THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
IRVINE
GIFT OF
FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY
MANY MINDS
MANY MINDS
By MAURICE BUTTON
Author of "The Greek Point of View "
TORONTO
THE M US SON BOOK COM PANT
LIMITED
M3
Made and Printed in Great Britain for Hoddcr and Stoughton Limited,
by Butler & Tanner.Ltd., Frome and London
PREFATORY NOTE
THE papers in this volume were originally com-
posed either as popular lectures to miscel-
laneous audiences in Ontario Myot, xQOTQenrixol, or Myot
yQixoi, or Ao'yot fjicuspTixot, as an older sophist of Greece
would have called them : or in other cases as lectures
to University societies, authors' societies and the like in
Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa : or, in the third case,
were printed in the periodical called " The University
Magazine," which represented in its day the Univer-
sities of Dalhousie and McGill and Toronto.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
POPULAR LECTURES ...... 9
I THE MIND OF HERODOTUS ..... 17
II THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 29
III PLATO AND POETRY 61
IV FRANCIS BACON 76
V KIPLING . 110
VI PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS . . . .148
VII SOME OXFORD TYPES 157
VIII THE ENGLISHMAN : THE FRENCHMAN : THE ROMAN :
THE GREEK 191
IX SATIRE AND HUMOUR 242
X THOUGHT AND ACTION 252
XI QUALITY AND EQUALITY 266
XII THE BEST POLICY 281
POPULAR LECTURES
AT the inauguration half a century ago of one of
the minor English Universities, " Ladies and
Gentlemen," began the Founder, pointing proudly to
two young gentlemen fresh from Oxford and to two
Cambridge men a trifle more mature, " here I offer
you a University eddication free of cost."
The University of Toronto in somewhat the same
fashion is wont to send out, on Friday evenings,
members of its staff to deliver popular lectures in the
various cities, towns and villages of Ontario.
On such occasions it is obvious to anyone who will
reflect a moment that the audience cannot be treated
in the high-handed fashion recommended once by
the Master of an Oxford College to a youthful and
conscientious extension lecturer, who was finding it
hard to hold his hearers. " What concessions, Master,
must I make to the limitations of the audience ? "
asked a youthful economist. The answer was un-
expectedly emphatic : " Damn the audience."
We in Ontario dare not do so ; we humour them
generally ; which means that we attempt to impart
humour even into the subject of economics or even
into more serious subjects.
A single instance will illustrate sufficiently and is
taken from my own experience. After I had endea-
voured to sketch the ancient Roman, the ancient
Greek, etc., to a small Ontario country town of
Scotch origin and had received the customary vote of
thanks, I was asked to convey a message to my
colleague due on the following Friday. *' Will you
kindly tell Dr. Blank that this village likes its sub-
10 POPULAR LECTURES
jects handled humorously." " Certainly," I said,
" and what is his subject ? " " The creation of the
world."
A large portion of the book that follows is taken
from the exercises of these flamboyant Fridays, so
to speak ; a smaller portion from the sinister Satur-
days that succeeded them : when, I mean, suffering
from the reaction, one spoke in more serious fashion
than usual to one's usual students in University
College.
It is already clear that popular lecturing itself
invites a popular lecture " handled humorously."
I can only skirt the fringes of a fruitful theme, con-
fining myself to my own entertainments and those
of my familiar friends and colleagues.
When I was first imported into Canada from
Oxford fifty years ago, a babe and suckling thrown
into the midst of the wise after the flesh and the
children of this world who are more prudent in their
generation than the children of Oxford, I was sent to
a mercantile centre to introduce " The Women of
Greece."
I did my best and waited for the reporters' verdict.
My friends painfully and earnestly sought to keep
the next morning's papers from me ; but I outwitted
them and found a passage which then and after-
wards brought me such enlightenment and such
entertainment as often sweeten these intellectual
gymnastics. " The lecturer's delivery," I read, " was
monotonous and his accent distressingly Oxonian ;
but the subject-matter unexpectedly turned out to
be not without interest."
After fifty years the subject-matter remains the
same ; but in the other qualities there has been time,
I believe, for some improvement.
Other places helped to rub in these useful and
needed lessons. At Niagara Falls (Canadian side)
I once trod upon the toes of an Irish reporter by my
lecture on Roman, Greek, etc. ; he said quite fairly
POPULAR LECTURES 11
that it should have been called rather a lecture on
Rome, Athens, London and Paris ; but he began his
report with more vivacity. " Professor Hutton lec-
tured here last night, if reading in a monotonous voice
from MSS. can be called a lecture ; however, his
accent was less unpleasant than that of Professor Z.,
who preceded him last week and who was understood
to say, after George Eliot, that 'Jyne was in the
cowl-house ' ; (Professor Z. had come to us from
London.) The morning papers contained this criti-
cism, but a later morning's paper criticized the critic :
1 1 have looked up ' lecture ' in a dictionary," wrote
" Working Man," " and I read 'a reading from MSS.' '
The reporters of those days were more vivacious
than those of to-day. One of them introduced me
in happy fashion somewhat as follows : " The polished
head of University College lectured here last night " ;
those who were present appreciated the mot. A simi-
lar reporter in the mercantile centre recorded above
wrote in a similar vein of a colleague : " From such
of the remarks of the reverend gentleman as perco-
lated to us through his beard we gathered," etc. ; or,
again from Niagara Falls, where the roar of the
cataract makes distinct enunciation necessary : " Many
of the learned lecturer's remarks missed us and went
astray in his whiskers."
Of course the humours of these evenings were
much increased by casual circumstance. It was my
fate to deliver the long screed on the Roman, etc.,
for the first time and when the ink was hardly dry
in a manufacturing centre, which turned out with
extraordinary keenness ; the whole population seemed
to be present men, women and large numbers of
innocent children. I was taken aback and astonished,
but waded through the luminous-voluminous record
with such speed as was possible, when I had to
stick closely to the text. When I had finished, to
my own relief and every one's, I was greeted with a
vote of thanks which has remained embedded for
12 POPULAR LECTURES
forty years in my memory. " Next Friday," said
the chairman (I know his name but willingly forget
it), " we are to have Dr. Blank, who, I am thankful
to say, does not use notes." This was the same
Dr. Blank who was to handle humorously the creation
of the world : what notes indeed would have served
him?
The chairman's views of " notes " is still the
prevalent view, though it is not universal, and would
have been fatal to much literature : to Newman's
sermons, for example.
At Paris (Ontario) I remember gratefully that I
stayed with a cultivated artist, who put in a word
for me (and for Newman). " If you knew," he said
to a malcontent and critic, " what a comfort it is to
me to sit under a man, who will never hem and haw,
and lose himself and repeat himself, but go on without
turning a hair, turning only leaves, to the bitter
and better end, to the haven desired by all, you would
not talk so much nonsense, nor hear so much."
Of course the ideal method is to have your MS.
all written out fully in front of you, but to know it
all by heart ; but this ideal is only reached honestly
and without unprofitable exertion when the lecture
is in constant and almost continuous demand, and
has been given to the public, say, in its seventieth
edition, or has been forgiven to the lecturer even
unto seventy times seven.
This was almost my fortune at one time with the
often quoted " Roman." It was competing, quite
vainly, with a lamented colleague's " Water-babies."
The babies had reappeared three hundred times ;
the " Roman " had only reached his seventy-fifth
metempsychosis when my colleague's demise ended
the unequal rivalry. Since then the "Roman" with
no new world to conquer has largely rested in camp,
waiting for other barbarian babes to fight ; but the
babes like the Christianity which is based upon
them dominated the civilization of pagan Rome.
POPULAR LECTURES 13
Sometimes I was the unwilling and unwitting
agent of matrimonial triumphs and of a husband
setting down his wife : " There, my dear, you see
I was right ; you have been advocating an Athenaeum
for this village all this time. Professor Hutton
lectured last night for an hour and a quarter and
said ' Athenian ' a score of times and never once
4 Athenaeum.' :
Sometimes a personal triumph wasted away on
further inquiry. I lectured at Morrisburg and was
accompanied by the whirr of skates upon the ice of
an adjoining rink. My audience contained one man
with a large number of ladies ; I thanked my one
faithful ally (for whom I was minded as before and
since to open the lecture " Ladies and Mr. X.).
" Sir," said his wife softly to me, " he is not only
lame but stone-deaf."
Occasionally I have been subjected to the chequered
experience of being helped out by another and almost
simultaneous entertainment. When I had exhausted
half the ancient Roman once at Dunnville or some
place in that vicinity I was invited to sit down and
take breath for a time, while a capable and excellent
singer revived the audience for a further effort of
listening to me.
I was not ungrateful, knowing what I knew, that
some of my colleagues at Collingwood had been
sandwiched for the same reason with nigger minstrelsy.
It goes without saying that the chairman often
on these occasions, as at all lectures, furnishes the
comedy or the tragedy of the evening. One of my
colleagues in history was sent a few months after
the outbreak of " The Great War " to lecture at a
hamlet on the shore of Lake Simcoe. The chairman,
a local politician, took the chair at 8.15 p.m., and
at 9.15 was still pointing out to the audience how
much Sir Edward Grey had been helped in unravelling
the twisted skein of European diplomacy by the
experience which he had acquired as Governor-
14
General of Canada. Canada, he pointed out truly,
has more politics to the square inch and more square
inches for politics than almost any other country on
the face of this earth. My colleague was left with
only thirty minutes in which to develop his ideas of
the sources of Sir Edward Grey's diplomacy. Nor
was it only the chairman who sometimes added to
the humour of these occasions ; occasionally it was
the local pastor when he gave board and lodging to
the itinerant lecturer. I remember one of these
hospitable clergymen who prayed " for the stranger
who is within our gates that the Lord, to whom all
things are possible, may touch even his lips with
fire, so that his words may not merely instruct but
edify and inspire, and may confirm the church."
The indulgence of the audience often helped us
out. One of us once with professorial absence of
mind left his MS. in a railway carriage when he had
occasion to change from one railway line to another ;
he arrived at his destination without the proper
ammunition. But did he fail ? Far from it ; never
had he achieved, never had any of us achieved a
greater succes d'estime. The audience providentially
was made up of the pupils of a ladies' college. My
colleague, providentially again, had his dress suit
with him ; providentially for the third and fourth
time he was a fine-looking man, and best of all he
wore a monocle. He put on the dress suit, he adjusted
the monocle and he held a reception of the young
ladies. Never has a lecture before or since gone so
well.
At other times the success and joy of these enter-
tainments has been reaped later after many days.
I took up some years ago, for example, the subject
of Lewis Carroll ; it seemed to go all right, but the
real triumph of the lecture was withheld for many
months, and only came to me in fact the other day
from a young woman in the Public Library at Toronto.
She confided to me how a dear old lady since dead,
POPULAR LECTURES 15
God rest her soul had come to the Library and
said : " I have heard that Professor Hutton is to
lecture on Lewis Carroll ; I suppose I ought to read
Alice." Alice was given her. Within twenty-four
hours Alice was returned. As she slammed her down
on the desk she said : " I thought I had to read
this book ; I took ; I have read it from cover to
cover ; there is not one word of sense in it."
And yet I should give a very different impression
from that which I ought to give, and should unduly
emphasize an unfortunate experience of Professor
Huxley's, if I handled this theme of popular lecturing
humorously and humorously only.
Professor Huxley has somewhere recorded how he
was facing in some despondency one day a popular
audience, when his eye caught a responsive look in a
bright and feminine eye. " Come," he said to himself,
" I can venture to talk about the cerebellum even
to these people ; there is one intelligent eye at least
among them " ; and he ventured and talked the
subject out. At the close, and after the vote of
thanks, the owner of the intelligent eyes came forward
with profuse thanks. " There is only one small
question, Professor, I should like to ask ; I did not
quite gather from your charming lecture whether the
cerebellum is in the head or in the feet."
I, on the contrary, have never known an occasion,
however unpromising, when I have not profited as
well as preached, and learned as well as taught ;
and not merely those lessons of accent and delivery
already noticed, much more serious lessons. At the
little village of Ayr I found an interested and inter-
esting critic in the local minister, later to become my
friend in St. Andrews (Scotland) and in Toronto-
Mr. Thomson. He not only contributed some bon
mots which seemed to me to illuminate the subject
of ancient Rome, but he gave me the first information
I had received of that quaint speculation which finds
negro blood to be the source of the character of the
16 POPULAR LECTURES
Romans. I have always known, I repeat, that no
man who has faith, hope and charity can try popular
lecturing without finding profit therein ; he will find
appreciation and knowledge to interest him in the
most unlikely places.
One of my colleagues, e.g., lectured on Shakespeare
in Madoc, a small and very hard- worked community
in an out-of-the-way mining quarter of Ontario. Th
whole population was present, every one but t}.<
overdriven driver of the local bus, and he was absent
unwillingly. " I apologize, boss," he said next morn-
ing, " for not being at the lecture ; it was splendid
and I hated missing it; but the missus wan hound
to be there, and I had to mind the baby." At.
Madoc a lecture was a real relief and refreshment.
There was neither bridge nor cinema nor skating
carnival to dispute the right of way ; and the audience
was in proportion much better attuned to Shake-
speare, and much more fully repaid the accomplished
lecturer.
His mind may even turn regretfully to Madoc
when he if confronting his own students ; some of
these, especially the young women, attend but do
not attend, to p<-ak after the; manner of the Athe-
nian. They are out not no much for a degree, B.A.
or B.A.D. (Baccalaurea Artis Domestics*), though
they may reach one, not being fools by any means,
still less tor knowledge and thought, as for those
weekly, nay nightly dam^s, for whi<-h a modern
University seems to furnish an unwilling, unwitting
OOMSJOn. Some of them, it may KafV-ly \>< ;>v,urn' d,
will be like Hippoclides: faoQifooncu, tto yAfv/r they
will dance away their marriage.
CHAPTER I
THE MIND OF HERODOTUS
(1) TJKRODOTUS is called the "Father of His-
""1 tory " ; dubitative persons, full of scruples
and mis:M\in:;s. prefer to call him the "Father of
i Naturally ; for history is the statement of
facts about past events or persons, and, if its facts
are not so, it is a scries of lies ; but there is nothing
so diilu ult to discover as a fact about past events,
except facts about persons past or present; these
art- past all diseovery. Herodotus knew this; he
starts out, therefore, with a maxim absolutely abhor-
rent to the more credulous and thoughtless persons
\\ lu> ha\ e fancied themselves historians since his day :
" it is not my business to believe what I hear, it is
my business to report it."
(2) But he was saved from writing lies solely or
rhu nother element in his nature more fortunate
than his passion for reporting ; he was not an historian
only, but a poet. lie looked at persons and events
in the large ; he saw men and facts in masses ; he
generali/ed lilV ami history.
(8) And tins brings me to a now point : I have
said Herodotus was a poet as well as an historian.
I now say he was an historian, also; for the true
historian, as we well know, does not write much of
aeeessions. eonmations. royal births ami deaths and
marriages, wars and rumours of war, campaign and
nwivh and eountermareh. laws and lawyers, hut of
what people m the mass said and thought ; of their
rehjMon and idi als of life, of their habits, their habit
even, their general make-up. Measured by this
MM. 17 2
18 THE MIND OF HERODOTUS
standard, Herodotus is the truer historian than
Thucydides.
(4) Then why are they so misjudged ? The reason
is near at hand : we are living under democracy,
the government of the man in the street ; and this
is well enough, but something follows which is
not well : we allow ourselves to think that great
men do not count ; that whatever happens is due
to the average man and the spirit of the age ; comes
from the general stream of tendencies which make
the age ; from far-reaching impersonal laws ; from
fate. So with Thucydides ; he also lived under a
democracy and believed in fate ; in commercial
forces, political forces, geographical forces, not in the
real influence of individuals.
This is a scientific view, and, therefore, Thucydides
is called a scientific historian, and, in this sense,
Herodotus is not a scientific historian ; he is so fond
of human character in the individual I seem to be
contradicting what I said before, that he saw men
and women in masses, but it is not really the opposite.
I mean that he loved human nature in the mass
and in the individual, and always preferred to speak
of men and women rather than of impersonal ten-
dencies and forces, of nationality and geography
therefore when he speaks of a war he tells you the
gossip about it, the interesting personal quarrel which
put a match to the kindling wood, rather than the
larger and less personal forces which were the fuel
maintaining the flame.
(5) But even here he is not so unphilosophic as
people fancy ; for, after all, individuals, especially
kings, queens, and courtiers, were not always so
helpless as they are to-day ; they used to have
power, and to make war for their own opinions
without their people's consent, even as to-day the
peoples or the newspapers make wars without their
rulers' consent ; the latter are only rulers and kings,
so they have to follow. " Quicquid delirant Achivi
THE MIND OF HERODOTUS 19
plectuntur reges," said the witty German yesterday.
So much the less reproach, then, to Herodotus for
telling us of the personal trifles out of which wars
arose. So much the more credit to him that, in that
age, when kings and courtiers counted for so much,
he has written so much of ordinary men and women.
(6) Take an illustration of his love for personal
causes : the Persian war was traceable in part to
the Greek physician Democedes, who lived in gilded
slavery, as he called it, in Persia. Unable to return
home, like a wise man he went to the Sultana, whom
he had cured of cancer, surgery was something in
those days, and told her, if she wanted to repay
him, to persuade the Sultan to make war on Greece.
She did so ; she told the Sultan she must have some
Greek tirewomen ; they were even then the best
hairdressers and the most ladylike ladies' maids in
the world.
(7) Now here I have stumbled on a feature in
Herodotus which I cannot defend, though I can
defend a good deal : he reports this whole conversa-
tion between the Sultan and Sultana in the small
hours of the night as though he were an American
reporter stowed away beneath the royal four-poster.
4 What is truth ? " is so hard a question. Herodotus
did not think it involved verbal accuracy in details ;
he did think that the use of the imagination in
details brought the central fact more home to the
mind ; he was, after all, hardly farther from the
truth than Dr. Johnson in his reports of the Parlia-
mentary debates of his age.
(8) Let us get a little closer to our historian's
character, and, in his own spirit, become more
personal. Herodotus, like all men frank, simple, and
straightforward, is very fond of talking of himself :
of the things he has seen, the places he has been
to, the persons he has met, the stories he believes
and the stories he does not believe, the ideas he
approves and the ideas he reprobates.
20 THE MIND OF HERODOTUS
(9) As to the extent of his travels, he is charged
with lying. This is a more serious form of lying
than the other lying, which was merely the permission
of a vivid imagination, and natural to the historians
and reporters of old. It is asserted that he confounds
an island with a city ; that he claims to have been
in Egyptian Thebes, yet never mentions its labyrinth,
though he has made much of a smaller labyrinth
elsewhere. It is said, even more ungraciously, that
when he says he will not mention a god for religious
reasons, it is only because he does not know what
god to mention ; for he has already mentioned half
a dozen times the same unmentionable god ; it is
said that when he likens the language of the Egyptians
to " the twittering of birds," he convicts himself of
never having heard much of it ; rather, of course,
he convicts his commentator of criminal dullness.
The " twittering of birds " is, of course, a Greek
phrase, like our " double Dutch." Herodotus means
only that Egyptian was like " double Dutch " to the
natives of Epirus ; and now it is in order for the
same commentator to prove to me that Egyptian is
not in the least like Dutch. It is said, finally, that
he implies a visit to Babylon ; and that yet his
mistakes about statues, temples, and town walls
prove that he was never there.
Some of these charges look true. I am afraid
Herodotus has magnified his travels and has seen in
his book some things he never saw in his body, and
has been to places where he was not ; but I venture
to assert that no case has been made out against
him of lying deliberately and wilfully where anything
serious was at stake ; or of bearing false witness
against any state or individual, Aeginetans or others.
(10) One ancient writer has written about his
cynicism (xaxoijOeia). It is kindly, genial cynicism,
a pleasant spice of acidity in his overflowing tolerance
and good humour, the result as much as the cause
of his tolerance. For instance, about the siege of
THE MIND OF HERODOTUS 21
Troy, some people said that Helen never went to
Troy, because it is incredible that the Trojans would
have suffered ten years' siege and ten years' hard-
ship all for one little woman. They would have
surrendered her long before the end, and so Herodotus
thinks. That seems a rather cynical and unimagina-
tive argument ; but, after all, it is a matter of opinion.
It is echoed by modern historians : by Mr. Grote
and Mr. Payne Knight.
Here is another amusing passage of mild cynicism.
The Persian war was in part the result of ancient
quarrels. Herodotus' theory of them is very pic-
turesque and personal : If you want to know why
East and West have never agreed, says Herodotus,
the answer is simple, cherchez la femme. First
of all, some Phoenicians stole lo, while she was
incautiously cheapening trinkets on the beach ; then
some Greeks landed at Tyre and stole Europa ; these
would be Cretans (interpolates Herodotus, demurely) ;
this was only tit for tat, laa ngo<; laa ; but after
this the Greeks began it again and stole Medea ; and
then Paris, to equalize matters, ran away with Helen.
So far, continues the historian, quoting Persian
opinion, not much harm had been done, but from
this point Greece was grievously to blame. She
collected a vast armada to recover the lost princess.
Now, to carry off young ladies is wicked, but to
worry about those carried off is worse than wicked
it is silly ; for manifestly, if they had not liked
it, they would not have been carried off. And so
we are to understand the patient, philosophic East
had taken no account of its light women stolen, but
the childish, feverish, restless Western mind vexed
itself even then, as ever it vexes itself still, about
trifles.
Parts of that argument are rather cynical, rather
suggestive of Gibbon, of whom it was said that he
never failed in human sympathy except when some
young woman was being deceived. It is not^ quite
22 THE MIND OF HERODOTUS
self-evident that the princesses all wanted to be
carried off ; it is, perhaps, an illusion of masculine
vanity. All literature has been hitherto an uncon-
scious conspiracy against one side of the truth, the
woman's side ; but it is exploded now, that conspiracy,
and to-day we are shooting skywards among the
fragments thereof.
(11) I say that Herodotus perhaps misunderstands
lo and Europa, but when he understands a woman
and even that is not beyond his powers no one
is more kindly. He has as keen an eye for the
witchery of childhood. A certain Corinthian innocent,
whose father's name was Eagle, was marked out for
massacre by the local Herod ; but the child provi-
dentially smiled upon its murderer, and he, too pitiful
to slay, passed it on and on and on, till it came back
to the mother, who hid the child in a chest, and he
survived and was called " Chester " and became a
mighty king and put his enemies under his feet, that
the words of the prophet might be fulfilled, which he
spake, saying :
" An Eagle is with child ; the child, a lion,
Shall loose men's knees and be a soul of iron.
Beware, all Corinth ! Mark, all ye who dwell
By her fair cliff and frowning citadel."
This is one of the charms of Herodotus' work ; it
bears the spirit of the Old Testament. He is living
in the midst of prophecies which every one knows
and repeats and waits to see verified, which often,
therefore, verify themselves.
(12) His own attitude to such things is thoroughly
characteristic, thoroughly natural. He has no cut-
and-dried system ; he is full of inconsistencies like
the rest of us ; he has all the moods and fancies,
which pass in turn, according to circumstances, across
the average mind. Every shade of religious emotion
doubt, caution, disbelief, belief is mirrored in his
history and woven side by side into the same page,
THE MIND OF HERODOTUS 23
even as they blend into one another in the same
twenty-four hours of most men's lives ; he believes,
that is, or he disbelieves, according to the prophet
or according to the mood. And so with regard to
oracles. When Herodotus finds the prophet Bacis
saying that " after Athens has been destroyed, Divine
Justice shah* quench Masterful Satiety, the son of
Insolence ; and the son of Cronos is bringing on the
day of liberty for Greece," he is satisfied at once
that there is something in oracles, and he will neither
disbelieve himself nor suffer others to do so. And
yet, conversely, when he is told that the oracle of
Dodona of the oak tree was established by two black
doves arriving from Egypt and speaking with human
voice, he is perfectly incredulous. He is of opinion
that two Egyptian priestesses arrived and founded
the oracle. They were swarthy and therefore were
called black. Any lady may properly be termed a
dove. Their language was at first gibberish to the
natives, and therefore was called bird-twittering or
bird language. When the women had learned the
local dialect, the natives said that the doves now
spake with a human voice, and so the whole fable
of the black doves originated in the use of simple
metaphors.
In other words, Herodotus is perfectly frank and
natural ; and yet, or and therefore, perfectly devout,
entirely anxious neither to abdicate his own reason,
on the one hand, nor yet to speak lightly of dignitaries
and of sacred things, on the other, a god-fearing
man, who does not think that the god he fears requires
him to be a fool.
(13) But let us return to his kindliness ; his large
tolerance is of the essence of his character. Herodotus
is always charitable, even to his rivals, the utter-
most test of charity. There was a rival historian
somewhat his senior, Hecatseus of Miletus, and the
worst shaft he permits himself to aim at him is a
little Voltairean satire : " When Hecatseus the his-
24 THE MIND OF HERODOTUS
torian was in Egypt constructing a pedigree for him-
self and tracing himself back to a god, the sixteenth in
ascent above him, the priests of Zeus in Thebes did
for him what they also did for me, who had no
family tree to construct ; they showed him three
hundred and forty-five statues of human father and
son in succession, and argued from them that for
three hundred and forty-five generations no god had
appeared on earth." In another passage he permits
himself to say that he laughs when he sees " some-
body's " maps. " Somebody >! is supposed to be
Hecatseus.
One who bears so lightly on the foibles even of a
rival is naturally indulgent to all other men. A
certain Delphian, to oblige the Spartans, took a bowl
for holy water, presented by Croesus to the temple,
and engraved upon it an inscription recording Sparta
as the donor. Herodotus knows his name, but will
not mention it. A certain Samian detained the
property of an unfortunate Persian nobleman impaled
by Xerxes. Herodotus knows his name, but willingly
forgets it. The Egyptians were the first to discover
the immortality of the human soul and its trans-
migration after death into the body of one of the
lower animals, its passage thence into other creatures
of earth, air and water, and its return after three
thousand years into human shape. Some Greeks,
both in ancient and recent times, have claimed this
doctrine as their own discovery. Herodotus has their
names upon his list, but does not record them.
The same indulgence shows itself in the wider field
of national shortcomings. The state of Argos had
been accused by her neighbours of coquetting with
Persia. Herodotus is content to give the Argive
version, and the neighbourly version, and to conclude
as follows : " I know this much, that if all men
were to bring together each people its own grievances
into one place, wishing to exchange them for the
grievances of others, each people would be glad,
THE MIND OF HERODOTUS 25
after looking at their neighbours' grievances, to take
back their own ; so Argos is not the worst offender."
(14) As a poet he naturally demands poetic justice,
something juster than the justice of this world ; and
so he improves the occasion, as we say, and adds to
the dramatic effect of his history which is, after all,
a drama more than a bald history by introducing
characters and scenes, the historical reality of which
is open to serious, question : e.g. there is Crcesus of
Lydia ; "he thought himself the happiest of man-
kind," says Herodotus, " and therefore I imagine
came to sorrow." And therefore Herodotus is careful
to keep alive this discrowned king, this living instance
of the vanity of riches and power, long after his fall,
in order to preach this moral. He is the chorus in
Herodotus' drama, a King Lear, a tragedy king. So,
and in the same vein, Herodotus tells us of the death
of Cyrus on the battlefield. He ought to have died
so. This is Herodotus' thought ; and therefore that
version of his death which makes him die so is to
Herodotus the most reasonable version. The his-
torian Xenophon conversely says that he died in
his bed ; it is most possible, most probable. That
is how things happen in this prosaic world; poetic
justice is rare.
(15) But here I have stumbled upon Herodotus'
religion ; it is curious and worth study. He is full
of the idea that God is stern even to jealousy ; he
clutches, therefore, eagerly at every legend which
illustrates the idea ; everywhere he sees the jealousy
which puts down the mighty from their seat, which
introduces a cycle, a rotation, a see-saw of happiness
among men and nations. His very first words strike
this note : "I am going to set forth the history of
little states alike and of great ; for those which once
were great are now small, and those which once were
small are in my day great ; knowing, then, that
prosperity has no abiding stay, I shall speak alike of
both ; the cycle rolls round."' The best-known story
26 THE MIND OF HERODOTUS
in Herodotus illustrating this faith is, of course, the
ring of Poly crates.
(16) But this doctrine of divine jealousy has
obviously a lighter and a brighter side, and passes
into the law of compensation. Herodotus, though he
is both sad and saddening, is much too devout not
to draw this comfort from it ; the lofty are laid low,
but the humble are exalted ; he ransacks both nature
and the life of man for illustrations sometimes
quaint to grotesqueness of this principle. There
was once, e.g., a Magnesian farmer, who had accident-
ally killed his son ; this man received, in the just
Providence of God, a special compensation a windfall
in the wreck of the Persian fleet off his farm so
that he was not wholly unhappy.
Again, the battle is not to the strong ; it is the
meek who inherit the earth, the weak and meek who
multiply while the ravening and dangerous multiply
slowly or not at all (and the proud and over-civilized
commit race suicide). The rabbit is the only creature
which presents the phenomenon of superfetation,
while the lioness has but one cub and that once only ;
the mother-serpent throttles the father ; the young
destroy the mother ; but harmless garter-snakes are
oviparous and multiply freely ; and here is another
far-fetched illustration : the goat is a sufficiently
pungent creature, but Herodotus points out with
triumph that nature inspires him to rub his beard
in the sap of certain deliciously aromatic trees,
whence he provides his owners with one of the
favourite perfumes of commerce ; and so once more
in the intelligent, if paradoxical, economy of nature,
out of the strong has come forth sweetness.
But apart from biology, the broad doctrine of
compensation is so deep-seated in Herodotus' heart
that he dwells upon it with his latest breath ; his
history flickers out it hardly seems to end in an
expression of this doctrine. " Soft lands breed soft
peoples," he reflects, " but empire belongs to lands
THE MIND OF HERODOTUS 27
that are poor and to people who live hard lives ; "
and there, it seems, he paused as if to weigh the
thought again, and there his fate overtook him, and
he added not another word to bring his history to a
more formal conclusion.
(17) Herodotus is very quick to catch national
and racial peculiarities, and to hit them off by an
anecdote or apophthegm ; it is his superiority to
national prejudices, his broad philosophic appreciation
of all nations, which makes him so weighty an author
in spite of all his levity. Herodotus lived among
democrats, all exalting their own country ; but he is
no Chauvinist, and he never writes buncombe. His
is a temperate patriotism, and not the refuge of a
scoundrel ; conversely, if he was not a jingo, still
less was he a spurious cosmopolitan, the friend of
every nation except his own.
(18) And yet if I were to leave the impression that
he cared only for men and women and character,
personal or national, it would be entirely unjust to
his many-sided nature, his multiplex personality.
There is nothing he did not care for ; sometimes he
is quite wrong, as to the causes, e.g. of the flooding
of Egypt in summer by the Nile ; more often he is
right, and those of his tales which have been most
ridiculed, then or since, have later been established.
But some of the amazing stories for which modern
writers abuse him are only told by him, because
they are amazing, and he tells us carefully that he
does not himself believe them. Such is the story of
the Phoenix, for which a reverend professor living in
Oxford has condemned him for credulity ; this is
the same gentleman, by the way, who tells us not
to believe that the Egyptian language is like the
twittering of birds, not to believe that Herodotus
ever talked with the Egyptian priests. Herodotus
could not understand Egyptian priests, he assures us.
Time has its revenge, you see. Now it is the priests and
the Egyptologists who cannot understand Herodotus.
28 THE MIND OF HERODOTUS
(19) Historians have especially derided Herodotus'
version of the political debate in Persia on the merits
of democracy, monarchy, and aristocracy. Herodotus
knew he would be derided ; he was derided even in
his own times. " All the same," he remarks, with
patient philosophy, " the debate did take place."
Whether it did or not, commented Grant Duff a
score of years ago, at any rate after all these ages
there is little new light to be added on these difficult
questions ; so sound, so sensible, is the debate. And
now, in this year of grace 1927, we find at last all
our journalists shouting at the top of their lungs
that East and West are one, and that Chinamen
and Persians are just as much entitled to democracy
or republicanism as we are ourselves. The journalists
are building better than they know. They are
building on Herodotus.
(20) So, then, in conclusion, whatever Egyptologists,
priests, and historians may say in disparagement of
Herodotus' judgment, wisdom, or accuracy, though
they charge him with vanity, with credulity, with
romancing, after all the reasonable charges have
been allowed, and the necessary deductions from the
value of his history admitted, we may rest assured
that he will still remain most amiable, most witty,
most wise, most pitiful, most entertaining, a very
lovable historian. We shall read his books and
laugh over them ; we may laugh, also, when we see
his detractors' books ; we need not be at equal pains
to read them. Some of their names we know, but
very willingly we forget them.
CHAPTER II
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
THAT the personality of an historian is a large
factor in his history is the merest truism : if
only because in history, as in metaphysics, there is
no such thing as the fact in itself : ding an sich : but
all so-called facts are strained through the moulds
furnished by the special nature of the writer.
But this subjective element will vary immensely in
direct ratio to two forces, not identical though con-
verging : to the depth and force of the writer's per-
sonality but also to the theory which he holds of his
function as historian.
Theories of history, like theories of life itself, will
modify largely the play of temperament and per-
sonality. No man was temperamentally gayer or
lighter hearted than Matthew Arnold : his theory of
life nevertheless went a long way to diminish the
gaiety and high spirits of his writings.
There are broadly two theories of history. There
is the large and chiefly modern school of historians,
who almost seek to turn history into a record similar
to the records of the investigations of the naturalist
or mathematician. History is to record facts ascer-
tained by severe and laborious research into the
original authorities. It is to be documented by refer-
ence to these authorities. It is to turn largely on the
constitutional development and constitutional changes
in a nation's life : on its economic changes : on the
influence of geography and climate. In short, it is
to be an unfolding of law, Jaw human as unfolded in
constitutions and institutions, and law natural as
29
30 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
illustrated in economic, geographic and climatic
forces. It is to fight shy of the merely personal
factors in life : the characters of individual men and
women : partly because these are of less importance
in a broad view of life, but even more because these
are past finding out. The influence of moral and
religious ideas in the same way must be left without
treatment for the same reasons that these things are
of little importance apart from economic, geographic
and climatic forces, and that in any case they are
too subjective for discussion. They seem to raise the
thorny question of free-will in man. History had
better adopt, as a working hypothesis at least, the
doctrine of necessity, and assume that, so far as the
historian is concerned, his work is to be a record only
of the results of law : like the records of the naturalist
and mathematician : and that the virtues and vices
of men are equally the results of law, of conditions
and environment, and are not affected by the meta-
physical figment called free-will.
If a man holds such a theory, as many do, it is
obvious that even a marked and vivacious person-
ality will not obtrude itself into his history : that his
history will become almost impersonal on principle :
that though the writer be a Bishop, it may be, his
history will not be a hand-book of morals, a collection
of inspiring anecdotes, a fountain of moral edifica-
tion : that it will not improve the occasion, as the
phrase is. For all such efforts, the writer will turn
to such other functions as he may be in a position
to discharge, the functions of a Bishop, or a school-
master, or a father, and the like.
Bishop Stubbs, for example, was a man of marked
personality, of caustic humour and masculine good
sense, intolerant only of trivialities, of humbug and
affectation and waste of time. But we know this
from sources other than his histories : and if he was
a voracious reader of fiction as well as a veracious
historian we are entitled to surmise that it was because
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 31
he found history, as he conceived it and made it, so
dull, that he turned instinctively to the opposite field
of literature for relief and refreshment. If he had
held a less dry theory of history he would have written
better history and have read fewer novels : both his
writing and his reading would have gained.
The historian of to-day, says another academic
historian, Lord Acton, dines in the kitchen : if he
does so, he does so of his own will and judgment and
no one else need complain : if he does not. But it is
a different matter that he should make his readers
dine there with him. After all, it is usual for the
cook who prepares the entertainment in the kitchen
to take her own entertainment there : it is not usual
for her to ask the guests to join her at her repast.
I trust I am not flippant beyond measure. Quite
seriously, it does not really and rightly follow that,
because history involves a lot of dull spade work and
heavy research, the result, when served up, should
be also dull and heavy. Goldwin Smith was not.
Gibbon was not : he avoided it by footnotes. We
may suppose that he was always learned : that he
read Thucydides amid the diversions of the nursery :
but his learning sits lightly on him and the easy read-
ing which he furnishes is the best tribute he desired
to the hardness of his work.
There is, however, and always has been a concep-
tion of history diametrically the opposite of that
which imposed itself upon Bishop Stubbs : the con-
ception that the historian is also or almost a poet.
A true historian will give his imagination free play
in the interpretation of the difficult and bygone
minutiae of time and place and nationality, and will
lift them up into the atmosphere which is familiar to
himself and his readers, and will make modern history
of them, and will re-write them in short for his own
age and in the language of his own age, and in so
doing will, in a sense, universalize them, in spite of
certain obvious risks in so doing. Shelley said that
32 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
every good historian was a poet. Carlyle illustrated
Shelley's contentions in his history of the French
Revolution. Froude illustrated it in a less degree in
his histories, and has been alternately exalted and
depreciated since by students of history according as
they follow Shelley's or Aristotle's conception of the
function of the historian. (Aristotle said that history
was the antithesis of poetry, that poetry was more
serious and more philosophic.)
If after this preamble we turn to the historians of
Greece, the same antithesis even there presents itself
in germ at least, if not highly developed.
Herodotus is frankly expansive, personal, imagina-
tive. He desires to produce a certain general effect,
and to produce this effect it is as nothing to him if
some of his details be obviously imagined, be mani-
festly devoid of evidence. He is willing that it should
be so. He is willing that any reader of his shall say
" And now I know all and more than all that is
known of this or that great man " : provided that the
reader can add with some confidence " but not more
than the angels know," that is, provided that the
added and imaginary details furnished by Herodotus
from his inner consciousness are true in spirit to the
details actually known : provided that they are ben
trovato and furnish suitable diet for the intellectual
repast of angels and other beings who live in the spirit.
Nay more, Herodotus does not conceive that truth,
even when conceived in this broad sense, is his only
or his primary object. No : he is called upon rather
to chronicle belief and word, fancy and conversation,
superstition or scandal, anything and everything
which occupies man's thoughts, rather than the
historical facts, if any, beneath the words and fancies
or scandals. He is not required to believe every-
thing, nay, anything that he has heard, but he is
required to chronicle it.
But Herodotus redeems his dangerous theory by
his choice of his anecdotes, scandals, superstitions : if
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 33
there are a few stories introduced only because they
are macabre, grotesque, or gruesome, if occasionally
Herodotus suggests a modern " realist," that is a
writer of matter so exceptionally nasty as hardly to
be real in a broad sense any longer, still on the whole
he selects his anecdotes however unauthentic for
their serious inner truth, for their profound moral
significance. It is for this reason that he has become
a storehouse for the moral and anecdotical historian
who is more concerned with human nature than with
constitutions or economics. Men have been inspired
to take up classics for their vocation by Rollin's
history : but Rollin was first inspired by Herodotus.
We do not learn from him, we have to wait for twenty
centuries to learn from Mr. Leaf, that the Trojan
War was akin in spirit to the GaUipoli campaign of
1915, that it was a battle for the economic control
of the waterways of the Black Sea and the .^Egean
and of the grain trade which issues through those
waterways. But his own special and picturesque
theory of the cause of the Trojan War and of other
great wars between ast and West, though it wholly
overlooks the play of economic forces, cannot be said
to overlook the play of other true causes, and other
real forces in human history, underlying life in all
ages and modifying it here, there and everywhere,
and far more likely to-day to be under-rated and
under-stated than exaggerated : cherchez la femme is
no mere flippancy or cynicism as an explanation of
events, and is not antiquated and out-of-date because
our historians have learned also to take more account
to-day of the impersonal and less picturesque factor
of economics.
When we turn from Herodotus to Thucydides we
are already opening the preface of the volume of
scientific history : we are passing from the expansive
and personal historian who parades like Byron
before his readers the pageant of his heart and mind,
to the reserve and the silence and the mauvaise horde of
M.M. 3
34 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
the modern scientific historian, of the man who counts
it beneath him, or above him, to have moral judgments,
who counts it still more unworthy of his functions to
write emotionally, whose good taste or mauvaise honte
rejects as egotism all reference to himself, whose
aesthetic sense or mauvaise honte leaves his story
always to speak for itself and suggest its own morals.
I was speaking of the doctrine of necessity which
underlies the work of the scientific historian. It cer-
tainly underlies the work of Thucydides. He assumes
in one of the best-known passages of his introduction x
that human nature is the same in all ages, that
as Aristotle puts it ndvra ax^dov etf^rat "pretty
well everything is known " which is to be known ;
and that accordingly the history of the future will
follow the lines of the past as similar conditions
geographical, climatic and economic recur. His book
will therefore be no mere picture of local and ephe-
meral conditions to which Aristotle condemns the
historian but like the work of the poet, a book of
reference for all times and lands.
If his work is not as baldly scientific and dry as
that of his modern admirers, it is only because even
with him as with Herodotus, the dramatic element
still lingers, and his history, like the history of Hero-
dotus, seems still in part modelled on tragedy. As
Herodotus, in effect, retains a chorus to strike the
note of the impartial spectator and comment suitably
on the tragic history of men, some Croesus or Arta-
banus who lingers on in the history, after his own
part is over, to point the moral (as Margaret of Anjou
lingers on in Shakespeare's plays), so even Thucydides
seems to entertain the doctrine of the Divine Irony
as set forth by the Athenian dramatists, and presents
the hour of triumph and of paeans as the hour pre-
ceding downfall : the insolent exultation of Athens
over Melos, the arrogance of the Athenians at the
Melian dialogue becomes a sort of Bacchic chorus,
1 Book I, 22.
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 85
ushering in the fatal Sicilian expedition with its
motive of " world empire or downfall," even as the
triumphant Bacchic chorus of Sophocles' Antigone
heralds the suicide of Antigone Haemon and Eury-
dice.
And in a few other passages notably at the end of
the third book in the Ambraciot episode there is a
dramatic and artistic value wholly foreign to severely
scientific history. But these poetic touches are the
rare exceptions which relieve at long intervals the
impersonal and colourless narrative : scarcely even
when the events narrated are most appalling and
appealing will the writer let it be seen that the appeal
has reached himself. When the brutal Thracian
mercenaries of Athens the Albanians or Bulgarians
of Thucydidean Thrace break into an elementary
school of bucolic Boeotian children and murder all the
pretty babes [or heavy babes] at one fell swoop, faint
and far seems the echo of the humanitarian sentiment
of the sentimental Athenians which we can catch
in the comments of their very unsentimental and
academic historian. It is no jest but sober truth
which Professor Mahaffy expresses when he remarks
that Thucydides' emotion is discernible here only in
the extra contortions and crabbedness of his syntax. 1
This is a crucial instance of that mauvaise honte of
the scientific historian which banishes emotion and
indignation from his pages, and which regards ex-
pansiveness as the unpardonable sin in history.
Herodotus breaks out to record his personal dissent
from the mild and abstract proposition of some con-
temporary Darwin that man is only an animal and
need not be more careful of his behaviour in temples
and holy places than animals are seen to be. 4 The
proposition is displeasing to me," he tells us : Thucy-
dides will not let his personal disgust be seen even
when infants are butchered. It seems to be beneath
the dignity of history : to be an unworthy concession
1 VII, 29.
36 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
to popular feeling and superficial sentiment, to be a
playing to the gallery and the groundlings.
But note, however, how this mauvaise honte and this
reserve defeats itself in a sense and debars the his-
torian scientific though he may be who is its
victim, from discharging one of the chief functions
of history. It is the merest commonplace that
history should record not only wars and battles and
royalties and constitutions, but the general life of the
people themselves, social, industrial, artistic, moral
and religious, and this quite apart from the modern
or democratic conditions, which give more or less to
the mass of the people the control of their govern-
ments, and therefore give the people of necessity a
place in history.
Even under autocratic governments, such as those
of the East in Herodotus' time, and since, we expect
that the historian shall not confine himself to the
doings and sayings of royalty, but shall describe the
life of their subjects. This is what Herodotus has
done, and though he might fairly and scientifically
have argued that history was made in those days by
kings and generals and that therefore their deeds and
words were of the essence of history, he has yet gone
far outside them and has described everything he
saw and heard discussed : the customs, beliefs, even
the dress and food of the ordinary man : the servants
he kept or did not keep, the ornaments the women
wore, the uses to which they put them : the soil and
climate : the yield of different cereals and fruits : the
physical structure of the land and of its inhabitants :
the flora and fauna : the life-history of great rivers
and their effect on geography : the sources of the Nile,
the circumnavigation of Africa and so on. He is an
encyclopaedist, and an encyclopaedist all the more
useful because he writes with verve and enthusiasm
and is brimming over with a sense of the importance
of his function as a reporter.
The scientific historian Thucydides, on the other
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 87
hand, is debarred by mauvaise honte, by his unfor-
tunate sense of the dignity and impartiality or even
neutrality that most abused of all words the neu-
trality even, which he thinks incumbent on the
historian. He is not to report frivolities and trivi-
alities : he is not to become a tattler and a gossip
dvdQconoMyos : he is not to descend to personalities :
he is not to mention women : he is not to describe
the petty local and picturesque occasions which serve
as the odorous sulphur match to light great con-
flagrations ; the occasion, for example, of the revolt
of Mytilene from Athens. He is to confine himself
to the great conflagration the revolt itself. All else
is unnecessary and superfluous and supererogatory.
He is not even to mention the names of speakers,
when speeches are recorded. The speech is to show
the great lines of thought, which animated peoples
during the Peloponnesian War the lines of thought
will be blurred or at least reduced to insignificance,
if the speaker's name be obtruded : a merely personal
note will seem to detract from their larger import.
Life is full of trifles but art of dignity, and the
trifles of life though they be also its tragedy and
comedy are unworthy a place in the history, which
is to go down to posterity for a book of perpetual
reference : and therefore though the Peloponnesian
War touched Greece closely on every side and affected
every one and every thing, Thucydides has not con-
descended to give much more than its military opera-
tions and its broader diplomatic history. Only three
continuous chapters have been given to its moral
effects (one of them accounted spurious) : apart from
his account of the plague, the military and diplomatic
history have been relieved only by those strange
speeches so curiously blent of scientific and unscien-
tific elements : unscientific, since they are frankly
not Hansard reports or anything approaching them ;
ultra-scientific, since they exclude all the personal
note and all topical allusions, and leave only a skeleton
38 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
or outline of political or national principles very
eloquent sometimes, as in the Funeral Speech, and
very instructive, as in the speech of Cleon, but much
more natural in the reflections of a philosophic
historian, than on the lips of a popular orator. It
is hard to believe that the real Pericles was not more
topical, it is impossible to believe that Cleon was not.
Lord Bryce some years ago in a service in honour of
Mr. William Gladstone referred to the loss of young
life in the Great War, and quoted from the Funeral
Speech of Pericles " the year has lost its spring." Now
the words are not in Thucydides' version of that speech
and perhaps he thought them " tosh " ; perhaps he
just forgot them : in either case it was Aristotle who
had sufficient sympathy with poetry to treasure up
from the Funeral Speech this little touch of the poet x :
none the less poetic even if it was not original exactly
on the lips of Pericles but a quotation from Gelo
(Herodotus, VII, 162) much improved by a nobler
application.
Thucydides could have enlightened us in a million
ways about the daily life of Greece, the outer and the
inner life, and have shown us the soul of its peoples.
He has put aside the task as unworthy of a severe
and scientific thinker, has left it wholly on the shoul-
ders of Herodotus and Plutarch, and only rarely-
very rarely has let us see that any personal opinions
or emotions were evoked in him by the course of the
war.
This is high art it may be said : the highest art :
the historian lets his facts speak for themselves and
thereby enables them to speak with tenfold force.
Thucydides has so successfully concealed himself that
no one ever suspected personal bias even in his
account of Cleon, until the democratic enthusiasm of
Grote, on behalf of demagogues, threw a light into
dark places and cast a shadow on the seeming imper-
sonality of the historian's history. The defence may
1 Aristotle's Rhetoric, Book I, 7. 34.
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 39
be an adequate defence of the silence of Thucydides
on moral themes, of his comparative silence about
the " frightfulness " of Athenian policy or the " fright-
fulness " of the war generally : I think it is : but
where the facts do not speak for themselves, where
they need interpretation, it is a dead loss to the
modern reader that Thucydides either records facts
without explanation, as, for example, the mutilation
of the Hermae, or does not think them worthy of
record at all.
If Herodotus or Plutarch had covered the same
ground with the same advantages, what a different
place the Athens of Pericles and Socrates would be
for us to-day ! How infinitely more real and more
alive ! Plato and Aristophanes have done something
to fill the gap but neither can be expected to fill it
well : and each is justified, and even compelled, by
his special subject matter to leave it largely unfilled.
We had a right to expect from Thucydides as an
historian records which cannot be required of dia-
logues on philosophy and still less from the frank
caricatures of ancient comedy : and least of all from
the conventional and, so to speak, Sunday-school
sermons and religious services of ancient tragedy.
After all this generalizing and all this more or less
vague beating of the air in which Thucydides moved,
let me come down closer to details and endeavour to
seize a few points of his mind "unseized " it may be
"by the Germans yet" and publish them.
It appears to me perhaps the most curiously
salient or crucial passage for plumbing the depths of
Thucydides' personality is that in Book VII l which
records his judgment on the career and character of
Nicias. It is an extraordinary verdict. Here is a
general, who has been condemned already in the
history, at least by implication, for lack of vigour :
who has been condemned explicitly for superstition :
whose unscrupulous politics in the matter of Pylos,
1 VII, 86. Oeiaoiuk, VII, 50.
40 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
where he risked defeat for Athens for the sake of dis-
crediting a rival, have been frankly stated : whose
selfishness in remaining in Sicily rather than face
complaints and recriminations at home, obviously
sacrificed Athenian to personal interests and was
afterwards emphatically contrasted for this reason
by Plutarch the moralist with the unselfish patriotism
of a much more obscure general, one Leo of Byzan-
tium : whose craving for life even at the bitter end,
when everything else but life was lost, has been
recorded without comment : and yet after all these
materials furnished us for a verdict more or less
unfavourable to Nicias, the historian concludes :
" This or something of the sort was the cause of
his execution : of all Hellenes of my time he had
least deserved a fate so unhappy : when his practice
of every customary virtue is taken into account."
The historian's verdict throws more light on his
own temperament and point of view than on the
peculiar hardships of Nicias' fate. Why was this
conventional, wealthy, reputable and hitherto lucky
Athenian general held up for special commiseration ?
Grote has argued that his repute testifies to the inner
conservatism of the Athenian people, who chose this
typical conservative to lead them. But why did
Thucydides also choose him for a special tribute of
pity?
I can only suggest that the historian, himself an
" intellectuel," as the phrase goes in France, a member
of the " aufklarung," as they say in Germany, one
of the " illuminati," as the Italians have it, had
arrived very positively at this conclusion from the
use of his intellect and his illumination, that intellect
and illumination are a very dubious advantage to
their owner and his countrymen from the political
point of view : that after all that man is the best
citizen who sticks to the old paths and does not see
beyond them ; that those laws are best which are
the laws of one's own country ; and that that religion
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 41
is truest which is the religion of one's own country
the answer which the oracle of Delphi by the way
also once had given to an over-speculative inquirer
after absolute truth : and therefore his praise of
Nicias.
It is not an unfamiliar point of view of course. It
finds support from Aristotle when he comes to eulo-
gize the same Nicias and to criticize the reformer and
idealist Hippodamus of Miletus. There is a brilliant
array of Frenchmen of our own day, who similarly
exalt on general grounds a conservatism and an
orthodoxy which some of them can hardly be supposed
to augment with their personal convictions ; which
most of them perhaps endorse with their judgment
rather than with their private emotions, Barres,
Bazin, Brunetiere, Bordeaux, Bourget, Bergson : but
I do not know that a stranger and stronger instance
of this conservatism of experience and judgment can
be found than the eulogy of Thucydides the dis-
illusioned historian pronounced over the pietist,
traditionalist and in every sense commonplace charac-
ter of Nicias. It suggests that to Thucydides' mind
the ultimate truth of politics is that " dullness with
honesty " average honesty at any rate, " is better
for a state than cleverness with recklessness ; clever-
ness without balance." The words are the words of
Cleon. 1
And that aphorism leads one to the very curious
and piquant difficulties which surround the relations
of Thucydides and Cleon.
The aphorism is one of Cleon's : it belongs to his
speech on the Mytilenaean question as reported by
Thucydides himself.* The whole of the speech is
along similar lines : a plea for common sense and
practical prudence in dealing with enemies as against
newfangled ideas of humanitarianism, or as against
philosophic idealism or as against mere ingenious
sophistry. The speech is extremely powerful as an
* III, 57. 3. 87.
42 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
indictment of Athenian humanitarianism, idealism,
ingenuity and sophistry. It seems to me to be the
best speech I had almost said the best passage in
Thucydides, with the possible exception of the
Funeral Speech. But that only makes it doubly
difficult to gauge the relations of the speaker and the
reporter of the speech. How comes it that Thucy-
dides has reported so vigorous an expression of what
we may call Tory-democracy, an expression by a
democrat of the old Tory creed of horse-sense and
common instinct and natural nationalism against
fads, ideals and 'ologies of every kind ? and has sup-
ported it by an emphatic tribute to Nicias, the
incarnation of old conventions (though not of democ-
racy) and yet has no word of commendation for the
speaker, but on the contrary has taken away his
character with posterity ? And all the more success-
fully and artistically because with so much self-
restraint, that no one before Grote suspected preju-
dice and unfairness and a personal grudge.
No one supposes that Thucydides' speeches are
close reports of their originals : all the more difficult
is it to understand the real force and eloquence of
Cleon as reported. And there is a further contra-
diction and mystification in this matter. Thucydides
writes or reports, or writes partly and partly reports,
Cleon' s protest against Athenian many-sidedness and
susceptibility, Athenian idealism and scepticism ;
Cleon' s trenchant conclusion that democracy is an
impossible form of government for the conduct of
foreign politics (for foreign politics must have con-
tinuity and principle, and democracy is the govern-
ment of fits and starts, of snap votes and see-saw
emotions). Thucydides goes out of his way as though
in order to supplement Cleon to exalt the humdrum
moderation of Nicias, and yet per contra he im-
plicitly and explicitly condemns Cleon as a violent
demagogue, despite the large element of Toryism
common to Cleon with Nicias. Further, in his fam-
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 43
ous chapters of reflection, 1 Thucydides laments the ill
repute and unpopularity which by reason of the war
came to be attached to academic thinkers, to the
enlightened and the scrupulous and the best educated
men in Athens. Owing to the war he says
moderation came to be regarded as a mere excuse for
cowardice and to know everything people began to
say was to do nothing.
Is not this " trying to have it both ways " ? Who
was it who said " to know everything was to do
nothing " ? Not merely the Athenian public, if we
may read between the lines, but the historian himself
also. What can his fantastic praise of Nicias mean,
except that to his own mind also as well as to the
popular mind, there seemed no help for the city from
its best educated and most intelligent people, and
more help from the stolid conservatism and stubborn
unintelligence of Nicias ? And what does the brilliant
speech of Cleon mean except the same thing ? And
if Thucydides feels the force of Cleon's speech and
the force of Nicias' timid orthodoxy and of his blind
obedience to customary virtues, why should he com-
plain that the most intelligent and best educated
were forced to the wall ? On his own showing that
was the only place for them. They were incompetent
to help the State in a crisis. They had no beliefs or
habits or sheet-anchors left and in the storm of the
war sheet-anchors were beyond all things necessary :
and the man who had one even a Nicias was the
best citizen of the State : and the man who depre-
cated high-flown novelties and far-fetched sensibilities
even a Cleon was a good citizen.
I have tried to penetrate the ideas underlying this
strange eulogy of Nicias. I have assumed that the
tie uniting two men so different as Nicias and Thucy-
dides was the political conservatism of each. I have
assumed further that they represent between them
the two schools of thought into which conservatism
1 Book III, 82-88.
44 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
has ever been, still is, and perhaps will continue to be
divided : the conservatism of unthinking loyalty to
the past, conventionalism, traditionalism, or even
mere class and economic interests : and, on the other
hand, the conservatism of profound scepticism and
doubt : doubt which reaches so far that it accepts the
established always just because it is established ; and
feels that any change may be for the worse, and no
change in politics can be demonstrated to be for the
better, since politics is not yet a science, and since
even beneficent changes open the door to unsettlement
and discontent, and break down that sense of finality
and settled order on which the contentment and
therefore the happiness of a State depends.
Sir Walter Scott, to take an illustration from our
own history, or a greater man, Edmund Burke, repre-
sent more or less the romantic conservatism of the
first kind. Gibbon, Hookham Frere, Canning, Mansel
and all the Saturday Reviewers represent the con-
servatism of the doubters. Aristotle has given voice
to the two spirits of conservatism : one in his chapter
on Hippodamus and one in his eulogy of Nicias.
Thucydides has anticipated Aristotle in expressing
them.
I assume yet further that the conservatism of
Thucydides has led him to give vivid and vital ex-
pression to that glorification of selfish common sense
and rough nationalism or national egotism which we
find in Cleon's argument : to that depreciation of
scruples and humanitarian sympathies which we find
in Cleon's arraignment of Athenian susceptibility :
but that, this vein of sympathy with Cleon's speech
by no means prevents him from heartily disliking and
distrusting the speaker. He sympathizes with him as
a Tory and dislikes him as a democrat and a man.
The sympathy is merely intellectual and never per-
sonal. The dislike is profound and personal : a
dislike of taste and feeling. There is no agreement
between him and Cleon except in opinions. Thucy-
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 45
dides was divided like other men between his judg-
ment and his personal tastes, like the great Lord
Falkland, for example ; his friends were all among
the educated and the refined and sensitive : his
judgment was against his friends, at any rate in
politics, as too sensitive and scrupulous and unde-
cided for the rough business of politics. His taste
and judgment met together again and were reconciled
when he encountered the personality of Nicias, a man
of the upper class, " a gentleman " as we say, and yet
an unhesitating and confirmed conservative : hence
the extravagant praise of Nicias and the very mixed
verdict and uncertain sound with which Thucydides
expresses himself on the cultivated and refined mem-
bers of his own circle : the men who knew everything
and did nothing. When he coined that epigram I can-
not but think that to him it expressed something
more than a democratic scoff, a Cleonic scoff, at
mugwumps and kidglove politicians and independ-
ents. It expressed something of a serious truth.
These academic thinkers were not of the stuff of
statesmen : were too many-sided and undecided :
independents are people who cannot be depended
upon : professors and philosophers are the worst of
statesmen : they think they can arrange the world
with essays and lectures. They make bad Presidents.
