{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4212/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4212","id":"gutenberg_4212","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4212","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Culture","Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century"],"text":"Ver.10/04/01*END*\n\n\n\n\n\nThis etext was produced by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.\n\n\n\n\nCULTURE AND ANARCHY: AN ESSAY IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CRITICISM\n1869, FIRST EDITION\nMATTHEW ARNOLD\n\n\nChapter Notes: I have indicated the author's notes with a superscript\nasterisk *, my own substantive notes with a superscript + sign, and\nmy nonsubstantive notes with a superscript \u00b1 symbol.\n\nPagination: The text following a given page number in brackets marks\nthe beginning of that page, as in the following example: [22] This is\npage twenty-two. [23] This is page twenty-three.\n\nCONTENTS\n\nPreface: iii-lx\nI: 1-50 (Sweetness and Light)\nII: 51-92 (Doing as One Likes)\nIII: 93-141 (Barbarians, Philistines, Populace)\nIV: 142-166 (Hebraism and Hellenism)\nV: 166-197 (Porro Unum est Necessarium)\nVI: 197-272 (Our Liberal Practitioners)\n\n*Note: in the first edition, chapters are numbered only, not named.\nI have added the third edition's titles for reference.\n\n\n\nCULTURE AND ANARCHY (1869, FIRST EDITION)\n\nPREFACE\n\n[iii] My foremost design in writing this Preface is to address a word\nof exhortation to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.  In\nthe essay which follows, the reader will often find Bishop Wilson\nquoted.  To me and to the members of the Society for Promoting\nChristian Knowledge his name and writings are still, no doubt,\nfamiliar; but the world is fast going away from old-fashioned people\nof his sort, and I learnt with consternation lately from a brilliant\nand distinguished votary of the natural sciences, that he had never\nso much as heard of Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to have\ninvented him.  At a moment when the Courts of Law have just taken off\nthe embargo from the recreative religion furnished on Sundays by my\ngifted acquaintance and others, and when St. Martin's Hall [iv] and\nthe Alhambra will soon be beginning again to resound with their\npulpit-eloquence, it distresses one to think that the new lights\nshould not only have, in general, a very low opinion of the preachers\nof the old religion, but that they should have it without knowing the\nbest that these preachers can do.  And that they are in this case is\nowing in part, certainly, to the negligence of the Christian\nKnowledge Society.  In old times they used to print and spread abroad\nBishop Wilson's Maxims of Piety and Christianity; the copy of this\nwork which I use is one of their publications, bearing their imprint,\nand bound in the well-known brown calf which they made familiar to\nour childhood; but the date of my copy is 1812.  I know of no copy\nbesides, and I believe the work is no longer one of those printed and\ncirculated by the Society.  Hence the error, flattering, I own, to me\npersonally, yet in itself to be regretted, of the distinguished\nphysicist already mentioned.\n\nBut Bishop Wilson's Maxims deserve to be circulated as a religious\nbook, not only by comparison with the cartloads of rubbish circulated\nat present under this designation, but for their own sake, and even\nby comparison with the other works of the same [v] author.  Over the\nfar better known Sacra Privata they have this advantage, that they\nwere prepared by him for his own private use, while the Sacra Privata\nwere prepared by him for the use of the public.  The Maxims were\nnever meant to be printed, and have on that account, like a work of,\ndoubtless, far deeper emotion and power, the Meditations of Marcus\nAurelius, something peculiarly sincere and first-hand about them.\nSome of the best things from the Maxims have passed into the Sacra\nPrivata; still, in the Maxims, we have them as they first arose; and\nwhereas, too, in the Sacra Privata the writer speaks very often as\none of the clergy, and as addressing the clergy, in the Maxims he\nalmost always speaks solely as a man.  I am not saying a word against\nthe Sacra Privata, for which I have the highest respect; only the\nMaxims seem to me a better and a more edifying book still.  They\nshould be read, as Joubert says Nicole should be read, with a direct\naim at practice.  The reader will leave on one side things which,\nfrom the change of time and from the changed point of view which the\nchange of time inevitably brings with it, no longer suit him; enough\n[vi] will remain to serve as a sample of the very best, perhaps,\nwhich our nation and race can do in the way of religious writing.\nMonsieur Michelet makes it a reproach to us that, in all the doubt as\nto the real author of the Imitation, no one has ever dreamed of\nascribing that work to an Englishman.  It is true, the Imitation\ncould not well have been written by an Englishman; the religious\ndelicacy and the profound asceticism of that admirable book are\nhardly in our nature.  This would be more of a reproach to us if in\npoetry, which requires, no less than religion, a true delicacy of\nspiritual perception, our race had not done such great things; and if\nthe Imitation, exquisite as it is, did not, as I have elsewhere\nremarked, belong to a class of works in which the perfect balance of\nhuman nature is lost, and which have therefore, as spiritual\nproductions, in their contents something excessive and morbid, in\ntheir form something not thoroughly sound.  On a lower range than the\nImitation, and awakening in our nature chords less poetical and\ndelicate, the Maxims of Bishop Wilson are, as a religious work, far\nmore solid.  To the most sincere ardour and unction, Bishop Wilson\nunites, in these Maxims, that downright honesty [vii] and plain good\nsense which our English race has so powerfully applied to the divine\nimpossibilities of religion; by which it has brought religion so much\ninto practical life, and has done its allotted part in promoting upon\nearth the kingdom of God.  But with ardour and unction religion, as\nwe all know, may still be fanatical; with honesty and good sense, it\nmay still be prosaic; and the fruit of honesty and good sense united\nwith ardour and unction is often only a prosaic religion held\nfanatically.  Bishop Wilson's excellence lies in a balance of the\nfour qualities, and in a fulness and perfection of them, which makes\nthis untoward result impossible; his unction is so perfect, and in\nsuch happy alliance with his good sense, that it becomes tenderness\nand fervent charity; his good sense is so perfect and in such happy\nalliance with his unction, that it becomes moderation and insight.\nWhile, therefore, the type of religion exhibited in his Maxims is\nEnglish, it is yet a type of a far higher kind than is in general\nreached by Bishop Wilson's countrymen; and yet, being English, it is\npossible and attainable for them.  And so I conclude as I began, by\nsaying that a work of this sort is one which the Society for\nPromoting Christian [viii] Knowledge should not suffer to remain out\nof print or out of currency.\n\nTo pass now to the matters canvassed in the following essay.  The\nwhole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help\nout of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total\nperfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most\nconcern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world,\nand, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free\nthought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow\nstaunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue\nin following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of\nfollowing them mechanically.  This, and this alone, is the scope of\nthe following essay.  I say again here, what I have said in the pages\nwhich follow, that from the faults and weaknesses of bookmen a notion\nof something bookish, pedantic, and futile has got itself more or\nless connected with the word culture, and that it is a pity we cannot\nuse a word more perfectly free from all shadow of reproach.  And yet,\nfutile as are many bookmen, and helpless as books and reading often\nprove for bringing nearer to perfection those who [ix] use them, one\nmust, I think, be struck more and more, the longer one lives, to find\nhow much, in our present society, a man's life of each day depends\nfor its solidity and value on whether he reads during that day, and,\nfar more still, on what he reads during it.  More and more he who\nexamines himself will find the difference it makes to him, at the end\nof any given day, whether or no he has pursued his avocations\nthroughout it without reading at all; and whether or no, having read\nsomething, he has read the newspapers only.  This, however, is a\nmatter for each man's private conscience and experience.  If a man\nwithout books or reading, or reading nothing but his letters and the\nnewspapers, gets nevertheless a fresh and free play of the best\nthoughts upon his stock notions and habits, he has got culture.  He\nhas got that for which we prize and recommend culture; he has got\nthat which at the present moment we seek culture that it may give us.\nThis inward operation is the very life and essence of culture, as we\nconceive it.\n\nNevertheless, it is not easy so to frame one's discourse concerning\nthe operation of culture, as to avoid giving frequent occasion to a\nmisunderstanding whereby the essential inwardness of the [x]\noperation is lost sight of.  We are supposed, when we criticise by\nthe help of culture some imperfect doing or other, to have in our eye\nsome well-known rival plan of doing, which we want to serve and\nrecommend.  Thus, for instance, because I have freely pointed out the\ndangers and inconveniences to which our literature is exposed in the\nabsence of any centre of taste and authority like the French Academy,\nit is constantly said that I want to introduce here in England an\ninstitution like the French Academy.  I have indeed expressly\ndeclared that I wanted no such thing; but let us notice how it is\njust our worship of machinery, and of external doing, which leads to\nthis charge being brought; and how the inwardness of culture makes us\nseize, for watching and cure, the faults to which our want of an\nAcademy inclines us, and yet prevents us from trusting to an arm of\nflesh, as the Puritans say,--from blindly flying to this outward\nmachinery of an Academy, in order to help ourselves.  For the very\nsame culture and free inward play of thought which shows us how the\nCorinthian style, or the whimsies about the One Primeval Language,\nare generated and strengthened in the absence of an [xi] Academy,\nshows us, too, how little any Academy, such as we should be likely to\nget, would cure them.  Every one who knows the characteristics of our\nnational life, and the tendencies so fully discussed in the following\npages, knows exactly what an English Academy would be like.  One can\nsee the happy family in one's mind's eye as distinctly as if it was\nalready constituted.  Lord Stanhope, the Bishop of Oxford, Mr.\nGladstone, the Dean of Westminster, Mr. Froude, Mr. Henry Reeve,--\neverything which is influential, accomplished, and distinguished; and\nthen, some fine morning, a dissatisfaction of the public mind with\nthis brilliant and select coterie, a flight of Corinthian leading\narticles, and an irruption of Mr. G.  A.  Sala.  Clearly, this is not\nwhat will do us good.  The very same faults,--the want of\nsensitiveness of intellectual conscience, the disbelief in right\nreason, the dislike of authority,--which have hindered our having an\nAcademy and have worked injuriously in our literature, would also\nhinder us from making our Academy, if we established it, one which\nwould really correct them.  And culture, which shows us truly the\nfaults, shows us this also just as truly.\n\n[xii] It is by a like sort of misunderstanding, again, that Mr. Oscar\nBrowning, one of the assistant-masters at Eton, takes up in the\nQuarterly Review the cudgels for Eton, as if I had attacked Eton,\nbecause I have said, in a book about foreign schools, that a man may\nwell prefer to teach his three or four hours a day without keeping a\nboarding-house; and that there are great dangers in cramming little\nboys of eight or ten and making them compete for an object of great\nvalue to their parents; and, again, that the manufacture and supply\nof school-books, in England, much needs regulation by some competent\nauthority.  Mr. Oscar Browning gives us to understand that at Eton he\nand others, with perfect satisfaction to themselves and the public,\ncombine the functions of teaching and of keeping a boarding-house;\nthat he knows excellent men (and, indeed, well he may, for a brother\nof his own, I am told, is one of the best of them,) engaged in\npreparing little boys for competitive examinations, and that the\nresult, as tested at Eton, gives perfect satisfaction.  And as to\nschool-books he adds, finally, that Dr.  William Smith, the learned\nand distinguished editor of the Quarterly Review, is, as we all know,\n[xiii] the compiler of school-books meritorious and many.  This is\nwhat Mr. Oscar Browning gives us to understand in the Quarterly\nReview, and it is impossible not to read with pleasure what he says.\nFor what can give a finer example of that frankness and manly self-\nconfidence which our great public schools, and none of them so much\nas Eton, are supposed to inspire, of that buoyant ease in holding up\none's head, speaking out what is in one's mind, and flinging off all\nsheepishness and awkwardness, than to see an Eton assistant-master\noffering in fact himself as evidence that to combine boarding-house-\nkeeping with teaching is a good thing, and his brother as evidence\nthat to train and race little boys for competitive examinations is a\ngood thing?  Nay, and one sees that this frank-hearted Eton self-\nconfidence is contagious; for has not Mr. Oscar Browning managed to\nfire Dr.  William Smith (himself, no doubt, the modestest man alive,\nand never trained at Eton) with the same spirit, and made him insert\nin his own Review a puff, so to speak, of his own school-books,\ndeclaring that they are (as they are) meritorious and many?\nNevertheless, Mr. Oscar Browning is wrong in [xiv] thinking that I\nwished to run down Eton; and his repetition on behalf of Eton, with\nthis idea in his head, of the strains of his heroic ancestor,\nMalvina's Oscar, as they are recorded by the family poet, Ossian, is\nunnecessary.  \"The wild boar rushes over their tombs, but he does not\ndisturb their repose.  They still love the sport of their youth, and\nmount the wind with joy.\" All I meant to say was, that there were\nunpleasantnesses in uniting the keeping a boarding-house with\nteaching, and dangers in cramming and racing little boys for\ncompetitive examinations, and charlatanism and extravagance in the\nmanufacture and supply of our school-books.  But when Mr. Oscar\nBrowning tells us that all these have been happily got rid of in his\ncase, and his brother's case, and Dr.  William Smith's case, then I\nsay that this is just what I wish, and I hope other people will\nfollow their good example.  All I seek is that such blemishes should\nnot through any negligence, self-love, or want of due self-\nexamination, be suffered to continue.\n\nNatural, as we have said, the sort of misunderstanding just noticed\nis; yet our usefulness depends upon our being able to clear it away,\nand to convince [xv] those who mechanically serve some stock notion\nor operation, and thereby go astray, that it is not culture's work or\naim to give the victory to some rival fetish, but simply to turn a\nfree and fresh stream of thought upon the whole matter in question.\nIn a thing of more immediate interest, just now, than either of the\ntwo we have mentioned, the like misunderstanding prevails; and until\nit is dissipated, culture can do no good work in the matter.  When we\ncriticise the present operation of disestablishing the Irish Church,\nnot by the power of reason and justice, but by the power of the\nantipathy of the Protestant Nonconformists, English and Scotch, to\nestablishments, we are charged with being dreamers of dreams, which\nthe national will has rudely shattered, for endowing the religious\nsects all round; or we are called enemies of the Nonconformists,\nblind partisans of the Anglican Establishment.  More than a few words\nwe must give to showing how erroneous are these charges; because if\nthey were true, we should be actually subverting our own design, and\nplaying false to that culture which it is our very purpose to\nrecommend.\n\nCertainly we are no enemies of the Nonconformists; [xvi] for, on the\ncontrary, what we aim at is their perfection.  Culture, which is the\nstudy of perfection, leads us, as we in the following pages have\nshown, to conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious\nperfection, developing all sides of our humanity; and as a general\nperfection, developing all parts of our society.  For if one member\nsuffer, the other members must suffer with it; and the fewer there\nare that follow the true way of salvation the harder that way is to\nfind.  And while the Nonconformists, the successors and\nrepresentatives of the Puritans, and like them staunchly walking by\nthe best light they have, make a large part of what is strongest and\nmost serious in this nation and therefore attract our respect and\ninterest, yet all that, in what follows, is said about Hebraism and\nHellenism, has for its main result to show how our Puritans, ancient\nand modern, have not enough added to their care for walking staunchly\nby the best light they have, a care that that light be not darkness;\nhow they have developed one side of their humanity at the expense of\nall others, and have become incomplete and mutilated men in\nconsequence.  Thus falling short of harmonious [xvii] perfection,\nthey fail to follow the true way of salvation.  Therefore that way is\nmade the harder for others to find, general perfection is put further\noff out of our reach, and the confusion and perplexity in which our\nsociety now labours is increased by the Nonconformists rather than\ndiminished by them.  So while we praise and esteem the zeal of the\nNonconformists in walking staunchly by the best light they have, and\ndesire to take no whit from it, we seek to add to this what we call\nsweetness and light, and develope their full humanity more perfectly;\nand to seek this is certainly not to be the enemy of the\nNonconformists.\n\nBut now, with these ideas in our head, we come across the present\noperation for disestablishing the Irish Church by the power of the\nNonconformists' antipathy to religious establishments and endowments.\nAnd we see Liberal statesmen, for whose purpose this antipathy\nhappens to be convenient, flattering it all they can; saying that\nthough they have no intention of laying hands on an Establishment\nwhich is efficient and popular, like the Anglican Establishment here\nin England, yet it is in the abstract a fine and good thing that\nreligion should [xviii] be left to the voluntary support of its\npromoters, and should thus gain in energy and independence; and Mr.\nGladstone has no words strong enough to express his admiration of the\nrefusal of State-aid by the Irish Roman Catholics, who have never yet\nbeen seriously asked to accept it, but who would a good deal\nembarrass him if they demanded it.  And we see philosophical\npoliticians, with a turn for swimming with the stream, like Mr.\nBaxter or Mr. Charles Buxton, and philosophical divines with the same\nturn, like the Dean of Canterbury, seeking to give a sort of grand\nstamp of generality and solemnity to this antipathy of the\nNonconformists, and to dress it out as a law of human progress in the\nfuture.  Now, nothing can be pleasanter than swimming with the\nstream; and we might gladly, if we could, try in our unsystematic way\nto help Mr. Baxter, and Mr. Charles Buxton, and the Dean of\nCanterbury, in their labours at once philosophical and popular.  But\nwe have got fixed in our minds that a more full and harmonious\ndevelopment of their humanity is what the Nonconformists most want,\nthat narrowness, one-sidedness, and incompleteness is what they most\nsuffer from; [xix] in a word, that in what we call provinciality they\nabound, but in what we may call totality they fall short.\n\nAnd they fall short more than the members of Establishments.  The\ngreat works by which, not only in literature, art, and science\ngenerally, but in religion itself, the human spirit has manifested\nits approaches to totality, and a full, harmonious perfection, and by\nwhich it stimulates and helps forward the world's general perfection,\ncome, not from Nonconformists, but from men who either belong to\nEstablishments or have been trained in them.  A Nonconformist\nminister, the Rev. Edward White, who has lately written a temperate\nand well-reasoned pamphlet against Church Establishments, says that\n\"the unendowed and unestablished communities of England exert full as\nmuch moral and ennobling influence upon the conduct of statesmen as\nthat Church which is both established and endowed.\" That depends upon\nwhat one means by moral and ennobling influence.  The believer in\nmachinery may think that to get a Government to abolish Church-rates\nor to legalise marriage with a deceased wife's sister is to exert a\nmoral and ennobling influence [xx] upon Government.  But a lover of\nperfection, who looks to inward ripeness for the true springs of\nconduct, will surely think that as Shakspeare has done more for the\ninward ripeness of our statesmen than Dr.  Watts, and has, therefore,\ndone more to moralise and ennoble them, so an Establishment which has\nproduced Hooker, Barrow, Butler, has done more to moralise and\nennoble English statesmen and their conduct than communities which\nhave produced the Nonconformist divines.  The fruitful men of English\nPuritanism and Nonconformity are men who were trained within the pale\nof the Establishment,--Milton, Baxter, Wesley.  A generation or two\noutside the Establishment, and Puritanism produces men of national\nmark no more.  With the same doctrine and discipline, men of national\nmark are produced in Scotland; but in an Establishment.  With the\nsame doctrine and discipline, men of national and even European mark\nare produced in Germany, Switzerland, France; but in Establishments.\nOnly two religious disciplines seem exempted; or comparatively\nexempted, from the operation of the law which seems to forbid the\nrearing, outside of national establishments, of men of the [xxi]\nhighest spiritual significance.  These two are the Roman Catholic and\nthe Jewish.  And these, both of them, rest on Establishments, which,\nthough not indeed national, are cosmopolitan; and perhaps here, what\nthe individual man does not lose by these conditions of his rearing,\nthe citizen, and the State of which he is a citizen, loses.\n\nWhat, now, can be the reason of this undeniable provincialism of the\nEnglish Puritans and Protestant Nonconformists, a provincialism which\nhas two main types,--a bitter type and a smug type,--but which in\nboth its types is vulgarising, and thwarts the full perfection of our\nhumanity?  Men of genius and character are born and reared in this\nmedium as in any other.  From the faults of the mass such men will\nalways be comparatively free, and they will always excite our\ninterest; yet in this medium they seem to have a special difficulty\nin breaking through what bounds them, and in developing their\ntotality.  Surely the reason is, that the Nonconformist is not in\ncontact with the main current of national life, like the member of an\nEstablishment.  In a matter of such deep and vital concern as\nreligion, this separation from the main current of the national life\nhas [xxii] peculiar importance.  In the following essay we have\ndiscussed at length the tendency in us to Hebraise, as we call it;\nthat is, to sacrifice all other sides of our being to the religious\nside.  This tendency has its cause in the divine beauty and grandeur\nof religion, and bears affecting testimony to them; but we have seen\nthat it has dangers for us, we have seen that it leads to a narrow\nand twisted growth of our religious side itself, and to a failure in\nperfection.  But if we tend to Hebraise even in an Establishment,\nwith the main current of national life flowing round us, and\nreminding us in all ways of the variety and fulness of human\nexistence,--by a Church which is historical as the State itself is\nhistorical, and whose order, ceremonies, and monuments reach, like\nthose of the State, far beyond any fancies and devisings of ours, and\nby institutions such as the Universities, formed to defend and\nadvance that very culture and many-sided development which it is the\ndanger of Hebraising to make us neglect,--how much more must we tend\nto Hebraise when we lack these preventives.  One may say that to be\nreared a member of an Establishment is in itself a lesson of\nreligious moderation, and a help towards [xxiii] culture and\nharmonious perfection.  Instead of battling for his own private forms\nfor expressing the inexpressible and defining the undefinable, a man\ntakes those which have commended themselves most to the religious\nlife of his nation; and while he may be sure that within those forms\nthe religious side of his own nature may find its satisfaction, he\nhas leisure and composure to satisfy other sides of his nature as\nwell.\n\nBut with the member of a Nonconforming or self-made religious\ncommunity how different!  The sectary's eigene grosse Erfindungen, as\nGoethe calls them,--the precious discoveries of himself and his\nfriends for expressing the inexpressible and defining the undefinable\nin peculiar forms of their own, cannot but, as he has voluntarily\nchosen them, and is personally responsible for them, fill his whole\nmind.  He is zealous to do battle for them and affirm them, for in\naffirming them he affirms himself, and that is what we all like.\nOther sides of his being are thus neglected, because the religious\nside, always tending in every serious man to predominance over our\nother spiritual sides, is in him made quite absorbing and tyrannous\nby [xxiv] the condition of self-assertion and challenge which he has\nchosen for himself.  And just what is not essential in religion he\ncomes to mistake for essential, and a thousand times the more readily\nbecause he has chosen it of himself; and religious activity he\nfancies to consist in battling for it.  All this leaves him little\nleisure or inclination for culture; to which, besides, he has no\ngreat institutions not of his own making, like the Universities\nconnected with the national Establishment, to invite him; but only\nsuch institutions as, like the order and discipline of his religion,\nhe may have invented for himself, and invented under the sway of the\nnarrow and tyrannous notions of religion fostered in him as we have\nseen.  Thus, while a national Establishment of religion favours\ntotality, hole-and-corner forms of religion (to use an expressive\npopular word) inevitably favour provincialism.\n\nBut the Nonconformists, and many of our Liberal friends along with\nthem, have a plausible plan for getting rid of this provincialism,\nif, as they can hardly quite deny, it exists.  \"Let us all be in the\nsame boat,\" they cry; \"open the Universities to everybody, and let\nthere be no establishment of [xxv] religion at all!\" Open the\nUniversities by all means; but, as to the second point about\nestablishment, let us sift the proposal a little.  It does seem at\nfirst a little like that proposal of the fox, who had lost his own\ntail, to put all the other foxes in the same boat by a general\ncutting off of tails; and we know that moralists have decided that\nthe right course here was, not to adopt this plausible suggestion,\nand cut off tails all round, but rather that the other foxes should\nkeep their tails, and that the fox without a tail should get one.\nAnd so we might be inclined to urge that, to cure the evil of the\nNonconformists' provincialism, the right way can hardly be to\nprovincialise us all round.\n\nHowever, perhaps we shall not be provincialised.  For the Rev. Edward\nWhite says that probably, \"when all good men alike are placed in a\ncondition of religious equality, and the whole complicated iniquity\nof Government Church patronage is swept away, more of moral and\nennobling influence than ever will be brought to bear upon the action\nof statesmen.\" We already have an example of religious equality in\nour colonies.  \"In the colonies,\" says The Times, \"we see religious\ncommunities unfettered by [xxvi] State-control, and the State\nrelieved from one of the most troublesome and irritating of\nresponsibilities.\" But America is the great example alleged by those\nwho are against establishments for religion.  Our topic at this\nmoment is the influence of religious establishments on culture; and\nit is remarkable that Mr. Bright, who has taken lately to\nrepresenting himself as, above all, a promoter of reason and of the\nsimple natural truth of things, and his policy as a fostering of the\ngrowth of intelligence,--just the aims, as is well known, of culture\nalso,--Mr. Bright, in a speech at Birmingham about education, seized\non the very point which seems to concern our topic, when he said: \"I\nbelieve the people of the United States have offered to the world\nmore valuable information during the last forty years than all Europe\nput together.\" So America, without religious establishments, seems to\nget ahead of us all in culture and totality; and these are the cure\nfor provincialism.\n\nOn the other hand, another friend of reason and the simple natural\ntruth of things, Monsieur Renan, says of America, in a book he has\nrecently published, what seems to conflict violently with [xxvii]\nwhat Mr. Bright says.  Mr. Bright affirms that, not only have the\nUnited States thus informed Europe, but they have done it without a\ngreat apparatus of higher and scientific instruction, and by dint of\nall classes in America being \"sufficiently educated to be able to\nread, and to comprehend, and to think; and that, I maintain, is the\nfoundation of all subsequent progress.\" And then comes Monsieur\nRenan, and says: \"The sound instruction of the people is an effect of\nthe high culture of certain classes.  The countries which, like the\nUnited States, have created a considerable popular instruction\nwithout any serious higher instruction, will long have to expiate\nthis fault by their intellectual mediocrity, their vulgarity of\nmanners, their superficial spirit, their lack of general\nintelligence.\"* Now, which of these two friends of culture are we to\nbelieve?  Monsieur Renan seems more to have in his eye what we\nourselves mean by culture; [xxviii] because Mr. Bright always has in\nhis eye what he calls \"a commendable interest\" in politics and\npolitical agitations.  As he said only the other day at Birmingham:\n\"At this moment,--in fact, I may say at every moment in the history\nof a free country,--there is nothing that is so much worth discussing\nas politics.\" And he keeps repeating, with all the powers of his\nnoble oratory, the old story, how to the thoughtfulness and\nintelligence of the people of great towns we owe all our improvements\nin the last thirty years, and how these improvements have hitherto\nconsisted in Parliamentary reform, and free trade, and abolition of\nChurch rates, and so on; and how they are now about to consist in\ngetting rid of minority-members, and in introducing a free breakfast-\ntable, and in abolishing the Irish Church by the power of the\nNonconformists' antipathy to establishments, and much more of the\nsame kind.  And though our pauperism and ignorance, and all the\nquestions which are called social, seem now to be forcing themselves\nupon his mind, yet he still goes on with his glorifying of the great\ntowns, and the Liberals, and their operations for the last thirty\nyears.  It never [xxix] seems to occur to him that the present\ntroubled state of our social life has anything to do with the thirty\nyears' blind worship of their nostrums by himself and our Liberal\nfriends, or that it throws any doubts upon the sufficiency of this\nworship.  But he thinks what is still amiss is due to the stupidity\nof the Tories, and will be cured by the thoughtfulness and\nintelligence of the great towns, and by the Liberals going on\ngloriously with their political operations as before; or that it will\ncure itself.  So we see what Mr. Bright means by thoughtfulness and\nintelligence, and in what manner, according to him, we are to grow in\nthem.  And, no doubt, in America all classes read their newspaper and\ntake a commendable interest in politics more than here or anywhere\nelse in Europe.\n\nBut, in the following essay, we have been led to doubt the\nsufficiency of all this political operating of ours, pursued\nmechanically as we pursue it; and we found that general intelligence,\nas Monsieur Renan calls it, or, in our own words, a reference of all\nour operating to a firm intelligible law of things, was just what we\nwere without, and that we were without it because we worshipped our\nmachinery [xxx] so devoutly.  Therefore, we conclude that Monsieur\nRenan, more than Mr. Bright, means by reason and intelligence the\nsame thing as we do; and when he says that America, that chosen home\nof newspapers and politics, is without general intelligence, we think\nit likely, from the circumstances of the case, that this is so; and\nthat, in culture and totality, America, instead of surpassing us all,\nfalls short.\n\nAnd,--to keep to our point of the influence of religious\nestablishments upon culture and a high development of our humanity,--\nwe can surely see reasons why, with all her energy and fine gifts,\nAmerica does not show more of this development, or more promise of\nthis.  In the following essay it will be seen how our society\ndistributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and\nAmerica is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and\nthe Populace nearly.  This leaves the Philistines for the great bulk\nof the nation;--a livelier sort of Philistine than ours, and with the\npressure and false ideal of our Barbarians taken away, but left all\nthe more to himself and to have his full swing!  And as we have found\nthat the strongest and most vital part of English Philistinism was\nthe [xxxi] Puritan and Hebraising middle-class, and that its\nHebraising keeps it from culture and totality, so it is notorious\nthat the people of the United States issues from this class, and\nreproduces its tendencies,--its narrow conception of man's spiritual\nrange and of his one thing needful.  From Maine to Florida, and back\nagain, all America Hebraises.  Difficult as it is to speak of a\npeople merely from what one reads, yet that, I think, one may,\nwithout much fear of contradiction say.  I mean, when, in the United\nStates, any spiritual side in a man is wakened to activity, it is\ngenerally the religious side, and the religious side in a narrow way.\nSocial reformers go to Moses or St.  Paul for their doctrines, and\nhave no notion there is anywhere else to go to; earnest young men at\nschools and universities, instead of conceiving salvation as a\nharmonious perfection only to be won by unreservedly cultivating many\nsides in us, conceive of it in the old Puritan fashion, and fling\nthemselves ardently upon it in the old, false ways of this fashion,\nwhich we know so well, and such as Mr. Hammond, the American\nrevivalist, has lately, at Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle, been refreshing\nour memory with.  Now, if America thus [xxxii] Hebraises more than\neither England or Germany, will any one deny that the absence of\nreligious establishments has much to do with it?  We have seen how\nestablishments tend to give us a sense of a historical life of the\nhuman spirit, outside and beyond our own fancies and feelings; how\nthey thus tend to suggest new sides and sympathies in us to\ncultivate; how, further, by saving us from having to invent and fight\nfor our own forms of religion, they give us leisure and calm to\nsteady our view of religion itself,--the most overpowering of\nobjects, as it is the grandest,--and to enlarge our first crude\nnotions of the one thing needful.  But, in a serious people, where\nevery one has to choose and strive for his own order and discipline\nof religion, the contention about these non-essentials occupies his\nmind, his first crude notions about the one thing needful do not get\npurged, and they invade the whole spiritual man in him, and then,\nmaking a solitude, they call it heavenly peace.\n\nI remember a Nonconformist manufacturer, in a town of the Midland\ncounties, telling me that when he first came there, some years ago,\nthe place had no Dissenters; but he had opened an Independent\n[xxxiii] chapel in it, and now Church and Dissent were pretty equally\ndivided, with sharp contests between them.  I said, that seemed a\npity.  \"A pity?\" cried he; \"not at all!  Only think of all the zeal\nand activity which the collision calls forth!\" \"Ah, but, my dear\nfriend,\" I answered, \"only think of all the nonsense which you now\nhold quite firmly, which you would never have held if you had not\nbeen contradicting your adversary in it all these years!\" The more\nserious the people, and the more prominent the religious side in it,\nthe greater is the danger of this side, if set to choose out forms\nfor itself and fight for existence, swelling and spreading till it\nswallows all other spiritual sides up, intercepts and absorbs all\nnutriment which should have gone to them, and leaves Hebraism rampant\nin us and Hellenism stamped out.\n\nCulture, and the harmonious perfection of our whole being, and what\nwe call totality, then become secondary matters; and the\ninstitutions, which should develope these, take the same narrow and\npartial view of humanity and its wants as the free religious\ncommunities take.  Just as the free churches of Mr. Beecher or\nBrother Noyes, with their provincialism [xxxiv] and want of\ncentrality, make mere Hebraisers in religion, and not perfect men, so\nthe university of Mr. Ezra Cornell, a really noble monument of his\nmunificence, yet seems to rest on a provincial misconception of what\nculture truly is, and to be calculated to produce miners, or\nengineers, or architects, not sweetness and light.\n\nAnd, therefore, when the Rev. Edward White asks the same kind of\nquestion about America that he has asked about England, and wants to\nknow whether, without religious establishments, as much is not done\nin America for the higher national life as is done for that life\nhere, we answer in the same way as we did before, that as much is not\ndone.  Because to enable and stir up people to read their Bible and\nthe newspapers, and to get a practical knowledge of their business,\ndoes not serve to the higher spiritual life of a nation so much as\nculture, truly conceived, serves; and a true conception of culture\nis, as Monsieur Renan's words show, just what America fails in.\n\nTo the many who think that culture, and sweetness, and light, are all\nmoonshine, this will not appear to matter much; but with us, who\nvalue [xxxv] them, and who think that we have traced much of our\npresent discomfort to the want of them, it weighs a great deal.  So\nnot only do we say that the Nonconformists have got provincialism and\nlost totality by the want of a religious establishment, but we say\nthat the very example which they bring forward to help their case\nmakes against them; and that when they triumphantly show us America\nwithout religious establishments, they only show us a whole nation\ntouched, amidst all its greatness and promise, with that\nprovincialism which it is our aim to extirpate in the English\nNonconformists.\n\nBut now to evince the disinterestedness which culture, as I have\nsaid, teaches us.  We have seen the narrowness generated in\nPuritanism by its hole-and-corner organisation, and we propose to\ncure it by bringing Puritanism more into contact with the main\ncurrent of national life.  Here we are fully at one with the Dean of\nWestminster; and, indeed, he and we were trained in the same school\nto mark the narrowness of Puritanism, and to wish to cure it.  But he\nand others would give to the present Anglican Establishment a\ncharacter the most latitudinarian, as it is called, possible;\navailing themselves for this [xxxvi] purpose of the diversity of\ntendencies and doctrines which does undoubtedly exist already in the\nAnglican formularies; and they would say to the Puritans: \"Come all\nof you into this liberally conceived Anglican Establishment.\" But to\nsay this is hardly, perhaps, to take sufficient account of the course\nof history, or of the strength of men's feelings in what concerns\nreligion, or of the gravity which may have come to attach itself to\npoints of religious order and discipline merely.  When the Rev.\nEdward White talks of \"sweeping away the whole complicated iniquity\nof Government Church patronage,\" he uses language which has been\nforced upon him by his position, but which is, as we have seen,\ndevoid of any real solidity.  But when he talks of the religious\ncommunities \"which have for three hundred years contended for the\npower of the congregation in the management of their own affairs,\"\nthen he talks history; and his language has behind it, in my opinion,\nfacts which make the latitudinarianism of our Broad Churchmen quite\nillusory.  Certainly, culture will never make us think it an\nessential of religion whether we have in our Church discipline \"a\npopular authority of elders,\" as Hooker calls [xxxvii] it, or whether\nwe have Episcopal jurisdiction.  Certainly, Hooker himself did not\nthink it an essential; for in the dedication of his Ecclesiastical\nPolity, speaking of these questions of Church discipline which gave\noccasion to his great work, he says they are \"in truth, for the\ngreatest part, such silly things, that very easiness doth make them\nhard to be disputed of in serious manner.\" Hooker's great work\nagainst the impugners of the order and discipline of the Church of\nEngland was written (and this is too indistinctly seized by many who\nread it), not because Episcopalianism is essential, but because its\nimpugners maintained that Presbyterianism is essential, and that\nEpiscopalianism is sinful.  Neither the one nor the other is either\nessential or sinful, and much may be said on behalf of both.  But\nwhat is important to be remarked is that both were in the Church of\nEngland at the Reformation, and that Presbyterianism was only\nextruded gradually.  We have mentioned Hooker, and nothing better\nillustrates what has just been asserted than the following incident\nin Hooker's own career, which every one has read, for it is related\nin Isaac Walton's Life of Hooker, but of which, [xxxviii] probably,\nthe significance has been fully grasped by not one-half of those who\nhave read it.\n\nHooker was through the influence of Archbishop Whitgift appointed, in\n1585, Master of the Temple; but a great effort had just been made to\nobtain the place for a Mr. Walter Travers, well known in that day,\nthough now it is Hooker's name which alone preserves his.  This\nTravers was then afternoon-lecturer at the Temple.  The Master whose\ndeath made the vacancy, Alvey, recommended on his deathbed Travers\nfor his successor, the society was favourable to him, and he had the\nsupport of the Lord Treasurer Burghley.  After Hooker's appointment\nto the Mastership, Travers remained afternoon-lecturer, and combated\nin the afternoons the doctrine which Hooker preached in the mornings.\nNow, this Travers, originally a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,\nafterwards afternoon-lecturer at the Temple, recommended for the\nMastership by the foregoing Master, whose opinions, it is said,\nagreed with his, favoured by the society of the Temple, and supported\nby the Prime Minister,--this Travers was not an Episcopally ordained\nclergyman at all; he was a Presbyterian, [xxxix] a partisan of the\nGeneva church-discipline, as it was then called, and \"had taken\norders,\" says Walton, \"by the Presbyters in Antwerp.\" In another\nplace Walton speaks of his orders yet more fully:--\"He had\ndisowned,\" he says, \"the English Established Church and Episcopacy,\nand went to Geneva, and afterwards to Antwerp, to be ordained\nminister, as he was by Villers and Cartwright and others the heads of\na congregation there; and so came back again more confirmed for the\ndiscipline.\" Villers and Cartwright are in like manner examples of\nPresbyterianism within the Church of England, which was common enough\nat that time; but perhaps nothing can better give us a lively sense\nof its presence there than this history of Travers, which is as if\nMr. Binney were now afternoon-reader at Lincoln's Inn or the Temple,\nwere to be a candidate, favoured by the benchers and by the Prime\nMinister, for the Mastership, and were only kept out of the post by\nthe accident of the Archbishop of Canterbury's influence with the\nQueen carrying a rival candidate.\n\nPresbyterianism, with its popular principle of the power of the\ncongregation in the management of [xl] their own affairs, was\nextruded from the Church of England, and men like Travers can no\nlonger appear in her pulpits.  Perhaps if a government like that of\nElizabeth, with secular statesmen like the Cecils, and ecclesiastical\nstatesmen like Whitgift, could have been prolonged, Presbyterianism\nmight, by a wise mixture of concession and firmness, have been\nabsorbed in the Establishment.  Lord Bolingbroke, on a matter of this\nkind a very clear-judging and impartial witness, says, in a work far\ntoo little read, his Remarks on English History:--\" The measures\npursued and the temper observed in Queen Elizabeth's time tended to\ndiminish the religious opposition by a slow, a gentle, and for that\nvery reason an effectual progression.  There was even room to hope\nthat when the first fire of the Dissenters' zeal was passed,\nreasonable terms of union with the Established Church might be\naccepted by such of them as were not intoxicated with fanaticism.\nThese were friends to order, though they disputed about it.  If these\nfriends of Calvin's discipline had been once incorporated with the\nEstablished Church, the remaining sectaries would have been of little\nmoment, either for numbers or [xli] reputation; and the very means\nwhich were proper to gain these friends, were likewise the most\neffectual to hinder the increase of them, and of the other sectaries\nin the meantime.\" The temper and ill judgment of the Stuarts made\nshipwreck of all policy of this kind.  Yet speaking even of the time\nof the Stuarts, but their early time, Clarendon says that if Bishop\nAndrewes had succeeded Bancroft at Canterbury, the disaffection of\nseparatists might have been stayed and healed.  This, however, was\nnot to be; and Presbyterianism, after exercising for some years the\nlaw of the strongest, itself in Charles the Second's reign suffered\nunder this law, and was finally cast out from the Church of England.\n\nNow the points of church discipline at issue between Presbyterianism\nand Episcopalianism are, as has been said, not essential.  They might\nprobably once have been settled in a sense altogether favourable to\nEpiscopalianism.  Hooker may have been right in thinking that there\nwere in his time circumstances which made it essential that they\nshould be settled in this sense, though the points in themselves were\nnot essential.  But by the very fact of the settlement not having\nthen been effected, of the [xlii] breach having gone on and widened,\nof the Nonconformists not having been amicably incorporated with the\nEstablishment but violently cast out from it, the circumstances are\nnow altogether altered.  Isaac Walton, a fervent Churchman, complains\nthat \"the principles of the Nonconformists grew at last to such a\nheight and were vented so daringly, that, beside the loss of life and\nlimbs, the Church and State were both forced to use such other\nseverities as will not admit of an excuse, if it had not been to\nprevent confusion and the perilous consequences of it.\" But those\nvery severities have of themselves made union on an Episcopalian\nfooting impossible.  Besides, Presbyterianism, the popular authority\nof elders, the power of the congregation in the management of their\nown affairs, has that warrant given to it by Scripture and by the\nproceedings of the early Christian Churches, it is so consonant with\nthe spirit of Protestantism which made the Reformation and which has\nsuch strength in this country, it is so predominant in the practice\nof other reformed churches, it was so strong in the original reformed\nChurch of England, that one cannot help doubting whether any\nsettlement which suppressed it could have been really permanent,\n[xliii] and whether it would not have kept appearing again and again,\nand causing dissension.\n\nWell, then, if culture is the disinterested endeavour after man's\nperfection, will it not make us wish to cure the provincialism of the\nNonconformists, not by making Churchmen provincial along with them,\nbut by letting their popular church discipline, formerly found in the\nNational Church, and still found in the affections and practice of a\ngood part of the nation, appear in the National Church once more; and\nthus to bring Nonconformists into contact again, as their greater\nfathers were, with the main stream of national life?  Why should not\na Presbyterian or Congregational Church, based on this considerable\nand important, though not essential principle, of the congregation's\npower in the church management, be established,--with equal rank for\nits chiefs with the chiefs of Episcopacy, and with admissibility of\nits ministers, under a revised system of patronage and preferment, to\nbenefices,--side by side with the Episcopal Church, as the Calvinist\nand Lutheran Churches are established side by side in France and\nGermany?  Such a Congregational Church would unite the main bodies of\nProtestants who are now separatists; and [xliv] separation would\ncease to be the law of their religious order.  Then,--through this\nconcession on a really considerable point of difference,--that\nendless splitting into hole-and-corner churches on quite\ninconsiderable points of difference, which must prevail so long as\nseparatism is the first law of a Nonconformist's religious existence,\nwould be checked.  Culture would then find a place among English\nfollowers of the popular authority of elders, as it has long found it\namong the followers of Episcopal jurisdiction; and this we should\ngain by merely recognising, regularising, and restoring an element\nwhich appeared once in the reformed National Church, and which is\nconsiderable and national enough to have a sound claim to appear\nthere still.