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 FOUR GREAT HUMANISTS 
 
 CORNELIUS B. BRADLEY 
 
 leprinted from the Univbesity op California Cheoniclk, Vol. IX, No. 1] 
 
 *^ OF THE 
 
 , UNIV^RSITV 
 \ 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1907 
 
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 FOUR GREAT HUMANISTS 
 
 CORNELIUS B. BRADLEY 
 
 [Reprinted from the Uxiversity of California Chronicle, Vol. IX. No. 1] 
 
 
 *^ OF THE ^ 
 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1907 
 
FOUR GREAT HUMANISTS.^ 
 
 Cornelius B. Bradley. 
 
 • There is one master problem of the ages ; — a problem at 
 which have toiled all generations of men, all races, all con- 
 ditions, all times, all societies; — a problem which includes 
 all others, summing up in its own vast synthesis everything 
 that elsewhere is separately worked out as religion, philos- 
 ophy, social order, art, science, or mastery of the material 
 world. It is the human problem, as one of its latest students 
 has called it : — how to make man truly human jjiow jo bring 
 hi m into the i nheritance w hich is ^lajnlyjn^^awjbo realize 
 for him the kingly destiny which all augury foretells ; how 
 to_c rown him — individually and socially, with that perfec- 
 tion of strength, beauty, and happiness in_himself and in 
 his^surroundings, without which his^Jife, however splendid 
 in outward circumstance, must ever seem forlorn and tragic. 
 TEe ages have toiled at this problem ; but for the most part 
 merely on some special element or factor in it, without any 
 adequate vision of its vast scope — without clear conscious- 
 ness even of what they w^ere doing. Only twice, so far as 
 we know, in the history of the race has the problem as a 
 whole come clearly into view, and received the conscious 
 consideration it calls for: — once in Plato's time, and once 
 again in ours. Of that earlier treatment I shall not venture 
 to speak in the presence of men who have made it their 
 ^ A paper read before the Berkeley Club, January, 1906. 
 
special study; nor, having touched upon the matter in an 
 earlier paper, shall I stop now to note the separate contri- 
 bution which each of the great ancient civilizations made 
 towards a future solution; nor yet of the part which, in 
 these recent times, races other than our own have taken in 
 its discussion. Suffice it to say that within the century just 
 closed the human problem has become again the object of 
 absorbing interest on the part of all thinking men, with a 
 clearer vision than ever before of its real dimensions and of 
 the multitude of factors involved, and with a more conscious 
 determination to work it out unto some approximate solu- 
 tion both reasonable and practical. In this attempt our 
 own English race has been among the very foremost, hav- 
 ing received the full force of the ideas and the enthusiasm 
 which ushered in the great Revolution, mthout the dis- 
 couragement, disaster, and loss attending that crisis on 
 the Continent. Its experience of world empire, its wealth 
 — with the contrasts of human condition and of oppor- 
 tunity thereby revealed, — the buoyant hope of its own 
 expansive movement, peopling the Antipodes with its col- 
 onies, and above all, its greatness of heart, its instinct for 
 large affairs, and its traditional sense of moral responsi- 
 bility, have all combined to force this problem upon the at- 
 tention of its master minds — statesmen, seers, poets, artists, 
 soldiers. Four of the men so engaged upon this problem — 
 Carlyle, Emerson, Ruskin, Arnold — were gifted with elo- 
 quence and expressive power so extraordinary as to place 
 them at once in the front rank of all the serious writers of 
 the time. To each of these men was revealed one profound 
 phase or aspect of the whole truth concerning man's salva- 
 tion — one sentence of the complete revelation which the 
 world yet waits to hear. Then his lips were touched as with 
 a coal from the altar ; and on his heart evermore was laid the 
 burden of prophecy unto an amazed and too often a gain- 
 saying world. Each in his long career became entangled in 
 other matters, in controversies and criticisms which often 
 
have obscured the real issue for which he stood. More un- 
 fortunately still, the utterance of one has often seemed op- 
 posed or denied by that of another, to the nullification of 
 the real truth in both. But now that the babel of voices 
 about them has subsided somewhat, and from a little dis- 
 tance we can distinguish their words more truly, it may be 
 worth while, if we can, to put their separate sentences to- 
 gether, and spell out so much of the whole prophecy as it 
 has been given them to teach. At the feet of these four 
 prophets it has been my good fortune to sit often of late. 
 So far as a professed learner and disciple of them all may 
 without presumption attempt it, I desire to clear the master- 
 thought of each from whatever is incidental or irrelevant, to 
 apply whatever correction may prove necessary for point of 
 view or personal bias, and to place it then in its true relation 
 to that of the others — limiting myself strictly to their utter- 
 ance on the one great problem we have named. 
 
