{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_64021/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_64021","id":"gutenberg_64021","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64021","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Knowledge, Sociology of","Philosophy and religion","Science -- Moral and ethical aspects"],"text":"THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE\n                    AND OTHER PLEAS AND DISCUSSIONS\n\n\n                                   BY\n\n                          FRANCES POWER COBBE\n\n  AUTHOR OF \u201cAN ESSAY ON INTUITIVE MORALS,\u201d \u201cRELIGIOUS DUTY,\u201d \u201cBROKEN\n   LIGHTS,\u201d \u201cTHE HOPES OF THE HUMAN RACE,\u201d \u201cTHE PEAK IN DARIEN,\u201d \u201cTHE\n              DUTIES OF WOMEN,\u201d \u201cA FAITHLESS WORLD,\u201d ETC.\n\n\n                                 BOSTON\n                   GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET\n                                  1888\n\n\n\n\n                               CONTENTS.\n\n\n            ESSAY                                      PAGE\n                  PREFACE                                 v\n\n               I. THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE        1\n\n              II. THE EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS          35\n\n             III. PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM                    69\n\n              IV. THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING               111\n\n               V. TO KNOW, OR NOT TO KNOW               147\n\n              VI. THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE  173\n\n\n\n\n                                PREFACE.\n\n\nWe are all possessed of friends who, when any serious belief or matter\nof practical conduct is in question, take up at the outset a thesis of\ntheir own which they press on our acceptance with the best arguments at\ntheir disposal. It is a rarer privilege to enjoy the intercourse of one\nwho does not invariably start with a ready-made opinion of what may be\ntrue, right, or expedient in the doubtful case on which we wish to\nconsult him, but who will patiently turn over the matter with us,\nsuggest and register the various \u201cpros and cons,\u201d refer to admitted\nprinciples and facts, and thus aid us to form a comprehensive judgment\nfor ourselves rather than induce us to accept his own. The discourse of\nthe first order of friends is an Argument, a Plea, a Contention; that of\nthe second, a Discussion.\n\nIn the same way, of course, an Essay may be either a Plea or a\nDiscussion. The author may take the position of Counsel for one side or\nother of the case before the reader, or else he may charge as Judge, and\nsum up the substance of such arguments as might have been used by two\nadvocates on the opposite sides. Either style of writing is perfectly\nlegitimate; and each has its particular fitness and utility.\nMisunderstanding and perplexity only occur when the hasty reader\n(newspaper critics being signally guilty in this matter) chooses to\nassume that an avowedly one-sided Plea is intended for a Judicial\nDiscussion,[1] or treats a Discussion as a Plea for the side which the\ncritic dislikes.\n\nIn the present little collection of Essays, written at various times and\nfor various objects, it will be found that the first three belong to the\nclass which I have described as Pleas, and the last three more or less\nto that of Discussions.\n\nI plead that the Scientific Spirit of the Age, while it has given us\nmany precious things, is, in its present exorbitant development,\ndepriving us of things more precious still.\n\nI plead that the Education of the Emotions (to be carried on chiefly\nthrough the contagion of good and noble sentiments) is an object of\nparamount importance, albeit nearly totally ignored in ordinary systems\nof education.\n\nI plead that, in the present disintegration of all religious opinion,\nJudaism may yet become a progressive, and cease to be merely a tribal,\nfaith; and that, if it absorb the moral and spiritual essence of\nChristianity, it may solve the great problem of combining a theology\nconsonant to modern philosophy with a worship hallowed by the sacred\nassociations of the remotest past.\n\nIn the last three Essays, I discuss the relation of Knowledge to\nHappiness; I discuss the real\u2014as distinguished from the\nconventional\u2014character of our common processes of Thought; and, finally,\nI discuss the respective claims of Town and Country Life to be esteemed\nmost healthy and felicitous for body and mind.\n\nI shall much rejoice if I win my readers to adopt the opinions which I\nhave advocated in the first half of the book.\n\nI shall remain altogether indifferent as to which of the alternative\nviews put forth in the concluding Essays may seem to them most\nimpressive, and only congratulate myself if I shall have succeeded in\nsetting forth in due light and order the multitudinous points which\ntogether constitute the materials for forming a sound judgment upon\nthem.\n\n                                                    FRANCES POWER COBBE.\n\n  HENGWRT, DOLGELLY,\n        1888.\n\n\n\n\n                                ESSAY I.\n                   THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE.\n\n\nThat the present is pre-eminently the Age of Science is a fact equally\nrecognized by the majority who hail it with triumph and by the minority\nwho regard it with feelings wherein regret and apprehension have their\nplace. As in Literature an age of production is ever followed by an age\nof criticism, so in the general history of human interests War,\nReligion, Art, start in early days and run their swift course, while\nScience creeps slowly after them, till at last she passes them on the\nway and comes foremost in the race. We still in our time have War; but\nit is no longer the conflict of valiant soldiers, but the game of\nscientific strategists. We still have Religion; but she no longer claims\nearth and heaven as her domain, but meekly goes to church by a path over\nwhich Science has notified, \u201cOn Sufferance Only.\u201d We still have Art; but\nit is no longer the Art of Fancy, but the Art of the Intellect, wherein\nthe Beautiful is indefinitely postponed to the technically True, as\nTruth is discerned by men who think _qu\u2019il n\u2019y a rien de vrai except\u00e9 le\nlaid_. All our multiform activities, from agriculture down to\ndressmaking, are in these days nothing if not \u201cscientific,\u201d and to\nthousands of worthy people it is enough to say that Science teaches this\nor that, or that the interests of Science require such and such a\nsacrifice, to cause them to bow their heads, as pious men of old did at\nthe message of a Prophet. \u201cIt is SCIENCE! Let it do what seemeth it\ngood.\u201d The claims of the \u00e6sthetic faculty, and even of the moral sense,\nto speak in arrest of judgment on matters entirely within their own\nspheres, are ruled out of court.\n\nBy a paradoxical fatality, however, it would appear as if the obsession\nof the Scientific Spirit is likely to be a little lightened for us by an\nevent which might have been expected to rivet the yoke on our necks. The\nrecently published Life of the most illustrious and most amiable man of\nScience of this scientific age has suggested to many readers doubts of\nthe all-sufficiency of Science to build up not theories, but men. Mr.\nDarwin\u2019s admirably candid avowal of the gradual extinction in his mind\nof the \u00e6sthetic[2] and religious elements has proved startling to a\ngeneration which, even when it is ready to abandon Religion, would be\ndirefully distressed to lose the pleasures afforded by Art and Nature,\nPoetry and Music. Instead of lifting the scientific vocation to the\nskies (as was probably anticipated), this epoch-making Biography seems\nto have gone far to throw a sort of dam across the stream, and to have\narrested not a few Science-worshippers with the query: \u201cWhat shall it\nprofit a man if he discover the origin of species and know exactly how\nearth-worms and sun-dews conduct themselves, if all the while he grow\nblind to the loveliness of nature, deaf to music, insensible to poetry,\nand as unable to lift his soul to the Divine and Eternal as was the\nprimeval Ape from whom he has descended? Is this all that Science can do\nfor her devotee? Must he be shorn of the glory of humanity when he is\nordained her Priest? Does he find his loftiest faculties atrophied when\nhe has become a \tmachine for grinding general laws out of large\ncollections of facts\u201d?[3]\n\nWhile these reflections are passing through many minds, it may be\npermitted to me to review some features of the Scientific Spirit of the\nAge. Frankly, I shall do it from an adverse point of view. There were\nmany years of my life during which I regarded it with profound, though\nalways distant, admiration. Grown old, I have come to think that many\nspirits in the hierarchy are loftier and purer; that the noblest study\nof mankind is Man, rather than rock or insect; and that, even at its\nbest, Knowledge is immeasurably less precious than Goodness and Love.\nWhether in these estimates I err or am justified, it would, in any case,\nbe superfluous for me to add my feeble voice to the glorification of the\nScientific Spirit. Diana of the Ephesians was never proclaimed so\nvociferously \u201cGreat\u201d; and perhaps, like the worshippers of the elder\ngoddess, it may be said of those of Science, \u201cThe most part know not\nwherefore they have come together.\u201d It will suffice if I succeed in\npartially exhibiting how much we are in danger of losing by the\nScientific Spirit, while others show us, more or less truly, what we\ngain thereby.\n\nIn speaking of \u201cScience\u201d in this paper, I must be understood to refer\nonly to the Physical Sciences, not to the mathematical or metaphysical.\nThe former (especially the Biological group) have of late years come so\nmuch to the front that the old application of the word to the exact\nsciences and to metaphysics and ethics has almost dropped out of popular\nuse. I also desire to explain at starting that I am not so blind as to\nignore the splendid achievements of modern physical science in its own\nrealm, nor the benefits which many applications of the Scientific Spirit\nhave brought in various other directions. It is the intrusiveness and\noppression of the Scientific Spirit in regions where it has no proper\nwork, and (still more often) its predominance in others where its place\nshould be wholly subordinate, against which a protest appears to be\nneeded. A score of causes have contributed in our generation to set\nScience up and to pull other things down. The levels need to be\nredressed. Time will not permit me to exhibit the results of the\nexcessive share taken of late years by the Scientific Spirit in many\npractical matters wherein experience and common sense were safer guides,\n_e.g._, in Agriculture. This side of the question I must leave\nuntouched, and limit myself to the discussion of the general influence\nof the Scientific Spirit in Education, in Art, in Morals, and in\nReligion.\n\n\nProfessor Tyndall, in the Preface to his great work on \u201cHeat as a mode\nof Motion,\u201d calls Science \u201cthe noblest growth of modern times,\u201d and adds\nthat \u201cas a means of intellectual education its claims are still\ndisputed, though, once properly organized, greater and more beneficent\nrevolutions wait its employment here than those which have marked its\napplication in the material world\u201d (2d ed., p. x). Since the publication\nof this book, and indeed since the opening of the Age of Science, the\nrelative claims of Science and Literature to form the basis of\n_intellectual_ instruction have been incessantly debated by men\nqualified by experience in tuition (which I cannot claim to be) to form\na judgment on the subject. There has been, however, I think, too little\nattention given on either side to the relative _moral_ influences of the\ntwo studies.\n\nIn addressing the London Society for the Extension of University\nTeaching on March 3 last, Sir James Paget expressed his dissent from\nProfessor Morley\u2019s opinion (given on a similar occasion last year) that\n\u201cLiterature was an excellent, if not a better study than Science.\u201d Sir\nJames maintained, on the contrary, that \u201c_nothing could better advance\nhuman prosperity than Science_,\u201d and he elaborately set forth the\nspecific benefits of a scientific education as he conceived them, as\nfollows:\u2014\n\n  There was first the teaching of the power of observing, then the\n  teaching of accuracy, then of the difficulty of attaining to a real\n  knowledge of the truth, and, lastly, the teaching of the methods by\n  which they could pass from that which was proved to the thinking of\n  what was probable.[4]\n\nIt would, of course, be unjust to hold Science to these definitions, as\nif they exhausted her claims as our instructress. It may, however,\nfairly be assumed that, in the view of one of the leading men of science\nof the day, they are _paramount_. If any much higher results than they\nwere to be expected from scientific teaching, Sir James would scarcely\nhave omitted to present them first or last. To what, then, do these four\ngreat lessons of Science amount? They teach\u2014and, I think, teach\nonly\u2014Observation, Accuracy, Intellectual Caution, and the acquirement of\na Method of advancing to the _thinking of what was probable_,\u2014possibly\nthe method commonly known as Induction.\n\nI must confess that these \u201cgreat truths\u201d (as Sir James oddly calls them)\nrepresent to my mind only the culmination of the lower range of human\nfaculties; or, more strictly speaking, the perfect application to human\nconcerns of those faculties which are common to man and the lower\nanimals. A fox may be an \u201c_observer_,\u201d and an exceedingly _accurate_\none\u2014of hen-roosts. He may be deeply sensible of \u201c_the difficulty of\nattaining to a real knowledge_\u201d\u2014of traps. Further than this, he may even\n\u201c_pass from the proved_\u201d\u2014existence of a pack of hounds in his cover to\n\u201c_thinking that it was probable_\u201d\u2014he would shortly be chased. To train a\nMAN, it is surely indispensable to develop in him a superior order of\npowers from these. His mind must be enriched with the culture of his own\nage and country, and of other lands and ages, and fortified by\nfamiliarity with the thoughts of great souls on the topics of loftiest\ninterest. He must be accustomed to think on subjects above those to\nwhich his observation, or accuracy of description, or caution in\naccepting evidence can apply, and on which (it is to be hoped) he will\nreach some anchorage of faith more firm than Sir James Paget\u2019s climax of\nscientific culture, \u201c_the passing from that which was proved to the\nthinking of what was probable_.\u201d He ought to handle the method of\ndeductive reasoning at least as well as that of induction, and beyond\nthese (purely intellectual) attainments a human education making claim\nto completeness should cultivate the imagination and poetic sentiment;\nshould \u201csoften manners,\u201d as the _literae humaniores_ proverbially did of\nold; should widen the sympathies, dignify the character, inspire\nenthusiasm for noble actions, and chivalrous tenderness towards women\nand all who need defence; and thus send forth the accomplished student a\n_gentleman_ in the true sense of the word. The benefits attributed by\nSir James Paget to Scientific education, and even those with which, in\ncandor, we may credit it beyond his four \u201cgreat truths,\u201d fall, I venture\nto think, deplorably short of such a standard of culture as this.\n\nThe deficiencies of Scientific education do not exhaust the objections\nagainst it. There seem to be positive evils almost inseparable from such\ntraining when carried far with the young. One of the worst is the danger\nof the adoption by the student of materialistic views on all subjects.\nHe need not become a theoretic or speculative Materialist: that is\nanother risk, which may or may not be successfully eliminated. But he\nwill almost inevitably fall into practical materialism. Of the two sides\nof human life, his scientific training will compel him to think always\nin the first place of the lower. The material (or, as our fathers would\nhave called it, the _carnal_) fact will be uppermost in his mind, and\nthe spiritual meaning thereof more or less out of sight. He will view\nhis mother\u2019s tears not as expressions of her sorrow, but as solutions of\nmuriates and carbonates of soda, and of phosphates of lime; and he will\nreflect that they were caused not by his heartlessness, but by cerebral\npressure on her lachrymal glands. When she dies, he will \u201cpeep and\nbotanize\u201d on her grave,\u2014not with the poet\u2019s sense of the\nsacrilegiousness of such ill-placed curiosity, but with the serene\nconviction of the meritoriousness of accurate observation among the\nscientifically interesting \u201cFlora\u201d of a cemetery.\n\nTo this class of mind, thoroughly imbued with the Scientific Spirit,\nDisease is the most important of facts and the greatest of evils. Sin,\non the other hand, is a thing on which neither microscope nor telescope\nnor spectroscope, nor even stethoscope, can afford instruction. Possibly\nthe student will think it only a spectral illusion; or he will foresee\nthat it may be explained by and by scientifically, as a form of disease.\nThere may be discovered _bacilli_ of Hatred, Covetousness, and Lust,\nrespectively responsible for Murder, Theft, and Adultery. Already\nhypocrisy is a recognized form of Hysteria. The state of opinion in\n\u201cErewhon\u201d may be hopefully looked for in England, when the Scientific\nSpirit altogether prevails.\n\nBesides its materializing tendency, a Scientific Education involves\nother evils, among which may be counted the fostering of a callous and\nirreverent spirit. To this I shall return presently. Of course every\ntendency of a pursuit, good or bad, affects the young who are engaged in\nit much more than the old, whose characters may have been moulded under\nquite opposite influences. We must wait for a generation to see the\nScientific Spirit in its full development.\n\nAs to the instruction of young men and women in Physiological Science in\nparticular, I am exonerated from treating the subject by being\nprivileged to cite the opinions of two of the most eminent and\nexperienced members of the scholastic profession. I do so with great\nthankfulness, believing that it will be a revelation to many parents,\nblindly caught by scientific claptrap, to learn that such are the views\nof men among the best qualified in England to pronounce judgment on the\nsubject.\n\nThe late lamented Mr. Thring, of Uppingham, wrote to me, Sept. 6, 1886:\u2014\n\n  My writings on Education sufficiently show how strongly I feel on\n  the subject of a literary education, or rather how confident I am in\n  the judgment that there can be no worthy education which is not\n  based on the study of the highest thoughts of the highest men in the\n  best shape. As for Science (most of it falsely so called), if a few\n  leading minds are excepted, it simply amounts, to the average dull\n  worker, to no more than a kind of upper shop work, weighing out and\n  labelling and learning alphabetical formul\u00e6,\u2014a superior grocer\n  assistant\u2019s work, and has not a single element of higher mental\n  training in it. Not to mention that it leaves out all knowledge of\n  men and life, and therefore\u2014is eminently fitted for life and its\n  struggle! Physiology in its worse sense adds to this a brutalizing\n  of the average practitioner, or rather a devilish combination of\n  intellect worship and cruelty at the expense of feeling and\n  character. For my part, if it were true that Vivisection had\n  wonderfully relieved bodily disease for men, if it was at the cost\n  of lost spirits, then let the body perish. And it is at the cost of\n  lost spirits. I do not say that under no circumstances should an\n  experiment take place, but I do say that under no circumstances\n  should an experiment take place for teaching purposes. You will see\n  how decided my judgments are on this matter.\n\nThe Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, Head Master of Harrow, has been good enough\nto write to me as follows:\u2014\n\n  I am most willing to let you quote my words, whether what I said\n  before or what I say now. You command my full sympathy in the\n  crusade which you have so nobly declared against cruelty. I say this\n  frankly, although I know that there is some difference between us in\n  regard to the practice of Vivisection. But even if it be necessary\n  that in some cases, and under strict conditions, vivisectional\n  experiments should be made upon animals, I cannot doubt that the use\n  of such experiments tends to exercise a demoralizing influence upon\n  any person who may be called to make them. I hold, therefore, that\n  the educational effect of Vivisection is always injurious. Knowledge\n  is dearly purchased at the cost of tenderness, and I cannot believe\n  that any morally-minded person could desire to familiarize the young\n  with the sight of animal suffering. For my part, I look upon the\n  hardness of heart with which some distinguished physiologists have\n  met the protest raised against Vivisection as one of many signs that\n  materialism means at the last an inversion of the ethical law;\n  _i.e._, a preference of knowledge to goodness, of mind to spirit,\n  or, in a word, of human things to divine. Surely it is a paradox\n  that they who minimize the specific distinction between man and the\n  animals should be the least tender in their views of animal\n  sufferings, and that Christians who accentuate that distinction\n  should be willing to spare animals pain at the cost of enhancing\n  their own. I conceive it then to be a primary duty of a modern\n  educator, at School or at College, to cultivate in his pupils, by\n  all the means in his power, the sympathetic sentiment towards the\n  animal world.\n\nTo turn to a less painful part of our subject.\n\nScience and Art are constantly coupled together in common parlance and\nin grants of public money; but, if ever incompatibility of temper formed\na just ground of divorce, it is surely in their case. When Science\u2014like\nPoverty\u2014comes in at the door, Art\u2014like Love\u2014flies out at the window.\nThey move in different planes, and touch different parts of human\nnature. Science appeals to the Intellect, Art to the Emotions; and we\nare so constituted that our Intellects and Emotions are like buckets in\na well. When our Intellects are in the ascendant, our Emotions sink out\nof sight; when our Emotions rise to the surface, our busy Intellects\nsubside into quiescence. It is only the idolatry of Science which could\nmake intelligent men overlook the fact that she and Art resemble two\nleashed greyhounds pulling opposite ways, and never running together\nunless there be some game (shall we surmise an endowment of public\nmoney?) in view. The synthetic, reverential, sympathizing spirit of Art\nis opposed, as the different poles of the magnet, to the analytic,\nself-asserting, critical spirit of Science. The artist seeks Beauty;\nfinds likenesses; discerns the Ideal through the Real. The man of\nScience seeks Facts; draws distinctions; strips the Real to the skin and\nthe bones.\n\nA great light of the Scientific Age has been heard to say that when he\nfirst visited the Vatican he \u201csat down before Raphael\u2019s Transfiguration\nand filled three pages of his note-book with its faults.\u201d It was the\nmost natural thing in the world for him to do! How should a Physicist\napprove of three figures suspended in the air in defiance of the laws of\ngravitation? Or what could a Zo\u00f6logist say to an angel outrageously\ncombining in his person the wings exclusively belonging to the Order\n_Aves_ with the arms and legs of _Bimana_? Worst of all, what must be\nthe feelings of a Physiologist confronted with a bas-relief of a Centaur\nwith two stomachs, or of a Cherub with none?\n\nPoetry is the Art of Arts. If we desire to see what Science can do for\nit, let us take a typical piece wherein Fancy revels and plays like an\nAriel with wreaths of lovely tropes,\u2014say Shelley\u2019s \u201cSensitive Plant,\u201d\nfor example. We must begin by cutting out all the absurdly unscientific\nstatements; _e.g._, that the lily of the valley grows pale with passion,\nthat the hyacinth rings peals of music from its bells, and that the\nnarcissus gazes at itself in the stream. Then, in lieu of this folly, we\nmust describe how the garden has been thoroughly drained and\nscientifically manured with guano and sewage. After this the flowers may\nbe mentioned under their proper classes, as monandria and polyandria,\ncryptogams and phenogams. Such would be the result of bringing the\nScientific Spirit to bear on Poetry. Introduced into the border realm of\nFiction, it begins by marring with pedantic illustrations the otherwise\nartistic work of George Eliot. Pushed further, it furnishes us with\nmedical novels, wherein the leading incident is a surgeon dissecting his\naunt. Still a step onward, we reach the brute realism of \u201cA Mummer\u2019s\nWife\u201d and \u201cLa Joie de Vivre.\u201d The distance between Walter Scott and Zola\nmeasures that between Art and Science in Fiction.\n\nTo many readers it may appear that the antagonism of Science to Art may\nbe condoned in favor of her high claim to be the guide, not to Beauty,\nbut to Truth. But is it indeed _Truth_, in the sense which we have\nhitherto given to that great and sacred word, at which Physical Science\nis now aiming? Can we think of Truth merely as a vast heap of Facts,\npiled up into an orderly pyramid of a Science, like one of Timur\u2019s heaps\nof skulls? To collect a million facts, test them, classify them, raise\nby induction generalizations concerning them, and hand them down to the\nnext generation to add a few thousand more facts and (probably) to\nreconstruct the pyramid on a different basis and another plan,\u2014if this\nbe indeed to arrive at \u201cTruth,\u201d modern Science may boast she has touched\nthe goal. Yet in other days Truth was deemed something nobler than this.\nIt was the interests which lay behind and beyond the facts, their\npossible bearing on man\u2019s deepest yearnings and sublimest hopes, which\ngave dignity and meaning to the humblest researches into rock and plant,\nand which glorified such discoveries as Kepler\u2019s till he cried in\nrapture, \u201cO God, I think thy thoughts after thee!\u201d and Newton\u2019s, till he\nclosed the \u201cPrincipia\u201d (as Parker said of him) by \u201cbursting into the\nInfinite and kneeling there.\u201d In our time, however, Science has\nrepeatedly renounced all pretension to throw light in any direction\nbeyond the sequence of physical causes and effects; and by doing so she\nhas, I think, abandoned her claim to be man\u2019s guide to Truth. The Alpine\ntraveller who engages his guides to scale the summit of the Jungfrau,\nand finds them stop to booze in the _Wirthschaft_ at the bottom, would\nhave no better right to complain than those who fondly expected Science\nto bring them to God, and are informed that she now never proceeds above\nthe Ascidian. So long as all the rivulets of laws traced by Science\nflowed freshly onward towards the sea, our souls drank of them with\nthankfulness. Now that they lose themselves in the sands, they have\nbecome mere stagnant pools of knowledge.\n\n\nWe now turn to the influence of the Scientific Spirit on Morals.\n\nRespecting the theory of ethics, the physico-Scientific Spirit has\nalmost necessarily been from the first Utilitarian, not Transcendental.\nTo Mr. Herbert Spencer the world first owed the suggestion that moral\nintuitions are only results of hereditary experiences. \u201cI believe,\u201d he\nwrote in 1868 to Mr. Mill, \u201cthat the experiences of utility, organized\nand consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have\nbeen producing corresponding modifications which, by continued\ntransmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of\nmoral intuition, certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct\nwhich have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility.\u201d\nMr. Darwin took up the doctrine at this stage, and in his \u201cDescent of\nMan\u201d linked on the human conscience to the instincts of the lower\nanimals, from whence he held it to be derived. Similar instincts, he\ntaught, would have grown up in any other animal as well endowed as we\nare, but those other animals would not necessarily attach their ideas of\nright and wrong to the same conduct. \u201cIf, for instance, men were reared\nunder precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a\ndoubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a\nsacred duty to kill their brothers.\u201d (_Descent of Man_, vol. i. p. 73.)\n\nThese two doctrines\u2014that Conscience is only the \u201ccapitalized experience\nof the human tribe\u201d (as Dr. Martineau has summarized Mr. Spencer) and\nthat there is no such thing as absolute or immutable Morality, but only\na convenient Rule for each particular class of intelligent animals\u2014have\nbetween them revolutionized theoretic ethics, and deeply imperilled, so\nfar as they are accepted, the existence of human virtue. It is in vain\nthat the plea is often entered on the side of faith that, after all,\nDarwin only showed _how_ Conscience has been evolved, perhaps by Divine\nprearrangement, and that we may allow its old authority all the same. He\nhas done much more than this. He has destroyed the possibility of\nretaining the same reverence for the dictates of conscience. As he\nhimself asks, \u201c_Would any of us trust in the convictions of a monkey\u2019s\nmind?_... The doubt always arises whether the convictions of man\u2019s mind,\nwhich has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of _any\nvalue_.\u201d (_Life_, vol. i. p. 316.) Who, indeed, can attach the same\nsolemn authority to the monitions of the\n\n                  \u201cStern daughter of the Voice of God\u201d\n\nand to the prejudices of ancestors just emerging from apehood? It was\nhard enough heretofore for tempted men to be chaste, sober, honest,\nunselfish, while passion was clamoring for indulgence or want pining for\nrelief. The basis on which their moral efforts rested needed to be in\ntheir minds as firm as the law of the universe itself. What fulcrum will\nthey find henceforth in the sand-heap of hereditary experiences of\nutility?\n\nThus the Scientific Spirit has sprung a mine under the deepest\nfoundations of Morality. It may, indeed, be hereafter countermined. I\nbelieve that it will be so, and that it will be demonstrated that many\nof our broadest and deepest moral intuitions can have had no such\norigin. The universal human expectation of Justice, to which all\nliterature bears testimony, can never have arisen from such\ninfinitesimal experience of actual Justice, or rather such large\nexperience of prevailing injustice, as our ancestors in any period of\nhistory can have known. Nor can \u201cthe set of our (modern) brains\u201d against\nthe destruction of sickly and deformed infants have come to us from the\nconsolidated experience of past generations, since the \u201cutility\u201d is all\non the side of Spartan infanticide. But for the present, and while\nDarwinism is in the ascendant, the influence of the doctrine of\nHereditary Conscience is simply deadly. It is no more possible for a man\nwho holds such a theory to cherish a great moral ambition than for a\nstream to rise above its source. The lofty ideal of Goodness, the hunger\nand thirst after righteousness, which have been the mainspring of heroic\nand saintly lives, must be exchanged at best for a kindly good nature\nand a mild desire to avoid offence. The man of science may be anxious to\nabolish vice and crime. They offend his tastes, and distract him from\nhis pursuits; but he has no longing to enthrone in their place a\npositive virtue, demanding his heart and life\u2019s devotion. He is almost\nas much disturbed by extreme goodness as by wickedness. Nay, it has been\nremarked, by a keen and sensitive observer, that the companionship of a\nreally great and entirely blameless man of science invariably proved a\n\u201ctorpedo touch to aspiration.\u201d\n\nAn obvious practical result of the present influence of Science on\nMorals has been the elevation of Bodily Health into the _summum bonum_,\nand the consequent accommodation of the standard of right and wrong to\nthat new aim. An immense proportion of the arguments employed in\nParliament and elsewhere, when any question touching public health is\nunder discussion, rest on the unexpressed major premise \u201cthat any action\nwhich in the opinion of experts conduces to the bodily health of the\nindividual or of the community is _ipso facto_ lawful and right.\u201d I\ncannot here indicate the conclusions to which this principle leads. Much\nthat the Christian conscience now holds to be Vice must be transferred\nto the category of Virtue; while the medical profession will acquire a\nPower of the Keys which it is perhaps even less qualified to use than\nthe Successors of St. Peter.\n\nAnother threatening evil from the side of Science is the growth of a\nhard and pitiless temper. From whatsoever cause it arise, it seems\ncertain that, with some noteworthy exceptions, the Scientific Spirit is\ncallous. In the mass of its literature, the expressions of sympathy with\ncivilized or savage, healthy or diseased mankind, or with the races\nbelow us, are few and far between. Men and beasts are, in scientific\nlanguage, alike \u201cspecimens\u201d (wretched word!); and, if the men be ill or\ndying, they become \u201cclinical material.\u201d The light of Science is a \u201cdry\u201d\none. She leaves no glamour, no tender mystery anywhere. Nor has she more\npity than Nature for the weak who fall in the struggle for existence.\nThere is, indeed, a scientific contempt quite _sui generis_ for the\n\u201cpoor in spirit,\u201d the simple, the devoutly believing,\u2014in short, for all\nthe humble and the weak,\u2014which constitutes of the Scientific Spirit of\nthe Age a kind of Neo-Paganism, the very antithesis of Christianity. I\nmay add that it is no less the antithesis of Theism, which, while\nabandoning the Apocalyptic side of Christianity, holds (perhaps with\nadded consciousness of its supreme value) to the spiritual part of the\nold faith, and would build the Religion of the future on Christ\u2019s\nlessons of love to God and Man, of self-sacrifice and self-consecration.\n\nPrior to experience it might have been confidently expected that the\nDarwinian doctrine of the descent of Man would have called forth a fresh\nburst of sympathy towards all races of men and towards the lower\nanimals. Every biologist now knows tenfold better reasons than Saint\nFrancis for calling the birds and beasts \u201clittle brothers and sisters.\u201d\nBut, instead of instilling the tenderness of the Saint of Assisi,\nScience has taught her devotees to regard the world as a scene of\nuniversal struggle, wherein the rule must be, \u201cEvery one for himself,\nand no God for any one.\u201d\n\nTen years ago an eminent American physician remarked to me: \u201cIn my\ncountry the ardor of scientific research is rapidly overriding the\nproper benevolent objects of my profession. The cure of disease is\nbecoming quite a secondary consideration to the achievement of a correct\ndiagnosis, to be verified by a successful _post mortem_.\u201d How true this\nnow holds of the state of things in English hospitals, that remarkable\nbook, \u201cSt. Bernard\u2019s,\u201d and its still more important key, \u201cDying\nScientifically,\u201d have just come in time to testify.[5] No one who has\nread these books will deny that the purely Scientific Spirit is (at all\nevents sometimes) a merciless spirit; and that Dr. Draper\u2019s famous\nboast, so often repeated, that \u201cScience has never subjected any one to\nphysical torture\u201d (Preface to \u201cConflict,\u201d p. xi), is untrue.\n\nIrreverence appears to be another \u201cnote\u201d of the Scientific Spirit.\nLiterature always holds a certain attitude of conservatism. Its kings\nwill never be dethroned. But Science is essentially Jacobin. The one\nthing certain about a great man of science is that in a few years his\ntheories and books, like French Constitutions, will be laid on the\nshelf. Like coral insects, the scientists of yesterday, who built the\nfoundations of the science of to-day, are all dead from the moment that\ntheir successors have raised over them another inch of the interminable\nreef. The student of Literature, dealing with human life, cannot forget\nfor a moment the existence of such things as goodness which he must\nhonor, and wickedness which he must abhor. But Physical Science, dealing\nwith unmoral Nature, brings no such lessons to her votaries. There is\nnothing to revere even in a well-balanced solar system, and nothing to\ndespise in a microbe. Taking this into consideration, it might have been\nforeseen that the Scientific Spirit of the Age would have been deficient\nin reverence; and, as a matter of fact, I think it will be conceded that\nso it is. It is a spirit to which the terms \u201cimperious\u201d and \u201carrogant\u201d\nmay not unfitly be applied, and sometimes we may add \u201coverbearing,\u201d when\na man of science thinks fit to rebuke a theologian for trespassing on\n_his_ ground after he has been trampling all over the ground of\ntheology. Perhaps the difference between the new \u201cbumptious\u201d Spirit of\nScience and the old exquisitely modest and reverent tone of Newton and\nHerschel, Faraday and Lyell, is only due to the causes which distinguish\neverywhere a Church Triumphant from a Church Militant. But, whatever\nthey may be, it seems clear that it will scarcely be in an age of\nScience that the prophecy will be fulfilled that \u201cthe meek shall inherit\nthe earth.