 
 fare between the flesh and spirit. The Christian doc- 
 trine of self-sacrifice at first also seems to countenance 
 this view of the body as fit only to be set aside in 
 the onward march of soul. The Bible, however, never 
 ascribes evil to matter as such, or to body as such ; and 
 the body is consistently regarded as an integral part 
 of man's nature. The New Testament ideal is ever a 
 sanctified body, freed from sin, glorified, not anni- 
 hilated ; and never thinks of a disembqdied state as the 
 ideal, even in connection with its doctrine of the resur- 
 rection. The New Testament writers, in ascribing to 
 Christ a flesh like ours, and yet maintaining His sin- 
 lessness, show that they did not assume dualism in 
 human nature, nor that evil was an essential part of 
 man's physical constitution. The Christian position 
 is that the body is not a clog on the spirit hindering 
 its high desires: it is the vehicle by which the spirit 
 works, and the channel through which the spirit is 
 taught and influenced. The very heart of the Chris- 
 tian position is stated by St. Paul when he says in pro- 
 found words, " The body is for the Lord, and the Lord 
 for the body." ^ The incarnation has set the seal of 
 glory on human flesh. The doctrinal value of the in- 
 carnation and the death and the resurrection of Christ 
 must lie in the fact that He took on Him real and 
 
 * I Cor. vi. 3. 
 
ORIGIN OF ASCETICISM 205 
 
 complete human nature. That Jesus was made man, 
 born of a woman, that He drank of the cup of human 
 life and tasted what it is for a man to die, means 
 dignity for the very flesh. What He has so graced and 
 blessed cannot be called common or unclean. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 
 
 IT might be thought unnecessary to enter at this 
 late day into an exposure of this ideal, as it may 
 be contended that the world has quietly put it 
 aside as an exploded error. It has been judged 
 in its fullest form in the monastic system, and has 
 been found wanting. It might be dismissed by us as 
 disposed of by the verdict of history, after a long trial, 
 and under the most favourable circumstances. New- 
 man in his Apologia describes how Augustine's words, 
 Securus judicat orbis t err arum, impressed him when 
 he was taking his momentous step to the Church of 
 Rome ; and we may use the same words about the great 
 monastic system, and may think that the whole theory 
 on which it was based is set aside by the practical una- 
 nimity of judgment against it which history records ; 
 but such might be no more a valid and ultimate argu- 
 ment than it was in Newman's case. Weight must 
 always be given to what seems like the universal assent 
 of mankind, as in some of the instinctive beliefs which 
 rarely fail men. The verdict of history may appear 
 conclusive on the ascetic theory as found in the mon- 
 astic system; but history also shows the tendency to 
 revert to seemingly outworn stages, renewing them 
 once more with vigour, though it may be with a dif- 
 ference. Also, the problems of life are never solved 
 once for all : the old foes return with a new face, and 
 
 206 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 207 
 
 each generation has to make its own solutions. Even 
 the corruption of the monasteries, which was so fla- 
 grant, and which made an indignant world sweep them 
 away, does not dispose of the theory for which they 
 stood; as abuse is no conclusive argument against the 
 original value of the institution itself. In any case, 
 whether there be a danger of a revival of similar mani- 
 festations among us in our modern life or not, the 
 truth, which gave the system its vitality, is no less a 
 truth to-day, and is open to exaggeration and false 
 applications still. It thus remains useful, if not nec- 
 essary, to notice the defects and temptations of the 
 ascetic ideal. 
 
 The ascetic ideal taken by itself results in failure, 
 even more disastrous than the failure of the theor>- 
 of self-culture; for the latter at least aims at a posi- 
 tive end, while the former spends its strength on a 
 merely negative method. We have admitted that there 
 is truth in both, and that a place must be found for 
 both in our plan of a true life ; but, though asceticism 
 may be the nobler fault arising from a passionate long- 
 ing for purity, the other ideal is the more complete. 
 This can be seen from the fact that even ascetic prac- 
 tises can only be justified as methods chosen to reach 
 a truer culture. Indeed culture, if it is to be more than 
 an easy acceptance of the natural, must to some extent 
 make use of restraint to achieve its end. Sacrifice is 
 essential for a well-balanced character and life. The 
 scholar must make some sacrifice of bodily health, or 
 at least of bodily pleasure, if only to give him time to 
 study. It is recognised to be justifiable to give up 
 pleasure of sense in the interests of intellectual good, 
 
2o8 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 to " scorn delights and live laborious days," that truth 
 may be reached. It can be even seen to be noble and 
 right to make some sacrifice and mental culture for a 
 larger spiritual good. Sacrifice there must always be, 
 since nothing can be got without it; and the ideal of 
 culture would be a dead-letter without the upward 
 striving. When the lower in any sphere is given up 
 for the higher, we commend the sacrifice, and feel that 
 it is amply justified. 
 
 But while culture, rightly viewed, is forced to ad- 
 mit a place for sacrifice, it only throws out into clearer 
 relief the subordinate position of sacrifice as purely a 
 means. Sacrifice, which looks upon the restraint as a 
 good thing in itself, and which is not undertaken ex- 
 plicitly for some other end, is the barrenest and the 
 most dangerous object man can set before him. It is 
 dishonouring both to man and to God ; to man, because 
 it means the useless impoverishment of life; to God, 
 because it implies that the mere suffering of body, or 
 the denial of reason, can in themselves please Him. 
 Yet this is the besetting temptation, which asceticism 
 has never been able to avoid. To elevate self-denial 
 into an end in itself, opens the door to many evils of 
 creed and of life, and degrades religion; and yet to 
 so elevate self-denial into an end, either wholly or 
 partially, is the position of the ascetic ideal. The 
 method insisted on, as can be seen from any book of 
 ascetic devotion, is, Deny yourself every satisfaction, 
 deny the eyes delight in seeing, the tongue the pleasure 
 of speech, the palate what it likes, the ears the music 
 of man and the song of birds, the body all ease and 
 comfort ; and the more complete this denial is, the more 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 209 
 
 meritorious is the exercise, and the more pleasing the 
 sacrifice is to God. 
 
 The very half truth in it makes its inherent false- 
 ness the more dangerous. A religious man must deny 
 himself many things of ear and eye and tongue. He 
 must often renounce pleasure ; and all this is true, even 
 to men who have no religious ideal, but who, like the 
 self-contained culturists, have any high purpose at all. 
 We do not need to be told the duty and obligation of 
 self-denial by any anchorite of old, or by the weak de- 
 votionalists of to-day, who echo faintly the anchorites' 
 creed without the courage to follow their practice. It 
 comes to every earnest man, and certainly it comes 
 with forceful insistence to every sincere Christian soul, 
 who knows that he must bend to a cross if he would 
 follow his Master. He knows he must give up if he 
 would be true to himself, as well as true to Him. But 
 even where self-mortification may seem to be most 
 necessary, it must never be for its own sake. Sacrifice 
 can have no justification whatever, and must be cursed 
 with futility, except as it is undertaken for a higher 
 purpose. Self-denial is always a relative thing, either 
 relative to some good of self, or relative to some good 
 of others. In the first case, when it is in some legiti- 
 mate self-interest, it is designed to minister to some 
 form of culture, some clearer mental enlightenment, 
 or some deeper moral discipline, or some richer spirit- 
 ual blessing — which means that it is for the sake of 
 man's own best life, for a more attractive development, 
 for a higher culture. Christ's teaching, even in the 
 passages which seem most an encouragement to asceti- 
 cism, is that it is better to pluck out an eye or cut off 
 
210 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 a hand than to allow the whole body to perish, that it 
 is therefore for the sake of the larger and higher life. 
 And if any form of self-culture taken by itself fails, 
 as we have shown it does fail, how much more must 
 the ascetic ideal fail, since it is only a means towards 
 a means ! 
 
 Following on the initial mistake, which elevates what 
 at the best can only be a means into an end in itself, 
 it omits elements from the moral ideal, which are neces- 
 sary to keep it sane and sweet, such as the place of 
 pleasure. Men have instinctively felt that happiness 
 must somehow be associated with whatever is looked 
 on as the great end of human life ; since so many things 
 in the world are capable of giving pleasure, and even 
 the necessary purposes of nature hold out bribes of 
 pleasure, or at least of freedom from pain. It is, for 
 example, for the maintenance of life that food should 
 be taken, and nature manages to secure her purpose 
 by making it on the whole a pleasure to eat. In vari* 
 ous ways pleasure is put before us as a sort of lure to 
 lead us to do certain things, so that it seems natural 
 for man to consider among other things how a certain 
 course will affect his happiness. And though men early 
 discovered that to make pleasure the aim of life was 
 a sure way to deprive it of all true joy, still they have 
 never given up the innate assurance that happiness 
 must at least be included in man's chief end. It throws 
 the whole providence of God into utter confusion to 
 imagine that happiness in itself is evil, and that moral 
 good implies its eradication. 
 
 It was the early faith of Israel that righteousness 
 inevitably produced prosperity, that there was complete 
 correspondence between the moral life and the outward 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 211 
 
 government of the world. They looked with assurance 
 to see the wicked wither away, and to see the good man 
 send his roots deep like a tree and spread his branches 
 wide. They expected a happy prosperous life for the 
 man who kept the divine law, and walked in the way 
 of the commandments. One of the keenest problems of 
 the Bible was how to reconcile this seeming axiom of 
 faith with the facts of experience. It is the problem of 
 the Book of Job, and of some of the finest Psalms,^ 
 arising from the evident knowledge that often the good 
 man suffers and the evil man prospers. They could 
 not believe that this apparent contradiction could be 
 real; for, if the world is governed in a moral way, it 
 was to be expected that good would invariably be re- 
 warded and evil be punished. 
 
 The first intuitive faith that the keeping of the law 
 brought earthly happiness looked too much on the sur- 
 face ; and through the sore struggle to account for the 
 discrepancies men of faith were driven inward, and 
 religion became more spiritual. Yet men have never 
 given up the belief that in some way there is an essential 
 connection between the two. It is an instinct of the 
 heart that happiness and goodness go together, that 
 they must, if God be reasonable, and certainly must if 
 He be righteous. It is a commonplace of religious 
 faith that righteousness and blessedness are in- 
 separably united; and indeed all morality, and all law. 
 and all thinking, are based on it. It demoralises both 
 life and religion to believe that God does not desire the 
 happiness of His creatures, just as surely as it de- 
 moralises life and religion to imagine that He has no 
 higher aim for them than that they should be happy. 
 
 *£. g. Psalms xxxvii., xlix, Ixxiii. 
 
212 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 It was a wise, as well as a scriptural, answer which 
 was given to the first question of the Westminster 
 Shorter Catechism as to man's chief end, " Man's chief 
 end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." It 
 is not without reason that spiritual life and blessed- 
 ness are always in some form joined together; for 
 goodness and happiness were not meant to be divided. 
 
 To separate happiness from the moral ideal, or to 
 make happiness itself the ideal, each result in fearful 
 mistake. It does not come within our scope to show 
 the fallacy of the latter of these alternatives, though 
 it is evident that to make happiness the end cuts away 
 the foundation from morality; for it changes law into 
 arbitrary choice according to personal inclination. In 
 practice it leads to Epicureanism, however refined the 
 form may be. We can see what havoc it must make 
 of all the noblest and highest qualities in man, if we 
 say that there is nothing better than happiness, even 
 though we safeguard that by trying to show how much 
 better and more lasting the higher pleasures are than 
 the lower ones. As a matter of experience also it is 
 found that the pursuit of pleasure is doomed to dis- 
 appointment, and can never escape from what Carlyle 
 calls that inexorable all-encircling ocean moan of 
 ennui. '' If you could mount to the stars, and do yacht 
 voyages under the belts of Jupiter, or stalk deer on the 
 ring of Saturn, it would still begirdle you." ^ 
 
 But if it is true that to make happiness the end leads 
 to failure, it is equally true that to leave out happiness 
 from the moral ideal is also failure, and to an earnest 
 man it must mean asceticism. Asceticism looks upon 
 pleasure even in things innocent as sin, and rightly so, 
 
 ^Latter-Day Pamphlets \^ Jesuitism]. 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 213 
 
 if it is not part of the moral ideal for a man. Logically, 
 this would result in the termination of all human so- 
 ciety, and indeed of human life itself. Asceticism, 
 which set itself to uproot and exterminate certain 
 natural impulses, could not help looking on pleasure 
 as a lure to trap the unwary soul, and on beauty as a 
 temptation of the devil. 
 
 How the thought works out we see from Augustine, 
 whom we quote, because with his keen and bold in- 
 tellect he unbares the essential principle of ascetic dis- 
 trust of pleasure as such. In his Confessions he dis- 
 cusses the temptations which come to him, in spite of 
 having cut himself off from the world and given him- 
 self wholly to God; and among them he tells us his 
 difficulties concerning music. He is half inclined to 
 condemn it in its use in the Church services, because 
 of the pleasure it gives him. " Sometimes I wish. the 
 whole melody of sweet music, to which the Psalms of 
 David are generally set, to be banished from my ears, 
 ay, and from those of the Church itself." ^ He blames 
 himself for letting the melody please him, and is sus- 
 picious of the emotions created by the music. He calls 
 it a gratification of the flesh, that he should find more 
 satisfaction in the divine words when they are sung 
 with a sweet and accomplished voice, than in the ordi- 
 nary reading of the words themselves. He knows it 
 to be sin, that he should have any such enjoyment. 
 He rather approves of the plan of Athanasius, Bishop 
 of Alexandria, who partly avoided the difficulty by a 
 compromise, and made the reader of the Psalm intone 
 with so slight an inflection of voice that it was more 
 like recitation than chanting. Augustine is only kept 
 
 * Confessions^ Bk, x. chap, xxxiii. 
 
214 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 from condemning Church music altogether, by the 
 memory of how it affected him before he was a Chris- 
 tian, and how it moved him towards religion. His 
 faltering conclusion is, " Thus I hesitate between the 
 danger of mere enjoyment, and my experience of their 
 wholesomeness ; and I am more drawn, though not 
 now declaring an irrevocable opinion, to approve of 
 the custom of chanting in Church, that so by the de- 
 light of the ears the weaker minds may rise to the 
 feeling of devotion. Yet when it befalls me to be more 
 moved with the singing than with the words sung, I 
 confess that I sin grievously, and then I would prefer 
 not to hear the chanter." His dilemma is created by 
 the fact that the music is useful in impressing others 
 to enter religion; otherwise he would condemn it, as 
 far as he is concerned. 
 
 It is the same with pleasant odours,^ though these 
 do not trouble him much, as they do not represent 
 any great attraction ; but pleasant sights are a greater 
 difficulty than even the musical temptation, since they 
 are more constant. The eyes love fair and varied 
 forms, and bright and pleasing colours, and the light 
 all through the day suffuses everything, charming 
 him with its varied play, even when he is not thinking 
 of it. He resists these seductions of the eyes, though 
 he confesses that often he is ensnared ; for " that cor- 
 poreal light, of which I speak, seasoneth the life of this 
 world for her blind lovers with an enticing and dan- 
 gerous sweetness." ^ And of course the numberless 
 things made by various arts and crafts, if made more 
 beautiful than is necessary, exceeding moderate use 
 
 * Confessions, Bk. x. chap, xxxii. 
 * Ibid., chap. xxxv. 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IPEAL 215 
 
 and all pious meaning, only add to the enticements 
 of the eyes — to say nothing of pictures and statuary. 
 Augustine, with his strong and spiritual mind did 
 have a glimmering of the great truth that those beau- 
 tiful things, which are conveyed through men's souls 
 to the hands of artificers, come from the Beauty which 
 is above our souls ; but his deep-rooted asceticism could 
 not let him rest there in that noble thought, and his 
 last word is that his steps are entangled with these 
 beauties, and he appeals to God to pluck him out. 
 
 The same deadly temptation lurks in the curiosity, 
 or appetite for knowing, which he classes as " lust of 
 the eyes," since the eyes are chief among the senses 
 as sources of knowledge. This curiosity, which we 
 to-day would honour as the mother of science, is to 
 him full of snares and perils, and it is his joy that he 
 has cut much of it away, and driven it from his heart. 
 He is glad to think that he does not now care to 
 know the transits of the stars, and has ceased to 
 desire the sights of the theatre; but he is not quite 
 easy in conscience, since, though he would not go to a 
 circus to see a dog course a hare, yet if by chance he 
 saw it happen in a field, he is not certain but that 
 the sport would divert his mind from some great 
 subject of thought, and he would sin in the inclina- 
 tion of his mind. 
 
 Naturally, his difficulty is most of all with the 
 pleasures of the palate. He must eat if he would 
 live; and if he eat he cannot avoid feeling the satis- 
 faction of taste. It is no question with him of gluttony 
 or drunkenness, which would be impossible to him, 
 and which of course he would condemn, as every 
 moralist must, on grounds of excess. He is troubled 
 
2i6 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 by the fact that there should be any pleasure at all in 
 such a thing as eating. He wants to eat only for 
 the necessary care of body, for health's sake, that he 
 may do his work ; and he finds his very fasting a snare ; 
 for after fasting, while he is passing from the dis- 
 comfort of emptiness to the content of satisfaction, he 
 is only adding to the pleasure of eating. '' And though 
 health be the cause of eating and drinking, yet a dan- 
 gerous enjoyment waiteth thereon like a lackey, and 
 oftentimes endeavours to precede it, so as to be the 
 real cause of what I say I do, or wish to do, only 
 for health's sake." ^ God has taught him, he asserts, 
 that he should set himself to take food only as physic, 
 but there is this terrible difficulty of holding the reins 
 of the throat, which would be a simple matter, if he 
 could only hold them so tight as to dispense with 
 food altogether. 
 
 We have illustrated this point at such length from 
 Augustine, because he is so frank in his statement 
 of the difficulties of the ascetic theory, and so cour- 
 ageous in accepting the consequences which the theory 
 involves. We see here the fatal introspection, which 
 ever goes hand in hand with asceticism, and which 
 induces a morbid and unnatural life. Instead of assist- 
 ing in the task of quelling the senses, it only hinders, 
 for it lays the stress in the wrong place. Instead of 
 freeing the mind from the engrossments of sense, it 
 only clogs it the more, enhancing the powers of the 
 senses. Persistent suppression of our impulses and 
 sensibilities creates a condition of disease. The child, 
 who is ever held down by a system of repression, 
 loses the natural buoyancy of mind, and becomes 
 
 * Confessions, Bk. x. chap. xxxi. 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 217 
 
 morbid, living under a leaden sky. This pathetic sight 
 is common enough in child life, due sometimes even to 
 over-education through the folly of guardians, who do 
 not realise that happy play is part of a child's education 
 and who do not see that the loss of a joyful childhood 
 can be made up by no subsequent advantages, even if 
 their system did give these advantages. 
 
 The method of repression in moral discipline, so 
 vividly illustrated by Augustine, often also shows its 
 failure by the terrible reactions which occur. Men like 
 Augustine are saved from such by their passionate 
 love of God, and by their absorbing work, and by 
 their intellectual activity; but many are the instances 
 of moral relapse in the stories of the desert saints, 
 and of those whose asceticism was even more logical 
 than Augustine's. The very temptations which drove 
 men to adopt extreme measures for their extirpation, 
 seem to be strengthened by the treatment. Nature 
 revenges herself for the acts of violence done against 
 her. The natural inclinations, which cannot be com- 
 pletely suppressed, are often driven into mean, and 
 sometimes into evil, channels. The attempt to turn the 
 current of Nature back on herself only dams up the 
 waters, to break out somewhere else and devastate the 
 life. The terrible stories of awful fights with devils, 
 and the deadly assaults of the old passions, in the 
 life of St. Anthony and others, illustrate the truth 
 that their method, instead of reducing temptation, 
 only creates it. If Anthony had lived an active life 
 in some worthy work, many of his temptations would 
 never have troubled him at all. Idle self-meditation 
 makes a man brood on his evil thoughts, and chains 
 his mind to them. It was the recognition of this, which 
 
21 8 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 is the reason why in all the rules of the great monastic 
 orders labour was enforced. 
 
 We also clearly see that a theory like Augustine's, 
 which looks on the ordinary pleasures and enjoyments 
 of life as in themselves sinful, would mean self-mur- 
 der if carried to its logical issue. To make pleasure 
 essentially antagonistic to the moral ideal brings life to 
 a standstill. And on the same ground we should 
 as surely starve the mind, or the soul, as the body. 
 Life is not made any easier for us by a general doctrine 
 of self-denial; for the question arises, How far? 
 Where are we to draw the line, if we are to draw any 
 line ? Must we only deny our senses what they seem to 
 crave as legitimate satisfaction? If pleasure is a fatal 
 objection, can it logically be limited to the pleasure of 
 sense? Must we not also deny the pleasures of 
 thought to our mind, our intellectual faculties? for 
 sm is as common there as in the body, and is far 
 more subtle. Must we even go further (and if not, 
 why not?), and deny ourselves the very highest things 
 in our nature — affection, conscience, sympathy, the 
 pleasures which undoubtedly result, say from the 
 exercise of benevolence? 
 
 The right view of this question of pleasure is the 
 Biblical view, that there is a true and legitimate de- 
 sire for happiness, provided that if we zvill the end 
 we also will the true means. We need to recognise that 
 happiness is inseparable from character; that is, we 
 must not desire to be happy, without deserving to 
 be happy. " Morality is properly not the doctrine 
 how we should make ourselves happy, but how we 
 should become worthy of happiness. It is only when 
 religion is added that there also comes in the hope of 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 219 
 
 participating some day in happiness, in proportion as 
 we have endeavoured to be not unworthy of it." ^ Re- 
 ligion thus gives its seal to the natural craving for 
 happiness, and at the same time saves it from the 
 dangers which give excuse for the ascetic distrust of 
 it. Religion points to ethical happiness, the pleasure 
 which flows from moral effort, as distinguished from 
 mere animal enjoyment. Such ethical happiness, in- 
 finitely higher as it is than physical pleasure, must not 
 be made the end of life. We are not to seek the highest 
 life for the sake of happiness. Nothing will so quickly 
 kill true religion as to embrace it for the sake of re- 
 ward; virtue for any kind of loaves and fishes is 
 not virtue made perfect, but only prudential calcula- 
 tion. Morality needs to be free, spontaneous, not blind 
 obedience to a rule on the one side, nor, on the other 
 side, a choice of alternatives based on which is likely 
 to pay best, but willing submission to the dictates of the 
 highest. This is the great truth, which gives grounds 
 for the ascetic distrust of pleasure in itself. 
 
 At the same time, virtue alone can bring true and 
 permanent joy. It is an assured truth, as Mill asserts, 
 that the higher pleasures are more satisfying and 
 more enduring than lower ones. Every one able to 
 judge will admit that intellectual and artistic pleas- 
 ures are of finer quality than any physical enjoyment ; 
 and this is equally true of spiritual blessedness. Therein 
 is a joy of the Lord which is the strength of life; a 
 perfect satisfaction of heart, of which the worldling \v 
 cannot even dream ; a fountain of peace and joy, which ) 
 the broken cisterns of earth cannot give to the thirsty i 
 lips that seek them. The Bible is full of Beatitudes, 
 
 * Kant, Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason, p. 271. 
 
220 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 asserting that, while no true self-surrender can be 
 made for happiness, yet self -surrender does open the j 
 door to happiness; and that therefore we cannot \ 
 separate joy from the Christial ideal. . The ascetic mis- 
 take in this region is an artificial division of human 
 life, which excludes happiness on what is deemed the 
 lower levels as inherently sinful. Christ's teaching, 
 on the contrary, is that if we seek first the kingdom 
 of God and His righteousness, if we submit to the law 
 of holiness and the law of love, all the other things 
 are added, and take their rightful place. Even the 
 things that the Gentiles seek come, without wasting 
 the life in the vain pursuit of them — *' He giveth it 
 His beloved in sleep." ^ He does not shut the door 
 of the world's beauty and truth on us. He does not 
 condemn as evil the aims which are so common among 
 men, the desire for happiness, the desire for knowl- 
 edge, the love of beauty and art. He simply says they 
 are not first. He says, Seek the highest, and in seeking 
 the highest every true function of life will be performed 
 and every true instinct satisfied. If we seek the 
 highest all else worth having is ours ; if we seek after 
 God, God's world will not fail u§. 
 
 The truth of the ascetic position on this question is 
 that happiness, either as an ideal for self, or even for 
 others, is not the true foundation of ethics. A man 
 must be willing to do without happiness, must put 
 duty first at all costs, must sometimes choose self- 
 sacrifice so complete that there seems no room for 
 earthly happiness in it. Yet happiness is a principle 
 which cannot be omitted, without perverting our whole 
 view of life, and leading to the false and strained mor- 
 *Ps. cxxvii. 2 (R. v., margin). 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 221 
 
 bidness we have noticed from Augustine's great book. 
 Nflnatural impulse is inherently wrong. It may be out ' 
 of place, inappropriate in time, diseased in its formS, 
 uncontrolled and lawless in its activities ; and for these 
 reasons it needs to be held in the grip of a consecrated 
 will, and it makes demands for self-denial and complete 
 control; but in itself it is not essentially sinful. To 
 hold this is a virtual denial of the divine providence 
 of the world. This is one of the causes of the failure 
 of the ascetic ideal. It is such an attitude, expressed 
 or latent, which has given cause for the reproach that 
 the world should be impoverished, by Christian 
 thought and effort being so much relegated to another 
 sphere than the practical. The reproach has grounds 
 in history from all forms of withdrawal from the 
 world, and all methods of repression used to reach 
 holiness. We must take the side of men of the world 
 in their protest against such an interpretation of the 
 demands of religion, though perhaps for different 
 reasons than theirs. Religion does not look on the 
 things on the earth as sinful in themselves, even when 
 it points away from them to things above. St. Paul 
 often states his position in such words as " All things 
 are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient 
 (profitable) ; all things are lawful unto me, but I will 
 not be brought under the power of any." ^ This is the 
 Christian attitude, which will not be brought under 
 the power of any, which, in the interests of the soul, 
 will even shrink from no necessary self-denial. While 
 it asserts that the only worthy end for man is one 
 above sense, and sees that a life concerned only with 
 things on the earth is futile, even though it may not 
 
 * I Cor. vi. 12. Cf. I Cor. x. 23. 
 
 :nt\ 
 'W\\ 
 
 Via I 
 
222 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 be sinful in a gross way ; it nevertheless refuses to look 
 upon the work of God's hands as evil. If on the one 
 hand the worldliness, which seeks to fill the deep heart 
 of man with things of sense, which never reaches out 
 hands of desire towards the unseen and eternal, is a 
 tragic failure; so on the other hand the other-world- 
 liness, which flees from the duties and ties of earth, 
 which slips off from the burden of being a man, is no 
 less a failure, though it be in the supposed interests 
 of sanctity. 
 