Whatever else we can read between the lines of his
history is consistent with these assumptions and ex-
planations. It is pretty obvious that Thucydides had
a great admiration for Pericles. It is not from him
but from Plutarch that we hear that Pericles was like
other great reformers ; that he had to begin by
playing to the gallery, if by so doing he could adver-
tise himself and get a following, and prepare the way
for serious and conservative reforms later on. Thu-
cydides admits no such opportunism. Pericles is
with him the ideal reformer who aimed at conciliating
all opposites and making Athens the union of all
conflicting virtues : the seat of liberty, yet the home
46 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
of law and lawful authority : the temple of art, yet
the city of severe simplicity and economy : and most
of all, the very fountain of free thought, free speech,
free life and philosophy, and yet the nursing mother
of soldiers, sailors and men of action : a sort of
Platonic Callipolis reconciling and embracing the
opposite virtues of Athens and of Sparta : that Sparta
to which Thucydides with Plato and all the Athenian
intellectuals even Socrates so fondly turned amid
the noise and blather, the babbling and bubbling, the
blabbering and blubbering of Athenian democracy.
It is not from Thucydides that we hear that the
Periclean ideal was impracticable. He certainly im-
plies that it failed ; but he does not put the blame
on Pericles for its failure. He seems to suggest that
it did not fail as long as Pericles was present to
inspire his countrymen with his ideals. Periclean
Athens to Thucydides is Athens at her best. Peri-
clean Athens was nominally a democracy he writes
in reality she was a city governed by her first
man. 1
This is perhaps a sort of Carlylean or Ruskinese
hero-worship ; it is certainly not the expression of a
Lincoln-democrat. Government for the people was
Pericles' aim. Government by the people was hardly
even Pericles' practice, so far as we can judge.
And it was certainly not Thucydides' idea of good
government. There is, or was, a Society of St.
Michael, I believe, to which Ruskin and Carlyle
belonged at least in spirit : a society intended to pro-
test that in politics as in religion a man best shows
his free will by surrendering it freely to the grace
given him from above, from a God or a god-like man,
to whose will he submits himself : after that it is
not he who works but the grace, the will of the higher
nature, which works in him. Obedience a free and
willing obedience to such grace is his salvation.
Thucydides, I think, belonged to the same school :
1 II, 65.
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 47
the very antithesis of the modern and characteristic
school of the Socialists. " Enough of great men "
is their cry : " nous en avons assez." " Do not think
of me, do not magnify me," said Francisco Ferrer, a
genuine and sincere martyr to this cause. " The
future does not depend on individuals but on classes
and communities : the individual is henceforth
nothing. He has had his day and ceased to be."
I turn from Thucydides' politics to his religion.
A man's religion, says Carlyle, is the most interesting
thing about him. It may be so, but it is not on that
account the most easily discoverable. Herodotus'
religion is both interesting and discoverable : the old
doctrine of Divine Jealousy pushed to its logical con-
clusion, illustrated with fantastic modern instances
but relieved by the other Herodotean doctrine the
complement of jealousy of Divine Compensation :
the same God who puts down the mighty from their
seat is careful to exalt the humble and the meek, and
to see that the meek and not the mighty inherit the
earth (that the French- Canadians and not our ambi-
tious and exacting race populate Ontario). There is
nothing so picturesque and definite as this in Thucy-
dides' religion. It is much nearer the sombre creed
of Tacitus, when he claimed to have produced evi-
dence to show that Heaven, if it is not careful for
our peace of mind, is careful at least to punish our
offences. 1 That seems to be the conclusion very
tentatively put forward by Thucydides in Book I. 1
The point is important because it is customary to
say that Thucydides derided oracles and portents and
was purely negative, scientifically negative on the
question of religion.
It is scarcely so. If he does not propound a defin-
itely religious reason for the calamities of Nature,
earthquake, pestilence and famine, he comes as near
to it as man so sceptical can come. He sympathizes
with the religious point of view, if he does not exactly
1 Tacitus, Uist., 1. 8. 1. 28.
48 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
endorse it, just as he sympathizes with Nicias, whose
religious extravagances nevertheless he has had occa-
sion to deplore.
There are some three passages on this subject and
they are fairly consistent. There was an old oracle
that a Dorian war would come and with it Ao*//o'c
pestilence or hn6g famine. (The passage of course is
of prime interest to the students of pronunciation ; it
seems to establish almost beyond demur the proposi-
tion that the classical pronunciation of " oi " and " i "
was identical, or nearly so, as it is identical in modern
Greek : both " oi " and " i " are the French long " i "
and the English long " e.") When the Pelopon-
nesian war came and pestilence with it but not
famine, people quoted the line with Xoipdi;. If
there had been a famine, remarks Thucydides, they
would have quoted it with At^efc. Some readers read
a scoff at oracles here : there is no scoff at oracles,
only a mild reference to the weakness of human nature,
which adjusts its memory and its evidences to the
accomplished facts.
Still less can hostility to the oracles of Greece
be found in his comment on another oracle. This
oracle said " r6 nefaayixdv aqyov fyetvov." l Accord-
ingly people argued that when the plague broke out
in Athens after the occupation of this forbidden dis-
trict the plague was Heaven's punishment for a
violation of Divine Law. Thucydides interposes a
mild protest, which certainly does not scoff at oracles.
Rather he commits himself to the somewhat hazard-
ous proposition that the prophet foresaw that when
the days should come for the occupation of the
Pelasgic district they would be days of mourning.
The prophet foresaw that it would never be occupied
to advantage : and that is all (Thucydides says) his
oracle meant. That is to say, Thucydides has
rationalized away the theory of Divine Vengeance
as expressed in the special locality of the plague,
1 2. 17.
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 49
but he has contrived to do so without disputing at
all, rather while accepting, the authenticity and the
historical accuracy of the ancient oracle.
And in the last and crucial passage of Book I l he
will not even consent to rationalize away the theory
of Divine Vengeance. Rather he covertly suggests
he throws it out as a natural hypothesis that the
prevalence of Natural calamities, of earthquakes,
eclipses, tidal waves and plagues, drought and famine,
concurrently with the Peloponnesian war was not a
mere coincidence. He will not pledge himself to the
proposition that these things were the Divine penal-
ties for an unnecessary, degrading, unnatural and
impious war, for this would be going perhaps beyond
the province of history. But he will at least support
this proposition of the conscientious and God-fearing
people of the day, to the extent of adding his testi-
mony to the alleged synchronism : there was a
synchronism. There actually were more cataclysms
of Nature during the Peloponnesian war than during
any other period of similar extent. 8 When a his-
torian goes out of his way to call attention to this
synchronism, it can hardly be doubted that he would
have liked to go further, had the spirit of his circle
and the growing science of the day permitted him to
do so.
I will dwell yet a little longer on his sense of the
" frightf ulness " of the Peloponnesian war, and of the
shock which it gave to God-fearing people. Thucydides
seems very full of that sense of horror. Modern
historians like Mahaffy sometimes claim credit for
deprecating and depreciating the eternal and inter-
necine feuds of the Greeks. They even extend their
indifference and contempt to Athens' battle for free-
dom against Philip, as if Athens ought to have des-
paired of herself, like Phocion, or ought to have
sacrificed herself on the altar of futurity and humanity,
in order that Alexander might the sooner over-run
1 l. 28. l. 28.
M.M. 4
50 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
the East, and spread Hellenism and civilization over
Egypt and Asia Minor : whence, via Rome, it would
reach the whole world, East and West alike, and go
down to all ages. But whatever be thought of
Demosthenes and Philip, and even though it be pre-
posterous to expect of Demosthenes that sacrifice of
Athens for Europe's sake which the modern reader of
Demosthenes may to-day accept with resignation
and even with satisfaction, there will be a general
tendency among the modern readers of Thucydides to
accept his reprobation of the civil wars of the Greeks,
and of the Peloponnesian war in particular.
His reprobation of the Peloponnesian war has two
aspects one of which at least will commend itself.
Thucydides, like Plato, if not like Aristotle, has no
sympathy with or enthusiasm for Imperialism : for
an Empire to be built up by Athens or any other Greek
State over other nations, including in these other
nations many Greek States ; he no doubt followed
the policy of Pericles, who advocated the maintenance
of the then Empire and the then sea power of Athens
by means of a strong fleet but not the extension of the
Empire. Pericles seems to have assumed that it was
hopeless to unite Greece and to conciliate Sparta,
and therefore to have advocated against Sparta " a
preventive war " as the Germans call it : but he
warned Athens against the policy of adventure and
world domination, such as came afterwards with
Alcibiades and the Sicilian Expedition. If the other
policy the policy of domination in the East, instead
of in the West, over Asia Minor and the Persian
Empire, instead of over the Greeks of Sicily, had ever
been seriously suggested to Pericles, as it suggested
itself to Isocrates and to Aristotle and to Alexander,
it is conceivable that he might have agreed, for this
would have meant domination over Asiatics not over
Greeks. But there was no room for such a sugges-
tion in the divided state of Greece and its internal
feuds.
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 51
Be that as it may, Pericles remained opposed to
wars of conquest, and Thucydides evidently both in
principle and from bitter experience followed Pericles.
It may be even that he would have agreed with
Plato, that the ideal Athens was not even the Athens
of Pericles with the Athenian Empire of the year 431,
but just the city of Athens and the adjoining Attica,
just a Greek n6h<; living in friendly relations with
other Greek nofeu;; just a municipality as we call
it ; or a free city of the middle ages, Genoa, Venice,
Bremen, without their external possessions. It may
be that even to the same degree as Plato, Thucy-
dides, was a little- Athens man (/iixgojioAmyc). At any
rate there is nothing to show that he would have
disliked or did dislike, if he knew it, the Platonic ideal.
Modern British readers are less friendly to the
city-state and to this intense and extreme decentra-
lization, which comes to them as doubly " suspect " ;
" suspect " on account of all their associations, ex-
periences and prejudices derived from the history of
2,000 years, and twice suspect as associated not with
the name of Greece and the Greek n6h<; and Plato
and Thucydides, but with the ideals of Rousseau
and a number of impracticable modern doctrinaires,
French and others : Karl Marx and Bakounine and
many members of the Paris Commune of 1871, who
wanted to break up France into communes like the
municipality of Paris.
But the other and second aspect of Thucydides'
dislike of Imperialism is much more modern and
commends itself just now to all of us. Thucydides'
idea of Imperialism was far removed from the ideas
associated with that word by reasonable Canadians,
Australians, Africanders and by the majority of the
people of the Mother Country : the idea of a united
Empire of free peoples, bound together in a perpetual
defensive alliance with the minimum of machinery
for that bond and therefore the maximum of good
feeling and mutual forbearance : the idea of a gener-
52 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
ous loyalty to the past and its traditions : of a
generous repudiation of narrow nativism and know-
nothing-ism. Imperialism to Thucydides was rather
the idea still suggested by the word to the minds of
a few fanatics and doctrinaires of Radical tempera-
ment in Great Britain, the idea of militarism, jingo-
ism, flag-waving, red-painting. It was even worse
than this, it was the idea suggested to Thucydides
by the bitter evidence of the Peloponnesian war and
to us by the bitter evidence of German " frightful-
ness." It was the idea that " Imperialism " means
the most ruthless militarism and ambition in the
conduct of war and the most shameless materialism
and the most unscrupulous Macchiavelism in the
conduct of diplomacy.
Thucydides discerned a progressive brutality and a
progressive materialism in the Athenian treatment of
the enemy and of the neutral states. It is no wonder
that he became a little-Athens man.
The received rules of war were barbarous enough
to begin with and before the Peloponnesian war
began. On the other hand, the Athenian tempera-
ment was humanitarian enough before the war
to largely cancel these rules. Athens was the one
State when Pericles delivered his Funeral Speech, in
which " virtue " aqe-cr) stood not for virtus valour,
not for the religion of valour, but for benevolence-
humanity generosity charity : the men of " vir-
tue," says Thucydides in his account of the plague,
that is to say, the kindly man and the charitable 1
died of the plague in the largest numbers. Athens
before the war in fact had been the one Greek State
which was to a certain degree Christian before Christ.
And all this was lost by the brutalizing influence of
the war, or at least by the influence of the brutalized
and materialistic spirit in which the war was waged.
No wonder that Thucydides had ceased to be if he
ever was an Athenian Imperialist.
1 2. 51.
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 53
Thucydides has told us that he wrote for all time
and that his work would never be out of date. 1 If
anyone wants to test that soaring ambition let him
do what I was able to do recently. Let him sit down
quietly and listen to two young students of Greek
reading alternately from Thucydides, the dialogue
at the end of Book V called the Melian debate. One
reader represents the unhappy and weak neutral
Melos : the other, the callous, cynical, militaristic
and aggressive Athens. The readers translated almost
literally : changed nothing but the names : put
Belgium for Melos : and Germany for Athens : and
Great Britain for Sparta. For nothing else needed to
be changed ; and we heard coming to us from the
year 416 B.C. the first proof, the first edition, of the
identical debate between Belgium and Germany,
which was republished under other names and at
various times between 1860 and 1914 : but never so
closely to the original as in 1914.
Thucydides therefore did something more than put
forward a claim to anticipate future history, he did
more than claim that history repeated itself. He
did more than claim that history is written for the
future, that the future may guide itself by the experi-
ence of the past : or in the somewhat romantic and
extravagant terms which are familiar to some of us
from our school days that history gives a young
man all the advantages of age without its infirmities-
all those claims I mean which have been definitely
repudiated by some historians like Ranke, and which
obviously leave out of sight the familiar experience,
that no man, and a jortiori, no nation, will agree
to be taught by any experience except his own
these claims were not only put forward by Thucydides,
but so successfully established by him, that a drama-
tic debate, like the Melian dialogue, can be pitch-forked
bodily into the year 1914 as a prtcis of the diplomatic
history of Belgium and Germany in that eventful year.
1 1. 22.
54 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
That debate indeed is doubly dramatic, as has
been already suggested. It is not only dramatic in
its form, its dialogue, it is dramatic no less in its
intense though unspoken irony. It precedes Books
VI, VII, and Books VI, VII introduce the fall of
Athens. " Strength goeth before a fall " is the
religion of Herodotus. The same religion, but spirit-
ualized, deepened, purified, is the religion of Thucy-
dides. By painting strength in darker colours as
pride, by heightening the picture of Athenian arro-
gance and cynicism towards Torone, Scione, Mende,
Melos, and the rest of the cities and states which
resisted Athens, he has given the Creed of Divine
Jealousy a more righteous cast, a more humane
interpretation. The humanitarianism of Athens
the better mind of Athens is overheard in Thucydides
confessing the justice of the Divine retribution which
has fallen on her : not merely because she was
powerful and ambitious, but because her subservience
to her ambition and to her lust of power had dimmed
and blighted all her greater and more characteristic
qualities. " The war up to 415 B.C. made Athens
great and Athenians small " : that is the comment
to be read between the lines of Thucydides.
No man can say that modern Germany has not
applied history to her politics in spite of Ranke :
her politics have almost been made by her historians.
It is a pity that her historians have not gone to
ancient history, and in particular to Thucydides and
the history of Athens, when they were looking for
historical omens. The Melian dialogue might have
warned Germany off Belgium, if they had still cared
for their classics. Curiously enough they did see the
parallel between Great Britain and Sparta but not
between themselves and Athens, or between Belgium
and Melos. 1
There is little else to be found I think in Thucydides'
1 Vide What Germany Thinks, p. 205, and footnote on Pro-
fessor Reinhard Frank of Munich and Tubingen (p. 193).
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 55
history capable of throwing much light on his mind
and personality. A man who so veiled his moral,
religious, and artistic bias that the former is not
easily understood (as in the verdicts on Nicias and
Antiphon), while the two latter have been overlooked
more or less entirely, until recently, is not likely to
declare himself freely in smaller ways.
There is occasionally a touch, a hint of dry sar-
casm. The Spartan Admiral Cnemus missed attack-
ing the Peiraeus, so he said, by stress of weather.
4 If he had wished to make a better pace the weather
would not have been an insuperable obstacle," l
observes Thucydides. There is just one speech which
is not merely dramatic, like the Melian dialogue, but
full of personal colour or at least of national colour :
the speech of the Spartan ephor Sthenelaides. 2 Thu-
cydides actually gives the speaker's name in this
case, apparently because the speech is so full of
character as to be too full of character, except as an
individual type : too full even for a type of Sparta :
more Spartan than the Spartans.
" The greater part of the Athenian argument I
cannot understand. They have said a great deal in
eulogy of Athens but they have not shown that they
are not injuring our good allies : if they behaved well
against Persia all the more shame on their behaviour
to-day."
There seems a touch of individual portraiture here.
If the name were not given, it might almost seem a
touch of caricature : probably that is why the name
is given. But this speech is exceptional, not only
in its caricature, if there be caricature, but in the
giving of a name to the speaker. Thucydides' crav-
ing for the impersonal, his ambition to record the
laws of history and not the feats of passing and
ephemeral individuals, banishes names, broadly speak-
ing, from his history, where other historians of ail
ages would record them.
Book II, 93. Book I, 85. 86.
56 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
There is little else that occurs to me. Thucydides
believes in fate. He is a fatalist even to the extent
of believing that he can read fate and forecast the
future, human nature being the same in all ages.
Is it a sort of natural compensation that the man who
believed in so little in which other men believed,
who believed in so little that he glorifies convention-
alism and conservatism just because it is conventional
and conservative : who liked the conventional and
conservative Nicias just because he appealed to his
taste, his sense of manners and moderation : who
canonizes nothing in his history except the modera-
tion of aristocrats aQiaroxQaTiai; ad)<pQovo<; TIQOTI^OEI x
a moderation which no doubt, he would himself
have admitted, is no special virtue, virtue being
merely a matter of circumstance, condition and
opportunity or lack of opportunity ; which is no
special virtue in the aristocrats but the natural result
of their interests and their advantages, and therefore
all the more useful and punctual, just because it is
not dependent on the off chance of real virtue but is
a natural product of conditions ; is it a sort of natural
compensation, I say, that this man who could see
his way before him so little, who is so dubious of
human effort, should at least conceive so confident a
belief in Fate and in his power to read Fate ?
It may be so. Nature abhors a vacuum. Some
Faith a man must have obviously to write history at
all : and if no other, then faith in fate and in the
reign of laws which can be deciphered and inter-
preted ; let it be counted to Thucydides for righteous-
ness that he sometimes manages to anticipate the
future so closely.
Again, is it a contradiction to be so impersonal and
fatalistic and yet to desire the government of a State
by its chosen spirits, by the elect, by a Pericles, when
a Pericles is born at long intervals to guide a State ?
1 III, 82 : compare VIII, 24, p6voi ol Aaxedatpdvioi
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 57
I do not think so. Thucydides believed in fate :
even in democracy as a result of fate, as an inevitable
and disagreeable product at a certain stage of culture
when universal education has made all questions open
questions and has destroyed the rule of convention
and old-established aristocracy. He disliked democ-
racy as government from the street, as government
without reflection, without knowledge, without experi-
ence of the past, without true education : as a
government which has neither pride of ancestry, nor
hope of posterity : as a government where the
ordinary statesman can only take short views, for
no views which are long, which are based on long
experience, will commend themselves to the man in
the street. The ordinary statesman must adapt him-
self to democracy in such an age, for democracy is an
inevitable result of popular and universal education.
But if fate should produce at intervals a great
demagogue in the best sense of that term a
popular leader or demagogue who can yet by his
force of eloquence and force of character impose
himself upon the street and the State, upon popular
opinion, a Pericles in fact, is it not better, is it not
common sense, to exalt that demagogue and his
government and to canonize his rule however short
its duration and human life being short his rule will
be short as a happy incident, a blessed respite for
a moment from the anarchy and see-saw which must
otherwise mark the tragic career of democracy ?
There are only two faiths possible, I think, to an
historian : such a faith in Fate which I have endeav-
oured to interpret as the faith of Thucydides, pessi-
mistic enough though it be ; and the other faith
which is very modern and Christian in the perfecti-
bility of human nature, even under democracy, or
especially under democracy ; a perfectibility which
will enable even the man in the street to listen more
and more to the teachings of experience, and to give
even to his democracy that sweet reasonableness and
58 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
that moderation which are natural enough without
special virtues, just by force of circumstances and
personal interests, to an aristocracy : to the wealthy,
well-born and well-educated. Thucydides had no
such faith in progress or in the evolution of human
nature by itself and from within and by the very law
of evolution : human nature is to be the same in
all ages : its germ-plasms do not change.
Evolution implies a terminus ad quern as well as
a quo : but many of us forget the terminus ad quern,
or at least we assume that the terminus ad quern of
evolution and democracy is the stage which we our-
selves have already reached, and practically we only
think about the terminus a quo. That is, we all
recognize clearly and consciously that society has
developed from barbarism but we assume vaguely
and unconsciously that it has now reached its zenith.
So Thucydides : he recognized no man more clearly
that Athens had evolved from piracy and general
barbarism : that it had evolved to a certain stage
of general education and thought : but, he seems
to have thought Athens having reached that cul-
minating point could go no further and must even
recede into the degeneracy and anarchy which
education and thought themselves produce : must
fall before the more brutal powers like Macedon,
which, without education and thought, yet retained
the more brutal and masculine virtues : the will to
fight, the will to power, the power to raise armies,
and a rough indifference to all the luxuries of thought
and the artificial and hot-house life of the theatre
and the law courts and the public assembly, " the
fountains and the fooleries " called civilization.
Then in time evolution would take its turn with
these uncivilized powers : and they also would begin
to decay by reason of their new virtues, their thought
and education, before new barbarians. Fate destroys
nations by their very virtues, and the terminus ad
quern is soon reached, and the cycle starts afresh
THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 59
from a new deluge of some sort. Fate leads nations
in a cycle : evolution is from one end of the cycle to
the other : but the wheels soon revolve full circle,
and then the evolution is over : at least for a time
and for that nation. It is not a continuous evolu-
tion : it is strictly limited, with its beginning, its
culmination and brief transitional period of glory-
Athens under Pericles and its decay. (This, by the
way, I believe is also the doctrine of Chateaubriand's
first essay, his essay on Revolution : he was a student
of Thucydides.)
It is not a cheering creed, but is it scientific ?
Can it be said to be unscientific just because it is not
cheering : just because it offends a certain deep and
sanguine instinct ? That is a question for the
theologians. Thucydides had no such theology as
could make it seem unscientific to his mind. His
mind was academic : the mind of an academic
liberal : who is next door to a conservative : who
lives in a semi-detached house with conservatism
occupying the other half. Like Jowett, for example,
Thucydides was liberal in theology and conservative
in politics : liberal in education but conservative in
broader and deeper things. He was of two minds
about education and religion. He distrusted religion
in details and in given cases in the case of Nicias'
superstitions about the moon, for example but he
welcomed it as a conservative force, as a force modify-
ing the wheels of change, putting a brake upon them.
Conversely, he trusted education in details, wanted
it for himself and men of his class, an upper class :
but he distrusted it broadly and on larger grounds
and in the field of politics as a solvent of the existing
order of things, as a harbinger and herald of universal
doubt and of that ever widening horizon of open
questions, which is the mark of democracy and
universal education, and of the plague of books and
lectures; and which ends in anarchy. Culture
universal culture at any rate is anarchy. It is
60 THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY
" sensibility without bread " as Gold win Smith used
to say. To know everything is to do nothing. Thu-
cydides coined the epigram, resented it, but perforce
illustrated it in himself. He was the scientific
officer who lost a campaign because he had more
science than energy : the type of officer with whom
we have all been familiar of recent years, since the
day when one scientific general failed to swear his
boats up the Nile in time to relieve Gordon, and a
second failed to hold the crest of Majuba against the
escalading Boers. Science can do much in warfare
especially in modern warfare but it cannot supply
energy. It may easily diminish the energy of native
will and natural force of character : " the native hue
of resolution is sicklied o'er by the pale cast of
thought." Thucydides could do nothing in the
Athens of his days, or in the war in which, unfor-
tunately for his reputation, he took an academic
and a very ineffectual hand, except record its history.
CHAPTER III
PLATO AND POETRY
THE tenth book of Plato's Republic, or the first
part of it, at least, is a Platonic "Bull"
against poetry. And there is something of the " bull "
about it, in more senses than one. Surely it is piquant
in an unusual degree to find the great litterateur of
Greek literature denouncing poetry, to find the great
stylist of the philosophers of Greece denouncing style.
It is pathetic, even more than piquant, to find the
unsuccessful reformer of Syracuse, the academic
adviser who proved too academic to advise Dionysius,
the philosopher who had to return to his books and
give up his dreams of administration, to find him in
this book pleading so vehemently for action, for
deeds, for life, protesting so eloquently against our
writing history when we could be making it, holding
up to our admiration not his own class and his own
type, not Plato, not the writer, the dreamer, the
speculatist, the ironical humorist, but the statesman,
reformer, and man of action all in fact that he
himself, before or after this time, essayed in vain
to be.
This book has the piquancy and the pathos of
literature confessing her un worthiness ; of style sitting
in sackcloth and ashes ; of speculation confessing
that she is an unprofitable servant. It reads like
the expression of the mood which comes and comes
again to every student ; wherein he feels the vanity
of study ; wherein he feels that he is giving up his
life to words, words, words ; that he is plucking
from the tree of knowledge instead of from the tree
61
62 PLATO AND POETRY
of life. He wishes that he were a man of affairs
instead. He does not know, poor innocent, that
that, too, is vanity ; and that, as Professor Clark
Murray used to say, we are all, yes positively all
of us, spinning webs out of our brains, which we
call facts and, by no means least, those of us who
are men of affairs, the bankers and stockbrokers at
the present moment in the city of New York, as
much, or more so, than the theologians and men of
science.
Carlyle reproached himself that, whereas his father
had made bridges, he only made books. Plato is
in that Carlylean mood ; and too absorbed in it to
notice that some books sometimes are the best of
bridges ; and the only bridges whereby weak men
can cross some of the deepest of rivers, as, for example,
the sufficiently deep river of death ; which many
men have, in the ages since Plato, crossed by means
of one of the very few books, perhaps the only book,
better fitted than Plato to effect a crossing for them.
This indictment by Plato of poetry appears to
fall into three chief counts. Poetry is imitation, not
creation, not action. Etymologically and in Greek,
poetry is creation, and the poet is par excellence the
creator, and the creator the poet. But this is only
the perversity of language. In fact poetry is the
antithesis of action, and is imitation, says Plato.
Here is a curious and ominous beginning. The word
imitation has now become the orthodox definition of
poetry ; because it was caught up and repeated, but
in a much broader sense, by Aristotle. It has come
down through superstitious veneration for their usage
to modern times. It is quoted, for example, in the
last book on the subject, that by Mr. Courthope, till
recently Professor of Poetry in Oxford.
But, inevitably, some reviewers of Mr. Courthope's
book, more clearsighted in criticism than learned in
literature, objected to the word. They protested that
poetry is not imitation, but rather the deepest expres-
PLATO AND POETRY 63
sion possible in words of the profoundest passion
that words can express. Words, it is very likely,
never express the profoundest passion, and the
passion which they do express is less profound ; but
that does not alter the truth of the definition, " the
deepest expression possible in words of the profoundest
passion words can express."
Plato missed this word, " expression." There is
no word for it in Greek, and he used instead this
unhappy phrase fufirjat^. A word is a fatal thing
and leads its user far afield. At the very outset
Plato is pre-occupied, obsessed, by the implications
and suggestions of this unfortunate word. It has
caused him throughout to reduce poetry to the level
of painting. He has been describing in earlier books
the democratization of Greek society, the spread of
education to lower classes, and the consequent influx
into the learned professions of men of humble origin,
insufficient manners, and imperfect culture. Philo-
sophy he likens racily to a maiden heiress whom her
natural suitors, men of birth and breeding, have
deserted for leadership in politics and social life ;
but in their place come little, bald-headed plumbers
just out of prison, " their sentence quashed, their
faces washed " ; and they court her for her prestige
and her " genteel " surroundings a picture corre-
sponding, as Nettleship dryly observes, to the democ-
ratization of the Church to-day. Well, Plato seems
to find a parallel to these spurious philosophers or
sophists in the poets. They too he seems to say-
are interlopers, imitators, reaping where they had
not sown, gathering where they had not strawed.
They have phrases and catch-words in abundance.
Colours, scents, and echoes from real life hang about
their verses ; but it is all imposture. They do not
know whereof they write. They only parrot and
make believe. Plato will not even go as far as he
goes in his Ion, or in his Apology, and concede that,
if they do not know, they have at least an instinct,
64 PLATO AND POETRY
a tact, an unconscious prompting, an inspiration
which takes the place of knowledge.
Rather, he brushes aside their work as wholly
frivolous and artificial. It is pretty ; it is musical
and ingenious ; but strip away the gimcrackery of
art, the " sensual caterwauling " of music ; the artful
aid of alliteration, the combinations, as Robert Louis
Stevenson said, of " p's," " u's," and " /'s," or other
mystic letters whose magic chemistry lies at the root
of poetry, and explains the secret of the quickened
heart-beats with which we hear it ; tear away these
things and nothing more is left ; the charm is gone,
the illusion snapped ; it fades away into the light of
common day yes, poetry is just trifling ; just
dabbling in sound and phrase ; just a tickling of the
ear ; just sensuous artifice ; it is not serious work,
not even scientific work. And, besides, no literature,
not even scientific work, is worthy to be compared
with action. A man makes history ; he does not
write it. The use of knowledge and the poet has
not even knowledge lies in action, not in itself.
You notice how far Plato goes. We can hear from
others than Plato that exact knowledge is fatal to
ornamental gifts ; that it is fatal to the journalist,
the politician, the orator, the conversationalist ; and
we can all agree to avoid argument for the moment
to throw in the poet with journalists and conver-
sationalists. We all know silent men of science, who
are silent in half-a-dozen languages, and despise
literature. It hardly invalidates the argument that
some few poets themselves, like Browning, have
shared this feeling and have begged that they be
not mistaken for " damned literary men."
But Plato goes further : he has little use here
even for men of science. Knowledge is to lead to
action, instead of being a very general bar thereto ;
and men are to make history, not write it. The
man of action comes first and he is the only man
whom Plato recognizes as a man of knowledge. The
PLATO AND POETRY 65
man of mere knowledge, if it be worth while distin-
guishing between nonentities, would no doubt come
next ; and the poet who has neither action nor
exact knowledge comes last ; but it is not worth
while so to distinguish between two nonentities.
Plato has met, one supposes, silent men of action
Laconians, no doubt conceivably, also in Italy, an
unknown stranger or two from far-off Rome. He
has marked their scorn for literature ; and he has
not also marked that, so far as knowledge goes, these
men of action are as badly off as poets ; and some-
times indeed are poets ; and have borne the name
of Solon or Aeschylus. He has made two classes,
men of active knowledge, and men of ignorant dilet-
tantism, where the rest of us see three classes, men
of action, men of thought, journalists and litterateurs,
the poets being found, according to their style and
quality, in all three classes. Poetry Plato knows it
well in other dialogues where he is not holding, as
here, a brief against poetry poetry is one of the
voices of youth, with love and with religion ; but
as love has its counterfeits, calf-love, sensual love,
animal appetite or Whitmania, ambition, self-love
and the like ; and as religion also has its hypocrisies
and its idolatries, so poetry in this book is lost
behind the swarm of inferior spirits who burlesque it.
(2) He goes on presently to his next count. These
imitators imitate only the material and visible ; the
outward shows and semblances of things, rather than
solid facts. Their method is a picturesque sensation-
alism, not a sober record of life. They are realists,
as we perhaps should say, if a realist is one " who
dabbles in the muddy shallows of life and fancies
he is sounding its depths." Plato, no doubt, is
thinking of Euripides ; of an Athenian theatre given
over to the drama of realism ; to spectacular displays
of poverty and life in the slums ; to tales of mean
streets ; to problem plays ; and to dirty, disagreeable
doubtings : illicit love, like Phaedra's, is the motif ;
M.M. s
66 PLATO AND POETRY
or just poverty, hunger, and dirt like TeJephus' :
these things find " the gods," and we are living in
a sentimental and humanitarian age where the little
finger of the man in the street is thicker than the
loins of caste, and privilege, and culture, and the
sheltered life.
So far, so good ; and Plato is at least not flagrantly
inconsistent yet with himself or with his gospel of
work versus faith : of action versus thought. We
may, perhaps, refute him with Browning :
" But all the world's coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account ;
All instincts immature, all purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount ;
Thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act ;
Fancies that broke thro' language and escaped ;
All I could never be, all, men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God whose wheel the pitcher shaped."
But, then, we might also refute Browning with
Browning :
" And the fault I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin
Tho' the deed be a sin, I say."
(3) But, soon after, Plato introduces what purports
to be a new objection to poetry, and one which surely
contradicts his own previous argument. Poetry, he
says, appeals to the emotions, and to reach the emo-
tions it sets forth " actions and emotions, not char-
acter." There was a hint of this in the last count.
It portrays a man acting and feeling, not thinking
and being : it portrays rage, despair, love, grief,
murder, and suicide though the two last are apt to
be less obtrusive in a Greek play than in a modern
not character. But man at his best thinks and is :
man at his best is not in love, nor in rage, nor in
despair, still less does he weep and tear his hair ;
he is silent, self-composed, austere ; he is a stoic.
The poet will not portray a stoic ; indeed he cannot.
A stoic on the stage would be a stick ; so the poet
PLATO AND POETRY 67
portrays only the weaker brethren, or man in his
weaker moods of action and feeling.
But where now is Plato's glorification of action ?
Before it was action against literature, or mere
thought. Now, the deepest and highest life appears
to be, not in action, but in thought and being, not
in what a man does but in what he is ; not in his
works but in his faith. Plato began by glorifying
activity and action ; now he abuses actors and acting.
Yet there is a real connection between the two sets of
words, though only the Latin and English languages
show it, and the Greek by what might seem a strange
freak does not strange, because one would expect
the actor's art to be magnified by the Greek language
instead of by the Latin and the English, the artistic
side of it being surely as conspicuous as the practical ;
but of course the reason is the one already noticed,
the Greek language has identified action with the more
subjective, the more spiritual art of the poet ; it can-
not, therefore, identify it also with the objective and
material art of the actor. But what am I saying ?
After all the Greeks have used their secondary word
for action, at any rate the substantive which means
an action, for an " act " by actors on the stage ; our
own word " drama," I mean.
Now, if the end of life rather lie in composed
character, austerity, and pride than in theatrical
and violent actions and emotions, why then the men
who make history, who act bloody parts and are
possessed of headstrong passions (the headstrong man,
by the way, is the man weak in his head), these men
seem to be relegated to a back seat at the Platonic
feast of life ; and the student, and the philosopher,
and the historian, and the man of science seem to be
invited to sit down above them at the board. This
may be sound Platonism. Generally speaking, I
think it is. But is it consistent with the early chapters
of this same book ?
(4) But the most difficult and debatable portion
68 PLATO AND POETRY
of Plato's attack on poetry is not the proposition
that poetry is playing with life and not living, imita-
tion of life and not creation, nor that it is the imita-
tion of crude life, the mere life of action and emotion
instead of the life of thought.
The first of these propositions is obviously true of
minor poets ; untrue of any considerable poet : who,
because he is a considerable poet, has been a consider-
able man first. He has thought and suffered beyond
other men. He has been torn up and transplanted
from the society of other and more ordinary men,
from the others who remain reeds shaken by the
wind, and has been fashioned by the knife and iron
of thought and suffering into the reed-made flute or
pipe, the mouthpiece of some great god, Pan, some
spirit greater than humanity. The true poet, as
the phrase goes, learned in suffering what he taught
in song.
The second proposition again is implicitly incon-
sistent with the first, since it involves what the first
denies, the deeper reality of the world of thought
over the world of action. With the second Plato has
himself refuted the first ; and has made it somewhat
unnecessary for his readers to take the first seriously.
But the third count in his indictment, to the latter
part of which I have already referred, is that poetry
addresses itself to the emotions, that is, as he says,
to an unreal element in human nature. This is the
count which is difficult of interpretation, and which
has been very differently interpreted.
" What is truth ? " asked Pilate, when he heard
the word used in argument. " What is reality ? " is
the question somewhat similar, which Plato's con-
tinual use of this vague word provokes. The unreal
element in human nature according to Plato is the
element opposed to that in us which weighs, and
measures, and calculates. It is the element opposed
to cold-blood reason and logic. When we have
suffered a great loss of any kind, the emotional
PLATO AND POETRY 69
element raves like a tragedy queen over the past;
the element of reason takes stock of our position and
gathers up the fragments that remain. So far, so
good ; but what we want to know and what we never
distinctly learn from Plato whence the different
interpretations of his argument by different inter-
preters seems to be this : what is the extent and
nature of this emotion which he banishes, and of
this cold-blood and logic which he enthrones in its
place ?
Mr. Gradgrind, also, in Hard Times enthroned
cold-blood and logic, and many an ancient Gradgrind
of the Cynic and Stoic persuasion enthroned these
apathies. The philosopher who, hearing of his son's
death, retorted that he never supposed that he had
begotten an immortal ; the other philosopher who,
losing his wife and children, consoled himself with
the apothegm that the sage is independent of cir-
cumstances this is the somewhat unattractive guise
in which resignation expressed or concealed itself in
the poor pagan world. But can we make anything
worth having out of apathy, unless it be an apathy
towards the trivial rendered natural and becoming,
because its house is already swept and garnished
and possessed by some absorbing passion or devotion
to some one or a few high ends ? Can cold-blood,
and logic, and so-called reason so absorb and possess
man's soul ? or does not " emotion " cover all forms
of high passion and devotion ? Can all emotion be
banished rightly ? Is Plato objecting only to " the
skin-deep sense of our own eloquence," which is the
poet's besetting sin, and his substitute often for " the
pure emotion of a high devotion," or is ho really asking
us to forego emotion altogether and live as merely
rational cold-blooded creatures ? It is the old problem
of Greek philosophy. What is the relation in Plato
and Aristotle of the moral nature (of those aspirations
after generosity, courage, forgiveness, faith, hope,
and charity, which Aristotle calls "moral" or
70 PLATO AND POETRY
" ethical "), and the reason which alone Aristotle
pronounces to be divine ?
The moral is of the earth earthy, says Aristotle.
It is the handmaid, not the mistress ; the mistress
is reason and philosophy. Plato's is not an analytical
intellect like Aristotle's ; and he has never so sharply
distinguished between moral and intellectual. Right-
eousness and Reason go generally hand in hand in
his Republic ; and yet the partnership never seems
quite essential in his eyes ; but always temporary
rather and, as it were, conditional and contingent ;
and in his eyes the divine nature as also in Dean
Mansel's system, and in all systems based on Aristotle
seems to stand apart from the petty and anthropo-
morphic moralities of human life. Hence the inter-
preters have parted here, and one school interprets
Plato in what I am tempted to call a Christian rather
than in a Platonic sense.
Mr. Prickard, in his very interesting little book on
Aristotle's theory of poetry, interprets the tenth book
of Plato's Republic to mean that Plato is deprecating
" sentimentalism " ; the sentimentalism of the literary
man. The world is divided so I presume the
argument would run between the literary and the
silent races. The Greek spends himself on expression.
He is the JEolian harp which answers to every wind
of doctrine or feeling, and therefore he never really
feels. Before he has really felt he has expressed and
dismissed his nascent feeling in expression ; and the
moment after he has expressed, he feels another and
a different emotion, and expresses it. He is elastic
to the core of his being. He is a child all the days
of his life, with the child's frivolity, the child's
delight in mere living, and the child's volubility and
volatility. His emotions are real while they last;
indeed, it is absurd to call emotion unreal (as Plato
does) just because it is not permanent ; for emotion
as opposed to passion is essentially transient. But
he is so impressionable that he is never really im-
71
pressed ; he is the actor, the journalist, the poet ;
the natural man in a southern and tempestuous
population, the democratic man who acknowledges
no aristocracy or hierarchy of instincts and impulses,
but obeys each in turn, as it comes to him, and recog-
nizes each as equal, each as counting for one and
none for more than one in his moral democracy. The
opposite type to this is the Spartan ; unsympathetic ;
unemotional ; silent ; but capable of devotion to a
single absorbing purpose ; capable of passion, un-
diluted and unaltering ; and capable of martyrdom.
Plato, living in Athens, reacts, as a philosopher will,
towards the unpopular and alien, the foreign and
opposite type. He sighs for Spartan doggedness and
tenacity of purpose. If Athenians did not express
their emotion in language, especially in poetry, they
would have sufficient emotion to cany them through
life ; even through the stormy life of politics. They
would be able, that is, to act instead of talk ; for
you cannot, as the poet dough has quaintly said,
have your emotion and yet express it also.
Plato had seen, or at least had heard of, the whole
Athenian people bursting into tears of idle pity, and
fear, and wrath, at the portraiture of the capture of
Miletus by Barbarians : he wanted their pity to be
expended on practical politics, on the political humilia-
tion of Hellas. He wanted their fear and wrath
expended upon nerving the soldier's arm and
ening his weak knees. He hates to see all
evaporate in literary expression.
In short, Plato's feeling for poetry and its
temptations seems precisely akin if Mr.
be right-^to the feeling of Cardinal Newman,
expressed in certain verses which I am aceu^
to repeat ad mmumm to my habitual puptk.
tbou thy words ; the
That thro* tbee sw0 and
They win oondeooe witaoi lay
72 PLATO AND POETRY
"But whoso lets his feelings run
In soft luxurious flow,
Faints when hard service must be done,
And shrinks at every woe.
"Faith's meanest deed more favour bears
Where hearts and wills are weighed,
Than brightest transports, choicest prayers,
Which bloom their hour and fade."
This seems to me an admirable picture of the
seamy side of poetry and literature ; even more
admirable than Matthew Arnold's " Stagirius," which
is his version of the same theme :
" When the soul, growing clearer,
Sees God no nearer ;
When the soul, mounting higher,
To God comes no nigher ;
But the arch-fiend Pride,
Mounts at her side,
Foiling her high emprise,
Sealing her eagle eyes,
And when she fain would soar,
Makes idols to adore,
Changing the pure emotion
Of her high devotion,
To a skin-deep sense
Of her own eloquence ;
Strong to deceive, strong to enslave
Save, oh ! save."
Plato, surfeited with Athenian emotionalism,
humanitarianism, and infirmity of purpose, represents
his Athenian philosophers as repenting of their
Athenian or feminine temperament, and seeking like
women for some nature stronger, less sensitive, and
more masculine. They seem to say :
" We, too, have felt the load we bore
In a too strong emotion's sway.
We, too, have wished no woman more
These starting feverish hearts away.
We, too, have longed for trenchant force,
And will like a dividing spear,
Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course
Which knows no doubt, u$i$? f^.8 no fear -'"
PLATO AND POETRY 73
Such is Mr. Prickard's interpretation of the 10th
Book, and it reconciles us to Plato, if only it be
correct. But is it correct ? I see no sign that Plato
has ever really faced the question : " How much
emotion is to be discarded, and what is to take its
place ? ' He is preaching Stoicism but, then, Stoi-
cism, if it mean fortitude at one stage, will pass, and
pass by ever indistinguishable shades, into a later
stage where it means mere apathy. The Red Indian,
who was a Stoic in his own sufferings, became after
a time at once incapable of suffering himself, and
capable of inflicting monstrous suffering upon others.
To preserve at one and the same time " kindness in
another's troubles, courage in one's own " remains a
difficult ideal, composed, like all perfection, of oppos-
ing and well-nigh incompatible elements. Plato
never seems to ask himself even the elementary
question. "Is it the expression of feeling or the
feeling expressed which is objectionable ? '' " Is it
composure of bearing or composure of feeling which
is desirable, and which is presented in the Spartan
type ? If the latter, how far shall this composure
of feeling be permitted to go ? Are our philosophers
to be wholly apathetic or merely too proud of their
high purposes in life to be shaken by life's trifles ? '
Now these are critical and crucial questions ; and
in the exact kind and even in the exact degree of
composure lies all the difference between fortitude
and apathy. The two are not essentially divided,
rather, there is direct communication and continuous
progression from the one to the other ; and yet there
is all the difference of right and wrong between them.
How are we to distinguish where the right ends and
the wrong begins. Where is the quantitative analysis
to show us how much fortitude there be in Spartan
endurance, and how much apathy ?
Nature does not help us to distinguish these elements
in the Spartan, or other soldier. Nature does not
help us to read aright those of our own race who arc
74 PLATO AND POETRY
silent and seem apathetic. Sometimes they seem
heartless, because they are so careful not to wear
their hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at
and interviewers to report. A young Canadian the
member of a more emotional race than that which
created our Empire and inhabits its seat writing
from England, recently, notes the scanty vocabulary
of the upper class there, and their aversion to vivacity
and verbosity ; they do not talk themselves ; and
they look suspiciously at talkers ; only a Prime
Minister should talk ; he cannot help himself ; it
is the price he pays for his bad eminence.
But are all these people really ashamed of all
emotion ? Do they really live only for golf and
brandy-and-soda, for bridge and other brigandage ?
Perhaps the cynic who should so assume who should
assume that their mauvaise honte and silence covered
nothing but materialism perhaps he would find in
an appreciable number of cases that, like the mauvaise
honte of some schoolboys, it covered the other and
the nobler source of silence the silence of the philo-
Laconian Laches in Plato's dialogue of that name.
Laches cannot abide talking and talkers, because
their talking takes the place of action their preaching
of practice : he does not propose to take a seat in a
church whose apostle is himself a castaway; and
Laches does not seem to see how Nature, herself, by
her method of division of labour, tends to divide
men into hearers of the word (or preachers) who are
not doers, and doers who are not hearers : into men
of action who understand neither themselves nor the
history they are making : and men of thought who
understand both themselves and their times but
contribute nothing towards making the history they
write. He does not seem to see that thought and
the expression of thought is one man's metier in life,
his forte and his action, just as action is the only
conscious thought and expression to which another
man, unintelligent and silent, ever attains.
PLATO AND POETRY 75
Laches, therefore, cannot tolerate eloquence, unless
in one of those rare cases where all a man's eloquent
words are but the reflexion of an eloquent life ; where
all the ideals upon his lips have risen thither from deep
springs of passion, and have spoken in a thousand
nameless, unremembered acts, before they were
permitted to find tongue.
Tongue-tied races and tongue-tied people are some-
times silent, like Laches, because they hate hypocrisy ;
because they hate to speak without acting, to profess
more than they can practise. It is because they
aspire more and not less to living on a high plane
.that they tune their words religiously to a minor key,
and talk only of trivialities and field sports.
And surely the best poetry, like the best practice,
must proceed from this sincere passion to be real
and serious. The best poetry surely cannot be the
fitful experiments of impressionists, the trivial moods
of dilettantism ; and there lies the source of the
misgivings and demurrers with which we read Plato's
attack on poetry.
CHAPTER IV
FRANCIS BACON
WHEN it was first suggested to me that I should
lecture on Bacon, I at once objected that I
had no interest in the subject, except a strong pre-
judice against the hero proposed for me. But I was
weak enough to add that perhaps after all a strong
aversion for a man, was the next best qualification
for writing of him, after a strong liking ; and after
those words of weakness and folly, there was no escape.
That happened some years ago, and of course it
only took me two weeks to realize the egregious
fallacy of the argument ; there is nothing in it, it is
a fallacy of the cave. If in large things nothing can
be done without love, so in small. If one cannot
base a happy life for Ireland upon hatred of Great
Britain ; if one cannot build a new civilization for
France upon " La Guerre Sociale," upon hatred, that
is, of the capitalists and the upper and the middle-
classes, so neither can one even write a popular
lecture on Bacon to any good purpose without
heartily admiring Bacon.
Enlightened dislike is almost as near a contradic-
tion in terms not quite as near as enlightened
selfishness ; or to put it the other way round, to
know all as the audacious French proverb says is
to pardon all. Or if it is not quite that, at any rate
it is to have much sympathy for all ; and nothing
can be made not even a lecture without sympathy,
or out of mere dislike.
But why should one feel an aversion for Bacon
such as I feel ? The answer is simple : you have
76
FRANCIS BACON 77
anticipated it : Lord Macaulay's essay of eulogy upon
him. For here is a question of temperament. The
world is divided between two temperaments : the
temperament which calls itself practical and is
delighted with all increases in the practical conveni-
ences of life, in the triumphs of applied science, in
the railroad, steamship, telegram, telephone, and
air-ship ; and there is the temperament which
persists instead in looking inward and in asking not
is there outward progress but, is there inward strength
and peace ? Discontent, unrest, vain ambitions,
social bitterness, la guerre sociale, all of which are
not merely compatible with material progress, but
seem to be especially stimulated thereby, appear to
this temperament to cancel the good of the coincident
material progress ; because, as even Bacon himself
has observed, the happiness of a people or an indivi-
dual, does not depend upon their material comforts
wholly or chiefly, but upon their content or discontent.
Macaulay and Bacon belong emphatically to the
first type. They are constitutionally impatient of
the sciences which, in a certain sense, are not progres-
sive : metaphysics and theology. They are progres-
sive in fact ; but we have each of us to make the
progress for ourselves over again from the first step
to the last. We inherit, to a very slight degree if
at all, the triumphs made and the heights reached
by previous explorers here ; we have to explore for
ourselves : whence the educational value of these
speculations.
Well, that is not Bacon's point of view. His
point of view is expressed in the motto prefixed often
to Bacon's works ; it is not systems of philosophy,
religion, or even of politics, which help men, it is
the various unrelated little material improvements,
and useful inventions, and discoveries of applied
science : the compass, gun-powder, the printing
press ; or, as we should say to-day, wireless telegraphy
and aviation.
78 FRANCIS BACON
What then was Bacon's achievement ? What was
his idea ? Whence his fame ?
Well : I have been beating about the bush and
striving to stave off that awkward question ; it is so
hard to answer. It looks so flippant and so super-
ficial to say there was no achievement, no message,
no right to fame. It looks only one degree less
flippant and many degrees more undutiful and irrev-
erent to say; it was just that he was the typical,
material-minded Englishman, who hated philosophy,
and knew enough and was courageous enough and
gifted enough, to be able to rid his mind of cant
and to say so with impunity ; and having said so,
to earn eternal fame from his grateful and material-
minded countrymen, whose prejudices and limitations
he had glorified and for ever consecrated.
That is a suspicious explanation in my eyes.
I have heard a great deal about this dull, illiterate
and unphilosophic material-minded Englishman. I
have done something in my humble way, I suppose,
involuntarily and unwillingly, to spread the tradition
of his dullness. But after all he is not so dull and
so illiterate as to glorify Bacon because he was
impatient of philosophy ; and if he were, his approval
would not make any man a hero or famous.
It may be true, I think it is, that there is a certain
sobriety or heaviness about the average English
town possibly climatic which makes its average
inhabitant less quick-witted, less intelligent, more
material-minded, than the Irishman or the Highland
Celt. It may be true, I think it is, that even in
the English Universities there is a certain matter-of-
fact habit of mind, which is tedious to the wit of
Dublin or the keen intellect of Scotland : whence it
is that Scotchmen so often supply the philosophy of
Oxford ; and one Irishman at least has added to its
scholarship by editing the most vivacious and Irish
of the Greek historians.
It may be true, I think indeed it is, that the
FRANCIS BACON 79
English mind moves more slowly and with much
less show and glitter : that it expresses itself, when
forced to expression, in a manner much less picturesque
than in the Celtic fringe. But to say that does not
forbid me to add, that the plodding and cautious
sense of the English race, may be expected to produce,
and has produced when combined with a national
wealth and a mass of population capable of adding
literature to the other luxuries of life a literature
broader, more fruitful, more learned : nay even more
eloquent, more witty and more wise, than the litera-
ture of the lighter weights and more feminine spirits
across the Tweed and Channel.
And therefore it is absurd to say that English and
Lowland-Scot illiteracy and materialism have made
of any mere materialist a hero. I came across this
short way of dealing with Bacon's fame the other
day, but the very book in which I found it disproves
the theory. I found it in an essay written by the
Fenian John Mitchel, to relieve the tedium and
constraint in which his more official writings had
involved him.
I found this essay much more to my taste than
his more formal deliverances : and yet the very
book, or books, of which it forms a part, disposes
of the broad assertion of the illiteracy of the English
race. At the best book-shop in Toronto you will
find five volumes of selections from the literature of
Ireland. I have looked through it once or twice,
and I have discovered three names of first-rate
excellence worth all the others put together Burke,
Berkeley, and Swift, none of them surely very
characteristic Irishmen : each of them surely Angli-
cized. Besides these three names there may be twenty
others of some merit, beginning with Goldsmith and
Sheridan, and ending with Yeats and Moira O'Neill
and Synge, with Lever and Lover and Lecky and the
two Moores in between. Similarly, I presume one
may collect twenty names from Scotland, beginning
80 FRANCIS BACON
with Scott and Burns and Stevenson and Carlyle.
Macaulay and Macdonald, and half a dozen from
Wales : George Meredith and Vaughan (the Silurist)
and Lewis Morris for three of the six.
But the materialized and illiterate "predominant
partner," the partner who characteristically depre-
ciates his literature as he depreciates all his gifts,
will still be able to submerge the junior partners
with a fair list of considerable names : Chaucer and
Shakespeare : Milton and Spenser and Dryden and
Pope ; Byron and Shelley ; Coleridge, Cowper and
Crabbe and Wordsworth ; and Southey, Tennyson
and Browning ; Swinburne and William Morris,
Keats and Blake and Watson, and Kipling and
Newbolt ; and Masefield and Henley and Housman ;
Courthope, Clough and Calverley ; Hood and Fitz-
Gerald ; Matthew Arnold and Landor.
Or in another field, of Gibbon and Hallam ; Froude
and Freeman, and Stubbs and Goldwin Smith and
Seeley and Morley.
And in another field, again, of Dickens and
Thackeray and George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte ;
and Miss Austen and Arnold Bennett ; of Bulwer
Lytton and Trollope and Wells.
And in yet another : Lamb and Hazlitt ; Defoe
and DeQuincy, and Addison and Johnson, and
Smollett and Fielding and Richardson ; Newman
and Wesley, and Baxter and Bunyan ; Keble and
Kingsley.
Or in science itself, besides Bacon, Darwin and
Spencer and Huxley and Tyndall.
Therefore it will not do to dismiss the fame of
Bacon or of any man as merely based upon the
brutal Englishman's relish of a brutal Englishman.
The Englishman is not primarily a student, or thinker,
or writer, or speaker : his religion is achievement and
adventure ; but all these other things with the coming
of wealth and civilization have been added unto him.
All the more difficult after removing the simple
FRANCIS BACON 81
Fenian explanation to find an explanation that is
satisfactory.
What did Bacon do for his fame ? The French
who are both impartial and intelligent answer that
his merit lies in his general views. This is somewhat
vague. The merit of Socrates who also thought
himself a practical man and is often compared and
contrasted with Bacon also lay in his general view :
in his spirit of relentless self-examination : in his
determination to rid his mind of cant and find a
rock-bottom for knowledge of ethics and politics.
But this spirit is the very essence of religion and
philosophy and may well make a man famous.
Again, Christianity itself has moved the world by
its spirit, not by any system of elaborate doctrine
or elaborate institutions ; the spirit of Christianity,
its two commandments, are quite sufficiently drastic
and revolutionary to account for its fame. What is
there drastic and revolutionary in the work of Bacon
and in his general views ?
They look at first sight so obvious : they are now
so commonplace. Bacon believed in experiments and
in examination of phenomena. Bacon objected to
authority in philosophy, especially to the authority
of Aristotle. He lived in an age of great adventure,
of great geographical discoveries, of great national
uplift, when as Milton wrote soon afterwards
14 A mighty nation was renewing itself, rousing herself
like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invin-
cible locks, as an eagle renewing her mighty youth
and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day
beam ; for now the time seems come when not only
our Seventy Elders but all the Lord's people are
become prophets."
Bacon shared all these impulses of confidence and
ambition, and he added the special thought that the
outward fabric of life, material civilization, could be
made over by a new method of discovery in physical
science.
M.M. 6
82 FRANCIS BACON
So much is clear ; but this does not account for
his fame, for there was no new method of discovery :
there were no great discoveries made either by him
or his method. There was more " hot air," to use
an American vulgarism, than anything else, in his
books and his anticipations. It seems almost then
to come down to this, that when philosophers and
men of science also, had fallen under the bondage
of a man somewhat resembling Bacon but infinitely
abler, the Greek Aristotle, Bacon had the sense to
protest against this foolish idolatry, which called a
great Greek " Master," and to see that no improve-
ment would be made in physical or natural science
without experiment.
One cannot understand, or begin to understand
Bacon's fame, except by remembering this idolatry,
of which he was the iconoclast. The spirit of Aristotle
was dead or alive only in Bacon and a few men of
science ; the letter of Aristotle and the bondage of
the letter was killing scientific progress.
These are some of the typical anecdotes which
illustrate the service Bacon rendered to science and
to common sense.
An anatomist at Venice, dissecting a human body
sent for a local philosopher, and pointed out to him
that all the nerves centred in the brain and ran
thence throughout the body, with one nerve to the
heart. " It certainly seems so," said the philosopher,
" and I would have believed it if Aristotle had not
said that they all centred in the heart : " but that
ended discussion.
Or again, a scientific monk (like Roger Bacon or
the Austrian Mendel) discovered spots on the sun
and called the attention of his superior. " Your
instruments or your observation," was the answer,
" are at fault : I have looked it up in Aristotle :
there are no spots in him."
Or once more from the opposite point of view. A
Baconian-minded man of science invented the tele-
FRANCIS BACON 88
scope, and called a philosopher to admire it. " You
will find it all in Aristotle," was the chilly answer.
"He says that if one descends a well, one can see the
stars at noonday. There is your telescope in germ :
anyone can apply the hint, and invent a telescope
after that." All this is amusing enough, and it
shows Bacon's good sense that he protested and
restored examination of phenomena and experiment ;
but it does not explain his fame.
I said he was an inferior Aristotle himself : an
Aristotle much damaged : he was. Aristotle before
him and against Plato recommended experiment and
relied on experience, and deprecated abstract and a
priori mathematical thought and Plato's indifference
to experiment. Aristotle, like Bacon, thought there
was too much " permissio intellectus " : too much
indulgence of the imagination in science. Aristotle,
like Bacon, recommended " abnegatio notionum "
a pruning of the imagination.
Again, Aristotle like Bacon thought something
might be done by careful training and habit to make
men equal to one another : to provide equality of
opportunity : only he was never so foolish as to
imagine that any new system of training would make
every man the equal of every other man, and able
to discover all that civilization would like to have,
by merely mechanical industry. This was one of
Bacon's mad fancies going far beyond the optimism
of Aristotle, even as Aristotle's democratic optimism
went far beyond the aristocracy of nature in which
Plato believed.