\u201d[6]\n\nAmong the delicate and beautiful things which Science brushes away from\nlife, I cannot omit to number a certain modesty which has hitherto\nprevailed among educated people. The decline of decency in England,\napparent to every one old enough to recall earlier manners and topics of\nconversation, is due in great measure, I think, to the scientific\n(medical) spirit. Who would have thought thirty years ago of seeing\nyoung men in public reading-rooms snatching at the _Lancet_ and the\n_British Medical Journal_ from layers of what ought to be more\nattractive literature, and poring over hideous diagrams and revolting\ndetails of disease and monstrosity? It is perfectly right, no doubt, for\nthese professional journals to deal plainly with these horrors, and with\nthe thrice abominable records of \u201cgyn\u00e6cology.\u201d But, being so, it follows\nthat it is _not_ proper that they should form the furniture of a\nreading-table at which young men and young women sit for general\u2014not\nmedical\u2014instruction. Nor is it only in the medical journals that\ndisease-mongering now obtains. The political press has adopted the\npractice of reporting the details of illness of every eminent man who\nfalls into the hands of the doctors, and affords those gentlemen an\nopportunity of advertising themselves as his advisers. The last\nrecollection which the present generation will retain of many an\nillustrious statesman, poet, and soldier, will not be that he died like\na hero or a saint, bravely or piously, but that he swallowed such and\nsuch a medicine, and, perhaps, was sick in his stomach. Death-beds are\ndesecrated that doctors may be puffed and public inquisitiveness\nassuaged.\n\nSo far does the materialist spirit penetrate into literature that in\ncriticising books and men the most exaggerated importance is attached by\nnumberless writers to the physical conditions and \u201cenvironments\u201d of the\npersonages with whom they are concerned, till we could almost suppose\nthat\u2014given his ancestry and circumstances\u2014we could scientifically\nconstruct the Man, with all his gifts and passions. As if, forsooth, a\ndozen brothers were alike in character, or even all the kittens in a\nlitter! It is refreshing to read the brisk _persiflage_ on this kind of\nthing in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for March 1. The writer, reviewing\nMr. Lecky\u2019s books, states that but little of that splendid historian\u2019s\nprivate life has been published, and adds:\u2014\n\n  \u201cJe ne me plains pas de cette s\u00e9cheresse, je la b\u00e9nis. C\u2019est un\n  plaisir, devenu si rare aujourd\u2019hui, de pouvoir lire un livre sans\n  en conna\u00eetre l\u2019auteur: de juger une \u0153uvre directement et en\n  elle-m\u00eame, sans avoir \u00e0 \u00e9tudier ce compos\u00e9 d\u2019organes et de tissus,\n  de nerfs et de muscles, d\u2019o\u00f9 elle est sortie: sans la commenter \u00e0\n  l\u2019aide de la physiologie, de l\u2019ethnographie, et de la climatologie:\n  sans mettre en jeu l\u2019atavisme et les diath\u00e8ses h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaires!\u201d[7]\n\nTurn we lastly to the influences of the Scientific Spirit on Religion.\nIt is hardly too much to affirm that the advance of that Spirit has been\nto individuals and classes the signal for a subsidence of religious\nfaith and religious emotion.[8] Judging from Darwin\u2019s experience, as\nthat of a typical man of science, just as such a one becomes an\nembodiment of the Scientific Spirit, this religious sentiment flickers\nand expires, like a candle in an airless vault. Speaking of his old\nfeelings of \u201cwonder, admiration, and devotion\u201d experienced while\nstanding amid the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, he wrote in later\nyears, when Science had made him all her own: \u201c_Now_ the grandest scenes\nwould not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It\nmay be truly said that I am like a man who has become colorblind\u201d\n(_Life_, vol. i. p. 311). Nor did the deadening influences stop at his\nown soul. As one able reviewer of his \u201cLife\u201d in the _Spectator_ wrote:\n\u201cNo sane man can deny Darwin\u2019s influence to have been at least\ncontemporaneous with a general decay of belief in the unseen. Darwin\u2019s\nTheism faded from his mind without disturbance, without perplexity,\nwithout pain. These words describe his influence as well as his\nexperience.\u201d\n\nThe causes of the anti-religious tendency of modern science may be\nfound, I believe: 1st, in the closing up of that \u201cGate called\nBeautiful,\u201d through which many souls have been wont to enter the Temple;\n2d, in the diametric opposition of its method to the method of spiritual\ninquiry; and, 3d, to the hardness of character frequently produced (as\nwe have already noted) by scientific pursuits. These three causes, I\nthink, sufficiently account for the antagonism between the modern\nScientific and the Religious Spirits, quite irrespectively of the\nbearings of critical or philosophical researches on the doctrines of\neither natural or traditional religion. Had Science inspired her\nvotaries with religious _sentiment_, they would have broken their way\nthrough the tangle of theological difficulties, and have opened for us a\nhighway of Faith at once devout and rational. But of all improbable\nthings to anticipate now in the world is a Scientific Religious\nReformation. Lamennais said there was one thing worse than Atheism;\nnamely, indifference whether Atheism be true. The Scientific Spirit of\nthe Age has reached this point. It is contented to be Agnostic, not\nAtheistic. It says aloud, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d It mutters to those who\nlisten, \u201cI don\u2019t care.\u201d\n\nThe Scientific Spirit has undoubtedly performed prodigies in the realms\nof physical discovery. Its inventions have brought enormous\ncontributions to the material well-being of man, and it has widened to a\nmagnificent horizon the intellectual circle of his ideas. Yet\nnotwithstanding all its splendid achievements, if it only foster our\nlower mental faculties while it paralyzes and atrophies the higher; if\nReverence and Sympathy and Modesty dwindle in its shadow; if Art and\nPoetry shrink at its touch; if Morality be undermined and perverted by\nit; and if Religion perish at its approach as a flower vanishes before\nthe frost,\u2014then, I think, we must deny the truth of Sir James Paget\u2019s\nassertion, that \u201c_nothing can advance human prosperity so much as\nscience_.\u201d She has given us many precious things; but she takes away\nthings more precious still.\n\n\n\n\n                               ESSAY II.\n                     THE EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS.\n\n\nHuman Emotions\u2014the most largely effective springs of human conduct\u2014arise\neither at first hand on the pressure of their natural stimuli, or at\nsecond hand by the contagion of sympathy with the emotions of other men.\nThis last source of emotion has not, I conceive, received sufficient\nattention in practical systems of education, and to the consideration of\nit the present paper will be chiefly devoted.\n\nEvery human emotion appears to be transmissible by contagion, and to be\nalso more often so developed than it is solitarily evolved. For once\nthat Courage or Terror, Admiration or Contempt, or even Good-will and\nIll-will, spring of themselves in the breast of man, woman, or child,\neach is many times _caught_ from another mind possessed of the same\nfeeling. By a subtle sympathy, not unshared by the lower animals, a\nsympathy which sometimes works slowly and imperceptibly and is sometimes\ncommunicated with electric velocity, one man conveys to another, as if\nit were a flame, the emotion which burns in his own soul. Thenceforth\nthe recipient becomes a fresh propagator of the emotion to those with\nwhom he in his turn comes into physical contact. A few instances may be\nnamed to make clear my meaning.\n\nThe most familiar example of the contagiousness of the emotions, as the\nreader will instantly recall, is that of Fear, which has often spread\nthrough whole armies with such inexplicable celerity and fatal results\nthat the ancients were fain to attribute the frenzy to the malevolence\nof a god, and called such terrors \u201cPanic.\u201d The disasters which have\noccurred during the last few years in so many European and American\ntheatres and churches afford sad evidence that, though \u201cgreat Pan is\ndead,\u201d our liability to succumb to such waves of fear has not been\ndiminished by modern civilization. The proof of the special power of the\ncontagion lies in this: that there is every reason to believe that the\nmajority of the persons constituting the terror-stricken crowd would,\n_if alone_, have met the danger with reasonable composure. There is also\nhappily, we may remember, such a thing as the contagion of Courage as\nwell as that of Terror. And many a time and oft in our history the\ncaptain of a sinking ship, the commander of a retreating regiment, has,\nby his individual intrepidity, restored the _morale_ of his men. Again,\na remarkable instance of the contagiousness of emotion is afforded by\nthe Popularity of the men who become in any country the idols of the\nhour. The fact is very well known to the organizers of _claques_ and\n_r\u00e9clames_ in theatres, and of ovations in political life, that it is\nenough for a small band of friends in an assembly to cheer and clap\nhands, to induce hundreds, who had previously little interest in the\nwork or person praised, to join the hosannas. When a statesman has\nsucceeded in arousing enthusiasm for himself (possibly by persuading\nscores of people and associations that \u201call his sympathies are with\ntheir\u201d\u2014totally opposite aims), he may then safely disappoint each in\nturn and veer round to the opposite point of the political and\ntheological compass from which he sailed with flowing canvas. His\npopularity will not be forfeited or even lessened; for it is a mere\ncontagion of sentiment, not a rational or critical judgment. Herein lies\nthe special peril of democracies, that this kind of contagion of\npersonal enthusiasm rapidly becomes the largest factor in their\npolitics. From the nature of things, the masses cannot form judgments on\nquestions of state, referring, perhaps, to countries of which the very\nnames are unknown to them; and, therefore, they must of necessity choose\nMen, not Measures. When we further examine who are the Men so chosen and\nwhy, we arrive at the startling discovery that it is exclusively _by\nrhetoric_ that the contagious admiration and sympathy of the masses can\nbe roused. Not sound statesmanship, not wise patriotism, not\nincorruptible fidelity, not dignified consistency, not, in short, any\none quality fitting a man to be a safe or able minister, attracts the\nenthusiasm of the multitude, or is even estimated at all by them. The\nonly gift they can appreciate is that which they themselves would\ndesignate \u201c_the Gift of the Gab_.\u201d The lesson is a grave one for all\nfree countries. By such popular idolatry of great talkers were all the\nold republics of Greece and Magna Graecia brought to destruction; and\nthe men who by such means acquired a bastard royalty over them so\nexercised it as to make the name of \u201cTyrant\u201d for ever abominable.\n\nAs concerns emotions connected with Religion, the contagion of them has\nbeen notorious in all ages, for good or evil, according to the character\nof the religion in question. The intoxication of the dances of old\nM\u00e6nads and the modern Dervishes, the shrieks and self-woundings of the\npriests of Baal and Cybele, the frenzied scenes of sacrifice to Moloch\nand the Aztec gods, and a hundred other examples will occur to every\nreader. Probably those on the largest scale of all recorded in history\nwere the first Crusades, when \u201cEurope precipitated itself on Asia\u201d in a\ndelirium of religious enthusiasm caught from Peter the Hermit and\nBernard of Clairvaux. The outbursts of the Anabaptists, the Flagellants\nand Prophets of the Cevennes, in Christendom, and of Moslem fanatics\nunder Prophets and Mahdis (of which we have probably by no means heard\nthe last), and finally the Revivals of various sects in England and\nAmerica, and the triumphs of the Salvation Army, are all instances of\nthe part played by the contagion of emotion in the religion of the\ncommunity at large. I shall speak hereafter of its share in personal\nreligious experience.\n\nIn much smaller matters than religion, and where no explosion reveals\nthe contagion of sentiments, it is yet often possible to trace the\nspread of an emotion, good or bad, from one individual of a family or\nvillage to all the other members or inhabitants. It suffices for some\nspiteful boy or idle girl to call a miserable old woman a witch, or to\nexpress hatred of some foreigner or harmless eccentric, to set afloat\nprejudices which end in something approaching to persecution of the\nvictims, who may be thankful they did not live two hundred years ago,\nwhen, instead of being boycotted, they would have been burned. A child\nin a school or large household who has the misfortune to be lame or\nugly, or to exhibit any peculiarity physical or mental, may, without any\nfault on its side, become obnoxious to the blind dislike of a stupid\nservant or jealous step-mother, and then\u2014the contagion spreading and\nintensifying as it extends\u2014to the common hatred of the little\ncommunity,\u2014a hatred justifying itself by the sullenness or deceptions to\nwhich the poor victim at last is driven. Even domestic animals suffer\nfrom this kind of contagious dislike, and benefit on the other hand by\ncontagious admiration and fondness.[9] \u201cGive a dog a bad name and hang\nhim\u201d is true in more senses than one.\n\nWe need not pursue this part of the subject further. Every day\u2019s\nexperience may supply fresh illustrations of the immense influence of\ncontagion in the development of all human emotions. Nor is it by any\nmeans to be set down as a weakness peculiar to or characteristic of a\nfeeble mind to be blindly susceptible of such contagion. Even the\nstrongest wills are bent and warped by the winds of other men\u2019s\npassions, persistently blowing in given directions. Original minds,\ngifted with what the French call _l\u2019esprit primesautier_, are perhaps,\nindeed, affected rather more than less than commonplace people by the\nemotions of those around them, because their larger natures are more\nopen to the sympathetic shock. Like ships with all sails set, they are\ncaught by every breeze. It is a question of degree how _much_ each man\nreceives of influence from his neighbors; but (to use the new medical\nbarbarism) we are never \u201cimmune\u201d altogether from the contagion.\n\n\nWe may now approach our proper subject of the Education of the Emotions,\ncarrying with us the important fact that no means are so efficacious in\npromoting good ones as the wise employment of the great agency of\nContagion; and, further, that this contagion works only by exhibiting\nthe genuine emotion to the person we desire to influence. Only by being\nbrave can we inspire courage. Only by reverencing holy things can we\ncommunicate veneration. Only by being tender and loving can we move\nother hearts to pity and affection.\n\nLet us glance over the variety of circumstances wherein great good might\nbe effected by systematic attention to the natural laws of the\ndevelopment of the emotions. We may begin by considering those connected\nwith the education of the young.\n\nIn the first place, parents duly impressed with the importance of the\nsubject would carefully suppress, or at least conceal, such of their own\nemotions as they would regret to see caught up by their children. At\npresent, numberless sufficiently conscientious fathers and mothers, who\nwould be horrified at the suggestion of placing books teaching bad\nlessons in the hands of their sons and daughters, yet carelessly allow\nthem to witness (and of course to receive the contagion of) all manner\nof angry, envious, cowardly, and scornful emotions, just as they chance\nto be called out in themselves. It would be to revolutionize many homes\nto induce parents to revise their own sentiments, with a view to\ndeciding which they should communicate to their children. In one way in\nparticular, the result of such self-questioning might be startling.\nEvery good father desires his son to respect his mother, and would be\nsorry to teach him only the half of the Fifth Commandment\u2014_in words_.\nYet how do scores of such well-meaning men set about conveying the\nsentiment of reverence which they recognize will be invaluable to their\nsons? They treat those same mothers, in the presence of those same sons,\nwith such rudeness, dismiss their opinions with such levity, and perhaps\nexhibit such actual contempt for their wishes that it is not in nature\nbut that the boy will receive a lesson of disrespect. His father\u2019s\nfeelings, backed up as they are by the disabilities under which the\nConstitution places women, can scarcely fail to impress the young mind\nwith that contempt for women in general, and for his mother in\nparticular, which is precisely the reverse of chivalry and filial piety.\n\nAlmost as important as the contagion of parental emotion is that of the\nsentiments of Teachers; yet on this subject nobody seems to think it\nneedful even to institute inquiries. So far as I can learn, the sole\nquestion asked nowadays when a professor is to be appointed to a Chair\nat the Universities is, \u201cWhether he be the man among the candidates who\nknows most [or rather who _has the reputation_ of knowing most] of the\nsubject which he proposes to teach?\u201d This point being ascertained, and\nnothing serious alleged against his moral conduct, the fortunate\ngentleman receives his appointment as a matter of course. Even electors\nwho personally detest the notorious opinions of the professor on\nreligion or politics acquiesce cheerfully in the choice; apparently\nsatisfied that he will carve out to his students the particular pound of\nknowledge he is bound to give them, and not a drop of blood besides. The\nsame principle, I presume (I have little information on the subject),\nprevails in schools generally, as it does in private education. A\nprofessor or governess is engaged to instruct boys or girls, let us say\nin Latin, History, or Physiology, and it is assumed that he or she will\nact precisely like a teaching machine for that particular subject, and\nnever step beyond its borders. A little common sense would dissipate\nthis idle presumption,\u2014supposing it to be really entertained, and that\nthe mania for cramming sheer knowledge down the throats of the young\ndoes not make their elders wilfully disregardful of the moral poison\nwhich may filter along with it. Every human being, as I have said,\nexercises some influence over the emotions of his neighbor; but that of\na Teacher, especially if he be a brilliant one, over his students, often\namounts to a contagion of enthusiasm throughout the class. His\nadmirations are adored, the objects of his sneers despised, and every\nopinion he enunciates is an oracle. And it is these professors and\nteachers, forsooth, whose opinions on ethics, theology, and politics it\nis not thought worth while to ascertain before installing them in their\nChairs to become the guides of the young men and women who are the hope\nof the nation!\n\nIt does not require any direct, or even indirect, inculcation of\n_opinion_ on the teacher\u2019s part to do mischief. It is the contagion of\nhis emotions which is to be feared, if those emotions be base or bad.\nLet him teach History and betray his enthusiasm for selfish and\nsanguinary conquerors, or justify assassins and anarchists, or\njest\u2014Gibbon fashion\u2014at martyrs and heroes, will he not communicate those\nbase sentiments to his young audience? Or let him teach Science, and\nconvey to every student\u2019s mind that deification of mere knowledge, that\ninsolent sense of superiority in the possession of it, that remorseless\ndetermination to pursue it regardless of every moral restraint, which is\ntoo often the \u201cnote\u201d of modern scientism, will the instruction he\naffords to his students\u2019 brains counterbalance the harm he will do to\ntheir hearts?\n\nAnd, on the other hand, what a splendid vantage-ground for the\ndissemination not merely of knowledge, but of elevated feelings, is that\nof a Teacher! Merely in teaching a dead or modern language, a\nfine-natured man communicates his own glowing feelings respecting the\nmasterpieces of national literature which it is his duty to expound.\n\nThe last point we need notice as regards the contagion of emotions among\nthe young is the subject of Companions. Here again, as in the case of\nrespect for mothers, there is great unanimity in theory. Every one\nadmits that bad companions are ruinous for boys or girls. But, when it\ncomes to taking precautions against the herding of innocent and\nwell-nurtured children with others who have been familiar with vice, I\nsee little trace of the anxious care and discrimination which ought to\nprevail. Nay, in the case of the children of the poor, it seems to me\nthe law is often wickedly applied to compel good parents to send them,\nagainst their own will and convictions, to sit beside companions who\nhave come straight to school out of slums of filth, moral and physical.\nI have known Americans argue that it is right for children of all\nclasses to associate together, so that the well-trained may communicate\ngood ideas to the ill-trained. The reasoning appears to be on a par with\na proposal to send healthy people to sleep in a cholera hospital. But,\nwhile we allow ourselves to be terrified beyond bounds by alarms about\nthe infection of bodily disease, we take hardly any precautions against\nthe more dreadful, and quite as real, infection of moral corruption.[10]\n\nThe general sentiment of boys and youths in the great public schools and\ncolleges of England\u2014thanks to the high-minded Masters who have been at\ntheir head\u2014is, on the whole, good and honorable. It may be taken for\ngranted that a boy from Harrow, Eton, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, or\nUppingham, and _a fortiori_ a man from Oxford or Cambridge, will despise\nlying and cowardice and admire fair play and justice. How grand a\nfoundation for national character has thus been laid! What a debt do we\nowe alike to the Masters and the \u201cTom Browns\u201d who have communicated the\ncontagion of such noble emotions! In Continental _lyc\u00e9es_ and academies,\npublic opinion among the boys is, by all accounts, wofully inferior to\nthat which is current in our great schools. There has never been an\nArnold in a French Rugby.\n\nAs regards girls, their doubly emotional natures make it a matter of\nmoral life and death that their companions (of whose emotions they are\nperfectly certain to experience the contagion) should be pure and\nhonorable-minded. It is most encouraging to every woman who reads Mrs.\nPfeiffer\u2019s masterly new book, \u201cWomen and Work,\u201d to see the rising\ngeneration of girls displaying such splendid abilities and zeal for\ninstruction, and\u2014as Mrs. Pfeiffer amply proves\u2014without paying for it in\nloss of bodily vigor. Fain would I see the \u201cblessed Damozels,\u201d who are\nstill standing behind the golden bars of noble homes, all flocking to\nthe new colleges for women, as their brothers do to Christchurch and\nTrinity, there to imbibe parallel sentiments of truthfulness and\n_pluck_, more precious than Greek, Latin, or mathematics!\n\n\nLeaving now the subject of the Education of the Emotions of the Young,\nby parents, teachers, and companions, I proceed to speak of the general\neducation of the emotions of the community by public and private\ninstrumentality,\u2014a wide field, over which we can only glance. What\nmachinery is disposable to cultivate the better and discourage the lower\nemotions, either by the exhibition of the direct natural stimulus to the\nformer and withdrawal of it in the latter cases, or by the aid of\ncontagion?\n\nIn the grand matter of Legislation I do not know that there is much more\nto be done than has already been achieved by the abolition of those\npublic punishments of criminals\u2014hanging, drawing and quartering,\nflogging at the cart\u2019s tail, and the pillory\u2014which must have been\nfrightfully prolific of cruel passions in the spectators. To have taken\npart in such executions, _e.g._ in the old stonings to death, in the\nburning of witches and heretics, or in the minor but yet barbarous and\ncowardly pelting of the helpless wretches in the pillory, must have been\nan apprenticeship worthy of a Red Indian. Even to have been a passive\nspectator of a Newgate execution in later years, amid the yelling crowd,\nmust have been excessively demoralizing, and in fact was at last\nrecognized by the Legislature to be so, instead of a wholesome warning.\nIt is a cause for rejoicing that there is an end of this kind of\ncontagious emotion in England, except in the case of experiments on\nanimals, of which the Act of 1876 sanctions the exhibition to classes\nunder special certificates which require the subjects to be fully\nan\u00e6sthetized. On this point the warning of the late lamented Professor\nRolleston ought, I think, to have sufficed. He told the Royal\nCommission: \u201cThe sight of a living, bleeding, and quivering organism\nmost undoubtedly does act in a particular way upon what Dr. Carpenter\ncalls the emotiono-motor nature in us.... When men are massed together,\nthe emotiono-motor nature is more responsive, it becomes more sensitive\nto impression than it does at other times, and that of course bears very\ngreatly on the question of interference with vivisections before masses\u201d\n(_Minutes_, 1287[11]). The time will come when it will be looked upon as\na monstrous inconsistency that the spectacle of the execution of\nmurderers should be shut off from the _adult population on account of\nits recognized ill effects in fostering contagious cruelty_, and, at the\nsame time, as many as nineteen certificates should be issued in one year\nby the Home Office, specially authorizing the mutilation of harmless\nanimals _before classes of young men and women_.\n\nMajestic public functions, coronations, thanksgivings, state entries\ninto great cities, and funerals of distinguished men afford admirable\nmachinery for the communication of noble emotions through the masses. It\nwas worth the cost and trouble of last year\u2019s Jubilee ten times over to\nhave sent through so many brains and hearts the thrill of sympathy which\nfollowed the Queen to the old throne of her fathers, while the kings of\nthe earth stood around her as witnesses that she had kept the oath to\nher people, sworn there fifty years before. For one day England and all\nher vast colonies beat with one heart, and the contagion of loyal\nemotion, love, reverence, pride, and pity, for woman, empress, mother,\nwidow, ran round the globe. Sad was it (as many must have remembered)\nthat he who would have found the true words to give utterance to the\nsentiment in the heaving breast of the nation, he whose proud duty it\nwould have been to welcome the Queen to his own Abbey, was lying on that\nday silent beneath its pavement.\n\nBeyond Legislation and Public Functions, the largest influence which\nsways the emotions of all educated people is undoubtedly Literature. The\npower of Books to awaken the most vivid feelings is a phenomenon at\nwhich savages may well wonder. The magic which enables both the living\nand the long departed to move us to the depths of our being by the aid\nonly of a few marks on sheets of paper is a never-ending miracle. It\nwere vain to attempt to do any justice to the subject, or show how the\ncontagion of piety, patriotism, enthusiasm for justice and truth, and\nsympathy with other nations and other classes than our own, is borne to\nus in the pages of the poets and historians and novelists of the world.\nPitiful it is to think how narrow must be the scope of the emotions of\nany man whose breast has never dilated nor his eyes flashed over the\ngrandeur of the Book of Job, over Dante or Shakspere, and whose heart\nhas never been warmed and his sympathies extended, backwards through\ntime and around him in space, by Walter Scott, and Defoe, and Dickens,\nand George Eliot. Alas that we must add that Literature can not only\nkindle the noblest emotions, but also light up baleful fires, of the\nbasest and most sensual,\u2014to look for which we have not now even to cross\nthe Channel! M. Zola has been translated into English.\n\nAfter Literature I presume that the Stage is the greatest public agency\nfor the promotion of fine emotions, and it is to the honor of human\nnature that it is found (at least in our country) to be most popular\nwhen it fulfils its office best, and calls out sympathy for generous and\nheroic actions. When the Roman audience rose _en masse_ to applaud the\nline of Terence which first proclaimed the brotherhood of man,\u2014\u201cHomo\nsum: humani nihil a me alienum puto,\u201d\u2014the highest mission of the Drama\nwas fulfilled. Of course no one desires the string of high emotion to be\nexclusively or perpetually harped upon; and for my own part I think that\nthe mere production of the emotion of harmless merriment is one of the\ngreatest boons of the stage. The contagion of laughter, in a theatre or\nout of it, is an altogether wholesome and beneficent thing. How it\nunseats black Care from our backs! How it carries away, as on a fresh\nspring breeze, a whole swarm of buzzing worries and grievances! How it\nwarms our hearts for ever after to the people with whom we have once\nshared a good honest _fou rire_! \u201cBehold how good and how pleasant a\nthing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity,\u201d and (with all\nrespect let us add) in hilarity! A good joke partaken with a man is like\nthe Arab\u2019s salt. Our common emotion of humorous pleasure is a bond\nbetween us which we would not thereafter lightly break.\n\nThe education of the emotions of actors and actresses, apart from that\nwhich they afford to the emotions of the public, is a very curious\nsubject of consideration. Great part of the training of an actor\nconsists in learning to give the uttermost possible external expression\nto those emotions which it is the task of other people to reduce to a\nvanishing point. Undoubtedly (as one of the most gifted of the\nprofession has remarked), the \u201chabit of representing fictitious feeling\ntends to produce a superficial sensibility, and an exaggerated mode of\nexpressing the same.\u201d But it may be questioned whether this extreme be\nworse than the opposite, wherein the expression of the emotions is so\neffectually repressed that the feelings themselves die out for want of\nair and exercise,\u2014a consummation not unknown in the reposeful \u201ccaste of\nVere de Vere.\u201d\n\nBesides Literature and the Stage, Music no doubt is a most marvellous\nagency for calling out Emotion. It is, in fact, the Art of Emotion. The\nmusician plays with the strings of the human heart while he touches\nthose of his instrument. Since Collins wrote his \u201cOde to the Passions\u201d\nand Pope his \u201cOde on Saint Cecilia\u2019s Day,\u201d there is no need to describe\nhow every emotion known to man may be brought out by music. Something\nmay well be hoped for a generation which, rejecting the more trivial and\nsensuous music of Italy, finds delight in the exalted play of the\nemotions which follows the wands of Bach and Beethoven and Wagner. The\nefforts now made to offer music at once cheap and good to as many of the\nworking classes as can be found to enjoy it is perhaps the most direct\nway conceivable of fostering their best emotions.\n\nThe Beauty of Nature and of Art are also powerful levers of the higher\nemotions, which it becomes us to use for the benefit of our fellows\nwhenever it is practicable to do so.\n\n\nBut, while these varied engines are at work to stir beneficently the\nemotions of the masses, there are on the other hand certain agencies in\nfull play amongst us which have, I fear, a totally different effect;\nwhich, in fact, can only tend to deaden, if not destroy, the most\nprecious of emotions, those of family affection. I do not know that the\nquestion has ever been faced: What are the _moral_ effects of our\nenormous Hospitals? From the side of the bodily interests of the\npatients, they may be wholly advantageous.[12] But as regards the sacred\ninstitutions of the Family, on which society itself is based, I ask\nwhat, except evil, can result from the habitual separation of relatives\nthe moment that illness makes a claim for tenderness and care?\n\nIt is the law of human nature that the sentiment of sympathy should be\ndrawn forth by personal service to the suffering; and feelings of\ngratitude and affection by the receipt of such personal service. In\ncomparison of these sources of emotion, those which act in times of\nprosperity are weak and poor. If we subtract in imagination from our own\naffections those which have come to us either through nursing or being\nnursed in sickness and danger, the residue will represent all which we\nleave within reach of the million. Many of us can remember quarrels\nwhich have been reconciled, unkindnesses atoned for, and bonds of sacred\nunion in faith and eternal hope linked beside beds of pain when death\nseemed standing at the door. These things form some of the highest\neducational influences which Providence brings to bear on the human\nspirit, and out of them arise the sweetest affections, the warmest\ngratitude, the most vivid sense of a common nearness to God and the\nImmortal Life.\n\nAnd of all this the entire working class of the nation is systematically\ndeprived! Formerly it was only in cases of extreme poverty, where the\ncrowded lodging was an altogether unfit place to nurse the sufferer,\nthat recourse was had to the public Hospitals. Now it has become the\ninvariable practice the moment that illness, even of non-infectious\nkind, declares itself, to send straight away to the hospital artisans,\nsmall tradesmen, and farmers from their own comfortable abodes, servants\nfrom the large and airy houses where they have labored faithfully, and\neven children from their mothers\u2019 arms. It is not a mere matter of\nconjecture that such a custom must do harm and weaken the sense of\nfamily obligation. It is a fact that it has done so already, and is\ndoing so more every day. Sons and daughters place their blind and\npalsied parents in asylums; wives send their husbands in a decline to\nBrompton Hospital; and it has become a surprising piece of filial\ndevotion if a daughter remain at home to take care of a bed-ridden\nmother, even when her means fully permit of such sacrifice of time. What\ndeadly injury is all this to the hearts of men, women, and children!\n\nOf course Hospitals have their important uses. No one denies it. Some\ncases of disease and some degrees of poverty require such institutions.\nBut this does not justify the monstrous over-use of them now in vogue.\nEven for the class whose homes are too crowded to admit of nursing being\nproperly or safely done in them, I cannot but think that small Cottage\nHospitals, where the wife or mother or daughter would be free to perform\nher natural duties by the bedside, and where she would be shown how best\nto perform them, would be infinitely preferable for every reason, moral\nand physical, to our present Palaces of Pain. Excellent also in all ways\nwill be the plan of Nurses provided for the poor in their own homes by\nthe Queen\u2019s wise gift of the balance of her Women\u2019s Jubilee Fund. The\nsecret of the excessive resort to Hospitals is of course the\nencouragement to patients given by the medical schools attached to them,\nfor the sake of obtaining a large supply of \u201cclinical material.\u201d\n\n\nLastly, we come to speak of the Education of the Religious Emotions. We\nhave already referred to the outbursts of contagious enthusiasm in the\nCrusades and Revivals. It remains to say a few words respecting the\nvarious sources of religious emotion, at first and second hand.\n\nA fundamental difference between the Catholic and Puritan mind seems to\nbe that the former seizes on every available means for producing\nreligious emotion _through the senses_; the latter turns away from such\nmeans with intense mistrust, and limits itself to appeals _through the\nmind_. Dark and solemn churches like that at Assisi decorated by Giotto\n(which the friar who showed it told me was the \u201cbest place in the whole\nworld for prayer\u201d), gorgeous altars, splendid functions, pictures,\nmusic, incense,\u2014all these are to the Catholic and High Churchman\nveritable \u201cmeans of grace\u201d; _i.e._, they call out in them emotions which\neither are religious or they think lead to religion. Long Prayers,\nHymns, Bible-readings, and preachings,\u2014these, on the other hand, are the\nEvangelicals\u2019 means of grace, and they produce in them emotions\ndistinctly religious. We must, I think, treat these differences as\nmatters of spiritual _taste_, concerning which it is proverbially idle\nto dispute. Both have their advantages, and both their great perils: the\nCatholic method has the peril of lapping the soul in a fool\u2019s paradise\nof fancied piety, which is only sensuous excitement; the Puritan method\nhas that of creating the hysteria of a Revival. In each case it is the\ncontagion of _the emotion of a multitude_ which creates the danger.