If California 
 
 Regional 
 
 facility
 
 THINGS WORTH THINKING ABOUT 
 
 A SERIES OF LECTURES 
 
 UPON 
 
 LITERATURE AND CULTURE 
 
 BY 
 
 T. G. TUCKER, M.A. 
 
 Professor of Classics in the University of Melbourne 
 
 IHelbournc 
 GEORGE ROBERTSON AND COMPANY 
 
 1890
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE following short studies were originally delivered 
 as Lectures before various societies, and subsequently 
 appeared in the columns of the Melbourne Argus. 
 They are here reprinted with such slight revision as 
 their present collection seemed to render desirable. 
 
 They will be found to be closely connected in in- 
 tention, since they all alike aim at encouraging in an 
 undogmatic way that humaner culture and that open- 
 mindedness and receptivity which alone can counter- 
 act the harsh and vulgarizing materialism wherewith 
 our future development as a people is palpably 
 threatened. 
 
 If this oneness of purpose has caused some re- 
 iteration here and there, it is hoped that such repeti- 
 tion will prove rather helpful than offensive. 
 
 761 *'
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS AND THEIR BELIEFS - 1 
 
 THE NATURE AND PROVINCE OF POETRY 39 
 
 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND EDUCATION - 73 
 
 CULTURE AND CANT - - - 109 
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY - 134 
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL 171 
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT - 203
 
 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS AND 
 THEIR BELIEFS. 
 
 AMONG the most attractive studies is that of the 
 development of the powers of human mind, of that 
 part in us which distinguishes us from the brutes. 
 If we would speculate on the future of humanity ; if 
 we want to find out whether man is growing more or 
 whether he is growing less like the angels as cen- 
 turies roll by ; and if we want to have a reasoned 
 basis for the conclusion we do come to, and not to 
 rest it merely on that self-conceit which is wont to 
 arise during epochs of material progress ; it is worth 
 our while to go back as far into the past as we can, 
 and to consider the mental condition of our ancestors 
 I would almost say the earlier stages of ourselves 
 at the most remote time at which we can be said 
 to discover them. As we proceed back from one 
 millennium to another for centuries, in a connection 
 like this, count for little we may look for tokens of 
 a growth in certain faculties and virtues and powers, 
 and for a diminution in certain brutalities. We 
 may look for an advance in moral ideas, and in 
 
 2
 
 2 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 penetration of intellect ; and anyone who attempts 
 this quest in an unprejudiced and scientific manner 
 will undoubtedly find what he would fain expect. 
 He will find that in the power of reason and in 
 purity of conduct, as well as in physical advantages, 
 we are many stages further on the road to human 
 perfection than were the earliest peoples whom we 
 can be said to know. 
 
 Yet there both have been and are many of the 
 opposite view. The ancients had a tradition of a 
 gradual decline of the world. Homer speaks dis- 
 paragingly of " the men that live in these degenerate 
 days," and the poets tell us that the earliest age of 
 the world was a golden age, an age of justice and 
 righteousness and peace and spontaneous plenty, and 
 that there followed it in deteriorating succession a 
 silver, a bronze, and at last an iron age. But as a 
 human being is, after all, a very hopeful sort of 
 pessimist, they nevertheless looked for a return in 
 some happy future of that age of gold. 
 
 And if you do not attach much value to the 
 notions of an ancient Greek or Roman and I 
 believe it is getting fashionable to feign an ignorant 
 contempt of them you may, at least, have observed 
 that many of our own ancients are " belauders of 
 days gone by," of what they call " the good old 
 times." Perhaps it is an amiable trait in aged 
 persons to be faithful to a dead past ; perhaps it is 
 not an unamiable trait in youth that it believes in 
 progress. But, after all, the belief in the good old 
 past is based on sentiment, while the belief in the
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. .3 
 
 good young future is based on both sentiment and 
 reason. 
 
 You may be asking what all this has to do with 
 my subject. Well, it is meant partly to prepare you 
 for a not very gratifying picture which I shall have 
 to draw of the mental condition of our ancestors 
 in that dim time to which philological science, the 
 study of language and its laws, can carry us back ; 
 partly it is meant to make what I have to say as 
 apparently credible as it is scientifically true. There 
 are persons now-a-days who are like the ancients in 
 imagining a lost golden age of humanity, and who, 
 looking at the peoples that now are on the face of 
 the earth, mourn that the savage has fallen so far 
 from his high and enlightened estate, and that the 
 so-called civilized man too has fallen at least in some 
 degree I am here to speak of some of the results 
 of a study which comes to quite the opposite con- 
 clusion, a study which finds reason to rejoice that 
 civilized man has risen so high, and that the 
 barbarian is rising after him. I am going to hold 
 that our own ancestors were once as savage as any 
 existing savages, in morals, in religious views, and in 
 intellectual and material resources. And I take 
 leave, further, to think that we too are savages to 
 what man will be in the hereafter. 
 
 All the studies which are engaged in searching 
 into antiquity will support this cheerful view. There 
 are several such studies now being scientifically 
 pursued. They are interpenetrating each other, 
 illuminating each other, at more and more points.
 
 4 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 There is, for instance, the biological study, which 
 investigates the growth of the physical man ; there 
 is the study of history, which traces the changes in 
 his social and political ideas ; there is archaeology, 
 which examines his implements and productions at 
 different periods ; there is the comparative study of 
 religions, which traces his expanding views of the 
 spiritual world ; and there is a study with which I 
 have to do, and which, so far as the mind is concerned, 
 can go further back than any other the comparative 
 study of languages a study which learns from words 
 and their history how confined and elementary were 
 the ideas of those who first used them. 
 
 All these branches of inquiry discover the same 
 cheering tale of the growth of light and the growth 
 of sweetness in humanity ; but the study of lan- 
 guage tells it most conclusively and goes deepest 
 down. It reaches far beyond history. Historical 
 study, in its narrower sense, draws its materials from 
 written records, and written records belong to 
 advanced civilization. Historical study, therefore, 
 cannot help us in regard to those periods which lie 
 far beyond the invention of writing ; but the science 
 of language penetrates to a very primitive condition 
 of things. It does not stop at cuneiform inscriptions 
 or Egyptian hieroglyphics. These are only its 
 instruments for deeper delving. Linguistic study 
 cannot, of course, tell us everything. It cannot tell 
 us for certain whether the primitive ancestors of our 
 own stock dwelt in Asia or in Europe, whether they 
 were tall or short, and so forth ; but it can tell us by
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 5 
 
 what devices they expressed their conceptions, what 
 conceptions those were, and how they developed. It 
 can betray to us many significant facts as, for 
 instance^ that, at a comparatively recent period, they 
 had a very inadequate sense of colour, of the distinc- 
 tion between blue and black, green and yellow. It 
 can reveal to us that they had little ear for musical 
 harmony, their notion of music being that of the wind 
 among the trees, or, as the Greeks afterwards called 
 it in their myth, the music of Orpheus for Orpheus, 
 in his Hindu form, Ribhu, is the wind. And thus 
 there can be little doubt that, with eye and ear at 
 least, we human beings are developing new delicacies 
 of sensation and discrimination. 
 
 A most important revelation made by the study of 
 language is the revelation of the religious ideas of 
 those pre-historic ancestors and of the steps by which 
 their beliefs passed into pagan myths, into the 
 mythologies of Greece and Rome, India and Persia, 
 Germany and Scandinavia. So much light has the 
 scientific study of language thrown upon all this 
 question that a new science has come into existence 
 very imperfect, no doubt, as yet, but gaining con- 
 tinually in clearness and system the science of com- 
 parative mythology. In this study I have exercised 
 myself somewhat, and I want to-night to set before 
 you, in a way as free from technicalities as I can, 
 the conclusions which I believe to be most trust- 
 worthy concerning the earliest ascertainable beliefs 
 of that part of the pre-historic world's population 
 from which we are descended. I shall avoid very
 
 6 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 disputable points, and, of course, in lectures like this, 
 one expects to do more good by throwing out a series 
 of suggestions to be thought over, than by epitomizing 
 the results of an extensive science. 
 
 There are many who have wondered at a very 
 striking anomaly in the civilization of the ancient 
 peoples of Greece and Rome. " Here," they say, 
 " are peoples whose literature is of the highest finish, 
 whose art in sculpture and building can never be too 
 much admired, whose philosophical inquiries were 
 ardent and acute ; and yet. what a religion was 
 theirs ! How infinitely below their arts and man- 
 ners ! How inconsistent, how absurd, how morally 
 gross ! " There is no wonder that people should say 
 this, and perhaps there is little wonder that persons 
 whose acquaintance with Greece and Rome is but 
 slight should judge from the absurdity and impro- 
 priety of their myths that, after all, the Greeks and 
 Romans were not the civilized peoples, not worth the 
 study, we make out. It will be part of my subject 
 to deal with this anomaly, to say how these unworthy 
 myths arose, and to point out why it was that a 
 civilized people continued to entertain them. We 
 may find in the study of language a sufficiently 
 intelligible and natural reason for both their origin 
 and their preservation. The ancients themselves, in 
 their sceptical moods, scarcely knew what to make of 
 their traditions. One adventurous reasoner sug- 
 gested that the myths were pure inventions, intended 
 to inculcate moral lessons. Of very questionable 
 morality, indeed, would the lessons be, and, therefore,
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. / 
 
 his theory found little acceptance. Another thought 
 them a series of allegories, intended to teach the 
 principles of physical science. Yet another, the 
 renowned Euhemerus, declared that they were legends 
 embodying real historical facts, exploits of real men 
 and women exalted into myths. The same view was 
 taken of the Teutonic mythology by that worthy 
 gentleman of the middle ages, Saxo Grammaticus. 
 Bacon, again, has a series of allegorical explanations 
 of such traditions, and heads them with the title, 
 " Wisdom of the Ancients." All these rationalizing 
 efforts were wide of the mark, as will, I think, be seen. 
 
 Again, there are many who, going a little deeper 
 into this subject, have noticed distinct resemblances 
 between the extinct myths of Greece and the living 
 myths of barbarian peoples now-a-days those of the 
 Polynesians for example, or of the Red Indians 
 and, with that hastiness of conclusion which comes 
 of a lack of scientific training, they have invented 
 ingenious theories of a genealogical connection 
 between Polynesians and Red Indians and Greeks ; 
 or they have even supposed that these beliefs have 
 found their way by promulgation from land to land, 
 just as we promulgate Christianity by missions. 
 
 And, once more, those who are interested in what 
 is called folk-lore that is to say, in the popular 
 superstitions, fables, and nursery tales which are 
 passed on from generation to generation, such as 
 the stories of Jack the Giant-killer and Cinderella, 
 the use of the divining rod for the discovery of 
 hidden treasure, the belief that a dog howling about
 
 8 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 a house portends a death in the family, and so on 
 those, I say, who are interested in comparing these 
 as they are told on the Ganges, on the Volga, or in 
 the Hebrides, are apt to be startled at the great 
 similarity between them, and to run away into wrong 
 conclusions. To explain these phenomena will fall 
 within my scope; for all those old legends and fables 
 and superstitions aVise from what were once religious 
 beliefs, from a method of mythology which once pre- 
 vailed among the ancestors of all these various 
 peoples alike. 
 
 I do not, however, propose to speak of the myths 
 of all the world, but shall, except for purposes of 
 illustration, confine myself to those of our own 
 ancestors. And when I say our own ancestors I do 
 not mean the ancestors of such of us as may be 
 Saxons or of such as may be Celts, but I mean the 
 ancestors of a wider stock, the stock that long ago 
 spread itself from one original home over all the land 
 from Gibraltar to Calcutta, and from Crete to the 
 North Cape. I shall, I fear, in what I now have to 
 say for a short time, be giving no new information 
 to some of you. But I trust these more learned 
 persons will bear with me while I make what may 
 prove a necessary explanation to others present. In 
 some far-off pre-historic time it may be 5,000 years 
 ago, or it may be many more the Teutons, Sclavs, 
 Celts, Greeks, Italians, Persians, and Hindus did not 
 exist as separate peoples with differences of speech, 
 religion, habits, and appearance. There was in that 
 dim time one people, a rude and unrefined people,
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 
 
 with great possibilities of development, no doubt, 
 with germs of great moral and intellectual energy 
 such as were not possessed by other peoples which 
 then occupied the earth, but with only germs. The 
 great capacities which have made it what it is were 
 yet latent. There were, of course, numerous other 
 stocks upon the face of the earth, some of which, 
 such as the Semitic, can be well denned. But the 
 one of which I am speaking is very distinct, and will 
 be treated alone. And be it observed that we are 
 dealing here with no such wild notions as that of 
 Anglo-Israelism and such-like inanities, but with 
 scientific fact. 
 
 What to call this primitive people is a difficult 
 question. Because from them are descended almost 
 all the inhabitants of Europe and of that part of 
 Asia which is about the River Indus, we call them 
 Indo-Europeans a clumsy and unsatisfactory name, 
 which makes us think of the divided elements rather 
 than of the primitive unity. Some, altogether 
 wrongly, call them Aryans, a title which properly 
 belongs only to those of the stock who dwell in Asia. 
 Physically their chief characteristics were their light 
 hair, eyes, and complexion, . and Professor Huxley, 
 with that habit of denning characteristics which 
 belongs to the cultured and literary scientist, calls 
 them Xanthochroi a Greek compound meaning 
 blonde as opposed to the Melanchroi, the swarthy 
 dark-eyed stocks. I wish we might accept this word 
 instead of our " Indo-Europeans," because it not only 
 contains no element of untruth, but is also commend-
 
 10 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 able as bringing before us an important physical 
 distinction. Where the cradle of the race was, 
 where was the centre from which it expanded like an 
 expanding wave, is a debated question. Some say in 
 Central Asia, about the River Oxus ; but my own 
 belief, founded on arguments which I could give if 
 this were occasion for them principally arguments 
 connected with the earliest ascertained migrations of 
 the several peoples, or with the crops and trees and 
 animals and climate with which the original people 
 must have been familiar, or with matters of a more 
 technical nature involving delicate similarities of 
 language my own belief, founded on these argu- 
 ments, is that these Xanthochroi, these ancestors of 
 Celt and Hindu, Greek and Scandinavian, dwelt in 
 a country extending along the south-eastern shore 
 of the Baltic Sea, and inland where Prussia and 
 Russia now border on each other. From this 
 region they spread west and east and south, not 
 of deliberate intent, perhaps not perhaps, as a 
 deliberately conquering people, but as their own 
 fecundity compelled them, and as more fertile or 
 more sunny lands invited them insensibly on. And 
 so some found their way round the Caspian Sea, and 
 as far as India ; others were urged southward into 
 the peninsulas of Greece and Italy and Spain ; 
 others passed westward to France and Britain, or, 
 after reaching Denmark, crossed northward into 
 Scandinavia. But they did not find all this country 
 uninhabited. The southern parts, at least, were 
 apparently occupied by a shorter race with dark skins
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 11 
 
 and hair and eyes, with a different language and 
 different customs. The expanding Xanthochroi pressed 
 these before them down into the farthest peninsulas 
 and corners, into Italy and Spain and the Pelopon- 
 nese, and when they could press them no further 
 they partly absorbed them into themselves by inter- 
 marrying with them, and thereby modified their own 
 distinctive character and appearance. And this is in 
 all probability the reason why the two sorts of people 
 the dark and the blonde exist among us. This, 
 too, is the reason why the dark predominates among 
 the peoples of Spain and Italy, while the light pre- 
 dominates among the Germans and the Scandinavians, 
 who, being left in the original home, the later born 
 of the original stock, had no such Melanchroic 
 peoples to subdue and to blend with. The Xantho- 
 chroi are still spreading. We are still crowding out 
 the other stocks. North and South America and 
 Australia are practically ours, and Asia is apparently 
 falling also into the hands of the Xanthochroic Sclav, 
 who is still pressing out from the original abode. 
 
 Let us return to our primitive people. While yet 
 it was one, we know something I may say we know 
 very much -of its condition. It had clothes and 
 wattled huts, it ploughed and sowed, it had rowing 
 boats, it had cattle and horses, and carts, and it had 
 some sort of metal. It had hamlets, but no cities. 
 The family relations existed, but we do not know 
 exactly how close these were felt to be. A still closer 
 study of language, however, is held to reveal below 
 all this a more primitive, a ruder form of life, in a
 
 12 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 still dimmer time, when the same stock, which after- 
 wards used a certain tool, did not possess that 
 tool, but used bare hands or clumsy devices such as 
 savages use ; a time when they did not know how to 
 produce fire, but had to obtain it by accident, or to 
 borrow it from one kept always burning ; when con- 
 sequently they often ate raw food ; a time, in short, 
 when they were miserable savages, as bad as the 
 veriest Hottentot. If now you will believe that this 
 original common ancestry did once exist, and if you 
 will attribute to them an extremely rudimentary 
 civilization, you will not be surprised, on the one 
 hand, that certain legends extend all the way 
 from the Himalayas to the Atlantic, nor, on the 
 other, that those legends are frequently childish 
 and immoral. 
 
 It will not be dangerous for me to say that religious 
 belief, like everything else, grows more refined and 
 reasonable with the advance of time ; nor will any- 
 one deny that is to say, no student of history will 
 deny that there is in religious beliefs an ascertain- 
 able natural development. Those who make any 
 comparative study of religions those who watch 
 even superficially the changes which have occurred 
 throughout the world in succeeding ages in the con- 
 ception which man entertains of his relation to some 
 greater power outside himself find that there are 
 regular steps up which that conception mounts. 
 Savage peoples begin with a vague belief in spirits, 
 souls of ancestors and other souls, which are to be 
 propitiated, to be kept away, or else to be mastered.
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 13 
 
 The savage thinks he can control the spirit by magical 
 arts and incantations. He does not love the spirit, 
 nor worship it from any reverent disposition of mind 
 he fears it, and seeks to bribe it, or else to circum- 
 vent it. Sometimes the spirit is habitant, either by 
 choice or compulsion, in some visible object, and that 
 object is thereupon worshipped. It becomes a fetish, 
 and, after what I have said, you will not be surprised 
 to find that the fetish is occasionally kicked and 
 cuffed. Savagery of this sort is not dead yet, even 
 in civilized countries, for the uneducated Italian 
 peasant woman in her wrath still cuffs her little 
 image. The religious state of mind if you can call 
 it religious which I am describing, is technically 
 known as animism, and in it, as you can readily 
 understand, there is no room for moral suggestion. 
 
 Next, as time goes on, certain spiritual powers grow 
 in dignity and in width of operation. The idea of gods 
 begins to develop itself. The powers and phenomena 
 of nature the sky, the earth, the sun, the wind, the 
 dawn become deities. The sky itself, the sun itself, 
 is a spirit-god not the habitation of a god nor the 
 realm of a god, but actually and literally itself a god. 
 And as these powers and phenomena are numerous, 
 the gods are equally numerous ; the night sky is a 
 different deity from the day sky, and the storm wind 
 from the gentle breeze. These greater spirits, too, 
 can be propitiated by offerings or worked upon by 
 magic. The South African of to-day seeks to 
 control an eclipse by beating his tom-tom. The old 
 Xanthochroi witches sought to bring down the
 
 14 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 influence of the moon with spells. And while these 
 greater spirits are worshipped, the lower animism of 
 which I have spoken, the worship of ancestors, the 
 propitiation of them by sacrifice even by human 
 sacrifice and the custom of fetishism, still go on, 
 less and less perhaps, but always breaking out oddly 
 and inconsistently through the newer beliefs, as, for 
 instance, when persons avoid or affect certain objects 
 as lucky or unlucky, or when they turn their chairs 
 round and round because they are unsuccessful at 
 whist. I want this state of religious belief this 
 animistic polytheism or polydtemonism to be 
 properly borne in mind, for it is, we must hold, the 
 state of belief which existed among that primitive 
 ancestral people of which I have spoken. 
 
 We have, I may remark, not yet come to any 
 suggestion of moral guidance. A religion like this 
 has no idea of retribution, and its only idea of 
 immortality is that of continuance. It would 
 accordingly concern itself in no degree with the 
 question of morality. How should it 1 There is 
 nothing moral or immoral about a sky, or a sun, or a 
 wind, and the early barbarian did not begin by 
 assuming that his gods, and such gods, should be 
 beings of a fine morality. His method was not ci 
 priori. He did not say, " These are the gods I 
 worship, and as gods must, of course, be pure, there- 
 fore these are pure." The despairing Greek of later 
 days might say " If the gods do aught that's wrong, 
 then they^'are not gods at all," but not so the 
 barbarian. He took his gods as he found them.
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 15 
 
 Accordingly, when he began to describe the doings 
 of these nature-spirits, he described them as he 
 fancied he saw them, and his descriptions sometimes 
 attributed a moral, sometimes a questionable, and 
 sometimes a decidedly immoral course of action to 
 the sun, or the moon, or the earth. He saw the 
 clouds sweep across the sky, but he knew not the 
 most elementary explanation of science ; he did not 
 know how they moved, unless it was by their own 
 divine volition. He did, indeed, perceive that the 
 wind blew at the time, but he did not know what 
 wind was, or how it blew, or why it blew, unless it 
 was by its own divine will. And then he saw the 
 divine sky and the divine sun apparently struggling 
 with the clouds, and suddenly there was a flash and 
 a crash of thunder and a fall of rain, and he said to 
 himself " The gods up there are fighting, and the 
 great sky-god is smiting the cloud-gods, and making 
 their blood to flow down upon the earth." Now, 
 this fighting may have been an immoral thing for 
 the gods to indulge in, but the barbarian simply 
 supposed the divine powers to be doing what he 
 himself was accustomed to do under apparently 
 similar circumstances. He himself was an unmoral 
 man of war from his youth up, and knew no better, 
 and when he wanted to explain the operations of 
 the nature-spirits, he represented them, and saw 
 nothing absurd in representing them, as fighting or 
 doing still worse deeds, at which we, indeed, may 
 cover our faces, but in which he saw nothing 
 
 ' o 
 
 unbecoming.
 
 16 OUR EARLIKST ANCESTORS 
 
 To this state of belief a state common to all 
 primitive peoples I shall return ; but, in order to 
 be as clear as possible upon the question of religious 
 development, I will proceed at present to point out 
 the next step which would naturally be taken by a 
 belief of this kind. It would become anthropo- 
 morphic that is to say, it would no longer be the 
 visible sky and the visible sun and the palpable 
 wind which would be looked upon as a god, but the 
 sky and the sun and the wind would be the god's 
 abode, or his instrument, the place or phenomenon 
 in which his operation lay. He himself would be 
 personified. And so the thought of the deity would 
 become separated from the thought of the concrete 
 or literal object which had first been deified ; and 
 sometimes, if the object had borne two or three 
 titles (as, for instance, the sky was called the 
 Shining Place, or the Infinite, or the Coverer), then 
 one of the.se might be kept to signify the actual 
 object, the actual sky, while the others might by 
 usage become restricted to signify its deity ; or all 
 alike might be looked upon as names of deities, and 
 hence there would come to be several gods for one 
 object. In this way the heavens, and the air, and 
 the earth became filled with a host of deities, no 
 longer indeterminate spirits, but personified, endowed 
 with human attributes, immoral as well as moral, 
 deities whose loves and wars and intrigues were just 
 no better and no worse than the wars and intrigues 
 and loves of human beings. It is only when the 
 gods are thus separable from their particular sphere
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 17 
 
 that you can have a joint abode of them, such as 
 the Greek Olympus or the Teutonic Asgard. 
 
 And let us come yet onwards, and learn from the 
 science of language the clue to the persistence of this 
 nature-worship, or rather to the beliefs derived from 
 it in more civilized times. Our earliest Xanthochroic 
 ancestors knew what they were about when they 
 were worshipping the powers of nature. When they 
 first told religious stories about the gods, about a 
 beneficent god slaying a malignant giant, or about a 
 certain male deity ill-treating a certain nymph, they 
 knew they were describing as best they could some- 
 thing they fancied they had seen the powers of nature 
 doing. The heaven raining upon the earth was an 
 impregnation of one divinity by another. Observe 
 the dawn. The dawn apparently springs from " the 
 forehead of the morning sky." That pre-historic 
 people said this much and no more. It was the way 
 they spoke of what they thought they saw in the 
 morning the Dawn, a veritable goddess, leaping 
 from the forehead of the Sky, a veritable god. Well, 
 you are aware how language changes ; you are aware 
 how different our English is from Anglo-Saxon, and 
 Italian from Latin. You know that very many 
 Anglo-Saxon words are quite unintelligible to the 
 modern reader. And, going still further back, you 
 know that English and Dutch are descended from a 
 common speech, and yet how unmeaning the words 
 of the one language are to those who speak the other. 
 And yet we have books to teach us the sense of those 
 old words and special scholars to enlighten us the 
 
 3
 
 18 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 meaning is discoverable in an extant literature. 
 But what, think you, would be the case with that 
 pre-historic people after it broke up, hundreds, per- 
 haps thousands, of years after its subdivisions had 
 passed beyond each other's ken 1 They had no 
 literature, no reference books, no scholars to remind 
 them of the meaning of old words which had grown 
 obsolete except in the religious traditions. Genera- 
 tion after generation those descriptions of what the 
 gods did would be repeated in the household in the 
 self-same forms that had been used in the original 
 home ; and those stories and traditions would contain 
 names of deities, which names were once literal titles, 
 signifying bright, infinite, rushing, and so forth, but 
 which had now ceased to be used in ordinary speech 
 partly, no doubt, because they were being used as 
 names of gods but had given place to synonymous 
 words of another shape. What would be the effect 
 of this 1 It would be that those names of gods would, 
 in many cases, become mere names, recalling nothing 
 definite, no particular object in nature, but suggesting 
 anthropomorphic divinities, whose powers were to be 
 gathered, not from their names, but from the traditions 
 which contained their names. 
 
 Let me .give the instance of the dawn springing 
 from the forehead of the morning sky. That earliest 
 people called the day-sky Dyeus, "the shining;" the 
 dawn they called Adhana. But these were divinities, 
 and they said, therefore, that Adhana is born from 
 the forehead of Dyeus. Now, suppose the branches 
 of this stock to have been separated for a thousand
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 19 
 
 or two thousand years, and suppose one people to 
 have migrated as far as Greece and the Hellenic 
 isles. This people carries with it those old traditions, 
 which form its religious doctrines, told as regularly 
 from father to son as our legends of Cinderella and 
 Red Ridinghood are told from generation to genera- 
 tion in the nursery. By this time those old words 
 Dyeus and Ad liana carry to the Greeks no more 
 interpretation in themselves than Anglo-Saxon words 
 do to us. If I told you a story about a certain 
 Bealdor and a certain Wiga you would think of them 
 as names of persons ; but Bealdor is only old English 
 for prince, and Wiga for warrior. So it was with the 
 Greeks. They had come to call the sky, whether by 
 day or night, Ouranos, and the dawn they called Eos ; 
 and, therefore, when they related how Athene sprang 
 from the head of Zeus (for that is the way they had 
 come to pronounce Adhana and Dyeus), they thought 
 indeed of two deities, but had no conception of the 
 origin of the story. No ; from the influence of the 
 analogy of the Semitic goddess Tanith they had 
 begun to regard Athene as the patron goddess of 
 arts, and to their minds the legend therefore taught 
 if it taught anything that wisdom is the offspring 
 of the rnind of the supreme God. It is easy for you 
 to imagine how many of the traditions became totally 
 unintelligible. The Greeks themselves had half 
 doubts as to whether many of the more immoral 
 stories were to be tolerated ; but there was the 
 tradition, thrice ancient, and who were they that they 
 should question what their fathers had taught them 1
 
 20 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 Should we, do you suppose, if we had been Greeks, 
 unless we had been a Plato or a Socrates, have thrown 
 over an ancestral religion because there were things 
 in it we could not understand, and the propriety of 
 which we doubted 1 One of their own poets, a sceptic 
 himself (Euripides), says 
 
 " We set not up our wisdom against Heaven. 
 Our fathers' doctrines, old as time itself, 
 Our heritage, no reasoning shall cast down, 
 For all that intellect may think it sees." 
 
 And subsequently, when literature was in demand 
 (and the earliest literatures are mainly religious), 
 poets would embellish these narratives, they would 
 modify them for the sake of novelty or consistency, 
 they would confound the deeds of one god with the 
 deeds of another. When an adventure originally 
 belonging to the sun no longer carried in itself the 
 popular name of the sun, but another name, a title 
 which had once belonged to the sun, but which had 
 now ceased to convey a connection with him such 
 as Hercules, Sisyphus, or Ulysses then other deeds 
 and a character might be attached to that Hercules, 
 Sisyphus, or Ulysses which could not properly belong 
 to the sun at all. Thus mythology becomes very 
 complex. This was the "state of mythology which 
 prevailed in Greece and Rome in the classic times, in 
 Germany .and Scandinavia until a thousand years ago, 
 in India until Brahmanism introduced more of system, 
 in Persia until the reform of Zarathustra. 
 
 At this stage the sense of moral responsibility is 
 growing. The evolution of society brings out the
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 21 
 
 moral sense in rnan, and man therefore begins to 
 attribute a moral guidance to his gods. He begins 
 to develop an idea of retribution after death. Dis- 
 credit of the old traditions and rationalizing efforts 
 are on the increase, and so we pass on to the next 
 stage. In this stage a written code a scripture 
 takes the place of tradition. The great multitude of 
 deities are subordinated to one chief divinity, or all 
 the spirits are treated as but different avatars of one 
 and the same, and thus we get a pantheism, or an 
 ordered polytheism inclining to monotheism. And 
 lastly comes the great world-religion which -entirely 
 rids itself of nature-worship, and puts all its trust in 
 one perfect, omnipotent God, and in the efficacy of 
 faith and morality. 
 
 I have now given you a superficial sketch for in 
 the time at my disposal, and in the absence of techni- 
 cal terms, it must be superficial of the steps by 
 which religious belief develops itself, and has de- 
 veloped itself in our own stock. Let me now return 
 to our primitive people, as I promised to do ; for 
 there are two questions which naturally present 
 themselves. The one is " How do you account for 
 the. great resemblances between these myths of our 
 own ancestors and the myths of other stocks, of most 
 remote and barbarous peoples, who appear to have 
 had no connection or communication with the one of 
 which we speak ? Why have the Red Indians and 
 Hottentots traditions which differ from those of the 
 Greek or the Scandinavian mainly in the names of 
 the deities concerned ? " The other question is
 
 22 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 " How, on the contrary, seeing that Hindus, Romans, 
 and Teutons were originally one people, possessed of 
 a common stock of beliefs, do you account for the 
 wide dissimilarities between them, in the character 
 and powers of their several deities, and often in their 
 names 1 " Both these questions admit of an easy 
 answer. You will remember that I remarked how 
 the student of religions perceives a regular develop- 
 ment in belief all over the world. And you will re- 
 member that early religions blend a belief in spirits 
 with a deification of the powers of nature, fetishism 
 with polytheism. This has been the same among all 
 races. All over the world there is or has been 
 a similar way, natural to ignorant barbarians, of 
 looking at the operations of nature. They have all 
 alike heard the storm and the thunder, seen the sun 
 rise and pass over the sky and set, beheld the clouds 
 sometimes floating far aloft like fairy forms, some- 
 times in fantastic shapes, such as Hamlet talks of, 
 sometimes black and lowering. They have seen the 
 lightning dash forth like a spear or a serpent ; they 
 have heard echoes, they have seen stars apparently 
 falling, they have felt the cold and darkness of 
 exceptional winters, and the heat and fire of excep- 
 tional summers. Well, these various peoples, seeing 
 and feeling all this, and believing all these natural 
 powers to be a multitude of mighty spirits, have 
 constructed a series of narratives to explain those 
 sights and sounds. In other words they have con- 
 structed a mythology. 
 
 For what is a mythology 1 I would wish you to
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 23 
 
 do away from your minds the idea that nature-myths 
 are allegories or poetical fictions ; they are nothing 
 so sophisticated as allegories or fictions ; they were 
 originally nothing but explanations, offered in all 
 seriousness and simplicity by the untutored savage. 
 As explanations, they were, no doubt, imaginative 
 and a little far-fetched, but they had to be so, for 
 anything unreal must be imaginative. A myth has 
 been defined as " a product of human fancy working 
 on a most rudimentary knowledge of the outer 
 world." That definition may be taken as sufficient, 
 if we understand that, though the explanation is a 
 fancy, it is nevertheless sincere. If you want to 
 comprehend the state of mind which could seriously 
 explain the wind blowing the nimbus clouds across 
 the sky as the wind-god Saramaias driving home the 
 celestial cows with their udders full an account 
 which afterwards became the myth of Hermes 
 stealing the oxen : if you want to understand how 
 the lightning-flash could be soberly explained as the 
 heaven-god hurling his shining spear at his foes, the 
 storm-demons an account which afterwards became 
 the myth of Zeus defeating the Titans, or Thor 
 hurling his hammer Miolner at the Jotuns : if you 
 want to do this, you must evidently make your mind 
 as the mind of a little child, a child who has never 
 heard the word electricity or any other scientific 
 term ; a child who thinks the earth is flat, and the 
 sky a roof not so very far above it, who thinks the 
 sun is about as large as he looks, and that he passes 
 over the earth ; a child who has not the least con-
 
 24 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 ception what wind is, or how it moves, or why the 
 tide rises, or how rain comes to be up there in the 
 clouds. Let anyone here think of his earliest infant 
 fancies about such things, and let him remember 
 that he has not so much grown out of them as been 
 instructed out of them by the long-accumulated 
 teachings of science. He will then not wonder that 
 the primitive barbarian looked upon such things as 
 spirits with a volition of their own. I do not mean 
 to say that there was never any tendency to invent 
 pure fictions. I only maintain that this tendency 
 did not operate at first, nor indeed until compara- 
 tively recent times. 
 
 Well, here, you see, all the world over is the same 
 material for constructing myths, the same natural 
 powers, differing somewhat in exercise, no doubt, 
 according to the latitude and physical surroundings, 
 but mainly identical. Here, then, we find the reason 
 why the tales of the Sandwich Islands should 
 frequently resemble those of Caffraria, Mexico, or 
 Greece, without any communication whatsoever 
 having existed between those places. The names of 
 the deities will differ, of course, altogether, and the 
 particular turn of the story as heard in New Zealand 
 will differ from that heard in Iceland, but the main 
 plot will be the same, and the only wonder would be 
 if it were not so. Therefore the notion that heaven 
 is the all-father and earth is the all-mother was 
 universal ; and that they were perpetually united 
 until their children rent them apart, is a story to be 
 found not only in the Greek myth of Ouranos and
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 25 
 
 Kronos, but also in the Maori myth of Rangi and 
 Papa. Differences of fancy there must, of course, 
 be with differences of race ; and if a savage people 
 attributes as it certainly does its own habits to 
 the divine powers, the habits and morals of the gods 
 of the mythologies will indeed differ as much as 
 those of the peoples differ ; yet in the main there 
 will be a distinct analogy in their adventures. 
 
 Our own ancestors, then, had a religion if you 
 can call it such which worshipped the natural 
 powers, the spirits of ancestors, and also fetishes. 
 There are those who from a desire, I suppose, to 
 think the best of their forefathers deny that there 
 was any fetish worship among them. But historical 
 evidence is too strong. Fetish stones, fetish trees, 
 and fetish animals are heard of till comparatively 
 late in our civilization. The navel-stone where the 
 oracles were given at Delphi, the whispering oaks at 
 Dodona, the Palladium which was brought in such 
 pomp to Rome, were, after all, only fetishes. The 
 old English customs of dancing round the Maypole 
 and decking the wells are mere survivals of a time 
 when the village community worshipped its fetish 
 tree and its fetish water. I used myself to be much 
 impressed by the thought of the Pelasgians going 
 up to the solitary mountain-top to worship, and 
 of those old Teutons of whom Tacitus says that 
 they went into the woods and worshipped an unseen 
 presence. I used to find something of simple com- 
 munion with God in these practices. But I am 
 compelled to confess that this was an illusion. They
 
 26 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 went to mountain-top and wood, not to commune in 
 secret with God, but to adore a fetish. It is, I 
 repeat, undeniable that fetishism existed among this 
 folk, as undeniable as are all its magic rites and 
 human sacrifices. "What are sacrifices and magic ? 
 The idea underlying all animistic sacrifice is the idea 
 that the spirits of the dead, looking on at life, are 
 jealous of the living, and grudge them the joys they 
 themselves have lost. They accordingly work the 
 living all manner of malicious ill. But the unsophis- 
 ticated barbarian thinks that if he surrenders some- 
 thing he values, if he shows that he is considerate of 
 the feelings of those disembodied ones, and does not 
 exult in his own advantage if, in short, he makes a 
 sacrifice, the spirits will be complimented and molli- 
 fied. And in the worst state of things, if there is a 
 great calamity, causing death or widespread panic, 
 what sacrifice could be more effective than a human 
 sacrifice 1 And, undoubtedly those old Xanthochroi 
 did offer up human beings. Even in early Greece 
 among the Pelasgians such sacrifices are heard of, in 
 a half-hearted, shame-faced sort of way, but still 
 heard of they are. So, too, the early Latin peoples 
 devoted a band of chosen youth to death in order to 
 propitiate the war spirit ; and when Mettus Curtius 
 leapt into the yawning gulf in the Forum, and when 
 Decius Mus went to certain destruction among the 
 enemy, they were merely illustrating the old notion 
 of propitiation by sacrifice. The old Germans also, 
 and the Wends, and the Celtic Druids offered their 
 human sacrifices in a way as cruel as any African
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 27 
 
 or Polynesian tribe. And magic is an attempt 
 to influence the spirits in another way, not by 
 propitiating, but by mastering. I have no need 
 to demonstrate that there are still in our very 
 midst well-dressed barbarians who believe in magical 
 arts. 
 
 Let us for the moment leave aside the worship of 
 the natural powers, such as earth and sky and dawn 
 and wind, and let us consider this lower side of the 
 belief of our pre-historic kin I mean its worship of 
 the spirits of ancestors. Concerning the soul and its 
 after-life, their 'view, so far as I can discover, was 
 something like this. It is an inconsistent view, of 
 course, and we must expect nothing else. When the 
 body is dead, the spirit lingers for a while near it ; 
 afterwards it passes to and fro through air and earth, 
 entering into bodies animate or inanimate, appearing 
 at times to men, and capable of working them evil or 
 good. We know what curious and sudden appear- 
 ances are made by animals, and what mysterious 
 sounds come from woods and rocks. All these were 
 the work of spirits. Those spirits have become the 
 pitris of India, the fravashis of Persia, the bogies of 
 Teutonic countries, and their worship is being revived 
 now-a-days by the enlightened cult of the table- 
 rappers. Of all the peoples of our stock, those who 
 kept this animistic belief most undeveloped until 
 Christianity reached them were the Letts and Sclavs. 
 Among them we find the spirits represented as sparks, 
 stars, butterflies, birds, shadows, vapours, breaths of 
 air. And I must confess that the Wendic name for
 
 28 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 a butterfly, " little soul," is to my mind no unpleasing 
 one. 
 
