A 1,246,964
.
ܫܐܕ
ܕ݂ܵ;;
ܬ܀
ܕ݁ܕ݂
ܕ
29
ܘ
23
8. f.
ܚܪܕܕ
THE UNTIL
«
TOPICS OF THE DAY
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISIVOODE AND CO., NEWSTREET SQUARD
AND PARLLULAT STREET
ATHEISM
AND
44229
THE VALUE OF LIFE
Five Studies in Confemporary liferature
THE PROFESSOR IN THE PULPIT
TENNYSON UNDER THE SHADOW
GEORGE ELIOT OLV TID HUMAN DESTINI
NATURAL RELIGION
ATHEISTIC METHODIST
H.MMALLOCK
Halliam
urrell
AUTHOR OF 'IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?'
SA
Q
UMTILE
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty tye Queen
1884
All rights reserved
PREFACE.
THE FOLLOWING Essays, though not originally
published in connexion with each other, will be
found to embody a consecutive train of thought,
and to follow one another in a connected and
logical order. They have been written at va-
rious dates during the past five years. The first
four appeared in the 'Edinburgh Review, and
are now republished through the courtesy of
Messrs. Longman. The last appeared in The
Nineteenth century, and is republished in ac-
cordance with an arrangement made by myself
with Mr. Knowles.
October, 1884.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S LECTURES AND ESSAYS
1
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
83
GEORGE ELIOT ON THE HUMAN CHARACTER .
147
NATURAL RELIGION
211
ATHEISTIC
METHODISM, OR
THE BEAUTY
OF
HOLINESS
307
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S LECTURES
AND ESSAYS.
The volumes, now before us are extremely wel-
come; and we shall begin our remarks on
them by explaining why we say so. The late
Professor Clifford was a very remarkable man,
and he was remarkable for two reasons-first,
for the genuine eminence that was due to his
own genius; secondly, for the imputed emi-
nence that was due to the admiration of his
friends. For the first of these we entertain all
respect, and we shall speak of it in respectful
terms ; but we do it no wrong if we say that
it is altogether dwarfed by the second. Pro-
fessor Clifford has grave claims on our atten-
tion, and not only does this view of him in no
way detract from these, but in some ways it
very largely increases them. If we study a man
1 Lectures and Essays by the late William Kingdon Clifford,
F.R.S. Edited by Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock, with
an Introduction by F. Pollock. Two vols. Svo. London : 1879.
B
9 9
2
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
because we think him really great, and desire to
understand the exact quality of his greatness,
we shall, without doubt, be doing a very impor-
tant thing. But if we study a man mainly
because he has been thought great by others, we
may be doing a thing that is no less important,
although in a somewhat different way. If the
interest in the former case is more intense, in
the latter it is more extended. A genius, as
a genius, represents himself, and nothing more
than himself.
A man, as thought to be a
genius, represents the judgments of those who
have thought him one ; and the less solid the
ground that this opinion rests upon, the more
significant does the opinion itself become. We
cannot be sure, for instance, that a man is a
judge of poetry because he takes pleasure in
reading “Hamlet;' but we can be sure he is
not a judge of poetry if he takes pleasure in
reading Martin Tupper. If we pass from
poetry to pbilosophy, the matter is yet plainer.
We may assent dutifully to profound truths
without being ourselves profound ; but we
shall not emphatically endorse superficial false-
hoods without being ourselves ignorant and
superficial.
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
3
Let us now pass at once to Professor
Clifford, and see the application of these re-
marks to him. His most obvious claim to
notice was his great power as a specialist. He
was a mathematician of a very high order, and,
speaking merely of the outward events of his
life, it was as a mathematician that his career
was successful. But besides his mathematical
powers he had a wide and accurate grasp of
physical science generally ; and he had a singu-
lar faculty, also, of imparting clearly whatever
he knew clearly. In this way he became, very
early in life, a powerful and prominent figure in
the world of scientific thinkers ; nor, as we read
his lectures, and reflect upon his personal cha-
racter, can we at all wonder at the high position
he occupied. But this position could by no
means content him; he could not but look
further. The scientific world, as compared with
the world in general, was really, he saw, only a
limited coterie, limited not only in point of
numbers, but in point of the questions with
which it was supposed to busy itself. How
absorbing and vast these questions were no
man knew better than Clifford, but he knew
also that there was another question beyond
B 2
4
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
“Qurt
them, to which they were all subordinate.
This, in his own language, was the question of
' right and wrong ;' or, in other words, the
question of how to live and what ends to live
for. This was the only enquiry, he said, that
concerned all of us ; and it was further the
supreme concern of each. Man is born to act,
not to think and to know. Know and think her
must, and he must know and think accurately ;
but this as a means only, not as an end.
interest, Clifford said, in speaking of the physi-
cal sciences, 'lies with so much of the past as
may serve to guide our actions in the present,
and to intensify our pious allegiance to the
fathers who have gone before us and the
brethren who are with us; and our interest lies
with so much of the future as we may hope will
be appreciably affected by our good actions now.
Beyond that, as it seems to me, we do not know,
and we ought not to care.' It was his ambition,
therefore, to emerge from the domain of special-
ists, and to become a power in the domain of
practical life. He was not content with being
an instructor of students; he proposed also to
be a leader of men. Nor was his ambition here
of at all a limited nature. He said the disorder
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
5
of the world, its painful perplexities of thought,
and its chaos of conflicting motives, and he
sought in the midst of this to inaugurate a new
order, and by entirely new means. His schemes
were co-extensive with the whole of human life.
There was no force of passion or of faith, of self-
approval or contrition, of joy or pain, with which
he did not consider himself well qualified to deal.
This assertion may at first sight appear startling;
and doubtless, made bluntly, it would have
startled Clifford himself. But we shall see very
shortly that it is neither more nor less than the
truth.
It must not be supposed, however, that
Clifford's practical schemes and teachings at all
superseded his more special studies. The former,
as he conceived them, were but the fulfilment of
the latter, and it was mainly the latter, he
thought, that made him fit for the former. He
did not say that scientific knowledge was inferior
to practical knowledge, but that practical know-
ledge must be made scientific. What,' he
asked, “is the domain of science ? It is all
possible human knowledge which can rightly be
used to guide human conduct.' And when
knowledge, with a view to such guidance, had
6
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
been enlarged and sifted by scientific methods, a
complete revolution, he conceived, would take
place in the whole of it. In this revolution, as
we have said already, he aspired to play a pro-
minent part. What was the part he actually did
play in it is what we propose to enquire in the
present article. Of his merits as a professor
we shall say but little.
but little. We shall confine our-
selves to considering how far those merits had
fitted him to be an instructor of the world in
general.
Now, our own verdict is that they had not
fitted him at all; nor should we consider him in
this capacity as worth discussion if it were not
for one reason.
That reason is the reverence
that has been given him in England by those of
his own way of thinking ; and these are none
other than that school of science and of progress
which at the present moment has secured the
ear of the world. If, therefore, in Clifford's
writings we find but little of the sort of wisdom
we are speaking of, we shall find what has
passed for wisdom with those who pass for wise;
so much so that in the volumes now before us
we seem to have a reflection of the state of
philosophical knowledge and practical sagacity
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
7
amongst those who conceive themselves now to
be the high-priests of humanity and the direc-
tors of human destiny. Similar reflections may,
of course, be found elsewhere ; but we doubt if
we can find any so complete, and we may add
so flattering, as here. Clifford was in every
way fitted to be a representative man, in virtue
alike of his strength and weakness, his breadth
and narrowness, and also of his character, his
education, and the general tenor of his life.
It is to this last subject that we now pro-
pose to proceed, as, in considering his general
teaching, it will throw much light on the matter.
It is his own observation that one of the chief
steps in psychology was ‘Hartley's idea of
mental chemistry. We are ourselves about to
act on an idea somewhat similar, and apply to
Clifford's life what we may call biographical
chemistry. We will explain our meaning
further. The practical teachings of Clifford,
like those of his school in general, have been
given to the world as the first fruits of a new
era, and they are supposed to be based on re-
formed methods of study. We, on the contrary,
conceive their origin to be entirely different.
We conceive them to have nothing to do with
8
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
reformed methods, or to be at best connected
with them in a very secondary way.
We
believe them to belong almost exclusively to the
old order of things, and that the true explana-
tion of them is to be found not in the matured
theories of their advocates, but in their early
education, the circumstances of their lives, and
the moral atmosphere they breathed while their
characters were in the process of formation.
We believe, in other words, that these teachings
represent not the voice of science, but the voice
of a certain section of society, remarkable in
practical matters for amiability, simplicity, and
prejudice, and, above all, for religious feeling.
Nothing, we think, would show this more clearly
than the examination we are about to make of
the life of Professor Clifford. This, for our
present purpose, need be only a very simple
one, and Mr. Pollock's brief memoir will
supply us with nearly all the materials that are
requisite.
William Kingdon Clifford was born in 1845
at Exeter, where his father for a time was one
of the chief booksellers, and afterwards, on re-
tiring from business, a respected and active
magistrate. The first fifteen years of his life
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
9
Clifford passed in his native city, and received
the best education that its schools could offer
him. Towards the end of this period he showed
marked signs of ability. He distinguished
himself in the University Local Examinations,
and in 1860 he went to King's College,
London. It was here that, for the first time,
his special powers developed themselves, and
he was recognised as a mathematical genius
of peculiar promise. He remained at King's
College for three years. Towards the end of
that period he went up to Cambridge, and
gained a minor scholarship at Trinity College,
and in 1863, at the age of eighteen, he began his
life there. Here he gained a reputation of a
somewhat varied kind, not only as a thinker
and a student, but also as a successful gym-
nast; and his biographer tells us of him that,
of all public testimonies to his merits at Cam-
bridge, a paragraph in ‘Bell's Life' was the one
that pleased him best. The regular course of
reading that is marked out for undergraduates
seemed to him at once narrow and narrowing,
and, though anxious for a good degree, he could
not resist endangering his best prospects by
straying in search of knowledge far beyond the
10
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
man.
appointed boundaries. In this
In this way, from an
academical point of view, much of his time was
completely wasted ; and yet such were his
talents and so great his powers of work, that at
the end of his fourth year he came out Second
Wrangler, and was also second Smith's prize-
In the next year, when he was but
twenty-three, he was elected a fellow of his
college. Two years later he took part in the
English Eclipse expedition, and saw something
of foreign travel, both in its pleasures and its
hardships. Another year passed, and he was
elected Professor of Applied Mathematics at
University College, London. He was
He was now
only twenty-six, and in another three years,
when he was still short of thirty, he was elected
Fellow of the Royal Society. In the following
year
he married, and, so far as we can presume
to judge, all life seemed to be growing bright
for him. But the promises of the future were
too soon to be blighted. His assiduous work,
in which he never spared himself, had been
too much for even strength like his, and he had
hardly been married a year before signs of
pulmonary disease were observed in him. So
grave did these appear that he was obliged,
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
11
though with extreme reluctance, to accept a
six months' holiday, which he spent in Algiers
and in the south of Spain. This rest, for the
time, was of great benefit to him. He returned
to England much recruited, and, though still
considered by the doctors extremely delicate, he
continued for a year and a half longer a life of
intellectual labour. By-and-by, however, a re-
lapse came. He was working hard at the time,
and he still refused to spare himself. At the
same juncture his father died, and the shock of
this loss was a fresh and severe strain. Every
circumstance seemed to combine against him,
and his own restless mind, which was more
than ever occupied with work, was his worst
enemy. His weakened system could bear up no
longer, and his doctors now warned him that
he was in a state of imminent danger, and that
he must at once leave England. In the April
of 1878 he and his wife started for the Mediter-
ranean. Four months of travel again brought
their benefit, and the invalid returned in August
seemingly much better. The improvement,
however, did not last long. In a few weeks he
again overtried himself, a relapse took place, and
' from that day,' says his biographer, 'the fight
12
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
was a losing one. All that could be done for
him his friends did, and through their solicitous
counsels, and, we believe, attended by some of
them, he again tried what a milder climate
could do for him, and sailed for Madeira at the
beginning of 1879. But it was all in vain.
He gained nothing more than a two months'
reprieve, and on March 3 of that year he
died.
Such is the rough sketch of Clifford's life in
its main outer incidents. His inward history
we shall consider presently, but there is a cer-
tain tribute due to him which we shall first pause
to pay. If we think of Clifford himself as a
private character, the principal task before us
is a singularly ungrateful one. It is a task that
will consist of entirely adverse criticism. Clif-
ford, as in a few moments we shall have to look
at him, will be not a private character, but a
public teacher, and we shall see him in this
capacity as one of the bitterest and most un-
flinching opponents of everything that in
general the world calls religion—a contempt-
uous and obtrusive denier of God, of soul,
and of immortality. And we shall further see
him as replacing the denied doctrines by others
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
13
which, tried by his own canons, we shall show
to be entirely baseless. But just as his merits
as a man must not blind us to his faults as a
teacher, so his faults as a teacher must not blind
us to his merits as a man. The two in his case
seem eminently separable, and we desire as dis-
tinctly as we can to separate them. Nor must
anything we shall say presently about the
former be held to indicate that we doubt or
forget the latter. Of a man's intellectual emi-
nence there is perhaps no worse judge than an
admiring and affectionate friend. To a man's
personal excellence there can be no better wit-
ness. And as to Clifford's private character,
it seems that all his friends were agreed.
Rarely, we fear, can it fall to the lot of anyone
to inspire an intimate circle with such a deep
and tender regard as Clifford did. Clifford's
own circle, indeed, as his biographer tells us,
was composed for the most part of what we may
call kindred spirits, and his extreme opinions,
which he never disguised from anyone, could
be no offence to them, as to outsiders they
could not fail to be.
be. But even such outsiders
were partly disarmed of their anger by his
truthfulness and his severe simplicity. Mr. F.
14
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
Pollock's memoir is not perhaps remarkable as a
piece of biographical art; but the affection he ex-
presses for his friend is a fact of real significance,
and the details of that friend's character, which
he gives us with a touching tenderness, we may
receive with implicit confidence—a confidence all
the greater because the language used is so mode-
rate, and no attempt is made to disguise certain
slight imperfections. Thus both in manner and
dress we gather that Clifford was generally un-
couth and careless, and his laughter especially
knew no conventional restraints. His humour,
too, would seem to have been somewhat cum-
brous, though much admired by the society in
which he lived. Such defects as these, however,
are only trifles, and by many of his friends they
were probably thought merits. What we wish
here to dwell upon are his deeper and rarer
qualities. As a friend he was genial and un-
selfish, and, above all, constant and genuine.
Even his enmities and disapprovals were soft-
ened by a natural charity, and, if he met his
worst foe suddenly, his first impulse would
have been to shake hands with him. As a
companion he had many endearing qualities.
In his eagerness in his own pursuits there was
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
15
something catching. He forced his friends to
share it, as if by some happy magic, whilst he
was equally ready himself to feel with them in
turn. · But the real expression,' says Mr.
Pollock, 'of Clifford's varied and fascinating
qualities was in his whole daily life and con-
versation, perceived and felt at every moment
in his words and looks, and for that very
reason impossible to describe.' If we may be
allowed to cite a valuable private testimony in
corroboration of this remark, we may add that
so keen an observer as Lord Houghton has,
in our hearing, spoken of Clifford in almost
exactly the same words ; and after two such
witnesses we need seek for no other. Truthful,
affectionate, laborious, self-denying, and devoted,
the moral life of this professional atheist may in-
deed put to shame not a few professional Chris-
tians. Mr. Pollock says further that it is a
rebuke' to the defenders of Christianity. This,
however, is a very different statement, and, as
we shall see presently, an altogether untrue one.
Let us now return to what is of more direct
concern to us. Let us return to Clifford as a
teacher on practical matters—as a typical spokes-
man of our modern ethical atheism--and see
6
16
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
what was his inward history, and how his
opinions formed themselves. He was, as we
have seen already, born in a cathedral town,
and the first fifteen years of his life were passed
almost under the shadow of the cathedral towers.
Nor was this an outward fact only ; it corre-
sponded in his case, as we shall see was natural,
to an inward one. Those were the palmy days
of the Anglican or High Church party. It was
then a real power in the English world of
thought; much of the intellect of the country
was attached to it; and at Exeter especially,
under the celebrated Henry Phillpotts, its in-
fluence over many minds could hardly fail to be
prevalent. In Clifford's case this influence
seems to have been heightened by every circum-
stance. His father, in his business capacity,
dealt largely in devotional books and bibles ;
and his high character and his superior position
thus specially connected him with the ecclesias-
tical body. He was, indeed, pre-eminently a
churchman's bookseller. At the back of his
shop, under a glass case, stood a model of the
west front of the cathedral, exquisitely carved
in rush pith, the work of one of his own family,
and regarded with a double reverence, both for
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
17
the skill displayed by the artist and the character
of the edifice represented. Such were the cir-
cumstances that surrounded
young Clifford
during the first fifteen years of his life-years
in which the mind is open to all impressions,
and which determine, more than any others, the
feelings, if not the thoughts, of a man. And
of Clifford it would have been said by a High
Churchman that these early years did their best
for him. His natural character was, it seems,
deeply religious, and he grew up a devout and
earnest Anglican. Nor did the faith of his boy-
hood desert him when he went to London, and
must have been brought into contact with other
ways of thinking ; nor did it fail him even
during his undergraduate course at Cambridge.
Despite all the new knowledge that his scientific
studies brought him, he still believed his Bible;
he still revered his prayer-book ; and a crucifix,
as we have been told by one who knew him,
hung on his bedroom wall, when he was first a
fellow of his college. But about this time, as we
gather from Mr. Pollock, an inward change was
ginning in him, and the theology to which he
had hitherto trusted began to seem vulnerable to
his maturing powers of criticism. His religious
C
18
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
faith, however, was as yet in no way weakened,
only his belief in a certain Christian position.
All truth must, he believed, be in harmony, and
science and history he believed to be a part
of truth ; but he was growing convinced that
science and history were not in harmony with
the Anglican theory, and all his problem now
was to find a religious system with which they
should be. The direction his thoughts took
will surprise many. They turned, not, as might
seem natural, to the rationalising or the Broad
Church School, but to the Church of Rome it-
self. Nor was this, in Clifford's case, any idle
dallying. He set himself to study the Catholic
theologians ; he acquired some real knowledge
of St. Thomas Aquinas, and used all his in-
genuity and his scientific acquirements in defend-
ing the Catholic position. In his views at this
time there was nothing of the spirit of com-
promise. He maintained to the fullest the
authority of religious dogmas, and he held that
they should be received implicitly without
demand for proof. Such truths, he believed,
were beyond scientific proof, and were only
apprehended by man through a special theolo-
gical faculty, or insight. "And he actually, "
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
19
6
says Mr. Pollock, 'defined superstition as “a
belief held on religious or theological grounds,
but capable of scientific proof or disproof.” ?
When or how,' says Mr. Pollock, Clifford
first came to a clear perception that this position
of quasi-scientific Catholicism was untenable, I
do not exactly know. We may ourselves re-
mark, however, that it could not have lasted for
more than two years after his having gained his
fellowship. “But I know,' Mr. Pollock adds,
' that the discovery cost him an intellectual and
moral struggle, of which traces may be found
here and there in his essays.' According to the
same authority, this profound change of view
was accomplished gradually, and without any
violent reaction, or rushing to the opposite
extreme. On such matters Mr. Pollock has a
right to speak with confidence, but we have
reason to think that he is here perhaps mistaken.
A story is told of Clifford, by one who knew
him at this time, which would lead us, on
this matter, to an exactly opposite conclusion.
Clifford, as we have said already, had been wont
to keep a crucifix in his bedroom, we believe for
devotional purposes. One morning this revered
symbol was found inverted, and placed upon it
c2
20
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
2
was a Phrygian cap of liberty. For the truth
of this story we cannot ourselves vouch, but the
source it came from seemed to us to be trust-
worthy ; in itself it does not look like an in-
vention, and it is also in harmony with many
subsequent facts which Mr. Pollock himself tells
us, and which Clifford's own words bear witness
to. But, however sudden may have been his final
break with Christianity, the beliefs with which
he sought to replace the loss took some years in
settling themselves; and, in spite of whatever Mr.
Pollock may say, Mr. Pollock's own statements
show that there was at first something extreme
in them, which Clifford afterwards modified.
Thus he was inclined at first to think that he
found in the doctrine of evolution something
that far more than made up for what he lost in
theology. He rushed from the sorrow of loss
into the joy of discovery ‘For two or three
years,' says Mr. Pollock, “the knot of Cambridge
friends, of whom Clifford was the leading spirit,
were carried away by a wave of Darwinian
enthusiasm : we seemed to ride triumphant on an
ocean of new life and boundless possibilities.'
Like most other young men in the same stage of
development, Clifford turned his thoughts to-
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
21
wards the politics of republicanism. He con-
ceived an enthusiastic admiration for Mazzini;
he read and quoted the poetry of Mr. Swinburne,
and thought Songs before Sunrise' some of the
wisest and most precious poems ever written.
All this was bound up closely with his scientific
theories ; and Mazzini he regarded as the priest,
and Mr. Swinburne as the prophet, of evolution.
He seems indeed, at this time, to have worked
himself into a feverish and artificial state of ex-
citement about the prospects held out to him by
his new view of things. "Shall there not,' he
wrote in a notebook during his later days at
Cambridge,' be a new revelation of a great and
more perfect cosmos, a universe fresh-born, a new
heaven, and a new earth ? Mors janua vitæ ; by
death to this world we enter upon, a new life in
the next. · The new incarnation may need
a second passion, but evermore beyond it is the
Easter glory. The main definite idea that was
embodied in this excitement was 'a conception,'
as Mr. Pollock puts it, of freedom as the one
aim and ideal of man. It included Repub-
licanism as opposed to the compulsory aspect of
government and traditional authority in general,
but was otherwise not bound to any particular
22
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
66
theory in politics. Indeed it forbade binding
oneself irrevocably to any theory whatever ; and
the one commandment of freedom was thus ex-
pressed : “ Thou shalt live and not formulise."
There is one thing in the world,” Clifford
wrote at this time, "more wicked than the desire
to command, and that is the will to obey." '
But this stage of thought was only a passing
one. When he quitted Cambridge, at the age of
twenty-five, and removed to London as a pro-
fessor at University College, his views upon such
subjects began slowly to be changed and modified
and he was probably aware himself that they
were not yet determined, since for five years
longer he never gave them publicly any direct
utterance, or began his ministry of practical
teaching and prophecy. During these five years
indeed, he published but six essays, and the
subjects of them were remote from common life,
although in reality, closely connected with it. In
the February of 1870 he delivered a discourse
before the Royal Institution on ‘Theories of the
Physical Forces,' which was printed in the
Proceedings of that body. He delivered a
lecture at Manchester two years afterwards on
'Atoms,' and six months later in the same year,
6
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
23
another lecture before the British Association, at
Brighton, on the 'Aims and Instruments of
Scientific Thought.' In March, 1873, he again
lectured before the Royal Institution, his subject
this time being 'The Philosophy of the Pure
Sciences;' and in 1874 he lectured on the
'Beginning and the Ending of the Earth,' and on
the ' Connexion of Mind and Body. In these
discourses, as their several titles denote, what he
mainly aimed at explaining (and he did this with
a most admirable lucidity) was the chief conclu-
sions that modern science had come to concern-
ing the constitution of matter, the history of the
material universe, the connexion of the brain with
consciousness; and further, though in a less
successful and more faltering way, the nature of
scientific knowledge as a whole, regarded from
the metaphysical stand-point. But he touched
only here and there, far off and indirectly, on
such questions as morals and religion, and the
practical hopes of the human race. Signs, how-
ever, are not wanting that it was to these ques-
tions he was gradually leading up, and that it
was on these that he was preparing himself to
speak before long with authority.
It was during this period, as his biographer
24
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
3
tells us, that his philosophy, as distinct from his
science, took its final shape, and the lectures
themselves show us how continually his mind
was dwelling on it. We find him not only
dealing with atoms, with heat, with the struc-
ture of the nervous system, but with object and
subject, the Me and the Not-me, the existence
of necessary truths, and the uniformity of nature
in the case of conscious action. More than this
too, we find that he has been busy with history,
and that he has been endeavouring diligently
to discover in it his philosophy teaching by
example. Everywhere there is a sound of
active mental preparation, and we feel that
the forces are being massed for some more
practical purpose. He is placing and pointing
his artillery, that he may command human life.
He defines progress for us, and tells us it is
the same thing as science. He gives the general
history of 'light and right' during the past two
thousand years ; how these existed for eight .
centuries on the shores of the Mediterranean,
till, under the blighting influence of the Church,
they went into abeyance, and there ceased to
be such a thing as 'goodness' in Europe-or
would have ceased, had it not been for Arab or
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
25
rage and
6
7
for Jew, who saved the sacred treasure from the
and hatred of Christianity, which was
nothing, in Clifford's judgment, but a power of
' disease and delirium. Human history, he tells
us, is the history of the progress of man the
progress of man is one with scientific thought;
for nearly twenty-two centuries,' he adds, the
upward life of humanity has depended on one
sacred book for its chief 'guide and encourage-
ment,' and this is not, as is commonly supposed,
the Bible, but the Propositions of Euclid. The
meaning of all this we shall see presently. As
yet he had not expressed it plainly. But he
comes nearer to practical questions in other
places. In 'Body and Mind' we see that the
questions of 'fate and free-will,' of immortality,
and of responsibility, are pressing close upon
him ; and in 'The First and Last Catastrophe,
in which he deals with the age and the duration
of the earth, he does actually utter his first
words of preaching. Towards the end of this
lecture he says that the greatest of all our
interests is bound up with the consciousness
that exists upon the earth,' and that corresponds
part for part, with the brain of the organised
being. For all organised beings on the earth,
26
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
6 Let us
some day or other, there is in store a final de-
struction, and for those who can see the force
of scientific evidence the conclusion seems in-
evitable that all human consciousness will be
finally destroyed with them ; and it is a very
serious thing,' says Clifford, 'to consider that
not only the earth itself and all that beautiful
face of nature we see, but also the living things
upon it, and all the consciousness of men and
the ideas of society which have grown up upon
the surface, must come to an end. We who
hold that belief must just face the fact and make
the best of it. . .. Do I seem to say,
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ? " Far from
it. On the contrary, I say " Let us take hands
and help, for this day we are alive together.”
The
year
in which these words were written
may be said to have closed Clifford's period of
mental preparation. The year following, he
made his first appearance as a professed au-
thority on the most momentous and profound of
questions; and he began his utterances with no
uncertain sound. A book had appeared about
this time, called “The Unseen Universe,' the
work of two eminent men of science, who sought
by certain ingenious theories to reconcile modern
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
27
materialism with Christian theology, and especi-
ally to find a place in it for the belief in our
personal immortality. The publication of this
work loosened Clifford's tongue, and set free
the thoughts and feelings that had been so long
gathering. And what seems to have excited
him in it was not the method of the authors,
but their aims—the special doctrines which they
were desirous of defending. Since the days,
five years back, when Clifford was studying
Aquinas, a change had indeed come over him.
Then, if he must lose religion, the loss would,
he felt, be a heavy one.
Even fifteen months
ago there seemed to him a profound sadness in
it. But now his mood was different. What we
saw him once regretting, we now find him
hating. He can hardly speak of a Christian
doctrine except in the language of parody; he
seems nervously anxious to be as offensive as
possible, and his voice seems to vacillate between
a sneer and a forced giggle. Towards the end
the note changes somewhat, and the young pro-
fessor of thirty concludes with this awful
warning :-
Only for another half-century let us keep our heavens
and "hells and gods.” It is a piteous plea; and it has
28
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
soiled the hearts of these prophets, great ones and blessed,
giving light to their generation, and dear in particular to our
own mind and heart. These sickly dreams of hysterical
women and half-starved men, what have they to do with the
strength of the wide-eyed hero, who fears no foe with pen
or club?
... That which you keep in your heart, my
brothers, is the slender remnant of a system which has made
its red mark on history, and still lives to threaten mankind.
The grotesque forms of its intellectual belief have survived
the discredit of its moral teaching of this what the kings
could bear with the nations have cut down; and what the
nations left the right heart of man by man revolts against
day by day. You have stretched out your hands to save the
dregs of the sifted sediment of a residuum. Take heed lest
you have given soil and shelter to that awful plague which
has destroyed two civilisations and but barely failed to slay
such promise of good as is now struggling to live among men."
Having thus traced Clifford's opinions up to
the time when they took their final consistency,
we will now examine in detail what his formed
system was. Ultimately and essentially it was
a practical, an ethical system ; but the ethical
part
of it rested on three others, which we may
call, with sufficient accuracy, the physical, the
metaphysical, and the historical ; and these, as
treated by him, we will now consider separately.
Numerous and diverse as are the details of all
three, for Clifford their primary outcome was
one very simple message—there is no God, no
soul, no future life. We say this is what he
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
29
learned from them primarily ; because in a
secondary way he looked to science doubtless for
many conquests over nature that would amelio
rate man's condition, and to history for many
lessons that would guide his conduct, in addition
to that general system by which religion was to
be superseded. But to destroy religion—that
soiling power, that grotesque threatener of man-
kind, that awful plague, that portentous phantom,
the offspring of disease and hysteria—to destroy
this, and to leave the ground clear for what was
better, seems to have been the first personal
anxiety of Clifford with regard to his own inner
convictions, as well as the first practical step in
the general reconstruction of thought. That
Clifford's conversion to unbelief was genuine it is
not possible to doubt. He yielded with sorrow
and reluctance to what he thought overwhelming
evidence. But he seems subsequently to have
been conscious that the peace bought by the
victory was not proportionate to the pain he had
endured in gaining it. A vague misgiving seems
still to have haunted him, that the religion he
had rejected might, after all, be the true one,
and that the sufferings he had undergone might
be sufferings in the cause of falsehood. That he
30
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
respected these misgivings, or seriously enter-
tained them, we do not for a moment mean. We
mean the exact contrary. He resolved not to
entertain them
; he resolved to despise them.
He regarded them as the voices of an intellectual
tempter whom it was his business to exorcise ;
but still they were there with their disturbing
whisper, continually forcing him to exclaim,
“Get thee behind me, Satan!' There is reason
to believe that this was the case from the evidence
of certain of those who knew Clifford. But, even
were evidence of this kind wanting, the same fact
might, we think, be gathered from his writings.
In physics, in metaphysics, and in history,
underlying all his other interests, there seems to
have been a nervous, half-unconscious, and
almost instinctive watchfulness
over
every
alleged fact and every theory, to see whether,
directly or indirectly, it would give the least
assistance to theology ; and if it would do this,
Clifford was prepared to reject it. It is this, we
think, that accounts for the bitterness that is so
often traceable in his writings. He is still afraid
that he may have scotched
have scotched the snake, not killed
it ; and he is perpetually stamping on it, to
make sure that it shall not revive.
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
31
This is least manifest in his dealing with
physical questions, but even here it is distin-
guishable. Of his physical creed we need not
speak at length, because he had himself little to
do with elaborating it, and its outlines are also
familiar to the world at large. Clifford was not,
nor did he profess to be, a specialist in any
department of physical knowledge. But he was
a diligent and accurate student of all the best
authorities, and he could often explain experi-
ments and discoveries more clearly than could
the discoverers and experimentalists themselves.
But though, in his knowledge of the detailed
facts of physics, he was thus far removed from
the lay world in general, the most momentous
lessons that those facts seemed to teach him were
only those that the lay world could appreciate ;
and these, though, as we have said, familiar now
to most of us, it will be well to state briefly. In
the first place, then, all nature is uniform. There
has never been in it anywhere any breach of
continuity; and it follows from this—the follow-
ing are Clifford's own words--that the state at
this moment of any detached fragment [of the
universe], say a particle of matter at the tip of
my tongue, is an infallible record of the eternal
32
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
past, an infallible prediction of the eternal future.
As the history of eternity,' he adds, 'is
written in every second of time, so is the history
of the universe written in every point of space.'
Its history as a whole, our own limited powers
have not permitted us to discover. It is, how-
ever, self-existent. It has been the work of no
conscious intelligence; and, so far as we know,
design is altogether peculiar to the animals
living upon the earth. Consciousness cannot
exist without a brain ; and the only rational
conception of an intelligent Deity would oblige
us to suppose the whole universe to be a brain.
But in this case, Clifford argues, God could
know nothing of human actions, and he could
only influence the course of events by his
weight. Any such notion
Any such notion as this, however,
we may set aside.
· The universe,' he says,
'is made up of atoms and ether. There is
no room in it for ghosts. But though cer-
tain facts about the constitution of matter
generally are all we can arrive at when deal-
ing with the remoter distances of time and
space, with regard to our own system, and
especially our own planet, we can speak with
more confidence. It is this last that most nearly
រ
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
33
concerns us; and what we know with great
probability,' Clifford says, is this. Between
one and two hundred millions of years ago, the
earth was a liquid in a state of intense heat, but
in a constant process of cooling. About the
date just indicated there was,' he says, 'a
catastrophe, which induced a new rate of cool-
ing ;' and we come to a time when the earth
began to assume its present state. The im-
mense distance of that time from our own it is
hard for us to realise ; but we may gain some
better notion of it if we represent as six years,
the six thousand years for which it is commonly
said that man has possessed a history, and then
say that the time we are speaking of was about
five hundred years ago. If Adam had been born
a year or two before the death of Lord Beacons.
field the present earth would have been born
about the time of the battle of Agincourt. At
that date there would have been upon its sur-
face no life, no soul, no consciousness--neither
thought, nor emotion, virtue, or humanity.
But Clifford agrees with Dr. Tyndall in saying
that there would have been the promise and
the potency' of them all. Whatever it
Whatever it may be
that we commonly call matter, all that we call
D
34
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
ܕ ܕܕ
spirit was then potentially contained in it ; and
about the date just indicated the first beginnings
took place of what now is human life-took
place by spontaneous generation. We may
refuse to believe this, and say that life came
from elsewhere. But whenever Clifford con-
templated this only possible alternative, an
invariable monitor,' he said, of which I can
give no rational account, invariably whispers
“Fiddlesticks!” His beliefs from this point
were the beliefs now so widely current. By
some process or processes of evolution, amongst
which the survival of the fittest was an im-
portant, though not the only element, life grew
more and more complex, more and more organic,
more and more conscious, until at last, from
some non-human parents, the first human beings
appeared on the earth's surface. A high scien-
tific authority in Germany maintained that this
last and central doctrine was not yet proved,
and that we had no right to teach it, as yet, as
true. This seems to have exercised Clifford's
mind considerably, and his last literary work
was an answer to it, which is for many reasons
very instructive. Clifford said in that answer
that it was quite true that we were not certain
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
35
of the truth of the doctrine in question, but
then, further, we were not certain of anything ;
and he contends that the evidence as to the
descent of man is really as cogent as that for
the descent of other animals. He argues this
point with great ability. But the details of the
argument are not our concern here. What we
want to call attention to is the degree of cer-
tainty which Clifford claimed for the above
doctrine as a whole. And it is important to
notice this, because not only in the essay to
which we are now alluding, but continually
elsewhere throughout his works, we find him
insisting on the extreme modesty of science, so
different from the arrogance of theology. We
must recollect,' he says, for instance, quoting
Professor Huxley as an exponent of his own
opinions,' that any human belief, however broad
its basis, however defensible it may seem, is,
after all, only a probable belief.' And he is
constantly asking us to notice how he always
prefers to use the word 'probable rather than
' certain. But should anyone in this matter
really take him at his word, and believe that
practically there was the very least uncertainty
either as to the truth of the above-mentioned
D 2
36
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
doctrine or more particularly as to the descent
of man, his answer, he informs us, would be
this : 'Don't be so silly ; I have no patience
with you. Indeed, as to his meaning, he is yet
more explicit ; and he tells us in so many words,
that when our physicists modestly say they are
not certain that man was descended from not-
men, and that these not-men were descended
from unconscious and inorganic matter, they
mean that they are a great deal more certain of
the fact than any of us can be as to the taking
of Plevna by the Russians. They mean that
they are more 'cock-sure' in their doubts than
the generality of us are in our certainties.
Such in rough outline being Clifford's
physical creed, and such the doubt or certainty
with which he held and taught it, let us next
consider his metaphysical creed, not forgetting
how greatly it is to his credit that he saw
the necessity for any metaphysical creed at all.
He has arrived, let us remember, from the
lifeless and uninhabited earth, at the human
race, and at human consciousness; and now
a question which, though historically
it is the last, yet logically is the first of all.
What is consciousness ? or rather, What is
comes
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
37
knowledge ? Unlike the majority of modern
men of science, Clifford saw that the methods
which are commonly called scientific, though
they might rear up a vast superstructure of
knowledge, yet left the foundations of it to take
care of themselves, and that it was possible,
unless these were looked to, to undermine them
completely. He saw that all material analysis
of the universe, all discoveries as to the connec-
tion of mind with brain, all theories of sight and
of sensation, and the getting together and trans-
mission of various kinds of knowledge, might,
from one point of view be plausibly proved
worthless, and be robbed of all the meaning
they were supposed to have. Let us trace all
existing things to atoms, and out of the move-
ments of these atoms trace the formation of the
body and brain of man, yet from one point of
view we have made no advance whatever. The
question still remains, what are these atoms ?
If from one point of view consciousness is
pro-
duced by them, from another they are the crea-
tions of consciousness. If we can think of mind
only in terms of matter, we can think of matter
only in terms of mind, and it seems that outside
our own consciousness nothing exists at all.
38
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
If I consider merely my own feelings (says Clifford), and
ask what evidence they give of anything beyond them, it
seems to me that I must answer no evidence at all. . . . If
I say that such and such things existed at some previous
time, I mean that, if I had been there, I could have perceived
them. If I say that there is hydrogen in the sun,
I mean
that, if I could get any of that gas, I should be able to burn
it in oxygen, and produce exactly the same impressions on
my senses as those which, in the aggregate, I call water.
It is true that these words betray a certain
vacillation of thought, which is not confined to
this special passage.
But they show us quite
sufficiently that the initial problem in question
was fully perceived by Clifford. If we say that
an atom is the ultimate unit of things, we mean
by an atom something that, were our senses fine
enough, would exist for us as an individual
feeling. And Clifford saw that it was needful to
maintain science as something more than the
analysis of the feelings of the individual. The
progress of philosophy in this respect, Clifford
said, began with Berkeley, 'who establshed, in a
security that has never yielded to attack, the
subjective character of the world of phenomena :
that this world I perceive is my perceptions,
and nothing more.' But besides these percep-
tions, said Berkeley, there is also a spirit, a me
that perceives them.
And 'to get rid,' says
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
39
Clifford, ' of this imaginary soul or substance was
the work of Hume. The next important step
was made by Mill, who defined more completely
the views of Hume, and explained by the law
of association how we come to believe in the
external world. After Mill came Mr. Herbert
Spencer, who combined the analysis of mental
action given by the association theory with the
analysis of nervous action supplied by the
histologists,' proving that the evolution of mind
'
proceeds pari passu' with the evolution of the
organism.
Here, then (says Clifford) is the great advantage of
Mr. Herbert Spencer in the study of both orders of facts.
He can make any step in analysis of the one help in analysis
of the other. And accordingly he has carried both to an
extent that leaves all previous investigators far behind. But
you will see at once that we must look at the question of
idealism from the physiological point of view. And accord-
ingly he considers that there is something different from our
perceptions, the changes in which correspond in a certain
way to the changes in the worlds we perceive. He thinks,
however, we can never know what it is; and he says~...
The antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended
whilst consciousness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge
of that ultimate reality in which subject and object are
united.' . . . Mr. Spencer attempts to make my feelings
give me evidence of something that is not included among
them. A careful study of all his arguments to that effect
has only convinced me over again that the attempt is hopeless.
40
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
Though Mr. Herbert Spencer has failed,
Clifford tells us that he can himself succeed.
'Can we,' he says, 'get out of our hobble and
arrive at real knowledge derived from external
experience, from messages, and not from imagina-
tion? I think we can.' But our knowledge,
he warns us, will be of the nature not of
certainty, but of inference ; and inference de-
pends on a something that is not inferred itself.
It depends upon one grand assumption, and
that assumption is the uniformity of nature.
And why, Clifford asks, do we assume that ?
'I cannot,' he answers, give you a logical
reason for believing it, but I can give you a
physical explanation of the fact that we all do
believe it. We believe,' he says—and it will be
well to quote this passage in extenso—
we believe a thing when we are prepared to act as if it were
true. Now, if you and I had not habitually acted on the
assumption of the uniformity of nature from the time when
we could act at all, we should not be here to discuss the
question. Nature is selecting for survival those individuals
and races who act as if she were uniform ; and hence the
gradual spread of that belief over the civilised world.
This uniformity may be mérely a uniformity of pheno-
mena, a law relating to my feelings. So long as I only am
concerned, it seems to me that the idealist theory is perfectly
sufficient. It is quite capable of explaining me, but when
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
41
you come into the question it is perfectly at a loss, . . . I
do believe that you are conscious in the same way that I am;
and once that is conceded, the whole idealist theory falls to
pieces. For there are feelings which are not my feelings,
which are entirely outside my consciousness; so that there
is at least an external world. But let us consider now in
what way we infer it; why do I believe that there are
feelings which are not mine? Because, as I belong to a
gregarious race, the greater part of my life consists in acting
upon the position that it is true.
Clifford wrote this as early as 1873; but
the views just stated he seems never to have
changed subsequently, though he invented, for
the sake of accuracy, a new piece of terminology.
' Things presented in my consciousness, phe-
nomena, I propose,' he says subsequently, 'to
call objects, whilst your feelings, which are not,
and cannot by any possibility become, objects in
my consciousness,' but which are inferred, and
in the very act of inference thrown out of my
consciousness, recognised as outside of it, as not
being a part of me, I propose to call ejects.'
Making use of these terms, Clifford proceeds to
point out how the belief in the existence of
ejects profoundly modifies the object. He takes
a table for instance, and shows how complex our
conception is of it—how it is a conception of 'a
table as an object in the minds of men ...
an
42
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
indefinite number of ejects, together with one
object, which the conception of each eject more
or less resembles.' This complex conception he
calls the social object,' and we gain the impres-
sion of its externality by this 'sub-conscious
reference to supposed ejects.' But Clifford
warns us not to think that our argument has
brought us too far. Our impression of the
'outness' of the social object thus accounted
for does not enable us to argue that there is
anything 'outside of my consciousness except
the minds of other men. This all-important
step yet demands to be taken. We arrive at this
by observing the correspondence or parallelism
between mind and body.' Mind, or conscious-
ness, is an exceedingly complex thing. It is
not a unit, as thinkers used to suppose. Mind,
consciousness, or a sense of personality, consists
of 'a stream of feelings so compact together
that at each instant it consists of (1) new feel.
ings, (2) fainter repetitions of previous ones,
and (3) links connecting these repetitions. Now
we know from the highest scientific authorities
that “the complexity of consciousness is paral-
leled by complexity of action in the brain,' and
there is reason to believe that as consciousness
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
43
co-exists with complex brain motion, so elemen-
tary feeling co-exists with elementary brain
motion. From this, Clifford argues, it follows
that elementary feeling does not imply con-
sciousness, but that without consciousness ba
feeling can exist by itself He continues
>
thus :
If that doctrine be true, we shall have along the line of
the human pedigree a series of imperceptible steps connecting
inorganic matter with ourselves. To the later members of
that series we must undoubtedly ascribe consciousness,
although it must of course have been simpler than our own.
. . As we go back along the line, the complexity of the
organism and of its nerve-action insensibly diminishes;
and for the first part of our course we see reason to think
that the complexity of consciousness insensibly diminishes
also. But if we make a jump, say to the tunicate molluscs,
we see no reason to infer the existence of consciousness at all.
Yet not only is it impossible to point out a place where any
sudden break takes place, but it is contrary to all the natural
training of our minds to suppose a breach of continuity
so great. . . There is only one way out of the difficulty,
and to that we are driven. ... As the line of ascent is un-
broken, and must end at last in inorganic matter, we have no
choice but to admit that every motion of matter is simul-
taneous with some ejective fact or event, which might be a
part of consciousness. From this follow two important
corollaries. (1) A feeling can exist by itself, without form-
ing a part of consciousness. It does not depend for its
existence on the consciousness of which it may form a part.
Hence a feeling (or an eject-element) is a Ding an sich, an
44
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
absolute, whose existence is not relative to anything else.
Sentitur is all that can be said. (2) These eject-elements,
which correspond to motions of matter, are connected to-
gether in their sequence and co-existence by counterparts of
the physical laws of matter. ... That element then, (Clifford
proceeds), of which, as we have seen, even the simplest
feeling is a complex, I shall call mind-stuff. A moving
molecule of inorganic matter does not possess mind or con-
sciousness, but it possesses a small piece of mind-stuff
and, when matter takes the complex form of a living human
brain, the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of a
human consciousness, having intelligence and volition. . .
The two chief points of this doctrine may be thus summed
up :-Matter is a mental picture, in which mind-stuff is the
thing represented. Reason, intelligence, and volition are
properties of a complex which is made up of elements them-
selves not rational, not intelligent, not conscious.
So far as he was himself concerned, Clifford
looked on this theory as his own; but he not
only tells us that, after it dawned on him, he
learned that several of his friends had arrived at
something similar, but he adds, in another place,
that it now was no mere guess or conjecture,
but the view at which all the greatest thinkers
had arrived and were arriving; and he intended
to have included it in a book to be called "The
Creed of Science.'