Alchemy was another of Bacon's fancies, in which
he parts company not with Plato only but with
Aristotle also. Bacon thought it was possible to
discover all the simple qualities assumed to be few
in number of which matter is composed, and then
to superinduce them singly or in combination at
pleasure. Thus gold would be analysed by experi-
ment into its simple properties, and these then would
84 FRANCIS BACON
be superinduced on lead or silver, and you would
have all the qualities of gold. " Whether you call
it gold I care not," adds Bacon graciously. He was
not only broadly an alchemist, but also within limits
an astrologer ; and herein for once he comes nearer
to Plato than to Aristotle.
Aristotle again surpassed other Greek philosophers,
especially Plato, in terminology : in careful definition ;
and Bacon's terminology, if not very accurate and
careful, makes up for this lack, by effectiveness and
vigour. Each man in his own way was a coiner of
technical terms.
In short though Aristotle preferred natural history
to physics, so that Darwin turns to Aristotle with
enthusiastic eulogy and puts him far above Cuvier
or Linnseus, while physicists albeit in a minor key
and with recognition much more reserved pay their
respects to Bacon (while the mathematicians of course
rank Plato far higher than either), yet Bacon and
Aristotle had much in common, so that one may
almost say that wherever Bacon has really anything
to say, it is in Aristotle's spirit, though illuminated it
may be with later and fuller knowledge, and whenever
he is original and revolutionary, he is wrong.
Neither of them trusted mathematics as Plato
trusted them, and neither of them therefore did
anything for astronomy. Aristotle diverted Greek
science to natural history, biology and physiology ;
and Europe waited seven centuries with the excep-
tion of Archimedes for Galileo, Kepler and Coper-
nicus.
And when they came they were of no account in
Bacon's eyes. He did not accept their discoveries :
he rejected the diurnal revolution of the earth, no
less than the heliocentric system. That is nothing
to his discredit, as a statesman or a philosopher. There
is no one perhaps among my readers at this minute
who accepts the system of Copernicus, and rejects
the geocentric system, except as a matter of faith ;
FRANCIS BACON 85
but it is something against him as a loud-voiced and
professed reformer in physical science.
Again, he lived as a contemporary of Harvey, and
he knows nothing of the circulation of the blood. No
wonder that Harvey wrote : " The Lord Chancellor's
science is the science of a Lord Chancellor."
And yet it would be unfair to Bacon to suppose
that science owes him absolutely nothing, except
that truth which is so much like a truism ; the truth
that experiment not faith, experience not authority,
must be its method.
Something more than that may be said for him.
The French have even said that he invented the first
thermometer : an air thermometer. Apparently in
fact he invented nothing, but he understood some
things that were then new and anticipated even some
ideas that are still new ; in particular his ideas on
heat, to which I will return in a few minutes, illustrate
the strength of his mind, as well as the weakness of
his system, and deserve a moment's thought.
Bacon thought imagination fatally active in science.
He deplored the loose rein given it usually : the per-
missio intellectus. He demanded instead the empty-
ing of his imagination by the man of science, the
abnegatio notionum as the first condition of progress.
Then by this self-denying ordinance and by patient
observation, progress would be made by any student
of science and every student, and all the journeymen-
workers of science would become prophets.
It was only necessary to discover the few simpler
qualities and properties which underlie all matter,
underlie, that is, its grosser and visible qualities, and
then by a process of elimination each of these could
be in turn put aside (when it manifestly did not
concern the problem under investigation), until no-
thing remained but the property under investigation
with one other ; then obviously here was the essence
of the property investigated : here was the " forma "
as Bacon called it.
86 FRANCIS BACON
Much controversy ranges round Bacon's forma ;
even his champions criticize it and say he overlooked
the plurality of causes, for the property investigated
may be produced by different causes. There is no
guarantee that the cause thus discovered is the only
cause, the essence, the true cause.
Not so, retort the unbelievers : Bacon never over-
looked the plurality of causes : he never came so
near to science as to imagine a plurality of causes.
He dwelt in a shadowland of mediaeval mysticism and
he talked of " essence " and " forma " like any monk
or any Aristotelian : his " forma " is not defective
science, it is not science at all. Nature is not simple ;
and no man had discovered in Bacon's day, no man
has yet discovered, those few simple properties into
which all her complexity can be reduced : no man
perhaps ever will discover them. However it be,
Bacon himself recognized soon that he could not
discover these simple elements of nature, as he
imagined ; and now comes in both the proof of the
vanity of his method, and of the keenness of his
mind.
Finding that he could not proceed without more
knowledge of what are the simple properties of matter
and of its grosser aspects, he proceeded to eliminate
these in succession. He recants for a moment and
abjures the Baconian system. Just for the time, he
says, just to illustrate what discoveries can be made,
let us anticipate a little, and allow ourself for once
the use of imagination and theory : the liberty of
forming notions. And accordingly he brings together
various phenomena illustrating heat, and by reject-
ing in succession such conditions as did not occur in
all the phenomena, he ends up with the very modern
conclusion that heat is a mode of motion. Similarly
he approached at least, if at some distance, the idea
of gravitation : not as near as some of the men he
attacks, perhaps, but nearer than others. He made
suggestions partly right, partly wrong, about the
FRANCIS BACON 87
weight of the air on a mountain top, on the earth's
surface, and in a coal mine ; it is least on the mountain
and most in the mine, he thinks. He even allowed
himself for a moment what he calls "the mad
dream " of suspecting, that the light which we see
from the stars is not their immediate and present
light but has taken some time in reaching us, and
dates back a longer or shorter period. To-day
astronomers can teU us that the rays we see started
in some cases before the birth of Christ only to reach
us now ; in some cases in the days of Edward I,
in others in the time of Henry VIII, and so on.
But Bacon for a moment on the line of truly scien-
tific speculation repented the next moment and
abandoned his " mad dream," and once more
wrote down his " science " as the science of a brilliant
amateur.
He succeeded by the same sound but un-Baconian
method of imagination in analysing colour success-
fully. This, with heat, forms part of that vindemiatio
prima, or " first vintage," which is the only vintage
worth tasting in Bacon's cellar ; and this vintage
was, by his own admission, contraband. It was
smuggled in illicitly. It was only there to show
what he could do with a complete outfit of definitions
and facts, when without definitions and sufficient
facts, with the unlawful light of imagination only,
he could do so much.
But to-day the men of science Baconians or non-
Baconians (in the sense of appreciating Bacon's
science or disparaging it) accept the unlawful light
of the imagination as the only fruitful light.
Kepler made nineteen guesses before he solved
the motion of the planets and their ellipses : he could
have found nothing without guessing. It is the
Keplers among us who find things : not patient fools
with the patent Baconian tables of facts and definitions.
Copernicus' discovery was not verified by experi-
ment till after his death : it rested on his intellect
88 FRANCIS BACON
and imagination. Harvey discovered the circulation
of the blood by the arguments of analogy, and by the
arguments of final causes, and the arguments of the
imagination. The valves of the veins reminded him
of other valves of hydraulic engines, and of what use
could they be, he asked himself, unless for purposes
of circulation.
Darwin was led to his doctrine of evolution by
his imagination : by the analogies he saw in embryo-
logy between man and the lower animals.
Adams and Leverrier discovered Neptune this is
the stock illustration which may be quoted equally
against Bacon and against Plato, to illustrate equally
the folly of Bacon in resting on experiment alone,
and of Plato in seeming wholly to reject experiment
Adams and Leverrier discovered Neptune by strict
reasoning from observed facts. They saw the per-
turbations of the satellites of Uranus and they trusted
their reason and their experience of Nature, to the
extent of insisting that there must be a cause thereof ;
and the only cause they could imagine was an unseen
planet at a certain point in space. They placed the
planet there and they called it Neptune. They did
not wait for telescopes before reasoning, trusting and
imagining ; they neither distrusted their imagination
as Bacon bade them nor distrusted Nature as
Plato exhorted ; they faced boldly the weakness of
the one, the arbitrariness and license of the other.
Some years passed before telescopes revealed the
assumed Neptune. Then, at last, Bacon and Plato
with their opposite incredulities and distrusts, were
refuted ; and at one and the same time the strength
of human reasoning was indicated in spite of Bacon,
the law and order of Nature, in spite of Plato. Bacon
believed in Nature, but not in reason : he was never
a philosopher. Plato in reason (he was so wholly a
philosopher) but not in nature : he was not an
adequate naturalist. Adams and Leverrier did some-
thing to reconcile science with philosophy.
FRANCIS BACON 89
Well, then, if this be all, how explain Bacon's fame :
how account for it ? I do not think I have accounted
for it yet : I am not sure that I can, but I humbly
venture to suggest a further explanation.
Physicists are an unlettered race : illiteracy is the
badge of all their tribe, but the greatest science and
art of all arts and sciences is the art and science of
speech. The orator, the writer, the man who com-
mands a fluent tongue and the vocal expression of a
vivid imagination, the man with a style equal to his
thought and knowledge, is the greatest force not on
the earth but in the world of thought and know-
ledge, or at least of popular thought and knowledge ;
in the world of popular science and literature, and
especially of science ; for among the dumb the orator
is king.
And hence the fame of Bacon : he was a noted
physicist like Lord Kelvin, but he was what Lord
Kelvin could never be a magnificent man of letters :
he was a first-rate stylist. (Something of the same
kind of fame might have been won, had his life been
longer, by the late Professor Henry Drummond.)
He had a splendid gift for phrase-making. Lord
Beaconsfield nor Matthew Arnold had it more ; and
he had a marvellous knack for analogies : vivid pic-
turesque metaphors ; and he had a wonderful com-
mand of the greatest monuments of literature the
Bible and Classical Mythology. No one loves a
Biblical quotation more than Bacon ; and to read
Bacon is a liberal education in classical mythology.
His aphorisms accordingly are sententious, pictur-
esque, Biblical, classical, in their form ; and in their
matter full of striking analogy and metaphors.
Bacon has always an analogy and metaphor ready
by which to prejudice a question fatally, and often
beyond revision, for those who are influenced by
metaphors. For example, knowledge which does not
lead to inventions and the amelioration of life
knowledge like Henry Smith's mathematical dis-
90 FRANCIS BACON
coveries, of which their author boasted that not a
penny could be extracted from them by hook or by
crook is brushed aside by Bacon with the bold
metaphor, that it is as empty as a childless marriage :
the metaphor if far fetched is characteristic of the
fertility of his imagination, and of the limits of his
interests. He is of the same spirit as Comte the
Frenchman, who deprecated Sidereal astronomy : or
as the historic (?) Socrates of Xenophon, who also
was most fertile in analogy and most limited in
scientific interest.
Now simile, metaphor and analogy are the very
life of religion and philosophy, and literature, and
even of science ; without analogy and metaphor we
cannot make a step in religion : not many steps in
science. We humanize our religion or it is no reli-
gion ; we humanize our science, or there is barely
any science left. Christianity is an anthropomorphic
religion ; and without it what is religion ?
If we could not talk of " energy," and of " purpose,"
of " attractions " and " repulsions," and " abhorrence"
in nature, and the like, what would become of
Science ?
And he who like Bacon is a master of metaphor
and analogy and literary allusion and sententious
phrase, is the master of the literary mind and of the
reading public.
Here are some, a few, of his more striking aphorisms.
Time, like a river, brings down to us the lighter
stuff : the windier matter ; it buries beneath its
waves solid and more serious things.
Princes are like heavenly bodies : they have much
veneration but no rest.
Philosophers are like ants : they collect facts with
blind industry ; or they are like spiders, they spin
webs out of themselves ; they ought rather to be like
bees : they should both collect and arrange their
material and organize it for themselves into a new
whole.
FRANCIS BACON 91
Men are too impatient in the race of science for
positive results : they stop like Atalanta to pick up
apples, and they lose their race.
If all the intellects and industries of all the ages
could be brought together, one could not make much
progress in science by guesswork and hypotheses.
The imagination needs weights to keep it quiet,
rather than wings to fly.
These last aphorisms show Bacon in a characteristic,
but not a scientific mood. He wants discovery reached
gradually, the ladder ascended rung by rung ; the
highest generalization reached from intermediate
conclusions : themselves traced down till they rest
on individual instances. He did not think that a
man ought to put up an hypothesis of his imagination
and then deduce its consequences, and test those
consequences by experiment of fact. He did not
approve of deduction. He hated the Greek syllogism,
which is merely a statement of man's habit of general-
izing from particulars and then testing his generaliza-
tion by applying it to other particulars.
Again : To inquire into final causes is to treat your
mind like the daughter whom you put into a nunnery :
she is dead to you and the world ; even so is he who
dedicates himself to final causes.
I am but the bugler of Science : I summon others.
(Bacon was the bell that rang men to worship in
the chapel of Science ; and all the more, that he was
hardly inside the chapel himself, at the best a wor-
shipper in the old-fashioned choir; that is, in the
benches very far from the shrine ; the choir sings
lustily and sleeps during the sermon.)
The human intellect is like a broken mirror; it
distorts what it reflects. It must be cleaned and
polished. It must be protected against its fancies and
fallacies, and these fancies are fourfold.
(1) The idola fori : the fallacies and weaknesses
inherent to mankind.
(2) The idola specus : the idols of the cave ; the
92 FRANCIS BACON
special weaknesses of the individual thinker ; his
idiosyncrasies.
(3) The idola linguae : the pitfalls and traps and
ambiguities of language.
(4) The idola theatri : the idols of the theatre ;
the fallacies of convention and authority.
These four idola are, perhaps, the best-known
passages in the Noifum Organon. They are stated
without much accuracy : Bacon never was accurate.
They are just vivid and picturesque : obvious when
pointed out ; the expression of a few minutes, reflec-
tion, but so stated as to catch the memory.
Bacon delighted in scriptural quotation : some of
his best aphorisms are of this order, for example :
As with the Kingdom of Heaven, so also the
kingdom of Science cometh not with observation but
imperceptibly (by small gradations, by gradual accre-
tions).
No one can enter the kingdom of Science any
more than the Kingdom of Heaven, except as a little
child. (The imagination must be restrained : nature
must be studied humbly, without preconceptions.)
Others of Bacon's happiest aphorisms are also on
religion :
" Why seek ye the living among the dead ? " he
said to those who went to the Book of Genesis for
their science, or to the Book of Job for their religion :
" hence will come only a fantastic science and an
heretical religion."
(The Old Testament lives, that is : but not as the
receptacle of the laws of dead matter.)
" * The heavens declare the glory of God ' ; but
it is never written the heavens declare the will of
God."
The aphorism seems to hit equally the astrologers
though Bacon believed in astrology, within limits
and the numerous thinkers, ancient and modern,
who would find God's will and character in Nature,
rather than in man.
FRANCIS BACON 93
People were twisting their science in Bacon's time
to suit a fancied orthodoxy : Bacon has no mercy
for them : "they offer to the Lord of Truth the unclean
homage of a lie."
" Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament,
adversity of the New."
Can the essential spirit the forma of Christianity
on the one side and Judaism on the other be better
expressed ?
Bacon, like Cicero, had an intense faith in well-
turned sentences, to heal the miseries of life, to
extricate a man from a tight place.
He did not extricate himself by his scriptural
quotations though he tried one manfully, when writing
from prison to the House of Lords to ask them to
intercede with the King for him : " You shall do a
work of charity : you shall do me good : my creditors
good, and, it may be, you shall do posterity good, if
out of this carcass of dead and rotten greatness, as
out of Samson's lion, there may yet be honey gathered
for the use of future times " (p. 159, Church). He did
not restore his fallen fortunes thus. But, at least, he
may have been consoled I imagine that he was by
the reflection that Christianity did not attach the
old value to success, which Paganism had attached
thereto.
Hence I think was Bacon's fame : from his literary
skill ; for very few since in his line and for the
moment his line, as we see him, was science have
been like him. Bacon and Tyndall, Darwin and
Huxley are, perhaps, the four exceptions ; the four
great men of science with great literary gifts : the
four exceptions that prove the rule that a man does
not become famous by science : rarely even by
real science : never by the amateurish science of a
Bacon .
I have said nothing yet of Bacon's life, of his
statesmanship, of his politics, of his religion, of his
private character.
94 FRANCIS BACON
These, I presume, are largely outside his fame, and
require shorter notice.
He had a hard time struggling into office against
the prejudice of lawyers and statesmen ; he was the
amateur in law, as in science, and the lawyers hated
him. He was too great a man to be a typical lawyer.
Sir Edward Coke detested him, and he detested Sir
Edward. There were reasons beside the reasons
which divide the lawyer from the many-sided man.
Each wanted to marry the same rich widow : Sir
Edward succeeded. Bacon had to put up with an
Alderman's daughter, and console himself by writing
that she was " a handsome maiden to my liking.'*
He had a hard life as I have said. He supported
Essex with Elizabeth, at the beginning of his life
and used his scriptural quotations with more freedom
than propriety : " Martha, Martha ! " he wrote to
Essex, " thou art careful about many things, but one
thing is needful " and the one thing turns out to be
to flatter the Queen. Then he was tempted, and
tempted successfully, to desert and attack Essex and
help to ruin him. Then he became a hanger-on
instead of Salisbury his kinsman (he always hung
on desperately to any kinsman who could advance
him). Then in James' days he hung on to Bucking-
ham. A hard time he had, and a harder fall. He
was very fond of finery and display. He loved func-
tions and feasts. At his marriage he spent a large
portion of his wife's dower in purple suits for himself
and her, in cloth of silver and cloth of gold ; and
when he expected afterwards another office, he put
his servants into new livery.
Accordingly, he was always pushed for money;
and accordingly he accepted, and allowed his servants
to accept, gifts of money from suitors in the courts,
who had cases before him.
Bacon was the academic man with the academic
mind : he disliked and scorned narrow rules, moral
fanaticism, Sunday-school maxims. Was he a narrow
FRANCIS BACON 95
sectarian, a naked cynic, or a monk on a pillar that
he should mortify his flesh for a moral idea ? He
was a man of the world, not an ascetic, or a moral
crusader. He was great enough and strong-minded
enough to take the money which he needed and
give the decisions, independently of the money ; the
disappointed suitors could not ask it back : the
others would not.
The system worked for a time till Parliament, sore
and jealous of the Royal authority and the authority
of Ministers, ordered an inquiry. The facts were
proved (that money had been paid, not that decisions
against justice had been bought). The distinction
did not appeal, does not appeal to-day, to the popular
mind, to the popular instinct, and Bacon fell from
office, and never recovered it, though he was pardoned.
He acknowledged his guilt with a fullness and a
humility of confession, which offends his biographer,
Dean Church ; perhaps because it recalls too closely
the submission he had made in earlier life to Salisbury
and to Buckingham ; because it looks foolish, his
habitual time-serving, his " whispering breath and
bated humbleness " in the presence of Kings and the
favourites of Kings. Dean Church thinks he should
have made a fight for it : he had not altered his
judgments for money : he had only taken the money :
or, in many cases, only allowed his servants to take
money (they could get new liveries then free of cost
to him).
I cannot help doubting a little here : I think Dean
Church is rather hard on Bacon. I think he was a
better Christian, perhaps, than quite appears ; although
he was not a Christian after present-day fashion ; and
therefore with the present-day obsession, that our
Christianity is Christianity, we question his Christ-
ianity. We say it was exposure, not crime, of which
Bacon was ashamed. Of course : and so it is with
all of us ; it is the exposure which makes the crime
apparent to us. It is the feeling that the grocer says,
96 FRANCIS BACON
' There goes Lord Bacon, who took bribes, just as
I sand my sugar; " and worse, that the poor gardener
says, "There goes Lord Bacon, who sold himself as
even I have never done.'* It is this, I think, that
makes men realize the vanity of wealth and power,
and the safety there might have been on the forgotten
rock of honesty. A Dutchman may occasionally
feel, " There go I save for the grace of God," when
he sees a criminal ; a judge of similar mind may
feel that he is worse than the criminal he condemns.
But such introspection becomes morbid, and is not
the rule. It is the revelation which comes with a
passion of shame which shows us what we are ; and
a passion of shame comes most easily, and to most
men comes only, with exposure. The first five minutes
after exposure probably taught Bacon more than
twenty years without it and made him a better man,
less superficial and more lovable. Then he realized
what he had done : all its fatality ; all its futility ;
all its deadly danger, its pernicious precedent. He
realized then perhaps as other men of genius too
late, the soundness of Sunday-school maxims, of
stiffnecked honesty, of narrow morality, of fanatic
Puritanism, in a world which is not made of philoso-
phers or for philosophers : in a world where no virtue
is safe which is not enthusiastic : no heart pure
which is not passionate. And realizing this he
repented honestly in sackcloth and ashes : " his
stately purple he abhorred, his cancellarian throne."
He was not a Christian of to-day's brand. He was
not a humanitarian. He was still less a Socialist and
an egalitarian. To us Christianity is so closely bound
up with democracy, is so obviously the basis for all
the best and most characteristic modern legislation ;
is so conspicuously the basis, and the only sound
basis, for social betterment, that it is hard to conceive
perhaps a good Christian especially a good Christian
who believed like Bacon in amazing possibilities of
science and discovery and in the amelioration of
FRANCIS BACON 97
life it is hard to conceive of such a man spending
his life as a court favourite and a time-server, bowing
and scraping before Kings, carefully guarding their
prerogative and smoothing their way, carefully limit-
ing and restricting, and jealously heading off the
advancing tide of popular government, and the
authority of the House of Commons.
All this Bacon did. He was, as he says, a perfect
and peremptory royalist. He deeply distrusted popu-
lar government. He is full of the usual classical talk
of the jealousy and malignity of the mob ; which,
however, seems only to mean (if freely translated)
the desperate wickedness of human nature. The
mob is the people and the people are ourselves, our
wicked selves ; if so, it cannot be so terribly unchris-
tian to talk thus ; it seems sometimes almost an echo
of the Scriptures and St. Paul.
At any rate it is to Bacon's credit, infinitely to his
credit, that living so close to monarchy, seeing all
its seamy side, serving successively the most jealous
woman in Europe, and the most learned fool in
Christendom, he stuck to it as a loyal statesman,
and smoothed its fall, and conserved its powers, as
long as he could, and resisted the onrush of what
he felt with all other academic thinkers would be
only the reign of incompetence and mediocrity and
ignorance and arrogance. Young men whilst they
are in Universities, old men who are still only aca-
demic, always think like this. They believe in one
divine right only, the divine right of intellect ; and
that is even more hostile to democracy than to the
divine right of kings ; because a king may have the
divine right of intellect, the people c&nnot have ; it is
silly to count heads, they say, and not what is in
them. We are out of sympathy with this academic
mood to-day, because we are living in a new enthus-
iasm of Christianity, of practical Christianity I mean
(whatever difficulties may attach to the Christian
dogmas), and practical Christianity seems to most of
M.M. 7
98 FRANCIS BACON
us to involve democracy. Bacon was a Christian,
and I believe a sincere Christian, but he did not live
in an age when practical Christianity was paramount.
His Christanity was a matter of private life, not of
politics and social betterment : it made him penitent
when he sinned : it did not alter his peremptory
royalism.
His conduct at his fall to return now to the
chronology of his life it seems to me, became him
and redeemed him ; and he seems a finer figure in
disgrace than ever before when he blacked the boots
of Buckingham, and fawned upon Elizabeth and
James.
And now we have reached the last scene. His
death I may remind you was pathetic, symbolical
and characteristic. He got out of his coach, bought
a fowl from a market-woman's stall and stuffed it
with snow, to try the properties of snow as cold
storage. The fowl may have lasted longer for the
experiment : the experimenter did not. The hot
amateur of science caught a chill, and lost his life
in an amateurish experiment.
Incidentally, you have had glimpses of Bacon's
politics, character and religion : the only interesting
things about a man.
If I have not said anything about his statesmanship
it is not because it was not greater than his science
or his law ; but because it is neither so interesting
now, nor so connected with his fame.
Bacon was the academic thinker and the amateur :
too broad to be a lawyer or a man of science. Natur-
ally he was the better statesman for this breadth.
He had a hand in the Union of Scotland : its success
was largely his work.
Bacon, perhaps, thought little of his services to
England and Scotland in that union ; yet the union
though foolish federalists may minimize it to-day
was one of his most solid services to Great Britain ;
blessing each country ; tempering English recklessness
FRANCIS BACON 9d
and wastefulness with Scotch thrift and prudence ;
modifying Scotch meanness and narrowness with
English liberality and generosity. Thanks to Bacon,
England has been governed since largely by Scotch-
men of intellectual keenness and moral grit ; and
Scotland has been saved from stewing in its own thin
juice of hard-headed prudence ; and " The House
with the Green Shutters " in which a Scotchman has
gibbeted his country has been the record, not of
Scotch life on the whole and everywhere, but only
an episodic sketch, a sporadic picture of the worst
side of Scotland.
Bacon did not succeed in science ; and in states-
manship in which his judgment, tact and genius
deserved success, he failed utterly at the last through
his own criminal folly. It all might not have mat-
tered much had he succeeded as a man, in private
life. In many men the happiness and the virtues
of private life condone their public failure. But
Bacon deliberately cut himself adrift from such chance
of condonation. Public life is so hard an art and
success in it a goal at once so attractive and so
difficult albeit dubious in value that no man is
heavily judged because he sacrifices private life and
private happiness to such success : but at least he
foregoes the name of wise.
And Bacon had no wisdom, no philosophy : he
set himself deliberately to build his house upon the
sand : upon the sand, first of all, of a mercenary and
heartless marriage. Let it be counted a redeeming
feature of his folly that he thought the aldermanic
bride at least a handsome maiden. Other men as
clever as Bacon have married wives for their looks
or for their ankles ; and some of them have prospered
better than they deserved, and have found that a
graceful " understanding " so to speak does not
preclude, and often has included, more solid graces
in the upper parts, of heart and head.
Bacon had neither the luck nor the desert even of
100 FRANCIS BACON
such luck, as often comes to men who have followed
in marriage only the giddy pleasure of the eye : he
did not value even at their own poor worth the giddy
pleasure of the eye. He married coolly, prudently
and fatally for money ; and, so far as marriage was
concerned, lived unhappily ever after, "he loved
not to be with his mate" we read.
Common men the vulgar sort, as Bacon calls us
marry for love and are often much deceived ; but
their state of mind even when it is illusory is its
own reward. Bacon was incapable of such illusions.
" It seemeth to be reserved," so he writes of the
illusion of love in his essays " it seemeth to be
reserved for martial men " : happy soldiers and wise
soldiers.
It is sometimes supposed that a judicious injudicious
marriage was a bond, nor yet the only bond between
Bacon and Shakespeare (I am almost approaching at
length a topic to some of you perhaps outweighing in
importance all the topics of this lecture). I am not
aware that Shakespeare's marriage was judiciously
mercenary : if it was not judicious in that sense, it
was not really so injudicious, however foolish or
mistaken or tragically vulgar in its origin. There is
a time for everything, even for prudence : it is in
making investments and in choosing houses. To treat
a wife as an investment or a house, as a means of
cutting coupons and of hanging up a hat, is the most
imprudent thing a man can do. It is to turn a virtue
to the wrong uses and to use it at the wrong turns :
it is as though a man should live among the Esquimaux
because it is so cheap ; or among cannibals because
there are no funeral expenses. Or conversely, it is
as though a man should reject promotion to Heaven
(or to a University professorship) for a stockbroker's
office, because the emoluments of the latter are
presumably greater than a University or Heaven will
provide. After all, I mean, a large part of life is
atmosphere : now a large part of atmosphere is wife.
FRANCIS BACON 101
I have said very little to make you like Bacon,
and a good deal to make you hate him. But we
like men often for their foibles ; their angles endear
them, as Mr. Goldwin Smith and others have said.
Bacon had his foibles : listen, and you will come
to like him. He would not go to bed at night. He
sat up reading late in bed, and even when the light
was out he courted epigrams instead of sleep, and
came down proportionately late next day, and in
direct ratio aggravated his mother (who was not
Queen Elizabeth I hasten to add, though when I
was in Chicago once and took up a Sunday paper,
I read therein not only of the fall of the French
demagogue, Mons. Briand, and of the majestic and
soul-stirring eloquence of the similar English dema-
gogue, Mr. Churchill, but as though this were not
enough excitement for the day of rest I read also
that an American Professor had found a cipher,
and was digging up the mud of the river Wye at
Chepstow and was going to show once for all beyond
a doubt, as clear as Wye mud could make it, that
Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth and the
author of Shakespeare).
And so I come round again to the Bacon-Shakespeare
question. Let us get rid of it summarily. I have
already quoted the crucial text as Bacon would say :
the damning evidence. " If anyone," said Mr.
Goldwin Smith, " really can fancy for a moment
that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, let him read the essay
on love : ' You may observe that amongst all the
great and worthy persons (whereof the memory
remaineth either ancient or recent) there is not one
that hath been transported to the mad degree of
love ; which shows that great spirits and great
business do keep out this weak passion. ... I
know not how but martial men are given to love :
I think it is but as they are given to wine.' And
let him afterwards read Romeo and Juliet. That is
evidence enough for me : I want no more." If I
102 FRANCIS BACON
again, the disciple only of Mr. Goldwin Smith,
did, I would add, what I have indeed already said,
there is no continuous eloquence in Bacon. There
are no passages of English, strong, simple, sound,
inspired, that might have been written yesterday for
their living passion, such as occur often in Shake-
speare : no picture of life as a stage : no picture of
life's vanity, its unsubstantial pageant : only fine
aphorisms, brilliant analogies : sober history, or
shrewd reflections. There are purple passages in
Shakespeare ever memorable. The most purple pas-
sage that occurs to me in connection with Bacon was
his passage up the aisle of Marylebone Chapel, recorded
for us by some spiteful spectators of his marriage,
who apparently designed to gibbet him that day
for a " pompous ass."
He was more than that ; but he had no affinity,
that I can see, with Shakespeare. Read his essay
on love, or his only acknowledged poem. I am not
prejudiced against this Baconian-Shakespeare theory.
If there were any evidence that Shakespeare's poems
had speedily become famous : if there were further
evidence that contemporaries admitted a mystery
about the authorship, and hinted of Bacon, it would
supply at once a clue to the mystery of Bacon's fame :
all would be clear. There is no such evidence.
The theory arose last century, about 1840, with a
clergyman named Smith I think ; arose apparently
in order to harmonize the fate of great literatures
(Bacon disapproves of final causes ; but they are
irresistibly alluring) : the higher critics had impeached
the authorship of Old and New Testament. Wolf
and others had decried a personal Homer. It did
not seem fair that the only other monument of
literature of surpassing value should have an undis-
puted authorship. So Bacon was exhumed to dis-
credit the authorship of Shakespeare. But it will
not do. It would be more credible and more con-
sistent with the other higher critics of the Bible and
FRANCIS BACON 103
of Homer, more consonant with the spirit which
denies, to suggest a joint stock company for Shake-
speare ; and Bacon might be taken for a partner
into the firm, and the authorship of the passages, for
example, supposed to show amateurish knowledge
of the law, might be assigned to him.
To return to his foibles so long forgotten, he had,
like Cicero and Erasmus, a very sharp tongue. He
was detested by statesmen and lawyers as an academic
wit who could not curb his tongue, who made sharp
speeches about them. This foible cost him, or lost
him the confidence and trust of lawyers and states-
men : it should endear him to a University : it
should condone for him even the sharp speeches
against the Universities themselves and the lecturers
there. One jest you will find it is of course only a
translation from the Greek which strikes me as
rather a good description of a University lecture-room :
4 The words of an old man with nothing to do to
young men who know nothing." Or again, he talked
of Copernicus and his school " as the carmen who
drive the earth about " : a gibe which is almost a
translation from Cicero on Caesar.
Bacon liked patent medicines. (This foible some-
times annoys me, but some of you will like it.) He
was full of superstitious fancies about the spirit in
our members ; and accordingly (we are told) " he
drank a maceration of rhubarb, infused into a draught
of white wine and beer, and mingled together for the
space of half an hour, once in six or seven days
immediately before his meal whether dinner or
supper," because (he said) " it dries the body yet
not too much : it takes off the frothy humours but
not the spirits."
Also he took every morning for thirty years three
grains of nitre in thin warm broth.
Surely by this time it has become clear to mathe-
matical demonstration that Bacon would have been
enthusiastic about Jaeger flannel, had he lived to
104 FRANCIS BACON
enjoy it. Poor man, this crowning happiness was
denied him : but on occasion he wore instead against
his skin the heart of an ape. This (he says) being
worn near the heart increaseth audacity, and near
the head increaseth wit. We may presume that
sometimes he placed it beneath his purple waistcoat
and his suit of cloth of silver and cloth of gold ;
but that more often he wore it in his hat, and talked
through it : if he were alive to-day he would be using
monkey-glands : it would not be any sillier or any
less silly.
So much for his foibles.
But a better way perhaps of realizing to yourselves
Bacon's temperament and habit of mind is to compare
him with the similar scientific optimists of to-day or
yesterday.
There is Professor Loeb for example : not the real
Professor Loeb probably, but Professor Loeb at
least as he appears to the newspaper reporter. Let
me tell you a little episode as it " occurred " to me.
It was perhaps ten years ago that one morning I
read in the newspapers that Professor Loeb saw his
way to abolishing death. I remember well with
what dismay Professor Goldwin Smith a few days
later referred to this " menace " as he called it : it
" had added a new terror to life," he said. I also
was, if not dismayed, much startled. I went to
College prayers with some misgivings : I hardly
expected to find the students there ; that is, if they
had seen the papers. Some apparently had not, and
prayers were safe for one day longer at least. But
after prayers I hurried off down town to arrest, if
possible, the recent payment of a life insurance
premium. I found to my surprise no signs of unusual
excitement in the streets ; men going about their
usual vocations and avocations as if their horizon were
unaltered. Could it be that Toronto did not read the
papers as religiously as I do ? Even the insurance agent,
who should have been depressed to. desperation, was
FRANCIS BACON 105
tranquil, even cheerful : ready to return my premium
but dubious of my sanity and of Professor Loeb's.
Until gradually it dawned upon my over-literal mind,
that I had simply been a victim of two of the leading
spirits of our age : of faith in science for these are
the ages of Faith nothing being changed but its
orientation, the credulity the same, the object only
different the victim of faith in science, and of the
yellow press.
And here is a passage from a characteristic magazine
article describing the visions of another present-day
Bacon Mr. Edison. A Bacon, I hasten to add, in
respect of his hopefulness : far more scientific, quite
un-Baconian, most full of imagination in his methods.
14 Mr. Edison believes," writes the reviewer, " that
a way will soon be discovered to manufacture gold,
because the making of gold is a question only of
the proper combination and treatment of matter."
(There is the very voice of Bacon I may remind you.)
Then the inventor came to aeroplanes ; and the
reporter continues : " He would apply the bumblebee
principle to aeroplanes." (Bacon too paid homage
to the bumblebee principle remember.) " And new
aeroplanes on the bumblebee principle will carry
passengers a hundred miles an hour." " All furniture
(too) will soon be made of steel : and all buildings
of reinforced concrete "... cloth buttons thread
tissue paper and pasteboard will be fed into one
end of a machine, and suits of clothing packed in
boxes will come out the other end. Invention is in
its infancy. . . . The coming farmer will be a man
on a seat beside a push button and some levers.
* The submarine," again, " may be so formidable
that it will not be worth while to build battleships :
all England will some day stop (work) at the sound
of one command, and that the command of a working
man. . . . There will be no poverty in the world a
hundred years from now : why should there be ?
Practically everything we know to-day that is worth
106 FRANCIS BACON
while, we have learned in the last hundred years ;
and we have only just begun to use our brains.
There will be some big experiments tried in govern-
ment within the next fifty years."
I have read from Mr. Edison's visions because so
much of it all of it except the humanitarian democ-
racy in it illustrates Bacon.
Yet the very motto on your cards, the motto from
Bacon for this lecture, was chosen in Bacon's lifetime,
or soon after, by a philosopher, a man of the other
temperament, and handled in the opposite way :
see Religio Medici. " Of those three great inventions
in Germany, there are two, Printing and Gunpowder,
which are not without their incommodities. It is
not a melancholy wish of my own, but the desire of
better heads, that there were a general Synod not
to unite the incompatible differences of Religion, but
for the benefit of learning to reduce it as it lay at
first, in a few and solid authors, and to condemn to
the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies,
begotten only to distract and amuse the weaker
judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade
and mystery of typographers."
Dr. Thomas Browne of Norwich, a greater man of
science than Bacon, and also a much deeper thinker
on man and human nature, selected two of Bacon's
boasts for his doubts and questionings. He did not
cavil at the compass I believe, but of the printing
press and of gunpowder he complained in the same
vein and with the same reason that Plato mutatis
mutandis complained of the invention of writing.
I mean that these philosophers who are thinking
more of the victories of the human mind over itself
than over nature, complain that each fresh victory
over nature leaves it as weak, sometimes almost
more weak, against itself, than it was before. Writing
destroyed the human memory : printing and type-
writing have destroyed writing. Each fresh military
invention has been declared in turn to destroy the
FRANCIS BACON 107
use of courage, and the advantage which this personal
quality used to give : and it seems to be true that
modern military science since the Great War is
really destroying not courage of course but its
usefulness in war.
But Bacon is of the opposite school. Here is a
religious man his religion was I think one of the
soundest things about him who, with all his devout
faith, was yet of opinion that no star of the Eastern
heavens or the Western, no nor even that spiritual
sense of justice, which was declared by the Greek
to be passing the marvel of the Eastern or the Western
star, that sense of justice which is believed by the
Christian to have grown and grown in the world,
with the coming of the Star in the East ; who with
all his faith was yet of opinion that neither star nor
justice, neither church nor empire, has done as much
for man as printing, gunpowder and the compass.
And the other temperament the philosopher's
listens incredulously because these practical dis-
coveries, which Bacon lauds so highly, are so painfully
composite in their nature.
And this philosophic incredulity towards the gospel
of Bacon may be put in another way.
It is the old controversy in part between the
Catholic and Protestant. The Catholic tells you
that his St. Francis of Assisi forgot the meannesses
and squalor of earth, and helped other poor souls to
forget them. And the Protestant answers that his
St. Francis of Verulam has filled Protestant countries
and Protestant churches with material comfort, and
that material comfort is itself the best index of a
higher religion. When a man has made his money
said Phocylides he begins to think of virtue. One
cannot be a Christian said a later Anglican Phocy-
lides on less than a pound a week. The Catholic
St. Francis never provided that pound : he was not
daunted by the want of it. The English St. Francis
did something by his faith and spirit if not by his
108 FRANCIS BACON
actual science to provide it through the conquest
of Nature.
The people of Siena to-day are in the Baconian
mood : they are proud of the Socini of Siena who
founded the Unitarian or Socinian or humanitarian
church. Once they were proud rather of St. Catharine
of Siena, who was obsessed with unworldliness and
other-worldliness and with mediaeval theology.
Where the heart is the treasure will be also. The
heart of Siena in her day was not in Siena, and Siena
was a poor place ; but much could be forgiven it, for
it loved much. To-day Siena's heart is in Siena, and
Siena has the comforts and treasures of Protestantism
and secularism.
It must be all a question of degree ; but few people
will doubt that there have been in Catholic Quebec
low standards of comforts, high standards of conduct :
and in Catholic Ireland apart from politics and
certain special political vices and political treacheries
a high level of character and a low level of material
comfort : and in England conversely and in ancient
Rome and many similar communities of to-day, a
lower level of character, and a much higher level of
comfort, than in Ireland or Quebec. Personally I
am sorry for the owner of an auto. I feel at present
that even if I had one I should not often mount
thereon no, not though Noah, Daniel and Job were
in it.
Bacon never faces these questions : has no time
for them : no interest in them. He says somewhere
that reason and religion must direct the onward
course of science, but he has no advice to give to
this crucial end : to this which is after all the one
and only end, transcending in importance all the
science which is only one of its instruments. Bacon
was emphatically a son of Martha. (She is the third
mother you have heard imputed to him !)
How shall we sum up more seriously the work of
this enthusiast, enthusiastic alike in science and
FRANCIS BACON 109
brilliant in letters. There survives of Bacon after
all is said that passion for knowledge which however
ineffectual, because compacted partly of ignorance and
arrogance, was at least its own reward : and alas !
its owner's only happiness : there survive the solid
services which he rendered his country in its Parlia-
ment, especially in effecting the Union with Scotland.
And last, but not least, perhaps most, that gift of
phrase, that happy knack of coining catch-words.
Fine phrases make fine writers. His phrases have
survived, while his ordinary style has perished with
his science and passed out of date. His essays are
to-day obscure often, and miss their point from
changes in the taste and usage of words.
But his phrases, his epigrams, his analogies, have
survived in large number to be a perpetual pleasure,
a xTfjpa els fct: there is one analogy in particular I
will recall again before I close.
Time like a river bears on its bosom the froth and
scum and chaff of thought before the eyes of men ;
but what is solid of thought and what is worth having
has sunk beneath the wave.
Is it really so ? Perhaps it is sometimes. And
therein lives perhaps the secret of Bacon's fame.
Among the chaff on the river of time, amidst the
smoke that curls up against the forests of the past,
amidst the breezes that blow from the level wastes
of human history some of the chaff that glitters
brightest, some of the smoke that curls bluest, some
of the breezes that whisper pleasantest albeit only
chaff and smoke and wind may be identified still
as the happy rhetoric, the fetching phrases, the telling
catch-words, the glittering generalities, of the dilet-
tante science of Francis Bacon.
CHAPTER V
KIPLING
IT is by a stroke of the irony of fate that this paper
sees the light now when every occasion for it has
long passed, or not yet come. Before the war, or
again long after the war, it might have been, it might
again be, in season.
Fifteen years ago, when we were lapped in pacifism,
a mild protest on behalf of Kipling, a suggestion that
he knew something of the facts of life, if not so much
about its theories, that he knew in particular some-
thing more about human nature and the British
Empire, if not so much about a ghostly and rather
ghastly International Polity, than fanatic Radicals,
would have been in season ; but now it is all to no
purpose surely : you are all converted, you all know
that soldiers have their uses and their virtues.
I have been bemoaning the untimeliness of this
Kipling paper, yet there are possibly some consola-
tions, and it is not wholly untimely. This is a very
academic society, yet not wholly academic ; and the
non-academic portion may have found Conrad and
Henry James, George Meredith and George Bernard
Shaw strong meat for babes. At the reading of these
papers some of you did not say a word, " nor under-
stood none neither," perhaps. Well, if so, for this
portion at least here comes consolation ; here, at least,
in Kipling is a writer who writes to be understanded
of the people.
Here is a paper on a commonish man, who lives
with men and knows men. Who, though he be the
best educated, in the narrow sense, of most of the
no
KIPLING 111
writers whom this society has discussed, is yet the most
democratic, in the proper sense of that much abused
term, of them all. Not democratic in politics no doubt,
no more democratic than Shakespeare or Socrates ;
but democratic, like Shakespeare and Socrates, in the
true sense that he loves mankind, that he plays to
its gallery, more or less honourably, less cheaply than
Shakespeare on the whole ; less lusciously than
Dickens, but always to the gallery, in the sense that
he appeals, like Shakespeare and Dickens, to common
vulgar emotions and experiences ; to the vulgar
geniality or genial vulgarity of the ordinary English-
man ; to his good nature and sentimentality ; to his
vulgar patriotism even.
There is no inconsistency, by the way, in saying
that Kipling appeals to vulgar patriotism, and yet in
protesting that neither he nor the nation to whom he
appeals say much of patriotism : do not slobber about
it or celebrate flag-days or teach patriotism in the
schools. There are appeals and appeals. The appeal
he makes to his countrymen, and the appeal his
countrymen prefer, is the recital of deeds done and
hardships braved ; stories of men of action.
Kipling has a genius for friendship, chiefly with the
vulgar : with the soldier man and the sailor man, two
of the vulgarest of our race ; but next with the
engineer of every species and kind, nautical, electrical,
and railway engineer : especially therefore with the
inventive and ingenious American ; and next with the
professional administrator of the middle classes, the
officials of the Indian Civil Service, the officers and
doctors of the Indian Army : inexhaustible in his
sympathies, and with no prejudices except the pre-
judices which Dickens shared and which most pro-
fessors share one bond at least, if there be but one
between Kipling and ourselves which Shakespeare,
it is safe to say, shared also, to the small measure of
his experience, the prejudice against politicians and
members of parliament, party politics and catch-
112 KIPLING
words, suffrage and suffragists ; especially Pagett,
M.P., and the men and women who find a panacea
for human ills in the equality of voting powers and
in the counting of noses, with no account of brains
above them or of biceps beneath, least of all of national
character beyond, above, below, greater than noses,
brains, and biceps. Like his countrymen he takes to
his heart without distinction the five great men of
action : the soldier, the sailor, the missionary, the
explorer, the true statesman (not the politician and
circus-rider style of statesman), and adds a sixth, the
product of his own age and modern conditions, the
engineer in all his sorts and kinds. And yet, or per-
haps I ought to say and therefore, he is somewhat
heavily handicapped, I recognize, with an academic
audience, especially in his character of poet.
We like our poets to be poetic figures ; to be stately,
dignified, picturesque. You cannot look at the
portrait of Dr. Bridges, prefixed with instinctive
symbolism by his publishers to the collection of his
poems, without exclaiming at once a poet or an
artist 1 No other man has quite that quality of
clothing and coiffure. We like our poets to retain a
certain distance and aloofness from us in their private
lives ; not to be vulgarized by the publicity with
which Mr. Stead and the journalists have damned our
age. Tennyson lived in the picturesque seclusion of
Aldworth, " Far from the madding crowd's ignoble
strife," seeing before him only " Green Sussex melting
into blue with one grey glimpse of sea." His house
also was a setting which matched its owner. The
frame suited the picture ; even an unobservant
stranger would at once have recognized that this man
was not a common man, but some sort of character :
a person of quality.
But Kipling is a journalist, and a journalist, on the
whole, of the school which is distinct from men of
letters.
Is he not then heavily handicapped ? How can
KIPLING 113
this little newspaper man be a poet ? He has no
distinction of birth, of University education, of style
and language ; he has not even the fads and fancies
and sensational eccentricities of belief which made
Mr. Stead even though he vulgarized all journalism
seem after all a separate figure and a sort of philo-
sopher, at least of a Christian Science kind.
Kipling has travelled everywhere, talking, listening,
observing. His life has been in the open air of action,
rather than in the student's library, and his books
are the celebration of action, not of thought. The
ultimate creed of the Englishman is the good of
action and the emptiness of thought and speech.
Kipling gives expression to that creed. Ah ! but
that antithesis, says someone more pensively in-
clined, is shallow and will not bear examination, if
only because our action itself is continually only the
reflex of some lonely thinker's thoughts and speech :
if only because Kipling himself inspires great actions
and he has no doubt inspired many great actions,
e.g., the career of Colonel Elkington only by
means of his words and writings. " The song that
nerves a nation's arm is in itself a deed," says some-
one, and if so the antithesis disappears. Yes, and
quite apart from this, the antithesis between thought
and action, between words and deeds, seems vain to
the pensive mind, for a different and opposite reason :
nature herself has created that antithesis and justified
it : nature herself has created one man or even one race
to think and talk and not to act, to know themselves
and their neighbours and life, but only as bystanders,
as onlookers, as spectators, who accomplish nothing
practical, who leave neither Empires nor laws ; who
are thinkers, ineffectual thinkers often, aoMa <PQOV-
OVTCC prjdevds xQortarces and nothing beyond ; and
another man or even another race to act and accom-
plish ; to build Empires and laws and stamp their
mark on everything, unconscious all the while of
their own nature and of human nature ; men of
M.M. 8
114 KIPLING
action who know nothing. And if this be nature's
law so to divide men, how vain is the antithesis and
the attempt to exalt either thought or action above
the other. It would even seem that the thinkers
and the talkers are excused from being anything
more, nay, are forbidden to be more : that the writers
and preachers of the Word are necessarily not the
doers : that the doers are necessarily not the
preachers : that the apostle disquieted himself un-
necessarily when his sensitive instinct warned him
that if he preached much more to others he might
himself become a castaway. Why not a castaway if
a preacher ? What else is a preacher but a breath,
a flame that evaporates in hot air, that has no place,
no life, except within the pulpit ? Has not nature
created literary men and literature just to pour out
words and thoughts which are sufficient in them-
selves, which have in themselves their end, their
inspiration or otherwise ? by their words they are
justified and by their words they are condemned ;
for there is " nothing to them " but words. What
matter then if the outward lives of such men show
every inconsistency in action, and range from pictur-
esque eccentricities to common blackguardism ?
Rousseau and Coleridge and Verlaine were born to
express, in words, high thoughts and high emotions ;
with those expressions their life-work is accomplished,
they are free to dispose of the balance of the time,
the idle hours of relaxation and release, after any
fashion that they please, and no man should be so
Pharisaic, so Philistine, so prudish, as to challenge
their sincerity, just because the life lived, the deeds
done, are as worthless as the theories and words were
fine and inspiring.
I am playing the advocatus diaboli, you perceive,
against Kipling's man of action, whose actions endear
him and him alone to Kipling. I am pleading for the
artistic and literary sinners whom Kipling's standard
of judgment, judgment by life, by action, condemns.
KIPLING 115
It is not for nothing that his heart warms to Martha
and is cold towards Mary. Personally, of course,
being a Professor I am on the side of Mary ; but I
recognize none the less a certain soundness in the
British leaning to Martha. It is better not to
scrutinize too closely these laws of nature : not to know
too much about them ; not to become a sophist of Greece.
It is a healthy instinct which bids the Englishman
and every healthy man ignore, avoid, shut his eyes
to that law of nature which tends to separate thought
and action as incompatible. It is a healthy instinct
which seeks to vault over the gulf between thought
and action ; to vault it, vault it again and con-
tinually to vault it, until a man has established
in his own life a fair compromise between those
rival, opposite, and almost incompatible spirits.
I am not saying that Kipling desires that com-
promise ; he is intolerant of thoughts and theories ;
he is content with wholesome primary instincts and
their most wholesome and primary expression, that
is, their expression, not in thought and speech, not in
meditation and in eloquence, but just in plain silent
action.
Anyhow that antithesis, such as it is, and however
it be true or untrue, lies at the root of Kipling's books ;
of his poetry alike and of his prose.
In his case there is no occasion to separate the
poetry and the prose. Literature is an appeal to the
mind of man, to his emotions, imagination, reason.
If it is also an appeal to his senses ; if it has a certain
music and rhythm which makes a sensuous appeal
to his ears as well, it is called poetry. But there is
no vital difference between Kipling's prose and
poetry : they appeal to the same emotions, imagin-
ations, instincts, and reason, with or without the
added sensuous appeal to the ears. The poetry is
just as simple, just as much addressed to the man in
the street, as the prose ; nay, more so, obviously.
" The sailing of the Bolivar " is to fastidious ears, I
116 KIPLING
presume, no less than to fastidious minds, poor stuff.
Its appeal is not primarily to the ears, but to a non-
fastidious spirit, to the spirit of action, the passion
for adventure, the reckless risking of life. A trifle
shocking perhaps the Bolivar, and yet not unworthy
of the literature of a nation not interested to create
literature primarily but to create men and seamen
and to rule the waves.
His journalism handicaps him in another way. I
know estimable and gifted University Professors who
damn the " Recessional " as Charles Lamb damned
the Baptist Minister at a venture ; just because it
is Kipling's and therefore, they are certain, just a
piece of copy, just a fragment of journalism written
to " feature " a volume needing advertisement with
the middle classes : just a picturesque impression of
a clever and detached mind, watching the English
public ; catching on quickly to its religiosity and its
profound hypocrisy, and giving expression for the
sake of a cheap popularity to the hypocritical
religion of the English.
Well, it may be that there is a simpler explanation
of the " Recessional," just that the author is himself
an Englishman and an instinctive, unconscious
Englishman, and therefore also as the dyer's hand
is subdued to what it works in a religious hypocrite ;
neither more nor less sincere or insincere than his
countrymen.
But perhaps the French and other critics of English
hypocrisy have not quite touched bottom yet in their
attempt to plumb that bottomless sea of national
characteristics. Hypocrisy, as generally understood,
is acting to deceive the public, but hypocrisy as pre-
dicated by Frenchmen of Englishmen is rather a
malicious and French synonym for aspiration : the
acting, the efforts, the exertions which a man makes
to impose upon himself, to make himself better than
he has been. If you remove the hypocrisy you destroy
the aspiration.
KIPLING 117
The Englishman with his political instinct is full of
Latin affectatio, which is variously translated and
with equal correctness " aspiration," " affectation " ;
for the Roman, also, was an Englishman, full of hypo-
critical aspiration, of aspiring hypocrisy.
To come down from these generalities to issues
more precise, if Kipling had done nothing else he
would still have added to English poetry a note long
waited for, late found the muse of science : the
tenth muse. This is the age of science, and everyone
has said that science would some day find her poet
who would see her romance, and not repeat after the
forlorn fashion of the nobleman in McAndrew's
Hymn the ancient lamentations about its banality
and its materialism. But no one has realized so well
as Kipling this general aspiration, this vague pre-
monition.
McAndrew's Hymn is still the best thing of its
kind ; there are even persons not unintelligent who
consider it the best poem ever written : " The King "
and " The Miracles " are in the same vein. There is
the tenth muse celebrating mechanical science, as she
glorifies the passage of the railway train across a
landscape : the beauty of London's smoky atmo-
sphere to the eyes of Japanese artists : the beauty of
Sheffield's smoke and Sheffield's chemicals, adver-
tised to the world to-day by common post-cards, as
picturesque as they are cheap. Here is a vein of
poetry scarcely scratched at present, but it is Kipling
who has opened it. Or take again the lighter side of
Kipling's verses : Departmental Ditties have been
called " banjo songs." " So be it," says an English
critic ; " but we must go back to Be*ranger to match
them. A banjo song inspired is better than serious
poetry that is not." There is the root of the matter.
There is the difference between the real poet laureate
of Great Britain and the titular laureate : between
Kipling and Doctor Bridges.
Every human being not a pedant or a pacifist can
118 KIPLING
read Kipling : can even read him in quantities more
than the majority of authors. The taste for Dr.
Bridges' poetry is an acquired taste, very slowly,
very painfully acquired: acquired, if at all, at
Oxford and Cambridge in their honour schools of
classics. I shall not be suspected of disliking these
Universities and their honour schools of classics ; but
better a single book of Kipling's, any book almost,
than a wilderness of the English Hellenists, Bridges
and William Morris and Co. Yes, even (if Atalanta be
excepted) with Swinburne included. Is this blas-
phemy for a Professor of Greek ? It is not blasphemy ;
by those who died at Marathon it is not. Whom do
their ghosts read to-day ? if so be that they can read
English, as they stretch their feet before the hearth
in the taverns by the waters of Acheron, Kipling or
Dr. Bridges ? Whom does Admiral Phormio prefer,
this English poet of the sea and of ships, of " dro-
mond ' ' and " kataphract," of " thranite " and of
"thalamite," this celebrator of Greek galleys, or Dr.
Bridges ? Whom does ^Eschylus prefer, this English
poet of soldiering and sailoring or Dr. Bridges ?
Whom does Socrates prefer ? round whom all gathered
to hear him talk, because they knew he was a man
who had done so much more than talk : whose
sermons were the only serious talk some soldiers
would accept, because he had earned the right to use
high words by deeds that matched the words. Whom
does Plato prefer ? Plato who pines through long
pages to be a man of action and not of words only,
and only gave up the ambition when he had tried
his hand at action, had tried to hold down Syracuse,
and had failed ?
We read and rightly the literature of Greece ; but
it is of decadent Greece : as literature is naturally a
hot-house flower which glows brightest in periods of
decadence, when there is nothing more serious than
literature to do or think of ; in the intervals, I mean,
between the greater periods of action ; in the fin-de-
KIPLING 119
sicde intervals, when a worn-out age is passing on
its death-bed, and a new age of action is not yet born.
Our Greek literature, for the greater part, comes
from decadent Greece ; but the great Greece of great
actions, the Greeks who did what Great Britain was
seeking to do yesterday, rescue the world from the
tyranny of ambitious barbarians, these men were not
just " damned literary men " ; and these men would
give short shrift, one may conjecture, to the works
of the English Hellenists if they could get a copy of
Kipling into their horny hands, before their weather-
beaten cheeks and faded eyes. These men were men,
if scholars also, (piMaoyoi dfveu fiaXaxtat;.
Few men few educated men even go to poetry
for affectations and artificialities for Patristic liter-
ature so to say but rather for the simple sentiments
and naive emotions which are always in danger of
perishing by the force of education, sophistication
and experience, and by the mere efflux of time ;
which are in danger of perishing at any rate beneath
the crushing materialism of a man's prime and middle
age.
Many modern democrats seem to me to misjudge
things and exactly to reverse their right relations.
Poetry is one thing, politics another. If there be
anything wherein the voice of the people, of the mass
of us, has a right to be heard, it is in poetry ; for
poetry is the voice of elemental and elementary
feeling and of national character. If there be any-
thing where the demos or the mass of us ought to be
humble and follow our betters it is in the science of
politics, or at least in many technical departments
thereof, e.g., in foreign politics, or in economics,
wherein we have no knowledge and no right of
control. Yes, but " Kipling is so vulgar," says some
intellectual. " That's very vulgar, father," said Sir
Walter Scott's "more feminine" daughter, if I recollect,
on one occasion to her father. " Vulgar, my dear,"
said the old aristocrat, " do you know what vulgar
120 KIPLING
means ? It means common ; everything best in the
world, the best emotions, the best aspirations, the
best instincts are all common. Very vulgar things
indeed, my dear ; go away and thank God that it is
so." I presume that is sound sense, and none the
worse from the lips of Sir Walter, who was not a
democrat in the narrow sense. There are qualities,
he meant, and qualities. There is quality in the
sense of some idea or series of ideas, some art which
few people reach and few value. It is far fetched :
difficult to attain ; when attained it is still caviare to
the man in the street.
It is quality without quantity, without substance,
that is, romance without reality. But there are other
qualities, the best in human nature, which being the
best are rarely attained and in scant measure ; yet
they make their appeal universally to all classes and
natures : to literate and illiterate. Here also as in
the other case, few there be that find them : yes,
but none that do not love them and would fain find
them. There is no contradiction here between quality
and quantity. He who appeals to these qualities has
the world to appeal to, for these qualities appeal to
the whole world. And yet that does not diminish the
quality of his appeal ; the quality of his work is best,
though he has the largest quantity of readers, because
he is appealing to the best qualities in them, the best
qualities for all their commonness and vulgarity, for
all their universality. The common people hear such
a poet gladly, for the high quality of his appeal.
Kipling is the unlaureated laureate because he appeals
strongly to these elusive yet primary instincts ; to
vulgar courage, to common loves and sorrows, to the
child's heart in all men and to the children who are
in all men's hearts : to the infinite admiration of the
street, for the five or six great men of action, the
soldier, the sailor, the missionary, the explorer, the
engineer, and the true statesman.
Well, to resume, Kipling has this vulgar passion
KIPLING 121
for reality, for action and men of action : none the
less, all the more presumably, because he is himself
only a man of words, a journalist and story-teller.
A man's philosophy says someone is the obverse,
rhe complement of his character.