 And here spirit-worship or spirit-belief might have 
 stayed ; it might have gone no further, if the idea of 
 gods had not grown up out of a contemplation of the 
 powers of nature. But the notion of these greater 
 deities enlarged the conception of the universe ; and 
 the sinking of the sun-god in the west, beyond the 
 sea and under the earth, brought about the fancy 
 that underground there was a shadow-world, like the 
 Semitic Sheol, and that to reach it the spirit passed 
 away to the west over a river or sea of death. This 
 river of death appears in the traditions of all the 
 branches of our stock. The Norse peoples had their 
 Miclgard serpent sea, and would sometimes place 
 their dead chieftains on ships, to be carried away 
 westward without crew or steersman. The Greeks 
 had the river Oceanus encircling all the world and 
 flowing back into himself, like a serpent with its tail 
 in its mouth. Beyond this lay that shadow-world 
 which Ulysses visited. So to this day the dying are 
 allowed to drift down the Ganges ; for that custom, 
 too, is a relic of the belief in the old river of death. 
 Sometimes the spirit was represented as passing 
 heavenwards along the Milky Way or the rainbow, 
 as along a bridge, and the Milky Way was there- 
 fore called the "bridge of souls." The Wends 
 called it the " mouse-path." It will perhaps be 
 instructive if I use this in illustration of the way 
 in which some sorts of legends develop them- 
 selves. Among the animals with which spirits
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. "29 
 
 were associated the mouse was the most frequent. 
 Why, exactly, it is hard to say. A mouse issues 
 curiously from crannies. It seems to come from 
 nowhere in particular, and to disappear no whither 
 in particular. And we may readily believe that 
 in the ill-built houses of that olden people mice 
 were regular inhabitants. The strangely appearing, 
 strangely vanishing, bright-eyed little mouse came to 
 be looked upon as embodying the spirit of a dead 
 ancestor, and gradually mouse and soul became 
 synonymous terms. Hence the " mouse-path " means 
 the soul-path. You all know the story of the Pied 
 Piper who drew the rats out of Hamelin by his 
 piping, and who, when the stipulated payment was 
 refused him, drew all the rosy chubby little children 
 away to doom by piping in the same manner. 
 Reduced to its original elements, this is nothing more 
 than a narrative of some plague, when the children 
 died, when their souls departed from them in the 
 wind. That souls were supposed to be carried off in 
 a wind need not surprise us, and the Pied Piper is 
 after all only the piping wind, the rats or mice (for 
 the ancients did not distinguish them) are the souls 
 of the dying. In the same way, when that wicked 
 bishop who dwelt on the island in the Rhine burned 
 up in his barns all the people who cried to him for 
 food, his punishment was this thousands upon 
 thousands of mice swam across to the island, climbed 
 the tower, and consumed the wretched man. And 
 what were the mice but the vengeful souls of those 
 dead ones ? I could give many such instances as
 
 30 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 these of tales still lingering among us derived from 
 those old spirit-beliefs. I will give one more. The 
 wind, I have said, was the agent whereby the depart- 
 ing soul was carried away. In Greek legend this 
 appears as the wind-god Hermes, the psychopomp, he 
 who leads the soul by the hand into the nether world. 
 In the Vedic myths the wind is the dog Yama ; for 
 the wind, you know, howls, and so do dogs, and when 
 the ancients heard the wind but could not see it, 
 they thought of it as a spirit-dog. Therefore, when 
 souls departed, they were accompanied by the clog 
 Yama. And when superstitious persons among our- 
 selves say that someone will die in the house because 
 a dog howled last night, they are only repeating one 
 of those old myths of the wind-god and the soul. 
 There is, too, an old warning which is given to 
 children that they should not point at the stars. 
 Why 1 Well, I do not know what sort of excuse 
 would be invented now, but the origin of the scruple 
 lay in the notion that the stars were ancestors' souls, 
 and should be treated with a proper and distant 
 respect. 
 
 This, then, was the more rudimentary animistic 
 side of our forefathers' belief, and almost all our 
 superstitions about lucky and unlucky sights and 
 sounds can be traced back to it. We still have our 
 fancies about the difference for good or evil produced 
 by seeing three magpies or one magpie, one crow or 
 two crows, or by hearing the cuckoo under such and 
 such conditions. All this, when we come to think of 
 it, is precisely of a piece with those beliefs which we
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 31 
 
 are apt to consider so ridiculous in the pagan Greeks 
 and Romans and Teutons the beliefs in omens, in 
 auguries from the appearances and numbers of beasts 
 and birds observed on the right hand or on the left, 
 in auspices from the shapes of flames and the chance 
 hearing of casual sounds. These matters assumed 
 to the pagans, highly civilized as they were in other 
 respects, such a vast importance as to be to us alto- 
 gether ludicrous. Yet, perhaps, those who believed 
 in them do not deserve the contempt that should be 
 shown to those who, in our own day, with all its 
 Christianity and its scientific knowledge, cannot 
 possess their souls in patience because of a magpie or 
 a howling dog. The notion of spirits embodied in 
 certain animals had caused them to be looked upon 
 as prescient, as warning apparitions. Birds fly near 
 to heaven ; birds and beasts have peculiar presenti- 
 ments, perhaps I should say pre-sensations, of storms 
 and changes of climate which man himself cannot 
 foresee. No wonder then that from these reasons, 
 and from the further reason that there really is 
 something mysterious which men are apt to feel 
 instinctively in the face of such birds as the sable 
 raven, with his bright eye and his solemn croak ; no 
 wonder, I say, that the early barbarian looked to 
 them for omens. And, when such beliefs had existed 
 for many centuries, and had been embellished and 
 systematized, you could not expect a people who 
 had no scientific or 1'eligious revelation to be led 
 to reject the traditions by the promptings of pure 
 reason.
 
 32 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 I will now return for a few moments to the higher 
 element of our primitive hierology, to the worship 
 and the traditions connected with the powers of 
 nature. The old ancestor on the Baltic shores adored 
 every manifestation of nature's energy, and explained 
 it by stories which we call myths. Heaven was the 
 all-father, earth was the all-mother, and the rest of 
 gods and men were the offspring of this pair. The 
 heaven-god was the highest divinity Dyeus, "the 
 brilliant," the shining, and Pater, " the father." 
 Dyeus-pater was, therefore, the name by which he 
 was known, and those whose knowledge of language 
 or mythology is but elementary will recognize the 
 Jupiter of the Romans, the Zeus-pater of the Greeks, 
 the Djaus-pitar of the old Hindus. But, perhaps, 
 you will not recognize the same Dyeus in one of our 
 commonest words in the word Tuesday, " the day 
 of Tiu," for such is the Germanic pronunciation of 
 the name. But Dyeus was not the only bright one. 
 All the gods were so called, and the Hindu deva, the 
 Latin deus, the Teutonic tivar are merely words for 
 "the shining ones." Every time we say "deity" or 
 "divine," we are, without knowing it, attributing 
 brightness as the chief characteristic of godhead. 
 Another word for God was something like Bhagha, 
 which we now call " Bogie" or " Puck," using the 
 term for spirits who are by no means bright. Thus 
 do some words come to honour and some to dishonour. 
 The reason is clear. When Christianity came it 
 turned the pagan deities into fiends, just as 
 Zoroastrianism turned the Devas, the Persian "shin-
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 33 
 
 ing ones," into "devils." Among those old " shining 
 ones" are to be counted the sky, the dawn, the sun, 
 the morning breeze, the storm wind, fire, and a host 
 of others. Naturally such deities took their sex from 
 their appearance or supposed character. The Sun is 
 a male who pursues the fleeing female Dawn. The 
 winds are male because, presumably, they bluster 
 and rage. The light mists and fleecy clouds are 
 nymphs, swan-maidens, valkyries. All the operations 
 of the gods are literal. The sun-god shoots his 
 gleaming arrows. The tempests are the contests of 
 the gods of light and the powers of darkness. The 
 overclouding of the sky is the temporary defeat of 
 Dyeus and of the sun. 
 
 Moreover, it is clear that, from a state of mind 
 like this, and by the aid of the imagination, which is 
 so quick in barbarians, not one, but a multitude of 
 accounts would arise and develop themselves into 
 curiously varied myths. For instance, the sun is at 
 one time a wanderer who is making for his home in 
 the west, across the sea of heaven. This, in the 
 Greek legend, becomes the myth of Ulysses making 
 his way westward to Ithaca, at one time confined in 
 the island of Calypso ("the concealer") that is to 
 say, hidden in a cloud ; at another time narrowly 
 escaping between the clashing rocks of the Symple- 
 gades that is to say, through a rent in the cloud- 
 banks ; and yet again sailing serenely in the light 
 Phseacian cloud-ships, till at last he reaches his long- 
 lost home and his Penelope, the western twilight, 
 who weaves and unweaves every day the parti- 
 
 4
 
 34 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 coloured cloud-web of the sunset. Again, the sun is 
 a deity who perpetually rolls a round stone to the 
 summit of a hill, only to find it roll as perpetually 
 down again ; and hence the story of Sisyphus, since 
 it was only when the meaning of the tradition was 
 forgotten, and when the idea of retribution in another 
 world had been developed, that Sisyphus and his 
 stone became a legend of the underworld instead of a 
 legend of the sky. Yet once more he is a hero who, 
 after many labours, dies in a blood-stained robe upon 
 a western funeral pyre ; and hence the story of 
 Heracles and the poisoned shirt of Nessus. And as 
 in the Norse countries the sun is little seen, and his 
 days are short or almost lacking in winter, one of the 
 chief myths there centres upon the untimely death of 
 Baldr, a beneficent deity, who was to the Scandi- 
 navian what Apollo was to the Greek, and whose 
 name, Baldag, after all, means only the white god of 
 day. 
 
 Now, suppose our original people to be widely 
 expanded. Suppose its various offshoots to have 
 found new homes very unlike those they had once 
 inhabited. What do you think would be the effect 
 on this mythology of theirs 1 I said that the pheno- 
 mena of nature are the material for all mythologies. 
 True ; but according to the character of a race will 
 be the character of the interpretation it puts upon 
 these phenomena. The sensual Hottentot will make 
 a differently-coloured set of myths to those of the 
 reflective Semite. While the several branches were 
 yet latent in the common stock, their myths were of
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 35 
 
 a uniform character ; but a long interval of separa- 
 tion, in a new clime, amid new scenes, with the new 
 habits and operations that result from new exigencies, 
 always must affect the character and intellect as 
 much as it evidently affects the physique. So it was 
 with our sundered peoples. The Greek, " ever 
 walking delicately through the most translucent air" 
 of Hellas and sailing amid its gleaming Cyclades, 
 takes one view of the bright heavens and the powers 
 that are therein. The Scandinavian, amid his gloomy 
 snow-capped mountains and sombre pine forests the 
 Hindu, in the hot and enervating plains below 
 Himalaya these take quite other views. To the 
 Greek his winds are gentle, his sun is genial and 
 cheering, his sky is serene, and in lapse of years his 
 deities become graceful, dignified, chiefly marked by 
 beauty. To the Scandinavian his winds are savage 
 and furious, his sun is dull and short of life, his 
 sky is mainly cloud. His gods, therefore, became 
 awkward, violent, struggling perpetually with the 
 JiJtuns, those giant powers of mischief, and they are 
 chiefly marked by strength. The Norse god is a 
 drunkard, and Valhalla, the " hall of the chosen," is 
 a place where departed heroes spend their time in 
 drinking enormously of ale ; but the Greek god 
 drinks amicably of nectar, and the Indian god drinks 
 soma, and, in short, every mythology makes its gods 
 eat and drink and do whatever they would eat and 
 drink and do if they were in a clime and in a civili- 
 zation like those of their votaries. 
 
 The relative positions of the deities changed like-
 
 36 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 
 
 wise. In Scandinavia the sky that is to say, the 
 unclouded sky is of little account. He is not bright 
 nor potent, and hence the old Dyeus, the Teutonic 
 Tiu, falls into a lower place, and Wuodan, the active 
 ever-present god of the storm-wind, whose coming 
 was felt among the crashing pine-woods, becomes the 
 chief god ; and next to him is Thor, the wielder of 
 the thunderbolt. In Greece and Italy Dyeus remained 
 supreme, but in India his fighting son Indra sup- 
 planted him, and naturally so, for the Hindus were 
 men of war, and it must necessarily be a martial deity 
 that took the first place with them. 
 
 There are, indeed, some other reasons for peculiar 
 modifications of the mythology of some of the 
 branches. " Home-keeping youths have ever homely 
 wits," and, accordingly, the Wends and Germans, who 
 remained near the original home, kept the ancestral 
 nature-worship in a great measure unsophisticated ; 
 but the Hindus and Persians, who had wandered far 
 and met with other stocks, had been led, by finding 
 that there were other religions, to look into their own, 
 and so had modified their beliefs. The one branch 
 chose Brahmanism, the other the more enlightened 
 religion of Zarathustra. The Greeks, for their part, 
 came down upon the peninsula and the islands, turned 
 navigators, brightened their wits, and from their 
 intercourse with the Phoenicians and Egyptians, they 
 learned of new gods and new customs, to which they 
 inclined with some favour, but to which their neigh- 
 bours of Rome and their distant cousins of Norway 
 and Britain had no counterpart. I might follow out
 
 AND THEIR BELIEFS. 37 
 
 this line of argument and this line of fact in such a 
 way, 1 think, as to make the cause of most of these 
 divergencies clear to you ; but I must content myself, 
 since this is but a lecture, with doing what all lec- 
 turers must be content to do namely, with throwing 
 out suggestions for you to follow up at your leisure. 
 I have said what I proposed to say about our earliest 
 ancestors in respect of their religious beliefs. I can 
 perhaps do no better than conclude with a nature- 
 myth .of a barbarian people not far from ourselves, a 
 myth of the Maoris, which, though more allegorical 
 in appearance than those earliest myths of which I 
 have spoken, will none the less prove that savages do 
 really invent from the workings of the natural powers 
 those legends which I have described. I condense 
 the myth from the native story as told to Sir George 
 Grey. " In the beginning Rangi and Papa (heaven 
 and earth), the father and mother of all, were per- 
 petually united, and their children were oppressed 
 between their bodies ; but at length the children con- 
 spire to separate them. They all strive, but in vain, 
 until Tanemahuta (the forest god) rises and thrusts 
 Father Heaven up and away from the earth, so that 
 there is room and light for all earth's offspring." In 
 other words, there once was chaos of earth and the 
 firmament until the trees of the forest, which the 
 myth deifies, grew and thrust upward the vault of 
 heaven. The other children were Tangaroa (the god 
 of the sea and of fishes), Rongomatane (the deity 
 representing cultivated food), Haumiatikitiki (the god 
 of uncultivated food), and Tumatauenga (the god
 
 38 OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS AND THEIR BELIEFS. 
 
 representing human kind). The only son who sided 
 with his father was Tawhirimatea. And who, do you 
 suppose, is Tawhirimatea 1 He is the god and father 
 of winds and storms, and it was but natural that the 
 winds should follow the heaven. Thence he carries 
 on war with his brothers. He fights the forest-god 
 and the sea-god ; that is to say, the storm lashes 
 forest and sea. He fights the gods of food until 
 Papa, the earth, conceals them for safety. And what, 
 think you, is this but the winter season, when the 
 crops are hidden, as it were, from the wintry storms ? 
 And so the storm-god triumphs over all but the god 
 of mankind. He alone can withstand the storm, and 
 because his brothers have proved such cowards, he, the 
 god of mankind wages war upon the forest-god and 
 the sea-god, and the gods of the crops which simply 
 means that man subdues all the elements and produc- 
 tions of nature to himself. And so the legend goes 
 on, personifying everything, until it ends in this 
 touching way : " Up to this time the vast heaven 
 has ever remained separated from his spouse, the 
 earth. Yet their mutual love still continues ; the 
 soft, warm sighs of her loving bosom still ever rise 
 to him, ascending from the woody mountains and 
 valleys, and men call them mists ; and the vast 
 heaven, as he mourns through the long nights his 
 separation from his beloved, drops frequent tears upon 
 her bosom, and men seeing these term them dew- 
 drops."
 
 THE NATURE AND PROVINCE OF 
 POETEY. 
 
 MY subject is apparently so vast, and its nature so 
 abstract, that you may wonder what I shall find to 
 say concerning it, for it requires little experience to 
 teach that, the wider the therne discussed, the less 
 easy it is to say anything worth hearing about it. I 
 may as well, therefore, clear the ground a little by 
 stating what I do not intend to deal with. And, in 
 the first place, I would have it understood that this 
 is not a lecture of criticism. It does not aim at a 
 comparison or judgment of individual poets, nor at 
 increasing your familiarity with any of them, but at 
 a statement of the purpose they all alike serve in 
 human society, at a definition of the nature and 
 requirements of their art and mission. 
 
 You will therefore have no opinion laid before you 
 on the relative merits or the special excellences of 
 Dante and Shakspere, Goethe and Wordsworth, 
 Browning and Tennyson : but some attempt will be 
 made to discover what there is, besides versification, 
 common to them all, in virtue of which they are called 
 " poets."
 
 40 THE NATURE AND 
 
 Again, it would be unprofitable to roam over the 
 spacious field of extant poetry in order to cull some 
 choicest blossoms merely for the delight of the hour. 
 I shall, therefore, make no selection of transcendent 
 passages by way of quotation. This form of bouquet- 
 gathering is, of course, good in season, whether it be 
 for simple aesthetic pleasure or for that kind of 
 botanizing study which is called criticism. But my 
 object is different. I intend to ask you to listen to 
 .an attempt at explaining the nature and utility of 
 poetry so far as I find them capable of demonstration, 
 and I hope incidentally to help some of you to certain 
 criteria for distinguishing the false poetry from the 
 true. 
 
 In Shakspere's " As You Like It," the simple 
 Audrey says to Touchstone, " I do not know what 
 poetical is ; is it honest in deed and word ? is it a 
 true thing ? " Perhaps many of us are at the bottom 
 in the same condition as the simple Audrey. Some 
 of us do not know what poetical is, and not a few 
 including that high-soulecl philosopher Plato have 
 had grave doubts whether it is a " true thing." Let 
 us understand what poetry ideally and genuinely is, 
 nnd I believe that we shall find it to be one of the 
 truest of things. 
 
 The word " poetry " is one of the commonest in 
 use, and at the same time one of the most indefinite. 
 We not only hear it applied to a form of literature, 
 but also to mere sentiments and attitudes of mind. 
 We hear, for instance, of this or that boasted agent 
 of civilization " destroying all the poetry of life."
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 41 
 
 Sometimes a man who lias never written a line of 
 verse is said to be of a " poetical temperament," and 
 yet we do not intend thereby at all to imply that he 
 is capable of becoming a poet, as that word is gener- 
 ally understood. Again we speak of a painter filling 
 his pictures with poetry, and we even hear of such a 
 thing as the poetry of motion. 
 
 And when we come to deal with that form of 
 literary composition to which the term is particularly 
 applied, we meet with wide differences of opinion. 
 Some persons, for instance, will call " Paradise Lost " 
 a poem, while they emphatically refuse the title to 
 the occasional verses, however good, of a magazine ; 
 others, on the contrary, will call all verses poetry, 
 whether they be the " Iliad," the " Divine Comedy," 
 the " Essay on Man," the " Ingoldsby Legends," or 
 a nursery rhyme. This is not as it should be. The 
 whole tendency, and the proper one, of modern 
 speech is towards precision, towards making one 
 word mean one thing, and that thing as specific as 
 possible. But the word poetry is not specific, in that 
 it does not convey to all persons the same idea or 
 even very closely similar ideas. Let the conversa- 
 tion turn upon poetry, and one person will roundly 
 aver that he never reads it, that he has no taste for 
 it. Another is omnivorous ; he reads what he calls 
 poetry (but what he ought to call verse) indiscrimin- 
 ately, though he will admit that sometimes his read- 
 ing gives him pleasure, while at other times he has 
 the sense of performing a not very agreeable duty. 
 And the true lover of true poetry who hears them
 
 42 THE NATURE AND 
 
 will feel that the word is being badly used, that the 
 false is being confounded with, placed in equal honour 
 with, the true. He will know that the legitimate 
 poetry is being made to suffer for the faults of the 
 illegitimate. 
 
 In ordinary language any composition in verse, no 
 matter what its nature, is called a poem, though it is 
 usual for the sake of a little more precision, to add 
 an epithet ; and we hear, for instance, of a comic- 
 poem or a society poem. According to this view, 
 that sublime creation, " The Inferno," and a rhyming 
 advertisement of soap are equally poems. Do you 
 speakers of the English tongue think it right to 
 encourage this laxity in your own speech ? If I may 
 be allowed to deliver a lay sermon on the abuse of 
 language, I will ask you to treat the word witli more 
 respect when you mean verse to say verse, and when 
 you say poetry to mean something that deserves a 
 special name. I am not about to propound any new 
 theory, although thus desirous of combating an old 
 error. There is an increasingly large number of 
 persons in our own day who suppose or whose 
 indulgent friends suppose that they can write 
 poetry, because they have the faculty of stringing 
 verses together, and because they can rhyme "moon" 
 with "soon," and "beauty" with "duty," and so 
 forth. Yet it is as easy and as worthless to produce 
 this kind of pseudo-poetry as it is to produce a sort of 
 pseudo-music by turning the handle of a hurdy-gurdy. 
 Our language is copious, and ideas are to be borrowed 
 in plenty. With this stock-in-trade the manufacture
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 43 
 
 of verse is easy, but not of poetry, for poetry, as I 
 intend to show, demands exceptional faculties. Lan- 
 guage can be taught, ideas can be lent, but sight 
 cannot be given to the blind, and the true poet 
 requires the penetrating eye as well as the speaking 
 voice. Such persons I would endeavour to dissuade ; 
 I would exhort them to consider whether what they 
 are doing is the best exercise of their abilities. There 
 are too many who confound the fancy for a poetic 
 reputation with the right to it, who mistake a certain 
 verbal facility for genius. Let us make the proper 
 distinction between verse and poetry, let us call our 
 mistaken friend a versifier or a rhymer, perhaps a 
 rhymester, let us deny him any ascription of the 
 honourable name of poet, and I feel that he will be 
 less infatuated with his delusion. 
 
 Critics like Fenelon, Coleridge, Carlyle, Emerson, 
 and other authorities of greatness have laid down the 
 principle that a work not in metre at all may be a 
 poem, while many compositions in metre and rhyme 
 have nothing of poetry about them. Walt Whitman 
 is held by some to be a great poet, though he has no 
 very evident metre ; and, on the other hand, it is 
 much discussed whether Pope was a poet at all. 
 
 In short, it has been maintained, and among 
 people who exercise proper vigilance over their lan- 
 guage it has been generally accepted, that poetry is 
 not the opposite of prose, but of the matter-of-fact. 
 It is, they rightly tell us, verse which is the antithesis 
 of prose, and poetry may be either one or the other 
 either verse or prose although in ordinary experience,
 
 44 THE NATURK AND 
 
 by a law of association which I shall hereafter try to 
 explain, it is verse. In other words, poetry is not neces- 
 sarily verse, and still less is verse necessarily poetry. 
 Archbishop Whately, indeed, in his "Rhetoric." 
 is on the other side ; he defends the popular view. 
 He says : " Poetry is verse ; it is not distinguished 
 from prose by superior beauty of thought or expres- 
 sion, but is only a distinct kind of composition. Try 
 the experiment of breaking up the metrical structure 
 of a fine poem, and you will find it inflated and 
 bombastic prose" and here I will stop, though he 
 adds much more to the same effect. I feel con- 
 strained to stubbornly deny that if the metrical 
 structure of a true poem is broken up it becomes 
 only, inflated and bombastic prose. In the best 
 poems of the best poets the words are never bom- 
 bastic and inflated ; they are simply the best, the 
 most picturesque, the most vivid, the most forcible, 
 the most imaginative ; and if they were read in prose 
 they would retain all these excellent qualities. Are 
 the Psalms of David inflated and bombastic prose 
 because their metrical structure is broken up in our 
 translation 1 Take some of the finest passages of our 
 most admirable prose writers Jeremy Taylor and 
 Sir Thomas Browne, or our still living Ruskin and 
 you will find that their prose is exactly like a poem 
 with the metrical structure broken up, their words 
 are just such as would be and are used by poets and 
 he would indeed be a bold man who would say that 
 they write a bombastic and inflated prose. The 
 truth is, of course, that their prose is poetry that
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 45 
 
 they are poets who differ from most poets in that 
 they do not convey their lofty thoughts in formal 
 metre. 
 
 So much and such excellent matter has been 
 written on this subject by great masters, ancient and 
 modern, that I must inevitably find myself now and 
 again repeating what has been already far better 
 expressed by one or other of them. But for that you 
 will forgive me. 
 
 Poetry has, in brief, been rightly described as the 
 opposite of the matter-of-fact, whether that manifest 
 itself in the commonplace or in the scientific. Its 
 most direct opposite is science ; but though opposite 
 the two are not antagonistic. Men and women are 
 of opposite sexes ; but they are not, I trust, therefore 
 of antagonistic sexes also. Science has for its object 
 the discovery, for practical purposes, of laws of 
 facts. The scientist, as such, the philosopher, as 
 such, is searching only for dry, hard, unimaginative 
 morsels of measurable, weighable, analysable truth. 
 We are here in a world of stubborn conditions, 
 whose force we must recognize whether we like it or 
 not. Science deals with these things as they are, 
 literally, materially. Having arrived at its literal 
 fact, science is satisfied. It wants no imaginative 
 glamour thrown round its discovery. 
 
 I would not be understood to say that men of 
 science lack imagination. On the contrary, the 
 greatest scientists sometimes make the boldest flights 
 of imagination, apparently more ambitious than 
 those of poets. Imagination of a kind is a great
 
 46 THE NATURE AND 
 
 scientific instrument to discovery before the dis- 
 covery. We should scarcely have had a Newton, a 
 Franklin, or a Darwin without this gift. But when 
 his discovery has been made, the scientist regards no 
 more than the literal fact. The poet is not con 
 tented with this. He represents that part of our 
 humanity which yearns for something to beautify or 
 temper this rigid positiveness, for something which 
 the fact can teach or suggest of high and noble and 
 comforting. The poet does not go contrary to 
 scientific results or methods. He is only dissatisfied 
 with them as mean and beggarly elements. As 
 Emerson remarks, the man of science looks at a tree 
 from the point of view of the utilitarian, who plans 
 to make it produce more and more fruit. The 
 matter-of-fact man looks upon the broad bosom of 
 earth as suitable for building allotments or cabbage 
 and strawberry gardens. What does the poet do 1 
 Perhaps he grows his apples and strawberries and 
 fences his allotment like the other man, but he sees 
 more in trees and plants than a promise of fruit, and 
 more in a piece of mother earth than unearned 
 increment. He looks at such things with a colouring, 
 a warmth lent by imagination and emotion. Nature 
 around him suggests trains of meditation, which 
 arouse yet others, until he learns or seems to learn 
 something useful for himself and for humanity. 
 
 A poet may be a man of as good practical common 
 sense as another ; he may be shrewd and sound in 
 business ; but he is not content with common sense, 
 nor with business, nor with pieces of positive infor-
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 47 
 
 ination. He cannot live on dry bones. And why 
 not 1 Is it because he is weaker than the other 1 
 No. It is because he has two sides to his mind, and 
 the other has but one. He, as the poet puts it, 
 " Feels that this cold, metallic motion is not all the 
 life God fashions or reveals." He looks in all things 
 for symbols, outshadowings of something deeper, 
 something that comes home to himself and his 
 fellow-men, and all the universe. Where the matter- 
 of-fact man sees woods, mountains, streams, clouds, 
 stars, the poet sees those same things, but he also 
 sees in them images and suggestions of things higher 
 and more abiding. They bring themselves into 
 sympathy with him and his life. He fancies he 
 hears in them tuneful voices warning him, teaching 
 him, or consoling him. He feels that the " worldling 
 intellect" of the scientist " mis-shapes the beauteous 
 forms of things." And if you say that the scientist 
 is not thus harsh and narrow, then it may be replied 
 that, so far as he is not, he partakes of the higher 
 nature of the poet ; and fortunately almost all 
 scientists do so partake. With the philosopher 
 intellect is everything. By all means let us admire 
 intellect ; nevertheless, to all the best natures there 
 is something harsh and loveless and dispi ting about 
 mere intellect untempered by fancy, imagination, or 
 the access of inexplicable unreasoning sentiment. 
 I often think of the instance given by Keats 
 
 " There was an awful rainbow once, in heaven. 
 We know her woof, her texture ; she is given 
 In the dull catalogue of common things."
 
 48 THE NATURE AND 
 
 Science has in a certain sense debased that rainbow. 
 Science, helpful as it is materially, would, I am 
 afraid, be debasing life if it were not for the check 
 of poetry. 
 
 And is science all-truthful 1 Can science tell us 
 all we want to know 1 Is its logic enough to satisfy 
 all even of our intellectual wants ? Our intellect is 
 very finite. Can it comprehend the notion of infinity 
 or eternity 1 Can an intellect convince us of 
 immortality, or, on the other hand, disprove it 1 It 
 is plain that here we fall back on something more 
 impressive and convincing than mere intellect, and 
 we find it in the imagination, the inspiration, and, 
 as it were, the second-sight of the poet. 
 
 Do not think that the poet cannot see clearly what 
 the man of science sees, and that he cannot recognize 
 the force of circumstances and necessities. That is 
 not the case. In the midst of his contemplations and 
 ecstacies the poet knows too well that life is full of 
 wants and disorders, and that scientific facts are not 
 only useful but necessary. But while the mere 
 scientist is seeking only for fact and its literal 
 application, the poet is seeking for pleasure in it, 
 beauty in it, sometimes prophecy in it. The scientist 
 provides us with a chill bare truth, and the poet 
 clothes it in radiance and beauty and honour. 
 
 Have you ever held to your ear one of those large 
 spiral shells, and listened to the echoes murmuring 
 within it ? Explained as a fact, the cause is obvious. 
 But do you cease to listen on that account, or do you 
 rather delight to let your imagination loose to enjoy
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 49 
 
 the fancies that suggest themselves ? Does it seem 
 do you like to fancy that you hear in those far- 
 reaching echoes a romantic tale of the depths of the 
 sea ; or do you remain unrelentingly conscious that a 
 certain amount of air is mechanically vibrating in a 
 receptacle thus and thus constituted ? In the one 
 case you have something of the poetic in you ; in the 
 other you are the one-sided slave of a fact. 
 
 Can you in any degree understand feel what 
 Wordsworth meant when he spoke of the cataract 
 " haunting him like a passion 1 " Or do you agree in 
 the Philistine's remark that there is no wonder in 
 Niagara running downwards, seeing that it cannot 
 well run upwards ? Does your knowledge that it is 
 merely water obeying the laws of gravity prevent 
 you from experiencing a sort of pain grow up in your 
 minds, unintelligible yet undeniable 1 
 
 In Plato we find a grand conception of an Eros, or 
 passionate love, leading on the philosopher in search 
 of truth. There is also an Eros or passion in poets 
 which leads them to see in common things beauty 
 and pathos and sympathy, where, to the common eye, 
 even to the scientific eye, there is but a material 
 body, plain and charmless. The poet finds sermons 
 in stones, a spirit and a meaning in everything. He 
 puts into every dumb thing a tongue, making it 
 eloquent to sing or teach. 
 
 I despair of making the poet's mission much more 
 manifest than this. It is a thing to feel rather than 
 to demonstrate. Yet I may now do my best to meet 
 the specific question, "What, then, is poetry? 
 
 5
 
 50 THE NATURE AND 
 
 Give us a definition, a portable value for the term." 
 This is not so easy as it would appear. Great 
 authorities have defined the word in their several 
 ways, and equally great authorities refuse to accept 
 their definitions. 
 
 Even poets themselves are not at one as to the 
 principles of the art they practise. Mr. Swinburne 
 does not think as Mr. Matthew Arnold, nor did 
 Byron think as the poets of the Lakes. In our own 
 day readers of periodical literature have heard Mr. 
 Arnold maintaining that poetry, must be full of high 
 and earnest purpose, that it is " a criticism of life, 
 and that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful 
 and beautiful application of ideas of life to the 
 question how to live." And then Mr. Swinburne 
 declares with exceeding vehemence that this view is 
 entirely wrong, and that a man is a poet if he be 
 richly endowed with imagination and harmony, 
 while, on the other hand, he is no poet if he have all 
 the other virtues and possess not these. 
 
 Well, when two such authorities are at feud on a 
 subject which they may be expected best to under- 
 stand, it might seem presumptuous for me here to 
 talk of a definition, and when Mr. Swinburne still 
 further proclaims that " the test of the highest 
 poetry is that it eludes all tests," one might well feel 
 dispirited in attempting to analyse qualities which he 
 places above analysis. But you will, perhaps, agree 
 with me that when you visit a gallery of pictures 
 you can (if you are not yourself a painter with 
 long-fostered idiosyncrasies and prejudices) recognize
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 51 
 
 several admirable styles of painting, and appreciate 
 their several excellences. You can enjoy this realism, 
 that idealism, yonder romanticism. Here you see 
 chiefly a striving after a sublime conception, there a 
 zeal of minute faithfulness in detail. And being one 
 who loves pictures, you can find delight and instruc- 
 tion in them all, provided the execution be good of 
 its kind. 
 
 And so I think it is with poetry. Laymen like 
 ourselves can find delight in Byron, whom Matthew 
 Arnold prefers, for Matthew Arnold's reasons ; and 
 we can find delight in Shelley, whom Swinburne 
 prefers, for Swinburne's reasons ; and I think that if 
 we have read poetry widely and thoughtfully, if we 
 have ears for a harmony, souls for a thought, educa- 
 tion for a language, and sympathy for a subject, we 
 may, after all, be in a very fair position to say what 
 poets do for us, and what are the qualities which- 
 variously found in the various masters of the art 
 make poetry a delight, a comfort, or an edification. 
 
 Consoled by this reflection, I shall venture to state 
 the conclusion which I have accepted, after what I 
 believe to be a thoughtful study of the best poets of 
 such ages and countries as are accessible to me, and 
 after much reading of criticisms by professed critics. 
 Of all existing definitions I find myself most entirely 
 in accord with that of Coleridge, whose admirable 
 book, " Biographia Literaria," is, despite its unfor- 
 tunate title, one of the absolutely fullest books in 
 our tongue, and one to which I shall always acknow- 
 ledge much indebtedness. If in some not very
 
 52 THE NATURE AND 
 
 important points we modify his definition, we arrive 
 at this : Poetry is that manner of writing in appro- 
 priate melody, but not necessarily in metrical verse, 
 which is opposed to science, inasmuch as it seeks for 
 its object not the ascertaining of material literal 
 truth, but the imparting of either intellectual or 
 spiritual delight, by means of language which comes 
 rather spontaneously than voluntarily from a heart 
 exalted and warmed, but within the limits of good 
 sense. It is the product of great sensibility and 
 imagination, and of exceptional sympathy with the 
 objects and incidents which the poet contemplates ; 
 and it gives such a vivid reflection of the latent 
 truths of Nature and of the soul as is beyond the 
 power of science. 
 
 I trust it is now clear that poetry is opposed to 
 science, not as its antagonist, but as its complement ; 
 it is opposed to the matter-of-fact because it ever 
 throws out a tendril of sympathy to all it contem- 
 plates, because, in formal terms, it always combines 
 the subjective with the objective. 
 
 So far is poetry from being regardless of common 
 facts that many of our greatest poets have been 
 among the most practical of men. Do not, I pray 
 you, look upon the poet as a visionary, an idle, help- 
 less enthusiast. Dante and Goethe bore their parts 
 in public affairs. Shakspere was a practical citizen 
 who looked after his business matters and prosecuted 
 for his small debts even while writing "Lear" and 
 " Othello." Byron drew the sword for Greek liberty. 
 It is true that now-a-days we do dissociate poets from
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 53 
 
 practical affairs ; but that is not because of any 
 incapacity, but because the division of labour is 
 growing more and more necessary. In modern times 
 men become narrowed in their work, their classes 
 and professions ; and, accordingly, poets too are 
 forming a class whose only work is poetry. Yet 
 once poets worked and fought and wrote with equal 
 aptitude. In ancient times men like ^Eschylus did 
 doughty deeds in battle, and yet lost no virtue of 
 their poetical faculty thereby. There is not there 
 cannot be any reason why a man with the two 
 components of a perfect brain should be inferior to 
 him who possesses but one. 
 
 There is one question on which I feel very strongly. 
 The idea is abroad, and it has been encouraged by 
 writers of eminence Macaulay among them that 
 poetry is on the wane that it is a dying thing. Men 
 point especially to the natural imagery which seems 
 to distinguish the earliest literatures and the speech 
 of the most uncivilized peoples, and they insist that, 
 as civilization advances, poetry withers before it. I 
 do not believe this fear to be a sound one, and I 
 should like for a few moments to examine the data 
 on which it is based. 
 
 And, first, I think those who speak in this way 
 are labouring under the old confusion about poetry 
 and verse. They see that all the beginnings of 
 literature were in verse, that prose was of later birth, 
 and that the proportion of prose continually increases 
 out of all measure with that of verse. And they put 
 this phenomenon down hastily at any rate wrongly
 
 54 THE NATURE AND 
 
 to the decline of the poetic element in mankind. 
 But more verse by no means proves more poetry : 
 nay, even the non-existence of verse would not prove 
 more than a different conception of poetry. I think, 
 though ladmit that it is something of a digression, that 
 it might be useful for me to explain why verse was 
 the natural form for the earliest literature to take. 
 We are apt now-a-days to think A'erse the more 
 sophisticated form of composition, while, as a matter 
 of fact, the contrary is the truth. The poietes, the 
 " maker " what the old Teutons called the " song- 
 smith" and Pindar called the " builder of hymns "- 
 found it far easier both to make and to spread a 
 literature of verse than one of prose. We imagine 
 that, as we think prose and talk prose, so it would 
 be natural for a man in a society of least culture to 
 compose prose and not verse. And yet the oldest 
 work of Greek literature is an epic poem, and it was 
 only as the people grew more and more in learning 
 and art that prose writing began to flourish at the 
 expense of verse. So it is in old French, German, 
 Anglo-Saxon. There are two very satisfactory 
 reasons for the priority of the metrical form. 
 
 The first reason is, that whenever a literature first 
 begins there are none who read, and few who would 
 be attracted by a recitation without cadence or jingle. 
 Men in nascent civilizations have not learned to go 
 to books for their knowledge ; they have not even 
 learned their letters perhaps writing is almost 
 unknown. They want to be sung to ; but they do not 
 want they do not even know what it is to be read
 
 PROVINCE OP POETRY. 55 
 
 to. They require something grateful to the ear, easy 
 to remember. And to this end verse, and not prose, 
 is suited. Of prose, men can carry away but little ; 
 it is addressed solely to the mind, without any 
 assistance from the ear, and so it makes for itself no 
 lasting abode in the brain. We all remember, as 
 Emerson reminds us, medleys of old saws and proverbs 
 perhaps with little or nothing striking in the 
 thought but which, being expressed in a sort of 
 cadence and rhyme, cling to the memory far more 
 enduringly than the most polished and pregnant sen- 
 tences of prose. We remember, " Thirty days hath 
 September," simply because of the jingle. Most of 
 us recall strangely, and as if by accident, at odd 
 moments, little snatches of nursery rhymes, little 
 burdens of ballads, which we have not heard since 
 childhood ; while the same memory, so spontaneous 
 in these respects, cannot be forced to retain even for 
 a few days the shortest passage of prose. 
 
 So in those early days, when books were few 
 or none, when the very materials for their production 
 were almost unobtainable, the only way whereby 
 a literary work could be diffused was by the old 
 delightful plan of recitation or singing. In Greece 
 the rhapsodists carried from town to town the verses 
 of Homer stored in their memory, and these they 
 sang or recited, after a prelude on the harp, to crowds 
 of eager listeners. 
 
 This can only be done with verse. To lay aside 
 the harp, to speak like a mere ordinary man, without 
 rhyme or metre, would be to awaken no interest, to
 
 56 THE NATURE AND 
 
 gratify neither ears nor fancy. Let anyone commit 
 to memory, on the one hand, a large portion of 
 " Paradise Lost," and, on the other, the most eloquent 
 speech of Burke ; and after some attempts to deliver 
 each, examine which of the two he finds it easier to 
 remember, more grateful to utter, more alluring to 
 the hearer. This experience is universal. As among 
 the Greeks we find the wandering rhapsodists, so in 
 Iceland do we find the skalds, in France the trouba- 
 dours and jongleurs, in Germany the minne-sanger, 
 and in Celtic countries the bard. 
 
 All literatures begin alike. A series of verses 
 committed to memory, often recited, and widely 
 spread. Then an attempt to reduce them to writing 
 for the sake of preservation by a reading few ; then 
 a demand for books, so more readers ; and when once 
 men are readers, they like to read even things which 
 they do not care to hear recited ; and so arises prose. 
 
 There is another reason why verse precedes prose. 
 It is easier to compose. In ballad verse the writer 
 may be abrupt in expression, he need care less about 
 arrangement, he may even be somewhat lax in diction. 
 Prose, on the other hand, must be reasoned and com- 
 pact. We, who are accustomed to write English 
 prose from our childhood, know how difficult it is to 
 arrange our words so as to be clear and precise and 
 forcible ; and some, after abundant efforts, prove 
 unable to master the art. Yet, if we have some taste, 
 and an ear for rhythm, we require no such study in 
 order to express ourselves adequately in a kind of 
 verse. There is no temptation in verse to be prolix,
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 57 
 
 to make long and confused sentences, parenthesis 
 within parenthesis. 
 
 I am anxious not to weary you with this discussion ; 
 but when it is held that the ancients were more 
 poetical than the moderns because of their abundant 
 verse and little prose, I, who much admire, and in a 
 sense professionally belong to, the ancients, think I 
 see that view to be a fallacy. 
 
 Well, but, the supporter of this opinion says, 
 surely it is a fact that in primitive communities, when 
 civilization is in its infancy, imagination is stronger 
 than reasoning power, and the symbolic and figurative 
 utterance comes more naturally than the literal and 
 logical. Trade, physical science, and the other 
 material advances of society, tend to make us less 
 sensible to movements of imagination and fancy than 
 our forefathers were. The savage, he will say, is 
 always poetical, and though he does not indeed use 
 the mechanical contrivances of metre and rhyme, 
 poetry does not depend on these. He is full of 
 metaphor and simile and fanciful turns of expression. 
 He illuminates his speech by means of flashes which 
 we should think almost inspired. 
 
