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 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
 
 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 II: . ^ 
 
 ESSAYS Ato ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY STDGWICK 
 
 
 
 3Lontiou 
 M ACM ILL AN AXD CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1904 
 
 All rights reso-vea
 
 PREFATORY NOTE' 
 
 Henry Sidgwick had long intended to collect together 
 essays and addresses written by him at different times ; 
 and some essays on ethical subjects he had published 
 under the title of Practical Ethics in the " Ethical Library " 
 series (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.) in 1898. The 
 volume now published contains miscellaneous essays on 
 other subjects. Several of them were specified by the 
 author during the last few weeks of his life as suitable for 
 such a collection, though with some hesitation in one or 
 two cases. After due consideration, all the papers that he 
 named have been included ; and we have added a few 
 others, which seemed likely to be of interest to the 
 general reader. We have not included any of the papers 
 published in Mind ; some of them will appear more appro- 
 priately along with some hitherto unpublished philosophical 
 lectures in a volume which is being edited by Professor 
 James Ward. 
 
 It will be seen that the papers fall mostly into three 
 divisions, according as they deal with literature, economics 
 and sociology, or education ; and it seemed best to arrange 
 them, within the limits of each division, in chronological 
 order. The only exceptions are the essay on Bentham 
 and Benthamism, which we have placed between the 
 
 v
 
 vi ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 literary and economic groups, and the essay on Alexis de 
 Tocqueville, M-hich has been printed at the end of the 
 volume as a supplement. This paper was written when 
 the author was twenty-three, and, not being among those 
 specitied by him, could hardly find a place among the 
 maturer essays which compose the rest of the book ; but it 
 seemed of sufdcient interest not to be omitted altogether. 
 
 With the exception of the two papers on Shakespeare, 
 all those in the volume have been published before — most 
 of them in Eeviews and Magazines, The Scope and Method of 
 Economic Science and The Pursuit of Culture as an Ideal 
 separately, and The Theory of a Classical Education in a 
 volume of essays. Thanks are due to Publishers and 
 Editors for their kind consent to republication. 
 
 ELEANOE MILDEED SIDGWICK. 
 AETHUE SIDGWICK.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PA'IF 
 
 1. EccE Hojio {IVestminster lieview, July 1866) . . 1 
 
 2. The Prophet op Culture {Macmillan'.i Magazine, August 
 
 1867) . . . . . " . .40 
 
 3. The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh 
 
 Clough {Westminster Review, October 1869) . . 59 
 
 4. Shakespeare's Methods, with SPECiAii reference to 
 
 Julius C^sar and Coriolanus . . .91 
 
 5. Shakespeare and the Romantic Drama, with special 
 
 REFERENCE TO MaCBETJ{ . . . .120 
 
 6. Bentham and Benthamism in Politics and Ethics 
 
 (Fortnightly Revieio, May 1877) . . .135 
 
 7. The Scope and Method of Economic Science. An 
 
 Address given as President of the Economic Science and 
 Statistics Section of the British Association in 1885 . 170 
 
 8. Economic Socialism (C^on^emjJorari/iJei-ieii;, November 1886) 200 
 
 9. Political Prophecy and Sociology {Natvmal Review, 
 
 December 1894) . . . . .216 
 
 10. The Economic Lessons of Socialism {Economic Journal, 
 
 September 1895) ..... 235 
 
 11. The Relation of Ethics to Sociology {International 
 
 Joimial of Ethics, Octoher 1899) . . .249 
 
 12. The Theory of Classical Education. (From Essays on 
 
 a Liberal Education, edited by F. W. Farrar. Mac- 
 millan and Co., 1867) . .' . . . 270 
 
 13. Idle Fellowships {Contemporary Review, April 1876) . 320 
 
 14. A Lecture against Lecturing {New Review, May 1890) . 340 
 
 15. The Pursuit of Culture as an Ideal. A Lecture 
 
 delivered to the students of the University College of 
 Wales, Aberystwith, in October 1897 . . . 352 
 
 SUPPLEMENT 
 
 Alexis de Tocqueville {Macmillan's Magazine, November 1861) 361 
 
 vii
 
 EREATA 
 
 Page 64, line 11 from foot, for " hut the term was somewhat indefinite 
 read "but the term is somewhat indefinite." 
 
 For footnote to page 168, end of first paragraph, see page 374.
 
 ECCE HOMO^ 
 
 ( Westmirister Review, July 1866) 
 
 Few persons who have read through Ecce Homo will be pre- 
 pared to deny, whatever faults they may find with its methods 
 and conclusions, that it possesses very remarkable positive 
 merits. As the present article will unavoidably be made 
 up chiefly of censure and criticism, we wish at the outset 
 to give most warm and sincere praise to the originality of 
 the conception, the vigour of its execution, the sympathetic 
 intensity with which the writer has grasped the chief points 
 in the character and work of Jesus, the flowing and fervid 
 eloquence with which he has impressed them on his readers. 
 His conceptions are, of course, partly old, partly new ; 
 whatever we may think of the latter element, we willingly 
 admit that he has made us feel the old as if it were new. 
 It requires genius to produce this effect : and genius of a 
 certain kind our author possesses. His book will probably 
 have a most beneficial operation, especially among the 
 persons whose impression will be that the author has 
 preached them a series of good sermons, and meanwhile 
 contrived somehow to set Christianity upon a basis im- 
 pregnable to the assaults of modern criticism and science. 
 
 ^ Ecce Homo : a Sin-vei/ of the Life and Works of Jesus Christ. 8vo. 4th 
 edition. London : Macniillan. 1866. 
 
 [This book, now known to he by J. R. Seeley, was published anonymously, as 
 was this article on it ; but Sidgwiek and Seeley were friends, and by the time the 
 review was published each was aware of what the other had written, and they 
 had already been in correspondence about the book. — Ed.] 
 
 I B
 
 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 At the same time the author might fairly complain if we 
 treated his book as belonging to the class which, as a literary 
 cynic has said, tend to edification rather than instruction. 
 It claims to be much more : it is clearly the result of a 
 good deal of general reading and reflection ; and eminent and 
 cultivated persons have spoken of it as if it were likely to 
 have a permanent influence on the thought of students. As 
 we have a strong conviction that it is not calculated to pro- 
 duce this effect, it seems desirable that we should support this 
 conviction by a close examination of its principal features. 
 
 The first thing that will surprise a student who has 
 taken up the book is the total absence of any introductory 
 discussion of the evidence on which the historical portion 
 of the book is intended to be based. Considering that we 
 derive our knowledge of the facts from a limited number of 
 documents, handed down to us from an obscure period, and 
 containing matter which in any other history we should 
 regard as legendary : considering that in consequence these 
 documents have been subjected for many years to an 
 elaborate, minute, and searching investigation : that hun- 
 dreds of scholars have spent their lives in canvassing such 
 questions as the date of their composition, their authorship, 
 the conscious objects or unconscious tendency of each author, 
 his means of information, and his fidelity to fact, the prob- 
 ability of their being compiled or translated from previous 
 works in whole or part, or of their having undergone 
 revisions since the original publication, the contradictions 
 elicited by careful examination of each or close comparison 
 of them together, the methods of reconciling these contra- 
 dictions or deciding between conflicting evidence, and many 
 other similar points, — it might seem natural that the author 
 of such a work as this should carefully explain to his readers 
 his plan and principles for settling or avoiding these im- 
 portant preliminary questions. But by a bizarre arrange- 
 ment of his matter, the author defers all discussion of this 
 subject till he has reached his fifth chapter, entitled " Christ's 
 Credentials." In this chapter he gives us, still fragmentarily 
 and incidentally, his notions of historical criticism ; and as
 
 ECCE HOMO 
 
 we get nothing further from liim on this important topic, 
 it is desirable to examine the chapter somewluit closely. 
 
 He begins by saying, that, in his previous chapters, he 
 "has not entered into controvertible matter": the in- 
 accuracy of this statement, even as tested by his own 
 definition of " controvertible matter," we pass by for the 
 present, being eager to come to that definition. " We have 
 not," he continues, " rested upon single passages, nor drawn 
 upon the fourth gospel." Uncontrovertible matter, there- 
 fore, seems to be whatever the synoptic gospels have in 
 common. If this were all that had been evolved, after the 
 trouble spent in examining the relation between the three 
 first gospels, it would be a somewhat meagre and jejune 
 result ; but let that pass. It is clear that, whatever else 
 the synoptic gospels have in common, they all contain a 
 number of miraculous stories. We hasten, therefore, to see 
 what he will say of miracles ; and what he does say of 
 them is so extraordinary, that, for fear of misrepresenting 
 him, we must quote the whole passage, referring at the 
 same time to page 10, where similar views are indicated. 
 
 It will be thought by some that in asserting miracles to 
 have been actually wrought by Christ we go beyond what the 
 evidence, perhaps beyond what any possible evidence, is able to 
 sustain. Waiving then for the present the question whether 
 miracles were actually Avrought, wo may state a fact which is 
 fully capable of being established by ordinary evidence, and 
 which is actually established by evidence as ample as any 
 historical fact whatevei- — the fact, namely, that Christ professed 
 to work miracles. We may go further, and assert with con- 
 fidence that Christ was Ijelieved by his followers really to Avork 
 miracles, and that it was mainly on this account that they con- 
 ceded to him the pre-eminent dignit}^ and authority which he 
 claimed. The accounts we have of these miracles may 1)6 
 exaggerated ; it is possible that in some special cases stoincs 
 have been related which have no foundation whatever ; but, on 
 the whole, miracles play so important a part in Christ's scheme 
 that any theory which would represent them as due entirely to 
 the imagination of his followers or of a later age destroys the 
 credibility of the documents not partially but wholly, and leaves 
 Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules. Now the present
 
 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 treatise aims to show that the Christ of the Gospels is not 
 mythical, by showing that the character those biographies 
 portray is in all its large features strikingly consistent, and at 
 the same time so peculiar as to be altogether beyond the reach 
 of invention both by individual genius and still more by what 
 is called the ' consciousness of an age.' Now if the character 
 depicted in the Gospels is in the main real and historical, they 
 must be generally trustworthy, and, if so, the responsibility 
 of miracles is fixed on Christ. In this case the reality of the 
 miracles themselves depends in a great degree on the opinion 
 we form of Christ's veracity, and this opinion must arise gradually 
 from the careful examination of his whole life. For our present 
 purpose, Avhich is to investigate the plan which Christ formed 
 and the way in which he executed it, it matters nothing whether 
 the miracles were real or imaginary ; in either case, being be- 
 lieved to be real, they had the same effect. Provisionally, 
 therefore, we may speak of them as real. 
 
 Now every line of this seems to us to show ignorance 
 or misapprehension of the question at issue, as at present 
 understood by the most intelligent advocates on either side 
 of the controversy. He states the dilemma as it was stated 
 in the eighteenth century, but as we never expected to see 
 it stated again, except in the official rhetoric of the less 
 educated clergy, " Christ professed to work miracles ; 
 therefore, either he did work them, and was possessed of 
 supernatural power, or he did not work them and was 
 unveracious." Now German criticism for many years past 
 has always started with the negation of both alternatives, 
 and with the two assumptions which our author declares 
 to be irreconcilable. The stvident who treats the gospel 
 narratives historically — in using the word, we intend no 
 jjetitio principii, but simply to express in a word, '' accord- 
 ing to the method applied everywhere else in history " — 
 does not regard the reality of miracles as a question of 
 more or less evidence, to be decided by presumptions with 
 regard to the veracity of witnesses. If by miracle is meant 
 a violation, or — if the word be invidious — transcendence 
 of the laws of nature, or — if the phrase be ambiguous — 
 the uniformities of our physical experience, he rejects the
 
 ECCE HOMO 
 
 notion absolutely. If he admits one miracle, he is no 
 longer competent, as liistorian, to say how many more he 
 will admit, and whether any are to be repudiated ; the 
 theologian has to decide from principles peculiar to himself 
 how much fictitious matter an inspired writer may be 
 allowed to insert, and how much interference is consistent 
 with the Divine wisdom. On the other hand, it is regarded 
 as equally certain — though the certainty is of a different 
 kiud — tliat Jesus was not a wilful deceiver.^ The whole 
 constructive work of the critical school is based on the 
 attempt to show that what our author assumes to be 
 impossible may be done, that we can distinguish between 
 history and legend in the biography of Jesus, without 
 supposing him to have " professed to work miracles," unless 
 we call phenomena not contrary to the analogy of experience 
 by that name. Such are the cures of the so-called demoniacs 
 and of persons afflicted with certain other diseases — those, 
 namely, in which the influence of the nervous system may 
 be believed to be occasionally very great. No one thinks 
 of denying that, as far as these go, Jesus did and was 
 believed to do what appeared to him and to others " mighty 
 works." But it is a very different tiling to assume that he 
 was believed by himself and others to possess " boundless 
 supernatural power." This theory and all that the author 
 has based upon it "' must be regarded as decidedly contro- 
 vertible matter. To speak of miracles " provisionally as 
 real " is the one thing that no one will do. The question 
 of their reality stands at the threshold of the subject, and 
 can by no device be conjured away. 
 
 We see then that the critical school will hardly admit 
 that all that the synoptic gospels have in common may be 
 relied upon as certain. It will be fairly urged that the 
 rejection of miracles proper — as we may call what is in- 
 explicable in accordance with the known laws of experience 
 
 ^ The partial acquiescence in deception, attributeil to him by M. Renau, has 
 found, we believe, no more favour in Germany than in England. 
 
 "^ Among other statements we are told that tlie Pharisees conceived Jesus to 
 be capable of boundless mischief. Tlie truth is, they conceived him to be a 
 s\iccessful exorcist : no unique phenomenon, as is proved by Matt. xii. 24-27, to 
 which our author refers. Cf. also Acts xix. 13-16.
 
 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 — involves such destructive effects, that we require certain 
 methods of reconstruction before we can deal with the 
 documents at all. The phenomena the student has now 
 before him are not miracles but the records of miracles, 
 legends, myths, semi-legends, semi-myths, or whatever else 
 he may call them. He has to account for them ; and 
 whether he treats them ration alls tically, or semi-rationalisti- 
 cally, or on the principle of Mythus, or on the principle of 
 " Tendenz," or by some process intermediary between, or 
 compounded of these, whatever method he uses will 
 necessarily affect his view of the rest of the gospel narra- 
 tives. He must treat these latter as a whole : he cannot 
 explain the composition of a part of them without, at the 
 same time, determining the degree of authenticity possessed 
 by the rest. It is very possible that he may come to the 
 conclusion that certain other statements " common to the 
 synoptic gospels" are not to be relied on. Thus, again, 
 the question of miracles stands at the threshold of the 
 subject in a way that seems never to have occurred to our 
 author. It is possible that he may have good reasons for 
 relying on the particular portions of the narrative which he 
 has quoted and referred to ; but if he writes for persons who 
 " provisionally " reject miracles — and he seems to do so — 
 he is bound to give these reasons. This self-confident con- 
 struction, this arbitrary settlement, without vouchsafing an 
 argument, of questions that have been long and elaborately 
 discussed, would have been put forth in Germany by no 
 man of equal ability with our author, not even by Ewald. 
 The first chapter will afford an excellent illustration of 
 what we have been saying. In it we have an account of 
 the relation between Jesus and John the Baptist, in which 
 the author clearly thinks that he has exercised a sober 
 criticism of his authorities, and that his results are scarcely 
 " controvertible." Indeed, he afterwards goes so far as 
 to suggest an explanation of the marvels recorded as 
 following the baptism, which is conceived after the crass 
 rationalism of the school of Paulus. The account is as 
 follows : —
 
 ECCE HOMO 
 
 The Baptist addressed all Avho came to him in the same stern 
 tone of authority. Young and old gathered round him, and 
 among them must have been many whom he had known in 
 earlier life, and some to whom he had been taught to look up 
 with humility and respect. Uut in his capacity of prophet he 
 made no distinction. All alike he exhorted to repentance ; all 
 alike he found courage to baptize. In a single case, however, 
 his confidence failed him. There appeared among the candi- 
 dates a young man of nearly his own age, who was related to 
 his family. We must suppose that he had had personal inter- 
 course with Christ before ; for though one of our authorities 
 represents John as saying that he knew him not except by the 
 supernatural sign that pointed him out at his baptism, yet we 
 must interpret this as meaning only that he did not before 
 know him for his successor. For it appears that before the 
 appearance of the sign John had addressed Christ with ex- 
 pressions of reverence, and had declared himself unfit to baptize 
 him. After this meeting we are told that on several occasions 
 he pointed out Christ as the hope of the nation, as destined to 
 develop the work he himself had begun into something far more ' 
 memoral^le, and as so greatly superior to himself, that, to repeat 
 his emphatic words, he was not worthy to untie his shoe. 
 
 He proceeds to say that John described the " character " of 
 Jesus by calling him the Lamb of God. This last statement, 
 as it rests on an unusual interpretation of a passage in the 
 fourth gospel, even our author can hardly regard as more 
 than a plausible conjecture. As regards the passage we 
 have quoted, the relationship between Jesus and John rests 
 on the authority of the third gospel only ; John's declaration 
 of his unfitness, etc., rests on the authority of the first gospel 
 only — the several occasions are to be inferred from none of 
 the synoptics ; the " emphatic words," though no doubt 
 applied by the early Christians to Jesus, do not appear 
 to have been said of him personally, but rather of the 
 unknown Messiah, whose forerunner John conceived him- 
 self to be. All that we learn from the synoptics of the 
 subsequent relations of Jesus and John implies anything 
 rather than a recognition of the former by the latter as 
 Messiah. 
 
 This is a sample of the author's carelessness even in
 
 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 applying his own principles. At the same time he entirely 
 ignores the view held, not merely by Strauss and the mythi- 
 cists, but by scholars who differ as widely from this school as 
 Schenkel does, viz. that Jesus was never recognised by 
 John as Messiah. The arguments that support these views 
 are these. The supernatural circumstances recorded as 
 attending the baptism show that fact has here been at least 
 to some extent modified by legend. What is afterwards 
 told us of John, that he continued at the head of a school 
 distinct from that of Jesus, and in certain points strikingly 
 opposed to it, that towards the end of his life, as though 
 struck for the first time with the possibility of Jesus being 
 the expected Messiah, he sent to inquire into his claims, 
 that he was not convinced of their validity (for if he had 
 been we should have heard of it, nor would Jesus have 
 spoken of him as less than the least in the kingdom of 
 heaven), — all seems irreconcilable with the protestations 
 and revelations at the baptism, even when the supernatural 
 element in these has been carefully extracted. Again, 
 tradition had a peculiar incentive to colour the facts of this 
 baptism. It was difficult to explain why Jesus should have 
 undergone this baptism of repentance at all, in accordance 
 with the traditional view of his person and attributes. 
 Therefore, it is urged, in a later development of the tradi- 
 tion, which has found its way into one only of the synoptic 
 gospels, John is represented as feeling and expressing the 
 difficulty, and Jesus as removing it.-^ In the fourth gospel 
 the difficulty seems no longer felt, while the development of 
 tradition has gone much further. This theory is naturally 
 ignored by the orthodox, but it ought to have been at least 
 noticed by a writer who treats his authorities with the 
 freedom of our author. 
 
 In the next chapter, on the Temptation, we find the 
 following critical principle enunciated : — 
 
 ^ If this suspicion is once admitted, the reply of Jesus will be seen to contain 
 a very inadequate answer to the diflBculty. The baptism had a particular 
 symbolic meaning ; it implied past sin. present repentance, and preparation for 
 the expecte<l Messiah : it could hardly come under the head of duties incumbent 
 upon the Messiah as well as all other men [iracav diKaioavv-qv).
 
 ECCE HOMO 
 
 The account of the temptation, from whatever source derived, 
 has a very striking internal consistency, a certain inimitable 
 probability of improbal>ility, if the expression may be allowed. 
 That popular imagination which gives Ijirth to rumours and then 
 believes them, is not generally capable of great or sublime or 
 well-sustained efforts. 
 
 Wunderthutige Bilder sind mei.st nur schleclile Gemalde. 
 
 The popular imagination is fertile and tenacious, but not very 
 powerful or profound. Christ in the wilderness was a subject 
 upon wliicli the imagination would very readily work, but at the 
 same time far too great a sul)ject for it to Avork upon success- 
 fully ; we should expect strange stories to be told of his adven- 
 tures in such a solitude, but we should also expect the stories to 
 be very childish. 
 
 It is curious that the writer should not see that if tliis 
 principle can determine anything, it can decide everything. 
 The miraculous stories of the New Testament, with hardly 
 an exception, and the majority of the miraculous stories of 
 the Old Testament, whatever else they are, are certainly not 
 " childish." What, for instance, can be more " sublime and 
 well-sustained " than that most incredible of Hebrew 
 legends — the account of the ascent of Elijah ? What 
 imagination could be more " powerful and profound " than 
 that which produced the story of the transfiguration ? The 
 tales of the apocryphal gospels are for the most part childish, 
 and this has been fairly urged on the orthodox side as an 
 argument for plenary inspiration. But if we reject this 
 subjective and sesthetic criterion as decisive of the whole 
 question, we cannot trust it in any particular case, nor 
 profess to tell legend from fact by mere literary discrimi- 
 nation. We pass by, then, our author's theory of the 
 Temptation as one among many plausible conjectures, with 
 this objectionable peculiarity, that it is based on the sup- 
 posed consciousness by Jesus of (apparently unbounded) 
 supernatural powers. If this consciousness be supposed 
 veracious, it must be left to the theologian to realise and 
 explain ; if a delusion, it is one which the historian will 
 find uo sufficient ground for attributing to Jesus.
 
 10 £SSAVS AND ADDRESSES I 
 
 The rest of the first part of the book is taken up with 
 an account of the external side of Jesus' work : the position 
 he took up, as distinguished from tlie doctrine he preached. 
 We find throughout the same apparent ignorance of the 
 views of the most eminent critics, the same careless or 
 arbitrary application of the writer's own principles. Along 
 with these we find much clear and vivid insight into human 
 nature and the larger facts of classical and Hebrew history — 
 much artistic grouping and felicitous expression of familiar 
 truths, and some that are less familiar. But as a historical 
 essay we must rank the result very low, as it contains none 
 of the distinctions and limitations, none of the nuances of 
 colouring, so important to a historical picture, which long- 
 continued, free, and careful study of the gospels has gradually 
 brought out. His fundamental notion is that Christ repre- 
 sented himself as king ; that he " laid claim to the royal 
 title ;" that he " calls himself habitually king ;" and that in 
 this capacity he proceeded to form a society, pronounce 
 judgments, issue laws. He never even alludes to the fact, 
 which strikes the least intelligent reader of the gospels, that 
 Jesus, while he continually proclaimed " the kingdom of 
 Heaven," never once applied to himself the title of king. 
 Even the view of traditional orthodoxy is more faithful to 
 the facts, in this respect, than our author's. Every popular 
 preacher tells us that Jesus, from his humility, chose for 
 himself the title of " Son of Man." It has been the subject 
 of much controversy, and must be regarded as still un- 
 decided, what associations precisely w^ould be called up by 
 this phrase in the minds of the contemporaries of Jesus — 
 whether those which it would derive from Ezekiel and 
 other passages of the Old Testament, or those which the 
 authors of Daniel and the Book of Enoch attach to it. But 
 that it would not be generally understood as equivalent to 
 Messiah seems clear, among many passages, from Matt. xvi. 
 13-17. Here Jesus asks, "Whom do men say that I, the 
 Son of Man, am?" and regards as a divine revelation 
 Peter's reply, " Thou art the Christ." To one who takes 
 the synoptic gospels by themselves, nothing can seem plainer
 
 ECCE HOMO II 
 
 than that Jesus did not declare himself to his disciples as 
 Messiah, at any rate till some time after his appearance as a 
 preacher, and that he took pains to prevent a belief in his 
 Messiahship from spreading among the people. He is repre- 
 sented as rebuking the demons who did homage to him. 
 From some passages we should infer that he tried to con- 
 ceal his healing powers, and imposed, with this object, strict 
 silence upon those whom he cured. ^ In proclaiming, there- 
 fore, the kingdom of God, he would seem by no means to 
 proclaim himself as king ; but simply to take up and echo, 
 in a different strain, the teaching of John. All the passages 
 to which our author refers, in support of the opposite theory, 
 he colours more or less wrongly. Jesus claims " power on 
 earth to forgive sins ;" but he does so expressly as " Son of 
 Man." Now " Son of Man " can only be made to mean 
 " king " indirectly, as meaning Messiah, and this meaning, as 
 we have seen, did not clearly attach to the phrase. Again, 
 our author tells us that Jesus was asked whether tribute- 
 money ought to be paid, as a " way of sifting his monarchical 
 claims." The more usual — and surely more probable — 
 explanation is that the question was put to him not as king 
 but as liabbi. It was selected by his adversaries to bring 
 him into a disagreeable dilemma, from the known difficulty 
 of reconciling religious duty (as it was conceived) with 
 political expediency. Again, " Christ continued to speak 
 of himself as king with such consistency and clearness that 
 those who were nearest his person . . . quarrelled for places 
 and dignities under him." It would be truer to say that he 
 gradually led — without any distinct claim on his own part — 
 his disciples to regard him as Messiah, which in their minds 
 meant — inter alia — king. If he had ever spoken of himself 
 as Messiah or king the chroniclers would certainly have told 
 us. No doubt at the close of his career, on his last entry 
 into Jerusalem, " he pointedly refused " to silence " those who 
 hailed him as Son of David." But it seems hasty to infer 
 from this that " he clung firmly to the title of king, and 
 attached great importance to it." Our author states that 
 
 ^ Sometimes with singiilar vehemence. Cf. Mark i. 43, efM^pifj-rjadfievoi.
 
 12 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES i 
 
 " the Jews procured his execution because . . . they could 
 not forgive him for claiming royalty and at the same time 
 rejecting the use of physical force . . . They did not object 
 to the king, they did not object to the philosopher ; but they 
 objected to the king in the garb of a philosopher." Here 
 the writer is partly indulging a vigorous imagination, partly 
 relying on the fourth gospel alone. According to the 
 synoptics, it was not " the Jews " generally who procured 
 his execution, but their religious leaders ; ^ and they did so 
 not primarily because he was king or philosopher, but 
 because he was a religious innovator, who threatened to pull 
 down the temple. No doubt the mob deserted and mocked 
 their fallen favourite ; but this desertion was not the cause, 
 but the effect, of his apparent fall. If he could not save 
 himself, and come down from the cross, he was no king for 
 them. It is certainly possible to hold very various opinions 
 with respect to the gradual progress or unveiling of the 
 claims of Jesus, from his first announcement of the kingdom 
 of heaven to the crv Xeyet? with which he replies to Pilate — 
 a phrase which, though not proclamatory, is not evasive. 
 There is no doubt that he ultimately claimed, and was 
 understood to claim, to be Messiah ; but when, how far, 
 how clearly, did he make the claim ? The question has 
 many difficulties, and every one who forms a definite theory 
 must depend much on conjecture. But as our author does 
 not even recognise that there is this gradual progress or un- 
 veiling, it would take us too far from his book to discuss the 
 question any further. 
 
 It follows that we cannot attach much value to his 
 remarks on what he calls " Christ's Eoyalty." So long as 
 Jesus was not looked upon as king, but simply as holding 
 the keys of the kingdom of heaven, he would be to his 
 disciples more what John was, — a teacher laying down 
 precepts, rather than a king issuing ordinances. The people 
 would regard him as a leader of a school or sect, differing 
 from the Pharisees, Sadducees, or Essenes, as each of these 
 
 ^ Their mortal hostility is represented as being of ancient date. Cf. 
 Mark iii. 6.
 
 ECCE HOMO 13 
 
 sects differed from the other ; but like them all, basing itself 
 on the law of Moses, and superadding its peculiar tenets. 
 It is true that his hearers contrasted his bold free handling 
 of morality with the anxious servility of the learned com- 
 mentators. But it does not therefore follow that they 
 regarded liim as a rival of Moses or representative of 
 Jehovah. Here again, in endeavouring to form an exact 
 idea of the relations of the teaching of Jesus to the written 
 or even to the oral law, we come upon difficulties to whicli 
 our author scarcely alludes, and which he does not in the 
 least help us to solve. These relations appear either pro- 
 gressive or inconsistent, as far as the indications in the 
 synoptic gospels can be trusted. At one time Jesus avers 
 that he is not come to destroy the law, that one jot or tittle 
 shall in no wise pass from it, that no one shall break one 
 of these least commandments without heavy penalties ; at 
 another time he compares the existing institutions, apparently, 
 to old wine-skins and old raiment, and asserts that " the 
 Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." And in his remarks 
 on what " was said by them of old time," though he for the 
 most part supplements the Mosaic law, he also distinctly 
 condemns maxims that are to be found in it (so Matt. v. 
 38, 43, and reff.). Again, he tells his disciples to observe 
 and do whatsoever the Scribes and Pharisees bid them 
 observe, even, it would seem, to tithing mint and anise and 
 cummin, for they, the Scribes and Pharisees (not Jesus him- 
 self, observe), sit in Moses' seat. Elsewhere he says that 
 they make the word of God of none effect by their tradi- 
 tions, and attacks particular traditions with indignant 
 vehemence : he also says that they bind upon men burdens 
 grievous to be borne. These apparent contradictions are 
 variously explained : sometimes by subtle interpretations of 
 particular passages, sometimes by referring conflicting pre- 
 cepts to different periods of Jesus' career, sometimes by 
 assuming that one or other of our present gospels has been 
 the work of at least two hands (for instance, the combina- 
 tion of a " universalist " and a " particularist " in Matthew's 
 gospel is a theory held by some Germans). We do not
 
 14 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES i 
 
 object to our author that he disagrees with any or all of the 
 existing views on the subject, but that he does not seem 
 aware that it is necessary for him to have a view at all. 
 So of the limits to which Christ confined his preaching : at 
 one time he sends his disciples to the lost sheep of the house 
 of Israel, and forbids them to go among the Samaritans ; he 
 can hardly be brought to heal a Syrophcenician, and com- 
 pares the race to dogs ; elsewhere he indicates in parables, 
 and once expressly declares, that the kingdom will be taken 
 from the Jews and given to another nation. These contrasts 
 admit of a similar variety of explanation: the author of 
 Ecce Homo does not notice them. The consequence of all 
 this is that the many good things he has to say about 
 Christ's legislation are useless to the accurate reader in their 
 present form, because the framework in which they are 
 placed is so carelessly and clumsily constructed out of un- 
 supported assumptions. When we find, for example, a 
 writer stating that Jesus regarded baptism as an indispens- 
 able rite of initiation into his kingdom, supporting his state- 
 ments on an external and political interpretation of the 
 interview with Xicodemus, quite alien to the spiritualism of 
 the fourth gospel, and getting over the awkward fact that 
 Jesus is never represented in the synoptic gospels as baptiz- 
 ing, by means of the assumption that he regards John's 
 baptism as sufficient, — we have an uneasy feeling that even 
 what we admire in him may prove unsound when closely 
 tested. We are obliged to take to pieces his vigorous 
 rhetoric and rearrange it for ourselves, which is a great 
 drawback to the thorough enjoyment of it. 
 
 The author says, in his preface, that he has reconsidered 
 the whole subject from the beginning, traced the biography 
 of Jesus from point to point, and accepted " those con- 
 clusions about him . . . which the facts themselves, critically 
 weighed, appear to warrant." We willingly believe him 
 quite sincere in this assertion, but we could not select more 
 appropriate words to describe what, in our opinion, he has 
 omitted to do. At least we find it hard to understand how 
 a man who has gone through tliis process should then write
 
 ECCE HOMO 15 
 
 — " no important change took place in Christ's mode of 
 thinking, speaking, or acting ; at least the evidence before 
 us does not enable us to trace any such change," without 
 supporting this opinion by arguments. There is no more 
 fruitful source of error in history than the determination to 
 find the tree in the seed, and to attribute to the originators 
 of important social changes detailed foresight as to the shape 
 those changes were to assume. To this vulgar prejudice 
 our author seems to have yielded without the least attempt 
 at resistance or self-justification. Because Christianity was 
 ultimately preached as a universal religion, he assumes that 
 Jesus must have intended from the first to found a world- 
 wide society, and totally ignores, as we have seen, the 
 scattered indications of a more limited conception to be 
 found in the gospels, and the fact that even after his death 
 his disciples preached for some time only to Jews and pro- 
 selytes. Because the effort to impose upon all members of 
 the Christian Society, become universal, the obligations of 
 the Mosaic law was abandoned after a struggle (which many 
 critical historians consider to have been long and bitter) : 
 because, as the expectation of Christ's speedy advent grew 
 faint, and his expectant Church began to organise itself for 
 long life without a Head, the moral teaching of Jesus 
 assumed more and more to his followers the character of a 
 code of laws — it is inferred that he deliberately proposed to 
 himself to supersede the Mosaic law by a new one pro- 
 mulgated on his own authority, no explanation being even 
 suggested of the passages in which he expressly asserts the 
 contrary. Because Jesus was perpetually and cousistently 
 exalted after his death by his followers, we are told that 
 he perpetually and consistently exalts himself: because 
 Christians felt that their intensest religious ardours, and 
 their most powerful moral impulses, sprang from and were 
 bound up in their personal devotion to their Master, our 
 author tells us that " Christ claims to be a perpetual attrac- 
 tive power ... to humanity struggling with its passions 
 and its destiny he says, Cling to me, cling ever closer to 
 me," and represents Jesus as intending this passion for himself
 
 1 6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES i 
 
 to be the root and first principle of all morality in the 
 Church. It is true that he might justify himself abundantly 
 from the fourth gospel for this colouring. But here as 
 elsewhere he quotes the language of the fourth gospel, and 
 then adds that the expressions of the synoptics " give sub- 
 stantially the same meaning." This makes it difficult for 
 us to believe that his acquaintance with the critical school 
 can be very profound ; for he seems to know that certain 
 persons reject the fourth gospel, and yet not to know that 
 the marked difference between it and the synoptics, with 
 respect to this " self-exaltation," is one of the reasons which 
 induces them to do so. We do not mean here, or generally, 
 that our author's view is entirely wrong, but that it is 
 wrongly coloured. If he would rewrite the passages in 
 which it is expressed in conformity with the conclusions of 
 criticism, he might still use a good deal of his present 
 eloquence. No doubt the Jesus of the synoptics shows a 
 remarkable contrast of humility of temper with conscious- 
 ness of pre-eminence; but the precise combination of 
 humility and self-exaltation which our author paints can 
 only be obtained by forcibly mixing the colours of the fourth 
 gospel with those of the three first. In the synoptics Jesus 
 for some time consistently abstains from exalting himself; 
 he occasionally refers to his example as a means of influenc- 
 ing his followers, but not more markedly than another 
 revered teacher might do ; and though, where he speaks 
 openly of his Messiahship, he assumes obedience and rever- 
 ence to be due to him, and regards then'efusal to pay them 
 as a grievous sin, yet he does not make this duty towards 
 himself prominent in his inculcation of moral precepts. 
 The author refers to the institution of the Lord's Supper to 
 support his view ; but it fails to do so until interpreted in 
 the fourth gospel, and here we have another instance of his 
 singular style of criticism. He speaks of St. John's dis- 
 course, " which we may quote without distrust, as it is so 
 manifestly confirmed by the accounts given by the other 
 Evangelists of the institution of the Supper." Now no 
 critic that we are aware of, who ' distrusts ' this gospel at
 
 ECCE HOMO 17 
 
 all, excepts from his distrust the discourse referred to : the 
 question among such critics is whether we are to regard it 
 (with Strauss and Schenkel) as intended to give the spiritual 
 counterpart and substitute for the too carnal institution of 
 the Supper/ or merely a later spiritual interpretation of it. 
 There is exactly the same question with regard to the dis- 
 course with Nicodemus, in the third chapter of this gospel, 
 which, as we have seen, our author takes and interprets in 
 a fashion entirely his own. There are good reasons for 
 rejecting the fourth gospel as an accurate narrative ; there 
 are good reasons for accepting it as such ; there may be 
 good reasons for accepting part, and rejecting part, but our 
 author certainly does not put tliem forward. At the same 
 time the most suspicious critic would hardly deny that there 
 may be an element of truth in this gospel very valuable, as 
 supplementing the other three, and that it is in itself not 
 improbable that Jesus recognised the importance of the 
 singular personal influence that he exercised over other men, 
 and even foresaw that it would continue and increase after 
 his death ; but that he intended a passionate devotion to 
 himself to be the mainspring and motive-power of morality 
 in his followers, we certainly sliould not infer from our 
 authorities reasonably estimated. 
 
 We have next to consider what is, according to our 
 author, the chief principle and supreme rule in the morality 
 taught by Jesus — the trunk, or stem, springing from the 
 passion which he regards as the root. This he develops at 
 great length in what is, perhaps, the most striking and 
 effective portion of his work ; we can hardly hope to do 
 justice to it in a scanty summary, but we may avoid any 
 serious misrepresentation. Christ, he says, placed the happi- 
 ness of man in a political constitution. He did not consider, 
 as certain philosophies had done, each individual as an in- 
 dependent being, but as a member of a society. The great 
 duty he requires from all who enter the kingdom of God is 
 
 ^ It is certainly singular, and tends to support this view, that there is no 
 mention of the institution of the Supper in the fourth gospel ; but this question, 
 which is connected with the much discussed Passover controversy, we must 
 pass by. 
 
 C
 
 i8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES I 
 
 a disinterested sacrifice of self to the interests of the whole 
 society. This sacrifice is to be made without a view to the 
 ultimate interest of the individual : indeed, to be complete 
 it demands of a man what he cannot do with a view to his 
 ultimate interest, that he should love his enemies. He 
 " issued from the Mount an edict of comprehension," assert- 
 ing the unity of the human race, their equality before God, 
 and fraternity under God's fatherhood. He made morality 
 universal, thus giving to men what a philosopher or two 
 had claimed for them but coldly and ineffectually. But for 
 the better execution of this edict, instead of giving detailed 
 laws to his society, he tried to evoke the law-making faculty 
 in each member of it. Philosophers had tried the same 
 thing, but they had wrongly regarded reason as the law- 
 making faculty ; Christ saw that passion could be only con- 
 trolled by passion, and therefore his law-making faculty is 
 a passionate, enthusiastic philanthropy, or, in our author's 
 fine phrase, the enthusiasm of humanity. This enthusiastic 
 condition of mind is what is meant by the Trvevfia "Aytov 
 of which we hear so much in the early Church. More 
 closely examined it is discovered to be a love not of the 
 race, nor of each individual, but of man as man, or of 
 humanity in each individual. Thus Christ, for the first 
 time, placed the love of man distinctly in the list of virtues. 
 Morality had previously been negative ; he discovered 
 Positive Morality — a new continent in the moral globe. 
 
 Now if this had been put before us in a sermon as a 
 spirited general sketch of what Christianity has been to the 
 world — of tlie moral idea that it has generated among man- 
 kind — we should not have been disposed to find fault with 
 it. But the biographer of Jesus, if he would be loyal to 
 historic truth, must forget all about the subsequent de- 
 velopment of Christianity, and endeavour to see Jesus as 
 he appeared to his Jewish contemporaries. We hoped 
 from our author's preface that he might have done this ; 
 but we feel that he has not, and that in consequence his 
 portrait wants fidelity in details. We feel continually as 
 we read — ' This is what has been felt since Jesus, and
 
 ECCE HOMO 19 
 
 what would not have been felt had it not been for Jesus ; 
 but it is not precisely what Jesus taught.' Here and 
 there we feel that if Jesus planted, Jean Jacques and 
 Comte have watered. 
 
 If we cannot assert that any virtue may not be found 
 at least in germ in the teaching of Jesus, we may still 
 show that our author has brought into prominence the 
 wrong points in that teaching, and mingled with it alien 
 conceptions. In the first place it seems to us an over- 
 statement to say that Christ placed the happiness of man 
 in a political constitution, and did not consider him as an 
 independent being. Isolation and self-sulHciency were 
 marked features of the ideals that reigned in Greece during 
 the post- Aristotelian period, and the ideal of Jesus may so 
 far be contrasted with these. But the writer makes it too 
 nearly akin to Benthamism. It seems to us truer to say 
 that Jesus taught philanthropy more from the point of 
 view of the individual than from that of society. His 
 disciples were to do good to their enemies, to do good 
 expecting no return, to give freely, to lend to those who 
 could not pay ; but, as our author himself admits, to each 
 precept is attached a reason which comes home directly to 
 the individual. This reason sometimes appeals to self-love 
 — their reward should be great, they should receive again 
 full measure, pressed down and running over : sometimes to 
 a nobler sentiment — it was more blessed to give than to 
 receive, they would be children of the Highest, they would 
 be like God in His grand impartial effusion of benefits. 
 All this is not what we call philanthropy in its essence, 
 though it leads to the same results ; much less is it the 
 enthusiasm of humanity. Our author asks — " Can a man 
 love his enemies with a view to his own interest ? " This 
 is a diiticulty to be felt by a more introspective age than 
 that to which Jesus preached : it was at any rate not felt 
 by the author of the third gospel.^ But we are told that 
 Christ " quoted a sentence from the book of Deuteronomy, 
 in which devoted love to God and man is solemnly enjoined 
 
 1 Cf. Luke vi. 35.
 
 20 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 upon the Israelite," and declared "an ardent, passionate, 
 or devoted state of mind to be the root of virtue." By 
 the " sentence from the book of Deuteronomy " our author 
 means two sentences, one from Deuteronomy and the other 
 from Leviticus ; the latter, which alone speaks of love to 
 man, runs simply — " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself." He has imported into this, in his mind, the 
 ardour and passion that belong to the former sentence ; 
 this sentence expresses simply a calm, though very lofty 
 ideal of equity : we do not love ourselves with passion or 
 enthusiasm. Again, the injunction to the young man to 
 sell his goods and give them to the poor was surely given, 
 not primarily for the sake of the poor, but for the sake of 
 the young man himself: it was a test, not of philanthropy, 
 but of faith. We must repeat, we are only arguing about 
 the comparative prominence of the two points. It seems 
 to us that Jesus would have reversed Paul's estimate of 
 Tr/cTTt? and a^dirrj ; he valued love highly, but he speaks 
 more of faith. What he chiefly inculcates is not enthusi- 
 asm, or if enthusiasm, not that of passionate affection ; it is 
 a calmer, and, some may think, a far grander sentiment, 
 faith in virtue, in the ideal of which philanthropy is only a 
 part — the readiness to sacrifice all, not for humanity, but 
 for the good cause, for the right. In so far as the writer 
 speaks of the state of feeling in the early Church among 
 the followers of Jesus after his departure, his remarks seem 
 to us far more correctly coloured. An " enthusiastic " or 
 elevated " condition of mind " is no unfair modernisation, 
 from one point of view, of the " outpouring of the Holy 
 Spirit ; " of that outpouring, love was one of the chief and 
 most striking fruits. The word a^ydirif], which is only 
 found twice in the synoptic gospels, occurs more than a 
 hundred times in the other books of the New Testament, 
 in various passages of description, exhortation, prayer, and 
 thankssfiviufij, culminating in the sublime encomium of 
 Paul. 
 
 In what we have said we have left out as far as 
 possible the strictly religious element in the teaching of
 
 ECCE HOMO 21 
 
 Jesus. We have done so because our author has done so, 
 and because we do not join -with many of his critics in 
 condemning his treatment in this respect. He tliereby 
 confines himself to a part only of the work of Jesus, and 
 his book is so far one-sided ; but it is a part that can 
 fairly be discussed by itself, and if this had been his only 
 Gue-sidedness we do not think it would have been strongly 
 felt. But it has led him into a further error which we 
 must notice ; it has led him to neglect the great difference 
 between Jewish and ethnic morality, and consequently 
 somewhat to misrepresent the relation of Jesus to the one 
 and the other. Jewish morality was always suffused with 
 the glow of religious feeling which makes the morality of 
 most philosophers seem cold in comparison : the Greek 
 moralised with his eyes turned inward, the Jew with his 
 eyes turned toward the God of his fathers. To say that 
 Jesus, in preaching positive morality, discovered a new 
 continent in the moral globe, is strangely unfair both to 
 Jews and Gentiles ; but among the Jews morality was not 
 only positive : it was even enthusiastic, towards each and 
 all of the chosen people of God. Ethnic patriotism was 
 a feeling directed chiefly toward the State ; but Jewish 
 patriotism, burning more brightly amid the ruins of national 
 existence, flowed into the channels of individual sympathy 
 and tenderness. When Jesus spoke to his disciples of 
 other Jews as their brethren, he used no new and un- 
 familiar word. He does not find it necessary to inculcate 
 almsgiving ; he only attempts to purify it from the alloy of 
 vanity and ostentation — a purification which it doubtless 
 much needed, as we fear it somewhat needs still. Many a 
 Tobit, no doubt, had given his bread to the hungry and 
 his garments to the naked, had bitterly afflicted himself 
 for the calamities of his suffering brethren, before Jesus 
 shed on the virtues of jihilanthropy and tenderness the 
 peculiar light of his sublime idealism. Here again, 
 the old account of Christianity, which represents it as 
 internalising and universalising what liad before been too 
 external and too limited, seems much truer tluiu the
 
 22 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES I 
 
 antithesis which our author superadds between " positive " 
 and " negative." 
 
 But in this work of Christianity what precise portion is 
 the historian to attribute to Jesus ? We have already- 
 hinted at some of the difficulties which bans; about this 
 question ; and we approach the solution of it, we must 
 premise, with a diffidence very unlike our author's confident 
 certainty. We have to form our judgment upon slender 
 evidence, examined in the doubtful light of historic analogy. 
 Our author, in all the second part of his book, writes with 
 a consistent determination to find his ideal of morality 
 completely developed in Jesus. He unfolds a carefully 
 considered utopia, or scheme of human progress, for which 
 Jesus' words are made to supply from time to time texts or 
 mottoes. Sometimes he strays considerably from his text, 
 e.g. Christ is supposed to have said that the enthusiasm of 
 humanity was the source of virtue : the best method of 
 producing this enthusiasm is discovered to be family affec- 
 tion : therefore family affection must be encouraged in 
 obedience to Jesus ; — we feel that we have got a long way 
 from " He that hateth not his father and his mother." 
 Every student of morality is aware of the facility with 
 which all the virtues may be deduced from each one, and 
 no one who has realised the fertility, breadth, and origi- 
 nality of the moral conceptions of Jesus, can doubt that any 
 ideal we are likely to form may be built upon a careful 
 selection of his words. But the historian's hard duty is 
 not to exaggerate, however strong the temptation to do so 
 may be. It is only to hasty hero-worshippers that this 
 will appear equivalent to nil admirari ; the historically 
 cultivated mind will feel that a portrait requires light and 
 shade to give it the requisite reality, and that the more it 
 gains in reality the more profound is the admiration that it 
 excites. The defect of Eenan's Vie cle Jisus was not its 
 historical fidelity but its want of that quality. It was not 
 in so far as he had realised the manner in which the idea of 
 Jesus was conditioned by the circumstances of time and 
 place and the laws of human development, but in so far as
 
 ECCE HOMO 23 
 
 he had failed to do so, that his work proved inefficacious to 
 stir tlie feeling's of Englishmen. We felt that he had 
 looked at his subject through Parisian spectacles ; and taken 
 up too ostentatiously the position of a spectator — a great 
 artistic error in a historian. His most orthodox assailants 
 in England felt for the most part that their strength lay in 
 showing not that the Jesus of lienan was a mere man and 
 ought to have been more, but that he was not the right man. 
 The truth seems to be that in the simple and grand 
 conception that Jesus formed of man's position and value in 
 the universe, all the subsequent development of Christianity 
 is implicitly contained: l)ut that the evolution of this con- 
 ception was gradual, and was not completed at his death. 
 The one thing important to Jesus in man was a principle so 
 general that faith, love, and moral energy seem only diflerent 
 sides of it. It was the ultimate coincidence, or rather, if we 
 may use a Coleritlgian word, indifference of religion and 
 morality. It was " the single eye," the Tightness, of a man's 
 heart before God. It was faith in the conflict with baser 
 and narrower impulses, love when it became emotion, moral 
 energy as it took effect on the will. It was that which 
 living in a man filled his whole body with a light, purified 
 him completely, so that nothing external could defile him. 
 This principle led to various results. In the first place (and 
 in this respect the teaching of Jesus left nothing to be sup- 
 plied) it intensified or deepened all moral obligations. This 
 inner light could not produce right outward acts, except 
 through the medium of right inward impulses. Moreover, 
 the man who had it could acquiesce in no compromises, but 
 must aim at perfection. The second consequence of the 
 principle ought to have been, and is in Christianity as at 
 present understood, that the degree in which a man possesses 
 this inner Tightness of heart fixes his rank in the kingdom 
 of God at any time. Birth, wealth, worldly position, even 
 intellectual culture (though it may enable one man to do 
 more good than another), even past good works (if the spirit 
 in which they were done is growing faint), are insignificant 
 as claims in comparison with this. But, as actually preached
 
 24 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES i 
 
 by Jesus, this principle seems (if we take our authorities as 
 they stand) to have assumed a paradoxical and one-sided 
 shape. He gives not equality but superiority to those in 
 poverty and bodily wretchedness. This shape, it is to be 
 observed (by this time we need hardly say that the author 
 of Ecce Homo seems not to have observed it), is especially 
 paradoxical and one-sided in one of our three authorities. 
 In all of them we find the saying that it is easier for a camel 
 to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to 
 enter the kingdom of heaven. In the first gospel we have 
 the impossibility of serving God and mammon insisted upon, 
 and in connection with this all careful provision for material 
 wants discouraged. But it is only in Luke tliat we find a 
 blessing pronounced on the poor and a woe on the rich : ^ it 
 is only in Luke that we find applied to wealth the passionate 
 phrase " unrighteous mammon," which, taken in connection 
 with the parable that precedes, suggests the idea that there 
 is something unholy in wealth, that it ought to be got rid 
 of, while it is possible in getting rid of it to utilise it. 
 These passages have been frequently understood as having 
 only that point of paradox which a new truth requires in 
 order to force its way into tlie world. But the phrases in 
 Luke seem too strong to be explained in this way, and 
 almost amount to a slight distortion of view. This may be 
 referred to more than one reason, issuing naturally from the 
 conception of Jesus combined with his circumstances. M. 
 Eeuan is not perhaps entirely wrong in attributing the 
 passages that discourage providence to the exuberance of 
 simple faith in a Galilean peasant, ignorant of the compli- 
 cated arrangements of society. But this hardly reaches the 
 height of the character. We rather refer them to his severe 
 uncompromising absoluteness of idealism, that requires careful 
 tempering to be made practical." Again (and this our author 
 
 ^ The question with regard to the two recensions of the " Beatitudes " as they 
 are called seems to be this : — have we in the first gospel a softening down and 
 spiritualising of the original teaching, or in Luke an Ebionitish exaggeration of 
 it ? It is difficult but important to decide. 
 
 '^ Comj)are his utterance with respect to purity, Matt. v. 27-30. Here, how- 
 ever, we wouLl gladly think that the first gospel lias, by a dangerous mistake, 
 brought vv. 29, 30, into a wrong connection. Cf. Mark ix. 43-47.
 
 ECCE HOMO 25 
 
 finely describes), Jesus with his intense apprehension of what 
 constitutes true human worth, would feel a peculiar horror at 
 the hard insolent selfishness that often accompanies wealth ; 
 most men with character enough to break through the com- 
 fortable acquiescence of conventional ethics have felt this in 
 some degree. Again, his estimate of human worth, together 
 with faith in Divine equity, might seem to point to a here- 
 after, when the positions of rich and poor should be reversed. 
 This is suggested by the parable of Lazarus,^ taken together 
 with the beatitudes in the same gospel. Besides, the prac- 
 tical experience of Jesus would lead him to take the worst 
 view of the rich. His converts were found among the poor 
 and lowly, who were at the same time intellectually babes. 
 The rich would be to a great extent also the wise and 
 prudent; property and education would combine in hinder- 
 ing them from joining the train of an unauthorised and 
 vagabond master. These reasons may account for a partiality 
 that requires to be accounted for in a teacher in whom all 
 have recognised a rare ethical balance, and a singular freedom 
 from asceticism. 
 
 Thirdly, when conscience was thus turned inward, and 
 morality made to depend on the state of the heart, it was a 
 necessary consequence that the ceremonial law must fall. 
 This elaborate system of minute observances was needless, 
 and if needless it was burdensome. But this deduction was 
 only partially made by Jesus ; to complete it was reserved 
 for one only second to Jesus among the benefactors of man- 
 kind — for Saul of Tarsus. How far Jesus actually went it is 
 hard to say. Where the account given by our authorities is 
 as here primd facie fluctuating and confused, the modes of 
 reconciliation or explanation naturally vary. Perhaps we 
 may say that he rejected anything in the written or oral law 
 that seemed to him immoral or imperfectly moral, that 
 among things indifferent he disregarded or attacked particular 
 traditions that he felt to be specially vexatious or trivial, but 
 
 in general contented himself with " exceeding the righteous- 
 
 ^ It is to be observed that the coiniiion view that the rich man is punished for 
 neglecting Lazarus is at variance with Abraham's reply, audcau hardly be deduced 
 solely from the iwiOvixQv xopTaadijvai in verse 21 (Luke xvi. 19-31).
 
 26 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES i 
 
 ness of the Scribes and Pharisees," superadding to the tradi- 
 tional external obligations his strict requisition of lightness 
 and purity of heart. Still his murmur of burdens grievous 
 to be borne foreshadows — but only foreshadows — a time 
 when the handwriting of ordinances should be completely 
 blotted out. 
 
 Fourthly, if man's position in the universe, or, more reli- 
 giously, in the sight of God, depends upon his rightness of 
 heart, it followed that the kingdom of God was opened to 
 all of Adam's seed. But, here again, it is to Paul we owe 
 the complete declaration that Christ has put on one level 
 circumcision and uncircumcision, Greek, Jew, barbarian, 
 Scythian, bond and free. Did the idea of Jesus reach to 
 this ? Perhaps hardly in the earlier part of his career, 
 before his claims seemed finally rejected by the leaders of 
 his people, when he felt himself limited in his work to the 
 lost sheep of the house of Israel, when he forbade his 
 disciples to evangelise the Samaritans, when he spoke of 
 Syrophcenicians as dogs. Yet, even then, his conception 
 seems not so much limited as not extended ; circumstances 
 have not extended it. He yields to a proof of faith in the 
 Syrophoenician woman. Perhaps, toward the close of his 
 life, amid forebodings of his coming doom, there rose in his 
 mind a clear foresight that his kingdom would be of Gentiles 
 — can we say that it would be universal ? At any rate, we 
 find no distinct expression of this in the synoptic gospels ; 
 and the historian must very doubtfully accept the discourses 
 of the fourth, even where they most accord with the image 
 he has formed to himself of Jesus. 
 
 We have sketched this outline in contrast with our 
 author's, to show exactly to what degree we can admit that 
 the " edict from the Mount " gave to mankind the univer- 
 sality of rights which a few philosophers had ineffectually 
 claimed for them. We should like to say a word about 
 these philosophers. In our author's treatment of them he, 
 very needlessly, exceeds the limits of fair advocacy. He 
 seems, indeed, to regard himself as holding a brief against 
 philosophers in general. In one passage (p. 100) he draws
 
 ECCE HOMO 27 
 
 a fancy portrait of tlie " philosophic good man." This is, 
 perhaps, just within the limits of fair advocacy ; that is to 
 say, it is a spirited and instructive caricature. A philo- 
 sopher might draw a fancy portrait of the religious enthu- 
 siast, equally fair, equally instructive, and equally one-sided. 
 In truth, enthusiasm and reason are supplementary ; neither 
 can dispense with the other ; and it is for the interest of the 
 human race that each should keep a jealous watch on the 
 other. But in one respect the past philosopher is at a great 
 disadvantage, as compared with the past prophet, and has 
 more claim on the tenderness of the historian. The philo- 
 sopher introduces his new truth to the world enclosed in a 
 system ; when humanity has extracted and assimilated the 
 kernel, the empty husk is found with the philosopher's name 
 inscribed on it ; the prophet hurls his new truth out in the 
 form of a paradox, the point of which is ever after found 
 useful. This applies peculiarly to Stoicism ; we associate 
 the term with salient extravagances ; the most valuable part 
 of the system that flourished under the name is so familiar, 
 so axiomatic to us, that we do not value it. There is no fear 
 that men will fall into the error of putting Stoicism for 
 quantity of effect, or intrinsic excellence on a par with 
 Christianity. The Porch was one entrance into the Church; 
 and the panegyrist of Jesus ought to treat Stoicism with 
 the tender and scrupulous fairness due to a forerunner 
 superseded, and a rival outshone. One repeated unfairness 
 in our author's treatment of the philosopher springs from a 
 misconception which is strange in one who has evidently 
 read his Plato. He speaks of " reason " as if it meant only 
 logic ; as if its supremacy kept the man entirely cold ; as if 
 it were impossible to feel ardour and enthusiasm for abstrac- 
 tions. " He who refrains from gratifying a wish on some 
 ground of reason, at the same time feels the wish as strongly 
 as if he gratified it." In an earlier passage he asks the 
 philosopher triumpliantly, " Where is the logical dilemma 
 that can make a knave honest ? " Now we admit that one 
 of the great philosophical blots of Stoicism was the confusion 
 it made between distinct mental faculties, elaborative, intui-
 
 28 £SSA YS AND ADDRESSES i 
 
 tive, emotional, volitional, so that a Stoic might commit the 
 absurdity of trying, by a logical dilemma, to make a knave 
 honest. But how was the Stoic himself made and kept 
 honest, and pure, and self-sacrificing ? Not by his logic, but 
 by the enthusiasm that he felt when he contemplated the 
 true law, the right reason, the wisdom that became dearer 
 to him than any pleasure, the idea of good that rose up in 
 and absorbed liis soul, casting into shade the 'prima naturae, 
 the lawful objects of the earlier natural impulses. " It is 
 one of the most remarkable features," we are told, " of 
 Christ's moral teaching, that he does not command us to 
 regulate or control our unlawful desires, but pronounces it 
 unlawful to have such desires at all." Whether this is 
 a thoroughly sound treatment of ethics we are not now 
 inquiring ; but it describes accurately Stoic theory, and 
 Stoic practice. That an ordinary man, one of the masses, 
 intellectually speaking, could only get his unlawful desires 
 destroyed by means of a feeling of personal devotion, we are 
 not prepared to dispute ; and hence the effect of Christianity 
 was incomparably greater in extent than that of any philo- 
 sophy could have been. But to deny this efficacy to those 
 incredibiles ardores that the inner vision of truth and wisdom 
 excited in a few, is worse than a mere historical error : it 
 implies a psychological deficiency. 
 
 In a way partly similar, partly different, our author 
 tries to depreciate the tenet as held by the Stoics of human 
 brotherhood, the universality of moral obligation. He does 
 not deny that it was held by them in all completeness. He 
 knows that Cicero's Stoic says, " Each one of us is a part 
 of the world, hence we must prefer the common advantage 
 to our own ; the universe is the common city of gods and 
 men": that Seneca writes, "We are members of a vast 
 body ; we are naturally kinsmen ; there is communio juris 
 among us all ; live for another if you would live for 
 yourself " : that Marcus Aurelius writes (expressing in a 
 scholastic form what may even be called the enthusiasm of 
 humanity), " Unless you regard yourself as a member of 
 the human society, you do not yet love men from the heart ;
 
 ECCE HOMO 29 
 
 doing good does not give you a completed joy ; you do it 
 simply as a thing fit to do, not as doing good to yourself." 
 Yet he seems unable to do hearty justice to pliilosophers. 
 He says of the tenet : " It had become a commonplace of 
 Stoic philosophy " (hinting it was confined to the lecture- 
 room), " but to work it into the hearts and consciences of 
 men required a higher power." Yes, " of men," but of 
 what men ? Not of Stoics, but of the mass of mankind, 
 who never were and never could become Stoics. That a 
 tenet may change the face of society, it must be accepted 
 in some sort by the numerical majority. If Christians had 
 remained as few in number as Stoics, the "edict" of Jesus 
 would have had as much and as little effect as the " claim " 
 of Zeno. True, the insincere Stoic was undoubtedly less 
 controlled by his profession than the insincere Christian. 
 The force of public opinion on him was smaller. There is 
 just this element of truth in what our author means to 
 say ; but it is precisely what he has not expressed. Into 
 the hearts and consciences of sincere Stoics the tenet was 
 worked, probably as much as it has since been into the 
 hearts and consciences of sincere Christians — that is, 
 generally, in a very limited and unsatisfactory degree. To 
 what Christian monarch can we point who more than 
 Marcus Aurelius made this sublime principle his inspiration 
 and his restraint, the subject of his meditations and the 
 guide of his life ? 
 
 We must now turn to our author's detailed account of 
 the subordinate principles or laws (as he calls them) into 
 which the teaching of Jesus branched. AYe find continual 
 repetition of the same misplaced colouring, and the same 
 mistaken ingenuity. When he gets hold of a vague popular 
 misconception, he exaggerates it, he refines it, he elaborates 
 it, he systematises it ; he generally does anything but correct 
 it. But we find him very refreshing to read ; his style is 
 so free from cant, haziness, self-consciousness, sickly sweet- 
 ness, turgid rhetoric ; his treatment so bold, independent, 
 distinct, coherent. Indeed, the whole plan is too coherent. 
 He is not content to find in Jesus a rare balance of moral
 
 30 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES i 
 
 intuitions ; he insists on attributing to him an articulate 
 system of ethics ; consequently he is constantly suggesting 
 for him, without any evidence, ideas, feelings, reflections 
 alien to his age and inconsistent with the simple directness 
 of the prophetic character. For instance, he points out the 
 " apparent inconsistency " between the absolute purity and 
 severity of the moral ideal of Jesus, and his readiness to 
 sympathise with sinners. He then shows how the incon- 
 sistency is overcome by the conception of the " law of 
 mercy." We should rather say that the inconsistency was 
 never felt, and therefore not overcome. The one virtue 
 seemed as natural, sprang as spontaneously as the other. 
 
 We have already discussed our author's " provisional " 
 assumption of a right to speak of the miracles as real. 
 This assumption is much used or abused in his chapter 
 on Positive Morality. He works up into a more definite 
 and imposing form the popular notion that Jesus was a 
 wonderful example of practical philanthropy. He tells us 
 we might have thought it more appropriate to Jesus to 
 instruct more and give less time to the relief of physical 
 evils ; but no, he thought otherwise : " his biography may 
 be summed up in the words 'he went about doing good'; 
 his wise words were secondary to his beneficial deeds ; 
 the latter were not introductory to the former, but the 
 former grew occasionally and, as it were, accidentally out 
 of the latter." Xow the perfect unselfishness of Jesus, and 
 his tenderness for his fellow-men, affords the foundation for 
 the popular notion ; but the pointed form which is given to 
 it in the passage we have quoted seems in direct conflict 
 with our authorities. Even if w^e assume that the number 
 of cases recorded is not exaggerated (an assumption which 
 on purely historic grounds we shall find it difficult to 
 admit), there is nothing which we should infer with more 
 certainty from the gospels than that Jesus regarded teach- 
 ing and preaching as his primary function. He is always 
 represented as taking the initiative in this. He comes 
 into Galilee preaching ; he enters into the synagogue and 
 teaches ; he goes into the next towns that he may preach ;
 
 ECCE HOMO 31 
 
 we read always, " he began to teach " by the seaside, in 
 the synagogue, elsewhere ; the multitude came unto him, 
 and he teaches them as is his wont. But he exercises 
 his gift of healing only when appealed to ; the people 
 throng round him and press liiin to exercise it ; they 
 " bring unto him " diseased persons, and he heals them ; 
 lepers and others fall in his way and entreat him ; he 
 heals all, but with occasional reluctance, with repeated 
 efforts to keep his possession of the gift as secret as possible. 
 It was the spiritually sick that he came to seek and to save ; 
 there is no evidence of any eagerness on his part to relieve 
 ordinary physical evils. 
 
 In one of his two chapters on the " Law of ^lercy," our 
 author describes two repentances — that of Zacchteus, the 
 rich receiver of taxes, and the well-known story of the 
 woman who was a sinner. The passage is in his best style ; 
 the colouring is not overdone, the contrast and the observa- 
 tions to which it gives rise are as just and appropriate as 
 they are fresh and striking. With this illustration he 
 connects an excellent account of " the three stages in 
 the progress of the treatment of crime : the stage of 
 barbarous insensibility, the stage of law or justice, and that 
 of mercy or humanity." This last stage, he tells us, was 
 reached by the morality of Jesus. Law, to keep up a 
 proper sensibility for the injured, has to be cruel to the 
 injurer. But the mercy of Jesus overcomes the emotional 
 difticulty, achieves the emotional feat, of sympathising with 
 and loving the injurer, while at the same time hating the 
 sin and pitying the sufferer far more than law. Therefore, 
 it is a positive duty of Christ's followers to attempt the 
 restoration of the criminal classes. Practical men may 
 plausibly urge that the enterprise is hopeless ; but Christ, 
 says our author, rising into one of his loftiest strains of 
 eloquence, knew of no limits to enthusiasm — 
 
 He laid it as a duty upon the Church to reclaim the lost, 
 because he did not think it Utopian to suppose that the Chiu-ch 
 might be not in its best members only, but through its whole 
 body, inspired by that ardour of humanity that can charm away
 
 32 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 the bad passions of the wildest heart, and open to the savage 
 and the outlaw lurking in moral wildernesses an entrancing 
 view of the holy and tranquil order that broods over the streets 
 and palaces of the city of God. 
 
 We willingly lend our liearts to this preaching. This 
 is true Christianity : " the Article of Conversion is the true 
 Artimdus stantis aut cadentis Ecdesice" But when we close 
 the book the question forces itself upon us — What was it 
 that Jesus actually did in this direction ? The attentive 
 reader of the two chapters we refer to will discover a 
 distinct and palpable seam running through them, where 
 the exposition of the duty is sewn on to the account of the 
 example. The question is how to deal with the criminal 
 classes, the enemies of their kind, outlaws, injurers of society, 
 who fall under the ban of law and justice. " Therefore," 
 says our author, " Christ went among " — whom ? thieves 
 and murderers ? — no, " publicans and sinners." There is 
 surely a great difference between the two classes. The 
 publicans were not enemies of society, but a sordid and 
 repulsive part of its organisation ; instruments that law 
 used and despised, not objects against which it was directed. 
 Mr. Plumptre ^ compares them with Eoman Catholic excise- 
 men in Ireland. " Sinners " is a vague term, but it is clear 
 that the persons described by it were vicious as distinct 
 from criminal, liable to social ostracism, not legal punish- 
 ment. Suppose a man, then, in the habit of dining with 
 excisemen and prostitutes, with a view to their moral 
 improvement. He would show, perhaps, more heroism, 
 certainly more originality, than a man who went as a city 
 missionary among the criminal classes of London ; but it 
 would be only in a very general sense that we could say 
 that the one man followed the example of the other. 
 Again, there is no evidence that Jesus sought out publicans 
 and harlots, and endeavoured to pierce through the hardened 
 shell of vicious habit that encased their hearts. Some of 
 them thronged among the crowd to hear him, and he did 
 not repel them ; similarly they had gone to John to be 
 
 ^ Smith's Dictionary of the. Bible.
 
 ECCE HOMO 33 
 
 baptised, and he had baptised them. Those with whom he 
 associated had, we may believe, already shown signs of 
 repentance ; his preaching had already stirred iu them the 
 impulse toward goodness. All honour to the tender insight 
 that could discern and cherish this impulse when others 
 saw only the mould of life and circumstance in which the 
 character was assumed to have hardened ! All honour to 
 the magnanimity that in this work could brave the con- 
 demnation of the pious, the censure of those whose ceusure 
 was felt heaviest ! ^ But the particular duty which our 
 author sets before us of sympathising with and converting 
 the hardened outlaw, while we sympathise with, and exact 
 justice for, his victim, Jesus does not, from the evidence 
 before us, appear to have actually undertaken. This emo- 
 tional problem we have to attempt ; let us solve it as it 
 can be solved in the spirit of Christianity ; but let us not 
 strain history till it cracks in a morbid anxiety to make the 
 emotional stimulus afforded by Christ's personal example as 
 great as possible.^ 
 
 But Jesus did not manifest only pity and tenderness, 
 conspicuous as these qualities were in him : he also showed 
 anger and resentment. Our author, therefore, to complete 
 his work has to explain the Law of Kesentment. We 
 looked forward with some interest to this explanation, as 
 we foresaw the difficulty in which he would be placed, and 
 considered that his mode of dealing with that difficulty 
 would be an excellent test of his qualities as a historian. 
 For the objects of the resentment of Jesus were the religious 
 teachers of his nation — a nation appointed by Providence 
 to be the religious teachers of mankind. These are the only 
 persons against whom he inveighs with bitter vehemence ; 
 for whose virtues he has no praise,^ for whose faults he 
 
 • In choosing a publican for a disciple, Jesus would go further still. But, 
 although the puhlicans were as a class rapacious and unjust, there was nothing 
 incompatible, whatever bigots might think, in tax-gatherin;4 and virtue. 
 
 - A good instance of this straining is sten where our author endeavours to 
 bring prostitutes under tlie heail of "injurers," by describing them as "the 
 tempters who waylaid the chastity of men." We hear the fact cracking. 
 
 * We ought to notice as an exceptiou that he once said of one of them " that 
 he was not far from the kingdom of God." This incident coutirms us in the view 
 we subsequently express. 
 
 D
 
 34 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 has no excuse. Now the religious teachers of a people, 
 whatever may be their defects and shortcomings (and we 
 shall hardly be suspected of a disposition to underrate 
 them), are not usually those against whom an impartial 
 moralist concentrates his invective. Here, therefore, the 
 example seems to require careful interpretation. The ordi- 
 nary commentator, who is not troubled by any considerations 
 of historic analogy, finds no difficulty at all. In reading 
 Matt, xxiii. and the parallel passages in Luke, he conceives 
 an idea of the Pharisees and scribes made to suit these 
 passages. He willingly believes that they were hypocriti- 
 cal and rapacious, serpents and vipers, making long prayers 
 to devour widows' substance, whose proselytes were children 
 of hell, whose carefully purified vessels were full of extortion 
 and excess. For purposes of edification this answers very 
 well ; every one feels that against so odious a combination 
 of vices no invectives can be too vehement, too scathing. 
 If it is pointed out to the commentator that Jesus elsewhere 
 seems to speak of these persons as the whole who needed 
 not a physician, the righteous whom he was not come to 
 call to repentance: elsewhere as possessing a righteousness 
 of their own, though below the standard of his lofty require- 
 ments, — he simply replies that these were different Phari- 
 sees and different scribes. The author of Ecce Homo is at 
 once too genuinely honest and too widely cultivated to rest 
 content with this. He finds it necessary to represent the 
 Pharisees as a historian, using all the sources of evidence 
 within his reach, may reasonably conceive them to have 
 existed ; and to realise the relations of Jesus towards them 
 as a whole, in accordance with such representation. Only on 
 this basis can he conscientiously expound the example and 
 develop the Law of Kesentment. Let us see what the result is. 
 In the first place, from his consistent determination not 
 to treat the career of Jesus as in any respect progressive, 
 he ignores what is the only true key to these relations. He 
 cannot trace their gradual embitterment, arising out of the 
 ever increasing clearness of the irreconcilable antagonism 
 between the insulted bigots and the daring innovator, from
 
 ECCE HOMO 35 
 
 the outset of Jesus' niinistiy, wlieii he simply left the 
 " righteous " on one side as having no immediate call to deal 
 with them, to that period near its close, when, foreseeing and 
 almost courting the inevitable doom, he poured out in those 
 well-known charges the concentrated energy of his indigna- 
 tion. Still he quite appreciates the comparative historic 
 value of the earlier and later utterances. Of the worst 
 charges he says (we could not expect him to say more), 
 " We have not the evidence before us which might enable 
 us to verify these accusations." He sees that the point of 
 the antagonism between the " one learned profession " and 
 Jesus was, that the former were " legalists," that they 
 asserted " the paramount necessity of particular rules." 
 They " believed that the old method by which their ancestors 
 had arrived at a knowledge of the requirements of duty — 
 namely, divine inspiration — was no longer available, and 
 that nothing therefore remained but carefully to collect the 
 results at which their ancestors had arrived by this method, 
 to adopt these results as rules, and to observe them punctili- 
 ously." He says that it may be urged that such men, how- 
 ever mistaken, did " in some cases the best they could, that 
 they were serious and made others serious." But Jesus, he 
 finds, " made no allowance " for them. How is this to be 
 explained ? How is our indignation against these sincere but 
 mistaken bigots to be sufficiently stimulated ? It appears 
 that after all they were impostors of a very subtle sort. 
 " Their good deeds . . . did not proceed from the motives from 
 which sitch deeds naturally spring, and from which the public 
 suppose them to spring." When tliey tithed their property they 
 were impostors, because they made people think they did so 
 from " ardent feelings," whereas their real motive was "respect 
 for a traditional rule." When they searched the Scriptures, 
 they were impostors, because they pretended to be possessed 
 with the spirit of what they read without really being so. 
 Thus, because they followed " motives which did not actuate 
 them, but which tliey supposed ought to actuate them," he 
 thinks it right to say of them that they were " destitute of 
 convictions " ; " winning the reverence of the multitude by
 
 36 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 false pretences " ; " actors in everything " ; " their whole life 
 a play." 
 
 Now we cannot conceive the true analysis of bigotry and 
 legalism more blurred and confused than it is by this in- 
 genious rhetoric — a rhetoric all the more dangerous because 
 it is, as the author proceeds to show, of so universal applica- 
 tion. Eeligious conservatives in all ages are men who cling 
 to the letter without comprehending the spirit — who inherit 
 the results of an enthusiasm whose counterpart in the pre- 
 sent they misunderstand and dislike. But to say that, 
 because they are destitute of enthusiasm, they are " destitute 
 of convictions," that " their zeal for truth is feigned," because 
 their view of truth is narrow, that " they love the past 
 only because they hate the present," to charge them with 
 wilful fraud as pretenders to an ardour and enthusiasm 
 that they have not, to describe their virtues as being no 
 virtues at all, because they are mixed with conventionality 
 and triviality, — would be the blindest advocacy, or the most 
 unscrupulous special pleading. In the secular strife between 
 the old and the new, upon which human progress depends, 
 our good wishes are entirely with the innovators. Nor 
 have we a word of condemnation for the champions of this 
 grand cause, if in the fiery heat of battle they strike some- 
 what merciless and sweeping blows. It is by such strokes 
 that great victories have generally been won. Still the 
 most terrible fury in assault may be combined with a just 
 recognition of the merits of adversaries, a generous sympathy 
 with whatever in them is or might have been virtue ; and 
 in our ideal we conceive these qualities combined. Such 
 magnanimity we, in common with the whole Christian 
 world, have read in the close of our Master's life, as told 
 by Luke.^ The end has come; the people, whose eyes he 
 
 1 Here for the last time, our author quotes the fourth gospel to support his 
 most infelicitous interpretation of the third. It is the only support he has. The 
 reply to the high-priest is no " menace " ; it is simply a calm assertion. His 
 address to the women expresses mere sadness ; most generous sadness : it is his 
 people's deserved doom that grieves him : he would avert it if it were possible : 
 hence the "forgive them." No one, we think, who read the account in Luke hy 
 itself, would take the words otherwise. We attribute the sentence he quotes 
 from John xix. 11 to the indignation of a disciple.
 
 ECCE HOMO 37 
 
 has been vainly endeavouring to open, have made their 
 choice ; they have identified tliemselves with their tradi- 
 tional leaders ; his work is closed, his strife is over, and 
 with it the bitterness of the strife has melted into pure 
 sadness, into all-embracing forgiveness. But our author 
 reads the passage otherwise. It was only the Koman 
 soldiers he forgave. Having hated in the world his enemies, 
 the legalists, he hated them unto the end. In his dying 
 moments he pointedly excepted them from pardon ; thus 
 giving his followers a most solemn intimation, that " the 
 enthusiasm of humanity," though it destroys " a great deal 
 of hatred . . . creates as much more," that the new com- 
 mandment he gave unto them did not exclude bitterness, 
 irreconcilable hostility, intolerant anger, vindictive enmity. 
 
 Here, then, is what the enthusiasm of humanity comes 
 to ; here is the last fashion of the Imitatio Christi. We 
 are to love the whole human race, except our religious 
 adversaries ; we are to cherish the ideal of man in every 
 man, only not in a legalist. We are to have an inexhaustible 
 sympathy with those who are trying in every way to do 
 wrong ; nothing but enmity for those who are trying in a 
 mistaken way to do right. We are not to burn any one, we 
 are told, on the whole ; we might burn the wrong man ; 
 but the spirit of auto-da-fe is thoroughly Christian ; some 
 one ought to be burnt if we could only tell who. Perhaps 
 much of this is conscious paradox, meant to be taken cum 
 grano ; but we fear the writer may carry his readers — that 
 he has carried himself — dangerously far. Other men have 
 felt the profoundest pity for the Jewish nation, whose 
 passionate patriotism and imperishable faith have passed 
 through so fearful a doom of blood and fire to haunt the 
 world as a spectral anachronism for ever ; our author 
 assures us, with the calm truculence of a thoroughgoing 
 enthusiast — 
 
 Almost all the genuine worth and virtue of the nation was 
 gathered into the Christian Church ; what remained without was 
 perversity and prejudice, ignorance of the time, ignorance of 
 the truth — that mass of fierce infatuation which was burnt up
 
 38 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES i 
 
 in the flames which consumed the temple or shared the fall of 
 of the Antichrist Barcochebah. 
 
 This thoroughly exemplifies the Law of Eesentment ; this 
 is the " irreconcilable hostility " of the religious partisan. 
 We disown the authority of this law; we decline to follow 
 this example. We have not so learned Christ ; it is not 
 thus we would be filled with his spirit. Let the author of Ecce 
 Homo, and those who think with him, look well to what they 
 are doing. They would willingly deliver men from bondage to 
 the letter of an ordinance ; let them not bind upon us servile 
 conformity to the pattern of a life. ISTeither the one nor 
 the other is compatible with the true liberty of the spirit. 
 For the spirit of moral heroes does not only live after them ; 
 it grows, it deepens, it enlarges after them. It transcends 
 the limits of their earthly development ; it overleaps the 
 barriers that circumstance had fixed ; it shakes off the 
 bonds that action had imposed ; it is measured not by what 
 it did, but by what it might have done and will yet do. 
 So we imitate our other patterns and examples in the 
 essence, not the limitations, of their virtues ; so we must 
 imitate our great pattern and example, the great originator 
 and source of our morality. True, the Christian has to 
 combine anger with love, resentment with sympathy ; but 
 he is not to suppress the latter towards a special class of 
 men, because he regards them as the counterpart of the 
 antagonists of Jesus. Nay, this is the peculiar lesson that 
 enthusiasts have to learn, if progress is ever to be peace- 
 ful : to recognise and love the virtues that may thrive 
 wonderfully under the most besotted adherence to the most 
 narrow and contemptible notions. In Jesus the limitation 
 of sympathy arose from inevitable partiality of view ; cir- 
 cumstances had sundered him too widely from the orthodox 
 party ; it was necessary that he should fight them to the 
 death. We may imagine how differently he might have 
 spoken of them if he could only have seen their best side 
 instead of their worst. Surely he who could discern and 
 cherish the sparks of love, the germs of devotion, the yearn- 
 ings after virtue in the hearts of publicans and sinners.
 
 ECCE HOMO 39 
 
 would liave seen the glowing zeal, the anxious obedience, 
 the earnest self-denial, the sublime aspiration, that lingered 
 in and leavened that mass of paltriness and bigotry and 
 error. lie would have learnt of long prayers offered up 
 not to cover spoliation, of teachers who bore, as far as men 
 could bear, the burdens they laid on others, of proselytes of 
 whom Pharisaic effort had not made children of hell, but 
 who were soon to pour in eager throngs through the opened 
 gates of the city of God. He might even have personally 
 known one, then an eager pupil of the great pillar of 
 legalism, the young Pharisee who more than any of his 
 own followers was to inherit his spirit and complete his 
 work, and strike the final and triumphant blow for the law 
 of liberty and love. 
 
 Our limits compel us to stop. To develop and support 
 fully on all the points on which we differ from our author 
 our divergent view, would require a book as long as his 
 own — nay, perhaps longer, as we should find it expedient to 
 use more argument for each assertion. His method we think 
 radically wrong ; his conclusions only roughly and partially 
 right. But we would not part from him in this tone. The 
 one thing in which we agree with him outweighs all the 
 rest. We desire as sincerely as he does that the influence 
 of Jesus on the modern world should increase and not 
 decrease. That his book will tend to produce this effect on 
 the majority of readers we can hardly doubt ; that such will 
 be its operation on the minds even of students we think 
 most probable. We cannot possibly have sound history 
 without uncompromising criticism and perpetual contro- 
 versy ; but it is good to be reminded from time to time 
 to drop the glass of criticism, and let the dust-clouds of 
 controversy settle. Many students who cannot patiently 
 lend their minds to our author's teaching may be stimulated 
 by it to do as he has done : may be led to contemplate in the 
 best outline that each for himself can frame, with unwonted 
 clearness of vision and unwonted force of sympathy, the 
 features of a conception, a life, a character which the world 
 might reverence more wisely, but can never love too well.
 
 II 
 
 THE PEOPHET OF CULTUEE 
 
 {Macmillan's Magazine, August 1867) 
 
 The movement against anonymous writing, in which this 
 journal some years ago took a part, has received, I think, an 
 undeniable accession of strength from the development (then 
 unexpected) of Mr. Matthew Arnold. Some persons who 
 sympathised on the whole with that movement yet felt that 
 the case was balanced, and that if it succeeded we should 
 have sacrified something that we could not sacrifice without 
 regret. One felt the evils that " irresponsible reviewers " 
 were continually inflicting on the progress of thought and 
 society : and yet one felt that, in form and expression, 
 anonymous writing tended to be good writing. The buoyant 
 confidence of youth was invigorated and yet sobered by 
 having to sustain the prestige of a well-earned reputation ; 
 while the practised weapon of age, relieved from the 
 restraints of responsibility, was wielded with almost the 
 elasticity of youth. It was thought we should miss the 
 freedom, the boldness, the reckless vivacity with which 
 one talented writer after another had discharged his missiles 
 from behind the common shield of a coterie of unknown 
 extent, or at least half veiled by a pseudonym. It was 
 thought that periodical literature would gain in carefulness, 
 in earnestness, in sincerity, in real moral influence : but 
 that possibly it might become just a trifle dull. We did not 
 foresee that the dashing insolences of " we-dom " that we 
 should lose would be more than compensated by the delicate 
 impertinences of egotism that we should gain. We did not 
 
 40
 
 II THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 41 
 
 imagine the new and exquisite literary enjoyment that 
 would be created when a man of genius and ripe thought, 
 perhaps even elevated by a position of academic dignity, 
 should deliver profound truths and subtle observations with 
 all the dogmatic authority and self-confidence of a prophet : 
 at the same time titillating the public by something like 
 the airs and graces, the playful affectations of a favourite 
 comedian. "We did not, in short, foresee a Matthew Arnold : 
 and I think it must be allowed that our apprehensions have 
 been mucli removed, and our cause much strengthened, by 
 this new phenomenon. 
 
 I have called Mr. Arnold the prophet of culture : I will 
 not call him an " elegant Jeremiah," because he seems to 
 have been a little annoyed (he who is never annoyed) by 
 that phrase of the Daily TeUfiraph. " Jeremiah ! " he 
 exclaims, " the very Hebrew prophet whose style I admire 
 the least." I confess I thought the phrase tolerably felicitous 
 for a Philistine, from whom one would not expect any very 
 subtle discrimination of the differentiae of prophets. Nor 
 can I quite determine which Hebrew prophet Mr. Arnold 
 does most resemble. But it is certainly hard to compare him 
 to Jeremiah, for Jeremiah is our type of the lugubrious ; 
 whereas there is nothing more striking than the imperturb- 
 able cheerfulness with which Mr. Arnold seems to sustain 
 himself on the fragment of culture that is left him, amid 
 the deluge of Philistinism that he sees submerging our age 
 and country. A prophet however, I gather, Mr. Arnold 
 does not object to be called ; as such I wish to consider and 
 weigh him ; and thus I am led to examine the lecture with 
 which he has closed his connexion with Oxford, — the most 
 full, distinct, and complete of the various utterances in 
 which he has set forth the Gospel of Culture. 
 
 As it will clearly appear in the course of this article, how 
 highly I admire Mr. Arnold as a writer, I may say at once, 
 without reserve or qualification, that this utterance has dis- 
 appointed me very much. It is not even so good in style 
 as former essays ; it lias more of the mannerism of repeating 
 his own phrases, which, though very effective up to a certain
 
 42 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES ii 
 
 point, may be carried too far. But this is a small point : 
 and Mr. Arnold's style, when most faulty, is very charming. 
 My complaint is that, though there is much in it beautifully 
 and subtly said, and many fine glimpses of great truths, it 
 is, as a whole, ambitious, vague, and perverse. It seems to 
 me over-ambitious, because it treats of the most profound 
 and difficult problems of individual and social life with an 
 airy dogmatism that ignores their depth and difficulty. And 
 though dogmatic, Mr. Arnold is yet vague ; because when he 
 employs indefinite terms he does not attempt to limit their 
 indefiniteness, but rather avails himself of it. Thus he speaks 
 of the relation of culture and religion, and sums it up by 
 saying, that the idea of culture is destined to " transform 
 and govern " the idea of religion. Now I do not wish to be 
 pedantic; and I think that we may discuss culture and religion, 
 and feel that we are talking about the same social and intel- 
 lectual facts, without attempting any rigorous definition of 
 our terms. But there is one indefiniteness that oufrht to be 
 avoided. When we speak of culture and religion in common 
 conversation, we sometimes refer to an ideal state of things 
 and sometimes to an actual. But if we are appraising, 
 weighing, as it were, these two, one with the other, it is 
 necessary to know whether it is the ideal or the actual that 
 we are weighing. When I say ideal, I do not mean some- 
 thing that is not realised at all by individuals at present, 
 but something not realised sufficiently to be much called to 
 mind by the term denoting the general social fact, I think 
 it clear that Mr. Arnold, when he speaks of culture, is 
 speaking sometimes of an ideal, sometimes of an actual 
 culture, and does not always know which. He describes it 
 in one page as " a study of perfection, moving by the force, 
 not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure 
 knowledge, but of the moral and social passion for doing 
 good." A study of this vast aim, moving with the impetus 
 of this double passion, is something that does, I hope, exist 
 among us, but to a limited extent ; it is hardly that which 
 has got itself stamped and recognised as culture. And Mr. 
 Arnold afterwards admits as much. For we might have
 
 II THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 43 
 
 thought, from the words I have quoted, tliat we had in 
 culture, thus possessed by the passion of doing good, a 
 mighty social power, continually tending to make " reason 
 and the will of God prevail." But we find that this power 
 only acts in fine weather. " It needs times of faith and 
 ardour to flourish in." Exactly ; it is not itself a spring 
 and source of faith and ardour. Culture " Lelieves " in 
 making reason and the will of God prevail, and will even 
 " endeavour " to make them prevail, but it must be under 
 very favourable circumstances. This is rather a languid 
 form of the passion of doing good ; and we feel that we 
 have passed from the ideal culture, towards which Mr. 
 Arnold aspires, to the actual culture in which he lives and 
 moves. 
 