We will not at present pause to criticise,
but will pass
first to the remaining
parts of his system. Thus far he has derived
on
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
45
living and conscious man from inanimate and
unconscious matter, and has explained what
that matter is, and the process of its trans-
formation. If this account be true, it follows
without saying that all knowledge is derived
from experience, and cannot possibly have any
other source—not the experience of the indi-
vidual only, but the slowly acquired and
transmitted experience of the race. Clifford
saw, however, that there was one great difficulty
in the way of this theory, and that was the
necessity and the universality of the truths of
geometry. Having spoken of the various ways
in which these have been explained, “it seems,
he says, 'to me that the Kantian dilemma about
universal propositions is just as valid now, in
spite of these explanations, as it was in his time.
. . . Either I have some source of knowledge
other than experience, and I must admit the
existence of à priori truths, independent of
experience ; or I cannot know that any uni-
versal statement is true.'
Now experience,
Clifford says, must be the only source of know-
ledge, for if it were not, the evolution theory
would be found inadequate; 'so that I am
driven,' he continues, “to conclude in regard to
7
46
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
every apparently universal statement, either
that it is not really universal .
or that
I do not know that it is true. He was well
aware that this alternative presented many
apparent difficulties, and that these were not to
be removed without much intellectual labour.
But the way out of them, he conceived, had been
at last discovered by certain modern Conti-
nental speculators, whose opinions he embraced
with enthusiasm. This school has sought to
effect a complete revolution in our conception of
geometrical truths. Its position is that these
are neither necessarily nor universally true now,
and that in the remoter past they may not have
been true at all. There may be triangles whose
angles do not equal two right angles; there
may be converging parallel lines ; there may
be two straight lines that enclose a space The
change in scientific ideas indicated by these
startling doctrines is, says Clifford, 'of trans-
cendent importance,' and for this reason : 'it is
a change in our conception of the cosmos.
Were the Euclidean assumptions true, the
constitution of the universe, at an infinite dis-
tance from us, would be as well known as the
geometry of this room . . . so that here we
should have real knowledge of something at
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
47
least that concerns the cosmos, something that
is true throughout the immensities and the
eternities. That something Lobatchewsky and
his followers have taken away.
The know-
ledge of immensity and eternity is replaced by
a knowledge of Here and Now.' And thus,
Clifford argued, we have no knowledge that the
evolution theory will not account for, and, as a
supposed corollary, we have no reason for
believing in an immaterial soul, and no parallels
by which to illustrate and support a belief in a
theological intuition.
Let us now pass on to Clifford's doctrine of
the human will, "The mind,' he says, 'is to be
regarded as a stream of feelings which runs
parallel to, and is simultaneous with, the action
of that particular part of the brain in which the
cerebrum and the sensory tract are excited.
The body, of which the brain is a part, and on
which its action is dependent, 'is a physical
machine, which goes by itself according to a
physical law, that is to say, is automatic. An
automaton is a thing which goes by itself when
it is wound up, and we go by ourselves when
we have food.' Were other men not conscious,
we might regard them as 'mere machines
but, as a matter of fact, they are machines
2
7
;
48
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
attended by consciousness--they are conscious
automata. Clifford here anticipates the ob-
jections, that if we are automata, we have no
freedom of will and no moral responsibility.
But with both of these he makes short work
indeed. So far from the doctrine of automatism,
being a denial of the doctrine of free will, it is,
he
says, the only accurate expression of it. An
automaton, he says, is the exact opposite of a
puppet. A puppet requires to be pushed or
pulled by wires, and an automaton goes by
itself. People only object, Clifford thinks, to
the doctrine of human automatism because they
are thinking of automata that have been made
by man with certain definite intentions, and
whose whole action is determined by a person
outside ; but the race of human automata have
collectively made themselves. And this, he
says, puts the two cases on an entirely different
footing. For the will to be free, we need no
doctrine of the creation of energy in the brain ;
we need not believe that in the movements of
the brain-molecules the uniformity of nature is
even infinitesimally violated. If we want to
know what free will is, says Clifford, Kant is
the man to tell us ; and free will, according
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
49
to Kant, is that property which enables us to
originate events independently of foreign deter-
mining causes ; 'which, it seems to me,' pro-
ceeds Clifford, 'amounts to saying precisely that
we are automata, that is, we go by ourselves,
and do not want anybody to push or pull us.
With similar facility he goes on to show us that
exactly the same conclusion is contained in the
doctrine of responsibility. If,' he says, 'there
is a certain point where the law of causation
does not apply, where my action does not follow
by regular physical causes from what I am,
then I am not responsible for it, because it is
not I that do it. So you see the notion that we
are not automata destroys responsibility. Clif-
ford, however, does not end here, but adds this
significant sentence :
Moreover, if we once admit that physical causes are not
continuous, but that there is some break, then we leave the
way open for the doctrine of a destiny or a providence out-
side of us, overruling human efforts, and guiding human
history to a foregone conclusion. . I do think that if it is
right to call any doctrine immoral, it is right so to call this
doctrine, when we remember how often it has paralysed the
efforts of those who were honestly climbing up the hillside
towards the light and right, and how often it has nerved the
sacrilegious arm of the fanatic or the adventurer who was
conspiring against society.
E
50
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
Having carried our survey of Clifford's views
thus far, we are now, as the above sentence may
suggest to us, in a position to enter upon a new
part of them—the historical. We include in
history not those times only of which we have
written records, but those times also which are
sometimes called prehistoric ; for in these were
first shaped the beginnings of that society against
which the fanatics of theism have so often con-
spired, and we can understand society only by
a study of the first beginnings of it. Thus out
of historical knowledge springs directly ethical
knowledge, or the knowledge of right and wrong.
It is the opinion of Clifford's school that up to
a very recent date the whole civilised world
has been in error on these matters---completely
in error theoretically, and in very grave error
practically. The cause of this confusion has
been the theories of theology, which represented
ethics as resting on a completely false founda-
tion ; and this confusion it is that Clifford's
school have undertaken to dispel. For the source,
it tells us, of our moral rules and obligations we
must look to no superhuman lawgiver. Morality
is nothing if not human. It is nothing but the
necessary cause, accompaniment, and condition
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
51
of the gradual evolution of society. It is, in
other words, the condition of co-operation ; and
co-operation has been imperative on man for
two reasons-first, because of the struggle for
existence; secondly, because men are gregarious
animals. The human struggle for existence was
at first not a struggle of individual against
individual so much as a struggle of tribe against
tribe. The original savage, says Clifford, being
little able to reflect, was probably not possessed
clearly of the conception of his individual self.
He was, however, preyed upon perpetually by
unreflecting and immediate desires ; and thus his
conception of self was not only less used and
developed, but was also,' says Clifford, 'less
definite and more wide.' He found that the
satisfaction of his immediate desires depended on
the strength and the well-being of his tribe ; and
thus this external object, his tribe, became
associated with all his pains and pleasures, and
was identified by him with himself. “Now the
tribe,' says Clifford, 'quâ tribe, has to exist, and
it can only exist by aid of such an organic
artifice as the conception of the tribal self in the
minds of its members. Hence the natural se-
lection of those races in which this conception
E 2
52
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
is most powerful.' But, along with this kind of
primeval progress, something else also was in
process of development; and that was the con-
ception of the individual self, not as identified
with the tribal self, but as distinguished from it.
Thus gradually there were developed in the
individual two rival selves, each of which be-
came fixed as a specific character in the consti-
tution of social man. The quality or disposition
in an individual which gives his individual self
the supremacy we now know under the common
name of selfishness ; while the quality or dis-
position which gives his tribal self the supremacy
is called by Clifford piety. Man had by this
time grown a more or less civilised being ; and
his actions had lost much of their instinctive
character, and had become to a great extent
calculating and deliberate. The result of this
progress was to increase the power of selfishness
as the rival of piety, and to produce what we
now know as the conscious moral struggle.
Piety, therefore, says Clifford, had to be
'encouraged,' and it was encouraged by the
common approbation of individual acts,' regarded
as good for the community; and natural selection
in the long run has preserved those tribes which
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
53
have approved of the right things-namely,
those things which at that time gave the tribe an
advantage in the struggle for existence.
And now (says Clifford) let us take the man who habitu-
ally does such things as are advantageous for the tribe.
Such a man the tribe cannot fail to approve of; and the
pious or tribal self of each member of the tribe says to such
a man 'I like you.' This is moral approbation. But let us
take another case. Let us suppose a man has done some-
thing that is obviously harmful to the tribe, owing to his
selfishness having got the better of his piety. By-and-by
his piety reasserts itself, and the man says ' In the name of
the tribe, I do not like this thing that I, as an individual,
have done.' ... This self-judgment in the name of the
tribe, Clifford proceeds, is called Conscience. If the man
goes farther and draws from this act an inference about his
own character, he may say 'In the name of the tribe, I
do not like my individual self.' This is Remorse.
In
a mind sufficiently developed to distinguish the individual
from the tribal self, conscience is thus a necessary result of
the existence of piety; it is ready to hand as a means for its
increase.
Thus far, however, Clifford admits that he
has only accounted for conscience in its elemental
form. If we wish to understand the present
moral nature of man, we must consider how
society has used the feelings of the individual as
a means for its own preservation. In our present
state of development the moral sense has become
54
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
purely intuitive ; conscience gives us imperative
orders, assigning no reasons. Now how has this
come about? It has come about in this way.
Conscience in the individual, at this stage of
man's development, represents not the experi-
ence and wisdom of the individual, but the in-
herited wisdom of the tribe, which has been in-
grained in the individual, not only through
natural selection and the survival of the fittest,
but by the two following processes, of which one
is direct and the other indirect. If a man
offends, the tribe may directly express its dis-
approval by killing the man, or inflicting on him
some material punishment ; or else it may punish
him indirectly, by pouring out its anger and
contempt upon his selfishness, until his own
pious self takes part with the tribal judgment,
and endorses the condemnation that is thus
passed upon him. Finally, to these processes
we must add a third, which is a union of the
former two. “Self-judgment,' says Clifford, 'in
the name of the tribe, becomes associated with
very definite and material judgment by the
tribe itself;' and thus the motive power of
conscience is strengthened to
strengthened to an enormous
degree,' and its decisions are guided and made
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
55
definite by the definite nature and occasion of
the public penalty.
Such, then, is the natural history of the
growth of conscience, which Clifford thinks
amply sufficient to explain it in its present con-
dition. And from this explanation of it he
thinks we arrive at a clear notion of what we
mean by moral responsibility. We are morally
responsible, he says, 'when we can be punished
for doing wrong, with approval of the tribal
self,' be the punishment either our own self-
condemnation or the condemnation or the
punishment of us by others. And responsi-
bility,' says Clifford, implies two things—(1)
The act was a product of the man's character
and of the circumstances, and his character may
to a certain extent be inferred from the act ;
(2) the man had a conscience which might have
been so worked upon as to prevent him com-
mitting the act.
And now comes the grand conclusion to
which the above views lead us. The old con-
ception of virtue was an entirely wrong one.
It was not only not the truth, but the direct
denial of the truth. According to the old
theory, we were to be virtuous, because we
6
56
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
owed a debt to ourselves or to the God who
made us, and for whose sake we were bound to
keep ourselves pure. But according to the new
theory we owe ourselves nothing. Self-improve-
ment, as self-improvement, is a vice, and not a
virtue.
There are (says Clifford) no self-regarding virtues. The
qualities of courage, prudence, &c., can only be rightly en-
couraged in so far. as they are shown to conduce to the
efficiency of the citizen; that is, in so far as they cease to be
self-regarding. The duty of private judgment, of searching
after truth, the sacredness of belief which ought not to be
misused on unproved statements, follow only on showing
of the enormous importance to society of a true knowledge
of things. And any diversion of conscience from its sole
allegiance to the community, is condemned à priori in the
very nature of right and wrong.
Such being the case, Clifford looked on what
is commonly called history—that is, such history
as is derived from written records as the above
philosophy teaching by example. For him
such history was the history of the true view of
things, obscured by superstition and misconcep-
tion—sometimes more obscured and sometimes
less—and ever struggling to break through what
obscured it. So far as in the present volumes
he appeals to past events, he appeals to them
only to bear him out in his ethical and non-
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
57
religious theories, and to show that these at last
are gaining their final victory, and are ushering
in a new era. And what is the result? Clifford
was prepared to tell us.
The dim and shadowy outlines (he says) of the super-
human deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the
mist of his presence floats aside we perceive with greater and
greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler
figure—of Him who made all gods and shall unmake them.
From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depth
of every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us
with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says, ' Before
JEHOVAH was, I AM!'
And now let us enquire finally what Clif-
ford's practical preaching was to this new age
which he conceived himself, amongst others, to
be inaugurating. What was it that he tried to
make the men about him do, and that he con-
cluded they would do? In the first place, as
we have seen already, he said to them : Don't
think about saving your own souls. They are
nothing to you. Don't think about any duties
to a superhuman deity, for there is no such
being, and, even if there were, you could have
no duties towards him. These two beliefs have
been the source of half the evil that is in the
world. In the second place he said to them :
58
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
you all.
Instead of your own souls and your God, you
must put society. At present you must put
the special community to which you happen to
belong, and by-and-by, when you grow more
and more instructed, you must learn to include
in that community all the human race. And
how are you to serve the community ? and
what is to be the result of your service ? You
are to serve it by striving after 'increased effi-
ciency, each of you in your special work as well
as in the social functions which are common to
all. You must strive each of you to be a
better citizen, a better workman, a better son,
husband, or father.' And if you do this, all of
you, the community of which you are each of
you a part will through all the coming genera-
tions grow healthier and better ; it will
go
from
strength to strength, and will by-and-by reach
heights of which we have hardly a conception.
The progress of the community, then, being
the end of all individual action, how are we of
this generation to adapt our means to the end ?
Such adaptation,' says Clifford, 'may be pro-
duced in two ways that we at present know of -
by processes of natural selection, and by the
agency of an intelligence in which an image or
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
59
come.
idea of the end preceded the use of the means.
Now, natural selection is the work of nature.
The individual teacher has nothing to do with
that. His sole concern lies with the intelligence
of those he addresses. And not only is it this
only that he can work upon, but it is this that
for the future must be the chief force at work.
Progress hitherto has been largely unconscious.
Men thought indeed they were going in one
direction, but natural causes have been really
taking them in another. But now a change has
The world is being baptised into a new
life. The real meaning of the moral sense is at
last discovered, 'and it must,' says Clifford, 'be
directed for the future by our conscious dis-
covery of the tribal purpose which it serves.
'Conscience,' he repeats again, 'is the voice of
man within us commanding us to work for man.'
And thus the work of the preacher and the
teacher is twofold ; he has in the first place to
direct this conscience, and in the next place he
has to strengthen it, and to give force to its
mandates.
Clifford's premature death has, of course,
left his practical teaching incomplete. He has
indeed accomplished with sufficient clearness the
7
60
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
first of the two tasks just mentioned, but he
hardly had time to do more than touch ex-
plicitly on the second. He has told us that the
great work of each of us is to make our piety
overcome our selfishness, and that the object of
our piety is the social organism. But how this
piety for the future is to be strengthened in its
hard struggle with its enemy he has only given
us hints here and there by the way. His views,
however, on this matter we can arrive at pretty
clearly, and of all his views they are perhaps
the most significant. We will speak of them
presently ; but first of all let us look back on
the other parts of his system, the main outlines
of which we have now glanced at.
It is true that in these there is nothing that,
at the present time, can be very new or startling
to any of us. But, as assimilated and ex-
pressed by Clifford, we have thought the modern
system well worth considering. Amongst our
scientific thinkers he was a man of unusual
culture, as well as of unusual ability ; and the
weakness of the theories he advocated, and the
insufficiency of the training he had received, are
best visible in a man who naturally was so
highly gifted.
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
61.
Of his views on physical science there is
obviously no need to speak. He was simply
here an intelligent disciple of others, whom we
have no call to criticise. But what we do pro-
pose to examine is the methods by which he
proposed to place this physical science on a firm
philosophic basis, and to reconcile its teachings
with the verdicts of our moral consciousness.
And first let us consider how he deals with the
first of all questions--the existence of an ex-
ternal world. Its existence as we have seen
he conceived he had established, and that he had
set right on this point all former philosophers,
from Berkeley to Herbert Spencer. And it
must be admitted that in his views and in the
exposition of them there are displayed great
ingenuity and great power of thought. But
when we come to examine the final upshot of
them, we shall find that they all end in nothing.
He succeeds with extreme skill in travelling
round a circle, and in the end he finds him-
self just where he started. And, curiously
enough, in two places he virtually admits this
himself. We can only, he maintains, free our-
selves from the position of absolute idealism by
our belief in what he calls “personal ejects ;
62
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
and why, he asks, does he believe in these ? why
does he believe that there are feelings which are
not his own ? Because,' he answers, 'as I
belong to a gregarious race, the greater part of
my life consists in acting upon the supposition
that it is true.' This is literally the only
answer that he gives to the great question ;
and he gives this not hastily, but with all de-
liberation, and he leads solemnly up to it, as a
piece of profound wisdom. Now what does this
sentence amount to ? To believe that there are
feelings which are not his own is the same thing
as to believe that he belongs to a race. The
question, then, that he is really asking is, 'Why
do I believe that I belong to a race ?' And his
only answer is, . Because I belong to a gre-
garious race. But this is not all. In another
place precisely the same question is again asked
by him, and what he
says
there is
very
different
and far more to the purpose. 'How,' he says,
'this inference is justified, how consciousness
can testify to anything outside itself, I do not
pretend to say. I need not untie a knot that
the world has cut for me long ago. ...
The
position of absolute idealism may therefore be
left out of count; although each individual may
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
63
be unable to justify his dissent from it. Now
let us suppose this last statement true, and we
have one thing to observe that Clifford seems
altogether to have forgotten. It may be quite
true that the belief in question is not only inex-
plicable, but indubitable ; but we by no means
have disposed of it by admitting that. Ac-
cording to Clifford's philosophy all knowledge
is based on experience; if he cannot maintain
that position, his whole system falls to the
ground ; and here we find him, apparently quite
unconscious of the results of it, not admitting
only but proclaiming that the one fact of our
daily life, on our knowledge of which all other
knowledge is based, is a fact that no experience
could have taught us, and that we must have
learned it from some other source.
It is true that, granting the existence of the
personal eject, Clifford deduces with much in-
genuity from it the existence of ejects that are
not personal-in other words, the inorganic
universe. But here again, in spite of all his
skill, his reasonings prove useless. They de-
pend, as we have seen already, upon his theory
of the nature of things in themselves. And
what does this theory amount to ? Ingenious
64
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
as are the means by which he arrives at his
results, the results when arrived at are crude
and puerile to an almost inconceivable degree.
* The thing in itself' is, he tells us, elementary
feeling, mind-stuff, or quasi-mind; and this is
known to us as matter. With every moving
molecule of matter there moves also a small
particle of mind-stuff which is attached to it.
Now, not only must it be obvious to anyone at
all trained in philosophical thinking that this
theory leaves time, and still more plainly space,
entirely unaccounted for ; but there is a further
and yet more obvious objection to it, which has
not escaped even his own enthusiastic biographer.
This theory, which Clifford flattered himself was
a new form of monism, is in reality nothing but
the dualism it was intended to replace ; only he
chooses to call matter 'mind-stuff,' and he chooses
to call mind consciousness. His theory, he
tells
us,
rests on the doctrine that there can be
feeling without consciousness, a statement to
which it is impossible to affix any meaning
whatsoever, The old-fashioned dualism
the statement of a mystery, but it was the state-
ment of it in intelligible language. Clifford
transferred the mystery from the statement to
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
65
the way of stating it; and instead of simplify,
ing a fact, he merely made his language meaning-
less.
But the confusion in his philosophy becomes
most apparent, and is of most practical im-
portance, when he comes to treat of mind and
body in connection with human automatism and
the freedom of the will. It would be hard to
imagine, were the fact not before our eyes, that
any man of Clifford's powers should have shown
himself, on a point like this, so utterly incapable
of clear and coherent thought, or of seeing
steadily for a moment what is the real point
at issue. As a specimen of his philosophical
manner, we may first notice how he prepares the
ground for himself. "The will,' he says, 'is not
a material thing. It is not a mode of material
motion. Such an assertion belongs to the crude
materialism of the savage. The only thing that
influences matter is the position of surrounding
matter, or the motion of surrounding matter ;
and thus he lays down, as if to close the question
for ever, “if anybody says that the will influences
matter, the statement is not untrue, but it is
It is a combination of words
whose corresponding ideas will not go together.'
F
nonsense.
66
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
Anything more utterly false, and we may add
foolish, than this, it is not easy to imagine.
That will should influence matter may or may
not be a possibility ; but it is the expression of a
distinct belief, and of a belief that is held by a
very large number of people. One important
example of it is the belief that God orders the
world ; and Clifford not only holds that to this
proposition a very distinct idea can attach itself,
but an idea that is so powerful as to be of the
utmost practical danger. There is another
answer to him that is even more near to hand.
He
says
that to say matter influences will is not
untrue but nonsense. But let us take the con-
verse of this proposition ; and that, as he would
be the first to admit, is not only not nonsense,
but it is true. Give a man wine, and you nerve
his will to fight. Give a man more wine, and
you put his will to sleep for a time. Stab him
in the heart with a dagger, and you extinguish
his will for ever.
It is perfectly true, however, to say, that for
will to influence matter is, on Clifford's theory,
impossible. On that theory, consciousness is
nothing but a passive spectator, and the will
itself is nothing but a fiction. The strange
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
67
6
thing is, that Clifford himself neither admitted
nor saw this, but thought he could show, on the
contrary, not only that will was a reality, but
also that it was free. And this brings us to the
climax of his philosophical confusions. That
man is a free agent appears to me obvious, and
that in the natural sense of the words. We
need ask for no better definition than Kant's :
“ Will is a kind of causality belonging to living
agents, in so far as they are rational ; and free-
dom is such a property of causality as enables
them to be efficient agents independently of out-
side causes determining them ; as, on the other
hand, necessity is that property of all irrational
beings which consists in their being determined
to activity by the influence of outside causes.
Now this, no doubt, at first sight sounds well
enough ; but it seems to have escaped Clifford
that these words of Kant belonged to one
philosophy, and that in being transplanted to
another they become nonsense. We need not
pause to point out that, in the first place, will,
in Clifford's system, is emphatically not a kind
of causality at all. All we need remark upon is
the use of the words outside causes.
outside causes. Now,
according to Clifford, an outside cause is
any
ܕ ܕܕ
F 2
68
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
4
6
cause outside 'my consciousness ;' and if there
is one thing that his theory teaches more plainly
than another, it is that men cannot be efficient
agents independently of outside causes ;' nay,
more than this, they cannot be agents at all. 'I
believe,' says Clifford, 'that I am a free agent,
when my actions are independent of the circum-
stances outside me.' But this, according to his
theory, no man's actions ever are. So far from
our being independent of such circumstances, we
are entirely at the mercy of them ; we are like
all irrational beings,' as described by Kant;
we are determined to activity by the influence
of outside causes.' In fact, the distinction
between outside cause and any other kind of
cause is here a wholly false one.
we are free because we go of ourselves, we do
not want anybody to push or pull us.' Now of
course, in a certain sense, we'go of ourselves,
just as a tree does ; but the direction in which
we go, if it cannot be said to be determined by
anyone pulling us, is determined by countless
other things attracting us; and so far as freedom
goes, and so far as outsideness in the matter goes,
there is nothing to choose really between propul-
sion and attraction. I place three children on a
Clifford says
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
69
stage, telling them not to move of themselves,
but to allow me to push and pull them as I
please, and then make them perform certain
evolutions. The children, in so far as these
movements are concerned, are merely marion-
nettes or puppets. Clifford himself would have
maintained that they were not free agents. Sup-
posing, however, I knew the nature of the
children sufficiently well, I could, by a certain
arrangement of sweetmeats or other attractive
objects about the stage, produce exactly the
same movements, and I should be able to predict
them with exactly the same certainty. The
children in both cases would have been equally
at my mercy; nor would it make the least dif-
ference in the present argument whether the
cause that determined them to activity were my
hand or a sugar-plum. That there is an acci-
dental difference between the two cases is true
enough, but the difference is only an accidental
The action is in one case accompanied by
the feeling which we call volition, and in the
other case it is not. According to Clifford and
his school, there are really but two kinds of
action, each of them equally inevitable and
equally necessary-action in which we are pro-
one.
70
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
pelled, and action in which we are attracted ; and
what Clifford means by will, or by free will, is
nothing but the consciousness of being attracted,
not propelled.
From this subject we pass to one directly
connected with it, to the conscience and moral
responsibility ; and we shall find that precisely
the same confusion exists in Clifford's mind here.
'In order,' he says, “that a man may be morally
responsible for an action, three things are neces-
sary :-(1) He might have done something else ;
that is to say, the action was not wholly deter-
mined by external circumstances, and he is
responsible only for the choice which was left
him. (2) He had a conscience. (3) The action
was one in regard to the doing or not doing of
which conscience might have been a sufficient
motive. Now, from our point of view, all this
is completely true; but that point of view is not
Clifford's. All through this there runs a con-
ception that in Clifford's system is totally
inadmissible. He is perpetually presupposing
the presence of some mysterious force whose
According to Clifford's theory, to call the will free is only
a piece of tautology. In the only sense in which the will is
ever free, it is always free.
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
71
existence he has already denied—some force that
need not follow the uniformity of nature—some
fatis avolsa potestas. He betrays this in his use
of the words ' might have been. But in his
system such a mood of the verb has no place at
all. Nothing might have been but the things
that have been ; and were it not for the limitation
;
of our own knowledge of details, we should see
that it was as absurd to say a man inight have
acted otherwise than he did act, as to say that a
stream might flow up a hill.
Still, however this may be, ic will be said,
and said truly, that conscience is a fact, and the
sense of responsibility is a fact ; that no theories
can take them away ; and that, by the bestowal
of praise and blame, the conscience may be
trained, just as a warped piece of timber may be
straightened, so as to be of better service in
the future no matter what our views are as to
what might have been in the past. But even
here the old difficulty clings to us ; for, useful
as moral blame might be, we shall see that the
above view of things must, if it were ever fully
adopted by us, completely paralyse our powers
of blaming. Clifford says very truly that our
right, or, in other words, our ability, to award
72
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
blame, is in proportion to the presence or
the absence of extenuating circumstances. When
a man, for instance, has so strong an inclination
to drink that we cannot conceive any conscience
strong enough to overmaster it, he is not any
more responsible for drinking than he would be
for coughing if his glottis were irritated. “But if
it is not inconceivable,' says Clifford,' that a very
strong conscience fully brought to bear might
succeed in conquering the inclination, we take a
lenient view of the fall, but we shall still regard
it as a fall, and say that the man is responsible.
Now between the two classes of actions which
Clifford means to indicate there is indeed a
difference ; but he has quite misconceived its
nature. The difference has no reference to the
past or to what might have been, but to the
future and what we conceive will be. Accord-
ing to Clifford's theory, we are not justified in
blaming a man because he has acted in one
way when he might have acted in another, but
because, if we blame him for what he has done,
he will be less likely to offend in the same way
again. If we adopt this view, however, there
is one point to remember. The blame in this.
case would be as desirable and as beneficial as
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
73
in the other, but we shall find ourselves unable
to award it. As Clifford himself. tells us, blame
diminishes as extenuating circumstances multi-
ply; and, on Clifford's theory of human action,
every offence has not only extenuating circum-
stances but circumstances that are completely
exculpating. It is impossible for the worst of
men to commit an action which the best of men
under like circumstances would not have com-
mitted likewise.
We might dwell, did space permit us, on
certain further results of the theory we are now
considering. We might show how the logical
result of it must be, that, if we are any of us
responsible for anything, we are responsible not
for our own sins, but for the sins of others, and
that of those others the two most important
parts are our fathers who are dead and our
children who are unborn. But this particular
matter would involve a long discussion as to
the meaning of words and the associations they
carry with them.
It is more to our present
purpose to note what we were before speaking
of-the way in which Clifford has confused the
perception that a thing would be desirable with
the assumption that it would be possible ; for it
74
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
is this confusion that is most typical of his
school, and which runs through all their more
immediate preaching as to general human action,
and through all their prophecies as to the future
that is before humanity.
This leads us to approach the matter from a
slightly different point of view. The end and
object of our existence is, we have seen, to
promote the progress of the community, and
this progress is to be effected through the edu-
cation and the intensification of the conscience.
Clifford, it will be seen, here agrees with Mr.
Herbert Spencer. Conscience, as conceived of
by him, is an inherited tribal instinct traversing
the individual appetites. Its voice is an in-
stinctive voice, and its biddings, as Clifford
expressly says, do not rest, in the individual,
upon their true reasons. But what he and his
school propose to do is to alter this state of
things ; they propose to make conscience rest
its biddings on their true reasons, and guide them
'by a conscious discovery of the tribal purpose
it serves. But they forget that in doing this
they are putting conscience in an entirely new
position. Its instinctive character disappears ;
nay, more, as conscience it ceases to exist. It
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
75
resolves itself into the ordinary intellectual
judgment as to the means towards an end, the
end in this case being presupposed the most
desirable. And thus the problem for the pro-
phets of progress is not how to strengthen con-
science, but it is simpler and more direct. It is
how to strengthen our conscious devotion to the
community, so as to make it more and more domi-
nant over our conscious devotion to ourselves.
And it is the difficulty and even the nature
of this problem that Clifford and his school seem
entirely to overlook. They imagine that their
system will leave them the old power of con-
science intact, and that the changes of view that
they introduce will only add to it. But they
forget one thing. They are right, on their own
grounds, in calling conscience instinctive, inas-
much as its biddings do not rest on their true
reasons ; but they do rest on reasons, even
though the reasons be not true. It is only
through an assignment of reasons, through a
statement of facts, and the drawing a conclusion
from them, that conscience has the smallest
power of enforcing its orders. This reasoning
may be sometimes more articulate, and some-
times less, but it is always there ; and one of
76
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD's
the propositions contained in it is a personal
menace to the individual. It not only gives an
order, but it gives a curse or a blessing, and
of one or other of these it foretells the sure
fulfilment. It is, as Cardinal Newman has said,
not only a king, but a prophet and a priest like-
wise. The truth of this statement, be it re-
membered, is quite independent of any theolo-
gical doctrine. As a doctrine it
As'a doctrine it may be true or
false, but it certainly is true as an analysis of
what conscience has been felt to be by the
common consciousness of the mass of conscien-
tious men. Now, according to Clifford's theory,
conscience must be powerless as a king, and an
impostor as a priest and a prophet. All its
influence is, in fact, founded on a false prestige ;
and what Clifford and his school have fondly
and foolishly imagined is that they can destroy
the prestige and yet retain the power. They
imagine they can remove the fulcrum, and yet
employ the lever.
The same singular oversight, the same in-
ability to grasp one entire side of the question,
is to be found even more plainly when Clifford
deals with Christianity as a fact in the history
of progress. The Jews, he informs us, were an
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
77
eminently conscientious race, because of the
difficulties with which, as a tribe, they had to
contend in the struggle for existence; and that
struggle was successful because their conscience
was rightly informed.
The moral teaching of Christ (says Clifford), . is
the expression of the conscience of a people who had fought
long and heroically for their national existence. In that long
and terrible conflict they had learnt the supreme and over-
whelming importance of conduct, ... the weakness and
uselessness of solitary and selfish efforts, the necessity for a
man who would be a man to lose his poor single personality
in the being of a greater and nobler combatant--the nation.
And they said all this, after their fashion of short and
potent sayings, perhaps better than any other men have said
it before or since. It was this heroic people that produced
the morality of the Sermon on the Mount.
This morality it is that is the one thing of value
in Christianity
. ; and this Clifford is confident
that the world will go on practising with ever-
increasing diligence. But of how the world has
been induced to practise it in the past he
says
nothing, he thinks nothing. The importance of
the part played by the ideal of Christ of a
Christ either divine or deified, an object at once
of love, of worship, and of imitation-seems to
have altogether escaped him. Study of history,
observation of life, and ordinary common sense,
73
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
seem alike to have left one half of his mind a
complete blank ; and whilst speculating on
what would be good, if men were to do it, he
has forgotten to consider for a moment what it
is likely that men will do.
As a parallel to his above account of the
origin of Christianity, we may mention his
account of the Reformation in England, which
is equally ludicrous in the ignorance and the
naïve arrogance it betrays. The cause of the
event in question was, he says, simple and
single. It was none other than our great
characteristic as Englishmen; it was the prin-
ciple which forbids the priest to come between
a man and his conscience.' Any statement
more utterly false than this it is hardly possible
to imagine. The English Reformation, as every
schoolboy knows, was at first a political event,
not a religious one ; and the hatred of priests
as priests, so far from being a cause of it, was
only a late and a long-delayed result. Mr.
Pollock himself is obliged to admit that Clifford
studied history poetically, not scientifically.
We should ourselves prefer to say that he
studied it in the spirit of prejudice rather than
in the spirit of poetry ; and, when we say that
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
79
the examples we have just adduced are fair, if
not favourable, specimens of his historical criti-
cism, the verdict will hardly be thought unjust.
On whatever period he touches, his treatment of
it is the same. Nor, when we consider his case,
is this much to be wondered at. Of historical
knowledge he had evidently only smatterings,
and even these were fragmentary and discon-
nected ; and he went to these smatterings, as he
himself almost acknowledges, with the deter-
mination to make them bear witness to foregone
conclusions, of which the most important was
that all goodness was of purely human origin,
and that the chief enemies of goodness were
priesthoods generally, and the Christian priest-
hood in particular. We are far from attributing
such a procedure to any dishonesty in Clifford's
mind, but wonder certainly arises that to an
honest man such a procedure should have been
possible. The answer to this is to be found, we
think, in that fault of Clifford and his school we
were just now indicating, their utter want of
any practical knowledge of human nature. Men
and women, with all their complex motives, were
not, to Clifford, realities. Simple, upright, and
prejudiced in a certain way himself, he imagined
80
PROFESSOR CLIFFORD'S
that the great mass of human kind would be
simple, upright, and prejudiced, just as he was.
And the little esoteric ambitions and contempts
of the common-room or the lecture hall, he mis-
took for the emotions and aspirations of the
human kind in general.
And this is what we meant when we said
that Clifford's teaching was to be best under-
stood through his biography. Not only, as we
have seen already, will his theory of things not
hold together for a moment, but it is utterly
unfit for any practical application. Considering
Clifford's genius, such a result is singular ; but
we conceive it to be explained thus. Clifford's
views of life and his desires to influence men
were not what they were because he was an
accurate thinker or a student of science or of
philosophy; they were what they were because
he came of the Christian middle class of England,
and because every thought and every feeling he
possessed was steeped in the beliefs and the senti-
ments of that class; and when he tells us about
the nobleness of humanity and the grandeur of
our Father Man, the emotions expressed are not
the result of his scientific observations or of his
later experiences, but they are the echo or the
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
81
survival of emotions that had been ingrained
in him at his mother's knee or under the arches
of Exeter Cathedral. Clifford, as a practical
preacher, as a dealer with his brother men,
differed little in his knowledge and his feelings
from an ordinary Bible-reader. What he did
differ in from the Bible-reader was that the
latter retains the original theoretical framework
of his feelings; whereas Clifford had removed
this, and was obliged to supply another. That
he failed to see how unsound that other was
theoretically, and how inefficient practically, can
be explained also by an appeal to his life. His
feelings seem, in reality, to have been the thing
that guided him ; he was determined that his
non-theistic theories should support these, and
therefore any non-theistic theory that seemed to
support them he was ready to accept as sound.
Whilst as to the practical side of the question,
just as his bringing up had made him deeply
religious, and had left his morality, when his
religion went, strongly touched with emotion, so
had it left him unversed in the ways of the
world at large ; and whilst endowing him with
what, as a private character, we must call a
beautiful innocence, it had left him in what,
G
82
CLIFFORD'S LECTURES AND ESSAYS
as a public teacher, we must call a fatal igno-
rance.
If what we have said applied to Clifford only,
it would hardly perhaps have been worth say-
ing ; but, as we have observed already, it applies
not to Clifford only, but to the whole modern
school. If, as many think, that school is a
really formidable foe to religion, it will be at
any rate some comfort to know that it will
certainly not destroy religion by replacing it.
Its prestige, further, will be rendered less
formidable if we reflect on how one of its best
instructed and most gifted spokesmen has ex-
hibited himself in these two volumes as hopelessly
untrained in philosophy, hopelessly ill-read in
history, and without the smallest grasp of that
refractory human character of which he boasts
that in the future his school will have the sole
guidance.
83
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS.1
To all admirers of Mr. Tennyson's genius his
last volume should be one of singular interest ;
and this for two reasons. It not only claims
our best attention for itself, but it turns our
attention even more forcibly to its author. It
throws a new light on his whole position and
history, and at once helps and incites us to
reconsider them. The poems comprised in it
are of unequal merit and importance; but their
strength and weakness in this way are both
alike instructive. By-and-by we shall speak
of them more in detail. It will be enough at
present to make a brief allusion to one of them
—the single poem of Rizpah.' Of this astonish-
ing production it has been well said, that were
all the rest of the author's works destroyed,
this alone would at once place him amongst the
first of the world's poets. Such was the verdict
? Ballads and Poems. By Alfred Tennyson. London : 1880.
G 2
84
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
pronounced by Mr. Swinburne. It has all his
characteristic generosity, and hardly anything of
his characteristic exaggeration.
Now to many men whose opinions are worth
considering, an event of this kind must have
been quite out of their calculations. It has been
thought by many that, for a number of years
past, Mr. Tennyson's powers have been more or
less declining; and the decline they date probably
from the publication of “Enoch Arden.' With
this view of the matter we do not ourselves
agree,
but we by no means hold it groundless. We
hold, on the contrary, that it embodies an im-
portant truth, but a truth apprehended in a false
and confused way. It is this confusion, we think,
that the present volume will dissipate; in what
manner we shall endeavour to show presently.
Of many men of genius it may be said truly
that their powers declined towards the latter
years of their lives, and in some cases altogether
left them. Not to go far afield, we need think
but of Scott and Southey, or of Swift, who
expired a driveller and a show. Here we have
instances of a certain decline of powers, which,
in a larger or less degree, is no unusual thing ;
and when it has been said of a genius that his
6
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
85
powers showed signs of failing him, it has been
meant generally, and probably meant truly, that
a certain change had taken place in his brain.
There are other cases, however, in which similar
signs occur, but the cause to which they are due
is altogether different. It is external, it is not
internal. No change is involved in the brain of
the man in question. His powers may still
exist in all their earlier vigour. What does not
exist as it once did is the earlier stimulus to use
them. The powers of some men, for instance,
have been mainly roused by poverty, those of
others by ambition; and with the achievement
either of fame or riches the powers have not
decayed, they have only been employed languidly.
Mr. Tennyson's case, we conceive, is analogous
in one way to these. We do not mean that
either fame or wealth has affected in any degree
the exercise of his genius, but that the cause
that has affected it is equally external. It is
not in him, it is without him. His last volume
must convince us that his vigour is unimpaired.
His sight is not dim, nor his bodily strength
abated. We may compare him to a mirror
reflecting the sky's light on us, which was
once dazzling, but which has slowly been growing
86
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
dimmer; and the cause we shall find to be not
that the mirror is tarnished, but one very different
—that the sun is sinking.
We have not chosen this last image at ran-
dom. The days have long gone by since the man
of genius was looked upon as a kind of mysterious
aerolite fallen to earth from heaven, and connected
with his surroundings in only an accidental way.
He is recognised now as the special outcome of
his age; and he is conditioned by its conditions,
even while he assists to change them. This re-
mark will apply to all genius, but we are speak-
ing now with a special view to the poet's. The
poet is, as it were, at once a mirror and a burn-
ing-glass. He receives the light and the images
that are round him ; he intensifies the one, and
he reduces the other to order : but the spectrum
of this reflected world still depends on the actual
world it reflects. This is true even of those poets.
who are said to be most original. The word
original indeed, in this connexion, has been a
source of great confusion, and it still serves to
perpetuate an entirely false conception. It is
supposed commonly to be a word of the highest
praise when applied to a poet's genius, and the
judgment conveyed by it seems to amount to
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
87
this—that the poet's chief ideas spring from
himself alone, and that he has not acquired or
chosen them from any external source. Now the
truth is, that could this be said with accuracy of
any ideas at all, it could be said not of the
greatest, but only of the most contemptible ;
and if we use the word in question with the
meaning above referred to, we shall find more
originality in the eccentricities of a baby than
we shall in the pages of a Shakespeare. The
sources of the highest poetry are, on the contrary,
essentially external, and often borrowed from
that which has preceded the poet or from that
which surrounds him. Nor is this true only of
plots and of constructions; it is true also of
thoughts, and true in a deeper way. The great
thoughts of the world have always matured
slowly; they have never sprung full-grown from
the head of any Thunderer; and when they have
burst on an age as new from the lips of any poet,
they have been thoughts that were already
existing, only existing unrecognised. The poet
has evoked them from the age, he has not added
them to it.
And is this all, it may perhaps be asked-is
this all that the greatest poets do for us? We
88
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
world as
answer that this is far more than it seems to be.
We have compared the poet to a mirror, we have
compared his works to a reflection ; but the
mirror and the reflection are both of a special
kind. What is shown us is an image of the
common world we live in, but it is not that
common eyes see it. Spirits are
reflected as well as bodies; bodies themselves
become half-transparent. As we look our eyes
are opened, the invisible is revealed to us, we are
shown our own existence under new and un-
expected aspects. The hopes, and thoughts, and
doubts that have been hovering in the air around
us, troubling all of us and eluding all of us, have
been compelled by the poet to put on fitting
bodies—to assume a ' questionable shape.' What
the poet does is to reveal an epoch to itself. No
poet can do more than this ; only the greatest
poets can do so much. But more is comprised
in this than there may at first sight seem to be.
In the vulgar sense no great thoughts may be
original, but practically the man may be well
said to originate them who makes them arrrange
and show themselves, who confronts the
the age with
its own image, and who points its aspirations to
the goal they have been dimly seeking for.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
89
If this be accepted as the great poet's function,
we shall realise two points as to the great poet's
genius. We shall realise first how great that
genius has to be. The poet's mind can reflect
those things only with which it is itself in
sympathy, and, to reflect the character of an age,
it must be in sympathy with many things. It
must have grasped the science and the philosophy
by which the intellect of the age is either ruled
or agitated ; it must have the same grasp on
religious and political feeling. These require-
ments must be remembered, and how great these
requirements are. But there is something more
besides. We must remember that be the genius
never so great, it can grasp and assimilate nothing
but what is present for it to assimilate ; and that
its nature, be it what it will, is subdued to what
it works in.
We have been led into making the above re-
marks because, in a singularly clear way, Mr.
Tennyson is an illustration of the truth of them.
In his poetry, more clearly than in that of
most poets, we can recognise his own age re-
flected, and perceive the real relation between art
and nature ; indeed, from a study of his more
mature poems one might almost construct the
90
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
spiritual and even the political history of his
epoch. That such a history would be complete
we do not say. It is given to no one man to
understand his own epoch completely, and there
are doubtless forces at work in the world at
present that have eluded Mr. Tennyson. To
say this is not to disparage his genius. What
he has failed to do does but show that he is not
greater than the greatest men; what he has done
shows that he is very nearly their equal. The
more we study his best and sincerest works, the
more shall we realise how wide have been his
sympathies, how varied his knowledge, and how
firm has been his grasp of whatever matter he
has mastered. The speculative philosophy, the
scientific knowledge of his age; the bearings of
these upon religion, and the bearings of religion
upon conduct; the passions of a people either
for peace or war, for order or for liberty ; the
dark and the bright side of civilisation and
material progress; the self-assertion of the
people as against the claims of birth and privi-
lege; and again the claims of culture, and the
sense of noblesse oblige—all these has Mr. Tenny-
son understood and assimilated. In his powers
of understanding and sympathy he is many-
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
91
minded, not only many-sided. He is not one
man, but a set of men. He is at once meta-
physician and physicist, sceptic, and theologian,
democrat and aristocrat, radical and royalist,
fierce patriot and far-seeing cosmopolitan ; and
he has revealed to the
age the strange interaction
of these varied characters, and how the beliefs
and the passions of each modify and are modified
by those of all the others.
If we will but bear in mind Mr. Tennyson's
relation to his age, and the history of that age
during the past thirty-five years of his life, we
shall better understand the history of his own
genius, and of what has seemed to many the
decline of it. We shall see that in reality it has
not declined at all, and that it is the age that has
changed, not he. His own powers still remain
what they were. All he has lacked latterly has
been adequate use to put them to.
We purpose
first to consider what these powers are—to con-
sider, that is (if we may again use the simile),
what is the material of the mirror before we
criticise the reflection.
Poets are divided commonly into two great
classes, for which the current antithetic names
are lyrical and dramatic. The division is a true
92
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
one, and corresponds with a well-known fact ;
but the names, we think, are both inadequate
and confusing. The nature of the difference
which they serve so ill to indicate, is we con-
ceive, this. Each class of poet exhibits human
nature ; but the one does so through the charac-
teristics that individualise men, the other through
the characteristics that unite them. The one
shows us human characters, the other the human
character. Shakespeare is a poet of the first
order, Mr. Tennyson of the second. It will be
seen that, as a rule, and with but one or two
marked exceptions, the characters Mr. Tennyson
has treated with most effect are of interest
because they are without any private person-
ality. The sentiments and the thoughts are
appropriate to the average man or woman, and
all that is individual in the case is the material
or the mental circumstances. Let us take, for
instance, the fine poem of Ulysses, and con-
trast it with The Northern Farmer. The first
of these is typical of Mr. Tennyson's usual treat-
ment; the last is an exception to it. The
Northern farmer is a special, an individual
character. He is of interest to us because he is
strange and external to us. To borrow a phrase
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
93
from philosophy that is rather plain than ele-
gant, he is emphatically the not-me. But with
Ulysses the case is exactly opposite. His feel-
ings, his aspirations interest us because, or in so
far as, they are a fragment of the me.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains : but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence.