 Perhaps it is not unnatural that our friend should 
 say this ; that he should think our modern atmosphere 
 of logic and science uncongenial to poetry. It appears 
 very reasonable to suppose that as ideas are more and 
 more formulated, as the processes of reason are more 
 and more reduced to method, in so much is the imagin- 
 ation more and more suppressed. It seems as if 
 minds educated, especially in the mathematics and in
 
 58 THE NATURE AND 
 
 natural and mental science, now have too keen an 
 insight into logical sequence, too abiding a conscious- 
 ness of the real, to wander off unfettered in the 
 flights of fancy. This is a very strong line of argu- 
 ment, and some authorities, Macaulay I have already 
 mentioned, are much impressed by it. But I believe 
 that our imaginations are not suppressed, that they 
 are only differently directed. Scientific practicality 
 is indeed something like a shrivelling and despiteful 
 frost. But some plants, I am told, such as the vine, 
 cannot thrive well without frost. The frost does 
 them good, and is almost essential to the true bear- 
 ing of fruit. The frost is an unpleasant thing in 
 itself and so is scientific practicality but it may 
 be good in its effect. 
 
 Are we to believe that poetry will decay ? Are we 
 to believe the time is coming when the muses will be 
 from the world "with sighing sent?" Is the world 
 in this respect at least to become more coarse and 
 vulgar because of the progress of knowledge 1 If it 
 is, I for one feel ready to cry out with Wordsworth 
 
 " Good God ! I'd rather be 
 A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 
 So might I, standing on the pleasant lea, 
 Have glimpses that should make me less forlorn " 
 
 than such a world as that would make me. It is 
 impossible, with only Wordsworth and Tennyson 
 before us in these later days, to believe that the 
 divine afflatus is breathing less strongly upon men. 
 
 To put the matter on the very lowest ground, it is 
 certain that the human feelings and sentiments are
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 59 
 
 superior to all philosophy, and will ever find expres- 
 sion for themselves, independently of cold reason, in 
 such terms as their intensity and the imagination 
 may suggest. The instinctive part of the mind will 
 ever and again rebel against the domination of the 
 intellectual part. I think it is Renan who says that 
 as a man becomes more and more developed in 
 intellect, the more strongly he is attracted to the 
 opposite, and that he finds rest and refreshment in 
 the childlike, impulsive artlessness of nature. The 
 brain, he says, grows arid with reasoning. " Arid ! " 
 Yes, that seems to be the word. It suggests a thirst 
 for the sweet dews of simplicity and fancy, and these 
 are the moistures on which poetry thrives. 
 
 But this is the lower ground. There is a far higher 
 reason for an optimistic view. When we are told 
 that poetry must necessarily decay, and mere verses 
 take its place, we need not be alarmed. Rather, 
 with Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold, we may 
 anticipate an even more glorious poetical future. For 
 it seems to me that in our own day the gaze of con- 
 templation, the looking before and after, the deep 
 communings of the spirit with the mysteries of life 
 and nature, all of these are growing more and more 
 intense. We shall not, perhaps, produce simple and 
 childlike poems of romance and narrative Iliads, 
 Odysseys, ^Eneids, Canterbury Tales, Faerie Queenes 
 but we shall have something which better befits the 
 time. After all, every great poet owes the character 
 of his work to his surroundings rather than to him- 
 self. He generally comes when he is most wanted to
 
 60 THE NATURE AND 
 
 give expression, not to ideas absolutely his own, but 
 to those questions, yearnings, aspirations which the 
 time-spirit is stirring all around him. Most of you 
 may have seen a chemical solution full of hazy, in- 
 definite particles floating loosely, and then you have 
 seen some new element infused which at once resolves 
 them into a precipitate, something distinct and recog- 
 nizable. It is very much the same with the great poets. 
 The world of their time is full of vague thoughts 
 and feelings floating in solution, till suddenly there 
 comes the man with the precipitating quality, the 
 giver of form and distinctness, and the world is 
 enriched with the clear expression of a clear idea. 
 
 Look at the great continent of the New World, 
 with its territorial vastness, its mighty mountains 
 and forests, and suggestions of freedom ; its new ways 
 of looking at men and things. It is plain that a new 
 poetry is growing up there, the poetry of nature, and 
 of equality, which is akin to nature, being the state 
 of man as nature intended him. The old aristocratic 
 poetry of " lords and ladies gay " and " haughty feats 
 of arms," is dying, perhaps. But the poetry of 
 modern humanity is only being born. We have 
 abundance of nebulous ideas still in solution, and we 
 always shall have, till human life, its institutions and 
 its beliefs, are all perfect ; till nature has yielded up 
 her last secret to science ; till the heavens above and 
 and the earth beneath can be read like a printed 
 book ; till man has no doubts, or fears, or hopes. 
 And if poetry does not die till then, we may look far 
 enough yet for its decease.
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 61 
 
 But, as I have said, though poetry will not die out 
 until man becomes a machine, yet the conception 
 of poetry in ages hereafter will be ever changing. 
 Man's imaginative part will not be suppressed, but 
 will turn with new powers into new ways. This 
 observation is justified by the history of the past. It 
 has been frequently noted that the two most engross- 
 ing themes of our modern poets were almost un- 
 touched by the ancients. The one is the poetry of 
 nature, of nature the beautiful or the mysterious. 
 Homer and Yirgil offer us no loving descriptions of, 
 far less any meditations upon, natural beauties, loved 
 for their own sake, such as meet us in Wordsworth. 
 They do not find their hearts going out to glowing 
 sunsets or sunrises ; thej' give voice to no ardent 
 sensations aroused by the stilly night, the storm, the 
 breath of flowers. They simply say, "The sun set, 
 and all the ways were dark;" "There was a valley 
 dark with the shade of pines ;" " The dawn with rosy 
 fingers appeared." They speak of the " hoary" or the 
 " purple" sea, or even of its "unnumerable laughter ;" 
 and these touches are left to suggest whatever more 
 the reader may desire. But the modern poet fills in 
 the sketch he is enamoured of that which the other 
 scarcely observes. To an ancient poet a primrose 
 was a primrose, and it was nothing more ; a waterfall 
 was just a waterfall. It, of course, pleased his eye, 
 perhaps as much as ours ; but there was nothing to 
 reach his emotions or call for ardent expression. He 
 was not haunted as by a passion. I do not think he 
 would have comprehended a longing aroused by the 
 inanimate.
 
 62 THE NATURE AND 
 
 The second main point wherein modern poetry 
 differs from the ancient lies in the greater study of 
 self introspection, it is called. The ancient poet 
 kept himself in the background ; but the modern 
 poet, I have seen or heard it somewhere said, is ever 
 seeking to " unravel the tangles of his own spirit," 
 sounding the depths of the conflicting currents of 
 feeling. This self-probing was not performed by any 
 Greek, Roman, or even mediaeval poet. In Homer 
 and Virgil the descriptions of moods and passions are 
 very superficial. It is quite enough for them that 
 " anger grows hot" or " sorrow gnaws the soul." To 
 them joy makes a man dance, love scorches his 
 heart so much and nothing more. I cannot conceive 
 of any Greek or Roman writer examining himself in 
 the modern manner. 
 
 Thus has poetry changed in recorded times, and so 
 it will change in the future. One of my most firm 
 beliefs is in the ultimate refining and perfecting of 
 the human race, and, therefore, in the expansion of 
 the human faculties ; and I believe that the efforts of 
 poets to " communicate the incommunicable" will be 
 crowned with much success, inasmuch as the incom- 
 municable will grow ever less and less. 
 
 But, you may ask, what is the mark of the true 
 poet ? How are we, in the mass of professed poetry 
 and the multitude of professed poets, with their 
 various faults or excellences, to distinguish poetry 
 from verse 1 
 
 There is more cant talked about poetry than about 
 anything else, except perhaps what is known as art.
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 63 
 
 Few people judge for themselves. The great majority 
 prefer to take their criticisms on trust. It is thought 
 a confession of incompetence to dislike this or that 
 part of Shakspere or Milton ; yet can you always 
 honestly say that you agree with the traditional 
 verdict ? Generally a candid opinion is suppressed, 
 because the reader is afraid to disagree with the 
 majority and the constituted authorities, because he 
 distrusts himself. Some poets love more the sublime, 
 some love more the beautiful. Because you delight 
 in Milton, it follows not that you will equally delight 
 in Keats. 
 
 An ancient poet, Pindar, says that he writes words 
 that have " voice for them that understand." Likes 
 are known by likes. A reader must have an intellect 
 and a soul not unlike that of the poet. It requires 
 strong flight to follow the eagle, a delicate ear to 
 distinguish the songbird's tune. Poets must be 
 deeply studied, and there are readers who must 
 expect to fail to appreciate the highest foi'ms of 
 poetry ; but he must indeed be a hopeless, soulless 
 clod to whom all poetry alike is void of charm, who 
 has no little vein, no tiniest spark of the poetic in his 
 nature. 
 
 Well, but can we, despite Mr. Swinburne, analyze 
 the various excellences of poetry 1 I think we can 
 do so fairly well. We may note one special strength 
 in one poet, another in another. The ideal poet, 
 the hitherto unrealized, though almost reached in 
 Shakspere, would combine many distinguishable 
 virtues and talents. For instance, just as at Rome
 
 64 THE NATURE AND 
 
 an orator was defined as a " good man, skilled in 
 speaking," so it was said in Greece that it was 
 impossible for a man to be a good poet unless he was 
 first a good not a " goody" man. No truly mean, 
 black-hearted being can be a poet. 
 
 Besides this moral qualification, on which you will 
 not require me to dwell, I may enumerate briefly the 
 evident qualities and gifts which the best poets must 
 possess. And first of all is the quality of good sense. 
 Though Aristotle says that " no real genius was ever 
 without some mixture of madness, and nothing grand 
 or sublime can be spoken except by the agitated 
 soul," yet that mixture of madness must be only 
 enough to promote excitement, ardour, and sen- 
 sibility, not to cloud reason. If the poet has a 
 Tnmkenheit ohne Wein, it must be an intoxication 
 which comes upon him after his good sense has 
 directed him to, and given him a hold upon, his 
 subject. I sometimes think that some of our 
 would-be poets of the lachrymose school are par- 
 ticularly remarkable for a lack of this good sense. 
 They affect " world-pains" and " philosophies of 
 despair." But Chaucer and Shakspere were espe- 
 cially the poets of good sense, and they were 
 eminently cheerful. Sometimes, too, I think that 
 Wordsworth's good sense failed him when he chose 
 the most trivial, infantile themes for his verse, for 
 good sense teaches that no puerile subject can be 
 made poetical. And in the matter of expression 
 the writers of the Queen Anne time sinned against 
 good sense, when, as Mr. Gosse playfully reminds us,
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 65 
 
 they called all women " nymphs," and the caterpillar 
 " the crawling scourge that smites the leafy plain," 
 and so forth. This was not good sense, but nonsense. 
 This, too, is a matter on which I need not dwell. 
 
 The second quality of the poet is earnestness and 
 inspiration. Whatever be his message, glad, merry, 
 or prophetic, he must mean what he says ; he must 
 be constrained to give vent to thoughts that swell in 
 his breast. This is inspiration, to have that within 
 you which must come forth of you. The old world, 
 as you may find in Carlyle, gave the same name to 
 poets as to prophets ; and in modern clays, perhaps, 
 the true poet is the successor of the prophets. The 
 poet must feel the prophetic impulse, a spontaneous 
 abandonment. Emerson gives us an essay on inspira- 
 tion, which I shall use as common property, since it 
 is impossible to add to it. 
 
 " Tis not every day that I 
 Fitted am to prophesy," 
 
 says Herrick ; and so Byron declares that without 
 an estro or afflatus his pen was powerless. There are 
 days on which the poet must not write. According 
 to Plato, if the letters called by his name are really 
 his, " A light as if leaping from a fire will all on a 
 sudden be kindled in the soul." This is what we 
 call poetic inspiration, what the ancients called the 
 divine afflatus or the access of the Muse ; and 
 it is these occasions only which call forth poetry. 
 Emerson tells us of a remark made to him by a 
 religious poet, that " he valued his poems not 
 
 6
 
 66 THE NATURE AND 
 
 because they were his, but because they were not." 
 There is a deep truth in this. 
 
 Then, again, the poet must have genius. He must 
 be capable of energy without effort, of spontaneous 
 originality, of fancy and imagination. He must be 
 able to lend novelty to old and familiar objects and 
 incidents. He must be able to " make the common 
 marvellous.'' Mere love of Nature cannot make a 
 poet, nor can mere depth of feeling. He must 
 possess that power which can grasp and depict the 
 inmost essences of things. There must be no 
 faintness and blur about his conceptions ; no half 
 sights. His imagery must be powerful, and at the 
 same time must grow upon him from the subject 
 itself. 
 
 And to express all this he requires another great 
 gift the gift of language. If he can merely 
 describe he is no poet. He must describe vividly, 
 briefly, suggestively, yet completely. His language 
 is of that timbre which the subject requires. While 
 striving to be brief, the poet is not obscure ; while 
 striving for grandeur, he is not bombastic. And 
 this necessary verbal power only comes by pains and 
 study. It is often said that " a full heart, brimful 
 of one noble passion," is sure to find words fit for 
 its expression. I am not convinced of that, for 
 experience teaches the contrary. Language requires 
 either a transcendent gift or abundant study. 
 
 Poetry does not depend on rhymes and cadence 
 and compound epithets. The test of the language 
 of poetry lies in this, that every single word is
 
 PROVINCE OF POETKY. 67 
 
 essential, either for the ear, or the intellect, or the 
 emotion ; that it brings new strength, or tenderness, 
 or pathos. And this excellence of language must be 
 maintained. Splendid lines here and there, gaudy 
 trimmings and purple patches, do not make a poem 
 beautiful or immortal. No word must be weak, 
 faint, unnecessary, coarse, or low. Nay, further, 
 Coleridge's schoolmaster was right when he taught 
 that " in the truly great poets there was a reason 
 assignable, not only for every word, but for the 
 position of every word." 
 
 As the poets imagine in stronger and clearer 
 lights, so their language must shed stronger and 
 clearer lights. Look at the word-painting in Keats ; 
 the old analogue betAveen poem and picture is for 
 ever illustrated in him. But the greatest masters of 
 those bold completely satisfying strokes which mark 
 the supreme painter were Dante and Shakspere. 
 Their few words of description leave absolutely 
 nothing to be desired. What is called Dantesque 
 may be explained by the instance in the " Inferno " 
 of that persistent, noiseless, measureless rain of flame 
 which 
 
 " Fell like broad snowfiakes when the wind is still." 
 
 What more could a thousand words do? One of 
 Shakspere's greatest powers lies in this capacity to 
 utter with no more and no less the very essence of 
 his thought. 
 
 Moral goodness, good sense, inspiration, genius, 
 language, these are a formidable catalogue of require-
 
 68 THE NATURE AND 
 
 ments. But there is yet another, which I have kept 
 till the last, because, though I feel it is equally 
 essential with these, I none the less feel that its 
 reason is less obvious, and that it may seem com- 
 paratively trivial. A poet must have melody, sweetly 
 or richly cadenced and musical words, tones which 
 will delight the ear and cling to the memory. I 
 anticipate the question " Why ? " Why should our 
 highest and most spiritual thoughts be best conveyed 
 in verse? What necessary connection exists between 
 an elevated mood and a harmonious expression? 
 Why should a thought conceived by inspired imagina- 
 tion necessarily take birth in rhyme and melody in- 
 stead of in the ordinary language of prose? We 
 know that such is the case, that as soon as a man 
 begins to rise above the commonplace, so soon his 
 style begins to take on itself a rhythmic shape ; his 
 words are not satisfied to string themselves together 
 in their work-a-day manner : words less trite and 
 debased, more noble and sonorous, offer themselves 
 as if by some law of nature, and those words arrange 
 themselves in a more sweet and musical order. Try 
 the experiment. Take up a specimen of prose 
 eloquence by some master of our tongue. So long as 
 the subject is common, poor, matter-of-fact, the 
 sentences are without charm or melody. But when 
 the speaker rises to a subject calling for fire or pathos, 
 then, without conscious effort or volition, his expres- 
 sion grows richer in sound, more delicate and har- 
 monious in construction. It is always so. There is 
 much truth in those who contend that there is a
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 69 
 
 deep-laid connection between sound and thought. A 
 great literary critic somewhere compares the expres- 
 sion " Patience is a virtue, " with the expression " For 
 an enduring heart have the gods given unto the 
 children of men." He does not explain the difference. 
 Let us avail ourselves of that instance. Who ever 
 feels himself exalted, his feelings moved, or even his 
 attention arrested by the phrase " Patience is a 
 virtue " 1 No one. And why 1 Not because it is 
 not a truth, but because it is a truth expressed in a 
 manner that regards not the accordant language and 
 rhythm. It is a hard, matter-of-fact assertion, the 
 offspring of a cold, self-possessed thought. But " For 
 an enduring heart have the gods given unto the chil- 
 dren of men " contains, besides the unwonted diction 
 (which I admit gives much charm), a rhythmic 
 motion, a moving concurrence of sounds, which all 
 who hear must feel. And it gets that rhythm be- 
 cause the man who utters it is not speaking in 
 his everyday character, from his everyday feelings, 
 but he is in a state of exaltation, and his thought 
 clothes itself correspondingly in words of exalted 
 sound. 
 
 Now, all writing which is truly called poetry is 
 produced under a state of excitement ; the writer is 
 carried out of himself. It follows, therefore, from 
 this mysterious connection, this indefinable sym- 
 pathy between the spoken sound and the conceiving 
 mood, that all poetical utterance is harmonious, 
 "and most naturally takes the form of sweet or 
 solemn verse.
 
 70 THE NATURE AND 
 
 Let us take another instance. You remember 
 Wordsworth's 
 
 " Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills." 
 
 Here is a beautiful thought in beautiful expression ; 
 and what I contend is that the unspeakable music of 
 this verse for I find it such could never have 
 been produced by a mere act of artistic volition ; and 
 that, on the other hand, it almost naturally produces 
 itself from the sweet beauty of the thought. A man 
 could not sit down in cold blood and write like that. 
 He might resolve to compose lines of the most melo- 
 dious possible sound, but he could not succeed like 
 that, unless his thought, his mood, were attuned to 
 harmonious utterance. Perhaps some of you may 
 think that in the lines just quoted the sense is over 
 simple that, after all, the beauty lies in the sound, 
 and that therefore there is something of an illusion 
 here. Yet who but a poet could feel the voiceless 
 teaching of woods and rills, the lesson which speaks in 
 the vast ineffable silence of the 'stars ? One can 
 imagine a Wordsworth on a windless, noiseless night 
 gazing with poetic yearning into the great starry 
 dome, until its silence grew upon him, and filled him 
 with a great calm or a great pain of heart. We can 
 imagine him then uttering his thought in words 
 which seem expressly made to give to his feeling an 
 
 4 
 
 audible sound of the truest note. But, on the other 
 hand, when Wordsworth talks of pedlars, and black-
 
 PROVINCE OF POETRY. 71 
 
 thorns, and other unpoetic themes, his verse is no 
 richer, no more melodious, than the prose of his 
 guide-book to the lakes. 
 
 And if the music of verse is the fit utterance for 
 impassioned thought, it is equally the best instrument 
 for inducing the proper mood in the reader or hearer. 
 If the poet's raptures, visions, fancies, enthusiasms 
 were set before us in formal prose, we should not 
 feel our souls equally disposed to receive them. Our 
 souls want thawing. We all know what it is to have 
 our mood suddenly and entirely changed by the 
 chance hearing of a piece of music. A gleeful air 
 will exhilarate the depressed soul ; the " Dead 
 March " will sadden the most frivolous. That is why 
 we have military bands to inspire our troops and 
 great organs to aid our devotions. The Greeks had 
 the Dorian mood to inspire courage and endurance, 
 the Lydian disposed to mourning, and the Phrygian to 
 a kind of sensual frenzy. Those acquainted with 
 natural phenomena know how, when sand is scattered 
 loosely on a layer placed upon a glass, and the strings 
 of a violin are played above it, the sand will arrange 
 itself into symmetrical shapes ; so is it with the 
 human soul. There is something of the sort in 
 buildings. Rich carvings, paintings, window-stainings 
 are not without their attuning purpose or effect. It 
 is so with the melody of verse. Turn your ear from 
 common prose to the full organ-peal of Milton's verse, 
 and your whole disposition is altered ; you are prepared 
 to receive impressions ; you are teachable ; your soul 
 opens its pores to drink in the refreshing moistures.
 
 i'2 THE NATURE AND PROVINCE OF POETHY. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this point because I have heard 
 many persons speak of this effect of rhythm as 
 illusory. On the contrary, I think it very real. 
 Leave a funeral oration in prose, however eloquent, 
 and take up the poetic plaint of Lycidas 
 
 " For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime. 
 Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. 
 Who would not sing for Lycidas ? " 
 
 or Shelley's 
 
 " I weep for Adonais he is dead," 
 
 and I am convinced that the mournful melody of 
 these poems will draw a tear from you, where all the 
 truth and strength of the funeral oration may fail. 
 
 These, then, are the true qualities of the true poet. 
 Milton sums them up in the sentence that the poet 
 must be "simple, sensuous, and passionate." In 
 other words, he must have a sensitive faculty of 
 language, a sensitive eye and ear, a sensitive heart. 
 
 What is the province of poetry 1 It is like that of 
 every liberal art. It is to serve as the salt and leaven 
 of life, to refresh us when we grow weary with outward 
 shows, and harsh, positive facts ; to raise us above 
 pounds, shillings, and pence ; to keep alive our better 
 part; and, in order that I may end with words more 
 impressive than any of my own, I will say that it 
 " opens our eyes to the loveliness and wonder of the 
 world around us an inexhaustible treasure ; but for 
 which, because of the film of familiarity and selfish 
 solicitude, we have eyes that see not, ears that hear 
 not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand."
 
 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 THE subject of this address is not a novel one. 
 Essayists have written upon it, and educationists 
 have wrangled about it, with abundant zeal, during 
 the last quarter of a century. May I ask you to be 
 satisfied if I simply endeavour to re-state the case, as 
 it appears to me, in an intelligible and dispassionate 
 form ? A lecturer's duty is to make himself familiar 
 with the region under survey, and then to guide his 
 hearers round to the best points of view, as far as the 
 time admits, without overmuch of the cicerone's 
 garrulity. 
 
 Some of you may anticipate rather a one-sided 
 presentment of this question to-night. My own 
 position is that of the student of letters, and you may 
 fear that you are about to hear a eulogy of literature 
 and a disparagement of the educational value of 
 science, at some sacrifice of the exact truth. I shall 
 be much disappointed, I shall feel that I have 
 entirely failed in my purpose, if you part from me 
 under the impression that you have been listening to 
 an antagonist of scientific teaching. Science, in the
 
 74 LITEHATURK, SCIENCE, 
 
 popular sense of the term, cannot but have an immense 
 attraction, cannot but convey most profitable sug- 
 gestion, even to the man who is no pi'ofessed scientist. 
 Thoughts are interlinked with thoughts, studies with 
 studies, in such a mutually helpful way that the man 
 of letters can scarcely meet with any new scientific 
 conclusion or new scientific theory without finding it 
 of service to some inquiry which his mind is pursuing 
 in its own speculative fields. The student, whether 
 of science or letters, is only a true student in 
 so far as he resolves, in singleness of heart, to see 
 things as they are ; and if any man starts with and 
 adheres to the presumption that his studies are the 
 only worthy studies, and the rest comparatively con- 
 temptible, he is no true student desiring to see things 
 as they are. We shall not, then, entertain any such 
 presumption, but shall endeavour to examine the 
 respective claims of science and literature, to see how 
 many each possesses of those elements which make up 
 the complete education of a human being, and in what 
 relative proportions they possess them. This will 
 give us our premises ; the conclusion will be easy to 
 deduce. 
 
 We must begin, however, with an understanding 
 as to what the terms literature and science imply. 
 In their widest senses they are not reciprocally exclu- 
 sive ; there is a sort of literature of science, and 
 literature itself, if properly pursued, is one of the 
 sciences. Cicero, ages ago, observed : " All the arts 
 which appertain to humanity have a certain common 
 bond," and in " arts" he included studies. The more
 
 AND EDUCATION. 75 
 
 one reads and thinks, and realizes the profoundness 
 of his own ignorance as we all do realize it more 
 and more every day the more he recognizes the 
 reality of this common bond. Among the wise 
 sayings in Bacon's " Advancement of Learning" there 
 is none wiser than this "And generally let this be 
 a rule, that all partitions of knowledge be accepted 
 rather for lines and veins than for sections and 
 separations." Studies interpenetrate each other, 
 throw light on each other at more and more points. 
 Biology, for instance, is a branch of science, history 
 is a branch of literature, the comparative study of 
 languages partakes of both literature and science. 
 Now, note the connecting links. Biology examines 
 the conditions of life and the development of the 
 physical man ; it seeks to tell us what he has been 
 and how lie came to be what he is. History examines 
 the growth of his political, social, and moral ideas ; 
 it tells us how the communities and relations of man 
 came to be what they are. The comparative study 
 of languages inquires into the development of his 
 power of expression, and therewith shows the 
 unfolding and the subtilizing of his conceptions. 
 Roughly speaking, the three studies deal with man 
 as an animal, man as a member of society, man as a 
 mind. Here is the common bond. 
 
 But the past of man suggests the past of the 
 world, or geology, and this carries us out again to 
 astronomy, and so these vast subjects, these boundless 
 regions of reasoning and speculation, keep opening 
 out in vista after vista before our unsatisfied
 
 76 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 intellects. The man of letters feels this as pro- 
 foundly as any man of science. He rejoices to add 
 to the alembic of his mind some great scientific fact, 
 and leave it there to find its relation to the ideas 
 which are already amalgamating within him. 
 "There is," says Mr. Hamerton, "a sort of intel- 
 lectual chemistry. We cannot learn any new thing 
 without changing our whole intellectual composition, 
 as a chemical cc mpound is changed by a new in- 
 gredient." 
 
 This interconnection of studies compels some 
 important reflections. It shows, for instance, that 
 it is only a narrow, short-sighted mind which will 
 denounce unfamiliar studies as useless and aimless. 
 It makes it probable again that it is well for every- 
 body in early life to learn many things for which he 
 then displays no particular aptitude ; and it leads 
 one to feel how dangerous it is for governments and 
 ruling powers, taking empirical views of education, 
 to subsidize and coddle some pet branch of learning 
 to the certain neglect of those less favoured. 
 
 But though the division between studies is, as 
 Bacon puts it, only " a vein " and not "a section," we 
 do in use make a complete severance of literature 
 from science, and for the purposes of this lecture I 
 shall accept the distinction. Unfoi-tunately our 
 nomenclature is not fixed, and, if it be fixed, the 
 fixture must be arbitrary. Science properly means 
 knowledge ; and that plainly is a term which no 
 field of learning should arrogate to itself. And if it 
 is to mean those branches of study in which know-
 
 AND EDUCATION. 77 
 
 ledge is obtained by systematic methods, by 
 observing, experimenting, classifying, drawing con- 
 clusions, it is once more plain that all this can be 
 done in things of the mind as well as in natural 
 phenomena ; and so we hear of mental and moral 
 science. In popular parlance, however, science 
 means natural and physical science, nature-know- 
 ledge ; and it is with the educational value of 
 science in this sense that I shall deal a study 
 limited in its scope to the investigation of nature, 
 that is to say, of the properties of existing things 
 which nature produces, and the operations which 
 nature displays. 
 
 Literature, too, does not mean the same to all 
 men. Carlyle, for instance, says that " literature is 
 the thought of thinking souls." Charles Lamb calls 
 such books as Adam Smith's, not literature, but 
 "things in books' clothing." Mr. Stopford Brooke 
 has it that "by literature we mean the written 
 thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and women 
 arranged in a way which will give pleasure to the 
 reader." But whatever meanings are attached to 
 the term by others, I shall not regard it as, on the 
 one hand, extensive enough to include all written 
 books ; nor, as on the other, narrow enough to 
 mean merely belles lettres. But I shall mean the 
 collection of writings which, without having for 
 their main object the examination or teaching of 
 scientific or technical matters, are nevertheless writ- 
 ings with a worthy, an elevating, or an instructive 
 purpose, and writings in which there is intentionally
 
 78 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 studied the art of powerful, beautiful, and lucid 
 expression. 
 
 With this understanding let us proceed to compare 
 the results for education which will flow from true 
 study, on the one side of the material works of 
 nature, on the other of the written works of the 
 mind of man. 
 
 What do we mean by education 1 It is one of the 
 commonest of words, but the thing is most rarely 
 understood. Yet, until we know quite precisely 
 what we mean by educating, we cannot possibly 
 know how we are to set about it in the right way. 
 "Education," says Plato, "is the tii-st and fairest 
 thing the best of men can ever have." And, again, 
 " there is nothing more divine about which a man 
 can take counsel than about the training of himself 
 and of those who belong to him." I suppose there 
 is not a person present who does not grant the 
 truth of these maxims. But let us ask, with 
 that eminent scientist Professor Huxley, " What 
 is education ? Above all things, what is our ideal 
 of a thoroughly liberal education ? Of that 
 education which, if we could begin life again, we 
 would give ourselves ? " Huxley himself answers 
 by comparing life to a game of chess. " The life, the 
 fortunes, and the happiness of every one of us, and 
 more or less of those connected with us, depend on 
 our knowing something of the rules of the game. 
 The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the pheno- 
 mena of the universe, the rules of the game are what 
 we call the law? of nature. . Education is
 
 AND EDUCATION. 79 
 
 learning the rules of the mighty game. In other 
 words, education is the instruction of the intellect in 
 the laws of nature, under which name I include, not 
 merely things and their forces, but men and their 
 ways, and the fashioning of the affections and the 
 will into an earnest and loving desire to move in 
 harmony with those laws." I shall not unduly 
 criticise this similitude. I shall abstain from point- 
 ing out how very small a part of playing chess is the 
 learning of its rules. I shall merely hint that you 
 might know all the chess rules by heart and yet be 
 beaten every time you sat down to play. But I par- 
 ticularly ask you to observe that under the laws of 
 nature Professor Huxley includes men and their 
 ways ; for I mean to claim that to the successful con- 
 duct of the chess-game of life there contributes more 
 largely the knowledge of men and their ways than 
 the knowledge of external nature and its forces. 
 
 Education is the training of a human being to live 
 the highest, most useful, and happiest life which 
 humanity allows. It should bring out what is good 
 in him, correct what is bad in him, and encourage in 
 him those powers which he lacks. Information is not 
 education. A man may know encyclopaedias through 
 from beginning to end and not be educated. The 
 world is waking up to this truth. In old -fashioned 
 schools the material of so-called education consisted 
 of three objects a book, a boy, and a cane. The 
 whole problem of the instructor was to make the cane 
 force the book into the boy. We no longer believe 
 in this Dr. Busby form of instruction. We demand
 
 80 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 teaching. We demand that a boy or girl shall be 
 looked upon as a developing organism, not as an 
 empty vessel which requires forcible filling. The first 
 quality, therefore, that we demand in any educational 
 method or scheme, is that it should plainly work 
 toward the perfecting of character and capacity. 
 Good old Locke urges " That which I cannot too 
 often inculcate is that whatever the matter be 
 about which it is conversant, whether great or small, 
 the main (I had almost said only) thing to be con- 
 sidered in every action of a child is what influence 
 it will have upon his mind ; what habit it tends to, 
 and is likely to settle in him ; how it will become him 
 when he is bigger." You must pardon me for insist- 
 ing upon this vitally essential point. We find around 
 us too great a faith in the knowledge of facts and 
 material processes. The air is filled with cries that 
 our education should be " technical." The State 
 encourages the cry, forgetting apparently that in so 
 far as the State looks after education it should look 
 after it, not as a training of spring chickens for the 
 market, but as a training of future citizens for 
 the art of citizenship. This was the argument for 
 compulsory education, and I venture to think it is 
 the only safe principle for legislative direction of the 
 same. 
 
 An old Greek philosopher, when asked what a boy 
 should be taught, replied, like Locke, by the question, 
 " What will he need to know when he is a man?" 
 There is more in the remark than appears on the 
 surface. He did not mean that if a boy was to be a
 
 AND EDUCATION. -81 
 
 physician he must learn medicine, or that if he was 
 to be a lawyer he must learn law. Any dunce would 
 know as much as that. But he recognized that the 
 boy would have the life, the duties, and the pleasures 
 of a man as well as those of a lawyer or physician, 
 and that that life, those duties, and those pleasures 
 required a liberal training and apprenticeship. Hear 
 Rousseau : " Let one destine my pupil to the army, 
 the church, the bar, what does it matter 1 Before 
 parents have decided on a vocation, nature has called 
 him to human life ; living is the trade I want to 
 teacli him." 
 
 In these days of industrial struggle we are always 
 forgetting that we are in life in order to live. In 
 our zeal of " getting on," we seem to be in the 
 condition of King Pyrrhus. Cineas asked him what 
 he would do when he had conquered Italy. " I will 
 conquer Sicily." "And then?" "Then I will 
 conquer Africa." " And after you have conquered 
 the world 1 " " Then I will take my ease and be 
 merry." Then said Cineas, " Why can you not take 
 your ease and be merry now 1" And when Words- 
 worth was describing to Hannah More how he spent 
 the day in doing this and writing that, the old lady 
 sharply inquired, " And when dost thee think, 
 friend 1" So one might be disposed to inquire of 
 our toiling, moiling men of riches, who toil and moil 
 for more, " And when dost thee live, friend ?" No 
 one would be so foolish as to disparage manly work 
 and rational effort, but one may be excused for 
 believing that work and wealth are after all only 
 
 7
 
 82 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 means to an end, and that end is the best use and 
 enjoyment of life, together with the diffusion of the 
 best influence. " Nature herself," says Aristotle, " re- 
 quires that we should not only be able to work well, 
 but also to use leisure well," and " business should be 
 chosen for the sake of leisui'e, and things necessary 
 and useful for the sake of the beautiful in conduct." 
 
 If this is true, as it cannot but be true, education 
 which aims only at teaching what is required for a 
 trade or profession is no education ; it must aim at 
 teaching what is required for life and citizenship. 
 Outside his work every man acts on his neighbours 
 as a unit of society, and on himself as a spiritual 
 being. Education must develop the faculties and 
 furnish the resources which both these relations 
 require. And what will these faculties be ? and 
 what these resources 1 Well, " the first and fairest 
 thing the best of men can ever have," as a complete 
 and perfect member of civilization, is the power and 
 habit of looking at things as they are, on all sides, 
 clearly, without prejudice or passion, not deluding 
 himself or others as to those things and their conse- 
 quences, avoiding above all deadly things " the lie 
 that sinketh in" in oilier words, the power and 
 habit of thinking straight, and the power and habit 
 of acting straight. 
 
 Plato explains how in the nature of man there are 
 three elements the concupiscent, the passionate, 
 and the reasoning ; and how by education they must 
 be brought into subjection the first to temperance, 
 the second to courage, the third to wisdom.
 
 AND EDUCATION. 83 
 
 " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to sovereign power ; 
 Yet not for power (Power of herself 
 Would come uncalled for), but to live by law, 
 Acting the law we live by without fear." 
 
 None of these powers and habits can be fully 
 possessed from nature alone. 
 
 Now these, you may say, are generalities ; let us 
 come to particulars. When Bacon dedicates his 
 " Advancement of Learning" to King James, he 
 commends " the largeness of your capacity, the 
 faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your 
 apprehension, the penetration of your judgment, the 
 facility and order of your elocution." What Bacon 
 says is generally the most satisfying of its kind, and 
 I could wish no better description of the intellectual 
 part of the educated man than this of large capacity, 
 swift apprehension, penetrating judgment, and lucid 
 expression. Especially communicable by training is 
 swiftness of apprehension. Nothing is more charac- 
 teristic of the educated man than the readiness with 
 which he grasps your meaning, anticipates the 
 bearing of your argument and its corollaries. He is 
 to the uncultured what a conductor of electricity is 
 to a non-conductor. Bring him into contact with the 
 pole of a thought, and its full significance flashes 
 instantaneously through him. Or he is what a 
 creature with antenna? or feelers is to one without 
 them. He has a feeling of a thing as he approaches 
 it or it approaches him ; while the uncultured and 
 aiitenmieless only feel it when they come into perhaps 
 severe collision with it. And he will impart as
 
 81 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 easily as receive. How often do you meet somebody 
 who struggles laboriously to unfold to you some 
 conception, some sentiment, which he thinks to be 
 novel and incommunicable, while you can see before 
 you all the time the goal to which he is flapping on 
 his slow and heavy way, and you can see how easily, 
 by some pregnant phrase or apt similitude, he might 
 express it all in a moment with perfect fulness ! 
 
 I ask you if it is not ultimately a more important 
 matter for a -common wealth that all its citizens should 
 have the power of thinking straight and thinking 
 readily than that they should know how to manufac- 
 ture a superior quality of sheep wash or a new sort of 
 dye ? I was once being driven over a bridge in a 
 neighbouring colony, and, as the driver slowed his 
 team, I asked him if the bridge was unsafe. He said 
 he didn't know that it was, but there was a by-law 
 against driving over it faster than a walk. And 
 when I ventured to hint that such regulations mostly 
 had a reason, he declined to discuss the question, and 
 answered finally, that " it was only just a by-law." 
 And I thought what a grand community a state 
 would be where men never even tried to have a clear 
 mind as to the how and why of things ; and it 
 appeared to me that great and complex questions of 
 society and politics, voted upon by such men, would 
 run a risk of meeting a strange fate indeed. 
 
 Education, then, is transcendently important. It 
 is also a lifelong process. There is no error which I 
 would combat more vigorously than the notion that 
 education ends when a man is grown up. In truth
 
 AND EDUCATION. 85 
 
 man is mentally never grown up ; education has no 
 finality. There is not a man here who reads and 
 thinks, that does not feel as if he were painfully climb- 
 ing an elevation to whose summit he can never reach ; 
 that when he was below in the valley he thought he 
 saw all there was to see ; and that, as he mounts 
 higher and higher, more and more regions of inquiry 
 open out before him, while still beyond his ken stretcli 
 other kingdoms of knowledge and the glory of them. 
 
 And if education is this, if the objects of education 
 are these, which among its instruments are the best ? 
 Suppose with Bacon that " some men have entered 
 into a desire of learning upon a natural curiosity, 
 sometimes for variety and delight, sometimes for 
 ornament and reputation, sometimes for victory of 
 wit, and most times for lucre and profession ; and 
 seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift 
 of reason to the benefit and use of men," and suppose 
 that, while we allow with all reasonableness that 
 variety and delight and ornament and wit and lucre 
 are desirable things enough, we nevertheless claim 
 that the prime object of studies is to " give a true 
 account of our gift of reason to the benefit and use of 
 men," what shall we study ? 
 
 This will depend on what a given study does for us 
 in four respects how far it teaches us to do, to know, 
 to think, and to feel. These four things, it has been 
 said, though I forget where, make up life doing, 
 knowing, thinking, feeling. Let us compare the 
 effects of scientific and literary study on each of these 
 elements of existence. I hope to be able to show
 
 86 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 that, setting aside the matter of efficacy as a bread- 
 winning study merely, literature will shun no com- 
 parison with science in its powers to make men do, 
 know, think, and feel high and noble things, and 
 things vitally important for the social problems with 
 which every civilized man is confronted. 
 
 It is a common mistake to imagine that the study 
 of literature is a light and barren matter, a kind of 
 elegant aesthetic trifling, while science is severe, use- 
 ful, and productive. It seems to be thought that 
 science is concerned with things and literature with 
 words, and that the literary student " sleeps and 
 dreams that life is beauty," while the scientist " wakes 
 and finds that life is duty." I want to remove that 
 mistake. I want to show that the study of literature 
 is a rigid and exacting discipline, that it is really 
 concerned with thoughts involved in words, and that 
 its effect is both to emphasize duty in life and also to 
 equip man for its fulfilment. 
 
 In the first of these regions, in the sphere of doing, 
 the advantage seems to be wholly on the side of 
 science. We are always hearing, with more or less 
 wonder and satisfaction, of the new things and the 
 great things that science is doing, the novel opera- 
 tions it is inventing, the discoveries which it is turn- 
 ing to the use of manufacture, locomotion, and all the 
 other resources and conveniences of life. The student 
 of letters has nothing of a commensurable sort to 
 offer. He acknowledges gratefully his obligations to 
 science, and he does not pretend to pay science back 
 in its own or any parallel kind. And in this fact
 
 AND EDUCATION. 87 
 
 lies a danger of hasty conclusion. One might, in 
 his haste, point to a boy who is learning chemistry, 
 and tell us how that boy will at some time be able to 
 do something with his knowledge. He will become 
 an analyst, perhaps an inventor at least, an applier 
 of useful chemical processes. And if the question is 
 asked, What is the boy who is studying literature 
 going to do, what is he going to make or invent or 
 apply in a material, tangible way ? and if the answer 
 thereto is to decide the whole question of education, 
 then the students of literature have indeed a poor 
 case to rely upon. The fruits of scientific instruction 
 are so speedy and so tangible, and the fruits of literary 
 education are so slow and so abstract in their nature, 
 that I never wonder at the ignorant or the narrow- 
 minded coming to what is called the Philistine con- 
 clusion on the question. But I do wonder at persons 
 who call themselves statesmen doing the same. 
 