I have internal evidence only on which to rely, but
between the lines, e.g., of that vigorous dream since
become a reality called The Army of a Dream, I
think I read the confession that the writer himself
would not have succeeded as a man of action, would
never have become a first-rate driving force, a great
slave driver ; would never have speeded up produc-
tion and energy, as the great soldiers and adminis-
trators speed them up : it is rare for the genius of
sympathy and friendship to possess such driving
power. So also it may be read between the lines of
Stalky and Co. that the writer would have naturally
emerged from the training school of Indian officers
and officials there described an official or officer him-
self, had not his talents been so markedly of a different
type. In that description of a rather abnormal and
strange school the later career of the writer is not
obscurely anticipated.
For in Stalky's school there are three classes of
boys : the docile " swats " or " smugs " or " grinds "
or " cissies," or whatever the present slang be for that
small band which has in its time included Demos-
thenes, Lamb, Coleridge, and Trollope, and the other
sufferers of genius who were miserable at school.
Second, the young ruffians who play games and little
else : but third, also, a curious band of outlaws and
vagrants who despise about equally " the flanneled
fools and muddied oafs " of the athletic field, and the
pale-faced students of Latin verses and conic sections.
These curious and abnormal outlaws defy masters
alike and boys : cut football for the sake of smoking,
but over their illicit pipes read Browning and Ruskin
with keen zest, compose satire and topical verses,
write and draw caricatures. Obviously here is the
122 KIPLING
budding of all the volumes about India, South Africa,
and the Seven Seas : the boy had a gift for expression
and for story-telling more than for command. He
had the makings of a hero worshipper, rather than of
a hero.
And now that I am talking of Stalky and Co. I had
better quote a passage about the flag. Messrs.
Gardiner and Massingham and similar fanatics, the
arid Radicals and the ingenuous Professors who
swallow acid Radicalism as gospel, find a compendium
for Kipling in beer, Bible, and flag. I dispute the
compendium. I think this is a passage which, in the
proper sense of the much abused words, is the excep-
tion proving my rule that there is no such compendium
in fact.
Read Stalky and Co., page 242, and you will see
that the compendium is no compendium.
However that be, Kipling solved the problem of a
profession in that way and became first and foremost
a sort of glorified reporter of India, of her scenery,
her sorrows, her superstitions. He talked to her
peasants and her priests and her anchorites. He was
not like the British officer, a solitary figure on the
Indian railway platform, waiting alone for his train :
cut off not more by separate colour than by separate
waiting room from the cultivators thronging their
platform with their wives, children, and furniture,
and bedding ; and camping sometimes for a week
before they find room upon the train for their migra-
tions and pilgrimages. He made it his business to
know something of these men of action as well as of
the officers.
His first serious book says its introduction was
the fulfilment of a promise made to a one-eyed holy
man, who lived on an island in the middle of a river,
and fed the fishes with little bread pellets twice a day,
and buried the corpses which the freshets stranded
there. The holy man advised him to begin a story,
bring it to a crisis, leave it there, and then pass round
KIPLING 123
the hat before continuing. This is the Indian story-
teller's method. Kipling recognized the method of
the serial story, but preferred to publish in one book
and at one time Life's Handicap or Stories of My Own
People.
Here is a piece of restrained pathos from that book ;
not mushy pathos like Dickens, but restrained. It
is the story of an Englishman who hired a native
house and took to it " without benefit of clergy " a
little Mahomedan girl. They were very happy and
their baby was happy and completed their happiness ;
but the heats came and the baby died and the child
wife died just as the rains began, and her mother
begged all the furniture except the bed, and the
Englishman went back beneath the downpour to his
official home. 1
I do not know how much is fact and how much
fiction in these stories. Kipling, like every story-
teller, freely enhances and embroiders. One of these
stories is a trifle horrible " The Mark of the Beast."
Probably even it is not wholly compact of imagination :
the writer bored his friends, as I have noted, with the
stock quotation from Hamlet, " There are more
things," etc. ; and this philosophy of his, borrowed
from Hamlet and from Purun Bhagat, the Hindoo
hermit, who " did not believe in miracles because all
things were one big miracle, and when a man knows
that he has something to go upon ; he knows that
there is nothing great and nothing little in the world," 1
and this sense of mystery, reinforced by his sense of
reality, his passion for facts, leaves little room for
works of pure imagination, sheer invention. More
likely the sensitive, sceptical, sympathetic spirit of
the author, and of the doctor from whom he gets the
story, interprets it as based on some obscure phe-
nomena, still hidden from western science. The
same suggestion comes from the story called " The
1 "Without benefit of Clergy," Life's Handicap, p. 157.
* 2nd Jungle Book, pp. 51-52.
124 KIPLING
Bisara of Pooree." The Bisara is a little charm fatal
to its owner. Kipling represents himself as deliber-
ately and carefully hiding it away, that there may be
no owner. The creeds of the East lie heavier on him
than on his countrymen.
This is not the place to discuss at length Kipling's
Indian politics : he may have been wrong about
South Africa : it looks very much like it : very much
as if Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman was right and
the other side wrong. But, after all, the Dutch are
not only white men but our own kin. There was
nothing needed to restore harmony but a good fight,
and now that the good fight has come and gone and
cleared the air, and also incidentally has given
Great Britain at last a real army and something like
a real union with her daughter states, harmony should
be possible, even easy. But there is little or no
analogy between South Africa and India. India is
not a nation but a host of nations, none of them
white. Further, its problem is complicated by the
same difficulty which Greece presented to Rome.
The cleverest of Indian races, the most capable of
rising under present conditions to political power (of
succeeding, I mean, in those competitive examin-
ations which we have established for ourselves and
which for us are not too absurd and impossible), the
most literary and intelligent of Indian races, the
Bengalese, are also the most worthless morally ;
timid, dishonest, cunning, and unscrupulous as a
decadent Greek. This is the race that takes to
politics, that is, to civilized and peaceful quarrelling,
that talks politics, that demands a political equality
which it does not possess by nature and character
when compared with the other races, and still less
when compared with the governing race. Such a
story as " The Head of the District " sets forth the
difficulties of the radical solution of the Indian
question ; of the policy offered by the imaginary
Pagett, M.P., and the member for Tooting : offered
KIPLING 125
in actuality by the late Keir Hardie and a score of
other British politicians of the same school. It is a
tragedy they seem to think, the best thing hi life
being parliamentary quarrelling and verbal jangling,
that a great Asiatic peninsula should be governed by
a few aliens from Europe who recognize no Indian
parliament. Tragedy it often is for the aliens. The
peninsula which under British rule is for the first time
at peace, gets what peace can give to its best men, its
peasants and farmers ; while the soldierly races find
employment under the British flag. Peasants,
farmers, soldiers are contented : only the Scribes
and Pharisees, lawyers, journalists, politicians and
agitators of Bengal suffer. But for the aliens, who
spend their lives in a climate where they cannot make
their home, where their children cannot live after the
fifth year ; where the white race does not seem to
survive after the third generation ; whereby it loses
its youth and breaks the hearts of its womenkind by
sending away to Europe its children ; whereby it
spends its old age away from the scene of its man-
hood and its best labour ; in some unknown and
unknowing English town, Brighton, Clifton, Chelten-
ham, Bath, or Bournemouth, which no longer counts
as " home," whatever it may once have counted ;
whence the old man's heart flies far away to ** the
land of Regrets," the land where he has spent his
energies and himself but has not made his abiding
stay, ah ! tragedy enough here for him and to spare I
The Asiatic doctrine of the unreality of life, so
foreign to the British mind, now finds a home from
very force of circumstance, by very pressure of
experience, it well may be, in the heart of the Anglo-
Indian, ex-soldier and ex-magistrate. How can he
escape the Indian Doctrine, which his own career in
India illustrates ? " The shadows come and go, the
shadows come and go." axiai ydg iopb xal
* I
Life's Handicap, I think, was Kipling's first serious
126 KIPLING
book rather than his first book. The first book was
more cynical, naturally. Departmental Ditties was
written in the twenties when a man's intellect is in
its prime and at its best and sees easily through the
vanity of life ; when the young man, like and unlike
his Creator, surveys life confidently and confidently
pronounces judgment " And behold it is all very
bad," and the evening and the morning are about
his twenty-fifth birthday.
But there is, nevertheless, good humorous stuff in
Departmental Ditties. There is " My Rival," which is
as good as Calverley, high praise though that be ; and
would have pleased Calverley very much ; which
means by interpretation that it is far better than
anything in Sir Alfred Austin or Dr. Bridges, so-
cafled laureates.
I suppose it was on the strength of Departmental
Ditties, and little else, that Mr. Paul Elmer More, one
of the few good critics whom the United States have
produced, pronounces sentence that there is little
sense of mystery, of asceticism, of restraint, of dis-
illusionment, of beauty in Kipling. He suggests that
Kipling and Fitzgerald were the two popular poets of
England twenty years ago, because the national taste
and temper were badly divided between substance
without form and form without substance. He
means, I think, that since everyone wants each of
these in poetry, the public instinct seized upon these
two poets, because the one set forth the philosophy
of form with such lucidity, such logic, such happiness
of phrase, such melody and even passion, that he
made even a poor and threadbare philosophy inter-
esting and fascinating, while the other having for his
subject the real passions and aspirations and high
instincts of man, the deepest and most inexplicable,
and most " inexpressive " things, gave them, beyond
other men, an expression, the form of which seemed
comparatively adequate and sufficiently passionate.
Fitzgerald charmed because he was so superior to
KIPLING 127
William Morris, Dr. Bridges, and a host of other
" idle singers of an empty day," even Swinburne in-
cluded, while himself belonging to the idle singer
school ; Kipling because he was the most vocal, the
least stammering, the least tongue-tied interpreter
of things too deep for words.
As for the lack of mysticism, of the sense of beauty,
of the sense of disillusionment, that is a hard saying
to anyone who knows " The Miracle of Purun Bhagat,"
or "They," or "Wireless," or "The Brushwood
Boy," or "The Children of the Zodiac," or "The
True Romance." Mr. More makes a grudging excep-
tion in favour of two lines of this latter poem, but
why in favour of two lines only ? and what else is
" If " ? Is there not disillusionment enough in all
conscience hi " If " ? Here is the very spirit of
illusion and disillusionment alike : of faith and hope
and yet of knowledge and experience, woven, each,
into the warp and woof of the poem : here is a poem
of action and reflection in equal proportions, a poem
of form and substance alike, a poem of vigorous form,
even though the form be rough, and packed full of
thought and moral exaltation, full of substance ; a
poem which justifies poetry, for it is the putting of
the best thought into a language less inadequate than
prose to stir and master the heart. If a man can
" treat those two impostors just the same " (success and
failure), is he not sufficiently disillusioned, sufficiently
ascetic, sufficiently detached from life and its vanities ?
There is mannerism no doubt, a double mannerism in
the last line, but it has its place and its value ; it is the
mannerism of the writer and his race : the deliberate
temperamental ^c/euatc or ht6vris, which hates above
everything to gush and slop over and exaggerate :
pelaxns is the note of all intellectual men, but of one
race chiefly, and that a race far from intellectual, the
British. It is a moral quality with them, not the
result of intellect. And so the end of the poem runs
simply "You'll be a man," and then, with another
128 KIPLING
mannerism of the same kind but greater, a deliberate
" my son " : nothing high flown or high falutin in the
peroration ; nothing Emersonian or American : and
for the best of reasons ; high words, tall talk, are
an unpardonable luxury, an unforgivable sensuality.
Anyone can utter them, except the man who believes
in them too deeply so to do. What he feels most he
will not say ; what he says being from the outer lips
he necessarily does not deeply feel : for the passion
of high things has one lawful expression and one only,
it must express itself in deeds : it was meant to be
the steam of life, to drive life's locomotive along long
and weary roads, across crazy bridges, over roaring
floods of dejection and discontent, and at last into the
distant unknown goal. To blow off this steam in
words, is as though the locomotive should misuse,
abuse, its throttle and its safety valve, intended only
for the excess of steam and not for its main volume.
" You cannot have your emotion and express it also,"
said the reflective Oxford poet.
In the second place, Kipling is the journalist and
the reporter of the common soldier, and finds much
more in the common soldier of course than Bible,
bottle, and flag.
If he had been nothing more than the reporter of
Ortheris, Learoyd and Mulvaney, he would still have
earned his fame. These men are real creations and
real men : we don't doubt it to-day : we know it
only too well. The world is full of them and of their
heroism, and can hardly contain all the books that
are being written about them. Mons and Ypres
have crowned them : the soldier passes as Kipling
says with his usual vivacity from one extreme to
the other in popular estimation. In the days of
peace he is a " brutal and licentious soldiery." x
The churches will.not look at him. The Methodists,
whom Learoyd joins, because he is in love with a
consumptive Methodist girl, frown upon him : he is
1 See Departmental Ditties, pp. 59-62.
KIPLING 129
a brand barely plucked from the burning : he is the
sort of person who will enlist : and when he does
enlist, they cast him out : all but the dying girl who
knows a man when she sees one. 1
I was speaking of Kipling as technically better
educated than some of the other writers we all of us
discuss. I meant merely that as a fact he has much
more Latin and Greek and more English literature
than Mr. Wells, or than the melancholy and more
interesting peasant novelist Thomas Hardy. Kipling
evidently never learned the classics well enough
to appreciate them to the full except Horace's
" Regulus " : he went to them like other schoolboys
to scoff : he did not remain to pray his best prayers.
A few Greek words like flcda/uri?? and dgavirrj?,
dgdpcov and xardyQaxrov belonging to his beloved art
of navigation, a song with a crude beginning from
Horace, and a glance at Admiral Phormio, these are
the chief relics of his school classics. 8 But the
result is that his literary education gives to Kipling's
tales a peculiar literary flavour not found in these
other writers. It makes his absurd and humorous
characters more absurd even than Dickens' char-
acters in a way, though in another way they are much
less absurd, because much less extravagant in per-
sonality. A literary quotation in Kipling on illiterate
lips seems grotesque, but it is only a verbal grotesque-
ness. In Dickens' delicious extravagances the gro-
tesqueness lies in the murdering and misapplication
of some quotation, which is hardly literary, since it
is fetched from the Bible, or from some similar source
of household words.
When we get a laughter-loving genius like Dickens
who can give us something worth laughing at, the
amazing and side-splitting caricatures of Micawber,
1 "On Greenhow Hill," pp. 82-88.
1 See Traffics and Discoveries, p. 86, " When the robust and
brass-bound man," etc., but he has written since that time one
or two admirable " translations," of Horace Odes " Bk. V."
M.M. 9
130 KIPLING
Pecksniff, Gamp, of course we immortalize him
why not ? The British immortalize the man who
makes them laugh loudest : and none the less, all
the more, if he does not bother them to think : if he
gives them not subtle pictures of their own foibles, like
Miss Austin or Thackeray or Trollope or Kipling him-
self often, but just sheer, preposterous, and delicious
caricature : a continuous Punch, the better for being
continuous. We all love such passages as Mrs.
Gamp is always ready to give us. " But I will say,"
said Mrs. Gamp, " and I would if I was led a Martha
to the stakes for it," or this other : " The Ankworks
Package," Mrs. Gamp replied, " And I wish it was in
Jonadge's belly, I do."
For such passages we pardon the other caricatures
of Dickens, which are rather horrible : the caricatures
of pathos : the caricatures which deface which
would spoil, if it could be spoilt the pathos of a
child's death-bed.
There is no such uproarious and exquisite nonsense
for readers of Kipling. There is only the mild
surprise and amusement provoked by hearing a
literary and more or less recondite quotation on
illiterate lips. Pycroft the sailor quotes Browning. 1
The cat in the old water-mill quotes the same poet
twice (pp. 344-350), both of them brilliant quotations,
of the very best of Browning : Kipling never quotes
anything but the best.
4 Wireless " 2 is much more deliberately and avow-
edly literary. A consumptive druggist is in love with
a girl called Fanny Brand. He has never heard of
Keats, but he writes verses to his Fanny from a
similar environment. And so the spirit of Keats,
summoned by an adjoining wireless apparatus, appears
to assist him. And a stanza from " St. Agnes' Eve "
is painfully written out. And then an attempt is
made by the druggist to compose two lines which
1 " Mrs. Bathurst," p. 334 T. and D.
8 T. and D.
KIPLING 181
Kipling remarks are two of the five best lines in
English literature : the two famous lines about
" magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous
seas, in fairylands forlorn." Kipling quotes also
the three other best lines : they are from Coleridge
and his Kubla Khan, and are no doubt well worth
quoting. But this is the extreme case of literary
criticism and allusion which I have found in his
stories.
At this point, if at all, I ought to say a word of his
artistry. Some foreigners have written whole books
on this one subject, but to so analyse a poet is rather
like peeping and botanizing on a mother's grave ;
besides, personally, I wholly disbelieve the Steven-
sonian theory. Stevenson analysed the passage from
Keats' ode to a nightingale just referred to into per-
mutations and combinations of p, v, and f : credat
Judaeus ; let the latest materialistic man of science
who belongs to Berlin or Judaea believe it : the
charm seems to lie in picturesque images more than
in melodious sounds ; and Kipling's force seems to
derive from the same origins. He has written nothing
more characteristic than " The Bolivar" and no lines
in it more characteristic than
Once we saw between the squalls, lyin' head to swell,
Mad with work and weariness, wishin' they was we,
Some damned liner's lights go by like a grand hotel ;
Cheered her from the Bolivar, swampin' in the sea.
It is the picture, not the permutations of letters,
which fixes the passage in the memory ; its verbal
artifices are nothing more novel than alliteration
the oldest, easiest, and most obvious of artifices. I
think the same may be said of the most effective
stanza of " Sussex " :
Here leaps ashore the full sou'west,
All heavy- winged with brine ;
Here lies above the folded crest
The Channel's leaden line;
132 KIPLING
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
Along the hidden beach.
The alliteration is clever, but it is to the eye and the
memory ; it is in the pictures and the associations
which the lines evoke that the fascination of " Sussex "
lies, not in the permutations of " s " and " b " and
" c."
There are many other minor traces of his English
reading. Barrack Room Ballads has echoes of Swin-
burne at his best; in Atalanta, that is to say. 1 Sea
Warfare, his last book, 8 has a parody, probably an
unconscious memory, of the little known contem-
porary poet, F. W. Bourdillon : the poem called
" The American " in the The Seven Seas is obviously
suggested by Emerson's " Brahma " : surely a feat of
discrimination, since " Brahma " is the only poem
Emerson ever wrote as the little Sunday-school girl
also recognized which is worth memorizing. No,
not quite, Kipling has found and used one other tag
from Emerson which is effective. 1
" The Last Department " 4 is a vigorous exercise
in the style of Fitzgerald and Omar Khayyam ; a
Mahomedan student in the story " On the City Wall " 5
quotes Dickens and Nicholas Nickleby. " Baa Baa
Black Sheep " heads a chapter with four of the best
lines of Clough but they are strangely labelled " The
City of Dreadful Night," and are ascribed apparently
to James Thomson, who is more correctly quoted in
The Light that Failed. One of the best lines of
Matthew Arnold's " The unplumbed salt estranging
sea " appears in another story always the best, that
is the point, " choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's
every word. No gaudy ware, like Gandolf's second
line : Tully, my masters ! Ulpian serves his need ! "
1 " The Masque of Plenty." a Page 45.
Vide the lines prefixed to " The Children of the Zodiac."
* In D. D. 6 Page 144.
KIPLING 133
But to return from this long digression on Kipling's
literary education to the three soldiers. It is not
beer, Bible, and flag which inspires the study of
officers and privates called " His Private Honour," l
nor " The Courtship of Dinah Shadd." This story
contains, I suppose, the best piece of rhetoric in
Kipling the drunken Irishwoman's curse when Mul-
vaney takes Dinah instead of her dubious daughter ;
it is just native Irish eloquence, someone may say,
and Kipling is merely reporting it very probably,
but at least he has a perfect flair for the best rhetoric,
none the less good, all the better, rather, because it
falls from illiterate lips and fades away at last into
an unwilling and Balaam-like blessing.
But next to the soldier Kipling loves the sea and
the sailor ; best of all the modern scientific sailor,
the engineer. But not him only the sailor for him-
self the common, vulgar, hard-drinking sailor. There
is " Captains Courageous " there is the extraordin-
arily vivid study of the Eastern seas called ' ' The
Disturber of Traffic." 8 In a similar vein are, " The
Rhyme of the Three Sealers " ; 4 " The Last Chan-
tey " ; " The Bell Buoy " ; " The Rhyme of the
Three Captains," " The Mary Gloster" About this
last ballad I have noted a little but very entertaining
article by Mr. Lewis Freeman, the American, in Land
and Water. It is addressed to " British Merchant
Captains." 7
After the common sailor comes the skilled sailor ;
then mechanical engineers, and engineering in general,
and science in general. I have said enough about
this already. It is for many people Kipling's title to
fame, though I am only ranking it as the fourth of
his titles. There are stories and verses too numerous
1 Many Inventions. * Life's Handicap.
M.I. * The Seven Seas. S.S.
The Five Nations.
7 Land and Water, August 17, 1916, p. 16. (See "The Mary
Gloster," pp. 185, 186, 187, 188.)
184 KIPLING
to record properly under this head : " The Ship That
Found Herself," x etc., and a host of others. The
man who wrote these things would have been a com-
petent mechanic if fate had not made him a journalist.
No mere craft of journalism could have inspired the
verve with which this journalist celebrates the last
theme of prose and poetry the triumph of science.
I come to the next tap ; the children's tap. The
cry is back to Christianity, but all the world has long
ago returned, in the matter of child worship, to the
wisdom of Christianity's founder. Kipling is not
the first at that shrine but he worships well ; far
more agreeably than Dickens. I suppose a third of
his work is devoted to children and dear to them ;
Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies are
specially for children, most readable though they be
to everyone with a little sanctified common sense
and a love of history.
Besides these two books there are isolated stories
elsewhere. " They," e.g., the story of the dead
children who gather round the beautiful Sussex house
(under Chanctonbury Ring), of the maiden lady who
is blind and has no other consolation but the sound
of their voices and the rustle of their clothes, and who
keeps open house and open nursery and play-room
for them. They have been excused " from the
Father's Face " to visit her because she loved much.
" Shall I that have suffered the children to come to
me hold them against their will," says the introduc-
tory verse. Not much beer and flag about that
verse, by the way, though something of the Bible,
and none the worse on that account.
These books and stories appear to me to be sound
and wholesome and first-rate reading for childhood ;
though I am aware that they appear light and frothy
and sentimental to the more severe taste of Americans.
Once upon a time I was sitting on a summer afternoon
beneath Cheyenne Mt., in Colorado, and above the
1 Day's Work.
KIPLING 135
sun-flecked prairies, writing my luminous, I beg
pardon my voluminous essay on Herodotus, while
my wife discoursed George Macdonald's At the Back
of the North Wind to the children. A visitor was
announced, and a member of our common profession
with her youthful American daughter of ten years of
age. '* I am surprised," she said severely, " that you
allow these sentimental things to be read to your
children Elizabeth here sit up Elizabeth, love is
reading Arts and Crafts of the Middle Ages." Poor
Elizabeth ! And then we are surprised that American
women grow up callous ! that even one of the best of
them sees nothing more in the most chivalrous and
romantic and disinterested war ever waged than just
a dog-fight and a mix-up of drunken rowdies ; or at
the best, arts and crafts of the Middle Ages. The
intellectuals have no intelligence the spring and
source of all intelligence is denied them, sympathy ;
knowledge at one main entrance quite cut off.
The next tap is part of this a double-jointed tap
with two faucets, the cool water of history and the
warm water of animal stories ; the most popular, I
suppose, of all Kipling's taps, and running freely
through all his books.
Through the two Jungle Books first and foremost,
but through all. Everyone knows the Mowgli stories,
based, like everything in Kipling, I presume, on fact.
The Romans are not likely to have invented Mowgli,
they found him that is all.
Then there is the story of " Kaa's " hunting the
story of the fascination exercised by the python upon
monkeys ; upon the Bandarlog. Kipling, like the
rest of us, does not like monkeys they are painfully
suggestive of man's history, whether it be his rise or
his fall. His verses, had they been written yesterday,
might have been taken as a satire at the expense of
the Allies and for the glorification of Germany. The
Bandarlog have all the foibles of the Allies before the
war they dream and chatter, and have no law, no
136 KIPLING
order, no settled purpose, no foreign policy only
" brightest transports, choicest prayers which bloom
their hour and fade " nothing but idealism empty,
luxurious, self-indulgent imaginations which are not
the seed of action, but begin and end in themselves ;
and with these also many personal remarks and per-
sonal squabbles. Read the " Road Song of the
Bandarlog in the Tree Tops." 1
Then there is " Rikkitikki, the Mongoose." 2 There
is " The Undertakers " ; 8 " The Red Dog " ; 4 " The
Bridge Builders," already quoted in another con-
nection ; 6 " Oonts " (the Camels) ; 6 the cat and
rat in " Below the Mill Dam " ; 7 " The Walking
Delegate " (the horse) ; 8 and " The Maltese Cat "
(the polo pony), 9 and " My Lord the Elephant." 10
" Moti Guy, the Mutineer," n also an elephant
story.
There is also and better perhaps than most of the
other animal stories " In the Rukh," 12 a vivid picture
of the Indian forest and its occupants and its German
chief forester. Kipling has some appreciation,
necessarily, of German efficiency, and his usual sym-
pathy in painting rapidly the high lights of character
and conversation. There is little French, by the
way, in Kipling's books, only in The Light that Failed,
and yet with his instantaneous comprehension and
insight he has, since the war began, caught the spirit
of France, and his verses to France 13 might have been
written no better had he spent half a lifetime reading
French history. Read " Broke to Every Known
Mischance," p. 1, of France at War.
Now I turn on the seventh tap England ; espec-
ially the Southern counties and of the Southern
1 1st Jungle Book or Songs from Books, pp. 92-93.
2 1st Jungle Book. 3 2nd Jungle Book.
4 2nd Jungle Book. 5 D W.
6 D.D. i T. and D. 8 D.W.
9 D.W. 10 M.I. w- L.H.
18 M.I. 13 in p mnce
KIPLING 137
counties the pleasant county of Sussex a point of
contact between Tennyson and Kipling the last
real laureate and the real present laureate ; Sussex
runs in the verses of each ; Kipling celebrates it in
Puck of Pook's Hill y and in Rewards and Fairies, and
in The Five Nations, but England generally is the
burden of " The Song in Springtime " l and of " The
Broken Men." ' Of a different key but belonging to
the same organ are the well-known, often quoted
verses in The Seven Seas 3 and " The English Flag." 4
I must not quote those household words to this
academic audience. I will only remark in passing
that here is a vivid statement of the bald fact at
which the German rages and scoffs that our Empire,
like the Kingdom of Heaven, came not with obser-
vation, that it came not as his with far sight and
foresight, through the scheming and lying of his
Government for forty years, nay for seventy-five
years : through its paternal remittances to German
traders : through bonuses and bounties : but came
just of itself, with no Government's thought or aid,
broadly speaking ; by the restless energy of the race,
the spirit of adventure : these are just good songs of
patriotism.
And this tap also may be described as another
double tap, for here comes in what some simple souls
have fondly imagined to be all that there is in Kipling,
and wherefore arid, acid, acrid souls have intellect-
ually berated him the Imperial thought one of his
minor thoughts, unless I am mistaken, and only
magnified into his chief thought by radical bitterness.
" What should they know of England who only
England know ? " was Kipling's sufficient answer ;
but no man with a heart and soul thinks first and
foremost of politics, or writes chiefly of such vapid
and external trappings.
Imperialism is the opposite of a narrow national-
1 D.D. F.N.
* " A Song of the English," In Barrack Room Ballads.
138 KIPLING
ism and a parochial know-nothing-ism : that is all
so far as I can discover after forty-five years
that Imperialism, either here in Canada or in Great
Britain, means or has ever meant for the quiet
people who have accepted that word.
In the South African tales is included The Captive,
and in The Captive is a different note ; a new note :
Kipling's American note. I have mentioned Dickens
once or twice ; it is impossible to speak of Kipling's
American studies without thinking of Dickens ; the
parallel is in some respects so close. Here are two
Englishmen, the idols of their own people, who have
taken occasion to visit America and to write of
America not always or at first with cordial appre-
ciation or with unstinted acceptance. Dickens wrote
bitter things about American manners, American
advertising, and spread-eagle oratory ; American
dollar-hunting ; but the vitality and human nature
or democratic spirit of his works so endeared him to
America, as a superior, as an infinitely greater Walt
Whitman, that it overlooked his scoffs and took him
to its broad heart and keeps him there. Similarly
with the vitality and human nature of Kipling : no
living English author exists says Mr. Elmer More,
the American critic for a plain American car con-
ductor except Kipling. " I s'pose you've heard that
Kipling has been very ill ; he ought to be the next
poet laureate ; he don't follow no beaten track ; he
cuts a road for himself every time right through, and
a mighty good road it is," said the conductor to a
visiting Englishman in New York ; and so America
forgave his scoffs. The resourcefulness of the
American ; his science, and his humour, appeal
irresistibly to Kipling ; and such stories as The
Captive (the American who invented a machine gun
and sold it to the Boers and fought with it against
the British in South Africa) are as wholly appreciative
of the American captive, and his point of view, as of
the British point of view. The Captive is very
KIPLING 189
American and very diverting ; not least so in his
criticisms of his countrywomen.
I have found nine lamps for Kipling ; let me find
a few more to outshine definitely the seven churches
and the lamps of architecture.
There is the tenth lamp of philosophy. I really
mean philosophy ; good pragmatist philosophy, the
only philosophy of value ethics. Kipling is a moral-
ist, like all his countrymen.
He is a moralist, even if his is not exactly the com-
plete and perfect morality of the New Testament ;
there is morality for men if not for women, for lay-
men if not for ecclesiastics, running through all his
books side by side with the running beer and waving
flag : the stern and masculine morality which consists
in courage, honesty, truth-speaking, and hard work.
;t Never tell a lie and never borrow money J " was
Richard Burton's compendium for life, to each of his
sons, when he called him into his study, at the age of
fifteen or thereabouts, before launching him on the
world. Kipling has the primary and essential moral-
ities of the earlier dispensation. If his books lack
something of the secondary and more exquisite
refinements of Christian morality, still even these
were intended we have reason to believe to supple-
ment, complete, and fulfil, not to destroy and super-
sede the earlier groundwork : and even in the secondary
moralities he does not offend like some of his con-
temporaries, whom we have been discussing.
I have quoted " If " already, and " The Bolivar "
already. I will illustrate Kipling's ethics instead,
negatively, by quoting Tomlinson and 4 The Con-
version of Aurelius McGoffin." l
This is the sort of stuff which makes Kipling good
reading for academic souls, for souls oblivious of an
older and wider creed, who have taken in its place
Tolstoy or Ibsen or some other vain babbler. His
poems were written for our learning, for us academic
1 Plain Tales from the Hill*, pp. 151, etc.
140 KIPLING
persons who have no action, who have words only ;
whose lives are chronicled by words and dated by
theories ; in this year the Professor developed that
epoch-making theory, etc. (now forgotten), in that
year he fired off those epigrams (Paris still keeps those
hot chestnuts on sale), in the third he discovered a
new philosophy which lasted for two sessions and
almost persuaded some young students not to be
Christians. We are the people for whom the curious
text was written " by your words ye shall be justified
and by your words ye shall be condemned " : most
merciful and also most just of texts : since we have
only words whereby we can be judged, whether for
acquittal or condemnation. It is salutary, therefore,
for us above other men, to read the author who
makes light of books and theories and reflection, of
everything but action.
The crew of the Bolivar were men of action. Tom-
linson was perhaps a Professor of Greek. Another
Tomlinson by the way another Professor of Greek
has been quoting lately, apropos of the war, a
remark of Lord Melbourne's, " all the damned fools
were on one side and all the clever fellows on the
other, and by George, Sir, the damned fools were
right ! >! Kipling has generally been among the
damned fools who were right ; he has much sym-
pathy with damned fools because he knows they are
apt to be right in this insoluble world. He has very
imperfect sympathy with the clever fellows and the
Professors of Greek they are unintelligent intellect-
uals and intellectual neutrals ; understand every-
thing except human nature. The Germans, as the
chief " intellectuals," have the least intelligence, but
Miss Jane Addams sometimes makes a good second
and Mr. Bernard Shaw a bad third.
You can divine from this reference to Mr. Shaw all
the limitations of Kipling. I can recollect no examples
of irony in Kipling though irony be one of the choicest
flowers of literature again, there is none of that
KIPLING 141
arch-egotism which is also a super-advertisement for
its author there are no parlour tricks and posturings
and intellectual stunts, pour tpater le bourgeois.
I can find with a little seeking an eleventh lamp
religion. Kipling is like Whittier in this, that he has
written a good hymn or two and knows his Isaiah
to some purpose. 1 Unlike Whittier in this, that his
good hymns are not his only good work, his only con-
tribution to literature.
Well, I said at the beginning that this lecture was
unnecessary and belated, and so it is. But after all,
the war with all its horrors and its heroism will pass ;
and all things will settle down again and slumber,
and the world will be again somewhat as it was
before, all things will be peaceful and people will
imagine they have always been so : and Dr. Bridges
will chirrup his melodies again, and we shall have
new idle singers of new empty days : and then
Kipling will be again a good recipe : a reminder that
the great days of Canada though over were once
here : for there is the doctrine ancient, simple, true,
which Socrates died expounding. Socrates hated
tall talk and poetry and almost all poets except
Homer, especially Meletus, an Athenian Richard le
Gallienne, perhaps : and he loved grotesque and
homely illustrations : so as he sat in prison on his
truckle bed, rubbing his legs and restoring the cir-
culation which the chains had arrested ; he chose
his legs for his parable " My friends, what a strange
thing is pain and pleasure one cannot well get the
one without finding the other also ; these my legs
were suffering from the chains and now they give me
pleasure, etc., etc." But so also in much larger
things than those Socratic shanks ; war and religion,
horrors and heroism, vice and virtue, go and come
together : and these that have been the years of
horror and despair have been also the great years
of Canada : her heroic youth : her youth spent in
1 The Captive.
142 KIPLING
fighting against the very different youth, the wild-
oats youth of Germany.
It is certain now that this war is not to last any
longer. 1 War is necessarily a transition, but that does
not prevent it from marking, like other transitions,
the culminating point of human virtue, like Pericles'
rule in Athens which was the last outburst of great
living for Athens : the precursor of a period of
decadence : of moral decay and intellectual brilliancy.
The horrors of war seem to go hand-in-hand with the
highest standards of conduct which human nature in
the mass can reach : it gives us martyrs who are not
agitators, and saints who are neither self-willed nor
self-seeking : young men who are quite unconscious
that they have any affinity with saint or martyr and
yet are Canada's martyrs and saints.
And in conclusion, here is a morality, just as a
conclusion because after all Kipling is a moralist first
and foremost, and didactic beyond everything else.
You will find it in " They," 2 pp. 300-301.
If for an old woman's moralizing Kipling lost his
way, we may for Kipling lose perhaps, for one even-
ing our academic ways : and bear with this vulgar
journalist who has redeemed his profession and his
class : surely none too soon : sorely they needed
redemption : journalism has well-nigh destroyed
literature. But in Kipling it has done something at
least to replace what it has destroyed. He has
magnified the sons of Martha with such passion and
aptness of expression that he has pleased the sons of
Mary also and deserved well of literature.
1 Written while the war was still in progress.
T. and D.
CHAPTER VI
PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS
IT is a proverbial fact, poignant also and entertaining
yet quite intelligible, that an author is generally
the worst judge, interpreter, and expounder of his
own work. Virgil fancied himself a philosopher and
wanted to burn the ^Eneid. Wordsworth never knew
when he was inspired and when he drivelled. Tenny-
son throws no light, only added darkness, on difficult
Tennysoniana. Browning frankly left the oracles in
Browningese to the Browning clubs.
It is, therefore, only to be expected that the last
interpreter of our Coleridgian yv^n will be Coleridge
himself. I have looked for an explanation at any
rate in Coleridge and have found less than nothing ;
nothing would have left me at liberty to say that
Coleridge obviously meant what I suppose him to
have meant : what I actually found, however, were
a few words which seemed to me inept and insig-
nificant. I have forgotten entirely now what these
words were only the impression of their insigni-
ficance remains.
Now the worst of this is that it opens the door for
the enemy to blaspheme, for the scoffer to rejoice.
Accordingly, some of my cherished colleagues I am
told and can well believe it, it is so colleagiate have
at once pronounced the distinction a mare's nest,
originally intended to form part of those lines which
the poet indited " to a young ass." There is no
valid distinction, only a distinction without a differ-
ence, between Aristotle and Plato ; so runs the col-
leagiate criticism.
143
144 PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS
Nevertheless, because I also am a colleague, I
desire for a few moments to attempt to describe the
impressions which, as I conjecture, hovered vaguely
before Coleridge's mind, when he uttered the famous
words. Although, like a true poet, he could seize
only the oracle to which he was inspired and not the
grounds of it : he could interpret, I mean, only the
divine mind (the conclusions, the large results of
thought which seemed to come to him ready-made)
and not his own mind : not, that is, the various
detailed considerations on which the large results
ultimately hung. Coleridge was like the untrained,
unscientific judge in the oft-quoted story, who could
be depended upon for sound conclusions, but went
quite astray, if he attempted to analyse his con-
clusions into their premises.
What then did Coleridge mean ? Not surely that
the actual conclusions and creeds of the two men
are very unlike ; for after all their politics, though
different, are not contrary ; a conservative democrat
and an aristocrat are not antithetically opposed : nor
is their religion different in essentials ; though Plato
never emptied his religion or his God of morality, as
Aristotle empties them. Each seems again to have
believed in an immortality of an impersonal Oriental
and Buddhist character : the dew-drop slips into the
shining sea. The distinction must rather lie in their
methods, their pre-suppositions, their temperaments.
1. And first and foremost Plato generalizes : Aris-
totle distinguishes : here is a vital difference of
method and of temperament : 6 awonnxot; diafoxrix6<;
says Plato, 6 di ^ ov : the philosopher generalizes :
he who does not is no philosopher. But with Aris-
totle the cry is for distinction : let us distinguish :
the world cannot distinguish : that is what separates
the world from the elect ; but also, I may add, in a
secondary degree Plato from Aristotle.
Illustrations crowd into the mind and could be
multiplied almost indefinitely to prove that Plato
PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS 145
overlooks differences, while Aristotle is apt to make
distinctions where there is no difference. Plato con-
founds virtue with art and art with virtue : he
identifies the honest man with the man who makes a
patent safe : he insists that cooks should have a
moral purpose : virtue with knowledge (how often it
is rather ignorance, as with the Romans) : virtue
with virtue, all being alike soluble into knowledge;
so that courage is identified with temperance, besides
being the same virtue in man and woman ; and
temperance conversely is the brave resistance to
pleasure : art with artist (art only seeks its patient's
good; therefore the artist only seeks his patient's
good ; the doctor does not practise for a living but
for his patient's living) : religion with morality :
man with God : consciousness with the processes of
replenishment and evacuation which produce pleasure
and pain (so that pleasure and pain is each called
unreal by Plato according to the replenishment or
the hunger of the body accompanying them). Plato
confounds the human shepherd with the shepherd of
sheep (each practises his art only for the sheep's
sake) : man with woman : man and woman with
pigeons, dogs and horses : and all knowledge with
a priori mathematics. Rarely, very rarely, is Plato
betrayed into an unnecessary and unreal distinction,
such as that between the art of pay and the art of
healing, the two separate arts which nevertheless every
doctor unites. And this, obviously, only because he
has previously failed to distinguish between the aim
of medicine and the aim of the medical man, and has
laid himself open to the charge that he never paid his
doctor's bills : he is compelled to save himself from
that injurious imputation to explain that his doctor
qua doctor, rendered no bills, but only qua trades-
man : he paid the tradesman's bill but not the
doctor's : a distinction without a difference to a
practical tradesman-doctor. In Plato finally, action
and contemplation are ever united in the ideal life
MM 10
146 PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS
of his guardians as in his own strenuous and would-be
practical essays at statesmanship in Sicily in un-
happy Sicily.
But Aristotle is always refining : virtue is very
properly distinguished from art : politics still more
shrewdly separated from medicine and the more
normal and legitimate arts : the human shepherd
from the shepherd of sheep : the good man from the
good citizen. (Quaintly enough to our notions ; for
his good man is the mild, colourless character ; his
good citizen is the full four-square, all-round efficient
man.) One of his best distinctions never out-of-date
is the distinction which Plato overlooked in his
desperate attempt to ignore the difference between
meum and tuum, the distinction between meum and
nostrum ; another is the distinction ever needing to
be re-affirmed in some form or other against Comtists
or other modern fanatics, between selfishness and
selfishness : between selfishness the vice, the loving
of oneself at the expense of others, and the selfishness
which is no vice, the simple love of life and self : thus
the craving for immortality, e.g. by interpretation, is
not selfish : only for immortality at the cost of
others : or for honour and a good name at the cost
of others : " soit mon nom fletri," a Danton may
naturally exclaim, because he adds "si la France soit
libre," but no man otherwise need desire to be accursed
or annihilated. There is martyrdom and martyrdom :
martyrdom for the sake of others and martyrdom for
martyrdom's sake, this latter a very selfish unselfish-
ness, because it is at the expense of others, the per-
secutors ; and so on : I am developing Aristotle.
Or again in his chapter on Phaleas, desires are for
three things : for daily bread ; for champagne and
sweetbreads ; for the things of the soul, power,
knowledge, fame, divine worship : the economist
solves only the meanest and tha smallest difficulties,
when he has successfully provided every man with
three square meals a day. The medical man in his
PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS 147
own house is a very different being much less cool
and trustworthy an adviser from the medical man
in his patient's house. Government by rule and pre-
cedent is a very different thing weaker alike and
stronger from government by individual will and
personal initiative : again monarchy and each other
form of Government has various species under the
one genus. There are five spurious forms of courage,
of varying degrees of spuriousness, besides the true
form ; and the true form, in spite of Plato, is not the
same for a man as for a woman : it is less patient than
hers, less enduring, more drastic, and more dramatic.
The human creature is carefully distinguished from
the brute creation, and also masculine from feminine
employments and duties. There are slaves and
slaves : slaves who should be free men and free men
who should be slaves ; for the Greek is quite distinct
from the barbarian, even as he is at the other end
distinct from the gods. Contemplation befits the
latter the gods and a few of the diviner men
philosophers : action befits the rest of men : the
action again must aim partly at pleasure ; but much
more at activity for its owner's sake or the State's
sake : and the two the pleasure and the activity of
which it is the reflex can very properly be distin-
guished; just as also morality can be sharply dis-
tinguished from religion ; for morality is of the
earth, earthy : a means only of keeping the brain
clear and wholesome, swept and garnished, that
religion may enter in and that by means thereof a
man may follow the divine life and may think upon
thought.
2. I come next to minor and secondary distinctions
between the two men ; already more or less implied.
Plato represents pure mathematicians : Aristotle the
students of the physical and natural sciences. Plato,
I mean, represents a priori reasoning, and Aristotle
experience. Plato thinks that all science, even
applied mathematics, even astronomy, can be best
148 PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS
studied, after a short introduction in the form of
observation, without instruments and without experi-
ments and without observation : instruments and
experiments will indeed positively mislead the student,
for they will show that the coarse world of matter
does not follow very closely the laws and principles
of mathematical generalization : that the actual
ellipses of the actual planets are imperfect, as im-
perfect as heard melodies compared with the unheard
and ideal ; but if the actual ellipses are imperfect, so
much the worse for the actual planets ; let the
mathematician return to the law of the planets, the
ideal of the planets, the faith and spirit of the planets,
and not be disturbed by their vain and sinful works ;
which, in the nature of things, can never correspond
with their ideals, though nearer indeed to their ideals
than the human creature ever comes to his ideal.
Nay, so wide is Plato's faith in mathematical
generalizations that he brings the elementary in-
stitutions of human society, the marriage in due
season of each new generation of citizens, within the
range of astronomical science, and we are treated to
abstruse speculations about the nuptial number, or
about the 729 times by which the aristocrat is happier
than the tyrant. Of course he is more than half
joking, but the joking shows how he hankers after
mathematical explanations of the problems of politics.
Aristotle has scant faith in these vague general
ideals ; this universal good or God which informs all
things that are good : sometimes he has no faith even
in those general propositions which are the conditions
of all argument : e.g., he sets before you in one
passage (of great moment for apiarists) the moving
doubt, " do bees swarm when a warming pan is
beaten because they like the noise or because they
fear it ? " but the controversial spirit thus aroused
does not prevent him from adding cheerfully in the
next breath, " after all, perhaps they do not hear it
at all." He is quite dispassionate, quite contented
PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS 149
even though his experiments are neither as Bacon
would say lucifera nor fructifera : in the same quite
cautious matter-of-fact vein he resists co-education
and the rights of women, not on principle, not on
metaphysics, but with the homely and prosaic argu-
ment, " some one must keep house and attend to
the larder : who else will do it ? "
I mean that Aristotle has great interest in details
and in special individual facts ; and is not at all con-
cerned to get facts out of which large deductions can
be drawn : any fact, even a negative one, is interesting
to his strictly scientific and severely sober temper-
ament. One amazing example of this is worth
quoting : all philosophy has been full of the thought
that it is not truth but the search for truth which
repays men ; which soothes life and sweetens it
until it becomes at least tolerable ; but Aristotle
makes no such limitations, admits no such hesitation.
If the search be pleasant, he says audaciously, it is
reasonable to suppose that the goal is still pleasanter :
a prophecy, surely, only true of the collector, of the
man of science interested in details and in mul-
titudinous collections of details ; who is satisfied to
exhaust some science and to complete some collection,
though he be as far as ever from broad generalizations
and from any large understanding of himself or life ;
who is satisfied to perfect his collection of certain
shells from the seashore, without vain speculations
upon sea, or shore, or the wherefore of shells, and
shore, and sea.
8. In the third place because Plato reasons a
priori and Aristotle is an empiricist it follows that
Plato is idealist against the realism of Aristotle. An
interesting side-light on this head is presented by
their treatment of the perennial and modern difficulty,
the elementary school and its social influences. The
idealist aristocrat though he be had enough natural
sentiment in him to wish to unite all classes, at least
in childhood, in common schools ; or at any rate in
150 PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS
common games : it was the democrat whose caution
and whose realism led him jealously to separate
the children of the free from contact with slave
children and their games, lest one of these little ones
should be contaminated ; and should contract vulgar
and commercial ideas in his games ; the idea of
trading, for example, I suppose.
This is sometimes made the distinction between
Plato and Aristotle. So, for example, Professor
Munsterberg, in his entertaining book on " American
Traits," makes this distinction of idealism or real-
ism the one fundamental distinction between races
and individuals. He writes : " the realist is demo-
cratic, the idealist aristocratic ; the realist is cos-
mopolitan, the idealist national and imperialistic ;
the realist seeks his goal in liberty, the idealist in
justice. They are the two poles of mankind : the
realism of the man the idealism of the woman in
every noble household " or perhaps vice versa to-day in
some less normal but not less noble households :
" and so, in history, in Plato and Aristotle we feel at
once the typical expression of the two great tendencies.
Plato, says Goethe, fills the world with his ideals, but
Aristotle works with material already given " ; that
is, Aristotle, as I understand it, accommodates him-
self to facts and accepts because they seem to be the
facts of the past such horrors as infanticide, abor-
tion, and slavery, much more readily than Plato and
is much more disposed to conserve ancient wrongs,
because they are ancient. Plato is more disposed to
dash himself and his hopes to pieces upon the iron
walls of fact, in deference to the supremacy of ideals,
the supremacy of the inner voice over outer experi-
ence. Each exhibits the characteristic weakness of
the conservative respectively and of the reformer.
But to return to Professor Munsterberg. If he be
right, I ought to make here a fourth distinction, and
dub Plato an Imperialist and Nationalist, and Aris-
totle a Cosmopolitan or Humanitarian. Perhaps
PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS 151
even I might take a poll on the Philippine question,
or the future of Canada, to test beyond any cavil the
accuracy of the proposition that every man is by
nature a Platonist or an Aristotelian ; but I think
I will let this stand over ; for I feel some perplexity.
The truth is that in our British politics at least
Nationalist and Imperialist are not always synony-
mous but are sometimes antithetical terms : and
besides I have other scruples about this particular
distinction, suggestive and racy though it be.
For I sometimes think that Plato in spite of his
sympathy with the eternal feminine is less national-
istic, less narrowly Hellenic than Aristotle ; that
Aristotle is more friendly to Greek Imperialism and
the Greek conquest of barbarians than was Plato ;
that Plato in fact was not only " a little Athenian,"
rather than an Athenian Imperialist, but even was
nearer to being " a little Hellene " than was Aris-
totle. Aristotle indeed, if the Aristotelian scholar
Oncken be right, was not Alexander's tutor for
nothing.
It is safer at any rate to take some other distinc-
tions which follow more certainly and more obviously
from the distinctions already noted. 4. Plato then
is revolutionary ; Aristotle is conservative. 5. Plato
is constructive and creative ; Aristotle is only critical.
6. Plato is, in one sense at least of that much-abused
word, practical, while Aristotle is only speculative.
I mean that Plato has a platform ; has changes
to propose ; wide-reaching reforms, nay revolutions
to champion ; hopes and faiths that the end is not
yet ; that as Hellas has scandalized the barbarians
by her naked games, yet has, within her own borders
at least, lived down the scandal, so other changes
undreamed of yet such as co-education will be the
household words of later Athenians ; for the whole
world is in evolution. But Aristotle is practical only
in the lower sense that he had no high dreams, no
vast changes to propose, nothing to give us on practical
152 PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS
matters but a string of dnoQiai, a string of pros and
cons, from which it seems that everything worth
discovering is discovered already pretty well ; though
there are some minor combinations and permutations
which might be tried without impropriety. For
Aristotle is the practical man without faith in meta-
physics and with only that tolerably common sense
which, under such circumstances, poets and Platonists
have found intolerable : or, per contra, to quote
Goethe against Coleridge, if it be true that the clever
man finds everything wrong in the world and the
wise man nothing, Aristotle, measured by Goethe's
standard, was the wise Conservative, Plato only the
clever Radical.
Plato, says Mr. Benn acutely, had he not been a
philosopher would have been a statesman or a soldier :
Aristotle would have been a speculative surgeon, or,
in these days, a research fellow in some modern
science-ridden University. Even Plato's injustice to
poetry, to which Aristotle is so just and even generous,
is, I think, only the poet's sense of the defects of his
own temperament ; it is the literary man's con-
fession of the manifold foibles of literature. It is
very fortunate under these circumstances that the
disinterested and unpoetic observer came to the
rescue of Poetry and placed her on her pedestal above
history, from which the self-tormenting doubts of
poets like Plato are less likely now to dethrone her.
The same thing, by the way, has happened in English
literature over again : the best defence of poetry
comes from Bacon of all men, one of the most prosaic
of Englishmen and the nearest in spirit to the Bacon
of Stagirus whom he so undutifully depreciated.
7. Perhaps it also follows that Plato is more human
and generous and Aristotle more impersonal and
scientific and callous : Plato the natural man and
Aristotle the student. Plato like Schiller in German
literature the man of action (he certainly tried
hard to be a man of action) Aristotle, like Goethe,
PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS 158
the thinker : the devotee of self-culture. Plato is
the missionary, ardent to seek and to save that which
is lost, even though it be only common clay, fitted to
make but vessels of dishonour : Aristotle is, like his
own epicurean gods, careless of the great bulk of
mankind. The aristocrat was, as often in this
complex world, the practical philanthropist : the
theoretic democrat was less intent upon serving
common people.
8. It is no contradiction to this to say that Aris-
totle is anthropocentric, and therefore, in a sense
human, where Plato is theological ; Aristotle's caution
limits him narrowly to earth :
"Know thou thy self: presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man."
But Plato is theological, and yet, or and therefore,
more humane, if not more human ; for theology and
the humanities (in spite of a few historical quarrels)
must stand or fall together, and rest on the same
basis. Plato believes, then, that the end of man is
to glorify God and to enjoy Him until he be reunited
with Him with a glorious man-like God, a being
with all human righteousness and more than human
intelligence.
9. Plato then has faith, the faith of the theologian
and mystic, against Aristotle's Comtism, or agnosti-
cism, or rationalism, or whatever name you give to
the euthanasia which Aristotle sought to procure for
the poor, old, struggling patient of the philosophers,
theology.
10. Plato has optimism against Aristotle's pessi-
mism.
11. In short the difference between the two men is
that which Shelley draws between poetry and science.
Poetry, he says, is creative, constructive, imaginative :
all good history therefore is poetry (and all scientific
or modern history, I presume it follows, is bad
history) ; science on the other hand is only analytic.
154 PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS
So Plato once more is the poet and Aristotle the man
of science, who yet admits the superiority of poetry
to one science at least, the science of history.
I find the same Shelleyan distinction echoed by
Dr. Osier in his Science and Immortality, page 34,
" Aristotle and Plato, Abelard and St. Bernard,
Huxley and Newman, represent in different periods
the champions of the intellect and of the emotions."
12. And Shelley's distinction suggests one other
which has indeed already been drawn in the passage
which I quoted from Professor Munsterberg. It was
Buckle who distinguished woman from man, as the
imaginative, deductive, a priori reasoner, feeling her
way intuitively, from the man who is inductive, and
experimental, and cautious, taking one step at a
time.
The distinction may not be altogether happy, for
induction like deduction surely may involve imagin-
ation in an extreme degree : but as a distinction
between intuition and imagination whether inductive
or deductive on the one side, versus facts and cautious
step-by-step ascent or descent, from particulars to
general propositions or vice versa, it seems to be
sound : and if so, Plato's intelligence, in spite of all
his distrust of poets and his very modified trust in
women, includes the feminine no less than the poetic
intelligence, while Aristotle is narrowly masculine in
mind.
13. And if I may make my dozen articles into a
baker's dozen and into the number of the Apostles,
I feel inclined to add that Plato naturally as the poet,
as the theologian, as the man of feminine intuition,
is much more concerned to consider " duty " and not
happiness (except as the reflex of duty) to be the
lawful end and aim of human institutions, and the
test of their success ; while Aristotle as the secularist
or pessimist, as the cautious, sceptical man of science,
enthusiastic only for research and reflection, and not
at all disposed to admit many applicants into that
PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS 155
charmed circle of the elect, Aristotle is much more
disposed to welcome anything as so much clear good,
if only it increase the pleasures of life for the multitude,
none too many even at the best ; and it is all-
important therefore with him that an institution
should make directly for human happiness.
And so, while Plato is continually repudiating with
indignation the suggestion that he ought to think
more of his guardians' happiness and less of their
duties, Aristotle is much concerned about their
happiness and is not a missionary and has no ruthless
spirit of self-sacrifice. Aristotle is not in the same
degree at all a forerunner of Christianity, nor
a " naidayu-yds ei<; Xgtardv," nor a favourite with
Christian churchmen : rather he is as Antiochus,
Cicero's teacher, I think, argued or implied the
precursor of Epicurus and the Epicureans.
This may seem a hard saying in the light of Car-
dinal Newman's words : 1 " While the world lasts
will Aristotle's doctrine on these matters last, for he
is the oracle of nature and of truth. While we are
men we cannot help to a great extent being Aris-
totelians . . . we are his disciples whether we will
or no." And there is a passage of somewhat similar
purport, I remember, somewhere in the works of a
more masculine-minded and more Aristotelian theo-
logian, Frederick Robertson.
Theologians, like other persons, are scandalized by
the recklessness of Plato, by vagaries like his com-
munism of wives and property, and turn therefrom
with relief to the sober sense of Aristotle. Never-
theless it remains true that the dogma of theology, as
well as the loftiest spirit which theology inspires, the
amor theologicus, is of Plato not of Aristotle. Plato
exalted Divine righteousness to an equality with
Divine intelligence ; Aristotle founded the agnos-
ticism which makes of righteousness and of all moral
impulses, " regulative " virtues ; human not divine.
1 In Idea of a University.
156 PLATONISTS AND ARISTOTELIANS
In the keen and crucial controversies of the last
generation between Dean Mansel and Frederick
Maurice to which Mr. Goldwin Smith contributed
one of his earliest essays, it was not he only but the
natural instinct of all Christians which followed the
Cambridge theologian in his Platonism, while all the
ecclesiastical dignities of Mansel were not sufficient
to Christianize Aristotle. And equally and more
obviously the devotion of the missionary the amor
theologicus finds its counterpart in Plato ; alike in
his theory and in his practice.
CHAPTER VII
SOME OXFORD TYPES
THE life of a University is in a measure exceeding
the measure of other human life mortal, tran-
sient, passing away. It is so both to the bodily eye,
both in respect of the faces and figures which people
the colleges and quadrangles, and also to the eye
of reflection which takes account, not of faces and
figures, but of the deep things of life, of intellectual
movements and religious tendencies. We look round
after a few years' absence, and often look round in
vain, for some doctrine once familiar. We miss after
a brief interval all the old landmarks of thought,
which made up the intellectual prospect of the place.
If, therefore, a man desire to taste something of
the profoundest melancholy which the sense of change
brings to the sensitive mind, let him re-visit Oxford
after a few years' interval. New names are over
every door, and the boisterous life of each college,
of which so short a time before he and his formed
a part, oppresses by its very boisterousness and self-
sufficiency. How little he and his are missed ! U n'y
a pas d'homme nicessaire. He turns his steps, a trifle
less elastic than they used to be, once more to the
river-banks to see once more the fairest sight which
the outward physical life of any University can offer,
the racing of the Eights in May. The banks are
alive with men in garish flannel as of old : the barges,
as of old, with women in purple and fine linen. Each
college boat as it drops down in the cool hush of
evening to the starting-point, shows him the familiar
colours. There, again, is the scarlet of Magdalen :
157
158 SOME OXFORD TYPES
the Maltese Cross of Worcester : the red rose of
Pembroke passes him again perched upon the boat's
bow. But in the midst of it all he is a stranger :
not a face the same : save and except that here and
there he meets perhaps some belated solitary don,
some resident fellow and lecturer, and hails him for
a pillar of stability in a world of flux, a splendour
among shadows : dtos ninvvrai ral de axiai aiaaovaiv to
all of which by the law of human discontent, and the
irony of things, the solitary don makes answer only
by a doubtful smile which shows that to himself he
seems far otherwise : a vessel stranded on life's
voyage or ever its sails were fully set; a pelican of
the wilderness, an owl of the desert, a sparrow alone
upon the house-top. From experiences such as these
the returned exile, if he be sensitive to change, will
hurry with all speed away, repenting his momentary
return, and will be glad, if he be a simple and domestic
man, to exchange the glories of Oxford for the squalor
of London, for the vulgarity and mediocrity of any
town, where only he can find faces that he knows,
and friends to welcome him. While if he be instead
a philosopher, he will for consolation lay the lesson
of the river and the familiar-unfamiliar Eights to
heart, and preach himself a sermon on their text, and
teach himself that even so upon the bosom of a wider
and a mightier river, the river of time and life, indi-
vidual types and nations disappear only the race
remains.