Let us compare
All these, it is plain, are not individual
thoughts and sentiments. They are what,
under the required conditions, are to some
extent shared by every man.
them with those of the Northern farmer. There
is a bizarre likeness between the two, which will
make the difference clearer, as in both cases the
thing represented is an active man confronting
the approach of death.
Do godamoighty knaw what a's doing a-taä kin' o' mea ?
I beänt wonn as saws 'ere a beän an' yonder a pea;
An' Squoire ’ull be sa mad an’all-a' dear a' dear!
And I'a managed for Squoire coom Michaelmas thutty year.
94
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
It will be seen that the idea in the farmer's
mind is much the same as that attributed to
Ulysses. Both men think it vile
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use.
Both long to save something from that eternal
silence.' But this longing is specialised in the
one case ; it is universalised, by symbolism, in
the other. Now it is true that, in the case of the
· Northern Farmer,' Mr. Tennyson has specialised
with singular success.
He has done the same
thing also in certain other poems. But if we
take his genius and his works as a whole, to do
this is not characteristic of him. What he does
for the most part is the exact opposite of this ;
and it is through such opposite treatment that
his chief work has been accomplished. It has
been said of Hamlet that he is not a man, but
that he is man. A similar, though not the
same remark, might be made of Mr. Tennyson's
chief creations. We can say of nearly all of them
that they are not men ; we can say of no one of
them that he is man ; but they are each of them
certain parts of man. They represent the general
human character, as Mr. Tennyson sees it de-
veloped in certain directions, or stirred and some-
times distorted by certain events or passions.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
95
ލް
Few students of the Arthurian Idylls can fail
to be struck with this.
The men and women
described in them are no doubt diverse ; but they
are not, properly speaking, so much diverse
characters as diverse characteristics. Arthur, for
instance, is virtue ; he is not a virtuous man :
he is virtue, distilled out of man in general, not
embodied in one man in particular. The same
may be said of Lancelot; he too is a distillation.
He is simply Arthur, with a baser element added.
And these two figures are typical.
All the men
and women of the Idylls are creatures of a like
substance, with but one or two exceptions, and
these unimportant. Contrast Mr. Tennyson's
heroes with those of the Homeric poems, and the
fact is at once apparent. Achilles, Hector, and
Ulysses—these are men, they are not qualities.
They are embodiments ; Mr. Tennyson's are
disembodiments. In the Homeric poems we see
various men and women ; in Mr. Tennyson's
poems we see self under various conditions ; we
see self as it may be, or as it might be.
I am thyself: what hast thou done to me?
And I, and I, thyself—lo, each one saith.
Nor must the variety of the forms mislead us in
which self is thus presented. In all, or in nearly
96
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
all, there is one of two things—the common male
self or the common female self ; only they are
shown to us under all influences. They are
shown us modified by youth and age, by thought,
by passion, and by affection, by moral perplexities,
and by evil or good volition. But through all
these varied circumstances we have still the
common character. The remarkable scene in
which Vivien ruins Merlin may strike us, at first
sight, as dramatic, in the common sense of the
word. But it is really not so.
The actors in it
are really not a man and woman. They are the
wise man's weakness and the wicked woman's
attraction. Mr. Tennyson, it is true, has at-
tempted to make one of them more than this;
but in so far as he has done so, he has failed.
He has tried to make his Vivien an individual.
He has tried to give her some special personal
character. He has given her certain tricks of
speech and ways of smiling saucily,' and he has
doubtless accomplished something in the direc-
tion aimed at. But with what result ? Vivien
as an abstraction is worthy of Mr. Tennyson.
Vivien as a special young lady is worthy of
Mr. Anthony Trollope. According to the com-
mon use of the word dramatic, we doubt if Mr.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
97
Tennyson has been dramatic in any memorable
way, excepting in the case of The Northern
Farmer. Gawain is a spirited sketch ; Limours
is a delicate one ; Sir Kaye the seneschal though
slight and coarse, is a distinct one ; and there
are many more of the same degree of merit.
But it is not here that we must look for Mr.
Tennyson's true powers. We must look for
them, as we have said already, in his revelations
of man and woman, not in his creations of sepa-
rate men and women.
It seems to be accepted as very nearly an
axiom, that creative art, such as that of the
Homeric poems or of Shakespeare, is, of all forms
of art, the highest. We are not concerned to
dispute or deny this. We may concede that Mr.
Tennyson's art is but art of the second order ;
but it has certain qualities of its own that belong
to no other kind. It may not do all that creative
art can do, but it does certain things that creative
art can not do ; and it is suited in a special
manner to the age that Mr. Tennyson has been
born in. It is on this point that we now desire
to dwell.
Mr. Tennyson's age is in many ways peculiar.
We have contrasted his art already with that of
H
98
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
Shakespeare. We may contrast his age with
that of Shakespeare also. In both, life and
thought have been exceptionally active ; but the
activity has taken very different forms, and has
been the result of very different forces. In the
first, it was the activity of action. In the
second, it has been the activity of reflection.
For Shakespeare the question was, what shall
men do ? For Mr. Tennyson it has been, what
shall man do ? Life, as Shakespeare knew it,
was intenser in some ways than it has ever been
since ; and thought, in some ways, was as active
then as now. But thought was quickened with-
out being bewildered ; and scepticism was not
afraid of itself from suspecting, in any degree, its
own ultimate tendencies. As to theology, it is
true, the human mind was in a ferment ; but
scepticism as to theologies was but a sign of
faith in theology. The infinite solemnity of
every human life, the infinite importance of each
separate human destiny—these were things that
were not questioned or doubted of.
As to
thought and feeling on practical moral questions,
the ethics of Catholic Christendom were still
dominant. The Catholic ideal was still the un-
questioned standard.
What is noble in man,
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
99
and what is pure in woman-all men were
agreed on these points ; and as to the value as
well as to the nature of virtue their consent was
equally unanimous.
The extraordinary power
of the great Elizabethan drama is mainly due to
this. Every action in life, to the thought of that
age, was either a triumph or a catastrophe ; and
the strongest evidence of this fact is, in many
places, the poet's silence about it. What we
never doubt of, we have no need to affirm. Mr.
Ruskin has divided poets into two classes, one
of which, he says, has the ascending vision, the
other the descending. Thus Dante looked up-
wards to heaven, Shakespeare downwards to
farth. And this may be true enough. But
though Shakespeare may only have seen the
earth, he saw it by the light of heaven ; and the
same is true, too, of his fellow-poets and his epoch.
But now all is changed. What in Shake-
speare's days men took for granted, in Mr.
Tennyson's they have had to fight for, to
question, and to reconsider. They have had to
seek for the site of their city, not to make de-
signs for their houses. Human nature, as Mr.
Tennyson has found it, is at a singular crisis in
its history. When he first began to look about
H 2
100
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
him, 'ideas,' as George Eliot says, 'with fresh
vigour were making armies of themselves.' New
scientific knowledge, new political aspirations
were forcing themselves into the common con-
sciousness, and the old elements with the new
were forming unfamiliar combinations. The
world was waking up to the condition that for
three centuries it had been preparing for itself,
and it was waking up to it with hope, and fear,
and wonder. It was in such a state that Mr.
Tennyson found it—a state unparalleled in any
preceding age ; and this fact is reflected in all his
works. He found the common circumstances by
which the men of his time were united more im-
portant than their private and personal varieties.
They differed more from the men of other ages
than they did from each other ; or this common
difference was, at all events, of a more pressing
and profound significance. Human souls might
each have their own vicissitudes ; but the human
soul was undergoing one more important. The
spiritual climate was rapidly changing round it,
and it had to adapt itself to new fashions of life.
How should this be done? That was the great
question. What was the extent, and what the
nature, of the change ? How much of the old
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
101
ܪ
could man retain ? How should this much be
reconciled with what was strange and new ?
The issue was one of infinite complexity. Most
men could but discern some fragment of it. Mr.
Tennyson has discerned, we do not say the
whole, but more of it certainly than any of his
English contemporaries. He may not on any
subject possess the knowledge of a specialist;
but he has grasped with astonishing accuracy the
salient points--the points of common moment
in countless branches of thought and of dis-
covery, and he has seen their bearing on the
daily life of man.
How accurate this grasp has been, we may
illustrate by a single example—the example of
the short poem of 'Lucretius.' The beauties of
this masterpiece have met with but little re-
cognition generally ; and from the very nature
of the subject it must necessarily be obscure to
many. Its poetic qualities, however, we are now
not concerned to insist upon ; what we refer to
is the intellectual power displayed in it. The
Lucretian philosophy is in places very obscure,
and it has been beyond the power of many of the
most accomplished scholars to expound clearly
some of the author's scientific conceptions. But
102
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
Mr. Tennyson, in his short poem, has done more
than a score of coinmentators. On the dark
places of the 'De rerum naturâ' his verses fall
like a beam of sunlight. He conveys more in a
line than others have done in chapters. Never,
for instance, has the aim of the Roman poet been
interpreted so vividly as in the following pas-
sage, where Mr. Tennyson makes him speak of
My golden work in which I told a truth
That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel,
And numbs the Fury's ringlet-snake, and plucks
The mortal soul from out immortal hell.
But an example can be given more striking even
than this. Of all the obscure parts of the sys-
tem of Lucretius, the most obscure is perhaps
his theory of vision. It is a difficult thing to
understand clearly : it is still more difficult to
express clearly. Any student who has tried to
master this matter, and comes fresh upon Mr.
Tennyson's allusions to it, can hardly fail to
be startled by the sudden illumination they
afford him. Lucretius is made to describe his
impure dreams as
The phantom husks of something foully done,
And fleeting through the boundless universe.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
103
And in another moment he goes on thus to
question himself :-
How should the mind, except it loved them, clasp
These idols to herself? or do they fly
Now thinner, and now thicker, like the flakes
In a fall of snow, and so press in, perforce
Of multitude, as crowds that in an hour
Of civic tumult jam the doors, and bear
The keepers down, and throng, their rags and they
The basest, far into that council-ball
Where sit the best and stateliest of the land ?
In these passages, more especially in the single
line
The phantom husks of something foully done-
there is a grasp displayed of an extremely intri-
cate subject, and a magical power of making an
obscure subject lucid, to which in any writer it
would be hard to find a parallel. And as Mr.
Tennyson has mastered ancient thought, so in
the same way has he mastered modern. And
herein lies one of the chief secrets of his influ-
He has had a broad intellectual grasp of
those unique and diverse circumstances that
have given its character to our age.
The poet, however, needs more than such
powers of intellect ; and Mr. Tennyson possesses
ence.
104
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
more. We have said that what he deals with is
the common human character, and he under-
stands and he treats this like a master. We
may describe him as busy with two distinct
heroes—the Spirit of the Age, and the Spirit of
Human Nature; and his theme is the latter
of these as making terms with the former. .
Human nature in its broadest and most general
sense-of this he has a consummate knowledge.
He knows its good and evil, and all its various
workings, whether glad or sad, tender or terrible.
He knows the qualities in it that are of all time,
as well as the circumstances of it that are of his
own time. Such knowledge, on its more philo-
sophic side, he manifested very early.
There are
three poems of his, all written before he was
twenty-six, which most men have to live ten
years longer before they can understand pro-
perly. We refer to “The Palace of Art, The
Vision of Sin,' and the short stanzas called
· Will. All these show a piercing vision, a
prophetic vision also, of the needs of the human
soul, and the result on it of certain courses.
The young man writes with all the wisdom of
the old ; and in the first two of the three poems
named the wisdom is all the more remarkable,
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
105
because the language it is expressed in is some-
times almost puerile in its freshness. As an
artistic production the Palace of Art' is poor ;
so is the 'Vision of Sin' also. In neither is the
style sufficiently chastened. The poet, with a
boy's glee, has introduced boyish ornament.
But the matter is in startling contrast. What
he deals with is no youthful feeling, but the
barren years that succeed to a youth misspent.
The real burden of his story is the sorrows of
the soul in middle and in old age, and these are
described with all the prescient force of genius.
The bitterness and the lonely cynicism that are
the doom of vice and selfishness are not realised
by most men till the time has come to feel
them ; but Mr. Tennyson knew or foreknew
them when he was yet in the dawn of manhood.
At the very time when he could describe the
purest and the most trusting love—the love of a
young man—with all a young man's sympathy,
he could describe the blighted soul, in this way,
also :
Deep dread and loathing of her solitude
Fell on her, from which mood was born
Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood
Laughter at her self-scorn.
106
TENYYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
But in dark corners of her palace stood
Uncertain shapes; and unawares
On white-eyed phantasmis weeping tears of blood,
And horrible nightmares,
And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame,
And, with dim fretted foreheads all,
On corpses three-months-old at noon she came,
That stood against the wall.
In all this there is an almost ghastly vividness,
and of the Vision of Sin' we may say the same
thing, whilst in the poem of Will’ the well-
known concluding stanza has all the precision
of a profound philosophic statement, and all the
passionate despair of a soul that has proved the
tragic truth of it.
He seems as one whose footsteps halt,
Toiling in immeasurable sand,
And o'er a weary sultry land,
Far beneath a blazing vault,
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,
The city sparkles like a grain of salt.
Seeing Mr. Tennyson thus a master of the
more complex problems of life, and those pre-
sumably most remote from his own experience,
it is small wonder that he was master of things
more near to him. Instances will occur to all,
so readily that we need not cite them, of his
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
107
early command of the universal passions-of
maternal, of sexual, and of divine love; of the
desire for rest and the desire for action ; of hope
and of sorrow. Such poems as 'Locksley Hall, '
‘The May Queen,' and 'The Lotos-Eaters' have,
for this reason, become household words. As
he has lived on, the same power has become
matured, and we can pronounce him, as we
know him now, one of the greatest masters of
pathos to be found in any age. His command,
in short, is over all those emotions and situations
which iinpart their own interest to the persons
concerned with them, and do not derive it from
them. Within such limits he has few rivals.
These qualifications, however, would have
been but of small avail, had it not been for one
other. We have spoken already of his matter.
What we speak of now is his form. It may be
doubted if any poet since the days of Horace
and Virgil has been so great a master of the
mere art of expression ; and there is more in this
than there may at first sight seem to be. It
may be thought that expression is a mere affair
of words ; but it is not so. We include in ex-
pression not only the words which convey the
meaning directly, but the scenic surroundings,
108
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
the remote allusions, and the side touches that
accompany it, and by which the mind and the
imagination are prepared and tuned for its re-
ception. Such art is one of the last refinements,
one of the last luxuries of poetry; and it is not
characteristic of the poets of the greatest ages.
It is proper to poets who have had to sing under
difficulties, and who, to collect listeners, are
obliged first to fascinate them. The interest in
Homer lies mainly in what he says ; in Horace,
in Virgil, and in Mr. Tennyson, it lies equally
in how they say it.
The relation of the thought
to the expression charms us, as well as the rela-
tion of the thought to ourselves : it is possible,
indeed, that the latter may be quite trivial, and
yet the former give us great pleasure. Mr.
Tennyson's earlier verses will afford us many
examples of this. Here, for instance, are some
stanzas, which, though sufficiently slight in
meaning, have two phrases in them as felicitous
as any of Horace :
Go fetch a pint of port :
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
109
And in the same poem the poet speaks of a
vintage which
Stow'd, when classic Canning died,
In musty bins and chambers,
Had cast upon its crusted side
The gloom of ten Decembers.
The 'Lyrical Monologue,' from which these lines
are quoted, is nothing but a plaything, and not,
as a whole, a pretty one. But the nature and
the perfection of skill is sometimes best illus-
trated by the waste of it. Here is another
example of the poet's manner, on which we
shall dwell somewhat more at length.
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills ?
But cease to move so near the heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire ;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find hiu dropt upon the firths of ice,
110
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors :
But follow. Let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley ; let the wild
Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air.
So waste not thou : but come ; for all the vales
Await thee : azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
We have quoted this passage because in its short
compass there are illustrations of all Mr. Tenny-
son's chief technical excellences. The actual
meaning, the actual thought, is simple. There
is nothing in it very striking or passionate ; but
as an example of expression it is wonderful.
The thought is buoyed up, is prolonged and
amplified, as a single clause of a prayer is by
an elaborate piece of music. Other thoughts,
and remote images, are summoned from all
quarters to throw light upon it, and to make
our own feelings resonant as it touches them.
Phrases and epithets are used with an astonish-
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
111
ing precision. Flying ideas and pictures are
snared by them, as though by a hunter's lasso.
Let the wild
Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke.
In these lines we have a landscape like one
of Turner's. Every word in it is a study.
Here, again, the verse has a different quality.
Nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns.
This single touch reminds one of Milton by
the magical stimulus that it gives to the im-
agination. It produces a feeling in us as
though our thoughts were being caught away
by a wind. And all these powers are here
employed by the poet to convey a thought or a
sentiment which is in itself a commonplace.
Love is a domestic, not a transcendental passion :
that is the long and short of the whole of it.
As related to ourselves, this may not have much
interest; but as related to the way in which Mr.
Tennyson has chosen to tell it us, it must
enchant and startle every lover of poetry.
The workmanship in the above passages is
notably more precious than the material; and
112
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
we have purposely chosen them, for that reason,
as examples of Mr. Tennyson's manner. But
that is not because we think that such is the
case with him generally. On the contrary, we
hold that, in the work that is most distinctive of
him, the thought is as profound as the manner
is fine and perfect. What we have wished to
illustrate has been this. Let thought with Mr.
Tennyson be either profound or shallow, he has
always, in expressing it, two aims present. One
is to express the thought; the other is to con-
nect with the expression some added literary
pleasure He is perpetually offering his audi-
ence a large bribe to listen to him.
It is to
his astonishing skill in this way that much of
his success is due. Sometimes, indeed, the skill
overreaches its own object. He refines his
verbal workmanship to the verge of weakness,
and his allusion and imagery sometimes produce
obscurity. But take him for all in all, he ranks
the first of English poets in making the act of
expression a luxury and a perfect ornament.
To sum up, then, what we have thus far
observed about him, his chief characteristics
amount to these. In the first place, he is a man
of wide intellectual grasp. He has understood
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
113
his age, and its various complex tendencies, like
a divine, a philosopher, a politician and a
physicist. He understands, in the second place,
the common human character, and is a complete
master of its more universal manifestations. He
has studied this character with special reference
to the conditions now surrounding it. And he
has finally an unrivalled gift for expressing his
own meaning, and for compelling others to
attend to it. Thus, in studying his works, let
us be clear what we can look to find in them.
We are not to look there for complex dramatic
action, nor even for the unfolding of any great
and sustained story. Small stories he tells well
and skilfully ; but to these his power is limited.
The Arthurian Idylls, as a whole, it is true,
suggest a story, but they suggest it only, they
do not tell it. They are stars in a constellation,
and the astronomer fills the figure in. They
but approach an epic near enough to make us
feel how far they are from it. Nor are we to ex-
pect from him, on the other hand, any birdlike
lyrical outbursts. The true lyrist presents us
with one special man-himself. The true dra-
matist presents us with many men.
Mr. Tenny
son does neither. He presents us with the
:I
114
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
us ;
common self-common to him and all of he
presents us with such of its workings and
vicissitudes as we might conceivably all ex-
perience; and he presents us with it in special
connection with the conditions of the present
century
And now let us examine a little more closely
from what standpoint he does this. His position
we think, at least to a late period, can be defined
with sufficient clearness. He may be said to
represent and to have helped largely to formu-
late the scientific optimism of the early Victorian
epoch. That optimism then was not what it is
In the world of thought events have been
moving rapidly. The last few decades have
done the work of centuries, and it needs an
effort to realise how matters stood but forty,
thirty, or even twenty years ago. This, how-
ever, we must try to do, if we would understand
Mr. Tennyson's history. The facts of the case
are simple, and can be stated briefly. Mr.
Tennyson's development has coincided with two
great events—the growth in England of the
modern democratic principle, and the general
diffusion of modern religious scepticism—and
with both of these events his career is closely
now.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
115
associated. The earliest poems of his which he
has thought worth preserving appeared a few
months after the passing of the first Reform
Bill, and must have been composed during the
times of popular agitation that preceded it. А.
year later, at a cost of twenty millions, slavery.
was abolished in all the British colonies, and
for the first time it could be said that our rule
was over none but freemen. Two years later
was seen the birth of a national education
system, and the passing of a new Poor Law.
The people at large were finding their voice on
all sides, and in many quarters began to use it
with violence. Demands were made presently
for further parliamentary reforms, and the po-
litical privileges of property were attacked openly,
and not without success. At the same time
there was formed an Anti-Corn-Law League
and the gospel of free trade was preached with a
religious enthusiasm. In seven years' time the
preaching bore its fruit. The Corn Laws were
repealed in 1846, and the Free-trade policy
under Lord John Russell was carried at once
into every branch of commerce. Six years after-
wards came the great industrial exhibition,
which contained contributions from nearly every
I 2
116
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
nation. This was a huge material symbol of a
new form of optimism and at the same time a
stimulus to it. Popular sympathy and imagina-
tion began to take a wider flight, and visions
filled the air of a universal human brother-
hood. Wars were to cease; there was to
be a millennium of trade and of benevolence.
Events, however, soon convinced the most
sanguine that such a consummation was to
be, at any rate, not immediate. But a year
or two passed, and England was at war with
Russia, and the spirit of militant patriotism
dealt somewhat roughly with the mild enthusi-
asm of humanity.
The events we have thus briefly glanced at
cover a period of some twenty-five years, and it is
of that period in especial that Mr. Tennyson is the
interpreter. Its ideas have been the ideas of his
heart, and its hopes have been the hopes of his
heart. We have touched as yet on its political
aspect only. Its religious aspect is no less
remarkable. During that quarter of a century
science and scientific scepticism, for the first
time in England, began to be widely popular
and to leaven thought at large. For the first
time the general lay mind began to examine
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
117
critically the great teachings of Revelation, to
confront them with those of science, and to be
startled at the two as they were placed together.
Men who lament the fact, and men who rejoice
over .it, are to be heard now on all sides pro-
claiming the spread of infidelity; but at the
time we speak of, though so little removed from
ours, the national faith was strong. Men were
not then prepared for even such moderate
exhibitions of free-thought as 'Ecce Homo' or
the volume of ' Essays and Reviews.' They still
felt secure in their old traditional position, and
conceived that the modern view of the Cosmos
could be harmonised easily with their own. In
the religious world for a time this produced a
strange activity, tinged with the same facile
optimism that was to be discerned in politics,
and very closely connected with it. Not only
were all peoples to be united, but all creeds were
to be united also. Some looked forward to a
union of all the sacerdotal churches, others to
the advent of some simpler form of Christianity.
But various as such hopes may have been in
detail, they had all one common quality—they
were all Christian, and they all pointed to
progress.
118
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
Such was the picture on its sunny side, but
it had its dark side as well. In the world of
thought, though as yet they worked in secret;
the spirits of denial and of materialism were
already active. Deism was dead and done with.
What the Christian had now to meet was
Atheism. And in social life as well this creed
had its counterpart. It was all very good that
the world should 'fill with commerce,' and magic
argosies be laden 'with costly bales ;' but the
cultus of trade and industry, as it was then
practically adopted, looked under certain aspects
like the most sordid and heathen Mammon-
worship. The august and inspiring spectacle of
universal progress was in danger of changing
itself into that of a struggle for base luxury.
None of these facts were lost upon Mr. Tenny-
He knew his generation both in its good
and evil; but he believed the good principle to
be the stronger of the two, and he tried to show
his generation where its own strength lay.
To this end he has dwelt throughout all
his works on certain modes of life and on cer-
tain moral qualities. He has tried to exhibit
by every means in his power their beauty and
their sanctity ; he has contrasted them with
son.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
119
their opposites, and he has done all he could to
harmonise them with their present environment.
These modes of life and these qualities are not
many in number. They amount, we think, to
these—love, friendship, domesticity, patriotism,
cosmopolitanism, and undogmatic Christianity.
He has presented them to us under every con-
ceivable form, and connected with every con-
ceivable circumstance, and he has used all his
matchless skill to bring home to his audience
their beauty or their intellectual fitness. He
tries so to show them to us that we may believe
from seeing them.
Such is his constant method when he deals
with love. The passion of the lover for him is but
the sunrise of the affections of the husband, and he
has consistently striven to connect it as such with
every thought of mental and emotional satisfac-
tion, and every image of spiritual and physical
beauty. He has linked and interfused it with all
the fairest aspects of nature with sunset and with.
sunrise, with flowers, with meadows, and a thou-
sand homely scenes, and he has done this gener-
ally with an art that conceals itself. The
picture and the passion he puts side by side,
and the two coalesce spontaneously. "Maud,
120
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
which, in our judgment, is one of the finest
love-poems in our language, is full of this
quality. There are also exquisite instances of
it in his earlier idylls. The following passage
is from one of these last. Should my shadow, '
says the lover to his beloved-he is parted for
ever from her, not by faults, but by misfortune
_ should my shadow cross thy dreams'-
Oh might it come like one that looks content,
With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth,
And point thee forward to a distant light,
Or seem to lift a burden from thy heart
And leave thee freër, till thou wake refreshed
Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown
Full quire, and morning driven her plow of pearl
Far furrowing into light the mounded rack,
Beyond the fair green field and eastern sea.
In the same way, whenever he treats this
passion, he is constantly mixing it with some
sight or sound of beauty. And these sights
and sounds are no vague abstractions. They
are things that we are all of us familiar with
;
they are the common things of our own English,
life. Mr. Tennyson's love has nothing transcen-
dental about it. Its home is the earth, and not
the air ; and here lies the secret of its power.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
121
It purifies earth because it does not disdain to
inhabit it.
Am I not the nobler through thy love?
Oh three times less unworthy! likewise thou
Art more through love.
Mr. Tennyson's whole philosophy of the subject
is comprised in these lines. In a certain sense
the philosophy is not peculiar to him, but in a
certain sense it is. Though the passion of love
is as old as human nature itself, yet in different
ages it has assumed special aspects, and taken
special places in man's moral view of life. This
is markedly true of the present century, and
true still more of those years of it which at
present we have in view. The progressive and
hopeful school of religious thinkers, all, during
that period, took one direction. The more rigid
forms of orthodoxy, they began to think, were
untenable. These, all of them, were associated
with the ascetic view of life ; and our highest duty
with regard to human affection was according to
them little more than curbing it. What the
progressive school aimed at was to reverse this
condition of things. In proportion as they
thought it hopeless to formulate what was
divine, they sought to deify what was human.
122
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
They preached a new gospel : we were not to
check our nature, but to develop it. The
delights of affection which had all along been
permitted man were no longer presented as
concessions to our weakness, but as the chief
elements of our strength. The allowed indul-
gence became the enjoined duty. We were no
longer to prevent love running away with us;
we were to make it run away with us till it
brought us to the gates of heaven.
It is this view of the matter that Mr. Tenny-
son has assimilated, and of which he is the most
perfect and the most influential spokesman.
Here at least, he teaches us, we have one thing
stable, one thing beyond the reach of scepticism,
and a nucleus and a rallying-point for all that is
valuable in life. Sensuous beauty adorns and is
hallowed by it; material refinements are chas-
tened and spiritualised by it; and the true
meaning of Christianity is unlocked by it. Mr.
Tennyson is the prophet par excellence, of affection
thus regarded ; and his two longest and most im-
portant works are a deliberate exposition of its
nature and its varied influence. The two works
we allude to are 'In Memoriam' and The
Arthurian Idylls.' The subject of both is the
same ; only it is treated under different aspects.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
123
* In Memoriam' deals with love as connected
with faith ; the ‘Idylls' deal with it as con-
nected with practice.
The former of these is in many ways unique.
In no other poem that we know of is there so
complete a fusion of profound thought and
passion. We have an intense feeling presented
to us as related to its proximate cause, and also
as adjusting itself to the deepest claims of
philosophy. At one and the same time it is
both expressed and vindicated. Every theory
of physical and social evolution, every latest
speculation as to the nature of life and its im-
mortality, mixes in the mind of the poet over
the
grave
of his dead friend ; and he disarms of
its terrors every seemingly hostile doctrine, or
else discovers in it food for faith and comfort.
The mastery which he displays over both
branches of his subject is no less astonishing
than the way in which he unites the two. Not
only does his science penetrate his passion, and
his passion breathe a living soul into his science,
but the latter is as comprehensive and accurate
as the former is deep and tender. Every' one of
his illustrations, as it were, is a picture by a
great master, and every picture is a scientific
diagram. In the following two stanzas there is
124
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
a geological treatise epitomised ; but the events
dealt with are not so much chronicled as ex-
hibited.
There rolls the deep, where grew the tree.
Oh earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars hath been
Tbe stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
And then in another instant the poet proceeds
thus :
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
I heard a voice · believe no more
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer'd' I have felt.'
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach through nature, moulding men.'
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
125
Such is the soul's attitude, with regard to
physical science on the one hand and to religion
on the other, which Mr. Tennyson in 'In
Memoriam' reveals to his generation. The
lines just quoted form a key to the whole poem.
The
poem in many ways is full of change and
variety ; but the poet through all this does but
alternate between two subjects— love as a passion
that is experienced, and love as a mystery that
is to be expounded. “In Memoriam’ stands
alone for the way in which these are dealt with.
It is in form but the personal expression of one
man's regret for another. In reality it is a
revelation to an age of its own struggle after
some new spiritual stand-point.
So, too, with the Idylls, the real hero through
all of them is not this knight or that knight;
the hero is pure human affection : only affection
here is presented not as the germ of faith, but
as the source of beneficent conduct. As in ‘In
Memoriam' it is treated as purifying and giving
vision to the soul, so in the Idylls it is exhibited
as inspiring and ennobling life, and as being not
only the germ of faith, but the motive power in
all social progress.
Of all Mr. Tennyson's
works, the Idylls, or at least the four earlier
126
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
ones, have been the most widely popular ; but
we doubt if they will be the most enduring.
The period and the life they deal with are not
only too remote from our own, but they are
poorly fitted to represent, even symbolically, the
duties and the aspirations of to-day. To fight
the heathen, and to put down brigandage, is but
a meagre symbol of complex modern activity.
A tournament hardly seems to us a test of a
man's most valuable or most interesting quali-
ties; and a serious reader can hardly fail to be
wearied by the perpetual recurrence of single
combats the unborsing of horsemen, the splin-
tering of lances, and the cleaving of helmets.
Had Mr. Tennyson's power been more dramatic,
this would have mattered less. Through the
sameness of such incidents we should have dis-
cerned various personalities, with their special
hopes and aims; and these might have given
the incidents their own variety and significance.
But Mr. Tennyson is not dramatic. If we com-
pare his poetry with the prose romances it is
founded on, we shall realise this more clearly
than ever. In the prose romances nearly every
character is a complete man or woman, with a
complete human individuality. This individu-
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
127
ality Mr. Tennyson has not only in no way
developed, he has not even retained it in its dis-
tinctness. On the contrary, he would seem to
have done his utmost not to develop but to
obliterate it. And thus the result is that on
which we have already commented. We have
qualities and situations ; we have not men and
women.
Such being the case, we again repeat
our judgment that though certain qualities of
human nature are developed with extreme power
in the Idylls, the situations, as a rule, are for
the most part insufficient, and are often not far
from puerile. The environment of the organism,
if we may so speak, does not represent adequately
the environment of modern man. And yet this
is evidently what the case requires it should do.
Mr. Tennyson, in his study of human nature, is
essentially not an antiquarian. If it is not
modern man that he studies, he studies nothing.
His Idylls are no contributions to the spiritual
history of the past; they are meant to be
pictures of the spiritual condition of the present.
Every thought and every sentiment of his
knights and ladies is essentially of our own
century ; it is in that fact that their interest.
lies: and it is for this reason we regret the limits
128
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
of the stage on which he has chosen to exhibit
them.
In spite, however, of this fundamental want,
the Idylls doubtless fulfil much of their writer's
intention, and exhibit many of his very finest
qualities. Taken together as one connected
poem, it is true they lack unity. They form
but the hints of a great design which the
artist has not had strength to execute. They
are merely so many stepping-stones for our
own constructive imagination. But, taken sepa- .
rately, they are true works of art.
The story in
each is unfolded with grace and skill, and that
power of expression on which we have dwelt
already is conspicuous everywhere. It is not,
however, on these points that we are concerned
to dwell now. What we wish to note is,
that, in spite of much that is wanting, the
Arthurian Idylls are, within certain limits, a
representation of a modern fact. They repre-
sent the modern religious spirit, springing from
the human heart, and fusing itself with his-
torical Christianity; and they represent it,
imperfectly it is true, but still distinctly, as
taking science by the hand, and with its aid
setting to reform the world.
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
129
In this connection we must notice another
poem, “Aylmer's Field.' Human affection is
again the central theme. The characters in the
story are treated according to the usual method.
Their situations make them, not they the situa-
tions. It is enough for the poet's purpose that
they are human beings. All he desires to show
is the passions and the influences that act
through them, and what he deals with in this
case is the dark and not the bright side of
progress. He deals with love as thwarted by
the demands of an artificial civilisation, and
as crying out from its grave against the forces
that have destroyed it.
Of these three works we have been dwelling
on, 'In Memoriam,' the Arthurian Idylls, and
the short tale just mentioned, the first was
published in 1850, the four finest of the second
in 1859, and the third in 1864. The first only
belongs, so far as time goes, to that quarter of a
century which we conceive in especial to be Mr.
Tennyson's own; but the others, though not
given to the world within its limits, are yet
equally its spiritual children, and are the result
of its temper and its philosophies. In the same
set of works are of course included also the two
K
130
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
early volumes, 'The Princess' and 'Maud ;*
and these, taken together, comprise the fullest
results of Mr. Tennyson's genius. We must
now repeat what we said at starting. The
above results are the fullest, not because Mr.
Tennyson's genius has since declined, but
because the materials his age has supplied him
with have since changed in quality. That
special period which we have called his own
was one of the most exciting periods to be any-
where found in history. It saw the blossoming,
if not the bud, of half the wonders of the
century, and to an English eye especially, it was
full of splendid promise. Distress and poverty,
it is true, were not wanting ; but year by year
their voice was heard, and year by year some
abuse was remedied.
Freedom in England
seemed growing visibly, and, contrasted with
Continental troubles, peace seemed growing
also. It was this period that was ushered in
not only with the first Reform Bill, but with the
first railroads ; and commerce developed itself
even more rapidly than freedom. Science, as
we have already said, had freed religion from
her trammels without depriving her of her
supports. All human life was then in eager
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
131
movement. A new world had been discovered
in the very midst of the old. Progress, and
rapid progress, towards some ever-bettering
state seemed a matter at that time not of faith
only, but of sight.
Bliss was it in that dawn
To live, but to be young was very heaven,
That was said of the times of the first French
Revolution. It may be said with equal truth of
the earlier times of Queen Victoria. For the
earnest and the courageous that was the age of
confident optimism, and of this Mr. Tennyson,
in poetry, has been the great national exponent.
It is this that he has made his own ; it was on
this that he staked his hopes ; it was by the
spirit of this optimism that his poetic character
was fashioned. But the years of promise went
by, and they were not succeeded by any years
of performance-or, at least, there was no per-
formance adequate to the hopes of the sanguine.
We say this with a reservation. To the san-
guine of a certain class there was indeed per-
formance, but those were not men with the faiths
of Mr. Tennyson. They were the extreme
apostles of atheism and revolution, whereas Mr.
Tennyson was conservative even in his liberal-
K 2
132
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
ism, and was, above all, profoundly religious.
It is hard to believe, therefore, that the world,
as for the last twenty years he has looked on it,
has not in many ways been growing a darker
sight to him. His faith in progress may be
still firm, but the fact of it has not been visible
to him. It is true that in his own creed he has
provided against such a trial. It is part of the
teaching of his Idylls, taken collectively, that
apparent failure is not final failure, and that
advance is not to be doubted of because of tragic
relapses. And it may well be that, even during
these latter years, he can catch, as clearly as
ever
A deeper voice across the storm,
Proclaiming social truth shall spread,
And justice, even though thrice again
The red fool-fury of the Seine
Should pile her barricades with dead.
But though his intellectual faith may assure him
of the truth of this, it can hardly be doubted that
sight, so far as the present goes, has told him a
different tale. Social truth and justice have not
spread as rapidly as he once dreamed they would,
and there is another side of progress which must
have disappointed him still more. We mean the
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
133
progress, or, at least, the change in the relation-
ship between religion and science. We see signs
to us very plain, in Mr. Tennyson's later poems,
that the course of thought upon these subjects
has profoundly affected him, and that, though it
has not weakened his faith, it has given a sombre
tone to it. His first literary expression of this is
to be found, we think, in 'Lucretius,' which
was published in 1868. That poem seems sig-
nificant of two facts-the hostile fascination for
him of the doctrines of scientific materialism,
and the desolate deductions that, if true, it sug-
gested to him. Despite the historical accuracy
with which he treats his subject, there is some-
thing of the modern world that he breathes
through the life of the Roman—the modern world
as he was beginning to re-conceive it.
I often grew
Tired of so much within our little life,
Or of so little in our little life-
Poor little life that toddles half an hour
Crowned with a flower or two, and there an end.
That Mr. Tennyson would avow these as his own
sentiments, we do not for a moment say. But
we do say that they are the sentiments the age
was suggesting to him, and that his artistic
134
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
mirror now reflected gloom, where, fifteen years
before, it had been reflecting brightness.
There are further facts which support us in
this opinion. After the publication of Lucretius'
Mr. Tennyson's next feat was the completion of
the Arthurian Idylls ; and this done, he betook
himself to a new form of poetry—the historic
drama. In 1875 he published "Queen Mary,'
and, two years later, 'Harold.' Now these
dramas display many masterly qualities. Being
the work of Mr. Tennyson, it would be strange
if they did not. But there is one thing wanting
in them, and that is inspiration. We feel all
through that the poet is amusing himself; he is
not expressing himself. He is delighted in the
exercise of his own skill, but his heart is not in
the subjects on which his skill is being exercised.
Shakespeare's histories spoke at once to the
sympathies of his audience : the events and senti-
ments presented to them were to them living
things. They could piece out with their
thoughts' all artistic imperfections, and their
imagination would throng the stage with
Those very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt.
But Mr. Tennyson's dramas make no such appeal
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
135
و
as this to the present London public. "Harold'
is as simply antiquarian as Mr. Freeman's
' History of the Norman Conquest,' nor is anti-
Catholic feeling at this day strong enough to
give even the interest of hate to a picture of
'bloody Queen Mary. Mr. Tennyson in com-
posing these dramas, seems to us to have gone
into a spiritual retirement, rather than to have
kept the spiritual field ; and the same may be
said also with regard to The Cup' and to 'The
Falcon.' There is much in each of them to
excite literary admiration and even literary
criticism. Were we aiming at that, we might
dwell longer upon them. But our aim at present
lies in another direction. It is not to appraise
the value of Mr. Tennyson's separate works in
themselves, but to point out the relation of those
works to their author, and the relation of their
author to his
age.
On these points, as we have said before, his
last small volume throws an important light;
and it is this volume that it now remains for us
to consider. Much of its contents we may quietly
put aside, not because there is little to praise in
them, but because the praise may be taken for
granted. We
We purpose to note only those poems
136
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
that throw light on Mr. Tennyson's history, and
these we take to be the following- The First
Quarrel,' 'The Northern Cobbler,'' The Village
Wife, and above all, 'Rizpah' and 'De
Profundis.' The first four form a group together,
the last stands by itself. We will treat each
division separately. The first four poems are all
sufficiently remarkable, and convince us of one
fact. Mr. Tennyson's command over our com-
mon human nature is still as great as ever, and
his sympathy with it still as keen and fresh.
The First Quarrel,' the Northern Cobbler, '
and the Village Wife,' are all in his best manner;
whilst of 'Rizpah' we must say far more than
this.
This poem is the story of a poor dying
woman, whom an intense shock and sorrow had
reduced to madness, and she is represented as
telling it to a lady who had come to visit her.
Her son, a young man of fine spirit and promise,
had fallen among bad companions, and through
their influence his manliest characteristic had
ruined him.
He lived with a lot of wild mates, and they would not let
him be good;
They swore that he dare not rob the mail, and he swore that
he would;
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
137
And he took no life, but he took one purse, and when all
was done
He flung it among his fellows—I'll none of it,' said my son.
I came into court to the judge and the lawyers—I told them
my tale,
God's own truth--but they kill'd him, they kill'd him for
robbing the mail.
Then, since I couldn't but hear that cry of my boy that
was dead,
They seized me and shut me up; they fastened me down on
my bed.
- Mother, O mother!!-he called in the dark to me year
after year
They beat me for that, they beat me—you know that I
couldn't but hear;
And then at the last they found I had grown so stupid and
still,
They let me abroad again ; but the creatures bad worked
their will.
What followed was this: Her boy had been
hanged in chains, and by the time she was set
free again he was nothing but a dangling skeleton,
that was falling bone by bone to the ground.
When there was no moon, and when the nights
were dark, she stole unobserved to the gallows,
and night by night collecting what had fallen, she
at last laid all of her son that was left her in holy
ground.
138
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
Do you think I was scared by the bones? I kissed 'em, I
buried 'em all-
I can't dig deep, I am old-in the night by the churchyard
wall.
Such is the outline of the story ; such is the
motive of the poem. We feel almost bound to
apologise for quoting from it. A work of this
character can never be done justice to by quota-
tions. But we have used the above lines with no.
further end than to indicate baldly the outline
of the poet's subject. For his sublime treatment
of it, for the tenderness and the terror of his
pathos, we must refer the reader to the entire
poem itself. Nothing in Maud,' nothing in
"Guinevere,' can approach in power to 'Rizpah.'
This fact can, we conceive, be accounted
for by the special nature of the subject. Of all
human affections, that least subject to change,
either in the way of contraction or develop-
ment, is the passion of mother for child. It
asks least aid either from faith or reason. And
something similar may be said of the other three
poems that we have associated with Rizpah."
These three deal all of them with the life of the
common people, and touch on feelings and prin-
ciples in their rudest and simplest form. They
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
139
take us below the reach of either conscious faith
or philosophy ; and they elude, they do not
meet, the problems of human destiny. Thus
Mr. Tennyson's genius has escaped, in these
cases, from the external circumstances that had
been depressing it; and once supplied with a
fitting theme to handle, it has shown itself as
strong, if not stronger than ever.
But when we come to the poem called 'De
Profundis,' we find it exerting itself under quite
other conditions. Just as in the foregoing poems
the spirit of the age had been eluded by him, so
in this last is it met face to face. Mr. Tennyson
here set himself in the year 1880 to repeat what
he did exactly thirty years before. He resumed
the same task which he had undertaken in 'In
Memoriam.' When 'De Profundis ' appeared in
'The Nineteenth century,' it was treated by the
weekly journals as some obscure vagary.
of
genius, which might be pardoned, but could
certainly not be praised. A. more foolish judg-
ment than this we cannot well imagine. The
poem is short, but it is, despite its shortness, one
of the most significant of all the later works of
the author; and, taken in connection with
certain parts of 'In Memoriam,' it throws a
140
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
singular light on his intellectual history. It
shows how more and more, as he has lived
through the age of science, the multiplying facts
of scientific materialism have been pressing
themselves on his thought and feelings; and his
religious faith, as it now stands confronted by
them, is solemn in its steadfastness rather than
triumphant. It is thus that, in his latest utter-
ance,
he addresses a new-born child :
O dear Spirit half-lost
In thine own shadow and this fleshy sign
That thou art thou—who wailest being born
And banished into mystery, and the pain
Of this divisible-indivisible world,
Amongst the numerable-innumerable
Sun, sun, and sun, thro' finite-infinite space
In finite-infinite Time-our mortal veil
And shattered phantom of that infinite One,
Who made thee unconceivably Thyself
Out of His whole World-self and all in all !
In this it is true that the poet's earlier faith
asserts itself; but it does so in a changed tone,
which betokens that the conditions of religious
thought are different from what they were thirty
years ago. It verges upon mysticism. He no
longer addresses the
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
141
to whom he could say in those days, full of
devout conviction-
Our little systems bave their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
He can no longer use this language, though he
still endeavours to re-convey the meaning of it.
And it is this constancy of his faith under sad-
dening and new conditions that seems to us to
be the key to his present literary position. The
age has changed, but he has remained constant ;
and instead of being the impassioned exponent
of contemporary thought, all he can now do is to
bow his head and submit to it.
If this view of him be true, it will follow
that we must look on him as, properly speak-
ing, the poet of a completed epoch. This may
seem, at first sight, a startling judgment of a
man whose genius we believe to be still in its
full vigour. But our meaning is less startling
than it may seem to be. Though ages pass,
their effects do not perish, nor is their inspira-
tion obsolete because its sources are now sealed
The case is exactly the reverse of this.
Mr. Matthew Arnold has said, in one of his
most pregnant apophthegms,
to us.
142
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
Deeds in hours of insight willed
May be through hours of gloom fulfilled ;
and what he says of hours may be also said of
epochs. The lessons which sight has taught us
may be practised, and may increase in use, when
sight is for the time withdrawn. The mind of
the world, and the mind of England especially,
during the particular period we have been
speaking of, was undergoing a momentous ex-
perience, the wisdom taught by which will long
outlive its circumstances. It is that wisdom,
or at least the noblest part of it, that Mr.