 And though this fact of " quick returns " is a 
 truth which no sane being would deny, we may make 
 a very serious qualification. It is true of the applied 
 sciences, such as chemistry, physics, medicine. Yet 
 there are a number of sciences of which it does not 
 hold good, the study of which has no appreciable 
 relation whatever to action, does not result in the 
 tangible doing of anything. A great deal of geologi- 
 cal and biological inquiry, for instance, is concerned 
 as entirely with the satisfying of curiosity as ever 
 literature can be. Go into a museum full of stuffed 
 birds and beasts, labelled with hard names, setting 
 forth their classifications and peculiarities. What
 
 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 does the study of these do, in what is called a practi- 
 cal way, for you and for me, any more than the 
 knowledge of a dead language or the classification of 
 books ? It is all useful for knowing and for thinking, 
 but in no perceptible degree has it any relation to 
 acting or producing. I want to bring this home to 
 you, because men are accustomed to speak loosely 
 and sweepingly, without distinction of terms. They 
 tell us that science is utilitarian, and literature is 
 not ; and I want you to ask them which sciences 
 are utilitarian, and how far sciences are as purely orna- 
 mental as they declare literature itself to be. 
 
 Pray understand me. I do not call it a demerit of 
 certain sciences that they are non-utilitarian. With 
 Huxley, I do not look upon science as merely a 
 " comfort-grinding machine." But when its educa- 
 tional claims are based upon the grounds of its 
 practical utility, I do say, first of all, as I understand 
 education, practical utility is not to be rated supreme ; 
 and, secondly, that even science itself is frequently 
 far from having any practical utility whatsoever. 
 
 But if literature cannot compare with the study of 
 electricity or of chemistry in dazzling fruits, is it 
 therefore incapable of " doing " in some sane sense of 
 that word ? Far from it. If properly pursued, as it 
 unfortunately too seldom is, it imparts the power no 
 inconsiderable power of expression. "Nothing," 
 says Emerson, " seems so easy as to speak and to be 
 understood." And yet to know how to speak and to 
 write with such clearness as to preclude all mistake, 
 with such attractiveness as to secure and sustain
 
 AND EDUCATION. 89 
 
 attention, and with sucli vigour as to leave an abiding 
 effect all this is one of the hardest things to learn, 
 and one which, except in cases of exceptional genius, 
 only the study of literature can bestow. And thus 
 the student of letters gains a practical power of his 
 own, and can find scope for doing, in bringing forcibly 
 and attractively before a wide circle thoughts which 
 it is for the good of the world to spread : 
 
 " For words are things, and a small drop of ink, 
 
 Falling like dew upon a thought, produces 
 That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." 
 
 His doing lies in the diffusion of pleasure and teach- 
 ing by what he writes, just as the other's doing lies 
 in the diffusion of comfort and profit by what he 
 invents or applies. 
 
 And outside all this, there is, as I have said, the 
 citizen life, the human life. And there is much to be 
 done among men and for men in legislation, in organ- 
 ization, and in personal influence, where neither science 
 as such nor literature as such is involved ; but where 
 the man must act for good or evil, not according to 
 any special knowledge, but according to that amount 
 of penetration, reflection, judgment, and justice which 
 his methods and subjects of thought have built up in 
 him. This is higher action than the other, and I 
 think you may be brought to agree with me that, in 
 this higher and more important action, the literary 
 man should be at least not inferior to the man of 
 science. 
 
 And in respect of knowing, of replenishing the 
 mind with facts, of gaining the satisfaction that
 
 90 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 arises from the gratification of that higher curiosity 
 which is called a thirst for knowledge, and of apply- 
 ing data for thinking and acting upon, I seem to find 
 that literature is at no disadvantage. I recognize 
 that astronomy induces grand conceptions of the 
 universe ; that there is much to know from it of 
 motions and sizes and distances of the heavenly bodies, 
 and of this world of ours. I recognize that botany 
 imparts most curious and fascinating information as 
 to the unfolding, the habits, and the relationships of 
 plants. The knowledge of the chemist that this and 
 that element combined will produce water or lime, or 
 a poison, or an explosion, is all most entertaining as well 
 as most useful. No mistake could be greater than to 
 suppose that the man of letters thinks such know- 
 ledge dry and vulgar. On the contrary, he exclaims 
 with the Roman poet, Felix qui potu.it rerum cognoscere 
 causas " Happy he who first found power to learn 
 the reasons of things." Though the same man of 
 letters is fain to ask sometimes, amid the boastings 
 of scientists, whether the man of science does, after 
 all, know the reasons of things ; whether he does 
 know more than the operations of things and the 
 effects of things. The chemist knows that, as a 
 fact, certain elements combined do produce certain 
 results ; but does he know what, after all, one 
 most de.sires to know, the reason why they so act 
 and so produce? The electrician knows what his 
 instruments will do, but he does not know why they do 
 it ; he does not know what electricity is. Let us be 
 quite clear as to this. What does the scientist know ?
 
 AND EDUCATION. 91 
 
 He knows certain facts, valuable and immensely 
 interesting facts ; he knows certain laws of nature, 
 and, in the applied sciences, he knows how to turn 
 those laws to some great or small use. And all this 
 is excellent knowledge, but it is not the only excellent 
 knowledge. There are many other facts besides 
 material facts ; there are facts of human history and 
 human thought and feelings ; there are spiritual laws 
 as well as laws of nature ; there is a method of 
 applying those laws everyday of our lives ; our whole 
 life is an applied science. And it is these last facts 
 and laws and applications that the literary student 
 learns. If the objects from which he learns his 
 lessons are not chemicals and plants and minerals, 
 they are something equally great; they are "the 
 seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in 
 bookes." He knows of the past thoughts and deeds 
 of men, the past events and changes of nations ; his 
 store of ideas and facts gives him the benefit of long 
 and wide experience "without either wrinkles or grey 
 hair," as old Fuller has it. 
 
 Let us look at some of the minuter knowledge of 
 the students of literature and science respectively. 
 A comparison must depend for its effect on the rela- 
 tive worth of the facts which each student knows. 
 It is interesting to know that " the spark from a 
 Leyden jar lasts only the 24,000th part of a second," 
 or that " potassium melts at 58 deg.," or that "the 
 brain consists of globules of 1-4, 000th of an inch in 
 diameter, united by a transparent viscid and coagul- 
 able gelatinous fluid ; " but it is in no dcgi-ee more
 
 92 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 interesting or tangibly useful to know these facts than 
 to know that "by-ancl-by" once meant "this very 
 moment," or that in Chaucer's time " creature" was 
 pronounced " cre-a-ture" and "night" as "neecht,' 
 or that Sterne plagiarized largely from Burton's 
 " Anatomy of Melancholy." The biologist knows the 
 arguments on which the theory of evolution is based, 
 though he does not know that the theory is indubi- 
 table, nor can he turn it to much use if it is. The 
 student of literature knows the far more certain 
 data for supposing an evolution of human thought, 
 and he can trace in a large measure the evolu- 
 tion of human expression. If a chemist tells me 
 that ammonia consists of one part of nitrogen to 
 three parts of hydrogen, I am prepared to tell him 
 that Dante's " Divina Commedia" consists of three 
 parts, the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso. 
 If the electrician tells me that bodies charged witli 
 the same kind of electricity repel one another, I am 
 prepared to tell him that the original meaning of 
 " scandal " was " stumbling-block," and the original 
 meaning of " tribulation " was " being passed under 
 a harrow." And, as items of satisfying information, 
 without reference to practical application, and merely 
 as items of knowledge, I contend that the literary 
 facts are as interesting as the others. 
 
 This is, perhaps, low ground ; but I am ready to 
 come to any ground one may reasonably choose. You 
 may say, " These are matters of insignificant detail, 
 but the comprehensive knowledge of nature and its 
 workings is, as knowledge, of undeniable grandeur."
 
 AND EDUCATION. 93 
 
 True, and no less so is the comprehensive knowledge 
 of the workings of the human spirit, which literature, 
 " the thought of thinking souls," imparts ; no less 
 exalting is it to know " the best that has been said 
 and thought in the world." To know the mental 
 past, the mental present, and to help to determine 
 the mental future, seems to me such is my taste 
 as satisfying as to know the physical past and present, 
 and to guess the physical future. 
 
 And there is one great advantage wholly on the 
 side of literature too manifest to be gainsaid. Those 
 parts of scientific knowledge which induce the most 
 sublime conceptions those portions which, apart 
 from details, determine man's view of the insigni- 
 ficance of his own planet and himself those great 
 speculations which mean so much to his way of 
 looking at the universe these all speedily find their 
 way into literature. Is it evolution 1 The student 
 of letters, though he cannot indeed judge of the 
 convincingness of the data, cannot but learn what 
 the theory is and what it means. Is it the nebular 
 theory 1 He learns of that too. As Huxley admits, 
 " the whole of modern thought is steeped in science ; 
 it has made its way into the works of our best poets, 
 and even the mere man of letters is unconsciously 
 impregnated with it." On the other hand, the 
 scientist does not find literary facts and literary 
 knowledge forced upon him in this way. In so far 
 as he is a scientist and nothing else, all this region is 
 to him an unknown land. Any man of letters knows 
 that the sun is about 92,000,000 miles off, but not
 
 94 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 every scientist knows who wrote " Don Quixote," 
 and why he wrote it. 
 
 I have dealt with doing and knowing. I have said 
 that scientific study can manifestly produce much and 
 literature little or nothing in material operations, 
 though there does arise from literature a real and 
 valuable power of spreading thoughts, and a power 
 of acting wisely in society. For knowledge I main- 
 tain that the facts of the one study are as worthy as 
 the facts of the other, whether in the whole or in the 
 parts ; though, at the same time, I hold that while 
 literature necessarily secures to itself much of the 
 knowledge of science, science does not necessarily 
 secure to itself anything of the knowledge of litera- 
 ture. 
 
 Yet, as I have urged, education in the best sense 
 is less concerned about these about doing and 
 knowing than about thinking and feeling. The 
 question to be asked about one who claims to be 
 educated is not so much what can he do or what 
 does he know, as how does he think and what can he 
 feel. It has been well said that the difference 
 between a wise man and one who is not wise consists 
 less in the things he knows than the way in which 
 he knows them. Has a man logical and liberal 
 thought and humanity of sentiment 1 Is he anxious 
 to see luminously the truth, the whole truth, and 
 nothing but the truth 1 Does he habitually adopt 
 the proper method of arriving at that clear vision ? 
 If so, his education has been a true education, no 
 matter what subject it has been mainly concerned
 
 AND EDUCATION. 95 
 
 with. But does he not do these things habitually ? 
 Then, though he have all the knowledge of a Leibnitz 
 or a Whewell, his education has been false. 
 
 One cannot, indeed, think very soundly on any 
 subject without some knowledge, but he may know 
 many facts about that subject without much thinking. 
 Let this be borne in mind, and let the chief question 
 we ask about the educational utility of any study be, 
 " How does it exercise the faculties that reason, as 
 opposed to the faculties that merely receive ?" 
 
 There are right and wrong ways of teaching and 
 learning both science and literature. There is a 
 logical way and an illogical way. The Royal Com- 
 mission of 1861 reported that "science quickens and 
 cultivates directly the faculty of observation, which 
 in very many persons lies dormant through life, the 
 power of accurate and rapid generalization, and the 
 mental habit of method and arrangement. It accus- 
 toms young persons to trace the sequence of cause 
 and effect, it familiarizes them with a kind of reason- 
 ing which interests them and which they can promptly 
 understand." 
 
 Now, this statement seems a very reasonable one, 
 and, in view of it, we picture our child at school 
 "tracing the sequence of cause and effect" while he 
 learns elementary science. Yet a teacher of science, 
 giving instances of the sort of answer he occasionally 
 received from these reasoning pupils, mentions one 
 to this effect : " Mummulitic limestone is made by 
 little fishes, who live in the limestone and carry lime- 
 stone to the mountains from the sea." And in that
 
 96 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 most entertaining collection, " English as She is 
 Taught," we find the pupil, who has found in science 
 " a kind of reasoning which he can promptly under- 
 stand," telling us that " drops of water are generally 
 spherical for various reasons known only to the 
 gracious Providence which has formed them." Believe 
 me, I mention instances like these not in a flippant 
 spirit nor out of any disrespect to the learning of 
 science, but in order to show that we must qualify 
 that sentence which I quoted from the Royal Com- 
 mission's report by the proviso that the method of 
 teaching be sound, and that the scholar be by no 
 means a natural dunce. And so, when someone from 
 the scientific camp shall discuss literary instruction, 
 and shall ask us what good comes of pupils stuifing 
 themselves with secondhand and muddled criticism of 
 authors whom they have never read, we may reply 
 that we, too, only assert the study to be a logical 
 training when the method is sound, and when the 
 scholar is not a natural dunce. 
 
 What is a proper mental training ? It is a train- 
 ing which develops accuracy and attention ; disci- 
 plines the recipient to a search for the how and why 
 of things ; distinguishes between facts that are 
 normal and facts that are abnormal ; and leads 
 straight to consequences a training which, according 
 to Bacon, " taketh away all temerity and insolency 
 of judgment by copious suggestion of all doubts and 
 difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance 
 reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first 
 offers and conceits of the mind, and to accept of
 
 AND EDUCATION. 97 
 
 nothing but examined and tried ;" or, as he puts it 
 elsewhere, -'teacheth a man what things are in their 
 nature demonstrative and which are conjectural, and 
 the use of distinctions and exceptions." 
 
 Accuracy and attention are the earliest things to 
 inculcate in a child ; logical deduction will follow as 
 his mind matures. I shall be quite within the truth 
 if I say, with the support of my professional experi- 
 ence, that all depends on the method of study. 
 Unless the teaching be enlightened, it is not a habit 
 of accuracy or attention, still less is it a logical habit, 
 which will result. It will be only an exertion of 
 memory, a submission of judgment to dictation, a 
 growing impatience of seeing things as they are or 
 forejudging their consequences. But we will assume 
 that the teaching is enlightened, and we will begin 
 with science. Now, the first thing that occurs to me 
 is .that elementary scientific facts and experiments 
 have a great advantage over all other objects of study 
 in attracting the attention of the very young. An 
 interest in letters is difficult to arouse ; it requires 
 some maturity. To see how two invisible gases 
 become visible water ; to see how iron will fly to a 
 magnet while brass will not ; to see the gold leaves 
 opening and shutting in an electroscope all this is 
 as diverting as play, and as easy to remember. But 
 it is not a particularly attractive fact, nor is it so 
 easy to remember, for instance, that " kine " is a 
 doubled plural, the true plural being the Scotch " ki," 
 and the rest of the word being formed on the analogy 
 of " oxen," and so forth. There is an undeniable 
 
 8
 
 98 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 advantage here for science in the way of attractive- 
 ness, but it is not true that there is any strictly 
 intellectual advantage. 
 
 The principal thing is to get a child to ask why ; 
 and if the child asks why iron flies to a magnet and 
 brass does not, I am sure he will not get so satisfac- 
 tory an answer as if he asks why " kine " comes to be 
 a plural of " cow." But then, says Professor Huxley, 
 " the mind of the scholar should be brought into 
 direct relation with fact ; he should not only be told a 
 thing, but made to see, by the use of his own intellect 
 and ability, that the thing is so, and not otherwise;" 
 and he continues, " Don't be satisfied with telling 
 him that a magnet attracts iron. Let him see that 
 it does ; let him feel the pull of the one upon the 
 other for himself." Yet I venture to think it is not 
 intellect or ability which is engaged at all in such a 
 case. The child sees and feels that the fact is so, 
 and not otherwise, yet after all it is but ocular vision 
 and physical feeling, and one may fail to see where 
 the exertion of intellect comes in. 
 
 No ! intellect and ability come in at the point 
 where the student begins to say, if A is B, and B is 
 C, A must be C ; if such and such a law of nature 
 exists, such and such consequences will flow from it. 
 " Science," we are told, " is but organized common 
 sense." We say, " Common sense tells me this or 
 that." The science-student, who is informed of the 
 properties of things, begins to use his intellect and 
 ability only when his "organized common sense" 
 begins working to some deduction from that informa-
 
 AND EDUCATION. 99 
 
 tion. Let us then be quite clear that by scientific 
 information is meant one thing, and by scientific 
 training another thing, and that it is only a minority 
 of those who learn what is called science who develop 
 in any fulness the scientific habit. And, on the 
 other hand, let us claim about the same proportion 
 between those who acquire only literary information 
 and those who acquire a logical literary training. 
 Then, taking two persons really educated in each 
 kind, let us see what sort of a mental habit they 
 have each developed. 
 
 The scientist, whatever his science may be, if he 
 is an original inquirer, first observes facts by noting 
 and experimenting then he compares these facts 
 and classifies them ; next he deduces conclusions from 
 them ; and, finally, he verifies them, to see that there 
 is no mistake. Here there is plainly a full and clear 
 logical method, which will be habitual whenever that 
 man deals with material phenomena. This corres- 
 ponds entirely to Bacon's requirement that we should 
 " turn back the first offers and conceits of the mind, 
 and accept of nothing but examined and tried." 
 Here, you would suppose, is the clear thinker, most 
 wise worker amid the operations of human society. 
 But let us be cautious. The phenomena of life, the 
 problems of humanity, are far more complex than 
 any phenomena of nature or problems of physical 
 science. They are in a different sphere, concerned 
 with a different material. The scientific philosopher, 
 when lie has a mind to exercise his habitual method 
 on facts of society, is doing a right and laudable
 
 100 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 thing ; but he cannot experiment in the same way 
 upon his facts in the quiet of the laboratory ; he 
 cannot make sure of isolating those facts ; things and 
 motives are apt to be compound which he thinks 
 are single ; he cannot adopt his usual manner of 
 verification. This seems to be the weakness of that 
 study which, while it boasts of being so scientific in 
 method, fails so signally in practice I mean political 
 economy which, in dealing with some of the most 
 intricate questions of human intercourse, fails, and 
 cannot but fail, because it cannot calculate the 
 amount of the factor of human motives. 
 
 I do, I repeat, appreciate the truth that a scientist's 
 training is in its own domain most logical and 
 thorough, but in the domain of society I cannot feel 
 that the observations, or the experiments, or the 
 deductions can be made truly by the lumen siccxm of 
 " science" alone. 
 
 Next, let us look at literature. Has this study, 
 among original thinkers, its training in observation, 
 in classifying, in deducing conclusions, in verification ? 
 Assuredly it has. In the study of a language, for 
 instance, one observes a certain grammatical usage 
 or a certain phenomenon of expression. One asks 
 the reason of it, reduces its appearances under a rule 
 which is only hypothetical for the time being, and 
 about which one suspends his judgment until the 
 rule is verified by the test of all existing instances. 
 The student of grammar and expression works on 
 the exact lines of the natural history sciences. All 
 training is scientific which habituates the student to
 
 AND EDUCATION. 101 
 
 comparing, seeking analogies, distinguishing between 
 the exception and the rule, the accidental and the 
 essential. And I venture to believe that the true 
 student of language does all this in an eminent 
 degree. He is not merely cultivating memory and 
 taste though these are great things but he is 
 cultivating reason, swiftness of apprehension, and 
 yet caution and justness of mind. 
 
 How is literature a study 1 It is not the light 
 amusement it is often supposed to be. It begins 
 with a study of grammar, and it ends with a study 
 of the conditions and progress of all human expres- 
 sion and human thought. Grammatical analysis 
 plainly calls for exercise of intellect and ability. 
 This is succeeded by paraphrase and translation 
 of literary passages, in which the student must 
 keep examining himself "Do I understand this?" 
 " Am I bringing out the truth, the whole truth, 
 and nothing but the truth of this original ? ' 
 Next, perhaps, comes composition, which teaches, 
 or should teach, accuracy, clearness, and truthful- 
 ness. In writing a piece of English, a literary 
 exercise of the same language which we -speak so 
 inadequately and laxly all our days, the student 
 is perpetually on his guard. " Does this word 
 cover exactly the sense I mean, no more and no 
 less '( How am I to qualify it or amend it ? Is 
 this or that epithet quite a meaning and an honest 
 one ? Is it sufficiently implied in what I have 
 written 1 Can I not express this thought in a 
 more clear or forcible or brief way ? " Depend
 
 102 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 upon it, clear and accurate expression demands clear 
 and accurate thinking. 
 
 A main difference between the student of letters 
 and the dabbler in literature is that the one has laid 
 hold on some criteria of absolute beauty and strength 
 and excellence in writing, while the other has not. 
 You may think this is pure sestheticism. I say it is 
 a logical exercise. From the very first moment that 
 a young student is brought face to face with the 
 correction of faulty sentences, his intellect is being 
 robustly exercised. He is asked to criticise the 
 lines 
 
 " The noise returning with returning light 
 Dispersed the silence and dispelled the night "- 
 
 and he discovers with a little thinking that they are 
 bathos, that the second line adds nothing whatever 
 to the first, and that it is absurd in itself ; he will 
 tell you that of course noise must disperse silence, 
 and light must disperse night, and that to cap the 
 absurdity it is grammatically the noise itself which 
 is made to dispel the night. This, of course, is a 
 flagrant instance. I have chosen it as an exercise 
 for the young scholar. But what we have in such 
 an obvious form here occurs in more subtle forms, 
 and occasionally in dangerous forms, in writings of 
 vital import. And I claim that a habit of dis- 
 tinguishing these faults and these untruths is a most 
 valuable habit to acquire. 
 
 And as to the study of mere words. Is it not 
 ultimately of immense importance that men should
 
 AND EDUCATION. 103 
 
 use their words with absolute precision ? Half the 
 mistakes of our proverbial philosophy, half the per- 
 niciousness of our common cant, is due to the sloven- 
 liness with which men use, and the various senses in 
 which they accept, one and the same term. The 
 ordinary peasant, says Max Miiller, has a vocabulary 
 of 300 words, the well-informed ordinary reader 
 possesses some 3,000, the careful writer and thinker 
 some 6,000, while a Shakspere mounts to 15,000. 
 Why this gradation ? Simply because clear and 
 wide thought demands more and more distinct terms, 
 cannot do without them, and therefore the wide and 
 clear thinker must furnish himself with them. He 
 must to that extent be a literary student. 
 
 And when the mind is matured and habituated to 
 true methods, there comes the study of the writings 
 of men arranged in order of time and place, the 
 study of the manner in which thought is developed 
 and propagated under the various limitations of 
 knowledge and of social and religious views in 
 various ages and various countries. The student of 
 literature is not contented with knowing what and 
 how Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and Milton wrote, but 
 he must know why each came to write as he did and 
 not otherwise. Not only is the language of Tennyson 
 different from the language of Spenser, but their 
 tone and scope of thought is different. That much 
 any amateur sees and feels ; but the student of 
 letters has to see and know with some exactness not 
 only in what respects the language is different, but 
 in what respects and through what causes there is
 
 104 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 such difference in the mode and scope of thought. 
 And to do this requires a training. As Mr. John 
 Morley truly says, " The habit and power of reading 
 with reflection, comprehension, and memory all alert 
 and awake, does not come at once to the natural 
 man.' Still less does a habit and power of com- 
 paring the whole mental and moral tone of one book 
 with the whole mental and moral tone of another 
 book come at once to the natural man. 
 
 I trust you will admit that literature has its 
 strictly logical training in a manner closely cor- 
 responding to that of science. And when the logical 
 method so acquired is brought to bear on the 
 problems of life, which are neither literature nor 
 applied science, but human facts and social forces, I 
 have already given some reasons for thinking that 
 the scientist will scarcely find his preparation better 
 than that of the man of letters. It is at least 
 evident that men of literature come more to the 
 front in governments and authority than men of 
 science, and this, I believe, because of their wider 
 views, more accurate views, and more sympathetic 
 views of man as a social being. Whether you believe 
 in a Gladstone or a Disraeli, the result is the same. 
 You have to deal with the man of letters in both 
 cases. Granting that both literary and scientific 
 education produce a habit of endeavouring to see a 
 question on as many sides as possible, to get at as 
 many facets of a truth as possible, to which of the 
 two will the more sides and facets be likely to 
 appear 1 I think to the student of letters ; because
 
 AXl) EDUCATION. 105 
 
 he knows more of society in the past, he knows 
 more of the workings of men's minds, he has been 
 accustomed to contemplate the complexities of human 
 motives as revealed in sober history, impassioned 
 poetry, imaginative fiction ; he has learned to know 
 the manner in which the same fact has been 
 looked at by men of the most widely different 
 views at the most widely different epochs. "Con- 
 sider," says Emerson, " what you have in the smallest 
 chosen library a company of the wisest and wittiest 
 men that could be picked out of all civil countries 
 have set in their best order the results of their wisdom 
 and learning." The literary student is led by pagan 
 philosophers, Plato and Aristotle ; by the Indian 
 Buddha and the Arabian Mahomet, by the Christian 
 fathers, by the Catholic teachers and the Protestant 
 reformers, by utilitarian writers and transcendental 
 writers, by writers of fact and writers of fiction, by 
 conservatives and radicals, and by men of all other 
 sorts of views he is led by these to all possible qu artel's 
 of a fact ; and, best of all, so long as he is a student of 
 literature only, he assimilates these various views 
 incidentally they are not set before him or read by 
 him in a controversial spirit. He reads " not to con- 
 tradict or refute, nor to believe and take for granted, 
 nor for good talk and discourse, but to weigh and 
 consider.'' And so the thoughts of a world become 
 his thoughts. 
 
 If literature is " the thought of thinking souls," it 
 seems to me that the social equipment of the literary 
 student finds nothing comparable to itself in the
 
 106 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, 
 
 social equipment of the scientist. The scientist will, 
 I believe, miss many of the side-lines of truth, and 
 will often imagine his facts to be whole and inde- 
 pendent while they are really only relative and 
 partial. 
 
 Finally, in the matter of feeling, in regard to senti- 
 ment and morality, what are we to say 1 I cannot 
 understand, though I have conscientiously striven to 
 understand, the statement of the eloquent scientist 
 whom I have had occasion to mention more than once, 
 Professor Huxley, when he says in his "Lay Sermons" 
 that science " has profoundly altered men's views of 
 right and wrong," and that " in desiring to ascertain 
 the laws of comfort, it has been driven to discover 
 those of conduct, and to lay the foundation of a new 
 morality." Where is this new morality 1 Is the 
 morality of the Sermon on the Mount an obsolete 
 morality 1 Is the morality of Socrates and Gautama 
 in any essential matter different from the ideal of 
 morality to-day? Let the astronomer "teach the 
 infinite magnitude of the universe " and the chemist 
 "demonstrate the infinitesimal minuteness of its 
 constituent parts." Does this really affect your view 
 or my view of the Tightness or wrongness of any 
 action 1 I had hoped to find as I read on that 
 Huxley would have shown us the operation of this 
 scientifically directed conscience ; but he does not, and 
 I fear he could not. No ! Science seems to have noth- 
 ing to do with our sense of conduct. How keenly does 
 Mathew Arnold put it when he says that "in the gene- 
 rality of men there arises the desire to relate pieces of
 
 AND EDUCATION. 107 
 
 scientific knowledge to our sense for conduct, our 
 sense for beauty, and there is weariness and dissatis- 
 faction if the desire is baulked ;" and then, when the 
 biologist tells us that an early ancestor of ours was 
 an animal " with a tail and pointed ears, probably 
 arboreal in its habits," we endeavour to " relate this 
 piece of information to our sense for conduct, our 
 sense for beauty." Does this help to direct our 
 conduct or ennoble our lives ? It is hard to see 
 that it does. 
 
 But let the student of literature read Dante and 
 Shakspere and Goethe, read history, read the lives of 
 noble men and the creations of noble fancies, read of 
 glorious deeds with rapture and infamous deeds with 
 disgust and horror ; then, indeed, do these things 
 react upon his conduct. " Poesy," says Bacon, 
 " serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, 
 and delectation," and not only poesy, but all writing 
 of the higher kind. If evil communications corrupt 
 good manners, it is fair to suppose the converse. 
 Good communications amend evil manners, and such 
 communications are most to be found in contact with 
 noble minds, uttering their wisest and in their wisest 
 way. It is not for nothing that these literary studies 
 have been called the humanities. 
 
 If I were asked, therefore, which form of education 
 I should think wisest not in view of bread-winning, 
 nor yet for special aptitudes, but in view of the social 
 and moral duties of the ordinary human being I 
 should say that the best of all would be one in which 
 there was a liberal acquaintance with the main facts
 
 108 LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND EDUCATION. 
 
 and processes of physical science, but chiefly a 
 thorough study of literature ; and that the second 
 best would be one in which there was a thorough 
 study of some science, but largely supplemented and 
 corrected by a liberal acquaintance with literature. 
 This is not hostility to science ; it is only a relegation 
 of it to its proper place, which is apt to be unduly 
 exalted by the clamour of wondering ignorance. 
 Witli Mr. Frederic Harrison, I do not think that any 
 education can be sound which " leaves any great type 
 of thought, any dominant phase of human nature, 
 wholly a blank." And I think it must be apparent 
 that science, confined to itself, does leave a most im- 
 portant province a blank. 
 
 In a democratic country I fear that excessive 
 scientific education might lead to too great a faith in 
 machinery, to doctrinaire methods, insufficiently con- 
 sidering the constituent parts of the nature of man. 
 And therefore, seeing this danger, I feel constrained 
 now and again, at opportunities like these, to raise a 
 protest against those who, when we ask for educational 
 bread for our rising generation, will insist upon 
 giving it something which comes sadly near to being 
 an educational stone.
 
 WHEN I was asked to address this assembly to-night, 
 I was allowed entire liberty as to the choice of a 
 subject. In the exercise of that liberty I have not 
 been unmindful of the nature and aims of the body 
 whose opening meeting this is. As I understand it, 
 this society is one of those literary and dialectic 
 associations which are coming to be recognized as 
 very important agents in the strictly intellectual 
 operations of the modern church. "Every form of 
 association," says Aristotle, " aims at some good 
 thing," and, I take it, the good thing aimed at by 
 such associations as yours is the improvement of 
 your knowledge and faculties, the possession of 
 clearer and surer criteria for the ascertaining of 
 truth truth in literature, truth in art, truth in social 
 relations, truth in politics. In other words, you 
 seek enlargement of your culture ; for culture, as I 
 shall strive to explain, is nothing else but this. I 
 have, therefore, chosen to speak to you upon the 
 subject of culture ; and since cant that is to say, 
 literaiy, artistic, social, and political cant is the 
 negation of culture, I must speak upon cant also.
 
 110 CULTURK AND CANT. 
 
 I am aware that Matthew Arnold has written 
 much, vigorously and luminously, upon culture ; 
 that Emerson has expressed, or rather, after his 
 peculiar manner, adumbrated certain thoughts upon 
 this subject as upon most others of spiritual interest ; 
 and that the matter which might be collected upon it 
 from other thinkers would fill many a volume. But 
 have no misgivings. You shall not be treated here to 
 a distillation of Matthew Arnold, nor to a rifacimento 
 of Emerson. Something I must, of course, owe to 
 them and others more perhaps than I am aware of, 
 for no man knows where or when all the seeds of 
 particular thoughts were implanted in him. At this 
 day a person of a fair range of reading cannot say 
 exactly what intellectual debt he owes to Plato, 
 Aristotle, Bacon, Shakspere, Pascal, Goethe, or 
 Carlyle. If we could trace back every thought to 
 its source, we should perhaps be astounded to find 
 how little is our own how endless is the catalogue 
 of those who have supplied their larger or smaller 
 contributions to our sum of knowledge and under- 
 standing. All that can be called our own is the 
 shape of the conglomerate, the form and consistency 
 which the correlated whole has taken upon itself in 
 the receptacle of our mind. One who gathers large 
 stores of money cannot tell from whom he received 
 each coin, or through how many hands that coin had 
 passed before ; none the less the sum is his, and the 
 use to which he can put it is his. All that can be 
 claimed is that one shall have fairly earned each 
 thought from its original, that he shall have made it
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. Ill 
 
 his own and not have borrowed it for an occasion. 
 Think of this ; think how little our own few ideas 
 are worth ; and when we come to consider the 
 necessity and the practical bearing of culture, the 
 thought will have its weight. 
 
 I promise you, then, no thoughts which you cannot 
 find scattered somewhere in literature between Moses 
 and Ruskin ; but I do promise you that you shall 
 hear nothing about " the remnant," or " the 
 Philistines," or about "sweetness and light" happy 
 though those terms are, and heartily as I admire him 
 who used them so much ; you shall not hear of 
 culture as " the harmonious expansion of all the 
 powers ;" nor shall you have, with Mr. Ruskin, any 
 wailings of Ichabod, any diatribes against those 
 modern monsters the railways, or against the soul- 
 withering immorality of buying in the cheapest and 
 selling in the dearest market. Rather I think, with 
 Mr. Harrison, that there is somewhat too much 
 aloofness, too little effort, too much negation, about 
 the sweetness and light of the admired author of 
 that phrase, and too much pessimism, too little con- 
 sideration, about the writer of " Fors Clavigera." 
 
 It is a serious drawback to all right thinking and 
 right understanding that words are used among us 
 with so little care, so little agreement, as to their 
 exact signification. The last time some of us met 
 in this place we tried to get at a better comprehension 
 of the term "poetry" what it implied and what it 
 did not imply ; and if people generally were to agree 
 upon some clear definition of that word, whether it
 
 112 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 be the definition I then offered or whether it be some 
 other, I venture to think the question which has 
 been agitating some of us of late, as to whether 
 Browning is a consummately admirable poet or not, 
 might be speedily settled. In our sytems of educa- 
 tion, above all things else which we might teach, we 
 ought to demand what we never do demand 
 absolute precision in the use of words. This is really 
 of vastly more importance to a community than 
 " technical education," " classical education," or any 
 other education about which a fuss may be made. 
 Words are the current coins of speech and thought. 
 When one person mentions a shilling or a sixpence 
 or a pound, he means precisely what another man 
 means by a shilling or a sixpence or a pound. There 
 is no illusion here, no possibility of a quarrel as to 
 the results of addition, subtraction, and division ; 
 but when one person uses a word, particularly if it is 
 an abstract word, we cannot be sure that it represents 
 the same value to both speaker and hearer ; and 
 amid a multitude of such divergences sometimes 
 important, sometimes trifling it is no wonder that 
 the addition, subtraction, and division processes of 
 thought result in serious discrepancies and quarrels. 
 
 " Culture" is one of such words. When it was 
 newly coined it bore a clear stamp and inscription ; 
 but, with the wear and tear of time and careless 
 handling the legend and impress have grown indis- 
 tinct. To not a few "culture" is another name for 
 testheticism, a superfine taste in things of art and 
 beauty ; to others it conveys the notion of social
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 113 
 
 polish and social gifts, with accomplishments in the 
 literary or artistic regions. Others treat it as an 
 equivalent of " refinement." Matthew Arnold makes 
 it mean sweetness and light. So it is, though in a 
 less degree, with " cant." To a very large number of 
 persons the use of the word outside the domain of 
 religion is practically unknown ; whereas rightly it 
 should be, and is, used in connection with all think- 
 able and speakable subjects. 
 
 When usages differ thus, it is a sound principle to 
 go and ask the mint to decide the value of the coin ; 
 in other words, to go back to its etymology. " Cul- 
 ture," cultura, is tillage or cultivation. Apply tillage 
 to the mind, and what results ? Not necessarily 
 lestheticism, or what are generally known as accom- 
 plishments not necessarily a fine voice, a fine air, 
 or fine manners. These, if the soil is congenial if 
 their germs are innate may indeed be made to grow 
 and flourish ; but tillage cannot make all soils pro- 
 duce all things. A man of very high culture may 
 be mean in appearance, awkward in manner, endowed 
 with scarcely a single external accomplishment. 
 Happier is he if he possesses these adornments, these 
 fringes to his culture ; but the body of culture may 
 subsist equally soundly without them. The rough, 
 unsocial Carlyle, with his thick northern burr, is a 
 type of essential culture unadorned. Goethe, a man 
 whom Carlyle loved, added to his culture many an 
 elegant bedizenment. Culture, we say, is tillage of 
 the mind, the removal of the clogging weeds, the 
 turning up of the soil, so that the light and warmth 
 
 9
 
 114 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 of knowledge may penetrate it, the rains and dews 
 of wise thoughts and ideas may sink into it, and the 
 airs and winds of discourse and argument may play 
 upon it and stimulate it. Its latent powers are made 
 capable of their best productions. 
 
 Here we will leave the figure, for metaphors and 
 analogies, if pursued beyond their vital point, are apt 
 to become misty or misleading. In plain terms, 
 when is a man cultured 1 Not when he is instructed 
 or informed, not when his head is full of facts and 
 figures, not even if he is a " walking encyclopaedia" 
 or a "book in breeches;" but when, over and above 
 the requisite supply of knowledge, he is educated in 
 the true sense when his best intellectual and moral 
 faculties have been brought out and exercised, and 
 have learnt the true measure of their strength and 
 the true method of using it. Sound and varied 
 knowledge he must have, to serve as data for his 
 reasoning. Ideas in ample range must be familiar 
 to him. Yet these will not suffice ; they must be 
 associated with the philosophic spirit and the philo- 
 sophic method. Do not be frightened by the word 
 philosophy. Philosophia is " the love of wisdom." 
 A philosopher is a lover of wisdom. His heart 
 is set on finding out, wooing, and wedding truth. 
 The philosophic spirit is the spirit which such 
 a one will possess a spirit which, in thought, in 
 conversation, and in debate, cares nothing for vanity 
 or ambition, does not wish to appear clever or 
 " consistent," but seeks only to get at the truth. 
 Such a spirit has Aristotle when he says, " Plato is
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 115 
 
 ray friend, Socrates is my friend, but truth is still 
 more my friend." This is the spirit in which the 
 man of culture ponders and discusses, showing 
 neither fear nor favour toward any opinion, whether 
 another's or his own. Do not mistake me. I do 
 not say that life should be full of criticism, v/ithout 
 courtesy or without reverence. I do not believe the 
 freedom of criticism should be "the desolate freedom 
 of the wild ass." Criticism backed by knowledge 
 and ideas can never be discourteous or irreverent. 
 
 And the method must accompany the spirit. An 
 ideal judge, besides his knowledge of law and his 
 unbiassed spirit, must have a clear method of sum- 
 ming up. The man of culture, besides his stores of 
 ideas and his impartial spirit, must be possessed of 
 clear methods of reasoning and conclusion. Know- 
 ledge, ideas, openness and evenness of mind, reasoning 
 power these make culture, and true culture must 
 have them all. I do not call a narrow-minded man, 
 however well informed, a man of culture. And that 
 is why I oppose culture to cant. 
 
 If you accept this view, you will admit that 
 culture is not the special property of any class or 
 condition of society. The peer and the millionaire 
 may have none of it they often do have none of it ; 
 the artisan and the labourer may have much of it ; 
 the professional classes, as things at present go, 
 perhaps have most of it. It is in the power of 
 everyone, whatever his occupation, who can read, 
 reflect, listen, and discuss, to become cultured ; it is 
 out of the power of anyone, however wealthy or
 
 116 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 exalted, to become cultured unless he read, reflect, 
 listen, and discuss. 
 
 " Cant," by derivation, means sing-song. Pass by 
 an infant school and hear the children monotonously 
 chanting their earliest lessons their " a, b, ab," 
 " b, a, ba," and their " two and three are five." 
 Perhaps it is true that infants learn best or solely in 
 that way ; it is none the less true that this dreary 
 sing-song is not an intellectual process. The infants 
 remember what they chant by dint of repetition, 
 just as a parrot learns ; " and," in the words of 
 Calverley, " as for the meaning, it's what you please." 
 The Roman, from whom we have borrowed the word, 
 called this modulated reiteration " singing," cantare. 
 As the child grows, he learns longer lessons, passages 
 from books, rules of grammar, and so forth. Too 
 frequently the passages and the rules have not been 
 explained to him. He has not exercised his under- 
 standing upon them. He is compelled to take them 
 as lie finds them, unquestioned and uncomprehended. 
 Therefore, when he comes to repeat them he drops 
 into a sing-song delivery. He feels, to use an 
 Americanism, that he is " speaking a piece" not 
 his own piece, but somebody else's piece. And when 
 the boy or girl grows into man or woman, when the 
 lessons of school are over, and the lessons of social 
 and public life begin in earnest, is the sing-song done 
 with ? Nothing of the kind. More than half of 
 mankind, when they are expressing what they are 
 pleased to call their views, are going through the old 
 school process of repeating by rote. One can almost
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 117 
 
 fancy at times that he detects the old swing of the 
 voice. The opinion they are uttering is not really 
 theirs ; it is borrowed ; it is the ipse dixit of some 
 favourite speaker, writer, or politician, duly repeated 
 by the disciple. They have not heard or read the 
 other views of other thinkers ; they have not taken 
 pains to compare and deliberately choose the best 
 Lacking the fund of knowledge and ideas, lacking 
 the philosophic spirit and the philosophic method 
 in short, lacking culture ; feeling, moreover, their 
 own weakness, and striving to conceal their own 
 incapacity of judgment, they make themselves 
 content to learn what the fashionable world says, or 
 the fashionable critic says, so that, on occasion, they 
 may be prepared to " speak their piece." Wherein 
 is this one whit better than the parrot, who tells you 
 " it's a fine day," or that he is "a pretty Polly," 
 without in the least knowing what sort of an 
 attribute prettiness is in a parrot or fineness in a 
 day? 
 