 Another mistake in the ascetic conception of the 
 moral ideal is the thought that abstinence is neces- 
 sarily a higher virtue than temperance. Abstinence^ 
 even from things recognised to be lawful, will often 
 be a man's duty, because of weakness in himself, or 
 because of some higher duty towards others. There 
 will always be room for a self-denial, which men of 
 the world would call quixotic and unnecessary. Com'^ 
 plete abstinence is certainly a safer way to pursue in 
 things that are doubtful, either because there happens' 
 to be a great deal of evil associated with the particular] 
 things good in themselves, or for example's sake, toj 
 save the young or the weak from temptation. But it 
 is a mistaken idea of virtue to rank the mere absti- 
 nence above a temperate and controlled use of the 
 material. The mere escape from temptation cannot be 
 compared with the virile mastery of the conditions 
 of life. Such an escape may be only a sign of moral 
 feebleness, and of incapacity to keep a true balance 
 amid the difficulties of the world. The temptations 
 involved in the possession of earthly property can no 
 doubt be avoided by giving it away, like St. Anthony; 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 223 
 
 but even the deepest of the temptations may remain 
 if the desire is retained; and it will always be a nobler 
 thing to use property wisely and graciously as a stew- 
 ard of the grace of God, than to bundle over the bur- 
 den to another. It is in the battle that soldiers are 
 best made, and through struggle that strength is got, 
 and by the stress and strain of life that character is 
 built. Character, like the oak, hardens its fibre in the 
 storm. There may be moral cowardice in what looks 
 like beautiful self-renunciation, the cowardice which 
 is afraid of life and its stem conditions. Milton's 
 noble words are applicable here : " I cannot praise a 
 fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and un- 
 breathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adver- 
 sary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal 
 garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. 
 Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we 
 bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is 
 trial, and trial is by what is contrary." ^ He thinks 
 the poet Spenser a better teacher than Scotus or 
 Aquinas; for he makes his true knight Guion, rep- 
 resenting Temperance, pass unscathed through all 
 the temptations which assail temperance, the cave of 
 Mammon and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might 
 see and know, and yet abstain.^ 
 
 The evasion of natural responsibilities is not vic- 
 tory; and it will ever remain a higher task to bring 
 the complete round of human experience into the 
 obedience of Christ. To refuse the ties of marriage 
 and those that link us to our fellows, to refuse the 
 obligations of the common business of the world, is 
 
 * Milton, Areopagitica. 
 'Faerie Queen, Bk. 11. canto 7. 
 
224 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 indeed to find a certain kind of safety; but it is at 
 the expense of the moral discipline, which these are 
 calculated to afford. We are acted on persistently by 
 the forces of our day, and are held fast in the meshes 
 of the social net, mixed up in our complex civilisation, 
 with the spirit of the world ceaselessly playing on us ; 
 but these are precisely the conditions that create 
 character, and that test of what stuff we are made. If 
 we were not so sensitive to our environment, if we 
 were not so easily affected by the tone and colour of 
 our spiritual surroundings, life would not, it is true, be 
 such a perilous venture for us; but the venture must 
 be made, if character is to be developed and strength- 
 ened. Clement, who had in many respects by far the 
 sanest and the most truly spiritual mind of all the 
 early Fathers, appreciated the value of ordinary life 
 as the true sphere of Christian activity. He opposed 
 the tendency of his time to magnify celibacy, and 
 pointed to married life as not only the normal life, 
 which it of course must be, but even the more honour- 
 able. " The genuine Christian has the Apostles for his 
 example ; and in truth it is not in the solitary life one 
 shows himself a man; but the victory is his, who as a 
 husband and father of a family, withstands all the 
 temptations that assail him in providing for wife and 
 children, servants and substance, without allowing 
 himself to be turned from the love of God. The man 
 with no family escapes many temptations; but as he 
 has none save himself to care for, he is of less worth 
 than the man who has more to disturb him, it is true, 
 in the work of his own salvation, but accomplishes 
 more m social life, and in truth presents in his own 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 225 
 
 case a miniature of providence itself." ^ It is true that 
 there are cases and times, when a man, who has given 
 no hostages to fortune, who is unhampered by such 
 ties as marriage, may be able to do a special piece of 
 work, may volunteer more easily for any forlorn 
 hope, undistracted by the cares and embarrassments in- 
 volved in all human relationships; and such a time 
 was the early centuries, when the Christian faith some- 
 times called for the completest sacrifice; but these 
 arc cases of practical expediency, and not of ascetic 
 principle. 
 
 The deepest idea at the root of asceticism is, as we 
 have seen, the radically false conception of human 
 nature, as a soul degraded by being imprisoned in 
 sinful matter. The attitude is, as Origen put it bluntly, 
 that all the evil which reigns in the body is due to the 
 five senses. 2 From this position it is natural to try 
 to limit the connection even if it cannot be altogether 
 severed. In practice asceticism confines sin to one or 
 two sensuous acts, and strenuously proceeds to uproot 
 the impulses which produce these acts. It has its 
 origin in facts, the fact of sin, and the duty of self- 
 control; but it takes a materialistic conception of 
 both of these facts. It sees that sin is the ruin of 
 man, but it looks on sin as not essentially a spiritual 
 evil. It sees the need of self-control, but it seeks this 
 by external means, by methods of repression. The 
 
 ^ Vide Neander's Church History, vol. i. section 3, p. 383 
 (T. and T. Clark). 
 
 " Omne vitium quod re gnat in cor pore ex quinque sensibus 
 pendet. 
 
226 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 false diagnosis vitiates the method of cure. It con- 
 fuses sin with sense, attributes evil to the animal 
 desires, and naturally proceeds to reduce the connec- 
 tion with sense. It fails, however, to evict sin, because 
 it does not go to the source. It does not follow that 
 sin is made less, even when sense is weakened, and 
 when sensuous temptation is immensely limited. The 
 old roue has not become virtuous because his passions 
 are burned out. He ceases to commit some of the 
 sins that formerly held him in thrall, but the cessation 
 is merely because his senses have weakened in their 
 relish for those particular sins, not because he is a 
 stronger moral being. Similarly, it might be possible 
 by all manner of self-inflicted austerities to so subject 
 the flesh that a special temptation might even cease, 
 without the process representing any moral advance. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, we do not escape temp- 
 tation, by cutting connection with the sordidness and 
 grossness of ordinary life. This was the experience 
 of all, that temptation was not shut out by convent 
 bars. Nilus, himself a monk, said of another monk, 
 who to escape inward temptation fled from his cell, 
 and ran about from one place to another, " He will 
 change his place, but not the anguish of his heart. He 
 will rather nourish and increase his temptations." The 
 initial thought, that" flesh is the seat of sin, can be 
 easily seen to be a fallacy. It cannot be so, since for 
 one thing there are clearly many sins, which are not 
 prompted by the animal nature at all, so that, even if 
 the flesh were beaten into subjection on these points, 
 the great battle against sin could hardly be said to be 
 begun. There would still stand all of the mind, and 
 the imagination, and subtler spiritual sins, entrench- 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 227 
 
 ing themselves in the citadel of life. Pride, envy, 
 hatred, for instance, are not touched by the material 
 methods of ascetic treatment. We have to go deeper 
 for the true diagnosis of sin, and deeper also for the 
 true cure. It is like trying to deal with a conflagra- 
 tion by putting out the sparks, without touching the 
 fire, the source of the sparks. Sin is not a physical 
 thing, and its cure cannot be effected by physical 
 means. It is the doom of asceticism that it sets itself 
 to an impossible task. 
 
 It is chiefly a failure in method therefore. By 
 using only repression and restraint, it withdraws at- 
 tention from the true seat of sin, which is the human 
 heart, and transfers it to what is really external to the 
 life. To have as weapons only negative prohibitions, 
 is to fight a losing battle. The ascetic method is but 
 another form of extemalism, which is the curse of 
 religion. Though it seems to begin in contempt for 
 the external side of life, as a matter of fact its fun- 
 damental mistake is that it exaggerates the external. 
 It sets too much stress on mere surroundings ; for true 
 life is possible anywhere, and evil is not confined to 
 particular spots. Temptations, therefore, are not 
 killed by creating a desert, and calling it peace. Hu- 
 mility may be found on the steps of a throne, and 
 spiritual pride can kill the soul of a solitary desert 
 saint, or the hermit on a pillar. It follows that the 
 means employed are futile, being purely negative, an 
 outside method of attacking the problem. It is false 
 to make virtue consist in the mere denial of gratifica- 
 tions which our nature craves; and it is, to say the 
 least, a calamity to look upon religion as a sort of 
 moral police saying, " You must not do this." Virtue, 
 
228 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 it is true, will always have a negative side; religion 
 will always seem self-denial; but that is not the 
 essence of either virtue or religion. The mere thwart- 
 ing of desire in ourselves, or in others, may mean not 
 a single inch of advance in true virtue or true religion. 
 We might multiply restrictions a thousandfold, and be 
 as far off from the desired goal as ever. The external 
 method of defence is futile, for it can never cover all 
 the ground. 
 
 What boots it at one gate to make defence, 
 And at another to let in the foe, 
 Effeminately vanquished ? ^ 
 
 We can see how true this is in other spheres of 
 life, as well as in religion. The ideal of the state is 
 not despotic rule, with men blindly bending to au- 
 thority, with coercive laws beating back individual 
 action at all points ; but a free state, where citizens 
 grow up in political liberty amid free institutions. 
 So also, the ideal of education is not dogmatic teach- 
 ing, which treats a child as fit only to be hedged 
 round by restrictions, and his mind to be cut and 
 shaped to pattern. It is rather the drawing out of 
 the innate capacity, giving each pupil freedom to 
 grow. Both in the state and in education, however 
 perfect they may be, there will be restraint, restrictive 
 laws in the one case, and rules and regulations in the 
 other, which repress wrong tendencies ; but these are 
 not the end either of the state or of education, but 
 are merely makeshifts to produce the ultimate 
 freedom. 
 
 * Milton, Samson Agonistes. 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 229 
 
 •Failure dogs the heels of every negative method 
 in all regions of life, but its failure is nowhere so 
 signal as in religion. William Blake said in his usual 
 style of striking paradox, " Men are admitted into 
 heaven, not because they have curbed and governed 
 their passions, or have no passions, but because they 
 have cultivated their understandings. The fool shall 
 not enter into heaven, let him be never so holy." ^ This 
 is the extreme opposite of the position of the ascetic 
 ideal, the statement of the gospel of culture in bold, 
 defiant outline. The truth of it is that the worth of 
 a life is not a negative, but ever a positive, value. Life 
 cannot reach completion by any system of " Thou shalt 
 not," however extended. Life cannot be guided by 
 any system of detailed commandment at all. The 
 area of life is too large to be covered by rules; for 
 there would continually arise something, which could 
 not be included in any commandment. Every ascetic 
 system of thought and practice fails, just because of 
 the external way of approaching the problem, confin- 
 ing life within straight lines, imprisoning it in rules. 
 
 Because of this, the failure is more marked when 
 the experiment is tried on a large scale. It may often 
 seem to succeed with the individual, because with the 
 individual it is usually self-chosen, and therefore 
 carries a certain moral dynamic ; but, when applied to 
 public affairs, its failure is instant and sure. Puritan- 
 ism in England, in spite of its great qualities, and its 
 magnificent services to the community, failed for the 
 selfsame reason, because it was too much a mere 
 negation, not only in its protests against the common 
 
 * Proverbs of Hell — Appendix to Marriage of Heaven and 
 Hell. 
 
230 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 enjoyments of men, but because of its aloofness from 
 many essential interests, and its isolation from hu- 
 man history. It revolted men, who were keenly sus- 
 ceptible to beauty, and to the charm and grace of life. 
 It looked with contempt, or with fear, on all natural 
 inclinations, and on the love of the beautiful — or at 
 least gave men the impression that it did. Its attitude 
 was too extreme and uncompromising. It had cour- 
 age and stern opposition to evil ; it hated the levity and 
 frivolity of so many classes at the time, and hated the 
 sins and scandals of both Church and State, which 
 indeed produced Puritanism; but its essential failure 
 v/as due to the external means it employed. When 
 morality is made to consist in rigid adherence to laws 
 and customs, it ceases to be true morality, and when 
 the strong hand is removed, life bounds back with all 
 the greater recoil. Morality must be a living spring 
 of action, self-engendered and free, or it will decay. 
 
 This is well illustrated by the history of all Sump- 
 tuary Laws, which different States used to pass in 
 a panic at the luxury and licence of life. In Rome, 
 when wealth increased, laws were passed regulating 
 the cost of entertainments, and the number of guests 
 one could invite, but never with any success for the 
 reformation of morals. In England there were many 
 such laws down to the time of the Reformation, regu- 
 lating the number of courses that were permitted at 
 dinner according to rank and degree, and the kind 
 of dresses people were allowed to wear, also accord- 
 ing to rank. The Scottish Parliament did the same for 
 the dress of ladies, quaintly stating that it was for 
 the sake of " the puir gentlemen their husbands and 
 fathers." If restraint in dress, and deportment, and 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 231 
 
 manner of living, come naturally from principle, then 
 it is well; but if repression in these things is only 
 forced on people from without, it is neither good 
 political economy, nor good morality. Unless by way 
 of setting a standard, and so gradually creating a pub- 
 lic conscience on such subjects, repressive laws really 
 effect nothing. Besides, it is always a practical failure, 
 human nature being what it is. Montaigne's criticism 
 of Sumptuary Laws on this score is a valid one. " The 
 way by which our laws attempt to regulate idle and 
 vain expenses in meat and clothes seems to be quite 
 contrary to the end designed. The true way would 
 be to beget in men a contempt for silks and gold, as 
 vain, frivolous, and useless; whereas we augment to 
 them the honours, and enhance the value of such 
 things, which surely is a very improper way to create 
 a disgust. For to enact that none but princes shall 
 eat turbot, shall wear velvet or gold lace, and to inter- 
 dict these things to the people, what is it but to bring 
 them into a greater esteem, and to set every one 
 more agog to eat and wear them ? " ^ It is useless to 
 begin at the circumference of life. 
 
 The mistake of all forms of asceticism, both per- 
 sonal and social, is partly, therefore, a mistake as to 
 where the denial is needed. Sin is much more than 
 bodily excess; it is not a property of matter, but a 
 condition of soul. Worldliness is not a thing of local- 
 ity, and purity is not a negative virtue. A man may 
 be in the world and yet not of it; a man may be out 
 of the world and yet of it. akin in spirit, held in its 
 toils. Sin is to be met and overcome at its source, 
 in the thought of the mind, in the imagination of the 
 
 ^Essays, chap, xxxiv., " Of Sumptuary Laws." 
 
232 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 heart; and this is to be accompHshed not by external 
 curbing, but by a new principle of life. Opposed to 
 externalism of morals, the Christian method demands 
 a renewing of will, producing spontaneous moral em- 
 ancipation. Instead of mere negative prohibitions, it 
 points as the true secret to the purifying of the inner 
 life, raising it into a higher sphere, where the lower 
 temptations can get no foothold. Instead of the nega- 
 tions it presents a positive; instead of rules and pre- 
 cepts of abstinence it offers a vital principle, which 
 will work itself out in all the details of life, and carry 
 its inspiring force to every region, sanctifying every 
 part, and leaving none as common and unclean. This 
 principle of life expresses itself in the ordinary rela- 
 tions, in the social duties of the family and the state. 
 The Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice even finds 
 its true sphere there, and not in useless asceticism. 
 
 Beginning at the centre, the whole circle will be per- 
 vaded with good, right to the circumference. " Walk 
 in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the 
 flesh," ^ is St. Paul's alternative to the fruitless efforts 
 after external holiness. He did call upon his converts 
 as part of the ethical implication of their faith to 
 mortify their members which are on the earth, ^ a word 
 which was often read, or misread, as an argument 
 for various kinds of world-denial and renunciation; 
 but it is no general system of artificial discipline which 
 he commends to them, and no glorification of the 
 desert as a school for saints. He goes on to describe 
 what he means, giving instances of the kind of self- 
 discipline required. It is not a statement that ordinary 
 life is evil, and that all the relations and environment 
 
 *Gal. A. i6. "Col. iii. 5- 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 233 
 
 in which we are placed in the world are evil; it is a 
 call to resist whatever in a man's life is opposed to the 
 Christian faith. He specifies some of the things in 
 those who have been taken out of paganism, which 
 need mortification, *' fornication, uncleanness, passion, 
 evil desire, covetousness." Repression, renunciation, 
 there must always be. A man must have his nature 
 under the curb, and must master his soul. Every life 
 knows best where the struggle must be. To one it 
 may be the torment of some passion, which needs con- 
 stant restraint ; to another it may be temper, or pride, 
 or a tongue hard to be controlled ; the besetting sin of 
 another may be sloth, or sluggishness of nature. It» 
 is there, at the point of least resistance, the true self-j 
 denial must be applied. But the method which the 
 Apostle gives as the true way to mortify the evil d«-, 
 sires, is to set the affections on hig'her things.^ J 
 
 Growth, not restraint by itself, is the true method; 
 not by crushing the lower, but by quickening the 
 higher. The extinction of evil by a process of evic- 
 tion is a failure, because even if it were possible there 
 is no security against the seven worse devils taking 
 up abode in the swept, and garnished, but empty 
 loom. The spiritual is attained, not by unnaturally 
 crushing the natural, but by disentangling the natural 
 from what is evil in it, and rising above it, so that the 
 higher becomes the natural. The way to overcome 
 is not by a policy of repression, negativing every 
 impulse as it arises, denying every craving, rooting 
 out every desire. Even as strategy there is a better 
 way, by turning the enemy's flank. It is vain to try 
 to kill evil thought, by striving to empty the mind of 
 
 » Col. iii. 2. 
 
234 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 all thought: it is at least a more hopeful method, by 
 fostering every thought of good, by filling the mind 
 with whatsoever things ajre lovely, and true, and 
 good, and pure. It is not the curb we need so much 
 as the guiding rein. Even as a policy we know some- 
 thing of the expulsive power of a new affection, in 
 Dr. Chalmers's great phrase. A noble attachment 
 will give a man power to repress the base, as no 
 mere coercive means will do. The higher motives, if 
 we would only believe it in dealing with other men 
 as well as with ourselves, are always the strongest. 
 Esprit de corps will do more for a regiment than the 
 lash. A high sense of honour will save a man from 
 disgrace, as no fear of punishment can. Christ's 
 method in all His teaching was not restriction and 
 negation. He often showed the futility of cleansing 
 the outside of the cup and the platter, and denounced 
 all the external methods of seeking holiness. Inward- 
 ness is the word which best describes His method. 
 He again and again pointed to the heart of man, as 
 the source of sin, and the sphere of holiness, and the 
 field of struggle ; for out of it are the issues of hfe. 
 
 In the next two chapters other indications will be 
 given of the inherent weakness of the ascetic ideal, 
 notably that it creates an artificial distinction in the 
 ethical standard, making two grades with two rules 
 of morality. But its failure is already sufficiently 
 made evident for the reasons given above — first that 
 it raises into an end what can only be justified as a 
 means; secondly, that it leaves out an essential ele- 
 ment of the moral ideal, happiness, and is therefore 
 led to look upon pain as in itself good; further, that 
 
FAILURE OF THE ASCETIC IDEAL 235 
 
 it makes abstinence a higher virtue than temperance, 
 and the evasion of natural responsibiHties more worthy 
 than the mastery of the temptations involved in them ; 
 and lastly, that it is on that account a mistake in 
 method, spending its force on external and repressive 
 rules. The conclusion we have so far arrived at is that 
 of the two ideals, that of culture is essentially higher 
 than that of restraint, in spite of the elements of 
 nobility in the latter ; since culture is at least a positive 
 end, and can be made to include restraint, indeed must 
 to some extent use it as a means to reach its full 
 fruition. 
 
IX 
 
 A MEDIAEVAL CONCEPTION OF SAINTHOOD 
 
 A FURTHER evidence of the harmful legacy 
 from the ascetic ideal is to be found in the 
 Church idea of a saint, and all that sprang 
 from it, both of a false standard of holiness, 
 and of errors of creed and worship. The primary idea 
 of the word saint means pure, clean, ceremonially or 
 morally consecrated to God. In the Old Testament it is 
 applied to Israel as a people, as " Let thy priests be 
 clothed with righteousness, and let thy saints shout for 
 joy." ^ In the New Testament it is applied to the whole 
 Christian Church, to the members of the Christian com- 
 munity generally. It is assumed of all who profess the 
 Christian name that they are consecrated to God, and 
 are sanctified by the Holy Spirit. It sets a standard for 
 the Church, anticipating the ultimate result, as it were. 
 The Church is counted holy, and at the same time 
 called to be holy; consecrated, and by that summoned 
 to the consecrated life. We cannot over-estimate what 
 this meant to the early Church as a motive for her 
 members to realise their exalted ideal. In the New 
 Testament the word Saints is never used exclusively 
 of certain select people, a sort of election within the 
 election, a few eminent superior Christians who have 
 outshone their fellows in attainments and sanctity. It 
 always expresses the commonalty of the faith, and is 
 
 * Psalm cxxxii. 9. 
 336 
 
MEDIAEVAL SAINTHOOD 237 
 
 applied, as St. Paul often does, to the whole Chris- 
 tian community. The very title contained a moral 
 dynamic, fit to give all members of the Church pause, 
 and to make them inquire whether they were living 
 up to their name, whether it was an accurate definition 
 and description of them. It made holiness an essen- 
 tial note of the true Church, a characteristic by which 
 it is to be tested and known. A synonym for the 
 Church which has even been accepted as a fair defi- 
 nition is " the Saints," emphasising holiness as a req- 
 uisite. The righteousness of Christ's disciples must 
 exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
 who made religion itself consist of righteousness.^ 
 The work of Christ was to present His people holy, 
 and unblamable, and unreprovable.^ The name by 
 which God is known is the Holy One, and His people 
 are the holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly call- 
 ing.* It follows that mistaken ideas of what holiness 
 is will mean mistaken ideas of what constitutes 
 sainthood. 
 
 Very soon in the history of the Church a process 
 set in, which despoiled the word of its meaning, and 
 also robbed the thought of its power. It came to 
 mean the exceptional in many ways; and so tests of 
 sainthood were introduced, which in many periods 
 excluded all believers whose lives, sometimes for con- 
 science's sake and because of the claims of duty, could 
 not be run on the lines of approved sainthood. The 
 Church conception of a saint became limited and de- 
 fined to a class, and was exclusively referred to a 
 select few. A saint came to mean one who was emi- 
 nent for the Christian qualities, for holiness of life, and 
 
 'Matt V. 20. *Col. i. 22. *Heb. iii. i. 
 
238 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 steadfastness to the faith. There was even a further 
 degradation of the idea and the word, when it was 
 narrowed still more to mean one who was officially 
 recognised and canonised by the Church. Ecclesiastical 
 usage early restricted it to those exceptional in their 
 virtues, who displayed the Christian quaHties in a 
 heroic degree. This limitation of the word is not 
 confined to the Roman Catholic Church, as there is 
 a common use of it among Protestants, which has 
 the same effect. By saint is often meant a certain 
 peculiar type of faith and character — pietists, mystics, 
 and men who show a weak aloofness from the great 
 interests of the world, and from the great fight of faith 
 with the world. Thus it is sometimes used with a sort 
 of sneer in it, as if it invariably implied weakness of 
 some kind, the unpractical feckless man, too good for 
 the world; and even sometimes the word connotes hy- 
 pocrisy. It is a terrible abasement of a noble word, 
 and is caused by a similar process, which produced 
 its degradation in the early centuries. The root of 
 both the Roman Catholic and the modem abuse of 
 the word is an unspiritual idea of holiness, and there- 
 fore an unspiritual idea of the method of attaining 
 holiness. In both it is assumed to be best attained 
 by withdrawal, either complete or partial, from the 
 world. The method, of course, finds its completest 
 form in the medisevalism of the Roman Church ; but 
 many of the modern pietist conceptions of a saint are 
 coloured by the same idea, and only differ from the 
 other by not being carried out to their logical 
 conclusion. 
 
 The origin of the defined and limited class of saints 
 in the early Church was very natural. It was natural 
 
MEDliEVAL SAINTHOOD 239 
 
 for the Church to look back to the Apostles of Jesus, 
 who had known Him in the flesh, as belonging to a 
 special and privileged class, with special claims to be 
 called saints. Then, in the hard times of persecution 
 when the Church had to go through the fire, it was 
 natural that all who suffered death for Christ's sake 
 should be admired and venerated. They had sealed 
 their faith with their blood. As a matter of course, 
 all who suffered as martyrs were put on the list of 
 saints. The first hagiology was a martyrology ; this 
 was so especially the case that the word martyrology 
 is still used in ecclesiastic language for the list of 
 the saints, though in later times many were canonised 
 who had not died as martyrs. The same was true 
 of the Confessors, who, though they were not actu- 
 ally put to death, suffered torture and imprisonment, 
 and refused to deny their faith. Ordinary flesh and 
 blood admired such heroic adherence to Christ, and 
 men assumed that these noble sufferers must be of a 
 stronger fibre, with a greatness of faith which lifted 
 them out of the common ranks. The very humility 
 of the Church made ordinary believers set up as better 
 than themselves others, who were thus eminent in 
 their piety, more remarkable in the steadfastness of 
 their testimony, and more useful in their servicec. 
 
 In the primitive Church it was customary to make 
 much of the memory of their martyrs, the holy dead 
 who would not deny their Lord. They kept the anni- 
 versaries of their death, and took communion on these 
 days. Each Church had its own martyrs and con- 
 fessors, the men who had worshipped with them and 
 had departed in the odour of sanctity, and these were 
 lovingly remembered. It was merely a grateful com- 
 
240 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 memoration, and was of practical use as an incitement 
 to emulate the example of pious and holy men. 
 Eusebius quotes in his History of the Church an in- 
 teresting letter from the Church of Smyrna, which 
 shows the natural veneration for a martyr, and also re- 
 veals that they were well aware of the danger of 
 Saint-worship, by the way they guard themselves in 
 explaining in what sense they display respect and 
 veneration to the relics. The letter gives an account of 
 the martyrdom of their bishop, St. Polycarp, and then 
 goes on *' Our subtle enemy, the devil, did his utmost 
 that we should not take away the body, as many of 
 us wished to do. It was suggested that we should 
 desert our crucified Master and begin to worship 
 Polycarp. Fools ! who knew not that we can never 
 desert Christ, who died for the salvation of all men, 
 nor worship any other. Him we adore as the Son 
 of God; but we show respect to the martyrs, as His 
 disciples and followers. The centurion, therefore, 
 caused the body to be burned; we then gathered his 
 bones, more precious than pearls, and more tried than 
 gold, and buried them. In this place, God willing, we 
 will meet and celebrate with joy and gladness the 
 birthday of this martyr, as well in memory of those 
 who have been crowned before, as by his example to 
 prepare and strengthen others for the combat." ^ We 
 see from this most interesting letter how natural it 
 was that a Church should hold festival on a martyr's 
 birthday, which was counted the day of his martyrdom, 
 as being the day he entered into fulness of life; and 
 how natural it was also that the relics should be lov- 
 ingly preserved and treasured, even put in their most 
 
 * Baring-Gould, Lives of the Saints, vol. i., Intro, p. xii. 
 
MEDIiEVAL SAINTHOOD 241 
 
 sacred place, under the altar, as became the common 
 practice in the Church. It is to be expected that their 
 fellow-believers should hold in deep affection the 
 mortal remains of a heroic brother. In course of time 
 what was a natural and beautiful instinct became de- 
 graded. From this human root grew all the abuses 
 which are associated with saint-worship — ^the super- 
 stition, the miracle-mongering, the fetish of saints' 
 bones and relics, which has made the very word saint 
 an offence in the ears of many. The good custom cor- 
 rupted the Church. 
 