\n\nSo far, then, is culture from making us unjust to the Nonconformists\nbecause it forbids us to worship their fetishes, that it even leads\nus to propose to do more for them than they themselves venture to\nclaim.  It leads us, also, to respect what is solid and respectable\nin their convictions, while their latitudinarian friends make light\nof it.  Not that the forms in which the human spirit tries to express\nthe inexpressible, or the forms by which man tries to [xlv] worship,\nhave or can have, as has been said, for the follower of perfection,\nanything necessary or eternal.  If the New Testament and the practice\nof the primitive Christians sanctioned the popular form of church\ngovernment a thousand times more expressly than they do, if the\nChurch since Constantine were a thousand times more of a departure\nfrom the scheme of primitive Christianity than it can be shown to be,\nthat does not at all make, as is supposed by men in bondage to the\nletter, the popular form of church government alone and always sacred\nand binding, or the work of Constantine a thing to be regretted.\nWhat is alone and always sacred and binding for man is the climbing\ntowards his total perfection, and the machinery by which he does this\nvaries in value according as it helps him to do it.  The planters of\nChristianity had their roots in deep and rich grounds of human life\nand achievement, both Jewish and also Greek; and had thus a\ncomparatively firm and wide basis amidst all the vehement inspiration\nof their mighty movement and change.  By their strong inspiration\nthey carried men off the old basis of life and culture, whether\nJewish or Greek, and generations arose [xlvi] who had their roots in\nneither world, and were in contact therefore with no full and great\nstream of human life.  Christianity might have lost herself, if it\nhad not been for some such change as that of the fourth century, in a\nmultitude of hole-and-corner churches like the churches of English\nNonconformity after its founders departed; churches without great\nmen, and without furtherance for the higher life of humanity.  At a\ncritical moment came Constantine, and placed Christianity,--or let us\nrather say, placed the human spirit, whose totality was endangered,--\nin contact with the main current of human life.  And his work was\njustified by its fruits, in men like Augustine and Dante, and indeed\nin all the great men of Christianity, Catholics or Protestants, ever\nsince.  And one may go beyond this.  Monsieur Albert Reville, whose\nreligious writings are always interesting, says that the conception\nwhich cultivated and philosophical Jews now entertain of Christianity\nand its founder, is probably destined to become the conception which\nChristians themselves will entertain.  Socinians are fond of saying\nthe same thing about the Socinian conception of Christianity.  Even\nif this were true, it would still have been [xlvii] better for a man,\nthrough the last eighteen hundred years, to have been a Christian,\nand a member of one of the great Christian communions, than to have\nbeen a Jew or a Socinian; because the being in contact with the main\nstream of human life is of more moment for a man's total spiritual\ngrowth, and for his bringing to perfection the gifts committed to\nhim, which is his business on earth, than any speculative opinion\nwhich he may hold or think he holds.  Luther,--whom we have called a\nPhilistine of genius, and who, because he was a Philistine, had a\ncoarseness and lack of spiritual delicacy which have harmed his\ndisciples, but who, because he was a genius, had splendid flashes of\nspiritual insight,--Luther says admirably in his Commentary on the\nBook of Daniel: \"A God is simply that whereon the human heart rests\nwith trust, faith, hope and love.  If the resting is right, then the\nGod too is right; if the resting is wrong, then the God too is\nillusory.\"  In other words, the worth of what a man thinks about God\nand the objects of religion depends on what the man is; and what the\nman is, depends upon his having more or less reached the measure of a\nperfect and total man.\n\n[xlviii] All this is true; and yet culture, as we have seen, has more\ntenderness for scruples of the Nonconformists than have their Broad\nChurch friends.  That is because culture, disinterestedly trying, in\nits aim at perfection, to see things as they really are, sees how\nworthy and divine a thing is the religious side in man, though it is\nnot the whole of man.  And when Mr. Greg, who differs from us about\nedification, (and certainly we do not seem likely to agree with him\nas to what edifies), finding himself moved by some extraneous\nconsiderations or other to take a Church's part against its enemies,\ncalls taking a Church's part returning to base uses, culture teaches\nus how out of place is this language, and that to use it shows an\ninadequate conception of human nature, and that no Church will thank\na man for taking its part in this fashion, but will leave him with\nindifference to the tender mercies of his Benthamite friends.  But\navoiding Benthamism, or an inadequate conception of the religious\nside in man, culture makes us also avoid Mialism, or an inadequate\nconception of man's totality.  Therefore to the worth and grandeur of\nthe religious side in man, culture is rejoiced and willing to pay any\ntribute, [xlix] except the tribute of man's totality.  True, the\norder and liturgy of the Church of England one may be well contented\nto live and to die with, and they are such as to inspire an\naffectionate and revering attachment.  True, the reproaches of\nNonconformists against this order for \"retaining badges of\nAntichristian recognisance;\" and for \"corrupting the right form of\nChurch polity with manifold Popish rites and ceremonies;\" true, their\nassertion of the essentialness of their own supposed Scriptural\norder, and their belief in its eternal fitness, are founded on\nillusion.  True, the whole attitude of horror and holy superiority\nassumed by Puritanism towards the Church of Rome, is wrong and false,\nand well merits Sir Henry Wotton's rebuke:--\"Take heed of thinking\nthat the farther you go from the Church of Rome, the nearer you are\nto God.\"  True, one of the best wishes one could form for Mr.\nSpurgeon or Father Jackson is, that they might be permitted to learn\non this side the grave (for if they do not, a considerable surprise\nis certainly reserved for them on the other) that Whitfield and\nWesley were not at all better than St. Francis, and that they\nthemselves are not at all better than Lacordaire.  Yet, [l] in spite\nof all this, so noble and divine a thing is religion, so respectable\nis that earnestness which desires a prayer-book with one strain of\ndoctrine, so attaching is the order and discipline by which we are\nused to have our religion conveyed, so many claims on our regard has\nthat popular form of church government for which Nonconformists\ncontend, so perfectly compatible is it with all progress towards\nperfection, that culture would make us shy even to propose to\nNonconformists the acceptance of the Anglican prayer-book and the\nepiscopal order; and would be forward to wish them a prayer-book of\ntheir own approving, and the church discipline to which they are\nattached and accustomed.  Only not at the price of Mialism; that is,\nof a doctrine which leaves the Nonconformists in holes and corners,\nout of contact with the main current of national life.  One can lay\none's finger, indeed, on the line by which this doctrine has grown\nup, and see how the essential part of Nonconformity is a popular\nchurch-discipline analogous to that of the other reformed churches,\nand how its voluntaryism is an accident.  It contended for the\nestablishment of its own church-discipline as the only true [li] one;\nand beaten in this contention, and seeing its rival established, it\ncame down to the more plausible proposal \"to place all good men alike\nin a condition of religious equality;\" and this plan of proceeding,\noriginally taken as a mere second-best, became, by long sticking to\nit and preaching it up, first fair, then righteous, then the only\nrighteous, then at last necessary to salvation.  This is the plan for\nremedying the Nonconformists' divorce from contact with the national\nlife by divorcing churchmen too from contact with it; that is, as we\nhave familiarly before put it, the tailless foxes are for cutting off\ntails all round.  But this the other foxes could not wisely grant,\nunless it were proved that tails are of no value.  And so, too,\nunless it is proved that contact with the main current of national\nlife is of no value (and we have shown that it is of the greatest\nvalue), we cannot safely, even to please the Nonconformists in a\nmatter where we would please them as much as possible, admit Mialism.\n\nBut now, as we have shown the disinterestedness which culture\nenjoins, and its obedience not to likings or dislikings, but to the\naim of perfection, let us show its flexibility,--its independence of\nmachinery.  That [lii] other and greater prophet of intelligence, and\nreason, and the simple natural truth of things,--Mr. Bright,--means\nby these, as we have seen, a certain set of measures which suit the\nspecial ends of Liberal and Nonconformist partisans.  For instance,\nreason and justice towards Ireland mean the abolishment of the\niniquitous Protestant ascendency in such a particular way as to suit\nthe Nonconformists' antipathy to establishments.  Reason and justice\npursued in a different way, by distributing among the three main\nChurches of Ireland,--the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and the\nPresbyterian,--the church property of Ireland, would immediately\ncease, for Mr. Bright and the Nonconformists, to be reason and\njustice at all, and would become, as Mr. Spurgeon says, \"a setting up\nof the Roman image.\"  Thus we see that the sort of intelligence\nreached by culture is more disinterested than the sort of\nintelligence reached by belonging to the Liberal party in the great\ntowns, and taking a commendable interest in politics.  But still more\nstriking is the difference between the two views of intelligence,\nwhen we see that culture not only makes a quite disinterested choice\nof the machinery [liii] proper to carry us towards sweetness and\nlight, and to make reason and the will of God prevail, but by even\nthis machinery does not hold stiffly and blindly, and easily passes\non beyond it to that for the sake of which it chose it.\n\nFor instance: culture leads us to think that the ends of human\nperfection might be best served by establishing,--that is, by\nbringing into contact with the main current of the national life,--in\nIreland the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian Churches along with\nthe Anglican Church; and, in England, a Presbyterian or\nCongregational Church of like rank and status with our Episcopalian\none.  It leads us to think that we should really, in this way, be\nworking to make reason and the will of God prevail; because we should\nbe making Roman Catholics better citizens, and Nonconformists,--nay,\nand Churchmen along with them,-- larger-minded and more complete\nmen.  But undoubtedly there are great difficulties in such a plan as\nthis; and the plan is not one which looks very likely to be adopted.\nIt is a plan more for a time of creative statesmen, like the time of\nElizabeth, than for a time of instrumental [liv] statesmen like the\npresent.  The Churchman must rise above his ordinary self in order to\nfavour it; and the Nonconformist has worshipped his fetish of\nseparatism so long that he is likely to wish still to remain, like\nEphraim, \"a wild ass alone by himself.\"  The centre of power being\nwhere it is, our instrumental statesmen have every temptation, as is\nshown more at large in the following essay, in the first place, to\n\"relieve themselves,\" as The Times says, \"of troublesome and\nirritating responsibilities;\" in the second place, when they must\nact, to go along, as they do, with the ordinary self of those on\nwhose favour they depend, to adopt as their own its desires, and to\nserve them with fidelity, and even, if possible, with impulsiveness.\nThis is the more easy for them, because there are not wanting,--and\nthere never will be wanting,--thinkers like Mr. Baxter, Mr. Charles\nBuxton, and the Dean of Canterbury, to swim with the stream, but to\nswim with it philosophically; to call the desires of the ordinary\nself of any great section of the community edicts of the national\nmind and laws of human progress, and to give them a general, a\nphilosophic, and an imposing expression.  A generous statesman may\n[lv] honestly, therefore, soon unlearn any disposition to put his\ntongue in his cheek in advocating these desires, and may advocate\nthem with fervour and impulsiveness.  Therefore a plan such as that\nwhich we have indicated does not seem a plan so likely to find favour\nas a plan for abolishing the Irish Church by the power of the\nNonconformists' antipathy to establishments.\n\nBut to tell us that our fond dreams are on that account shattered is\ninexact, and is the sort of language which ought to be addressed to\nthe promoters of intelligence through public meetings and a\ncommendable interest in politics, when they fail in their designs,\nand not to us.  For we are fond stickers to no machinery, not even\nour own; and we have no doubt that perfection can be reached without\nit,--with free churches as with established churches, and with\ninstrumental statesmen as with creative statesmen.  But it can never\nbe reached without seeing things as they really are; and it is to\nthis, therefore, and to no machinery in the world, that culture\nsticks fondly.  It insists that men should not mistake, as they are\nprone to mistake, their natural taste for the bathos for a relish for\nthe sublime; and if statesmen, either [lvi] with their tongue in\ntheir cheek or through a generous impulsiveness, tell them their\nnatural taste for the bathos is a relish for the sublime, there is\nthe more need for culture to tell them the contrary.  It is delusion\non this point which is fatal, and against delusion on this point\nculture works.  It is not fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for\nfree trade, extension of the suffrage, and abolition of church-rates,\ninstead of graver social ends; but it is fatal to them to be told by\ntheir flatterers, and to believe, with our pauperism increasing more\nrapidly than our population, that they have performed a great, an\nheroic work, by occupying themselves exclusively, for the last thirty\nyears, with these Liberal nostrums, and that the right and good\ncourse for them now is to go on occupying themselves with the like\nfor the future.  It is not fatal to Americans to have no religious\nestablishments and no effective centres of high culture; but it is\nfatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to believe, that\nthey are the most intelligent people in the whole world, when of\nintelligence, in the true and fruitful sense of the word, they even\nsingularly, as we have seen, come short.  It is not [lvii] fatal to\nthe Nonconformists to remain with their separated churches; but it is\nfatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to believe, that\ntheirs is the one pure and Christ-ordained way of worshipping God,\nthat provincialism and loss of totality have not come to them from\nfollowing it, or that provincialism and loss of totality are not\nevils.  It is not fatal to the English nation to abolish the Irish\nChurch by the power of the Nonconformists' antipathy to\nestablishments; but it is fatal to it to be told by its flatterers,\nand to believe, that it is abolishing it through reason and justice,\nwhen it is really abolishing it through this power; or to expect the\nfruits of reason and justice from anything but the spirit of reason\nand justice themselves.\n\nNow culture, because of its keen sense of what is really fatal, is\nall the more disposed to be pliant and easy about what is not fatal.\nAnd because machinery is the bane of politics, and an inward working,\nand not machinery, is what we most want, we keep advising our ardent\nyoung Liberal friends to think less of machinery, to stand more aloof\nfrom the arena of politics at present, and rather to try and promote,\nwith us, an inward working.  They do not listen [lviii] to us, and\nthey rush into the arena of politics, where their merits, indeed,\nseem to be little appreciated as yet; and then they complain of the\nreformed constituencies, and call the new Parliament a Philistine\nParliament.  As if a nation, nourished and reared in Hebraising,\ncould give us, just yet, anything better than a Philistine\nParliament!--for would a Barbarian Parliament be even so good, or a\nPopulace Parliament?  For our part, we rejoice to see our dear old\nfriends, the Hebraising Philistines, gathered in force in the Valley\nof Jehoshaphat before their final conversion, which will certainly\ncome; but for this conversion we must not try to oust them from their\nplaces, and to contend for machinery with them, but we must work on\nthem inwardly and cure them of Hebraising.\n\nYet the days of Israel are innumerable; and in its blame of\nHebraising too, and in its praise of Hellenising, culture must not\nfail to keep its flexibility, and to give to its judgments that\npassing and provisional character which we have seen it impose on its\npreferences and rejections of machinery.  Now, and for us, it is a\ntime to Hellenise, and to praise knowing; for we have Hebraised too\nmuch, [lix] and have over-valued doing.  But the habits and\ndiscipline received from Hebraism remain for our race an eternal\npossession; and, as humanity is constituted, one must never assign\nthem the second rank to-day, without being ready to restore them to\nthe first rank to-morrow.  To walk staunchly by the best light one\nhas, to be strict and sincere with oneself, not to be of the number\nof those who say and do not, to be in earnest,--this is the\ndiscipline by which alone man is enabled to rescue his life from\nthraldom to the passing moment and to his bodily senses, to ennoble\nit, and to make it eternal.  And this discipline has been nowhere so\neffectively taught as in the school of Hebraism.  Sophocles and Plato\nknew as well as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews that\n\"without holiness no man shall see God,\" and their notion of what\ngoes to make up holiness was larger than his.  But the intense and\nconvinced energy with which the Hebrew, both of the Old and of the\nNew Testament, threw himself upon his ideal, and which inspired the\nincomparable definition of the great Christian virtue, Faith,--the\nsubstance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,--this\nenergy of faith in its ideal has [lx] belonged to Hebraism alone.  As\nour idea of holiness enlarges, and our scope of perfection widens\nbeyond the narrow limits to which the over-rigour of Hebraising has\ntended to confine it, we shall come again to Hebraism for that devout\nenergy in embracing our ideal, which alone can give to man the\nhappiness of doing what he knows.  \"If ye know these things, happy\nare ye if ye do them!\"--the last word for infirm humanity will always\nbe that.  For this word, reiterated with a power now sublime, now\naffecting, but always admirable, our race will, as long as the world\nlasts, return to Hebraism; and the Bible, which preaches this word,\nwill forever remain, as Goethe called it, not only a national book,\nbut the Book of the Nations.  Again and again, after what seemed\nbreaches and separations, the prophetic promise to Jerusalem will\nstill be true:--Lo, thy sons come, whom thou sentest away; they come\ngathered from the west unto the east by the word of the Holy One,\nrejoicing in the remembrance of God.\n\nNOTES\n\nxxvii. *\"Les pays qui comme les \u00c9tats-Unis ont cr\u00e9\u00e9 un enseignement\npopulaire consid\u00e9rable sans instruction sup\u00e9rieure s\u00e9rieuse,\nexpieront longtemps encore leur faute par leur m\u00e9diocrit\u00e9\nintellectuelle, leur grossi\u00e8ret\u00e9 de moeurs, leur esprit superficiel,\nleur manque d'intelligence g\u00e9n\u00e9rale.\"\n\n\n\n[PREAMBLE] CULTURE AND ANARCHY\n\n[1] In one of his speeches a year or two ago, that fine speaker and\nfamous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took occasion to have a fling at the\nfriends and preachers of culture.  \"People who talk about what they\ncall culture!\" said he contemptuously; \"by which they mean a\nsmattering of the two dead languages of Greek and Latin.\"  And he\nwent on to remark, in a strain with which modern speakers and writers\nhave made us very familiar, how poor a thing this culture is, how\nlittle good it can do to the world, and how absurd it is for its\npossessors to set much [2] store by it.  And the other day a younger\nLiberal than Mr. Bright, one of a school whose mission it is to bring\ninto order and system that body of truth of which the earlier\nLiberals merely touched the outside, a member of the University of\nOxford, and a very clever writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison, developed,\nin the systematic and stringent manner of his school, the thesis\nwhich Mr. Bright had propounded in only general terms.  \"Perhaps the\nvery silliest cant of the day,\" said Mr. Frederic Harrison, \"is the\ncant about culture.  Culture is a desirable quality in a critic of\nnew books, and sits well on a possessor of belles lettres; but as\napplied to politics, it means simply a turn for small fault-finding,\nlove of selfish ease, and indecision in action.  The man of culture\nis in politics one of the poorest mortals alive.  For simple pedantry\nand want of good sense no man is his equal.  No assumption is too\nunreal, no end is too unpractical for him.  But the active exercise\nof politics requires common sense, sympathy, trust, resolution and\nenthusiasm, qualities which your man of culture has carefully rooted\nup, lest they damage the delicacy of his critical olfactories.\nPerhaps they are the only class [3] of responsible beings in the\ncommunity who cannot with safety be entrusted with power.\"\n\nNow for my part I do not wish to see men of culture asking to be\nentrusted with power; and, indeed, I have freely said, that in my\nopinion the speech most proper, at present, for a man of culture to\nmake to a body of his fellow-countrymen who get him into a committee-\nroom, is Socrates's: Know thyself! and this is not a speech to be\nmade by men wanting to be entrusted with power.  For this very\nindifference to direct political action I have been taken to task by\nthe Daily Telegraph, coupled, by a strange perversity of fate, with\njust that very one of the Hebrew prophets whose style I admire the\nleast, and called \"an elegant Jeremiah.\"  It is because I say (to use\nthe words which the Daily Telegraph puts in my mouth):--\"You mustn't\nmake a fuss because you have no vote,--that is vulgarity; you mustn't\nhold big meetings to agitate for reform bills and to repeal corn\nlaws,--that is the very height of vulgarity,\"--it is for this reason\nthat I am called, sometimes an elegant Jeremiah, sometimes a spurious\nJeremiah, a Jeremiah about the reality of whose mission the writer in\nthe Daily [4] Telegraph has his doubts.  It is evident, therefore,\nthat I have so taken my line as not to be exposed to the whole brunt\nof Mr. Frederic Harrison's censure.  Still, I have often spoken in\npraise of culture; I have striven to make all my works and ways serve\nthe interests of culture; I take culture to be something a great deal\nmore than what Mr. Frederic Harrison and others call it: \"a desirable\nquality in a critic of new books.\"  Nay, even though to a certain\nextent I am disposed to agree with Mr. Frederic Harrison, that men of\nculture are just the class of responsible beings in this community of\nours who cannot properly, at present, be entrusted with power, I am\nnot sure that I do not think this the fault of our community rather\nthan of the men of culture.  In short, although, like Mr. Bright and\nMr. Frederic Harrison, and the editor of the Daily Telegraph, and a\nlarge body of valued friends of mine, I am a liberal, yet I am a\nliberal tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and I\nam, above all, a believer in culture.  Therefore I propose now to try\nand enquire, in the simple unsystematic way which best suits both my\ntaste and my powers, what culture really is, what good it [5] can do,\nwhat is our own special need of it; and I shall seek to find some\nplain grounds on which a faith in culture--both my own faith in it\nand the faith of others,--may rest securely.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n[5] The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes,\nindeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity.  The\nculture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek\nand Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual\nas curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance,\nor else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its\nholder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it.\nNo serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, as\nculture, at all.  To find the real ground for the very differing\nestimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must find\nsome motive for culture in the terms of which [6] may lie a real\nambiguity; and such a motive the word curiosity gives us.  I have\nbefore now pointed out that in English we do not, like the\nforeigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense;\nwith us the word is always used in a somewhat disapproving sense; a\nliberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind may be\nmeant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but with us the\nword always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying\nactivity.  In the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an\nestimate of the celebrated French critic, Monsieur Sainte-Beuve, and\na very inadequate estimate it, in my judgment, was.  And its\ninadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in our English way it left\nout of sight the double sense really involved in the word curiosity,\nthinking enough was said to stamp Monsieur Sainte-Beuve with blame if\nit was said that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by\ncuriosity, and omitting either to perceive that Monsieur Sainte-Beuve\nhimself, and many other people with him, would consider that this was\npraiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really\nto be accounted worthy of blame [7] and not of praise.  For as there\nis a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely\na disease, so there is certainly a curiosity,--a desire after the\nthings of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of\nseeing them as they are,--which is, in an intelligent being, natural\nand laudable.  Nay, and the very desire to see things as they are\nimplies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained\nwithout fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind\nand diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we\nblame curiosity.  Montesquieu says:--\"The first motive which ought to\nimpel us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our\nnature, and to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent.\"\nThis is the true ground to assign for the genuine scientific passion,\nhowever manifested, and for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this\npassion; and it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term\ncuriosity stand to describe it.\n\nBut there is of culture another view, in which not solely the\nscientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are,\nnatural and proper in an intelligent [8] being, appears as the ground\nof it.  There is a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the\nimpulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for\nstopping human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing the\nsum of human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better\nand happier than we found it,--motives eminently such as are called\nsocial,--come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and\npre-eminent part.  Culture is then properly described not as having\nits origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of\nperfection; it is a study of perfection.  It moves by the force, not\nmerely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but\nalso of the moral and social passion for doing good.  As, in the\nfirst view of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words:\n\"To render an intelligent being yet more intelligent!\" so, in the\nsecond view of it, there is no better motto which it can have than\nthese words of Bishop Wilson: \"To make reason and the will of God\nprevail!\"  Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be\noverhasty in determining what reason and the will of God say, because\nits turn is for acting rather than thinking, and it wants to be [9]\nbeginning to act; and whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions,\nwhich proceed from its own state of development and share in all the\nimperfections and immaturities of this, for a basis of action; what\ndistinguishes culture is, that it is possessed by the scientific\npassion, as well as by the passion of doing good; that it has worthy\nnotions of reason and the will of God, and does not readily suffer\nits own crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them; and\nthat, knowing that no action or institution can be salutary and\nstable which are not based on reason and the will of God, it is not\nso bent on acting and instituting, even with the great aim of\ndiminishing human error and misery ever before its thoughts, but that\nit can remember that acting and instituting are of little use, unless\nwe know how and what we ought to act and to institute.\n\nThis culture is more interesting and more far-reaching than that\nother, which is founded solely on the scientific passion for knowing.\nBut it needs times of faith and ardour, times when the intellectual\nhorizon is opening and widening all round us, to flourish in.  And is\nnot the close and bounded intellectual horizon within which we have\nlong lived [10] and moved now lifting up, and are not new lights\nfinding free passage to shine in upon us?  For a long time there was\nno passage for them to make their way in upon us, and then it was of\nno use to think of adapting the world's action to them.  Where was\nthe hope of making reason and the will of God prevail among people\nwho had a routine which they had christened reason and the will of\nGod, in which they were inextricably bound, and beyond which they had\nno power of looking?  But now the iron force of adhesion to the old\nroutine,--social, political, religious,--has wonderfully yielded;\nthe iron force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully\nyielded; the danger now is, not that people should obstinately refuse\nto allow anything but their old routine to pass for reason and the\nwill of God, but either that they should allow some novelty or other\nto pass for these too easily, or else that they should underrate the\nimportance of them altogether, and think it enough to follow action\nfor its own sake, without troubling themselves to make reason and the\nwill of God prevail therein.  Now, then, is the moment for culture to\nbe of service, culture which believes in making reason and the [11]\nwill of God prevail, believes in perfection, is the study and pursuit\nof perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible\nexclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas,\nsimply because they are new.\n\nThe moment this view of culture is seized, the moment it is regarded\nnot solely as the endeavour to see things as they are, to draw\ntowards a knowledge of the universal order which seems to be intended\nand aimed at in the world, and which it is a man's happiness to go\nalong with or his misery to go counter to,--to learn, in short, the\nwill of God,--the moment, I say, culture is considered not merely as\nthe endeavour to see and learn this, but as the endeavour, also, to\nmake it prevail, the moral, social, and beneficent character of\nculture becomes manifest.  The mere endeavour to see and learn it for\nour own personal satisfaction is indeed a commencement for making it\nprevail, a preparing the way for this, which always serves this, and\nis wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame absolutely in itself, and\nnot only in its caricature and degeneration.  But perhaps it has got\nstamped with blame, and disparaged with the dubious title of\ncuriosity, because [12] in comparison with this wider endeavour of\nsuch great and plain utility it looks selfish, petty, and\nunprofitable.\n\nAnd religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which\nthe human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself,--\nreligion, that voice of the deepest human experience,--does not only\nenjoin and sanction the aim which is the great aim of culture, the\naim of setting ourselves to ascertain what perfection is and to make\nit prevail; but also, in determining generally in what human\nperfection consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical with\nthat which culture,--seeking the determination of this question\nthrough all the voices of human experience which have been heard upon\nit, art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as religion,\nin order to give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution,--\nlikewise reaches.  Religion says: The kingdom of God is within you;\nand culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an internal\ncondition, in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as\ndistinguished from our animality, in the ever-increasing\nefficaciousness and in the general harmonious expansion [13] of those\ngifts of thought and feeling which make the peculiar dignity, wealth,\nand happiness of human nature.  As I have said on a former occasion:\n\"It is in making endless additions to itself, in the endless\nexpansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that\nthe spirit of the human race finds its ideal.  To reach this ideal,\nculture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true value of\nculture.\"  Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming,\nis the character of perfection as culture conceives it; and here,\ntoo, it coincides with religion.  And because men are all members of\none great whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature will not\nallow one member to be indifferent to the rest, or to have a perfect\nwelfare independent of the rest, the expansion of our humanity, to\nsuit the idea of perfection which culture forms, must be a general\nexpansion.  Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible\nwhile the individual remains isolated: the individual is obliged,\nunder pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his own development if\nhe disobeys, to carry others along with him in his march towards\nperfection, to be continually doing all he can to enlarge [14] and\nincrease the volume of the human stream sweeping thitherward; and\nhere, once more, it lays on us the same obligation as religion, which\nsays, as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it, that \"to promote the\nkingdom of God is to increase and hasten one's own happiness.\"\nFinally, perfection,--as culture, from a thorough disinterested study\nof human nature and human experience, learns to conceive it,--is an\nharmonious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and\nworth of human nature, and is not consistent with the over-\ndevelopment of any one power at the expense of the rest.  Here it\ngoes beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived by us.\n\nIf culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious\nperfection, general perfection, and perfection which consists in\nbecoming something rather than in having something, in an inward\ncondition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of\ncircumstances,--it is clear that culture, instead of being the\nfrivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic\nHarrison, and many other liberals are apt to call it, has a very\nimportant function to fulfil for mankind.  And this function is\nparticularly [15] important in our modern world, of which the whole\ncivilisation is, to a much greater degree than the civilisation of\nGreece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to\nbecome more so.  But above all in our own country has culture a\nweighty part to perform, because here that mechanical character,\nwhich civilisation tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most\neminent degree.  Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection, as\nculture teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some\npowerful tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance.  The\nidea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is\nat variance with the mechanical and material civilisation in esteem\nwith us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us.\nThe idea of perfection as a general expansion of the human family is\nat variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits\nto the unrestrained swing of the individual's personality, our maxim\nof \"every man for himself.\"  The idea of perfection as an harmonious\nexpansion of human nature is at variance with our want of\nflexibility, with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a\nthing, with our intense [16] energetic absorption in the particular\npursuit we happen to be following.  So culture has a rough task to\nachieve in this country, and its preachers have, and are likely long\nto have, a hard time of it, and they will much oftener be regarded,\nfor a great while to come, as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs, than as\nfriends and benefactors.  That, however, will not prevent their doing\nin the end good service if they persevere; and meanwhile, the mode of\naction they have to pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight\nagainst, should be made quite clear to every one who may be willing\nto look at the matter attentively and dispassionately.\n\nFaith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in\nmachinery most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this\nmachinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in\nmachinery, as if it had a value in and for itself.  What is freedom\nbut machinery? what is population but machinery? what is coal but\nmachinery? what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth but\nmachinery? what are religious organisations but machinery?  Now\nalmost every voice in England is accustomed to speak of these things\nas if they [17] were precious ends in themselves, and therefore had\nsome of the characters of perfection indisputably joined to them.  I\nhave once before noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for proving the\ngreatness and happiness of England as she is, and for quite stopping\nthe mouths of all gainsayers.  Mr. Roebuck is never weary of\nreiterating this argument of his, so I do not know why I should be\nweary of noticing it.  \"May not every man in England say what he\nlikes?\"--Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks; and that, he thinks, is quite\nsufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, our aspirations\nought to be satisfied.  But the aspirations of culture, which is the\nstudy of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when\nthey may say what they like, is worth saying,--has good in it, and\nmore good than bad.  In the same way The Times, replying to some\nforeign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English\nabroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free\nto do and to look just as he likes.  But culture indefatigably tries,\nnot to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he\nfashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is\nindeed [18] beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw\nperson to like that.  And in the same way with respect to railroads\nand coal.  Every one must have observed the strange language current\nduring the late discussions as to the possible failure of our\nsupplies of coal.  Our coal, thousands of people were saying, is the\nreal basis of our national greatness; if our coal runs short, there\nis an end of the greatness of England.  But what is greatness?--\nculture makes us ask.  Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to\nexcite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of\npossessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and\nadmiration.  If England were swallowed up by the sea to-morrow, which\nof the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the love,\ninterest, and admiration of mankind,--would most, therefore, show the\nevidences of having possessed greatness,--the England of the last\ntwenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid\nspiritual effort, but when our coal, and our industrial operations\ndepending on coal, were very little developed?  Well then, what an\nunsound habit of mind it must be which makes us talk of things like\ncoal or iron as constituting [19] the greatness of England, and how\nsalutary a friend is culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and\nthus dissipating delusions of this kind and fixing standards of\nperfection that are real!\n\nWealth, again, that end to which our prodigious works for material\nadvantage are directed,--the commonest of commonplaces tells us how\nmen are always apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself; and\ncertainly they have never been so apt thus to regard it as they are\nin England at the present time.  Never did people believe anything\nmore firmly, than nine Englishmen out of ten at the present day\nbelieve that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so\nvery rich.  Now, the use of culture is that it helps us, by means of\nits spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but\nmachinery, and not only to say as a matter of words that we regard\nwealth as but machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is\nso.  If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by\nculture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would\ninevitably belong to the Philistines.  The people who believe most\nthat our greatness and welfare [20] are proved by our being very\nrich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich,\nare just the very people whom we call the Philistines.  Culture says:\n\"Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their\nmanners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively;\nobserve the literature they read, the things which give them\npleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the\nthoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of\nwealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just\nlike these people by having it?\"  And thus culture begets a\ndissatisfaction which is of the highest possible value in stemming\nthe common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy and industrial\ncommunity, and which saves the future, as one may hope, from being\nvulgarised, even if it cannot save the present.\n\nPopulation, again, and bodily health and vigour, are things which are\nnowhere treated in such an unintelligent, misleading, exaggerated way\nas in England.  Both are really machinery; yet how many people all\naround us do we see rest in them and fail to look beyond them!  Why,\nI have heard [21] people, fresh from reading certain articles of The\nTimes on the Registrar-General's returns of marriages and births in\nthis country, who would talk of large families in quite a solemn\nstrain, as if they had something in itself beautiful, elevating, and\nmeritorious in them; as if the British Philistine would have only to\npresent himself before the Great Judge with his twelve children, in\norder to be received among the sheep as a matter of right!  But\nbodily health and vigour, it may be said, are not to be classed with\nwealth and population as mere machinery; they have a more real and\nessential value.  True; but only as they are more intimately\nconnected with a perfect spiritual condition than wealth or\npopulation are.  The moment we disjoin them from the idea of a\nperfect spiritual condition, and pursue them, as we do pursue them,\nfor their own sake and as ends in themselves, our worship of them\nbecomes as mere worship of machinery, as our worship of wealth or\npopulation, and as unintelligent and vulgarising a worship as that\nis.  Every one with anything like an adequate idea of human\nperfection has distinctly marked this subordination to higher and\nspiritual ends of the cultivation of bodily vigour and activity.\n\n[22] \"Bodily exercise profiteth little; but godliness is profitable\nunto all things,\" says the author of the Epistle to Timothy.  And the\nutilitarian Franklin says just as explicitly:--\"Eat and drink such an\nexact quantity as suits the constitution of thy body, in reference to\nthe services of the mind.\"  But the point of view of culture, keeping\nthe mark of human perfection simply and broadly in view, and not\nassigning to this perfection, as religion or utilitarianism assign to\nit, a special and limited character,--this point of view, I say, of\nculture is best given by these words of Epictetus:--\"It is a sign of\naphuia\"+ says he,--that is, of a nature not finely tempered,--\"to\ngive yourselves up to things which relate to the body; to make, for\ninstance, a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss about eating, a\ngreat fuss about drinking, a great fuss about walking, a great fuss\nabout riding.  All these things ought to be done merely by the way:\nthe formation of the spirit and character must be our real concern.\"\nThis is admirable; and, indeed, the Greek words aphuia, euphuia,+ a\nfinely tempered nature, a coarsely tempered nature, give exactly the\nnotion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive of it: a\nperfection in which the [23] characters of beauty and intelligence\nare both present, which unites \"the two noblest of things,\"--as\nSwift, who of one of the two, at any rate, had himself all too\nlittle, most happily calls them in his Battle of the Books,--\"the two\nnoblest of things, sweetness and light.\"  The euphy\u00eas+ is the man who\ntends towards sweetness and light; the aphy\u00eas+ is precisely our\nPhilistine.  The immense spiritual significance of the Greeks is due\nto their having been inspired with this central and happy idea of the\nessential character of human perfection; and Mr. Bright's\nmisconception of culture, as a smattering of Greek and Latin, conies\nitself, after all, from this wonderful significance of the Greeks\nhaving affected the very machinery of our education, and is in itself\na kind of homage to it.\n\nIt is by thus making sweetness and light to be characters of\nperfection, that culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one\nlaw with poetry.  I have called religion a more important\nmanifestation of human nature than poetry, because it has worked on a\nbroader scale for perfection, and with greater masses of men.  But\nthe idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect on all its sides,\nwhich is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea,\nthough it [24] has not yet had the success that the idea of\nconquering the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human nature\nperfect on the moral side, which is the dominant idea of religion,\nhas been enabled to have; and it is destined, adding to itself the\nreligious idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern the other.\nThe best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which religion and poetry\nare one, in which the idea of beauty and of a human nature perfect on\nall sides adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and works in\nthe strength of that, is on this account of such surpassing interest\nand instructiveness for us, though it was,--as, having regard to the\nhuman race in general, and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks\nthemselves, we must own,--a premature attempt, an attempt which for\nsuccess needed the moral and religious fibre in humanity to be more\nbraced and developed than it had yet been.  But Greece did not err in\nhaving the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, so\npresent and paramount; it is impossible to have this idea too present\nand paramount; only the moral fibre must be braced too.  And we,\nbecause we have braced the moral fibre, are not on that account in\nthe right way, if at the same [25] time the idea of beauty, harmony,\nand complete human perfection, is wanting or misapprehended amongst\nus; and evidently it is wanting or misapprehended at present.  And\nwhen we rely as we do on our religious organisations, which in\nthemselves do not and cannot give us this idea, and think we have\ndone enough if we make them spread and prevail, then, I say, we fall\ninto our common fault of overvaluing machinery.\n\nNothing is more common than for people to confound the inward peace\nand satisfaction which follows the subduing of the obvious faults of\nour animality with what I may call absolute inward peace and\nsatisfaction,--the peace and satisfaction which are reached as we\ndraw near to complete spiritual perfection, and not merely to moral\nperfection, or rather to relative moral perfection.  No people in the\nworld have done more and struggled more to attain this relative moral\nperfection than our English race has; for no people in the world has\nthe command to resist the Devil, to overcome the Wicked One, in the\nnearest and most obvious sense of those words, had such a pressing\nforce and reality.  And we have had our reward, not only in the great\nworldly prosperity which our obedience to this [26] command has\nbrought us, but also, and far more, in great inward peace and\nsatisfaction.  But to me few things are more pathetic than to see\npeople, on the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction which\ntheir rudimentary efforts towards perfection have brought them, use,\nconcerning their incomplete perfection and the religious\norganisations within which they have found it, language which\nproperly applies only to complete perfection, and is a far-off echo\nof the human soul's prophecy of it.  Religion itself, I need hardly\nsay, supplies in abundance this grand language, which is really the\nseverest criticism of such an incomplete perfection as alone we have\nyet reached through our religious organisations.\n\nThe impulse of the English race towards moral development and self-\nconquest has nowhere so powerfully manifested itself as in\nPuritanism; nowhere has Puritanism found so adequate an expression as\nin the religious organisation of the Independents.  