This is, I think, the most obvious, as it is certainly
the most melancholy method of realizing the transi-
toriness of University life ; but the other transitori-
ness, that of the intellectual fashion of things, is not
less conspicuous. And therefore I preface these few
words I have to say of some Oxford types as I have
known them, by the warning that I am not pretend-
ing or intending to describe the Oxford of to-day,
though only half a century has yet elapsed, or any
other Oxford, except only the Oxford of some fifty
SOME OXFORD TYPES 159
years ago ; and in particular one type of mind and
one school of thought in the Oxford of fifty years
ago, the type of mind and school of thought which
though by no means unchallenged nevertheless
was conspicuously in the ascendant and largely
dominated the place.
This was the rationalist and classical school : and
its two most conspicuous leaders were Jowett, Master
of Balliol, and Pattison, Rector of Lincoln. I have
called it rationalist and classical because neither name
alone seems enough : I am not sure that it would
not be better to adopt a third name instead of either
and call it the school of the Humanists.
4 The Humanists " is, as you know, the name given
to the Greek scholars of the Renaissance, who by
their study of Greek literature were led to rebel
against the tyranny of ecclesiasticism and the Church :
were led to vindicate for men the right to use their
reason, and intelligently and with open eyes to study
human nature as well as patristic theology : intelli-
gently and with open eyes to choose for themselves
their rule of life, instead of accepting one, however
right and good, unintelligently, at the bidding of the
Church.
Because they relied on human nature they may be
called rationalists ; because it was their Greek classics
which aroused their faith in human reason they may
be called classicists. But since their interest was
primarily in this world and in this life, and in man,
as opposed to theology and another world and the
life of angels, they were broadly termed Humanists.
It is said, and rightly, that the educated church-
man who deliberately and after examination submits
his faith to the Church's teaching is also a rationalist.
He uses his reason to distrust his reason and to accept,
as above his reason, the Church's authority. Un-
doubtedly the term " rationalist," like the term
" sceptic," is misused when it is confined to one class
of rationalists and one school of sceptics ; those
160 SOME OXFORD TYPES
whose results are antagonistic to the Church's results.
Every one who thinks is to that extent rational and
sceptic in the true sense of the term and is a true
41 free thinker." But because the churches in the
past have appealed on the whole to the fears and
the conscience of man without showing how those
fears and that conscience are grounded in reason and
are the expression of reason, the term rationalist has
been not unnaturally monopolized by those who
have appealed to the reason direct ; in the current
and narrow sense therefore of the word I speak of
the School of Jowett and Pattison as rationalist.
The history of the relations of classical scholarship,
humanism and rationalism to the Christian churches
is a long subject which indirectly concerns us here.
There have been, before our own age at least, three
well-marked quarrels and divisions between the two
forces, but there have always been at the same time
wide-minded whole-hearted men who protested
against the antagonism. In the early ages of the
Church she was opposed by the expiring Paganism
of the classical world, and Greek philosophy was used
against her, and she in turn denounced Greek philo-
sophy. But already there were Churchmen, Origen
and Clement of Alexandria, who protested that a man
need not renounce or denounce Plato and Aristotle
because he studied St. Paul.
Then there was the renewed battle in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries at the Renaissance between
revived classical Paganism and Christianity ; and
many Greek scholars relapsed into the naturalism
and laxity of the heathen. But the greatest of the
scholars, like Erasmus, still were true to both forces,
still recognized inspiration in all nations and in all
genius, and refused to sacrifice either Plato to piety
or piety to Plato.
The third outbreak perhaps, we may say, was in
the eighteenth century, when the learned world had
well-nigh given up Christianity for rationalism ; but
SOME OXFORD TYPES 161
Bishop Butler renewed the traditions of Erasmus,
and reassured the faith of the educated, just as the
Methodist movement revived the mass of the people
to decent and God-fearing lives.
Well, something of the old battle broke out anew
in Oxford after the failure of Cardinal Newman, and
the dying out of the so-called Oxford movement.
Cardinal Newman and the Oxford movement repre-
sented the appeal of the ancient Church to man's
conscience, fear and reason, against the Liberal and
Latitudinarian doctrine, that salvation was not in
the Church only or by the Fathers only, or by the
apostles only, that inspiration was not Biblical only.
This Liberal and Latitudinarian school which was
held in check by Newman revived after his withdrawal,
and gradually dominated Oxford. The very nature
of the studies of the place made this inevitable. The
study of Oxford is the Classics. But all experience
shows that where a man's mind is, there wUl his
treasure be also. The mind of Oxford was bent
upon the classics and it was but human that many
minds should take them even too seriously, and give
them only too permanent an influence over life and
character. It is indeed a good illustration of the
law of Compensation. The serious student of the
classics was tempted by manifold temptations to
exaggerate their importance ; on the other hand, the
other and older school of classical scholars, those
who made of the classics only an educational instru-
ment, were apt to defeat even their own humble
object just because they did not attribute to them
importance enough. Classics studied only as a dis-
cipline became an unmeaning weariness of the ilrsh
and were often not taken seriously enough even to
furnish a good discipline. At the best, where in
countless country rectories mild-eyed clergymen united
the classics and the Gospels as the two solaces of life,
there was a tendency to turn the classics into a mere
elegant accomplishment, a facility of Latin and Greek
M.M. n
162 SOME OXFORD TYPES
verse. The classical scholar was apt never to plunge
beneath the surface of ancient life, never to under-
stand ancient life and history (and therefore to mis-
understand modern life and history also), and all
because he took his classics in a wrong spirit, as a
mere discipline in rhetoric and the like.
So then when Newman left Oxford, the other
school which recognized to the full, and perhaps
more than to the full, the real significance of the
classics now had its turn and succeeded to the vacant
throne, and of this school Jowett and Pattison were
leaders. And once more it is easy to see the divisions
in this school itself : to trace its left wing and its
right wing and its centre. I mean that this school
covered every possible attitude to the Christian
Church from devout acceptance to indifference or
contempt. Frederick Robertson and Frederick Mau-
rice (though the latter ultimately associated himself
with Cambridge) and, before their time and Jowett's
time, Dr. Arnold, were strong churchmen (in the
broad sense) as well as ardent scholars. On the
other hand, the Rector of Lincoln, Arthur Hugh
Clough the poet, and the late Mr. Pater (in the earlier
part of his life at least) parted company with Christian
doctrine. Mr. Pater in particular in my time seemed
to be always preaching on a text from the poet
Clough, " the ruinous force of the will." His little
book on the Renaissance was a whimsical extrava-
ganza insisting that the one thing needful is not to
form habits, to remain open to all impressions,
scrupulously to avoid willing, to be patiently passive,
expectant, negative, plastic, fluid, waiting for fresh
light on everything : in short, Clough 's attitude
pushed to its logical extreme and made absurd. These
men in turn formed the left wing.
Where are we to put Jowett ? Well, Jowett is of
all men one of the hardest to place : least of all
men will he allow himself to be catalogued and
labelled. The distinctive feature of his mind was
SOME OXFORD TYPES 163
that he could not sharply be distinguished, and though
many persons regarded, and still regard, his teachings
as the same as Pattison's, I think it would be fairer
to place him in the centre with Dean Stanley, his old
friend ; sympathizing in turn, or rather sympathizing
throughout with both views, or better still perhaps,
contradicting both in turn ; for it was always notice-
able in him that he tried to bring his hearers to the
attitude of comprehensiveness, the attitude of bene-
volent neutrality which he maintained himself. To
an ultra Humanist he seemed fanatically Christian :
to a fanatic Christian, a mere Humanist. He refused
to admit the antagonism which other minds felt
between the Biblical and the Greek view of life. He
detested systematic and logical thought : he dis-
trusted every philosophy as narrow and one-sided.
He looked askance even at his old friend Mr. T. H.
Green because he had a system.
One ingenious critic has argued that he became
more and more merely humanist : therefore his first
work was on St. Paul, his next on Plato, and his
next on Thucydides. That looks plausible, and it
can be strengthened by adding " and his last on
Aristotle." For Aristotle is even more humanistic
and more perfunctory in his recognition of theology
than Thucydides himself. But it is only plausible :
there is not much in it : it is so easy by a twist to
give another aspect to his kaleidoscopic mind : I
should prefer to put it in this way rather.
Jowett began by studying St. Paul. If he had
been left to himself he would probably have ended
with St. Paul, but his Greek professorship imposed
upon him as a matter of obligation (moral if not
legal) strictly classical work, and he turned first to
the most theological and Christian of classical writers
Plato "the crazy theologian," as Bacon calls
him : the man drunk with God, as some German
has defined Socrates. " The archangel slightly
damaged," as Charles Lamb said of his English
164 SOME OXFORD TYPES
Plato Coleridge. When he had finished Plato he
turned, but with nothing like the same enthusiasm,
to the sober and perplexed piety of Thucydides, and
when he had finished Thucydides, he had to betake
himself in his old age and not with a very good grace
to the Positivism of Aristotle. And the work was
done rather perfunctorily. I see little traces of
Aristotle's influence in Jowett's style or mind, while,
on the other hand, Plato's style and Plato's mind
44 almost shouts aloud " to use the old gram-
marian's phrase in everything he wrote. The most
Aristotelian passage I have noticed is the reflection,
44 The good man if he is to do good in this world
must also be something of a rogue," namely, of
an actor, an impostor, a charlatan. And this reflec-
tion is borrowed more directly from Macchiavelli
than from Aristotle, although the germ of it is to be
found in Aristotle's Politics. After all it is not so
very Pagan : it does not seem to mean much more
than the scriptural commendation of the wisdom of
serpents. But of Plato, as I said, we see the influence
everywhere. What can be more Platonic than the
irony of some of his rebukes ? He was correcting a
student's Greek exercise, and after correcting patiently
and largely for some minutes turned round to the
author with the question : 44 Have you by any chance
a taste for mathematics ? " Or again a diplomatist
indulged at his dinner table in some very broad
remarks a thing which Jowett hated (he had no
prurience in his mind) : pushing back his chair, he
rose from the table with the rebuke, 44 Shall we
resume this conversation with the ladies ? '
Jowett felt even a morbid horror of being merely
academic and unpractical. His so-called weakness
for success, his distrust of men who had failed in
life illustrates this peculiarity of his mind. 44 1 don't
want my pupils at any rate," he once said, apparently
referring to Dr. Arnold's, " to make a mess of life."
He seems to have exaggerated in his opportunism or
SOME OXFORD TYPES 165
his optimism the righteousness of the world's verdicts
and the world's results, and to have underrated the
righteousness and exaggerated the defects of those
who have failed in a worldly sense ; who have made
a mess of life. His so-called toadyism of the rich
and well-born was no doubt merely prudence and
wisdom : he desired to direct for good the influence
such persons possessed. Money he believed to be
'* the source of all good," and he was bound therefore
to seek to influence its possessors by all means in his
power.
To begin again, there were I think, roughly speaking,
four main currents of thought in those days, converg-
ing to form the river of University life. There was,
first and foremost, this school which had resisted and
reacted from the so-called famous Oxford Movement
and the teaching of Newman : the school which had
out-lived the Oxford Movement, and more than any
other single school dominated Oxford : this rationalist
and classical school, of which the best-known names
were Jowett, Master of Balliol, and Pattison, Rector of
Lincoln (often the name of Mr. T. H. Grec n of Balliol
is added, the original of Mr. Gray in Robert Elsmere).
Not of course that the ordinary undergraduate saw
much, if anything, of these great names. Jowett
and Pattison were elderly men, and the latter in
particular had withdrawn in a great measure from
the work of teaching : but it was their influence
which had moulded most of the men he did see.
Besides, if he did not see much of them, he heard a
great deal : he knew all that there was to know about
them, and a great deal more as well more even
than the angels knew : that is to say, not only more
than the bald historic facts, and more also than the
unrecorded facts, but more even than that illuminat-
ing fiction which is often in spirit and in idea truer
than fact, and which we may well believe engages
the subtle intelligence of angels. For there had
166 SOME OXFORD TYPES
gathered a vast accretion of legend round the name
of each : many of these legends neither literally nor
spiritually true. Than the rapid spread of such
legends nothing is more curious or interesting, unless
it be the antiquity of some of them, which yet purport
to be historical accounts of quite recent events and
persons. Jowett himself on one occasion asked a
friend for the anecdotes told of him, and after listen-
ing quietly to a long list " All of those," he remarked,
" were told by me and my contemporaries of my
predecessor, except one, and that is not true of me."
However as Herodotus would say I am not bound
to believe all the legends I heard in Oxford : I am
bound to record them.
Of Pattison, then, it was told that he never spoke
to undergraduates unless they had shown marked
ability ; but he made one exception in favour of
anglers. With an undergraduate of either of these
types he would walk and talk of philosophy, or of
fish. But even with them he was austere. One of
them more ambitious than the rest, and deter-
mined not to sink below the level of the occasion
and the Rector began the conversation, the minute
they issued through the College gateway, with the suf-
ficiently abstruse remark : " The irony of Sophocles,
Dr. Pattison, is finer than the irony of Euripides."
" Quote," was the dry comment : but quotation
came there none : only in its place a silent walk. A
weaker mind when engaged in the hazardous joy of
a walk with Jowett says another legend lost its
self-possession in presence of his silence and exchanged
silence for vacuous speech. " It's a fine day, Master,"
stammered ingenuous youth. For answer came a
reproachful look, but no further speech on either side
to enliven or belie the peaceful prospect of Nature,
till as they reached the College gate again after the
student's constitutional was finished, came a parting
echo of the unhappy overture, " That was a foolish
remark you made."
SOME OXFORD TYPES 167
Nor did the voluble and self-possessed orator always
fare better. One such there was who talked and
talked and talked only to reap at the walk's conclu-
sion the chequered verdict : " That will do, but too
much conceit."
Yet another had the bad taste and the bad judg-
ment to suppose that the Master would welcome
cheap, second-hand agnosticism : and he finished a
lively discourse in the style of the late Colonel Inger-
soll, to find his companion gently humming " Rock
of ages, cleft for me."
Said a worse offender on another occasion a
flippant young woman : " Master, what is your
opinion of God ? " "I am more concerned to know,"
was the answer, " what is God's opinion of me."
This was indeed one of the most interesting and
charming features of Jowett's character, that he
never paraded his religious difficulties or talked of
them except in sincerity to persons who could appre-
ciate and understand. He never gratified the sensa-
tion-loving, superficial public by oratorical fireworks
of this kind. The fashionable world flocked from
London and the Provinces on a summer Sunday
into Oxford and packed the University Church when
he was the preacher, all agog to hear and to tell some
new heresy, or, at the worst, if nothing newer and
more exciting came, at least to lay once more to its
faithless soul, the flattering unction that there was
no more Hell. Then would the Master in his piping
voice pronounce a mild eulogy upon friendship ; or
read an essay on the lost art of conversation, or set
himself in some other way to carry out what he
described as the end and object of all good sermons :
" the idealization of life," a phrase which illustrates
the strength and weakness of sermons. He measured
his audience well on such occasions ; not equally well,
perhaps, when he preached the sermon on conversa-
tion once in the Highlands of Scotland to a congrega-
tion of drovers and shepherds. His contempt for
168 SOME OXFORD TYPES
affected and precocious infidelity showed itself again
on another occasion when a flippant youth reported
that he could not satisfy himself of the existence of
Deity. " You will satisfy yourself by ten o'clock
to-morrow morning, sir, or leave College," was the
unsympathetic answer. A deeper answer was returned
to well-meaning irreverence of a different type.
" Master," said a converted pupil, " I have found the
Saviour." " Then don't tell anybody," was the
quiet rebuke. Another anecdote not less character-
istic of this side of his mind, the theological side,
was told of an occasion during my own term in
Oxford. A student of his College went to ask him
for the use of the College hall for a meeting to promote
missions to the Hindoos. " Certainly," said the
Master, and added to his visitor's embarrassment,
" I will take the chair myself." Which he accord-
ingly did, with an opening address delightfully frank
and typical. " A missionary's career," he said,
" appears to me a singularly attractive one : it gives
a man so admirable an opportunity of studying the
picturesque religions of the East." It was this
open-mindedness to religious systems other than
Christianity which formed the basis for another
anecdote by no means so authentic : according to
which a distinguished Hindoo, a convert of the
missionaries, after hearing the Master preach, an-
nounced himself re-converted to Buddhism !
Jowett was much more of a man of the world
than Pattison and aimed far more at completeness
of life and interests. He was therefore not so intoler-
ant of small things. " I must apologize, Master,"
said a youthful philosopher who had been deputed,
very much against his will, to approach the Master,
or reproach the Master, concerning the quality of
the potatoes served by the College kitchen : "I must
apologize, Master, for distracting your attention to
such trifles." " Don't apologize," was the unexpected
answer of the philosopher more mature. " Life is
SOME OXFORD TYPES 169
made up of trifles." And so on another occasion he
astonished a particularly laborious student, who sat
with open eyes and straining ears expecting some
aphorism on Plato, with the eminently practical
advice, " Be young, my young friend, be young."
But if Jowett seemed to be a living protest against
the narrowly academic life, if he seemed to be a living
proof that extremes meet, and that the head of the
most intellectual of Colleges was chiefly interested to
give expression to popular and practical worldliness,
and to discourage the shibboleths of the schoolmaster
and the don, yet no one, on the other hand, has
laid his finger with more shrewdness on the incon-
veniences and difficulties which result in a Univer-
sity, when this worldly, practical, many-sided culture
instead of the narrow pedantry of the scholar has
become the pervading and prevailing ideal of Univer-
sity men. In his old age when his teaching had
borne most fruit, and all men at Oxford were aiming
at his own broad humanity, he criticized the result
in the following trenchant sentence : " There is more
discontent in Oxford than there used to be : all the
young Fellows want to be married and have not
the money : want to be scholars and have not
the industry : want to be authors and have not the
originality : want to be gentlemen and have not the
manners."
Mr. Thomas Hardy, in his Jude the Obscure, is
generally understood to refer to Jowett when he
describes an Oxford don as pouring cold water on
Jude's ambition to be a scholar, and bidding him
stick to his masonry. It is at any rate the sort of
advice born of a scholar's reaction and a scholar's
doubts and scruples, mixed with a man of the world's
common sense which Jowett under such circum-
stances would have given. I have given it myself
under analogous circumstances and given it in vain :
and learned to doubt whether it was not the wrong
advice under the circumstances.
170 SOME OXFORD TYPES
The sceptic's apprehensiveness to pass on which
has played so large a part in the lives of scholars,
and sometimes in reference to marriage and its
perturbing risks a part so tragic, was, if another
anecdote be true, unnecessarily keen even in Jowett's
mind on one occasion. " Dr. Jowett," said a young
lady to whom he had shown great kindness Jowett
and Pattison by the way, like so many other men
of their position and character, were always sur-
rounded by a bevy of ardent enthusiastic girls, eager
to learn something broader and deeper and higher
than the domesticities and phylacteries and millinery
which pervade unseasonably feminine conversation
" Dr. Jowett," said this young lady, who had been
encouraged by his kindness to hope that he would
grace her approaching marriage, " Dr. Jowett, I
have a great favour to ask of you : will you marry
me ? " " Perhaps we should not be happy," was
his hasty and irrelevant ejaculation. He was a great
friend as this anecdote reminds me of George
Eliot, and she too in a pessimistic spirit, whenever
she heard of an approaching marriage in her circle,
was accustomed to say softly, " Yes, he is very
charming and she is very charming, but will they
suit ? "
But this nervous appreciation of the breadth of
the gulf which sunders masculine and feminine nature,
and the consequent appreciation of marriage, plays
so large a part in the lives of men of the student
type that it may be said to be a constant feature of
University life at Oxford and elsewhere. It suggests
once more the name which most of the anecdotes
about Jowett suggest, the name of the man who,
though he was no longer living, was the first repre-
sentative of the type to which Jowett and Pattison
belonged : the friend and pupil but also teacher of
Jowett, the favourite pupil of Dr. Arnold, the poet-
friend of his poet-son Matthew Arnold, the original
of " Thyrsis " in the exquisite poem " The Scholar-
SOME OXFORD TYPES 171
Gipsy ' the name of Arthur Hugh Clough, a name
of the generation previous to my time, but the house-
hold name still in the Oxford of my time : one of
the most characteristic of Dr. Arnold's pupils, the
one who most helps us to understand what the best
of the Athenians meant, by complaining that Socrates
spoilt young men : as high-minded, conscientious and
blameless a man as ever entered a University to
puzzle over the mystery of existence, and see exist-
ence pass him by before he has made up his mind
what he will do with it. I make no apology for
dwelling for a few minutes upon his life and poems.
A good critic Lowell has ventured to say that
Clough is the poet of the nineteenth century : the
poet he means of course in whose poems the spirit
of the century has best found utterance. Whether
he be this or not, at any rate he is the poet of Oxford,
as it was in part in his time, and still more as it
was in my time a generation later. He came up to
Oxford over-educated, over-refined by Dr. Arnold,
over-scrupulous for a world like ours : '* Spoilt by
Socrates," as the Athenians said of Plato. As is
usual in such cases, he began his doubts and ques-
tionings where his teacher's doubts and questionings
ceased. He could not see his way to dogmatize even
about morals as Dr. Arnold dogmatized about theology.
The tests were still applied in his day in Oxford,
and he soon found his position as a Fellow and Tutor
a false one and resigned : but, characteristically
for he hated ostentatious heterodoxy as much as
Jowett did he followed up his resignation not by
the expected theological pamphlet, but by the publi-
cation of his " long vacation pastoral " : the descrip-
tion of an Oxford reading party in the Highlands,
the Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich ; a lively and amusing
poem in which there is no heterodoxy, and in which
the discussion even of social questions is wholly
unprejudiced and impartial, marked by the entire
detachment of mind characteristic of its author.
172 SOME OXFORD TYPES
Clough was next appointed to the Principalship
of University Hall, London, where he is remembered
as one would expect for the conservative and
ecclesiastical leanings which throve with new life
in him the moment he was confronted with the
opposite and no less distasteful extremes ; the
moment, that is, when he passed from the ancient
and imaginative bigotry of Oxford to the commercial
and sordid Radicalism of London. He did not
therefore retain this position long, and after a short
time spent on this side in Boston where he found
the education of youth at once wider and shallower
than in Oxford he ultimately settled down in England
as examiner for the Civil Service, married and enjoyed
a few years of peaceful unenquiring practical routine,
escaping gladly from metaphysics and theology to
children's nonsense and re-reading the Socratic maxim
inverted : dve&Taoroi; (Uo<; tf ^v (MCDTOG, he now said. He
died at the early age of forty-three a few years
younger than Dr. Arnold at his premature death
by a fate which seems symbolical and pathetic. The
paralysis which had so long preyed upon his will
and convictions now spread outwards so to speak and
laid hold upon his body.
Obviously his was not the pen of a ready writer.
A Socratic constipation to use a Socratic and medical
metaphor lay heavy upon his mind. Spontaneity,
fluency, eloquence, were impossible. Only at long
intervals, as with Socrates himself, did the impulse
to make a long speech take possession of him. But
out of the small volume of poems which he has left
to return now at last to the subject, which immedi-
ately suggested his name one of the best and the
most typical illustrates what I was saying of Jowett.
In this poem "Amours de voyage" the hero is
a travelling student " sicklied o'er with the pale cast
of thought," who, falling in love and genuinely in
love with a good-hearted affectionate and intelligent
woman of his own country and station, cannot persuade
SOME OXFORD TYPES 178
himself that he is in love : or rather that there is
anything in love. A young man and a young woman
of wholesome nature and decent life, thrown together
among foreigners, with nothing more special to do
than visit picture galleries and make bets upon the
number of the arrows in the various martyrdoms of
St. Sebastian, cannot but attract each other. But
there is nothing in it. No guarantee of real con-
geniality, still less of life-long love : only the malicious
witchery of Dame Nature, first and mightiest of
match-making mothers, " juxtaposition it is, and
what is juxtaposition ? >:
Sic visum Veneri cui placet impares formas atque
animos sub juga aenea saevo mittere cum joco.
And so he torments himself with doubts and tor-
ments, not less the trustful, natural, unmetaphysical
girl, ignorant of Nature's malicious art, and happy
in her ignorance (" Wem Gott betriigt ist wohl
betrogen "). And finally he lets himself be guided
by mere circumstance. He happens to miss her at
one or two foreign cities where he had expected to
meet her. And he tells himself that fate is against
his marriage and he gives it all up. A Methodist
might logically and reasonably have done as he did,
namely, have discovered in circumstance a Divine
leading, and he at least would have had his com-
pensation in the discovery. But for dough's hero
there is neither justification nor compensation. Ultra
scepticism has passed as it is always passing into
lifeless and lukewarm superstition.
Another illustration of this paralysis of the will
and of the convictions and of the misery which follows
therefrom when the vital crises of life come to be
faced, is furnished by another book full of the Oxford
associations and the Oxford influence of this time,
written by one whose nearest kin grandfather,
father, uncle, brother, and husband were Oxford
graduates and Professors Robert Elsmere. You will
recollect what is incomparably the best thing in the
174 SOME OXFORD TYPES
book : the picture of Langham the irresolute lover.
The man is life-like beyond any other of the authoress'
masculine creations. And yet he is not an individual
so much as a type. Half the Oxford men whom I
have met since the book appeared have told me
confidently and confidentially that they knew the
original of Langham. And each says that he was a
Fellow of his College. And so he was, and so he is
a Fellow of every College in a metaphysical Univer-
sity. He has eaten of the tree of knowledge and not
of the tree of life. He is trying the impossible : to
work out the problems of God and life and marriage
and happiness by thinking alone.
And there is another and an opposite weakness
too, characteristic of the Oxford academic life.
From the very exhaustion and reaction which
intense thought produces, the thinker tends to turn
with extravagant relief and exaggerated pleasure to
such trivialities and hobbies as demand no mental
exertion. Now a frivolous hobby is an admirable
thing for an average man, but it is rather pathetic
in this sort of philosopher. It means so much some-
times to him. It seems to be his only pleasure, and
at last, alas ! his only real hold on life ; and when it
becomes this it is hard to say whether it is more
ridiculous or pathetic : it certainly is not sublime.
I have witnessed a devout clergyman under these
conditions develop a painfully acute interest in the
details of his dressing-table, in the varieties of toilet
soaps or razors. And so to pass from abstractions
to concrete instances, the Rector of Lincoln became
an enthusiast almost to fanaticism about the game
of croquet. I am tempted to say that his great
ambitions and his lofty aspirations seemed to end
in coveting the croquet championship of England.
By the side of this whimsical perversion of nature,
the reaction of a similar Oxford mind of the same
date, the late Professor Chandler, Professor of Moral
Philosophy, looks healthier and worthier : it was at
SOME OXFORD TYPES 175
least more intellectual. Fretted by the uncertainties,
and at the same time by the vast importance of the
problems of moral philosophy, Professor Chandler
turned for relief to Greek accents, finding therein
apparently a subject in which Truth was at once
quite discoverable and quite valueless. And he pro-
duced accordingly the standard work in this depart-
ment ; while conversely on Moral Philosophy his
fastidious intellect maintained a silence eloquent alike
of the insolubility of its problems, and of the depth
of his own studies therein. Socrates, it is true, was
fond of the paradox that there is no such thing as
eloquence : that like virtue it is merely know-
ledge : that each man is eloquent of what he knows.
But men like Professor Chandler, and indeed the
dialogues of Socrates himself, suggest the converse
paradox that a man is only eloquent of what he does
not know, or of that wherein he is only trifling : of
what he knows, that is, just enough to let slip a
stream of only half- true or only half-serious speech.
So far from eloquence being based on knowledge we
see the fastidious scholar the late Dr. Hort of
Cambridge, for instance preserving silence in half-a-
dozen languages ; or, like Plato, deliberately choosing
some ironical theme, or some petty matter-of-fact
and unregarded detail such as Greek accents, like
Professor Chandler for his eloquence. Besides,
indeed, if eloquence did depend upon knowledge, what
would become of the lawyer and the politician ?
Jowett with all his maxims of worldly prudence
managed to retain moral earnestness in a remarkable
degree. He was, in fact, not unlike Socrates in his
capacity for incompatible enthusiasms. Doubts of all
kinds and experience of life did not make him as
cynical as they usually make men so observant :
perhaps hardly as genially and pleasantly cynical
as Clough became : certainly not as cynical as
Pattison.
But to return to Jowett. Some of his sayings
176 SOME OXFORD TYPES
which look cynical are not really so on closer scrutiny,
but sound enough. " Never indulge a scruple."
" Indulge " is good. The scruples which we can
indulge are the scruples which please us, which are
mental luxuries, which are the product of fastidious
education, which are wholly welcome. But the
scruples which are worthy, which press on the con-
science against the will, and restrain from unlawful
or prompt to right action one may obey, but one
cannot indulge, for one does not love them. So
again there is humour and some spice of sense rather
than mere cynicism in his quaint saying : " It is
with a man's profession as it is with his wife : it
doesn't much matter what your choice is : the
important thing is, that having made your choice
you stick to it." In this case, however, it must be
admitted that he spoke from theory only, while in
practice possibly as the former anecdote suggests
at least he entertained like other scholars an extra-
vagant terror of matrimony. Even the often quoted
anecdote, which looks so cynically audacious and
unscrupulous, that wanting to preach a sermon on
conversation, he chose for his text, " Man does not
live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth," even this only sounds audacious,
because the retailers of the anecdote have carefully
concealed or forgotten the essential fact that there
is a real doubt here whether this be not the authentic
text. Probably it is, though it is certainly not the
text now familiar to us.
This sermon on conversation suggests another point.
Persons who met Jowett in later life were struck
with his conversational fluency, as well as with his
wide information ; but old friends who knew him
well Mr. Tollemache, for example, and Mr. Goldwin
Smith give a very different account. They say he
laboured under the scholar's deficiency of small talk
and unreadiness of tongue : that he was apt to be
silent, and when he spoke to be embarrassed for
SOME OXFORD TYPES 177
words : "He was the teapot which will not pour "
as Mr. Smith quaintly puts it whence indeed,
because oddities and eccentricities are often the
strongest attraction a man can possess and the best
advertisement, came part of his influence and the
mark which he made. His angles as Mr. Tolle-
mache puts it endeared him. The latter friend
relates that on one occasion a Cambridge friend found
him absolutely speechless after the first greeting, and
after waiting a few minutes said reproachfully,
i4 Master, does not Wycherley somewhere say that
the silence of the wise man is as prejudicial as the
speech of fools ? ' J
I think it was his sense of this deficiency in his
own conversation which sometimes led him to lay
great stress upon the value of this gift in others,
and so sometimes, when the context was ambiguous,
caused him to give dire offence unintentionally. It
is reported that during a lecture before ladies on the
higher education of women, he had the temerity to
say, " The object which women should always pursue
in education is facility to converse." Of course this
was put down to the strain in him of cynicism and
reaction and utter Toryism. He was supposed to
mean, " There is nothing in education for your sex :
you can only be ornamental at best." I think he
rather meant, " Nature has given you ornamental
gifts, which some of you, and especially the best of
you, think little things. Life is made up of little
things these little gifts are great gifts : cultivate
them greatly and gratefully." Or if there was any
further meaning than this in his words, it was not
the depreciatory meaning his hearers fancied, but
simply the familiar text, " Athenas nacta es, has
exorna " : each has his gifts : these are your gifts :
all gifts are good : cultivate them.
Though Jowett and Pattison belong broadly to
the same type, they never agreed in the matter of
original research. Jowett fought a steady battle
M.M. 12
178 SOME OXFORD TYPES
against the endowment of original research and the
plans of Pattison. He was too much of the man to
be capable of the passion of the scholar. Libraries
filled him with misgiving as keen as his interest in
them. Unless learning bore upon life and character
he attached no value to it. He was indifferent to
archaeology and antiquities. He said of the great
scholar (Bentley) who knew all the commentators
and minor classicists " that he kept very poor com-
pany " and that " much learning had made him, if
not mad, yet worse : dull, ill-balanced, inhuman."
I have been speaking of the great men of the
Rationalist School and of the besetting defects of
their system. The defects are themselves great and
worthy of the men : but in smaller men of the same
school, smaller defects appeared.
I have left myself little time for notice of other
schools of thought, but other schools there were.
Only second in influence to this Classical and Ration-
alist School this school whose devotion to the classics
carried it back to the Rationalism of Plato and
Aristotle was a theological school : the School of
the Oxford High Churchmen, of which Dean Church
and Canon Liddon and Canon King were the leaders,
the two latter living largely in Oxford. The school
included churchmen of every degree of Anglicanism
and Ritualism. It covered also, and therein lay its
strength, not merely the moral fervour and apostolic
devotion which has gathered hundreds of men and
women in the squalid slums of great English cities
into Anglican and Ritualist churches, but also a
breadth of view and a liberality of thought which
had a few years before been associated only with
the name of Dean Stanley and the Broad Church.
The men whose names are now well known in the
English Church Holland and Gore and Jayne and
Talbot and Paget and many others belonged to this
school. Its influence has spread, not over England
only, but to this continent.
SOME OXFORD TYPES 179
There was, I think, also another school of church-
men of an older type : the conservative churchmen
in whom churchmanship was closely allied with
conservative politics : the relic of the days when
Dean Mansel was a power in Oxford. But if so,
their influence was largely confined to ManseFs own
College, St. John's, and one heard little of them.
Mansel himself had been far more a conservative, I
apprehend, than a churchman, and as much a sceptic,
a wit, and a dialectician as either. And it was not
likely therefore that his influence would be abiding.
In my time he seemed to be chiefly remembered as
the author of various witty verses, such as the qua-
train, which was passed round when there was a
proposal to increase the ad eundem gradum fees for
graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, which ran
somewhat as follows :
When Alma Mater her wide hem enlarges
Charges her graduates, graduates her charges,
What scheme can be imagined fairer then,
Than this of doubling fees for Dublin men.
And when it was proposed to exact a double essay
for the degree of D.D., Mansel wrote :
Your degree of D.D. you propose to convey,
When an A double SS writes a double (e)SS-A(y).
Or, again, it was questioned should cutlets a la
Reform be spelt with an e at the end of Reform :
" Oh yes, reform always ends in e m(e)ute."
Again : In 1865 Gladstone was beaten by Hardy
as Member for the University of Oxford. Bishop
Wilberforce (Soapy Sam) supported Gladstone and
complained that the other side had " ploughed with
his heifer" that is, used the services of nis Arch-
deacon (Archdeacon Clarke who organized the Hardy
party). Mansel (against Wilberforce and Gladstone)
wrote :
180 SOME OXFORD TYPES
When the versatile Bishop of Oxford's famed city
Cast his eyes on the Chairman of Hardy's Committee
Said Samuel (from Samson the metaphor taken) :
" They plough with my heifer : that is, my Archdeacon."
But when Samuel himself leaves his friends in the lurch
To vote with the foes of the State and the Church
It proves without doubt and the spectacle shocks one
That Dissenters can plough with Episcopal Oxon.
Again : " c Dogmatism ' is puppyism full grown."
Again : He was walking with a friend in Magdalen
walks, and the jackdaws were making a portentous
hubbub. " What's it all about ? " said the friend.
" Ah, no doubt it's just their caws," was Mansel's
answer.
A Mr. Money of St. John's was very devoted to his
wife, who was in an interesting condition.
" Crescit amor Nummi quantum ipsa Pecunia
crescit," said Mansel.
The unattached under Kitchen were accused of
immorality. Mansel defended them " Parca juven-
tus nee tantum Veneris quantum studiosa Culinae."
And last, and perhaps in point of numbers least,
there was in Oxford a remnant of the old Evangelicals,
fallen on evil days, and with a scanty following, with
their principal stronghold of old, the most beautiful
College in Oxford I sometimes think, Wadham College,
wrested from them by an upstart band of Positivists,
who of course ran the College down to the ground,
whence only after some years it began painfully to
arise. (There were never, by the way, I suppose more
than thirty Positivists in England all told, and they
have had three disruptions I am informed, and are
now divided into four churches : three, namely, besides
the original church, the church of the marrow let us
call it, " Three persons and no God," as some one
said. At their worship it is understood they solemnly
" commemorate space " ; a euphemism, I conjecture,
for the solitude which they wrought in the quadrangles
of Wadham, and in those grey gardens where, for
SOME OXFORD TYPES 181
long years after, the cedars of Lebanon wasted their
sweetness on the desert air.)
And yet the old Evangelical School as I at least
am especially bound to remember still had their
saints in Oxford. In Dean Burgon's book The Lives
of Ten Good Men one of the first lives is that of
Richard Lynch Cotton, Provost of Worcester College.
If the other nine good men were between them as
good as Dr. Cotton, the world was not worthy of
them, and they were worthy to be the ten righteous
men for whom, as of old, the State may hope to be
pardoned. For the Provost of Worcester was an
adorable old man. He used to tell us how Dean
Burgon once stooped down and kissed him on the
top of his head. I do not think we were merely
amused to hear it. He was a very little man, and
Dean Burgon was very tall, but in fact the feat was
easy for other than merely physical reasons. A
propos, however, of his smallness of stature, by the
way Mr. Goldwin Smith has told me that his keenest
recollection of the Provost was on the occasion of the
then Prince of Wales taking his degree. There was a
great function, and the Provost as it happened was
the Vice-Chancellor that year. Mr. Smith beheld him
in his scarlet robes, standing in the National History
Museum, between the front legs of the giraffe. He
beheld him again by the way the same evening in a
different and more dignified place ; but there also
the Provost again provoked a smile : this time from
his entire absence of savoir faire and presence of
mind. He was chairman of a great dinner party at
which the Chancellor of the University and a large
portion of the then Conservative Government were
present. He had to propose the health of Her
Majesty's Government ; but being at once an ardent
conservative and a nervous speaker he could not
stop himself when once wound up, and before his
oration was over, most of his guests who should have
responded to it had driven to the station to catch
182 SOME OXFORD TYPES
the last train. He was a man of the most unaffected
and simple piety it has ever been my good fortune
to meet. So pleasant is his memory that I should
be even sorry now to see his pre-eminence in this
regard challenged by younger men. It may be there
is no fear of that. He belonged, indeed, to the
distant past, to a race well-nigh extinct. In fact, a
Canadian undergraduate who was a member of the
College in my time was accustomed to point out his
portrait to undergraduates of other colleges with the
laconic remark, " Our Provost, by Holbein." The
information chiming so exactly with the Provost's
general reputation, character and appearance, was
generally accepted with respectful interest and
acquiescence. The same veracious authority used to
assert that when he asked permission to go for a
day's shooting, the Provost answered : " Certainly,
but take care your arquebuss doesn't explode." This
piety, to return to it, was transparent on all occasions.
With the newly elected scholar, for example, fresh
perhaps from a small country grammar school and
country rectory, green and young and hopeful,
launched upon the world like a lamb among wolves,
he would begin the academic life with a few words
of private prayer between them two only, or at least
I mean of course between them two and One Other,
whom, as Herodotus would say, it is not lawful for
me to mention on such an occasion. Such prayer
rose naturally to his lips and therefore fell naturally
upon his pupil's ears. From this first introduction
to him to the end of one's course he left the same
impression on one's mind : that of one who never
neglected his college duties as he conceived them,
but was as faithful a Provost as any man could be.
Foremost among these duties in his opinion was the
sending for those students whose attendance at chapel
left something to be desired. If on one of these
occasions one chose to go to him in the morning
hours, one would find him reading the Bible, generally
SOME OXFORD TYPES 183
I think the Old Testament. Elaborate but futile
endeavours were made to calculate the number of
verses which he covered in a morning's reading. In
the afternoon, on the other hand, he seemed usually
to relax his mind with Davison on Prophecy. He
gave me a copy of the book and thereby hangs
another tale. He had once printed a volume of
Sermons in his younger days. They had not been
financially a success : in point of fact the edition was
left on his hands. Ultimately he disposed of them
by presenting one copy as a gift to each freshman as
he entered college. But this created a new difficulty
when the edition was exhausted. He did not like to
withdraw from the precedent established, and he was
far too modest to print a new edition. So Davison
succeeded to the vacant place. I wish that I had
been before the days of Davison. I would rather
have had his own sermons : they would have recalled
more vividly the once familiar scene of the College
Chapel, with the white-haired old man sitting in the
corner, holding a lighted candlestick askew upon his
knee to follow better the reading of the lessons for
the day, and dropping warm wax all over his white
surplice. Or again, on a warm summer Sunday
afternoon preaching to a recumbent and somnolent
audience discourses whose toothless utterance pre-
vented a large part from reaching our ears : though
ever and again one could catch the name of Aristotle
sandwiched between those of the Apostles.
Nor was he less careful of lighter and less solemn
duties. He asked us all to breakfast every year, ten
or twelve at a time. I do not know what the prin-
ciple of selection was : it may have been alphabetical
even. But if so I never heard of anyone taking
offence, as the Trinity men at Cambridge took dire
offence when their Master's young wife issued her
invitations on this principle. But the Provost was
not a young woman or a senior classic : he could step
in where angels would have feared to tread. At these
184 SOME OXFORD TYPES
same breakfasts he retailed personal anecdotes : often
manfully and under great difficulties : that is to say,
across the coffee-pot and the whole length of the
table to the senior man at the other end. This was
when the freshmen gathered at his end kept silence,
as happened not unfrequently, even from good words.
Perhaps I should add in justice to the freshmen that
the Provost was deaf, and until one had gained by
experience the range of his ears, it was difficult to
reach them. Absence of such experience often led
to conversation at cross purposes. Dialogues like
the following occurred :
(Freshman) Oxfordshire is a good country for the
study of Botany, Mr. Provost. (Mr. Provost) Um
ah, what ?
(Freshman) The Botany of Oxfordshire is interest-
ing, sir. (Provost) I cannot hear what you say.
(Freshman) The botanical resources of Oxfordshire
are varied. (Provost) You really must speak up. I
cannot hear a word you say.
(Freshman) Do you not find the Botany of Oxford-
shire interesting, sir ? (Provost) Oh, ah, now I hear
you quite well. Yes, I think he left Oxford before
my time.
From the same deafness he followed the chapel
service rather by long-garnered experience than by
actual knowledge. Once a stranger acting as chaplain
read the whole exhortation, instead of the opening
and the closing texts to which the usual chaplain
always expeditious confined himself. The Provost
gave the reader the usual ten seconds and then
started in manfully on the confession all by himself
in his own corner. The chaplain, indifferent to senile
eccentricities, continued the exhortation and so on
throughout, till the young scholar, whose duty it was
to read the first lesson, did so in great confusion,
every other verse of the lesson being punctuated by
and blended with a slow dropping fire from the
Provost, who had now embarked upon the evening
SOME OXFORD TYPES 185
psalms and who led by a clear lap, so to speak (except
for the wax thereon). His anecdotes were often very
entertaining. For example, the Russian university
students were at one time then as so often since
in revolt against the Government. After they had
been suppressed as so often since the officer in
command telegraphed to the Czar, Alexander II, for
instructions. " Treat them as a father would," ran
the Czar's answering telegram. But, alas ! in trans-
mission it became " Treat them as my father
would," and the students next day matriculated into
a better world and into a University not made
with hands.
But he was not a man of varied accomplishments.
For instance, his education in agriculture had been
neglected altogether. It was his habit periodically
to visit the College farms in Northamptonshire. He
thought it wise on those occasions to pass judgment
as representing the Lord of the Manor upon the
crops. But to do this it was necessary to entrap the
tenant into naming each crop. Sometimes the farmer
was dense enough to fall into the snare : but some-
times he was too dense, and the Provost had to pass
sentence at a venture not always with success.
" Well, Mr. Hodge, that is a fine crop of ah ah,
um ah oats you have there." " Wheats, Mister
Provost, whoats, sir; why, them's turnips." Such
incidents no doubt confirmed Mr. Hodge in the com-
fortable assurance that the College was an easy
landlord.
Nor even in the fine arts, on the other hand, was
the Provost well informed ; his sense of music in
particular was elementary and peculiar. One of us
died in my time, and we had a funeral service in the
College Chapel, and the Dead March in Saul was
played. As we emerged said the Provost to the Vice-
Provost, " What an inspiriting air." He had the most
pathetic, but the most sincere belief, as I have said
already, in the efficacy of these Chapel exercises.
186 SOME OXFORD TYPES
" Stupendous," he once said to me it was one of his
favourite epithets " stupendous ; is it not the influence
of Chapel ? I always know what a man's character
is when I look at his Chapel list. Most remarkable
(another favourite epithet). Do you know I received
lately a request for a testimonial from a man I had
not seen for thirty years. I could not remember his.
name or anything about him, but I turned to his
Chapel list and found he had been a regular attendant.
So I sent him, with full confidence, a hearty testi-
monial. Most excellent young man ! "
This criterion of character led to most amusing
scenes regularly at the end of each term when the
College was gathered into the College hall and the
Lecturers and Fellows reported to the Provost upon
each undergraduate's progress. A name would be
read out, and the dons would perhaps hear unstinted
testimony to the owner's scholarship and attendance
upon lectures. The Provost while running his eye
down the Chapel list for the name would begin an
eloquent period with : " Most excellent young man :
it will be a stupendous satisfaction to you " when
suddenly he would stop, his face would change and
sadden, his eye had discovered a flaw in the excellent
young man's Chapel list. Then fainter paled the sun-
light in the high stained windows and more sombre
grew the scene : the speaker's voice assumed ever a
graver and more warning note. A little while and we
seemed to be listening to the prophet Jeremiah. Or,
vice versa, don after don would rise and denounce
some very idle or very dull youth for non-attendance
at lectures, and no prospect of passing " smalls."
And the Provost would shake his head solemnly
ejaculating " dear dear dear " till of a sudden his
tone rang cheery. We knew what had happened :
he had just discovered that the scapegrace was a
regular attendant at morning prayers. Very quickly
and gladly the good old man slipped away from
reproof to sympathy, from sympathy to encourage-
SOME OXFORD TYPES 187
ment, from encouragement to congratulation : while
we outsiders watched with equal amusement the relief
of the victim and the disconcertment and annoyance
of the younger dons. They had brought him to the
Provost to curse him and behold he had blessed him
altogether.
On another occasion I recollect he sent for an
athlete, a very worthy fellow, fonder of running the
secular races set before him, than the Apostolic race
to Chapel, as the Provost conceived it. " I don't
see, Mr. Provost," grumbled this young gentleman,
" the use of all these Chapels." " Oh, Mr. Holt, Mr.
Holt," said the Provost, inexpressibly shocked and
grieved, " how can you say so, Mr. Holt ? What
will you do in heaven, Mr. Holt ? It is one endless
Chapel there."
Naturally his belief in the goal at the other end
was not less uncompromisingly literal. It is reported
that on one occasion, having an offender before him,
he solemnly lighted a candle, and held the offender's
finger for an instant in the flame, with the laconic
appeal, " It will be worse than that."
Similarly when Mr. Graham Balfour Stevenson's
biographer begged permission to seek refuge from a
racking toothache in a London dentist's chair, the
Provost's permission carried with it something of
admonishment impersonal admonishment for all of
us and for all men afflicted with toothache, not for
Balfour especially "This should teach you, Mr.
Balfour, to meditate on the place where there will
be eternal gnashing of teeth" and apparently an
inadequate supply of dentists : surely a remarkable,
though indirect, tribute to the high moral character
generally of that profession !
Whether the Inquisitors were not after all merciful
men at heart is a question of casuistry much disputed
in the schools. The Provost of Worcester at least I
am sure was justified by his creed and never acted
or thought except in a spirit of mercy. Even in
188 SOME OXFORD TYPES
matters which provoke more serious protest than
this he was palpably innocent, and even proud of
actions which other men not of his creed could not
have done without some shame and concealment.
He used to tell with simple complacency how when
Tom Arnold the younger became a Roman Catholic
on the evening preceding the election to the History
chair, for which he was a candidate, he (the Provost)
had hurried round in a cab at midnight to all the
electors to advertise the recreancy and defeat Arnold's
chances.
The younger dons loved to " draw " him about
Dean Stanley. He was perfectly polite, but very
non-committal. " Yes," he said on one occasion
after the Dean had been preaching in the morning
at St. Mary's in the University pulpit, " there was
much I liked in his sermon. He quoted many
beautiful texts."
There was hung up in his hall one of those missionary
maps one sees with Africa and tracts of Asia painted
black, and black patches elsewhere, and a dubious
dingy shade over Quebec and South America. " Ah,
Mr. Provost," said a mischievous geologist, " I am
glad to see that coal has been so abundantly distri-
buted by the Gracious Giver." " Not coal not coal
heathendom," was the shocked reply.
Being an Evangelical he had not the same horror
of Dissent as of Romanism, but he strived to convert
it by gentle but persistent efforts. He told me once,
with pardonable pride, how he had conquered a
Methodist farm-labourer in the little village of which
he had been rector for a time, by the mild but steady
pressure of a little joke. The man's name was
"Church." "Your name is Church," the Provost
used to say reproachfully. " Stupendous ; can Church
go into Chapel ? " The man held out for a few weeks
and then capitulated, and Church became a pillar
of the Church.
Another little joke was a propos of his wife, a
SOME OXFORD TYPES 189
sister of Dr. Pusey. " She is a Pusey not a Pusey-
ite."
So then to revert in conclusion for a moment to
the two types of men of whom I have said most, in
the one case because they were most influential, in
the other because I happened to see most of them,
there were in the Oxford of those days, so far as my
College was concerned at least, the three men and
the two types counting Jowett and Pattison as
falling broadly under one and the same type :
The Master, the Rector and the Provost;
The humanist, the sceptic and the pietist;
The man of the world, the cynic, and the saint,
Wisdom, learning, and religion.
And the most eminent of these was the first, the
Master of Balliol. And the most characteristic of
his times was the second, the Rector of Lincoln (for he
had not as many sides to his mind as the Master :
he had less individuality : he was in a greater degree
an impersonal type) ; while the third, obscure and
without special gifts, toiled patiently after that form
of Christianity which his system of thought set
before him for his goal.
Each filled his place and realized in human measure
his own type. The first two were names to conjure
with throughout the land, echoing, shall I say ? as
a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. But the
third enjoyed at least this compensation, that he
was enabled, both by his temperament and by his
school of thought, to retain through all the depress-
ing disillusionments of life, a large measure of those
very elementary and yet invincible graces which
seemed to ebb away and flicker out of the lives of
his more gifted colleagues : the three graces of the
Christian dispensation ; however these virtures might
lose their lustre for some of his more brilliant con-
temporaries, for the Provost Faith was still something
more than indolence, Hope more than improvidence,
190 SOME OXFORD TYPES
Charity more than an amalgamation of softness and
stupidity. And therefore, because the weak things
of the world are apt, as we know, to confound the
mighty, and because revelations have been made to
babes which are hidden from the wise and prudent,
I doubt whether after all the Provost was not the
best beloved generally, and the most generally missed
in his College ; and whether after all it is not his
acquaintance, which his College looks forward with
the liveliest interest to renewing in another world ;
if ever, that is to say, they are tempted to hope that
even for the least of his disciples, and those who are
not worthy to be called his disciples, his prayers and
his piety may furnish a passport into that " Endless
Chapel " of the Heavenly Jerusalem upon which his
imagination loved to dwell.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN:
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK
THE purpose of this essay is to point out certain
habits of thought and life, certain virtues and
certain defects, in which the Englishman resembles
the ancient Roman, while the Frenchman (or the
Irishman in turn) reproduces rather the ancient
Greek, i.e. the ancient Athenian. Of course such
resemblances and analogies do not cover the whole
life and character of any of these four races, and
equally of course the ancient Roman and the ancient
Greek seem often very closely akin to each other and
equally unlike the modern Englishman : thus, for
instance, there is a self-consciousness and a display
about all the ancient classical world, even the Roman,
which is foreign on the whole to the English character,
though natural to the French. When the ancient
Roman set himself to deliver his country from a
tyrant, the Emperor Nero, or the Emperor Corn-
modus, he could not go about the work in a business-
like way ; he must needs dedicate the dagger, which
is to deliver the land, by a solemn religious service
in a temple like a mediaeval warrior, passing the night,
before he receives his spurs, in prayer beside his
sword : and so he calls attention to his enterprise
and suspicion is excited and the enterprise fails : or
he must needs before slaying the tyrant denounce
him with lofty oratory, just as though the tyrant
were only a stage tyrant, and himself a stage liber-
ator, slaying his victim to slow music and the applause
of the gallery : and of course the consequence is that
191
192 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
before he has finished his eloquent invective the
astonished guards interpose, and the tyrant is rescued
and only the would-be liberator slain. This staginess
and self-consciousness was a defect even of the
ancient Roman, still more of the Greek, whose great
man (according to Aristotle) will always walk slowly,
and talk in a deep voice and with a measured utter-
ance, in order to distinguish himself from the ordinary
Greek, who is always in a hurry and fluster of ex-
citement, and gesticulating vehemently and talking
shrilly and walking fast and sometimes even carrying a
walking-stick, like a mere Englishman, so that in this
respect both the classical nations often suggest the
Frenchman rather than the Englishman, and seem
more like than unlike each other. But after all even
here I think you will see the Roman is more like the
Englishman than the Greek is and the Greek is nearer
the Frenchman : and so with this caution, that the
analogies cannot be pressed very far without breaking
down, and that in the matter to which I have referred
and many others, you must expect the whole classical
world to stand together, and to offer a contrast to
the modern Englishman if not to the whole modern
world, as may well happen, I will now proceed with-
out further preface to suggest some of the analogies
which occur to one as one reads the classics.
Burke said that he did not know how to draw up
an indictment against a whole nation, but in a certain
sense all classical scholars find themselves drawing
up this indictment against the ancient Romans or
against the ancient Greeks, that they resemble respec-
tively the Englishman on the one hand, the French-
man or it may be the Irishman on the other.
Generally it is the character of the peoples which
suggests the parallel, but sometimes it is their cir-
cumstances and fortunes, and the part they play on
the world's stage. This is the smaller and less im-
portant feature of resemblance : let us take it first,
and so clear the way for the deeper resemblances of
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 198
character. Look at the English administration of
India, and compare it with the Roman adminis-
tration of Western Asia and Syria, and you will see
the external analogy. Sir Alfred Lyall has said that
no one enters into the spirit of the life of those Roman
times, that no one comprehends for example the
Roman history contained in the Acts of the Apostles,
so fully as the modern Anglo-Indian magistrate. He,
like the Roman of old, presides over a horde of subject
races, hating each other even more than they hate
him ; over the shifty, subtle and fluent Bengalee, so
strong in ingenuity, so weak in character and courage,
corresponding to the " Graeculus esuriens," the hungry,
cringing half-caste Greek of Roman Asia ; over the
warlike Mahrattas and Ghoorkas corresponding to
the Parthians of Roman times ; and over the proud,
fanatic, intolerant Mahommedans, who look upon the
rule of England in India with the same mixture of
resignation and loathing with which the orthodox
and high-spirited Jew regarded the " abomination
of desolation," " the mammon of unrighteousness,"
that is, the eagles of Rome, and paid his tribute to
Caesar in the days of the Saviour. The Anglo-Indian
magistrate preserves the Pax Britannica against each
and all of his divided subjects, as the Roman magis-
trate the pax Romana. He sees one section of his
subjects so susceptible to Western education that
they cast aside at once all their ancient national pre-
judices and beliefs and develop all the doubting spirit
of their conquerors, without any of that sober sense
and underlying instinctive faith which natural bias
and centuries of discipline in the Roman or English
way of living have engendered in those conquerors.
Like the Roman magistrate, he sees another section
so intolerant of modern ideas that the introduction of
each trivial reform, though it be only the use of
greased cartridges, or a change in the age for marriage,
threatens a general insurrection. Like the Roman
too he is the unwilling listener to endless disputes
194 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
arising out of that odium theologicum which hangs
heavy in the air of the East, and is for ever interfering
with the peaceful current of secular pursuits : if he
is metaphysical he asks the complainants the question
of the weary Pilate, " What is truth ? " more often
he tells them, " This is a matter of words and names
of which I will be no judge," and they say of him as
the Jews said of Gallio, " He cares for none of these
things."
But it is time to turn now to the deeper aspects of
this parallel and to the resemblance in character and
not in circumstances only between the English and
Roman, the Greeks and French.
Some points of resemblance scarcely need stating :
they are so obvious. The Roman was a narrow-
minded man intensely practical, intensely money-
loving and material : he made happiness and wealth
or happiness and good luck, identical : " beatus "
the wealthy man, and " felix " the lucky man both
stand also for the happy man : he inscribes the extent
of his property even upon his tombstone as the best
certificate he could carry into the next world for
admission into heaven : he pushes his economical
spirit not only so far into the secular affairs of life as
to spoil a solemn public ceremonial for want of a
little tasteful expenditure a grace which the Greeks
characteristically erected into a virtue and which is
known in Aristotle's treatise on the virtues by the
name of neyaXonQtneia as, for instance, when a certain
Roman named Tubero, entertaining the people in
honour of the victories of Scipio Agricanus (minor),
seated them upon benches spread with shabby goat-
skins and fed them out of earthenware ; but he
pushed it even into religion : he forbade costly
sacrifices : he forbade the consecration of land to the
gods, that is the withdrawal of it from the plough :
he forbade the taking up of collections in their honour,
that is the impoverishment of the treasury : he for-
bade the dedication of the precious metals to their
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 195
temples and images, that is the withdrawal of good
coin from commercial circulation : though perhaps in
this last case there was also a Puritanic objection to
the intrusion of a sensuous element into the worship
of unseen gods. The Roman again was prosaic in
nature as in name : Strabo the man with the squint ;
Naevius the man with warts ; Naso the man with
the nose. There is still a Marquis Scrofa in Italy I
believe : from classical times the name has survived :
Scrofa means " swine " : but Greek names were
such as Hegesistratus the leader of the host, Nicoma-
chus the victor in battle, Periander the very man.
So our English names, e.g. Hutton, are not romantic
(even " Howard " is said to = Hog man : so that
the " Norfolk Howards " is not after all an ironical
name for " harvesters ") ; or, if our names were
" romantic," in a sense they were taken, until a
comparatively recent date, from the Old Testament.