 It is not necessary to trace the steps of the descent, 
 down to the belief in the magical efficacy of touching 
 some sacred relic. The eminent Christians, who were 
 sainted, were at first held up for the exhortation of all 
 the people, that their good example might fire them 
 with emulation of their zeal and faithfulness; and 
 the step from that to the worship of the Saints was 
 not difficult to take in these days, when the hardest 
 thing for the Church to combat was the pagan tastes 
 and superstitions of a great mass of the population. 
 We see the good of it, and the danger, in a remark 
 of St. Augustine : " The Christian people celebrate the 
 memory of the martyrs with religious solemnity both 
 to excite to imitation, and that they may become fel- 
 lows in their merits and be assisted by their prayers." 
 The catalogue of those who had claims to sainthood 
 grew larger as the years passed, and it was impossible 
 even to read all the names on the days set apart, when 
 the Church thanked God for the Martyrs and Saints, 
 who had witnessed a good confession. So, gradually 
 the whole year was mapped out, and the saints were 
 named on their special days. To begin with, each 
 
242 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Church of a district made its own saints, and com- 
 memorated its own blessed dead, those whom they 
 knew to be eminent for sanctity. Each bishop had the 
 power to canonise a local saint or martyr, but in the 
 twelfth century these local lists were closed, and the 
 Pope claimed the sole right of creating saints in this 
 ecclesiastical sense. According to the laws of canoni- 
 sation, which hold good in the Roman Church to-day, 
 there must be, in addition to heroic virtue, evidence of 
 the saint having performed miracles in confirmation 
 of his sanctity. 
 
 But worse even, if possible, than all the abuses 
 which crept into the Church through saint-worship 
 is the degradation of the word Saint itself. It began 
 by the removal of the idea of sainthood from the 
 ordinary lives of ordinary Christians. It was taken 
 away as an ideal for all, and ultimately was made the 
 mark of a special and artificial type of goodness. What 
 we have already seen of the origin of the ecclesiastical 
 saint explains how this came about. We saw how 
 naturally the Martyrology set the standard. The 
 Martyrs were canonised, because of their suffering 
 unto death for the name of the Lord. Suffering came 
 to be the badge of the saint; and so when the days of 
 martyrdom passed, other kinds of suffering took the 
 place of martyrdom as tests of sainthood. When the 
 Christian faith was recognised by the Empire, so that 
 persecution ceased and the opportunities of martyrdom 
 were reduced, the idea became prevalent that there was 
 no longer scope in the world for the full exercise of 
 Christian virtue in a heroic degree. The confessors 
 who had suffered were held in higher esteem than 
 
MEDIAEVAL SAINTHOOD 243 
 
 ever; and the standard then set up was transferred to 
 the self-inflicted austerities of those who sought to 
 display exceptional virtue Men martyred themselves, 
 and the ideal Christian Hfe came to be a life of as- 
 ceticism, however empty of moral significance these 
 ascetic practices happened to be. Fasting, maceration, 
 physical self-mortification, voluntary privation, be- 
 came the marks of a saint. The anchorites were con- 
 sidered by the people more holy than the coenobite 
 monks who resided in monasteries, because they car- 
 ried the principle of renunciation furthest. If renunci- 
 ation is in itself good, and even represents the highest 
 life, then of course the solitary ascetics, who renounced 
 not only the world but the society of their fellows, 
 have reached a higher point of perfection. 
 
 We find all kinds of artificial self-torture among 
 these, as if they competed with each other in dis- 
 covering new kinds of cruelty against their own per- 
 sons. Many of the Saints, whose names have been 
 included in the great catalogue, have little about the 
 record of their lives that is really noble and beauti- 
 ful and Christlike. Some of the Lives of the Saints 
 are but pitiful, and even disgusting, reading. It is 
 true that in a profligate time, when the world seemed 
 drowned in luxury, the spectacle of men, willingly 
 inflicting the most terrible severity on themselves, 
 may have done good by creating a startling sense of 
 contrast. Any good, however, that might have ac- 
 crued from such was a thousandfold counterbalanced 
 by the immense evil produced in the Church by the 
 thought that the supposed holiness, which gives a 
 man a title to be a saint, has little to do with ordinary 
 life. Nothing could make up for the loss which came 
 
244 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 through the true ideal of the Christian Ufe being ob- 
 scured. Among the hermits of Egypt there was dis- 
 played a remarkable ingenuity in the different forms of 
 austerity, and in the kinds of penance they imposed on 
 themselves sometimes for very trivial faults, all being 
 the fruit of the notion that suffering in itself was good. 
 St. Macarius of Alexandria, so called to distinguish 
 him from another St. Macarius of Egypt, was one day 
 '^tung by a gnat in his cell, and he killed it. Then, 
 regretting that he had allowed himself to be irritated 
 by an insect, and that he had lost an opportunity of 
 enduring mortification calmly, he went to the marshes 
 of Scete and stayed there six months suffering terribly 
 from the insects, as if they had known he had killed 
 a brother gnat. When he returned he was so dis- 
 figured by their bites that he was only recognised by 
 his voice. When a younger disciple once asked leave 
 to drink a little water because of the parching thirst, 
 the old hermit, under whose care and tuition he had 
 put himself, told him to be satisfied with resting 
 for a little in the shade, and to encourage him said 
 that for twenty years he had never once eaten, or 
 drunk, or slept, as much as nature demanded. St. 
 Anthony at one period went to the tombs, and leaving 
 instructions with an acquaintance to bring bread at 
 intervals of many days, he entered one of the tombs, 
 and shutting the door upon himself remained there 
 alone. 
 
 Some of the austerities were grotesque in the ex- 
 treme, though, if we grant the assumption that a saint 
 is to be made through self-inflicted suffering, we can- 
 not wonder at eccentric forms of pain being sought 
 after. Among the Celtic Saints barbarities were com- 
 
MEDIAEVAL SAINTHOOD 245 
 
 mon : one would stand naked in ice-cold water until he 
 recited the psalter ; another would sleep among corpses 
 and suspend himself on the points of sickles placed 
 under his armpits; another would keep a stone in his 
 mouth throughout Lent. Endless instances could 
 be given of how the whole conception of sainthood 
 became degraded. One of the first disciples of An- 
 thony was Paul the Simple, who came at the age of 
 sixty as a candidate to adopt the mc«iastic life. An- 
 thony, to test his qualifications, and thinking him 
 too old to begin, tried to disgust him by the severity 
 of the discipline. He set Paul to pray outside his 
 door, and told him not to desist till he was released. 
 He prayed on through the blazing sun, and through the 
 night, as rigid as one of the date-palms of the desert. 
 He then brought him into his cave, and gave him 
 some platting work to do, and when it was done re- 
 buked him for doing it badly, and bade him undo it 
 all again. Anthony then brought bread and called 
 the famished candidate to supper, but as grace before 
 meat, he recited twelve Psalms and twelve prayers 
 to try his patience, and then took away the bread, say- 
 ing that looking on it would suffice for supper. As 
 Paul did not murmur at even this new version of a 
 Barmecide feast, we are told that Anthony saw that 
 he was qualified to be a monk.^ 
 
 This conception of the saintly life as implying 
 self-mortification is not confined to the first early 
 hermits; it has persisted throughout the centuries, 
 though in the finest and noblest of the canonical saints 
 it has been modified by never being chosen as a good 
 in itself. But right through the Roman Calendar it 
 
 ^ Lives of the Saints, vol. iii. p. 114. 
 
146 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 is always considered a great feature of sainthood, 
 that men and women should have shown their con- 
 tempt for the world by the practice of austerities. In 
 every country and every age there are saints who 
 have been canonised seemingly for no other reason 
 than that they have emulated the pains of the early 
 confessors. The Blessed Marianna of Quito in Peru, 
 who lived in the seventeenth century but was only 
 beatified in 1850 by Pius IX., seems to have bought 
 her title to sainthood by mortification. She used to 
 sleep in a coffin or on a cross, and on Fridays she 
 hung for two hours on a cross, suspended to it by her 
 hair and by ropes. Another saint of the same period 
 in Peru, St. Rose of Lima, set herself to imitate St. 
 Catherine of Siena, fasted like her, wrapped chains 
 round her body, had a crown of thorns which she 
 placed daily on her head, and had it struck so as to 
 wound her forehead. 
 
 This whole conception which colours the story of 
 so many saints is due to a false and mischievous 
 view of the meaning and value of pain. It is an 
 inevitable temptation of asceticism, that it can hardly 
 fail to put value on suffering for its own sake. Some- 
 times there is lurking at the bottom of it the thought 
 of its being an expiation, and sometimes that it is a 
 purifying process ; but these are much higher and less 
 dangerous than the useless self-sacrifice, which looks 
 upon pain as in itself a good. It sets a false standard, 
 which vitiates true morality, though we recognise the 
 element of truth in it. There is a heart of good in 
 things evil; and it is not difficult to see how penance 
 grew to such lengths in the Church. Christians early 
 learned the deep spiritual value of trial, and from 
 
MEDIEVAL SAINTHOOD 247 
 
 experience they could testify that good did come out of 
 seeming evil. All the sad experiences of life, which 
 come as fresh food for suffering, become also occa- 
 sions for triumph, ever more fruitful of renewed 
 strength, and hope, and peace. They learned to glory 
 in tribulations, knowing, as they daily discovered, 
 that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experi- 
 ence, and experience hope, and hope maketh not 
 ashamed, because the love of God was shed abroad in 
 their hearts. From this root of truth came the false 
 doctrine of penance, that men should make trials for 
 themselves, which is always a dangerous experiment, 
 and can hardly escape the temptation to value the 
 form of discipline for its own sake. 
 
 The doctrine of the cross is sometimes stated as if 
 there were in itself a purifying quality in pain, and 
 even as if God took pleasure in our agony, and asked 
 for mutilation of body or mind as the necessary way 
 of pleasing Him. It is not merely that this leads to 
 mere sentimental ism in many, who speak of renunci- 
 ation when there is no real sacrifice underlying it. 
 We just need to think of the amount of spurious 
 mysticism, the unreal sentiment in much devotional 
 phraseology about self-crucifixion, to realise the temp- 
 tation on this side. But worse than that even is the 
 thought of God as a sort of Moloch, who takes de- 
 light in seeing our children pass through the fire. 
 It is a pagan thought, that mere suffering is pleas- 
 ing to God, and is blessed to the soul. The prophet 
 denounces the idea that God requires of men burnt- 
 offerings, or such a sacrifice as their first-bom for 
 their transgression ; and points them to a free and 
 joyous life of justice, and kindness, and a humble 
 
248 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 walk with God. There are tragic and terrible aspects 
 of Hfe, that seem sometimes almost to justify the ex- 
 tremest attitude of asceticism ; but life as God gave it 
 is a good thing with its own joy and beauty. Chris- 
 tianity has often been called a religion of sacrifice and 
 sorrow, of blood and tears ; and it is profoundly true ; 
 but it is not true in the sense sometimes meant. 
 Christ never looked upon pain as a good thing, as is 
 so often done by sentimental devotionaHsm. To Him 
 it was an evil thing to be banished, one of the bane- 
 ful brood of sin, with which He waged warfare. He 
 never took upon Himself any needless pain ; He manu- 
 factured no forms of self-denial, and chose no artificial 
 deprivations. He was no martyr by mistake. Men 
 have sometimes expatiated on the physical pains of the 
 crucifixion, and have attempted to estimate the spiritual 
 pains that broke the Saviour's heart; and have in it 
 all lost sight of the real point of emphasis, that the 
 self-emptying, the sacrifice, the cross, are all to be 
 interpreted by love. And many who have sincerely 
 desired to follow Jesus, have done so by various 
 forms of self-inflicted penance, seeking to imitate 
 Him in an external way ; whereas it might be possible 
 to have the imitation carried to such complete detail as 
 to include the very cross itself, and yet there be no 
 meaning, no sacrifice in it, and the whole result a 
 ghastly failure. 
 
 There is no merit in pain in itself, and no moral 
 value in suffering, and no virtue in the cross in itself. 
 Pain is often, it is true, a " hound of heaven " to a 
 good man, driving him to spiritual ends; but an evil 
 man has his share of pain, and remains evil. Spiritu- 
 ally, it all depends on the way it is accepted and used. 
 
MEDIEVAL SAINTHOOD 249 
 
 *' It is good for me that I have been afflicted," said the 
 Psalmist, " that I might learn Thy statutes. Before I 
 was afflicted I went astray ; but now I have kept Thy 
 word ; " ^ but often affliction only degrades and hardens. 
 Pain is nothing in itself. Mere tribulation, unsancti- 
 fied to the soul that suffers, is not a blessing but a 
 curse. The furnace without this result only con- 
 sumes the heart, bums away the life into charred dust. 
 A man may go through the fire unpurified, and taste 
 the chastisement of life without the love in it, and be 
 made only more hard and rebellious by every stroke 
 on the anvil. There is no failure of life so terrible 
 as this, to have the pain without the lesson, the sorrow 
 without the softening; and yet it is common enough. 
 And if this is true of the inevitable affliction which 
 comes to all without seeking it, it is also true that 
 the pain of any voluntary self-denial in itself has no 
 magical merit.. It may indeed have a moral value, in 
 being a test of the constancy of soul which occasioned 
 the denial. It may be a proof of the higher love, and 
 may at least show that it is more than an emotion. 
 Still, it must be insisted that mere idle self-denial is of 
 no value. 
 
 It is very important that we should have a con- 
 sistent attitude towards pain, and perhaps here as 
 elsewhere the rule in medio tutissimus is a good one. 
 There may be a weak dread of pain, which leads to 
 all forms of moral cowardice, and which would make 
 physical comfort the chief end of life; but, on the 
 other hand, to look upon pain as anything but an 
 evil is to set a false standard for self, and to give an 
 opening for cruelty towards others. It was a similar 
 
 * Psalm cxix., verses 67 and 71. 
 
250 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 m(X)d to this last, which inspired the opposition to the 
 use of chloroform, which Sir James Simpson had to 
 encounter; some objectors holding that pain was of 
 God's appointing, and that it was a species of presump- 
 tion to seek to mitigate it. In the literature of the 
 canonical saints this endurance of bodily pain is en- 
 larged on, till the chief mark of sainthood came to be 
 suffering, and human life was put out of perspective. 
 In the ordinary conduct of life there are plenty oppor- 
 tunities for endurance, and patience, and true self- 
 denial; and these fine qualities are always found in 
 every noble life. Courage in the face of danger, resig- 
 nation before calamity, endurance in the path of duty 
 in spite of any suffering that may be involved — these 
 will always command the admiration of men ; but 
 empty suffering, with no necessity to explain it, or no 
 high end to dignify it, is without moral contents. 
 The mere giving up, with no purpose and no large 
 reason, is useless. That is to look upon self-denial 
 as a fetish, as if God could be pleased by pain ; and this 
 is at the bottom of so much mistake in the history of 
 the Church, and of so much false devotion to-day. It 
 is a wrong conception of God, to think His favour 
 depends on the infliction of some sort of painful 
 deprivation on self; as if even He could be bribed by 
 self-torture. 
 
 It must never be forgotten that all our Lord's pains 
 came to Him in His ministry, in His service, in the 
 path of duty ; and they were all inspired, and glorified, 
 by love. This is why Christianity is a religion of 
 joy, as well as of sorrow; because it is a religion of 
 love. From one point of view the life of Jesus was 
 an easy, simple, natural, joyous, instinctive life; and 
 
MEDIEVAL SAINTHOOD 251 
 
 yet from another it was a stern, strenuous, and even a 
 stricken life. He, who was pre-eminently the Man 
 of joy, who at the last spoke of giving His joy to the 
 disciples, was also the Man of sorrows ; and the source 
 of His joy and of His sorrow was the same. They are 
 both the fruit of love. The joy of love is a fact, 
 and so also is the sorrow of love. It is profoundly true 
 that 
 
 The mark of rank in nature 
 Is capacity for pain. 
 
 That is because it is capacity for love. Vicarious suf- 
 fering is a fact of life, and cannot be expelled from 
 life, till love is expelled. We cannot care greatly 
 for the highest interests of another, without bearing 
 his infirmities, and taking on his sicknesses, nay, even 
 bowing to the burden of his sins. To see how true 
 and how universal this vicarious suffering is, we 
 need only look around — the shepherd and his lost 
 sheep, the tender picture Jesus drew of how the 
 shepherd thinks not of those safe in the fold but of 
 the one strayed silly sheep, and goes out into the wil- 
 derness to find it: a mother and her cripple child, the 
 gentlest-tended, the best beloved of all the family, as 
 she takes the very infirmities on her heart: a father 
 and his prodigal son, with a keener sorrow and an- 
 guish of soul than even he can suffer in the far country 
 though he perish with hunger. The hunger, which can 
 be appeased with the husks the swine did eat, is noth- 
 ing to the heart -hunger at home. Love's sorrows are 
 as true as its joys; and yet the love transmutes the 
 sorrow into something passing rich and strange, as 
 with the Master Himself, of whom we read that He 
 
2S2 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 for the joy set before Him endured the cross and de- 
 spised the shame. Sacrifice is of the very essence of 
 love, but without love there is no sacrifice. All pains 
 and self-denials are barren and dangerous self-de- 
 ceptions, if they are not prompted, and inspired, and 
 imposed by love. Only love's own royal hand can 
 make the thorns into a crown. It is false therefore to 
 say that a life is to be measured by loss or by pain : 
 it can only be measured by love. That at least is 
 how it will be measured and judged one day. 
 
 A further and even more serious evil, affecting not 
 the individual merely, but the whole conception of 
 the Christian life, was created by the degradation of 
 the word saint, as solely the privilege of the ascetic. 
 The strange division of the Christian life into two 
 grades began, which exists to this day in the Roman 
 Catholic Church, that there are two classes of believers 
 with two standards of morality. The foundation of the 
 error is the belief that at bottom the Christian faith is 
 a world-renouncing creed, and that those, who would 
 perfectly fulfil the word of Christ, must give up the 
 Vv^orld in the ascetic sense. This practically narrowed 
 itself down ultimately to a question of the celibate or 
 the married life. The theory is that there is a loftier 
 stage of Christian life, possible only to those who live 
 unmarried and as far as possible apart from the world. 
 The monastic life was called the angelic life.^ The 
 words " religion " and " religious " are always used 
 by mediaeval writers in the sense of one who has em- 
 braced the monastic life, as can be seen from such 
 
MEDIAEVAL SAINTHOOD 253 
 
 beautiful books as the Fioretti of St. Francis, or the 
 Imitaiio Christi, where asceticism is touched with a 
 sweet and gentle tenderness, that makes them perenni- 
 ally attractive. The ** religious " are always those who 
 have left the business of the world to seek holiness 
 in seclusion. This is still the ecclesiastical use of the 
 word, as for example in the common phrase " to enter 
 religion," meaning to take the vow of some monastic 
 order, or the equally common phrase '* his name in 
 
 religion is ." A " religious " in the Roman 
 
 Catholic sense always means a monk, or friar, or nun. 
 The influence of Greek thought, as seen in the 
 Alexandrian theology, helped to create the distinc- 
 tion we are noticing. That theology, which laid so 
 much stress on knowledge,^ tended in itself to make 
 two ranks of Christians, with two different standards 
 of virtue — the Christian sage and the simple believer. 
 The one could enter into the mysteries of the faith, 
 could read the symbolism in nature, and the allegory 
 in history and in religious interpretation, of which 
 that school was so fond; the other had to accept 
 results, and receive the teaching, and live by simple 
 faith. These two tendencies, one ascetic and the 
 other intellectual, were combined in this way, that 
 the Christian sage was recognised as the man who 
 gave himself up to the life of contemplation, and cut 
 himself off from the entanglements of the earthly 
 relations. The superior virtue of the sage was evi- 
 denced by his contempt of the ordinary comforts of 
 life. But as this superiority was impossible for all 
 believers, since, if followed by all, it would bring the 
 » yv&6ii, if Beta 6o<pia. 
 
254 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Church to an end, a place was left in the Church for 
 those inferior persons, who were content with the 
 lower kind of life. 
 
 This ascetic division of the moral law, however, 
 was not allowed to grow without powerful protest. 
 Clement of Alexandria opposed the tendency to ele- 
 vate the ascetic and celibate life above that of the 
 ordinary Christian living in the common way in the 
 world. He pointed to the inward and the spiritual; 
 and declared that humility is shown, not by castiga- 
 tion of body, but by gentleness of disposition. True 
 abstinence was of the soul, and referred not merely, 
 as asceticism implied, to bodily pleasures. The busi- 
 ness of the world should be conducted in an unworldly 
 way; and this was the task of Christians. Still, in 
 spite of such protests, the opposition between the 
 ascetic and the common Christian grew, and the 
 cleavage widened. 
 
 The Roman Catholic theory of Christian morals is 
 still that of these days, that there is a higher and a 
 lower morality; the ascetic type being the true per- 
 fection of Christian life, the other a kind of com- 
 promise, necessary for less strenuous people. There 
 are the perfect Christians, and the common Chris- 
 tians, two grades, with necessarily two standards of 
 morality, that of the religious orders, and that of 
 secular Christians. This is inevitable in a Church 
 which claims universal sway, and yet binds itself to an 
 ascetic creed as at least the highest manner of life. 
 Renan accepts this as the logical conclusion of 
 Christ's teaching; for of course it suits his purpose to 
 assume that what he found in the Roman Catholic 
 Church was the New Testament position. He says: 
 
MEDIAEVAL SAINTHOOD 255 
 
 " Perfection being placed beyond the ordinary condi- 
 tions of society, and a complete gospel life being 
 only possible away from the world, the principle of 
 asceticism and monasticism was established. Christian 
 societies would have two moral rules: the one mod- 
 erately heroic for common men, the other exalted 
 in the extreme for the perfect man, and the perfect 
 man would be the monk, subjected to rules which 
 professed to realise the Gospel ideal. It is certain 
 that this ideal, if only on account of the celibacy and 
 poverty it imposed, could not become the common 
 law." ^ He pushes this argument as conclusive 
 against the faith, if judged by common sense. The 
 argument is indeed conclusive, if he could prove the 
 premise, that such a division of the ethical standard 
 is sanctioned by the New Testament. Renan cer- 
 tainly states a fact of Qiurch history, that such a 
 division was actually made. The result was that celi- 
 bacy and renunciation were pointed to as essential 
 requisites for the highest Christian attainment. They 
 were not made necessary for salvation, that is for 
 bare salvation, but necessary for a high place in the 
 Kingdom. This division inevitably did mean, as 
 Renan asserts, a double morality with two moral 
 rules, one for common mortals, the other for perfect 
 men who professed, and alone could profess, to realise 
 the Gospel. 
 
 This is absurd as logic. If voluntary celibacy and 
 renunciation of the world are necessary for Christian 
 perfection, then it must be a rule for all. There can 
 be no exceptions. It cannot be left optional that a 
 Christian should choose a lower line of life than Jesus 
 
 ^ Renan, Vie de Jesus, chap. xix. 
 
256 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 asked for; and if abstinence is the higher virtue, it is 
 incumbent on all. Morality comes always with a cate- 
 gorical imperative. It ever comes as " Thou must, 
 thou shalt," never as " Thou mayest." It is not a coun- 
 sel, but a command : it states a law. The only logical 
 position is the position of the New Testament, which 
 never once hints at such compromises, but speaks of all 
 the Church as called to be saints; and if that implies 
 an ascetic life, as the Church of Rome asserts, then 
 it is bound to insist on the same moral standard being 
 imposed on all. The fact that this is impossible, if the 
 world is to continue at all, is no reason for moral com- 
 promises, but might be a fit reason for considering the 
 fundamental position, and for examining its truth. 
 
 If this division is absurd as logic, it was also un- 
 speakably evil as practice. It is not necessary to stop 
 to speak of all the evils which resulted — indeed to do 
 so would be to traverse the whole Christian centuries. 
 We have already seen that, since saints were supposed 
 to be a different order of being from ordinary believers, 
 this led to saint-worship, and its kindred superstitions. 
 The theory of '' good works " was a further conclusion 
 which followed. For, whatever might be the case with 
 the common Christian living under the common code 
 of morals, those who fulfilled all righteousness after 
 the perfect pattern, not only did not need a Redeemer 
 in the same sense as the others, but had even a stock of 
 merit over and above through their refined sanctity. 
 All the errors and abuses, which blossomed from the 
 doctrine of good works, down to the scandalous sale 
 of indulgences, which roused Luther and precipitated 
 the Reformation, grew from this root. 
 
 The practical effect also on the Christian life was 
 
MEDIAEVAL SAINTHOOD 257 
 
 disastrous, and for both parties, both for those on 
 the higher plane and those on the lower. Men, who 
 were in earnest after holiness, were put on a false 
 trail, and were given a life to live, where a balance 
 and completeness of Christian character were made 
 well-nigh impossible. The distinction, which set them 
 up on a pinnacle, created often, as we find in Church 
 history, a spiritual pride and self-righteousness, which 
 destroyed the very purpose of sanctification the system 
 was meant to assist. This temptation to spiritual pride 
 is one which besets all religion which makes bodily 
 penance a rule of life, and we see it illustrated again 
 and again in the history of hermits and monks. 
 Luther unbares the religious source of the temptation, 
 going to the root of the disease : " All the priests, 
 monks and hermits, that live in their cloisters (1 speak 
 of the best of them) repose their trust and confidence 
 in their own works, righteousness, vows and merits 
 and not in Christ." ^ This at least is the temptation 
 and when it is given way to, it results in the most offen- 
 sive form of pride. The greater the appearance of 
 renunciation, the greater grows the temptation. 
 
 The story of the early desert-saints is full of illus- 
 trations of the lengths to which pride sometimes car- 
 ried men who had renounced the world. It led some 
 monks to think that they were superior not only to 
 ordinary men, which was natural enough with their 
 standards ; but pride often made them think themselves 
 superior to the ordinary means of grace, and caused 
 them to refuse to take part in communion as being 
 unnecessary for them.. Some of them imagined them- 
 selves honoured with special revelations, leading to the 
 
 * Luther, Com. on Galatians, v. 2. ad. loc. 
 
258 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 most eccentric vagaries. Sometimes, on the other 
 hand, we find in the records the self-same pride show- 
 ing itself in grotesque and exaggerated humility, in 
 unreal self-disparagement, in self-denunciation about 
 trifles, a mood which is not absent in some forms of 
 present-day religion also. We can understand the 
 temptation to pride in a man like Simeon Stylites, 
 whose extraordinary self-torture not only set him apart 
 from others, but also impressed thousands to come 
 and get his blessing. Tennyson in his poem ^ refers 
 to this subtle temptation — 
 
 ** Am I to blame for this, 
 That here come those that worship me? Ha! ha! 
 They think that I am somewhat. What am I? 
 The silly people take me for a saint, 
 And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers : 
 And I in truth (Thou wilt bear me witness here) 
 Have all in all endured as much, and more 
 Than many just and holy men, whose names 
 Are register'd and calendar'd for saints." 
 
 Legal morality always ends in self -righteousness. 
 Our Lord makes the Pharisee of the Parable say in 
 self-satisfied assurance, " I fast twice in the week," ^ 
 making a merit in the discipline. Those who, like 
 St. Simeon Stylites, pushed the physical treatment 
 of the soul to its utmost extreme, often also show 
 temptations created by their way of life, narrowness 
 of mind, self-will, presumption, zeal without knowl- 
 edge, all due to lack of culture and disregard of all 
 considerations except the one aim. It is to be ex- 
 pected, for example, that we should find among the 
 crowd of monks who followed St. Anthony's example, 
 
 ^St Simeon Stylites. 'Luke xviii. 12. 
 
