LIBRARY 
 
 University oi 
 
 California 
 
 Irvine

 
 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW, 
 
 flubliglurs to the anibrrsitn. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON AND NEW YORK. 
 
 London, - - Simpkin, Hamilton and Co. 
 Cambridge, Mactnillan and Bowes. 
 Edinburgh, Douglas and Faults. 
 
 MDCCCXCVIII.
 
 University Addresses: 
 
 Being Addresses on subjects of Academic 
 
 Study delivered to the University 
 
 of Glasgow 
 
 By 
 
 JOHN CAIRD, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Late Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow 
 
 Glasgow 
 James MacLehose and Sons 
 
 Publishers to the University 
 1898
 
 GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.
 
 DEDICATED 
 TO THE STUDENTS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE Addresses printed in this volume are of two 
 kinds. My brother, for a number of years, was in 
 the habit of giving a lecture, at the beginning of each 
 session, on some subject connected with the studies 
 of the University, or on the work of some great 
 author philosopher or theologian, scientific or literary 
 man who might be regarded as a representative of 
 one of these studies. He also, throughout his tenure of 
 the office of Principal except on one or two occasions 
 when he was prevented by ill-health delivered an 
 Address to the graduates at the end of the Session 
 after the Graduation Ceremonies, generally discussing 
 some topic connected with University Education. 
 
 Of the former class of Addresses the most im- 
 portant, to the number of twelve, are included in 
 this volume. Of the latter class, which were of a
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 slighter and more occasional character, I have printed 
 two specimens at the end of the volume. 
 
 The Address for 1897 contains the last words 
 which he was able to speak in public. 
 
 EDWARD CAIRD. 
 
 BALLIOL COLLEGE, 
 September 26*A, 1898.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES, .... 1 
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES, . 31 
 
 ERASMUS, 56 
 
 GALILEO, 89 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON, . . 124 
 
 DAVID HUME, 157 
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY,. . . 191 
 
 THE STUDY .OF HISTORY, 223 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY, 254 
 
 THE STUDY OF ART, 278 
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART, ... 307
 
 x CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING, .... 332 
 
 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN TEACHING, . . 360 
 GENERAL AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION, . 373
 
 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 
 November 3, 1874. 
 
 IN taking leave of you last session, I referred at 
 some length to various incidents that had occurred 
 in the course of the session, and to various changes, 
 past and prospective, affecting the welfare and pro- 
 gress of the University. I shall defer any remarks 
 of a similar kind that might now be made till a 
 like period of the session comes round again, believ- 
 ing, as I do, that I can make a better use of the 
 present opportunity of addressing you, by directing 
 your attention to some object of a more general 
 character, but which, from its relation to your studies, 
 may be supposed to possess some interest for Univer- 
 sity men. If, in doing so, I trespass a little longer 
 than some would like on your patience, I trust that, 
 as I have not many opportunities of repeating the
 
 2 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 offence, I may bespeak, on this occasion, your kind 
 indulgence. 
 
 In what respect does a University, as a place of 
 education, differ from other and kindred institutions ? 
 What are its peculiar functions ? or, if we regard the 
 communication of knowledge as the most important of 
 these, what is that special kind of knowledge which 
 it is its office to communicate ? Wherein does the 
 knowledge it teaches, either in itself or as regards the 
 conditions under which it is taught, differ from know- 
 ledge acquired elsewhere in schools, from individual 
 teachers, from books, by private study ? 
 
 Waiving any discussion as to the historic meaning 
 of the name, it may help us to answer these questions 
 if we say in general, that it is the peculiar function of 
 a University to teach Science, or the universal element 
 in human knowledge : and, again, that in bringing 
 together in one institution teachers of the various 
 branches of science, if it does not pretend to embrace 
 all knowledge, it yet further justifies the name of a 
 University, by representing and treating each separate 
 and limited department not as a whole in itself, 
 but in its organic relation to the other branches 
 of knowledge. 1 Preparatory training elsewhere may 
 supply the student with the mere implements of study, 
 may discipline his mental powers into a capacity for 
 scientific culture, and may furnish him with much 
 elementary knowledge in an arbitrary and authoritative
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 3 
 
 shape ; but it is the province of the higher education 
 to bring the mind, by the exercise of its own indepen- 
 dent efforts, to the knowledge, not of the net results 
 of inquiry on any subject or class of subjects, but of 
 the principles on which they depend, and the processes 
 which lead to them, in other words, to enable the 
 student, in every province of investigation, to discern 
 and to acquire the habit of seeking after that which 
 alone constitutes thorough and exhaustive knowledge, 
 the knowledge of the reality under the mask of 
 appearances, of the principles and laws that underlie 
 the chaos of the senses, the transient and meaningless 
 aspects of the phenomenal world, and the rude gen- 
 eralizations of popular thought. A University, if we 
 
 may so express it, has for its function the cultivation 
 of the scientific habit of mind the faculty of grasping 
 the universal element in all human knowledge. And 
 "then7"as I have said, it has this as a further char- 
 acteristic, that it visibly represents the systematic or 
 organic unity of the various departments of knowledge, 
 not merely by the juxtaposition in a common seat 
 of learning of the teachers of these departments, but 
 by the subjection of the whole work of education 
 carried on within its halls to a common idea or 
 system ; so that each particular subject is seen to 
 have its own place, significance, and value in its 
 relation to the totality of knowledge of which it 
 is a component member. In one word, according to
 
 4 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 this view, what lends distinctive significance to the 
 name University is, that it is an institution which 
 teaches, or professes to teach, what is universal in 
 all departments of knowledge, and each separate 
 department in its relation to universal knowledge. 
 
 These two aspects of University teaching, however, 
 are, in one point of view, reducible to one and the 
 same. You cannot teach the different departments 
 of knowledge scientifically without showing their 
 relations to each other as parts of one organic 
 whole. To know any one subject thoroughly, you 
 must know many more. The most superficial 
 acquaintance with science, in any of its great provinces, 
 suggests to us by how many links of reciprocal 
 interdependence what we call the particular sciences 
 are connected with each other. The student of 
 biology, for instance, cannot pursue his investigations 
 independently of the researches of the chemist ; nor 
 the geologist, or palaeontologist, without reference to 
 the results of the inquiries of both, or without taking 
 into account those cosmical phenomena and laws 
 which astronomy unfolds ; nor the latter, again, with- 
 out regard to those researches into optical, electrical, 
 thermal, and other phenomena, which belong to the 
 domain of physical science. The physiologist cannot 
 treat of the phenomena and functions of animal life 
 without regard to the present or past terrestrial 
 conditions under which they exist, or to those laws of
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. O 
 
 the molecular forces of matter into which, according 
 to some theorists, they are ultimately reducible. How 
 closely, again, many of the physical sciences are 
 connected with, and how much of their advancement 
 they owe to, that great science which deals with the 
 necessary relations of space and number, no one here 
 needs to be told. Whenever any science has reached 
 the point at which its mechanical data can be stated 
 in exact terms of quantity, mathematical science lends 
 to it its all-powerful aid as an instrument of deduction. 
 " The command of geometry over the relations of 
 space, the far-reaching power which symbolic reasoning 
 confers," and the vast success which, in the field of 
 physical science, has attended the employment of both, 
 whether as means of discovery, or in reaping the fruits 
 of discoveries already made, constitute one of the most 
 remarkable points in the history of modern science. 
 These few examples out of many are sufficient to 
 show how closely interwoven many of the various 
 departments of human knowledge are with each other. 
 But it is not merely in this empirical way that 
 the idea of the correlation of the various departments 
 of scientific knowledge, and the necessity therefore 
 of treating them in connexion with each other, is 
 brought before us. This correlation is implied in the 
 very idea of science, and it is that to which the 
 scientific impulse may be said ever to point. Science, 
 in one point of view, is just the search for unity ;
 
 6 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the endeavour to reproduce in thought that systematic 
 order, harmony, unity, which we believe to exist in 
 things. The presupposition which is the secret stimu- 
 lus of intelligence and of the desire for knowledge, 
 is the possibility of finding reason, rational coherence, 
 connexion, system in all things ; the conviction that 
 in the whole realm of being, in nature and in man, in 
 matter and spirit, from the least and lowest material 
 object up to the highest intelligence, there can exist 
 no dualism, no contradiction, no contingency, no gap 
 or gulf which it is impossible for thought to bridge ; 
 and this is virtually the notion that there is really 
 only one science, of which the various special sciences 
 are but arbitrary divisions or degrees. That, there- 
 fore, which the special sciences do, each for that 
 limited group of facts or phenomena with which it 
 deals, a higher science, or science taking a wider field, 
 must seek to do for them. The scientific impulse is 
 not satisfied with leaving the physical sciences in 
 isolation from each other, or these from those which 
 deal with organization and life, or both from that 
 which takes special cognizance of self-conscious mind. 
 It longs to give explicit insight into that continuity, 
 that bond of causation which it implicitly believes to 
 bind, by firmer than iron links, the whole round world 
 together. 
 
 The aspiration after unity may indeed, in its ardour, 
 snatch too hastily at results, attempt to forestall the
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 7 
 
 slow march of discovery, and betray even the most 
 able and trained scientific thinkers into grasping at 
 a premature and false simplicity. The gaps between 
 even sciences of the same order may be too hastily 
 filled up by presumptuous guesses ; as when the 
 evolutionist overleaps the lacunae between different 
 kinds of phenomena, and rashly resolves organization 
 and life into the results of chemical combination. Or, 
 again, the great gulf that seems to ordinary thought to 
 divide the material world from the spiritual, the realm 
 of nature from the realm of mind, may be lightly ex- 
 plained away, by the subjective idealist on the one 
 hand, by the materialist on the other ; the former sup- 
 pressing all objectivity that is not the mere projection 
 of his own individual thought, the latter suppressing 
 all subjectivity that is not the mere function of matter 
 and material organization. Or, to give only one other 
 example, that which has been the grand problem of 
 philosophy, and at which the highest minds of the 
 race have age after age been trying the relation of 
 the finite to the infinite, of nature and man to God 
 the vulgar religionist may seem to himself and 
 his compeers to settle by the interjection of a deus 
 ex machind, an arbitrary anthropomorphic creator out- 
 side of the world, fabricating matter and mind after 
 the manner of a maker of machines ; not reflecting 
 that arbitrary power or will is but a meaningless 
 phrase substituted for thought, an explanation which,
 
 8 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 being itself unthinkable, explains nothing ; and that, 
 in having recourse to it, he is only imposing on 
 himself and all others whose intellectual hunger is 
 capable of being appeased by big words. 
 
 But though in these and other cases endeavours 
 after scientific unity may prove unsuccessful, the con- 
 viction which is their motive is nevertheless the 
 fundamental instinct of science the conviction that 
 there is a unity of principle underlying all diversity 
 and apparent contradiction of things. And, further, 
 though they may fail as yet to attain the result of 
 which they boast, yet are not the efforts of many 
 scientific observers, in our day at least, pointing out to 
 us the direction in which it lies ? For, the unity of 
 the world of which they are in search is a unity, not of 
 aggregation or juxtaposition or mere coexistence of 
 component elements, but a unity of process or develop- 
 ment of a system in which the first and lowest step 
 implies, prophesies, and virtually contains all the suc- 
 cessive steps up to the last and highest ; and the last 
 is that which presupposes, comprehends, and justifies 
 all that preceded it. If we are ever to get at the true 
 explanation of the world, will it not be one in which 
 there will be no arbitrary leap from one order of 
 existences or of forces to another, but the transition 
 from the mechanical to the chemical, from the in- 
 organic to the organic, from lower to higher forms of 
 life, will, every single step of it, be seen to be that of
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 9 
 
 intelligible succession and law ? May we not hope 
 to see how each lower class of relations prepares for 
 and points to the higher, and the higher as we rise to 
 it is the ever deeper and deeper explanation of the 
 lower ? Nor need we be afraid to say that when, 
 from the highest summit of nature, from organization 
 and life in the most developed of the lower creatures, 
 we rise to the self-conscious mind that thinks them, 
 here again we shall not find any element of unreason, 
 any dualistic opposition, any arbitrary gap which law 
 and science can never bridge, but a transition which, 
 as we can at least presume now to be, so intelligent 
 insight may yet discern to be, determined by 
 absolute necessity and law. To think thus, as we 
 shall immediately see, is very far from involving a 
 materialistic theory of the universe. But, meantime, 
 we surely need not be restrained by any bugbear of 
 materialism from recognizing in the system of the 
 universe that process of development from the animal 
 to the rational which, as a matter of fact, we see 
 exemplified in each individual life. There was a time 
 in the history of each individual man when he was an 
 existence without sensation, without feeling, without 
 personality, without thought not merely lower than 
 the higher specimens of brute organisms, but on a 
 level with the very lowest of them. Nor can we say, 
 as we watch the line of development, at what moment 
 of time he rose out of dumb insensibility and uncon-
 
 10 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 sciousness, a mere germinating unity of organic forces, 
 into sensibility ; or again, at what precise moment the 
 tremendous step was taken by which a self-conscious 
 personality emerged out of the animal, and the mere 
 life of feeling and sensation silently passed into the 
 higher life of thought. But what this individual 
 history brings before us is the fact of a progression 
 without cleft or arbitrary leap, if not from mere 
 material atoms and forces, at least from the animal to 
 the rational, from the highest product of Nature to that 
 which consummates and transcends Nature, the life of 
 self-conscious man. How organization is connected 
 with life and thought, how dumb feeling effloresces 
 into self-consciousness, science may be utterly unable 
 to tell us and we may add, if it start with the 
 presupposition of the absolute and essential difference 
 of mind and matter, nature and spirit, it never shall 
 be able to tell us. But, at least, the scientific con- 
 viction is not chimerical and groundless which assures 
 the observer that the connexion which yet baffles 
 explanation is not an arbitrary one ; that, as there is 
 no disharmony, no hard and fast division between the 
 sciences which treat of mechanical forces and those 
 which deal with chemical affinities and combinations, 
 and between these again and the biological sciences so 
 between all of these and the science which passes 
 beyond nature unto the realm of spirit, of ideas, of 
 moral and spiritual intelligence, there is no breach of
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. \\ 
 
 systematic continuity, no irrational gap which only 
 arbitrary will can tie together, but intelligible sequence, 
 coherence, correlation. And so we come back to 
 that idea with which we started, and which a great 
 school of learning such as this represents and in some 
 measure realizes, the idea at once of the diversity 
 and the unity of the sciences. Analysis, abstraction, 
 division, are necessary for knowledge ; but we should 
 ever keep in mind that these are only means to a 
 higher synthesis, to the reproduction of a more rich 
 and perfect unity. To the unreflecting mind science 
 may have an aspect of crabbedness and harshness. 
 The abstracting intellect seems to break up the unity 
 and beauty of the world, to divide and dissect and 
 separate part from part, member from member, and to 
 substitute for the inartificial simplicity and harmony 
 which we intuitively recognize in nature, dry and 
 repulsive classifications and abstractions. The soft, 
 rounded symmetry, the spontaneous grace and loveli- 
 ness, seems to fall away from the fair face and form 
 of nature before the touch of analysis, so that there is 
 left for us only a bare and rigid skeleton, from which 
 the life, the harmony, the unity are gone. But it is 
 not so. The superficial, sensuous unity which science 
 dissolves, it is ever seeking in a deeper way to restore; 
 or rather, its perpetual aim is to give us back, instead 
 of the rude unities of popular observation, the real 
 and profounder unity of thought, of order, of law, of
 
 12 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 identity of principle under endless diversities of form 
 and aspect ; of relation, process, organic development, 
 beneath seeming disorder and aimless, endless change. 
 And so when we rightly consider the matter, science 
 presents to us no rugged and ungainly aspect, but is 
 radiant with a diviner beauty than meets the eye ; 
 and, instead of being " harsh and crabbed, as dull fools 
 suppose," there is no harmony so true, so sweet, as 
 that which falls on the ear and penetrates the soul of 
 her earnest votaries. Follow where she leads with a 
 loyal and indefatigable spirit ; and though the path 
 along which she conducts may often seem a rugged 
 and toilsome one, it leads to a region raised above the 
 grosser pleasures, the vulgarizing aims, and the petty 
 distractions of common life. To the domain of science 
 we may apply those lofty words in which Hegel has 
 spoken of that of religion : " It is a region in which 
 the spirit disburdens itself of its finiteness, and relates 
 itself to that which is unlimited and infinite where 
 its attitude is no longer that of dependence but of 
 freedom, and where the individual has no longer to do 
 with himself, his interests, his vanity, but only with 
 absolute truth. The things which occasion anxiety 
 and doubt, all petty cares and troubles, all narrow 
 and selfish interests, we leave behind us on the sand- 
 bank of time. In this pure region we penetrate 
 through the external, deceitful shows and semblances 
 of the world, and all things become revealed to us,
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 13 
 
 transfigured in the pure light of truth, and softened in 
 its atmosphere of eternal peace and rest." 1 
 
 To give any detailed illustration of the subject to 
 which I have now referred the correlation of the 
 various sciences, and their unity as members of one 
 organic whole or system of thought is beyond the 
 scope of such an address as the present. I will 
 content myself, in the few words I have yet to say, 
 with offering you one or two illustrations of a single 
 branch of the subject viz., the connexion and recip- 
 rocal obligations of the Physical and the Metaphysical 
 sciences of those sciences, that is, which treat of 
 outward Nature, its phenomena and laws ; and those 
 sciences which treat of Thought or Mind, and especially 
 that which deals with its fundamental notions or cate- 
 gories, their genesis and development. 
 
 Now, if we ask what is the debt which empirical 
 sciences owe to metaphysics, there are not a few 
 highly able and accomplished men in our day who 
 will tell you that that debt is simply nil. Matter 
 and material forces, their conditions and laws, facts 
 and phenomena, their coexistences and successions 
 with these alone has science to do ; and anything 
 beyond that is a mere intrusion of metaphysical 
 fictions into its proper province. So long as we are 
 dealing with the irrefragable data of observation and 
 experience, and with those laws which, as they are 
 
 hie der Religion, L, s. 5.
 
 14 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 only generalizations from experience, can be satis- 
 factorily verified by it, we are on solid ground. But 
 when you attempt to go beyond this to carry us into 
 speculations about noumena and phenomena, substances 
 and essences, causes, efficient and final, and so forth 
 you are dragging us into a region to which the methods 
 and tests of experience no longer apply, and from which 
 we derive absolutely no help in explaining it. There 
 are those, too, who will go even further than this, and 
 not content simply with disowning for positive science 
 all aid from the metaphysical sciences from Logic, 
 Psychology, Philosophy are disposed to expunge the 
 latter class altogether from the realm of human know- 
 ledge. Instead of deriving from the science of ideas 
 any help towards the explanation of nature, any con- 
 tribution to the physical sciences, they would maintain, 
 with more or less confidence, the doctrine that ideas 
 themselves are but a product of nature ; that mind is 
 but a mode, mental activity but a function of matter ; 
 or, again, that the principle of the convertibility of 
 force applies to the phenomena of consciousness and 
 thought, in common with those of nature; that, as 
 mechanical force is transformable into chemical, and 
 the latter may be shown, in any given case, to be the 
 exact equivalent of the former, so, in like manner, 
 organic or vital force is but transformed chemical ; and, 
 finally, that we only reach another stage of the same 
 process, or manifestation of the same law, when vital
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 15 
 
 energy is converted into sensation, feeling, and the 
 other phenomena of consciousness. Instead, therefore, 
 of bewildering himself with the baseless and unscientific 
 speculations of the so-called science of metaphysics, 
 what the truly scientific investigator, who would under- 
 stand the universe in which he is placed, has now to 
 do, is simply, by the sure method of observation and 
 experiment, to trace, in every sphere of inquiry, the 
 manifestations and the transformations of force. 
 
 Now, to this tendency to ignore metaphysics, to 
 begin and end with material facts, and to supersede 
 thought and a science of thought, the general answer 
 is that those who try to do so are attempting to per- 
 form an impossible feat. You cannot build up a world 
 out of experience without regard to thought and its 
 laws ; for, in the very effort, you tacitly presuppose 
 what you are trying to ignore. You cannot reach 
 mind as an ultimate product of matter and force ; 
 for in doing so you have already begun with mind; 
 the earliest step of the inquiry involves mental forms, 
 and it is only in terms of mind that the problem 
 you are investigating can be so much as stated. Even 
 if you could really start with bare, self-identical, objec- 
 tive facts, stript of every ideal element or contribution 
 from thought, even then you could go no farther, your 
 first step would be your last, you would be no nearer 
 to an ordered world than a loose heap of printer's 
 types is to an epic poem or a scientific treatise. But
 
 16 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 you cannot start with such facts. Tor the least and 
 lowest fact of outward observation is not a bare fact, 
 an independent entity, fact minus mind, and out of 
 which mind may be got somehow or other to emerge ; 
 but it is fact as it appears to an observing mind, fact 
 as object or in the medium of thought, interpenetrated 
 and suffused with thought, having mind or thought as 
 an inseparable factor of it. Whether there be such a 
 thing as an absolute world outside of thought, whether 
 there be such things as matter and material atoms 
 existing in themselves before any mind begins to 
 perceive or think about them, is not to the purpose. 
 If there be such atoms, at any rate you, before you 
 begin to make anything of them, must think them, 
 and you can never, by thinking about atoms or by 
 thinking about anything, prove that there is no such 
 thing as thought. Before you reach thought as a last 
 result, you would need to eliminate it from the data of 
 the problem with which you start ; and that you can 
 never do, any more than you can stand on your own 
 shoulders or outstrip your own shadow. 
 
 The fundamental vice, then, of materialism, is that 
 that out of which mind is to be extracted is itself the 
 creation of mind and already involves its existence as 
 an originating power. 
 
 This will be rendered still more obvious, if, passing 
 from the general statement of the contradiction, or 
 vicious circle which materialism involves, we illustrate
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 17 
 
 by one or two examples the share which mind or 
 thought has in those things, or that progressive series 
 of things, out of which it is supposed to be evolved. 
 For, consciously or unconsciously, we are all of us, in 
 our sensible experience, in our ordinary or our scientific 
 observations in our inductive or deductive reasonings 
 in our judgments, comparisons, generalizations 
 clothing outward objects with the forms, and weaving 
 together the rude data of experience into coherent 
 unities and relations, by means of the categories of 
 thought. 
 
 The ordinary and unreflecting observer, indeed, 
 seems to himself to be confronted by a world of 
 realities existing apart in themselves, just as he per- 
 ceives them, and of which he is simply the passive 
 spectator. And all that he- knows of them, their 
 solidity, extension, figure, number, weight, measure, 
 distance, their permanent identity, their likenesses 
 and differences, nay, their varied colours, sounds, 
 tastes, etc., are there, existing and given in nature, 
 and simply and immediately reflected on the passive 
 mirror of his own consciousness. 
 
 The more cultured observer has, of course, got 
 beyond any such blind sensationalism, admitting, as 
 he does and must, that something at least of what 
 ordinary thought ascribes to nature and external 
 objects exists only relatively to the sensibility of the 
 observer. But he, too, not seldom, in a more elabo-
 
 18 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 rate though still unconscious way, is betrayed into 
 the same error, of transferring to the phenomenal 
 world or to outward experience what is due to and 
 presupposes the originating power of thought. He 
 will look at the actual world as it is before him. He 
 will accept nothing that is not given by observation 
 and experience. Nothing for him shall have any 
 further import or validity than it can be shown to 
 have from the most careful observation of nature. 
 He will simply record, at most, classify and generalize 
 her facts and phenomena, and have nothing to do with 
 empty abstractions and subjective fictions. Yet here 
 too there is often the same illusion to which I have 
 referred. The empiricist or materialist, while suppos- 
 ing himself to be dealing with hard material facts and 
 experiences, is to be found employing such abstractions 
 as force, law, matter, as if they were on the same level 
 with sensuous things, and intromitting with them in 
 his investigations and reasonings as real entities, 
 immediately given, apart from the activity of thought 
 to which they truly belong. Or, again, whilst con- 
 temning all that is supersensible, he is continually 
 using, and cannot advance a single step without using 
 though often in a hap-hazard and uncritical manner 
 categories such as unity, multiplicity, identity, differ- 
 ence, cause, effect, substance, properties, etc., which are 
 pure metaphysical creations unconsciously subsumed, 
 without proof or determination, from that realm of
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 19 
 
 ideas which he ignores or denies. The empiricist, in 
 short, is, and cannot help being, an unconscious meta- 
 physician, the materialist an unconscious spiritualist. 
 
 Let me briefly illustrate this. All our knowledge 
 of nature, let it be conceded, is derived from experi- 
 ence. But experience itself depends on something 
 that is not given by sensible experience, and without 
 which it could not exist. I have said that, in one 
 sense, knowledge begins with analysis, takes the 
 unities roughly given in common consciousness or 
 observation and breaks them up by abstraction, so as 
 to reconstruct them in a truer unity, according to their 
 hidden but real relations and laws. But this is only 
 an imperfect account of the process. The analysis 
 with which we seem to start depends on a prior 
 synthesis. It is by our organs of sense that we con- 
 verse with nature. The utmost, however, which, by 
 this means, we can attain is simply isolated and 
 transient sensations. But isolated sensations are not 
 knowledge. If this were all, our consciousness would 
 be but the stage athwart which flitted an endless 
 series of fugitive impressions, transient, unrelated, in- 
 coherent, chasing and obliterating each other, incapable 
 of being arrested, so as to be compared or combined, 
 or of constituting the smallest object of real knowledge, 
 much less of being built up into a solid framework of 
 science. No repetition or reproduction could make 
 these dumb phantoms articulate, for there would be
 
 20 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 nothing to give them the capacity of self-identification, 
 the power of reporting or explaining their own recur- 
 rence. To do this we must have the presence of some 
 permanent amidst the variable some unifying, con- 
 centrating power amidst this flux of impressions, to 
 reclaim them from chaos, to identify, relate, compare, 
 co-ordinate them into coherent objects of knowledge. 
 And this constant amidst the variable, not given by 
 them, but above them, this unifying power is, and can 
 only be, that spiritual self, that self-conscious Ego, 
 which is not given by sense, which is not in this or 
 that sensation, but common to them all, to which they 
 are each and all referred, and which locks together in 
 the unity of thought. In one word, to constitute the 
 reality of the outward world, the lowest fraction or 
 minimum of knowledge, nay, -the very existence of 
 things, or even of molecules and atoms, you must needs 
 presuppose that thought or thinking Self, which some 
 would persuade us is to be educed or evolved from them. 
 
 The existence and originating power of thought, 
 then, is implied, or presupposed, in order to gain even 
 that point of departure for science which is involved 
 in the existence of outward things or facts, no rela- 
 tions being predicable save of objects that have each a 
 definite identity. 
 
 It is only a wider expression of the same synthetic 
 principle when we connect things or facts together, in 
 an ordered system or cosmos, by the notion of Cause
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 21 
 
 and Effect. The particular sciences are only a follow- 
 ing out, deliberately and systematically, of the process 
 by which, at the outset of experience, thought corre- 
 lates the data of sense. 
 
 Interpret nature, we are told, from itself. Never 
 attempt to superinduce your a priori conceptions on 
 the facts of experience. What experience gives is 
 always true ; anything you add to its facts and 
 realities must be mere subjective fiction. Compare 
 and generalize, if you will, and reproduce, in scientific 
 form, the data presented to you in the outward world ; 
 but if you try to read anything into or between them 
 any mysterious tie of causation or power between the 
 successions of phenomena which observation presents 
 you are substituting for science a mere metaphysical 
 illusion. Habit may lead you to expect that the same 
 or a similar antecedent will always be followed, as 
 heretofore, by the same or a similar consequent ; but 
 this is merely the effect of custom. All that nature 
 contains is simply successions of phenomena ; and any 
 mysterious link between them is a pure invention. 
 