 Mr. Arnold afterwards explains to us a little further 
 how much of the passion for doing good culture involves, 
 and how it involves it. " Men are all members of one 
 great whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature 
 will not allow one member to be indifferent to the rest, or 
 to have a perfect welfare independent of the rest. . . . The 
 individual is obliged, under pain of being stunted and 
 enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys, to carry 
 others along with him in his march towards perfection." 
 These phrases are true of culture as we know it. In using 
 them Mr. Arnold assumes implicitly what, perhaps, should 
 have been expressly avowed — that the study of perfection, 
 as it forms itself in members of the human race, is naturally 
 and primarily a study of the individual's perfection, and only 
 incidentally and secondarily a study of the general perfec- 
 tion of humanity. It is so incidentally and secondarily for 
 the two reasons Mr. Arnold gives, one internal and the other 
 external : first, because it finds sympathy as one element of 
 the human nature that it desires harmoniously to develop ; 
 and secondly, because the development of one individual is 
 bound up by the laws of the universe with the development 
 of at least some other individuals. Still the root of culture, 
 when examined ethically, is found to be a refined eudie- 
 monism : in it the social impulse springs out of and re-enters
 
 44 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES U 
 
 into the self-regarding, which remains predominant. That 
 is, I think, the way in which the love of culture is generally 
 developed : an exquisite pleasure is experienced in refined 
 states of thought and feeling, and a desire for this pleasure 
 is generated, which may amount to a passion, and lead to 
 the utmost intellectual and moral ejffort. Mr. Arnold may, 
 perhaps, urge (and I would allow it true in certain cases) 
 that the direct impulse towards perfection, whether realised in 
 a man's self or in the world around, may inspire and impas- 
 sion some minds, without any consideration of the enjoy- 
 ment connected with it. In any case, it must be admitted 
 that the impulse toward perfection in a man of culture is not 
 practically limited to himself, but tends to expand in in- 
 finitely increasing circles. It is the w4sh of culture, taking 
 ever wider and wider sweeps, to carry the whole race, the 
 whole universe, harmoniously towards perfection. 
 
 And, if it were possible that all men, under all circum- 
 stances, should feel what some men, in some fortunate 
 spheres, may truly feel — that there is no conflict, no 
 antagonism, between the full development of the individual 
 and the progress of the world — I should be loth to hint at 
 any jar or discord in this harmonious movement. But this 
 paradisaical state of culture is rare. We dwell in it a little 
 space, and then it vanishes into the ideal. Life shows us 
 the conflict and the discord : on one side are the claims of 
 harmonious self-development, on the other the cries of 
 struggling humanity : we have hitherto let our sympathies 
 expand along with our other refined instincts, but now they 
 threaten to sweep us into regions from which those refined 
 instincts shrink. Not that harmonious self-development 
 calls on us to crush our sympathies ; it asks only that they 
 should be a little repressed, a little kept under : we may 
 become (as Mr. Arnold delicately words it) philanthropists 
 " tempered by renouncement." There is much useful and 
 important work to be done, which may be done harmoniously: 
 still we cannot honestly say that this seems to us the most 
 useful, the most important work, or what in the interests of 
 the world is most pressingly entreated and demanded. This
 
 II THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 45 
 
 latter, if doue at all, must be done as self-sacrifice, not as 
 self-development. And so we are brought face to face with 
 the most momentous and profound problem of ethics. 
 
 It is at this point, I think, that the relation of culture 
 and religion is clearly tested and defined. Culture (if I 
 have understood and analysed it rightly) inevitably takes 
 one course. It recognises with a sigli the limits of self- 
 development, and its first enthusiasm becomes " tempered 
 by renouncement." Ileligion, of which the essence is self- 
 sacrifice, inevitably takes the other course. We see this 
 daily realised in practice : we see those we know and love, 
 we see the elite of humanity in history and literature, 
 coming to tliis question, and after a struggle answering it : 
 going, if they are strong clear souls, some one way and some 
 the other ; if they are irresolute, vacillating and " moving 
 in a strange diagonal " between the two. It is because he 
 ignores this antagonism, which seems to me so clear and 
 undeniable if stated without the needless and perilous 
 exaggerations which preachers liave used about it, that I 
 have called Mr. Arnold perverse. A philosopher ^ with 
 whom he is more familiar than I am speaks, I think, of 
 " the reconciliation of antagonisms " as the essential feature 
 of the most important steps in the progress of humanity. 
 I seem to see profound truth in this conception, and perliaps 
 Mr. Arnold has intended to realise it. But, in order to 
 reconcile antagonisms, it is needful to probe tliem to the 
 bottom ; whereas Mr. Arnold skims over them with a lightly- 
 won tranquillity that irritates instead of soothing. 
 
 Of course we are all continually trying to reconcile this 
 and other antagonisms, and many persuade themselves that 
 they have found a reconciliation. The religious man tells 
 himself that in obeying the instinct of self-sacrifice he has 
 chosen true culture, and the man of culture tells himself 
 that by seeking self-development he is really taking the 
 best course to " make reason and the will of God prevail." 
 But I do not think either is quite convinced. I think each 
 dimly feels that it is necessary for the world that the other 
 
 ' Hegel.
 
 46 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 II 
 
 line of life should be chosen by some, and each and all look 
 forward with yearning to a time when circumstances shall 
 have become kinder and more pliable to our desires, and 
 when the complex impulses of humanity that we share shall 
 have been chastened and purified into something more easy 
 to harmonise. And sometimes the human race seems to the 
 eye of enthusiasm so very near this consummation : it seems 
 that if just a few simple things were done it would reach it. 
 But these simple things prove mountains of difficulty ; and 
 the end is far off I remember saying to a friend once — a 
 man of deep culture — tliat his was a " fair-weather theory 
 of life." He answered with much earnestness, " We mean 
 it to be fair weather henceforth." And I hope the skies are 
 growing clearer every century ; but meanwhile there is much 
 storm and darkness yet, and we want — the world wants — 
 all the self-sacrifice that religion can stimulate. Culture 
 diffuses " sweetness and light " ; I do not undervalue these 
 blessings : but religion gives fire and strength, and the world 
 wauts fire and strength even more than sweetness and light. 
 Mr. Arnold feels this when he says that culture must "borrow 
 a devout energy " from religion ; l3ut devout energy, as Dr. 
 Newman somewhere says, is not to be borrowed. At the 
 same time, I trust that the ideal of culture and the ideal of 
 religion will continually approach one another : that culture 
 will keep developing its sympathy, and gain in fire and 
 strength ; that religion will teach that unnecessary self- 
 sacrifice is folly, and that whatever tends to make life harsh 
 and gloomy cometh of evil. And if we may allow that the 
 progress of culture is clearly in this direction, surely we may 
 say the same of religion. Indeed the exegetic artifices by 
 which the Hellenic view of life is introduced and allowed a 
 place in Christian preaching would sometimes be almost 
 ludicrous, if they were not touching, and if they were not, 
 on the whole, such a sign of a hopeful progress : of progress not 
 as yet, perhaps, very great or very satisfactory, but still very 
 distinct. I wish Mr. Arnold had recognised this. I do not 
 think he would then have said that culture would transform 
 and absorb religion, any more than that religion would
 
 n THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 47 
 
 transform aud absorb culture. To me the ultimate and 
 ideal relation of culture and religion is imaged like the 
 union of tlie golden and silver sides of the famous shield 
 — each leading to the same " orbed perfection " of actions 
 and results, but shining with a diverse splendour in the 
 light of its different principle. 
 
 Into the dithculties of this question I have barely- 
 entered ; but I hope I have shown the inadequacy of Mr. 
 Arnold's treatment of it. I think we shall be more per- 
 suaded of this inadequacy when we have considered how 
 he conceives of actual religion in the various forms in which 
 it exists among us. He has but one distinct thing to say 
 of them, — that they subdue the obvious faults of our 
 animality. They form a sort of spiritual police : that is 
 all. He says nothing of the emotional side of religion ; of 
 the infinite and infinitely varied vent which it gives, in its 
 various forms, for the deepest fountains of feeling. He says 
 nothing of its intellectual side : of the indefinite but inevit- 
 able questions about the world and human destiny into 
 which the eternal metaphysical problems form themselves 
 in minds of rudimentary development ; questions needing 
 confident answers — nay, imperatively demanding, it seems, 
 from age to age, different answers : of the actual facts of 
 psychological experience, so strangely mixed up with, and 
 expressed in, the mere conventional "jargon" of religion 
 (which he characterises with appropriate contempt) — how 
 the moral growth of men and nations, while profoundly 
 influenced and controlled by the formulie of traditional 
 religions, is yet obedient to laws of its own, and in its turn 
 reacts upon and modifies these formulae : of all this Mr. 
 Arnold does not give a hint. He may say that he is not 
 treating of religions, but of culture. But it may be replied 
 that he is treating of the relation of culture to religions ; 
 and that a man ought not to touch cursorily upon such a 
 question, much less to dogmatise placidly upon it, without 
 showing us that he has mastered the elements of the 
 problem. 
 
 I may, perhaps, illustrate my meaning by referring to
 
 48 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES ii 
 
 another essayist — one of the very few whom I consider 
 superior to Mr. Arnold — one who is as strongly attached to 
 culture as Mr. Arnold himself, and perhaps more passion- 
 ately, — M. Renan. It will be seen that I am not going to 
 quote a partisan. From " my countryman's " judgment of 
 our Protestant organisations I appeal boldly to a Frenchman 
 and an infidel. Let any one turn to M. Eenan's delicate, 
 tender, sympathetic studies of religious phenomena — I do 
 not refer to the Vie de JSsus, but to a much superior work, 
 the Essais d'Histoire religicuse, — he will feel, I think, how 
 coarse, shallow, unappreciative, is Mr. Arnold's summing up, 
 "they conquer the more obvious faults of our animality." 
 To take one special point. When Mr. Arnold is harping on 
 the " dissidence of Dissent," I recall the little phrase which 
 M. Eenan throws at the magnificent fabric of Bossuet's 
 attack upon Protestantism. " En France," he says, " on ne 
 comprend pas qu'on se divise pour si peu de chose." M. 
 Ptenan knows that ever since the reviving intellect of 
 Europe was turned upon theology, religious dissidence and 
 variation has meant religious life and force. Mr. Arnold, of 
 course, can find texts inculcating unity : how should unity 
 not be included in the ideal of a religion claiming to be 
 universal ? But Mr. Arnold, as a cultivated man, has read 
 the New Testament records with the light of German erudi- 
 tion, and knows how much unity was attained by the 
 Church in its fresh and fervent youth. Still, unity is a 
 part of the ideal even of the religion that came not to send 
 peace, but a sword : let us be grateful to any one who 
 keeps that in view, who keeps reminding us of that. But 
 it may be done without sneers. Mr. Arnold might know 
 (if he would only study them a little more closely and 
 tenderly) the passionate longing for unity that may be 
 cherished within small dissident organisations. I am not 
 defending them. I am not saying a word for separatism 
 against multitudinism. But those who feel that worship 
 ought to be the true expression of the convictions on which 
 it is based, and out of which it grows, and that in the 
 present fragmentary state of truth it is supremely difficult
 
 II THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 49 
 
 to reconcile unity of worship with sincerity of conviction — 
 those who know that the struggle to realise in combination 
 the ideals of truth and peace in many minds reaches the 
 pitch of agony — will hardly think that Mr. Arnold's taunt 
 is the less cruel because it is pointed with a text. 
 
 I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is as judged 
 by his own rules and principles that I venture to condemn 
 Mr. Arnold's treatment of our actual religions. He has said 
 that culture in its most limited phase is curiosity ; and I 
 quite sympathise in his effort to vindicate for this word the 
 more exalted meaning that the French give to it. Even of 
 the ideal culture he considers curiosity (if I understand him 
 rightly) to be the most essential, though not the noblest, 
 element. Well, then, I complain that in regard to some of 
 the most important elements of social life he has so little 
 curiosity ; and therefore so thin and superficial an apprecia- 
 tion of them. I do not mean that every cultivated man 
 ought to have formed for himself a theory of religion. 
 " Non omnia possumus omnes," and a man must, to some 
 extent, select the subjects that suit his special faculties. 
 ]^>ut every man of deep culture ought to have a conception 
 of the importance and intricacy of tlie religious problem, a 
 sense of the kind and amount of study that is required for 
 it, a tact to discriminate worthy and unworthy treatment of 
 it, an instinct which, if he has to touch on it, will guide 
 him round the lacun?e of apprehension that the limits of 
 his nature and leisure have rendered inevitable. Now this 
 cultivated tact, sense, instinct (Mr. Arnold could express my 
 meaning for me much more felicitously than I can for my- 
 self), he seems to me altogether to want on this topic. He 
 seems to me (if so humble a simile may be pardoned) to 
 judge of religious organisations as a dog judges of human 
 beings, chiefly by the scent. One admires in either case 
 the exquisite development of the organ, but feels that the 
 use of it for this particular object implies a curious, an 
 almost ludicrous, limitation of sympathy. When these 
 popular religions are brought before Mr. Arnold, he is 
 content to detect their strong odours of Philistinism and
 
 so ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES ii 
 
 vulgarity ; he will not stoop down and look into them ; he 
 is not sufficiently interested in their dynamical importance ; 
 he does not car^ to penetrate the secret of their fire and 
 strength, and learn the sources and effects of these ; much 
 less does he consider how sweetness and light may be added 
 without any loss of fire and strength. 
 
 This limitation of view in Mr. Arnold seems to me the 
 more extraordinary, when I compare it with the fervent 
 language he uses with respect to what is called, jpar excellence, 
 the Oxford movement. He even half associates himself 
 with the movement — or rather he half associates the move- 
 ment with himself. 
 
 It was directed, he rightly says, against " Liberalism as 
 Dr. Newman saw it." What was this ? " It was," he 
 explains, " the great middle class Liberalism, which had for 
 the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1 8 3 2 and 
 local self-government in politics ; in the social sphere free 
 trade, unrestricted competition, and the making of large 
 industrial fortunes ; in the religious sphere the dissidence of 
 Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." 
 Liberalism to Dr Newman may have meant something of all 
 this ; but what (as I infer from the Apologia) it more 
 especially meant to him was a much more intelligent force 
 than all these, which Mr. Arnold omits : and pour cause ; 
 for it was precisely that view of the functions of religion 
 and its place in the social organism in which Mr. Arnold 
 seems at least complacently to acquiesce. Liberalism, Dr. 
 Newman thought — and it seems to me true of one phase or 
 side of Liberalism — wished to extend just the languid 
 patronage to religion that Mr. Arnold does. What priest- 
 hoods were good for in the eyes of Liberalism were the 
 functions, as I have said, of spiritual police ; and that is all 
 Mr. Arnold thinks they are good for at present ; and even 
 in the future (unless I misunderstand him), if we want 
 more, he would have us come to culture. But Dr. New- 
 man knew that even the existing religions, far as they fell 
 below his ideal, were good for much more than this ; this 
 view of them seemed to him not only shallow and untrue,
 
 n THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 51 
 
 bat perilous, deadly, soul-destroying ; and inasmuch as it 
 commended itself to intellectual men, and was an intelligent 
 force, he fought against it, not, I think, with much sweetness 
 or light, but with a blind, eager, glowing asperity which, 
 tempered always by humility and candour, was and is very 
 impressive. Dr. Newman fought fur a point of view which 
 it required culture to appreciate, and therefore he fought in 
 some sense with culture ; but he did not fight for culture, 
 and to conceive him combating side by side with Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold is almost comical. 
 
 I think, then, that without saying more about religion, 
 Mr. Arnold might have said truer things about it ; and I 
 think also that without saying less about culture — we have 
 a strong need of all he can say to recommend it — he might 
 have shown that he was alive to one or two of its besetting 
 faults. And some notice of these might have strengthened 
 his case ; for he might have shown that the faults of culture 
 really arise from lack of culture ; and that more culture, 
 deeper and truer culture, removes them. I have ventured 
 to hint this in speaking of Mr. Arnold's tone about religion. 
 What I dislike in it seems to me, when examined, to be 
 exactly what he calls Philistinism ; just as when he com- 
 mences his last lecture before a great university by referring 
 to his petty literary squabbles, he seems to me guilty of what 
 he calls " provincialism." And so, again, the attitude that 
 culture often assumes towards enthusiasm in general seems 
 to spring from narrowness, from imperfection of culture. 
 The fostering care of culture, and a soft application of sweet- 
 ness and lis;ht, mirdit do so much for enthusiasm — enthu- 
 siasm does so much want it. Enthusiasm is often a turbid 
 issue of smoke and sparks. Culture might refine this to a 
 steady glow. It is melancholy when, instead, it takes to 
 pouring cold water on it. The worst result is not the 
 natural hissing and sputtering that ensues, though that 
 cannot be pleasing to culture or to anything else, but the 
 waste of power that is the inevitable consequence. 
 
 It is wrong to exaggerate the antagonism between 
 enthusiasm and culture ; because, in the first place, culture
 
 52 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES il 
 
 has an enthusiasm of its own, by virtue of which indeed, as 
 Mr. Arnold contemplates, it is presently to transcend and 
 absorb religion. But at present this enthusiasm, so far from 
 being adequate to this, is hardly sufficient — is often in- 
 sufficient — to prevent culture degenerating into dilettantism. 
 In the second place, culture has an appreciation of enthusi- 
 asm (with the source of which it has nothing to do), when 
 that enthusiasm is beautiful and picturesque, or thrilling 
 and sublime, as it often is. But the enthusiasm must be 
 very picturesque, very sublime ; upon some completed 
 excellence of form culture will rigorously insist. May it 
 not be that culture is short-sighted and pedantic in the 
 rigour of these demands, and thus really defeats its own 
 ends, just as it is often liable to do by purely artistic 
 pedantry and conventionality ? If it had larger and 
 healthier sympathies, it might see beauty in the stage 
 of becoming (if I may use a German phrase), in much 
 rough and violent work at which it now shudders. In pure 
 art culture is always erring on the side of antiquity — much 
 more in its sympathy with the actual life of men and 
 society. In some of the most beautiful lines he has 
 written, Owen Meredith expresses a truth that deserves to 
 be set in beautiful language : 
 
 I know that all acted time 
 By that which succeeds it is ever received 
 As calmer, completer, and more sublime, 
 Only because it is finished ; because 
 We only behold the thing it achieved, 
 We behold not the thing that it was. 
 For while it stands whole and immutable 
 In the marlde of memory, how can we tell 
 Wliat the men that have hewn at the block may have been ? 
 Their passion is merged in its passionlessness ; 
 Their strife in its stillness closed tor ever ; 
 Their change upon change in its changelessness ; 
 In its final achievement their feverish endeavour. 
 
 Passion, strife, feverish endeavour — surely in the midst of 
 these have been produced not only the rough blocks with 
 which the common world builds, but the jewels with which
 
 II THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 53 
 
 culture is adorned. Culture the other day thought Mr. 
 Garrison a very prosy aud uninteresting person, and did not 
 see why so much fuss should be made about him ; but I 
 should not be surprised if in a hundred years or so he were 
 found to be poetical and picturesque. 
 
 And I will go farther, aud plead for interests duller and 
 vulgarer than any fanaticism. 
 
 If any culture really has what Mr. Arnold in his finest 
 mood calls its noblest element, the passion for propagating 
 itself, for making itself prevail, then let it learn " to call 
 nothing common or unclean." It can only propagate itself 
 by shedding the light of its sympathy liberally ; by learning 
 to love common people and common things, to feel common 
 interests. Make people feel that their own poor life is ever 
 so little beautiful and poetical ; then they will begin to turn 
 and seek after the treasures of beauty and poetry outside 
 and above it. Pictorial culture is a little vexed at the 
 success of Mr. Frith's pictures, at the thousands of pounds 
 he gets, and the thousands of people that crowd to see them. 
 Now I do not myself admire Mr. Frith's pictures ; but I 
 think he diffuses culture more than some of his acid critics, 
 and I should like to think that he got twice as many pounds 
 and spectators. If any one of these grows eagerly fond of a 
 picture of Mr. Frith's, then, it seems to me, the infinite path 
 of culture is open to him ; I do not see why he should not 
 go on till he can conscientiously praise the works of Pietro 
 Perugino. But leaving Mr. Frith (and other painters and 
 novelists that might be ranked with him), let us consider a 
 much greater man, Macaulay. Culture has turned up its 
 nose a little at our latest English classic, and would, I 
 think, have done so more, but that it is touched and awed 
 by his wonderful devotion to literature. But Macaulay, 
 though he loved literature, loved also common people and 
 common things, and therefore he can make the common 
 people who live among common things love literature. 
 How Philistinish it is of him to be stirred to eloquence by 
 the thought of " the opulent and enlightened states of Italy, 
 the vast and magnificent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the
 
 54 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES il 
 
 villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with 
 every article of comfort and luxury, the factories swarming 
 with artisans, the Apennines covered with rich cultivation 
 up to their very summits, the Po wafting the harvest of 
 Lombardy to the granaries of Venice, and carrying back the 
 silks of Bengal and the furs of Siberia to the palaces of 
 Milan." But the Philistine's heart is opened by these 
 images ; through his heart a way is found to his taste ; 
 he learns how delightful a melodious current of stirring 
 words may be ; and then, when Macaulay asks him to 
 mourn for " the wit and the learnino- and the genius " of 
 Florence, he does not refuse faintly to mourn ; and so 
 Philistinism and culture kiss each other. 
 
 Again, when our greatest living poet " dips into the 
 future," what does he see ? 
 
 The heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales. 
 
 Why, it might be the vision of a young general merchant. 
 I doubt whether anything similar could be found in a 
 French or German poet (I might except Victor Hugo to 
 prove the rule) : he would not feel the image poetical, and 
 perhaps if he did, would not dare to say so. The Germans 
 have in their way immense honesty and breadth of sympathy, 
 and I like them for it. I like to be made to sympathise with 
 their middle-class enthusiasm for domestic life and bread- 
 and-butter. Let us be bold, and make them sjanpathise 
 with our middle-class affection for commerce and bustle. 
 
 Ah, I wish I could believe that Mr. Arnold was de- 
 scribing the ideal and not the actual, when he dwells on 
 the educational, the missionary, function of culture, and 
 says that its greatest passion is for making sweetness and 
 light prevail. For I think we might soon be agreed as to 
 how they may be made to prevail. Religions have been 
 propagated by the sword : but culture cannot be propagated 
 by the sword, nor by the pen sharpened and wielded like 
 an offensive weapon. Culture, like all spiritual gifts, can 
 only be propagated by enthusiasm : and by enthusiasm that
 
 II THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 55 
 
 has got rid of asperity, that has become sympathetic ; that 
 has got rid of Pharisaism, and become humble. I suppose 
 Mr. Arnold would hardly deny that in the attitude in 
 which lie shows himself, contemplating the wealthy Thilis- 
 tine through his eyeglass, he has at least a superficial 
 resemblance to a Pharisee. Let us not be too hard on 
 Pharisaism of any kind. It is better that religion should 
 be self-asserting than that it should be crushed and stifled 
 by rampant worldliuess ; and where the worship of wealth 
 is predominant it is perhaps a necessary antagonism that 
 intellect should be self-asserting. But I cannot see that 
 intellectual Pharisaism is any less injurious to true culture 
 than religious Pharisaism to true worship ; and when a 
 poet keeps congratulating himself that he is not a Philistine, 
 and pointing out (even exaggerating) all the differences 
 between himself and a Philistine, I ask myself, Where is 
 the sweetness of culture ? For the moment it seems to 
 have turned sour. 
 
 Perhaps what is most disappointing in our culture is its 
 want of appreciation of the " sap of progress," the creative 
 and active element of things. We all remember the pro- 
 found epigram of Agassiz, that the world in dealing with a 
 new truth passes through three stages : it first says that it 
 is not true, then that it is contrary to religion, and finally, 
 that we knew it before. Culture is raised above the first 
 two stages, but it is apt to disport itself complacently in 
 the third. " Culture," we are told, " is always assigning to 
 the system-maker and his system a smaller share in the 
 bent of human destiny than their friends like." Quite so : 
 a most useful function : but culture does this with so much 
 zest that it is continually overdoing it. The system-maker 
 may be compared to a man who sees that mankind want a 
 house built. He erects a scaffolding with much unassisted 
 labour, and begins to build. The scaffbldin«T is often un- 
 necessarily large and clumsy, and the system-maker is apt 
 to keep it up much longer than it is needed. Culture 
 looks at the unsightly structure with contempt, and from 
 time to time kicks over some useless piece of timber. The
 
 56 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES ii 
 
 house, however, gets built, is seen to be serviceable, and 
 culture is soon found benevolently diffusing svi^eetness and 
 light through the apartments. I'or culture perceives the 
 need of houses ; and is even ready to say in its royal way, 
 ' Let suitable mansions be prepared ; only without this 
 eternal hammering, these obtrusive stones and timber.' 
 We must not forget, however, that construction and de- 
 struction are treated with equal impartiality. When a 
 miserable fanatic has knocked down some social abuse with 
 much peril of life and limb, culture is good enough to point 
 out to him that he need not have taken so much trouble : 
 culture had seen the thing was falling ; it would soon have 
 fallen of its own accord ; the crash has been unpleasant, 
 and raised a good deal of disagreeable dust. 
 
 All this criticism of action is very valuable ; but it is 
 usually given in excess, just because, I think, culture is a 
 little sore in conscience, is uncomfortably eager to excuse 
 its own evident incapacity for action. Culture is always 
 hinting at a convenient season, that rarely seems to arrive. 
 It is always suggesting one decisive blow that is to 
 be gracefully given ; but it is so difficult to strike quite 
 harmoniously, and without some derangement of attitude. 
 Hence an instinctive, and, I think, irrational, discourage- 
 ment of the action upon which less cultivated people are 
 meanwhile spending themselves. For what does action, 
 social action, really mean ? It means losing oneself in a 
 mass of disagreeable, hard, mechanical details, and trying to 
 influence many dull or careless or bigoted people for the 
 sake of ends that were at first of doubtful brilliancy, and 
 are continually being dimmed and dwarfed by the clouds of 
 conflict. Is this the kind of thing to which human nature 
 is desperately prone, and into which it is continually 
 rushing with perilous avidity ? Mr. Arnold may say that 
 he does not discourage action, but only asks for delay, in 
 order that we may act with sufficient knowledge. This is 
 the eternal excuse of indolence — insufficient knowledge : 
 still, taken cautiously, the warning is valuable, and we may 
 thank Mr. Arnold for it : we cannot be too much stimu-
 
 11 THE PROPHET OF CULTURE 57 
 
 lated to study the laws of the social phenomena that we 
 wish to modify, in order that " reason the card " may be as 
 complete and accurate as possible. But we remember that 
 we have heard all this before at much leni,'th from a very 
 different sort of prophet. It has been preached to us by a 
 school small, but energetic (energetic to a degree that 
 causes Mr. Arnold to scream ' Jacobinism ! ') : and the 
 preaching has been not in the name of culture, but in the 
 name of religion and self-sacrifice. 
 
 I do not ask much sympathy for the people of action 
 from the people of culture : I will show by an example 
 how much. Paley somewhere, in one of his optimistic 
 expositions of the comfortableness of things, remarks, that 
 if he is ever inclined to grumble at his taxes, when he gets 
 his newspaper he feels repaid ; he feels that he could not 
 lay out the money better than in purchasing the spectacle 
 of all this varied life and bustle. There are more taxes 
 now, but there are more and bigger newspapers : let us 
 hope that Paley would still consider the account balanced. 
 Now, might not Mr. Arnold imbibe a little of this pleasant 
 spirit? As it is, no one who is doing anything can feel 
 that Mr. Arnold hearing of it is the least bit more content 
 to pay his taxes — that is, unless he is doing it in some 
 supremely graceful and harmonious way. 
 
 One cannot think on this subject without recalling the 
 great man who recommended to philosophy a position 
 very similar to that now claimed for culture. I wish to 
 give Mr. Arnold the full benefit of his resemblance to 
 Plato. But when we look closer at the two positions, the 
 dissimilarity comes out : they have a very different effect 
 on our feelings and imagination ; and I confess I feel more 
 sympathy with the melancholy philosopher looking out with 
 hopeless placidity " from beneath the shelter of some wall " 
 on the storms and dust-clouds of blind and selfish conflict, 
 than with a cheerful modern liberal, tempered by renounce- 
 ment, shuddering aloof from the rank exhalations of vulgar 
 enthusiasm, and holding up the pouncet-box of culture 
 betwixt the wind and his nobility.
 
 58 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES n 
 
 To prolong this fault-finding would be neither pleasant 
 nor profitable. But perhaps many who love culture much 
 — and respect the enthusiasm of those who love it more — 
 may be sorry when it is brought into antagonism with 
 things that are more dear to them even than culture. I 
 think Mr. Arnold wishes for the reconciliation of antago- 
 nisms : I think that in many respects, with his subtle 
 eloquence, his breadth of view, and above all his admirable 
 temper, he is excellently fitted to reconcile antagonisms ; 
 and therefore I am vexed when I find him, in an access of 
 dilettante humour, doing not a little to exasperate and 
 exacerbate them, and dropping from the prophet of an 
 ideal culture into a more or less prejudiced advocate of 
 the actual.
 
 TIT 
 
 THE POEMS AND PEOSE REMAINS OF ARTHUR 
 
 HUGH CLOUGH^ 
 
 ( Westminster Review, October 1869) 
 
 These two volumes contain all that will now be given to 
 the world of a very rare and remarkable mind. The editor 
 has, we think, exercised a wise confidence in transgressing 
 what is usually a safe rule in posthumous publications, and 
 including in the volume some prose that the author had 
 probably not composed for permanence, and some verse that 
 is either palpably unfinished, or at any rate not stamped 
 with the author's final approval. Clough's productive im- 
 pulse was not energetic, and only operated under favourable 
 conditions, which the circumstances of his life but scantily 
 afforded. Therefore the sum-total of his remains, when all 
 is included, does not form an unwieldy book ; and on the 
 other hand his work is so sincere and independent that 
 even when the result is least interesting it does not dis- 
 appoint, while his production is always so rigidly in ac- 
 cordance with the inner laws of his nature, and expresses 
 so faithfully the working of his mind, that nothing we have 
 here could have been spared, without a loss of at least bio- 
 graphical completeness. There is much that will hardly be 
 interesting, except to those who have been powerfully 
 infiuenced by the individuality of the author. But the 
 number of such persons (as every evidence shows), has not 
 
 ^ The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a Selection 
 from his Letters, and a Memoir. Edited by his Wife. London : JIacmillan 
 and Co. 1869. 
 
 59
 
 6o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES iii 
 
 diminished, but largely increased during the ten years that 
 have elapsed since his death : the circle of interest has 
 gone on widening without becoming fainter, and now in- 
 cludes no small portion of a younger generation, to whom 
 especially the publication of these volumes will afford 
 timely and welcome gratification. 
 
 The tentative and gradual process by which Clough's 
 remains have been published is evidence and natural result 
 of the slow growth of his popularity. For this there seem 
 to have been several reasons. It is partly due to the 
 subject-matter of his writings. He was in a very literal 
 sense before his age. His point of view and habit of mind 
 are less singular in England in the year 1869 than they 
 were in 1859, and much less than they were in 1849. 
 We are growing year by year more introspective and 
 self-conscious : the current philosophy leads us to a close, 
 patient, and impartial observation and analysis of our 
 luental processes : and the current philosophy is partly the 
 effect and partly the cause of a more widespread tendency. 
 We are "rowing at the same time more unreserved and 
 unveiled in our expression : in conversations, in journals 
 and books, we more and more say and write what we 
 actually do think and feel, and not what we intend to 
 think or should desire to feel. We are growing also more 
 sceptical in the proper sense of the word : we suspend our 
 judgment much more than our predecessors, and much more 
 contentedly : we see that there are many sides to many 
 questions : the opinions that we do hold we hold if not 
 more loosely, at least more at arm's length : we can imagine 
 how they appear to others, and can conceive ourselves not 
 holding them. We are losing in faith and confidence : if 
 we are not failing in hope, our hopes at least are becoming 
 more indefinite ; and we are gaining in impartiality and 
 comprehensiveness of sympathy. In each of these respects, 
 Clough, if he were still alive, would find himself gradually 
 more and more at home in the changing world. In the 
 second place his style, at least in his longer poems, is, 
 though without any affectation, very peculiar : at the same
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH C LOUGH 6i 
 
 time he has not sufficient loudness of utterance to compel 
 public attention. Such a style is naturally slow in making 
 way. Even a sympathising reader has to get accustomed 
 to its oddities before he can properly feel its beauties. 
 Afterwards, if it has real excellence, its peculiarity becomes 
 an additional charm. Again, the chief excellence of Clough's 
 style lies in a very delicate and precise adaptation of form 
 to matter, attained with felicitous freshness and singular 
 simplicity of manner ; it has little superficial brilliancy 
 wlierewith to captivate a reader who through carelessness 
 or want of sympathy fails to apprehend the nuance of 
 feeling. 
 
 To this we may perhaps add, that the tone which many 
 of Clough's personal friends have adopted in speaking of 
 the author and his writings has, though partly the result, 
 been also partly the cause of the slow growth of their 
 popularity. It was, for example, certainly a misfortune 
 that in issuing the first posthumous edition of these poems, 
 Mrs. Clougli prefaced them with a notice by Mr. Palgrave, 
 a critic of much merit, but quite inappreciative of his 
 friend's peculiar genius, and whose voluble dogmatism 
 renders his well-meant patronage particularly depressing. 
 There is a natural disposition among personal friends to 
 dwell upon unrealised possibilities, and exalt what a man 
 would, could, or should have done at the expense of what 
 he actually did ; and to this in Clough's case circumstances 
 were very favourable. In the first place he produced very 
 little, and the habit of demanding from candidates for 
 literary fame a certain quantum of production seems in- 
 veterate, though past experience has shown the fallacy of 
 the demand, and we may expect it to become still more 
 patent in the future. Indeed, if we continue as we are 
 now doing, to extend our own literary production and our 
 sympathy and familiarity with past and alien literature 
 fari passu, the reader of the future will have so much 
 difficulty in distributing his time among the crowd of 
 immortal works, that he certainly will contract a dislike 
 to the more voluminous. And in the case of poems like
 
 62 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES in 
 
 these, that are attractive chiefly because they are charac- 
 teristical and representative, because they express in an 
 original and appropriate manner a side of human life, a 
 department of thought and feeling, that waited for poetical 
 expression, voluminous production seems not only unneces- 
 sary but even dangerous. On a subjective poet continence 
 should especially be enjoined ; if he writes much he is in 
 danger of repeating words or tune ; if he tries to write 
 much he is in danger of mistaking his faculties and forcing 
 his inspiration. 
 
 But besides this scantiness of production, there is much 
 in the external aspect of Clough's career which justifies the 
 disposition to regard his life as "wasted" — at best an interest- 
 ing failure. We have before us a man always trying to solve 
 insoluble problems, and reconcile secular antagonisms, ponder- 
 ing the " uralte ewige Eathsel " of existence, at once inert 
 and restless, finding no fixed basis for life nor elevated sphere 
 of action, tossed from one occupation to another, and ex- 
 hausting his energies in work that brought little money and 
 no fame ; a man who cannot suit himself to the world nor 
 the world to him, who will neither heartily accept mundane 
 conditions and pursue the objects of ordinary mankind, nor 
 effectively reject them as a devotee of something definite ; 
 a dreamer who will not even dream pleasant dreams, a man 
 who " makes the worst of both worlds." 
 
 This is no doubt a natural complaint from a practical 
 point of view, but it ignores the fact that the source of 
 Clough's literary originality and importance lies precisely in 
 what unfitted him for practical success. He was overweighted 
 with certain impulses, felt certain feelings with a too ab- 
 sorbing and prolonged intensity; but the impulses were 
 noble, at least an " infirmity of noble minds "; they are inci- 
 dent to most fine natures at a certain stage of their develop- 
 ment, and generally are not repressed without a certain 
 sense of loss and sacrifice. This phase of feeling is worthy 
 of being worthily expressed, and it is natural that it should 
 be so expressed by one who feels it more strongly than 
 other men — too strongly for his own individual happiness.
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CHOUGH 63 
 
 It is the same with other phases of feeling. Out of many 
 poets there are few Goethes ; the most are sacrificed in 
 some sort to their poetical function, and it is but a common- 
 place sympathy that loudly regrets it. Those at any rate 
 who had no personal knowledge of Clough, may recognise 
 that this life, apparently so inharmonious, was really in the 
 truest harmony with the work that nature gave him to do. 
 In one sense, no doubt, that work was incomplete and frag- 
 mentary ; the effort of tlie man who ponders insoluble 
 problems, and spends his passion on the vain endeavour to 
 reconcile aspirations and actualities, must necessarily be so ; 
 the incompleteness is essential, not accidental. But his 
 expression of what he had to express is scarcely incomplete, 
 and though we have no doubt lost something by his premature 
 death we can hardly think that we have lost the best he had 
 to give. His poetical utterance was connected by an inner 
 necessity with his personal experience, and he had already 
 passed into a phase of thought and feeling which could 
 hardly lead to artistic expression so penetrating and stirring 
 as his earlier poems. 
 
 But we shall better discuss this question after a closer 
 examination of his work, of what he had to express and how 
 he expressed it. 
 
 In this examination we shall treat Clough as a poet. It 
 is necessary to premise this, because he was a philosophic 
 poet, — a being about whose nature and raison cVetre the 
 critical world is not thoroughly agreed. Philosophic poetry 
 is often treated as if it was versified philosophy, as if its 
 primary function was to ' convey ideas,' the only question 
 being whether these should be conveyed with or without 
 metre. Proceeding on this assumption, an influential sect 
 maintains that there ought to be no philosophic poetry at 
 all ; that the ' ideas ' it ' conveys ' had much better seek 
 the channel of prose. To us it seems that what poetry has 
 to communicate is not ideas but moods and feelings ; and 
 that if a feeling reaches sufficient intensity, whatever be its 
 specific quality, it is adapted for a poetical form, though 
 highly intellectual moods are harder to mould to the con-
 
 64 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES ill 
 
 ditions of metrical expression than others. The question is 
 often raised, especially at the present day, when our leading 
 poets are philosophic, whether such and such a poem — 
 say Browning's Christinas Eve, or parts of In Memoriam 
 — would not have been better in prose. And the question 
 is often a fair one for discussion, but a wrong criterion is 
 used for determining it. If such a poem is really unpoeti- 
 cal, it is not because it contains too much thought, but 
 too little feeling to steep and penetrate the thought. Tried 
 by this test, a good deal of Browning's thought-laden verse, 
 and some of Tennyson's, will appear not truly poetical ; the 
 feeling is not adequate. Although Clough sometimes fails 
 in this way, it may generally be said that with him the 
 greater the contention of thought, the more intense is the 
 feeling transfused through it. He becomes unpoetical 
 chiefly when he becomes less eagerly intellectual, when he 
 lapses for a moment into mild optimism, or any form of 
 languid contentment ; or when like Wordsworth he caresses 
 a rather too trivial mood ; very rarely when the depths of 
 his mind are stirred. He is, then, pre-eminently a philo- 
 sophic poet, communicator of moods that depend on profound 
 and complex trains of reflection, abstract and highly refined 
 speculations, subtle intellectual perceptions, and that cannot 
 be felt unless these are properly apprehended. He is to a 
 great extent a poet for thinkers ; but he moves them not 
 as a thinker, but as a poet. 
 
 We do not mean to say that Clough was not a thinker ; 
 but the term was somewhat indefinite, and in one sense he 
 was not. His mind brooded over a few great questions, and 
 was rather finely receptive than eagerly discursive ; he did 
 not enjoy the mere exercise of thought for its own sake. 
 This is evidenced by the first of the volumes before us, 
 especially the letters, which, except in the rare instances 
 where he drops to his habitual depth of meditation, are 
 perhaps somewhat disappointing. There is humour in them, 
 but the vein is thin ; and subtlety, perpetual subtlety, and 
 from time to time a pleasant flow of characteristically 
 whimsical fancy ; there is also a permanent accuracy, pro-
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH C LOUGH 65 
 
 priety, justesse of observation, remarkable in compositions so 
 carelessly thrown off; but fertility and rapid movement of 
 ideas are wanting. They do not seem the work of a mind 
 that ranges with pleasure and vigour over all subjects that 
 come in its way. The critical essays, again, that have been 
 republished, though exceedingly just, careful, and indepen- 
 dent, and therefore always worth reading, are not very 
 striking ; with the exception of occasional passages where 
 passionate utterance is given to some great general truth. 
 But though he was too much of a poet to care greatly for 
 the mere exercise of the cognitive faculties, though no one 
 could less have adopted the " philosopher's paradox " of 
 Lessing, we may still call him philosophic from his pas- 
 sionate devotion not to search after truth, but to truth 
 itself — absolute, exact truth. He was philosophic in his 
 horror of illusions and deceptions of all kinds ; in his per- 
 petual watchfulness against prejudices and prepossessions ; 
 against the Idols, as Bacon calls them, of the Cave and the 
 Theatre, as well as of the Tribe and the Market-place. He 
 was made for a free-thinker rather than a scientific inquirer. 
 His skill lay in balancing assertions, comparing points of 
 view, sifting gold from dross in the intellectual products 
 presented to him, rejecting the rhetorical, defining the vague, 
 paring away the exaggerative, reducing theory and argument 
 to their simplest form, their " lowest terms." " Lumen 
 siccum," as he calls it in one of his poems, is the object of 
 his painful search, his eager hope, his anxious loyalty. 
 
 The intellectual function, then, which Clough naturally 
 assumed was scepticism of the Socratic sort — scepticism occu- 
 pied about problems on which grave practical issues depended. 
 The fundamental assumptions involved in men's habitual 
 lines of endeavour, which determined their ends and guided 
 the formation of their rules, he was continually endeavouring 
 to clear from error, and fix upon a sound basis. He would 
 not accept either false solutions or no solutions, nor, unless 
 very reluctantly, provisional solutions. At the same time, 
 he saw just as clearly as other men that the continued con- 
 templation of insoluble problems is not merely unpractical, 
 
 F
 
 66 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES m 
 
 but anti-practical ; and that a healthy and natural instinct 
 forces most men, after a few years of feverish youthful 
 agitation, resolutely to turn away from it. But with this 
 instinct Clough's fine passion for absolute truth conflicted ; 
 if he saw two sides of a question, he must keep seeking a 
 point of view from which they might be harmonised. In 
 one of the most impressive of the poems classed in this 
 edition as Songs in Absence, he describes his disposition 
 
 To finger idly some old Gordian knot, 
 Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave ; 
 
 but the reluctance to cleave knots, in the speculative sphere, 
 does not proceed from weakness. 
 
 It is this supreme loyalty to reason, combining and con- 
 flicting with the most comprehensive and profound sympathy 
 with other elements of human nature, that constitutes the 
 peculiar charm of Clough's scepticism, and its peculiar 
 adaptation to poetical expression. Towards the beliefs to 
 which other men were led by their desires, he was as 
 strongly, or more strongly, impelled than others ; the asser- 
 tions in which they formulated their hopes he would gladly 
 have made with the same cheerful dogmatism. His yearn- 
 ing for the ideal he never tried to quench or satisfy with 
 aught but its proper satisfaction ; but meanwhile the claims 
 of the real, to be accepted as real, are paramount. He 
 clings to the " beauty of his dreams ; " but — two and two 
 make four. It is the painfulness, and yet inevitableness of 
 this conflict, the childlike simplicity and submissiveness with 
 which he yields himself up to it ; the patient tenacity with 
 which he refuses to quit his hold of any of the conflicting 
 elements ; the consistency with which it is carried into 
 every department of life ; the strange mixture of sympathy 
 and want of sympathy with his fellow-creatures that neces- 
 sarily accompanies it — that makes the moods which he has 
 expressed in verse so rare, complex, subtle, and intense. 
 
 We may classify these moods, according to a division 
 suggested by this edition, into first, those of religious scepti- 
 cism, where the philosophic impulse is in conflict with the
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 67 
 
 mystical; secondly, those of ethical scepticism, where it 
 contends with habitual active principles ; thirdly, those 
 where it is perplexed with the most clamorous and absorb- 
 ing of human enthusiasms, the passion which forms the 
 peculiar topic of poetry. It is this latter division that at 
 once completes the consistency of Clough's scepticism, and 
 forms its most novel, original, and least understood applica- 
 tion. As he himself says, not only " saint and sage," but 
 also " poet's dreams," 
 
 Divide the light in coloured streams ; 
 
 the votary of truth must seek " lumen siccum." 
 
 The personal history of Clough's religious scepticism has 
 rather to be guessed than known from the records of his 
 life that lie before us. The memoir prefixed to the volume, 
 written with great delicacy and dignity, but with an un- 
 reserve and anxious exactness in describing his phases of 
 thought and feeling worthy of the subject and most grateful 
 to the reader, can tell us little on this head. Nor do the 
 letters that lead us up to the time when he must in effect 
 have abandoned the beliefs of his childhood at all prepare 
 us for so deep a change. At Rugby he seems to have 
 yielded himself entirely to the influence of Arnold, and to 
 have embraced with zealous docility the view of life which 
 that remarkable man impressed so strongly, for good or for 
 evil, on his more susceptible pupils. But though some- 
 what over-solemn and prematurely earnest, like many Rugby 
 boys of the time, he was saved from priggishness by his 
 perfect simplicity. At Balliol he shows nothing of the 
 impulsiveness, vehemence, and restlessness, the spirit of 
 dispute and revolt, which are supposed to precede and 
 introduce deliberate infidelity. Thrown upon Oxford at the 
 time when the " Newmanitish phantasm," as he calls it, 
 was startling and exciting Young England, he writes of the 
 movement to his friends with a mild and sober eclecticism — 
 a tranquil juste-milieii temper which would become a dean. 
 He is candidly observant, gives measured admiration for good 
 points, notes extravagances, suggests the proper antidotes,
 
 68 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 HI 
 
 seems disposed, on the whole, to keep out of the atmos- 
 phere of controversy and devote himself to his studies. 
 Nothing could give smoother promise of untroubled ortho- 
 doxy. It is true that he speaks of being " exhausted by 
 the vortex of philosophism "; and he must have been much 
 more powerfully influenced by Newmanism. than these 
 letters indicate. He said afterwards, that for two years of 
 this time he had been " like a straw drawn up the vortex 
 of a chimney." His mind seems habitually to have been 
 swayed by large, slow, deep-sea currents, the surface remain- 
 ing placid, even tame ; such a steady hidden movement it 
 seems to have been that floated him away from his old 
 moorings of belief. Gradually or suddenly the theologico- 
 juridical, ecclesiastico-mystical dialectics that went on around 
 him became shadowy and unreal : all his religious needs, 
 hopes, aspirations remaining the same, a new view of the 
 universe, with slowly accumulating force, impressed itself 
 irresistibly on his mind, with which not only the intellectual 
 beliefs entwined with these needs and aspirations seemed 
 incompatible, but even these latter fundamentally in- 
 congruous. And thus began a conflict between old and 
 new that was to last his life, the various moods of which 
 the series of his religious poems, solemn, passionate, and 
 ironical, accurately expresses.'^ 
 
 Perhaps the first characteristic that we notice in these 
 is their rare reality and spontaneity. We feel that they 
 are uttered, just as they appear, from an inner necessity; 
 there was no choice to say them or not to say them. With 
 
 1 A similar account is to be given of another event in his life, his abandonment 
 of outward conformity to Anglicanism and its material appurtenances of an Oriel 
 fellowship and tutorship. No reader of his life and writings can doubt that with 
 him this step was necessarily involved in the change of opinions : yet many years 
 elapsed between the two, and his biogi\apher thinks that it was "some-half- 
 accidental confirmation of his doubts as to the honesty and usefulness of his 
 course " that finally led him to resignation. Such accident can surely have been 
 but the immediate occasion, expressing the slow hidden gro\si;h of resolve. Lax 
 subscription to articles was the way of Clough's world : and it belonged to his 
 balanced temper to follow the way of his world for a time, not approving, but 
 provisionally submitting and experimentalising. To do what others do till its 
 unsatisfactoriness has been thoroughly proved, and then suddenly to refuse to do 
 it any longer, is not exactly heroic, nor is it the way to make life pleasant ; but 
 as a xna media lietween fanaticism and worldliness, it would naturally commend 
 itself to a mind like Clough's.
 
 in ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 69 
 
 some poets religious unbelief or doubt seems an abiding 
 attitude of intellect, but only occasionally to engross the 
 heart ; their utterances have the gusty force of transitory 
 passion, not the vitality of permanent feeling. But with 
 Clough it is different : the whole man is in the poems — they 
 spring from the very core of his being. The levity of some 
 of them is as touching as the solemnity of others ; it is 
 a surface - mood, showing explored depths beneath it, in 
 which an unrestful spirit finds momentary relief Another 
 characteristic is, that over the saddest cries of regret and 
 struggles of checked aspiration is spread a certain tran- 
 quillity — not of hope, still less of despair, but a tranquillity 
 that has something Aristotelian in it, the tranquillity of 
 intellectual contemplation. It is curious, for example, to 
 contrast the imperishable complaint of Alfred de Musset — 
 
 Quand j'ai connu la verite, 
 J'ai cru que c'etait une amie ; 
 Quand je I'ai comprise et sentie, 
 J'en otais dfya degoiltd ; 
 
 with Clough's 
 
 It fortifies my soul to know 
 That, though I perish, Truth is so. 
 
 The known order of the world, even without the certainty 
 of a personal God, source or correlate of that order, afforded 
 somewliat of philosophic satisfaction, however little it could 
 content the yearnings of his soul. It was a sort of terra 
 firma, on which he could set his feet, while his eyes gazed 
 with patient scrutiny into the unanswering void. Further, 
 we remark in these moods their balanced, complex char- 
 acter ; there is either a solemn reconciliation of conflicting 
 impulses, or a subtle and shifting suggestion of different 
 points of view. Specimens of the former are two hymns 
 (as we may call them), headed " Qui Idborat oral" and u^t'o? 
 dvfivo^; ; they attempt to reconcile the intellectual resolve 
 to retain clear vision with religious self-abandonment. The 
 latter of these has a little too much intellectual subtlety 
 and academic antithesis ; but the former is one of Clough's
 
 70 £SSA VS AND ADDRESSES iii 
 
 most perfect productions ; there is a deep pathos in the 
 restrained passion of worship, and the clear-cut exactness of 
 phrase, as it belongs to the very essence of the sentiment, 
 enhances the dignity of the style. Somewhat similar in 
 feeling, but more passionate and less harmonious, is the 
 following fragment : — 
 
 let me love my love unto myself alone, 
 
 And know my knowledge to the world unknown ; 
 
 No witness to the vision call, 
 
 Beholding, unbeheld of all ; 
 
 And worship Thee, with Thee withdrawn apart, 
 
 Whoe'ei", whate'er Thou art. 
 
 Within the closest veil of mine own inmost heart. 
 
 Better it were, thou sayest, to consent : 
 
 Feast while we may, and live ere life be spent ; 
 
 Close lip clear eyes, and call the unstable sure, 
 
 The unlovely lovely, and the filthy pure ; 
 
 In self-belyings, self-deceivings roll. 
 
 And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul. 
 
 Nay, better far to mark off so much air, 
 And call it Heaven : place bliss and glory there ; 
 Fix perfect homes in the unsubstantial sky, 
 And say, what is not, will be by and by. 
 
 Sometimes the intellectual, or as we have called it, 
 philosophical element, shows itself in a violence of sincerity 
 that seems reckless, but is rather, to use a German word, 
 ruchsichtslos ; it disregards other considerations, not from 
 blind impulse but deep conviction. The tone of the poem 
 is then that of one walking firmly over red-hot ploughshares, 
 and attests at once the passion and the painfulness of look- 
 ing facts in the face. In the fine poem called Easter 
 Bay (where a full sense of the fascination of the Christian 
 story and the belief in immortality depending on it, and of 
 the immensity of its loss to mankind, conflicts with scientific 
 loyalty to the modern explanation of it), the intensity of 
 the blended feeling fuses a prosaic material into poetry very 
 remarkably.
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 71 
 
 What if the women, ere the dawm was grey, 
 Saw one or more great angels, as they say, 
 (Angels or Him himself) ? Yet neither there, nor then, 
 Nor afterwards, nor elsewhere, nor at all, 
 Hath he appeared to Peter or the Ten ; 
 Nor, save in thunderous terror, to blind Saul ; 
 Save in an after Gospel and late Creed, 
 He is not risen, indeed, — 
 Christ is not risen. 
 
 As circulates in some great city crowd 
 A rumour changeful, vague, importunate, and loud, 
 From no determined centre, or of fact 
 Or authorship exact. 
 Which no man can deny 
 
 Nor verify ; 
 So spread the wondrous fame ; 
 
 He all the same 
 Lay senseless, mouldering, low : 
 He was not risen, no — 
 
 Christ was not risen ! 
 
 Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ; 
 
 As of the unjust, also of the just — 
 
 Yea, of that Just one, too ! 
 This is the one sad Gospel that is true, 
 
 Christ is not risen ! 
 
 The complex and balanced state of Clough's moods shows 
 itself in an irony unlike the irony of any other writer ; 
 it is so subtle, frequently fading to a mere shade, and so 
 all -pervading. In the midst of apparently most earnest 
 expression of any view, it surprises us with a suggestion of 
 the impossibility that that view should be adequate ; some- 
 times it shifts from one side of a question to the other, so 
 that it is impossible to tell either from direct expression or 
 ironical sugoestion what the writer's decision on the whole 
 is. In some of the later stanzas of the poem we have 
 quoted the irony becomes very marked, as where the " Men 
 of Galilee " are addressed — 
 
 Ye poor deluded youths, go home. 
 Mend the old nets ye left to roam,
 
 72 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES ill 
 
 Tie the split oar, jiatch the torn sail : 
 It was indeed an "idle tale," 
 He was not risen. 
 
 The truth is, that though Clough from time to time attempts 
 
 to reconcile and settle, his deepest conviction is that all 
 
 settlement is premature. We meet continually phrases 
 
 like the 
 
 Receive it not, yet leave it not, 
 And wait it out, man, 
 
 of one of his earlier poems. To use a favourite image of 
 his, the universe, by our present arithmetic, comes to much 
 less than we had fondly imagined. Our arithmetic is sound, 
 and must be trusted ; in fact, it is the only arithmetic 
 we have got. Still the disappointing nature of the result 
 (and let us never pretend to ourselves that it is not 
 disappointing) may be taken as some evidence of its 
 incompleteness. 
 
 This irony assumes a peculiar tone when it is directed 
 to vulgar, shallow, unworthy states of mind. It is not 
 that Clough passionately repudiates these, and takes up a 
 censorial position outside and over against them ; these, too, 
 are facts, common and important facts of humanity ; humani 
 nihil — not even Philistinism — a se alienum putat. His 
 contempt for them is deep, but not bitter ; indeed, so far 
 from bitter that a dull pious ear may misperceive in it an 
 unpleasing levity. His mode of treating them is to present 
 them in extreme and bald simplicity, so that the mind 
 recoils from them. A penetrating observer describes some- 
 thing like this as a part of Clough's conversational manner. 
 " He had a way," says Mr. Bagehot, " of presenting your 
 own view to you, so that you saw what it came to, and that 
 you did not like it." A good instance of this occurs in an 
 unfinished poem, called The Shadow (published in this 
 edition for the first time). We quote the greater part of it, 
 as it also exemplifies Clough's powerful, though sparingly 
 exercised, imagination ; which here, from the combination 
 of sublimity and quaiutness, reminds one of Eichter,
 
 HI ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGII 73 
 
 only that we have antique severity instead of romantic 
 profuseness : — 
 
 I dreamed a dream : I tlroamt that I espied, 
 
 Upon a stone that was not rolled aside, 
 
 A Sliadow sit upon a grave — a Shade, 
 
 As thin, as unsubstantial, as of old 
 
 Came, the Greek poet told, 
 
 To lick the life-blood in the trench Ulysses made — 
 
 As pale, as thin, and said : 
 
 " I am the Resurrection of the Dead. 
 
 The night is past, the morning is at hand, 
 
 And I must in my proper semblance stand, 
 
 Appear brief S2)ace and vanish,— listen, this is true, 
 
 I am that Jesus whom they slew," 
 
 And shadows dim, I dreamed, the dead apostles came, 
 And bent their heads for sorrow and for shame — 
 Sorrow for their great loss, and shame 
 For what they did in that vain name. 
 
 And in long ranges far behind there seemed 
 
 Pale vapoury angel forms ; or was it cloud ? that kept 
 
 Strange watch; the women also stood beside and wept. 
 
 And Peter spoke the word : 
 " O my own Lord, 
 What is it we must do ? 
 Is it then all untrue ? 
 
 Did we not see, and hear, and handle Thee, 
 Yea, for whole hours 
 Upon the Mount in Galilee, 
 On the lake shore, and here at Bethany, 
 When Thou ascended to Thy God and ours ? " 
 
 And paler still became the distant cloud. 
 And at the word the women wept aloud. 
 
 And the Shade answered, " What ye say I know not ; 
 
 But it is true 
 
 I am that Jesus whom they slew, 
 Whom ye have preached, but in what way I know not." 
 
 And the great AVorld, it chanced, came by that way, 
 And stojiped, and looked, and spoke to the police, 
 And said the thing, for order's sake .and peace. 
 Most certainly must be suppressed, the nuisance cease.
 
 74 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES ' in 
 
 His wife and daughter must have where to pray, 
 And whom to pray to, at the least one day 
 In seven, and something sensible to say. 
 
 Whether the fact so many years ago 
 
 Had, or not, happened, how was he to know ? 
 
 Yet he had always heard that it was so. 
 
 As for himself, perhaps it was all one ; 
 
 And yet he found it not unpleasant, too, 
 
 On Sunday morning in the roomy pew, 
 
 To see the thing with such decorum done. 
 
 As for himself, perhaps it was all one ; 
 
 Yet on one's death-bed all men always said 
 
 It was a comfortable thing to think upon 
 
 The atonement and the resurrection of the dead 
 
 So the great World as having said his say, 
 
 Unto his country-house pursued his way. 
 
 And on the grave the Shadow sat all day. 
 
 The effect of the latter part is like that of stripping an 
 uncomely body, familiar to us as respectably draped and 
 costumed, and showing it without disguise or ornament. 
 That ' the world ' has never seen himself in this nakedness 
 we feel : but we also feel that here is the world which we 
 know. The two lines before the three last show the 
 felicitous audacity with which Clough sometimes manages 
 metre : nothing could more sharply give the shallowness of 
 the mood in contrast with the solemnity of the subject than 
 the careless glibness of the lines, 
 
 It was a comfortable thing to think upon 
 
 The atonement and the resurrection of the dead. 
 
 The longest of the religious poems is an unfinished 
 one called The Mystery of the Fall. The fundamental idea 
 seems to be this. The legend of the Fall represents a per- 
 manent and universal element of human feeling, the religious 
 conviction of sin, but only one element : the beliefs corre- 
 sponding to it, even if intuitive consciousness is relied upon 
 as their evidence, are not affirmed by the sum-total of valid 
 consciousness — taking ' Sunday and work-days ' together. 
 Not only do our practical necessities and active impulses
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 75 
 
 require and generate other conceptions of the universe which 
 seem incompatible with the religious, but the latter is un- 
 satisfying in itself: the notions of perfect creation, lapse, 
 wrath, propitiation, though they correspond to a part of our 
 religious experience, yet do not content our religious feeling 
 as an adequate account of the relation of God to man. 
 This Clough has tried to express, keeping the framework of 
 the old legend, in dialogues between Adam, Eve, Cain, and 
 Abel after expulsion from the garden. The transitions and 
 blendings of the different moods are given with a close and 
 subtle fidelity to psychological truth : and this putting of 
 new wine into old bottles is perhaps justified by the pro- 
 minence in human history of the Hebrew legend. There is 
 no reason why Adam and his family should not be perma- 
 nent machinery for serious fable, as Jove and his subordinates 
 are for burlesque. Still the incongruity between the modern 
 moods (and especially the perfect self-consciousness accom- 
 panying them) and the antique personages and incidents is 
 here too whimsical : and, for poetry, the thought is too pre- 
 dominant, and the feeling not sufficiently intense ; to some 
 parts of the subject, as the murder of Abel, Clough's imagi- 
 nation is inadequate : and on the whole the result is 
 interesting rather than successful, and we doubt whether 
 the poem could ever have been completed so as to satisfy 
 the author's severe self-criticism. 
 
 We take a very different view of the other unfinished 
 long poem, Dipsychus. If it had received the author's 
 final touches, a few trivialities and whimsicalities would no 
 doubt have been pruned away : but w'e doubt whether the 
 whole could have been much improved. It has certain 
 grave defects wliich seem to us irremovable, and we should 
 rank it as a work of art below either of his hexameter poems. 
 There is not sufficient movement or evolution in it ; the 
 feeling is too purely egoistic to keep up our sympathies so 
 long ; and it is not sufficiently framed. The Venetian 
 scenes in which the dialogue goes on, though appropriate to 
 some of the moods, have no particular connection with the 
 most important : whereas in Amours de Voyage, and still
 
 76 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES in 
 
 more in The Bothie, the liarmonising of external and in- 
 ternal presentments is admirably managed. At the same 
 time the composition is one of great interest. The stress of 
 feeling is so sustained, the changes and fluctuations of mood 
 are given with such perfect propriety, the thought and 
 expression are so bold and novel yet free from paradox, so 
 subtle without a particle of mere ingenuity. The blank 
 verse too in parts, though only in parts, seems to have been 
 carefully studied, and, though a little too suggestive of 
 Elizabethan models, to attain a really high pitch of ex- 
 cellence. Perhaps no other poem of Clough's has so de- 
 cidedly this one ' note ' of genius, that its utterances are at 
 once individual and universal, revealing the author to the 
 reader, and at the same time the reader to himself. 
 
 The constructive idea of the poem, which is a dialogue 
 between a man and an attendant spirit, is taken of course 
 from Faust. But G-oethe (as his half- apologetic prologue 
 hints) sacrificed something in adapting his idea to the con- 
 ditions of drama : and the issues in Clough's debate are so 
 much finer, that we feel nothing imitative in his develop- 
 ment of the conception. The suggestions of the spirit are 
 never clearly fiendish in themselves ; with much skill their 
 fiendishness is made to lie in their relation to the man's 
 thoughts. The spirit, in fact, is the " spirit of the world ; " 
 and the close of the debate is not between clear right and 
 wrong (however plausible wrong), but between two sides 
 of a really difficult question, — how far, in acting on society, 
 rules and courses repugnant to the soul's ideal are to be 
 adopted. True to himself, Clough does not decide the 
 question ; and though his sympathies are on the side of the 
 ideal, we never know quite how far he would pronounce 
 against the fiend. 
 
 The second part of the poem is almost too fragmentary 
 to discuss. In it the man appears at the close of a 
 successful career, having been attuned and attempered to the 
 world by an immoral liaison. How far this means is 
 justified by that end seems to us a disagreeable special- 
 isation of the general problem of the first part, much more
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 77 
 
 easy to decide. It is worked out, however, with much force. 
 Several songs included in this poem were in the first edition 
 published separately — by a great mistake, we cannot but 
 think, as they have more force and beauty in their original 
 setting ; and it was a little unfair to Clough (though less 
 than might be expected) to publish his fiend's utterances as 
 his own. 
 
 We turn now to what we may call the amatory 
 scepticism. This is a more proper subject of poetry, 
 as thought here is in no danger of being too predominant 
 over feeling ; at the same time it is more novel and 
 original, as on no subject do poets in general less allow 
 thought to interfere with feeling. Poets, in fact, are the 
 recognised preachers of the divinity, eternity, omnipotence 
 of Love. It is true that with some of them fits of despair 
 alternate with enthusiasm, and they proclaim that Love is 
 an empty dream : but the notion of scrutinising the enthu- 
 siasm sympathetically, yet scientifically, and estimating the 
 precise value of its claims and assertions, probably never 
 entered into any poetic soul before Clough. Xor is it less 
 alien to the habits of ordinary humanity. That the lover's 
 state is a frenzy, innocuous indeed, delightful, perhaps even 
 laudable as a part of nature's arrangements for carrying on 
 the affairs of the world, but still a frenzy ; that we all go 
 into it and come out of it, take one view of thimrs in 
 general when in it and another when out of it — is what 
 practical people accept with more or less playful or cynical 
 acquiescence. Poets have a license to take an opposite 
 view — in fact we should be disappointed if they did not ; 
 but we listen to them not for truth but for pleasant illusion. 
 It will be seen how impossible it was for Clough's nature to 
 acquiesce in this. Goethe sings of 
 
 Den Drang nach Wahrheit und die Lust am Trug, 
 
 as part of the poet's endowment. It was Clough's peculiar- 
 ity, perhaps his defect, as a poet, that he had not the 
 " Lust am Trug." He feels the rapture that illusion gives, 
 he quotes more than once with sympathy
 
 78 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES III 
 
 Wen Gott betriigt ist wolil betrogen, 
 
 but such " wohl " he could not himself appropriate. Nor 
 could he serenely separate idea from fact, as his friend 
 Emerson does in the following passage : — 
 
 And the first condition [of painting Love] is, that we must 
 leave a too close and lingering adherence to the actual, to facts. 
 . , Everything is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect. 
 But all is sour, if seen as experience. Details are always melan- 
 choly : the plan is seemly and noble. It is strange how painful 
 is the actual world, — the painful kingdom of time and place. 
 There dwells care and canker and fear. With thought, with the 
 ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. 
 
 This well illustrates by contrast the fundamental mood 
 of Clough. For his imagination at any time thus to abandon 
 terra firina and console itself with cloudland would have 
 been impossible. The fascination of the ideal was as strong 
 for him as for other poets, but not stronger than the necessity 
 of making it real. Hence in that period of youthful fore- 
 cast and partial experience of passion, in which the finest 
 love-fancies of most poets are woven, he perpetually feels 
 the need of combining clear vision with exaltation. He 
 keeps questioning Love as to what it really is, whence it 
 comes, whither it goes : he demands a transcendent evalu- 
 ation of it. 
 
 Whence are ye, vague desires ? 
 Whence are ye ? 
 
 From seats of bliss above, 
 Wliere angels sing of love ; 
 From subtle airs around, 
 Or from the vulgar ground. 
 Whence are ye, vague desires? 
 Whence are ye 1 
 
 ' Is love spiritual or earthly ? ' is the passionate perplexity 
 that tinges many of his songs. Or if this pearl of great 
 price is to be found on earth, how shall we know it from 
 its counterfeits, by what criterion discern the impulses that 
 lead us to the true and the false ? In one of the finer
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 79 
 
 passages of the Mari Magno tales, this longing for direction 
 is uttered. 
 
 Beside the wishing gate which so they name, 
 'Mid northern hills to me this fancy «ime, 
 A wish I formed, ray wish I thus expressed : 
 Would I could vnsh riiy tcishes all to rest, 
 And know to loish the wish that were the best ! 
 O for some winnowing wind, to the empty air 
 This chaff of easy sympathies to bear 
 Far off, and leave me of myself aware ! 
 While thus this over health deludes me still. 
 So willing that I know not what I will ; 
 O for some friend, or more tliau friend, austere. 
 To make me know myself and make me fear ! 
 O for some touch, too noble to be kind. 
 To awake to life the mind within the mind ! 
 
 But if love be after all only " a wondrous animal delight " 
 in which nature's periodic blossoming culminates, the 
 philosophic spirit, however deep its yearning, cannot sub- 
 mit to it, but has to contemplate it from the outside with 
 tender and curious sympathy. This mood tinged with play- 
 fulness inspired the charming song in which he describes 
 how he watched 
 
 ... in pleasant Kensington 
 
 A 'prentice and a maid. 
 That Sunday morning's April glow, 
 
 How should it not impart 
 A stir about the veins that How 
 
 To feed the youthful heart I 
 
 The rapture of this sympathetic contemplation is expressed 
 in Amours de Voyage. 
 
 And as I walk on my way, I behold them consorting and coupling ; 
 Faithful it seemeth and fond, very fond, very probably faithful. 
 All as I go on my way, with a pleasure sincere and unmingled. 
 Life is beautiful, Eustace .... 
 
 and could we eliminate only 
 This vile hungering impulse, this demon within us of craving. 
 Life were beatitude, living a perfect divine satisfaction. 
 
 This leads us to the deepest issue of all — a thoroughly 
 Platonic problem. Be this love as noble as it may, is its
 
 8o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES m 
 
 exaltation compatible with clear vision ? Does not this 
 individualised enthusiasm of necessity draw away from the 
 centrality of view and feeling after which the philosophic 
 spirit aspires ? Is it not unworthy of us, for any pleasure's 
 sake, to be tricked by its magic and take its coloured light 
 for white ? 
 
 But we are tired of reducing to prose the various phases 
 of this subtle blending and conflict of enthusiasms. As 
 expressed by Clough they have the perfect vitality and 
 reality of all his moods. None of these perplexities is 
 arbitrarily sought ; the questions raised must each have 
 been raised and decided by many human beings since self- 
 consciousness began. If no poet has uttered them before, 
 it is because in most men the state of mind in which they 
 were felt is incompatible with the flow of feeling that 
 poetry requires. Clough's nature was, perhaps, deficient in 
 passion, but it had a superabundant tenderness and sus- 
 ceptibility to personal influence, which made him retain the 
 full feeling of personal relations while giving free scope to 
 his sceptical intellect. 
 
 In one of the two long hexameter poems published 
 in his lifetime, Amours de Voyage, Clough has given a 
 dramatic embodiment to the motives that we have been 
 analysing. The poem is skilfully composed. Thoroughly 
 apprehending the aversion which practical humanity feels 
 for these perplexities, he somewhat exaggerates the egotism 
 of the hero of the piece to whom he attributes them, handles 
 him with much irony throughout, and inflicts a severe 
 but appropriate Nemesis at the close. The caricature in 
 ' Claude ' is so marked that we are not surprised that 
 Clough, the least egoistical of men, was indignant when a 
 friend appeared to take the poem as an account of the 
 author's own experiences. " I assure you," he writes, " that 
 it is extremely not so." Still this attitude of the author 
 could not reconcile the public to a hero who (as the motto 
 has it) doutait de tout, meme de I'amour. That the poem 
 never attained the success of The Bothie we are not sur- 
 prised. It has not the unique presentations of external
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 8l 
 
 nature which give such a charm to the earlier poem : it 
 wants also the buoyant and vivacious humour which is 
 80 exuberant in T}ic Bothic, and of which the fountain in 
 Clough's later years seems almost to have dried up. But 
 it shows greater skill in blending and harmonising different 
 threads of a narrative, and a subtler management of the 
 evolution of moods ; it has a deeper psychological interest, 
 and in its best passages a rarer, more original imagination. 
 The * amour ' is very closely interwoven with the incidents 
 of the French siege of Home (of which, by the way, Clough's 
 letters give us interesting details), so that the two series of 
 events together elicit a complete and consistent self-revel- 
 ation of the hero. The amative dubitations turn principally 
 on two points — the immense issues that depend on amative 
 selection compared with the arbitrary casual manner in 
 which circumstances determine it, and the imperious claim 
 of passion for a concentration of interest which to the 
 innermost, most self-conscious, self is profoundly impossible. 
 These play into one another in the following very character- 
 istic passage : — 
 
 Juxtaposition, in tine ; ami wliut is juxtaposition 1 
 
 Look you, we travel along in the railway carriage or steamer, 
 
 And, four passer le temps, till the tedious journey be ended, 
 
 Lay aside paper or book, to talk with the girl that is next one ; 
 
 And, pnur passer le temps, witli the terminus all Ijut in prospect, 
 
 Talk of eternal ties and marriages made in heaven. 
 
 Ah, did we really accept with a perfect heart the illusion ! 
 
 Ah, did we really believe that the Present indeed is the Only ! 
 Or through all transmutation, all shock and convulsion of passion, 
 Feel we could carry undimmed, unextinguished, the light ot" our 
 knowledge ! 
 
 But for the .steady fore-sense of a freer and larger existence, 
 Think you that man could consent to be circumscribed here into 
 
 action ? 
 But for assurance udthin of a limitless ocean divine, o'er 
 Whose great trayiquil depths unconscioris the icind-tost surface 
 Breaks into ripples of trouble that come and change and endure not, — 
 But that in this, of a truth, we have our being, and know it, 
 Think you we men could submit to live and move as we do here ? 
 
 G
 
 82 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES in 
 
 ■ All, but the women — God bless them ! they don't think at all 
 about it. 
 Yet we must eat and drink as you say. And as limited beings 
 Scarcely can hope to attain upon earth to an Actual Abstract, 
 Leaving to God contemplation, to His hands knowledge confiding, 
 Sure that in us if it perish, in Him it abideth and dies not, 
 Let us in His sight accomplish our petty particular doings, — 
 Yes, and contented sit down to the victual that He has provided. 
 
 The three lines that we have italicised seem to us almost 
 perfect specimens of the English liexameter, showing the 
 extreme flexibility which the metre has in Clough's hands, 
 and his only, and none of the over-accentuation which 
 neither he nor any one else can generally avoid. Very 
 opposite opinions have been delivered as to the merits of 
 this hexameter. Some most appreciative readers of the 
 poems declare that they read them continually under 
 protest ; that no interest in the subject and no habit can 
 make the metre tolerable. Mr. Arnold, however, on this 
 subject an especially Ehadamanthine critic, considers the 
 success of Clough's experiment to be so decided as to form 
 an important contribution to the question (which has occu- 
 pied a most disproportionate amount of human intellect 
 in our time), How Homer is to be translated ? We do not 
 take either view. "We think Clough's metre, as he uses it, 
 felicitous ; but we do not think that this proves anything 
 as to the appropriateness of the hexameter for translating 
 Homer, or for any other application of ' the grand style.' 
 Clough has not naturalised the metre. He has given it 
 ease, but not simplicity ; he has not tried to give it simpli- 
 city, and therefore he has succeeded with it. All English 
 hexameters written quite cm serieux seem to us to fail; the 
 line ought to be unconscious of being a hexameter, and yet 
 never is. But Clough's line is, and is meant to be, conscious 
 of being a hexameter : it is always suggestive of and allusive 
 to the ancient serious hexameters, with a faint but a delib- 
 erate air of burlesque, a wink implying that the bard is 
 singing academically to an academical audience, and catering 
 for their artificial tastes in versification. This academic 
 flavour suits each poem in a different way. It harmonises
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH C LOUGH 83 
 
 with the Oxonian studies of Tlie BotJiic ; and here, indeed, 
 the faint burlesque inseparable from the metre becomes from 
 time to time mock-heroic. In Amours de Voyage, it suits 
 the over-culture, artificial refinement of the hero's mind : he 
 is, we may say, in his abnormal difficulties of action and 
 emotion, a scholastic or academic personage. In short tlie 
 metre seems to belong to a style full of characteristic self- 
 conscious humour such as Clough has sustained through each 
 of the poems ; and we cannot analyse its effect separately. 
 Clough we know thought differently ; Imt we are forced to 
 regard this as one instance out of many where a poet takes 
 a wrong view of his own work. His experiment of trans- 
 lating Homer into similar hexameters is nearly as much a 
 failure as Mr. Arnold's, or any other ; and his still bolder 
 experiment of writing hexameters by quantity and not 
 accent results, in spite of the singular care and even power 
 with which it is executed, in a mere monstrosity. 
 
 We consider then that it was a happy instinct that led 
 him to the metre of The Bothie. In more ordinary metres 
 he often shows a want of mastery over the technicalities of 
 verse-writing. He has no fertility of rhymes, he is mono- 
 tonous, he does not avoid sing-song, he wearies us with 
 excessive, almost puerile, iterations and antitheses. It is very 
 remarkable, therefore, how in this new metre, self-chosen, he 
 rises to the occasion, how inventive he is of varied movements, 
 felicitous phrases, and pleasant artifices of language, how 
 emphatically yet easily the sound is adapted to the sense, 
 in a way which no metre but blank verse in the hands of a 
 master could rival. Another evidence of the peculiar fitness 
 of this instrument for his thought is the amount that he can 
 pack without effort into his lines ; as e. g. in the following de- 
 scription of one of the members of the Oxford reading-party — 
 
 Author forgotten aud sileut of currentest plirase and fancies, 
 Mute and exuberant by turns, a fountain at intervals playing, 
 Mute and abstracted, or strong and abundant as rain in the tropics ; 
 Studious ; careless of dress ; inobservant ; by smooth persuasions 
 Lately decoyed into kilt on example of Hope and the Piper ; 
 Hope an Antinoiis mere, Hyperion of calves the Piper.
 
 84 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES in 
 
 It is hard to imagine so much said so shortly in any other 
 style. 
 
 The flexibility of the metre aids in bringing out another 
 great excellence of these poems ; the ease and completeness 
 with which character is exhibited. There is not one of the 
 personages of The Bothie, or even of Amours de Voyage, 
 where the sketching is much slighter, whose individuality is not 
 as thoroughly impressed upon us as if they had been delineated 
 in a three-volume novel by Mr. Trollope. We are made to 
 understand by most happily selected touches, and delicately 
 illustrative phrases, not only what they are in themselves, 
 but precisely how they affect one another. It becomes as 
 impossible for us to attribute a remembered remark to the 
 wrong person as it would be in a play of Shakespeare. To 
 say that Clough's dramatic faculty was strong might convey 
 a wrong impression, as we imagine that he was quite devoid 
 of the power of representing a scene of vivid action ; but the 
 power of forming distinct conceptions of character, and 
 expressing them with the few touches that poetry allows, is 
 one of the gifts for displaying which we may regret that he 
 had not ampler scope. 
 
 The descriptions of natural scenery in The Bothie form 
 probably the best-known and most popular part of Clough's 
 poetry. In this, as in some of his most important poetical 
 characteristics, he may be called, in spite of great differences, 
 a true disciple of Wordsworth. His admiration for the latter 
 appears to have been always strongly marked ; and one of 
 the more interesting of the prose remains now published is 
 an essay on Wordsworth, perhaps somewhat meagre, but 
 showing profound appreciation, together with the critical 
 propriety and exactness of statement characteristic of Clough. 
 His simplicity, sincerity, gravity, are all Wordsworthiau ; but 
 especially his attitude towards nature. Through a manner 
 of description quite different we trace the rapt receptive 
 mood, the unaffected self-abandonment, the anxious fidelity 
 of reproduction, which Wordsworth has taught to many 
 disciples, but to no other poet so fully. 
 
 In the essay referred to we find a view of Wordsworth's
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 85 
 
 poetical merits, which to many persons will appear para- 
 doxical, but which seems to us perfectly true, and applicable 
 to some extent to Clough himself. He says that Wordsworth, 
 the famous prefaces notwithstanding, — 
 
 "really derives from his style and his diction his chief and 
 special charm"; ... he bestowed "infinite toil and labour 
 upon his poetic style"; "in the nice and exquisite felicities 
 of poetic diction he specially surpassed his contemporaries"; 
 and " his scrupulous and painstaking spirit, in this particular, 
 constitutes one of his special virtues as a poet. . . . He 
 has not . . . the vigour and heartiness of Scott, or the force 
 and the sweep and the fervour of Byron. . . . But that 
 permanent beauty of expression, that harmony between thought 
 and word, which is the condition of ' immoiial verse,' they did 
 not, I think — and Wordsworth did — take pains to attain. 
 There is hardly anything in Byron and Scott which in another 
 generation people will not think they can say over again quite 
 as well, and more agreeably and familiarly for themselves ; 
 there is nothing which, it will be plain, has, in Scott or Byron's 
 way of putting it, attained the one form which of all others 
 truly belongs to it ; which any new attempt will, at the very 
 utmost, merely successfully repeat. For poetry, like science, 
 has its final precision ; and there are expressions of poetic 
 knowledge which can no more be re-written than conld the 
 elements of geometry. There are pieces of poetic language 
 which, try as men will, they Avill simply have to recur to, and 
 confess that it has been done before them." 
 
 And he goes on to say that " people talk about style as 
 if it were a mere accessory, the unneeded but pleasing 
 ornament, the mere put -on dress of the substantial being, 
 who without it is much the same as with it." Whereas 
 really " some of the highest truths are only expressible to 
 us by style, only appreciable as indicated by manner." 
 
 With all this we agree : but it seems to us that two 
 conditions are necessary for the success in style spoken of, 
 and that Clough has only given one. In order to attain it, 
 a man must be conscious of very definite characteristic 
 moods, and must have confidence in them, take an interest 
 in and value their definite characteristics ; then in express- 
 ing them he must work with a patient, single-minded effort
 
 86 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES in 
 
 to adapt the expression to the mood, caring always for the 
 latter more than for the former. This was certainly the 
 manner of Clough's composition, and hence many of his 
 poetic utterances have, as he phrases it, " final precision." 
 We do not mean to compare their effect to Wordsworth's. 
 Clough has none of the prophetic dignity of his master, of 
 the latter's organ-music he has not even an echo : and he 
 far surpasses him in subtlety. There is a peculiar com- 
 bination of simplicity and subtlety in his best things, the 
 simplicity being as it were the final result and outcome of 
 the subtlety, so that the presence of the latter is felt, and 
 not distinctly recognised, which we find in no other poet 
 except Goethe. It is this combination that fits him for his 
 peculiar function of rendering conscious the feelings that 
 pass half unconsciously through ordinary minds, without 
 seriously modifying them. There is a pretty instance of 
 this in an idyllic song which we will quote. Most of the 
 song is rather commonplace ; a peasant-girl driving she- 
 goats homeward thinks alternately of the scene, and of her 
 absent lover. Suddenly we are surprised with this very 
 Cloughian sentiment. 
 
 Or may it be that I shall tiud my mate, 
 And he returning see himself too late ? 
 For work we must, and what we see, we see, 
 And God he Jc7)ows, and what must he, must be. 
 When sweethearts wander far away from me. 
 
 The excellence of the lines that we have italicised we should 
 describe paradoxically by saying that their naivete is at 
 once perfect, and as naivete, impossible. 
 
 On the other hand, if Clough has many of Wordsworth's 
 excellences, he certainly has his full share of the cognate 
 defects. It is natural, perhaps, to the man who values the 
 individuality of his thought and feeling so much as to spend 
 great care on its expression, to want the power of discrimi- 
 nating between those parts of it that are, and those which 
 are not worth expressing. Certainly Clough has not, any 
 more than his master, the selective faculty that leads to the
 
 Ill ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 87 
 
 sustained elevation and distinction wliich we expect from a 
 great poet, and which the adoption of a simple manner 
 renders peculiarly indispensable. Commonplace thought and 
 feeling in strikingly simple language does not make, perhaps, 
 more really worthless poetry than commonplace thought 
 and feeling in ornate language ; but its worthlessness is 
 more patent. There is this one advantage, that the critic 
 is not forced to dwell upon it : no one's taste is perverted, 
 except perhaps in the first charm of the poet's novelty. No 
 one now pretends to admire the dulness and twaddle in 
 Wordsworth ; and in Clough even more than in Wordsworth 
 the expression rises and falls with the matter : the dullest 
 and most trivial things are the worst put. We will only 
 say that the genius of twaddle, which often hovers near his 
 muse, makes its presence especially felt in his last poems, 
 the Mari Magno tales. These must, of course, be judged 
 as unfinished productions; but no retouching could have 
 enabled them to rank very high as poetry. They are easy, 
 pleasant, even edifying reading, and they essentially want 
 effectiveness. They are written in obvious emulation of 
 Crabbe ; and in a natural and faithful homeliness of style, 
 which occasionally becomes a transparent medium for a 
 most impressive tenderness, they certainly rival Crabbe ; but 
 their general level is much lower. The charm of Crabbe, 
 when he is not tender, lies in the combination of unobtru- 
 sive dignity, and a certain rustic raciness and pregnancy, 
 with a fair share of the artificial point and wit that properly 
 belong to the Popian measure. Clough has nothing of this; 
 and though in the best passages his characteristic fineness of 
 apprehension makes amends, on the dead levels of narration 
 the style is much inferior to Crabbe's : its blankuess is 
 glaring. In the first tale especially the genius of twaddle 
 reigns supreme ; it reminds us of — we will not say the 
 worst, for it has no bad taste, but — the second-rate portions 
 of Coventry Patmore. 
 
 The inferiority of these poems is due, as we before hinted, 
 to a deeper cause than a temporary defect of vigour or a 
 mistaken experiment of style. It is evident that we have
 
 88 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 III 
 
 here Clougli without his peculiar inspiration — his talent, we 
 may say, but not his genius. As an artist he is noteworthy 
 — his production has many high qualities, viewed as techni- 
 cally as possible ; it is not, however, as a mere artist, but as 
 an utterer of peculiar yet representative moods, that he has 
 the power to excite our deepest interest. But these moods 
 are the moods, in the main, of youth; and when Clough, 
 after a period of more than usually prolonged adolescence, 
 finally adopted the adult attitude towards life, they ceased 
 to dominate his habitual thought and feeling. Not that any 
 abrupt change shows itself in him. There were two tempers 
 singularly entwined in him throughout: his letters for the 
 most part present a striking contrast to the contemporary 
 poems. In the latter we find chiefly absorbing effort after 
 an ideally clear vision, a perfect solution of problems : in 
 the former mild practical wisdom, serene submission to the 
 imperfections of life, cheerful acquiescence in " the best 
 imder the circumstances." And this quieter tone naturally 
 grew upon him. Not that he could ever separate specula- 
 tion from practice, or in either sphere settle down into 
 smooth commonplace : but he grew tired of turning over the 
 web of commonplace notions and rules, and showing their 
 seamy side : he set himself rather to solve and settle 
 instead of raising and exposing difficulties. At the same 
 time the sincerity which had led him to emphasise his 
 passionate perplexities, still kept him from exaggerating his 
 triumph over them : he attains no fervour of confident hope, 
 nor expansion of complacent optimism : he walks in the 
 twilight, having adapted his eyes to it somewhat, but he does 
 not mistake it for dawn. Whether in such twilight he would 
 ever have seemed to see wdth sufficient clearness to impel 
 him to utter his vision to the world, is doubtful : at any rate 
 the utterance would, we imagine, have taken a prosaic and 
 not a poetical form. He was looking at life steadily till he 
 could see it whole : aspiring, as he says in an early poem, 
 to 
 
 . . . bring some worthy thing 
 For waiting souls to ?ee.
 
 HI ARTHUR HUGH C LOUGH 89 
 
 But the very loftiness of this aspiration, and the severity 
 with whicli he would have judged his own claims to be a 
 teacher, incline us to think that he would never have 
 uttered the final outcome of his life's thought. What he 
 wished to do for the world no one has yet done : we have 
 scarcely reason to believe that he could have done it : and 
 he would have been content to do nothing less. His pro- 
 visional views, the temporary substitutes for " demonstrated 
 faith " by which he was content to walk, he would hardly 
 have cared to publish. That they would, however, have 
 been interesting, we can see from the only fragment of them 
 that the editor has been able to give us — a paper on The 
 Rdifjious Tradition. From this, as it illustrates a dif- 
 ferent side of Clough's mind to that on which we have 
 been led chiefly to dwell, we will conclude by quoting 
 some extracts : — 
 
 The more a man feels the value, the true import, of the 
 moral and religious teaching which passes amongst us by the 
 name of Christianity, the more will he hesitate to base it upon 
 those foundations which, as a scholar, he feels to be unstable. 
 Manuscripts are doubtful, records may be unauthentic, criticism 
 is feeble, historical facts must be left uncertain. Even in like 
 maimer my own personal experience is most limited, perhaps 
 even most delusive : what have I seen, what do I know ? Nor 
 is my personal judgment a thing which I feel any great 
 satisfaction in trusting. My reasoning powers are weak ; 
 my memory doubtful and confused; my conscience, it may be, 
 callous or vitiated. 
 
 ... I see not what other alternative any sane and humble- 
 minded man can have but to throw himself upon the great 
 religious tradition. But I see not either how any upright and 
 strict dealer with himself — how any man not merely a slave to 
 spiritual a{)petites, affections and wants — any man of intel- 
 lectual as well as moral honesty — and without the former the 
 latter is but a vain thing — I see not how anyone who will not 
 tell lies to himself, can dare to affirm that the narrative of the 
 four Gospels is an essential integral part of that tradition. I 
 do not see that it is a "reat and noble thinji ... to go about 
 proclaiming that Mark is inconsistent with Luke ... it is no 
 new gospel to tell us that the old one is of dubious authenticity. 
 I do not see either , . . that it can be lawful for me, for the
 
 90 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES in 
 
 sake of the moral guidance and the spiritual comfort, to ignore 
 all scientific or historic doubts, or if pressed with them to the 
 utmost, to take refuge in Eomish infallibility . . . 
 