MEDIAEVAL SAINTHOOD 259 
 
 fanatical fury, which ambitious men like Cyril, Bishop 
 of Alexandria, utilised for their purposes, as Kingsley 
 illustrates with historical accuracy in Hypatia. Many 
 of the first hermits and monks were noble men ab- 
 sorbed with a passion for holiness, but when it became 
 almost a fashion, many, without the inward strength 
 for the life and without the deep spiritual impulse, 
 crowded to the desert monasteries, with the result 
 that the whole life became degraded. Pride, mental 
 disorders, insanity, self-mutilation often to the extent 
 of suicide, result-ed ; and sometimes violent reaction to 
 unbridled licentiousness. 
 
 Apart from such dreadful excesses, which indeed 
 were only possible when the ascetic theory was carried 
 to its furthest as implying solitude, yet the same temj>- 
 tation of pride is seen in the conclusiveness and al- 
 most contempt for Christians of the lower order, inci- 
 dent on the division of two grades of which we are 
 speaking. We can see from a casual remark of New- 
 man's how the theory of two classes arises, and even 
 becomes inevitable, as soon as the ascetic position is 
 accepted even in a modified degree. In a sermon on 
 Lent he discusses the temptation of reaction into self- 
 indulgence, that follows immediately after a pro- 
 longed fast, and he adds : '* This grievous consequence 
 is said actually to happen in some foreign countries, 
 in the case of the multitude, who never will have a 
 deep and consistent devotion while the world lasts." * 
 It is strange to find the ascetic ideal leading to a 
 similar contemptuous exclusiveness, which we noted as 
 a temptation of the aesthetic ideal, which makes self- 
 culture the end of life. 
 
 * Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. vi. scr. 3. 
 
26o CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Disastrous also was the effect on ordinary Christian 
 life, on the men at the lower level as well as those on 
 the higher. The two classes were set against each 
 other, and this division of the Christian life turned 
 the Church, from being the whole body of believers 
 with equal rights and duties, into an ecclesiastical 
 aristocracy, and worship became a service performed 
 by the priest for the laity. Practically it meant a 
 blow at Christian morality, for it lowered the tone 
 of secular society, not merely by the loss of so many 
 earnest men who might have kept the world pure, 
 but most of all by making it understood that ordinary 
 believers were not expected to come up to the high 
 ideal. Men who did not take the vows might be 
 selfish, and proud, and worldly, and yet be Chris- 
 tians, on a lower plane, it is true, but still accepted 
 by the Church in spite of their sins. The practical 
 result meant discouragement of all who were admit- 
 tedly on the lowel level, who mixed in the world, and 
 married, and did the usual business of life. When 
 the life of seclusion was exalted above the common 
 life of Christians, the effect was as we might expect. 
 Much was not asked from the common believer, and 
 gradually the ordinary business of life lost its place as 
 the recognised sphere of the Christian calling. This 
 tendency, even at an early time, is casually illustrated 
 by Clement of Alexandria who tells us that when he 
 sought to influence public morals he was met by the ex- 
 cuse, " We cannot all be philosophers and ascetics. We 
 are ignorant people, and cannot read the Holy Scrip- 
 tures ; why should we be subjected to such rigorous de- 
 mands ? " ^ It was a very natural retort. When the 
 
 * Clemens, Padag. i. 3, 
 
MEDIAEVAL SAINTHOOD 261 
 
 dignity of the ordinary Christian calling is lost sight 
 of, the standard of piety in th€ lower positions is bound 
 to suffer. 
 
 The distinction into two classes gives also an excuse 
 to worldly men to ride off on the plea that they had 
 no call to the life of seclusion, and were only ordinary 
 people living in the midst of the world, and therefore 
 could not be expected to display the heroic virtue 
 natural enough among the perfect. The true ideal of 
 the Christian life has been obscured by the error that 
 the holiness, which gives a man a title to be a saint, 
 has nothing to do with common life. But holiness is 
 not a negative thing, a state of being free from con- 
 tamination, avoiding the stains of the world; it is a 
 state of being and becoming, a progressive mastery 
 over Hfe and the conditions of life, a growth into 
 spiritual power; and to this all are called, to live in 
 God through all the vicissitudes of lot, amid all the 
 work and relationships of the world, inspired with the 
 spirit of faith, and prayer, and communion. It is 
 the nobler task, and the harder. The moral and spirit- 
 ual demands made on us are concerned with our actual 
 lives in the world. If to flee from duty and the hard 
 sphere where it is not easy to be true to our highest 
 ideal, if to escape from the seductions of the world 
 to some convenient desert, is the condition of saint- 
 hood, then we are not all called to be saints. The 
 world could not get its business done if we were all 
 saints of that type. 
 
 Besides, that is often the path of cowardice. In 
 the complexity of modem life, with persistent claims 
 on all sides, with clamant demands on time and 
 thought, with its many unsolved problems, the simplest 
 
a62 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 way out of all difficulties is to throw it up. The easiest 
 way to unloose the knot is to cut the cord. The desert 
 is always easier than Corinth; the hermit's cell than 
 the market-place ; the cloister than the hearth ; but the 
 saints of Corinth, of the market-place, and of the 
 hearth, may be most to the mind of Jesus. There is 
 another Martyrology than the canonical one, which 
 will have many nameless saints consecrating their lives 
 to service, the sweet, humble souls who are the salt 
 of the earth and save it from corruption, the loving 
 hearts that are the light of the world. 
 
 We need to get the word and the idea of sainthood 
 back to its New Testament usage and to realise that it 
 is not a far-away ideal to which only a few exceptional 
 men can aspire, but a task to which all are summoned. 
 We must avoid all distinctions, which would create a 
 religious aristocracy in the great commonwealth of 
 the faith; for there are other and similar ways of 
 perverting the Christian ideal for all, as well as the 
 Roman Catholic one. We may create distinctions 
 by laying emphasis on the mere intellectual appre- 
 hension of the truth, between the cultured who have 
 entered into the mysteries, and the simple believer; 
 or we may create distinctions even in the name of 
 evangelical religion. The term '* higher holiness," for 
 example, which is common in certain quarters, is a 
 most unfortunate one, though we must sympathise 
 with every attempt to raise the level of aspiration 
 and attainment. The danger is a spiritual exclusive- 
 ness, which may be only another form of Pharisaism, 
 as well as leading the ordinary Christian to imagine 
 that he has no call to realise to the full the Christian 
 
MEDIiEVAL SAINTHOOD 263 
 
 ideal. It is the common task to adjust all the duties 
 and relations of life to the love of God, which makes 
 its imperious claim on the human heart; and this 
 task is not the exceptional but the common lot of all. 
 By dismissing the mediaeval notion of sainthood, 
 with its division of ethics, we will get back the moral 
 dynamic it contains. It is a true principle of morals 
 that men will become what they are trusted to be, and 
 will do what is expected of them, will approximate not 
 only their own ideal but even the ideal which others set 
 up for them. This is seen in the education of children, 
 where the system of distrust is always a failure. A 
 child brought up by that method will almost infallibly 
 give good cause for the distrust. He is driven to it, 
 to justify the mean and poor opinion in which he is 
 held. In all our dealing with our fellows this is a prin- 
 ciple which can be counted on for much, that they will 
 be what is laid on their sense of honour to be. The 
 normal conscience rises to the demands made on it, 
 and easily falls to the limit of the standard expected 
 from it. When St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he 
 called them saints, though his epistles reveal sins which 
 would have made a less stout heart despair of them. 
 " The Church of God in Corinth," to which the Apostle 
 writes, was what Bengel calls a great and joyful 
 paradox. When we think of the evil reputation which 
 the city had among the cities of the ancient world as a 
 place notorious for its debauchery, the very name of 
 Corinth being a byword for loathsome sin, we get some 
 idea of the strange combination of the two names which 
 make Bengel call it a paradox. But the circumstances 
 which made it a great and joyful paradox made the 
 Apostle all the more anxious to lift up the standard of 
 
264 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 holy living, and to keep it up, and induced him to 
 lay stress on the high calling. In his very designation 
 of them as " sanctified and called to be saints " ^ he 
 points to the character they are expected to display. 
 He reminds them, by a sort of glorious anticipation, 
 of their dignity, that they may stand fast in their 
 present attainment, and may even rise higher. The 
 process is stated as a completion, the work is stated 
 as an act, but there is no contradiction in the com- 
 bination of ideas. It just means that they are conse- 
 crated, and so are called to the consecrated life. 
 
 * I Cor. i. 2. 
 
X 
 
 THE PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 UFE 
 
 THOUGH it is a constant danger of asceticism 
 to become an end in itself, y^t it begins usu- 
 ally as a recognised means of attaining some 
 coveted spiritual result, not merely saving 
 the life from evil, but also moving it to a higher good. 
 This hope, which underlies ascetic practices, is based 
 on the experience, that physical treatment does affect 
 the whole spiritual condition. It is found as a matter 
 of fact that men can induce certain states of mind, 
 and even seem to enter into divine mysteries, by habits 
 and exercises that begin with the body. This is a 
 region of great difficulty, where exaggeration is fa- 
 tally possible, but where under-statement of the facts 
 is also very common. It is not easy to thread our 
 way in a sphere like this, which is so subtle and so 
 delicate; but no consideration of the ascetic ideal can 
 be complete without taking into account the facts, 
 which indeed give it its perennial vitality. The phys- 
 ical treatment of the spiritual life has ever been a 
 subject of fascination to men, and endless have been 
 the experiments they have tried. All ascetic practices, 
 which are genuinely religious, are accepted as the ap- 
 proved method of reaching a fuller spiritual commun- 
 ion, and of attaining a religious exaltation, thought to 
 be otherwise impossible. The truth at the bottom of 
 
 265 
 
266 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 them all is the admittedly close connection of our bodily 
 acts with the state of the mind and even of the soul. 
 There is here an interesting illustration of the 
 strange manner in which human thought goes in cir- 
 cles, so that what at first seem utter extremes meet. 
 All such physical treatment of the soul is a tacit ac- 
 knowledgment of the unity of man's being, and yet 
 many of the ascetic practices go rather on the principle 
 that a true man is a disembodied spirit having as far 
 as possible shuffled off the mortal coil. Self -mortifica- 
 tion attempts to feed the soul by starving all bodily 
 instincts and crushing out all natural impulses. Thus 
 as we have said extremes meet, because a fundamental 
 error of all ascetic systems is the subdivision of a hu- 
 man being into parts, as if body can be regarded as 
 something apart from mind and soul, and as if soul can 
 only be perfected when the body is utterly renounced ; 
 and yet the very attempts are an evidence of the truth 
 of the oneness of man's nature ; for they start with the 
 fact that the two are so closely united that the soul can 
 be helped or hindered by the body. The great fact, 
 which makes the ascetic ideal in any degree reasonable, 
 is that the different parts of the being of man are 
 relative to each other. The animal part cannot be iso- 
 lated from the rest of his nature. This can be most 
 clearly seen by remembering that the body is indeed 
 the medium of all knowledge. Through the senses we 
 derive the impressions, intellectual and spiritual, which 
 are our highest possessions ; and these impressions are 
 coloured by the medium through which they pass. 
 Man is a unity; not a duality as is so often imagined 
 in ascetic thought (flesh and spirit joined together in' 
 a loathsome union, like a living prisoner chained to a 
 
PHYSICAL TREATiMENT OF SOUL 267 
 
 dead corpse) ; nor a triad (body and mind and soul, 
 each dwelling apart with a life of its own). We can 
 make distinctions in our nature for convenience of 
 speech, but they must be confessedly inexact. Man 
 is one and indivisible ; the life that he lives in the flesh 
 is the life that he lives in the soul. We can classify in 
 a broad way, but we cannot tell even where mind or 
 soul begin. 
 
 The connection between body and mind is a com- 
 monplace of thought with us, but it is not yet a com- 
 monplace of practice. In the training and education of 
 children, for example, how difficult it is to steer a 
 straight course between the two extremes that are 
 possible here. We constantly find a swing of the pen- 
 dulum in prevailing notions of education held by 
 people. At one time physical culture is put first, and 
 is almost exclusively attended to, till we are afflicted 
 with the idolatry of mascularity ; then we find a period 
 when the worse error gets hold which considers only 
 mental training, and looks upon it as a great thing if 
 by hot-house methods child-prodigies can be produced. 
 Yet true education must aim at co-ordinate develop- 
 ment in this matter, as Montaigne says wisely, " I 
 would have the disposition of his limbs formed at the 
 same time as his mind; for it is not a soul, it is not 
 a body, we are training up, but a man, and we ought 
 not to divide him." As a matter of fact, neither in 
 education nor in life, can we divide human nature into 
 parts without inevitable loss and error. The relation 
 of mind to body is a very close one, in which each 
 affects the other for good or evil. We are more depend- 
 ent on physical conditions for our happiness, and 
 even for our goodness, than we perhaps like to admit. 
 
268 CULTURE AND RESTRAIN! 
 
 It is astonishing how our view of life takes its colour 
 from the state of health. Physicians know that, if 
 they could cure the sick soul in many cases, they would 
 get at the secret of the sick body ; and ministers know 
 that, if sometimes they could produce conditions and 
 environment of health, they could bring many a man 
 to a different way of thinking. In a vague fashion 
 we recognise these facts, but as a rule we are in the 
 dark about the mystery of the interpenetrating influ- 
 ence of body on mind, and the reflex action of mind 
 on body. There is a great future for mental therapeu- 
 tics, when it gets free from the charlatan and the 
 quack. We know in general terms, as a maxim of 
 both morals and of medicine, that 
 
 " Faults in the life breed errors in the brain. 
 And these reciprocally those again; 
 The mind and conduct mutually imprint 
 And stamp their image in each other's mint." 
 
 It may seem, as it has often done to some hypersensi- 
 tive minds, a degradation that the higher nature should 
 be so dependent on the lower, and that intellectual and 
 even moral qualities should gain or lose tone accord- 
 ing to the state of the health. Whether it is a degrada- 
 tion or not, it is wise to accept facts, and this close 
 connection of body and mind is a solemn fact. 
 
 Looked at properly it contains no degrading ideas, 
 but rather suggests the sacredness of all the laws of 
 our nature. It makes health a duty, and every wilful 
 disobedience to the laws of health becomes a crime; 
 for it not only punishes the body where the sin took 
 place, but affects the whole man. We are learning 
 the truth of this in education, and we see that man 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 269 
 
 needs to be a good animal, before the best of anything 
 else is possible. The keenest brain needs a foundation 
 of physical health to do its best work. Jowett, the 
 late Master of Balliol, said that one of the causes 
 of failure at the University of some promising stu- 
 dents was neglect of health, either through the care- 
 lessness of ignorance or through moral evil. Many 
 a man learns, after it is too late, that he is not fit for 
 the prolonged mental efforts he might have been but 
 for early folly. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott speaks in his Journal of how he 
 suffered from fluttering of the heart, and of the dispir- 
 iting effect it had on him, though he knew that it was 
 nothing organic but was merely nervous. He says 
 that in youth this complaint used to throw him into in- 
 voluntary passions of causeless tears. He manfully set 
 himself to drive it away by exercise, though he wishes 
 he had been a mechanic. He was a man of healthy 
 nature in every sense, but he too had his times of de- 
 pression. At the time he made the entry in his Journal, 
 he had been overworked and overstrained, and con- 
 fesses he had not taken exercise for four or five days. 
 He asks, as many brain-workers have often done, 
 whether it is the body brings it on the mind or the 
 mind on the body, though he accepts it as part of the 
 price he had to pay for other things. " As to body and 
 mind, I fancy I might as well enquire whether the 
 fiddle or the fiddlestick makes the tune." * It is folly 
 to shut our eyes to the fact that man is subject to the 
 organic laws, which govern all life. Every brain- 
 worker has to learn something of the physical limits, 
 under which he must work. Nature does not repeal 
 
 '^ Journal, entry March 14th, 1826. 
 
270 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 her punishments easily, and when we reaHse that we 
 often have to pay not in mere physical uneasiness, but 
 in intellectual deprivation, we should feel the responsi- 
 bility. When the harmony of life is out of tune it is 
 often found, as Scott found in that particular case, 
 that it is the fiddle that is out of order and not the 
 fiddlestick, the body and not the mind. From such a 
 point of view wilful neglect of health is criminal, dif- 
 fering only in degree from suicide. Loss of time, 
 loss of work, languid performance of duty, result from 
 ill-health. Our accountants can give us the average 
 number of days lost per year to the community by 
 illness, but who can calculate how much of that is 
 self-caused, or is produced through self-neglect? On 
 the whole it is a good thing that the tide has turned 
 in education and that we have ceased to think that it 
 pays to over-educate children and undermine their 
 constitution by undue stimulation of brain. The brain 
 is a sensitive organ, the capacity of which is affected 
 in many ways. Perfect sanity of judgment, penetra- 
 tion of mind, good sense, acute discrimination, reason- 
 ableness, are all more likely to be found in a state 
 of health than in a state of debility. 
 
 But this relation of the body seems to go deeper 
 still into life; for we find the effect of bodily condi- 
 tion in the springs of moral thinking and acting as 
 well as of purely mental states. Functional derange- 
 ments tend to become organic, and organic disease 
 preys not on the body merely, but disturbs the brain, 
 affects the will, and prevents a man from being fully 
 master of his own designs. Irritated nerves are re- 
 sponsible for some abnormal moral conditions as well 
 as for some morbid states of mind. Cheerfulness is 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 271 
 
 often a matter not of superior virtue but of healthy 
 digestion. The sins of temper, which mean pain to 
 others, as well as to the man himself, are often the 
 result of physical prostration or unstrung nerves. The 
 jaundiced eye sees everything in its own hue. Much 
 of Carlyle's philosophy and many of his judgments 
 had their roots in his dyspepsia. There is a close con- 
 nection of the laws of health with the laws of morality. 
 A truly healthy man, with cleanness of blood and clear 
 brain and healthy tastes, will keep free from some 
 evils almost by instinct; and on the other hand the 
 moral standpoint given by religion reacts to create 
 healthy conditions for the brain and the other bodily 
 functions. 
 
 This is along the line of the many facts which are 
 being accepted to-day, as to the reflex influence of 
 the mind on the body. States of feeling can create 
 physical conditions; cerebral excitement, as every 
 doctor knows, affects bodily functions. Anger can 
 burst a blood-vessel ; fear can paralyse the nerve cen- 
 tres; grief can make a young man old in a night; 
 care paints her image on the face and bows the shoul- 
 ders in a pathetic stoop. The resources of the mind 
 brought to bear on the body can sometimes banish 
 disease in a manner which is almost uncanny. Further, 
 health is contagious as well as disease. Half of the 
 secret of the success of some of our great doctors lies 
 in the moral qualities, the courage, faith, brightness, 
 hopefulness, which seem to be stored in their health- 
 ful temper and nature. The mind, by appealing to 
 faith and hope in others, is able also to influence their 
 very bodies; and this old truth is what enables many 
 quackeries of the faith-healing sects to live at all. 
 
272 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Now the calm acceptance of such facts is the right 
 poHcy for us. The lesson of this close interaction of 
 mind and body is that we should put the whole treat- 
 ment of the body on a moral basis. De Quincey 
 closes the section dealing with Health of his treatise 
 on Casuistry with some strong words, which have 
 added weight from his own mistakes in dealing with 
 himself, " Casuistry justly and without infringing any 
 truth of Christianity urges the care of health as the 
 basis of all moral action, because, in fact, of all per- 
 fectly voluntary action. Every impulse of bad health 
 jars or untunes some string in the fine harp of hu- 
 man volition; and, because a man cannot be a moral 
 being but in the proportion of his free agency, there- 
 fore it is clear that no man can be in a high sense 
 moral, except in so far as through health he com- 
 mands his bodily powers, and is not commanded by 
 them." ^ 
 
 Of course we know the limitations of any such 
 statement, which looks as if we could put a good 
 digestion in place of a good conscience. A man of 
 perfect physique may have no mind at all to speak 
 of, and be utterly crass in his moral sentiments. 
 What it means is that, other things being equal, a 
 man in good health will do better work, and be more 
 trustworthy in his thoughts and judgments, than if 
 he suffered from ill-health. It has also to be remem- 
 bered that many a time pain of body has taught the 
 deepest lessons, and that such pain has even been a 
 school of saints, in which they have learned patience 
 and faith and charity, and have hushed their souls into 
 peace before God. Many a sweet and pure character 
 
 ^Collected Works, vol. viii. p. 355. 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 273 
 
 has been formed through severe bodily discipline. 
 They have made the very rod a staff to comfort and 
 support them. This does not, however, justify any 
 wilful neglect, or wicked and foolish action against the 
 laws of health. Suffering may have, as in countless 
 cases it has had, beneficent results, deepening the very 
 soul, and enriching the life ; but it all depends on how 
 it comes and how it is received. Instead of refining, 
 it may only brutalise, and coarsen still more the fibre. 
 If the weakness of body is the result of excess and 
 sin, if the lassitude has been self-sought and the pain 
 self-inflicted, even though it does ultimately bring 
 wisdom, it is a joyless wisdom, the sort of wisdom 
 which comes, when the heart is eaten out, when life 
 has lost its beauty and grace, and the world which 
 should have been the scene of purity of thought and 
 grace of speech and nobility of deed, has become a 
 place of mourning and ashes. 
 
 One true moral, therefore, which we should draw 
 from the close connection of body with mind and spirit, 
 is that the body should be treated sacredly, as an in- 
 tegral part of human nature. Every act of intemper- 
 ance of whatever sort, every sin against the physical 
 constitution, every wilful neglect of the laws of health 
 and moral life, is injuring the self in ways too delicate 
 to estimate, and is dimming the radiance of the soul. 
 Sin writes its terrible retribution on the very nerve 
 and tissue. On this subject we find men among the 
 prophets, who do not always accept every Christian 
 position. Herbert Spencer writes with prophetic ear- 
 nestness, " Few seem conscious that there is such a 
 thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and 
 acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat 
 
274 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 their bodies as they please. Disorders entailed by dis- 
 obedience to Nature's dictates they regard simply as 
 grievances; not as effects of a conduct more or less 
 flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on 
 their dependents, and on future generations, are often 
 as great as those caused by crime; yet they do not 
 think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true 
 that in the case of drunkenness the viciousness of a 
 bodily transgression is recognised; but none appear 
 to infer that if this bodily transgression is vicious so 
 too is every bodily transgression. The fact is that all 
 breaches of the laws of health are physical sins." ^ Just 
 because we do not place life on a physical basis this 
 should appeal to us; we are all the more bound to 
 accept it because life has a moral basis. Mental vigour 
 and spiritual insight are not got through despising the 
 physical side of life. 
 
 We have been led to state one of the true conclu- 
 sions which should follow from the fact of the con- 
 nection of body with the higher life, before dealing 
 with the mistakes which have arisen in this region. 
 The ascetic mistake starts from the fact that the soul 
 is unmistakably sensitive to the body, and that all 
 the spiritual experiences are bound up with the phys- 
 ical life. Self-control, in bodily acts such as eating 
 and drinking, does without doubt affect more than 
 the body; it disposes towards a state of mind and a 
 moral habit, which are essential to spiritual progress. 
 Further, a resolute disciplined habit of separation from 
 the distractions of earth gives the suitable sphere for 
 the holy meditation, by means of which the soul grows 
 
 'Herbert Spencer, Education (Pop. Ed.), p. 171. 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 27 s 
 
 deep and strong. Self-control of some kind, and some 
 form of solitude, seem necessary instruments of de- 
 votional culture. These, then, are the facts which 
 all religious experience warrants; and the natural 
 temptation arises to exaggerate these methods, and to 
 work upon the soul according to prescribed forms to 
 attain spiritual exaltation. If a man is ambitious of 
 penetrating into the innermost secrets of the celestial 
 light, it is natural to assume that he can at least go 
 far, if he is willing to shake off every clog, and will 
 shrink from no extreme of self-denial. Separation and 
 mortification, as complete as possible, come to be ac- 
 cepted as the approved and infallible methods of reach- 
 ing the heavenly vision and entering into spiritual 
 communion. It becomes easy to believe that any un- 
 common experience is an evidence of success; and 
 thus we find men, who are eager for personal illumi- 
 nation, confusing the most grotesque experiences with 
 spiritual blessedness. They do not *' try the spirits 
 whether they are of God." ^ 
 
 The story of human error in this region is not a 
 pleasant one to read, though we recognise the facts 
 which have given such error currency. Delusions, 
 visions, ecstatic states, mystical hallucinations, have 
 deceived men into imagining that these are tests of 
 spirituality: and often they are found divorced from 
 all moral law. A great deal of the self-denial and 
 the discipline insisted on in ascetic devotion, is un- 
 real, and much easier than the fruits of the Spirit 
 in humility, and meekness, and love; as forms of 
 outward penance are always easier to the mass of 
 men than real inward discipline. By means of exer- 
 
 * I John iv. I. 
 
276 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 cises, a man can put himself into a state of dream, 
 rising sometimes to ecstasy; but it may only be a 
 surface discipline, without true training of mind, and 
 will, and imagination, and heart. When we put the 
 stress on the mere seeing of visions or some emotional 
 exaltation, then what best produce such are looked 
 upon as the highest religious instruments. We know, 
 for instance, that the hypnotic state can be induced by 
 fixed staring, but we know that mesmerism has in itself 
 no religious significance. Hypnotists also induce 
 trance by suggestion, by superimposing their will on 
 the patient's will; and this can be done by a man on 
 himself, where he is so to speak, both the patient and 
 the operator. If a man resigns his mind to credulity, 
 he can produce almost any state of mind he desires, 
 with consequences both on bodily condition on the 
 one side, and on what seems like spiritual condition 
 on the other; and so we find the same type of mind 
 producing in one a weak hypochondria, and in another 
 a mystic exaltation that seems to raise him above 
 physical conditions altogether. 
 
 A mistaken notion of what is the true character of 
 spirituality is at the bottom of many of the grotesque 
 practices which we see appearing and reappearing 
 in history, all based on the physical treatment of the 
 soul. The penitential discipline of the mediaeval 
 Church gave ground for the extravagances ; for that 
 discipline undoubtedly seemed to effect what was 
 claimed for it. Practices like self-laceration, and the 
 systematic weakening of the body by prolonged fasts 
 and watchings, by severe scourgings, by wearing 
 sackcloth, chains, girdles with pricks to wound the 
 flesh, and such like, had as their impelling cause the 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 277 
 
 desire to produce a state which was held to give abun- 
 dant entrance into divine mysteries. It was not the 
 mere desire for notoriety which gave rise to the 
 flagellants, who lashed themselves into an ecstatic 
 fury ; for since the Church sanctioned such things as 
 an authorised method of discipline, it was naturally 
 assumed that the more complete the discipline the 
 more perfect would be the results. In Church history 
 we find paroxysms of flagellation, such as the great 
 recrudescence seen during the period of the Black 
 Death in the fourteenth century, which spread over a 
 great part of Europe, till it had to be put down by 
 the Church. Some of the flagellants developed hereti- 
 cal views, renounced the sacraments of the Church as 
 useless to those who accepted complete mortification, 
 for whom the one and only sacrament needed was that 
 of the bloody baptism of the scourge. The discipline 
 of the lash was revived by the Jesuits, and received 
 ecclesiastical sanction. Similarly, sects have arisen 
 constantly, and have kept ground for a time, the 
 chief item of whose creed seems to be some form of 
 dancing ; from the Euchites of the fifth century, called 
 also Messalians or Chorentes from their mystic dances, 
 down to the Shakers, who have been popularly so 
 called from the quivering motion of their body in their 
 solemn religious dances or processions. The author 
 has seen Moors dancing and cutting themselves, till 
 they fell down in a sort of madness, to the great ad- 
 miration of the spectators, who looked on them as 
 peculiarly holy men. The history of ecclesiastical fasts 
 also cannot be complete without taking into account 
 the facts, which seem to authorise the physical treat- 
 ment of the spiritual life. Many of the symptoms can 
 
278 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 be explained on pathological grounds, the connection 
 between nervous affections and ecstatic visions, the 
 exaltation of feeling rising to enthusiasm and issuing 
 in fantastic visionary ideas of bliss. The ground- 
 work of truth is that the treatment of the body does 
 determine to some extent both mental and spiritual 
 results, so that it is a natural step to invent artificial 
 discipline to hasten these results. 
 