\nSolitary religious emotion, either produced by the glory and majesty of\nNature or by lonely prayer and communings with God, can lead to no evil;\nnay, is the climax of purest joy vouchsafed to man. Not misguided are\nthose who enter into their chambers and shut the door \u201cto pray to Him\nwho sees in secret,\u201d or who go up into the hills and woods\n\n                                            \u201cTo seek\n              That Being in whose honor shrines are weak,\n              Upreared by human hands.\u201d\n\nThe converse of the emotions of Awe and Reverence\u2014namely, the tendency\nto jest and ridicule\u2014are supposed by some to be dangerous enemies to\nreligion. I do not believe they are so. I think a genuine sense of humor\nand a keen eye for the ludicrous is a most precious protection against\nabsurdities and excesses. Like Tenderness and Strength, the sense of the\nSublime and of the Ridiculous are complementary to each other, and exist\nonly in perfection together in the same character. It is the man who\ncannot laugh who never weeps.\n\nFinally, we reach the point where the religious emotions, produced\neither alone or by contagion, effect the greatest of spiritual miracles:\nthat \u201cconversion\u201d or revulsion of the soul which ancient India, no less\nthan Christendom, likened to a New or Second Birth. It would appear\nthat, when this mysterious change does not take place by the solitary\nwork of the Divine on the human spirit, it does so by the attractive\npower of another human soul, which has itself already undergone the\ngreat transformation. It is the _living_ Saint who conveys spiritual\n_life_. He need not be a very great or far advanced soul in the\nspiritual realm. Many a simple person with no exceptional gifts has\n\u201cturned to the wisdom of the just\u201d the hearts of strong men, whom the\nmost eloquent and thoughtful of preachers have failed to move by a hair.\nBut the greater the saint, the greater naturally must be his power. It\nwas the contagion of Divine Love, caught from him who felt it most of\nall the sons of men, which moved the little band in the upper chamber of\nJerusalem\u2014who moved the world.\n\nIt is worthy of notice that when a man so powerfully influences another\nas to \u201cconvert\u201d him in the true sense, _i.e._ to bring him to the higher\nspiritual life, it very often happens that at the same time he\n\u201cconverts\u201d him in the lower sense, to the doctrines of the special\nChurch to which he himself belongs. The man has received the impulse of\nreligion from that particular direction. It has come to him colored by\nthe hues of his friend\u2019s piety, and he accepts it, doctrines and all, as\nhe finds it. The matter has been one of emotional contagion, not of\ncritical argument on either side.\n\nIt is impossible to form the faintest estimate of the good\u2014the highest\nkind of good\u2014which a single devout soul may accomplish in a lifetime by\nspreading the holy contagion of the Love of God in widening circles\naround it. But just as far as the influence of such men is a cause for\nthankfulness, so great would be the calamity of a time, if such should\never arrive, when there should be a dearth of saints in the world, and\nthe fire on the altar should die down. A Glacial Period of Religion\nwould kill many of the sweetest flowers in human nature; and woe to the\nland where (as it would seem is almost the present case in France at\nthis moment) the priceless tradition of Prayer is being lost, or only\nmaintained in fatal connection with outworn superstitions.\n\n\nTo resume the subject of this paper. We have seen that the Emotions,\nwhich are the chief springs of human conduct, may either be produced by\ntheir natural stimuli or conveyed by contagion from other minds, but\nthat they can neither be _commanded_ nor _taught_. If we desire to\nconvey good and noble emotions to our fellow-creatures, the only means\nwhereby we can effect that end is by filling our own hearts with them\ntill they overflow into the hearts of others. Here lies the great truth\nwhich the preachers of Altruism persistently overlook. It is better to\n_be_ good than to _do_ good. We can benefit our kind in no way so much\nas by being ourselves pure and upright and noble-minded. We can never\n_teach_ Religion to such purpose as we can _live_ it.\n\nIt was my privilege to know a woman who for more than twenty years was\nchained by a cruel malady to what Heine called a \u201cmattress grave.\u201d\nLittle or nothing was it possible for her to do for any one in the way\nof ordinary service. Her many schemes of usefulness and beneficence were\nall stopped. Yet, merely by attaining to the lofty heights of spiritual\nlife and knowledge, that suffering woman helped and lifted up the hearts\nof all who came around her, and did more real good, and of the highest\nkind, than half the preachers and philanthropists in the land. Even now,\nwhen her beautiful soul has been released at last from its earthly cage,\nit still lifts many who knew her to the love of God and Duty to remember\nwhat she was, and to the faith in immortality to think what now she must\nbe, within the golden gates.\n\n\n\n\n                               ESSAY III.\n                          PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM.\n\n\nWhen the new \u201cScience of Religions\u201d has been further developed, it will\nprobably be recognized that the character of each is determined, not\nonly by its own proper dogmas, but by those of the religion which it has\nsuperseded. Men do not, as they often imagine, tear up an old faith by\nthe roots and plant a new one on the same ground. They only cut across\nthe old and graft the new on its stem. Thus it comes to pass, for\nexample, that much of the sap of Roman Paganism runs through the pores\nof Latin Christianity, and much of that of Odin worship through those of\nTeuton and Scandinavian Protestantism. Still more certainly does the\nfaith held by an individual man in his earlier years dye his mind with\nits peculiar color, so that no subsequent conversion ever wholly\nobliterates it, but makes him like a frescoed wall on which yellow has\nbeen painted over blue, leaving as the result\u2014green. The tint of\nAnglican piety may be discerned even beneath a pervert Cardinal\u2019s\nscarlet robe. A Romish acolyte, transformed into the most brilliant of\nsceptical essayists, still boasts that the ecclesiastical set of his\nbrain enables him \u201calone in his century\u201d to understand Christ and Saint\nFrancis.[13] A Jew, baptized and become Prime Minister of England, wrote\nnovels and made history altogether in the vein of the author of the Book\nof Esther. Beneath the wolf\u2019s clothing of the whole pack of modern\nSecularists, Agnostics, and Atheists, friction reveals (for the present\ngeneration, at all events) a flock of harmless Christian sheep.\n\nFor this reason hasty efforts to fuse religious bodies which happen to\nmanifest tendencies to doctrinal agreement seem predestined to failure.\nMuch else besides mere readiness to pronounce similar symbols of faith\nis needed to gather men permanently into one temple. Amalgamation\nattempted prematurely can only result in accentuating those diversities\nof sentiment which have stronger power to dissever than any intellectual\naffinities have charms to unite. Ecclesiastical schisms are infinitely\neasier to effect than ecclesiastical coalitions.\n\nNevertheless, the levelling of the fences which have for ages kept men\nof different religions apart is, _per se_, a matter for such earnest\nrejoicing that we may well exult at any instance of it, independently of\nulterior hopes or projects. Especially must our sympathies with those\nwho are thus clearing the ground be quickened when the faith to be\ndis-immured is an old and venerable one, the nearest of all to our\nown,\u2014a faith whereof any important modification must be fraught with\nincalculable consequences to the civilized world. The new Reform among\nthe Jews is emphatically such a movement,\u2014an effort to throw down the\nhigh and jealous walls behind which Judaism has kept itself in\nseclusion. The gates of the Ghettos, which for a thousand years shut in\nthe Jews at night in every city in Europe, were not more rigid obstacles\nto social sympathy and intercourse than have been the nation\u2019s own\niron-bound prejudices and customs. But just as these Ghettos themselves,\nso long \u201clittle provinces of Asia dropped into the map of Europe,\u201d have\nbeen thrown open at last by the growing enlightenment of Christian\nStates, so the Jewish moral walls of prejudice are being cast down by\nthe advanced sentiment of cultured Jews.\n\nIt is the specialty of the higher religions to unfold continually new\ngerms of truth, while the lower ones remain barren and become overgrown\nwith the rank fungi of myth and fable. I do not speak now of the results\nof external influences bearing on every creed, and tending to vivify and\nfructify it. Such influences have done much, undoubtedly, even for\nChristianity itself, which has been stirred by all the agencies of the\nSaracen conquests, the classic Renaissance, modern ethics and\nmetaphysics, modern critical science, and at last in our time by the\nextension of the theological horizon over the broad plains of Eastern\nsacred literature. I am speaking specially of the prolific power of the\nricher creeds to go on, generation after generation, bringing forth\nfresh, golden harvests, like the valleys of California. If we look for\nan instance of the opposite barrenness, we shall find it in the worn-out\nreligions of China, ice-bound and arid as the desolate plains and\ncraters of the moon; the Tae-ping rebellion having been perhaps a\nsolitary development of heat caused by the impingement on them of the\norb of Christianity. If, on the other hand, we seek for a supreme\ninstance of fertility, we find it in the religion of Nazareth, which\nseems to enjoy perpetual seed-time and perpetual harvest.\n\nThe question is one of more than historical interest: Is Judaism\nlikewise a religion capable of bearing fresh corn and wine and oil for\nthe nations? We know that both Christianity and Islam are developments\nof the Jewish idea,\u2014the Semitic development (Islam) carrying out its\nmonotheistic doctrine in all its rigidity, but losing somewhat on the\nmoral and spiritual side; the Aryan development (Christianity)\nabandoning the strictly monotheistic doctrine, but carrying far forward\nthe moral and the spiritual part. But both these Banyan-like branches\nhave struck root for themselves, and their growth can no longer be\ntreated as derived from the trunk of Judaism. Our problem is, Can\nJudaism further develop itself along its own lines? Or is it (as\ngenerally believed) destined to permanent immobility, with no possible\nfuture before it save gradual dismemberment and decay? Shall we best\nliken it to Abraham\u2019s oak at Mamre, whose leaf has not failed after\nthree thousand years of sun and storm, and when the very levin-bolt of\nheaven has blasted its crown,\u2014or to the hewn and painted mast of some\nladen argosy wherein float the fortunes of Israel?\n\nThere are, it would appear, three parties now existing among modern\nJews. There is, first, the large Orthodox party, which holds by the\nverbal inspiration of the Old Testament and the authority of the\nTalmud.[14]\n\nSecondly, there is the party commonly called that of Reformed Jews,\nwhich separated about forty years ago from the Orthodox by a schism\nanalogous to that which cut off the Free Kirk from the Kirk of Scotland.\nThe _raisons d\u2019\u00eatre_ of this reform were certain questions of ritual\n(the older ritual having fallen into neglect) and the relinquishment by\nthe reforming party of the authority of the Talmud. The progress so\neffected occasioned great heart-burnings,\u2014now happily extinguished,\u2014and\nproceeded no further than these very moderate reforms.[15]\n\nLastly, there is a third Jewish party, existing chiefly in Germany and\nAmerica, and numbering a few members among the younger generations in\nEngland. For convenience\u2019 sake, I shall distinguish it from the older\nReformed party by calling it the party of the New Reform, or of Broad\nChurch Jews, the analogy between its attitude towards Orthodox Judaism\nand that of the late lamented Dean Stanley and his friends to the Church\nof England being singularly close.\n\nThe attitude even of the Orthodox and older Reformed Jews (alike for our\npresent purpose) is, theoretically, not wholly unprogressive, not\nnecessarily purely tribal. They have admitted principles inconsistent\nwith stagnant tribalism. They believe that, though the _ceremonialism_\nof Judaism is for Jews alone, yet the mission of Judaism is to spread\nthrough all the nations its great central _doctrine_ of the Unity of\nGod. As Philipsohn (who, it is said, has since somewhat receded from his\nposition) observed in his Lectures so far back as 1847:\u2014\n\n  Judaism has never declared itself to be in its specific form the\n  religion of all mankind, but has asserted itself to be the religion\n  of all mankind in and by the religious idea.... Talmudism itself\n  admits that he even who no longer observes the law, but who utters\n  as his confession of faith the words, \u201cHear, O Israel, the Lord our\n  God the Eternal is One,\u201d may be considered still to be a Jew.\n  _Development of the Religious Idea_, p. 256.\n\nThe saying of the Talmud, \u201cThe pious among all nations shall have a\nplace in the world to come,\u201d has become a stock quotation, and has been\nof the utmost value to modern Jewish orthodoxy. Thus even this most\nconservative party among the Jews is not without a certain expansive\nprinciple. It must be admitted, however, that it does little or nothing\nto make that principle practically efficacious, and is content to wait\nfor the advent of Messiah to convert the nations by miracle without any\ntrouble to Jews to strive to enlighten them beforehand. Considering what\nthe Jews for ages have had to bear from those who vouchsafed to try to\nconvert _them_, we may pardon this lack of zeal for proselytism as far\nfrom unnatural; yet the consequences have been deplorable. He who holds\na precious truth concerning eternal things, and fails to feel it to be\n(as Mrs. Browning says) \u201clike bread at sacrament,\u201d to be passed on to\nthose beside him, loses his right to it, and much of his profit in it.\nIt is \u201ctreasure hid in a field.\u201d The attitude is anti-social and\nmisanthropic of a people who practically say to their neighbors: \u201cWe\npossess the most precious of all truths, of which we are the divinely\ncommissioned guardians and witnesses. But we do not intend to make the\nsmallest effort to share that truth with you, and generations of you may\ngo to the grave without it for all we care. We are passive witnesses,\nnot active apostles. By and by, the Messiah will appear, and convert all\nwho are alive in his time, whether they will or not; but, for the\npresent, Christendom is joined to idols, and we shall let it alone.\u201d The\nfaith which speaks thus stands self-condemned. If a creed be not\naggressive and proselytizing, like Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, it\nconfesses either mistrust of itself or else misanthropic indifference to\nthe welfare of mankind. Thus the Orthodox and the elder Reformed Jews\nhave tacitly pronounced their own sentence.\n\nTurn we now from these to the new Reformation. This last is a\ndevelopment of Judaism, truly _on its own lines_, but yet extending far\nbeyond anything contemplated by the elder bodies. To measure it aright,\nwe must cast back a glance over the path which Judaism traversed in\nearlier times, and note how completely this new and vast stride is a\ncontinuance of that march towards higher and wider religious truth.\n\nFrom the earliest conception of Jahveh as the Tribal God,\u2014a conception\nwhich even Kuenen admits to be native to the race of Israel, and\nuntraceable to any other people,\u2014from this conception, which plainly\nassumed the existence of other and rival gods of neighboring nations, it\nwas an enormous step in advance to pass to the idea of One only Lord of\nall the earth, whose House should be a \u201cHouse of prayer for all\nnations.\u201d\n\nStill vaster was the progress from anthropomorphic and morally imperfect\nideas of the character of the tribal God to the adoration of Isaiah\u2019s\n\u201cHigh and Holy One, who inhabiteth eternity,\u201d who dwells in the high and\nholy place with the pure in heart and the contrite.\n\nAgain, there was made a bound forward by Judaism when the earlier simple\nsecularism and disbelief of, or indifference to, a future world vanished\nbefore the belief in Immortality which grew up in spite of the teachings\nof Antigonus and Sadok, and (after the Dispersion) never faded out again\naltogether.\n\nAnd finally, with the development of the Prophetic spirit, Worship\nassumed more its true forms of praise, confession of sin, and\nthanksgiving; and, at the fall of Jerusalem, the bloody sacrifices (long\nlimited to the sacred enclosure) came to an end forever amid the smoking\nruins.\n\nThese were truly great steps of progress made by Israel of old; but the\nlast of them left the nation to carry into its sorrowful exile an\nintolerable burden of ceremonialism and dusty superstitions, whereof the\nTalmud is now the lumber-room, and possessed also by an unhappy demon of\nanti-social pride, which forbade it to extend to or accept from other\nnations the right hand of human brotherhood. The Jews did not go out\nfrom Jerusalem as the little band of Christian missionaries had gone,\neager to scatter their new wealth of truth among the nations, and,\nthough stoned and crucified by those whom they sought to bless, yet ever\nafter by their children\u2019s children to be revered and canonized. The Jews\nwent out as misers of truth, holding their full bags of treasure hid in\ntheir breasts. Nor in the ages following the Dispersion, while\nChristianity diverged further and further from pure Theism, and through\nMariolatry and Hagiolatry sank well-nigh to polytheism and idolatry, do\nwe ever once hear of an attempt by any Jewish teacher, even by such a\nman as Maimonides, to call back the wandering nations by proclaiming in\ntheir ears the \u201cschema Israel\u201d\u2014\u201cTHE LORD YOUR GOD THE ETERNAL IS ONE.\u201d\nBefore the expulsion from Palestine, for a brief period, Judaism (as one\nof its bitterest enemies has remarked) showed promise of becoming a\nproselytizing creed, \u201cwhen, under the influence of Greek philosophy and\nother liberalizing influences, it was tending from the condition of a\ntribal to that of a universal creed. But Plato succumbed to the Rabbins.\nJudaism fell back for eighteen centuries into rigid tribalism, and, as\nLord Beaconsfield cynically said of it, has ever since \u2018no more sought\nto make converts than the House of Lords.\u2019\u201d[16]\n\nAt last the long pause in the progress of Judaism, considered as a\nreligion, seems drawing to an end; and we may hail its present advance\nas the continuance of that noble march which the Jewish race began to\nthe music of Miriam\u2019s timbrel.\n\nThis last step forward of Reformed Judaism consists, according to its\nlatest interpreter, in \u201cthe struggle now consciously and now\nunconsciously maintained to emancipate the Jewish faith from every\nvestige of tribalism, and to enshrine its wholly catholic doctrines in a\nwholly catholic form.\u201d This end is to be pursued through the\n\u201cDENATIONALIZATION of the Jewish religion, by setting aside all the\nrules and ceremonies which do not possess an essentially religious\ncharacter or are maintained merely for the sake of the national, as\ndistinct from the religious, unity.\u201d\n\nThe following are the modes in which this programme may be followed\nout:\u2014\n\n1. Reformed Judaism abandons the Messianic hope. It neither desires nor\nexpects the coming of Messiah, and the resettlement of the Jews in\nPalestine as a nation it regards as retrogression toward tribalism.[17]\n2. It rejects the theory of the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament,\nnor does it recognize the perfection and immutability of the law\ncontained within the Pentateuch. 3. It rejects the theory of a Divine\ntradition recorded in the Mischna, and does not admit the authority of\nthe Talmudic laws. 4. It puts aside, as no longer binding, all the\nlegal, hygienic, and agrarian ordinances of the Pentateuch, together\nwith the laws relating to marriages and to the Levites. 5. It cuts down\nthe feasts and fasts to the Sabbath, the Passover, and four others. 6.\nIt adopts the vernacular of each country for a larger or smaller part of\nthe service of the synagogue, instead of retaining the whole in Hebrew.\n\nBesides these six great changes, there are two others looming in the\ndistance. Reformed Judaism still regards the rite of circumcision as\nbinding, though several distinguished reformers (notably Geiger) have\nrecommended that proselytes should not be required to adopt it. Of the\nchange of the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday, I am informed that\nthe transference of the holy day has already been made by one synagogue\nin Berlin, which holds its services on the Sunday, and by many\nindependent Jewish men of business; and that it is very much desired in\nsome other quarters. The difficulty attendant on this change obviously\nis: that it would prove so favorable to the interests of Jews in a\nsecular sense that, if adopted, the charge of worldly motives is certain\nto be brought against those who advocate it.\n\nThese, then, in brief, are the negations of Reformed Judaism. On the\npositive side, it reaffirms those dogmas which are the kernel of\nJudaism,\u2014\u201cthe Unity of God; His just judgment of the world; the free\nrelation of every man to God; the continual progress of humanity; the\nimmortality of the soul; and the Divine election of Israel\u201d (understood\nto signify that the Jews, under the will of God, possess a specific\nreligious mission not yet entirely fulfilled). As to the observances of\nReformed Judaism, the framework of life and habit under which it\nproposes to exist, \u201cthey will remain distinctively Jewish, and must not\nbear the mere stamp of nineteenth century religious opinion.\u201d The Jewish\nReformer thus, like many another Radical, is an aristocrat at heart, and\nshrinks from descending to the level of a _parvenue_ faith. In my humble\njudgment, he is entirely right in his decision. So long as he places the\ninterests of truth and honesty above all, he cannot do better than hold\nfast by everything which reminds himself and the world of his pedigree\nthrough a hundred generations of worshippers of Jehovah.\n\nThe extent to which such reformation as that now sketched prevails at\nthis hour among Jews is difficult to ascertain. The movement has been\ngoing on for some time, and yet counts but a moderate number of\nadherents, chiefly, as I have said, German and American Jews. Nay, what\nis most unhopeful, the disease of religious indifference, that moral\nphylloxera which infests the choicest spiritual vineyards, is working\nits evil way among the broader-minded Jews, as it works (we know too\nwell) among the broader-minded Christians. To unite depth of conviction\nwith width of sympathy has ever been a rare achievement. \u201cTout\ncomprendre sera tout pardonner,\u201d may be rendered, in intellectual\nmatters, \u201cTo find truth everywhere is to contend for it nowhere.\u201d\n\nThere is good room to hope, however, that if some fall out of the ranks,\nthe Reformed party will yet possess enough energy, vigor, and cohesion\nto make its influence erelong extensively felt.\n\n\nIt is a startling prospect which has been thus opened before us. If\nanything seemed fixed in the endless flux of nations and religions, it\nwas the half-petrified religion of the Jew. That the stern figure which\nwe have beheld walking alone through the long procession of history\nshould come at last and take a place beside his brothers is hard to\npicture. We live in a time when,\n\n                  \u201cFaiths and empires gleam,\n                  Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.\u201d\n\nEvery solid body is threatened with disintegration; and the new powers\nof cohesion, if such there be, have scarcely come into play. But, of all\nchanges fraught with momentous consequences, none could well be more\nimportant than that of a stripping off of its tribal gaberdine by\nJudaism, and the adoption of \u201ca law fit for law universal.\u201d The old\nfable is realized. The wind and hail of persecution blew and pelted the\nJew for a thousand years, and he only drew his cloak closer around him.\nThe sunshine of prosperity and sympathy has shone upon him, and, lo! his\nmantle is already dropping from his shoulders.\n\nFor the present we can only treat the matter as a grand project, but we\nmay endeavor to estimate the value of a Reformation of Judaism such as\nLuther accomplished for Christianity. In the first place, it is, I\nconceive, the sole chance for the permanent continuance of the Jewish\nreligion that it should undergo some such regeneration. If the proposed\nReform perish in the bud, Orthodox Judaism will doubtless survive for\nsome generations, but, according to the laws which govern human\ninstitutions, its days must be numbered. In former times, when every\nnation in Europe held aloof from its neighbors in fear and jealousy, it\nwas possible for alien tribes, like the Jews and gypsies, to move among\nall, holding rigidly to their own tribal alliances and observances;\nhated and mistrusted, indeed, but scarcely more so than their Christian\nnext-door neighbors. But now that Christian nations are all blending\ntogether under the influence of perpetual intercourse, and their\ndifferences of belief, governments, costumes, habits, and ideas are\neffacing themselves year by year, the presence of a non-fusing,\nnon-intermarrying, separatist race\u2014a race brought by commerce into\nperpetual friction with all the rest\u2014becomes an intolerable anomaly.\n\nFor once Mr. Goldwin Smith was in the right in this controversy, when he\nremarked that \u201cthe _least_ sacred of all races would be that which\nshould persistently refuse to come into the allegiance of humanity.\u201d\n\nThe Jews have shown themselves the sturdiest of mankind, but the\ninfluences brought to bear on them now are wholly different from those\nwhich they met with such stubborn courage of old. Political ambition, so\nlong utterly closed to them, but to which Lord Beaconsfield\u2019s career\nmust evermore prove a spur; pleasure and self-indulgence, to which their\nwealth is an ever ready key; the scepticism and materialism of the time,\nto which their acute and positive minds seem to render them even more\nliable than their contemporaries,\u2014these are not the elements out of\nwhich martyrs and confessors are made. A reformed, enlightened,\nworld-wide creed, which a cultivated gentleman may frankly avow and\ndefend in the _salons_ of London, Paris, Berlin, or New York, and in the\nprogress of which he may feel some enthusiasm,\u2014a creed which will make\nhim free to adopt from Christianity all that he recognizes in it of\nspiritually lofty and morally beautiful,\u2014such a creed may have a future\nbefore it of which no end need be foreseen. But for unreformed Judaism\nthere can be nothing in store but the gradual dropping away of the\nablest, the most cultured, the wealthiest, the men of the world and the\nmen of the study,\u2014the Spinozas, the Heines, the Disraelis\u2014and the\npersistence only for a few generations of the more ignorant, fanatical,\nobscure, and poor.\n\nAgain, besides giving to Judaism a new lease of life, the Reform\nprojected would undoubtedly do much to extinguish that passion of\n_Judenhasse_ which is the disgrace of Eastern Christendom, and the\nsource of such manifold woes to both races. The root of that passion is\nthe newly awakened sense (to which I have just referred) of impatience\nat the existence of a nation within every nation, having separate\ninterests of its own and a solidarity between its members, ramifying\ninto every trade, profession, and concern of civil life. Were this\nsolidarity to be relinquished, and the mutual secret co-operation of\nJews[18] reduced to such natural and fitting friendliness as exists\nbetween Scotchmen in England, and were it to become common for Jews to\nmarry Christians and discuss freely with Christians their respective\nviews,\u2014were this to happen, mutual respect and sympathy would very\nquickly supersede mutual prejudice and mistrust. After two generations\nof such Reformed Judaism, the memory of the difference of race would, I\nam persuaded, be reduced to that pleasant interest wherewith we trace\nthe ancestry of some of our eminent statesmen to \u201cfine old Quaker\nfamilies,\u201d or remark that some of our most brilliant men of letters have\nin their veins the marvellous Huguenot blood.[19]\n\nIt is superfluous to add that the Jewish people, thus thoroughly adopted\ninto the comity of European nations, and Judaism recognized as the great\nand enlightened religion of that powerful and ubiquitous race, the true\nmission of Judaism, as taught by Bible and Talmud\u2014that of holding up the\ntorch of monotheistic truth to the world\u2014would begin its practical\naccomplishment. The Latin nations in particular, to whom religion has\npresented itself hitherto in the guise of ecclesiasticism and\nhagiolatry, and who are fast verging into blank materialism as the sole\nalternative they know, would behold at last, with inevitable respect, a\nsimple and noble worship, at once historical and philosophic, without\npriestly claims, and utterly at war with every form of monasticism and\nsuperstition. The impression on these, and even on the Northern nations,\nof such a spectacle could not be otherwise than elevating, and possibly,\nin the Divine order of the world, might be the means whereby the tide of\nfaith, so long ebbing out in dismal scepticism, should flow once more up\nthe rejoicing shores.\n\nEven if this be too much to hope, I cannot doubt that many Christian\nChurches would draw valuable lessons from the presence among them of a\ntruly reformed Judaism. Especially in these days of irreverence, of\nfinikin Ritualism on one side and Salvation Army rowdyism on the other,\nit would be a measureless advantage to be summoned to revert in thought\nto the solemn and awe-inspired tone of Hebrew devotion which still\nbreathes in the services of the synagogue. It has been a loss to\nChristians as well as to Jews that these services have hitherto been\nconducted in Hebrew.[20] Had the synagogue services in London been\nconducted in the English language, I believe that many of the popular\nmisapprehensions concerning Judaism would never have existed, while the\nimpression of profound reverence which the prayers convey would have\nreacted advantageously on Christian worship, too liable to oscillate\nbetween formalism and familiarity.[21]\n\nI am bound to add, on the other side, that it appears to me there are\nsome very great advantages on the side of Christianity of which it\nbehooves reforming Jews to take account. These are not matters of dogma,\nbut of sentiment; and not only may they be appropriated by Jews without\ndeparting by a hair\u2019s breadth from their own religious platform, but\nthey may every one be sanctioned (if any sanction be needed for them) by\ncitations from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. The great difference\nbetween Judaism and Christianity on their moral and spiritual sides, in\nmy humble judgment, lies in this: that the piety and charity, scattered\nlike grains of gold through the rock of Judaism, were by Christ\u2019s\nburning spirit fused together, and cast into golden coin to pass from\nhand to hand. Jews have continually challenged Christians to point to a\nsingle precept in the Gospel which has not its counterpart in the Old\nTestament. They are perhaps in the right, and possibly no such isolated\nprecept can be found differentiating the two creeds; but, both by that\nwhich is left aside and by that which it chose out and emphasized,\nChristianity is, practically, a new system of ethics and religion.\n\nTo these three things in Christianity I would direct the attention of\nJewish reformers:\u2014\n\nThe Christian idea of love to God.\n\nThe Christian idea of love to Man.\n\nThe Christian sentiment concerning Immortality.\n\nFor the first, far be it from me to wrong the martyr race by a doubt\nthat thousands of Jews have nobly obeyed the First Great Commandment of\nthe Law (given in Deuteronomy vi. 4, as well as repeated by Christ) and\n\u201cloved the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and strength,\u201d\neven to the willing sacrifice of their lives through fidelity to Him.\nThe feelings of loyalty entertained by a Jew in the old days of\npersecution to the \u201cGod of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob\u201d must have been\noften a master-passion as fervid as it was deep-rooted. But alongside of\nthis hereditary loyalty to the God and King of Israel there might well\ngrow somewhat of that tender personal piety which springs from the\nEvangelical idea of God as holding personal relations with each devout\nand forgiven soul.\n\nOf the two theories of religion,\u2014that which starts with the idea of a\nTribe or Church, and that which starts with the unit of the individual\nsoul,\u2014Judaism has hitherto held the former. It has been essentially a\ncorporate religion; and to be \u201ccut off from the congregation,\u201d like\nSpinoza, has been deemed tantamount to spiritual destruction. It is\nsurely time that Reformed Judaism should now adopt the far higher theory\nof religious individualism, and teach men to seek those sacred private\nand personal relations with the Lord of Spirits which, when once\nenjoyed, cause the notions of any mere corporate privileges to appear\nchildish. Had the deep experiences which belong to such personal piety\nbeen often felt by modern Jews (as they certainly were by many of the\nold Psalmists), it could not have happened that modern Jewish literature\nshould have been so barren as it is of devotional works and of spiritual\npoetry. To a serious reverential spirit (a sentiment far above the level\nof that of the majority of Christians), Jews too rarely join those more\nardent religious affections and aspirations which it is the glory of\nChristianity to inspire in the hearts of her saints. Had they known\nthese feelings vividly and often, we must have had a Jewish Thomas \u00e0\nKempis, a Jewish Saint Theresa, a Jewish Tauler, F\u00e9nelon, Taylor,\nWesley. It will not suffice to say in answer that Jews did not need such\ntreatises of devotion and such hymns of ecstatic piety, having always\npossessed the noblest of the world in their own Scriptures. Feelings\nwhich really rise to the flood do not keep in the river-bed for a\nthousand years.\n\nAgain, the Christian idea of Love to Man possesses an element of\ntenderness not perceptible in Jewish philanthropy. Jews are splendidly\ncharitable not alone to their own poor, but also to Christians. Their\nmanagement of their public and private charities has long been\nrecognized as wiser and more liberal than that of Christians at home or\nabroad. They are faithful and affectionate husbands and wives;\npeculiarly tender parents; pious children; kindly neighbors. The cruel\nwrongs of eighteen centuries have neither brutalized nor imbittered\nthem. Well would it be if whole classes of drunken, wife-beating\nEnglishmen would take example in these respects from them! But of\ncertain claims beyond these, claims always recognized by Christian\nteachers, and not seldom practically fulfilled by Christian men and\nwomen,\u2014the claims of the erring to be forgiven, of the fallen to be\nlifted out of the mire,\u2014Jews have hitherto taken little account. The\nparable of the Lost Sheep is emphatically Christian; and among\nChristians only, till quite recently, have there been active agencies at\nwork to seek and save ruined women, drunkards, criminals, the \u201cperishing\nand dangerous classes.\u201d[22] Mary Magdalene did well to weep over the\nfeet of Jesus Christ. It was Christ who brought into the world\ncompassion for her and for those like her. And for the forgiveness of\nenemies, also, the Christian spirit, if not absolutely unique, is yet\nsupreme. The very core of the Christian idea fitly found its expression\non the Cross, \u201cFather, forgive them, for they know not what they do.\u201d\nThat divinest kind of charity, which renounces all contests for rights,\nand asks not what it is _bound_ to do, but what it may be _permitted_ to\ndo, to bless and serve a child of God,\u2014that charity may, I think, justly\nbe historically named Christian. Of course, every pure Theism is called\non to teach it likewise.