 Of these four Carlyle comes first : — earliest in point of 
 time, simplest and most direct in his language, in spirit and 
 manner most nearly approaching his great prototype, the 
 Hebrew prophet. The starting point of his thought was the 
 miseryand _confusion of the world of men about him, its 
 crying need of redem ption, and the futility of expecting 
 tEat disorder and unreason would ev er mend themselves, or 
 that any mere aggregation and summation of a world full 
 of foolish and helpless individuals would ever develop the 
 wisdom and virtue needed to establish and direct a happy 
 human society. 
 
 The times in England were such indeed as to give pause 
 to the most thoughtless. In the social world, an effete aris- 
 tocracy, incapable longer of its high function of leadership, 
 and concerned chiefly in keeping its own prestige and priv- 
 ilege intact; the rising power of commerce, with its new 
 aristocracy of wealth, and its slogan of Supply and De- 
 mand; and finally the Enceladus of Democracy, starved, 
 chained, and buried under Etna, but beginning to feel his 
 
power, and to stir portentously in Com Law agitation, Par- 
 liamentary reform, and Chartist uprisings. In the spiritual 
 and moral world a corresponding chaos : — old faiths fiercely 
 held in form, while their substance was fast dissolving 
 away ; shallow and complacent eighteenth century optimism, 
 and laissez-faire, crying ''Peace! Peace!" when the very 
 structure of society seemed threatening to fall about their 
 ears; — everywhere either an unreasoning confidence in for- 
 mulas, or the lurking taint of insincerity, or the flat denial 
 of materialism, or worst of all, sheer indifferentism. This 
 view very likely may seem to us darker than the facts really 
 warranted; but it was the view strongly held, even at a 
 somewhat later date, by the other two Englishmen of our 
 little group, and we may be sure that the case was serious 
 indeed. 
 
 In a time, then, like that of John the Baptist, and in a 
 mood like his, Carlyle began to preach, ' ' Repent ye, for the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand!" His work, like John's, 
 was a work of preparation, and necessarily in large degree 
 destructive. By him the axe was laid at the root of the 
 tree, and every tree that bore not good fruit was to be hewn 
 down and cast into the fire. Like John, he had no working 
 scheme of outward and material betterment to offer, nor 
 had he either faith in or patience for any such device. The 
 real difficulty lay within, in a wrong state of the heart : — in 
 Pharisaical self-complacency, in belief in the efficacy of pre- 
 tence, in unbelief in the eternal reality and power of truth 
 and justice. These devils he would exorcise; in the repen- 
 tant heart he would establish the beginnings of the life of 
 faith and obedience; — for all further guidance and salva- 
 tion, especially for the masses of mankind, he could only 
 point expectant souls to the Hero-Savior sent of God, al- 
 ready no doubt among us, but awaiting the hour of his re- 
 vealing. A noble message indeed, of commanding simplicity 
 and power, preached from a thousand different texts, with 
 unparalleled opulence and splendor of illustration, during 
 
forty long years of prophetic ministry! A message pro- 
 foundly true for all times; and perhaps for no age more 
 needful than for that to which it was preached ! 
 
 The thought behind this message was simple, too, though 
 startling. Spi rit is the ultim ate and_ojQly_reality. Manjs 
 spirit, and participant theref ore_of the dWine nature. All 
 real growth and bettermenf for man is spiritual betterment, 
 whose"motive "forc e" is the" comp ulsion_ojjove _ and^rev^ 
 fof "a^Eeavenly Ideal. But the mass of men are too blind to 
 see or too weak to follow the Ideal unaided. The only hope 
 for society, then, is the incarnation of divine power from 
 time to time in certain individuals gifted with clear vision 
 of the Ideal, and commissioned to guide and direct the hu- 
 man race on its march thither. These are the Hero-Kings. 
 To discover and enthrone them is the supreme problem of 
 society. To reverence and obey them is its only duty. 
 