 I answer, every carefully conducted experiment is 
 a proof that you discern more in nature than mere 
 sensible experience gives something which is not 
 the mere creation of association or custom, linking 
 together events often observed in succession. For, if 
 this were all, why is it that in a crucial experiment 
 the notion of necessity, or of necessary sequence, is
 
 22 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 given the very first time the succession is presented ? 
 Why is it that all other and prior experiences of 
 succession inconsistent with this one experience are 
 set aside as delusive ; or that, in future, any result 
 different from this that seems, or is alleged, to be 
 given under the same conditions you at once and 
 confidently deny ? A single instance in which you 
 know exactly what precedes and follows, suffices to 
 establish necessity of sequence ; and it does so 
 because, independent of frequency or custom, you 
 see something more there than arbitrary succession, 
 something more than sense gives or can give : you 
 see the phenomena locked together by the absolute 
 necessity of causation. And, in general, the notion 
 or belief in a uniform order of nature, on which all 
 science rests, is one which is not built up by ex- 
 perience ; for it not only presents itself in the case 
 of a single crucial experiment, but it is presupposed 
 in order to any experience, to any one act of 
 scientific observation. For in the very endeavour 
 to account for any change, we imply that it is a 
 change in an order which is by supposition con- 
 stant; and only because of that presupposition does 
 it require to be accounted for. Alteration that is 
 not referred to what does not alter, to an invariable 
 or uniform system, is the alteration of nothing. 1 In 
 
 1 Cf. Green's "General Introduction" to his edition of Hume's 
 Treatise, on Human Nature; in particular, sections 284 ff.
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 23 
 
 other words, science, in order to its very existence, 
 rests on an idea, not indeed brought to or super- 
 imposed on nature, but perceived in nature, yet 
 which mere sensible experience could never give 
 us an idea which enables us to rise above experi- 
 ence, and gives unity and permanence to the endless 
 flux of events the idea, namely, of causation. Reason 
 is seen in nature, because we have reason to see it. 
 And so, again, we recur to the principle, that out 
 of nature, of things and forces, of her so-called 
 material realities, you can never evolve thought; for 
 in order to any knowledge of these, nay, as an 
 element of the very existence and essence of these, 
 thought is already presupposed. To make thought 
 a function of matter, is simply, in a round-about 
 way, to make thought a function of itself. 
 
 The limits of this Lecture debar me from any 
 further illustration of the principle on which I am 
 insisting. But enough, perhaps, has been said to 
 enable us to see the fallacy which lurks in the 
 attempted proof or suggestion, on physical grounds, 
 of the material origin and nature of mind. "If," 
 writes one of the most eminent of modern biolo- 
 gists " If the properties of water may properly be 
 said to result from the nature and disposition of its 
 component molecules, I can find no intelligible ground 
 for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm 
 result from the nature and disposition of its mole-
 
 24 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 cules. ... If (again) the protoplasm of a fungus 
 is essentially identical with, and most readily con- 
 verted into, that of any animal, I can discover no 
 logical halting-place between the admission that such 
 is the case, and the further conception that all vital 
 action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the 
 result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm 
 which displays it. And, if so, it must be true in 
 the same sense, and to the same extent, that the 
 thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and 
 your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of 
 molecular changes in the matter of life, which is 
 the source of other vital phenomena." l The implied 
 argument here is, that as the phenomena of life 
 may be ultimately resolvable into those of chemical 
 affinity, and these, again, into molecular force ; so, 
 and to precisely the same extent, the phenomena 
 of consciousness, sensation, feeling, intelligence, will, 
 may be resolvable into the physical organization of 
 the thinking agent. 
 
 But suppose the former steps in this series of 
 transformations were no longer mere conjecture but 
 demonstrated truth, there is an enormous gap between 
 this concession and the final step of the supposed 
 process namely, the resolution of thought into a 
 result of vital organization. Suppose we accept to the 
 fullest extent the physiologist's account of the matter, 
 
 1 Huxley's Lay Sermons, p. 138.
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 25 
 
 what proof, or scintillation of proof, have we here that 
 organization is prior to thought ? Prior to thought it 
 may be, in the sense that neither he nor I, this acci- 
 dental individuality, would be able to think unless we 
 had a brain and nervous system of a particular struc- 
 ture. But a theory of the physical conditions of 
 thought is not an explanation of the nature and origin 
 of thought itself. In another sense, to say that 
 organization is prior to thought, is to give utterance 
 to a contradiction in terms. Not only is it true, in 
 general, that neither organization nor anything else 
 can have, or be conceived to have, any existence save 
 as thinkable existence ; but life and organization, or 
 an organic structure, involve in their very essence a 
 whole host of ideas or categories, those which I have 
 above discussed, and many others. It is thought, 
 therefore, which is, and must be, prior to them, seeing 
 it enters into their very being and essence. Before 
 the physiologist reaches mind, that out of which mind 
 is to be made, or from which it is to be evolved, is 
 suffused with thought, swimming in an atmosphere of 
 thought. It is possible, indeed, for you, or any one, 
 to observe, and investigate, and experiment about the 
 structure and functions of the human organization, 
 before thinking about mind or ideas, or without ever 
 thinking about them at all ; but that is saying no more 
 than when you say that a man may walk without 
 studying anatomy, or eat and drink without thinking
 
 26 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 about his digestive and nutritive organs. It is not the 
 less true that every step he takes, and every morsel he 
 eats, implies the existence and activity of the physical 
 organs concerned in the process. And so the uncon- 
 scious use of ideas, categories, reason, intelligence, is no 
 disproof, but the reverse, of the priority of thought. 
 It is only a proof that, in the steps of the rational 
 process, or in the stages of that education through 
 which each human spirit passes in order to the attain- 
 ment of knowledge, thought must begin to live in the 
 outward world before it falls back on itself. The 
 dream-life of childhood, in which mind wanders abroad, 
 and lives a mere life of objectivity and self-estrange- 
 ment, must precede the conscious life of intellectual 
 manhood. We must, and do, think objects of thought 
 before we think the mind that thinks them : but any 
 way, consciously or unconsciously, that which thinks 
 the outward is prior to the outward. Thought cannot 
 be the function of organization or of anything else in 
 the universe, for it is the prius of organization and of 
 all things. 
 
 I have taxed your patience too long with this 
 somewhat dry discussion ; and in what I have said 
 I have not even touched on the question as to the 
 bearing of the views I have attempted to criticise 
 in the province of religion and theology. On this 
 subject it is, of course, at present impossible to 
 enter. But I will hazard- on it a single remark in
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 27 
 
 conclusion. I have spoken of the priority of thought 
 or mind to matter. But the priority I have claimed 
 for it is not, and cannot be, that of your individual 
 thought or mine. In the case of the individual, finite 
 thinker, that is not first which is spiritual, but that 
 which is natural. A great poet has said that " in our 
 life does nature live." But it is not so. There was a 
 time when our thought was not ; and the world and 
 all that is therein, the round ocean, the living air, the 
 blue sky, the fair and wondrous order of nature, would 
 be as real and as fair though we, and myriads such as 
 we, were not here to perceive and know it. But 
 though nature lives not in our life, what I have said 
 as to the priority of thought to nature is still not the 
 less true. Nay, just because it is not true of your 
 thought or mine, the principle contains in it the 
 strongest, the deepest, the one irrefragable proof of the 
 existence of a thought, a mind which is before and 
 beyond all finite thought, or rather with reference to 
 which the words " before " and " after " have no longer 
 any meaning the one eternal thought on which all 
 being and all knowing rest. And this, as it is the 
 surest proof of the existence, is also that which gives 
 to us the grandest conception of the nature of God. 
 The distinguished representatives of modern scientific 
 thought, to whom I have above referred, have denied 
 and who shall presume to question the sincerity of 
 their denial ? that the tendency of their doctrines is
 
 28 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 atheistic. But the only conception of God, of which, 
 avowedly, their speculations admit, is a God outside of 
 knowledge, the dark impenetrable back-ground of the 
 phenomenal world, our only relation to whom is not 
 intelligent admiration or love, but simply that awe and 
 submission we feel before the unknown and the un- 
 knowable. The object of religion, we are told, is " the 
 mystery from which we have emerged, and which each 
 succeeding age is free to fashion in accordance with its 
 own needs." 1 " It will be wise," we are advised, " to 
 recognize the various religions of the world as the 
 forms of a force, mischievous if permitted to intrude 
 on the region of knowledge over which it holds no 
 command, but capable of being guided to noble issues 
 in the region of emotion." 2 But, if this be the only 
 God to whom science points, and with the notion of 
 whom it proposes to meet and satisfy the infinite 
 aspirations and inextinguishable longings of the spirit 
 of man, the boon it brings is one for which I, for one, 
 cannot pay it the poor tribute of my gratitude. I 
 cannot bow before this blank inscrutability, of whom 
 you help me neither to affirm nor deny anything, and 
 for whom, therefore, I can feel no rational reverence. 
 I cannot, will not, submit my will to that of which I 
 know, and can know, nothing , of which, or of whom, 
 I cannot tell whether, if I did know him, the proper 
 
 1 Tyndall ) 8 Address to the British Association, p. 61. 
 2 Ibid., p. 61.
 
 THE UNITY OF THE SCIENCES. 29 
 
 attitude might not be not love and veneration and 
 obedience but resistance and abhorrence. Not such 
 is the God to whom the principle I have imperfectly 
 illustrated points not a Being who is banished 
 beyond the bright domain of intelligence, but one 
 who is Himself the light of all our seeing, the Infinite 
 Thought which, though it transcends all thinking 
 things, all objects of all thought, reveals itself in 
 all that human thought can grasp, and discloses 
 itself more and more fully with every step in the 
 advance of human intelligence. The God of whom 
 we can thus conceive is no blank mystery, no veiled 
 divinity on whose face the eye of human intelli- 
 gence can never rest, with whom the conscious spirit 
 of man can hold no communion. It is not left us, as 
 the highest attitude of our religious nature, after we 
 have found noblest intellectual satisfaction in tracing 
 back to their farthest sequences the phenomena and 
 laws of this fair and ordered world, to stand dumb 
 and silent before that portentous veil which for ever 
 wraps the invisible from our view, and to say, "Behind 
 that perhaps is God ; you can never see Him, never 
 know Him, but fancy and imagination may disport 
 themselves at their own wayward will in shaping out 
 fantastic notions of Him, all alike erroneous and illu- 
 sive." It is some reward of a truer speculation if it 
 enables us to put away this phantom of nescience, and 
 to think God as the God of truth and science, the
 
 30 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Being whose dwelling place is not thick darkness, but 
 wherever knowledge sheds its kindly light over the 
 paths of men whom every true thought, every fresh 
 discovery, every idea of the wise, and every intuition 
 of the good, are helping us to know more fully the 
 Being, in one word, who is Himself the Truth, absolute 
 and inexhaustible, after which the greatest of the sons 
 of men have sought with a thirst that is unquenchable, 
 and which, when they have in any measure grasped it, 
 is the crown and consummation of their efforts.
 
 THE PBOGKESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 
 
 November 2, 1875. 
 
 LAST session the topic on which I took leave to 
 address you was " the Unity of the Sciences," the 
 relation, that is, of the various departments of 
 knowledge to each other as parts of one organic 
 whole. It may be said to be the peculiar function 
 of a University to teach science, or the universal 
 element in human knowledge ; and, again, Univer- 
 sity teaching has this as a further characteristic 
 of it, that it visibly represents the systematic unity 
 of the various departments of knowledge, not merely 
 by the juxtaposition of their teachers in a common 
 seat of learning, but by the subjection of the whole 
 work of education carried on within its walls to a 
 common idea or system. In short, what according to 
 this view lends distinctive significance to the name 
 University is, that it is an institution which teaches, 
 or professes to teach, what is universal in all depart- 
 ments of knowledge, and each separate department in 
 
 its relation to universal knowledge. 
 
 31
 
 32 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 It is to another characteristic of the sciences, which 
 concerns us no less than their unity, that I purpose 
 to-day, for a few minutes, to direct jour attention 
 I mean, their pngressiveness. The history of human 
 knowledge is a history, on the whole, of a continuous 
 and ever-accelerating progress. In some of its de- 
 partments this characteristic may be more marked and 
 capable of easier illustration than in others. External 
 accidents, affecting the history of nations, may often 
 have disturbed or arrested the onward movement, or, 
 even for a time, seem to have altogether obliterated 
 the accumulated results of the thought of the past. 
 But on the whole the law is a constant one, which 
 constitutes each succeeding age the inheritor of the 
 intellectual wealth of all preceding ages, and makes 
 it its high vocation to hand on the heritage it has 
 received, enriched by its own contributions, to that 
 which comes after. In almost every department of 
 knowledge the modern student begins where innumer- 
 able minds have been long at work, and with the 
 results of the observation, the experience, the thought 
 and speculation of the past to help him. If the field 
 of knowledge were limited, this, indeed, would, in one 
 point of view, be a discouraging thought; for we 
 should in that case be only as gleaners coming in at 
 the close of the day to gather up the few scanty ears 
 that had been left, where other labourers had reaped 
 the substantial fruits of the sofl. But, so far from
 
 PROGRESS1VENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 33 
 
 that, vast and varied as that body of knowledge which 
 is the result of past research may seem to be, the 
 ha man race may, without exaggeration, be said to 
 have only entered on its labours, to have gathered in 
 only the first fruits of a field which stretches away 
 interminably before it. 
 
 Now it is this condition or characteristic of human 
 knowledge, which constitutes the inspiration and the 
 ever present stimulus of intellectual effort Without 
 its quickening influence, thought and research would 
 lose half their charm. If we cannot assent to the 
 paradoxical notion of some thinkers that the chief 
 value of knowledge is not in the possession, but in 
 the pursuit of it ; if there are few who would endorse 
 the well-known saying of Malebranche, " If I held 
 truth captive in my hand, I should open my hand and 
 let it fly, in order that I might pursue it again " ; 
 yet this much may be conceded, that the known, the 
 mastered and established facts of knowledge, derive 
 a great part of their value from their relation to the 
 unknown and the undiscovered. As we review the 
 history of science, we are impressed by the fact that 
 the greatest discoveries, however important in them- 
 selves as a contribution to human knowledge, have 
 been incalculably more important, as stepping-stones 
 to subsequent and still greater advances. And we in 
 turn, in our day, feel in our intellectual labours the 
 power of the future pressing on us. It is the new
 
 34 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 hopes that are ever arising in us in the search after 
 truth; it is the stir of unresting endeavour, the 
 impossibility of stationariness or stagnation, the ex- 
 citement of enquiry, the wonder and delight of new 
 ideas, of the world of thought breaking upon us with 
 the ever-unabated charm of novelty; it is the sense 
 of ever-growing power, the ever-increasing amount of 
 our intellectual possessions, and prophetic glimpses of 
 richer, yet still unappropriated, treasures that lie beyond 
 us ; it is, in short, this atmosphere of progressiveness 
 which lends a peculiar interest and attractiveness to 
 the vocation of the student and the searcher after 
 
 T~ 
 
 truth, j To few, indeed, is it given to be great dis- 
 
 *^S 
 
 coverers or original thinkers, to know, by experience, 
 the delight of the mind on which some great result 
 of thought or investigation a new law of nature, 
 or speculative principle, or conception of creative 
 imagination in the realm of art comes, now, perhaps, 
 dimly foreshadowed, now shaping itself into dawning, 
 deepening fulness and distinctness of outline, at length 
 grasped with the firm sense of realized certainty of 
 possession. But though this peculiar experience is 
 that only of the few, we can all, at least at second 
 hand, share in the stimulus which the thoughts and 
 discoveries of the higher and more gifted minds afford; 
 and the humblest labourer in the field of science may 
 feel himself partaking in the common movement, and 
 in the intellectual activity of his own mind responding
 
 PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 35 
 Lf ,2,16 unresting activity which pervades the world of 
 
 ?>>] 
 
 r ie immediate duty, it is true, of the great majority 
 ose whom I address is that, not of discoverers, but 
 irners. Whether in future years it shall be given 
 iy of us to rise to the rank of original thinkers or 
 stigators, or we must be content to belong, at best, 
 at of the receptive and transmitting order, to whom 
 is allotted the humbler office of being the conductors 
 or interpreters of thought to the common mind, in 
 the meantime, at least, our work is to gain, by the 
 aid of skilful teachers, some acquaintance in various 
 directions with the extant body of knowledge, with the 
 languages and literature of the past, with the facts and 
 principles concerning the outward world of nature or 
 the inner world of mind which have been found out 
 and established. But even here, in this our proper 
 vocation of students and learners, we may and do get 
 the benefit indirectly of that spirit of progressiveness 
 which is the life of science. If not immediately act- 
 ing on your own minds, it acts on you through your 
 teachers. Though not directly controlling your own 
 aims and enquiries, it is reflected upon you in the 
 intellectual atmosphere in which you daily breathe, in 
 the living power and influence which ever penetrates 
 the instructions of a teacher who is abreast with his 
 science and seeking by his own investigations to 
 contribute to its progress. Universities, especially
 
 36 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Universities constituted as our Scottish Universities 
 are, are places where a body of men are, for the 
 most part, withdrawn from all other work but that of 
 study and thought men to whom knowledge is a pro- 
 fession, with ample leisure for prolonged enquiry, each 
 in his special department, and a command of the best 
 appliances for private research. Such places ought to 
 be, and I am happy to think that our Universities have 
 generally been, centres of intellectual activity. Seldom, 
 if ever, have their professors been content to be mere 
 routine teachers of stock ideas or transmitters of 
 accepted traditions ; generally they have added to the 
 function of communicating, the other and higher function 
 of extending the bounds of knowledge. I need not 
 recall the names of Scottish professors whose contribu- 
 tions to literature and science and philosophy have 
 given an impulse to the thought of former times ; nor 
 is the ancient fame of this University in our own day 
 likely to suffer for lack of productive activity on the 
 part of its teachers. 
 
 Now, what for my present purpose I wish to say 
 with reference to this fact is, that though the 
 function of the original thinker and investigator and 
 that of the teacher are distinct, yet the latter ever 
 derives from the former a great access of power 
 a power which, in the most elementary work of the 
 class-room, will be sure to tell. It is not merely that 
 the daily presence of a man eminent in the department
 
 PROGRESS1VENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 37 
 
 he teaches has an insensible influence on the minds 
 of the students which he can never exert who works 
 merely from hand to mouth, knowing little more of 
 his science than he daily doles out to his pupils ; it 
 is that the man who speaks from a full mind, with 
 a complete mastery of his subject and a genuine en- 
 thusiasm for its advancement, whose own powers are 
 kept at their highest tension by original and exhaustive 
 enquiry, will infuse into the ordinary routine of in- 
 struction a spirit and life, a freshness and ardour, which 
 a commonplace mind can never communicate. It is, 
 in one word, that the teaching of such a mind will 
 transmit to other minds that with which it is itself 
 penetrated the power of that progressive spirit which 
 is the life of science. 
 
 But now, passing from these general considerations, 
 is it in point of fact true, it may be asked, that pro- 
 gressiveness is the universal characteristic of human 
 knowledge ? Are there not departments of study in 
 which the productions that approach nearest to per- 
 fection are to be found, not in the present, but in the 
 past, so that nothing is left to succeeding ages but 
 to endeavour to imitate those exquisite works of the 
 genius of antiquity which they can never hope to excel? 
 Are there not again, it may be asked, some subjects 
 with respect to which experience proves that the mind 
 of man can make little or no advancement beyond the 
 point reached at a very early period by one or two
 
 38 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 master minds of ancient times ; and others in which 
 the period of greatest illumination for the human mind 
 was more than eighteen centuries ago, nay, in which 
 the very organ of knowledge has for ages been an 
 unused faculty, and wisdom at this entrance quite 
 shut out ? If we look only to the domain of the 
 physical sciences, we see that here modern times are 
 at an immense distance in advance of ancient ; and 
 there are obvious reasons on which we may base the 
 conviction that the progress of these sciences will be 
 still greater and more rapid in the future. As the 
 number of observers increases and, with that, the 
 possibility of the subdivision, comparison, and correct- 
 ness of observation ; as methods of investigation im- 
 prove, and the application of science to the mechanical 
 arts leads to the construction of instruments more 
 delicate and incalculably adding to the power of 
 observation ; and still more significantly, as province 
 after province of science is reduced to a condition of 
 generalization, to which mathematical processes of 
 reasoning can be applied; it is impossible that man's 
 knowledge of the inexhaustible realm of nature should 
 not go on in an ever -increasing ratio. 
 
 But, whilst from these and other causes, in the 
 domain of Physical Science, each successive generation 
 is surely destined to advance by rapid strides on the 
 attainments of its predecessors; there are other depart- 
 ments of mental activity, in which neither experience
 
 PROGKESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 39 
 
 nor the reason of the thing, it may be said, leads us 
 to look for the same progressiveness. Can we ascribe 
 it to the same extent, or indeed at all, to Literature 
 and Art, to Philosophy, to Theology? Is it to modern 
 or ancient times that we look for the most perfect 
 masterpieces of purely literary art ? Has language 
 ever afforded a medium of expression, at once so varied 
 and so accurate, so subtle and refined, lending itself 
 with such infinite flexibility to the most delicate 
 distinctions of thought, and to the endlessly diversified 
 tones of feeling and fancy, clothing with aptest forms 
 the severe dialectic of philosophy, and the impassioned 
 inspirations of epic or dramatic genius has language 
 ever afforded a more perfect instrument of thought 
 than that which, though dead, yet speaks to us from 
 the lips of the orators and poets, the historians and 
 philosophers of ancient Greece ? Not to speak of 
 their historic value, or of the substantive excel- 
 lence of their contents, when we wish to place 
 before the student of our day models of finished 
 and faultless excellence in form and expression, 
 examples by which he can be trained in the principles 
 that regulate the formation and structure of language, 
 the precise and accurate use of words, the delicacies 
 of style, the simplicity, the terse conciseness, the 
 measured rhythmical sweetness, the elevated grandeur, 
 the sustained force and vivacity of which human 
 speech is capable, is it not the fact that we pass by
 
 40 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 all the treasures of modern literature, to put into his 
 hands, and bid him spend laborious days and nights 
 in mastering and appreciating, the works of the great 
 writers of classical antiquity ? And the same obser- 
 vation applies to some extent also to ancient art in 
 general. Are not the remains of Greek sculpture and 
 architecture the envy and the despair of modern artists ? 
 Is not much, at least, of modern art only an endeavour 
 to reproduce with laborious imitation the lines and 
 forms of those works which were flung forth, with the 
 spontaneous ease and exuberance of genius, from the 
 creative spirit of Greek and Eoman art ? 
 
 If, again, we turn from Art to Philosophy, to some 
 it would seem as if here too we have an exception 
 to the alleged progressiveness of human knowledge. 
 To outsiders at least, it will be said, it looks as if not 
 much has ever come of metaphysical speculation. Is 
 not the history of speculative thought, it may be 
 asked, a record of endless motion without advancement? 
 In each successive age do we not find the old divisions 
 and controversies reproduced without apparently any 
 nearer approach to definite results ? Are not philo- 
 sophers still disputing about the same questions on 
 which Plato and Aristotle thought and reasoned ? 
 Idealism and empiricism, materialism and spiritualism, 
 dogmatism and scepticism, utilitarianism and intuition- 
 alism do not these various schools of thought find 
 their advocates in modern times, each as eager and
 
 PROGRESS1VENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 41 
 
 earnest, as thoroughly convinced of the absolute and 
 exclusive truth of his own standpoint, as the repre- 
 sentatives of the same schools in all past times ? 
 And if there be any one school that is, more than 
 another, the fashion of our day, that can claim a 
 wider consensus of opinion than others, is there not 
 a strange irony in the fact that it is a school which 
 makes it the business of philosophy to prove that 
 philosophy is an impossibility, that the necessary 
 limits of human thought preclude all knowledge of the 
 supersensible, and that the attempt to grasp absolute 
 truth is a delirium or a dream ? 
 
 Now, however plausible such representations may 
 sound to the popular ear, I think it would not be 
 difficult to show that they are fallacious and superficial. 
 Neither Art nor Philosophy, nor, I will add, Theology, 
 constitutes any exception to that law of progress which 
 conditions all human knowledge. That I may not 
 trespass too far on your indulgence, I will leave over 
 for the present what might be said on Art and on the 
 still more delicate and perilous subject of Theology, 
 and in the few minutes that remain to me, confining 
 myself to only one of the above-named departments, I 
 shall try very briefly to show that the much maligned 
 science of Philosophy can justly claim to be a pro- 
 gressive science. 
 
 The doubt or denial of this claim, whether tacit or 
 avowed, is grounded, as I have just said, on the never-
 
 42 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 ending succession of opinions and systems issuing in 
 no definite and universally established results, which 
 seems to characterize the history of metaphysical 
 speculation. Each new system purports to have 
 reached the secret of the universe, and denounces all 
 previous explanations as futile. Yet each in turn, 
 after attracting more or less attention, meets the 
 universal fate succumbs to some newer, yet equally 
 transient attempt to construct a perfect philosophy. 
 Where then, in this restless flux of opinion, can we 
 discern any sign of definite progress ? Amidst the 
 diversity and conflict of systems, how shall a plain 
 and unsophisticated enquirer determine which is true, 
 or whether the pretensions of the last and newest 
 system are better grounded than any of those which 
 it claims to supersede ? 
 
 Now, in the first place, I think it necessary to 
 remark, that a plain and unsophisticated observer is 
 not, in this case, a competent judge. Whether 
 Philosophy has progressed or not, whether beneath 
 the appearance of incessant change there has been 
 a silent and steady advance of thought, is a question 
 which cannot be determined by outsiders. In no case, 
 indeed, can science be adequately appreciated from 
 without; but of all branches of science, Philosophy 
 can least suffer its acquisitions to be tested by ex- 
 ternal criticism. In the case of the physical sciences 
 or the mechanical arts, dealing as they do with
 
 PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 43 
 
 sensible facts, or appealing to results bearing on 
 the outward utilities of life, there is a possibility, 
 up to a certain point, of progress being tested and 
 recognized by the popular mind. But Philosophy 
 has its peculiar domain in a region altogether re- 
 mote from popular observation, in the region of 
 thought, of ideas, of the ultimate and invisible 
 principles of things. Its objects are not discerned 
 by the senses, capable of being represented to the 
 imagination, or realized by the natural shrewdness 
 or ordinary good sense of the world. It demands for 
 its prosecution a power of abstraction, of generaliza- 
 tion, of speculative insight, which is not given to all ; 
 and an intellectual self-restraint, and superiority to 
 outward illusions, which few are capable of yielding 
 to it. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that 
 leads to this kingdom, and few there be that find it. 
 Yet, it would seem as if, even more than the other 
 sciences, Philosophy is expected to make its results 
 palpable to the ordinary and unscientific mind to 
 stand and be judged by that generalization of com- 
 mon ignorance which we designate " common sense." 
 Common sense is never allowed to sit in judgment 
 on mathematical investigations, on a process involving 
 delicate experimental analysis, on the correctness of 
 a medical diagnosis, on a question of comparative 
 philology or ethnology. In these cases uninstructed 
 shrewdness is not offended to find that the language of
 
 44 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 science is to it unintelligible, its methods and processes 
 an utter blank. Yet ordinary intelligence is somehow 
 supposed to be quite adequate to the work of estimat- 
 ing the methods and results of a science, the most 
 recondite of all ; takes upon it to flout at what it calls 
 the jargon of metaphysics, and is credited with wisdom 
 in treating the results of speculative research as empty 
 words. 
 
 Again, it is to be remarked that, owing to the 
 remoteness of philosophy from ordinary thought, there 
 is another difficulty with which it has to contend, and a 
 further hindrance to the recognition of its substantial 
 results. Here, more than elsewhere, science is subjected 
 to the presence of impostors, whilst here it is less easy 
 than elsewhere to detect and expose them. There are 
 many who give themselves the air of metaphysicians 
 and psychologists with whom philosophy has nothing 
 to do, yet the discredit of whose crudenesses and 
 absurdities, in the general judgment, philosophy is 
 often made to bear. All sciences, indeed, are more 
 or less exposed to the intrusion of pretenders and 
 charlatans ; and in science, no more than in any 
 other sphere of human activity, is it possible to 
 prevent, occasionally, an element of nonsense from 
 creeping in. But this is an evil which, from the 
 nature of the thing, is more common in philosophy 
 than anywhere else. For, though its province is in 
 one sense remote, in another it is near and familiar.
 
 PROGRESSWENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 45 
 
 Though not many can grasp it, all, or almost all, can 
 talk about it. It deals with mind, with ideas, with 
 the principles and processes of thought ; and every- 
 body has in his possession, at least implicitly, the 
 subject matter with which it concerns itself: everybody 
 has, or thinks he has, a mind and ideas. And so, 
 mistaking the familiar for the intelligible, without 
 science, culture, or discipline, multitudes who are shut 
 out by conscious ignorance from other sciences, have 
 thought themselves entitled to rush into this field. 
 The literature of philosophy is thus exceptionally 
 beset by extravagances and vagaries, by crude obser- 
 vations, ill-sifted notions, and baseless theories in 
 short, by the element of nonsense. From which it 
 arises that people who have no liking for the subject, 
 or who have caught up a prejudice against it, find 
 ready to their hands a thousand illustrations of the 
 uselessness and unprofitableness of metaphysics. But 
 surely, if we would estimate the true value and solid 
 results of philosophy, we should begin by brushing off 
 this foreign and parasitical element. If controversies 
 about the squaring of the circle or the perpetual 
 motion are not to be set down to the discredit of 
 mathematical or mechanical science ; if the pseudo- 
 science of Astrology or the dreams of alchemists and 
 Rosicrucians are not suffered to abate our respect for 
 the sober investigations of Astronomy or Chemistry, 
 why should a like careful discrimination not be made
 
 46 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 when we come to consider what is or is not included 
 in that body of truth for which philosophy is respon- 
 sible ? The history of philosophy is indeed rife with 
 conflicts and controversies ; but the senseless quarrels 
 of camp followers and hangers-on have no bearing on 
 the great controversies of nations, nor even on the 
 issue of a single campaign. 
 