The modern\nIndependents have a newspaper, the Nonconformist, written with great\nsincerity and ability.  The motto, the standard, the profession of\nfaith which this organ of theirs carries aloft, is: \"The Dissidence\nof Dissent and the [27] Protestantism of the Protestant religion.\"\nThere is sweetness and light, and an ideal of complete harmonious\nhuman perfection!  One need not go to culture and poetry to find\nlanguage to judge it.  Religion, with its instinct for perfection,\nsupplies language to judge it: \"Finally, be of one mind, united in\nfeeling,\" says St. Peter.  There is an ideal which judges the Puritan\nideal,--\"The Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the\nProtestant religion!\"  And religious organisations like this are what\npeople believe in, rest in, would give their lives for!  Such, I say,\nis the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of\nhaving conquered even the plain faults of our animality, that the\nreligious organisation which has helped us to do it can seem to us\nsomething precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when it\nwears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead as this.  And men\nhave got such a habit of giving to the language of religion a special\napplication, of making it a mere jargon, that for the condemnation\nwhich religion itself passes on the shortcomings of their religious\norganisations they have no ear; they are sure to cheat themselves and\nto explain this condemnation [28] away.  They can only be reached by\nthe criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a language not to\nbe sophisticated, and resolutely testing these organisations by the\nideal of a human perfection complete on all sides, applies to them.\n\nBut men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and again\nfailing, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary first stage to\nperfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our\nanimality, which it is the glory of these religious organisations to\nhave helped us to subdue.  True, they do often so fail: they have\noften been without the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan;\nit has been one of their dangers that they so felt the Puritan's\nfaults that they too much neglected the practice of his virtues.  I\nwill not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's expense; they have\noften failed in morality, and morality is indispensable; they have\nbeen punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for\nhis performance.  They have been punished wherein they erred; but\ntheir ideal of beauty and sweetness and light, and a human nature\ncomplete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of perfection\nstill; just as the Puritan's ideal [29] of perfection remains narrow\nand inadequate, although for what he did well he has been richly\nrewarded.  Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers'\nvoyage, they and their standard of perfection are rightly judged when\nwe figure to ourselves Shakspeare or Virgil,--souls in whom sweetness\nand light, and all that in human nature is most humane, were\neminent,--accompanying them on their voyage, and think what\nintolerable company Shakspeare and Virgil would have found them!  In\nthe same way let us judge the religious organisations which we see\nall around us.  Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which\nthey have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see clearly that\ntheir idea of human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the\nDissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant\nreligion will never bring humanity to its true goal.  As I said with\nregard to wealth,--let us look at the life of those who live in and\nfor it;--so I say with regard to the religious organisations.  Look\nat the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Nonconformist;--a life\nof jealousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of\nchapels, sermons; and then think of it [30] as an ideal of a human\nlife completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs\nafter sweetness, light, and perfection!\n\nAnother newspaper, representing, like the Nonconformist, one of the\nreligious organisations of this country, was a short time ago giving\nan account of the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and of all the\nvice and hideousness which was to be seen in that crowd; and then the\nwriter turned suddenly round upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how\nhe proposed to cure all this vice and hideousness without religion.\nI confess I felt disposed to ask the asker this question: And how do\nyou propose to cure it with such a religion as yours?  How is the\nideal of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so narrow, so far\nremoved from a true and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is\nthe life of your religious organisation as you yourself image it, to\nconquer and transform all this vice and hideousness?  Indeed, the\nstrongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the\nclearest proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea of perfection\nheld by the religious organisations,--expressing, as I have said, the\nmost wide-spread effort which the human [31] race has yet made after\nperfection,--is to be found in the state of our life and society with\nthese in possession of it, and having been in possession of it I know\nnot how many hundred years.  We are all of us included in some\nreligious organisation or other; we all call ourselves, in the\nsublime and aspiring language of religion which I have before\nnoticed, children of God.  Children of God;--it is an immense\npretension!--and how are we to justify it?  By the works which we do,\nand the words which we speak.  And the work which we collective\nchildren of God do, our grand centre of life, our city which we have\nbuilded for us to dwell in, is London!  London, with its unutterable\nexternal hideousness, and with its internal canker of public\negestas, privatim opulentia,+--to use the words which Sallust puts\ninto Cato's mouth about Rome,--unequalled in the world!  The word,\nagain, which we children of God speak, the voice which most hits our\ncollective thought, the newspaper with the largest circulation in\nEngland, nay, with the largest circulation in the whole world, is the\nDaily Telegraph!  I say that when our religious organisations,--which\nI admit to express the most considerable effort after perfection [32]\nthat our race has yet made,--land us in no better result than this,\nit is high time to examine carefully their idea of perfection, to see\nwhether it does not leave out of account sides and forces of human\nnature which we might turn to great use; whether it would not be more\noperative if it were more complete.  And I say that the English\nreliance on our religious organisations and on their ideas of human\nperfection just as they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on\nmuscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth,--mere\nbelief in machinery, and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely\ncounteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and on\ndrawing the human race onwards to a more complete perfection.\n\nCulture, however, shows its single-minded love of perfection, its\ndesire simply to make reason and the will of God prevail, its freedom\nfrom fanaticism, by its attitude towards all this machinery, even\nwhile it insists that it is machinery.  Fanatics, seeing the mischief\nmen do themselves by their blind belief in some machinery or other,--\nwhether it is wealth and industrialism, or whether it is the\ncultivation of bodily strength and activity, or whether it is a [33]\npolitical organisation, or whether it is a religious organisation,--\noppose with might and main the tendency to this or that political and\nreligious organisation, or to games and athletic exercises, or to\nwealth and industrialism, and try violently to stop it.  But the\nflexibility which sweetness and light give, and which is one of the\nrewards of culture pursued in good faith, enables a man to see that a\ntendency may be necessary, and even, as a preparation for something\nin the future, salutary, and yet that the generations or individuals\nwho obey this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short of\nthe hope of perfection by following it; and that its mischiefs are to\nbe criticised, lest it should take too firm a hold and last after it\nhas served its purpose.  Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech\nat Paris,--and others have pointed out the same thing,--how necessary\nis the present great movement towards wealth and industrialism, in\norder to lay broad foundations of material well-being for the society\nof the future.  The worst of these justifications is, that they are\ngenerally addressed to the very people engaged, body and soul, in the\nmovement in question; at all events, that they are always seized with\n[34] the greatest avidity by these people, and taken by them as quite\njustifying their life; and that thus they tend to harden them in\ntheir sins.  Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement\ntowards fortune-making and exaggerated industrialism, readily allows\nthat the future may derive benefit from it; but insists, at the same\ntime, that the passing generations of industrialists,--forming, for\nthe most part, the stout main body of Philistinism,--are sacrificed\nto it.  In the same way, the result of all the games and sports which\noccupy the passing generation of boys and young men may be the\nestablishment of a better and sounder physical type for the future to\nwork with.  Culture does not set itself against the games and sports;\nit congratulates the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its\nimproved physical basis; but it points out that our passing\ngeneration of boys and young men is, meantime, sacrificed.\nPuritanism was necessary to develop the moral fibre of the English\nrace, Nonconformity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination\nover men's minds and to prepare the way for freedom of thought in the\ndistant future; still, culture points out that the harmonious\nperfection of generations of [35] Puritans and Nonconformists have\nbeen, in consequence, sacrificed.  Freedom of speech is necessary for\nthe society of the future, but the young lions of the Daily Telegraph\nin the meanwhile are sacrificed.  A voice for every man in his\ncountry's government is necessary for the society of the future, but\nmeanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed.\n\nOxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults; and she has heavily\npaid for them in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold upon the\nmodern world.  Yet we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and\nsweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed to seize one\ntruth:--the truth that beauty and sweetness are essential characters\nof a complete human perfection.  When I insist on this, I am all in\nthe faith and tradition of Oxford.  I say boldly that this our\nsentiment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness\nand rawness, has been at the bottom of our attachment to so many\nbeaten causes, of our opposition to so many triumphant movements.\nAnd the sentiment is true, and has never been wholly defeated, and\nhas shown its power even in its defeat.  We have not won our\npolitical battles, we have not carried our [36] main points, we have\nnot stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not marched\nvictoriously with the modern world; but we have told silently upon\nthe mind of the country, we have prepared currents of feeling which\nsap our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we have kept up\nour own communications with the future.  Look at the course of the\ngreat movement which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years\nago!  It was directed, as any one who reads Dr. Newman's Apology may\nsee, against what in one word maybe called \"liberalism.\"  Liberalism\nprevailed; it was the appointed force to do the work of the hour; it\nwas necessary, it was inevitable that it should prevail.  The Oxford\nmovement was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on every\nshore:--\n\n     Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?+\n\nBut what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, and as it\nreally broke the Oxford movement?  It was the great middle-class\nliberalism, which had for the cardinal points of its belief the\nReform Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the\nsocial sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, [37] and the\nmaking of large industrial fortunes; in the religious sphere, the\nDissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant\nreligion.  I do not say that other and more intelligent forces than\nthis were not opposed to the Oxford movement: but this was the force\nwhich really beat it; this was the force which Dr. Newman felt\nhimself fighting with; this was the force which till only the other\nday seemed to be the paramount force in this country, and to be in\npossession of the future; this was the force whose achievements fill\nMr. Lowe with such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule he was so\nhorror-struck to see threatened.  And where is this great force of\nPhilistinism now?  It is thrust into the second rank, it is become a\npower of yesterday, it has lost the future.  A new power has suddenly\nappeared, a power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but\nwhich is certainly a wholly different force from middle-class\nliberalism; different in its cardinal points of belief, different in\nits tendencies in every sphere.  It loves and admires neither the\nlegislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self-\ngovernment of middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition\nof middle-class [38] industrialists, nor the dissidence of middle-\nclass Dissent and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant\nreligion.  I am not now praising this new force, or saying that its\nown ideals are better; all I say is, that they are wholly different.\nAnd who will estimate how much the currents of feeling created by Dr.\nNewman's movement, the keen desire for beauty and sweetness which it\nnourished, the deep aversion it manifested to the hardness and\nvulgarity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned on\nthe hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestantism,--\nwho will estimate how much all these contributed to swell the tide of\nsecret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground under the self-\nconfident liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared the\nway for its sudden collapse and supersession?  It is in this manner\nthat the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and\nin this manner long may it continue to conquer!\n\nIn this manner it works to the same end as culture, and there is\nplenty of work for it yet to do.  I have said that the new and more\ndemocratic force which is now superseding our old middle-class\nliberalism cannot yet be rightly judged.  It has its [39] main\ntendencies still to form.  We hear promises of its giving us\nadministrative reform, law reform, reform of education, and I know\nnot what; but those promises come rather from its advocates, wishing\nto make a good plea for it and to justify it for superseding middle-\nclass liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it has itself yet\ndeveloped.  But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned friends\nagainst whom culture may with advantage continue to uphold steadily\nits ideal of human perfection; that this is an inward spiritual\nactivity, having for its characters increased sweetness, increased\nlight, increased life, increased sympathy.  Mr. Bright, who has a\nfoot in both worlds, the world of middle-class liberalism and the\nworld of democracy, but who brings most of his ideas from the world\nof middle-class liberalism in which he was bred, always inclines to\ninculcate that faith in machinery to which, as we have seen,\nEnglishmen are so prone, and which has been the bane of middle-class\nliberalism.  He complains with a sorrowful indignation of people who\n\"appear to have no proper estimate of the value of the franchise;\" he\nleads his disciples to believe,--what the Englishman is always too\nready to believe, [40] --that the having a vote, like the having a\nlarge family, or a large business, or large muscles, has in itself\nsome edifying and perfecting effect upon human nature.  Or else he\ncries out to the democracy,--\"the men,\" as he calls them, \"upon whose\nshoulders the greatness of England rests,\"--he cries out to them:\n\"See what you have done!  I look over this country and see the cities\nyou have built, the railroads you have made, the manufactures you\nhave produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest\nmercantile navy the world has ever seen!  I see that you have\nconverted by your labours what was once a wilderness, these islands,\ninto a fruitful garden; I know that you have created this wealth, and\nare a nation whose name is a word of power throughout all the world.\"\nWhy, this is just the very style of laudation with which Mr. Roebuck\nor Mr. Lowe debauch the minds of the middle classes, and make such\nPhilistines of them.  It is the same fashion of teaching a man to\nvalue himself not on what he is, not on his progress in sweetness and\nlight, but on the number of the railroads he has constructed, or the\nbigness of the Tabernacle he has built.  Only the middle classes are\ntold they have [41] done it all with their energy, self-reliance, and\ncapital, and the democracy are told they have done it all with their\nhands and sinews.  But teaching the democracy to put its trust in\nachievements of this kind is merely training them to be Philistines\nto take the place of the Philistines whom they are superseding; and\nthey too, like the middle class, will be encouraged to sit down at\nthe banquet of the future without having on a wedding garment, and\nnothing excellent can then come from them.  Those who know their\nbesetting faults, those who have watched them and listened to them,\nor those who will read the instructive account recently given of them\nby one of themselves, the Journeyman Engineer, will agree that the\nidea which culture sets before us of perfection,--an increased\nspiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness,\nincreased light, increased life, increased sympathy,--is an idea\nwhich the new democracy needs far more than the idea of the\nblessedness of the franchise, or the wonderfulness of their own\nindustrial performances.\n\nOther well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not\nin the old ruts of middle-class [42] Philistinism, but in ways which\nare naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this\ncountry they are novel and untried ways.  I may call them the ways of\nJacobinism.  Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of\nrenovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and\nwhite for elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational\nsociety for the future,--these are the ways of Jacobinism.  Mr.\nFrederic Harrison and other disciples of Comte,--one of them, Mr.\nCongreve, is an old acquaintance of mine, and I am glad to have an\nopportunity of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and\ncharacter,--are among the friends of democracy who are for leading it\nin paths of this kind.  Mr. Frederic Harrison is very hostile to\nculture, and from a natural enough motive; for culture is the eternal\nopponent of the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism,-\n-its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract system.  Culture is\nalways assigning to system-makers and systems a smaller share in the\nbent of human destiny than their friends like.  A current in people's\nminds sets towards new ideas; people are dissatisfied with their old\nnarrow stock of Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon [43] ideas, or any\nother; and some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the real merit of\nhaving early and strongly felt and helped the new current, but who\nbrings plenty of narrownesses and mistakes of his own into his\nfeeling and help of it, is credited with being the author of the\nwhole current, the fit person to be entrusted with its regulation and\nto guide the human race.  The excellent German historian of the\nmythology of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome under\nthe Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god of light, healing, and\nreconciliation, observes that it was not so much the Tarquins who\nbrought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, as a current in the mind\nof the Roman people which set powerfully at that time towards a new\nworship of this kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine\nreligious ideas.  In a similar way, culture directs our attention to\nthe current in human affairs, and to its continual working, and will\nnot let us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings.  It makes\nus see, not only his good side, but also how much in him was of\nnecessity limited and transient; nay, it even feels a pleasure, a\nsense of an increased freedom and of an ampler future, in so [44]\ndoing.  I remember, when I was under the influence of a mind to which\nI feel the greatest obligations, the mind of a man who was the very\nincarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable,\nit seems to me, whom America has yet produced,--Benjamin Franklin,--I\nremember the relief with which, after long feeling the sway of\nFranklin's imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a project of his\nfor a new version of the Book of Job, to replace the old version, the\nstyle of which, says Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less\nagreeable.  \"I give,\" he continues, \"a few verses, which may serve as\na sample of the kind of version I would recommend.\"  We all recollect\nthe famous verse in our translation: \"Then Satan answered the Lord\nand said: 'Doth Job fear God for nought?'\"  Franklin makes this:\n\"Does Your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct is the effect of\nmere personal attachment and affection?\"  I well remember how when\nfirst I read that, I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to\nmyself: \"After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's\nvictorious good sense!\"  So, after hearing Bentham cried loudly up as\nthe renovator of modern society, [45] and Bentham's mind and ideas\nproposed as the rulers of our future, I open the Deontology.  There I\nread: \"While Xenophon was writing his history and Euclid teaching\ngeometry, Socrates and Plato were talking nonsense under pretence of\ntalking wisdom and morality.  This morality of theirs consisted in\nwords; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters known to every\nman's experience.\"  From the moment of reading that, I am delivered\nfrom the bondage of Bentham! the fanaticism of his adherents can\ntouch me no longer; I feel the inadequacy of his mind and ideas for\nbeing the rule of human society, for perfection.  Culture tends\nalways thus to deal with the men of a system, of disciples, of a\nschool; with men like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill.\nHowever much it may find to admire in these personages, or in some of\nthem, it nevertheless remembers the text: \"Be not ye called Rabbi!\"\nand it soon passes on from any Rabbi.  But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi;\nit does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit of a future and\nstill unreached perfection; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand\nfor perfection, that they may with the more authority recast the\nworld; [46] and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture,--eternally\npassing onwards and seeking,--is an impertinence and an offence.  But\nculture, just because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to\nimpose on us a man with limitations and errors of his own along with\nthe true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the world and\nJacobinism itself a service.\n\nSo, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past and of those\nwhom it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away with\nculture,--culture with its inexhaustible indulgence, its\nconsideration of circumstances, its severe judgment of actions joined\nto its merciful judgment of persons.  \"The man of culture is in\npolitics,\" cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, \"one of the poorest mortals\nalive!\"  Mr. Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, and he\ncomplains that the man of culture stops him with a \"turn for small\nfault-finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action.\"  Of\nwhat use is culture, he asks, except for \"a critic of new books or a\nprofessor of belles lettres?\"  Why, it is of use because, in presence\nof the fierce exasperation which breathes, or rather, I may say,\nhisses, through the whole production in which Mr. Frederic Harrison\n[47] asks that question, it reminds us that the perfection of human\nnature is sweetness and light.  It is of use because, like religion,-\n-that other effort after perfection,--it testifies that, where bitter\nenvying and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work.\n\nThe pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and\nlight.  He who works for sweetness works in the end for light also;\nhe who works for light works in the end for sweetness also.  But he\nwho works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and\nthe will of God prevail.  He who works for machinery, he who works\nfor hatred, works only for confusion.  Culture looks beyond\nmachinery, culture hates hatred; culture has but one great passion,\nthe passion for sweetness and light.  Yes, it has one yet greater!--\nthe passion for making them prevail.  It is not satisfied till we all\ncome to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the\nfew must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity\nare touched with sweetness and light.  If I have not shrunk from\nsaying that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I\nshrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis, must have\nsweetness and light [48] for as many as possible.  Again and again I\nhave insisted how those are the happy moments of humanity, how those\nare the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are the\nflowering times for literature and art and all the creative power of\ngenius, when there is a national glow of life and thought, when the\nwhole of society is in the fullest measure permeated by thought,\nsensible to beauty, intelligent and alive.  Only it must be real\nthought and real beauty; real sweetness and real light.  Plenty of\npeople will try to give the masses, as they call them, an\nintellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper\nfor the actual condition of the masses.  The ordinary popular\nliterature is an example of this way of working on the masses.\nPlenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of\nideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or\nparty.  Our religious and political organisations give an example of\nthis way of working on the masses.  I condemn neither way; but\nculture works differently.  It does not try to teach down to the\nlevel of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or\nthat sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. [49]\nIt seeks to do away with classes; to make all live in an atmosphere\nof sweetness and light, and use ideas, as it uses them itself,\nfreely,--to be nourished and not bound by them.\n\nThis is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles\nof equality.  The great men of culture are those who have had a\npassion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end\nof society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their\ntime; who have laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh,\nuncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanise\nit, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and\nlearned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the\ntime, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light.  Such a\nman was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of all his\nimperfections; and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which\nAbelard excited.  Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end\nof the last century; and their services to Germany were in this way\ninestimably precious.  Generations will pass, and literary monuments\nwill accumulate, and works far more perfect than the [50] works of\nLessing and Herder will be produced in Germany; and yet the names of\nthese two men will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such\nas the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken.  Because\nthey humanised knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life\nand intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness\nand light, to make reason and the will of God prevail.  With Saint\nAugustine they said: \"Let us not leave Thee alone to make in the\nsecret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the\nfirmament, the division of light from darkness; let the children of\nthy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon\nthe earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce the\nrevolution of the times; for the old order is passed, and the new\narises; the night is spent, the day is come forth; and thou shalt\ncrown the year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth\nlabourers into thy harvest sown by other hands than theirs; when thou\nshalt send forth new labourers to new seed-times, whereof the harvest\nshall be not yet.\"\n\nNOTES\n\n22. +aphuia.\n\n22. +aphuia, euphuia.  See notes below for these words separately,\npage 23.\n\n23. +euphy\u00eas.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"well-grown, shapely,\ngoodly: graceful.  II. of good natural parts: clever, witty; also 'of\ngood disposition.'\"\n\n23. +aphy\u00eas.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"without natural talent,\ndull.\"  GIF image:\n\n31. +public\u00e9 egestas, privatim opulentia.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: public penury and private opulence.\n\n36. +Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?  E-text editor's\ntranslation: Which part of the world is not filled with our sorrows?\nP. Vergilius Maro (Virgil), Aeneid, Book 1, Line 459.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n[51] I have been trying to show that culture is, or ought to be, the\nstudy and pursuit of perfection; and that of perfection as pursued by\nculture, beauty and intelligence, or, in other words, sweetness and\nlight, are the main characters.  But hitherto I have been insisting\nchiefly on beauty, or sweetness, as a character of perfection.  To\ncomplete rightly my design, it evidently remains to speak also of\nintelligence, or light, as a character of perfection.  First,\nhowever, I ought perhaps to notice that, both here and on the other\nside of the Atlantic, all sorts of objections are raised against the\n\"religion of culture,\" as the objectors mockingly call it, which I am\nsupposed to be promulgating.  It is said to be a religion proposing\nparmaceti, or some scented salve or other, as a cure for human\nmiseries; a religion breathing a spirit of cultivated inaction,\nmaking its believer refuse to lend a hand at uprooting the definite\nevils on all sides of us, and filling him with antipathy against the\nreforms and reformers which try to [52] extirpate them.  In general,\nit is summed up as being not practical, or,--as some critics more\nfamiliarly put it,--all moonshine.  That Alcibiades, the editor of\nthe Morning Star, taunts me, as its promulgator, with living out of\nthe world and knowing nothing of life and men.  That great austere\ntoiler, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, upbraids me,--but kindly,\nand more in sorrow than in anger,--for trifling with aesthetics and\npoetical fancies, while he himself, in that arsenal of his in Fleet\nStreet, is bearing the burden and heat of the day.  An intelligent\nAmerican newspaper, the Nation, says that it is very easy to sit in\none's study and find fault with the course of modern society, but the\nthing is to propose practical improvements for it.  While, finally,\nMr. Frederic Harrison, in a very good-tempered and witty satire,\nwhich makes me quite understand his having apparently achieved such a\nconquest of my young Prussian friend, Arminius, at last gets moved to\nan almost stern moral impatience, to behold, as he says, \"Death, sin,\ncruelty stalk among us, filling their maws with innocence and youth,\"\nand me, in the midst of the general tribulation, handing out my\npouncet-box.\n\n[53] It is impossible that all these remonstrances and reproofs\nshould not affect me, and I shall try my very best, in completing my\ndesign and in speaking of light as one of the characters of\nperfection, and of culture as giving us light, to profit by the\nobjections I have heard and read, and to drive at practice as much as\nI can, by showing the communications and passages into practical life\nfrom the doctrine which I am inculcating.\n\nIt is said that a man with my theories of sweetness and light is full\nof antipathy against the rougher or coarser movements going on around\nhim, that he will not lend a hand to the humble operation of\nuprooting evil by their means, and that therefore the believers in\naction grow impatient with them.  But what if rough and coarse\naction, ill-calculated action, action with insufficient light, is,\nand has for a long time been, our bane?  What if our urgent want now\nis, not to act at any price, but rather to lay in a stock of light\nfor our difficulties?  In that case, to refuse to lend a hand to the\nrougher and coarser movements going on round us, to make the primary\nneed, both for oneself and others, to consist in enlightening\nourselves and qualifying ourselves [54] to act less at random, is\nsurely the best, and in real truth the most practical line, our\nendeavours can take.  So that if I can show what my opponents call\nrough or coarse action, but what I would rather call random and ill-\nregulated action,--action with insufficient light, action pursued\nbecause we like to be doing something and doing it as we please, and\ndo not like the trouble of thinking, and the severe constraint of any\nkind of rule,--if I can show this to be, at the present moment, a\npractical mischief and danger to us, then I have found a practical\nuse for light in correcting this state of things, and have only to\nexemplify how, in cases which fall under everybody's observation, it\nmay deal with it.\n\nWhen I began to speak of culture, I insisted on our bondage to\nmachinery, on our proneness to value machinery as an end in itself,\nwithout looking beyond it to the end for which alone, in truth, it is\nvaluable.  Freedom, I said, was one of those things which we thus\nworshipped in itself, without enough regarding the ends for which\nfreedom is to be desired.  In our common notions and talk about\nfreedom, we eminently show our idolatry of machinery.  Our prevalent\nnotion is,--and I quoted a [55] number of instances to prove it,--\nthat it is a most happy and important thing for a man merely to be\nable to do as he likes.  On what he is to do when he is thus free to\ndo as he likes, we do not lay so much stress.  Our familiar praise of\nthe British Constitution under which we live, is that it is a system\nof checks,--a system which stops and paralyses any power in\ninterfering with the free action of individuals.  To this effect Mr.\nBright, who loves to walk in the old ways of the Constitution, said\nforcibly in one of his great speeches, what many other people are\nevery day saying less forcibly, that the central idea of English life\nand politics is the assertion of personal liberty.  Evidently this is\nso; but evidently, also, as feudalism, which with its ideas and\nhabits of subordination was for many centuries silently behind the\nBritish Constitution, dies out, and we are left with nothing but our\nsystem of checks, and our notion of its being the great right and\nhappiness of an Englishman to do as far as possible what he likes, we\nare in danger of drifting towards anarchy.  We have not the notion,\nso familiar on the Continent and to antiquity, of the State--the\nnation, in its collective [56] and corporate character, entrusted\nwith stringent powers for the general advantage, and controlling\nindividual wills in the name of an interest wider than that of\nindividuals.  We say, what is very true, that this notion is often\nmade instrumental to tyranny; we say that a State is in reality made\nup of the individuals who compose it, and that every individual is\nthe best judge of his own interests.  Our leading class is an\naristocracy, and no aristocracy likes the notion of a State-authority\ngreater than itself, with a stringent administrative machinery\nsuperseding the decorative inutilities of lord-lieutenancy, deputy-\nlieutenancy, and the posse comitat\u00fbs,+ which are all in its own\nhands.  Our middle-class, the great representative of trade and\nDissent, with its maxims of every man for himself in business, every\nman for himself in religion, dreads a powerful administration which\nmight somehow interfere with it; and besides, it has its own\ndecorative inutilities of vestrymanship and guardianship, which are\nto this class what lord-lieutenancy and the county magistracy are to\nthe aristocratic class, and a stringent administration might either\ntake these functions out of its hands, [57] or prevent its exercising\nthem in its own comfortable, independent manner, as at present.\n\nThen as to our working-class.  This class, pressed constantly by the\nhard daily compulsion of material wants, is naturally the very centre\nand stronghold of our national idea, that it is man's ideal right and\nfelicity to do as he likes.  I think I have somewhere related how\nMonsieur Michelet said to me of the people of France, that it was \"a\nnation of barbarians civilised by the conscription.\"  He meant that\nthrough their military service the idea of public duty and of\ndiscipline was brought to the mind of these masses, in other respects\nso raw and uncultivated.  Our masses are quite as raw and\nuncultivated as the French; and, so far from their having the idea of\npublic duty and of discipline, superior to the individual's self-\nwill, brought to their mind by a universal obligation of military\nservice, such as that of the conscription,--so far from their having\nthis, the very idea of a conscription is so at variance with our\nEnglish notion of the prime right and blessedness of doing as one\nlikes, that I remember the manager of the Clay Cross works in\nDerbyshire told me during the Crimean [58] war, when our want of\nsoldiers was much felt and some people were talking of a\nconscription, that sooner than submit to a conscription the\npopulation of that district would flee to the mines, and lead a sort\nof Robin Hood life under ground.\n\nFor a long time, as I have said, the strong feudal habits of\nsubordination and deference continued to tell upon the working-class.\nThe modern spirit has now almost entirely dissolved those habits, and\nthe anarchical tendency of our worship of freedom in and for itself,\nof our superstitious faith, as I say, in machinery, is becoming very\nmanifest.  More and more, because of this our blind faith in\nmachinery, because of our want of light to enable us to look beyond\nmachinery to the end for which machinery is valuable, this and that\nman, and this and that body of men, all over the country, are\nbeginning to assert and put in practice an Englishman's right to do\nwhat he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he\nlikes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes,\nsmash as he likes.  All this, I say, tends to anarchy; and though a\nnumber of excellent people, and particularly my friends of the\nliberal or progressive party, as they [59] call themselves, are kind\nenough to reassure us by saying that these are trifles, that a few\ntransient outbreaks of rowdyism signify nothing, that our system of\nliberty is one which itself cures all the evils which it works, that\nthe educated and intelligent classes stand in overwhelming strength\nand majestic repose, ready, like our military force in riots, to act\nat a moment's notice,--yet one finds that one's liberal friends\ngenerally say this because they have such faith in themselves and\ntheir nostrums, when they shall return, as the public welfare\nrequires, to place and power.  But this faith of theirs one cannot\nexactly share, when one has so long had them and their nostrums at\nwork, and sees that they have not prevented our coming to our present\nembarrassed condition; and one finds, also, that the outbreaks of\nrowdyism tend to become less and less of trifles, to become more\nfrequent rather than less frequent; and that meanwhile our educated\nand intelligent classes remain in their majestic repose, and somehow\nor other, whatever happens, their overwhelming strength, like our\nmilitary force in riots, never does act.\n\nHow, indeed, should their overwhelming strength [60] act, when the\nman who gives an inflammatory lecture, or breaks down the Park\nrailings, or invades a Secretary of State's office, is only following\nan Englishman's impulse to do as he likes; and our own conscience\ntells us that we ourselves have always regarded this impulse as\nsomething primary and sacred?  Mr. Murphy lectures at Birmingham, and\nshowers on the Catholic population of that town \"words,\" says Mr.\nHardy, \"only fit to be addressed to thieves or murderers.\"  What\nthen?  Mr. Murphy has his own reasons of several kinds.  He suspects\nthe Roman Catholic Church of designs upon Mrs. Murphy; and he says,\nif mayors and magistrates do not care for their wives and daughters,\nhe does.  But, above all, he is doing as he likes, or, in worthier\nlanguage, asserting his personal liberty.  \"I will carry out my\nlectures if they walk over my body as a dead corpse; and I say to the\nMayor of Birmingham that he is my servant while I am in Birmingham,\nand as my servant he must do his duty and protect me.\"  Touching and\nbeautiful words, which find a sympathetic chord in every British\nbosom!  The moment it is plainly put before us that a man is\nasserting his personal liberty, we are half disarmed; [61] because we\nare believers in freedom, and not in some dream of a right reason to\nwhich the assertion of our freedom is to be subordinated.\nAccordingly, the Secretary of State had to say that although the\nlecturer's language was \"only fit to be addressed to thieves or\nmurderers,\" yet, \"I do not think he is to be deprived, I do not think\nthat anything I have said could justify the inference that he is to\nbe deprived, of the right of protection in a place built by him for\nthe purpose of these lectures; because the language was not language\nwhich afforded grounds for a criminal prosecution.\"  No, nor to be\nsilenced by Mayor, or Home Secretary, or any administrative authority\non earth, simply on their notion of what is discreet and reasonable!\nThis is in perfect consonance with our public opinion, and with our\nnational love for the assertion of personal liberty.\n\nIn quite another department of affairs, an experienced and\ndistinguished Chancery Judge relates an incident which is just to the\nsame effect as this of Mr. Murphy.  A testator bequeathed 300\u00a3. a\nyear, to be for ever applied as a pension to some person who had been\nunsuccessful in literature, and whose duty [62] should be to support\nand diffuse, by his writings, the testator's own views, as enforced\nin the testator's publications.  This bequest was appealed against in\nthe Court of Chancery, on the ground of its absurdity; but, being\nonly absurd, it was upheld, and the so-called charity was\nestablished.  Having, I say, at the bottom of our English hearts a\nvery strong belief in freedom, and a very weak belief in right\nreason, we are soon silenced when a man pleads the prime right to do\nas he likes, because this is the prime right for ourselves too; and\neven if we attempt now and then to mumble something about reason, yet\nwe have ourselves thought so little about this and so much about\nliberty, that we are in conscience forced, when our brother\nPhilistine with whom we are meddling turns boldly round upon us and\nasks: Have you any light?--to shake our heads ruefully, and to let\nhim go his own way after all.\n\nThere are many things to be said on behalf of this exclusive\nattention of ours to liberty, and of the relaxed habits of government\nwhich it has engendered.  It is very easy to mistake or to exaggerate\nthe sort of anarchy from which we are in danger through them.  We are\nnot in danger from [63] Fenianism, fierce and turbulent as it may\nshow itself; for against this our conscience is free enough to let us\nact resolutely and put forth our overwhelming strength the moment\nthere is any real need for it.  In the first place, it never was any\npart of our creed that the great right and blessedness of an\nIrishman, or, indeed, of anybody on earth except an Englishman, is to\ndo as he likes; and we can have no scruple at all about abridging, if\nnecessary, a non-Englishman's assertion of personal liberty.  The\nBritish Constitution, its checks, and its prime virtues, are for\nEnglishmen.  We may extend them to others out of love and kindness;\nbut we find no real divine law written on our hearts constraining us\nso to extend them.  And then the difference between an Irish Fenian\nand an English rough is so immense, and the case, in dealing with the\nFenian, so much more clear!  He is so evidently desperate and\ndangerous, a man of a conquered race, a Papist, with centuries of\nill-usage to inflame him against us, with an alien religion\nestablished in his country by us at his expense, with no admiration\nof our institutions, no love of our virtues, no talents for our\nbusiness, no turn for our comfort!  Show him our symbolical [64]\nTruss Manufactory on the finest site in Europe, and tell him that\nBritish industrialism and individualism can bring a man to that, and\nhe remains cold!  Evidently, if we deal tenderly with a\nsentimentalist like this, it is out of pure philanthropy.  But with\nthe Hyde Park rioter how different!+  He is our own flesh and blood;\nhe is a Protestant; he is framed by nature to do as we do, hate what\nwe hate, love what we love; he is capable of feeling the symbolical\nforce of the Truss Manufactory; the question of questions, for him,\nis a wages' question.  That beautiful sentence Sir Daniel Gooch\nquoted to the Swindon workmen, and which I treasure as Mrs. Gooch's\nGolden Rule, or the Divine Injunction \"Be ye Perfect\" done into\nBritish,--the sentence Sir Daniel Gooch's mother repeated to him\nevery morning when he was a boy going to work: \"Ever remember, my\ndear Dan, that you should look forward to being some day manager of\nthat concern!\"--this fruitful maxim is perfectly fitted to shine\nforth in the heart of the Hyde Park rough also, and to be his\nguiding-star through life.  He has no visionary schemes of revolution\nand transformation, though of course he would like his class to rule,\nas the aristocratic [65] class like their class to rule, and the\nmiddle-class theirs.  Meanwhile, our social machine is a little out\nof order; there are a good many people in our paradisiacal centres of\nindustrialism and individualism taking the bread out of one another's\nmouths; the rioter has not yet quite found his groove and settled\ndown to his work, and so he is just asserting his personal liberty a\nlittle, going where he likes, assembling where he likes, bawling as\nhe likes, hustling as he likes.  Just as the rest of us,--as the\ncountry squires in the aristocratic class, as the political\ndissenters in the middle-class,--he has no idea of a State, of the\nnation in its collective and corporate character controlling, as\ngovernment, the free swing of this or that one of its members in the\nname of the higher reason of all of them, his own as well as that of\nothers.  He sees the rich, the aristocratic class, in occupation of\nthe executive government, and so if he is stopped from making Hyde\nPark a bear-garden or the streets impassable, he says he is being\nbutchered by the aristocracy.\n\nHis apparition is somewhat embarrassing, because too many cooks spoil\nthe broth; because, while the aristocratic and middle classes have\nlong been doing [66] as they like with great vigour, he has been too\nundeveloped and submissive hitherto to join in the game; and now,\nwhen he does come, he comes in immense numbers, and is rather raw and\nrough.  But he does not break many laws, or not many at one time;\nand, as our laws were made for very different circumstances from our\npresent (but always with an eye to Englishmen doing as they like),\nand as the clear letter of the law must be against our Englishman who\ndoes as he likes and not only the spirit of the law and public\npolicy, and as Government must neither have any discretionary power\nnor act resolutely on its own interpretation of the law if any one\ndisputes it, it is evident our laws give our playful giant, in doing\nas he likes, considerable advantage.  Besides, even if he can be\nclearly proved to commit an illegality in doing as he likes, there is\nalways the resource of not putting the law in force, or of abolishing\nit.  So he has his way, and if he has his way he is soon satisfied\nfor the time; however, he falls into the habit of taking it oftener\nand oftener, and at last begins to create by his operations a\nconfusion of which mischievous people can take advantage, and which\nat any rate, by troubling the common course [67] of business\nthroughout the country, tends to cause distress, and so to increase\nthe sort of anarchy and social disintegration which had previously\ncommenced.  And thus that profound sense of settled order and\nsecurity, without which a society like ours cannot live and grow at\nall, is beginning to threaten us with taking its departure.\n\nNow, if culture, which simply means trying to perfect oneself, and\none's mind as part of oneself, brings us light, and if light shows us\nthat there is nothing so very blessed in merely doing as one likes,\nthat the worship of the mere freedom to do as one likes is worship of\nmachinery, that the really blessed thing is to like what right reason\nordains, and to follow her authority, then we have got a practical\nbenefit out of culture.  We have got a much wanted principle, a\nprinciple of authority, to counteract the tendency to anarchy which\nseems to be threatening us.