Tennyson has assimilated, and which he has
kept alive for all men in his perfect verse.
In
the present generation his power has not ceased;
it has only changed its function. Whereas his
greatest work, as we have said, was moulded by
a past epoch, it may help to mould a coming
one, and to revive the beliefs and feelings it was
itself inspired by. There are some elements in
it, no doubt, that are perishable, but the larger
part of it is enduring ; and Mr. Tennyson
has said much, that when he said it was new to
poetry, which once so said will never become
old.
We have one
more observation to add,
one more
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
143
which will help perhaps to illustrate our main
thesis. We have tried to point out that Mr.
Tennyson's special function has been to inter-
pret a special period, and that that period has
now gone by. The correctness of these views
with regard to his literary office will be realised
more clearly if we consider who succeeded him
in it. His successor, it seems to us, was none
other than George Eliot. What Mr. Tenny-
son's poetry was to the second quarter of our
century, George Eliot's novels have been to the
third. The aim of both writers has been the
same, though their methods have been so very
different. They have both chosen as their one
constant theme human nature as related to
modern thought ; and they have tried to recon-
cile what was highest in the one to what was
most deeply true in the other. But the intel-
lectual condition of the world, as the novelist
saw it, was not the condition that inspired and
nerved the poet. The novelist was living into her
true period, just as the poet was living out of his ;
and the very influences that have cast a gloom
upon the latter have been those that have given
her solemn chiaro-oscuro to the former. Mr.
Tennyson has ever tried to discern God through
144
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
the material universe. It is George Eliot's
endeavour to show us we can do without Him.
Both treat the affections as the chief treasures of
life ; but Mr. Tennyson makes these the germ of
faith, George Eliot makes them the end of it.
Mr. Tennyson looks forward to
Some far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
Such a vision as this is to George Eliot a fond
delusion. For her in the farthest future there
is nothing but one blank catastrophe, when
Human time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread for ever.
That all men in the present day, or even many
men, share this dark forecast, we do not
pre-
sume to say. But though it is not the view
that masters the present age, it is without doubt
the view that distinguishes it. It occupies even
those whom it does not conquer, and either by
defiance or submission, we have each and all to
deal with it. It has been Mr. Tennyson's
mission to express faith ; it has been George
Eliot's to combat with despair. Mr. Tennyson's
spirit breathes still in his latest lines. It is
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
145
true that, as we have said, it has now a wistful
sadness in it; but for that very reason it will here
help us better to a comparison. The following
is from his last volume ; it is from the poem of
‘De Profundis,' a part of which we have already
quoted. He is addressing the human soul at
the close of its action here. "Still,' he says--
still depart
From death to death, thro' life to life, and find
Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought
Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite,
But this main miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the world.
Let us now turn to George Eliot, and hear her
on the same subject. In her novel of Middle-
march' she represents a noble nature, starting in
life full of lofty ambitions; and the story is the
record of their failures. And what is the con-
clusion that this suggests to the authoress ?
There is some comfort in it, but it is cornfort of
infinite sadness. It is nothing more than this :
That vain as life may be, let us not lose heart
utterly, for it is not wholly vain.
things,' she says, ' are not so ill with you and
me as they might have been, is half owing to the
number who have lived faithfully a hidden life,
L
- That
146
TENNYSON'S BALLADS AND POEMS
and rest in unvisited tombs. Thus speaks the
spirit of the epoch that has succeeded Mr.
Tennyson's. To some of the popular writers of
the present day their best consolation is the
thought that 'things are not so ill with us as
they might have been ;' their one shield against
despair is an icy stoicism, and their one bond of
brotherhood is less of hope than of suffering.
If it be the mission then of the great poet or
artist to express and not to struggle with the
spirit of his epoch, it will be hardly matter of
wonder if the course of events lately has not
been such as to stimulate Mr. Tennyson. That
his latter works have had less influence than his
former ones, we shall see to be inevitable from
the very circumstances of their composition ;
and the fact is not to be attributed to any
failure of the poet's genius. On the contrary,
we believe that were Mr. Tennyson, in his
present maturity, to be moved back to the
with whose spirit he was most in harmony, he
would excel his former self wherever that was
possible ; and that what he would do would be
as great an advance upon what he has done, as
* Rizpah ’ is upon 'The May Queen' or 'The
Grandmother.'
years
147
GEORGE ELIOT ON THE HUMAN
CHARACTER.
7
A DISTINGUISHED living author once observed in
our hearing, that there was a time when George
Eliot's genius seemed to him to be of almost
boundless promise. 'I even thought,' he pro-
ceeded, 'that some day she might perhaps have
equalled Miss Austen.
There are few, we
conceive, amongst George Eliot's admirers who
would either thank our critic for these liberal
hopes, or sympathise with him in his implied
disappointment; nor do we ourselves share in
the temper of his criticism. We disagree with
him, however, not because his judgment was
entirely false, but because it was only very
partially true. So far as he had viewed the
matter, his view was accurate. It is misleading
only because its scope was limited.
There are
few minds which have accomplished much, that
to observant eyes have at one time not promised
London and
Theophrastus Such.' By George Eliot.
Edinburgh : 1879.
L 2
148
GEORGE ELIOT ON
more. Even the most many-sided genius must
have given hints, at the outset, of the possession
of many powers it could never bring to per-
fection
;
and we shall often best estimate a
writer's chief achievements by examining first
the extent and the nature of his partial failures.
When, therefore, it is said that George Eliot
might have been a second Miss Austen, and has
failed to be so, we need not, in assenting to this,
be passing a degrading judgment. We advance
instantly from our notice of the success she has
foregone, to inquiring what other success she has
tried to achieve instead of it-what greater birth-
right she has bought by the sacrifice of her mess
of pottage. This inquiry is not altogether an
easy one; and a more significant homage could
not be paid to the authoress than to say that it
is worth our while, in her case, to make it with
seriousness. Her present volume is especially
useful, not only because it suggests such a
task to us, but also because it will assist us in
attempting it.
The most obvious aspect under which we
look at her is that simply of a novelist—as a
dramatic artist in prose. It is not here that her
real pre-eminence lies ; but we will confine our-
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
149
selves at first to this very restricted view of her,
and regard her as though she were simply a
novelist among novelists.
Now, the qualities that a novelist most
requires are, in their own degree, the same as
those required by a dramatist. A novel, like a
drama, is a work of art, and must, like a drama,
conform to certain artistic laws, and present
certain artistic qualities. The most prominent
of these have their close analogies in painting.
The first requirements in a picture are that it
conform to certain rules of composition, group-
ing, chiaro-oscuro, and perspective. In like
manner we require first of all in a novel or a
drama that there be a certain method, grace, and
unity in the plot. The various incidents must
be presented to us in their due proportion. The
attention must not be distracted by unnecessary
figures or events. Everything must be properly
subordinate to some central interest; and form
parts of a single organic whole. When the
novelist or the dramatist fulfils these require-
ments, we may say, in painters' language, that
the composition of his piece is perfect. As equally
apposite examples of this kind of perfection, we
may cite two works, which, in other ways, are of
150
GEORGE ELIOT ON
a widely different character—'Tom Jones,' and
the Edipus Tyrannus' of Sophocles. But
composition is not all. We require moral per-
spective and moral chiaro-oscuro as well. What
is trivial and incidental must not be drawn too
large. What is important must not be drawn
too small. And further, the lights and shades,
or, if we like to add a new metaphor, the colours,
must be properly harmonised and distributed.
Everything must not be made an unrelieved dark-
ness by vice or sorrow, or a flat and even brightness
by joy or virtue. The novelist and the painter
have each of them a kindred artistic effect to
produce with shine and shadow, and with various
combinations of colour.
Further, there is a second class of require-
ments needful for a novelist, which might also,
were there occasion for it, be illustrated by a
reference to painting ; and this is an insight into
the human heart which is not only profound, but
at the same time wide and impartial; and a
power, not alone of describing character, but still
more of presenting it in action.
If we judge George Eliot's work by the tests
above suggested, there is scarcely one adverse
criticism to which it is not open. The composition
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
151
of her stories is to the utmost rude and faulty ;
or rather, in the artistic sense of the word, there
is no composition in them at all. In 'Middle-
march,' for instance, we have not one plot, but
two, and these joined together in the clumsiest
and most unskilful fashion. Elsewhere, it is
true, her designs may have more unity ; but the
unity, even where most traceable, is obscured or
quite distorted by masses of irrelevant detail.
Every stone in her building may be of marble,
and of marble finely cut : but the building as a
whole is not fitly framed together; and many of
the blocks which exhibit the finest carving are
not only not needed by the structure, but they
overload it and destroy its symmetry.
She
recognises the time-worn truth that a story must
have a beginning, a middle, and an end ; but be-
tween these three parts she observes no just pro-
portion. Her action moves onwards by fits and
starts. She hurries when we would have her
linger : she lingers when we would have her
hurry: and her pace seems to depend not so
much on the nature of the road, as on the flowers
she desires to pluck by the side of it, or the
views of distant scenery which she leans over
gates to contemplate.
152
GEORGE ELIOT ON
But there is a greater defect still to notice.
In dealing with her principal characters she does
not, as a general rule, so much present them, as
describe them to us. And we are made all the
more keenly conscious of this, because with her
minor characters her procedure is exactly op-
posite. Mrs. Tulliver and Aunt Pullet, dis-
cussing a bonnet, are presented to us. Maggie
and Stephen Guest, in their love scenes, are de-.
scribed to us.
The former group is a painting
left to speak for itself. The latter is a charcoal
sketch, with a long explanation under it. We
are not saying that the sketch may not show
higher powers than the painting : but they are
not powers of the same order ; they are not the
powers we expect to find in an artist. And so
far as artistic success the success of the true
novelist-goes, it is not too much to say that
with George Eliot this varies in an inverse ratio
to the importance which she herself attaches to
her subjects.
It will be recollected that in making these re-
marks we are purposely narrowing our view.
We are regarding the authoress under only one
aspect. And if our judgment should seem to be
somewhat too severe, it is she herself who is re-
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
153
sponsible for the severity. We are trying her by
standards that she has herself suggested ; and
those standards are the highest. We are con-
demning the faults of what she has done by the
perfection of what she shows us she might have.
done. She might have been a second Miss
Austen : and that within its limits is no small
praise ; for it means at any rate that she might
have been an almost faultless, artist. And it is
only because we see her to have been capable of
perfect art, that we are forced to note the im-
perfections of the art she has actually given us.
But if she has failed as a novelist where
novelists of less genius have succeeded, she ex-
hibits .powers to which, amongst other novelists,
we can hardly find a parallel, and which only
very rarely have expressed themselves in prose
fiction at all. She may be less than Miss Austen
in art, but she is greater than Scott in insight.
Indeed, to compare her even to Scott is an un-
fairness to her. We must go for our parallel yet
a stage higher ; and we must not stop short
of the world's greatest poets.
The art of the
novelist, and presumably his vision also, rests on
the surface of life and of society. His eyes, so
far as he can use them, may be as keen and
154
GEORGE ELIOT ON
piercing as the poet's; but he uses them from a
different point of view. The varied human
landscape lies before him, and he paints what he
sees of it; but he is not, like the poet, at a
sufficient height above it, to see to the bottom
of its deep ravines and valleys, or to the sum-
mits of its lofty mountains. That it has deep
valleys and that it has mountain peaks, he pre-
sumes ;
but he has neither descended to the one,
nor scaled the other. With George Eliot, how-
ever, the case is different. She, like the poet,
takes a more commanding standpoint. Her eyes
are occupied with the high and deep places of
the human spirit, and the larger and profounder
questions of human destiny. For her, as for
the poet, life is, as it were, transparent; and she
sees the mightiest issues hiding under the most
trivial. Her materials for excitement and interest
are not the excitements of adventure, with their
varieties of surface incident ; her materials for
tragedy are not murders or escapes from murder,
with the manceuvres of criminals and detectives :
but they are the inner spiritual events that take
place beneath the surface, and of which the outer
events are for her the signs merely. Her works
partake thus of the quality that separates the
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
155
poetry of a great drama from the prose of a
great novel. The essential difference, for in-
stance, between “Hamlet' and 'Pendennis' lies
in the different level in human life to which the
two works pierce. The one reaches to the
poetry of life ; the other only presumes it, or at
best points to it from a distance. But the vision
of George Eliot goes straight to it, and encounters
it face to face. She has seen and has felt like
Sophocles, that
Full many things are wonderful, but none
More fearful and more wonderful than man; 1
and she has seen and felt this with something of
the emotion that is common and almost peculiar
to the greatest tragic poets.
And yet with all this George Eliot is not a
poet ; and, putting form altogether out of the
question, her works are not poetry. They bear
the same relation to poems that a chrysalis does
to a butterfly, just before the change. We feel
them to be quivering with a life that demands
some further development. We feel that some-
thing is on the ground that requires to fly, and
that is every moment on the point of soaring.
| Antigone, 333.
156
GEORGE ELIOT ON
But the wings never unfold themselves. The
strength is wanting somewhere by which the
prison is to be broken.
Thus, to pass on her work any general
literary judgment is a somewhat puzzling task.
But going again for assistance to a simile drawn
from painting, we may compare her work, not
so much to so many separate pictures, as to so
many separate canvases, each covered with a
number of pictorial fragments—fragments con-
nected together indeed by some thread, inward
or outward, of thought or meaning ; but neither
in conception nor execution fused together into
coherent artistic wholes. We have studies for
some heroic subject-some great and solemn
action—which are instinct with power and genius
but in which the figures are grouped ill, and
often only partly outlined ; and we have this
heroic group broken or surrounded by a number
of semi-serious figures—not in outline, but
painted in solid colour, and with the most
masterly and complete finish. Such at least is
the impression which her earlier works have
made on us. Her manner latterly, it is true,
has
grown in some ways more congruous; but
this is not because she has learnt to finish the
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
137
;
whole of her pictures as she once did their
secondary parts ; but because she has ceased
to use her brush at all, and has left the whole in
the condition of shadowy sketches.
To the eye, therefore, of purely artistic
criticism, George Eliot's work, even at its high-
est, is full of flaws and blemishes. The world,
however, is not made up entirely of artistic
critics and the common sense of the public,
with its wise want of fastidiousness, often detects
in a writer what there is of genius the better for
not detecting what there is lacking in art and
skill. And such is the case with George Eliot.
She sees truths about life which vast numbers of
men and women feel to be true, and which they
are grateful to her for having expressed and set
before them. She has given definiteness to
views which before were dim and vague to them;
she has given voice to thoughts and feelings
which before were inarticulate. They feel that
she has done this for them somehow ; and hou
they neither know nor care to criticise. Her
books are more to them like Bibles than books of
mere amusement; and they have been treated
and read with a reverence that was perhaps never
before accorded to any works of fiction.
158
GEORGE ELIOT ON
may sound a
Her position is thus sufficiently remarkable ;
but there is a point about it beyond any we have
yet touched upon, which makes it more remark-
able still ; and this is a point probably, that is
little suspected by the larger part of her most
earnest and most reverent students. She is the
first great godless writer of fiction that has
appeared in England; perhaps, in the sense in
which we use the expression, the first that has
appeared in Europe. To
say
this
paradox or an insult, but it is neither. And
this will appear presently, when we have ex-
plained the meaning which we attach to the
obnoxious word godless.
We must remember that generally, up to
the present time, human conduct was, amongst
serious people, supposed to bear reference, before
all things, to some power above ourselves, and
of a different nature, to whom our souls belonged,
and for whose sake we were bound to keep them
pure. And this conception has so penetrated
our modern civilisation, that it has been implied
in the entire lives and thoughts of numbers who
not only never thought of affirming it, but who
even posed as deniers of the belief upon which it
rested. Shakespeare, for instance, may or may
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
159
not have been a religious man ; he may or may
not have been a Catholic, or a Protestant. But
whatever his personal views or feelings may have :
been, the light by which he viewed life was the
light of Christianity. The shine, the shadow,
and the colours of the moral world he looked
upon, were all caused or cast by the Christian
Sun of Righteousness. But now amongst the
vast changes that human thought has been
undergoing, the sun that we once all walked by
has for many eyes become extinguished ; and
every energy has been bent upon supplying man
with a substitute, which shall have if possible, an
equal illuminating power, and at any rate the
same power of moral actinism. This substitute
at present is, it is true, somewhat nebulous
but the substance it is composed of is already
sufficiently plain. The new object of our duty
is not our Father which is in Heaven, but our
brothers and our children who are on earth. It
is to these alone, according to the new gospel,
that our piety is due ; it is indeed to these that
all true piety has, in all ages, been ignorantly
paid. It is needless to dwell upon this concep-
tion longer. Whether we think it sourd or
hollow, its general character is familiar enough
و
160
GEORGE ELIOT ON
to all of us; and we know that a growing number
of men and women around us are adopting it.
But it is one thing to adopt a belief in theory-
another thing to put it in practice; and again
another thing, to receive it, as it were in solution,
into our daily thoughts and feelings, so that we
not only act and think by it, but also instinctively
judge and feel by it. This third stage is the one
that is reached latest, and we doubt whether as
yet any considerable body of men and women
have attained to it. The nearest approach to it,
so far as we know, is to be found in the novels of
George Eliot : only there even it is not reached
perfectly ; for the moral standard of the novelist
and the rational justification of her own judg-
ments and sympathies, are not present to her
mind instinctively, and as matters of course ;
but they are for ever being consciously em-
phasised by herself, and for ever being pointed
out, more or less directly, to the reader. At
any rate, in the world of earnest art, she is the
first legitimate fruit of our modern atheistic
pietism ; and as such, she is an object of extreme
interest, if not to artistic epicures, at any rate
to all anxious inquirers into human destiny.
For in her writings we have some sort of presen-
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
161
tation of a world of high endeavour, pure morality
and strong enthusiasm, existing and in full work,
without any reference to, or help from, the
thought of God.
Godless in its literal sense,
and divested of all vindictive meaning, exactly
describes her writings. They are without God,
not against him. They do not deny, but they
silently and skilfully ignore Him. We have the
same old liturgies of human faith and action,
only they are intercepted and appropriated by a
new object, when they seemed to be on their way
to the old. The glory and the devotion that was
once given to God is transferred silently to man.
The
way
in which this feat is performed is
very remarkable ; for the characters she presents
us with are suffered rarely, if ever, to hold
opinions that are consciously to themselves at
all akin to the author's. On the contrary, they
are most of them Christian people, with the love
of God and the fear of hell presumably before
their
eyes.
But in all their more vital struggles
after God, the supernatural element in their
beliefs is represented as having no effect on them.
It is treated as a husk or shell, concealing, or
perhaps sheltering, something more precious
than itself; or at best conveying a truth in
M
162
GEORGE ELIOT ON
metaphor through the channel of a sacramental
lie. Mr. Tryan, in “Janet's Repentance,' and
Savonarola in 'Romola,' are both of them
marked instances of this; and the author's
dealing with these characters is exceedingly
skilful. Mr. Tryan is a clergyman, passionately
devoted to his sacred calling, an ardent disciple
of a special school of divinity, and eaten up
with the sincerest zeal for souls. And yet the
writer contrives to exhibit all that she wishes us
to admire in him as resting on a basis with
which his religious beliefs have nothing at all to
do. In her portrait of Savonarola this treat-
ment is yet more distinguishable and yet more
significant. His chief connection with the story
in which she introduces him, is his conversion
of the heroine, from the neo-paganism of the
Renaissance, to the precepts of Christ, and to a
humble acceptance of sorrow.
But in all his
exhortations to her, and they are some of them
singularly beautiful, there is hardly one appeal
to Christianity on its supernatural side. Savona-
rola is the spokesman of Humanity made divine,
not of Deity made human. In so far as he is
not this, but the reverse of this, there, according
to George Eliot, lies his weakness and not his
strength. . The higher life,' the withdrawal
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
163
ness.
from man for the sake of communion with God,
is for her a diseased weakness, if not a wicked-
The Christ of the Christian Church says,
'If a man love father and mother more than
me,
he is not worthy of me.' The Christ of George
Eliot says the exact opposite : 'A man is not
worthy of me unless he love me less than father
or mother.' With her, as she says often and
explicitly, the transcendent morality' is to
share willingly in the 'common lot,' and not to
seek escape from ties after those ties have ceased
to be pleasant.'. She urges with a solemn elo-
quence, she seems to see in a solemn ecstasy,
that a man's highest life is to be found in sorrow
borne for the sake of others; and that all seem-
ing miseries 'máy be turned to blessings, by
making an offering of them to something beyond
ourselves. But an offering to what? To the
God who has made us, loved us, and suffered for
us, and into whose presence we may one day
win admission ? To no such God; but to some
impersonal cause, some force of human progress.
your marriage-sorrows,' says Savonarola,
,
to Romola, 'an offering, too, my daughter : an
offering to the great work by which sin and sorrow
are to be made to cease.' This is the one teach-
6
Make
DI 2
164
GEORGE ELIOT ON
ing of all her novels ; and its fundamental dif-
ference from the higher Christian teaching lies
in this, that it asserts the part to be greater and
more complete than the whole ; that it asserts
those human hopes, and loves, and enthusiasms
which Christianity has developed for us, and
bequeathed to us, to be in reality complete in
themselves, and clogged and weighted only, not
supported by, what were once supposed to be
their divine foundations.
This fact, as we have said before, is probably
little suspected by the majority of George Eliot's
readers. These carry with them the lamp of
their own religion into that tender but gloomy
world into which the author leads them; and do
not perceive what the only light is, with which
it would be else provided. They have them-
selves supplied what is wanting before they have
felt the want. And they have imagined that
the beliefs which they do not find dwelt upon,
have been pre-supposed as true, instead of being
studiously ignored as false. But if we would
really see George Eliot in all her full signifi-
cance, we must not close our eyes thus. If we
do, we shall not only miss the one thing which
she has renounced much to teach us ; but we
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
165
shall miss something that is of an importance
far more general. We shall miss the first con-
crete examples of the workings of the new re-
ligion of humanity ; and the only means as yet
offered us by which to test the results of it, as
seen or anticipated by one of its own apostles.
Further, if we look at her in this way, and with
this intention, her work, which seems so chaotic
when judged by any mere artistic tests, becomes
congruous and intelligible. It is not so much a
series of novels, interspersed with philosophical
reflections ; it is a gradual setting forth of a
philosophy and religion of life, illustrated by
a continuous succession of diagrams. That this
is the true view of the matter has been getting
more and more evident as the career of the author
has proceeded. How far this line of development
has been conscious and intentional, with herself,
it is not ours to inquire. But, consciously or
unconsciously, the main stream of her powers
has drifted into the philosophic channel, and has
left her artistic powers as a mere auxiliary to
these, although from the very nature of the case
closely connected with them. It is, therefore,
by her philosophy that she has the strongest
claim to be judged.
166
GEORGE ELIOT ON:
Now, it is not our intention here (for neither
place nor space permit of it) to discuss that
philosophy with reference to its truth or perma-
nent value. But for reasons that will appear
presently it will be well to glance at certain
salient features of it. The first article of her
creed is I believe in Humanity as the em-
bracer of every moral end that is possible for
man; as the only and sufficient object of his
highest hopes, and his truest religious emotions.
And it is her aim, conscious or unconscious,
throughout all her writings to exhibit to us the
highest lives directed and nourished only by
motives that are purely human. One thing
therefore is at once evident. She does not, if
we recollect rightly, profess herself to be an
optimist. We think indeed she has expressed
her convictions somewhere as a creed of melior-
ism. But at any rate the whole fabric of her
system and her emotions rests, for its one
foundation, on a profound satisfaction in the
fact of the human race existing, and an earnest
hope and expectation of a blessed, if not of a
quite perfect, future for it. It is an unspeak-
able good that it exists now; it will be a yet
more unspeakable good that it exists by-and-by.
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
167
We need not, however, seek to define her hopes
too exactly. It is sufficient that her entire
philosophy is an impassioned protest against
pessimism, and that it presents the human life
and the human lot to us as worthy of all our
piety-all our love and reverence.
The question
that at once arises is, how far does this Deity, as
she
presents it to us, justify or excite the adora-
tion that she is so pressing we should accord to
it? And the answer to this question is some-
what startling. George Eliot, as we have said,
is theoretically no pessimist; and yet the picture
she presents to us of the world we live in almost
exactly answers to the description given of it by
Schopenhauer, as nothing better than a 'penal
settlement.' It might at first sight seem hard
to account for this inconsistency.
It might
seem that her philosophic theories and her true
natural vision were at hopeless war with one
another; and that her diagrams refuted instead
of illustrating the text of her proposition. Or
we might figure her as labouring under a destiny
the exact reverse of Balaam’s; and having re-
solved to bless the human destiny, finding her-
self constrained by the power of truth to curse it.
For in what light is it that she exhibits men
168
GEORGE ELIOT ON
to us ? She exhibits them as, first and before
all things, beings who are not isolated, but
linked together by countless ties of duty and
affection ; and the essence of all right conduct,
and the moral raison d'être of existence, consists,
according to her, in our willingly keeping these
ties in violate. Thus far the matter does not
sound unpromising. But if we go farther, it
will
appear that the race of beings that are thus
linked together, form no happy and rejoicing
brotherhood, finding each a glad reward in the
sense that the rest are helped by him ; but a
sad and labouring race of chained convicts, whose
highest glory it is not to attempt escaping. We
are all born, she teaches, with bonds about us, and
we inevitably increase their number, prompted
by our own cravings, as we live on. And, says
George Eliot, every such bond ‘is a debt : the
right lies in the payment of that debt ; it can lie
nowhere else. In vain will
In vain will you wander over the
earth ; you will be wandering away for ever
from the right.'
Now 'the right' according to her teaching,
has two distinct characteristics; in the first
place, it is the hardest thing of all to attain ;
and in the next place it is the only thing that is
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
169
worth attaining. But when it is attained it
seems, as she describes it, little better, at the
best, from the human stand-point, than a choice
between evils. “Renunciation,' she says ex-
plicitly, 'does not cease to be a sorrow; but it
is a sorrow borne willingly. And again she
says in another place, the highest happiness
... often brings so much pain with it that we
can only tell it from pain by its being what we
would choose before everything else, because
our souls see it is good.' But thus far clearly
she must be doing it some injustice. For else-
where a sense of positive rapture is supposed to
be a part of its content; and despite all its
anguish, it is supposed to admit us to some
vision, that makes all life below it dross for
The matter is a mystery, and is seen by
herself to be so; so much so, indeed, that the
illustration and simplification of it is really the
one purpose that runs through all her novels.
The central action of all of them at least of all
the later ones—is transparently the same. It is
the choice or the refusal of some person or
persons of this highest happiness, which can
hardly be told from pain, but which, when once
chosen, is to make all else dross for ever. And
6
ever.'
· 170
GEORGE ELIOT ON
by these examples she seeks to convince us of
three things : firstly, that the right, for its own
sake, and resting on a strictly human basis, does
practically bring its own reward with it, in the
way her system requires of it; secondly, that
men and women will recognise this truth, with-
out any bias derived from supernatural hopes
or affections; and, lastly, we gather her to
imply that though the number of these loftier
natures be but small, they yet supply a kind of
vicarious value and sanctity to the entire race
they belong to : and thus give ground to the
philosopher for a solemn piety towards that race
as it is, and a sure if anxious hope for it as it
will be.
Now, as this philosophy of George Eliot's
is the most rational and moving statement of all
that, according to many modern thinkers, the
salvation of man depends on, it becomes a
matter of no small interest to enquire on what
basis of fact she rests it. She certainly does
not rest it—and this is the grand point in
its favour-on an ignorance or careless obser-
vation of life's meanness, sins, and miseries.
She does not underestimate the causes for
despair. The question is, does she over-estimate
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
171
the causes for hope ? In other words, how
far does this prophetess of humanity under-
stand and present correctly the realities of
human nature?
The answer to this question is, we fear, not
reassuring. We have already pointed out in
her work certain artistic anomalies which are
fatal to it from the point of view of the artist ;
and chief amongst these was the strange want of
unity in her manner, which we compared to a
mixing together of finished figures in oil with
shadowy charcoal outlines. Looking at her
simply as a novelist, this phenomenon was
puzzling. Looking at her as a philosopher, it
becomes, we conceive, sufficiently explicable.
In her side characters we see her genuine artistic
vision, her genuine artistic powers. We see
living men and women presented to us with all
the power of a dramatist. But when we pass
from her side characters to her principal ones,
the whole spectacle changes. We have not what
the artist discovers as existing, but what the
theorist dreams of as that which ought to exist.
We have the phantoms of the philosopher pro-
jected into the world of reality. In other
words, her higher characters, which she holds
172
GEORGE ELIOT ON
up to us as the salt of the earth and the
examples of right action, are hardly, as she pre-
sents them to us, human characters at all.
They are principles, not incarnate in so many
different bodies, but dressed up in different suits
of clothes, and set working under different
circumstances. Romola, except in externals, is
the same as Dorothea ; so too, towards the end
of her history, is Maggie Tulliver. This last
character, by the way, is in one respect a very
curious one.
She is a composite product of
both of the author's methods. She is begun
according to one, she is finished according to
the other. She is begun as a little flesh-and-
blood girl ; she is gradually sublimated into a
great philosophy in action. And amongst such
shadowy presences, which alone are to be our
models and our encouragements, Aunt Gleg
moves as Dante did through the world of spirits
-a solid body and casting a human shadow,
and which we feel at once to belong to quite a
different order of beings.
The treatment by George Eliot of her own
genius may be compared to her treatment, just
noticed, of the character of Maggie Tulliver.
There were two tendencies always visible in her
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
173
--that of the artist, and that of the philosopher.
Could the first of these have absorbed and em-
ployed the second, the highest artistic work
might doubtless have been the result. As a
matter of fact, the philosophy has gained the
day ; and, as the philosophy has grown, the art
has dwindled. But, like Pharaoh's lean kine, it
has not fattened by what it has fed upon. Her
view of human nature as a philosopher has
grown wider than it would have been as an
artist ; but as it has grown wider it has
grown less accurate; and as her inductions
have grown more confident, the basis on which
she rests them has become less reliable. To
make such systems as hers of any practical
value, two things are needed. One is a know-
ledge of the great general principles of human
impulse ; the other is a knowledge of the
various complex circumstances under which
these impulses act upon us, and by which their
power is profoundly modified. It is this latter
sort of knowledge in which George Eliot appears
to us to be so deficient. She reminds us
of an engineer or a shipwright, who may be
well versed in the laws of motion, but who
knows little of the practical difficulties caused
174
GEORGE ELIOT ON
by friction, or of the various strengths and
consistencies of the only materials in which his
designs can be carried out. And the shadowy
and unreal impression which her typical cha-
racters convey to us, we take to be but the out-
ward sign of a fundamental unreality in her
conception of them.
Her present volume more than any of the
preceding ones serves at once to confirm and
to illustrate this impression. Its scope and
character fit it in a peculiar way to show, us
what her general knowledge of the world really
is ; and in what manner and from what fields
she has gleaned the facts on which she supports
her theories. And thus, whatever may be its
intrinsic interest, it may form for each reader a
text for more interesting inquiry. The Im-
pressions of Theophrastus Such' belongs to that
class of literature which Theophrastus the
Greek originated, and which La Bruyère in
modern times has made yet more famous. Like
the Characters' of these two writers, it
consists, not of a dramatic presentation of vari-
ous men acting and reacting with their various
aims and powers upon one another, but of studies
of men and women taken singly, and regarded
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
175
primarily in relation to themselves, or rather to
a single class of which they are supposed typical,
and which is further supposed to be an import-
ant element in the composition of society. The
talents required by this kind of composition are
fewer than those required by the novelist ; but
though the novelist requires other talents in
addition to these, he first and before all things
requires these also. Theophrastus and La
Bruyère might not have all the makings in them
of great novelists : but a great novelist must
have all the makings of a Theophrastus or a La
Bruyère. The generalised facts that such
writers as these present to us, are the raw
material of artistic fiction ; and George Eliot, in
following in their wake, has been inviting us to
see the quality of her material before it has been
manufactured, and allowing us, perhaps a little
unwisely, to examine its quality when in that
condition. In the creations of the novelist
.
which are presented to us in rapid action, and
which distract our judgment by a vivid appeal
to our interest, there may be many defects that
will readily escape notice. But in a work like the
present, we have the characters standing still as
it were, and an examination of them becomes a
176
GEORGE ELIOT ON
much simpler task. Further, we are in the
present case not only shown what the author thus
observes of men, but we are told by her how
she observes them, and with what intentions.
Now, in the book before us it is hardly
necessary to say that there are many passages
that bear the full stamp of the author's insight
and originality ; but nothing she has ever
written has, whilst reminding us of her strength,
so fully convinced us of her weakness. In the
first place, at the very threshold, we are met
with an instance of her want of art--of a sense
of what is and what is not superfluous.
Her
first two chapters are devoted to a description
by himself of a certain imaginary bachelor, who
tells us he has clumsy feet, a shambling ungainly
gait, a frightful upper lip, and an aspect gene-
rally that makes ladies smile when they look
at him; and it is to this shadowy being that
all the following studies of life are attributed.
In the character of this gentleman there is no-
thing very striking or attractive; but the chief
fault to find with him is, not that he is vague and
vapid, but that he is absolutely unneeded.
We suppose him at the outset to have some sig-
nificance in connection with what follows : but
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
177
so far as we can see, he has none whatever. He
is introduced by the author probably as a sort
of screen for her own personality ; but her
device is none the less inartistic because it was
a becoming modesty that suggested it. Nor is
it redeemed as art because the bachelor's auto-
biography is the occasion in one place of one of
the finest and most truthful passages in the book,
which we think it will not be amiss to present
here to the reader. The bachelor is speaking
of the changes in English scenery which the
progress of the present century had brought
with it, 'in contrast,' he says,
with those
grander and vaster regions of the earth, which
keep an indifferent aspect in the presence of
man's toil and devices.'
What (he continues), does it signify that a Lilliputian
train passes over a viaduct amidst the abysses of the Apen-
nines, or that a caravan laden with a nation's offerings
creeps across the unresting sameness of the desert, or that a
petty cloud of steam sweeps for an instant over the face of
an Egyptian colossus, immovably submitting to its slow
burial beneath the sand ? But our woodlands and pastures,
our hedge-parted corn-fields and meadows, our bits of high
common where we used to plant the windmills, our quiet
little rivers here and there fit to turn a mill-wheel, our
villages along the old coach roads, are all easily alterable
lineaments that seem to make the face of our Motherland
N
178
GEORGE ELIOT ON
sympathetic with the laborious lives of her children. ..
Our rural tracts—where no Babel-chimney scales the heavens
are without mighty objects to fill the soul with the sense
of an outer world unconquerably aloof from our efforts.
The grasses and reeds nod to each other over the river, but
we have a canal close by ; the very heights laugh with corn
in August, or lift the plough-team against the sky in Sep-
tember. Then comes a crowd of burly navvies with pickaxes
and barrows; and while hardly a wrinkle is made in the
fading mother's face or a new curve of health in the blooming
girl's, the hills are cut through or the breaches between them
spanned ; we choose our level, and the white steam pennon.
flies along it.
But because our land shows this readiness to be changed,
all signs of permanence upon it raise a tender attachment,
instead of awe. Some of us, at least, love the scanty relics
of our forests, and are thankful if a bush is left of the old
hedgerow. A crumbling bit of wall, where the delicate iry-
leafed toad-flax hangs its light branches, or a bit of grey
thatch, with patches of dark moss on its shoulder and a
troop of grass-stems on its ridge, is a thing to visit. And
then the tiled roof of cottage and homestead, of the long
cow-shed where generations of the milky mothers have stood
patiently, of the broad-shouldered barns, where the old-
fashioned flail once made resonant music, while the watch-
dog barked at the timidly venturesome fowls making
pecking raids on the outflying grain; the roofs that bare
looked out from among the elms and walnut-trees, or be-
side the yearly group of bay and corn stacks, or below
the square stone steeple, gathering their grey or ochre
tinted lichens and their olive-green mosses, under all minis-
tries,-let us praise the sober harmonies they give to our
landscape, helping to unite us pleasantly with the elder
generations.
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
179
This eloquent passage is worthy of George
Eliot at her best, and not only shows us how on
occasions thought and feeling can be harmoni-
ously fused together by her, and presented to us
in the form of a vivid picture, but it shows how
near she can rise towards the true sublime.
What can be more impressive than the first sen-
tence we have quoted, with its solemn presenta-
tion of the littleness of man's greatest labours,
when confronted with the vaster aspects of Time
and Nature? What more skilful than her tran-
sitions to the converse picture ? Whilst, when
we read how the heights lift the plough-team
against the sky, prose seems to be standing on
tip-toe, and to be on the point of unfolding the
wings of poetry.
But we are delaying too long the main sub-
ject of our consideration. The chief aspect
under which we are to consider our author- the
special aspect under which in her new volume
she explicitly presents herself, is that of a
philosopher and a woman of the world, who has
fitted herself to be the former of these by having
first become the latter; who claims to speak
with authority about man from her intimate
knowledge of the ways and works of men.
N 2
180
GEORGE ELIOT ON
Deducting the two chapters we have just
noticed, the 'Impressions of Theophrastus Such'
consists of sixteen essays, of which five or six
may be classified as fragments of moral philo-
sophy, and the remaining ten or eleven as studies
of the facts of character. Or—for this division
is in some way not entirely accurate—we may
describe the sixteen essays taken all together as
composed of three separate elements, theories,
reflections, and observations.
The theories of the author are precisely those
we should have expected to find. They are
nothing but re-statements of the great thesis of
our modern moralised humanism, that the basis
and the motive of all right conduct depends on
nothing but the necessities of human welfare and
the constitution of the human character. To
one important side of this theory the whole of
her last essay is devoted—the identification of
the individual consciousness with the corporate
consciousness of the race. She is- and we are
glad to see her so far moderate-convinced that
we are not at present ripe for a full cosmo-
politanism--for a participation in a universal
human consciousness. But a participation in a
national consciousness, which we are ripe for, is,
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
181
she holds, a far more solid and important fact
than we most of us take it to be. “Not only,'
she says, 'does the nobleness of a nation depend
on the presence of this national consciousness,
but also the nobleness of each individual citizen.'
The memory of our historical past, the antici-
pation of our historical future-here is one of the
substitutes for the love and the fear of God, and
the aspiration after a more intimate communion
with him! And the Jews are, in this essay,
held up to us as an example of its working
power, and the splendid results that would, in
their case, come of it, if only the Gentile world
were less cynical and selfish.
In her essay on 'Moral Swindlers 'the above
doctrine is inculcated under a different guise, and
with more practical force. In it she comments
on the excuses made and the pity expressed for
the disgraced director of certain bubble com-
panies, on the ground that he was a thoroughly
moral man.'
What do you mean by a thoroughly moral man ?' said I.
Oh, I suppose that every one means the same by that,'
said Melissa, with a slight air of lebuke. “Sir Gavial is an
excellent family man, quite blameless there; and so charit-
able round his place at Tiptop. Very different írom Mr.
Barabbas, whose life, my husband tells me, is most objection-
182
GEORGE ELIOT ON
able, with actresses and that sort of thing. I think a man's
morals should make a difference to us. I'm not sorry for
Mr. Barabbas, but I am sorry for Sir Gavial Mantrap.'
I wish that this narrow use of words, which are wanted
in their full meaning, were confined to women like Melissa.
Seeing that Morality and Morals under their alias of Ethics
are the subject of voluminous discussion, and their true
basis a pressing matter of dispute, ... one might expect to
find that educated men would avoid a perversion of language
which lends itself to no wider view of life than that of
village gossips. . . . Not for one moment would one willingly
lose sight of the truth that the relation of the sexes and the
primary ties of kinship are the deepest root of human well-
being; but to make them by themselves the equivalent of
morality is verbally to cut off the channels of feeling through
which they are the feeders of that well-being.
The writer proceeds to explain her meaning
farther, by declaring that the most momentous
portion of morality, and that to which the name
should be most emphatically applied, lies not in
personal purity of life, or benignity and self-
restraint towards those about us, but in what she
calls' good workmanship . manipulative or
other,' from—and these are her own examples--
the making a pair of boots to the editing a poli-
tical newspaper. And the one thing needful, she
says, to the loftiest moral life, and—as she else-
where adds to the only true religion as well, is
'an effective and awe-inspiring vision of the
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
183
human lot,' and an understanding of the con-
nection between duty and the material processes
by which the world is kept habitable.'
How far all this will harmonise with certain
of her other dicta we cannot here pause to
inquire. We should have conceived, however,
from certain passages in her writings, and from
many incidents in her stories, that the inner
intention which an act embodied, and not the
material results that followed on it, were, accord-
ing to her view, the primary tests of morality;
and that actions might, at times, be in the highest
sense moral, though their inevitable results could
be nothing but unbappiness. The question, how-
ever, is not whether one view of the question is
true, and another false; for they are not mutually
exclusive ; on the contrary, they each imply the
other, and no moralist for a moment ever doubted
the truth of either of them. The only question
is as to their relative importance. It is not
whether private morality is possible without
public, but whether public morality is possible
without private ; and whether private morality,
with the agonising struggles which she says are
involved in it, can be ever generally sustained by
merely temporal aspirations and enthusiasms.
184
GEORGE ELIOT ON
7
Morality must spring, she tells us, from an
'effective and awe-inspiring vision of the human
lot.' That possibly may be very true : but is
the human lot' calculated to inspire awe ?
Doubtless it is so for those who suppose that
each human being has a stake in eternity. Will
it be equally so for those who suppose man's
greatest mission is to “keep the world habitable
for himself and his ephemeral children?; Will
the 'vision 'supply such men with the solemn
enthusiasm and the severe resolve that will alone
serve their purpose? This is really the long
and short of the matter. The whole philosophic
dispute becomes at last eminently practical ; and
is carried inevitably from that lower court in
which cases are judged by theory, to that higher
and final one, where they are judged by homely
knowledge of the world and shrewd observation
of fact. The common lot,' as it exists at
present, can be an object of effective vision for
George Eliot, only as containing in itself the
seeds of its own improvement. At present the
world consists of a majority that have need to be
improved, and of a minority that are labouring
to improve them ; but if mankind show few signs .
of
progress, not only does their own existence
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
185
become morally hopeless, but the efforts of their
improvers become altogether vain. Does our
author, then, really see in the world around her
any sure signs for the faith that she feels and
inculcates? Is the awe that the vision’inspires
her with due to the width of her view, or to a
haze that distance lends to it? Let us turn from
her generalisations on man to the specimens she
offers us of typical individual men.
We used to question whether in the whole
range of fiction there was ever a being so unreal
and so meaningless as the gentleman or the man
of fashion described by Dickens. Certainly no
chimæra or centaur could be more impossible
tban Sir Mulberry Hawk or Lord Frederick
Verisopht. But George Eliot has, we think,
equalled Dickens. If Sir Mulberry Hawk and
Lord Frederick are chimæras, the men and
women of Theophrastus Such' are wraiths.
They are intended to be typical human beings,
but they are hardly human beings at all. They
are like shapes seen in a dream, which seem
always on the point of speaking, but which
never utter a sound, and which grow more faint
and shadowy the more we look at them. We
cannot, indeed, call them impossible, as we could
186
GEORGE ELIOT ON
Sir Mulberry Hawk, for they are not definite
enough to have so definite a judgment pronounced
on them. On the contrary, so far as we can
judge of them, they are not only not impossible,
but they are not improbable. As we read the
descriptions of them, our impression is that the
author must have had some reality in her mind ;
but if the reader would get at this reality, his
imagination has so far to amend what she
presents him with, that the result will be to his
credit rather than hers; and when the result is
attained, and the faint and timid outlines are
filled in so as to somewhat approach a portrait,
his chief feeling will be wonder that such
portraits should have been thought worth
taking. There are descriptions in these essays
of at least twenty characters, every one of
which is meant to be typical of some important
element in society, and is expressly used to
point some important moral. But it is not too
much to say that in not one of those characters
is there the least sense conveyed to us of the
author's having really seen her subjects, or at
any rate having been in any degree familiar with
them. They are like the productions of one
who has thought much about life, but has
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
187
known practically very little of it; and who has
seen the less of it, the more she has come to
think about it. Very different is she in this
way from her two illustrious predecessors. The
qualities most present in them are precisely
those most absent in George Eliot. Theo-
phrastus and La Bruyère both impressus
instantly as men with a profound knowledge of
life. They may or may not have used this
knowledge as the foundation of philosophic
theories; but there, at all events, is the hard
knowledge of facts, without which all the
theories will be valueless. They do not in-
form us whether they have had any awe-in-
spiring visions' of man; but they show us,
without telling us, that they have had a very
keen vision of men. Two thousand years and
more have passed since the days of Theophrastus,
and yet his characters are as vivid as though
they were painted yesterday. As we study
them the past seems present; the dead world
seems alive again. Generations divide us from
La Bruyère, and a part of his salt, it is true, has
lost its savour with time. But this is a part
that we can well spare. What remains fresh, is
fresh and pungent as on the day he wrote it.
188
GEORGE ELIOT ON
6
' Theophrastus Such' impresses us in a way
precisely opposite. Instead of making the past
seem near to us, it makes the present seem re-
mote. And it does this in two ways ; firstly,
in the manner in which the facts are presented
to us ; secondly, in the facts that are selected
for presentation. The manner is timid, dream-
like and shadowy, where it should be wide.
awake and familiar. The facts, when they
should be typical of what is of wide importance,
are typical only of what is most trivial or con-
fined in interest ; or when not that, they are
without
any meaning whatever, unless we are to
suppose them to be undiscoverable personalities.