 The limitations of this doctrine are obvious. Carlyle's 
 emphasis is placed on the weakness and foolishness of hu- 
 man nature, which keeps the race, — and, if this were the 
 whole truth, must forever keep it, — in a state of tutelage. 
 The doctrine is therefore essentially pessimistic from the 
 start; and pessimistic also in its effect, as the fate of its 
 prophet abundantly shows. Human progress under its 
 working alone can never become a steady growth; it must 
 be rather a series of catastrophes or explosions which mo- 
 mentarily burst the bonds. But the forces which once have 
 brought freedom soon become new chains to bind, until an- 
 other deliverer must come to repeat the process, and so on 
 ad mfinitum. Moreover, in the case of the heaven-sent Hero, 
 force, or perhaps we should say effectiveness — is too readily 
 assumed to be the sure token of the inward graces of wisdom 
 and goodness, which alone are saving, — a result, no doubt, 
 of Carlyle's extraordinary delight in the contemplation of 
 power ; — while his instinct for dramatic illustration has led 
 him to choose for us a most amazing gallery of saviors of 
 society, from Odin and Mahomet to Frederick the Great, 
 
and the bloody tyrant of Paraguay. But after all necessary 
 corrections have been made for over-emphasis, for bias of 
 temper, for limitation of view, what factors of the great 
 problem are more universally true, or more constant, than 
 these which Carlyle so eloquently enforced — man 's outward 
 need of inspired leadership, and his inward need of rever- 
 ence and obedience ? 
 
 It is no refutation or disparagement of Carlyle 's doc- 
 trine to say that it is aristocratic. The aristocratic factor, 
 we may be sure, can never be eliminated from the human 
 scheme without the destruction of human society itself. 
 The world may well be thankful that, at a time when its 
 importance was greatly obscured, or even openly denied, 
 there was found so valiant a champion and defender of it. 
 But, as Tennyson tells us — 
 
 God fulfills himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world; 
 
 — and the thought was Carlyle 's before it was Tennyson's. 
 The high doctrine of man's need of inspired leadership, 
 through its slippery corollary of the divine right of kings, 
 led straight, as we have seen, to the apotheosis of tyranny. 
 That doctrine needed to be met and safeguarded by the 
 counter-doctrine and truth of the divine inspiration of 
 every man, the necessity of individual initiative, the duty 
 of self-reliance. The prophet of this individualistic faith 
 was our own Emerson, sincere admirer and life-long friend 
 of Carlyle. Singularly enough, the philosophic basis of the 
 two was identical : — ^tMt"man is sprfi^~ and partaker of ^the 
 divine nature ; that only by love and obedience to the heav- 
 enly call does he rise into a better life — can he attain salva- 
 tion. But the one, considering humanity as massed in so- 
 ciety, thought only of the call from without, the voice of 
 divinely commissioned leadership. The other, considering 
 the individual, thought only of the still small voice of in- 
 ward prompting. Because his Hero-King did not appear 
 when most he was needed, or, appearing, was thwarted and 
 
brought to naught through the stupidity of men, Carlyle 
 sank ever deeper and deeper into the pit of despair ; while 
 Emerson, sure that the soul is ever in communication with 
 universal spirit and the source of all light, was radiant with 
 hope. True, there were many things in the times and in his 
 own immediate surroundings to favor this buoyancy of 
 Emerson's thought. The nation whose life he shared was 
 in the first flush of its youth, with a dawning sense of meas- 
 ureless opportunity and coming greatness — its magnificent 
 resources as yet scarcely touched; its diversity, its roomy 
 freedom, its untried problems all beckoning the aspiring 
 spirit to enter in and possess. And no doubt these same 
 things had much to do with the way in which this strong 
 voice of faith and courage was heard and received. But 
 his hope was as far as possible removed from that shallow 
 American self-complacency which so often shames us in the 
 eyes of the truly wise. It rested not on any special phase 
 of time or circumstance, but on the unswerving conviction 
 that God himself guides each soul of man, and He cannot 
 guide him wrong. Nor was Emerson concerned beyond the 
 individual, for, if the individuals'" are ' all God-guided, so- 
 ciety, he argued, will take care of itself. A much more 
 lofty and spiritual doctrine this than the other ; yet for that 
 very reason more difficult of ready application in a world 
 not spiritual, but carnal. 
 