\n\nBut how to organise this authority, or to what hands to entrust the\nwielding of it?  How to get your State, summing up the right reason\nof the community, and giving effect to it, as circumstances may\nrequire, with vigour?  And here I think I see [68] my enemies waiting\nfor me with a hungry joy in their eyes.  But I shall elude them.\n\nThe State, the power most representing the right reason of the\nnation, and most worthy, therefore, of ruling,--of exercising, when\ncircumstances require it, authority over us all,--is for Mr. Carlyle\nthe aristocracy.  For Mr. Lowe, it is the middle-class with its\nincomparable Parliament.  For the Reform League, it is the working-\nclass, with its \"brightest powers of sympathy and readiest powers of\naction.\"  Now, culture, with its disinterested pursuit of perfection,\nculture, simply trying to see things as they are, in order to seize\non the best and to make it prevail, is surely well fitted to help us\nto judge rightly, by all the aids of observing, reading, and\nthinking, the qualifications and titles to our confidence of these\nthree candidates for authority, and can thus render us a practical\nservice of no mean value.\n\nSo when Mr. Carlyle, a man of genius to whom we have all at one time\nor other been indebted for refreshment and stimulus, says we should\ngive rule to the aristocracy, mainly because of its dignity and\npoliteness, surely culture is useful in reminding us, [69] that in\nour idea of perfection the characters of beauty and intelligence are\nboth of them present, and sweetness and light, the two noblest of\nthings, are united.  Allowing, therefore, with Mr. Carlyle, the\naristocratic class to possess sweetness, culture insists on the\nnecessity of light also, and shows us that aristocracies, being by\nthe very nature of things inaccessible to ideas, unapt to see how the\nworld is going, must be somewhat wanting in light, and must therefore\nbe, at a moment when light is our great requisite, inadequate to our\nneeds.  Aristocracies, those children of the established fact, are\nfor epochs of concentration.  In epochs of expansion, epochs such as\nthat in which we now live, epochs when always the warning voice is\nagain heard: Now is the judgment of this world--in such epochs\naristocracies, with their natural clinging to the established fact,\ntheir want of sense for the flux of things, for the inevitable\ntransitoriness of all human institutions, are bewildered and\nhelpless.  Their serenity, their high spirit, their power of haughty\nresistance,--the great qualities of an aristocracy, and the secret of\nits distinguished manners and dignity,--these very qualities, in an\nepoch of [70] expansion, turn against their possessors.  Again and\nagain I have said how the refinement of an aristocracy may be\nprecious and educative to a raw nation as a kind of shadow of true\nrefinement; how its serenity and dignified freedom from petty cares\nmay serve as a useful foil to set off the vulgarity and hideousness\nof that type of life which a hard middle-class tends to establish,\nand to help people to see this vulgarity and hideousness in their\ntrue colours.  From such an ignoble spectacle as that of poor Mrs.\nLincoln,--a spectacle to vulgarise a whole nation,--aristocracies\nundoubtedly preserve us.  But the true grace and serenity is that of\nwhich Greece and Greek art suggest the admirable ideals of\nperfection,--a serenity which comes from having made order among\nideas and harmonised them; whereas the serenity of aristocracies, at\nleast the peculiar serenity of aristocracies of Teutonic origin,\nappears to come from their never having had any ideas to trouble\nthem.  And so, in a time of expansion like the present, a time for\nideas, one gets, perhaps, in regarding an aristocracy, even more than\nthe idea of serenity, the idea of futility and sterility.  One has\noften wondered whether upon the whole [71] earth there is anything so\nunintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the world is really going, as\nan ordinary young Englishman of our upper class.  Ideas he has not,\nand neither has he that seriousness of our middle-class, which is, as\nI have often said, the great strength of this class, and may become\nits salvation.  Why, a man may hear a young Dives of the aristocratic\nclass, when the whim takes him to sing the praises of wealth and\nmaterial comfort, sing them with a cynicism from which the conscience\nof the veriest Philistine of our industrial middle-class would recoil\nin affright.  And when, with the natural sympathy of aristocracies\nfor firm dealing with the multitude, and his uneasiness at our feeble\ndealing with it at home, an unvarnished young Englishman of our\naristocratic class applauds the absolute rulers on the Continent, he\nin general manages completely to miss the grounds of reason and\nintelligence which alone can give any colour of justification, any\npossibility of existence, to those rulers, and applauds them on\ngrounds which it would make their own hair stand on end to listen to.\n\nAnd all this time, we are in an epoch of expansion; [72] and the\nessence of an epoch of expansion is a movement of ideas, and the one\nsalvation of an epoch of expansion is a harmony of ideas.  The very\nprinciple of the authority which we are seeking as a defence against\nanarchy is right reason, ideas, light.  The more, therefore, an\naristocracy calls to its aid its innate forces,--its impenetrability,\nits high spirit, its power of haughty resistance,--to deal with an\nepoch of expansion, the graver is the danger, the greater the\ncertainty of explosion, the surer the aristocracy's defeat; for it is\ntrying to do violence to nature instead of working along with it.\nThe best powers shown by the best men of an aristocracy at such an\nepoch are, it will be observed, non-aristocratical powers, powers of\nindustry, powers of intelligence; and these powers, thus exhibited,\ntend really not to strengthen the aristocracy, but to take their\nowners out of it, to expose them to the dissolving agencies of\nthought and change, to make them men of the modern spirit and of the\nfuture.  If, as sometimes happens, they add to their non-\naristocratical qualities of labour and thought, a strong dose of\naristocratical qualities also,--of pride, defiance, turn for\nresistance--this truly aristocratical [73] side of them, so far from\nadding any strength to them really neutralises their force and makes\nthem impracticable and ineffective.\n\nKnowing myself to be indeed sadly to seek, as one of my many critics\nsays, in \"a philosophy with coherent, interdependent, subordinate and\nderivative principles,\" I continually have recourse to a plain man's\nexpedient of trying to make what few simple notions I have, clearer,\nand more intelligible to myself, by means of example and\nillustration.  And having been brought up at Oxford in the bad old\ntimes, when we were stuffed with Greek and Aristotle, and thought\nnothing of preparing ourselves,--as after Mr. Lowe's great speech at\nEdinburgh we shall do,--to fight the battle of life with the German\nwaiters, my head is still full of a lumber of phrases we learnt at\nOxford from Aristotle, about virtue being in a mean, and about excess\nand defect, and so on.  Once when I had had the advantage of\nlistening to the Reform debates in the House of Commons, having heard\na number of interesting speakers, and among them Lord Elcho and Sir\nThomas Bateson, I remember it struck me, applying Aristotle's\nmachinery of the [74] mean to my ideas about our aristocracy, that\nLord Elcho was exactly the perfection, or happy mean, or virtue, of\naristocracy, and Sir Thomas Bateson the excess; and I fancied that by\nobserving these two we might see both the inadequacy of aristocracy\nto supply the principle of authority needful for our present wants,\nand the danger of its trying to supply it when it was not really\ncompetent for the business.  On the one hand, in Lord Elcho, showing\nplenty of high spirit, but remarkable, far above and beyond his gift\nof high spirit, for the fine tempering of his high spirit, for ease,\nserenity, politeness,--the great virtues, as Mr. Carlyle says, of\naristocracy,--in this beautiful and virtuous mean, there seemed\nevidently some insufficiency of light; while, on the other hand, Sir\nThomas Bateson, in whom the high spirit of aristocracy, its\nimpenetrability, defiant courage, and pride of resistance, were\ndeveloped even in excess, was manifestly capable, if he had his way\ngiven him, of causing us great danger, and, indeed, of throwing the\nwhole commonwealth into confusion.  Then I reverted to that old\nfundamental notion of mine about the grand merit of our race being\nreally our honesty; and the [75] very helplessness of our\naristocratic or governing class in dealing with our perturbed social\nstate gave me a sort of pride and satisfaction, because I saw they\nwere, as a whole, too honest to try and manage a business for which\nthey did not feel themselves capable.\n\nSurely, now, it is no inconsiderable boon culture confers upon us, if\nin embarrassed times like the present it enables us to look at the\nins and the outs of things in this way, without hatred and without\npartiality, and with a disposition to see the good in everybody all\nround.  And I try to follow just the same course with our middle-\nclass as with our aristocracy.  Mr. Lowe talks to us of this strong\nmiddle part of the nation, of the unrivalled deeds of our liberal\nmiddle-class Parliament, of the noble, the heroic work it has\nperformed in the last thirty years; and I begin to ask myself if we\nshall not, then, find in our middle-class the principle of authority\nwe want, and if we had not better take administration as well as\nlegislation away from the weak extreme which now administers for us,\nand commit both to the strong middle part.  I observe, too, that the\nheroes of middle-class liberalism, such as we have [76] hitherto\nknown it, speak with a kind of prophetic anticipation of the great\ndestiny which awaits them, and as if the future was clearly theirs.\nThe advanced party, the progressive party, the party in alliance with\nthe future, are the names they like to give themselves.  \"The\nprinciples which will obtain recognition in the future,\" says Mr.\nMiall, a personage of deserved eminence among the political\nDissenters, as they are called, who have been the backbone of middle-\nclass liberalism--\"the principles which will obtain recognition in\nthe future are the principles for which I have long and zealously\nlaboured.  I qualified myself for joining in the work of harvest by\ndoing to the best of my ability the duties of seed-time.\"  These\nduties, if one is to gather them from the works of the great liberal\nparty in the last thirty years, are, as I have elsewhere summed them\nup, the advocacy of free-trade, of parliamentary reform, of abolition\nof church-rates, of voluntaryism in religion and education, of non-\ninterference of the State between employers and employed, and of\nmarriage with one's deceased wife's sister.\n\nNow I know, when I object that all this is machinery, the great\nliberal middle-class has by this [77] time grown cunning enough to\nanswer, that it always meant more by these things than meets the eye;\nthat it has had that within which passes show, and that we are soon\ngoing to see, in a Free Church and all manner of good things, what it\nwas.  But I have learned from Bishop Wilson (if Mr. Frederic Harrison\nwill forgive my again quoting that poor old hierophant of a decayed\nsuperstition): \"If we would really know our heart let us impartially\nview our actions;\" and I cannot help thinking that if our liberals\nhad had so much sweetness and light in their inner minds as they\nallege, more of it must have come out in their sayings and doings.\nAn American friend of the English liberals says, indeed, that their\nDissidence of Dissent has been a mere instrument of the political\nDissenters for making reason and the will of God prevail (and no\ndoubt he would say the same of marriage with one's deceased wife's\nsister); and that the abolition of a State Church is merely the\nDissenter's means to this end, just as culture is mine.  Another\nAmerican defender of theirs says just the same of their industrialism\nand free-trade; indeed, this gentleman, taking the bull by the horns,\nproposes that we should for the [78] future call industrialism\nculture, and the industrialists the men of culture, and then of\ncourse there can be no longer any misapprehension about their true\ncharacter; and besides the pleasure of being wealthy and comfortable,\nthey will have authentic recognition as vessels of sweetness and\nlight.  All this is undoubtedly specious; but I must remark that the\nculture of which I talked was an endeavour to come at reason and the\nwill of God by means of reading, observing, and thinking; and that\nwhoever calls anything else culture, may, indeed, call it so if he\nlikes, but then he talks of something quite different from what I\ntalked of.  And, again, as culture's way of working for reason and\nthe will of God is by directly trying to know more about them, while\nthe Dissidence of Dissent is evidently in itself no effort of this\nkind, nor is its Free Church, in fact, a church with worthier\nconceptions of God and the ordering of the world than the State\nChurch professes, but with mainly the same conceptions of these as\nthe State Church has, only that every man is to comport himself as he\nlikes in professing them,--this being so, I cannot at once accept the\nNonconformity any more than the industrialism and the other great\n[79] works of our liberal middle-class as proof positive that this\nclass is in possession of light, and that here is the true seat of\nauthority for which we are in search; but I must try a little\nfurther, and seek for other indications which may enable me to make\nup my mind.\n\nWhy should we not do with the middle-class as we have done with the\naristocratic class,--find in it some representative men who may stand\nfor the virtuous mean of this class, for the perfection of its\npresent qualities and mode of being, and also for the excess of them.\nSuch men must clearly not be men of genius like Mr. Bright; for, as I\nhave formerly said, so far as a man has genius he tends to take\nhimself out of the category of class altogether, and to become simply\na man.  Mr. Bright's brother, Mr. Jacob Bright, would, perhaps, be\nmore to the purpose; he seems to sum up very well in himself, without\ndisturbing influences, the general liberal force of the middle-class,\nthe force by which it has done its great works of free-trade,\nparliamentary reform, voluntaryism, and so on, and the spirit in\nwhich it has done them.  Now it is clear, from what has been already\nsaid, that there has been at least [80] an apparent want of light in\nthe force and spirit through which these great works have been done,\nand that the works have worn in consequence too much a look of\nmachinery.  But this will be clearer still if we take, as the happy\nmean of the middle-class, not Mr. Jacob Bright, but his colleague in\nthe representation of Manchester, Mr. Bazley.  Mr. Bazley sums up for\nus, in general, the middle-class, its spirit and its works, at least\nas well as Mr. Jacob Bright; and he has given us, moreover, a famous\nsentence, which bears directly on the resolution of our present\nquestion,--whether there is light enough in our middle-class to make\nit the proper seat of the authority we wish to establish.  When there\nwas a talk some little while ago about the state of middle-class\neducation, Mr. Bazley, as the representative of that class, spoke\nsome memorable words:--\"There had been a cry that middle-class\neducation ought to receive more attention.  He confessed himself very\nmuch surprised by the clamour that was raised.  He did not think that\nclass need excite the sympathy either of the legislature or the\npublic.\"  Now this satisfaction of Mr. Bazley with the mental state\nof the middle-class [81] was truly representative, and enhances his\nclaim (if that were necessary) to stand as the beautiful and virtuous\nmean of that class.  But it is obviously at variance with our\ndefinition of culture, or the pursuit of light and perfection, which\nmade light and perfection consist, not in resting and being, but in\ngrowing and becoming, in a perpetual advance in beauty and wisdom.\nSo the middle-class is by its essence, as one may say, by its\nincomparable self-satisfaction decisively expressed through its\nbeautiful and virtuous mean, self-excluded from wielding an authority\nof which light is to be the very soul.\n\nClear as this is, it will be made clearer still if we take some\nrepresentative man as the excess of the middle-class, and remember\nthat the middle-class, in general, is to be conceived as a body\nswaying between the qualities of its mean and of its excess, and on\nthe whole, of course, as human nature is constituted, inclining\nrather towards the excess than the mean.  Of its excess no better\nrepresentative can possibly be imagined than the Rev. W. Cattle, a\nDissenting minister from Walsall, who came before the public in\nconnection with the proceedings at [82] Birmingham of Mr. Murphy,\nalready mentioned.  Speaking in the midst of an irritated population\nof Catholics, the Rev. W. Cattle exclaimed:--\"I say, then, away with\nthe mass!  It is from the bottomless pit; and in the bottomless pit\nshall all liars have their part, in the lake that burneth with fire\nand brimstone.\"  And again: \"When all the praties were black in\nIreland, why didn't the priests say the hocus-pocus over them, and\nmake them all good again?\"  He shared, too, Mr. Murphy's fears of\nsome invasion of his domestic happiness: \"What I wish to say to you\nas Protestant husbands is, Take care of your wives!\"  And, finally,\nin the true vein of an Englishman doing as he likes, a vein of which\nI have at some length pointed out the present dangers, he recommended\nfor imitation the example of some churchwardens at Dublin, among\nwhom, said he, \"there was a Luther and also a Melancthon,\" who had\nmade very short work with some ritualist or other, handed him down\nfrom his pulpit, and kicked him out of church.  Now it is manifest,\nas I said in the case of Sir Thomas Bateson, that if we let this\nexcess of the sturdy English middle-class, this conscientious\nProtestant Dissenter, so strong, so self- [83] reliant, so fully\npersuaded in his own mind, have his way, he would be capable, with\nhis want of light--or, to use the language of the religious world,\nwith his zeal without knowledge--of stirring up strife which neither\nhe nor any one else could easily compose.\n\nAnd then comes in, as it did also with the aristocracy, the honesty\nof our race, and by the voice of another middle-class man, Alderman\nWilson, Alderman of the City of London and Colonel of the City of\nLondon Militia, proclaims that it has twinges of conscience, and that\nit will not attempt to cope with our social disorders, and to deal\nwith a business which it feels to be too high for it.  Every one\nremembers how this virtuous Alderman-Colonel, or Colonel-Alderman,\nled his militia through the London streets; how the bystanders\ngathered to see him pass; how the London roughs, asserting an\nEnglishman's best and most blissful right of doing what he likes,\nrobbed and beat the bystanders; and how the blameless warrior-\nmagistrate refused to let his troops interfere.  \"The crowd,\" he\ntouchingly said afterwards, \"was mostly composed of fine healthy\nstrong men, bent on mischief; if he had [84] allowed his soldiers to\ninterfere they might have been overpowered, their rifles taken from\nthem and used against them by the mob; a riot, in fact, might have\nensued, and been attended with bloodshed, compared with which the\nassaults and loss of property that actually occurred would have been\nas nothing.\"  Honest and affecting testimony of the English middle-\nclass to its own inadequacy for the authoritative part one's\nadmiration would sometimes incline one to assign to it!  \"Who are\nwe,\" they say by the voice of their Alderman-Colonel, \"that we should\nnot be overpowered if we attempt to cope with social anarchy, our\nrifles taken from us and used against us by the mob, and we, perhaps,\nrobbed and beaten ourselves?  Or what light have we, beyond a free-\nborn Englishman's impulse to do as he likes, which could justify us\nin preventing, at the cost of bloodshed, other free-born Englishmen\nfrom doing as they like, and robbing and beating us as much as they\nplease?\"\n\nThis distrust of themselves as an adequate centre of authority does\nnot mark the working-class, as was shown by their readiness the other\nday in Hyde Park to take upon themselves all the functions of [85]\ngovernment.  But this comes from the working-class being, as I have\noften said, still an embryo, of which no one can yet quite foresee\nthe final development; and from its not having the same experience\nand self-knowledge as the aristocratic and middle classes.  Honesty\nit no doubt has, just like the other classes of Englishmen, but\nhonesty in an inchoate and untrained state; and meanwhile its powers\nof action, which are, as Mr. Frederic Harrison says, exceedingly\nready, easily run away with it.  That it cannot at present have a\nsufficiency of light which comes by culture,--that is, by reading,\nobserving, and thinking,--is clear from the very nature of its\ncondition; and, indeed, we saw that Mr. Frederic Harrison, in seeking\nto make a free stage for its bright powers of sympathy and ready\npowers of action, had to begin by throwing overboard culture, and\nflouting it as only fit for a professor of belles lettres.  Still, to\nmake it perfectly manifest that no more in the working-class than in\nthe aristocratic and middle classes can one find an adequate centre\nof authority,--that is, as culture teaches us to conceive our\nrequired authority, of light,--let us again follow, with this class,\nthe method we have [86] followed with the aristocratic and middle\nclasses, and try to bring before our minds representative men, who\nmay figure to us its virtue and its excess.  We must not take, of\ncourse, Colonel Dickson or Mr. Beales; because Colonel Dickson, by\nhis martial profession and dashing exterior, seems to belong\nproperly, like Julius Caesar and Mirabeau and other great popular\nleaders, to the aristocratic class, and to be carried into the\npopular ranks only by his ambition or his genius; while Mr. Beales\nbelongs to our solid middle-class, and, perhaps, if he had not been a\ngreat popular leader, would have been a Philistine.  But Mr. Odger,\nwhose speeches we have all read, and of whom his friends relate,\nbesides, much that is favourable, may very well stand for the\nbeautiful and virtuous mean of our present working-class; and I think\neverybody will admit that in Mr. Odger, as in Lord Elcho, there is\nmanifestly, with all his good points, some insufficiency of light.\nThe excess of the working-class, in its present state of development,\nis perhaps best shown in Mr. Bradlaugh, the iconoclast, who seems to\nbe almost for baptizing us all in blood and fire into his new social\ndispensation, and to whose [87] reflections, now that I have once\nbeen set going on Bishop Wilson's track, I cannot forbear commending\nthis maxim of the good old man: \"Intemperance in talk makes a\ndreadful havoc in the heart.\"  Mr. Bradlaugh, like Sir Thomas Bateson\nand the Rev. W. Cattle, is evidently capable, if he had his head\ngiven him, of running us all into great dangers and confusion.  I\nconclude, therefore,--what, indeed, few of those who do me the honour\nto read this disquisition are likely to dispute,--that we can as\nlittle find in the working-class as in the aristocratic or in the\nmiddle class our much-wanted source of authority, as culture suggests\nit to us.\n\nWell, then, what if we tried to rise above the idea of class to the\nidea of the whole community, the State, and to find our centre of\nlight and authority there?  Every one of us has the idea of country,\nas a sentiment; hardly any one of us has the idea of the State, as a\nworking power.  And why?  Because we habitually live in our ordinary\nselves, which do not carry us beyond the ideas and wishes of the\nclass to which we happen to belong.  And we are all afraid of giving\nto the State too much power, because we only conceive of the State\n[88] as something equivalent to the class in occupation of the\nexecutive government, and are afraid of that class abusing power to\nits own purposes.  If we strengthen the State with the aristocratic\nclass in occupation of the executive government, we imagine we are\ndelivering ourselves up captive to the ideas and wishes of Sir Thomas\nBateson; if with the middle-class in occupation of the executive\ngovernment, to those of the Rev. W. Cattle; if with the working-\nclass, to those of Mr. Bradlaugh.  And with much justice; owing to\nthe exaggerated notion which we English, as I have said, entertain of\nthe right and blessedness of the mere doing as one likes, of the\naffirming oneself, and oneself just as it is.  People of the\naristocratic class want to affirm their ordinary selves, their\nlikings and dislikings; people of the middle-class the same, people\nof the working-class the same.  By our everyday selves, however, we\nare separate, personal, at war; we are only safe from one another's\ntyranny when no one has any power; and this safety, in its turn,\ncannot save us from anarchy.  And when, therefore, anarchy presents\nitself as a danger to us, we know not where to turn.\n\n[89] But by our best self we are united, impersonal, at harmony.  We\nare in no peril from giving authority to this, because it is the\ntruest friend we all of us can have; and when anarchy is a danger to\nus, to this authority we may turn with sure trust.  Well, and this is\nthe very self which culture, or the study of perfection, seeks to\ndevelop in us; at the expense of our old untransformed self, taking\npleasure only in doing what it likes or is used to do, and exposing\nus to the risk of clashing with every one else who is doing the same!\nSo that our poor culture, which is flouted as so unpractical, leads\nus to the very ideas capable of meeting the great want of our present\nembarrassed times!  We want an authority, and we find nothing but\njealous classes, checks, and a dead-lock; culture suggests the idea\nof the State.  We find no basis for a firm State-power in our\nordinary selves; culture suggests one to us in our best self.\n\nIt cannot but acutely try a tender conscience to be accused, in a\npractical country like ours, of keeping aloof from the work and hope\nof a multitude of earnest-hearted men, and of merely toying with\npoetry and aesthetics.  So it is with no little [90] sense of relief\nthat I find myself thus in the position of one who makes a\ncontribution in aid of the practical necessities of our times.  The\ngreat thing, it will be observed, is to find our best self, and to\nseek to affirm nothing but that; not,--as we English with our over-\nvalue for merely being free and busy have been so accustomed to do,--\nresting satisfied with a self which comes uppermost long before our\nbest self, and affirming that with blind energy.  In short,--to go\nback yet once more to Bishop Wilson,--of these two excellent rules of\nBishop Wilson's for a man's guidance: \"Firstly, never go against the\nbest light you have; secondly, take care that your light be not\ndarkness,\" we English have followed with praiseworthy zeal the first\nrule, but we have not given so much heed to the second.  We have gone\nmanfully, the Rev. W. Cattle and the rest of us, according to the\nbest light we have; but we have not taken enough care that this\nshould be really the best light possible for us, that it should not\nbe darkness.  And, our honesty being very great, conscience has\nwhispered to us that the light we were following, our ordinary self,\nwas, indeed, perhaps, only an inferior self, only darkness; and [91]\nthat it would not do to impose this seriously on all the world.\n\nBut our best self inspires faith, and is capable of affording a\nserious principle of authority.  For example.  We are on our way to\nwhat the late Duke of Wellington, with his strong sagacity, foresaw\nand admirably described as \"a revolution by due course of law.\"  This\nis undoubtedly,--if we are still to live and grow, and this famous\nnation is not to stagnate and dwindle away on the one hand, or, on\nthe other, to perish miserably in mere anarchy and confusion,--what\nwe are on the way to.  Great changes there must be, for a revolution\ncannot accomplish itself without great changes; yet order there must\nbe, for without order a revolution cannot accomplish itself by due\ncourse of law.  So whatever brings risk of tumult and disorder,\nmultitudinous processions in the streets of our crowded towns,\nmultitudinous meetings in their public places and parks,--\ndemonstrations perfectly unnecessary in the present course of our\naffairs,--our best self, or right reason, plainly enjoins us to set\nour faces against.  It enjoins us to encourage and uphold the\noccupants of the executive power, whoever they [92] may be, in firmly\nprohibiting them.  But it does this clearly and resolutely, and is\nthus a real principle of authority, because it does it with a free\nconscience; because in thus provisionally strengthening the executive\npower, it knows that it is not doing this merely to enable Sir Thomas\nBateson to affirm himself as against Mr. Bradlaugh, or the Rev. W.\nCattle to affirm himself as against both.  It knows that it is\nstablishing the State, or organ of our collective best self, of our\nnational right reason; and it has the testimony of conscience that it\nis stablishing the State on behalf of whatever great changes are\nneeded, just as much as on behalf of order; stablishing it to deal\njust as stringently, when the time comes, with Sir Thomas Bateson's\nProtestant ascendency, or with the Rev. W. Cattle's sorry education\nof his children, as it deals with Mr. Bradlaugh's street-processions.\n\nNOTES\n\n56. +posse comitat\u00fbs.  Arnold's phrase refers to the medieval\ninstitution of the \"power of the county.\"  It originally consisted of\na county's able-bodied males over fifteen, and the local authorities\nmight call upon it to preserve order.  Later, the posse became an\ninstrument of the church parish.\n\n64. +London's Hyde Park riots occurred in 1866.  Reform Leaguers bent\non assembling to promote universal suffrage broke through the iron\nrails encompassing the Park.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n[93] From a man without a philosophy no one can expect philosophical\ncompleteness.  Therefore I may observe without shame, that in trying\nto get a distinct notion of our aristocratic, our middle, and our\nworking class, with a view of testing the claims of each of these\nclasses to become a centre of authority, I have omitted, I find, to\ncomplete the old-fashioned analysis which I had the fancy of\napplying, and have not shown in these classes, as well as the\nvirtuous mean and the excess, the defect also.  I do not know that\nthe omission very much matters; still as clearness is the one merit\nwhich a plain, unsystematic writer, without a philosophy, can hope to\nhave, and as our notion of the three great English classes may\nperhaps be made clearer if we see their distinctive qualities in the\ndefect, as well as in the excess and in the mean, let us try, before\nproceeding further, to remedy this omission.\n\nIt is manifest, if the perfect and virtuous mean of that fine spirit\nwhich is the distinctive quality [94] of aristocracies, is to be\nfound in Lord Elcho's chivalrous style, and its excess in Sir Thomas\nBateson's turn for resistance, that its defect must lie in a spirit\nnot bold and high enough, and in an excessive and pusillanimous\nunaptness for resistance.  If, again, the perfect and virtuous mean\nof that force by which our middle-class has done its great works, and\nof that self-reliance with which it contemplates itself and them, is\nto be seen in the performances and speeches of Mr. Bazley, and the\nexcess of that force and that self-reliance in the performances and\nspeeches of the Rev. W. Cattle, then it is manifest that their defect\nmust lie in a helpless inaptitude for the great works of the middle-\nclass, and in a poor and despicable lack of its self-satisfaction.\nTo be chosen to exemplify the happy mean of a good quality, or set of\ngood qualities, is evidently a praise to a man; nay, to be chosen to\nexemplify even their excess, is a kind of praise.  Therefore I could\nhave no hesitation in taking Lord Elcho and Mr. Bazley, the Rev. W.\nCattle and Sir Thomas Bateson, to exemplify, respectively, the mean\nand the excess of aristocratic and middle-class qualities.  But\nperhaps there might [95] be a want of urbanity in singling out this\nor that personage as the representative of defect.  Therefore I shall\nleave the defect of aristocracy unillustrated by any representative\nman.  But with oneself one may always, without impropriety, deal\nquite freely; and, indeed, this sort of plain-dealing with oneself\nhas in it, as all the moralists tell us, something very wholesome.\nSo I will venture to humbly offer myself as an illustration of defect\nin those forces and qualities which make our middle-class what it is.\nThe too well-founded reproaches of my opponents declare how little I\nhave lent a hand to the great works of the middle-class; for it is\nevidently these works, and my slackness at them, which are meant,\nwhen I am said to \"refuse to lend a hand to the humble operation of\nuprooting certain definite evils\" (such as church-rates and others),\nand that therefore \"the believers in action grow impatient\" with me.\nThe line, again, of a still unsatisfied seeker which I have followed,\nthe idea of self-transformation, of growing towards some measure of\nsweetness and light not yet reached, is evidently at clean variance\nwith the perfect self-satisfaction current in my class, the middle-\nclass, [96] and may serve to indicate in me, therefore, the extreme\ndefect of this feeling.  But these confessions, though salutary, are\nbitter and unpleasant.\n\nTo pass, then, to the working-class.  The defect of this class would\nbe the falling short in what Mr. Frederic Harrison calls those\n\"bright powers of sympathy and ready powers of action,\" of which we\nsaw in Mr. Odger the virtuous mean, and in Mr. Bradlaugh the excess.\nThe working-class is so fast growing and rising at the present time,\nthat instances of this defect cannot well be now very common.\nPerhaps Canning's \"Needy Knife-grinder\" (who is dead, and therefore\ncannot be pained at my taking him for an illustration) may serve to\ngive us the notion of defect in the essential quality of a working-\nclass; or I might even cite (since, though he is alive in the flesh,\nhe is dead to all heed of criticism) my poor old poaching friend,\nZephaniah Diggs, who, between his hare-snaring and his gin-drinking,\nhas got his powers of sympathy quite dulled and his powers of action\nin any great movement of his class hopelessly impaired.  But examples\nof this defect belong, as I have said, to a bygone age rather than to\nthe present.\n\n[97] The same desire for clearness, which has led me thus to extend a\nlittle my first analysis of the three great classes of English\nsociety, prompts me also to make my nomenclature for them a little\nfuller, with a view to making it thereby more clear and manageable.\nIt is awkward and tiresome to be always saying the aristocratic\nclass, the middle-class, the working-class.  For the middle-class,\nfor that great body which, as we know, \"has done all the great things\nthat have been done in all departments,\" and which is to be conceived\nas chiefly moving between its two cardinal points of Mr. Bazley and\nthe Rev. W. Cattle, but inclining, in the mass, rather towards the\nlatter than the former--for this class we have a designation which\nnow has become pretty well known, and which we may as well still keep\nfor them, the designation of Philistines.  What this term means I\nhave so often explained that I need not repeat it here.  For the\naristocratic class, conceived mainly as a body moving between the two\ncardinal points of Lord Elcho and Sir Thomas Bateson, but as a whole\nnearer to the latter than the former, we have as yet got no special\ndesignation.  Almost [98] all my attention has naturally been\nconcentrated on my own class, the middle-class, with which I am in\nclosest sympathy, and which has been, besides, the great power of our\nday, and has had its praises sung by all speakers and newspapers.\nStill the aristocratic class is so important in itself, and the\nweighty functions which Mr. Carlyle proposes at the present critical\ntime to commit to it must add so much to its importance, that it\nseems neglectful, and a strong instance of that want of coherent\nphilosophic method for which Mr. Frederic Harrison blames me, to\nleave the aristocratic class so much without notice and denomination.\nIt may be thought that the characteristic which I have occasionally\nmentioned as proper to aristocracies,--their natural inaccessibility,\nas children of the established fact, to ideas,--points to our\nextending to this class also the designation of Philistines; the\nPhilistine being, as is well known, the enemy of the children of\nlight, or servants of the idea.  Nevertheless, there seems to be an\ninconvenience in thus giving one and the same designation to two very\ndifferent classes; and besides, if we look into the thing closely, we\nshall find that the term Philistine conveys a sense which [99] makes\nit more peculiarly appropriate to our middle class than to our\naristocratic.  For Philistine gives the notion of something\nparticularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and\nits children, and therein it specially suits our middle-class, who\nnot only do not pursue sweetness and light, but who prefer to them\nthat sort of machinery of business, chapels, tea meetings, and\naddresses from Mr. Murphy and the Rev. W. Cattle, which makes up the\ndismal and illiberal life on which I have so often touched.  But the\naristocratic class has actually, as we have seen, in its well-known\npoliteness, a kind of image or shadow of sweetness; and as for light,\nif it does not pursue light, it is not that it perversely cherishes\nsome dismal and illiberal existence in preference to light, but it is\nseduced from following light by those mighty and eternal seducers of\nour race which weave for this class their most irresistible charms,--\nby worldly splendour, security, power and pleasure.  These seducers\nare exterior goods, but they are goods; and he who is hindered by\nthem from caring for light and ideas, is not so much doing what is\nperverse as what is natural.\n\nKeeping this in view, I have in my own mind [100] often indulged\nmyself with the fancy of putting side by side with the idea of our\naristocratic class, the idea of the Barbarians.  The Barbarians, to\nwhom we all owe so much, and who reinvigorated and renewed our worn-\nout Europe, had, as is well-known, eminent merits; and in this\ncountry, where we are for the most part sprung from the Barbarians,\nwe have never had the prejudice against them which prevails among the\nraces of Latin origin.  The Barbarians brought with them that staunch\nindividualism, as the modern phrase is, and that passion for doing as\none likes, for the assertion of personal liberty, which appears to\nMr. Bright the central idea of English life, and of which we have, at\nany rate, a very rich supply.  The stronghold and natural seat of\nthis passion was in the nobles of whom our aristocratic class are the\ninheritors; and this class, accordingly, have signally manifested it,\nand have done much by their example to recommend it to the body of\nthe nation, who already, indeed, had it in their blood.  The\nBarbarians, again, had the passion for field-sports; and they have\nhanded it on to our aristocratic class, who of this passion too, as\nof the passion for asserting one's personal liberty, are the [101]\ngreat natural stronghold.  The care of the Barbarians for the body,\nand for all manly exercises; the vigour, good looks, and fine\ncomplexion which they acquired and perpetuated in their families by\nthese means,--all this may be observed still in our aristocratic\nclass.  The chivalry of the Barbarians, with its characteristics of\nhigh spirit, choice manners, and distinguished bearing,--what is this\nbut the beautiful commencement of the politeness of our aristocratic\nclass?  In some Barbarian noble, no doubt, one would have admired, if\none could have been then alive to see it, the rudiments of Lord\nElcho.  Only, all this culture (to call it by that name) of the\nBarbarians was an exterior culture mainly: it consisted principally\nin outward gifts and graces, in looks, manners, accomplishments,\nprowess; the chief inward gifts which had part in it were the most\nexterior, so to speak, of inward gifts, those which come nearest to\noutward ones: they were courage, a high spirit, self-confidence.  Far\nwithin, and unawakened, lay a whole range of powers of thought and\nfeeling, to which these interesting productions of nature had, from\nthe circumstances of their life, no access.  Making allowances for\nthe [102] difference of the times, surely we can observe precisely\nthe same thing now in our aristocratic class.  In general its culture\nis exterior chiefly; all the exterior graces and accomplishments, and\nthe more external of the inward virtues, seem to be principally its\nportion.  It now, of course, cannot but be often in contact with\nthose studies by which, from the world of thought and feeling, true\nculture teaches us to fetch sweetness and light; but its hold upon\nthese very studies appears remarkably external, and unable to exert\nany deep power upon its spirit.  Therefore the one insufficiency\nwhich we noted in the perfect mean of this class, Lord Elcho, was an\ninsufficiency of light.  And owing to the same causes, does not a\nsubtle criticism lead us to make, even on the good looks and\npoliteness of our aristocratic class, the one qualifying remark, that\nin these charming gifts there should perhaps be, for ideal\nperfection, a shade more soul?\n\nI often, therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the\naristocratic class from the Philistines proper, or middle-class, name\nthe former, in my own mind, the Barbarians: and when I go through the\ncountry, and see this and that beautiful and [103] imposing seat of\ntheirs crowning the landscape, \"There,\" I say to myself, \"is a great\nfortified post of the Barbarians.\"\n\nIt is obvious that that part of the working-class which, working\ndiligently by the light of Mrs. Gooch's Golden Rule, looks forward to\nthe happy day when it will sit on thrones with Mr. Bazley and other\nmiddle-class potentates, to survey, as Mr. Bright beautifully says,\n\"the cities it has built, the railroads it has made, the manufactures\nit has produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest\nmercantile navy the world has ever seen,\"--it is obvious, I say, that\nthis part of the working-class is, or is in a fair way to be, one in\nspirit with the industrial middle-class.  It is notorious that our\nmiddle-class liberals have long looked forward to this consummation,\nwhen the working-class shall join forces with them, aid them heartily\nto carry forward their great works, go in a body to their tea-\nmeetings, and, in short, enable them to bring about their millennium.\nThat part of the working-class, therefore, which does really seem to\nlend itself to these great aims, may, with propriety, be numbered by\nus among the Philistines.  That part of it, again, which [104] so\nmuch occupies the attention of philanthropists at present,--the part\nwhich gives all its energies to organising itself, through trades'\nunions and other means, so as to constitute, first, a great working-\nclass power, independent of the middle and aristocratic classes, and\nthen, by dint of numbers, give the law to them, and itself reign\nabsolutely,--this lively and interesting part must also, according to\nour definition, go with the Philistines; because it is its class and\nits class-instinct which it seeks to affirm, its ordinary self not\nits best self; and it is a machinery, an industrial machinery, and\npower and pre-eminence and other external goods which fill its\nthoughts, and not an inward perfection.  It is wholly occupied,\naccording to Plato's subtle expression, with the things of itself and\nnot its real self, with the things of the State and not the real\nState.  But that vast portion, lastly, of the working-class which,\nraw and half-developed, has long lain half-hidden amidst its poverty\nand squalor, and is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an\nEnglishman's heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, and is\nbeginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it\nlikes, bawling what it likes, [105] breaking what it likes,--to this\nvast residuum we may with great propriety give the name of Populace.\n\nThus we have got three distinct terms, Barbarians, Philistines,\nPopulace, to denote roughly the three great classes into which our\nsociety is divided; and though this humble attempt at a scientific\nnomenclature falls, no doubt, very far short in precision of what\nmight be required from a writer equipped with a complete and coherent\nphilosophy, yet, from a notoriously unsystematic and unpretending\nwriter, it will, I trust, be accepted as sufficient.\n\nBut in using this new, and, I hope, convenient division of English\nsociety, two things are to be borne in mind.  The first is, that\nsince, under all our class divisions, there is a common basis of\nhuman nature, therefore, in every one of us, whether we be properly\nBarbarians, Philistines, or Populace, there exists, sometimes only in\ngerm and potentially, sometimes more or less developed, the same\ntendencies and passions which have made our fellow-citizens of other\nclasses what they are.  This consideration is very important, because\nit has great influence in begetting that spirit of indulgence which\n[106] is a necessary part of sweetness, and which, indeed, when our\nculture is complete, is, as I have said, inexhaustible.  Thus, an\nEnglish Barbarian who examines himself, will, in general, find\nhimself to be not so entirely a Barbarian but that he has in him,\nalso, something of the Philistine, and even something of the Populace\nas well.  And the same with Englishmen of the two other classes.\nThis is an experience which we may all verify every day.  For\ninstance, I myself (I again take myself as a sort of corpus vile to\nserve for illustration in a matter where serving for illustration may\nnot by every one be thought agreeable), I myself am properly a\nPhilistine,--Mr. Swinburne would add, the son of a Philistine,--and\nthough, through circumstances which will perhaps one day be known, if\never the affecting history of my conversion comes to be written, I\nhave, for the most part, broken with the ideas and the tea-meetings\nof my own class, yet I have not, on that account, been brought much\nthe nearer to the ideas and works of the Barbarians or of the\nPopulace.  Nevertheless, I never take a gun or a fishing-rod in my\nhands without feeling that I have in the ground of my nature the\nself-same seeds which, fostered by [107] circumstances, do so much to\nmake the Barbarian; and that, with the Barbarian's advantages, I\nmight have rivalled him.  Place me in one of his great fortified\nposts, with these seeds of a love for field-sports sown in my nature,\nWith all the means of developing them, with all pleasures at my\ncommand, with most whom I met deferring to me, every one I met\nsmiling on me, and with every appearance of permanence and security\nbefore me and behind me,--then I too might have grown, I feel, into a\nvery passable child of the established fact, of commendable spirit\nand politeness, and, at the same time, a little inaccessible to ideas\nand light; not, of course, with either the eminent fine spirit of\nLord Elcho, or the eminent power of resistance of Sir Thomas Bateson,\nbut, according to the measure of the common run of mankind, something\nbetween the two.  And as to the Populace, who, whether he be\nBarbarian or Philistine, can look at them without sympathy, when he\nremembers how often,--every time that we snatch up a vehement opinion\nin ignorance and passion, every time that we long to crush an\nadversary by sheer violence, every time that we are envious, every\ntime that we are brutal, [108] every time that we adore mere power or\nsuccess, every time that we add our voice to swell a blind clamour\nagainst some unpopular personage, every time that we trample savagely\non the fallen,--he has found in his own bosom the eternal spirit of\nthe Populace, and that there needs only a little help from\ncircumstances to make it triumph in him untameably?\n\nThe second thing to be borne in mind I have indicated several times\nalready.  It is this.  All of us, so far as we are Barbarians,\nPhilistines, or Populace, imagine happiness to consist in doing what\none's ordinary self likes.  What one's ordinary self likes differs\naccording to the class to which one belongs, and has its severer and\nits lighter side; always, however, remaining machinery, and nothing\nmore.  The graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and\nconsideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and pleasure.  The\ngraver self of one kind of Philistine likes business and money-\nmaking; his more relaxed self, comfort and tea-meetings.  Of another\nkind of Philistine, the graver self likes trades' unions; the relaxed\nself, deputations, or hearing Mr. Odger speak.  The sterner self of\nthe [109] Populace likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter\nself, beer.  But in each class there are born a certain number of\nnatures with a curiosity about their best self, with a bent for\nseeing things as they are, for disentangling themselves from\nmachinery, for simply concerning themselves with reason and the will\nof God, and doing their best to make these prevail;--for the pursuit,\nin a word, of perfection.  To certain manifestations of this love for\nperfection mankind have accustomed themselves to give the name of\ngenius; implying, by this name, something original and heaven-\nbestowed in the passion.  But the passion is to be found far beyond\nthose manifestations of it to which the world usually gives the name\nof genius, and in which there is, for the most part, a talent of some\nkind or other, a special and striking faculty of execution, informed\nby the heaven-bestowed ardour, or genius.  It is to be found in many\nmanifestations besides these, and may best be called, as we have\ncalled it, the love and pursuit of perfection; culture being the true\nnurse of the pursuing love, and sweetness and light the true\ncharacter of the pursued perfection.  