 Thus, apart from the gross, unregulated practices 
 which we have noticed, all systems of ascetic devotion 
 make much of the mechanics of prayer, and methods 
 of solitude, and preparation of soul by fasting and 
 such like. This is a difficult region, where hard and 
 fast lines cannot be drawn. It is impossible to take 
 a clear attitude of condemnation since method of some 
 sort seems necessary here as in other spheres of cul- 
 ture. Protestantism has suffered much by often rcr 
 nouncing method altogether; and it must be admitted 
 that we have among us too little devotional culture, 
 and have paid too little attention to the development 
 of the contemplative life generally. Something, how- 
 ever, is to be said for this distrust of method, when 
 we think of the errors committed in its name, and of 
 the tendency to subordinate real spiritual fruits to 
 mechanical forms, resulting in spurious spirituality. 
 
 A noteworthy instance of a consistent treatment 
 of the body is found in the exercises prescribed by 
 Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. In order 
 to see the danger of the system inaugurated, we do 
 not need to believe with Carlyle that Jesuitism is in 
 its spirit only " an apotheosis of falsity, a kind of subtle 
 quintessence and deadly virus of lying," and the result 
 of Ignatius' black militia on Europe merely an " abomi- 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 279 
 
 nable mud-deluge," though Carlyle had historic reason 
 for some of his indignation; nor need we look upon 
 Ignatius himself as a scandalous mortal, a man full 
 of prurient elements from the first, '* A bad man, I 
 think; not good by nature; and by destiny swollen 
 into a very Ahriman of badness." ^ He was a sincere, 
 and from his own point of view a devout man, ear- 
 nestly desirous of furthering religion in himself and 
 throughout th^e world. His Spiritual Exercises, full as 
 they are of false religious conceptions, are also full 
 of a passionate desire to discipline his soul, and to 
 make it a channel of divine grace. They were begun 
 for his own spiritual benefit, and were afterwards 
 given to train the order he established. The great 
 thought of the book is method, using rigidly and per- 
 sistently the prescribed mechanics of devotion. Not 
 only the subjects of meditation, and the special virtues 
 and graces desired, but also the times, and postures, 
 3jid the details of manner are all regulated. The 
 exercitant is told how he is to stand, and when to 
 shut his eyes, and for how long, during his contem- 
 plation. At one time he is to stand for the space 
 of a Pater noster one or two paces from the place 
 in which he is about to meditate, and make an act 
 of reverence or humiliation; at another he is to vary 
 his posture during the contemplation, at one time 
 kneeling, at another prostrate on the earth, or stretched 
 on the ground with face upward, now seated, now 
 standing. Then having finished the exercise, he is to 
 examine for the space of a quarter of an hour how he 
 has succeeded in the contemplation. Again, he is to 
 deprive himself of all light, shutting the shutters and 
 
 "Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets — {Jesuitism^. 
 
28o CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 doors, during the time he is m the room. He is to 
 learn to restrain his eyes while speaking to people, only 
 looking at them when receiving or dismissing them. 
 These exercises are to be accompanied with penance, 
 which is divided into interior and exterior penance, 
 the former consisting in grieving for sin, and resolving 
 not to commit sin, the latter, which is the fruit of the 
 interior, consists in chastisement for sins committed, 
 and this is inflicted chiefly in three ways. First, in 
 regard to food, not in cutting off what is superfluous, 
 which is not penance but temperance, but in retrench- 
 ing what is suitable, " and the more we retrench the 
 greater and better is the penance, provided only the 
 person be not injured and no notable weakness ensue." ^ 
 The second is in regard to sleep, and here again it is 
 not leaving off what is superfluous, but in leaving off 
 conveniences, and the more this is done the better the 
 penance — with the same proviso as before that no 
 injury is done. The third manner is to chastise the 
 flesh by causing it sensible pain, which is to be inflicted 
 by wearing a hair-cloth, cords, or iron chains next 
 the skin, by disciplining or bruising the body, and by 
 other kinds of austerities. Pain, not sickness, is to be 
 the result aimed at, pain sensible to the flesh that will 
 not penetrate to the bone; and so the instrument 
 prescribed as most convenient is a lash of small cords, 
 that will cause pain exteriorly without injuring the 
 health. The rules for regulating food are along the 
 same lines. Pious contemplation about the lives of 
 the saints is prescribed while taking food, to take the 
 mind away, that there be less delight and sensible 
 pleasure in the act of eating. Here again sickness 
 ^Spiritual Exercises — First Week: Additions. 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 281 
 
 is to be avoided, but the more a man can give up 
 the oftener he will " experience interior lights, and 
 consolations, and divine inspirations." ^ Ignatius 
 thought he found these consolations and inspirations 
 through such methods; and we have seen in what 
 sense it was true that a certain exaltation of emotion 
 can be produced, which is easily mistaken for a 
 spiritual state. 
 
 This is confirmed by some of the methods ^ of 
 prayer, which Ignatius orders. In one method the 
 exercitant is to keep his eyes shut or fixed on one 
 spot, say the word Pater, and dwell on the consider- 
 ation of this word so long as he finds meanings, 
 comparisons, relish, and consolation in thoughts about 
 this word ; and he is to act in the same way in regard 
 to each word of the Lord's Prayer or other prayer. 
 This method is to be continued for one hour. Another 
 method is the rhythmical, which consists in saying 
 one word of the Lord's Prayer at each breath or respi- 
 ration, so that . only one word is said between each 
 breath, and in the length of time between each breath 
 attention is to be paid to the signification of the word. 
 
 We need say nothing as to how such a system con- 
 flicts with the teaching of Jesus, who condemned all 
 " vain repetition as the heathen do." We can see how 
 such a methodised system of devotion makes a suit- 
 able beginning for novices who seek to enter the order 
 of the Jesuits, which drills its members into obedience, 
 and passive acceptance of commands, and the com- 
 plete giving up of the individual will. We are, how- 
 ever, not concerned with the achievements and de- 
 
 * Spiritual Exercises — Third Week. 
 •Fourth Week: Three Methods of Prayer. 
 
282 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 merits of the Jesuit system, but with the physical 
 treatment of the spiritual life so plainly set forth in the 
 Spiritual Exercises. There is a business-like utilisation 
 of the mechanics of devotion to produce the best 
 spiritual results, with an equal business-like care that 
 the line be not overstepped, which would injure health, 
 and injure the capacity of serving the order and the 
 Qiurch. The system has succeeded in creating a 
 drilled religious militia, with an unquestioning obedi- 
 ence, and a complete discipline, such as no secular 
 army in the world has ever equalled or approached; 
 but history has never given the Jesuit system credit 
 for pure spiritual results, which can be compared to 
 their practical success. The truth is that the interior 
 lights and consolations and inspirations, which such 
 devotional exercises produce, cannot be called spiritual 
 at all. They are mostly sensuous emotions, physical 
 in their character, as they are physical in their origin. 
 They are of the same class as the hypnotic trance got 
 in a similar way, by fixing the eyes on one spot, and 
 by resigning the will. When religion is chiefly valued 
 according to the emotions raised, more and more 
 stress comes to be laid on the forms which produce 
 emotion, and religion itself is bound to degenerate. 
 The spiritual life is inseparably related to character, 
 and all spiritual truth must be tested by conscience 
 and by moral law. Only by moral sympathy can we 
 truly enter into the mind of Christ; and methods, 
 which are artificially imposed to reach a supposed 
 sanctification, can hardly escape from being divorced 
 from moral reverence and moral obedience. The 
 danger of all physical treatment of the spiritual life is 
 extemalism and formalism. 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 283 
 
 It will simplify our discussion if we narrow it 
 down to one particular item of all ascetic practice, 
 that of fasting, which has a recognised place in all 
 systems as an instrument of spiritual culture. The sur- 
 face temptation which it carries is of course the empty 
 doing of it as a duty of religion, culminating in an 
 ostentation like that of the Pharisees in their acts of 
 fasting. They had reduced it to a system, and had 
 made it a distinct religious duty, quite apart from the 
 spiritual results it was supposed to accomplish. Our 
 Lord in condemning it enforced the necessity of sin- 
 cerity and reality above all things in religion, and 
 taught that all forms, fasting included, must be judged 
 by the purity and simplicity of intention. He points to 
 the danger and temptations of such mechanical exer- 
 cises. All bodily discipline, all kinds of abstinence, 
 can have value only as means, and when this is for- 
 gotten they become a degradation. The idolatry of 
 forms is the constant temptation of the human heart, 
 and our Lord prescribed no forms as in themselves 
 sacred. Men have practised self-denial, fasting, and 
 all sorts of renunciation, in order to overcome their 
 besetting temptations and sins; and these very ab- 
 stinences, however helpful and seemingly necessary, 
 may become a subtler temptation. For one thing, 
 when religion is reduced to mechanical rule, men soon 
 covet the appearance, which is cheaply got; and arti- 
 ficial adherence to the rule is the inevitable result. 
 This was the condemnation of the Pharisees, that they 
 made a parade of their strict exercises ; and that, laying 
 stress on outward performance instead of humility of 
 heart, which fasting was meant to symbolise and to 
 encourage, they made it an occasion of ostentation. 
 
284 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Besides, all forms like fasting create temptations, if 
 they are raised to the level of religious duty. This 
 was the protest against the ascetic rules of monasti- 
 cism, made by such different men as Luther and Eras- 
 mus. The point of Erasmus' constant contention, in 
 many of his Colloqiiies ^ and elsewhere, is that it is 
 wrong to lay down such forms as Christian duty which 
 a man or woman neglects at peril. He often speaks 
 with indignation of the formalism, to which all ascetic 
 acts had arrived in his time, including the monastic 
 vow. It led some who had no call to such a life to 
 attempt it, with disastrous moral results, and it hurt 
 many a gentle conscience. In the same line also 
 Luther calls the founders of the religious orders 
 troublers of men's consciences. Luther indeed, who 
 spoke from experience as Erasmus did, strongly con- 
 demned the solitary life as a religious method, while 
 he admitted the measure of truth it contained. The 
 great point insisted on by both is that these things 
 should not be elevated into rules of religion. *' It is 
 a perilous thing for a man to be alone," writes Luther. 
 " Wherefore they that ordained that cursed monkish 
 and solitary life gave occasion to many thousands to 
 despair. If a man should separate himself from the 
 company of others for a day or two to be occupied 
 in prayer (as we read of Christ that He sometimes 
 went aside alone into the Mount, and by night contin- 
 ued in prayer), there were no danger therein. But 
 when they constrained men continually to live a soli- 
 tary life it was a device of the devil himself; for when 
 a man is tempted and is alone he is not able to raise 
 
 ^E. g. Familiar Colloquies — ["The Penitent Virgin "]. 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 285 
 
 himself up, no not in the least temptation that can be " ^ 
 Ascetic methods are condemned by Erasmus and Lu- 
 ther, because they are imposed as sacred rules of duty, 
 whereas th-ey can have no religious significance, except 
 as they are the natural expression of an inward motive. 
 They both also assert that they produce new tempta- 
 tions, apart altogether from the possibility of violent 
 reaction, by which nature reasserts herself, and apart 
 from the spiritual danger of pride when a man does 
 succeed in silencing nature. The physical treatment of 
 the soul, which men take up so lightly, must be a deli- 
 cate task, requiring wisdom, and individual treatment, 
 and cannot be comprehended in general rules to be 
 applied indiscriminately. If we are in the dark about 
 the relation of mind to body, much more are we in 
 the dark as to how any persistent bodily action will 
 affect each individual soul. 
 
 All who have ever tried, even in a modified degree, 
 any of the prescribed methods of repressions in the 
 hope that they offered an infallible instrument of 
 spiritual culture, cannot but confess that it was like 
 ignorant blundering fingers tampering with delicate 
 mechanism whose working was mysterious. Newman 
 admits that fasting, for example, does not lessen temp- 
 tations but creates them. He confesses it may make a 
 man irritable, and ill-tempered, or may produce a 
 feebleness which deprives him of his wonted com- 
 mand over his bodily acts, feelings, and expressions. 
 " Thus it may make him seem, for instance, to be out 
 of temper when he is not ; I mean because his tongue, 
 his lips, nay, his brain, are not in his pK>wer. He does 
 
 * On Galatians, p. 324. 
 
286 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 not use the words he wishes to use, nor the accent and 
 tone. . . . Again, weakness of body may deprive 
 him of self-command in other ways; perhaps he can- 
 not help smiling or laughing, when he ought to be 
 serious, which is evidently a most distressing and 
 humbling trial ; or when wrong thoughts present them- 
 selves, his mind cannot throw them off, any more 
 than if it were some dead thing and not spirit. Or 
 again, weakness of body often hinders him from fixing 
 his mind on his prayers, instead of making him pray 
 more fervently; or again, weakness of body is often 
 attended with languor and listlessness, and strongly 
 tempts a man to sloth. Yet I have not mentioned 
 the most distressing of the effects which may follow 
 from even the moderate exercise of this great Chris- 
 tian duty. It is undeniably a means of temptation, 
 and I say so lest persons should be surprised and de- 
 spond when they find it so." ^ It is an instance of the 
 peculiar twist in Newman's mind that he should see 
 this, and yet not see the implication of it. All he has 
 said, besides the more distressing effects he tells us 
 he has left unsaid, did not make him question whether 
 it is such a clear Christian duty as he assumes. If it 
 exposes men to thoughts from which they turn with 
 abhorrence and terror, as he confesses it does, then 
 instead of subduing the flesh, which is claimed for 
 it, on the contrary it gives the flesh power. No value 
 as a penitential exercise can make up for such dangers. 
 It will always remain far more of a Christian duty to 
 avoid being irritable and ill-tempered, than to gain 
 some expected sanctity at the risk of wounding others 
 with tongue or act. Surely with such supposed in- 
 
 * Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. vi. serm. i. 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 287 
 
 struments of piety the test must be rigorously applied, 
 " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 
 In addition, it must be remembered that men are 
 not all made in one cast-iron mould, and that therefore 
 such abstinences have different effects on different 
 persons. It follows that the same formal act will be 
 various in its results. To apply it as a fixed rule of 
 duty is to apply it blindly, like a doctor prescribing- 
 medicine by rule of thumb, in the pious hope that 
 something may chance to do good. It is a principle 
 of the modern practice of medicine not to treat the 
 disease so much as the individual patient; and in the 
 subtler region of the soul it is far more difficult to 
 say how any general rule of conduct will affect it. 
 The physical treatment of the spiritual life, working 
 as it does with narrow approved methods, does not take 
 into account the differences in the material on which 
 it operates. It would be all very well if the aim were 
 to produce uniformity of discipline, as in the Jesuit 
 order, where each responds to superior will as an 
 automaton; but in the varied many-sided sphere of a 
 rich and full Christian life, methods which are applied 
 mechanically are an offence and a hindrance. 
 
 The above criticism applies of course only to fast- 
 ing as a formal and universal rule, as if it were in 
 itself a Christian duty. It may well be useful to some, 
 and there will always be occasions when it should 
 come natural to all. If it helps a man to real self- 
 government, it justifies itself. If it makes him more 
 gentle and loving instead of irritable, more prayerful 
 instead of less, if it gives him more control of his 
 whole nature, and if it expresses real sincere repent- 
 ance and desire for holiness, it justifies itself. But if 
 
288 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 it, or any other method of formal reHgion, exposes a 
 man to sin, to pride, to sloth, then it comes under the 
 same condemnation as the forms of fasting which the 
 Pharisees practised. The true view, and the scriptural, 
 is Luther's sane judgment, " We do not reject fasting 
 and other good exercises as damnable things ; but we 
 teach that by these exercises we do not obtain remis- 
 sion of sins," ^ That is to say, he will not allow a 
 magical efficacy to a form, and will not let a method 
 of personal discipline be elevated into a Christian duty. 
 We must always distinguish between any form and 
 the spiritual reality it is meant to embody. The com- 
 mon mediaeval proverb, Cucullus non facit monachum ^ 
 (the cowl does not make the monk), shows that it was 
 quite well understood by spiritually-minded men that 
 the mere withdrawal from the world might not mean 
 any real change of heart. Many passages in the Imi- 
 tatio Christi, for example, recognise this, such as, 
 " The wearing of the religious habit, and the shaving 
 of the crown, profit but little ; but change of majuners, 
 and perfect mortification of passions, make a true 
 religious ^ man." * Only as we realize that there is no 
 merit in any form in itself, will we be saved from 
 the many temptations of formalism,, and be able to 
 use a form for our own best life. It might be good 
 for some to fast who do not, to practise some con- 
 tempt for the material side of life, which to-day 
 
 * Com. on Galatians, ii. 3, ad. loc. 
 
 * Shakespeare makes the clown translate the proverb as " I 
 wear not motley in my brain." — Twelfth Night, i. 5 
 
 ' Note " religious " has its usual reference to the monastic 
 life. 
 *Bk. I. chap. xvii. 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 289 
 
 threatens to engulf the soul. If we condemn any 
 rigid rules like fasting, it should not be because of 
 the greater laxity of our own lives, but because we 
 have a higher and more spiritual standard, and be- 
 cause our ideal is that religion should be the guiding 
 spirit and paramount power in every region, of life, 
 in the civil and social relations as well as what are 
 called the more distinctively religious. It has always 
 been common for frivolity and worldliness to condemn 
 all forms of seriousness and zeal, just because these 
 are a rebuke of selfish pursuit of pleasure and of soft 
 complacent living. Puritanism and every kindred seri- 
 ousness are sneered at, not for thte things in which 
 they contradict the spirit of the Christian faith, but 
 for the things which in them are essentially Christian. 
 The easy worldly temper objects to the earnest and 
 zealous interpretation of religious duty. Rather, we 
 would admit the profound truth and universal obli- 
 gation of self-denial, which lias so often been clothed 
 in ungainly forms, but which makes its imperious 
 demand on us still if we would be true men ; only, all 
 forms of self-denial must be alive with spiritual mo- 
 tive and not dead mechanical rules ; and, if duty seems 
 to prescribe them, they must be accepted not as them- 
 selves parts of Christian duty, but as means to the 
 great Christian ends of love and holiness and service. 
 
 The physical treatment of the spiritual life by pre- 
 scribed mechanical rules really puts t!he cart before 
 the horse; for what is wanted rather is the spiritual 
 treatment of the physical life, consecrating every 
 power and activity by a sacred motive, putting all life 
 on a moral basis. From this point of view our treat- 
 
290 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 ment of the body will be regulated by the acknowl- 
 edgment that it is an integral part of human nature, 
 partaking of the fortunes of the life, sharing in its 
 failures and successes, and contributing to both. It is 
 the instrument of the soul, carrying out its behests; 
 and at the same time it gives the points of contact 
 through which the soul becomes rich or poor, noble or 
 base. The body therefore demands care and discipline, 
 the wise and strong guidance of mind, and heart, and 
 spirit. It is only when the spiritual rules and directs 
 that there can be permanent harmony, and the body 
 become the servant and instrument of the higher. In 
 this case also the treatment of the body becomes an 
 outward symbol of the inward condition. 
 
 Of all God's works which do this world adorn, 
 There is no one more fair and excellent 
 Than is man's body, both for power and form, 
 While it is kept in sober government; 
 But none than it more foul and indecent, 
 Distemper'd through misrule and passions base; 
 It grows a monster, and incontinent ^ 
 Doth lose his dignity and native grace. ' 
 
 This solemn sense of duty to the physical side of 
 life is certainly part of the great lesson of the close 
 connection of body and mind. The true attitude 
 towards the body will be one neither of contempt, 
 nor of weak pandering to its impulses. Something 
 of self-reverence is implied in all adequate self-control. 
 The great difficulty in any wholesale condemnation 
 of the physical treatment of the spiritual life is that 
 
 ^ Immediately. 
 •Spenser, F(ierie Queen, Bk. ii. Canto 9. 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 291 
 
 we undoubtedly need method and the careful cultiva- 
 tion of habit. It is easy enough to condemn the idola- 
 try of form, into which men have been led, by concen- 
 trating attention on the mechanics of prayer and the 
 regulation methods; but all masters of the devo- 
 tional life insist on the necessity of creating the oppor- 
 tunities, and giving the soul the suitable environment 
 for growth in grace. Devotional culture is as much 
 the result of effort as mental culture. We recognise 
 the cultured mind when brought into contact with it. 
 It has fed itself with the food of thought, with wide 
 and accurate reading, with careful study. We feel 
 it has breadth and sweep, with nothing narrow in its 
 judgmients. So we recognise the cultured soul, with 
 the aroma of devotion and a peace that rebukes the 
 fret and fever of the day — with holy eyes like the eyes 
 of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, with rebellious heart 
 curbed and brought into submission. All culture is 
 the fruit of discipline; and this highest culture comes 
 from the discipline of heart and will, through giving 
 the soul the necessary occasions. If there is to be 
 any depth of religious life at all, there must be a certain 
 separateness, making the opportunities for the holy 
 duty of " recollection," providing times for prayer and 
 meditation, which make a man calm at the heart, and 
 therefore strong for all the needs of living. 
 
 The cultivation of the contemplative life is a valu- 
 able feature in the purpose which inspired so much 
 ascetic practice. In the emphasis which it laid on 
 meditation there is no keen opposition to the rival ideal 
 of culture, which also in a different way makes much 
 of a similar aloofness, and insists on the value of soli- 
 tude in producing a rich and deep life. Cowley says, 
 
292 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 " To be a philosopher is but to retire from the world, 
 or rather to retire from the world as it is man's, into 
 the world as it is God's " ; and something of that inner 
 retirement seems necessary, at once for the calm poise 
 of nature and easeful mastery of work in the great 
 artist, as well as for the repose of soul in the saint. In 
 our busy practical life the temptation is to be engrossed 
 in outside activities, with no time for the meditation 
 by which the soul gathers itself at the centre, and 
 withdraws from all distracting sights and sounds. 
 Even in religious work it is common to find men 
 with many admirable qualities, active, zealous, eager 
 in all good causes, but with a shallow spiritual life 
 behind, with little sweetness and winsomeness of char- 
 acter, and little of the devotional spirit, and little of 
 the attractive grace, which comes from shutting the 
 door to be in secret with the Father, who seeth in 
 secret. There is grim irony in Swedenborg's vision 
 of the hell where everybody is completely busy in 
 making everybody else virtuous. 
 
 At the same time this separated life is not a matter 
 of mere formal times of prayer and physical separation 
 from the world. It is rather a cloister in the heart, 
 a spiritual separateness, which brings a new motive 
 able to cover all the tasks and duties of life which the 
 faith imposes. Its essence is a self-surrender to the 
 will of God, Hfting the whole life up to a new level, 
 where the common domestic and social relations and 
 the ordinary work of the world are consecrated. The 
 ultimate test of the contemplative life is its effect on 
 the active life; and the ultimate test of devotion is 
 devotedness. We need method and form in religion 
 as in all other spheres of life, but it is one of the great 
 
PHYSICAL TREATMENT OF SOUL 293 
 
 ethical revelations of our Lord that character is formed 
 not by method, but by the open vision of Gk>d. The 
 recognition of this alone will save method from its 
 besetting- temptations, which we have been considering 
 in this chapter. 
 
XI 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS ON ASCETICISM 
 
 IN the gradual evolution of the mediaeval concep- 
 tion of a saint, and in the growth of the ascetic 
 ideal generally, it was assumed that renunciation 
 of the world in the monastic sense was enjoined 
 in the Bible, and was distinctly taught by Christ. The 
 Church, however, even when it has held this most 
 strongly, has not been quite consistent. The practical 
 necessities of social life, and the stubborn facts of 
 human nature, have compelled a modification of the 
 position. For instance, it has always allowed and 
 sanctictfied marriage for the majority of Christian peo- 
 ple. By the perfect it might be considered an inferior 
 condition of the religious life, but it was held legiti- 
 mate for the general mass of believers. Indeed it has 
 to be remembered that it was the Christian faith after 
 all, which ennobled the whole family relation, and 
 first put marriage on its true and high platform. A 
 very peculiar illustration of the inconsistency, induced 
 by the two different streams of tendency, is aflforded 
 by the place which marriage ultimately received. In 
 the mediaeval Church marriage was declared a sacra- 
 ment, and yet the priest was deprived of this sacra- 
 ment. The celibate life was supposed to be higher 
 than the married life, and yet the latter had the addi- 
 tional sacrament with the extra grace which a sacra- 
 ment implied. It may have been because such needed 
 
 294 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 295 
 
 grace more, but there was an instinct in the Church 
 of the true place of marriage, which thus found satis- 
 faction in spite of the illogical position. Though from 
 the middle of the third century onwards the ascetic 
 tendency grew ever more strong, yet the Church did 
 not make it a general rule, and got out of the dilemma, 
 as we have seen, by the theory of two distinct moral 
 codes — one representing a higher vocation, the other 
 a more relaxed standard for weaker "brethren. Thus 
 Tertullian, writing about second marriages, and vehe- 
 mently denouncing them, speaks of two rules; one 
 which tolerates what it cannot prevent, the other a state 
 more in the line of God's preference. 
 
 The seeming inconsistency of having two moral 
 rules was got over by asserting that our Lord meant 
 such items of the ascetic creed as renouncing property 
 and abstaining from marriage, not as commands, but 
 as counsels; so that those who do not practise these 
 abstinences are not to be blamed, and all are not com- 
 pelled to adopt them, because all are not capable of 
 them. It was a counsel of perfection set for those able 
 to receive it. Monasticism was declared to be " de jure 
 divino, non praecipiente sed consulente." This is an 
 impossible position, since Jesus in His teaching cer- 
 tainly sanctioned no division of moral rule, and what 
 He called perfection was to be pursued by all His fol- 
 lowers without exception ; but it was a compromise 
 which to some extent conserved the rights of ordinary 
 Christians. 
 