\n\nWith regard to women, the attitude of Judaism is peculiar. It has always\nrecognized some \u201cRights of Women,\u201d and has never fallen into the\nabsurdity of cherishing mental or physical weakness in them as honorable\nor attractive. As Mrs. Cyril Flower (then Miss Constance de Rothschild)\nshowed in an interesting article published some years ago, the \u201cHebrew\nWoman,\u201d so magnificently described in the last chapter of Proverbs, has\nalways been the Jewish ideal: \u201cStrength and honor are her clothing. She\nopeneth her mouth with wisdom.\u201d No jealousy, but, on the contrary,\njoyful recognition, awaited in each age the vigorous actions of Miriam\nand Deborah, of Judith and Esther, and of the mother of the seven\nmartyrs in the Book of Maccabees. Jewish marriages (till quite recently\nformed always on the Eastern rather than on the Western system) are\nproverbially faithful and affectionate; and the resolution of Jews never\nto permit their wives to undertake labor outside their homes (such as\nfactory work and the like) has undoubtedly vastly contributed to the\nhealth and welfare of the nation. Yet, notwithstanding all this,\nsomething appears to be lacking in Jewish feeling concerning women. Too\nmuch of Oriental materialism still lingers. Too little of Occidental\nchivalry and romance has yet arisen. In this respect, strange to say,\nthe East is prose, the West poetry. The relations of men and women,\nabove all of husband and wife, cannot be ranked as perfect till some\nhalo of tender reverence be added to sturdy good-will and fidelity.[23]\n\nAnd, beyond their human brethren and sisters, Christians have found (it\nis one of those late developments of the fertile Christian idea of which\nI have spoken) that the humbler races of living creatures have also\nclaims upon us,\u2014moral claims founded on the broad basis of the right of\nsimple sentiency to be spared needless pain; religious claims founded on\nthe touching relation which we, the often forgiven children of God, bear\nto \u201cthe unoffending creatures which he loves.\u201d This tender development\nof Christianity, and the discovery consequent on it, that \u201che prayeth\nwell who loveth well both man and bird and beast,\u201d is assuredly worthy\nof the regard of those Reformers who would make Judaism a universal\nreligion. Semitic literature has hitherto betrayed a hardness and\npoverty on this side which it is needful should now be remedied, if\nJudaism is to ride on the full tide of Aryan sympathies.\n\nAnd, lastly, the Christian sentiment concerning Immortality deserves\nspecial attention from Reforming Jews. The adoption of the dogma of a\nFuture Life has scarcely even yet, after some fifty generations,\nimprinted on the Jewish mind the full consciousness of\n\n                 \u201cThat great world of light which lies\n                 Behind all human destinies.\u201d\n\nJews have, it would appear, essentially the _esprit positif_. They are\ncontent to let the impenetrable veil hang between their eyes and the\nfuture world,\u2014that veil which the Aryan soul strives impatiently, age\nafter age, to tear away, or on which it throws a thousand phantasms from\nthe magic-lanthorn of fancy. Millions of Christians have lived with\ntheir \u201ctreasures\u201d truly placed in that world where moth and rust do not\ncorrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. Especially have the\nbereaved among us dwelt on earth with their hearts already in heaven\nwhere their beloved ones await them. To too great an extent, no doubt,\nhas this \u201cother-worldliness\u201d been carried, especially among ascetics;\nbut, on the whole, the firm anchorage of Christian souls beyond the tomb\nhas been the source of infinite comfort and infinite elevation. Of this\nsort of projection of the spirit into the darkness, this rocket-throwing\nof ropes of faith over the deeps of destruction, whereby the mourner\u2019s\nshipwrecked soul is saved and reinstated, the Jewish consciousness seems\nyet scarcely cognizant. Perhaps these days of pessimism and mental fog\nare not those wherein any one is likely to find his faith in immortality\nquickened. As Dr. Johnson complained that he was \u201cinjured\u201d by every man\nwho did not believe all that he believed, so each of us finds his hope\nof another life chilled by the doubts which, like icebergs, float in the\nsea of thought we are traversing. But, for those Jews who thoroughly\naccept the dogma of immortality, it would surely be both a happiness and\na source of moral elevation to give to such a stupendous fact its place\nin the perspective of existence. There is infinite difference between\nthe molelike vision which sees nothing beyond the grassroots and the\nworms of earth, though dimly aware of a world of sunlight above, and the\neagle glance which can measure alike things near and afar; between the\nman who counts his beloved dead as lost to him because he beholds and\nhears and touches them no more, and the man who can say calmly amid his\nsorrow,\u2014\n\n                \u201cTake them, thou great Eternity!\n                  Our little life is but a gust,\n                Which bends the branches of thy tree,\n                  And trails its blossoms in the dust.\u201d\n\nTurning now from the results on Judaism itself and on Christianity at\nlarge of a great Jewish Reformation, we may indulge in some reflections\non the possible bearings of such an event on that not inconsiderable\nnumber of persons who, all over Europe, are hanging loosely upon or\ndropping silently away from the Christian Churches. I am not speaking of\nthose who become Atheists or Agnostics and renounce all interest in\nreligion, but of those who, like Robert Elsmere, pass into phases of\nbelief which may be broadly classed under the head of Theism. These\npersons believe still in God and in the life to come, and hold\ntenaciously by the moral and spiritual part of Christianity, perhaps\nsometimes feeling its beauty and truth more vividly than some orthodox\nChristians who deem the startling, miraculous, and \u201capocalyptic\u201d part to\nconstitute the essence of their faith. But this \u201capocalyptic part,\u201d and\nall which Dr. Martineau has called the \u201cMessianic mythology,\u201d they have\nabandoned. Of the number of these persons, it is hard to form an\nestimate. Some believe that the Churches are all honeycombed by them,\nand that a panic would follow could a census of England be taken in a\nPalace of Truth. Not a few in the beginning and middle of this century\nquitted their old folds, and under the names of \u201cUnitarians,\u201d \u201cFree\nChristians,\u201d and \u201cTheists\u201d have thenceforth stood confessedly apart.[24]\nBut of late years the disposition to make any external schism has\napparently died away. The instinct, once universal, to build a new nest\nfor each brood of faith seems perishing among us. The Church-forming\nspirit, so vigorous of old in Christianity and in Buddhism, is visibly\nfailing, and making way for new phases of development, of which the\nSalvation Army may possibly afford us a sample. Among cultivated people\nsubtle discrimination of differences and fastidiousness as regards\nquestions of taste are indefinitely stronger than that desire for a\ncommon worship which, in the breasts of our forefathers, who \u201crolled the\npsalm to wintry skies,\u201d and dared death merely to pray together, must\nhave mounted to a passion. Englishmen generally still cling to public\nworship, but it is chiefly where an ancient liturgy supplies by old and\nholy words a dreamy music of devotion, into which each feels at liberty\nto weave his own thoughts. Wherever the demand is made for prayers which\nshall definitely express the faith and aspirations of the modern-minded\nworshipper, there the subtleties and the fastidiousness come into play,\nand, instead of being drawn together, men sorrowfully discover that they\nare made conscious by common worship of a hundred discrepancies of\nopinion, a thousand disharmonies of taste and feeling. In all things, we\nmen and women of the modern Athens are not \u201ctoo superstitious,\u201d but too\ncritical; and in religion, which necessarily touches us most vitally,\nour critical spirit threatens to paralyze us with shyness. The typical\nEnglish gentleman and lady of to-day are at the opposite pole of\nsentiment in this respect from the Arab who kneels on his carpet on the\ncrowded deck for his evening orison, or from the Italian _contadina_ who\ntells her beads before the wayside Madonna. Doubtless, here is one\nreason among many why such multitudes remain without any definite place\nin the religions of the land. They hang languidly about the old hive,\nfeebly humming now and then, but feeling no impulse to swarm, and\nfinding no queen-spirit to lead them to another home where they might\nbuild their proper cells and make their own honey.\n\nBut, whether embodied in any religious sect or Church, or hanging\nloosely upon one, the persons of whom we have been speaking, as\nbelievers in God and in the spiritual, but not the apocalyptic side of\nChristianity,\u2014_Christian Theists_, as we may best call them,\u2014are of\ncourse nearer in a theological point of view than any others to those\nReformed Jews whom we may call _Jewish Theists_. The intellectual creeds\nof each, in fact, might, without much concession on either side, be\nreduced to identical formul\u00e6. Now, Christian Theists have hitherto\nwanted a rallying point, and have been taunted with the lack of any\nhistoric basis for their religion. Why (it will be asked by many) should\nnot this Reformed Judaism afford such a rallying point, and the old\nrocky foundations laid by Moses support a common temple of Christian and\nJewish Theism?\n\nIt may prove that such a consummation may be among the happy reunitings\nand reconstructions of the far future. But for the present hour, and for\nthe reasons I have given in the beginning of this paper, I do not\nbelieve it can be near at hand. I am also quite sure that it would be\nthe extreme of unwisdom to hamper and disturb the progress of Reformed\nJudaism along its own lines by any hasty efforts at amalgamation with\noutsiders, who would bring with them another order of religious habits\nand endless divergencies of opinion.\n\nLet Reformed Judaism relight the old golden candlestick, and set it\naloft, and it will give light unto all which are in the house,\u2014not only\nthe House of Israel, but in the House of Humanity. A glorious future may\nin God\u2019s Providence await such purified, emancipated Judaism. It is\ntrue, it may not exhibit the special form of religion which one party or\nanother among us altogether desires to see extended in the world. Some\nradical reformers who sympathize in its general scope would wish to find\nit stripping off altogether its Jewish character, and torn up from the\nroot of Mosaism. Many more orthodox Christians will undervalue it\nbecause it shows no indication of a tendency to adopt from Christianity\nsuch doctrines as the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the Atonement, even\nwhile, on the spiritual side, it is imbued with the essential ideas of\nhim whom it will doubtless recognize as the great Jewish Rabbi and\nProphet, Jesus of Nazareth. But it is not for us to seek to modify,\nscarcely even to criticise, such a movement as this. A respectful\ninterest and a hopeful sympathy seem to me the only sentiments wherewith\nChristians and Christian Theists should stand aside and watch this last\nmarch forward of that wondrous patriarchal faith, whereof Christianity\nitself is the firstborn son, and Islam the younger; and which now in the\nend of the ages prepares to cross a new Jordan, and take possession of a\nnew Holy Land.\n\n  \u2042 NOTE.\u2014It is proper to mention, in republishing this essay at the\n  desire of Jewish friends, that it was received on its first\n  appearance with the utmost possible disfavor by the Jewish press.\n\n\n\n\n                               ESSAY IV.\n                        THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING.\n\n\nEndless books have been written about the Laws of Thought, the Nature of\nThought, and the Validity of Thought. Physiologists and metaphysicians\nhave vied with one another to tell us in twenty different ways how we\nthink and why we think and what good our thinking may be supposed to be\nas affording us any real acquaintance with things in general outside our\nthinking-machine. One school of philosophers tells us that Thought is a\nsecretion of the brain (_i.e._, that Thought is a form of Matter), and\nanother that it is purely immaterial, and the only reality in the\nuniverse,\u2014_i.e._, that Matter is a form of Thought. The meekest of men\n\u201cpresume to think\u201d this, that, and the other; and the proudest\ndistinction of the modern sage is to be a \u201cThinker,\u201d especially a \u201cfree\u201d\none. But with all this much ado about Thought, it has not occurred to\nany one, so far as I am aware, to attempt a fair review of what any one\nof us thinks in the course of the twenty-four hours; what are the number\nof separable thoughts which, on an average, pass through a human brain\nin a day; and what may be their nature and proportions in the shape of\nRecollections, Reflections, Hopes, Contrivances, Fancies, and\nReasonings. We are all aware that when we are awake a perpetual stream\nof thoughts goes on in \u201cwhat we are pleased to call our minds,\u201d\nsometimes slow and sluggish, as the water in a ditch; sometimes bright,\nrapid, and sparkling, like a mountain brook; and now and then making\nsome sudden, happy dash, cataract-wise, over an obstacle. We are also\naccustomed to speak as if the sum and substance of all this thinking\nwere very respectable, as might become \u201cbeings endowed with the lofty\nfaculty of thought\u201d; and we always tacitly assume that our thoughts have\nlogical beginnings, middles, and endings\u2014commence with problems and\nterminate in solutions\u2014or that we evolve out of our consciousness\ningenious schemes of action or elaborate pictures of Hope or Memory. If\nour books of mental philosophy ever obtain a place in the Circulating\nLibraries of another planet, the \u201cgeneral reader\u201d of that distant world\nwill inevitably suppose that on our little Tellus dwell a thousand\nmillions of men, women, and children, who spend their existence as the\ninterlocutors in Plato\u2019s Dialogues passed their hours under the grip of\nthe dread Socratic elenchus, arguing, sifting, balancing, recollecting,\nhard at work as if under the ferule of a schoolmaster.\n\nThe real truth about the matter seems to be that, instead of taking this\nkind of mental exercise all day long, and every day, there are very few\nof us who ever do anything of the kind for more than a few minutes at a\ntime; and that the great bulk of our thoughts proceed in quite a\ndifferent way, and are occupied by altogether less exalted matters than\nour vanity has induced us to imagine. The normal mental locomotion of\neven well-educated men and women, save under the spur of exceptional\nstimulus, is neither the flight of an eagle in the sky nor the trot of a\nhorse upon the road, but may better be compared to the lounge of a\ntruant school-boy in a shady lane, now dawdling pensively, now taking a\nhop-skip-and-jump, now stopping to pick blackberries, and now turning to\nright or left to catch a butterfly, climb a tree, or make\ndick-duck-and-drake on a pond; going nowhere in particular, and only\nonce in a mile or so proceeding six steps in succession in an orderly\nand philosophical manner.\n\nIt is far beyond my ambition to attempt to supply this large lacune in\nmental science, and to set forth the truth of the matter about the\nactual Thoughts which practically, not theoretically, are wont to pass\nthrough human brains. Some few observations on the subject, however, may\nperhaps be found entertaining, and ought certainly to serve to mitigate\nour self-exaltation on account of our grand mental endowments, by\nshowing how rarely and under what curious variety of pressure we employ\nthem.\n\nThe first and familiar remark is that every kind of thought is liable to\nbe colored and modified in all manner of ways by our physical conditions\nand surroundings. We are not steam thinking-machines, working evenly at\nall times at the same rate, and turning out the same sort and quantity\nof work in the same given period, but rather more like windmills,\nsubject to every breeze, and whirling our sails at one time with great\nimpetus and velocity, and at another standing still, becalmed and\nineffective. Sometimes it is our outer conditions which affect us,\nsometimes it is our own inner wheels which are clogged and refuse to\nrotate; but, from whatever cause it arises, the modification of our\nthoughts is often so great as to make us arrive at diametrically\nopposite conclusions on the same subject and with the same _data_ of\nthought, within an incredibly brief interval of time. Some years ago,\nthe President of the British Association frankly answered objections to\nthe consistency of his inaugural address by referring to the different\naspects of the ultimate problems of theology in different \u201cmoods\u201d of\nmind. When men of such eminence confess to \u201cmoods,\u201d lesser mortals may\navow their own mental oscillations without painful humiliation, and even\nput forward some claim to consistency if the vibrating needle of their\nconvictions do not swing quite round the whole compass, and point at two\no\u2019clock to the existence of a Deity and a Life to come, and at six to a\nnebula for the origin, and a \u201cstreak of morning cloud\u201d for the\nconsummation of things. Possibly, also, the unscientific mind may claim\nsome praise on the score of modesty if it delay for the moment to\ninstruct mankind in either its two o\u2019clock or its six o\u2019clock creed, and\nwait till it has settled down for some few hours, weeks, or months, to\nany one definite opinion.\n\nNot to dwell for the present on these serious topics, it is only\nnecessary to carry with us through our future investigations that every\nman\u2019s thoughts are continually fluctuating and vibrating, from inward as\nwell as outward causes. Let us glance for a moment at some of these.\nFirst, there are the well-known conditions of health and high animal\nspirits, in which every thought is rose-colored; and corresponding\nconditions of disease and depression, in which everything we think of\nseems to pass, like a great bruise, through yellow, green, blue, and\npurple to black. A liver complaint causes the universe to be enshrouded\nin gray; and the gout covers it with an inky pall, and makes us think\nour best friends little better than fiends in disguise. Further, a whole\ntreatise would be needed to expound how our thoughts are further\ndistempered by food, beverages of various kinds, and narcotics of great\nvariety. When our meals have been too long postponed, it would appear as\nif that Evil Personage who proverbially finds mischief for idle hands to\ndo were similarly engaged with an idle digestive apparatus, and the\nresult is that, if there be the smallest and most remote cloud to be\nseen in the whole horizon of our thoughts, it sweeps up and over us just\nin proportion as we grow hungrier and fainter, till at last it\noverwhelms us in depression and despair. \u201cWhy?\u201d we ask ourselves, \u201cwhy\nhas not A. written to us for so long? What will B. think of such and\nsuch a transaction? How is our pecuniary concern with C. to be settled?\nWhat is the meaning of that odd little twitch we have felt so often here\nor there about our persons?\u201d The answer to our thoughts, prompted by the\nevil genius of famine, is always lugubrious in the extreme. \u201cA. has not\nwritten because he is dead. B. will quarrel with us forever because of\nthat transaction. C. will never pay us our money, or we shall never be\nable to pay C. That twitch which we have so thoughtlessly disregarded is\nthe premonitory symptom of the most horrible of all human maladies, of\nwhich we shall die in agonies and leave a circle of sorrowing friends\nbefore the close of the ensuing year.\u201d Such are the _id\u00e9es noires_ which\npresent themselves when we want our dinner; and the best-intentioned\npeople in the world, forsooth! recommend us to summon them round us by\nfasting, as if they were a company of cherubim instead of imps of quite\nanother character! But the scene undergoes a transformation bordering on\nthe miraculous when we have eaten a slice of mutton and drunk half a\nglass of sherry. If we revert now to our recent meditations, we are\nquite innocently astonished to think what could possibly have made us so\nanxious without any reasonable ground. Of course, A. has not written to\nus because he always goes grouse-shooting at this season. B. will never\ntake the trouble to think about our little transaction. C. is certain to\npay us, or we can readily raise money to pay him; and our twitch means\nnothing worse than a touch of rheumatics or an ill-fitting garment.\n\nBeyond the alternations of fasting and feasting, still more amazing are\nthe results of narcotics, alcoholic beverages, and of tea and coffee.\nEvery species of wine exercises a perceptibly different influence of its\nown, from the cheery and social \u201csparkling grape of Eastern France\u201d to\nthe solemn black wine of Oporto, the fit accompaniment of the blandly\ndogmatic post-prandial prose of elderly gentlemen of orthodox\nsentiments. A cup of strong coffee clears the brain and makes the\nthoughts transparent, while one of green tea drives them fluttering like\ndead leaves before the wind. Time and learning would fail to describe\nthe yet more marvellous effects of opium, hemlock, henbane, hashish,\nbromide, and chloral. Every one of these narcotics produces a different\nhue of the mental window through which we look out on the world;\nsometimes distorting all objects in the wildest manner (like opium),\nsometimes (like chloral) acting only perceptibly by removing the sense\nof disquiet and restoring our thoughts to the white light of commonsense\ncheerfulness; and again acting quite differently on the thoughts of\ndifferent persons, and of the same persons at different times.\n\nOnly secondary to the effects of inwardly imbibed stimulants or\nnarcotics are those of the outward atmosphere, which in bracing weather\nmakes our thoughts crisp like the frosted grass, and in heavy November\ncauses them to drip chill and slow and dull, like the moisture from the\nmossy eaves of the Moated Grange. Burning, glaring Southern sunshine\ndazes our minds as much as our eyes, and a London fog obfuscates them,\nso that a man might honestly plead that he could no more argue clearly\nin the fog than the Irishman could spell correctly with a bad pen and\nmuddy ink.\n\nNor are mouths, eyes, and lungs by any means the only organs through\nwhich influences arrive at our brain, modifying the thoughts which\nproceed from them. The sense of Smelling, when gratified by the odors of\nwoods and gardens and hay-fields, or even of delicately perfumed rooms,\nlifts all our thoughts into a region wherein the Beautiful, the Tender,\nand the Sublime may impress us freely; while the same sense, offended by\ndisgusting and noxious odors, as of coarse cookery, open sewers, or\nclose chambers inhabited by vulgar people, thrusts us down into an\nopposite stratum of feeling, wherein poetry entereth not, and our very\nthoughts smell of garlic. Needless to add that in a still more\ntranscendent way Music seizes on the thoughts of the musically-minded,\nand bears them off in its talons over sea and land, and up to Olympus\nlike Ganymede. Two easily distinguishable mental influences seem to\nbelong to music, according as it is heard by those who really appreciate\nit or by others who are unable to do so. To the former it opens a book\nof poetry, which they follow word for word after the performer, as if he\nread it to them, thinking the thoughts of the composer in succession\nwith scarcely greater uncertainty or vagueness than if they were\nexpressed in verbal language of a slightly mystical description. To the\nlatter the book is closed; but though the listener\u2019s own thoughts unroll\nthemselves uninterrupted by the composer\u2019s ideas, they are very\nconsiderably colored thereby. \u201cI delight in music,\u201d said once Sir\nCharles Lyell to me: \u201cI am always able to think out my work better while\nit is going on!\u201d As a matter of fact, he resumed at the moment a\ndisquisition concerning the date of the Glacial Period at the precise\npoint at which it had been interrupted by the performance of a symphony\nof Beethoven, having evidently mastered in the interval an intricate\nastronomical knot. To ordinary mortals with similar deficiency of\nmusical sense, harmonious sound seems to spread a halo like that of\nlight, causing every subject of contemplation to seem glorified, as a\nlandscape appears in a dewy sunrise. Memories rise to the mind and seem\ninfinitely more affecting than at other times, affections still living\ngrow doubly tender, new beauties appear in the picture or the landscape\nbefore our eyes, and passages of remembered prose or poetry float\nthrough our brains in majestic cadence. In a word, the sense of the\nBeautiful, the Tender, the Sublime, is vividly aroused, and the\natmosphere of familiarity and commonplace, wherewith the real beauty and\nsweetness of life are too often veiled, is lifted for the hour. As in a\ncamera-obscura or mirror, the very trees and grass which we had looked\non a thousand times are seen to possess unexpected loveliness. But all\nthis can only happen to the non-musical soul when the harmony to which\nit listens is really harmonious, and when it comes at an appropriate\ntime, when the surrounding conditions permit and incline the man to\nsurrender himself to its influences; in a word, when there is nothing\nelse demanding his attention. The most barbarous of the practices of\nroyalty and civic magnificence is that of employing music as an\naccompaniment to feasts. It involves a confusion of the realm of the\nreal and ideal, and of one sense with another, as childish as that of\nthe little girl who took out a peach to eat while bathing in the sea.\nNext to music during the dinner-time comes music in the midst of a\ncheerful evening party, where, when every intellect present is strung up\nto the note of animated conversation and brilliant repartee, there is a\nsudden _douche_ of solemn chords from the region of the pianoforte, and\npresently some well-meaning gentleman endeavors to lift up all the lazy\npeople, who are lounging in easy-chairs after a good dinner, into the\nempyrean of emotion \u201csublime upon the seraph wings of ecstasy\u201d of\nBeethoven or Mozart; or some meek damsel, with plaintive note, calls on\nthem, in Schubert\u2019s _Addio_, to break their hearts at the memory or\nanticipation of those mortal sorrows which are either behind or before\nevery one of us, and which it is either agony or profanation to think of\nat such a moment. All this is assuredly intensely barbarous. The same\npeople who like to mix up the ideal pleasure of music with incongruous\nenjoyments of another kind would be guilty of giving a kiss with their\nmouths full of bread and cheese. As to what we may term extra-mural\nmusic, the hideous noises made by the aid of vile machinery in the\nstreet, it is hard to find words of condemnation strong enough for it.\nProbably the organ-grinders of London have done more in the last twenty\nyears to detract from the quality and quantity of the highest kind of\nmental work done by the nation than any two or three colleges of Oxford\nor Cambridge have effected to increase it. One mathematician alone, as\nhe informed the writer, estimated the cost of the increased mental labor\nthey have imposed upon him and his clerks at several thousand pounds\u2019\nworth of first-class work, for which the State practically paid in the\nadded length of time needed for his calculations. Not much better are\nthose church bells which now sound a trumpet before the good people who\nattend \u201cmatins\u201d and other daily services at hours when their profane\nneighbors are wearily sleeping or anxiously laboring at their appointed\ntasks.\n\nNext to our bodily Sensations come in order of influence on our thoughts\nthe Places in which we happen to do our thinking. Meditating like the\npious Harvey \u201cAmong the Tombs\u201d is one thing; doing the same on a breezy\nmountain side among the gorse and the heather, quite another. Jostling\nour way in a crowded street or roaming in a solitary wood, rattling in\nan English express train or floating by moonlight in a Venetian gondola\nor an Egyptian dahabieh, though each and all favorable conditions for\nthinking, create altogether distinct classes of lucubrations. If we\nendeavor to define what are the surroundings among which Thought is best\nsustained and most vigorous, we shall probably find good reason to\nreverse not a few of our accepted and familiar judgments. The common\nidea, for example, that we ponder very profoundly by the seashore, is, I\nam persuaded, a baseless delusion. We _think_ indeed that we are\nthinking, but for the most part our minds merely lie open, like so many\noysters, to the incoming waves, and with scarcely greater intellectual\nactivity. The very charm of the great Deep seems to lie in the fact that\nit reduces us to a state of mental emptiness and vacuity, while our\nvanity is soothed by the notion that we are thinking with unwonted\nemphasis and perseverance. Amphitrite, the enchantress, mesmerizes us\nwith the monotonous passes of her billowy hands, and lulls us into a\nslumberous hypnotism wherein we meekly do her bidding, and fix our eyes\nand thoughts, like biologized men, on the rising and falling of every\nwave. If it be tempestuous weather, we watch open-mouthed till the\nbeautiful white crests topple over and dash in storm and thunder up the\nbeach; and, if it be a summer evening\u2019s calm, we note with placid,\nnever-ending contentment how the wavelets, like little children, run up\nsoftly and swiftly on the golden strand to deposit their gifts of shells\nand seaweed, and then retreat, shy and ashamed of their boldness, to\nhide themselves once again under the flowing skirts of Mother Ocean.\n\nAgain, divines and poets have united to bolster up our convictions that\nwe do a great deal of important thinking at night when we lie awake in\nbed. Every preacher points to the hours of the \u201csilent midnight,\u201d when\nhis warnings will surely come home, and sit like incubi on the breast of\nsinners who, too often perhaps, have dozed in the day-time as they flew,\nbat-wise, over their heads from the pulpit. Shelley, in \u201cQueen Mab,\u201d\naffords us a terrible night scene of a king who, after his dinner of\n\u201csilence, grandeur, and excess,\u201d finds sleep abdicate his pillow\n(probably in favor of indigestion); and Tennyson, in \u201cLocksley Hall,\u201d\nthreatens torments of memory still keener to the \u201cshallow-hearted cousin\nAmy\u201d whenever she may happen to lie meditating\u2014\n\n    \u201cIn the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.\u201d\n\nCertainly, if there be any time in the twenty-four hours when we might\ncarry on consecutive chains of thought, it would be when we lie still\nfor hours undisturbed by sight or sound, having nothing to do, and with\nour bodies so far comfortable and quiescent as to give the minimum of\ninterruption to our mental proceedings. Far be it from me to deny that\nunder such favorable auspices some people may think to good purpose.\nBut, if I do not greatly err, they form the exception rather than the\nrule among bad sleepers. As the Psalmist of old remarked, it is\ngenerally \u201cmischief\u201d which a man\u2014wicked or otherwise\u2014\u201cdevises upon his\nbed\u201d; and the truth of the observation in our day is proved from the\nharsh Ukases for domestic government which are commonly promulgated by\nPaterfamilias at the breakfast table, and by the sullenness _de parti\npris_ which testifies that the sleepless brother, sister, or maiden aunt\nhas made up his or her mind during the night to \u201chave it out\u201d with\nSo-and-so next morning. People are a little faint and feverish when they\nlie awake, and nothing occurs to divert their minds and restore them to\nequanimity, and so they go on chewing the bitter cud of any little\ngrudge. Thus it comes to pass that, while Anger causes Sleeplessness,\nSleeplessness is a frequent nurse of Anger.[25]\n\nFinally, among popular delusions concerning propitious conditions of\nThoughts, must be reckoned the belief (which has driven hermits and\nphilosophers crazy) that thinking is better done in abnormal isolation\nthan in the natural social state of man. Of course there is benefit\nquite incalculable in the reservation of some portion of our days for\nsolitude. How much excuse is to be made for the shortcomings, the\nill-tempers, the irreligion of those poor people who are scarcely alone\nfor half an hour between the cradle and the grave, God alone can tell.\nBut, with such reasonable reservation of our hours and the occasional\nprecious enjoyment of lonely country walks or rides, the benefits of\nsolitude, even on Zimmermann\u2019s showing, come nearly to an end; and there\nis little doubt that, instead of thinking more, the more hours of\nloneliness we devote to doing it, the _less_ we shall really think at\nall, or even retain capacity for thinking and not degenerate into\ncabbages. Our minds need the stimulus of other minds, as our lungs need\noxygen to perform their functions. After all, if we analyze the\nexquisite pleasure afforded us by brilliant and suggestive conversation,\none of its largest elements will be found to be that it has quickened\nour thoughts from a heavy amble into a gallop. A really fine talk\nbetween half a dozen well-matched and thoroughly cultivated people, who\ndiscuss an interesting subject with their manifold wealth of allusions,\narguments, and illustrations, is a sort of mental Oaks or Derbyday,\nwherein our brains are excited to their utmost speed, and we get over\nmore ground than in weeks of solitary mooning meditation. It is\nsuperfluous to add that if our constitutional mental tendency be that of\nthe gentleman who na\u00efvely expressed his feelings by saying impressively\nto a friend, \u201cI take _great_ interest in my own concerns, I _assure_ you\nI do,\u201d it seems doubly desirable that we should overstep our petty\nring-fence of personal hopes, fears, and emotions of all kinds, and roam\nwith our neighbors over their dominions, and into further outlying\nregions of public and universal interest. Of all ingenious prescriptions\nfor making a miserable moral hypochondriac, it is difficult to imagine a\nbetter than the orthodox plan of the \u201cSelig-gemachende Kirche\u201d for\nmaking a Saint. Take your man or woman, with a morbidly tender\nconscience and a pernicious habit of self-introspection. If he or she\nhave an agonizing memory of wrong, sin, or sorrow overshadowing the\nwhole of life, so much the better. Then shut the individual up in a cell\nlike a toad in a stone, to feed on his or her own thoughts, till death\nor madness puts an end to the experiment.\n\nBut if the seaside and solitude and the midnight couch have been much\noverrated as propitious conditions of thought, there are, _per contra_,\ncertain other conditions of it the value of which has been too much\nignored. The law of the matter seems to be that real hard Thought, like\nHappiness, rarely comes when we have made elaborate preparation for it;\nand that the higher part of the mind which is to be exercised works much\nmore freely when a certain lower part (concerned with \u201cunconscious\ncerebration\u201d) is busy about some little affairs of its own department\nand its restless activity is thus disposed of. Not one man in fifty does\nhis best thinking quite motionless, but instinctively employs his limbs\nin some way when his brain is in full swing of argument and reflection.\nEven a trifling fidget of the hands with a paper-knife, a flower, a\npiece of twine, or the bread we crumble beside our plate at dinner,\nsupplies in a degree this _desideratum_, and the majority of people\nnever carry on an animated conversation involving rapid thought without\nindulging in some such habit. But the more complete employment of our\nunconscious cerebration in walking up or down a level terrace or\nquarter-deck, where there are no passing objects to distract our\nattention and no need to mark where we plant our feet, seems to provide\neven better for smooth-flowing thought. The perfection of such\nconditions is attained when the walk in question is taken of a still,\nsoft November evening, when the light has faded so far as to blur the\nsurrounding withered trees and flowers, but the gentle gray sky yet\naffords enough vision to prevent embarrassment. There are a few such\nhours in every year which appear absolutely invaluable for calm\nreflection, and which are grievously wasted by those who hurry indoors\nat dusk to light candles and sit round a yet unneeded fire.\n\nThere is also another specially favorable opportunity for abstruse\nmeditation, which I trust I may be pardoned for venturing to name. It is\nthe grand occasion afforded by the laudable custom of patiently\nlistening to dull speakers or readers in the lecture-room or the pulpit.