Natures with this bent emerge\nin all classes,--among the Barbarians, among the Philistines, [110]\namong the Populace.  And this bent always tends, as I have said, to\ntake them out of their class, and to make their distinguishing\ncharacteristic not their Barbarianism or their Philistinism, but\ntheir humanity.  They have, in general, a rough time of it in their\nlives; but they are sown more abundantly than one might think, they\nappear where and when one least expects it, they set up a fire which\nenfilades, so to speak, the class with which they are ranked; and, in\ngeneral, by the extrication of their best self as the self to\ndevelope, and by the simplicity of the ends fixed by them as\nparamount, they hinder the unchecked predominance of that class-life\nwhich is the affirmation of our ordinary self, and seasonably\ndisconcert mankind in their worship of machinery.\n\nTherefore, when we speak of ourselves as divided into Barbarians,\nPhilistines, and Populace, we must be understood always to imply that\nwithin each of these classes there are a certain number of aliens, if\nwe may so call them,--persons who are mainly led, not by their class\nspirit, but by a general humane spirit, by the love of human\nperfection; and that this number is capable of being diminished or\naugmented.  I mean, the number of those who will succeed in [111]\ndeveloping this happy instinct will be greater or smaller, in\nproportion both to the force of the original instinct within them,\nand to the hindrance or encouragement which it meets with from\nwithout.  In almost all who have it, it is mixed with some infusion\nof the spirit of an ordinary self, some quantity of class-instinct,\nand even, as has been shown, of more than one class-instinct at the\nsame time; so that, in general, the extrication of the best self, the\npredominance of the humane instinct, will very much depend upon its\nmeeting, or not, with what is fitted to help and elicit it.  At a\nmoment, therefore, when it is agreed that we want a source of\nauthority, and when it seems probable that the right source is our\nbest self, it becomes of vast importance to see whether or not the\nthings around us are, in general, such as to help and elicit our best\nself, and if they are not, to see why they are not, and the most\npromising way of mending them.\n\nNow, it is clear that the very absence of any powerful authority\namongst us, and the prevalent doctrine of the duty and happiness of\ndoing as one likes, and asserting our personal liberty, must tend to\nprevent the erection of any very strict standard of [112] excellence,\nthe belief in any very paramount authority of right reason, the\nrecognition of our best self as anything very recondite and hard to\ncome at.  It may be, as I have said, a proof of our honesty that we\ndo not attempt to give to our ordinary self, as we have it in action,\npredominant authority, and to impose its rule upon other people; but\nit is evident, also, that it is not easy, with our style of\nproceeding, to get beyond the notion of an ordinary self at all, or\nto get the paramount authority of a commanding best self, or right\nreason, recognised.  The learned Martinus Scriblerus well says:--\"The\ntaste of the bathos is implanted by nature itself in the soul of man;\ntill, perverted by custom or example, he is taught, or rather\ncompelled, to relish the sublime.\"  But with us everything seems\ndirected to prevent any such perversion of us by custom or example as\nmight compel us to relish the sublime; by all means we are encouraged\nto keep our natural taste for the bathos unimpaired.  I have formerly\npointed out how in literature the absence of any authoritative\ncentre, like an Academy, tends to do this; each section of the public\nhas its own literary organ, and the mass of the public is without any\nsuspicion that [113] the value of these organs is relative to their\nbeing nearer a certain ideal centre of correct information, taste,\nand intelligence, or farther away from it.  I have said that within\ncertain limits, which any one who is likely to read this will have no\ndifficulty in drawing for himself, my old adversary, the Saturday\nReview, may, on matters of literature and taste, be fairly enough\nregarded, relatively to a great number of newspapers which treat\nthese matters, as a kind of organ of reason.  But I remember once\nconversing with a company of Nonconformist admirers of some lecturer\nwho had let off a great fire-work, which the Saturday Review said was\nall noise and false lights, and feeling my way as tenderly as I could\nabout the effect of this unfavourable judgment upon those with whom I\nwas conversing.  \"Oh,\" said one who was their spokesman, with the\nmost tranquil air of conviction, \"it is true the Saturday Review\nabuses the lecture, but the British Banner\" (I am not quite sure it\nwas the British Banner, but it was some newspaper of that stamp)\n\"says that the Saturday Review is quite wrong.\"  The speaker had\nevidently no notion that there was a scale of value for judgments on\nthese topics, and that the judgments of the [114] Saturday Review\nranked high on this scale, and those of the British Banner low; the\ntaste of the bathos implanted by nature in the literary judgments of\nman had never, in my friend's case, encountered any let or hindrance.\n\nJust the same in religion as in literature.  We have most of us\nlittle idea of a high standard to choose our guides by, of a great\nand profound spirit, which is an authority, while inferior spirits\nare none; it is enough to give importance to things that this or that\nperson says them decisively, and has a large following of some strong\nkind when he says them.  This habit of ours is very well shown in\nthat able and interesting work of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's, which we were\nall reading lately, The Mormons, by One of Themselves.  Here, again,\nI am not quite sure that my memory serves me as to the exact title,\nbut I mean the well-known book in which Mr. Hepworth Dixon described\nthe Mormons, and other similar religious bodies in America, with so\nmuch detail and such warm sympathy.  In this work it seems enough for\nMr. Dixon that this or that doctrine has its Rabbi, who talks big to\nhim, has a staunch body of disciples, and, above all, has plenty\n[115] of rifles.  That there are any further stricter tests to be\napplied to a doctrine, before it is pronounced important, never seems\nto occur to him.  \"It is easy to say,\" he writes of the Mormons,\n\"that these saints are dupes and fanatics, to laugh at Joe Smith and\nhis church, but what then?  The great facts remain.  Young and his\npeople are at Utah; a church of 200,000 souls; an army of 20,000\nrifles.\"  But if the followers of a doctrine are really dupes, or\nworse, and its promulgators are really fanatics, or worse, it gives\nthe doctrine no seriousness or authority the more that there should\nbe found 200,000 souls,--200,000 of the innumerable multitude with a\nnatural taste for the bathos,--to hold it, and 20,000 rifles to\ndefend it.  And again, of another religious organisation in America:\n\"A fair and open field is not to be refused when hosts so mighty\nthrow down wager of battle on behalf of what they hold to be true,\nhowever strange their faith may seem.\"  A fair and open field is not\nto be refused to any speaker; but this solemn way of heralding him is\nquite out of place unless he has, for the best reason and spirit of\nman, some significance.  \"Well, but,\" says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, [116]\n\"a theory which has been accepted by men like Judge Edmonds, Dr.\nHare, Elder Frederick, and Professor Bush!\"  And again: \"Such are, in\nbrief, the bases of what Newman Weeks, Sarah Horton, Deborah Butler,\nand the associated brethren, proclaimed in Rolt's Hall as the new\ncovenant!\"  If he was summing up an account of the teaching of Plato\nor St. Paul, Mr. Hepworth Dixon could not be more earnestly\nreverential.  But the question is, have personages like Judge\nEdmonds, and Newman Weeks, and Elderess Polly, and Elderess\nAntoinette, and the rest of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's heroes and heroines,\nanything of the weight and significance for the best reason and\nspirit of man that Plato and St. Paul have?  Evidently they, at\npresent, have not; and a very small taste of them and their doctrines\nought to have convinced Mr. Hepworth Dixon that they never could\nhave.  \"But,\" says he, \"the magnetic power which Shakerism is\nexercising on American thought would of itself compel us,\"--and so\non.  Now as far as real thought is concerned,--thought which affects\nthe best reason and spirit of man, the scientific thought of the\nworld, the only thought which deserves [117] speaking of in this\nsolemn way,--America has up to the present time been hardly more than\na province of England, and even now would not herself claim to be\nmore than abreast of England; and of this only real human thought,\nEnglish thought itself is not just now, as we must all admit, one of\nthe most significant factors.  Neither, then, can American thought\nbe; and the magnetic power which Shakerism exercises on American\nthought is about as important, for the best reason and spirit of man,\nas the magnetic power which Mr. Murphy exercises on Birmingham\nProtestantism.  And as we shall never get rid of our natural taste\nfor the bathos in religion,--never get access to a best self and\nright reason which may stand as a serious authority,--by treating Mr.\nMurphy as his own disciples treat him, seriously, and as if he was as\nmuch an authority as any one else: so we shall never get rid of it\nwhile our able and popular writers treat their Joe Smiths and Deborah\nButlers, with their so many thousand souls and so many thousand\nrifles, in the like exaggerated and misleading manner, and so do\ntheir best to confirm us in a bad mental habit to which we are\nalready too prone.\n\n[118] If our habits make it hard for us to come at the idea of a high\nbest self, of a paramount authority, in literature or religion, how\nmuch more do they make this hard in the sphere of politics!  In other\ncountries, the governors, not depending so immediately on the favour\nof the governed, have everything to urge them, if they know anything\nof right reason (and it is at least supposed that governors should\nknow more of this than the mass of the governed), to set it\nauthoritatively before the community.  But our whole scheme of\ngovernment being representative, every one of our governors has all\npossible temptation, instead of setting up before the governed who\nelect him, and on whose favour he depends, a high standard of right\nreason, to accommodate himself as much as possible to their natural\ntaste for the bathos; and even if he tries to go counter to it, to\nproceed in this with so much flattering and coaxing, that they shall\nnot suspect their ignorance and prejudices to be anything very unlike\nright reason, or their natural taste for the bathos to differ much\nfrom a relish for the sublime.  Every one is thus in every possible\nway encouraged to trust in his own heart; but \"he that trusteth in\nhis [119] own heart,\" says the Wise Man, \"is a fool;\"+ and at any\nrate this, which Bishop Wilson says, is undeniably true: \"The number\nof those who need to be awakened is far greater than that of those\nwho need comfort.\"  But in our political system everybody is\ncomforted.  Our guides and governors who have to be elected by the\ninfluence of the Barbarians, and who depend on their favour, sing the\npraises of the Barbarians, and say all the smooth things that can be\nsaid of them.  With Mr. Tennyson, they celebrate \"the great broad-\nshouldered genial Englishman,\" with his \"sense of duty,\" his\n\"reverence for the laws,\" and his \"patient force,\" who saves us from\nthe \"revolts, republics, revolutions, most no graver than a\nschoolboy's barring out,\" which upset other and less broad-shouldered\nnations.  Our guides who are chosen by the Philistines and who have\nto look to their favour, tell the Philistines how \"all the world\nknows that the great middle-class of this country supplies the mind,\nthe will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things\nthat have to be done,\" and congratulate them on their \"earnest good\nsense, which penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and\ngives to conventional illusions their [120] true value.\"  Our guides\nwho look to the favour of the Populace, tell them that \"theirs are\nthe brightest powers of sympathy, and the readiest powers of action.\"\nHarsh things are said too, no doubt, against all the great classes of\nthe community; but these things so evidently come from a hostile\nclass, and are so manifestly dictated by the passions and\nprepossessions of a hostile class, and not by right reason, that they\nmake no serious impression on those at whom they are launched, but\nslide easily off their minds.  For instance, when the Reform League\norators inveigh against our cruel and bloated aristocracy, these\ninvectives so evidently show the passions and point of view of the\nPopulace, that they do not sink into the minds of those at whom they\nare addressed, or awaken any thought or self-examination in them.\nAgain, when Sir Thomas Bateson describes the Philistines and the\nPopulace as influenced with a kind of hideous mania for emasculating\nthe aristocracy, that reproach so clearly comes from the wrath and\nexcited imagination of the Barbarians, that it does not much set the\nPhilistines and the Populace thinking.  Or when Mr. Lowe calls the\nPopulace drunken and venal, he [121] so evidently calls them this in\nan agony of apprehension for his Philistine or middle-class\nParliament, which has done so many great and heroic works, and is now\nthreatened with mixture and debasement, that the Populace do not lay\nhis words seriously to heart.  So the voice which makes a permanent\nimpression on each of our classes is the voice of its friends, and\nthis is from the nature of things, as I have said, a comforting\nvoice.  The Barbarians remain in the belief that the great broad-\nshouldered genial Englishman may be well satisfied with himself; the\nPhilistines remain in the belief that the great middle-class of this\ncountry, with its earnest common-sense penetrating through sophisms\nand ignoring commonplaces, may be well satisfied with itself: the\nPopulace, that the working-man with his bright powers of sympathy and\nready powers of action, may be well satisfied with himself.  What\nhope, at this rate, of extinguishing the taste of the bathos\nimplanted by nature itself in the soul of man, or of inculcating the\nbelief that excellence dwells among high and steep rocks, and can\nonly be reached by those who sweat blood to reach her?  But it will\nbe said, perhaps, that candidates for [122] political influence and\nleadership, who thus caress the self-love of those whose suffrages\nthey desire, know quite well that they are not saying the sheer truth\nas reason sees it, but that they are using a sort of conventional\nlanguage, or what we call clap-trap, which is essential to the\nworking of representative institutions.  And therefore, I suppose, we\nought rather to say with Figaro: Qui est-ce qu'on trompe ici?+  Now,\nI admit that often, but not always, when our governors say smooth\nthings to the self-love of the class whose political support they\nwant, they know very well that they are overstepping, by a long\nstride, the bounds of truth and soberness; and while they talk, they\nin a manner, no doubt, put their tongue in their cheek.  Not always;\nbecause, when a Barbarian appeals to his own class to make him their\nrepresentative and give him political power, he, when he pleases\ntheir self-love by extolling broad-shouldered genial Englishmen with\ntheir sense of duty, reverence for the laws, and patient force,\npleases his own self-love and extols himself, and is, therefore,\nhimself ensnared by his own smooth words.  And so, too, when a\nPhilistine wants to represent his brother Philistines, and [123]\nextols the earnest good sense which characterises Manchester, and\nsupplies the mind, the will, and the power, as the Daily News\neloquently says, requisite for all the great and good things that\nhave to be done, he intoxicates and deludes himself as well as his\nbrother Philistines who hear him.  But it is true that a Barbarian\noften wants the political support of the Philistines; and he\nunquestionably, when he flatters the self-love of Philistinism, and\nextols, in the approved fashion, its energy, enterprise, and self-\nreliance, knows that he is talking clap-trap, and, so to say, puts\nhis tongue in his cheek.  On all matters where Nonconformity and its\ncatchwords are concerned, this insincerity of Barbarians needing\nNonconformist support, and, therefore, flattering the self-love of\nNonconformity and repeating its catchwords without the least real\nbelief in them, is very noticeable.  When the Nonconformists, in a\ntransport of blind zeal, threw out Sir James Graham's useful\nEducation Clauses in 1843, one-half of their parliamentary\nrepresentatives, no doubt, who cried aloud against \"trampling on the\nreligious liberty of the Dissenters by taking the money of Dissenters\nto teach the tenets of the [124] Church of England,\" put their tongue\nin their cheek while they so cried out.  And perhaps there is even a\nsort of motion of Mr. Frederic Harrison's tongue towards his cheek\nwhen he talks of the \"shriek of superstition,\" and tells the working-\nclass that theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy and the\nreadiest powers of action.  But the point on which I would insist is,\nthat this involuntary tribute to truth and soberness on the part of\ncertain of our governors and guides never reaches at all the mass of\nus governed, to serve as a lesson to us, to abate our self-love, and\nto awaken in us a suspicion that our favourite prejudices may be, to\na higher reason, all nonsense.  Whatever by-play goes on among the\nmore intelligent of our leaders, we do not see it; and we are left to\nbelieve that, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of our\nrepresentative and ruling men, there is nothing more admirable than\nour ordinary self, whatever our ordinary self happens to be,--\nBarbarian, Philistine, or Populace.\n\nThus everything in our political life tends to hide from us that\nthere is anything wiser than our ordinary selves, and to prevent our\ngetting the notion of a paramount right reason.  Royalty itself,\n[125] in its idea the expression of the collective nation, and a sort\nof constituted witness to its best mind, we try to turn into a kind\nof grand advertising van, to give publicity and credit to the\ninventions, sound or unsound, of the ordinary self of individuals.  I\nremember, when I was in North Germany, having this very strongly\nbrought to my mind in the matter of schools and their institution.\nIn Prussia, the best schools are Crown patronage schools, as they are\ncalled; schools which have been established and endowed (and new ones\nare to this day being established and endowed) by the Sovereign\nhimself out of his own revenues, to be under the direct control and\nmanagement of him or of those representing him, and to serve as types\nof what schools should be.  The Sovereign, as his position raises him\nabove many prejudices and littlenesses, and as he can always have at\nhis disposal the best advice, has evident advantages over private\nfounders in well planning and directing a school; while at the same\ntime his great means and his great influence secure, to a well-\nplanned school of his, credit and authority.  This is what, in North\nGermany, the governors do, in the matter of education, for the [126]\ngoverned; and one may say that they thus give the governed a lesson,\nand draw out in them the idea of a right reason higher than the\nsuggestions of an ordinary man's ordinary self.  But in England how\ndifferent is the part which in this matter our governors are\naccustomed to play!  The Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial\nTravellers propose to make a school for their children; and I\nsuppose, in the matter of schools, one may call the Licensed\nVictuallers or the Commercial Travellers ordinary men, with their\nnatural taste for the bathos still strong; and a Sovereign with the\nadvice of men like Wilhelm von Humboldt or Schleiermacher may, in\nthis matter, be a better judge, and nearer to right reason.  And it\nwill be allowed, probably, that right reason would suggest that, to\nhave a sheer school of Licensed Victuallers' children, or a sheer\nschool of Commercial Travellers' children, and to bring them all up,\nnot only at home but at school too, in a kind of odour of licensed\nvictualism or of bagmanism, is not a wise training to give to these\nchildren.  And in Germany, I have said, the action of the national\nguides or governors is to suggest and provide a better.  But, in\nEngland, the action of the national [127] guides or governors is, for\na Royal Prince or a great Minister to go down to the opening of the\nLicensed Victuallers' or of the Commercial Travellers' school, to\ntake the chair, to extol the energy and self-reliance of the Licensed\nVictuallers or the Commercial Travellers, to be all of their way of\nthinking, to predict full success to their schools, and never so much\nas to hint to them that they are doing a very foolish thing, and that\nthe right way to go to work with their children's education is quite\ndifferent.  And it is the same in almost every department of affairs.\nWhile, on the Continent, the idea prevails that it is the business of\nthe heads and representatives of the nation, by virtue of their\nsuperior means, power, and information, to set an example and to\nprovide suggestions of right reason, among us the idea is that the\nbusiness of the heads and representatives of the nation is to do\nnothing of the kind, but to applaud the natural taste for the bathos\nshowing itself vigorously in any part of the community, and to\nencourage its works.\n\nNow I do not say that the political system of foreign countries has\nnot inconveniences which may outweigh the inconveniences of our own\npolitical [128] system; nor am I the least proposing to get rid of\nour own political system and to adopt theirs.  But a sound centre of\nauthority being what, in this disquisition, we have been led to seek,\nand right reason, or our best self, appearing alone to offer such a\nsound centre of authority, it is necessary to take note of the chief\nimpediments which hinder, in this country, the extrication or\nrecognition of this right reason as a paramount authority, with a\nview to afterwards trying in what way they can best be removed.\n\nThis being borne in mind, I proceed to remark how not only do we get\nno suggestions of right reason, and no rebukes of our ordinary self,\nfrom our governors, but a kind of philosophical theory is widely\nspread among us to the effect that there is no such thing at all as a\nbest self and a right reason having claim to paramount authority, or,\nat any rate, no such thing ascertainable and capable of being made\nuse of; and that there is nothing but an infinite number of ideas and\nworks of our ordinary selves, and suggestions of our natural taste\nfor the bathos, pretty equal in value, which are doomed either to an\nirreconcileable conflict, or else to a [129] perpetual give and take;\nand that wisdom consists in choosing the give and take rather than\nthe conflict, and in sticking to our choice with patience and good\nhumour.  And, on the other hand, we have another philosophical theory\nrife among us, to the effect that without the labour of perverting\nourselves by custom or example to relish right reason, but by\ncontinuing all of us to follow freely our natural taste for the\nbathos, we shall, by the mercy of Providence, and by a kind of\nnatural tendency of things, come in due time to relish and follow\nright reason.  The great promoters of these philosophical theories\nare our newspapers, which, no less than our parliamentary\nrepresentatives, may be said to act the part of guides and governors\nto us; and these favourite doctrines of theirs I call,--or should\ncall, if the doctrines were not preached by authorities I so much\nrespect,--the first, a peculiarly British form of Atheism, the\nsecond, a peculiarly British form of Quietism.  The first-named\nmelancholy doctrine is preached in The Times with great clearness and\nforce of style; indeed, it is well known, from the example of the\npoet Lucretius and others, what great masters of style the atheistic\n[130] doctrine has always counted among its promulgators.  \"It is of\nno use,\" says The Times, \"for us to attempt to force upon our\nneighbours our several likings and dislikings.  We must take things\nas they are.  Everybody has his own little vision of religious or\ncivil perfection.  Under the evident impossibility of satisfying\neverybody, we agree to take our stand on equal laws and on a system\nas open and liberal as is possible.  The result is that everybody has\nmore liberty of action and of speaking here than anywhere else in the\nOld World.\"  We come again here upon Mr. Roebuck's celebrated\ndefinition of happiness, on which I have so often commented: \"I look\naround me and ask what is the state of England?  Is not every man\nable to say what he likes?  I ask you whether the world over, or in\npast history, there is anything like it?  Nothing.  I pray that our\nunrivalled happiness may last.\"  This is the old story of our system\nof checks and every Englishman doing as he likes, which we have\nalready seen to have been convenient enough so long as there were\nonly the Barbarians and the Philistines to do what they liked, but to\nbe getting inconvenient, and productive of anarchy, [131] now that\nthe Populace wants to do what it likes too.  But for all that, I will\nnot at once dismiss this famous doctrine, but will first quote\nanother passage from The Times, applying the doctrine to a matter of\nwhich we have just been speaking,--education.  \"The difficulty here\"\n(in providing a national system of education), says The Times, \"does\nnot reside in any removeable arrangements.  It is inherent and native\nin the actual and inveterate state of things in this country.  All\nthese powers and personages, all these conflicting influences and\nvarieties of character, exist, and have long existed among us; they\nare fighting it out, and will long continue to fight it out, without\ncoming to that happy consummation when some one element of the\nBritish character is to destroy or to absorb all the rest.\"  There it\nis; the various promptings of the natural taste for the bathos in\nthis man and that amongst us are fighting it out; and the day will\nnever come (and, indeed, why should we wish it to come?) when one\nman's particular sort of taste for the bathos shall tyrannise over\nanother man's; nor when right reason (if that may be called an\nelement of the British character) shall absorb and [132] rule them\nall.  \"The whole system of this country, like the constitution we\nboast to inherit, and are glad to uphold, is made up of established\nfacts, prescriptive authorities, existing usages, powers that be,\npersons in possession, and communities or classes that have won\ndominion for themselves, and will hold it against all comers.\"  Every\nforce in the world, evidently, except the one reconciling force,\nright reason!  Sir Thomas Bateson here, the Rev. W. Cattle on this\nside, Mr. Bradlaugh on that!--pull devil, pull baker!  Really,\npresented with the mastery of style of our leading journal, the sad\npicture, as one gazes upon it, assumes the iron and inexorable\nsolemnity of tragic Destiny.\n\nAfter this, the milder doctrine of our other philosophical teacher,\nthe Daily News, has, at first, something very attractive and\nassuaging.  The Daily News begins, indeed, in appearance, to weave\nthe iron web of necessity round us like The Times.  \"The alternative\nis between a man's doing what he likes and his doing what some one\nelse, probably not one whit wiser than himself, likes.\"  This points\nto the tacit compact, mentioned [133] in my last paper, between the\nBarbarians and the Philistines, and into which it is hoped that the\nPopulace will one day enter; the compact, so creditable to English\nhonesty, that no class, if it exercise power, having only the ideas\nand aims of its ordinary self to give effect to, shall treat its\nordinary self too seriously, or attempt to impose it on others; but\nshall let these others,--the Rev. W. Cattle, for instance, in his\nPapist-baiting, and Mr. Bradlaugh in his Hyde Park anarchy-\nmongering,--have their fling.  But then the Daily News suddenly\nlights up the gloom of necessitarianism with bright beams of hope.\n\"No doubt,\" it says, \"the common reason of society ought to check the\naberrations of individual eccentricity.\"  This common reason of\nsociety looks very like our best self or right reason, to which we\nwant to give authority, by making the action of the State, or nation\nin its collective character, the expression of it.  But of this\nproject of ours, the Daily News, with its subtle dialectics, makes\nhavoc.  \"Make the State the organ of the common reason?\"--it says.\n\"You may make it the organ of something or other, but how can you be\ncertain that [134] reason will be the quality which will be embodied\nin it?\"  You cannot be certain of it, undoubtedly, if you never try\nto bring the thing about; but the question is, the action of the\nState being the action of the collective nation, and the action of\nthe collective nation carrying naturally great publicity, weight, and\nforce of example with it, whether we should not try to put into the\naction of the State as much as possible of right reason, or our best\nself, which may, in this manner, come back to us with new force and\nauthority, may have visibility, form, and influence, and help to\nconfirm us, in the many moments when we are tempted to be our\nordinary selves merely, in resisting our natural taste of the bathos\nrather than in giving way to it?\n\nBut no! says our teacher: \"it is better there should be an infinite\nvariety of experiments in human action, because, as the explorers\nmultiply, the true track is more likely to be discovered.  The common\nreason of society can check the aberrations of individual\neccentricity only by acting on the individual reason; and it will do\nso in the main sufficiently, if left to this natural operation.\"\nThis is what I call the specially British form of [135] Quietism, or\na devout, but excessive, reliance on an over-ruling Providence.\nProvidence, as the moralists are careful to tell us, generally works\nin human affairs by human means; so when we want to make right reason\nact on individual reason, our best self on our ordinary self, we seek\nto give it more power of doing so by giving it public recognition and\nauthority, and embodying it, so far as we can, in the State.  It\nseems too much to ask of Providence, that while we, on our part,\nleave our congenital taste for the bathos to its natural operation\nand its infinite variety of experiments, Providence should\nmysteriously guide it into the true track, and compel it to relish\nthe sublime.  At any rate, great men and great institutions have\nhitherto seemed necessary for producing any considerable effect of\nthis kind.  No doubt we have an infinite variety of experiments, and\nan ever-multiplying multitude of explorers; even in this short paper\nI have enumerated many: the British Banner, Judge Edmonds, Newman\nWeeks, Deborah Butler, Elderess Polly, Brother Noyes, the Rev. W.\nCattle, the Licensed Victuallers, the Commercial Travellers, and I\nknow not how [136] many more; and the numbers of this noble army are\nswelling every day.  But what a depth of Quietism, or rather, what an\nover-bold call on the direct interposition of Providence, to believe\nthat these interesting explorers will discover the true track, or at\nany rate, \"will do so in the main sufficiently\" (whatever that may\nmean) if left to their natural operation; that is, by going on as\nthey are!  Philosophers say, indeed, that we learn virtue by\nperforming acts of virtue; but to say that we shall learn virtue by\nperforming any acts to which our natural taste for the bathos carries\nus, that the Rev. W. Cattle comes at his best self by Papist-baiting,\nor Newman Weeks and Deborah Butler at right reason by following their\nnoses, this certainly does appear over-sanguine.\n\nIt is true, what we want is to make right reason act on individual\nreason, the reason of individuals; all our search for authority has\nthat for its end and aim.  The Daily News says, I observe, that all\nmy argument for authority \"has a non-intellectual root;\" and from\nwhat I know of my own mind and its inertness, I think this so\nprobable, that I should be inclined easily to admit it, if it were\nnot that, in [137] the first place, nothing of this kind, perhaps,\nshould be admitted without examination; and, in the second, a way of\naccounting for this charge being made, in this particular instance,\nwithout full grounds, appears to present itself.  What seems to me to\naccount here, perhaps, for the charge, is the want of flexibility of\nour race, on which I have so often remarked.  I mean, it being\nadmitted that the conformity of the individual reason of the Rev. W.\nCattle or Mr. Bradlaugh with right reason is our true object, and not\nthe mere restraining them, by the strong arm of the State, from\nPapist-baiting or railing-breaking,--admitting this, we have so\nlittle flexibility that we cannot readily perceive that the State's\nrestraining them from these indulgences may yet fix clearly in their\nminds that, to the collective nation, these indulgences appear\nirrational and unallowable, may make them pause and reflect, and may\ncontribute to bringing, with time, their individual reason into\nharmony with right reason.  But in no country, owing to the want of\nintellectual flexibility above mentioned, is the leaning which is our\nnatural one, and, therefore, needs no recommending to us, so\nsedulously recommended, and the leaning which is [138] not our\nnatural one, and, therefore, does not-need dispraising to us, so\nsedulously dispraised, as in ours.  To rely on the individual being,\nwith us, the natural leaning, we will hear of nothing but the good of\nrelying on the individual; to act through the collective nation on\nthe individual being not our natural leaning, we will hear nothing in\nrecommendation of it.  But the wise know that we often need to hear\nmost of that to which we are least inclined, and even to learn to\nemploy, in certain circumstances, that which is capable, if employed\namiss, of being a danger to us.\n\nElsewhere this is certainly better understood than here.  In a recent\nnumber of the Westminster Review, an able writer, but with precisely\nour national want of flexibility of which I have been speaking, has\nunearthed, I see, for our present needs, an English translation,\npublished some years ago, of Wilhelm von Humboldt's book, The Sphere\nand Duties of Government.  Humboldt's object in this book is to show\nthat the operation of government ought to be severely limited to what\ndirectly and immediately relates to the security of person and\nproperty.  Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the [139] most beautiful and\nperfect souls that have ever existed, used to say that one's business\nin life was, first, to perfect oneself by all the means in one's\npower, and, secondly, to try and create in the world around one an\naristocracy, the most numerous that one possibly could, of talents\nand characters.  He saw, of course, that, in the end, everything\ncomes to this,--that the individual must act for himself, and must be\nperfect in himself; and he lived in a country, Germany, where people\nwere disposed to act too little for themselves, and to rely too much\non the Government.  But even thus, such was his flexibility, so\nlittle was he in bondage to a mere abstract maxim, that he saw very\nwell that for his purpose itself, of enabling the individual to stand\nperfect on his own foundations and to do without the State, the\naction of the State would for long, long years be necessary; and soon\nafter he wrote his book on The Sphere and Duties of Government,\nWilhelm von Humboldt became Minister of Education in Prussia, and\nfrom his ministry all the great reforms which give the control of\nPrussian education to the State,--the transference of the management\nof public schools from their old boards of trustees to the [140]\nState, the obligatory State-examination for schools, the obligatory\nState-examination for schoolmasters, and the foundation of the great\nState University of Berlin,--take their origin.  This his English\nreviewer says not a word of.  But, writing for a people whose dangers\nlie, as we have seen, on the side of their unchecked and unguided\nindividual action, whose dangers none of them lie on the side of an\nover-reliance on the State, he quotes just so much of Wilhelm von\nHumboldt's example as can flatter them in their propensities, and do\nthem no good; and just what might make them think, and be of use to\nthem, he leaves on one side.  This precisely recalls the manner, it\nwill be observed, in which we have seen that our royal and noble\npersonages proceed with the Licensed Victuallers.\n\nIn France the action of the State on individuals is yet more\npreponderant than in Germany; and the need which friends of human\nperfection feel to enable the individual to stand perfect on his own\nfoundations is all the stronger.  But what says one of the staunchest\nof these friends, Monsieur Renan, on State action, and even State\naction in that very sphere where in France it is most excessive, the\nsphere [141] of education?  Here are his words:--\"A liberal believes\nin liberty, and liberty signifies the non-intervention of the State.\nBut such an ideal is still a long way off from us, and the very means\nto remove it to an indefinite distance would be precisely the State's\nwithdrawing its action too soon.\"  And this, he adds, is even truer\nof education than of any other department of public affairs.\n\nWe see, then, how indispensable to that human perfection which we\nseek is, in the opinion of good judges, some public recognition and\nestablishment of our best self, or right reason.  We see how our\nhabits and practice oppose themselves to such a recognition, and the\nmany inconveniences which we therefore suffer.  But now let us try to\ngo a little deeper, and to find, beneath our actual habits and\npractice, the very ground and cause out of which they spring.\n\nNOTES\n\n119. +Proverbs 28:26.  \"He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool:\nbut whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered.\"  The King James\nBible.\n\n122.  +\"Qui est-ce qu'on trompe ici?\"  E-text editor's translation:\n\"Who is the one getting fooled here?\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\n[142] This fundamental ground is our preference of doing to thinking.\nNow this preference is a main element in our nature, and as we study\nit we find ourselves opening up a number of large questions on every\nside.\n\nLet me go back for a moment to what I have already quoted from Bishop\nWilson:--\"First, never go against the best light you have; secondly,\ntake care that your light be not darkness.\"  I said we show, as a\nnation, laudable energy and persistence in walking according to the\nbest light we have, but are not quite careful enough, perhaps, to see\nthat our light be not darkness.  This is only another version of the\nold story that energy is our strong point and favourable\ncharacteristic, rather than intelligence.  But we may give to this\nidea a more general form still, in which it will have a yet larger\nrange of application.  We may regard this energy driving at practice,\nthis paramount sense of the obligation of duty, self-control, and\nwork, this earnestness in going manfully with the best light we [143]\nhave, as one force.  And we may regard the intelligence driving at\nthose ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, the\nardent sense for all the new and changing combinations of them which\nman's development brings with it, the indomitable impulse to know and\nadjust them perfectly, as another force.  And these two forces we may\nregard as in some sense rivals,--rivals not by the necessity of their\nown nature, but as exhibited in man and his history,--and rivals\ndividing the empire of the world between them.  And to give these\nforces names from the two races of men who have supplied the most\nsignal and splendid manifestations of them, we may call them\nrespectively the forces of Hebraism and Hellenism.  Hebraism and\nHellenism,--between these two points of influence moves our world.\nAt one time it feels more powerfully the attraction of one of them,\nat another time of the other; and it ought to be, though it never is,\nevenly and happily balanced between them.\n\nThe final aim of both Hellenism and Hebraism, as of all great\nspiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same: man's perfection or\nsalvation.  The very language which they both of them use in\nschooling [144] us to reach this aim is often identical.  Even when\ntheir language indicates by variation,--sometimes a broad variation,\noften a but slight and subtle variation,--the different courses of\nthought which are uppermost in each discipline, even then the unity\nof the final end and aim is still apparent.  To employ the actual\nwords of that discipline with which we ourselves are all of us most\nfamiliar, and the words of which, therefore, come most home to us,\nthat final end and aim is \"that we might be partakers of the divine\nnature.\"  These are the words of a Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism\nand Hebraism alike this is, I say, the aim.  When the two are\nconfronted, as they very often are confronted, it is nearly always\nwith what I may call a rhetorical purpose; the speaker's whole design\nis to exalt and enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only\nas a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his purpose.\nObviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism which is thus reduced to\nminister to the triumph of Hebraism.  There is a sermon on Greece and\nthe Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without interest and\nrespect, Frederick Robertson, in which this rhetorical use of Greece\nand the Greek [145] spirit, and the inadequate exhibition of them\nnecessarily consequent upon this, is almost ludicrous, and would be\ncensurable if it were not to be explained by the exigences of a\nsermon.  On the other hand, Heinrich Heine, and other writers of his\nsort, give us the spectacle of the tables completely turned, and of\nHebraism brought in just as a foil and contrast to Hellenism, and to\nmake the superiority of Hellenism more manifest.  In both these cases\nthere is injustice and misrepresentation.  The aim and end of both\nHebraism and Hellenism is, as I have said, one and the same, and this\naim and end is august and admirable.\n\nStill, they pursue this aim by very different courses.  The uppermost\nidea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the\nuppermost idea with Hebraism is conduct and obedience.  Nothing can\ndo away with this ineffaceable difference; the Greek quarrel with the\nbody and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking, the Hebrew\nquarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting.  \"He that\nkeepeth the law, happy is he;\" \"There is nothing sweeter than to take\nheed unto the commandments of the Lord;\"+--that is the Hebrew [146]\nnotion of felicity; and, pursued with passion and tenacity, this\nnotion would not let the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had,\nat last, got out of the law a network of prescriptions to enwrap his\nwhole life, to govern every moment of it, every impulse, every\naction.  The Greek notion of felicity, on the other hand, is\nperfectly conveyed in these words of a great French moralist: \"C'est\nle bonheur des hommes\"--when? when they abhor that which is evil?--\nno; when they exercise themselves in the law of the Lord day and\nnight?--no; when they die daily?--no; when they walk about the New\nJerusalem with palms in their hands?--no; but when they think aright,\nwhen their thought hits,--\"quand ils pensent juste.\"  At the bottom\nof both the Greek and the Hebrew notion is the desire, native in man,\nfor reason and the will of God, the feeling after the universal\norder,--in a word, the love of God.  But, while Hebraism seizes upon\ncertain plain, capital intimations of the universal order, and rivets\nitself, one may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness and\nintensity on the study and observance of them, the bent of Hellenism\nis to follow, with flexible activity, the whole play of the universal\norder, to be [147] apprehensive of missing any part of it, of\nsacrificing one part to another, to slip away from resting in this or\nthat intimation of it, however capital.  An unclouded clearness of\nmind, an unimpeded play of thought, is what this bent drives at.  The\ngoverning idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of\nHebraism, strictness of conscience.\n\nChristianity changed nothing in this essential bent of Hebraism to\nset doing above knowing.  Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following\nnot our own individual will, but the will of God, obedience, is the\nfundamental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we\nhave attached the general name of Hebraism.  Only, as the old law and\nthe network of prescriptions with which it enveloped human life were\nevidently a motive power not driving and searching enough to produce\nthe result aimed at,--patient continuance in well doing, self-\nconquest,--Christianity substituted for them boundless devotion to\nthat inspiring and affecting pattern of self-conquest offered by\nChrist; and by the new motive power, of which the essence was this,\nthough the love and admiration of Christian churches have for\ncenturies been employed in varying, amplifying, [148] and adorning\nthe plain description of it, Christianity, as St. Paul truly says,\n\"establishes the law,\"+ and in the strength of the ampler power which\nshe has thus supplied to fulfil it, has accomplished the miracles,\nwhich we all see, of her history.\n\nSo long as we do not forget that both Hellenism and Hebraism are\nprofound and admirable manifestations of man's life, tendencies, and\npowers, and that both of them aim at a like final result, we can\nhardly insist too strongly on the divergence of line and of operation\nwith which they proceed.  It is a divergence so great that it most\ntruly, as the prophet Zechariah says, \"has raised up thy sons, O\nZion, against thy sons, O Greece!\"+  The difference whether it is by\ndoing or by knowing that we set most store, and the practical\nconsequences which follow from this difference, leave their mark on\nall the history of our race and of its development.  Language may be\nabundantly quoted from both Hellenism and Hebraism to make it seem\nthat one follows the same current as the other towards the same goal.\nThey are, truly, borne towards the same goal; but the currents which\nbear them are infinitely different.  It is true, Solomon will praise\n[149] knowing: \"Understanding is a well-spring of life unto him that\nhath it.\"+  And in the New Testament, again, Christ is a \"light,\"+ and\n\"truth makes us free.\"+  It is true, Aristotle will undervalue\nknowing: \"In what concerns virtue,\" says he, \"three things are\nnecessary,--knowledge, deliberate will, and perseverance; but,\nwhereas the two last are all important, the first is a matter of\nlittle importance.\"  It is true that with the same impatience with\nwhich St. James enjoins a man to be not a forgetful hearer, but a\ndoer of the work,+ Epictetus exhorts us to do what we have\ndemonstrated to ourselves we ought to do; or he taunts us with\nfutility, for being armed at all points to prove that lying is wrong,\nyet all the time continuing to lie.  It is true, Plato, in words\nwhich are almost the words of the New Testament or the Imitation,\ncalls life a learning to die.  But underneath the superficial\nagreement the fundamental divergence still subsists.  The\nunderstanding of Solomon is \"the walking in the way of the\ncommandments;\" this is \"the way of peace,\"+ and it is of this that\nblessedness comes.  In the New Testament, the truth which gives us\nthe peace of God and makes us free, is the love of Christ\nconstraining [150] us to crucify, as he did, and with a like purpose\nof moral regeneration, the flesh with its affections and lusts, and\nthus establishing, as we have seen, the law.  To St. Paul it appears\npossible to \"hold the truth in unrighteousness,\"+ which is just what\nSocrates judged impossible.  The moral virtues, on the other hand,\nare with Aristotle but the porch and access to the intellectual, and\nwith these last is blessedness.  That partaking of the divine life,\nwhich both Hellenism and Hebraism, as we have said, fix as their\ncrowning aim, Plato expressly denies to the man of practical virtue\nmerely, of self-conquest with any other motive than that of perfect\nintellectual vision; he reserves it for the lover of pure knowledge,\nof seeing things as they really are,--the philomath\u00eas.+\n\nBoth Hellenism and Hebraism arise out of the wants of human nature,\nand address themselves to satisfying those wants.  But their methods\nare so different, they lay stress on such different points, and call\ninto being by their respective disciplines such different activities,\nthat the face which human nature presents when it passes from the\nhands of one of them to those of the other, is no longer the [151]\nsame.  To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things as they are, and\nby seeing them as they are to see them in their beauty, is the simple\nand attractive ideal which Hellenism holds out before human nature;\nand from the simplicity and charm of this ideal, Hellenism, and human\nlife in the hands of Hellenism, is invested with a kind of a\u00ebrial\nease, clearness, and radiancy; they are full of what we call\nsweetness and light.  Difficulties are kept out of view, and the\nbeauty and rationalness of the ideal have all our thoughts.  \"The\nbest man is he who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest\nman is he who most feels that he is perfecting himself,\"--this\naccount of the matter by Socrates, the true Socrates of the\nMemorabilia, has something so simple, spontaneous, and\nunsophisticated about it, that it seems to fill us with clearness and\nhope when we hear it.  But there is a saying which I have heard\nattributed to Mr. Carlyle about Socrates,--a very happy saying,\nwhether it is really Mr. Carlyle's or not,--which excellently marks\nthe essential point in which Hebraism differs from Hellenism.