 Where then, since neither in Rationalism nor in Eome is our 
 refuge, — where then shall we seek for the Religious Tradition ? 
 
 Everywhere ; but above all in our own work : in life, in 
 action, in submission, so far as action goes, in service, in experi- 
 ence, in patience, in confidence. I would scarcely have any 
 man dare to say that he has found it, till that moment when 
 death removes his power of telling it. Let no young man pre- 
 sume to talk to us vainly and confidently about it. Ignorant, 
 as said Aristotle, of the real actions of life, and ready to follow 
 all impressions and passions, he is hardly fitted as yet even to 
 listen to practical directions couched in the language of religion. 
 But this apart — everywhere . . . among all who have really 
 tried to order their lives by the highest action of the reasonable 
 and spiritual will.
 
 [The following papers on Shakespeare's plays consist of parts of several 
 lectures given at difTerent times from 1S89 to 1898 at Newnham College. As 
 they did not form jiart of a course, but were delivered independently at con- 
 siderable intervals of time, and to different audiences, it was almost inevitable 
 that matters relating to Shakespeare's work generally should be treated of 
 more tliau once in connexion with different plaj's, and these repetitions make 
 it impossible to print all the lectures as they were given. Under the circum- 
 stances it seemed best to rearrange the lectures, with a few omissions and 
 adjustments, adding only a very few words where required for connexion. 
 — E]).] 
 
 IV 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S METHODS, WITH SPECIAL 
 EEFERENCE TO JULIUS C^SAB AND COEIO- 
 LANUS 
 
 Julius Caesar and Coriolanus are the first and last of the 
 group of plays on which Shakespeare's unique position 
 among modern poets mainly rests — the group or series of 
 the seven great tragedies of his second and third periods — 
 beginning with Julius Ccesar and Hamlet, and ending with 
 Anto7iy and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, with Othello, Lear, 
 and Macbeth intervening between the two. Before I say 
 what I have to say about these plays, I should like to make 
 clear what I shall try to do, and especially what I shall not 
 try to do. I shall not try to give an abridged account of 
 the story of the play, as told in successive scenes. I shall 
 assume that we have probably all, at some time or other, 
 read the play ; and when I refer to points in the dramatic 
 story, stages, or critical moments in its action, I shall do 
 so chiefly with the aim of illustrating Shakespeare's method 
 of work. 
 
 Still less shall I attempt to rival the admirable com- 
 
 91
 
 92 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 mentary of Mr. Aldis Wright, by dealing with any of the 
 difficulties of interpretation which the play presents. But 
 I should like to say a word as to the way in which com- 
 mentaries of this kind should be used. Both the academic 
 persons who manage examinations in English literature, and 
 the commentators who assist in the preparation for them, 
 are sometimes attacked as insidious foes of the culture that 
 they profess to promote. It is said that under their influ- 
 ence the study of notes supplants and extinguishes the 
 study of literature ; and the story is told of a young lady 
 who fastened up the text with an elastic band, that it 
 might not distract her mind from the notes. 
 
 There is, perhaps, some justification for these sarcasms. 
 The natural way of using a commentator is for occasional 
 reference when we cannot understand the author ; the 
 systematic perusal of notes which an examination requires 
 seems artificial and may be depressing. Still, I am per- 
 suaded, that with a view to reading Shakespeare with 
 adequate intelligence, for literary enjoyment and culture, 
 this close and thorough study of some one play is a valu- 
 able exercise. The most incurable defect in our ordinary 
 reading of such an author lies in the misapprehensions of 
 which we have no consciousness whatever ; — the allusions 
 that we merely miss, the subtle changes in the meaning 
 of words and phrases that we simply ignore : but which, 
 in the aggregate, interpose a thin impalpable mist between 
 our mind and the author's, the source of which we cannot 
 trace or remove. To correct this, it is very useful — 
 whether with or without an examination in prospect — 
 to take some one play and read it twice through care- 
 fully : the first time without a commentary, marking all the 
 difficulties perceived : and the second time with a good 
 commentary, marking all the meanings missed on the first 
 reading as well as noting the solutions of the difficulties 
 perceived. The immediate effect of the second process may 
 be slightly depressing : but it will render all our subse- 
 quent reading of Shakespeare, for entertainment in hours 
 of leisure, more intelligent than it would have been.
 
 IV 'JULIUS C/ESAR ' AND ' CORIOLANUS ' 93 
 
 To-day, however, I am not concerned with the business 
 of interpretation. My aim is chietly to use these plays to 
 illustrate Shakespeare's conception of dramatic work, and 
 his method of working up his material, not forgetting the 
 changes in his conception and method, and in the metrical 
 instrument on which he plays such different tunes at 
 different periods. 
 
 Let us begin by considering the date of the plays : for 
 this is not a matter of merely biographical or bibliographical 
 interest. The ardent and persistent scrutiny of Shakespeare 
 and his times, during the present century, has produced no 
 result of more value than the greater knowledge it has 
 given us of the chronological order of the plays. Tor the 
 chronological order is here markedly an order of develop- 
 ment, and Shakespeare is a writer whose manner — both as 
 regards style and versification, and as regards the deeper 
 qualities of dramatic treatment — is in a continual process 
 of change ; and we cannot really attain to a full and delicate 
 literary appreciation of his work if we read, say Richard 
 III., Julius Cccsar, and Coriolamis, as if they were the 
 products of the same mind at the same time. 
 
 Fortunately, in the case of Julius Ccesar the date can be 
 fixed, with a very high degree of probability, within very 
 narrow limits. We can fix it at the commencement of the 
 period in which Shakespeare's greatest work was done — in 
 the latter part of 1600 or the beginning of 1601. It may 
 be interestinsr to show how external and internal evidence 
 combine to bring us to this result. We are very ignorant 
 of Shakespeare's life : but there are a few points, a few 
 milestones in his career, which we can recognise clearly ; 
 and these fortunately suffice to show us the general course 
 of his work as a dramatist, and to mark its successive 
 stages. We know that in 1585, at the age of twenty-one, 
 he was married and father of three children baptized at 
 Stratford-on-Avon. We know from a splenetic utterance 
 in a pamphlet by Eobert Greene, a leading dramatist of the 
 time, written on his deathbed in 1592, that Shakespeare was 
 then by profession a play-actor, who was at the same time
 
 94 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 rising into reputation as a playwright : he had risen enough 
 to excite Greene's jealousy, but not enough to compel him 
 to respectful treatment : he treats him as a conceited up- 
 start Jack-of-all-trades, who absurdly supposes that he can 
 write blank verse as well as the University men. Six 
 years later, in 1598, his position is quite changed; for 
 Francis Meres, M.A., in the Wifs Treasury, published that 
 year, compares Shakespeare with Plautus and Seneca as a 
 playwright for the stage, and calls him "among the English 
 most excellent" both in comedy and tragedy. Meres mentions 
 twelve plays, which include all the plays published in the first 
 folio which we should on other grounds regard as Shake- 
 speare's early work : he includes the obviously early comedies, 
 Love's Labours Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona, and the charming Midsummer- Night' s Dream ; he 
 includes also the crude exercise in bloody horrors called 
 Titus Andronicus, and the fascinating but plainly youthful 
 Romeo and Juliet. The other four plays that Meres classi- 
 fies as tragedies belong to the group of English historical 
 plays : Julius Ccesar is not among them. Shakespeare's 
 serious work appears to have been concentrated at this time 
 on the production of scenes from English chroniclers : he 
 has not yet turned his attention to North's Plutarch. 
 
 Julius Cmsar, then, is not earlier than 1598 ; and as we 
 have evidence that the second part of Henry TV. and Henry 
 V. were written after Meres' book came out, but before the 
 end of 1 5 9 9, we may conceive Shakespeare as still occupied 
 with English history to the end of the century. On the 
 other hand, Julius Cmsar must have appeared before the 
 end of 1601: because in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, pub- 
 lished that year, occur the lines — 
 
 The many-headed multitude were drawne 
 By Brutus' speech that Csesar was ambitious. 
 
 This, as you know, is the simple and summary justification 
 that Shakespeare's Brutus gives for his deed — 
 
 As he was ambitious I slew him —
 
 IV 'JULIUS CMSAR' and ' CORIOLANUS' 95 
 
 and the phrase is taken by Antony as the point which his 
 dexterous rhetoric has to repel, and is repeatedly quoted — 
 
 But Brutus says he was ambitious, etc. 
 
 Now, though Plutarch indicates the lines of Antony's 
 funeral speech, which Shakespeare has followed, he says 
 nothing about this charge of ambition. This point is intro- 
 duced by Shakespeare, and it is to Shakespeare's play that 
 Weever must refer. Julius Ccesar, then, is not later than 
 1601 ; and there are probable reasons for thinking it not 
 earlier than 1601. 
 
 And this date is confirmed by the internal evidence from 
 style and versification : which I shall presently illustrate. 
 Julius Ccesar, judged purely by its literary and metrical 
 quality, may be placed at the very point of transition from 
 Shakespeare's first to his second manner — so far as the 
 tragic style is concerned. It is, as I have said, the first of 
 the great series of plays of deep tragic interest — i.e. the 
 interest of sympathy with human beings of chequered but 
 not ignoble character, whose gloomy fate is partly woven 
 for themselves by the manifestation of their character under 
 pressure of their circumstances — in which Shakespeare's 
 unrivalled gifts of dramatic characterisation are exhibited 
 in full maturity. 
 
 In saying this, I do not, of course, mean to draw a broad 
 distinction between the first and second periods. Penetrating, 
 intense, versatile, imaginative sympathy with human nature 
 in all its varieties is a gift of Shakespeare's from the first ; 
 and so far as comic characterisation goes, it is manifested 
 in one or two plays of the first period as fully as it ever is. 
 But in the more difficult characterisation of tragedy a some- 
 what longer interval of growth was required in which 
 Shakespeare's experience of life was widening and deepening, 
 and the mastery of his instrument becoming more complete. 
 It is not till we come to the second period — which we may 
 take to begin with Julius Ccesar, followed by Hamlet — that 
 Shakespeare's conception of character reaches its highest 
 point of subtlety, complexity, and coherence, and his pre-
 
 96 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 sentation of character its highest point of vitality and 
 impressiveness. Nor do I know any play earlier than 
 Julius Cccsar in which is shown in an equally high degree 
 the dramatist's art of combining incidents so as to exhibit 
 the movement and working of character under stress of cir- 
 cumstances, and the art of framing situations and scenes so 
 as to present effectively both the contrasts and the inter- 
 action of different characters in diverse moods. 
 
 And we may note a corresponding change in style and 
 diction. In the plays of the first period the profusion and 
 flow of poetic utterance does not always reveal an equal 
 fulness of thought ; there is sometimes, too, in the speeches 
 too uniform a level of passion, a want of the gradual rise 
 and fall of agitated emotion which is so striking a feature of 
 Shakespeare's maturest work ; there is a tendency to rhetori- 
 cal amplification and rhetorical ingenuity — a liability to 
 strain the natural imagery and inventiveness of passion into 
 laboured conceits and extravagances. 
 
 Now, human improvement is usually gradual, and we 
 
 cannot say that the style of Julius Cccsar is entirely free 
 
 from these latter defects. For instance, at the crisis of the 
 
 famous funeral oration of Antony, when he is showing the 
 
 crowd the bloody garments of Csesar, pierced by the assassins' 
 
 swords — 
 
 See what a rent the envious Casca made : 
 Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed — 
 
 I am afraid that what follows is a conceit — 
 
 And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away, 
 Mark how the blood of (^sesar followed it, 
 As rushing out of doors, to be resolved 
 If Brutus so unkindly kuock'd, or no. 
 
 Well, this image of the blood rushing out to see who is 
 knocking is not the natural fantasy of passionate sorrow 
 and indignation striving to communicate itself : it does not 
 come from the heart, and we cannot conceive its finding its 
 way to that organ. So before, when in Antony's pathetic
 
 IV ^JULIUS C^SAR ' AND ' CORIOLANUS ' 97 
 
 outburst over the body of Ctesar, immediately after the 
 murder, he cries — 
 
 Here wast thou bay'd, brave hart ; 
 Here didst thou fall ; and here thy hunters stand 
 Sign'd in thy spoil and crimson'd in thy lethe — 
 
 the image is natural and moving : but when he goes on — 
 
 world, thou wast the forest to this hart ; 
 And this, indeed, world, the heart of thee — 
 
 though the pun seems doubtless more grotesquely inappro- 
 priate to us than it would have seemed to an Elizabethan 
 audience, it is difficult to believe that it can ever have 
 seemed like the natural extravagance of emotion that finds 
 ordinary expression feeble and inadequate. I do not think 
 you will find such a pun at such a point of pathos in 
 Shakespeare's later work. 
 
 These are spots in the sun. In the main the style of 
 Julius Ccesar has freed itself from the immaturities of Shake- 
 speare's earlier period. It is thoroughly dramatic : while 
 there are many speeches in it which are eminently adapted 
 for declamation — that is, for delivery apart from their 
 dramatic context, — there is none that is in a bad sense 
 declamatory : there is none that does not gain by its 
 context, nor can be spared from it without some loss to the 
 dramatic situation. It is interesting to compare the style 
 of Julius Ccesar in this respect with that of Coriolanus, 
 which exemplifies Shakespeare's third and latest manner. 
 In this last stage the style suited to declamation has been 
 altogether abandoned : the manner is purely dramatic. You 
 can hardly find a single speech in Coriolanus calculated to 
 give much pleasure, if severed from its context : though 
 in their context the best speeches of Coriolanus have — with 
 some loss of lucidity — a greater intensity of emphasis 
 through greater concentration, and a more Hfelike representa- 
 tion of the utterances of surging passion. 
 
 I will give here one illustration from Julius Caesar of 
 this double quality — declamatory and dramatic. On the eve 
 
 H
 
 98 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES IV 
 
 of the Ides of March, when the last struggle in Brutus' 
 mind is over, his servant tells him that Cassius and others 
 have come with 
 
 their hats plucked about their ears, 
 And half their faces buried in their cloaks. 
 
 Brutus answers — 
 
 Let 'em enter. 
 They are the faction. conspiracy, 
 Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, 
 When evils are most free ? 0, then by day 
 Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough 
 To mask thy monstrous visage ? Seek none, conspiracy ; 
 Hide it in smiles, and affability : 
 For if thou path, thy native semblance on. 
 Not Erebus itself were dim enough 
 To hide thee from prevention.^ 
 
 This is a fine outburst, but it does not seem very appro- 
 priate to the actual moment when the conspirator's col- 
 leagues are being let in ; and at first one is disposed to think 
 that Shakespeare in introducing it has aimed at theatrical 
 effect rather than dramatic propriety. And perhaps Shake- 
 speare would have felt this later on in his career. Still 
 reflection will show that it has a deeper dramatic meaning. 
 He has just shown us Brutus convincing himself, by a dry 
 unemotional process of reasoning, that Caesar must be killed ; 
 he wants to shows us, that while stoically determined to 
 act for the general good by the dry light of reason alone, 
 Brutus is no cold passionless pedant : he feels intensely the 
 moral repugnance that a fine nature must feel to the 
 dreadful deed. 
 
 The passage recited may also serve to illustrate the 
 change in versification which accompanies the change in 
 style as we pass from the first to the second manner. The 
 blank verse of the earliest period too much resembles 
 rhymed verse in its structure : the lines usually end with 
 a strong syllable and a stop, and are a little too regular for 
 dramatic utterance. In the versification of Julius Ccesar, 
 
 ^ Act ii. Sc. i.
 
 IV 'JULIUS C^SAR ' AND ' CORIOLANUS ' 99 
 
 on the other hand, adequate variety and llexibihty is intro- 
 duced by varying the pauses, allowing the sense sometimes 
 to run over from one line to another, and introducing extra 
 syllables not only at the end of lines, but sometimes even 
 in the middle. 
 
 To hide thy monstrous visage. Seek none, conspiracy ; 
 
 — I do not think you will find a line like that in a play 
 earlier than Juliits Cccsar. 
 
 In the third manner the change is carried further in 
 the same direction : the poet's aim often seems to be to 
 conceal the metrical structure, preferring to have the breaks 
 in the sense at the middle of the line rather than the end, 
 and sometimes ending the line with a word on which the 
 speaker cannot rest even for a moment. Take as an 
 instance this speech of Coriolanus : — 
 
 ' Shall ' ! 
 O good but most unwise patricians ! why, 
 You grave but reckless senators, have you thus 
 Given Hydra here to choose an officer, 
 That with this peremptory ' shall,' being but 
 The horn and noise 0' the monster's, wants not spirit 
 To say he'll turn your current in a ditch, 
 And make your channel his? If he have power, 
 Then vail your ignorance ; if none, awake 
 Your dangerous lenity. If you are learn'd. 
 Be not as coumion fools ; if you are not, 
 Let them have cusliions by you. You are plebeians, 
 If they be senators : and they are no less. 
 When, both your voices blended, the great'st taste 
 Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate, 
 And such a one as he, who puts his ' shall,' 
 His popular ' shall,' against a graver bench 
 Than ever frown'd in Greece. By Jove himself ! 
 It makes the consuls base : and my soul aches 
 To know, when two authorities are up. 
 Neither supreme, how soon confusion 
 May enter 'twixt the gap of both, and take 
 The one by the other. ^ 
 
 I pass to examine Shakespeare's method of using his 
 materials, in the composition of his plays and characterisa- 
 
 ' Act iii. Sc. i.
 
 100 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 tion of the personages. But here I must begin by saying 
 that he has no uniform method : on the contrary, the 
 striking characteristic of his method is that it varies so 
 much with the nature of the materials. 
 
 I may quote a few sentences of Gervinus in which this 
 is well put : — 
 
 " When he had an older drama before him, he discarded for the 
 most part" — perhaps that is too strong — "the whole form, and 
 retained only the story and the name. Was it a poor novel of 
 Italian origin, he could seldom use the web of the action without 
 first unweaving it, nor a character without creating it entirely 
 afresh. We need only recollect the shallow narratives out of 
 which he fashioned AlVs Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, 
 Cymheline, and the Merchant of Venice, to perceive with what a 
 cold and regardless manner he treated the motives of the actions 
 and the actions themselves. Even in the chronicles of his 
 English histories, however conscientiously he observed the 
 historical tradition, he was obliged, in order to put life into 
 them, to lengthen them considerably and to introduce into them 
 fictitious matter, and not unfrequently to invent the explanatory 
 motives of the actions." 
 
 The case is startlingly different when we turn to the group 
 of Eoman plays, where the material is supplied by Plutarch 
 — read in North's translation. In Plutarch's lives Shake- 
 speare found history in the shape in which it suits the 
 dramatist — he found it in the form of biography, written 
 by one who had a genius for biography. Here there were 
 historic plots ready made : characters fully drawn, with 
 appropriate actions : striking situations, moving incidents, 
 suggestions of effective dramatic scenes in abundance — and 
 all belonging to the real world, not the world of fiction. 
 
 Under these circumstances the task of the dramatist did 
 not call for creative originality in the largest sense : his 
 business was mainly to select and combine the incidents of 
 Plutarch's narrative, developing some aspects of the story 
 and subordinating others, with a view to harmonious effect. 
 And in expressing the character of his main personage — 
 as in the case of Brutus, the moral hero of Julius Cccsar — 
 what he has to do is, to a great extent, to work on the
 
 IV 'JULIUS CAlSAR' AND ' CORIOLANUS' loi 
 
 lines clearly drawn by Plutarch, and to reproduce and 
 imitate the characteristic traits given in the incidents and 
 utterances recorded by the biographer. This, at any rate, 
 is what Shakespeare does. His least appreciative critics 
 have rarely denied him creative and inventive powers of 
 the first order : but to exercise these powers here would be 
 inconsistent with the direct and simple manner in which 
 he conceives the dramatist's task. What he has undertaken 
 is to tell a true story by action, to bring on the stage a 
 great historic event, which from its nature and the person- 
 ages concerned is exceptionally adapted for dramatic treat- 
 ment ; and, as always when his undertaking is of this kind, 
 he shows a reverent fidelity to the essential and vital facts 
 of the history, though he allows himself some freedom in 
 handling details. Even single expressions and phrases in 
 which character is manifested, he is careful to note and use 
 in composing his speeches. 
 
 I have said that the simple aim of Shakespeare is to 
 tell a story dramatically. This is why so many of his 
 plays resist the application of the traditional classification — 
 handed down from the Greek stage — into comedies and 
 tragedies. That is, they have usually either a preponder- 
 antly comic or preponderantly tragic quality ; but very 
 rarely is this quality maintained throughout : the interest 
 of the comedy is deepened by the introduction of serious 
 pathos, as in Mucli Ado ahout Nothing, and the tragic 
 effects are relieved and heightened and rendered more 
 lifelike by scenes and personages that are at least half 
 comic, as the grave-diggers and the fop in Hamlet, the 
 porter in Macbeth, the fool in Lear. Sometimes the comic 
 and the serious interest is very evenly balanced, as in 
 Henry IV. ; sometimes the effect is not designed to be 
 markedly either comic or tragic, but simply interesting, as in 
 Cymbeline and the Winter's Talc. In Julius Casar, indeed, 
 the comic element is very slight, — though il always think 
 that the facetious citizen in the first scene rises above the 
 rather low average standard of Shakespeare's verbal wit, — 
 but I still feel that its plan of construction illustrates the
 
 I02 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 conception of the drama on which I am now insisting, I 
 think even the title shows this. Eegarded as a tragedy, 
 the hero is undoubtedly Brutus : it is in the interplay of 
 his character and his circumstances that the deepest interest 
 of the drama lies : but the central event is the death of 
 Julius Caesar, and it is the event that gives the title. The 
 character of Csesar is of quite subordinate interest ; indeed, 
 I think that Shakespeare deliberately presents it in the 
 least attractive aspect which was compatible with fidelity to 
 fact — emphasising his overweening and boastful conscious- 
 ness of his exalted position— in order that the spectator's 
 sympathies may not turn too decisively on Csesar's side 
 against Brutus. At the same time I do not doubt that 
 Plutarch's life suggested to Shakespeare that arrogant egot- 
 ism was an attribute of Ceesar. In another play Shake- 
 speare speaks of Csesar's famous letter — I once heard it 
 described as Ceesar's famous telegram — " veni, vedi, vici " as 
 a " thrasonical brag " ; ^ and several other utterances of the 
 great man would confirm this view — his divorcing his wife 
 because Caesar's wife must be above suspicion : his reassuring 
 his boatman in a storm, " Thou hast Caesar and his fortune 
 with thee " : his lofty insolence to the tribune who resisted 
 his spoliation of the public treasury, " Thou art mine, both 
 thou and all them that have risen against me ... it is 
 harder for me to [threaten to kill] thee than to do it." All 
 these would suggest a great man with an overblown and over- 
 weening consciousness of his greatness : a man who might 
 be fitly made to exemplify — as Shakespeare makes him 
 exemplify — the " pride that goeth before a fall," declaring 
 himself unassailable and immutable just as the mine of 
 conspiracy is exploding under his feet. The attractive 
 qualities which Plutarch also shows us in Ciesar; his grace 
 and honhommie, his clemency and magnanimity, Shake- 
 speare would doubtless have brought forward, if the plan 
 of the drama had been different : he does not quite conceal 
 these qualities, but he keeps them in the background, as I 
 conceive, out of regard for the main dramatic effect at 
 
 ^ As You Like it, Act v. Sc. ii.
 
 IV 'JULIUS C^SAR ' AND * CORIOLANUS ' 103 
 
 whicli he aims. He has to win a share of our sympathy 
 for the noble aim that partly redeems the guilt of the 
 assassins : he must not, therefore, dwell too much on the 
 lovable qualities of the victim. 
 
 However this may be, Caesar is not included among the 
 characters of the play who have a leading interest for us as 
 characters. These are Brutus, Cassius, and Antony ; and it 
 is instructive to note how far Plutarch has supplied matter 
 for the striking contrast that Brutus presents alternately to 
 either of the other two, and how Shakespeare has worked 
 upon the material supplied. I will try to show this briefly 
 in the case of Brutus and Cassius. 
 
 There is no doubt that Shakespeare's conception of the 
 relation of Brutus to the conspiracy and to Cassius is 
 simply Plutarch's. The lines with which Antony in the 
 last scene pronounces Brutus' epitaph are simply Plutarch 
 versified : — 
 
 This was the noblest Roman of them all : 
 
 All the conspirators save only he 
 
 Did that they did in envy of great Cresar ; 
 
 He only, in a general honest thought 
 
 And common good to all, made one of them.^ 
 
 It is from this moral elevation of Brutus, as Plutarch again 
 tells us, that his moral support is thought indispensable by 
 the conspirators. Cassius is the instigator of the con- 
 spiracy, and Plutarch makes clear that he would have 
 practically guided it more wisely than Brutus, being " very 
 skilful in wars," and better understanding the hard neces- 
 sities of the cruel business he undertakes. He would not 
 have saved Antony alive, and he would not have added tlie 
 mistake of letting him make his funeral oration : Plutarch, 
 like Shakespeare, expressly puts down these mistakes in the 
 art of revolution to Brutus. But Cassius' morale is recog- 
 nised as lower : " it is reported," says Plutarch, " that 
 Brutus could evil away with the tyranny, and that Cassius 
 hated the tyrant." Hence, when he begins to stir his 
 friends against Cassar, Plutarch tells us that they only 
 
 1 Act V. Sc. V,
 
 104 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 promised to take part with him, " so Brutus were the chief 
 of their conspiracy ... it stood them upon to have a man 
 of such estimation as Brutus, to make every man boldly 
 think, that by his only presence the fact were holy and 
 just." This is the central point in Brutus' relation to the 
 great event, as Shakespeare presents it. 
 
 Similarly all the main details of the event and its con- 
 sequences : the appeal of Cassius to Brutus : the method of 
 rousing him by anonymous letters adjuring him to wake 
 from his lethargy : the relation of Portia to Brutus, her 
 self-wounding to test her firmness, her appeal for her hus- 
 band's confidence, her subsequent intense anxiety ; later 
 on, the death of Portia, the altercation between the two 
 leaders in Brutus' tent, in which their moral difference is 
 effectively brought out, their disagreement about the fatal 
 battle, the apparition of the evil genius, the chief features 
 of the battle itself, and of their double suicide, — all this is 
 taken substantially from Plutarch, though some minor de- 
 tails are altered. Similarly the other features of Brutus' 
 character, besides his moral elevation, are at least suggested 
 in Plutarch. Plutarch's Brutus, like Shakespeare's, is a 
 man who frames his manner of life by the study of philo- 
 sophy ; a bookish man, who falls to his book even on the 
 day before a battle ; and at the same time — what is not 
 always the case with bookish philosophers — a man of cool 
 self-restraint and rational firmness in trying crises of action, 
 never carried away by passion or covetousness, never yield- 
 ing to wrong or injustice. This outline Shakespeare has 
 filled in with the figure of a thinker, studious of self- 
 perfection, and self- revering ; who guides his own actions, 
 when most daring, by pure reason, and before he resolves 
 to be an assassin, makes the premises and the steps of 
 the formal process of reasoning that has led him to 
 this conclusion almost pedantically precise. It is for the 
 prevention of future mischief: Csesar is not now a cruel 
 tyrant, but experience shows that when he has attained 
 the crown, the highest object of ambition, he is likely to 
 become so : —
 
 IV 'JULIUS CAiSAR ' AND ' CORIOLANUS ' 105 
 
 Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel 
 
 Will bear no colour for the thing he is. 
 
 Fashion it thus ; that what he is, augmented, 
 
 Would run to these and these extremities : 
 
 And therefoi'e think him as a serpent's egg. 
 
 Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous, 
 
 And kill him in the shell.' 
 
 Contrast the manner in which Cassius has tried to sting 
 him to resolve, by appealing to his personal sense of 
 humiliation : — 
 
 Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world 
 
 Like a Colossus, and we petty men 
 
 Walk under his huge legs and peep about 
 
 To find ourselves dishonourable graves. 
 
 Men at some time are masters of their fates : 
 
 The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
 
 But in ourselves, that we are underlings. 
 
 Brutus and Ciesar : what should be in that " Caesar " ? 
 
 Why should that name be sounded more than yours ? 
 
 Write them together, yours is as fair a name ; 
 
 Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well ; 
 
 Weigh them, it is as heavy ; conjure with 'em, 
 
 Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar. 
 
 Now, in the names of all the gods at once, 
 
 Upon what meat doth this our Coesar feed, 
 
 That he is grown so great ? Age, thou art shamed ! 
 
 Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods ! 
 
 When went there by an age, since the great flood. 
 
 But it was famed with more than with one man"? 
 
 When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome, 
 
 That her wide walls encompass'd but one man 1 
 
 Now is it Rome indeed and room enough. 
 
 When there is in it but one only man. 
 
 O, you and I have heard our fathers say, 
 
 There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd 
 
 The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome 
 
 As easily as a king.- 
 
 This is the speech of a man who genuinely loves free- 
 dom, but in whom the love of freedom takes its lowest 
 form of aversion to personal inferiority of position. There 
 is force, however, in the concluding appeal to Brutus' 
 ancestry : Brutus feels it, but is not to be moved to hasty 
 
 ^ Act ii. Sc. i. "^ Act. i. So. ii.
 
 I06 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 resolve : he replies with grave considerateness and defers 
 decision. Eational himself, he expects rationality from 
 others : he is even under the illusion that Antony will yield 
 to the reasons which have led him to kill Caesar : thus his 
 address to the crowd before the funeral, though not without 
 force, is jejune and academic. 
 
 At the same time, I think that Mr. Dowden in his 
 interesting book on Shakespeares Mind and Art has dwelt 
 too exclusively on this side of Brutus' character. He is no 
 mere Idealist, secluded in a world of abstractions : he has 
 strong emotions and is in certain respects well fitted for 
 action. This is Plutarch's conception of him, and it is 
 clearly also Shakespeare's. Xotice his cool self-command at 
 the crisis just before the event, when the more passionate 
 Cassius is giving way to premature despair, under the 
 erroneous idea that Csesar is being informed of the conspiracy. 
 Observe with what firmness and calmness — though not 
 altogether wisely — he directs the action of the conspirators 
 immediately after the event. Observe the combination of 
 feeling and self-mastery finely shown later on in his lament 
 over the body of Cassius : — 
 
 Friends, I owe more tears 
 To this dead man, than yon shall see me pay. 
 I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.^ 
 
 Nor is it mere negative self-mastery : he can not only 
 restrain his mood but summon what mood the occasion 
 demands. The change in Act ii. Scene i. from the mood 
 of painful conflict and gloomy meditation to that of 
 inspiriting resolve is very striking, and shows a man who, 
 as far as mo7'ale is concerned, is eminently fit for action. 
 Up to the moment when he gives his hand in final pledge 
 he is almost like a brooding Hamlet : — 
 
 Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
 And the first motion, all the interim is 
 Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream : 
 The genius, and the mortal instruments, 
 
 ^ Act V. Sc. iii.
 
 IV 'JULIUS CAiSAR' AND ' CORIOLANUS' \Q^ 
 
 Are then in council ; and the state of man 
 Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
 Tlie nature of an insurrection.^ 
 
 But then comes out another side of his nature : he springs 
 to his right place as leader by virtue of moral superiority : 
 and we feel that we have here the one man who can make 
 conspiracy high-hearted, noble, magnanimous. 
 " Let us swear," says Cassius, " our resolution." 
 
 Brutus. No, not an oath : if not the face of men, 
 The sufierance of our souls, the time's abuse, — 
 If these be motives weak, break off betimes, 
 And every man hence to his idle bed ; 
 So let high-sighted tyranny range on, 
 Till each man drop by lottery. But if these, 
 As I am sure they do, bear fire enough 
 To kindle cowards and to steel with valour 
 The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen, 
 What need we any spur but our own cause 
 To prick us to redress ? what other bond 
 Than secret Komaiis, that have spoke the word. 
 And will not palter ? and what other oath 
 Than honesty to honesty engaged, 
 That this shall be, or we will fall for it ? 
 Swear priests and cowards and men cautelous, 
 Old feeble carrions and such suffering souls 
 That welcome wrongs ; unto bad causes swear 
 Such creatures as men doubt : but do not stain 
 The even virtue of our enterprise, 
 Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits, 
 To think that or our cause or our performance 
 Did need an oath ; when every drop of blood 
 That every Roman bears, and nobly bears. 
 Is guilty of a several bastardy. 
 If he do break the smallest particle 
 Of any promise that hath pass'd from him.- 
 
 Observe with what fidelity and inventiveness combined 
 Shakespeare has used his materials. The moral superiority 
 of Brutus, and the fact that the conspirators were not bound 
 by oaths : these data he finds in I'lutarch. But the com- 
 bination of the two is all Shakespeare's : and it is impossible 
 to imagine a more effective way of making his hero assume 
 
 ^ Act ii. Sc. i. '^ Act ii. So. i.
 
 io8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 the moral position that by right belongs to him. Observe, 
 too, how well this speech is made to illustrate what Plutarch 
 tells us of the style of Brutus' oratory. " When [his mind] 
 was moved to follow any matter he used a kind of forcible 
 and vehement persuasion that calmed not, till he had obtained 
 his desire." Forcible and vehement persuasiveness is the 
 exact description of the lines I have recited. 
 
 One word more before I leave Brutus and Cassius. 
 There is a fine tragic effect in the way in which each friend 
 misleads the other in turn : Brutus yielding to Cassius 
 when he urges the need and the call of Eome ; and Cassius 
 allowing his superior practical insight to be overruled, in 
 deference to his friend's moral superiority. 
 
 Perhaps of all the personages in the play, the character of 
 Antony has the greatest dramatic capabilities : there is no 
 room in this piece to develop them fully, but the presentation 
 as far as it goes is excellent both in itself and in its contrast 
 with Brutus. He is a man of genius without an ideal, with 
 a rich nature i capable of strong affections and loyal subordina- 
 tion: but intensely pleasure-loving and without morale,: as 
 Dowden well says, " looking on life as a game, in which he 
 has a distinguished part to play, and playing that part with 
 magnificent grace and skill," but with utter unscrupulous- 
 ness. Shakespeare's unique power of presenting the elements 
 of a mingled character — with good impulses but capable of 
 the worst crimes — was never better shown. Antony is 
 separated from Brutus by a moral gulf: the hideousness of 
 the proscription by the Triumvirs, with their cold-blooded 
 mutual sacrifice of friends and kinsmen to each other's 
 vengeance, is used with fine tragic effect — we feel it an 
 awful penalty for Brutus' noble crime, that the generosity 
 and clemency of Ciesar has been exchanged for these bar- 
 gaining butchers. Yet with all this, it is Antony not Brutus 
 that has le heme role in the encounter over Ctesar's body, 
 and at the funeral : because he shows not merely skilful 
 management for his ends, but, genuinely and intensely, the 
 human affection that Brutus has suppressed in himself. I 
 know nothing subtler in Shakespeare than the way in which
 
 IV 'JULIUS C^SAR ' AND ' CORIOLANUS ' 109 
 
 genuine feeling burns through the craftily planned speech 
 with which he enters after the dreadful deed is done : — 
 
 mighty Ctesar ! Doat thou lie so low ? 
 Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils. 
 Shrunk to this little measure 1 Fare thee well. 
 
 1 kuow not, gentlemen, what you intend. 
 Who else must be let blood, who else is rank : 
 If I myself, there is no hour so fit 
 
 As CVesar's death's hour, nor no instrument 
 
 Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich 
 
 With the most noble blood of all this world. 
 
 I do beseech ye, if ye bear me hard. 
 
 Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke, 
 
 Fullil your pleasure. Live a thousand years, 
 
 I shall not find myself so apt to die : 
 
 No place will please me so, no mean of death, 
 
 As here by Csesar, and by you cut off, 
 
 The choice and master spirits of this age.^ 
 
 Turning to Coriolanus, also taken from North's Plutarch, 
 we again find that Shakespeare's use of his materials throws 
 light on the leading motives and aims that governed him 
 in his choice and treatment of a subject. Professor Gervinus, 
 a commentator from whom much may be learnt, begins his 
 study of Coriolanus as follows : — 
 
 Fondness for the Roman State, whose mighty career Shake- 
 speare contemplates in this play with the proud satisfaction of 
 one belonging to it, seems to have induced the poet, after the 
 completion of Antony and Cleopatra, to take up once more the 
 better days of the first military greatness of this people and to 
 treat a more noble subject out of its history. As in Antony 
 he had represented the imperial time and its degeneracy, and in 
 Ccesar the struggle of the republic with monarchy, in Coriolanus 
 he brings before us the struggle between the aristocratic and 
 democratic elements within the republic. The play is filled with 
 the striving of the two powers, tribunes and consuls, plebeians and 
 patricians, senate and people . . . The opposition between these 
 two powers is everywhere exhibited as founded on their nature ; 
 the implacable enmity between them is shown as a necessary 
 result of the imprudence, unreasonableness, and harshness, of 
 their contrast. 
 
 ^ Act iii. Sc. i.
 
 no ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 Now, I do not say that there is nothing of all this in 
 Shakespeare's mind, but I feel convinced that it occupied 
 a much more subordinate place in his aims and motives 
 than Professor Gervinus thinks. It is not fondness for 
 the Eoman State, but fondness for the Eoman character, and 
 a keen sense of its capabilities for dramatic representation 
 that moved Shakespeare, — in my view. Plutarch, his source, 
 is a biographer not a historian, and, as I have said, it is 
 in the character of a biographer that he has so strong an 
 attraction for our dramatist. 
 
 The fights of Romans and Volscians, the struggles of 
 patricians and plebeians interest him mainly as constituting 
 the element in which his hero first manifests his heroic 
 qualities, and then weaves for himself his tragic destiny by 
 his heroic excesses and errors of passion. I see no sign that 
 he has more than the vaguest conception of Eoman history 
 as a whole : he makes Coriolanus say, when soliciting votes 
 as a candidate, that " aged custom " will not permit him to 
 be consul, except by the people's voices : ^ not being ap- 
 parently aware that the whole affair happened — according 
 to tradition — only twenty years after the expulsion of the 
 kings from Eome. 
 
 It is not only that he has no general apprehension 
 of the difierence between the ancient and the modern 
 world — he makes Coriolanus talk of " our divines " as 
 persons with the functions of imparting virtues to the 
 laity — and that he falls into the anachronisms of refer- 
 ring to Alexander, to Cato, even to Galen, as if they 
 were characters familiarly known at the beginning of the 
 5th century B.C. This kind of thing we are accustomed 
 to in Shakespeare. It is more striking to contrast the 
 close and reverent fidelity with which he has studied 
 and the skill with which he has used every scrap of 
 information that Plutarch has given him about the char- 
 acters and moods of his personages, with his carelessness 
 and looseness in dealing with the purely political aspect 
 of the story. 
 
 ^ Act ii. Sc. iii.
 
 IV 'JULIUS C.-ESAR' AND ' C0K20LANUS'' in 
 
 The central facts, from tlie political point of view, are 
 the appointment of the tribunes and the bold proposal of 
 Coriolanus to abolish tlie new-fangled plebeian magistracy. 
 Now the psycholof/ical interest of these facts is most fully 
 apprehended by Shakespeare : the self - assertive pride of 
 office of these plebeian magistrates, contrasting with the 
 arrogant consciousness of personal superiority shown by the 
 patrician : their practised dexterity in managing the mob 
 and working its feelings up to the point they desire, as 
 contrasted with Coriolanus' reckless folly in provoking it 
 by violent utterances of contempt : the collapse of the 
 demagogues when the battle is transferred from the forum 
 to the field : — all this is most vividly presented. But the 
 political aspect of the matter has no similar interest for 
 him, even on what seems to us its most dramatic side. 
 Every schoolboy knows — I think this really is one of the 
 things that every schoolboy does know — how the poorer 
 plebeians were oppressed by the old harsh law of debt, 
 reducing the defaulting debtor to practical slavery : how 
 they were only induced to go out to light an invading foe 
 by the promise of relaxation of this harsh law : how the 
 promise was not kept : how despairing of redress the 
 plebeians marched away in orderly secession and encamped 
 on the Holy Hill two miles off, threatening to leave Eome 
 to the patricians and their clients. It is at this juncture 
 that Menenius is sent to them, and persuades them to a 
 compromise by the famous fable of the belly and its 
 members, with which the play begins : and the chief point 
 of this compromise is the appointment of tribunes. All 
 this is clearly told by Plutarch — though not witli perfect 
 historical accuracy : — but all this does not interest Shake- 
 speare. He mixes up this great historic secession of the 
 plebs with a disturbance about the distribution of corn 
 in time of dearth, which Plutarch descrilies at a later date : 
 he makes Menenius tell his fable to a hungry company of 
 mutinous citizens in a street : and he represents this event- 
 ful grant of the plebeian magistracy, the tribunate, as made 
 to another similar crowd who
 
 112 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 Said they were an-hungry ; sigh'd forth proverbs, 
 That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat, 
 That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not 
 Corn for the rich men only.^ 
 
 It is impossible to conceive that a dramatist moved — as 
 Gervinus asserts — by " fondness for the Eoman State " and 
 desire to show what it was " in its better days," could have 
 so degraded and vulgarised this most impressive incident in 
 its history. Nor does he understand what the tribunes are 
 appointed to do : he supposes that they are concerned in 
 managing the election to the consulship and have to 
 " endue " the candidate " with the people's voice " : though 
 I find no excuse for this blunder — as there is for other 
 blunders — in North's Phiiarch, 
 
 So again : he is in a muddle about Coriolanus' candi- 
 dature for the consulship, which he describes after Plutarch : 
 he thinks that it terminates in an election, and that 
 Coriolanus actually is consul, by the people's voices : though 
 as a subsequent confirmation is required, they have and 
 use the power of revoking their votes. But this is a mere 
 misunderstanding of Plutarch, who simply tells us that the 
 people received the candidature of Coriolanus favourably, 
 but changed their minds when it came to the election. 
 
 No, as I say, it is not the Koman State that interests 
 Shakespeare but the Eoman men and women of Plutarch, 
 and their remarkable dramatic capabilities. The relation 
 between patricians and plebeians had to be presented : but 
 it was in order to bring out impressively the mingled 
 qualities of Coriolanus. Hence it is rather irrelevant to 
 inquire after Shakespeare's political sympathies : it is 
 evident, indeed, that he is not a democrat, he does not 
 think that one man is as good as another, or that vox 
 populi is vox Dei, and there is no doubt an intention in 
 this play to give an impression of the ignorance and short- 
 sighted impulsiveness of the common people. But I con- 
 ceive that this is done largely with the dramatic object of 
 winning our sympathies for Coriolanus, whose contempt 
 
 1 Act i. Sc. i.
 
 IV 'JULIUS C/ESAR' and ' CORIOLANUS' 113 
 
 for plebeians is thus partly justified. At the same time, 
 he wishes no less to represent the people as impressible by 
 valour, grateful for heroic services, easily led to follow and 
 submit to a hero, if he will only keep his temper and 
 use a little tact and discretion. It is the fatal defect of 
 Coriolanus that he cannot condescend to exhibit these 
 qualities. 
 
 As I have said, in combining the diverse qualities of 
 Coriolanus — as well as in the other characters of the play — 
 Shakespeare has followed and developed with the utmost care 
 and fidelity the indications given by Plutarch. Pre-eminent 
 alike in valour and physical strength, exercised in all kinds 
 of activity, so that no competitor was ever a match for him, 
 with " natural strength, and hardness of ward, that never 
 yielded to any pain or toil he took upon him," he performs 
 with a certain heroic inevitableness the great deeds of 
 martial prowess that win him the surname of Coriolanus. 
 Then when the victory is over, his magnanimity is no less 
 marked : his refusal of the gifts that the consul presses on 
 him, his determination to take simply his share with the 
 rest of the soldiers, his single petition for the release of an 
 old friend and host among the Volscian captives — these 
 fine features of the hero's conduct are merely transferred 
 from Plutarch's prose to the at once simple and dignified 
 verse that Shakespeare has always at command for worthy 
 occasions : — 
 
 I thank yoii, general ; 
 
 But cannot make my heart consent to take 
 
 A bribe to pay my sword : I do refuse it ; 
 
 And stand upon my common part with those 
 
 That have behekl the doing.^ 
 
 On the other hand, says his biographer, " he was so 
 choleric and impatient, that he would yield to no living 
 creature : churlish, . . . uncivil and altogether unfit for any 
 man's conversation ": so that while men marvelled " much at 
 his constancy, that he was never overcome with pleasure, 
 nor money," yet " for all that, they could not be acquainted 
 
 ' Act ii. Sc. ix. 
 
 I
 
 1 14 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 with him, as one citizen useth to be with another in the 
 city. His behaviour was so unpleasant to them, by reason 
 of a certain insolent and stern manner he had." Shake- 
 speare admirably exemplifies this (in Act i. Sc. iv.) by the 
 outburst of contemptuous fury at the cowardice of the 
 common soldiers : on account of which, though his heroism 
 excites admiration, he is always — so to say — on the verge 
 of unpopularity. When he rushes gallantly into Corioli the 
 soldiers' comment is 
 
 First Soldier. See, they have shut him in. 
 
 All. To the pot, I warrant him. 
 
 Hence, as Plutarch later on explains, he is altogether unapt 
 for the political career to which his military services entitle 
 him ; being " a man too full of passion and choler, and too 
 much given over to self-will and opinion," lacking "the 
 gravity, and affability that is ... to be looked for in a 
 governor of State ": and " thinking that to overcome always, 
 and to have the upper hand in all matters, was a token of 
 magnanimity." But having this imperious self-will, he 
 lacks the highest kind of magnanimity — the greatness of 
 soul that can forgive an injury : his rejection for the consul- 
 ship fills him — Plutarch tells us — with " spite and malice," 
 and his subsequent banishment produces a more profound 
 and all - absorbing " vehemency of anger, and desire of 
 revenge," that sweeps away all regard for friends and for 
 country. 
 
 And here I would note a subtle trait skilfully intro- 
 duced by Shakespeare into the earlier delineation of his 
 hero. Knowing — as no reader of Plutarch could fail to 
 know — how strong an element patriotism was in the 
 character of a Eoman of noble type, he thinks that, to 
 explain the conduct of Coriolanus at this crisis, it should 
 be hinted in the earlier part of the play that even in fight- 
 ing his country's battles he is not in any high degree 
 moved by patriotic ardour. As the first citizen says in 
 the first scene, " What he hath done famously, though soft- 
 conscienced men can be content to say it was for his
 
 IV 'JULIUS cjesar' and ' CORIOLANUS' 115 
 
 country, he did it to please Lis mother, and to be partly 
 proud." And his own casual phrase in the same scene, 
 about his Volscian rival Tullus Aufidius, shows us delicately 
 but sufficiently that it is chivalry and martial ardour rather 
 than patriotic self-devotion that move him — 
 
 Were half to half the world by the ears and he 
 Upon my party, I'M revolt, to make 
 Only my wars with him. 
 
 Well, these traits make up an impressive and interesting 
 moral figure, but not an attractive one : not a hero that can 
 gain our sympathies — as Shakespeare always, I think, aims 
 at gaining them, and always, I think, succeeds even when 
 his choice of a character has imposed on him the greatest 
 difficulties. Here, however, he has no difficulties to over- 
 come : since a tender and amiable side to Coriolanus is 
 given by the most interesting and ultimately important 
 elements in his life, as told by Plutarch — his relation to his 
 mother. " The only thing that made him to love honour," 
 says the biographer, " was the joy he saw his mother 
 did take of him. For he thought nothing made him so 
 happy and honourable, as that his mother might hear every- 
 body praise and commend him, and that she might always 
 see him return with a crown upon his head." And it is not 
 only love that he habitually pays her, but obedience in 
 domestic life, for, "thinking all due to his mother, that had 
 been also due to his father if he had lived," he took a wife 
 at her desire, and " never left his mother's house therefore." 
 It is this double habit of intense filial affection and submis- 
 sive filial obedience that overcomes his passion of revenge 
 at the crisis of his fate, when all other forces have given 
 way before it, and saves him at the cost of life from the 
 terrible crime of destroying his fatherland. 
 
 So far, then, as Shakespeare works out this relation 
 between mother and son, conceiving them as similar in 
 their characters — alike in haughty determination, and 
 voluble vehemence and furious outbursts when their passion 
 is roused — as well as bound by indissoluble ties of affection,
 
 ii6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 he keeps still within the limits of the original Roman type 
 as presented by Plutarch. At the same time, I always feel 
 that in endeavouring to impress us with the charm of this 
 side of Coriolanus' nature, he has mingled with the Eoman 
 oricrinal a good deal of the exuberant manliness, the eager 
 chivalry, cordial friendship, enthusiastic courtesy, of the 
 finest type of gentleman of the Elizabethan age, Plutarch 
 tells us that Coriolanus was churlish, uncivil, and unfit 
 for any man's conversation : but Shakespeare's Coriolanus 
 only shows these qualities when moved by his exaggerated 
 contempt and aversion for the weaker side of common 
 human nature. He is not so to his intimates : the enthu- 
 siasm of old Menenius shows this — the relation between 
 the older and the younger man is very natural and affect- 
 ing. Again, his loyal and frank confidence in Aufidius — 
 after they have sworn comradeship and even when the 
 latter is plotting against him — is pathetically introduced at 
 the crisis when he gives way to his mother's appeal : — 
 
 Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars, 
 I'll frame convenient peace. Now, good Aufidius, 
 Were you in my stead, would you have heard 
 A mother less ? or granted less, Aufidius ? 
 
 I'll not to Rome, I'll back with you ; and pray you, 
 Stand to me in this cause.^ 
 
 Again, his tenderness to his wife is very beautifully though 
 briefly presented : but for this, unlike what I have just 
 noted, there is Plutarch's authority. Plutarch tells very 
 well how, when the women come to him in his camp, affec- 
 tion overcomes his determination to be stern, " and nature 
 so wrought with him, that ... he could not keep himself 
 from making much of them." The exquisite address on 
 his return from Corioli is all of Shakespeare's invention ; 
 but it is quite in harmony with Plutarch. Nothing can be 
 more simply effective than the contrast between the two 
 women. Shakespeare has obviously asked himself what 
 kind of daughter-in-law a woman like Volumnia would 
 
 ^ Act V. Sc. iii.
 
 IV 'JULIUS C^SAR' AND ' CORIOLANUS' 117 
 
 select to introduce into her household, and has decided 
 that it would be a woman like Virgilia — and very unlike 
 herself. 
 
 Kound Coriolanus the other characters group themselves 
 in effective contrast, and in relations that bring out his 
 characteristics. First — Menenius, the genial popular noble- 
 man, whose frankness the people like, though he tells them 
 plain truths, and has no love for their leaders and tribunes, 
 puts no restraint on his tongue. For an instance of 
 Menenius' generally good-humoured roughness of speech, see 
 his chaff of the leader of the mob in Act i. Scene i. — 
 
 What do you think, 
 You, the great toe of this asseuibly ? 
 
 First Git. I, the great toe ! why the great toe ? 
 Men. For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest, 
 Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost : 
 etc. 
 
 This rough banter Shakespeare conceives as the right way 
 to deal with the mob : it is effective at the time, and it 
 leaves no sting behind, such as the insolence of Coriolanus 
 leaves. There is not much of the Roman in Menenius : but 
 it is a very vivid sketch of what an Elizabethan nobleman 
 might be who could persuade a mob by a dexterously applied 
 fable. 
 
 The character of Aufidius is more subtly mingled. His 
 furious threats of unchivalrous assault in the last scene of 
 Act i. contrast with Coriolanus' magnanimity — 
 
 Nor sleep nor sanctuary, 
 Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol, 
 The prayers of priests nor times of sacrifice, 
 Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up 
 Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst 
 My hate to Marcius. 
 
 Yet the very announcement of them, the very declaration 
 that his " valour's poisoned," makes us feel that we are deal- 
 ing with a mixed nature and not completely fallen ; and 
 prepares us for what follows when Coriolanus is banished : 
 the first generosity, as appears in Act iv. Scene v. (the outburst
 
 iiS ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES iv 
 
 of enthusiasm here is very Elizabethan — there is nothing 
 more characteristic of the Ehzabethan time than enthusiasm 
 for human excellence), and then the clouds of jealousy 
 settling down again, yet not without a certain sense of 
 justice (see Act iv, Sc. vii.). So, again, the final treachery 
 and penitence at the close is characteristic. 
 
 I have spoken of Shakespeare's fidelity to his original. 
 This is shown in one way more strikingly here than in any 
 other of the Eoman plays, in the closeness with which he 
 follows the speeches. He takes all the ideas and as many 
 of the phrases as he can use, putting on emphasis and 
 imagery when North's English prose does not seem to 
 him sufficiently moving. There are three cases : — (1) 
 The speech in the third Act, urging the abolition of the 
 tribunate, already quoted from ; (2) the address to Aufidius 
 when he comes to him as a suppliant in Antium (Act iv. 
 Sc. v.); (3) Volumnia's maternal appeal (Act v. Sc. iii.). 
 A close comparison of these with North's original is very 
 interesting and instructive : but this is the kind of com- 
 parison which, perhaps, a lecturer had better suggest than 
 perform. I will only make a few remarks. In the first case 
 — the speech about the tribunate — Shakespeare is not pro- 
 fessedly giving the speech on the occasion on which the 
 model in Plutarch is delivered, but a repetition on a different 
 occasion : in the street, not in the senate : hence, perhaps, he 
 has introduced more of his own matter. In the second case 
 — the speech to Aufidius — he is very close to his original, 
 only introducing a few images to make it more vivid. In the 
 third case — Volumnia's appeal — he keeps very close to his 
 original so far as it goes, only the appeal is skilfully divided, 
 so as not to be too long, and the order slightly changed so 
 as to lead to the climax ; but I think it impresses him as 
 not quite feminine enough in style, so he adds a more 
 characteristically feminine though less classical passage at 
 the end : — 
 
 To his surname Coriolanus 'longs more pride 
 Than pity to our prayers. Down : an end ; 
 This is the last : so we will home to Rome,
 
 IV 'JULIUS C^.SAR' AND ' CORIOLANUS' 119 
 
 And (lie among our neiglibours. Nay, behold 's : 
 This boy, tliat cannot tell what he would have, 
 But kneels and holds up hands for fellowship, 
 Does reason our petition with more strength 
 Than thou hast to deny 't. Come, let us go : 
 This fellow had a Volscian to his mother ; 
 His wife is in Corioli and his child 
 Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch : 
 I am hush'd until our city be afire, 
 And then I'll speak a little.
 
 SHAKESPEAEE AND THE EOMANTIC DEAMA, 
 WITH SPECIAL EEFEEENCE TO MACBETH 
 
 The easiest method of getting a precise notion of what is 
 meant by the Eomantic drama (of which the Shakespearian 
 drama is the most splendid and impressive example) is to 
 interpret it negatively. The Eomantic drama is the type 
 of drama that dechnes to be " cribbed, cabined, and con- 
 iined " by the rules and restrictions which, under the 
 influence of the scholars of the Eennaissance, came to be 
 regarded as inviolable canons of classical art. In the 
 Eomantic drama no " unity " is considered indispensable 
 for the general coherence of impression which dramatic like 
 every other art requires, save and except the unity of 
 human interest which a series of events acquires from the 
 relations of all the events, in the way of cause and effect, to 
 the life of a single human being, or closely connected group 
 of human beings. If we may call this " unity of action," 
 then the principle of the Eomantic drama is that " unity of 
 action " is the one unity needful ; all other unities — unity 
 of time, unity of place, unity of tone of sentiment, whether 
 tragic or comic, unity of aesthetic level in the verbal instru- 
 ment of expression, whether prose or verse — are all non- 
 essential, and may be broken or kept according to convenience. 
 These unities were maintained — not exactly and universally, 
 but in the main — spontaneously and as a matter of course, 
 by the great Greek tragedians : and they were imposed as 
 
 1 20
 
 V THE ROMANTIC DRAMA AND ' MACBETH' 121 
 
 rules resting on indubitable a?sthetic principles on the so- 
 called classical drama of France : but the liornantic drama 
 holds it always lawful to violate them, though it may not 
 always be expedient. 
 
 Unity of time and place are undoubtedly helpful in 
 impressing the imagination of the audience with the inner 
 unity of the action represented : but few critics would now 
 maintain that they are indispensable for this purpose : and 
 certainly in many cases their observance would render it 
 impossible to bring directly before the spectators the most 
 essential parts of the action — the most important conse- 
 quences of the most important causes. Thus, e.g., in 
 witnessing the tragedy of Othello, the spectator must be dull 
 whose imagination does not follow the wedded Othello and 
 Desdemona from Venice to Cyprus, without the least sense 
 of a break in the coherence of the action. So, again, if such 
 an action as that of Macbeth is to be adequately represented 
 — if the spectator is to see how " the assassination " cannot 
 " trammel up the consequence," but " in these cases we still 
 have judgment here," — the time of the piece must be 
 stretched to years. We must follow Macbeth from his appear- 
 ance in the prime of manly vigour, fighting like " Bellona's 
 bridegroom " against the enemies of his country, until after 
 restless years of criminal rule, his 
 
 way of life 
 Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf ; 
 And that which should accompany old age, 
 As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 I must not look to have ; but, in their stead, 
 Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, 
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.^ 
 
 The violation of unity in the tone of feeling stirred by 
 the drama, the mingling of comic with tragic effects — this 
 is at once a characteristic of "deej^er import, and more in 
 need of defence. Even ardent admirers of Shakespeare 
 have not always been able to approve the combinations of 
 effects on which he ventures. Even Coleridcre considered 
 
 Act V. Sc. iii.
 
 122 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES v 
 
 that the " low soliloquy of the porter in Macbeth must have 
 been written for the mob by some hand other than Shake- 
 speare's " ; and this view seems to have been accepted by 
 Messrs. Clark and Wright. I see no reason for regarding 
 this as less thoroughly Shakespearean than, e.g., the utter- 
 ances of the Fool in King Lear, at the crisis w^hen the storm 
 of the old man's passion is vying with the storm of the 
 elements, which some readers have also found inharmonious 
 with the pathetic situation in which they are introduced. 
 Whether it is right a3sthetically to appeal to our sense of 
 the ridiculous at the very crisis of tragic interest, I do not 
 venture dogmatically to decide. There seems to me both gain 
 and loss in it. Undoubtedly the utterances {e.g.) of the 
 porter in Macbeth break the harmony of the spectator's 
 sentiment, and so far tend to diminish the intensity of the 
 tragic impression. It may be replied that they relieve the 
 strain on his feelings and so prevent him from being wearied : 
 and I have no doubt that Shakespeare — writing for a mixed 
 audience — had this effect in view. But this alone would 
 not seem to me an adequate defence ; an audience that 
 required for mere relief such violent mixtures of tragic and 
 comic as Shakespeare allows himself, would seem to me 
 a vulgar audience : to cultivated spectators adequate relief 
 might be given by more refined methods. For Shakespeare's 
 mixtures, however, there is usually more to be said. Firstly, 
 since in actual life the trivial and ridiculous does thus 
 mingle itself with the gravest events, its introduction often 
 increases in a startling way the life-likeness of the whole ; 
 the combination of the two elements enables the poet to 
 bring before us the whole scene, the whole story, in its ful- 
 ness. Sometimes it does even more than this : the ludicrous 
 element, even while it amuses, heightens the pathos, in- 
 tensifies the tragedy of the situation. This, I think, is 
 the case in the scene in Lear to which I referred ; the 
 grotesque accompaniment of the faithful fool renders the 
 outpourings of the desolate king's wounded heart more and 
 not less pathetic. I do not say that the additional vivid- 
 ness and intensity thus gained always makes up for the loss
 
 V THE ROMANTIC DRAMA AND 'MACBETH' 123 
 
 through discordance of effects : hut at any rate it is charac- 
 teristic of the Eoniantic drama that it prefers to seize this 
 Jiind of gain at the risk of this kind of loss. 
 
 The same general preference is shown in otlier ways 
 than in the mingling of tragedy and comedy ; the Itomantic 
 — and especially the Shakespearean — drama will aim at 
 naturalness at the risk of offending our sense of taste and 
 decorum : it will aim at emphasis and force in the expres- 
 sion of feeling at the risk of repelling us hy violence 
 and uncouthness : it will aim at volume and richness of 
 effect at the risk of wearying by profusion or bewilder- 
 ing by variety. It has the defects of its Cjualities ; 
 what can be fairly claimed for it is, that for its central 
 object of presenting impressively the complex content of a 
 human story, its method, in a master's hand, is surpassingly 
 effective. 
 
 This disregard of unity or homogeneity in tone of senti- 
 ment is naturally accompanied by the license of variation 
 in the metliod of verbal expression which characterises this 
 type. The Shakespearean drama descends to prose, rises to 
 blank verse, and occasionally dances into rhyme at its own 
 sweet will, according as it finds one or other of these modes 
 of expression more appropriate. In Shakespeare's use of 
 these different verbal instruments important changes occur 
 as his art develops ; thus, except in two or three of the 
 earliest comedies, rhyme occupies a quite subordinate place, 
 and towards the close of his period of production he seems 
 to be abandoning it : still it is used, though sparingly, for 
 definite effects even in his best tragedies. To speak frankly, 
 I cannot always explain why it is used, nor can I always 
 explain the subtle instinct by which Shakespeare divides 
 the less impressive part of the dialogue between blank verse 
 and prose ; but one may say broadly, that in Shakespeare's 
 mature work blank verse is used ordinarily for passionate, 
 earnest, and dignified utterance, prose ordinarily for what is 
 either comic, trivial, or markedly unemotional, while rhymed 
 verse may come in where deliberate sententiousness seems 
 to be in place, as at the conclusion of a scene, or where a
 
 124 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 combat of polite wits is designed, the entertainment of which 
 is not impaired by a touch of artificiality.^ 
 
 It follows from what has been said, that it is not always 
 possible to classify the products of the Eomantic dramatist 
 as definitely tragedies or comedies. To apply such a classi- 
 fication rightly would be to miss the essential features of 
 the type. They may be either or both in varying degrees : 
 mainly tragic with comic elements, or mainly comic with 
 pathetic effects produced by an introduction of the style 
 of tragedy. Thus, in Much Ado ahoid Nothing, the effect 
 is preponderantly comic and most 'of the dialogue is in 
 prose ; but when, in the fourth act, the wedding is broken 
 off by a vile conspiracy of calumny against the bride, it 
 rises into blank verse ; and the passionate outbreak of the 
 father, under the shock of his daughter's dishonour, is in the 
 finest tragic manner of Shakespeare's middle period. 
 
 Do not live, Hero ; do not ope thine eyes : 
 
 For, did I think thou woiildst not quickly die, 
 
 Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames, 
 
 Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches. 
 
 Strike at thy life. Grieved I, I had but one 1 
 
 Chid I for that at frugal nature's frame ? 
 
 0, one too much by thee ! Why had I one ? 
 
 Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes? 
 
 Why had I not with charitable hand 
 
 Took up a beggar's issue at my gates, 
 
 Who smirched thus and mired with infamy, 
 
 I might have said " No jxtrt of it is mine, 
 
 Tliis shame derives itself from unknown loins " ? 
 
 But mine and mine I loved and mine I praised 
 
 And mine that I was proud on, mine so much 
 
 That I myself was to myself not mine. 
 
 Valuing of her — why she, 0, she is fallen 
 
 Into a pit of ink.^ 
 
 The conspiracy is, as you know, unmasked, and the calumny 
 refuted, and all ends happily : so we have no scruple in 
 classifying the play as a comedy ; but when from the lively 
 
 ^ When I say that l)lank verse is used for dignified utterance, it is to be noted 
 that it is sometimes tlie dignity of the person, rather than of the matter spoken, 
 that determines the choice of tliis form. 
 
 2 Act iv. Sc. i.
 
 V THE ROMANTIC DRAMA AND 'MACBETH' 125 
 
 repartees of Beatrice and Benedict, and the merry jest of 
 making each believe that the other is pining for love of him 
 or her, we are suddenly swept into this passage of elevated 
 pathos, we feel to the full the mingled quality of the 
 Romantic drama. 
 
 Still, such plays as this we can classify by their pre- 
 dominant quality ; but there are others in which we tind 
 no such definite predominance of quality at all ; and in 
 some of these latter the aim of presenting an interesting 
 story is more prominent than any design of being either 
 tragic or comic. Thus, in Cymhcline, The Winter's Tale, and 
 The Tempest, the dramatist does not aim specially at moving 
 us to pity and terror, or amusing us with droll situations 
 and witty sayings — any more than a modern novelist does, 
 — but at exciting our sympathy with the joys and sorrows, 
 hopes and fears, of interesting persons to whom interesting 
 events happen. 
 
 I have mentioned three plays that belong to Shake- 
 speare's latest work, because it is important to note that 
 this mixed and variegated quality of the effects aimed at 
 by the liomantic drama is not a characteristic that Shake- 
 speare's art has any tendency to outgrow, — as he seems to 
 have a tendency to outgrow the use of rhyme. Quite the 
 contrary ; it is in his earliest work that we have comedy 
 w'ithout any pathetic or dignified scenes, and tragedy with- 
 out any touch of the humorous. Loves Labour s Lost and 
 the Comedy of Errors are both the purest comedies though 
 of very different kinds ; and Titus Andronicus — which, I 
 am sorry to say, I can find no adequate reason for not 
 regarding as an early production of Shakespeare's — is the 
 most perfectly unrelieved tragedy, and blank verse — often 
 very blank — from beginning to end. Whereas of the later 
 tragedies there is not one of which the predominant tone is 
 not relieved or varied — it may be heightened — by some 
 other element than the serious tragic style. 
 
 Partly, this may be referred to the tendency of develop- 
 ment of Shalvcspeare's own genius ; we seem to find in him a 
 growing determination to combine fulness and pregnancy with
 
 126 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES v 
 
 impressiveness — at some sacrifice of harmoniousness — in all 
 his representation and expression of human life. But it is 
 partly to be regarded in a less personal way, as exhibiting the 
 final and complete triumph of the popular conception of the 
 drama over the scholarly conception, between which, for some 
 time before Shakespeare, there has been a conflict going on. 
 
 ■ • ■ • « • 
 
 In the present lecture it is my object to characterise 
 and illustrate some of the special features of Shakespeare's 
 own work ; and I have thought it best to take as a kind 
 of centre the play of Macbeth, and dwell most on those 
 aspects of Shakespeare's work which Macbeth exemplifies. 
 That is, I shall have in view mainly the plays classified 
 as Tragedies or Histories — not Comedies ; I say Tragedies 
 or Histories, because Macbeth is to be regarded as partaking 
 of both characters. I see no reason for thinking that 
 Shakespeare regarded Holinshed's Chronicle — from which 
 he took the story of the play — as materially less historical 
 and trustworthy in its account of Duncan's murder and 
 Macbeth's reign, than in the later events of English history 
 in which he similarly followed its guidance. 
 
 And when I distinguish these from Comedies I wish 
 you to bear in mind that, as I have said, the separation 
 between the two is only partial, since it is a fundamental 
 characteristic of the Eomantic drama that the dramatist 
 can mingle the two elements in any proportion he likes. 
 Still, allowing for this mingled quality of the Eomantic 
 drama, there are still many plays which we can fairly 
 classify as Tragedies or Comedies. And when we compare 
 the two sets, I think it ought to be admitted — notwith- 
 standing the delight that so many of his comic personages 
 have given us — that Shakespeare's fame as the greatest of 
 modern dramatists rests more indubitably on his tragedies. 
 Por, first, Shakespearean tragedy impresses me as a higher 
 type of drama than Shakespearean comedy, because of its 
 greater unity of interest. In the great tragedies — in 
 Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello — the fate of the central 
 personage, or closely united pair of personages, as woven by
 
 V THE ROMANTIC DRAMA AND 'MACBETH' 127 
 
 the iiitemctiou of character and circumstances, supplies a 
 dominant central thread of interest round which the in- 
 terests of all other events and personages are hung, and 
 from their relation to which these minor interests derive 
 most of their vitality. Now in the best Shakespearean 
 comedy this unity of central interest is wanting, and 
 therefore there is less coherence in total effect. Thus, 
 though I individually enjoy Shakespeare's comedies more 
 than Moliere's, I cannot deny that Moliere's type has the 
 decided advantage in cohesion and unity of interest. Some- 
 thing similar may be said of Ben Jonson. When I pass 
 from the Shakespearean comedy to the Jonsonian, I have to 
 admit, along with a great loss of charm, a certain progress 
 in type, an increase in coherent interest ; but in tragedy 
 after Shakespeare there is no similar advance. Secondly, 
 in one important element of a comedian's stock-in-trade, 
 Shakespeare's stock-in-trade seems to me inferior in quality : 
 I mean loit. He has plenty of it ; he delights in quips and 
 quirks and happy hits, neat turns of phrase and smart 
 repartees ; and — in the earlier part of his career at least — 
 is inventive and profuse in his efforts to produce them. 
 But the results are disappointing; his sallies and retorts 
 are ingenious but not felicitous; his word-plays rarely 
 make us laugh, and often make us blush to contemplate 
 our greatest comic poet lingering so complacently over 
 puns so poor. And we feel this all the more, as the 
 pleasure we get from his humour — from laughter-provoking 
 incongruities between what men are and what they think 
 themselves to be or what their situation calls on them to 
 be — is so varied and inexhaustible, whether we simply 
 laugh at the humorous personage, as at Bottom and Dog- 
 berry and IMalvolio ; or, better still, partly at and partly 
 with them, as with Falstaff and Touchstone. This humour 
 is only one aspect of Shakespeare's subtle and compre- 
 hensive grasp of human life in its strangely varied diver- 
 gences from the human ideal : but his combats of wit and 
 ingenuities of vivacious dialogue — I humbly think that 
 they were for an age, and not for all time.
 
 128 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES v 
 
 And it ought to be said that as Shakespeare's art 
 develops, this element is valued less and less for its own 
 sake, and more and more as a means of exhibiting char- 
 acter. Of comedy then I shall say no more in detail, but 
 only refer to it generally, so far as may be necessary in 
 speaking of Shakespeare's work as a whole. 
 
 It is clear that — at least during a great part of Shake- 
 speare's career — his literary reputation, w^hich was con- 
 siderable, was not based mainly on his plays, but on his 
 poems, Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, and on the sonnets 
 handed round among his friends, and not published till 
 1609. This is shown by his being mentioned with 
 praise as a poet by writers who do not even allude to his 
 plays. 
 
 I conceive, then, that Shakespeare, who seems to have 
 been quite devoid of the self-assertive egotism that char- 
 acterised his rival Ben Jonson, regarded his plays much as 
 the public regarded them : he constructed them for the 
 stage, and so long as they retained their popularity on the 
 boards it was not in the way of business to collect them in a 
 book. There is no reason to suppose him indifferent to their 
 ultimate fate ; he died prematurely at fifty-two, and may 
 easily have designed for his old age the task of presenting 
 his work in final literary form : which, as it was, had to be 
 undertaken seven years after his death by surviving mem- 
 bers of his company. But, primarily, he wrote with an eye 
 to his business, as playwright, play-actor, and shareholder 
 in the Globe Theatre, — a business which he pursued with 
 steady resolution, but always looking forward to leaving it 
 and living like a gentleman at Stratford, when he had 
 restored the decayed fortunes of his family. 
 
 I dwell on this business aspect of Shakespeare's work, 
 because I think that not only the difficulty of making out 
 exactly where his work begins and ends, but also the 
 characteristic qualities of what is undoubtedly his — both 
 good and bad qualities — are largely due to this cause, 
 that what he had to write was first and foremost an acting
 
 V THE ROMANTIC DRAMA AND 'MACBETH' 129 
 
 play, made to tell on a certain given audience, whose 
 capacities and susceptibilities he had, as actor as well as 
 playwright, learned to know thorougldy. We must con- 
 ceive it as an audience of a very mixed character : contain- 
 ing doubtless a refined and cultivated element, who could 
 appreciate his deeper reflection, his subtleties and ingen- 
 uities, and catch the meaning of the compact allusive 
 phrases with which his later style is rife : but containing 
 also a vulgarer element that had to be amused by broad 
 drollery, entertained by varied scenes and startling tran- 
 sitions, impressed witli contrasts of character and changes 
 of moods by violent and profuse manifestations. I think 
 that, in the eager sustained effort to satisfy these diverse 
 needs the genius of Shakespeare was drawn out, but was also 
 here and there made to stoop to work quite below the level 
 of his own taste. And as the demand for new plays was 
 surprisingly incessant, — in one part of his career at least 
 it would seem that a new play was wanted about every 
 seventeen days, — it is not strange that even Shakespeare's 
 facile pen and unflagging industry could not unassisted 
 meet the demand, so that he was led to collaborate with 
 others, and take old plays and work them up into a more 
 effective form. I cannot doubt that in most, if not all, of 
 the plays regarded by at least some important critics as 
 doubtful,^ a mingling of Shakespearean and non- Shake- 
 spearean elements has been caused in one or other of these 
 two ways. 
 
 But if this alien element be admitted in so many of the 
 plays published as Shakespeare's by his fellow-actors, how 
 can we define its limits ? Well, I think the decision is 
 difiicult, and that we must candidly admit that the work 
 of other hands may possibly lurk unrecognised in plays 
 that have hitherto been unquestioningly received. For 
 example, I agree with the Cambridge editors " in tracing such 
 an element in Macbeth from the combined effect of internal 
 and external evidence ; but I do not think that a sober- 
 
 ^ Thus Andronicm, the three parts of Henry VI., The Taming of the Shrew, 
 Timon 0/ Athois, Pcric/c.s; Henri/ VIIL 
 "^ Messrs. Clark and Wright. 
 
 E
 
 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 minded critic will extend the alien element far, in the plays 
 on which the world sets a real value. And I would add that 
 I do not think the general possibility of this foreign ad- 
 mixture ought to be used as a means of relieving Shake- 
 speare of the responsibility of bad writing ; indeed, however 
 strong my impression might be that the style of a passage 
 was un-Shakespearean, I should never rely on the evidence 
 of style alone unsupported by other tests. Experiences of 
 my own many years ago, when I knew more about the 
 authorship of anonymous reviews than I do now, convinced 
 me that cultivated persons generally overrate their power of 
 knowing an author by his style. I think, therefore, that 
 when Messrs. Clark and Wright say that " Shakespeare has 
 always a manner which cannot well be mistaken," they are 
 not allowing enough for the general feebleness of human 
 discernment of literary qualities. In the particular case of 
 Macbeth, however, I agree with the Cambridge editors in 
 thinking the second scene of Act i., in which the sergeant 
 reports the martial deeds of Macbeth and Banquo, is un- 
 Shakespearean in its laboured and level bombast unsuited 
 to the personage, and that most of the utterances of Hecate 
 and some of those of the witches, are un-Shakespearean in 
 their flat and fluent triviality. 
 
 Let me explain. I do not think that Shakespeare in 
 his maturity writes exactly bombast, as I should use the 
 word. I admit that his expressions are what might loosely 
 be called " bombastic " ; i.e. I admit that they are some- 
 times violent, exaggerated, extravagant, — if you like, un- 
 natural. Excessive emphasis is a sin of the Elizabethan 
 drama generally, and Shakespeare is undoubtedly among 
 the sinners. But his violent and extravagant phrases are 
 at any rate carefully prepared and worked up to : they 
 belong to the character, the situation, and correspond to 
 some adequate cause of strong emotion : they do not pro- 
 duce on us the effect of mere rhetorical effort gone wrong : 
 of a man swelling out his phrases and talking big in order 
 to impress us, and not impressing us after all. And I think 
 that there is no play of Shakespeare's better adapted to
 
 V THE ROMANTIC DRAMA AND 'MACBETH' 131 
 
 illustrate this difference than Macbeth : none in which the 
 violent utterances are more carefully prepared and worked 
 up to. Take, e.(/., the meditation of Macbeth just before the 
 murder of Banquo : — 
 
 'r, } 
 
 To be thus is nothin<,' 
 But to be safely thus. — Our fears in Banquo 
 Stick deep ; ami in his royalty of nature 
 Reigns that which would be fear'd : 'tis much he dares ; 
 And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, 
 He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour 
 To act in safety. There is none but he 
 Whose being I do fear : and, under him, 
 My Genius is rebuked ; as, it is said, 
 Mark Antony's was by Cajsar. He chid the sisters 
 When tirst they put the name of king upon me. 
 And bade them speak to him : then prophet-like 
 They hailed him father to a line of kings : 
 Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown. 
 And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, 
 Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand. 
 No son of mine succeeding. If 't be so. 
 For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind ; 
 For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd ; 
 Put rancours in the vessel of my peace 
 Only for them ; and mine eternal jewel 
 Given to the common enemy of man. 
 To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings ! 
 Rather than so, come fate into the list, 
 And champion me to the utterance ! ^ 
 
 Observe how out from the meditative calmness of the 
 intellectual state of analysis of his rival's character, the 
 passion of jealousy — naturally imperious in a powerful 
 mind that has given itself to criminal ambition — is gradu- 
 ally worked up to increasing violence of expression. The 
 last phrase is just w^hat might have been bombastic if it 
 had not been thus prepared ; but as it comes in it seems to 
 me right. 
 
 I will take another instance where there is an extrava- 
 gance of image which I cannot quite defend, but which yet 
 is not bombast : — 
 
 ' Act iii. So. i.
 
 132 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well 
 It were done quickly : if the assassination 
 Could trammel up the consequence, and catch 
 With his surcease success ; that but this blow 
 Might be the be-all and the end-all here, 
 But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 
 We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases 
 We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
 Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
 To plague the inventor : This even-handed justice 
 Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
 To our own lips. He's here in double trust ; 
 First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, 
 Strong both against the deed ; then, as his host, 
 Who should against his murderer shut the door. 
 Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan 
 Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking-oflf : 
 And pity, like a naked new-born babe, 
 Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed 
 Upon the sightless couriers of the air. 
 Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
 That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur 
 To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
 Vaulting ambition, which o'er-leaps itself, 
 And falls on the other.^ 
 
 I confess that the idea of " tears drowning the wind " 
 seems to me too extravagant to be approved anywhere : but 
 if anywhere we can tolerate it here, where it comes as the 
 one burst of violent emotion in a speech of which the 
 general language expresses admirably the tranquil tension 
 of anxious meditation at a tremendous crisis of life. 
 
 Observe, again, how subtly these speeches — and other 
 speeches of Macbeth — are suited to the character that 
 Shakespeare requires for the effectiveness of the drama. 
 Macbeth is the only one of the great group of tragedies that 
 belongs to Shakespeare's middle period, in which the lead- 
 ing villain of the piece is at the same time the hero, on 
 whose career (along with his wife's) the spectators have to 
 
 ^ Act 1. Sc. vii.
 
 V THE ROMANTIC DRAMA AND 'MACBETH' 133 
 
 concentrate their main interest : the dramatist has therefore 
 the difficult problem of exciting our sympathies for a man 
 whom he has to show descending through a series of hideous 
 crimes to a depth of utter wickedness. And the difficulty 
 is doubled because the story he has to tell precludes him 
 from attributing to Macbeth, at the great crisis of the 
 action, the only moral excellences appropriate to a 
 thorough-going criminal — high-hearted courage and manly 
 resolution. It is the wife who has to exhibit these 
 qualities: and if it is awkward for a hero to be a villain, 
 it is even more awkward for him to play second fiddle to 
 a woman. 
 
 But it is in triumphing over difficulties of this kind that 
 Shakespeare's dramatic genius is most strikingly shown : for 
 if there is anything in which Shakespeare's genius is in- 
 contestable it is in his power of winning for his personages 
 — under the most unfavourable circumstances — at least the 
 quantum of human sympathy required for dramatic interest. 
 He achieves this in the case of Macbeth by giving him an 
 intellectual comprehensiveness and penetration, and at the 
 same time an emotional susceptibility remarkably deep and 
 delicate. Thus his vacillation at the crisis, before the crime, 
 and the terrifying collapse and overthrow of his rational 
 self-control immediately after it, are felt by the spectator to 
 be due not to the feebleness of his nature but to its 
 intellectual range and emotional fineness. It is because he 
 can see clearly the consequences of his crime, and even feel 
 with sympathetic intensity the pity and horror it will 
 excite in others — though this gift of sympathy is perfectly 
 dominated by selfish ambition — that he hesitates at the 
 crisis ; it is through the same fineness of nature that he 
 feels so intensely afterwards how the springs of true human 
 life are for him so irrevocably poisoned. 
 
 The same characteristics give a singular charm to his 
 meditative utterances even at the later period of his career, 
 when not only morality but natural affection has been eaten 
 out of him by his course of relentless crime. Thus in his 
 speech, on hearing of his wife's death —
 
 134 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES r 
 
 She should have died hereafter ; 
 There would have been a time for such a word. 
 To-moiTow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
 To the last syllable of recorded time, 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
 Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
 And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. 
 Signifying nothing.^ 
 
 In this speech he shows that conjugal love — so strong in 
 the crisis before the murder, so powerful in deciding him 
 to action — has withered away : the relic of it is only able 
 to stir in him a vague sense of the hollowness of life : but 
 his expression of this feeling irresistibly wins for him the 
 interest attaching to a fine nature in moral ruin. 
 
 ^ Act. V. Sc. V.
 
 VI 
 
 BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM IX POLITICS AXD 
 
 ETHICS 
 
 {Fortnightly Review, May 1877) 
 
 In the critical narrative, equally brilliant and erudite, 
 which Mr. Leslie Stephen has given us of the course of 
 English thought in the eighteenth century, there is one 
 gap which I cannot but regret, in spite of what Mr. Stephen 
 has said in explanation of it. The work of Bentham 
 is treated with somewhat contemptuous brevity in the 
 chapter on Moral Philosophy ; while in the following 
 chapter on Political Theories his name is barely mentioned. 
 The present paper is an attempt in some measure to supply 
 this deficiency. I should not have ventured on it if 
 Beutham's teaching had become to us a matter of merely 
 historical interest ; as I cannot flatter myself that I possess 
 Mr. Stephen's rare gift of imparting a sparkle to the dust- 
 heaps of extinct controversy. But no such extinction has 
 yet overtaken Bentham : his system is even an important 
 element of our current political thought ; hardly a decade 
 — though an eventful one — has elapsed since it might 
 almost have been called a predominant element. Among 
 the other writers to whom Mr. Stephen has devoted many 
 entertaining pages in his tenth chapter, there is not one of 
 whom this can be said. It would be almost ostentation, in 
 polite society at the present day, to claim familiarity with 
 Bolingbroke ; it would be even pedantry to draw attention 
 to Hoadly. The literary sources of tlie French Pevolution 
 
 135
 
 136 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 are studied with eager and ever-increasing interest ; but 
 they are studied, even by Englishmen, almost entirely in 
 the writings of France : the most ardent reader of revolu- 
 tionary literature is reluctant to decline from Eousseau to 
 Tom Paine. Mr. Kegan Paul's entertaining biography 
 has temporarily revived our interest in Godwin, other- 
 wise Political Justice would be chiefly known to this 
 generation through the refutation of Malthus ; and Malthus's 
 own work is now but seldom taken from the shelf. There 
 are probably many schoolboys feeding a nascent taste for 
 rhetoric on the letters of Junius ; but Mr. Stephen has felt 
 that the inclusion of these in an account of Political 
 Theories requires something like an apology. Burke lives, 
 no doubt, not merely through the eloquence which immor- 
 talises even the details of party conflicts, but through a kind 
 of wisdom, fused of intellect and emotion, which is as 
 essentially independent of the theorising in which it is 
 embedded as metal is of its mine. But though Burke lives, 
 we meet with no Burkites. The star of Hume's meta- 
 physical fame has risen steadily for a century ; but his 
 warmest admirers are rather irritated by his predominant 
 desire for literary popularity, and are perhaps too much 
 inclined to turn aside from the philosophic material that 
 was wasted in furnishing elegant essays on National Char- 
 acter and The Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth. In short, 
 of all the writers I have mentioned, regarded as political 
 theorists, it is only the eccentric hermit of Queen's Square 
 Place whose name still carries with it an audible demand that 
 we should reckon with his system, and explain to ourselves 
 why and how far we agree or disagree with his opinions. 
 
 Mr. Stephen, it should be said, is so far from denying 
 this exceptional vitality of Benthamism, that he even puts 
 it forward as an explanation of his cursory treatment of 
 this system. " The history of utilitarianism as an active 
 force belongs," he tells us, to the new post-revolutionary 
 era, on the threshold of which his plan compels him to 
 stop. This argument would have been sound if Bentham 
 had really been a man of the nineteenth century, born
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 137 
 
 before his time in the eigliteenth, and thus naturally 
 not appreciated till later, when the stream of current 
 thought had at length caught him up. Such freaks of 
 nature do sometimes occur, to the very considerable per- 
 plexity of the philosophical historian, in his efforts to 
 exhibit a precise and regular development of opinion. 
 But this is so far from being the case with Bentham, 
 that when J. S. Mill, in his most eclectic phase, under- 
 took to balance his claims as a thinker against those 
 of Coleridge, he described the coniiict between these two 
 modes of thought as the " revolt of the nineteenth century 
 against the eighteenth." The appropriateness of the phrase 
 is surely undeniable. No doubt it is also true, as Mr. 
 Stephen says, that Benthamism as an active force — and 
 Benthamism is nothing if it is not an active force — belongs 
 rather to the nineteenth century. It is just because both 
 these views are equally true that Bentham deserves the 
 special attention of the historian of opinion. In England, 
 at least in the department of ethics and politics, Bentham- 
 ism is the one outcome of the Seculum Rationalisticum 
 against which the philosophy of Restoration and Reaction 
 has had to struggle continually with varying success. It 
 is, we may say, the legacy left to the nineteenth century by 
 the eighteentli ; or rather, perhaps, by that innovating and 
 reforming period of the eighteenth century in which En- 
 lightenment became ardent, and strove to consume and 
 re-create. In his most characteristic merits, as well as his 
 most salient defects, Bentham is eminently a representative 
 of this stirring and vehement age : in his unreserved devo- 
 tion to the grandest and most comprehensive aims, his 
 high and sustained confidence in their attainability, and the 
 buoyant, indefatigable industry with which he sought the 
 means for their attainment — no less than in his exaggerated 
 reliance on his own method, his ignorant contempt for the 
 past, and his intolerant misinterpretation of all that opposed 
 him in the present. 
 
 It must be admitted that, though distinctly a child of its 
 age, Benthamism was not exactly a favourite child. The
 
 138 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 Fragment on Government (1776), and the Principles of 
 Morals and Legislation (published 1789), had found com- 
 paratively few sympathising readers at the time when 
 Political Justice and The Eights of Man were being greedily 
 bought. At the age of forty-two (1790) Bentham speaks, 
 in a letter to his brother, of " the slow increase of my 
 school." Yet we observe very clearly that from the first 
 Bentham appears as a teacher and master of political 
 science — one who has, or ought to have, a " school " — and 
 is accepted as such by competent judges. In 1778, only 
 two years after the publication of the Fragment, D'Alembert 
 writes to him, in the style of the time, as a philosopher and 
 professional benefactor of the human race. Two years 
 later he was taken up by Lord Lansdowne, who seems to 
 have had the eager receptivity for abstract theory which is 
 often found in powerful but imperfectly trained intellects, 
 even after the fullest acquisition of all that experience can 
 teach. The retired statesman bore with really admirable 
 patience the humours of the sensitive and self-conscious 
 philosopher : and in the circle at Bowood Bentham found 
 — besides the one romance of his life — invaluable oppor- 
 tunities for extending his influence as a thinker. It was 
 there that he first met Ptomilly, the earliest of the band of 
 reformers who, in the next century, attempted the practical 
 realisation of his principles ; and there, too, he laid the 
 foundation of his remarkable ascendency over Dumont. 
 The self-devotion with which a man of Dumont's talents and 
 independence of thought allowed himself to be absorbed in 
 the humble function of translating and popularising Ben- 
 tham was a testimony of admiration outweighing a bushel 
 of complimentary phrases : of which, however, Bentham had 
 no lack, though they came from a somewhat narrow circle. 
 " The suffrages of the few," writes Dumont in one of his 
 earUer letters, " will repay you for the indifference of the 
 many . . . Write and bridle my wandering opinions." 
 Through Dumont he became known to Mirabeau : and a 
 good deal of Benthamite doctrine found its way into that 
 hero's addresses to his constituents, which Dumont assisted
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 139 
 
 in composing. Brissot again, who saw a good deal of 
 
 Bentham in London, some years before 17<S9, always spoke 
 
 and wrote of him with the utmost enthusiasm : to which it 
 
 may be partly attributed that, in August 1792, a special 
 
 law of the National Assembly made him (as he tells Wilber- 
 
 Ibrce afterwards) " an adopted PVench citizen, third man in 
 
 the universe after a natural one " ; Priestley and Paine 
 
 being the first two. As soon as Dumont published the 
 
 Principes de la Code Civile et F^7iale (1802), expressions of 
 
 even hyperbolical admiration were sent to the philosopher 
 
 from different parts of Europe. A Swiss pastor subscribes 
 
 himself, rather to Bentham's amusement, " un homme 
 
 heureux, regcnere par la lecture de vos ouvrages." A 
 
 Russian general writes that his book " fills the soul with 
 
 peace, the heart with virtue, and dissipates the mists of the 
 
 mind " ; and conjures him to dictate a code to Eussia. 
 