 The chief difficulty with the other scheme was to find 
 the Hero-King, and get him enthroned, — and then to keep 
 him from being spoiled by the servility and the flattery of 
 men. But the difficulties in the way of any general appli- 
 cation of Emerson 's scheme are much more subtle and per- 
 plexing. First of all, the individual alone is its-end. It 
 scarcely recognizes society at all save in its reaction upon 
 the individual spirit. The only real life is the secret life of 
 thought. Society does scarcely more for that than to fur- 
 nish the thinker with a convenient laboratory or a stage to 
 which he may now and then come from his central solitude 
 
10 
 
 and test the quality of his thought by putting it into action. 
 History, the record of society, has for him no directive 
 force; — the most that it can do for one is through its con- 
 crete embodiments to suggest to the soul certain features of 
 the soul's own divine excellence which it might otherwise 
 have overlooked. History is, in fact, but a mirror in which 
 a man sees nothing but his own image. In travel and in art 
 man finds nothing which he himself does not first bring to 
 them. Government is a thing to be left to clerks and desks. 
 Reforms, even of giant evils like slavery, excite in Emerson 
 but the most languid interest. The heat and passion inevit- 
 able to them are evils quite as great as those they would dis- 
 place. In fact, the reader is apt to find himself in a topsy- 
 turvy world where ''gravitation turns the other way" — 
 where the part is greater than the whole, where one over- 
 balances all. 
 
 Much of this confusion is due, no doubt, to Emerson's 
 fondness for pungency and paradox, to his inveterate habit 
 of whimsical over-statement, to his unwillingness to blur the 
 sharp outline of a statement by any hint of the many quali- 
 fications and limitations which in his own case his clear 
 sanity never failed to apply. But apart from this, the doc- 
 trine in itself is plainly esoteric, capable of being under- 
 stood and practiced only by souls already enlightened. To 
 others — to the "average sensual man" as Arnold calls him 
 — its very basis and the terms in which it is announced are 
 alike unintelligible. In his case what can be the outcome of 
 counsels such as, "Act only upon your impulse," "Obey 
 your heart, ' ' but horrors like those of the Salem witchcraft 
 or of the Inquisition. ' ' If the light that is in thee be dark- 
 ness, how great is that darkness ! ' ' Denial of all external 
 authority brings one perilously near to antinomianism. 
 Emerson 's reply to this criticism is characteristic : "If any 
 one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its command- 
 ment one day ! ' ' 
 
 But none of these criticisms can shake the real truth of 
 
11 
 
 the law itself, or obscure the serene reflection of it in the 
 character and life of Emerson. Nor can they lessen the 
 value of that great tide of courage and aspiration which 
 was, perhaps, to most of those who heard him the best result 
 of his prophesying. I cannot think that any sincere soul 
 was ever misled by Emerson's statement of the truth. Only 
 shallow souls could ever have perverted the noble individ- 
 ualism of it into the silly and selfish travesty we all know 
 too well. 
 
 Thus clearly were preached these two cardinal doctrines 
 touching man's salvation; thus strongly were planted these 
 two pillars of his hope ; here, rightly in the main, were lo- 
 cated the two foci of the curve of progress. Neither doc- 
 trine was new. Both were old — as old as the earliest spir- 
 itual thought on the subject. Yet each gathered from the 
 circumstances of its utterance, from the needs of the age, 
 and from the genius and character of the man, an emphasis 
 and a quickening power well nigh unexampled in recent 
 times. Rightly, in the main, I think we shall all agree, were 
 these cardinal points located; but each with too exclusive 
 attention, as though it alone were the center of the sphere, — 
 with too little conscious reference to the other as its neces- 
 sary correlate and complement. Both men planted them- 
 selves firmly on righteousness as the only salvation, and on 
 divine guidance sought through reverence and faith, as the 
 only means thereto. But divine guidance, in the thought 
 of the one, was for the mass of men, and therefore mediate 
 — incarnate in human leadership ; in the thought of the 
 other, it was for the individual, and therefore immediate — 
 a distinct revelation from God. Its chief attribute for the 
 one was action and force ; for the other, thought and char- 
 acter. Each view is partial, and appeals to a distinct group 
 of men; neither alone suffices for man's salvation. As Jou- 
 bert finely says:^ ''Force and Right are rulei-s of this 
 world; but Force till Right is ready." To bring these two 
 
 ^ Quoted by Arnold, Essays 1st Series, p. 12. 
 
12 
 
 into harmony, to find the radii which link these foci to- 
 gether, so that from them both the true orbit of human pro- 
 gress may be more nearly found, — was a task reserved for 
 other men ; and one of these men was Ruskin. 
 