\n\"Socrates,\" this saying goes, \"is terribly at ease in Zion\"\nHebraism,--and here is the source of its [152] wonderful strength,--\nhas always been severely preoccupied with an awful sense of the\nimpossibility of being at ease in Zion; of the difficulties which\noppose themselves to man's pursuit or attainment of that perfection\nof which Socrates talks so hopefully, and, as from this point of view\none might almost say, so glibly.  It is all very well to talk of\ngetting rid of one's ignorance, of seeing things in their reality,\nseeing them in their beauty; but how is this to be done when there is\nsomething which thwarts and spoils all our efforts?  This something\nis sin; and the space which sin fills in Hebraism, as compared with\nHellenism, is indeed prodigious.  This obstacle to perfection fills\nthe whole scene, and perfection appears remote and rising away from\nearth, in the background.  Under the name of sin, the difficulties of\nknowing oneself and conquering oneself which impede man's passage to\nperfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active entity hostile\nto man, a mysterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey the other day, in\none of his impressive sermons, compare to a hideous hunchback seated\non our shoulders, and which it is the main business of our lives to\nhate and oppose.  The discipline of the [153] Old Testament may be\nsummed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the\ndiscipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die\nto it.  As Hellenism speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things in\ntheir essence and beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to\nachieve, so Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious of sin, of\nawakening to a sense of sin, as a feat of this kind.  It is obvious\nto what wide divergence these differing tendencies, actively\nfollowed, must lead.  As one passes and repasses from Hellenism to\nHebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels inclined to rub one's\neyes and ask oneself whether man is indeed a gentle and simple being,\nshowing the traces of a noble and divine nature; or an unhappy\nchained captive, labouring with groanings that cannot be uttered to\nfree himself from the body of this death.\n\nApparently it was the Hellenic conception of human nature which was\nunsound, for the world could not live by it.  Absolutely to call it\nunsound, however, is to fall into the common error of its Hebraising\nenemies; but it was unsound at that particular moment of man's\ndevelopment, it was premature.  The indispensable basis of conduct\nand [154] self-control, the platform upon which alone the perfection\naimed at by Greece can come into bloom, was not to be reached by our\nrace so easily; centuries of probation and discipline were needed to\nbring us to it.  Therefore the bright promise of Hellenism faded, and\nHebraism ruled the world.  Then was seen that astonishing spectacle,\nso well marked by the often quoted words of the prophet Zechariah,\nwhen men of all languages of the nations took hold of the skirt of\nhim that was a Jew, saying:--\"We will go with you, for we have heard\nthat God is with you.\"+  And the Hebraism which thus received and\nruled a world all gone out of the way and altogether become\nunprofitable, was, and could not but be, the later, the more\nspiritual, the more attractive development of Hebraism.  It was\nChristianity; that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and\nrescue from the thrall of vile affections, not by obedience to the\nletter of a law, but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing\nexample.  To a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity\noffered its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice; to men who\nrefused themselves nothing, it showed one who refused [155] himself\neverything;--\"my Saviour banished joy\" says George Herbert.  When the\nalma Venus, the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, so fondly\ncherished by the Pagan world, could not save her followers from self-\ndissatisfaction and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came\nbracingly and refreshingly: \"Let no man deceive you with vain words,\nfor because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children\nof disobedience.\"+  Throughout age after age, and generation after\ngeneration, our race, or all that part of our race which was most\nliving and progressive, was baptized into a death;+ and endeavoured,\nby suffering in the flesh, to cease from sin.  Of this endeavour, the\nanimating labours and afflictions of early Christianity, the touching\nasceticism of mediaeval Christianity, are the great historical\nmanifestations.  Literary monuments of it, each, in its own way,\nincomparable, remain in the Epistles of St. Paul, in St. Augustine's\nConfessions, and in the two original and simplest books of the\nImitation.*\n\nOf two disciplines laying their main stress, the [156] one, on clear\nintelligence, the other, on firm obedience; the one, on\ncomprehensively knowing the grounds of one's duty, the other, on\ndiligently practising it; the one on taking all possible care (to use\nBishop Wilson's words again) that the light we have be not darkness,\nthe other, that according to the best light we have we diligently\nwalk,--the priority naturally belongs to that discipline which braces\nman's moral powers, and founds for him an indispensable basis of\ncharacter.  And, therefore, it is justly said of the Jewish people,\nwho were charged with setting powerfully forth that side of the\ndivine order to which the words conscience and self-conquest point,\nthat they were \"entrusted with the oracles of God;\"+ as it is justly\nsaid of Christianity, which followed Judaism and which set forth this\nside with a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider influence,\nthat the wisdom of the old Pagan world was foolishness compared to\nit.  No words of devotion and admiration can be too strong to render\nthanks to these beneficent forces which have so borne forward\nhumanity in its appointed work of coming to the knowledge and\npossession of itself; above all, in those great [157] moments when\ntheir action was the wholesomest and the most necessary.\n\nBut the evolution of these forces, separately and in themselves, is\nnot the whole evolution of humanity,--their single history is not the\nwhole history of man; whereas their admirers are always apt to make\nit stand for the whole history.  Hebraism and Hellenism are, neither\nof them, the law of human development, as their admirers are prone to\nmake them; they are, each of them, contributions to human\ndevelopment,--august contributions, invaluable contributions; and\neach showing itself to us more august, more invaluable, more\npreponderant over the other, according to the moment in which we take\nthem, and the relation in which we stand to them.  The nations of our\nmodern world, children of that immense and salutary movement which\nbroke up the Pagan world, inevitably stand to Hellenism in a relation\nwhich dwarfs it, and to Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it.\nThey are inevitably prone to take Hebraism as the law of human\ndevelopment, and not as simply a contribution to it, however\nprecious.  And yet the lesson must perforce be [158] learned, that\nthe human spirit is wider than the most priceless of the forces which\nbear it onward, and that to the whole development of man Hebraism\nitself is, like Hellenism, but a contribution.\n\nPerhaps we may help ourselves to see this clearer by an illustration\ndrawn from the treatment of a single great idea which has profoundly\nengaged the human spirit, and has given it eminent opportunities for\nshowing its nobleness and energy.  It surely must be perceived that\nthe idea of the immortality of the soul, as this idea rises in its\ngenerality before the human spirit, is something grander, truer, and\nmore satisfying, than it is in the particular forms by which St.\nPaul, in the famous fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the\nCorinthians,+ and Plato, in the Phaedo, endeavour to develope and\nestablish it.  Surely we cannot but feel, that the argumentation with\nwhich the Hebrew apostle goes about to expound this great idea is,\nafter all, confused and inconclusive; and that the reasoning, drawn\nfrom analogies of likeness and equality, which is employed upon it by\nthe Greek philosopher, is over-subtle and sterile?  Above and beyond\nthe inadequate solutions which Hebraism and Hellenism here attempt,\nextends the immense [159] and august problem itself, and the human\nspirit which gave birth to it.  And this single illustration may\nsuggest to us how the same thing happens in other cases also.\n\nBut meanwhile, by alternations of Hebraism and Hellenism, of man's\nintellectual and moral impulses, of the effort to see things as they\nreally are, and the effort to win peace by self-conquest, the human\nspirit proceeds, and each of these two forces has its appointed hours\nof culmination and seasons of rule.  As the great movement of\nChristianity was a triumph of Hebraism and man's moral impulses, so\nthe great movement which goes by the name of the Renascence* was an\nuprising and re-instatement of man's intellectual impulses and of\nHellenism.  We in England, the devoted children of Protestantism,\nchiefly know the Renascence by its subordinate and secondary side of\nthe Reformation.  The Reformation has been often called a Hebraising\nrevival, a return to the ardour and sincereness of primitive [160]\nChristianity.  No one, however, can study the development of\nProtestantism and of Protestant churches without feeling that into\nthe Reformation too,--Hebraising child of the Renascence and\noffspring of its fervour, rather than its intelligence, as it\nundoubtedly was,--the subtle Hellenic leaven of the Renascence found\nits way, and that the exact respective parts in the Reformation, of\nHebraism and of Hellenism, are not easy to separate.  But what we may\nwith truth say is, that all which Protestantism was to itself clearly\nconscious of, all which it succeeded in clearly setting forth in\nwords, had the characters of Hebraism rather than of Hellenism.  The\nReformation was strong, in that it was an earnest return to the Bible\nand to doing from the heart the will of God as there written; it was\nweak, in that it never consciously grasped or applied the central\nidea of the Renascence,--the Hellenic idea of pursuing, in all lines\nof activity, the law and science, to use Plato's words, of things as\nthey really are.  Whatever direct superiority, therefore,\nProtestantism had over Catholicism was a moral superiority, a\nsuperiority arising out of its greater sincerity and earnestness,--at\nthe moment of its apparition at any [161] rate,--in dealing with the\nheart and conscience; its pretensions to an intellectual superiority\nare in general quite illusory.  For Hellenism, for the thinking side\nin man as distinguished from the acting side, the attitude of mind of\nProtestantism towards the Bible in no respect differs from the\nattitude of mind of Catholicism towards the Church.  The mental habit\nof him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in no respect differs\nfrom the mental habit of him who imagines that a Madonna of wood or\nstone winked; and the one, who says that God's Church makes him\nbelieve what he believes, and the other, who says that God's Word\nmakes him believe what he believes, are for the philosopher perfectly\nalike in not really and truly knowing, when they say God's Church and\nGod's Word, what it is they say, or whereof they affirm.\n\nIn the sixteenth century, therefore, Hellenism re-entered the world,\nand again stood in presence of Hebraism,--a Hebraism renewed and\npurged.  Now, it has not been enough observed, how, in the\nseventeenth century, a fate befell Hellenism in some respects\nanalogous to that which befell it at the commencement of our era.\nThe Renascence, that [162] great re-awakening of Hellenism, that\nirresistible return of humanity to nature and to seeing things as\nthey are, which in art, in literature, and in physics, produced such\nsplendid fruits, had, like the anterior Hellenism of the Pagan world,\na side of moral weakness, and of relaxation or insensibility of the\nmoral fibre, which in Italy showed itself with the most startling\nplainness, but which in France, England, and other countries was very\napparent too.  Again this loss of spiritual balance, this exclusive\npreponderance given to man's perceiving and knowing side, this\nunnatural defect of his feeling and acting side, provoked a reaction.\nLet us trace that reaction where it most nearly concerns us.\n\nScience has now made visible to everybody the great and pregnant\nelements of difference which lie in race, and in how signal a manner\nthey make the genius and history of an Indo-European people vary from\nthose of a Semitic people.  Hellenism is of Indo-European growth,\nHebraism is of Semitic growth; and we English, a nation of Indo-\nEuropean stock, seem to belong naturally to the movement of\nHellenism.  But nothing more strongly marks the essential unity of\nman than the affinities we can [163] perceive, in this point or that,\nbetween members of one family of peoples and members of another; and\nno affinity of this kind is more strongly marked than that likeness\nin the strength and prominence of the moral fibre, which,\nnotwithstanding immense elements of difference, knits in some special\nsort the genius and history of us English, and of our American\ndescendants across the Atlantic, to the genius and history of the\nHebrew people.  Puritanism, which has been so great a power in the\nEnglish nation, and in the strongest part of the English nation, was\noriginally the reaction, in the seventeenth century, of the\nconscience and moral sense of our race, against the moral\nindifference and lax rule of conduct which in the sixteenth century\ncame in with the Renascence.  It was a reaction of Hebraism against\nHellenism; and it powerfully manifested itself, as was natural, in a\npeople with much of what we call a Hebraising turn, with a signal\naffinity for the bent which was the master-bent of Hebrew life.\nEminently Indo-European by its humour, by the power it shows, through\nthis gift, of imaginatively acknowledging the multiform aspects of\nthe problem of life, and of thus getting itself unfixed from its own\nover- [164] certainty, of smiling at its own over-tenacity, our race\nhas yet (and a great part of its strength lies here), in matters of\npractical life and moral conduct, a strong share of the assuredness,\nthe tenacity, the intensity of the Hebrews.  This turn manifested\nitself in Puritanism, and has had a great part in shaping our history\nfor the last two hundred years.  Undoubtedly it checked and changed\namongst us that movement of the Renascence which we see producing in\nthe reign of Elizabeth such wonderful fruits; undoubtedly it stopped\nthe prominent rule and direct development of that order of ideas\nwhich we call by the name of Hellenism, and gave the first rank to a\ndifferent order of ideas.  Apparently, too, as we said of the former\ndefeat of Hellenism, if Hellenism was defeated, this shows that\nHellenism was imperfect, and that its ascendency at that moment would\nnot have been for the world's good.\n\nYet there is a very important difference between the defeat inflicted\non Hellenism by Christianity eighteen hundred years ago, and the\ncheck given to the Renascence by Puritanism.  The greatness of the\ndifference is well measured by the difference in force, beauty,\nsignificance and usefulness, between [165] primitive Christianity and\nProtestantism.  Eighteen hundred years ago it was altogether the hour\nof Hebraism; primitive Christianity was legitimately and truly the\nascendent force in the world at that time, and the way of mankind's\nprogress lay through its full development.  Another hour in man's\ndevelopment began in the fifteenth century, and the main road of his\nprogress then lay for a time through Hellenism.  Puritanism was no\nlonger the central current of the world's progress, it was a side\nstream crossing the central current and checking it.  The cross and\nthe check may have been necessary and salutary, but that does not do\naway with the essential difference between the main stream of man's\nadvance and a cross or side stream.  For more than two hundred years\nthe main stream of man's advance has moved towards knowing himself\nand the world, seeing things as they are, spontaneity of\nconsciousness; the main impulse of a great part, and that the\nstrongest part, of our nation, has been towards strictness of\nconscience.  They have made the secondary the principal at the wrong\nmoment, and the principal they have at the wrong moment treated as\nsecondary.  This contravention of the [166] natural order has\nproduced, as such contravention always must produce, a certain\nconfusion and false movement, of which we are now beginning to feel,\nin almost every direction, the inconvenience.  In all directions our\nhabitual courses of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit,\nand control, both with others and even with ourselves; everywhere we\nsee the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound\norder and authority.  This we can only get by going back upon the\nactual instincts and forces which rule our life, seeing them as they\nreally are, connecting them with other instincts and forces, and\nenlarging our whole view and rule of life.\n\nNOTES\n\n145. +Proverbs 29:18 is the source of the first passage.  I have not\nfound the exact language of the second quotation, but the thought\nresembles that of Psalms 19:9-10: \"The fear of the Lord is clean,\nenduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous\naltogether.  More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much\nfine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.\"  King James\nBible.\n\n148. +Romans 3:31.  \"Do we then make void the law through faith? /\nGod forbid: yea, we establish the law.\"  King James Bible.\n\n148. +Zechariah 9:12-13.  \"Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners\nof hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double unto\nthee; / When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim,\nand raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made\nthee as the sword of a mighty man.\"  King James Bible.\n\n149. +Proverbs 16:22.  \"Understanding is a wellspring of life unto\nhim that hath it: but the instruction of fools is folly.\"  King James\nBible.\n\n149.  +John 8:12.  \"Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am\nthe light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in\ndarkness, but shall have the light of life.\"  And again: John 9:4-5.\n\"I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the\nnight cometh, when no man can work. / As long as I am in the world, I\nam the light of the world.\"  King James Bible.\n\n149. +John 8:31-32.  \"Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on\nhim, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; /\nAnd ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\"\nKing James Bible.\n\n149. +James 1:25.  \"But whoso looketh into the perfect law of\nliberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but\na doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.\"  King\nJames Bible.\n\n149. +Proverbs 2:20-21 may be the passage Arnold has in mind,\nalthough the language differs: \"That thou mayest walk in the way of\ngood men, and keep the paths of the righteous. / For the upright\nshall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.\"  One of\nthe central devices in Proverbs is the metaphor of the \"path\"--of\nuprightness, folly, etc.  King James Bible.\n\n150. +Romans 1:18.  \"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven\nagainst all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the\ntruth in unrighteousness.\"  King James Bible.\n\n150. +Philomath\u00eas, \"fond of knowledge, loving knowledge.\"  (Liddell\nand Scott.)  GIF image:\n\n154. +Zechariah 8:23.  \"Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days\nit shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all\nlanguages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him\nthat is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that\nGod is with you.\"  King James Bible.\n\n155. +Ephesians 5:6.  \"Let no man deceive you with vain words: for\nbecause of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of\ndisobedience.\"  King James Bible.\n\n155. +Romans 6:3.  \"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized\ninto Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?\"  King James Bible.\n\n155. *The two first books.  +Arnold refers to the Imitatio Christi,\nattributed to fourteenth-century priest Thomas \u00e0 Kempis.  The Benham\ntranslation and a modern English translation are currently available\nfrom the College of St. Benedict at Saint John's University Internet\nTheology Resources site.  See also the Benham text link.\n\n156. +Romans 3:1-2.  \"What advantage then hath the Jew? or what\nprofit is there of circumcision? / Much every way: chiefly, because\nthat unto them were committed the oracles of God.\"  King James Bible.\n\n158. +See 1 Corinthians 15.  Saint Paul wrestles in this chapter to\nexplain the Resurrection's promise.  For example, refer to 15:50-53:\n\"Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the\nkingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. /\nBehold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall\nall be changed, / In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the\nlast trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised\nincorruptible, and we shall be changed. / For this corruptible must\nput on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.\"\n\n159. *I have ventured to give to the foreign word Renaissance,\ndestined to become of more common use amongst us as the movement\nwhich it denotes comes, as it will come, increasingly to interest us,\nan English form.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\n[166] The matter here opened is so large, and the trains of thought\nto which it gives rise are so manifold, that we must be careful to\nlimit ourselves scrupulously to what has a direct bearing upon our\nactual discussion.  We have found that at the [167] bottom of our\npresent unsettled state, so full of the seeds of trouble, lies the\nnotion of its being the prime right and happiness, for each of us, to\naffirm himself, and his ordinary self; to be doing, and to be doing\nfreely and as he likes.  We have found at the bottom of it the\ndisbelief in right reason as a lawful authority.  It was easy to show\nfrom our practice and current history that this is so; but it was\nimpossible to show why it is so without taking a somewhat wider sweep\nand going into things a little more deeply.  Why, in fact, should\ngood, well-meaning, energetic, sensible people, like the bulk of our\ncountrymen, come to have such light belief in right reason, and such\nan exaggerated value for their own independent doing, however crude?\nThe answer is: because of an exclusive and excessive development in\nthem, without due allowance for time, place, and circumstance, of\nthat side of human nature, and that group of human forces, to which\nwe have given the general name of Hebraism.  Because they have\nthought their real and only important homage was owed to a power\nconcerned with their obedience rather than with their intelligence, a\npower interested in the moral side of their nature almost\nexclusively.  Thus they have [168] been led to regard in themselves,\nas the one thing needful, strictness of conscience, the staunch\nadherence to some fixed law of doing we have got already, instead of\nspontaneity of consciousness, which tends continually to enlarge our\nwhole law of doing.  They have fancied themselves to have in their\nreligion a sufficient basis for the whole of their life fixed and\ncertain for ever, a full law of conduct and a full law of thought, so\nfar as thought is needed, as well; whereas what they really have is a\nlaw of conduct, a law of unexampled power for enabling them to war\nagainst the law of sin in their members and not to serve it in the\nlusts thereof.  The book which contains this invaluable law they call\nthe Word of God, and attribute to it, as I have said, and as, indeed,\nis perfectly well known, a reach and sufficiency co-extensive with\nall the wants of human nature.  This might, no doubt, be so, if\nhumanity were not the composite thing it is, if it had only, or in\nquite overpowering eminence, a moral side, and the group of instincts\nand powers which we call moral.  But it has besides, and in notable\neminence, an intellectual side, and the group of instincts and powers\nwhich we call intellectual.  No doubt, mankind makes in general its\nprogress in a [169] fashion which gives at one time full swing to one\nof these groups of instincts, at another time to the other; and man's\nfaculties are so intertwined, that when his moral side, and the\ncurrent of force which we call Hebraism, is uppermost, this side will\nmanage somehow to provide, or appear to provide, satisfaction for his\nintellectual needs; and when his intellectual side, and the current of\nforce which we call Hellenism, is uppermost, this, again, will provide,\nor appear to provide, satisfaction for men's moral needs.  But sooner or\nlater it becomes manifest that when the two sides of humanity proceed\nin this fashion of alternate preponderance, and not of mutual\nunderstanding and balance, the side which is uppermost does not\nreally provide in a satisfactory manner for the needs of the side\nwhich is undermost, and a state of confusion is, sooner or later, the\nresult.  The Hellenic half of our nature, bearing rule, makes a sort\nof provision for the Hebrew half, but it turns out to be an\ninadequate provision; and again the Hebrew half of our nature bearing\nrule makes a sort of provision for the Hellenic half, but this, too,\nturns out to be an inadequate provision.  The true and smooth order\nof humanity's development [170] is not reached in either way.  And\ntherefore, while we willingly admit with the Christian apostle that\nthe world by wisdom,--that is, by the isolated preponderance of its\nintellectual impulses,--knew not God, or the true order of things, it\nis yet necessary, also, to set up a sort of converse to this\nproposition, and to say likewise (what is equally true) that the\nworld by Puritanism knew not God.  And it is on this converse of the\napostle's proposition that it is particularly needful to insist in\nour own country just at present.\n\nHere, indeed, is the answer to many criticisms which have been\naddressed to all that we have said in praise of sweetness and light.\nSweetness and light evidently have to do with the bent or side in\nhumanity which we call Hellenic.  Greek intelligence has obviously\nfor its essence the instinct for what Plato calls the true, firm,\nintelligible law of things; the love of light, of seeing things as\nthey are.  Even in the natural sciences, where the Greeks had not\ntime and means adequately to apply this instinct, and where we have\ngone a great deal further than they did, it is this instinct which is\nthe root of the whole matter and the ground of all [171] our success;\nand this instinct the world has mainly learnt of the Greeks, inasmuch\nas they are humanity's most signal manifestation of it.  Greek art,\nagain, Greek beauty, have their root in the same impulse to see\nthings as they really are, inasmuch as Greek art and beauty rest on\nfidelity to nature,--the best nature,--and on a delicate\ndiscrimination of what this best nature is.  To say we work for\nsweetness and light, then, is only another way of saying that we work\nfor Hellenism.  But, oh! cry many people, sweetness and light are not\nenough; you must put strength or energy along with them, and make a\nkind of trinity of strength, sweetness and light, and then, perhaps,\nyou may do some good.  That is to say, we are to join Hebraism,\nstrictness of the moral conscience, and manful walking by the best\nlight we have, together with Hellenism, inculcate both, and rehearse\nthe praises of both.\n\nOr, rather, we may praise both in conjunction, but we must be careful\nto praise Hebraism most.  \"Culture,\" says an acute, though somewhat\nrigid critic, Mr. Sidgwick, \"diffuses sweetness and light.  I do not\nundervalue these blessings, but religion gives fire and strength, and\nthe world wants fire [172] and strength even more than sweetness and\nlight.\"  By religion, let me explain, Mr. Sidgwick here means\nparticularly that Puritanism on the insufficiency of which I have\nbeen commenting and to which he says I am unfair.  Now, no doubt, it\nis possible to be a fanatical partisan of light and the instincts\nwhich push us to it, a fanatical enemy of strictness of moral\nconscience and the instincts which push us to it.  A fanaticism of\nthis sort deforms and vulgarises the well-known work, in some\nrespects so remarkable, of the late Mr. Buckle.  Such a fanaticism\ncarries its own mark with it, in lacking sweetness; and its own\npenalty, in that, lacking sweetness, it comes in the end to lack\nlight too.  And the Greeks,--the great exponents of humanity's bent\nfor sweetness and light united, of its perception that the truth of\nthings must be at the same time beauty,--singularly escaped the\nfanaticism which we moderns, whether we Hellenise or whether we\nHebraise, are so apt to show, and arrived,--though failing, as has\nbeen said, to give adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of\nman's moral side,--at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the\nclaims of both the sides in man, the moral as well [173] as the\nintellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of a reconciliation of\nboth; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the\nbest of lessons for us moderns.  So we ought to have no difficulty in\nconceding to Mr. Sidgwick that manful walking by the best light one\nhas,--fire and strength as he calls it,--has its high value as well\nas culture, the endeavour to see things in their truth and beauty,\nthe pursuit of sweetness and light.  But whether at this or that\ntime, and to this or that set of persons, one ought to insist most on\nthe praises of fire and strength, or on the praises of sweetness and\nlight, must depend, one would think, on the circumstances and needs\nof that particular time and those particular persons.  And all that\nwe have been saying, and indeed any glance at the world around us,\nshows that with us, with the most respectable and strongest part of\nus, the ruling force is now, and long has been, a Puritan force, the\ncare for fire and strength, strictness of conscience, Hebraism,\nrather than the care for sweetness and light, spontaneity of\nconsciousness, Hellenism.\n\nWell, then, what is the good of our now rehearsing [174] the praises\nof fire and strength to ourselves, who dwell too exclusively on them\nalready?  When Mr. Sidgwick says so broadly, that the world wants\nfire and strength even more than sweetness and light, is he not\ncarried away by a turn for powerful generalisation? does he not\nforget that the world is not all of one piece, and every piece with\nthe same needs at the same time?  It may be true that the Roman world\nat the beginning of our era, or Leo the Tenth's Court at the time of\nthe Reformation, or French society in the eighteenth century, needed\nfire and strength even more than sweetness and light.  But can it be\nsaid that the Barbarians who overran the empire, needed fire and\nstrength even more than sweetness and light; or that the Puritans\nneeded them more; or that Mr. Murphy, the Birmingham lecturer, and\nthe Rev. W. Cattle and his friends, need them more?\n\nThe Puritan's great danger is that he imagines himself in possession\nof a rule telling him the unum necessarium, or one thing needful,+\nand that he then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of\nwhat this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks [175] he has\nnow knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, and, in this\ndangerous state of assurance and self-satisfaction, proceeds to give\nfull swing to a number of the instincts of his ordinary self.  Some\nof the instincts of his ordinary self he has, by the help of his rule\nof life, conquered; but others which he has not conquered by this\nhelp he is so far from perceiving to need subjugation, and to be\ninstincts of an inferior self, that he even fancies it to be his\nright and duty, in virtue of having conquered a limited part of\nhimself, to give unchecked swing to the remainder.  He is, I say, a\nvictim of Hebraism, of the tendency to cultivate strictness of\nconscience rather than spontaneity of consciousness.  And what he\nwants is a larger conception of human nature, showing him the number\nof other points at which his nature must come to its best, besides\nthe points which he himself knows and thinks of.  There is no unum\nnecessarium, or one thing needful, which can free human nature from\nthe obligation of trying to come to its best at all these points.\nThe real unum necessarium for us is to come to our best at all\npoints.  Instead of our \"one thing needful,\" justifying in us\nvulgarity, hideousness, ignorance, violence,--our [176] vulgarity,\nhideousness, ignorance, violence, are really so many touchstones\nwhich try our one thing needful, and which prove that in the state,\nat any rate, in which we ourselves have it, it is not all we want.\nAnd as the force which encourages us to stand staunch and fast by the\nrule and ground we have is Hebraism, so the force which encourages us\nto go back upon this rule, and to try the very ground on which we\nappear to stand, is Hellenism,--a turn for giving our consciousness\nfree play and enlarging its range.  And what I say is, not that\nHellenism is always for everybody more wanted than Hebraism, but that\nfor the Rev. W. Cattle at this particular moment, and for the great\nmajority of us his fellow-countrymen, it is more wanted.\n\nNothing is more striking than to observe in how many ways a limited\nconception of human nature, the notion of a one thing needful, a one\nside in us to be made uppermost, the disregard of a full and\nharmonious development of ourselves, tells injuriously on our\nthinking and acting.  In the first place, our hold upon the rule or\nstandard to which we look for our one thing needful, tends to become\nless and less near and vital, our conception of it more and more\n[177] mechanical, and unlike the thing itself as it was conceived in\nthe mind where it originated.  The dealings of Puritanism with the\nwritings of St. Paul afford a noteworthy illustration of this.\nNowhere so much as in the writings of St. Paul, and in that great\napostle's greatest work, the Epistle to the Romans, has Puritanism\nfound what seemed to furnish it with the one thing needful, and to\ngive it canons of truth absolute and final.  Now all writings, as has\nbeen already said, even the most precious writings and the most\nfruitful, must inevitably, from the very nature of things, be but\ncontributions to human thought and human development, which extend\nwider than they do.  Indeed, St. Paul, in the very Epistle of which\nwe are speaking, shows, when he asks, \"Who hath known the mind of the\nLord?\"+--who hath known, that is, the true and divine order of things\nin its entirety,--that he himself acknowledges this fully.  And we\nhave already pointed out in another Epistle of St. Paul a great and\nvital idea of the human spirit,--the idea of the immortality of the\nsoul,--transcending and overlapping, so to speak, the expositor's\npower to give it adequate definition and expression.  But quite\ndistinct from the question [178] whether St. Paul's expression, or\nany man's expression, can be a perfect and final expression of truth,\ncomes the question whether we rightly seize and understand his\nexpression as it exists.  Now, perfectly to seize another man's\nmeaning, as it stood in his own mind, is not easy; especially when\nthe man is separated from us by such differences of race, training,\ntime, and circumstances as St. Paul.  But there are degrees of\nnearness in getting at a man's meaning; and though we cannot arrive\nquite at what St. Paul had in his mind, yet we may come near it.  And\nwho, that comes thus near it, must not feel how terms which St. Paul\nemploys in trying to follow, with his analysis of such profound power\nand originality, some of the most delicate, intricate, obscure, and\ncontradictory workings and states of the human spirit, are detached\nand employed by Puritanism, not in the connected and fluid way in\nwhich St. Paul employs them, and for which alone words are really\nmeant, but in an isolated, fixed, mechanical way, as if they were\ntalismans; and how all trace and sense of St. Paul's true movement of\nideas, and sustained masterly analysis, is thus lost?  Who, I say,\nthat has watched Puritanism,--the force which [179] so strongly\nHebraises, which so takes St. Paul's writings as something absolute\nand final, containing the one thing needful,--handle such terms as\ngrace, faith, election, righteousness, but must feel, not only that\nthese terms have for the mind of Puritanism a sense false and\nmisleading, but also that this sense is the most monstrous and\ngrotesque caricature of the sense of St. Paul, and that his true\nmeaning is by these worshippers of his words altogether lost?\n\nOr to take another eminent example, in which not Puritanism only,\nbut, one may say, the whole religious world, by their mechanical use\nof St. Paul's writings, can be shown to miss or change his real\nmeaning.  The whole religious world, one may say, use now the word\nresurrection,--a word which is so often in their thoughts and on\ntheir lips, and which they find so often in St. Paul's writings,--in\none sense only.  They use it to mean a rising again after the\nphysical death of the body.  Now it is quite true that St. Paul\nspeaks of resurrection in this sense, that he tries to describe and\nexplain it, and that he condemns those who doubt and deny it.  But it\nis true, also, that in nine cases out of ten where St. Paul thinks\nand speaks of resurrection, he [180] thinks and speaks of it in a\nsense different from this; in the sense of a rising to a new life\nbefore the physical death of the body, and not after it.  The idea on\nwhich we have already touched, the profound idea of being baptized\ninto the death of the great exemplar of self-devotion and self-\nannulment, of repeating in our own person, by virtue of\nidentification with our exemplar, his course of self-devotion and\nself-annulment, and of thus coming, within the limits of our present\nlife, to a new life, in which, as in the death going before it, we\nare identified with our exemplar,--this is the fruitful and original\nconception of being risen with Christ which possesses the mind of St.\nPaul, and this is the central point round which, with such\nincomparable emotion and eloquence, all his teaching moves.  For him,\nthe life after our physical death is really in the main but a\nconsequence and continuation of the inexhaustible energy of the new\nlife thus originated on this side the grave.  This grand Pauline idea\nof Christian resurrection is worthily rehearsed in one of the noblest\ncollects of the Prayer-Book, and is destined, no doubt, to fill a\nmore and more important place in the Christianity of the future; but\nalmost as [181] signal as is the essentialness of this characteristic\nidea in St. Paul's teaching, is the completeness with which the\nworshippers of St. Paul's words, as an absolute final expression of\nsaving truth, have lost it, and have substituted for the apostle's\nliving and near conception of a resurrection now, their mechanical\nand remote conception of a resurrection hereafter!\n\nIn short, so fatal is the notion of possessing, even in the most\nprecious words or standards, the one thing needful, of having in\nthem, once for all, a full and sufficient measure of light to guide\nus, and of there being no duty left for us except to make our\npractice square exactly with them,--so fatal, I say, is this notion\nto the right knowledge and comprehension of the very words or\nstandards we thus adopt, and to such strange distortions and\nperversions of them does it inevitably lead, that whenever we hear\nthat commonplace which Hebraism, if we venture to inquire what a man\nknows, is so apt to bring out against us in disparagement of what we\ncall culture, and in praise of a man's sticking to the one thing\nneedful,--he knows, says Hebraism, his Bible!--whenever we hear this\nsaid, we may, without [182] any elaborate defence of culture, content\nourselves with answering simply: \"No man, who knows nothing else,\nknows even his Bible.\"\n\nNow the force which we have so much neglected, Hellenism, may be\nliable to fail in moral force and earnestness, but by the law of its\nnature,--the very same law which makes it sometimes deficient in\nintensity when intensity is required,--it opposes itself to the\nnotion of cutting our being in two, of attributing to one part the\ndignity of dealing with the one thing needful, and leaving the other\npart to take its chance, which is the bane of Hebraism.  Essential in\nHellenism is the impulse to the development of the whole man, to\nconnecting and harmonising all parts of him, perfecting all, leaving\nnone to take their chance; because the characteristic bent of\nHellenism, as has been said, is to find the intelligible law of\nthings, and there is no intelligible law of things, things cannot\nreally appear intelligible, unless they are also beautiful.  The body\nis not intelligible, is not seen in its true nature and as it really\nis, unless it is seen as beautiful; behaviour is not intelligible,\ndoes not account for itself to the mind and show the reason for its\nexisting, unless it is beautiful.  The [183] same with discourse, the\nsame with song, the same with worship, the same with all the modes in\nwhich man proves his activity and expresses himself.  To think that\nwhen one shows what is mean, or vulgar, or hideous, one can be\npermitted to plead that one has that within which passes show; to\nsuppose that the possession of what benefits and satisfies one part\nof our being can make allowable either discourse like Mr. Murphy's\nand the Rev. W. Cattle's, or poetry like the hymns we all hear, or\nplaces of worship like the chapels we all see,--this it is abhorrent\nto the nature of Hellenism to concede.  And to be, like our honoured\nand justly honoured Faraday, a great natural philosopher with one\nside of his being and a Sandemanian with the other, would to\nArchimedes have been impossible.  It is evident to what a many-sided\nperfecting of man's powers and activities this demand of Hellenism\nfor satisfaction to be given to the mind by everything which we do,\nis calculated to impel our race.  It has its dangers, as has been\nfully granted; the notion of this sort of equipollency in man's modes\nof activity may lead to moral relaxation, what we do not make our one\nthing needful we may come to treat not [184] enough as if it were\nneedful, though it is indeed very needful and at the same time very\nhard.  Still, what side in us has not its dangers, and which of our\nimpulses can be a talisman to give us perfection outright, and not\nmerely a help to bring us towards it?  Has not Hebraism, as we have\nshown, its dangers as well as Hellenism; and have we used so\nexcessively the tendencies in ourselves to which Hellenism makes\nappeal, that we are now suffering from it?  Are we not, on the\ncontrary, now suffering because we have not enough used these\ntendencies as a help towards perfection?\n\nFor we see whither it has brought us, the long exclusive predominance\nof Hebraism,--the insisting on perfection in one part of our nature\nand not in all; the singling out the moral side, the side of\nobedience and action, for such intent regard; making strictness of\nthe moral conscience so far the principal thing, and putting off for\nhereafter and for another world the care for being complete at all\npoints, the full and harmonious development of our humanity.  Instead\nof watching and following on its ways the desire which, as Plato\nsays, \"for ever through all the universe tends towards that which\n[185] is lovely,\" we think that the world has settled its accounts\nwith this desire, knows what this desire wants of it, and that all\nthe impulses of our ordinary self which do not conflict with the\nterms of this settlement, in our narrow view of it, we may follow\nunrestrainedly, under the sanction of some such text as \"Not slothful\nin business,\" or, \"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all\nthy might,\" or something else of the same kind.  And to any of these\nimpulses we soon come to give that same character of a mechanical,\nabsolute law, which we give to our religion; we regard it, as we do\nour religion, as an object for strictness of conscience, not for\nspontaneity of consciousness; for unremitting adherence on its own\naccount, not for going back upon, viewing in its connection with\nother things, and adjusting to a number of changing circumstances; we\ntreat it, in short, just as we treat our religion,--as machinery.  It\nis in this way that the Barbarians treat their bodily exercises, the\nPhilistines their business, Mr. Spurgeon his voluntaryism, Mr. Bright\nthe assertion of personal liberty, Mr. Beales the right of meeting in\nHyde Park.  In all those cases what is needed is a freer play of\nconsciousness [186] upon the object of pursuit; and in all of them\nHebraism, the valuing staunchness and earnestness more than this free\nplay, the entire subordination of thinking to doing, has led to a\nmistaken and misleading treatment of things.\n\nThe newspapers a short time ago contained an account of the suicide\nof a Mr. Smith, secretary to some insurance company, who, it was\nsaid, \"laboured under the apprehension that he would come to poverty,\nand that he was eternally lost.\"  And when I read these words, it\noccurred to me that the poor man who came to such a mournful end was,\nin truth, a kind of type, by the selection of his two grand objects\nof concern, by their isolation from everything else, and their\njuxtaposition to one another, of all the strongest, most respectable,\nand most representative part of our nation.  \"He laboured under the\napprehension that he would come to poverty, and that he was eternally\nlost.\"  The whole middle-class have a conception of things,--a\nconception which makes us call them Philistines,--just like that of\nthis poor man; though we are seldom, of course, shocked by seeing it\ntake the distressing, violently morbid, and fatal turn, which [187]\nit took with him.  But how generally, with how many of us, are the\nmain concerns of life limited to these two,--the concern for making\nmoney, and the concern for saving our souls!  And how entirely does\nthe narrow and mechanical conception of our secular business proceed\nfrom a narrow and mechanical conception of our religious business!\nWhat havoc do the united conceptions make of our lives!  It is\nbecause the second-named of these two master-concerns presents to us\nthe one thing needful in so fixed, narrow, and mechanical a way, that\nso ignoble a fellow master-concern to it as the first-named becomes\npossible; and, having been once admitted, takes the same rigid and\nabsolute character as the other.  Poor Mr. Smith had sincerely the\nnobler master-concern as well as the meaner,--the concern for saving\nhis soul (according to the narrow and mechanical conception which\nPuritanism has of what the salvation of the soul is), and the concern\nfor making money.  But let us remark how many people there are,\nespecially outside the limits of the serious and conscientious\nmiddle-class to which Mr. Smith belonged, who take up with a meaner\nmaster-concern,--whether it be pleasure, or field-sports, or [188]\nbodily exercises, or business, or popular agitation,--who take up\nwith one of these exclusively, and neglect Mr. Smith's nobler master-\nconcern, because of the mechanical form which Hebraism has given to\nthis nobler master-concern, making it stand, as we have said, as\nsomething talismanic, isolated, and all-sufficient, justifying our\ngiving our ordinary selves free play in amusement, or business, or\npopular agitation, if we have made our accounts square with this\nmaster-concern; and, if we have not, rendering other things\nindifferent, and our ordinary self all we have to follow, and to\nfollow with all the energy that is in us, till we do.  Whereas the\nidea of perfection at all points, the encouraging in ourselves\nspontaneity of consciousness, the letting a free play of thought live\nand flow around all our activity, the indisposition to allow one side\nof our activity to stand as so all-important and all-sufficing that\nit makes other sides indifferent,--this bent of mind in us may not\nonly check us in following unreservedly a mean master-concern of any\nkind, but may even, also, bring new life and movement into that side\nof us with which alone Hebraism concerns itself, and awaken a\nhealthier [189] and less mechanical activity there.  Hellenism may\nthus actually serve to further the designs of Hebraism.\n\nUndoubtedly it thus served in the first days of Christianity.\nChristianity, as has been said, occupied itself, like Hebraism, with\nthe moral side of man exclusively, with his moral affections and\nmoral conduct; and so far it was but a continuation of Hebraism.  But\nit transformed and renewed Hebraism by going back upon a fixed rule,\nwhich had become mechanical, and had thus lost its vital motive-\npower; by letting the thought play freely around this old rule, and\nperceive its inadequacy; by developing a new motive-power, which\nmen's moral consciousness could take living hold of, and could move\nin sympathy with.  What was this but an importation of Hellenism, as\nwe have defined it, into Hebraism?  And as St. Paul used the\ncontradiction between the Jew's profession and practice, his\nshortcomings on that very side of moral affection and moral conduct\nwhich the Jew and St. Paul, both of them, regarded as all in all--\n(\"Thou that sayest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? thou that\nsayest a man should not [190] commit adultery, dost thou commit\nadultery?\")+--for a proof of the inadequacy of the old rule of life,\nin the Jew's mechanical conception of it, and tried to rescue him by\nmaking his consciousness play freely around this rule,--that is, by\na, so far, Hellenic treatment of it,--even so, when we hear so much\nsaid of the growth of commercial immorality in our serious middle-\nclass, of the melting away of habits of strict probity before the\ntemptation to get quickly rich and to cut a figure in the world; when\nwe see, at any rate, so much confusion of thought and of practice in\nthis great representative class of our nation, may we not be disposed\nto say that this confusion shows that his new motive-power of grace\nand imputed righteousness has become to the Puritan as mechanical,\nand with as ineffective a hold upon his practice, as the old motive-\npower of the law was to the Jew?  and that the remedy is the same as\nthat which St. Paul employed,--an importation of what we have called\nHellenism into his Hebraism, a making his consciousness flow freely\nround his petrified rule of life and renew it?  