 Another Piussian admirer ranks him with Bacon and Xew- 
 
 ton as the " creator of a new science," and writes that he is 
 
 "laying up a sum for the purpose of spreading the light 
 
 which emanates " from his writings. Nor is he without 
 
 similar honour even in his own country. Lord Lansdowne, 
 
 answering good-humouredly a reproachful epistle of sixty 
 
 pages, says that it is a letter which " Bacon might have 
 
 sent to Buckingham." In 1793 a gentleman whom he has 
 
 asked to dinner writes expressing " a woman's eagerness to 
 
 meet a gentleman of so enlightened a mind." A few years 
 
 later we find that the great Dr. Parr is never tired of 
 
 praising his " mighty talents, profound researches, important 
 
 discoveries, and irresistible arguments." On the whole we 
 
 may say that as even in his revered old age he never 
 
 attained the kind of popularity that adapts a man's name 
 
 for utterance on platforms : so even in the earlier part of his 
 
 career he often met with respect that almost amounted to 
 
 homage from men more or less influential and representative. 
 
 The degree and kind of influence which Bentham exercised 
 
 in the revolutionary period corresponds tolerably well to the 
 
 degree of affinity between his teaching and the principles 
 
 on which the revolutionary movement proceeded. In the
 
 I40 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 combat against prejudices and privileges any ally was 
 welcome ; and Bentham was as anxious as any revolutionist 
 to break with the past, and reform all tlie institutions 
 of society in accordance with pure reason. It is true that, 
 from our point of view, the reason of Bentham appears the 
 perfect antithesis of the reason of Eousseau ; but it is very 
 doubtful whether this would have been evident to Eousseau 
 himself. The mainspring of Bentham's life and work, as 
 his French friends saw, was an equal regard for all man- 
 kind : whether the precise objects of this regard were 
 conceived as men's " rights " or their " interests," was a 
 question which they would not feel to be of primary con- 
 cern. He himself, indeed, was always conscious of the 
 gulf that separated him from his fellow-citizens by adoption. 
 " Were they," he writes in 1796, "to see an analysis I have 
 by me of their favourite Declaration of Eights, there is not 
 perhaps a being upon earth that would be less welcome to 
 them than I could ever hope to be." But the Anarchical 
 Fallacies, like some other fruits of Bentham's labours, 
 remained on the philosopher's shelves till the end of his 
 life ; only a meagre fragment of them found its way into 
 Dumont's Principes ; and by the time that this came out, 
 anarchical theories were somewhat obscured behind military 
 facts. And unless the " principle of utility " explicitly an- 
 nounced itself as hostile to the fundamental principles of 
 the common revolutionary creed, it certainly would not be 
 generally perceived to be so. I should almost conjecture 
 from what Mr. Stephen says of Bentham, compared with 
 the references to utilitarianism in his discussion of earlier 
 writers, that he has hardly enough recognised that Ben- 
 tham's originality and importance lay not in his verbal 
 adoption of utility as an end and standard of right political 
 action, but in his real exclusion of any other standard ; 
 in the definiteness with which he conceived the " general 
 good " ; the clearness and precision with which he analysed 
 it into its empirically ascertainable constituents ; the ex- 
 haustive and methodical consistency with which he applied 
 this one standard to all departments of practice ; and the
 
 VI BENTFIAM AND BENTHAMISM 141 
 
 rigour with which he kept its appHcatiou tree from all alien 
 elements. Merely to state " utility " as an ultimate end 
 was nothing ; no one would have distinguished this from 
 the "public good" at which all politicians had always 
 professed to aim, and all revolutionary politicians with 
 special amplitude of phrase. The very Declaration of the 
 National Assembly, that solemnly set forth the main- 
 tenance of the " natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable " 
 riglits of man, as the sole end of government, announced in 
 its very first clause, that " civil distinctions, therefore, can be 
 founded only on public utility." Tt was not then sur- 
 prising that Morellet, Brissot, and others, recognising the 
 comprehensiveness of view and clearness of grasp that were 
 so remarkably combined in Bentham's intellect, the equal 
 distribution of his sympathies, and the elevated ardour of 
 his philanthropy, should have hailed him as worthy to 
 " serve in the cause of liberty." 
 
 And yet the almost comical contrast that we find between 
 Bentham's temper and method in treating political questions, 
 and the habitual sentiments and ideas of his revolutionary 
 friends, could hardly fail to make itself felt by the latter. Let 
 us take, for example, tlie Essay on Parliamentary Tactics 
 which he offered for the guidance of the new Assembly in 
 1789 ; and let us imagine a French deputy — a member of 
 the " Tiers " that has so recently been " Rien " and is now 
 conscious of itself as " Tout " — attempting its perusal. He 
 finds in it no word of response to the sentiments that are 
 filling his breast ; nothing said of priWleged classes whose 
 machinations have to be defeated, in order that the people 
 may realise its will ; instead of this, he is met at the out- 
 set with an exhaustive statement of the various ways in 
 which he and other servants of the people are liable to 
 shirk or scamp their work, or otherwise to miss attainment 
 of the general good. The object of the treatise, as the author 
 explains, is — 
 
 To obviate the inconveniences to which a political assembly 
 is exposed in the exercise of its functions. Each rule of this 
 tactics can therefore have no justifying reason, except in the
 
 142 ESSA YS AND ADDIiESSES vi 
 
 prevention of an evil. It is therefore with a distinct knowledge 
 of these evils that we should proceed in search of remedies. 
 These inconveniences may be arranged under the ten following 
 heads : — 
 
 1. Inaction. 
 
 2. Useless decision. 
 
 3. Indecision. 
 
 4. Delays. 
 
 5. Surprise or precipitation. 
 
 6. Fluctuations in measures. 
 
 7. Quarrels. 
 
 8. Falsehoods. 
 
 9. Decisions, vicious on account of form. 
 
 10. Decisions, vicious in respect of their foundation. 
 
 We shall develop these different heads in a few words. 
 
 Under the head of delays, we find — 
 
 may be ranked all vague and useless procedures — preliminaries 
 which do not tend to a decision — questions badly propounded, or 
 presented in a bad order — personal quarrels — A^tty speeches, 
 and amusements suited to the amphitheatre or the playhouse. 
 
 The last and most important head is thus further 
 analysed : 
 
 When an assembly form an improper or hurtful decision, it 
 may be supposed that this decision incorrectly represents its 
 wishes. If the assembly be composed as it ought to be, its wish 
 will be conformed to the decision of public utility ; and when it 
 wanders from this it will be from one or other of the following 
 causes : — 
 
 1. Absence. — The general wish of the assembly is the wish of 
 the majority of the total number of its members. But the 
 greater the number of the members who have not been present 
 at its formation, the more doubtful is it whether the wish which 
 is announced as general be really so. 
 
 2. Want of Freedom. — If any restraint have been exercised 
 over the votes, they may not be conformable to the internal 
 wishes of those who have given them. 
 
 3. Seduction. — If attractive means have been employed to act 
 upon the wills of the members, it may be that the wish announced 
 may not be conformable to their conscientious wish.
 
 VI 
 
 BE NTH AM AND BENTHAMISM 143 
 
 4. Ernn-. — If they have not possessed the means of informing 
 themselves — if false statements have been presented to them — 
 their understandings may be deceivi-d, and the ^\•ish which has 
 been expressed may not be that which they would have formed 
 had they been better informed. 
 
 And so on for page after page of dull and beggarly 
 elements, methodised no doubt in a masterly manner, and 
 calculated to have a highly salutary and sol)ering effect on the 
 mind of any legislator who can be persuaded to read them. 
 One defect which Bentham is most seriously concerned to 
 cure is the imperfect acquaintance that legislators are liable 
 to have with the motions on which they vote. 
 
 " Nothing is more common," he says, " than to see orators, and 
 even practised orators, falling into involuntary errors with respect 
 to the precise terms of a motion." This evil, he thinks, may be 
 obviated by " a very simple mechanical apparatus for exhibiting 
 to the eyes of the assembly the motion on which they are 
 deliberating." 
 
 " We may suppose a gallery above the president's chair, which 
 presents a front consisting of two frames, nine feet high by six 
 feet wide, filled Avith black canvas, made to open like folding 
 doors ; — that this canvas is regidarly pierced for the reception of 
 letters of so large a size as to be legible in every part of the 
 place of meeting. These letters might be attached by an iron 
 hook, in such manner that they could not be deranged. When 
 a motion is about to become the object of debate, it would be 
 given to the compositors, who would transcribe it upon the 
 table, and by closing the gallery, exhibit it like a placard to 
 the eyes of the whole assembly." 
 
 One would think that these suggestions were sufficiently 
 particular ; but Bentham feels it needful to give a page more 
 of minute directions as to size of letters, method of fixing 
 them, composition of the table, etc. 
 
 The salutary working of this machinery is obvious : — 
 
 When the orator forgets his subject, and begins to wander, a 
 table of motions offers the readiest means for recalling him. 
 Under the present regime, how is this evil remedied ? It is 
 necessary for a member to rise, to interrupt the speaker, and
 
 144 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 call him to order. This is a provocation — it is a reproach — it 
 woiuids his self-love. The orator attacked, defends himself ; 
 there is no longer a debate upon the motion, but a discussion 
 respecting the application of his arguments. . . . But if we 
 suppose the table of motions placed above [the president], the 
 case would be very different. He might, without interrupting 
 the speaker, warn him by a simple gestxire ; and this quiet sign 
 would not be accompanied by the danger of a personal appeal. 
 
 The faithful Duinont is unbounded in his eulosr of this 
 " absolutely new and original " work, which " fills up one of 
 the blanks of poKtieal literature," and reports that Mirabeau 
 and the Due de la Eochefoucauld admired this '" truly philo- 
 sophical conception." Still the reader will hardly be sur- 
 prised to learn that ^Morellet thinks it not likely to be 
 appreciated by " light-minded and unreflecting persons " in 
 the crisis of 1789. Bentham, we feel, niust often have 
 appeared to his French friends as a perfect specimen of the 
 cold unsentimental type of Englishman ; though with an 
 epistolary prolixity which Sir Charles Grandison could 
 hardly surpass. On one occasion the admiring Brissot 
 cannot repress a murmur at the " dryness and di-oUery " 
 with which he responds to sentiment. " You have then 
 never loved me ! " he exclaims, — " me whose sensibilities 
 mingle with legislation itself ! " And in truth, though 
 Bentham had plenty of sensibilities beneath his eccentric 
 exterior, he was not in the habit of letting them mingle 
 with legislation. 
 
 The above extracts have sufficiently illustrated another 
 marked characteristic of Bentham's work in politics, besides 
 his severe exclusion of fine sentiments : his habit, namely, 
 of working out his suggestions into the minutest details. 
 This tendencv he often exhibits in an exaggerated form, so 
 that it becomes repellent or even ridiculous ; especially as 
 Bentham, with all his desire to be practical, is totally devoid 
 of the instinctive seK-adaptation which most men learn 
 from converse with the world. Still the habit itself is an 
 essential element of the force and originality of his Intel- 
 lectual attitude. " A man's mind," says the representative
 
 VI BEN IB AM AMD BENTHAMISM 145 
 
 scientiric Luan iu Mlddleniarch, " must be continually ex- 
 panding and shiiuking between the whole human horizon 
 and the horizon of an object-glass." Bentham's mind was 
 continually performing a similar " systole and diastole " ; and 
 thus, in spit€ of the unduly deductive method that he 
 generally employs, he reaUy resembles the modem man of 
 science in tlie point in wliich the latter differs most strikingly 
 from the ancient notion of a philosopher. His apprehension, 
 whether of abstract theory or of concrete fact, has marked 
 limitations ; but as regards the portion of human life over 
 which his intellectual vision ranges, he has eyes which can 
 see with equal clearness in the most abstract and the most 
 concrete region ; and he as naturally seeks completeness in 
 working out the details of a practical scheme as in defining 
 tlie most general notions of theoretical jurisprudence. He 
 aims at a perfectly reasoned adaptation of means to ends in 
 constructing a " frame of morions," no less than in construct- 
 ing a code of laws ; and he passes from the latter to the 
 former without any abatement of interest or any sense of 
 incongruit}-. Thus, for twenty years (from 1791 to 1811), 
 wliile his fame as a philosophical jurist was extending 
 through the civilised world, he was probably better known 
 to the Government at home as belongnng to the rather 
 despised class of beings who were then called " projectors," 
 from his favourite plan of a " Panopticon "' Penitentiary, 
 wliich was coutinuallv ur^ed on their notice bv himself and 
 his friends. 
 
 Panopticon or Inspection House M'as a circular building, 
 in which prisoners' cells were to occupy the circumference 
 and keepers the centre, with an intermediate anntdar wall 
 all the way up, to which the cells were to be laid open by 
 an iron grating. This construction (which with pro]:>er 
 modifications could be adapted to a workhouse) fills a much 
 larger space in Bentham's correspondence than all his codes 
 j)Ut together. Indeed, among the numerous wrongs, great 
 and small, on which the philosopher in his old age used to 
 dilate with a kind of cheerful acrimony peculiar to himself, 
 there was none which roused so much resentment as the 
 
 L
 
 146 ESS A VS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 suppression of Panopticou, which he always attributed to a 
 personal grudge on the King's part. He composed a whole 
 volume on " the war between Jeremy Bentham and George 
 III., by one of the belligerents." " But for George III." the 
 narrative begins, " all the prisons and all the paupers in 
 England would long ago have been under mv management." 
 
 O O O I/O 
 
 For the administration of his prisons he had devised a com- 
 plete scheme, to the realisation of which he was prepared to 
 devote himself. The expense of prisoners was to have been 
 reduced ultimately to zero by a rigid economy, which yet, 
 when mitigated by the indulgences that were to be earned 
 by extra labour, would only produce about sufficient dis- 
 comfort to make the punishment deterrent. Idle prisoners 
 were to be fed on potatoes and water ad lib., clothed in coats 
 without shirts, and wooden shoes without stockings, and 
 made to sleep in sacks in order to save the superfluous 
 expense of sheets. Existence being thus reduced to its 
 lowest terms, a means of ameliorating it was provided in a 
 certain share of the profits of industry ; and Bentham was 
 sanguine enough to suppose that fifteen hours a day of 
 sedentary labour and muscular exercise combined, could be 
 got out of each prisoner by this stimulus. Contract-manage- 
 ment was an essential feature of the scheme ; it must be made 
 the manager's interest to extract from his prisoners as much 
 work as he could without injuring them ; while the prisoners 
 would be sufficiently protected against the manager's selfish- 
 ness by the terms of his contract, by the free admission of 
 the public to inspect the prison, and by a fine to be paid 
 for every prisoner's death above a certain average. 
 
 The amount of labour that Bentham spent in elaborating 
 the details of this scheme, defending it against all criticisms, 
 urging it on ministers and parliamentary friends, and vitu- 
 perating all whom he believed to have conspired to prevent 
 its execution, would have alone sufficed to fill the life of a 
 man of more than average energy ; while the total dis- 
 appointment of the hopes of twenty years, after coming 
 v/ithin sight of success — for in 1794 Parliament had au- 
 thorised such a contract as Bentham proposed — would have
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 147 
 
 damped any ordinary philanthropic zeal. Jiut Panopticon 
 and all that belongs to it, including all that he wrote on 
 the Poor Law and Pauper Management, might be subtracted 
 from Bentham's intellectual labours, without materially 
 diminishing the impression produced on the mind by their 
 amount and variety. Xay, even if the whole of his vast 
 work on Law and its administration, including innumerable 
 pamphlets on special points and cases, were left out of 
 sight, — if we knew nothing of Bentham the codifier, or Ben- 
 tham the radical reformer, — his life would still seem fuller 
 of interests and activities than most men's. Besides his 
 well-known pamphlet in defence of usury, he composed a 
 Manual of Political Economy, in which the principles of 
 laisser-faire are independently expounded and applied. The 
 Bell and Lancaster method of instruction inspired him to 
 enthusiastic emulation : he immediately planned an unsec- 
 tarian Chrestoraathic dav-school to be built in his own 
 garden in Queen's Square Place. The school itself never 
 came into existence ; for this, like some other educational 
 schemes, was wrecked on the rock of theology. But Ben- 
 tham fulfilled his part in composing a Chrestomathia, which 
 contained, besides a full and original exposition of pedagogic 
 principles, a sort of manual of geometry, algebra, and physics, 
 and an encyclopix-dic discussion of scientific nomenclature 
 and classification. And this is only one striking .specimen 
 of his habitual practice. Quicquid agunt homines — whatever 
 men do for men's happiness — is certainly the farrago of his 
 inexhaustible MSS. Whatever business suggests to him an 
 idea of amelioration he immediately studies with minute and 
 intense interest, until he believes himself to have perfectly 
 penetrated it by his exhaustive method, and is ready with 
 a completely reasoned scheme of improvement. Currency 
 projects, banking regulations, proposals for an " unburthen- 
 some increase of the revenue," reform of the Thames police, 
 a new mode of taking the census, a device for preventing 
 forgery, a prospect of abolishing the slave-trade, a plan 
 for morally improving Irish labourers in New York — each 
 subject in its turn is discussed with a fresh eagerness and
 
 148 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 an amplitude of explanation that seem to belong to the 
 leisured amateur of social science. Xor is his attention 
 confined to matters strictly social or political. He is not 
 too much engaged in applying his method of study to ex- 
 pound it in an Essay on Logic, supplemented by a charac- 
 teristic dissertation on Language and Universal Grammar. 
 Chemistry and botany, from their rich promise of utility, 
 are continually attractive to him. He is never too busy to 
 help in experiments which may enrich mankind with a new 
 grass or a new fruit. At one time he is anxious to learn 
 all about laughing gas ; at another he corresponds at length 
 about a Frigidarium, in which fermentable substances may 
 be preserved from pernicious fermentation while remaining 
 unfrozen. Nothing seems to him too trivial an object for 
 his restless impulse of amelioration ; and he cannot under- 
 stand why it should seem so to any one else. There is an 
 amusing instance of this in one of his letters to Dumont 
 at the crisis of a negotiation in which the latter, having won 
 Talleyrand's patronage for the Civil and Penal Codes, is 
 delicately endeavouring to secure a favourable notice for 
 Panopticon. Dumont has asked his master to send Talley- 
 rand a set of economical and political works. It occurs to 
 Bentham that it will be a stroke of diplomacy to forward 
 along with the books " a set or two sets of my brother's 
 patent but never-sold fire-irons of which the special and 
 characteristic property is levity." They would serve, he 
 thinks, " as a specimen of the Panopticon system. One 
 might be kept by T. (Talleyrand), the other, if he thought 
 fit, passed on to B. (Bonaparte)." Even the sympathetic 
 Dumont declines to extend his interest to patent fire-irons, 
 and coldly intimates that he is " not familiar with such 
 instruments." The humblest games, we find, are not un- 
 worthy of utilitarian consideration, and may be treated in 
 the same confident deductive fashion as governments. At 
 Ford Abbey — where Bentham lived from 1814 to 1817, 
 and where the youthful J. S. Mill found the " sentiment of 
 a larger and freer existence " in the " middle-age architecture, 
 baronial hall, and spacious and lofty rooms " — battledores
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 149 
 
 and sliuttlecocks were kept in Irequeut exercise ; and any 
 tendency in manufacturers to deviate from the true type of 
 shuttlecock was severely repressed. " Pointed epigrams, 
 yes," writes the philosopher; "but pointed shuttlecocks 
 never were, nor ever will be, good for anything. These, 
 it is true, have not been tried ; but trial is not necessary to 
 the condemnation of such shuttlecocks as these." Uentbara 
 was strictly temperate in his diet : he ate meat but once a 
 day, and then very moderately, and was almost a teetotaler. 
 But the pleasures of the table were too important to be 
 diminished by a stupid adherence to custom ; and being 
 particularly fond of fruit, he used often to maximise his 
 prandial happiness by commencing with the dessert, before 
 the sensibility of his palate had been impaired by coarser 
 viands. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on this side of Bentham's 
 character, because it seems to me that we get the right 
 point of view for understanding his work in politics and 
 ethics, if we conceive it as the central and most important 
 realisation of a dominant and all-comprehensive desire for 
 the amelioration of human life, or rather of sentient exist- 
 ence generally, A treatise on deontology, a code, an 
 inspection-house, a set of fire-irons, may all be regarded as 
 instruments more or less rationally contrived for the pro- 
 motion of happiness ; and it is exclusively in this light 
 that Beutham regards them. Thus, perhaps, we may partly 
 account for the extreme unreadableness of his later writ- 
 ings, which are certainly " biblia abiblia." The best defence 
 for them is that they are hardly meant to be criticised a.s 
 books ; they were written not so much to be read as to be 
 used. Hence if, after they were written, he saw no prospect 
 of their producing a practical effect, he kept them con- 
 tentedly on his shelves for a more seasonable opportunity. 
 In his earlier compositions he shows considerable literary 
 faculty : his argument is keen and lucid, and his satirical 
 humour often excellent, though liable to be too prolix. But 
 the fashion in which he really liked to express his thoughts 
 was the proper style of legal documents — a style, that is
 
 150 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 in which there are no logically superfluous words, but in 
 which everything that is intended is fully expressed, and 
 the most tedious iteration is not shunned if it is logically 
 needed for completeness and precision. And as years went 
 on, and Dumont saved him the necessity of making himself 
 popular, he gave full scope to his peculiar taste. Such a manner 
 of expression has indeed a natural affinity to the fulness of 
 detail with which his subjects are treated. But the tedium 
 caused by the latter is necessarily aggravated by the former ; 
 and therefore the " general reader " has to be warned off 
 from most of Bentham's volumes ; or perhaps such warning 
 is hardly needed. Those, however, who study him as he 
 would have wished to be studied, not for literary gratifica- 
 tion, but for practical guidance, will feel that his fatiguing 
 exhaustiveness of style and treatment has great advantages. 
 It to some extent supplies the place of empirical tests to 
 his system ; at least, whatever dangers lurk in his abstract 
 deductive method of dealing with human beings, we certainly 
 cannot include among them the " dolus " which " latet in 
 generalibus." If in establishing his practical principles he 
 has neglected any important element of human nature, we 
 are almost certain to feel the deficiency in the concrete 
 result which his indefatigable imagination works out for 
 us. Often, indeed, the danger rather is that we shall be 
 unduly repelled by the mere strangeness of the habits 
 and customs of the new social organisation into which he 
 transports us. 
 
 Thus from different points of view one might truly de- 
 scribe Bentham as one of the most or the least idealistic of 
 practical philosophers. What is, immediately suggests to 
 him what ought to be ; his interest in the former is never 
 that of pure curiosity, but always subordinated to his pur- 
 pose of producing the latter ; there is no department of the 
 actual that he is not anxious to reconstruct systematically 
 on rational principles, and so in a certain sense to inform 
 and penetrate with ideas. While again his ideal is, to 
 borrow a phrase of John Grote's, as much as possible de- 
 idealised, positivised, some might say philistinised, his good
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 151 
 
 is purged of nil mystical elements, and reduced to the positive, 
 palpable, empirical, definitely quantitative notion of " maxi- 
 mum balance of pleasure over pain " ; and his conception 
 of human nature and its motives — the material which he has 
 to adapt to the attainment of this good — is not only un-ideal, 
 but even anti-ideal, or idealised in the wrong direction. 
 While he is as confident in his power of constructing a 
 liappy society as the most ardent believer in the moral 
 perfectibility of mankind, he is as convinced of the un- 
 ([ualified selfishness of the vast maj(jrity of human beings as 
 the bitterest cynic. Hence the double aspect of his utili- 
 tarianism, which has caused so much perplexity both to 
 disciples and to opponents. It is as if Ilobbes or Mande- 
 ville were suddenly iuspired with the social enthusiasm of 
 Godwin. Something of the same blending of contraries 
 is found in Ilelvetius ; and he, perhaps, rather than Hume, 
 should be taken as the intellectual progenitor of Bentham. 
 In Helvetius, however, though utilitarianism is passing out 
 of the critical and explanatory phase in which we find it in 
 Hume, into the practical and reforming phase, the transition 
 is not yet complete. Still tlie premises of Bentham are all 
 clearly given by lielvetius ; and the task which the former 
 took up is that which the latter clearly marks out for the 
 moralist. Indeed, if we imagine the effect of LEsprit on 
 the mind of an eager young law-student, we seem to have 
 the whole intellectual career of Bentham implicitly contained 
 in a " pensee de jeunesse." 
 
 Helvetius puts with a highly effective simplicity, from 
 which Hume was precluded by his more subtle and complex 
 })sychological analysis, these two doctrines : first, that every 
 human being " en tout temps, en tout lieu " seeks his own 
 interest, and judges of things and persons according as they 
 promote it : and secondly, that, as the public is made up of 
 individuals, the qualities that naturally and normally gain 
 public esteem and are called virtues are those useful to the 
 public. Observation, he says, shows us that there are a few 
 men who are inspired by " un heureux naturel, un dcsir vif 
 de la gloire et de I'estime," with the same passion for justice
 
 152 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES vr 
 
 and virtue whicli men generally feel for wealth and great- 
 ness. The actions which promote the private interest of 
 these virtuous men are actions that are just, and conducive, 
 or not contrary, to the general interest. But these men are 
 so few that Helvetius only mentions them " pour I'honneur 
 de I'humanite." The human race is almost entirely com- 
 posed of men whose care is concentrated on their private 
 interests. Plow, under these circumstances, are we to 
 promote virtue ? for which Helvetius really sedms to be 
 genuinely concerned, though he is too well bred to claim for 
 himself expressly so exceptional a distinction. It is clear, 
 he thinks, that the work will not be done by moralists, 
 unless they completely change their methods. " Qu'ont 
 produit jusqu'aujourd'hui les plus belles maximes de la 
 morale ? " Our moralists do not perceive that it is a futile 
 endeavour, and would be dangerous if it were not futile, to 
 try to alter the tendency of men to seek their private 
 happiness. They might perhaps gain some influence if 
 they would substitute the " langage d'interet " for the " ton 
 d'injure " in which they now utter their maxims ; for a man 
 might then be led to abstain at least from such vices as are 
 prejudicial to himself But for the achievement of really 
 important results the moralist must have recourse to legisla- 
 tion. This is a conclusion which Helvetius is never tired 
 of enforcing. " One ought not to complain of the wicked- 
 ness of man, but of the ignorance of legislators who have 
 always set private interest in opposition to public." " The 
 hidden source of a people's vices is always in its legislation ; 
 it is tliere that we must search if we would discover and 
 extirpate their roots." " ]\Ioralists ought to know that as 
 the sculptor fashions the trunk of a tree into a god or a 
 stool, so the legislator makes heroes, geniuses, virtuous men, 
 as he wills : . . . reward, punishment, fame, disgrace, are 
 four kinds of divinities with whicli he can always effect the 
 public good." In short, Helvetius conceives that universal 
 self -preference might by legislative machinery be so perfectly 
 harmonised with public utility that " none but madmen 
 would be vicious " : it only wants a man of insight and
 
 VI BENTHAM AND P.EN7HAM/SM 153 
 
 courage, " ediauffe de la passion du I'icii general," to effect 
 this happy consummation. 
 
 Such, then, was the task that Jientham, at the age of 
 twenty-five, undertook ; and perhaps his bitterest opponent, 
 surveying his sixty years of strenuous performance, will 
 hardly blame him severely for presumption in deeming 
 himself to possess the requisite qualifications. The young 
 Englishman, indeed, with his faith in our " matchless con- 
 stitution "'as yet unshaken, conceives himself to bo in an 
 exceptionally favourable position for realising this union of 
 morals and legislation. " France," he writes in his com- 
 monplace-book for 177-1-75, " may have philosophers. The 
 world is witness if she have not philosophers. But it is 
 England only that can have patriots, for a patriot is a 
 philosopher in action." Such a " philosopher in action " 
 might hope not merely to delineate, but actually to set on 
 foot that reformation in the moral world which could only 
 come from improvement in the machine of law. But in the 
 moral no less than in the physical world one cannot im- 
 prove a machine without understanding it ; the study of it 
 as it exists must be separated from the investigation of what 
 it ought to be, and the former must be thoroughly per- 
 formed before the latter can be successfully attempted. 
 This is to us so obvious a truism that it seems pedantic to 
 state it expressly ; but it is a truism which Bentham found 
 as nnich as ])0ssible obscured in Blackstone's famous Com- 
 mentaries. The first thing then which he had to do was 
 to dispel that confusion between the expository and the 
 censorial functions of the jurist, which seemed to be inherent 
 in the official account of the laws and constitution of Eng- 
 land. The clearness and completeness with which this is 
 done are the chief merits of the Fragment on Gavernment. 
 In this elaborate attack on Blackstone's view of municipal 
 law Benthain does not as yet criticise the particulars either 
 of the British constitution or of British administration of 
 justice : his object is merely to supply the right set of 
 notions for apprehending what either actually is, together 
 with the right general principles for judging of its goodness
 
 154 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 or badness. His fundamental idea is taken, as he says, 
 from Hume ; but the methodical precision with which it is 
 worked out is admirable ; in fact, the Fragment contains 
 the whole outline of that system of formal constitutional 
 jurisprudence which the present generation has mostly 
 learnt from his disciple John Austin. Among other things 
 we may notice as characteristic the manner in which he 
 throws aside the official nonsense about the " democratic 
 element " in the unreformed British Parliament, which half 
 imposed even on the clear intellect of Paley. " A duke's 
 son," he says, " gets a seat in the House of Commons ; it 
 needs no more to make iiim the very model of an Athenian 
 cobbler." In a similar spirit he banters Blackstone's account 
 of the " wisdom and valour " for which our lords temporal 
 are selected. He remarks that in Queen Anne's reign, in 
 the year 1711, " not long after the time of the hard frost," 
 there seems to have been such an exuberance of these 
 virtues as to " furnish merit enough to stock no fewer than 
 a dozen respectable persons, who upon the strength of it 
 were all made barons in a day " ; a phenomenon, he adds, 
 which a contemporary historian has strangely attributed to 
 the necessity of making a majority. It is evident that 
 whatever constitution Bentham may prefer, he will not be 
 put off" by any conventional fictions as to the relations of 
 its parts ; his preference will depend entirely on what he 
 believes to be their actual working. 
 
 More than thirty years, however, were to elapse before 
 Bentham seriously turned his attention to constitutional 
 construction. Indeed nothing is more characteristic of the 
 Benthamite manner of thought, in its application to politics, 
 than the secondary and subordinate position to which it 
 relegates the constitutional questions that absorbed the entire 
 attention of most English politicians of the eighteenth 
 century. Such politicians, even when most theoretical, 
 seem to have had no notion that the political art properly 
 includes a systematic survey of the whole operation of 
 government, and a thorough grasp of the principles by 
 which that operation should be judged and rectified. Their
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 155 
 
 philosophy was made up of iiietaphysico-jural dissertations 
 on the grounds and limits of civil obedience, and loose 
 historical generalisations as to the effects of the " three 
 simple forms " of government, conceived as chemical elements 
 out of which the British constitution was compounded. 
 What they habitually discussed was not how laws should 
 be made or executed, but what the terms of the social com- 
 pact were, and whetlier tlie balance between Crown and 
 Commons could be maintained withmit corruption. It is 
 perhaps some survival in ]\Ir. Stephen's mind of this now 
 antiquated way of viewing politics which has led him, wliile 
 speaking respectfully of Dentliam's labours in the sphere of 
 jurisprudence, to refer so slightly to him in describing 
 the course of political thouglit. And no doubt Bentham's 
 determination to maintain a ])urely and exhaustively practical 
 treatment in all his writings on law and its administration, 
 render it almost necessary to leave the greater part of his 
 work to the criticism of professional experts. But the 
 general principles by which the whole course of his industry 
 was guided ; that government is merely an organisation for 
 accomplishing a very complicated and delicate work, of 
 which the chief part consists in preventing, by the threatened 
 infliction of pain or damage for certain kinds of conduct, 
 some more than equivalent pain or loss of liappiness result- 
 ing from that conduct to some of tlie governed ; that the 
 primary end of the political art is to secure that this work 
 shall be done in the best possible way with the utmost 
 possible precision and the least possible waste of means ; 
 and that the rules controlling the appointment and mutual 
 relations of different members of the government should be 
 considered and determined solely with a view to this end, — 
 these were surely worth mentioning among political theories. 
 For it is this fundamental creed tliat has given IV^nthamism 
 its vitality : when once these principles were clearly and 
 firmly apprehended by a man with the " infinite capacity 
 for taking trouble " which has been said to constitute genius, 
 though the eighteenth century, ideally speaking, was not 
 yet over, the nineteenth had certainly begun. A theory
 
 156 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 that is exclusively positive and unmetaphysical, at the same 
 time that it is still confidently deductive and unhistorical, 
 forms the natural transition from tlie " Age of Reason " to 
 the period of political thought in which we are now living. 
 
 Wlien we consider that Bentham's early manhood coin- 
 cided with the intensest period of revolutionary fervour, 
 and that he was in close personal relations with some 
 influential Frenchmen of this age, it seems a remarkable 
 evidence of his intellectual independence that he shouhl 
 have so long kept his attention turned away from constitu- 
 tional reform. Probably the aversion he felt for the meta- 
 physics in which the conception of rational and beneficent 
 government seemed to be commonly entangled, co-operated 
 to concentrate his attention on that department of reform 
 in which alone he felt himself in full sympathy with the 
 party of movement. At the outset of the American war he 
 was altogether hostile to the colonists, owing to the " hodge- 
 podge of confusion and absurdity " which he found in their 
 Declaration of Eights. Six years later he was content to 
 regard the English constitution as " resting at no very great 
 distance, perhaps, from the sunmiit of perfection." In 1789 
 he went so far with his French friends as to offer the cause 
 of liberty his treatise on Parliamentary Tactics. Still, as 
 we have seen, the dry practicality of this dissertation could 
 hardly be surpassed ; it does not touch on a single " burn- 
 ing question " except Division of Chambers, wdiich it treats 
 very abstractly and neutrally. In 1793 whatever sym- 
 pathy he may have felt for the revolutionists had quite 
 vanished. " Could the extermination of Jacobinism be 
 effected," he writes to his cousin Metcalf, " I should think 
 no price that we could pay for such a security too dear " ; 
 and about the same time he tells Dundas tliat though some 
 of the MSS. he sends him might " lead to his being taken 
 for a republican," he is " now writing against even Parlia- 
 mentary Eeform, and that without any change of sentiment." 
 It is evident that he is thoroughly absorbed in schemes 
 of legislative and administrative improvement : his interest 
 in the French Revolution was due to the unexampled
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 157 
 
 opportunity it seemed to offer for new codes, new judicial 
 establislnnents, Panopticons, etc. ; he has no desire to quarrel 
 with the English Tory Government if it will find employ- 
 ment for his inventions in this line. Until 1791 he seems 
 to have hoped that Lord Lansdowne would place him in 
 Parliament; he even obtained a vague ])romise to that 
 effect, though for some reason or other the idea was after- 
 wards dropped. Then during the twenty years (from 1791 
 to 1811) in which Panopticon was in suspense, he would 
 naturally shrink from risking its prospects by any open 
 breach with the Government. Still it is pretty clear that 
 his opinion of the practical efliciency of the j\Iatchless Con- 
 stitution was growing rapidly worse during the latter part 
 of this period, until in 1809 he wrote his first plan of 
 Parliamentary Peform. This, however, remained unpublished 
 till 1817; and in a letter to President Madison in 1811, 
 in which he proposes to codify for the United States, he 
 takes care to say that " his attention has not turned and is 
 not disposed to turn itself" to changes in the form of their 
 government. Indeed, since the enthusiastic reception which 
 his Civil and Penal Codes, in Dumout's rendering, had met 
 with throughout Europe, his hopes of benefiting the human 
 race by codification had taken so wide a range as almost 
 necessarily to keep him neutral even towards the most 
 despotic kind of ride. In no country was this reception 
 more enthusiastic than in Paissia. Accordingly in 1814, 
 Panopticon being finally suppressed, and code-making being 
 in hand in Kussia, Bentham considers that tlie time has 
 come to offer his services for this purpose. The Emperor, 
 with every expression of courtesy and respect, requests him 
 to communicate with the Connnission that is sitting on 
 legislation. But this seems to him useless. Alone he must 
 do it ; and he somewhat sourly rejects all compliments not 
 accompanied with legislative carte hlanchc. When he is 
 convinced that he cannot be employed on these conditions, 
 his last reason for keeping terms with the traditional forms 
 of sovernment would seem to have vanished ; and he 
 prepares, when already verging on threescore and ten, to
 
 158 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 crown the edifice of his jurisprudence with a Constitutional 
 Code. 
 
 It is not often that an energetic practical philanthropist 
 throws himself into constitutional reform at the age of 
 sixty-eight. When he does so, it is likely to be with the 
 accumulated bitterness resulting from a lifetime of baffled 
 attempts to benefit his fellow -men under their existing 
 constitution. And all that Bentham writes after 1817 is 
 full of the heated and violent democratic fanaticism which 
 is incident to the youth of many Liberals who in later 
 years become " tempered by renouncement," but which, as 
 we have seen, was conspicuously absent from the earlier 
 stages of Bentham's political activity. No doubt this may 
 be partly attributed to the spirit of the time. From 1817 
 to 1830 the tide of Liberalism was rapidly rising, and the 
 flavour of the rising Liberalism was peculiarly bitter. Still 
 a man of sixty-eight is not usually carried away by an 
 upsurging wave of opinion ; and we can hardly explain 
 Bentham's mood without taking into account the acrimony 
 of the disappointed projector. It is the persistent rejection 
 of Panopticon and many other fair schemes wdiich has in- 
 spired him with so intense a conviction that governments of 
 One or Few invariably aim at the depredation and oppression 
 of the Many. He tells us himself, in the " historical pre- 
 face " (published 1828) intended for the second edition of the 
 Fragment on Government, that it is only after the experience 
 and observation of fifty years that he has learnt to see in the 
 imperfections of the British constitution " the elaborately 
 organised and anxiously cherished and guarded products of 
 sinister interest and artifice." Had George III., any time 
 between 1793 and 1811, made peace with Panopticon, had 
 Alexander in 1814 allowed free play to the great codifier's 
 energies, the Constitutional Code, we may well believe, 
 would have remained unwritten, and the philosophy of 
 modern English Eadicalism would have acknowledged a 
 different founder. 
 
 And yet, when we examine the rational basis of his 
 constitutional construction, whether as given in the intro-
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 159 
 
 duction to his Flan of Parliamentary Fiefurm (1817), or 
 more fully and characteristically developed in the elaborate 
 work just mentioned, we find that it consists in a few 
 very natural inferences from the ethical and psychological 
 premises on which his whole social activity proceeded ; 
 inferences, indeed, so simple and obvious, that we can 
 hardly suppose him not to have tacitly drawn them, even 
 in the earliest stage of his career. If once we regard the 
 administration of law as a machinery indispensable for 
 identifying the interest of individuals with the conduct by 
 which they will most promote the general happiness, so 
 that through a skilful adjustment of rewards and punish- 
 ments the universally active force of self-preference is made 
 to produce the results at which universal benevolence would 
 aim, it is plain that our arrangements are incomplete unless 
 they include means for similarly regulating the self-prefer- 
 ences of those who are to work and repair the machine. 
 And this, of course, must be done by a combination of 
 rewards and punishments ; the problem is, how to apply 
 these so as to produce an adequate effect. It is obviously 
 a far more difficult problem than that with which Bentham 
 had to deal in regulating private relations. For what the 
 private man, in his view, has for the most part to do, in 
 order to promote the general happiness, is to consult the 
 interests of himself and his family ; whatever private 
 services it is desirable he should render to others should 
 rarely be made legally obligatory, except when he has 
 freely bound himself by special and definite contracts. 
 But from governors, if government is to be well performed, 
 we require the energetic and sustained exercise of all their 
 faculties in the service of their fellow-citizens generally — 
 even more sustained energy than most men spend on their 
 own affairs, in proportion as government is a more difficult 
 business ; while at the same time this business is of such a 
 nature that it is necessary to give the managers of it an 
 indefinite power of interfering with the liberty, property, 
 and even life of their fellow -citizens generally. For to 
 set definite limits to this power in the prescriptions of a
 
 i6o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 VI 
 
 constitutional code is, from a utilitarian point of view, 
 manifestly irrational. The only rational limits — those wliich 
 utility would prescribe in any case — cannot be foreseen and 
 fixed once for all ; hence any such constitutional restric- 
 tions, if observed, are likely to prevent salutary laws and 
 ordinances as well as mischievous ones ; while, if they are 
 to be overruled by the " salus populi," their announcement 
 was worse than useless — it was an express incitement to 
 groundless rebellion. The only plan that remains, and the 
 only one that can possibly secure the requisite junction of 
 interests, is to provide that government, while supreme 
 over individuals, shall be under the continual vigilant 
 control of the citizens acting collectively. Every citizen 
 who is not childish, insane, etc., should primd facie have a 
 share in this control, otherwise his interests will presumably 
 be neglected ; and every one an equal share, in so far as 
 we have no ground for considering one man's happiness of 
 more importance than any other man's. 
 
 We are thus led to the familiar system of Representative 
 Democracy, with universality and equality of suffrage ; but, 
 be it observed, without any of the metaphysical fictions 
 which had commonly been involved in the construction of 
 this system. Bentham's system is not a contrivance for 
 enabling every one to " obey himself alone " : such an end 
 would have seemed to him chimerical and absurd : it is 
 merely an arrangement for securing that every one's in- 
 terests shall be as well as possible looked after. To this 
 difference of ratmiale corresponds naturally a difference 
 of constitutional sentiment. Bentham's supreme legislative 
 assembly is not a majestic incarnation of the sovereignty of 
 the people ; it is merely a collection of agents, appointed 
 by the people to manage a certain part of their concerns, 
 liable, like other agents, to legal punishment if they can be 
 proved to have violated their trust, and to instant dismissal 
 if it seem probable that they have done so. 
 
 Another important difference appears at once in com- 
 paring the rationale of utilitarian democracy with that 
 based on natural rights. The former, however dogmatically
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM i6i 
 
 it may be announced, depends necessarily upon certain 
 psycholoj^acal generalisations, the truth of which may be 
 continually brought to tlie test of experience. Between 
 traditional legitimacy and natural freedom there was no 
 common ground, and therefore really no argument possible. 
 If I maintain that I and my fellow-citizens have an im- 
 prescriptible right to be governed only by laws to which 
 we have consented, I can find no relevancy in the answer 
 that certain persons have inherited a prescriptive right to 
 govern me. lUit if I maintain that our common interests 
 are most likely to be well looked after by managers whom 
 we can dismiss, however confident I may be in my deduc- 
 tion of this probability from the " universality of self-prefer- 
 ence," I must admit arguments from experience tending to 
 prove the opposite. And when these are once admitted, 
 the descent from the position of Bentham and James Mill, 
 that democracy is absolutely desirable, to John Stuart ^Mill's 
 relative and qualified assertion of its desirability, is logic- 
 ally inevitable ; though, like many other logically inevitable 
 steps, it took a generation to make it. 
 
 The chief peculiarities, however, in the main outline of 
 Bentham's constitution are due not to his conception of the 
 political end, but to his intense sense of the need of guard- 
 ing his government against the danger of perversion : a 
 danger which democrats of the older type, from their con- 
 fidence in ordinary human nature, had commonly over- 
 looked. If the oppressions of kings and aristocrats are 
 connected with the prevalence of prejudice and superstition, 
 it is natural to suppose that when these are removed the 
 business of government is as likely to go on well as any 
 other business. But in Bentham's view governors, xmder 
 however enlightened a constitution, will be ordinary human 
 beings exposed to extraordinary temptations, to which, 
 therefore, we must presume that they will certainly yield 
 unless very exceptional securities are provided. All the 
 members of government will have natural appetites for 
 power, wealth, dignity, ease at the expense of duty, venge- 
 ance at the expense of justice, which are obviously all
 
 I62 ESSA VS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 forces acting in the direction opposed to the general happi- 
 ness. And since for the exercise of their normal functions 
 governors, or at least the chief among them, must have 
 power not definitely limited, and must have at their dis- 
 posal a similarly indefinite amount of wealth, it cannot but 
 be profoundly difficult to prevent them from satiating — if 
 it be possible to satiate — all their mischievous appetites. 
 To set one part of government to watch another will avail 
 little : corrupt mutual connivance is too obviously their 
 common interest. The utmost frequency in the elections 
 of the members of the legislative assembly is a desirable, 
 but not an adequate security : it will be the interest of 
 each legislator to corrupt his leading constituents by 
 patronage, and it will be their interest to be corrupted ; 
 and the claim of experience which the sitting member can 
 put forward will be so plausible that it will be easy for the 
 leading constituents to hoodwink the rest. How then shall 
 we prevent legislators, administrators, and leading constitu- 
 ents from being thus driven by the combined force of their 
 self-preferences into a conspiracy against the general happi- 
 ness ? We must do what we can by " minimising con- 
 fidence and maximising control," through the concentration 
 of responsibility, together with arrangements for securing 
 to the public easy and complete cognisance of all official 
 acts. We must " minimise the matter of corruption " by 
 continually keeping down the amount of wealth and power 
 disposable by each official : in order to reduce salaries, 
 Bentham proposes to institute a pecuniary competition 
 among the properly qualified candidates for any office, on 
 the principle of choosing the man who will take least, or 
 perhaps will even pay, to perform its functions. We must 
 render bargains with electors difficult by secret voting. But, 
 above all, we must be in a position to stamp out the virus 
 of corruption as soon as it appears by immediately dis- 
 missing — or, as he prefers to say, "dislocating" — the 
 peccant official. He considers that direct " location " by 
 the people is incompatible with good government, except in 
 the case of members of the legislature ; even the appoint-
 
 VI BE NTH AM AND BENTHAMISM 163 
 
 ment of the head of the executive, who has to make or 
 sanction otlier administrative appointments, he would give 
 to tlie supreme assembly ; but " universal dislocability " by 
 a vote of the majority of citizens seems to him absolutely 
 indispensable : all other securities will be inadequate with- 
 out this. 
 
 After all is done, the readers of the Constitutional Code 
 will probably feel that, when Helvetius proposed to ardent 
 philanthropy the noble task of moralising selfish humanity 
 by legislation, he had not sufliciently considered the diffi- 
 culty of moralising the moralisers, and that even the inde- 
 fatigable patience and inexhaustible ingenuity of Bentham 
 will hardly succeed in defeating the sinister conspiracy of 
 self-preferences. In fact, unless a little more sociality is 
 allowed to an average human being, the problem of com- 
 bining these egoists into an organisation for promoting their 
 common happiness is like the old task of making ropes of 
 sand. The difficulty that Hobbcs vainly tried to settle 
 summarily by absolute despotism is hardly to be overcome 
 by the democratic artifices of his more inventive successor. 
 
 Bentham's final treatise on politics. was never absolutely 
 completed. Only about one half had been printed or 
 revised for the press when his long career of intellectual 
 toil was terminated. On the 6th of June 1832, there 
 remained for the indefatigable old man but one last coutri- 
 bution to the balance of human happiness, which was faith- 
 fully rendered : to " minimise the pain " of the watchers 
 round his dying bed. His treatise on private ethics, or, as 
 he calls it. Deontology (the place of which in his system 
 had been indicated fifty years before in his Treatise on 
 Morals and Legislation), was left a mere mass of undigested 
 fragments. The task of preparing it for publication was, how- 
 ever, at once undertaken by Bowring, the favourite disciple 
 of the master's later years ; and so much of Bentham's 
 work had been given to the world through the medium of 
 a disciple, that there seemed no reason why the Deontology 
 should not take rank with The Civil and Penal Codes as 
 a generally trustworthy exposition of Benthamite doctrine.
 
 i64 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 But the book had no sooner appeared than it was formally 
 repudiated by that section of the school whose opinions 
 were likely to have most weight with the public. J. S. Mill, 
 writing August 1838, in the London and Westminster 
 Review, urged that, considering its dubious origin and in- 
 trinsic demerits together, it should be omitted from any 
 collected edition of Bentham's works ; its demerits being 
 that instead of " plunging boldly into the greater moral 
 questions," it treated almost solely of " the 'petite morale, 
 and that with pedantic minuteness, and on the quid pro 
 quo principles which regulate trade." That the Deontology 
 corresponds to this description is undeniable ; the only 
 question is whether a disciple of Bentham's ought to have 
 been surprised at it. The surprise, at any rate, is a pheno- 
 menon demanding explanation ; for Bentham is not a Hegel, 
 to be understood by one disciple only, and misunderstood 
 by him ; he is commonly liable to be wearisome from ob- 
 trusive consistency, and unreadable from an excessive desire 
 to be unmistakable. 
 
 The truth is that an ethical system constructed on Ben- 
 tham's principles is an instrument that may be put to several 
 different uses ; so that it is not unnatural that his disciples, 
 employing and developing it each in his own way, should 
 insensibly be led to widely divergent views as to the really 
 essential characteristics of the master's doctrine. The theory 
 of virtue which he received from Helvetius has two aspects, 
 psychological and ethical. Psychologically analysed, common 
 morality appears as a simple result of common selfishness. 
 " Each man likes and approves wdiat he thinks useful to 
 him ; the public (which is merely an aggregate of indi- 
 viduals) likes and praises what it thinks useful to the pub- 
 lic ; that is the whole account of virtue." How, on this 
 theory, men's moral judgments come to agree as much as 
 they actually do is not sufficiently explained ; and in any 
 case there is no rational transition possible from this 
 psychological theory to the ethical principle that " the 
 standard of rectitude for all actions " is " public utility." 
 Nor does Bentham really maintain that there is : when he
 
 VI BENTIIAM AND BENTHAMISM 165 
 
 is pressed, he explains frankly that his first principle is 
 really his individual sentiment ; that, in fact, he aims at the 
 general happiness because he happens to prefer it. Still, 
 for all practical purposes, he does accept " greatest happi- 
 ness " ^ as (to use his own words) " a }tlain as well as true 
 standard for whatever is right or wrong, useful, useless, or 
 mischievous in human conduct, whether in the field of morals 
 or of politics." The primary function, then, of the utili- 
 tarian " moralist is to apply this standard to the particulars 
 of human lite, so as to determine by it the different special 
 virtues or rules of duty, so far as such determination is 
 possible in general terms ; and, in fact, several of the frag- 
 ments put together in the Deontology were written with 
 this aim. But suppose this has been accomplished, and the 
 code of duty clearly made out : we have still to ask what 
 the exact use of it will be. It will, of course, give a com- 
 plete practical guidance to persons whose ruling passion is 
 a desire to promote universal happiness ; but Bentham, no 
 less than Ilelvetius, regards such persons as so exceptional 
 that it would be hardly worth while to print a book for them. 
 What, then, is the relation of the utilitarian moralist to the 
 great mass of mankind, in whose breasts universal benevo- 
 lence holds no such irresistible sway ? This is the practi- 
 cally important question. One answer to it is that given 
 by Paley (and afterwards by John Austin), which treats 
 the rules of utilitarian duty as a code of Divine Law, 
 adequately supported by religious sanctions. Such an 
 answer avoids some of the objections to utilitarianism, at 
 the cost, perhaps, of introducing greater ones ; but in any 
 case it is not Bentham's, though it is not expressly excluded 
 by him. If we put this aside, there remain two entirely 
 different ways of dealing with the question, each of which, 
 
 ' The plirase whicli he used duriug the greater part of his life, aud which ha.s 
 become current — "The greatest happiness of the greatest number" — he found, 
 at the age of twenty-two, in an early pamphlet of Priestley's. In the Deontology, 
 howi'ver, he proposes to drop the latter half of the phrase, as superfluous and 
 liable to luisinterprt'tation. 
 
 ■ J. S. Mill tells us in his Aiitobiography that he introduced this term into 
 currency from one of Gait's novels. It was, however, suggested by Beuthani, in 
 a letter to Dumont in .Tune 1S02, as preferable to "Benthamite."
 
 l66 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 from a utilitarian point of view, is perfectly appropriate. 
 In the first place, the code as above deduced may be offered 
 to mankind as a standard for rectifying their ordinary 
 judgments of approbation and disapprobation, clearing them 
 from a certain amount of confusion and conflict which now 
 perplexes them, and so increasing their beneficent effect. 
 Even if few persons are sufficiently benevolent to take the 
 general happiness as the one ultimate end of their own 
 conduct, it may still be generally accepted as a standard for 
 apportioning praise and blame to others ; and much would 
 be gained for the general happiness if the wdiole force of 
 these powerful motives could be turned in the direction 
 of promoting it. In all Bentham says of the " moral sanc- 
 tion " in his Morals and Legislation, this conception of 
 morality as a system of distributing praise and blame is 
 implied ; and such, I gather, was the view taken by James 
 Mill of the practical function of the utilitarian moralist 
 (except in so far us his associational psychology led him to 
 recognise the love of virtue as a distinct though derivative 
 impulse). But this view, though not absent from the 
 Deontology, is certainly not prominent there ; and it is 
 plain from Bentham's earlier treatise ^ that he conceived 
 " private ethics " not merely as an art of praising and 
 blaming, but rather as an art of conduct generally, from the 
 individual's point of view — " art of self-government " he 
 calls it. But in counselling individuals Bentham thought, 
 like Helvetius, that it was useless to " clamour about duty " ; 
 the only effective way of persuading a man to its perform- 
 ance was to show him its coincidence with interest. In 
 such a demonstration the pleasures of pure benevolence 
 are, of course, not neglected : but he obviously cannot lay 
 much stress on them. Hence the necessity for the " quid 
 pro quo " treatment of which Mill complains. The errone- 
 ousness of the estimate which the vicious man makes of 
 pains and pleasures has to be shown in every possible way ; 
 honesty has to be exhibited as the best policy, extra-regard- 
 ing beneficence as an investment in a sort of bank of general 
 
 •* C'f. esp. c. xix. of the Principles of Morals and Legislation, §§ 2, 3, 6, 7.
 
 VI BENTH AM AND BENTHAMISM 167 
 
 good-will, etc. We can see at the same time why, from this 
 point of view, tlie 'pdite, morale, is so prominent. For the 
 more important i)art of the coincidence between interest 
 and duty it belongs to the legislator to effect and enforce ; and 
 his share of the code ought to be written, to use a Platonic 
 image, in large print, needing no comment ; the moralist's 
 task is to decipher and exhibit the minor supplementary 
 prescriptions of duty. And that Dentham, M'hen he had 
 once undertaken this task, should have performed it with a 
 " minuteness " which a hostile critic might call " pedantic," 
 can hardly have surprised any one so familiar with his 
 works as i\lill was. 
 
 So far, I think, there can be no doubt that Bowring has 
 given ns the genuine Bentham, and that the faithful 
 historian must refuse to follow Mill in rejecting the 
 Deontology. But it is one thing to hold that the moralist 
 ought chieHy to occupy himself in showing men how much 
 of their happiness is bound up with their duty : it is quite 
 another thing to maintain that the two notions are univer- 
 sally coincident in experience, and that (from a purely 
 mundane point of view) " vice may be defined to be a 
 miscalculation of chances." This latter is the ground 
 implicitly taken throughout the greater part of the Deonto- 
 logy, and expressly in one or two passages. No doubt the 
 step to tliis from the former position is a very natural one 
 for an enthusiastic and not very clear-headed disciple ; for 
 if it is tenable, the moralist's task can be much more 
 triumphantly achieved. But that Bentham himself would 
 ever have deliberately maintained this position is very 
 dilhcult to believe. Certainly in the passage of his earlier 
 treatise above referred to, where he defines the relation of 
 " private ethics " to legislation, he distinctly avoids taking 
 it. " It cannot but be admitted," he says, " that the only 
 interests which a man at all times and on all occasions is 
 sure to find adequate motives for consulting are his own." 
 All he can maintain is that " there are no occasions on 
 which he has not some motives for consulting the happiness 
 of other men." And with his purely practical view of the
 
 i68 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vi 
 
 moralist's function, he would naturally, in writing his notes 
 for the Deontology, exhibit these motives without dwelling 
 on their occasional inadequacy, and would thus encourage 
 his editor to take the critical step from the actual to the 
 ideal, and assert that they are always adequate. But if, as 
 we have seen, the author of the Principles of Morals and 
 Legislation shrank from asserting this, we can hardly suppose 
 that the author of the Constitutional Code had seen reason 
 to change his mind. For if it is always every man's interest, 
 on a rational computation of chances, to promote the general 
 happiness, what becomes of his anti-monarchical and anti- 
 oligarchical deductions from the principle of self-preference ? 
 It may of course be said that monarchs and oligarchs may 
 and do mistake their true interests. But Bentham's argu- 
 ment goes far beyond this. He repeatedly states it as 
 certain and inevitable that, without such artificial junction 
 of interests as is provided by the Constitutional Code, 
 governors will sacrifice the happiness of the governed to 
 their own appetites for power, wealth, ease, and revenge. 
 There are some inconsistencies so flagrant that even a 
 philosopher should be held innocent of them till he is 
 proved guilty ; and to hold the serene optimism of the 
 Deontology as to human relations generally, together with 
 the bitter pessimism of the Constitutional Code as to the 
 relation of rulers and subjects, would surely be an in- 
 consistency of this class. 
 
 At the same time I must admit that there were other 
 utilitarians besides Bowring who did not perceive the in- 
 congruity, and that even after it had been explained to 
 them by a writer who generally succeeded in making his 
 explanations pretty clear. In the famous passage of arms 
 between the Edinhurgh and the Westminster in 1829-30, 
 Macaulay no doubt ventured into a region where he was 
 not altogether at home ; still his clear common sense, wide 
 knowledge of historical facts, and a dialectical vigour and 
 readiness which few philosophers could afford to despise, 
 rendered him by no means ill matched even against James 
 Mill ; in fact, both combatants, on the ground on which
 
 VI BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM 169 
 
 tlicy met, were better equipped for ofiensive thau for 
 defensive "v\ arfare ; and if the author of the Essay on 
 Government had himself replied to his assailant, the conflict 
 would probably have been bloody, but indecisive. But 
 "Nvheu Macaulay's article came out, the split between Bow- 
 ring and the Mills had taken place, and the management of 
 the Westminster had passed into the hands of Colonel 
 Perronet Thompson, who accepted to the full Bowring's 
 view of utilitarian ethics, and in fact regarded the coin- 
 cidence of utilitarian duty with self-interest properly under- 
 stood as Bentham's cardinal doctrine. Colonel Thompson 
 was a writer of no mean talents, and if he had only had to 
 defend his own view of the " greatest happiness principle " 
 he might have come off with tolerable success. Unfortu- 
 nately the conditions of tlie controversy rendered it incumbent 
 on him to defend James ^Mill's at the same time ; and 
 against the compound doctrine that it is demonstrably the 
 interest of kings and aristocracies to govern well, and yet 
 demonstrably certain that they will never think so, Macaulay's 
 rejoinder was delivered with irresistible force. 
 
 Macaulay's articles had other consequences, more im- 
 portant than that of exhibiting the ambiguities of the 
 greatest hap})iness principle. His spirited criticism of the 
 deductive politics of James Mill, though it was treated with 
 contempt by its object, had a powerful effect on the more 
 impartial and impressible mind of the younger jMill ; and 
 the new views of utilitarian method which were afterwards 
 propounded in the latter's Logic of the Moral Sciences^ owe 
 their origin in some measure to the diatribes of the Edin- 
 burgh. If space allowed, it would be interesting to trace 
 the changes that Bentham's system underwent in the 
 teaching of his most distinguished successor, under the 
 combined influences of Comtian sociology, Associational 
 psychology, and Neo-Baconian logic. But such an under- 
 taking would carry us far beyond the limits of the pre- 
 sent historical sketch, and rit?ht into the midmost heats 
 of contemporary controversy. 
 
 ^ Cf. J. S. Mill's Logic, B. vi. cIk vii. viii. ; and bis Autobiography, p. 158.
 
 YII 
 
 THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC 
 
 SCIENCE 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND 
 STATISTICS SECTION OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AS 
 PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION IN 1885. 
 
 I HAVE chosen for the subject of the discourse, which by 
 custom has to be delivered from the chair that I am called 
 upon to occupy, the scope and method of economic science, 
 and its relation to other departments of what is vaguely 
 called ' social science.' If the abstract and academic nature 
 of the subject, together with my own deficiencies as an 
 expositor, should render my remarks less interesting to 
 the audience than they have a right to expect, I trust that 
 they will give me what indulgence they can ; but, above 
 all, that they will not anticipate a corresponding remote- 
 ness from concrete fact in the discussions that are to follow. 
 I see from the records of the Association that it has been 
 the custom in this department — and it seems to me a good 
 custom — to give to the annual addresses of the presidents 
 the variety that naturally results when each speaker in 
 turn applies himself unreservedly to that aspect of our 
 complex and many-sided inquiry which his special studies 
 and opportunities have best qualified him to treat ; and as 
 my own connection with economic science has been in the 
 way of studying, criticising, and developing theories, rather 
 than collecting and systematising facts, I have thought that 
 I should at any rate have a greater chance of making a 
 useful contribution to our discussions if I allowed myself to 
 
 170
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 171 
 
 deal with the subject from the point of view that is most 
 familiar to me. 
 
 I have the less scruple in adopting this course because 
 1 do not think that any who may listen to my remarks 
 are likely to charge me with overrating the value of abstract 
 reasoning on economic subjects, or regarding it as a sub- 
 stitute for an accurate and thorougli investigation of facts 
 instead of an indispensable instrument of such investigation. 
 There is indeed a kind of political economy which Hourislies in 
 proud independence of facts ; and undertakes to settle all 
 practical problems of Governmental interference or private 
 philanthropy by simple deduction from one or two general 
 assumptions — of which the chief is the assumption of the 
 universally beneficent and liarmonious operation of self- 
 interest well let alone. This kind of political economy is 
 sometimes called ' orthodox,' though it has the character- 
 istic unusual in orthodox doctrines of being repudiated by 
 the majority of accredited teachers of the subject. But 
 whether orthodox or not, I must be allowed to disclaim all 
 connection with it ; the more completely this survival of 
 the u -priori politics of the eighteenth century can be 
 banished to the remotest available planet, the better it will 
 be, in my opinion, for the progress of economic science. 
 Since, however, this kind of political economy is still some- 
 what current in the market-place, — since the language of 
 newspapers and public speakers still keeps up the impression 
 that the professor of ])olitical economy is continually laying 
 down laws which practical people are continually violating, 
 — it seems worth while to trv to make clear the relation 
 between the economic science which we are concerned to 
 study and the principles of Governmental interference — or 
 rather non-interference — which are thought to have been 
 of late so persistently and in some cases so successfully 
 outraged. 
 
 It must be admitted at once tliat there is considerable 
 excuse for the popular misapprehension just mentioned ; 
 since for more than a century the general interest taken in 
 the analysis of the phenomena of industry has been mainly
 
 172 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 due to the connection of this analysis with a political move- 
 ment towards greater industrial freedom. No researches 
 into the historical development of economic studies before 
 Adam Smith can displace the great Scotchman from his 
 position as the founder of modern political economy con- 
 sidered as an independent science, with a well-marked field 
 of investigation and a definite and characteristic method of 
 reasonino-. And no doubt the element of Adam Smith's 
 treatise which makes the most impression on the ordinary 
 reader is his forcible advocacy of the " system of natural 
 liberty"; his exposition of the natural "division of labour" 
 — tending, if left alone, to become an international division 
 of employments — as the main cause of the "universal 
 opulence " of " well-governed " societies ; and of the manner 
 in which, in this distril)ution of employments, individual 
 capitalists seeking their own advantage are led " by an 
 invisible hand " to " prefer that employment of their capital 
 which is most advantageous to society." 
 
 At the same time Adam Smith was too cool and too 
 shrewd an observer of facts to be carried, even by the force 
 and persuasiveness of his own arguments, into a sweeping 
 and unqualified assertion of the universality of the tendency 
 that he describes. His advocacy of natural liberty in no 
 way blinds him to the perpetual and complex opposition 
 and conflict of economic interests involved in the unfettered 
 efforts of individuals to get rich. He even goes the length 
 of saying that " the interest of the dealers in any particular 
 branch of trade or manufacture is always in some respects 
 different from, and even opposite to, that of the public." 
 To take a particular case, he is decidedly of opinion that 
 the natural liberty of bankers to issue notes may reasonably 
 be restrained by the laws of the freest Governments. He is 
 quite aware, again, that the absence of Governmental inter- 
 ference does not necessarily imply a state of free competition, 
 since the self-interest of individuals may lead them, on the 
 contrary, to restrict competition by " voluntary associations 
 and agreements." He does not doubt that Governments, 
 central or local, may find various ways of employing wealth
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 173 
 
 — of which elementary education is one of the most im- 
 portant — wliich will he even economically advantageous to 
 society, tliou,f,di they could not he remuneratively under- 
 taken by individual capitalists. In short, however fascina- 
 ting the picture that Adam Smith presents to us of the 
 continual and complex play of individual interests consti- 
 tuting and regulating the vast fabric of social industry, the 
 summary conclusion drawn by some of his disciples that 
 the social production of wealth will always be best pro- 
 moted by leaving it altogether alone, that the only petition 
 which industry should make to (Government is the petition 
 of Diogenes to Alexander that he would cease to stand 
 between him and the sunshine, and that statesmen are 
 therefore relieved from the necessity of examining carefully 
 the grounds for industrial intervention in any particular 
 case — this comfortable and labour-saving conclusion finds 
 no support in a fair survey of Adam Smith's reasonings, 
 though it has been no doubt encouraged by some of his 
 phrases. To attribute to him a dogmatic theory of the 
 natural right of the individual to absolute industrial inde- 
 pendence — as some recent German writers are disposed to 
 do ^ — is to construct the history of economic doctrines from 
 one's inner consciousness. 
 
 It is true, as I have said, that among Adam Smith's 
 disciples there were not a few wdio rushed to the sweeping 
 generalisations that the master had avoided. In England, 
 in particular, the influence of the more abstract and purely 
 deductive method of Eicardo tended in this direction. It 
 was natural, again, that in the heat of a political movement 
 absolute and unqualified statements of principle should 
 come into vogue, since the ease and simplicity with which 
 they can be enunciated and apprehended makes them more 
 eflective instruments of popular agitation : hence it is not 
 surprising to find the anti-corn-law petitions declaring the 
 " inalienable right of every man freely to exchange the 
 result of his labour for the productions of other people," to 
 
 ^ E.g. V. Scbeel, in Schouberg's llandbiuh der polilischen Ockonomie, p. 89, 
 speaks of "Die uatuirechtlicbe Wirthschaftstheorie oder der Smitbiauisiuus."
 
 174 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 be " one of the principles of eternal justice." But under 
 the more philosophic guidance of J. S. Mill, English political 
 economy shook off all connection with these antiquated 
 metaphysics, and during the last generation has been 
 generally united with a view of political principles more 
 balanced, qualified, and empirical, and therefore more in 
 harmony with the general tendencies of modern scientific 
 thought. 
 
 If, indeed, laisser-faire were — as many suppose — the one 
 main doctrine of modern political economy, there can be no 
 doubt that the decisive step forward that founded the 
 science ought to be attributed not to Adam Smith, but to 
 his French predecessors the ' Physiocrats.' It is to them — 
 to Quesnay, De Gournay, De la Eiviere, Turgot — that the 
 credit, whatever it may be, is due of having first proclaimed 
 to the world with the utmost generality and without quali- 
 fication that what a statesman had to do was not to make 
 laws for industry, but merely to ascertain and protect from 
 encroachment the simple, eternal, and immutable laws of 
 nature, under which the production of wealth would regulate 
 itself in tlie best possible way if men would abstain from 
 meddling. 
 
 This doctrine formed one part of the impetuous move- 
 ment of thought against the existing political order which 
 characterised French speculation during the forty years that 
 preceded the great Eevolutiou. It was, we may say, the 
 counterpart and complement of the doctrine of which 
 Eousseau was the chief prophet. The sect of the Econo- 
 mistes and the disciples of Eousseau were agreed that the 
 existing political system needed radical change ; and in both 
 there was a tendency to believe that an ideal political order 
 could at once be constituted. At this point, however, their 
 courses diverged : the school of Eousseau held that the 
 essential thing was to alter the structure of government, and 
 to keep legislation effectually in the hands of the sovereign 
 people ; the Economistes thought that the all-important 
 point was to limit the functions of government, holding that 
 the simple duty of maintaining the natural rights of the
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 175 
 
 individual to liberty and property could be best performed 
 by an absolute uiouarcli. IJoth movements had much 
 justitication ; both have had ellects on the political and 
 social lite of Europe of which it is difficult to measure the 
 extent; but both doctrines — attained, as they were, by a 
 fallacious method — involved a large element of exaggeration, 
 suitable to the ardent and sanguine period that brouglit 
 them forth, but which gives them a curious air of absurdity 
 when they are resuscitated and olVered for the acceptance of 
 our more sober, circumspect, and empirically-minded age. 
 In the most civilised countries of Europe it is now a 
 recognised and established safeguard against oppressive laws 
 that an eftective control over legislation is vested in the 
 people at large ; but no serious thinker would now main- 
 tain with liousseau that the predominance of the will of the 
 sovereign people has a necessary tendency to produce just 
 legislation. Similarly, the doctrine of the I'hysiocrats has 
 prevailed, in the main, as regards the internal conditions of 
 national industry in modern civilised societies. The old 
 hampering privileges, restraints, and prohibitions have been 
 almost entirely swept away, to the great advantage of the 
 community ; but the absolute right of the individual to 
 unlimited industrial freedom is now only maintained by a 
 scanty and dwindling handful of doctrinaires, whom the 
 progress of economic science has left stranded on the crude 
 generalisations of an earlier period. 
 
 There will probably always be considerable disagreement 
 in details among competent persons as to the propriety of 
 Governmental interference in particular cases ; but, apart 
 from questions on which economic considerations must yield 
 to political, moral, or social reasons of greater importance, 
 it is an anachronism not to recognise fully and frankly the 
 existence of cases in which the industrial intervention of 
 Government is desirable, even with a view to the most 
 economical production of wealth. Hence, I conceive, the 
 present business of economic theory in this department is to 
 give a systematic and carefully-reasoned exposition of these 
 cases, which, until the constitution of human nature and
 
 176 ESSAYS AMD ADDRESSES vii 
 
 society are fundamentally altered, must always be regarded 
 as exceptions to a general rule of non-interference. The 
 statesman's decision on any particular case it does not be- 
 long to abstract theory to give ; this can only be rationally 
 arrived at after a careful examination of the special con- 
 ditions of each practical problem at the particular time and 
 place at which it presents itself. But abstract reasoning 
 may supply a systematic view of the general occasions for 
 Governmental interference, the different possible modes of 
 such interference, and the general reasons for and against 
 each of them, which may aid practical men both in finding 
 and in estimating the decisive considerations in particular 
 cases. Thus it may show, on the one hand, under what 
 circumstances the inevitable drawbacks of Governmental 
 management are likely to be least, and by what methods 
 they may be minimised ; and where, on the other hand, 
 private enterprise is likely to fail in supplying a social need 
 — as where an undertaking socially useful is likely for 
 various reasons to be unremunerative to the undertakers — 
 or where private interests are liable to be markedly opposed 
 to those of the public, as is generally the case with businesses 
 that tend to become monopolies. 
 
 It would be tedious now to dwell at more length on 
 these generalities ; but there is one special exception to the 
 triumph of the system of natural liberty in the civilised 
 countries of Europe which has too much historical importance 
 to be passed over without a word in this connection. As 
 we are all aware, this triumph lias only been decided 
 as regards the internal conditions of industry and trade ; the 
 practice of imposing barriers on international exchange, with 
 a view to the protection of native industry, still flourishes 
 in the most advanced communities, and shows no immediate 
 tendency to come to an end. It is not, I conceive, reason- 
 able to attribute this result entirely, as some Free-traders 
 are disposed to do, to the incapacity of mankind to under- 
 stand elementary economic truths, and the interested efforts 
 of a combination of producers to prey in a comfortable aud 
 legal way on the resources of the confiding consumers. I
 
 vir THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 177 
 
 do not deny that both these causes have operated ; but, in 
 view of the evident ability and disinterestedness of many of 
 the writers and statesmen who have su})ported the cause of 
 Protection on the Continent or in the United States, I cannot 
 find in them an adequate exphmation of the phenomenon. 
 
 A part of the required explanation is, I think, suggested 
 when we examine the arguments by which Free Trade was 
 actually recommended to intelligent Englishmen at the time 
 when England's policy was taking the decisive turn in this 
 direction, and imagine their effect on the mind of an 
 intelligent foreigner. Suppose, for instance, that the intelli- 
 gent foreigner is studying the Edinburgh Review in 1841, 
 when it came forward as a vigorous and decided advocate 
 of Free Trade. In the January number he would find the 
 cosmopolitan and abstract argument with which we are so 
 familiar ; he would learn how, under Free Trade, " every 
 country will exert itself in the way that is most beneficial 
 in the production of wealth " ; how labour and capital will 
 be employed in each country to produce those things which 
 the varieties of climate, situation, and soil enable it to jjro- 
 duce with greater advantage than other countries, so that 
 " the greatest possible amount of industry will be kept 
 constantly in action, and all commodities will exist in the 
 greatest abundance." But in the July number of the same 
 organ he would find a recommendation of Free Trade from 
 a national point of view, which, though more restricted in 
 its scope, would appear to contain matter no less important 
 for practical consideration. He would find that the imme- 
 diate introduction of Free Trade was held to be essential in 
 order to keep what remained of the manufacturing and 
 commercial supremacy of England. He would learn that 
 " the early progress of any nation that attempts to rival us 
 in manufactures must be slow " ; for " it has to contend 
 with our great capital, our traditionary skill, our almost 
 infinite division of labour, our long-established perseverance, 
 energy, and enterprise, our knowledge of markets, and with 
 the habits of those who have been bred up to be our 
 customers." He would learn that there was " no reason to 
 
 N
 
 178 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 to believe that," in the " absence of disturbing causes," we 
 should ever lose our present command of the world's 
 market ; that we might have preserved our superiority for 
 centuries ; but that " if these difficulties were once sur- 
 mounted, this superiority — so far at least as respects the 
 commodity in which we find ourselves undersold — would 
 be gone for ever," in consequence of " the well-known law 
 of manufacturing industry that, ceteris i^ctrihus, with every 
 increase of the quantity produced, the relative cost of pro- 
 duction is diminished." It cannot be denied that a con- 
 sideration of this law, and of the vis inertice here attributed 
 to an established superiority in manufactures and commerce, 
 supplies an important qualification of the general argument 
 for Free Trade. For, along with the tendency of industry 
 to go where it can be most economically carried on, we have 
 also to recognise a tendency for it to stay and develop where 
 it has been once planted ; and the advantage of lea^dng this 
 latter tendency undisturbed wou.ld naturally be less clear to 
 the patriotic foreigner than to the patriotic Englishman. 
 The proclamation of a free race for all, just when England 
 had a start which she might probably keep " for centuries," 
 would not seem to him a manifest realisation of eternal 
 justice ; to delay the race for a generation or two, and 
 meanwhile to apply judiciously " disturbing causes " in the 
 form of protective duties, would seem likely to secure a 
 fairer start for other nations, and ultimately, therefore, 
 a better organisation of the world's industry even from 
 a cosmoj^olitan point of view. 
 
 Nor would it seem to him a conclusive argument against 
 this course that protective duties impose great present 
 pecuniary sacrifices on the protecting nation ; especially 
 when he learnt, from an impartial English source, of the 
 great sacrifices which private capitalists in England were in 
 the habit of making to assist the tendency of free com- 
 petition in their favour. He would find, for instance, in the 
 Keport of a Commission published in 1854,^ an appeal to 
 
 ^ See p. 20 of Report by Mr. H. S. Tremenheere, Cominissiouer appointed to 
 inquire into the operation of Act 5 & 6 Vict. c. 99, and into the state of tlie popu- 
 lation in the mining districts (Vol. XIX. of Purl. Papers for 1854).
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 179 
 
 the working-classes to consider " the immense losses which 
 their employers voluntarily incur in bad times, in order to 
 destroy foreign competition, and to gain and keep possession 
 of foreign markets." Should the efforts of Trade Unionists, 
 urges ttie writer, be successful for any length of time, they 
 would interfere with the " great accumulations of capital 
 w^hich enable a few of the most wealthy capitalists to over- 
 whelm all foreign competition in times of great depression," 
 and which thus constitute " the great instruments of warfare 
 against the competing capital of foreign countries." If it 
 was the view of shrewd English men of business that these 
 great sacrifices of private wealth were needed and were 
 worth making, to maintain the industrial start once gained, 
 the intelligent foreigner would naturally conclude that the 
 other combatants in the industrial battle must be prepared 
 to make corresponding sacrifices ; that each nation must 
 fight with its own weapons ; and that where there were no 
 great accumulations of capital in private hands, the instru- 
 ments of warfare must be obtained by a general con- 
 tribution. 
 
 I have given these considerations, not because I agree 
 with the practical conclusion which they tend to support, 
 but because I think that they require to be met by a line 
 of argument different from that which English economists 
 have usually adopted. I think it erroneous to maintain, on 
 the ordinary economic grounds, that temporary Protection 
 must always be detrimental to the protecting country, even 
 if it were carried out by a perfectly wise and strong Govern- 
 ment, able to resist all influences of sinister and sectarian 
 interests, and to act solely for the good of the nation. The 
 decisive argument against it is rather the political consider- 
 ation that no actual Government is competent for this 
 difficult and delicate task ; that Protection, as actually 
 applied under the play of political forces, is sure to foster 
 many weak industries that have no chance of living with- 
 out artificial support, and to hamper industries that might 
 thrive independently, by the artificial dearness of some of 
 their materials and instruments ; so that it turns out a
 
 t8o £SSA VS and ADDRESSES vii 
 
 dangerous and clumsy, as well as a costly, instrument of 
 industrial competition, and is not likely on the whole to 
 bring the desired victory, though it may give a partial 
 success here and there. And some such conclusion as this 
 is, I think, now prevalent even among those German 
 economists who are most decided in their rejection of the 
 claims of laisser-faire to absolute and unqualified validity. 
 
 So far I have been speaking of the function of economic 
 science in determining principles of Governmental inter- 
 vention in matters of industry, because this is the function 
 prominent in the popular view of political economy. But 
 I need hardly say to the present audience that this is not 
 the view that English economists generally have taken as to 
 their primary business. Indeed, during the last generation 
 our leading economists — even those who come nearest to 
 the so-called ' orthodox ' type — have gone even further 
 than I should myself go in declaring that economic science 
 had nothing to do with the doctrine of laisser-faire. No one 
 {e.g.) has stated this more strongly than Cairnes, whom I 
 select as a conspicuous and effective advocate of Free Trade. 
 " The maxim of laissez-faire" he says, " has no scientific basis 
 whatever " ; it is a " mere handy rule of practice," though 
 " a rule in the main sound." According to this view, the 
 ' laws ' with which economic science is primarily concerned 
 are the laws that determine economic quantities — the amount 
 of the aggregate of wealth, its annual increase, the relative 
 values of its different elements, and the shares of the 
 economic classes that have combined to produce it — as they 
 would be apart from special Governmental interference ; and 
 not the rules for deciding when and how far such inter- 
 ference is justifiable. 
 
 And it is the additional light that Adam Smith threw on 
 the general determination of such economic quantities — and 
 not his advocacy of natural liberty — which in the view of 
 economists constitutes his chief claim to his place in the 
 historical development of economic science. And I may 
 observe that, from this point of view, the important pre- 
 decessors of Adam Smith are not the Physiocrats only, but
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE i8i 
 
 even more Cantillon, who wrote a generation before, to 
 whom Jevons drew attention some years ago in a remark- 
 able essay ; nor should we overlook his English predecessors 
 of a still earlier age such as Petty and Locke — the former 
 of whom has a special interest for iis as a pioneer in each of 
 the two lines of investigation of which we here maintain 
 the union, since he was the first in England to combine a 
 serious effort to establish tlie general relations of economic 
 quantities by abstract reasoning and analysis M'ith patient 
 endeavours to ascertain particular economic facts by statis- 
 tical inquiries. When we trace tlie gradual evolution of the 
 modern economic view as to the manner in which the play 
 of individual self-interests tends to determine prices and 
 shares — from the rude beginnings of Petty and Locke, 
 tlirough the more systematic and penetrating theory of 
 Cantillon, the fuller analysis and exposition of Adam Smith, 
 and the closer reasoning of Piicardo, down to the important 
 rectifications and additions of Jevons — we see clearly that 
 the progress of the theory has no necessary connection with 
 any doctrine as to the limits of the industrial intervention 
 of Government. 
 
 And it is to be observed that neither Adam Smith nor 
 the predecessors to whom I have referred had any design 
 of maintaining that the distribution which they were en- 
 deavouring to analyse satisfied either the claims of ideal 
 equity by giving each individual his deserts, or the claims 
 of expediency by giving him what was most conducive to 
 general happiness. Nor, since Adam Smith, has any lead- 
 ing English economist maintained the former of these 
 propositions ; and so far as the school of Eicardo may have 
 seemed to maintain the latter — so far as they certainly 
 have taught that direct Governmental interference with 
 distribution was undesirable — it has not been from any pre- 
 valence among them of the shallow optimism of Bastiat and 
 his followers. It is pessimism rather than optimism which 
 is to be laid to their charge ; not a disposition to underrate 
 or ignore the hardships that the " natural " rate of wages 
 might entail ; but a conviction that, however bad things
 
 I82 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 might be naturally, the direct interference of Government 
 could only make them worse. I am not arguing that they 
 did not go too far in this view ; I am now chiefly desirous 
 to remove a profound and widespread misunderstanding 
 as to the general aim and drift of their investigations, which 
 I find in certain German and other Continental critics of 
 English political economy, — and, I may add, in certain 
 English critics who repeat the foreign objections. Such 
 critics either fail to see, or continually forget, that the 
 English economist, in giving an explanation of the manner 
 in which prices, wages, profits, etc., are determined, is not 
 attempting to justify the result ; he is not trying to show 
 that in getting the market price of his services the labourer, 
 capitalist, or landlord gets what he deserves. Thus when 
 Senior called interest the " reward of abstinence," he did not 
 mean to imply that it was normally proportioned to the 
 capitalist's merit iu abstaining, but merely that capital is 
 increased by individuals saving instead of spending, and 
 that they require the inducement given by the actual rate 
 of interest to save to the extent to which they actually are 
 saving. Whether any other rate of interest would be juster 
 is a question of ideal politics to which the English econo- 
 mist has usually nothing to say so long as it is stated 
 in this abstract form ; it is only when the political idealist 
 descends to practice, and proposes a scheme for reahsing his 
 conception of justice, that it comes within the province of 
 economic science to discuss the probable effects of this 
 scheme on production and distribution. But it is not with 
 such far-reaching proposals of change that the English 
 economist is mainly concerned ; his primary business is to 
 ascertain the causes which determine actual prices of pro- 
 ducts and services. 
 
 Hence, when the most recent German school of econo- 
 mists — variously known as the ' historical,' ' ethical,' or 
 ' social ' school — claims to have moralised political economy 
 by throwing over the assumption of egoism, which they 
 regard as characteristic of ' Smithianismus,' they usually 
 appear to the English economist to confound what is with
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 183 
 
 what ought to be. The assumption that egoism ought to be 
 universal — that the universal prevalence of self-interest 
 leads necessarily to the best possible economic order — has 
 never been made by leading English writers ; and it is an 
 assumption witli which tliey generally conceive themselves 
 in no way concerned — in that part, at least, of the science 
 which deals with distribution. It is the actual prevalence 
 of self-interest in ordinary exchanges of products and ser- 
 vices which constitutes their fundamental assumption. 
 
 But I admit that this reply does not end the con- 
 troversy. The critic may rejoin that, if egoism is not what 
 ought to be, the tranquil way in which the economist 
 treats it as universally predominant is objectionable, as 
 tending to give dangerous encouragement to the baser side 
 of human nature. And, secondly, he may deny that self- 
 interest actually has any such predominance as English 
 economists assume ; hence, he may argue, their fundamental 
 assumption must lead to serious errors in the analysis and 
 forecast of actual facts. 
 
 The first of these points I should concede to some 
 extent. If we regarded it as blameworthy that a man 
 should, under ordinary circumstances, try to get the 
 highest price for any commodity he sells, and give the 
 lowest for what he buys, then, though the analysis of 
 economic facts, as they exist in the present selfish and 
 wicked world, might still be conducted on the present 
 method, I certainly think its results ought to be — and 
 would be — expounded in a different tone. I should say, 
 therefore, that our economists generally do not hold to be 
 censurable, in a broad and general way, the self-regard 
 which they assume as normal. I conceive, however, that 
 this view is commonly held with the following important 
 qualifications. 
 
 Firstly, it is not implied that the right of free exchange 
 ought not to be legally limited in respect of certain special 
 commodities. Thus, when it is urged by statesmen or 
 philanthropists that the sale of opium, or brandy, or lot- 
 tery-tickets, or children's labour, ought to be prohibited or
 
 1 84 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 placed under certain restrictions, the political economist, 
 as such, is not to be regarded as holding a brief on the other 
 side — at most he only throws the onus probandi on those 
 who advocate interference, adding perhaps a warning that the 
 consequences of their measure may possibly be different from 
 what they anticipate, owing to the play of ordinary self-regard 
 working under the new conditions that they aim at imposing. 
 
 Secondly, it is not implied that similar limitations may 
 not be effectively imposed by the force of moral opinion. 
 It has, indeed, to be pointed out that morality, like law, 
 may produce effects other than what are designed — e.g. that 
 the discredit attaching to usury may cause the unhappy 
 debtor to pay more instead of less for his inevitable loan, 
 since the usurer has to be compensated for the social draw- 
 backs of his despised employment. But it does not follow 
 that there are no cases in which this disadvantage has to be 
 faced as the least of two evils. 
 
 Thirdly, the economist does not assume that his economic 
 man is always buying in the cheapest and selling in the 
 dearest market, and never rendering services to his fellow- 
 creatures on any other terms. He does not lay down that 
 the economic distribution which it is his business to analyse 
 will not be supplemented to an indefinite extent by a 
 distribution prompted by other motives : — indeed, it should 
 be noted that the ordinary economic man is always under- 
 stood to be busily providing for a wife and children ; so that 
 his dominant motive to industry is rather domestic inter- 
 est than self-interest, strictly so-called. And it has never 
 been supposed that outside his private business ^or even 
 in connection with it if occasion arises — a man will not 
 spend labour and money for public objects, and give freely 
 gratuitous services to friends, benefactors, and persons in 
 special need or distress. 
 