\nA moment\u2019s reflection will surely enable the reader to corroborate the\nremark that we seldom think out the subject of a new book or article, or\nelaborate a political or philanthropic scheme, a family compact, or the\n_menu_ of a large dinner, with so much precision and lucidity as when\ngazing with vacant respectfulness at a gentleman expatiating with\nelaborate stupidity on theology or science. The voice of the charmer as\nit rises and falls is almost as soothing as the sound of the waves on\nthe shore, but not quite equally absorbing to the attention; while the\nrepose of all around gently inclines the languid mind to alight like a\nbutterfly on any little flower it may find in the arid waste, and suck\nit to the bottom. This beneficent result of sermon and lecture-hearing\nis, however, sometimes deplorably marred by the stuffiness of the room,\nthe hardness and shallowness of the seats (as in that place of severe\nmortification of the flesh, the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street),\nand lastly by the unpardonable habit of many orators of lifting their\nvoices in an animated way, as if they really had something to say, and\nthen solemnly announcing a platitude,\u2014a process which acts on the nerves\nof a listener as it must act on those of a flounder to be carried up\ninto the air half a dozen times in the bill of a heron and then dropped\nflat on the mud. Under trials like these, the tormented thoughts of the\nsufferer, seeking rest and finding none, are apt to assume quite\nunaccountable and morbid shapes, and indulge in freaks of an irrational\nkind, as in a dream. The present writer and some sober-minded\nacquaintances have, for example, all felt themselves impelled at such\nhours to perform a\u00ebrial flights of fancy about the church or\nlecture-room in the character of stray robins or bats. \u201cHere,\u201d they\nthink gravely (quite unconscious for the moment of the absurdity of\ntheir reflection), \u201chere, on this edge of a monument, I might stand and\ntake flight to that cornice an inch wide, whence I might run along to\nthe top of that pillar; and from thence, by merely touching the bald tip\nof the preacher\u2019s head, I might alight on the back of that plump little\nangel on the tomb opposite, while a final spring would take me through\nthe open pane of window and perch me on the yew-tree outside.\u201d The whole\nmay perhaps be reckoned a spontaneous mythical self-representation of\nthe Psalmist\u2019s cry: \u201cOh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I\nflee away and be at rest.\u201d\n\nAnother kind of meditation under the same aggravated affliction is\nafforded by making fantastic pictures out of the stains of damp and\ntracks of snails on the wall, which often (in village churches\nespecially) supply the young with a permanent subject of contemplation\nin \u201cthe doctor with his boots,\u201d the \u201cold lady and her cap,\u201d and the huge\nface which would be quite perfect if the spectator might only draw an\neye where one is missing, as in the fresco of Dante in the Bargello.\nOccasionally, the sunshine kindly comes in and makes a little lively\nentertainment on his own account by throwing the shadow of the\npreacher\u2019s head ten feet long on the wall behind him, causing the action\nof his jaws to resemble the vast gape of a crocodile. All these,\nhowever, ought perhaps to be counted as things of the past; or, at\nleast, as very \u201cRural Recreations of a Country Parishioner,\u201d as A. K. H.\nB. might describe them. It is not objects to distract and divert the\nattention which anybody can complain of wanting in the larger number of\nmodern churches in London.\n\nBut, if our thoughts are wont to wander off into fantastic dreams when\nwe are bored, they have likewise a most unfortunate propensity to swerve\ninto byways of triviality no less misplaced when, on the contrary, we\nare interested to excess, and our attention has been fixed beyond the\npoint wherein the tension can be sustained.\n\nEvery one has recognized the truth of Dickens\u2019s description of Fagin, on\nhis trial, thinking of the pattern of the carpet; and few of us can\nrecall hours of anguish and anxiety without carrying along with their\ntragic memories certain objects on which the eye fastened with\ninexplicable tenacity. In lesser cases, and when we have been listening\nto an intensely interesting political speech, or to a profoundly\nthoughtful sermon (for even _Habitans in Sicco_ may sometimes meet such\ncases), the mind seems to \u201cshy\u201d suddenly, like a restive horse, from the\nwhole topic under consideration, and we find ourselves, intellectually\nspeaking, landed in a ditch.\n\nAnother singular phenomenon under such circumstances is that, on\nreturning, perhaps after the interval of years, to a spot wherein such\nexcessive mental tension has been experienced, some of us are suddenly\nvividly impressed with the idea that we have been sitting there during\nall the intervening time, gazing fixedly on the same pillars and\ncornices, the same trees projected against the evening sky, or whatever\nother objects happen to be before our eyes. It would appear that the\nimpression of such objects made on the retina, while the mind was wholly\nand vehemently absorbed in other things, must be somehow photographed on\nthe brain in a different way from the ordinary pictures to which we have\ngiven their fair share of notice as they passed before us, and that we\nare dimly aware they have been taken so long. The sight of them once\nagain bringing out this abnormal consciousness is intensely painful, as\nif the real self had been chained for years to the spot, and only a\nphantom \u201cI\u201d had ever gone away and lived a natural human existence\nelsewhere.\n\nPassing, now, from the external conditions of our Thinking, if we\nattempt to classify the Thoughts themselves, we shall arrive, I fear, at\nthe painful discovery that the majority of us think most about the least\nthings, and least about the greatest; and that, in short, the mass of\nour lucubrations is in the inverse ratio of their value. For example, a\nshare of our thoughts, quite astonishing in quantity, is occupied by\npetty and trivial Arrangements. Rich or poor, it is an immense amount of\nthought which all (save the most care-engrossed statesmen or absorbed\nphilosophers) give to these wretched little concerns. The wealthy\ngentleman thinks of how and where and when he will send his servants and\nhorses here and there, of what company he shall entertain, of the\nclearing of his woods, the preservation of his game, and twenty matters\nof similar import; while his wife is pondering equally profoundly on the\nfurniture and ornaments of her rooms, the patterns of her flower-beds or\nher worsted-work, the _menu_ of her dinner, and the frocks of her little\ngirls. Poor people need to think much more anxiously of the perpetual\nproblem, \u201cHow to make both ends meet,\u201d by pinching in this direction and\nearning something in that, and by all the thousand shifts and devices by\nwhich life can be carried on at the smallest possible expenditure. One\nof the very worst evils of limited means consists in the amount of\nthinking about sordid little economies which becomes imperative when\nevery meal, every toilet, and every attempt at locomotion is a\nbattle-field of ingenuity and self-denial against ever-impending debt\nand difficulty. Among men, the evil is most commonly combated by\nenergetic efforts to _earn_ rather than to _save_; but among women, to\nwhom so few fields of honest industry are open, the necessity for a\nperpetual guard against the smallest freedom of expense falls, with all\nits cruel and soul-crushing weight, and on the faces of thousands of\nthem may be read the sad story of youthful enthusiasm all nipped by\npitiful cares, anxieties, and meannesses, perhaps the most foreign of\nall sentiments to their naturally liberal and generous hearts.\n\nNext to actual arrangements which have some practical use, however\nsmall, an inordinate quantity of thought is wasted by most of us on\nwholly unreal plans and hypotheses which the thinker never even supposes\nto bear any relation with the living world. Such are the endless moony\nspeculations, \u201c_if_ such a thing had not happened\u201d which did happen, or\n\u201c_if_ So-and-so had gone hither\u201d instead of thither, or \u201c_if_ I had only\nsaid or done\u201d what I did not say or do, \u201cthere would have\nfollowed\u201d\u2014heaven knows what. Sometimes we pursue such endless and\naimless guessings with a companion, and then we generally stop short\npretty soon with the vivid sense of the absurdity of our behavior;\nunless in such a case as that of the celebrated old childless couple,\nwho, looking back over their fireside on forty years of unbroken union,\nproceeded to speculate on what they should have done _if_ they had had\nchildren, and finally quarrelled and separated for ever on a divergence\nof opinion respecting the best profession for their (imaginary) second\nson. But, when alone, we go on weaving interminable cobwebs out of such\ngossamer threads of thought, like poor Perrette with her pot of milk,\u2014a\ntale the ubiquity of which among all branches of the Aryan race\nsufficiently proves the universality of the practice of building\n_ch\u00e2teaux en Espagne_.\n\nOf course, with every one who has a profession or business of any kind,\na vast quantity of thought is expended necessarily upon its details,\ninsomuch that to prevent themselves, when in company from \u201ctalking shop\u201d\nis somewhat difficult. The tradesman, medical man, lawyer, soldier,\nlandholder, have each plenty to think of in his own way; and in the case\nof any originality of work\u2014such as belongs to the higher class of\nliterature and art\u2014the necessity for arduous and sustained thought in\ncomposition is so great that (on the testimony of a great many wives) I\nhave come to the conclusion that a fine statue, picture, or book is\nrarely planned without at least a week of domestic irritation and\ndiscomfort, and the summary infliction of little deserved chastisement\non the junior branches of the distinguished author or artist\u2019s family.\n\nMechanical contrivances obviously give immense occupation to those\nsingular persons who can love Machines, and do not regard them (as I\nmust confess is my case) with mingled mistrust, suspicion, and\nabhorrence, as small models of the Universe on the Atheistic Projection.\nAgain, for the discovery of any chemical _desideratum_, ceaseless\nindustry and years of thought are expended; and a Palissy deems a\nquarter of a lifetime properly given to pondering upon the best glaze\nfor crockery. Only by such sacrifices, indeed, have both the fine and\nthe industrial arts attained success; and happy must the man be counted\nwhose millions of thoughts expended on such topics have at the end\nattained any practical conclusion to be added to the store of human\nknowledge. Not so (albeit the thoughts are much after the same working\ncharacter) are the endless meditations of the idle on things wholly\npersonal and ephemeral, such as the inordinate care about the details of\nfurniture and equipage now prevalent among the rich in England, and the\nlavish waste of feminine minds on double acrostics, art, embroidery,\nand, above all, Dress! A young lady once informed me that, after having\nfor some hours retired to repose, her sister, who slept in the same\nroom, had disturbed her in the middle of the night: \u201cEug\u00e9nie, waken up!\nI have thought of a trimming for our new gowns!\u201d Till larger and nobler\ninterests are opened to women, I fear there must be a good many whose\n\u201cdream by night and thought by day\u201d is of trimmings.\n\nWhen we have deducted all these silly and trivial and useless thoughts\nfrom the sum of human thinking,\u2014and evil and malicious thoughts, still\nworse by far,\u2014what small residuum of room is there, alas, for anything\nlike real serious reflection! How seldom do the larger topics presented\nby history, science, or philosophy engage us! How yet more rarely do we\nface the great questions of the whence, the why, and the whither of all\nthis hurrying life of ours, pouring out its tiny sands so rapidly! To\nsome, indeed, a noble philanthropic purpose or profound religious faith\ngives not only consistency and meaning to life, but supplies a\nbackground to all thoughts,\u2014an object high above them, to which the\nmental eye turns at every moment. But this is, alas! the exception far\nmore than the rule; and, where there is no absorbing human affection, it\nis on trifles light as air and interests transitory as a passing cloud\nthat are usually fixed those minds whose boast it is that their thoughts\n\u201ctravel through eternity.\u201d\n\nAlone among Thoughts of joy or sorrow, hope or fear, stands the grim,\nsoul-chilling thought of Death. It is a strange fact that, face it and\nattempt to familiarize ourselves with it as we may, this one thought\never presents itself as something fresh, something we had never really\nthought before,\u2014\u201c_I shall die!_\u201d There is a shock in the simple words\never repeated each time we speak them in the depths of our souls.\n\nThere are few instances of the great change which has passed over the\nspirit of the modern world more striking than the revolution which has\ntaken place in our judgment respecting the moral expediency of\nperpetually thinking about Death. Was it that the whole Classic world\nwas so intensely entrancing and delightful that, to wean themselves from\nits fascinations and reduce their minds to composure, the Saints found\nit beneficial to live continually with a skull at their side? For\nsomething like sixteen centuries Christian teachers seem all to have\ntaken it for granted that merely to write up \u201cMemento mori\u201d was to give\nto mankind the most salutary and edifying counsel. Has anybody faith in\nthe same nostrum now, and is there a single Saint Francis or Saint\nTheresa who keeps his or her pet skull alongside of his Bible and\nPrayerbook?\n\nA parallel might also be drawn between the medical and spiritual\ntreatment in vogue in former times and in our own. Up to our generation,\nwhen a man was ill, the first idea of the physician was to bleed him and\nreduce him in every way by \u201cdephlogistic\u201d treatment, after which it was\nsupposed the disease was \u201cdrawn off\u201d; and, if the patient expired, the\nsurvivors were consoled by the reflection that Dr. Sangrado had done all\nwhich science and skill could effect to preserve so valuable a life. In\nthe memory of some now living, the presence of a medical man with a\nlancet in his pocket (instantly used on the emergency of a fall from\nhorseback or a fit of apoplexy, epilepsy, or intoxication), was felt by\nalarmed relations to be quite providential. Only somewhere about the\nperiod of the first visitation of cholera in 1832 this phlebotomizing\ndropped out of fashion; and, when the doctors had pretty nearly\nabandoned it, a theory was broached that it was the human constitution,\nnot medical science, which had undergone a change, and that men and\nwomen were so much weaker than heretofore that, even in fever, they now\nneeded to be supported by stimulants. Very much in the same way it would\nappear that in former days our spiritual advisers imagined they could\ncure moral disease by reducing the vital action of all the faculties and\npassions, and bringing a man to feel himself a \u201cdying creature\u201d by way\nof training him to live. Nowadays our divines endeavor to fill us with\nwarmer feelings and more vigorous will, and tell us that\n\n                \u201c\u2019Tis life of which our veins are scant;\n                O Life, not Death, for which we pant;\n                More life, and fuller, _that_ we want.\u201d\n\nIs it possible that human nature is really a little less vigorous and\npassionate than it was when Antony and Cleopatra lived on the earth, or\nwhen the genius of Shakspere made them live on the stage?\n\n\n\n\n                                ESSAY V.\n                        TO KNOW, OR NOT TO KNOW.\n\n\nThe father of Grecian philosophy held that \u201cMan was created to know and\nto contemplate.\u201d The father of Hebrew philosophy\u2014whose \u201cSong,\u201d if not\nhis \u201cWisdom,\u201d is canonical, and whose judgment, if not his life, is\nsupposed to have been divinely guided\u2014taught the somewhat different\nlesson: \u201cHe that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.\u201d\n\nWe have been more or less steadily trying the validity of Solomon\u2019s\ndictum for about three thousand years. Would it be premature to take\nstock of the results, and weigh whether it be really for human\nwell-being or the reverse that Knowledge is \u201cincreasing,\u201d not only at\nthe inevitable rate of the accumulating experience of generations, but\nalso at the highly accelerated pace attained by our educational\nmachinery? It is at least slightly paradoxical that the same State\nshould call on its clergy to teach as an infallible truth that \u201che that\nincreaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,\u201d and at the same time decree for\nall its subjects, as if it were a highly benevolent measure, universal\ncompulsory education.\n\nI fear that the prejudice in favor of Knowledge is so potent that no\nreader will give me credit for entering on this inquiry in any other\nspirit than one of banter. Nevertheless, I propose in the present paper\nto examine, to the best of my ability, the general bearings of\nbook-knowledge upon human happiness and virtue, and so attain to some\nconclusion on the matter, and decide whether Solomon did or did not give\nproof of profound sagacity in originating the axiom that \u201cIgnorance is\nbliss\u201d in the usual negative form of Hebrew verities; and also in\nforetelling (nearly thirty centuries before the present London\npublishing season) that \u201cof the making of books there is no end.\u201d\nKnowledge, like other evils, it seems, is infinitely reproductive.\n\nThe larger and simpler objections to book-lore lie on the surface of the\ncase. First. Health, bodily activity, and muscular strength are almost\ninevitably exchanged in a certain measure for learning. Ardent students\nare rarely vigorous or agile; and, in the humbler ranks, the loss of\nruddy cheeks and stalwart limbs among the children of the peasantry,\nafter schools have been established in a village, has been constantly\nobserved. The close and heated class-rooms in which the poor urchins sit\n(often in winter with clothes and shoes drenched through with rain or\nsnow) form a bad exchange, in a physical point of view, for the scamper\nacross the common, and the herding of sheep on the mountain. Let us put\nthe case at its lowest. Suppose that, out of three persons who receive\nan ordinary book-education, one always loses a certain share of health;\nthat he is never so vigorous as he would have been, and is more liable\nto consumption, dyspepsia, and other woes incident to sedentary\nhumanity, of which again he bequeaths a tendency to his offspring. Here\nis surely some deduction from the supposed sum of happiness derivable\nfrom knowledge. Can all the flowers of rhetoric of all the poets make\natonement for the loss of the bounding pulse, the light, free step, the\ncool brain of perfect health?\n\nSecondly. It is not only the health of life\u2019s noon and evening which is\nmore or less compromised by study, but the morning hours of life\u2019s\nglorious prime, hours such as never can come again on this side heaven,\nwhich are given to dull, dog\u2019s-eared books and dreary \u201ccopies,\u201d and\nsordid slates, instead of to cowslips and buttercups, the romp in the\nhay-field, and the flying of the white kite, which soars up into the\ndeep dark blue and carries the young eyes after it where the unseen lark\nis singing and the child-angels are playing among the rolling clouds of\nsummer. There was once a child called from such dreams to her\nlesson,\u2014the dreary lesson of learning to spell possibly those very words\nwhich her pen is now tracing on this page. The little girl looked at her\npeacock, sitting in his glory on the balustrade of the old granite\nsteps, with nothing earthly ever to do but to sun himself and eat nice\nbrown bread and call \u201cPea-ho!\u201d every morning, and the poor child burst\ninto a storm of weeping, and sobbed, \u201cI wish I were a peacock! I wish I\nwere a peacock!\u201d Truly Learning ought to have something to show to\ncompensate for the thousand tears shed in similar anguish! School-rooms\nare usually the ugliest, dullest, most airless and sunless rooms in the\nhouses where they exist; and yet in these dens we ruthlessly imprison\nchildren day after day, year after year, till childhood itself is over,\nnever, never to return. And _then_ the young man or woman may go forth\nfreely among the fields and woods, and find them fair and sweet, but\nnever so fair or so sweet as they were in the wasted years of infancy.\nWho can lay his hand on his heart, and say that a cowslip or a daffodil\nsmells now as it used to smell when it was so very much easier to pluck\nit, quite on our own level? Do strawberries taste as they did, and is\nthere the same drop of honey in each of the flowerets of the red clover?\nAre modern kittens and puppies half so soft and so funny as they were in\nformer days when we were young? No one will dare affirm any of these\nthings who has reached years of discretion. Is it not then a most\nshort-sighted policy\u2014giving away of a bird in hand for a bird in the\nbush\u2014to sacrifice the joyous hours of young existence for the value of\nadvantages (if advantages indeed they be) to be reaped in later and\nduller years? Watch a child at play, O reader, if you have forgotten\nyour own feelings. Let it be Coleridge\u2019s\n\n                     \u201cLittle singing, dancing elf,\n                     Singing, dancing by itself.\u201d\n\nCatch, if your dim orbs are sharp enough, those cloudless blue eyes\nlooking straight into yours, and hear the laugh which only means the\nbest of all possible jokes, \u201cI _am_ so happy!\u201d Then go to your stupid\ndesk, and calculate algebraically what amount of classics and\nmathematics are equivalent to that ecstasy of young existence, wherein\n\n         \u201cSimply to feel that we breathe, that we live,\n         Is worth the best joy which life elsewhere can give.\u201d\n\nThe pagan Irish believed in a paradise for the virtuous dead, and called\nit \u201cInnis-na-n\u2019Oge,\u201d the \u201cIsland of the Young.\u201d We all live there the\nfirst dozen years of mortality; and, unless we prove unusually\nexcellent, I fear it may be long before we arrive at a better place.\n\nBut hitherto we have taken for granted that the little prisoners of the\nschool-room are all sure to live and come into their fortunes of\nerudition, earned with so many tear-blisters on their lesson-books. Of\ncourse, however, this is far from being the true state of the case. The\npoor little child, whose happiness\u2014innocent, certain, and immediate\nhappiness\u2014is bartered so ruthlessly for the remote and contingent\nbenefit of his later years, may very probably never see those years at\nall; nay, in a fixed average number of cases, it is absolutely certain\nthat he will not grow into a man. Can anything be much more sad than\nsuch an abortive sacrifice? Who does not remember Walter Scott\u2019s \u201cPet\nMarjory,\u201d with her infantine delight in her visits to the country, and\nthe calves and the geese, and the \u201cbubbly-jocks\u201d; and how she wrote down\nin her private journal that she was learning the multiplication table,\nand that seven times seven was a \u201cdivlish thing,\u201d and quite impossible\nto acquire; and how, when somehow at last even the still more dreadful\n\u201ceight times eight\u201d had been lodged in her poor little brains, there\ncame a day when she cried suddenly to her mother, \u201cOh, my head! my\nhead!\u201d and then in a few brief hours there was an end of lessons and\ntheir advantages for Marjory forever?\n\nAnd yet again, when some ardent lad has passed through school and\ncollege, foregoing all the sports of his age, and receiving prizes and\nhonors, till he stands a first-class man of Oxford or Cambridge, and his\nfather\u2019s sacrifices and his mother\u2019s yearnings and all his own gallant\nand self-denying labors seem on the point of reaping their reward, how\noften does it come to pass that with the close of the struggle come the\nreaction, the decline, the hasty journey abroad, the hoping against\nhope, and then\u2014death!\n\nThirdly. There is the waste of Eyesight in education. It is understood,\nwhen we see a young man with the \u201clight of the body\u201d dimmed behind glass\nspectacles, that he has hurt his eyes by poring over books. A farmer, a\nsportsman, or a soldier, purblind at twenty-five or thirty, is a rare\nthing to see. It is the scholar, lawyer, or divine who has paid the\npenalty of seeing God\u2019s beautiful world evermore through those\nabominable bits of glass. And for what mighty advantage? Again I say, it\nought to be something excessively valuable for which a man will exchange\nthe apple of his eye. Suppose Bell Taylor were to ask a blind gentleman\na fee of a thousand pounds to give him his sight as he has given it to\nmore than one born blind. The blind man, if he possessed the money,\nwould doubtless pour it out like water to obtain the priceless boon of\nvision. And _this_ is the gift which our boys exchange for a moderate\nacquaintance with the Greek language, to be forgotten in a few years\nafter they leave school!\n\nHalf the vast Teutonic nation beholds the universe from behind\nspectacles; owing, no doubt, to their vaunted compulsory education,\naided by their truculent black types. And we open-eyed Britons are\nexhorted, forsooth, to admire and follow in the steps of those barnacled\nPrussians!\n\nSuch are three of the most obvious losses to be placed in the scale\nagainst the gains of Knowledge,\u2014the loss to many of bodily health; to\nall of the unshackled freedom of childhood; and to not a few of perfect\neyesight.\n\nBut we cannot suppose it was to any of these things Solomon alluded when\nhe linked Knowledge and Sorrow in one category. It is not likely that\nthose studies of his, about the hyssop and the cedar, injured his\nhealth; nor that the royal sage sat on his famous ivory throne to\nreceive the Queen of Sheba in a pair of spectacles. As to the loss of\nthe pleasures of childhood, his well-known opinion of the value of the\nRod (to the wisdom of which the subsequent conduct of his son Rehoboam\nafforded an illustration) makes it probable that he would have approved\nof the torture of infants through the instrumentality of lessons.\nKnowledge and Sorrow had, no doubt, some other connection in his mind;\nand that connection we have still to mark.\n\nIt is a paradox only too readily verified that the mind as well as the\nbody suffers in more ways than one from the acquirement of book\nknowledge. In the first place, the Memory, laden with an enormous mass\nof facts, and accustomed to shift the burden of carrying them to written\nnotes and similar devices, loses much of its natural tenacity. The\nignorant clodhopper always remembers the parish chronicles better than\nthe scholarly parson. The old family servant, who is strongly suspected\nof not knowing how to write and whose spectacles are never forthcoming\nwhen there is any necessity to read, is the living annalist of the\nhouse, and was never yet known to forget an order, except now and then\non purpose. Not only are the interests, and consequently the attention\nand retentive powers, of illiterate persons monopolized by the practical\nconcerns of life and the tales of the past which may have reached their\nears, but they have actually clearer heads, less encumbered by a\nmultitude of irrelevant ideas, and can recall whatever they need, at a\nmoment\u2019s notice, without tumbling over a whole lumber-room full of\nrubbish to get at it. The old Rabbinical system of schooling, which\nmainly consisted in the committal to memory of innumerable aphorisms and\ndicta of sages and prophets, possessed this enormous advantage over\nmodern instruction,\u2014that whatever a man had so learned he possessed at\nhis fingers\u2019 ends, ready for instant use in every argument. But, as half\nthe value of knowledge in practical life depends on the rapidity with\nwhich it can be brought to bear at a given moment on the point of issue,\nand as a ready-witted man will not merely outshine in discussion his\nslow-brained antagonist, but forestall and outrun him in every way, save\nin the labors of the library, it follows that to sacrifice the ready\nmoney of the mind for paper hard to negotiate is extremely bad economy.\nMere book-learning, instead of rendering the memory more strong and\nagile, accustoms it to hobble on crutches.\n\nOther mental powers suffer even more than the memory by the introduction\nof books. That method which we familiarly call the \u201cRule of Thumb\u201d\u2014that\nis, the method of the Artist\u2014is soon lost when there come to be\ntreatises and tables of calculation to form, instead, the Method of the\nMechanic. The boats of Greece are to this day _sculptured_ rather than\nwrought by the shipwrights, even as the old architects cut their marble\narchitraves by the eye of genius trained to beauty and symmetry, not by\nthe foot-rule of precedent and book-lore. The wondrous richness and\nharmony of coloring of Chinese and Indian and Turkish stuffs and carpets\nand porcelain are similarly the result, not of any rules to be reduced\nto formul\u00e6, but of taste unfettered by pattern-books, unwarped by\nSchools of Art Manufacture, bequeathed through long generations, each\nacquainted intimately with the aforesaid \u201crule of thumb.\u201d\n\nFor the Reasoning powers, the noblest in the scale of human faculties,\nit may be fairly doubted whether the modern increase of Knowledge has\ndone much to strengthen them, when we find ourselves still unprotected\nby common sense against such absurdities as those which find currency\namongst us. Men are treated amongst us like fowls, crammed to the crop\nwith facts, facts, facts, till their digestion of them is impaired.\n\nAs to the Imagination, books are like the stepping-stones whereon fancy\ntrips across an otherwise impassable river to gather flowers on the\nfurther bank. But it may be questioned whether the reading eye ever\nreally does the same work as the hearing ear. The voice of tradition\nbears, as no book can do, the burden of the feelings of generations. A\nballad learned orally from our mother\u2019s lips seems to have far other\nmeaning when we recall it, perchance long years after that sweet voice\nhas been silent, than the stanzas we perused yesterday through our\nspectacles in a volume freshly reviewed in the _Times_.\n\nSuch are the somewhat dubious results of book-lore on the faculties\nexercised in its acquisition. It is almost needless to remark that there\nare also certain positive vices frequently engendered by the same\npursuit. Bacon\u2019s noble apophthegm, that \u201ca little knowledge leads to\natheism, but a great deal brings us back to God,\u201d needs for commentary\nthat \u201ca little\u201d must be taken to signify what many people think \u201cmuch.\u201d\nRead in such a sense, it applies not only to religious faith, but to\nfaith in everything, and most particularly to faith in Knowledge itself.\nNobody despises books so much as those who have read many of them,\nexcept those still more hopeless infidels who have written them. Watch\nthe very treatment given to his library by a bookworm. Note how the\nvolumes are knocked about, and left on chairs, and scribbled over with\nill-penned notes, and ruthlessly dog\u2019s-eared and turned down on their\nfaces on inky tables, and sat upon in damp grass under a tree! Contrast\nthis behavior towards them with the respectful demeanor of unlettered\nmortals, who range the precious and well-dusted tomes like soldiers on\ndrill on their spruce shelves; nobody pushed back out of the line,\nnobody tumbling sideways against his neighbor, nobody standing on his\nhead! History is not jumbled ignominiously with romance; moral treatises\nare not made sandwiches of (as we have beheld) between the yellow covers\nof Zola; and \u201cSunday books\u201d have a prominent pew all to themselves,\nwhere they are not rubbed against by either profane wit or worldly\nwisdom. Such is the different appreciation of literature by those to\nwhom it is very familiar and by those to whom it preserves still a\nlittle of the proverbial magnificence of all unknown things.\n\nWe used to hear, some years ago, so much about the Pride of Learning\nthat it would be a commonplace to allude to that fault among the\ncontingent disadvantages of study. One of the Fathers describes how he\nwas flogged by an angel for his predilection for Cicero,\u2014an anecdote\nwhich must have made many a school-boy, innocent of any such error, feel\nthat life was only a dilemma between the rods of terrestrial and\ncelestial pedagogues. But it is obvious that the saint had in his mind a\nsense that the reading of \u201cTusculan Disputations\u201d had set him up\u2014saint\nthough he was\u2014above the proper spirit of implicit docility and\nunqualified admiration for more sacred instructions. The critical\nspirit, which is the inevitable accompaniment of high erudition, is\nobviously a good way off from that ovine frame of mind which divines, in\nall ages, have extolled as the proper attitude for their flocks. Nay, in\na truer and better sense than that of the open-mouthed credulity so idly\ninculcated, it must be owned that, short of that really great knowledge\nof which Bacon spoke and which allies itself with the infinite wisdom of\nlove and faith, there are few things more hurtful to a man than to be\naware that he knows a great deal more than those about him. The main\ndifference between what are called self-made men and those who have been\neducated in the upper grades is that the former, from their isolation,\nhave a constant sense of their own knowledge, as if it were a Sunday\ncoat, while the others wear it easily as their natural attire. The best\nthing which could happen to a village Crichton would be to be\nmercilessly snubbed by an Oxford don. The days when women were\n\u201cPr\u00e9cieuses\u201d and \u201cBlue Stockings\u201d were those in which it was a species\nof miraculous Assumption of Virgins when they were lifted into the\nheaven of Latin Grammar.\n\nBut, passing over the injury to healthy eyesight and mental vigor\ncontingent on learning, and the moral faults sometimes engendered\nthereby, I proceed to ask another question. What is the ethical value of\nthe Knowledge bought at such a price, and heaped together by mankind\nduring the thirty centuries since Solomon uttered his warning? How has\nit contributed to their moral welfare?\n\nSurely it is true that even as Art too often gilds sensuality, and\nrenders it attractive to souls otherwise above its influence, so\nKnowledge must open new roads to temptation, and take off from sin that\nstrangeness and horror which is one of the best safeguards of the soul.\nThe old jest of the confessor, who asked the penitent whether he did\nsuch and such dishonest tricks, and received the reply, \u201cNo, Father; but\nI will do them next time,\u201d was only a fable of one form of the mischief\nof knowledge; and that not the most fatal form either. To know how to do\nwrong is one small step towards doing it. To know that scores and\nhundreds and thousands of people, in all lands and ages, have done the\nsame wrong, is a far larger encouragement to the timidity of guilt. Not\nonly is it dangerous to know that there is a descent to Avernus, but\nspecially dangerous to know that it is easy and well trodden. Dr. Watts\nwas injudicious, to say the least of it, to betray to children that the\nway to perdition is a\n\n                   \u201cBroad road, where thousands go,\u201d\n\nwhich, moreover,\n\n                      \u201cLies near, and opens fair.\u201d\n\nBetter let people suppose that it has become quite grass-grown and\nimpassable.\n\nMany offences, such as drunkenness, debauchery, swindling, adulteration,\nand false weights, are diseases propagated, chiefly, if not solely, like\nsmall-pox by direct infection conveyed in the knowledge that A, B, C,\nand D do the same things. David was not so far wrong to be angry; and\ndivines need not be so anxious to excuse him for being so, when he saw\nthe \u201cwicked\u201d flourishing \u201clike green bay-trees.\u201d Such sights are, to the\nlast degree, trying and demoralizing.\n\nIn a yet larger and sadder sense, the knowledge of the evil of the\nworld, of the baseness, pollution, cruelty, which have stained the earth\nfrom the earliest age till this hour, is truly a knowledge fraught with\ndread and woe. He who can walk over the carnage field of history and\nbehold the agonies of the wounded and the fallen, the mutilations and\nhideous ruin of what was meant to be such beautiful humanity,\u2014he who can\nsee all this, ay, or but a corner of that awful Aceldama, and yet retain\nhis unwavering faith in the final issue of the strife, and his\nsatisfaction that it has been permitted to human free will, must be a\nman of far other strength than he who judges of the universe from the\npeaceful prosperity of his parish, and believes that the worst of ills\nis symbolized by the stones under which \u201cthe rude forefathers of the\nhamlet sleep.