 Of the same ultimate conviction as Carlyle, though of 
 kindlier temper, and confronted by the same social condi- 
 tions, it was no doubt inevitable that he should become a 
 follower and professed disciple of Carlyle. But it was 
 equally inevitable that a nature so differently endowed and 
 trained, so much wider in range both of experience and 
 sympathy, should greatly modify Carlyle 's stern and barren 
 gospel of work. Seeing clearly the need of inspired leader- 
 ship, he saw also what Carlyle failed to see, — the equal need 
 of self-help and individual initiative. He had an abiding 
 faith in our common human nature, which saved him alike 
 from Carlyle 's despair and from his consequent inaction. 
 The leadership which, in his view, was to save the world, 
 was not concentrated into fierce bursts of meteoric splendor, 
 soon to be quenched in darkness as profound as ever; but 
 distributed — lodged in its degree in every soul that truly 
 loves truth and righteousness. The world he looked out 
 upon seemed bad indeed ; but he had no mind either to fold 
 his hands in despair, or make the confusion worse by use- 
 less wailing and denunciation. Rather would he rouse every 
 true heart within sound of his voice to range himself man- 
 fully on the side of order and right, and avail himself of 
 whatever leadership might be at hand, — until through sol- 
 dierly obedience he should himself become a leader in his 
 place in the mighty army of God. 
 
 The correction which Ruskin here applies to Carlyle 's 
 scheme is important in many ways. First of all, it makes 
 possible a continuous betterment of society, in place of 
 fierce paroxysmal reform, with long succeeding periods of 
 discouragement and relapse. Provision, moreover, is made 
 for a continuous organization of society, evermore renewed 
 from within, instead of its momentary organization out of 
 
13 
 
 chaos by force from without — an effort which usually ex- 
 hausts Carlyle's hero before he can accomplish much else. 
 And, since all members of society are participant, the pro- 
 cess is truly educative for all, and not merely coercive. In 
 fine, Ruskin's scheme, though as thoroughly aristocratic as 
 Carlyle's, faces in the opposite direction; for while Car- 
 lyle's interest seems wholly dramatic and spectacular, cen- 
 tered upon the person and the performance of the hero; 
 Euskin 's is wholly practical, centered on the outcome to the 
 masses. 
 
 But this correction is not all. Ruskin saw clearly— as 
 Carlyle did not— that work alone cannot satisfy the need of 
 the human spirit; nor work with obedience and reverence 
 added. Even so, it is no better than slavery, unless there is 
 for the workman joy in his work and in the fruits of it. 
 Were we not all, alas, too familiar with the fact, with what 
 horror and indignation should we regard an organization of 
 society which inevitably dooms any of its members to work 
 necessarily deadly?— to labor that kills the body, like that 
 in the fierce heat at the furnace-mouth, or amidst noxious 
 fumes; or labor that kills the soul through its unending 
 monotony and infinitesimal range, as in many departments 
 of manufacture with modern machinery ; or labor that kills 
 both body and soul, — so poorly paid that the utmost effort 
 of the worker does not earn him enough sustenance to enable 
 him to continue the work by which alone he lives! This 
 dire evil Carlyle had seen, — had painted it in lines of fire 
 on a background as black as the walls of Tartarus; — and 
 there he had stopped. Ruskin set himself to do what he 
 could to abate it ; devoting thereto the full strength of his 
 manhood, and a fortune by no means inconsiderable for 
 those days. His efforts were manifold, but mainly along 
 three lines: (1) To arouse the conscience of an indifferent 
 public to a sense of its responsibility for its brother's blood, 
 by a succession of appeals unparalleled for passionate earn- 
 estness and eloquence — ^the utterances by which Ruskin is 
 