 But though it is impossible outside of Philosophy 
 to demonstrate its reality and its progress though, 
 in other words, it is only a knowledge of philosophy 
 that can qualify us for appreciating its progressive 
 character; yet, waiving for the present other points, 
 there is one general consideration with respect to 
 the history of this science which, even without this 
 deeper knowledge, may help us to see how there 
 may be real progress here despite that appearance of 
 fluctuation, that absence of settled results, to which 
 I have referred. And that consideration is simply 
 this, that the highest kind of progress is not pro- 
 gress by addition or accumulation, but progress by 
 development, and development implies the perpetual 
 transmutation of the past. There is one kind of 
 progress which consists simply of addition of the 
 same to the same, or of the external accumulation 
 of materials. But increase by addition, even though 
 it be ordered or regulated addition, is not the highest 
 kind of advancement. Pile heap on heap of inor- 
 ganic matter, and you have a result in which nothing
 
 PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 47 
 
 is changed ; the lowest stratum of the pile remains 
 to the last what it was at the first, and you keep 
 all you ever had in solid permanence. Add stone 
 to stone or brick to brick, till the house you have 
 built stands complete from foundation to copestone ; 
 and here, though in order and system there may be 
 a shadow of something higher than mere quantity, 
 there is still only addition without progress. You 
 have here also what the superficial mind covets 
 as the sign of value in its possessions permanent 
 results, solid and stable reality. Every stone you 
 place there remains to the last cut, hewn, shaped, 
 in all its hard external actuality, what it was at 
 the first : and the whole edifice, in its definite out- 
 ward completeness stands, it may be, for ages, a 
 permanent possession of the world. 
 
 But when you turn from inorganic accumulation 
 or addition of quantities to organic growth, the kind 
 of progress you get is altogether different. Here 
 you never for a single day or hour keep firm pos- 
 session of what you once had. Here there is never- 
 resting mutation. What you now have is no sooner 
 reached than it begins to slip away from your grasp. 
 One form of existence comes into being only to be 
 abolished and obliterated by that which succeeds it. 
 Seed or germ, peeping bud, rising stem, leaf and 
 blossom, flower and fruit, are things that do not 
 continue side by side as part of a permanent store,
 
 48 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 but each owes its present existence to the annulling 
 of that which was before. You cannot possess at 
 one and the same time the tender grace of the 
 vernal woods and the rich profusion of colour and 
 blossom of the later growth of summer. If you 
 are ever to gather in the fruit, you must be con- 
 tent that the gay blossoms should shrivel up and 
 drop away. Yet though, in organic development 
 you cannot retain the past, it is not destroyed 
 or annihilated. In a deeper way than by actual 
 matter-of-fact presence and preservation, it con- 
 tinues. Each present phase of the living organism 
 has in it the vital result of all that it has been. 
 The past is gone, but the organism could not have 
 become what it is without the past. Every bygone 
 moment of its existence still lives in it, and indeed 
 as it was, but absorbed, transformed, worked up into 
 the essence of its new and higher being. Ano^ when 
 the perfection of the organism is reached, the unity 
 of the perfectly developed life is one which gathers 
 up intp^ itself, not by juxtaposition or summation, 
 but in a much subtler way, the concentrated^ results^ 
 of all its bygone history. And by how much life is 
 nobler than dead matter, by so much are the results 
 "and fruits of life the manifestation of a nobler kind~ 
 of progress than the accumulation of things which 
 are at once permanent and lifeless, and permanent 
 'because t.hpy are 1ifp.1p.ss. *
 
 PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 49 
 
 Now, the claim of philosophy a claim asserted 
 by its greatest modern representatives is that the 
 history of speculative thought, like the whole history^ 
 of man of which it is the highest form and expression. 
 is not an accidental succession of opinions, but a 
 development the evolutionthrough definite stages of 
 an^ ever-growing orgamc__life 1 _: Philosophy does not 
 advance by mere empirical addition of fact to fact, and 
 opinion to opinion ; its history is that of a process, a 
 systematic development, each step of which, though 
 true, is not the absolute truth, and therefore yields to 
 and is taken up into another and higher in the dialectic 
 movement of the thought of the world. And, as in 
 the process of physical life, each successive phase 
 and form, though it seems to be the subversion, is 
 only the deeper realization of that which preceded 
 it. The first step, like the germ, contains ideally 
 and implicitly the whole subsequent development ; 
 and the last, in the fulness and riches of its life, 
 absorbs and explains, is in itself the truth and 
 realization of all that seems to have passed away. 
 
 The attempts, for instance, at the first awakening 
 of speculative thought in Greek philosophy, to explain 
 the world by such notions as Being, Becoming, the 
 One, the Many, etc., might seem to have lost any other 
 than a historic or antiquarian interest. But even the 
 ripest and most advanced philosophy of modern times 
 has not refuted or falsified these notions of its earliest
 
 50 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 infancy. For the categories which seemed to these early 
 thinkers the ultimate principles of things, do actually 
 enter into the system of the world, and must enter 
 into any rational explanation of it which our latest 
 thought can give. They are the notions with which 
 every philosophy must begin, and they are only 
 false when we stop short at such abstractions, 
 instead of regarding them as only the first faint 
 notes of that rhythmical harmony of thought into 
 which they have long been taken up. And even 
 in these first beginnings of speculation we already 
 see the process at work by which one philosophy, 
 while seeming to be subverted, yet really passes 
 into and yields up its life to another. "All is 
 Being," is the formula which expresses one and 
 perhaps the earliest, definite attempt to read the 
 secret of the universe. " Change, division, multi- 
 plicity, are but surface appearance and illusion. 
 There must be one permanent principle or ground of 
 things, and all other experiences that seem to be, are 
 but phantoms." "All is Becoming," was the seemingly 
 contradictory explanation of another and later school. 
 "Nothing in the universe continues for two successive 
 moments, but restless movement, mutation, fleeting- 
 ness, an eternal alternation of birth and decay, life and 
 death, that alone is. The permanent is the illusory 
 what is, only seems to be ; the real principle of things 
 is to be found not in the idea of Being, but of
 
 PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 51 
 
 Becoming." And both explanations were true ; both 
 principles needed to rise, and have their day, and play 
 themselves out to the fullest, before thought, obeying 
 its own inward impulse, rose to a higher principle 
 which at once superseded and embraced them a 
 principle which includes both change and permanence, 
 unity and difference ; which sees not the one only, or 
 the many only, not the particular, the manifold, apart 
 from the universal, nor the universal apart from the 
 particular, but a universal which is in the particular, 
 a world which is neither in abstraction, but both ever 
 coincident, ever blended, ever reciprocally interpene- 
 trated in the concrete unity of thought and life. 
 
 And so, in like manner, at another and far distant 
 time, when a deeper problem arose for solution, the 
 problem of matter and mind, of the world without, and 
 its relation to the world within, it would be easy to 
 show how, beginning with the hard opposition of the 
 two, speculation first playing with metaphorical solu- 
 tions, such as that of a mental tablet on which 
 impressions are inscribed from without, sought on the 
 one hand the explanation of materialism ; on the other, 
 by necessary reaction, that of false or subjective 
 idealism, till the truth in both was taken up, and the 
 error eliminated in a deeper philosophy, which says, 
 " Both are true, but neither in abstraction from the 
 other. Neither materialism in itself, nor idealism in 
 itself, neither bare objectivity, nor bare subjectivity ;
 
 52 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 but the secret is to be found in that deeper concrete 
 unity in which they are both lost and found again 
 the unity of self-conscious thought." 
 
 Thus, not to weary you with further illustration, 
 what has been said may, at least in some faint 
 measure, suggest to you a view which removes from 
 the history of philosophy that aspect of chaos and 
 perpetual contradiction issuing in no progressive 
 knowledge which has been so often urged against 
 it. There is much, as I have already said, in the 
 history of speculative thought just as in the outward 
 life of man, that belongs to the accidental and 
 irrational errors, vagaries, paradoxes, assuming the 
 name and the guise of philosophy. But just as the 
 student of the constitutional history of England can 
 trace, amidst all the complexity and contingency of 
 outward and passing events, through successive times 
 and dynasties, underneath the waywardness of indi- 
 vidual passion and the struggle for ascendancy of 
 classes and orders, the silent, steady development 
 of that system of ordered freedom which we name the 
 Constitution of England; so, in the light of the prin- 
 ciple I have attempted to set forth, looking back on 
 the course which human thought has travelled, we 
 shall be at no loss to discern beneath the surface 
 changes of opinions, unaffected by the abnormal dis- 
 plays of individual folly and unreason, the traces of a 
 continuous, onward movement of mind. It is one
 
 PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES. 53 
 
 thought, one mind, and spirit which has lived and 
 thought through the ages. The intellectual life of the 
 world is the intellectual life of the individual mind 
 writ large. It is not dwarfed in perpetual childhood. 
 It has grown from less to more ; and the rich content 
 of its present thought is no chance-medley of opinions, 
 but the legitimate and logical outcome of all the 
 thought of the past. 
 
 And now let me ask in conclusion, is there not, in 
 the idea I have imperfectly presented to you, that 
 which should have a stimulating and ennobling in- 
 fluence on us in our vocation of students ? Should it 
 not help to lift us above ourselves, our petty individual 
 aims, our narrow and selfish desires to feel that we are 
 sharers in a life which is infinitely larger and greater 
 than our own the ever-advancing intellectual life of 
 man. The pursuit of knowledge is at once a humbling 
 and ennobling work humbling, because it is so little 
 we individually can accomplish within the narrow 
 limits of our brief and passing life ; but ennobling, 
 because no earnest seeker after truth, but, by the very 
 nature and law of his vocation, enters into communion 
 with the great intellectual fellowship of all time ; and 
 if he will but open his mind to the genius and spirit 
 of his calling, may feel himself inspired with the 
 purest and noblest aims that have ever animated the 
 spirit of humanity. Little indeed is it that we, even 
 the most richly dowered with the gifts of intellect, can
 
 54 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 do to advance the cause of truth. Slender at the 
 best is the contribution we can make to the intel- 
 lectual wealth of the world. But, slight though it be, 
 it is surely something to think that it is taken up into 
 and becomes an integral part of a life which neither 
 space nor time can measure. Far above the agitation 
 and strife of man's petty passions, far above the 
 individual cares and interests that seem for the 
 moment so important, never hasting, never resting, 
 onward through the ages, the life of thought and 
 knowledge advances to its goal. What its course 
 has been in the past is only an augury of the yet more 
 splendid future that awaits it. Science, advancing to 
 richer discoveries, and a more comprehensive grasp of 
 the order and system of nature ; philosophy, shedding 
 new and fuller light on the deeper problems of 
 thought ; art, enriching the world with new and 
 fairer creations ; and the many-sided intelligence of 
 man, freed from the idols and prejudices that still 
 encumber it, unfolding new capabilities of insight, and 
 a new consciousness of power and freedom if some- 
 thing like this is the intellectual destiny that lies 
 before our race, is there not in the contemplation of it 
 that which may inspire us with a high and ennobling 
 sense of our work here, and of the ends to which such 
 institutions as this are devoted ? To work here in 
 order to gain the knowledge that will qualify you to 
 earn your bread is no dishonourable motive. To study
 
 PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE SCIENCES .55 
 
 for honours, to be inspired by the love of fame and 
 reputation, if it be the reputation of acquirements that 
 are in themselves good and noble, is no unworthy aim. 
 But there is an intellectual virtue that is higher and 
 purer than these, without some touch of which you 
 can be no true student. For, as the highest patriotism 
 is that of the man who thinks not of honour or 
 rewards, but so loves his country that he is content 
 to be forgotten, to lose himself altogether in the larger, 
 dearer life for which he lives ; so he only rises to the 
 true nobility of the student's calling who catches some 
 sympathetic spark of that pure intellectual love, that 
 love of knowledge for its own sake, which lifts him 
 out of self into fellowship with those in all the ages 
 whose life has been, and will be, the eternal life of 
 thought.
 
 ERASMUS. 
 
 November 17, 1877. 
 
 IN the addresses which I have delivered at the 
 opening of former sessions, I attempted, as some of 
 you may remember, to bring before you some con- 
 siderations of a general kind as to the studies with 
 which a seat of learning is occupied such, for 
 example, as their unity and reciprocal influences, their 
 progressiveness, and the conditions by which their por- 
 gress is determined. I am well aware, however, of 
 the difficulty of treating such subjects so as not to tax 
 your patience. The studies of this place are very 
 varied, and in seeking points of view which are 
 common to all of them, one is apt to lose in interest 
 what is gained in breadth and comprehensiveness. 
 It has occurred to me, however, that, turning aside 
 from such general discussions as I have referred to, it 
 might not be an altogether uninteresting and unprofit- 
 able employment of the few minutes during which I 
 can claim your attention, if I should try to bring 
 
 66
 
 ERASMUS. 57 
 
 before you some typical examples of those who have 
 been your forerunners in the life of thought and study, 
 and who have nobly achieved what it is your hope 
 and aim, in some measure at least, to accomplish. On 
 this, and, it may be, on some future occasions, I shall 
 select some notable example of those who are univer- 
 sally recognized as masters in the various departments 
 of human thought in letters, in philosophy, in science, 
 in art, etc. tell you something of their outward career 
 and of their mental history, and try to gather up some 
 of the lessons with which their lives are fraught. 
 To-day I shall ask you to contemplate with me the 
 character and career of one who, though of many-sided 
 nature, may in some respects be regarded as a charac- 
 teristic specimen of the vocation of the scholar and 
 the man of letters, I mean EKASMUS. 
 
 Now there are, let me say in the first place, many 
 reasons, some of them derived from the peculiar 
 character of the times in which he lived, others from 
 the special genius and history of the man himself, why 
 the life of Erasmus should furnish a most suggestive 
 subject of reflection for the modern student. It is 
 well, for one thing, to go back from our easy in- 
 tellectual position, with all our affluent aids to learn- 
 ing, in books, accomplished teachers, and methods of 
 study perfected by long observation and experience, to 
 contemplate the life of the scholar under different and 
 immeasurably harder conditions, and to see how a
 
 58 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 mind, not by any means of the very highest order, 
 but of great activity and intellectual zeal and with 
 inexhaustible powers of application, could conquer all 
 difficulties and achieve a splendid success. 
 
 Moreover, the age in which Erasmus lived, divided 
 from us though it be by a long interval of time, and by 
 the wider gulf which the progress of science and culture 
 and great and manifold social and political changes have 
 created between the thought of the sixteenth and that 
 of the nineteenth century, has in one respect such like- 
 ness to our own as to lend a peculiar interest to the 
 great scholar's career. The time of Erasmus was a 
 transition time, a period when, over all Europe, the 
 spirit of the past was struggling with the spirit of 
 the future, or rather, with the spirit of a remoter 
 past which had awoke from the sleep of ages, to 
 transfuse itself under new and richer forms into the 
 life of the modern world. First in Italy, and then 
 on this side the Alps, what we call " the revival 
 of letters," the quickening of human intelligence by 
 renewed acquaintance with the literature, the philo- 
 sophy, the civilization of classical antiquity, had 
 stirred up a new spirit of intellectual independence ; 
 and as everywhere this spirit grew and gathered 
 strength, the natural result was a struggle with 
 the long unmolested sway of tradition and auth- 
 ority. It was not merely that in the resuscitated 
 treasures of ancient thought men found themselves
 
 ERASMUS. 59 
 
 heirs to a long lost heritage, but that converse with 
 the great writers of former times communicated a new 
 self-confidence to human reason, awakened into new 
 life the suppressed critical instincts, and made that 
 attitude of docile ignorance or spurious intellectual 
 activity which had hitherto prevailed, no longer pos- 
 sible. So long as in the great mass of men of all 
 ranks and classes the life of intelligence was absolutely 
 dormant, and for those who thought at all, the only 
 outlet for intellectual activity was in proving and 
 reproving the foregone conclusions embodied in the 
 dogmas of the Church, the reign of ecclesiastical 
 authority was absolute and universal. But as the 
 educated mind became more and more familiar with 
 the great things which the thought of former ages had 
 achieved, a new sense of power, a new ideal of life, 
 new criteria of truth, a craving for deeper intellectual 
 satisfaction, began to discover themselves. The modern 
 spirit was beginning to be conscious of its new-born 
 powers, and even where it did not manifest itself in 
 open revolt against established beliefs and institutions, 
 it shook them to their very foundations. " Through 
 all the palaces of ignorance," to use the words of the 
 historian of literature, " went forth a cry of terror at 
 the coming light." In all quarters in the schools 
 and universities, in the seats of ecclesiastical rule, in 
 the great cities, in the sheltered seclusion of the 
 cloister as the new learning penetrated, the spirit of
 
 60 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 free enquiry began to make itself felt, on the one hand, 
 in a demand for changes and reforms, and, on the other, 
 in the bitter, reactionary hostility of those whom 
 interest, custom, or intellectual stagnation rendered its 
 implacable foes. 
 
 Now, in all such transition periods there is one 
 class of minds whose course of action is beset by 
 special difficulties. How, amidst the ferment of a 
 great social revolution, amidst the war of conflict- 
 ing parties and interests, when old ideas and forms of 
 belief are giving way, and ancient institutions are 
 rudely assailed and obstinately defended, shall one 
 whose tastes and vocation are simply those of the 
 scholar and the man of letters, order his life ? There 
 are tendencies in the spirit of culture which would 
 seem to draw the mind in opposite directions, and to 
 render decisive action impossible. It is at once pro- 
 gressive and conservative ; it has in it elements both 
 of hardihood and timidity a critical audacity which 
 seems to rank its possessor on the side of revolution, 
 and yet a fastidious moderation, a recoil from violence 
 and vulgar iconoclastic zeal, which to a superficial 
 observer gives him the air of the reactionary and the 
 obstructive. A thinker, a man of ideas, imbued with the 
 pure and ardent love of knowledge, and therefore hating 
 obscurantism and all its brood of vices, intellectual and 
 moral, he has yet no sympathy with the role of the 
 vulgar partizan, and the coarse weapons of party war-
 
 ERASMUS. 61 
 
 fare excite in him nothing but disgust. He cannot be 
 false to his own growing convictions, or refuse to follow 
 where the lights of science and speculation seem to 
 lead him, even though it be to the uprooting of 
 cherished associations and the subverting of venerable 
 institutions ; yet, on the other hand, there is a side of 
 his nature to which the very antiquity of such insti- 
 tutions appeals, as something imposing and sacred ; 
 and where it is possible to breathe new life into 
 the symbols and traditions of the past, he will have 
 no hand in their destruction. The very keenness of 
 his insight helps him to detect a soul of goodness in 
 things evil, an element of truth beneath forms of 
 exaggeration and error ; and his acquaintance with the 
 history of thought renders him tolerant of differences, 
 friendly to comprehension, and averse to arrogant and 
 indiscriminating censure of opinions. 
 
 Has our lot, too, fallen in an age of transition 
 and conflict ? Is the time we live in one in which 
 the critical spirit has received, from the progress of 
 scientific discovery and other causes, a fresh access 
 of power, so that in Church and State, in all de- 
 partments of human experience, there is no institu- 
 tion however ancient and established, no form of 
 opinion, no symbol of faith, however sacred and 
 venerable, which is not put on trial for its very 
 life ; and does it therefore become to us a question of 
 deepest personal interest how, in such a time, a man
 
 62 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 imbued with the true spirit of culture shall steer his 
 course ? Then I think that at least an important 
 contribution to the answer to this question may be 
 gathered from a study of the life of the great scholar 
 of the Eenaissance and the Reformation. 
 
 Of the outward life of Erasmus, the limits of this 
 lecture do not admit of my giving even the most 
 meagre outline. Those of you who care to know more 
 about him I may refer, amongst other easily accessible 
 books, to The Life of Erasmus, by Mr. R B. Drum- 
 mond, of Edinburgh, and to a more recent book on the 
 same subject by a French author, M. Gaston Feugere. 
 For my present purpose it will be enough that you 
 bear in mind one or two facts in the life of Erasmus 
 which I shall now very briefly narrate. Erasmus, or 
 to give his name with the Latin reduplication of the 
 Greek form of it Desiderius Erasmus, was born in 
 the year 1467 at Rotterdam, where still one may see 
 in the market place the quaint-looking statue which 
 for more than two centuries has witnessed to the 
 admiration of his fellow-citizens for their illustrious 
 countryman. He began life under very unfavourable 
 conditions, in straitened circumstances, and left by the 
 death of his parents to the care of grasping and unkindly 
 relatives. There is a tradition that he, who afterwards 
 became the most famous scholar and man of letters of 
 his day, was at school a bit of a dunce. The tradition 
 rests on no satisfactory evidence, and is due, perhaps,
 
 ERASMUS. 63 
 
 to the not uncommon tendency with reference to great 
 men, to trace splendid results to unlikely beginnings. 
 At any rate the fact, if it be a fact, is not one which 
 affords any legitimate consolation to born dunces ; and 
 I need not suggest that it would be slightly illogical for 
 any one to argue thus: " Erasmus was a dunce at school, 
 therefore I, who am also a dunce at school, will be 
 sure to become a second Erasmus." 
 
 His first start in life was a false one^and he ran 
 a great risk of a misdirected career. j^What a man 
 achieves in life, depends in no slight measure on 
 the appropriateness of his calling to his natural gifts 
 and tendencies. On the one hand, false ambition 
 has not seldom overweighted slender abilities by the 
 demands of a too exalted vocation, and an indif- 
 ferent lawyer or doctor, or a poor and commonplace 
 preacher, has been often the spoiling of a good 
 ploughman or a successful shopkeeper. And on the 
 other hand, great powers have been sometimes cramped 
 or stifled by an uncongenial sphere of exertionTj 
 Erasmus, who had, as we shall see, nothing of the 
 clerical nature in him, was in early life, against 
 the strong bent of his genius, forced to enter the 
 cloister, and afterwards into priest's orders. For- 
 tunately, however, circumstances enabled him to 
 effect his release from monastic vows, and opened up 
 for him the way to that which was his true and 
 proper career. He was enabled to gratify his great
 
 64 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 ambition that of studying at one of the famous 
 Universities of Europe ; and at the University of Paris, 
 though struggling with almost incredible difficulties 
 from poverty and weak health, he devoted himself 
 with passionate enthusiasm to classical studies, and to 
 that new learning which was now attracting the 
 interest of all liberal minds. Here he soon began to 
 attract the attention of men of letters, and by the 
 productions of his pen to lay the foundations of that 
 world-wide celebrity as a thinker and writer to which 
 he gradually attained. 
 
 His various and voluminous writings I shall after- 
 wards notice; and of the events of his outward life 
 from this time forwards, my notice must be very 
 brief. He frequently visited England, and spent at 
 its Universities and amongst its men of letters many 
 years of his life. From the very first he found much 
 to gratify him in this country. Social distinction, 
 universal deference, the friendship of such men as 
 More and Colet and Grocyn, the attentions and favours 
 of persons of ranks these and other attractions made 
 England for him a second home. He finds something to 
 praise even in its much defamed climate ; its manners 
 and customs pleased him, and in a letter to a friend 
 he speaks with more gusto than we should expect in a 
 sober ecclesiastic, of a certain osculatory usage, not 
 confined to members of the same sex, which seems to 
 have been prevalent in the English society of those days.
 
 ERASMUS. 65 
 
 To Erasmus, as to Luther afterwards, a visit to 
 Italy had been in his early youth an object of eager 
 desire. To the latter that country was the ideal 
 sanctuary of religion, to the former the home of poetry 
 and art and letters. But though the disenchantment 
 was not as great in the one case as in the other, though 
 Erasmus was received with flattering attentions by 
 patrons of letters and by the highest ecclesiastical 
 dignitaries, he could not be tempted by brilliant offers 
 of preferment to give up the freedom of the citizen of 
 the republic of letters, and, by fixing his residence at 
 Rome, tacitly to accept the role of a retained advocate 
 and defender of the Church. 
 
 The later years of Erasmus's life were passed in what 
 to him was the repulsive and ungenial atmosphere of 
 ecclesiastical strife and revolution. " Up to the year 
 1520," says one of his biographers, "Erasmus stood 
 before the world, acknowledged and honoured as not 
 only the greatest scholar on this side of the Alps, but 
 fairly competing with or surpassing the greatest in 
 Italy. He was the object, no doubt, of much jealousy, 
 much suspicion, but still more of fear. Through him 
 Scholasticism was fast waning, and giving place to the 
 Humanities, as they were called. The cloisters and 
 more orthodox University might seem almost para- 
 lyzed. It might appear as if the world certainly we 
 might say it of England was become Erasmian." 
 
 But now the time had come when the " long
 
 66 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 smouldering" flame of religious revolution was about 
 to break out, when between the Church and the 
 Eeformers, the defenders and the opponents of the 
 established order of things, all hope of compromise 
 seemed to be at an end, and when, in the fierce 
 stirring of the passions of men on religious questions, 
 it was almost impossible for even the most quiescent 
 natures to remain aloof from the conflict, and the 
 demand was made on every one to take a side. 
 Erasmus was too important a personage not to have 
 the call to declare himself pressed on him with special 
 urgency. And, at first sight, it seemed impossible to 
 doubt on which side he should take his stand. Not 
 only by his graver critical works, his edition of the 
 New Testament, his commentaries, his theological 
 treatises, had he done much to shake the reign of 
 authority and infallibility, and to introduce a spirit 
 of free and rational criticism into the study of the 
 long sacred questions of dogma and discipline, but 
 in his lighter effusions he had employed all the re- 
 sources of wit, of irony, of satirical description, of 
 pungent raillery, to rend the robe of decent formality 
 with which ecclesiastical institutions had covered their 
 decay and rottenness; and he had roused all over Europe 
 the ire of monks and divines by what is harder to 
 bear than formal denunciation setting all the world 
 a-laughing at them. Surely he, the sworn foe of dog- 
 matism and superstition and prescription, the eager
 
 ERASMUS. 67 
 
 advocate of free thought and the rights of the human 
 conscience, must now cast in his lot openly with the 
 friends of reform. 
 
 But that course, though he never lacked the 
 courage of his opinions, was impossible for Erasmus. 
 He could put aside with disdain the bribe of place 
 and preferment by which those who knew not the 
 true nature of the man sought to enlist his services on 
 the side of reaction. What of real or lasting dignity 
 could title and office, the name of bishop or cardinal, 
 have added to him, who was already the acknowledged 
 king of the world of letters, and the bearer of a name 
 which would be remembered and revered when a 
 thousand conventional potentates and dignitaries should 
 be forgotten. There may have been something in the 
 fact that he was now, as has been urged, at a period of 
 life when the most active mind yearns for repose, when 
 the turmoil of controversy becomes repulsive, and the 
 quiet student would fain devote the evening of life to 
 retirement and meditation. But the motive of Eras- 
 mus's conduct lies deeper than the old man's natural 
 indisposition to action and strife. 
 
 What that motive was will appear more closely 
 in the sequel ; but meantime I have only to relate 
 the fact that he found it impossible to identify 
 himself either with the party of revolution or with 
 the party of reaction. He would not join those who 
 were in open revolt from the Church and aimed at
 
 68 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 nothing less than her overthrow ; nor would he, on 
 the other hand, consent to be silent as to the cor- 
 ruptions and abuses that so grievously deformed her 
 institutions. And he had to pay the usual penalty 
 which in a time of fierce conflict awaits the man of 
 comprehension and compromise the suspicion and 
 hatred of the thorough -going partizans on both sides. 
 By the one he was branded as a recreant and a traitor 
 to his convictions ; by the other, as a latitudinarian, a 
 rationalist, a betrayer of the creed he professed and the 
 Church whose minister he was. It is something to know 
 that the recriminations of both sides, though they might 
 harass and distress him, could not shake the confidence 
 or embitter the sweet and genial nature of the man 
 they assailed. And now, when the controversies of his 
 day are things of the past, in the clearer light of 
 history, not a few amongst us are beginning to see 
 that, beyond the things which Erasmus valued as of 
 the essence of religion, there is little for which a wise 
 and good man would care to contend ; and whether we 
 approve or condemn his course of action, all of us alike 
 can now do justice not only to the greatness of his 
 mind and the splendour of Lis acquirements, but also 
 to the purity of his motives and the truthfulness and 
 independence of his character. 
 