 And as a matter of fact the Christian life in the 
 iirst centuries did not spend itself in barren asceti- 
 cism, but brought new vigour into all the ordinary 
 channels and occupations of the world's work. Chris- 
 
296 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 tians pursued the ordinary avocations, entered into 
 trade and the secular professions, accepted every inno- 
 cent calHng, and only carried into these a new spirit of 
 honesty, and diligence, and unselfishness. There are 
 many indications that their example of integrity in 
 their business life, and of purity in their home life, did 
 more for the spread of the faith than any reasoned 
 pleadings. Tertullian, who became almost fanatically 
 ascetic, makes a point of this in replying to the charge 
 that Christians were a useless sort of people to the 
 world at large. ** How can this possibly be," he asks, 
 " since we mix with you as men, have the same food 
 and clothing, and the same necessaries of life as your- 
 selves ? We are no Brahmins, or Indian gymnoso- 
 phists, who live in woods, or recluses in exile from 
 other men. We know the gratitude we owe to God, 
 our Lord the Creator of all, and we reject nothing He 
 has given for man's use. We are indeed temperate in 
 our enjoyment, lest we transgress by excess, or abuse 
 His favours. Therefore we come to your forum, your 
 baths, inns, workshops, markets, and enter into all 
 other kinds of intercourse. We pursue with you navi- 
 gation, war, commerce, we share in your arts and pub- 
 lic works, and contribute to the service of the public." ^ 
 It is essential to remember this practical inconsistency, 
 which kept excessive asceticism a very small feature of 
 the early Church, or our picture of these days will get 
 hopelessly out of perspective. Still, with the steady 
 growth of the tendency, it came to be a prevalent as- 
 sumption that renunciation was indeed the very heart 
 of Christ's teaching, and that the highest life to which 
 He calls men is ascetic in character. 
 
 * Tertullian, Apology, chap. xlii. 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM zgy 
 
 This underlying conception of the Christian creed 
 is by no means obsolete, but is tacitly maintained 
 both by friends and by foes of the Christian faith. 
 It was of course so understood by the whole mediaeval 
 Church, and issued in the great monastic system, and 
 is indelibly imbedded in the Church Calendar of the 
 Saints. The Roman Catholic position is still that 
 the life of renunciation and withdrawal from the 
 world is the perfect religious life. All the varied forms 
 of asceticism found in Church history owe their origin 
 to this fundamental conception, that they were in sym- 
 .pathy with the teaching of Jesus. All the mediaeval 
 writers take for granted that, if Christ's will is to be 
 perfectly performed, m^ must accept an ascetic creed. 
 The Imitatio Christi, one of the sweetest and sanest 
 of mediaeval books, has this as a presupposition. '' Flee 
 from the throng of the world into the wilderness as 
 much as thou canst : for the talk of worldly affairs is a 
 great hindrance, although spoken with sincere inten- 
 tion " ^ — and of course this advice is given to men who 
 are already monks, as if the mere embracing of the 
 monastic life were not a sufficient withdrawal. " Oh 
 how strict and self-renouncing a life led those holy 
 Fathers in the wilderness! . . . They renounced 
 all riches, dignities, honours, friends, and kinsfolk; 
 they desired to have nothing which appertained to the 
 world; they scarcely took things necessary for the 
 sustenance of life; they grieved to serve their bodies 
 even in necessity." ^ A Kempis quotes their example 
 of rigourous abstinence to rebuke the lukewarmness and 
 negligence of monks of his own time, and to show 
 what perfect following of Jesus must mean. A similar 
 
 *Bk. I. chap. X. *Bk. i. chap, xviii. 
 
298 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 presupposition is seen in many Protestant quarters, 
 though not carried to the same logical conclusion as 
 by the Roman Catholic Church. Usually it is stated as 
 a vague sentimentalism, making much of renunciation 
 as the doctrine of the cross, without any real sacrifice in 
 it. We find in modern devotional books and in relig- 
 ious poetry, as well as in all forms of pietism and mys- 
 ticism, the underlying idea that in its ultimate issue 
 the Christian faith asks for renunciation of the world, 
 and that men attain to perfection in the proportion 
 in which they give up the world. 
 
 The thought makes many religious men uneasy, 
 and has certainly increased for them the difficulties 
 of leading the Christian life in the world. The notion 
 that complete following of Jesus means abstention 
 from the practical business and the ordinary activities 
 of society has made many a conscience of believers 
 morbid and strained. It tends to self-deception if 
 Christians believe they should not find enjoyment 
 from the common sources of human joy, and should 
 as far as possible be free from the complications of 
 active interest in the world of affairs, when as a matter 
 of fact they cannot avoid the ordinary pleasures of 
 life. Many who are sincere in their endeavour after 
 the Christian life, cannot reconcile this faith with the 
 inevitable necessity of mixing with the world. They 
 have an uncomfortable assurance that they do get 
 enjoyment from recreation of body, and from success 
 in business, and from the pleasures of imagination, 
 and from the ties of affection ; while at the bottom of 
 their minds is the thought that religion at its highest 
 and purest demands the renunciation of these. They 
 cannot see their way out of the difficulty ; for they do 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 299 
 
 not feel themselves called to sever their lives com- 
 pletely from their ordinary environment; and yet 
 they have a suspicion that to be a perfect Christian 
 they should make a clean sweep of all participation 
 in the world's pleasures. This creates a furtive and 
 strained conscience, so that they are never quite at 
 home in either world. They accuse themselves of 
 self-indulgence, though they believe they have a sin- 
 cere interest in religion. They do love God, and hon- 
 estly desire to do His will; but they are tormented 
 as to what it means, when they are told that they must 
 not love the world, nor the things that are in the 
 world. This uneasy conscience is to be directly at- 
 tributed to the perhaps unexpressed idea of which we 
 speak. 
 
 In a previous chapter we have already referred to 
 the common literary comparison of Christ with Apollo 
 or some other of the Greek gods; and at the same 
 time a comparison between the typical Christian life 
 and the typical pagan life; the latter as simple and 
 natural and joyous, a sort of victorious possession of 
 the world; the former as unearthly, renouncing joy, 
 and creeping out of the great experiences of life. 
 Such comparisons always assume the ascetic character 
 of Christ's life and teaching. Shorthouse, in his very 
 popular book, John Inglesant, draws this contrast: 
 " They were standing before the Apollo in the Belvi- 
 dere gardens. Inglesant took from beneath his vest 
 a crucifix in ivory, exquisitely carved, and held it 
 beside the statue of the god. The one the noblest 
 product of buoyant life, the proudest perfection of 
 harmonious form, purified from all the dross of hu- 
 manity, the head worthy of the god of day and of 
 
300 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 the lyre, of healing and of help ; the other worn, and 
 emaciated, helpless, dying, apparently without power, 
 forgotten by the world." ^ Elsewhere he calls Christ 
 " the Divine Ascetic who trod the winepress of the 
 wrath of God." It must be evident to all how prev- 
 alent the thought is that Christ, by His example 
 and teaching, inculcated the principles of asceticism. 
 A modem advocate of a modified monasticism in the 
 Church of England ^ says boldly, that if any dis- 
 passionate person could read for the first time our 
 Lord's Sermon on the Mount, he would come to no 
 other conclusion than that the life of the ascetic is 
 distinctly ordained by Christ. Of course early defend- 
 ers of monasticism insisted also that it not only 
 received the sanction of our Lord's teaching, but that 
 His own life was framed according to the well-known 
 three rules of the monastic orders, Chastity, Poverty, 
 Obedience. 
 
 The same opinion as to the essence of the Christian 
 faith is freely expressed by enemies as well as by 
 friends. What some have thought the glory of the 
 faith, namely that it produces men who make complete 
 sacrifice of all earthly joy, is made by others an accu- 
 sation in the count against Christianity. They accept 
 to the full the thought that Christ's religion is at bot- 
 tom ascetic; and then they turn the acknowledgment 
 against it. Renan declares that Jesus boldly preached 
 war against nature, and total severance from ties of 
 blood, and asked from His disciples a complete detach- 
 ment from the earth, arid the practice of absolute pov- 
 erty ; and that His . requirements undoubtedly meant 
 
 * John Inglesant, chap. xxv. 
 ■Rev. F. C. Woodhouse, Monasticism, p. 6. 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 301 
 
 the despising of the healthy limits of man's nature. He 
 speaks of the harsh and gloomy feeling of distaste for 
 the world, and of excessive self-abnegation, which 
 characterises Christian perfection. He points to the 
 danger, which threatened the future of this exalted 
 morality. " By detaching man from earth, the ties of 
 life were severed. The Christian would be praised for 
 being a bad son, or a bad patriot, if it was for Christ 
 that he resisted his father, or fought against his coun- 
 try. The ancient city, the parent republic, or the law 
 common to all, were thus placed in hostility with the 
 Kingdom of God." The further consequence of course 
 followed that the ideal of Jesus was impossible, as 
 few could even attempt to realise the Utopia He 
 pointed to. Renan declares that common sense revolts 
 against the conclusion of asceticism, that perfection 
 should be placed outside the ordinary conditions of 
 society ; but his whole argument is to show, not the folly 
 of the monastic ideal, but the failure of this part of 
 Christ's teaching.^ It was natural for Renan, who was 
 trained to be a monk, and who broke away from the 
 position of his youth, to think that the monastic life 
 was the ideal Christian life, for this was the presuppo- 
 sition of his whole early education. 
 
 The same acceptance of the thought that the Chris- 
 tian creed is ascetic has often been made by others to 
 show the ethical flaws in Christianity, to show that its 
 system of morals *is impracticable, and cannot be ad- 
 justed to ordinary human Hfe. The attempt is to 
 prove Christianity to be unnatural ; for the plain man 
 with ordinary healthy instincts feels that a religion, 
 which demands the extirpation of natural impulses, 
 
 * Vide argument of chap. xix. of Vie de Jesus. 
 
302 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 can be no religion for him. He feels sure, without 
 being able to give reasons, that his capacities were 
 not given him to be crushed, and the world was not 
 created to be renounced. He feels that the ordinary 
 blessings of life are good in themselves, and that there- 
 fore the religion, which has nothing to say to them, 
 puts itself outside his practical interests. 
 
 Similarly, the acceptance of the ascetic ideal as 
 Christian has been made by socialists, who denounce 
 the unworldliness of the faith, and assert that it mili- 
 tates against the introduction of the new social and 
 industrial conditions which they seek to promote. 
 This is a common objection made by the party of 
 reform, and by all who are keenly interested in ma- 
 terial and secular progress, though they have no sym- 
 pathy with theoretic socialism. The objection states 
 that religion puts the emphasis on the future Hfe, 
 and in the interests of the soul condemns worldly 
 conditions; and so it impedes material progress, since 
 it makes men willing to endure injustice, instead of 
 rising up in wrath to put an end to it. And while 
 this applies to the general temper of the Christian faith, 
 it applies with thousandfold weight to the complete 
 ascetic position, which is assumed to be the logical con- 
 clusion of the faith. Civilisation, which is taken to 
 be synonymous with temporal welfare, is advanced, we 
 are told, not through the passive virtues like resigna- 
 tion, which religion magnifies, but through compe- 
 tition, through the desire for acquisition, through dis- 
 content with the present, finding outlet in remedial 
 measures. Religious faith robs the present of its full 
 power by looking forward to a visionary future. It 
 despises the ordinary life with its pleasures and occu- 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 303 
 
 pations, and depreciates the active sphere in which 
 men must live, since it makes spiritual contemplation 
 the ideal. It does not love this world, and therefore 
 does not make the best of it. Take a very typical 
 quotation along this line of objection from W. R. 
 Greg's The Creed of Christendom: " It is only those 
 who feel a deep interest in, and affection for, this 
 world, who will work resolutely for its amelioration: 
 those whose affections are transferred to heaven acqui- 
 esce easily in the miseries of earth, give them up as 
 hopeless, as befitting, as ordained, and console them- 
 selves with the idea of the amends, which are one day 
 to be theirs. If we had looked on this earth as our only 
 scene, it is doubtful if we should have tolerated its 
 more monstrous anomalies and more curable evils. 
 But it is easier to look to a future paradise, than to 
 strive to make one on earth ; and the depreciating and 
 hollow language of preachers has played into the hands 
 both of the insincerity and the indolence of man- 
 kind." 1 
 
 It might be answered to this particular charge 
 that it is not so as a matter of fact, that, though we 
 might perhaps expect those who looked to the future, 
 and who lived in the power of an endless life, to be 
 careless about temporal things, and think it not worth 
 while even remedying glaring abuses ; still, as a matter 
 of fact, the world's best benefactors, the men who have 
 lived, and have been willing to die, for the good 
 of their fellows, who have spent themselves in toil 
 for every noble end, the men who have ever given the 
 impulse to all reform, have been just the men who have 
 believed in God, and been inspired by Christ's passion 
 * The Creed of Christendom, p. 250. 
 
304 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 for humanity, and have agonised for the coming of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It must be confessed, 
 however, that sometimes the charge has received 
 plausibility from the conduct of some, who have in the 
 name of religion washed their hands of the temporal 
 concerns of the great mass of men ; and of course in a 
 completely consistent asceticism the charge would be 
 absolutely valid. 
 
 In substantiating the claim that the Bible taught 
 an ascetic creed, the advocates of monasticism were 
 somewhat hard put to it to find support from the 
 Bible, and were often driven to interpret passages in a 
 fanciful manner. The Old Testament on the face of 
 it did not give much help, though it was declared 
 that Elijah and Elisha were monks. There is a 
 healthy naturalism in the Old Testament, which can 
 hardly be missed even by a casual reader. It never 
 looks on man as a soul degraded by being covered 
 with a body; so the false contempt for the body has 
 no place in Jewish thought. The traditional Jewish 
 view made marriage both a duty and a privilege; and 
 children are called the heritage of the Lord> The 
 most characteristic feature of the early religion of 
 Israel is a bright, joyous cheerfulness ; and, though the 
 tone grew deeper and more sombre, it never could be 
 called ascetic. It is true that we find such symptoms 
 as the Nazarite vow to abstain from wine, and also 
 the similar rule of the Rechabites, but these seem to 
 owe their origin to a protest in favour of the simple life 
 of older times ; and certainly they are not representa- 
 tive of the g^eat stream of the national life, any more 
 
 * Psalm cxxvii. 3. 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 305 
 
 than the Essenes in the New Testament times were. 
 In the second part of the Decalogue, which deals with 
 the relations of man to man, the fundamental con- 
 ditions of social life are frankly accepted. The mo- 
 rality of the Old Testament indeed is founded on the 
 basis of the family, one of the finest flowers of which 
 is the honour to be shown to parents,^ All through 
 the law and the prophets it is assumed that a true 
 relation to Jehovah will evidence itself in moral integ- 
 rity towards men, showing itself in honesty, and jus- 
 tice, and truth, and scrupulous regard for the rights 
 of others. Man indeed, by virtue of the spiritual prin- 
 ciple with which he has been endowed, stands above 
 the level of nature, clothed with a special dignity. The 
 earth is given him to cultivate and make his own, and 
 he is to multiply and possess it.^ Family life is looked 
 on as the natural foundation for the moral and spir- 
 itual wellbeing of the race made in God's image, as is 
 implied in the account of man's creation : '' So God 
 created man in His own image, in the image of God 
 created He him, male and female created He them." 
 Apart then from isolated texts, which seem to be 
 wholly or partially ascetic in their character, the above 
 is unmistakably the great general trend of Old Testa- 
 ment religion. The repudiation of marriage is spe- 
 cially opposed to genuine Jewish ideas, which find ex- 
 pression not only in the Bible, but in the later Tal- 
 mudic literature, as many references in the Mishna^ 
 testify. 
 
 * Fifth Commandment. ' Gen. i. 28. 
 
 ' For example, " No one must withdraw from the duty of 
 having children, unless he has children already, according to 
 the school of Shammai two sons, according to that of Hillel at 
 least a son and a daughter." — Jebamoth vi. 6. 
 
3o6 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 The situation seems somewhat altered when we come 
 to the New Testament, and it looks as if a good case 
 could be made out on the other side. On the first 
 blush it seems as if Christ meant His religion to be in 
 its essence an ascetic one. Passages can be collated to 
 appear as if He demanded from His disciples the 
 extreme of renunciation. If a man is to win the 
 Kingdom of God, he must be prepared to give up 
 everything else, like the man who sold all his posses- 
 sions to purchase the field in which was the treasure 
 he had found.^ The renunciation is stated in all its 
 absoluteness as a separation from his very nearest 
 and dearest. " If any man come to Me and hate 
 not his father and mother, and wife and children, 
 and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, 
 he cannot be My disciple," ^ which certainly does look 
 like a warrant for all the extravagances of anchorites 
 who interpreted it by fleeing from the world altogether. 
 In the great decision there are to be no half measures, 
 no partial renunciation, but complete detachment from 
 the lower loves : " Whosoever he be of you that for- 
 saketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple." ^ 
 The advice to the rich young ruler, " If thou wilt be 
 perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the 
 poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and 
 come and follow Me," * seems to prohibit all the 
 worldly business which produces wealth ; since, if abso- 
 lute poverty is a condition for discipleship, then it is 
 folly to make wealth merely in order to strip oneself 
 of it later on. That would be a dangerous tampering 
 with evil. And what can look more like the setting 
 
 * Matt. xiii. 44. ' Luke xiv. 26. 
 
 'Luke xiv. 33. '•Matt. xix. 21. 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 307 
 
 up as an ideal the mutilation of all natural desires than 
 the saying, " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out 
 and cast it from thee; and if thy right hand offend 
 thee, cut it off and cast it from thee : for it is profitable 
 for thee that one of thy members should perish, and 
 not that thy whole body should be cast into hell " ? ^ 
 The very heart of His teaching is displayed in the 
 profound saying, " Whosoever shall save his life shall 
 lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for My sake 
 shall find it." « 
 
 A hasty conclusion from such single passages would 
 be to put them out of relation to the general teaching, 
 and often also out of relation to the particular occa- 
 sion which suggested each saying. Some of them 
 were for an individual case, as with the rich young 
 ruler, where the advice is the special cure from the 
 diagnosis of his spiritual state. It was the reading in 
 Church of this advice to the young ruler which in- 
 duced St. Anthony, the father of Christian monasti- 
 cism, to begin his career of strict asceticism. The 
 words " If thou wilt be perfect, give all to the poor," 
 stung him, and when he left the Church he gave away 
 all his ancestral possessions and distributed all his 
 money, with the exception of a small sum, which he 
 kept for his sister. The next time he went to Church 
 the word read was " Take no thought for the morrow," 
 and so he then disposed of what he had retained for his 
 sister, being ambitious for her also to be perfect. It 
 may be noted in passing the inconsistency involved in 
 making this a rule; for if the actual possession of 
 property is an absolute hindrance to the spiritual life, 
 
 ' Matt. V. 29, 30. ' Matt. xvi. 2$, 
 
3o8 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 then to give it away is to benefit oneself by only adding 
 a terrible temptation to somebody else. There is a cer- 
 tain inevitable selfishness in the extreme ascetic posi- 
 tion, similar to the selfishness in the opposite extreme 
 of self-culture, both making the highest end a perfec- 
 tion for self. A word which was made much of by 
 the early ascetics was " Take heed to thyself," bring- 
 ing often all the vices of morbid introspection and 
 self-absorption. We constantly read of single phrases 
 and texts being the instrument in driving men to 
 become monks, as St. John the Calybite, who when 
 a mere boy read in the Gospels, "He that loveth 
 father and mother more than Me is not worthy of 
 Me," and immediately ran away from home, and 
 entered the Sleepless order of monks, so called be- 
 cause they took turn at divine service day and night 
 so that prayer and praise might ceaselessly ascend. 
 
 This common practice of singling out special 
 phrases suggests a further consideration in under- 
 standing our Lord's teaching, namely, that our in- 
 terpretation must take into account the form and 
 method He constantly adopted. There was an im- 
 pressive pregnancy in His manner of teaching, which 
 seems to have been chosen by a deliberate principle, 
 which Wendt ^ calls the principle of aiming at the 
 greatest clearness in the briefest compass. He de- 
 pended sometimes on startling antitheses, or sudden 
 appeals, to gain entrance into men's minds. He often 
 put His judgments and instructions in crisp, pointed 
 sentences, which made them specially memorable. He 
 selected cases of illustration, which brought out in 
 the most vivid relief the deep religious truth He wished 
 * Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, vol. i. p. 130. 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 309 
 
 to inculcate. He did not weaken the force of the 
 principle by needless details, or explanations, or modi- 
 fications, which would apply in different circum- 
 stances. It was not a system of precepts to be rigidly 
 followed according to the letter, but a system of prin- 
 ciples by which His disciples were thrown back upon 
 conscience. He refused on many occasions to give the 
 definite advice asked of Him. He spoke in parables, 
 that men might be forced to make their own interpreta- 
 tion, and face up to their own moral decisions. He 
 would not, for example, adjudicate on the claims of 
 wealth when a question of inheritance was earnestly 
 asked.^ If He had, it might have been true for that 
 instance and not for any other; so in reply He 
 stated a principle about wealth which is true for all 
 time. So, in all these passages of an ascetic colour 
 which we have quoted, the deep eternal principle, 
 which Jesus undoubtedly meant to enforce, is the 
 imperious claim of the Kingdom of God over men, a 
 claim so unique that a man must allow nothing to 
 stand in the way, either of his entrance into the 
 Kingdom, or of his duty towards it afterwards. But 
 it is evident from His teaching that our Lord never 
 contemplated that the possession of worldly goods, 
 or intercourse with earthly relatives, or ordinary social 
 life, were in themselves irreconcilable with the highest 
 life as citizens of the Kingdom. It is the profoundest 
 of religious truths that a man must give the complete 
 and loyal devotion of his heart to the highest spiritual 
 ends of the Kingdom of God, so that the solemn word 
 will always remain true, " He that loveth father or 
 mother more than Me is not worthy of Me." 
 
 * Luke xii. 13. 
 
310 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 But to see how foolish it is to assume that such a 
 saying must necessarily mean the rupture of the ordi- 
 nary parental ties, we need only think of some other 
 scenes from the life of Jesus, such as that one where 
 He displayed the most righteous scorn at the Pharisaic 
 quibble which made it possible for a man to neglect an 
 aged father or mother.^ Times may come when a 
 man has to choose between obeying a higher law, and 
 displeasing an earthly parent, as such times came to all 
 the early Christians, whether they had been Jews or 
 pagans. They had to break off from the past, and 
 had to risk the domestic and social ruptures, which 
 all such adherence to new truths involves. This alone 
 is enough to explain the tone of urgency, and almost 
 stem warning, with which Jesus spoke of the inevitable 
 conflict between His faith and the prevailing tradi- 
 tions and prejudices and established beliefs. He knew 
 that He was sending fire on the earth, and was intro- 
 ducing what would bring division and not j>eace in a 
 surface sense.^ He knew that the faith must produce 
 cleavage even in the closest relations of life, dividing 
 father from son and mother from daughter; and in 
 such conditions it was a true judgment which de- 
 clared that no one was qualified to be a disciple of 
 His, who was not prepared for the sacrifices that 
 were bound to come. A correct estimate then of 
 these hard sayings about renunciation must not only 
 consider the eternal spiritual principle which under- 
 lies them, but must also take into account the fact 
 that they were spoken with reference to a period when 
 severe conflict between the new and the old was 
 inevitable. 
 
 * Mark vii. lo flF. * Luke xii. 49-53. 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 311 
 
 That he did not ask for the dissolution of the 
 ordinary relations of life as necessary for disciple- 
 ship, is evident from the view He took of marriage 
 as absolute, ennobling, and consecrating it as a divine 
 ordinance, " What therefore God hath joined together 
 let not man put asunder." ^ The truth is, that in coming 
 to a decision as to our Lord's position regarding this 
 great problem, we must take the whole tenor of His 
 teaching, and the spirit of His whole life, if we would 
 not misunderstand Him. When we do this, we find 
 that the ascetic position is a complete travesty of His 
 gospel and of His own manner of living. He showed 
 no stoical contempt for the necessaries of life, and did 
 not take up an attitude of defiance of nature. He did 
 not say with the Stoics that men should make them- 
 selves independent of bodily needs — He simply and 
 naturally accepted the fact of these needs, saying ten- 
 derly, even in a counsel against over-anxiety, " your 
 Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of 
 them " ^ while, on the other hand. His teaching was 
 utterly opposed to anything like Epicureanism, which 
 made these an end. He did not depreciate the body. 
 His whole life was full of loving ministrations to the 
 physical well-being of others, healing the sick, going 
 about doing good. 
 
 Apart from His teaching we need also to consider 
 His example; for Jesus taught by what He was, and 
 what he did, as well as by what He said. He did 
 not live as an ascetic Himself. He Himself tells us 
 that He was reproached that He was unlike John 
 the Baptist in this, and was called " a gluttonous man 
 and a wine-bibber," ^ because He did not practise the 
 * Mark x. 9. ' Matt. vi. 2,2. * Matt. xi. ig. 
 
312 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 austerities which John had made familiar. Nothing 
 could be more illuminating on Christ's life in this re- 
 spect than that criticism, which He accepts as marking 
 Him off in the popular mind from John. He knew 
 that He was misunderstood, and that He laid Himself 
 open to grave objections, by refusing to lay stress on 
 the outward rules, which the Pharisees and the dis- 
 ciples of the Baptist thought so important. To Him 
 the heart of John's teaching was his call to repent- 
 ance, his proclamation of the advent of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven, — the camel's hair raiment and the leathern 
 girdle, and the food of locusts and wild honey were 
 only accidentals though they affected the popular im- 
 agination so much. Both the Pharisees, and the 
 people generally, understood John, whether they were 
 influenced or not. They understood the type of piety 
 for which he was so eminent; but they stumbled at 
 the carelessness for such external forms which Jesus 
 displayed. They could not reconcile the high demands 
 of holiness which He preached, with the sweet and 
 sunny and natural life He lived. The description of 
 the current impression which His life created, as op- 
 posed to the ascetic character of John's life, is a fair 
 description of our Lord's whole career viewed from 
 the outside. The records are full of His social inter- 
 course with all sorts of people, rich and poor, saint and 
 sinner. He accepted invitations to feasts; went to a 
 marriage; sat down to dinner with hospitable Phari- 
 sees; was a frequent visitor at the house of Martha 
 and Mary at Bethany. He had the instinctive human 
 longing for companionship, which made Him desire 
 to have some of the disciples with Him at the great 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 313 
 
 crises of His life. No one can read the gospels with 
 an unprejudiced eye, without feeling how preposter- 
 ous is the ascetic contention that it is based on the re- 
 quirements of the Christian life. " To an ordinary 
 layman the life of an anchorite might appear in the 
 highest degree opposed to that of the Teacher, who 
 began His mission at a marriage feast." ^ 
 
 Further, He did not impose on His disciples ascetic 
 rules. We learn, for example, that the disciples did 
 not fast, which was a recognised religious duty of the 
 time — indeed they were taken to task for the neglect 
 by the disciples of John the Baptist, who show by 
 the form of their question their surprise that Jesus 
 should allow such laxity. " Then came the disciples 
 of John saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast 
 oft, but Thy disciples fast not ? " ^ In His reply 
 Jesus defends His disciples, though without blaming 
 John's disciples for fasting. " Jesus said unto them. 
 Can the children of the bridechamber mourn as long 
 as the bridegroom is with them? but the day will 
 come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from 
 them, and then shall they fast." The principle of the 
 answer is that men may fitly fast, when the outward 
 form is in keeping with a real and natural feeling, in 
 some sad season of their life, or some solemn crisis; 
 but He would not encourage any formal, forced, or 
 unnatural rite, out of harmony with the simplicity and 
 joy in which His disciples lived. To create wilful 
 mourning would have been foolish and sinful. 
 