 This parroting, this thoughtless repetition, is par- 
 ticularly common in literature and art. Persons 
 who make a point of speaking the truth, who would 
 be greatly shocked if they had the least suspicion 
 that they were not speaking the truth, are led by a 
 mixture of motives a little vanity and ostentation, 
 a little desire to be agreeable, a little too much sub- 
 mission of judgment they are led by these, I say, 
 to slip into an unconscious, but none the less 
 demoralizing, form of falsehood in speaking of things 
 literary and artistic. They read the latest magazine
 
 118 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 criticism on a book or on a picture. They perhaps 
 do not read the book itself or examine the picture 
 itself. They learn their lesson from the magazine ; 
 they repeat it till they fancy it is their own concep- 
 tion ; and they endeavour, sometimes quite in good 
 faith, to pass it off as such. 
 
 We might be tempted to pass this frailty good- 
 humouredly by, if it were not for one consideration. 
 The persons who use this cant are the great majority. 
 We do wrong if we conceal this fact from ourselves. 
 A confession of incompetence is rare, and marks 
 either stark contempt or unusual magnanimity ; on 
 the other hand, the real and competent culture is 
 equally rare. Between these rarities lies the great 
 body of dilettante readers and society conversa- 
 tionists, who, after all, form the staple of a gene- 
 ration. The average taste of a generation may thus 
 be determined by cant it frequently is so deter- 
 mined. 
 
 There would be little resultant harm in this if it 
 were always the soundest judges who wrote the 
 criticisms, and if it were always the best criticisms 
 that passed into cant. But, unfortunately, that has 
 seldom been the case. For how many years has 
 shallow criticism, with all its myriad-voiced parrot- 
 ings, decried a great writer a Wordsworth ! Now 
 this paralysis of the critical powers of a generation is 
 a serious thing for its authors and its painters, as 
 well as for itself. It is all very well to cry, " Truth is 
 great and it will prevail." It is all very well to tell us 
 that Shakspere and Milton and Wordsworth have
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 119 
 
 their reward now, while Robert Montgomery and 
 Tupper are relegated to the kitchen. It is very well 
 to tell us that pictures about which we now dispute 
 will find their level in due season. But when is the 
 due season 1 Are we justified in shifting our critical 
 responsibilities on to the shoulders of time and 
 posterity ? Is it fair to our intellects or morals 1 Is 
 it fair to those writers and artists who work for our 
 edification or delight 1 No. Every utterance of 
 cant is demoralizing and debilitating ; a constant 
 substitution of cant for thought results in flaccidity 
 and attenuation of all our intellectual muscles. 
 
 There is nothing so contrary to humanity as cant. 
 An ape can imitate, and will imitate, any acts, wise 
 or foolish. A man should imitate only such acts and 
 repeat only such lessons as his cultured judgment 
 commends to him as wise. Cant reminds one of those 
 echoes which are heard in certain valleys and caves. 
 Utter but a sound, no matter whether it have sense 
 or no sense, and that sound will be passed on and on, 
 sent forwards, sideways, backwards, faster and faster, 
 in all sorts of tones deep, shrill, masculine, feminine, 
 earnest, mocking till it ends in a babble and a 
 clamour utterly unmeaning and not seldom exasperat- 
 ing. So does a criticism or a maxim pass in cant 
 down the corridors of human society, and the voices 
 that bandy it hither and thither have about as much 
 claim to the thought as the rocks have to the original 
 utterance. 
 
 Culture and cant are thus opposed to each other. 
 They cannot co-exist, except in so far as culture is
 
 120 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 imperfect. Culture imparts and enhances the power 
 of criticism ; cant stunts and paralyses it. By cant, 
 one enslaves his judgment ; through culture he 
 becomes able to say, what it is the consummation of 
 humanity to say, Liheravi animam meam, " I have 
 emancipated my soul." Culture knows not only 
 whether it likes a thing, but why it likes it. In 
 literature it is not to be deceived by sonorous syllables 
 or highly coloured language. It examines the 
 thoughts beneath the sound, it seeks to discover 
 whether the colour is only paint or whether it is the 
 healthy glow due to the warm life-blood of the sense. 
 If in things of intellect one will say, " When I was a 
 child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
 thought as a child, but when I became a man I put 
 away childish things," he must do so by culture. 
 Cant will keep him for ever a child. We know that 
 it is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
 from eloquence to bombast. How is the reading 
 world to know when an author takes this step ? How 
 is it to "free its soul" from the professional critics 
 and criticasters ? By cultivation. 
 
 There are those who think they have done a good 
 work when they have succeeded in creating a fashion, 
 such as that of belauding Greek sculpture. Yet, 
 when the praise is only learned by rote not based 
 on personal judgment what is the result ? Why, 
 Greek sculpture laiidatur et alget. People will talk 
 superficially about Pheidias and meanwhile deface 
 their cities with such paltry and soulless figures as 
 those in our public gardens, or the lions which lie
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 121 
 
 before our public buildings. It is of no earthly use 
 for a man to learn his little lesson that the Laocoon 
 is a superb group, if he cannot at the same time say 
 with Lessing why it is superb. It is of no use for a 
 man to repeat that Pheidian statuary is perfection, 
 unless he has rationally assured himself that perfection 
 lies in the expression of the abidingly and serenely 
 beautiful, avoiding the specious semblance of mutable 
 individual things, and, above all, of the ugly and the 
 vile. 
 
 It will not be difficult to see that this question of 
 culture is a most practical one. On the extent of 
 our national culture depends our national taste in all 
 forms of art, and, something weightier still, our 
 national judgment in social and political matters. 
 It is not upon the judgment and taste of some select 
 few, but upon those of the great body of the people, 
 that a nation's productions will depend. And taste 
 and judgment themselves depend on culture. It is a 
 common fallacy to suppose that the excellence of 
 ancient art in Greece and of mediaeval art in Italy 
 was due to some wonderful, some unparalleled natural 
 aptitude in the artists of those countries. It seems 
 to be imagined that there was an inexplicable 
 epidemic of plastic genius in Greece during a par- 
 ticular century, the century from Pheidias to Prax- 
 iteles, just as there was apparently an epidemic of 
 literary genius in England in the Elizabethan era. 
 If one means by this that there was a particular 
 century in which Greek sculpture flourished more 
 than at any other period, it is true ; but if one means
 
 122 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 that by some accident the very greatest geniuses 
 were produced all about the same time, it is probably 
 not true. The rude carvings at Selinus are proof 
 that the Greeks had to learn their art. We need not 
 deny the national aptitude, but we must not deny the 
 national training, the national culture. There were 
 geniuses before Pheidias, and there have been many 
 after him ; but the mass of the people among whom 
 the first and the last lived have been without the 
 true principles of taste. Being blind they followed 
 blind leaders. 
 
 Wherever culture is most widely spread, there art 
 nourishes in its best atmosphere ; wherever culture 
 becomes the special property of a few, and the great 
 mass deal in cant and not in criticism, there art 
 grows unworthy, tricky, fantastic, and poor. The 
 man, the artist, must have his milieu. If the arts 
 fail among us, we must blame ourselves and not the 
 artificers. If we do not train our critical powers and 
 supply ourselves with a basis to our judgments, we 
 can never compel artists to overcome their idiosyn- 
 crasies, to amend their weaknesses, to reduce their 
 extravagances in fact, we leave them to do as they 
 like, in the belief (which, so far as I can see, artists 
 widely entertain) that their works will at least impose 
 on somebody, and that the criticism which will be 
 bestowed upon them is quite as likely to be wrong as 
 right. I suspect that a Greek architect who set 
 about an unsightly edifice, or a sculptor who produced 
 an ungraceful statue, would have been shamed out of 
 his errors or driven into obscurity by the derision,
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 123 
 
 not of a critic here or a critic there, but of the whole 
 body of his enlightened nation. That is the way to 
 get good art and good literature. That is why we 
 tolerate so much art and so much literature that is 
 bad. Cardinal Antonelli told Matthew Arnold that 
 the common people of Italy, in passing their judg- 
 ments " e brutto " " e bello " were generally very near 
 the mark. It is easy, therefore, to understand that 
 art must be good in Italy to gain success. And this 
 popular Italian correctness of taste is not congenital 
 so much as it is thought. It is rather due to constant 
 association with the best style of work that is to say, 
 to a liberal measure of culture in that form. Plato 
 puts the necessity of training in a simple manner. 
 " We should be trained," he says, " from earliest 
 childhood so as to feel pain and pleasure at those 
 things at which we ought to feel pain and pleasure." 
 This the Athenians were ; this we are not. No ; we 
 are satisfied to divide ourselves into two canting 
 sects. The one sect contents itself with that per- 
 nicious maxim, " De yustibus non est dispntandum," a 
 maxim which is, of course, final. It is in sooth a fine 
 piece of cant, relieving one of all the burden of 
 thinking and all the tiresomeness of training. It 
 was no wise man who first used the phrase ; or if he 
 was so, he did not mean what we mean by it. Plato 
 tells us the opposite ; Aristotle tells us the opposite ; 
 modern thinkers tell us the opposite. We must 
 dispute about tastes if we want to have any taste 
 worth calling such. The other sect is one less candid. 
 It is the sect of those who pretend to have a taste,
 
 1^* CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 but who borrow that taste as they do the cut of their 
 clothes, from the recognized setters of the contem- 
 porary fashion. They ask no questions. "A wise 
 question," it has been said " is half-way towards 
 knowledge." The student's question " Why is this to 
 be commended or condemned ?" " Wherein lies its 
 excellence or defect 1" is half-way towards emancipa- 
 tion from cant. But as a rule the great body of us 
 do not ask it, or, if we do, we do not seriously wait 
 for an answer. 
 
 This is the case with sculpture, painting, and 
 architecture. We are no better when we come to 
 literature. Our magazines are full of what Professor 
 Freeman calls " more chatter about Shelley." There 
 are articles on Wordsworth and articles on Browning, 
 lucubrations on the egoism of Victor Hugo, and 
 dissections of the genius of Emerson. Now these 
 articles, when good of their kind, may be of great 
 service to culture if properly used ; they are ruinous 
 to culture if abused, as they commonly are. If we 
 have really read an author himself ; if we have first 
 studied him, and afterwards all the good that has 
 been said about him ; if, possessed of this ground- 
 work, we have discussed him as I have no doubt this 
 society does discuss great works of literature, then 
 one of those magazine articles may serve to present 
 us with new views, may strengthen us in some we 
 have adopted, and make us less tenacious of others. 
 But if we have not read the author himself, or have 
 only dabbled in him ; if we do not propose to study 
 him, but only to amuse some idle moments with what
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 125 
 
 is said about him, we become not cultivated by such 
 articles, but steeped in cant. 
 
 We have lately heard a good deal about Browning. 
 I should not choose to give you my own opinion, unless 
 I could at the same time give you my reasons for it, and 
 do as much justice as I could to the opposite view, and 
 that would take a lecture all to itself. But what I 
 would point out is that it is not enough for us to say, 
 " I like this and I don't like that." We must be pre- 
 pared to show cause. To do this we must first have 
 thought out the principles of the art in which our 
 poet is held to be a master. What makes a poet 1 
 How far does a given writer satisfy the conditions at 
 which we arrive 1 Are we ready to analyse the 
 qualities of his verse and his thought, till we can lay 
 our finger definitely on what we consider his points 
 of strength and of weakness ? Say we find genius 
 and passion, do we find power of language and 
 melody ? If the last quality, and still more clearness, 
 be conspicuously absent, what value are we to set 
 upon the rest as elements of poetry 1 May a man 
 not be a great thinker but an incomplete poet, as 
 Emerson was 1 I do not wish to throw off any 
 obiter dictum on these questions ; but, in the name 
 of all that is intelligent and straightforward, let us 
 ask and answer some such inquiries before we add 
 our echo either to the applause or the scoffs. Car- 
 dinal Newman, for instance, says, " I do not claim 
 for a great author as such any great depth of thought 
 or breadth of view ; but I ascribe to him as his 
 characteristic gift, in a large sense, the faculty of
 
 126 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 expression." It is possible to combat this opinion, 
 but it has at least the merit of containing a prin- 
 ciple. It is his luminous statement and absolute 
 justice of principles which make the critical great- 
 ness of Coleridge. His analysis of the qualities of 
 poetry, and particularly of Wordsworth's poetry, in 
 the " Biographia Literaria," is my constant admiration. 
 So it is, though he is marked by less serenity and 
 justice, with Carlyle. I know no exercise more 
 valuable than a careful study of these analyses. Less 
 thorough, less general, less impartial, but helpful 
 reading all the same, are Johnson's " Lives of the 
 Poets." 
 
 And now let us come to graver subjects of a more 
 practical bearing. There is cant, dangerous cant, 
 obstructive and destructive cant, working with 
 far-reaching power in society and in politics. 
 Many innocent diversions and charms of public 
 and private life are denied us through cant, 
 many enormities are sanctioned by it, many panics 
 originate in it. I mean, you will remember, second- 
 hand opinion, claptrap, senseless or misapplied 
 formulae, passed from tongue to tongue. Would you 
 wish me to specify some of these phrases, these 
 ancient saws and garbled proverbs, which the masses 
 catch as they catch the measles, but which they do 
 not get rid of quite so soon 1 Nothing would please 
 me more, but this is scarcely the time for so doing, 
 and by some rule of ineffable wisdom university 
 professors in this country are, I believe, supposed to 
 have no political views.
 
 CULTUHE AND CANT. 127 
 
 Still I am at liberty to explain my allusion. 
 There is a terrible word to which Wendell Holmes 
 draws attention, a word of awful sanctity among 
 Hindus the word Om. I don't know precisely what 
 it means or whether it means anything very precise, 
 but its effect on the nerves of a pious Hindu is said 
 to be awful. We all remember the venerable lady 
 who was affected to tears by " that blessed word 
 Mesopotamia." We can afford to laugh at Om and 
 Mesopotamia, but we have had and have among our- 
 selves forms of words which act upon large numbers 
 of people very much as Mesopotamia acted on that 
 female mind. Churchmen are familiar with the con- 
 tention concerning homoonsia and homoiousia. I am 
 far from taking it upon me to say that theologically 
 the contention is not an important one, but what I 
 do take it upon me to say is that those terms soon 
 passed, among the majority of those who used them, 
 into mere sounds, mere shibboleths, and that many 
 of those who suffered by the struggle were, after all, 
 "martyrs of a diphthong." We hear a proposal 
 sometimes summarily disposed of as being " un- 
 English." What a precious piece of cant is this 
 same " un-English ! " It deliberately closes the win- 
 dows of our minds and puts up the shutters, so that 
 no light from the wider world may intrude into our 
 little house. No wonder Heine called the English 
 language "the hiss of egoism." "Britannia rules 
 the waves." So long as semi-inebriated gatherings 
 roar this refrain, can we hope that the nation will 
 sternly demand of the British Admiralty that vigi-
 
 128 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 lance and progress which experts tell us are not 
 now shown 1 " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," " The 
 Divine Right of Kings," " The Liberty of the Sub- 
 ject." A long list could be made of such " winged 
 words," which determine, or have determined, the 
 feelings and the votes of great masses of people. 
 There is much in the old saying, " Give me the 
 making of a nation's songs, and I will give you the 
 making of its laws." With such phrases our poli- 
 ticians go on weaving ropes of sand. There is no 
 cohesion in these detached and often self-contra- 
 dictory phrases. 
 
 And what does culture do in the matter? Culture 
 does not dwell, as is often supposed, in a passionless 
 intermundium. It does not lead only the life con- 
 templative. It fits a man for social and political 
 work, by training him to think straight. Though 
 it recognizes with Epictetus that " every matter has 
 two handles," it recognizes none the less that it is a 
 duty to take hold of one of them. But while the un- 
 cultured man can only get hold of the right handle by 
 accident, or by a guess of rare sagacity, the man of 
 culture does so by a rational choice, and will be right 
 ten times to the other man's once. 
 
 As I once said in an article upon " straight think- 
 ing," the cultured man is like the train which runs 
 with certainty from start to destination, while the 
 uncultured man is apt to be switched off on to 
 another track by some cant phrase or other. He 
 does not perceive his error, he appears to be running 
 smoothly enough, but in the end will find himself
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 129 
 
 anywhere but at the point he meant to reach. With- 
 out going so far as to say with Socrates that all 
 virtue is knowledge, we may assert that knowledge 
 and straight thinking are essential to sound legisla- 
 tion. In view of this fact, I would refuse utterly to- 
 place in Parliament a man of one idea and a man 
 of one book. Still worse is the man of no idea 
 and of no book. " The senate is the soul of the 
 people," said an ancient worthy. Let us have a 
 cultured soul, if we can anywise obtain it. By large 
 numbers of societies such as yours culture may be 
 widely spread throughout the body politic, and a 
 cultured body politic will make sure of the wisdom 
 of its legislators. Then, when questions of federa- 
 tion or separation or any of those great matters 
 arise, as arise they must, we may rest assured that 
 reason will prevail that men will speak genuine and 
 significant thoughts instead of stringing together 
 " the phrases they have got among them to express 
 their no-meaning by." 
 
 There is only one other matter but an important 
 matter on which we must touch. You will say, 
 " We all want culture, but how are we to get it 1 
 What is the price to be paid for it?" I have already 
 said that culture is not erudition. If it were, it 
 would manifestly be an impossibility to many. Of 
 means to obtaining it I should name reading, reflec- 
 tion, discussion, conversation, and travel. Reading 
 first ; reading, as Matthew Arnold puts it, the best 
 that has been thought and said in the world. Good 
 books and well digested are the grand nutriment of 
 
 10
 
 130 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 thought. Ptolemy called the great library at Alex- 
 andria "the pharmacy of the soul." This is a true 
 quality of the good books to purge and invigorate 
 the mind, to make it healthy. Vauvenargues has it 
 "Good books are the essence of the best minds, the 
 abstract of their knowledge, and the fruit of their 
 long vigils." He says, however, good books. There 
 are, unfortunately, many bad books, useless books, 
 and worse than useless books. The easy diffusion of 
 literature, the abundance of printed matter in our 
 time, is not wholly a thing to congratulate ourselves 
 upon. This is a bookmaking age, and it is easy for 
 one who has no guide or adviser to make a bad choice 
 of matter, or to make an excessive choice. There is 
 the literature false in sentiment and unsound in 
 reasoning. Such bad literature is, according to 
 George Eliot, " spiritual gin ; " it reduces the faculties 
 to a state of dissipation, and it were better to read 
 nothing at all. I agree with Carlyle : " We ought 
 to cast aside altogether the idea people have that if 
 they are reading any book, if an ignorant man is 
 reading any book, he is doing rather better than 
 nothing at all." There is .also the bookmaking litera- 
 ture, pure and simple, not necessarily false, but 
 worthless, inane, empty of ideas, information, or sug- 
 gestion. I lately read a well-got-up book by Mr. 
 Mahaffy on the art of conversation ; and I could but 
 regret the waste of time. Six or seven terse sentences 
 of La Rochefoucauld on the subject, which could be 
 read in less than as many minutes, contain more 
 thought than all the scores of pages in that volume.
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 131 
 
 We cannot spare the time to read what is positively 
 bad or what is negatively useless. We want to 
 direct our reading so as to bring the largest number 
 of ideas and views of things into correlation. What 
 books do this for us ? I am not going to give you 
 another list of the hundred best books. We have 
 had enough of that. But in general I would express 
 the opinion that, after all, the works which will be 
 found to do most for culture are those books to 
 which the consensus of many years or many countries 
 has given the places of honour Plato, Aristotle, 
 Dante, Shakspere, Bacon, Goethe, Carlyle, and 
 many more much more than enough to make a 
 hundred volumes, though, perhaps, not more than 
 enough to make a hundred authors. These, and not 
 all sorts of galvanically resuscitated works of for- 
 gotten mediocrities, are the works to be read by 
 seekers after culture who are not professed students 
 of literature. Read Mr. Harrison's choice of books, 
 and the remarks of his master, Comte ; read what 
 Emerson has to say on books. You will find that all 
 your advisers recommend that reading should not be 
 of one place, one time, or one subject ; it should 
 include all Bacon's three parts of learning, history, 
 philosophy, and poetry that is to say, the literature 
 of record, the literature of reason, and the literature 
 of ideas and imagination. 
 
 But the reading must be reflective and discriminat- 
 ing. In the Mishna there are four sorts of readers 
 sponges, hour-glasses, strainers, sieves. The sponges 
 absorb everything alike ; the hour-glasses take matter
 
 132 CULTURE AND CANT. 
 
 in at one end and let it out at the other ; the 
 strainers let out all the good and retain only the 
 dregs ; the sieves let out the useless and retain only 
 the good. We want, in this respect, to be sieves 
 to sift what we read. 
 
 I have mentioned discussion as a help to culture. 
 I believe it to be such, so long as it is 
 
 " Friendly free discussion, calling forth 
 From the fair jewel truth its latent ray," 
 
 so long as it really " ventilates" a subject that is, 
 lets the free air of ideas play upon and around it. 
 But discussion may, on the contrary, become a great 
 enemy to wisdom and method, if it degenerates into 
 expression of crude opinions and adherence to them 
 because they are once expressed, if it results in 
 ambitious displays of paradox, if a disputant seeks 
 conquest and not truth. 
 
 Conversation, too, is important. It shapes our 
 thoughts if we have any ; it gives us thoughts if we 
 have none ; it makes us know what we really do think, 
 how far we think it, and with how much of ourselves 
 we are dissatisfied. " Society," remarks Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes, " is a strong solution of books." 
 But he was speaking of American society, and par- 
 ticularly of Boston society. I am afraid our own 
 society is but a very weak solution of books. I do 
 not come here to say unpleasant things, nor, on the 
 other hand, to hide my convictions. The English 
 publishers tell me that the demand for good books in 
 these colonies is strangely small. One must, for 
 many reasons, believe them. Society among us is a
 
 CULTURE AND CANT. 133 
 
 strong solution of money and sport it is anything 
 but a strong solution of books. Conversation of 
 value is, therefore, rare. It lies with societies like 
 yours to help to remedy this state of things. 
 
 Travel, also, is of great value. One of the great 
 defects the greatest defect of our Australian 
 Natives' Association is that its members are the 
 least travelled among us. They have, speaking 
 generally, seen nothing of other countries, older 
 countries, wiser countries, more learned countries, 
 richer and more powerful countries. They have been 
 fed and swollen on the rank wind of fulsome flattery 
 by itinerant lecturers and patronizing foreigners. 
 They get a conception of our country and ourselves 
 quite out of proportion to our real bulk in the world. 
 Travel is the best remedy for this ; but travel is a 
 thing everyone cannot get, and in its absence reading, 
 reflection, and conversation among a society which is 
 a strong solution of books are the best means of 
 correcting the mental vision. 
 
 And now I have done. I have used the terms 
 culture and philosophy frequently. I have been 
 compelled to do so. I feel that to many ears 
 philosophy has an uncongenial sound. I trust none of 
 you will go away with that notion. Look up the 
 word in your fullest dictionary, see what it means, 
 and then agree with Milton 
 
 " How charming is divine philosophy 
 
 Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
 
 And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, 
 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns."
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 " AN ESSAY," says Ellesmere in " Friends in Council," 
 " is not worth much in itself is likely, indeed, to be 
 rather a nuisance ; but it gives good room for dis- 
 cussion." In what I have to say upon my somewhat 
 rashly comprehensive subject this is my chief hope 
 to afford room for good discussion. The " teachings 
 of history" are numberless ; a lecture cannot pretend 
 to gather them one by one into a complete body of 
 doctrine. My intention to-night is humbler. It is 
 merely to ask you to recognize that the study of 
 history in the proper sense is no dilettante study, but 
 a study of exceedingly practical bearings on citizen- 
 ship, still more on statesmanship. 
 
 Apart from the fact that this is the centenary of 
 the French Revolution, I have been led to this 
 particular subject by two considerations. The one is 
 that historical study is strangely neglected in our 
 educational system, or else is reduced to so jejune a 
 narration of facts as to be virtueless. Whether this 
 neglect is due to that intellectual and moral cowardice 
 which results from our sectarian differences, I do not 
 know. I only know that we are bringing up our
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 135 
 
 citizens and statesmen in either contempt or fear of 
 the lessons of history. My second reason was this : 
 some time ago I was privileged to address an associa- 
 tion of native-born Australians on the " Teachings 
 of Travel," and I then urged that there were among 
 our native-born young men tokens of a deep-seated 
 misconception of that great world, in which we do not 
 at present bulk very large. It appeared to me that 
 the best corrective was travel. Now there is also in 
 our midst an unreasonable conceit of this particular 
 generation of the nineteenth century ; there is an 
 assumption that its political and social questions are 
 something peculiarly distinctive of it, requiring a 
 peculiarly constituted nineteenth century mind to 
 deal with them. The consequence is that crowds of 
 persons are found quite prepared to make and 
 unmake laws, and to embroil international or 
 economic relations, by the sole light of that uncer- 
 tain luminary called common sense. Truly quoth 
 Oxenstiern, " Quantilla sapientia reyitur muiidus /" 
 
 The corrective for this self-sufficient empiricism is 
 history. Give us, indeed, in our voters and law- 
 makers everything practical that we can get ; but 
 give us also, I beg, an intelligent apprehension of 
 other places and other times, so that we may attain 
 to what we now most lack " wise suspense in 
 forming opinions, wise reserve in expressing them, 
 wise tardiness in trying to realize them." Our 
 future is one of immense potentialities ; it lies in 
 our hands ; we must not suffer it to be spoiled by 
 the ignorant or the doctrinaire.
 
 136 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 Perhaps I should first correct some popular errors 
 touching what history means. What is history 
 Clio, the historic muse, is traditionally represented 
 roll in hand, with books outspread at her feet. 
 Pictorially this is well ; but history is not wholly 
 gleaned from books. All records of the past are 
 history. We want to know what a people was, as 
 well as what it did. A people's history in this sense 
 is gathered from its monuments and works of art, as 
 well as from what is written by or of it. A building 
 or a carving tells the mind and feeling of its creator. 
 Take all forms of record, not only annals, chronicles, 
 and codes, but all other memorials, excavated from 
 Karnak or Troy, deciphered from obelisks, inter- 
 preted from the spirit of a Parthenon, a Roman 
 aqueduct, or a Gothic aisle ; take the poems in which 
 men have expressed their ideals, the religions and 
 philosophies they have believed ; combine with these 
 whatever else reveals the material, mental, social, 
 and political condition of man in different places 
 from age to age, and "you have the material of 
 history. Is this all useless ? Is it to be so regarded 
 by a generation which finds it so important to study 
 evolution in biology and the successions of geological 
 formations 1 
 
 History as a mere narrative of past facts is, 
 indeed, worth little. But as it approaches nearer to 
 a biography of humanity, its interest and its value 
 become immense. " History," said Voltaire in his 
 haste, " is only the picture of crimes and follies." 
 It is in a great measure such, if it means only the
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 137 
 
 doings of tyrants and kings, their battles and 
 slaughters ; though, even so, it would be worth our 
 while to know about and to prevent a repetition of 
 those same follies and crimes. But the remark is 
 untrue of that history which regards all human 
 work and progress. Crimes and follies there are in 
 plenty in the picture ; but there are in the picture 
 also, for instance, the workings of nations up to 
 freedom, the efforts by which they sought it and the 
 counsels by which they established it ; there are the 
 steps, irregular enough sometimes, whereby in social 
 organization, in mental culture, and in moral virtues, 
 men have ascended and are ascending still. A com- 
 plete historical picture cannot be made from chronicles 
 alone. The mere facts of a long period of Assyrian 
 empire are written on the tablets of the library of 
 Ashurbanipal, but the civilization of the people is 
 more definitely seen in the sculptures Layard exhumed 
 and the canals we still can trace. Take the earliest 
 period of Grecian society. From what manner of 
 record do we know it ? From the poetry of Homer. 
 Yet Homer gives us nothing of what is generally 
 known as " historic" matter. No ; but he does some- 
 thing equally valuable he portrays for us a certain 
 condition of society, with a certain range of ideas in 
 morals, law, and belief. Such a condition may not 
 have been precisely one actually existent at the time 
 he would have us believe, but that is of little moment. 
 It is sufficient that it was a condition conceivable to 
 Homer. Not even the greatest geniuses Homers 
 and Shaksperes can wholly emancipate themselves
 
 138 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 from the prevailing "Zeitgeist." Besides historic facts, 
 we require to know how those facts appeared to the 
 better, the average, and the worse minds of the time ; 
 for a people may be superior to its own. deeds, and, 
 like individuals, may " see and approve the better, 
 but follow after the worse." Hence, to my thinking, 
 a special value attaches to those writings which reveal 
 events and ways of thought unconsciously. The 
 truest insight into Roman culture under the earlier 
 empire is perhaps to be obtained from Pliny's letters ; 
 the moral state of Italy and France in the earlier 
 part of the sixteenth century receives peculiar light 
 from the autobiography of Cellini ; the life and 
 thought of English society last century is inti- 
 mately seen in the Spectator and Boswell's " Life of 
 Johnson." 
 
 Modern historians more and more recognize the 
 significance of these various materials. I may add a 
 few words about the historic spirit. It has been a 
 fault of many modern writers that they have sought 
 to substantiate from history their own prepossessions. 
 Instead of humbly asking Clio's guidance, they put 
 her on the rack. However philosophically -minded 
 the historian, he will with difficulty avoid having 
 " some theory to maintain, some party to support, 
 some hero to glorify." Macaulay cannot bring him- 
 self to represent impartially a Bacon or a Maryborough. 
 He forgets that, as Montaigne puts it, " the action 
 may be praiseworthy though the man is not." 
 Mitford, in his now fortunately obsolete " History 
 of Greece," finds all oligarchical proceedings faultless.
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 139 
 
 Grote, on the other hand, finds perversity in each, 
 and seems to be holding a brief for the democratic 
 cause. Gibbon's obtrusive scepticism unduly colours 
 his " Decline and Fall." Hence, though with Gibbon 
 it has not yet occurred, it is the fate of each historian 
 to be superseded by some other. Observing this, one 
 might, perhaps, suspect that history is after all a 
 " vast Mississippi of falsehood," and that its lessons 
 can never be secure ; but, in truth, the supersession 
 of history by history is a mark of advancing certainty 
 in both the science and the art, betokening increased 
 accuracy of fact, increased hold upon the true historic 
 method and spirit. 
 
 The earliest history is but annals. Next comes 
 the Herodotean stage, uncritical story, charming to 
 read, a blending of " Dichtung" and " Wahrheit," 
 confounding sober fact with the legends and myths 
 of folk-lore. Then follows the stage of clear, impartial 
 narrative the Thucydidean mode which would 
 indeed be the perfection of historic writing if it were 
 only applicable as, unhappily, it is riot to other 
 than contemporaneous events. In modern times 
 these stages more or less repeat themselves. But 
 there is a stage beyond. As in later Greek literature 
 a philosopher like Plutarch sought to turn history to 
 use in the moral instruction of mankind, so in our 
 day the effort of the historical teacher is to go beyond 
 events, to search for causes, and, if possible, devise 
 such general laws as may guide or guard society. 
 Facts in themselves are nothing. History, the Greek 
 ttrropid, is " inquiry," and beyond inquiry of the
 
 140 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 
 
 truth of facts lies inquiry of the causes of facts and 
 the bearing of facts. 
 
 A century and a half ago Voltaire and Bolingbroke 
 protested that historical study should not be a matter 
 of mere facts and sentences. But it takes long to 
 kill old errors. No doubt our boys and girls still 
 misspend their time in learning the precise month 
 King Stephen died, the precise number of French 
 slaughtered at Agincourt, the precise dying words of 
 Cardinal Wolsey. Our elementary histories, and 
 many that should know better, still divide their 
 chapters by reigns and centuries, as if human progress 
 turned over a new leaf with new years or new kings. 
 Even Carlyle (with whom, indeed, history is narrative, 
 an epic poem perhaps, like his " French Revolution") 
 lumps together in undiscriminating contempt a whole 
 century the unfortunate eighteenth as if time 
 were arranged in separate heterogeneous blocks, 
 or in streaks distinct as those of the conventional 
 rainbow. 
 
 I would not underrate the mere pleasure of historical 
 reading. Though " life is real, life is earnest," the 
 earnestness is not so terribly morbid that all reading 
 is to be serious study ; and among mental diversions 
 there are few greater than the perusal of books like 
 Motley's " Dutch Republic" or Macaulay's " History" 
 or Prescott's " Peru." The mere possession of know- 
 ledge has its satisfaction. There are, indeed, irre- 
 deemable Philistines who do not comprehend this 
 pure desire of knowledge. They are as bewildered 
 as the Arab Sheikh who said to Layard, " Why do
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 141 
 
 you spend so many purses on such things? You say 
 that these stones teach you wisdom, but they do not 
 help you to make better knives or chintzes, wherein 
 the English chiefly show their wisdom." Yet most 
 of us are not in this state. And even while reading for 
 diversion only we feel that we are imbibing a certain 
 amount of greater tolerance of other peoples and 
 other creeds, of social wisdom, of encouragement to 
 high purpose. " Lives of great men all remind us 
 we can make our lives sublime." 
 
 But there are deeper lessons which do not yield 
 themselves without deliberate search. 
 
 Human society is a thing of extreme complexity, 
 of slow and spontaneous growth. Our forefathers 
 have been and have done something in virtue of 
 which we are what we are. The continuity of history 
 has no absolute breaks ; its study is the study of 
 cause and effect. Now these are important facts. 
 When the human body sickens, we do not permit the 
 empiric to pour nostrums into us, much less to per- 
 form an amputation. We ask the trained physician 
 to diagnose the ailment, and to prescribe remedies 
 according to his science. And yet, on the contrary, 
 when the social frame is out of sorts, are we to 
 accept the specifics of advertising quackery? Are 
 we to forget that he who prescribes for society must 
 understand society's anatomy and the laws of its 
 growth 1 
 
 The first lesson of history that should be learned 
 is the facts of social development. Intelligent 
 citizens are to be found who believe only in the
 
 142 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 nineteenth century ; others pretend to believe only 
 in the "good old times." The one notion leads to 
 the most mischievous extreme of revolutionary 
 Radicalism, the other to the most vexatious extreme 
 of obstructive Conservatism. Analyse these notions, 
 and it will be found that your revolutionary is a 
 believer in the nineteenth century because, besides 
 that it is the century which has had the merit of 
 producing himself, he does not comprehend from 
 history that all solid progress has been slow and 
 tentative ; while your obstructive is such because he 
 does not comprehend that history is a story of new 
 devices meeting new conditions. Now, personally, I 
 believe in the good young future, though not in 
 all respects, nor perhaps as regards the immediate 
 morrow. But what I urge is that we should be com- 
 placent about quite the right thing, and not about 
 the wrong thing. For instance, we are as we 
 well may be complacent about our mechanical and 
 locomotive facilities ; but let us recognize that no 
 absolutely new light has come upon human intel- 
 lect or morals through railways, telegraphy, or the 
 mitrailleuse. 
 
 One of the most prevalent opinions of to-day is 
 that the world is inevitably tending to democracy as 
 the recognized form of government for all civilized 
 peoples. On what is this opinion based ? Theoreti- 
 cally, no doubt, on an intuition of human rights, but 
 historically on nothing more than the events of one 
 century over a very limited part of civilization. But 
 the historian finds that in the earliest historic dawn
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 143 
 
 democracy, oligarchy, kingship, despotism, existed 
 side by side as they do to-day. He finds that 
 democracy has fallen to decay rather sooner than 
 other polities. He finds the Jewish people, after 
 long use of popular government, anointing for itself 
 a king ; he finds Home, after centuries of republican 
 institutions, subjecting itself all at once to the most 
 despotic rule. What could seem more certain than 
 that the French Revolution, inspired by its " Goddess 
 of Reason," had made monarchy impossible? Yet, 
 how soon a Buonaparte had " changed all that " ! 
 If we guess the future, we must not call it prophecy. 
 The American republic is no convincing instance, as 
 I may show. 
 
 That there is a gradual general progress of the 
 human race is certain ; that there is ultimate hope 
 of human perfectibility has been held by many 
 admirable minds, different as Diderot from Words- 
 worth. But this progress and this perfecting are to 
 be counted by millennia rather than by generations ; 
 they do not proceed by leaps and bounds, much less 
 by jumps. Nor are they regular all along the line. 
 There have been abnormal seasons of retrogression 
 here and there, as in Western Europe after the Roman 
 power was broken. The great flood-tides of ideals 
 and enthusiasms have their ebb. It is questionable 
 whether the American of to-day is the equal of those 
 who signed the Declaration of Independence or drew 
 up the Constitution. 
 
 If this is so, if a tendency at a particular moment 
 may not be a forward but a backward tendency,
 
 144 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 surely it is well to avoid hasty assumptions about 
 democratic or other advance. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss the development 
 of institutions among civilized peoples. I might, 
 from the lessons of comparative history, and com- 
 parative jurisprudence, which is part of history, 
 describe the common manner in which all our 
 societies have been evolved ; how at first there 
 was a patriarchal stage, when the individual had 
 no separate rights, conscience, or responsibility ; 
 how patriarch of family developed into chief 
 of tribe, and chief of tribe into patriarchal 
 king of the common stock ; how aristocratical 
 government often, though not of necessity, arose 
 where kings were weak or criminal ; and how, here 
 and there, democracy followed upon the selfishness 
 and stubbornness of oligarchic rule. And, keeping 
 along these lines, I might show how government 
 "for and by the people" has regularly tended to 
 pass into anarchy, into ochlocracy government by 
 the mob. Thanks to Sir Henry Maine, I might 
 traverse the same ground again, and follow the 
 history of the one most definite element of steady 
 progress, showing how law has steadily crystallized 
 itself; how the king's arbitrary "dooms" were 
 replaced by that customary law of which privileged 
 bodies were custodians, and this again by codes so 
 fixed and recognized that every man could take his 
 stand upon them for right and liberty. I might 
 gather from all this that, so far has the "individual" 
 been from " withering" as his world grew great, that
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 145 
 
 he has gained in rights and freedom of expansion as 
 he has done in duties. 
 
 If you ask what pertinent effect this knowledge 
 should have, I reply that it should give pause to 
 revolutionary spirits ; it should keep them from 
 misleading themselves and the ignorant by shallow a 
 priori notions of polity like those of Rousseau, 
 which had such extraordinary influence on the 
 Jacobins. Rousseau's " Social Contract" is based 
 on a fallacy, the fallacy of a departed golden age of 
 " the state of nature." Rousseau believed, not in 
 progress, but decay. He cared nothing for history. 
 He acknowledges as much when he says that his 
 principles are not drawn. " from authority, but 
 spring from the nature of things and are based on 
 reason." Well, Frankenstein's monster was " based 
 on reason," and it was not a success. A society 
 which has grown as the natural man grows is more 
 to be relied on. One man's reason may be another 
 man's folly. Similarly, had Plato known that all 
 the tendency of civilization had been to give expan- 
 sion to the individual, his ideal republic would not 
 
 have been one which was based on the effacement of 
 
 
 
 individuality. 
 
 A hundred years ago the air of France was full of 
 schemes and formulas, containing much of truth, but 
 so largely misconceiving the organization of society 
 that their application was foredoomed to excess and 
 disappointment. To-day we have our socialists, our 
 communists, our cries that la propriete c'est le vol. I 
 shall not pretend to argue the points of any of these 
 
 11
 
 146 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 propaganda. That is not my function. Suffice it to 
 point to one great lesson of history, the lesson of the 
 growing independence of individual man, in his 
 private rights, his private conscience, his power to 
 act and work for himself, consistently with the main- 
 tenance of civil order. Human nature may be 
 crushed now and again by a legislative Procrustes, 
 but not for long, and not successfully. Puritan 
 tyrannies, sumptuary laws of Rome or of Geneva, 
 have had but brief and hypocritical existence. What 
 human nature will and will not stand may be 
 gathered from the past, and one thing most certain is 
 that while man invents and accepts laws as means of 
 guarding rights and safety, he will not accept them 
 as a leaden clog upon his natural powers and aspira- 
 tions. 
 