 I cannot of course pretend, in the brief space at my 
 command, to write an essay on the life and labours 
 of Erasmus. All I can attempt is to suggest to you
 
 ERASMUS. 69 
 
 in a very cursory manner one or two points in which 
 his career seems to have a special bearing on our 
 modern avocations and duties. 
 
 From this point of view let me call your attention, 
 in the first place, to his marvellous intellectual activity. 
 Perhaps the first impression left on the mind by the 
 life of Erasmus is that of amazement at his extra- 
 ordinary literary productiveness. Never, it would seem, 
 was there so fertile a mind, never so busy a pen. 
 Never even under the most favourable circumstances, 
 and with the amplest resources at his command, has 
 the most laborious man of letters, spending his whole 
 time in the undisturbed seclusion of the study, left, as 
 the monument of his intellectual activity, works so 
 numerous, so elaborate, and on such a range of subjects, 
 as this man of feeble health and manifold external 
 distractions. 
 
 No doubt, indeed, he had some advantages which 
 all students and scholars do not possess. He was, 
 for one thing, free from domestic ties. Though he 
 succeeded in shaking off many of the obligations of 
 the monastic life, and retained in his intercourse with 
 the world, and in his ways of thinking and acting, not 
 a trace of professional narrowness, yet, perhaps from 
 inclination as much as necessity, he continued all 
 through life exempt from family cares. Now, though 
 no doubt domestic life has its advantages far be it 
 from me to question it yet perhaps it may be
 
 70 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 conceded that celibacy has for a literary man this 
 recommendation, that it leaves the energy of his nature, 
 instead of being drained off by competing domestic 
 and social claims, wholly free for intellectual work. 
 From first to last, Erasmus was master of his whole 
 thought and time. He could do what he liked and 
 go where he would, as the exigencies of the scholar's 
 vocation required, no man and what perhaps is of 
 more consequence no woman forbidding him. 
 
 Also, there is something in the fact that, in his day, 
 the whole field of thought was comparatively fresh 
 and new. He was not, like a modern man of letters, 
 forestalled in all directions by the labours of innumer- 
 able predecessors. People in our day still persist in 
 writing books, but, in many departments at least, it is 
 very difficult to get anything new to say, anything that 
 some one of the great writers of the last two or three 
 centuries has not said as well or better already. To 
 a great extent we enter on a field where the harvest 
 has been already reaped, and only the gleaner's scanty 
 work remains to be done. Even an original thinker 
 may often be chagrined to find that, in the ideas 
 on which he most prides himself, he has only been 
 rediscovering old truths, and that his happiest 
 thoughts are but unconscious plagiarisms. And as for 
 minds not of the highest order, they must content 
 themselves either with the unambitious office of the 
 interpreter of master minds to popular intelligence, or
 
 ERASMUS. 71 
 
 at best with bringing with immense labour a very 
 few grains as their small contribution to the already 
 accumulated stores of human thought. 
 
 But, when Erasmus wrote, almost every department 
 of thought was a fresh preserve. Greek and Eoman 
 literature, indeed, existed, and had disclosed to the 
 educated mind a whole world of intellectual achieve- 
 ment of which, in form at least, the writers of the 
 Eenaissance felt themselves reduced to the position of 
 half-despairing imitators. And not only was the very 
 work of reproducing this literature, the function of the 
 editor, the interpreter, the redactor, etc., one which in 
 those days created an entirely new occupation, calling 
 forth the rarest faculties of the scholarly and cultured 
 intelligence, and stimulating its labours by the delight 
 of ever new discoveries in a hitherto untrodden field ; 
 but the very fact that the classic literature was then 
 a new literature gave the writers of those days an 
 immense advantage over those of later times. Ideas 
 that are now common-places, quotations and allusions 
 that in a modern book would seem pedantic and stale, 
 classical figures, metaphors, mythological images and 
 invocations which are in our day too hackneyed for 
 anything but schoolboy exercises all these furnished 
 in those days a wholly virgin material for authors, and 
 possessed to the yet unsophisticated taste of readers 
 all the charm of novelty. A writer, therefore, of fair 
 erudition and ordinary diligence, could without diffi-
 
 72 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 culty produce much readable matter, swell the bulk of 
 his pages at a very small cost of thought, and gain 
 the reputation of voluminous authorship at a much 
 cheaper rate than is possible in our more fastidious 
 times. 
 
 Nevertheless, making allowance for all these ad- 
 vantages, the fertility of Erasmus remains something 
 almost unparalleled. He was all his days a man of 
 feeble health, and for many of his later years he 
 laboured under an organic malady which made exertion 
 torture, so that he could write only in the intervals 
 between ever-recurring accesses of acute physical pain. 
 He was, moreover, a great traveller. His restless, 
 sanguine, inquisitive temperament, as well as the scat- 
 tered state of manuscripts and other literary material at 
 that time, made long residence in one place impossible 
 for him ; and a great part of his time was, therefore, 
 consumed in flitting about from place to place. Yet 
 with all this, healthy or ill at ease, stationary or on 
 the move, his eager brain kept ever active and his 
 pen never rested. Scarcely a year of his mature life 
 passed without the issue of some elaborate treatise, 
 and in the intervals of his severer labours he flung 
 out as a kind of parergon or intellectual diversion, 
 satirical pamphlets, squibs, copies of verses, school 
 books, manuals of good advice for young men and 
 women literary brochures of all sorts and on all 
 manner of subjects. Much, indeed, of his writing
 
 ERASMUS. 73 
 
 which comes under the latter classification does not 
 imply great labour or research, or anything more than 
 a full and fertile mind ; and, in point of fact, some of 
 his best and most popular productions were struck out 
 almost at a heat. His Encomium Morice, for instance, 
 a satirical fable, in which, in a tone of light, half- 
 veiled, malicious mockery, he attacks the vices of the 
 age and especially those of his two sworn classes of 
 foes, the monks and the scholastics, seems to have 
 been thrown off in a single fortnight when on a visit 
 to a friend. 
 
 But these lighter effusions form only a small part 
 of his works. The books on which his fame as a 
 scholar, a critic, a theologian, mainly rest, are, all of 
 them, works which could not have been produced 
 without sustained thought and much labour and re- 
 search. He is among the foremost of those to whom 
 the world is indebted for the revival of classical 
 learning. He published editions of the works of 
 Aristotle and Demosthenes, translations of several of 
 the plays of Euripides, of the greater part of Lucian, 
 and of the moral works of Plutarch. He edited either 
 in whole or in part, among other Latin authors, 
 Livy, Cicero, and Terence. Moreover, in his well-known 
 Colloquies, and especially in his Adagia, a vast col- 
 lection of proverbs or pointed sayings gathered from 
 the whole range of classical literature, he displays an 
 amount of reading, a familiarity not only with the
 
 74 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 great authors of every age, but even with obscure 
 writers, which, it has been well said, "even in the 
 present day, with all our subsidiary aids to learning, 
 moves our astonishment." 
 
 Again, he has been called " the parent of Biblical 
 Criticism." The edition of the Greek New Testa- 
 ment commonly called the Complutensian, though 
 in preparation, had not yet appeared when Erasmus 
 published his edition, with elaborate annotations 
 and a continuous paraphrase ; and the merit of this 
 work, great as it is, is much enhanced in our eyes 
 when we consider the enormous labour implied in 
 the examination and deciphering of scattered and 
 hitherto unedited manuscripts, and remember that in 
 this, as in his other critical labours, he was without 
 the help of previous labourers in the same field, and 
 that for him the modern apparatus of lexicons, gram- 
 mars, annotations, commentaries, etc., did not exist. It 
 is true that, as might be expected, much of Erasmus's 
 work as the restorer of classical and Biblical literature 
 has been superseded, and that his editions have given 
 place to the more accurate results of modern scholar- 
 ship ; but if we consider his work, not only in regard 
 to the spirit that prompted and sustained it, the dogged 
 and incessant opposition it had to encounter, and the 
 manifold invaluable results with which it was fraught, 
 but especially with regard to the conditions under 
 which it was performed, we cannot wonder that the
 
 ERASMUS. 75 
 
 best modern scholars should be ready to acknowledge 
 the incomparable merit of the man who cleared the 
 way for them and made their labours easy. Here, as 
 in other departments of knowledge, the greatest honour 
 is often due, not to those who have advanced the 
 farthest, but to those who first broke ground ; and to 
 underrate their merits in comparison with later writers, 
 because much of their work has been antiquated, would 
 be like the mistake of the foolish child elevated on the 
 parental shoulders, who should think himself a much 
 taller person than his father. 
 
 Lastly, to omit all detailed mention of Erasmus's 
 editions of many of the Greek and Latin fathers, and 
 his numerous theological and controversial works, I 
 must call your attention to what constituted no 
 unimportant addition to his other labours, viz., his 
 private correspondence. Now-a-days very few people, 
 and least of all those whose brains are toiled by 
 systematic literary work, bestow any pains on the 
 business of letter-writing, or regard it in any other 
 light than as a bore, to be got rid of as summarily as 
 possible. But in the time of Erasmus this business 
 could not be treated so unceremoniously. In those 
 days there were no newspapers, journals, pamphlets, 
 transactions of learned societies, and letter-writing 
 came very much in the place of these. In our time 
 many people who want their opinions made up for 
 them on all sorts of questions get it done without
 
 76 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 troubling their friends, in the daily and weekly 
 papers, and in magazine and review articles. We 
 do not need in our theological or political difficulties 
 to have recourse to private consultation of competent 
 advisers, or even to wait till somebody has written a 
 book on the subject. The best thing that clever men 
 can say on burning questions is always to be had in 
 some smart or brilliant paper in next month's magazine, 
 or the next issue of the Quarterly Eeviews. But, in 
 those days, men like Erasmus were the common prey 
 of all sorts of people in quest of intellectual guid- 
 ance. Not only friends and private acquaintances, but 
 strangers of all ranks and classes in Church and State 
 bishops, cardinals, courtiers, ladies of quality, even 
 princes and kings were continually writing to him for 
 counsel : and even if common courtesy had permitted, 
 the sex or rank of the writers hindered him from 
 treating them curtly. 
 
 Moreover, letter-writing had to be done under the 
 consciousness of a very exacting standard, for every 
 man of reputation knew that his letters would be 
 handed about and treated as common property. 
 Inaccuracy, levity, paradox, flippancy, the venial 
 sins of a rapid and careless pen, must needs be 
 guarded against, when everything a man wrote was 
 sure to become currently known and quoted under the 
 sanction of his name. In addition to this, a letter- 
 writer had then to be careful of the form as well as
 
 ERASMUS. 77 
 
 the substance of his letters, for they were written in 
 Latin, at that time the medium of communication in 
 educated society ; and they had to be written in good 
 Latin ; for not only had the classical revival created a 
 sort of new-fangled rage for purity of style, but 
 Erasmus had many enemies, and among the bitterest 
 of them, the pedants and grammarians whom his 
 merciless quizzing had keenly incensed, and who were 
 eagerly waiting for his halting. He wrote, therefore, 
 knowing that for the slightest solecism, for any phrase 
 wanting in elegance, nay, for any case or tense not 
 sanctioned by Cicero or the authority of the writers of 
 the so-called Augustan age, he would have to answer. 
 Yet, all these conditions notwithstanding, he was so 
 voluminous a letter-writer that his correspondence fills 
 two folio volumes. 
 
 On the whole I have said enough, I think, 
 to show, that the great literary reputation of Eras- 
 mus was not lightly won. It has become a sort 
 of common-place in books of good advice to young 
 men, that not genius but industry and application are 
 the great means of success. This maxim is only 
 partially true, and is certainly not to be appropriated 
 as the consolation of dulness and stupidity. Never- 
 theless the life and labours of Erasmus are to a certain 
 extent a proof of what intellectual industry and hard 
 unflinching labour can accomplish. For his was by 
 no means a mind of the very highest order. He was
 
 78 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 clever and keen-witted, he had great quickness of 
 apprehension, great sagacity and shrewdness, a correct 
 taste, a nimble fancy, and a fund of genuine, inex- 
 haustible humour, with a solid substratum of judgment 
 and good sense to sustain all his other qualities; but 
 he was neither a man of genius nor a profound thinker, 
 he had nothing of the intuitive insight that saves a 
 world of labour, or the instinctive grasp which seizes 
 the essence of a subject while other minds are toiling 
 by slow processes of enquiry and reasoning to reach it. 
 What he achieved is for all students and scholars an 
 example of what can be done by cultivating to the 
 utmost the talent we possess, by unflinching diligence 
 and steady toil, seconding a fair measure of intellectual 
 power in one word, of the great things that may in 
 the field of letters be accomplished by good parts and 
 hard work. 
 
 I can add only a few sentences on one other of 
 those aspects of the life of Erasmus in which it is 
 of special interest for us ; and that is his devotion 
 to the cause of letters and liberal thought in an age 
 of religious conflict. Had Erasmus been merely an 
 eminent ecclesiastic, a man whose reputation rested 
 on his theological or polemical achievements, in this 
 place we should have no special call to treat of him. 
 But though he made many contributions to theological 
 literature, Erasmus was not distinctively a theologian 
 or a divine. The secret of his life, that which explains
 
 ERASMUS. 79 
 
 and gives unity to much in it that, from another point 
 of view, might seem doubtful or discordant, is this, 
 that he was a man of letters who found himself by 
 accident in the guise of a priest, and that he typifies 
 for us, not simply the relation of culture to religion, 
 or the relation of the modern to the ecclesiastical 
 spirit, but that relation as it manifests itself in one 
 who, being really akin to the former, is externally, 
 and by force of circumstances, ranked among the 
 professional representatives of the latter. The great 
 interest of his career and of the virtues and defects, 
 the excellencies and shortcomings which characterized 
 it, lies in this, that he was a liberal thinker in the 
 guise of a churchman, and that in an age of intense 
 religious and ecclesiastical excitement. 
 
 Erasmus had none of the special tendencies, higher 
 or lower, which fit a man for the calling of the 
 ecclesiastic, especially in revolutionary and troublous 
 times. Though of blameless life, and though there is 
 no reason to question the sincerity of his religious 
 belief, his piety was certainly of the rational rather 
 than the emotional order, devoid of anything approach- 
 ing to enthusiastic feeling, and in his theology the 
 dogmatic element was ever subordinated to the moral 
 and practical. Though constrained in early life to 
 submit to monastic vows, you have only to look at the 
 quiet, sagacious face that lives for us in Holbein's or 
 Durer's portrait, full of worldly shrewdness, sobriety,
 
 80 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 and self-command, and without a trace of fervour or 
 enthusiasm, to see that he who thus looked had no 
 vocation for the life of the cloister. No raptures of 
 mystic piety, no tendernesses of devout communion, 
 could ever have kindled or softened those cool, critical 
 eyes ; no spiritual struggle and inward conflict, no 
 ascetic abnegation and macerations of the flesh, could 
 ever have disturbed the composure that sits on that 
 calm, self reliant countenance. Insight, intellectual 
 refinement, keen-witted sagacity, a humour half 
 playful, half sarcastic of such qualities you have 
 unmistakable expression ; but you could never con- 
 ceive the owner of that face as the leader of an 
 ecclesiastical revolution or a martyr for religious 
 convictions. 
 
 And the story of his life, when we read it, in no 
 respect belies the anticipations which the look of the 
 man would lead us to form. The monk in him was 
 not skin-deep. The priest's habit sat uneasily upon 
 him. The sphere of literature and art was that in 
 which the true element of his genius lay. His real 
 church was the republic of letters, the dignitaries he 
 most honoured were not popes and cardinals, but 
 philosophers, poets, historians. His calendar of saints 
 and martyrs embraced many who were strangers to 
 papal canonization : and we do not wonder to 
 hear him say that, after reading the Phaedo, he was 
 tempted to exclaim, " Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis ! "
 
 ERASMUS. 81 
 
 and to find him, like Dante, disposed to accord to 
 Virgil a place, if not in the highest realm of the 
 blessed, yet above that to which he had no scruple to 
 consign immoral and flagitious ecclesiastics of the 
 highest rank. The sole passion of his life, if we can 
 use such a word of a nature so uniformly moderate 
 and unemotional, was the love of letters and liberal 
 thought, and his sole desire and aim as a churchman 
 was to let the purifying breath of knowledge and 
 cultured intelligence exert its wholesome influence on 
 ecclesiastical ideas and institutions. It was vain to 
 think to bind such a nature in ecclesiastical trammels, 
 or to forbid it to find scope for its wider tendencies 
 beyond the domain of arid scholastic dogmas or 
 technical church routine. Already, in the years of 
 his early cloister education, when caught indulging in 
 prohibited classical studies, and compelled to turn 
 from Cicero and Virgil to school divinity and church 
 drill, he compares himself to Eurydice, catching a 
 glimpse of the sweet light of day only to be plunged 
 again in the darkness of the nether world. And his 
 whole subsequent career is in keeping with this 
 beginning. 
 
 Now the chief value and use of such natures as 
 that of Erasmus, when brought like him into close 
 relations with church affairs and ecclesiastical tradi- 
 tions and institutions, seem to be this, that they 
 constitute a sort of living test of the measure in which
 
 82 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the Church and its traditions and institutions are in 
 harmony with the spirit of culture. That spirit, 
 however you regard it, is obviously a most potent 
 force in the world's history, and especially in the 
 formation and development of our modern life. That 
 which we designate vaguely by such terms as ' culture/ 
 ' civilization,' ' secular knowledge,' asserts itself as a 
 power existing side by side with religion and the 
 Church, yet acting in a great measure independently 
 of them, filling 'a large, in many cases much the larger, 
 space in educated men's lives, holding their thoughts, 
 absorbing their energies, moulding their opinions, 
 kindling their enthusiasm, shaping their character. 
 Not religious teachers and writers only, but, with an 
 even more obtrusive and persistent influence, men of 
 letters, philosophers, historians, poets, scientific investi- 
 gators, unfolding to us the treasures of nature and 
 art, giving form to the creative conceptions of genius, 
 transfusing into our minds and hearts the thoughts 
 that live for ever in the literature of the past these 
 are they who are and must be, to a great extent, the 
 masters of our minds, and whose far-reaching influence 
 in every sphere of human activity it is almost impos- 
 sible to over-rate. 
 
 Here then, side by side with the specially re- 
 ligious organizations, working in the same world 
 and on the same spiritual natures, is an agency 
 of incalculable power ; and it becomes a question of
 
 ERASMUS. 83 
 
 the highest importance how far this collateral force 
 or factor in man's life is to be in harmony or hostility 
 with the other. If, especially at a time when the 
 world is deeply stirred by religious or ecclesiastical 
 movements, we would learn how far science, letters, 
 cultured thought, that kind of knowledge which helps 
 a man to a deeper understanding of himself and the 
 order of the world and the conditions of his life in 
 it, can co-operate with existing religious ideas and 
 organizations, or with any one or other of the religious 
 tendencies that are struggling for the mastery this is 
 a question which receives its practical solution in, and 
 lends a singular interest to, the lives of such men as 
 Erasmus. 
 
 And what in his case was the solution ? Erasmus 
 has been called a precursor of the Eeformation ; and so, 
 no doubt, he was. But it was only in the sense in which 
 all light, all intelligence, all contact with ideas and 
 converse with the great thinkers of the past, is against 
 religious corruption and on the side of religious truth 
 and purity and freedom. Up to a certain point 
 culture and religion have common foes to fight, and 
 are banded in a common enterprise. They were in 
 Erasmus's day, and they are now, the sworn enemies 
 of ignorance, of spiritual despotism, of dogmatism, of 
 intolerance, of irrational superstition. If in the sphere 
 of religion there has arisen anything which threatens 
 or checks the free play of intelligence, any pretended
 
 84 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 authority or mediation by which the spirit of man is 
 forbid free and immediate communion with the God of 
 truth ; if for any reason religion is made to assume a 
 jealous attitude towards erudition, is falsely alarmed at 
 the results of historical and critical investigation, or 
 shrinks from the free examination of the origin and 
 formation of sacred documents ; or if, when thoughtful 
 learning and genius are seeking in a reverential and 
 earnest spirit to clear received opinions of error and 
 confusion, the attempt is made to silence them by 
 clamour or by the terror of ecclesiastical penalties, 
 then there can be no doubt on which side the voice 
 of culture and liberal intelligence will be heard. So 
 long as the conflict is with suck foes, so long as the 
 religious reformer is endeavouring to free himself 
 and others from intellectual slavery and asserting the 
 rights of conscience against sacerdotalism and spurious 
 authority, then, from the ranks of lettered and scientific 
 thought, a thousand voices will be ready to bid him 
 God speed; then men like Erasmus, whose genius 
 and vocation are those of the scholar rather than the 
 theologian, are ready to co-operate with him hand and 
 heart. 
 
 But there may and often does come a time in 
 ecclesiastical conflicts when there is no longer any place 
 or function for such men as Erasmus. Even when, 
 as in the great religious movement of the sixteenth 
 century, the conflict is one in which interests of real
 
 ERASMUS. 85 
 
 and grave importance are at stake, but much more, 
 when, as has too often been the case in ecclesiastical 
 controversies, the zeal of the combatants is in inverse 
 ratio to the importance of the matter in dispute, often 
 the only attitude possible for such men is that of 
 silence and reserve. If the questions at issue are 
 those on which reason cannot be the umpire things 
 of words and names, oppositions of one unintelligible 
 dogma to another equally unintelligible, determinations 
 as to postures, dresses, arbitrary forms and observances 
 matters which have no rational significance and no 
 bearing on life and duty of all such discussions the 
 scholar and thinker will wash his hands clear. He 
 will refuse to let his mental tranquillity be disturbed 
 by them. Unable to persuade the combatants of the 
 futility of that which they are fighting about, there is 
 nothing for him but to stand by in amused pity till 
 the din be done. Or if the controversy be one in 
 which intelligible issues are involved, here again such 
 a man will refuse to go one step beyond the point 
 where reason's voice can be heard, and men will 
 consent to listen to it. He will never join in the 
 appeal to the uninstructed multitude on questions on 
 which only the trained intellect of the scholar and 
 critic is entitled to pronounce an opinion. He will 
 never countenance the substitution of recrimination 
 for argument, of personal denunciation of the doubter 
 for painstaking examination and refutation of his errors.
 
 86 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 He will not be betrayed into indiscriminating censure 
 even of opinions that have become tainted with error, 
 and to the last he will strive to discern the soul of 
 goodness and truth that is often hid under a currupt 
 form, and to find in that deeper truth a fulcrum for 
 the refutation of the heretic's own errors and mistakes. 
 Finally, in judging of men and opinions and institutions, 
 even of those with which he has least sympathy, he 
 will try to see only with reason's eyes and hear only 
 with reason's ears, to disabuse himself of individual 
 and personal bias, to throw himself into other people's 
 point of view, and to preserve in his estimate of 
 them the calmness, the impartiality, the unimpassioned 
 serenity and sweetness of reason itself. 
 
 Something like this was the spirit and temper of the 
 great scholar whose career we have been contemplating. 
 It may be that we, looking back with the clearer light 
 which time and the progress of thought have thrown on 
 the characters and events of his day, can now see that 
 he carried too far the tolerant and forbearing spirit so 
 congenial to his nature and his pursuits, that his 
 hatred of strife and violence sometimes degenerated 
 into timidity, and that the conservative instincts of 
 the scholar led him to cling to institutions which had 
 grown too corrupt for preservation. But at least this 
 we can venture to pronounce, that the principles which 
 guided him were those which all true culture tends 
 to foster, and that even his errors leant to virtue's
 
 ERASMUS. 87 
 
 side. For, in conclusion, let me repeat, the spirit 
 and temper of the scholar, the spirit which comes of 
 studious investigation and converse with the thoughts 
 of the wise and good of ancient and modern times, is 
 a spirit at once liberal and restrained, critical and 
 tolerant, full of hopefulness, yet full of reverence, eager 
 for advancement, yet careful to seek it in the lines 
 which history and the intellectual and spiritual life of 
 the past have consecrated. He is one who believes 
 that all human institutions, secular and sacred, are of 
 necessity changeful, because the life of thought on 
 which they rest, unless when it sinks into torpor or 
 is paralyzed by disease, is never stationary, never 
 stereotyped in one rigid state, but is ever evolving its 
 inexhaustible vitality in new and original products, 
 ever seeking to clothe itself in fairer and fresher forms. 
 But he is one also who recognizes the continuity of 
 man's spiritual life, who knows that it is neither 
 desirable nor possible to cut ourselves off from the life 
 of the past, to shake off the influence of its traditions 
 or deprive ourselves of the inspiration of its great and 
 noble lives. He will never, for the doubtful advantage 
 of spick and span new symbols and organizations, 
 throw away the influence over men's minds of those 
 which have stood the test of time and into which new 
 life can be breathed. If it is possible to purify the 
 temple's courts from within, he will not forsake or 
 share in the destruction of the fane which the faith of
 
 88 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 a hundred generations has hallowed. If it is not 
 perverted into the means of intellectual and spiritual 
 bondage, he will not destroy one link of the golden 
 chain that binds the thought and life of the present 
 to the thought and life of the ages that are gone.
 
 GALILEO. 
 
 November 8, 1879. 
 
 IN some of the addresses which I have delivered at 
 the opening of former Sessions, I have endeavoured 
 to give an account of the life and work of some of 
 those illustrious men to whom we owe our intel- 
 lectual inheritance, and who have nobly achieved what 
 it is our hope and aim in some measure at least to 
 accomplish. I have directed your attention succes- 
 sively to conspicuous examples of men eminent in 
 scholarship, in letters, and in philosophy, to-day I 
 shall ask you to contemplate with me the life, the 
 character and achievements of a great man of science. 
 The task would be a bold one, for me, indeed, an 
 impossible one, if the appreciation of a great name 
 in the history of science were the exclusive function 
 of those who have themselves made science the 
 work of their lives, or who are experts in the 
 particular department to which that great name be- 
 longs. But though it is true that special knowledge 
 
 and affinity of tastes and pursuits are invaluable 
 
 89
 
 90 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 qualities in a biographer, and indispensable for a 
 technical estimate of a great man's contributions to his 
 special department of knowledge, yet there is an 
 obvious distinction between a scientific biography and 
 the biography of a scientific man ; and the latter and 
 less ambitious task may be in some measure overtaken 
 even by one who is altogether incompetent for the 
 former. Not only is it true that the greatest men are 
 ever those who are something more than specialists, 
 and that their career furnishes materials for a moral 
 and psychological study outside of the particular field 
 in which their fame was won, but in the department of 
 science it is possible to recognize the value of results 
 without that professional knowledge which would 
 enable us to criticise the process by which they have 
 been reached, and those who stand only in the outer 
 court of the temple may be able, with a not altogether 
 blind admiration, to reverence those high priests of 
 science whom they cannot follow within the veil. 
 
 It is unfortunate for me, that by a somewhat 
 singular coincidence the name which, led by the 
 foregoing considerations, I had selected as the text for 
 a few reflections on the character and career of the 
 man of science, is that which has been taken as the 
 subject of an introductory lecture to which many of 
 us listened with delight on Wednesday last. 1 I can 
 only console myself by reflecting that though by this 
 x The introductory lecture of Professor Jack.
 
 GALILEO. 91 
 
 accident any little interest my words might possess 
 has been discounted, yet my new colleague's masterly 
 treatment of the subject in its properly scientific 
 aspect absolves me from even the poor attempt I 
 might make in that direction, and that I am enabled, 
 by simply referring to what he said, arid greatly to 
 your advantage, to skip all reference to scientific 
 questions and to confine myself to the treatment of 
 the subject in its more general aspects. 
 
 Recent historical investigations have somewhat 
 lessened the splendour, not indeed of Galileo's con- 
 tributions to science, but of the personal greatness of 
 the man. Nevertheless it is still true that amongst 
 the pioneers of modern scientific research there are 
 few or none who have enriched science by results 
 so important, or whose personal history is of so much 
 pathetic interest and so full of instruction for those 
 who can read its lessons. I shall briefly recount the 
 leading incidents of Galileo's life, and then, so far 
 as time permits, try to gather up some of the lessons 
 for the modern student with which it is fraught. 
 