\u201d Almost every form of knowledge is some such trial of\nfaith. Look at zo\u00f6logy and pal\u00e6ontology. What revelations of pain and\ndeath in each hideous artifice of jagged tooth, and ravening beak, and\ncruel claw! What mysterious laws of insect and fungus life developed\nwithin higher organisms, to whom their presence is torture! What savage\nscenes of pitiless strife in the whole vast struggle for existence of\nevery beast and bird, every fish and reptile! Turn to ethnology, and\ngather up the facts of life of all the barbarian tribes of Africa and\nPolynesia; of the countless myriads of their progenitors; and of those\nwho dwelt in Europe and Asia in bygone \u00e6ons of prehistoric time. Is not\nthe story of these squalid, half-human, miserable creatures full of woe?\nOur fathers dreamed of a Paradise and of a primeval couple dwelling\nthere in perfect peace and innocence. We have at last so eaten of the\nTree of Knowledge that we have been driven out of even the ideal Eden;\nand instead thereof we behold the earliest parents of our race, dwarf\nand hirsute, shivering and famished, contending with mammoths in a\ndesert world, and stung and goaded by want and pain along every step in\nthe first advance from the bestiality of the baboon into the\ncivilization of a man.\n\nTurn to astronomy, and we peer, dazed and sick, into the abysses of time\nand space opened beneath us; bottomless abysses where no plummet can\nsound, and all our toylike measures of thousands of ages and millions of\nmiles drop useless from our hands. Can any thought be more tremendous\nthan the question, What are _we_ in this immensity? We had fondly\nfancied we were Creation\u2019s last and greatest work, the crown and glory\nof the universe, and that our world was the central stage for the drama\nof God. Where are we now? When the \u201cstars fall from heaven,\u201d will they\n\u201cfall on the earth even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs\u201d? Nay,\nrather will one of the heavenly host so much as notice when our little\nworld, charged with all the hopes of man, bursts like a bubble, and\nfalls in the foam of a meteor shower, illumining for a single night some\nplanet calmly rolling on its way?\n\nLet us pass from the outer into the inner realm, and glance at the\ndevelopments of human thought. The knowledge of Philosophy, properly so\ncalled, from Pythagoras and Plato to Kant and Spencer,\u2014is it a Knowledge\nthe increase of which is wholly without \u201csorrow\u201d? Not the most pathetic\npoem in literature seems to me half so sad as Lewes\u2019s History of\nPhilosophy. Those endless wanderings amid the labyrinths of Being and\nKnowing, Substance and Phenomenon, Nominalism and Realism, which, to\nmost men, seem like a troubled \u201cdream within a dream,\u201d to him who has\ntaken the pains to understand them rather appear like the wanderings of\nthe wretch lost in the catacombs. He roams hither and thither, and feels\nfeebly along the walls, and stumbles in the dark, finding himself in a\npassage which has no outlet, and turns back to seek another way of\nescape, and grasps at something he deems may contain a clew to the far\ndistant daylight, and, lo! it is but an urn filled with dust and dead\nmen\u2019s bones.\n\nFaust is the true type of the student of metaphysics when he marks the\nskull\u2019s \u201cspectral smile\u201d:\u2014\n\n               \u201cSaith it not that thy brain, like mine,\n               Still loved and sought the beautiful,\n               Loved truth for its own sake, and sought,\n               Regardless of aught else the while,\n               Like mine the light of cloudless day,\n               And in unsatisfying thought\n               By twilight glimmers led astray,\n               Like mine, at length, sank overwrought?\u201d\n\nThere _may_ be truth within our reach. Some of us deem we have found it\nin youth, and, passing out of the metaphysic stage of thought, use our\nphilosophy as a scaffolding wherewith to build the solid edifice of\nlife, gradually heeding less and less how that scaffolding may prove\nrotten or ill-jointed. But, even in such a case, the knowledge of all\nthat _has_ been, and _is_ not, in the world of man\u2019s highest thought is\na sorrowful one. As we wander on from one system to another, we feel as\nif we were but numbering the gallant ships with keels intended to cut\nsuch deep waters, and topmasts made to bear flags so brave, which lie\nwrecked and broken into drift-wood along the shore of the enchanted\nLoadstone Isle.\n\nWhat is, then, the conclusion of our long pleading? Knowledge is\nacquired at the cost of a certain measure of health, and eyesight, and\nyouthful joy. Knowledge involves the deterioration of some faculties as\nwell as the strengthening of others. Knowledge engenders sundry moral\nfaults. In the realms of history, of physical and of mental science, the\nsurvey of things obtained through knowledge is full of sadness and\nsolemnity. The telescope which has revealed to us a thousand galaxies of\nsuns has failed to show us the Heaven which we once believed was close\noverhead.\n\nIs then the pursuit of Knowledge, after all, truly a delusion, the worst\nand weariest of human mistakes, a thing to which we are driven by our\nnecessities on one hand and lured by our thirst for it on the other, but\nwhich, nevertheless, like the martyrs\u2019 cup of salt water, only burns our\nlips with its bitter brine?\n\nNot so! a thousand times, no! Knowledge, like Virtue, is not good\nbecause it is useful, but useful because it is good. It is useful\ncontingently, and good essentially. The joy of it is simple, and not\nonly needs not to be supplemented by accessory advantages, but is well\nworth the forfeit of many advantages to obtain. The most miserable\nwretch we can imagine is the ignorant convict locked up in a solitary\ncell, with nothing to employ his thoughts but unattainable vice and\nfrustrated crime, whereon his stupid judges leave him to ruminate as if\nsuch poison were moral medicine to heal the diseases of his soul. And,\non the other hand, one of the happiest beings we can imagine is the man\nat the opposite end of the intellectual scale, who lives in the free\nacquirement of noble knowledge. What is any \u201cincrease of sorrow\u201d\nincurred thereby, compared to the joy of it? To build Memory like a\ngallery hung round with all the loveliest scenes of nature and all the\nmasterpieces of art; to make the divine chorus of the poets sing for us\ntheir choicest strains whenever we beckon them from their cells; to talk\nfamiliarly, as if they were our living friends, with the best and wisest\nmen who have ever lived on earth, and link our arms in theirs in the\nnever-withering groves of an eternal Academe,\u2014this is to burst the\nbounds of space and bring the ages together, and lift ourselves out of\nthe sordid dust to sit at the banquet of heroes and of gods.\n\n\n\n\n                               ESSAY VI.\n                 THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE.\n\n\nWhether it is best to live rapidly or slowly; whether the \u201ctwenty years\nof Europe\u201d be preferable to the \u201ccycle of Cathay\u201d; and what is to be\nsaid on behalf of each of the two modes of existence,\u2014supposing that we\nhave the choice between them,\u2014seem to be questions not unworthy of a\nlittle consideration. It is quite possible that the common impulse to be\n\u201cin among the throngs of men,\u201d and to cram a month\u2019s ideas and\nsensations into a day, may be the truest guide to happiness; indeed, it\nis rather sorrowful to doubt that it should be so, considering how every\nsuccessive census shows the growth of the urban over the rural\npopulations, and how strongly the magnets of the great cities seem\ndestined in future years to draw into them all the loose attractable\nhuman matter in each country. Nevertheless, it must be admitted to be\nalso possible that, like the taste for tobacco or alcohol or opium, the\ntaste for town life may be an appetite the indulgence of which is\ndeleterious, and that our gains of enjoyment thereby obtained may be\npractically outbalanced by the loss of pleasures which slip away\nmeanwhile unperceived. It would be satisfactory, once for all, to feel\nassured that in choosing either town or country life (when we have the\nchoice), we not only follow immediate inclination, but make deliberate\nselection of that which must necessarily be the higher and happier kind\nof life, on which, when the time comes for saying good-night, we shall\nlook back without the miserable regret that we have permitted the nobler\nduties and the sweeter joys to escape us, while we have spent our years\nin grasping at shadows and vanities. The dog with the bone in his mouth,\nwho drops it to catch the bone in the water, is a terrible warning to\nall mankind. But which is the real bone, and which is only the\nreflection? The question is not easily answered.\n\nLet us premise that it is of English country life and town life alone I\nmean to speak. Foreigners\u2014Frenchmen, for example\u2014who live in the country\nseem always to do so under protest, and to wish to convey to the\ntraveller that, like the patriarch, they are only strangers and\nsojourners in the rural districts, seeking a better country, even a\nParisian. Moli\u00e8re\u2019s Comtesse d\u2019Escarbagnas, who has been six weeks in\nthe capital once in her life, and who indignantly asks her visitor, \u201c_Me\nprenez-vous pour une provinciale, Madame?_\u201d is the type of them all. Of\ncourse, country life taken thus as a temporary and rather disgraceful\nbanishment can never display its true features or produce its proper\nquantum of enjoyment.\n\nAnd again, among English forms of country life, it is life in _bona\nfide_ rural districts which we must take for our type. All round London\nthere now exists a sort of intellectual cordon, extending from twenty to\nthirty miles into Kent and Surrey, and about ten miles into Herts and\nEssex. Professor Nichols might have mapped it as he did our starry\ncluster, by jotting down every house on the boundary inhabited by\npoliticians, literary men, and artists, and then running a line all\nround from one to another. Within this circumference (of course,\nextending year by year), the ideas, habits, and conversation of the\ninhabitants are purely Londonesque. The _habitu\u00e9_ of London\ndinner-parties finds himself perfectly at home at every table where he\nsits down, and may take it for granted that his hosts and their guests\nwill all know the same familiar characters, the same anecdotes of the\nseason, the books, the operas, the exhibitions; and, much more than all\nthis, will possess the indescribable easy London manner of lightly\ntripping over commonplace subjects, and seriously discussing only really\ninteresting ones, which is the art of conversational perspective. Beyond\nthe invisible mental London Wall which we have described, the wanderer\nseems suddenly to behold another intellectual realm. As the author of\nthe \u201cNight Thoughts\u201d describes a rather more startling experience, he\nstands on the last battlement, which\n\n                \u201cLooks o\u2019er the vale of non-existence,\u201d\u2014\n\nat the end of all things wherewith he is familiar. He has, in short,\npenetrated into the Rural Districts of the Mind, where men\u2019s ideas have\nhedges and ditches no less than their fields.\n\nAnd once again we must take English country life in its most elevated\nand perfect form,\u2014that of the hereditary landed gentry,\u2014to contrast it\nmost advantageously with the life of towns. To understand and enjoy\ncountry life as it may be enjoyed, a man should not only live in one of\nthose \u201cStately Homes of England,\u201d of which Mrs. Hemans was so enamoured,\nbut be born and have spent his youth in such a house, built by his\nfathers in long past generations. A wealthy merchant or a great lawyer\nwho buys in his declining years the country seat of some fallen family,\nto enjoy therein the honorable fruits of his labors may probably be a\nmuch more intelligent person than the neighboring squire, whose acres\nhave descended to him _depuis que le monde est monde_. But he can no\nmore make himself into a country gentleman, and acquire the tastes and\nideas of one, or learn to understand _from the inside_ the loves and\nhates, pleasures and prejudices of squiredom, than he can acquire the\n_dolce favella Toscana_ by buying himself a Florentine barony.\n\nAnd, lastly, our typical country life must neither be that of people so\ngreat and wealthy as to be called frequently by political interests up\nto Parliament, and who possess two or more great estates (a man can no\nmore have two _homes_ than he can have two heads), nor yet that of\npeople in embarrassed and narrow circumstances. The genuine squire is\nnever rich in the sense in which great merchants and manufacturers are\nrich; for, however many acres he may possess, it is tolerably certain\nthat the claims on them will be quite in proportion to their extent.\nThere is, in fact, a _kind of money_ which never comes out of land; a\ncertain freedom in the disposal of large sums quite unknown among the\nlanded gentry, at least in these days. But, if not possessed of a heavy\nbalance at their bankers, the country family must have the wherewithal\nfor the young men to shoot and hunt and fish, and for the girls to ride\nor amuse themselves with garden and pleasure-grounds according to taste.\nAll these things, being elements of the typical English country life,\nmust be assumed as at least attainable at will by our \u201cCountry Mouse\u201d if\nhe is not to be put altogether out of countenance by his brother of the\ntown.\n\nAs for the Town Mouse, he need not be rich, nor is it more than a\ntrifling advantage to him (felt chiefly at the outset of his career)\nthat his father or grandfather should have occupied the same social\nposition as himself. All that is needed is that, in the case of a man,\nhe should belong to a good club, and go out often to dinner; and, in the\ncase of a lady, that she should have from one hundred to five hundred\npeople on her visiting list. Either of these fortunate persons may,\nwithout let or hindrance, experience pretty nearly all the intellectual\nand moral advantages and disadvantages of living in a town, provided\ntheir place of abode be London. Over every other city in the empire\nthere steals some breath of country air, if it be small; or, if it be\nlarge, its social character is so far modified by special commercial,\nindustrial, or ecclesiastical conditions that its influence cannot be\nheld to be merely that of a town _pur et simple_; nor are the people who\ncome out of it properly typically towny, but rather commercial-towny,\nmanufacturing-towny, or cathedral-towny, as the case may be.\n\nTurn we now from these preliminaries to the characteristics of the Town\nlife and the Country life, each in its own most perfect English form.\nLet us see first what is to be said for each, and then strike our\nbalance. Very briefly we may dismiss the commonly recognized external\nfeatures of both, and pass as rapidly as possible to the more subtle\nones, which have scarcely perhaps been noted as carefully as their\nimportance as items in the sum of happiness will warrant.\n\n\n                         TOWN MOUSE _loquitur_.\n\n\u201cI confess I love London. It _is_ a confession, of course, for everybody\nwho lives in the country seems to think there is a particular virtue in\ndoing so, resembling the cognate merit of early rising. Even that\ncharming town poet, Mr. Locker, practically admits the same when he\nsays,\u2014\n\n                 \u2018I hope I\u2019m fond of much that\u2019s good,\n                   As well as much that\u2019s gay;\n                 I\u2019d like the country _if I could_,\n                   I like the Park in May.\u2019\n\n\u201cThe truth is that one wants _to live_, not to vegetate; to do as much\ngood, either to ourselves or other people, as time permits; to receive\nand give impressions; to feel, to act, to _be_ as much as possible in\nthe few brief years of mortal existence; and this concentrated Life can\nbe lived in London as nowhere else. If a man have any ambition, here it\nmay best be pursued. If he desire to contend for any truth or any\njustice, here is his proper battle-field. If he love pleasure, here are\nfifty enjoyments at his disposal for one which he can obtain in the\ncountry. The mere sense of forming part of this grand and complicated\nmachine, whereof four millions of men and women work the wheels, makes\nmy pulse beat faster, and gives me a sense as if I were marching to the\nsound of trumpets. Then the finish and completeness of London life is\ndelightful to the thoroughly civilized mind. It is only the\nhalf-reclaimed savage who is content with unpaved and unlighted roads,\nill-trained servants, slovenly equipages, and badly cooked, badly\nattended dinners. Like my little nibbling prototype who served his feast\n\u2018_sur un tapis de Turquie_,\u2019 I like everything, down to the little card\non which my _menu_ is written, to be perfect about me. The less I am\nreminded by disagreeable sensations of my animal part, the more room is\nleft for the exercise of my higher intellectual functions. The ascetic\nwho lives on locusts and wild honey, and _catches the locusts_, has far\nless leisure to think about better things than the alderman who sits\ndown every day to ten courses, served by a well-trained staff of London\nservants. The sense of order, of ease, of dignity and courtesy, is\ncontinually fostered and flattered in the great Imperial City, which,\nnotwithstanding its petty faults of local government, is still the\nfreest and noblest town the globe has ever borne. People talk of the\n\u2018freedom\u2019 of the country, and my quondam host, the Country Mouse, is\nperpetually boasting of his \u2018crust of bread and liberty.\u2019 But, except\nthe not very valuable license to wear shabby old clothes, I am at a loss\nto discover wherein the special freedom of rural life consists. You are\ncertainly watched, and your actions, looks, and behavior commented on\nfifty times more by your idle neighbors in the country, gasping for\ngossip, than by your busy neighbors in town, who never trouble\nthemselves to turn their heads when you pass them in the street, or even\nto find out your name if you live next door. In the country, you have\ngenerally the option of going on either of three or four roads. In\nLondon, you have the choice of as many thousand streets. In the country,\nyou may \u2018kill something\u2019 whenever you take your walks abroad, if that\nspecial privilege of the British gentleman be dear to your soul, and you\ncare to shoot, hunt, or fish. Or, if you belong to the softer sex or\nsort, you may amuse yourself in your garden or shrubbery, play tennis,\nteach in the village school, or pay a visit to some country neighbor who\nwill bore you to extinction. In London, you have ten times as large a\nchoice of occupations, and five hundred times as pleasant people to\nvisit; seeing that in the country even clever men and women grow dull,\nand in town the most stupid get _frott\u00e9_ with other people\u2019s ideas and\nhumor.\n\n\u201cAgain,\u2014and this is a most important consideration in favor of\nLondon,\u2014when a man has no particular bodily pain or mental affliction,\nand is not in want of money, the worst evil which he has to dread is\n_ennui_. To be bored is the \u2018one great grief of life\u2019 to people who have\nno other grief. But can there be any question whether _ennui_ is better\navoided in London or in the country? Even in the month of August, as\nsomebody has remarked, \u2018when London is \u201cempty,\u201d there are always more\npeople in it than anywhere else\u2019; and where there are people there must\nbe the endless play of human interests and sympathies. Nay, for my part,\nI find a special gratification in the cordiality wherewith my\nacquaintances, left stranded like myself by chance in the dead season,\nhail me when we meet in Pall Mall like shipwrecked mariners on a rock;\nand in the respectful enthusiasm wherewith I am greeted in the\nhalf-deserted shops, where in July I made my modest purchases, unnoticed\nand unknown. In the country, on the contrary, _Ennui_ stalks abroad all\nthe year round; and the puerile ceremonies wherewith the ignorant\nnatives strive to conjure away the demon\u2014the dismal tea and tennis\nparties, the deplorable archery meetings, and, above all, the really\nfrightful antediluvian institution, called \u2018Spending a Day\u2019\u2014only place\nus more helplessly at his mercy. We conjugate the reflective verb \u2018to be\nBored,\u2019 in all moods and tenses; not in the light and airy way of\ntownsfolk, when they trivially observe they were \u2018bored at such a party\nlast night,\u2019 or decline to be \u2018bored by going to hear such a preacher on\nSunday morning,\u2019 but sadly and in sober earnest, as men who recognize\nthat boredom is a chronic disease from which they have no hope of\npermanent relief. There is, in short, the same difference between\n_ennui_ in the country and _ennui_ in town as between thirst in the\nmidst of Sahara and thirst in one\u2019s home, where one may ring the bell at\nany moment and call for soda water.\u201d\n\n\nSo speaks the modern Town Mouse, describing the more superficial and\nobvious advantages of his abode over those of his friend in the country.\nAnd (equally on the surface of things) straightway replies\u2014\n\n\n                             COUNTRY MOUSE.\n\n\u201cThere is some sense in these boasts of my illustrious friend and guest,\nbut against them I think I can produce equivalent reasons for preferring\nthe country. In the first place, if he lives _faster_, I live _longer_;\nand I have better health than he all the time. My lungs are not clogged\nwith smoke, my brain not addled by eternal hurry and interruption, my\neyes not dimmed by fog and gaslight into premature blindness. While his\nlimbs are stiffening year by year till he can only pace along his\nmonotonous pavement, I retain till the verge of old age much of the\nagility and vigor wherewith I walked the moors and climbed the mountains\nin my youth. He is pleased at having twenty times as many sensations in\na day as I; but, if nineteen out of the twenty be jarring noises,\nnoxious smells, plague, worry, and annoyance, I am quite content with my\nhumbler share of experience. Even if his thick-coming sensations and\nideas be all pleasant, I doubt if he ever have the leisure necessary to\nenjoy them. Very little would be gained by the most exquisite dinner\never cooked, and the finest wines ever bottled, if a man should be\nobliged to gobble them standing up, while his train, just ready to\nstart, is whistling behind him. Londoners _gulp_ their pleasures, we\ncountry folk _sip_ such as come in our way; think of them a long time in\nadvance with pleasant anticipation, and ruminate on them and talk them\nover for months afterwards. I submit that even a few choice\ngratifications thus carefully prized add to a man\u2019s sense of happiness\nas much as double the number which are received when he is too weary to\nenjoy or too hurried to recall them.\n\n\u201cAgain, the permanent and indefeasible delights of the country seem\nsomehow to be more indispensable to human beings than the high-strung\ngratifications of the town. The proof of this fact is that, while _we_\ncan live at home all the year round, Town Mice, after eight or nine\nmonths\u2019 residence at longest, begin to hate their beloved city, and pine\nfor the country. Even when they are in the full fling of the London\nseason, it is instructive to notice the enthusiasm and sparkle wherewith\nthey discuss their projected tours a few weeks later among Swiss\nmountains or up Norwegian fiords. Also it may be observed how of all the\nentertainments of the year the most popular are the Flower-shows, and\nthe afternoon Garden-parties in certain private grounds. Even the\nwretched, unmanly sport of Hurlingham has become fashionable, chiefly\nbecause it has brought men and women out of London for a day into the\nsemblance of a country place. Had the gentlemen shot the poor pigeons in\nLincoln\u2019s Inn Fields or Bloomsbury, the admiring spectators of their\nprowess would have been exceedingly few. Nay, it is enough to watch in\nany London drawing-room wherein may stand on one table a bouquet of the\ncostliest hot-house flowers, and on the other a bowl of primroses in\nMarch, of hawthorn in May, and of purple heather in July, and see how\nevery guest will sooner or later pay some little affectionate attention\nto the vase which brings the reminiscence of the fields, woods, and\nmountains, taking no notice at all of the gorgeous azaleas and\npelargoniums, gardenias, and camellias, in the rival nosegay. It is very\nwell to boast of the \u2018perfection\u2019 and \u2018finish\u2019 of London life, but the\n\u2018perfection\u2019 fails to supply the first want of nature,\u2014fresh air; and\nthe \u2018finish\u2019 yet waits for a commencement in cheerful sunlight\nunobscured by smoke and fog, and a silence which shall not be marred all\nday and night by hideous, jarring, and distracting sounds. What man is\nthere who would prefer to live in one of the Venetian palace chambers,\ngorgeously decorated and adorned with frescos and marbles, and gilding\nand mirrors, but with a huge high wall, black, damp, and slimy, within\ntwo feet of the windows, shutting out the light of day and the air of\nheaven, rather than in a homely English drawing-room, furnished with\nnothing better than a few passable water-color sketches and some\nchintz-covered chairs and sofas, but opening down wide on a sunny\ngarden, with an acacia waving its blossoms over the emerald sward, and\nthe children weaving daisy chains round the neck of the old collie who\nlies beside them, panting with the warmth of the weather and his own\nbenevolence?\n\n\u201cThen as to the dulness of our country conversation, wherewith my\ndistinguished friend the Town Mouse has rather impolitely taunted us. Is\nit because we take no particular interest in his gossip of the clubs\nthat he thinks himself justified in pronouncing us stupid? Perhaps we\nalso think him a trifle local (if we may not say provincial) in his\nchoice of topics, and are of opinion that the harvest prospects of our\ncountry, and the relations of agricultural labor to capital, are\nsubjects quite as worthy of attention as his petty and transitory\n_cancans_ about articles in reviews, quarrels, scandals, and jests. East\nIndians returning to Europe after long absence are often amazed that\nnobody at home cares much to hear why Colonel Chutnee was sent from\nCurriepoor to Liverabad, or how it happened that Mrs. Cayenne broke off\nher engagement with old General Temperatesty. And in like manner perhaps\na Londoner may be surprised without much reason that his intensely\ninteresting \u2018latest intelligence\u2019 is rather thrown away upon us down in\nthe shires.\u201d\n\n\nThese, as we premised, are the obvious and salient advantages and\ndisadvantages of Town and Country life respectively observed and\nrecognized by everybody who thinks on the subject. It is the purport of\nthe present paper to pass beyond them to some of the more subtle and\nless noticed features of either mode of existence, and to attempt to\nstrike some kind of balance of the results as regards individuals of\ndifferent character and the same individual in youth and old age.\n\nWhen we ask seriously the question which, of any two ways of spending\nour years, is the most conducive to Happiness, we are apt to overlook\nthe fact that it is not the one which supplies us with the most numerous\nisolated items of pleasure, but the one of which the whole current tends\nto maintain in us the _capacity_ for enjoyment at the highest pitch and\nfor as long a time as possible. There is something exceedingly stupid in\nour common practice of paying superabundant attention to all the\nexternal factors of happiness down to the minutest rose-leaf which can\nbe smoothed out for our ease, and all the time forgetting that there\nmust always be an internal factor of _delightability_ to produce the\ndesired result, just as there must be an eye wherewith to see as well as\ncandles to give light. The faculty of _taking_ enjoyment, of _finding_\nsweetness in the rose, grandeur in the mountain, refreshment in food and\nrest, interest in books, and happiness in loving and being loved, is\u2014as\nwe must perceive the moment we consider it\u2014indefinitely more precious\nthan any gratification which can be offered to the senses, the\nintellect, or the affections, just as eyesight is more valuable than the\nfinest landscape, and the power of loving better than the homage of a\nworld. Yet, as Shelley lamented,\u2014\n\n                      \u201cRarely, rarely comest thou,\n                      Spirit of Delight\u201d;\n\nand we allow it to remain absent from our souls, and grow accustomed to\nliving without it, while all the time we are plodding on, multiplying\ngratifications and stimulants, while the delicate and evanescent sense\nthey are meant to please is becoming numb and dead. We often, indeed,\nmake religio-philosophical remarks on the beautiful patience and\ncheerfulness of sufferers from agonizing disease, and we smile at the\nunfailing hilarity wherewith certain Mark Tapleys of our acquaintance\nsustain the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We quote, with high\napproval, the poet who sings that\n\n                   \u201cStone walls do not a prison make,\n                   Nor iron bars a cage.\u201d\n\nNevertheless, the singular phenomenon of evident, unmistakable Happiness\nenjoyed, in despite of circumstances, never seems to teach us how\nentirely secondary all objective circumstances needs must be to the\nsubjective side of the question, and how much more rational it would be\non our part to look first to securing for ourselves the longest and\ncompletest tenure of the internal elements of enjoyment before we turn\nour attention to the attainment of those which are external.\n\nThe bearing of this remark on the present subject is, of course,\nobvious. Is it Life in Town or Life in the Country wherein the springs\nof happiness flow with perennial freshness, and wherein the Spirit of\nDelight will burn brightest and longest? To solve this problem, we must\nturn over in our minds the various conditions of such a state of mind\nand spirits, the most generally recognized of which is bodily Health.\n\nThere is not the smallest danger in these days that any inquirer,\nhowever careless, should overlook the vast importance of physical\nsoundness to every desirable mental result. Indeed, on the contrary, we\nmay rather expect shortly to find our teachers treating Disease as the\nonly real delinquency in the world, and all crimes and vices as mere\nsymptoms of disordered nerves or overloaded stomach,\u2014kleptomania,\ndipsomania, homicidal mania, or something equally pardonable on the part\nof automata like ourselves. Seriously speaking, a high state of health,\nsuch as the \u201cOriginal\u201d described himself as having attained, or even\nsomething a few degrees less perfect, is, undoubtedly, a potent factor\nin the sum of happiness, causing every separate sensation\u2014sleeping,\nwaking, eating, drinking, exercise, and rest\u2014to be delightful; and the\nfolly of people who seek for Happiness, and yet barter away Health for\nWealth or Fame, or any other element thereof, is like that of a man who\nshould sell gold for dross. Admitting this, it would seem to follow that\nLife in the Country, generally understood to be the most wholesome, must\nbe the most conducive to the state of enjoyment. But there are two\npoints not quite cleared up on the way to this conclusion. First, bodily\nhealth seems to be, to some people, anything but the blessing it ought\nto be, rendering them merely coarse and callous, untouched by those\nfiner impulses and sentiments which pain has taught their feebler\ncompanions, and so shutting them out from many of the purest and most\nspiritual joys of humanity. Paley questioned whether the sum of\nhappiness would not be increased to most of us by one hour of moderate\npain in every twenty-four; and, though few would directly ask for the\nincrement of enjoyment so attained, there are perhaps still fewer who\nwould desire to unlearn all the lessons taught in the school of\nsuffering, or find themselves with the gross, oxlike nature of many a\nfarmer or publican, whose rubicund visage bears testimony to his\nvigorous appetite and to the small amount of pain, sorrow, or anxiety\nwhich his own or anybody else\u2019s troubles have ever caused him. Taking it\nall in all, it seems doubtful, then, whether the most invariably robust\npeople are really much higher than those with more fluctuating health\nwho have taken from the bitter cup the sweet drop which is always to be\nfound at the bottom by those who seek it. For those, unhappiest of all,\nwhom disease has only rendered more selfish and self-centred and\nrebellious, there is, of course, no comparison possible.\n\nAnd, secondly, Is it thoroughly proved that country life is invariably\nhealthier than the life of towns? The maladies arising from bad air,\nlate hours, and that overwork and overstrain which is the modern Black\nDeath, are of course unknown in the calm-flowing existence of a rural\nsquire and his family. But there are other diseases which come of\nmonotonous repose, unvarying meals, and general _tedium vitae_, quite as\nbad as the scourges of the town. Of all sources of ill health, I am\ninclined to think lack of interest in life, and the constant society of\ndull and disheartening people, the very worst and most prolific.\nUndoubtedly, it is so among the upper class of women; and the warnings\nof certain American physicians against the adoption by girls of any\nserious or earnest pursuit seems painfully suggestive of a well-founded\nalarm lest their own lists of hysterical and dyspeptic patients should\nshow a falling off under the new impetus given to women\u2019s work and\nstudy. In London, people have very much less leisure to think about\ntheir ailments, or allow the doctor\u2019s visit to become a permanent\ninstitution, as is so often the case in country houses. The result is\nthat (whether or not statistics prove the existence of more sickness in\ntown than in the country) at least we do not hear of eternally ailing\npeople in London nearly so often as we do in country neighborhoods,\nwhere there are always to be found as stock subjects of local interest\nand sympathy old Mr. A.\u2019s gout, and Lady B.\u2019s liver complaint; and those\nsad headaches which yet fortunately enable poor Mrs. C. to spend at\nleast one day in the week in her darkened bedroom out of the reach of\nher lord\u2019s intolerable temper.[26] Be it also that the maladies which\ntownsfolk mostly escape\u2014namely, dyspepsia, hysteria, and neuralgia\u2014are\nprecisely those which exercise the most direct and fatal influence on\nhuman powers of enjoyment, whereas the ills to which flesh is heir in\ngreat cities, among the upper and well-fed classes, are generally more\nremotely connected therewith.\n\nBut\u2014_pace_ the doctors and all their materialistic followers\u2014I question\nvery much whether bodily health, the mere absence of physical disease,\nbe nearly as indispensable a condition of happiness as certain\npeculiarities of the mental and moral constitution. The disposition to\nAnxiety, for instance, which reduces many lives to a purgatory of\nincessant care,\u2014about money, about the opinion of society, or about the\nhealth and well-being of children,\u2014is certainly a worse drawback to\npeace and happiness than half the diseases in the Registrar-General\u2019s\nlist. This anxious temperament is commonly supposed to be fostered and\nexcited in towns, and laid to sleep in the peaceful life of the country;\nand, if it were certainly and invariably so, I think the balance of\nhappiness between the two would well-nigh be settled by that fact alone.\nBut again there is something to be said on the side of the town. An\nAfrican traveller has described to me how, after months exposed to the\ninterminable perils from man and brute and climate, he felt, after his\nfirst night on board a homeward-bound English ship, a reaction from the\ntension of anxiety which revealed to himself the anguish he had been\nhalf-unconsciously enduring for many months. In like manner the city man\nor the statesman feels, when at last he takes his summer holiday, under\nwhat tremendous pressure of care he has been living during the past\nyear, or session, in London; and he compares it, naturally enough, with\nthe comparatively careless life of his friend, the country squire. But\nevery one in London does not run a race for political victory or social\nsuccess, and there are yet some sober old ways of business\u2014both legal\nand mercantile\u2014which do not involve the alternative of wealth or ruin\nevery hour. For such people I apprehend London life is actually rather a\ncure for an anxious temperament than a provocative of care. There is no\ntime for dwelling on topics of a painful sort, or raising spectres of\npossible evils ahead. Labors and pleasures, amusements and monetary\nworries, succeed each other so rapidly that the more serious anxieties\nreceive less and less attention as the plot of London life thickens year\nby year. One nail drives out another, and we are now and then startled\nto remember that there has been really for days and months a reasonable\nfear of disaster hanging over us to which we have somehow scarcely given\na thought, while in the country it would have filled our whole horizon,\nand we should scarcely have forgotten it day or night.