14 
 
 still most generally known. (2) To expose the fallacies — as 
 he deemed them — of current economical theory, and the 
 viciousness of commercial morals behind which the srreed 
 that wrought such cruel wrong was seeking to shelter itself. 
 This matter is beset with too many difficulties to permit of 
 its being handled here. I may only remark in passing that, 
 upon the whole, Ruskin 's way of thinking seems to be gain- 
 ing ground among thoughtful men; namely, that there are 
 values in the world which are real, and not merely the out- 
 come of fortuitous ' ' supply and demand ' ' ; that a nation 's 
 real wealth is in the life and character of its people, rather 
 than in some accumulation of mere material things pur- 
 chased perhaps at the sacrifice of that other ; that an econ- 
 omy claiming to be called political should above all recognize 
 and seek to conserve the chief values of the nation, or else, 
 if unable or unwilling to concern itself Avith these, it should 
 be content to wear the truer designation of commercial 
 economy. All this, however, was but incidental to his main 
 effort: (3) to improve both the character and the condition 
 of the workingman, by helping him to help himself. This 
 he would do by keeping constantly before the workingman 
 higher ideals both of life and of work ; by encouraging him 
 to make himself master of his craft ; and by creating among 
 the wealthy a discriminating taste in favor of genuine hand- 
 workmanship as against the machine-made article. Within 
 the brief compass of this paper it is impossible to give any 
 adequate idea of the amount of time and energy Euskin put 
 into this labor of love. Schools, museums, workingmen's 
 colleges and classes, experimental farms, workshops, homes, 
 communities; the enlistment and training of an army of 
 helpers, incessant teaching, planning, writing, lecturing, 
 printing ; — until the over-tasked heart and brain could hold 
 out no longer. He rests now from his labors, but his works 
 do follow him, in Toynbee Halls, college settlements, work- 
 ingmen 's clubs, and organizations of similar intent through- 
 out England, America, and the Antipodes. 
 
15 
 
 My account of Ruskin's contribution to the human prob- 
 lem will not be complete, however, until I have recalled the 
 work of his earlier years, and his remarkable vindication of 
 the place and power of Beauty in human life, and its pro- 
 found relation to character. Wordsworth and the poets no 
 doubt were in this field before him, and Emerson, too; but 
 to none had it ever been given to expound with such full- 
 ness of illustration and such convincing power the divine 
 beauty which everywhere clothes the world, — in flower, bird, 
 and tree ; in valley, plain, and mountain ; in river, sea, and 
 sky. Ruskin approached this subject through Art, and 
 nearly all his writing on it is ostensibly criticism of art. 
 But while the beauty of art is included in his scheme, art is 
 for him but a transcript, a memorandum, from Nature, — an 
 appreciation and interpretation by a gifted soul of some 
 glimpse of her transcendent beauty, — precious indeed, but 
 chiefly so because it enables our duller eyes to see thence- 
 forth in Nature what otherwise would have been hidden 
 from them. And this, I take it, is precisely the value to us 
 of Ruskin 's writing on this theme. Never before had there 
 been such an opening of blind eyes, such a quickening of 
 dull senses, such conscious delight in the beauty of this fair 
 world, as followed — and still follows — the reading of the 
 Modern Painters. 
 
 Ruskin 's work, then, as we review it, is seen to be very 
 largely a correction of the narrowness of Carlyle's doc- 
 trine, a quickening of its barrenness by infusing into it the 
 vital elements of brightness, hope, and self-help, and by 
 illustrating in various ways its applicability to existing hu- 
 man society in all its degrees. In so doing he had availed 
 himself, as we have seen, of certain important elements of 
 Emerson's doctrine, though not, of course, necessarily de- 
 rived from him. Still the correction as a whole was a dis- 
 tinct approximation toward Emerson 's position. There was 
 equal need, however, that Emerson 's doctrine should receive 
 correction ; that his life of the spirit should be taken out of 
 
16 
 
 its barren isolation, should be brought into the current of 
 the world 's life, enriching and enriched ; that the individual 
 be brought to recognize his relation and his obligation to so- 
 ciety ; that a liberty, threatening at any moment to explode 
 into antinomianism and anarchy, should be taught its strict 
 limits. 
 