Parents sometimes named their children Chilion
Nathan and Jedidiah ; Jemima Kezia and even
Keren Happuch : while the Frenchman, bearing him-
self such names as Belchasse, Beauregard and Lauricr,
is appropriately giving to his sons Christian names
which are Pagan and Classical : he calls them " Aris-
tide " or " Theramene." It followed that the English
Revolution of the seventeenth century was based on
the Old Testament, the French Revolution of the
eighteenth century on a religious reading of Plutarch
and the Classics. The Roman was tenacious of old
ideas : still of his tongue : a lover of compromise
rather than of logic ; conservative to a fault ;
adapting new knowledge to old superstitions, rather
than sacrificing old superstitions to new knowledge :
for instance, his newer knowledge told him more and
more the solidarity of nature, the omnipresence and
omnipotence of law : his old superstitions on the
other hand discerned marvels and miracles, signs
and tokens everywhere. Another man, a Greek, a
shallow logical man, would have regarded the two
196 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
systems of thought as incompatible ; the conser-
vative and cautious Roman characteristically argued
otherwise : he argued that if the pulse of Nature be
one, if one law rules throughout the Universe, then
what so natural or so scientific as to believe that the
travail of Nature, when mighty events are drawing
to the hour of birth, will extend to the furthest corner
of her being, and transfigure even the humblest
things and the things least concerned with sym-
pathetic pangs ? Reasonably then might a Roman
continue to find signs of the coming times where his
fathers had found them before him, even in the
entrails of the silly sheep, the flight of the uncon-
scious bird. And so he accepted by preference that
pious Stoic rationalism which set itself to justify
with ingenious sophistry of argument, yet instinctive
wisdom of spirit, all the imaginative absurdities of
ancient divination.
No one who knows anything of religious thought
in England will deny the existence there also of a
spirit of conservatism, of a tenacious adherence to
the old in the midst of the new, of an instinctive
determination to keep the old while accepting also
the new, of an emphatic preference for compromise
over logic. What indeed is the national church but
an embodiment of compromise ? a church " with
Calvinistic articles, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian
clergy."
4 With instinctive wisdom of spirit " because when
a nation is passing through that bad half-hour and
the half-hour of a nation's life may cover a couple of
centuries of individual lives which comes to people
who have lost their old creed and have not yet found
a satisfactory new one, this spirit of compromise,
however difficult and forced and far-fetched, is still
a safeguard and a sheet-anchor to conscientious souls :
to those who will neither keep the old unchanged if
their intellects refuse it, nor yet accept the new to
suit their intellects, if it starve their instincts and
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 197
their emotions and offer them no basis on which to
build a God-fearing life : " in the orphanhood of the
soul," says Plato, " when our spiritual parents, that
is, the creeds of childhood, are dead the flatterers'
voices are heard and the flatterers speak loud : the
flatterers are the body and its appetites ; beware the
flatterers* voices and stick by hook or crook, till
age has brought its own sobriety to the voices of
childhood, however stammering and obscure those
oracles."
The Romans managed and our people manage by
their spirit of compromise to stick as near as possible
to their ancient creeds.
I have been writing of compromise in matters of
religion ; but the British spirit of compromise is as
conspicuous in politics. The father of Mirabeau,
" the friend of man," as Carlyle calls him, says some-
where of the English : " These miserable Islanders
do not know, and will not know until their wretched
system has brought them to utter ruin, whether they
are living under a monarchy or a republic, a democ-
racy or an oligarchy." To the Frenchman possessed
by the desire for clarity and first principles such a
situation is wholly intolerable. To the Englishman
it is the most natural thing in the world. Therefore
an Englishman was able to carry on the work of
government in Egypt when a Frenchman would have
declared from the first that the task was absolutely
impossible. Here, as so often, our want of sensitive-
ness, or our " stupidity " as foreigners call it, stood
us in good stead. 1
The Roman then, to return to him, accepted even
this eclectic and loose theology only in its loosest
form ; so that the Stoics in Rome from Panaetius to
Seneca were always latitudinarian and indifferent to
strict and narrow doctrine. The Roman was a man
unintelligent in the ordinary sense and governed by
custom rather than by reason, and yet endowed with
1 The Spectator, 1008, in a review of Lord Owner's book.
198 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
that admirable substitute for reason and intelligence
which other creatures of custom exhibit, wise in-
stincts : he was a man who made much of the little
things of life : of the outward and visible and ritual-
istic side of politics and religion and social life,
however trivial and unphilosophical this devotion to
appearances may seem to be : who thought that if
the gown did not make the magistrate (or the student),
yet the magistrate (or the student) should none the
less wear the gown : that if forms and ceremonies in
religion, the attendance upon sacred chickens and
the observance of their cries and carriage, were little
things, yet it was from self-sacrificing obedience to
these little things that success in life for Rome had
proceeded ; inasmuch as any discipline, any restraint,
any prescribed modes of thinking and living, any
supernatural fears however childish and grotesque,
were ties which bound Roman and Roman together,
curbed Roman self-will and daunted Roman selfish-
ness, and saved Rome from the Greek anarchy of
individual taste and judgment, and the universal
selfishness of Greek free-thinking.
The Roman admiral who, being told that the sacred
chickens would not eat, said, " Well, let them drink,"
and threw them overboard, and fought a battle
against the omen, was not the typical Roman : rather
Fabius, who risked defeat rather than forego ancient
ceremonies : he felt that reverence for such things
was of paramount value and that it was worth risking
even a defeat in battle to maintain the established
system of metaphysics and theology. The Oriental
it has been well said makes his laws a religion :
it cannot be charged : these are the laws of the Medes
and Persians : the Greek made his law and his
religion a matter of personal opinion, and there was
nothing safe from change ; but the Roman chose the
middle path and made his law and in a less degree
his religion a matter for argument and considera-
tion and for cautious and sober change, but at the
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 199
same time until changed, an object of unhesitating
obedience.
Such men as these Romans were no doubt always
in danger of becoming formalists, true to the letter
rather than to the spirit : legally rather than
morally justified, hypocrites who tithed mint anise
and cummin and neglected the weighter things of
the spirit ; but after all they were not conscious
hypocrites : they imposed upon themselves before
they imposed upon their neighbours. The English
pater-familias is a hypocrite say the French but
hypocrisy is hard always to distinguish from aspir-
ation : is he a hypocrite who hides from himself the
sordid side of his own character ? who being evil yet
veils it and knows at least how to give good gifts to
his children, for all his own evil ? (Henry VIII,
observes Mr. Lilly, had " the nonconformist con-
science " : he would have been a better man had he
been a worse.) When the Romans were extortioners,
e.g. as were Seneca and Brutus, two of their loftiest
characters, they never appear to have realized that
extortion might be immoral for them, although legal,
and that if for them it were immoral, then neither
the strictness with which they kept the law, or the
austerities of their lives, would save their names
from the condemnation which lies in wait even if it
has to wait for several generations for sinners
against light : for those whose gifts and moral
nature are in advance of their age, and who yet
permit their practice to lag torpidly behind in
company with the age. Finally these Romans were
men who clung through good report and evil report,
through learned Greek theorizing and loose Greek
practice : yes and even in spite of learned Greek
theorizing and loose Greek practice mutually allied
for the preaching and the practice of evil, these were
men who clung to the essential political virtues, to
practical prudence rather than to logical consistency :
to commercial honesty rather than Greek commercial
200 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
" smartness " (" in Greece you call in twenty witnesses
and attach twenty seals to a document and then you
are cheated : in Rome there may be no witness and
no seal but a plighted word is kept " J ) : and to the
maintenance above all of a healthy domestic life,
which surrounded the young from the first with an
atmosphere of propriety, decency, sobriety.
It is for these reasons, I imagine, that if we want to
see how little a good Pagan of the classical era differs
from a good Christian of to-day, it is to Cicero with
all his absurdities and insincerities, his vanities and
his politician's manifold dishonesties, that many of
us instinctively turn, rather than to Socrates or
Aristotle, or even to Plato. This indeed is very
curious and interesting and worth a minute's thought
and digression. Many classical scholars would no
doubt deny in toto the truth of what I am saying,
and many perhaps, while conceding the truth, would
explain it otherwise. They would say perhaps that
the only reason why men prefer Cicero to Plato is
to borrow the famous phrase of Lord Westbury
that the latter has not even a redeeming vice, while
Cicero has many redeeming vices, and is thoroughly
human and in every way such a sinner as we are
ourselves : we do not like, on the other hand, persons
so immaculate and superior as Plato.
To my mind this is not a satisfactory explanation. I
shouJd prefer to say that we feel in the presence of the
great Greeks even sometimes in the presence of Plato
himself as we feel towards literary men of unrivalled
genius but Bohemian type of mind and life : we
admire their vast stores of knowledge and their
equally ready wit and eloquence, and their fearless
frankness verging often on brutal cynicism ; but we
feel a doubt if they have any principles or any feelings
left, and we shrink accordingly and never give them
a whole-hearted confidence. The Greeks lived by
intellect, and the Romans by instinct, and the Greeks
1 Polybius.
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 201
therefore dropped gradually one by one even with-
out being able to help themselves and without guilt
all moral principle ; moral prejudice as they would
have called it : no man by thinking finds out good
or God, and the Greeks came to be lukewarm there-
fore about character and morals (like over-educated
men of all races since), and by the law of compen-
sation and the bent of his own nature, he came to set
a disproportionate value in consequence upon in-
tellect.
This can be illustrated from his use of words.
When the Greek or the Frenchman speaks of a man
metaphorically left-handed when he uses the ad-
jective CTxcmfc or gauche, he means intellectually or
artistically left-handed, i.e. stupid, dull, or inartistic
and tactless : when a Roman or Englishman uses
the word metaphorically he means by " sinister "
morally left-handed : the Greek and the Frenchman
think first of the intellect and give an intellectual
meaning to their words, the Roman and the English-
man first of the character : and their words refer to
the morals rather than to the intellect. The Greek
came to be above all things critical : a callous man ;
in a sense a hard man, though always merciful : i.e.
a man hardened against both good and evil ; a man
as incapable of simple enthusiasms and of a simple
life of humdrum duties and affections as of un-
mitigated brutal vice. He was the most hopeless
subject, e.g. for the early Christian preachers and
apostles whose gospel was to him " foolishness," just
as Evangelical religion has ever since excited the
aversion of men of taste : this gospel might seem a
revelation to babes and might be accepted * by
honourable women not a few," but the Greek philo-
sopher agreed with St. Paul that it did not commend
itself to the wise and prudent.
And here, before we leave the Greek philosopher,
and this problem which he affords tous,andthecuriouslv
mixed feelings with which we regard him, I think we
202 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
can here trace the analogy which it is our purpose to
trace. When these philosophers had become callous on
moral questions and had taught themselves to justify
deliberately as part of the resources of civilization
such practices as infanticide, abortion and slavery
and massacre, they generally, being Greeks, took
refuge in art and style : they devoted themselves to
literary polish and perfection of manner and ex-
pression, even more than to the accumulation of
knowledge. On the other hand, when the Romans,
in an age of material civilization and unbelief, had
unlearned, through Greek influence, their moral
prejudices and principles, they took refuge not in
art but in learning. The elder Pliny and Varro
became antiquarians of remorseless Roman energy
and industry : they made life hideous and the flesh
weary with much learning : they laid the foundation
for all the dry grammatical and antiquarian research
which has followed since : while the sceptical, artistic,
unlaborious and indolent Greek was all the time
pronouncing a great book to be a great evil, because it
implies a want of balance : an excess : a limitation
of the mind to one subject of interest. Have not the
same phenomena been seen in similar epochs since ?
The over-educated Teuton, including the Englishman,
in an age of moral revolution and anarchy like our
own, gives himself, if to any intellectual life, to
science, to learning in some form or other : to original
research. The over-educated Frenchman, on the
other hand, dedicates himself to art for art's sake
and to criticism. He becomes a stylist above all,
and a master of literary form and method, and an
expert in criticism. However this literary taste and
the passion for art in the Greek and the Frenchman,
and the indifference to taste and art in the Roman
and the Englishman, constitute an analogy so striking
and far-reaching that we shall come across it again
later on.
To return then to where we were. In the general
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 208
description of the Roman character which I have
attempted, how many suggestions there are of the
stolid Englishman or the canny Scot : of the first
of whom someone has said that ask him whether
the earth moves round the sun or the sun around
the earth and he would prefer to reply if he con-
scientiously could, " Sometimes one, sometimes the
other " : so great is his passion for compromise, his
indifference to strict logical consistency in merely
abstract questions ; but who again on questions which
are not merely abstract but practical and vital, is not
seldom as strait-laced as any ancient Roman. The
Romans were not less indifferent to Greek abstractions ;
in fact they summarily cut short the career alike of
Greek mathematicians l and of the science itself, and
Europe had to wait thanks to Rome's conquest of
the world for nearly twenty centuries for a Kepler
to carry forward the work of Greece. Among the
Greeks says Cicero * " geometry was in the highest
honour, but we have set the limits of this science at
its practical applications to measuring and calcu-
lating." While of the second, the Scot, his clannish-
ness and his thrift are qualities entirely Roman.
Roman too is the laconic temperament of the British
race : " the Romans " (says Plutarch in a passage
recently quoted by Professor Mahaffy) " understood,
as the Greeks did not " (except the Spartans and the
Boeotians to whom Plutarch himself oelonged), " the
dignity, and the majesty and the solemnity of silen
You Athenians," said the shrewd old Macedonian
savage Philip the Peter the Great or the Bismarck
of Greece you Athenians are no better than your
own god Hermes, all prattle and prurience."
So again in some worse features also of the Roman
and British character, the points of contact are many.
English nature and English literature are often coarse,
as coarse as the life of Antony : or the verse of
Juvenal : it is not so often prurient and morbid as
1 Archimedes. * Tusculan Disp., 1. 2. 5.
204 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
the life and literature of Athens and of France.
English nature and literature again are often rough
and unpolished and prejudiced : they exaggerate one
side of life, develop one style of virtue, miss the
subtler shades of character ; and accordingly, if we do
not indeed turn to France for all our literature as
Rome turned to Greece, yet we do still turn to
France for the most delicate criticism, the most lucid
analysis of life and character ; as well as for the highest
polish of literary style and harmonious expression.
I have already referred incidentally to this analogy
between Greece and France, between England and
Rome, but it needs more than a passing notice. The
causes of the analogy are obvious : the Roman and
the Englishman in his heart believes only in action,
in deeds, in life ; and under the head of action, deeds
and life he does not willingly include thought, still
less the expression of thought in language, though a
book being a tangible material reality gives a certain
importance in his eyes to its writer, such as the mere
pursuit of some train of thought not materialized
into a book would not have lent him. But the
thoughts which the book contains must be solid, real
additions to human knowledge, definite, tangible
facts, some scientific discovery, e.g. capable of appli-
cation to life, and having a commercial value : they
must not be intangible, misty speculations : they must
not be mere sentimental poetry, least of all must they
be experiments in sound and phrase, a mere playing
with pretty images, sonorous cadences, musical verses.
So too the Romans were equally contemptuous of
mere literature. The Roman Senate only once passed
a literary vote, and only once ordered a book to be
translated into Latin and published ; and that was in
the case of a Carthaginian, not a Greek book : a
practical treatise on farming. Accordingly we find
that all Roman literature almost was a mere copy and
adaptation of the Greek (except satire and such com-
pilations of archaeological and grammatical research
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 205
as are not usually styled literature) : and we find even
that Rome's great literary men shared the Roman
feeling of indifference to mere literature : we find
that they were almost all men of action and proud of
themselves as such. Cicero was a voluminous writer,
but it was not as a writer he wanted to be known,
but as a successful statesman, and even as a formid-
able aspirant to the Dictatorship : Tacitus and Pliny
the Younger were writers, and the latter was even
an affected and artificial writer, but both were men of
affairs, governors of men. Horace was a poet but
also a shrewd man of the world, the friend and con-
fidant of the greatest statesman of his time. Virgil
himself though a student and master of words
not a practical man in any sense was yet more than
a mere artist and phrase-maker, he was a simple-
minded peasant prophet, passionately attached to
the sights and sounds of the country, and the rustic
virtues ; deeply in earnest : while Lucretius, his
master, was another prophet, and even more entirely
in earnest ; so wholly taken up with preaching an
explanation of life and the spirit in which life should
be lived as to be quite indifferent to the melody and
art of his sermon : and therefore we find it hard to
read Lucretius to-day. Even Propertius thought as
much of learning as of mere form and sound, and so
far was not as sensuous and superficial as his Greek
models.
Do we not see the same features, though to a less
degree, in English literature ? the sensuous school
of writers, those who turn literature into a play of
words, and into harmonies of sound, or those again
who turn her into a series of pretty pictures and
literary allusions and picturesque imaginings have
never had a following in England : how many people
care for the poems of the sensuous poet, William
Morris ? how many care for the brilliant melody of
Swinburne ? and no one reads the extravagant
jinglings and rhymings of mere musicians, like
206 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
Marzials. Tennyson was a great master of words and
he has a large following ; but then, like Virgil, he was
a great deal more than a master of words : he was
very much in earnest and a very patient thinker :
and after all his roughest ballads were the source of
much of his popularity ; just as to-day people are
glad to read Rudyard Kipling's poems, which owe
nothing to mere grace of form and smoothness, and
are hardly to be called poems, but draw all their
force from the riotous abundance of life and action,
the spirit of reckless deeds and not of pensive medi-
tation, which they breathe. (Kipling characteris-
tically exalts Martha over Mary.) Browning again
was a poet, but no one reads him for his literary finish
and good taste, but for his vigorous pictures of life,
and his insistence on reality and whole-heartedness,
in fact as a sort of Carlyle in verse ; and he never
wished to be read in any other spirit : he could not
bear to be thought a mere student ; a " damned
literary man," as he vigorously expressed it : the
insincerity, the affectation, the hollowness, the in-
effectual unreality of the man who lives only in ideas
and words repelled him unspeakably. Turn to prose-
writers : Thackeray was half ashamed of being a
writer : he wanted to be judged as a man who lived
with men and knew men : Macaulay was in politics
and only secondarily a student : " had Montesquieu
been an Englishman," he added, " he also would
have been a civil servant and an administrator."
Sir Walter Scott, poet and prose-writer, and the
greatest of Scotch writers, preached this doctrine of
the subordination of literature to life, of style to
character, alike in theory and in practice : in his
novels and his daily acts : he pushed it so far as to
declare that the greatest man he had known was the
Duke of Wellington. But when Sir Walter went to
Ireland, he was received by the poor Irish with
enthusiasm ; they thought that a greater man than
the Irish soldier, Wellington, was among them.
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 207
So again Gibbon's contempt for the mere literary
man of his time was not merely the aristocrat's con-
tempt for Grub Street : it was partly the typical
Englishman's contempt for ranters and sob-artists :
just as when the older scions of old houses, which
have supplied the state with soldiers, sailors and civil
servants, are still heard occasionally lamenting the
degeneracy of our days, and the tendency of the junior
members of their houses to become journalists (" mere
writers," as they say) it is permissible to hear in the
lamentations, not the mere utterance of aristocratic
prejudice, but the healthier instinct also of the practical
English mind : a man they feel, loses touch with fact,
misses the significance of life, when he abandons
himself " to the chatter of irresponsible frivolity."
Jane Austen refused to dine out as the authoress
of Pride and Prejudice : only was willing to dine out
as " Jane Austen " : her books were not her life :
she felt that she was more, if also less, than they :
however ordinary her character and extraordinary
her artistic genius, she yet set the first above the
second, because it was herself. A mere artist, a
French woman, would have been honoured beyond
measure to receive an invitation in her character of
an artist : she could receive no higher compliment.
The French criticism of the English Universities
hits the mark and misses the mark for the same
reason. It is true as the French critics say that
Oxford has not developed science in any branch in
proportion to her income and influence : but why ?
just because Oxford is an English University : in
other words has aimed at a certain type of character,
at a certain ideal of life, rather than at the develop-
ment of science : it is not only because she vahn-s
science less, but also because she values character
more that she is so different from a French University :
against her few discoveries or triumphs in science she
can set the generations of young men whose very
character and soul bear her stamp.
208 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
In short the material nature of the Englishman
leads him both for good and evil like an ancient
Roman, to distrust thought, to distrust, still more,
language as less sincere than thought, as given us, in
fact, to conceal our thought, and to distrust most of
all eloquence and melody as the most insincere forms
of language.
" What style, Sir," said an ambitious young Indian
Civil Servant once to a magnate of the East India
Company, " should be adopted in despatches home ? '
" The style as we like, young man," said the ruler
of India of those days, " is the humdrum " : both in
grammar and sentiment a typical English answer.
A learned English Bishop of the later Victorian age
is reported to have said that the one feature of his
Oxford career, to which he looked back with entire
satisfaction, was that he had never attended a Univer-
sity sermon. The Verger in the same University
church is reported to have commented with equal
phlegm on the continuous flow of oratory there :
4 Yes, Sir, I have heard two sermons here every
Sunday for thirty years ; but thank God I am a
Christian still."
It was the same Bishop, by the way, who being
invited to bring his pastoral crozier to a school Con-
firmation Service wrote back on a post-card, " I send
you this p.c. to say that I shall not bring my p.c.
with me " ; and who on another occasion receiving a
gift of episcopal vestments, alb and cope and chasuble
and the like, from a circle of devout ladies, is reported
to have thanked the donors with a chastened sigh
and the whisper that " he would have preferred
twelve new night-shirts " ; and yet again the same
Bishop, who, after telling schoolchildren that there
was one book beginning with a " B " which he con-
sulted daily, met the raucous and eager shout of
14 Bible " with a hasty " No, children, ' Bradshaw ' ;
good-bye."
A New York reporter I remember some years ago
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 209
complaining of the taciturnity of the heroes of Chitral :
if these men said he, would only talk as they act, how
the expedition could have been boomed in New York :
and what a scoop for the reporter and his paper : but
they talk only of field sports and athletics and
resolutely hide their souls in a plus-quam Roman
reserve'.
No one knows, therefore, whether an Englishman's
silence is from contempt of words and love of deeds,
or whether it be mere shame of all emotion : both
varieties of silence, in fact, are found among English-
men.
But if one turns to the Greeks and the French one
finds a very different tone of mind : one finds men
consecrating their lives to a minute observation and
photography of the smallest abstract details of human
character and circumstance, and to a laborious study
of all the resources of words, in order that this meti-
culous picture of details may be brought home to us
in the most artistic and the most convincing language ;
and we find lives, thus consecrated, eulogized after
they have closed in terms which seem to our practical
instincts monstrously exaggerated and wholly un-
suitable : we should not use language so high-flown
over the graves even of the great men of action : of
the soldier, the sailor, the explorer, the missionary or
the statesman (of the better sort).
There is an anecdote somewhere of a right-minded
Englishman, John Austin, who went to an eminently
respected and right-minded French thinker Cousin,
I think and attacked Voltaire for his ribald and
blasphemous libels on the most romantic and innocent
figure in French history, the Maid of Orleans : a
memory more deeply cherished probably in England
than in France, and enshrined in English poetry
rather than in French ; and the eminent philosopher
vigorously dissented : " Mais, Monsieur, c'est chef
d'ceuvre, he said ; it was enough for him that the
libels were as witty and plausible and well-written as
M.M. 14
210 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
the brain of genius could make them : as literature
the book was to him admirable because of its form :
neither truth nor decency had any bearing upon the
question. So in ancient Greece we find the same per-
fection of form combined with moral callousness :
or again combined as in many of the dialogues of
Plato with no positive teaching, with merely negative
conclusions or quibbling ; yet Plato does not feel
that the dialogue (though ending in nothing but
mystification or sophistry), needs to be justified : it
is dramatic : and life-like : and that is sufficient.
In the case of Isocrates we see this tendency to form
and art for art's sake at its maximum. Isocrates has
hardly anything to say ; but he is immensely in-
terested and excited about the question of how to
say it : no pains are too great to be expended in the
effort to say it luminously and melodiously and
antithetically and alliteratively and proportionately.
In short the French and the Greek mind dedicates
itself to literature which consists of matter and
manner ; but matter to be adequately elucidated to
the reader depends upon manner. Naturally, there-
fore, manner from having the second place easily
slips into the first place, and sometimes comes to have
the only place in the writer's regard. Isocrates has
no matter except, indeed, the theme " of the yellow
peril," the danger of Eastern domination. In Plato
the two are generally well balanced (though con-
clusions are often only negative) : only in Aristotle,
not an Athenian, is there an actual indifference to
manner in the omnivorous curiosity for knowledge
and facts and matter.
And so with regard to style in another form :
graciousness of manner and courtliness : the Greeks
on their tombstones remarks Professor Mahaffy
continually record the urbanity of the deceased as his
cardinal virtue ; and the Irish occasionally do the
same ; while everyone who knows Ireland at all knows
that the urbanity of the Irishman is at any rate not
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 211
occasional but constant : the Irish jaunty-car driver,
e.g., is excessively anxious to learn what are the
politics of his fare in order that he may out of
courtesy accommodate his own thereto : and it
would give him acute pain to say inadvertently any-
thing offensive to the stranger ; in fact he makes you
fancy that he at least understands the Christian
precept that charity is the greatest of the virtues in
its true and broad sense : as covering outward as
well as inward charity, manners as well as heart : as
including good-temper and courtesy no less than a
good heart.
But the Englishman on the other hand, however
good his heart, however ready he be to do a real
service, has no use for outward courtesy : when
every other hat is off in recognition of a lady's appear-
ance, his is still on. In short this virtue seems almost
as unnecessary or second-rate to the ordinary Engli>h-
man, when his attention is directed to it by what he
reads about it in the Ethics of Aristotle, as it must
have seemed to Cato the Roman, when he gave
audience to foreign ambassadors amid surroundings
which defy description further than by the brief report
that courtesy and urbanity could not possibly have
been more entirely absent. It was for these reasons
that Greek became to the Romans the language of
the highest society, and often the language of liter-
ature, just as French is to-day the language of dip-
lomacy, the language of the courts. The late Bishop
of London denned a gentleman as a man of good
manners : the Spaniard (he said) is the best gentle-
man in Europe, the Frenchman next ; the Englishman
is not a gentleman : but he can be made one : the
German never.
Other failings besides these are common to the Roman
and the Englishman : the customary and instinctive
character of his virtues becomes to each a snare when
foreign ways and new ideas press importunately for
recognition ; they are resisted at first with an un-
212 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
reasoning obstinacy of conservatism : they are received
wholesale at last with an equally unreasoning abandon.
The tide which has been dammed too vehemently ends
by bursting the flood gates and sweeping all before it.
Thus Greek literature, at first dreaded and despised,
was afterwards only too powerful in Rome ; and it
was a long time before the naturally conservative
instincts of the Romans revived sufficiently to enable
them to discriminate. In the same way foreigners
have often said that the Englishman is so much the
creature of custom that he at first is impervious to
any change however just ; and finally for the same
reason the victim of any change however mischievous :
because he has no reason to give for the faith in his
own ways which was in him. He drops his religion,
they say, when he gets into Southern latitudes : new
surroundings, new principles, or rather no principles.
Away from home, away from the sphere where routine
governs him, he, like the Romans of Rome, or the
" stunted Romans " of Greece, the red-coats of Sparta,
is true neither to his own principles nor to those of
any other people.
In all these details the Greeks, that is, of course, the
Athenian type of Greek, and the French, are at the
opposite pole of character from the English and the
Romans. Logical consistency which means so little
to the Englishman or Roman means a great deal
to the French and Greeks. Abstract ideas become
prolific in France as in ancient Greece of endless con-
troversy, by no means always ending in words only.
Take as an illustration the abstract idea which more
than almost any other haunts the imagination of all
of us, and influences our opinions to-day, the idea of
equality ; in some respects, perhaps, the demand for
equality, the accompanying jealousy of superiority,
are world- wide and world-old passions : powerful
alike in Rome and in Greece, among Englishmen and
among Frenchmen : all these races, e.g., someone
may say, resent equally the assumption of intellectual
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 218
superiority : resent being lectured to : detest acad-
emic oratory in their statesmen ; and ridicule and
despise (or affect to despise) and at any rate distrust
the professor on the platform. Cicero is always
obliged, when addressing a popular audience, to affect
to despise Greek art, and Greek philosophy and Greek
science : to dissemble his knowledge and interest
in these things as Lord Sherbrooke did in Australia
and in England. Cleon in Athens proclaimed that
the plain man in the street was a better servant of
the state than the student of the sophists : Robes-
pierre in France proclaimed that " the Republic did
not want savants." Every number of Punch in
England used to contain ridicule of Mr. Lecky in
Parliament : nor was Sir George Cornwall Lewis a
great success there. So far these races agree in de-
spising or resenting or distrusting it is not clear
which intellectual, especially literary, superiority.
But when we come to other spheres the contrast is
great. Only France and Greece really try to carry
out into practice the doctrine of social equality : only
France and Greece really try to resist the power of
wealth and birth. In Rome Cicero was weak because
he had neither : because he was a new man of the
middle class with no superiority but the objectionable
superiority of a literary intellect. In Rome Crassus
was strong because he was both a millionaire and a
rather dull man. So in England one sees or used to sec
that a gathering of English radicals never feels happy
in passing a vote against the House of Lords till it has
put a Lord in the chair to make the vote respectable :
and the radical London County Council elected a few
years ago a Peer for chairman, a Baronet for vice-
chairman, and an Honourable for secretary : and an
English constituency will still perhaps elect a Marquis
by preference ; unless possibly he has against him a
millionaire: a millionaire- Marquis is irresistible;
for he is the personification of the devoutest aspir-
ations of all his constituents. This may be snobbish-
214 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
ness ; but if so snobbishness like other private vices
is a public benefit ; for from this snobbishness flows
a most salutary spirit of caution and conservatism ;
a most wholesome respect for the past and the real
and the practicable. But in Greece aristocrats were
driven out of politics or into insurrection ; as the
Orleanist Princes were ostracized in France ; or as
the young and foolish sugar Lord and millionaire Le
Baudy was persecuted to death, some time ago, denied
the usual consideration shown to all other men, just
because he was a millionaire : and consideration to
him would have looked suspicious and a violation of
equality. And so in these cases the French and
Greek passion for equality oversteps itself and falls
over on the other side and ends in a new inequality
justice for everyone except princes and millionaires.
The ancient Greek democrat then was as jealous
for equality as any Frenchman of to-day, as sensitive
to " coercion," as clamorous for the abstract principle
of autonomy as any Irishman : there is an old Irish
stanza which brought a little nearer to date runs
somewhat as follows :
" Och Dublin city there is no doubtin'
Bates every city upon the say :
Tis there you'll see Tay Pay a spoutin'
And all the patriots making hay ;
For 'tis the capitol of a happy nation
With loyal pisintry upon a fruitful sod,
Fightin' like divils for conciliation :
Murtherin' each other for the love of God."
Compromise, the essence of practicable systems
religious or political, was as abhorrent to him, as is
the name " Republic " to a French monarchist, or
the legal recognition of the Roman Catholic Church
to a French unbeliever. In a delightful anecdote
from Cicero (which has at last received the publicity
it deserves through Professor Mahaffy), the Roman
officer Gellius called all the Greek philosophers to-
gether and implored them to settle once for all their
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 215
verbal disputes and get down to solid business, and
to this end put at their disposal his own intelligent
and cultured mind, in order to effect a working com-
promise. But working compromises were the one
thing which these Greeks both for better and for
worse reasons did not desire. Logical consistency,
the symmetry and cohesion of their systems of
thought, were as dear to their acute intelligence, as
argument and oratorical display and everything in
short except solid business were dear to their indolent
vanity. These Greek philosophers and their suc-
cessors were the men who elaborated the philosophical
and religious dogmas which still largely hold the field
in metaphysics and theology. For example the whole
of the modern doctrine of the intrinsic immortality
of the soul is said by learned theologians to be un-
evangelical and mere Platonizing ; but in any case
it is a building by Clement and Origen, and Tertullian
and Augustine, and Athenodorus and Athanasius,
along Platonic lines, upon some passages of the New
Testament : the same Origen in the same way a
Platonizer is the first preacher of restoration and of
" universalism " : he, like Plato, disbelieves in all
punishment which is not remedial and corrective.
For the Greek fathers, we are told, settled the meta-
physical and abstract problems of theology the
relationship of the Father to the Son, of the Son to
human Nature, and the like : the Roman fathers gave
their attention to the doctrine of works and faith,
and to the doctrine of the will.
And so in the same way it is to the acute intellect
of France, to Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot, that we
can trace the political and social dogmas which have
ruled the world since the French revolution. In the
same connection see what a dignity attaches in Greece
and France to words and ideas which either do not
exist for Romans and Englishmen or exist only as
of secondary importance. It would hardly be fair,
perhaps, to quote the Greek " optf " the origin of our
216 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
" school," but meaning " leisure," as a proof that the
Greek turned all leisure into an opportunity for in-
struction and education ; in fact the true inference
is as likely as not the opposite one that in the ancient
world, taken up with the necessary tasks of life, all
education had originally to be snatched in leisure
moments : instead of being formally and regularly
provided, as a serious part of life's business : and so
education was " leisure " to the Greeks, and " play "
to the Romans (ludus). But look, instead, at such a
word as diargi^ij : diaTQifir) means a " pastime," but it
comes to mean in Greek philosophical discussion
or a philosophical treatise, or an oratorical treatise,
or a scientific seance, or a conversazione : a " seance "
and a " conversazione " ! We have to go to France
and Italy for an equivalent : and the Romans were
equally unable to translate diaTQifiij into Latin. To
the Greeks, i.e., a " pastime " was an occasion for
literary and philosophical thought : or oratory : to
us anything which involves sitting still and talking
seems to involve waste of time and frivolity and frip-
pery. Look once again at o%ohri itself : " leisure " is
not a very lofty idea to us ; but how much it meant
often to the Greek : it meant philosophy : it meant
education : and so his word for leisure came to be
the spiritual equivalent of our word " school " ; his
leisure was often passed voluntarily and deliberately
in thought, in " schooling " himself, however little
spiritual significance may attach etymologically to
the kinship between these two words. When Aris-
totle uses the word oxoAij for " meditation," it is
impossible to explain away his use of the word for
" leisure " as a mere insignificant historical accident.
But turn from this abstract thought to conduct, and
where is this strictness and tenacity of principle in
Greek or Frenchman ? If the Roman or the English-
man subordinates his religion to his spirit of thrift,
yet the Frenchman or the Greek makes of his religion
only an opportunity for a holiday : they are the gay
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 217
nations of the earth : they never take their pleasures
sadly : they neither themselves feel nor tempt the
onlooker to feel that life would be tolerable but for
its amusements.
They make even war with a light heart. But the
Englishman hi his amusements is between Scylla
and Charybdis : the Scylla of coarse animalism, the
Charybdis of Puritanism : " Scribes and Pharisees on
the one side " cried Chillingworth, " publicans and
sinners on the other." But the gayer and lighter
French nature is beside itself with happiness when
it is the season for happiness, as it is beside itself next
day, it maybe, with political passion when the " red
fool-fury of the Seine, the mad hysterics of the Celt "
takes its turn with their impressionable mercurial
temperaments. The impassive sober-minded Roman
or Englishman despises this volatility and excitement :
it seems to him childish : to show want of seriousness
and principle. He is a matter-of-fact person : he is
not suspicious, e.g., of all about him ; but the Parisian
like the ancient Athenian is nothing if not suspicious :
often the atmosphere of Paris is one of preternatural
suspicion : but suspicion there always is : his troops
are beaten in battle, and at once there rises the cry
" nous sommes trahis " just as a beaten general did
not venture to return at once to Athens : and just as
Athens went mad with suspicion at the time of the
mutilation of the Hermae, or again at the conspiracy
of the 400 : and just as Diodotus said of her : " Athens
is the only city a man cannot serve frankly because
you requite him by suspecting some sinister motive,
some unseen price : to win your trust he needs must
lie.*' All such morbidly-active intelligence is foreign
to the Englishman. The English socialist mechanic,
for example, is still, if not as much as ever, hated on
the Continent by his confreres of " the International "
because he yawns at their pyrotechnical orations :
so the ancient Roman yawned at the histrionics of
the Greek ; " you know what asses Greeks make of
218 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
themselves," says Cicero to a Roman jury (we are
indebted again to the Dublin Professor for the refer-
ence), " with the arching of their eyebrows and the
shrugging of their shoulders." And these lively
expressions of lively emotion were not more offensive
to him and his Roman hearers than the liveliness of
the emotion itself : ' You cry for blood," he says in
another passage, " That is not Roman, it is only
blathering Greeks or beastly barbarians who carry
hate so far " : " blathering Irishmen " in the modern
parallel. So in this matter of animated gesture, the
American continent, where a Southern sun and French
and Irish influence have modified Anglo-Saxon cold-
ness, found the late Matthew Arnold a poor lecturer,
because he was without that fearful and wonderful
art, called elocution. He did not " orate " : he did
not move from his place : he could not even slap his
thigh : yet Caius Graccius himself, for all his Roman
coldness, made that concession to democracy : he was
quite unlike Henry Ward Beecher or Dr. Talmage.
" I cannot discover, Madam," said the late President
of University College, Toronto, to an American lady,
" that your son has that acquaintance with languages
and science which we require for matriculation."
" Oh, he does not know much of those things," was
the answer, " but you should hear him spout." I
should not venture to say that this weakness for
declamation extended even to the teachers as a rule
across the line, but occasionally it is noticeable even
in them. " I do not see," said a Professor of a not
inconsiderable University, " how so and so men-
tioning a very good student and a rising scholar
" can ever do well as a lecturer with those front
teeth." " Good gracious, what do you mean ? " was
the answer. " Have you not noticed, my dear Sir,
the gap in his front teeth ? I do not see how he can
ever attain to 4 the vocal interpretation ' of literature."
Even where there is no declamation, the American
is more high-falutin and eulogistic than the English-
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 219
man. " Out of Plato," says Emerson, "come all
things that are still written and debated among men
of thought." ' There is no sort of rubbish or non-
sense," says the Oxford Don, with his deprecatory air,
t4 that you won't find in Plato." Perhaps it is for
this reason that literary men seem to have in some
ways more influence in America than in England. In
America, it is said, the College President is the only
personal power ; the only figure corresponding to an
English Duke : his influence is only impaired by that
democratic jealousy which insists upon the equality
of all men : one man is as good as another. In
England, on the other hand, the College President will
not be hampered by democratic equality, but he will
be contemptuously thrust aside by the national con-
tempt for learning ; and will enjoy less influence
than his colleague in America : unless, indeed, he be
a nobleman ; and then he will regain from the English
aristocratic spirit, all the influence his American
brother enjoys from the American admiration of
literature : probably, on the whole, as the English
aristocracy and the English upper classes are largely
educated men and women, the educated have as much
influence in England as in the States ; but for different
reasons. In England because of their birth and in
spite of their education : in America because of the
superior education and in spite of their superior birth.
So in the case of another kind of gesticulation-
dancing : imagine, if you can, an ancient Roman when
he was sueing for a lady's hand attempting to further
his suit by standing upon his head upon the table
and figuring with his legs : this is too much it is true
even for Greek taste, and Hippoclides, the suitor in
question, " danced away his marriage." But this
was the only dance we hear of Greece rebuking ;
whereas there was no sort of dancing even the most
dignified but was a scandal to the typical Roman, as
it is to not a few Englishmen and Scotchmen. For
one thing these races are too stiff and awkward to
220 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
dance. The native of this Continent, the American
or Canadian (or Red Indian) is distinguishable in
Regent Square or the Strand for his lither and more
lissome figure and carriage. And in matters much
more serious than dancing, respectability and self-
restraint were demanded of Romans, even of Roman
youths, such as never formed a factor in the life of
Greek youth, nor indeed were even required by the
theories of Greek philosophers. In fact the Greek
philosopher, the very crown of his race, often stood
on the same moral (or immoral) level as an easy-going
Roman man of the world who never professed to be
a moralist. Socrates, e.g., stands on the same plane
in some not unimportant details of morality with the
coarse elder Cato, or the bon vivant Horace. It was
only in Rome that efforts were made by parents to
preserve for their sons the happiness which comes to
him who is content with temperate pleasures : to
shield their sons from the unhappiness which follows
upon the appetite for intemperate and highly-seasoned
excitements : for such excitements as leave a sting
and project a sting ; spoiling the past with poisoned
memories, and the future with importunate desires ;
and making their victim ultimately if he yield to
them to be in turn " a Prodigal's favourite and then
a miser's pensioner."
In many other ways the laxity of the Greeks about
conduct may be contrasted with their demand for
precision of theory, and may be paralleled in modern
France. The great Frenchman who died recently,
Renan, was a model of Greek excellence and polish,
the very type of a Greek philosopher : polished in
literary style and polished in personal manner : never
dissenting without first politely agreeing. " Vous avez
mille raisons," he would say before proving to you
that you knew nothing : eloquent : witty : subtle :
lucid and fair. But in practical matters he did not
profess to retain even rudimentary convictions. One
who had scandalized the world by his writings, he
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 221
would say, should in mere decency forbear to scan-
dalize it by his acts : and therefore as a matter of
taste, from a Greek sense of the artistic, m&b <ty<w,
he preferred to keep the ten commandments : but
whether they deserved such observance was an open
question : in any case he could not feel much interest
in practical questions of any sort. Thought and the
exposition of thought in language (not action) was
his metier, his line in life. Action was repellent to
him just as to the Greek " labour " and " sorrow "
are synonymous (nfoos) : and " action " (ngayfta) is
also " a bore " and " a worry " and " a nuisance " :
to the same Greek again " action " and " actor " came
to mean " poetry and poet " : " to act," or " to
make," is to write poetry : " with all your making,
make poetry," surely a bewildering and a dazzling
light upon the nature of the Greek mind and its in-
herent love of literature. But to return to Re*nan
the very omnibus conductors, he complained, soon
found out that he was not a practical person ; and
that no consideration for his wishes and convenience
were necessary from practical persons like themselves.
Serious men indulge in irony no doubt : but Re* nan's
irony rings of Greek scepticism and levity, not of
Roman scorn and seriousness. A British statesman
also, it is well known, must not only be serious to
command attention, but must at pain of losing all
standing, be almost heavy : levity, lightness, wit,
humour, anything that can recommend him to liter-
ature, to cultivated hearers, all these things are
equally anathema : a man cannot jest and be in
earnest too : Plato's principle of * " refined earnest-
ness and that playfulness which is earnestness* twin
sister " is insufferable, unbearable, wholly unintelli-
gible to a British audience. Something of dullness is
the first factor in respectable seriousness of purpose.
How much humour had Mr. Gladstone ? And yet
Renan, from whom we have again digressed, was a
1 Plato's Sixth Letter.
222 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
very Puritan by the side of many other litterateurs
and stylists of France, whose assaults upon the
Decalogue have not been confined to raillery and
playful doubts. If you tell a Frenchman, it is said,
of someone whom you admire he asks, " What does
he know ? " if an American, " What can he do ? '
if an Englishman, " What sort of a fellow is he ? "
that idea of character as the chief interest in a man,
was familiar to the Romans.
Take even domestic life where Christianity by
introducing higher standards has made it almost
impossible for any nation to revert to Greek uses,
yet even here French domestic life in Paris at any
rate comes nearer to the Greek, and English nearer
to the Roman type. The English are consummate
hypocrites and consummate prudes on this question
the French tell us : in other words they show
their usual political instinct and sagacity, but they
are only politic not sincere ; and no doubt the
Greeks said the same of the ancient Romans;
especially of that typical Roman, the elder Cato, of
whom we have heard from Plutarch, that he never
kissed his wife in the presence of his daughter. I
recollect a well-known and highly-respected lady in
Oxford the wife of a popular Professor finding
fault with the late Canon Liddon for accepting an
invitation to dine with the Master of Balliol there to
meet " George Eliot." Allowance being made for
our higher standards, Cicero, I think, showed a hardly
keener sense of propriety when he confessed with
what qualms he found himself dining at the same
table as the actress Cytheris : but would any Greek
have felt any qualms at all ? the thing is incredible.
Socrates in such circumstances would at once have
cross-questioned the actress on the art of entrapping
lovers, and would have suggested that she should try
her skill on himself.
Even to Plutarch, the most exemplary and the
least Bohemian of all great Greeks, marriage is
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 22
very far indeed from being the sacred tie which
it often was for the Roman. And so in modern
Paris, while the divorce courts are as active as in the
United States, domestic affection appears, on the
whole, in the ancient Greek form, of devotion to
children on the part of the parents : devotion to
parents on the part of the children, rather than in
the form of marital devotion of husband and wife.
And this is natural. The Frenchwoman marries like
the Athenian woman, at her parents' bidding : and
to do so emerges for the first time from rigid, per-
haps conventual, seclusion : her liberty begins with
marriage, where the liberty of the Roman or Anglo-
Saxon woman is apt to end. If happy marriages lie
at the foundation not only of individual happiness,
but of national well-being, it is not unreasonable to
attribute to this source in some degree the success of
Rome and the failure of Greece : the comparative
strength of England and the many maladies of modern
France. Again, while the courage and devotion of
Roman wives was proverbial, and Arria and Portia
are only two names out of many, the women of Greece
(apart from those of Sparta), whether from want of
depth in their natures, or from a vicious training,
gained no such reputation. What reputation they
did gain was rather as conversationalists and wits.
Diotima of Mantinea and Aspasia of Miletus were
more conspicuous for their gifts of intellect than for
their force of character. Perhaps it is not less true
that Frenchwomen have shone rather in this direction
than in any other; and that their triumphs have
been achieved in the creation and management of
salons, and in the persons of Madame de Stael, Madame
Roland, Madame Adam, and other prodigies of tact
and conversation. The superiority of French actresses
points in the same direction. The only great British
actresses (or actors either for the matter of that), are
of course Irish : to put the truth in an Irish way.
On the other hand the Greek and the Frenchman
224 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
has this advantage over the Roman and the English-
man in that he is not liable to be carried away by
foreign and novel habits for want of any principle of
intelligent criticism : his habits are not based on
unintelligent custom : they have been examined by
him : they stand on their own merits : the Greek
and the Frenchman is a law to himself, when the
other law fails (and in his eyes it fails very often).
If he seems to be sometimes blown about by every
wind of doctrine and the slave of each new paradox,
it is not for want of intelligence as the Roman or
Englishman but from excess of intelligence it is
because his sceptical, inquisitive, fickle and susceptible
intelligence becomes tired of harping on the same old
truths for ever : becomes tired of hearing the same
old virtues praised for ever : becomes bored to death
with the stale old rant about Aristides and his justice.
Most of us recollect that anecdote of the dull Spartan
who asked the Athenian why Aristides had been
banished : and some of us have heard of the Athenian's
scoff at Socrates : " Hallo, Socrates, here you are
repeating the same old illustrations." " Yes," said
Socrates, " and, what is more surprising, to enforce
the same old truths," or in other words " Yes, the
same old songs and what is more to the same old
tunes." The Greek then is the slave of each fresh
paradox, only because "he is contemptuous and
weary of ordinary things " : only because "he is
ever seeking for conditions of life other than those
in which he lives, though he has not had the patience
to master these thoroughly " : only because he is,
above all, " a visionary and a student, dreaming in a
metaphysical lecture-room," and is, least of all, " the
sober, practical statesman planning for a nation's
welfare " : x in short because " he is a walking inter-
rogation point." " What's that you say ? " 2 " So-
crates," says Cope, " went about seeking whom he
might confute." So for the same reason the French-
1 Thucydides, III, 38. a Aristophanes, Clouds, 1174.
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 225
man and Greek are apathetic and criminally patient
about dull domestic wrongs, which bore without
exciting them. An observer of the Reign of Terror
wrote : l The patience with which the French have
tolerated imprisonment en masse, the judicial assassin-
ation of hundreds, convicts the nation. In all that
time not a son dared avenge his father, not a husband
defend his wife, not a father rescue his child : and
this in a country where swords would once have leapt
from scabbards for the sake of a mistress or an
epigram." It is this which makes Frenchman or
Greek seem unstable, not unintelligent helplessness.
The Greek even in the presence of his Roman master
remained sure that he was incarnate reason and not
his master : that he was the intellect of the world :
just as the Frenchman however humiliated does not
abate one jot of his confidence that France is, and
must ever remain, the training school of Europe, the
eye of the European body politic.
I do not think it is inconsistent with this to add,
that the quick sympathy and susceptibility of the
Greek made him appreciate the strong points of other
nations, and adapt himself to them more or less con-
sciously and sincerely, while the Roman repelled all
foreign ways at first with the savage's contempt and
hatred of all foreigners, and then accepted them at
last with the savage's helplessness in the presence of
keener minds. The Greek was from the first sym-
pathetic and appreciative, critical in the good as well
as in the bad sense : he never lost his sense of his own
keener insight, but this did not prevent him from
admiring and flattering stronger types, and cringing
to them or actually copying them sometimes even
where he despised them. And so we find the Greek
of the Roman Empire conspicuously demoralized and
debased in character by his position as slave, even
while retaining his intellectual pride : he became a
time-server and an opportunist, and that most melan-
choly of spectacles, a man of genius without con-
M.M. li
226 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
science and self-respect. And so we find the Greeks
of Ionia from the very first orientalized and denation-
alized by association with Lydian and Persian satraps.
His supple and elastic versatility despised the pre-
judices of nationality and became everything and
therefore nothing : the chameleon of nations. And
yet he is not a helpless and passive chameleon,
changing against its own will and despite itself and
from without, but rather changing like the poet who
recognizes consciously and gladly every mood and
type of life which meets him and answers to its appeal,
and finds for it a voice and an expression better than
it could have found for itself, and yields himself for
the time to its influence, till the mood is past and
begins to bore him. Or as the opportunist accepts
each circumstance and character he meets adapts
himself to it and without resisting it is content to
turn it to his own advantage.
Or again, to vary the metaphor, as certain crea-
tures are said to have the instinct for their own
safety of taking upon themselves the colours and
appearance of their surroundings : the protective
mimicry of Nature it is called. In the animal world,
that is, certain creatures are protected or assisted
in the struggle for existence by their resemblance
to their surroundings ; and of this resemblance
naturalists recognize two forms : (1) a resem-
blance produced externally ; certain colours, e.g.
which dominate the surroundings of the caterpillar,
colour the caterpillar itself and assimilate it to the
leaves upon which it feeds : but in other cases
(2) the assimilation is from within : the variations of
nature result in certain forms which accidentally
perhaps, and yet intrinsically, and therefore in a
certain sense spontaneously, resemble their surround-
ings. To this assimilation, which even if it be not
really conscious and deliberate, is yet spontaneous,
one may compare the conscious and spontaneous
assimilation of himself by the Greek to his sur-
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 227
roundings. But when we see a Roman, on the other
hand, changed and transformed by his surroundings,
we feel that there is nothing ingenious, quick-witted
and dexterous in the change of attitude ; he could not
help himself ; he changed without intending it ; he
would have stayed as he was if he had been able ; but
circumstances were too much for him ; the prevailing
colour prevailed over him because he could not resist
it ; though he may revert presently perhaps with his
innate conservatism to the older and longer-established
and instinctive type; but for the time he is the
victim and the creature of his environment ; he is
the green caterpillar.
Not less of course but more conspicuous is the
advantage of the Greek and French on the side of
the fine arts : all the stories one hears of self-made
Englishmen or Western Americans sending for casts
of ancient statues, the Venus of Melos for instance,
and then sueing the railway companies for damages
or calling upon them to replace the statues with new
ones as good as the old, because the casts arrive
minus an arm : these are only the modern versions
of the stories told in Greece from 146 B.C. and
onwards, of the ignorance and stupidity of the vulgar
Roman collector ; who collects because it is the proper
thing for a rich man to do, but who knows nothing
and cares less for art : and who threatens the ship-
master who transports these treasures from Greece to
Rome that he shall be forced to replace in its former
condition whatever is broken on the voyage.
So again not only are style and criticism the
peculiar glory of France and Greece even after
Greece lost all sense of style she still maintained in
Polybius her pre-eminence in acute criticism, detach-
ment of mind, and judicial impartiality of intellect
but in smaller matters wit is a French boast as it
was a Greek virtue ; just as to refer again for a
moment to Ireland there is more wit bubbling over
in a day in a Dublin home-rule riot (says Mr. Bagehot
228 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
in one of his incomparable essays) than could be
gathered in a year from the dull courts of Westminster.
And in Athens nothing flourished more than the clubs
for collecting and perpetuating bon-mots and epi-
grams. If the end of life was never quite a joke
to the life-loving Athenians, yet a joke was certainly
the end of life. Again, as Paris sets the style to the
world for dressing, so the barbers and tailors and
perfumers of Rome were Greeks : and it was a stand-
ing paradox no doubt to many a Roman (to quote
Mr. Bagehot again), that while the Greeks taught
him almost everything he learned, whether of science
or of art, they still remained barbers, fiddlers, dancing-
masters, actors, professors, domestic chaplains and
literary hacks, while he and his countrymen remained
rulers. Compare the Englishman's idea of French-
men : at any rate till recently. " Counts indeed,"
said Beatrice, " every one of these wretches says he
is a count : Guiscard said he was a count, and I
believe he was a barber : all Frenchmen are barbers :
don't contradict me : or else dancing-masters or else
priests." * If England, says someone, has 100 religions
and one sauce, France has 100 sauces and no religion.
I said " almost " everything, for there is one
exception which in itself illustrates the parallel I am
drawing. Just as Paris is the most artistic, yet
London the healthier and more comfortable, and also
the more decent of the two capitals, the English-
man's prudery again coming in so also in ancient
times if Roman art was inferior to Greek, and was
borrowed from Greece, yet in some respects Rome
surpassed Greek cities ; in health, viz. in comfort
and decency. For instance the Roman gave himself
with whole-souled enthusiasm to the practical and
congenial subject of drains : both as a matter of
common sense and as a matter of decency. He even
installed over this agreeable department of life his
national goddess ; and Venus received a new mission
1 Thackeray's Esmond, Book III, chap. 2.
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 220
in life, to superintend and direct with supernatural
guidance the working of Rome's very modern and
very scientific sewage system ; and in return was
honoured with a new title, " Venus Cloacina " " Our
Lady of Drains." For drainage and washing purposes
Rome received by her several aqueducts a daily
volume of nearly 39,000,000 cubic feet of water,
three times as much as modern cities of the same
size (Toronto uses 35,000,000 gallons only, not one-
fifteenth). Hence Strabo contrasts Greek cities with
Rome to the advantage of the latter ; just as any-
one who dislikes to see sewage flaunting itself before
the face of a whole people on the bosom of a majestic
river, or who dislikes to see other small indecencies
of the streets, prefers London to Paris (or at least
used to do so : since Baron Hausmann's time Paris
has been reformed in these respects). The Greek
love of beauty in short did not extend to health or
comfort or cleanliness always, and often stopped short
at outward shape and form, just as politeness (a
Greek and French virtue) often stops short at out-
ward ceremonies. The same Greek love of beauty
occasionally too conflicts with decency to eyes which
are not Greek or French, when it seems to question
the necessity of every one wearing at least an irre-
ducible minimum of clothing. So too the Roman
Bible contained the verse which the Englishman has
boldly foisted upon his Bible, though it does not in
reality contain it, " cleanliness is next to godliness."
Neither Greeks nor French are religiously clean : nor
is it only the politicians of Ireland who need white-
washing. But wherever the Roman went, there went
also, as recent excavations are perpetually showing,
his elaborate bathroom with its hot and cold water
pipes and its steam pipes, precisely as the progress
of the English pater-familias round the globe used to
be signalled by a procession of zinc and tin baths
lurching on the tops of cabs and in the luggage van
of railway trains, and now is advertised less conspicu-
230 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
ously by a neatly folded package out of which is
blown up in a few minutes a rubber tub.
Under this same general head of the arts it is an
old observation of Cicero's that music had less influence
on Roman than on Greek minds. Part of this charge
is due probably to the later date of Roman civiliza-
tion : even the Greeks latterly as we know from
Philodemus' tract on music rescued recently from
Herculaneum had ceased to be so much influenced
by it. The connection between music and morals is
says Philodemus fiddlesticks : but part of the
difference which Cicero notices must be put down to
the intrinsically different characters of Greeks and
Romans the sensuous susceptibility of the first and
the impassivity of the second. The only exception I
can think of to this greater sensitiveness of the Greeks
to the sensuously beautiful is the exception of Virgil,
and Virgil's love of nature the lakes and rivers,
woods and mountains : a love which strikes the
modern reader as much more profound and direct
than anything of the sort in Greek literature : but
this is only an individual exception, and Virgil was
no more a typical Roman, was far less a typical
Roman, than Wordsworth or Tennyson were typical
Englishmen.
There are one or two isolated traits to dwell no
more on the arts which illustrate our parallel. There
is the Roman and the English respect for age : a
trait noticeably missing in Athens as in America, and
not specially conspicuous in France. There is the
French and Greek passion for the theatrical, the
piquant, the striking, for eclat, for notoriety. The
Athenian and the French soldier, e.g., are conspicuous
for dash, for elan, for brilliant enterprise : not so
conspicuous for that dull hammering away at the
enemy which has sometimes saved an English army
from defeat even after it has been beaten. " They do
not know when they are beaten," complains the
exasperated victor, and so he loses his victory. And
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 281
the Romans never knew : nor the Spartans. An
English army might have won the battle of St.
Quentin in 1871 : the French won and then lost
from premature despair (as the Athenians but for
despair might have secured their retreat from Syra-
cuse). Soult after Albuera wrote : " There is no
beating these troops, in spite of their generals. I
always thought them bid soldiers, now I am sure of
it ; for I turned their right, pierced their centre, they
were everywhere broken, the day was mine, yet they
did not know it and would not run."
But an army brilliant in battle under favourable
conditions needs, as one of these conditions, to be
wound up for battle by brilliant oratory : it likes to
hear, it almost requires to hear, " that from the
pyramids twenty centuries are looking down upon
it." Every Athenian army was regularly wound up
for battle by oratory, though even so it was not
always bound to win : only a Spartan army could
fight and win when taken unexpectedly and not
wound up ; as in the first battle of Mantinea. I
presume, along the same lines of reflection, that a
poetic and oratorical general, like Sir Ivor Hamilton,
e.g., was not likely ever to be popular with British
Tommies : Redvers Buller was their favourite. A
British public again would never have elected Sopho-
cles as general ; even a French public would have
stood rather aghast ; it would have celebrated his
death by a " mafficking " night in Paris, but it would
hardly have elected him a general ; yet this quality
of oratory in a soldier is sometimes essential. When
Lord Wolseley was fighting the Mahdi he prepared a
proclamation for the Soudanese and had it translated
into Arabic, but fortunately asked an Arab to revise
it ; it was very British, simple, prosaic, definite. The
reviser read it and said that no Soudanese would
have any idea of what it meant ; his revision con-
tained the same meaning but in the language of Isaiah.
So when Marshal St. Arnaud was in the Crimea he
232 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
issued a proclamation beginning " soldats 1'heure est
venue de combattre et de vaincre." Simultaneously
came a general order from Lord Raglan to his troops :
it said, " I have requested Commissary-General Fidler
to take steps to insure that the troops shall all be
provided with a ration of porter for the next few
days." Each order was effectual : the French and
the British stormed Alma with equal gallantry. These
are mild illustrations : there are others more quaint.