 The same day, the 18th of February, 1564, which 
 deprived Florence of its greatest artist, Michael Angelo, 
 was that on which one who was destined to win for 
 himself by his genius and his works a not less illus- 
 trious name, saw the light. It was not indeed by 
 carrying on the succession of great names in poetry 
 and art, which had begun with Dante, that Galileo was
 
 92 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 to shed new lustre on the country of his birth. But 
 in another sense there was no breach of continuity, for 
 the genius of a great discoverer in the realms of science, 
 though he is called to deal with sober facts under 
 rigorous conditions of observation and experiment, is 
 yet one which calls into play some of the highest exer- 
 cises of the creative imagination ; and though it was not 
 the vocation of Galileo to bear us upward on the wings 
 of poetic intuition into communion with the invisible 
 and ideal, it was the not less elevating result of his 
 labours to lift the veil from the real world and to show 
 it to mankind vivified by the light of thought and 
 glorified by the presence of unchangeable order and 
 eternal laws. The earlier portion of Galileo's life owes 
 its chief interest to the struggle of a mind of strongly 
 marked aptitudes to reach its proper vocation. He 
 was of what is called good family, but straitened cir- 
 cumstances compelled his father to sacrifice aristocratic 
 scruples and to select for his son, notwithstanding early 
 indications of talents that fitted him for a higher career, 
 the unambitious but lucrative employment of a seller 
 of cloth. Youthful aspirations are not always infallible 
 indications of an exalted destiny. The promptings of 
 personal or parental ambition have sometimes diverted 
 a substantial contribution from an honest handicraft 
 only to secure a worthless offering to literature or 
 professional life. An indifferent artist has not seldom 
 been the spoiling of a good artizan, and the world has
 
 GALILEO. 93 
 
 been poorly compensated for the loss of many excellent 
 coats and shoes by the bestowment on it of bad poems 
 and dull sermons. 
 
 In the case of Galileo, however, the signs of 
 incipient genius were really prophetic of a great 
 future; and so, by a compromise between interest 
 and ambition, his father resolved that he should aban- 
 don the calling of a distributor of wool to prepare by 
 a University education for a profession which is some- 
 times a lucrative, sometimes an intellectual one, and 
 sometimes both that of a physician. But at the 
 University of Pisa, Galileo's bent towards purely 
 scientific pursuits became too pronounced for further 
 resistance. He spent much of his time in constructing 
 ingenious pieces of mechanism, in his solitude he 
 studied Euclid when he should have been occupied 
 with Galen and Hippocrates; and amongst other inci- 
 dents indicative of strong natural bias, it is told of 
 him that whilst attending divine service in the Cathe- 
 dral at Pisa, his thoughts very improperly wandered 
 from the sermon to watch dreamily the swinging of a 
 beautiful lamp, the work of a great Italian artist, 
 which, suspended from the chancel arch, had been 
 accidentally moved from its vertical position. It was 
 not, however, the beauty of the lamp which attracted 
 his attention; for, though by no means destitute of 
 artistic taste, the scientific instinct, which was in him 
 ever the strongest, led him to notice that the oscilla-
 
 94 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 tions seemed to be performed in exactly equal times, 
 and this, by comparing them with the beatings of his 
 pulse, he ascertained to be actually the case. This 
 discovery of the isochronism of the vibrations of the 
 pendulum, and its important applications, was after- 
 wards to engage much of his attention. 
 
 Having at length secured his father's consent to 
 devote himself entirely to mathematics and physics, he 
 almost immediately attracted the attention of Italian 
 mathematicians by composing an essay on the hydrostat- 
 ical balance, suggested by the writings of Archimedes, 
 and by the patronage of Ferdinand de Medici he was at 
 the early age of 25 appointed Lecturer on Mathematics 
 at the University of Pisa. Professors of Mathematics 
 were not in those days so adequately remunerated as 
 in more recent times, for the salary of his office, we are 
 told, was only 60 crowns, or about 13 of our money. 
 He was appointed only for a limited term of years, but 
 his tenure of office was destined to be still more brief. 
 The Aristotelian physics had long been regarded as an 
 infallible authority in the schools of learning, and no 
 Confession of Faith was ever deemed more sacred from 
 criticism than, for ages had been regarded the physical 
 dogmas of the master. It is true that some whispers 
 of dissent had been tolerated in the case of that 
 universal genius, Leonardo da Vinci, and others. But 
 
 " That in the captain's but a choleric word 
 Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy " ;
 
 GALILEO. 95 
 
 and it was with mingled amazement and indignation 
 that the University authorities at Pisa found that the 
 youthful professor was instilling into the minds of the 
 students, whose admiration he had won by the origin- 
 ality and brilliancy of his teaching, scientific heresies 
 of the most dangerous character. He presumed not 
 only to question the traditional doctrines in physics, 
 but to denounce the Aristotelian method, and to appeal 
 from loosely-grounded presuppositions or a priori 
 axioms and syllogistic deductions to the rigorous in- 
 vestigation of facts and phenomena as the sole criterion 
 of truth in science. 
 
 One tenet, for instance, of the Aristotelian me- 
 chanics was that heavy bodies fall to the earth more 
 rapidly than lighter bodies, and that their velocities 
 are in proportion to their weight. Galileo attacked 
 this doctrine, refuted the traditional arguments on 
 which it was based, and maintained that, with allow- 
 ance for the unequal resistance of the air in different 
 cases, all bodies would fall from the same height in 
 the same time. The learned appealed to Aristotle 
 and to the obvious and self-evident truth, as they 
 held it, that a mass weighing ten pounds must needs 
 fall to the ground in one tenth of the time which 
 it takes a mass of one pound to fall from the 
 same height. Galileo appealed to the infallible test 
 of experience. In the presence of his gainsayers he 
 ascended the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped from
 
 96 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 its summit bodies of unequal weight, which struck the 
 ground at the same instant. Not even then, however, 
 would his censors, though silenced, confess themselves 
 defeated. In many minds refutation, so far from 
 subverting, rather serves to strengthen the hold of 
 inveterate beliefs. A disproved dogma, like a departed 
 friend, becomes only the dearer, and he who speaks 
 evil of either is regarded with the like detestation. It 
 is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, notwithstand- 
 ing the sympathy and admiration of his pupils and the 
 success of his teaching, the audacious innovator soon 
 found his place too hot to hold him. Happily for him, 
 at this conjuncture, another position, that of Professor 
 of Mathematics at Padua, which was in the gift of the 
 Republic of Venice, where a freer and more progressive 
 spirit prevailed, was very opportunely offered to him, 
 and at once accepted. 
 
 Of his long and brilliant career in his new home, 
 of his patient researches and the important discoveries 
 in mathematics and physics and in the application 
 of science to the mechanical arts, which crowned his 
 labours, and of his growing fame as a teacher and 
 investigator, I am, for the reason above indicated, 
 happily relieved from the necessity of saying any- 
 thing. I confine myself therefore to that part of 
 his scientific life which, both in itself and in its 
 bearing on his future career, was most significant, 
 viz., his astronomical discoveries and their relation to
 
 GALILEO. 97 
 
 the Copernican system. He appears at first to have 
 taught and defended in his lectures the all but uni- 
 versally accepted Ptolemaic system, and, whether from 
 the cautious spirit of true science or from a less 
 worthy motive, to have continued to teach it even 
 when his own convictions had begun to lean in the 
 direction of the new doctrine. But circumstances 
 soon forced him to break through his self-imposed 
 reserve. The first of these was the sudden appear- 
 ance and as sudden vanishing of a new star in the 
 constellation Serpentarius, in October, 1604. It was 
 one of the hitherto undisputed and most sacred Aris- 
 totelian doctrines, to which the language of Scripture, 
 according to the popular interpretation of it, lent its 
 sanction, that the celestial spheres were perfect and 
 unchangeable, and that all phenomena indicating 
 change, such as comets and meteors, were only within 
 the region of the earth's atmosphere. Galileo showed 
 from the fact that the new star had no sensible 
 parallax, that it must be situated far beyond the 
 bounds of our system, and that the so-called inviol- 
 ability of the vault of heaven was a mere popular 
 illusion. 
 
 But all other discoveries were speedily thrown 
 into the shade by the phenomena which a new 
 instrument of observation was the means of dis- 
 closing. Acting on the hint supplied by the rumour 
 of the invention of a Dutch optician, Lipperhey,
 
 98 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Galileo, from his own knowledge of the laws of 
 reflexion and refraction, succeeded in constructing 
 what we would now call a telescope, which showed 
 distant objects magnified three times, then another 
 with a magnifying power of eight, and finally a third 
 with a power of more than 30 times. The tele- 
 scopic appearance of the heavens has been long 
 familiarly known to us, and "it is hardly possible 
 for us to conceive," as has been said, "the intense 
 interest with which the first glimpse of it must have 
 been obtained. The multiplicity of the brilliant 
 objects calling for examination, the undefined ex- 
 pectation of what might be revealed by the powers 
 of an instrument yet untried, and the probability of 
 numerous additions to the list of those bodies which 
 had as yet come under the cognizance of man these, 
 and the host of kindred emotions, must have united 
 to give an overwhelming interest to first results of 
 the new process of observation." 
 
 Possessed then of an instrument available for astro- 
 nomical purposes, Galileo directed it successively, and, 
 as he himself says, with incredible delight, to the 
 heavenly bodies, observing first the surface of the 
 moon, and detecting in almost every part of the disc 
 of what had hitherto been supposed to be a body 
 perfectly spherical and smooth, what seemed to be 
 ranges of mountains, deep hollows, and other in- 
 equalities discoveries to which one who at a later
 
 GALILEO. 99 
 
 time, when the great astronomer was broken and 
 crushed by the storms of adverse fate, visited and 
 learned to know and love him, has thus referred in 
 the Paradise Lost : 
 
 " the moon whose orb 
 
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
 At evening from the top of Fesole, 
 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
 Eivers or mountains in her spotty globe." 
 
 Next, " directing his telescope to the Milky Way, he 
 discovered there crowds of minute stars unrecognizable 
 by the naked eye, and inferred that the whiteness of 
 this part of the heavens was due to a multiplicity 
 of still smaller stars which his telescope could not 
 resolve." A still more important discovery succeeded, 
 viz., that of Jupiter's satellites; then that of the spots 
 on the sun's disc, from his observation of which he 
 inferred the rotation of the sun on its axis ; then 
 certain phenomena which ultimately led to the dis- 
 covery of the ring of Saturn, and, to name no other, 
 in the same year so rich in new results, observing 
 the planet Venus when not far removed from the sun 
 he saw her " in the form of a crescent resembling 
 exactly the moon at the same elongation," and by 
 continued observations found that Venus exhibited 
 phases which could only be due to her revolution 
 round the sun. Similar, though less conspicuous, 
 changes of phase he found to characterize the planet 
 Mars.
 
 100 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Never in so short a space of time had the realm 
 of human knowledge been enriched by discoveries so 
 splendid and resting on a basis of evidence so clear 
 and irrefragable. What reception might they be 
 expected to meet but the eager interest and assent 
 of all intelligent minds, and the admiration and 
 reverence of mankind for the man who had, as if 
 at one stroke, expanded and revolutionized the whole 
 aspect of the physical universe, and opened up a 
 future of inconceivable progress for subsequent 
 observers. And yet, strange to say, it was just these 
 inestimable contributions to man's knowledge of nature 
 which changed the hitherto comparatively smooth and 
 tranquil current of Galileo's life into one of stormy 
 conflict and unrest, which roused against him a host 
 of individual enemies, and, above all, which brought 
 him within the toils of a spiritual despotism, then, as 
 now, the instinctive foe of light and liberty, and then, 
 as happily it is not now, too formidable to be despised. 
 
 To understand this, and to enable us to see the 
 significance of the remaining period of Galileo's career, 
 I must ask you to reflect for a moment on the 
 relations in which discoveries such as his necessarily 
 placed him, first, to the scientific authorities of his 
 day; and, secondly, to that power which claimed for 
 itself supreme authority both secular and spiritual. 
 In the first place, the seats of learning were against 
 him. It rnisjht indeed be expected that these homes
 
 GALILEO. 101 
 
 of science and intellectual culture should ever be 
 the first to welcome fresh light. If there are any 
 places on earth, we should suppose, where the 
 advancement of knowledge would be the first and 
 highest aim, where the value of new and better 
 methods of investigation would be discerned long 
 before the outside world had learned to appreciate 
 them, where the dawning light of a great idea in 
 philosophy, or a new discovery in science, or a fresh 
 result of historical and critical investigation, would 
 be seen and hailed as from a watch-tower long before 
 the lower levels of intelligence had caught its gleams, 
 if there are any places in a civilized country where 
 an original thinker would be sure to find an asylum 
 from the prejudices of ignorance or the clamour of 
 interested malice, surely, we should say, it must be the 
 Universities and schools of learning. Whether it be 
 so in our day or no, I will not venture to say, but, 
 looking to the past, experience unfortunately often 
 belies such an expectation. Too often it has been 
 just in these places that the stolid inertia of custom 
 has been slowest to overcome, too often it has been 
 into these retreats that the light of new thought 
 has taken longest to penetrate, and there that the 
 pioneers of science and speculation have found the 
 coldest welcome or have met with jealous suspicion 
 or persistent neglect. To take a single remarkable 
 instance from the history of science in our own
 
 102 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 country, forty years after the publication of Newton's 
 great work, the Cartesian system, it is said, was still 
 taught as the only true one at the English Universities, 
 and in his own University of Cambridge he did not 
 live to see his doctrines introduced. 
 
 Such too, and in a still more aggravated form, was 
 the experience of Galileo. The fame indeed of his 
 great discoveries spread far and wide, and attracted 
 crowds, amongst whom were numbered distinguished 
 men from Germany, from France, from the Low 
 Countries and elsewhere, to his lecture-room ; and 
 not a few men of science followed the example of 
 Kepler who, with magnanimous superiority to all 
 personal jealousy of a rival in his own special pro- 
 vince, wrote with enthusiasm that Galileo had by his 
 discoveries given evidence of the divinity of his genius, 
 and reprinted the Sidereus Nuncius in which they 
 were given to the world, with a preface in which 
 he expressed his conviction of the truth and value of 
 the new telescopic observations. But in his own 
 country the professors of science in the Universities 
 almost universally refused to recognize his discoveries, 
 and not a few did their best to discredit them. 
 
 Nor is it difficult to understand the reason of 
 their hostility. Vulgar jealousy of a brilliant rival 
 might act on some minds, but the secret of the 
 opposition was in most cases much deeper. Galileo 
 was not simply the discoverer of a few new facts
 
 GALILEO. 103 
 
 and phenomena, which might be incorporated into 
 their old system of teaching ; at one stroke he 
 destroyed their whole stock in trade, and forced 
 them, should they accept his theories, to begin the 
 world anew. The Aristotelian method and the 
 Aristotelian physics, or rather, these interpreted and 
 overlaid by the authoritative dogmatism of the 
 scholastic doctors, had for long been in undisputed 
 possession of the Universities. And that method was 
 one which almost entirely exempted its adherents 
 from the toilsome work of observation and the 
 patient study of nature. Principles of sweeping 
 generality were either assumed, or accepted on the 
 evidence of a few imperfect and unsifted observa- 
 tions; and from these, as from mathematical definitions 
 and axioms, the whole body of the accepted scientific 
 conclusions were derived. The circle, e.g. it was laid 
 down, is the most perfect figure, therefore the move- 
 ments of the heavenly bodies must all be performed 
 in exact circles and with uniform motion. If any 
 observed facts seem to conflict with this dogma, they 
 must not be allowed to suggest any doubt of the 
 principle of circularity, but recourse must be had to 
 intricate combinations of circular motion to preserve 
 the alleged ideal perfection. Motions, again, it was 
 said, are either natural or unnatural. The natural 
 motion of fire and light bodies is upwards, of heavy 
 bodies downwards, therefore the latter seek the earth.
 
 104 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 The heavens, according to another dogma, are un- 
 changeable; for change is either generation or cor- 
 ruption, which implies contrariety. But the celestial 
 motions being circular admit of no contrariety, and 
 are therefore incorruptible and unchangeable. 
 
 No wonder that to men habituated to this short 
 and easy way of developing nature out of their in- 
 ternal consciousness, Galileo's discoveries should come 
 with a shock of surprise and alarm. It was not in 
 human nature to hear calmly the inflated system of 
 sounding generalizations and dogmatic assertions with 
 which their intellectual life was identified, treated as 
 an illusion, to see it suddenly collapse before the 
 incisive assaults of the teacher of the new learning, 
 and to be told that they must renounce all this parade 
 of fictitious knowledge, and seek to enter anew the 
 kingdom of science, as little children. 
 
 But it was not merely the opposition of science, 
 falsely so called, that Galileo had to encounter. The 
 simple conflict of truth with error and baseless assump- 
 tion could not have been long continued or of uncertain 
 issue. But his discoveries brought him into collision 
 with a more dangerous foe, and one with whom for 
 him the struggle proved to be a very unequal one. 
 All light is on the side of true religion, but history 
 shows that all light is not on the side of the Church. 
 In the case before us, the particular results of Galileo's 
 investigations, and the spirit and tendency of the
 
 GALILEO. 105 
 
 method by which he prosecuted them, placed him 
 in antagonism to the ecclesiastical authorities of his 
 time. At first blush experimental science and theo- 
 logy would appear to belong to provinces so inde- 
 pendent as to preclude all collision between them. 
 Whether the earth goes round the sun or the sun 
 round the earth, whether the orbits of the planets 
 are circular or elliptic, whether Venus and Mars 
 shine always full-orbed or exhibit phases like the 
 moon, and the like questions; and, on the other hand, 
 what is the true doctrine of the Trinity, whether 
 justification is by faith or works, whether " grace " 
 is pre-venient or co-operative, whether there are two 
 sacraments or seven, whether the Pope is Peter's 
 successor and the infallible head of the Church or 
 Antichrist and the Man of Sin these are classes 
 of questions pertaining to things so incommensurate, 
 so incapable of comparison or relation that, it would 
 seem, any possible belief might be held in the one 
 province without clashing with any opinion or belief 
 in the other. Not only personal piety and morality, 
 but thorough orthodoxy in one's ecclesiastical creed, 
 would seem to be quite unaffected by ignorance or 
 wrongheadedness in science; and, on the other hand, 
 a heretic in theology might, for all that appears, 
 be a man of accurate and comprehensive scientific 
 conceptions. Galileo's telescopic discoveries were de- 
 monstratively confirmatory of the Copernican system
 
 106 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of the physical universe, and he himself knew them 
 to be so ; but why should he, a sincere Catholic 
 though he was, have had any more difficulty in avow- 
 ing his belief in the Copernican system than his belief 
 in the rule of three ? 
 
 The answer is, that though scientific errors and 
 moral "and religious aberrations do indeed belong to 
 wholly different categories, though neither merit nor 
 blame in the forum of conscience can attach to the 
 conclusions to which a scientific investigator is led, 
 yet in the case before us, as in many others in its 
 history, the Church has gone out of its way to 
 create artificial sins, and by attaching moral and 
 spiritual responsibility to convictions with which the 
 conscience has nothing to do, by dragging into the 
 province of religion, principles and beliefs which have 
 no relation to piety opinions concerning physical 
 facts, questions of chronology and historic criticism, 
 of dates, names, matters of bibliographic curiosity- 
 theological authorities in all ages have done what they 
 could to confuse men's moral and religious perceptions 
 and to lay snares for weak consciences. Astronomical 
 conceptions have no connection with piety or morality, 
 but the current interpretation of Scripture sanctioned 
 by the authority of the Church was inconsistent with 
 the Copernican system, and its adherents must be 
 prosecuted as enemies of religion. All theologians, 
 Catholic and Protestant, have long found it possible
 
 GALILEO. 107 
 
 to reject the doctrine that our earth is the immovable 
 centre of the universe about which the other heavenly 
 bodies revolve, and at the same time to believe in 
 the divine inspiration of a book whose language, 
 literally construed, sanctions that doctrine. They 
 have long ceased to perceive any contradiction be- 
 tween a theological doctrine which makes man and 
 his world of infinite worth in the sight of God, and 
 an astronomical doctrine which dwarfs this earth to 
 the position of a minor planet in the solar system, 
 itself but an insignificant member of the system of 
 worlds and stars and suns that people the immeasur- 
 able depths of space. 
 
 But in Galileo's time it was not so. How, it 
 was thought, could man pretend to believe that 
 the sun rises and sets, and returns to his place, 
 like " a strong man rejoicing to run a race," as 
 Holy Writ tells us, or to accept Joshua's miracle 
 in which that orb is made to stand still, or Isaiah's 
 in which he " returns ten degrees by which degrees 
 he was gone down," when yet they aver their belief 
 that the sun never moves at all ? How could men 
 continue believers in the cosmogony of Genesis, 
 which, interpreted according to its plain meaning, 
 makes this earth of ours the first work of creative 
 power, and then rears over it the vault of heaven, 
 with a sun and moon and stars whose only function is 
 to give light to it ; or again, in that great order of
 
 108 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 redemption which ascribes infinite grandeur and im- 
 portance to man and the scene of his existence, whilst 
 yet they taught a blasphemous theory which makes 
 the earth no more important than a single fluttering 
 leaf in a boundless forest or a tiny drop in the 
 immeasurable ocean ? It is not difficult to under- 
 stand that, before theologians had found a way of 
 readjusting the relations of Scripture and science, 
 such considerations as these should give rise to serious 
 alarm in the minds of ecclesiastical persons ; how that 
 alarm should spread to what we would now call " the 
 religious public"; how it should gradually gather 
 head till it became a demand that the rash thinker 
 should be dealt with by the Church Courts ; and 
 finally formulated itself in a charge of heresy and 
 a demand for recantation under the threat of serious 
 temporal penalties. 
 
 I cannot tax your patience by any detailed narrative 
 of the remaining incidents of Galileo's life. They are 
 for the most part simply a story of misspent energies. 
 of great intellectual power diverted from its proper 
 work, of a mind compelled to waste in fierce and futile 
 strife with theological obscurantists the great powers 
 whose natural vocation lay in the peaceful fields of 
 science. In an evil hour for himself, tempted by the 
 prospect of increased emolument and greater leisure 
 for research, he exchanged his position under the pro- 
 tection of the Republic of Venice, and its atmosphere
 
 GALILEO. 109 
 
 of political independence and intellectual freedom, for 
 a place at the Court of Tuscany, where ecclesiastical 
 prejudices and influences gave its tone to the social 
 atmosphere, and where he was comparatively defence- 
 less against the machinations of the enemies of free 
 enquiry and the ghostly terrors of the Inquisition. 
 Galileo had no inclination for theological controversy. 
 The results of research he was content to give to the 
 world and let them stand for what they were worth, 
 judged by a purely scientific standard. Whatever 
 else was true, they were true, and it was the business 
 of others to adjust them to their preconceived notions. 
 There have been, perhaps there still may be found in 
 the scientific world, men of a different temperament 
 men who are never so happy as when they are setting 
 theologians by the ears, whose delight it is to wound 
 theological susceptibilities, to seize on some fact or 
 theory that seems to conflict with traditional religious 
 beliefs and to flaunt it in its most offensive aspect before 
 the eyes of indignant ecclesiastics. To make sport for 
 the profane and gain a cheap notoriety by such 
 undignified tricks was altogether foreign to the calm, 
 reverent, religious spirit of the great natural philo- 
 sopher. But in his own despite he was dragged into 
 the atmosphere of theological strife, and compelled to 
 waste the rest of his life in vain attempts to reconcile 
 the irreconcilable, to show the consistency of unquestion- 
 able scientific facts with impossible theological dogmas.
 
 110 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Aiid here too, as in similar cases, it was not the wiser 
 heads, but the camp-followers of the Church, that forced 
 on the controversy. There were many cultured ecclesi- 
 astics, and amongst them the highest dignitaries of the 
 Church, who had sufficient intelligence and sympathy 
 with science to be by no means sure of their own 
 traditional stand-point, if not to have the secret con- 
 viction that on the matter in hand the truth lay on 
 the side of the man of science. These therefore would 
 gladly have avoided a conflict whose dangerous 
 character they more than half-divined. But, as often 
 happens, ignorance and fanaticism forced the hands of 
 wary and astute leaders, and the attack on scientific 
 freedom was begun by the class of persons in which 
 zeal is generally least tempered with discretion. 
 
 A Dominican monk, we are told, mounted the pulpit 
 and preached a declamatory tirade against the new 
 learning on a text in which prophetic inspiration had 
 wonderfully anticipated the very name and pursuits of 
 the impious astronomer, " Ye men of Galilee, why stand 
 ye gazing up into heaven." By a conclave of people of 
 this sort, the mind of a weak but jealous lady of high 
 rank, the mother of the Grand Duke, was inflamed 
 with prejudice against the anti-scriptural doctrine of 
 the double motion of the earth ; and at length the 
 mind of the religious public became so charged with 
 suspicion that Galileo was constrained to abandon his 
 attitude of reserve, and to attempt in a published letter
 
 GALILEO. HI 
 
 to prove at once the scientific truth and the theological 
 harmlessness of the Copernican system. In this letter 
 he discusses the question of the relations of Scripture 
 and science with great clearness and force, and he 
 rests his case on arguments to which, whatever their 
 cogency, modern controversy on this subject has added 
 little. But Galileo might have spared his pains. No 
 matter how solid the basis of fact on which his 
 conclusions were founded, no matter how vigorous his 
 deductions and irrefragable his logic, no matter how 
 profound and sincere his deference for Scripture, and 
 even his submission to the authority of the Church in 
 its own province, the controversy was now removed 
 to a region, as it was soon to be submitted to the 
 decision of a tribunal, where fact and reason, clear 
 demonstration and felicitous expression when opposed 
 to foregone conclusions and the intolerance of ignorance, 
 are of no more force than sharp arrows shot against 
 a mud wall. I am compelled by the limits of this 
 lecture to omit all intervening incidents, and to con- 
 clude by a brief reference to the well-known story of 
 his final appearance before the great ecclesiastical 
 tribunal of those days the Holy Inquisition. 
 
 Recent historical investigation has done much to 
 modify the long received story of Galileo's trial, and 
 to strip away something of the glory which popular 
 estimation for a time rendered to him as the most 
 illustrious of the " martyrs of science." The long
 
 112 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 current story represented the man of science, old and 
 feeble in body, but dauntless and intrepid in spirit, 
 thrown into the prisons of the Inquisition ; then, when 
 brought forth, with noble fortitude avowing and de- 
 fending the impugned doctrine of the earth's motion 
 before his judges, remaining steadfast even when his 
 feeble frame was stretched on the rack, till at last, 
 when flesh and blood could bear no more, he promises 
 to recant ; and even then, when, broken and crushed 
 by physical torture, he has been compelled, kneeling 
 before his persecutors, and clothed ignominiously in 
 a penitential garb, to utter the form of recantation, 
 he has scarce risen from his knees till the famous 
 words, " But it still moves," break from his lips in 
 mockery of the solemn farce that had just been 
 enacted. Lastly, to fill up the horrors of the popular 
 story, he is condemned to be deprived of sight, and 
 thrown again to languish out life, blind and mangled, 
 in the dungeons of the Inquisition. 
 
 Bad, however, as the true story is, the greater part 
 of these material horrors are the mere accretions which 
 the popular imagination has gathered round it. In the 
 form to which criticism has reduced it, it tells worse 
 for Galileo, and somewhat better for his persecutors. 
 Whether from the interposition of powerful friends, 
 or from the fact that his astute judges knew their 
 man, and saw that in his case physical torture was 
 superfluous, he was treated during the whole course of
 
 GALILEO. H3 
 
 the trial with marked external consideration. He was 
 allowed to remain with his friends, save for a short 
 interval when the rules of the Holy Office rendered 
 his presence imperative, and even then, instead of a 
 dungeon, he was lodged in a comfortable suite of 
 apartments, attended by his own servant. Even after 
 his condemnation, the sentence of imprisonment was 
 very laxly interpreted, and it ultimately became 
 nothing more serious than his being interned on 
 parole within certain limits, and he passed the last 
 years of his life in a villa of his own in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Florence, and in the society of his friends 
 and pupils. 
 