 The man to apply these corrections was Matthew Ar- 
 nold. Deeply enamored of the Greek brightness, intelli- 
 gence, and reasoned self-control, he was shocked and af- 
 fronted by the unreason, the freakishness, the excess which 
 everywhere appeared in English character and life; and at 
 first, chiefly by the entire absence of any sure standard of 
 taste, or even of intelligence, in English literature. Here 
 genius of the highest order, it seemed, did not avail to save 
 a man from losing himself in eccentricity and caprice, from 
 working on in serene ignorance of what elsewhere had been 
 thought and done, and so wasting his powers on work fore- 
 doomed to failure. Popular approval was no sound crite- 
 rion of excellence, though commonly accepted as such. The 
 verdict of English criticism was of no avail, for it was as 
 freakish and uncertain as the work it dealt with, voicing in 
 oracular fashion nothing more than the critic's unreasoned 
 and ignorant likes and dislikes. Bureaucratic control, like 
 that of the French Academy, was plainly impossible, — ab- 
 horrent to all English traditions of freedom. What was to 
 be done? How might any real standard of excellence be 
 found to correct the vagaries of individual judgment and 
 effort? Arnold's answer was that the nearest possible ap- 
 proximation to the absolute standard of excellence in any 
 given field is to be found in a consensus of opinion on the 
 part of the men best qualified to judge matters in that field ; 
 that is, men of judicial temper whose knowledge is such that 
 they form their judgment of the new in the light of the best 
 that has ever been known and thought on that subject. This 
 is Arnold's famous method of criticism, neither autocratic, 
 nor bureaucratic, nor the result of universal suffrage; but 
 
17 
 
 aristocratic in the true sense of the term — a control by the 
 best. The judges in this high court of criticism, it is true, 
 are never finally gazetted and named ; but that does not de- 
 stroy its effectiveness. It matters little how many unworthy 
 ones sit with them on the bench. The verdict of each ' ' best ' ' 
 carries its own warrant of intelligence and fairness written 
 on its face ; all other votes are easily discovered and thrown 
 out. 
 
 This method, it may be urged, is nothing but the method 
 of plain common sense, practiced unconsciously from the 
 beginning of the world, and the means of all progress made 
 so far. Very true. But that does not prevent the method 
 from being obscured or forgotten, and needing therefore to 
 be rediscovered, consciously restated, and applied to new 
 conditions; needing especially redefinition of the term so 
 sure to be misunderstood or perverted, ''the best." There 
 can be no better proof of the need of it in Arnold's day 
 than the revolution it wrought in English literary criticism ; 
 — a revolution of which Arnold was the pioneer, and in 
 which he is still one of the chief landmarks. 
 
 The method was far-reaching, capable of widest appli- 
 cation. Arnold began with literature, but it soon became 
 evident that his interest was not so much in literature it- 
 self as in what lay behind it, namely, in life. Poetry for 
 him was a criticism of life. With Socrates he was sure that 
 an unexamined life is not worth living. So to English life 
 as he found it, in all its chief aspects and problems, he be- 
 gan to apply the searching test of his analysis and criticism : 
 to politics, manners, morals, religion; to the press, the 
 church, the Bible, the Irish question, to "marriage with a 
 deceased wife 's sister ' ' ! Everywhere he found the same 
 faults: — "want of sensitiveness of intellectual conscience, 
 disbelief in right reason, dislike of authority," blind follow- 
 ing of "stock notions and habits," foolish complacency in 
 "doing as one likes." To Arnold himself were strikingly 
 applicable the words he wrote of Goethe : — 
 
18 
 
 Physician of the iron age, 
 
 He took the suffering human race; 
 He read each wound, each weakness clear, 
 
 And struck his finger on the place. 
 And said : ' ' Thou ailest here, and here ! ' ' 
 
 Of course, there was tremendous outcry on the part of those 
 who felt his lancet and probe — an outcry to which we on 
 this side of the Atlantic contributed our full share, when- 
 ever our pet w^eaknesses were touched. 
 
 But what is to be the remedy for all this? Culture, 
 w hich Arnol dexplains to be the "pursuit of our total per- 
 fection by means of getting to know,^ on all the matters 
 which most concern us, the best which has been thought and 
 said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a 
 stream "oT'TiFesh and free thought upon our stock notions 
 and habits."^ Culture is not merely "the endeavor to see 
 things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge of the uni- 
 versal order which seems to be intended and aimed at in 
 the world, which it is man's happiness to go along with, or 
 his misery to go counter to" — not merely thus to learn 
 ' ' reason and the will of God, ' ' but beyond this, it is the en- 
 deavor ' ' to make reason and the will of God prevail. ' '* The 
 perfection which culture aims at is "an inward condition 
 of mind and spirit, not an outward set of circumstances ' ' — ^ 
 "a growing and a becoming, not a having and a resting." 
 "And because men are all members of one great whole, and 
 the sympathy v/hich is in human nature will not allow one 
 member to be indifferent to the rest, or to have perfect 
 welfare independent of the rest, the expansion of our hu- 
 manity, to suit the idea of perfection which culture forms, 
 must be a general expansion. Perfection is not possible 
 while the individual remains isolated. The individual is re- 
 quired, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled, if he 
 disobeys, to carry others along with him in his march to- 
 ward perfection, to be continually doing all he can to en- 
 
 ^ Culture and Anarchy, Preface, xi. 
 * Culture and Anarchy, p. 9. 
 ' Ibid., p. 12. 
 