 The political economists, it is true, have often felt called 
 upon to criticise the proceedings of philanthropists ; but 
 those who have assumed in enunciating these criticisms a 
 grave air of giving the results of abstruse scientific reasoning 
 are partly to blame, I think, for having drawn on political
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 185 
 
 economy a kind of odium which ought to have been thrown 
 on the broader back of plain common sense. We may say, 
 indeed, with special force of a great part of economic science 
 what Huxley has said of science generally — that it is only 
 " organised common-sense." lUit it needs little organisation 
 to show that the motives to industry and thrift are impaired 
 by the indiscriminate relief of the idle and improvident ; 
 that you help men best by encouraging them to help them- 
 selves, by widening the opportunities for the display of 
 energetic activity and enterprise, and diffusing the know- 
 ledge that will save it from being wasted, rather than by 
 diminishing the inducements that stimulate it. To appre- 
 hend the truth of propositions like these, a man need not 
 even have read a shilling handbook ; and yet these common- 
 places constitute the greater part of the " liard-hearted 
 economist's " criticism of sentimental philanthropy. If, 
 indeed, the economist has gone on to say that therefore no 
 efforts oucjht to be made to relieve distress, and raise those 
 who have temporarily stumbled in the struggle for existence, 
 or if he has prophesied failure to all larger attempts on the 
 part of philanthropists, to improve the condition of the 
 classes at the base of the industrial pyramid — if, I say, an 
 individual economist has here and there been found lecturing 
 and prognosticating in this sweeping manner, he has only 
 exemplified the common human tendency to dogmatise 
 beyond tlie limits of his knowledge ; and I trust the blame 
 will not be laid on the science whose exacter methods he 
 has deserted or misapplied. 
 
 The important question of method, then, at issue 
 between the English economists and their German critics is 
 not whether the play of the ordinary motives of self-interest 
 ought to be limited and supplemented by the operation of 
 other motives ; but whether these other motives actually do, 
 or can reasonably be expected to, operate in such a way 
 as to destroy the general applicability of the method of 
 economic analysis which assumes that each party to any 
 free exchange will prefer his own interest to that of the 
 other party. And in speaking of the German historical
 
 1 86 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 school as antagonists on this question, I ought to say that 
 I refer only to what I may call their more aggressive left 
 wing. With the more moderate claims of the historical 
 method as set forth by the distinguished leader of the 
 school, William Eoscher, the English economists who main- 
 tain the tradition of Adam Smith and Eicardo have no sort 
 of quarrel ; and Eoscher expressly disclaims any quarrel 
 with them. He has sought, as he says, " gratefully to avail 
 himself" of the results of Eicardian analysis, and we can no 
 less gratefully profit by the abundant historical researches 
 that he has led and stimulated. It is no doubt true that 
 our older economists often had an insufficient appreciation 
 of the historical variations in economic conditions ; and, in 
 particular, did not adequately recognise the greater extent 
 to which competition was limited or repressed by law or 
 custom in states of society economically less advanced than 
 our own. But for a generation there has been no serious 
 dispute about this ; nor has there ever been any funda- 
 mental disagreement between Eicardians and Eoscherians as 
 to the right method of studying the history of economic 
 facts. The most deductive English economist has never 
 gone so far as to maintain that this can be constructed 
 d, priori, any more than any other history ; and if a 
 generation ago he was sometimes wont to dogmatise with 
 insufficient information as to the causes of industrial changes 
 and the economic effects of political measures in other ages 
 and countries, he has grown wiser, like other persons, through 
 the great development of historical study — and of what I 
 may call the common historic sense of educated persons — 
 which has taken place in the interval. Indeed, I think the 
 danger now is rather that we should go into the opposite 
 extreme, and not give sufficient attention to the more latent 
 and complicated but very effective manner in which com- 
 petition is found operating even in states of society where 
 the barriers of custom are stronG[est. 
 
 But further, even as regards the present condition of 
 industry in the more advanced countries, to which the 
 theory of modern economic science primarily relates, there
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 187 
 
 is, I conceive, no dispute as to the need of what is called a 
 " realistic " or " inductive " method — i.e. as to the need of 
 accurately ascertaining particular facts when we are inquir- 
 ing into tlie particular causes of particular values, or of the 
 shares of particular economic classes at any given place and 
 time. All that the deductive reasonings of English econo- 
 mists supply is a method of analysing the phenomena and 
 a statement of the general causes that govern them, and of 
 the manner of their operation. In this analysis, no doubt, 
 the assumption is fundamental that the individuals con- 
 cerned in the actual determination of the economic quanti- 
 ties resulting from free exchange will aim, ceteris paribus, 
 at getting the most they can for what they sell and giving 
 the least they can for what they buy. And when we iind 
 the legitimacy of this assumption, and the scientific value of 
 the analysis based upon it, broadly assailed by Hildebrand,^ 
 Knies," and others, we are no doubt seriously concerned to 
 meet their criticism. 
 
 For my own part, I can only say that, having searched 
 their works with the interest and respect which are due to 
 the indefatigable research and the scientific fertility of the 
 German intellect, I am quite unable to discover what other 
 scientific treatment of the general theory of distribution and 
 exchange they propose to substitute for the treatment which 
 they sweepingly criticise. T cannot perceive that their 
 higher view of man as a moral, sympathetic, public-spirited 
 being, habitually rising above the sordid huckstering con- 
 siderations by which English economists assume him to be 
 governed, has any material effect on their theory of the 
 determination of economic quantities when it comes to be 
 actually worked out. When Knies,^ for instance, is discussing 
 the nature and functions of capital, money and credit, or 
 when he is arguing with more subtlety than success against 
 
 ^ See two papers ou "Die gegeiiwiutige Aufgabe Jer Wisseiischaft iler politis- 
 cheu Oekonomie," in the first volume (1863) of Hililebramrs Jahrbuch fur 
 National-Oekonomie n. Slatistik\ p. 5 ff. and p. 137 ff. : especially his criticism of 
 J. S. Mill (p. 23), quoted with approval by Schouberg in the introduction to his 
 JIandltuch. 
 
 2 See his Politisdie Oekonomie vom geschichtUchen Standpunktc, iii. § 3. 
 
 3 See his Geld und Credit— in particular, Credit, pt. ii. oh. xii. § 2.
 
 i88 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 the Eicardian doctrine of rent, we find tliat the capitalists 
 and landlords, the lenders and borrowers, whose operations 
 are contemplated, exhibit throughout the familiar features 
 of the old economic man. So, again, when, in the Encyclo- 
 pcedia of Political Economy ^ recently published by this 
 school, we examine the definitions of fundamental notions, 
 or the explanation of prices, or the theory of distribution, 
 we meet, indeed, with some interesting variations on the 
 old doctrines, but we find everywhere the old economic 
 motives assumed and the old method unhesitatingly 
 applied. The proof of the pudding, as the proverb says, is 
 in the eating ; but our historical friends make no attempt 
 to set before us the new economic pudding which their large 
 phrases seemed to promise. It is only the old pudding 
 with a little more ethical sauce and a little more garnish of 
 historical illustrations. 
 
 In saying this I should be sorry to seem to underrate 
 the debt that economic science owes to the labours of the 
 school now dominant in Germany. Much of the positive 
 work that they have produced is in its way excellent ; even 
 their criticism of the older method has been, in my opinion, 
 most useful ; and if I complain that they have by no means 
 done what they announced, with some flourish of trumpets, 
 that they were going to do, it is chiefliy because their ex- 
 aggerated phrases have led critics of a looser sort to mis- 
 understand and misrepresent the recent progress and actual 
 condition of economic thought. I fully recognise that the 
 elaborate and careful study of economic facts in all depart- 
 ments, which the historical school has encouraged and carried 
 out, is an indispensable aid to the due development of 
 general economic theory. In all abstract economic reason- 
 ing which aims at quantitative precision, there is necessarily 
 a hypothetical element ; the facts to which the reasonings 
 relate are not contemplated in their actual complexity, but 
 in an artificially simplified form ; if, therefore, the reasoning 
 is not accompanied and checked by a careful study of facts, 
 the required simplification may easily go too far or be 
 
 ^ See Schonberg's Handbuch, iv. v. and xi.
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 1S9 
 
 inappropriate in kind, so that the hypothetical element of 
 the reasoning is increased to an extent which prevents the 
 result from having any practical value. And this danger is 
 enhanced by the great, though generally gradual, changes in 
 economic facts which accompany or constitute industrial 
 development. Thus, for instance, a theoretical investigation 
 of the purchasing power of money, which assumes for 
 simplicity that coin and bank notes form the sole medium 
 of exchange, might easily lead to serious practical errors in 
 the existing condition of industry ; and a theory of capital 
 which ignores the great and growing preponderance of 
 auxiliary over remuneratory capital is liable to be similarly 
 delusive. The general study of economic history is im- 
 portant as calling attention to this source of error ; but for 
 effective protection against it we must look to that patient 
 and systematic development of statistical inquiry which it 
 is one of our main functions here to watch and to foster. 
 
 I must observe, however, that the historical economists 
 are apt to insist too one-sidedly on the progress in economic 
 theory attained by studying the industrial organisation of 
 society in different stages of its development ; they do not 
 sufficiently recognise that other kind of progress which 
 consists in conceiving more clearly, accurately, and con- 
 sistently, the fundamental facts that remain without material 
 change. But this latter kind of progress is very palpable 
 to one who traces back the history of economic doctrines. 
 Indeed, if our active controversy on principles and method 
 has led anyone to think that political economists are always 
 wrangling, and never establishing anything, he may easily 
 correct this impression by turning to the older writers, and 
 noting the confusions they make on points that are now 
 clear to all instructed persons, and the inferences they 
 unhesitatingly draw, which all would now admit to be in 
 whole or in part erroneous. And by the " older writers " I 
 do not mean merely those who lived before Adam Smith : 
 what I have just said is no less true of the Wealth of 
 Nations and its most distinguished successors. A tiro can 
 now see the fallacy of Adam Smith's statement, that
 
 190 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vil 
 
 " labour never varying in its own value " is a " universal " 
 and " accurate standard of the exchangeable value of all 
 commodities at all times and places " ; the staunchest 
 Eicardian would refuse to follow his master in maintaining 
 that a tax on corn would cause labourers " no other in- 
 convenience than that which they would suffer from any 
 other mode of taxation " ; the most faithful disciple of 
 J. S. Mill would not fall into the confusion between 
 " interest " and " profit " which seriously impairs the value 
 of important parts of his discussions. Much progress, 
 I doubt not, still remains to be made, by steadily con- 
 tinuing that labour of reflective analysis through which our 
 conception of fundamental economic facts has grown con- 
 tinually fuller and more exact ; but no one who examines 
 impartially the writings of our most eminent predecessors 
 can ignore the progress that has already been made. 
 
 I now pass to consider another old charge against 
 political economists, which has been recently revived : the 
 charge of confining their attention too much to the special 
 group of phenomena with wliich they are primarily con- 
 cerned, and nealecting the relations of these to other social 
 facts. There have, no doubt, been writers — Senior is, 
 perhaps, the most important — in whom such neglect was 
 deliberate and systematic; but their peculiar view of 
 economic method has long ceased to have much influence 
 on current thought ; and I hardly think that political 
 economists are now more open to the charge of systematic 
 narrowness than any other set of students who do not 
 " take all knowledge for their province," but accept the 
 limitations which the present state of research imposes as 
 the inevitable condition of thorough work in any department. 
 And so far as the charge hits a real defect, I doubt whether 
 vague generalities about the " consensus of the different 
 functions of the social organism," and the impossibility of 
 " isolating the study of one organ from that of the rest," 
 will be found of much practical use in correcting the 
 defect ; since the relations of other social phenomena 
 to those which primarily concern the economist vary
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 191 
 
 indefinitely in closeness and importance ; so that the question 
 how far it is needful to investigate tliem is one which 
 has to be answered very differently in relation to different 
 economic inquiries. Thus, in considering generally the first 
 subject of Adam Smith's investigation — " the causes of the 
 improvement in the productive powers of labour" — the 
 importance of a healthy condition of social morality must 
 not be overlooked ; but it is not therefore the economist's 
 duty to study in detail the doctrine or discipline of the 
 different Christian churches : while any reference he may 
 make to the history of the Fine Arts will obviously be still 
 more remote and brief. If, however, we are considering 
 historically the causes that have affected the interest of 
 capital, the views of Christian theologians with regard to 
 usury will require careful attention; if, again, we are 
 investigating the share taken by a particular community in 
 the international organisation of industry, the higher average 
 of artistic sensibility among its members may be a consider- 
 ation deserving of notice — as in the case of France. 
 
 Or again, we may illustrate the different degrees in 
 which economic science is connected with different depart- 
 ments of social fact by comparing the chief classes of 
 statistics with which it has been our custom here to deal. 
 Some of the most important of these — such as the statistics 
 of taxation, trade, railways, land-tenure and the like, and a 
 great part of the statistics of population — supply the indis- 
 pensable premisses of much of the economist's reasoning, so 
 far as it aims at being precise and particular, and the in- 
 dispensable verification of many of his conclusions. In 
 other cases again, — as, for instance, the great departments 
 of sanitary and educational statistics, — the interest of the 
 economist is more general and limited : for though both 
 sanitation and education have important bearings on the 
 productiveness of national labour, the details of the organ- 
 isation for promoting either end lie in the main beyond the 
 scope of his investigation ; while he has manifestly still less 
 to do with criminal statistics, military and naval statistics, 
 and several other species of social facts wliich governmental
 
 192 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 or private agencies now enable us to ascertain with approxi- 
 mate quantitative exactness. 
 
 At this point, however, our critics %vill probably say 
 that it is not so much a knowledge of the separate relations 
 of different groups of social phenomena that the political 
 economist lacks, but rather a true conception of the social 
 organism as a whole, and of the fundamental laws of its 
 development ; he does not recognise that his study can only 
 be legitimately or profitably pursued as a duly subordinated 
 branch of the general science of sociology. This view was 
 strongly urged by Mr. Ingram in his presidential address to 
 this Section seven years ago in Dublin ^ ; and it was 
 enforced by pointing contemptuously to the limited function 
 which well-instructed economists at the present day are 
 careful to allot to their science in the settlement of practical 
 questions. When we explain, with Cairnes, that political 
 economy furnishes certain data that go towards the forma- 
 tion of a sound opinion on such questions, but does not 
 undertake to pronounce a final judgment on them, we are 
 told that this " systematic indifferentism amounts to an 
 entire paralysis of political economy as a social power " ; 
 and that the time has come for it to make way for, or be 
 absorbed into, the " scientific sociology " which is now in 
 the field, and which certainly seems ready to offer states- 
 men the dogmatic, comprehensive, and complete practical 
 guidance that mere economic science confesses itself inade- 
 quate to supply. 
 
 It appears to me that Mr, Ingram and his friends some- 
 what mistake the point that they have to prove. It is not 
 necessary to show that if we could ascertain from the past 
 history of human society the fundamental laws of social 
 evolution as a whole, so that we could accurately forecast 
 the main features of the future state with which our present 
 social world is pregnant, — it is not needful, I say, to show 
 that the science which gave this foresight would be of the 
 
 1 It has been recently expressed again, with no less emphasis, in Mr. Ingram's 
 article on " Political Economy," in the niueteeutli volume of the Encydojpcedia 
 Britannica.
 
 VI 1 THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 193 
 
 highest value to a statesman, and would absorb or dominate 
 our present political economy. What has to be proved is 
 that this supremely important knowledge is within our 
 grasp ; that the sociology which professes this prevision is 
 really an estabhshed science. To deny this may perhaps 
 seem presumptuous, in view of the voluminous works that 
 we possess on the subject, which it would be quite out of 
 place for me to attempt to criticise methodically on the 
 present occasion. Fortunately, however, such methodical 
 criticism is not required to justify my negative conclusion : 
 since there are two simple tests of tlie real establishment of 
 a science — emphatically recognised by Comte in his dis- 
 cussion of this very subject — which can be quickly and 
 decisively applied to the claims of existing sociology. These 
 tests may be characterised as (1) Consensus or Continuity, 
 and (2) Prevision. The former I will explain in Comte's 
 own words : — " When we find that recent works, instead of 
 being the result and development of what has gone before, 
 have a character as personal as that of their authors, and 
 bring the most fundamental ideas into question " — then, 
 says Comte, we may be sure we are not dealing with any 
 doctrine deserving the name of positive science. Now, if 
 we compare the most elaborate and ambitious treatises on 
 sociology, of which there happens to be one in each of the 
 three leading scientific languages, — Comte's Politique Positive, 
 Spencer's Sociology, and Schiittie's Ban und Leben des socialen 
 Kbrpers, — we see at once that they exhibit the most com- 
 plete and conspicuous absence of agreement or continuity 
 in their treatment of the fundamental questions of social 
 evolution. 
 
 Take, for example, the question of the future of religion. 
 No thoughtful person can overlook the importance of reli- 
 gion as an element of man's social existence ; nor do the 
 sociologists to whom I have referred fail to recognise it. 
 But if we inquire after the characteristics of the religion of 
 which their science leads them to foresee the coming pre- 
 valence, they give with nearly equal confidence answers as 
 divergent as can be conceived. Schiiflle cannot comprehend 
 

 
 194 ESS A YS AND ADDJiESSES vii 
 
 that the place of the great Christian Churches can be taken 
 by anything but a purified form of Christianity ; Spencer 
 contemplates complacently the reduction of religious thought 
 and sentiment to a perfectly indefinite consciousness of an 
 Unknowable and the emotion that accompanies this peculiar 
 intellectual exercise; while Comte has no doubt that the 
 whole history of religion — which, as he says, " should resume 
 the entire history of human development " — has been lead- 
 ing up to the worship of the Great Being, Humanity, 
 personified domestically for each normal male individual by 
 his nearest female relatives. It would certainly seem that 
 the science which allows these discrepancies in its chief 
 expositors must be still in its infancy. And when we go 
 on to ask how these divergent forecasts of the future are 
 scientifically deduced from the study of the past evolution 
 of mankind, we are irresistibly reminded of the old epigram 
 as to the relation of certain theological controversialists to 
 the Bible : 
 
 Hie liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque, 
 Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua. 
 
 I do not doubt that our sociologists are sincere in settincr 
 before us their conception of the coming social state as the 
 last term of a series of which the law has been discovered 
 by patient historical study ; but when we look closely into 
 their work it becomes only too evident that each philosopher 
 has constructed on the basis of personal feeling and ex- 
 perience his ideal future in which our present social 
 deficiencies are to be remedied ; and that the process by 
 which history is arranged in steps pointing towards his 
 Utopia bears not the faintest resemblance to a scientific 
 demonstration. 
 
 This is equally evident when we turn from religion to 
 industry, and examine the forecasts of industrial develop- 
 ment offered to the statesman in the name of scientific 
 sociology as a substitute for the discarded calculations of the 
 mere economist. With equal confidence, history is repre- 
 sented as leading up, now to the naive and unqualified indi-
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 195 
 
 vidualisin of Spencer, now to the carefully guarded and 
 elaborated socialism of SchiifHe, now to Comte's dream of 
 securing seven-roomed houses for all working-men — with 
 other comforts to correspond — solely by the impressive 
 moral precepts of his philosophic priests. Guidance, truly, 
 is here enough and to spare : but how is the bewildered 
 statesman to select his guidance when his sociological 
 doctors exhibit this portentous disagreement ? 
 
 Nor is it only that they adopt diametrically opposite 
 conclusions : we find that each adopts his conclusion with 
 the most serene and complete indifference to the line of 
 historical reasoning on which his brother sociologist relies. 
 SchiifHe, e.g., appears not to have the least inkling of the 
 array of facts which have convinced Spencer that the recent 
 movement towards increased industrial intervention of gov- 
 ernment in Germany and England is causally connected 
 with the contemporaneous recrudescence of " militancy " 
 in the two countries. And similarly, when Spencer ex- 
 plains how, under a regime of private property and free 
 contract, there is necessarily a " correct apportioning of 
 reward to merit," so that each worker " obtains as much 
 benefit as his efforts are equivalent to — no more and no 
 less," he exhibits a total ignorance of the crushing refutation 
 which, according to SchafHe, this individualistic fallacy has 
 received at the hands of socialism. The tendency of free 
 competition to annihilate itself, and give birth to mono- 
 polies exercised against the common interest for the private 
 advantage of the monopolists ; the crushing inequality of 
 industrial opportunities, which the legal equality and free- 
 dom of modern society have no apparent tendency to 
 correct ; the impossibility of remunerating by private sale 
 of commodities some most important services to the 
 community ; the unforeseen fluctuations of supply and 
 demand which a world-wide organisation of industry brings 
 with it, liable to inflict, to an increasing extent, unde- 
 served economic ruin upon large groups of industrious 
 workers ; the waste incident to the competitive system, 
 through profuse and ostentatious advertisements, needless
 
 196 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES vii 
 
 multiplication of middlemen, inevitable non-employment, 
 or half-employment, of many competitors ; the demoral- 
 isation, worse than waste, due to the reckless or fraudulent 
 promotion of joint-stock companies, and to the gambling rife 
 in the great markets, and tending more and more to spread 
 over the whole area of production, — such points as these 
 are unnoticed in the broad view which our English soci- 
 ologist takes of the modern industrial society gradually 
 emancipating itself from militancy : it never enters his head 
 that they can have anything to do with causing the move- 
 ment towards socialism to which his German confrere has 
 yielded.^ 
 
 However, whether Spencer or Schiiffle is a true prophet 
 — whether the decay of war will bring us to a more com- 
 plete individualism, or whether the increasing scale of the 
 organisation of industry and its increasingly marked de- 
 ficiencies are preparing the way for socialism — cannot 
 certainly be known before a date more or less distant. But 
 as Comte's sociological treatise was written a generation ago, 
 we are fortunately able to bring his very definite predictions 
 and counsels to the test of accomplished facts. In 1854 
 he announced that the transition which was to terminate 
 the Western Eevolution, would be organised from Paris, the 
 " religious metropolis of regenerate humanity," where an 
 " irreversible dictatorship " had just been established, within 
 the space of a generation. In the initial phase of the 
 transition, which ought to last about seven years, perfect 
 freedom of the press would " rapidly extinguish journalism," 
 owing to the " inability of the journal to compete with the 
 placard." By a "judicious use of placards, with a few 
 occasional pamphlets," Positivism would regenerate public 
 opinion. The budget of the clergy, the University of 
 France, the Academy of Sciences, must be suppressed, and 
 the proximate abolition of copyright announced. By these 
 moderate measures Louis Napoleon's irreversible dictatorship 
 might be " perfected and consolidated," so that the dictator 
 
 ^ See Schaffle's " Kritik der kapitalistischen Epoclie," in Baxt, und Leben des 
 socialen Korpers, vol. iii. pp. 419-457.
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 197 
 
 might assume complete legislative power, reducing the 
 Ilepresentative AssemVjly — which would sit once in three 
 years — to the purely financial function of voting the Budget. 
 In the second phase of the transition, which should last 
 about five years, the " dictatorial government, now un- 
 questionably progressive," would suppress the French army, 
 substituting a constabulary of 80,000 gendarmes. This 
 would suffice to maintain order, internal and external, 
 as the oppressive military establishments of neighbouring 
 states would everywhere fall as soon as France had put 
 down her army. The dictator would then break up France 
 into seventeen separate intendancies, as a step towards 
 the ultimate Positive regime, under which the peoples of 
 Western Europe are to be distributed into seventy republics, 
 comprising about 300,000 families each. The third and 
 last phase of the transition, which should occupy about 
 twenty-one years, might be expected to be opened by the 
 voluntary abdication of the dictator in favour of a triumvirate, 
 consisting probably of a banker to manage foreign affairs, 
 an " agricultural patrician " as minister of the interior, and 
 a working-man to take charge of the finances. Their names 
 would be suggested by the High Priest of Humanity — 
 indeed, Comte tells us that he had been " working for 
 several years at the choice of persons," in order to be ready 
 for this momentous nomination : for the immense influence 
 which Positivist doctrine ought to have gained by this time 
 would enable the political direction of France to be placed 
 completely in the hands of Positivists. This triumvirate 
 would transform the seventeen intendances into separate 
 republics : the hourgeoisic would then be gradually " elimi- 
 nated " by the extinction of litterateurs, lawyers, and small 
 capitalists, so that society would pass easily into the final 
 rewime.^ 
 
 I need not go on to this final regime : I have already 
 given you more than enough of these extravagances ; but 
 it seemed important to show how completely the delusive 
 
 ^ These details are taken from Comte's Systime de Politique Positive, vol. iv. 
 chap. V.
 
 198 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES vil 
 
 belief that he had constructed the science of sociology could 
 transform a philosopher of remarkable power and insight 
 into the likeness of a crazy charlatan. I trust that our 
 Association will take no step calculated to foster delusions 
 of this kind. There is no reason to despair of the progress 
 of general sociology ; but I do not think that its develop- 
 ment can be really promoted by shutting our eyes to its 
 present very rudimentary condition. When the general 
 science of society has solved the problems which it has as 
 yet only managed to define more or less clearly — when for 
 positive knowledge it can offer us something better than 
 a mixture of vague and variously applied physiological 
 analogies, imperfectly verified historical generalisations, and 
 unwarranted political predictions — when it has succeeded in 
 establishing on the basis of a really scientific induction its 
 forecasts of social evolution — it will not require any formal 
 admission to the discussions of this Section ; its existence 
 will be irresistibly felt throughout the range of the more 
 special inquiries into different departments of social fact to 
 which we have hitherto restricted ourselves. It is our 
 business in the meantime to carry on our more limited and 
 empirical studies of society in as scientific a manner as 
 possible. Of the method of statistical investigation I have 
 not presumed to speak, as I have not myself done any work 
 of this kind, but have merely availed myself gratefully of 
 the labours of others. But, even so, it has been impossible 
 for me not to learn that to do this work in its entirety, as 
 it ought to be done, repuires scientific faculties of a high 
 order. For duly discerning the various sources of error that 
 impede the quantitative ascertainment of social facts, elimi- 
 nating such error as far as possible, and allowing for it 
 where it cannot be eliminated — still more for duly analysing 
 differences and fluctuations in the social quantities ascer- 
 tained, and distinguishing causal from accidental variations 
 and correspondences — there is needed not only industry, 
 patience, accuracy, but a perpetually alert and circumspect 
 activity of the reasoning powers ; nor is the statistician 
 completely equipped for his task of discovering empirical
 
 VII THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE 199 
 
 laws \mless he can effectively use the assistance of an 
 abstract and difficult calculus of probabilities. It is satis- 
 factory to think that there is every prospect of statistical 
 investigations being carried on, in an increasingly compre- 
 hensive and systematic manner, throughout an ever widen- 
 ing range of civilised countries. The results of this develop- 
 ment cannot fail to be important from the statesman's no 
 less than the theorist's point of view : for though the statis- 
 tician, as such, does not profess to guide public opinion on 
 political questions, there can be no doubt — as Mr. Giffen 
 has recently pointed out — that the knowledge attained by 
 him tends to exercise on the general discussion of such 
 questions an iniiuence, on the whole, no less salutary tlian 
 profound.
 
 VIII 
 ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 
 
 {Oontemporary Jlcview, November 1886) 
 
 Observers of the current drift of political thought and 
 practice, however widely they may diverge in their judg- 
 ments of its tendencies, appear to be generally agreed upon 
 one point — viz. that Socialism is flowing in upon us with a 
 full tide. Whether, like M. de Laveleye, they regard this 
 phenomenon complacently as a "good time coming," or 
 whether, with Mr. Spencer, they hold that what is coming 
 is " slavery," they seem to have no doubt that the political 
 signs are pointing to a great extension of governmental 
 interference in the affairs of private members of the com- 
 munity. And a second point on which they appear to agree 
 is that this socialistic movement — as it is often called — is 
 altogether opposed to ' orthodox political economy ' ; that 
 the orthodox political economist teaches us to restrict the 
 intervention of Government on all the lines on which the 
 socialistic movement aims at extending it. The object of 
 the present paper is not to argue directly for or against any 
 proposed governmental interference, but to reduce to its 
 proper limits the supposed opposition between orthodox 
 political economy and what is vaguely called socialistic, or 
 semi-socialistic, legislation. I admit that the opposition 
 really exists to some extent ; and, so far as it exists, I am 
 — for the most part — on the side of orthodox political 
 economy ; but I think that the opposition has been danger- 
 ously and misleadingly exaggerated for want of a proper 
 
 200
 
 VIII ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 201 
 
 distinction of the diUbreiit grounds on which different kinds 
 of governiiiontal interference are reasonably based. 
 
 I will begin by stating briefly the general argument by 
 wliich orthodox political economy seeks to show that wealth 
 tends to l>c produced most amply and economically in a 
 society where Government leaves industry alone ; — that is, 
 where Government confines itself to the protection of person, 
 property, and reputation, and the enforcement of contracts 
 not obtained by force or fraud, leaving individuals free to 
 produce and transfer to others whatever utilities they may 
 choose, on any terms that may be freely arranged. The 
 argument is briefly that — assuming that the conduct of 
 individuals is generally characterised by a fairly intelligent 
 and alert pursuit of their private interests — regard for self- 
 interest on the part of consumers will lead to the effectual 
 demand for the commodities that are most useful to society, 
 and regard for self-interest on the part of producers will 
 lead to the production of such commodities at the least cost. 
 If any material part of the ordinary supply of any com- 
 modity A were generally estimated as less adapted for the 
 satisfaction of social needs than the quantity of another 
 commodity B that could be produced at the same cost, the 
 demand of consumers would be diverted from A to B, so 
 that A would fall in market value and B rise ; and this 
 change in values would cause a diversion of the efforts of 
 producers from A to B to the extent required. On the 
 other hand, the self-interest of producers will tend to the 
 production of everything at the least possible cost ; because 
 the self-interest of employers will lead them to purchase 
 services most cheaply, taking account of quality, and the 
 self-interest of labourers will make them endeavour to 
 supply the best paid — and therefore most useful — services 
 for which they are adapted. Thus the only thing required 
 of Government is to secure that every one shall be really 
 free to buy the utility he most wants, and to sell what he 
 can best furnish. 
 
 If the actual results of the mainly spontaneous organisa- 
 tion bv which the vast fabric of modern industry has been
 
 202 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES viii 
 
 constructed do not altogether realise the economic ideal 
 above delineated, they at any rate exhibit, on the whole, a 
 very impressive approximation to it. The motive of self- 
 interest does, I hold, work powerfully and continually in 
 the complex manner above described ; and I am convinced 
 that no adequate substitute for it, either as an impulsive or 
 as a regulating force, has as yet been found by any social- 
 istic reformer. Still, the universal practice of modern 
 civilised societies has admitted numerous exceptions to the 
 broad rule of laisser-fairc with which the argument above 
 given concludes ; and it seems worth while to classify these 
 exceptions, distinguishing as clearly as possible the prin- 
 ciples on which they are based, in order that, in any novel 
 or doubtful case, we may at least apply the appropriate 
 general considerations for determining the legitimacy of the 
 exception, and not be misled by false analogies. 
 
 Let us begin by marking off a class of exceptions with 
 which political economy, as I conceive it, is only indirectly 
 or partially concerned ; — exceptions which are due to the 
 manifest limitations under which abstract economic theory 
 is necessarily applied in the art of government. Thus, in 
 the first place, the human beings with whom economic 
 science is primarily concerned — who, in the general argu- 
 ment for laisser-faire, are assumed to be capable of a suffi- 
 ciently alert and careful regard for their private interests — 
 are independent adults. The extremest advocate of laisser- 
 faire does not extend this assumption to children ; hence 
 the need of governmental interference to regulate the educa- 
 tion and employment of children has to be discussed on 
 principles essentially different from those on which we 
 determine the propriety of interfering with the industry of 
 adults. It is, no doubt, a very tenable proposition that 
 parents are the best guardians of their children's interests, 
 but it is quite a different proposition from that on which 
 the general economic argument for industrial non-inter- 
 ference is based — viz., that every one is the best guardian 
 of his own interests ; and the limitations within which 
 experience leads us to restrict the practical application
 
 VIII ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 203 
 
 of the two principles respectively differ to an important 
 extent. 
 
 But, secondly, what the political economist is primarily 
 concerned with is the elTect on the wealth^ of the community 
 caused by interference or non-interference ; but we all agree 
 that from the statesman's point of view considerations of 
 wealth are not decisive ; they are to be subordinated to con- 
 ditions of physical or moral well-being. If we regard a man 
 merely as a means of producing wealth, it might pay to 
 allow a needle-grinder to work himself to death in a dozen 
 years, as it was said to pay some American sugar-planters 
 to work their slaves to death in six or eight ; but a civilised 
 community cannot take this view of its members ; and the 
 fact that a man will deliberately choose to work himself to 
 death in a dozen years for an extra dozen shillings a week 
 is not a decisive reason for allowing him to make the sacrifice 
 imchecked. In this and similar cases we interfere on other 
 than economic grounds : and it is by such extra-economic 
 considerations that we justify the w^hole mass of sanitary 
 regulations ; restrictions on the sale of opium, brandy, and 
 other intoxicants ; prohibitions of lotteries, regulation of 
 places of amusement ; and similar measures. It is, no 
 doubt, the business of the political economist to investigate 
 the effects of such interference ; and, if he finds it in any 
 case excessively costly, or likely to be frustrated by a 
 tenacious and evasive pursuit of private interest on the part 
 of persons whose industry or trade is interfered with, he 
 must direct attention to these drawbacks ; but the principles 
 on which the interference is based carry him beyond the 
 scope of his special method of reasoning, which is concerned 
 primarily with effects on wealth. 
 
 This last phrase, however, suggests another fundamental 
 distinction to which attention nmst be drawn. AVe have to 
 distinguish eil'ects in the production of wealth from effects 
 on its distribution. The argument for laisser-faire, as given 
 
 ^ I use the terni wealth for brevity ; but I should include along with wealth 
 all purchased utilities — whether "embodied in matter" or not — so far as tliey are 
 estimated merelv at their value in the market.
 
 204 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES viii 
 
 above, dealt solely with its tendency to promote the most 
 economical and effective production of wealth : it did not 
 aim at showing that the wealth so produced tends to be dis- 
 tributed among the different classes that have co-operated 
 in producing it in strict accordance with their respective 
 deserts. On this latter point there has, I think, always 
 been a marked difference between the general tone of English 
 political economists and the general tone of leading con- 
 tinental advocates of laisser-faire, of whom Bastiat may be 
 taken as a type. Bastiat and his school do boldly attempt 
 to show that the existing distribution of wealth — or rather 
 that which would exist if Government would only keep its 
 hands off — is " conformable to that which ought to be " ; 
 and that every worker tends to get what he deserves under 
 the economic order of unmodified competition. But the 
 English disciples of Adam Smith have rarely ventured on 
 these daring flights of optimistic demonstration : when, e.g., 
 Eicardo talked of " natural wages," he had no intention of 
 stamping the share of produce so designated as divinely 
 ordered and therefore just ; on the contrary, a market-price 
 of labour above the natural price is characteristic, in 
 Eicardo's view, of an " improving society." And, generally 
 speaking, English political economists, however ' orthodox,' 
 have never thought of denying that the remuneration of 
 workers tends to be very largely determined by causes inde- 
 pendent of their deserts — e.cj. by fluctuations in supply and 
 demand, from the effects of which they are quite unable to 
 protect themselves. If our economists have opposed — as 
 they doubtless have always opposed — any suggestion that 
 Government should interfere directly to redress such in- 
 equalities in distribution, their argument has not been that 
 the inequalities were merited ; they have rather urged 
 that any good such interference might do in the way 
 of more equitable distribution would be more than out- 
 weighed by the harm it would do to production, through 
 impairing the motives to energetic self-help ; since no 
 Government could discriminate adequately between losses 
 altogetlier inevitable and losses that might be at least largely
 
 VIII ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 205 
 
 reduced either by foresight or by promptitude and energy in 
 meeting unforeseen changes. If, however, we can find a 
 mode of intervention which will reduce inequalities of dis- 
 tribution without materially diminishing motives to self- 
 help, this kind of intervention is not, I conceive, essentially 
 opposed to the teaching even of orthodox political economy 
 — according to the English standard of orthodoxy ; for 
 orthodox economy is quite ready to admit that the poverty 
 and depression of any industrial class is liable to render its 
 members less productive from want of physical vigour and 
 restricted industrial opportunities. Now, an important part 
 of the recent, and the proposed, enlargement of governmental 
 functions, which is vaguely attacked as socialistic, certainly 
 aims at benefiting the poor in such a way as to make them 
 more self-helpful instead of less so, and thus seeks to miti- 
 gate inequalities in distribution without giving offence to 
 the orthodox economist. This is the case, e.g., with the 
 main part of governmental provision for education, and the 
 provision of instruments of knowledge by libraries etc. for 
 adults. I do not say that all the money spent in this way 
 is well spent ; but merely that the principle on which a 
 great part of it is spent is one defensible even in the court 
 of old-fashioned political economy ; so far as it aims at 
 equalising, not the advantages that should be earned by 
 labour, but the opportunities of earning them. 
 
 At this point it will probably be objected that the means 
 of equalising opportunities in the way proposed can only be 
 raised by taxation, and that it cannot be economically sound 
 to tax one class for the benefit of another. If, however, the 
 result sought is really beneficial to the production of the 
 community as a whole, it may, I conceive, be argued — on 
 the premises of the most orthodox political economy — that 
 the expense of it may be legitimately thrown on the com- 
 munity as a whole — i.e. may be raised by taxation equitably 
 distributed. In order to make this plain, it will be con- 
 venient to pass to the general consideration of a kind of 
 exceptions to laisscr-faire differing fundamentally in prin- 
 ciple from those which we have so far considered ; cases in
 
 2o6 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES viii 
 
 which it may be shown a priori that laisser-faire would not 
 tend to the most economic production of wealth or other 
 utilities, even in a community whose members were as 
 intelligent and alert in seeking and guarding their private 
 interests as any human beings can reasonably be expected 
 to be. I do not argue that in all such cases Government 
 ought to interfere : in human affairs we have often only a 
 choice of evils, and even where private industry fails to 
 bring about a satisfactory result, it is possible that govern- 
 mental interference might on the whole make matters worse. 
 All I here maintain is, that in such cases the general economic 
 presumption in favour of leaving social needs to be supplied 
 by private enterprise is absent, or is balanced by strictly 
 economic considerations on the opposite side. 
 
 To give a complete systematic account of these excep- 
 tional cases would carry me beyond the limits of an article : 
 my present object is merely to illustrate the general concep- 
 tion of them by a few leading examples, in choosing which 
 I shall try as far as possible to avoid matters of practical 
 controversy. 
 
 We may begin by noticing that there are certain kinds 
 of utility — which are, or may be, economically very important 
 to individuals — which Government, in a well-organised 
 modern community, is peculiarly adapted to pro\'ide. Com- 
 plete security for savings is one of these. I do not of course 
 claim that it is an attribute of Governments, always and 
 everywhere, that they are less likely to go bankrupt, or 
 defraud their creditors, than private individuals or com- 
 panies. History would at once refute the daring pretension. 
 I merely mean that this is likely to be an attribute of 
 governments in the ideal society that orthodox political 
 economy contemplates. Of this we may find evidence in 
 the fact that even now, though loaded with war debts and 
 in danger of increasing the load, the English Government 
 can borrow more cheaply than the most prosperous private 
 company. We may say, therefore, that Government is 
 theoretically fit to be the keeper of savings for which 
 special security is required. So again — without entering
 
 vm ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 207 
 
 dangerously into the burning question of currency — we may 
 at least say that if stab'diti/ in the value of the medium of 
 exchange can be attained at all, without sacrifices and risks 
 outweighing its advantages, it must be by the intervention 
 of Government : a voluntary combination powerful enough 
 to produce the result is practically out of the question. 
 
 In other cases, again, where uniformity of action or 
 abstinence on the part of a whole class of producers is 
 required for the most economical production of a certain 
 utility, the intervention of Government is likely to be the 
 most effective way of attaining the result. It should be 
 observed that it is not the mere need of an extensive 
 combination of producers which establishes an exception to 
 the rule of laisscr-faire, for such need can often be adequately 
 met by voluntary association : the case for governmental 
 interference arises when the utility at which the combina- 
 tion aims will be lost or seriously impaired if even one 
 or two of the persons concerned stand aloof from the 
 combination. Certain cases of protection of land below the 
 sea-level against Hoods, and the protection of useful animals 
 and plants against infectious diseases, exemplify this condi- 
 tion. In a perfectly ideal community, indeed, we might 
 perhaps assume that all the persons concerned would take 
 the requisite precautions ; but in any community of human 
 beings that we can expect to see, the most that we can hope 
 is that the great majority of any industrial class will be 
 adequately enlightened, vigilant, and careful in protecting 
 their own interest ; and in the cases just mentioned, the 
 efforts and sacrifices of a great majority might easily be 
 rendered almost useless by the neglect of one or two 
 individuals. 
 
 But the case for Ejovernmental interference is still 
 stronger where the very fact of a combination among the 
 great majority of a certain industrial class to attain a certain 
 result materially increases the inducement for individuals to 
 stand aloof from the combination. Take, for instance, the 
 case of certain fisheries, where it is clearly for the general 
 interest that the fish should not be caught at certain times,
 
 2o8 ESSA YS AND ADDJ^ESSES viii 
 
 or ill certain places, or with certain instruments ; because 
 the increase of actual supply obtained by such captures is 
 much overbalanced by the detriment it causes to prospective 
 supply. We may fairly assume that the great majority of 
 possible fishermen would enter into a voluntary agreement 
 to observe the required rules of abstinence ; but it is 
 obvious that the larger the number that thus voluntarily 
 abstain, the stronger inducement is offered to the remaining 
 few to pursue their fishing in the objectionable times, places, 
 and ways, so long as they are under no legal coercion to 
 abstain. 
 
 So far I have spoken of cases where it is difficult to 
 render a voluntary association as complete as the common 
 interest requires. But we have also to consider cases where 
 such a combination may be too complete for the public 
 interest, since it may give the combiners a monopoly of the 
 article in which they deal. This is, perhaps, the most 
 important of all the theoretical exceptions to the general 
 rule of laisser-faire. It is sometimes overlooked in the 
 general argument for leaving private enterprise unfettered, 
 through a tacit assumption that enlightened self-interest 
 will lead to open competition ; but abstract reasoning and 
 experience equally show that under certain circumstances 
 enlightened self-interest may prompt to a close combination 
 of the dealers in any commodity : and that the private 
 interest of such a combination, so far as it is able to secure 
 a monopoly of the commodity, may be opposed to the general 
 interest. Observe that my objection to monopoly — whether 
 resulting; from combination or otherwise — is not that the 
 monopolist may make too large a profit : that is a question 
 of distribution with which I am not now concerned. My 
 objection is that a monopolist may often increase his profit, 
 or make an equal profit more easily, by giving a smaller 
 supply at higher prices of the commodity in which he deals 
 rather than a larger supply at lower prices, and so render- 
 ing less service to the community in return for his profit. 
 Wherever, from technical or other reasons, the whole of any 
 industry or trade in a certain district tends to fall under the
 
 viii ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 209 
 
 condition of monopoly, I do not say that there ouglit to be 
 governmental interference, but at any rate the chief economic 
 objection to such interference is absent. 
 
 A familiar instance of this is the provision ol' lighting and 
 water in towns. Experience has amply shown — what might 
 have been inferred a iiriori — that in cases such as these it 
 is impossible to obtain the ordinary advantages from com- 
 petition. Competition invariably involves an uneconomical 
 outlay on works, for which the consumers have ultimately 
 to pay when the competing companies — necessarily few — 
 have seen their way to combination. 
 
 And it is to be observed that the same progress of 
 civilisation which tends to make competition more real and 
 effective, when the circumstances of industry favour competi- 
 tion, also increase the facilities and tendencies to combination 
 when the circumstances favour combination. 
 
 But again, laisser-faire may fail to furnish an adequate 
 supply of some important utility for a reason opposite to 
 that just considered, not because the possible producer has 
 too much control over his product, but because he has too 
 little. I mean that a particular employment of labour or 
 capital may be most useful to the community, and yet the 
 conditions of its employment may be such that the labourer 
 or capitalist cannot remunerate himself in the ordinary way, 
 by free exchange of his commodity, because he cannot appro- 
 priate his beneficial results sufficiently to sell them profitably. 
 Contrast, for instance, the case of docks and lighthouses. In 
 an enlightened community, the making of docks might be 
 left to private industry, because the ships that use them 
 could always be made to pay for them ; but the remunera- 
 tion for the service rendered by a lighthouse cannot be 
 similarly secured. Or, to take a very diiferent instance, 
 contrast scientific discoveries and technical inventions, A 
 technical invention may be patented ; but, though a scientific 
 discovery may be the source of many new inventions, you 
 cannot remunerate that by a patent ; it cannot be made a 
 marketable article. In other cases, again, where it is quite 
 possible to remunerate labour by selling its product, experi- 
 
 P
 
 2IO ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES viii 
 
 ence shows that the process of sale is uneconomical from the 
 cost and waste of trouble involved. This, for instance, is 
 why an advanced industrial community gets rid of tolls on 
 roads and bridges. 
 
 It is under this last head that a portion at least of the 
 expenditure of Government on education, and the provision 
 of the means of knowledge for adults, may, I think, be 
 defended in accordance with the general assumptions on 
 which ' orthodox political economy ' proceeds ; so far as this 
 outlay tends to increase the productive efficiency of the 
 persons who profit by it to an extent that more than repays 
 the outlay. For it will not be denied (1) that the poverty 
 of large classes of the community, if left without aid, would 
 practically prevent them from obtaining this increment of 
 productive efficiency ; and (2) that even when it is clearly 
 worth paying for, from the point of view of the community, 
 the business of providing it could not be remuneratively 
 undertaken by private enterprise. So far, therefore, there 
 is a 'prima facie case for governmental interference on strictly 
 economic grounds. 
 
 I do not, however, contend that this defence is applicable 
 to the whole of the expenditure of the funds actually raised, 
 by compulsory taxation, for educational purposes ; still less 
 that it is applicable to the whole of the expense that eager 
 educational reformers are urging upon us. Nor do I mean 
 to suggest that the economic reason just given is that which 
 actually weighs most with such reformers. I should rather 
 suppose that their strongest motive usually is a desire to 
 enable the mass of the community to partake effectively in 
 that culture, which — though not perhaps the most generally 
 valued advantage which the rich obtain from their wealth — 
 is at any rate the advantage to which the impartial philan- 
 thropist sincerely attaches most importance. Is this desire, 
 then, one that may legitimately be gratified through the 
 agency of Government ? ' No,' say Mr. Spencer and his 
 disciples ; ' let the philanthropist diffuse knowledge at his 
 own expense as much as he likes ; to provide for its diffusion 
 out of the taxes is a palpable infringement of the natural
 
 via ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 211 
 
 rights of the taxpayers.' ' Yes,' say the semi- Socialists — 
 if I may so call them — taking the same ground of natural 
 right, ' the equalisation of opportunities by education, the 
 free communication of culture, are simple acts of reparative 
 justice which society owes to the classes that lie crushed at 
 the base of our great industrial pyramid.' 
 
 Now this whole discussion of natural rights is one from 
 which, as a mere empirical utilitarian, I should prefer to 
 stand aloof. But when it is asserted that the prevalent semi- 
 socialistic movement implies at once a revolt from ortho- 
 dox political economy, and a rejection of Kant's and Mr. 
 Spencer's fundamental political principle, that the coercive 
 action of Government should simply aim at securing equal 
 freedom to all, I feel impelled to suggest a very different 
 interpretation of the movement. I think that it may be 
 more truly conceived as an attempt to realise natural justice 
 as taught by Mr. Spencer, under the established conditions 
 of society, with as much conformity as possible to the teach- 
 ings of orthodox English^ political economy. For what, 
 according to Mr. Spencer, is the foundation of the right of 
 property ? It rests on the natural right of a man to the 
 free exercise of his faculties, and therefore to the results of 
 his labour ; but this can clearly give no right to exclude 
 others from the use of the bounties of Nature : hence the 
 obvious inference is that the price which — as Eicardo and 
 his disciples teach — is increasingly paid, as society pro- 
 gresses, for the use of the " natural and original powers of 
 the soil," must belong, by natural right, to the human com- 
 munity as a whole ; it can only be through usurpation that 
 it has fallen into the hands of private individuals. Mr. 
 Spencer himself, in his Social Statics, has drawn this 
 conclusion in the most emphatic terms. That " equity does 
 not admit property in land " ; that " the right of mankind at 
 large to the earth's surface is still valid, all deeds, customs, 
 and laws notwithstanding " ; that " the right of private 
 
 ' I s.-^.y "English " because Bastiat and other continental writers have partly, 
 T tliink, been led to reject the Ricanliaii theory of rent by their desire to avoid 
 the obvious inference that the payment of rent was opposed to natural justice.
 
 212 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES viii 
 
 possession of the soil is no right at all " ; that " no amount 
 of labour bestowed by an individual upon a part of the 
 earth's surface can nullify the title of society to that part " ; 
 that, finally, " to deprive others of their rights to the use of 
 the earth is a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of 
 taking away their lives or personal liberties"; — these conclu- 
 sions are enforced by Mr. Spencer with an emphasis that makes 
 Mr. Henry George appear a plagiarist. Perhaps it will be 
 replied that this argument only affects land : that it doubt- 
 less leads us to confiscate land " with as little injury to the 
 landed class as may be " — giving them, I suppose, the same 
 sort of compensation that was given to slave-owners when 
 we abolished slavery — but that it cannot justify taxation of 
 capitalists. But a little reflection will show that tliis dis- 
 tinction between owners of land and owners of other property 
 cannot be maintained. In the first place, on Mr. Spencer's 
 principles, the rights of both classes to the actual things they 
 now legally own are equally invalid. For, ob\dously, the 
 original and indefeasible right of all men to the free exercise 
 of their faculties on their material environment must — if 
 valid at all — extend to the whole of the environment ; 
 property in the raw material of movables must be as much 
 a usurpation as property in land. As Mr. Spencer says, 
 " the reasoning used to prove that no amount of labour 
 bestowed by an individual upon a part of the earth's surface 
 can nullify the title of society to that part," might be 
 similarly employed to show that no one can, " by the labour 
 he expends in catching or gathering," supersede " the just 
 claims of other men " to " the thing caught or gathered." 
 If it be replied that technically this is true, but that sub- 
 stantially the value of what the capitalist owns is derived 
 from labour, whereas the value of what the landlord owns is 
 largely not so derived, the answer is that this can only affect 
 the respective claims of the two classes to receive compensa- 
 tion when the rest of the community enforce their inde- 
 feasible rights to the free use of their material environ- 
 ment ; and that, in fact, these different claims have now got 
 inextricably mixed up by the complicated series of exchanges
 
 VIII ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 213 
 
 between land and movables that has taken place since 
 the original appropriation of the former. To quote Mr. 
 Spencer again, " most of our present landowners are men 
 who have, either mediately or immediately, given for their 
 estates equivalents of honestly-earned wealth " — at least as 
 honestly earned as any other wealth — so that if they are 
 to be expropriated in order to restore the free use of the 
 land to the human race, the loss entailed on them must be 
 equitably distributed among all other owners of wealth. 
 
 But is the expropriation of landlords a measure eco- 
 nomically sound ? We turn to the orthodox economists, 
 who answer, almost unanimously,^ that it is not ; that, not 
 to speak of the financial difficulty of arranging compensation, 
 the business of owning and letting land is, on various 
 grounds, not adapted for governmental management ; and 
 that a decidedly greater quantum of utility is likely to be 
 obtained from the land, under the stimulus given by complete 
 ownership, than could be obtained under a system of lease- 
 hold tenure. What then is to be done ? The only way 
 that is left of reconciling the Spencerian doctrine of natural 
 right with the teachings of orthodox political economy, seems 
 to be just that ' doctrine of ransom ' which the semi- 
 socialists have more or less explicitly put forward. Let the 
 rich, landowners and capitalists alike, keep their property, 
 but let them ransom the flaw in their titles by compensating 
 the other human beings residing in their country for that 
 free use of their material environment which has been with- 
 drawn from them ; only let this compensation be given in 
 such a way as not to impair the mainsprings of energetic 
 and self-helpful industry. We cannot restore to the poor 
 their original share in the spontaneous bounties of Nature ; 
 but we can give them instead a fuller share than they could 
 acquire unaided of the more communicable advantages of 
 social progress, and a fairer start in the inevitable race for 
 the less communicable advantages ; and ' reparative justice ' 
 demands that we should give them this much. 
 
 ' J. S. Mill is so far as I know, the only important exception ; anil his ortho- 
 doxy OQ questions of this kind is somewhat dubious.
 
 214 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES viii 
 
 That it is not an easy matter to manage this compensa- 
 tion with due regard to the interests of all concerned, I 
 readily grant ; and also that the details of the legislation 
 which this serai-socialistic movement has prompted, and is 
 prompting, are often justly open to criticism, both from the 
 point of view of Mr. Spencer and from that of orthodox 
 economists ; but, when these authorities combine to attack 
 its general drift, it seems worth while to point out how 
 deeply their combined doctrines are concerned in its 
 parentage. 
 
 At this point the reader may perhaps wonder where I 
 find the real indisputable opposition, which I began by ad- 
 mitting, between orthodox political economy and the prevalent 
 movement in our legislation. The most obvious example of 
 it is to be found in the kind of governmental interference, 
 against which the request for laisser-faire was originally 
 directed, and which is perhaps more appropriately called 
 ' paternal ' than ' socialistic ' : legislation which aims at 
 regulating the business arrangements of any industrial class, 
 not on account of any apprehended conflict between the 
 private interests, properly understood, of the persons con- 
 cerned, and the public interest, but on account of their 
 supposed incapacity to take due care of their own business 
 interests. The most noteworthy recent instance of this in 
 England is the interference in contracts between (English) 
 agricultural tenants and their landlords in respect of ' com- 
 pensation for improvements ' ; since no attempt, so far as I 
 know, was made by those who urged this interference to show 
 that the properly understood interests of landlords and 
 tenants combined would not lead them to arrange for such 
 treatment of the land as was under their existing circum- 
 stances economically best, 
 
 A more important species of unorthodox legislation 
 consists of measures that attempt to determine directly, by 
 some method other than free competition, the share of the 
 appropriated product of industry allotted to some particular 
 industrial class. The old legal restrictions on interest, old 
 and new popular demands for ' fair ' wages, recent Irish
 
 VIII ECONOMIC SOCIALISM 2 1 5 
 
 legislation to secure * fair ' rents, all come under this head. 
 Any such legislation is an attempt to introduce into a social 
 order constructed on a competitive basis a fundamentally 
 incompatible principle ; the attempt in most cases fails from 
 its inevitable incompleteness, and where it succeeds, its suc- 
 cess inevitably removes or weakens the normal motives to 
 industry and thrift. You can make it illegal for a man to 
 pay more than a certain price for the use of money, but you 
 cannot thus secure him the use of the money he wants at 
 the legal rate ; so that, if his wants are urgent, he will pay 
 the usurer more than he would otherwise have done to com- 
 pensate him for the risk of the unlawful loan. Similarly, 
 you can make it illegal to employ a man under a certain rate 
 of wages, but you cannot secure his employment at that rate, 
 unless the community will undertake to provide for an 
 indefinite number of claimants work remunerated at more 
 than its market value ; in which case its action will tend to 
 remove, to a continually increasing extent, the ordinary 
 motives to vigorous and efficient labour. So again, you can 
 ensure that a tenant does not pay the full competition rent 
 to his landlord, but — unless you prohibit the sale of the 
 rights that you have thus given him in the produce of the 
 land — you cannot ensure that his successor in title shall not 
 pay the full competitive price for the use of the land in rent 
 '£ilu8 interest on the cost of the tenant-right ; and, in any 
 case, if you try by a 'fair rent 'to secure to the tenant a 
 share of produce on which he can ' live and thrive,' you 
 inevitably deprive him of the ordinary motives — both 
 attractive and deten-ent — prompting to energetic self-help 
 and self-improvement. I do not say dogmatically that no 
 measures of this kind ought ever, under any circumstances, 
 to be adopted, but merely that a heavy burden of proof is 
 thrown on any one who advocates them, by the valid objec- 
 tions of orthodox political economy ; and that, in the 
 arguments used in support of recent legislation of this kind, 
 this burden does not appear to me to have been adequately 
 taken up.
 
 IX 
 POLITICAL PEOPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 {National Review, December 1894) 
 
 " Of all the mistakes that men commit," says George Eliot, 
 " prophecy is the most gratuitous." The epigram is effective, 
 and convenient for quotation when one does not wish to 
 commit oneself to a forecast of events. But, unless we 
 take the word prophecy in a very special and narrow sense, 
 it is surely an audacious inversion of the truth such as 
 only genius could successfully venture on. It rather seems 
 to me that among the countless mistaken affirmations which 
 man makes — 
 
 Sole judge of truth, through endless error hurl'd — 
 
 those which relate directly or indirectly to the future are 
 the only ones which are 7iot gratuitous. When we make 
 positive statements as to unimportant details of past history 
 — e.g., as to the place at which, or the manner in which, 
 the Battle of Hastings was fought — we incur a risk of error 
 which may fairly be called gratuitous. And if this cannot 
 be said of all our statements as to past events, this is only 
 because and so far as our conception of such events may 
 conceivably affect some historical generalisation by which 
 political science — when it comes to be constructed — may 
 furnish guidance for the future conduct of human beings. 
 All rational action is based on belief of what is going to 
 happen : all experts in all practical callings are always 
 prophesying. The physician who orders a dose, the engineer 
 who determines the structure of a bridge, no less than the 
 
 216
 
 IX POLITICAL PROPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY 217 
 
 statesman who proposes a tax, can only justify what they 
 do by predicting the effects of their respective measures. 
 
 It may be said that these predictions are of proximate 
 events, and that gratuitous error comes in when we try to 
 prophesy far ahead, beyond the needs of practice. But it 
 is surely very dilhcult to draw the line. Man is an animal 
 of large discourse ; in an early stage of civilisation he begins 
 to take an interest in his posterity and in the welfare of Ids 
 tribe ; with advancing civilisation his interests extend, and 
 the further they extend the more remote becomes the future 
 by his conception of which his acts and feelings are in- 
 fluenced. It is perhaps gratuitous to trouble ourselves 
 about the ultimate refrigeration of the solar system, — 
 though I believe that the prospect of it seriously depresses 
 some highly educated persons, — but no one can say that the 
 probable exhaustion of our coal mines in the course of a 
 century or two is not a matter of practical concern to 
 Englishmen, 
 
 These reflections are, I fear, too obvious to be interesting ; 
 but it is somewhat less of a platitude to remark how much 
 the importance of prophecy has increased, for the present 
 generation, through the increasing prevalence of the 
 ' historical method ' of dealing with political and social 
 questions. So long as imhistorical ideals are dominant — 
 so long as men believe in the construction of a social order 
 based on eternal and immutable principles of natural justice, 
 which determine the only legitimate form of government 
 and define the only legitimate sphere of its operations — 
 any prophecy of what is coming can only affect their view 
 of what ought to be done in a secondary and subordinate 
 way. The plan of their work is laid down independently 
 of all forecasts of wind and weather : it will be prudent, no 
 doubt, to take account of any interruptions which these 
 intrusive forces may cause, but they cannot modify the 
 architectural design on which the social edifice is to be con- 
 structed. But the spread of the historical method, with its 
 accompanying conviction of the relativity of all political 
 construction to the changing condition and circumstances of
 
 2i8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 society, inevitably destroys the belief in a polity eternally 
 and immutably just : and in many sanguine minds it tends 
 to substitute for this a belief in progress, which fuses the 
 notion of what ought to be and what will be into one 
 dominant conception of a ' good time coming ' — believed 
 to be good because it is coming, quite as much as it is 
 believed to be coming because it is good. And even minds 
 less sanguine, less confident that the process of human 
 history is a continual progress from worse to better, are 
 naturally led by the same line of thought to accept un- 
 resistingly a future which they cannot find altogether satis- 
 factory to their desires and aspirations. For no sensible 
 person wishes to row against the stream, unless he has a 
 very decided conviction that the stream is going the wrong 
 way ; and even then, if the stream is in the long run 
 irresistible, the duty of putting off the evil day is dreary 
 and unattractive. If we are certainly going to " shoot 
 Niagara," what matters it whether the catastrophe comes a 
 little sooner or a little later ? Let us drop the oars, enjoy 
 the scenery, shoot, and have it over. 
 
 In this way what Matthew Arnold called the " policy of 
 the jumping cat " comes to be invested by the historical 
 method with a certain melancholy dignity ; it presents 
 itself as an inevitable result of a wide vision of truth, a 
 refined adaptation of highly cultivated individuals to their 
 social environment. When this attitude of mind is widely 
 prevalent among educated persons generally, innovators 
 whose social and political ideals are really in their inception 
 quite unhistorical, are naturally led to adopt the historical 
 method as an instrument of persuasion. In order to induce 
 the world to accept any change that they desire, they 
 endeavour to show that the whole course of history has 
 been preparing the way for it — whether ' it ' is the recon- 
 ciliation of Science and Eeligion, or the complete realisation 
 of Democracy, or the fuller perfection of Individualism, or 
 the final triumph of Collectivism. The vast aggregate of 
 past events — many of them half-known and more half- 
 understood — which makes up what we call history, affords
 
 IX POLITICAL PROrHECY AND SOCIOLOGY 219 
 
 a malleable material for the application of this procedure : 
 by judicious selection and well -arranged emphasis, by ignor- 
 ing inconvenient facts and filling the gaps of knowledge 
 with convenient conjectures — it is astonishing how easy it 
 is plausibly to represent any desired result as the last in- 
 evitable outcome of the operation of the laws of social 
 development ; the last term of a series of which the formula 
 is known to the properly instructed historian. 
 
 Prophesying of this kind is not by any means " gratuitous"; 
 but it may be dangerous : it is certainly liable to fill the 
 mind of the confiding reader with a vain illusion of know- 
 ledge. The object, accordingly, of my present paper is not 
 to stop such prophesying — which it would be futile to 
 attempt, — nor to argue that one prophet is as likely to be 
 right as another — which would be a paradox opposed to 
 common experience, — but to endeavour to! make clear the 
 limitations within which the guidance offered by such fore- 
 casts may reasonably be accepted. 
 
 I will begin by remarking that prophecies are not always 
 put forward, even by the most highly educated prophets, as 
 based on a scientific grasp of the laws of social evolution. 
 Indeed, in the most impressive book of a prophetic nature 
 which has appeared in England for many years — I mean 
 Pearson's National Life and Character ^ — the prophecies are 
 not announced with any such pretensions ; they always rest 
 on a simply empirical basis, and only distinguish themselves 
 from the common run of such forecasts by the remarkably 
 wide and full knowledge of relevant historical facts which 
 the writer shows, and the masterly skill with which the 
 facts are selected and grouped. His predictions are almost 
 always interesting, and sometimes, I think, reach a degree 
 of probability sufficient to give them a real practical value. 
 At the same time, in spite of Mr. Pearson's masterly hand- 
 ling, or perhaps all the more on account of it, I know 
 no book which brings home to one more forciblv the 
 
 ^ Published 1893 (Macmillnii and Co.). I must take this ojjjwrtunity of ex- 
 pressing my deep sense of the loss which the scientific study of politics has 
 sustained through the recent premature death of this remarkalile WTiter.
 
 220 ESSA VS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 imperfection of all such empirical forecasts. Such predictions 
 may be classed under two heads, in respect of the general 
 procedure employed in them : they either proceed on the 
 assumption that what is will continue to be, or that what 
 has happened will happen again. Each procedure is, under 
 proper conditions and limitations, quite legitimate when we 
 are only aiming at a probable conclusion ; but each has its 
 own imperfections, which, though they are tolerably obvious, 
 I may briefly analyse and illustrate from the work just 
 mentioned. 
 
 I do not wish to exaggerate these imperfections. The 
 assumption that what is will continue to be, is, even in its 
 crudest form, one which the most enlightened persons con- 
 tinually make with practical success in their political fore- 
 casts : for under ordinary circumstances the amount of 
 change that takes place in the structure even of a modern 
 political society, and the functioning of its organs, is not 
 great in proportion to what remains unchanged within the 
 periods to which such forecasts usually relate. And, of 
 course, as our statistical knowledge increases, through the 
 greater amount of labour and the improved methods applied 
 to the ascertainment of present social facts, the degree of 
 precision with which we can predict these facts in the 
 proximate future will proportionately grow. Thus we can 
 predict pretty confidently about how many children will be 
 born next year, about how many of them wnll go to school, 
 about how much they will know when they leave school, 
 about how many will marry, about how many will be tried 
 for murder, and about how many will be convicted. Still, 
 we do not, of course, assume that any of these numerical 
 proportions will remain unchanged. The best knowledge 
 of history, even if confined to current history, prevents us 
 from accepting the proposition that what has been will be, 
 in its crudest form, in which it excludes change. It is in 
 the more refined form of the expectation that a process of 
 change in a certain direction, which we can trace in past 
 history up to our own time, will continue in the future in 
 the same direction, that this assumption is liable to be
 
 IX POLITICAL PROPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY 221 
 
 too easily accepted by educated persons. I think that Air. 
 Pearson relied on it somewhat too much. After giving 
 some striking instances of false and true prophecies, he con- 
 cludes that " the power of divination among men seems 
 rather to concern itself with general laws," and that we are 
 " fairly successful in ascertaining a general law of progress." 
 Accordingly, he proceeds to forecast confidently certain im- 
 portant changes in English national character, which, though 
 he does not precisely date them, must, according to his 
 reasoning, require a considerable time. 
 
 Now, firstly, I think that the mere ascertainment of the 
 direction in which society generally has been moving within 
 a certain period, especially in respect of important features 
 of national character, is more difficult than is often supposed ; 
 owing to the great complexity of the whole social movement 
 of thought and feeling and the very imperfect knowledge of 
 it that even the most instructed student of social facts can 
 possess. But grant that the direction in which our social 
 world has moved up to the present time has been correctly 
 ascertained, still, until we have grasped the law of the whole 
 course of development we can have no certainty that the 
 movement is not going to change. And I think that here 
 we may conveniently bring the other form of the empirical 
 prophecy — the assumption that what has happened will 
 happen again — to show the extent of the liability to error 
 involved in the assumption that we can infer, empirically, 
 the movement of change in the future from its movement 
 in the past. 
 
 Mr. Pearson found that in the last twenty years — I do 
 not think that the experience on which he based his fore- 
 cast goes farther back — the functions of Government have 
 shown a tendency to expand (especially in the colony of 
 Victoria) : he also found that the infiuence of religion has 
 shown a tendency to diminish, especially the belief in a 
 future life, which our age tends to regard as " nothing more 
 than a fanciful and unimportant probability " : and, assum- 
 ing these tendencies to continue, he predicted certain de- 
 pressing eifects on national life and character. Now, the
 
 222 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 tendency to Socialism is undeniable ; and I am not prepared 
 to deny that a drift to secularism is traceable in what may 
 be in a wide sense called the educated classes ; and I should 
 quite agree with Mr. Pearson, that if both tendencies to- 
 gether continue operating long enough they are likely to 
 affect our national character very seriously. But I hesitate 
 to infer confidently that this effect will be produced, when 
 I reflect how short a time it is since a more fully developed 
 Individualism seemed to thoughtful minds " in the van of 
 progress," and how impossible it would practically have 
 been to prophesy on empirical grounds any one of the 
 revivals of religious sentiment that have taken place during 
 the history of Christianity. 
 
 As for the first point, we have only to look at our most 
 eminent living philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who stands 
 before us as an impressive survival of the drift of thought 
 in the first half of the nineteenth century. He formed, 
 before 1850, the opinion that a completed Individualism 
 was the ultimate goal of human progress ; and to this 
 opinion he remains true in 1894, regarding the Socialistic 
 drift of the last twenty years as a lamentable temporary 
 divergence from the true and main movement of political 
 thought and fact. It seems at least not improbable 
 that some of the ardent youths who are now expect- 
 ing the salvation of society through the triumph of 
 Collectivism, may, before they reach old age, find them- 
 selves similarly contemplating the receding tide of public 
 opinion. 
 
 As to the second point, let us consider the greatest 
 change that West-European Christianity has seen — the 
 Eeformation. Is it not a historical commonplace that the 
 tendency towards a practically secular view of human life 
 has rarely been more marked than it was in the educated 
 class — including the leading clergy of the most civilised 
 country in Europe — in the age that preceded Luther ? As 
 Clough aptly says, in an ironical passage, — Luther made a 
 sad mistake : he did not see how Leo X. and Co. were 
 quietly clearing away worn-out superstitions ;
 
 IX POLITICAL PROPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY zzi 
 
 He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg 
 
 lungs, and 
 Bring back theology once yet again in a Hood upon Europe. 
 
 Why should not another Luther, adapted to modern in- 
 tellectual and social conditions, have a similar effect now ? 
 
 I do not use these instances to predict either a new 
 Eeformation or a reaction to the Individualistic ideal ; 
 indeed, I regard prophecies, based on analogous historic 
 cases — except when they are very carefully selected from 
 comparatively recent history — as generally more untrust- 
 worthy than prophecies based on observation of current 
 drift and tendency. For such analogies are ahvays very 
 imperfect. The history of civilised man is a process of 
 change, usually, no doubt, gradual, but still sufficiently 
 rapid to establish profound differences between any two 
 stages separated by a considerable interval of time ; so that 
 even where a new phase shows an impressive resemblance 
 in certain characteristics to some antecedent phase, this 
 analogy can hardly ever be sufficient to justify a confident 
 prediction. 
 
 Let us take, for example, an analogy that has been ex- 
 tensively used in political discussions. From the time of 
 Montesquieu and Eousseau, down to the time of Sir Henry 
 Maine, a leading place has been given in such discus- 
 sions to the consideration of democracy, as known to us 
 from Greek and Eoman history. It has been apparently 
 assumed that a study of this previous experience is likely 
 to throw important light on the process of change now going 
 on in West-European States. Now, I am far from thinking 
 that such a study is not highly interesting and suggestive; 
 since an instructive parallel may certainly be traced between 
 the successive stages in the more rapid development of the 
 City-States of ancient Greece and Italy, and the successive 
 stages in the slower development of the Country-States of 
 modern Europe. But before we allow ourselves to draw 
 any practical inferences from this analogy, it is obviously 
 necessary to take full account of the important difierences 
 between Grteco-Eoman political conditions and those of
 
 224 £SS^ VS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 West-European States — the difference between direct and 
 representative Democracy ; the change in the conditions and 
 estimation of industry ; the difference due to slavery, which 
 excluded absolutely from political rights a large portion of 
 the manual-labour class in the most democratic of ancient 
 communities ; the difierence in religious organisation, and 
 the yet profounder differences in the nature of the influence 
 exercised by religion on the life of individuals. One who 
 duly considers these differences may, doubtless, still find a 
 knowledge of the phenomena of Greek democracy useful 
 in the way of suggestion and warning ; but he will hardly 
 venture to use this knowledge as the basis of a prophecy, 
 unless he holds himself to have grasped the funda- 
 mental laws of the whole process of political and social 
 development. 
 
 This leads us back to the question which I first raised. 
 Can we ascertain from past history the fundamental laws 
 of social evolution as a whole ? I have tried to show that 
 only a positive answer to this question can justify us in 
 confidently forecasting the future of society for any con- 
 siderable way ahead. Can we give such an answer ? To 
 put it otherwise. Is the ' social dynamics ' of which we 
 have heard so much for half a century, a science really 
 established and constructed, and not merely adumbrated ? — 
 I do not, of course, mean completely constructed, but con- 
 structed sufficiently for prevision, fortunately there is a 
 simple criterion of the effective establishment of a science 
 — laid down by the original and powerful thinker who 
 must certainly be regarded as the founder of the science 
 of society, if there is such a science — the test of Con- 
 sensus of experts and Continuity of scientific work ; and, 
 if we accept Comte's criterion, it is easy to show that the 
 social science is not yet effectively constructed — at least so 
 far as the department of ' social dynamics ' is concerned — 
 since it is certain that every writer on the subject starts 
 cle novo and builds on his own foundation. 
 
 As evidence of this I may refer to a vigorously-WTitten 
 and stimulating book of which, as I understand, several
 
 IX POLITICAL PROPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY 225 
 
 thousand copies have been sold, and wliich has much 
 impressed the reviewers — I mean Mr. J>enjamin Kidd's 
 treatise on Social Uoolution. 
 
 Mr, Kidd begins by " confessing " — witli the frankness 
 with which each successive sociologist has liitherto confessed 
 the deficiencies of his predecessors — that " there is no science 
 of human society properly so-called": "From Herbert 
 Spencer in England," — who, in Mr. Kidd's view, has thrown 
 but " little practical light on the social problems of our 
 time " — " to Schiiifle in Germany, ... we have every pos- 
 sible and perplexing variety of opinion." In short, " science 
 has obviously no clear perception of the nature of the social 
 evolution we are undergoing " ; and " has made no serious 
 attempt to explain the phenomenon of our Western civilisa- 
 tion." This he considers to be, at least in part, the fault of 
 " the historian," who usually is depressingly reluctant to 
 generalise and obstinately refuses to predict. " The historian 
 takes us through events of the past, through the rise and de- 
 cline of great civilisations, . . . through a social development 
 which is evidently progressing in some definite direction, 
 and sets us down at last with our faces to the future with 
 scarcely a hint as to any law underlying it at all, or indica- 
 tion as to where our own civilisation is tending." It is thus 
 left for the biologist — or rather the amateur equipped with 
 the latest and most controverted results of biological specula- 
 tion — to rush in where the historian fears to tread, and tell 
 us what history really means, and what it is all coming to. 
 
 Now, personally I have some sympathy with the com- 
 plaint here brought against historians ; I often find myself 
 wishing that of the great volume of energy that is now 
 being thrown into the study of history, a somewhat larger 
 portion was devoted to the comparison and systematisation of 
 facts already known, and somewhat less to the ascertainment 
 of new facts, l^ut probably everyone m'Iio has done any- 
 thing wliich may by a stretch be called research in any 
 departments of history will be able also to sympathise with 
 the reluctance of the professional historian to perform the 
 task which I\Ir. Kidd demands of him. For such a student 
 
 Q
 
 226 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 is likely to have gone through an experience of the follow- 
 ing kind. At the first stage of his knowledge, — i.e. when 
 he has studied his subject in one or more of the general 
 histories of the period, it yields to his mind an ample crop 
 of impressive generalisations ; he seems to know not only 
 what happened but why it happened, and is ready to formu- 
 late sociological laws in abundance. Then when he has 
 begun to feel more or less at home among the original 
 authorities, he finds his confidence in this formulation 
 diminish ; he notices facts which his formulae do not satis- 
 factorily explain, and inevitable gaps in his knowledge 
 which make his first insight into causes appear superficial. 
 This process goes on ; and ultimately the generalisations to 
 which he still clings appear so reduced in number, so far 
 from certain, so loaded with qualifications and reserves, so 
 inadequate to the full complexity of the facts, that he feels 
 inclined to postpone offering them for the enlightenment of 
 mankind. Now, if some such process as this is a common 
 experience of professional students of history, and if they 
 thus come habitually to distrust and severely to control 
 their own tendency to generalise, much more are they likely 
 to distrust the generalisations of the professional sociologist, 
 whose knowledge is apt to be distinguished rather by range 
 than by depth or accuracy. If I am right in thus charac- 
 terising the general attitude of the historian towards the 
 sociologist, I fear it is likely to be confi,rnied rather than 
 modified by a study of the remarkable chapters in which 
 Mr. Kidd sketches the development of western civilisation. 
 
 The historian will here learn, for example, that in 
 Eome occupations connected with agriculture " M^ere regarded 
 as unworthy of freemen," and that " the freemen of Eome 
 could hardly be said to work ; they fought and lived on the 
 produce of the fighting " ; and he will wonder what manual 
 of Eoman history Mr. Kidd has been using, whether it left out 
 the familiar story of Cincinnatus, whether it mentioned Cato, 
 what account it gave of the struggle between patricians and 
 plebeians, of the Licinio-Sextian laws, and of the colonisa- 
 tion system of Eome. Again, he will learn that in all the
 
 IX POLITICAL PROPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY 227 
 
 Greek city States " the ruliii;^ classes had a single feature iii 
 common — their military origin . . . they represented tlie 
 party which had imposed its rule by force on the rest of the 
 community " ; and he will perhaps envy the boldness of 
 conjecture which has illuminated the history of {e.g.) Attica 
 for the special benefit of Mr. Kidd. Passing to mediseval his- 
 tory, he will find that " amongst all the Western peoples there 
 has been a slow but sure restriction of the absolute power 
 possessetl under military rule by the hand of the State " ; 
 and will vainly try to divine what account of the feudal 
 system has fallen under Mr. Kidd's notice. His perplexity 
 will be at its height when he finds that in spite of this 
 absolute power of the military head of the State, Western 
 Europe has become in the twelfth century a vast theocracy 
 in which the " church is omnipotent," one result of which 
 is that " all the attainments of the Greek and lioman genius 
 are buried out of sight " : and he will ask himself — to take 
 one point among many — whether Mr. Kidd has really never 
 heard of the throng of students from all parts of Europe to 
 hear the teaching of Jurisprudence at Bologna in the twelfth 
 century, or whether he is under the impression that Irnerius 
 and his successors lectured exclusively on the Canon Law ! 
 
 I might add similar statements with regard to more 
 modern times ; but I have said enough to explain why I 
 think that the historian, after reading Mr. Kidd, will be 
 more than ever inclined to draw a sharp line between his 
 own methods and those of the would-be sociologist ; and 
 will hardly take much interest in any prediction of the 
 future founded on such knowledge of the past as the speci- 
 mens above quoted exemplify. It may be replied, perhaps, 
 by the admirers of Mr. Kidd, that this only shows the his- 
 torian's pedantic habit of laying stress on details ; and that 
 the main argument of Mr. Kidd's historical chapters — the 
 demonstration of the importance of Christianity in the 
 growth of West-European civilisation — remains unall'ected. 
 Let us turn, then, to his main argument. 
 
 According to ]\Ir. Kidd the central feature of human 
 history is the struggle of man, " moved by a profound social
 
 228 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 instinct " to keep his reason under by the aid of religion, 
 and thus prevent the suspension of progress which the un- 
 checked exercise of reason would inevitably cause. When 
 Christianity was born, religion in the Eoman dominion was 
 practically dead, and consequently Roman civilisation had 
 commenced to die ; but with Christianity came a " fierce 
 ebullition of life " of which the " amorphous vigour " " was 
 so great that several centuries have to pass away " before we 
 can see what " it was destined to build up." At length in 
 the twelfth century a.d. reason is effectually subdued ; and 
 in the " European Theocracy of the fourteenth century " the 
 " ultra-rational sanction " of the " altruistic ideal " — which 
 it was the distinctive characteristic of Christianity to exalt 
 — has attained " a strength and influence never before 
 known." \ Then in the sixteenth century the " immense 
 body of altruistic feeling " generated by Christianity is 
 " liberated into the practical life of the peoples affected by " 
 the Eeformation : so that henceforward the evolutionist 
 notes the greater development of altruistic sentiments in 
 Protestant nations. 
 
 There is much that is true in this historic survey and 
 much that is new ; the difficulty is to find anything that is 
 both. The fundamental importance of the Christian Church, 
 in the long process of building up the West-European State- 
 system, is a truth not left for Mr, Kidd to enforce : but I 
 conceive that the movement towards Theocracy in the ]\Iiddle 
 Ages is essentially connected with the success of the Church 
 in dominating the political disorder caused by Teutonic 
 invasions and conquests. In the fresh life of ci\ilisation 
 ultimately exhibited in this system of States, the influence 
 of Christianity is doubtless an indispensable factor ; but the 
 fresh material furnished by the Teutonic invaders would 
 appear to be no less essential. Mr. Kidd, however, seems 
 to treat the barbarian irruptions and their consequences as 
 a ' negligeable quantity ' ; but on this view he was surely 
 bound to show that Christianity had the vitalising effect 
 that he attributes to it in the older political society 
 in which it had its origin : and it is difficult to imagine
 
 IX POLITICAL PROPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY izg 
 
 how he would try to show this, with regard to either 
 of the two portions of the Koman Empire, whose fates, in 
 the fifth century a.d., begin to diverge so widely. The 
 extent and the causes of the process of social decline, dis- 
 cernible in the Western Empire before the Teutonic con- 
 quests, is doubtless somewhat obscure ; still it seems clear 
 that Christianity, if it did not contribute to it, did little or 
 nothing to arrest it: the process appears to go on in the 
 fourth and fifth centuries, unaffected by the establishment 
 of Christianity as the dominant religion. But the Eastern 
 or greater half of the Empire is perhaps more important 
 for our argument ; partly because Christianity had its origin 
 and earliest development here, but chiefly because this part 
 of the Empire continued to exist as an independent political 
 community during the centuries in which the Western 
 Church was developing in a theocratic direction. Now, Mr. 
 Lecky is one of Mr. Kidd's authorities ; but I will not ask 
 him exactly to accept that historian's view, that of the 
 " Byzantine Empire the universal verdict of history is that 
 it constitutes, with scarcely an exception, the most thoroughly 
 base and despicable form that civilisation has yet assumed." 
 This " universal verdict " is doubtless far too sweeping and 
 unqualified : still, when all has been done that can be done 
 to restore the lost character of the Byzantine Empire, its 
 staunchest champion will hardly refer to its history as evi- 
 dence of the vitalising and altnoising effect of religion. 
 
 But even as regards Western Europe in the Middle 
 Ages Mr. Kidd's claims seem extravagant. He tells us 
 that the " ultra-rational sanction " of religion had attained, 
 in " the European Theocracy of the fourteenth century, a 
 strength and infiuence never before known." Let us recall 
 one or two salient facts in the history of this century. It 
 begins, with the conflict between Philip the Fair of France 
 and Boniface the P^ighth when the king, with the general 
 support of the laity of his kingdom, defies the Pope's 
 authority, and publicly burns his bull " Ausculta Fili." 
 Then after an intervening Pope's reign has been cut short, 
 through his imprudence (as Yillaui suggests) in eating figs
 
 230 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 untasted, with Clement the Fifth begins the " Babylonish 
 captivity " of the Papal Court at Avignon ; in consequence 
 of which, as Bishop Creighton says, " the luxury, vice and 
 iniquity of Avignon became proverbial throughout Europe." 
 Then, when the seventy years of this captivity have termi- 
 nated, there follows the great schism that lasts on into the 
 fifteenth century. Let us imagine a thinker of the fourth 
 century B.C. — say Plato or Aristotle, acquainted only with 
 the " narrow and egotistical morality " of Greece — resusci- 
 tated and made to read Mr. Kidd ; and then introduced to 
 the pair of rival popes who begin the schism, in the pages 
 of the cautious and impartial ecclesiastical historian whom 
 I have, just mentioned. He will read, among other things, 
 of the bargain by which in 1380 Urban the Fifth agreed 
 to invest Charles of Durazzo with the crown of Xaples, on 
 condition of his confirming the grants of " all the richest 
 part of the Neapolitan kingdom," which his Floliness has 
 made to his nephew Butillo ; — a profligate rufifian for whom 
 his affectionate uncle pleads the excuse of youth, when 
 subsequently, being forty years old, he breaks into a nunnery 
 and violates a sister of noble birth. Then he might turn 
 to contemplate Urban's rival, Eobert of Geneva, stamping 
 out sedition at Cesena as Papal Legate (in the year before 
 he became Clement the Seventh), with a barbarity that 
 revolted even the hardened captain that commanded the papal 
 mercenaries. " For three days and three nights the carnage 
 raged inside the devoted city ; . . . five thousand perished 
 in the slaughter, and the name of Cesena would have been 
 destroyed if the barbarous general, Hawkwood, had not been 
 better than his orders, saved a thousand women, and allowed 
 some of the men to escape." This exploit, the historian 
 adds, " seems to have stood Piobert in good stead, as con- 
 vincing his electors of the promptitude and decision which 
 he possessed in emergencies." ^ I think our resuscitated 
 philosopher, however willing to acknowledge the moral 
 deficiencies of his own age and country, will hardly be 
 
 ^ See Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Reformation, vol. i. ch. i. 
 p. 65.
 
 IX POLITICAL PROPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY 231 
 
 much impressed Ly these evidences of the strengtli and 
 influence of the " ultra-rational sanction " in developing 
 altruism in mediteval Europe. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood ; I do not deny that, in 
 spite of the facts just mentioned — and many others of the 
 same kind — there is still an important element of truth in 
 Mr. Kidd's arguments ; but the truth, as he presents it, is 
 distorted by exaggerations and omissions not only into 
 error, but into absurdity. And there is similar exaggeration 
 in what he says of the superior altruism of I'rotestant 
 nations since the Ueformation. England, no doubt, took 
 the lead in abolishing the slave-trade and slavery ; but we 
 have also to remember the prominent part that it took, after 
 the Reformation, in developing the slave-trr.de and negro 
 slavery ; moreover, in tracing the wave of philanthropic 
 sentiment that swells gradually through the eighteenth 
 century and prepares the way for the movement of Clarkson 
 and Wilberforce, we must not forget the important contri- 
 bution made to this tide of feeling by the free-thinking 
 writers of Catholic France. Certainly I know nothing 
 written on slavery in English before 1750 that stings and 
 penetrates like the irony of Montesquieu,^ 
 
 As for the general moral superiority of the Anglo-Saxon 
 in his dealings with inferior races — I think that any 
 Anglo-Saxon who will study with strict impartiality the 
 " wretched details of ferocity and treachery which have 
 marked the conduct of civilised men in their relations 
 
 ^ I will quote a few senteuces from the chapter to which I refer {Esprit des 
 Lois, Book XV. chap, v.) : "Si i'avais a souteair le (b'oit que nous avons eu de 
 reiulro les ucgres esclaves, voici ce que je dirais : 
 
 " Les peuples d'Europe ayant exteriniui- ceux de I'Amerique, ils ont dfi mettre 
 eu esclavage ceux de I'Afrique, pour s'eu servir k deiVicher taut de terres. 
 
 " Le Sucre serait troji clier, si Ton ue laisait travailler la jdaute qui le produit 
 par des esclaves. 
 
 " Ceux dout il s'agit sent noirs depuis les pieds jusqu'a la tete ; et ils ont le nez 
 si ecras('' qu'il est presqu'impossible de les jjlaindre . . . 
 
 " II est impossible que nous supposions que ces gens-la soient des honinies ; 
 parce que, si nous les supposions ties homnies, on comniencerait a croire que nous 
 ne sonimes pas uous-niOnies chnHiens. 
 
 " De petits esprits exagtrent trop I'injustice que Ton fait aux Africains : car, si 
 elle 6tait telle qu'ils le disent, ne serait - il pas venu daus la tete des princes 
 d'EuroiH', qui font entre eux tant de conventions inutiles, d'en faire une 
 geuerale eu favour de la niisi-ricorde et de la pitit- '.'"
 
 232 ESS A VS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 with savages," ^ is not likely to rise from the study thanking 
 heaven that he is not a Frenchman or a Spaniard ; but 
 rather with a humble hope that the page of history record- 
 ing these details is now turned for West-European nations 
 generally, and that the future historian of the Europeanisa- 
 tion of Africa will have a dili'erent tale to tell. 
 
 But this is a subject which my limits do not allow me 
 to discuss : and I have perhaps said enough to explain 
 why I think that Mr. Kidd has left the science of society 
 where he found it — unconstructed, so far as tlie laws of 
 social development are concerned. It is permissible to 
 hope that progress is being made towards its construction : 
 and doubtless the study of biology would be a valuable 
 preparation for any thinker who may attempt to further 
 its progress. But I think that the biologist who is to 
 succeed in this attempt will have to know a little more 
 history than Mr. Kidd : and in auy case some time must 
 be expected to elapse before it will afford a solid basis for 
 confident prophesying. It must be remembered that Sociol- 
 ogy labours under many difficulties which we do not find 
 in Biology. For instance, the organisms with which the 
 latter deals are well-defined and mostly quite separate or- 
 ganisms, which normally pass through a tolerably uniform 
 series of stages from infancy to death, the nature and dura- 
 tion of which only vary within narrow limits ; while, though 
 they are subject to diseases of which the incidence is not 
 similarly uniform, we can at any rate usually distinguish 
 their normal from their morbid conditions with approximate 
 accuracy. Neither of these statements are true of the 
 organisms which sociology studies. Mr. Kidd, indeed, thinks 
 otherwise ; in speaking of Eome under the Empire before 
 Christianity, he says that " we have only to watch the progress 
 of those well-marked and well-known symptoms of decay and 
 dissolution which life at a certain stage everywhere presents." 
 And here, I admit, he might shelter himself behind historical 
 authority more respectable than any he could find for some 
 
 ' This is the language of Merivale. Colonisation and Colonies, Lect. xviii. ; and 
 Merivale is not a writer who indulges in heated rhetoric.
 