Let us take the following description, for
instance, of a gentleman called Spike, who is
given us as a type of what the author calls a
political molecule : '
He was (she says), a political molecule of the most
gentlemanlike appearance, not less than six feet high, and
showing the utmost nicety in the care of his person and
equipment. His umbrella was especially remarkable for its
neatness, though perhaps he swung it unduly in walking.
His complexion was fresh, his eyes small, bright and twink-
ling. He was seen to great advantage in a hat and great-
coat-garments frequently fatal to the impressiveness of
shorter figures; but when he was uncovered in the drawing-
room it was impossible not to observe that his head shelved
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
189
off too rapidly from the eyebrows towards the crown, and
that his length of limb seemed to have used up his mind so
as to cause an air of abstraction from conversational topics.
He appeared, indeed, to be preoccupied with a sense of his
exquisite cleanliness, clapped his hands together and rubbed
them frequently, straightened his back, and even opened his
mouth and closed it again with a slight snap, apparently for
no other purpose than the confirmation to himself of his own
powers in that line. . . . Sometimes Spike's mind, emerg-
ing from its preoccupation, burst forth in a remark delivered
with smiling zest; as that he did like to see gravel walks
well rolled, or that a lady should always wear the best
jewellery, or that a bride was a most interesting object; but
finding these ideas received rather coldly, he would relapse
into abstraction, draw up his back, wrinkle his brows longi-
tudinally, and seem to regard society, even including gravel
walks and brides, as essentially a poor affair.
Now, for what purpose is this vapid phantom
conjured up for us?
for us ? To illustrate what truth?
The truth, that political demands which are
made by the individual selfishly are often 'trans-
muted by the nature of things' into 'a demand
for the public benefit. Now, we should have
ourselves thought this a truism so obvious that
it required no more illustration than the fact
that a man sleeps when he is sleepy, and so
ceases to keep others awake 'who happen to be
sleepy also. But even were anything gained
by the illustration here offered us that of a
190
GEORGE ELIOT ON
narrow-minded cotton-spinner, who with a keen
insight into no political truths save a few that
bear on his own commercial interests, is yet an
involuntary helper to his brothers in commerce
also, the portrait of this special cotton-spinner
adds nothing to our understanding of the lesson.
Spike himself is as much a superfluity as in a
diagram of a pump would be a picture of a man
at the handle; and his place and function might
be signified just as well by a single capital letter,
as by the vague and long-drawn description of
him we have just quoted. Where, we ask, was
the need of all those particulars ? Would not
the picture have been equally useful, or useless,
had every feature in it been reversed : had Spike
been a dwarf instead of six feet high, had his eyes
been languid instead of bright and sparkling,
and had he thought that brides looked sheepish
rather than interesting ? Let us contrast this
description of George Eliot's with one of La
Bruyère's, in which the effect is produced in a
precisely similar way-an enumeration of ex-
ternal details as to manner and deportment :-
Giton a le teint frais, le visage plein, et les joues pen-
dantes, l'oeil fixe et assuré, les épaules larges, l'estomac haut,
la démarche ferme et délibérée ; il parle avec confiance, il
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
191
fait répéter celui qui l'entretient, et il ne goûte que médio-
crement tout ce qu'il lui dit; il dort le jour, il dort la nuit,
et profondément; il ronfle en compagnie ; il occupe à table
et à la promenade plus de place qu'un autre; il tient le
milieu en se promenant avec ses égaux; il s'arrête, et l'on
s'arrête; il continue de marcher, et l'on marche; tous se
réglent sur lui; il interrompt, il redresse ceux qui ont la
parole; on ne l'interrompt pas, on l'écoute aussi longtemps
qu'il veut parler, on est de son avis; on croit les nouvelles
qu'il débite. S'il s'assied, vous le voyez s'enfoncer dans un
fauteuil, croiser les jambes l'un sur l'autre, froncer le sourcil,
abaisser son chapeau sur ses yeux pour ne voir personne, ou
le relever en suite, et découvrir son front, par fierté ou par
audace. Il est enjoué, grand rieur, impatient, présomptueux,
colère, libertin, politique, mystérieux sur les affaires du
temps; il se croit des talents et de l'esprit :-il est riche!
What a difference between the two styles of
portraiture. In La Bruyère's every detail tells
in George Eliot's none. Everything in the
former is typical of a class ; all that we can say
of the latter is that some things in it may be
accidents of some special individual. Let us
make another comparison.
Let us compare
Theophrastus Such with Theophrastus, and see
how the impressions of the two differ when they
are concerned with the same object. The
following is the portrait Theophrastus gives of
the Flatterer :
The flatterer is a person who will say when he walks
192
GEORGE ELIOT ON
with another, 'Do you observe how people are looking at
you? This happens to no man in Athens but you. A
compliment was paid you yesterday in the porch. More
than thirty persons were sitting there, and the question was
started, Who is our foremost man? Everyone mentioned
you first, and ended by coming back to your name.' With
these and the like words he will remove a morsel of wool
from his patron's coat; or, if a speck of chaff has been laid
on the other's hair by the wind, he will pick it off, adding
with a laugh, 'Do you see? Because I have not met you
for two days, you have bad your beard full of white hairs;
although no one has darker hair for his years than you.'
Then he will request the company to be silent while the
great man is speaking, and will praise him, too, in his hear-
ing, and mark his approbation in a pause with True;' or
he will laugh at a frigid joke, and stuff his cloak into his
mouth as if he could not repress bis amusement. . . If his
pation is approaching a friend, he will run forward and say,
'He is coming to you;' and then turning back, 'I have
announced you.'
He is the first of the guests to praise
the wine, and to say, as he reclines next the host, “How
delicate is your fare.' He will ask his friend if he is
cold, and if he would like to put something more on; and
before the words are spoken, will wrap him up. Moreover,
he will lean towards his ear and whisper with him; or will
glance at him as he talks to the rest of the company. He
will take the cushions from the slave in the theatre, and
spread them on the seat with his own hands. 1
Let us compare this with George Eliot's
portrait of ' A too deferential Man.'
first remark, however, that in this case what she
We may
1 Mr. R. C. Jebb's translation. 1870.
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
193
desires to illustrate is a fact requiring really keen
observation to detect, and not at all obvious to
the careless eye :-
People are misled (she tells us), by the common mistake
of supposing that men's behaviour, whether habitual or occa-
sional, is chiefly determined by a distinctly conceived motive,
a definite object to be gained, or a definite evil to be avoided.
The truth is that, the primitive want of nature once toler-
ably satisfied, the majority of mankind, even in civilised life
full of solicitations, are with difficulty aroused to the dis-
tinct conception of an object towards which they will direct
their actions with careful adaptation, and it is yet rarer to
find one who can persist in the systematic pursuit of such an
end. ... Society is chiefly made up of human beings whose
daily acts are all performed either in unreflecting obedience
to custom and routine, or from immediate promptings of
thought or feeling to execute an immediate purpose.
When they fall into ungraceful compliment, or other luck-
less efforts of complaisant behaviour, these are but the tricks
or habits gradually formed under the successive promptings
of a wish to be agreeable, stimulated day by day without any
widening resources for gratifying the wish. It does not in
the least follow that they are seeking by studied hypocrisy
to get something for themselves.
Now, all this, though it is said in a singu-
larly flat and unincisive
way, is yet without
doubt quite worth saying. But when we turn
to the example by which she desires to illustrate
it, we can hardly conceive one fulier and less
0
194
GEORGE ELIOT ON
luminous. She calls her "Too Deferential Man'
Hinze.
ز
From his name (she says), you might suppose him to be
German; in fact, his family is Alsatian, but he has been
settled in England for more than one generation. He is the
superlatively deferential man. He cultivates the low-
toned tête-à-tête, keeping his hat carefully in his hand and
often stroking it, as if to relieve his feelings under the pres-
sure of the remarkable conversation which it is his honour
to enjoy at the present moment. I confess to some rage on
hearing him yesterday talking to Felicia, who is certainly a
clever woman; ... but you would have imagined that
Hinze had been prepared by general report to regard his in-
troduction to her as an opportunity comparable to an audi-
ence of the Delphic Sibyl. Felicia ... evidently embarrassed
by this reverent wonder, ... became somewhat confused,
stumbling on her answers, rather than choosing them. He
continued to put large questions, bending his head slightly,
that his eyes might be a little lifted in awaiting her reply.
· What, may I ask, is your opinion as to the state of
art in England ?'
« Oh,' said Felicia with a slightly deprecatory laugh, “I
think it suffers from two diseases—bad taste in the patrons,
and want of inspiration in the artists.
"That is true, indeed,' said Hinze, in an undertone of
deep conviction. 'You have put your finger with strict
accuracy on the causes of decline. To a cultivated taste like
yours, this must be particularly painful.”
What we have quoted already, is nearly as
long as the whole of the corresponding sketch of
Theophrastus ; and of George Eliot's we have
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
195
quoted a fifth part only. For seven or eight
more pages are the doings and the disposition of
Hinze enlarged upon ; and our impression of him
in the end is if anything more hazy than at the
beginning. It is quite possible that the pecu-
liarities she ascribes to him may one and all of
them belong to some living individual, but they
do not make that individual live for us. They
are not characteristic of even a single human
being, much less are they typical of any im-
portant class ; nor do they help us in any degree
to understand practically the important general
truth which they are intended to illustrate.
The same singular infelicity in the selection
of facts to dwell upon is exhibited perhaps even
more strongly in the essays called 'So Young,'
and Diseases of Small Authorship.' The
former of these is an account of a man named
Ganymede, who was precocious in his boyhood
and who looked boyish in his early manhood.
He was always taken for younger than he was,
and so he cherished the pleasing notion that he
was still a youth at forty. This is the sum and
substance of the entire essay. How any
human
being could have thought it worth the writing
is more than we can say. In ‘Diseases of Small
03
196
GEORGE ELIOT ON
Authorship,' we have two companion pictures,
between which there seems no essential difference
beyond the sex of the subjects. The one is
of a man, the other of a woman, who have each
of them at some time or other written a single
book, and who find in that book thereafter their
principal pride and topic. This is the one fact
that we are told about them. They are nothing
but two names, garnished with a few meaningless
rags of detail, to which this meaningless fact is
attached.
We have already set a sample of George
Eliot's work side by side with that of Theo-
phrastus ; and the contrast between the two
writers hardly needs to be pointed further.
Every detail that the Greek gives us is peren-
nially typical of some special character ; every
character is typical of some perennial class. We
can do nothing in George Eliot's case but flatly
reverse the criticism. The important difference,
however, between the two writers, is no mere
difference in literary skill. It lies far deeper ; it
points to far more important issues ; and the
other is but the outward and accidental sign of
it. It is the difference in their acquaintance
with life ; in their insight into the practical work-
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
197
ing capacities of human nature. In just the
same way is George Eliot contrasted with La
Bruyère ; and as most of the powers of Theo-
phrastus are included in his, with the addition of
some others, La Bruyère will perhaps be of
most service to us in the comparison we are
about to enter on.
It will be recollected that the chief question
we have been trying to suggest to the reader, is
the question of how far George Eliot's know-
ledge of human nature fits her to be a prophet
about its prospects and its general value-how
far her vision of the human lot' is accurate and
authentic. Now, as we have already said, her
knowledge in this matter is in some ways
both
profound and singular. But its value is de-
stroyed by being incomplete and partial. We
have compared her already to an engineer who
is a full master of certain mechanical theories,
but who is in the most naïve ignorance of the
strength of engineering materials—who knows
little of the action on them of heat and cold, or
of the comparative strengths of iron, oak, and
steel. She sees the various temptations that beset
men, and the various noble impulses that at
times stir them ; but she does not see in their
198
GEORGE ELIOT ON
due proportions what are men's average powers
of resisting the one, or their average likelihood
of being lifted upwards by the other. It is just
in this kind of insight that La Bruyère is so con-
spicuous. His vision of the human lot is dis-
torted by no theories as to the effect it ought.
to produce upon him. He sees it as it is, and he
shows it as he sees it. In every word he writes,
we see that he is at home with his subject. He
has that accurate empirical knowledge which, in
all practical matters, is the only foundation on
which any sound theory can be built. Let us
compare the course of humanity to a horse-race ;
and La Bruyère, we may say, predicts its issue
like a groom or a book-maker ; George Eliot, like
an excited poet. It is true that she knows
human nature to be weak and wavering ; but
this is a knowledge which she never seems
properly to assimilate. Just as a cynic knows
that virtue exists, and yet trusts human nature
no more for it, so does George Eliot know that
vice and weakness exist and yet trusts human
nature none the less for it. In her present
volume, the weaknesses of men are the chief
topic dwelt on; and her treatment of these shows
us more clearly than anything else she has
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
199
written, the reason why her recognition of them
is so unproductive. They are all for her things
at a distance, seen through a glass darkly ;
sounds heard in a dream. She is not familiar
with them ; they do not appeal to her with
human everyday voices. She has the same
shyness which tries to seem like ease, as she.
moves amongst them, that a village curate
might have when he dined at the great house
of his neighbourhood.
Not only the matter of her book shows this
but her manner also—a manner indeed which is
nothing new to her, but which seems latterly to
have grown more and more emphasised. She is
stiff and pompous. She cannot say a simple thing
simply ; she has infinite ingenuity in insinuating
platitudes ; she says oracularly what was too
evident to be worth saying at all ; and what was
perfectly fit to be said outright and bluntly, she
continually hints at with a species of elephantine
archness. Thus instead of plainly saying of a
clergyman that his memory had decayed, and
with it his once ripe scholarship, she informs
us with a suppressed knowingness that 'there is
another stage that is beyond ripeness, and less
appreciated in the market.' A living Englishman
200
GEORGE ELIOT ON
she calls a British subject included in the last
census. A servant's spelling is, in her language,
unvitiated by non-phonetic superfluities ;' and
the county aristocracy are 'such of humanity as
live within park-railings.' Here again is a piece
of wisdom, for which the whole essay, of which,
it is the concluding sentence, has been gradually
preparing our incredulous and startled ears :
'Let us be just enough to admit that there may
be old-young coxcombs as well as old-young
coquettes,' she says; as if the former were not
known to us just as well as the latter, and had
not figured equally often in life, literature, and
conversation.
These things in themselves are only trifles
but they are trifles which in the present case
mean a great deal. They illustrate that prac-
tical inacquaintance of the authoress with society
as a working machine, which was already evi-
dent to us in other ways; and to which, when
she is speaking to us as in eloquent prophecy,
we should be wise to pay special attention.
We trust that her admirers will not think
we do her injustice ; that when pointing out
her defects we are forgetting her signal merits ;
that because we see the feet of the image to
;
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
201
be clay, we forget that the head is gold. We
do nothing of the kind. Rather, the more
strongly we are impressed with her ignorance of
life in one sense, the more do we feel and wonder
at her knowledge of it in another. In the
midst, to use an expression of her own, of her
maze of illusory discoveries 'as to the general
ways of men, we come across reflections of quite
a different order, like granite boulders on a plain
of sand. Take this for instance :
Men's minds differ in what we may call their climate,
or share of solar energy; and a feeling or tendency which is
comparable to a panther in one, may have no more imposing
aspect than that of a weasel in another.
It is a pity that the effect of this pregnant
sentence is weakened by a number of tame vari-
ations on it which come directly after. But
what in itself can be more clear and trenchant !
Whilst as to the following, there are few men,
we imagine, who will not be touched to some
degree by its keen and piercing pathos :
I have sometimes thought that the facility of men in
believing that they are still what they once meant to be,-
this undisturbed appropriation of a traditional character,
which is often but a melancholy relic of early resolutions, like
the worn and soiled testimonial to soberness and honesty
carried in the pocket of a tippler whom the need of a dram
202
GEORGE ELIOT ON
had driven into peculation-may sometimes diminish the
turpitude of what seems a flat and barefaced falsehood.
Here again we have a really weighty aphor-
ism :
It is not true that a man's intellectual power is like the
strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest.
point.
Instances of this same kind of power might
be multiplied almost indefinitely ; but, as we
have said already, they do nothing to strengthen
our belief in that practical kuowledge of man-
kind which would alone give us confidence in
the value of her general theories, her piety to-
wards humanity, her faith in its future progress,
and her belief in it as a substitute for every
extra-human object of devotion.
We have yet a farther point to notice, and a
very curious one. Not only does George Eliot
not seem aware of how her theories are really at
variance with her more profound reflections on
life, and how utterly unsupported they are by
what she fancies to be her practical knowledge
of it; but she actually touches herself on the
chief and most hopeless flaws in them, and yet
seems to be somehow quite unaware that she
has done so, or else in nervous haste, to wilfully
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
203
close her eyes to the fact. We are alluding
especially to two essays in her present volume,
"Shadows of the Coming Race,' and ' Debasing
the Moral Currency.' In the former, which, as
the name suggests, has much in it that is bor-
rowed from Lord Lytton, the author gives us a
forecast of a state of things in which the con-
clusions of modern science shall have become
the natural heritage of the world at large, and
consciousness shall have been accepted as simply
an 'accompaniment' to life, to which ‘prejudice'
once gave 'a supreme governing rank, when, in
truth, it is an idle parasite on the grand sequence
of things
... a futile cargo, screeching irrele-
vantly, like a fowl tied head downwards to the
saddle of a swift horseman. Now, this is
exactly what the scientific school of which
George Eliot herself is an avowed disciple pro-
claims consciousness to be : what she says has
the sound only and not the sense of a misrepre-
sentation. And yet at the end, when she sup-
poses herself asked if the above beliefs, with certain
others, are hers, 'Heaven forbid !' she replies.
They seem to be flying about in the air with other
germs, and have found a sort of nidus among my melancholy
fancies. Nobody really holds them. They bear the same
204
GEORGE ELIOT ON
1
relation to real belief as walking on the head for a show
does to running away from an explosion or walking fast to
catch the train.
This may be true enough ; but it is no
answer to the difficulty. The conclusions
which she thinks can be dismissed so easily, she
admits are ‘logical,' and 'well argued' from the
scientific premisses. If this be the case there
must be some flaw in the premisses themselves ;
and if it be true, as she says, that 'nobody
really holds' the former, there would be more
intellectual candour, more justice done both to
herself and others, were she to admit that, in
her opinion, nobody really held the latter. But
that
any
such alternative is before her she seems
to have no notion. 'Debasing the Moral
Currency' suggests reflections to us that are yet
more surprising. Our author's most sacred
faith, we must remember, is a faith in the
per-
manent preciousness of human nature ; and the
most precious part of human nature is its
noblest and most inspiring sentiments. And
yet in the essay to which we are now alluding,
she informs us in so many words that the most
precious part of humanity is also the most
perishable.
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
205
:
These [i.e. our highest moral sentiments) are (she says),
the most delicate elements of our too easily perishable
civilisation. And here, again, I like to quote a French
testimony. Sainte-Beuve, referring to a time of insurrec-
tionary disturbance, says: 'Rien de plus prompt à baisser
que
la civilisation dans les crises comme celle-ci; on perd en
trois semaines le résultat de plusieurs siècles. La civilisa-
tion, la vie est une chose apprise et inventée, qu'on le sache
bien Inventas ciut qui vitam excoluere per artes. Les
hommes après quelques années de paix oublient trop cette
vérité : ils arrivent à croire que la culture est chose innée,
qu'elle est la même chose que la nature. La sauvagerie est
toujours là à deux pas, et, dès qu'on lâche pied, elle recom-
mence.'
With all this we ourselves concur most
heartily ; but it strikes us as coming strangely
from one who believes in nothing worthy of
devotion outside humanity. We should have
thought that with such a believer 'la culture'
was essentially 'la même chose que la nature,'
and that humanity, once civilised, was as likely
to grow savage as a man once old was likely to
grow young again. We should have thought
that such fears as those above expressed argued
a somewhat impious mistrust of the one Deity
that it is right and rational for us to serve and
worship
This is not the place, however for a philoso-
phical discussion. We are not writing a critique
206
GEORGE ELIOT ON
on the modern cultus of humanity. We have
been but endeavouring to point out to the reader
what a singular light on that cultus may be
thrown by the writings of its most inspired
apostle. Against her as a teacher, and a represen-
tative teacher, our main charges have been these.
Though her general reflections on life are both
profound and original, her particular observa-
tions of it have been so limited or so hazy, that
she possesses no knowledge fit to form a found-
ation for any scientific theory of it. Her theory,
such as it is, is utterly unsupported by the
foundation, such as it is. Or, rather, the entire
fabric seems to be inverted, and the foundation,
turned uppermost, seems to be crushing the
superstructure. The new religion, by the light of
which she attempts to viery life, seems to be the
ghost of a Methodistic theism, which has escaped
from its old body, and for which she is trying in
vain to find a new one. The body she selects is
'humanity ; but she fails to see how unfit that
ruinous, and polluted temple is for the reception
of such an inmate. The reason of this failure
on her part is probably due rather to the fine-
ness of her nature than to any deficiency of her
intellect; and though it is to her discredit as a
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
207
one.
philosopher, it is to her credit as a woman.
Plato has observed that a physician, if he
would obtain a real insight into the nature of
disease, should not himself be a man of entirely
robust health. In the same way, would a phi-
losopher understand human nature thoroughly,
he should, we much fear, be not of the robustest
morals. We do not in the least mean that
he should be a vicious man, but that he should,
at least, have not been always a very virtuous
Men err in their judgments on human
nature, both by being very good and by being
bad. But the knave's estimate of the
world is little more faulty than the hero's ;
indeed, sad as it may be to say it, we fear that
very often it is less so——less so, that is, as regards
the practical course of things ; for most of the
knavery that the hero is too good to suspect, is
knavery that is successful, and bears fruit in
accomplished deeds : whilst most of the good
that the knave is too degraded to dream of, is
good not as practical success, but merely as
heroic failure. We admire Leonidas more than
Xerxes;
but Leonidas falls, and the Persians
pass Thermopylæ. We admire the martyr
more than the apostate ; yet we suspect that
very bad.
208
GEORGE ELIOT ON
the actual history of Christianity would have
been predicted more accurately by the apostate
than the martyr. There are few of what she
considers the weak features in Christianity on
which George Eliot is harder than the ecstatic
visions of the monks. And yet these monks, as
she herself admits, were men of singular self-
devotion, and consumed by passionate enthu-
siasm. We would ask her to apply to herself
her own criticisms, and to inquire whether her
awe-inspiring visions of the common lot' have
more solid substance in them than the monk's
visions of his Redeemer.
To criticise the faults and the weakness of
what is great and noble is always a painful task.
Utterly as we disbelieve in the religion of
Humanity, as a system in any way self-suffi-
cient; utterly as we believe it to be at variance
with all accurate and all dispassionate observa-
tion, we yet cannot refuse to admire those who
persist in proclaiming as omnipotent and eternal
the goodness which they themselves at times
acknowledge to be so perishable ; nor, suppos-
ing for a moment that immorality and theism
are so connected as some writers contend they
are, shall we apply inaptly to such theorists as
THE HUMAN CHARACTER
209
George Eliot that memorable line, so full of
mournful reverence-
Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni.
And yet clearly, where great fallaciies exist,
it is our duty to do our best to expose them,
and to extract them from the shadow of the
truths under which they shelter. Fortifying
ourself against a reverence that may easily
become a superstition, it is our duty to contend
against the golden falsehoods, the heroic flatteries
with which certain philosophers would now
disturb our view of the human race. Nor, as a
counterblast to George Eliot's eloquence, can
we do better than commend to the reader such
unheroic, but such true wisdom as that which
breathes in the following sentences of La
Bruyère :
Ne nous emportons point contre les hommes en voyant
leur dureté, leur ingratitude, leur injustice, leur fierté,
l'amour d'eux-mêmes, et l'oubli des autres. Ils sont ainsi
faits, c'est leur nature, c'est de ne pouvoir supporter que la
pierre tombe, ou que le feu s'élève. . . . Le stoïcisme est un
jeu d'esprit et une idée semblable à la république de Platon.
We have dwelt at length on the fact that
George Eliot's theories of the world are not yet
borne ont by her examples of it. We have
P
210 GEORGE ELIOT ON THE HUMAN CHARACTER
pointed out how, though theoretically she is at
least a mitigated optimist, her representations of
the common lot are those of the most gloomy
pessimist. We think that we cannot quit the
subject better than in indicating some clue to
this seemingly so strange inconsistency.
It
may be found, we take it, in the following words
of her own :-
No wonder (she says), the sick-room and the lazaretto
have so often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual
doubt-a place of repose for the worn and wounded spirit,
Here is a duty about which all creeds and all philosophers
are at one; here, at least, the conscience will not be dogged
by doubt, the benign impulse will not be checked by adverse
theory ; here you may begin to act without settling one
preliminary question.
Exactly so: and George Eliot's device for
exhibiting a purely human virtue to us is to
represent all life as a sick-chamber, in which her
heroes and heroines are the ministrants, and all
the rest of the world is dying in ignoble agony.
How far such a view of life as this is calculated
permanently to stimulate progress and to sus-
tain flagging endeavours, we must leave to be
nsidered by others, and to be discussed in
other places.
211
NATURAL RELIGIONI
SOME seventeen years ago a singular book was
published, which perplexed and startled the
religious world of England. It edified some,
it
shocked others; and for a time
and for a time left others
doubtful whether they ought to be shocked or
edified. That book was the celebrated Ecce
Homo'; nor, when we consider its tone and
subject, can we at all wonder at the ambiguous
effect produced by it. It professed to be a
study of Christ's life and nature, regarded solely
under their human aspect. It was conceived, as
such, in a spirit of the deepest reverence. Its
moral phraseology, though partly that of
philosophy, was in a greater measure that of the
Christian pulpit. The sacred character which it
undertook to analyse, was analysed only that it
might be made a clearer object for imitation.
The author evidently was in some sense a
By the Author of 'Ecce Homo.' London : 1882.
P 2
212
NATURAL RELIGION
Christian, and a Christian whose piety was of
an unusually earnest kind. The most orthodox
readers were obliged to admit all this ; and they
were not, nor could they be, untouched by its
influence. From the very first, however, not
the orthodox only, but many whose theology
was then looked upon as the broadest, felt a
certain suspicion of this new and persuasive
teacher ; and their suspicions grew to certainties
as they studied his work more closely. Chris-
tian, in some sense, he no doubt was ; but his
Christianity, they soon detected, was something
distinct from theirs. The distinction, it is true,
was nowhere expressly stated by him. He
preserved, on the contrary, a solemn and guarded
silence about it ; and left it to be inferred, or not
inferred, by his readers. His true position was
thus for a short time doubtful; but it was
doubtful to the intelligent for a short time
only. They soon detected in his book, under all
its moral fervour, not so much a tendency to
general theological scepticism as a distinct re-
pudiation of one doctrine in particular, on which
the whole theology of the Christian world has
based itself. Not only did 'Ecce Homo, in
literal accordance with its title, confine itself to
NATURAL RELIGION
213
the consideration of Christ's strictly human
nature, but it invited the reader so to conceive
that nature as to shut out tacitly any real belief
in a Divine nature, distinct from and yet united
to it. The Christ thus depicted might no doubt
be the Holy One; He might no doubt be the
first of created things; but He was certainly not
the Word by whom all things were created. He
was not the Christ of the fourth Gospel ; He was
not the Christ of the Nicene Creed ; He was not
the Christ of any of the Christian Churches,
Greek, Roman, or Protestant. Critics were not
wanting to impress this fact on the public. One
of the chief theologians of the High Church
party declared the author to be a man who had
lost faith. The Evangelicals, and many Broad
Churchmen, were committed by their tenets
to a precisely similar judgment on him; and of
those who divined his drift, none completely
welcomed him but the laxest and most hete-
rodox of the religious rationalists.
It is not our purpose here to criticise 'Ecce
Homo;' but we
we have certain reasons for
wishing to recall to the reader the intellectual
stand-point which the author assumed in
writing it, and the kind of influence which it
211
NATURAL RELIGION
has since exercised and represented. Long
before its publication, the battle between science
and orthodoxy had spread itself into the field
of popular thought and literature. There had
been, amongst writers addressing the general
public, scientific critics openly at war with
orthodoxy; there had been orthodox apologists
openly at war with science ; there had also been
a party, on the same side as the orthodox, who
were willing and anxious to come to terins
with the adversary. But though it had been
attempted by many Christian writers to accom-
modate the Christian position to the demands
of sceptical criticism, sceptical criticism had as
yet, in no popular way, attempted to appro-
priate the Christian position for itself. To do
this was the object of 'Ecce Homo. Unlike
the authors of 'Essays and Reviews,' the author
of this book approached and treated his subject
not from within the Church, but altogether
from without it. Like most men of his time, be
must have been born in the Christian pale ; but
it was quite evident that he had formally left this
and he was examining the Gospel now as a new
species of convert, not as one who was striving to
keep the faith. To some of the Broad Church
NATURAL RELIGION
215
party, the Church, as assailed by science, seemed
merely like a vessel that had been seized by an
intellectual custom-house; and their chief occu-
pation was to select and to pitch overboard all
the doctrines that science might call in question.
But the author of 'Ecce Homo' was possessed
of a different aim. It was not to eradicate error
from a faith he was resolved to keep, but to find
truth afresh in a faith he had already discarded.
In this way he performed a work of greater
immediate import than he, probably, at that
time was conscious of; and he found an audience
larger than he had anticipated. Under the cover
of a silence which has long since been broken,
the ranks of unwilling sceptics were then rapidly
swelling. One by one, with sincere reluctance,
men were parting with faiths that had been
the most cherished things of their childhood;
and though they longed to replace them, they
were doubtful how to do so.
To such men, or
at least to a large number of them, ' Ecce Homo'
came like a light in darkness. It seemed to
say the exact word they were waiting for. It
introduced them to a teacher who, equally
with themselves, had felt the force of modern
destructive criticism. He had boldly allowed it
216
NATURAL RELIGION
to do, as he thought, its worst. He had allowed.
it to rob him of all accepted theology, of all
membership of any recognised Church ; and yet
in the end, this very same criticism was, as it
seemed, bringing him back to Christ. Here was
a comfort, indeed, to a number of vexed spirits.
Here was a teacher who had been in all points
tried as they had been. He had lost, of his first
beliefs, all that they had lost. He not only had
no faith left in the Mosaic account of the creation,
but none in even the complete accuracy of the
Gospels, or of the complete wisdom of every
word of the Epistles. The Bible to him, what-
ever might be its value, owed this to no super-
natural origin ; and if it was greater than other
human books, it was seen to be greater only
because tried by a common standard. To him,
like all books, it naturally had its errors ; and,
like all books of antiquity, very much that is
obsolete. Creeds and dogmas he viewed in the
samé spirit. None were infallible; at least in
their literal meaning, or, in that way, had for
him the least binding authority. And yet, in
pite of all this—in spite of all that science had
taken from him, he still could find in his.
uninspired Evangelists, he still would find in
ܪ
NATURAL RELIGION
217.
the fallible theorists of the Epistles, a divine clue
to the way, the truth, and the life. He still
could find in Christ, though dethroned from His
place in heaven, a master, an example, a redeemer,
a true guide to salvation. Salvation was a
word which had not lost its meaning for him ;
he still could see a road that led to the New
Jerusalem; and
and he still could detect on
earth a veritable Christian Church, and declare
that the gates of hell should never prevail
against it.
A message like this, we say, was the very
message that thousands were then waiting for ;
and the reception given the book must, to any
thoughtful observer, have marked an epoch in
the spiritual life of England. It revealed the
existence, and it gave voice to the convictions,
of a new religious body, that had been spon-
taneously and unconsciously forming itself. It
was a body without name, or rules, or recog-
nised test of membership. It had no organisa-
tion, it had no places of worship. But the
points of agreement which united all its members,
though vague in outline, were sufficiently plain
in substance. Its members were all converts of
science and of secular criticism. In the current
218
NATURAL RELIGION
sense of the word they had distinctly ceased to
be Christians. But the Christian instinct was
still strong in all of them ; and they were
longing to set on a scientific basis convictions
which they thought could be secure upon no
other, and which they were fully resolved they
would make secure somehow. It was to these
men especially that · Ecce Homo' appealed ;
and to the religion which it formed, and sought
to foster in them, the author has since given
an extremely apposite name; he has called it
Natural Christianity.
Now many people have thought, and many
people still think, that Natural Christianity is
to be the religion of the future ; nor, whatever
their opinion may be worth, are we able to call
it groundless. This new religion, vague and
shadowy as it seems
it seems to be, has gained in
comprehension what it has lost in definiteness ;
and it may fairly claim amongst its professors,
some of the keenest of modern intellects. It
has been a moral refuge for sceptic after sceptic;
and it has been of infinite comfort to them,
when assailed as atheists, in enabling them to
retort with a text from the New Testament.
It has given its own colour to Parisian Positi-
NATURAL RELIGION
219
vism ; it has converted physicists into preachers
of lay-sermons; and it has moved even men
who repudiate all religion to profess their repu-
diation of it in the scriptural language of Coven-
anters. In our own country indeed, up to very
recently, it has been almost co-extensive with
ethical free-thinking. To Christians therefore
of the older kind, who still believe in revelation,
and in the Church's divine origin, the fortunes
and the influence of this new form of Christianity
cannot fail to be of very singular interest.
Regarded as a popular faith, its existence has
been not a long one ; but it has been, in one way,
strangely eventful. We propose to review the
history of it during the past seventeen years, and
to compare its condition at the beginning of that
period, with its condition now at the end of it.
One of the chief complaints made by Natural
Christianity has been that the rival system is
incapable of growth. We are told, that by its
supernatural postulates, it is inseparably linked
to certain views of the universe which
every
day are being shown to be more untenable ; and
it cannot accept the new views that are replacing
them. It
may wish to do so, but it cannot. It
is obliged to reply Non possumus. If Chris-
220
NATURAL RELIGION
و
tianity is to live, say the Natural Christians, it
can only live by growing. It must keep abreast
of advancing secular knowledge, and be always
ready to change or discard its dogmas, if secular
criticism pronounce them false or inaccurate.
Change, indeed, according to their view of the
matter, is in religion the same thing as life ; and
Natural Christianity will reveal its living power
to us largely, if not chiefly, by its constant and
fearless changes. Few systems, whether of
religion or government, are found to fulfil
entirely the predictions of their followers or
their adherents ; but, at least in respect to the
above matter of change, Natural Christianity
has been an exception to this rule. Never was
there a religion which, within an equal space of
time, has changed so profoundly all its original
features : or whose latter end has so rapidly
forgotten its beginning. It is, as yet, hardly
generation old, and it has already not merely
grown, but we may almost say that it has
outgrown itself.
There are many, we do not doubt, who will
receive this last statement with indignation.
They will either say that notorious facts dis-
prove it; or else that it is incapable either of
NATURAL RELIGION
221
7
proof or disproof: or very likely they will say
both. And we quite admit ourselves that we
are dealing with an elusive subject, which it is
difficult to treat of in very precise terms.
Undue precision, however, we shall certainly
not affect; nor shall we attempt to generalise
further than our evidence warrants. But a
piece of evidence is at the present moment
before us which will enable us to speak with a
certain amount of confidence. Ecce Homo,
as we have said already, is a work admittedly
representative of the spirit of Natural Chris-
tianity, as it was in its adolescence some
seventeen years ago ; and we may accept its
author as a representative Natural Christian.
He is representative in every requisite way-in
his general devoutness, in his particular inoral
tone, in his willingness to believe whatever
science will let him believe, and in his docile
disavowal of whatever it will not let him. He
is representative, above all, because he is a man
of exceptional intellect, and is thus quick to
interpret the meaning of those scientific dis-
coveries to which all Natural Christians are
pledged to adjust their creed. We shall not be
far wrong, indeed, if we regard him as a mirror
222
NATURAL RELIGION
in which any such Christians may see their own
positions reflected. And if this be the case, the
history of his opinions will be practically a
history of Natural Christianity generally. For
such a history he has now supplied the materials.
He has given the world, during the course of
the
present year, a new volume, with the title of
Natural Religion’; and by comparing the
views and spirit of that, with the views and
spirit of 'Ecce Homo,' we conceive we may
arrive at no untrustworthy estimate, not only
of the changes which the author has himself
experienced, but of changes experienced also by
the mass of those who share his opinions.
With regard to “Ecce Homo, it will be
enough if we speak briefly; for the points we
are concerned to notice in it are few, though of
profound significance. In spite of the author's
extra-ecclesiastical position, and the purely
secular spirit in which he examines the phe-
nomenon of Christianity, there are three super-
natural doctrines which he never seems to have
questioned, and a fourth which, if he questioned
it, he questioned only to retain. The existence
of a personal God, the immortality of the
human soul, and some special mission deputed
NATURAL RELIGION
223
by God to Christ-to these three questions his
scepticism seems never to have extended. The
fourth question is the reality of Christ's mira-
cles ; and he decides, having gravely weighed
the matter, that some, at least, of them are
authentic. We beg that the reader will reflect
upon these facts : he will find them full of
instruction. Here are four doctrines —that a
personal God exists ; that the human soul is
immortal ; that God sent Christ to do a unique
work in the world, and endowed him for this
purpose with miraculous powers—here are four
doctrines of the most distinctly supernatural
character, and yet, seventeen years ago, the
author of 'Ecce Homo' accepted them from
the standpoint of Natural Christianity. We
shall pause for a moment to show we are not
misstating the case.
' It was the will of God,' says the author,
' to beget no second son like Christ. . . . And
as, in the will of God, this unique man was
elected to a unique sorrow, and holds as undis-
puted a sovereignty in suffering as in self-
devotion, all lesser examples and lives will for
ever hold a subordinate place, and serve chiefly
to reflect light on the central and original
224
NATURAL RELIGION
21
6
The
Example. In his wounds all human sorrows
will hide themselves, and all human denials
support themselves against his cross. This
passage occurs in the closing chapter of the
work ; and the author proceeds to tell us, that
though he is relinquishing his subject for the
time being, he has by no means exhausted it.
There are two points, dealt with by Christianity,
which he has not yet touched upon.
first,' he says, 'is Physical Evil ; the second is
Death. . . . What comfort,' he continues, 'Christ
gave men under these evils ; how he reconciled
them to nature as well as to each other, by
offering them new views of the Power by which
the world is governed, by his own triumph over
death, and by his revelation of eternity, will be
the subject of another treatise.'? In an earlier
chapter again he writes thus : 'If we suppose
that Christ really performed no miracles, and
that those which are attributed to him were the
product of self-deception, mixed in some pro-
portion or other with imposture, then, no doubt,
the faith of St. Paul and of St. John was
an empty chimera, a mere misconception.' 3
· Miracles,' he writes further, “play so important
1 'Ecce Homo,' pp. 321, 322 * Pp. 322, 323.
3 P. 40.
NATURAL RELIGION
225
2
1
a part in Christ's scheme that any theory which
would represent them as due entirely to the
imagination of his followers, or a later age,
destroys the credibility of the documents, not
partially but wholly, and leaves Christ a per-
sonage as mythical as Hercules. Now the
present treatise aims to show that the Christ of
the Gospels is not mythical.
The above extracts-and we could add to
their number from almost every chapter-will
be enough to inform, or else to remind the
reader, how much supernaturalism remained, at
the time we speak of, in this Natural Christian's
creed. Indeed, so marked is this element that
it may almost produce an impression that we
have done wrong in calling him a Natural
Christian at all. Such, however, he most un-
doubtedly was, as the following facts will show.
We mean, when we call him a Natural Christian,
that he approaches Christianity from a purely
secular standpoint, and that he accepts this part
1 P. 43. The writer, it is true, says presently, that for his
purpose it is enough to assume the reality of the miracles ' pro-
visionally.' But the whole tone of his volume, and many dis-
tinct expressions, show that at that time he believed in them
actually ; and, on the face of the matter, it is clear that his
scientific conception of nature was not such as to make him
think them, on a priori grounds, impossible.
Q
226
NATURAL RELIGION
and rejects that according to the dictates of
purely secular criticism. We mean, in fact,
that he dis believes in everything that either
Catholics or Protestants mean by revelation or
inspiration. He does, no doubt, believe in a
revelation of some sort. The most valuable of
his own beliefs he believes were revealed by
Christ. But he applies the word Revelation to
the teachings of science also ; and he believes
that the Almighty speaks through Professor
Huxley in precisely the same sense as that in
which he spoke through Christ. "Another
mighty revelation,' he says, 'has been made to
us, for the most part in these latter ages. We
live under the blessed light of science—a light
yet far from its meridian, and dispersing every
day some cowardice of the human spirit. These
two revelations stand side by side. Our modern
physicists, historical writers and philologists,
are 'expounders,' in his words, 'of a wisdom
that Moses desired in vain ;' the least among
them is greater than Moses : 'l and, if we may
add ourselves a familiar illustration of these
opinions, Bishop Colenso's criticisms on the
• Books of Moses' must be a truer revelation
1 ܕ
1 Pp. 328, 329.
NATURAL RELIGION
227
than were those books themselves. The author
does, indeed, look upon the revelation made by
Christ as of all revelations the greatest and most
important; but the means by which we arrive
at what that revelation was, are of no other
kind than those by which we arrive at the
history of Greece. The Christian records have,
in his eyes, no special authority. He endorses
some of their statements, and he rejects others.
St. Mark, 'to him, is not more inevitably
accurate than Mitford was to Lord Macaulay ;
nor is he more submissive to the theology of
the creeds than the late Mr. Lewis was to the
philosophy of Hegel. The appearance, for
instance, of the Spirit in the form of a dove
he at once sets aside as an evident, though
harmless fable ; 1 and—to come to a wider
matter—the Holy Spirit itself, he declares to be
really a symbolic name for 'The Enthusiasm of
Humanity.' 2
Here is a man, then, who has entirely broken
away
from every trammel of Christian tradition
and dogmatism.
He believes himself to be
standing on the same intellectual ground, he
conceives himself to be following the same
1 P. 10.
2 P. 320.
Q 2
228
NATURAL RELIGION
intellectual methods, as the most sceptical and
atheistic of our modern physicists and historians ;
and, if he sees in the universe anything more
than they do, he conceives that he does so simply
from using their methods better. And yet this
man, some seventeen years ago, could declare, in
the face of all that his guides were teaching him,
and appealing to no source of knowledge but
such as they would recognise, that a personal
God exists, that man's soul is immortal, and
that Christ was miraculously deputed to lead
that soul to its salvation. This man, too, was
not one of the ignorant. He was a trained
scholar and critic, a diligent student of the dis-
coveries and the speculations of his epoch, and
so far as intellect and moral influence went, he
was evidently to be ranked amongst the foremost
of his contemporaries. To minds of a certain
class this will now seem hard to realise. The
late Professor Clifford, for instance, during the
closing years of his life, would have looked on
the author's position as logically inconceivable.
None the less it was his, and not his only ; it
was substantially the position also, as abundant
evidence shows, of nearly all the earnest thinkers
in England, who having discarded, at the bid-
NATURAL RELIGION
229
ding of science, the theology they had inherited
from their fathers, were still imbued with the
feelings, and still clung to the hopes, of which
that theology till then had been the accepted ex-
planation and analysis. In other words, Natural
Religion in England was distinctly, at that time,
Natural Christianity ; and Natural Christianity,
in the minds of even its most advanced profes-
sors, not only contained, but was actually based
upon, a set of doctrines which are most un-
equivocally supernatural.
There were two sets of thinkers to whom
this position always seemed untenable the
orthodox of all shades on the one side, and
those who rejected all theism on the other.
These opposing schools, though they agreed in
nothing else, agreed in their estimate of this
new form of Christianity. The non-theistic
scientists believed firmly that the positive method
could afford us no proof whatever of the existence
of a personal God, and that it could afford a
distinct disproof of the existence of an immortal
soul; whilst, as for miracles, it made them
simply inconceivable.
The orthodox agreed
with this estimate of the positive method so long
as it was taken by itself ; but, according to their
230
NATURAL RELIGION
philosophy of human nature, that method,
though true as far as it went, was so far from
being the sole road to truth, that it was the road
to truth only of the least vital kind. Man had
other methods of knowing, by which this was
to be checked and supplemented. He had a
moral sense, he had a spiritual sense, he had faith,
he had a revelation. It was through these that
he apprehended his nature, his destiny, and his
duty; and the lower faculties employed by
positive science only helped him to a true con-
ception of things when employed together with
those higher ones, and regarded as subordinate to
them. Now the Natural Christians, though not
disavowing the latter, reversed the position in
which the orthodox school placed them. They
made science the interpreter of the truths appre-
hended by faith, not faith the interpreter of the
truths apprehended by science. This, to the
orthodox thinkers and the non-theistic thinkers
alike, seemed to be practically rejecting faith
altogether; and the chief doctrines of Natural
Christianity seemed thus to have no ground to
stand upon. They seemed, indeed, to both these
schools, to be simply survivals of a system which
the Natural Christian had abandoned, and which
NATURAL RELIGION
231
the Natural Christian would soon discern to be
such. The orthodox looked forward to this
event as the consummation of a spiritual
tragedy ; the non-theistic school looked forward
to it as the consummation of an intellectual en-
franchisement : they both looked forward to this
conclusion, whether for bad or good, as inevit-
able.