\n\nAnd, again, quite as important as bodily health and freedom from anxiety\nis the possession of a certain childlike freshness of character; a\nsimplicity which enables men and women, even in old age, to enjoy such\ninnocent pleasures as come in their way without finding them pall, or\ndespising them as not worth their acceptance. Great minds and men of\ngenius seem generally specially gifted with this invaluable attribute of\nperennial youth; while little souls, full of their own petty importance\nand vanities, lose it before they are well out of the school-room. The\nlate sculptor, John Gibson (whose works will be, perhaps, appreciated\nwhen all the monstrosities of modern English statuary are consigned to\nthe lime-kiln), used to say in his old age that he wished he could live\nover again every day and hour of his past life precisely as he had spent\nit. Let the reader measure what this means in the mouth of a man of\ntransparent veracity, and it will appear that the speaker must needs\nhave carried on through his seventy years the freshness of heart of a\nboy, never wearied by his ardent pursuit of the Beautiful, and supported\nby the consciousness that this pursuit was not wholly in vain. People\nwho are always \u201clooking for the next thing,\u201d taking each pleasure not as\npleasure _per se_, but merely as a useful stepping-stone to something\nelse which may possibly be pleasure, or as a subject to be talked of;\npeople who are always climbing, like boys at a fair, up the slippery\npole of ambition,\u2014cannot possibly know the meaning of such genuine and\never fresh enjoyment.\n\nIs a man likely to grow more or less simple-hearted and single-minded in\nTown or in the Country? Alas! there can be little or no doubt that\nLondon life is a sad trial to all such simplicity; and that nothing is\nmore difficult than to preserve, in its hot, stifling atmosphere, the\nfreshness and coolness of any flower of sentiment, or the glory of any\nnoble, unselfish enthusiasm. Social wear and tear, and the tone of\neasy-letting-down commonly adopted by men of the world towards any lofty\naspiration, compel those who would fain cherish generous and\nconscientious motives to cloak them under the guise of a hobby or a\nwhim, and, before many years are over, the glow and bloom of almost\nevery enthusiasm is rubbed off and spoiled.\n\nBut it is time to pass from the general subjective conditions of\nhappiness common to us all to those individual tastes and idiosyncrasies\nwhich are probably more often concerned in the preference of town or\ncountry life. We are all of us mingled of pretty nearly the same\ningredients of character; but they are mixed in very different\nproportions in each man\u2019s brewing, and in determining the flavor of the\ncompound everything depends on the element which happens to prevail. By\nsome odd chance, few of us, notwithstanding all our egotism and\nself-study, really know ourselves well enough to recognize whether we\nare by nature gregarious or solitary, acted upon most readily by\nmeteorological or by psychological influences, capable of living only on\nour affections or requiring the exercise of our brains. We are always,\nfor example, talking about the gloom or brightness of the weather, as if\nwe were so many pimpernels, to whom the sun is everything and a cloudy\nday or a sharp east wind the most pitiable calamity. The real truth is\nthat, to ninety-nine healthy English men and women out of a hundred,\natmospheric conditions are insignificant compared to social ones; and\nthe spectacle of a single member of the family in the dumps, or even the\nsuspicion that the servants are quarrelling in the kitchen, detracts\nmore from our faculty of enjoyment than a fall of the barometer from\nVery Dry to Stormy. In the same way we talk about people \u201cloving the\ncountry\u201d or \u201cloving the town,\u201d just as if the character which fitted in\nand found its natural gratification in the one were qualified to enjoy\nquite equally the other. Obviously, in some of us the passion for Nature\nand natural beauty is so prominent that, if it be starved (as it must\nneeds be in a great city) or only tantalized by the sight of pictures\nreminding us of woods and hills and fresh breezes when we are stifled\nand jostled in the crowded rooms of Burlington House or the Grosvenor\nGallery, we miss so much out of life that nothing can make up for it,\nand no pleasures of the intellect in the company of clever people, or\ngratification of taste in the most luxurious home, are sufficient to\nbanish the regret. A young branch swaying in the breeze of spring, and\nthe song of the lark rising out of the thyme and the clover, are better\nthan all the pictures, the concerts, the conversation which the town can\noffer. And just in the opposite way there are others amongst us in whom\nthe \u00e6sthetic element is subordinate to the social, and who long to take\na part in the world\u2019s work rather than to stand by and watch the grand\npanorama of summer and winter move before them while they remain\npassive. Is it not patently absurd to talk as if persons so differently\nconstituted as these could find happiness,\u2014the one where his ingrained\npassion for Nature is permanently denied its innocent and easy\ngratification, the other where his no less deeply rooted interest in the\nconcerns of his kind is narrowed within the petty sphere of rural social\nlife?\n\nBut let us now pass on, hoping that we have found the round man for the\nround hole, and the square man for the square one. What are the more\nhidden and recondite charms of the two modes of life, of which the Town\nMouse and the Country Mouse have rehearsed the superficial characters?\nWhat is the meaning in the first place of that taste for \u201cLife at High\nPressure,\u201d against which W. R. Greg cautioned us, and Matthew Arnold\ninveighed? How was it that the sage Dr. Johnson felt undoubtedly a\ntwinge of the same unholy passion when he remarked to the faithful\nBoswell how delightful it was to drive fast in a post-chaise,\u2014in _such_\na post-chaise, and over such roads as existed in his time? I apprehend\nthat the love for rapid movement comes from the fact that it always\nconveys to us a sense of vivid volition, and effectually stirs both our\npulses and our brains, causing us not only to seem to ourselves, but\nactually to become, more intelligent. At first the bustle and hurry of\nLondon life bewilder the visitor; and, finding it impossible to think,\nmove, and speak as fast as is needful, he feels as a feeble old lady\nmight do arm-in-arm with Jack in his Seven-league boots. But after a\nlittle while he learns to step out mentally as rapidly as his neighbors,\nand thereby acquires the double satisfaction of the intrinsic pleasure\nof thinking quickly and not dwelling on ideas till they become tedious,\nand the further sense of gratified vanity in being as clever as other\npeople. This last is again a curious source of metropolitan\nsatisfaction. It is all very well to boast of having \u201calso dwelt in\nArcadia.\u201d Such pastoral pride is humility beside the conceit of being a\nthorough-bred Londoner. There may live many men with souls so dead as\nnever to themselves to have said\u2014anything signifying peculiar\nappropriation of the soil of Scotland, or of any other \u201cnative land.\u201d\nBut who has ever yet met a Cockney who was not from the bottom to the\ntop of his soul proud of being a Londoner, and deeply convinced that he\nand his fellows can alone be counted as standing \u201cin the foremost files\nof time\u201d? Of course, whilst he is actually in London, he has no\nprovocation to betray his self-satisfaction among people who can all\nmake the same boast. But watch him the moment he passes into the\ncountry. Observe the pains he takes that the natives shall fully\nunderstand what manner of man, even a Londoner, they have the privilege\nof entertaining, and no doubt will remain as to how immensely superior\nhe feels himself to those who habitually dwell \u201cfar from the madding\ncrowd.\u201d If he wander into the remoter provinces, say of Scotland, Wales,\nor Ireland, there is always in his recognition of the hospitality shown\nto him a tone like that of the shipwrecked apostle in Malta: \u201cThe\nBarbarous people there showed us no small kindness.\u201d He manages to\nconvey by looks, words, and manners his astonishment at any vestiges of\ncivilization which he may meet on those distant shores, and exhibits\ngraceful forbearance in putting up with the delicious fresh fruit,\ncream, vegetables, and home-fed beef and mutton of his entertainers in\nlieu of the stale produce of the London shops. One such stranded Cockney\nI have known to remark that he \u201cobserved\u201d that the eggs at N\u2014\u2014, and at\nanother country house where he occasionally visited, had in them a\n\u201cpeculiar milky substance,\u201d about whose merits he seemed doubtful; and\nanother I have heard, after landing at Holyhead on his return from\nIreland, complacently comparing his watch (which had, like himself,\nfaithfully kept London time during all his tour) with the clock in the\nstation, and observing to his fellow-passengers \u201cthat there was not a\nsingle clock right in Dublin,\u2014they were all twenty minutes too\nslow,\u2014and, when he went to Galway, he found them still worse.\u201d\n\nEven if a man sincerely prefer country life, and transfer his abode from\nLondon to the rural districts, he still retains a latent satisfaction at\nhaving lived once in the very centre of human interests, close to the\nthrobbing heart of the world. The old squire, who has been too gouty and\ntoo indolent to run up to town for twenty years, will still brighten up\nat the names of the familiar streets and play-houses, and will tell\nanecdotes, the chief interest of which seems to lie in the fact that he\nformerly lodged in Jermyn Street, or bought his seals at the corner of\nWaterloo Place, or had his hair cut in Bond Street, preparatory to going\nto the play in Drury Lane.\n\nAs volunteers enjoy a field day with the man\u0153uvres and marches, so a\nLondoner experiences a dim sense of pleasure in forming part of the huge\narmy of four millions of human beings who are for ever moving hither and\nthither, and yet strangely bringing about, not confusion, but order. The\nGreek philosophers and statesmen, who thought such a little tiny \u201cPolis\u201d\nas Athens or Sparta (not an eighth part of one postal district of\nLondon) almost a miracle of divine order, would have fallen down and\nworshipped at the shrine of Gog and Magog for having provided that a\nwhole nation should be fed, housed, clothed, washed, lighted, warmed,\ntaught, and amused for years and generations in a single city eight\nmiles long. It is impossible not to feel an ever fresh interest and even\nsurprise in the solution of so marvellous a problem as this human\nant-hill presents, and Londoners themselves, perhaps even more than\ntheir visitors, are wont to watch with pleasant wonder each occurrence\nwhich brings its magnitude to mind: the long quadruple train of splendid\nequipages filing through Hyde Park of a summer afternoon; the scene\npresented by the river at the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race; or the\noverwhelming spectacle of such crowds as greeted the Queen on her\nJubilee.\n\nThe facility wherewith a busy-minded person, possessed of moderate\npecuniary resources, can carry out almost any project in London, is\nanother great source of the pleasure of town life. At every corner a\ncab, a hansom, an omnibus, an underground station, or a penny steamboat,\nis ready to convey him rapidly and securely to any part of the vast\narea; and a post-pillar or post-office or telegraph office, to forward\nhis letter or card or telegram. He has acquired the privilege of\nBriareus for doing the work of a hundred hands, while the scores of\npenny and half-penny newspapers give him the benefit of the hundred eyes\nof Argus to see how to do it.\n\nNot many people seem to notice wherein the last and greatest of London\npleasures, that of London society, has its special attraction. It is\ncontrasted with the very best society which the Country can ever afford,\nby offering the charm of the _impr\u00e9vu_. There are always indefinite\npossibilities of the most delightful and interesting new acquaintances\nor of the renewal of old friendships in London: whereas even in the most\nbrilliant circles in the country we are aware, before we enter a house,\nthat our host\u2019s choice of our fellow-guests must have lain within a very\nnarrow and restricted circle, and that, if a stranger should happily\nhave fallen from the skies into the neighborhood, his advent would have\nbeen proclaimed in our note of invitation. Now it is much more piquant\nto meet an agreeable person unexpectedly than by formal rendezvous; and,\nfor that large proportion of mankind who are not particularly agreeable,\nit is still more essential that they should be presented freshly to our\nacquaintance. Other things being equal, a Stranger Bore is never half so\ngreat a bore as a Familiar Bore, of whose boredom we have already had\nintimate and painful experience. There yet hangs about the Stranger Bore\nsomewhat of the mists of early day, and we are a little while in\npiercing them and thoroughly deciding that he _is_ a bore and nothing\nbetter. Often, indeed, for the first hour or two of acquaintanceship, he\nfails to reveal himself in his true colors, and makes remarks and tells\nanecdotes the dulness of which we shall only thoroughly recognize when\nwe have heard them repeated on twenty other occasions. With our own\nFamiliar Bore no illusion is possible. The moment we see him enter the\nroom, we know everything that is going to be said for the rest of the\nevening, and Hope itself escapes out of Pandora\u2019s box. Thus, even if\nthere were proportionately as many bores in London as in the provinces,\nwe should still, in town, enjoy a constant change of them, which would\nconsiderably lighten the burden. This, however, is very far from being\nthe case; and the stupid wives of clever men and the dull husbands of\nclever wives, who alone smuggle into the inner coteries (few people\nhaving the effrontery to omit them in their invitations), are so far\nrubbed up and instructed in the best means of concealing their\nignorance, silliness, or stupidity, that they are often quite harmless\nand inoffensive, and even qualified to shine with a mild reflected\nlustre in rural society in the autumn. Certain immutable laws made and\nprovided by society against bores are brought sooner or later to their\nknowledge. They do not tell stories more than five minutes long in the\nnarration, nor rehearse jokes till they fancy they can recall the point,\nnor entertain their friends by an abridgment of their own pedigree, or\nby a catalogue of the ages, names, heights, and attainments in the Latin\ngrammar of their hopeful offspring. To all this sort of thing the\nmiserable visitor in the country is liable to be subjected in every\nhouse the threshold of which he may venture to cross; for, even if his\nhost and hostess be the most delightful people, they generally have some\nold uncle or aunt, or privileged and pompous neighbor, with whom nobody\nhas ever dared to interfere in his ruthless exercise of the power to\nbore, and who will fasten on a new-comer just as mosquitoes do on fresh\narrivals at a seaport after having tormented all the old inhabitants.\n\nAnd if London Bores are as lions with drawn teeth and clipped claws,\nLondon pleasant people on the other hand are beyond any doubt the\npleasantest in the world; more true and kind and less eaten up by vanity\nand egotism than Parisians, and twice as agile-minded as the very\ncleverest German.\n\nAgain, a great charm of London is that wealth is of so much less social\nweight there than anywhere else. It is singular what misapprehensions\nare current on this subject, and how apt are country people to say that\nmoney is everything in town, whereas the exact converse of the\nproposition is nearer the truth. In a country neighborhood, the man who\nlives in the largest house, drives the handsomest horses, and gives the\nmost luxurious entertainments is allowed with little question to assume\na prominent position, be he never so dull and never so vulgar; and,\nthough respect will still be paid to well-born and well-bred people of\ndiminished or narrow fortune, their position as regards their _nouveau\nriche_ neighbors is every year less dignified or agreeable. Quite on the\ncontrary in town: with no income beyond what is needful to subscribe to\na club and wear a good coat, a man may take his place (hundreds _do_ so\ntake a place) in the most delightful circles, welcomed by all for his\nown worth or agreeability, for the very simple and sufficient reason\nthat people like his society and want nothing more from him. In a city\nwhere there are ten thousand people ready to give expensive dinners, it\nis not the possession of money enough to entertain guests which can by\nitself make the owner an important personage, or cause the world to\noverlook the fact that he is a snob; nor will the lack of wealth prevent\nthose thousands who are on the look-out only for a pleasant and\nbrilliant companion from cultivating one, be he never so poor. The\ndistinction between the rural and the urban way of viewing a new\nacquaintance as regards both birth and fortune is very curiously\nbetrayed by the habit of townsfolk to ask simply \u201c_what_ a man may be\u201d\n(meaning, \u201cIs he a lawyer, a _litt\u00e9rateur_, a politician, a\nclergyman,\u2014above all, is he a pleasant fellow?\u201d) and that of country\ngentry invariably to inquire, \u201c_Who_ is he?\u201d (meaning, Has he an estate,\nand is he related to the So-and-so\u2019s of such a place?) It is not a\nlittle amusing sometimes to witness the discomfiture of both parties\nwhen a bland old gentleman is introduced in London to some man of\nworld-wide celebrity, whose antecedents none of the company ever dreamed\nof investigating, and the squire courteously intimates, as the\npleasantest thing he can think of to say, that he \u201cused to meet often in\nthe hunting field a gentleman of that name who had a fine place in\nCheshire,\u201d or that \u201che remembers a man who must surely have been his\nfather\u2014a gentleman-commoner of Christchurch.\u201d\n\nFor those men and women\u2014numerous enough in these days\u2014who hold rather\npronounced opinions of the sort not relished in country circles, who are\nheretics regarding the religious or political creed of their relatives\nand neighbors, London offers the real Broad Sanctuary, where they may\nrest in peace, and be no more looked upon as black sheep, suspicious and\nuncomfortable characters, the \u201cgentleman who voted for Topsy Turvey at\nthe last election,\u201d or \u201cthe lady who doesn\u2019t go to church on Sundays.\u201d\nIn town, not only will their errors be overlooked, but they will find\nscores of pleasant and reputable persons who share the worst of them and\ngo a great deal further, and in whose society they will soon begin to\nfeel themselves by comparison quite orthodox, and perhaps rather\nconservative characters.\n\nAnd lastly, besides all the other advantages of London which I have\nrecapitulated, there is one of which very little note is ever taken. If\nmany sweet and beautiful pleasures are lost by living there, many sharp\nand weary pains also therein find a strange anodyne. There is no time to\nbe very unhappy in London. Past griefs are buried away under the\nsurface, since we may not show them to the unsympathizing eyes around;\nand present cares and sorrows are driven into dark corners of the mind\nby the crowd of busy every-day thoughts which inevitably take their\nplace. A man may feel the heart-ache in the country, and wander mourning\nby the solitary shore or amid the silent winter woods. But let him go,\nafter receiving a piece of sad intelligence, into the busy London\nstreets, and be obliged to pick his way amid the crowd; to pass by a\nscore of brilliant shops, avoid being run over by an omnibus, give a\npenny to a streetsweeper, push through the children looking at Punch,\nclose his ears to a German band, hail a hansom and drive to his office\nor his chambers,\u2014and at the end of the hour how many thoughts will he\nhave given to his sorrow?\n\nBefore it has had time to sink into his mind, many days of similar fuss\nand business will have intervened; and by that time the edge of the\ngrief will be dulled, and he will never experience it in its sharpness.\nOf the influence of this process, continually repeated, on the\ncharacter, a good deal might be said; and there may be certainly room to\ndoubt whether thus perpetually shirking all the more serious and solemn\npassages of life is conducive to the higher welfare. After we have\nsuffered a good deal, and the readiness of youth to encounter every new\nexperience and drink every cup to the dregs has been exchanged for the\ndread of strong emotions and the weariness of grief which belong to\nlater years, there is an immense temptation to spare our own hearts as\nmuch as we can; and London offers the very easiest way, without any\nfailure of kindness, duty, or decorum, to effect such an end.\nNevertheless, the sacred faculties of sympathy and unselfish sorrow are\nnot things to be lightly tampered with; and it is to be feared that the\nconsequences of any conscious evasion of their claims must always be\nfollowed by that terrible Nemesis, the hardening of our hearts and the\ndisbelief in the sympathy of our neighbors. We have made love and\nfriendship unreal to ourselves, and it becomes impossible to continue to\nbelieve they are real to other people. Yet, I think, if the shelter be\nnot wilfully or intentionally sought, if it merely come in the natural\ncourse of things that the business and variety of town life prevent us\nfrom dwelling on sorrows which cannot be lightened by our care, it seems\na better alternative than the almost infinite durability and emphasis\ngiven to grief in the monotonous life of the country.\n\nIf these be the advantages of Town life, however, there are to be set\nagainst them many and grievous drawbacks. First, as the Country Mouse\njustly urges, half those quickly following sensations and ideas which\nconstitute the highly-prized rapidity of London life are essentially\ndisagreeable in themselves, and might be dispensed with to our much\ngreater comfort. In the country, for example, out of fifty sights,\nforty-nine at least are of pretty or beautiful objects, even where there\nis no particularly fine scenery. Woods, gardens, rivers, country roads,\ncottages, wagons, ploughs, cattle, sheep, and over all, always, a broad\nexpanse of the blessed sky, with the pomps of sunrises and sunsets, and\nmoonlight nights and snow-clad winter days,\u2014these are things on which\neverywhere (save in the Black Country, which is not the _country_ at\nall) the eye rests in peace and delight. In the town, out of the same\nnumber of glances of our tired eyeballs, we shall probably behold a\nscore of huge advertisements, a line of hideous houses with a butcher\u2019s\nshop as the most prominent object, an omnibus and a brewer\u2019s dray, a\nscore of bricklayers returning (slightly drunk) from dinner, and a\nhandsome carriage with the unfortunate horses champing their gag-bits in\nagony from their tight bearing-reins while the coachman flicks them with\nhis whip. In the country, again, out of fifty odors the great majority\nwill be of fresh herbage, or hay, or potato or bean fields, or of newly\nploughed ground, or burning weeds or turf. In the town, we shall endure\nthe sickly smell of drains, of stale fish, of raw meat, of carts laden\nwith bones and offal, the insufferable effluvium of the city cook-shops;\nand last\u2014not least\u2014pervading every street and shop and park, puffed\neternally in our faces, the vilest tobacco. And finally, in the country,\nour ears are no less soothed and flattered than our senses of smelling\nand sight. The golden silence when broken at all is disturbed only by\nthe noise of running waters, of cattle lowing, sheep bleating, thrushes\nand larks and cuckoos singing, rooks cawing on the return home at\nevening, or the exquisite \u201csough\u201d of the night wind as it passes over\nthe sleeping woods as in a dream. In the town, we have the relentless\nroar and rattle of a thousand carts, cabs, drags, and omnibuses, the\nperpetual grinding of organs and hurdy-gurdies, the unintelligible and\near-piercing cries of the costermongers in the streets, and generally,\nto complete our misery, the jangle of a pianoforte heard through the\nthin walls of our house, as if there were no partitions between us and\nthe detestable children who thump through their scales and polkas for\nsix hours out of the twenty-four. Such are the sufferings of the senses\nin London,\u2014surely worth setting against the luxuries it is supposed to\ncommand, but which it only commands for the rich, whereas neither rich\nnor poor have any immunity from the ugly sights, ugly smells, and ugly\nnoises wherewith it abounds. But, beyond these mortifications of the\nflesh, London entails on its thoroughgoing votaries a heavier\npunishment. Sooner or later on every one who really works in London\nthere comes a certain pain, half physical, half mental, which seems to\nhave its bodily seat somewhere about the diaphragm, and its mental place\nbetween our feelings and our intellect,\u2014a sense, not of being tired and\nwanting rest, for that is the natural and wholesome alternative of all\nstrong and sustained exercise of our faculties, but of being \u201clike dumb\ndriven cattle,\u201d and of having neither power to go on nor to stop. We\nseem to be under some slave-master who whips us here and there, and\nforbids us to sit down and take breath. We want fresh air, but our walks\nthrough the crowded streets or parks only add fatigue to our eyes and\nweariness and excitement to our brains. We need food, but it does us\nlittle good; and sleep, but we waken up before half the night is past\nwith our brains busy already with the anxieties of the morrow. We are\nconscious we are using up brains, eyesight, health, everything which\nmakes life worth possessing, and yet we are entangled in such a mesh of\nengagements and duties that we cannot break loose. We can only break\n_down_; and that is what we pretty surely do when this state of things\nhas lasted a little too long.\n\nPerhaps the reader is inclined to say, Why not try the golden mean, the\ncompromise between town and country, to be found in some _rus in urbe_\nin Fulham or Hampstead, or a villa a little way further, at Richmond or\nNorwood or Wimbledon? I beg leave humbly to contend that the venerable\nAristotelian \u201cMeson\u201d is as great a mistake in geography as in ethics,\nand that it will be generally found that people adopting the Half-way\nHouse system of lodgement will be disposed to repeat the celebrated\nScotch ode with slight variations. \u201cTheir heart is\u201d\u2014in London; \u201ctheir\nheart is not,\u201d\u2014by any means, in Hampstead or Twickenham. Their days are\nspent either in waiting at railway stations to go in or out of town, or\nin the yet more tantalizing anticipation of friends who have promised to\n\u201cgive them a day,\u201d and for whom they have provided the modern substitute\nfor the fatted calf, but who, on the particular morning of their\nengagement, are sure to be swept off their consciences by an unexpected\nticket for the opera, which they \u201ccould not enjoy if they had gone so\nfar in the morning as dear Mr. A.\u2019s delightful villa.\u201d Of course, it is\npossible to live in the outer circle of real London, and have fresh air\nand comparative quiet, infinitely valuable. But he who goes further\nafield, the ambitious soul who dreams of cocks and hens, or even soars\nto a paddock and a cow, is destined to disillusion and despair. He tries\nto \u201cmake the best of both worlds,\u201d and he gets the worst of both. The\ngenuine Londoner considers his proffers of hospitality as an imposition;\nand the genuine country cousin is indignant, on accepting them, to find\nhow far is his residence from the exhibitions and the shops. His trees\nare black, his roses cankered, and his soul imbittered by the\ndefalcations of friends, the blunders and extortions of cabmen, and his\nown infructuous effort to be always in two places at once.\n\nNor is the second and, apparently, more facile resource of the tired\nLondoner\u2014that of quartering himself on his kind country friends for his\nholidays\u2014very much more successful. The country would indeed be\ndelightful for our Christmas fortnight or our Easter or Whitsuntide\nweek, if we were permitted to enjoy in it that repose we so urgently\nneed and so fondly seek. We are quite enamoured, when we first turn our\nsteps from the smoky city, with the trees and fields; and we enjoy\nindescribably our rides and drives and walks, the varied aspects of\nnature, and the beasts and birds wherewith we are surrounded. But one\nthing we have not bargained for, and that is\u2014country Society. Of course\nwe love our friends and relations in whose homes we are received with\nkindness and affection, whom we know to be the salt of the earth for\ngoodness, and who love us enough to feel an interest even in our\ntowniest gossip. But _their_ country friends, the neighboring\ngentlefolk, the clergyman\u2019s wife, the family doctor, the people who are\ninvariably invited to meet us at the long formal country dinner! This is\nthe trial beneath which our new-found love of rural life is apt to\nsuccumb. Sir Cornewall Lewis\u2019s too famous _dictum_ returns, slightly\nmodified, to our memories\u2014As \u201clife would be tolerable but for its\npleasures,\u201d so the country would be enchanting, were it not for its\nsociety. Could we be allowed to live in the country, and see only our\nhosts, we should be as happy as kings and queens. But to fly, for the\nsake of rest and quiet, from the tables where we might have met some of\nthe most brilliant men and women of the day, and then to find that we\nshall incur the disgrace of being unsociable curmudgeons if we object to\nspend the afternoon in playing tennis with the rector\u2019s stupid\ndaughters, and to dine afterwards at the house of a particularly dull\nand vulgar neighbor with whom we would fain avoid such acquaintance as\nmay justify him in visiting us in town, this is surely an evil destiny!\nWhen, alas! will all the good and kind people who invite town friends to\ncome and rest with them in the country forbear to make their acceptance\nthe occasion for a round of rural dissipation, and believe that their\nweary brother would be only too glad, did civility permit, to inscribe\non the door of his bedroom during his sojourn the affecting Italian\nepitaph, _Implora pace!_\n\nThe Country Mouse has naturally said as little as possible of the\ndrawbacks of his favorite mode of existence,\u2014metaphorically speaking,\nthe dampness of his \u201cHollow Tree,\u201d and its liability to be infested by\nOwls. It may be well to jot off a few of the less recognized offsets to\nthe pleasures of rural life before listening to any eulogies thereof.\n\nThe real evil of country life I apprehend is this: the whole happiness\nor misery of it is so terribly dependent on the character of those with\nwhom we live that, if we are not so fortunate as to have for our\ncompanions the best and dearest, wisest and pleasantest, of men and\nwomen (in which case we may be far happier than in any other life in the\nworld), we are infinitely worse off than we can ever be in town. One,\ntwo, or perhaps three relatives and friends, who form our permanent\nhousemates, make or mar all our days by their good or evil tempers,\ntheir agreeability or stupidity, their affection and confidence, or\ntheir dislike and jealousy. _\u00catre avec les gens qu\u2019on aime, cela\nsuffit_, says Rousseau; and he speaks truth. But _\u00eatre avec les gens\nqu\u2019on n\u2019aime pas_, and buried in a dull country house with them, without\nany prospect of change, is as bad as having a millstone tied round our\nnecks and being drowned in the depth of the sea. In a town house, if the\nfathers and sons, mothers and daughters, scold and wrangle, if the\nhusband be a bear or the wife a shrew, there is always the refuge of the\nouter circle of acquaintances wherein cheer and comfort, or, at least,\nvariety and relief, may be found. Reversing the pious Dr. Watts\u2019s maxim,\nwe cry,\u2014\n\n                   \u201cWhatever brawls disturb the home,\n                   Let peace be in the street.\u201d\n\nThe Club is the shelter of henpecked man; a friend\u2019s house, or Marshall\nand Snellgrove\u2019s, the refuge of a cockpecked woman. On the stormiest\ndomestic debate, the advent of a visitor intervenes, throwing temporary\noil on the waters, and compelling the belligerents to put off their\nquarrels and put on their smiles; and, when the unconscious peacemaker\nhas departed, it is often found difficult, if not impossible, to take up\nthe squabble just where it was left off. But there is no such luck for\ncross-grained people in country houses. Humboldt\u2019s \u201cCosmos\u201d contains\nseveral references to certain observations made by two gentlemen who\npassed a winter together on the inhospitable northern shores of Asia,\nand one of whom bore the alarming name of Wrangle. It is difficult to\nimagine any trial more severe than that of spending the six dark months\nof the year with Wrangle on the Siberian coast of the Polar Sea. But\nthis is a mere fancy sketch, whereas hundreds of unlucky English men and\nwomen spend their winters every year in country houses, limited,\npractically, to the society of a Mr. or a Mrs. Wrangle who makes life a\nburden by everlasting fault-finding, squabbling, worry, suspicion, jar,\nand jolt. As regards children or dependent people or the wives of\ndespotic husbands, the case is often worse than this. By a terrible law\nof our nature, an unkindness, harshness, or injustice done once to any\none has a frightful tendency to produce hatred of the victim (I have\nelsewhere called the passion _heteropathy_) and a restlessness to heap\nwrong on wrong, and accusation upon accusation, to justify the first\nfault. Woe to the hapless stepchild or orphan nephew or penniless\ncousin, or helpless and aged mother-in-law, who falls under this\nterrible destiny in a country house where there are few eyes to witness\nthe cruelty and no tongue bold enough to denounce it! The misery endured\nby such beings, the poor young souls which wither under the blight of\nthe perpetual unmerited blame, and the older sufferers mortified and\nhumiliated in their age, must be quite indescribable. Perhaps by no\nhuman act can truer charity be done than by resolutely affording moral\nsupport, if we can do no more, to such butts and victims; and, if it be\npossible, to take them altogether away out of their ill-omened\nconditions, and \u201cdeliver him that is oppressed from the hand of the\nadversary.\u201d It is astonishing how much may be done by very humble\nspectators to put a check to evils like these, even by merely showing\ntheir own surprise and distress in witnessing them; and, on the\ncontrary, how deplorably ready are nine people out of ten to fall in\nwith the established prejudices and unkindnesses of every house they\nenter.\n\nVery little of this kind of thing goes on in towns. People are too busy\nabout their own affairs and pleasures, and their feelings of all kinds\nare too much diffused among the innumerable men and women with whom they\ncome in contact, to permit of concentrated dislike settling down on any\ninmate of their homes in the thick cloud it is apt to do in the country.\n\nHere we touch, indeed, on one great secret of the difference of Town and\nCountry life. All sentiments, amiable and unamiable, are more are less\ndissipated in town, and concentrated and deepened in the country. Even a\nvery trifling annoyance, an arrangement of hours of meals too late or\ntoo early for our health, a smoky chimney, a bad coachman, a door below\nstairs perpetually banged, assumes a degree of importance when\nmultiplied by the infinite number of times we expect to endure it in the\nlimitless monotony of country life. Our nerves become in advance\nirritated by all we expect to go through in the future, and the\nconsequence is that a degree of heat enters into family disputes about\nsuch matters which greatly amazes the parties concerned to remember when\nthe wear and tear of travel or of town life have made the whole mode of\nexistence in a country home seem a placid stream, with scarcely a pebble\nto stir a ripple.\n\nAnd now, at last, let us begin to seek out wherein lie the more hidden\ndelights of the country life; the violets under the hedge which sweeten\nall the air, but remain half-unobserved even by those who would fain\ngather up the flowers. We return in thought to one of those old homes,\nbosomed in its ancestral trees and with the work-day world far enough\naway behind the park palings so that the sound of wheels is never heard\nsave when some friend approaches by the smooth-rolled avenue. What is\nthe key-note of the life led by the men and women who have grown from\nchildhood to manhood and womanhood in such a place, and then drop slowly\ndown the long years which will lead them surely at last to that bed in\nthe green churchyard close by, where they shall \u201csleep with their\nfathers\u201d? That \u201cnote\u201d seems to me to be a peculiar sense\u2014exceeding that\nof mere calmness\u2014of _stability_, of a repose of which neither beginning\nnor end is in sight. Instead of a \u201cchangeful world,\u201d this is to them a\nworld where no change comes, or comes so slowly as to be imperceptible.