 IX POLITICAL PROPHECY AND SOCIOLOGY 233 
 
 of his statements before quoted. Still, I think, that in all 
 such phrases an essentially vague analogy is strained to 
 produce. a false semblance of definite knowledge : since there 
 is really no adequate reason for supposing that the Koman 
 Empire could not continue to exist for an indefinite time if 
 there had been no barbarians to invade it. And it is to be 
 observed that though States, in a certain sense, come to an 
 end through conquest, they are not thereby disintegrated, 
 as the living organisms with which Biology deals are disin- 
 tegrated by death natural or violent ; the change they go 
 through is always far less, and varies indefinitely in nature 
 and extent. So again, in the case of the social organism 
 there is no well-defined distinction between conditions 
 properly morbid and beneficial processes of change. For 
 example, Comte ultimately came to think that the whole 
 condition of Western Europe between the Mediaeval pre- 
 dominance of the Catholic Church and the proximate estab- 
 lishment of the Positive Eeligion must be regarded as a 
 morbid and abnormal condition ; and, though this is an ex- 
 treme case, it sufficiently shows how unsettled our common 
 conceptions of normal and morbid are, in their relation to 
 social phenomena. Now, I suppose, that if biologists were 
 hopelessly disagreed as to whether a given animal was 
 healthy or diseased, and if they had no reason to think 
 that it would ever die unless it was eaten by another 
 animal, their power of prophesying its future would be 
 confined within very narrow limits ; and I conceive that this 
 parallel accurately describes the present condition of the 
 social science. 
 
 I conclude, then, that in the present state of our know- 
 ledge it is for most practical purposes wise to " take short 
 views " of the life of civilised society : not quite so short as 
 those of the ordinary politician, — who can hardly be described 
 as an "animal of large discourse" except in the modern 
 popular sense of the term : but certainly short compared 
 with those of the aspiring constructors of social dynamics, 
 from Auguste Comte downwards. Not that we are to dis- 
 card as useless either historical enquiries, or the systematic
 
 334 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES ix 
 
 ascertainment of present movements of change : such studies 
 will point out dangers against which we should be on our 
 guard, and cheer us with hopes which it is legitimate to 
 indulge. But these fears and hopes may prove dangerously 
 misleading, if they beguile us into imagining ourselves able 
 to forecast scientifically the future stages of social develop- 
 ment. Scientific prevision of this kind will perhaps be 
 ultimately attained, as the slow fruit of long years of labour 
 yet to come ; — but even that is one of the things which it 
 would be rash confidently to predict. 
 
 [In reprinting this essay one or two sentences Lave been omitted as 
 repeating too closely what has already been said in the essay on the Scope 
 and Method of Economic Science. — Ed.]
 
 X 
 
 THE ECONOMIC LESSONS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 (The Economic Journal, September 1895) 
 
 By " Socialism " 1 mean the practical doctrine, that it is 
 desirable to abolish private property completely or to a 
 great extent, with a view to increasing the ordinary remuner- 
 ation of labour, and thus increasing happiness by producing 
 a greater equality of incomes. By Political Economy I mean 
 the theory of the natural and right mode — or the natural and 
 the right modes — of arranging the production, distribution, 
 and exchange of wealth in political or governed societies of 
 human beings. My paper is concerned with the relations 
 between the two. 
 
 The present unmistakable drift towards Socialism in 
 Western Europe is a fact of great interest, and a reasonable 
 source of alarm to some, and perhaps of hope to others, from 
 the political and economic changes to which it tends. But 
 I am not now concerned with it in this aspect ; — in which 
 probably most educated persons are now as well acquainted 
 as thev desire to be with the ar<j;uments on both sides. I 
 propose to treat Socialism from a special point of view, 
 somewhat less familiar. 
 
 Socialism as a political ideal is very ancient ; but as a 
 practical ideal for the modern state, it was born about the 
 same time as modern political economy — Morellet's Code de 
 la Nature was even a year or two earlier than Quesney's 
 Tableau ^conomique. And though it was for a generation 
 quite dreamy and feeble — politically a negligeable quantity 
 
 235
 
 236 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES x 
 
 — it became formidable before the end of the century in 
 the conspiracy of Babeuf (1795); when the desire for 
 "egalite reelle," " egalite de fait" — instead of mere "equality 
 before the law " — became a demand and a menace. Since 
 this time, for a hundred years, the life of Socialism has run 
 side by side with that of Political Economy. It is obvious 
 that two systems or modes of thought, so close in their 
 subject-matter — for the aim of both, so far as Political 
 Economy has a practical aim, is to establish the production 
 and distribution of wealth on a right basis — can hardly have 
 lived side by side for a century without exercising an im- 
 portant influence on each other. I propose to examine this 
 influence from the point of view of Political Economy, i.e. 
 to inquire not what Socialism has learnt from Political 
 Economy, but what Political Economy has learnt from 
 Socialism. I take this point of view, partly because I am 
 writing for Political Economists rather than for Socialists, — 
 partly because, of the two, Political Economy has the more 
 manifest and palpable continuity of life and progressive 
 development during the century in question, in spite of the 
 differences of its schools. Socialism, on the other hand, 
 appears to die out and be born again : its leading ideas 
 are indeed few and comparatively simple, but they seem to 
 undergo a kind of transmigration from system to system, 
 rather than continuous development. 
 
 And this transmigration carries the ideas that are at the 
 root of Socialism not only from sect to sect, but from 
 country to country. In fact the century with which we are 
 concerned divides itself naturally into two approximately 
 equal parts : in the first half of which Socialism is mainly 
 French or English ; while in the second half it is pre- 
 ponderantly German. I find that German writers — and 
 some English writers who have learnt from them — are apt 
 to distinguish the two periods differently : they call the 
 Socialism of the first half of the century " unscientific," and 
 that of the second half " scientific." There is some justi- 
 fication for this ; but, on the whole, the antithesis appears 
 to me misleading. It is a natural tendency of Teutons,
 
 X THE ECONOMIC LESSONS OF SOCIALISM 237 
 
 justly proud of the primacy that they have attained in the 
 pursuit of truth, to assume that even the fallacies and 
 Utopias produced by the Teutonic intellect are superior in 
 quality to the similar products of other nationalities. I 
 submit that the superiority is overrated, in the present case; 
 and that, at any rate, it does not amount to a distinction in 
 kind. All modern Socialism has been based on some theory 
 of the effects on the production of wealth that would follow 
 from the total or partial abolition of private property, and 
 none, 1 conceive, has been based on a souvd theory. So far 
 as I know, no positive contribution of importance has been 
 made to Economic Science by any Socialist writer throughout 
 the century : the lessons of Socialism to Economic Science 
 have been mainly in the way of criticism — criticism partly 
 direct and purposed, partly indirect and unintentional ; by 
 drawing extravagant inferences from accepted economic pre- 
 mises it has suggested shortcomings in these premises by an 
 undesigned reductio ad ahsurdicm. In this latter way, espe- 
 cially, the instruction derived from the German Socialists 
 has been obtained from fallacious reasoning of a more 
 elaborate kind, and showing a greater grasp of economic 
 method. On the other hand, the earlier Socialism, though 
 indefinitely more fantastic and obviously ' cranky ' than the 
 later, seems to me also more original, in the best sense of 
 the word : Saint-Simon, in particular — though it was perhaps 
 not without reason that his disciple and collaborator Auguste 
 Comte, spoke of him as a " demoralised mountebank " 
 (jongleur ddprave) — has certainly more claim to be called a 
 man of genius than Karl Marx. And the leading ideas with 
 which the later Socialism operates are all found in the earlier, 
 though in somewhat vaguer forms. That the liberty which 
 seemed to the eighteenth century a completely satisfying 
 ideal really leads, in industry and commerce, to anarchy and 
 contiict and the " exploitation " of the many by the few : 
 that the problem for the nineteenth century is therefore 
 social and industrial organisation, based upon a scientific 
 study of society, and having for its end the amelioration 
 moral, physical, and intellectual of the condition of the poor
 
 238 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES x 
 
 masses : that history, scientifically grasped, shows this end 
 to be only attainable by a comprehensive association of 
 labour, and by taking the instruments of industry — land 
 and capital — out of private ownership and placing them 
 under the control of associated labour, — so that every mem- 
 ber of society, labouring according to his capacity, may 
 receive the due reward of his labour, and no one may enjoy 
 the " impious privilege " of living on the labour of others ; — 
 all this was emphatically declared by Saint-Simon and his 
 disciples. That, again, the industrial reorganisation of society 
 has been rendered at once more imperative and more prac- 
 ticable by the great development of macliinery, the gain of 
 which now goes to the few at the expense of the many : 
 that labour, being the source of all wealth, is the only true 
 measure and standard of value, and that therefore a currency 
 based on labour is the proper medium in the reorganised 
 system of exchange which society needs ;— these were cardinal 
 points in Owen's preaching and practical efforts. Put these 
 ideas together and compare them with doctrines of later 
 German Socialism, which piques itself on being scientific, 
 and acknowledges no connexion with Saint - Simon or 
 Owen: it will be found that there is, after all, little funda- 
 mentally new in the later scheme ; only the older ideas 
 have gained in precision, articulation, and coherence, by 
 being brought into closer relation to the reasonings of 
 Political Economy. 
 
 Let us begin, then, by considering the lessons learnt by 
 Political Economy from the earlier Socialism, before we pass 
 to the later. In order to make these clear, we must recall 
 the original view of the nature and aims of Political 
 Economy, It was, as the meaning of the word suggests, a 
 part of the Art of Public Finance : its object was to make 
 the people as rich as possible, in order that the funds 
 required by Government might be obtained as amply and as 
 easily as possible. And these two objects, "enriching the 
 people " and " enriching the sovereign," are retained in 
 Adam Smith's definition of the study ; though by this time 
 the first object has come to be conceived as independent of,
 
 X THE ECONOMIC LESSONS OF SOCIALISM 239 
 
 and prior to, the second. " Political Economy," he says, 
 " proposes two distinct objects : first, to provide a plentiful 
 revenue or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to 
 enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence lor 
 themselves ; and secondly, to supply the state or common- 
 wealth with a revenue sufficient for the public service." 
 But in the view of Adam Smith — as in that of the Physio- 
 crats his predecessors — the first object was best attained by 
 what lie calls " the obvious and simple system of natural 
 liberty " ; the true answer to the question, " how to make 
 tlie nation as rich as possible," was " by letting each member 
 of it make himself rich in his own way " — only protecting 
 him against invasion of property and breach of contract. 
 Tn order to establish this conclusion, the new school of 
 Tolitical Economy had to trace the processes by which 
 wealth was or would be produced, distributed, and ex- 
 changed, apart from governmental interference : and it is 
 with this task that the greater part of Adam Smith's book 
 is occupied. 
 
 Thus it came about that Political Economy, as taught by 
 the disciples and successors of Adam Smith, was a body of 
 doctrine consisting of two distinct parts : one part being an 
 analysis of the process by which wealth was, or tended to 
 be, produced, divided, and exchanged, apart from govern- 
 mental interference ; the other being a demonstration that 
 this process led to the best attainable result. It is obvious 
 that these two pieces of reasoning have no necessary logical 
 connexion ; it is also to be observed that while in the former 
 the subject of the distribution of wealth among diti'erent 
 classes of producers tended to occupy an increasingly pro- 
 minent place, the original aim of I'olitical Economy so far 
 dominated the latter as to leave the question of distribution 
 rather in the background there. The original aim, as we 
 saw, was to answer the question ' how to make the people 
 as rich as possible,' not ' how to secure to individuals their 
 proper share of wealth'; — the sovereign and his finance 
 minister having naturally a keener interest in the former 
 question. Hence, when the new school succeeded in obtain-
 
 240 £SSJ VS AND ADDRESSES x 
 
 ing acceptance for their new answer — ' laissez-foAre' — to 
 the old question, it was primarily as a solution of the 
 problem of National Production — not Distribution — that it 
 was accepted. No doubt the more enthusiastic adherents 
 of the new doctrine were prepared to prove that laisser-faire 
 led to the best possible results in distribution as well as in 
 production ; and that in an economic world properly let 
 alone every individual would actually earn what he deserved. 
 But I think that the leading English economists from Adam 
 Smith downward kept clear of this extreme optimism ; and 
 in resisting governmental interference to raise wages were 
 mostly content to argue that such interference, by hamper- 
 ing the production of wealth, would in the long run do 
 more harm than good to the class that it was designed 
 to benefit. 
 
 The first effect, then, of the collision with Socialism, and 
 of the Socialistic criticism of the actual distribution of 
 incomes, was to bring Political Economy to a clearer con- 
 sciousness of the essential difference, from a scientific point 
 of view, between the two parts of its teaching. It was thus 
 led to treat the strictly scientific part — the analysis of the 
 processes of social industry, considered as let alone by 
 Government, and the ascertainment of their laws — as its 
 primary business ; and to maintain its traditional justifica- 
 tion of the results of these processes in a more limited and 
 guarded way. At any rate this change took place in 
 English Political Economy, to which, for the sake of sim- 
 plicity, I shall confine my attention in the present paper. 
 It was admitted by Senior, as early as 1827, that a broad 
 distinction had to be drawn between the " theoretical " and 
 the " practical branch of the science," and that the conclu- 
 sions of the latter must be regarded as " more uncertain." 
 Ultimately the difference between the two branches seemed 
 to the same writer to be even more marked ; and he 
 confined the term " Science of Political Economy " to the 
 theoretical part, relegating the practical part to the Art of 
 Government — an art, he is careful to point out, which aims 
 at objects to which the possession of wealth is only a sub-
 
 X THE ECONOMIC LESSONS OF SOCIALISM 241 
 
 ordinate means. A similar view is taken by J. S. Mill, who 
 — in express verbal contradiction of Adam Smith — declared 
 that " Political Economy does not itself instruct how to 
 make a nation rich " : it was also adopted by Cairnes, and 
 became in short the accepted view of English economists. 
 Along with this, among the practical problems to which the 
 Science of I'olitical Economy was now conceived as furnish- 
 ing data, the problem of ameliorating distribution was more 
 distinctly recognised as important. Thus Seiuor makes the 
 noteworthy statement that " diffusion of wealth " such that 
 " all the necessaries and some of the conveniences of life 
 may be secured to the labouring class, alont entitles a people 
 to he called rich." ^ J. S. Mill went much further : indeed, 
 in his case we have the remarkable phenomenon that the 
 author of the book which became, for nearly a generation, 
 by far the most popular and influential text-book of Political 
 Economy in England, was actually — at any rate when he 
 revised the third and later editicms — completely Socialistic 
 in his ideal of ultimate social improvement. " I look 
 forward," he tells us, in his Autohiography, " to a time when 
 the rule that they who do not work shall not eat will be 
 applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all ; and 
 when the division of the produce of labour, instead of 
 depending, in so great a degree as it now does, on the 
 accident of birth, ivill he made hy concert on an acknowledged 
 principle of justice." ^ Having this ideal, he "regarded all 
 existing institutions and social arrangements as merely pro- 
 visional, and welcomed with the greatest pleasure and 
 interest all Socialistic experiments by select individuals." 
 In short, the study planted by Adam Smith and watered by 
 Eicardo had, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, 
 imbibed a full measure of the spirit of Saint-Simon and 
 Owen, — and that in England, the home of what the Germans 
 call " Mauchesterthum." 
 
 I do not mean to sugMst tliat those who learnt Political 
 Economy from Mill's book during this period went so far 
 as their teacher in the adoption of Socialistic aims. This, 
 
 * The italics are mine. 
 
 R
 
 242 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES X 
 
 no doubt, was far from being the case. Indeed — if I 
 may judge from my own experience — I should say that 
 we were as much surprised as the ' general reader ' to 
 learn from Mill's Aittohiography that our master, the 
 author of the much -admired treatise "On Liberty," had 
 been all the while looking forward to a time when the 
 division of the produce of labour should be " made by 
 concert." But though Mill had concealed from us the 
 extent of his Socialism, we were all, I think, conscious of 
 having received from him a certain impulse in the Socialistic 
 direction : we had at any rate ceased to regard the science 
 of Political Economy as opposing a hard and fast barrier 
 against the Socialistic conception of the ideal goal of economic 
 progress. 
 
 In the region, then, of practical ideals and ultimate aims 
 the lesson learnt from Socialism had been very important : 
 still the main part of the analysis and reasoning which 
 constituted what was now called the Science of Political 
 Economy remained prima facie unaffected by the inter- 
 penetration of ideas that I have described. The old division 
 of those who share the produce of industry into landlords, 
 capitalists, and labourers, receiving respectively rent, profit, 
 and wages, was substantially retained ; and the improve- 
 ments introduced by Senior and Mill into the definitions 
 of rent, profit, and wages, and into the theory of the 
 determination of their amounts, appeared to relate to points 
 of subordinate importance. But on looking closer a marked 
 change in tone, pai'tly attributable to the influence of 
 Socialism, is clearly discernible in Mill's treatment of the 
 landlord. Adam Smith, indeed, had pointed out that the 
 landlord's rent " costs him neither labour nor care," and is 
 " not at all proportional to what the landlord may have laid 
 out on the improvement of the land " : and Eicardo, dis- 
 tinguishing rent proper, as the price paid for the use of the 
 " original and indestructible qualities of the soil," from the 
 interest on the capital laid out in agiicultural improvements, 
 had represented the former as iuevitably growing continually 
 larger with the " natural advance of society " ; and had thus
 
 X THE ECONOMIC LESSONS OF SOCIALISM 243 
 
 fixed on the landlords the invidious character of a useless 
 class levying an ever-increasing tribute on the useful classes. 
 But it was left for Mill to emphasise the claim of society to 
 the ' unearned increment ' of value thus continually gene- 
 rated by the industrial process ; and though ' land-national- 
 isation ' is not one of the practical measures definitely 
 advocated by Mill in his treatise, it looms, if I may so f^^ay, 
 on the horizon. 
 
 Still, the share of produce wliich falls to the landlord as 
 such is, after all, small compared with that which falls to 
 the owners and employers of capital ; and here the 
 economists of the early Victorian period, no less than their 
 predecessors, maintained a view of the laws determining the 
 capitalist's share which seemed to offer a firm barrier 
 against Socialistic ideas. Senior and Mill recognised that a 
 portion of the gross profit of the employer of capital must be 
 regarded as remuneration for his labour, " wages of superin- 
 tendence " ; but the main part of the capitalist's share — 
 after allowing insurance for risk — was explained by Senior, 
 and by Mill after him, to be " remuneration for the 
 abstinence " exercised by the capitalist in employing his 
 wealth productively instead of consuming it. On this view, 
 the Socialist contention, that labour, being the source of all 
 wealth, ought to be remunerated with the whole of its 
 produce, was met by a simple and apparently cogent 
 argument : — ' Labour requires capital to be productive, and 
 capital is due to abstinence : unless the possessor of wealth is 
 remunerated for abstaining, abstinence and therefore capital 
 will cease or be much diminished. Hence if associated 
 labour were to refuse to remunerate capital it would — 
 ultimately if not at once — diminish instead of increasing 
 the individual labourer's share : for the loss of the aid 
 afforded by capital to labour would diminish the total 
 produce by an amount far exceeding the share now allotted 
 to capital,' 
 
 This was, I think, the current argument of persons who 
 had read Political Economy, in the third quarter of the 
 century ; and it may be found even later in organs of
 
 244 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES x 
 
 opinion whose age and dignity tend to keep them somewhat 
 in the rear of the movement of thought.^ But it involved, 
 as I am about to show, an elementary confusion of ideas ; 
 and I believe that the clearing away of this confusion has 
 been due to the collision of orthodox Political Economy with 
 the later — the German — phase of Socialism, in which Marx 
 is the most influential teacher. I do not mean to suggest 
 that this elimination of confusion was due to the superior 
 clearness of Marx's economic insight ; on the contrary, 
 Marx's elaborate argument to show that the labourers 
 naturally and properly should divide up the whole produce 
 of labour among themselves appears to me to involve a still 
 more fundamental muddle — which the English reader, I 
 think, need hardly spend time in examining, as the more able 
 and influential among English Socialists are now careful to 
 give it a wide bertli. But here, as sometimes happens in 
 controversy, the collision of two muddles ultimately brought 
 the truth out clear and unmistakable ; and the truth was 
 substantially on the Socialists' side. 
 
 The fallacy in the argument above summarised was due 
 to a confusion between the need of capital — in the form of 
 instruments, etc. — as an aid to labour in production, and the 
 demand of the private owners of capital, based on this need, 
 for a share of the product. As things are, the labourer's 
 share of consumable commodities is less than it would be if 
 his labour could be equally effective without instruments, 
 because he has to devote a part of it to the making of 
 instruments ; and it is further less than it would otherwise 
 be, because he has to devote another part of it to the making 
 of the commodities on which the owner of capital spends that 
 part of his interest which he does not save. The two 
 diminutions are separate and distinct, though the political 
 economist, used to individualistic conditions, naturalh' thinks 
 of them together ; and it is only the former that depends 
 on conditions of production which Socialism could not 
 alter. A Socialistic State would have to exercise absti- 
 nence, but it would not have to be paid for exercising it ; the 
 
 ' See e.q. the Edinburgh Revieu; July 1878, p. 174,
 
 X THE ECONOMIC LESSONS OF SOCIALISM 245 
 
 associated lal^ourers would liave to devote labour no less 
 than now to the making of instruments : but — assuming the 
 labour unchanged in quality and efficiency — they might 
 divide what the private capitalist now consumes (so far as it 
 is not remuneration for the skilled labour of the capitalist 
 employer) without any further abstinence. 
 
 The clearing away of this fallacy seemed likely to affect 
 rather seriously the individualist position in the controversy 
 with Socialism. So much stress had been laid on the indis- 
 pensability of the saving of the private owner of wealth and 
 on the inexorable necessity of remunerating his abstinence 
 with interest, that the admission that this latter necessity 
 would not exist in a Socialistic State seemed at first serious. 
 But need, controversial as well as physical, is the mother of 
 discovery ; and in this case it served to open the eyes of 
 economists to important shortcomings in the traditional view 
 of the function of capital and the law of its increase. In 
 Mill's chapter on the " Law of the Increase of Capital," 
 attention is entirely concentrated on saving : we are told 
 that " since all capital is the product of saving, the increase 
 of capital must depend on two things : the amount of the 
 fund from which saving can be made, and the strength of 
 the dispositions prompting to it " : — and these, in fact, are 
 the only topics dealt with in the chapter to which I refer 
 (I. xi.). Now no doubt if we ask how the mass of instru- 
 ments aiding labour that England possesses — the factories 
 and machines, ships, steam-engines, railroads and their 
 rolling stock, etc., — came to be accumulated, one part of the 
 answer is that persons were found sufficiently sup))]icd with 
 wealth not required for immediate consumption to be able to 
 pay for the production of these articles, and disposed to 
 spend their money in this way in view of the prospective 
 interest or profit. But this answer is obviously incomplete : 
 it is through saving that capital is there to be employed, but 
 it is through invention that there is a field of employment 
 for it : Watt and Stephenson are at least as important factors 
 in the causation of our railway system as the good people 
 who were willing to put their money in railways. Of course
 
 240 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES x 
 
 this aspect of the matter was not ignored by Mill : but it is 
 certainly left too much in the background in his discussion 
 of the laws of production ; and the fuller light thrown on it 
 in more recent treatises is partly, I think, due to the influ- 
 ence exercised by the controversy with Socialism. It should 
 be added that in considering invention as a part-cause of the 
 increased efficiency which labour derives from the aid of 
 capital, we must not limit the notion to technical inventions ; 
 we must include all expedients for saving labour or augment- 
 ing its utility, not only by improved instruments, but by 
 improved processes, in the organisation of business and trade 
 no less than in manufacture. 
 
 This leads me to another shortcoming in the older view 
 of the capitalist's function, to which attention was directed 
 by the controversial crisis above described, — the inadequate 
 recognition by the older writers of the importance of business 
 ability. A reader of Eicardo would be inclined to suppose 
 that any owner of capital would be likely to earn average 
 profits on his capital, — unless he suffered from a want of 
 average intellect : and Mill's phrase above quoted — " wages 
 of superintendence " — suggests that the skilled labour re- 
 quired from an employer of capital in business is on a par 
 with that required from a superior clerk. And no doubt in 
 certain businesses at certain quiet times this may be true : 
 but where change is active — i.e. in a continually increasing 
 part of modern business — a much higher quality both of 
 skill and energy is needed for success. And the higher 
 profit which the skill and energy obtains is not merely got 
 out of the unsuccessful competitors : it is, speaking broadly, 
 obtained by an economic service to society : the successful 
 man of business has through acumen, promptitude, and 
 resource, commonly been able to provide a given utility to 
 the consumer more economically than it would have been 
 provided without his efforts. 
 
 This completer analysis of the process of accumulating 
 and employing capital, bringing into prominence inventive 
 and industrial skill, is, I conceive, the latest important 
 lesson for which Political Economy has been in some
 
 X THE ECONOMIC LESSONS OF SOCIALISM 247 
 
 measure indebted to the controversy with Socialism. Per- 
 haps the next lesson of importance will come through 
 experiment rather than reasoning. This leads me to my 
 last remark. 
 
 My readers may think that, in what I have said, I have 
 spoken too exclusively of the lessons learnt from reasoning, 
 criticism, and controversy, and not said enough of experi- 
 ment. I should have much liked to be able to say more of 
 the instruction derived from Socialistic experiment. But the 
 truth is that there is very little to say : the reason being , 
 that while the earlier Socialists were much disposed to 
 experiment, their experiments were mostly such palpable 
 failures that their only effect was to harden the orthodox 
 economist in his prejudices as well as his sound conclusions. 
 It is true that the success of the artisans' co-operative stores 
 — and, in a much more limited degree, of attempts at 
 co-operative production — may be partly set to the account 
 of Socialism ; as, without the impulse given by Owen to the 
 co-operative movement, the venture of the Eochdale Pioneers 
 would probably never have been made. But the successes 
 of these co-operative stores, though they have taught us 
 something worth knowing, have not taught the lesson that 
 Socialists have desired to teach : they have not demonstrated 
 the great capitalist or great employer to be superfluous, but 
 only that competition does not tend to the most economical 
 supply of the services of the ordinarily humble and 
 struggling retail tradesmen of the poor. 
 
 The tendency of the later school has been to dis- 
 courage all voluntary essays in Socialism : on the pretext 
 that no instructive experience can be gained except 
 through the action of the State. From a scientific point 
 of view this attitude is to be regretted, but I can quite 
 understand that it is politic in those who aim at producing 
 an immediate and far-reaching movement in a Socialistic 
 direction : since a study of the broad results of previous 
 experiments of the kind certainly does not tend to en- 
 courage such a movement. At any rate it seems at present 
 that if we are to derive important economic instruction
 
 248 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 from Socialistic experimentation, the corpus vile will have 
 to be a West-European nation. One nation will probably 
 be found sufficient: and I trust that we shall all agree to 
 yield the post of honour to Germany, in this branch of the 
 pursuit of knowledge.
 
 XI 
 
 THE KELxVTIOK OF ETIUCS TO SOCIOLOGY 
 
 A PAPER READ BEFORE THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ETHICS 
 AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 {International Jouriud of Ethics, October 1899) 
 
 In selecting the subject of my lecture this evening I was 
 influenced by the title of the body to whose invitation I 
 responded — the London School of Ethics and Social Philo- 
 sophy. For I take this title to imply that the studies of 
 the school are not concerned only with ethics in the narrow 
 sense : — i.e. with the inquiry into the principles and 
 method of determining what is right and wrong in human 
 action, the content of the moral law, and the proper object 
 of rational choice and avoidance. This is, indeed, a vast, 
 comprehensive, and difficult subject, even if we pursue it, 
 so far as possible, as a separate and independent inquiry ; 
 still, I take it to be the aim of your school not to confine the 
 work of your students to the theory of what ought to be — 
 of the ideal relations of human beings living in society ; 
 but rather to combine with this the scientific study of the 
 actual relations of men regarded as members of societies, 
 as they have been, are, and will be. For it is only by a 
 combination of the two studies that we can hope to attain 
 that wider view which belongs to philosophy as distinguished 
 from science ; from which we endeavour to contemplate 
 the whole of human thought — whether concerned with 
 ideas or empirical facts — as one harmonious system. It 
 is as a contribution to social philosophy thus understood 
 
 249
 
 2SO ESSA VS AND ADDRESSES xi 
 
 that I offer the observations that follow on the relation of 
 ethics to sociology. 
 
 But at the outset I find myself in some perplexity. In 
 order to examine closely the relation between the two 
 studies, we ought to be able to bring the general character 
 and outline of each in turn clearly before our minds. Now, 
 I may assume that my avidience can do this in the case of 
 ethics ; or, at least — as the range of the subject is somewhat 
 vaguely and variously conceived — the brief description that 
 I just now gave will suffice to indicate to you the body of 
 systematic thought that I have in my mind when I use the 
 term. But it is not so clear that I can assume this with 
 regard to sociology ; since, though the educated world has 
 heard of sociology for about three-quarters of a century, it 
 can hardly be said, in England at least, to have yet attained 
 the rank of an established science, — at any rate, if academic 
 recognition can be taken as a criterion of the establish- 
 ment of a science. There is, so far as I know, no chair 
 of sociology in any English university ; it is not formally 
 included in any academic curriculum ; there is no elementary 
 manual of English manufacture by which a student may 
 learn to pass an examination in sociology with the least 
 possible trouble. It is otherwise in the United States, 
 where sociology has already got both professorial chairs and 
 handbooks. Perhaps in intellectual as well as industrial 
 matters the Anglo-Saxons across the Atlantic are more apt 
 than we are to seize and effectively apply new ideas. Still, 
 the leading English philosophers of the latter half of the 
 nineteenth century, J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer, have 
 both devoted an important part of their energies to the 
 exposition of the subject, — which, indeed, occupies three out 
 of the ten volumes of Spencer's great system of synthetic 
 philosophy. And, largely under their influence, in spite 
 of the cold shade of official neglect in which it still lingers, 
 the ideas of sociology have more and more tended to pene- 
 trate and pervade current ethical discussion. Take, as an 
 instance of this, the following statement made some years 
 ago by a writer of repute : —
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 251 
 
 A man's first and last duty is to see and do those things 
 which the social organism of which he is a member calls upon 
 him to do. 
 
 " The social organism " is essentially a sociological con- 
 ception ; and if we admit this statement in its lull breadth, 
 we implicitly admit the claim — -which the young science 
 lias in fact been making since its birth from the brain of 
 Auguste Comte — to dominate the older subject of ethics and 
 even to reduce it to a department of itself. 
 
 This claim I propose to examine in the present lecture ; 
 but, for the reasons I have just indicated, it seems best that 
 before proceeding to examine it I should briefly sketch the 
 aims and method of sociology as presented by the leading 
 writers whom I have named. 
 
 Sociology, as conceived by Comte and Spencer, may be 
 briefly described as an attempt to make the study of human 
 history scientific by applying to it conceptions derived from 
 biology, with such niodilicutions as their new application 
 requires. We have, however, for tliis purpose to include, 
 along with history in the ordinary sense, a large part of 
 what is commonly known as anthropology, — that is, the 
 comparative study of the contemporary social conditions, 
 and recent social changes so far as ascertainable, of those 
 parts of the human race that have not arrived at a suffi- 
 ciently advanced stage of civilisation to have a history m 
 the ordinary sense. 
 
 To begin, we may definitely conceive the objects which 
 sociology studies as a number of groups of human beings 
 which at the outset I shall consider to be each an inde- 
 pendent political or governed society, though this view must 
 be taken subject to important modifications later on. Each 
 such society may be to a great extent properly regarded — 
 and I shall begin by regarding it — as having an organic 
 life of its own, distinct from the lives of the individuals 
 composing it. It is in this view that I call it an ' organism,' 
 meaning by the term first that such a group is not a mere 
 aggregate of individuals, but an aggregate of which the 
 members have definite relations that, though themselves
 
 252 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 XI 
 
 subject to change, remain comparatively constant while the 
 individuals change ; and that these relations bind the 
 individuals together into mutually dependent parts of a 
 larger whole, performing mutually dependent functions. 
 The society has thus a structure which so far resembles the 
 structure of a living animal that its existence depends on 
 its functioning ; it cannot cease to function and retain its 
 structure, as a machine can. I further mean to imply 
 that such a society goes through processes of growth and 
 change which are at any rate largely caused — as the changes 
 of a plant or animal — by interaction with its environment, 
 physical and social : and especially changes by which it 
 adapts or adjusts itself to its environment, — i.e. tends to 
 preserve itself amid changes in environing conditions even, 
 if need be, by the occasional sacrifice of the lives of in- 
 dividual members. With this definite meaning, finding in 
 such societies these characteristics, we may agree to call them 
 organisms in spite of their unlikeness in other important 
 respects to the organisms which biology studies. 
 
 Then, following Spencer and combining the results of 
 history and archa:;ology with the study of less advanced 
 societies now existing, somewhat as the biologist combines 
 the results of geology with those of zoology and botany, we 
 may note how the prevalent type of social oi-ganism, like 
 the prevalent types of animals or plants, tends, as evolution 
 goes on, to grow in mass both by multiplication of units 
 within each group and by union of groups. We may note 
 further how along with increase of mass goes development 
 of social structure, by which the differentiation of its 
 mutually dependent parts becomes continually more com- 
 plex ; until from the simplicity of a little tribe of hunters, 
 with hardly any division of functions except wdiat is con- 
 nected with sex, we arrive ultimately at the complexity 
 of a modern industrial society, with its vast diversity of 
 occupations. 
 
 Spencer proceeds to draw an instructive parallel be- 
 tween the sociological and the biological differentiation of 
 organs. He bids us observe in each case —
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 253 
 
 (1) A "sustaining system," alimentary in tlic animal 
 and industrial in the society, 
 
 (2) A "distributing system," carrying about nutriment 
 in the animal and commodities in the society, and 
 
 (3) A " regulating and expending system." liy this last 
 notion he represents an analogy between the apparatus of 
 nerves and muscles in an animal which carries on conflict 
 with other animals and the governments and armies of 
 political society ; taking the governmental system as ulti- 
 mately developed to correspond to the brain and nervous 
 centres, the supreme deliberative assembly being analogous 
 to the cerebrum. 
 
 So much for the resemblances between the social organ- 
 ism and the animal or plant. As we should expect, they 
 belong primaril}' to the physical life of human societies ; 
 but when we turn to note the ditleiences, we shall be led 
 gradually to contemplate their intellectual life. 
 
 "We may begin by observing that a political society has 
 not, like an animal, a normal period of life and a normal 
 series of vital changes from infancy to senility and death. 
 Indeed, the political societies historically known to us do 
 not ordinarily die unless they are assailed and structurally 
 destroyed by other societies ; and when death, in a certain 
 sense, thus befalls any such society, it does not entail the 
 death of the human beings composing it. Some of them, 
 no doubt, perish in the collision, but tlie bulk of them are 
 absorbed alive by the conquering society. Even in peace 
 an important mingliug of units from different societies goes 
 on, as is most conspicuously illustrated at the present time 
 by the comparatively new societies formed in America. 
 They are largely made neither by " multiplication of units " 
 nor by " union of groups," but by composition of imits from 
 a number of groups. 
 
 But it is still more important to observe that the social 
 organism to which an individual is found to belong, through 
 the social relations binding him to other men, becomes very 
 different in its ran^e as we pass from one set of relations 
 to another. There is nothing corresponding to this in the
 
 254 £SSA VS AND ADDRESSES xi 
 
 case of an animal. Each animal has its own sustaining 
 system, its own distributing system, and its own regulating 
 and expending system, quite unconnected with the corre- 
 sponding systems of other animals. The alimentary organs 
 of one animal do not provide, nor its blood-vessels convey, 
 nutriment to the organs of other societies, nor does its brain 
 co-operate in directing their movements, except indirectly 
 by producing external movements of its own organs. The 
 case is quite otherwise with the organic life of societies. 
 The channels of communication by which commodities are 
 carried run, as we know, not only within States, but across 
 States, almost ignoring their boundaries ; and the same is 
 true of the process of differentiation which localises parti- 
 cular branches of industry in situations specially favourable 
 to it, and thus tends to Ijind the inhabitants of the districts 
 in question into one economic whole. We all know that 
 England forms part of an economic system extending far 
 beyond the limits of the British empire. 
 
 But again a very similar set of cross-divisions, lines of 
 separation that cut across the boundaries of States, is found 
 in what we cannot but regard as an important part of 
 the regulative apparatus of social organisms : I mean the 
 ecclesiastical systems. We all know how, throughout the 
 civilised world, members of the same States are divided from 
 one another, and members of different States are united, 
 by communities formed for the purpose of religious in- 
 struction and worship. No fact is more striking in the 
 history of regulating social agencies than the manner in 
 which religions claiming to be world-religions — Buddhism, 
 Christianity, Mohammedanism — have arisen and spread and 
 overleaped all the lines of separation of political societies ; 
 binding their converts, through the most powerful ties of 
 common beliefs and common worship, into organisms quite 
 different from States, though they come to have an elabo- 
 rately differentiated quasi-political organisation. Now, in 
 studving these ecclesiastical organisms from the outside, we 
 miglit of cours3 dwell on the social differences and relations 
 between priests or monks and laymen, and the organisation
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 255 
 
 of ecclesiastical government. But it would be a very shallow 
 insight that did not penetrate further, and recognise as the 
 most essential social relation wliich binds human beings 
 together on this side of their life community of thought 
 and sentiment — a common stock of ideas and convictions 
 about the universe, its ground and end, and human destiny. 
 Hence, when the sociologist studies these ecclesiastical bodies, 
 it is to the laws of change and growth of this intellectual 
 and emotional context, this common body of ideas and 
 sentiments, that his deepest attention should be directed. 
 
 And this is true also of the political regulation of social 
 man. Mr. Spencer, as we saw, compares the brain of an 
 animal with the supreme deliberative assembly of a nation. 
 But surely the political brain of England is not limited to 
 the six hundred and seventy respectable gentlemen who 
 chiefly make our laws : it is to be found wherever political 
 thought is going on which will take effect in determining 
 the action of the English Government. And if so, the 
 history of political ideas shows that no modern nation has 
 a brain strictly and entirely its own. If \ve insist on keep- 
 ing the analogy, we have for the main movements of political 
 thought to trace the operation and development of at least 
 a West-European brain ; whose range of influence in modern 
 times has not only extended to European colonies in other 
 parts of the globe, but has even included a people so alien 
 in its origin and previous history as the Japanese. 
 
 And, Anally, what I have said of religious and political 
 ideas is equally true of moral ide?.s and sentiments. Indeed, 
 throughout the history of European civilisation morality has 
 had an intimate connexion both with religion and with polity. 
 Still, the study of the development of morality and its con- 
 ditions and laws of growth and change may be pursued, no 
 less than the study of religious or political thought, as a 
 partially independent branch of sociological inquiry ; and 
 when we so pursue it we soon find that the aggregate of 
 human beings bound together spiritually by sharing a com- 
 mon moral life is not to be identified with any one of the 
 political societies which we began by regarding as social
 
 256 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xi 
 
 organisms. And the same may be said in modern times of 
 the possession of a common body of scientific knowledge ; 
 indeed, science is less modified by national differences than 
 morality ; and European science has united the educated 
 portion of the Japanese people more completely with our 
 educated world than European political ideas. Thus, in 
 contemplating the continual enlargement of these spiritual 
 bonds of social union we are irresistibly led — as the founder 
 of sociology, Comte, was led — to an ideal future, when the 
 whole population of the globe will form, from an intellectual 
 point of view, a single social organism. There is a striking 
 passage, remarkable in a writer who claims to expound a 
 purely positive method, in which Comte tells us that Sociol- 
 ogy, reading the future into the past, " represents the whole 
 human race, past, present, and future, as constituting a vast 
 and eternal social unit, where different organs, individual 
 and national, concur in their various modes and degrees in 
 the evolution of humanity." 
 
 To sum up, as we pass from one aspect to another of the 
 many-sided social life of man, we are led gradually from the 
 conception of an indefinite number of social organisms, sub- 
 ject, like plants or animals, to the struggle for existence as 
 a main factor in their development, — a conception which 
 physical analogies and the contemplation of the earlier stages 
 of human history combine to press on us, — to the idea of 
 a single social organism, which a study of later civilised 
 history, especially in its spiritual aspect, renders no less 
 inevitable. 
 
 I turn now to examine the relation of sociology to ethics, 
 and especially the claim of the former study to absorb the 
 latter and reduce it to a subordinate department of itself. I 
 may perhaps say that I come to the examination of this 
 claim in an impartial spirit. Speaking as a professor of 
 ethics, I do not consider myself as holding a brief for the 
 independence of my subject. It is for the true good of 
 any department of knowledge or inquiry to understand as 
 thoroughly as may be its relation to other sciences and 
 studies, to see clearly what elements of its reasonings it has
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 257 
 
 to take from tlieiii, and wliat in its turn it may claim to 
 give them ; and the vahie of this insight becomes greater 
 in proportion as the steady growth of human knowledge, tlie 
 steady extension of the range of human inquiry, l)rings with 
 it a continually more urgent need for a clear and rational 
 division of intellectual labour. If, therefore, the relation of 
 ethics to sociology is truly one of suljordination, it is im- 
 portant that students of ethics should fully recognise this 
 truth and render due obedience to the superior authority. 
 
 Of course, in order that this authority, however ideally 
 unquestionable, should be actually unquestioned, sociology 
 must have become an established science, and be not merely 
 struggling towards this position. And if I were speaking as 
 an advocate of the claims of ethics to actual independence, I 
 should have nmch to say on this topic ; and my brief would be 
 stulfed with quotations from very recent treatises on sociology, 
 whose authors — to quote a well-known epigram — show them- 
 selves most emphatically " conscious of one another's short- 
 comings." But this advocate's work is not now my affair. I 
 wish to assume for the purposes of my present discussion that 
 the struggle of sociology to become an established science, a 
 struggle carried on now for three-quarters of a century, has 
 been crowned with the success which I hope will ultimately 
 crown it. I will assume that it has attained as much con- 
 sensus as to principles, method, and conclusions, and as 
 much continuity of development, as the physical sciences 
 dealing with organic life, and as much power of prevision as 
 Comte hoped for it ; — for he was not sanguine enough to 
 suppose that sociology could ever predict with the exactness 
 and minuteness of astronomy, and foretell the stages of a 
 political revolution as astronomy foretells the stages of a 
 solar eclipse. Let us suppose this consummation attained, 
 and consider how far this scientific prevision of social effects 
 will so far determine ethical reasonings as to reduce ethics 
 to a subordinate department of sociology. 
 
 I think it must be admitted that this effect will be pro- 
 duced to a considerable extent, upon any view of ethics ex- 
 cept the ultra-intuitional, in respect of the deduction of
 
 258 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES XI 
 
 particular rules of morality from fundamental principles. 
 For all schools, except that which takes the immediate 
 judgments of conscience as infallible guides in all questions 
 of conduct, admit that the application of moral principles 
 to practice must be largely governed by foresight of con- 
 sequences, and must therefore admit that rules of social 
 behaviour will properly l^e determined in detail by the 
 scientific prevision of social consequences so far as such 
 prevision is available. We may compare, as a parallel case, 
 the relation of the moral duty or virtue of temperance to 
 human physiology, including pathology ; the ethical maxim 
 that the bodily appetites ought to be strictly obedient to 
 the regulation of reason must receive its practical application 
 from a forecast of consequences ; and this, with the develop- 
 ment of physiological knowledge, must change from a merely 
 empirical to a more or less scientific forecast. We com- 
 monly recognise that the diet scientifically known to be 
 promotive of health and efficiency is the truly temperate 
 diet ; and the most ascetic moralist has to admit that self- 
 denial, no less than self-indulgence, must be limited and 
 guided by medical prevision. Similarly we must admit that 
 our social affections and sentiments will have to yield to the 
 control and obey the guidance of sociological previson when 
 sociology has become a really established science. 
 
 Indeed, some effect of this kind has already been pro- 
 duced on current ethical notions and habits by the branch 
 of sociology which has been separated from the general 
 science of society, and received a development in advance of 
 the rest under the name of political economy. For instance, 
 under the influence of the economic forecast — deductively 
 and inductively established — of the bad consequences of 
 indiscriminate almsgiving, the old and eminent virtue of 
 charity, in its narrower signification, has materially changed 
 its practical content for the modern educated man, while 
 retaining its principle and motive unchanged. Its applica- 
 tion to conduct has become more complex and exacting ; 
 it is recognised as demanding thought and care, besides 
 the mere altruistic preference of the satisfaction of others'
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 259 
 
 desires to the satisfaction of our own, and as imposinf^ 
 restraints on sympathetic impulses as well as on self- 
 regarding ones. 
 
 A similar effect of economic forecast on ethical concep- 
 tions and accompanying sentiments is traceable in the case 
 of justice ; but with the difference that in this case we have 
 marked ethical divergences resulting from divergences in the 
 economic or sociological prevision of consequences. Suppose 
 we take the principle that desert ought to be requited as 
 expressing the abstract essence of distributive justice. Its 
 practical application cannot but be different, on the one 
 hand, for the individualist who holds that any important 
 relaxation in the competitive struggle for existence must 
 result in the arrest and decline of human improvement, 
 through the equalising of the prospects of survival of the 
 unfit along with the tit ; and, on the other hand, for the 
 socialist who forecasts a more rapid and effective improve- 
 ment under the stimulus of altruistic aifection, sympathy, 
 and public spirit, when these nobler impulses are no longer 
 starved and depressed by the egoistic habits and sentiments 
 that necessarily result from the present competitive struggle. 
 The former will tend to interpret the requital of desert to 
 mean securing to each man the precise social value of his 
 services ; the latter will tend to interpret it to mean securing 
 him what he requires for the most efficient performance 
 of his social function. Of course, as sociological prevision 
 extends in range and increases in exactness, we must suppose 
 fundamental divergences of this kind to diminish and a 
 more decisive effect to be produced. 
 
 I have said enough to show the import of my admission, 
 as a representative of ethics, that if we suppose sociology 
 an established science, we must suppose its forecast of social 
 consequences to exercise a fundamentally important eflect 
 on the practical application of general ethical principles or 
 maxims, and on the deduction of subordinate rules of conduct 
 i'rom these. 
 
 I now turn to the more important and more disputable 
 element of the claim of sociology to absorb and subordinate
 
 26o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xi 
 
 ethics, — i.e. the claim not merely to modify the practical 
 application of ethical principles, but to determine these very 
 principles themselves. 
 
 Here, first, I quite admit that the connexion of sociology, 
 supposing it an established science, with the subject-matter 
 of ethics must necessarily be so intimate and so compre- 
 hensive, that its claim to dominate and subordinate ethics is 
 natural and almost inevitable ; and we cannot be surprised 
 that it should appear irresistible to students of sociology 
 who have never made a systematic attempt to purge their 
 moral notions of the confusions of popular thought. For, 
 as we have seen, sociology undoubtedly comprehends in its 
 subject-matter the study of morality as a social fact, and 
 this study must include morality as a whole, the principles 
 accepted in any age and country, no less than the accepted 
 and current application of the principles to particular con- 
 crete problems of conduct. It is a part of the business of 
 sociology — at least as important, from a purely sociological 
 point of view, as any other part — to ascertain first the facts, 
 and then, as far as possible, the laws of the development of 
 moral opinions and sentiments, as one element in the de- 
 velopment of human society as a whole : to show how it 
 has influenced and been influenced by other elements in the 
 whole social evolution : to trace it back, if possible, to its 
 origin : and — always supposing sociology to have arrived 
 at the stage of scientific prediction — to foretell its future 
 conditions. 
 
 It is natural to infer that a sociology supposed able to 
 accomplish all this — and I am willing, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, to make the supposition — would reduce ethics to a 
 subordinate department of itself. I do not, however, think 
 that this inference is logically sound. Indeed, I think that 
 in most cases it arises from a confusion of thought that a 
 little reflection ought to dispel. 
 
 To show this, let us suppose ethics and sociology as inde- 
 pendent and established systems of thought, and then try to 
 imagine a conflict between them, a conflict such as some- 
 times takes place between established sciences, — e.g. there
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 261 
 
 was one some time ago between physicists and geologists as 
 to the time of duration of the earth. 
 
 We shall lind that we cannot really suppose sucli a 
 conflict possible. No ethical proposition can possibly con- 
 tradict a sociological proposition, since they cannot relate to 
 the same subject-matter, — that is, so long as ethics is under- 
 stood in the limited sense that I have defined [see p. 249], 
 and so long as sociology keeps strictly within the bounds of 
 its domain as a positive science. Sociology thus conceived 
 is strictly incapable of answering any ethical question, and 
 ethics thus understood is strictly incapable of answering 
 any sociological question, — for ethics is only concerned with 
 what ought to be, and sociology, even when it deals with 
 ethical judgments, is only concerned with what is, has been, 
 and will be judged, and not at all with the question whether 
 it is, has been, or will be truly judged. So far as any 
 sociologist expresses any opinion on the latter point, he 
 assumes a knowledge which the method of his science, 
 regarded as a study of empirical fact, is quite incompetent 
 to supply. 
 
 I do not think that this is likely to be disputed, so far 
 as sociology is concerned with the mere ascertainment of 
 particular facts, past and present ; but it may be disputed 
 in respect of the general truths which sociology as a science 
 must be supposed to have established. And I admit that 
 if we examine this dispute with care we shall find, not 
 indeed a possible conflict between ethics and sociology, but 
 a possible coincidence so close as, if actually accepted, to 
 justify the view that sociology is destined to absorb ethics. 
 
 But here, again, I must point out that the dispute some- 
 times arises from mere confusion of thought. It is rightly 
 seen that the aim of sociology is not merely to ascertain, 
 but to explain, the variations and changes in social morality, 
 and that this explanation must lie in reducing to general 
 laws the diversity of moral opinions prevalent in different 
 ages and countries ; and it is vaguely thought that these 
 general laws, at any rate when brought to a sutficiently high 
 degree of generality, must coincide — if they do not clash —
 
 262 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xi 
 
 with ethical principles. But not only is there no prima 
 facie reason why they should coincide, but primd facie every 
 reason why they should not. For the sociological laws must 
 explain, and be manifested in, the erroneous moral judgments 
 that have been prevalent in human society no less than in 
 true moral judgments; they must explain the prevalent opinion 
 of certain groups of primitive men that successful thieving 
 is honourable and virtuous, or that the revenge of a blood- 
 relation is the holiest duty that man can perform, no less than 
 the opposite moral opinions now prevalent in Europe. 
 
 There is, however, a subtler form of the same view which 
 cannot be so decisively put on one side. It may be urged 
 that the subject-matter of sociology, no less than the subject- 
 matter of animal or vegetable biology, is a kind of organic 
 life ; and that as the varied structures and functions of 
 animal or vegetable organisms can only be understood if we 
 regard them as adapted or adjusted to the preservation 
 either of the individual organism or its type, so sociology 
 requires the same conception of adaptation to the end of 
 social preservation in its explanation of social facts. Accord- 
 ingly, morality, prevalent moral opinions and sentiments, 
 being an important complex of relations among the members 
 of a society, must be brought under the same general con- 
 ception ; so that the most comprehensive and fundamental 
 sociological law, explaining the development of morality, 
 will consist in just this statement of Preservation of the 
 Social Organism as the end to which morality is normally 
 and broadly a means, — though in any particular society at 
 any particular time details of positive morality may not be 
 perfectly adapted to this end. If this is so, it may be said, 
 the moralist must adopt this sociological end as his ultimate 
 ethical end, since otherwise he would be setting up an ideal 
 opposed to the irresistible drift of the whole process of life 
 in the world, which would be obviously futile.^ 
 
 ^ Some writers would substitute " welfare" or "health " for " preservation" in 
 this reasoning. But unless " welfare " or " health " is interpreted to mean merely 
 preservation in a condition favourable to future preservation, in which case simple 
 preservation is still the ultimate end, the terms seem to me to introduce an ethical 
 conception which cannot be arrived at by any strictly sociological method.
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 263 
 
 Now, supposing a con&en&us of sociologists to declare that 
 the preservation of the social organism is the one all- 
 comprehensive end, by continual adjustment to which the 
 actual evolution of morality may be simply and completely 
 explained ; and supposing a cunse'iisus of moralists to accept 
 this sociolofrical end as the ultimate good to the attainment 
 of which all human action should be directed, then, 1 admit, 
 it would be broadly true to say that ethics was absorbed by 
 sociology. For on these hypotheses there would, firstly, be 
 a complete coincidence between the sociological and the 
 ethical end ; and, secondly, as 1 have already explained, the 
 working out of the rules conducive to the end must, so far 
 as social morality is concerned, consist in an application of 
 sociological knowledge. Ethics would not, indeed, even so, 
 be exactly a branch of the science, but it would be an art 
 based on the science and having as its fundamental principle 
 the highest generalisation of the science, modified so as to 
 take on an ethical import. 
 
 It would still, I think, be formally important to insist 
 that this fusion of studies can only be rationally effected by 
 the judgment that identifies the sociological and the ethical 
 ends ; and that this judgment is not one to which the moralist 
 can be cogently driven by any sociological arguments. For 
 the argument that if he declines to accept it he places him- 
 self in opposition to the process of nature is only forcible if we 
 introduce a theological significance into our notion of nature, 
 attributing to it design and authority ; and this introduc- 
 tion of theology carries the sociologist beyond the limits 
 of his special science. But, though it would be formally 
 important to insist on this, the fusion would still be com- 
 plete on the two hypotheses, sociological and ethical, above 
 stated. 
 
 But neither of these hypotheses can be accepted as more 
 than partially true. 
 
 Take the ethical question first — can we regard the mere 
 preservation of the life of a human being, or of any number 
 of human beings combined in a society, as an ultimate and 
 paramount end and standard of right action, apart from any
 
 264 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES xi 
 
 consideration of the quality of the life preserved ? I appeal 
 confidently on this point — it is the only appeal possible — 
 to the deliberate judgment of thoughtful persons, when the 
 question is clearly set before it. Doubtless a fundamentally 
 important part of the function of morality consists in main- 
 taining habits and sentiments preservative of individual and 
 social life ; but tins is because, as Aristotle said, in order to 
 live well we must live. It does not follow that life is 
 simply the iiltimate end ; since if all life were as little 
 desirable as some portions of it have been in the experience 
 of most of us, we should judge anything tending to its pre- 
 servation as unmitigatedly bad. It is not life simply, but 
 good or desirable life, that is the ethical end ; and though — 
 as all students of your school will know — there is still much 
 controversy as to the precise content of the notion " good " 
 in this application, it is a controversy which ethics has got 
 to work through, and in settling which it cannot derive any 
 material aid from sociology. 
 
 But, again, the sociological hypothesis seems to me 
 equally unacceptable when put forward as a complete ex- 
 planation of the facts to which it relates. 
 
 The view that morality has been developed under the 
 influence of the struggle for existence among social organ- 
 isms as a part of the complex adaptation of such organisms 
 to the conditions of their struggling existence is, I think, 
 a probable conjecture as regards the earlier stages of its 
 development in prehistoric times. It is reasonable to suppose 
 that the observance of duties to fellow-tribesmen within a 
 primitive tribe tended to the survival of the tribe in the 
 struggle for tribal existence, by increasing the internal 
 coherence of the tribe and the effective co-operation of its 
 members. But it is not reasonable to accept this as the 
 main explanation of the evolution of morality even in 
 primitive ages, because it is certainly not a cause that has 
 had any great effect on the important changes in moral 
 beliefs that have taken place in historic times. Take one 
 of the greatest of such changes — that resulting in the con- 
 version of the Greco-Roman civilised world to Christianity.
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 265 
 
 Not only would it be obviously absurd to attribute this 
 change to the struggle for existence among civilised societies; 
 there is not even any adequate evidence that it had a pre- 
 servative effect on the political society in which the conver- 
 sion took place. I should conjecture that before Constantine 
 its operation was the other way, considering the passive 
 alienation of primitive Christians from the secular society 
 in which they lived, over which they believed a swift and 
 sudden destruction to be impending. And, though this 
 split between religion and the State was healed by Con- 
 stantine, it is difficult, even after this, to see any tendency 
 in Christianity to preserve the Roman empire, or even 
 arrest its decline and fall. The Christian empire seems 
 simply to continue the process tending towards surrender 
 to the barbarians outside. 
 
 In short, the sociological hypothesis that I am now 
 considering — so far as it is offered as a complete explana- 
 tion of moral evolution — seems to me due to the one- 
 sidedness of view which 1 before noted as a source of 
 sociological error : the concentration of attention on the 
 physical side of social life and its primitive conditions, 
 unduly ignoring its spiritual side and the later stages of its 
 development. And this is true, not of morality only, but 
 of the development of knowledge, of art, — indeed of all the 
 chief elements of that ideal good which we most deeply 
 value in what we call the progress of civilisation. "We 
 cannot say of the most signal contributions to this progress 
 that they are always decisively preservative of the parti- 
 cular nation in which they are made ; if we are to view 
 them as adjustments of means to a social end, it can be no 
 lesser or more limited end than the welfare of humanity at 
 large. 
 
 I now turn to consider an objection that may be taken 
 against the whole line of thought that I have adopted. I 
 may be asked, ' Why insist on this artificial separation 
 between the subjects of ethics and sociology ? "Wliy not 
 allow the development of both to be influenced by the 
 natural play of thought between the two ? Why attempt
 
 266 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xi 
 
 tlie impossible task of keeping different portions of our 
 thought on human relations in separate water-tight com- 
 partments ? ' 
 
 To objections of this kind my answer is, — First, that I 
 fully recognise the propriety of the demand that our ethical 
 and our sociological thought should be brought into clear 
 and consistent relations : indeed, I regard the harmonising 
 of different sciences and studies as the special task of 
 philosophy. I think, however, that the impulse to put 
 together different lines of thought requires methodical 
 restraint, because one of the most fruitful sources of error 
 in philosophy has been over-hasty synthesis and combina- 
 tion without sufficient previous analysis of the elements 
 combined. But, secondly, in order to avoid this error, I by 
 no means wish to prevent altogether mutual influence, in- 
 terpenetration of ideas, between the two studies I am now 
 considering. I only urge that it should be carefully watched 
 and criticised, in order that it may not be the source of 
 confusion, which is especially dangerous in the condition of 
 controversy and conflict of opinion on fundamental points 
 from which neither sociology nor ethics has as yet success- 
 fully emerged. To illustrate this, let me consider first 
 the current influence on ethics of sociological concep- 
 tions. I will take the fundamental conception of the social 
 organism. 
 
 Although as a utilitarian I cannot regard mere preserva- 
 tion of the social organism as the ultimate end and supreme 
 standard of right action, I recognise the value of the concep- 
 tion in making our general view of duty, whether framed on 
 utilitarian or any other principles, fuller and truer. In any 
 case it is important for an individual that he should not 
 conceive himself merely as a member of an aggregate, 
 capable of benefiting or injuring by his actions other indivi- 
 duals as such, but also as a member of a body formed of 
 individual human beings bound into a whole by complex 
 mutual relations ; a whole of which the parts, whether 
 individuals or groups, have functions diverse and mutually 
 dependent. Adopting this conception, he will, whatever
 
 XI THE K ELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 267 
 
 view he takes of the ultimate ethical eud, judge actions 
 largely by their effect iu promoting or impeding the co- 
 herent and harmonious co-operation of different organs of 
 society, and in strengthening or weakening habits and 
 sentiments that tend to the efficient performance of social 
 functions. 
 
 All this is highly important. But some writers seem 
 drawn by the interest of the novel conception to regard it 
 as supplying a complete determinant of duty. That is, it 
 seems to be supposed that adequate guidance to particular 
 duties is 2:iven in all cases bv the facts of social relations. 
 ' A man,' it is said, ' finds himself as a member of a society 
 in certain relations to other human beings. He is son, 
 brother, husband and father, neighbour, citizen. These 
 relations are all facts, and his duties lie in fulfilling the 
 claims that are essential parts of these relations.' Now, no 
 doubt the claims or conscious expectations connected with 
 these relations, and the common recognition of these claims 
 by other members of the society than those primarily con- 
 cerned are important social facts. But it can hardly be 
 maintained that it is an absolute duty to fulfil all such 
 expectations, as they are to a certain extent vague, varying, 
 liable to conflict with each other, sometimes unreasonable, 
 sometimes sanctioned by custom, but by custom " more 
 honoured in the breach than in the observance." In short, 
 so far as these claims are actual facts they are not indisput- 
 ably valid, and do not form a harmonious system, and the 
 study of them as facts does not give a criterion of their 
 validity and a means of eliminating conflict. In consider- 
 ing which of the demands made on us by our fellow-men 
 have to be satisfied and which repudiated, and, when two 
 conflict, which is to be postponed, we require a system of 
 principles of right conduct which the study of social facts 
 as such cannot alone give, but which it is the business of 
 ethics to give. 
 
 On the other hand, just as this wide and quasi- 
 architectonic use of sociological conception in ethics leads 
 to a mistaken attempt to get the ideal out of the actual, so
 
 268 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xi 
 
 the converse influence of ethics on sociology leads to equally 
 mistaken attempts to get the ideal into the actual,— ie. to 
 predict a future state of society in harmony with ethical 
 ideas without any adequate support in scientific induction 
 from the known facts of past social evolution. 
 
 In criticising this ' evolutionary optimism,' as we may 
 call it, I ought to explain that I am not opposing optimism 
 as a philosophical doctrine. I am not myself an optimist ; 
 but I have a great respect for the belief that, in spite of 
 appearances to the contrary, the world now in process of 
 evolution, is ultimately destined to reveal itself as perfectly 
 free from evil and the best possible world. What I would 
 urge is that, in the present state of our knowledge, this 
 belief should be kept as a theological doctrine, or, if you 
 like, a philosophical postulate, and that it should not be 
 allowed to mix itself with the process of scientific inference 
 to the future from the past. 
 
 The sociologist who brings his optimism into his socio- 
 logical reasonings must, I think, find the tendency almost 
 irresistible to give a one-sided prominence to those facts in 
 the past history of society which make for a favourable view 
 of its future progress, and to ignore those facts which make 
 for the opposite conclusion. It is only in this way that I 
 can account for Mr. Spencer's belief, regarded by him as a 
 strictly scientific inference from a survey of historical facts, 
 that the evolution of human society will ultimately bring 
 about a condition of social relations in which the voluntary 
 actions of normal human beings will produce " pleasure 
 unalloyed by pain anywhere." And, similarly, I think that 
 his hypothetical conclusion that " there needs but a continu- 
 ance of absolute peace externally, and a vigorous insistence 
 on non-aggression internally, to insure the moulding of men 
 into a form naturally characterised by all the virtues," has 
 not really been reached by a strictly sociological method; 
 but that the sociological reasoning which has led him to it 
 has been influenced and modified throughout by an in- 
 dividualistic ideal formed prior to systematic sociological 
 study.
 
 XI THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO SOCIOLOGY 269 
 
 I seem to liml this confusing effect of 'evolutionary 
 optimism' in an even more extreme though vaguer form 
 in a good deal of popular discourse about progress. The 
 heliever in ' a good time coming ' often seems inclined to 
 believe that what is coming is good because it is coming, no 
 less than that what is good is coming because it is good. 
 Now, granting the latter proposition to be well founded, it 
 does not in any way imply the former ; granting that man 
 is destined to unalloyed bliss, still his road to this bright 
 goal may be in parts very devious and distressful ; and 
 some of the most distressful turns that would otherwise be 
 found in it may be avoidable evils, but only avoidable by 
 vigorous resistance to present tendencies of change. Tliis 
 seems obvious enough : but it is an obvious truth which is 
 liable to be missed because the opposite error is not ex- 
 plicitly propounded, but lurks in a vague acquiescence in 
 the drift of events. 
 
 [In reprinting this essay one or two sentences ha\e been omitted as 
 repeating too closely what has already been said in the essay on the Scoipe 
 and Method of Economic Science : but mere repetition of phrases (like the 
 epigram in the last paragraph about 'a good time coming,' which appears 
 also on p. 218) it seemed needless to remove. — Ed.]
 
 XII 
 
 THE THEOEY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 
 
 (From Essays on a Liberal Education, edited by F. W. Farrar. 
 Macmillan and Co., 1867.) 
 
 It is my wish to examine, as closely and completely as I 
 am able to do within the limits of an essay, the theory 
 of classical education : meaning thereby the body of reasons, 
 which, taken together, may be supposed to persuade the 
 intelligence of the country, that the present course of 
 instruction in the Greek and Latin languages and literature 
 is the best thing that can be applied in the minds of 
 English boys, in the year 1867 A.D., — or at least better 
 than anything that it has been proposed to substitute for 
 it. Such a theory is somewhat difficult to extricate and 
 expound in the case of this as of other institutions 
 established long ago, in obedience to an impulse that has 
 ceased to operate, under intellectual and social conditions 
 which have since been profoundly modified. It is always, 
 I think, a shallow view of history which represents such 
 institutions as existing by vis i7ierticc alone ; vis inertice is a 
 blind and irrational force, which we have to calculate and 
 allow for in explaining to ourselves why institutions exist • 
 but it is powerless (especially in an age like our own), 
 unless combined with a respectable array of more rational 
 forces. These forces are found in the convictions of intelli- 
 gent and open-minded men who work the system, that it is 
 supplying actual needs of the present age, is doing good 
 work which the existing society wants done. But since it 
 has never been incumbent upon any set of men, as a 
 
 270
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 271 
 
 distinct and inevitable duty, to set forth what these needs 
 and this work are ; since it is evident to tlie most super- 
 ficial inqiiirer that the system was originally established — 
 or grew up — to meet very different needs, and to do very 
 different work, its real raison d'etre as an existing institution 
 has to be elicited in the irregular, and, to a speculative 
 mind, unsatisfactory way of volunteer conservative advocacy. 
 The reasoning of advocates is generally apt to be A-ague, 
 sweeping, rhetorical : but the arguments constructed to 
 support what exists are perhaps the worst, as they are 
 constructed under less pressure, witli less felt need of 
 intellectual exertion, and are inevitably addressed to the 
 more docile and less critical portion of the public. A good 
 reason, no doubt, is none the worse for being made to order; 
 still it is natural to regard such reasons witli suspicion, and 
 the suspicion is often justified by closer examination. For, 
 whatever be the cause, the arguments for classical education 
 are often stated, even by able men, in a manner hardly 
 worthy of their ability. They seem often so trivial and 
 shallow, so partial and fragmentary, so vague and sweeping ; 
 they seem to suggest such narrow views of culture, such 
 imperfect acquaintance with the intellectual development ot' 
 mankind, so slight an effort to comprehend all the conditions 
 of the infinitely important ])roblem with which they deal. 
 At the same time, the advantage that experience gives 
 can hardly be too highly estimated. The result of handing 
 over education to the most comprehensive theorist, with 
 whatever gifts of lucid expression, would be, I doubt not, 
 disastrous. The history of education is the battle-ground 
 and burial-ground of impracticable theories : and one who 
 studies it is soon taught to al)ate his constructive self- 
 confidence, and to endeavour humbly to learn the lessons 
 and harmonise the results of experience. But a teacher's 
 experience must be measured not by the length of time that 
 he has been engaged in his work, but by the amount of 
 analytical faculty and intellectual labour that he has applied 
 to the materials with which it has furnished him ; by the 
 way in which he has availed himself of the opportunities of
 
 272 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 observation and experiment which he, beyond all other men, 
 has possessed. It not unfrequently happens — and perhaps 
 it is not surprising — that even successful schoolmasters, 
 immersed in the business of their profession, are found to 
 have learned the theory of what they are doing casually and 
 long ago from other men, and to have let it remain in their 
 minds in undigested fragments, not really brought to the 
 test of, and therefore not modified by, experience. When 
 such men become advocates, we soon detect their incapacity 
 to give us any real instruction. Of course, many of a 
 very different stamp have written in defence of classical 
 education, and probably in the works and pamphlets that 
 now exist on the subject, amounting to a considerable 
 literature, all possible arguments have been brought forward. 
 Still the wish that forms itself in the mind on the perusal 
 of these works is, that the period of advocacy should if 
 possible now close, and that not one or two, but a number 
 of intelligent educators should take the arguments pro- 
 vided for them, revolve them carefully, and by close, sober, 
 accurate observation, obtain their exact value ; and then 
 express this in carefully guarded and limited statements. 
 The very mistakes and contradictions of sucli observers 
 would elicit truth, and we should soon feel a legitimate 
 confidence, which we can hardly feel now, that our 
 systematic treatment of youthful intellect, if not absolutely 
 the best conceivable, was at least approximately the best 
 attainable. 
 
 In beginning to treat of classical education, it is perhaps 
 desirable to make a protest against the notion which seems 
 to prevail in some quarters, that the course of instruction 
 which now bears that name is an organic whole, from which 
 it is impossible to cut oif any part, without converting the 
 rest into something of very inferior value. A boy is con- 
 sidered to have been made a complete classical scholar when 
 he has been taught to translate elegantly and correctly from 
 Latin and Greek into English prose ; to compose correct 
 and elegant Latin and Greek prose, and Latin and Greek 
 verse. Classical study, the result of which does not include
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 273 
 
 all these accomplishments, is supposed to be deficient in 
 thoroughness. 
 
 Now there seems no adequate reason why Latin and 
 Greek should be regarded as a sort of linguistic Siamese 
 twins, which nature has joined together, and which would 
 wither if separated. No doubt, the study of the one is a 
 good preparation for the study of the other ; but it has no 
 special need of it for its own completeness. The qualities 
 of the two languages, and the reasons for which it is 
 desirable to study them, are in many respects very different: 
 and it is only by a palpable looseness of thought that they 
 can be joined together in discussion as frequently as they are. 
 ^\Tien, for instance. Dr. Woolley ^ says these two languages 
 are the " master-keys that unlock the noblest tongues of 
 Europe," he forgets how little Greek has to do with any of 
 these tongues, except in forming their scientific terminology. 
 When again the " severe regularity " of both languages is 
 eulogised, it is forgotten how strong the tendency is in 
 Greek to deviate from the normal type of the sentence, and 
 to frame constructions which are not diflticult to understand, 
 but which can be brought under no grammatical rules. 
 Moreover, the assumption is often made that, because there 
 are strong arguments to prove that the thorough learning of 
 one dead language is a valuable element of education, and 
 that this language ought to be either Greek or Latin, there- 
 fore there is justification for teaching both Greek and Latin 
 — I will not say thoroughly, but so as to engross the lion's 
 share of time and trouble. 
 
 Again, it seems undeniable that a person may learn to 
 read even a dead and ditticult language with correctness and 
 ease combined, without ever attempting to compose elegantly 
 or even idiomatically in it ; without, in fact, writing more 
 than a sufficient number of exercises to fix thoroughlv in his 
 mind the more important part of the grammar. ^Many 
 students of Sanskrit, Hebrew, and other languages do not do 
 as much as this, and yet obtain a sufficiently firm grasp, for 
 their purposes, of the languages they study. The fact 
 
 ^ Late Principal of the University of Sydney. 
 
 T
 
 274 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 seems to be, that if the sole end in learning a language be 
 to read it easily, with correct apprehension of its meaning, 
 the only means absolutely necessary is to read a great deal, 
 and take care that the meaning is correctly apprehended. 
 But perhaps the most singular assumption is, that it is an 
 essential part of the study of Greek and Latin to cultivate 
 the faculty of writing what ought to be poetry in these 
 tongues. No one of the large and increasing body of 
 students, who concentrate their energies upon other 
 ancient languages : no one of the professors, who elucidate 
 with the most subtle and delicate apprehension the most 
 obscure and difficult poems in these languages — ever 
 dreams of trying to develop such a faculty, except as the 
 merest pastime. The composition of verses, and of elegant 
 prose, may, or may not, be a desirable element of education; 
 but these exercises must be defended independently on 
 their own merits, not as forming an essential part of 
 instruction in Greek and Latin. 
 
 In the discussions on classical education, we find 
 debated, and decided generally, though not always, in the 
 same way, a preliminary question of great importance — 
 namely, whether education ought to be natural or artificial. 
 I use these as the most convenient words, but they require 
 some explanation. By a " natural " education is meant, 
 that which teaches a boy things in which, for any reason 
 whatever, he will be likely to take an interest in after life. 
 It may be, that for comm.ercial or professional reasons only, 
 he will be forced to take an interest in certain subjects ; in 
 that case his education must at some time, and to some 
 extent, begin to be commercial or professional, and not 
 liberal. One can hardly be content that any human being 
 should be trained entirely for his metier, and have no share of 
 what may be called a liberal education, — for every human 
 being will have at least so much leisure, as to make it im- 
 portant for himself and for others, that he should be taught to 
 use it rightly. But taking the term in its ordinary sense, and 
 applying it to those who are able to defer the period of 
 professional study till at least the close of boyhood, a liberal
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 275 
 
 educati(jii has fur its object to impart tliu hii^'hest culture, to 
 lead youths to the most full, vigorous, and harmonious exer- 
 cise, according to the best ideal attainable, of their active, 
 cognitive, and aesthetic faculties. What this ideal, this 
 culture may be, is not easy to determine ; but when we 
 have determined it, and analysed it into its component 
 parts, a natural education is evidently that which gives the 
 rudiments of these parts in whatever order is found the 
 best ; which familiarises a boy with the same facts that it 
 will be afterwards important for him to know ; makes him 
 imbibe the same ideas that are afterwards to form the 
 furniture of his mind ; imparts to him the same accom- 
 plishments and dexterities that he will afterwards desire to 
 possess. An artificial education is one which, in order that 
 a man may ultimately know one thing, teaches him another, 
 which gives the rudiments of some learning or accomplish- 
 ment, that the man in the maturity of his culture will be 
 content to forget. This is the extreme case, but in pro- 
 portion as the system of education approximates to this, in 
 proportion as the subjects in which the boy is instructed 
 occupy a small share of the thoughts of the cultivated man, 
 so far that system may be called artificial, rather than 
 natural. Now I think it must be allowed that, however 
 much, historically and actually, the onus inohandi may 
 rest on those who oppose an artificial system of education, 
 and wish to substitute a more natural one, yet, logically, 
 the position of the combatants is reversed, and the onus 
 prohancli rests on those who maintain the artificial system. 
 If a boy is to be taught things which, it is distinctly under- 
 stood, are to be forgotten, the good that they do him during 
 the time that they remain in his mind ought to be very 
 clearly demonstrated. In order to escape the severity of 
 this demonstration, the advocates of classical education are 
 sometimes inclined to make an obviously unfair assumption. 
 They assume that " training the mind " is a process 
 essentially incompatible with " imparting useful knowledge." 
 And no doubt the attack on classical education has 
 frequently been of so vulgar and ignorant a character, that
 
 276 £SSA VS AND ADDRESSES Xli 
 
 this assumption might be, if not fairly, at least safely, 
 made. The clamour has been, ' useful knowledge at any 
 rate, and let the training of the mind take care of itself.' 
 Against assailants of this sort the defence of classics was, and 
 deserved to be, victorious. But the question is now posed in a 
 suitable form. It is now urged that the process of teaching 
 useful knowledge affords as valuable a training in method 
 as any other kind of teaching. However difficult it may be 
 to appraise exactly two different kinds of training, this task 
 distinctly devolves on those who would teach knowledge 
 that they admit to be useless. 
 
 But in the case of classics the uselessness is by no means 
 admitted. Though I think it may be fairly said that 
 classical education is supported chiefly as an artificial 
 system, it is supported partly as a natural system. 
 Though many of its advocates would urge that it ought to 
 be maintained for the training alone, even though the 
 knowledge imparted were all to be forgotten, the majority 
 urge also that this knowledge is in various ways of per- 
 manent value. In estimating the utility of the results of 
 classical study, we naturally range these results under two 
 heads : the knowledge of language gained, and the acquaint- 
 ance w^ith literature. The latter is the more splendid 
 result, that which affords more scope to the eloquence of 
 advocates, and is more impressive to the outside world ; but 
 the former is the more certain and universal acquisition, 
 and the one upon which most stress is laid by educators. 
 Whatever else is denied, the bitterest reformer cannot deny 
 that boys do acquire some knowledge of two dead languages. 
 We may therefore fitly commence our examination by 
 inquiring what this knowledge is worth. 
 
 In the first place, although the classicists are, on the 
 whole, the staunchest supporters of a liberal as opposed to a 
 professional education, they also point out that a knowledge 
 of Greek and Latin is useful professionally. This line of 
 argument has been taken by able and accomplished men ; ^ 
 
 ^ I may mention Sir W. Hamilton [Edinbunjh Review, October 1836. See his 
 Discussions on Philosophu, etc.), and tlie Kev. W. G. Clark [Cambridge Essays, 1855).
 
 xn THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 277 
 
 but I am not sure that it has, ou the whole, been of service 
 to the cause. The professional advantages are found to be 
 unequally distributed among the different professions; and in 
 some cases there is an almost comical discrepancy between 
 the labour expended and the utility acquired. A clergyman 
 has to interpret the Greek Testament, and therefore it is 
 iiaportant that he should be able to read it in the original. 
 It might, perhaps, from a professional point of view, be 
 better that he should be familiarised a little less with the 
 Attic, and a little more with the Hellenistic dialect ; but 
 still Greek is, after all, Greek.' When, however, this point 
 is strongly pressed, we cannot avoid contrasting the great 
 anxiety shown that a clergyman should know Greek, with 
 the complacent indifference with which his total ignorance 
 of Hebrew is usually contemplated. 
 
 We may admit, again, that a lawyer — even an English 
 lawyer — ought to be able to read Eoman law in the 
 original. It is not clear that he is likely to advance 
 himself in his profession by the study, but it is for the 
 benefit of society that he should engage in it. He ought, 
 therefore, to be acquainted with Latin grammar, and a 
 certain portion of the Latin vocabulary. As to doctors, 
 can we gravely urge that they ought to understand the 
 language in which their prescriptions are written, and 
 that they find it instructive to read Galen and Hippocrates 
 in Greek ? ' To men of science, it is pointed out that 
 their ever-increasing technical terminology is systematically 
 formed from Greek and Latin words. This is true ; and 
 it is also true that a man of science might obtain a perfect 
 grasp of this terminology by means of a list of words that 
 he would learn in a day, and the use of a dictionary that he 
 might acquire in a week. It may be further remarked, 
 
 ' Some writers seem to extend the necessity of learning Greek, for the purposes 
 of religion, much more indefinitely. " No religious nation," says Mr. Thring, "can 
 give up Greek." I do not suppose that Mr. Thring means more than that it is 
 desirable that there should be, besides the clergy, a body of learned persons 
 studying Greek (and Hebrew), so as to keep the study safe from any professional 
 narrowness. In this I should heartily agree. But it is a very aristocratic view 
 of religion that makes it depend in any degree on a knowledge of Greek. 
 
 * See Cambrid'je Esmys, 1S55.
 
 278 £SSJ YS AND ADDRESSES Xli 
 
 that though a clergyman might conceivably dispense with 
 Latin, a learned clergyman, one from whom original 
 research in the field of ecclesiastical tradition is expected, 
 cannot dispense with it ; and generally every antiquarian 
 student, every one who inquires into the early history of 
 any European nation, or of any department of modern 
 science, will require to read Latin with ease. Science has 
 at length broken its connexion with what was so long the 
 learned language of Europe ; but it is still the key to what, 
 in contradistinction to science, is usually called erudition. 
 To sum up : Greek is of use (we may say indispensable) to 
 clergymen : Latin to lawyers and learned men. The 
 other infinitesimal fragments of utility may be disregarded 
 for our present purpose ; and finally, in all these cases, it is 
 only the power of reading that is of use, and not that of 
 writing the language. 
 
 Much more importance is claimed for the knowledge of 
 the classical languages as an element of a truly liberal 
 culture : as the best introduction to the study of Philology, 
 as including the best instruction in the universal principles 
 of Grammar, and as indispensable to a real knowledge of 
 English and of other modern languages. It seems rather 
 important to attach as clear and precise ideas as we can to 
 the words " Philology " and " Grammar " : as the looseness 
 with which they are sometimes used creates an inevitable con- 
 fusion of thought. Grammar is sometimes regarded as either 
 an introduction to, or an extension of, Logic. It is called 
 " the logic of common speech." ^ Now it would appear that 
 Grammar, in this sense, includes only a small portion of 
 Avhat is taught as the grammar of any particular languages. 
 It teaches some of the facts and laws of thought and 
 expression wluch Logic also teaches (both studies being 
 united by a common root), and also certain other facts and 
 laws, which the theory of syllogistic reasoning is not obliged 
 to notice, but which are equally universal, and — if I may 
 use the term without provoking a controversy — equally 
 necessary. Such are — the distinctions of substantives and 
 
 ^ Report of the Public Schools Commission, published in 1864.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 279 
 
 adjectives, of transitive and intransitive verbs, the existence 
 and classification of the relations expressed by the other 
 parts of speech, the distinctions of tenses and voices, of 
 principal and subordinate, declarative and conditional 
 sentences, etc. It is clearly impracticable to separate this 
 part of any particular grammar from the rest : because it is 
 difticult to say what is, and what is not, universal : since 
 each man is biassed in favour of the distinctions which his 
 mother tongue brings into prominence ; and since there 
 are many distinctions, which, when they are once pointed 
 out, we not only see to be true, but cannot conceive how 
 we could ever have overlooked. The most philosophical 
 branch of Philology is that which busies itself with such 
 real but not indispensable (what we may call potentially 
 universal) distinctions of thought : collecting them when 
 they lie scattered in the grammar of particular languages, 
 and clearly defining, arranging, and comparing them. This 
 seems a study both extremely interesting in itself, and 
 intimately connected with — we may even say a branch of 
 — mental philosoi)hy. And, no doubt, in learning Latin 
 or Greek many such distinctions are taught to an English 
 boy, of which the closest observation of his mother tongue 
 would leave him ignorant. But it cannot be denied that 
 nine-tenths of his time is occupied in storing up facts which 
 in no sense belong to universal grammar : in learning, not new 
 shades and distinctions of thought, but simply special ways 
 of expressing old shades and distinctions, facts which are so 
 patent in his own language, that Latin instruction is an 
 extremely tedious and circuitous process of teaching him to 
 observe them. In learning the usage of a new language 
 we always find some things which seem to us convenient 
 and rational, and which we should like if possible to incor- 
 porate into our own : but the greater part of what we learn 
 appears accidental and arbitrary, while a good deal we 
 regard as provokingly useless and troublesome. There is 
 probably always a scientific explanation of this last, as the 
 result of ages of growth, but there is often no philosophical 
 explanation of it as belonging to a present instrument of
 
 28o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 thought. When, therefore, we are told that " the principles 
 of universal grammar which are necessary as the foundation 
 of all philosophical acquaintance with every language, carry 
 the young scholar forward till his mind is deeply imbued 
 with the literature,"^ etc., we see what large deductions 
 must be made from this statement. A boy does no doubt 
 learn principles of universal grammar which he will always 
 desire to retain : but he learns them along with a large 
 assortment of formulae which, when he has once ceased to 
 study Latin, he will be willing as soon as possible to forget. 
 By Philology is generally understood the study of 
 language historically, of its changes, its laws of growth and 
 development. It deals chiefly with the vocabulary and 
 accidence of languages, as distinguished from the philoso- 
 phical study of Grammar, of which I have spoken, that 
 deals chiefly with the syntax. It is a study to which the 
 thorough learning of either Latin or Greek forms an 
 excellent introduction ; but Latin from its relation to 
 English possesses peculiar advantages in this respect ; and 
 these advantages would be much increased if French were 
 learnt along with Latin, and every opportunity taken of 
 pointing out the mutual relations of the three languages, 
 Latin, French, and English. No cultivated man can fail to 
 feel the interest and charm of Philology, or would wish to 
 say a word in its disparagement. Its materials are abun- 
 dant, its processes productive, the aid it affords to History 
 and Anthropology most valuable. Still it must be classed 
 among the sciences that are studied from " pure curiosity " ^ 
 alone ; and however noble an impulse we feel this to be, 
 however true it is that any great increase of its force marks 
 a step in human progress, yet such studies must be ranked, 
 in importance to society, below sciences like Physics, 
 Chemistry, Astronomy, animal and vegetable Physiology, 
 which (besides the gratification they afford to curiosity) 
 have had, and promise still to have, the greatest influence 
 on the material welfare of the human race. And if we cannot 
 
 ^ Dr. Moberly. 
 
 2 I use the word in the more elevated signification which the corresponding 
 term in French bears.
 
 XII 'J HE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 281 
 
 (as we certainly cannot) include all the sciences in the 
 curriculum of general education, it seems (from this point 
 of view) that those studied from pure curiosity are precisely 
 those that ought to be left to students of special bias and 
 faculty, e\ery care being taken to yield to this bias and 
 foster this faculty. If then it appear desirable on other 
 grounds that boys should learn Latin (or Greek), the fact 
 that they will be thereby initiated into the study of 
 Philology is a real additional advantage ; but taken by 
 itself it does not constitute a very strong reason for learn- 
 ing either language. 
 
 We are told, however, in the strongest and most 
 unqualified terms, that we cannot understand our own 
 language without a knowledge of Latin and Greek : and 
 this in two ways — both in respect of its grammar, and in 
 respect of its vocabulary. This claims to be so cogent a 
 proof of the direct utility of these ancient languages, that 
 it deserves our most serious consideration. We shall find, 
 I think, that it has been urged by the advocates of classics 
 with more than usual exaggeration. The limit of extrava- 
 sjance seems to be reached in the following utterance of 
 Professor Lilians (which is quoted with approbation in the 
 Eeport of the Public Schools Commission) : " It (English) 
 is, besides, so uncompounded in its structure, so patchwork- 
 like in its composition, so broken down into particles, so 
 scanty in its inflections, and so simple in its fundamental 
 rules of construction, that it is next to impossible to have a 
 true grammatical notion of it, or to form any correct ideas of 
 grammar and philology at all, without being able to compare 
 and contrast it with another language, and that other of 
 a character essentially different." ^^^ly the rules of a 
 language should be hard to teach because they are simple, 
 because the character of the language is analvtical and 
 not synthetical, because in it the relations of words and 
 sentences are expressed almost entirely by particles, 
 without the aid of inflection : why in such a language it 
 should be " impossible " to convey " correct ideas," not only 
 of the facts and principles of universal grammar (which are
 
 282 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 ex vi termini ^ common to all languages), but also of the 
 formulae in which its special usage is summed up, is not 
 attempted to be shown. That a person who had learnt 
 English grammar only would have a very limited idea of 
 grammar is undeniable, but it is obvious that his idea might 
 be correct as far as it went. The learning of the rules of Latin 
 usage, would, no doubt, sharpen our perception of the rules of 
 English usage ; and this indirect utility (which belongs rather 
 to the second part of our subject) I do not wish to undervalue. 
 And it may be advantageous to excite a boy's interest in the 
 laws of language first, by making him feel that, without the 
 observation of these laws, he cannot obtain the results that 
 are demanded from him. But to assert that Grammar could 
 not be taught analytically, instead of synthetically, seems 
 contrary to common sense and experience alike." 
 
 When we take the vocabulary, as well as the grammar, 
 of English into our view, we find still more startling state- 
 ments as to the difficulty of mastering our mother tongue. 
 Mr. Thring tells us that " it is scarcely possible to speak 
 the English language with accuracy or precision, without a 
 knowledge of Latin and Greek." " It is not possible to 
 have a masterly freedom in the use of words, or a critical 
 judgment capable of supporting its decision by proof without 
 such knowledge." These are the words of a vigorous 
 writer, and their substance I find stated, though less 
 extravagantly, by several others. They seem to me well to 
 illustrate the ignorance of the real nature of language, and 
 the laws of its apprehension, in which our long tutelage to 
 Latin and Greek has left us. 
 