With this view we have always ourselves
agreed. Natural Christianity, as we have said
before, has numbered amongst its followers many
eminent men, and, what is more than that, many
noble and many excellent men. Of this fact we
are perfectly well aware. The author of ' Ecce
Homo ' seems to us to be a marked example of
it, and we fully appreciate the high qualities that
are in question. But between the men and their
theories we draw a sharp distinction ; and our
strong moral respect for the one is not at all in-
compatible with intellectual contempt for the
other. We have always held that the theory of
Natural Christianity was bound, sooner or later,
to find its adherents out; that it would force on
their convictions its own logical consequences ;
that, by the only methods which they con-
sidered valid, it would rob them of the only
232
NATURAL RELIGION
beliefs that they considered valuable ; and that
it would finally stultify, without respect of
persons, the wisest and the least wise of those
who had once so confidently proclaimed it.
Events, it is true, have not quite answered to
our expectation, but they have failed to do so in
one way only—they have come to pass far
sooner than we had expected. Natural Chris-
tianity is already, we believe, evaporating. The
critical solvents, against which it refused to pro-
ct itself, are already doing their own legitimate
work ; and all the doctrines that gave it meaning
or influence are disappearing in fumes at the
touch of the irresistible acid. We are not speak-
ing at random ; nor, though we believe there are
large numbers who will
agree with every word
we have said, should we have ventured to speak
as we have done, without definite facts to sup-
port us. We are about to cite the author of Ecce
Homo ' himself as a witness against the very posi-
tion which he did so much to render popular ;
and we shall show that his latest volume, alike
in its arguments and its spirit, is a complete,
though unconscious, condemnation of his first.
'Natural Religion is a sad and singular
book, and to any careful reader it must present
NATURAL RELIGION
233
itself in two lights—first, as a series of im-
personal arguments ; secondly, as a personal con-
fession—à mental autobiography. We shall
begin by giving a brief account of the arguments,
and the ends which the author tells us he has in
view in advancing them. After that we shall
proceed to other considerations.
The main idea which he desires and hopes to
illustrate may be gathered pretty plainly from
the following sentence in his preface. "The
author,' he there says of himself, with a some-
what pointless irony, 'is one of those simpletons
who believe that, alike in politics and religion,
there are truths outside the region of party
debate, and that these truths are more important
than the contending parties will easily admit.'
Now the contending parties with which he
himself is concerned are not the orthodox
Christians on the one hand, and the Natural
Christians of former years on the other. They
are distinguished far more simply. On the one
hand are all men, no matter of what sect, who
believe in a personal God and in man's personal
immortality; and, on the other hand, all who
refuse to believe in either.
His contending
parties, in fact, if described in our current
234
NATURAL RELIGION
phraseology, are the party of religion and the
party of absolute atheism ; or, to use, as he
does at times, words yet more significant, they
are the party of faith and the party of positive
science. That these two parties differ in pro-
found and important ways he does not attempt
to deny, but his contention is that these points
of difference are less profound and less important
than they are thought to be ; and, fürther, that
on whatever points the two may be really
opposed, there are many on which they really
agree.
His book, he tells us, is to be a study of
these grounds of agreement.
It may probably seem at first sight to the
reader that the author has set himself a somewhat
hopeless task. It is nothing less, as he expressly
states, than to exhibit a profound religious agree-
ment between those who cling to religion and
those who repudiate it-between theists and
atheists. His contention is, however, that the
words religion and atheism are used popularly in
wholly inaccurate ways, and that most who call
themselves atheists are not atheists at all, whilst
those who call themselves the religious party
have no monopoly of religion. He explains his
meaning as follows.
NATURAL RELIGION
235
Taking the modern man of science as a type
of the so-called atheist, he maintains that this man,
though he might himself be unaware of the fact,
does really recognise and really worship a God;
and that this God, further, is the God wor-
shipped by the Christians. The scientific man,
it is true, calls his God not God but Nature.
That, however, says the author, is a mere question
of words ; and though words may obscure facts
they cannot alter them. The Christians, he
argues, believe that their God made everything,
and that He is everywhere. He therefore made,
and he still sustains and orders, the whole of
that visible universe which we commonly call
Nature.
Nature, accordingly, is at least one
revelation of God ; and the study of Nature must,
properly speaking, be at least one branch of
theology. Indeed in earlier times, he observes
with great justice, it was distinctly recognised as
such. “If, then,' the author continues—and he
shall speak in his own words-
if, on the one hand, the study of Nature be one part of the
study of God, is it not true that he who believes only in
nature is a theist, and has a theology ? Men slide easily
from the most momentous controversies into the most con-
temptible logomachies. If we will look at things, and not
merely at words, we shall soon see that the scientific man
236
NATURAL RELIGION
has a theology and a God, a most impressive theology, a most
awful and glorious God. I say that man believes in a God,
who feels himself in the presence of a power which is not
himself and is immeasurably above himself, a power in the
contemplation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of
which he finds safety and happiness. And such now is
Nature to the scientific man. The average scientific man
worships just at present a more awful and, as it were, a
greater deity than the average Christian."
The scientific man then, says our author, is
certainly not an atheist; indeed, he adds, no one
can be who is not afflicted with some kind of
mental deficiency ;' that is to say, if we use the
word atheism in the sense popularly given to it.
In that sense, we are told, it is 'a mere specula-
tive crotchet;' it is not a serious matter and is
only skin-deep. But there is an atheism of a
far profounder kind, which alone it appears may
deserve the name, and which is not a speculative
denial but a great moral disease.
1
The present form (says the author), of such real atheism
might be called by the general name of wilfulness. All
human activity is a transaction with nature. It is the
arrangement of a compromise between what we want on the
one hand, and what nature has decreed on the other.
Not to recognise anything but your own will, to fancy any-
thing within your reach if you only will strongly enough, to
acknowledge no superior power outside yourself which must
1
· Natural Religion,' p. 19.
NATURAL RELIGION
237
be considered and in some way propitiated if you would
succeed in any undertaking; this is complete wilfulness, or,
in other words, pure atheism.
1
The author's meaning thus far is perhaps some-
what obscure ; he therefore illustrates it by an
example. One European country in especial, he
thinks, has exhibited in its conduct this pure
atheism he is describing. And what country
does the reader think that is ? He will be per-
haps surprised when he learns it is not Italy,
which has seized on the Papal States ; it is not
Germany, which has harassed the Catholic
hierarchy; it is not France, which has expelled
the religious orders. It is none of these ; it is
Poland. She, says the author, is a genuine type
of 'insensate atheism. Sedet ceternumque sedebit
that unhappy Poland, not indeed extinguished
but partitioned, and every thirty years decimated
anew. She expiates the crime of atheistic wil-
fulness, the fatal pleasure of unbounded individual
liberty, which rose up against the very nature of
things.'
We shall not at present pause to criticise
these views : we shall first, so far as we can,
complete our general outline of them. We have
? “Natural Religion,' pp. 27, 29.
238
NATURAL RELIGION
now stated the author's first position, which
once again he sums up as follows: Theism
consists not in possessing a meritorious, or true,
or consoling theory, but simply in possessing a
theory of the Universe.' (P. 36.) In other
words, as he reiterates with a nervous persistency,
Nature, when looked at with the eyes of modern
science, even if those eyes detect in it no trace
either of personality or benevolence, is neverthe-
less in very truth God. Instead of atheism
then', he says, 'we find the result of cancelling
supernaturalism and submitting to science, is a
theology in which all men, whether they con-
sider it or not, actually do agree that which is
concerned with God in Nature.' (P. 47.)
Having thus established, as he conceives,
that, in spite of all that science can take from us,
it yet leaves and indeed forces on us both a
theism and a theology, he proceeds to ask, how
will it be with religion ? The popular instinct,
he thinks, draws a broad distinction' between
the two ; and of course if they are really separate
things, that science will leave the one to us, is
no proof that it will leave the other. It
may
have left us a theology and yet have annihilated
our religion. Is this so ? That is the next
NATURAL RELIGION
239
question, and to it he replies as follows : 'There
are two ways in which the mind apprehends any
object, two sorts of knowledge which combine
to make complete and satisfactory knowledge.
The one may be called theoretic or scientific
knowledge ; the other, practical, familiar, or
imaginative knowledge;' and applying this
statement to the present question, theology, he
tells us, is the scientific knowledge of God, and
religion is the imaginative knowledge of Him.
God, then, being the same as Nature, and theo-
logy consisting of the generalisations of the
natural sciences, religion consists of these gene-
ralisations when grasped by the imagination, and
through that acting on the emotions.
The author now takes a new departure,
and goes on to tell us how the emotions are
acted on, how science or theology is transmuted
into religion. Of the results of this process, he
says, there are three varieties ; and though, pro-
perly speaking, there is only one scientific theo-
logy, yet this, in passing through the prism of
the imagination, reaches the moral being in the
form of three religions. These are, in the first
place, the Religion of Nature ; in the second, the
Religion of Humanity ; in the third, the Religion
ܪ
240
NATURAL RELIGION
of Beauty. We will take the three in order, and
explain what the author means by them.
To begin, then, the word Nature, as the
author justly observes, is unluckily somewhat
ambiguous, and is only used here because there
is no better available : for Nature means some-
times the All, inclusive of human nature, and
sometimes the All, exclusive of it. In the pre-
sent connection it is taken to mean the latter.
It means a 'power not ourselves '-'a Supreme
Power outside ourselves, which must be con-
sidered and in some way propitiated,' and to
whose laws 'we must conform under penalties.'
It is, in fact, Nature in the current scientific
sense. Nature, in this sense, says the author, is
the object of the first of the three forms of re-
ligion ; and the religion in question consists in
an emotional state of mind, in which our scien-
tific knowledge, as it were, is held in solution.
Thus we know that Nature is immense ; its laws
uniform ; the results of these laws various. We
feel that the immensity is overwhelming; the
uniformity solemn and awful; the variety inex-
pressibly wonderful : and such a feeling, per-
vading and abiding in our consciousness, is the
religion of Nature.
NATURAL RELIGION
2+1
This religion (says the author) is austere, abstract, sub-
lime. It worships, not the individual form of Nature, but
Nature itself considered as a unity. It may indeed be called
out by
a tree, or a flower, the sky, or the sea. But in
that case what it worships is as little as possible the object
itself; for this religion looks through and beyond visible
things : . .. loses the individual in the kind, and the kind
itself in the vista of higher unities above it ...
.. collects
them all into one grand Unity—who layeth the beams of his
chamber in the waters, who maketh the clouds his chariot,
and walketh upon the wings of the wind. (P. 82.)
Such then is the Religion of Nature.
The Religion of Humanity is of a more
directly practical, and, as the author in one
place hints, perhaps of a higher kind. Still, in
one sense of the word it is a Religion of Nature
also ; for man is himself an integral part of
Nature-one revelation, perhaps the highest, of
the all-embracing 'unity. What, then, is the
content of this second kind of religion ? In
explaining this the author finds no difficulty.
The Religion of Humanity, he says, is simply
the Religion of Christianity, with the super-
natural part subtracted from it. It contains
all the brotherly love, the willingness to spend
and be spent for others, the hope, the charity,
the enthusiasm, the admiration for moral
excellence, that Christ taught, appealed to, and
R
242
NATURAL RELIGION
awakened in the mind of the Christian world.
The object of its worship is not the inhuman
immensity, the inhuman order adored by the
first religion. It is not the earthquake and the
fire ; 'it is the still small voice ;' 'it is the
compassion we feel for one another ;''not the
storm that threatens the sailor with death, but
the life-boat and the Grace Darling that put out
from shore to the rescue; not the intricate
laws that confound our prudence, but the
science that penetrates them, and the art that
makes them subservient to our purposes. It is,
in a word, all that we recognise as morally good
in man; and the religion and the worship con-
sists in our admiration and our imitation of
this. Here, argues the author, is a religion with
which, surely, we should be all familiar. Let
us take from Christianity, as has just been said,
its supernatural hopes, its supernatural sanctions,
and what remains is the religion just described.
Nor, should anyone who has been touched by the
spirit of Christianity consider that this remainder
is insignificant. It is, on the contrary, by far
the most important part of the whole. Indeed,
the establishment of Christianity, he says, 'is in
the main simply a reaction against such intoler-
NATURAL RELIGION
243
ance (i.e. the theological intolerance of the
Jews), when the right of ideal humanity to
receive worship was asserted in the heart of a
people devoted to the exclusive worship of
Deity.'
Lastly, we come to the Religion of Beauty.
It is occasionally difficult, in the way in which
the author speaks of this, to separate it from the
Religion of Nature ; and it is indeed bound
up
with it as closely as the Religion of Humanity.
By putting together, however, all that we find
said about it, the author's conception of it be-
comes sufficiently distinct and coherent. The
Religion of Beauty has much in it akin to the
sensuous nature-worship of the Greeks. Its
spirit is indeed the spirit of that religion purified,
enlarged, and rationalised by the teachings of
modern science. How then does it differ from
the modern Religion of Nature ? It differs not
so much in the object, as in the temper in which
that object is dwelt upon. The Religion of Nature
is concerned with the law and the unity that
underlie phenomena. The Religion of Beauty is
concerned with the phenomena that are the result-
ants of law and unity. The former, as we have
seen already, worships the individual object itself
R 2
244
NATURAL RELIGION
- be it a tree or a flower, the sea or the sky, as
little as possible; the latter, as much. It
worships not the laws that result in the primrose,
but it worships the primrose itself. It sees
with the eye of Art, not with the eye of Science ;
and
yet it sees with the eye of Art after it has
been purged by Science. It is in this that it
differs from Hellenism. The Greek saw a
fountain and a pine-tree; but it was not the
gleam of the water, 'splendidior vitro,' nor the
wet mossy rocks, nor the tints of the blue-grey
foliage, nor the light on the bough and bark, that
his emotions rested on. They passed through
these to some semi-human divinities—to nymphs
or hamadryads ; and the emotions due to the
beauty of the things seen were wasted on the
doubtful beauty of the puerile things imagined.
But the Greek Religion of Nature in returning
to the modern world has returned purified, and
returned with an even greater, though perhaps,
more sober gladness. The fountain and the grove
moved Wordsworth even more than they moved
the poets of the Anthology. The modern
worshipper sees new beauties in the water,
because he has no thought of any Naïad who
inhabits it ; he receives a deeper 'impulse from
NATURAL RELIGION
245
the vernal wood'than he ever could have done
when the nymphs and the satyrs haunted it.
These, then, according to the present author,
are the three Natural Religions which belong to
man in virtue of his humanity, and of his human
knowledge. They are altogether independent of
the supernatural ; and not only can Science
never destroy them, but, on the contrary, as it
grows itself, it will deepen, enlarge, and quicken
them.
The author, however, is very far from being
satisfied with a mere statement of the above
views. Many people, possibly most religious
people, will at first regard them, he thinks, as
of no practical value. They will tell him that,
if he likes, he may call the universe God, but
that this will not make it God in any real sense
of the word ; and so, similarly, he may talk about
his three religions, but they are not religions
that will give anyone guidance or comfort, nor
except by metaphor can they be called religions
at all. Anticipating these attacks, he is per-
petually pausing to meet them. We will con-
sider now how he does so.
To return again, then, to the fundamental
thesis of the volume, that the visible universe,
246
NATURAL RELIGION
as approachable by positive science, is, though
it be the manifestation of no conscious or per-
sonal unity, none the less a very living God for
us—the author conceives, and we think not with-
out reason, that his average religious readers
may retort much as follows upon him :-
We know very well that the universe is glorious, but
when we have said that, there is an end of the matter. We
want to make atheists believe in God, and you do it, not by
changing their minds, but by changing the meaning of the
word God. It is not a verbal controversy that reigns
between atheists and Christians; it is the great controversy
of the age. Two opposite theories of the universe are in
conflict. On the one side is the greatest of all affirmations,
on the other the most fatal of all negations. There never
yet was a controversy which was not trivial in comparison
with this. It is cruel trifling to speak of compromise, it is
waste of time to draw verbal distinctions. Let atheism be
atheism, and darkness keep her raven gloss! Away with the
plausible definitions which would make it impossible for any
rational being ever to be an atheist! (P. 26.)
Such is the criticism of his Theistic theory which
the author anticipates, and the passage just
quoted is only one out of the many in which he
confronts himself with the imagined objector.
Let us see how he defends himself. We have
already seen what is his definition of Atheism.
We have now to see how he defends his defini-
tion of Theism.
NATURAL RELIGION
247
In the first place, then, he says, that to be a
Theist is to believe that God exists, not to be-
lieve that He is of such and such a character.
Thus, Calvin was a Theist just as clearly as
Canon Farrar is, though the latter believes that
God will have mercy on everybody, and the
former believed He would have mercy on ex-
ceedingly few. The author, however, means a
great deal more than this. Not only is a belief
in God per se independent of any belief as to his
moral character, but it is independent also of any
beliefs as to his distinctness from Nature,' or even
as to his personality. In short, a belief in God
per se is simply a belief in some regularity in the
universe to which a man must conform under
penalties.' That is to say, God is Nature as dis-
cerned by the clearest vision ; and Nature is God
as discerned by a less clear vision. Thus far,
however, he has not answered his objector ; he
has only put his own position in a yet more
objectionable light. How can Nature, regarded
merely as a regularity, take the place of God ?
The author answers frankly, that if by God be
meant the Christian God, this God in Nature
will not take his place completely ; but though
it takes his place only partially, it will neverthe-
243
NATURAL RELIGION
less do so really. That is to say, Nature will not
excite all the emotions that were excited by the
Christian God, but it will excite a large number
of emotions which Christians have always main-
tained could be excited by nothing except God.
Therefore, says the author, even for the Christian,
Nature must be God, though it be God under
one aspect only. Surely, he argues, me can see
this easily, we have here no occasion for moral
or emotional quibbling. We need look merely
at the plainest and most undoubted facts. Chris-
tians believe God to be infinite, omnipresent,
omnipotent. To apply these epithets to any
other Being would be blasphemy. The man of
.
science applies exactly the same epithets to
Nature, and so (with certain limitations which
do not affect the case) 1 does the Christian also.
Nature then, as regarded by the man of science,
possesses attributes, and extorts a homage which
the Christian acknowledges are proper to God
alone. The Christian must therefore admit that
Nature is truly God. The author constantly
recurs to and dwells upon this argument, and
1
That is to say, though the Christian may think God in-
dependent of the material universe, He is yet co-extensive with
it, and He sustains the whole of it; and He is the only Being
of which this can be said.
NATURAL RELIGION
249
urges the validity of it by the aid of many fur-
ther examples. The Christian declares God to
be the sole author of his existence ; the man of
science declares the same thing of Nature. Of
God only does the Christian say, 'in Him we
live and move and have our being. With in-
tense conviction the man of science says this of
Nature. Nature, as an historical fact, does
cause such men to worship.
Linnæus (writes the author) fell on his knees when he
saw the gorse in blossom; Goethe, gazing from the Brocken,
said, 'Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him?'
Kant felt the same awe in looking at the starry heaven as
in considering the moral principle; Wordsworth is inspired
rather amongst the mountains than amongst human beings;
in solitude Byron felt the rapture that purified from self.
It is a paradox which will convince few, that the heavens
declare no glory but that of Kepler and Newton. (P. 84.)
Here then, argues the author, are notorious
instances of men who have recognised the real
godhead of Nature.
Nor is this recognition,
he proceeds, necessarily Pantheism. It may be,
and it also may not be. The Pantheist believes
in an immanent cause ; the ordinary Theist in a
transcendent one. But these differences are
secondary. They are indeed but different the-
ories of God, based upon a common recognition
250
NATURAL RELIGION
us.
of Him : just as the theory that man has a
separate soul, and the theory that the soul is but
the living unity of the body, are alike based on
the common recognition of man. Supposing,
then, what really seems to be the case, that the
only Theism which science can recognise is
Pantheism, we still have a God sacred and awful,
an object of contemplation, of wonder, and of
worship: who if we go up to heaven is there,
who if we go down to hell is there also ; who
gives life, and who takes life away, and whose
everlasting arms both in life and death are under
Still does the Christian doubt ! The
author bids him turn to his Bible. That
abounds, he tells him, in the language of
Pantheism,' and both in Judaism and Chris-
tianity the word [God] is used for the most part
in its large indeterminate sense.' (P.88.) For
some purposes—for those especially of experi-
mental science, it will be no doubt well to retain
the word Nature, but that is not because Nature
is not really God, but because the name God 'is
too sacred to be introduced unnecessarily ; too
sacred in short to be worked with.'
Such are the main points of the author's
vindication of a natural and scientific theism.
NATURAL RELIGION
251
That, by itself, however, he frankly admits
would not, for the world at large, be a matter of
great importance ; and in the middle of his book,
quite distinct from the chapters, he inserts, in
italics, two pages of further objections :
Has all this (he represents his critic as saying)—has all
this any practical bearing? When a religion such as Christi-
anity loses its hold, after having possessed the minds of men
for centuries, as a matter of course a sort of phantom of it
will haunt the earth for a time. Its doctrines, rejected as
doctrines, will be retained for a while as rhetoric and imagery;
even the feelings which grow out of those doctrines will for cu
while survive them. A Neochristianity must inevitably arise,
which will console for a short interval some feeble minds.
... To such pious dreamers the plain English intellect loves
to apply a practical test. . . It scrutinises their conduct, asks
whether and in what respect they lead a different life from
others who do not profess to be religious ? Often (the objec-
tor is supposed to add further)—often this test works so
effectively as to save the trouble of all further discussion. The
Neochristian, who was perhaps prepared for argument, if he
is not provoked by argument, gradually forgets his crotchet.
He does not cease to think it true ; but he ceases to find it
important.
:
The author devotes the whole of the latter
part of his book to answering these objections.
He maintains that the religion whose nature he has
just been describing, is not only a real religion,
but a religion with the strongest practical
bearing ; and he sets himself to prove this, not by
252
NATURAL RELIGION
a scientific forecast of the future, but by an
analytic study of the present and the past. This
natural Theism, he says, with thė religion, or
rather the three religions which appertain to it, is
practically nothing new. He has said thus much
already ; but he must again return to the fact.
First, however, he pauses to ask what it is
religion must do, to vindicate, to the popular
mind, the practical character demanded of it.
It must do, he says, two things. It must keep
the individual in the path of right action ;
and it must lead him to find happiness only in
right emotion. It must redeem him, that is, first
from the selfish life, secondly from the sensual
life. And it must do this by showing him, that
such redemption is the one thing needful; that
in missing it he is 'losing his own soul,' and
that in that case it will profit him nothing,
even should he gain the entire world. This
is what most men demand of a practical religion ;
and this, says the author, his religion will do-
this, and a great deal more besides, which most
men would never demand of any religion at all.
He refers us, then, to the present and the
past-to the present first. From the present,
he selects the two types of men, who are
NATURAL RELIGION
253
supposed in general to be most free from, or
most adverse to, the control of the only religion
that the objectors regard as practical. These are
the man of science and the artist, or the devotee
of beauty. That both these men have a religion
of some sort the author has already argued.
He is now going to point out to us how this
religion influences them. The man of science,
he
says,
in the present state of our knowledge,
considers that we have not yet a large enough
inductive basis to enable us to construct any
coherent moral system. The man of science
therefore thinks it premature to fight for or
against any of the moral systems that at present
exist in the world. We must first understand,
he is represented as saying, more than we do
about sociology :
But, on the other hand (his supposed argument proceeds),
the laws of the universe can actually be, to an indefinite
extent, unveiled; the process is going on rapidly, and
infinitely more labourers are wanted to gather in the
harvest. In these circumstances it is a kind of sin to
occupy oneself with any other task. We have nothing to do
but to think, observe, and write. And thus (continues the
author), he enters upon a life to which the platitudes current
about virtue have no application. . . . His pursuit stands to
him in the place of friends, so that he has but few and slight
ties to society. ... But though so solitary, such a life may
be to him, if not satisfying, yet preferable beyond comparison,
254
NATURAL RELIGION
and on the most solid grounds, to any other life he knows of.
It may be full of an occupation for the thought, so inex-
haustively interesting as to make ennui, in such a man's
life, an extinct and almost fabulous form of evil; at the
same time it may be full of the sense of progress made both
by the individual himself, and by the race through his
labours. (P. 122.)
Let us now turn to the devotees of beauty.
What moral effect does their religion have upon
them? The critics the author is meeting will
say, ' Exceedingly little ;' and the author thinks
that, on the surface, they may have soine
ground for their opinion. For of the devotees
of beauty there is one class, and that the class
at the present moment most prominent, who
not only seem to be indifferent to the current
religious ethics, but actually opposed to them.
They regard “the pruderies of virtue as the
greatest hindrance' to the proper enjoyment of
life, and they side openly with the Medicean
world against Savonarola. (P. 121.)
Now, to the conventional moralist, it is no
doubt. quite true that the so-called religions of
these two types of men will seem to have none of
the practical effect spoken of. The man of
science is untouched by the Christian moral
precepts; the devotee of keauty makes a point of
NATURAL RELIGION
255
disobeying them. How are such men redeemed
by their religion from a wholly secular life?
And how, even metaphorically, can we speak of
their saving their souls? The author admits
that these questions are quite natural ; but he
has his answer to them. Neither the man of
science, nor the man who worships beauty has
the same conception of duty, the same concep-
tion of salvation, that is possessed by the
Christian or the ordinary theist : but they have
conceptions of them none the less; and none
the less do they embody these in their actions.
Thus the man of science finds his religion
teaching him the duty of the pursuit of truth ;
and he patiently follows this duty every day of
his life. Indeed 'he often,' says the author, 'is
disposed to regard himself as not only more
religious, but more virtuous than the moralist.
For he believes that his love of truth is more
simple, more unreserved, more entirely self-
sacrificing than that of the moralist, whom he
suspects onesidedly of suppressing or disguising
truth for fear of weakening social institutions,
or offending weak brethren.' Then, again, the
devotee of beauty, though he may by a perver-
sion of language declare himself the enemy of
256
NATURAL RELIGION
morality, is not so really. He is the enemy of
a certain form of morality no doubt; but that
is not because he thinks this to be morality, but
because he thinks it to be false morality. He
has a code of his own, which he thinks truer
than that he cavils at, and which the author
represents him as putting in the following
words :
The man whose heart never goes forth in yearnings or in
blessings towards beautiful things, before whom all forms
pass and leave him as cold as before, who simply labels
things and prices them for the market, but never worships
or loves; of such a man we may say that he has no soul;
and however fortunate he may he esteemed or esteem him.
self, he remains always essentially poor and miserable.
(P. 126.)
Such are the words put into the mouth of the
man who worships Beauty, merely as an avowed
voluptuary ; and yet even on him his religion
has a redeeming influence. But the Religion of
Beauty has other votaries as well, of a yet
higher order. A type of these is Wordsworth.
Wordsworth, says the author, was no doubt a
Christian ; but his Religion of Beauty stood on
own basis : to it alone was due the main
characteristics of his life, and it would not have
been vitally altered had Christianity never
NATURAL RELIGION
257
existed. We shall take occasion presently to
dispute this singular judgment. The author,
however, seems quite convinced of the truth of
it ; and therefore points to Wordsworth as the
saint' of the Religion of Beauty.
Here was
a man who deliberately refused to serve either
the Mammon of money or of popularity. He
had his message, his prophecy to deliver to the
world, and he renounced the world in order to
deliver it :
He surrendered (says the author) the wealth that is
earned by labour, trade, speculation, in exchange for the
wealth that is given away. Others might purchase and
hoard and set up fences, calling it property to exclude others
from enjoyment. To his share fell what all may take alike.
the goodly universe to which he was wedded in love
and holy passion. (P. 102.)
And again, speaking of such a career as this,
"This,' says the author, “is the victory that over-
cometh the world. And thus, he concludes
after all, the Religion of Nature and the Religion
of Beauty do both teach their votaries the same
old truth, that man has a soul, which if he lose,
it will be small profit to him to gain the whole
world. . . . Neither school yield in any degree
to the moralist in the emphasis with which they
brand the mere worldling, or by whatever name
S
258
NATURAL RELIGION
they distinguish the man who is devoted to
nothing, who has no religion and no soul,
Philistine or hireling or dilettante.'
If, then, the objector can be forced to see
the practical working of the Religions of Nature
and of Beauty, much more easy will it be to
convince him of the practical working of the
Religion of Humanity. Indeed this is a point
which hardly requires argument. The author
seems to presume that the influence of this
religion is a fact too patent to require his in-
sisting on it; and indeed, when we consider
that he identifies it with the moral side of
Christianity, we think that he is justified in his
presumption.
Here, then, are three Natural Religions, not
only existing in spite of science, but, to a large
extent, sustained and nourished by science, and
actually saving souls in this so-called atheistic
age. Still, says the author, there is one fact
which we must not blink. These three religions
not only differ, but there has hitherto been a
certain antagonism between them. He is not
alluding to the present only; he alludes to the
past also ; for these three Natural Religions, he
says, have always existed, though they have
NATURAL RELIGION
259
enshrined themselves, in earlier ages, in forms
that are now archaic. He has already said that
Christianity is in reality nothing but our modern
Religion of Humanity, with a certain amount of
supernaturalism added to it ; the Monotheism of
the Jews was essentially our modern Religion of
Nature ; and the Greek Polytheism was essen-
tially our modern Religion of Beauty. Now if
we look back, he says, over the history of the
Christian Church, we shall see that "it has
been always struggling with these [two latter]
religions, and that the only peculiarity of our
own age is the confident and triumphant manner
in which the two enemies advance to the attack
from opposite sides. Thus, the author pro-
ceeds, 'the controversy of the present day is not
one between religion and irreligion, but is a
controversy or a rivalry of religions amongst
themselves. (P. 128.)
Now all these three religions, he goes on to
tell us, whatever their differences, are united in
this—that they have one common enemy ; and
that enemy is irreligion. And what is irreligion ?
It is not any rival conviction, but it is the utter
want of any conviction at all. It is life with-
out worship ; and the World is the collective
$ 2
260
NATURAL RELIGION
2
;
character of those who do not worship. The
modern name for the World, he says, is ' Conven-
tionalism. This it is that Christ especially
warred against. Even in the greatest of sinners
he could find the one thing needful, if only
they 'loved much :' if they had enthusiasm '
or "freshness of feeling.' Such persons were
already more than half on his side. His only
true enemies were those who had no enthusiasm
they were the world. And precisely the same
spirit, he tells us, animates the three Natural Re-
ligions now. The world is their common enemy,
and against that they ought to be united. They
ought to be : but are they? The author
says,
Not yet; but they may be. “And in such a union,
it appears, lies his chief hope for the future. The
three Religions are to be rivals no longer. Each
is to change somewhat, and be modified by the
others, until practically they become triune; and
they will thus together form a Religion greater
than, at any former time, they have any of them
been singly. We will proceed to describe this
consummation in detail.
If three parties, who at present differ are to
agree, somewhere or other there must be con-
cessions made. Of the three parties we are here
NATURAL RELIGION
261
concerned with, which is to be the chief conceder ?
This leads us to a new aspect of the author's
opinions, and one of great significance. The
Religion, it seems, that is to concede most, is the
Religion of Humanity, in its existing Christian
form. We do not mean merely that it is to
renounce its supernatural element : we suppose
that already. We mean further that it is to
modify its general moral tone. The author
observes that certain critics have compared the
Christian spirit to the spirit of old age, because
both are tinged with melancholy. This view,
however, he holds to be wholly wrong.
The Christian melancholy (he says) . . . has resembled
the sickliness of early youth rather than the decay of age.
. . All the faults that have ever been reasonably charged
against the practical working of Christianity . . . are the
faults which in the individual we recognise as the faults of
youth-a melancholy view of life, in morals a disposition
to think rather of purity than of justice, but principally
an intolerance of all limitations either in hope or belief.
(P. 153.)
Now what Christianity has to do, what it
will do—in fact, what it is now in the process
of doing, is to pass from this youthful stage into
the healthier stage of manhood.
The man
differs from the youth, in having discovered
262
NATURAL RELIGION
that things have their limitations——that beliefs
are not final, and that many ideals are unattain-
able. This discovery, however, is not a mere
negation. It constitutes, the author tells us, a new
form of religion. Having recognised how much
is beyond his reach, the man realises the more
keenly what is within it; and thus not only does
he use his strength with more vigour, but his
strength itself becomes greater, because he has
ceased to unnerve himself by vague longings for
the unattainable. In the place of morbid
melancholy arises a healthy gladness. It is the
buoyancy, the clear vision of childhood coming
back to him, and asserting itself with the
strength of maturity. Such a development.
now awaits Christianity, or has, perhaps, begun
already in it. Now how will this development
affect it, with regard to the two rival religions ?
The answer is easy. It will enable it to accept
frankly the pagan delight in the sensuous beauty
of life ; it will enable it to recognise Art as one
side of religion ; it will teach it that, when
rightly trained and chastened, the joy that
comes to us from colour, and light, and form,
and melodious sound, has nothing common or
unclean in it ; and that religion becomes great .
NATURAL RELIGION
263
in proportion as it pervades humanity, not in
proportion as it shrivels up into monasticism.
In a similar way it will reconcile it with the
great Religion of Nature. Christianity having
recognised that no dogmas are final, will listen
with reverence to the voice of God in Science,
bidding it put aside its old supernatural
theology, and take instead a theology wider
still. Christianity will recognise itself as the
Religion of Humanity; it will recognise Huma-
nity as an integral part of Nature, and Nature
as God-its own God for ever and ever.
And
thus these three religions will coalesce and
The Religion of Nature will be the
religion at once of worship and of knowledge, of
self-reverence and of docility. The Religion of
Beauty will be the Religion of exalted happi-
The Religion of Humanity will be the
religion of love and of progress, guided and
fulfilled by the two former, and at the same time
giving them their chiefest and deepest meaning.
In this way, the author thinks, religion in the
future will take into itself all that is best and
noblest in modern civilisation; and this reflection
leads him to the final points of his argument.
Thus far he has looked on Natural Religion as
form one.
ness.
264
NATURAL RELIGION
an influence in the life of the individual. He
now proceeds to show us that it will have an
influence far wider than that. Not only will it
take into itself, for the benefit of each separate
soul, the results of civilisation, but civilisation
itself will become the same thing as religion.
All the progressive nations of the world, in
virtue of their knowledge and their culture, will
form, through sympathy, one spiritual community
--a universal visible Church, with a local habita-
tion. The peoples of Europe, and, we presume,
those of America and the Colonies also, will
become that very thing which St. John meant by
the New Jerusalem, and which St. Augustine
meant by the City of God. Should such
language seem unmeaning or fantastic, the
author refers us to the Bible.
Let us consider (he writes). The Bible contains the
history of a tribe that grew into a nation, of its conquest of
a particular country, of the institutions which it created for
itself, and of its fortunes through several centuries. Through
all these centuries we hear little of heaven and hell. ...
The rewards and punishments contemplated are all purely
temporal. . . . In the latter part of the book the notion
of a future state first begins to appear. .. Then in
the New Testament it prevails and becomes part of the
teaching of the book. But to the end of the Bible there are
to be found no such heaven and hell as are put before us in
Dante; the writers do not fix their attention as he does
NATURAL RELIGION
265
•
upon a future state. A few mysterious affirmations about
it suffice for them. This is the more to be noted, be-
cause it is characteristic of the Biblical writers both in the
New and Old Testaments, that they occupy themselves
especially with the future. The future is their study, but
not- this is almost as true of the New Testament as the Old
---not the future after death. It is a kind of political future
that absorbs them, the fall of kingdoms and of tyrants, of
Babylon, Epiphanes, Nero, and the Roman Empire, the
future of Jerusalem, the expected return of Christ to reign
upon the earth. . . . The idea of a future life [in the current
.sense of the phrase) is one that we ourselves read into the
Bible; the idea which we find there, pervading it from first
to last, is one which belongs altogether to practical life, and
which must seem just as important to the sceptic as to the
most believing supernaturalist. (P. 173.)
Such is the spirit, says the author, that we
discover in the religion of the Bible; and
precisely the same spirit does or will animate
the religion of the modern world : indeed, little
as the Christian Church has recognised the fact,
the same spirit has really animated it. Its own
greatest triumphs have been practical triumphs
here. The first of these was the conquest
to itself of the whole Roman Empire. That
Empire, says the author, “became in its turn,
by the acceptance of Christianity, what ancient
Israel and ancient Athens had been—a city of
God.' The great event of the future is to be of
a similar kind to this. A new empire, wider
266
NATURAL RELIGION
than the Roman, is to accept a new religion
wider than Christianity. That religion is to be
the triune religion of Nature, and that empire
is to be the Universal State of the civilised
modern world. In this way, thinks the author,
and in this way only, can we have any hope for
the future. In this way only can there be
salvation for the individual soul and stability
for the State as against the forces of barbaric
revolution; and in this way the author thinks
both these things will be gained. The new
religion, whose nature he has been explaining to
us, will more and more, he thinks, take visible
form. Men will have to recognise what we
have seen him urging, that the Church is
[essentially] neither more nor less than the
Spiritual City of Western Civilisation, that it
is still the salt of the earth, still a missionary
and a militant body, and that a great external
mission lies before it—the bringing into itself
the Oriental and semi-civilised world.
The children of modern civilisation (he says) are called
to follow in the footsteps of Paul, of Gregory, of Boniface,
of Xavier, Eliot, and Livingstone : but they must carry not
merely Christianity in its narrow clerical sense, but their
whole mass of spiritual treasures to those who want them
... the true view of the universe, the true astronomy, the
NATURAL RELIGION
267
true chemistry, the true physiology, to nations still lapped
in mythological dreams.
progress and free-will to fatalist
nations ... the doctrine of a rational liberty into the heart
of Oriental despotisms. In doing all this .
we shall
admit the outlying world into the great civilised community,
into the modern City of God.
Finally, the author says that for such a
work as this there is needed an organisation,
and the existing Christian Church has such an
organisation ready. Now why, he asks, should
not this Church or at least the Protestant part
of it, recognising frankly the views that have
been above stated, recognising that a Church is
not based on exclusive dogmas,' but on the reli-
gious spirit, and that the religious spirit of this
scientific age is essentially the same as the true
religious spirit at all times—why should not the
Protestantism of England and America''take a
shape adapted to the age,'and, with all its organisa-
tion, its prestige, its traditional hold on the people,
become gradually without any sharp rupture with
the past, at one with this Natural Religion-this
religion of the present and the future ?
The reader has now before him the main
argument of the volume. It remains to consider
it under two aspects—its historical significance
and its absolute value.
268
NATURAL RELIGION
We shall gain our best insight into its
historical significance by once more referring to
'Ecce Homo. At the close of that volume the
author told us that in the limits of one essay
he could but half cover his subject, and he
promised that by-and-by—though probably not
for a considerable number of years another
volume should be given to us, in which his
studies on religion would be continued. He at
the same time indicated the points which this
volume would deal with, and these points were
as follows :--First, the new views' Christ gave
men of the Power by which the world is
governed ; 'secondly, Christ's own triumph over
death ;
and thirdly, Christ's revelation of
eternity.' Half of his promise the author has
now redeemed. Seventeen years have passed,
and that second volume has been given us; but
the other half of his promise, which related to
the contents of the volumehow has he kept
that? Even that he has kept to the letter, for
on every one of the promised topics he dwells
and dwells again; but he dwells on them
assuredly in a spirit which he then never con-
templated. He said he would dwell on Christ's
new views of the Father ; he does so, but only
NATURAL RELIGION
269
to tell us that no such Father exists. He said
he would dwell on Christ's own triumph over
death ; he does so, but only to tell us that
Christ's resurrection is a fable. He said he
would dwell on Christ's revelation of eternity ;
he does so, but only to tell us that we are the
perishing children of time.
We paused in the earlier part of this review
to show how distinctly, when he wrote Ecce
Homo,' the author reposed his faith on a super-
natural basis. We must here pause likewise to
justify what we have just now said, and to show
how that basis has been actually now discarded
by him. In the present case this is the more
necessary, because there are many passages in
his later volume which might seem to make this
doubtful. He says, for instance, in his preface
that the reader is cautioned not to enter on
this book with the expectation of finding in it
anything calculated to promote either 'ortho-
doxy or heterodoxy.' And he several times, in
referring to supernaturalism, makes use of such
phrases as ' suppose it should finally be rejected.'
It is easy to see, however, that if the present
volume has any serious meaning at all, the
author morally admits no "suppose' in the
270
NATURAL RELIGION
matter. The entire raison d'être of his argu-
ments is that supernaturalism is, as a fact, being
discarded by the world at large, and that not
through any dimness of vision, or any moral
obliquity ; but owing to the irresistible teaching
of modern science, 'under whose blessed light,
as he expressly says, 'we live ;' and whose
voice, it is implied in every single chapter, is for
himself the unerring voice of truth. But we
need not content ourselves with this indirect
evidence. We have explicit statements to the
same effect, which are all the more forcible
because they are not specially dwelt upon, but
are perpetually referred to and repeated as
though they were matters of course. Thus,
writing in one place, with a most delicate
sympathy, of the sorrow and dejection caused
by the first beginnings of doubt, he instinctively
speaks of doubt as the first message of science,
and he instinctively identifies science itself with
truth. Truth (he says) in the long run cannot
be resisted, and so, after whatever defence, the
fortress is carried, and the phantom garrison of
superstition is driven out.' Whilst, to make
his meaning more unambiguous still, he repeats
this same statement in a yet more trenchant
NATURAL RELIGION
271
form. "To complain (he says) of the march of
the scientific spirit, seems as idle as to complain
of the law of gravitation itself.'
We might multiply examples of this kind of
language, but for our present purpose these two
will suffice. The private convictions, or the
private vacillations of the author, do not affect
the truth or the falsehood of the main argument
of his book. Whatever he may think about the
supernatural himself, for argument's sake he
assumes it to be non-existent; and we have
only emphasised the fact that he believes, as well
as assumes it to be so, to show the singular
change that in less than twenty years the
march (as he calls it) of the scientific spirit'
has produced on his spiritual life. We have
already said, further, why we dwell at all on
what seems to be a personal question. It is be-
cause we believe the author to be a type, as well
as an individual, and because we believe that the
views put forth in the present volume are repre-
sentative now, as were those put forth in ‘ Ecce
Homo’ formerly. They both represent, at least
so far as England is concerned, the general view
of that new religious world, which has formed,
or has tried to form itself, having left the old
272
NATURAL RELIGION
behind. ' Ecce Homo' represented it in its
sanguine youth ; ' Natural Religion 'represents it
in the death-throes that are already overtaking it.
These last words are a sufficiently plain in-
dication of our own judgment on the arguments
we have been just considering. Regarded with
reference to their truth or untruth, and their
practical use or uselessness, we conceive that
they are based, all of them, on a profound false-
hood ; and that instead of giving new life to the
cause in whose behalf they are urged, they show
more decisively than any book we are acquainted
with, how forlorn and how hopeless that cause
has come to be. This judgment we shall now
proceed to justify.
First, then, we must observe that our views
about the volume before us are a tribute to its
ability, though they are not a tribute to its
truth. We consider its falsehoods to be both
important and representative ; but they are only
important because a keen intellect has been
guilty of them ; and they are only representa-
tive of the present state of a cause, because they
are representative of the best that that cause can
do. For wide and vigorous sympathy, for deli-
cate moral criticism, for a power of constructive
NATURAL RELIGION
273
1
imagination, and for ingenious reasoning, we
consider this volume to be very remarkable
indeed. So far as we know, it is the first work
that has summed up, with anything like com-
pleteness, the views or feelings that, in the extra-
orthodox world, are now supposed to constitute
religion and theology. It is the first work, too
--and this is of far more moment that has
given a formal unity to these various elements,
and has presented what aspires to be the creed
and the Church of the future, as anything at all
approaching to a moral and a logical whole.
This the present author has done, we think,
successfully ; nor are we by any means blind to
a certain grandeur in the result. We are, on
the contrary, quite prepared to admit that the
natural religion, which is here offered to our con-
sideration, not only in many ways commends
itself to the mind as plausible, but impresses the
imagination with a sense of its moral sublimity.
Indeed, to a certain extent, it resembles the
palace built by Mulciber-
Out of the earth, whose fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet
Built like a temple.
T
274
NATURAL RELIGION
The magnificence of the temple we frankly and
fully recognise. What we propose to show is
that it is wholly without foundation ; and that
this is the only, or at least the principal point
in which it differs from the religion whose place
it is designed to take.
The author so often identifies supernatural
religion with orthodox Christianity, that as we
are about to speak from the stand-point of super-
naturalism, it will be well to state briefly the
exact ground we shall occupy. The author's
arguments, though his language sometimes con-
ceals the fact, are, as we said at the beginning,
not directed against orthodox Christianity in
particular, still less against any particular form
of it; but rather against those two doctrines,
which are common, at least in the Western world,
to supernatural religions of every kind-the
doctrines of a personal God, independent of the
material universe, and a human soul that will
survive the dissolution of the body. When we
speak, therefore, in the following remarks, of
orthodoxy, of Christianity, or of supernatural
religion, we shall limit our meaning to these two
doctrines, and we shall treat them as the only
points of difference between the author and our-
NATURAL RELIGION
275
selves. If these once be assented to, the position
of supernaturalism is gained ; and further doc-
trines as to revelation and miracles have no
longer any à priori impossibility.
Using, then, the word supernatural in the
sense we have just assigned to it, we assert that
all religion is supernatural that really deserves
to be called religion. We will now examine the
arguments that are before us to the contrary,
touching firstly on those that relate to God, and
secondly on those that relate to man.
The author contends, as we have seen, that
if we subtract from God his personality and his
independence of Nature, and conceive of Him
simply as the unity of the material universe, the
unity thus conceived does not cease to be God.