 But, stript though it be of the more repulsive 
 adjuncts, the real degradation and pitifulness of the 
 story remains in substance the same. On the one 
 hand we have an odious spiritual despotism invading 
 the sanctuary of thought, and exacting a verbal 
 renunciation of convictions which it could never really 
 overturn, and, by intimidation, forcing a man of great 
 intellect but feeble resolution to stain his soul with 
 falsehood. And, on the other hand, there is the sad 
 spectacle of intellectual strength combined with moral 
 weakness ; of a mind of the highest order, rich in the 
 results of a life of thought and research, stooping to 
 let all go truth, freedom, self-respect, his own honour 
 and that of science implicated with it to overshadow 
 the lustre of a noble and blameless life for the sake 
 
 H
 
 114 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of personal safety, and at the bidding of a rancorous 
 confraternity of priests. " I abjure, curse and detest 
 the false opinion that the sun is the centre of the 
 world and immovable, and that the earth is not the 
 centre of the world and moves ; and I swear that I 
 will never assert verbally or in writing anything that 
 might furnish a suspicion of return to the foresaid 
 errors and heresies, so help me God and these Holy 
 Gospels which I touch with my hands." Such were 
 some of the words with which one whose name is 
 among the greatest in the annals of science dimmed 
 for ever the splendour of its fame. 
 
 It says something for the indomitable spirit of the 
 man, as well as for the irrepressibleness of his scien- 
 tific instinct, that, after this, he could still find 
 consolation in his former pursuits. But the spring 
 of his intellectual life was paralyzed. He dragged 
 out his few remaining years in weariness of spirit, 
 and amidst gradually increasing physical infirmities, 
 yet not without the alleviation afforded by the rever- 
 ence and kindly ministrations of friends and pupils, 
 who clung to him to the last. His desire that his 
 remains should rest in the burial-vault of his family 
 in the Church of Santa Croce at Florence was for a 
 time frustrated by the papal authorities, who warned 
 the Grand Duke that his reputation for piety would 
 suffer if he permitted the dying wish of a convicted 
 heretic to be gratified. It was not till well-nigh a
 
 GALILEO. 115 
 
 century had elapsed, and the world had come to know 
 how little Popes and Grand Dukes can arrest the 
 progress of truth, or the honour due to its discoverers, 
 that Galileo's remains were removed from an obscure 
 resting-place to the spot where he wished to lie. 
 There are few cities which possess so much historical 
 interest, so many attractions for the lover of art, so 
 much in its stately palaces, its venerable churches, 
 its monuments dedicated to immortal names, to touch 
 the springs of association that link the present to the 
 past. But if we know how to forget the faults of 
 human weakness in our admiration for genius and 
 gratitude for invaluable contributions to human know- 
 ledge, there is no spot in the fair capital of Tuscany 
 to which the visitor will feel his steps drawn by a 
 purer and profounder intellectual interest than that 
 over which an inscription tells him that he stands on 
 Galileo's grave. 
 
 The benefit which the modern student of science 
 derives from the labours of any of its great pioneers 
 is, for the most part, an indirect one. It reaches him, 
 not through the study of their works, but through 
 the impulse which they gave to the new direction of 
 human enquiry, the new method of investigation they 
 struck out, and the spirit of patient and untiring 
 devotion to the study of nature which the cultivators 
 of science in all succeeding generations have inherited
 
 116 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 from them. For physical science differs from some 
 other departments of human attainment in this respect, 
 that here the results of individual effort are rapidly 
 superseded and rendered obsolete. A great work of 
 art is never antiquated. The poetry, painting, sculp- 
 ture of one generation is not superseded by that of 
 the next, nor is there any such law of progressiveness 
 in literature and art as makes it necessary that the 
 achievements of a later should transcend in value 
 those of an earlier time. The works of the poets and 
 historians not only of the past literature of our own 
 country, but of far distant periods of human civilization, 
 are still in our hands, their names are daily on our 
 lips, our most skilled critics spend their lives in 
 eliciting their meaning, their works remain both in 
 substance and form a permanent intellectual possession 
 of the world. 
 
 It is different with the works of even the greatest 
 contributors to science. Their books are not read. 
 Sometimes their researches, in so far as they were 
 really valuable, have been valuable chiefly as stepping- 
 stones to greater discoveries; sometimes they have 
 been proved by subsequent investigation to be only 
 approximations to truth, provisional hypotheses which 
 have been superseded by more accurate and compre- 
 hensive generalizations. Even in the case of those 
 great discoveries which, like most of Galileo's, remain 
 permanent contributions to our knowledge of nature,
 
 GALILEO. H7 
 
 the form in which they were first propounded has 
 often been greatly improved on by the labours of later 
 though perhaps inferior minds, to whose works alone 
 the modern student owes his acquaintance with them. 
 How many pages of the sixteen volumes of Galileo's 
 works are read in a year by the whole scientific 
 world of the present day ? Who now reads Kepler's 
 Commentaries on Mars ? How many English mathe- 
 maticians and physicists are acquainted with their 
 great fellow-countryman's investigations in the form in 
 which they were given to the world in the Principia ? 
 For all practical purposes the modern student gets 
 what is of permanent value in the past literature of 
 science in a simpler and clearer form, and with the 
 modifications suggested by subsequent research, in the 
 scientific manuals and text-books of our own day ; and 
 so whilst the latter are in everybody's hands, the dust 
 gathers undisturbed on the works of the masters. 
 
 But though in this sense the work of the great 
 pioneers of science has passed away, in another and 
 higher sense it still lives and can never perish. It 
 lives in our undying admiration and reverence for their 
 genius. It lives in the ever-accumulating succession of 
 discoveries in every department of scientific observation 
 to which their lives and labours gave the first impulse. 
 It lives in the intellectual discipline which in such 
 places of education as this thousands are yearly gaining 
 from the new instrument of human culture which they
 
 118 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 created. Far more important even than their own 
 discoveries is that awakening of the scientific spirit, 
 that new direction and systematic method of inves- 
 tigation, that eager devotion to scientific pursuits of 
 which they were the originators. 
 
 In this country we are accustomed to style Bacon, 
 the "father of the Inductive Philosophy," and to 
 honour him as the reviver of physical science and the 
 founder of a new method of enquiry. But even if 
 Bacon's claim to be the inventor of the logic of the 
 sciences were more undisputable than it is, it is to 
 mistake the province of philosophy to regard him as 
 the founder of any science, who is only the interpreter 
 of its logic. Neither in science, nor art, nor any 
 other sphere of human activity is it the province of 
 philosophy to create, but only to explain and rationalize 
 the already existing matter on which it operates. It 
 no more creates science than grammar creates language, 
 or rhetoric eloquence, or than anatomy and physiology 
 the power of digesting and using one's limbs. A single 
 great poem, one living creation of genius fresh from 
 the fount of inspiration would do more to rouse the 
 latent instinct of art and evoke in men's minds the 
 power of artistic production than all the aesthetic 
 philosophies and treatises on criticism that were ever 
 written. And in like manner, the true fathers of 
 inductive science are not those who either in former 
 days or in our own have expounded the logic of
 
 GALILEO. 119 
 
 induction, the principles and methods of scientific 
 investigation, but those who, even before the time of 
 Bacon, like Copernicus, and Kepler, and Galileo, and 
 our own countryman Gilbert, not merely talked about 
 discovery but discovered, not merely wrote eloquently 
 about the experimental method, but by their own 
 wonderful realization of it showed it to mankind in 
 living activity, and so started the scientific life of the 
 modern world. Bacon has been compared to the 
 Hebrew prophet who pointed out afar off the promised 
 land but was not himself permitted to enter therein. 
 But even before he assumed the mantle of prophecy, 
 Galileo and his contemporaries had by their own 
 labours and writings become the founders of the modern 
 sciences of Astronomy and Physics, of Mechanics, 
 Hydrostatics, and even of Electricity and Magnetism ; 
 and thus, not content with a distant survey of the 
 rich and fair domain, they had actually, as the leaders 
 of a noble and uncounted host of conquerors, gone 
 forth to take possession of the land. 
 
 But perhaps the most important element of that 
 intellectual inheritance which we owe to them is this, 
 that Galileo and the other revivers of science have 
 created for us a new instrument of culture, a discipline 
 of mind not less valuable in its own place than those 
 which philosophy and classical literature supply. 
 Why should theorists quarrel about the comparative 
 advantages of a classical and scientific education ?
 
 120 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Has not each of these its own function in the training 
 of man's intellectual nature ? Is there not room for 
 both in the process of culture ? In opposition to the 
 fanatical upholders alike of the old and the new means 
 of discipline, may we not maintain that both are best ? 
 It is surely but a cheap reputation for wisdom which 
 is to be got by declaiming in the style we often hear 
 against either by pointing out, on the one hand, the 
 folly of leaving a young man at the end of a long and 
 elaborate education ignorant as a savage of the con- 
 ditions and laws of the world in which he lives, and 
 making the net result of all his school and college 
 training the capacity to turn a neat copy of verses in 
 a dead language, or perhaps in many oases only to 
 spell out laboriously and inaccurately the meaning of a 
 classical author ; or, on the other hand, by telling us 
 that the human spirit has higher capacities than can 
 be fed by measuring heights and distances, arranging 
 and ticketing stones and beetles in a glass case, or 
 being able to tell that water is a mixture of hydrogen 
 and oxygen. Surely the question, to confine ourselves 
 to the point before us, which a wise man should ask 
 is, whether in the study of the sciences of observation 
 and experiment there is a kind of training for human 
 intelligence which is not to be got elsewhere or no- 
 where else so thoroughly and systematically ? 
 
 It would be vain in the closing sentences of a lecture 
 to enter on a subject so wide as the disciplinary function
 
 GALILEO. 121 
 
 of the study of physical science. But this, at least, I 
 may find room to say, that whether a similar discipline 
 may in some measure be found in other studies or not, 
 it is unquestionable that in this study we are furnished 
 with a means of gaining intellectual strength and pre- 
 paration for the educated man's career in life such as it 
 would be foolish to neglect. We are not all, or even 
 the majority of us, to be men of science, but we all 
 need the intellectual habits which the faithful study 
 of science tends to foster. We are not all endowed 
 with the same natural gifts, but more even than 
 original capacity what distinguishes one man from 
 another, and determines the greater or less success 
 with which he shall play his part in the work of life, 
 is the keenness and accuracy of his powers of observa- 
 tion, the practised ability to grasp the meaning of 
 facts and to weigh the force of evidence. Half the 
 weakness and perversity in the world arises from 
 men's inability to see what is before their eyes, and the 
 other half mainly from their incapacity to discern the 
 meaning of what they see. In the business of life, in 
 all spheres of human activity, there are multitudes 
 who are the slaves of their eyes, the passive victims of 
 outward impressions who have never learned to fix 
 their attention, who overlook half of what they see, or 
 think they see what they do not see, or confound with 
 what they have seen what they only imagine, or what 
 other men tell them with an air of confidence that they
 
 122 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 have seen. There are multitudes who in the ever- 
 recurring exigencies of life when the call arises for 
 independent judgment or rapid decision and action, 
 from the lack of trained habits of observation and 
 inference, because, in other words, they have a reasoning 
 machine which has never been habituated to move 
 smoothly and rapidly are for all effective work weak 
 and useless. 
 
 Now just that intellectual lubrication, that rational 
 gymnastic which such minds need, is supplied 
 by a discipline in the methods, the problems, the 
 processes of physical science. And I will venture 
 to add that the true student of science will find 
 in it a school, not merely of intellectual, but, what 
 is even more valuable, of moral education. What 
 wise parent in quest of a good place of education 
 for his sou would hesitate in his choice if he 
 were told of a school where not only the best in- 
 struction was to be had, but where from day to day 
 the untrained mind would be exercised in habits of 
 patient industry, of exact and scrupulous regard for 
 truth, of self-renunciation, superiority to prejudice, 
 passion, self-will, of deference for unchangeable prin- 
 ciples, combined with manly independence and self- 
 reliance ? And just such is the school for human 
 intelligence which the study of nature offers us. For 
 here, in the reading of her lessons, we may daily find 
 at once that which tasks our utmost powers of patient
 
 GALILEO. 123 
 
 attention and most richly rewards the effort. Here 
 we are in the presence of a teacher who demands the 
 most rigorous exactitude, and yet who strips toil of its 
 painfulness by the wonder and delight of the lessons 
 we learn. Here we practically discover how sub- 
 mission is the pathway to freedom, renunciation to 
 true power and greatness. In the contemplation of 
 laws which our individual opinion can never alter 
 or modify, we learn the necessity of renouncing 
 prejudice and preconception, and yielding ourselves 
 up with absolute submission to the revelations of an 
 infallible authority ; and yet, at the same time, by the 
 awakened and ever-unfolding consciousness of a reason 
 within us which is in sympathy with the ever-present 
 reason and thought, the ordered sequence, harmony 
 and beauty which we discern without us, and which at 
 every new advance we make, flashes forth in fuller 
 effulgence from behind the veil of the visible ; by this 
 response of thought to thought and reason to reason, 
 we learn to know something of the essential grandeur 
 of our own nature, as sharing in that universal intel- 
 ligence of which nature and all material things are but 
 the partial and imperfect manifestation.
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 
 
 November 20, 1880. 
 
 IN the addresses which I have delivered in former 
 sessions I have tried to bring before you some 
 typical specimens of the career of the scholar, the 
 man of letters, the philosopher, the man of science 
 of those who in various departments of study have 
 been our forerunners in the life of thought. Last 
 session, as some of you may remember, I endeavoured 
 to delineate the character and labours of one of the 
 greatest of the pioneers of modern science. To-day I 
 shall ask you to contemplate with me for a little 
 the life and labours of one who, though neither a 
 man of science nor a philosopher, strictly so called, 
 has been long regarded as fulfilling a function common, 
 in some sense, to both provinces, that, as it may be 
 described, of the Philosopher of Science. It is only 
 indeed in a very limited sense that this title can be 
 claimed for the author of the Novum Organum and the 
 De Augmentis Scientiarum ; for the relation of philo- 
 
 124
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON, 125 
 
 sophy to science embraces problems of a kind with 
 which the peculiar genius of Lord Bacon did not 
 lead him to grapple. But to him has been long 
 ascribed the honour of being the first to investigate 
 and expound the logic of science, the principles and 
 methods of investigation which the inductive sciences 
 call into play, and to the employment of which their 
 wonderful progress during the last two centuries is 
 to be traced. It is on this special ground that he 
 has been styled Founder of the Inductive Philosophy ; 
 and if he really achieved what he has thus been 
 credited with, even though the profounder and more 
 comprehensive task of unfolding the speculative prin- 
 ciples on which the methodology of the sciences is 
 based lay beyond his reach, to that name he would 
 justly be entitled. But whatever view we may take 
 of the precise value of Bacon's labours, there can be 
 no question that there are few names which represent 
 subjects of thought of deeper and wider interest for 
 the modern student, or from the study of which even 
 an unskilled hand may more easily gather some profit- 
 able lessons. 
 
 My subject, then, to-day is the " Life and Works 
 of Lord Bacon." If Bacon's character forms still 
 one of the unsettled problems of history, it is 
 certainly not for lack of materials for its solution. 
 His voluminous scientific writings supply to all com- 
 petent critics an ample measure of his powers on that
 
 126 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 side of them on which his reputation chiefly rests; 
 and if from works of a purely scientific nature we 
 gain little insight into the personal character of their 
 author, Bacon has not only written largely on subjects 
 ethical, social, political, theological, in which the moral 
 and spiritual nature is apt more or less clearly to 
 reveal itself, but there is almost no other notable 
 character in modern history on which the fierce light 
 of critical investigation has been so fully concentrated. 
 Not only has every act of his public life been examined 
 with exhaustive scrutiny by biographers and historians, 
 sympathetic and hostile; but, owing to one of his 
 characteristic tendencies, he has lent himself to their 
 purposes as few other public men have done. 
 
 Private letters and diaries are not always trustworthy 
 exponents of character. Many men posture artificially, 
 even in their familiar correspondence, and the moral 
 sentiments and pious meditations of secret journals 
 are not seldom composed with a half-conscious view 
 to posthumous reputation and the purposes of the 
 biographer. But, not to speak at present of Bacon's 
 letters, it is impossible to doubt that his private note- 
 books and journals are a genuine self-revelation. His 
 cool, reticent nature cut him oft from intimate personal 
 relations with others, and through his long life of 
 manifold social activities, he never had a single living 
 confidant. But it was Bacon's constant habit, not 
 indeed to think aloud, but to soliloquize pen in hand.
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 127 
 
 His views of men and things, what he thought of 
 people he was daily associating with, hints for con- 
 versation at table, impromptus elaborately got up to 
 be introduced on fitting occasions, suggestions for 
 utilizing the idiosyncrasies of notable people, and 
 playing on the weaknesses of placemen, statesmen, 
 royal favourites, male and female, and even for the 
 proper mixture of deference and freedom to suit the 
 taste of royalty itself, all this and much more, the 
 sort of thing which most men would scarcely care to 
 acknowledge to their own consciousness, Bacon sets 
 down with undisguised simplicity in black and white. 
 Surely never did human being submit his soul to more 
 microscopic inspection, or more deliberately help the 
 world to know all the littlenesses as well as the great- 
 ness of his nature. 
 
 Ample, however, as are the materials for a critical 
 estimate of Bacon's character and life, their very 
 abundance and variety has proved embarrassing to his 
 critics. There can be no question that the fame of 
 Bacon has suffered not a little from the fact that his 
 career, in the multiplicity and variety of the details of 
 it which have reached us, has presented a tempting 
 subject to the lovers of paradox. From Pope, who 
 never scrupled to sacrifice a character to an epigram, 
 and whose chief delight it was to sum up a man's 
 life and being in a ringing couplet or a smart 
 antithesis, to Macaulay, who seldom can portray a
 
 128 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 character without intensifying the lights and deepen- 
 ing the shadows, in order to produce the necessary 
 effects for a clever review article, Bacon's life has 
 been a favourite study for scene-painting biographers. 
 It is always easier to paint a monster than, neither 
 flattering nor setting down aught in malice, to give us 
 the genuine portraiture of a man. Nor, indeed, can it 
 be questioned that at first sight there is much in 
 Bacon's many-sided character and history which lends 
 itself to the hand of a limner to whom the former 
 sort of work is congenial. 
 
 Bacon the philosopher of science, the author of the 
 De Augmentis and Novwm Organum, and Bacon the 
 lawyer, politician, courtier; Bacon the high priest of 
 nature, the herald of the new era of knowledge, 
 inspired with a noble intellectual ardour, leading 
 mankind back from the paths of error, and pointing 
 the way to the kingdom of light and truth, and 
 Bacon the subtle courtier, the ambitious, eager place- 
 hunter, stooping to be jostled among the herd of 
 time-servers and political lackeys in the courts of 
 Elizabeth and James I. seem to be not one man 
 but two. In the one aspect of him we behold an 
 intelligence of the highest order, conceiving and 
 steadily pursuing all through life a project far in 
 advance of his time, for the reorganization of the whole 
 field of human knowledge ; in the other aspect we 
 seem to see the same intelligence busying itself with
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 129 
 
 the petty aims and struggles of the pushing political 
 adventurer, restlessly contriving how to supplant rivals, 
 to curry favour with the dispensers of patronage, to 
 secure a place if even in the very outskirts of the 
 sphere of office and court favour, rejoicing in the 
 faintest recognition of royalty of royalty in the person 
 of a vain pedant, " the wisest fool in Christendom," 
 and of a woman who combined, in advanced years, the 
 watchful jealousy of a despot with the waywardness of 
 a youthful coquette. View him. only as a thinker, 
 and all the qualities that attract reverence for intel- 
 lectual greatness enthusiastic ardour in the pursuit 
 of truth, penetrating and prophetic insight, grasp and 
 comprehensiveness of mind, and a certain noble 
 audacity of speculation and irrepressible confidence in 
 human progress meet the eye. View him only as 
 an actor on the stage of public life, at one of the most 
 corrupt periods of England's political history, and it is 
 possible to see in him only a clever, pliant man of 
 the world, inspired with a somewhat vulgar ambition 
 for the good things of life, yielding to the contam- 
 inating influences of the time, cold and somewhat 
 faithless in his friendships, identifying himself with 
 the measures of rulers conspicuous for their meanness, 
 duplicity, and cruelty, and sacrificing his own self- 
 respect, if not for worldly gain, at least to serve the 
 ends of people who were not worthy, and whom he must 
 have known not to be worthy, to untie his shoe-latchet.
 
 130 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Such, or something like this, are the materials 
 from which it has been possible to produce the 
 picture, full of coarsely-drawn contrasts, of glaring 
 lights and ink-black shadows, Hyperion and Satyr 
 combined, which popular writers have offered to us 
 as the faithful representation of the character of 
 Bacon. Even were it nearer the truth than it is, it 
 is difficult to understand the strange zest which these 
 writers seem to feel in exposing the weaknesses and 
 inconsistencies of a great nature, and in ferreting out 
 every obscure and doubtful detail by which the proof 
 of his supposed infamy can be strengthened. There 
 are those, indeed, who can find consolation for their 
 own littleness in the failings of an exalted inind, and 
 whose delight in this sort of morbid anatomy is not 
 to be wondered at ; but surely for those who, by their 
 own acknowledgment, find in Bacon " the most ex- 
 quisitely constructed intellect that has ever been 
 bestowed on any of the children of men," the worthier 
 attitude would be, instead of airing one's wit and 
 fancy and fine-writing over the inconsistencies of 
 greatness, if possible, to ignore and forget them, if 
 not, to speak of them with a regret too profound 
 for flippancy. 
 
 "If such a man there be, 
 Who would not mourn that Atticus were he ? " 
 
 It is not my purpose, nor would it be possible 
 within the limits of a single lecture, to bring before
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 131 
 
 you the arguments and the evidence on which they 
 rest, which, as they are set forth in Mr. Spedding's 
 elaborate biography, have shaken, if not altogether 
 subverted, the unfavourable view of Bacon's character 
 with which brilliant but superficial writers had pos- 
 sessed the popular mind. It is Bacon's philosophy, or 
 his character and merits as a scientific teacher, of 
 which at present I desire specially to treat. Accord- 
 ingly I shall content myself with a few remarks, first, 
 on the relation of the character and life of Bacon to 
 his philosophy ; and, secondly, on that philosophy 
 itself, its merits and results. 
 
 I. In reflecting on the bearing of Bacon's life on 
 his philosophy, the question naturally suggests itself, 
 whether his achievements as a philosopher would have 
 been greater had his life been wholly devoted to 
 philosophy. He was anything but a secluded thinker 
 with no vocation but that of scientific investigation. 
 If science, as he himself asserts, was his mistress, at 
 first sight he seems to have been but an inconstant 
 lover content, at least, with but brief and infrequent 
 interviews with the object of his adoration. His whole 
 life, with but occasional intervals, was spent in the 
 thick and throng of the world, amidst the exigencies 
 of professional and public duty. He was a hard- 
 working lawyer, first working his way by incessant 
 study and application into practice ; then acting as 
 professional adviser of the crown, and finally, as Keeper
 
 132 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of the Seals and Lord Chancellor, getting -through an 
 amount of business, and with an exactness and despatch 
 which were in his day unprecedented. He was a 
 leading Member of Parliament, taking an active share 
 in the discussion of all important public measures. 
 He was a courtier whose time and thought were at the 
 disposal of officials and of a royal master and mistress 
 whose caprices and humours made the pursuit of court 
 favour and preferment anything but a sinecure. From 
 all these vocations and the various social demands 
 involved in them, it was but fragments of his time and 
 fag-ends of his thought which he could secure for 
 literature and science. And yet in literature and 
 science he worked harder and produced more than 
 most men who have nothing else to do. Whatever 
 the final verdict of criticism on the value of his 
 philosophical and scientific labours, there can be no 
 question that his productiveness as a writer was 
 incessant and far beyond that of most men whose 
 sole vocation was study, and that, whether his fame be 
 justly earned or no, he achieved, and has long retained, 
 the splendid reputation of the founder of the inductive 
 philosophy, and as such, of the greatest contributor to 
 the intellectual progress of mankind in modern times. 
 Regarding him, then, as a thinker and writer, was 
 all this professional and public work sheer waste or 
 malversation of intellectual power ? Must we regret 
 that so tine an instrument was set to do work so
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 133 
 
 coarse and unsuitable ? Would he have done more 
 and to more purpose in his proper calling of thinker 
 and writer, if he had had nothing to do but think and 
 write ? Now there can be no doubt that for most 
 minds of average, or even more than average ability, it 
 is a wise advice to say, Find out your work and stick 
 to it. There are many whose career has been marred 
 or frustrated either by missing their true vocation, or 
 by scattering their energies so as to achieve poor and 
 partial success in several lines, rather than much or 
 great success in one. The old story of the dilettante 
 peer who was, at best, only a philosopher among lords 
 and a lord among philosophers is often repeated. Was 
 Bacon, then, one of these instances of misdirected 
 energy ? 
 
 If we are to take his own word for it, the answer 
 would undoubtedly be that he was. " Many errors," 
 says he (Life, iii. 253), "I do willingly acknowledge, 
 and amongst the rest this great one that led the 
 rest : that knowing myself by inward calling to be 
 better fitted to hold a book than to play a part, I have 
 led my life in civil causes for which I was not very 
 fit by nature, and more unfit by preoccupation of 
 mind." And again, in a prayer which he composed 
 towards the close of his life, he confesses that " the 
 talent of gifts and graces " which he had received he 
 had " not put where it might have made best profit," 
 but had " misspent in things for which he was least fit,
 
 134 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 so that he might truly say, ' My soul hath been a 
 stranger in the course of my pilgrimage.'" 
 
 Yet, it may be questioned whether in so writing 
 Bacon judged himself truly or from a correct estimate 
 of his own special aptitudes. At first sight it seems 
 to go without saying that undivided application to 
 study is most favourable to production. But, on the 
 other hand, there are men whose temperament is such 
 that activity of mind grows with the demands made 
 upon it. Within certain limits, the mental stimulation 
 of multifarious employments more than makes up for 
 the loss of time they involve ; and they do their very 
 best in one particular line, not when they can give 
 their whole time to it, but when they have many 
 other things to do. Moreover, for some minds at 
 least, the whet of society is indispensable in order to 
 the attainment of the right temper and use of their 
 powers. Men dream of the great things they would do if 
 they could only command unbroken leisure for thought 
 and study, but when the leisure comes the dream is 
 seldom realized. And this, if we have regard to 
 Bacon's special genius and capacities, would not 
 unlikely have been the result in his case, had his 
 longing, real or feigned, for escape from the toils of 
 business and society been gratified. For, as we shall 
 immediately attempt to show, his great strength as 
 a thinker lay, not in the region of philosophy and 
 speculation, but in that of practical ethics, and the
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 135 
 
 wisdom that is the outcome of much and varied 
 experience and contact with the world. It may seem 
 almost a heresy to say it, but I venture to affirm that 
 Bacon's greatest and most characteristic work is not 
 the De Angmentis, or the Novum Organum, or any 
 of his purely scientific writings, but the Essays, and 
 that even of his more ambitious works the most 
 valuable element is the many incidental remarks and 
 suggestions which constitute a kind of practical 
 worldly wisdom or philosophy of common life. 
 
 Whatever may be said of Bacon's capacity to be the 
 prophet of science, there can be but one opinion of his 
 genius for the office of practical philosopher and 
 professor of worldly wisdom. Nowhere perhaps in 
 all literature ancient or modern can we find any 
 other book which can be compared with Bacon's 
 Essays as a manual of that wisdom which consists 
 of the knowledge, not of man but of men their 
 tendencies, passions, prejudices, weaknesses ; nowhere 
 at any rate a book in which the whole experience 
 of a most sagacious observer of human life is repro- 
 duced in such brief compass, expressed in language 
 so packed with meaning, yet so sparkling with wit 
 and fancy, grave humour, picturesque metaphor, and 
 felicitous illustration. The Essays betray no talent 
 for abstract speculation. There is no attempt in them 
 at the exhaustive analysis of principles. The move- 
 ment of thought is analogical rather than logical. 

 
 136 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 They consist, for the most part, of miscellaneous 
 remarks on human conduct, on the motives, illusions, 
 self-deceptions, jealousies, ambitions, failures, successes, 
 of men in the various relations of life, of prudential 
 maxims, hints for the dexterous management of 
 individuals and classes, counsels for youth and age, 
 for the married and single, for parents and children, 
 suggestions for the attainment of success in life, and 
 consolations for the lack of it advices to all sorts 
 of people, sometimes profound, always sagacious and 
 sensible, set off by striking illustrations and apt 
 historic allusions, and couched in a form of expression, 
 quaint, pointed, picturesque, and in almost ever) 7 
 sentence having the stamp of a strong and original 
 nature upon it. 
 