 1 As the word universal is generally used, I have indicated another application 
 of it, in the signification, as I have expressed it, of " potentially universal." 
 
 ■^ Some persons have a vague idea that it is not worth while trying to teach 
 English and some other modern languages systematically, because they are 
 "hybrid" ; as if a language could be "hybrid" in its grammar, however mixed 
 in its vocabulary, aud as if Latin was not hybrid, in the same sense, though not 
 to the same extent, as English. Others cannot divest themselves of the notion 
 that familiar phenomena must be simple, and seem almost irritated when shown 
 how varied and complex are the rules of using their vernacular. For instance, 
 a French writer complains "I'on rafline la gr-ammaire fraucaise : on questionne 
 un enfant . . . sur des distinctions subfiles auxquelles Pascal et Bossuet 
 n'ont jamais songe " : as if Vii-gil ever thought of a tertiary predicate, or 
 Thucydides of the peculiar usage of ottws m';.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 283 
 
 The fact is, that the study of Latin (for Greek, except in 
 respect of scientific terminology, has much less to do with 
 the question, and would hardly have been placed on a par 
 with Latin here, but for the hasty and random way in which 
 the stock argumerits on this suljject are continually repeated) 
 cannot tell us what the English language is — it can only 
 help us to understand how it has come to be what it is. In 
 order to learn to speak English with accuracy and precision, 
 we have but one rule to follow, — to pay strict attention to 
 usage. The authority of usage, the usage of cultivated 
 persons, is in all disputed points paramount. The history 
 of language is the history of continual change, and just as 
 in learning Latin and Greek (or any other language), the 
 tiro finds a knowledge of derivation frequently puzzling and 
 misleading, the usage of words having often strayed from 
 their original signification by long routes that can be only 
 conjecturally traced : so in the case of words that we have 
 derived from the Latin, the meaning of the Latin term has 
 often been so modified, that it would be the merest pedantry 
 to pay attention to it. No doubt we are all liable to make 
 mistakes in our own language, especially in the case of terms 
 which we meet with so rarely that the natural process by 
 which we learn the rest of our mother tongue cannot com- 
 pletely operate. And as these words are often derived from 
 the Latin, a Latin scholar has a certain additional protection 
 against such mistakes : he will naturally fall into them 
 rather less than another man who pays no particular 
 attention to the subject. But he is liable to fall into a 
 different set of errors if he ever attempts, as pedants have 
 attempted, to make his knowledge of Latin override English 
 usage. Mr. Thring regrets the loss of the original meaning 
 in the case of words like " edify " and " tribulation " ; and 
 no doubt the historic interest in the derivation of these 
 words is very great, and the non-classical reader has 
 every reason to be grateful to books like those of 
 Archbishop Trench, that open this new field of interest to 
 him. But for a man in search of accuracy and precision, 
 seriously to try and shackle himself by attention to these
 
 284 ^SSA YS AND ADDRESSES xil 
 
 lost siguificatious — to refuse, for instance, to use the word 
 " tribulation " except \\'hen the idea of " threshing " seemed 
 suitable, would be pedantic frivolity. To the masters of 
 English style, natural instinct and unconscious tact as to the 
 living force of language is the chief and primary guide ; 
 while English dictionaries and English classics are the only 
 corrective and court of appeal in case this tact breaks down. 
 In short, the application of Latin to the historical interpre- 
 tation of English is a branch of Philology — a most enter- 
 taining and instructive branch — which I should be glad to 
 place within the reach of every one, but which must be 
 regarded, like the rest of Philology, as an intellectual luxury. 
 When we are threatened, that, without a knowledge of Latin 
 and Greek, our language would be to us " a strange 
 collection of inexpressive symbols," ^ we are at first alarmed ; 
 but on reflection, we perceive that our verbal signs would 
 become " inexpressive," in the sense that they would only 
 express the things signified ; and the menace does not seem 
 so terrible. We reflect also, that the historical study of 
 language is of very modern growth, and that Greek and 
 Latin must have been " strange collections of inexpressive 
 symbols " to the writers of the master-pieces and models 
 which we are invited to cherish." 
 
 Some exception to what I have said ought to be made 
 in the case of scientific nomenclature ; because, as this is 
 the one part of our language of which the growth is 
 deliberate, and determined by the learned — not natural, and 
 determined by the mass of the nation — it has a living and 
 
 ^ Edinburgh licvieiv, cxx. 
 
 ^ Mr. Joseph Payne, in a pamphlet remarkable for sobriety of statement, 
 breadth of view, and close observation of the educational process, brings forward 
 a somewhat difl'ereut argument to show the advantage a Latin scholar has in 
 reading English. He quotes several uses of English words derived from the 
 Latin, in our older authors (such as 'civil,' 'resentment,' 'prevent'), which 
 a classical scholar understands at a glance, but which puzzle or mislead a man 
 uneducated in classics. But these uses ought to be found in dictionaries, and 
 noticed by commentators. Every man reading older authors in his vernacular 
 ought to know that a part of their vocabulary is archaic, and ought to be on the 
 watch for the archaic terms. I cannot think that the trouble is verj^ considerable 
 of acquiring as complete an acquaintance with these archaisms as is necessary 
 for literary purposes. A knowledge of Latin would only save a part of this 
 trouble ; much more would be done by the direct teaching of English literature 
 which I advocate in this essay.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 285 
 
 progressive connexion with Latin and Greek which no other 
 part of the Language has. But even liere it is necessary to 
 make distinctions. It seems too sweeping to say that " no 
 man can expound any subject-matter with scientific precision 
 unless he is acquainted with the ctijmolugies of the terms he 
 employs." ^ The newer terms of scientific phraseology have 
 been formed generally in a systematic way, upon fixed 
 principles, and we may assume that, for the future, all 
 additional technical terms will be so formed. Therefore, 
 though it is not absolutely indispensable to the scientific 
 student to possess the key to this phraseology (as he can 
 learn the meaning of each word from its usage and place 
 in the system to which it belongs), it will save him a great 
 deal of useless trouble if he does possess it. But in the 
 case of many of the older terms of science, formed irregularly 
 or on false principles, a knowledge of the derivation will be 
 useless or misleading. They have often great interest for 
 the historical student : to the scientific man, the sooner they 
 become mere counters the better. I have already indicated 
 with what ease men of science might learn all the Greek 
 and Latin words necessary to give them the required key. 
 Instruction in such words ought to form a distinct part of 
 the direct teaching of English, to which all these arguments 
 for learning Latin and Greek seem to point as an educa- 
 tional desideratum. 
 
 I have said that Latin was important chiefly with a view 
 to the historical study of our own language, and not in order 
 to obtain a complete grasp of it, as a living instrument of 
 thought. It ought to be added, that though Latin forms 
 one element in this historical study, it forms only one 
 element, and that the other elements — and, indeed, we may 
 say the study itself — have been surprisingly neglected in 
 our educational system. Hardly in our Universities does 
 any one dream of learning Early English, and though we 
 teach some French and German in our schools, we teach 
 them merely colloquially and practically, without any 
 reference to their historical development or their linguistic 
 
 ^ Cainbridge Essays, 1855.
 
 286 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 XII 
 
 relations. This neglect (which some efforts have been made 
 to repair during late years) will be commented upon more 
 in detail elsewhere in this volume.-^ I have referred to the 
 point here chiefly because it affords an example how the 
 arguments for learning classics, being " made to order," are 
 found, as far as they are worth anything, to prove more 
 than they were intended to prove, and to support, not the 
 existing course of instruction, but something of which that 
 would form only one part. 
 
 In the eyes of many persons, however, the most important 
 of the direct utilities supposed to be conveyed by a classical 
 education is still that for which a classical education was 
 originally instituted — acquaintance with the Greek and Latin 
 literatures. In the first place, just as the ancient languages 
 were called a master-key to unlock all modern European 
 tongues, so the ancient writings are said to be indispensable 
 to the understanding of all the best modern books. " If," 
 says Dr. Donaldson, " the old classical literature were swept 
 away, the moderns would in many cases become unintelligible, 
 and in all lose most of their characteristic charms." A 
 moment's reflection will show this to be a most strange and 
 palpable exaggeration. For instance, ]\Iilton is the most 
 learned of our poets : nay, as a poet he is generally said 
 to be obtrusively learned — learned to a fault. Yet how 
 grotesque an absurdity it seems to assert that Paradise 
 Lost would " lose most of its characteristic charm " to a 
 reader who did not understand the classical allusions and 
 similes. The real state of the case seems analogous to that 
 which we have just discussed. A knowledge of classics is 
 indispensable, not to the general reader, but to the historical 
 student of modern authors : without it he can enter into 
 their ideas and feelings, but not the antecedents which 
 determined those ideas and feelings. He cannot reproduce 
 the intellectual milieu in wdiich they lived ; he can under- 
 stand what they said, but not how they came to say it. 
 But for the general reader, who has no wish to go so deep, 
 classical knowledge does not do much more than save some 
 
 ' [Tlie volume in whicli this essay originally appeared. — Ed.]
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 287 
 
 trouble of referring to dictionaries and histories, and some 
 ignorance of quotations which is rather conventionally than 
 really inconvenient. i\Iany allusions to the classics explain 
 themselves ; many others are explained by the context ; and 
 the number of those that remain incomprehensible to a 
 person who has read histories of Greece and liorae, and 
 knows as much about the classics as he must inevitably 
 pick up from a good course of P^nglisli literature, is not very 
 considerable. We may grant that " literature can only be 
 studied thoroughly by going to its source." ^ But the con- 
 ception conveyed in this word thoroughly assumes an exalted 
 standard of reading, which, if carried out consistently, 
 would involve an overwhelming encyclopedic study of 
 literature. For the modern authors whom the stream of 
 fame has floated down to us, and whom we do read, contain 
 numerous allusions to preceding and contemporary authors 
 whom we do not think of reading, and require, in order to 
 be thoroughly understood, numerous illustrations from pre- 
 ceding and contemporary history which we have no leisure 
 to procure. We content ourselves with the fragmentary 
 liuhts of a casual commentator. I do not see that it would 
 be so dreadful if classical allusions were apprehended by 
 the general reader in the same twilight manner. It may 
 be very desirable that we should read everything more 
 accurately and thoroughly ; but let us have one weight and 
 one balance. The historical study of literature, for the 
 completeness of which I allow classics to be indispensable, 
 is a most interesting and improving pursuit, and one which 
 I hope will gain votaries yearly. But, after all, the branch 
 of this study which seems to have the greatest utility, if the 
 space we can allot to it is limited, is surely that which 
 explains to us (as far as is possible) the intellectual life of 
 our own age ; which teaches us the antecedents of the ideas 
 and feelings among which, and in which, we shall live and 
 move. Such a course, at this moment of history, would 
 naturally contain a much larger modern than ancient 
 element : it would be felt in framing it more imperatively 
 
 1 Dr. Temple.
 
 288 ^5^,-^ VS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 necessary to represent French, German, and English thought 
 of recent centuries, than to introduce us to any of the older 
 influences that combined to deterndne our immediate 
 intellectual antecedents. 
 
 But the intrinsic value of Latin and Greek literatures 
 seems to many to outweigh all other considerations. It is 
 true that these literatures are no longer supposed to contain 
 all knowledge ; even their claim to give the best teaching 
 in mental, ethical, and political philosophy, the last relic 
 of their old prestige, is rapidly passing away : still they 
 rmdeniably convey, with great vividness, a knowledge of 
 what the Greeks and Eomans were, how they felt, thought, 
 spoke, and acted ; and some persons of great eminence 
 consider it of the highest importance that Greek and Roman 
 life in all its phases should be kept continually before the 
 mind of the modern world. ^ Persons of very opposite views 
 agree in inculcating this. Clerical advocates tell us that to 
 feel the real force of Christianity, we must acquaint our- 
 selves with the vices of the ancient world, and learn how 
 impotent, ethically speaking, the unassisted human intellect 
 is ; while enthusiasts of a different stamp point to the narrow 
 rigidity, the withering pettiness, the complacent humdrum 
 of our modern life, and urge that ancient literature teaches 
 just that passionate love of country, love of freedom, love of 
 knowledge, love of beauty, for which they pant. I do not 
 wish to undervalue either kind of instruction, but I cannot 
 say that I see the absolute want of either : 1 cannot but 
 think that if we were debarred from Latin and Greek, a 
 careful teaching of modern history and a careful selection 
 of modern literature would supply our youth with all the 
 stimulus, example, and warning that they require. Further, 
 even if it be granted that we cannot dispense with the 
 lessons of the ancient world, it is easy to exaggerate the 
 disadvantages of learning them through the medium of modern 
 languages. We must remember how many excellent 
 translations we have of ancient authors, some of which 
 
 ^ This has been urged by Mr. Mill with his usual inipressiveness, and is illus- 
 trated in a beautiful essay of Villemaiu's, called Demosthenes et le General Foy.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 289 
 
 take rank a.s English classics ; and how much of our very 
 highest historical ability has been devoted to this period of 
 history. Of course, every student who takes up the period 
 as a speciality, will desire to know the languages thoroughly 
 well, in order to have an opinion of value upon disputed 
 points ; and even the general reader always feels the 
 additional vividness, and, therefore, the additional pleasure 
 and stinnilus and improvement, that a knowledge of the 
 original gives. But it would be absurd to say that an 
 Englishman (particularly if he can read French and 
 German) has any difficulty in accurately and thoroughly 
 informing himself what sort of people the Greeks and 
 Romans were. And it might, I think, be truly asserted, 
 however paradoxically, that even under our classical 
 system, the greater part of the vivid impressions that most 
 boys receive of the ancient world are derived from English 
 works ; from Pope's Homer, Macaulay's Lays, the English 
 Plutarch (if they have the good fortune to get hold of that 
 delightful book), and afterwards from Arnold, Grote, and 
 Merivale. 
 
 But the aesthetic importance of ancient literature is even 
 more insisted on than the value of its moral teaching. If 
 we do not teach a boy Latin and Greek, it is said, we cut 
 him off from the highest literary enjoyment, and we prevent 
 him from developing his taste by studying the best models. 
 It would avail little to call in question (had I space and 
 inclination to do so) the surpassing excellence of ancient 
 literature. For my present purpose, I must regard this 
 point as decided by an overwhelming majority of persons of 
 culture. But it will not be denied that in the English, 
 French, and German languages ^ there is a sufhciency of 
 good literature to till the leisure of a person engaged in any 
 active calling, a suMciency of works calculated to give a 
 high kind of enjoyment, and to cultivate, very adequately, 
 the literary taste. And if such a person was ever visited 
 by a painful hankering after the time-honoured volumes 
 
 ^ I ouly omit Italian becaxise it is rarely taught at schools, and I am not 
 prepared to recommend that it should be more generally taught. 
 
 U
 
 290 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 that were sealed to him, he might console himself Vjy taking 
 note how often his contemporaries who had enjoyed a com- 
 plete classical education, were in the habit of taking down 
 these masterpieces from their shelves. For I cannot help 
 thinking that classical literature, in spite of its enormous 
 prestige, has very little attraction for the mass even of 
 cultivated persons at the present day. I wish statistics 
 could be obtained of the amount of Latin and Greek read in 
 any year (except for professional purposes), even by those 
 who have gone through a complete classical curriculum. 
 From the information that I have been able privately to 
 obtain, I incline to think that such statistics, when com- 
 pared with the fervent admiration with which we all still 
 speak of tlie classics, upon every opportunity, would be found 
 rather startling. I am willing to admit that those who 
 have a genuine preference for the classics are persons of the 
 purest, severest, and most elevated literary taste ; and I 
 cannot conceive that these relics will ever cease to be 
 reverently studied by those who aspire to be artists in 
 language. But this by no means proves that they ought 
 to occupy the place they do in the training of our youth. 
 " It is admitted," says a Quarterly reviewer (summing up 
 very fairly the Eeport of the Public Schools Commission), 
 " that education must be literary, and that of literary 
 education, classical learning must be the backbone." 
 Whether I should agree with this or not, depends upon 
 the sense in which " backbone " is interpreted : at present 
 classical learning forms, so to say, the whole skeleton ; and 
 the result is, that, to a very large number of boys, what is 
 supposed to be a purely literary education, what is attacked 
 as being exclusively a literary education, is, paradoxical as 
 it may sound, hardly a training in literature at all. For 
 surely it is essential to the idea of such training that it 
 should have some stimulating power ; that it should inspire a 
 fondness for reading, educe the capacity for enjoying eloquence 
 and poetry, communicate an interest in ideas ; and not merely 
 guide and chasten such taste and interest if they already 
 exist. The instruments of literary training ought to be
 
 XII rilE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 291 
 
 not only absolutely admirable, but relatively attractive. 
 If we wish to educate persons to enjoy any kind of art, 
 I do not say that we are not to put before them things 
 hard to appreciate, but we must certainly put before them 
 also things that they will find easy to appreciate. I feel sure 
 that if the schoolmaster is ever to be, as I think he ought 
 to be, a missionary of culture, — if he is to develop, to any 
 extent, the icsthetic faculties of other boys than those who 
 have been brouglit ujj in literary homes, and have acquired, 
 before they come into his hands, a taste for English classics, 
 — he must make the study of modern literature a substantive 
 and important part of his training. It may be said that 
 some part of ancient literature, especially Greek, is ever 
 young and fresh ; and no doubt, in most good schools, some 
 boys are made to feel this, and their path becomes flowery 
 in consequence. But the majority want, to stimulate their 
 literary interest, something that can be read with more ease, 
 in larger portions : something, moreover, that has a visible 
 connexion with the life of their age, which exercises so 
 powerful a control over their imaginations. I do not 
 know that, if difficulties of language were put aside, some 
 ancient historians, such as Herodotus, might not be more 
 attractive to boys from their freshness and naiveU, than 
 any modern ones. But just when the difficulties of lan- 
 guage are beginning to be got over, boys cease to relish this 
 naivete. They want something that speaks to their opening 
 minds and hearts, and gives them ideas. And this they are 
 seldom able to find to a great extent in the ancient works 
 they read. This is true, I know, of some at least among the 
 minority who study classics at school and college with all 
 the stimulus of uniform success ; much more is it true of 
 the majority who fail or are but indifferently successful. 
 If such boys get imbued with literary culture at all, it is 
 not owing to the classical system ; it is due to home 
 influence, to fortunate school friendships, to the extra- 
 professional care of some zealous schoolmaster. In this 
 way they are taught to enjoy reading that instructs and 
 refines, and escape the fate of the mass, who temper small
 
 292 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 compulsory sips of Virgil, Sophocles, Tacitus, and Thucy- 
 dides, with large voluntary draughts of James, Ainsworth, 
 Lever, and the translated Dumas.^ 
 
 I wish this occasional and irregular training to be made 
 as general and systematic as possible ; and I feel sure that 
 whatever classical teaching was retained would become 
 more efficacious by the introduction of the new element ; 
 and this not merely because every new mental stimulus 
 that can be applied to a boy is immediately felt over the 
 whole range of his work, but because the boy would gain 
 a special motive for learning Latin and Greek, which he 
 had hitherto been without, and the want of which had made 
 his studies (to use the words of a Quarterly reviewer) " a 
 prolonged nightmare." He might not at once begin to 
 enjoy the classics : his progress might be still so slow, and 
 his attention so much concentrated on the form of his 
 authors, as to allow him but a feeble interest in their 
 substance. But he would be cheered by the hope of this 
 interest becoming daily stronger : he might distinctly look 
 forward to the time when Sophocles would be as dear to 
 him as Shakespeare, when Cicero and Tacitus would stir 
 him like Burke and Macaulay. Again, some modern litera- 
 ture has a direct power of revealing to us the charm of 
 ancient literature, of enabling us to see and feel in the older 
 masterpieces what the diU of each generation could see and 
 feel for themselves when the language was once understood, 
 but what for the mass requires an interpreter. Some, for 
 instance, would perhaps be ashamed to confess how shallow 
 an appreciation they had of Greek art till they read Goethe 
 and Schiller, Lessing and Schlegel. Xo doubt there are 
 boys who find out the beauties for themselves, just as there 
 are some to whom it would be a feast to be turned into a 
 room full of fragments of antique sculpture. But our system 
 is framed for the mass, and I feel convinced that the mass 
 require, to appreciate both the one and the other, a careful 
 preparation, the most important part of which would be 
 
 ^ I must be pardoned for using the names familiar to my generation. I have 
 no doubt there are other favourites now.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 293 
 
 supplied by a proper introduction into education of the 
 element I am advocating,^ 
 
 Further, I am disposed to think that the literary educa- 
 tion of even the best boys is liable to suffer from the narrow- 
 ness of the existing system. In the first place, there is a 
 great danger in the predominance that classics are made to 
 gain over their minds, by the indiscriminate eulogy and 
 unreserved exaltation of the ancient authors en masse,^ which 
 they frequently hear. They are told, dogmatically, that 
 these authors " are perfect standards of criticism in every- 
 thing that belongs to mere perfect form," that " the laws that 
 regulate external beauty can only be thoroughly known 
 through them," tliat " they utterly condemn all false orna- 
 ment, all tinsel, all ungraceful and unshapely work " ; and 
 the more docile of them are apt to believe these dogmas to 
 a degree that warps and oppresses the natural development 
 of their critical faculties. The truth is, that the best 
 classical models only exemplify certain kinds of perfection of 
 form, that several writers that boys read exemplil'y no parti- 
 cular perfection at all, and that some illustrate excellently 
 well the precise imperfections that the enthusiast I have 
 quoted enumerates." How can it be said, for instance, that 
 there is no " false ornament " in JEschvIus, no " tinsel " in 
 Ovid, no " ungracefulness " in Thucydides, no " unshapely 
 work " in Lucretius ? In what sense can we speak of 
 finding " perfect form " and " perfect standards of criticism " 
 in such inartificial writers as Herodotus (charming as he is) 
 or Xenophon ? Tliere is perhaps no modern thinker, with 
 equal sensitiveness to beauty of expression, who (in those 
 
 ^ Tlie Quarterly Review, a journal that does not often clamour for rash and 
 premature reforms, saj's (vol. cxvii. p. 418) : — 
 
 " Much more is it a thing to wonder at and be ashamed of, that, with such a 
 literature as ours, the Eudis^h lesson is still a desideratum in nearly all our great 
 places of education, and that the future gentry of the country are left to pick up 
 their mother tongue from tlie periodical works of fiction wliich are the bane of our 
 youth, and the dread of every conscientious schoolmaster." 
 
 We may add that the question whether native literature is to be systematically 
 taught, has long been decided in the aflirin.ative both in France and in Gernnmy. 
 
 - I allow that there are some exceptions to this statement ; for instance, one 
 of the most exquisite artists in language, Euripides, has been perhaps unduly 
 depreciated. Still I think I have fairlv described the general tendency. 
 
 =* Mr. Thriug.
 
 294 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 works of his which liave been preserved to us) has so 
 neglected and despised form as Aristotle. Auy artist in 
 words may learn much from Cicero, and much from Tacitus ; 
 but the profuse verbosity of the one, and the perpetual 
 mannerism of the otlier, have left the marks of their mis- 
 direction on English literature. I am simply repeating 
 what are now the commonplaces of cultivated criticism, 
 which can no longer be charged, on the whole, with being 
 servile towards antiquity ; but education is less emancipated, 
 and as long as these sweeping statements of the perfectness 
 of ancient literature are reiterated, a demand for careful 
 limitation seems necessary. 
 
 But secondly, it can hardly be said that the artistic 
 training which might be given by means of ancient litera- 
 ture (whicli I should be sorry to seem to undervalue) is 
 given under our present educational system. A few attain 
 to it self-taught : and even these are liable to all the 
 errors and extravagances of such self-education. But what 
 effort is made to teach literary criticism to the great 
 majority in our schools (or even in our universities) ? Are 
 they encouraged to judge as wholes the works that they so 
 minutely analyse ? to attain to any synthetical apprehension 
 of their excellence ? The point on which the wisest admirers 
 of ancient art lay most stress is the completely organic 
 structure of its products and the instinct for complex and 
 finely articulated harmony that is felt to have guided the 
 production. But in so far as schoolboys (with a few 
 exceptions) are taught to feel the beauty of these products 
 at all, it is the beauty of parts, and even of minute parts, 
 that they are taught to feel. And, from the mode in which 
 these beauties are studied for purposes of composition it is 
 not only a partial, but generally a perverted appreciation 
 that is attained. In the effort to prepare his mind for 
 composition, a boy is led to contemplate his authors under 
 conditions as unfavourable to the development of pure taste 
 and sound criticism as can possibly be conceived. He is 
 led to break the diction of great masters into fragments for 
 the purpose of mechanical ornamentation, generally clumsy
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 295 
 
 and often grotesque. His memory (as an advocate exultingly 
 phrases it) is " stored with precious things " : that is, it is 
 stored with long words, sounding epithets, imposing circum- 
 locutions, salient extravagances and mannerisms : so that 
 his admiration is directed to a great extent to what is 
 hizarrc, fantastic, involved, over-decorated in the admirable 
 models he studies : and even of what is really good he is apt 
 to spoil his delicacy of apprehension, by the habit of imitating 
 and introducing it unseasonably. I am aware how much 
 careful training may do to correct these vicious tendencies : 
 but they are likely to exist in overwhelming force as long 
 as the imitative instinct is so prematurely developed as it is 
 now, and applied to a material over which so imperfect a 
 command has been gained. 
 
 This forms a convenient transition to another part of my 
 subject : the examination in detail of the existing instruction 
 in Latin and Greek, regarded primarily as a species of 
 mental gymnastics, a method of developing the intellectual 
 faculties : without reference to the permanent utility of the 
 knowledge conveyed. When, however, the methods of 
 classical instruction are spoken of as a " fine training," the 
 word " training " may be used in two senses, which it is 
 necessary carefully to distinguish. Sometimes, merely a 
 rhetorical training is intended ; the boy, it is said, is 
 taught not only a special dexterity in the use of particular 
 languages (his own included), but a complete grasp of lau- 
 suaire in general: he learns to dominate the instrument of 
 thought instead of being dominated by it : " his mind is 
 enabled to conceive form as an object of thought distinct 
 from the subject-matter, and vice versd, and hence generally 
 to judge of the application of the one to the other in litera- 
 ture, with a degree of accuracy which is never attained 
 except by those thus trained." ^ Sometimes, again, it is 
 claimed that classics supply a complete general training to 
 the mind : that, in the words of ]\I. Cournot : " " Puen ne se 
 prete mieux que I'etude gramma ticale et litteraire d'une 
 langue au developpement graduel et methodique de toutes 
 
 ^ Rev. W. G. Clark. - De I' Instruction publique.
 
 296 ESSA VS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 les facultes intellectuelles de I'enfance et de I'adolescence. 
 Cette etude exerce la memoire, la sagacite, le gout, le 
 jugement sous toutes les formes, logiques ou non logiques, 
 c'est-a-dire, soumises ou non a des classifications, a des 
 deductions et a des regies precises. Elle forme Thomme 
 toute entier." It will be convenient to take the narrower 
 of these pretensions first : and examine whether composition 
 in the ancient languages, and translation from them into 
 our own, appear to form a complete course of instruction in 
 the art of speech. 
 
 I think that few who have considered the subject can 
 deny, that translation from a Latin or Greek author into 
 Englisli prose, under the guidance of a competent teacher, 
 is a very vigorous and efficacious training in the use of our 
 language, and gives very considerable insight into the nature 
 of speech, and its relation to thought and fact. Our only 
 doubt will be, whether the training and insight is not, by 
 itself, one-sided ; whether we do not require something else 
 as a supplement, to give us a complete view and a complete 
 grasp of language. " The art," says Dr. Moberly, " of 
 throwing English with facility into sentence-moulds made 
 in another language . . . what is this but to learn to have 
 the choicest, most varied, words and sentence-frames of our 
 language constantly at command, so that, whatever varieties 
 of thought and meaning present themselves to a man's mind, 
 he will never be at a loss for expressions to convey them 
 with an accuracy at once forcible and subtle to the mind of 
 his hearers." This is no over-statement : but it leaves out 
 of sidit the dilemma in which even the matured scholar, 
 and therefore infinitely more the tiro, is perpetually placed 
 between exact English and elegant English, between the set 
 of words that represents the precise meaning of the origi- 
 nal (and is endurable in the vernacular), and the nearest 
 English phrase that can be called tasteful. A schoolmaster 
 must inevitably sacrifice accuracy or style, and he, as a rule, 
 wisely determines to sacrifice style for the time. But if 
 style is sacrificed here, it becomes desirable to cultivate it 
 carefully in another part of the education. The result of
 
 xii THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 297 
 
 laboriously forcing our language into " moulds " unnatural 
 to it, will not be to give us an easy flow of it in natural 
 moulds. Even when the process is carried further, as in 
 the case of the more advanced students, and style is gradu- 
 ally more and more regarded, still the translator's dexterity 
 remains a special dexterity, and does not amount to the 
 whole art of composition. Translation is continually strain- 
 ing and stretching our faculty of language in many ways, 
 and necessarily imparts to it a high degree of a certain 
 kind of vigour ; but the i)vecise power that will be of 
 most use to us for the purposes of life it does not, by 
 itself, give, and it even causes us to form habits adverse to 
 the ultimate acquirement of that power. Teaching the art 
 of Rhetoric by means of translation only, is like teaching 
 a man to climb trees in order that he may be an elegant 
 dancer.^ 
 
 I have allowed the efficacy of translation in teaching 
 English expression ; it must also be said that it develops 
 very sufficiently the sense of one kind of excellence of form 
 in all the more intelligent and appreciative minds : I mean 
 of minute excellence, the beauty of single words and phrases. 
 It does this simply because it enforces a close and reverent 
 examination of masterpieces. "We are apt to neglect many 
 excellences in writings that we read with ease, simply 
 because we read them with ease ; and as we are forced in 
 these times to read much hastily, we find some trouble 
 in forming a habit of reading worthy things as they 
 deserve. The best training for such a habit is to read 
 fine compositions in some foreign language. But it must 
 be remarked that it is only at a certain stage in a youth's 
 
 ^ The conclusions of a thorongli-going advoc;itf of classical eihic.ition in 
 (rermany art^ as follows : " Das Uebersetzen der autiken Meisterwerke ist eine 
 Scliule fiir die Gewandtheit und Geilietrenbeit des Ausdrncks. wie es keiue 
 zweite gibt. Die Vcrirrinig aber, zu der diese Uebungen verkehit betrit-ben 
 fiihren kcinnten, die steife Naclibildung des griechiselien und rdiiiisclien Sj>rach- 
 geistcs, mit Verletzung des Deutschen, diese Verirrung winl verhiltet durcb 
 das Leseu unserer deutschen Klassiker. . . . Uni den Schiiler ziir richtigen 
 Ordnung der Gedanken anzuleiten, werden zu den Uebersetzungen aus den 
 alteu Versucbe in eignen deutschen Ausarbeitungen liiuzutreten niiissen." — 
 Raiimer, Oeschichte der Fddagogik. And this seems to me a well-balanced view 
 of the question.
 
 298 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 progress that Latin and Greek begins to give this training. 
 In many cases the boy (and even the undergraduate) never 
 becomes able to extract and feed on the beauties of his 
 authors. A mind exhausted with linguistic struggles is not 
 in a state to receive delicate literary impressions : instead 
 of being penetrated with the subtle and simple graces of 
 form, it is filled to the brim with thoughts of gender, 
 quantity, tertiary predicates, uses of the subjunctive 
 mood. 
 
 The training in sesthetic perception is thus by no means 
 general, and it is, as I have before pointed out, very incom- 
 plete. But such as it is, it seems to me to be conveyed 
 much more satisfactorily in the process of translation, 
 than in that which is generally supposed to teach it, com- 
 position in Greek and Latin. We are told that a boy 
 " cannot have appreciated the delicacy, taste, or the feeling 
 of his models in literature, if he have not in some degree 
 learned, from his own clumsy efforts and occasional better 
 successes, at how almost immeasurable distance they stand 
 from the rude rough things which otherwise he might be 
 led to compare with tliem." I have spoken of the false 
 and distorted view of literary excellence that this gives. A 
 thoughtful boy feels the hardship of being made to imitate 
 persons who have so unfair an advantage over him as the 
 writers in a language now dead. An ambitious boy often 
 loses all delicacy and truth of taste in the effort to assimi- 
 late all " useful " words and phrases which, however bad in 
 taste they may be, will at least decorate and set off his own 
 " rude rough things." The assertion that masterpieces can- 
 not be appreciated without an effort to imitate them seems 
 to me contrary to common sense, to our experience in 
 our own laim'uao-e, to our universal practice in studving 
 foreign literatures, and to the analogy of other arts.^ And 
 the imitation that is encouraged at schools in the process 
 of verse-writing is the very worst sort of imitation ; it is 
 
 ^ Tliere is some reason for Tirgiiig that a counoisseiir in painting should have 
 handled the pencil and the brush. But this is surely not in order to improve his 
 taste, but to teach him closeness and correctness of observation, without which, in 
 so directly imitative an art, a sense of beautiful effect may be misleading.
 
 xn THE THEORY Of CLASSICAL EDUCATION 299 
 
 something which, if it were proposed in respect of any other 
 models than these, we should at once reject as intolerably- 
 absurd. 
 
 There is much more to be said for the exercise of writing 
 elegant Latin prose, though I am not sure that it is not 
 prematurely attempted in our present system of education. 
 I do not think, as I have before said, that even this accom- 
 plishment is at all essential to the most accurate and com- 
 plete knowledge of the Latin language. It cannot be too 
 much insisted, that the faculty of reading a language and 
 that of composing in it are almost entirely distinct, and 
 have to be acquired separately. A development of the 
 latter faculty tends, no doubt, to improve the former to a 
 certain degree ; but it is a very roundabout way of improving 
 it ; if our object is to learn to read and translate, the time 
 would be much better spent in reading and translating. I 
 quite admit that by simply reading, without much sustained 
 effort to translate, a language so remote from our own in its 
 idiom as the Latin, a habit of loose apprehension is formed, 
 and not only the refinements of expression are lost, but 
 many mistakes are made in the substantial signification of 
 sentences. But I should urge that written translation 
 carefully looked over is, as a remedy for lax habits of 
 reading, very far superior to any amount of composition. 
 Perhaps also too much has been made of the rhetorical 
 utility of writing Latin prose : and too little of the logical 
 training given to maturer students by the process of trans- 
 lation from English into Latin. The close and prolonged 
 meditation over familiar words and expressions, which the 
 effort to reproduce their full substance in an alien and ditiicult 
 tongue entails, imparts a very delicate discrimination of the 
 exact import of these current phrases. Moreover, the effort 
 to write so extremely synthetical a language as the Latin 
 is very beneficial to an Englishman, as teaching him much 
 
 ^ I have previously noticed the only function for which composition seems 
 to me prt- feral )K' to any other exercise — that of fixing firmly in the miml the 
 grammar and the commoner rules of usatre, whioh we require to have firmly 
 fixed l)efore we can read with ease and security. It does not seem to me indis- 
 pensable even for this function ; but it is probably a distinct abridgment of labour-.
 
 300 ESS A VS AND ADDRESSES Xll 
 
 about the real connexions of thought, the logical inter- 
 dependence of sentences, which the analytical tendencies of 
 his own language prevent his noticing. With reference to 
 the rhetorical utility of this exercise, I will quote some 
 remarks of Dr. Moberly, with which I partly agree, but 
 which seem to me much too unqualified. " It is a very 
 great part of the benefit to be derived from writing Latin 
 prose, that a boy learns thence to write prose in any lan- 
 guage. . . . He is taught what constitutes a sentence ; how 
 much meaning he may put into a sentence ; how many 
 clauses a sentence will bear. . . . One of the most common 
 faults in composing English is that of stringing clauses upon 
 clauses, without heeding the necessary rules of periodic 
 structure, ... I do not wish to recommend the building up 
 of elaborate sentences after the manner of the writers of the 
 seventeenth century, but I wish to observe that the shpshod 
 style of modern English, with its loose clauses and involved 
 parentheses, would be greatly corrected by a careful course 
 of original composition in Latin. . . . Loose ungoverned 
 clauses, dissimilar nominatives, and verbs hung together by 
 unmeaning ' ands,' no less than mixed metaphors and 
 impossible figures, will not go into Latin. ' Try it in Latin,' 
 might often suggest to a young writer the absurdity of what 
 may seem to be rather fine in English. . . . The boy (who 
 can write Latin) has obtained a master -secret which he 
 can apply to many a difficult lock besides." There runs 
 through all this the erroneous idea, which is pointed in the 
 last sentence, that Latin style forms a kind of skeleton-key, 
 or universal touchstone, for all other styles. Xo doubt by 
 teaching any style thoroughly, we also teach, to a certain 
 extent, how to penetrate the mysteries of any new style. 
 But each language requires its own art of rhetoric ; the 
 " rules of periodic structure " are special for each : the 
 questions, " What constitutes a sentence?" etc., are answered 
 as differently as possible in different languages. In some 
 important points (mentioned by Dr. Moberly) practice in 
 Latin forms a specially useful corrective to faults in English 
 — it is like showing blemishes by a magnifying-glass : some
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 301 
 
 things that aru bad in Enghsh are clearly seen tu be 
 inadmissible in Latin. Dut precisely the same is true of 
 French. Either language, properly used, may be made to 
 improve our style iu our own ; any language (and not least 
 these two), if carelessly used, may spoil it. It is indis- 
 pensable that practice in writing the vernacular should 
 proceed imri imsm with the practice in an alien tongue, 
 and receive as careful attention. 
 
 Again, Latin is a language in which the rhythmical effects 
 are broad, palpable, easy to apprehend. This is also true 
 of English, and (however hopeless it is in our broken utter- 
 ance to emulate the continuous music of the more syn- 
 thetical language) we might educate the ear very thoroughly 
 by a careful study of our own masters of eloquence. Still, 
 writing Latin, at a stage when elegance can be made a 
 prominent object, seems well adapted to assist this educa- 
 tion ; and of course we attain a larger view of melody in 
 general, by the study of literary models so widely different 
 from our own. 
 
 Hardly any of the reasons that I have enumerated can 
 be urged in favour of writing Greek prose. Useful as the 
 Greek language is to teach subtlety and delicacy of thought, 
 it is so much more lax in its laws of expression and structure 
 than the Latin, that it has very little of the corrective 
 effect of this latter upon English composition. Besides, one 
 or two most charming and impressive Greek writers are 
 exceedingly bad models. It will sound a paradox to 
 mention Plato. Still, a style which is an intentional imita- 
 tion (often an exaggeration) of the flexible and irregular 
 movement of conversational utterances, can hardly be a 
 good pattern for ordinary prose. Thucydides, again, with 
 all the wonderful weight and pregnancy of his words, is the 
 product of what few will deny to have been a thoroughly 
 vicious school of rhetoric ; and I think the unqualified 
 admiration with which docile boys are, by many educators, 
 led to regard his writing, frequently tends to injure or perplex 
 the natural development of their taste. Besides, we are 
 naturally very little sensible to the rhythm of Greek prose
 
 302 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 (which may perhaps be accounted for by our manner of 
 reading it). It is hard for a boy even to pretend to 
 himself that he appreciates the melody of even Demo- 
 sthenes. 
 
 But, if it were granted that Greek composition supplied 
 as valuable a training as Latin, there would be very little 
 to be said for adding the one accomplishment to the other. 
 We thereby burden the memory with much additional 
 material, while we give the logical and rhetorical faculties 
 but little additional training. It is becoming more and more 
 evidently important in classical education to save time, 
 without lowering the standard of excellence in the work 
 required. One easy method of doing this is to reduce the 
 number of the kinds of composition cultivated. 
 
 On the whole, we are led to the conclusion that all these 
 processes form a one-sided and incomplete training in the 
 use of English, and require to be supplemented by some 
 careful and independent teaching of English composition. 
 It seems equally true that, in order to insure that complete 
 view of the relation of language to thought, which, if we 
 spend so much time in linguistic studies, we may fairly 
 expect to insure, we can hardly dispense with some 
 direct teaching of English. The immediate task set before 
 a boy in all tiie processes of classical education is to ascer- 
 tain exactly the equivalence of two languages, not the 
 relation of either to thought and fact. It is impossible that 
 he should not indirectly gain much insight into this rela- 
 tion ; but it is not impossible that in the case of many 
 scattered words and phrases, he may learn to fit one lan- 
 guage to another without expressing a really clear idea in 
 either. Moreover, he reads at a time such small portions of 
 the ancient authors, that there is very little opportunity for 
 teaching him to grasp a long and elaborate argument as a 
 whole ; for training him quickly to apprehend the bearing 
 not only of sentence on sentence, but of paragraph on para- 
 graph. Again, just as it was urged that the appreciation of 
 English literature, though it might perhaps be left to nature 
 in the case of boys brought up by intellectual parents in a
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 303 
 
 literary atmosphere, requires to be directly taught to boys 
 witliout these advantages : so it may be said that the same boys 
 are in danger of never learning a considerable portion of the 
 English vocabulary. I do not exactly mean teclmical terms, 
 but the half-technical, the philosophical, language which 
 thoughtful men habitually use in dealing with abstract sub- 
 jects. Of some of these terms such a boy may pick up a 
 loose and vague comprehension from ordinary conversation, 
 novels, and newspapers ; but he will generally retain 
 sufficient ignorance of them to make the perusal of all diffi- 
 cult and profound works more weary and distasteful than 
 their subject-matter alone would make them. II" English 
 authors were read in schools so carefully that a boy was 
 kept continually ready to explain words, paraphrase sen- 
 tences, and summarise arguments ; if the prose authors 
 chosen gradually became, as the boy's mind opened, more 
 difficult and more philosophical in their diction ; if, at the 
 same time, in the teaching of natural science, a gi-eat part 
 of the technical pliraseology (from which the main stream 
 of the language is being continually enriched) was 
 thoroughly explained to him, — then we might feel that, by 
 direct and indirect teaching together, we had imparted a 
 complete grasp of what is probably the completest instru- 
 ment of thought in the world.^ I have admitted that, in the 
 first stage in the analysis of language (assuming that we are 
 right to begin it as early as we do now) the intervention of 
 a foreign language may be valuable, in order that each step 
 in knowledge may be felt as an increase of power. But I 
 think that the last and crowning stage of this analysis, 
 where the learner's view of the relation of language to 
 thought is to be made as complete and profound as possible, 
 being abstract and difficult, and involving a considerable 
 
 ^ Mr. Johnson, of Eton, in liis interesting evidence before the Public Schools 
 Commission (see Report, vol iii. p. 159), expresses the opinion that, in the 
 process of more careful cultivation of French, the English language might be 
 (as he phrases it) "used, up," and all its terms explained; whereas it is 
 impossible to use it up in translation from Greek and Latin. Tliis suggestion 
 seems to me valuable and important, but I should still rely more on the direct 
 teaching I .speak of. tliough there is no reason why the two should not be 
 combined.
 
 304 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xil 
 
 strain on the reflective faculty, is generally best taught 
 in the most familiar language, and therefore in the 
 vernacular. 
 
 I hope that I have shown my anxiety not to underrate 
 the power over language developed by learning a foreign 
 tongue, and especially one very alien in its laws and 
 structure to our own. But I do not think it has been ever 
 shown that this mode of development of our faculty of 
 speech is absolutely necessary, or even, with reference to 
 the place which language occupies in our life, obviously 
 desirable. The normal function of language is not to 
 represent another language, but to express and communicate 
 facts. Scientific men are justly told by the classicists that 
 all their discoveries would be useless without lan^uacre ; and 
 the answer that the most inarticulate discoverers have 
 generally found means to communicate their message to 
 mankind, though a natural rejoinder, is not complete for 
 our present purpose, for this inarticulateness is precisely the 
 sort of evil which education ought to remedy. To describe 
 a fact or series of facts methodically, accurately, perspicu- 
 ously, comes by nature to some people, just as eloquence 
 does ; but it requires to be taught carefully to others. Only 
 it is hard to see why the study of language, in this sense, 
 should be separated at all from the study of subjects ; why, 
 as " things " cannot be taught without " words," the use of 
 words should not be learnt pari imssu with the knowledge 
 of things. Indeed, it must be so learned to some extent. 
 The only question is, whether care and attention shall be 
 bestowed on the process ; whether the scientific teacher 
 shall be content that his pupil should make it evident to 
 him that his mind has grasped ideas, or whether he shall 
 insist on those ideas being adequately expressed. If he 
 does this latter, he will give gradually a training in language 
 sufficient, not only for the ordinary uses in life, but even 
 for the purposes of most professional students. The delicate 
 perception of subtle distinctions which a good classical 
 education superadds is an intellectual luxury that ought not 
 to be despised, but may easily be overvalued.
 
 xn THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCAl^IOX 305 
 
 We have now to consider whether, in the acquisition of 
 linguistic and literary knowledge, and linguistic and literary 
 dexterity, by the various processes that we have been con- 
 sidering, there is really given to all the mental faculties a 
 most complete and harmonious training ; — and, if not, where 
 the training appears defective and one-sided, and what the 
 natural supplement is. There can be no doubt, I think, that 
 the training, as far as it goes, is strong and eflective, and there 
 is no doubt, too, that it is much more varied than its 
 depreciators are willing to allow. Indeed, it is curious 
 that so many men of science fail to perceive that the study 
 of language up to a certain point is very analogous in its 
 effect on the mind to the study of any of the natural history 
 sciences. In either case, the memory has to be loaded with a 
 mass of facts, which must remain to the student arbitrary 
 and accidental facts, affording no scope to the faculties of 
 judgment and generalisation. This is the weak point of 
 either study, regarded as an exercise of the reason, and 
 makes it desirable that the initiation into either should take 
 place early in life. But, as in natural science, so in lan- 
 guage, there is a large amount of material that not only 
 exercises the memory, but enforces constant attention and 
 perpetual close comparison : rules and generalisations have 
 to be borne in mind, as well as isolated facts ; habits of 
 accuracy and quickness in applying them are rapidly 
 developed, and the important faculty of judgment is per- 
 petually educed, trained, and stimulated. And the remark I 
 quoted from a French writer is most just, that the judgment 
 is exercised " in all its forms, both logical and non-logical." 
 In applying each newly learnt rule, it acts at first deliber- 
 ately, by an express process of reasoning, afterwards instinct- 
 ively, by an implicit process. I think, however, the common 
 statement, that in learning a language the mind is exercised 
 in induction, requires much qualification. The mind of the 
 matured, the professional scholar, is so exercised, because he 
 stands on a level with the authors of his grammars and 
 dictionaries, and from time to time observes new rules of 
 usage which they have not noted. But the boy, or youth, 
 
 X
 
 3o6 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 learning his lesson with ample grammar and dictionaries, is 
 not, or is very rarely, called upon to perform any such 
 process. For each doubtful case that comes before him his 
 books and memory combined soon furnish him with an 
 abundance, a plethora of formulae : ^ he has only to choose 
 the right one. In making this choice, besides close attention 
 and delicate discrimination, an unconscious tact, a trained 
 instinct, combines to guide him, and, by applying a mental 
 raagnifying-glass to this tact or instinct, we may discover in 
 it rudimentary inductive processes ; but we might find the 
 same in the mental operations of every skilled artisan, and 
 it is perhaps misleading to dignify them by the name. 
 Besides this training of the cognitive faculties, the c^eati^'e 
 are also, as we have seen, developed. In composition, the 
 boy applies the same rules, by the aid of which he has 
 analysed complex products of speech, to form similar pro- 
 ducts for himself ; and as in the former case he acted under 
 the guidance of a gradually developing scientific tact, so in 
 this he works under the influence of a slowly educed 
 sesthetic instinct. He is taught to make an effort to be an 
 artist in a material hard to manipulate, and the benefit of 
 this training will, it is presumed, abide with him in what- 
 ever material he has afterwards to work. 
 
 If, then, say the advocates of classics, we offer a study 
 of literature which at the same time combines scientific and 
 artistic training, why is not the completeness of our system 
 admitted, and why are we asked to introduce any new 
 element except for the vulgar reason that it would be more 
 useful ? Simply because each element of the training is 
 not (at any rate taken alone) the best thing of its kind or 
 the thing we most want. We may allow that the education 
 is many-sided : still, if it is defective on each side, this many- 
 sidedness will not count much in its favour. And the very 
 fact that the same instrument is made to serve various educa- 
 tional purposes, which seems at first sight a very plausible 
 
 ^ If a boy could be more debarred from grammars and dictionaries, there would 
 naturally be more induction in the process of learning the language. But the 
 efforts that have been made in this direction (though deserving of all attention) 
 do not seem as yet to have been conspicuously successful.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 307 
 
 argument in its favour, is really, tur the uiajoriLy of boys, a 
 serious disadvantage. in the actual process of education 
 one or other of the purposes is continually sacrificed. Some 
 boys with strong taste fur literature and natural power 
 of expression pass with moderate success through their 
 classical work by means of their literary tact alone, and 
 get, after the first rudiments of grammar are acquired, very 
 little training in close observation or accurate reasoning. 
 But with the greater number (especially of boys who do not 
 go to the University) the case is reversed. The mind, 
 exhausted with the labours of language, imbibes miserably 
 little of the lessons of literature. And here I may observe 
 that some educational reformers have committed a most 
 disastrous error — an error that might have been fatal, if 
 anything could be fatal, to their cause, in allowing the 
 notion to become current, that there is a sort of antagonism 
 between science and literature, that they are presented 
 as alternative instruments of education, between which a 
 choice has to be made. It is so evident that if one or other 
 must be abandoned, if we must inevitably remain either 
 comparatively ignorant of the external world, or compara- 
 tively ignorant of the products of the human mind, all but a 
 few exceptional natures must choose that study which best 
 fits them for communion with their fellow-men. But I 
 absolutely deny this incompatibility : nor do I think it 
 would ever have occurred to any one except for the 
 strange illusion that in the age in which we live classics 
 must necessarily be the " substratum," " basis," " backbone " 
 (or whatever analogous metaphor is used) of a literary 
 education : and that therefore we must leave on one side 
 every other form of literature with the view of imparting 
 as much classics as possible. The consequence is that half 
 the undergraduates at our Universities, and a larger propor- 
 tion of the boys at all (except perhaps one or two) of our 
 public schools, if they have received a literary education at 
 all, have got it for themselves : the fragments of Greek and 
 Latin that they have struggled through have not given it 
 them. If so many of our most expensively educated youth
 
 3o8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 regard athletic sports as the one conceivable mode of enjoy- 
 ing leisure : if so many professional persons confine their 
 extra-professional reading to the newspapers and novels : if 
 the middle-class Englishman (as he is continually told) is 
 narrow, unrefined, conventional, ignorant of what is really 
 good and really evil in human life ; if (as an uncompro- 
 mising writer ^ says) " he is the tool of bigotry, the echo of 
 stereotyped opinions, the victim of class prejudices, the great 
 stumbling-block in the way of a general diffusion of higher 
 cultivation in this country " — it is not because these per- 
 sons have had a literary education, which their " invincible 
 brutality" has rendered inefficacious : it is because the educa- 
 tion has not been (to them) literary : their minds have been 
 simply put through various unmeaning linguistic exercises. 
 It is not surprising that simple-minded people have thought 
 that since a complete study of Latin and Greek was felt by 
 some ' of those who had successfully pursued it to have been 
 (along with the other reading that they had spontaneously 
 absorbed) a fine literary education, therefore half as much 
 Latin and Greek ought to produce about half as much of 
 the same kind of effect ; and that when they see the 
 education on the whole to be a failure, instead of demand- 
 ing more literature as well as more science, they cry for 
 less literature. But the time seems to have come for us to 
 discern and repair this natural mistake. Let us demand 
 instead that all boys, whatever be their special bent and 
 destination, be really taught literature : so that as far as is 
 possible, they may learn to enjoy intelligently poetry and 
 eloquence : that their interest in history may be awakened, 
 stimulated, guided : that their views and sympathies may 
 be enlarged and expanded by apprehending noble, subtle, 
 and profound thoughts, refined and lofty feelings : that some 
 comprehension of the varied development of human nature 
 may ever after abide with them, the source and essence of 
 a truly humanising culture. Thus in the prosecution of 
 
 ' Dr. Doualdson. 
 
 "^ I say advisedly "some." Many successfully trained scholars feel very 
 differently witli regard to their training.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 309 
 
 their special study or runction, while their energy will be 
 even stimulated, their views and aims will be more intel- 
 ligent, more central ; and therefore their work, if less 
 absorbing, not less effective. 
 
 If this be done, it is a subordinate question what parti- 
 cular languages we learn. We must allow all weight to the 
 advantages which a dead and diflicult language has, as an 
 instrument of training, over a modern and easy one,^ But 
 we must remember that it is a point of capital importance 
 that instruction in any language should be carried to the 
 point at which it really throws open a literature : while it 
 is not a point of capital importance that any particular 
 literature should be so thrown open. 
 
 The defects of the usual exercises in Greek and Latin 
 composition, as an artistic training, have been incidentally 
 noticed ; and the disadvantages of verse composition in 
 particular are pointed out elsewhere in this volume.^ We 
 must not forget, however, that the place w^hich these exer- 
 cises fill in education must be filled iw some way or other ; 
 the boy must be taught to exercise his productive faculty, 
 and to exercise it in a regulated, methodical manner. 
 In the later stage of education, when discursive thought on 
 general and abstract themes may properly be demanded, 
 essays and careful answers to comprehensive questions seem 
 to constitute the best mode of developing this faculty, as 
 attention may thus be paid to style and substance at the 
 same time. In the earlier stages we require easier exercises 
 
 ^ I think there would be a great advantage in combining a difficult with an 
 easy lanjjuage. The more facile conquest a boy would make over one, might 
 encourage him in his harder struggle. Of course, for this, or any other 
 valuable result to be attained, the easy language must be studied with xs 
 much attention and respect as the hard one. This is one of the numerous 
 reasons for selecting French and Latin as the languages to be taught in early 
 education. Another re;xson for teaching them together is their relation to 
 each other and to English. (See Professor M. Miiller's evidence before the 
 Public Schools Commission, vol. iv. p. 396.) This eminent scholar there illus- 
 trates the way in which the ru^liments of Comjiarative Philology might be 
 taught by comparing wonls in the tliree languages, and ventures to assert that 
 '•an hour a-week so .-jient, would save ten hours in teaching French and 
 Latin." 
 
 - [The volume in which this essay originally appeared. The essay referred 
 to in the text is that On Greek and Latin Verse Conijiosifi'^n as a General Branch 
 of Education, by the Rev. F. W. Farrar. — Ed.]
 
 3IO ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 in English prose, such as narratives and descriptions, drawn 
 from experience or imagination, or freely compiled from 
 authors read ; the teaching of physical science would give 
 occasion to descriptions of a different kind ; the history 
 lesson would suggest orations and declamations at appro- 
 priate points, so that rhythm and melody might be naturally 
 taught. It is a doubtful point whether all boys should be 
 exercised in producing poetry ; it is hardly doubtful that 
 they should be exercised, if at all, in a material less difficult 
 than Latin or Greek is, up to a very advanced stage of its 
 acquisition. Perhaps translations into English poetry of 
 fine passages in foreign authors might be occasionally 
 required from all ; and original poetry, encouraged only 
 by prizes. If, too, it is once admitted that production of 
 the kind that develops tlie .Tsthetic faculty is to be encour- 
 aged, if the boy is to be stimulated to produce beautiful things, 
 there seems no adequate reason why the brain alone should 
 be exercised in such production ; the training of the hand 
 and eye which drawing affords is probably desirable for all 
 boys up to a certain point ; while after this point, boys who 
 are absolutely unproductive in language, may develop their 
 sense of beauty in pictorial art. 
 
 Then remains the training of the cognitive faculties 
 which the process of mastering the classical languages 
 supplies. We have seen that this training is in many 
 respects very efficacious, and that it (unlike many supposed 
 utilities of classics) is really given, to some extent, to most 
 boys.^ As I have said, it appears to me very similar to 
 that which would be supplied by one or more of the 
 physical sciences, carefully selected, limited, and arranged 
 for educational purposes. It is clear that this latter 
 study develops memory (both in extent and accuracy), close 
 attention, delicate discrimination, judgment, both instinctive 
 and deliberate, the faculty of rapidly applying the right 
 general formula to the solution of any particular problem. 
 
 ^ If the pernicious influence of Bohn's Library could be entirely excluded, 
 this might be stated more strongly. But it must never be forgotten, in dis- 
 cussing this question, that the training afforded by classics read with translations 
 is very diflfereut from that aflbrded by classics read without them.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 311 
 
 1 iua not in a position to institute a close comparison of 
 the efficacy of the two kinds of study in educating those 
 faculties of the mind which both in common call into exer- 
 cise.^ But the study of lanj^^uage seems to have certain 
 distinct advantages. In the first place, tlie materials here 
 supplied to the student are ready to liand in inexhaustible 
 abundance and diversity. Any page of any ancient autlior 
 forms for the young student a string of problems sufliciently 
 complex and diverse to exercise his memory and judgment 
 in a great variety of ways. Again, from the exclusion of 
 the distractions of the external senses, from the simplicity 
 and definiteness of the classification which the student has 
 to apply, from the distinctness and obviousness of the points 
 that he is called on to observe, it seems probable that this 
 study calls forth (especially in young boys) a more concen- 
 trated exercise of the faculties it does develop than any 
 other could easily do. If loth the classical languages were 
 to cease to be taught in early education, valuable machinery 
 would, I think, be lost, for which it would be somewhat 
 difficult to provide a perfect substitute. 
 
 But the very exclusions and limitations that make the 
 study of language a better gymnastic than physical science, 
 make it, on the other hand, so obviously inferior as a pre- 
 paration for the business of life, that its present position in 
 education seems, on this ground alone, absolutely untenable. 
 The proof of this I cannot attempt adequately to develop ; 
 but it seems appropriate to indicate the more obvious 
 reasons, as they are still ignored by many intelligent 
 persons. One point the advocates of the classical system 
 sometimes admit by saying " that it does not develop the 
 faculties of external observation " ; and the more open- 
 minded of them would desire that these faculties should be 
 somehow or other exercised, without interfering with the 
 
 ^ It U much to be wished tliat some competent person, equally aciiuainteil 
 with languages and science, and with equal experience in teaching the rudiments 
 of both, would carefully make such a comparison. At firesent, the Ijest 
 exponents of the effect of either study generally speak' of the other with com- 
 parative ignorance. It is, perhajjs, an indirect testimony to the ailviuitages of 
 scientific education, that this ignorance is more frequently combined with con- 
 temptuous dogmatism in the case of the classical advocate.
 
 312 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xn 
 
 " more important part of education." But this is a most 
 inadequate view of the question. It is not enough that the 
 intelligence should be trained at one time and in one way, 
 and the senses exercised separately ; we require that the 
 intelligence should be taught to exercise the important 
 functions of which we have spoken in combination with the 
 senses ; and we require this, because this is the normal 
 mode of the action of the intelligence in human life. It is 
 not enough that we should learn to see things as they are, 
 important as this is : we must also train the memory to 
 record accurately, and the imagination to represent faith- 
 fully, the facts observed : we must learn to exercise the 
 judgment and apply general formuhe to particular phe- 
 nomena, not only when these phenomena are broadly and 
 clearly marked out (as they are when we come armed with 
 complete grammars and dictionaries to the interpretation 
 of foreign speech), but also when they are obscure, hard to 
 detect, " embedded in matter," mixed up with a mass of 
 other phenomena, unimportant for our purpose, which we 
 have to learn to neglect. The materials on which our 
 intelligence has ordinarily to act, even when we are think- 
 ing, and not observing, are ideas of the external world, 
 mixed products of our mind and senses : and it must never 
 be forgotten that the training of the eye and hand given by 
 the various branches of physical science, tlie development 
 of our sense of form, colour, weight, etc., is not merely a 
 training of these external organs, but of our imaginative 
 and conceptive faculties also, and will inevitably make our 
 thinking more clear and effective. Similarly, the training 
 in classification which most immediately fits us for life is 
 that which the natural history sciences afford. In learning 
 them the student is taught not only how to apply a classifi- 
 cation ready made, but also, to some extent, how to make a 
 classification. He is taught to deal with a system where 
 the classes merge by fine gradations into one another, and 
 where the boundaries are often hard to mark ; a system 
 that is progressive, and therefore in some points rudimentary, 
 shifting, liable to continual modification ; along with the
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 313 
 
 immense ^•alue of a carefully framed technical phraseology 
 he is also taught the inevitable inadequacy of such a jjhrase- 
 ology to represent the variety of nature ; and these are just 
 the lessons that he requires to bear in mind in applying 
 method and arrangement to any part of the business of life.^ 
 And finally, above all, the study of language does not in the 
 least tend to impart the most valualjle and important of all 
 the habits that we combine under the conception of scientific 
 training : the habit, as is generally said, " of reasoning from 
 eflects to causes, and from causes to effects " ; it nught be 
 more distinctly defined as the habit of correctly combining 
 in imagination absent phenomena (whether antecedent or 
 consequent) with phenomena present in perception. Physics 
 and Chemistry are the most natural and efficacious way of 
 teaching boys from some part of any of the invariable series 
 of nature to infer and supply the rest ; their place could not 
 be adequately occupied by History and Literature, if ever so 
 philosophically taught ; as History and Literature are taught 
 at present, this training is simply absent from the classical 
 curriculum. 
 
 Asain, the advanta^ that the minds of the educated 
 might obtain from a sufficient variety of exercise is lost 
 under the present exclusive system. This absence of 
 variety is indeed sometimes claimed as a gain ; we are 
 solemnly warned of the paramount necessity of studying 
 one thing well. And certainly the encyclop;edic courses of 
 study which some theorists have sketched out have given 
 practical men an easy victory over them : it is so easy to 
 show that tliis encyclopaedic instruction would impart a 
 great deal of verbal, but very little real, knowledge. But 
 " est quadam prodire ten us, si non datur ultra." No doubt 
 the studies of boyhood must be carefully limited and 
 selected ; but they may be representative of the diversity of 
 
 1 Cuvier, speaking of his own study, says: — "Every disLnission wliich sup- 
 poses a cla.ssilication of facts, every research which reiiuires a distribution of 
 matters, is performed after the same manner ; and he who has cultivated this 
 science merely for amusement, is surprised at the facilities it aftbrds for dis- 
 entangling all kinds of affairs." 
 
 1 iio not think a student of languages could honestly claim an analogous 
 advantage for his own pursuit.
 
 314 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xil 
 
 the intellectual world in which men live. A boy must not 
 be overwhelmed in a mass of details : he ought to be forced 
 by all possible educational artifices to apprehend facts and 
 not to repeat words; but in order that he may attain a 
 thoroughly cultivated judgment according to the standard 
 of our age, his education must be many-sided, he must be 
 initiated into a variety of methods.^ And it may be observed 
 tliat under the present system neither the advantages of 
 concentration, nor the advantages of variety, are gained. A 
 boy, in passing from Greek to Latin, has not sufficient 
 change to give any relief to his faculties, but he has 
 sufficient to prevent him from making as rapid progress 
 in either language as he would make if he studied either 
 alone. The transition from the study of language to the 
 study of external nature would give so much relief, that it 
 would be possible for a boy to spend more time in his 
 studies on the whole, without danger of injurious fatigue. 
 A still more important advantage of variety of studies is 
 its certain effect in diminishing the number of boys who 
 take no interest in their school-work : a net is spread that 
 catches more ; and it is generally found that if a boy 
 becomes interested, and therefore successful, in one part of 
 his work, a stimulus is felt throughout the whole range of 
 his intellectual efforts. 
 
 In general the advocates of classical education, while 
 they rightly insist that educational studies should be 
 capable of disciplining the mind, forget that it is equally 
 desirable that they should be capable of stimulating it. 
 The extreme ascetics among them even deny this. Thus 
 Mr. Clark ^ says, " it is a strong recommendation to any 
 subject to affirm that it is dry and distasteful." I cannot 
 
 ' When people talk of "training the memory, judgment," etc., they often 
 ignore the difference between a general and special development of these 
 faculties. There is great danger lest, if trained to a pitch in one material 
 only, they will not work very well in any other material. The mind acquires, 
 as Mr. Faraday says, a certain bent and tendency, a desire and \villingness 
 to accept ideas of a certain kind, while it becomes slow and languid in deal- 
 ing with ideas of a different kind. Mr. Faraday's evidence of the inferiority 
 of educated men to children in apprehending scientific ideas, is very int^eresting 
 and impressive. (See Report of Public Schools Commission, vol. iv. p. 377.) 
 
 - Canibridge Essays, 1855.
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 315 
 
 lielp thinking that there is some confusion here between 
 " dry " and " hard." No doubt tlie faculties both of mind 
 and body must be kept a sufficient time in strong tension 
 in order to grow to their full strength : but we find in the 
 development of the body that this tension can be longest 
 and most healthily maintained by means of exercises that 
 are sought with avidity.^ Those who have argued that the 
 pursuit of knowledge might be made agreeable to boys, have 
 been somewhat misunderstood by the apologists of existing 
 institutions. They never meant that it could be made 
 pleasant to him as gingerbread is pleasant, but as a football 
 match in the rain, or any other form of violent exercise 
 under difficulties. The " gaudia " of the pursuit of know- 
 ledge are necessarily " severa " : but there seems to be no 
 reason why the relish for them should not be imparted as 
 early as possible. The universality and intensity of the 
 charms of science for boys have been sometimes stated, I 
 admit, with almost comical exaggeration. But it will not 
 be denied that the study of the external world does, on the 
 whole, excite youthful curiosity much more than the study 
 of language. The intellectual advantage of this ought to be 
 set against whatever disciplinary superiority we may attri- 
 bute to the latter instrument. On the moral advantage of 
 substituting, as far as possible, the love of knowledge, as a 
 nobler and purer motive, for emulation and the fear of 
 punishment, I have not space to dilate : but it seems 
 difficult to exaggerate the importance, though we may 
 easily over - estimate the possibility, of developing this 
 sentiment. 
 
 And the superior efficacy of natural science in evoking 
 curiosity is not due entirely, though it is due partly, to the 
 exercise it gives to the external senses as well as the 
 brain. It is due also to the fact that education in physical 
 science is (in the sense in which I have previously used 
 the word) a natural education in the present age. The 
 
 ^ It is curious in contemplating English school life as a whole, to reflect how 
 thoroughly we believe in natural exercises for the body and artificial e.rercises for 
 the mind.
 
 3i6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 book which it opens to the student is not one which he 
 will ever shut up and put by : it is not one that he could 
 easily have ignored. In the age in which we live the 
 external world forces itself in every way, directly and 
 indirectly, upon our observation ; we cannot fail to pick 
 up scraps of what is known about it : sciolism is inevitable 
 to us, unless we avoid it by becoming more than sciolists. 
 The boy's instinct feels this : so that, besides the obvious 
 and primary advantages that a natural system of education 
 has over an artificial one, there is this in addition : it not 
 only teaches what the pupil will afterwards be more glad to 
 know, but what he is at present more willing to learn. We 
 may admit that a knowledge of the processes and results of 
 physical science does not by itself constitute culture : we 
 may admit that an appreciative acquaintance with literature, 
 a grasp of the method as well as the facts of history, is a 
 more important element, and should be more prominent in 
 the thoughts of educators ; and yet feel that culture, without 
 the former element, is now shallow and incomplete. Physical 
 science is now so bound up with all the interests of mankind, 
 from the lowest and most material to the loftiest and most 
 profound : it is so engrossing in its infinite detail, so exciting 
 in its progress and promise, so fascinating in the varied beauty 
 of its revelations : that it draws to itself an ever-increasing 
 amount of intellectual energy; so that the intellectual man 
 who has Ijeen trained without it must feel at every turn his 
 inability to comprehend thoroughly the present phase of 
 the progress of humanity, and his limited sympathy with 
 the thoughts and feelings, labours and aspirations, of his 
 fellow-men. And if there be any who believe that the 
 summit of a liberal education, the crown of the highest 
 culture, is Philosophy — meaning by Philosophy the sus- 
 tained effort, if it be no more than an effort, to frame a 
 complete and reasoned synthesis of the facts of the universe, 
 — on them it may be especially urged how poorly equipped 
 a man comes to such a study, however competent he may 
 be to interpret the thoughts of ancient thinkers, if he 
 has not qualified himself to examine, comprehensively and
 
 xu THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 317 
 
 closely, the womlerful scale of methods by which the human 
 miud has achieved its various degrees of conquest over the 
 world of sense. AVheii the most fascinating of ancient 
 philosophers taught, but the first step of this conquest had 
 been attained. We are told that Plato wrote over the 
 door of his school, " Let no one who is without geometry 
 enter here." Tn all seriousness we may ask the thoughtful 
 men, M'ho believe that Thilosophy can still be best learnt 
 by the study of the Greek masters, to consider what the in- 
 scription over the door should be in the nineteenth century 
 of the Christian era. 
 
 In conclusion, it seems desirable to sum up brieHy 
 the practical changes (whether of omission or supplement) 
 which have been suggested from time to time by a detailed 
 examination of the arguments for the existing system : and 
 at the same time to add one suggestion which, if 1 do not 
 over-estimate its practical value, will very much facilitate 
 the introduction of such other changes as I desire. I think 
 that a course of instruction in our own laniruacre and 
 literature, and a course of instruction in natural science, 
 ought to form recognised and substantive parts of our school 
 system. 1 do not venture to estimate the amount of time 
 that ought to be apportioned to these subjects, but I think 
 that they ought to be taught to all, and taught with as 
 much serious eftbrt as anything else. I think also that, 
 partly for reasons which I have indicated and partly with 
 a view to practical advantages, more stress ought to be 
 laid on the study of French. While advocating these new 
 elements, I feel most strongly the great peril of over- 
 burdening the minds of youth, to their intellectual or 
 physical detriment, or both. From Germany, where the 
 system is now more comprehensive than ours, we hear 
 complaints which show that this evil has arisen. I do not 
 know which is its worst form, that the brains of boys 
 should be perpetually overstrained, or that a number of 
 things should be taught, all inadequately and superficially, 
 so that verbal memory is substituted for real apprehension. 
 A certain amount of time will be gained by the omission of
 
 3i8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xii 
 
 verses as a general branch of education (so that only the 
 few who have a special capacity for such exercises be 
 encouraged to pursue them). But I do not think the time 
 thus gained will suffice ; especially as it is desirable that 
 the study of every language that is studied should be made 
 more complete than it is now. I have before hinted at 
 what appears to me the obvious remedy for the evil I dread 
 — namely, to exclude Greek from the regular curriculum, 
 at least in its earlier stage. The one thing to be set against 
 the many reasons that exist for choosing Latin (if a choice 
 between the two languages is, as I think, inevitable), is the 
 greater intrinsic interest of Greek literature. But I do not 
 think that, if this change were made, Greek literature would 
 be thrown really open to fewer boys. I think that if Latin 
 (along with French and English) was carefully taught up 
 to the age of sixteen (speaking roughly), a grasp of Greek, 
 sufficient for literary purposes, might be attained after- 
 wards much more easily than is supposed ; particularly if 
 at that period (when in the case of all schoolboys the 
 stringency of the general curriculum ought to be considerably 
 relaxed) a proper concentration of energy were insured in 
 the first assault on the rudiments of the language. It is 
 supposed that there is a saving of time in beginning the 
 elements of Greek early. I am inclined to think that very 
 much the reverse is the case, and that if several languages 
 have to be learnt, much time is gained by untying the 
 fagot and breaking them separately. There are two classes 
 for whom the present system of education is more or less 
 natural, — the clergy and persons with a literary bias, and 
 the prospect of sufficient leisure to indulge it amply. The 
 former ought to read Greek literature as a part of their 
 professional training, the latter as a part of a comprehensive 
 study of literary history. Boys with such prospects, and a 
 careful previous training of the kind I advocate, would, on 
 the average, feel, as they approached the last stage of their 
 school life, an interest in Greek strong enough to make 
 them take it in very rapidly. I believe there are one or two 
 living instances of eminent Greek scholars who have begun
 
 XII THE THEORY OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION 319 
 
 to learn the language even later than the time I mention. 
 The experience of students for the Indian Civil Service shows 
 how quickly under a stimulus strong enough to produce the 
 requisite concentration, languages may be acquired more 
 remote from Greek and Latin than Greek is from Latin. 
 The advantage that young children have over even young 
 men in catching a spoken language has led some to infer 
 that they have an equal superiority in learning to read a 
 language that they do not hear spoken : an inference which, 
 I think, is contrary to experience. 
 
 Of the benefit of such a change to all other boys now 
 taught in our public and grammar schools, I need say no 
 more than I have said already. Without such a change 
 their interests (even if the recommendations of the Public 
 School Commissioners be carried into effect generally) will 
 still be sacrificed to the supposed interests of the future 
 clergy and literary men — a great clear loss for a very 
 illusory gain.
 
 XIII 
 IDLE FELLOWSHIPS^ 
 
 {Contemporary Review, April 1876) 
 
 That a real and — within certain limits — a final settlement 
 of the question of University Organisation is seriously 
 contemplated by Her Majesty's Government, is evident 
 from the Bill that has just been introduced for Oxford, 
 and the speeches of the minister introducing it. It is true 
 that the weakness of merely permissive legislation has not 
 been altogether avoided ; and such weakness is peculiarly 
 dangerous here, where the problem is to bring into effective 
 co-operation the action of several distinct and nearly inde- 
 pendent corporations. Still, if the new Commission is 
 united and firm, it can easily provide that the Colleges, 
 while allowed to determine the details of their own reform, 
 shall yet be reconstructed in such a manner as to constitute 
 them harmonious members of one coherent academic system. 
 And the main lines of the reform, towards which public 
 opinion in both Universities has long been steadily tending, 
 have been laid down by Lord Salisbury with much clearness 
 and decision. The " Idle Fellowship " is to become a thing 
 
 ^ [It is with some liesitation that this essay lias been rejjrinted, as the circum- 
 stances under which it was written have changed, and the evils of which it complains 
 have greatly diminished. It was written on the eve of the appointment of the Uni- 
 versity Commission, of which one result has been a great reduction in the number 
 of prize fellowships ; the value of those that remain has been greatly reduced by 
 agi'icultural depression ; and there is now less tendency than there was to give 
 to mathematics and classics an advantage over other subjects in the distribution of 
 fellowships. Still it cannot be said that prize fellowships and the waste of funds 
 involved have altogether disappeared, or that the general educational considera- 
 tions discussed in the essay are less true than they were, so that, on the whole, 
 it has seemed well to republish it. — Ed.] 
 
 320
 
 XIII IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 32 1 
 
 of tlie past ; academic endowments are to be restored to 
 academic uses. How urgently the need of this restoration 
 is felt, in Cambridge at least, is as yet hardly realised by 
 the world outside. This University has for years been 
 struggling and starving in the most pitiable manner, unable 
 to provide decently for the most indispensable functions ; 
 while what are commonly talked and thought of as " her 
 rich endowments " have been distributed among thriving 
 schoolmasters, school-inspectors, rising journalists, barristers 
 full of briefs, and barristers who never look for briefs. 
 Many important branches of study are not represented at 
 all within the limits of the University : several more are 
 inadequately and precariously represented by college lecturers 
 only. The Professorships that do exist, outside the sacred 
 and fruitful precincts of theology, are supported by incomes 
 varying in amount from a third to a fifth of the salary of 
 a county court judge. The utmost economy is unable to 
 provide Cambridge with a sutticieucy even of the ugliest 
 buildings required for scientific teaching and research in 
 the present stage of the progress of knowledge. How these 
 deficiencies are to be supplied, how the different grades of 
 academic teachers and investigators are to be appointed and 
 paid, how the co-operation of University and Colleges is to 
 be organised on a stable and satisfactory basis, are questions 
 requiring much further discussion and much skill and 
 judgment to settle. It would be impertinent in a paper 
 like the present to anticipate summarily the results of the 
 seven years of labour appointed for the new Commission. 
 The task that I have proposed to myself is the much 
 humbler one of examining the actual results of the existing 
 distribution of college endowments ; in order that while its 
 shortcomings and the positive evils that How from it are 
 traced to their proper sources, whatever good is really done 
 by it may be as far as possible secured in the impending 
 redistribution of the fund. For the sake of clearness and 
 precision, I have thought it best to confine the discussion 
 to Cambridge ; though the greater part of it is obviously 
 applicable to both Universities alike. 
 
 Y
 
 322 ESSA yS AND ADDRESSES xiii 
 
 There is no doubt that the Fellowship fund was origi- 
 nally designed for the maintenance of learned leisure : and a 
 considerable part of the confusion of thought that exists 
 on the subject of Fellowships arises from the difficulty of 
 ascertaining how far the original, historical raison d'etre of 
 the institution has actual application and force at the present 
 time ; a difficulty which commonly arises in the case of old 
 institutions of which the working has been subjected to a 
 long gradual process of indefinite customary change, with or 
 without an intermixture of abrupt legal changes. No one 
 of course is so ignorant as to suppose that the majority of 
 existing Fellows of Colleges are persons employing an un- 
 broken leisure in the cultivation of learning. Still there is a 
 vague idea current that resident Fellows at least are in some 
 degree bound to devote themselves to the cultivation of 
 learning ; not legally bound, but morally, as a parish clergy- 
 man is morally bound to take care of the spiritual welfare of 
 his parishioners, though his legal obligation extends only to 
 the performance of certain religious services. All who hold 
 with the present writer that this obligation ought to be 
 made far more stringent and definite, and enforced by more 
 substantial sanctions, cannot but rejoice that even a vague 
 sense of it is still generally recognised. At the same time, 
 it seems impossible consistently to maintain this sense of 
 obligation together with that other view of a Fellowship 
 which regards it as a legitimate assistance in the earlv 
 struggles of a practical career. The duty cannot, without 
 obvious absurdity, be made to depend on the mere choice of 
 residence in Cambridge. If a Fellow who goes to London 
 is employing his time legitimately in writing for news- 
 papers and magazines, how can a Fellow living in Cam- 
 bridge suffer the slightest moral condemnation for giving 
 himself up to similar avocations ? And if any kind of 
 work is morally open to him, however remote from the 
 original purpose of his Fellowship, how is it possible to 
 blame him, qud Fellow, if he prefers polite idleness to all 
 kinds of work ? And hence the obligation to learning has 
 now almost faded from men's minds in spite of tradition.
 
 XI 11 IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 323 
 
 and is only felt by the few who cherish what Mr. Disraeli 
 once called a historical conscience. Under the existing 
 system, the broad common-sense even of academic persons 
 cannot but regard a resident Fellow as a man who, having 
 won the great prize of successful juvenile study, has since 
 in the exercise of a perfectly legitimate choice preferred a 
 limited income, unlimited leisure, and the innocent pleasures 
 of college life to a struggle with the world. If he is 
 advancing knowledge, he is doing so as an amateur, not 
 as his recognised professional work ; if, again, he is not 
 advancing knowledge, the fact may be regretted, but can 
 hardly be charged against him, under the existing conditions 
 of tenure, as a dereliction of duty. 
 
 It is to be observed, however, that the resident Fellows 
 who do not form part of the educational stafi' of the 
 University or the Colleges are a comparatively small 
 minority — so small, indeed, that not a few persons take a 
 difl'erent view from that which we have just discussed ; and 
 conceive Fellowships to be intended, and actually to be 
 operating, as part payment for the service of academic 
 instruction. In a certain sense this view is net incom- 
 patible with the former ; in fact, it must be a prominent 
 feature in any scheme of University reform, that at least 
 the higher part of academic education should be in the 
 hands of persons who are also engaged in independent 
 study and research ; and that their income should consist 
 in part of College Fellowships. If this principle were 
 carried out, it would be almost iudiflerent whether the 
 Fellowships were primarily regarded as salaries for investi- 
 gators or for instructors, as the two functions would be 
 normally combined. At present, however, it is only to a 
 comparatively slight extent true that Fellowships are em- 
 ployed as salaries for teachers. In some Colleges, under 
 the statutes approved by the former Commission, Fellow- 
 ships are allowed to be retained by members of the edu- 
 cational staff of a College, after the time at which their 
 tenure would under ordinary circumstances have terminated. 
 Such Fellowships as are actually held on these terms may
 
 324 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xiii 
 
 legitimately be regarded as endowments used for the pay- 
 ment of teachers ; and the same view may be taken of a 
 few other Fellowships held by University Professors as 
 such ; though since these latter are not regularly and 
 systematically connected with Professorships, but only 
 bestowed on particular Professors by the somewhat arbi- 
 trary and accidental selection of the Colleges, they produce 
 the minimum of effect in the M-ay of attracting able men to 
 the posts. But these two classes taken together form a 
 small minority even of those Fellowships which are held by 
 resident academic teachers. In most cases the remunera- 
 tion that the Fellow receives for his work as a teacher 
 consists entirely in a salary paid over and above his 
 Fellowship, from a fund provided by the fees of under- 
 graduates (with some very trifling supplement from endow- 
 ments). It is the actual and prospective amount of this 
 salary — apart from his Fellowship — which the Fellow 
 compares with the income that could be obtained in some 
 other career, in considering whether or not it is his interest 
 to take part in academic teaching. 
 
 At the same time it must undoubtedly be admitted that 
 the services of the able and highly educated men who form 
 the educational staff of Colleges are obtained at a cheaper 
 rate than would be possible without Fellowships — even 
 apart from the exceptional tenure above noticed, under 
 which the Fellowship is definitely converted into a salary 
 for teaching. In many Colleges certain allowances are 
 regularly made to residents as such : and, even independ- 
 ently of these allowances, a Fellow who has no sj^ecial 
 ground for living elsewhere regards his College as his 
 natural home ; and if he resides there, the most natural 
 thing for him to do, and the easiest way to make a little 
 money, is to take part in teaching. And since his Fellowship 
 alone — as long as it lasts — enables him to live there a Kfe 
 of dignified comfort, with little or no increase of income, it 
 is natural that he should often be content with a compara- 
 tively scanty remuneration for the not very laborious work 
 which it lies in his way to do. Still it must be observed
 
 XIII IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 325 
 
 that this method of organising academic instruction has 
 serious and inevitable (h-awbacks. It is obviously in- 
 expedient that the majority of academic teachers should be 
 appointed by selection not from the whole range of the 
 available educational talent in the country, on the ground 
 of special fitness for their respective departments of the 
 work, but from the small number of persons who constitute 
 in each case the selecting body. The Fellows who become 
 lecturers thus rather choose their work than are chosen for 
 it ; and it may often be said that they choose it rather 
 negatively than positively. Partly the restriction of celi- 
 bacy, and partly the very smallness of the salaries to which 
 I have referred, have commonly prevented college tuition 
 from being regarded as a regular profession. Hence a large 
 proportion of those employed in it have taken it up as a 
 stop-gap, to fill the interval between the completion of their 
 education and their entrance on the main business of their 
 life; and thus can hardly bring to it the intensity and 
 concentration of energy which a vigorous man throws into 
 whatever he has deliberately chosen as his life's work. 
 
 We may conclude then that the existing distribution of 
 Fellowships, while it produces a few amateur students, and 
 enables society to obtain, more cheaply than would other- 
 wise be the case, the services of college tutors and lecturers, 
 yet cannot be held to provide a satisfactory endowment 
 either of learning and research, or of teaching; and still 
 less of that complete academic career which consists in the 
 combination of the two. It is necessary to make this 
 plain, because the proposal to employ the funds of the 
 Colleges in constituting such a career appears to excite 
 surprise in the minds of many who have vaguely supposed 
 that at least a great portion of them were already used for 
 this purpose. Well-informed advocates of the existing 
 svstem are, however, quite aware that — history and tradi- 
 tion notwithstanding — Fellowships are now normally be- 
 stowed not as payments for any present services to society, 
 but as rewards to young men for the past trouble that they 
 have taken in receiving a good education. They maintain
 
 326 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xiii 
 
 such rewards to be desirable in the first place merely as 
 prizes, to draw youths of talent to the Universities, and 
 stimulate and sustain their industry when there ; and 
 secondly, as affording to such youths pecuniary support 
 during the first years of their struggle with the world. 
 This latter argument seems to be the one on which most 
 stress is laid ; and in so far as it is valid at all it seems to 
 become of more importance in proportion as we conceive 
 the distribution of the rest of our educational endowments 
 to reach the ideal perfection which reformers contemplate. 
 In the ladder wdiich is to bear the child of talent upwards 
 from the gutter, the College Fellowship presents itself as 
 the last step ; and it is not unnatural for academic re- 
 formers no less than conservatives to imagine that a serious 
 hiatus would be left if this step were taken away. I think, 
 however, that it will appear on careful consideration that 
 this last round of the ladder is nearly if not quite super- 
 fluous ; and that even if it ought to be constructed at all, 
 it certainly is not the function of academic endowments to 
 furnish it. 
 
 First, however, it is important to remove a certain 
 ambiguity as to the nature of this step. The University 
 does not at present provide a complete preparation for any 
 profession (with the doubtful exception of the profession of 
 education) ; and though it seems desirable that it should 
 adapt its curriculum somewhat more than it at present does 
 to the practical needs of its alumni, there will always be a 
 certain part of the training necessary for any profession 
 which can only be got by serving some kind of apprentice- 
 ship to persons who are actually engaged in it. Hence, 
 even in the case of the ablest men, destined for practical 
 careers, an interval must normally elapse after the taking 
 of their degree, before their education is really completed ; 
 and there are the same grounds for supporting poor men of 
 merit during this period out of educational endowments as 
 there are for giving them exhibitions and scholarships at 
 school and college. I do not now consider whether these 
 grounds are adequate : I merely urge that if eleemosynary
 
 xiii IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 327 
 
 training is to be given at all, it should be given completely. 
 It is a very different thing to continue paying them pensions 
 for some years, when the yiensioners have or ought to have 
 already entered on the work of life, after the most complete 
 training that society can provide. If we consider the 
 matter in the abstract, apart from the historic names and 
 associations which lend, as it were, a picturesque and time- 
 honoured naturalness to the present composition and state 
 of collegiate corporations, it must surely appear very doubt- 
 ful whether such an expenditure of money — not merely of 
 academic funds, but of any funds whatever — is at all 
 desirable in the interests of society ; however agreeable it 
 may be for the young men themselves, who are thus 
 temporarily placed in comfortable circumstances. We can 
 hardly conceive such a distribution of funds coming into 
 existence, except through that slow historic perversion of 
 endowments from their original uses which has actually 
 occurred in the case of our colleges. 
 
 It is urged, as I have said, that young men of talent 
 require the support of these pensions, on account of the diffi- 
 culty they find in earning a livelihood during the early part 
 of their professional career. But this argument, if it is 
 intended to cover the whole case, affords a curious illustration 
 of the fallacy of generalising from a few striking instances. 
 Most university men have heard of one or two prosperous 
 barristers who would not have been able to go to the bar 
 without their Fellowships ; and they have probably never 
 asked themselves how large a proportion of College Fellows 
 have actually adopted careers which in the absence of this 
 peculiar institution would have been closed to them. And 
 yet the argument is eminently one of which the force cannot 
 be ascertained without some quantitative estimate of the 
 results to which it refers. In order to obtain such an 
 estimate, careful statistics ^ have been obtained of the careers 
 of the Fellows of Colleges elected in Cambridge from 1857 
 
 ^ These statistics have been collected by the Rev. H. A. Morgan, Fellow and 
 Tutor [now, 1901, Master] of Jesus College, who has kiudly permitted me to use 
 
 tlieni.
 