An English general at Cadiz in 1702 is said to have
issued the following proclamation : " Englishmen who
eat good beef and soup remember that it would be
the height of infamy to be beaten by this canaille of
Spaniards who live on oranges and citrons."
I should like to complete these paragraphs by
passing from military rhetoric to the rhetoric of
laymen. In the last week of April, 1778, Franklin,
the American ambassador, attended a ceremonial
banquet at the Academic des Sciences in Paris. A
general demand arose that " Monsieur Voltaire and
Monsieur Franklin should salute each other in French
fashion " accordingly, but it is only fair to add
with visible reluctance the two veterans fell upon
each other's necks, and the spectators burst into
rapture : " It is Solon," they cried, " embracing
Sophocles."
The same academy, by the way, held a similar
function in 1910 when I happened to be in Paris.
I read in next day's papers that a great savant had
read a paper which had dissolved his Immortals into
tears with its charm of style and pathos. I tried to
picture the Royal Society dissolved into tears ; but
before my mind arose instead a memory or legend
of the man who had left it ten thousand pounds :
; ' because," said the testator, " after suffering through
long years from insomnia, I lighted upon its lectures,
and found immediate profound and refreshing slum-
ber." There arose also a characteristic passage from
Mr. Chesterton, which describes an English schoolboy
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK
fervently " orating " : while another and more typical
schoolfellow buries his face in his desk groaning in
shame and gasping, '* Shut up, shut up, shut up."
Is not this the reason why personal government
seems to appeal so much more to the French race,
or to the Irish, than to the Anglo-Saxon ? It looks
like a contradiction to say that the nation of logical
theorists who have pressed the doctrine of equality
to its extreme lengths can also be aristocrats and
upholders of personal rule ; yet is not this contradic-
tion a fact ? The dullness, the pettiness, the weary
monotony and the snail-like pace of progress, all
these features of constitutional democracy which the
Anglo-Saxon accepts philosophically, as better than
the brilliancy and the wisdom of any kingly philo-
sopher or " patriot-king," because it involves self-
government, i.e. education, while the philosopher-
king educates no one but himself and his agents, all
these features seem unspeakably disgusting to a
brilliant, impatient, theatrical population : they are
all preaching equality, and yet they are sighing for
some dazzling and heroic figure to rule over them :
to centralize the nation's brilliancy as no parliament
can : to furnish just the one glowing exception which
will prove the rule of equality, and deliver it from
tediousness : and so the ancient Greek was for c\ r
setting up for himself some tyrant or personal ruler
whom the next generation proceeded to knock down
again.
From this same point of view France, as wits have
often said, is the feminine element in the modern
European family : she is always unhappy if the
reflection of herself in the glass of public opinion be
not flattering : she always seems to be saying to
herself, " How am I looking to-day ? is this style of
government becoming to me ? how do they like my
complexion in London and Vienna ? do these attm-
tions which I am receiving from Warsaw and Belgrade
make them jealous ? " These are the anxieties of
234 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
the public mind of la belle France. It is not that
she values foreign opinion more than her own opinion :
quite the contrary : it is only that she must by the
law of her being attract and dazzle even the benighted
and vulgar boors of London and Berlin, or she is
restless and discontented as a woman who is not
receiving " attentions." In other words her pre-
dominating passion is rather vanity than pride, the
passion of the Roman or Englishman. A similar
picture is drawn in memorable words by Carlyle of the
relations of England and Ireland, " a dull and selfish
working-man mated with a vain and sharp -tongued
wife, such is the tragic union of England with Ireland."
It is only to say the same thing in a slightly different
way to say that the French are childish as compared
with the English : and it is a very old rebuke of the
Greeks which the priest of Egypt pronounced : " Solon,
Solon, you Hellenes are childish always, there is no
old age in Hellas." " The Jews after all," said Heine,
" were men : the Greeks only handsome boys " :
or, again, the speaker in Thucydides' first book says
of the Athenians, " They were created, never to be at
rest themselves nor to let others rest " : of the French
Thiers said, " We are always in hot water ourselves
and we are always the pest and plague of all who
have anything to do with us : we are always fighting,
always inquiring, always inventing, always destroying
prejudices and breaking up institutions and supplying
political science with new facts, new experiments,
new warnings. Two or three thousand years hence,
when civilization has passed on in its westward
course, when Europe is in the state in which we now
see Asia Minor and Greece and Egypt, only two of
her children will be remembered : one a sober, well-
disposed good boy, the other a riotous, unmanageable,
spoilt child : and I am not sure that posterity will
not like the naughty boy best." And so Voltaire in
one of his plays calls the English the grown men of
Europe, " but the French are her children, and with
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 2.r>
them I love to play." (I am indebted for my quota-
tions from Thiers and Voltaire to that mine of happy
illustrations, the essays of Mr. Lionel Tollemache.
Anyone who has visited Paris recently has a new
illustration of French childishness staring him in the
face on the heights of Montmartre. No sooner has
the Roman Church built a new and specially conspi-
cuous centre for its worship the Church of the Sacre"
cceur than Anti-Clericalism promptly follows suit
and erects exactly opposite the door a shrine to the
last martyr whom the same church burned at the
stake ! Where outside France are clericals and anti-
clericals so child-like in their quarrels ?
That Irish character at its best is feminine, is
curiously illustrated by statisticians : even these dull
gentry have discovered that while less than one-
twentieth of the eminent men of the United Kingdom
are Irish, not less than one-third of the eminent women
are Irish on one or both sides. It was perhaps this
childish love of glory which led the Greeks to justify
tyrannicide more positively than the sober Romans
ever did. There was a great deal of demur and doubt
in Rome as to the right feeling to entertain towards
Caesar's murderers : there was only praise in Athens
for Harmodius and Aristogiton and Timoleon. The
only English champions of tyrannicide, if I recollect,
were Shelley and Landor, " Greeks born out of due
time." And so to-day it is the French or Slav anar-
chist to say nothing of Charlotte Corday whose
love for dramatic and brilliant spectacular effects
leads him to the modern form of tyrannicide, the
removal of the propertied classes by dynamite ; and
it is the French-American or Slav-American anarchist
of Chicago who revives the classical form of tyrannicide
by killing for notoriety's sake American Prrsi<!< nts.
The Parisian said Voltaire is a cross between an
ape and a tiger the French have always imitated
the ferocity of classical history more closely than
other modern people. If it cannot be said that
236 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
suicide in the same way is Greek and French rather
than Roman and English, it is only because suicide
is so much more serious and unpleasant a responsi-
bility for the notoriety-seeker than tyrannicide. A
great Frenchman on a famous occasion entered upon
war (he said) with a light heart : it was a light matter
to risk other people's lives : but not even a great
Frenchman takes his own life with light heart. In
fact the gaiety and joyousness of the French and
Greek races renders suicide specially unnatural and
abhorrent to them. Just as in Ireland, the rate of
suicide stands lower than in any other part of the
British Empire, so low that it is infinitesimal. And
yet of genuine moral scruples against suicide there
is more trace in Roman than in Greek history : and
more sympathy with the stoical sentiment of the
modern poet.
" When all life's hopes and blandishments are gone
The coward slinks out of life, the brave live on."
The Roman Stoics were always divided on the ques-
tion ; for though the seriousness and the strength of
Roman wills welcomed this effective way of vanquish-
ing all enemies, whether the foeman or the tyrant
or disease or pain or the whips and arrows of opposing
fortune, yet on the other hand the seriousness of
Roman purpose, the desire to use and not abuse the
gift of life, led them to wait and ponder and act
cautiously. But no Greek doubts the lawfulness of
suicide unless it be the least Greek of the Greeks,
Plato.
It is true that the whole of the ancient world
was theatrical as compared with the modern world,
but the Greeks went further in this direction than
the Romans. This theatrical element in ancient life
the French have often imitated, and so even suicide
so far as suicide has been a final bit of display, a
magnificent defiance hurled at Fortune in tones loud
enough to reach all men's ears and make them tingle
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 287
so far even suicide in its dramatic form may be
said to be specially Greek and French. Certainly
English suicide, though common enough, is rarely
dramatic or impressive. It is not spectacular, I mean :
it is impressive only as a sign of sincere and profound
strength of purpose. This aspect of British suicide
it was which impressed Napoleon, who contrasted it
with French indecision and infirmity of purpose.
' The English character," he says, " is superior to
ours. Conceive Romilly, one of the leaders of a
great party, committing suicide at fifty because he
had lost his wife. They are in everything more
practical than we are : they emigrate, they marry,
they kill themselves with less indecision than we
display in going to the opera. They are also braver
than we are." Braver but less artistic surely : a
more inartistic and horribly practical and matter-of-
fact performance than that at which Mr. Brown or
Mr. Smith confounds himself and his surroundings
with a blunt razor cannot possibly be imagined. The
ugliness of the deed is even more obvious than the
sin of it.
It is only during these last few years that the
yellow press and the theatrical notoriety-craving
spirit of this self-conscious age has produced even
in England suicides planned and perpetrated by
hypocrites, i.e. by actors ; actors who have one eye
fixed on the newspaper reporter and the effect, the
sensation, to be produced through him the next day
upon the public. It is one of the evils for which we
have to thank the popular penny press, and "the
new dark ages " which these newspapers have brought
with them.
There is only one remaining particular in which
the parallel is still worth tracing. Look at the four
peoples in their capacity for assimilating conquered
dependencies, and the parallel still holds. The Eng-
lishman (says the Frenchman) is just but he is not
genial ; " he is a beast but a just beast " (like his
238 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
great Schoolmaster- Archbishop). But geniality as it
is more common in this world than justice, so also
is it more effectual. Accordingly, though England
rules as widely as Rome once did, she is not better
liked by her subjects than Rome once was, and her
sister and wife, though part of herself, and represented
till yesterday and even over-represented in her Parlia-
ment, remained, after a generation of scrupulous
justice and the concession of unique privileges, still
unreconciled, for want of sympathy ; for want of some-
thing, that is to say, which women and womanly
nations love far more than mere justice.
The French and the Irish and the Greeks on the other
hand are often very unjust but they are genial, and
what is the result ? The result is that they have suc-
ceeded in wholly merging and absorbing into themselves
alien populations : that to-day the most irreconcilable
Irishman in Ireland is the Tipperary man of English
extraction : the most irreconcilable Frenchman in
Canada is the man with the Scotch name, who now
knows nothing of Scotland, though his ancestors were
Highlanders; the Fraziers and the Macleans of
Quebec ; and the most irreconcilable Frenchman in
Europe in 1914 was the Alsatian or the Lorrainer,
whose name and whose origin is as purely German as
was till 1918 his citizenship; e.g., General Zurlinden,
the late Governor of Paris, who would have been a
citizen of the German Empire if he had followed his
name and origin.
So in the case of Greece and Rome. Though
on the one hand the intrinsic personal jealousies
of the Macedonian officers of Alexander men as
jealous of each other and as treacherous to each
other as Napoleon's marshals and on the other
hand the intrinsic political jealousies of the Greek
City-States, prevented the Macedonian Empire from
holding together, as the Roman Empire was held
together, by the public spirit and the practical
prudence of the Roman people, yet it is none the
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 289
less manifest that Greece, though conquered, assimi-
lated both her conquerors and her fellow-subjects
with more completeness than Rome. Rome's con-
quests were more superficial, more confined to laws
and institutions and outward life. Greek conquest
sank deeper and transformed the mind. Rome's
conquest left sometimes as in Great Britain no
traces behind it, but bricks and mortar, pipes and
drains and high roads, law-courts and fortified camps :
but Greece Hellenized and civilized almost the whole
East and West, and affected in some degree even the
two most obstinate and exclusive of peoples : the
Jews and the Egyptians : at any rate their upper
and literary classes : for instance the Pharisees and
Sadducees show the influence respectively of Stoic and
Epicurean philosophy.
This geniality has other results : it is from it I
imagine that the epigram of Mons. Blouet derives
its force : "As for the cry * Liberty, equality, frater-
nity, ' ' he says, " the Englishman cares nothing for
equality and fraternity, so he can have liberty : the
American " (a cross I suppose between the English-
man and the Frenchman) " cares nothing for liberty
or fraternity so long as he can have equality ; but
the Frenchman cares really only for fraternity, and
for it he will dispense with liberty and equality."
do not mean that this geniality is the only cause of
the absorption by the Greeks and the French of other
nationalities : there are other causes, and these no
less than geniality illustrate our parallel. The Greeks
and the French have an historic consciousness:
they are proud of the history of their race : they
disseminate such a pride throughout their peoples
beginning even among the school children : and the
Americans do the same. Still more the Irish : they
may grossly misrepresent history, but a history of a
kind they know; just as the Athenian proplr n
represented the expulsion of their tyrants, but they
did not forget the expulsion.
240 THE ENGLISHMAN: THE FRENCHMAN
But the Englishman is blessed and cursed with the
virtue and vice of forgetting. His orators do not
dwell, as Athenian orators dwelt, on the legendary
glories of his race : they do not appeal to the past
but to the future and the present : to expediency and
commercial enterprise : even when they appeal to
the flag it is because trade follows it, and because it
is " a commercial asset." Their hearers they know
have no historic consciousness : know little of
their own past. Whereas an Irishman or a Greek
thinks more of his past than of his present or his
future. An Irishman, we are told, is more ashamed
of himself and his family because some ancestor sold
a fortress to Cromwell, than because he and his are
in the present dirty, shiftless and idle. But the
British public reads if any histories, impartial and
philosophic histories, not partisan pamphlets " slop-
ping over " with patriotism and nationalism : his
orators therefore do not appeal to mere patriotism :
nay more, they know that their hearers have a secret
sympathy with that trenchant Roman phrase which
dissipates so much sentiment and vaporous speech
and lays bare the homely and material foundations,
of that which is the healthiest kind of patriotism
in the long run : " ubi bene ibi patria," think the
hearers in their hearts. And so when they emigrate,
to the United States, e.g., these Englishmen, they
become Americans, sink their separate nationality,
transfer their love to their adopted home : and it is
not their fault at least if the United States are cursed
with alien flags and types and ideals, and are not
one people but mere sections of Europe out of joint.
The Irishman on the other hand stays in Ireland
though he starve there. His devotion is touching :
"it is magnificent but it is not war " or life. And
yet it is better than emigrating to America, if he is
going to bring Ireland and all Ireland's quarrels
thither with him. That is the case where an historic
consciousness becomes an unmixed curse ; a curse to
THE ROMAN: THE GREEK 241
the possessor alike and to his new home. In short
the history of Greece as that of the Celts is a history
of political and material failures and of spiritual
victory.
Rome's history is the opposite and England's also.
Of course Roman magistrates were often brutal and
unjust, like Verres, as well as often just and considerate
like Rutilius Rufus or Cicero or the younger Pliny,
or Felix or Festus. But their frequent injustice and
oppression were no more the essential cause of Rome's
unpopularity than the occasional excesses of Warren
Hastings or Hodson of Hodson's House or the treacher-
ous raid of Cecil Rhodes in South Africa, are the
causes of English unpopularity in India and South
Africa. The causes of such unpopularity lie deeper :
in that national narrowness and lack of sympathy,
comprehension and imagination which are the com-
pensating defects of a strong, a masculine and a
practical character.
M.M. l6
CHAPTER IX
SATIRE AND HUMOUR
HAVING had occasion recently to make a paper
for a Centenary of Lowell, I have been led
to consider the point of view of Lowell as humorist
and satirist, but also the wider question of the point
of view of humorists and satirists generally ; whence
this separate paper.
The peculiarity of the humour and satire of Lowell
lay in this, I think : that, though he represented
literature and the universities to his countrymen, he
yet set himself to reach the governing masses, the
masses who did not belong to the universities or
literature, and to be understand^ d of the people ; or
again to put the same thing in a way more interesting
and piquant, though he was satirist and humorist,
of first-rate excellence, yet, unlike the majority of
humorists and satirists, he chose the side of reform
and championed the faiths of Reformers and Idealists,
the " New Faiths " ; or I might as well put it more
broadly and say he championed just " Faith," for
Faith after all is broadly the quality of reformers ;
he championed " Faith " and " Reform " against all
those forces of conservatism which have generally in-
cluded, for reasons not very obscure, the humorists'
irony and the satirists' wit.
Plato, who has often photographed by casual
anticipation the smaller and quainter ironies of our
world's life, has an obiter dictum on this theme ;
himself a humorist, and no one can tell just how often
a humorist, he has the right to be heard.
Advocating emancipation for women, publicity and
242
SATIRE AND HUMOUR 248
public service for them, " Glaucon," he made Socrates
say, " Glaucon, my superlative friend, let us ask the
wits and humorists to forego for once their usual
line : not to make fun of all this novel and reforming
feminism for its incongruities : not to jest unceasingly
about the ladies who wear uniforms and ride a-horse
back " as who should say who drive motor cars and
ride bicycles.
" Of course it is funny to see them, passing funny ;
but so were our naked races funny even to us once,
to see ; and they are a scandal still to the barbarian."
(And so they still are after twenty centuries in spite of
Plato.) " Let us ask the wits and humorists not to scoff
but to believe and to be converted to the newer, truer
Faith, that nothing can be ridiculous which is useful."
There it lies, you perceive, the doctrine ; ancient,
simple, true, I apprehend ; that wits, satirists and
humorists are usually men of little faith ; that they
are obsessed by usage and conformity to usage ;
that having eyes only for the incongruous and gro-
tesque, they find the grotesque and incongruous more
often than not, in the crude Faith of the Reformer ;
in the zeal without discretion of the Idealist ; it is
only natural ; the humorist does not take himself
seriously ; it is the first condition indeed of humour ;
he cannot then take other men seriously ; and how
at any rate can he take seriously those most serious
moods of humanity which are called Faith and Ideal-
ism ? If he took conscience, etc., very seriously, the
first result would surely be as we have all seen with
our humorist friends when they " get religion " an
immediate falling off of wit and humour ; one would
decrease as the other increased ; it happened con-
spicuously to that great and delightful humorist,
Lewis Carroll, when he grew older and more sober
and more serious ; he exchanged the lifcgiving price-
less nonsense of Alice for the painful moralizing of
Sylvia and Bruno. So again if Dickens had been
more of a moralist and less of a humorist, he could
244 SATIRE AND HUMOUR
not have delighted in painting the brutality of Squeers
and Mrs. Gamp and the humbug of Pecksniff and the
folly of Micawber ; he would have been instead
depressed by the contrast between human nature, as
it was in these grotesque creatures and what it might
be and is in the saints ; but if the wit and humour
in a man do not decrease with age as they decreased
with Lewis Carroll, why then they increase and at
the expense of Faith ; and with them comes an ever
keener disgust for all Faith's foibles, an ever keener
gusto in launching shafts against demagogism, hysteria,
sciolism and the other grotesque garbs in which too
often Faith is fain to masquerade ; and after that it
is but a step to a warfare against all enthusiasm ;
that dubious quality, that debatable land, enthusiasm ;
a reproach to our eighteenth century ancestors, the
condition of all virtue to the nineteenth century.
The wit and humorist, the satirist and cynic seem
at last to be but one man with four names, and to
have little more definite to say to us than after
Talleyrand, I think " Surtout point de zele."
This is the temperament broadly of the humorists
from Aristophanes down to Hookham Frere his trans-
lator, down to Gibbon and Canning (with his " needy
knife-grinder "), down to the Saturday reviewers ; I
think there was a touch of it on this side of the
Atlantic in Hawthorne ; he writes somewhere : " The
time was come for me now to return to the merchants
of Boston, and to the other old fogies, who in this
general flux and intangibility of affairs still kept a
death-like grip on a few plain truths, which had not
been in vogue since yesterday morning."
But it was not the temperament of Plato or Lowell ;
Lowell seems an exception among English-speaking
humorists, with Praed perhaps originally as a companion
but a companion of very imperfect sympathy for if
Praed began life as a reformer he soon passed over,
as was to be expected of a wit, to the Conservatives.
I am trying to find other companions for Plato
SATIRE AND HUMOUR 245
and Lowell, but it is not easy ; one indeed there is,
the prince or princess of wits, humorists and satirists,
Jane Austen ; but then is she really parallel with
Lowell ? She had no opportunity in her cloistered
Hampshire life of meeting radicals and idealists ;
she expended her satire, therefore, on the people she
saw and met, and they were all conservatives and
conventionalists.
Perhaps a more promising parallel is Dickens ;
but then Dickens was a satirist, not of types and
temperaments, not of reformers and idealists, or of
conservatives and realists, but a satirist of individual
eccentricity ; he painted gigantic and side-splitting
posters, extravagant caricatures of the monthly nurse,
of his own sanguine happy-go-lucky father, of the
professional humbug with the good bedside manner,
of the rascally private schoolmaster ; but these broad
farces are not photographs of temperament ; and only
two, out of the four illustrations I have chosen, can,
even by a stretch, be described as satires at the expense
of conservatism, at the expense of existing institutions
and established doctrines.
The author of the Biglow Papers was wit, satirist
and humorist, yet he expended his wit on the Con-
servatives and Realists, not on the idealists of his
day ; and few seem to belong to his class ; and
Dickens to belong only partially.
I take a living author for comparison ; even Mr.
H. G. Wells, that prophet as he seems to America,
that most popular in America of all satirists and
humorists, even Mr. Wells who certainly does not
count himself a conservative cannot compete with
Lowell in this regard. There is humour and satire
in Peter and Joan both at the expense of idealists
and reformers ; and also in other passages- at the
expense of Tories and Conventionalists ; but if intrin-
sically the figures of Miss Phoebe Stubland and Lady
Charlotte Sydenham be equally fair targets for Ins
shafts, yet the satire and humour directed at Miss
246 SATIRE AND HUMOUR
Phoebe the reformer is infinitely more entertaining,
more piquant, better worth reading and writing, if
only because the target is so much newer and brighter
coloured, so much less fly-blown and dinted by
previous archers.
It occurred to me that this perhaps was a mere
personal judgment, born of my own twist towards
the wicked Lady Charlotte and the conservatives, so
I asked a young and clever graduate of the Univer-
sity of Toronto ; he told me that he on the contrary
read with greater zest the satire at the expense of
Lady Charlotte, " because he hated and abhorred
her ; while Miss Phoebe, tho' silly, was a good soul."
I agree with him about the two ladies, of course ;
but not otherwise. Lady Charlotte is just a fool,
and a heartless fool, and does not at this time of
day repay study, but Miss Phoebe is an ass ; and
there are so many asses of her kind about and they
bray so loudly and are so strong and willing, so
patient and hard-working, that the world must take
them seriously or they will take it ; I don't think
on mature reflection that I need be ashamed of
enjoying the satire at Miss Phoebe more than the
satire at Lady Charlotte ; satire is not needed, is
gratuitous, at the expense of moral deformity such
as Lady Charlotte's, but satire and humour are dis-
charging their regular task, their appointed work,
their life-long role and metier, when they fall upon
the incongruities of poor dear silly Miss Phoebe.
It reminds me of the old anecdote about Lord
Lytton : he took in to dinner an emancipated lady,
some Miss Phoebe ; " Lord Lytton," said Miss Phoebe,
" how can you be a Tory ? all fools are Tories."
"True, Madam," said Lord Lytton, "but all asses
are Radicals." Let Miss Phoebe then be written down
an ass ; and, oh, that she be written down an ass
pretty quickly, or no one knows what price the world
will not have to pay for the knowledge that Miss
Phoebe is an ass, and that the mare's-nests and crazes
SATIRE AND HUMOUR 247
and delusions of Faith and Reform are as perversive
and pervasive, as the instincts themselves to Faith
and Reform are essential to good life.
Then what is the metier and role of humour and
satire ? and how does it cover both Plato, Lowell,
Miss Austen, Dickens and Wells, and also Aristopha i
Gibbon, Canning, Frere, the Saturday reviewers, and
again the same Wells (" old Wells re-opened ") ?
I take it the distinction between the two schools
of humour and satire is pretty fine at first sight and
slender ; humour is mockery at the incongruous ;
and the incongruous takes two forms broadly which
may be so defined though in reality they are very
different as to seem alike ; there is the incongruity
between our theories and our practice, our ideals and
our actions ; and there is also the incongruity between
our ideals and theories on the one hand and the
actualities, possibilities and facts of life on the other ;
has not the difference almost disappeared in this
definition, the difference between Plato and Aristo-
phanes great though it be ? Plato and Lowell satirize
the incongruity of our actions in the light of our
principles ; Aristophanes the incongruity of our
principles in the light of the facts and Taws of life ; it
almost looks as if each humorist had the same thing,
incongruity, in view; only that they started from
opposite points of view and chose the opposite of
the two targets for their respective shafts ; one was
mocking our faithless lives, our disloyalty to prin-
ciple ; and the other our high-falutin principles, our
disregard of facts and life and common sense.
But there is nevertheless here a real difference;
Lowell is like my academic friend who hates Lady
Charlotte satirizing moral deformities, faithlessness
to conscience; Aristophanes like a true Greek, a
true intellectual is interested rather in the mtelleet
than in morals, even when he is scoffing at us ; and
he is satirizing our unbalanced ambitions, our soaring
ideals that are like balloons cut adrift from earth
248 SATIRE AND HUMOUR
altogether, that take their occupant up to altitudes,
the air of which no man can breathe ; as that balloonist
is a failure, so these idealists are failures. Their
hearts are all right like Miss Phoebe's, but their heads
are as silly as hers. Imperfect, impossible ideals are
her foible ; low life, coarse action is the offence the
sin rather of the Lady Charlotte ; Lowell is satir-
izing sin but Aristophanes philosophy.
Perhaps I am labouring the point unnecessarily.
Why not quote what certain of our own humorists
have said ? The bulk of the humour of Mr. Stephen
Leacock, if I recollect aright, is at the expense of
foolish idealists, of Mr. William Jennings Bryan and
Miss J. Addams, not at the expense of Germany, or, if
at the expense of Germany, still at the expense of
idealist Germany, the Germany of method and system,
with six little birds on each tree-branch singing in
harmony or unison, not the Germany of brutal violence
and cynical hypocrisy. Impossible ideals, not betrayed
and denied ideals move Mr. Leacock's intellectual mirth.
It is more profitable because more difficult to find
other contemporary humorists of the opposite school,
the school of Plato and Lowell. A critic in New
York, after my paper on Lowell, observed that the
same reasons which made Lowell interesting, en-
deared Bernard Shaw to him ; Shaw satirizes not
the pacifists and cranks, not the Sidney Webbs and
Massinghams and Gardiners, not the nation with
a capital " N," but the great public, the conven-
tionalists, the nation with a small " n." I sup-
pose that is true though it is at first sight rather
paradoxical (and all the more Shavian) that it should
be so ; at first sight one would expect an intellectual
and Mr. Shaw is nothing if not intellectual, much
more intellectual, his friends say, and he himself has
said, than Shakespeare one would expect an intellec-
tual to be rather indifferent to the moral inconsisten-
cies and hypocrisies of the great leviathan, to the
vulgar commonplace eternal insincerities of raw
SATIRE AND HUMOUR 249
human nature, and to be interested only in the false
theories of other intellectuals ; but after all there are
two schools of intellectuals, as there are two of
satirists and humorists ; there are the " intellectuals "
of the old world, men like Aristotle, who take a
seriously scientific view of the world, and build on
the past, on fact and history, and are thereby deeply
prejudiced against reform and ideals ; for were the re-
forms practicable they would have been secured already
in that illimitable past which has already tried all
permutations and combinations of circumstances and
institutions, which seemed to promise improvement,
and has adopted already all which really brought
improvement ; unrealized ideals are now presumably
Aristotle suggests Wills-o'-the-wisp, misleading
fires. The great flaws of life slavery, infanticide,
abortion, prostitution though they be to the Jews
a stumbling-block and to the Christians a horror I
am not exactly quoting Aristotle you perceive but
only Aristotelians remain as permanent flaws just
as Ireland remains a running sore but not a mortal
disease in the British body politic simply because
they have always been.
These are the conservative intellectuals ; they
accept permanent flaws as a part of the laws of life.
But Mr. Shaw has always been a liberal intellectual ;
he has always been idealist rather than scientific ;
In- has, for example, a violent feud with the doctors
and the vivisectionists ; though he be an intellectual
he is even in a greater degree a humanitarian ;
Androcles and the Lion is not a scoff at the early
Christian idealist ; but rather a sympathetic picture
of him as compared with the unchristian ruffians
of the world of all ages. Blanco Posnet and The
Devil's Disciple are not caricatures of impracticable
visionaries but pictures of rough and foul-mouthed
honesty, of unconscious Christianity in fact, which
because it is rough and foul-mouthed is quite mis-
understood by the smug conventional so-called
250 SATIRE AND HUMOUR
Christianity of the Sunday school ; the only objec-
tion to these entertaining and spirited dramas is
obviously that they are a little too obvious and
unintellectual ; if a reader knows already from his
reading of the Gospels that the Sunday schools are
not infallible exponents of Christianity, that the
publican and the harlot have already been entered
in the race for the Kingdom by a Higher Authority
than the Sunday school, against the righteous who
need no repentance, well, such a reader says " agreed "
before the race starts and the intellectual interest of
the drama disappears, though the moral interest
undoubtedly remains. But there remains also the
semi-paradox that an intellectual dramatist is main-
taining interest only by his moral appeal. Androcles
is much better than Blanco Posnet for this reason :
it retains an intellectual as well as a moral interest ;
is the ideal of the early Christian really impracticable ?
" Suppose," Mr. Shaw is here suggesting " suppose
we really try Christianity for the first time in the
world as a real working system." Androcles remains
his best, or one of his best, dramas ; there is nothing
intellectually cheap about it, as about Blanco and
The DeviVs Disciple ; but what again the intellectual
interest may be in Widowers' Houses I cannot dis-
cover ; nor even much moral interest for that matter ;
it appears to be a misanthropic picture of human
nature, so wholly and unrelievedly bad, especially
the feminine variety of it, that no hope remains for
man, and interest disappears, except in the sense that
Swift, the other Irish misanthrope, may still have an
interest for some readers. Ireland is full of mis-
anthropy ; its inhabitants apparently enjoy despair ;
but despair is fatal to all interest, moral and intellec-
tual, in the works it produces, except for Irish readers
who love despair and negation and insoluble problems
for their own sakes and would feel quite downhearted
if a problem were solved.
I need not run through the catalogue of Mr. Shaw's
SATIRE AND HUMOUR 251
plays ; some, like Mrs. Warren's Profession, are quite
edifying, but intellectually even cheaper than Blanco
Posnet; others are sheer fun and delightful farces,
like Pygmalion ; the humour whereof is abundant
but does not come under either of the heads with
which I am concerned.
Something reminds me of a stroke of satire from
Mr. Goldwin Smith which does fall under these heads ;
under the Plato, Lowell, Shaw head " * Give me
liberty, or give me death,' said Patrick Henry, and
bought another slave." The interest in that sharp
lunge at Irish rhetoric is moral obviously, and not
intellectual. But Mr. Goldwin Smith's epigrams were
not always at the expense of common human insin-
cerity ; there is another epigram hardly relevant
here for it is not humorous or satiric, but not less
characteristic of its author, at the expense of one of
the most popular humanitarian ideals, universal
education ; it means, said Mr. Goldwin Smith,
" Sensibility without bread." I quote it only to
illustrate the point that Mr. Smith coined epigrams
on each side against common human nature, and
against the idealists ; in the vein of Plato and in
the vein of Aristophanes ; as an intellectual who was
also idealistic and humanitarian, he could appreciate
in turn each school of humour and satire ; but as a
moralist and Puritan at heart I think, he probably
found greater pleasure or more food for reflection in
the moral humorists than in the intellectual, in the
school of Plato, Lowell and Shaw and the like, than
in Aristophanes, Canning, Frere, Gilbert and the rest.
But after all, the two schools are not mutually
exclusive ; there are humorists hovering between
them, the connecting link ; \vlu-n Fielding satirizes
Square, is it the false pedantic ideal he satirizes or
the faithless betrayal of the false ideal ? Or each
alike ? The two sides of humour, the two species of
incongruity, seem to have met and mixed in the
humorous picture of Square.
CHAPTER X
THOUGHT AND ACTION
WHAT is the intellectual and spiritual significance
of authors ? I suppose it is something very pro-
found indeed. For authors are the mediators between
two classes of persons very incompatible, though each
very interesting, and if authors, and authors only,
can establish a modus vivendi between them, how
supremely interesting should authors themselves be !
Unless indeed like some other well-balanced and
sympathetic people they become, by their very
breadth and comprehension, lukewarm and pallid
and colourless, and as unpicturesque, as the colours,
separately picturesque, become, when, blended, they
fade into the light of common day.
An Authors' Society should understand both the
literary man, who is often extremely piquant and
picturesque, and the man of action, who, if not
always piquant and picturesque and he often is
has the solid interest which belongs to reality and
sincerity.
An author is not necessarily a literary man : he
may be rather a man of action : a successful author
must almost necessarily be something of a man of
action : for he must have sound judgment and know
the world he lives in bodily, and not merely the world
in which his mind lives. And yet he is necessarily
sufficiently akin to the literary man to understand
him. For a generation now, in my capacity as
Professor, or at least Professor of the two classical
languages, I have tried to catch and compare the
spirit of literature, which was incarnate in Greece,
252
THOUGHT AND ACTION 258
with the spirit of action, which at one time was
Rome, and I have seized this welcome invitation to
Montreal, to a city which, being French and British,
is also Greek and Roman, to see if I can here, partly
by means of the twin spirits of this place, and partly
by grace of the Authors' Society, once more see those
two great spirits in living and vital action and
reaction upon one another, as they may be dimly
deciphered through the spectacles of the scholar, in
the words of classical history.
The natural history of the literary man has never
been, so far as I know, adequately investigated and
chronicled. Here is a subject for research which
I commend to our Canadian Authors' Society : a
subject as fruitful as any national history, in contrasts
and contradictions, in tragedy and comedy. Where
will you find in more riotous profusion the vagaries
of human nature ? than in the class which includes :
(1) The intellectual soldiers of fortune who have
long since discarded, sometimes quite honestly and
inevitably, all convictions, and who delight for dia-
lectic exercise or for a livelihood, to pull to pieces
all opinions put forward in their hearing, or all
opinions unwelcome to their employers : who fire off
their epigrams and paradoxes as effectively, rapidly,
and much more entertainingly than the material
soldiers of fortune their cannon : who have read
everything and seen through everything, and of whom
you can only be sure apart from the necessity of
their livelihood that they will contradict what you
say and will support the opposite : especially the
unpopular side, tine lost cause and the impossible
loyalty.
Even the Universities contain such men ; though
such men gravitate more naturally to journalism and
leave the Universities to the pedants. Jowett is
reported to have said that he would rather break
stones on the road than become one of these journal-
ists. It was his good fortune that the alternative
254 THOUGHT AND ACTION
was never so forced upon his notice by his circum-
stances, as it has been upon some no doubt of the
many clever men of his college before and since.
As a Puritan and middle-class Philistine myself I
have sat in a college common room, among brilliant
pyrotechnical performers of this kind, an exile re-
turned for a brief space, and have been glad that I
have been able to put bread in my mouth, with less
expenditure of wit, less gymnastic contortions of the
intellect, and less reckless abandonment of bourgeois
prejudice.
(2) But the class includes the exact opposite of
these gladiators ; the men with quite a pedantic
devotion to and belief in truth : quite a scholar's
faith in words to heal the world's wrongs and solve
its problems : with a Cicero's or a Dr. Arnold's faith
in pamphlets, and with a Cardinal Newman's faith
in theological distinctions : and a capacity for making
oneself miserable, if one sees reason to suspect oneself
a Manichee. Literary men, of the type of Cardinal
Newman, are the simplest and most whole-souled
believers in words and ideas : as horrified at paradox
or insincerity as any serious-minded grocer : wholly
incapable of diplomacy and economy of the truth :
as far as the poles asunder from the intellectual
gladiator on the one side, and the unscrupulous
diplomatist the Bismarcks of the world on the
other. They are not very manly sometimes, these
simple pedants and scholars. For example, I think
the Cardinal's verse
Bide thou thy time
Watch with meek eye the race of pride and crime,
Sit in the gate and be the heathen's jest
Smiling and self-possest.
O thou to whom is pledged a victor's sway
Bide thou the victor's day
does not ring very wholesome : there is a little feminine
spite in it. But at least these men, wholly sincere, are
worshippers even to idolatry of words and theories :
THOUGHT AND ACTION 255
words are only counters to the gladiators and to the
men of the world, but money, real coinage, to these
dreamers. Who loves truth, who sacrifices more for
it, his career, all that he has, more than this style of
literary man (and where is there a greater name in
literature than Newman's ?) Who makes more of a
scoff of it, and more disbelieves in it, than the other
mind, the gladiator ? Yet both are typical products
of literature. And there is this defence for the
believers in words, that often the iotas for which
they fight are only the last and literary expression
of a real and sufficient difference of creed, as Carlyle
came to be aware.
For literature covers a multitude of virtues and of
vices. All the unworldliness and saintliness of New-
man and all the morbid and unnatural excesses of
the mere Bohemian, and the artistic blackguardism
of De Maupassant and Verlaine. For they, too, are
the natural products of literature in a restless age of
inquiry. We have our childish creed (says Plato)
and we obey it as father and mother ; but when we
grow out of childish things, we find it is not precisely
true. We find our father and mother are not really
ours, but only adopted us. They are make-believes
to us and we to them, and we give our attention
instead, for the first time, perhaps, to the flatterers
who have always surrounded us, but to whom we
have not listened. And the voice of the flatterers
sounds sweeter, when our parents' voice has lost its
parental authority; and the flatterers are by intrr-
pretation, just the elemental passions of our own
body ; and we may listen so long that the flatterers
guide our whole after life, and even at our funeral
scandalize our serious friends by their attendance
as when at Verlaine's funeral, Esmee somebody or
other, stole all the umbrellas of the litterateurs,
perorating over his grave. Such a life is \.-mity, but
it is literature, and sometimes quite extraordinarily
good literature : quite amazing in its contrast with
256 THOUGHT AND ACTION
the life from which it issued and the other literature
in which it is sandwiched.
(3) Nay and this is another paradox in our subject
the very man who makes literature a byword by his
excesses, by his Bohemianism, yet in his own way
takes it very seriously indeed ; "in his own way "
(as Dowson said of himself) ; and the artistic black-
guard, who may seem without principle of any sort,
will resent as much and more than any simple-minded
Cardinal Newman, Plato's verdict that literature is
just trifling, is not serious : is amusement and not
work. No men have worked harder than some of
the reckless literary libertines of France.
(4) And over some of them a truthful charity or a
charitable truthfulness will cast a yet further mantle ;
they are sometimes the opposite of Verlaine or Gold-
smith who could write like saints however they talked.
They are only reckless in their books not in their
lives ; they are purging themselves (as Aristotle said)
of morbid and unhealthy fancies and imaginations by
their books ; you cannot have your emotion and
express it also. They have expressed theirs ; it is
gone and there no longer ; and in their daily life
they are all that their books are not ; as their books
are all that they are not. If you want to know what
a man is, says Mr. Hardy somewhere, you must often
wait to hear what he says or writes, and then find the
opposite and you have him. The ideal is never the
real ; and these men's rebellions and defiances are
in idea only. All that they feel of rebellion, in fact,
is felt in the mind only, and not with the immediate
and simple feeling of the man of action. I am told
that even Nietzsche, the prophet of blood and iron,
was only so theoretically : was only so as a species
of rebellious idealism. He was sensitive and shrink-
ing himself and so he glorified the brutal god of many
sensitive and shrinking persons the unspeakable
Prince Bismarck. The same is true in a converse
form of Coventry Patmore.
THOUGHT AND ACTION 257
(5) The literary man and thinker, of necessity
rises to greater heights and falls to deeper depths
than the man of action, for the ordinary balance of
mind and body does not keep him from extremes.
He lives in each in turn, but in each wholly, while
the mood lasts : whence come at once, as Mr. Hardy
has said, his shortcomings as a friend, a father, hus-
band son or brother. I mean that they come from
his living in the mind and imagination so deeply
and so constantly. He loves the ideal not the actual
brother ; and distance is needed to make him
brotherly : in the actual presence of the actual
brother considerably damaged from the arch-angelic
type his affection chills at once ; and again, unlike
and the opposite of women, even such chill affection
as he has, he spreads over all his brethren, even over
the human race ; and the butter of his affection
becomes too thin to butter their bread : to butter
the bread of the individual brother. He is devoted
to the race in a way, but callous to the individual,
as Emerson was callous and even indignant if his
daughter suffered toothache, in a world which her
father, following in the footsteps of another eminent
authority, whom he condescended to quote with
approval, had pronounced to be very good.
(6) And there is yet another genus or species of
literary men who are interesting and always with us :
the keen mordant intellects, which, piercing the shows
and shams of life, its affectations and humbug, and
yet not reckless gladiators only bent on fighting, elect
to support the cause which is at once solid and also
in an age of education apologetic and humble : the
cause of the established order of old fogeyisra ; for
what these men hate most is Sciolism. They sec it
in the liberals and reformers, and they launch upon
them a multitude of jests, which made Plato smart
and makes revolutionaries smart still. Humour is
not serious nor takes life and itself seriously ; and
these conservatives are humorous : almost all the
M.M. 7
258 THOUGHT AND ACTION
wits and humorists are conservatives, I think, from
Aristophanes, through Hookham Frere, and Gibbon
and Canning, down to Mr. Seaman and Mr. Godley,
and the Modern Saturday Reviewers : I can only
think of Praed and Lowell, who used their humour
to help the reformers. It is very natural. The
reformers believe so much and gush and "gas" so
much about it.
This, I take it, is why Lord Beaconsfield passed over
from the reformers to the conservatives and Mr.
Gladstone from the conservatives to the reformers ;
because the former was a sceptical and doubting
intellect, and the latter was full of faith and enthu-
siasm. It is also surely the reason why Erasmus
remained so conservative and friendly to the old
faith : Erasmus who was always humorous and
sceptical, whilst the blatant enthusiasm of Luther
carried him over to the reformers.
(7) Again you have seen the literary man of moody
silences ; Lord Beaconsfield once more : the man
who breaks out at long intervals only into some caustic
epigrams. But you have also the literary man of
exuberant verbosity. Even Mr. Gladstone must not
be shut out from the house of literature, even if his
mind was third rate as Mr. Bagehot said, and only
his energy first rate : and even though no speech
of his will last, for none had humour or distinction
or even first-rate phrases, but were as commonplace
as his taste in novels and in theology ; for he had at
least one real enduring faith which is not the faith
of the practical man, for which he surrendered office
and leadership : a faith in cosmopolitanism and a
horror of jingoism for which he fought early in life
with Lord Palmerston and surrendered late in life to
President Kruger, provoking from his great rival the
best-known and the not undeserved epigram about
cosmopolitans.
And even if Gladstone did not himself stand high
enough to count, there are plenty of others, men as
THOUGHT AND ACTION 259
delightful in their incessant talk as Bonary Price,
least British most vivacious of Englishmen ; or as
Anthony Trollope and other gifted men. One such
I remember who made his home here in Canada, an
Englishman with a French name and origin and all
a Frenchman's vivacity Mr. De Soy res.
(8) You have seen the literary man with his contempt
for " gas " and " gush," for emotion and rhetoric
and sentimentality like Byron. But the same Byron
was forever himself posing, and paraded before Europe
the pageant of his bleeding heart in his Childe Harold ;
and other leaders of thought who seem at first mere
men of action, on closer scrutiny have a real affinity
with the world of thought. Even Cardinal Manning
surrenders for an idea his leadership, and though he
was a man of action and a diplomatist, and disregarded
narrow scruples of truth-speaking like an ancient
Greek, and shocked Cardinal Newman's studious soul,
yet no one who surrendered so much was merely a
man of action.
(9) You have seen literary men as pessimists in
Europe ; but also as optimists, even fanatic optimists,
and just as naturally in America. You have seen him
as the believer in law and in necessity (Zeno, Holmes) ;
but you have seen him also as the believer in free
will (Erasmus).
(10) You have felt both as men of your race and
also as authors and practical men, the vanity and
unreality of literature; but you have felt no less,
doubtless, the vanity and unreality of practical 1
When I used to sit in lecture room No. 5 in our
University and translate Plato's Republic, I used
to leave that room and the society of Plato and half
a dozen students and return to the open town and
to the perusal of my tradesmen's bills with a sense
of the vanity and unreality of Plato, and a regret
that I had not chosen a more live profession and
one which would have helped me to cut down those
bills by showing me how to do more of the plumbing
260 THOUGHT AND ACTION
of my house and of the stoking of my furnace for
myself.
But some years afterwards, when I had a brief
opportunity of " service " as it is euphemistically
termed, that is "of serving tables," and became
a practical man almost and an administrator, I
somewhat changed my point of view. I found
that when I left the council chamber after discus-
sing for some time the list of prominent citizens and
their wives to be entitled to a seat at some Uni-
versity function, and the question whether the same
seat was entitled to a label " reserved " or not : or
again, when as Principal of my college I leave my
college council after we have discussed the precise
details for a students' entertainment ; the number of
tickets to be issued, the authority which is to issue,
the hours of opening and closing the same, the methods
for carrying out the closure, the means of scouring
the passage-ways, lecture rooms and even cellars
perhaps for stragglers when the doors are to be
locked, the problem whether the turning out of the
lights or the turning off of the heat will be the most
effectual damper upon the continuance of an enter-
tainment which has been declared " off," I say when
I have spent a few hours in the discussion of these
most practical and important details, I find to my
surprise that I am renewing very keenly an old
experience, and a sense of vanity and unreality again
takes possession of my soul, and a sense of vanity
even more overpowering than that which followed
the translation of Plato's Republic ; and it dawns
upon me that that sense of vanity is no whit more
intrinsically associated with the life of scholarship,
speculation and theory than with the life of practical
administration. That after all it is intrinsically only
the echo temperamental, perhaps, but inevitable of
the unsatisfactoriness, the wastefulness of all human
life, practical alike and speculative. And so I no
longer resent the translation of the dreams of Plato
THOUGHT AND ACTION 261
and I am just as willing to translate into words his
co-education-programme in room No. 5, as to trans-
late it into action in the council chamber. Each
translation may be defective, but the translation into
fact is bound to fall further behind his vision than
the other and more literal and more speculative
translation ; for words and speculations (as Plato
says) have necessarily a far greater grip of the truth
of things than mere realizations in fact and flesh and
matter.
And so, though you feel the vanity and flimsiness
and the want of body in the creeds and systems of
literary men like Coleridge and Channing, when you
see Coleridge arguing at great length with a Birming-
ham tallow-chandler to persuade him to subscribe to
his short-lived paper, when you watch in imagination
Channing conducting a religious service with a few
cut flowers in a glass of water on the table by way of
ritual and vestments : though you ask for a religion
and a system with more body in it, more power in it
for the ordinary man, though you miss the pomp and
circumstance, the lights and ceremonies of the Roman
church, though you miss the colour, the candles, the
sensuousness, the music, the things which make life,
from these pallid and emaciated rites, this spectral
theology : though the appeal of Coleridge and Chan-
ning is too far above human nature, too rational, too
rarefied, too neutral and impartial, when compared
with "the blessed mutter of the mass and the strong,
stupefying incense smoke" in the chapel of Rome; or
again, when compared with the fervid denunciations
of the scarlet woman, and Anti-Christ in the chapel
of the anti-Roman fanatic, though all this be so, you
have but to turn to the opposite pole, to the illiterate
life, to the life of the multitude and the men of action
to be reconciled to Channing.
For after all you feel not less acutely the sup
stitions, the vanity and the folly, the stupidity and
the ignorance of the great world of men of action,
262 THOUGHT AND ACTION
the men of action, who interfere through their agents
and policemen with students and dreamers : who
arrested Coleridge and Wordsworth as they sat
debating on the Somersetshire hills, on Realism and
Romanticism, for French spies marking out the
English coast, and arranging suitable plans for
Napoleonic disembarkations. Was the vanity greater
in the philosophers' conversation than in the activity
of the suspicious politicians and the local magis-
trates ? Vanity of vanities : all was vanity.
Ideas as well as words are only counters to the
man of action, unreal, trivial ; but is there nothing
to be said in honour of poor Robespierre, the idealist
(however blood-stained his hands), who sat through
the night, his last night of power, debating and
debating and debating should he sign the order for
the arrest of his enemies which meant more blood-
shed and perhaps civil war : and deciding at last not
to sign but rather to lose his own life than violate
constitutional forms : was he not therein a reputable
type of the student and literary man ? Let him who
is without ideas and is the mere man of action cast
the first stone at him ; or even in honour of poor
Camille Des Moulins on the scaffold : " If I could
only have got out the 7th number of the Vieux
Cordelier I should have turned the tables," the literary
man's pathetic faith in words. Even in honour of
the poorest of all ; even in Fabre d 'Eglantine there is
something tolerable : he groaned (says M. Belloc) all
the way to the scaffold. " What is the matter ? '
asked Danton. " I have written a play called the
Maltese Orange : I fear the police have taken it and
some one will steal it and get the fame " : to which
Danton the cynical man of action answered, " Tais-
toi : dans une semaine tu feras assez de vers."
Vain and pathetic and ludicrous often will seem
this faith in words ; and vital and solid the antithesis
between words and deeds and wholly in favour of
deeds. Yet of a sudden, by a shift of mind or mood
THOUGHT AND ACTION 263
or memory there sweep across our ears the chimes
of the New Testament making discord with our
harmony and upsetting all our confident conclusions :
4 By your words ye shall be justified and by your
words ye shall be condemned." It is a strange
sentence and a hard saying to a Briton when we have
just assured ourselves that words are often the
antithesis of deeds, and the safety-valve of steam, and
that by their means deeds are often avoided, both
for good and ill.
To whom can it apply ? to anyone ? Yes : perhaps
to those rare students who live wholly in their words
and thoughts and have and should have no life
outside them : to whom words and imaginations are
not the sufficient substitutes for one sort of action,
but their only action. Some students of literature
there are perhaps of the Pater type who live wholly
in their literature and must by it or by nothing be
justified or condemned. Perhaps it is better so for
them : all the impressionist fancies of Pater, all the
admonitions against habits, and fixed principles and
stereotyped forms of life and thought, all the warnings
against the ruinous force of the will, and the necessity
of an open mind above all things and a susceptible
nature, all this practically applied to action would
probably break down and land the practitioner in
awkward places, if not in prisons : as words and
theories they are at least innocuous imagination, if
somewhat flimsy.
This text illustrates also the creed of the " verbal "
scholar, the scholar who labours hard for verbal
niceties : for iotas, though iotas (as said before) are
often only the last not the first stage of his meditations.
The grammarian who "settled foi's business: let it be;
properly based otJv, gave us the doctrine of the
enclitic <5e, dead from the waist down." It illustrates
also, perhaps, the fastidiousness of the scholar about
words, and his difficulties with his spiritual self,
which will not use high words lightly, or throw them
264 THOUGHT AND ACTION
before swine so that the common people do not hear
him gladly : and the fastidiousness of hearers who
cannot abide high words except from those who are
justified by their lives in using them. It illustrates
also the scholar's horror of action, his absorption in
words and thoughts : it illustrates even ultimately
the difference between the civilization of Protestants,
namely action ; and that of Roman Catholics, namely,
thought and meditation.
Now this Society is a society largely of British
origin, originating in the race which has always
despised literature even when it practised it, and
not only when, like the Duke of Wellington, it was
exposed to it. This Society is not likely to take liter-
ature too seriously, to take it as seriously as French-
men take it. We belong to the race of Sir Walter
Scott, and Thackeray and Gibbon and Miss Austen ;
and they, none of them, thought of themselves,
at least of their literary selves, more highly than
they ought to have thought. Sir Walter thought
much more highly of the Duke of Wellington :
Thackeray of his knowledge of men and of life ;
Gibbon of his position and station : Miss Austen of
her gentility. You should be able by right of British
birth to escape the danger of any servility or super-
stition about literature.
And also as a Society of Authors, literary men
with some business capacity and business success,
you should be doubly able to weigh literature in the
balance and judge it discriminately, and mediate
between it and action.
You see enough of literature, and of the better
sides of it, I shall suppose, to sympathize with the
man of thought and theories, of words and principles,
against the mere men of action, the Bismarcks of
the world, who brush aside all theories and all prin-
ciples to accomplish their material and their immediate
ends. You see enough to sympathize rather with the
dreamers and visionaries who, like the Stoic philo-
THOUGHT AND ACTION 265
sophers, rush in where angels might fear to tread,
and attempt to separate warring armies, warring
competitive nations, with lofty theories and phrases
of Christianity and of the Fatherhood of God, and
of the Brotherhood of man.
You see enough of literature to see that it is not
all humbug and cant and insincerity, and trifling, in
spite of Plato, who plays the advocatus diaboli for
anyone who thinks of canonizing literature. You see
that its hypocrisy, is like other and quite common-
place hypocrisy, merely, very often, an ugly name
for aspiration.
And yet, your very name the Canadian Society of
Authors, is sufficient proof that though you welcome
literature and that republic of letters in which there
is neither bond nor free, Jew nor Gentile, you are
not unmanned by literature, nor so literary as to dis-
pense with nationality, national feeling, and common
patriotism, but you rather desire, while becoming
scholarly, that your scholarship and your literary
work shall be known by the name of Canadian, and
shall reflect credit, and win interest and esteem for
our young and in literature our still infant and
voiceless country.
CHAPTER XI
QUALITY AND EQUALITY
NO one can read history and philosophy and
theology and politics nay, no one can read
the fiction of this day without seeing the pervasive
attraction exercised over the imagination of theolo-
gians, statesmen, philosophers, and historians, and
even the novel-writers, at least of the present age, by
the idea of equality.
It is even their obsession. It is assumed that in a
divinely ordered society equality is the ideal in view,
if not the end actually obtained. It is assumed that
the ruling principle of the world Christianity is
but another name for equality. Christianity means
democracy, that is, a democratic equality. It is an
ideal, but something more. The founders of the
United States introduced into their Declaration of
Independence, as men are apt to fancy that they
secure their ideal by announcing it as a present fact,
the curious clause, that all men are born free and
equal. The founders of the French Revolution
repeated the proposition in their triple watchword
which stares one in the face on the public buildings
of Paris Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. One of the
founders, Philip, Due d'Orleans, bore it as his nick-
name Philippe Egalite.
On the other hand, more modern Egalitarians, even
though they are Socialists, press the doctrine of
equality less far. Mr. Hyndman, the Socialist, in his
reminiscences, for example.
But a second thought and a second study of these
sources reveals an undercurrent not running precisely
266
QUALITY AND EQUALITY 267
in the same direction. Democracy means the right
of numbers, the count of heads, the greatest happiness
of the greatest number. But it also means and the
two meanings are forever clashing and have created
two widely different views of democracy in all ages
liberty for every man, the rights of the individual,
the value of the individual soul, the rights not of men
only, but of man.
This democracy involves the rights of minorities,
not less than majorities ; proportional representation
is its legitimate offspring, and a new " divine right "
makes its appearance superseding the divine right
of the majority, as that superseded the divine right
of kings, the divine right of every man, even of a
minority of one, against the oppression of numbers.
And this divine right not less than the divine right
of numbers rests on the idea of equality. If every
man has equal rights with every other, there comes
a point, sooner or later, when his rights cannot be
over-ridden by the rights of any number however
great of his neighbours.
Everyone admits the right of numbers, of the
mass, of the State, to supersede individual and per-
sonal rights in all non-essentials ; in the expropriation
at a price of land required for public purposes, and
the like. Few, if any, thoughtful persons admit the
right of the majority to confiscate the property of
the minority, even of a minority of one, or to dictate
to them their way of living, their habits and religion
provided these things are not endangering the
State.
It may seem to benefit the State if the minority
can be forced into the same grooves of thought, life,
and religion as the majority ; it may seem to secure
the unity necessary to a perfect State ; but the French
statesmen who on this plea exterminated the Hugue-
nots, are voted to have been wrong. Not that they
failed exactly, but their success was worse than failure
and constituted a greater failure than direct failure ;
268 QUALITY AND EQUALITY
namely, failure indirect. The success of their per-
secutions filled all lands but France with the best
blood and intellect of France ; enriched the world
at the expense of France and was, while seemingly
successful, the worst blow ever dealt at French
interests. The right of numbers therefore, though
it is the principle of modern governments, has its
limits, however vague they be, and if their limits are
overrun, the numbers the nation itself that is suffer
more than they gain by so exaggerating their rights.
But yet a third current is as traceable in the river
of democratic politics as the current of individual
rights ; an undercurrent distinct from the main stream
of democracy, and distinct from the other and first
undercurrent of the rights of the individual.
The United States deny in practice whole-heartedly,
though in theory half-heartedly they support, the
equal rights of alien and so-called inferior civiliza-
tions. They claim the continent of America for the
white race ; they forbid the immigration wholly or
in part of the Chinese and of the Japanese. They
withhold by artifice if not yet by positive law the
franchise from the negro. The Canadian government
resists the intrusion of Chinese, Japanese, and Hin-
doos. The South African government resists the
same immigration and withholds, or sharply limits
by an educational test, the franchise of the Kaffir
and the other native tribes of Africa. The Australian
government resists the invasion of Japanese labourers.
The British government itself though looking ask-
ance at these things and in perpetual conflict with its
daughter states over the details of this question
denies the absolute equality of the brown races of
Hindostan : gives them civil but not exactly political
liberty, and civil but not political equality.
And many of these states further deny the political
equality of the white race, as far as one sex, the
female sex, is concerned, and confines the suffrage to
men.
QUALITY AND EQUALITY 269
And so neither democracy in its natural form the
rule of numbers nor in its secondary and higher
form the equal liberty and equality of all expresses
the whole thought of the age and of its popular
thinkers. There is no occasion to consider here the
thought of its unpopular thinkers, though they may
be legion absolutely ; relatively they are few, until
they convert the rest, and then they are no longer
unpopular.
But this second undercurrent, then, in the river of
modern democracy represents what ? Not the idea
of equality obviously, still less the idea of the rule
of numbers (which is itself implicitly and in germ
inconsistent with the idea of equality) ; this second
undercurrent naturally and absolutely contradicts
equality ; it bids equality mind its " p's " and " q's."
More precisely, it strikes off the '* e " and puts the
" q " first, and sets up in its place the principle of
" quality."
And then it begins to dawn upon the puzzled
theorist that even Christianity itself, which lies at
the basis of democracy and has been assumed to be
its synonym, has somehow, somewhere, in its mean-
ings, implications inconsistent with mere democracy
and inconsistent also with mere equality. It begins
to dawn upon him that the only equality recognized
by Christianity, or by any religion for that matter, is
not the equality of which the politician speaks, but
only the equal responsibility of all men for the making
the best of the very unequal talents committed to
their charge ; their equal responsibility for using to
the full the ten, or five, or one talent committed to
their charge.
But if the talents be ten and five and one, there is
no longer any equality in the ordinary sense of the
word. There is instead the principle of quality. The
man with ten talents has quality ; the man with five
has an approach to it ; the man with one has no quality.