 Now this obviously is a kind of philosophy which 
 is not to be learnt in lettered retirement, but only 
 through much converse with the world. If Bacon 
 had fled, as he often threatened to do, from the dis- 
 tractions of public life to the seclusion of a college 
 cloister, or to the solitude of his study and gardens 
 at Gorhambury, we might have gained more cum- 
 brous treatises on scientific method, and a fuller 
 elaboration of his vast yet impracticable scheme for 
 the reorganization of human knowledge ; but we 
 should never have possessed the less pretentious but, 
 in its own way, more genuine philosophy, the dis- 
 tilled essence of worldly wisdom and practical common
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 137 
 
 sense which is preserved for us in the pages of the 
 Essays. 
 
 II. I am warned by the lapse of time to omit what 
 further observations I had intended to offer on the 
 relation of Bacon's life to his philosophy, and must 
 now ask your attention for a few minutes to that 
 philosophy itself, its merits and defects. 
 
 The splendour of Bacon's fame as a philosophical 
 thinker and writer is due, in some measure at least, 
 to the fact that he reflects and represents the intellec- 
 tual spirit of his time. To say this is not to detract 
 from his just claim to honour, though it may abate 
 somewhat the exaggerated reverence which the popular 
 mind has long rendered to him as the originator of the 
 inductive method, and the founder of experimental 
 science. Even if the speculative value of his expo- 
 sition of the method of the sciences had been greater 
 than can now be conceded to it, to ascribe to him the 
 origination of that method and the impulse from 
 which the vast and brilliant results of scientific 
 investigation during the last two centuries have 
 emanated, is altogether to misconceive the nature of 
 the relation between science and what may be called 
 the philosophy of science. Philosophy is a later birth 
 of time than action, philosophical method is not the 
 parent but child of practical experience. The analysis 
 of an art, the unveiling of the intellectual process 
 which runs through and unconsciously regulates it,
 
 138 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 is no mean achievement, nor one which is barren of 
 practical results. But it is absurd to regard philo- 
 sophical method as the creator of the art itself, or the 
 guide to the right practice of it. Grammar comes 
 after speech, logic after reasoning, prosody after poetry. 
 Grammatical principles and rules may help children 
 to correct blunders of speech, rules of logic may some- 
 times assist us to detect, or at least to give formal 
 reasons for the exposure of paralogisms and fallacious 
 arguments ; rules of prosody may enable a boy to put 
 the proper number of syllables into a hexameter line 
 or to produce a technically correct copy of verses ; 
 but it would be ridiculous to say that the first philo- 
 sophic grammarian founded the art of correct speaking 
 and writing, that men first learnt from Aristotle how 
 to reason, or that the treasures of poetic genius which 
 the world possesses owe their origin to the man who 
 first elaborated the principles and rules of versification. 
 In all these cases men have acted before they began to 
 philosophize on their acting. It is as certain that the 
 power to practise an art and the actual experimental 
 exercise of that power must precede the investigating 
 and formulating of the principles that underlie it, as 
 that eating, drinking and digesting must precede 
 physiology, or that the exercise of the bodily functions 
 must precede anatomy. In point of fact (as has been 
 remarked), the age of the grammarians of classic liter- 
 ature was long subsequent to the time of its greatest
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 139 
 
 writers, nor can we suppose that Homer, or Sophocles, 
 or Aeschylus ever formally studied Greek grammar or 
 prosody, or that if they had done so, all their poetical 
 triumphs must be traced back, if such a man had 
 existed, to an early writer on the structure and 
 grammar of the Greek language and the formal rules 
 of fine writing. 
 
 And the same thing is true, mutatis mutandis, of 
 the relation between science and the philosophy of 
 science, between discovery and the reduction to rules 
 of the method of scientific investigation. It is the 
 scientific discoverer who comes first, and it is only 
 later, and following in the wake of his movements, 
 that the philosopher and logician gives speculative 
 development to those methods of investigation which, 
 by a kind of tact or instinct, the former has already 
 pursued. It is not Bacon, but Copernicus, Galileo, 
 Kepler, Gilbert, and others of that galaxy of experi- 
 mental investigators, who, in obedience to a common 
 impulse, had already, before Bacon took pen in hand, 
 practised with splendid success what he preached, 
 it is they who must be regarded as the true originators 
 of the great scientific revolution of the sixteenth 
 century, and the forerunners of Newton and Leibnitz 
 and Laplace, of Herschel and Faraday and Thomson, 
 of that great intellectual host who in modern times 
 have been the true interpreters of nature, and the prac- 
 tical asserters of man's dominion over her. To expound
 
 140 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the philosophy of nature and the principles of scientific 
 method is, as I have said, no mean achievement, and 
 it betrays prejudice and narrowness of mind in any 
 man of science if he slights or contemns it ; but the 
 province to which this achievement belongs is specu- 
 lative, not practical, and its influence on scientific 
 investigation and discovery is, at best, only indirect. 
 Even, therefore, if Bacon's attempt to methodize science, 
 and to unfold the principles and laws of scientific 
 investigation, had been perfectly successful, his claim 
 to be the creator and guide of scientific enquiry is of 
 precisely the same sort as would be the claim of a 
 writer on logic and rhetoric to be the inspirer and 
 guide of all the thinkers and orators whose writings 
 have not sinned against the laws of reason, or whose 
 eloquence has ever carried conviction to human 
 minds. 
 
 But we must now go on to remark that Bacon's 
 attempt to methodize science, judged by its own 
 merits, was far from successful. The Novum Organum 
 is, in many respects, a marvellous work to be produced 
 by a man whose own scientific knowledge was very 
 meagre, who was absolutely ignorant of mathematics 
 and of the principles and methods of the mathematical 
 sciences, and who never was at the pains to acquaint 
 himself with the labours of the great natural philo- 
 sophers of Italy and of his own country, and with the 
 results in the domain of mechanics and physical science
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 141 
 
 already attained by them. What a powerful and 
 comprehensive mind, fired with a genuine enthusiasm 
 for knowledge, and a general conception of the right 
 direction in which knowledge was to be sought, could 
 achieve from materials so inadequate, Bacon has here 
 accomplished. It was impossible for such a man to 
 write so largely, on whatever subject, and with what- 
 ever design, without writing much that is instructive 
 and interesting. And this great work is full of sage 
 remarks, of knowledge of the human mind both in its 
 weakness and its strength, and of acute incidental 
 observations on all sorts of subjects ; and it is 
 pervaded by a noble ardour and loftiness of spirit, a 
 grave yet intense enthusiasm for science, and a certain 
 prophetic faith in the intellectual future of humanity. 
 But, estimated from a strictly scientific point of 
 view, it has all the imperfection from which even the 
 greatest mind, working with inadequate preparation, 
 cannot escape. The method of scientific investigation 
 which it propounds is one which no man of science 
 has ever followed or could follow, the rules deduced 
 from it are impracticable, and the ends at which it 
 aims by the application of that method are chimerical 
 and illusory. Let me try very briefly to show that it 
 is so. Bacon's avowed aim, which in the Nomim 
 Organum he supposed himself to have realized, was to 
 furnish mankind with a new and infallible method of 
 discovery, by which the difficulties of scientific investi-
 
 142 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 gation should be, in a great measure, overcome, and 
 the whole field of knowledge at no distant day 
 explored. But the most striking advantage of this 
 supposed method or instrument of discovery was, as 
 its author conceived, that it would supersede inventive 
 genius in science, and, in the work of investigation, 
 confer on the most ordinary the same power with the 
 highest minds. When we attempt to draw a circle 
 with the unaided hand, the diversities of manual skill 
 come out in the result, but with a pair of compasses 
 all men can describe circles with equal exactitude, 
 and the skilled draftsman has no advantage over 
 others. So for his Novum Organum Bacon claimed 
 the extraordinary merit of endowing all men of 
 ordinary attention and industry with a capacity of 
 penetrating into nature's secrets which should leave 
 no room for disparities of intelligence. 
 
 It is needless to say that the history of scientific 
 discovery since his day has proved the futility of 
 any such notion as this levelling up or down of 
 intellectual differences in the domain of physical 
 enquiry. Great discoverers can no more be arti- 
 ficially manufactured than great poets or historians 
 or philosophers. In science, as in other depart- 
 ments of human activity, there is room for the 
 useful functions of the hewers of wood and drawers 
 of water, as well as for that of the higher and more 
 gifted intelligences ; but the distinction in the kind
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 143 
 
 and value of their work between these two classes 
 still remains, and if the last two centuries have been 
 signalized by the splendid advances which have been 
 made in all departments of physical enquiry, that 
 result is due mainly to the vast amount of intellect- 
 ual ability and application which science has called 
 forth. 
 
 But when we go on to consider what was Bacon's 
 conception of the nature of science and of the 
 problems which it seeks to solve, we are no longer 
 surprised at the artificial character of his method 
 and the exaggerated anticipations he entertained of 
 its success. If the system of nature were what Bacon 
 supposed it to be, it would be a comparatively easy 
 thing for the dullest mind, once possessed of the 
 key which his method supplies, to read off her most 
 hidden secrets. The whole physical world, with all 
 the infinite variety of objects it contains, he conceived 
 to consist of a limited number of simple elements 
 or qualities variously combined, just as, according to 
 his own comparison, the countless multiplicity of 
 words in a language are only various combinations 
 of the small number of letters which compose its 
 alphabet. And as the knowledge of the alphabet 
 enables us to understand the composition of every 
 word, so all that was necessary in order to the com- 
 plete knowledge of all concrete objects in nature 
 was simply to get hold of her simple elementary
 
 144 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 qualities ; nay, as he who knows the alphabet and 
 the laws of spelling and syntax, can not only read, but 
 reproduce the words and sentences, so he seems to 
 have supposed that the grammar of nature thus learned 
 would make a man master of nature, and enable him 
 to reproduce and modify her substances at will. " The 
 forms " (or immanent causes), says he, " of motion, 
 of vegetation, of gravity and levity, of density and 
 tenuity, of heat, of cold, and all other natures and 
 qualities, like an alphabet, are not many ; and of these 
 the essences upheld by matter of all creatures do 
 consist." "The simple forms or differences of things 
 are few in number, and the degrees and co-ordinations 
 thereof make all this variety." " Gold," for example, 
 he says, " has these natures, greatness of weight, close- 
 ness of parts, fixation, pliantness or softness, immunity 
 from rust, colour or tincture of yellow. Therefore the 
 sure way to make gold is to know the causes of the 
 several natures before rehearsed. For if a man can 
 make a metal that hath all these properties, let men 
 dispute whether it be gold or no." 
 
 This, then, being his conception of nature, the 
 problem of science became a comparatively simple 
 one, and the solution of it, in every case, a purely 
 mechanical or artificial process. The rules of investi- 
 gation and discovery are as capable of being formu- 
 lated and preached as the rule of three or the method 
 of extracting the square root, or the way in which an
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 145 
 
 apothecary mixes up the ingredients of a doctor's 
 prescription. What you have to do in order to 
 discover the cause of a given phenomenon is, first, 
 to make a collection of facts or instances in which 
 the phenomenon in question is present, then another 
 collection of instances in which it is absent, and 
 finally one in which it is present in various degrees 
 of intensity ; and then, by careful elimination or 
 exclusion of irrelevant causes, you will necessarily 
 come to detect in the residuum, in the cause or 
 element which is left, that cause of which you are in 
 quest. With all its vast parade of terms and 
 distinctions, Bacon's method of finding out the causes 
 of phenomena comes to little more than such a 
 direction as this for discovering the author, say, of 
 a disturbance at a public meeting. First, find out 
 a number of instances in which this fellow along 
 with others was present at public meetings when a 
 row took place ; secondly, find out a number of 
 other instances of meetings in which all these other 
 people were present, but not he, and no row took 
 place ; then by the method of exclusion or elimina- 
 tion it is quite clear that he must have been the 
 creator of the row. 
 
 It is impossible in this brief sketch to give a 
 more detailed account of Bacon's method, or even 
 to notice the objections which have been urged 
 against it in recent times. I must content myself
 
 146 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 with this single remark, that the problem which 
 meets the scientific enquirer is a very different 
 one from that which Bacon conceived it to be, and 
 one to which his short and easy method is, in the 
 great majority of cases, inapplicable. In a scientific 
 investigation the desired result is seldom, if ever, one 
 which can be reached merely by a process of elimina- 
 tion or exclusion. It can only be so reached in 
 those cases in which a concrete or complex pheno- 
 menon is the combined result of a number of knoum 
 agents, and in which, in order to ascertain what part 
 of that result is due to any one of these agents, it 
 is possible to deduct the known effects of all the rest. 
 But not only are there innumerable cases in which a 
 particular effect is due, not to a single cause, but to 
 the concurrent action of a plurality of causes ; but, 
 in general, it is to be considered that Bacon's method 
 presupposes that all the agents to which a given result 
 is due are known, and what we do is simply to ascribe 
 the residuary part of the result, by elimination, to one 
 of these agents ; and he takes no account of the fact 
 that the process of discovery, where its results are most 
 valuable, does not consist in rejecting from a number 
 of known causes all but one, but in rising by the 
 penetrative insight or divination of the scientific mind 
 from a multiplicity of apparently discordant facts and 
 phenomena to the idea of a hitherto unknown law 
 or relation which harmonizes and explains them
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 147 
 
 a process which implies an attitude of mind quite 
 beyond the compass of the ordinary observer. 
 
 When once the unknown element, the law or rela- 
 tion, has been discovered, it is a very easy matter to 
 pronounce, among the complex phenomena before us, 
 how much is due to it and how much to other concur- 
 rent conditions ; but the latter operation, which is all 
 that Bacon's method includes, presupposes the former; 
 that is, presupposes that the discovery to which it 
 is to lead us is already made. Even if there were 
 any truth in Bacon's notion of an alphabet of nature, 
 it would no more furnish its possessor with inventive 
 power, or the capacity of attaining scientific knowledge, 
 than the ability to repeat the A, B, of a language 
 gives a child the capacity to understand the pro- 
 foundest works which its literature contains, or quali- 
 fies him, by dexterous manipulation and combination 
 of the letters, to reproduce these works. When we 
 have mastered the orthography or even the grammar 
 of a language in which a great book is written, we 
 are a long way from an intelligent appreciation of 
 its contents, a much longer way from the capacity 
 to write such a book. And as it is not the colloca- 
 tion of letters or words, but the ideas, the hidden 
 element of thought that expresses itself through the 
 verbal symbols and links them together in a spiritual 
 order, which is the true key to the significance of 
 a book ; so, in deciphering the volume of nature,
 
 148 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 that which is the main function of the scientific 
 discoverer, that which made Kepler and Galileo and 
 Newton masters in scientific research, was not the 
 mere capacity to observe and manipulate facts accord- 
 ing to a cut-and-dry system of rules, but the capacity, 
 along with accurate and comprehensive powers of 
 observation, to grasp the hidden conception which 
 the facts had never hinted to other eyes, to make the 
 dumb, disjointed symbols articulate with the living 
 rhythm of law, and over the hitherto obscure or 
 meaningless page of the book of nature to shed the 
 light of intelligible order and system. In one word, 
 not only do we know, in point of fact, that neither 
 Bacon himself nor any other man ever made a single 
 scientific discovery, great or little, by means of his 
 so-called new organon of science, but we know that 
 from the very nature of the case they never could. 
 Neither this nor any other machinery of technical 
 rules could have enabled Newton to write the Prin- 
 cipia any more than it could have qualified Homer 
 to write the Iliad, or Plato the Republic, or Milton 
 the Paradise Lost. Whatever incidental merit it 
 possesses, the Novum Organum, so far as science is 
 concerned, is but the record of vast yet misdirected 
 and abortive labour a splendid failure, it may be, 
 but still a failure. 
 
 And now, lastly, if Bacon's greatness was not that 
 either of the man of science or of the philosopher of
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 149 
 
 science, what, we are led to ask, in relation to science 
 and scientific investigation, is his true title to fame ? 
 One answer which has been given to this question by 
 a very popular writer already referred to, is that the 
 special and characteristic merit of Bacon's philosophy 
 is that in all his speculations he aimed at practical 
 utility. He sought to bring science down from the 
 clouds, and to make it useful to man. Insight into 
 nature has, as its sole and supreme end, command 
 over nature for the service of man. Knowledge is to 
 be sought after because it enables man to turn physical 
 forces into agents for human uses. His imagination 
 had been kindled by those inventions, such as the art 
 of printing, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, which 
 had already so wonderfully contributed to the exten- 
 sion of man's power and dignity, and the convenience 
 and comfort of human life ; and his supreme endeavour 
 was, by a new and infallible method, to enable in- 
 ventors to do systematically what they had hitherto 
 accomplished by happy accidents. Instead of lighting 
 occasionally on ingenious contrivances, with this 
 instrument in hand they would go forth with a kind 
 of mechanical certainty to turn the knowledge of 
 nature into command over nature, and to render all 
 the forces and laws of the physical world subservient 
 to the satisfaction of man's wants, the multiplying of 
 his pleasures, and even the prolongation of his life. 
 And this practical aim, in contrast with the merely
 
 150 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 theoretic and therefore useless character of the philo- 
 sophy of preceding ages, constitutes the great and 
 imperishable title of its author to human reverence 
 and gratitude. 
 
 Nor can we wonder that this should, in Macaulay's 
 view, be the main excellence of Bacon's philosophy, 
 seeing his criterion of philosophical merit leads him to 
 regard the first shoemaker as a greater benefactor of 
 mankind than Seneca. " If," says he, " we are to 
 make our choice between the first shoemaker and the 
 author of the three Books On Anger, we pronounce for 
 the shoemaker. It may be worse to be angry than 
 wet. But shoes have kept millions from being wet, 
 and we doubt whether Seneca ever kept any one from 
 being angry," an illustration which tempts us to 
 enquire whether, on the same principle, Macaulay 
 would have regarded the maker of shoes as a greater 
 man and of juster title to human reverence than the 
 writer of sparkling review articles and popular books 
 of history. 
 
 But even if this account of Bacon's philosophy were 
 more accurate than we believe it to be, it is not in 
 regarding utility as the supreme end of science that 
 we can find his highest claim to honour. To set up 
 practical utility as the aim and criterion of science 
 would be a more misleading idol than any of those 
 against which Bacon warns us. If knowledge is 
 valuable only in so far as it can be shown to con-
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 151 
 
 tribute to the material uses and advantages of life, 
 half at least of the intellectual possessions of mankind, 
 including the greatest, or what men have consented to 
 regard as the greatest, books in ancient and modern 
 literature, must be consigned to the waste-basket. By 
 an unconscious, but wise and rational instinct, men in 
 all ages have exalted knowledge to a higher place in 
 the scale of excellence than any material pleasures or 
 advantages to which knowledge can contribute. They 
 have regarded the scientific impulse, the desire to 
 know, to bring human intelligence into converse with 
 truth, as that which is noblest in our nature, as the 
 very image of God impressed upon it. In art, in 
 science, in religion, the highest minds have ever 
 regarded the communion of thought with what is 
 true and fair and good, as precious in itself, and not 
 in order to any ulterior advantages, least of all to the 
 gratification of bodily appetites and the securing of 
 physical comfort. It has been their profound belief, 
 that if the whole world were made materially com- 
 fortable, if everybody were secure of three meals 
 a day, and of food, clothing, and all sorts of sensuous 
 enjoyments, there would still be a part of man's 
 nature, a capacity or desire more essential to its 
 completeness, left unappeased, and whose unsatisfied 
 cravings would leave him miserable as well as con- 
 temptible amidst all his comforts. It is no paradox 
 to say that, even in the proper domain of science, to
 
 152 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 know nature and her laws is a nobler thing than to 
 extract physical gain or enjoyment out of them ; and 
 in another and higher province inspired lips have 
 taught us not that we must know and believe in order 
 to be safe and happy, but that " this is life eternal, to 
 know Thee the true God." 
 
 But if not to the utilitarian aim of his philosophy, 
 to what else can Bacon's world-wide fame be justly 
 ascribed ? I answer that, though we cannot acknow- 
 ledge him as the founder or the philosopher of 
 experimental science, he may, at least, be designated 
 the greatest of its prophets. "It is not," says Sir 
 John Herschel, " the introduction of inductive reason- 
 ing, as a new and hitherto untried process, which 
 characterizes the Baconian philosophy, but his keen 
 perception, and his broad, spirit-stirring, almost en- 
 thusiastic announcement of its paramount importance, 
 as the alpha and omega of science." And this is, 
 perhaps, the view to which all competent judges would 
 now be disposed to assent. 
 
 In all great revolutions social, scientific, religious 
 there is need, not only for the profound intelligence 
 which grasps the new principles and laboriously works 
 out their results, but also for the inspired mind that 
 can apprehend their general significance, and the 
 eloquent tongue that can proclaim and popularize 
 them. His is no mean office, but rather a function 
 second only to that of the creator of a new era, who
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 153 
 
 can comprehend its magnitude, and with lofty eloquence 
 rouse the world to the appreciation of it. In our day, 
 the freedom of science, like the freedom of the press 
 or the liberty of the subject, has become a theme only 
 for schoolboy rhetoric ; but in the time of Bacon, 
 science was only beginning to realize and rejoice in its 
 emancipation, at once from the authority of Aristotle 
 and from the more oppressive and deadening authority 
 of the traditions and dogmas of the Church ; and it 
 was a task worthy of the best intellects of the day to 
 give articulate expression to the new-born sense of 
 liberty, and to warn men against the idols which had 
 hitherto enslaved them. To the modern mind, again, 
 it seems a mere truism to say that, for the knowledge 
 of nature, we must look to nature herself, that obser- 
 vation and experiment, and not a priori reasonings, are 
 the true instruments of investigation, and that it is 
 by careful inductions from observed facts, and not by 
 deduction from principles arbitrarily assumed or based 
 on slight and inadequate observation, that we can 
 frame our theories as to the laws of the natural world. 
 But what are truisms to us were the startling 
 novelties of the time of which we write, or, at most, 
 ideas which had only recently dawned upon the most 
 advanced minds, of the truth of which even the 
 educated world was only half-convinced, and the 
 significance and fruitfulness of which only a few had 
 been able to appreciate. Of these few, and of the
 
 154 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 thoughts and anticipations with which they were in- 
 spired, Bacon was the greatest representative and 
 exponent. Like them he saw the ancient reign of 
 night and darkness passing away, he perceived, in the 
 morning light of a new day, a world boundless and 
 inexhaustible in its yet unexplored resources stretching 
 away before him ; and of the joyous awakening, the 
 sanguine hopes, the intellectual ardour of conquest, 
 with which these sons of the light were filled, no 
 voice was found to give more expressive and jubilant 
 utterance than the voice of Bacon. It is no slight 
 honour to ascribe to the great prophet of the new 
 time, that in his own day he arrested by his com- 
 manding eloquence the attention of multitudes who 
 knew not, or took little note, of the intellectual 
 revolution that was taking place around them, and 
 that in our own time, with all the immense advance- 
 ment which scientific knowledge and scientific method 
 have gained from centuries of experience, there are 
 many of the stirring utterances of that long-silent 
 voice to which mankind have not ceased to listen. 
 
 In conclusion, let me say in a single sentence, that 
 for all educated men (and especially for those whose 
 work in life is implicated with the advancement of 
 knowledge and the intellectual progress of the world), 
 there is one reflection which, perhaps more emphati- 
 cally than any other, the life of Bacon suggests. It is 
 easy to say that science should purify and ennoble the
 
 SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF BACON. 155 
 
 life, that intellectual pursuits should raise us above 
 vulgar aims and mean ambitions, make us no longer 
 the slaves of our own senses or of the opinions of men, 
 and by supplying us with resources which custom 
 cannot stale nor age wither, nor the changes and 
 troubles of life affect, should communicate to us a noble 
 independence of spirit. This, however, is a philosophy 
 which it is easier to preach than to practise, and the 
 contemplation of one living example of it is more 
 persuasive than a thousand homilies. The admirer of 
 Bacon's genius must sadly acknowledge that in him 
 that example loses something of its ideal clearness and 
 force. But though we cannot aver that in his case 
 science and philosophy lent uniform dignity and eleva- 
 tion to life, this at least we can say, that in him we 
 have an example of the happiness which intellectual 
 pursuits can diffuse through a life otherwise chequered 
 and troubled. Never has there lived a human soul in 
 which the love of knowledge glowed with a purer and 
 more inextinguishable ardour ; never another human 
 life in which science proved more signally its power 
 to satisfy, to support, to console, to dull the sting of 
 care, to make the heart serene amidst outward dis- 
 asters and misfortunes, and even to render social 
 infamy and dishonour not intolerable. Simulation, 
 policy, ambiguity, were but too familiar to his lips, 
 but then at least there is ever the unmistakable ring 
 of sincerity in his words, when he celebrates the
 
 156 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 glories of science and the triumphs it is destined to 
 achieve. In that placid nature, that cold and un- 
 impassioned heart, a stranger to human tenderness, 
 and in which even religion woke no sentiment but 
 that of a rational conviction, there was one emotion 
 the love of knowledge which kindled into a fervour 
 more intense than love or patriotism or devotion in 
 other men. Wealth, place, preferment, the gauds 
 and shows of the world, he had sought ; but the 
 deepest place in his heart after all was not for these. 
 And when these failed him, when the edifice of 
 worldly greatness he had laboriously reared lay 
 crumbling around his feet, when, in age and sickness 
 and disappointment, all the joy seemed gone from 
 life, he turned with an almost new-born youthful 
 avidity, to find in study and investigation a still 
 unfailing source of interest and delight. As we close 
 our review of a career, lofty and splendid indeed, but 
 whose splendour is shadowed and softened by an almost 
 pathetic human interest, may I venture to express the 
 hope that, though remote from the experience of any 
 of us may be either the perilous greatness of the path 
 he trod, or the temptations to which even his great 
 spirit succumbed, we may at least catch some spark of 
 intellectual ardour from the inspiration of his genius, 
 some touch of sympathy with that indomitable devotion 
 to truth and knowledge which, despite of all anomalies 
 and imperfections, has made his an immortal name.
 
 DAVID HUME. 
 
 November 5, 1881. 
 
 IN the history of human thought the sceptic has had 
 a by no means unimportant part to play. If we take 
 the designation in the popular sense, as meaning 
 simply one who doubts or denies established or 
 generally accepted beliefs, the truth of this proposi- 
 tion is beyond question. The convictions we most 
 cherish, if they are worthy of the name, owe not a 
 little of their strength to those who have disputed 
 or rejected them. In the court of reason the 
 advocatus diaboli has a useful function to perform. 
 And this comes about, not merely from the fact that 
 an opinion or belief gains in strength by resistance 
 to skilful attacks, but also and mainly because current 
 beliefs have in many minds either no rational basis, 
 or, though true in themselves, are assented to on 
 grounds that are erroneous and untenable. It is at 
 least a negative service which the dexterous assailant 
 
 renders to us, and if he only awaken us to the cou- 
 
 157
 
 158 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 sciousness of insecurity, and set us on the search after 
 a firmer ground of certitude. From the nature of the 
 thing, common or generally accepted opinions are, 
 for the majority, unsifted opinions. It needs little 
 reflection to see how large an element of what passes 
 for knowledge is of that spurious kind which is 
 begotten, not of rational enquiry, but of custom or 
 conformity. In politics, in philosophy, in theology 
 and other provinces, he is a rarely fortunate man 
 who can always give a reason for the faith that is 
 in him. Even intelligent and educated minds are 
 often really active only within the limits of their 
 own special vocation or line of study, and outside of 
 that are unconsciously moulded by the intellectual 
 atmosphere in which they live. They are liberals 
 or conservatives, idealists or materialists, latitudin- 
 arians or dogmatists, of this or that ecclesiastical or 
 theological creed, not as the result of any process 
 of deliberate investigation, but by the accident of 
 birth or education, and the silent insensible force 
 of custom and association. And these arbitrary 
 influences obviously reach their maximum in the 
 case of notions which are the common, or all but 
 universal, beliefs of our time. That the earth is 
 stationary and the sun and stars go round it, that 
 the world was made out of nothing about three 
 thousand years ago, that it is a Christian duty to 
 persecute heretics, that witchcraft is a possible and
 
 DAVID HUME. 159 
 
 penal offence, that the slave-trade is an honest as 
 well as lucrative employment, that duelling is a 
 kind of murder incumbent on men of honour 
 these and many other propositions men for ages 
 seemed to themselves to believe, with a conviction 
 which it would have appeared as foolish to question 
 as it would be now to assert. And though, in the 
 progress of intelligence, these particular notions have 
 long been exploded, he would be a credulous man 
 who would claim for his own age absolute superiority 
 to unconscious errors, or think that the general 
 prevalence of a notion is a security against its de- 
 tected fallacy in all future times. 
 