 There is a complete fallacy, as Aristotle long ago 
 proclaimed, in asserting the absolute equality of men. 
 That men should all be equal in the eye of the law 
 is a rule received from Roman jurisconsults, and 
 admitted even by those who do not practise it. But 
 that man is equal to man in industry, capacity, and 
 morals, that every man deserves to possess just as 
 much and legislate just as much as every other man, 
 is pestilent folly. The Athenian democrats carried 
 out no such views. The French Jacobins, who had 
 roared themselves hoarse with the cant of equality 
 and fraternity, and had committed many crimes in 
 the name of each, when it came to carrying out the 
 said equality of brotherhood, " contrived," it has 
 been humorously said, "to always make themselves
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 147 
 
 the elder brothers." The American democrats love 
 high seats, and to be called "judge" and " honourable." 
 Coleridge and Southey, in their youth, devised for 
 their friends a settlement upon the banks of the 
 Susquehanna, where all things should be equally 
 divided. They called it a "Pantisocracy." As they 
 grew older Pantisocratism was all forgotten. History 
 further shows that, everywhere alike, there will 
 always be Irreconcilables, Nihilists, persons who 
 agitate and practise violence of tongue or hand, and 
 whom it would be folly for any legislator to attempt 
 to pacify. 
 
 I have said that human progress is to be estimated 
 by thousands rather than by decades of years. The 
 period anno domini is but a span, and we to-day, 
 though generally superior to Greeks and Romans, 
 are inferior to them in art and in a certain largeness 
 of conception. We are not keener inquirers than 
 the Athenians, nor better organizers than the 
 Romans. I shall not disguise the fact that our 
 constant boasting about this age of intellectual 
 movement seems to me a ridiculous and ignorant 
 boasting. Are we more eagerly speculative than 
 Aristotle, or Bacon, or Locke, or than the French 
 Encyclopaedists before the Revolution 1 Our stock 
 of scientific data is greater; our reasoning may there- 
 fore in some directions have a more practical basis 
 and outcome ; but, though our generation may stand 
 out in the future as an epoch of peculiar industrial 
 and mechanical progress, I incline to think that it 
 will rather appear deficient than otherwise in the
 
 148 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 matter of purely intellectual advance. Our morals, 
 it will be said, have vastly improved. In certain 
 sensual matters, yes ; but in other ways not much. 
 We have abolished slavery. t lt took 1,800 years of 
 Christianity to bring that result about ; but let it 
 pass. We may congratulate ourselves. Nevertheless, 
 only a few decades ago, the moral position of 
 Europeans and Americans relatively to slavery was 
 more unblushingly brutal than that of the pagans 
 2,000 years earlier. The Greeks fancied that intrinsic 
 personal superiority made the institution natural and 
 right ; the Romans justified it to themselves by right 
 of conquest. The modern planter simply stifled his 
 conscience, bought poor helpless stolen negroes, and 
 treated them like cattle. We cannot, therefore, 
 merely in virtue of lapse of time, place ourselves on 
 some different moral or intellectual plane from past 
 ages, and disclaim instruction from them. What do 
 they teach us ? 
 
 The gi'eat use of historical study is for wisdom and 
 life ; it is to supply us with principles and warnings 
 for our own times. " Is there anything whereof it 
 may be said See, this is new 1 It hath been already 
 of old time which was before us." History, say 
 the ancients, is the " mother of wisdom," the 
 " teacher of life." There are many aphorisms point- 
 ing to this recognition of its true utility. Dionysius 
 of Halicarnassus called history " philosophy teaching 
 by examples." " History repeats itself." If, instead 
 of parroting this expression as a piece of meaningless 
 cant, we were to stop and think of it, we might, per-
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 149 
 
 haps, proceed to read history in order to see if it were 
 true ; and, finding it so, we might know the better 
 how to deal with one of these recurrent phenomena. 
 Buckle took up the strong position that the actions 
 of men have the same uniformity of connection which 
 physical events have, and no other ; and that the 
 laws of these uniformities can be inductively ascer- 
 tained in the same way as the laws of the material 
 world. Buckle's own exposition may be unsatisfac- 
 tory, but that there are some such laws it is reasonable 
 to believe. The past is no chapter of accidents, and 
 the knowledge of it is knowledge of a very practical 
 application. Lord Macaulay was not a profound 
 philosopher, but he was a man of supreme common 
 sense. His speeches in the House of Commons are, 
 as we might expect, filled with historical allusions ; 
 his chief positions are taken up on historical arguments, 
 and the sides he took were those which we now 
 generally acknowledge to have been right. Now 
 possibly his excellent common sense alone might 
 have placed him on those sides ; but it is none the 
 less useful to note that common sense falls back on 
 history. " One urgent reason," says Professor Seeley, 
 " why politicians should study history is that they 
 may guard themselves against the false historical 
 analogies which continually mislead those who do not 
 study history." We are in a community where 
 everyone is a politician, and where everyone should 
 examine whether an alleged analogy is true or false. 
 We have persons among us who gloat over the 
 separation of the American colonies from England,
 
 150 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 
 
 and tell us that that separation is a precedent, a 
 necessary precedent, for ourselves. What are we to 
 say? Only, I presume, that, according to history, 
 there is in our relations no circumstance which can 
 justify us in comparing our position with theirs. To 
 run away from home because we are cruelly used 
 is a very different thing from spurning our mother 
 because we are weaned. 
 
 There is, however, quite as much danger, or even 
 more, of asserting that analogy does not exist when 
 it does. " There will never," says Coleridge, " be 
 wanting answers and explanations and specious 
 flatteries of hope to persuade a people and its Govern- 
 ment that the history of the past is inapplicable to 
 their case. ... I well remember that when the 
 example of former Jacobins, as Julius Caesar, Crom- 
 well, and the like, were adduced in France and 
 England at the commencement of the French Con- 
 sulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and pedant's 
 ignorance to fear a repetition of usurpation and 
 military despotism at the close of the enlightened 
 eighteenth century. Even so, in the very dawn of the 
 late tempestuous day, when the revolution of Corcyra, 
 the proscriptions of the reformers, Marius and Ca?sar, 
 and the direful effects of the levelling tenets in the 
 Peasants' War in Germany were urged on the Con- 
 vention, the magi of the day, the true citizens of the 
 world, gave us set proofs that similar results were 
 impossible, and that it was an insult to so philosophic 
 an age, to so enlightened a nation, to dare direct the 
 public eye towards them as to lights of warning."
 
 .THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 151 
 
 It seems to me that a necessary element in the 
 training of a statesman should be this that he should 
 study history, not history of one people or of one 
 country or of one age, but the history of human 
 societies and polities ; that he should trace the career 
 of different forms of governments, systematizing their 
 effects, their apparent points of strength or weakness ; 
 that he should examine periods of anarchy, their 
 causes, conduct, and cure ; that he should investigate 
 the workings of legal codes, and note how far their 
 abiding elements have had their roots in human 
 nature ; how far legislation has interfered well or 
 ill with contractual dealings. The study of a life, 
 you will say. Yes ; arid why should not a statesman 
 study all his life 1 Why should it be considered 
 enough equipment for a statesman that he should 
 have vehement party prejudices, a thick skin, and 
 physical endurance enough for an all-night sitting ? 
 
 A danger to be feared from legislators untrained 
 in history and unchecked by strong control is the 
 danger not only of empirical but of excessive legisla- 
 tion, interfering with the liberty of the subject 
 without necessity or wisdom. Jn modern as in 
 ancient times we have law-makers who almost want 
 to prescribe how the individual shall eat and drink. 
 They attempt to reduce the interworkings of the 
 social organization to a rigid mechanism in which 
 the human instincts shall play little or no part. But 
 history tells us that legislation has narrowed, not 
 extended, its field. All the early codes had their 
 ordinances touching religious and moral as well as
 
 152 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 
 
 civil matters. To legislate for one was regarded as 
 the function of the state as much as to legislate for 
 the other. No advanced community holds these 
 views now. The Puritan regulations only resulted 
 in a violently immoral reaction under Charles II., 
 and their fate in New England was little better. 
 " Those," says Mr. John Morley, " who have thought 
 about the matter most carefully and disinterestedly 
 are agreed that in advanced societies the expedient 
 course is that no portion of the community should 
 insist on imposing its own will upon any other 
 portion, except in matters which are vitally connected 
 with the maintenance of the social union." These 
 are the words of an advanced Liberal, but one whose 
 advanced Liberalism is tempered by historical study. 
 It is, of course, easy to answer that opinions will 
 differ as to what matters do concern the maintenance 
 of the social union. But, at least, it does not concern 
 the maintenance of that union that, for instance, 
 our shops should all compulsorily close at one rather 
 than another of two reasonable hours. The empiric 
 may say that he means to try the experiment. Well, 
 when an empiric declares his willingness to deal off- 
 hand with most complicated questions of economics 
 and human nature, he reminds one of the person 
 who, when asked whether he could play the tiddle, 
 replied that he did not, but was " going to do his 
 best." 
 
 Some time ago I mentioned the prevailing notion 
 that democracy is the inevitable government of the 
 future. To avoid being misjudged, I must premise
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 153 
 
 that I am a believer in a very broad basis of popular 
 government. There is little chance of anyone suc- 
 cessfully assailing the position of Aristotle, that the 
 rule of the many rather than the few is right, inas- 
 much as, though man for man the many may be 
 inferior to the select few, yet collectively they will 
 be more wise and more virtuous. If what I say 
 seems to provide argument against popular govern- 
 ment, it will in reality only be against a weakly or 
 unskilfully constituted form of democracy. 
 
 How do we mostly form our conceptions of the 
 best polity 1 Is it not from a priori reasoning, from 
 habituation, or from undefined sentiment 1 The 
 English Conservative looks with disgust upon 
 American democracy ; the American democract looks 
 with aggressive pity upon the "bloated monarchism" 
 of Europe. Theoretically, there is much to be said 
 for either side. But the contrast of view is mainly 
 due to difference of habituation. Again, in some 
 minds there prevails the sentiment of loyalty to the 
 powers that be ; in others, the sentiment of equality 
 of rights. The prudent man will rather ask what 
 experience has to say. Let us examine very briefly 
 the chief facts in the history of democracy. 
 
 The two best known republics of antiquity were 
 those of Athens and Rome. Both have emerged 
 from despotism, and both have a remarkably brilliant 
 career, the Athenian lasting some 200 years, the 
 Roman 500. The constitution of Athens was over- 
 thrown by conquest from outside, the Roman by 
 internal feuds. Concerning the Athenian democracy
 
 154 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 we may gather as the salient matters for our purpose 
 these facts : During the early period the people was 
 in a measure controlled by certain aristocratic insti- 
 tutions ; it was engrossed with one great idea, the 
 idea of Grecian liberty ; the citizens were of simple 
 habits, loyal to leaders and to their country. Next, 
 the aristocratical trammels are shaken off: circum- 
 stances of the Persian war have brought the state to 
 unwonted influence and vigour ; from wealth springs 
 a magnificent outburst of creative art, from power 
 springs a new idea, the idea of the predominance of 
 a splendid Athens. At the most flourishing period 
 of all, the people has yielded itself largely to the 
 control of one great leader, Pericles, whom it trusts, 
 and who happens to deserve its trust. A little later 
 Pericles, the master-mind, is gone ; worthless or 
 unwise demagogues take his place ; the people rushes 
 recklessly into wars beyond its strength under 
 incompetent generals chosen factiously ; master of 
 the political situation, the populace votes itself self- 
 indulgences, and never knows a settled policy. From 
 this time to the end we need not follow the weary 
 story of A'acillation, intrigue, and political corruption. 
 
 This outline is very roughly drawn ; but, so far as 
 it goes, I trust it is accurate. And it amounts to 
 this, that so long as the Athenians were filled with a 
 worthy sentiment, and so long as they were under 
 salutary restraint, whether exercised by an enlightened 
 body or by a master mind, their state was sound and 
 prosperous ; but when there was no authority to 
 check them but their own when, too, the national
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 155 
 
 idea had burnt itself out, they fell under the sway 
 of factious leaders of narrow views, and there 
 followed indulgence of hasty impulses, feeble efforts, 
 and self-betrayal. 
 
 But, you will say, the Athenians were a peculiarly 
 shifty people. What, then, of Rome ? If, as we 
 did with Athens, we try to gather the salient matters 
 from the history of those five centuries, we must 
 remember that the Roman state was all the time a 
 conquering state, employing the vastest armies of 
 antiquity. Had it been otherwise we cannot tell 
 what its fate might have been. More than half the 
 life of this great republic is one long struggle of the 
 commons to free themselves more and more from the 
 hegemony of the privileged orders. Now and again, 
 when internal troubles or foreign wars made danger 
 imminent, the whole people resigned its powers for a 
 brief and definite term to a single dictator, who 
 secured a new lease of safety and solidity for the 
 state. Let us proceed to the form of government at 
 the most admirable and strongest period of the 
 republic. It was thus : While sovereignty lay 
 nominally with the people that is to say, while the 
 people reigned there was a specially enlightened 
 body, the powerful senate, which really ruled. This 
 great and mostly wise control was the secret of the 
 success of Roman policy and Roman arms. But, 
 unhappily, it was no part of the constitution ; it was 
 a usurpation, wise indeed, and partly sanctioned by 
 prescription, but ever open to popular assault. And 
 it was at length so assailed. Disputes about the
 
 156 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 constitution issued in revolutions and counter-revolu- 
 tions. Large armies were in various parts of the 
 empire. Irregularities showed themselves, and 
 authority proved unable to enforce its will. The 
 result was civil wars and retaliatory proscriptions, 
 till peace at any price became so necessary, and a 
 successful general's power so irresistible, that the 
 helpless, weary people accepted the rule of a military 
 despot, Julius Ctesar, who began an autocracy more 
 absolute than that from which the community had 
 emerged 500 years before. 
 
 The bare existence of the community for so long a 
 period says much for the possibilities of republican 
 government. The solidity of Roman organization 
 and success of Roman effort betoken special merit in 
 the working of its de facto constitution. As with 
 Athens, the verdict comes to this, that the check 
 of the specially enlightened body or the specially 
 enlightened man was the safeguard of the state. But 
 with Rome there is this further lesson, that where 
 large standing armies feel themselves distinct in 
 interest from the people, and masters of the situation, 
 there is imminent risk of the despotism of a military 
 chief. 
 
 Let us look at France. The saying of Louis^XIV. 
 is a by-word, L'etat c'est moi ("7 am the state"). 
 How soon was this doctrine overthrown by that 
 other, of government " for and by the people " ! 
 There can be no question that the latter is the 
 position of reason and justice. It triumphed at the 
 Revolution. Democracy was established. Yet within
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 157 
 
 six years of the extreme measures of '93 the Corsican 
 idol of the soldiery was the practically autocratic 
 First Consul of France. " Since the introduction of 
 political freedom into France," says Sir Henry Maine, 
 " the democratic government has been three times 
 overthrown by the inob of Paris, three times by the 
 army, and three times by foreign invasion." But 
 again we may be told the French are a specially 
 fickle people. Is this so ? Then h'ow do we explain 
 that long period during which the French remained 
 so loyal to their monarchs, and that, too, under an 
 intensity of suffering seldom paralleled in modern 
 times ? No ; the revolutionaries had provided no 
 workable system of restraints upon constitutional 
 change ; and, at the same time, while carrying on 
 enormous wars with enormous enthusiasm, they made 
 the army feel, as the Roman army felt, that it was 
 the arbiter of politics. 
 
 But you will naturally direct your thoughts to the 
 United States of America. What is to be said of 
 this apparently decisive experiment ? Well, first of 
 all, I would say that, relatively to history, its dura- 
 tion has not yet been long. Nor do the corruptions 
 of American politics lead to any feeling of finality 
 or security of that democracy. In speaking of 
 Athens, Rome, and France, I have indicated two 
 chief causes of constitutional overthrow lack of 
 stringent checks when demagogism and self-seeking 
 have demoralized the people's votes ; and the exist- 
 ence of large standing armies, which may exalt a 
 favourite leader to despotic powers. It is precisely
 
 158 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 
 
 from these drawbacks that the United States are free. 
 The constitution is admirably checked throughout 
 by the federal system. To change an article in it is 
 so elaborate a process, and requires such an over- 
 whelming majority of federal congress and state 
 legislatures, that the perpetration of sudden follies is 
 impossible. The powerful senate is so selected that 
 some sort of eminence in the members is assured. 
 The President has greater power than an English 
 sovereign. Mere demagogism can lay no touch upon 
 the constitution. Moreover, that constitution itself 
 was no ideal scheme, evolved, like Rousseau's, " from 
 nature and based on reason." It was the British 
 constitution amended and adapted ; for the Washing- 
 tons and Hamiltons and Madisons recognized the 
 essential doctrine that society must grow, and cannot 
 be mechanically constructed. 
 
 Once more, America is no imperial state. It has 
 no standing army worth the name. There is no 
 danger of the military despot there, though Andrew 
 Jackson's presidency once came perilously near it. 
 But let America loosen its constitutional bands, let 
 it burn for foreign wars and raise armies of dimen- 
 sions proportionate with its size, and the fate of 
 Rome will almost certainly become the fate of the 
 United States. 
 
 My object, as I stated at the beginning, is not to 
 collect all the various teachings which history seems 
 to me to inculcate ; it is only to point out some few 
 of such lessons, and, if possible, to get our rising 
 politicians to recognize that history is, in fact, an
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 159 
 
 essential to the training of the real statesman 
 of him who would fain approach the guardianship 
 of the state duly equipped, and with a due sense 
 of the magnitude of his task. I will, therefore, 
 if you please, set forth in a desultory way certain 
 other of these lessons which I seem to myself to 
 find. 
 
 I would, for instance, direct the impatient revolu- 
 tionary spirit to the fact that all successful or 
 important reformations have taken long time, 
 long preparation to bring about. Rome was not 
 built in a day. A new theory with the salt of per- 
 manence in it has never been made palatable in a 
 day. The Protestant Reformation took over three 
 centuries to accomplish itself. This is not the popular 
 notion. It is frequently supposed that Martin Luther 
 posted his heretical document on the Wittenberg 
 Church door, and, lo ! the Christian world was 
 severed into two great camps. The French Revolu- 
 tion did not originate with the States General of 
 1789. The sounder part of the revolutionary ideas 
 had been spreading themselves half a century before. 
 Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau had been teachers that 
 made possible first a Mirabeau, and then a Robespierre 
 and a Danton. Indeed, Michelet begins his history 
 of the Revolution with Dante and Huss and the 
 thinkers of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. 
 Christianity itself took nine centuries to cover Europe. 
 There is no such thing as millions of people being 
 suddenly polarized by a single spark of thought, how- 
 ever 'divinely true. It is only error, like disease,
 
 160 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 which is readily contagious ; truth establishes itself 
 slowly, like returning health. 
 
 Now, it seems to me that some of the novel ideas 
 which are working in small but vigorous sections of 
 society to-day make more demands upon our capacity 
 for mental change than Christianity made upon the 
 Pagan world or the Reformation upon the Catholic 
 world. Some of these ideas may have truth in them. 
 One of the lessons of history is to make us careful in 
 assertion. Contemporaries have scarcely ever realized 
 the significance of a thought-movement. Truth does 
 not necessarily lie in the multitude of believers, 
 and there have always been individuals Buddha, 
 Socrates, Bacon in advance of their times. The 
 scholar in his study, the philosopher in his garden, 
 has often had a keener perception of social wants 
 than the active man of affairs. Some of these move- 
 ments, then, may have truth in them. On the other 
 hand, they may not. There have been entirely false 
 movements which, as Gamaliel would say, " have 
 not been of God." To what lesson do these facts 
 point? To this, that, on the one hand, fullest free- 
 dom of discussion should be granted to every social 
 scheme ; but, on the other, the least outbreak of 
 lawlessness in its behalf should be unflinchingly 
 suppressed. As truth can never be silenced by for- 
 bidding it a hearing, so it does not require violence 
 to propagate it. John Stuart Mill gives the reasons 
 for freedom of discussion. The new opinion may be 
 true or partly true ; and, in any case, the only way 
 of preventing truths from becoming mere meaningless
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 161 
 
 prejudices is to have them vigorously assailed. If, 
 therefore, small bodies of persons have a banner with 
 some strange device of economics or politics, let them 
 freely wave it, until by any form of violence they 
 seek to realize all at once their particular conception 
 of the millennium. They may be right ; if so, they 
 must be satisfied with the legitimate process of 
 gradually impregnating the general mind. 
 
 And, apart from economics, it is unfortunately 
 necessary still to remind men of the duty of tolerance 
 in the matter of belief. Greater religious tolerance 
 must inevitably come to the man who has any 
 capacity for realizing history. He will find abundant 
 instances of two opposite intolerances, and neither 
 in the right. He will see that there has been no 
 lengthened period in which a faith existed homo- 
 geneously over any considerable space. He will note 
 that morality has but partially depended on the par- 
 ticular creed a man professed to hold, that Socrates 
 and Sakya-muni had an ideal of practical morality 
 not differing essentially from ours. He will survey 
 the panorama of schisms and sects of old, and will 
 realize the possibility of a future time when historical 
 observers may similarly contemplate ourselves. He 
 will see the old pagan faiths broken into philosophic 
 sects, whose charity towards each other was like that 
 of Christian sects to-day, and who would have 
 deserved, mutato nomine, the sarcasm, " See how 
 these Christians love one another!" He will find 
 the less active-minded part of humanity from time to 
 time reforming their beliefs, by Mazdeism, Con- 
 
 12
 
 162 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 fucianism, Buddhism ; while the more active-minded 
 Europeans accept the solution of Christianity. So 
 he will find severance of church from church, west 
 from east, Protestant from Romish ; and, again, 
 Protestantism splitting into all conceivable and 
 inconceivable sects. These are superficial facts to 
 record ; but the wonder is that good people refuse to 
 learn the lesson they proclaim that there is no 
 finality with dogmatic creeds, nor do morality and 
 principle require it. 
 
 There are many earnest people who agonize in 
 heart at the spread of scepticism. Now, of the 
 unutterable wretchedness of atheism I have nothing 
 to say. But scepticism means attitude of inquiry, 
 and one would in all else think such an attitude was 
 good. Does history console us or alarm us 1 It tells 
 us, I believe, that an era of scepticism, of earnest 
 inquiry, has always been the precursor of an era of 
 regenerated and revitalized religion. History tells 
 us what Socrates tells us, that man is a religious 
 being. He has always been found, when an existing 
 creed ceased to animate, providing himself with new 
 guiding principles of faith and hope and conduct. 
 
 Some of you may say, " But, if this is the way you 
 talk about politics and society and religion and 
 tolerance and possessing one's soul in patience, your 
 historical study seems merely to lead to a position of 
 indolent indifferentism." Not at all. Tolerance and 
 large concession are not incompatible with the most 
 strenuous action. " Every matter hath two handles," 
 but nevertheless one of them must be grasped, and
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 163 
 
 grasped manfully. Because one listens patiently to 
 the other side, he will none the less in the day of 
 action have his decision ready one way or the other. 
 And is it less likely to be the right way than when it 
 is followed through the mere accident of habituation 
 or prepossession? The historical .student should, 
 indeed, above all others, seize strongly upon one of 
 the two handles of a matter. One of the plainest 
 lessons he has learned is " that to be weak is miser- 
 able," and not only miserable, but ruinous. 
 
 Another lesson is that of the power of an idea, of 
 a great principle, working in a people ; and the 
 wai-ning that goes with it is, that so long as the idea 
 is a living and informing national idea, the result is 
 rapid progress ; but when the idea loses its reality, 
 loses its stimulating power, the same people may 
 present a spectacle of weakness and decay. We hear 
 much about racial differences. We may safely admit 
 the diverse effects of blood, but they are commonly 
 exaggerated. Everyone knows, or should know, that 
 there is no inconsiderable Celtic element in the 
 English blood, and a very large Teutonic element in 
 the French blood. Everyone knows, or should know, 
 that the Lowland Scot is of exactly the same race 
 with, at least, the northern Englishman. We are 
 apt to attribute certain moral or intellectual pecu- 
 liarities to racial differences where racial differ- 
 ences are but slight or do not exist. If the Lowland 
 Scotch qualities diverge so widely from the English, 
 they do so only because of the divergence of the 
 ideas that have been encouraged by each. Whether
 
 164 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 
 
 a people is warlike, inventive, or inert depends less 
 on race than on the nature of its ideas, and these in 
 turn largely depend on circumstances. Many a weak 
 man or woman has been braced up by an enthusiasm 
 to endure or even to court martyrdom ; so, with a 
 similar intensity of faith in an absorbing principle, a 
 people has shown, sometimes for one generation some- 
 times for many, an immense zeal, and put forth an 
 immense effort, of which it was not suspected capable, 
 and which it was unable to maintain. The Saracens, 
 seized with the Mahometan enthusiasm, emerged 
 from an obscure corner of Arabia and spread their 
 empire from the Indus to the Atlantic. To-day their 
 descendants are thought capable of nothing great. 
 The little Greek states, possessed with the indomit- 
 able principle of Grecian freedom, gloriously conquered 
 the mightiest force the Persian could assemble. Yet 
 in less than seventy years they were severally in- 
 triguing miserably with that beaten foe to buy his 
 help against each other. The Jews are a remark- 
 able instance of a people in whom a great idea, 
 the theocratic principle, has worked marvellous 
 things. The Roman was invincible so long as 
 he felt and bore himself as Civis Romanus, a 
 citizen sharing in the immense majesty of the Roman 
 name. After the Revolution, the enthusiasm of the 
 French for their newborn ideals and regenerated 
 state was such that they readily took up arms almost 
 against the world. Call their enthusiasm patriotism, 
 or call it chauvinism if you like trueness or false- 
 ness of the principle matters not there is the fact of
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 165 
 
 the stupendous effort, and, except for the vastness 
 of the undertaking, the stupendous success. The 
 Germans have their idea, inviolability of the Father- 
 land, perhaps also its ascendancy in learning and in 
 war. The idea of England once was to be the helper of 
 the oppressed, the vindicator of human freedom. 
 What is its idea now 1 Is it propositi tenax, willing 
 to sacrifice near expediencies to some great and high 
 resolve 1 We cannot trust entirely to the effect of 
 blood, to racial virtues. What the Anglo-Saxon 
 ancestor was under certain motive influences is no 
 proof of what we shall or can be without them. 
 
 And this sudden and powerful influence of the 
 idea leads me to another warning, to wit, that in the 
 movements of nations it is largely the unexpected 
 which befals. The great conquerors of the ancient 
 East, Assyria and Egypt, were not destroyed the one 
 by the other, but by a new and unsuspected power, 
 the Medes and Persians. I have already mentioned 
 the Saracenic outbreak. An Asiatic irruption into 
 Europe left Hungary peopled by a wholly alien stock, 
 and another the Turkish swallowed the Greek 
 Empire. Imperial Rome fell before the despised 
 barbarian Goth. The Romans turned suddenly into 
 a nautical people during the Punic wars ; the 
 Egyptians did the same after the descents of certain 
 mysterious northern fleets. Of late, in our own half 
 of the world, one country has sprung at a bound 
 from barbarism to civilization I mean Japan. 
 What may come of the awakening in China we 
 cannot tell. The British are dominant in India to-
 
 166 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 day, and have been so for over a century. But for 
 more than three hundred years the Romans were in 
 Britain, and thought that they had come to stay for 
 ever : perhaps the last people the earlier Bom an 
 occupants had feared were the barbarian Germans 
 from over the North Sea. Now, it is quite likely 
 that superior persons will maintain that these facts, 
 while very interesting in their way, are of no bearing 
 upon or use to us. Possibly so. Yet it is well to 
 adopt all provisions for future strength, of which 
 provisions, perhaps, a mighty federation is not the 
 least. 
 
 I might go on in this way from lesson to lesson of 
 history. I might show by instances of Jud;va, 
 Athens, Venice, Genoa, England, how national 
 greatness requires no territorial greatness. I might 
 show how that old fable of the bundle of sticks 
 applies to the federation of states, by the instance of 
 the Jewish people, which gradually sank before the 
 neighbouring powers from the day when Jeroboam's 
 men raised their secession cry. " To your tents, O 
 Israel ;" by the instance of the commonwealths of 
 Greece, which, when united, destroyed the enormous 
 Persian hosts, but which were conquered later one 
 by one by a comparatively petty prince because of 
 their fratricidal feuds ; by the instance of that 
 sinister Roman policy, which, summed up in " Divide 
 et imperci" acted successfully in east and west and 
 north and south ; by the instance of a disunited 
 Poland ; by a contrast between a weak overrun 
 Germany of little states and a united German
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP HISTORY. 167 
 
 Empire which sways the policy of Europe. I might, 
 once more, show how small have been the causes of 
 wearisome and bloody feuds how Big-Eiidians have 
 slaughtered Little-Endians for years arid years, and 
 how ultimately Guelfs and Ghibellines knew as little 
 why they fought as those Irish factions who " broke 
 each other's heads all over Ireland about the colour 
 of a cow." But for one evening's consideration we 
 have enough. I will therefore end by briefly recalling 
 certain points to which I have given some promin- 
 ence. 
 
 History teaches the impossibility of realizing 
 extreme socialistic plans. It teaches the futility of 
 over-legislation. It teaches that violent revolutions, 
 short and sharp, lead mostly to worse reaction. It 
 teaches tolerance and slowness in realizing reforma- 
 tions. Concerning our form of government it has 
 warnings we cannot despise. This community of 
 ours is practically a democracy. It has established 
 the rule of the many. Good. Democracy is the 
 form of rule which best fits with a natural sense of 
 justice. It gives a free career to talent, and this is 
 its signal merit. The needed warning, however, is 
 that eras of unlimited democracy have not proved 
 necessarily eras of advance, nor have they had per- 
 manence. Now "history," says Mr. John Morley, 
 "is a great pit-alter, a prodigious wasteful experi- 
 ment, from which a certain number of precious 
 results have been extracted, but which is not now, 
 and never has been at any other time, a final measure 
 of all the possibilities of the time." That is to say,
 
 168 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 it might all have been so much better if people had 
 only known. Well, we have the benefit of others' 
 experience, and it seems a pity not to use that expe- 
 rience for our own profit. The " prodigious wasteful 
 experiment" shows that democracy, however just 
 and reasonable in theory, has peculiar risks which 
 render its existence peculiarly frail. 
 
 Democracies have always been born of some sort 
 of struggle ; their initial guidance has always been 
 in the hands of certain greater men, who were made 
 leaders because they were greater men. The early 
 times of democracies have therefore been times of 
 wisdom and strength of counsel, political probity, 
 social progress. But afterwards the path to leader- 
 ship lies through smaller questions, meaner interests. 
 The chosen are chosen less and less for intellectual 
 and moral capacity, and more and more for party 
 vehemence one might say virulence. The best 
 minds do not find their way to the legislative bodies. 
 Demagogism and short-sighted views prevail, and 
 counsel is "darkened" by "words without under- 
 standing." This has been the usual career of 
 democracies. Is history to repeat itself 1 I only 
 ask that our citizens should look this question 
 squarely in the face. I suggest no specifics. But 
 this much I say, that, for the order, progress, and 
 permanence of democracy, it is entirely necessary to 
 educate the people by all possible means of education, 
 not only by the common school teaching of facts in 
 childhood, but by every elevating influence and 
 reason-training process of art and science in maturity.
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 169 
 
 Not only should the state do this with a liberal hand, 
 but every specially enlightened citizen and every 
 wealthy citizen should of himself, as a matter even 
 of personal interest, act when and how he can to 
 improve the intellectual and moral powers of those 
 whose talents or advantages are less than his. It is 
 not enough to leave the moral training to the Church, 
 and the intellectual training to the school, and then 
 to lament over the ignorance and vices of the voting 
 populace. 
 
 And our legislators should be chosen in some wise 
 way which will ensure principle, loyalty, capacity, and 
 make them a body of light and leading, not of passion 
 or obstruction. To suggest that the present local and 
 party method is a false one will seem Utopian to the 
 so-called practical man. To suggest a safer method 
 would be to invite him to call me an unpractical 
 doctrinaire. I am not at all afraid of these re- 
 proaches, but such suggestions are now beyond my 
 province. 
 
 Again, democracies cannot endure unless they have 
 a rigorous system of checks upon licentious tampering 
 with the constitution. History tends to show that 
 the outcry against senates and upper houses is an 
 outcry to which no serious statesman should lend an 
 ear ; he should only the more resolve that such a cry 
 is a sign of threatening dissolution, and that it 
 becomes his duty to more and more secure the firm 
 authority of the threatened check. 
 
 Let me end by saying that, despite the warnings I 
 discover in history, I cannot but most firmly believe
 
 170 THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY. 
 
 in the gradual perfecting of human society. The 
 golden age has not passed. 1 cannot pretend to " dip 
 into the future" and see " the vision of the world and 
 all the wonder that shall be," but believe, despite 
 the present lamentations over the scepticism and 
 supposed moral indifferentism of our times, that the 
 true spiritual capacity of men is at least as great as 
 it has been at any past epoch. The age is merely 
 correcting its compasses, in order " to find its east" 
 with more certainty. 
 
 " New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient 
 
 good uncouth ; 
 
 They must upward still and onward who would keep 
 abreast of truth."
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 SOME time ago, in an address upon the subject of 
 " Culture and Cant," I mentioned that among the 
 most valuable aids to culture we must include travel ; 
 and, mindful at the time of certain crude utter- 
 ances on the part of native-born Australians, I ven- 
 tured to say that, though their association engaged 
 my sympathies, it had a great and palpable weakness. 
 The weakness lies in this, that, from the nature of 
 the case, the native-born Australians must, as a body, 
 be the least-travelled among us. I entertained, and 
 entertain more and more, a fear that our rising 
 generation is forming a most exaggerated estimate of 
 the relative importance of our country and ourselves 
 in the world ; that it is filling itself with too com- 
 placent a satisfaction with our own virtues and ideals ; 
 or, in other words, that it is encouraging a habit of 
 self-congratulation and self-assertion, which may 
 greatly injure the future history of our country in 
 the evolution of its society and its internal and 
 external policies. The remedy for this mental 
 infirmity, I said, lies in culture, through reading, 
 reflection, discussion, conversation, and, finally,
 
 172 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 travel observant travel among peoples older, more 
 powerful, more populous, or possessing a greater 
 aggregate of political and social wisdom and experi- 
 ence than ourselves. This branch of the association 
 has done me the honour to ask me to treat of this 
 educational, this corrective agent travel in par- 
 ticular. 
 
 I shall, if you please, deal with the subject from 
 an entirely general platform, in its general human 
 interest, and not from a specially Australian point 
 of view. I conceive this to be the wish of the society. 
 Let us, then, ask ourselves the simple question, 
 " What good does a man get from travel, and how 
 does he get it ?" and only incidentally, when occasion 
 arises for illustration from ourselves or application to 
 ourselves, let us ask the narrower question, " What 
 particular good can an Australian get from travel?" 
 There is, I am aware, an obvious disadvantage em- 
 barrassing one who, not being an Australian native, 
 speaks on such a question before Australian natives. 
 There is a danger that he may unwittingly and 
 unwillingly gall their vanity by insufficient praise or 
 by implied dispraise. But we are not here to praise or 
 to dispraise any country. We are here from a desire 
 to see things as they are, and to learn to make the 
 best of them and the best of ourselves. The objects 
 of this association are, one must confess, not very 
 definitely understood outside ; but I apprehend that 
 one chief object for which you band together is pre- 
 cisely this, to see things as they are among ourselves 
 and among other peoples, and, possessed of this just-
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 173 
 
 ness of vision, to work for the improvement of this 
 country and the elevation of its citizens. How will 
 travel help us to do this ? 
 
 The doctrine that travel is good has always pre- 
 vailed widely. You are aware that it has been laid 
 down theologically that the criterion of a true article 
 of belief is that it should satisfy the condition, quod 
 semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus that it has 
 always, everywhere, and by everybody been held 
 good. The belief in the utility of travel could very 
 well stand the application of this test. Travel is 
 universally regarded as the crown of a liberal educa- 
 tion. A " travelled" man is spoken of with a certain 
 respect in virtue of some superiority which he is 
 supposed to have gained from what he has seen and 
 heard. The same feeling, I suppose, was at the 
 bottom of the old German custom, according to which 
 a handicraftsman, after serving his apprenticeship, 
 was made to spend another period of pupilage his 
 Wanderjahre in going to and fro, working among 
 strange places and strange people. 
 
 There have been expressed, it is true, a few depre- 
 ciations of travel, as of everything else. Socrates, 
 or rather Plato, thought little of its usefulness ; but 
 it should be remembered that, in his day, the Greeks 
 fancied themselves an absolutely superior people, 
 with nothing to learn from the barbarians, who 
 were merely a foil for the setting of the Hellenic 
 gem. Addison, in the Spectator, pretends to regard 
 foreign travel as chiefly productive of coxcombry 
 and affectation ; yet this unfavourable statement is
 
 174 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 subsequently largely qualified, and was plainly 
 prompted by the immediate exigencies of an essay 
 directed against certain foolish innovations in the 
 fashion of dress and behaviour. According to some 
 well-known lines of the poet Cowper 
 
 " A dunce that has been sent to roam 
 Excels a dunce that has been kept at home." 
 
 Cowper, however, had never travelled himself, and, 
 moreover, it is not with dunces that we are now 
 concerned. I have thought it fair to record these 
 contrary votes, and I will join to them the fact that 
 Emerson also speaks slightingly of travel. Yet, 
 when we find this same Emerson himself travelling 
 twice to England, observing English character and 
 English customs, and thinking his observations 
 instructive enough for publication, we find it difficult 
 to reconcile his theory with his practice. We may 
 safely say that the few opposition votes in the 
 assembly of the sages do little to counterbalance 
 that general consensus of ancient and modern judg- 
 ment, which tells us, with Shakspere, that " Home- 
 keeping youths have ever homely wits." Whom does 
 Homer put forward as the type of prudence and 
 sagacity, as the man who always succeeds where 
 others fail ? It is Ulysses, the man " who saw the 
 cities of many men and got to know their mind." 
 He is the man of many resources and ready judg- 
 ment. The motto " Ne te qucesiveris extra," has few 
 supporters in literature. 
 
 Yet I do not preach passive acquiescence in any
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 175 
 
 tradition, however old, however well supported with 
 a " great cloud of witnesses." The ultimate question 
 will persistently suggest itself, " But is it so, and 
 why is it so ?" 
 
 Here I will ask you to. note that the exact subject 
 of my remarks is the teachings of travel. The 
 interest and pleasure of it lie outside my scope. All 
 the abundant delights in the choicest and most mar- 
 vellous scenes of natural beauty ; all the eager 
 enjoyment excited by the novelty of foreign life and 
 customs ; all the priceless sentiments evoked by the 
 contemplation of the monuments of ancient glory 
 and grandeur ; all the intense satisfaction of behold- 
 ing with one's very eyes the scenes that have grown 
 familiar in books all these I am in duty bound to 
 pass over. Not, indeed, that these contemplations 
 are without a kind, and valuable kind, of teaching. 
 It is impossible to stand in Greece or Italy, where 
 
 " Poetic fields encompass us around, 
 And still we seem to tread on classic ground," 
 
 without being reminded that the nineteenth century 
 is, after all, not everything admirable, and that we 
 may very well abate some of our modern self-conceit. 
 One can hardly look upon such a city as Athens or 
 the tinier Weimar without having the conviction 
 borne in upon him that, after all, it is not acres but 
 human brains that make a community great. One 
 can hardly traverse the deserted regions of Egypt 
 and Assyria, strewed with their prodigious monu- 
 ments, without having the salutary lesson, "Sic
 
 176 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 transit gloria mundi" impressed upon his mind as a 
 salutary corrective. Yet these lessons of historical 
 suggestion, though most valuable, are not exactly the 
 lessons of which you expect me to speak to-night. 
 