And after all without any such parable Christ-
270 QUALITY AND EQUALITY
ianity, if it be a religion, must be aristocratic in some
sense, not merely democratic ; must seek to get the
best out of any one, not the average only. It is a
religion and cannot then be like a labour union which
prescribes that the best bricklayer regulate his number
of bricks by the capacity of the poorest, or rather of
the average bricklayer. It is a religion ; it cannot
mean then that the good workman starve his ten
talents till they seem like five, or whatever be the
average number of talents vouchsafed to men. That
would turn the Creator into a labour boss, or walking
delegate. The imagination cannot go so far ; not
even the imagination of a decent labour " boss " or
respectable walking delegate.
There may be a divine right underlying all govern-
ment, the divine right of the individual to develop
his individual talent to the limit to which nature
permits its development. It is a terribly difficult
right to secure as society is at present constituted,
hampered as a man may be by heredity and circum-
stances. But something in us, nevertheless, attests
the divine right of such development. But there is
another divine right the divine right of quality to
rule, which will seem even more divine because it is
less difficult to secure, because indeed it cannot,
however often defeated, be permanently effaced or
ignored. In proportion as men are generous and
intelligent, the human nature in every man acknow-
ledges the right of quality and gives to it unstinted
obedience and ready acknowledgment. No man of
generosity and intelligence is so misled by the false
and perverted kind of democracy which calls itself
democracy while it is only the voice of jealousy and
envy, as to count himself the equal of one in whom
he sees superior quality.
But what is this superior quality, so universally
recognized and obeyed ? The question is never an
easy one to answer, and is impossible of answer in a
democratic age of universal education.
QUALITY AND EQUALITY 271
In the old aristocratic and caste societies of one
hundred years ago, it was easily answered. The
peasant in an English village of those days with that
keen perception of facts, that realism, which belongs
to the illiterate and makes the illiterate so much more
interesting and edifying as companion than the
literate, seized upon the superiority in knowledge,
birth, wealth, and manners not in any one of these
things only but in them all which he found in many
of his squires and class superiors and called it
" quality." They became to him " the quality " ;
and there was no difficulty for him in saying where
quality resided. But in this age all that is gone.
What peasant, however humble or servile from
years of subordination, could give to-day that pictur-
esque epithet " the quality " to the squire or noble-
man or millionaire whose only inequality with him-
self may be in money ; who thunders past him in an
infernal motor covering him with dust and spoiling
the flowers of his tiny garden, and coating garden
and cottage and flowers with dirt, but who may
know no more nor possess better manners than him-
self; who may amount to no more in Oxford or
Cambridge than himself; who may be even a lesser
part of Oxford than himself. A long string of
scholarships from the elementary school scholarship
to the scholarships of the university may have taken
him or his sons to the universities ; they cannot
have taken the squire or the millionaire in England
to seats of loftier learning or better manners. The
universities may not have stamped the impress of
these things so deeply on the squire's mind as upon
his own. Whatever quality in the proper sense of
the word there be in the world may now be his as
well as his squire's, and more than his squire's. And
there is no longer any very sure or easy outward
badge and visible sign by which the inward and
spiritual grace of quality may be distinguished.
Money will not do ; for it is still as ever doubly hard
272 QUALITY AND EQUALITY
for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven or
quality ; and few will do it. A few rich men will
survive the obstacles and engrossments of wealth,
the distractions of petty business, and still pettier
society, which it brings in its train. A few abnormal
camels will pass through the needle's eye ; nothing is
impossible to God, or to those men on whom His
grace has fallen, but as a criterion of quality money
will not only not serve, it will not begin to serve. It
will more easily serve as a criterion of grace's absence,
seeing that the victims are many in whom " dull
affluence repressed their noble rage."
Birth will not do ; for nature is capricious, and the
golden nature is sometimes found in modern states,
as in the Platonic Callipolis, in the brazen or leaden
class of the proletariat. Biologists cannot agree as
to the value of heredity and hereditary culture ; for
families, like lands as Pindar says soon suffer from
intensive culture and continual cropping, and have
to lie fallow for a few generations ; and rapidly
exhaust themselves when they are forced and culti-
vated to produce talent and grace and genius. The
virgin land which has never been cultivated, the
germ plasms of the uncultivated proletariat are apt
to be more promising, like the soil of Manitoba and
the West ; the proletariat is our political Saskat-
chewan.
Clothes will not do. They are too cheap and easy
an index. So that it becomes even safer to argue
from them inversely ; a poorly-dressed and dowdy
woman may be a great lady ; a lady of quality, and
a gentlewoman ; a richly caparisoned damsel runs
the risk of being at once set down as a dressmaker
or a housemaid enjoying her afternoon out.
Then if clothes, birth, money are no index, what
index remains ? Education remains, but it is delusive
and disappointing. Latin grammar does not give
quality necessarily ; nor even does the lack of it.
Physical science does not preclude illiteracy, and
QUALITY AND EQUALITY 278
though illiteracy does not preclude " quality," it
disguises it. A good modern education may leave
its possessor where it found him ; it may do worse,
and overlay and freeze the genial current of his soul,
as Dickens would have been pruned out of existence
by a good education.
There is no index of quality and no outward test ;
only a long experience, and the guarantee furnished
by a record of years will carry with it the conviction
that this man or that nobleman or peasant has the
indescribable distinction, a distinction of nature
primarily, only slightly disguised or arrested by un-
favourable circumstances.
Then, obviously, quality so hard to describe and
so much harder to recognize can be no measure for
political purposes, for the possession, for example, of
the franchise. Here, of course, when we reach this
democratic conclusion we are " up against " Socrates.
Socrates scoffed at democracy because it neglected
quality, because it counted noses. No man, he was
fond of saying, when a ship was tempest-tossed, took
a show of hands to find a helmsman. Every man
rushed for the expert for the helmsman for the
man of quality, and rushed him to the helm, and held
him there by force if necessary. A state should rush
to its natural helmsmen, the experts in government,
and hold them to the job.
The figure is entertaining, but it does not seem very
profound or salutary. Presumably on shipboard
there is a helmsman already, who is known, or at
least supposed, to understand something of the
business. Presumably, also, on shipboard in a storm
even human vanity is not so prodigious that the
ignorant but vain man, who is eager to be in the lime-
light but knows nothing of seamanship, will choose
the limelight at the cost of drowning ; to drown in
the limelight is imperfect distinction.
It is not quite the same in the ship of State, in
politics. A man may love the limelight (or the Lime-
M..M. 18
274 QUALITY AND EQUALITY
house light) inordinately, but, unfortunately, there is
no deterrent drowning, just ahead of him, to curb his
vanity ; and besides, it is so much harder on the ship
of State to recognize the expert. Democracy, so far
as I can judge, is only a method, and the only method
so far as I can at present imagine one, of choosing
that expert. I think Socrates was very unfair and
unjust. We all agree with him in his object. We all
want that expert. But we cannot, for the life of us,
imagine any better way of finding him than taking a
show of hands ; at any rate, of white hands (meta-
phorically white, of course). We might, indeed,
restrict the franchise to the B.A.'s of the University
of Toronto ; we might restrict it to the chief news-
paper editors ; we might restrict it to university
professors (I lean to this myself at times) or to all
doctors of medicine, or to all surgeons ; we might
restrict it to the ministers of the Anglican Church (I
put this in out of compliment to Trinity College) ;
we might restrict it to the bank managers ; we might
restrict it to Canadian Pacific Railway magnates ;
we might restrict it to lieutenant-governors. Alas,
for human nature, we have none of us sufficient faith
in any of those amiable persons ; for many reasons,
but two are sufficient : that we know by bitter
experience that many of them and not the worst
of them have no faith in themselves for any such
high office ; and secondly, by still bitterer experience,
we know that they have no faith in each other, and
frankly tell us, under their breath and in a corner,
that other B.A.'s and other university professors,
and other bank managers, etc., are little better than
fools; are, practically, morons.
These, you see, are the fancy franchises which the
late Mr. John Bright who was not a B.A. or a
university professor, or a doctor or a surgeon, or even
a bank manager unmercifully ridiculed ; and which
only the state of Belgium has ever (even partially and
in combination with manhood suffrage) put into prac-
QUALITY AND EQUALITY 275
tice. We can all of us sympathize with Mr. Bright. It is
so easy to ridicule, so hard not to ridicule, these pro-
fessors and professional gentlemen as heads of a
government. But personally I sympathize also with
the state of Belgium, at least in their idea, in their
aim and object, if not in their method of achieving it.
For, after all, what can be more absurd, as Socrates
saw, than this principle of equality in the franchise.
What can be more absurd than that a man who is
managing well, let us say, a large estate or a large
railway, or a large bank, or any large establishment
should see his vote cancelled by the vote of the laziest,
most shiftless and most incompetent of his tenants or
his employees : the thing is preposterous, absurd,
even wicked, at the first glance. It is so obvious, as
Aristotle says, that a State is a factory a large
business engaged in the manufacture of virtue ; and
the dividends from it, that is, the honours and the
chief posts and the chief power, should go to those
shareholders who contribute to its capital of virtue
the largest number of shares, that is, the greatest
amount of virtue. But, once more, with Aristotle's
metaphor, as with Socrates' metaphor of a ship, the
difficulty is to decide who are these shareholders, and
what is virtue. And who can decide that, and what
tests or index have we ?
And so democracy, in spite of Socrates' scoff and
Aristotle's metaphors, is justified in not looking
just yet for the index ; in ignoring it ; in basing
itself frankly on numbers and equality, with only
this recognition of quality in the background : that
it demands that the civilization of a land be the
civilization of the higher race, not the lower. Whether
that means the civilization of the white men, instead
of the civilization of the black and yellow or bronze,
is a different question, demanding the judgment of
an expert without prejudices, who has seen and known
intimately all these civilizations. And where is he
to be found ? But democracy may properly limit its
276 QUALITY AND EQUALITY
doctrine of numbers and equality with this vague
proposition of quality, though the proposition be at
present too vague and academic for practical utility,
and be one of those many discoveries which we must
patiently leave to the science of the future to discover.
What comes of all this ? Does anything come of
it ? Where does it all point ? Only to this, I think :
that in politics, in the distribution of the franchise,
we must base ourselves upon democracy and on the
principle of counting noses I don't say noses out of
slang or flippancy or irreverence, but only because it
is so abhorrent, so unscientific, to talk of the counting
of heads, when you are not counting what is in them.
When I see in the distant future the true counting of
heads, that is, the counting of what is in them, or
better the counting of what is in heads and hearts
combined, I cannot reconcile myself to speak of
counting heads in any lower, more vulgar, and more
democratic sense ; it shocks me.
In the administration of a state, then, and in the
distribution of the franchise, we must for the present
be content with our poor democratic principle : the
counting of numbers. (That avoids the vulgar word
noses.)
But secondly, we shall guard and limit the principle
of numbers by recognizing the more divine principle
of equality. We shall recognize minorities and give
minorities representation. We shall introduce pro-
portional representation. We shall give to each
considerable minority its representatives proportioned
to their number. We shall not be content much
longer to swing with the pendulum, as they swing in
England ; to be governed by a House of Commons
which represents now this snap majority and now
that. We shall find something more stable by pro-
portional representation and the representation of
minorities ; and perhaps still further stability by the
adoption of the referendum, a device which represents
at once the right of the majority but also the equal
QUALITY AND EQUALITY 277
rights of each voter. Our present system of repre-
sentative government recognizes the equal rights of
each voter only for a moment ; only when the pande-
monium of a general election is in progress. After
that is over, the individual voter is helpless again-
more helpless even than he was when the two parties
were cajoling him for his vote and becomes nobody,
until another election comes on. In the interval he
is governed by the snap majority which he put in
power, only because he had to put some party in
power, and which never represented him perhaps,
except on the one question which was paramount for
the moment during the election, and which may have
ceased to represent him only a month afterwards,
when circumstances have disposed of that burning
question and have put another in its place on which
the snap majority does not represent him at all.
Proportional representation, minority represen-
tation, and the referendum, these three reforms seem
all urgently needed to defend the rights of minorities
and also the rights of equality the rights of the in-
dividual voter ; to deliver us from the tyranny of
single chamber government, from the tyranny of a
House of Commons and an autocratic Cabinet, from
the insolence of elected persons.
Of course there are the theoretic safeguards of a
House of Lords and a Senate, but we need not discuss
those safeguards just now, when the House of Lords
is a cypher and cannot even act any longer as a
referendum and force an appeal to the real rulers, the
electors ; and when the Senate as we have known
it in this country has come to be only the refuge of
the enfeebled or unsuccessful statesmen of the party
in power, of the men who are too old to go through
the hurly-burly of an election, or have done so un-
successfully, and have claimed a senatorship as the
recompense of that rough and tumble experience and
of that electoral horseplay.
For government then, for politics, democracy and
278 QUALITY AND EQUALITY
equality ; and quality in the background as a dubious
principle absolutely sound, the soundest of all
principles in theory but academic and impracticable
in fact, until we are nearer the millennium.
But government and politics do not absorb life, any
more than trade and commerce and arts and sciences
absorb life. Socrates, by the way I can never get
away long from Socrates thought that trade and
commerce and arts and sciences did absorb life. He
thought that poets were demonstrably fools and
ignoramuses, because, while professing to understand
life, to understand men, women, and children, to
understand what a king says, and what a queen says,
and what a merchant and a judge and a doctor and
a tradesman says and does, he yet never could tell
you what a tradesman actually will say when you ask
him to recommend you a sugar or a tea ; what a
doctor will say when you ask for a prescription for
mumps ; what a seamstress will say and do when
you ask her to mend your gown and sew on some
collar buttons ; or what a muleteer will say or do to
get his mules up an impossible pass in the mountains.
The right words in all these cases, objects Socrates
to the poets, the mystical right-prescription for the
swollen face, the mystical right-swear-words for the
mule, are always known only by the expert, the doctor,
the seamstress, the tradesman, and the muleteer,
never by the poet.
Well, we have our Shakespeare, not to say our
Homer, who know what a man is, and a woman and
a child and a king and a tradesman and a doctor,
and a muleteer even, who did express human nature
over all these walks of life, or even over their mountain
passes. And having Shakespeare and Homer we
know that Socrates was talking Socratic nonsense,
and that life is greater than art, and much longer, in
spite of half-true proverbs ; in reality ars brevis vita
longa est. The time a man spends in his technical
pursuits is short. The part these things play in his
QUALITY AND EQUALITY 279
life is short and small. The man in them is greater
than the artist or craftsman, and the specific character
which he possesses as a man, that is, as a king, as a
doctor, as a tradesman, as a muleteer, is something
infinitely greater and more complex than his technical
knowledge, and the technical jargon in which he
expresses himself for a few minutes when he is " on
his job," " doing his bit " as king, tradesman, etc.
This specific character of man modified in each
case by his place in society and his trade this it is
which the poets because they are poets, and are
men of every sort, and, more, are man, woman and
child all in one comprehend and interpret to us out-
siders, so that we go to them, to Shakespeare and to
Homer, to know other men and to know ourselves.
Life is much greater, then, than government and
politics and franchises, much greater even than the
arts, trades, and professions which are greater than
politics. And what is to be the guiding principle of
life of private life, of the inner life, of the only life
most of us really lead of the life we lead when we
are not either voting or lecturing, or selling sugar, or
exhorting mules, etc., etc. ?
And here comes in at last and incontestably now,
and not theoretically or academically, nor as a vision
of some millennial future, here comes in again at last
our third principle of quality. Quality, however
vague, is that which we seek and express in private
life, in our very life and character ; by which we are
judged now ; by which we expect to be judged here-
after at the Great Assize, I mean. I will not attempt
at this late hour to prove there is a Great Assize, it
would take a little too much of that valuable time
which I have been wasting on hair-splitting and
experiments of an ultra-academic and professorial
character. I will content myself with a proposition,
which hardly anyone I think will deny : if there be
no such Great Assize there ought to be, for it repre-
sents the deepest instinct of justice implanted in the
280 QUALITY AND EQUALITY
human heart from kings to muleteers. The belief in
it springs from the deepest instincts and leads to the
noblest living. Therefore it must be true. What is
the good of pragmatism if it cannot at least teach us
that ? Quality I say is that by which we are judged
here in our private lives and expect to be judged at
the Great Assize.
And therefore there remain the three principles
we have been discussing democracy, equality, and
quality. Democracy for government and politics
and franchises ; equality for the law courts and as a
secondary principle, a principle of limitation and
regulation, even for our governments and our politics
and franchises yes, and even for our trade and pro-
fessions ; for all true and necessary work honourably
done and to the level of our best is in a certain sense,
a subjective sense, a religious or Christian sense,
equal. And quality, for our true lives, our inner
lives, our real selves, and our religion : now abide
these three principles, and the greatest of these is
quality.
CHAPTER XII
THE BEST POLICY
(1) ' F HAVE spent my sheltered and cloistered life in
A reading Socrates and Plato and Aristotle (whose
opinions outweigh with me Mr. Lloyd George's and
other modern lights, including Mr. Asquith and Mr.
Baldwin, though the opinions of the two latter, being
classical scholars, have a certain adventitious and
adscititious value of their own in my eyes) and some-
thing also of the other Greek sophists. One of the
later sophists Carneades, you will all remember
went to Rome on one occasion and shocked the
Roman Purists and Puritans the British hypocrites
of that dispensation by lecturing on behalf 01 justice
one day and against it the next.
(2) I have been driven by force of my reflections
upon life recently into the same predicament. I have
been protesting in season ana out of season for
years against that popular and utilitarian maxim
of this age and Zeitgeist, that honesty is just the
best policy and only that. I have been preaching
against John Stuart Mill and Grote and John Mac-
kinnon Robertson and scores of other men, much
more eminent than I am, that such honesty is no
honesty, and fatal to the nation (in the end) that
should adopt it. That utility and expediency is no
basis for honesty : that honesty must rest on less ob-
vious and easy and precarious and shifty quicksands :
that it must rest on foundations more close to rock-
bottom : more mystical and metaphysical and in-
stinctive : that it must rest on religion in fact : on
those unfathomable and invisible beings and things
281
282 THE BEST POLICY
known as the soul and God and duty and conscience :
on the first great words least understood. I have
been preaching that duty and expediency may be
often coincident but are never identical.
(3) And now having argued thus for years for
honesty for a real honesty I am going back on this
occasion only to argue like Carneades not for this real
honesty but in favour of the best policy.
(4) But I am not proposing just to eat my former
words I don't suppose Carneades did so but to
distinguish the different circumstances under which
men had better follow mystical instincts and instinc-
tive conscience and God and duty, and under which
again they should be content with the best policy,
and should be very careful very, very careful to
find the best policy, and therewith to stick to it
though the heavens of the politicians fall.
(5) You can guess why I have trimmed my sails and
taken a large reef in the main-sail, and steered for
a nearer and an easier port. We are hearing so much
about the maintenance of the British Empire and
its commonwealth of nations : the necessity of
maintaining it and the difficulty of guaranteeing its
maintenance.
(6) I quite agree : it is, I think, necessary to main-
tain it, not for Great Britain's sake only, though I
was caught too late ever to forget her interests ; not
for Canada's sake only, though I have been so long
here fifty years practically as to feel often a
Canadian : (and if and when I don't, my speech
bewrays me often and advertises me for one) I see
nothing for Canada of supreme value outside the
Empire : she would become just an inferior United
States (whether or not she were absorbed in the
United States), just a poorer America, a northern
North America, commercialized to her Southern
neighbour's likeness, gravitating every year more
and more to that type : not for Great Britain's sake
only or for Canada's sake only : but for the world
THE BEST POLICY 283
for the whole world's sake This British Empire
of nations is the greatest and most beneficent experi-
ment in politics ever made : at least the greatest and
most beneficent experiment which is already a going
concern : the League of Nations is greater and more
beneficent, but it is not yet secure, not yet really
going steadily. The British commonwealth of nations
is a going concern and it is an experiment which
benefits the whole world, for it makes for world peace.
(7) But how maintain it, this British Empire ?
That is where this " best policy " comes in. You
can't maintain it as you may hope to maintain
individual honesty : a man's and a woman's honesty,
by appeals to conscience and instinct and the soul
and God and duty. No one can easily count the
maintenance of our Empire a part of the word of
God and the voice of duty. Let us be content to
see that it is the best policy and stick like leeches
(8) to the best policy through good report and ill report :
through sensational journalism and fire-eating poli-
ticians and all the personal feuds and piques and
misunderstandings between man and man, which
are for ever breaking up homes and separating man
and man, and man and wife, and may easily break
up our beneficent Empire if we do not cling desper-
ately, in spite of all human feuds and friction, to
the best policy. All imperial questions, all inter-
national questions and imperial questions are already
almost international questions should be settled
not on sentiment only but on sheer cold-blooded
reason, and on considerations of the best policy : and
the good of the Empire and of the world.
(9) They can bear that scrutiny, even as con-
stitutional monarchy, which is often treated as a
matter of sentiment only, can bear the closest
scrutiny, and will turn out the best policy as well
as the best sentiment : for constitutional monarchy
as Venizelos knew, poor man, and argued and fought
for it and suffered for it (fighting for it even against
284 THE BEST POLICY
a monarch who disliked him) constitutional mon-
archy is the best defence of a state against the four
evils of modern life : the ambitious politician, the
ambitious soldier, the ambitious millionaire, the
ambitious journalist (the greatest danger of them all
to-day).
" My handkerchief " (said the King of Italy the
other day to Mussolini) " you cannot have : it is
the only thing you still let me poke my nose into " ;
Mussolini represents three out of the four evils : he
is an ambitious statesman and soldier and journalist
all in one.
(10) Can imperial questions and international
questions be settled calmly on the lines of the best
policy ? Are they now ? You know the difficulty :
a whole nation, like an individual, will destroy its
future, will tear up its prospects, will doom itself
and its unborn generations, in a fit of national anger,
in a momentary pique, if it conceives itself insulted
or even depreciated.
(11) Let some touchy and self-conscious demagogue
be snubbed by a foreign Power (as the French
ambassador in 1870 was supposed to have been
snubbed by William of Prussia), and not only will
the politicians of France be ready to fight, but all
France and especially all Paris, will be ready to take
up arms and shout, " a Berlin, a Berlin."
(12) And that is only one case. Germany was in
her turn carried into war in 1914 by ambitious
soldiers. No need for it : everything already going
or coming her way; she had only to sit still and
consider the best policy, and she would have mastered
Europe without war, as she failed, just failed, to do
through war.
(13) Every man round the British Empire may well
tremble when he thinks of these things, when he re-
flects how weak and frail to an angry man and even
to an angry nation is (i ' the best policy " against
wounded pride and injured self-love.
THE BEST POLICY 285
(14) Some statesman of South Africa, of Australia,
of Canada, even of India in the long days to come,
is affronted, let us suppose (it is so deplorably easy
and natural a supposition) by the hauteur or the
tactlessness or the misunderstood shyness even and
silence, of some other statesman in Downing Street :
the Dominion statesman is vain, perhaps, and the
other in Downing Street is tactless and stupid ;
a quarrel starts on personal grounds : it grows and
grows and from being personal becomes at once
(thanks to a yellow Press) national ; and the greatest
and best experiment ever tried in politics comes to
an untimely end, and ends in a judicial separation and
a divortium a mensd et toro : although the continuance
of the marriage as often of the individual marriage
was the best hope of peace and happiness for the
world as for the private house.
(15) It is hideous and awful to reflect that all the
world's prospects of hope and peace may vanish in
one hour through two stupid men's vanity and
tactlessness : and are not all men vain and tactless ?
If Downing Street is not always arrogant or tactless
it has often been so at least in the past ; and if it is
less and less so now, still it is not the vanity of
Ministers and Premiers only which threaten the peace
of our Empire : the chief statesmen of Downing Street
are very cautious to-day and try desperately to be
tactful, no doubt ; but there are deputy ministers and
civil servants also who have lived with politicians
and statesmen all their lives, and are heartily sick
of them and contemptuous of them : they know the
domestic article in Downing Street and humour it
and make allowances for it ; they do not know the
exotic product, the alien statesmen from the
Dominions : they are not familiar with their
nuances of manner and accent and appearance and
language. Almost without meaning it, they proceed
with nonchalance to knock the chips off the shoulder
of some Dominion representative, some simple, ignor-
286 THE BEST POLICY
ant, vain man, who flaunts chips upon his shoulder
and almost seems to ask some one to knock them
off the bored and blase official rather gladly knocks
them off and the fat is in the fire and the chips blaze
up splendidly, and a whole Dominion if the outraged
official has "a good Press," that is, a bad Press at
home is alienated and outraged, and perhaps irre-
trievably.
(16) Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen, remember how it
has been and may be again : it was only Lord
Salisbury's cynical aristocratic good-humour and
philosophic instinct for the best policy, that prevented
him from quarrelling with President Cleveland and
Mr. Olney over Venezuela, when they began to foam
at the mouth for the benefit and to the delight of
all the fire-eaters and tail-twisters in the United
States. To-morrow there may be other fire-eaters
and tail-twisters to be delighted, in a Dominion
much more essential to the Empire's peace and
happiness than the United States.
(17) " Good policy " is a poor motive in individual
life : it is only a dope, a drug, a dodge, a dose, and
a dole, to tempt men into a false honesty ; it is only
a pious fraud, which is really very impious, to dis-
guise from men the necessity and the difficulty of
real honesty, if the state is to last long and succeed.
Real honesty, I mean, is necessary in the long run
for every state, but it is difficult ; because it is not
always necessary to the individual, who has only a
short run of seventy years ; or in this age of medicine
of eighty years or even ninety years : (it is not
necessary for the individual always, or patent medi-
cines would not have made so many fortunes ; they
often do little harm and are compounded of harmless
sugar, but they never achieve the results claimed
for them).
(18) But "good policy" is the only safe motive in
international and imperial politics : we are told to
take short views in politics : we cannot take short
THE BEST POLICY 287
views in imperial and international politics, and then
hope that the Empire which we love will long survive
the innate quarrelsomeness, vanity and tactlessness
of human nature : these original sins are not confined
to Irishmen. Honesty cannot be secured in private
life by thoughts of the best policy, but by high
principles. But only thoughts of the best policy
will secure the survival of a commonwealth of
nations, made up of average human nature and
human quarrelsomeness.
(19) This University college and this University of
Toronto ought to be must be if it is to serve
Canada best, among the chief forces in Canada which
will make for the discussion of Canada's relations to
the seat of Empire and to the other Dominions in a
spirit of hard common sense and intelligent prudence
and far-sighted wisdom and, in a word, the best
policy.
(20) This college and this University will require
to breed the best type of journalists for journalists
are now in the place of the old diplomatists ; they
alone know the world, as even the old diplomatists
never knew it (they only met the people in dress
clothes and white ties, whereas the journalist makes
it his business to meet every one). This college and
University must breed the best type of journalists :
men who will make it their business to snuff out
the yellow Press, to smooth over difficulties of
personal tempers and misunderstandings and personal
idiosyncrasies between the members of the different
states of the Empire ; to effect compromises ; to seek
peace and ensue it and ensure it ; to work day and
night to iron out the creases and wrinkles of individual
irritation, to preserve the unity and peace of the
whole many-sided, many-coloured fabric which is the
hope of the world : and the only hope (a second world
war will destroy civilization) ; and to do all this to
achieve this beneficent end, what weapon have they
to their hands and pens, except this prosaic and
288 THE BEST POLICY
comparatively humble weapon, which is called "the
best policy"; but which they can so transfigure by
unselfish service to it, that it will almost shine in
the end with the radiance and the unearthly light,
which never was (for long) on sea or land, and which
belongs to things generally lying outside mere
policy ; true peace and real honesty, and the best
service to God and man, which any man can render
in his day and generation ?
INDEX
44 Abhorrences " (of Nature), 90
Academic thinkers, 48, 45, 59,
60, 95, 97, 98, 189
Accents (Greek), 175
Acheron, 118
Acton (Lord), 81
Actors, 67
Adem (Mme. Edmond), 228
Adams (Professor), 88
Addams (Miss Jane), 185, 140,
248
Aeroplanes, 105
Affectation, 117
Agnosticism, 158, 167
Albanians, 85
Albuera, 281
Alcibiades, 50
Alchemy, 88
Aid worth, 112
Alexander (of Macedon), 49, 50,
288
44 Alice " (in Wonderland, etc.),
15, 248
Alma (Battle of), 282
Ambracists, 85
America and Americans, 82,
110, 128, 184, 185, 188, 189,
150, 218, 219, 220, 222, 289,
245, 268, 282
Analogies, 89, 90, 102, 109
AndrocUs and the Lion, 249, 250
Anglo-Irish, 79
Anthropomorphism, 90, 158
Antigone, 85
Antiochus (Cicero's teacher),
155
Antiphon, 55
M.M.
Antiquarians, 202
Antony (Mark), 208
Apathy, 69, 78
Aphorisms, 89, 90, 92, 102
Apology (Plato's), 68
Arabia, 231
Archaeology, 178, 204
Archimedes, 84, 208
dgerij, 52
Argos, 25, 26
Aristides, 195, 224
Aristocrats and Aristocracy, 56,
58, 88, 270, 286
Aristogiton, 285
Aristophanes, 89, 224, 244, 247,
251, 258
Aristotle, 82, 84, 88, 41, 44, 50,
62, 69, 70, 81, 82, 88, 84, 86,
148-56, 160, 168, 164, 178,
188, 192, 194, 200, 210, 211,
216, 249, 256, 275, 281
Arnold (Matthew), 29, 69, 72,
80, 89, 182, 170, 218
(Thomas), 162, 164, 170,
171, 172, 254
(Thomas, junior), 188
Arquebuss, 182
Arria, 228
Artabanus, 84
Asia, 50, 125
Aspasia, 228
Aspiration, 116, 117, 265
Asquith (tord Oxford), 281
Astrology, 84
Astronomy, 84, 86, 90, 148
Atalanta, 91, 118
Athenaeum, 18
Athanasius, 215
289 19
290
INDEX
Athenian, 13, 16, 34, 89, 41, 43,
191-241
Athenodorus, 215
Athens, 84, 89, 46, 49, 50
" little Athens " (politi-
cal catch- word), 51,
52, 151
Atmosphere, 100
" Attractions " (of Nature), 90
Aufklarung, 40
Augustine, 215
Austen (Jane), 80, 130, 207, 245,
247, 264
Austin (Sir Alfred), 126
(John), 209
Australia and Australians, 51,
268, 285
" Authors' Society of Canada,"
252, 253, 264, 265
Aviation, 77
Ayr (Ontario), 75
Babylon, 20
Bacchic Chorus (Sophocles in
Antigone), 34, 35
Bacis (prophet), 23
Bacon (Sir Francis), 76-109,
152, 163
(Roger), 82
Bagehot (Walter), 227, 258
Bakounine, 51
Balfour (Graham). 187
(the Right Honble.
Stanley), 281
Bannerman (Sir H. C.). 124
Barbarians, 147, 151, 243
Barres (Maurice), 41
Baxter, 80
Bazin, 41
Beaconsfield (Lord), 89, 258
" Beauregard," 195
Beecher (Henry Ward), 218
" Belchasse," 195
Belgrade, 233
Belloc (Hilaire), 262
Belgium, 53, 54, 274, 275
Bengalese, 124, 198
Benn, 152
Bennett (Arnold), 80
Bentley, 178
Beranger, 117
Bergson, 41
Berkeley (Bishop), 79
Berlin, 234
Bible, 89, 195
Biglozv Papers, 245
Biology, 84, 272
Bismarck, 203, 254, 256, 264
Black Sea, 33
Blake (William), 80
Blanco Posnet, 249, 250, 251
Boeotians, 35, 203
Boers, 60
Bohemians and Bohemianism,
255, 256
Bolivar (the sailing of the), 115,
116, 131, 140
Bordeaux (Henri), 41
Boston (Mass.), 172, 244
Bourdillon (Francis W.), 132
Bourget, 41
" Bradshaw," 208
Bremen, 51
Briand, 101
" Bridge," 74
Bridges (Dr.), 112, 117, 118,
126, 127, 141
Bright (John), 274, 275
Bronte (Charlotte), 80
Browne (Sir Thomas), 106
Browning (Robert), 64, 66, 80,
119, 121, 130, 132, 143, 206
Brunetiere, 41
" Bruno," 243
Brutus (the Younger), 199
Bryan (William Jennings), 248
Bryce (Lord), 36
Buckingham (Earl of), 94, 95, 98
Buckle (Thomas), 154
Buddhists, 144, 168
Bulgarians, 35
Buller (Redvers), 231
Bulow (Prince), 19
Bunyan, 80
INDEX
291
Burgon (Dean), 181
Burke (Edmund), 44, 79, 192
Burns, 80
Burton (Sir Richard), 189
Butler (Bishop), 161
Byron, 88, 80, 259
Cadiz, 282
" Callipolis," 46, 272
Callousness, 201, 202
Calverley, 80, 126
Cambridge, 9, 162, 175, 188, 271
Canada and Canadians, 51, 74,
141, 142, 220, 282, 285, 287
Canadian Pacific Railway, 274
Canning, 44, 244, 247, 251, 258
Carlyle, 82, 46, 47, 62, 80, 197,
206, 284, 255
Carneades, 281, 282
"Carroll (Lewis)," 14, 248, 244
Catch-words, 109, 110
Catholics (Roman), 107, 108
Cato (the Elder), 211, 220, 222
Celts, 78, 79
Chandler (Professor), 174, 175
Channel (the Irish), 79
Channing (William Ellery), 261
Character, 200, 201, 207, 222,
279
Charybdis, 217
Chateaubriand, 59
Chaucer, 80
Chauvinists, 27
Chepstow, 101
44 Chester " (a nickname), 22
Chesterton (Gilbert), 282
Cheyenne (Colorado), 184
Chicago, 101, 285
Childhood and Children, 22, 92,
120, 180, 184, 149, 172, 190,
197
4t Chilion,"195
Chillingworth, 217
Chinese, 268
Chitral, 209
Christians (before Christ), 52
"Christian Science," 118
Christianity, 57, 70, 81, 90, 98,
95, 96, 97, 107, 184, 189, 160,
249, 250, 265, 266, 269, 270,
280
Cleon, 86, 88, 41, 42, 48, 44, 45,
218
Cleveland (President), 286
" Cloacina," 229
Clough (Arthur Hugh), 71, 80,
128, 182, 162, 171, 172, 178,
175
Cnemus (Spartan Admiral), 55
Co-education, 149, 151, 261
Coke (Sir Edward), 94
Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), 80,
114, 121, 181, 148, 144, 152,
164, 261, 262
Colour, 87
Commune (the Paris of 1871), 51
Compass, 77, 106
Compensation, 47, 56, 161, 201
Comte (Auguste), 90, 146, 158
Conservatism, 48, 44, 56, 59,
152, 179, 242, 245, 257
Conventionalism, 44, 56, 245,
248, 249
Cope (H. M.), 224
Copernicus, 84, 87, 108
Corday (Charlotte), 285
Cosmopolitanism, 258
Cotton (Richard, Lynch), 181-
90
Courthope (Professor), 62, 80
Cousin (Victor), 209
Cowper, 80
Crabbe, 80
Crassus, 218
Creighton (Bishop), 107, 211
Cretans, 21
Crimea, 281
Croesus, 24, 25, 84
Cromer(Lord), 197
Culture (and Anarchy), 59
Cuvier, 84
Cynics, 69, 175, 176, 177, 200,
244, 248, 262, 286
Cyrus (the Elder), 25
292
INDEX
Dancing, 219
Daniel (the Prophet), 108
Danton, 146, 262
Darwin, 80, 84, 88, 93
Darwinians, 35
Davison (author of Prophecy),
183
Decalogue, the, 221, 222
Defoe (Daniel), 80
Delphi, 41
Delphians, 24
De Quincy, 80
Demagogues, 57, 101, 284
Democedes (Greek surgeon), 19
Democracy, 18, 42, 46, 57, 83,
96, 97, 106, 266, 267, 269,
270, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277,
280
Democrat, 44, 119
Demosthenes, 50, 58, 121
Departmental Ditties, 117
Desmoulins (Camille), 262
dia-cgip-ij, 216
Dickens (Charles), 80, 111, 123,
129, 130, 132, 134, 138, 243,
245, 247, 273
Diderot, 215
Diodotus, 217
Dionysius of Syracuse, 61
Diotima of Mantinea, 223
Disciple (the Devil's), 249, 250
Disraeli (Benjamin), 89, 258
Divination (ancient Roman),
196
Dodona, 23
Dominions (the), 285, 286, 287
Downing St., 285
Dowson (Ernest), 256
Drainage, 228
Drama, 67
Dromond, 118, 129
Drummond (Henry), 89
Dryden, 80
Dublin, 78, 179
Duff (Sir M. Grant), 28
Dukes, 219
Dunnville (Ontario), 18
Dutch (double-), 20
Dutchman (a forgotten), 96
" Eagle " (a man's name), 22
East (the), 21, 36, 50, 124, 168
Edison, 105
Education (popular and univer-
sal), 57, 59, 119, 251, 270
Egalitarians, 96, 266
Eglantine (Fabre d'), 262
Egypt and Egyptians, 23, 24,
27, 50, 197, 234, 239
Egyptian (doctrines), 24
(Thebes), 20
(labyrinths), 20
language, 20, 27
" Eliot (George)," 80, 170, 222
Elizabeth (Queen), 94, 98, 101
Elkington (Colonel), 113
Elsmere (Robert), 173
Embryology, 88
Emerson (Ralph Waldo), 128,
132, 219, 257
Emotionalism, 72
Empire (British), 282, 283, 284,
285, 286, 287
" Energy " (in Nature), 90
Engineers, 112
Englishman, 78, 113, 115, 116,
117, 191-241
Enthusiasm, 244, 258
Epicurus, 155, 239
Epirus, 20
Equality, 266-80
Erasmus, 103, 160, 161, 258, 259
Essex (Earl of), 94, 95
Euripides, 65, 166
Europa, 21, 22
Europe, 50
Eurydice, 35
Evangelicals, 180, 181, 188, 201
Evolution, 58, 59, 88
Expression, 62, 70, 71, 74
Fabius (Cunctator), 198
Faith, 56, 57, 242, 243, 244, 247,
258
INDEX
293
Falkland (Lord), 45
Fate, 56, 57, 58
Federalism, 98
Felix, 241
Feminists and Feminism, 243
Fenians, 79, 80
Ferrer (Francisco), 47
Festus, 241
Fielding (novelist), 80, 251
Final causes, 88, 91, 102
Finality, 44
Fitzgerald (Edward), 80,126,182
" Flatterers (the) " (Plato's
Republic), 255
Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sulli-
van), 251
Gladiators (intellectual), 253,
254, 255, 257
Gladstone ( William E wart), 179,
221, 258
(William, junior), 86
Glaucon (in Plato's Republic),
243
Godley, 258
Goldsmith (Oliver), 79, 256
Gordon (General), 60
(Lindsay), 78
Gradgrind " (in Dickens), 69
Forma " (Bacon's), 85, 86, 93 Grammarians, 263
Franchise, 273, 274, 276
(Fancy-franchises),
274
Gravitation, 86
Gray (Thomas), 112
(in Robert Elsmere), 165
Free thought and free think- Grey (Sir Edward), 13, 14
ers," 160, 198
French, 81, 85, 116, 191-241
,, Canadians, 47
Freeman (historian), 80
(Lewis), 183
Frere (Hookham), 44, 244, 247,
251, 258
Froude (historian), 32, 80
Great Britain, 53, 54
Greece, 19, 51, 124
Greeks, 9, 10, 21, 24
Greek (phrases), 20
Green (Thomas Hill), 163, 165
Grote (George), 21, 88, 40, 42,
281
Grotesque, the, 243
Funeral (the funeral speech of Grub Street, 207
Pericles), 88, 41, 52
Galileo, 84
Gallio, 194
Gallipoli, 38
" Gamp, Mrs.," 180, 244
Guerre (Sociale, la), 76
Gunpowder, 77-106
Hmon (in Antigone), 85
Hallam (historian), 80
Hamilton (Sir Ivor), 281
Gardiner, A. G. (journalist), 122, Hansard, 86
248
Gcllius, 214
Gelo, 88
Genesis (the book of), 92
Genoa, 51
Gentleman, 45
George (Mr. Lloyd), 281
Hardie (Keir), 125
Hardy (Gathorne), 179
(Thomas), 129, 169, 256,
257
Harmodius, 285
Hastings (Warren), 241
Harvey, 85, 88
Germany, 40, 58, 54, 185, 186, Hausmann (Baron), 229
187, 140, 248
Ghoorkas, 198
Gibbon, 21, 81, 44, 80, 207, 244,
247, 258, 264
Hawthorne (Nathaniel), 244
Hazlitt, 80
Neat, 85, 86
HecaUcus, 28, 24
294
INDEX
" Hegesistratus," 195
Heine (Heinrich), 234
Helen of Troy, 21
Hellenism, 50, 239
Hellenists (the English), 118,
119
Henley (W.), 80
Henry (Patrick), 251
VIII (King), 199
Herculaneum, 230
Hermac, the, 39, 217
Hermes, 203
Herodotus, 17-28, 32, 33, 34,
36, 38, 39, 47, 54, 78, 135,
166, 182
Hindoos, 268
Hippoclides, 16, 219
Hippodamus (of Miletus), 41, 44
History, 17, 29, 32
Hodson (of Hodson's Horse),
241
Holbein, 182
Holland (Canon Scott), 178
Holmes (Oliver Wendell), 259
Homer, 141, 158, 278, 279
(authorship of), 102,
103
Honesty (as contrasted with
"best policy"), 199, 200,
281, 282, 286, 288
Hood (the poet), 80
Horace (the Roman poet), 129,
173, 205, 220
Hort (Professor), 175
Housman (A. E.), 80
" Howard," 195
Huguenots, 267
Humanitarianism, 42, 52, 54,
72, 96, 106, 108, 249, 251
Humanities, the, 153
Humanists, 159, 163
Humour and Humorists, 242-
51, 257, 258
Huxley (Thomas), 15, 80, 93
Hyndman (P., Socialist), 266
Hypocrisy, 116, 199, 222, 248,
265, 281
Ibsen, 139
Idealism and Idealists, 42, 136,
149, 242, 243, 245, 247, 248,
249, 251, 262, 266
Idola (Baconian), 91, 92
" Illuminati," 40
Imagination, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89,
90, 91, 105, 136, 154, 262
Imitation, 62
Immortality, 144, 146, 215
Imperialism, 50, 51, 52, 137,
138, 283, 284, 286, 287
Impressionism, 70, 75, 263
Incongruity and the Incon-
gruous, 243, 246, 247, 251
India, 122, 124, 125, 193, 285
Indians (Anglo-), 111, 125, 193,
208
Indians (Red), 73, 220
Ingersoll (Robert), 167
Inquisition, the, and the In-
quisitors, 187
Instinct, 196, 198, 200, 279,
281, 283
Intellectuals, the, 135, 140, 200,
201, 248, 249, 250, 254
International questions, 283,
284, 286, 287
lo, 21, 22
Ion (Plato's), 63
Ionian Greeks, 226
Ireland, 76, 108, 249
Irish, the, 10, 78, 79, 133, 191-
241, 287
Irony, 242
Isaiah, 231
Isocrates, 50, 210
Italy, 40, 65, 284
Jaeger flannel, 103
James I (King), 94, 98
(Henry), 110
Jane (Bishop), 178
Japanese, 117, 268
Jedidiah, 195
Jemima, 195
Jeremiah (the Prophet), 186
INDEX
295
Jews, the, 234, 289, 249.
Johnson (Samuel), 19, 80
Job (the Patriarch), 108
(the book of), 92
Journalism and Journalists,
112, 118, 116, 121, 128, 142,
207, 253, 287
Jowett (Benjamin), 59, 159-
90, 222, 253
Judaism, 93
Jude the Obscure, 169
Justice, 279, 281
Juvenal, 203
Kaffirs, 268
Kataphract, 118, 129
Keats, 80, 180, 131
Keble, 80
Kelvin (Lord), 89
Kepler, 84, 87, 208
Keren-happuch, 195
Kezia, 195
King (Bishop), 178
Kingsley (Charles), 80
Kipling, 80, 110-42, 206
Kitchen (Dean), 180
Knight (Payne), 21
Kriiger (President), 258
" Laches " (Plato's), 74, 75, 118
Laconians, 65
Lamb (Charles), 80, 116, 121,
168
Landor (W. S.), 80, 285
"Langham" (in Robert Els-
mere), 174
" Laurier," 195
Leacock (Stephen), 248
Leaf (Walter), 88
League of Nations, 288
Lear (King), 25
Lebaudy, 214
Lecky (W. H.), 79, 218
Leo (of Byzantium), 40
Lever (novelist), 79
Leverrier, 88
Lewis (Sir George C.), 218
Liberalism (academic), 59, 161
Liddon (Canon), 178, 222
Lilly (W. S ), 199
Lincoln (Abraham), 46
Linnaeus, 84
Literature and Literary Men,
61, 118, 119, 252, 253, 254,
255, 256. 259, 263, 264, 265
Amfo?,-. 127
Loeb (Professor), 104, 105
AOI/JO; and A(/io'c, 48
Lover (novelist), 79
Lowell (James Russell), 171, 242,
244, 245, 247, 248, 251, 258
Lucretius, 205
Luther. 258
Lyall (Sir Alfred), 125, 198
Lytton (Bulwer), 80
(Lord), 246
Macan, 78
Macaulay, 77, 80, 206
Macchiavelli, 52, 164
Macdonald (George), 80, 135
Macedon, 58
Madoc (Ontario), 16
M'Andrew's hymn, 117
Magdalen College, 157
Magnesian (farmer, the), 26
Mahaffy, 85, 49, 208, 210, 214,
218
Mahdi, the, 281
Mahrattas, 198
Majuba, 60
Manichee, 254
Manning (Cardinal), 259
Mansel (Dean), 44, 70, 156, 179,
244
Mantinea (first battle of), 281
Marathon, 118
Margaret (of Anjou), 84
Marx (Karl), 51
Martha (sister of Lazarus), 94,
108, 115, 142
Mary (sister of Lazarus), 115,
142, 206
Marzials, 206
296
INDEX
Masefield, 80
Massingham (journalist), 122,
248
Mathematics, 83, 84, 89
Maupassant, de, 255
Maurice (Frederick Denison),
156, 162
Mauvaise honte, 33, 34, 35, 36,
37, 74
Medea, 21
Medes (Laws of the), 198
firjdev ayav, 221
ywetcocrtg, 127
Melbourne (Lord), 140
Meletus (Athenian poet), 141
Melos (Island of), 34, 53, 54
Mende, 54
Mendel, 82
Meredith (George), 65, 80, 110
Methodists, 161, 173, 188
" Micawber," 129, 244
Miletus (capture of by Per-
sians), 71
Mill (John Stuart), 281
Milton (John), 80, 81
Mirabeau (pere), 197
Mitchel (John), 79
Moderation, 56, 58
Monarchy (Constitutional), 283,
284
Monkey-glands, 104
Montesquieu, 206
Montmartre. 235
Montreal, 253
Moore (George), 79
(Thomas), 79
More (Paul Elmer), 126, 138
Morley (John), 80
Morris (Lewis), 80
(William), 80, 118, 127,
205
Morrisburg (Ontario), 18
" Mugwump," 45
Munsterberg (Professor), 150
Murray (Professor Clark), 62
Mussolini, 284
Mytilene (revolt of), 36, 41
" Naerius," 195
Names in history, 55
Napoleon Bonaparte, 237, 238,
262
" Naso," 195
Nativism, 52
Natural History, 84, 88, 92
Negroes, 16, 268
Neptune (the planet), 88
Nettleship (Lewis), 63
Newbolt (Sir Henry), 80
Newman (Cardinal), 12, 71, 80,
136, 155, 161, 162, 165, 255,
256, 259
Niagara Falls (Canada), 10, 11
Nicias, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45,
48, 55, 56, 59
" Nicomachus," 195
Nietzsche, 256
Nile, the, 36, 60
Noah, 108
Novum Organon (Bacon's), 92
Odium theologicum, 194
Olney, 286
Oncken, 151
O'Neill (Moira), 79
Ontario, 9, 47
Oracles, 48
Orators and Oratory, 89, 231,
233
Oriental, 144, 198
Origen, 160, 215
Orleanist (Princes), 214, 266
Orthodoxy, 93
Osier (Sir William), 154
Oxford, 9, 10, 27, 78, 157-90,
271
Paget (Bishop), 178
" Pagett, M.P.," 112, 124
Palmerston (Lord), 258
Pan (the Greek God), 68
Panaetius (the Stoic), 197
Paris (France), 11, 217, 223,
228, 229, 232, 235, 284
Paris (Ontario), 12
INDEX
97
Paris (of Troy), 21
Patent medicines, 108, 286
Pater (Walter), 119, 162, 263
Patmore (Coventry), 256
Paul (Saint), 97, 160, 163, 201
" Pecksniff," 180, 244
Peirseus, 55
Peloponnesian War, 86, 48, 49,
50, 52
Pembroke College, 158
Pericles, 38, 89, 45, 46, 50, 51,
52, 57, 59, 119, 142
Persia, 24, 50, 55, 198
Persian political debates, 28
Persian wars, 19, 21
Persian fleet, 26
Peter (the Great), 203
" Peter and Joan," 245
Phaedra, 65
Phaleas of Chalcedon, 146
Pharisees, 114, 289
Philip of Macedon, 49, 50, 203
Philistines, 114, 254
Philodemus, 830
Phocion, 49
Phocylides, 107
Phoenicians, 21
Phoenix, 27
Phormio, 118, 129
Phrasemakers, 109
Physics, 84, 85, 89, 272
Physiology, 84
Pilate, 68, 194
Plague at Athens, 87, 52
Plato, 89, 45, 46, 50, 51, 61-75,
83, 84, 88, 106, 118, 148-56,
160, 168, 164, 169, 171, 175,
178, 197, 200, 210, 215, 219,
221, 286, 242, 248, 244, 247,
248, 251, 255, 256, 257, 259,
260, 261, 265, 272, 281
Pliny (the Elder), 202
(the Younger), 205, 241
Plutarch, 88, 89, 40, 45, 195,
203, 222
Poets, 17, 25, 112, 226, 278, 279
Poetic Justice, 25
Poetry, 119, 127
" Policy, the best," 281-88
TKttic (the Greek), 51, 288
Polybius, 200, 227
Polycrates, 26
Pope (Alexander), 80, 153
Popular lectures, 9-16
Portia (wife of the younger
Brutus), 223
Positivism and Positivists, 164,
180
Praed, 244, 258
Pragmatism, 189, 280
Press (the Yellow), 105, 287, 285,
286, 287
Price (Professor Bonamy), 259
Prickard, 70, 71, 73
Printing, 77, 106
Proletariate, 272
Propertius, 205
Prosperity, 98
Protective mimicry, 226
Protestantism, 107, 108, 264
Publicity, 112
Puritans and Puritanism, 96,
195, 217, 222, 251, 254, 281
" Purpose " (in Nature), 90
Pusey and Puseyite, 189
Pygmalion, 251
Pylos (in Laconia), 89
" Quality," 120, 266-80
Quantity, 120, 269
Quantitative analysis, 23
Quebec, 108, 188, 288
Radicals, 52, 110, 122, 124, 187,
152, 172, 218, 245, 246
Raglan (Lord), 282
Ranke (historian), 58, 54
Rationalism and Rationalists,
159, 160, 178
Realism and Realists, 149, 245,
262
" Recessional, the," 116
Referendum, 276
298
INDEX
Reform and Reformers, 242,
243, 245, 247, 249, 257, 258
Regulus (in Horace), 129
Re.ligio Medici. 106
Religion, 90, 92, 107, 243, 261,
270, 280, 281
Religiosity, 116
Renaissance, 160, 162
Renan (Ernest), 220, 221
" Repulsions " (of Nature), 90
" Research (original)," 178
Rhodes (Cecil), 241
Richardson (Samuel), 80
Robertson (Frederick William),
155, 162
(John Mackinnon),
281
Robespierre (Maximilien), 213,
262
Roland (Madame), 233
Rollin (historian), 33
Romans (ancient), 9, 13, 16, 65,
117, 145, 191-241, 281
Rome (ancient), 108, 124, 135,
253
Roman Catholicism, 261, 264
Romanticism, 262
Romilly (Samuel), 237
Rousseau (J. J.), 51, 114, 215
Rufus (Rutilius), 241
Ruskin 46, 121
Sadducees, 239
St. Andrews, 15
St. Arnaud (Marshal), 231
Saint Catharine (of Siena), 108
Saint Francis (of Assisi), 107
Saint Michael (Society of), 46
St. Quentin (battle of), 231
Saint Sebastian (martyrdoms
of), 173
Salisbury (Elizabethan Earl of),
94, 95
(Victorian Marquis
of), 286
Samian (a certain), 24
Samson, 93, 180
Saskatchewan, 272
" Satiety," 23
Satire and Satirists, 242-51
" Saturday Reviewers," 44, 244,
247, 258
Scepticism, 42, 44, 159, 173, 179
Schiller, 152
" Science (the Muse of)," 117
Sciolism, 244, 257
Scione, 54
Scipio (Africanus Minor), 194
Scotland, 78, 79, 99
Scott (Sir Walter), 44, 80, 119,
206, 264
Scriptural quotations, 92, 93, 94
" Scrofa," 195
Scylla (the monster), 217
Secularism, 108, 154
Seeley (historian), 80
" Selfishness (enlightened)," 76
Senate (Canadian), 277
Seneca, 197, 199
Sentimentalism, 70, 110, 259
" Service," 260
Shakespeare, 16, 34, 80, 100,
101, 102, 103, 111, 116, 123,
248, 278, 279
Shaw (George Bernard), 110,
140, 248, 249, 250, 251
Sheffield, 117
Shelley, 31, 32, 80, 153, 235
Sherbrooke (Lord), 213
Sheridan, 79
Sicilian expedition, 35, 40, 50
Siena, 108
Simcoe (Lake) (Ontario), 13
" Smartness " (commercial, of
Greeks), 200
Smith (author of the Bacon-
Shakespeare theory), 102
Smith (Goldwin), 31, 60, 80,
101, 102, 104, 156, 176, 177,
181, 251
Smith (Henry), 89, 90
Smollett, 80
Socialists, 47, 96, 266
Socini, 108
INDEX
299
Socrates, 89, 46, 81, 90, 110, Synge, 79
118, 141, 168, 171, 172, 175, Syracuse, 61, 118, 281
200, 220, 222, 224, 248, 278,
274, 275, 278, 281 Tacitus, 47, 205
Solon, 65, 282, 234 Talbot (Bishop), 178
Sophistry and Sophists, 42, 114, Talleyrand, 244
119, 196, 210, 281 Talmage (Dr. de Witt), 218
Sophocles, 166, 281, 232 " Telephus " (in Euripides), 66
Soudanese, 231 Telescope, 82, 83, 88
Soult (Marshal), 231 Temple (Archbishop), 288
Southey, 80 Tennyson, 80, 112, 137, 143,
Soyres (de), 259 206, 230
Spaniards, 322 Tertullian, 215
Sparta, 50, 53, 54, 55, 71, 73, Testament (Old), 93, 102, 139,
195
(New), 93, 102, 139,
262
Thackeray, 80, 180, 206, 228,
264
" Thalamite," 118, 129
Thebes (Egyptian), 19, 24
Theology, 153, 163, 168, 171,
172, 178
" Theramene," 195
223
Spartans, 24, 45, 55, 203, 212,
224, 231
Spencer (Herbert), 80
Spenser (Edmund), 80
44 Square " (in Fielding), 251
Stael, Madame de, 223
Stanley (Dean), 163, 188
Star-light, 86
Stead (journalist), 112, 118
Stevenson (Robert Louis), 64, Thermometers, 85
80, 181, 187 Thiers (President), 284
Sthenelaidas (Spartan), 55 Thomson (James) (Victorian
Stoics, 66, 69, 78, 196, 197, 286,
239, 264
Strabo, 195, 229
Stubbs (Bishop), 81, 80, 208
poet\ 182
(minister at Ayr, On-
tario), 15
Thracians, 85
44 Stubland (Miss Phoebe)," 245, " Thranite," 118, 129
246, 248
Submarines, 105
Suicide, 286, 287
Sultan, 19
Sultana, 19
Suspicion, 217
Sussex, 112, 181, 182, 184, 187
oyoAi}, 216
Swift (Dean), 79, 250
Swinburne, 80, 118, 127, 182,
205
Thucydides, 18, 29-60, 168,
164, 284
Timoleon, 285
Tollemache (Lionel), 176, 177,
235
Tolstoi, 189
Torone (Chalcidice), 54
Toronto, 79, 104, 229
Tory and Toryism, 41, 44, 177,
245, 246
44 Tosh," 88
44 Sydenham (Lady Char- Trinity College (Toronto), 274
lotte)," 245, 246, 247, 248 Trojan War, 88
Syllogisms, 91 Trollope (Anthony), 80, 121,
44 Sylvie," 248 180, 259
300
INDEX
Troy, 21
Tubero (Roman), 194
Tweed (the river), 79
Tyndall (Professor), 80, 93
Tyre, 21
Union (Act of Union with Scot-
land), 98, 109
(Labour), 270
United States, 223, 240, 266,
268, 282, 286
Universities (scoffs at), 103
(young men in), 97
University (of Toronto), 274,
287
Uranus, 88
Utilitarianism, 281
Varro, 202
Vaughan (the Silurist), 80
Venezuela, 286
Venice, 51, 82
Venizelos, 283, 284
Verlaine, 114, 255, 256
Verres, 241
Verulam, 107
Vienna, 233
Vieux Cordelier, 262
Virgil, 143, 205, 206, 230
Virtuosos (Roman), 227
Vivisection, 249
Voltaire, 23, 209, 215, 232, 234,
235
" Vulgar," 111, 119, 120, 142
Wadham College, 180, 181
Wales, 80
Warren (Mrs. Warren's Profes-
sion), 251
Warsaw, 233
Watson (William), 80
Water-babies, 12
Webb (Sydney and Mrs. Webb),
248
Wellington (Duke of), 206, 264
Wells (H. G.}, 80, 129, 245, 247
Wesley (John), 80
West, the, 50
Westbury (Lord), 200
Western mind, 21
Whitman (Walt), 138
Whitmania, 65
Whittier, 141
Widowers' Houses, 250
Wilberforce (Bishop Samuel),
179, 180
William I (German Kaiser), 284
Wireless telegraphy, 77
Wit, 242, 243, 244, 245, 254
Wolff (German higher critic),
102
Wolseley (Sir Garnet), 231
Women's rights, 149, 242
Worcester College, 158, 181
Wordsworth (William), 80, 143,
220, 230, 262
Wycherley, 177
Xenophon, 25, 90
Xerxes, 24
Yeats (Arthur Butler), 79
Zeno (Greek philosopher), 259
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