Only with this\ndifference: that whereas St. Paul imported Hellenism within the\nlimits of our moral part only, [191] this part being still treated by\nhim as all in all; and whereas he exhausted, one may say, and used to\nthe very uttermost, the possibilities of fruitfully importing it on\nthat side exclusively; we ought to try and import it,--guiding\nourselves by the ideal of a human nature harmoniously perfect at all\npoints,--into all the lines of our activity, and only by so doing can\nwe rightly quicken, refresh, and renew those very instincts, now so\nmuch baffled, to which Hebraism makes appeal.\n\nBut if we will not be warned by the confusion visible enough at\npresent in our thinking and acting, that we are in a false line in\nhaving developed our Hebrew side so exclusively, and our Hellenic\nside so feebly and at random, in loving fixed rules of action so much\nmore than the intelligible law of things, let us listen to a\nremarkable testimony which the opinion of the world around us offers.\nAll the world now sets great and increasing value on three objects\nwhich have long been very dear to us, and pursues them in its own\nway, or tries to pursue them.  These three objects are industrial\nenterprise, bodily exercises, and freedom.  Certainly we have, before\nand beyond our neighbours, given ourselves [192] to these three\nthings with ardent passion and with high success.  And this our\nneighbours cannot but acknowledge; and they must needs, when they\nthemselves turn to these things, have an eye to our example, and take\nsomething of our practice.  Now, generally, when people are\ninterested in an object of pursuit, they cannot help feeling an\nenthusiasm for those who have already laboured successfully at it,\nand for their success; not only do they study them, they also love\nand admire them.  In this way a man who is interested in the art of\nwar not only acquaints himself with the performance of great\ngenerals, but he has an admiration and enthusiasm for them.  So, too,\none who wants to be a painter or a poet cannot help loving and\nadmiring the great painters or poets who have gone before him and\nshown him the way.  But it is strange with how little of love,\nadmiration, or enthusiasm, the world regards us and our freedom, our\nbodily exercises, and our industrial prowess, much as these things\nthemselves are beginning to interest it.  And is not the reason\nbecause we follow each of these things in a mechanical manner, as an\nend in and for itself, and not in reference to a general end of human\n[193] perfection? and this makes our pursuit of them uninteresting to\nhumanity, and not what the world truly wants?  It seems to them mere\nmachinery that we can, knowingly, teach them to worship,--a mere\nfetish.  British freedom, British industry, British muscularity, we\nwork for each of these three things blindly, with no notion of giving\neach its due proportion and prominence, because we have no ideal of\nharmonious human perfection before our minds, to set our work in\nmotion, and to guide it.  So the rest of the world, desiring\nindustry, or freedom, or bodily strength, yet desiring these not, as\nwe do, absolutely, but as means to something else, imitate, indeed,\nof our practice what seems useful for them, but us, whose practice\nthey imitate, they seem to entertain neither love nor admiration for.\nLet us observe, on the other hand, the love and enthusiasm excited by\nothers who have laboured for these very things.  Perhaps of what we\ncall industrial enterprise it is not easy to find examples in former\ntimes; but let us consider how Greek freedom and Greek gymnastics\nhave attracted the love and praise of mankind, who give so little\nlove and praise to ours.  And what can be the reason [194] of this\ndifference?  Surely because the Greeks pursued freedom and pursued\ngymnastics not mechanically, but with constant reference to some\nideal of complete human perfection and happiness.  And therefore, in\nspite of faults and failures, they interest and delight by their\npursuit of them all the rest of mankind, who instinctively feel that\nonly as things are pursued with reference to this ideal are they\nvaluable.\n\nHere again, therefore, as in the confusion into which the thought and\naction of even the steadiest class amongst us is beginning to fall,\nwe seem to have an admonition that we have fostered our Hebraising\ninstincts, our preference of earnestness of doing to delicacy and\nflexibility of thinking, too exclusively, and have been landed by\nthem in a mechanical and unfruitful routine.  And again we seem\ntaught that the development of our Hellenising instincts, seeking\nskilfully the intelligible law of things, and making a stream of\nfresh thought play freely about our stock notions and habits, is what\nis most wanted by us at present.\n\nWell, then, from all sides, the more we go into the matter, the\ncurrents seem to converge, and together [195] to bear us along\ntowards culture.  If we look at the world outside us we find a\ndisquieting absence of sure authority; we discover that only in right\nreason can we get a source of sure authority, and culture brings us\ntowards right reason.  If we look at our own inner world, we find all\nmanner of confusion arising out of the habits of unintelligent\nroutine and one-sided growth, to which a too exclusive worship of\nfire, strength, earnestness, and action has brought us.  What we want\nis a fuller harmonious development of our humanity, a free play of\nthought upon our routine notions, spontaneity of consciousness,\nsweetness and light; and these are just what culture generates and\nfosters.  Proceeding from this idea of the harmonious perfection of\nour humanity, and seeking to help itself up towards this perfection\nby knowing and spreading the best which has been reached in the\nworld--an object not to be gained without books and reading--culture\nhas got its name touched, in the fancies of men, with a sort of air\nof bookishness and pedantry, cast upon it from the follies of the\nmany bookmen who forget the end in the means, and use their books\nwith no real aim at perfection.  We will not stickle for a name,\n[196] and the name of culture one might easily give up, if only those\nwho decry the frivolous and pedantic sort of culture, but wish at\nbottom for the same things as we do, would be careful on their part,\nnot, in disparaging and discrediting the false culture, to\nunwittingly disparage and discredit, among a people with little\nnatural reverence for it, the true also.  But what we are concerned\nfor is the thing, not the name; and the thing, call it by what name\nwe will, is simply the enabling ourselves, whether by reading,\nobserving, or thinking, to come as near as we can to the firm\nintelligible law of things, and thus to get a basis for a less\nconfused action and a more complete perfection than we have at\npresent.\n\nAnd now, therefore, when we are accused of preaching up a spirit of\ncultivated inaction, of provoking the earnest lovers of action, of\nrefusing to lend a hand at uprooting certain definite evils, of\ndespairing to find any lasting truth to minister to the diseased\nspirit of our time, we shall not be so much confounded and\nembarrassed what to answer for ourselves.  We shall say boldly that\nwe do not at all despair of finding some lasting truth to minister to\nthe diseased spirit of our time; but that we have [197] discovered\nthe best way of finding this to be, not so much by lending a hand to\nour friends and countrymen in their actual operations for the removal\nof certain definite evils, but rather in getting our friends and\ncountrymen to seek culture, to let their consciousness play freely\nround their present operations and the stock notions on which they\nare founded, show what these are like, and how related to the\nintelligible law of things, and auxiliary to true human perfection.\n\nNOTES\n\n174. +unum necessarium or one thing needful.  Arnold refers here, and\nin his subsequent chapter title, Porro Unum est Necessarium, to Luke\n10:42.  Here is the context, 10:38-42.  \"[Jesus] . . . entered into a\ncertain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into\nher house. / And she had a sister called Mary . . . . / But Martha\nwas cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord,\ndost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid\nher therefore that she help me. / And Jesus answered and said unto\nher, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:\n/ But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part,\nwhich shall not be taken away from her.\"  King James Bible.\n\n177. +Romans 11:34.  \"For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who\nhath been his counsellor?\"  King James Bible.\n\n189-90. +Romans 2:21-22.  \"Thou therefore which teachest another,\nteachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not\nsteal, dost thou steal? / Thou that sayest a man should not commit\nadultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost\nthou commit sacrilege?\"  King James Bible.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\n[197] But an unpretending writer, without a philosophy based on\ninter-dependent, subordinate, and coherent principles, must not\npresume to indulge himself too much in generalities, but he must keep\nclose to the level ground of common fact, the only safe ground for\nunderstandings without a scientific equipment.  Therefore I am bound\nto take, before concluding, some of the practical operations in which\nmy friends and countrymen are at this moment engaged, and [198] to\nmake these, if I can, show the truth of what I have advanced.\nProbably I could hardly give a greater proof of my confessed\ninexpertness in reasoning and arguing, than by taking, for my first\nexample of an operation of this kind, the proceedings for the\ndisestablishment of the Irish Church, which we are now witnessing.\nIt seems so clear that this is surely one of those operations for the\nuprooting of a certain definite evil in which one's Liberal friends\nengage, and have a right to complain and to get impatient and to\nreproach one with delicate Conservative scepticism and cultivated\ninaction if one does not lend a hand to help them.  This does,\nindeed, seem evident; and yet this operation comes so prominently\nbefore us just at this moment,--it so challenges everybody's regard,-\n-that one seems cowardly in blinking it.  So let us venture to try\nand see whether this conspicuous operation is one of those round\nwhich we need to let our consciousness play freely and reveal what\nmanner of spirit we are of in doing it; or whether it is one which by\nno means admits the application of this doctrine of ours, and one to\nwhich we ought to lend a hand immediately.\n\n[199] Now it seems plain that the present Church establishment in\nIreland is contrary to reason and justice, in so far as the Church of\na very small minority of the people there takes for itself all the\nChurch property of the Irish people.  And one would think, that\nproperty assigned for the purpose of providing for a people's\nreligious worship when that worship was one, the State should, when\nthat worship is split into several forms, apportion between those\nseveral forms, with due regard to circumstances, taking account only\nof great differences, which are likely to be lasting, and of\nconsiderable communions, which are likely to represent profound and\nwidespread religious characteristics; and overlooking petty\ndifferences, which have no serious reason for lasting, and\ninconsiderable communions, which can hardly be taken to express any\nbroad and necessary religious lineaments of our common nature.  This\nis just in accordance with that maxim about the State which we have\nmore than once used: The State is of the religion of all its\ncitizens, without the fanaticism of any of them.  Those who deny\nthis, either think so poorly of the State that they do not like to\nsee religion condescend to touch the State, or they think [200] so\npoorly of religion that they do not like to see the State condescend\nto touch religion; but no good statesman will easily think thus\nunworthily either of the State or of religion, and our statesmen of\nboth parties were inclined, one may say, to follow the natural line\nof the State's duty, and to make in Ireland some fair apportionment\nof Church property between large and radically divided religious\ncommunions in that country.  But then it was discovered that in Great\nBritain the national mind, as it is called, is grown averse to\nendowments for religion and will make no new ones; and though this in\nitself looks general and solemn enough, yet there were found\npolitical philosophers, like Mr. Baxter and Mr. Charles Buxton, to\ngive it a look of more generality and more solemnity still, and to\nelevate, by their dexterous command of powerful and beautiful\nlanguage, this supposed edict of the British national mind into a\nsort of formula for expressing a great law of religious transition\nand progress for all the world.  But we, who, having no coherent\nphilosophy, must not let ourselves philosophise, only see that the\nEnglish and Scotch Nonconformists have a great horror of\nestablishments and endowments for [201] religion, which, they assert,\nwere forbidden by Christ when he said: \"My kingdom is not of this\nworld;\"+ and that the Nonconformists will be delighted to aid\nstatesmen in disestablishing any church, but will suffer none to be\nestablished or endowed if they can help it.  Then we see that the\nNonconformists make the strength of the Liberal majority in the House\nof Commons, and that, therefore, the leading Liberal statesmen, to\nget the support of the Nonconformists, forsake the notion of fairly\napportioning Church property in Ireland among the chief religious\ncommunions, declare that the national mind has decided against new\nendowments, and propose simply to disestablish and disendow the\npresent establishment in Ireland without establishing or endowing any\nother.  The actual power, in short, by virtue of which the Liberal\nparty in the House of Commons is now trying to disestablish the Irish\nChurch, is not the power of reason and justice, it is the power of\nthe Nonconformists' antipathy to Church establishments.  Clearly it\nis this; because Liberal statesmen, relying on the power of reason\nand justice to help them, proposed something quite different from\nwhat they now propose; and they proposed [202] what they now propose,\nand talked of the decision of the national mind, because they had to\nrely on the English and Scotch Nonconformists.  And clearly the\nNonconformists are actuated by antipathy to establishments, not by\nantipathy to the injustice and irrationality of the present\nappropriation of Church property in Ireland; because Mr. Spurgeon, in\nhis eloquent and memorable letter, expressly avowed that he would\nsooner leave things as they are in Ireland, that is, he would sooner\nlet the injustice and irrationality of the present appropriation\ncontinue, than do anything to set up the Roman image, that is, than\ngive the Catholics their fair and reasonable share of Church\nproperty.  Most indisputably, therefore, we may affirm that the real\nmoving power by which the Liberal party are now operating the\noverthrow of the Irish establishment is the antipathy of the\nNonconformists to Church establishments, and not the sense of reason\nor justice, except so far as reason and justice may be contained in\nthis antipathy.  And thus the matter stands at present.\n\nNow surely we must all see many inconveniences in performing the\noperation of uprooting this evil, [203] the Irish Church\nestablishment, in this particular way.  As was said about industry\nand freedom and gymnastics, we shall never awaken love and gratitude\nby this mode of operation; for it is pursued, not in view of reason\nand justice and human perfection and all that enkindles the\nenthusiasm of men, but it is pursued in view of a certain stock\nnotion, or fetish, of the Nonconformists, which proscribes Church\nestablishments.  And yet, evidently, one of the main benefits to be\ngot by operating on the Irish Church is to win the affections of the\nIrish people.  Besides this, an operation performed in virtue of a\nmechanical rule, or fetish, like the supposed decision of the English\nnational mind against new endowments, does not easily inspire respect\nin its adversaries, and make their opposition feeble and hardly to be\npersisted in, as an operation evidently done in virtue of reason and\njustice might.  For reason and justice have in them something\npersuasive and irresistible; but a fetish or mechanical maxim, like\nthis of the Nonconformists, has in it nothing at all to conciliate\neither the affections or the understanding; nay, it provokes the\ncounter-employment of other fetishes or mechanical maxims [204] on\nthe opposite side, by which the confusion and hostility already\nprevalent are heightened.  Only in this way can be explained the\napparition of such fetishes as are beginning to be set up on the\nConservative side against the fetish of the Nonconformists:--The\nConstitution in danger!  The bulwarks of British freedom menaced!\nThe lamp of the Reformation put out!  No Popery!--and so on.  To\nelevate these against an operation relying on reason and justice to\nback it is not so easy, or so tempting to human infirmity, as to\nelevate them against an operation relying on the Nonconformists'\nantipathy to Church establishments to back it; for after all, No\nPopery! is a rallying cry which touches the human spirit quite as\nvitally as No Church establishments!--that is to say, neither the one\nnor the other, in themselves, touch the human spirit vitally at all.\n\nOught the believers in action, then, to be so impatient with us, if\nwe say, that even for the sake of this operation of theirs itself and\nits satisfactory accomplishment, it is more important to make our\nconsciousness play freely round the stock notion or habit on which\ntheir operation relies for aid, than to [205] lend a hand to it\nstraight away?  Clearly they ought not; because nothing is so\neffectual for operating as reason and justice, and a free play of\nthought will either disengage the reason and justice lying hid in the\nNonconformist fetish, and make them effectual, or else it will help\nto get this fetish out of the way, and to let statesmen go freely\nwhere reason and justice take them.\n\nSo, suppose we take this absolute rule, this mechanical maxim of Mr.\nSpurgeon and the Nonconformists, that Church establishments are bad\nthings because Christ said: \"My kingdom is not of this world.\"\nSuppose we try and make our consciousness bathe and float this piece\nof petrifaction,--for such it now is,--and bring it within the stream\nof the vital movement of our thought, and into relation with the\nwhole intelligible law of things.  An enemy and a disputant might\nprobably say that much machinery which Nonconformists themselves\nemploy, the Liberation Society which exists already, and the\nNonconformist Union which Mr. Spurgeon desires to see existing, come\nwithin the scope of Christ's words as well as Church establishments.\nThis, however, is merely a negative and [206] contentious way of\ndealing with the Nonconformist maxim; whereas what we desire is to\nbring this maxim within the positive and vital movement of our\nthought.  We say, therefore, that Christ's words mean that his\nreligion is a force of inward persuasion acting on the soul, and not\na force of outward constraint acting on the body; and if the\nNonconformist maxim against Church establishments and Church\nendowments has warrant given to it from what Christ thus meant, then\ntheir maxim is good, even though their own practice in the matter of\nthe Liberation Society may be at variance with it.\n\nAnd here we cannot but remember what we have formerly said about\nreligion, Miss Cobbe, and the British College of Health in the New\nRoad.  In religion there are two parts, the part of thought and\nspeculation, and the part of worship and devotion.  Christ certainly\nmeant his religion, as a force of inward persuasion acting on the\nsoul, to employ both parts as perfectly as possible.  Now thought and\nspeculation is eminently an individual matter, and worship and\ndevotion is eminently a collective matter.  It does not help me to\nthink a thing more clearly that thousands of other people are\nthinking [207] the same; but it does help me to worship with more\nemotion that thousands of other people are worshipping with me.  The\nconsecration of common consent, antiquity, public establishment,\nlong-used rites, national edifices, is everything for religious\nworship.  \"Just what makes worship impressive,\" says Joubert, \"is its\npublicity, its external manifestation, its sound, its splendour, its\nobservance universally and visibly holding its way through all the\ndetails both of our outward and of our inward life.\"  Worship,\ntherefore, should have in it as little as possible of what divides\nus, and should be as much as possible a common and public act; as\nJoubert says again: \"The best prayers are those which have nothing\ndistinct about them, and which are thus of the nature of simple\nadoration.\"  For, \"The same devotion,\" as he says in another place,\n\"unites men far more than the same thought and knowledge.\"  Thought\nand knowledge, as we have said before, is eminently something\nindividual, and of our own; the more we possess it as strictly of our\nown, the more power it has on us.  Man worships best, therefore, with\nthe community; he philosophises best alone.  So it seems that whoever\n[208] would truly give effect to Christ's declaration that his\nreligion is a force of inward persuasion acting on the soul, would\nleave our thought on the intellectual aspects of Christianity as\nindividual as possible, but would make Christian worship as\ncollective as possible.  Worship, then, appears to be eminently a\nmatter for public and national establishment; for even Mr. Bright,\nwho, when he stands in Mr. Spurgeon's great Tabernacle is so ravished\nwith admiration, will hardly say that the great Tabernacle and its\nworship are in themselves, as a temple and service of religion, so\nimpressive and affecting as the public and national Westminster\nAbbey, or Notre Dame, with their worship.  And when, very soon after\nthe great Tabernacle, one comes plump down to the mass of private and\nindividual  establishments of religious worship, establishments\nfalling, like the British College of Health in the New Road,\nconspicuously short of what a public and national establishment might\nbe, then one cannot but feel that Christ's command to make his\nreligion a force of persuasion to the soul, is, so far as one main\nsource of persuasion is concerned, altogether set at nought.\n\n[209] But perhaps the Nonconformists worship so unimpressively\nbecause they philosophise so keenly; and one part of religion, the\npart of public national worship, they have subordinated to the other\npart, the part of individual thought and knowledge?  This, however,\ntheir organisation in congregations forbids us to admit.  They are\nmembers of congregations, not isolated thinkers; and a true play of\nindividual thought is at least as much impeded by membership of a\nsmall congregation as by membership of a great Church; thinking by\nbatches of fifties is to the full as fatal to free thought as\nthinking by batches of thousands.  Accordingly, we have had occasion\nalready to notice that Nonconformity does not at all differ from the\nEstablished Church by having worthier or more philosophical ideas\nabout God and the ordering of the world than the Established Church\nhas; it has very much the same ideas about these as the Established\nChurch has, but it differs from the Established Church in that its\nworship is a much less collective and national affair.  So Mr.\nSpurgeon and the Nonconformists seem to have misapprehended the true\nmeaning of Christ's words, My kingdom is not of this world; [210]\nbecause, by these words, Christ meant that his religion was to work\non the soul; and of the two parts of the soul on which religion\nworks,--the thinking and speculative part, and the feeling and\nimaginative part,--Nonconformity satisfies the first no better than\nthe Established Churches, which Christ by these words is supposed to\nhave condemned, satisfy it; and the second part it satisfies much\nworse than the Established Churches.  And thus the balance of\nadvantage seems to rest with the Established Churches; and they seem\nto have apprehended and applied Christ's words, if not with perfect\nadequacy, at least less inadequately than the Nonconformists.\n\nMight it not, then, be urged with great force that the way to do\ngood, in presence of this operation for uprooting the Church\nestablishment in Ireland by the power of the Nonconformists'\nantipathy to publicly establishing or endowing religious worship, is\nnot by lending a hand straight away to the operation, and\nHebraising,--that is, in this case, taking an uncritical\ninterpretation of certain Bible words as our absolute rule of\nconduct,--with the Nonconformists.  If may be very well for born\n[211] Hebraisers, like Mr. Spurgeon, to Hebraise; but for Liberal\nstatesmen to Hebraise is surely unsafe, and to see poor old Liberal\nhacks Hebraising, whose real self belongs to a kind of negative\nHellenism,--a state of moral indifferency without intellectual\nardour,--is even painful.  And when, by our Hebraising, we neither do\nwhat the better mind of statesmen prompted them to do, nor win the\naffections of the people we want to conciliate, nor yet reduce the\nopposition of our adversaries but rather heighten it, surely it may\nbe not unreasonable to Hellenise a little, to let our thought and\nconsciousness play freely about our proposed operation and its\nmotives, dissolve these motives if they are unsound, which certainly\nthey have some appearance, at any rate, of being, and create in their\nstead, if they are, a set of sounder and more persuasive motives\nconducting to a more solid operation.  May not the man who promotes\nthis be giving the best help towards finding some lasting truth to\nminister to the diseased spirit of his time, and does he really\ndeserve that the believers in action should grow impatient with him?\n\nBut now to take another operation which does [212] not at this moment\nso excite people's feelings as the disestablishment of the Irish\nChurch, but which, I suppose, would also be called exactly one of\nthose operations of simple, practical, common-sense reform, aiming at\nthe removal of some particular abuse, and rigidly restricted to that\nobject, to which a Liberal ought to lend a hand, and deserves that\nother Liberals should grow impatient with him if he does not.  This\noperation I had the great advantage of with my own ears hearing\ndiscussed in the House of Commons, and recommended by a powerful\nspeech from that famous speaker, Mr. Bright; so that the effeminate\nhorror which, it is alleged, I have of practical reforms of this\nkind, was put to a searching test; and if it survived, it must have,\none would think, some reason or other to support it, and can hardly\nquite merit the stigma of its present name.  The operation I mean was\nthat which the Real Estate Intestacy Bill aimed at accomplishing, and\nthe discussion on this bill I heard in the House of Commons.  The\nbill proposed, as every one knows, to prevent the land of a man who\ndies intestate from going, as it goes now, to his eldest son, and was\nthought, by its friends and by its enemies, to be a [213] step\ntowards abating the now almost exclusive possession of the land of\nthis country by the people whom we call the Barbarians.  Mr. Bright,\nand other speakers on his side, seemed to hold that there is a kind\nof natural law or fitness of things which assigns to all a man's\nchildren a right to equal shares in the enjoyment of his property\nafter his death; and that if, without depriving a man of an\nEnglishman's prime privilege of doing what he likes by making what\nwill he chooses, you provide that when he makes none his land shall\nbe divided among his family, then you give the sanction of the law to\nthe natural fitness of things, and inflict a sort of check on the\npresent violation of this by the Barbarians.  It occurred to me, when\nI saw Mr. Bright and his friends proceeding in this way, to ask\nmyself a question.  If the almost exclusive possession of the land of\nthis country by the Barbarians is a bad thing, is this practical\noperation of the Liberals, and the stock notion, on which it seems to\nrest, about the right of children to share equally in the enjoyment\nof their father's property after his death, the best and most\neffective means of dealing with it?  Or is it best [214] dealt with\nby letting one's thought and consciousness play freely and naturally\nupon the Barbarians, this Liberal operation, and the stock notion at\nthe bottom of it, and trying to get as near as we can to the\nintelligible law of things as to each of them?\n\nNow does any one, if he simply and naturally reads his consciousness,\ndiscover that he has any rights at all?  For my part, the deeper I go\nin my own consciousness, and the more simply I abandon myself to it,\nthe more it seems to tell me that I have no rights at all, only\nduties; and that men get this notion of rights from a process of\nabstract reasoning, inferring that the obligations they are conscious\nof towards others, others must be conscious of towards them, and not\nfrom any direct witness of consciousness at all.  But it is obvious\nthat the notion of a right, arrived at in this way, is likely to\nstand as a formal and petrified thing, deceiving and misleading us;\nand that the notions got directly from our consciousness ought to be\nbrought to bear upon it, and to control it.  So it is unsafe and\nmisleading to say that our children have rights against us; what is\ntrue and safe to say is, that we have duties towards our [215]\nchildren.  But who will find among these natural duties, set forth to\nus by our consciousness, the obligation to leave to all our children\nan equal share in the enjoyment of our property? or, though\nconsciousness tells us we ought to provide for our children's\nwelfare, whose consciousness tells him that the enjoyment of property\nis in itself welfare?  Whether our children's welfare is best served\nby their all sharing equally in our property depends on circumstances\nand on the state of the community in which we live.  With this equal\nsharing, society could not, for example, have organised itself afresh\nout of the chaos left by the fall of the Roman Empire, and to have an\norganised society to live in is more for a child's welfare than to\nhave an equal share of his father's property.  So we see how little\nconvincing force the stock notion on which the Real Estate Intestacy\nBill was based,--the notion that in the nature and fitness of things\nall a man's children have a right to an equal share in the enjoyment\nof what he leaves,--really has; and how powerless, therefore, it must\nof necessity be to persuade and win any one who has habits and\ninterests which disincline him to [216] it.  On the other hand, the\npractical operation proposed relies entirely, if it is to be\neffectual in altering the present practice of the Barbarians, on the\npower of truth and persuasiveness in the notion which it seeks to\nconsecrate; for it leaves to the Barbarians full liberty to continue\ntheir present practice, to which all their habits and interests\nincline them, unless the promulgation of a notion, which we have seen\nto have no vital efficacy and hold upon our consciousness, shall\nhinder them.\n\nAre we really to adorn an operation of this kind, merely because it\nproposes to do something, with all the favourable epithets of simple,\npractical, common-sense, definite; to enlist on its side all the zeal\nof the believers in action, and to call indifference to it a really\neffeminate horror of useful reforms?  It seems to me quite easy to\nshow that a free disinterested play of thought on the Barbarians and\ntheir land-holding is a thousand times more really practical, a\nthousand times more likely to lead to some effective result, than an\noperation such as that of which we have been now speaking.  For if,\ncasting aside the impediments of stock notions and mechanical action,\nwe try to find the intelligible law [217] of things respecting a\ngreat land-owning class such as we have in this country, does not our\nconsciousness readily tell us that whether the perpetuation of such a\nclass is for its own real welfare and for the real welfare of the\ncommunity, depends on the actual circumstances of this class and of\nthe community?  Does it not readily tell us that wealth, power, and\nconsideration are, and above all when inherited and not earned, in\nthemselves trying and dangerous things? as Bishop Wilson excellently\nsays: \"Riches are almost always abused without a very extraordinary\ngrace.\"  But this extraordinary grace was in great measure supplied\nby the circumstances of the feudal epoch, out of which our land-\nholding class, with its rules of inheritance, sprang.  The labour and\ncontentions of a rude, nascent, and struggling society supplied it;\nthese perpetually were trying, chastising, and forming the class\nwhose predominance was then needed by society to give it points of\ncohesion, and was not so harmful to themselves because they were thus\nsharply tried and exercised.  But in a luxurious, settled, and easy\nsociety, where wealth offers the means of enjoyment a thousand times\nmore, and the temptation to abuse [218] them is thus made a thousand\ntimes greater, the exercising discipline is at the same time taken\naway, and the feudal class is left exposed to the full operation of\nthe natural law well put by the French moralist: Pouvoir sans savoir\nest fort dangereux.  And, for my part, when I regard the young people\nof this class, it is above all by the trial and shipwreck made of\ntheir own welfare by the circumstances in which they live that I am\nstruck; how far better it would have been for nine out of every ten\namong them, if they had had their own way to make in the world, and\nnot been tried by a condition for which they had not the\nextraordinary grace requisite!\n\nThis, I say, seems to be what a man's consciousness, simply\nconsulted, would tell him about the actual welfare of our Barbarians\nthemselves.  Then, as to their actual effect upon the welfare of the\ncommunity, how can this be salutary, if a class which, by the very\npossession of wealth, power and consideration, becomes a kind of\nideal or standard for the rest of the community, is tried by ease and\npleasure more than it can well bear, and almost irresistibly carried\naway from excellence and strenuous virtue?  This must certainly be\nwhat [219] Solomon meant when he said: \"As he who putteth a stone in\na sling, so is he that giveth honour to a fool.\"+  For any one can\nperceive how this honouring of a false ideal, not of intelligence and\nstrenuous virtue, but of wealth and station, pleasure and ease, is as\na stone from a sling to kill in our great middle-class, in us who are\ncalled Philistines, the desire before spoken of, which by nature for\never carries all men towards that which is lovely; and to leave\ninstead of it only a blind deteriorating pursuit, for ourselves also,\nof the false ideal.  And in those among us Philistines whom this\ndesire does not wholly abandon, yet, having no excellent ideal set\nforth to nourish and to steady it, it meets with that natural bent\nfor the bathos which together with this desire itself is implanted at\nbirth in the breast of man, and is by that force twisted awry, and\nborne at random hither and thither, and at last flung upon those\ngrotesque and hideous forms of popular religion which the more\nrespectable part among us Philistines mistake for the true goal of\nman's desire after all that is lovely.  And for the Populace this\nfalse idea is a stone which kills the desire before it can even\narise; so impossible and unattainable for [220] them do the\nconditions of that which is lovely appear according to this ideal to\nbe made, so necessary to the reaching of them by the few seems the\nfalling short of them by the many.  So that, perhaps, of the actual\nvulgarity of our Philistines and brutality of our Populace, the\nBarbarians and their feudal habits of succession, enduring out of\ntheir due time and place, are involuntarily the cause in a great\ndegree; and they hurt the welfare of the rest of the community at the\nsame time that, as we have seen, they hurt their own.\n\nBut must not, now, the working in our minds of considerations like\nthese, to which culture, that is, the disinterested and active use of\nreading, reflection, and observation, carries us, be really much more\neffectual to the dissolution of feudal habits and rules of succession\nin land than an operation like the Real Estate Intestacy Bill, and a\nstock notion like that of the natural right of all a man's children\nto an equal share in the enjoyment of his property; since we have\nseen that this mechanical maxim is unsound, and that, if it is\nunsound, the operation relying upon it cannot possibly be effective?\nIf truth and reason have, as we believe, any natural irresistible\neffect on [221] the mind of man, it must.  These considerations, when\nculture has called them forth and given them free course in our\nminds, will live and work.  They will work gradually, no doubt, and\nwill not bring us ourselves to the front to sit in high place and put\nthem into effect; but so they will be all the more beneficial.\nEverything teaches us how gradually nature would have all profound\nchanges brought about; and we can even see, too, where the absolute\nabrupt stoppage of feudal habits has worked harm.  And appealing to\nthe sense of truth and reason, these considerations will, without\ndoubt, touch and move all those of even the Barbarians themselves,\nwho are (as are some of us Philistines also, and some of the\nPopulace) beyond their fellows quick of feeling for truth and reason.\nFor indeed this is just one of the advantages of sweetness and light\nover fire and strength, that sweetness and light make a feudal class\nquietly and gradually drop its feudal habits because it sees them at\nvariance with truth and reason, while fire and strength tear them\npassionately off it because it applauded Mr. Lowe when he called, or\nwas supposed to call, the working-class drunken and venal.\n\n[222] But when once we have begun to recount the practical operations\nby which our Liberal friends work for the removal of definite evils,\nand in which if we do not join them they are apt to grow impatient\nwith us, how can we pass over that very interesting operation of this\nkind,--the attempt to enable a man to marry his deceased wife's\nsister?  This operation, too, like that for abating the feudal\ncustoms of succession in land, I have had the advantage of myself\nseeing and hearing my Liberal friends labour at.  I was lucky enough\nto be present when Mr. Chambers, I think, brought forward in the\nHouse of Commons his bill for enabling a man to marry his deceased\nwife's sister, and I heard the speech which Mr. Chambers then made in\nsupport of his bill.  His first point was that God's law,--the name\nhe always gave to the Book of Leviticus,--did not really forbid a man\nto marry his deceased wife's sister.  God's law not forbidding it,\nthe Liberal maxim that a man's prime right and happiness is to do as\nhe likes ought at once to come into force, and to annul any such\ncheck upon the assertion of personal liberty as the prohibition to\nmarry one's deceased wife's sister.  A distinguished Liberal\nsupporter of Mr. Chambers, in [223] the debate which followed the\nintroduction of the bill, produced a formula of much beauty and\nneatness for conveying in brief the Liberal notions on this head:\n\"Liberty,\" said he, \"is the law of human life.\"  And, therefore, the\nmoment it is ascertained that God's law, the Book of Leviticus, does\nnot stop the way, man's law, the law of liberty, asserts its right,\nand makes us free to marry our deceased wife's sister.\n\nAnd this exactly falls in with what Mr. Hepworth Dixon, who may\nalmost be called the Colenso of love and marriage,--such a revolution\ndoes he make in our ideas on these matters, just as Dr. Colenso does\nin our ideas on religion,--tells us of the notions and proceedings of\nour kinsmen in America.  With that affinity of genius to the Hebrew\ngenius which we have already noticed, and with the strong belief of\nour race that liberty is the law of human life, so far as a fixed,\nperfect, and paramount rule of conscience, the Bible, does not\nexpressly control it, our American kinsmen go again, Mr. Hepworth\nDixon tells us, to their Bible, the Mormons to the patriarchs and the\nOld Testament, Brother Noyes to St. Paul and the New, and having\nnever before read anything else but [224] their Bible, they now read\ntheir Bible over again, and make all manner of great discoveries\nthere.  All these discoveries are favourable to liberty, and in this\nway is satisfied that double craving so characteristic of the\nPhilistine, and so eminently exemplified in that crowned Philistine,\nHenry the Eighth,--the craving for forbidden fruit and the craving\nfor legality.  Mr. Hepworth Dixon's eloquent writings give currency,\nover here, to these important discoveries; so that now, as regards\nlove and marriage, we seem to be entering, with all our sails spread,\nupon what Mr. Hepworth Dixon, its apostle and evangelist, calls a\nGothic Revival, but what one of the many newspapers that so greatly\nadmire Mr. Hepworth Dixon's lithe and sinewy style and form their own\nstyle upon it, calls, by a yet bolder and more striking figure, \"a\ngreat sexual insurrection of our Anglo-Teutonic race.\"  For this end\nwe have to avert our eyes from everything Hellenic and fanciful, and\nto keep them steadily fixed upon the two cardinal points of the Bible\nand liberty.  And one of those practical operations in which the\nLiberal party engage, and in which we are summoned to join them,\ndirects itself entirely, as we have seen, to these cardinal points,\n[225] and may almost be regarded, perhaps, as a kind of first\ninstalment or public and parliamentary pledge of the great sexual\ninsurrection of our Anglo-Teutonic race.\n\nBut here, as elsewhere, what we seek is the Philistine's perfection,\nthe development of his best self, not mere liberty for his ordinary\nself.  And we no more allow absolute validity to his stock maxim,\nLiberty is the law of human life, than we allow it to the opposite\nmaxim, which is just as true, Renouncement is the law of human life.\nFor we know that the only perfect freedom is, as our religion says, a\nservice; not a service to any stock maxim, but an elevation of our\nbest self, and a harmonising in subordination to this, and to the\nidea of a perfected humanity, all the multitudinous, turbulent, and\nblind impulses of our ordinary selves.  Now, the Philistine's great\ndefect being a defect in delicacy of perception, to cultivate in him\nthis delicacy, to render it independent of external and mechanical\nrule, and a law to itself, is what seems to make most for his\nperfection, his true humanity.  And his true humanity, and therefore\nhis happiness, appears to lie much more, so far as the relations of\nlove and [226] marriage are concerned, in becoming alive to the finer\nshades of feeling which arise within these relations, in being able\nto enter with tact and sympathy into the subtle instinctive\npropensions and repugnances of the person with whose life his own\nlife is bound up, to make them his own, to direct and govern, in\nharmony with them, the arbitrary range of his personal action, and\nthus to enlarge his spiritual and intellectual life and liberty, than\nin remaining insensible to these finer shades of feeling, this\ndelicate sympathy, in giving unchecked range, so far as he can, to\nhis mere personal action, in allowing no limits or government to this\nexcept such as a mechanical external law imposes, and in thus really\nnarrowing, for the satisfaction of his ordinary self, his spiritual\nand intellectual life and liberty.\n\nStill more must this be so when his fixed eternal rule, his God's\nlaw, is supplied to him from a source which is less fit, perhaps, to\nsupply final and absolute instructions on this particular topic of\nlove and marriage than on any other relation of human life.  Bishop\nWilson, who is full of examples of that fruitful Hellenising within\nthe limits of Hebraism itself, of that renewing of the [227] stiff\nand stark notions of Hebraism by turning upon them a stream of fresh\nthought and consciousness, which we have already noticed in St.\nPaul,--Bishop Wilson gives an admirable lesson to rigid Hebraisers,\nlike Mr. Chambers, asking themselves: Does God's law (that is, the\nBook of Leviticus) forbid us to marry our wife's sister?--Does God's\nlaw (that is, again, the Book of Leviticus) allow us to marry our\nwife's sister?--when he says: \"Christian duties are founded on\nreason, not on the sovereign authority of God commanding what he\npleases; God cannot command us what is not fit to be believed or\ndone, all his commands being founded in the necessities of our\nnature.\"  And, immense as is our debt to the Hebrew race and its\ngenius, incomparable as is its authority on certain profoundly\nimportant sides of our human nature, worthy as it is to be described\nas having uttered, for those sides, the voice of the deepest\nnecessities of our nature, the statutes of the divine and eternal\norder of things, the law of God,--who, that is not manacled and\nhoodwinked by his Hebraism, can believe that, as to love and\nmarriage, our reason and the necessities of our humanity have their\ntrue, [228] sufficient, and divine law expressed for them by the\nvoice of any Oriental and polygamous nation like the Hebrews?  Who, I\nsay, will believe, when he really considers the matter, that where\nthe feminine nature, the feminine ideal, and our relations to them,\nare brought into question, the delicate and apprehensive genius of\nthe Indo-European race, the race which invented the Muses, and\nchivalry, and the Madonna, is to find its last word on this question\nin the institutions of a Semitic people, whose wisest king had seven\nhundred wives and three hundred concubines?\n\nIf here again, therefore, we seem to minister better to the diseased\nspirit of our time by leading it to think about the operation our\nLiberal friends have in hand, than by lending a hand to this\noperation ourselves, let us see, before we dismiss from our view the\npractical operations of our Liberal friends, whether the same thing\ndoes not hold good as to their celebrated industrial and economical\nlabours also.  Their great work of this kind is, of course, their\nfree-trade policy.  This policy, as having enabled the poor man to\neat untaxed bread, and as having wonderfully augmented trade, we\n[229] are accustomed to speak of with a kind of solemnity; it is\nchiefly on their having been our leaders in this policy that Mr.\nBright founds for himself and his friends the claim, so often\nasserted by him, to be considered guides of the blind, teachers of\nthe ignorant, benefactors slowly and laboriously developing in the\nConservative party and in the country that which Mr. Bright is fond\nof calling the growth of intelligence,--the object, as is well known,\nof all the friends of culture also, and the great end and aim of the\nculture that we preach.  Now, having first saluted free-trade and its\ndoctors with all respect, let us see whether even here, too, our\nLiberal friends do not pursue their operations in a mechanical way,\nwithout reference to any firm intelligible law of things, to human\nlife as a whole, and human happiness; and whether it is not more for\nour good, at this particular moment at any rate, if, instead of\nworshipping free-trade with them Hebraistically, as a kind of fetish,\nand helping them to pursue it as an end in and for itself, we turn\nthe free stream of our thought upon their treatment of it, and see\nhow this is related to the intelligible law of human life, and to\nnational well- [230] being and happiness.  In short, suppose we\nHellenise a little with free-trade, as we Hellenised with the Real\nEstate Intestacy Bill, and with the disestablishment of the Irish\nChurch by the power of the Nonconformists' antipathy to religious\nestablishments and endowments, and see whether what our reprovers\nbeautifully call ministering to the diseased spirit of our time is\nbest done by the Hellenising method of proceeding, or by the other.\n\nBut first let us understand how the policy of free-trade really\nshapes itself for our Liberal friends, and how they practically\nemploy it as an instrument of national happiness and salvation.  For\nas we said that it seemed clearly right to prevent the Church\nproperty of Ireland from being all taken for the benefit of the\nChurch of a small minority, so it seems clearly right that the poor\nman should eat untaxed bread, and, generally, that restrictions and\nregulations which, for the supposed benefit of some particular person\nor class of persons, make the price of things artificially high here,\nor artificially low there, and interfere with the natural flow of\ntrade and commerce, should be done away with.  But in the policy of\nour Liberal friends free-trade [231] means more than this, and is\nspecially valued as a stimulant to the production of wealth, as they\ncall it, and to the increase of the trade, business, and population\nof the country.  We have already seen how these things,--trade,\nbusiness, and population,--are mechanically pursued by us as ends\nprecious in themselves, and are worshipped as what we call fetishes;\nand Mr. Bright, I have already said, when he wishes to give the\nworking-class a true sense of what makes glory and greatness, tells\nit to look at the cities it has built, the railroads it has made, the\nmanufactures it has produced.  So to this idea of glory and greatness\nthe free-trade which our Liberal friends extol so solemnly and\ndevoutly has served,--to the increase of trade, business, and\npopulation; and for this it is prized.  Therefore, the untaxing of\nthe poor man's bread has, with this view of national happiness, been\nused, not so much to make the existing poor man's bread cheaper or\nmore abundant, but rather to create more poor men to eat it; so that\nwe cannot precisely say that we have fewer poor men than we had\nbefore free-trade, but we can say with truth that we have many more\ncentres of industry, as they are called, and much [232] more\nbusiness, population, and manufactures.  