This unity is omnipresent, omnipotent, all-
embracing, all-sustaining, and so forth. In a
word, for the scientific mind, it demonstrably
possesses attributes which the orthodox declare
can belong to none other but God. Therefore
the unity of the universe is God. Now, as put
by the author, this argument seems plausible ;
his evident earnestness lends it a kind of weight:
but when we look at it on its own merits, we
T 2
276
NATURAL RELIGION
.
shall see it to be as shallow a sophism as ever
imposed on anybody. We can easily test its
value by applying it to a parallel question. Let
us consider a corpse and let us consider a living
man ; and we shall find that a large part of our
description of the one will coincide exactly with
a large part of our description of the other.
Parts of both will apply to the human body, and
they will apply to nothing else. Now, when the
author speaks of man in general, and argues that
naturally he is a religious animal, his arguments
evidently refer to the living man only, and be-
come simple raving if referred to the dead body.
If, however, his contention be sound, that Nature
is really God, we can prove with equal facility
that corpses are really men.
If we can prove
that a universe without Personality can be wor-
shipped, we can prove that a man without
per-
sonality can worship it.
So much, then, for the author's formal
argument. Taken by itself it proves nothing, or
less than nothing ; but there are certain facts by
which he points his application of it, which are
far more worthy of attention than the logic they
are designed to illustrate.
to illustrate. We refer to those:
feelings of awe at the contemplation of the uni-
NATURAL RELIGION
277
verse, of benevolence at the contemplation of
humanity, and of delight at the contemplation of
beauty, which certainly survive, and which
seem also to be independent of, any intellectual
assent to the doctrines of supernaturalism. Now
we are willing to admit, quite as fully as the
author does, that all this profound emotion
is a part of our human nature; and that
many
who deny the special doctrines in question, may
be far more alive to it than many others who
profess them. Giving this fact, however, all
possible importance, we maintain that by itself it
neither leads to or constitutes anything worth
calling either a theism, or a theology, or a religion.
To the Christian or the supernaturalist, it pre-
sents itself as follows. Man is created by God
in God's own image. He partakes of God's
nature in two points especially-in his per-
sonality and in his discernment of good and
evil He has been endowed further with
certain faculties by which to apprehend and
respond to the love and the existence of his
Creator. These are facts of human nature, just
as the circulation of the blood is ; and they are
wholly independent of our own conscious recogni-
tion of them. We do not destroy the soul
278
NATURAL RELIGION
because we deny the existence of it; nor do we
cease to carry the faculty of faith within us
because we fail to understand, or refuse to
endorse, its teachings. Thus the whole world,
conceivably, might deny God, and it would still
be troubled with the sense of His presence and
the desire for Him. Faith would still speak, but
it would speak in an unknown tongue. The
traditional rendering of what it said would have
been discarded, and all the alternative renderings
that would be attempted would be tried by the
reason, and in time found out to be nonsense.
Here we may see the kind of judgment that the
supernaturalist will pass on the Natural Religion
described in the present volume. He will not
deny that it is a fact, but he will say that it is a
fact misnamed. It is not religion, but it is the
embryo of religion. It bears the same relation
to religion that the caterpillar bears to the
butterfly or the inarticulate cry of the baby to
the speech of the grown man. By being shut
out from the only true expression of itself, it can
only express and explain itself by a series of
fatuities. It is not destroyed, but for the time
it is rendered useless.
Let us speak more in detail. Man, says the
NATURAL RELIGION
279
author, though he believe in no supernatural
God, is conscious of awe and of admiration as he
contemplates the natural universe. We grant
that; but, before he proceeds further, let the
author analyse these emotions he speaks about.
Instead of doing this, he attempts to prove that
any such analysis is wholly beside the point.
Our love for a friend, he says, does not depend
on our theory as to whether or no he has an
immortal soul ; in precisely the same way our
religious admiration of the universe does not
depend on our theory as to whether or no it is
the work of a personal God. We are obliged to
the author for offering us this analogy : let us
only render it accurate, and his own position is
exposed by it. Our feelings he says with
regard to a man do not depend on our believing
he has an immortal soul. Now let us grant
that to be true, though in many cases it cer-
tainly is not ; but there is one belief with regard
to him which our feelings certainly do depend
upon, and that is the belief that he is possessed
of a personality. Supposing we were to dis-
cover that a figure we had long lived with was
really nothing more than a cunningly-devised
automaton—that it heard, and saw, and felt
280
NATURAL RELIGION
nothing—that it had no intellect, no conscience,
and no affections ; it is evident that our feelings
with regard to it would be altogether revolu-
tionised. And with regard to the universe the
case is just the same. The author tells us that
no matter what may be our theories about it, the
universe is a 'Power infinite and eternal, with
which our own being is inseparably connected,
in the knowledge of whose ways alone is safety
and well-being, and in the contemplation of
which we find a beatific vision.' And he thinks
in saying this that he proves the universe, per se,
to be God. This is the kind of language that
we ask him to analyse. An analysis of it will
prove a somewhat disenchanting process. In
the first place, to say that we are inseparably
connected with the universe is, except on super-
natural grounds, an untruth or a truism. By
'we' the author means our living and thinking
selves ; but we' in this sense are not in-
separably connected with anything, since, ac-
cording to what he calls his Natural Theology,
in a very short time we shall be no longer in
existence. And even while we are connected
with the universe, what kind of connection is it?
A double kind, says the author. It is a con-
NATURAL RELIGION
281
nection of physical dependence and of spiritual
communion.' Now as to physical dependence,
it is no doubt a fine way of expressing it to say
that in the knowledge of Nature's ways lies our
only safety and well-being ; but put in accurate
language, what does it really mean ? For the
magnificent Nature's ways we shall have to write
a very few of its ways. Of Nature's ways as a
whole the wisest of us know but little : of this
little only a fraction affects either our safety or
our well-being, and of that fraction by far the
larger part is known accurately by none but
scientific men and professionals. The average
human being needs but a very minute portion of
it to keep him both in health and safety, and
that portion is of the least impressive kind.
Even the author of Natural Religion' will
hardly contend that a man's knowledge that
mushrooms will disagree with him, or that
if he gets his feet wet he will have a cold
in his head, can be said to belong to the science
of theology, or can convey any sense to its
possessor that Nature itself is God.
The whole of the author's argument, then,
with regard to the divinity of the universe,
reduces itself to those vague emotions, those
282
NATURAL RELIGION
feelings of awe, of admiration, and of worship
which are excited in us when we realise its
vastness and its unity, which are said to place
us in some sort of communion with it, and to
make its contemplation a beatific vision for us.
Now for the man who believes that the universe
is the work of a personal God—a God in whose
image he is himself made, who desires his
worship, takes account of all his thoughts, and
whom some day he trusts he may see face to
face,-—for such a man, such emotion has a very
real significance. It is at once a purification and
a prophecy. It purges his eyes so that he sees
somewhat of God's glory, and it fills him with
the knowledge that he will be some day in God's
presence. The awe and the admiration are,
no doubt, full of mystery; but it is a mystery
that he knows will one day be solved for him.
Hence its close, its vital connection with himself.
Hence the starry heavens do indeed commune
with him, and the contemplation of them is a
beatific vision. But the man who believes the
universe to be the work of no Personality, and
who bel eves that he has himself no other life
but the present, how can he claim with the
universe any such connection as this? The
NATURAL RELIGION
283
universe takes no heed of him ; it is wholly
unconscious even that he or his race exists.
He may stare at the stars as much or as little as
he pleases, and his health or his well-being will
not be in the least affected by it. In what possible
sense can such a vision be called beatific ? It
conveys to him no hint of a mystery which will
one day be solved for him, and be brought into
personal relations to him. If he knows little of
Nature now, in a few score years he will know
nothing; and, as the author often himself
admits, in exact proportion as we widen our
conception of Nature, the less does it seem to
have any special message for us.
All these fine
emotions, then, of awe, of wonder, and of
worship, or whatever we like to call them—the
emotions at the sight and at the thought of
the heavens with their countless systems, which
make men catch their breath, and which bring
tears to their eyes, are emotions which we may
prize indeed in so far as they are pleasurable ;
but they are totally devoid of
devoid of any rational
meaning : they stand on a level no higher than
the exhilaration caused by riding; and if we
really set aside as a falsehood the suggestion
that the Christian finds in them, they can
284
NATURAL RELIGION
be actually reproduced by the sight of an exciting
race. We ourselves, speaking from the Christian
standpoint, do not, of course, for a moment
admit this to be true. The heavens declare to
the Christian the glory of a personal God, and
Epsom or Ascot does not ; but comparing the
breathless awe that is caused by the contempla-
tion of the firmament with the breathless sus-
pense caused when a great race draws to its
finish, the former is only higher than the latter
because it contains an affirmation and an evangel
that natural religion repudiates.
Let us now pass to the Religion of Beauty.
With regard to this the author's position is
somewhat ambiguous, or perhaps it might be
more true to say that his views are somewhat
confused. He says in one place that God is by
no means the only object of religion, but only
its object par excellence ; and he seems to
oscillate in his theory of Beauty between a
conception of it as one aspect of God, and the
conception of it as an object of worship co-
ordinate with Him. He accordingly has here
in view two classes of worshippers, one of which
might be typified by Mr. Pater or by Théophile
Gautier, and the other by Wordsworth.
NATURAL RELIGION
285
Now those who worship Beauty after the
fashion of Wordsworth are plainly supposed to
worship it as one revelation of God; all there-
fore that we have said with regard to the
worship of nature will apply equally to them.
It will be well, however, to pause here for a
moment, and, since the author has referred us
so often to Wordsworth personally, to note
briefly what his case really teaches us. The
author cites it as a plain and conclusive proof of
the reality of natural religion, as he himself
conceives it, and of the practical effect it may
have on a man's life. According to him, though
Wordsworth was no doubt a Christian, and
believed, as such, in the personality and the
providence of God and in the immortality of the
human soul, yet these beliefs were merely
accidental matters ; so far as Christianity had
him any appreciable effect, it was little more
than a superfluous reassertion of what Nature
had already revealed to him through her beauty,
and was wholly independent of any of its super-
natural elements. Now we believe that there
are few readers of ordinary intelligence who
will be for a moment deceived by this most in-
felicitous paradox. Since, however, the present
on
286
NATURAL RELIGION
author has stated, and laid such stress on it, we
shall in passing point out its absurdity. We
might easily do this by referring to Wordsworth
himself, but we may spare ourselves this trouble ;
we need only refer to his critic. In the very
page in which it is declared that Wordsworth’s
religion was in its essence noi supernatural,
it is admitted that he would have been a pessi-
mist but for a Christian faith in redemption ;'
and we are reminded that he calls the doctrine
of a future life “the head and mighty para-
mount of truths." ;
The author, in fact, cannot
state his case without contradicting himself ;
and the common sense of his readers will
anticipate him in the contradiction. But even
were this not so, even were Wordsworth's life
and views of life the results of Natural Religion,
as the author says they were, they would show
little with regard to that religion but its incom-
pleteness. Apart from his genius in enforcing
certain truths, the most remarkable thing about
Wordsworth is the fewness of the truths that
he enforced. Mr. Matthew Arnold has written
with perfect justice that
Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken
From half our human fate :
NATURAL RELIGION
287
and Mr. Ruskin, in a yet more trenchant
manner, has dwelt quite recently on this same
profound defect in him. Whilst if we pass
from his precepts to his example, we shall
find that to be of a still narrower kind, and
wholly useless to the vast majority of men,
whose problem is, and always must be, how
to face the world, and not how to retire from
it.
We believe, however, when the author speaks
of the Religion of Beauty, which he describes in
so many words as a kind of purified paganism,
that he is really conceiving of beauty, not as
Wordsworth did, as one aspect of God, but as
an object of worship, distinct from and co-
ordinate with Him. He is at all events per-
petually insisting that there can be a religion
of any object that excites permanently our
delight, our awe, and our admiration ; and to
explain his meaning, he in one place gravely
informs us that America is, without any meta-
phor, the object of a religion to the Americans.
Without, then, raising any discussion, as to
beauty for the sake of beauty, or the intensity of
the pleasure which our artistic nature derives
1 Ruskin's Fiction, Fair and Foul-Wordsworth.'
288
NATURAL RELIGION
from it, let us consider simply the broad general
question, whether America, or beauty, or any
object besides God, can be properly said to be the
object of a religion at all.
All questions of this kind are no doubt partly
verbal ; but whenever more is involved in them
than the settling of a terminology, what is
involved in thema is some distinct matter of fact.
The matter of fact in the present case is as
follows. Religion, says the author, is a state of
feeling, the principal object of which is, no doubt,
God; but God, he contends, is not its only object.
Now if it is worth his while to maintain this
position at all, he must mean that the feelings
excited by God, and the feelings excited by the
other objects he speaks of, are, as a fact, identical
in their most important points. The whole
question at issue is, what are these points of
identity and what is their importance ? The
author, let us remember, is addressing himself to
men who have been accustomed to identify
religion with supernaturalism, and he invites
them to analyse what this religion really means
to them. Part of his arguments they will no
doubt admit are sound. They will quite agree
with him that of what they mean by religion the
NATURAL RELIGION
289
devil might be the object just as well as God;
or a saint might be, or a dead hero might be.
But this would merely mean that there may
be
bad religions as well as good religions, false
religions as well as true ; religions of one god, or
of many gods, great gods or little. The devil
practically would be merely an evil god, and
the dead hero a little god. All these gods
would be conscious, they would all be person-
alities, they would all take account of the
conduct of their worshippers, and have the lives
of them more or less in their power; and they
one and all would be superhuman. Here we get
to the one essential point which distinguishes
religion from all other feelings. Religion is a
feeling excited by some superhuman personality
which takes cognizance of the human feelings
excited by it. Such is the reply that could be
made to the author by any one of the men to
whom he is addressing himself. They would
agree with him that the object of religion need
not be a good god, but they would add further
that it must be a god of some kind, and that
there are no gods but personal gods. Other
objects might excite feelings that would be like
religion in some points ; but they would not be
U
290
NATURAL RELIGION
like it in this essential point ; and though we
might very properly call them religions figura-
tively, they would not be religions in a scientific
sense, any more than scientifically love can be
called a fire, or a pair of angry eyes be said to be
looking daggers.
Suppose, however, that we set this argument
aside, and grant the author all that he has con-
tended for ; suppose we grant him that there can
be religions not only of bad objects as well as
good, but of impersonal objects as well as
personal deities, there yet remains to be made a
far more important criticism. If the author's
contention be not absolutely untrue, it is at all
events absolutely without significance. He
complains of men who were once Christians, for
saying that science has destroyed religion ; and
he seeks to reassure them by his long and
elaborate proof that, though no doubt it really
has destroyed Christianity, it has destroyed, in
doing so, not religion, but only a religion.
Religion per se’ it has left wholly intact. If,
however, religion per se need be neither good,
nor true, nor useful, nor elevating, who will care
to be told that religion per se will remain with
us ? Men who think that Christianity has been
NATURAL RELIGION
291
destroyed, do not lament the fact because
Christianity is a religion, but because they think
it a good religion : whilst men who still believe
in it, and who think it indestructible, revere
religion only in so far as it leads to Christianity.
Who values a system of philosophy simply
because it is a system, not because he thinks it
a true system? Or who admires 'Hamlet'
because it is a play, not because it is a fine play ?
The author might as well comfort us, supposing
all true knowledge were in danger, by urging
that though in future there would be no true
statements made about things, yet our children
would still have statements made to them of
some sort. Religion per se and statements per
se are things which per se are equally void of
meaning for us; and the raptures of mere
æstheticism would be no more a substitute for
Christianity because we agreed that both they
and it were religions, than Ude's Cookery would
be a substitute for the Bible, because both,
without doubt, were books. With regard, then,
to the Religion of Beauty, the author has left
æstheticism exactly where he found it. Artistic
admiration is, no doubt, a source of pleasure;
and with the modification of the ascetic spirit it
o 2
292
NATURAL RELIGION
may, no doubt, extend itself; but to insist on
calling it a religion would be, on any occasion,
useless; and to drag it into the present dis-
cussion at all is worse than useless ; it merely
creates confusion.
We offer these remarks with all the greater
confidence because, up to a certain point, the
author himself agrees with us. The Religion of
Beauty, if it stood alone, would be, he admits,
wholly inadequate and unsatisfying ; and, if it
stood alone, so would be the Religion of Nature.
Of this last he expressly says, that it is doubtful
if it is a religion that would even justify men
in living, or in bringing other men into the
world. Both these Religions, that of Nature
and that of Beauty, derive their chief meaning
from their connection with the Religion of
Humanity. The Religion of Beauty is but a
gracious supplement to things of far greater
value; and adorable as may be the aspect of
God that we discover in nature, that aspect is
dwarfed both in importance and majesty by the
aspect of Him that is revealed in humanity,-
'in,' as the author puts it, whatever more
awful forces stir within the human heart, what-
ever binds men in families, and orders them in
NATURAL RELIGION
293
states' (p. 89). There, we are told, we see
God as the Inspirer of kings, the Revealer of
laws, the Reconciler of nations, the Redeemer
of labour, the Queller of tyrants, the Reformer
of Churches, the Guide of the human race
towards an unknown goal.' We recognise Him
as the Embodiment of the highest' of existing
things—that is, the moral principle. Unless
we do this, says the author, unless we recognise
not only that God exists, but that He helps us
in our strivings,' and 'is not indifferent or
hostile to us ; we may have a theology, but we
have no faith ;' that is to say, we have no
helpful religion. To make religion helpful, to
make it worth having, to make it worth talking
about, we must, the author expressly says,
'believe much and hope much,' without regard
to the future of humanity. We must not only
believe that the moral principle exists, but we
must believe that its power will grow and
become supreme; that it is not only the highest
of principles, but the strongest also, and that it
will guide the human race to some noble state
of existence, equal, if not superior, to all our
loftiest visions.
Otherwise (says the author), if reality, when we acquire
294
NATURAL RELIGION
the power of distinguishing it, turns out to be not merely
different from what we expect, but much below what we
expect; if this universe, so vast and glorious in itself, proves
in relation to our desires narrow and ill-furnished,
then humanity (like the doomed and perishing individual
has its necessary old age; and if its old age, then surely that
which lies beyond old age.
We must abandon ourselves
to pessimism (p. 155). . . . All human griefs alike [will]
seem little worth assuaging, human happiness at the best too
paltry to be worth increasing. Life (will] become the
more intolerable the more we know and discover, so long as
everything widens and deepens except our own duration, and
that remains as pitiful as ever. What would Natural
Religion avail then ?
race
Here we arrive at the foundation of the
author's teaching. All the arguments he urges
in the whole of this volume depend for their
meaning on this one belief, that the future
history of our will be one of un-
ceasing progress; and by progress he means
certain
very distinct things. He means diffusion
of political liberty, diffusion of the material
luxuries of life, the fraternisation of nations,
the abolition of war, and so on.
But this is
not all he means, nor is it the most important
part. This is the body of progress merely,
it is not its soul. The soul of progress is the
1 P. 262, where the author explains at length what he
means by pessimisın.
NATURAL RELIGION
295
diffusion and the development of the spiritual
riches of our nature—of our joy in art and
in beauty, of our awe at the majesty of the
universe ; but principally of our love for our
fellows, our readiness for self-sacrifice, our
recognition of the inherent worth of life, and
above all of the sacredness of our own higher
natures, on which depends our recognition of
the sacredness of ideal humanity. To believe
that life, and the conditions of life, will, in the
above sense, for ever go on progressing till
they can progress no longer, and that after that
they will never retrograde -- this, says the
author, and this alone is ' faith'; this, and this
alone, makes religion valuable, or gives the
smallest meaning to all the hopes which he is
so earnestly holding out both to himself and
those he addresses.
We might pause here, were it worth while
to do so, to show that Natural Religion, as
described in this volume, is simply the positiv-
ism we have so long been familiar with, only
changed in so far as the culture of the author
has filled in its outlines, and his Christian
phraseology confused them. We will leave the
reader, however, to consider that point for
296
NATURAL RELIGION
himself, and pass on to one of far greater im-
portance. Supernaturalism, says the author,
has failed, because it has founded itself upon
dogmas, and made religion dependent on an
assent to them. Dogmas, he says, are always
liable to modification or disproof; and super-
natural dogmas are never capable of proof.
Thus supernaturalism for many men has put all
religion in danger, by resting it on a weak
foundation, and a foundation that does not
belong to it. Religion really, he says, has
nothing to do with dogmas, nor is a Church
like 'a philosophical school, held together by
doctrines. It is more like a state than a
school. Imagine a state resting upon
dogma!''The truth of a religion,' he adds, 'is .
a phrase without meaning. You may speak
of the truth of a philosophy, of a theory, of a
proposition, but not of a religion, which is a
condition of the feelings' (p. 222). Therefore,
he argues, religion is indestructible; and not
religion only, but a helpful, a saving religion,
which shall open to humanity and every mem-
ber of it for ever, a treasure compared with
which 'the whole world' is as nothing. Such
is the religion that he has been describing in
NATURAL RELIGION
297
this volume; and such a religion, he says, is.
independent of dogmas.
Now of all forms of misleading and empty
cant, the popular modern cant against dogma,
as such, is perhaps the most misleading and
emptiest. To say this, however, is one thing,
and to prove it another; and the proof, in some
cases, may be long, though never difficult. The
present author, however, saves us all trouble in
the matter, and supplies us out of his own
mouth with the materials for his own confu-
tation. In the very act of declaring that
religion does not rest upon dogmas, he is
giving us nothing but a practical proof that
it does. He makes a clean sweep of the ac-
cepted dogmas of supernaturalism, but he only
destroys these to put another dogma in the
place of them. His own Natural Religion is
itself founded on a dogma, as much as was ever
any system of Christianity ; and little as he
seems to perceive what he is doing, he not only
admits the fact, but is perpetually insisting on
it. For what is a dogma? It may be defined
in three ways. In the first place, it is a pro-
position as distinguished from an emotion ; in
the second place, it is a religious proposition as
298
NATURAL RELIGION
distinguished from other propositions ; and in
the third place it is a proposition, which, though
evidence may support it, must be assented to as
well upon grounds deeper than evidence; it
must be assented to by faith. Now what have
we just seen? Have we not just seen that, by
the author's own showing, his whole Natural
Religion depends for its whole value on our
assent to one cardinal proposition, which is
.stated by him in various ways ? We have
dwelt upon it only a moment ago; but let us
now repeat it. One way of putting it, as we
saw, is as follows—This universe, so vast and
glorious in itself, is, in relation to our own hopes
for the future, not narrow or ill-furnished.'
Another
way
is as follows— Humanity is
growing out of its youth into its healthful
inanhood, and that manhood will never decline
into old age.' And again, another way is as
follows—The omnipotent and omnipresent
power embodied in the universe, helps us in our
strivings, and is not indifferent or hostile to us.
Now how, we ask, does this proposition differ
in any essential way from the various dogmas
on which Scriptural religions base themselves ?
It is a proposition, it is not an emotion. It is,
7
NATURAL RELIGION
299
further, a religious proposition ; and it is,
further, as the author takes special pains to
emphasise, not to be held at the precarious
mercy of evidence, but is to be assented to as a
certainty, by an act of faith. Of course it may
be true, in the stricter sense of the word, to say
that religion is a state of the feelings ; but these
feelings, as the author himself shows us, depend
on a certain judgment with regard to the object
of them, which can only be expressed or thought
in the form of a dogma or proposition. Our
emotion with regard to the universe depends
on our judgment with regard to the universe ;
or in other words, our religion depends upon
our dogma. If we cling to our dogma as true
our religion will remain with us ; if we reject
our dogma as false our religion will leave us.
For this reason, in common language, we are
accustomed, and very properly, to speak of a
religion being true : and to declare, in this
connection, that such language implies a false-
hood, is neither more nor less than a miserable
quibble. One man respects another because he
believes him honest. If he finds him out to be
a rogue he will cease to respect him. Everyone
knows that the respect is not the belief ; but
300
NATURAL RELIGION
everyone knows that it is based upon it. If
anyone takes the trouble to tell us that respect
is not a proposition, but a state of the feelings,
we shall merely think that he is saying what is
superfluous; but if he argues from this that the
feelings do not depend on our assent to the
proposition, we shall merely think that he is
talking nonsense. And the same is the case
with religion. The common sense of the world
has always perceived this truth ; and the present
author, in his laborious effort to combat it, has
simply succeeded in giving the most signal
proof of it that it is possible to find in the
religious literature of the century.
Nowy
comes
further question. Since
Natural Religion is, after all, thus based upon
a dogma, what grounds have we for endorsing
that dogma as true? That is to say, what
grounds have we for any certitude as to the
continuous progress and glorious future of
humanity? It is not our province here to
discuss on its own merits this much-vexed
question. We shall merely confine ourselves to
the author's own treatment of it, and that
certainly is full of a strange significance. Not
once in the course of this whole volume does he
a
NATURAL RELIGION
301
in us.
make any attempt worth speaking of to show
any grounds for the faith that he requires to be
On the contrary, he rarely makes any
direct allusion to it, except to suggest darkly
that it may have no grounds at all. 'Apart
from pessimism,' he says in one place, there is
nothing to prevent us from worshipping.' But
he seems to wince at the very sound of the word
pessimism, and he sharply drops the question.
Such is his conduct generally whenever he is
face to face with it. Often, however, it is
glanced at obliquely by him, and then he deals
with it somewhat more in detail, but with what
result? Always to hint, not that the progress
of the human race and its religion is certain,
but that it is beset by dangers and uncertainties.
Whilst he is enlarging on the delights of what
he calls the higher life,' he admits the difficulty
of recommending these delights to the multi-
tude, and he admits that the lower life may bring
most complete content with it ; and whilst he
enlarges on the mission of our existing Western
civilisation, he hints broadly that in the course
of a few generations the whole of that civilisation
may be destroyed by a social revolution. No-
where does he offer us any tangible foundation
302
NATURAL RELIGION
for the faith that is to remove these mountains
of doubt or of despondency.
We do not blame the author. The defect is.
not in him, but in the hopeless and irrational
cause of which he has made himself the champion.
All his fellow-champions are in like case with
him. There is one foe which they cannot face,
and that foe is pessimism. Neither Comte, nor
George Eliot, nor Mr. Herbert Spencer, are more
convincing on this point than is the present
author. Not one of them can confute the
argument of the pessimist. Instead, they, some
of them, drown it in uproarious denial ; some of
them try to smile as though they had never
heard it ; and some of them, unintentionally, are
forced to admit its truth.
Of this last class is the author of Natural
Religion, and we propose to conclude our
criticisms on his system, by adding certain of
his own, which are yet more severe than ours.
Having shown already that he has failed to
convince us, we shall proceed to show that he
has failed to convince himself.
In the first place, then, we may remark that
throughout the whole volume the tone is one,
not of enthusiasm, but rather of a forlorn
NATURAL RELIGION
303
patience. The author seems to be a man who is
still searching for the pearl of price after he has
secretly given up all hope of finding it. His.
heart is still with the Christianity which he has
repudiated. In the natural world he has entered
he is an exile by the waters of Babylon, and he
is trying in vain to sing the Lord's song in a
strange land. · He tries to call the heathen city
Jerusalem, but in his heart he finds it only a
Zion of bitterness. We do not, however, refer
to his general tone merely ; we refer also to his
own explicit statements. The reader shall hear
a few of them. The highest worship, be says, is
not reached until 'passing by an act of faith
beyond all that we can know, we attribute all the
perfections of ideal humanity to the Power that
made and sustains the universe' (p. 168). And
again, in another place, he admits yet more
plainly that he can conceive no religion as
satisfactory that falls short of Christianity'
(p. 25). Admissions of this kind—which seem
like involuntary asides-are scattered through-
out the volume ; but there is no need to cite
more of them, since the sum and substance of all
of them is gathered up, concentrated and empha-
sised, in the three concluding pages.
304
NATURAL RELIGION
These pages, as related to the rest of the
volume, form the most curious conclusion to any
series of arguments that we ever remember to
have met with. They form a section by them-
selves, added as a sort of postscript ; and the gist
of them is a flat contradiction of everything that
their author has been just contending for.
· Throughout this volume,' he says, at the begin-
ning of this section," we have denied that
supernaturalism is necessary either to the idea,
or to the practical vigour, or to the popular
diffusion of religion' (p. 258). And this is
perfectly true ; it is exactly what the author has
done. But let us turn over a single page and
what shall we find there? We shall find the
author, after two brief paragraphs asking if that
very supernaturalism which he has been thus
setting aside ' may not be precious, nay, perhaps
indispensable' (p. 259) as a 'supplement' to his
'Naturalism.' Nor does he leave the question
in any ambiguous state. “No sooner,' he says,
'do we try to think that the known and the
natural . . . can suffice for human life, than
Pessimism raises its head.' And then the author
proceeds in a passage some words of which we
have already quoted :-
NATURAL RELIGION
305
US.
The more our thoughts widen and deepen, as the uni-
verse grows upon us, and we become accustomed to bound-
less space and time, the more petrifying is the contrast of
our own insignificance. . . . A moral paralysis creeps upon
For a while we comfort ourselves with the notion of
self-sacrifice; we say, what matter if I pass, let me think of
others. But the others now become contemptible to us
no less than self; all human griefs alike seem little worth
assuaging, human happiness too paltry at the best to be
worth increasing. The whole moral world is reduced to a
point; the spiritual city, the goal of all the saints,
dwindles to the least of little star's.' Good and evil, right
and wrong, become infinitesimal, ephemeral matters, whilst
eternity and infinity remain attributes of that only which is
outside morality. The affections die away in a world where
everything good and enduring is cold; they die of their own
conscious feebleness and bootlessness. "Supernatural religion,'
adds the author, ómet this want by connecting love and
righteousness with eternity. And if that is shaken,' he
proceeds with extreme pertinence, what would natural
religion avail then?' (P. 262.)
That is precisely the question that we our-
selves have been asking, and we are pleased to
perceive that at the close of his volume the
author's real answer exactly coincides with our
own ; and that answer is 'Nothing.' 'Natural
Religion ’is a sad and singular book. It is sad
as a picture of an earnest mind caught in an
intellectual tangle from which it is unable to
free itself; it is singular as being the work of a
trained and subtle reasoner, and yet ending with
X
306
NATURAL RELIGION
a formal repudiation of the proposition it was
written to vindicate. We have said the latter
end of Natural Christianity has in seventeen years
forgotten its beginning. The author of Natural
Religion ' has done the same in a fewer number
of chapters.
307
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR THE BEAUTY
OF HOLINESS.
A REPLY TO CRITICS.
The various writings in which I have discussed
the value of life, in especial my volume 'Is Life
Worth Living ?' have been made the subjects
of so much vindictive criticism, that I have been
often urged to make some reply in defence of
them; and certain incidents which have occurred
quite recently, have combined to offer me a
convenient opportunity for doing so. In the
first place, since the publication of these writings
of mine that are in question, a work has appeared
by one of the most eminent thinkers of the time,
which, though in no way designed to be a
special attack upon myself, has yet turned out
to be so practically. I refer to Mr. Herbert
Spencer's 'Data of Ethics,' which the author
implies and his disciples believe to be a final
and formal statement of the new philosophy of
life. Secondly, there has appeared in America,
I 2
308
OR
ATHEISTIC METHODISM,
from the pen of these very disciples, an entire
volume, in which, passage by passage, I am
angrily and laboriously refuted, with Mr.
Spencer's weapons, and from Mr. Spencer's
philosophical stand-point; and, lastly, in Eng-
land, a fluent and intellectual lady, Miss L. S.
Bevington, writing, so report says, under Mr.
Spencer's personal direction, has devoted two
essays’ in 'The Nineteenth Century' to applying
the arguments urged in 'The Data of Ethics’ to
mine. Considering therefore Mr. Spencer's high
repute, and how he has organised the scattered
speculations of our non-theistic thinkers, such
criticisms as those I have just alluded to have
seemed to me to deserve my best attention.
My best attention has been given thern, and
not without result. They have strengthened
my belief in all I have urged hitherto, and in
the ultimate helplessness of all that can be urged
against it. But though my critics have not
convinced me that my argument itself has any
flaw in it, they have shown me certain defects in
my own way of stating it, which I am anxious at
i The Value of Life: A Reply. New York. Putnam's
Sons.
2-2 Modern Atheism and Mr. Mallock. By L. S. Bevington.
Nineteenth Century, October and December, 1879.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
309
the same time to point out and to remedy: and
the criticisms in question, especially those of Miss
Bevington in 'The Nineteenth Century' have
taken a shape which makes the task a very easy one.
To begin, then, with this lady, her state of
mind as regards myself seems, if somewhat
singular, to be also typical and instructive : for
not only it seems have I roused her intellectual
powers against me, but in a still greater measure
her moral indignation also. She proclaims her-
self lost in wonder as to what conceivable 'cause,
social, moral or religious, I could expect to serve
by arguing in the way I have done. No
conceivable good, so far as she can see, could
come of it : and my only possible motive, as she
strongly hints, must be either a degraded or
perverse one. Others, perhaps, may also think
as she does—indeed, my censor in America is
even more severe than she is—and it may there-
fore be well briefly to say a word or two on the
matter. To me the answer to the question
seems sufficiently obvious : indeed, my critic has
herself given a part of it. My arguments, she
confesses, are of value to all scientific writers,
who would know at what points in morals men
were asking for definite scientific utterance.'
310
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
Surely one would think that this was no super-
fluous task, to browbeat the reluctant oracle,
by whose responses we are told that the whole
world is to guide itself, and to force its lips to
utter some definite and coherent sentence. And
the task would be of equal use, whether its aim
were to make the oracle help us or to make it
reveal its helplessness. Surely here is a motive
that one would think is plain and sane enough.
And is it not equally plain that there may be
yet another also, springing out of and complet-
ing this one ? What good, exclaims my critic,
can I think to gain by elaborate attempts at
reducing unbelievers to despondency, and at
loosing their hold upon hopes which they are
still struggling to cling to ? The answer is
near to hand. For those who hold that on
theism the hopes of the human race depend,
and that this alone can sustain it in the trial
or transformation to which it seems about to
be subjected, it may be of the utmost moment
to strip from the unredeeming philosophies all
the fragments of truth which for a moment
disguise their nakedness ; and to show, though
at the cost of pain and despair to many, that the
end of these things is death. Whenever a fight
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
311
grows hard between a false belief and a true one,
there will be found worthy soldiers fighting on
either side ; and the iron will go through the
souls of many who, so far as we can see, have
little deserved to feel it. But such pain in the
present case does not seem needless. To the
eyes of the believer, a large and leading body of
men are entering an Inferno which they honestly
mistake for paradise. At present they are only
on the confines of the 'brown air ;' and they
trust that it will grow brighter as they dive
further into it. To call them back by the way
they have gone seems hopeless. The one course
is to plunge them as quickly as may be to the
lowest circle, where the God they have denied is
most completely absent ; that so at last they may
emerge on the other side, and again see the stars.
And now having said this, let me proceed
to what lies before us—to the special points
that I am about to deal with now. The main
questions that my late volume has treated have
been, roughly speaking, two: first, the relation
of human life to theism; secondly, the relation of
theism to exact knowledge and thought. It is
the former of these only that my fair critic in. The
Nineteenth Century' has touched upon; and what
312
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
I am about to say will accordingly be confined to
that. Let us define more closely the exact scope
of the argument. It is concerned with the truth
or falsehood of two statements of my own,
which my two critics, English and American,
have, for precisely the same reasons, formally
contradicted. I have maintained that theism,
with its attendant doctrine of man's personal
immortality, ‘has a practical effect upon prac-
tical life-upon what men do, and what they
forbear to do—what they think of themselves,
and of one another. Without these beliefs, I
have said further, there can be no standard by
which the quality of pleasure can be tested ;
that truth as truth, and virtue as virtue, cease
to be in any way admirable. And should
these beliefs ever quite vanish from the world,
I have predicted a catastrophe as the result,
that might be not unfitly spoken of as the
second fall of man. My critics maintain, on the
contrary, that not even in its most modified
form is such a catastrophe possible. That a
vast change is imminent they indeed admit
readily, but it is a change, they say, that does
not touch virtue, nor any of the great emotions
that are at present connected with it. There is,
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
313
>
they assure us, to be no lowering of life ; our
highest hopes and pleasures, and all our pro-
foundest consolations, are to still remain to us;
and so long as man is man,' says Miss Bevington,
'virtue, as virtue, will never cease to be admirable.
Such are the counter-statements that I am
again about to deal with, and which I trust to
end by setting in a far plainer light. Here and
there, perhaps, I shall have for a moment to
repeat myself; but I agree with Mr. Herbert
Spencer in not much regretting this. For only,
as that writer says, 'by varied iteration can alien
conceptions be forced upon reluctant minds. '
What I have to do chiefly, however, is not
to repeat, but to correct myself. In parts of
my former writings there has been a certain
ambiguity, with which both my critics have
very justly taxed me. It lies in my use of the
two words virtue and morality, which on certain
occasions I have seemed to confound with
happiness; and, indeed, in the cases I am
referring to, they practically were inseparable.
In thought, however, at any rate, they are
always distinct things, and we shall save much
confusion if we transfer this distinction to
language, and resolve always to retain it there.
314
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
Let us begin with this: and we cannot do better
here than refer to the positive writers them-
selves. Mr. Herbert Spencer shall speak first.
'No school,' he says in his latest volume, 'can
avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a de-
sirable state of feeling called by whatever name
-gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure,
somewhere, at some time, to some being or
beings, is an inexpugnable element of the con-
ception. It is as much a necessary form of
moral intuition as space is a necessary form of
intellectual intuition.' 1
And 'if,' he says
further, 'we call good the conduct conducive to
life, we can only do so with the implication that
it is conducive to a balance of pleasures over
pains.'? Morality, or goodness itself, says my
American critic, repeating my own words, 'is
not the prize of life. That prize is happiness;
and morality,' he says, only furnishes the
negative conditions.' 3 Miss Bevington is even
more explicit. “Everyone else,' she says,
'knows and affirms, and no positive moralist
attempts to deny, that virtuous conduct is only
to be achieved at all for the sake of what lies
2 Ibid. p. 45.
1 Data of Ethics, p. 46.
3 The Value of Life, p. 229.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
315
beyond it.'? And, finally, I may add to this
a former remark of my own, that all those
actions which my critics praise as virtuous, are
only the creatures of the happiness they lead
to, and can have no more honour than the
latter is able to bestow upon them.' 2
What follows then is this, and all our posi-
tive writers will do well to remember it. The
entire worth of life—the dignity, the glory, or
whatever we please to call it, of humanity-
rests on the fact that humanity is capable, not
of virtue, or of heroism, not of truth, or purity;
but that it is capable of pleasure, of gratification,
of enjoyment, or of happiness. The former
are of value only because they lead to the
latter, at some time, and for some certain per-
sons ; and we only praise or felicitate those
pursuing them, in so far as the gratification
they lead to has been in some way tasted by
themselves. Thus all our interest in hu-
manity, and all our ardour in behalf of it, must
rise and fall with the fortunes of one belief-
our belief that humanity does secure, or that
it some day will secure, a preponderance of
1 Nineteenth century, October 1879, p. 598.
2 Is Life Worth Living ? p. 57
316
OR
ATHEISTIC METHODISM,
pleasurable over painful feelings; or, in other
words, that certain human brains shall at all
events some day, and perhaps do now, exist in
a certain state. The one and only thing in the
universe that, according to the positive system,
can per se be adored or valued, is, as Mr.
Spencer expresses it, 'the balance of pleasures
over pains '—the aggregate of agreeable states
of consciousness that shall be ours between our
births and death-beds.
Now all this, with but a single difference,
the theist admits quite as fully as any one; and
indeed so far as it goes it can be denied by no
sane person.
Of the difference in question we
shall come to speak presently; but there is
another point that we must first go on to deal
with. We must first ask how, since the ulti-
mate aim of action is nothing but unalloyed
gratification, not gratification but virtue is the
foremost thing that the positive teachers com-
mend to us.
of course, is easy ;
but none the less will it be well to restate it
clearly. It lies in the fact that we are, as Miss
Bevington expresses it, all helplessly social.'
In other words, we each need some help or
some self-restraint from others; we each owe
The answer,
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
317
others some help or some self-restraint in re-
turn; and it is on the gradual adjustment of
these mutual offices that all human progress
depends. It is the voluntary rendering of such
help, or the voluntary practice of such self-
restraint, that is called by the positivists
indifferently virtue, righteousness, or morality.
Now the acts that these names are applied to
are all of them, in their primary nature, an
unmixed pain to us. They are the foregoing of
what is directly pleasing to ourselves, that
others may obtain what is directly pleasing
to them; and as such, though the laws could
of course in some measure enforce them, it is a
psychological impossibility that they would ever
be voluntary-sought, that is, for their own
sake, as a gratification. To be voluntary, or,
in other words, to be virtuous, these painful
acts must become flavoured with a taste of
pleasure for the agent—with, as Mr. Spencer
would say, 'some state of feeling that is de-
sirable.' And there is in all of us a certain
natural sense, by which such pleasure can,
within limits, be given. This sense is the sense
of sympathy, our possession of which not
enables only, but, within limits, compels us, to
318
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
rejoice and suffer with others, as well as with
ourselves; and makes their welfare in some
degree traverse our own. It is this sense of
sympathy, and this alone, that, for the positive
thinker, makes virtue possible. It alone con-
secrates the beggarly elements of our own pain,
changing the substance of it although it leaves
the accidents, and makes us partakers sacra-
mentally of the agreeable feelings of our neigh-
bours, and even of our remote posterity.
It will be seen that, thus analysed, a virtuous
act is this. It is an act whose necessary con-
comitants are two distinct feelings, a feeling of
personal pain, and a feeling of vicarious pleasure
that outweighs it. Each of these two is equally
necessary. Without the first, the act would not
be virtuous; without the second, it would not
be possible. But yet more is implied than this.
In producing the clear balance of vicarious
pleasure, in securing its final victory over per-
sonal pain, it is understood always that there is
a struggle, never easy, and in some cases des-
perate; and the one end and object of all moral
systems is neither more nor less than to succour
and guide the combatant. When the triumph is
won, says Miss Bevington, it is a triumph of 'will ;
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
319
'will,' she says, ' and I use the word advisedly.'
We may therefore define the virtue, the morality,
or the righteousness with which we have to deal
in the two following ways. It may be defined,
by the analytical spectator, as the will, when it
so intensifies sympathy that the pain an act
gives to self is more than neutralised by the
pleasure it gives to others. It may be defined,
by the virtuous agent, as personal pain, over-
balanced by vicarious pleasure. Such is the
definition of it in its completeness. But viewed
as a thing to be desired and striven for by the
agent-viewed in the only light that can make its
attainment possible—the definition will be yet
shorter. We must define it only as the balance
of vicarious pleasure, without any account being
taken of its near connection with pain.
I will now check this account of the matter
by reference to the critic to whom for the pre-
sent I am more specially adverting. Virtue,
from the positive thinker's stand-point, is defined
formally by Miss Bevington as 'such conduct in
another as forwards his own interests at that
other's cost;' and she adds further, as a second
ground for praising it, that it is not thus good in
its outward effects only, but it is also a good
320
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
achieved with difficulty.'1 She is here in entire
agreement with Mr. Herbert Spencer; it will be
plain, therefore, that I am not misleading the
reader.
Now that virtue, thus regarded, is a good
when tested externally, may doubtless be true
enough. But this theory of it does but take us
a very short part of our way. “It is,' as Miss
Bevington herself truly says, 'null and void even
as a theory, unless it can be married to existing
human emotion, and can so sway the motives
which underlie conduct.' In other words, the first
practical task of the moralist is not to present
virtue as agreeable to others—that for the pre-
sent we may take for granted—but to present it
as an end for personal action ; that is, as an end
agreeable in some way to ourselves. Virtue to
be virtue, must be followed voluntarily—nay,
with ardour; and an agreeable feeling of some
kind is, therefore, in Mr. Spencer's words, 'an
inexpugnable element in our conception of it.
There must, if I
aust, if I may borrow his phraseology yet
further, be a particular mode of (agreeable)
feeling, temporarily existing as a concomitant
of each kind of beneficent action ; ' or the benefi-
ܪ
1 Nineteenth Ceritury, October 1879, p. 591.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
321
cent actions would never be done at all. It is
only such feeling that, in the absence of outward
force, can make any action possible. Nor does
it matter that the pleasure the virtuous act pro-
duces may pass in its course through others.
The important point is that like an electric
current, no matter how long the circuit, it
returns without fail to ourselves. Virtue, there-
fore, for the practical, for the preaching moralist,
is neither more nor less than a particular mode
of pleasure, for which he has to cultivate a taste
amongst disciples professedly reluctant. That
the rudiments of the taste exist is admitted by
all
; but the reluctance to have these developed
is admitted also-indeed, not admitted only, but,
as we have seen, emphasised as essential by the
positive thinkers themselves. Enormous diffi-
culties stand in the way of our conquering it
-difficulties so great that the whole history of
mankind hitherto has been little else but an
ever-baffled struggle against them.
This struggle, which religion has sustained
so painfully, our new philosophers tell us they
will undertake with a better heart ; and this for
two different reasons.
One is that the course of
human events, independent of any conscious
Y
322
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
effort on our part, tends of itself to evolve that
general happiness which it is the essence of
virtue to aim at consciously. Such a theory,
however, taken by itself, is rather a sedative to
virtue than a stimulant; and the moralist, as a
moralist, has nothing at all to do with it, unless
he can ‘marry it,' in Miss Bevington's language,
to a quite other set of considerations. It is no-
thing to him that, whether we will or no, there
are certain impersonal forces that are inexorably
moving all of us in one direction. The thing
precious in his eyes is that with these forces the
will of each of us should co-operate. It is his one
task to induce the will to do so ; and the task,
he admits himself, is a very hard one. Still the
positive thinker maintains that it is no harder
for him than for the religious thinker ; indeed,
in some ways easier. It is with his reasons for
this confidence--not with his theories, however
true, about the tendency of impersonal forces-
that we first of all have to deal.