\nAlmost everything which the eye rests upon in such a home is already\nold, and will endure for years to come, probably long after its present\noccupants are under the sod. The house itself was built generations\nsince, and its thick walls look as if they would defy the inroads of\ntime. The rooms were furnished, one, perhaps, at the father\u2019s marriage;\nanother, tradition tells us, by a famous great-grandmother; the halls\u2014no\none remembers by whom or how long ago. The old trees bear on their boles\nthe initials of many a name which has been inscribed long years also on\nthe churchyard stones. The garden, with its luxuriant old-fashioned\nflowers and clipped box borders and quaint sun-dial, has been a garden\nso long that the rich soil bears blossoms with twice the perfume of\nother flowers; and, as we pace along the broad terraced walks in the\ntwilight, the odors of the well-remembered bushes of lavender and\njessamine and cistus (each growing where it has stood since we were\nborn) fall on our senses like the familiar note of some dear old tune.\nThe very sounds of the landrail in the grass, the herons shrieking among\ntheir nests, the rooks darkening the evening sky, the cattle driven in\nto milking and lowing as they go, all in some way suggest the sense, not\nof restlessness and turmoil like the noises of the town, but of calm and\nrepose and the unchanging order of an \u201cabode of ancient Peace.\u201d\n\nThen the habits of the owners of such old seats are sure to fall into a\nsort of rhyme. There are the lesser beats at intervals through the long\nday, when the early laborer\u2019s bell, and the gong at nine o\u2019clock, and\none o\u2019clock, and seven o\u2019clock, sound the call to prayers and to meals.\nAnd there are the weekly beats, when Sunday makes the beautiful refrain\nof the psalm of life. And yet again there are the half-yearly summer\nstrophe and winter antistrophe of habits of each season, taken up and\nlaid down with unfailing punctuality, while the family life oscillates\nlike a pendulum between the first of May, which sees the domestic exodus\ninto the fresh, vast old drawing-room, and the first of November, which\nbrings the return into the warm, oak-panelled library. To violate or\nalter these long-established rules and precedents scarcely enters into\nthe head of any one, and the child hears the old servants (themselves\nthe most dear and permanent institutions of all) speak of them almost as\nif they were so many laws of nature. Thus he finds life from the very\nbeginning set for him to a kind of music, simple and beautiful in its\nway; and he learns to think that \u201cOrder is Heaven\u2019s first law,\u201d and that\nchange will never come over the placid tenor of existence. The\ndifficulty to him is to realize in after years that any vicissitudes\nhave really taken place in the old home, that it has changed owners, or\nthat the old order has given place to new. He almost feels\u2014thinking\nperhaps of his mother in her wonted seat\u2014that Shelley\u2019s dreamy\nphilosophy must be true\n\n              \u201cThat garden sweet, that lady fair,\n              And all bright shapes and odors there,\n              In truth have never passed away:\n              \u2019Tis we, \u2019tis ours, have changed, not they.\u201d\n\nThe anticipation of perpetual variety and change which is the lesson\ncommonly taught to children by town life,\u2014the Micawber-like expectation\nof \u201csomething turning up,\u201d to amuse or distract them, and for which they\nare constantly in a waiting frame of mind, is precisely reversed for the\nlittle scion of the old country family. For him nothing is ever likely\nto turn up beyond the ordinary vicissitudes of fair weather and foul,\nthe sickness of his pony, the death of his old dog or the arrival of his\nnew gun. All that is to be made out of life he invents for himself in\nhis sports and in his rambles, till the hour arrives when he is sent to\nschool. And when the epochs of school and college are over, when he\nreturns as heir or master, life lays all spread out before him in a\nlong, straight, honorable road, all his duties and his pleasures lying\nby the wayside, ready for his acceptance. For the girl there is often\neven longer and more unbroken monotony, lasting (unless she marry) into\nearly womanhood and beyond it. Nothing can exceed the _eventlessness_ of\nmany a young lady\u2019s life in such a home. Her walks to her village\nschool, or to visit her cottage friends in their sicknesses and\ndisasters; her rides and drives along the familiar roads which she has\nridden and driven over five hundred times already; the arrival of a new\nbook, or of some old friend (more often her parent\u2019s contemporary than\nher own),\u2014make up the sum of her excitements, or even expectations of\nexcitement, perhaps, through all the years when youth is most eager for\nnovelty, and the outer world seems an enchanted place. The effects on\nthe character of this extreme regularity and monotony, this life at Low\nPressure, vary, of course, in different individuals. Upon a dull mind\nwithout _motu proprio_ or spring of original ideas, it is, naturally,\ndepressing enough; but it is far from equally injurious to those\npossessed of some force of character, provided they meet the affection\nand reasonable indulgence of liberty without which the heart and\nintellect can no more develop healthfully than a baby can thrive without\nmilk, or a child\u2019s limbs grow agile in swaddling clothes. The young mind\nslowly working out its problems for itself, unwarped by the influence\n(so enormous in youth) of thoughtless companions, and devouring the\ngreat books of the world, ferreted out of a miscellaneous library by its\nown eager appetite and self-guided taste, is perhaps ripening in a\nhealthier way than the best taught town child, with endless \u201cclasses\u201d\nand masters for every accomplishment under the sun. Even the imagination\nis better cultivated in loneliness, when the child, through its solitary\nrambles by wood and shore, spins its gossamer webs of fancy, and invents\ntales of heroism and wonder such as no melodrama or pantomime ever yet\nbrought to the town child\u2019s exhausted brain. Then the affections of the\ncountry child are concentrated on their few objects with a passionate\nwarmth of which the feelings of the town child, dissipated amidst scores\nof friends and admirers, affords no measure whatever. The admiration\namounting to worship paid by many a little lonely girl to some older\nwoman who represents to her all of grace and goodness she has yet\ndreamed, and who descends every now and then from some far-off Elysium\nto be a guest in her home, is one of the least read and yet surely one\nof the prettiest chapters of innocent human sentiment. As to the graver\nand more durable affections nourished in the old home,\u2014the fond\nattachment of brothers and sisters, the reverence for the father, the\nlove, purest and deepest of all earthly loves, of mother for child and\nchild for mother,\u2014there can be little doubt that their growth in the\ncalm, sweet country life must be healthier and deeper rooted than it can\nwell be elsewhere.\n\nAnd finally, almost certainly, such a peaceful and solitary youth soon\nenters the deeper waters of the moral and spiritual life, and breathes\nreligious aspirations which have in them, in those early years, the\nfreshness and the holiness of the morning. Happy and good must, indeed,\nbe that later life from the heights of which any man or woman can dare\nto look back on one of these lonely childhoods without a covering of the\nface. Talk of hermitages or monasteries! The real nursery of religion is\none of these old English homes, where every duty is natural, easy,\nbeautiful; where the pleasures are so calm, so innocent, so interwoven\nwith the duties that the one need scarcely be defined from the other;\nand where the spectacle of Nature\u2019s loveliness is forever suggesting the\nthought of Him who built the blue dome of heaven, and scattered over all\nthe ground his love-tokens of flowers. The happy child dwelling in such\na home, with a father and mother who speak to it sometimes of God and\nthe life to come, but do not attempt to intrude into that Holy of\nHolies, a young soul\u2019s love and penitence and resolution, is the place\non earth, perhaps, best fitted to nourish the flame of religion. Of the\ncruelty and wickedness and meanness of the world the child hears only as\nof the wild beasts or poisonous reptiles who may roam or crawl in\nAfrican deserts. They are too far off to force themselves on the\nattention as dreadful problems of the Sphinx to be solved on pain of\nmoral death. Even sickness, poverty, and death appear oftenest as\noccasions for the kindly and helpful sympathy of parents and guides.\n\nTo turn to lighter matters. Of course among the first recognized\npleasures of the country is the constant intercourse with, or rather\n_bathing in_, Nature. We are up to the lips in the ocean of fresh air,\ngrass, and trees. It is not one beautiful object or another which\nattracts us (as sometimes happens in town), but, without being\ninterrupted by thinking of them individually, they influence us _en\nmasse_. Dame Nature has taken us on her lap, and soothes us with her own\nlullaby. Probably, on the whole, country folks admire each separate view\nand scrap of landscape less than their visitors from the town, and\ncriticise it as little as school-boys do their mother\u2019s dress. But they\nlove Nature as a whole, and her real influence appears in their genial\ncharacters, their healthy nervous systems, and their optimistic\nopinions. Nor is it by any means only inanimate nature wherewith they\nare concerned. Not to speak of their poorer neighbors (of whom they know\nmuch more, and with whom they usually live in far more kindly relations\nthan townsfolk with theirs), they have incessant concern with brutes and\nbirds. How much, to some of us, the leisurely watching of stately\ncattle, gentle sheep, and playful lambs, the riding and driving of\ngenerous, kindly-natured horses and the companionship of loving dogs,\nadd to the sum of the day\u2019s pleasures and tune the mind to its happiest\nkey-note, it would be difficult to define. For my own part, I have never\nceased to wonder how Christian divines have been able to picture Heaven\nand leave it wholly unpeopled by animals. Even for their own sakes (not\nto speak of justice to the oft ill-treated brutes), would they not have\ndesired to give their humble companions some little corner in their\nboundless sky? A place with perpetual music going on and not a single\nanimal to caress,\u2014even those which Mahomet promised his followers,\u2014his\nown camel, Balaam\u2019s ass, and Tobit\u2019s dog,\u2014would, I think, be a very\nincomplete and unpleasant paradise indeed!\n\nIt has often been said that the passion of Englishmen for field sports\nis really due to this love of Nature and of animals; that, like\nsheepdogs (who, when they are not trained to guard sheep, will, by an\nirresistible impulse, follow and harry them), they feel compelled to\nhave _something to do_ with hares and foxes and partridges and grouse,\nand salmon; and they find that the only thing to be done is to course\nand hunt and shoot and angle for them. Into this mystery I cannot dive.\nThe propensity which can make kind-hearted men (as many sportsmen\nunquestionably are) not merely endure to kill, but actually take\npleasure in killing, innocent living things, and changing what is so\nbeautiful in life and joy into what is so ineffably sad and piteous,\nwounded and dying, remains always to me utterly incomprehensible. But it\nis simply a fact that lads trained from boyhood to take pleasure in such\n\u201csports,\u201d and having, I doubt not, an \u201chereditary set of the brain\u201d\ntowards them, like so many greyhounds or pointers, never feel the\n_ribrezzo_, or the remorse, of the bird or beast murderer, but, escaping\nall reflection, triumph in their own skill, and at the same time enjoy\nthe woods and fields and river-sides where their quarry leads them. To\ndo them justice,\u2014as against many efforts lately made to confound them\nwith torturers of a very different class,\u2014they know little of the pain\nthey inflict, and they endeavor eagerly to make that pain as brief as\npossible. Nevertheless, Sport is an inexplicable passion to the\nnon-sporting mind; and, moreover, one not very easy to contemplate with\nphilosophical forbearance, much less with admiration.\n\nA larger source of wonder is it to reflect that this same unaccountable\npassion for killing pheasants and pursuing foxes has so deep a root in\nEnglish life that its arrest and disappointment by such a change of the\nGame laws as would lead to the abolition of game would practically\nrevolutionize all our manners. The attraction of the towns already\npreponderates over that of the country; but till lately the grouse have\nhad the honor of proroguing annually the British Senate, and the\npartridges, the pheasants, the woodcocks, and the foxes induce pretty\nnearly every man who can afford to shoot or hunt them to bring his\nfamily to the country during the season wherein they are to be pursued.\nOf course women, left to themselves, would mostly choose to spend their\nwinters in town, and their summers from May till November in the\ncountry. But Sport determines the Session of Parliament, and the Session\ndetermines the season; and, as women love the London Season quite as\nmuch as men like foxhunting, both parties are equally bound to the same\nunfortunate division of time, and year after year passes, and the lilacs\nand laburnums and hawthorns and limes in the old country homes waste\ntheir loveliness and their sweetness unseen, while the little children\npine in Belgravian and South Kensington mansions when they ought to be\nromping among their father\u2019s hay-fields and galloping their ponies about\nhis park. All these arrangements, and, further, the vast establishments\nof horses and hounds, the enormous expenditure on guns and game-keepers\nand beaters and game-preserving,\u2014the sole business of thousands of\nworkingmen, and the principal occupation and interest of half the\ngentlemen in the country,\u2014would be swept away by a stroke.\n\nBy some such change as this, or, more probably, by the pressure of a\nhundred sources of change, it is probable, nay, it is certain, that the\nold form of country life (which I have been describing, perhaps, rather\nas it was a few years ago than it is now) will pass away and become a\nthing of memory. When that time arrives, I cannot but think that England\nand the world will lose a phase of human existence which, with all its\nlights and shadows, has been, perhaps, the most beautiful and perfect\nyet realized on earth. Certainly, it has offered to many a happiness,\npure, stable, dignified, and blameless, such as it will be hard to\nparallel in any of the novel types of high pressure modern life.\n\nAnd, on the other hand, there is nothing so mournful as the life of an\nold ancestral home in the country! Everything reminds us of the lost,\nthe dead who once called these stately chambers their habitations, whose\nvoices once echoed through the halls, and for whose familiar tread we\nseem yet to wait; whose entrance, as of yore, through one of the lofty\ndoors would scarcely surprise us; whom we almost expect, when we return\nafter long absence, to see rising from their accustomed seats with open\narms to embrace us, as in the days gone by. The trees they planted, the\nwalks and flower-beds they designed; the sword which the father brought\nback from his early service; the tapestry the mother wrought through her\nlong years of declining health; the dog grown blind and old, the\ncompanion of walks which shall never be taken again; the instrument\nwhich once answered to a sweet touch forever still,\u2014these things make us\nfeel Death and change as we never feel them amid the instability and\neager interests of town existence. All things remain as of old \u201csince\nthe fathers fell asleep.\u201d The leaves of the woods come afresh and then\nfade; the rooks come cawing home; the church bells ring, and the old\nclock strikes the hour. Only there is one chair pushed a little aside\nfrom its wonted place, an old horse turned out to graze in peace for his\nlatter days; a bedroom upstairs into which no one goes, save in silent\nhours, unwatched and furtively.\n\nAs time goes by, and one after another of those who made youth blessed\nhave dropped away, and we begin to count the years of those who remain,\nand watch gray hairs thickening on heads we remember golden, and talk of\nthe hopes and ambitions of early days as things of the past,\u2014things\nwhich might have been, but now, we know, will never be on earth,\u2014when\nall this comes to pass, then the sense of the _tragedy_ of life becomes\ntoo strong for us. The dear home, loved so tenderly, is for us little\nbetter than the cenotaph of the lost and dead; the warning to ourselves\nthat over all our busy schemes and hopes the pall will soon come\ndown,\u2014\u201cthe night cometh when no man can work.\u201d\n\nI believe it is this deep, sorrowful sense of all that is most sad and\nmost awful in our mortal lot, a sense which we escape amid the rushing\nto and fro of London, but which settles down on our souls in such a home\nas I have pictured, which makes the country unendurable to many, as the\nshadows of the evening lengthen. To accept it, and look straight at the\ngrave towards which they are walking down the shortened vista of their\nyears, taxes men\u2019s courage and faith beyond their strength, and they fly\nback to the business and the pleasures wherein such solemn thoughts are\nforgotten and drowned. And yet beneath our cowardice there is the\nlonging that our little race should round itself once again to the old\nstarting point; that where we spent our blessed childhood, and rested on\nour mother\u2019s breast, and lisped our earliest prayers, there also we\nshould lay down the burden of life, and repent its sins, and thank the\nGiver for its joys, and fall asleep,\u2014to awaken, we hope, in the eternal\nHome.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 1:\n\n  Several such critics, writing of the essay in this book on the\n  \u201cScientific Spirit of the Age\u201d when it appeared in the _Contemporary\n  Review_ for July, condemned me for failing to do adequate justice to\n  Science, quite regardless of my reiterated assertions (see pp. 6, 7,\n  34) that I was writing exclusively on the adverse side, and left the\n  glorification of the modern Diana of the Ephesians to the mixed\n  multitude of her followers.\n\nFootnote 2:\n\n  \u201cUp to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as\n  the works of Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave\n  me great delight, and even as a school-boy I took intense delight in\n  Shakespeare. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me\n  considerable, and music very great delight. But now, for many years, I\n  cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have also almost lost my\n  taste for pictures or music.\u201d\u2014Darwin\u2019s _Life_, vol. i. p. 101.\n\nFootnote 3:\n\n  Darwin\u2019s _Life_, vol. i. p. 101. Said of himself by Darwin.\n\nFootnote 4:\n\n  That organ of the Scientific party, the _British Medical Journal_,\n  eulogizing this address, remarked that \u201cSir James is a master of\n  English, clothing all his thoughts in the most elegant language.\u201d To\n  the mere literary mind the above definitions may be thought to leave\n  something to be desired on the score of \u201celegance.\u201d\n\nFootnote 5:\n\n  Speaking of this latter book, the Manchester _Guardian_ (March 17)\n  remarked that \u201cthe charges in \u2018St Bernard\u2019s\u2019 were supported by details\n  of cases reported in medical journals and by statements made by\n  lecturers of distinction. The quotations are precise and easily\n  verified. The hospitals will do well to take some notice of a medical\n  man who avers that the healing of patients is subordinated to the\n  professional advantages of the staff and the students, that cures are\n  retarded for clinical study, that new drugs are tried upon hospital\n  patients, who are needlessly examined and made to undergo unnecessary\n  operations. They cannot afford to pass over the statement that the\n  dying are tortured by useless operations, and that the blunders of\n  students are covered by their teachers for the credit of the\n  hospital.\u201d Every one of these offences against justice and humanity is\n  directly due to the inspiration of the Scientific Spirit.\n\nFootnote 6:\n\n  It was long before Science acquired her natural voice. For more than a\n  thousand years she submitted servilely to Aristotle and his\n  interpreters. But the Science of the Dark Ages was only a branch of\n  learning of which a Picus of Mirandola or an Admirable Crichton could\n  master the whole, along with the classics and mathematics of the\n  period. The genuine Scientific Spirit was not yet born; and when it\n  woke at last in Galileo and Kepler, and down to our own day, the\n  Religious spirit was still paramount over the Scientific. It is only\n  in the present generation that we witness at once the evolution of the\n  true scientific spirit and of scientific arrogance.\n\nFootnote 7:\n\n  While I am writing these pages, the _Globe_ informs us that there\n  reigns at present in Paris a mania for medical curiosities and\n  surgical operations. \u201cIt has become the right thing to get up early\n  and hurry off to witness some special piece of dexterity with the\n  scalpel. The novel yields its attraction to the slightly stronger\n  realism of the medical treatise, and the picture galleries have the\n  air of a pathological museum. It is suggested that the theatres, if\n  they want to hold their own, must represent critical operations in a\n  thoroughly realistic manner on the stage.\u201d\n\nFootnote 8:\n\n  In the very noteworthy paper by Mr. Myers in the _Nineteenth Century_\n  for May on the \u201cDisenchantment of France,\u201d there occurs this remark:\n  \u201cIn that country where the pure dicta of Science reign in the\n  intellectual classes with less interference from custom, sentiment, or\n  tradition, than even in Germany itself, we should find that Science,\n  at her present point, is a depressing disintegrating energy\u201d (p. 663).\n  Elsewhere he says that France \u201cmakes M. Pasteur her national _hero_\u201d!\n\nFootnote 9:\n\n  I have heard a pitiful example of this kind of prejudice. An orphan\n  boy and his ugly mongrel dog were the objects of universal dislike and\n  ridicule in the house of his uncle, a Scotch farmer. The lad always\n  sat of an evening far back from the circle by the fireside, with his\n  crouching dog under his stool lest it should be kicked. One day the\n  little son of the house, of whom the farmer and his wife were dotingly\n  fond, went out with the boy and dog, and, a snow-storm coming on, they\n  were all lost on the hills. Next morning the dog returned to the farm,\n  making wild signs that the farmer should follow him, which he and his\n  wife did at once, in great anxiety. At last, the dog brought them to a\n  spot where they found the boy stiff and cold, but their child still\n  alive. The boy had taken off his own coat and wrapped it round the\n  child, whom he laid on his breast, and then, lying under him on the\n  snow, had died. Let us hope that at least the dog reaped some tardy\n  fruits of the farmer\u2019s repentance.\n\nFootnote 10:\n\n  I will cite an example from my own experience, which may help to make\n  parents realize the subtle peril of which I speak. Twenty-five years\n  ago I was engaged in an effort to help Mary Carpenter in the care of\n  the Red Lodge Reformatory for girl-thieves at Bristol. Our poor little\n  charges had all been convicted of larceny, or some kindred offence,\n  but they were not technically \u201cfallen\u201d girls: another establishment\n  received young women of this \u201cunfortunate\u201d class. Twice, however, it\n  happened, during my residence with Miss Carpenter, that girls who had\n  been on the streets were by mistake sent to us when convicted of\n  theft, and were of course received and placed with the others, all\n  being under the most careful surveillance both in the school-rooms,\n  playgrounds, and dormitory. Nevertheless, in each case, before the\n  \u201cunfortunate\u201d had been three days in the Lodge, by some inexplicable\n  contagion the whole school of fifty girls were demoralized so\n  completely that the aspect of the children and change in their\n  behavior gave warning to their experienced janitress to trace the\n  history of the new-comer more exactly, and, as the result proved, to\n  detect where the infection had come in.\n\nFootnote 11:\n\n  In Dr. Ingleby\u2019s just published Essays there is a very pertinent story\n  from Saint Augustine concerning this contagion of the emotion of\n  cruelty. A certain Alypius detested, on report, the spectacle of the\n  Gladiators, but was induced to enter the amphitheatre, protesting that\n  he would not look at the show: \u201cSo soon as he saw the blood,\u201d says\n  Saint Augustine, \u201che therewith drank down savageness; nor turned away,\n  but fixed his eye, drinking in pleasure unawares, and was delighted\n  with that guilty fight, and intoxicated with the bloody pastime; nor\n  was he now the man he came, but one of the throng he came\n  into.\u201d\u2014_Saint Augustine\u2019s Confessions_, Bk. vi., c. 8. Similar\n  perversions occur at all brutal exhibitions. A friend sends me the\n  following instance from his own knowledge. \u201cA party of English people\n  went to the Bull Ring of San Sebastian. When the first horse was\n  ripped up and his entrails trailed on the ground, a young lady of the\n  party burst into tears and insisted on going away. Her brothers\n  compelled her to remain; and a number of horses were then mutilated\n  and killed before her eyes. Long before the end of the spectacle the\n  girl was as excited and delighted as any Spaniard in the assembly.\u201d\n\nFootnote 12:\n\n  Readers of that singular book, \u201cSt. Bernard\u2019s\u201d (Swan, Sonnenschein &\n  Co., 1887, new edition 1888), and its sequel, \u201cDying Scientifically,\u201d\n  may possibly entertain doubts on this subject.\n\nFootnote 13:\n\n  \u201cC\u2019est pourquoi, seul dans mon si\u00e8cle, j\u2019ai s\u00fb comprendre J\u00e9sus Christ\n  et St. Fran\u00e7ois d\u2019Assise.\u201d\u2014_M. Renan._\n\nFootnote 14:\n\n  The heads of this party in England are the venerable Rabbi Nathan\n  Adler and his son and colleague, Rev. Herman Adler, who hold a kind of\n  Patriarchate over all English Orthodox Jews. The principal synagogue\n  of this party (to which the Rothschild family hereditarily belongs,\n  also the Cohens, Sir G. Jessel, etc.) is in Great Portland Street. The\n  _Eglise m\u00e8re_ is in the City, and there are many other synagogues\n  belonging to it scattered over London and England. The Portuguese\n  branch of the Orthodox party (the most rigidly Orthodox of all), to\n  which Sir Moses Montefiore belonged, has its chief synagogue in Bevis\n  Marks. The late distinguished Rabbi Artom, brother of Cavour\u2019s private\n  secretary, was minister of this synagogue.\n\nFootnote 15:\n\n  The Reformed Jews, among whom Sir Julian Goldsmid and Mr. F. D.\n  Mocatta hold distinguished places, have only one synagogue in London,\n  that in Berkeley Street. The minister of this wealthy and important\n  congregation is the Rev. D. Marks. A special liturgy, differing\n  chiefly from the Orthodox by omissions of Talmudic passages, is in use\n  in this synagogue.\n\nFootnote 16:\n\n  Professor Goldwin Smith, in the _Nineteenth Century_.\n\nFootnote 17:\n\n  It will be noticed that nothing can be further apart than these ideas\n  of a Reformed Judaism from those put forward by George Eliot in\n  \u201cDaniel Deronda.\u201d Equally remote are they from the crude endeavor to\n  return to a supposed primitive Judaism through the \u201cworship of the\n  letter\u201d of the Old Testament, which was hailed some years ago with\n  premature satisfaction by a certain school of Protestant Christians.\n  See the interesting \u201cHistory of the Karaite Jews,\u201d by the Rev. W. H.\n  Rule, D.D., 1870.\n\nFootnote 18:\n\n  As an example of this, I can mention the following fact. All the\n  Jewish journals in Germany (amounting to nine out of ten of all the\n  newspapers in the country) support a certain cruel practice. And why?\n  It has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with finance,\n  nothing to do with any matter wherein Jews have a different interest\n  from other people. The key to this mystery is simply that seven or\n  eight of the most guilty persons are Jews. This \u201cclandestine\n  manipulation of the press,\u201d and tribe-union for purposes disconnected\n  with tribal interests, constitutes a _cabal_, and necessarily creates\n  antagonism and disgust. Nothing of this kind can be laid at the door\n  of English Jews, and it is much to be wished that they would\n  expostulate with their brethren on its imbittering effects abroad.\n\nFootnote 19:\n\n  I cannot but think that too much has been made, particularly under the\n  influence of the modern mania for \u201cheredity,\u201d of the exceptional\n  character of the Jewish race. Of course, the Jews are a most\n  remarkable people, so vigorous physically as to be able to colonize\n  either India or Greenland, and after a thousand years of Ghetto\n  existence to remain (to the confusion of all sanitation-mongers) the\n  healthiest race in Europe. On the mental side, their multifarious\n  gifts and their indomitable sturdiness are no less admirable. But\n  their fidelity to their race and religion is not unmatched. Not to\n  speak of the miserable Gypsies, the Parsees offer a more singular\n  spectacle; for their members have always been a handful compared to\n  the Jews (not above 150,000 at the utmost), and during the ten ages of\n  their exile they have exhibited a spirit of concession towards the\n  customs of their neighbors which has left the actual dogmas of their\n  religion the sole bond of their national integrity. They worshipped\n  the One good God under the law of Zoroaster three, perhaps four,\n  millenniums ago, and they worship Him faithfully still, though a mere\n  remnant of a race, dwelling in the midst of idolaters, and with no\n  distinctive badgelike circumcision, no haughty disdain of \u201cGentile\u201d\n  nations, no hope of a restoration to their own land. Their priests\n  have been illiterate and despised, not erudite and honored rabbis.\n  Their sacred books have twice become obsolete in language, and\n  incomprehensible both to clergy and laity. Their Prophet has faded\n  into an abstraction. But their faith in Ahura-Mazda, the \u201cWise\n  Creator,\u201d the \u201cRich in Love,\u201d remains as clear to-day among them as\n  when it first rose upon the Bactrian plains in the morning of the\n  world. The virtues of truth, chastity, industry, and beneficence\n  inculcated by the Zend-Avesta, and attributed by the Greek historians\n  to their ancestors of the age of Cyrus, are still noticeable among\n  them in marked contrast to their Hindu neighbors; as are likewise\n  their muscular strength and hardy frames. Even as regards their\n  commercial aptitudes, the Parsees offer a singular parallel to the\n  Jews. The _Times_ remarked some years ago that out of the 150,000\n  Parsees there were an incredible number of very wealthy men, and six\n  were actual millionaires. One of the last, Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy,\n  gave away in his lifetime the sum of \u00a3700,000 sterling in charities to\n  men of every religion.\n\nFootnote 20:\n\n  The congregations use Prayer-books with the vernacular in parallel\n  columns.\n\nFootnote 21:\n\n  I refer especially to the magnificent services for the Day of\n  Atonement as used in the Reformed Synagogue. There are also many noble\n  prayers in the collection of Sabbath and other services for various\n  festivals. The whole liturgy is majestic, though somewhat deficient as\n  regards the expression of spiritual aspiration.\n\nFootnote 22:\n\n  So rapidly moves the world that, since this Essay was first published,\n  a whole systematic work of charity of this specially Christian\n  character has been established by benevolent Jewish ladies in London.\n  I have before me the \u201cReport of the Jewish Ladies\u2019 Association for\n  Prevention and Rescue Work\u201d for 1886\u201387, printed for private\n  circulation. The president of the association is Lady Rothschild; the\n  honorable secretaries, Mrs. Cyril Flower and Mrs. J. L. Jacobs.\n  Nothing can seem more wisely kind and merciful than the whole scheme\n  as here detailed. We are told that the poor Jewish girls reclaimed\n  from a life of vice (into which only of late years have many been\n  known to fall) \u201care taught not only to follow the observances of their\n  faith, but also to lead pure and useful lives; and no pains will be\n  spared to make them better women as well as capable earners of their\n  own livelihood.... The committee feel convinced they will not be\n  allowed to fail in their strenuous endeavor to bring back those who\n  are, as it were, sunk in moral death, to a _new life_.\u201d\n\nFootnote 23:\n\n  See this affectingly brought out in that charming book, \u201cThe Jews of\n  Barnow.\u201d\n\nFootnote 24:\n\n  A clever book, exhibiting great acquaintance with current phases of\n  opinion, appeared a few years ago, offering by its title some promise\n  of dealing with the case of the Christian Theists of whom I am\n  speaking. The author proposes to discuss \u201cNatural Religion,\u201d but he\n  shortly proceeds to describe a great many things which, in the common\n  language of mankind, are not _religious_ at all,\u2014scientific ardor,\n  artistic taste, or mere recognition of the physical order of the\n  universe,\u2014and to urge that these, or nothing, must constitute the\n  religion of the future. The Israelites who had gazed up in awe and\n  wonder at the rolling clouds on Sinai, from whence came the thunders\n  and voices, and the stern and holy Law, and were immediately\n  afterwards called on to worship a miserable little image of a calf,\n  and told, \u201cThese be Thy Gods, O Israel!\u201d might, one would think, have\n  felt the same sense of bathos which we experience when we are solemnly\n  assured that these sciences and arts _are_ henceforth our \u201cReligion.\u201d\n  A drowning man proverbially catches at straws, and people who feel\n  themselves sinking in the ocean of Atheism seize on every spar which\n  comes under their hands, and cry, \u201cWe may float yet awhile by this.\u201d\n  No one can blame them for trying to do so; but it is rather hard to\n  expect all the world to recognize as an ironclad the hencoop on which\n  they sit astride.\n\n  Among the \u201cNatural Religions,\u201d as he is pleased to call them, of which\n  he has brought us intelligence (some of which are not natural, and\n  none of which are properly Religions), the author of this book has\n  disdained to mention that ancient but ever new form of opinion which\n  in former days went by the name of Natural Religion. The words were\n  not happily selected, and belong indeed to an archaic theological\n  terminology. But they were understood by everybody to mean, _not_ the\n  recognition of the virtues of physical science, nor admiration of fine\n  scenery, nor enthusiasm for art, nor recognition of natural laws; for\n  all these things had names of their own. But it was understood to mean\n  the recognition and worship of a super-mundane, intelligent, and\n  righteous _Person_,\u2014in other words, of GOD. It contemplated God\n  \u201cmainly above Nature,\u201d _not_, as the author of this book says must\n  henceforward be done, \u201cmainly in Nature\u201d (\u201cNatural Religion,\u201d p. 160).\n  For admirable pictures, however, of the modern Artist, who would\n  rather have painted a good picture than have done his duty, and of the\n  modern Man of Science who, \u201cconsumed by the passion of research,\u201d\n  finds \u201cright and wrong become meaningless words,\u201d see p. 120.\n\nFootnote 25:\n\n  A Chief of the Police Force has informed me that arrests of\n  desperadoes are always made, if practicable, at about four A.M.; that\n  hour being found by experience to be the one when animal courage is at\n  its lowest ebb and resistance to be least apprehended.\n\nFootnote 26:\n\n  I have heard this peculiar but common form of feminine affliction\n  classified as the \u201cBad Husband Headache.\u201d\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                          TRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTES\n\n\n 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.\n 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.\n 3. Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at\n      the end of the last chapter.\n 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.","title":"The Scientific Spirit of the Age, and Other Pleas and Discussions","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":49802}