 It is remarkable, considering the high place as a 
 rule of religion which fasting afterwards took in the 
 
 * Lecky, Eur op. Morals, 11. p. iii. * Matt. ix. 14. 
 
314 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 Church, that there are only two passages ^ in the 
 gospels which indicate our Lord's attitude towards 
 fasting: the passage above quoted, in which He ex- 
 plains to John's disciples why His own disciples did 
 not fast ; and the passage in the Sermon on the Mount, 
 where He condemns the ostentation with which the 
 Pharisees fasted, *' When ye fast, be not, as the hypo- 
 crites, of a sad countenance; for they disfigure their 
 faces, that they miay appear unto men to fast. But 
 thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash 
 thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but 
 unto thy Father which is in secret." ^ The very refer- 
 ences show how little such things bulked in His view 
 of religion. He did not prescribe forms of fasting 
 or set times, because to Him such forms were an 
 offence, unless they corresponded with the inner state 
 of mind and heart. Nor did He condemn fasting al- 
 together as essentially wrong, but rather implied that 
 there would be occasions when it would be natural. 
 He ever laid the emphasis on the spiritual condition, 
 not on any external forms whatever. A similar situ- 
 ation to the complaint about neglect of fasting occur- 
 red in the matter of ritual ablutions. The Pharisees 
 complained, ' Why walk not Thy disciples according 
 to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with un- 
 washen hands? '^ The answer is an attack on the 
 
 *The reference in Matt. xvii. 21 (Mark ix. 29), tcai vTjdTEia 
 (" and fasting") is an addition of later mss., due to the grow- 
 insr ascetic spirit in the Church. This is the case also with 
 the references in Acts x. 30 and i Cor. vii. 5. 
 
 ' Matt. vi. 16. 
 
 ^ Mark vii. 5, and also Luke xi. 37, where the charge is 
 brought against Jesus Himself by a Pharisee who was His 
 host at dinner. 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 315 
 
 external forms of purification and sanctity in such 
 favour with the Pharisees, a condemnation of the ex- 
 ternal method of attacking the problem of sin, which 
 indeed is the mistake of all kinds of asceticism. 
 
 Jesus not only did not impose ascetic rules on 
 His disciples, but also He did not ask all men who 
 believed on Him to forsake their ordinary work and 
 follow Him, as He asked the inner circle of disciples 
 to do. The special calling of the disciples was a 
 practical necessity for the doing of the work He 
 designed. Jesus asked others to remain in their place 
 in life, and bring their faith to bear on all the circum- 
 stances of their lot. When the demoniac who had 
 been cured prayed that he might be with Him, " Jesus 
 suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to 
 thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord 
 hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on 
 thee." ^ The disciples were called on to make sacrifices 
 for the gospel's sake, but neither in their subsequent 
 practice, nor in their teaching after the death of Christ, 
 do we find anything to indicate that they imagined 
 that their Master had intended an ascetic community. 
 
 The Apostles did not inaugurate a system of re- 
 nunciation of the world. Their epistles are full of 
 counsel about the practical affairs and the common 
 relations of daily life. The epistles assume the ordi- 
 nary social conditions, and show the Christian faith in- 
 spiring these with a new spirit. We gather that the 
 Apostles sometimes took their wives with them on 
 their missionary journeys ; for St. Paul claims the 
 right to do so as well as the other Apostles.^ St. 
 Paul's natural temperament was ascetic, and he was 
 
 * Mark v. 19. * i Cor. ix. 5. 
 
3i6 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 ready to practice self-denial even in things which he 
 counted lawful ; but he refused to make such a rule of 
 Christian ethics. More than once in his epistles, after 
 proclaiming the Christian faith as a principle of life, 
 he goes on to show it fulfilling itself in elevating and 
 ennobling the social and domestic duties and relations, 
 husband and wife, parent and child, master and serv- 
 ant.^ He does not imagine these natural relations as 
 evil, but looks upon the faith as transforming and 
 purifying them, exhibiting its power on the common 
 levels of life. We find his fullest and highest thought 
 on the subject of marriage in the great passage in the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians, where he compares it to the 
 spiritual union of Christ and His Church.^ The re- 
 lation of marriage is glorified by the comparison, and 
 is declared to be a vital unity of which love is the 
 nexus, a state in which neither party is complete with- 
 out the other. Even in the later New Testament litera- 
 ture there is no suggestion of ascetic rules, but rather 
 the protest against them grows stronger as heresies 
 came into prominence. Thus in the First Epistle to 
 Timothy, forbidding to marry, and commanding to 
 abstain from meats, are classed with the " doctrines of 
 devils." ^ The epistle gives no ground for the law 
 of clerical celibacy, since deacons and bishops are to 
 be husband of one wife, and to rule their household 
 and children well.* One of the deepest principles of 
 the teaching, and it is in line with the whole Biblical 
 view, is that the world should be used, not abused, and 
 that God has given His children richly all things to 
 enjoy. "^ 
 
 *Col. iii. and iv. 'Eph. v. 22-33. *i Tim. iv. 1-3. 
 
 *Ibid. iii. 2-12. 'Ibid. vi. 17. 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 317 
 
 Besides being opposed to our Lord's manner of 
 life, asceticism is opposed to the very spirit of His 
 gospel, which came as an Evangel, a message of joy 
 and good tidings. It was the revelation of God as 
 the Father, and, since men were called to enter into 
 communion with God, it was also the revelation of 
 the infinite worth of the human soul. It is this 
 spiritual relation to God, which is the heart of Chris- 
 tianity. It is not a religion of particular command- 
 ments, and explicit statutes, requiring certain things 
 to be done and other things to be avoided. It lifts 
 men out of the region of rules into the region of 
 principles. It is spiritual communion with God, and 
 so is pure religion itself, the ultimate religion, beyond 
 which the soul of man cannot go. The fortunes of 
 religion therefore are not bound up in any form, eccle- 
 siastical or practical, and Jesus attached no import- 
 ance to any external rules in themselves. They were 
 not so much-xjpposfid*. as transcended b v Him, and 
 treated as matters of indifference. He did not ask 
 His disciples to practise certain ascetic commandments, 
 as if these would infallibly bring spiritual blessings. 
 What He did ask was singleness of heart, a tranquil, 
 simple faith in God, which would keep them calm in 
 all circumstances, and set them free from the bondage 
 of the world. 
 
 The Christian faith does not believe that the ordi- 
 nary blessings of life are evil, or are worthless ; rather 
 it looks upon them as given by the gracious love of 
 our Heavenly Father, who knoweth that we have need 
 of them. Men must not lose their hearts to any of 
 these earthly things, but because of the larger love 
 which is opened up to them. They are to seek first 
 
31 8 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 higher things, the Kingdom of God ; they are to live in 
 humble sweet natural dependence on God, using the 
 good gifts of His providence as not abusing them. 
 All things, earthly goods, earthly relations, the earthly 
 life itself, are to be consecrated to the great interests 
 of the Kingdom. That the Christian life demands self- 
 denial Jesus taught distinctly. If the will is to be 
 sanctified and submitted to God, there must be strenu- 
 ous self-control and sleepless discipline. He demanded 
 from His disciples the willingness to renounce personal 
 gratification, and if need be for the Gospel's sake give 
 up everything, even life itself ; but that is not a general 
 system of renunciation as a religious method, such 
 as asceticism means. Christian sacrifice is not a self- 
 inflicted thing to produce some spiritual good, as if 
 perfection could be achieved by any external form. 
 We have seen that there may be a formalism in the 
 practice of ascetic rules, more deadly to the soul than 
 any other formalism. Self-denial must always have a 
 place in the Christian life, if need be to the cutting ofif 
 a hand and plucking out an eye, though at the best that 
 is to enter the Kingdom maimed; but to look upon 
 mortification as in itself a virtue is a perversion of 
 our Lord's Gospel. What He asks for is love, not the 
 painful austerities which minister to spiritual pride. 
 He asks men to accept God as their Father, and live 
 humbly and sweetly in the light of that fact. He asks 
 men to live in the same filial relation as He did, to 
 come after Him in spirit, in spite of the ambitions and 
 desires that war against the good, and in spite of the 
 evil of the world. To come after Jesus needs prayer 
 and care and discipline, as all who have bent to the 
 King's Highway of the Holy Cross know; but most 
 
JESUS AND ASCETICISM 319 
 
 of all it needs, and this is the centre of His message, 
 a heart at rest, a heart fixed on God in simple trust 
 and humble love. 
 
 "Nothing so completely reveals the consistent atti- 
 tude of the New Testament toward this whole subject 
 as the petition of the Intercessory Prayer, " I pray 
 not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, 
 but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil." * 
 In face of full knowledge of the bitter hatred and 
 cruel malice of men, and of their moral insensibility 
 and passive opposition to spiritual things ; and in face 
 of full knowledge of the subtler danger to true life in 
 the numberless seductions and alluring temptations that 
 clamber at the heart, the prayer accepts the situation 
 as the proper environment of Christian life. It was 
 first of all for the world's sake. The choice and train- 
 ing of the Twelve meant only the small beginning of 
 the Kingdom, the first reddening of the dawn, the 
 faint flush along the eastern sky. To pray that the 
 disciples should in any form be taken out of the world 
 would be to give up the work at the start, to falsify the 
 past, and to relinquish the future. It was also for the 
 disciples' own sake; for discipline is just the process 
 ordained for disciples, and character is no hot-house 
 plant. There is a form of piety which has many at- 
 tractions to the meditative contemplative temper, with- 
 drawing itself from the rough work-a-day world, and 
 spending itself in devotions. There is a sweetness of 
 mind, and an attractive culture of spirit, to be got in 
 retirement ; but that may not necessarily be a sign of a 
 strong character. The ungenial surroundings, the 
 untoward lot, the very temptations, may be the condi- 
 
 *John xvii. 15. 
 
320 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 tion of a man's sanctification. The ordinary relations 
 of life, with their duties and responsibilities, with 
 their trials and sorrows and joys, are the divinely ap- 
 pointed environment to develop character, and to train 
 disciples into robust vigour of life. It is easy to keep 
 the hands clean by keeping them from work, and easy 
 to have a kind of refinement of soul by shirking con- 
 tact with the coarse outer world; but the secret of life 
 can never be attained by moral cowardice, and never 
 by the selfishness which would disentangle the life 
 from the lives of other men. Jesus desired for His 
 disciples the culture of character, which comes from 
 the good fight of faith in the world. 
 
OF THE • 
 
 OF 
 
 XII 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 
 
 THE two opposing methods which we have been 
 considering reflect the conflict in human na- 
 ture, the facts that seem to contradict each 
 other; and each of the methods ignores the 
 other side, and is bHnd to what does not tell in favour 
 of its particular theory. Self-culture is really based on 
 a form of optimism, which gaily assumes that nothing 
 more is wanted but the harmonious and joyous develop- 
 ment of all the powers existing in man. It has infinite 
 faith in natural education to draw out latent capacities 
 of power and joy, and so to make life sweet and sane. 
 Self-restraint as an exclusive method is essentially a 
 form of pessimism, which has little faith in the nat- 
 ural, and has no confidence that, even if the best means 
 of culture be used, the result will be of much value. 
 It is so impressed with the presence of evil in man 
 and in the world, that the harmony is always turned 
 into discord; and it sees no hope for ultimate good, 
 except by heroic measures for the extirpation of the 
 evil. Whatever be our special sympathy with either 
 of these extremes, according to our particular mood 
 of mind, we must accept the facts on which both are 
 founded, if we are to approach anything like a full 
 and true solution. We can accept what each asserts, 
 without being bound to follow each in what they deny. 
 We bow to the Hebraic preaching of the necessity for 
 
 321 
 
322 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 moral discipline, and also to the Hellenic gospel of the 
 love of the beautiful and the joy of living; but we 
 need not assent, when Culture makes light of sin as if 
 it did not exist except in some morbid imaginations, 
 or when Restraint rejects the fairest flowers of natural 
 joy and human genius. 
 
 The facts which give force and weight to the 
 aesthetic ideal are unimpeachable, and every fresh 
 soul that enters the world instinctively expects its 
 share of what seems its natural birthright of light 
 and joy. No doleful pronouncement of " vanity of 
 vanities " will convince the heart of youth that the 
 world can be only a diabolic instrument to ensnare 
 the soul and that the rich powers of mind and imagina- 
 tion and heart are only to be discarded. If repression 
 be the secret, then its task is unending; for it would 
 need to be begun again with every new life, which 
 comes endowed with the same keen zest for the mere 
 act of living, and with the same deep instinct for self- 
 expression. The ascetic ideal also takes firm stand on 
 facts, and experience only increases their force, and 
 adds to their number. No surface scheme of cul- 
 ture, however garishly it paints the prospect, can for 
 long cover over the ugly symptoms, and hide the evil 
 taint in life. Nor can it even secure the happiness it 
 promised, having no protection from the blows of 
 misfortune, and no safeguard against the inevitable 
 disillusionment. The pain and sorrow of life are 
 facts to the believer and the unbeliever alike; and all 
 that unbelief can do, at its best or at its worst, is to 
 rob the facts of their redemptive purpose, and empty 
 them of any intelligible or moral meaning. 
 
 Whether we have any prospect of reconciling them 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 323 
 
 or not, our first duty is to admit the deep-seated 
 antagonisms of human life, to accept the conflict in 
 man's nature, the combined glory and penury of his 
 life. To be true to all the facts, we must see amid 
 the nobility and achievements traces of the sordid 
 and base; and also see a soul of good in men and 
 things evil. This is the Christian position, the simple 
 acceptance of both sides, looking with clear eyes on 
 the whole situation. On the one hand it rejects the 
 rose-coloured optimism, which is wilfully blind to the 
 tragic facts, and which sees in history and experience 
 nothing but easy steps of progress towards perfection ; 
 and on the other hand it rejects the bland denial of 
 pessimism, which means despair of good, and in the 
 final issue means unfaith in the divine element of the 
 world and human life. It sees sin in man, but its last 
 word is not sin but redemption. The world is full of 
 menace to good, a place of trial and discipline, but it is 
 God's world, with beauty, and truth, and joy. To see 
 how completely the antagonisms of life are accepted, 
 we need only think how the heart of the Christian 
 faith can be expressed by the word Reconciliation. Its 
 very purpose was to reconcile, and bring together, all 
 that stood in unnatural opposition through sin. Its 
 work is to reconcile man to God, and man to man, and 
 all the diverse unrelated parts of man's nature with 
 each other in a centre of unity. All the discord is 
 changed to harmony by reconciling man to God; for 
 with that all other reconcilements come. The deepest 
 thought of Christ's teaching and life is simple confi- 
 dence in God, as seen both in the world and in human 
 life, recognising Him in nature and in man. This 
 consciousness of the divine takes precedence of all 
 
324 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 else, and becomes the great inspiring motive, driving 
 the Hfe to noble ends, and at the same time putting 
 everything into its rightful place in the large scheme. 
 A faith like this rises above any seeming contradic- 
 tion between elements, such as the contradiction be- 
 tween reason and faith, or between culture and re- 
 straint as opposing ideals. It solves the problem, not 
 by denying one side, but by carrying both sides up to a 
 higher point, where the practical contradictions are 
 merged in a principle of life. There can be no true 
 victory, except by a real reconcilement, by showing 
 the place of both in the plan of life — never by a policy 
 of extermination on either side, either by culture affect- 
 ing to ignore the moral appeal of sacrifice, or by re- 
 straint ruthlessly trampling on the legitimate claims of 
 the other. It must be by a reach forward and upward 
 to a larger ideal. 
 
 /Historically this was so; for Christianity reconciled 
 Hebraism and Hellenism by a form of knowledge and 
 of ethics that was made accessible to all classes and 
 races, leaving the old battlefield behind. The struggle 
 in Palestine, which was referred to in our first chap- 
 ter, between the sons of Zion and the sons of Greece, 
 seemed doomed to end in the complete triumph of 
 Hellenism, which could only have been a barren vic- 
 tory. When the champions of Jewish religion were the 
 Pharisees, with their hide-bound formalism and eccle- 
 siastical pedantry, no other result, however, was to be 
 expected; for all that they could hope to do was to 
 preserve a little section of the world in some shady 
 corner outside of the great stream of civilisation. It 
 seemed a lost battle for Israel, till the hopes of the 
 true Israel revived in Christ. His religion conquered 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 325 
 
 the world, indeed saved it from despair and death, and 
 gave it new youth and new Hfe. The gospel of culture, 
 which was all that Greece had to offer, could only at 
 the best gild the outside of life, could only direct taste, 
 and adorn the cup and platter: it could not redeem 
 the world from sin, and chain the beast in man, and 
 deliver both Greeks and barbarians from a reprobate 
 mind. Hellenism had to go down before the higher 
 ideal of Zion, but it was not the form it took from the 
 hands of the Pharisees that accomplished the victory; 
 but from One who was neither son of Zion nor son of 
 Greece, but both — because Son of Man. It was no 
 narrow, sectional, parochial Zionism which overthrew 
 the might of Rome and the grace of Greece. It was 
 the gospel of the eternal love of God, wide as the 
 needs of man, for Jew, and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, 
 bond, and free. 
 
 It begins in the deeps of human nature, dealing 
 with the heart of hearts, cleansing from sin, recon- 
 ciling man to God, and then setting him to live the 
 reconciled life. It is not a scheme of culture, nor a 
 system of philosophy; but religion, founding itself on 
 moral sanctions, fulfilling the law and the prophets, 
 enforcing the obligations of duty, bending the neck 
 to a yoke, even pointing to the glory of a cross; all 
 because it brought man into a new relation to God, 
 which made any moral demands easy and any com- 
 mandments light. And its end is not the curtail- 
 ment of life but its enlargement, so that there is 
 room for the development of every gift of brain, and 
 heart, and soul; for it takes the whole man, afford- 
 ing each gift a higher platform from which to work, 
 elevating and inspiring them with a new and larger 
 
326 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 ideal. At its historic introduction we see it enriching 
 Hfe to men, bringing the broadening of opportunities, 
 and the expansion of powers. It Hfted forward the 
 hfe of man with a great impulse, giving even to the 
 most degraded undreamt of possibilities, making a 
 slave a free spiritual being, leading him out in spite 
 of his serfdom into a large place. It ennobled life 
 to souls in the narrowest surroundings. It changed 
 the face of the world, revived the outworn pagan hfe, 
 making all things new. 
 
 It is so still even in our Christian age. The narrow 
 lot of man is broadened whenever he comes into the 
 filial relation to God, and there is always in it the 
 pyotency of continual expansion. It introduces a new 
 motive power which changes the current of life, and 
 offers a new outlook which changes the standpoint 
 of life. This enlargement of life through faith is a 
 fact of experience, which all who have bent to the 
 strait gate know. First of all it comes as an enlarge- 
 ment in the life of thought. Reconciliation with God 
 should mean sympathy with, and therefore insight into, 
 all His works. Just as monotheism, the revelation of 
 the One God, meant for the world an almost infinite 
 intellectual advance beyond the conceptions of lords 
 many and gods many of Paganism, so the further 
 revelation of the character and nature of God means 
 an almost infinite intellectual advance to the mind that 
 will fearlessly and consistently accept it, as Kepler 
 said of his astronomical studies, " I think the thoughts 
 of God after Him." Faith enlarges the horizon of Hfe, 
 leads out of narrow contracted views of the universe 
 to the acceptance of all truth. All the treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge are open to the believing mind ; 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 327 
 
 for they are all broken lights of God in whose light 
 alone we see light. " The invisible things of Him, 
 since the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being 
 perceived through the things that are made." ^ 
 
 But the horizon of life is broadened chiefly by means 
 of the enlargement of heart. It is not merely the 
 gain in a truer and higher standpoint, and is more 
 than an intellectual conception unifying the whole 
 universe by the thought of the One God, the eternal 
 immutable will which combines all phenomena, and 
 all laws, and all groups of laws. The enlargement 
 of life to the individual comes rather as an emotional 
 force than an intellectual. The consciousness of God 
 changes the world to a man. We lie at the outer 
 porches of the pool of life, a great multitude of impo- 
 tent folk, blind, halt, withered, waiting for the mov- 
 ing of the waters ; and to know the love of God is like 
 the entrance of the Good Physician with His word of 
 power, " Rise and walk." The Christian faith touches 
 the heart with love, and so gives the life a new buoy- 
 ancy. The world ceases to be the scene of petty deeds 
 and trivial events, and becomes a wide theatre of 
 action, in which man plays his part before high heaven. 
 Everything takes meaning and purpose from the great 
 motive : duty is ennobled by the new spirit in which it 
 is faced. The things done may be the same small 
 ordinary details of living, but they are glorified by 
 being done for love. That is why throughout the ages 
 it has ever been possible, nay easy, for men, if need be, 
 to suffer for the sake of Jesus. In the midst of out- 
 ward loss, with the cutting off of earthly joys, with the 
 shutting up of worldly prospects, with the narrowing 
 
 Romans i. 20. 
 
328 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 of life all round, there has ever been to His followers 
 an enlargement of life, a deepening and broadening of 
 the true sources of life, and even a joyous exultant 
 sense of victory through Him that loved them. 
 
 And the enlargement of life which thus comes is 
 not a temporary thing, like the high- water mark made 
 by a river in a time of flood. It remains a permanent 
 possession to the soul. It is not a mere emotion, which 
 uplifts the heart in a spasm of feeling, and then de- 
 flates it when the feeling passes. It registers itself on 
 the whole life ; for it carries with it a moral and spirit- 
 ual enlargement, as well as an intellectual and emo- 
 tional. It means an increasing power to be and to do, 
 a true expansion of life as well as of the mind and 
 heart. The Christian faith is ever a state of becom- 
 ing; the goal is the perfectness of God, and every 
 advance in the scale of being is a stage towards that 
 high end. Christ gives a man power to become, open- 
 ing up new possibilities of thought and feeling and 
 action. The psychology of it is just the introduction 
 of a new motive of love in the heart, which carries 
 the life forward with a rich sense of freedom. We 
 have already seen in our consideration of the failure 
 of the ascetic method of dealing with sin, that the 
 Christian attitude is life in the spirit, not futile battling 
 against physical conditions. If a man lets love reign 
 in the heart it will give power in the life, lifting it 
 to higher levels of moral dignity, with victory over 
 sin, and mastery of weakness, and a simple strong ful- 
 filment of duty even when there seems little pleasure 
 in it; for instead of pleasure there comes joy, filling 
 the channel with a full flow " brimming and bright and 
 large." 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 329 
 
 In all Christ's teaching on self-denial it must never 
 be forgotten that it always meant to Him some larger 
 good. Self-repression was always a stage to a truer 
 self-expression; any giving up of self would result 
 in the true finding of self. Thus, some common state- 
 ments of the method of Christ are so onesided as to 
 make them caricatures of His method ; for they leave 
 out of account the great positive end. The end is not ^_ 
 a broken, wounded life, but fulness of life, true life for 
 the first time, so large and full that it can be called 
 even here eternal life. It is not the process which is 
 to be judged, but the object achieved. To say that 
 religion means shrinkage and the attenuation of life, 
 is to consider a few peddling details, and to be blind 
 to the result. The result is not ebb, but flow. The 
 work of religion must be judged like all work, by the 
 product not by the process; and this at least is true, 
 whether it be in accordance with the actual facts or 
 no, that Jesus set forth as the fruit of His faith not the 
 decrease of powers but their development, not atrophy 
 but growth, and that He aimed not at the contraction 
 of life but its extension. We are easily deceived about 
 this, because we look so much on the externals. We 
 see religion making a man give up this and that, cur- 
 tailing here and there, sometimes we see even what 
 looks like cutting oflF a right hand and plucking 
 out a right eye; and we are inclined to think 
 that rehgion means the weakening and impoverish- 
 ing of life. But faith can dispense with much of the 
 outward, just because it enriches the inward. Even 
 when it seems to mean restraint on the surface, it 
 deepens the real life, and brings the joy of expansion. 
 When it appears as the absolute loss of life as men 
 
330 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 count loss, its express purpose is the gaining of life. To 
 be open on the side of God, responsive to spiritual in- 
 fluences, is to have unclosed a larger and ever larger 
 world of thought, and feeling, and aspiration. 
 
 " What was a speck expands into a star." 
 
 Restraint, in Christ's thought, is always a stage to 
 a truer culture, a completer saving of the life. He 
 asks for obedience, and when we obey we discover 
 that in obeying Him we are obeying the law of our 
 own life: He asks for service, and when we serve 
 we learn that His service is perfect freedom : He asks 
 us to lose our life, and lo, in losing it we find it. 
 
 Part of the message in the great Christian thought 
 of dying to live is that a man through the death of 
 his narrow selfish life enters into the larger life of 
 love and service of others. This is one of the deep 
 reconciling ideas, which combine the antithesis between 
 culture and restraint, and explain many of our difficul- 
 ties. We have seen how the ideal of self-culture 
 failed often, because it led to selfishness and a dis- 
 regard of social duty. If self-realisation be pursued 
 for its own sake, we cannot wonder that we should 
 often find as the result, a narrow exclusiveness, and 
 sometimes an inhuman egotism. We have to admit 
 the force of the same criticism passed on the ascetic 
 ideal when looked on as an end. One of the causes 
 of its failure is due to ignoring the duty of service, 
 which is really a distinctively Christian method of 
 dying to self. This social side of life represents a 
 task of religion, just as surely as the duty of personal 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 331 
 
 sanctity. Indeed in their deepest roots they are both 
 connected, so that the one is impossible without the 
 other. To dream of keeping self unspotted, after 
 having wilfully cut off relations with other men, 
 shows a lamentable mistake as to what true holiness 
 really is. 
 
 Men do not exist as single entities, each separate 
 in the inviolable sanctity of personality; they exist 
 in society, dependent on each other, bound together 
 for weal or woe. Civilisation is a social thing, and 
 is only possible tlirough society. Any return to na- 
 ture, either in the name of religion or in the name of 
 philosophy, as French writers before the Revolution 
 preached, means putting the clock back to the begin- 
 ning again. To break down human society to its 
 original atoms would lead to anarchy; and the whole 
 toilsome journey would need to be made over again. 
 Man has grown to his present intellectual and moral 
 stature through the social relations; so that to re- 
 nounce them would not only make an end of further 
 progress, but would also lose for us all past gains. 
 Voltaire said wittily about Rousseau's doctrine that he 
 preached the return to nature so eloquently that he 
 almost persuaded men to go on all fours. The witty 
 remark cuts deeper even than Voltaire meant; for any 
 return to nature in the sense of cutting the cord of 
 society would indeed be a descent to the animal state. 
 Any voluntary withdrawal from the social bond is, 
 at once a wrong to a man's own best life, and is a 
 social offence. It does not surprise us to find in read- 
 ing the Lives of the Saints that many of the most 
 devoted of anchorites lost the highest attributes of 
 manhood, as we see even from books that are carefully 
 
312 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 edited to show people the sanctity attained by them. It 
 does not surprise us also to find that monasticism 
 easily beat out of the ground all forms of anchorite 
 life, though monasticism after all was a compromise, 
 and the other was the only true logical position. Still 
 monasticism was able to endure, while the other 
 dwindled, simply because it included to some extent 
 the task of service to the world, in addition to the 
 task of personal holiness. 
 