Let us inquire, then, what this confidence
means. It means a confidence that he can do
some particular thing. But what? It can be
defined very narrowly. We have seen that his
general task is so to present virtue that the will
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
323
shall seize on it always as the chief end of action :
and he must present it, for this end, as essentially
a balance of pleasure outweighing a load of pain.
It is on the character of this balance, as related
to the virtuous agent, that the whole question
hangs; and the power of the positive moralist,
and the entire meaning of his system, are deter-
mined by how he handles it.
The task before him is indeed formidable.
What he must prove, and what he engages he
will prove, is that this balance of pleasure
is, for the agent himself, of all pleasures the
intensest—that it is, for him subjectively, the
most agreeable of all sensations ; so agreeable
indeed, that all others, matched with it, are, as
George Eliot expresses it, 'dross for ever,' and
that in so far as he fails to secure it, he really has
nothing although he possesses all things.
all things. That
I do not exaggerate the sentiments which my
critics engage to justify, can be shown by extracts
from the words of Miss Bevington herself. That
lady shows a nervous zeal in proclaiming that
'every word' I have said on this head is
emphatically true 'l She speaks of virtue as
' that thing we love so well ... and which we
1 Nineteenth Century, October 1879, p. 587.
Y 2
324
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
> 1
73
hug as our choicest treasure.' It would be a
terrible thing,' she says, “to be equally happy,
and equally prosperous, supposing such a case
were possible, without a belief in right and wrong
as such ; ' 2 and the results that would follow
the destruction of this belief would be, she says,
thoroughly dismal and sickening.
Nor is this unique intensity of the pleasures
brought by virtue ascribed to them, by the
positivists, through any kind of bravado. They
are obliged to ascribe it. Their system makes
them do so, as we can soon readily see.
We will illustrate the whole case by a short
and homely parable. Bill and James, we will
say, are two tourists, whose keenest personal
pleasure is in cutting their own names on the
roofs of public buildings. They take a long
and toilsome walk, that they may perform this
feat on the highest pinnacle of
pinnacle of a certail
cathedral tower. Having climbed at last, how-
ever, to the lofty scene of action, they find, to
their horror, that they have only two minutes
to spare, that the leads of the coveted pinnacle
1
Nineteenth Century, October 1879, p. 602.
2 Ibid. p. 587. The italics are in the original.
3 Ibid. p. 586.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
325
are some distance out of reach, and that if either
is to cut his name at all, it can only be one of
them raised on the other's shoulders. There is,
for a moment, a struggle in the minds of both.
Then Bill's will triumphs, and lifting James
up, who cuts his name in rapture, Bill's only
pleasure, the only reward of his walk, is such of
James's pleasure as, received by himself vicari-
ously, is in excess of the pain consequent on
his own self-denial.
Now, in this short drama, of which Bill is
the moral hero, we have all the elements of
virtue, as conceived of by the positivist, in their
immediate bearing on the agent. We see what
is virtue, we see what is not virtue, and we
see that which, while resembling it, yet is not it.
The delight of the two tourists in cutting their
respective names stands here for the logical end
of life, and the vindication of it as being worth
the living. But the separate pursuance of this
end by each of them is not virtue ; neither is
the suffering undergone by each in his long and
toilsome walk. This last, as Miss Bevington
puts it, is 'but disguised personal expediency;'
and so far from being identical with virtue, is,
in her opinion, in strong contrast to it. We
326
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
find virtue only in one place; that is, in the
foregoing by Bill personally of the one end of
his existence, and choosing instead, as it were,
only such a margin of it as, conveyed to him at
second hand, is not eclipsed by the pain of his
own personal loss of it.
Or let us have recourse to yet another
parable ; and compare the gladness of life to
some splendid opera, which all the musical
world is thronging eagerly to hear. Were there
enough seats to accommodate all the applicants
there would indeed be unmixed pleasure ; but
there would be no pleasure that could be praised
as virtuous. Virtue arises only through the
theatre being too small for the audience, and
through me, for instance, resigning willingly a
seat already reserved for me. I am not virtuous
in this case because I drive to the theatre in a
draughty hansom. I am not virtuous because
I fully enjoy the opera. I am virtuous only
in so far as I enjoy nothing of what I came to
enjoy, but am yet happier than if I had done
so, because I know my friend is enjoying it ;
though I may myself be catching my death of
cold in the passage, and hear no more classical
music than the barmaids' voices in the refresh-
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
327
ment room.
I
say I am virtuous only because
I get my enjoyment thus, and under these
conditions—because the indirect end of life,
largely deadened by pain, is more agreeable to
me—to me personally—than the direct one ever
could be, even with no pain to detract from it.
Let us consider well these two parables : for
they are all the more instructive because in their
details they are so trivial. The severe moralist
may say that my pleasure in the opera is only a
selfish luxury; and that the tourist's pleasure
in cutting his own name is only an offensive
vulgarity. But yet when we each of us, respec-
tively, secure these ends for others, and, at the
expense of pain, get the despised pleasures at
second hand, these despised pleasures are held
to change their character, and they become the
one thing in life we are ' to hug as our choicest
treasure. My friend has not this pleasure when
he sits entranced in the stall that I have given
up to him. James has not this pleasure when,
knife in hand, he is cutting his name delightedly.
It is I who have it, as I stand shivering in the
passage. It is poor Bill who has it, with
James's boots resting on his coat-collar.
Having thus far defined virtuous happiness
328
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
as a conception, we must now see how it is to
be turned into a reality, how it is to be hoisted
into the lofty niche designed for it, how it is to
be made practically operative with those who
we desire should seek it. As conceived of by
the theist, it has three essential characteristics
by which in his system it gains its hold on man,
its inwardness, its importance, and (within limits)
its absolute character. I have pointed these
out in my former volume ; and have declared
that the theist could alone invest it with them.
That the characteristics are essential both my
positive critics declare loudly ; but they declare
also that they are quite independent of theism,
and that the positive philosophy leaves them as
marked as ever
Let us now proceed to examine
again the two first of them, leaving the third to
be dealt with later on, and see how the positive
moralists try to make good their premisses.
First, then, as to the inwardness of virtue,
as virtue-what do both parties confessedly mean
by that? They mean that its excellence results
in the will, not in the outward act. The virtue,
as a virtue, with the special pleasure it brings with
it, is complete when the will has triumphed ;
and it is regarded as good with reference to the
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
329
person willing, not with reference to those others
on whose behalf he has willed. Professor
Clifford has declared this as loudly and as plainly
as any one. The virtuous act, in the acting of
it, has its distinctive character 'for ever,' he says,
and no accidental failure of its good or evil
fruits can possibly alter that.'1 And the lan-
guage of Miss Bevington herself shows that she
quite agrees with him. When we call virtue
inward, therefore, we mean that as a pleasure,
as a possible end of action—in other words, as
virtue—it is self-regarding. We mean that we
are enabled to pay a certain debt to our neigh-
bours, only because we make ourselves feel that
we owe a certain debt to ourselves.
Next as to its special, its incalculable im-
portance, our meaning is precisely similar.
When, as an end of action, we declare that it is
important a man should follow it, we mean that
it is important to himself; important indeed by
the way to others, but of special and incalculable
importance to himself alone.
Let us now see how my positive critic defends
herself, in continuing to ascribe to virtue these
two special characteristics; and it will be plain
1 Professor Clifford, Ethics of Belief.
.330
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
-a
at once that she, and her school in common with
her, instead of defending their position, are in
reality utterly and for ever abandoning it; and
that they only seem to be not doing so because
they retain certain marked words, though they
have completely reversed the meaning of them.
Thus, instead of vindicating for virtue in any
way the inwardness we above have spoken of, she
merely 'emphatically maintains the here mean-
ingless truism that virtue initiates in a certain
'set of . sensibilities in the individual'i
thing which is not peculiar to virtue, but is at
once common and essential to all free action
whatsoever. Whilst as to its importance, she
here not so much misses but inverts the meaning;
for referring it not to the agent, but to the vast
sum of events present and to come, external to
him, she does indeed show this importance to
be, in the case of each man, incalculable, but
incalculable not because it is so large, but because
it is so infinitesimally small.
It will be thus seen, and no one can more
clearly though more unconsciously confess this
than Miss Bevington, that virtue, as a personal
end of action, is placed by the positivists in a
1 Professor Clifford, Ethics of Belief.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
331
11
completely new position ; that everything supreme
and special in its pleasures altogether evaporates,
and that, were their account of it a true one,
there would be no means of marrying it to
existing human emotion.'
It will be here again urged that the sympa-
thetic appetite, or the motive power in virtue,
even if not to be roused by argument in the
individual man now, will be evolved to the
needed strength amongst the individual men of
the future. This theory, however—itself open
to dispute-would, were it never so true, be
nothing to the point here. The business of the
moralist is not scientific prophecy, though he
will doubtless call that to his aid. His business is
with living men and women, and lies in educating
their wavering and wayward wills; nay, unless
he can manage to do this, the prophecy just
alluded to must, he believes, be falsified. Posi-
tivism,' says my American critic, recognises
that beyond a certain stage of developinent,
changes in human destiny depend immediately
on the combined knowledge, desire, and will of
human beings.'? “It is well aware, also, he
6
" Nineteenth Century, October 1879, p. 600.
? The Value of Life, p. 235.
332
OR
ATHEISTIC METHODISM,
71
adds, of the feebleness of the sympathetic
instincts; and it proposes therefore to
develop such sentiments by every practicable
means.'
This development produces, when
accomplished, virtue ; and virtue, to make plain-
ness doubly plain, we will define yet once more.
It is, says Miss Bevington, 'a special meeting
of two characteristics, and these two charac-
teristics are 'use and difficulty.”? It is, there-
fore, not only the intensification in the individual
of the sympathetic appetite, but it is such an
intensification when secured with a struggle by
the will.
I repeat again, then, that to produce this
struggle, still more to secure the final success of it,
is a thing that the positive theory makes a logical
impossibility. What that system professes to
do, is, when stated nakedly, neither more nor
less than this. Starting with unalloyed happi-
ness-- with a balance of pure gratification, as
not merely the only right, but the only possible
end of action, it professes to show that, as
reaching us directly, this happiness is a thing to
be despised and renounced by all of us; and
1 The Value of Life, p. 205.
2 Nineteenth century, October 1879, p. 592.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
333
that whilst despised as the subject of our own
enjoyment, we are to fall down and adore it as
an object of contemplation. But to show this
is plainly a quite impossible feat. If the delight
of James is in itself despicable, this delight does
not become noble in Bill's case because it
reaches him at second hand, and because per-
sonally he has foregone all share in it. If it is
good in itself at all, it must be best at first
hand. If it is great at all, it must be greater
when there is no pain to detract from it. The
positive system can indeed prove one thing with
regard to virtue ; but this is the exact opposite
of what it wants to prove. It can prove that
we should each of us be glad if the rest of the
world was virtuous ; but that we should each of
us avoid to the utmost being virtuous ourselves.
Let me consult Miss Bevington, and see if she
does not agree with me. Virtue, as virtue,' she
says, 'will never cease to be admirable, and for
this reason. Man will always accord a very
special kind of admiration to such conduct in
another as forwards his own interest at that
other's cost. When, moreover, he receives
the benefit of such struggle, without himself
encountering its difficulty—in other words,
334
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
71
receives his own good fortune as the result of
his neighbour's struggle--not the death, burial,
and oblivion of a thousand creeds will avail to
hinder the instinctively special force of his admira-
tion.' In other words, our liking for virtue
lies in this, that its presence in another saves us
from the needing it in ourselves.
Now I am aware that the above account of
the matter will seem at first sight to be nothing
more than a parody. And that it is essentially
absurd is without doubt true. But its absurdity
does not prove that it is not a true analysis of
the positive theory ; but that the positive theory
is not a true analysis of facts. That virtue, as
a fact, may be in many cases possible without
any assent to theism, or any conscious thought
of it, is plain enough, and is denied by nobody.
But this is just what the theist would expect;
and, as we shall see presently, he can perfectly
well account for it.
We must first note, however, that though
such instances of virtue might be adduced in
numbers by the positive writers, those which
they do adduce generally are not true instances at
all. They consist almost always in abstentions
1 Nineteenth century, October 1879, p. 591.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
335
from three crimes or vices, murder, theft, and
drunkenness. But such abstentions, though con-
taining in them, as virtue does, a personal desire
overbalanced by a desire not personal, for all
this are yet not virtues. They lack, at least
in most cases, the essential element, struggle.
They are useful, but they are not difficult. A
selfish nephew, desiring the death of a rich uncle,
is not praised as virtuous because he does not
kill him ; nor, supposing he forbears to do so,
although he could do so safely, do we conceive
him to experience any virtuous rapture. Or let
us take an instance that is yet more suggestive
-----one connected not with murder, but with
what is next door to it-vindictive cruelty. А
man in a rage with his wife yields to his passion,
and begins to kick her wildly. This at first
gives him unmixed gratification ; but he finds
in a few seconds that he is more annoyed by the
scratches she inflicts on him than he is gratified
by the kicks that he inflicts on her. He there-
fore at once checks his passion; and though it
often again disturbs him, he never again yields
to it. It is yet plainer here, that, in spite of his
self-restraint, the man in question is not virtuous.
And we have in this case a type of a large
336
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
number of actions, which, though they all of
them resemble virtues, yet could some of
them never have been such, and have, some
of them, in the course of progress long ceased
to be so.
We are here brought to the question of virtue
and evolution ; and we are now in a position to
appreciate two important facts about it. The
first of these is that when virtuous conduct
comes, through evolution, to be spontaneous
conduct, it loses altogether its special character
als virtue ; and so, as far as such virtue is con-
cerned with it, 'our choicest treasure' vanishes.
The second point is that such evolution has
brought us but a certain way; and, without
conscious endeavour on our part, it cannot, as
my American critic admits, take us further.
We are standing now, as it were, on the stepping-
stones of a dead savagery, and are asking both
how and why we should painfully climb higher ;
at all events, we are only capable of virtue in
so far as we are in this position.
And in this position it is that positivism
fails to help us. To this how ? and why ? it
can give no coherent answer. The only answer
it can give has a radical flaw in it—a flaw;
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
337
indeed, which its exponents at times perceive,
but which, as we shall see presently, they utterly
fail to remedy. What we want, as virtuous
agents, to have scientifically made plain to us, is
that certain pleasures that lie for us on the far
side of pain are greater for us beyond comparison
than those that lie on the near side. The
superior amount of their pleasurableness is an
'inexpugnable element,' as Mr. Spencer says,
' in our conception of them.
Now the pleasures in question are, as we
have seen, vicarious ; they are, so to speak, not
self-luminous. What we require then in a satis-
factory answer must be one of two things. One
of these might be a proof that those pleasures
which are self-luminous, that is, which are
secured by us for others, so far exceed any that
could be self-luminous for ourselves, that the
mere reflection of the former will outshine the
sunlight of the latter. But this, we see at once,
is an impossibility. No such pleasures exist.
Nor, even if they did, would their existence
meet the needs of the case ; for though they
might, no doubt, excite virtue in a minority, yet
from the very terms of the proposition, they
could do so in a minority only. Those who
Z
338
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
enjoyed them directly would not be virtuous at
all ; whilst virtuous pleasure, so far from being
the highest, would be nothing but a poor substi-
tute, good for those only who could not get the
original.
What we require to have proved, then, must
be plainly something different. I must be shown,
not that the moonlight that is reflected on me
from my friend's pleasure, is brighter than any
candle-light I could get from my own; not that
it is brighter than my candle, but that it is.
brighter than what seems to be its own sun.
Such is the nature of the phenomenon that we
really have to account for. We get more out of
the sack than we, as yet, seem to have put into
it. And here at last we are getting near the
secret. We here see that, as yet, we have not
the whole matter before us, but that there must
be some new element that remains to be taken
account of. When Bill, in lifting James on his
shoulders, is happier than James thus lifted, his
greater happiness must have some source beyond
its seeming one. Its only seeming source is the
delight of James ; but that delight is despicable
and vulgar, and Bill is vulgar also, in so far as
he thinks it delightful. But Bill's balance of
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
339
t
pleasure which his self-denial brings with it,
is of a character very different. On this the
moralist will bestow all his best praise ; and it
is typical, for the positive moralist, of the
pleasures of all virtue. And what has happened
in producing it ? A few pains and pleasures,
all objectively trivial and unworthy of a refined
man's notice, have been arranged together in a
certain way by a will. And the result is that,
as a modern poet has said of music,
Out of three sounds are framed, not a fourth sound, but a
star.
Whence then--from what alien source, does
this star-like pleasure come—this choicest
treasure,' this blessedness,' which, as Mr.
Spencer takes several pages to tell us, can be
only some form of personal, of subjective grati-
fication ?l It is clear that it cannot derive its
value from those enjoyments which the virtue,
that alone secures it to us, shuffles from hand
to hand. It must derive it from something
else that can yield far greater pleasure than
these ; something that, through all our thoughts
for others, we must each 'covet earnestly' for
ܪ
i Vide Data of Ethics, pp. 41-44.
22
340
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
ourselves, and in which, through all denials
of self, we are each to the utmost to indulge
self.
The positivists admit, though they continu-
ally lose sight of the fact, that such a something
is essential ; and they declare, with much pomp
of language, that their system supplies us with
it. According to their account of it, it is this.
It is an intense, a passionate, an adoring joy at
the fact of the human race existing : or, to put
it accurately, and in Mr. Spencer's language, at
the fact of its presupposed existence having a
'balance of pleasures over pains' as a 'necessary
concomitant.' This balance is presented to us by
the positive system, as, for us, the one august and
precious thing in the universe; as a vast treasury
of the highest possible rapture, in the whole of
which we may every one of us share, if we only
contribute faithfully each our private mite to it.
On this conception the positivists have bestowed
the greatest pains. They have used every means
at their disposal to make it splendid and allur-
ing, and it seems, in many cases, to be actually
doing the work it is designed to do. They
seem actually to have aroused by it an emotion
that can be married' to their theory of virtue,'
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
341
7
and 'so sway the motives that underlie conduct.
This last fact we may admit readily; and it is
not unnaturally conceived by many to be a con-
clusive and practical proof of the validity of the
positive system. Such, however, is very far
from being the case. In the first place, as we
shall see by-and-by, the final object of emotion
we have just been speaking of, though impres-
sive enough under the limelight of the ima-
gination, is disenchanted instantly by a touch
of logical daylight. Whilst as to its reality
being proved by its apparent efficacy, we will
first proceed to see how the theist replies to
that.
When the positivist points out to him the
emotion in question as not existing only, but
existing efficaciously, the theist replies that the
emotion is doubtless there, but that its analysis
is very different from what the other thinks it is.
It is, says the theist, no mere delight in the
fact of the human race existing, though under
one of its aspects it may coincide with that.
Primarily, he says, it is a delight in the will of
God, and a conformity with it, more or less
impassioned Whatever else the individual
takes it for, it really is this. Man is, on this
342
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
theory, the child of God, and part of the child's
nature is an innate love for his father, and an
innate longing to please him, though these very
often may not rightly understand themselves.
The theist goes on to say that, unless they do
understand themselves, they will not indeed lie
dormant, still less be extinguished ; but that
their action will be uncertain and wayward, and
will never give their possessor either true peace
or guidance. Thus what they are always
craving for, always goading him to seek for
them, is a logical account of what they really
mean and aim at. And what the theist main-
tains is, that his system can alone give them
this ; not that it is alone in, to some degree,
touching them ; still less, that it is alone in
finding them at hand to be touched.
Let us now see what the theistic system is
;
remembering, as we do so, that the propositions
1 Miss Bevington and others completely misrepresent the
matter, when they speak of the theist as maintaining that
religion, or belief in God, has created conscience or virtue.
What the theist maintains is that God, not the belief in God,
has created them; and that the belief in God has developed
When the relations between religion and virtue are
spoken of, the others fail to distinguish the simple and obvious
difference between the logical connection and the historical
and to see that though historically virtue may be prior to religion,
religion logically is prior to virtue.
1
them.
;
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
3:43
we shall find it to consist of are not to be here
discussed as true statements of facts, but as true
translations of a belief in facts that is already
latent in us, under the form of feeling. The
feeling in question is that of the supreme value of
virtue, in other words, the supremacy of the
pleasure it is attended by. Now, as the theist
and the positivist both here agree about much,
we will start with their points of agreement, and
we shall so the better signalise the point where
they part company. The theist, then, agrees
with the positivist in accepting as virtues all
those acts which the latter defines as such ; and
he agrees that they all tend, as Miss Bevington
says they do, 'to the slow amelioration of man's
condition upon earth,'1 or, as she explains her-
self more distinctly, “to the securing him a
maximum of comfort and a minimum of
friction,' and this, too, for the largest number
of generations possible. Here the positivist
stops, and the theist goes on alone. The former
says that the virtuous appetite has now met with
its proper and sufficient object in such vague
happiness as is called confort for an indefinite
number of human beings. The theist altogether
1 Nineteenth Century, December 1879, p. 1012.
344
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
denies this. The virtuous appetite, he says, is
not satisfied that these human beings should be
happy. This is an object that not only does.
not satisfy the appetite, but barely even excites
it. It is not enough, he says, that these human
beings should be happy, but that their happiness
should be of one special kind. And for such
special happiness he has a special name, and
that name is holiness. Granted that man as
man is capable of this, it at once becomes his
duty to labour for man's existence; and a new
meaning shoots for him into that result of
virtue which Miss Bevington can describe only
as its lifeward tendency.'
What, then, is holiness, that such should be
the result of our recognition of it? In the
answer to this question we have all theism in
embryo. Holiness is a form of happiness so
apart, and by itself, that it can be described, to
those who have not felt it, no more than any
simple taste can. To those who do not feel it
the theist is dumb; for morally such men are
for the theist, deaf. But for those who do feel
it or can remember once to have felt it, what
the theist says is sufficiently plain and moving.
They will know what he means,
he means, however
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
315
vague his language, when the ells them it is a
feeling,
Unde nil majus generatur ipso,
Nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum;
and that life, except as a selfish and contemned
pleasure, is of value only as being the con-
dition of this. They will know what he means
when he tells them further that this feeling
unites in itself two qualities, which in all the
positive virtues are of necessity in antagonism
-selfishness and unselfishness; that there is here
a perfect marriage and balance between the pair,
and that neither of them is afore or after the
other. They will know what he means when he
tells them finally that the one cause and source
of this feeling is the vision and the fruition of
God; and that the saint when he exclaims, ‘My
Lord, I desire nothing but thee,' is exclaiming
in the same breath, ' and that my brother may
desire thee also.
In this desire, says the theist, in this supreme
desire, though it often does its work in secret
and in ways past finding out, is the real motive
for all those painful acts which the positivists
praise as virtues because of their lifeward
tendency,' meaning only hy this that they con-
346
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
duce to general 'comfort.' The theist values.
life, and he values lifeward tendencies, not as
subserving comfort, but as subserving holiness.
That men should live and be holy, is, he believes,
God's will ; and to co-operate with that will in
all ways is the essence of holiness. It is thus
that the theory of lifeward actions is for him
married to the emotions,' and 'so sways the
motives that underlie conduct.'
But what, then, of those direct pleasures of
life, which it is but fair to suppose that Miss
Bevington includes in comfort ?' What of the
pleasures, the excitements, and, above all, the
affections with which for most of us the entire
daily landscape is occupied, and amongst which
exclusively our active work lies ? What account
does the theist give of these, that is in harmony
with common sense, and with the common esti-
mate of them ? The account he gives is complete;
and it is the only account that can justify the
manner in which they are regarded at present
and in which the positivists declare they shall
never cease to be regarded. All the pleasures,
he says, and all the comforts in question, are
arranged in a scale, ascending and descending
according to their relation to the supreme
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
347
pleasure of holiness. Some of them are incom-
patible with it, and from their very nature
quench it. These are the fleshly lusts that war
against the Spirit. Others, though not it, are
yet imbued with a portion of it, some in a greater
degree, some less ; until into the thirst for
knowledge and into chastened human affection,
there seems to have been transubstituted the very
thing itself.
But we must here note this. These pleasures,
even the highest of them, though they must be
granted to us as sacraments of holiness, are
yet in themselves distinct from holiness. The
good man may long to acquire knowledge ; the
good man may long to receive love. But he
may be called upon, also, to forego both ; and
if he respond to this call of God willingly and
with his whole heart, he will be not the less
holy, but the holier. It is essential to the
entire position that we remember this. For
were this not the case, the system of the
theist would be as faulty as the system of the
positivist. Each system requires alike that
we should, if asked to do so, surrender all
pleasures but one. But the theistic system
alone can supply such a pleasure which, through
348
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
1
all self-surrender, will still remain for ever
with us.
This system, however, whilst denying any
pleasures but this one to be necessary, yet admits
others as good in a deep, though secondary,
sense; not despising those even which, as
related to holiness, seem at first to be most
indifferent. I speak of those very pleasures
which alone Miss Bevington and her school dwell
upon—those pleasures or comforts, on the general
distribution of which the continuance of the
huinan race, in the long run, depends; and with
which alone, on their theory, virtue has to deal.
The pursuit of holiness does not force us aside
from these ; for these, so far as they are ' life-
ward in their tendency,' are all of them in accor-
dance with the will of God. Nor does the
pursuit of holiness fail to give a meaning to the
allaying at our own cost of the slightest pain in
another ; or to giving another, at our own cost,
the slighest innocent pleasure. The theist
The theist agrees
with the positivist that such actions are virtues,
and that they bring a pleasure with them that
far outweighs their pain. But the virtuous
pleasure that lures us to such self-denial,
comes not from the pleasure foregone, which
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
349.
ex hypothesi is indifferent, but from the oblation,
conscious or unconscious, of self-denial, to
God. If its after consequences have been really
lifeward, well and good. We shall so have been
forwarding his will. But even should they fail
entirely our act is not in vain. It is good in
itself, in its own nature. In Professor Clifford's
words, 'no accidental failure of its fruits can
possibly alter that. It is good in its effect on
ourselves as a surrender of ourselves to God.
It is the giving Him the best that the moment
has enabled us to give Him ; it is what He values
most, the conforming of our will to His. And
such an act in one single man is an exemplar of
what should be the acts of all men—an exemplar,
not because its results as a fact are valuable,
but because with all earnestness they have been
meant to be so. For the positivist the only
measure of virtue is the objective success of it;
or, as Miss Bevington puts it, its active realised
' use. But the theist, should God deny all such
use to it, can rest in faith ; and should it prove
useful he will rest in thankfulness. Paul has
planted, Apollos watered; but it is God tha
has given the increase.
Here we see what the theist means when he
350
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
says that virtue is inward ; here we see what he
means when he says it is all-important. . And
now we can see what he means when he
says
its
character is absolute. He does not mean the
poor truism of the positivist which no one con-
tradicts or ever dreamed of contradicting, that
the conduct conducing to certain social advan-
tages cannot be altered by the changing caprice
of each of us. He means that amongst the
pleasures of which these advantages are, by
the other's confession, the negative conditions
only, there is one pleasure supreme over all
the others, and to whose throne the others are
valuable only as steps. We now see what and
whence is that pure and perfect passion which,
when once sure of its end, gives a meaning to all
virtue.
And in seeing this, we must also have seen
more than this. We must have seen that whilst
the theist admits, as virtues, all the acts that
positivists define as such, he includes a further
set that the positivist cannot include. He in-
cludes not only the subjugation of our own
pleasures as warring against others' happiness ;
but the subjugation of our own lower pleasures,
as warring against our own holiness. And
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
351
logically, in our conception of virtue, it is this
last-named part of it that is the first. My desire
for holiness must first make my life precious to
me, before I can attach much preciousness to
the lives of other people. Thus the meaning
of the word virtue is at once immeasurably
widened
;
and its present popular use is
explained naturally. I will but quote one in-
stance, and that shall be the commonest and
the most significant-the popular identification
of virtue with sexual continence. What is
implied here is, not that chastity is a virtue
because externally it is of social use to others,
but because internally it prepares self for God;
because it is a part of the payment of that same
debt to Him, of which subserving the welfare
of others is another part, and a part logically
subordinate.
Here is the explanation of that ambiguity
in my language, which I said just now I would
correct—my use at times, in my former volume,
of the words virtue and morality as synonymous
with the highest happiness, and with the final
end of life. I should, to have been entirely
accurate, have named that end not virtue but
holiness ; and, for the sake of entire clearness,
352
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
let me do so now. Let me re-state my former
proposition, with its meaning unchanged, but
only with its terms amended. Let me say that
what positivism subtracts from life, utterly and
for ever, is primarily not virtue as virtue, but
holiness as holiness ; to which I add, in what is
here only a parenthesis, that, in destroying the
latter, it also destroys the former ; leaving us
indeed, as its objects, many reasons to wish for
it; but as agents, no motive that can make us
practise even a part of it.
Holiness then, let me remind Miss Bevington
and all those who agree with her, is the real
name of the thing that their system takes away
from them. And indeed, though they do not
use the word in question, they make no secret
that there is some such loss. But what they
fail to see is the extent and the result of it.
Miss Bevington in her last Essay informs us
that we have lost nothing but 'a moral sofa,
and 'our spiritual cakes and ale.' This is her
simile for the sense of trust in God.) But I
1
1 Our sunbelievers ” know what they lose in losing religion.
They lose their moral sofas, their spiritual
" cakes and ale ;
but the solid ground remains for spiritual exercise, and the bread
and meat of success and survival will continue to reward that
exercise wherever faithfully performed.'
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
353
7
can tell her that the loss she speaks of is indeed
a loss, not only of spiritual cakes and ale,
but of necessary food and drink—of food and
drink without which the soul dies of star-
vation ; producing those results, during its
lingering, painful death, which my critic her-
self describes as 'thoroughly dismal and sick-
ening
If she and her school deny this, out of their
own mouth I can judge them ; and for such
witness I need go no further than the words
of
my present critic herself. Throughout the
whole of her two essays, what she is really
appealing to, is no sense on our part that virtue
produces comfort, which, besides its difficulty,
is the only charactistic she gives it; but a sense
that it is valuable as connected with that hierarchy
of ascending pleasures, which are ranged in due
gradation about the throne of holiness. Thus
greedy seizure on handy pleasure' she thinks
need be named merely to be at once condemned
by us ; and she puts the 'bliss of the moment'
in contrast with the strength of the morrow :'
although bliss and pleasure are, she affirms,
the only things to live for ; although strength
1 Nineteenth century, December 1879, p. 1006.
AA
6
91
354
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
has no value except as a means of bliss; and
although the value of bliss, she says, depends on
itself, and not on the 'hours or the years' for
which it is or will be present. Again, there are
two classes, she says, for whom we must labour ;
one is sufferers, and the other is sinners.' 1
Sexual passion she describes as in itself a 'reek-
ing miasm ;'2 and yet more significantly she
says she has not the least fear ? 3 that its admit-
ted pleasures will ever receive the approval of
positivism. Why, let me ask her, should she
use the word "fear'? Surely on her own
grounds she should have said “hope' instead.
The pleasures she alludes to are for many men
very keen pleasures. Could they then only be
found not injurious to the general 'comfort,' the
world would, on her own grounds, be so much
the richer for enjoying them.
them. My critic is
plainly quite sincere in her feelings; but they
belong to the creed she denies, not to the creed
she is defending. She really hates vice because
it wars against the spirit of holiness; not be-
cause it wars in any way against the spirit of
comfort. But she makes this plainer yet in
2 Ibid.
1 Nineteenth Century, December 1879.
3 Ibid. October 1879, p. 591.
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
355
another place. Fortunately, as an illustration of
the present condition of the positivists, she has
published a small volume of verse, in which the
restless movements—I. might almost say the
antics—of theism are pathetically visible under
the donkey's skin of positivism. The following
lines are from the most prominent and the most
powerful of the poems:
But now—what says philosophy of Self?
What thinks her follower of the man he is?
Can he, in presence of the symphony
That rolls around him, played by viewless cause,
On suns for instruments, with life for key. . .
Can he revert to his small destiny
As worth a moment's stopping of his ears,
While that sweet thundering of the huge Not Self
Challenges him to listen while he may ?
6
Now what do these lines mean as explained
by the professed theories of their writer ? The
huge Not Self' seems here to mean what she
calls in another place 'nature's large impersonal
workings ;' and in these she says 'we do like to
think there is an end that we may make our
special personal own.' ? But the unbelieving
moralist,' she goes on immediately, 'must resign
i Key Notes, by L. S. Bevington, 1879, p. 16.
? Nineteenth Century, October 1879, p. 601.
AA 2
356
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
the luxury of such a belief.' If this be the case,
in what possible sense can the ‘huge Not Self”
be said to 'thunder' at all, still more, to 'thun-
der sweetly'? In Wordsworth's ears it is quite:
true it did : for him it was a shell that mur-
mured with the voice of God. But Miss Beving-
ton's case is altogether different. . Perhaps,
however, the 'huge Not Self' means what she
elsewhere calls many-millioned humanity. But
in that case her meaning is no more satisfactory.
If every self is paltry, so are all selves put.
together. If the talking of one man is senseless
babble, the united babbling of a million men
may indeed out-thunder' it; but the 'thunder-
ing' will be neither 'sweet 'nor sensible. Let
us take a case of a like confusion in her prose, to
which the mention of Humanity' at once con-
ducts us.
“The evolutionist,' she tells us, feels
(through virtue) the glow of a calm blessedness.
in contemplating a mass of human beings '-and
why? Because ' his own smallest achievement
in self-education and self-elevation cannot but
affect them beneficially. There is no small and
great for him, since all is effectual.'1 In this
language we have a still more evident survival
1 Nineteenth Century, December 1879, p. 1008.
6
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
357
of theism, for in the mouth of the theist it has a
distinct meaning ; in the mouth of the positivist
none. . Let the will be good, and for the theist
there is indeed no small and great objectively.
But for the positivist the case is otherwise.
The 'mass of human beings' cannot thus take
the will for the deed ; and our virtues are great
and small in exact proportion to results they
accomplish severally. For the positivists to say
that there is no small or great in them is as if a
railway company were to say to the public, 'Pay
us with two pence or two pounds for your
tickets ; there is neither much nor little with us
for all is effectual.
What Miss Bevington has here had in her
mind is what Christ said of the widow's mite
;
but in attempting to transplant this from
His system to hers she shows not the difference
only, but the antagonism of the two. The
'mass of human beings,' as an object of work
and ardour, can never supply the place of God,
nor does it go even the smallest way towards
doing so. Every effort made by the positivists
to invest it with the divine glory and to raise
it to the divine eminence fails. They attempt to
perform the feat in many ways, but each effort
358
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
ends in its own discomfiture ; and the logic they
invoke to aid them by-and-by turns round and
confounds them. We are to adore humanity,
they say, as a vast corporate Pleasure, and our
emotions are to make us serve it by our each
doing our all to add to it. But the coin, they
proceed to tell us, in which our several shares
are to be paid is self-denial, and toil, and
difficulty. And thus the idol they hoped to
show us is a gigantic pleasure confronts them
as nothing but a sum-total of pains. Then,
again, if swerving from this conclusion, they
seek to fix the mind on life's direct and personal
pleasures, they find that they are already pledged
in each case to speak of these as contemptible ;
and their system thus demands of them the new
paradox that the sum of countless negative quan-
tities is a vast positive total. Whilst, finally,
if they appeal to the feeling they find existing
for virtue, and trust to rouse a response, when
they call it' our choicest treasure,' they are con-
fronted by their system with this blighting doc-
trine, that the one final end which it bids us
hope for is that virtue shall work itself out of,
not into, the great human entity. That, uncon-
sciously, they feel all this themselves is apparent
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
359
} *
whenever they forget their logic, and trust
themselves for a moment to utter their own
emotions ; never more so than when they fly off
at a tangent, and appeal to 'stars' and 'suns,
and 'æons,' and all the fine things in the extra-
human universe.
That the emotion that prompts such lan-
guage is genuine, none need doubt; nor will
the theist deny to it all fitting respect. But
the more reverend he considers the emotion of
the positivists, the more completely ludicrous
does he consider their own analysis of it. What
he sees in it is a survival of the religion they
deny ; not the firstfruits of the irreligion they
profess. Positivism, as preached in France, has
been called by Professor Huxley Catholicism
minus Christianity. As preached in England
and America, it may be called similarly 'Metho-
dism minus Christianity. That Methodism
contains in it the sense of holiness, the sense of
sin, and the longing to co-operate with God's
will-We all of us know this. But this is not
positivism.
What is positivism ? Is the theory true or
false that, independent of our own wills, or in
defiance of them, our race is tending steadily to
360
ATHEISTIC METHODISM, OR
get rid of its own discomforts ? And the positi-
vists present this race to us as one single indivi-
dual, whose vast career it irnagines will inflame
and move us. But this 'huge Not Self,' presented
to the lover of virtue, so far from being better
than the small 'selves' that compose it, must
really seem but the type of what is worst
and lowest in them. Humanity, regarded as
a single being, is a being without any aspira-
tions that are not selfish, and without
any
duties at all. It has been bestial at its infancy,
savage in its youth, unutterably impure in its
manhood ; and as a worthy crown of a worthy
life, it is to simper at last through an un-
repentant dotage into a hopeless and unremem-
bered grave.
I have alluded in this essay to Miss Beving-
ton's remarks on myself, only in so far as they
seem convenient examples of the reasonings of
the school she is representing. But if I may
say at parting a single word to herself, I
would remind ber that all that her new
teachers can tell her about virtue has been
told the world long ago by Christianity. They
have not contributed a single new truth to
it; though doubtless to prove its truth they
THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
361
may have subpoenaed new witnesses. All
that they have done new is not to add to the
Christian teaching, but to subtract from it; and
to subtract from it the one part that alone gave
the whole vitality.
Oh the little more, and how much it is !
And the little less, and what worlds away!
How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,
Or a touch suspend the blood's best play-
And life be a proof of this !
G.
LONDON : PRINTED BY
SPOTTISYOODE AND CO., NEJ-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
B B
A LIST OF NEW WORKS
Preparing for Autumn Publication.
)
6 Old
By the CROWN PRINCE OF AUSTILA.
Travels in the East. Including a Visit
to the Holy Land, Egypt, the Ionian
Islands, &c. By His Imperial and Royal
Highness the CROWN PRINCE RUDOLPH.
In royal 8vo. with numerous Illustrations.
By EDMUND YATES.
Memoirs of a Man of the World ;
or, Fifty Years of London Life:
By EDMUND YATES. In 2 vols. demy 8vo.
with portraits and vignettes.
Edited by LORD BRABOURNE.
Letters of Jane Austen to her
Relations, 1796-1815. Hitherto Un.
published. Edited, with Introduction and
Notes, by the Right Hon.LORD BRABOURNE.
In 2 vols. large crowu 8vo. with frontis-
pieces.
By MR. SERJEANT BALLANTINE.
From the Old World to the New.
Being some Experiences of a Recent Visit
to America, including a Trip to the
Mormon Country. By Mr. SERJEANT
BALLANTINE, Author of Some Experiences
of a Barrister,' In demy 8vo. with
portrait.
By MRS. SPEEDY.
My Wanderings in the Soudan. By
Mrs. T. C. S. SPEEDY. In 2 vols. crown
8yo, with numerous Illustrations.
By J. J. HISSEY.
An Old-Fashioned Journey through
England and Wales. By JAMES
JOHN HISSEY. In demy Svo. With frontis-
piece.
By H. W. LUCY.
East by West. A Record of Travel round
the World. By HENRY W. LUCY, Author
of 'Gideon Fleyce,' &c. In 2 vols, cr. 8vo.
By LADY WILDE.
Driftwood from Scandinavia. By
FRANCESCA LADY WILDE. In 1 volume,
large crown 8vo.
By C. PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY.
The Trottings of a Tender Foot'
in Spitzbergen and British Co-
lumbia. By ULIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY,
F.R.G.S., Author of 'Sport in the Crimea
and Caucasus. In 1 vol. crown 8vo.
By M. DE BOURRIENNI.
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte.
By LOUIS ANTOINE FAUVELET DE BOUR-
RIENNE, his Private Secretary. Edited,
with Preface and Notes, by Colonel R. W.
PHIPPS, late Royal Artillery. In 3 vols.
demy 8vo. with Map and the following
Illustrations, except one, on steel :
VOL. IT.
Napoleon I. (a). Josephine (a). Maria Louise
Pichegru.
Lannes.
(a).
Moreau.
Macdonald. King of Rome.
Desaix.
Cuirassiers at Bessieres.
Kleber.
Eylau.
Duroc,
Duc d'Enghien. Murat.
Caulaincourt.
Letitia Ramo. Napoleon I.(6). Maria Louise(),
lino.
Josephine (6) Prince Eugene.
Talleyrand. Davoust.
Napoleon I.(c).
Hortense,
Lasalle.
The Abdication
Junot.
Suchet.
Wellington.
Ney (a).
GouvionSt.Cyr. Blucher.
Massena.
Soult.
Ney (0)
By STANLEY HARRIS.
Reminiscenes of the Road. By
STANLEY HARRIS, Author of
Coaching Days' With 16 Illustrations on
stone by John Sturgess. In demy 8vo.
By Mrs. Moss KING.
Diary of a Civilian's Wife in India,
By Mrs. Moss KING. In 2 vols. crown 8vo.
with numerous Illustrations from drawings
by the Author.
By A. J. WEISE.
A History of the Discoveries of
America down to the Year 1525.
By ARTHUR JAMES WEISE, M.A. In 1 vol.
demy 8vo. with numerous Maps reproduced
in facsimile from the originals.
By W. H. MALLOCK.
Literary Essays. By WILLIAM HURRELL
MALLOCK, Author of "Is Life worth
Living ? &c. In 1 vol. crown 8vo.
ANONYMOUS.
Letters from Hell. Newly translated
from the German. With an Introduction
by Dr. GEORGE MACDONALD. In 1 vol.
clown 8vo. 6s.
By DEAN HOOK.
The Lives of the Archbishops of
Canterbury. By WALTER FARQUHAR
HOOK, D.D., late Dean of Chichester. Re-
issues of Volumes VIII. and XII. in demy
8vo.
By LADY JACKSON.
The Court of France in the Six-
teenth Century in the Reigns
of Francis I. and Henry II. By
CATHERINE CHARLOTTE LADY JACKSON,
Author of Old Paris,' The Old Régime,
&c. In 2 vols. large crown 8vo. with
portraits.
[December 31.
By ROBERT BUCHANAN.
Reminiscences of a Literary Career:
An Autobiography. By ROBERT BU-
CHANAN. In 2 vols. crown 8vo. with
portrait.
[December 31.
By LADY FULLERTON.
Ellen Middleton. By LADY GEORGIANA
FULLERTON, Author of "Too Strange not
to be True,' &c. A new edition in 1 vol.
crown 8vo. 6s.
By HECTOR MALOT.
No Relations. By HECTOR MALOT. A.
new edition, with numerous Illustrations,
in 1 vol. crown 8vo. in red cloth, 6s.
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
A NEW LIBRARY EDITION OF
MISS FERRIER’S NOVELS.
.
(THE EDINBURGH EDITION.)
In Six Volumes small crown 8vo.
The Set 30s. (originally published at 21s.), 09 separately as under:-
MARRIAGE
2 Vols. 10s.
THE INHERITANCE
2 Vols. 10s.
DESTINY.
2 Vols. 10s.
This Edition is printed from the Original Edition as annotated by
the Author, of whom a short Memoir is prefixed in ' Marriage.'
• Edgeworth, Ferrier, Austen, have all given portraits of real society far
superior to anything man, vain man, has produced of the like nature.'
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
· Miss Ferrier's novels are all thick set with specimens of sagacity, bappy
traits of nature, flashes of genuine satire, easy humour, sterling good sense,
and above all—God only knows where she picked it up-mature and perfect
knowledge of the world.”—NOCTES AMBROSIANÆ.
• I retire from the field, conscious there remains behind not only a large
harvest, but labourers capable of gathering it in. More than one writer has
of late displayed talents of this description, and if the present author, himself
a phantom, may be permitted to distinguish a brother, or perhaps a sister
shadow, he would mention in particular the author of the very lively work
entitled “Marriage." —SIR WALTER SCOTT.
“I assure you I think it (“ Marriage”) without exception the cleverest
thing that ever was written, and in wit far surpassing Fielding.'
LADY CHARLOTTE BURY.
· On Wednesday I dined in company with Sir Walter Scott, and he spoke
of the work (“ The Inheritance ") in the very higbest terms. I do not
always set the highest value on the baronet's favourable opinion of a book,
because he has so much kindness of feeling towards every one, but in this
case he spoke so much con amore, and entered so completely, and at such
length to me, into the spirit of the book and of the characters, that showed
me at once the impression it had made upon him. Every one I have met who
has seen the book gives the same praise of it.'—JOHN BLACKWOOD.
On the day of the dissolution of Parliament, and in the critical hours
between twelve and three, I was employed in reading part of the second
volume of “ Destiny.” My mind was so completely occupied on your colony
in Argyleshire, that I did not throw away a thought on kings or parliaments,
and was not moved by the general curiosity to stir abroad until I had finished
your volume. It would have been nothing if you had so agitated a youth of
genius and susceptibility, prone to literary enthusiasm, but such a victory
over an old hack is perhaps worthy of your notice.'
MACKINTOSH (to Miss Ferrier).
To be obtained of all Booksellers.
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 05801 4252