 Again, I must premise -that there are different 
 conceptions of travel ; there are travellers and 
 travellers. There are those who travel with the 
 seeing eye and the hearing ear, observant, receptive, 
 docile. And there are those who travel with a mind 
 in a perpetual attitude of aggressiveness, full of 
 prejudice and preconception, determined to wonder 
 at nothing, to admire nothing, still less to learn any- 
 thing. There have been not a few such travellers 
 from our own midst. It is no uncommon thing to 
 read of a visitor to Europe being interviewed on his 
 return, and it occasionally happens that his first 
 words are these, " I have seen no finer street than 
 Collins street ; " and beneath all his comments, 
 especially if they are perforce complimentary to the 
 foreign land, there seems to be running in a kind of 
 qualificatory or protesting strain that same under- 
 song, " I have seen no finer street than Collins- 
 street." I have known of one case where all that 
 the visitor to London could find to say was that " it 
 seemed a badly laid-out town." Well, ladies and 
 gentlemen, there can be no reasonable objection to a 
 comparison of streets nor to a criticism on the ground- 
 plan of London, but when the sum and substance of 
 a traveller's observation amounts simply to this, I 
 think the poet Cowper's remark applies well, and that 
 the " dunce who has been sent to roam excels the
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 177 
 
 dunce who has been kept at home." Such superficial 
 travelling is not the travelling of Ulysses. He not 
 only "saw the cities," but "got to know the mind" 
 of the peoples. There we have it in a nutshell. 
 When European visitors come among us, and are 
 whirled through our country in a special train lined 
 with satin, they do not even see our cities, still less 
 do they get to know our minds. When they content 
 themselves with the talk of one set of politicians at 
 the banquet table, they do not get to know much 
 that is worth knowing ; and when they go back 
 whence they came and indite their impressions of us 
 in what they call a book, we see plainly that they 
 have learned nothing of our thoughts as a people or 
 of the merits of our institutions. And so it is with 
 our own travellers to Europe. I set little value, 
 little practical value, upon the travel of one of us, 
 who steps upon an ocean steamer here, rushes through" 
 India and Egypt, "doing" them, as the vulgar term 
 goes, then settles like a butterfly on this town and 
 that of Italy, " doing" the monuments, picture- 
 galleries, and museums, staying short whiles at 
 exclusive hotels, providing himself with a set of phrases 
 about art, architecture, and antiquities as a stock- 
 in-trade for the conversation of society, but without 
 real improvement or storage of mind for his own or 
 his country's use. I do not say such travel is without 
 a sort of use of an aesthetic kind. Certainly it has 
 its intense enjoyments, but it is not the sort of travel 
 which instructs to any practical end. For this 
 instruction we must pass among the people, in their 
 
 13
 
 178 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVKL. 
 
 homes, their shops, their factories ; in the streets, the 
 cafes, and the theatres. We must inspect their 
 public and private life, their institutions, their arts 
 and sciences; we must be on the watch for things to 
 be learned and things to be unlearned. This is travel 
 in the sense in which I use the word. 
 
 Generally speaking, the prime use of such travel 
 as this is to secure a standard of measurement outside 
 ourselves, a standard whereby to measure the extent 
 of our civilization. Most peoples, civilized or savage, 
 are satisfied with their own culture, because com- 
 parisons are not continually forced upon them. That 
 one is contented with it is, therefore, no proof that it 
 is so good as it should be and might be made to be. 
 The chief object. of every nation in its legislation, in 
 its social and moral code, should be to advance its 
 civilization ; and it will do this only by clearing itself 
 Tof the clog of patriotic ignorance and conceit, by the 
 choice of proper ideals of life, and by readily absorbing 
 all new lessons in politics, manners, education, arts, 
 sciences, and manufactures. That is to say, it will 
 endeavour to see itself as it really is and other peoples 
 as they really are, choosing from all possible sources 
 not only whatsoever things are useful, but also what- 
 soever things are pure> amiable, and of good report. 
 In brief, it will gather to itself whatsoever lessons 
 tend to make human life more happy and healthy and 
 material prosperity more prosperous. 
 
 In the first place, then, travel is the great correc- 
 tive of patriotic ignorance and conceit. There are 
 intertwined with our earliest recollections certain
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 179 
 
 notions connected with our country, our race, and our 
 religion, notions which are as frequently wrong as 
 right, but which have always formed part of our 
 belief, and have coine to be axioms out of all ques- 
 tioning. These earliest notions are the hardest to 
 eradicate. Among them is the belief of every child 
 in every nation that he belongs to the best of all 
 peoples, best in that direction in which the national 
 ideals happen to lie. If a savage, he is brought up 
 to believe his people the most warlike and terrible. 
 If a member of a civilized community, that vestige of 
 savagery still remains indeed ; he is still led to think 
 that one man of his people is physically worth three 
 or more of any other ; but he will have other ideals, 
 in which he will fancy his nation to share most 
 largely. Perhaps it is the most honest and straight- 
 forward nation, as the English claim to be ; perhaps 
 it is the most progressive people, as the Americans 
 fancy themselves ; perhaps the people of. the com- 
 pletest civilization in point of social life and manners, 
 which is the particular foible of the French. I need 
 not illustrate these huge assumptions any further. 
 It is too well known that every people is so calmly 
 convinced of its superiority to all other peoples, in 
 some one or several respects, that to question the 
 fact from within is regarded as brutal iconoclasm, if 
 not as a sort of unpatriotic blasphemy. Add to this 
 that natural love of the native soil and the native 
 tongue, which no man can or need analyse. These, 
 and the innate desire to appear well in our own eyes 
 and in those of others, constitute that inferior sort
 
 180 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 of patriotism which is commonly paraded as a virtue. 
 For myself, I neither call this patriotism nor yet a 
 virtue. Patriotism, to rny mind, is not an idle conceit of 
 our country, instilled no one knows how, and based 
 on very questionable data. No ! Patriotism is the 
 earnest desire to serve our country, to work for its 
 improvement in all the ways in whicli it stands in need 
 of improvement, and if need be to die for its sake. 
 No man can do this rightly unless he first clearly 
 perceives wherein his civilization is strong and 
 wherein it is weak, and the best way to learn this is 
 by travel. There have, indeed, been thinkers who 
 have spun ideal constitutions, ideal civilizations, out 
 of their own brains. Plato has done it. More has 
 done it in the " Utopia," Bacon in the " New 
 Atlantis." But the constitution evolved by the 
 idealist might be an entirely unworkable constitution, 
 or a very uncomfortable constitution for the happi- 
 ness of a people who are not idealists. Ideals when 
 put in practice not unfrequently break down. The 
 only solid improvement of legislation and society lies 
 in the gradual application to them of principles and 
 methods which have been found successful elsewhere, 
 or for which a successful analogue or at least a 
 successful argument is to be found somewhere in 
 operation. 
 
 The other sort of patriotism, which consists in self- 
 laudation and self-conceit, is a positive mischief. It 
 prevents us doing justice to the excellences of other 
 countries. It seals the eye to what is superior in 
 them. It encourages the worship of pernicious
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP TRAVEL. 181 
 
 fetishes. If we make ourselves like those wretched 
 recluses who are for ever contemplating their own 
 navel, we must necessarily get false notions of our 
 material importance, and of the value of our own 
 virtues ; and the consequence is an assumption of 
 superiority which is not only unwarranted, but which 
 may have disastrous practical results. The Franco- 
 German war of 1870 was largely due to the patriotic 
 conceit, the chauvinism, of the French, who, as a 
 nation, knew nothing of the military resources of 
 Germany, altogether underrated them, and vastly 
 magnified their own. When they perambulated the 
 streets of Paris, shouting " Berlin," their mental 
 pictures of France and Frenchmen, Germany and 
 Germans, were all distorted and out of perspective. 
 They had no standard of measurement, and they did 
 not get it till the Germans themselves brought it 
 home to them. Had they seen themselves as the 
 Germans saw them, and the Germans as they were, 
 the war which ended so disastrously for them would 
 certainly not have begun in 1870. France would 
 have learned something even from its enemy. 
 
 I have chosen this as the most obvious modern 
 instance, not because the French have a monopoly of 
 patriotic conceit. China once thought itself able to 
 resist the combined power of England and France. 
 The English themselves are largely endowed with 
 self-approbation of a somewhat obtrusive kind. 
 Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am an Englishman, 
 and, I believe, as patriotic as most; but I have 
 observed my fellow-countrymen abroad as well as at
 
 182 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 home, and it would be a curious tiling for rne to 
 stand here reproving patriotic ignorance, and mean- 
 while to show a great amount of it myself by seeing 
 only good in my own compatriots. The average 
 Englishman believes in things English, and only in 
 things English. He stalks through the world, his 
 own possessions and other peoples' possessions, with 
 the air of the "just man made perfect." He seems 
 to be always saying to himself, " Civis Romanes 
 sum" to be thanking God every day that he is an 
 Englishman. In his view it is sufficient argument 
 against any custom of society, any view of life, any 
 procedure of policy, to say that it is un-English ; it 
 may be a frivolous French notion, or a pedantic 
 German notion, or a smart Yankee notion, but it is 
 not English, and that is enough. Again, the ordinary 
 Englishman is an impertinent traveller. In France 
 or Italy he is apt to treat the French or Italians as 
 foreigners, forgetting that he is himself the foreigner. 
 He is more inclined to pass remarks than to learn 
 something of use to himself and his own country. 
 Yet, if that same man were to travel in the receptive 
 spirit, if he were to mingle and converse with the 
 ordinary folk of the countries he visits, he would, 
 as the advertisements say, learn something to his 
 advantage. He would find that his exalted view of 
 England is not wholly shared, that it is seriously and 
 in manifold respects modified by other peoples, even 
 by peoples whom he thinks sufficiently low in the 
 scale of nations to content themselves with the 
 humble role of hero- worshippers. I was in Brazil in
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 183 
 
 the year 1880, and was considerably taken aback by 
 the fact that persons who could speak both English 
 and French would even address an Englishman in 
 French rather than in his own tongue, because of the 
 " superiority of the French over the English, both as 
 a military and a social power." I do not consider 
 that this was good manners on the part of my 
 Brazilian friends, but I do consider that it taught 
 me something. It taught me, for instance, that a 
 country cannot go on bragging and blustering and at 
 the same time purchasing peace at any price without 
 falling in the estimation of other nations. 
 
 Foreigners of sense are quite ready to admit the 
 solid excellences of many English institutions, but 
 they by no means find them all admirable, and they 
 by no means see in the English themselves such 
 perfect patterns of probity and virtue. We, for 
 instance, are always assured that in Central Asia 
 Russia is a dishonest aggressor and England is the 
 champion of justice, whose part it is to play St. 
 George to Russia's dragon. But what do other 
 nations think 1 I take up the Revue des deux Mondes, 
 which is by no means an Anglophobic magazine, and 
 which in point of critical and literary quality excels 
 all productions of the kind in any country, and I 
 find that the French mind sees the case thus : 
 " The two countries, Russia and England, pursue the 
 same means, a rectification of frontiers, a proceeding 
 eminently elastic and free from scruples ; both excite 
 disturbance among the neighbouring peoples so that 
 they may send troops to restore order." This is the
 
 184 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 view of the best French uiincl concerning our conduct 
 in Burmah and Russian conduct in Turkestan. I do 
 not say it is the true view, but I do say that it is 
 very wholesome to see ourselves in these matters as 
 others see us. There is a German view of the 
 English in the great poet and thinker, Goethe 
 " The English are pedants." Yet Goethe was well- 
 disposed towards England for the most part. Are 
 we pedants ? Let us ask a great American, Emerson. 
 He, speaking of Wordsworth, describes him as hav- 
 ing " a narrow and very English mind." Are then 
 " narroAv" and "very English" synonymous terms? 
 Perhaps we are not schemers like the Russians ; 
 perhaps we are not pedants or characterized by 
 narrowness of mind ; yet it is well for us to know 
 that we have a faculty for appearing so to our fellow 
 men in other countries, and it is well for us further 
 to remember that their practical policy, not to speak 
 of their sentiments, towards us may be very seriously 
 affected by the manner in which we as a nation 
 impress them. These are quotations from literature, 
 but literature cannot in this respect inform us with a 
 thousandth part of the certainty with which travel 
 instructs. 
 
 To England, above all countries, the gift of seeing 
 herself and others as they are, is essential. With 
 colonies so variously situated, with so many points of 
 contact with foreign powers and foreign feelings, 
 with peoples of all degrees of civilization or savagery 
 beneath her sway, in Ireland, the colonies, India, and 
 the isles, it is manifestly necessary that the rulers of
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 185 
 
 England should rid themselves of patriotic ignorance. 
 They should understand all these peoples, not by 
 hearsay, not through books and statistics, but through 
 travel, which shall both behold their cities and also 
 get to know their minds. If England is satisfied 
 that she is just, she should also (as Matthew Arnold 
 has said) learn how to be amiable, and amiability in 
 government comes not from a knowledge of statistics, 
 but from an intimate knowledge of minds and 
 manners. In former days, America was lost to her 
 because she was ignorant of the life and sentiments 
 and strength of so remote a dependency. Now-a- 
 days she is endeavouring to bring herself into actual 
 contact with her colonies. She is adjusting the 
 perspective of her mental picture. Her statesmen 
 will come more and more to see us as we are, our 
 statesmen will go more aftd more to see her as she is. 
 
 I have not spared my own native land ; it is there- 
 fore only fair that I should not speak smooth things 
 of this land of my adoption. If there are multi- 
 tudes of people in the British Isles whose knowledge 
 of the colonies is one of statistics and atlases only, 
 on the other hand it is plain to see that there are 
 multitudes of people growing up here whose know, 
 ledge of the British Isles is one of books and hearsay 
 only. I do not hesitate to say that the whole per- 
 spective of these persons is likely to be wrong, and 
 that such knowledge is wholly insufficient for dealing 
 with immense questions like that of separation, more 
 or less remote. But these are great subjects, and we 
 must not make the text of this discourse a peg on
 
 186 THE TEACHIXGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 which to hang a discussion of imperial federation or 
 separation. 
 
 How few of our conceptions of national types are 
 at all near the mark ! The European notion of 
 American civilization is but very partially true. On 
 the other hand, an un travelled American refuses to 
 understand that there can be anything in older 
 realms superior to his own resources and the machinery 
 of his own institutions. The untravellecl European 
 has a vulgar notion of American life and culture, 
 which Mr. J. Russell Lowell represents in this form : 
 "A country without traditions, without ennobling 
 associations, a scramble of parvenus, with a horrible 
 consciousness of shoddy running through politics, 
 manners, art, literature nay, religion itself." And 
 then Mr. Lowell goes on to tell us that when two 
 millions of Americans were fighting with all ' the 
 heroism of antiquity in the civil war, the European 
 began to rub his eyes and say, " You know, fellows 
 don't fight like that for a shop-till." And so we 
 might go on quoting the crude opinions of nation 
 upon nation, and it would be no difficult task to 
 show how peoples are galled and piqued into habitual 
 enmity by unjust caricatures produced by patriotic 
 ignorance and intolerance. 
 
 I need not pursue this part of niy subject much 
 further. There is,. however, one illustration I cannot 
 exclude. The Englishman, proud in his somewhat 
 sombre and rigid ethical attitude, is apt to think of 
 France as one great hotbed of all the immoralities of 
 Zolaism. He fancies French life to be as tainted as
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 187 
 
 its literature. Yet we need not sojourn long in 
 France to find that this is not true, but that there is 
 among the French, especially among the working 
 classes, a domestic life of a more pleasing and more 
 amiable kind than among the same classes in many 
 parts of England. We may notice, too, a general 
 impression that England is the home of wealth and 
 solidity, and France of cheap show and frivolity. 
 Yet the working man of France is, as a rule, a cleaner, 
 more thrifty, and more respectable man than his com- 
 peer in Glasgow, Liverpool, or Birmingham. 
 
 I have spoken most of England, because it is best 
 known to us, and because we can all remember what 
 shapes the patriotic conceit of our childhood took. But 
 all countries have had and have their share of this 
 chauvinism, this spreadeagleism, this " contemplation 
 of their own navel." The Jews have always thought 
 of themselves as a chosen people of the Lord. The 
 Greeks and Romans looked upon all peoples but 
 themselves as barbari, mere babblers of inarticulate 
 sounds. The earlier we go back the more pronounced 
 is this national vanity ; the more men learn to travel 
 the less pronounced it grows. Even the very planet 
 has lost its self-conceit, and no longer poses as the 
 hub of the universe. The earliest Greeks were a 
 circle of light about the Delphian centre of the 
 habitable world ; round them was a gradually darken- 
 ing penumbra of semi-civilization ; outside of this 
 was the blackness of the darkness of absolute bar- 
 barism, tenanted by beings who were scarcely human 
 even in shape. And what does this mean ? Simply
 
 188 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 that so far as they came into actual contact with 
 other peoples by travelling among them or receiving 
 travellers from them the Greeks sank something of 
 their faith in themselves, found something to learn 
 from Phoenicians and Egyptians and Persians ; or, in 
 other words, that, as the mathematicians put it, their 
 self-conceit was in inverse proportion to their know- 
 ledge of the rest of the world. 
 
 The exclusive Chinese long regarded, and provin- 
 cially still regard, their empire as the " celestial" 
 empire, and outsiders like ourselves as barbarians. 
 So was it with the Japanese. Accordingly China 
 and Japan, despite the natural abilities of their 
 peoples, lagged centuries behind the advancing world 
 of the west. But now that they admit travellers 
 and teachers among them, they are on the way to a 
 rush of civilization, of social and material advance- 
 ment, which is becoming no less than a revolution in 
 the whole condition of humanity in those countries. 
 
 I have pointed out some erroneous items in the 
 English estimate of France. The French estimate of 
 England is no more sound. To them we are a nation 
 of shopkeepers, occupying a miserable country stuffed 
 with factory chimneys from end to end ; a people 
 devoid of taste and art, possessing a literature chiefly 
 marked by la brutalite. Until the seventeenth cen- 
 tury we were despised barbarians ; but from the time 
 of Louis XIV. Frenchmen who could see and think 
 began to travel in England Buffon, Helvetius, 
 Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire great writers and 
 powers among their countrymen. The consequence
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 189 
 
 was a remarkable shifting in the French view of 
 English customs and institutions, and, more important 
 still, a great shifting in the customs and institutions 
 of France itself. There is little doubt that the French 
 Revolution was greatly prompted by what travelled 
 Frenchmen had seen of higher liberty and law in 
 more happy lands than their own, and especially in 
 the country of the English barbarians. 
 
 You may be saying, " This is, no doubt, all very 
 philosophical and all very true ; but patriotic vanity 
 is in human nature, and though you drive out nature 
 with the pitchfork of philosophy, it will still return." 
 To which I can only reply that pride goes before a 
 fall, and that, though pride well-grounded is a happy 
 and comfortable thing, self-applause ill-grounded is 
 the greatest bar to progress. Socrates despaired of 
 one who could not be brought to see his own ignor- 
 ance. Little hope can be entertained for a country 
 which makes its own vanity the measure of civiliza- 
 tion. After all, it is the " meek" who shall " inherit 
 the earth." 
 
 We here in Australia, through our geographical 
 extent and isolation, are very apt to develop patriotic 
 ignorance on a dangerous scale. We are likely to talk 
 ourselves into believing, and to instil into our children 
 the belief, that we are the most intelligent and best- 
 governed people in the world, with the most wonderful 
 of futures before us. This may be so ; but then, again, 
 it may not be so ; and it is for an association like 
 this to ask itself the plain question, " Because we 
 happen to be here in this fair land and this large
 
 190 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 land, does it, therefore, follow that there is not 
 somewhere a fairer and a larger land 1 Because we 
 have certain ways and notions, are these necessarily 
 the best ways and notions, even for us ? Have we 
 sucked all the honey from every flower of civilization, 
 and can we yet retire into our hive to make the most 
 of it ]" I should not have ventured to speak in this 
 way if I had not perceived a growing impatience 
 of instruction and help from outside, a growing 
 exclusiveness which may prove most prejudicial to 
 the advancement of this country ; and I am sure you 
 will believe me when I say that, though I am only 
 an Australian citizen, and not an Australian native, 
 I have but one desire to-night, and that is to aid in 
 the future career of this country, which is my home 
 as it is yours. 
 
 And, next, travel is the best agent for producing a 
 virtue which the coming years will more and more 
 demand the virtue of tolerance. Men will insist 
 on being less and less shackled by rigid creeds, 
 customs, and views of life. I am not going to do 
 anything so foolish as to deal with the religious 
 aspect of this topic in this place and at this time. 
 There is a tolerance and a freedom of thought out- 
 side the domain of religion, in our habits of living 
 and our choice of ideals. So long as a man is more 
 than a machine for making money he will struggle to 
 escape from "tuas uns alle biindigt, das Gemeine"- 
 the common rut that confines us all. A particular 
 nation is disposed to set itself certain models of living 
 certain conventions of thinking and behaviour to
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 191 
 
 which all its members are more or less compelled to 
 conform. These national ideals are not always very 
 high, not unfrequeritly they are very low. Yet there 
 they are, the political and social creeds are there, 
 and it is always a sore thing, and often a dangerous 
 thing, to break with the general creed. So one 
 people, entertaining an inherited belief in certain 
 ways of conduct and thinking, is mostly contempt- 
 uous of, or even tyrannical towards, the ways of con- 
 duct and thinking in which another people believes. 
 Personal behaviour which to us is normal appears 
 to an American arrogant, to a Frenchman bearish ; 
 conduct which to a Frenchman is civility is to an 
 Englishman affectation, to an American it is 
 " monkey tricks ; " and so nation goes on misjudging 
 nation simply because it measures by the unreasonable 
 standard of its own practice. Something is, no 
 doubt, due to natural instincts of race, but much 
 more to the contracted sympathies caused by the 
 narrowness of the parochial, or, at least, provincial, 
 groove into which each people falls. It is only by 
 travel or by much association with foreigners that 
 we can fully surmount the barriers raised by such 
 externals, such unessentials, as those of dress, 
 gesture, language, and complexion. These are films to 
 true vision. The question of civilization is whether 
 the man is a happier and nobler man, not whether 
 his habits and beliefs are English. If a Caesar or 
 Pericles or Charlemagne or Shakspere were restored 
 to us as he lived, I fancy it would be difficult to avoid 
 some feeling of condescension towards a person with
 
 192 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 such a dress, such a language, and such ignorance 
 of the usages of modern society. Yet our better 
 judgment would assure us that the man, the soul, 
 the brain beneath could be no subject for our 
 patronizing. 
 
 Again, we are convinced that all religions but our 
 own are absui'd ; we cannot understand sane beings 
 possessing any other, if they possess one at all. Yet 
 the Mussulman thinks similarly, and so does the Parsi. 
 We forget that we inherit our views, that we do not 
 in the proper sense acquire them. The traveller 
 would find that the Mussulman and the Parsi have 
 their share of intellect and morality ; he would dis- 
 cover that nobleness and happiness of life were less 
 a matter of the exact form of a creed than of the 
 measure of practice given to its moral code. Travel 
 above all things produces breadth of view and 
 tolerance, and no one among us is likely to deny the 
 necessity of tolerance and openmindedness. Religious 
 intolerance has kept back the course of civilization 
 more than any other influence. It has barred the 
 discovery, or at least the utilization of discovery, in 
 science. It has prevented the application of clear 
 principles to legislation and social amenities. If, 
 then, travel works only so much as this mental ex- 
 pansion, this increasing tolerance in matters of faith, 
 it would be an educational, a civilizing agent, needing 
 no further recommendation. One of the great 
 attractions of a new country like this is its average 
 spirit of tolerance. And why is tolerance here 
 greater than in England or in Scotland ? Because in
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP TRAVEL. 193 
 
 a theological way we get all the benefits of travel 
 without travelling ; we rub shoulders with all schools ; 
 no one dominant sect is allowed to contemplate 
 nothing but its own beauty, and to pose as an 
 ecclesiastical Narcissus. 
 
 And whether it be in religion or in social customs 
 the traveller would find that there are ways more 
 than one to the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number, which, after all the abuse bestowed on 
 Benthani, is, I believe, the object for which a con- 
 stitution should work. And I make bold to say the 
 same of politics and legislation. We are threatened 
 here with too much Government in purely social 
 matters, with step-motherly Government. This ruling 
 of us with rods of cast-iron is due to the great error 
 into which the uncultured are apt to fall that social 
 well-being can be secured by the good old rule of 
 " giving a certain number of persons the right to 
 have their own way, and to prevent the rest from 
 having theirs." Travel will, at any rate, teach the 
 lesson that social health does not depend upon some 
 particular legislative nostrum, but that there is in 
 human society a principle of adjustment which is 
 too subtle for politicians to grasp by a priori methods, 
 and with which excess of legislation gravely inter- 
 feres. But these are subjects which require separate 
 treatment at some other time. 
 
 I have sketched briefly and, I fear, vaguely, the 
 influences on inward culture which travel produces 
 to wit, a proper perspective of one's place in the 
 world, an unbiassed judgment of one's own civiliza- 
 
 14
 
 194 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 tion, a spirit of receptiveness, openmincleduess, and 
 tolerance. There remain the practical, mostly utili- 
 tarian, lessons to be derived from travel. I have 
 left these till last because, though they are obvious 
 and may be very briefly summarized, there are some 
 who may think them of the greatest importance, as 
 being most tangible. We want to make the best of 
 our laws, our resources, our arts, our physical and 
 mental health, and our manners. To that end, 
 acting with a docile eclecticism, we must learn what- 
 ever we can and wherever we can. 
 
 In politics we must occasionally go abroad for 
 examples, analogies, or at least favourable arguments. 
 When Lycurgus desired a new constitution for the 
 Spartans, he travelled for many years to study the 
 working of various laws in other lands, and to choose 
 out the best of them. When Peter the Great sought 
 to regenerate Russia, he did not draw on his own 
 theories, he did not gather reports and statistics, but 
 went himself, as a plain man, to see with his own 
 eyes how things were done in places where he 
 believed them to be done best. And our own bud- 
 ding politicians may still benefit by a similar form of 
 education. A comparison from personal inspection, 
 a careful and prolonged inspection, of the working 
 of things in bureaucratic France, in the full 
 democracy of America, in the limited monarchy of 
 England, under the despotism of Russia, in federated 
 Italy, and under the machine-like military system of 
 Germany such a comparison would go far to put 
 an apprentice politician in the way to decide, for
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 195 
 
 instance, in what measure it is necessary for a 
 government to interfere with individual enterprise 
 and liberty, and in what cases such interference is 
 not essential and therefore not good. The questions 
 concerning capital and labour, free-trade and protec- 
 tion, are certainly best settled by a comparison of 
 this kind, and not by empirical judgment based 
 upon isolated and misleading phenomena in our own 
 midst. 
 
 The same remark applies to our public education. 
 There remains a serious flaw in the highest instruc- 
 tion of these colonies. In England, as Emerson 
 confesses with enthusiasm, still more in Germany, 
 the universities set about training men of scholarship 
 and science as other workers are trained. When 
 they pretend to produce a mathematician they 
 produce a mathematician ; when a student wants to 
 be manufactured into a scientist, they make a 
 scientist of him. They do not leave him, as we do 
 in Australia, half finished or a quarter finished, in 
 order to make another equally incomplete. A whole 
 chair is better than two legs, a seat, and part of a 
 back. But here we must go on in the plenitude of 
 our self-satisfaction, thinking we have answered this 
 argument by pointing to the amount of money we 
 spend on education, and by alleging that the 
 Australian brain is- as good as the English or German 
 brain. I do not doubt this last fact, but brain after 
 all is only raw material. A young country should 
 of all countries be plastic. England is constantly 
 going abroad for educational information. The
 
 196 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 English universities most conservative of bodies 
 have lately reformed themselves, and what is of 
 importance for us at this moment is the fact that 
 they so reformed themselves largely because of the 
 actual personal contact into which most of the 
 agitating spirits had been brought with foreign 
 teaching. I venture to hold that with only a 
 slightly increased " plant," but with a different 
 method, and a different ideal, we might ere long 
 become self-supporting in the matter of teachers. 
 As it is, it would be unspeakably ludicrous and the 
 sheerest ignorance to say that we are self-supporting 
 now. My only hope is that a sufficient number of 
 our young Australians may see and appreciate abroad 
 methods and standards which they cannot see at 
 home, and that when they return they will help to 
 establish those methods and standards here, and so 
 emancipate their country from the educational 
 leading-strings, without which it would surely 
 stumble at present. 
 
 Past Exhibitions are said to have taught us much 
 in arts and industries : coming Exhibitions are ex- 
 pected to teach much. And what is an Exhibition 
 but travel coming among us ? When the moun- 
 tain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet went to 
 the mountain. When we cannot go to other coun- 
 tries their factories, their shops, and their studios 
 we bring those countries, with their factories, shops, 
 and studios, among ourselves in the shape of an 
 Exhibition. And so it must go on either we must 
 borrow the lesson or we must borrow the teacher.
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 197 
 
 There is manifestly no need to expound further a 
 principle which speaks for itself and which is so 
 generally acted upon. I need, moreover, say nothing 
 about the fact that, for commercial undertakings, for 
 learning languages, for the proper study of art and 
 architecture, travel is an absolute necessity. All 
 this it will be better judgment on my part to leave 
 to yourselves. 
 
 Yet there is one branch of civilization which 
 deserves more than this passing attention. It is the 
 sphere of manners. When we are children, brought 
 up each in our domestic circle, we only learn to judge 
 of our manners by contact with our comrades, by the 
 remarks they are pleased to pass upon us, and by 
 what we see them do. In one household children 
 grow up rude, in another polite ; but the intercourse 
 of house with house produces a general average of 
 manners, which is taken in society as a minimum. 
 There is an entire analogy with this in the case of 
 communities. Each tends to develop peculiarities, 
 to fall below or rise above the line ; yet the effect of 
 international intercourse is to produce a general 
 average of manners, which constitutes the criterion 
 of civilization. The more isolated a country, the 
 more marked the peculiarities of its manners are 
 wont to be. I trust no one here will be offended if I 
 say that the isolation of this country is producing a 
 marked isolation of manners ; that, in both official 
 and personal manners there is need of much watchful- 
 ness, if we are to keep up to the standard line of 
 true civilization. It seems to be forgotten that good
 
 198 THE TEACHIXGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 manners originally spring from good feeling, or that 
 in any case it is well to make men, whether officially 
 or privately, exercise a wholesome discipline over the 
 exhibition of their less pleasing propensities. There 
 is a manifest lack of courtesy in our public offices 
 and in our streets. All this comes, no doubt, partly 
 from a feeling of so-called independence ; but that is 
 a morbid independence which, while claiming personal 
 dignity for oneself, treats the rest of the world with 
 indignity. The most genuinely independent persons 
 are the most courteous. I could wish that this 
 association would severely discountenance this indis- 
 criminating freedom of elbows and tongues and 
 salivary glands. 
 
 It is, however, not everyone who can travel it is 
 only a small minority who can do so ; and, in the 
 absence of this form of self-culture, reading, discus- 
 sion, and conversation may do much towards " giving 
 us our east" in the navigation of our country. But 
 I altogether doubt whether encyclopsedias, reports, 
 statistics, lectures, pictures, all of which make the 
 propagation of ideas so easy nowadays, can give us 
 any adequate notion of a foreign people. To tell us 
 what height a man is, what he weighs, his lifting 
 powers, his trade, the amount of his wealth, and the 
 situation of his house, can never tell us what he is as 
 a man and how we are to deal with him as a man. 
 We may know whether he is big enough to knock us 
 down, but we cannot tell exactly what sort of con- 
 duct on our part will induce him to knock us down. 
 Nor can we know a nation fully at secondhand.
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 199 
 
 There is a vast difference between the effect of things 
 heard and of things seen 
 
 " Segnius irritant animum demissa per atirem 
 Quam qu;e sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus." 
 
 Moreover, writers are very prejudiced and very 
 fallible. Who among us could accept Mr. Froude's 
 " Oceana " as a representation of ourselves, of our 
 cities and our minds ? I have heard an Australian 
 gravely repeat the well-known, but exceedingly 
 foolish, remark that England was so small that all 
 the time he was there he thought he was going to 
 walk over the edge. I venture to say that no visitor 
 from Australia, America, Russia, or any other large 
 country ever felt anything of the kind. The horizon 
 in England is as wide as it is here, and no man yet 
 has been afraid of falling over the horizon. Let me 
 repeat what an American has to say, who was more 
 anxious to see things as they are than to parrot a 
 piece of patriotic bumptiousness : " As soon as you 
 enter England, which, with Wales, is no larger than 
 the state of Georgia, this little land stretches by an 
 illusion to the dimensions of an empire. The innu- 
 merable details, the crowded succession of towns, 
 cities, cathedrals, castles, and great and decorated 
 estates, the number and power of the trades and 
 guilds, the military strength and splendour, the 
 multitudes of rich and remarkable people all these 
 catching the eye and never allowing it to pause, hide 
 all boundaries by the impression of magnificence and 
 endless wealth." Obviously statistics and atlases are
 
 200 THE TEACHINGS OP TRAVEL 
 
 of no value for imparting an impression such as this, 
 which Emerson obtained from seeing the place with 
 his own eyes. 
 
 And now, before I close my imperfect remarks, I 
 would remind this association that one of its objects, 
 if I understand it aright, is to find out and to put in 
 practice whatever is best to be done in this country, 
 with its peculiarities of position, climate, and re- 
 sources. You claim to be united together in a 
 patriotic spirit, and I have maintained that the true 
 way to exhibit patriotism is by working without pre- 
 judice or bigotry for the improvement of your people. 
 It has been said of America that " its geography is 
 sublime, but its men are not." You are desirous of 
 making your men sublime as well as your geography. 
 To do this you seek civilization in its truest senses, 
 material and personal. You recognize that it is not so 
 much the numbers as the quality of our men that will 
 .make us a great nation ; or, as Ruskin puts it, "A 
 little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness of 
 fools." And if you are thus desirous of gathering to 
 yourselves national culture, if you recognize the truth 
 of the text, " Wisdom is the principal thing ; there- 
 fore, with all thy getting get understanding," you 
 will throw aside that soul-blasting doctrine of nil 
 admirari, of resolving to find nothing admirable out- 
 side yourselves, which is being spread among you. 
 At present we are always talking of our marvellous 
 cities, and we are beginning to think of the term as 
 absolutely true, and not as relatively true, in the 
 sense in which it is generously applied. We feel
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 201 
 
 intensely modern, and, in the pride of modernism, we 
 are apt to think of older countries as decrepit or 
 superannuated, forgetting that old countries do not 
 stand still any more than the newest, and that after 
 all it is only the occupation of the soil which is older, 
 only the monuments which are antique, whereas the 
 men and women are as younsr as we, and, being 
 nearer to the centres of civilization and original 
 thought, are perhaps even more modern than we. 
 We have dropped into a habit of " waving our own 
 flag at every dinner-table," a custom which is itself a 
 certain mark of uneasiness and immaturity, since the 
 mark of confidence and maturity is the absence of all 
 obtrusion. As Emerson had to warn the Americans, 
 it is only the hobbledehoy and the parvenu that are 
 so sensitive about the recognition of themselves. If 
 we have been provoked by criticism, let us use the 
 criticism, and let us take as a motto, " In quietness 
 and confidence shall be our strength." I have heard 
 the demand raised for a national character ; the 
 demand that the Australian native shall be "true to 
 himself." But there is no untruth towards oneself 
 in learning ; there is no crippling of originality in 
 the lessons gleaned from travel. An Australian 
 native is true to himself when he endeavours to live 
 the life and to act the acts which it is best for an 
 Australian to live and act ; and he cannot discover 
 all this by the unaided light of nature. With the 
 Scotch minister in Max O'Rell's book, he should pray, 
 " O Lord, give us receptivity that is to say, O Lord, 
 make us susceptible to impressions."
 
 202 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 And if native-born Australians cannot travel, they 
 should at least welcome among themselves the ex- 
 perience of travel in the shape of valuable and expert 
 immigrants. And when the cry "Australia for the 
 Australians " is raised, it is to be hoped that those 
 who spread the cry will remember that any good and 
 useful immigrant, anyone who can and will blend 
 with our people and teach us something or do some- 
 thing useful for us, is thereby transformed at once 
 into an Australian, and is a distinct gain to the 
 future of the country.
 
 THE best thinkers have long been acutely conscious 
 that it is time to deal with the food of the mind as 
 with the food of the body, to discriminate in our 
 diet, to devour fewer and more nutritious volumes, 
 and to masticate them well. What was true in 
 Bacon's day is still truer in ours that while some 
 books are " to be read wholly, and with diligence 
 and attention," others are to be read " but not curi- 
 ously," and others again to be read " only in parts." 
 We may add that large numbers are not to be read 
 at all. Printing, which spreads bad books or in- 
 different books with perhaps greater ease than it 
 spreads good books, is causing more and more em- 
 barrassment to the seeker after sound knowledge and 
 culture. 
 
 I want to-night to offer a few thoughts upon a 
 rational judgment of literature, not in any dogmatic 
 way, not presuming to be a special authority, but in 
 the hope that some, who have never yet based their 
 opinion of books upon clear principles, may be in- 
 duced to seek for such a basis. Whether they arrive 
 at the same principles as I may propound, or at 
 different principles, is not perhaps of the first import-
 
 204: LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 ance. The great matter is that their minds should 
 be aroused to the proper attitude. 
 
 I shall confine myself to what may be called pure 
 literature, literature which has no directly scientific 
 or philosophical intention. Those works whose sole 
 object is practical instruction in science or positive 
 facts are not literature in the proper sense. Charles 
 Lamb called them biblia abiblia, " books which are 
 no books, things in books' clothing," meaning in 
 especial Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations," essays 
 on population, treatises on moral philosophy, and so 
 forth. There is only one test to apply to such books 
 as these. If their statements are correct, if they are 
 statements concerning things worth troubling about 
 at all, if the reasoning is accurate and the expression 
 clear, such works are good of their kind. Neverthe- 
 less, except in point of expression, it is not " literary " 
 judgment which judges them. 
 
 The tests of pure literature are not so palpable. 
 Indeed, according to Mr. Swinburne, the test of all 
 the best poetry, for instance, is that it " eludes all 
 tests." One need not go so far as this. There do 
 exist tests, as I hope to show, though they are not the 
 sort of tests which can be expressed in exact formula? 
 like those of mathematicians, or in definite experi- 
 mental directions like those of the chemist. It is 
 true that failure has attended all attempts to define 
 "beauty" and "genius." Yet is it impossible to 
 determine some at least of the most essential qualities 
 which the words " beautiful " and " work of genius " 
 imply ?
 
 LITERARY JUDGMKNT. 205 
 
 Genuine, independent, and at the same time 
 competent criticism of a work of art is very rare. 
 I have in a previous lecture sufficiently expressed 
 myself upon the unconscious cant and not altogether 
 harmless hypocrisy which taints society in its com- 
 ments upon books, pictures, statuary, or music. We 
 are apt to pass off second-hand opinion as our own 
 till we come to believe it is our own. In these 
 things, as in social customs, we are apt to follow the 
 fashion of an aristocracy di color che, sanno " of 
 them that know." Now I do not recommend every 
 man straightway to set up for a judge. I only 
 recommend that we should be perfectly honest with 
 ourselves ; that we should not delude ourselves, but 
 ask always, " Do I really admire this 1 Do I really 
 feel this to be good or bad ? Or am I merely 
 judging through the eyes and sensibilities of others?" 
 The simple-minded may be " contented to enjoy 
 what others understand ;" but the mischief comes in 
 when there is neither understanding nor enjoyment, 
 but only a pretence at them ; only a feeling that one 
 is not enjoying what one ought to enjoy, and what 
 the best judges do enjoy. 
 
 And who are the aristocracy "of them that know"? 
 It is far from safe to "follow my leader" in judg- 
 ment of literature. Voltaire, the brilliant but 
 superficial, declared that much of Shakspere's 
 "Hamlet" read like the work of a "drunken 
 savage." The same critic congratulates a friend on 
 resolving that much of Dante is " stupidly extra- 
 vagant and barbarous." Thus to a national arbiter
 
 206 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 of taste last century Shakspere and Dante, the two 
 supremest figures of modern literature, were largely 
 savage or barbarian. There is plenty of material from 
 which to draw the moral of the fallibility of our 
 critical authorities and of ourselves. Before Shak- 
 spere had made himself the sun of English literature, 
 Pepys, the author of the diary, saw a performance 
 of " A Midsummer Night's Dream," and he found it 
 the " most insipid, ridiculous play" he had seen in 
 his life. Hume, the essay-writer, has an astounding 
 remark. He assumes, as a matter of course, that to 
 compare Bunyan with Addison is as absurd as to 
 compare " a molehill with Teneriffe." Most people 
 now-a-days will agree that the comparison is absurd, 
 but in exactly the reverse direction. Bunyan was a 
 thorough genius, Addison only a stylist of talent. 
 The poet whom Hume elects as the splendid model is 
 whom think you 1 Waller ! There was, it is well 
 to note, a time when Edmund Waller was held 
 superior to John Milton. 
 