And if we are sometimes a\nlittle troubled by our multitude of poor men, yet we know the\nincrease of manufactures and population to be such a salutary thing\nin itself, and our free-trade policy begets such an admirable\nmovement, creating fresh centres of industry and fresh poor men here,\nwhile we were thinking about our poor men there, that we are quite\ndazzled and borne away, and more and more industrial movement is\ncalled for, and our social progress seems to become one triumphant\nand enjoyable course of what is sometimes called, vulgarly,\noutrunning the constable.\n\nIf, however, taking some other criterion of man's well-being than the\ncities he has built and the manufactures he has produced, we persist\nin thinking that our social progress would be happier if there were\nnot so many of us so very poor, and in busying ourselves with notions\nof in some way or other adjusting the poor man and business one to\nthe other, and not multiplying the one and the other mechanically and\nblindly, then our Liberal friends, the appointed doctors of free-\ntrade, take us up very sharply.  \"Art is long,\" says The Times, \"and\nlife [233] is short; for the most part we settle things first and\nunderstand them afterwards.  Let us have as few theories as possible;\nwhat is wanted is not the light of speculation.  If nothing worked\nwell of which the theory was not perfectly understood, we should be\nin sad confusion.  The relations of labour and capital, we are told,\nare not understood, yet trade and commerce, on the whole, work\nsatisfactorily.\"  I quote from The Times of only the other day.  But\nthoughts like these, as I have often pointed out, are thoroughly\nBritish thoughts, and we have been familiar with them for years.\n\nOr, if we want more of a philosophy of the matter than this, our\nfree-trade friends have two axioms for us, axioms laid down by their\njustly esteemed doctors, which they think ought to satisfy us\nentirely.  One is, that, other things being equal, the more\npopulation increases, the more does production increase to keep pace\nwith it; because men by their numbers and contact call forth all\nmanner of activities and resources in one another and in nature,\nwhich, when men are few and sparse, are never developed.  The other\nis, that, although population always tends to equal the means of\n[234] subsistence, yet people's notions of what subsistence is\nenlarge as civilisation advances, and take in a number of things\nbeyond the bare necessaries of life; and thus, therefore, is supplied\nwhatever check on population is needed.  But the error of our friends\nis just, perhaps, that they apply axioms of this sort as if they were\nself-acting laws which will put themselves into operation without\ntrouble or planning on our part, if we will only pursue free-trade,\nbusiness, and population zealously and staunchly.  Whereas the real\ntruth is, that, however the case might be under other circumstances,\nyet in fact, as we now manage the matter, the enlarged conception of\nwhat is included in subsistence does not operate to prevent the\nbringing into the world of numbers of people who but just attain to\nthe barest necessaries of life or who even fail to attain to them;\nwhile, again, though production may increase as population increases,\nyet it seems that the production may be of such a kind, and so\nrelated, or rather non-related, to population, that the population\nmay be little the better for it.  For instance, with the increase of\npopulation since Queen Elizabeth's time the production of silk-\nstockings has wonderfully increased, and silk- [235] stockings have\nbecome much cheaper and procurable in much greater abundance by many\nmore people, and tend perhaps, as population and manufactures\nincrease, to get cheaper and cheaper, and at last to become,\naccording to Bastiat's favourite image, a common free property of the\nhuman race, like light and air.  But bread and bacon have not become\nmuch cheaper with the increase of population since Queen Elizabeth's\ntime, nor procurable in much greater abundance by many more people;\nneither do they seem at all to promise to become, like light and air,\na common free property of the human race.  And if bread and bacon\nhave not kept pace with our population, and we have many more people\nin want of them now than in Queen Elizabeth's time, it seems vain to\ntell us that silk-stockings have kept pace with our population, or\neven more than kept pace with it, and that we are to get our comfort\nout of that.  In short, it turns out that our pursuit of free-trade,\nas of so many other things, has been too mechanical.  We fix upon\nsome object, which in this case is the production of wealth, and the\nincrease of manufactures, population, and commerce through free-\n[236] trade, as a kind of one thing needful, or end in itself, and\nthen we pursue it staunchly and mechanically, and say that it is our\nduty to pursue it staunchly and mechanically, not to see how it is\nrelated to the whole intelligible law of things and to full human\nperfection, or to treat it as the piece of machinery, of varying\nvalue as its relations to the intelligible law of things vary, which\nit really is.\n\nSo it is of no use to say to The Times, and to our Liberal friends\nrejoicing in the possession of their talisman of free-trade, that\nabout one in nineteen of our population is a pauper, and that, this\nbeing so, trade and commerce can hardly be said to prove by their\nsatisfactory working that it matters nothing whether the relations\nbetween labour and capital are understood or not; nay, that we can\nhardly be said not to be in sad confusion.  For here comes in our\nfaith in the staunch mechanical pursuit of a fixed object, and covers\nitself with that imposing and colossal necessitarianism of The Times\nwhich we have before noticed.  And this necessitarianism, taking for\ngranted that an increase in trade and population is a good in itself,\none of the chiefest of goods, tells us that disturbances of [237]\nhuman happiness caused by ebbs and flows in the tide of trade and\nbusiness, which, on the whole, steadily mounts, are inevitable and\nnot to be quarrelled with.  This firm philosophy I seek to call to\nmind when I am in the East of London, whither my avocations often\nlead me; and, indeed, to fortify myself against the depressing sights\nwhich on these occasions assail us, I have transcribed from The Times\none strain of this kind, full of the finest economical doctrine, and\nalways carry it about with me.  The passage is this:--\n\n\"The East End is the most commercial, the most industrial, the most\nfluctuating region of the metropolis.  It is always the first to\nsuffer; for it is the creature of prosperity, and falls to the ground\nthe instant there is no wind to bear it up.  The whole of that region\nis covered with huge docks, shipyards, manufactories, and a\nwilderness of small houses, all full of life and happiness in brisk\ntimes, but in dull times withered and lifeless, like the deserts we\nread of in the East.  Now their brief spring is over.  There is no\none to blame for this; it is the result of Nature's simplest laws!\"\nWe must all agree that it is impossible that [238] anything can be\nfirmer than this, or show a surer faith in the working of free-trade,\nas our Liberal friends understand and employ it.\n\nBut, if we still at all doubt whether the indefinite multiplication\nof manufactories and small houses can be such an absolute good in\nitself as to counterbalance the indefinite multiplication of poor\npeople, we shall learn that this multiplication of poor people, too,\nis an absolute good in itself, and the result of divine and beautiful\nlaws.  This is indeed a favourite thesis with our Philistine friends,\nand I have already noticed the pride and gratitude with which they\nreceive certain articles in The Times, dilating in thankful and\nsolemn language on the majestic growth of our population.  But I\nprefer to quote now, on this topic, the words of an ingenious young\nScotch writer, Mr. Robert Buchanan, because he invests with so much\nimagination and poetry this current idea of the blessed and even\ndivine character which the multiplying of population is supposed in\nitself to have.  \"We move to multiplicity,\" says Mr. Robert Buchanan.\n\"If there is one quality which seems God's, and his exclusively, it\nseems that divine philoprogenitiveness, [239] that passionate love of\ndistribution and expansion into living forms.  Every animal added\nseems a new ecstasy to the Maker; every life added, a new embodiment\nof his love.  He would swarm the earth with beings.  There are never\nenough.  Life, life, life,--faces gleaming, hearts beating, must fill\nevery cranny.  Not a corner is suffered to remain empty.  The whole\nearth breeds, and God glories.\"\n\nIt is a little unjust, perhaps, to attribute to the Divinity\nexclusively this philoprogenitiveness, which the British Philistine,\nand the poorer class of Irish, may certainly claim to share with him;\nyet how inspiriting is here the whole strain of thought! and these\nbeautiful words, too, I carry about with me in the East of London,\nand often read them there.  They are quite in agreement with the\npopular language one is accustomed to hear about children and large\nfamilies, which describes children as sent.  And a line of poetry\nwhich Mr. Robert Buchanan throws in presently after the poetical\nprose I have quoted:--\n\n     'Tis the old story of the fig-leaf time--\n\nthis fine line, too, naturally connects itself, when one is in the\nEast of London, with the idea of God's [240] desire to swarm the\nearth with beings; because the swarming of the earth with beings does\nindeed, in the East of London, so seem to revive\n\n     . . . the old story of the fig-leaf time--\n\nsuch a number of the people one meets there having hardly a rag to\ncover them; and the more the swarming goes on, the more it promises\nto revive this old story.  And when the story is perfectly revived,\nthe swarming quite completed, and every cranny choke-full, then, too,\nno doubt, the faces in the East of London will be gleaming faces,\nwhich Mr. Robert Buchanan says it is God's desire they should be, and\nwhich every one must perceive they are not at present, but, on the\ncontrary, very miserable.\n\nBut to prevent all this philosophy and poetry from quite running away\nwith us, and making us think with The Times, and our practical\nLiberal free-traders, and the British Philistines generally, that the\nincrease of small houses and manufactories, or the increase of\npopulation, are absolute goods in themselves, to be mechanically\npursued, and to be worshipped like fetishes,--to prevent this, we\nhave got that notion of ours immoveably fixed, of which I [241] have\nlong ago spoken, the notion that culture, or the study of perfection,\nleads us to conceive of no perfection as being real which is not a\ngeneral  perfection, embracing all our fellow-men with whom we have\nto do.  Such is the sympathy which binds humanity together, that we\nare indeed, as our religion says, members of one body, and if one\nmember suffer, all the members suffer with it; individual perfection\nis impossible so long as the rest of mankind are not perfected along\nwith us.  \"The multitude of the wise is the welfare of the world,\"\nsays the wise man.  And to this effect that excellent and often\nquoted guide of ours, Bishop Wilson, has some striking words:--\"It is\nnot,\" says he, \"so much our neighbour's interest as our own that we\nlove him.\"  And again he says: \"Our salvation does in some measure\ndepend upon that of others.\"  And the author of the Imitation puts\nthe same thing admirably when he says:--\"Obscurior etiam via ad\ncoelum videbatur quando tam pauci regnum coelorum quaerere\ncurabant,\"+--the fewer there are who follow the way to perfection,\nthe harder that way is to find.  So all our fellow-men, in the East\nof London and elsewhere, we must take along with us in the progress\ntowards perfection, [242] if we ourselves really, as we profess, want\nto be perfect; and we must not let the worship of any fetish, any\nmachinery, such as manufactures or population,--which are not, like\nperfection, absolute goods in themselves, though we think them so,--\ncreate for us such a multitude of miserable, sunken, and ignorant\nhuman beings, that to carry them all along with us is impossible, and\nperforce they must for the most part be left by us in their\ndegradation and wretchedness.  But evidently the conception of free-\ntrade, on which our Liberal friends vaunt themselves, and in which\nthey think they have found the secret of national prosperity,--\nevidently, I say, the mere unfettered pursuit of the production of\nwealth, and the mere mechanical multiplying, for this end, of\nmanufactures and population, threatens to create for us, if it has\nnot created already, those vast, miserable, unmanageable masses of\nsunken people,--one pauper, at the present moment, for every nineteen\nof us,--to the existence of which we are, as we have seen, absolutely\nforbidden to reconcile ourselves, in spite of all that the philosophy\nof The Times and the poetry of Mr. Robert Buchanan may say to\npersuade us.\n\n[243] And though Hebraism, following its best and highest instinct,--\nidentical, as we have seen, with that of Hellenism in its final aim,\nthe aim of perfection,--teaches us this very clearly; and though from\nHebraising counsellors,--the Bible, Bishop Wilson, the author of the\nImitation,--I have preferred (as well I may, for from this rock of\nHebraism we are all hewn!) to draw the texts which we use to bring\nhome to our minds this teaching; yet Hebraism seems powerless, almost\nas powerless as our free-trading Liberal friends, to deal\nefficaciously with our ever-accumulating masses of pauperism, and to\nprevent their accumulating still more.  Hebraism builds churches,\nindeed, for these masses, and sends missionaries among them; above\nall, it sets itself against the social necessitarianism of The Times,\nand refuses to accept their degradation as inevitable; but with\nregard to their ever-increasing accumulation, it seems to be led to\nthe very same conclusions, though from a point of view of its own, as\nour free-trading Liberal friends.  Hebraism, with that mechanical and\nmisleading use of the letter of Scripture on which we have already\ncommented, is governed by such texts as: Be fruitful and multiply,+\nthe edict of [244] God's law, as Mr. Chambers would say; or by the\ndeclaration of what he would call God's words in the Psalms, that the\nman who has a great number of children is thereby made happy.  And in\nconjunction with such texts as these it is apt to place another text:\nThe poor shall never cease out of the land.+  Thus Hebraism is\nconducted to nearly the same notion as the popular mind and as Mr.\nRobert Buchanan, that children are sent, and that the divine nature\ntakes a delight in swarming the East End of London with paupers.\nOnly, when they are perishing in their helplessness and wretchedness,\nit asserts the Christian duty of succouring them, instead of saying,\nlike The Times: \"Now their brief spring is over; there is nobody to\nblame for this; it is the result of Nature's simplest laws!\"  But,\nlike The Times, Hebraism despairs of any help from knowledge and says\nthat \"what is wanted is not the light of speculation.\"  I remember,\nonly the other day, a good man, looking with me upon a multitude of\nchildren who were gathered before us in one of the most miserable\nregions of London,--children eaten up with disease, half-sized, half-\nfed, half-clothed, neglected by their parents, without health,\nwithout [245] home, without hope,--said to me: \"The one thing really\nneedful is to teach these little ones to succour one another, if only\nwith a cup of cold water; but now, from one end of the country to the\nother, one hears nothing but the cry for knowledge, knowledge,\nknowledge!\"  And yet surely, so long as these children are there in\nthese festering masses, without health, without home, without hope,\nand so long as their multitude is perpetually swelling, charged with\nmisery they must still be for themselves, charged with misery they\nmust still be for us, whether they help one another with a cup of\ncold water or no; and the knowledge how to prevent their accumulating\nis necessary, even to give their moral life and growth a fair chance!\n\nMay we not, therefore, say, that neither the true Hebraism of this\ngood man, willing to spend and be spent for these sunken multitudes,\nnor what I may call the spurious Hebraism of our free-trading Liberal\nfriends,--mechanically worshipping their fetish of the production of\nwealth and of the increase of manufactures and population, and\nlooking neither to the right nor left so long as this increase goes\non,--avail us much here; and that here, again, what we [246] want is\nHellenism, the letting our consciousness play freely and simply upon\nthe facts before us, and listening to what it tells us of the\nintelligible law of things as concerns them?  And surely what it\ntells us is, that a man's children are not really sent, any more than\nthe pictures upon his wall, or the horses in his stable, are sent;\nand that to bring people into the world, when one cannot afford to\nkeep them and oneself decently and not too precariously, or to bring\nmore of them into the world than one can afford to keep thus, is,\nwhatever The Times and Mr. Robert Buchanan may say, by no means an\naccomplishment of the divine will or a fulfilment of Nature's\nsimplest laws, but is just as wrong, just as contrary to reason and\nthe will of God, as for a man to have horses, or carriages, or\npictures, when he cannot afford them, or to have more of them than he\ncan afford; and that, in the one case as in the other, the larger the\nscale on which the violation of reason's laws is practised, and the\nlonger it is persisted in, the greater must be the confusion and\nfinal trouble.  Surely no laudations of free-trade, no meetings of\nbishops and clergy in the East End of London, no reading of papers\nand reports, can tell [247] us anything about our social condition\nwhich it more concerns us to know than that! and not only to know,\nbut habitually to have the knowledge present, and to act upon it as\none acts upon the knowledge that water wets and fire burns!  And not\nonly the sunken populace of our great cities are concerned to know\nit, and the pauper twentieth of our population; we Philistines of the\nmiddle-class, too, are concerned to know it, and all who have to set\nthemselves to make progress in perfection.\n\nBut we all know it already! some one will say; it is the simplest law\nof prudence.  But how little reality must there be in our knowledge\nof it; how little can we be putting it in practice; how little is it\nlikely to penetrate among the poor and struggling masses of our\npopulation, and to better our condition, so long as an unintelligent\nHebraism of one sort keeps repeating as an absolute eternal word of\nGod the psalm-verse which says that the man who has a great many\nchildren is happy; or an unintelligent Hebraism of another sort keeps\nassigning as an absolute proof of national prosperity the multiplying\nof manufactures and population!  Surely, the one set of Hebraisers\nhave [248] to learn that their psalm-verse was composed at the\nresettlement of Jerusalem after the Captivity, when the Jews of\nJerusalem were a handful, an undermanned garrison, and every child\nwas a blessing; and that the word of God, or the voice of the divine\norder of things, declares the possession of a great many children to\nbe a blessing only when it really is so!  And the other set of\nHebraisers, have they not to learn that if they call their private\nacquaintances imprudent and unlucky, when, with no means of support\nfor them or with precarious means, they have a large family of\nchildren, then they ought not to call the State well managed and\nprosperous merely because its manufactures and its citizens multiply,\nif the manufactures, which bring new citizens into existence just as\nmuch as if they had actually begotten them, bring more of them into\nexistence than they can maintain, or are too precarious to go on\nmaintaining those whom for a while they maintained?  Hellenism,\nsurely, or the habit of fixing our mind upon the intelligible law of\nthings, is most salutary if it makes us see that the only absolute\ngood, the only absolute and eternal object prescribed to us by God's\nlaw, or the divine order of [249] things, is the progress towards\nperfection,--our own progress towards it and the progress of\nhumanity.  And therefore, for every individual man, and for every\nsociety of men, the possession and multiplication of children, like\nthe possession and multiplication of horses and pictures, is to be\naccounted good or bad, not in itself, but with reference to this\nobject and the progress towards it.  And as no man is to be excused\nin having horses or pictures, if his having them hinders his own or\nothers' progress towards perfection and makes them lead a servile and\nignoble life, so is no man to be excused for having children if his\nhaving them makes him or others lead this.  Plain thoughts of this\nkind are surely the spontaneous product of our consciousness, when it\nis allowed to play freely and disinterestedly upon the actual facts\nof our social condition, and upon our stock notions and stock habits\nin respect to it.  Firmly grasped and simply uttered, they are more\nlikely, one cannot but think, to better that condition, and to\ndiminish our formidable rate of one pauper to every nineteen of us,\nthan is the Hebraising and mechanical pursuit of free-trade by our\nLiberal friends.\n\nSo that, here as elsewhere, the practical operations [250] of our\nLiberal friends, by which they set so much store, and in which they\ninvite us to join them and to show what Mr. Bright calls a\ncommendable interest, do not seem to us so practical for real good as\nthey think; and our Liberal friends seem to us themselves to need to\nHellenise, as we say, a little,--that is, to examine into the nature\nof real good, and to listen to what their consciousness tells them\nabout it,--rather than to pursue with such heat and confidence their\npresent practical operations.  And it is clear that they have no just\ncause, so far as regards several operations of theirs which we have\ncanvassed, to reproach us with delicate Conservative scepticism; for\noften by Hellenising we seem to subvert stock Conservative notions\nand usages more effectually than they subvert them by Hebraising.\nBut, in truth, the free spontaneous play of consciousness with which\nculture tries to float our stock habits of thinking and acting, is by\nits very nature, as has been said, disinterested.  Sometimes the\nresult of floating them may be agreeable to this party, sometimes to\nthat; now it may be unwelcome to our so-called Liberals, now to our\nso-called Conservatives; but what culture seeks is, above all, to\nfloat them, to [251] prevent their being stiff and stark pieces of\npetrifaction any longer.  It is mere Hebraising, if we stop short,\nand refuse to let our consciousness play freely, whenever we or our\nfriends do not happen to like what it discovers to us.  This is to\nmake the Liberal party, or the Conservative party, our one thing\nneedful, instead of human perfection; and we have seen what mischief\narises from making an even greater thing than the Liberal or the\nConservative party,--the predominance of the moral side in man,--our\none thing needful.  But wherever the free play of our consciousness\nleads us, we shall follow; believing that in this way we shall tend\nto make good at all points what is wanting to us, and so shall be\nbrought nearer to our complete human perfection.\n\nThus we may often, perhaps, praise much that a so-called Liberal\nthinks himself forbidden to praise, and yet blame much that a so-\ncalled Conservative thinks himself forbidden to blame, because these\nare both of them partisans, and no partisan can afford to be thus\ndisinterested.  But we who are not partisans can afford it; and so,\nafter we have seen what Nonconformists lose by being locked up in\ntheir New Road forms of religious institution, [252] we can let\nourselves see, on the other hand, how their ministers, in a time of\nmovement of ideas like our present time, are apt to be more exempt\nthan the ministers of a great Church establishment from that self-\nconfidence, and sense of superiority to such a movement, which are\nnatural to a powerful hierarchy; and which in Archdeacon Denison, for\ninstance, seem almost carried to such a pitch that they may become,\none cannot but fear, his spiritual ruin.  But seeing this does not\ndispose us, therefore, to lock up all the nation in forms of worship\nof the New Road type; but it points us to the quite new ideal, of\ncombining grand and national forms of worship with an openness and\nmovement of mind not yet found in any hierarchy.  So, again, if we\nsee what is called ritualism making conquests in our Puritan middle-\nclass, we may rejoice that portions of this class should have become\nalive to the aesthetical weakness of their position, even although\nthey have not yet become alive to the intellectual weakness of it.\nIn Puritanism, on the other hand, we can respect that idea of dealing\nsincerely with oneself, which is at once the great force of\nPuritanism,--Puritanism's great superiority over all products, like\nritualism, of our Catholicising [253] tendencies,--and also an idea\nrich in the latent seeds of intellectual promise.  But we do this,\nwithout on that account hiding from ourselves that Puritanism has by\nHebraising misapplied that idea, has as yet developed none or hardly\none of those seeds, and that its triumph at its present stage of\ndevelopment would be baneful.\n\nEverything, in short, confirms us in the doctrine, so unpalatable to\nthe believers in action, that our main business at the present moment\nis not so much to work away at certain crude reforms of which we have\nalready the scheme in our own mind, as to create, through the help of\nthat culture which at the very outset we began by praising and\nrecommending, a frame of mind out of which really fruitful reforms\nmay with time grow.  At any rate, we ourselves must put up with our\nfriends' impatience, and with their reproaches against cultivated\ninaction, and must still decline to lend a hand to their practical\noperations, until we, for our own part at least, have grown a little\nclearer about the nature of real good, and have arrived nearer to a\ncondition of mind out of which really fruitful and solid operations\nmay spring.\n\nIn the meanwhile, since our Liberal friends keep [254] loudly and\nresolutely assuring us that their actual operations at present are\nfruitful and solid, let us in each case keep testing these operations\nin the simple way we have indicated, by letting the natural stream of\nour consciousness flow over them freely; and if they stand this test\nsuccessfully, then let us give them our commendable interest, but not\nelse.  For example.  Our Liberal friends assure us, at the very top\nof their voices, that their present actual operation for the\ndisestablishment of the Irish Church is fruitful and solid.  But what\nif, on testing it, the truth appears to be, that the statesmen and\nreasonable people of both parties wished for much the same thing,--\nthe fair apportionment of the church property of Ireland among the\nprincipal religious bodies there; but that, behind the statesmen and\nreasonable people, there was, on one side, a mass of Tory prejudice,\nand, on the other, a mass of Nonconformist prejudice, to which such\nan arrangement was unpalatable?  Well, the natural way, one thinks,\nwould have been for the statesmen and reasonable people of both sides\nto have united, and to have allayed and dissipated, so far as they\ncould, the resistance of their respective extremes, and where [255]\nthey could not, to have confronted it in concert.  But we see that,\ninstead of this, Liberal statesmen waited to trip up their rivals, if\nthey proposed the arrangement which both knew to be reasonable, by\nmeans of the prejudice of their own Nonconformist extreme; and then,\nthemselves proposing an arrangement to flatter this prejudice, made\nthe other arrangement, which they themselves knew to be reasonable,\nout of the question; and drove their rivals in their turn to blow up\nwith all their might, in the hope of baffling them, a great fire,\namong their own Tory extreme, of fierce prejudice and religious\nbigotry,--a fire which, once kindled, may always very easily spread\nfurther?  If, I say, on testing the present operation of our Liberal\nfriends for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the truth about\nit appears to be very much this, then, I think,--even with a\ntriumphant Liberal majority, and with our Liberal friends making\nimpassioned appeals to us to take a commendable interest in their\noperation and them, and to rally round what Sir Henry Hoare (who may\nbe described, perhaps, as a Barbarian converted to Philistinism, as\nI, on the other hand, seem to be a Philistine converted to culture)\nfinely calls the conscientiousness of a [256] Gladstone and the\nintellect of a Bright,--it is rather our duty to abstain, and,\ninstead of lending a hand to the operation of our Liberal friends, to\ndo what we can to abate and dissolve the mass of prejudice, Tory or\nNonconformist, which makes so doubtfully begotten and equivocal an\noperation as the present, producible and possible.\n\nAnd so we bring to an end what we had to say in praise of culture,\nand in evidence of its special utility for the circumstances in which\nwe find ourselves, and the confusion which environs us.  Through\nculture seems to lie our way, not only to perfection, but even to\nsafety.  Resolutely refusing to lend a hand to the imperfect\noperations of our Liberal friends, disregarding their impatience,\ntaunts, and reproaches, firmly bent on trying to find in the\nintelligible law of things a firmer and sounder basis for future\npractice than any which we have at present, and believing this search\nand discovery to be, for our generation and circumstances, of yet\nmore vital and pressing importance than practice itself, we\nnevertheless may do [257] more, perhaps, we poor disparaged followers\nof culture, to make the actual present, and the frame of society in\nwhich we live, solid and seaworthy, than all which our bustling\npoliticians can do.  For we have seen how much of our disorders and\nperplexities is due to the disbelief, among the classes and\ncombinations of men, Barbarian or Philistine, which have hitherto\ngoverned our society, in right reason, in a paramount best self; to\nthe inevitable decay and break-up of the organisations by which,\nasserting and expressing in these organisations their ordinary self\nonly, they have so long ruled us; and to their irresolution, when the\nsociety, which their conscience tells them they have made and still\nmanage not with right reason but with their ordinary self, is rudely\nshaken, in offering resistance to its subverters.  But for us,--who\nbelieve in right reason, in the duty and possibility of extricating\nand elevating our best self, in the progress of humanity towards\nperfection,--for us the framework of society, that theatre on which\nthis august drama has to unroll itself, is sacred; and whoever\nadministers it, and however we may seek to remove them from the\ntenure of administration, yet, while they administer, [258] we\nsteadily and with undivided heart support them in repressing anarchy\nand disorder; because without order there can be no society, and\nwithout society there can be no human perfection.\n\nWith me, indeed, this rule of conduct is hereditary.  I remember my\nfather, in one of his unpublished letters written more than forty\nyears ago, when the political and social state of the country was\ngloomy and troubled, and there were riots in many places, goes on,\nafter strongly insisting on the badness and foolishness of the\ngovernment, and on the harm and dangerousness of our feudal and\naristocratical constitution of society, and ends thus: \"As for\nrioting, the old Roman way of dealing with that is always the right\none; flog the rank and file, and fling the ringleaders from the\nTarpeian Rock!\"  And this opinion we can never forsake, however our\nLiberal friends may think a little rioting, and what they call\npopular demonstrations, useful sometimes to their own interests and\nto the interests of the valuable practical operations they have in\nhand, and however they may preach the right of an Englishman to be\nleft to do as far as possible what he likes, and the duty of his\ngovernment to indulge him and connive as much as [259] possible and\nabstain from all harshness of repression.  And even when they\nartfully show us operations which are undoubtedly precious, such as\nthe abolition of the slave-trade, and ask us if, for their sake,\nfoolish and obstinate governments may not wholesomely be frightened\nby a little disturbance, the good design in view and the difficulty\nof overcoming opposition to it being considered,--still we say no,\nand that monster processions in the streets and forcible irruptions\ninto the parks, even in professed support of this good design, ought\nto be unflinchingly forbidden and repressed; and that far more is\nlost than is gained by permitting them.  Because a State in which law\nis authoritative and sovereign, a firm and settled course of public\norder, is requisite if man is to bring to maturity anything precious\nand lasting now, or to found anything precious and lasting for the\nfuture.\n\nThus, in our eyes, the very framework and exterior order of the\nState, whoever may administer the State, is sacred; and culture is\nthe most resolute enemy of anarchy, because of the great hopes and\ndesigns for the State which culture teaches us to nourish.  But as,\nbelieving in right reason, and having faith in the progress of\nhumanity [260] towards perfection, and ever labouring for this end,\nwe grow to have clearer sight of the ideas of right reason, and of\nthe elements and helps of perfection, and come gradually to fill the\nframework of the State with them, to fashion its internal composition\nand all its laws and institutions conformably to them, and to make\nthe State more and more the expression, as we say, of our best self,\nwhich is not manifold, and vulgar, and unstable, and contentious, and\never-varying, but one, and noble, and secure, and peaceful, and the\nsame for all mankind,--with what aversion shall we not then regard\nanarchy, with what firmness shall we not check it, when there is so\nmuch that is so precious which it will endanger!  So that, for the\nsake of the present, but far more for the sake of the future, the\nlovers of culture are unswervingly and with a good conscience the\nopposers of anarchy.  And not as the Barbarians and Philistines,\nwhose honesty and whose sense of humour make them shrink, as we have\nseen, from treating the State as too serious a thing, and from giving\nit too much power;--for indeed the only State they know of, and think\nthey administer, is the expression of their ordinary self; and though\nthe headstrong and violent [261] extreme among them might gladly arm\nthis with full authority, yet their virtuous mean is, as we have\nsaid, pricked in conscience at doing this, and so our Barbarian\nSecretaries of State let the Park railings be broken down, and our\nPhilistine Alderman-Colonels let the London roughs rob and beat the\nbystanders.  But we, beholding in the State no expression of our\nordinary self, but even already, as it were, the appointed frame and\nprepared vessel of our best self, and, for the future, our best\nself's powerful, beneficent, and sacred expression and organ,--we are\nwilling and resolved, even now, to strengthen against anarchy the\ntrembling hands of our Barbarian Home Secretaries, and the feeble\nknees of our Philistine Alderman-Colonels; and to tell them, that it\nis not really in behalf of their own ordinary self that they are\ncalled to protect the Park railings, and to suppress the London\nroughs, but in behalf of the best self both of themselves and of all\nof us in the future.\n\nNevertheless, though for resisting anarchy the lovers of culture may\nprize and employ fire and strength, yet they must, at the same time,\nbear constantly in mind that it is not at this moment true, what the\nmajority of people tell us, that the world [262] wants fire and\nstrength more than sweetness and light, and that things are for the\nmost part to be settled first and understood afterwards.  We have\nseen how much of our present perplexities and confusion this untrue\nnotion of the majority of people amongst us has caused, and tends to\nperpetuate.  Therefore the true business of the friends of culture\nnow is, to dissipate this false notion, to spread the belief in right\nreason and in a firm intelligible law of things, and to get men to\nallow their thought and consciousness to play on their stock notions\nand habits disinterestedly and freely; to get men to try, in\npreference to staunchly acting with imperfect knowledge, to obtain\nsome sounder basis of knowledge on which to act.  This is what the\nfriends and lovers of culture have to do, however the believers in\naction may grow impatient with us for saying so, and may insist on\nour lending a hand to their practical operations, and showing a\ncommendable interest in them.\n\nTo this insistence we must indeed turn a deaf ear.  But neither, on\nthe other hand, must the friends of culture expect to take the\nbelievers in action by storm, or to be visibly and speedily\nimportant, and to rule and cut a figure in the world.  Aristotle\nsays, [263] that those for whom ideas and the pursuit of the\nintelligible law of things can have much attraction, are principally\nthe young, filled with generous spirit and with a passion for\nperfection; but the mass of mankind, he says, follow seeming goods\nfor real, bestowing hardly a thought upon true sweetness and light;--\n\"and to their lives,\" he adds mournfully, \"who can give another and a\nbetter rhythm?\"  But, although those chiefly attracted by sweetness\nand light will probably always be the young and enthusiastic, and\nculture must not hope to take the mass of mankind by storm, yet we\nwill not therefore, for our own day and for our own people, admit and\nrest in the desponding sentence of Aristotle.  For is not this the\nright crown of the long discipline of Hebraism, and the due fruit of\nmankind's centuries of painful schooling in self-conquest, and the\njust reward, above all, of the strenuous energy of our own nation and\nkindred in dealing honestly with itself and walking steadfastly\naccording to the best light it knows,--that, when in the fulness of\ntime it has reason and beauty offered to it, and the law of things as\nthey really are, it should at last walk by this true light with the\nsame staunchness [264] and zeal with which it formerly walked by its\nimperfect light; and thus man's two great natural forces, Hebraism\nand Hellenism, should no longer be dissociated and rival, but should\nbe a joint force of right thinking and strong doing to carry him on\ntowards perfection?  This is what the lovers of culture may perhaps\ndare to augur for such a nation as ours.  Therefore, however great\nthe changes to be accomplished, and however dense the array of\nBarbarians, Philistines, and Populace, we will neither despair on the\none hand, nor, on the other, threaten violent revolution and change.\nBut we will look forward cheerfully and hopefully to \"a revolution,\"\nas the Duke of Wellington said, \"by due course of law;\" though not\nexactly such laws as our Liberal friends are now, with their actual\nlights, fond of offering us.\n\nBut if despondency and violence are both of them forbidden to the\nbeliever in culture, yet neither, on the other hand, is public life\nand direct political action much permitted to him.  For it is his\nbusiness, as we have seen, to get the present believers in action,\nand lovers of political talking and doing, to make a return upon\ntheir own minds, scrutinise their stock notions and habits much more,\nvalue their present [265] talking and doing much less; in order that,\nby learning to think more clearly, they may come at last to act less\nconfusedly.  But how shall we persuade our Barbarian to hold lightly\nto his feudal usages; how shall we persuade our Nonconformist that\nhis time spent in agitating for the abolition of church-rates would\nhave been better spent in getting worthier ideas than churchmen have\nof God and the ordering of the world, or his time spent in battling\nfor voluntaryism in education better spent in learning to value and\nfound a public and national culture; how shall we persuade, finally,\nour Alderman-Colonel not to be content with sitting in the hall of\njudgment or marching at the head of his men of war, without some\nknowledge how to perform judgment and how to direct men of war,--how,\nI say, shall we persuade all these of this, if our Alderman-Colonel\nsees that we want to get his leading-staff and his scales of justice\nfor our own hands; or the Nonconformist, that we want for ourselves\nhis platform; or the Barbarian, that we want for ourselves his pre-\neminency and function?  Certainly they will be less slow to believe,\nas we want them to believe, that the intelligible law of things has\nin itself something desirable and [266] precious, and that all place,\nfunction, and bustle are hollow goods without it, if they see that we\ncan content ourselves with it, and find in it our satisfaction,\nwithout making it an instrument to give us for ourselves place,\nfunction, and bustle.\n\nAnd although Mr. Sidgwick says that social usefulness really means\n\"losing oneself in a mass of disagreeable, hard, mechanical details,\"\nand though all the believers in action are fond of asserting the same\nthing, yet, as to lose ourselves is not what we want, but to find the\nintelligible law of things, this assertion too we shall not blindly\naccept, but shall sift and try it a little first.  And if we see that\nbecause the believers in action, forgetting Goethe's maxim, \"to act\nis easy, to think is hard,\" imagine there is some wonderful virtue in\nlosing oneself in a mass of mechanical details, therefore they excuse\nthemselves from much thought about the clear ideas which ought to\ngovern these details, then we shall give our chief care and pains to\nseeking out those ideas and to setting them forth; being persuaded,\nthat, if we have the ideas firm and clear, the mechanical details for\ntheir execution will come a great deal more simply and easily than we\nnow [267] suppose.  And even in education, where our Liberal friends\nare now, with much zeal, bringing out their train of practical\noperations and inviting all men to lend them a hand; and where, since\neducation is the road to culture, we might gladly lend them a hand\nwith their practical operations if we could lend them one anywhere;\nyet, if we see that any German or Swiss or French law for education\nrests on very clear ideas about the citizen's claim, in this matter,\nupon the State, and the State's duty towards the citizen, but has its\nmechanical details comparatively few and simple, while an English law\nfor the same concern is ruled by no clear idea about the citizen's\nclaim and the State's duty, but has, in compensation, a mass of\nminute mechanical details about the number of members on a school-\ncommittee, and how many shall be a quorum, and how they shall be\nsummoned, and how often they shall meet,--then we must conclude that\nour nation stands in more need of clear ideas on the main matter than\nof laboured details about the accessories of the matter, and that we\ndo more service by trying to help it to the ideas, than by lending it\na hand with the details.  So while Mr. Samuel Morley and his friends\ntalk [268] of changing their policy on education, not for the sake of\nmodelling it on more sound ideas, but \"for fear the management of\neducation should be taken out of their hands,\" we shall not much care\nfor taking the management out of their hands and getting it into\nours; but rather we shall try and make them perceive, that to model\neducation on sound ideas is of more importance than to have the\nmanagement of it in one's own hands ever so fully.\n\nAt this exciting juncture, then, while so many of the lovers of new\nideas, somewhat weary, as we too are, of the stock performances of\nour Liberal friends upon the political stage, are disposed to rush\nvaliantly upon this public stage themselves, we cannot at all think\nthat for a wise lover of new ideas this stage is the right one.\nPlenty of people there will be without us,--country gentlemen in\nsearch of a club, demagogues in search of a tub, lawyers in search of\na place, industrialists in search of gentility,--who will come from\nthe east and from the west, and will sit down at that Thyeste\u00e4n\nbanquet of clap-trap, which English public life for these many years\npast has been.  Because, so long as those old organisations, of which\nwe have seen [269] the insufficiency,--those expressions of our\nordinary self, Barbarian or Philistine,--have force anywhere, they\nwill have force in Parliament.  There, the man whom the Barbarians\nsend, cannot but be impelled to please the Barbarians' ordinary self,\nand their natural taste for the bathos; and the man whom the\nPhilistines send, cannot but be impelled to please those of the\nPhilistines.  Parliamentary Conservatism will and must long mean\nthis, that the Barbarians should keep their heritage; and\nParliamentary Liberalism, that the Barbarians should pass away, as\nthey will pass away, and that into their heritage the Philistines\nshould enter.  This seems, indeed, to be the true and authentic\npromise of which our Liberal friends and Mr. Bright believe\nthemselves the heirs, and the goal of that great man's labours.\nPresently, perhaps, Mr. Odger and Mr. Bradlaugh will be there with\ntheir mission to oust both Barbarians and Philistines, and to get the\nheritage for the Populace.  We, on the other hand, are for giving the\nheritage neither to the Barbarians nor to the Philistines, nor yet to\nthe Populace; but we are for the transformation of each and all of\nthese according to the law of perfection.\n\n[270] Through the length and breadth of our nation a sense,--vague\nand obscure as yet,--of weariness with the old organisations, of\ndesire for this transformation, works and grows.  In the House of\nCommons the old organisations must inevitably be most enduring and\nstrongest, the transformation must inevitably be longest in showing\nitself; and it may truly be averred, therefore, that at the present\njuncture the centre of movement is not in the House of Commons.  It\nis in the fermenting mind of the nation; and his is for the next\ntwenty years the real influence who can address himself to this.\n\nPericles was perhaps the most perfect public speaker who ever lived,\nfor he was the man who most perfectly combined thought and wisdom\nwith feeling and eloquence.  Yet Plato brings in Alcibiades\ndeclaring, that men went away from the oratory of Pericles, saying it\nwas very fine, it was very good, and afterwards thinking no more\nabout it; but they went away from hearing Socrates talk, he says,\nwith the point of what he had said sticking fast in their minds, and\nthey could not get rid of it.  Socrates is poisoned and dead; but in\nhis own breast does not every man carry about with him a possible\nSocrates, [271] in that power of a disinterested play of\nconsciousness upon his stock notions and habits, of which this wise\nand admirable man gave all through his lifetime the great example,\nand which was the secret of his incomparable influence?  And he who\nleads men to call forth and exercise in themselves this power, and\nwho busily calls it forth and exercises it in himself, is at the\npresent moment, perhaps, as Socrates was in his time, more in concert\nwith the vital working of men's minds, and more effectually\nsignificant, than any House of Commons' orator, or practical operator\nin politics.\n\nEvery one is now boasting of what he has done to educate men's minds\nand to give things the course they are taking.  Mr. Disraeli\neducates, Mr. Bright educates, Mr. Beales educates.  We, indeed,\npretend to educate no one, for we are still engaged in trying to\nclear and educate ourselves.  But we are sure that the endeavour to\nreach, through culture, the firm intelligible law of things, we are\nsure that the detaching ourselves from our stock notions and habits,\nthat a more free play of consciousness, an increased desire for\nsweetness and light, and all the bent which we call [272]\nHellenising, is the master-impulse now of the life of our nation and\nof humanity,--somewhat obscurely perhaps for this moment, but\ndecisively for the immediate future; and that those who work for this\nare the sovereign educators.  Docile echoes of the eternal voice,\npliant organs of the infinite will, they are going along with the\nessential movement of the world; and this is their strength, and\ntheir happy and divine fortune.  For if the believers in action, who\nare so impatient with us and call us effeminate, had had the same\nfortune, they would, no doubt, have surpassed us in this sphere of\nvital influence by all the superiority of their genius and energy\nover ours.  But now we go the way the world is going, while they\nabolish the Irish Church by the power of the Nonconformists'\nantipathy to establishments, or they enable a man to marry his\ndeceased wife's sister.\n\nTHE END.\n\nNOTES\n\n201. +John 18:36.  \"Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world:\nif my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that\nI should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from\nhence.\"  King James Bible.\n\n219. +Proverbs 26:8.  \"As he that bindeth a stone in a sling, so is\nhe that giveth honour to a fool.\"  King James Bible.\n\n241. +Arnold refers to fourteenth-century priest Thomas \u00e0 Kempis.\nThe Benham translation and a modern English translation of the\nImitatio are currently available from the College of St. Benedict at\nSaint John's University Internet Theology Resources site.  See also\nthe Benham text link.\n\n243. +Genesis 1:21-22.  \"And God created great whales, and every\nliving creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth\nabundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind:\nand God saw that\nit was good. / And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and\nmultiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in\nthe earth.\"  King James Bible.\n\n244. +Deuteronomy 15:11.  \"For the poor shall never cease out of the\nland: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand\nwide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.\"","title":"Culture and Anarchy","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":69624}