 Withdrawal from the world in any form, whether 
 for the exclusive culture of self or for ascetic disci- 
 pline, runs counter to the instincts implanted in us, 
 that we need society, that only through contact with 
 our fellows can we reach our best life. To be cut off 
 from sympathy with ordiriary life, from common fel- 
 low-feeling, is a loss which nothing can compensate, 
 not the finest culture of mind, and not even beatific 
 vision. Men have tried all sorts of modified ways of 
 reducing the social contact, and thus escaping defile- 
 ment. Take, for example, the gift of speech. We 
 know well the necessity for restraint here; for we 
 know the evil of a wayward tongue, and we know that 
 speech represents temptation like every other gift. 
 Men have been so conscious of the countless ways in 
 which language may be abused that they have some- 
 times thought the way out of the difficulty was to 
 give up speech altogether. St. Bruno, the founder 
 of the great Chartreuse Monastery, made silence one of 
 the rules of the order. According to this rule the 
 tongue was only to be used in the service of God, not 
 in ordinary conversation with men, the purpose being 
 to avoid much of the sin of the world. How false 
 the conception which underHes this is we can see, even 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 333 
 
 if it were a successful method of reaching holiness, 
 which it is not. Speech is the medium of all knowl- 
 edge, all social education, all civilisation, all that lifts 
 man above the beasts. The inherent falseness of 
 asceticism is seen here, as if Grod could be glorified by 
 wilful refusal to use a gift with which he has endowed 
 man. It implies a breakdown of the very principles 
 of human society ; and even if such methods were suc- 
 cessful in keeping a man unspotted from the world, 
 it would be by sacrificing the whole for the good of a 
 part. It would be the selfish seeking of personal good 
 by throwing overboard humanity. 
 
 To recommend self-sacrifice on selfish grounds is 
 to take away any moral value an act of virtue has, 
 and would be at the best prudential morality. Sacrifice 
 is ennobled by love, and is degraded when love is 
 absent. Self-denial when reduced to a system may 
 become a subtle form of self-assertion, as truly as 
 self-culture can be. A life may be full of asceticism 
 without any true sacrifice in it; for if love be absent 
 from sacrifice, though a man give his body to be 
 burned it profiteth him nothing. A religious method, 
 which is anti-social in its tendency, leads to a reductio 
 ad absurdum; for no method can be truly religiously 
 successful, which lands its followers in a selfish way 
 of living. It shuts the eyes to social duty, and cer- 
 tainly gives ground for the sneer that religion is only 
 another form of selfishness. If love be the bond of 
 perfectness, that implies social privilege and social 
 duty; for only through others can love be truly de- 
 veloped. It cannot live in a vacuum, without objects 
 on whom affection and service are expended. The 
 higher parts of our nature remain starved and stunted, 
 
334 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 if we refuse the social burdens and ties, whether for a 
 self-absorbing scheme of culture or for a method of 
 purity. '' Entangle not thy heart with any creature," ^ 
 says A Kempis, but it is part of the divine education 
 of life that we should be so entangled. The sweetest 
 and noblest qualities of human nature, sympathy, 
 charity, patience, friendship, love, are alone developed 
 through the ties that bind us to our fellows, in the 
 family, the Church, the state. 
 
 This spiritual culture in the higher graces is at- 
 tained, it is true, often through self-denial, but it is 
 self-denial in the midst of the relationships of daily 
 Hfe; not by inventing artificial discipline, but by ac- 
 cepting the ordinary occasions of life with their duties 
 and responsibilities. This may seem a slow method, 
 rather than the flashy one of cutting the knot alto- 
 gether, but it is the only sure method, the only way a 
 true and strong character can be built up. Emerson 
 says with insight, " There is a great deal of self-denial 
 and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town 
 and country, that has not got into literature, and never 
 will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on 
 superfluities and spends on essentials; that goes rusty 
 and educates the boy; that sells the horse but builds 
 the school; works early and late, takes two looms at 
 the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the 
 mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back 
 cheerfully to work again." ^ If our hearts and lives 
 were not entangled with others, we could never rise 
 to the heights of our nature. It is true that our social 
 environment implies temptation and danger, but that 
 
 ^ Imitatio Christi, Bk. ii. chap. viii. 
 Conduct of Life, chap. iv. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 335 
 
 is inseparable from moral life, and only thus is the 
 education of the heart made possible. 
 
 Even from the point of view of personal happiness, 
 this is reached not by selfishness, but by the develop- 
 ment of sympathy and love. Disinterested work for 
 others, the cultivation of the unselfish side of life, will 
 enlarge a man's horizon, and lift him out of personal 
 cares, and save him from the pain of morbid intro- 
 spection. This culture of heart, which is after all cul- 
 ture of character, is of more importance than intellec- 
 tual development. It is also an ideal for all in a 
 fuller way than culture of intellect can ever be. To 
 comparatively few come opportunities for complete in- 
 tellectual training, but all can practise unselfishness, 
 the quiet fulfilment of duty, generous thought, and 
 gentle deed. The instincts of pity, and help, and 
 charitable emotion, find their scope in the common 
 relationships and the social duties of life. The oppor- 
 tunities for true self-denial come in the ordinary con- 
 duct of life; and true sacrifice is all in the line of 
 duty. It comes to a man when he must adhere to 
 truth, when he must choose the higher and give up 
 the lower at the call of conscience, when he must 
 deny himself in order that larger interests than any 
 personal ones may be served. The most powerful 
 force in developing individual character comes from 
 serving an ideal outside of self, not from seeking a 
 harmonious growth of virtues and graces. 
 
 This criticism applies to both of the ideals we have 
 been considering, but more especially to the one which 
 claims to be the distinctively religious one. A man 
 cannot be said to be holy, though he has kept himself 
 unspotted from evil, if with it all he lives a hard 
 
336 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 and loveless life, and if he has passed by the world's 
 work and duties and interests; for holiness is not a 
 negative state, but means attainment, character, in- 
 creasing likeness to God whose nature is Love. The 
 Christian salvation is social as well as individual: it 
 could not really be the one without the other also. 
 Our Lord's purpose was to found a kingdom of souls 
 working out to social ends, a kingdom of men and 
 women living in loving relation to each other through 
 their loving relation to God. The Christian faith in 
 God carries with it as an inevitable consequence the 
 service of man. The training of the twelve, to which 
 Jesus gave most of His public ministry, was not an 
 end in itself, but a means to a greater end. The 
 Kingdom of Heaven was like leaven put into meal till 
 the whole should be leavened. Pure religion and un- 
 defiled is designed, not only to preserve good men 
 from contamination, but also to save the world. 
 
 When the ideal of religion does not include the 
 active practical life, it means an immense loss to the 
 world, as has often been proved in the history of the 
 Church. The number of hermits and coenobites of 
 Egypt in the fourth century seems incredible. They 
 covered the desert in thousands, mostly living in 
 monasteries, though many of them as solitaries. It 
 was irreparable loss to the world, as it has been down 
 the Christian ages since, of so many of the best citi- 
 zens, men and women who were in earnest, who really 
 desired to serve God, and whose standard was high 
 above that of the world they left. Some of the wisest 
 of the Fathers saw this danger of loss to the Church 
 and the world, and strove to show that all gifts of 
 the Spirit were given to be used on behalf of others. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 337 
 
 The gathering of ascetics under monastic orders was 
 indeed a piece of early Church statesmanship, that 
 they might be brought under discipHne, and be utiHsed 
 for service. Chrysostom, himself a monk, and who 
 was profoundly impressed by the ascetic ideal, con- 
 demned those who lived in solitude without a sense 
 of responsibility for others, condemned Christians 
 who take possession of the mountains instead of taking 
 possession of human life. "How shall we conquer 
 the enemy," he asks, " when some have no care for 
 virtue, and those who are interested for it, retreat to 
 a distance from the order of battle ? " ^ The withdrawal 
 of sincere Christian life from actual contact with the 
 world is an irreparable loss to the world. When the 
 finest spirits live only for their own improvement, 
 whether that be of mental or of spiritual powers, in- 
 stead of employing their gifts for the common good, 
 the result cannot but be fatal to everybody. 
 
 The recognition of this by the leaders of the Church 
 made them encourage monasticism as the Christian 
 ideal rather than any form of hermit life. The thought 
 of service was never quite lost sight of, though it was 
 often in danger of sinking to a very secondary posi- 
 tion. When Gregory of Nazianzen and Basil were 
 young men studying at Athens, they decided to aban- 
 don the great worldly prospects which lay before them, 
 and yet they felt the extreme form of withdrawal to be 
 only a disguised sort of selfishness, and so they chose 
 the compromise which included the opportunity of 
 service. Gregory speaks of two ascetic disciplines, 
 that of the solitary or hermit, and that of the secular, 
 the first thinking only of some personal good, the other 
 
 * 6th Homily on ist Ep. to Cor, 
 
338 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 the larger good of others. The monastic Hfe to some 
 extent combined both, offered seclusion and retirement, 
 and yet did not exclude the sweet ministry of love 
 which is so essentially Christian. 
 
 I saw when men lived in the fretful world, 
 
 They vantaged other men, but risked the while 
 
 The calmness and the pureness of their hearts. 
 
 They who retired held an uprighter port, 
 
 And raised their eyes with quiet strength towards heaven. 
 
 Yet served self only, unfraternally. 
 
 And so, 'twixt these and those, I struck my path, 
 
 To meditate with the free solitary. 
 
 Yet to live secular, and serve mankind.^ 
 
 This purpose of service was in the minds of many 
 who chose this life, withdrawing from the engross- 
 ments of the world, in order to be of greater service to 
 the world. 
 
 Even though we may condemn the particular his- 
 toric form it took in the monastic system, yet we must 
 remember that the same two notes found in Gregory's 
 decision must be combined for the highest kind of 
 social service. The qualifications for the best use- 
 fulness are detachment and sympathy, an aloofness 
 of spirit, if not of life, along with sensitiveness to the 
 needs and sorrows and sins of men. It is only the 
 man, whose own personality has been enriched, who 
 has any real contribution to make to the wealth of the 
 world. Capacity for service ultimately depends on the 
 fruitfulness of the self. This is the distinct place for 
 all kinds of culture, not as an end in itself, but as 
 means to the wider end of service. Social betterment 
 in any true sense, as more than the mere rearrange- 
 
 * Newmap, Historical Sketches, vol. ii. p. 57. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION / . 339 
 
 ment of external conditions, can only come from m- 
 dividual character and intellect. The production of 
 that is a primary duty, even for the sake of others. 
 A man's contribution to society will mean all the riches 
 and resources of his nature, his heritage of race, and 
 personal capacity, and education. Social good will be 
 advanced, not by impoverishing the self, but by letting 
 it grow to its full stature, by doing the work best 
 fitted for the special talents, and by giving them the 
 highest education possible. Everything, of course, 
 will depend on the aim and spirit of the culture. There 
 are dangers, some of which we have seen in discussing 
 the Defects of the Esthetic Ideal,^ but these dangers 
 must be faced, and they can safely be faced with tliis 
 religious thought of the consecration of gifts; for 
 the religious ideal of service will save a richly endowed 
 personality from his besetting temptation of the selfish 
 use of his powers. The artistic temptation, to look 
 upon life as aflFording material for art, will be dispelled 
 by the larger and deeper thought of serving men, 
 rather than of using them even in that refined sense. 
 
 The same is true of the spiritual detachment, which 
 the ascetic ideal embodied so fully. All the outlets of 
 human activity are meant to be laid hold of by Chris- 
 tian men, and made sacred by sanctified use. No seem- 
 ing victory over indwelling sin can make up for the 
 terrible waste of power for good, which might make 
 the desert of life blossom like the rose; and any such 
 victory, unrelated to the actual conditions of life, is 
 more apparent than real. True self-control is to be 
 got in the midst of the struggle : it is not mutilation of 
 natural desires, but the subordination of each desire to 
 
 ^Ante, chap. iii. 
 
340 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 the good of the whole man, and ultimately also to 
 man as a social unit. It is the task of life to acquire 
 the wisdom which can do this well, which can live 
 in the world, doing the duty of the world, accepting 
 all the responsibilities and temptations of the situation, 
 and yet untainted by the evil of the world. The King- 
 dom of God is the great Christian end. Service is the 
 Master's last word for the instruction of His disciples. 
 They are to go unto all the world ; and the command 
 is not only extensive in its sweep but also intensive 
 in its working. The sphere of the Christian activity i . 
 the whole range of human life, bringing love to the 
 world's woes, and love also to the world's work. A 
 loveless saint thus becomes a contradiction in terms. 
 
 We have here another illustration of the way ex- 
 tremes meet ; for we find both of the ideals leading men 
 to shut themselves off from the sordidness of the 
 world in some form of isolation, the one for the de- 
 velopment of mental gifts, the other for spiritual con- 
 templation, both neglecting the practical call to con- 
 secrate all gifts to service. Complete self-culture and 
 complete holiness are alike impossible without rocial 
 service; for the atrophy of the highest parts of our 
 nature results from any selfish plan of life. Any 
 scheme of self-culture, or any scheme of self-denial, 
 is no true end for man, and are at best means cowards 
 a higher end. Self-denial can often be justified as 
 being for the sake of a higher self -culture, and can 
 always be justified when inspired by love. In the 
 ultimate issue self-culture also can only be so justified. 
 Culture is but the polishing and sharpening of an in- 
 strument to make it serve for the best work. Exten- 
 sion of knowledge, refinement of feeling, education of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 341 
 
 taste, and all the noble results of culture, may minister 
 to a subtle selfishness, but they may legitimately be 
 sought that we may be qualified for the better service 
 of life. Certainly culture, which would be Christian, 
 must come under that law, which is the law of the 
 Christian life. Love and holiness are the two strands, 
 and without love holiness cannot be, since love is the 
 fulfilling of the law. The Christian heart must serve, 
 must bend to duty and all gentle ministry. There may 
 be an aloofness of soul, the unspotted mind, the ex- 
 alted life, combined with humble service of men — 
 nay, there must be both of these elements, found in 
 such perfect harmony in our Lord Himself. Words- 
 worth, in his great sonnet on Milton, expressed this 
 combination of a noble life — 
 
 Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart: 
 
 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: 
 
 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
 
 So didst thou travel on life's common way, 
 
 In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart 
 
 The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 
 
 How true it is, that love must test all life, is seen 
 even in the narrower sphere of the subject-matter of 
 art itself, and the spirit in which it must be produced. 
 Great art is not done for beauty's sake alone, but 
 for the sake of humanity. It is not art for art's sake, 
 as is the common cant of some art circles, not even art 
 for truth's sake, as Browning amended the phrase, 
 but art for love's sake. If the artist forgets to think 
 of how it affects human life, if he withdraws himself 
 in spirit from the vulgar throng, if he loves beauty 
 for itself, if he puts away from him the opportunity 
 
342 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 of serving mankind, if he has no desire to give 
 strength or consolation or dignity to life, he ends in 
 losing beauty itself; for beauty cannot survive when 
 love is dead. Thus we see tliat the empire over men 
 in art is given to the man who knows love, and in- 
 terprets it, and illustrates it. It is an unfathomable 
 subject, one that cannot be exhausted. It may be the 
 common love of a mother to her helpless child, which is 
 all that many Madonnas ever suggest, and yet which 
 makes them great art still. The empire over men in 
 life also is given to those who know love, who move 
 us by their cenderness, and sympathy, and gracious 
 ministry. When art loses its touch with life, no mere 
 technical excellence, no mere skill with colours or 
 with words, will save it from emptiness and failure; 
 and when religion loses its touch with the needs and 
 duties of Hfe, no interior lights, and sweet consola- 
 tions, and ecstatic visions, will save it from 
 degradation. 
 
 Culture for its own sake, and sacrifice for its own 
 sake, are neither a sufficient end, but they each find 
 scope, ai)d are made reasonable, by the great Christian 
 thought of service, which reconciles so many difficul- 
 ties which meet us in this whole region. With such a 
 dominating motive as service there will be room for 
 all types of personality, and for all individual capaci- 
 ties however divergent. We will see the need for self- 
 restraint, discipline, and the sterner qualities, supposed 
 to be associated only with Puritanism; and, on the 
 other hand, if we recognise that the end of all our 
 training of our powers is for service, we will not limit 
 the thought of service, as narrow Puritanism so often 
 did. We will know that it takes all sorts of men to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 343 
 
 make a world; and if they be true men serving the 
 commonweal according to capacity, it does not matter 
 much where and how they serve, or in what depart- 
 ment of work. There are many and various kinds of 
 service; and their rank is settled, not according to 
 the type of work, but according to the spirit in which 
 it is done. This principle of service does not mean 
 that all must become professional or amateur philan- 
 thropists, but it does mean some form of consecration 
 of g^fts. The artist and poet serve by creating their 
 works of beauty or of inspiring song, and to ask them 
 to leave the sphere for which they are specially en- 
 dowed, in order to work in a city slum, would be folly. 
 The world can much easier do without some of the 
 practical energy, which indeed it never lacks, than it 
 can do without the vision of the prophet, and the 
 imagination of the poet, and the beautiful creation of 
 the artist — all the intellectual and spiritual thought 
 with which thinkers and seers feed the true life of 
 their fellows. Much of the best labour, wrought out 
 of the brain and heart of a man, has no direct reference 
 to the welfare of men, but we cannot measure its in- 
 direct value in kindling thought, and deepening feel- 
 ing, and awakening aspiration. It is not dull uniform- 
 ity in what is called charitable work that is needed, 
 but spiritual consecration that will make all work 
 sacred because inspired with a noble motive. 
 
 The primal duties and gentle charities that bless 
 men will not be omitted, for such a conception of serv- 
 ice will give the tender touch upon all life, the loving 
 pity of men. The true moral of the brevity of time 
 is not the one Pater draws of gathering all we are 
 into one desperate effort to see and touch by the stir- 
 
344 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 ring of the senses, to experience a thrill from strange 
 dyes or strange colours or curious odours. Because 
 life is short, the highest course open to the children 
 of men is not to grasp at any exquisite passion, nor 
 even to seek some personal gain of culture — there is a 
 better part mentioned by Amiel, whose mind had an 
 even finer culture than Pater's : " Life is short, and we 
 have never too much time for gladdening the hearts 
 of those who are travelling the dark journey with us." 
 It is at least a nobler view, and will save life from 
 ever sinking to the depths into which the other some- 
 times plunges it. 
 
 Difficulties there will always be in reconciling in 
 detail the duty of culture with the equally imperative 
 duty of self-restraint. It is not possible to extricate 
 matters in our complicated life, and draw a hard and 
 fast line. It is difficult to say how far a man, who 
 wants to keep his garment unspotted, should go in 
 the matter of intercourse with the great mass of things 
 which seem to lie on the border-line. So much in the 
 world is in itself morally neutral, and can become good 
 or evil according to the way it is treated. When the 
 choice is between what is evil though alluring, and 
 what is good though difficult, it is easy to know at least 
 how the decision should go; but all the practical diffi- 
 culties are not so easily disposed of. When the choice 
 lies between the two courses which are both good, such 
 as when duty to self seems to conflict with duty to 
 others, the problem is harder. For example, a man 
 may see a chance of doing the kind of work he likes 
 best, if he will only cut himself off from certain irk- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 345 
 
 some domestic obligations. Is he to choose that which 
 will give himself greatest pain without considering 
 what will bring the greatest amount of good? Or 
 is he to say, according to the common philosophy of 
 culture, that the theory which requires of him the 
 sacrifice of the larger experience into which he might 
 enter has no real claim on him? 
 
 It is not possible in a general statement to give a 
 solution for all cases, apart from the particular cir- 
 cumstances of each special problem; but in concrete 
 cases the ordinary conscience of man finds little diffi- 
 culty in pronouncing judgment. It would condemn 
 Goethe for his treatment of the different women with 
 whom he successively fell in love, but for none of 
 whom he would take any risk of reducing his oppor- 
 tunities for calm self-development. It would condemn 
 Romney for his conduct to his wife.^ He came to 
 London, leaving behind at Kendal his wife and two 
 children, one son, and a baby daughter who died, 
 meaning to send for them when he had secured a posi- 
 tion. Fame and fortune came to him, and he gave 
 himself with intense devotion to his art, and became 
 the most fashionable portrait-painter of his day. For 
 thirty-five years he lived in London, but never sent 
 for his wife. He had been told that marriage spoilt 
 an artist, and there would also be in his mind the 
 shame of presenting his country wife to Lady Hamil- 
 ton whom he painted so often, and other grand people. 
 In his old age, when helpless and desolate, he returned 
 to her, and she forgave him, and nursed him till he 
 died. There is a standard of judgment, with which 
 
 * Vide Tennyson's Romney's Remorse, 
 
346 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 the heart of man agrees, which will confirm Edward 
 Fitz-Gerald's verdict, that this quiet act of hers is 
 worth all the pictures Romney ever painted.^ 
 
 Every serious man must decide for himself in all 
 the doubtful cases which emerge in life when culture 
 and restraint seem to conflict. No one can take from 
 another the responsibility of settling the numerous 
 problems, for instance, about amusements, about com- 
 pliance with custom, about certain forms of art and 
 literature. It is a safe general principle which dele- 
 gates decision to an enlightened conscience : " Happy 
 is he that condemneth not himself in the things which 
 he alloweth." This too must be added, that for true 
 judgments, as for useful influence, we need not so 
 much a scrupulous as a tender conscience, that thinks, 
 neither of selfish satisfaction, nor of frigid rectitude 
 of conduct and satisfied inward approval, but chiefly 
 of loving service. We must not l^t ourselves be de- 
 ceived by specious questions of casuistry, which only 
 obscure the issues. 
 
 The love of God in Christ unifies life for us, and 
 shows us the way out of difficulties as they arise, if 
 we are loyal to conscience. As love increases and 
 faith deepens, a man comes to see God everywhere, 
 in the world which is made beautiful and sacred by 
 His presence, in all human love which is a reflection 
 of the divine. Perfect moral health is a state in which 
 self-consciousness is forgotten, and a man desires 
 simply to do God's will. When a heart is motived 
 by the love of God, and a life is inspired by the 
 consciousness of God's presence, the necessary re- 
 
 ^ Fitz-Geraldi*6 Letters, p. 102, and vide James Smetham's 
 Letters, p. loi. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 347 
 
 straint becomes easy. The surrender of self to the 
 will of God makes all necessary self-denial not worthy 
 to be mentioned. In the interests of this great self- 
 surrender some may need to practise a self-sacrifice 
 that will look like the mutilation of life, but that is only 
 appearance. The obligation will always rest on a 
 Christian to give up all that is contrary to the mind 
 of Christ, but when the heart is filled with love of 
 good it finds no pleasure in evil. It does not mean any 
 narrow deprivation of anything truly human ; for the 
 Christian life is inclusive, subduing all spheres that 
 belong to man. 
 
 The Christian religion is the progressive grasp of 
 the whole contents of human life, taking possession 
 of every department of thought and activity, con- 
 quering and assimilating all forms of human develop- 
 ment. Historically, it took the philosophy of Greece, 
 and absorbed it, and gave it a new lease of power 
 because it put it on a permanent basis. It took the 
 imperialism of Rome, and directed it into a new 
 sphere, when Roman power was crumbling away. It 
 took the humanism of the Renaissance, and gave art a 
 new birth. It took the political and intellectual free- 
 dom of the Reformation, and made them religious. It 
 is taking the science, and politics, and social move- 
 ments of to-day, and will direct them to large and noble 
 ends. It solved the problems of the old world, and 
 will solve our problems, because nothing human is 
 alien to it. It is a principle of life, and has its undying 
 power in the present realisation of God in the world. 
 Its task is to make the secular life of man sacred, and 
 to transform the natural into the spiritual. It gives 
 added worth to all human things, asserting that there 
 
348 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 is nothing common or unclean in the life of man that . 
 cannot be adorned with a new splendour. This is 
 why the ascetic conception of life is radically false. 
 Allowing for a useful side in occasional protest, the 
 normal Christian life is not that of the anchorite in 
 the desert, or the devotee in his cell. The normal life 
 is that of citizens of a Kingdom of Heaven, working 
 out to positive results. The religious spirit must ex- 
 press itself in the actual world, in creating institutions 
 which shall make for righteousness. Its ideal is that 
 the so-called secular pursuits should be done in a re- 
 ligious spirit. 
 
 For a full character and a perfectly rounded life 
 there are needed both of the elements in the two rival 
 methods we have been considering. The stem temper, 
 which takes self-discipline as a serious task of life, may 
 blossom into beauty, with an eye for all that is fair, 
 and true, and good. The ideal of manhood includes 
 both, as Wordsworth portrays the perfected result of 
 Duty- 
 Flowers laugh before thee in their beds, 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads. 
 
 e think of the harmonious life of Christ, the com- 
 plete balance and poise of His character, the unrivalled 
 combination of qualities, wisdom and simplicity, 
 strength and tenderness, the perfect adjustment of life 
 to the divine will, the simple assurance of God, the 
 wonderful symmetry of life, genial and winsome in 
 spite of sorrow, with instinctive joy in all true love- 
 liness, taking delight in the birds, and the flowers, and 
 little children, though the shadow of the cross lay 
 athwart His path. There have in their measure been 
 many followers of His, who have found in Him the 
 secret of possessing their souls without cutting them- 
 
 ^iw^ 
 
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 349 
 
 selves off from anything that is pure and good, com- 
 bining a certain spiritual aloofness with many-sided 
 touch of the whole round of common life. In Christ 
 there is room for the fullest self-expression — nay, for 
 the first time He makes that completely possible, be- 
 cause He saves it from corrupt forms which would 
 bring decay and death. Secure at the heart, held by 
 love to Him at the centre, the life can swing round a 
 wide radius. He subdues us to Himself the Highest, 
 and sets us to the task of total perfection for self and 
 for the whole world. There never was such a scheme 
 of culture set before men as that to which He pointed : 
 " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in 
 heaven is perfect." ^ He preserves the Hellenic spirit 
 from degradation and from selfishness, by bringing to 
 it faith in God as a motive, and service of man as a 
 task. He saves the Hebraic spirit from formalism, 
 and the futile following after an external law of right- 
 eousness which ever misses the mark, by giving the law 
 a new spirit, the spirit of faith, and love, and perfect 
 freedom. Through Him the Gentiles, who followed not 
 after righteousness, have attained to it. In Him alone 
 could Israel, which did follow after the law of right- 
 eousness, find that for which she sought — the way to 
 the Father. In Him, too, all our particular difficulties 
 in the region we have been discussing, which is that of 
 the whole relation of the Christian to the world, will be 
 practically solved, if we can say with St. Paul, even in 
 echo : " 1 live, and yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; 
 and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the 
 faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Him- 
 self for me." ^ 
 
 It is religion man needs, not culture in itself. So 
 
 »Matt. V. 48. 'Gal. ii. 20. 
 
350 CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 
 
 the birthplace of modem civilisation is not Athens, 
 but Calvary. The *' pale Galilean " has conquered 
 against all the full-bl(X)ded gospels of the natural 
 joy of life, but conquered in the grandest way of con- 
 quest, not by the extermination of the opponent, but 
 by changing the enemy into a friend. When the sons 
 of Greece are not against but for the sons of Zion; 
 when all ideals of culture find their inspiration and 
 nourishment in the divine ideals of Jesus, and take 
 their place in the great loving world-purpose of the 
 world's Saviour ; when thought, and art and literature, 
 and knowledge, and life are brought into subjection 
 to the obedience of Christ, that is the true victory. 
 
 Thou hast conquered, O Galilean! 
 
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