 Samuel Johnson, a genuine man, and for the most 
 part a good and solid critic, could see nothing in 
 that glorious poem, " Lycidas." If there is one 
 charm in " Lycidas" more obvious than another, it 
 is its wonderful melody. Yet, says Johnson, " the 
 diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the num- 
 bers unpleasing." That is to say, the numbers of 
 
 " Hence with denial vain and coy excuse : 
 So may some gentle muse 
 With lucky words favour my destined urn, 
 And, as he passes, turn 
 And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud : "-
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 207 
 
 were " unpleasiug ;" they were too subtle, not 
 mechanical enough, for Johnson's ear. Genuine and 
 original as Johnson was, he could not wholly escape 
 the bad influence of his time. His was an age of 
 what was called elegance and polish. It doted on 
 form. And therefore Johnson, no less than his 
 weaker brethren, talks about the " modern graces 
 and pleasing improvements" imparted to Homer by 
 Pope's translation. Ho might as well have talked 
 about the " pleasing improvement " imparted by 
 painting the lily or tattooing a face of perfect beauty. 
 Contemporaries are particularly apt to overrate or 
 underrate. What was called the Lake school of 
 English poets the school of Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Southey was utterly ridiculed by one who was him- 
 self a poet, Lord Byron. The criticism of the young 
 lions of the "Edinburgh Review" is a standing 
 warning. Listen to what Jeffrey had to say, even 
 in maturer years : " The tuneful quartos of Southey 
 are already little better than lumber ; and the rich 
 melodies of Keats and Shelley, and the fantastical 
 emphasis of Wordsworth, and the plebeian pathos of 
 Crabbe, are melting fast from the field of vision. 
 Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into 
 distance and dimness, and the blazing star of Byron 
 himself is receding from its place of pride." Coleridge 
 he does not even mention, and the two for whom he 
 prophesies enduring fame are Rogers and Campbell. 
 What a medley of wrongheaded opinion is here ! Of 
 all these names, it is precisely Rogers and Campbell 
 who are least read and undoubtedly of wholly inferior
 
 208 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 sort, while the verdict of time is placing the " fan- 
 tastical emphasis" of Wordsworth above even the 
 blazing star of Byron. Similarly the " Edinburgh 
 Review" called Coleridge's " Christabel" a mixture of 
 raving and drivelling, and the " Literary Register" 
 spoke of Wordsworth's "drivelling nonsense." De 
 Quincey could see nothing in Goethe, though Goethe's 
 place is perhaps next to Shakspere and Dante. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. I have quoted all these 
 instances not to show that the leaders of contemporary 
 criticism are always wrong, but to show that they 
 are very fallible, that we may not completely sur- 
 render our judgment to them. They are by no means 
 always wrong. It is a mistake to suppose, for 
 instance, that Shakspere's merit was wholly undis- 
 covered in his own times. The best theorist; though 
 not the best practitioner, of poetry of that day was 
 Ben Jonson, and it is he who pronounces what was 
 both critically and prophetically true 
 
 " His learning savours not the school-like gloss 
 That most consists in echoing words and terms, 
 And soonest wins a man an empty name. 
 
 * * 
 
 But for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life, 
 That it will gather strength of life with being, 
 And live hereafter more admired than now." 
 
 Let us look at home. Is there not likely to be just 
 as questionable opinion prevailing among ourselves 
 concerning Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, the 
 Morrises, the Arnolds, and all their satellites ? 
 
 I shall not at present trouble you with my own
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 209 
 
 opinion of each of these ; but let me point out that 
 in our own generation there exists, on the one side 
 or the other, a style of criticism which will some day 
 appear as incomprehensible as any wrongheadedness 
 that can be quoted from Voltaire or Edinburgh 
 reviewer. In America a prominent but dubious 
 figure is Walt Whitman, and concerning him one 
 critic tells us, without mincing matters, that he is 
 nothing but a disgusting and ignorant imbecile ; while 
 another proclaims, with defiant trumpetings, that he 
 is the "cosmical" man, the inspired personification of 
 democracy, the Aclamus of a new literary era. Now 
 this, I say, is a curious phenomenon, and one which 
 ;iwakes sore distrust of finality in judgment. The 
 same writer cannot be both an imbecile and also the 
 oosmical man. Therefore, in the name of all that is 
 healthy-minded, let us endeavour to obtain some 
 clear ideas of goodness and badness in literature. 
 Let us search for some criterion as to whether the 
 " Chants Democratic" are just so much sheer non- 
 sense, or whether they are the first instalment of a 
 sublimer poetry of the future. 
 
 First we may observe that in literature, as in 
 clothes and mannei'S, there are transient fashions. 
 Just as an individual varies in his moods, so a people 
 has its moods, which affect its literary tastes. 
 Review the history of the literature of any country, 
 and you will see what are called " schools" or 
 literary " periods." In that of England we have 
 the Elizabethan period, rich and exuberant ; the 
 Queen Anne, formal and correct ; the early nineteenth 
 
 15
 
 210 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 century, romantic and emotional. So it has been in 
 Greece, so it has been in Italy and France, so it will 
 be wherever national life does not stagnate. I do 
 not know how it is with China. 
 
 The literature of the Elizabethan epoch may be 
 likened to a most luxuriant garden, where the richest 
 flowers bloom in profusion, and the stately trees 
 grow freely as nature made them a garden with 
 overhanging boughs, and winding walks, and pleasant 
 daisied lawns. The literature of the Queen Anne 
 time is like the same garden reformed on geometrical 
 principles, its walks cut straight and at right angles, 
 the flower-beds all symmetrical, the trees end shrubs 
 shorn into stiff and artificial forms. Never has the 
 effect of mannerism been more distinct than in the 
 time of Pope and his successors. Never has man 
 more manifestly "felt by rule and thought by 
 precedent." " What," asks Goethe, " is a school of 
 art ? It is a single individual who goes on talking 
 to himself for a hundred years, and feels an extreme 
 satisfaction with his own circle of favourite ideas, be 
 they ever so silly." There was much silliness in the 
 Queen Anne school. In matter and manner it was 
 like a single individual. So much was this the case 
 that when Pope wearied of translating the "Odyssey" 
 of Homer, he hired two hacks to finish the work, 
 and still put his name to the whole. There is one 
 regular orthodox manner of expression. A boot is 
 not a boot, but "the shining leather that encased 
 the limb." A caterpillar is not a caterpillar, but 
 "the crawling scourge that smites the leafy plain."
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 211 
 
 Coffee is not coffee, but " the fragrant juice of 
 Mocha's berry brown ;" and, I suppose, they could 
 not have called a spade a spade, but would have 
 called it, say, " the toiling blade that delves the 
 fruitful soil." 
 
 And fashion determines the substance as well as 
 the form. The early half of last century is given 
 over to the flattest of moralizing, what Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen calls the "tea-party" style. The vogue for 
 well-dressed platitudes is seen alike in the Spectator, 
 in the interminable novels of Richardson, in 
 Johnson's Rambler, and frequently even in Pope. 
 
 Popularity, then, need be no proof of abiding merit, 
 nor is unpopularity necessarily a proof of demerit. 
 An author may be right for his own age, but for that 
 alone ; he may be wrong for his own age, but right for 
 all time. Now this fact the fact that, for a more or 
 less considerable period a public may be judging amiss, 
 that it may be seeing things, not as they are, but 
 through the coloured medium of a transient fashion 
 shows how rare are sound first principles. How 
 shall we best avoid this danger of mis-seeing ? 
 
 o 
 
 Assuredly by habitual and intelligent reading of the 
 best works of other ages and other peoples. All 
 true views are comparative. If we read only the 
 poems and novels and magazines of to-day, our judg- 
 ment will be nought ; but let us know the classics of 
 our own and other tongues let us absorb their style 
 and spirit and then, while we do not neglect the 
 works of our contemporaries, we shall adjust and 
 focus them aright. This is the only way to escape
 
 212 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 slavery of opinion. There is as decided a fashion in 
 literature to-day as ever there has been. Our novels 
 Tendenz-Novdlen with their wire-drawn analysis 
 of character and passion and motive, and their morbid 
 social views ; our poems and sonnets, with their 
 straining after the clever and the striking ; these, 
 when men look back at them from the middle of the 
 twentieth century, will be seen to have a character 
 of their own, and the trail of the time-spirit will be 
 over them all. 
 
 The function of the critic is, therefore, apparent. 
 It is not to find fault it is not a merely negative 
 function. He serves the world by directing attention 
 to the right things. He seeks to know, and to get 
 others to know, the eternal principles which make 
 writing good or bad, independently of fashion or 
 spontaneous liking and disliking. His object is to 
 encourage the insight which realizes that a good thing 
 is good, a beautiful thing beautiful, and a hideous 
 thing hideous. This insight is not merely of aesthetic 
 value ; it is of moral value. And, be assured, the 
 true critic tries to get men to avoid or to choose, not 
 in obedience to his mere dictum, but by opening their 
 eyes to look clearly at that which they have either 
 not been regarding at all, or else regarding through 
 a glass darkly. 
 
 There is a much-abused old saying, De gustibus non 
 est disputandum. As a warning against unreasonable 
 and indeterminable discussion it is useful. As a 
 statement of absolute fact, as a relief from the 
 necessity of exerting a judgment, it is altogether
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 213 
 
 erroneous. " There is no quarrelling about tastes " 
 is a different thing from " There is no arguing about 
 taste." Whether ^Eschylus is to be preferred to 
 Sophocles, or Tasso to Ariosto, or Tennyson to 
 Browning, may largely depend on individual senti- 
 ment. There may be two excellences which have no 
 common measure ; they may be equally but differently 
 good. But when we come to compare the measurably 
 and demonstrably inferior with the superior Euripides 
 with Homer, Tasso with Dante, Ben Jonsoii with 
 Shakspere then there is, and must be, a disputing 
 about taste. That we are pleased with a thing is no 
 proof that we ought to be pleased with it. We must 
 ask with !Ste. Beuve, " Have I a right to be amused 
 by this, to applaud it, to be moved by it ?" " Positive 
 beauty and positive ugliness," says Ruskin, " are 
 independent of anybody's taste." We all develop in 
 respect of taste with advancing years and observa- 
 tion and culture. In our furniture and dress, in our 
 choice of forms and colours, in our liking of pictures 
 and music, we feel that we make some advance. The 
 child has not the taste of the matured, nor the 
 savage of the civilized ; and is there no arguing 
 whose taste is the better ? 
 
 It is at the elements of this positive beauty that 
 the literary critic seeks to arrive. How is he to dis- 
 cover them 1 Well, first, I think, he should naturally 
 suppose that the most perfect literature is that which 
 has for the longest time most unfailingly preserved a 
 natural attraction. If a book was written 2,000 
 years ago, and is read still, as it has always been
 
 214 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 read, with pleasure and admiration if it was written 
 500 or 300 years ago, and has survived in undiminished 
 freshness through all intervening changes of fashion 
 it is in such a book that he may most assuredly 
 look for the secrets of absolute excellence. There is 
 in literature, as in organic life, a survival of the 
 fittest. It is only the thing of beauty or the thing 
 of truth which is a joy for ever. By taking those 
 works which have proved themselves immortal, and 
 by examining them and them only, can the critic 
 make sure of laying hold on the fundamental verities. 
 What is it which makes Homer's " Odyssey" at all 
 times and in all places, carry us back to " that 
 ampler ether, that diviner air, and fields invested 
 with purpureal gleams " of the youth of the world ? 
 What is it that makes Dan Chaucer still " put a spirit 
 of youth in everything?" It is only when questions 
 like these are answered that we can pronounce with 
 confidence whether a debated work is the work of an 
 imbecile or of the Adamus of a new creation. 
 
 What are the legitimate objects of pure literature ? 
 In brief, they are two to refresh and to elevate. 
 " Poesy," says Bacon, " serveth and conferreth to 
 morality, magnanimity, and to delectation." These 
 are the things pure literature is to do for us to 
 ennoble our minds by stimulating in them ideal 
 aspirations, to keep alive our finer sensibilities, to 
 refresh us and add pleasure to our lives by such 
 delightful scenes and actions and thoughts in books 
 as we cannot always command in the surroundings of 
 our actual life. " We live by admiration, hope, and
 
 LITERARY JUDGEMENT. 215 
 
 love." These faculties must be fed, and the best 
 books supply us with their nutriment. These, then, 
 are the two great uses I find for true literature. 
 Nor is this account at all new, for ' c the sublime and 
 the beautiful" is but another way of expressing the 
 same sense. French fiction is, therefore, mostly bad 
 literature. Its execution may be consummately 
 artistic, but it is meant for depraved tastes and the 
 depravation of taste. Ruskin asserts that all good 
 works of art have " use or truth," they aim " either 
 at stating a true thing or adorning a serviceable one." 
 French fiction is not true, and it is not serviceable. 
 Zola has his defenders. They say he is but a realistic 
 painter, out-Hogarthing Hogarth, it is true, but 
 intending no help, but rather hindrance, to vice. 
 When one hears this one is reminded of sturdy old 
 Johnson. They were talking of Rousseau's " La 
 Nouvelle Heloise." Said Boswell, " I don't deny, 
 sir, that his novel may perhaps do harm, but I cannot 
 think his intention was bad." " Sir," replied John- 
 son, " that will not do. We cannot prove any man's 
 intention to be bad. You may shoot a man through 
 the head and say you intended to miss him, but the 
 judge will order you to be hanged." The Thebans, it 
 is said, went so far as to inflict a penalty on the man 
 who, in pictorial or plastic art, imitated ideal ugli- 
 ness ; so conscious were they of art's true purpose. 
 Rhopographer or rhy paragraph er, ragpainter or dirt- 
 painter, were the depreciatory terms, meant and felt, 
 for those who indulged in embodying the hideous or 
 the vile.
 
 216 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 Assuming that the province of literature is to 
 impart " morality, magnanimity, and delectation," 
 we may look at all such work in a twofold way. We 
 may look at the matter and the manner, the sub- 
 stance and the form. The author must have some- 
 thing worthy to say, and some worthy way of saying 
 it. He must not be open to the Frenchman's 
 criticism " This writer lias said exactly what he 
 wanted, only, unfortunately, what he wanted to say 
 was nothing." Furthermore, he must be able to say 
 the thing he has to say with skill or with beauty. 
 
 Above all things, the great writer must have 
 something to tell, some intention, something about 
 which he is in earnest. I have often sought to lay 
 my finger upon that supreme quality which chiefly 
 distinguishes the immortal works from the transient, 
 a quality which is not mere diction, not mere art, 
 not mere melody, nor yet mere intellect. All 
 these are, indeed, essential to the best, but these 
 alone, do not, if one examines well, make up im- 
 mortality. There is a salt and savour over and above 
 these. It is very obvious when discovered, and when 
 I name it you will regard it as a poor truism. Yet 
 for myself I willingly avow that only years of reading 
 have brought me to it. It is nothing else but sin- 
 cerity, single-heartedness, being in earnest. Reality 
 of intention and love of the work for the work's sake 
 must ever come first. I now understand what Milton 
 meant when he said that poetry must be " simple, 
 sensuous, passionate." Let us put " passionate " first. 
 I understand, too, what Matthew Arnold meant by
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 217 
 
 " truth and high seriousness " as the chief note of 
 the classic. Says the pithy Vauvenargues, " Great 
 thoughts come from the heart ; " and this, no doubt, 
 is the secret of great writing that it conies from the 
 heart, is not a creation of unwarmed intellect. Facit 
 indignatio versus, and other heartfelt passions besides 
 indiynatio. Sanity and power of intellect, sanity 
 and power of language must be there as well ; but 
 sincerity is the leaven which leavens the whole lump. 
 You know how differently we are affected by two 
 orators or preachers. The one may be the more 
 fluent, clear, logically acute, the more cultivated in 
 language and manner ; yet the other may mould and 
 sway us more. Why 1 Because the latter may mani- 
 festly mean and feel in a more single-hearted way 
 what he is saying, not speaking for the sake of 
 brilliancy and reputation, but because he really 
 wants to impress something upon us. It is this fer- 
 your which constitutes the spell of the old Hebrew 
 prophets. George Sand claims that she has always 
 written " with the real blood of her heart, and the 
 real flame of her thought." It is so with all the 
 absolutely best writers. It is the real blood of their 
 heart and the real flame of their thought which 
 produce the rich colour and warmth of their creations. 
 " What makes a poet 1 " asks Goethe ; and he replies, 
 "A heart brimful of some noble passion." I cannot 
 remember Ruskin's exact words, but somewhere he 
 too lays it down that, in order to create a thoroughly 
 good work of art of any kind, a man must love to 
 think about it, to look at it ; he must have his
 
 218 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 mind's eye upon it, and not upon the money or the 
 fame it will bring. 
 
 A sham carries its own condemnation. Samuel 
 Johnson was very severe on sham pastorals and sham 
 love-poetry. " Who will hear of sheep and goats and 
 myrtle-bowers through five acts?" Johnson himself 
 finds his own chief claim in his earnestness, in the 
 fact that, as a rule, he thought and meant what he 
 said, and said it at first hand. And Johnson naturally 
 reminds us of Boswell. Why did Boswell write such 
 an admirable book as his " Life of Johnson ?" Because 
 he was a fool, says Macaulay. If that were the 
 qualification, why are there not plenty more good 
 books ? Yes, but he was a unique fool, adds 
 Macaulay. Now Macaulay was looking for a 
 brilliant paradox and not for the truth. Boswell 
 wrote so excellent a book for no other reason than 
 that he was sincere and single-hearted about it. His 
 reverence and love for Johnson were so genuine that 
 they made him notice and remember and freshly 
 record doings and sayings of his hero, which others 
 would either not have seen or else have forgotten ; and, 
 in writing thus, his heart was upon his hero and not 
 upon James Boswell's honour and glory. I have 
 named Macaulay. Macaulay is admired, and justly 
 admired, in virtue of his style ; but he cannot rank 
 very high, nor endure very long, because he is not 
 thinking of the right thing ; he is thinking of the 
 form and the effect, when he ought to be thinking of 
 the substance and the truth. So, too, says the author 
 of " Obiter Dicta ": " Macaulay's style is ineffectual
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 219 
 
 for telling the truth about anything, sple-ndide 
 mendax." 
 
 The greatest poets and prose-writers alike are 
 sincere. " Chaucer," remarks Coleridge, " constructed 
 his poems from the inborn joyousness of his nature." 
 There is no great art of language or depth of thought 
 in such verses as 
 
 " Herkneth the blisful briddes how they synge, 
 And seeth the fresche flowres how they sprynge ! 
 Ful is my herte of revel and solace : " 
 
 but there is evident sincerity. Had Chaucer not 
 meant what he was saying, he could not have been 
 so natural and straightforward as that, and we, in 
 reading him, should not have felt the spring renewed 
 within ourselves as he always makes us feel it. 
 Listen again 
 
 ' ' And as for me, though that I can but lyte, 
 On bookes for to rede I me delyte ; 
 And to hem give I feyth and full credence, 
 And in myn herte have hem in reverence, 
 So hertely that there is game none 
 That from my bookes maketh me to gon, 
 But it be seldom on the holyday 
 Save, certeynly, when that the monthe of May 
 Is comeii, and that I here the fowle's syngen, 
 And that the flowres ginnen for to spryngen, 
 Farewell my bookes and my devocioun." 
 
 Here there is no aiming at effect, no elaboration of 
 art, no straining after descriptive perfection. He 
 has something in his heart to say, and he says it in 
 the words of his heart.
 
 220 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 How different is he from the "correct" school of last 
 century, by whom, according to " Guesses at Truth," 
 " first one thing was described and reflected upon, 
 then something else was described and reflected upon, 
 and then some third thing," not because the writer 
 cared anything about those things, not because the 
 reflections sprang naturally from those things, but 
 because he felt it to be a canon of correctness that he 
 should write in that way and no other. 
 
 One work of most considerable artistic merit, far- 
 famed for its polish of diction, is altogether empty of 
 other value by reason of its manifest want of 
 sincerity. I speak of Pope's "Essay on Man." There 
 is much genuine poetry in Pope, but I deal only witli 
 this particular work. Pope pretends a desire to 
 ' vindicate the ways of God to man," and he proceeds 
 to do so in a series of lines which are among the 
 cleverest and best known in our language. But they 
 do not ring true; they often contradict themselves, 
 and we know why they should. They do not proceed 
 from Pope's own conviction. He was only versifying 
 by a tour deforce what another man had first written, 
 in prose. Note the beginning 
 
 " Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things 
 To low ambition and the pride of kings. 
 Let us (since life can little more supply 
 Than just to look about us and to die) 
 
 Observe the immediate strain after an epigram. Who 
 can help feeling that the " pride of kings " is dragged 
 in by an effort of style, apart from real conviction or
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 221 
 
 connection with the matter ? It is the same through- 
 out. 
 
 There are two passages which I am wont to com- 
 pare when thinking on this subject. Their theme 
 is the same the omnipresence of the Deity. One is 
 in Pope, the other in Wordsworth. Says Pope 
 
 ' ' All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul ; 
 That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
 Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame, 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
 Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; 
 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, 
 As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; 
 As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns 
 As the rapt seraph that adores and burns." 
 
 Now, this is poetry of almost consummate skill, the 
 work of a brilliant man. Except in its grammar, 
 and in the detestable line " As full, as perfect, in a 
 hair as heart," its diction could hardly be improved. 
 But the line I have quoted is more than a weakness ; 
 it is a betrayal. The whole piece lacks the ring of 
 sincerity. Pope is evidently not filled with the idea 
 of the Divine omnipresence, but with the idea of 
 elaborate execution. "The vile man that mourns" 
 is, we feel, due to the exigence of an antithesis to 
 the " rapt seraph that burns." Nothing else in the 
 list is " vile," nor, being thus perfused with divinity, 
 should man be vile. Nor was Pope, in fact, burdened 
 with a sense of human vileness and mournfulness.
 
 222 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 Now hear a passage from " Tintern Abbey : " 
 
 ' ' I have felt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 This is poetry of more than skill. It is a genuine 
 utterance ; and I am willing to wholly stake my 
 credit for any literary judgment upon my preference 
 for both the harmony and the sense of this passage 
 over Pope's clever glittering couplets. The poet 
 need not have told us, "I have felt." 
 
 Wordsworth is always thus eloquent and har- 
 monious when he is writing of that for which he 
 really cares nature and nature's suggestions. It is 
 when he comes to trivialities, pedlars and black- 
 thorns, of which he has nothing real or affecting to 
 tell, that his verse becomes flat and insipid and dull. 
 
 There is little need to pursue this truth further. 
 Yet take Milton. The grand " organ voice" alone 
 would sustain "Paradise Lost" and "Lycidas:" 
 the compass and grace of diction would preserve 
 "Com us;" but no one can read Milton without a 
 consciousness of more than grandeur of diction. 
 There is a pervading grandeur of demeanour about 
 the author, who had formally and seriously dedicated 
 himself to the poetic office. Take, again, a writer
 
 LITERAKY JUDGMENT. 223 
 
 whose personal and literary character are very far 
 removed from Milton's I mean Montaigne. Mon- 
 taigne's essays are always charming. Analysis 
 finds it hard to tell why. They have no art 
 in them, no particular originality, eloquence, or 
 depth of thought. But Montaigne himself reveals 
 the secret in his very first sentence " C'est icy un 
 livre de bonne foy, lecteur" " Reader, this is an 
 honest book." That is its charm. It discloses the 
 heart-thoughts of the man, a man who, as Dean 
 Church puts it, really tl links that his experiences 
 may claim our sympathy. He was, therefore, called 
 egoist. The word is said to have been invented for 
 him. But this honest egoism is precisely his charm. 
 Compare his essays with the polite commonplaces of 
 the " Spectator," and you will find that the one writer 
 is saying what he thinks, while the other is saying 
 what he hopes it is the proper thing to say. 
 
 I avoid, as far as possible, direct criticism of con- 
 temporaries ; but I feel with Mr. Lowell that modern 
 poets appear rather " to tease their minds into a fury 
 than to infuse them with the deliberate heats of their 
 matured conception, and strive to replace the rapture 
 of the mind with a fervent intensity of phrase." 
 Swinburne is one of these. I have before me the 
 last series of " Poems and Ballads," and I find the 
 first poem, an " Ode to March," in the well-known 
 style. Here are some of its lines 
 
 " And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel 
 
 and ravin and spoil of the snow, 
 
 And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered 
 the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low ;
 
 224 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord 
 
 of the year that exults to be born, 
 So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness, 
 
 whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn ?" 
 
 Perhaps the majority of readers would much admire 
 this passage. Now, I may be wholly mistaken, but 
 it seems to me to be what the Greeks would call 
 " frigid." It seems to be an instance of teasing the 
 words into a fury without anything very definite 
 to say. I admit the skill of language, but that skill 
 only serves to cover a lack of intention. The art 
 itself is far from perfect ; it does not conceal, but 
 obtrudes itself. I do not indeed hold that all works 
 of art ought to have a definite practical moral ; I 
 only mean that a writer should appear to be writing 
 what he sincerely feels to be of value, and not what 
 he thinks will best manifest his skill of execution. 
 
 What is inspiration ? It is such sincerity drawing 
 upon unwonted depths of sensibility. One man is 
 capable of being stirred to profounder depths than 
 another. Some may go all their lives without being 
 able to understand what Wordsworth meant by 
 saying that 
 
 ' ' The meanest flower which blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 Or by his 
 
 " Light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream." 
 
 It is only exquisite sensibilities which can experience 
 the divine afflatus, or that feeling which Plato
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 225 
 
 describes when " a light as if leaping from a fire will 
 all of a sudden be kindled in the soul." And this 
 natural capacity and incapacity for feeling form the 
 justification of the proverb, " The poet is born, not 
 made " In point of art he can be made ; but, when 
 his art is complete, his work may still be in the state 
 of that painting of which the disappointed critic could 
 only say, with a snap of his fingers, " but it wants 
 that!" 
 
 Suppose the writer earnest ; suppose his sensibility 
 acute ; then he possesses that supreme quality, self- 
 identification with his subject. Is he constructing 
 imaginary characters'? Then he feels himself to be 
 those characters. He loses himself in them. He 
 knows what they should feel and do, because he 
 himself feels it and would do it. Longinus chooses 
 well when he selects the silence of Ajax, in the 
 " Odyssey " as a stroke of genius. " So I spake, but 
 he answered me not a word, and passed on to Erebus 
 after the other spirits of the departed dead." Scott 
 is excellent ; yet compare the characters in Shak- 
 spere's plays with those in Scott's novels. Says 
 Carlyle, " While Shakspere works from the heart 
 outwards, Scott works from the skin inwards, never 
 getting near the heart of men." Scott's characters 
 are constructed by logic, Shakspere's by feeling. 
 Hence Scott's characters are apt to become colourless 
 and monotonous. Shakspere's are all distinct, men 
 or women Hamlet, Othello, Romeo, Shylock, Falstaff, 
 or Portia, Juliet, Cordelia, Desdeinona, Lady Macbeth. 
 These are no machine-made figures, but constructions 
 
 16
 
 226 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 from the real blood of the heart and the real flame of 
 the thought. 
 
 No one can define genius. Yet genius is largely 
 this absorption. Genius implies insight into the 
 inmost essences of things. But such insight comes 
 largely from possession by the subject. Genius, it is 
 said, is the " gift of making the common marvellous." 
 But the common is only made marvellous by a man 
 of extraordinary faculties, who sees into things 
 while other men see round and about them. His 
 spiritual eye is more sensitive and more penetrating. 
 A gift this certainly is, and because it displays itself 
 in a manner beyond the reach of rule or art it has 
 obtained this name Genius the familiar spirit 
 attending one's natal day. In pagan terms, " Igneus 
 est ollis vigor et coelestis origo ;" in Christian language, 
 " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from 
 above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights." 
 
 Carlyle possessed a spiritual eye of wonderful 
 power. He beheld perfect scenes of the past in 
 every minutest detail, revealed, it has been said, as 
 if by flashes of lightning. Dante's imagination was 
 so vivid that the good people of Verona used to say 
 of him, "That is the man who has been in hell." 
 We need not here analyse, with Ruskin, imagination 
 associative, penetrative, and contemplative. Let us 
 simply take his definition : " Imagination is the 
 power of seeing anything we describe as if it were 
 real, so that, looking at it as we describe, points may 
 strike us which will give a vividness to the description 
 that would not have occurred to vague memory, or
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 227 
 
 been easil borrowed from the expressions of other 
 writers." My present insistence is that this power 
 largely comes from sincere and single-hearted absorp- 
 tion in the subject. 
 
 Next, imagination and insight are bound up with 
 what is often regarded as the purely artistic side of 
 a composition I mean with style. "The style 
 belongs to the man," said Buffon. The phrase has 
 been made both stronger and truer " The style is 
 the man." Style and thought act and re-act on each 
 other. It is, for instance, invariably found that, as 
 the thought rises into dignity and pathos, the 
 language rises with it in strength and rhythm. 
 " Language," says Wordsworth, " should be the 
 incarnation of the thought" that is to say, not a 
 mere external dress adapted to the thought, but the 
 very embodiment of the thought itself, the only true 
 form it can take to call its own. When Montaigne 
 has been reading certain of the noted classics of 
 style, he remarks, " I do not call this good expression ; 
 I call it good thinking." Excellence of style may in- 
 deed be analysed with Longinus into various elements, 
 but they are intimately connected. You may, it is 
 true, have fine diction and fine figures of speech, and 
 clear exposition, without much imagination or feeling ; 
 but if you have the feeling and the imagination, 
 your figures will almost necessarily be noble, your 
 diction noble. Real inspiration conceives its images 
 naturally, and images naturally conceived fit 
 into style with absolute completeness and beauty. 
 Shelley's
 
 228 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 " Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity " 
 
 could not have sprung from a mere exertion of the 
 wits. The merely talented man's images do not 
 suggest themselves in this way ; they are searched 
 for, and more or less forced upon the subject. They 
 are but approximations. Wordsworth exclaims 
 
 " nightingale, thou surely art 
 A creature of a fiery heart. " 
 
 " Fiery " is precisely the word. It came of itself. 
 How do we know? Because, when the talented 
 Edinburgh reviewer finds fault with the epithet, 
 Wordsworth sits down in cold blood to consider it, 
 and, in the absence of the feeling which dictated it, 
 he changes it to the sadly inferior " creature of 
 ebullient heart." So when Dante writes of that 
 relentless, changeless rain of fire, he says it 
 
 " Fell like broad snowflakes when the wind is still." 
 
 That is the incarnation of the thought. In his mind's 
 eye the poet saw the fire falling precisely so : the 
 thing and its similitude are beheld in one and the 
 same glance. 
 
 We may now leave the subject of this genuineness 
 and sincere sensibility, which is the grand essential 
 of sublime writing, and come to the properly intel- 
 lectual side, the side of skill and art of expression. 
 Apart from originality and depth and fervour of 
 thought, what is the criterion of good writing as 
 writing from an artistic point of view ? Is it richness 
 of expression, or forcibleness, or lucidity? Is it
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 229 
 
 vividness of delineation, or novelty of treatment? 
 Well, it may be all these ; but where so many 
 excellences may appear in various degrees, we still 
 want some universal criterion. Assuming an equal 
 command of diction, an equal power of imagination, 
 the distinguishing element would lie in directness, 
 straightforwardness, writing straight to the object, 
 saying what one means, no more and no less. The 
 test of a good style, say the authors of " Guesses at 
 Truth," is to be found in the untranslatableness of a 
 passage in terms of the same language without injury 
 to the meaning. One might put it thus : every word 
 must be necessary, or at least useful ; it must aid the 
 vision, assist the understanding, or work upon the 
 emotions. 
 
 There is nothing upon which more false taste 
 prevails than upon literary composition. Let me 
 illustrate the matter for a moment by the aid of 
 architecture. Imagine a row of stately columns in 
 the fagade of some noble structure ; let those columns 
 be Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, as you will. You will 
 notice that their shafts are all simple, and that such 
 ornament as they possess is at the capital, where the 
 horizontal and vertical lines are to meet. The 
 ornament is there for a purpose, to spare the abrupt- 
 ness of transition ; and which shape the ornament 
 shall take is fairly " a matter of taste." Now again, 
 suppose we begin to modify those shafts by means of 
 grooves running vertically ; here the eye is not dis- 
 pleased ; there is significance in the fact that those 
 lines seem by an illusion to help in the supporting
 
 230 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 strength and natural upward striving of the pillars. 
 But go further, and begin to bedeck the same shafts 
 with festoonings and reliefs and fantastic figurings : 
 good taste at once revolts. The ornamentation is 
 meaningless, it helps nothing, it is obtrusive, and it 
 offends. 
 
 So it is with literary style. Take the most con- 
 summate orator, Demosthenes. Everything is natural, 
 straightforward, possessed of a purpose ; figures of 
 speech, where they occur, help forward the matter ; it 
 seems as if no word could be taken away and no 
 word reasonably added. But consider a flowery 
 modern oration. At this passage and that we halt. 
 We say, "This is laboured and strained; this is 
 assuredly far-fetched and incongruous," and so forth. 
 I have mentioned a Greek. The Greeks, unlike us, 
 had fixed principles of judgment. It was so in all 
 their arts. The dominant note with them was self- 
 restraint, perfect sobriety and sanity. They had a 
 proverb " The half is more than the whole." They 
 hated the fantastic, the meaningless, the bombastic, 
 the vague, and the obscure. Above all things they 
 prized a noble simplicity. Modern taste is, I fear, 
 otherwise. Very many, perhaps the greater num- 
 ber, would feel no offence at the filigree-work on 
 our column-shafts. In literature, it is often pre- 
 cisely these idle ornaments of which men are most 
 enamoured. A Greek would have said, " I will 
 remember thee." So would a Chaucer, a Shakspere, 
 or a Milton. But the popular taste and the inferior 
 artist prefer it in this form :
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 231 
 
 " Thy image on her wing 
 Before my Memory's eye shall Fancy bring," 
 
 with attention to the capital letters. Examine the 
 expression, and the " wing " is an absurdity. Apply 
 the test of good style, and we may translate in 
 terms of the same language, " I will remember thee," 
 not only without injury, but with actual gain to 
 the meaning. The best writers may be known by 
 their simplicity. " A thing of beauty is a joy for 
 ever." Had exactly this expression been written in 
 . Greek, there are translators who would render it in 
 some such Swinburnian style as this, 
 
 "For the bliss and the blessing of beauty are deathless and 
 doomless for aye." 
 
 It is a safe rule for all good prose writing that words 
 are but means to an end ; they should not divert 
 attention to themselves by any gaudiness or glitter. 
 The old writing-masters used to say " Red ink for 
 ornament, black for use." There are periods of 
 literary craze, and I am not sure that this- is not one 
 of them, in which the " red ink " of ornamental 
 expression almost obscures the plain black of good 
 sense. After what is called the " Revival of Learn- 
 ing " a most absurd passion for a learned style pre- 
 vailed. Gongora in Spain with his estilo culto, Marini 
 in Italy, Du Bartas in France, Lyly in England, 
 were the great exponents of this finical school. 
 If there was a last possible way one would think of, 
 that was the way in which they would prefer to
 
 232 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 express themselves. You will remember the scene in 
 " Love's Labour Lost " 
 
 King. " A letter from the magnificent Armado." 
 Longaville. " How low soever the matter, I hope in God for 
 high words." 
 
 And he gets them, in this shape " Great deputy, 
 the welkin's vice-gerent and sole dominator of 
 Navarre, my soul's earth's god and body's fostering 
 patron" and so on. 
 
 I have already mentioned Johnson's approval of 
 Pope's translation of Homer, with its "modern graces 
 and pleasing improvements." Says Homer : " The, 
 stars shone round the bright moon in exceeding 
 splendour." That is not good enough for Pope ; it 
 says too obviously just what it means. It requires a 
 " modern grace and pleasing improvement," and he 
 gives it 
 
 " Around her throne the vivid planets roll, 
 And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole." 
 
 The moon must have a throne ; the stars must " roll," 
 not shine fixedly, as Homer saw them in his vision ; 
 we must be reminded that the stars are " unnum- 
 bered ;" and of all tawdry vulgarity of thought and 
 expression I know nothing worse than " gild the 
 glowing pole." The psalms of David, in our prose 
 translation, are in point of language unsurpassable. 
 Whether a man understands what is good and what 
 is bad may be surely discovered from his preference 
 of this magnificent prose to the pleasing improve- 
 ments of Tate and Brady.
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 233 
 
 How many are there who read Johnson's 
 
 " Let observation, with extensive view, 
 Survey mankind from China to Peru," 
 
 and remain unconscious that there is anything wrong ! 
 Yet look at the words closely. What do they mean? 
 Coleridge tells us. They mean, "Let observation, 
 with extensive observation, observe mankind exten- 
 sively." The man who could write this, and who 
 habitually wrote in that ponderous dialect which goes 
 by the name of Johnsonese, might well fail to judge 
 properly of " Lycidas." 
 
 I have spoken of the virtue of simplicity. Sim- 
 plicity of style is not to be confused with simpleness 
 of thought. Wordsworth's expression is always 
 simple ; the difference between his good poems and 
 his poor poems lies in the different values of thought. 
 He has been taunted with lines like 
 
 " I've measured it from side to side ; 
 'Tis three feet long and two feet wide." 
 
 But one notices that the taunt has been at the words, 
 whereas the real objection lies to the substance. Such 
 a fact has no relation to poetry. As verse, it has no 
 reason for its existence. " A thing of beauty is a 
 joy for ever" is equally simple in language, but it 
 embodies a thought deserving of a poetical setting. 
 Therein lies the difference. So again 
 
 " And I have travelled far as Hull, to see 
 
 What clothes he might have left or other property." 
 
 17
 
 234 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 One laughs at this. Why? At the notion of 
 these goods and chattels figuring in such attire, at 
 the notion of relating such matters in verse at all. 
 Contrast this with the same simplicity of language in 
 
 " The meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 On the other hand, directness of expression is not 
 incompatible with, but is largely assisted by, technical 
 finish, studied terseness and correctness. The " cor- 
 rect" writers of last century, despite their love of 
 false ornament, had the merit of securing the most 
 perfect expression when they chose. Lines of Pope 
 and Gray and Johnson rank next to those of 
 Shakspere in our stock of common phrases. Such 
 are : 
 
 " The feast of reason and the flow of soul." 
 " Shall feel the ruling passion strong in death." 
 " For fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 
 " To point a moral and adorn a tale." 
 
 These are lines which, as Ste. Beuve says, are 
 expressed once for all. They may have cost effort, 
 but that is not the point. The point is that they 
 illustrate the fact that, after all, what we really care 
 for, what we find will wear best, is lucid straight- 
 forward expi'ession. And this is what leads Cardinal 
 Newman to declare " I do not claim for a great 
 author, as such, a great depth of thought or breadth 
 of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of 
 human nature, or experience of human life ; but I 
 ascribe to him as his characteristic gift, in a large 
 sense, the faculty of expression."
 
 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 235 
 
 Let ine, in conclusion, bind together my remarks 
 by tracing briefly the ordinary development of 
 literary judgment in a- thoughtful man's mind. In 
 earliest youth, when books are new and full of 
 authority to him, he simply receives them as he is 
 told to receive them. "What serious or elevating 
 reading he has may or may not be congenial to him. 
 He is told that such and such Homer, Dante, 
 Shakspere, Thucydides, Bacon are classical works, 
 and that such and such others, though of exalted 
 rank, are lower than these. In his heart of hearts 
 he is, perhaps, not wholly convinced of the facts ; 
 more likely he has never sounded his heart of hearts 
 on the matter. He cannot comprehend what that 
 great thing is which his cultivated elders find in 
 Shakspere over and above the plots. 
 
 As he advances in literary education his eyes are 
 first opened to certain excellences of diction. He is 
 particularly struck by skill and art of phrase. He 
 loves the clever and the brilliant. He marks in his 
 books passages which he thinks particularly fine the 
 sort of passages which, above all others, lie would 
 have chosen to write himself. The Greeks had a 
 term for such spirited elegancies and boldnesses. 
 They called them neanika, " young-man efforts," 
 because the young man delights in fine nights of 
 fancy and striking images. 
 
 Follow him further his mind is maturing, his 
 reading is less upon the surface. He begins to look 
 more for thoughts underlying the words. He doubts 
 sometimes whether this luscious-looking poetical fruit
 
 236 LITERARY JUDGMENT. 
 
 is a natural fruit, or only an imitation in painted 
 wax. Books begin to drop into an order of greatness 
 in his mind. In reading his old books he comes upon 
 those marked passages and wonders why he should 
 have marked them. He seems to detect forced and 
 fantastic phrases and images, attempting to hide the 
 poverty of the thought. He gets into a habit of 
 reducing what he reads to plain terms, and he finds 
 that what he is admiring now is that which rings 
 sound and true, the noble rather than the fine. He 
 still wants, and will always want, the composition to 
 be shot through and through with warmth and colour, 
 but the warmth and colour must come from the 
 " real blood of the heart and the real flame of the 
 thought." Gradually there dawns upon him what 
 Goethe learned from Oeser was the last lesson of 
 art that beauty consists in naturalness, simplicity, 
 and repose. 
 
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