 32S ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xiii 
 
 to 1868 inclusive — more than 300 in all. It appears that 
 ratlier more than a fourth of these Fellows have adopted an 
 academic career; most of these are now resident in Cam- 
 bridge, either as holders of college offices or as private tutors, 
 while a few others have obtained professorships elsewhere ; 
 about another fourth have become schoolmasters ; others 
 again have obtained employment not strictly educational but 
 connected with education, as inspectors of schools or clerks 
 in the Privy Council Oftice, or are serving the State as 
 astronomers or geologists. To these cases, which amount to 
 more than half of the whole, the argument just mentioned is 
 obviously inapplicable, because in the competition for these 
 posts the academic distinction for which a Fellowship is 
 given is itself an amply sufficient advantage. The men who 
 are made Fellows are precisely those for whom, however the 
 University were organised, an academic career affording from 
 the outset a sufficient income would be at once open; they 
 are the men for whose assistance the headmasters of our 
 chief public schools compete ; in any decent administration 
 of the public service they are naturally selected for all posts 
 for which academic attainments are required. Thus they 
 are sure of obtaining from the first a better income than 
 their less distinguished contemporaries who still manage to 
 live by their employment ; and there is a peculiar and 
 palpable absurdity in supporting them further by a pension 
 of £300 a year from academic endowments. A few other 
 Fellows, again, join the ever - increasing profession of 
 journalism and magazine-writing — a highly honourable and 
 useful function, but one which no one would wish to support 
 artificially by Fellowships. A few others have been received 
 into houses of business or solicitors' offices ; for them, too, 
 no extraneous source of livelihood seems to be necessary, 
 when once they have entered upon their work. No doubt 
 this entrance cannot be effected without either capital or 
 connexion ; but to suggest that the college revenues should 
 furnish the former would surely be regarded as a redudio ad 
 absurdum of the principle that we are considering. About 
 sixteen per cent of the Fellowships are occupied by parochial
 
 xiii IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 329 
 
 clergy/ whether as holders of college livings or otherwise. 
 The case of these is somewhat different, as it niav he 
 plausibly urged that the incomes of curates (at least) are too 
 small, and that it is an advantage to supplement them from 
 any source. Still even here it seems a rather paradoxical 
 method of remedying the deficiency, to select a few of the 
 more talented of the younger clergy for pensions of about 
 twice the amount of a curate's average salary. Probably 
 no one at the present day would maintain that it is desirable 
 to draw young men of ability into the service of the Church 
 by giving them this large pecuniary advantage over their 
 colleagues ; since the gain to religion of the intellect thus 
 purchased must appear to be very doubtful. The relation 
 of the Church to the Universities is, however, a burning 
 question, which I hardly like to mix up with the present 
 discussion ; but perhaps it will be agreed, on dispassionate 
 consideration, that the University owes to the Church the 
 maintenance, by endowment or otherwise, of tlieological educa- 
 tion and learning in as good a condition as possible, rather 
 than a small contribution of money to the incomes of the 
 parochial clergy, however this contribution may be distributed. 
 There remain the professions of the Bar and Medicine, in 
 which this difficulty of obtaining employment during the 
 early years of the professional career certainly exists, even 
 for men of talent, completely trained and industrious. And 
 if we are considering the actual results obtained by sinecure 
 Fellowships, we may almost neglect Medicine, as not more 
 than one or two per cent of the Fellows of Colleges in Cam- 
 bridge enter upon this profession. The Fellows, then, who 
 are actually supported in careers from which they would 
 otherwise have been excluded, turn out to be almost entirely 
 barristers. An argument for sinecure Fellowships which 
 finds its only solid basis in the special circumstances of a 
 single profession — entered by not more than sixteen per 
 cent of the Fellows of Colleges, as far as our statistics go — 
 
 ' Clerical posts in the University and Colleges rest, of course, on a different 
 footing, and would always receive, as they do at present, their full share of 
 academic endowments.
 
 330 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES xiii 
 
 must be admitted to be in an unstable condition. But we 
 must observe that even of this number only a small fraction 
 represents the real gain of society in the way of additional 
 legal talent through the institution of Fellowships. We have 
 to subtract first the not inconsiderable quota of those who.se 
 " call to the bar " does not imply a real vocation for the legal 
 profession ; and, secondly, we have to subtract the genuine 
 barristers who would equally have become such if they had 
 been thrown on their own resources or those of their parents, 
 and who, it may be remarked, would perhaps have thrown 
 themselves into their work with more energy and decision if 
 they had had no Fellowships ; for it is in many cases a doubt- 
 ful l30on to remove from a young man the stimulus supplied 
 by straitened means or the sense of dependence upon others. 
 But even if we confine our attention to the funds distributed 
 among the small residuum of Fellows who go to the bar to 
 become lawyers, and really do become lawyers, and would 
 not have done so except for their Fellowships, it does not 
 seem after all clear that these funds are wisely bestowed, if 
 we consider the matter from the point of view of society, 
 and not of the fortunate individuals who receive them. In 
 fact, the very reason why they are needed seems also a 
 ground for doubting whether their effect is on the whole 
 beneficial. Why is it difficult to obtain employment at the 
 Bar ? Obviously because the profession is so attractive that 
 it is crowded by a throng of able competitors competing 
 eagerly for employment. Why, then, it may fairly be asked, 
 should we spend money in artificially swelling the crowd 
 and increasing the keenness of competition ? It will perhaps 
 be answered that, though there may be at present no lack, 
 or even a superfluity, of competitors quite adequate to the 
 ordinary work of advocacy, there is certainly no super- 
 abundance of men possessing at once legal attainments and 
 the general intellectual grasp which ought to be combined in 
 the lawyers who reach the highest posts in the judiciary and 
 become the legal advisers of the Crown. A few thousand a 
 year, it may be urged, is a small price to pay for the 
 advantage of having the best ability of the whole nation to
 
 XIII IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 331 
 
 choose from in selecting Attorney-Generals, Chancellors, and 
 Chief Justices. That there is some force in this I would 
 not deny : in fact, it seems to me that we have here the one 
 solid grain of argument in all the plausihle talk about 
 " supporting young men in their careers." But granting it 
 to be desirable that one or two pensions tenable for a few 
 years should be given away annually to young lawyers of 
 exceptional ability and scanty means, it hardly falls within 
 the province of the University to distribute these pensions. 
 The corporations charged with the supervision of the Bar, 
 who have funds, and lately at least have shown a laudable 
 desire to spend them in promoting the best interests of the 
 legal profession, appear the proper bodies to make this dis- 
 tribution. They are better able than the Universities to say 
 from time to time how far they are needed, and they ought 
 to be better able to secure in the recipients of the pension 
 the special talents and knowledge which it is desirable they 
 should possess. Again, if distributed by them, such pensions 
 need not be exactly sinecures. They could easily be given 
 on condition of performing some light educational duties, so 
 arranged as not to hamper the pensioner in the competition 
 for professional employment, while at the same time they 
 might be an inducement to him to resign his pension when 
 his time began to be fully occupied in ordinary legal work.^ 
 But whatever may be the best way of providing for the 
 interests of the Bar, it seems clear that the allotment of £300 
 a year apiece to all the successful competitors in University 
 examinations, of whom about sixteen per cent go to the Bar, 
 is not a good adaptation of means to this end. And we have 
 seen that in the case of the great majority of Fellows no 
 similar need exists for giving this eleemosynary sujtport 
 after their education is completed. I pass, therefore, to con- 
 sider the other argument by which these gifts are defended 
 — that, namely, which points to the attractive and stimulative 
 influence which they exercise as prizes for study. This 
 argument, I am aware, appears strong to many ; but I must 
 
 ^ Similarly, a .soiiiewliut ampler remuneration of medical teaching might surely 
 do all that is necessary for the support of talented young physicians.
 
 332 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xiii 
 
 confess that twenty years' experience of University life has 
 gradually led me to regard it far more unfavourably than the 
 one just discussed. Considered as a means of support after 
 education has been completed, the prize-fellowship has (as 
 we have just seen) a partial justification, though w^ithin a 
 very limited range. In a small number of cases it does meet 
 a definite need, and there is at least a probability of its pro- 
 ducing a certain amount of gain to the community; and 
 even in the great majority of cases, where there is no such 
 need, we have little ground for attributing to the institution 
 any positively bad effects. There is no reason to believe 
 that the pension drawn from academic endowments by (e.^.) 
 a young schoolmaster at Eton or Harrow is spent in any 
 worse way than any other portion of the superfluous wealth 
 of the community. But as a prize by which students may 
 be attracted to the University, and sustained in their industry 
 when there, the Fellowship operates in a manner which must, 
 I think, be pronounced positively pernicious. It places the 
 University in a radically false relation to the community, 
 and seriously impairs its performance of its proper function 
 as a centre of intellectual life. In saying this I do not wish 
 to propose any impracticably high standard as to the spirit 
 in which study ought to be carried on by undergraduates 
 generally ; but all will admit that the highest ideal of such 
 study requires that knowledge should be cultivated for its 
 own sake, and that it should be the aim of academic teachers 
 to maintain this ideal as far as possible — that the University 
 should be, as it were, a shrine in which the noble ardour of 
 disinterested curiosity is kept ever burning, and communi- 
 cated in each generation of students to all who are in any 
 degree capable of receiving it. No one who knows the 
 German universities can doubt that, whatever their defects 
 may be, they do perform satisfactorily this invaluable service 
 to the community : and probably no one who really knows 
 Cambridge would deny that, speaking broadly, she fails in 
 tins respect. And the blame of this failure cannot, I think, 
 be fairly thrown, as it sometimes is, on the exclusively 
 practical character of the English people ; when we consider
 
 XIII IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 333 
 
 the amount of disinterested study that is being carried on all 
 over England, sometimes under the greatest possible dis- 
 advantages and by persons who have to earn a livelihood 
 in some laborious trade or profession. It would be more 
 apparently reasonable to throw the blame on the teaching 
 body of the University, and 1 am not prepared to repudiate 
 the charge altogether. But I would urge those who are dis- 
 posed to censure us harshly fur this failure to rellect how 
 difficult it is to resist the strong perpetual pressure exercised, 
 on the minds of teachers and jtupils alike, by this fatal 
 possession of large pecuniary prizes for successful study as 
 tested by examinations. It is almost inevitable that the 
 pursuit of knowledge should be gradually turned into a 
 training for an intellectual wrestling-match. The possibility 
 of gaining such large immediate rewards by examinations 
 naturally concentrates the student's attention on the attain- 
 ment of the particular kind of knowledge and skill by which 
 this success may best be won. And thus the proper relation 
 of instruction and examination is inverted. Examination, 
 instead of being merely the means of testing the thorough- 
 ness with which a subject has been taught and learnt, 
 becomes the end to which teaching and learning are directed, 
 and the standard to which reference is naturally made in 
 determining both the matter to be learnt and the method of 
 learning it. The student feels himself under the necessity 
 of limiting his reading to those subjects and parts of subjects 
 on which questions are likely to be set ; he has to check 
 himself from pursuing any interesting inquiry too far, for 
 fear it should occupy an amount of time disproportioned to 
 the amount of ' marks ' he may hope to gain by it in 
 examination. His object is not so much to know truth as 
 to be able to write it out rapidly in fragments of a certain 
 size. This species of intellectual discipline has doubtless 
 some advantages ; but it must be allowed that, regarded as 
 a means of conveying either actual present knowledge, or the 
 habits of thought and feeling which will lead to the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge in the future, it is open to very serious 
 objections. There is no kind of study which does not sufler
 
 334 ^-^SA YS AND ADDRESSES xiii 
 
 to some extent from being pursued in this frame of mind ; 
 at the same time, some subjects are much more liable to 
 deterioration from this cause than others, as the difference 
 between the rational and — if I may coin a word — the 
 examinational manner of studying a suljject varies very much 
 in different cases. Thus we are led to notice another bad 
 result of the undue influence at present exercised by 
 examinations, which is strongly felt by those who have 
 charge of education at Cambridge — viz. that they are 
 seriously hampered in choosing subjects and framing courses 
 of study by the necessity of adapting them to examinational 
 reading and teaching. They cannot merely consider, even 
 in the case of the most intelligent pupils, what would be the 
 most desirable subject of study if the student were supposed 
 to be simply seeking for knowledge or intellectual training : 
 they must assume that their pupils will, speaking generally, 
 read witli a view to examinations, and therefore must choose 
 subjects which admit of being examined in satisfactorily. 
 
 In saying this I am anxious not to exaggerate either the 
 existing defect or the extent to which it might be expected 
 to be removed by a change in the distribution of endow- 
 ments. No doubt even now there are many disinterested 
 students at our Universities and not a few teachers, who 
 earnestly foster the impulse towards study for its own sake ; 
 but I think any one who knows Cambridge will admit that 
 students and teachers of this class have to set themselves 
 against the general tendency of the system. Again, it must 
 be admitted that the influence of examinations does not de- 
 pend entirely on the Fellowships : the immediate pleasure 
 of success in an intellectual competition, and the various 
 professional and social advantages that may be expected 
 from it, would in themselves exercise a powerful attractive 
 force on the minds of students generally. Still it is due to 
 the large pecuniary prizes that this influence becomes an 
 almost irresistible control. How can one persuade a poor 
 man not to concentrate his energies on success in a given 
 competition, when the possession of £300 a year for a long 
 term of years may depend upon it ? And it is only this
 
 XIII IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 335 
 
 overwhelming influence that depresses and demoralises ; for 
 lip to a certain point the guidance and stimulus of examina- 
 tions is highly heneticial. But though a good servant, the 
 examination is a bad master ; and the prize- fellowships 
 inevitably make it master. 
 
 It may be urged that the number of students in whom 
 disinterested curiosity could be made to operate effectively 
 as the sole or chief motive for study form but a small 
 minority of the whole contingent that the country annually 
 sends to Cambridge. It must be remembered, however, that 
 this minority is likely to be found chiefly — though not en- 
 tirely — among the more gifted and well-trained students : 
 that is, it coincides to a great extent with the equally small 
 class that is directly affected by the competition for Fellow- 
 ships. But the influence of the tone and spirit in which 
 study is carried on by the intellectual dite of any place of 
 education extends, in varying degrees of intensity, far beyond 
 the limits of the class itself It depends not a little on the 
 system which is brought to bear on these whether the whole 
 U'sneration of students ^ shall receive whatever measure of 
 truly academic culture they are capable of receiving, or 
 whether they shall in after-life look back upon the Uni- 
 versity (apart from its social advantages) as an institution 
 for giving them a certain amount of intellectual drill. And 
 even if we confine our attention to the alumni of the most 
 exclusively practical turn of mind, we shall find that their 
 interests suffer considerably under the present system. For 
 the desire of obtaining a Fellowship is not only not the best 
 possible motive by which to stimulate and direct youthful 
 study : it is out of several alternatives almost the worst. 
 Under its influence the " practical " youth is often led to 
 devote the precious years of his University life to a course 
 of reading which is equally out of relation to his intellectual 
 tastes and needs, and to his professional prospects : he 
 studies in a thoroughly utilitarian spirit what he yet regards 
 
 ' I use this term advisedly, as my remarks do not a]iply to the " residuum " 
 of undergraduates who are in no sense students : which would probably be uniu- 
 lluencud by any system.
 
 336 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES xiii 
 
 as useless for all purposes, except that of obtaining academic 
 prizes. No doubt the education may turn out to be of 
 more use to him than he anticipates : still it may easily 
 happen that it is not the course of training which his 
 teachers and advisers, any more than himself, would have 
 selected, excej^t for the one decisive consideration that it 
 offers him the only or the surest road to a Fellowship. It 
 may be said that the blame of this rests upon the Uni- 
 versity, or rather on the corporations of the Colleges, who 
 ought to distribute their Fellowships with more judgment. 
 But the truth is that to all the other forces of academic 
 conservatism, already sufficiently strong, the system of prize- 
 fellowships inevitably adds golden weights, which operate 
 independently of the deliberate choice of any College 
 authorities. Of late years the University of Cambridge has 
 consistently shown the greatest possible liberality and im- 
 partiality in offering her alumni a free choice among the 
 different branches of learning and science. She has yielded 
 to every proposal that has been supported by names of any 
 weight for the establishment of a new ramification of the 
 curriculum, with new examination, board of studies, selected 
 books, class-list of honours, etc. — in short, with all the 
 apparatus with which the University can commend a de- 
 partment of study to the attention of undergraduates. In 
 this way there are now no less than seven courses of study 
 thus distinguished and recommended, and ranged by the side 
 of the older classical and mathematical courses on a footing 
 of apparent equality. And many at least of the Colleges 
 are sincerely desirous of being equally comprehensive and im- 
 partial in the distribution of their rewards ; but, as was just 
 said, the present Fellowship system encloses both the electors 
 and the candidates for Fellowships in a sort of vicious circle 
 of old customs, which it requires exceptional independence 
 and enterprise on either side to break through. The College 
 wishes to elect the ablest of the youth that it has trained, 
 whatever course of study they may have adopted : a youth 
 of talent, very likely, would prefer on other grounds to enter 
 for one of the new Triposes ; but lie is led to choose one of
 
 XIII IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 337 
 
 the older lines of study, because he rightly thinks he is more 
 sure of obtaining a Fellowship by distinction in these ; and 
 he is more sure of this because the College rightly thinks 
 that the competition in these older lines is more keen, and 
 tliat there is consocjuently more security that the men who 
 attain distinction in them will be men of real ability. Each 
 of these opinions is justified, as long as its counterpart 
 is maintained : and accordingly each tends to maintain its 
 counterpart. There is no logical emergence from this circle ; 
 and so, generally speaking, it can only be broken down on 
 either side when the undergraduate is prepared to run some 
 risk for the sake of a favourite study, and the College is 
 prepared to accept a somewhat less complete guarantee of 
 ability. 
 
 If then we may conclude that it is inexpedient 
 to employ, as a stimulus to the study of undergraduates, 
 a system of pecuniary prizes so large that they inevitably 
 become the end and goal of such study, and deter- 
 mine its nature and direction, it still remains to be con- 
 sidered whether — as is sometimes urged — these prizes are 
 necessary to attract young men to the University. It would 
 need a good deal more evidence than I have ever seen 
 adduced to render this probable ; and if it were proved, 
 it would only be more clear that the relations between the 
 University and the country are in need of radical alteration. 
 What parents ought to seek from the University for their 
 sons is knowledge and intellectual training, and not money. 
 Let them be as watchful and exacting as they please in their 
 demands for the former commodity : it is surely desirable 
 that their vigilance, and the efforts of the University, should 
 be as little as possible distracted by the distribution of the 
 latter. I am not now speaking of the case where the one 
 gift is necessary to place the student in a condition to re- 
 ceive the dther. Let it be conceded that academic education 
 is a benefit, the communication of which, in certain cases, 
 may be made nearly or quite eleemosynary. Let the en- 
 dowments be used as liberally as possible in providing sup- 
 port for poor youths of real talent during the whole period 
 
 z
 
 338 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xm 
 
 of education. This species of alms certainly does not de- 
 moralise the recipient ; and it seems a gain to the community 
 that he should receive it. But I can hardly acquiesce in 
 regarding academic education as a serious burden, which 
 must be offered along with heavy bribes, if it is to be 
 accepted by able men. If this view be really prevalent, I 
 should hold that there must be something wrong either 
 in the education itself, or in the estimate generally set upon 
 it ; and it seems clear that the continuance of the system of 
 bribes is not calculated to remedy either defect. 
 
 But I cannot believe that Cambridge would to any im- 
 portant extent diminish the range of its influence, if the 
 prize-fellowships were abolished. I doubt whether even 
 now these rewards occupy a very prominent place in the 
 deliberations of parents who are considering the wisdom of 
 sending their sons to the University. That they have some 
 weight is, of course, undeniable ; comparatively few parents 
 could afford to disregard two or three thousand pounds ; 
 especially when our educational system tends so much to 
 foster the belief that the most valuable gift that Cambridge 
 has to bestow is money. But if we conceive a reconstructed 
 University, concentrating its attention on its proper function 
 of acquiring the best knowledge on all subjects and impart- 
 ing it in the best manner, and relying for attraction solely on 
 its excellent performance of this function, I see no reason 
 to believe that its work would not be rated at its true 
 value by the country generally. We are justified, I think, 
 in inferring this from the experience of neighbouring countries 
 on the same level of civilisation as ourselves, who have never 
 felt the need and never entertained the idea of alluring their 
 youth to literary or scientific culture by thus directly con- 
 necting it with cash. We might infer it even without look- 
 ing outside England, from the abundant zeal manifested 
 throughout the country in the case of education generally, 
 and especially of the most advanced portion of it : one 
 evidence of which is furnished by the recent remarkable 
 success of the Cambridge scheme of University extension. 
 And all experience combines to show that the faith of Eng-
 
 XIII IDLE FELLOWSHIPS 339 
 
 lishmen in the efiicacy of their educational institutions is 
 hardy enough to stand very rude shocks, and generally errs 
 by excess rather than defect. To suppose that even a 
 temporary decrease in the numbers of Cambridge would 
 result from the restoration of her endowments to learnin" 
 and research seems a most groundless alarm.
 
 XIV 
 A LECTURE AGAINST LECTUEING 
 
 (New Review, May 1890) 
 
 I HAVE for mauy years held the opinion that the traditional 
 method of academic teaching needs a radical alteration. I 
 have hitherto kept this opinion private, because I found that 
 it was not shared by most of the persons whose experience 
 gave them adequate means of forming a judgment ; but as 
 my own experience and reflection have continually strength- 
 ened it, I think it now desirable to publish it — giving due 
 warning to the reader that it is a heresy. My object is 
 primarily to obtain sympathy : there may possibly be others 
 who have long been secretly cherishing similar views ; and 
 perhaps, if we could communicate and combine, we might 
 at any rate call the attention of persons interested in educa- 
 tion to the gravity of the question, and stimulate some kind 
 of movement in the direction of the required change. But 
 I also partly wish to obtain advice : since — except in a very 
 limited part of the whole subject — I seem to see more 
 clearly the general direction in which improvement is needed 
 than the precise nature of the changes of method that 
 should be recommended. 
 
 In speaking of " method " I mean simply the way in 
 which instruction is imparted ; I am not concerned with 
 the questions (1) where University teaching should be 
 carried on, or (2) what subjects should be selected for 
 study, or (3) how the student's industry should be stimu- 
 lated and tested. These appear to be the points in which, 
 
 340
 
 XIV A LECTURE AGAINST LECTURING 341 
 
 in England, most University reformers are interested : they 
 are either for having academic centres in large cities, instead 
 of small provincial towns like Oxford and Cambridge ; or 
 they are for modern languages and experimental science 
 as against classics ; or they are opposed to the tyranny of 
 competitive examinations, and the degrading influence of 
 pecuniary bribes to learning. All these are most interesting 
 topics, on which there is much to be said on both sides. But 
 the change that I am now to advocate relates to a much more 
 simple and fundamental question : viz., how, when we have 
 located our teacher, and selected his subjects, and collected 
 a class of intelligent and industrous youth — with or without 
 the stimulus of prospective gain and glory — the instruction 
 should be imparted which the class may be presumed to be 
 fairly eager to acquire. 
 
 The answer — or at least the main answer — to this 
 question appears to be thought by most persons so simple 
 as hardly to require a moment's consideration. All that 
 seems to them necessary is that the teacher and the class 
 should be brought together in a room at a certain hour on 
 certain days in the week — varying usually from two to six 
 — and that the teacher should expound his subject in a 
 series of lectures, varying from forty-five to sixty minutes 
 in length. This is the traditional, time-honoured, almost 
 universal practice of University professors, ordinary or 
 extraordinary, in the countries that share European civilis- 
 ation : it is supported by an overwhelming consensus of 
 opinion and practice, and most persons with whom I have 
 spoken on the subject hardly seem able to conceive it as 
 either needing or admitting fundamental alteration. I do 
 not mean that what I have just described is universally 
 held to constitute the whole of a professor's educational 
 function. In England, at any rate, it is generally thought 
 that academic teaching, to be effective, must include some 
 kind of exercises written by the student and looked over by 
 the teacher, and some kind of oral communication between 
 the two, in the way of question and answer. In Germany, 
 however, the instrument of academic instruction is — in
 
 342 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xiv 
 
 most departments of study, and so far as the majority of 
 students are concerned — simply the lecture ; and even in 
 England it is commonly thought to be the main if not 
 the sole educational business of a professor to expound his 
 subject in a course of lectures. 
 
 It is this opinion that appears to me radically erroneous. 
 I regard the ordinary expository lecture — in most subjects, 
 and so far as the most intelligent class of students are 
 concerned — as an antiquated survival : a relic of the times 
 before the printing-press was invented : maintained partly 
 by the mere conservatism of habit and the prestige of 
 ancient tradition, partly by the difficulty — -which I quite 
 admit — of finding the right substitute for it. 
 
 This, then, is the heresy that I have to defend ; but 
 before defending it I wish carefully to limit it, in order not 
 to present too broad a front to an orthodox opponent; and 
 I therefore wish to except from condemnation various classes 
 of lectures on various grounds. Thus, I except lectures of 
 which the method is dialectic and not simply expository ; 
 and lectures on science or art, in which the exhibition of 
 experiments or specimens forms an essential part of the 
 plan of instruction ; and again, lectures on art or literature, 
 so far as they aim at emotional and iesthetic, not purely 
 intellectual, effects ; and lectures on any subject whatever 
 that are intended to stimulate interest rather than to con- 
 vey information. For all these purposes I conceive that the 
 use of lectures will increase rather than diminish as civiHsa- 
 tion progresses. Further, I have only in view the elite of 
 academic students : the intelligent and industrious youth, 
 who have been trained from childhood in the habit of 
 deriving ideas from books, and are able and willing to apply 
 prolonged labour and concentrated attention to the method- 
 ical perusal of books under the direction of their teachers. 
 My remarks have no reference to that large part of the 
 community that has never had the opportunity of acquiring 
 a thorough mastery of the art of reading books ; nor do 
 they refer to the class of — so-called — academic students who 
 require the discipline of schoolboys. It may be necessary to
 
 XIV A LECTURE AGAINST LECTUKING 343 
 
 drive these latter into lecture-rooms in order to increase the 
 chance of their obtaining the required instruction somehow. 
 I say " increase the chance " because it is by no means 
 certain that young people of this turn of mind will actually 
 drink of the fouutaiu of knowledge, even if they are led to 
 it daily between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. But the compulsion 
 may, no doubt, increase the chance of their imbibing know- 
 ledge, since it is difficult to find amusement during a lecture 
 which will distract one's attention completely from the 
 lecturer ; although I have known instances in which the 
 difficulty has been successfully overcome by patient in- 
 genuity. 
 
 Leaving, then, out of account exhibitory lectures, dialectic 
 lectures, disciplinary lectures, as well as lectures primarily 
 designed to produce an effect on the emotions, let us con- 
 tine our attention to the ordinary expository lecture, in 
 which the lecturer's function is merely to impart instruction 
 by reading or saying a series of words that might be 
 written and printed. My view is that this species of 
 lecture, when addressed to students who have duly learnt, 
 and are willing to use, the art of reading books, is, in most 
 cases, an unsuitable and uneconomical employment of the 
 time of the teacher and the class. In giving the arguments 
 for this view I shall first assume that an adequate exposition 
 of the lecturer's subject either is already obtainable in print, 
 or might be provided in this form by the lecturer himself, 
 if it were considered to be his professional duty to provide 
 it. This being granted, it seems to me obvious that the 
 class of students whom I have in view had better obtain the 
 required instruction by reading the print. The student who 
 reads has two capital advantages over the student who 
 listens : he can vary the pace at will, and he can turn 
 back and compare passages ; and, according to my experience 
 as a student, these advantages altogether outweigh the 
 counter -advantage of the additional intelligibility which 
 discourse acquires from the inflections of the human voice 
 and the variations of the speaker's emphasis. For in learning 
 anything it seems to me fundamentally important to be able
 
 344 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES xiv 
 
 to take in rapidly what is easy or familiar, and pause to 
 reflect as loner as one likes on what is novel or difficult. 
 No doubt a competent lecturer will always try to vary the 
 length of his treatment and the fulness of his illustrations 
 in different parts of his subject, according to his conception 
 of their comparative difficulty. But no lecturer can be 
 sufficiently acquainted with the nature and causes of the 
 transient hesitations and perplexities which beset the in- 
 tellectual progress of any individual mind ; and even if his 
 sympathetic insight were ever so keen and subtle, the 
 diversities in previous knowledge and faculty of appre- 
 hension which are commonly found among the members of 
 an actual class render it impossible for him to adapt his 
 exposition closely to the intellectual needs of any individual. 
 Besides, the one thing that the lecturer cannot allow is the 
 pause for reflection : he must go on talking. 
 
 Nor, again, can a lecturer give anything that corresponds 
 to the advantage of comparison of passages. It is funda- 
 mentally important that anyone systematically studying a 
 new subject should keep as clear as possible in his mind 
 the relation of what he is now reading or hearing to what 
 he has read or heard before. But it must continually 
 happen that this relation becomes temporarily obscured : 
 the student feels that he is assumed to remember distinctly 
 something that he only remembers vaguely, and perhaps 
 finds what is now said difficult to reconcile with what has 
 been said before. It is verv desirable that this va^eness 
 and difficulty should be at once removed by a reference to 
 the half-remembered statements and arguments ; this he 
 who reads can do, but he who listens has to listen on with 
 a perplexed and dubious mind. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be said that the listener can perform 
 this process after the lecture is over ; he can read over his 
 notes and compare them with books or with the notes of other 
 lectures. This I admit ; but then, if a lecture is treated in 
 this way — as something to be taken down at the time and 
 understood afterwards — the advantages of oral exposition 
 are largely lost : the process is nearly reduced to one of
 
 XIV A LECTURE AGAINST LECTURING 345 
 
 mere dittation. For the most intelligent pupil feels that if 
 he does not get down on paper the whole substance of the 
 lecture, he may possibly omit some statement of vital 
 importance for the work of reflection and comparison which 
 he has to postpone. 
 
 I remember well the occasion on which the view that I 
 am now expressing first presented itself to me in a clear 
 form, nearly tliirty years ago. It was the first time that I 
 attended a lecture — by an eminent professor — in a German 
 university. I went at the hour announced ; the small 
 lecture-room gradually filled, becoming even fuller than was 
 quite agreeable in the heats of July ; and I waited in 
 expectant curiosity. The eminent man came in, according 
 to custom, punctually at the quarter ; he carried in his 
 hand a manuscript yellow with age ; he did not seem to 
 look at his audience, but fixing his eyes on his manuscript 
 he be<][an to read it aloud with slow monotonous utterance. 
 I glanced round the room ; every pupil that I could see was 
 bending over his notebook, writing as hard as he could. 
 The uniamiliar surroundings and the unfamiliar language 
 stimulated my imagination, and I fancied myself back in a 
 world more than four centuries old, in which it had not yet 
 occurred to Coster or Gutenberg that it would be a con- 
 venience to use movable types for the multiplication of 
 copies of MS. I have since listened to many other lectures in 
 German university lecture-rooms, some of which have been 
 admirably delivered ; still, the effect of this first experience 
 has never been entirely effaced. 
 
 And it is to be observed that so far as the task of a 
 lecturer's class is reduced to a process of multiplication of 
 copies it is a task that might be performed through the 
 medium of a printing-press, not only more economically, 
 but more accurately. It is one more disadvantage of 
 expository lectures as compared with books that they are 
 often not taken down quite correctly. Some important 
 words are misheard, as is very natural when what is 
 written down is imperfectly understood at the time ; and 
 the work of subsequent comprehension is thereby needlessly
 
 346 ESS A YS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 XIV 
 
 and perhaps seriously confused. I once heard of a man 
 who spent six hours in endeavouring to understand the 
 notes of a lecture that had occupied a single hour ! It is 
 true that the lecturer was a bad lecturer, in form and style, 
 but he was not phenomenally bad, nor was the pupil 
 exceptionally unintelligent. Again, I was once told in an 
 Oxford common-room of the sad fortune of a student of 
 philosophy, who had succeeded in reproducing with toler- 
 able fidelity the doctrines of a Transcendentalist meta- 
 physician whose lectures he had been attending, until, in 
 his very last answer, he had occasion to refer several times 
 to the " universal I " which constitutes the centre of the 
 Transcendentalist world. Unluckily he always designated 
 this all-important entity as " universal eye," — an unauthor- 
 ised variation which blasted his fair prospects of success. 
 I admit it to be doubtful whether this gentleman would 
 have fathomed the mysteries of Transcendentalism if they 
 had been presented to his eye — I mean his individual eye 
 — instead of his ear ; but he would certainly have had a 
 better chance of comprehending them.^ 
 
 My opponents will perhaps reply that all my argument 
 is based on the unwarrantable assumption that what the 
 lecturer has to say — or an adequate substitute for it — is 
 obtainable in print. But, they will say, if the lecturer is 
 worth his salt this will not be the case ; he will always 
 have something to say which is not in print and which will 
 yet be important for the student to know, and it will be 
 worth the latter's while to go through some trouble to get 
 tliis. I do not deny that this is to some extent true; an 
 active -minded man, however many books and papers he 
 may liave printed, is likely always to have something to 
 say on a subject on which his thoughts are strenuously at 
 work, which may convey the truth as he sees it more 
 exactly or more comprehensibly than he has yet managed 
 to express it in print. I admit, therefore, that there must 
 
 ^ I do not vouch for the literal truth of this story — as truth is sometimes 
 mingled with fiction in Oxford — but I have myself had experiences somewhat 
 similar, though less striking.
 
 XIV A LECTURE AGAINST LECTURING 347 
 
 always be some, place left for the expository lecture. All I 
 contend is, that the need for it might be very much 
 reduced, and ought to be reduced, by giving every possible 
 encouragement to the teacher to disseminate his doctrine 
 through the medium of the press. My complaint against 
 the existing system is that it has the precisely opposite 
 effect. It gives the utmost inducement to a teacher to 
 keep the most indispensable part of his teaching un- 
 published. For since law or custom requires him to 
 deliver a certain number of lectures on a given subject, 
 when he has once published a systematic treatise on this 
 subject he finds himself in a dilemma resembling that pre- 
 sented by the Omar of tradition to the Alexandrian Library. 
 What he says in his lecture is either in his book or it is 
 not ; if it is there, it is superfluous to say it over again ; if 
 it is not there, he cannot regard it as very important unless 
 his views have changed, or some new discovery has been 
 made since he wrote his book. It is easy for him to avoid 
 this dilemma by not printing ; and thus — always assuming 
 that what he has to say is of real value — the students 
 elsewhere who cannot go to his lectures are deprived of 
 useful instruction, and the students who do attend them 
 have to receive it in an inconvenient form, in order that 
 the professor may be enabled to fulfil with Mat the 
 traditional conception of his functions. 
 
 I do not wish to degrade the tone of this discussion by 
 laying stress on sordid pecuniary considerations ; but I 
 must mention that I have heard of a professor whose class 
 diminished very markedly after his systematic treatise was 
 published ; and it seems obvious that, where there is an 
 active competition among teachers, a man who is conscious 
 of having attracted an audience rather by his matter than 
 by his manner may reasonably fear and avoid this result. 
 And it is surely a serious economic drawback in the 
 organisation of any kind of labour that the labourer has a 
 strong interest in diminishing, or hampering with incon- 
 venient conditions, the utility that he is appointed to 
 render to society.
 
 348 ESSAYS AxVD ADDRESSES XIV 
 
 My conclusion, then, is that it ought to be regarded as 
 the primary duty of an academic teacher, in relation to the 
 class of students for whom advanced teaching is mainly 
 provided, to supply the best possil^le instruments of self- 
 instruction in the form of printed books or papers. These 
 ought to be partly his own work, if he is worthy of his 
 position ; but the extent to which this ought to be tlie case 
 will vary with circumstances. To the study of this printed 
 matter his oral teaching ought to be frankly and completely 
 subordinate and supplementary. 
 
 In saying this I am anxious not to undervalue oral 
 teaching, or to overlook the counterbalancing advantages 
 which the listener's position has as compared with the 
 reader's. I quite admit that oral delivery must be very 
 bad if the inllections of voice and variations of emphasis do 
 not materially add to the intelligibility of the sentences 
 uttered. Also it may be fairly urged that the line which I 
 have tried to draw, between lectures designed to arouse 
 interest and lectures designed to give information, is onlv 
 partially tenable ; since a good lecture will stimulate while 
 informing, more than the same discourse would do if 
 printed, through the effect of personal presence and utter- 
 ance in stirring intellectual sympathy. I should be dis- 
 posed to admit this as a general rule, though I think that 
 there are important exceptions. For instance, having heard 
 J. S. Mill speak, I rather doubt whether, if he had delivered 
 his Liberty in oral discourses from a professorial chair, 
 their effect would have been as stimulating as the perusal 
 of the book actually was. Still, on the whole, I allow the 
 advantages claimed for oral teaching in both the respects 
 that I have just mentioned ; but I venture to think that 
 both the gain in facilitating comprehension and the stimulus 
 through intellectual sympathy would be more effectually 
 secured if the lecture were used as I desire it to be, as 
 frankly secondary and supplementary to the perusal of 
 printed matter. For in this case the lecturer would be 
 free to devote the larger part of his time and labour to the 
 work of explaining over again wliatever parts of the subject
 
 XIV A LECTURE AGAINST LECTURING 349 
 
 liis hearers had been unable adequately to learn from the 
 printed matter which he had placed in their hands. 
 
 The precise nature of the supplementary explanations 
 which would thus constitute the main material of ordinary 
 lectures would differ imptntantly with different subjects, 
 and probably also with dilferent teachers and different 
 classes. The general principle would have to be applied 
 in somewhat diverse ways to linguistic studies, historical 
 studies, mathematics, and moral sciences ; and I feel that it 
 would be presumptuous in me to make detailed suggestions 
 with regard to any subject except moral sciences or philo- 
 sophy, to which my own practical experience has long been 
 almost entirely confined. 
 
 In moral sciences, in their present state of uncertainty 
 and controversy, the student must expect — even after the 
 most careful selection of books for his perusal — to find 
 much that will perplex him in all the earlier stages of his 
 progress. Indeed, I may say that if he does not find this, 
 he is either above or beneath our present consideration ; he 
 either does not need oral teaching or is not likely to derive 
 much profit from it. Assuming him to be intelligent 
 enough to feel difficulties, and as yet without the grasp of 
 method necessary for solving them, the chief service that 
 the oral teacher can render is to assist in their solution : 
 first by mildly but firmly pressing the pupil to state his 
 difficulties as clearly as possible ; and secondly, by giving 
 his own mind to the task of comprehending and answering 
 them. I think that both parts of this indispensable process 
 are liable to be performed without adequate care. Especi- 
 ally I have found it hard to convince my pupils of the 
 importance, for progress in philosophy, of stating per- 
 plexities clearly and precisely. The art that has to be 
 learnt in order to achieve this result has been called the 
 art of " concentrating fog." In the earlier stages of philo- 
 sophical study, fog is sure to arise from time to time, in 
 the perusal even of the best attainable books ; from the 
 obscurity of some statements, or their inconsistency with 
 other statements of the same or other writtM'S, or with the
 
 350 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xiv 
 
 reader's previous beliefs. An intellectual fog, like a physical 
 fog, is very pervasive, and liable rapidly to envelop large 
 portions of a subject even when its original source really 
 lies in a very limited and not very important difficulty. 
 The great thing, therefore, is to concentrate it ; and the 
 most effective way of concentrating it is for the student to 
 force himself to state the difficulty on paper. Sometimes, 
 in the mere process of writing it down, the difficulty will 
 disappear like the morning mist, one does not know how ; 
 but when this result does not follow, the difficulty has at 
 any rate been brought into the very best condition for being 
 removed by a teacher. And the step gained by such 
 removal of a difficulty, so prepared, is hardly ever lest 
 again. 
 
 But though this precise and definite statement of diffi- 
 culties is always to be recommended, to require it always 
 would be impracticable : the worst confusions and mis- 
 understandings are those of which one is only dimly con- 
 scious, in the vague form of a lack of perfect comprehension. 
 A teacher, therefore, while urging precise statement as an 
 ideal to be aimed at, should give ungrudging welcome even 
 to vague and tentative statements of difficulties : he should 
 count it a gain if a pupil will merely tell him that he does 
 not quite understand page 5 of chapter iv., or the second 
 paragraph of page 156. Even if the teacher cannot guess 
 the exact point of the difficulty he will at any rate know 
 on what parts of the subject he should direct his faculty of 
 elucidation. Having thus received all available information 
 as to the intellectual needs of his class, the teacher will be 
 in a position to make his lecture effectively supplementary 
 to the reading of printed matter, by giving a second 
 exposition on the subject, specially framed to fill up the 
 gaps of apprehension left by the first. He must not 
 flatter himself that this second exposition will completely 
 attain his end, but he may hope that the difficulties which 
 remain will not be too extensive to be adequately dealt 
 with in conversation with the students individually after 
 the lecture is over.
 
 XIV A LECTURE AGAINST LECTURING 351 
 
 This, then, is the practical conclusion to which experi- 
 ence has led me : tliat in tlie teaching of piiilosophy 
 provision should be regularly made for explaining any 
 important argument, if necessary, three times over — first, 
 in books and printed papers which the student is to read 
 in his own room ; secondly, in a supplementary lecture, 
 framed in view of written statements of difhculties received 
 from the students ; and thirdly, if necessary, in subsequent 
 informal conversation. These three times ought, I think, 
 normally to suffice to make clear to students who are really 
 fit to study the subject anything which the lecturer really 
 understands. A cynic may say that the practical question 
 for a professor of philosophy is more often how to explain 
 what he only half understands to a class of which at least 
 half had better be studying something else. There may be 
 some truth in this ; but from the investigation of the new 
 practical problem presented by these conditions the in- 
 dulgent reader will permit me to recoil.
 
 XV 
 
 THE PURSUIT OF CULTURE AS AN IDEAL 
 
 [The following paper is part of a lecture delivered in 1897 to the students 
 of the University College of Wales, Aberystwith. The portion omitted here 
 — -which discusses more fully^the nature of culture and Matthew Arnold's 
 definitions of it — also formed part of a paper read about the same time to 
 the London School of Ethics and Social Philosophy, which has already been 
 published under the title " The Pursuit of Culture," in a collection of essays 
 by Henry Sidgwick, entitled Practical Ethics (Swan Sonnenschein, 1897). 
 "We the more readily omit this portion here, as the subject is also dealt wath 
 in the essay on The Prophet of Culture, printed above. — Ed.] 
 
 When I selected "The Pursuit of Culture" as the subject of 
 my address this evening, it was my desire to choose a topic 
 falling within the range of my habitual thought, which 
 should at the same time have an interest, not for stu- 
 dents of moral philosophy alone, but for academic students 
 generally. On the one hand, culture is recognised as a 
 fundamentally important part of the human good that it is 
 the business of practical morality to promote ; and the 
 recognition of this has grown during the last generation 
 with the enlargement of our conception of the future of 
 human life to be lived on this earth. The problem of 
 making that life a better thing has become more and 
 more clearly the dominant problem for morality ; and in the 
 doubtless imperfect conception we form of tliis betterment, 
 mental culture — which, according to usage, I shall simply 
 call culture — has an increasingly prominent place. When 
 thoughtful persons ask themselves what social end is served 
 by the luxurious expenditure of the wealthy, the most 
 persuasive answer is that this expenditure is largely 
 
 352
 
 XV THE PURSUIT OF CULTURE AS AN IDEAL 353 
 
 indispensable to the promotion of culture. Again, -when 
 the same persons ask themselves what of the goods that the 
 rich enjoy, it is really important for human happiness to 
 difi'use among the poorer classes — at any rate after the 
 elementary needs of physical existence are satisfied — the 
 answer again is ' culture.' When, finally, we ask, ' How, 
 then, is this element of human well-being to be adequately 
 promoted and diffused ? ' an obvious and familiar answer is, 
 ' By founding schools and universities, and keeping them in 
 a condition of full efficiency.' It seems, therefore, to con- 
 cern us all deeply to obtain as clear a conception as possible 
 of the ideal aim, which we find thus presented from so 
 many different points of view. 
 
 Since the most essential function of the mind is to think 
 and know, a man of cultivated mind must be concerned for 
 knowledge : but it is not knowledge merely that gives 
 culture. A man may be learned and yet lack culture : for 
 he may be a pedant, and the characteristic of a pedant is 
 that he has knowledge without culture. So again, a load 
 of facts retained in the memory, or a mass of reasonings got 
 up merely for examination — these are not, they do not give 
 culture. It is the love of knowledge, the ardour of scientific 
 curiosity, driving us continually to absorb new facts and 
 ideas, to make them our own and fit them into the living 
 and growing system of our thought ; and the trained faculty 
 of doing this, the alert and supple intelligence exercised 
 and continually developed in doing this — it is in these that 
 culture essentially lies. But how to acquire this habit of 
 mind, and to acquire along with it the refinement of sensi- 
 bility, the trained and developed taste for all manifestations 
 of beauty which no less belongs to culture — this is the 
 practical problem for all who pursue this ideal good : and 
 in a special manner and degree for academic students. 
 
 • «••••• 
 
 And for academic students there is one question of deep 
 interest — Is the specialist a man of culture, even so far as 
 the knowledge-element of culture is concerned ? And the 
 
 2 A
 
 354 £SSA YS AND ADDRESSES xv 
 
 answer, I think, must be No, so far as he is a mere 
 specialist— so far as his intellectual interests and sympathies 
 are confined within the limits of his specialty. If the root 
 of true culture is in him, he will resist and react against 
 this limiting and cramping of his thought — which yet, as I 
 have said, the progress of science renders in some degree 
 inevitable ; and there is nothing that can strengthen and 
 stimulate him more to this noble conflict than the habit of 
 taking delight in the best literature. 
 
 It is this intellectual function of literature — to maintain, 
 in spite of the increasing specialisation inevitably forced on 
 us by the growth of knowledge, our intellectual interests 
 and sympathies in due breadth and versatility, while at the 
 same time gratifying and exercising our sense of beauty — it 
 is this that partly justifies the one-sidedness of modern 
 education in respect of the fine arts. This one-sidedness — 
 the fact that we make so little systematic effort, in school 
 and college, to educate the taste and judgment in music, 
 painting, sculpture, architecture — has sometimes been criti- 
 cised by those who feel strongly the importance for human 
 life of adequately developing the sense of beauty. I am not 
 sure that the criticism can be completely answered ; and 
 possibly the twentieth century will set itself to remedy this 
 defect. But there are other considerations, besides the one 
 I have mentioned, which must always give a special pro- 
 minence to literature in aesthetic education. 
 
 First, literature alone of the arts shows us the highest 
 excellence in a kind of productive activity in which we all 
 take some part. We do not only, as the hmirgeois of comedy 
 puts it, talk prose all our life without knowing it, but when 
 eager to communicate experiences, ideas, and feelings, we 
 talk or write as impressive prose as we can ; thus the tech- 
 nique of the great artists in words is only a glorified form of 
 a skill that we all seek, and in some humble degree learn to 
 exercise. Perhaps if, in the infancy of civilisation, picture- 
 writing had not passed into hieroglyphics and been lost in 
 the dull symbolism of alphabets, we should now be in the 
 same position in respect to painting; but, as it is, literature
 
 XV THE PURSUIT OF CULTURE AS AN IDEAL 355 
 
 is unique in this relation to life. Secondly, literature is the 
 only art in which the greatest works can be at little cost 
 completely presented to the minds of all students every- 
 where. The products of the genius of Sophocles or Dante 
 are within the reacli of the scantiest purse, if only its owner 
 has learnt Greek or Italian; but more or less costly travel is 
 required to bring us similarly face to face with the masterpieces 
 of Greek sculpture or Italian painting. And, finally, literature 
 is, if I may so say, the most altruistic of the fine arts. I 
 mean it is an important part of its function to develop the 
 sensibility for other forms of Ijeanty besides its own. I 
 wonder how many of my generation have learnt to love 
 not only the beauties of nature more, but also painting, 
 sculpture, architecture, through the literary genius of John 
 Euskin. 
 
 But here I come upon a fundamental question, which 
 some of you may think I ought to have raised long ago. 
 I have assumed that it is a main aim of a liberal education 
 to impart culture, but it may not unreasonably be asked 
 — Can culture be really taught ? We can doubtless acquire 
 knowledge through teaching, but can we acquire the love 
 of knowledge, the ardour for seeing things as they are, which 
 I have assumed to be an essential element of culture ? So, 
 again, the technique of the fine arts may in some measure 
 be taught ; but can we really learn taste for fine works of 
 art, susceptibility to things of beauty ? It is rather like 
 the old question of the age of Socrates — Can virtue be 
 taught ? And the same answer applies, I believe, in both 
 cases. Virtue can be taught by a teacher who loves virtue, 
 and so can culture, but not otherwise ; since, as Goethe 
 sings : — " Speech that is to stir the heart must from the 
 heart have sprung." ^ Experience shows that the love of 
 knowledge and beauty can be communicated through in- 
 tellectual sympathy : there is a beneficent contagion in the 
 possession of it ; but it must be admitted that its acquisition 
 cannot be secured by any formal system of lessons. No 
 
 * [Perhaps Faust, i. 101 — Doch werilet Ihr nie Herz zu Ilerzen schatl'en, 
 
 Weuu es euch nicht von Ilerzen geht.]
 
 356 ESSA VS AND ADDRESSES xv 
 
 recipe for it can be enclosed in a syllabus, nor can it be 
 tested by the best regulated examinations. 
 
 And it has further to be observed that school methods 
 of studying a great writer — with dictionary or glossary, 
 and grammar, and learned notes, and inevitably snail-like 
 progress — are somewhat antagonistic to the realisation of 
 the culture-value of the study. I remember once, when a 
 reformer was advocating the study of native literature in 
 English schools, a friend of mine — himself a lover of books 
 — implored him to abandon the idea. He said — ' You 
 will destroy the public schoolboy's last chance of literary 
 culture if you make him hate Shakespeare as he now hates 
 a Greek play.' The paradox, I need hardly say, is not 
 even a half truth ; still, there is some truth in it, at least 
 as regards languages other than the vernacular. In many 
 — perhaps most — cases, Sophocles and Virgil will only be- 
 come instruments of culture after they have ceased to be 
 consciously and prominently instruments for learning foreign 
 grammar and idioms. How to deal with this situation is a 
 difficult question, which it is fortunately not my business 
 now to answer : but from the point of view of culture there 
 is one condition to lay down, and one consolation to offer. 
 
 The condition is laid down on behalf of that large and 
 increasing class of students, who are led by the bent of 
 their tastes and faculties, or the requirements of their 
 chosen profession, to make science, not literature, the main 
 object of their academic study ; and here I would take 
 science in the widest sense, to include not only mathe- 
 matical and physical sciences, but moral and political 
 sciences, and history as providing data for the latter. I 
 think it fundamentally important for this class of students 
 that any teaching of languages which is applied to them — 
 whatever language may be chosen — should be carried to the 
 point at which they can read with ease when they leave 
 school ; and that it is indefinitely better that they 
 should reach this point in any one of the great culture- 
 languages of Europe than that they should be carried half- 
 way to it in two. Unless this is tlie case, if they are still
 
 XV THE rURSUIT OF CULTURE AS AN IDEAL 357 
 
 liable, wliile reading, to be perplexed in every page by dilli- 
 culties of grammar, idiom, and vocaljulary, they will not be 
 able to use the language at the University — and still less, 
 generally speaking, in after life — cither as a means of gain- 
 ing knowledge (other than philological) or as a source of 
 literary enjoyment. In this case, their chief gain from 
 learning the language will be in the way of intellectual 
 gymnastic — the training in special kinds of observation, 
 discrimination and inference, and in the accurate expression 
 of shades of thought. I do not undervalue this educational 
 gain ; but I think the main part of it may be obtained from 
 the study of any one language other than the vernacular, if 
 properly taught ; and surely it is a sad pity that this should 
 be the sole gain from the labour of years spent upon a great 
 historic tongue. 
 
 I am aware that the condition I am laying down is 
 practically hard to realise in the case of languages so 
 difficult as Latin or Greek ; and, therefore, I hasten on to 
 my consolation. It is that for the essential needs of 
 literary culture — for learning to grasp great and subtle 
 thoughts, to share fine emotions, to taste with fulness and 
 delicacy the beautiful expression of both, to follow with 
 ready and versatile sympathy the varied manifestations of 
 man's spiritual life — any one of the great national litera- 
 tures of which I have spoken, properly studied, would 
 suffice ; the travel into other literatures is a luxury, not 
 indispensable, however justly valued. Take English : sup- 
 pose a man acquainted with the best works of the best 
 writers, from Chaucer to the present time ; able to learn 
 what they have to teach, to feel with due discrimination 
 their special beauties and at the same time their limitations, 
 to understand their aims and antecedents and judge their 
 achievements — so far as this can be done without knowing 
 of other literatures more than he can now know through 
 good English translations ; suppose him to have the know- 
 ledge of history that this would involve, and at the same time 
 to be duly trained by and instructed in science ; — surely the 
 pedant who would dispute such a man's claim to culture
 
 00 
 
 8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES xv 
 
 would only show his own ignorance of that gift. I do not 
 of course say that a lover of literature ought to he content 
 with this : I only offer this indisputable truth as a consola- 
 tion to anyone who finds his working time absorbed in 
 scientific or professional study before he has got sufficient 
 hold of Latin or Greek or French or German to read it in 
 hours of relaxation. In the house of culture there are many 
 mansions ; and to exhaust the lessons and the delights 
 that English literature by itself can offer would take con- 
 siderably more than the leisure that most busy lives can 
 afford for reading M'hat is not in the newspapers. 
 
 One word more before I sit down. So far I have spoken 
 of culture as something to be communicated by teachers or 
 acquired by solitary study. But when men of my age look 
 back on their University life, and ask themselves from what 
 sources they learnt such culture as they did learn, I think 
 that most would give a high place — and some the chief 
 place — to a third educational factor, the converse with 
 fellow-students. Even if we did not learn most from this 
 source, what we so learnt was learnt with most ease and 
 delight ; and especially the value of this converse in broaden- 
 ing intellectual interests, and keeping alive the flame of 
 eager desire to know truth and feel beauty, is difficult to 
 over-estimate. Indeed, this always appears to me one 
 great reason why we have Universities at all, as at present 
 organised. 
 
 Forty-five years ago a fine intellect, continually engaged 
 in swimming against the stream — John Henry Xewman — 
 set before the world an ideal of University education, in 
 which all students, whatever else they learnt, should give 
 the first place to the royal and ruling study of philosophy — 
 universal knowledge of things mundane and divine, sought 
 as its own end, in disregard of all sordid utilities. In 
 defending this ideal, he referred contemptuously to some 
 bygone Edinburgh reviewers who " wish one student of a 
 University to dedicate himself to chemistry, and another 
 to mathematics." " Now," says ISTewman, " if half-a-dozen 
 systems of education are to go on on the same spot, unity
 
 XV THE PURSUIT OF CULTURE AS AN IDEAL 359 
 
 of place is but an accident, and I do not see what is the 
 use of a University at all." W(^ all know how the develop- 
 ment of all sciences and studies, and especially the expansion 
 of our ideas of the preparation required for different profes- 
 sions and callings, have inevitably driven English University 
 education to develop in the direction opposed to Newman's 
 view. This has more or less been the case everywhere ; 
 Ijut — to my regret I confess — it has been most prominently 
 the case in the University from which I come. Certainly 
 a Cambridge man must admit that lie is bound to find an 
 answer to Newman's question : " AVhat is the use of a Uni- 
 versity if all that it means is that half-a-dozen " — I might 
 say a dozen — "systems of education are to go on in the same 
 place ? " Why, at any rate, it may be asked, when we are 
 making a new University, should we not — instead of the 
 present local colleges — have a great school of science in one 
 place, a great school of history in another, and so on ? 
 
 I was interested to find that Newman had supplied an 
 answer himself in the discourse preceding the one from 
 which I have quoted. " When," he says, " a multitude of 
 young persons, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and ob- 
 servant as young persons are, come together and freely mix 
 with each other, they are sure to learn from one another, 
 even if there be no one to teach them ; the conversation of 
 all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for them- 
 selves new ideas and views and fresh matter of thought day 
 by day." That is so, no doubt ; and that is an important 
 part of the reason why " unity of place " is more than an 
 " accident " for the students of diverse courses ; it tends to 
 produce a general breadth of intellectual sympathies and 
 interests among the students which could not otherwise be 
 obtained. I do not mean that this is the sole answer to 
 Newmian's question ; for the teachers similarly learn from 
 each other, and of course the separation of studies is no- 
 where so complete as his caricature supposes. Still this 
 informal mutual education of students will always be an 
 important factor in the work of the University ; and it 
 is one on which the thoughts of any academic teacher,
 
 36o ESSA VS AND ADDRESSES xv 
 
 conscious of the limitations and defects of his own labours 
 in the service of culture, will always gladly dwell. 
 
 This, then, is my last w^ord to the younger part of my 
 audience : that it rests largely with themselves, and with 
 the use they make not only of hours of w^ork but of hours 
 of leisure, to determine whether they will make the gifts 
 of culture their own. And the burden that this lays on 
 them is not a heavy one; it is not — as so many moral 
 precepts necessarily are — an injunction to endure and 
 refrain. It is simply a direction to live, in the fullest 
 manner, those higher modes of mental and social life from 
 which our finest human pleasures most directly and spon- 
 taneously spring.
 
 SUPPLEMENT 
 
 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEi 
 
 (Maanillan's Magazine, November 1861) 
 
 In the cluster of great writers who were swept from the world 
 in the fatal year 1859, Alexis de Tocqueville holds a distin- 
 guished place. Perhaps there is no foreign author of this cen- 
 tury whose works have been received in England with so universal 
 an echo of applause and assent. His first and only complete 
 Avork — the Democracy in America — was, from the nature of its 
 subject, one which especially excited English interest and ap- 
 pealed to English judgment : and the unique and strongly 
 defined position which he occupies, as a political thinker, in 
 France, gives him at once a peculiar value as a teacher for us, 
 and a peculiar claim on our sympathy. He himself ever mani- 
 fested a more than stranger's interest for England, where, as his 
 correspondence will show, he had many friends : his admiration 
 for our institutions and character was no mere theoretic en- 
 thusiasm, Imt was founded on a close acquaintance and a temperate 
 ap})reciation of our merits and faults alike : and he attached so 
 much importance to the estimate formed in England of his 
 writings, that in one letter he speaks of her as "almost a second 
 fatherland intellectually." It was only a fit testimony to these 
 close relations, that English voices should join in the tribute of 
 regret paid by his countrymen to his memory. 
 
 The recent publication, by M. Gustavo de Beaumont, of his 
 friend's remains, has been the signal for some utterances of Eng- 
 lish feelins;. M. de Beaumont's collection has been received, both 
 in France and in Englnnd, with an eagerness fully merited. In 
 the case of a man who wrote so little and so carefully as Tocque- 
 
 ^ IJemoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated from 
 
 the French hy the translator of A^apolean's Correspimdence with King Josrph, 
 with large additions. Two vols. Macmillau and Co., Cambridge and London. 
 
 361
 
 362 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES supplement 
 
 ville, the few fragments left behind unpublished are of peculiar 
 value ; while the letters that M. de Beaumont has given 
 to the world seem to have l^een selected and arranged with 
 skill and good taste ; and the short memoir which forms a 
 prelude to the collection is gracefully written, and shows 
 an enlightened appreciation of Tocqueville's character, as well 
 literary as personal. 
 
 The faults of the work are chiefly those of omission. In the 
 first place, I think M. de Beaumont's refusal to publish anything 
 that has not received the author's last touches, displays an 
 excessive scrupulousness, an exaggerated sensitiveness for his 
 friend's fame. It is tantalising to learn how large and hoAV 
 valuable a portion of the fruits of Tocqueville's studies is kept 
 from us for this reason. When we read those letters of Tocque- 
 ville, in which we are admitted, as it were, into his literary 
 workshop ; when we see the eager determination with which 
 he ensures his originality, the laborious patience with which he 
 gathers his ideas one by one in their native soil ; — we feel that 
 thoughts so slowly and carefully obtained ought not lightly to 
 be withheld from the world, because they have not been com- 
 pletely arranged and polished. M. de Beaumont himself notices 
 how he " observed much and noted little " ; how rarely he found 
 himself mistaken in those original notes ; how rarely he did more 
 than develop them ; how frequently they were incorporated 
 verbatim into the substance of the ultimate work. We cannot 
 but regret that these cogent reasons did not induce his editor to 
 modify his rigid resolution. 
 
 Nor is the brief memoir prefixed to the collection quite 
 satisfactory. The sketch is flowing and interesting ; the indica- 
 tions of character good as far as they go ; the criticisms of 
 Tocqueville's writings just and appropriate. But M. de Beau- 
 mont does not show us the man himself at all ; he envelops 
 him in a veil of vague phrases and general expressions of 
 praise, which leave no idea behind. He tells us, for in- 
 stance, that " the striking features of Tocqueville's political life 
 are firmness combined with moderation, and moral greatness 
 combined with ambition." Is not this worthy of Sir Archibald 
 Alison ? 
 
 There is another omission, for which, however, no blame is 
 due to M. de Beaumont. The political life of Tocqueville, which 
 began in 1840, and died at the death of French liberty, could 
 necessarily only be sketched with the faintest touches. To have 
 gone into detail with reference to the earlier part would have 
 been, as M. de Beaumont says, to revive antagonisms now buried in
 
 SUPPLEMENT ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE 363 
 
 a common mourning ; while a more definite and obvious restraint 
 compels the curtailing of the more recent letters. This forced 
 imperfection in the i)icture is strongly felt. For, whether in 
 puljlic life or not, Toc(|Ueville was eniincutly a politician. Hi.s 
 patriotism was no intermittent enthusiasm, no latent fire — it M-as 
 the guiding principle of his whole life. His sole profession was 
 to devote the rare powers of thought that nature had bestowed 
 on him to his country's service. 
 
 Fortunately this omission has been to a great extent supplieil 
 in the English translation, recently published, of M. de Beaumont's 
 book. This translation is enriched with several new frat^ments 
 of correspondence, and some valuable extracts from the journal 
 of Mr. Senior, one of Tocqueville's numerous English frieiitls. 
 Besides filling up the blank we have mentioned, these addi- 
 tions serve another important end ; they give us the talk of 
 Tocqueville to compare with his writings. Both are marked 
 by exactly the same traits ; the same e.iger activity of mind ; 
 the same energetic originality ; that rich fertility in epigrams, 
 Avhich is not uncommon among the countrymen of Voltaire, 
 but which in Tocqueville Avas kept in perfect restraint, so 
 that the puinted phrase always served to make some truth 
 more clear and impressive. Indeed he might himself have 
 adopted a boast of Voltaire's that he quotes, "Madame, je 
 n'ai jamais fait une phrase de ma vie " ; so free and natural are 
 his most piquant sayings. That rare faculty of illustration, that 
 fixes in the memory so many isolated passages in his writings, 
 shows even more exuberantly in his conversation ; while the 
 rapidity with which his clear and ready mind seized every new 
 fact, to systematise and generalise, contrasts well with the patient 
 soberness of judgment that kept sifting and examining his first 
 conclusions, till it evolved that calm and lucid exposition of 
 causes and eflects which his books contain. 
 
 The difficulties of translation, in respect of the letters, have 
 been well overcome l)y the English translator. It is always a bold 
 undertaking to translate French memoirs or correspondence, as 
 the French language is so peculiarly adapted by nature to this 
 kind of composition. And Tocqueville's stjde is one that brings 
 into play all the resources of his native tongue. The more we 
 examine any of his most careless efi'usiuns, the more we are 
 struck with the exactness and subtlety of his expressions : we 
 feel the difficulty of altering any of them without .spoiling the 
 sense. It must have cost more troulile than appears «>n the 
 surface to preserve so much of their character in an English 
 dress.
 
 364 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES supplement 
 
 I have said enough to show my admiration for these letters. 
 Indeed they seem to me to bear comparison in most respects 
 Avith any similar collection, ancient or modern. They bear testi- 
 mony to the truth of the old saying, " that politeness is but the 
 best" expression of true feeling." The warm affection that 
 breathes in them shows beautifully through the dress of delicate 
 compliment, varied by most genial humour, in which it is 
 clothed. M. de Beaumont observes on " the immense space that 
 friendship occupied in his life." The same fact will strike every 
 reader of the letters. Tocqueville's heart and mind shared the 
 same restless activity. He could not, therefore, be happy without 
 a wide field of personal relations. It was as impossible for him to 
 rest satisfied with that abstract philanthropy, which, absorbed in 
 plans for the general good, neglects individual ties, as it was 
 to assent to the "modern realism" (as he called it), which 
 ignores all individual rights in behalf of the general utility of 
 society. His hatred of this tendency seems to spring from a 
 one-sided experience, and one may feel it exaggerated ; but he 
 calls it himself one of his "central opinions," and it was curiously 
 in harmony with many others of his ways of feeling and think- 
 ing. Another thing that strikes one in the correspondence is 
 the perfection with which he adapts both matter and style, ap- 
 parently without effort, to suit correspondents of the most various 
 opinions, and the most various degrees of intellectual culture. 
 A comparison of the two first series of letters in the book, those 
 to his two oldest friends, Louis de Kergorlay and Alexis Stoffels, 
 will afford an excellent example of this. At the same time this 
 happy versatility never involves the sacrifice of the smallest tittle 
 of his individual convictions. A sensitive hatred of insincerity 
 is one of the most marked features of his character. "You 
 know," he writes to M. de Corcelle, " that I set a particular value 
 on your friendship. ... I have always found that you believed 
 what you said, and felt what you expressed. This alone would 
 have been enough to distinguish you from others." The same 
 sentiment recurs in more than one of his letters. He expresses 
 his general feeling on the point in a letter to INIadame Swetchine, 
 — warmly, but with his usual avoidance of exaggeration. "I 
 am not one of those," he writes, " who think all men false and 
 treacherous. Many people are sincere in important affairs and 
 on great occasions, but scarcely any are so in the trifles of everj?- 
 day. Scarcely any exhibit their true feelings, but merely those 
 which they think useful or popular ; scarcely any, in ordinary 
 conversation, seek and express their real opinions, instead of 
 searching for what Avill sound ingenious or clever. This is the
 
 SUPPLEMENT ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE 365 
 
 kind of .sincerity which is rare — particularly, I must say, among 
 women and in drawing-rooms, where even kindness has its 
 artifices." Sincerity, such as he hero longs for, was not merely 
 a principle with Tocqueville : it was a necessity. Without it, 
 correspondence would have lost its whole ciiarm for him. There 
 are two or three letters in which he endeavours to smooth awav, 
 if possible, the dissent which some opinion of his has evoked. 
 Here we see the eager desire for sympathy combined with the 
 resolution not to modify or disguise his sentiments in the smallest 
 point. In compo.sitions of all kinds, dcscri])tion as well as dis- 
 sertation, this love of truth is paramount with him. He com- 
 plains that " people say the ruins of Ptestum stand in the nn'dst 
 of a desert ; Avhereas their site is nothing more than a miserable, 
 badly-cultivated country, decaying like the temples themselves ! 
 Men always insist on adorning truth instead of describing it. 
 Even M. de Chateauln-iand has painted the real wilderness in false 
 colours." His own Fminirjht in the Wildeiiiess wijl interest even 
 those who are sated with pictures of wild life. The fire and 
 vivacity, the susceptil>le imagination and the keen observation, 
 may be met with elsewhere ; but hardl}' ever controlled by a 
 reason so sober and truthful, or enlightened by such breadth of 
 view. 
 
 When, however, in analysing the picture of character which 
 Tocqueville's letters leave upon my mind, I try to seize the 
 ground-colour that gives the tone to the whole, it seems to me 
 to consist in a child-like elevation of feeling. In one passage 
 of the memoir, M. de Beaumont observes that " intellectual 
 superiority would hardly be worth having if the moral feelings 
 and the character were to remain at the ordinary level." This 
 outburst of naif enthusiasm strikes one as almost comic, in the 
 mouth of an elderly politician ; but it suits Tocqueville exactly. 
 The lofty moral ideal, which in the case of so many men shines 
 clearly in youth, and then gradually fades away before the com- 
 monplaces of practical life, exercised over Tocqueville a pei-petual 
 and harmonious influence. This seems to have been partly due 
 to the delicate balance that he always preserved between reason 
 and feeling. Neither enthusiasm, passion, nor vanity, of all 
 which he "had his fair share, ever hindered him from seeing 
 things exactly as they were ; and this striking soberness of judg- 
 ment protected his youthfid enthusiasm, and prevented it from 
 being too rudely shaken by a contact with the realities of the 
 world. Consequently, his letters indicate remarkably little de- 
 velopment of character, considering the period over which they 
 extend ; and what little they do show is very calm and equable.
 
 366 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES supplement 
 
 Nor is there any exaggerated mock -maturity in his youthful 
 wisdom, or forced vivacity in the outbursts of his later years. 
 We see, indeed, that his unbounded ambition — that Promethean 
 fire which is needed to impel the most finely compounded 
 characters into proper action — was calmed gradually into a 
 quieter and more hidden feeling ; yet even this amljition had 
 never made him over-estimate the success towards which it 
 strove. He writes at the age of thirty to his most intimate 
 friend : " As I advance in life, I see it more and more from the 
 point of view which I used to fancy belonged to the enthusiasm 
 of early youth, as a thing of very mediocre worth, valuable only 
 as far as one can employ it in doing one's duty in serving men. 
 and in taking one's fit place among them." And, fifteen years 
 later, he writes to M. de Beaumont : "I consoled myself by 
 thinking that, if I had to live this quarter of a century over 
 again, I should not on the whole act very differently. I should 
 try to avoid many trifling errors, and many undoubted follies ; 
 but as to the bulk of my ideas, sentiments, and even actions, I 
 should make no change. I also remarked how little alteration 
 there was in my views of men in general during all these 
 years. Much is said about the dreams of youth, and the awak- 
 ing of mature age. I have not noticed this in myself. I was 
 from the first struck by the vices and weaknesses of mankind ; 
 and, as to the good qualities which I then attributed to them, I 
 must say that I still find them much the same." It is truly 
 refreshing to us whose ears are filled with the painful cynicism 
 of premature experience, to find that even now, to some favoured 
 souls, is granted the privilege of perpetual youth. 
 
 If any lack of interest should be felt in these letters, it will 
 be, I think, from a cause which is not altogether a defect. There 
 are no shadows, in one sense, in the picture. It is all clear sun- 
 shine in Tocqueville's life, both inner and outer. The perfect 
 healthiness of his nature excludes the charm that is sometimes 
 derived from an element of morbidity. But one may also say 
 with truth, that there is a want of depth. Perhaps the most 
 interesting element in the lives of great thinkers is their im- 
 perfect utterance of deep truths only half-grasped ; their con- 
 sciousness of enveloping mystery and darkness, into which the 
 light that shines from them throws only dim suggestive rays. 
 We find nothing of this in Tocqueville. " Shallow " and " super- 
 ficial " are the last epithets that could be applied ; and yet we 
 cannot call him profound, either in character or intellect. Earnest 
 as he was in the search after truth, he was destitute of one power, 
 necessary in the pursuit of the highest truth ; he could not endui^e
 
 SUPPLEMENT ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILl.E 367 
 
 to doubt. M. (le lieiiumont extracts fruin his early notes this 
 remarkable passage : " If I were desired to classify human miseries 
 I should do so in this order : — (1) Sickness, (2) Death, (3) Doubt." 
 In respect, therefore, of the deepest interests of humanity he 
 was content to l)e guided. He was devoutly attJiched to Ro- 
 manism ; but rather from the felt necessity of having a religion, 
 than from a deliberate conviction in favour of the particular 
 creed. He had acutely observed some of the more particular 
 mutual influences of religions and forms of government ; but his 
 remarks on the more general relations of religion to humanity 
 seem to me to constitute the weakest part of his writings. To 
 metaphysics he had a dislike which he frc(iuently shows. He 
 sends M. de Corcelle a coj^y of Aristotle, with the rcmai-k that it 
 is "much too Greek to suit him"; and in the second part of his 
 Democracy in America we can detect, here and there, that his 
 acquaintance with philosophy is somewhat superficial. It is no 
 contradiction to this, that Tocqueville disi)lays considerable skill 
 in psychological analysis. He shows the same superiority in 
 everything th;it depends only or chiefly on individual observation 
 and reflection. His insight was always both keen and wide, his 
 analysis both ingenious and sound ; but systematic abstract 
 thought was not to his taste, and he never i)ursued it with his 
 full energy. We may sum uj) much by saying that Tocqueville 
 applied to the study of politics a mind that, l)oth in its merits 
 and in its defects, was of the scientific rather than the philosophic 
 kind. We notice in him many traits peculiar to students of 
 physics. Thus, he early chose and ahvays adhered to a special 
 and definite subject of study ; his method was purely inductive ; 
 he always went straight to the original documents, which fonned, 
 as it were, the matter whose laws he was investigating ; he vrrote 
 down only the results of long and laborious observation ; and 
 these results were again rigorously winnowed before they saw the 
 light. " For one book he published," says M. de Beaumont, " he 
 wrote ten." And this is corroborated by the glimpses into his 
 laboratory that his letters from time to time allow. Thus at the 
 outset of his preparation for his last work he says : " I investigate, 
 I experimentalise : I try to grasp the facts more closely than has 
 yet been attempted, and to vrring out of them the general truths 
 which they contain." And again, three years later: "1 make 
 the utmost efforts to ascertain, from contemporary evidence, what 
 really happened ; and often spend great labour in discovering 
 what was ready to my hand. When I have gathered in this toil- 
 some harvest, I retire, as it were, into myself : I examine with 
 extreme care, collate and connect the notions which I have
 
 368 ESSA VS AND ADDRESSES supplement 
 
 acquired, and simply give the result." As an example of his con- 
 scientious labour, I may mention that he learnt the German 
 language at the age of fifty, read several German books, and 
 travelled in Germany for some months, for the sake of obtaining 
 information Avhich he compressed into a few paragraphs of his 
 Ancien lle'gime. While taxing thus the resources of his observation 
 to the utmost, he depended upon it too entirely ; his avoidance of 
 other writers on his own sul:)ject caused him, as he allows, great 
 waste of power ; his treatment of economical questions strikes 
 one often as too empirical and tentative ; political economy, when 
 he first wrote, had not taken rank as a true science, and his was 
 not the mind to labour at systematising and correcting a mass of 
 alien generalisations. But, while this diminishes occasionally the 
 intrinsic value of his speculations, it adds to the harmonious 
 freshness of his writings ; and, his observation being unerring, his 
 most hasty generalisations are always partially true. 
 
 The writings of Tocqueville mark an era in the study of 
 political science. Hitherto writers on this subject have laboured 
 under defects of two different kinds. Their science was only 
 struggling into birth, and their own insight was rarely clear from 
 the mists of partiality. For a long time, it is true, the study of 
 man will lag far behind the study of nature, but Tocqueville's 
 books indicate a transition to a better phase. The pioneers in 
 the van of all sciences will be men rather of a strong imagination 
 than a sober reason ; they have need of the former to fight the 
 various obstacles that an unknown country presents. Conse- 
 quently, their view will be wide and indefinite ; their assertions 
 confused, yet violent ; they will not be content to trace the 
 development of a few principles out of many, but they will make 
 their own poverty the measure of Nature's variety, and group all 
 the facts they meet with round the few principles they have 
 strongly grasped. Such men are necessary to make the first move 
 in any science, but they must pass aAvay and give place to others. 
 The early Greek physicists, the founders of science, bear, of 
 course, this character. In the study of external nature we have 
 now attained to a learned modesty which smiles at their 
 ignorant rashness ; but in the more difficult study of man we 
 are still taught by thinkers who, for hastiness of generalisa- 
 tion and audacity of assertion, may be compared to the well- 
 known Greek philosopher, who held that " all things were made 
 of water." 
 
 But what has most hampered political thinkers in all ages is 
 the little free play that has been alloAved to their intellects, 
 by passion, prejudice, and interest. These have warped uncon-
 
 SUPPLEMENT ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE 369 
 
 sciously the speculations of the nobler souls, and consciously those 
 of the ignobler. Not that the slavery has been complete ; but 
 the extraneous influence has fixed in the field of inquiry impass- 
 able limits and unassailable posts. Where men have overcome 
 the promptings of selfishness, they have been unable to throw off 
 early beliefs, cramped by the narrowness of a caste : or they have 
 fallen into the equally fatal bondage of a n iolent reaction from 
 these beliefs. In the latter case, however, where the restraints 
 have been merely negative, where the reason of men has been 
 free to choose anything except certain received opinions, the 
 philosophy of politics has always made greater progress. This 
 was the case with the French philosophers who preceded '89. 
 The natural wildness of awakening speculation was enhanced by 
 their negative position, their sweeping antagonism to an effete 
 system. This extravagance, however, will always be gradually 
 corrected, either by the bitter teachings of experience, or less 
 painfully by the progress of science, and the bloodless contests of 
 the pen. The first half-discoverer of a truth is apt to shout out 
 arrogantly his half-discovery ; his successor, to equal enthusiasm, 
 joins greater modesty of assertion. Not that the cast-off 
 chimeras fall immediately to the ground ; but they are taken up 
 by men of inferior intellect, and with smaller following. In free- 
 dom, however, from the defects I have noticed, Tocqueville has 
 outstripped his age, and his works will long remain models both 
 in style and matter. They are not made to strike or startle, but 
 they powerfully absorb the attention and convince the reason. 
 Their excellence often conceals their originality ; the perfect 
 arrangement of facts makes the conclusions drawn from them 
 appear to lie on the surface ; the ideas are so carefully explained, 
 defined, and disentangled, the arguments are strained so clear, 
 that we are cheated into the belief that we should have thought 
 the same ourselves if we had happened to develop our views on 
 the subject. Thus conviction steals in unawares, and it is only 
 by carefully comparing our views before and after perusal that 
 we find how much we have gained. 
 
 Tocqueville may be considered from another point of view as 
 an embodiment of the spirit of the age. As civilisation progresses, 
 unless patriotism decays, the votaries of politiail science will in- 
 crease very rapidly in number. Not only will the men think 
 who are thinkers liy nature, but the men of action will be forced 
 into the study of first principles. As the barriers between castes 
 are effaced, and national prejudices fade before increasing mutual 
 communication, every honest and sincere patriot will find it more 
 and more impossible to submit, in any degree whatsoever, to 
 
 2 B
 
 370 ESSA ys AND ADDRESSES supplement 
 
 political leading-strings. If he is without independence of mind, 
 he will become a disciple ; if he possesses it, he will study widely 
 and impartially for himself. In any case he will not be the 
 partisan he would in another age have been. The bent of 
 Tocque\alle's mind was eminently practical and patriotic : he did 
 not enter into study so much for the sake of abstract truth as for 
 the sake of his country. He was an aristocrat by birth and senti- 
 ment, whose education and experience had enabled him to get rid 
 of aristocratic prejudices without contracting opposite ones. His 
 impressible mind had early conceived a strong enthusiasm for 
 liberty ; and his common sense accepted social equality as in- 
 evitable. His unique position is due to his clear discrimination 
 between the two — liberty and equality ; between the motives for 
 which they are sought, and the results that follow their attain- 
 ment. He was one of the first to tear the sophism that the 
 tyranny of the majority is freedom, and the sophism that popular 
 election of an omnipotent government constitutes the government 
 of the people. But this article is not the place for an analysis of 
 Tocqueville's writings, and without such an analysis I could not 
 do justice to his opinions on this subject — for the investigation 
 of the mutual relations of liberty and equality occupied the 
 whole of his literary life ; it forms the guiding thread of both 
 his books. 
 
 Before the time comes for writing the history of the period of 
 Tocqueville's public life, we may hope that a more copious selec- 
 tion from his correspondence will be vouchsafed to the world. 
 The additions, however, in the English collection are of consider- 
 able value, especially in following Tocqueville through the 
 troubled years 1848-52. At first sight it seems surprising that 
 Tocqueville did not make more impression as an active politician. 
 It is not, of course, his mere literary pre-eminence that would 
 cause this surprise ; but practicality, as I have shown, is one of 
 his chief characteristics as a thinker. Clearness, soberness, and 
 shrewdness, together with breadth and originality of views, form 
 a perfect combination for a statesman. He was, however, always 
 in circumstances unfavourable to the display of his talents ; and 
 he had not the egotistic force of character which overcomes un- 
 favourable circumstances. At the outset of his political career, 
 in an interesting correspondence with Count Mole, he displays an 
 exaggerated moral sensitiveness ; and his very ambition was of 
 the kind that hampers rather than sustains a man. He was not 
 content that his motives should be elevated and his conduct pure ; 
 he desired to excel in purity and elevation. To this overstrained 
 purism we must attribute his remaining in opposition during the
 
 SUPPLEMENT ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE 371 
 
 years 1840-48. It is true that his disagreement with the 
 Diichatel-Guizot policy was sufficient to justify parliamentary 
 opposition in ordinary times ; but a patriot so sober and enlight- 
 ened as Tocqueville might have discerned the necessity of 
 sacrificing minor differences at that crisis, in the general cause of 
 order and constitutional government. As it was, he attached 
 himself to a composite party, with many of whose heterogeneous 
 elements he must have had far less sympathy than with the 
 ministry. Thus his oratory, far more adapted to exposition than 
 attack, found no scope ; his moderation kept him unnoticed among 
 men more bold, more captious, or more unscrupuloius than him- 
 self : altogether he gained respect rather than influence, and 
 came to be considered rather as a useful adviser than a cjipable 
 leader. 
 
 The Revolution of 1S48 came. Tocqueville had predicted a 
 similar event a month before, but he was not deceived as to its 
 factitious nature. The more we examine this "sham lievolution," 
 the more perfect an instance it appears of the irony of history. 
 Never were causes more disproportionate to effects. It was the 
 mere sound of the names " French " and " Revolution " combined 
 that shook the thrones of Europe; the resemblance between the 
 different movements of the year is thoroughly superficial. The 
 cry for social reform at Paris is echoed by a cry for national 
 union at Berlin, a cry for national independence at Pesth and 
 Milan ; and this Parisian cry for social reform was steadily 
 repudiated by France. "The nation," says Tocqueville, in a 
 letter to Mr. Grote, " did not wish for a revolution, much less 
 for a republic." And he argues "That the whole of the year 
 1848 has been one long and painful effort on the part of the 
 nation to recover what it was robbed of by the surprise of 
 February." He shows that it Avas only by a decision and 
 rapidity of action worthy of a better cause that the house of 
 Orleans contrived to lose the throne. The monarchy yielded to 
 an (Uaeute far less formidable than that which the feeble and 
 ephemeral Provisional Government quelled in June. Tocque- 
 ville describes, from his own experience, how an hour's delay 
 might have saved it. 
 
 With a heavy heart, but with undiminished zeal, Tocqueville 
 addressed himself to the task of supporting the Republic. 
 Grieved and disgusted as he was with the Revolution and the 
 follies of the Provisional Government, he saw in the Republic the 
 last chance of constitutional freedom. He was not slow in esti- 
 mating how fatal a wound the frenzy of a day had inflicted 
 on the country. The revolution, executed in the name of the
 
 372 ESSA YS AND ADDRESSES supplement 
 
 masses, had stirred among those masses only a feeling of dull 
 distrust and languid fear, hardly chequered by a little vague hope 
 and curiosity. Had the Provisional Government had any real 
 work to do, any desired social improvement to effect, it might 
 have regained public confidence. But, as it was unable at all to 
 counterbalance the necessary evils of a revolution, while it showed 
 marked incompetence in the ordinary business of administration, 
 affairs grew daily worse. The peasant proprietors of France, 
 to whom appeal had to be made, have the ordinary character- 
 istics of their class. They are well-meaning and intelligent, but 
 selfish and narrow : very shrewd on all matters within their 
 ken, very ignorant upon all without : entirely absorbed in their 
 individual struggle for prosperit}^, and desiring peace, order, 
 stability, above all other goods. They had never appreciated the 
 advantages of government by parties; before the close of 1848 
 they were decidedly prejudiced against it, and longing to repose 
 on one strong arm. Such were the men to whom universal 
 suffrage confided the fate of France. 
 
 It is melancholy to follow, under Tocqueville's guidance, the 
 details of the long death-struggle of French freedom. He had 
 the pain of seeing clearly the present and future evils, while 
 totally unable to heal the one or prevent the other. Even had 
 he possessed more influence, his peculiar talents were hardly 
 fitted for such troublous times ; he would always have shrunk 
 from the slightest violation of forms, though hampered by one 
 of the worst constitutions ever framed, and face to face with an 
 unscrupulous foe. In truth, the struggle was most unequal. On 
 the one side were the debris of old parties, disunited by long 
 habit, disorganised by the entire change in their position, stunned 
 by the rapid succession of political shocks, confused by the work- 
 ing of their new constitution, vacillating between the desire to 
 deal fairly with their President and the desire to protect them- 
 selves from his attacks, distrustful of each other and distrusted 
 by the nation. To the uncertain and inconsequent action of this 
 heterogeneous body, Louis Napoleon opposed an egotism pure 
 and simple, a calm and complete self-confidence, chequered by no 
 doubts and hampered by no scruples. The constitution brought 
 him into continual collisions with the Assembly, in which he had 
 all the advantage given by singleness of ynW and purpose. The 
 patience and dissimulation which his exile had sufficiently taught 
 him were all he required for the development. He had but to 
 profess the profoundest unselfishness, and seize every opportunity 
 for self- aggrandisement : he could thus, while gradually con- 
 solidating his own power, and bringing the Assembly into con-
 
 SUPPLEMENT ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE 373 
 
 tempt, contrive always to be or appear in tlie right. Perhaps 
 the greatest blot in his selfish policy was the dismissal in 
 October 1849 of the ministry in which Tocqueville held a 
 portfolio. The step was necessary for his ends ; but it was 
 impossible to find a plausil>le excuse for it. Tlic ministry had 
 passed successfully through a period of great difhculty ; and, 
 as Tocqueville says, there was actualh- a danger of constitutional 
 government again becoming popular. Imperialist writers tell us 
 that " the elected one responded to the national wish that he 
 should have more freedom of action " — a reason at once felicitous 
 and frank. 
 
 At length Tocqueville's worst expectations were realised by 
 the 2nd of December. He was at his post in the National 
 Assembly on that day ; and from a letter he wrote to 77('' Times 
 soon after (republished in the English edition), supplemented by 
 his conversations, we get a vivid idea of those memorable scenes. 
 The noble indignation he expresses in the letter at that signal 
 outrage to law and liberty Avas shared by many ; but there were 
 few who mourned its effects so deeply and so long. He com- 
 plains aflfectingly in his later letters of the state of moral isolation 
 in which he finds himself : that his contemporaries have ceased to 
 care for what he still loves passionately : that they solace them- 
 selves for its loss with tranquillity and material comfort, while 
 he is destitute even of sympathy in his sadness — sympathy, 
 which was to him almost a necessity of life. It moved him 
 especially to see the coldness with which England, the nurse of 
 liberty, looked on the enslavement of France : the arrogant con- 
 tempt of his countrymen, as though unworthy to be free, or even 
 happier as slaves : the selfish indifference at the tyranny, followed 
 in a year or two by blind approval and applause of the tyrant. 
 " Et tu, Brute," is the tone of several of Tocqueville's later letters 
 to England. 
 
 Reduced to political inaction, Tocqueville adopted the only 
 method left him of serving his country. He chose a period of 
 the past, fraught with instruction for the pi-esent, and devoted to 
 its study all the powers of his ripened intellect. The result of 
 this work, the volume on L'Ancien Regime, is but a fragment; 
 yet it shows a decided improvement on his former book, both in 
 style and matter, and is equally likely to have an enduring 
 reputation. From the midst of this work he was snatched away 
 by a sudden illness, in the spring of 1859. He left behind him, 
 besides his writings, an example bright in itself, and especially 
 valuable to the present generation — the example of one who com- 
 bined the merits of the man of thought and the maii of action ;
 
 374 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES supplembnt 
 
 of one who, possessing all the graces and refinements of modern 
 civilisation, its enlarged knowledge, its enlightened moderation, 
 its universal tolerant philanthropy, yet fashioned his life accord- 
 ing to an ideal with mediaeval constancy and singleness of purpose, 
 and displayed a passionate patriotism and an ardent love of 
 freedom worthy of a hero of antiquity. 
 
 NOTE ON BENTHAM'S DEONTOLOGY 
 A footnote to page 168, end of first paragraph. 
 
 [In the preface to the tliird edition of his Outlines of the History of Ethics, 
 published in 1892, Professor Sidgwick says: "I have . . . changed my 
 opinion on a point of some importance in the history of Utilitarianism : 
 I am now disposed to accept the posthumously published Deontology of 
 Bentham, as giving a generally trustworthy account of his view as to the 
 relation of Virtue to the virtuous agent's Happiness." And on p. 244 of 
 the same work he says : "In the Deontology ... it is distinctly assumed 
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