19 
 
 lar^e and increase the volume of the human stream sweep- 
 ing thitherward."^ And finally, perfection *'is a harmo- 
 nious expansion of all the powers which make beauty and 
 worth in human nature, and is not consistent with the de- 
 velopment of any one power at the expense of the rest. ' ''^ 
 
 This statement of Arnold's position brings out clearly 
 both the agreement between him and Emerson, and the dif- 
 ference. Both seek perfection, and that perfection is in- 
 ward and spiritual ; but unlike Emerson, Arnold sees clearly 
 that the plant of perfection cannot be grown in vacuo, but 
 only in the soil of human society, with the help of its brac- 
 ing and corrective contact ; — that indeed it is not a plant at 
 all, but a harvest waving to the utmost bounds of earth. 
 The life which quickens and guides its growth both call by 
 the same name. Reason, and each adds his own illustrative 
 synonyms: ''Reason and the soul which inspires all men," 
 says Emerson. ''Reason and the will of God," says Arnold. 
 But they are not quite the same thing. Emerson 's Reason is 
 intuitive, transcendent — a direct vision of ultimate truth. 
 For Arnold, as for Tennyson, the "will of God" is none 
 other than "the increasing purpose" which "through the 
 ages runs, ' ' known to us only as we watch its unfolding. Of 
 anjrthing claiming to be "the will of God" we can be sure 
 only by seeing how it coincides with the observed curve of 
 human progress. Arnold, in fact, only reiterates and en- 
 forces the caution uttered long ago by St. John : ' ' Beloved, 
 believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are 
 of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the 
 world." For any such caution we look in vain in Emerson's 
 writing. Was it because his own serene intelligence and his 
 well-ordered instincts seemed to call for little such correc- 
 tion ; or was his championship of liberty so absorbing that 
 without thought of results he would sweep away every ele- 
 ment of control and authority ? I cannot say. Lastly, both 
 men stood aloof from participation in any scheme of practi- 
 
 « Ibid., p. 11. 
 ' Ibid., p. 12. 
 
20 
 
 cal reform, and upon mucli the same stated grounds, namely, 
 that all real reform is of the spirit, and not of circumstance, 
 and that the spiritual aim is apt to be lost in the hurly-burly 
 and strife of practical reform. But behind this common 
 reason there seems to be in the one case a distinct lack of 
 interest in action itself as unimportant, while in the other 
 interest in action is plainly so great and so objective that 
 the thinker detaches himself from action that he may the 
 more surely follow its course and judge its outcome. 
 
 A summary of these separate teachings might run some- 
 what as follows : — 
 
 "Man is spirit," says Carlyle, "and destined to be par- 
 taker of the fullness of God. That this end may be achieved, 
 God's help is given the race in the shape of inspired leader- 
 ship, with the accompanying discipline of reverence, obe- 
 dience, and work." "God's help is given," says Emerson, 
 "through direct illumination of the individual spirit, with 
 the discipline of thought, freedom, and self-reliance." 
 "The leadership vouchsafed to society," says Ruskin, "is 
 not merely occasional, autocratic, and spectacular, but con- 
 stant, reciprocal, and educative for all. The obedience re- 
 quired is not blind submission to force, but a loving out- 
 reach toward excellence. Nor is work a barren exaction of 
 effort that we may exist, but it is the only means by which 
 we may lay hold of the joy destined for us in each other, and 
 in Nature, and in thought, 'Man shall not live by bread 
 alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth 
 of God.' " "God speaks, no doubt," says Arnold, "to our 
 secret soul ; but we must make sure that it is His voice we 
 hear, and not some echo out of our own dreams and vain 
 imaginings. Our private impression, therefore, must be 
 tested and corrected by His word as it is writ large and un- 
 mistakable on the pages of human history, and in the lines 
 of human thought. And only by a progress which enlarges 
 all sides of our nature, and carries with it all members of 
 our race, shall we ever come unto a perfect manhood, 'unto 
 the measure of the stature of the fullness of God. ' ' '