 Now whether the sceptic be right or wrong, one 
 great service which he renders to society is, that he 
 awakens reflection and forces men to consider how far 
 their unquestioned beliefs have no surer basis than 
 tradition and custom. Of course, if it turns out that 
 the notion he attacked is altogether erroneous, our 
 debt of gratitude is greatest, as being that which we 
 owe to the man who delivers us from the bondage of 
 falsehood. But a belief may be inherently true and 
 yet not true to us. We may hold without reason that 
 which is in itself rational, or our belief in it may be 
 based on weak and untenable grounds. The conclusion 
 may be right but the premisses by which we reach it 
 wrong. In both these cases, the assailant confers on 
 us an inestimable benefit by revealing to us our
 
 160 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 intellectual insecurity by cutting us away from our 
 unsafe anchorage and sending us in quest of firmer 
 moorings. 
 
 And this service is not less real, even when it 
 is the manifest intention of the sceptic to subvert 
 our faith in the truths he controverts. It is possible 
 that some of those writers who in former times 
 exposed the absurdity of the notion of the divine right 
 of kings, were inspired by a hatred of monarchical 
 institutions ; yet so far from proving the enemies, by 
 removing a weak and futile defence, and throwing the 
 burden of proof on better arguments, they were the 
 involuntary friends and upholders of monarchy. In 
 like manner, in more sacred matters, it may be with 
 an only slightly veiled atheistic design that a writer 
 attacks certain popular and plausible arguments for 
 the being of God ; but if what these arguments really 
 proved was not God, but only a deus ex machina or 
 an anthropomorphic idol which the current natural 
 theology had put in his place, then never had the 
 advocates of a true theism more real though involuntary 
 helpers than those whose unsparing logic shatters the 
 so-called proofs of the existence of God. Thus the 
 aim of the sceptic may be destructive, yet the ultimate 
 result of his efforts constructive. He may intend to 
 pull down the building, whilst in point of fact he is 
 only destroying the rotten props and unsound buttresses 
 by which it seemed to be upheld. He may flatter
 
 DAVID HUME. 161 
 
 himself that he has wholly obliterated the record of 
 eternal truth graven by the finger of God ; but all he 
 does is only to remove the green mould that had 
 gathered over it, or the spurious additions that had 
 distorted its meaning. 
 
 It is from such considerations as these that I have 
 been led to the selection of the subject of the present 
 lecture. I wish to bring before you to-day a brief 
 account of the life and teaching of one of the greatest 
 iconoclasts of modern times a thinker, in some re- 
 spects, in advance of his own time, and whose influence, 
 whether directly or indirectly by the impulse which 
 he gave to speculative thought, or by the new methods 
 and points of view to which, in the reaction from his 
 doctrines, later investigators have been led has been 
 probably greater and more lasting than that of any 
 other modern philosophic writer. Whatever may be 
 thought of his theological or anti-theological specu- 
 lations and on these I shall not venture to touch 
 no student of philosophy unless he is content to 
 overlook one of the most important stages in the 
 progress of thought, and to neglect the writer who 
 gave the death-blow to one school of philosophy and 
 was indirectly the creator of another can afford to be 
 ignorant of the philosophic teaching of David Hume. 
 
 In some cases the outward life of a writer has for 
 his readers a deeper than merely biographic interest. 
 It is natural that we should wish to know something
 
 162 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of the life and fortunes of one whose writings have 
 interested or instructed us. But beyond this general 
 human interest which they possess for us, there are 
 some writers whose life and thought are so closely 
 interwoven, who so live their thoughts or think their 
 lives, that each reflects light on the other, and neither 
 can be thoroughly comprehended apart from the 
 other. This is only partially true in the case before 
 us. In science and philosophy a man's contributions 
 to knowledge have a value which is quite independent 
 of his personality. Whoever invented the differential 
 calculus or the binomial theorem, we shall not under- 
 stand them any better by learning when or where 
 the discoverer lived, or what manner of man out- 
 wardly he was. Whether nominalism or realism is 
 the truer philosophic stand-point, whether thought 
 is a function of matter or matter has no existence 
 except for thought these and the like are questions 
 which are capable of investigation on their own 
 merits ; and it affords no help to their solution to 
 know where the originator, defender or impugner of 
 any of them was born, and how long he lived, whether 
 his person was comely or homely, whether he was 
 happy in his married life, or lived and died in single 
 blessedness. 
 
 But in the particular instance before us, this 
 reciprocal independence of life and teaching is un- 
 usually marked. In Hume, indeed, there is in some
 
 DAVID HUME. 163 
 
 respects a singular contrast between the literary and 
 the personal life. Perhaps in this point of view, 
 though in no other, the nearest approach to him was 
 in the case of his not less famous contemporary, Dr. 
 Johnson, who personally and in social life was one 
 of the most undeferential and incredulous of men, 
 dearly loving an argument merely for the sake of the 
 fight, indifferent which side he espoused, and almost 
 brutally sceptical of unsifted assertions and facts 
 outside of common experience ; and yet whose main 
 characteristic as an author is that of an intolerant 
 stickler for authority, an absolutely uncritical acceptor 
 of traditionary dogmas, and a laborious expounder of 
 intellectual common-places. 
 
 In Hume the contrast, though it runs in the oppo- 
 site way, is not less remarkable. He was probably 
 the worst-hated author and the best-liked and most 
 likeable man of his day the greatest of polemics 
 and the most amiable and tolerant of human beings. 
 He tells us in one of his letters that he " possessed 
 the love of all men, except all the Tories, all the 
 Whigs, and all the Christians" a pretty wide catalogue 
 of eliminations. He seldom took up his pen save to 
 expose the nakedness of some respectable tradition, 
 to lacerate the dearest prejudices of some school or 
 sect, or to rub some sensitive dogmatist against the 
 grain. Yet, in private life, by universal testimony 
 nobody could come near him without liking him.
 
 164 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Not only did his intellectual resources, his wit, his 
 playfulness, his power of repartee, make him a delight- 
 ful conversationist and companion ; but his sweetness 
 of nature and evenness of temper, his tact, his avoid- 
 ance of disagreeable or disputed topics, his almost 
 feminine gentleness and courtesy of manner, disarmed 
 opposition and drew to him a circle of attached 
 friends, including many who by profession and con- 
 viction were his avowed intellectual antagonists. As 
 an author, he himself acknowledges that his leading 
 passion was the love of fame, and his letters are full 
 of the author's sensitiveness to public opinion, and 
 of expressions of wounded sensibility when his appetite 
 for distinction was not fed up to the full measure of 
 his expectations. But by the common consent of his 
 contemporaries and intimates, he was, in private life, 
 the most self-effacing of men, modest, unobtrusive, 
 never seeking to shine, and, whoever formed the 
 company, ready to take and give as the talk went 
 round. He carried his courtesy, indeed, to the verge 
 of insincerity. At any rate, it needs a careful study 
 of his idiosyncrasy to understand how the philosophic 
 and religious sceptic could choose ministers of religion 
 for his bosom friends and be a constant and decor- 
 ous attender on the services of the Church. 
 
 Though, however, Hume's main contributions to 
 literature have little direct relation to his personality, 
 there are some of his writings which cannot be so well
 
 DAVID HUME. 165 
 
 appreciated without knowing something of the career 
 and character of the man ; and for this and other 
 reasons, a brief glance at the leading incidents of his 
 life may not be without its interest for the student of 
 his works. 
 
 Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711. His father 
 was a Scotch laird, the proprietor of a small estate in 
 Berwickshire ; and his biographers have not neglected 
 to tell us that the family were remotely connected 
 with the ancient line of the Homes of Douglas. I 
 suppose, however, that most sensible people will be 
 disposed to think that the philosopher's fame owes 
 little to his distant connection with a line of rude 
 feudal Barons, or rather, that Hume's name reflects 
 more glory on his tribe than all the aristocratic 
 nobodies that ever belonged to it. 
 
 Of his early years we know nothing, save that he 
 studied at the University of Edinburgh, and had 
 finished his college education at an age earlier than 
 even the too juvenile period of life at which most 
 modern students commence it. Wherever he got his 
 knowledge, he proved himself afterwards a widely-read 
 classical scholar ; and though his writings owe little 
 in substance to Greek or Eoman philosophy, yet in 
 their graceful clearness and elegance of style we can 
 discern no indistinct reflexion of classical models. 
 From the very outset of his intellectual life there are 
 indications that the bent of his mind was towards that
 
 166 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 province of thought in which his brightest laurels 
 were afterwards won. But the circumstances of his 
 family were straitened, and philosophy was not in his 
 day, any more than it is in our own, a paying trade. 
 Certain abortive attempts were made to fix him to 
 a profession. He tried for a short time, first law, and 
 then mercantile business ; and it was probably the 
 impossibility of getting him to settle down to either 
 in preference to those unremunerative studies in which 
 his true vocation lay, that drew forth his mother's 
 often-quoted criticism of her son's character. Mothers 
 are, generally, not disposed to err on the side of 
 blindness to the precocity of their offspring, and 
 Hume's mother is said to have been a sagacious 
 woman. But her sagacity was certainly at fault when 
 she pronounced that " Davie was a fine, good-natured 
 crater, but uncommon wake-minded." The maternal 
 verdict was soon and sufficiently refuted by the fact 
 that, after a year or two of hard reading and thought 
 at home, and three years' residence in France (of the 
 details of which we know little), he produced at the 
 age of twenty-four the greater part of his Treatise, on 
 Human Nature, the work on which undoubtedly his 
 philosophic fame rests, and which contains the essence 
 of all his contributions to speculative thought. The 
 imperfect success of this his first work, induced him, 
 as is well known, some years afterwards, to recast and 
 reproduce it in a form, as he supposed, better adapted
 
 DAVID HUME. 167 
 
 to the public taste. But the fundamental principles of 
 the early work remain unmodified in the Philosophical 
 Essays (afterward entitled Inquiries concerning the 
 Human Understanding} ; and all competent critics 
 are at one in the opinion that neither in substance 
 nor in form is the revised work an improvement on 
 the original. 
 
 The reasons which led Hume to undertake what to 
 most writers is the very irksome and repulsive task of 
 revision and reconstruction, are very characteristic ; and 
 we need go no further to understand why the result 
 could not be other than it was. He had been eager 
 for notoriety and literary success, and they had not 
 come. He had intended to astonish the world by the 
 daring character of his speculations, and the world 
 refused to be astonished. " Every one," he says in an 
 early letter, describing his literary projects, " every one 
 who is acquainted either with the philosophers or 
 critics, knows that there is nothing yet established in 
 either of these two sciences, and that they contain little 
 more than endless disputes even in the most funda- 
 mental articles. Upon examination of these I found a 
 certain boldness of temper growing in me, which was 
 not inclined to submit to any authority in these sub- 
 jects, but led me to seek out some new medium by 
 which truth might be established. After much study 
 and reflection there seemed to be opened up to me a 
 new scene of thought, which transported me beyond
 
 168 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 measure and made me throw up every other plan or 
 business to apply entirely to it." 
 
 The work which, in fulfilment of this design, he 
 produced, was one well calculated not merely to attract 
 the attention and interest of philosophical thinkers, 
 but to excite in the ecclesiastical world the alarm and 
 animosity of those who were capable of understanding 
 the logical bearing of his principles. So far, however, 
 from creating a revolution in philosophy, or from 
 rousing the ire of theologians, his book, at first, scarcely 
 attracted any notice whatever. " Never literary 
 attempt," says he, with some little exaggeration due 
 to modified ambition, " was more unfortunate. It fell 
 dead-born from the press, without reaching such dis- 
 tinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots." 
 
 The true cause of the failure, in so far as lack 
 of immediate success is equivalent to failure, is not 
 far to seek. The public to which such works are 
 addressed is, even in our own day, a limited one, and 
 one hundred and fifty years ago it must have been 
 smaller still. Psychology and metaphysics, philo- 
 sophical analysis and subtle dialectics, are not the 
 kind of food in which even the so-called " educated 
 world " takes much delight. The taste of the last- 
 century public was not, indeed, squeamish ; much of 
 the literature it absorbed, many of the books that 
 were universally read by both sexes, would now 
 scarcely find a respectable publisher. Eeaders of
 
 DAVID HUME. 169 
 
 books in those days seem almost to have regulated 
 their literary diet by the maxim, " Eat that which is 
 sold in the shambles, asking no question for con- 
 science sake." And, doubtless, then as now, people 
 liked to be shocked ; and if a writer's aim were to 
 create a sensation and sell his book, a strongly-spiced 
 attack on received opinions would have been sure of 
 immediate, if ephemeral, success. But to produce that 
 result the writer, in Hume's day as in ours, must appeal 
 to the average intelligence of the British public. In 
 vain will he court alarm by the most revolutionary 
 teaching that is veiled in abstract principles, or by 
 heresy that retreats into the covert of rnetaphysic, 
 and leaves no palpable trail of itself across the 
 common beliefs of society. In the long run, indeed, a 
 great book, however subtle its matter or severe and 
 unpopular its form, is pretty sure of success, and its 
 influence will be all the more permanent that it 
 goes to the root of the matter. But the writer of 
 such a book must put far from him the desire 
 of immediate popularity; and for fame, if in any way 
 that may be his motive, he must be content to wait. 
 The author of the Treatise on Human Nature could 
 well have afforded to practise this self-restraint; but 
 he was not content to wait, and the remodelled 
 publication is the result of his impatience. 
 
 In the Inquiry the alterations are precisely those 
 which might be expected from the motives just indi-
 
 170 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 cated. There are almost no additions to the earlier 
 work, and no such modification or development of 
 its principles as riper thought and meditation might 
 have suggested. There is not even an attempt to 
 answer objections or meet difficulties ; but, to make 
 the book less hard reading, the simple expedients 
 are adopted, first, of leaving out the parts at which 
 an ordinary reader would be most likely to boggle, and 
 secondly, of smartening and touching up the natural, 
 unpretending, if somewhat severe style in which his 
 thoughts first clothed themselves, into a brilliancy 
 which, if it makes the book a better work of art, 
 rather hinders than helps our appreciation of the 
 substance which the fine raiment covers. Moreover, 
 there is one remarkable addition to the matter, viz., 
 the disquisition on Miracles an addition the motive 
 of which it is perhaps not censorious to find in 
 Hume's determination not a second time to miss 
 that " murmur of the zealots," which, in the first 
 instance, he had failed to provoke. After what has 
 been said, we need not wonder that impartial criti- 
 cism has reversed his own verdict on the comparative 
 merits of the redaction and the original work ; that, 
 to find Hume at his best, we must still repair to 
 the latter, and that, whilst the weaknesses of his 
 system are common to both, it is, whether he himself 
 knew it or not, in the Treatise that as a philosopher 
 his great strength lies.
 
 DAVID HUME. 171 
 
 It would unduly protract this lecture to go into 
 a detailed account of his literary life, and of the 
 works, philosophical, political, historical, which in 
 rapid succession came from his prolific pen. Of his 
 historical work, its merits and defects, my present 
 purpose does not call me to treat. His career as 
 a philosophical writer is embraced within the period 
 from 1739, when the Treatise, appeared, to 1751, 
 when he published his Political Discou/rscs, constituting 
 the third volume of the Essays, Moral and Political, 
 and wrote the well-known Dialogues on Natwral Re- 
 ligion, which, however, did not appear in print till 
 after his death. 
 
 His outward life, for the greater part of it, was 
 a very uneventful one. His equanimity of temper 
 would probably have made the cares of life sit easy 
 on him, and have enabled him to bear calmly even 
 great hardships and trials. But his fortitude was 
 never put to the test. Good health, easy circum- 
 stances, literary labours in which he found never- 
 failing enjoyment, which never overtaxed his powers, 
 and which brought him gradually reputation and 
 wealth these, combined with social qualities which 
 brightened his hours of relaxation, and an utter 
 absence of morbidness or inequality of temperament, 
 made the current of Hume's life flow through long 
 years with almost unruffled smoothness. " I must 
 esteem myself," he tells us, " one of the happy and
 
 172 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 fortunate ; and so far from being willing to draw my 
 ticket over again in the lottery of life, there are very 
 few prizes with which I would make an exchange." 
 In another of his letters he gives us the following 
 half-playful, half-serious summary of the constituents 
 of human happiness which had fallen to his lot : " I 
 shall exult and triumph to you a little that I have 
 now at last . . . arrived at the dignity of being 
 a householder. About seven months ago, I got a 
 house of my own, and completed a regular family, 
 consisting of a head, viz., myself, and two inferior 
 members, a maid and a cat. My sister has since 
 joined me, and keeps me company. With frugality 
 I can reach, I find, cleanliness, warmth, light, plenty, 
 and contentment. What would you have more ? 
 Independence ? I have it in a supreme degree. 
 Honour ? That is not altogether wanting. Grace ? 
 That will come in time. A wife ? That is none 
 of the indispensable requisites of life. Books ? That 
 is one of them, and I have more than I can use. 
 In short, I cannot find any blessing of consequence 
 which I am not possessed of in a greater or less 
 degree ; and without any great effort of philosophy, 
 I may be easy and satisfied." l 
 
 For ten years after these words were written this 
 tranquil student-life suffered no interruption, unless 
 we can so term his appointment to the unremunera- 
 
 1 Burton, I. 377.
 
 DAVID HUME. 173 
 
 tive, but for a literary man very convenient, post of 
 Librarian to the Advocates' Library, and his unsuccess- 
 ful attempt to succeed his friend Adam Smith in the 
 Logic Chair of this University. A Mr. Clow, unknown 
 to fame by any other title, has been rescued from 
 oblivion by the fact that the patrons of a Scotch 
 University deemed his philosophical merits superior 
 to those of David Hume. The first serious break in 
 the even tenor of his life was his acceptance in 
 1763 of the appointment of Secretary to the French 
 Embassy, at the urgent request of the Ambassador, 
 Lord Hertford. Philosophers are perhaps not often 
 good business men. The popular notion of a philo- 
 sopher is probably that of a bemused, unpractical 
 recluse, harmlessly busying himself with abstruse 
 speculations, who can scarcely manage his own private 
 affairs, and even sometimes needs to be closely looked 
 after by his friends. However inadequate this notion 
 may be, it must be admitted that powers of analysis 
 and generalization, and a tendency to recur on all 
 occasions to wide theories and general principles, are 
 often a hindrance rather than a help to practical 
 politics and the transaction of business. On the other 
 hand, much inferior powers tact, ready-wittedness, 
 intuitive insight, the dexterity produced by experience 
 of affairs may equip a man of ordinary ability for 
 the conduct of business better than philosophic depth 
 and large scientific acquirements. But, whether this
 
 174 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 be so or no, Hume's biographers have furnished us 
 with satisfactory evidence that, both in the duties of 
 the Embassy, and afterwards in the post of Under- 
 secretary of State, his philosophy did not prevent him 
 from proving himself a thoroughly capable man of 
 business. 
 
 But Hume's most brilliant Parisian success was 
 won in other fields than that of business or diplo- 
 macy. He seems to have been welcomed with 
 what can only be described as an outburst of enthu- 
 siasm by the gay society of the French capital. His 
 writings and his philosophic fame procured him 
 admission not merely to literary circles, but to the 
 inmost penetralia of fashionable life. In this country 
 philosophy and fashion own very different standards 
 of merit, and in the English society of Hume's day 
 they were almost reciprocally exclusive. Grub Street 
 associations still clung to the literary life, and a fine 
 gentleman like Horace Walpole was half-ashamed of 
 being known to dabble in literature, and tried hard 
 to sink the author when he wished to maintain the 
 character of a man of fashion. 
 
 But in France, or rather in Paris, outside of 
 which there was then no France, it was different. 
 Bank might there second a man's claims to admis- 
 sion into good society, but it could not itself secure 
 it. Aristocratic stolidity had there no chance. A 
 coronet with nothing but arrogance and stupidity
 
 DAVID HUME. 175 
 
 beneath it was of no account, and dulness, even in 
 the person of a duchess, was inexorably tabooed. 
 Even polished manners and a good address, if the 
 owner of them had no other recommendation, could 
 not remove the social ban. To those brilliant salons, 
 presided over by rival dames who had won their way 
 to social supremacy, the one indispensable passport 
 was wit, intelligence, cleverness, the possession or 
 reputation of intellectual ability of some sort. In 
 that bright, smiling, sparkling, refined quintessence 
 of godless felicity, that whipped-cream of a world, 
 in which courtiers, fine ladies, artists, wits, philo- 
 sophers, men of letters, mingled and rustled and 
 whispered and flashed their epigrams and bon-mots 
 from ear to ear, a great intellectual celebrity was sure 
 of a welcome. Nor, it must be added, would the 
 welcome be less warm if his intellectual fame were 
 spioed by a savour of infidelity. For never, as is 
 well known, was there a society in Christendom 
 from which the faintest tincture of religion was more 
 completely banished, or which combined with the 
 highest refinement of this world a more heathenish 
 disregard of any world beyond it. 
 
 Such being the social atmosphere into which the 
 Scotch philosopher was introduced, his popularity is 
 not difficult to account for. Its artificiality, its 
 idolatry of genius, its Hast worldliness, its contempt 
 for all enthusiasms and superstitions, disposed it to
 
 176 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 receive open-armed one who seemed to lend the 
 sanction of philosophy to its ideal of life. Hume 
 was, it is true, in some respects but ill-adapted for 
 the part of an idol of fashionable society. His person 
 was ungainly, and the eager, questioning, critical soul 
 showed no sign of itself on the round, good-natured 
 face. His French vocabulary, moreover, was limited, 
 and the words did not come tripplingly from his 
 Scotch tongne. A somewhat cynical fellow-country- 
 man tells us how odd it was to see him at the opera 
 seated between two sprightly young ladies, good- 
 naturedly trying to respond to their attentions, like 
 a huge pet dog to the caresses of its mistress. 
 Nevertheless his genuine simplicity and good sense 
 carried him safely through all this nutter of popu- 
 larity ; and though it was not in human nature not 
 to be pleased and nattered by it, he took it for what 
 it was worth, and heartily enjoyed without being 
 hurt by a social success that would have turned 
 many a wise man's head. 
 
 It was in a society of a very different type that the 
 later and perhaps the happiest years of Hume's life 
 were passed. Though as an author he tried hard to 
 sink his nationality, and was nervously afraid of 
 Scoticisms in style, and though there are sides of 
 the Scottish nature and elements of the national life 
 with which he had no sympathy, yet in some points 
 of view he was a Scotsman to the back-bone. He
 
 DAVID HUME. 177 
 
 had left with reluctance that quiet retreat up 
 countless pairs of stairs in the Lawnmarket, which was 
 associated with his literary labours and successes, and 
 it was there, surrounded by his books and his friends 
 the Eobertsons and Fergussons and Adam Smiths 
 and Elliots and Homes and not in the brilliant 
 society of Paris, still less in that of London, that 
 his heart lay. And there was everything in the 
 conditions of the cultivated society of Edinburgh in 
 the middle of last century to make it a congenial 
 environment for such a man as Hume. A century 
 earlier, Edinburgh would have been no fitting, or 
 even possible, home for a sceptical philosopher. A 
 century later, and the characteristic features of Scotch 
 literary life would have all but vanished under the 
 absorbing influence of the wider nationality. Amidst 
 the ecclesiastical ferments of the seventeenth century, 
 Scotland would have been too hot to hold him. But 
 in the reaction from its civil and theological turmoils, 
 a cold fit had come over society, and the prevailing 
 social tepidity was precisely the temperature with 
 which Hume's intellectual and emotional nature was 
 en rapport, 
 
 The fierce struggle with despotism which had 
 hitherto absorbed the intellectual force of clergy and 
 laity alike, was now at an end, and the intellectual 
 horizon had begun to broaden. The national life 
 
 lost its almost exclusively theological character, and 
 
 M
 
 178 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the clerical element ceased more and more to dominate 
 society. Many causes contributed to this change. 
 The passionate zeal which had lent dignity and ele- 
 vation to a narrow creed and made even intolerance 
 and arrant dogmatism seem respectable, no longer 
 stimulated by the bracing air of persecution, began 
 to die out. It became possible to separate the cause 
 of political liberty from the cause of the Church. 
 Other interests began to rival the ecclesiastical in 
 the public mind. Literature and philosophy, long 
 suppressed by the desiccating influences of social 
 disorder, gradually revived ; and a new order that 
 of men of science and letters arose to modify the 
 long-prevailing domination of the clergy, and to draw 
 off to other objects that portion of the national 
 intelligence which refused to linger amongst effete 
 ecclesiastical squabbles and sectarian animosities. Of 
 this order Hume was one of the most remarkable 
 representatives, and its leading members, such as 
 those above named and others, Robertson, Hutcheson, 
 Fergusson, Adam Smith, Blair, Home, Henry, etc., 
 were his intimate personal friends and almost daily 
 associates. 
 
 It may seem inconsistent with what I have just 
 said as to the waning influence of the ecclesiastical 
 order that, with one exception, all the names I have 
 mentioned are those of clergymen. And, at first sight, 
 it is not a little strange that the leader of the new
 
 DAVID HUME. 179 
 
 order of men of letters, and he too one whose special 
 proclivities were, to say the least, so little congenial 
 to the theological mind, should have found his chosen 
 friends and confidants in the ministers of the Church. 
 But the explanation is easy. In the stirring times 
 that had passed away, few or none who were not 
 inspired by intense religious convictions were attracted 
 to the clerical vocation. It had no charms for either 
 the unenthusiastic or the worldly-minded for quiet 
 men whose piety had in it nothing of the spirit of 
 the martyr or the zealot, still less for those who love 
 an easy life of decent competence and respectable 
 stagnation. But now, in a changed world, the Church 
 had become a coveted home for other than pious 
 enthusiasts or red-hot Covenanting zealots for many 
 men of fair and decorous lives, but over whom the 
 chill that was in the air of the ecclesiastical world 
 had silently crept. A race of ecclesiastics had arisen 
 who were clergymen only in name, by inclination 
 and temperament the best of them, men of letters 
 or aspirants to literary fame, the less noble of them, 
 caring only for social position and worldly ease. 
 Amongst the former there were many men of blame- 
 less lives and sincere though unemotional religious 
 convictions, who performed their professional duties 
 in a quite decorous manner, but in whom the clerical 
 character was scarcely skin-deep. As we read, or 
 try to read, such specimens of their pulpit perform-
 
 180 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 ances as have survived the general doom of dulness 
 the frigid cento of prudential maxims, correct plati- 
 tudes, colourless panegyrics of virtue and lukewarm 
 exhortations to what was termed " rational and sober 
 piety" the materials of pulpit rhetoric which com- 
 pose, e.g. the once well-known sermons of Dr. Hugh 
 Blair we can understand how evanescent was the 
 limit that separated the teachers of this emasculated 
 Christianity from the non-religious world ; and how 
 little, when they affected the society of men of letters, 
 or even of sceptical philosophers, their presence would 
 be felt as the intrusion of a foreign element. 
 
 The closing years of Hume's life were rich in all 
 the constituents of happiness which he most prized. 
 He had many friends and no enemies. His home 
 was the resort of all that was most cultivated in 
 Edinburgh society. His reputation as an original 
 thinker had increased from year to year; and even 
 those who were his keenest philosophical antagonists 
 not only acknowledged his intellectual pre-eminence, 
 but, however much they differed from the writer, 
 could not help loving the man. Advancing years 
 brought no diminution of his gaiety of spirit, nor 
 did even the approach of death overshadow that 
 cheerful serenity for which he had all his life been 
 remarkable. 
 
 There are those who have thought it strange 
 that the end should come thus to a man of
 
 DAVID HUME. 181 
 
 David Hume's opinions. A more dismal closing 
 scene would have been in better keeping with such 
 a career. But timidity or fortitude in the face of 
 the inevitable is but a poor test of the truth of a 
 man's beliefs. Christianity is not imperilled because 
 the shadow of physical depression may eclipse in the 
 failing intelligence the light of Christian faith and 
 hope ; nor, on the other hand, is the serenity of the 
 sceptic, any more than the rapture of the saint, a 
 sure criterion of what the one denies and the other 
 affirms. Religion rests on a more impregnable basis 
 than the moods and frames of those who receive or 
 reject it. If it is to be tried by any outward test, 
 that is surely to be found in the answer to the 
 question, not how a man dies, but how he lives. 
 It will be well for those who believe in Christianity 
 to leave no advantage to the sceptic in that species 
 of argument. 
 
 The narrative of Hume's life has extended so much 
 beyond my intention that but little space is left for 
 any notice of his philosophy. This, however, is the 
 less to be regretted that the latter must necessarily 
 form an important part of your philosophical studies 
 under more competent guidance than mine. I can 
 offer in the few closing sentences of this lecture 
 only a brief indication of the general character and 
 tendency of Hume's speculations. Hume's scepticism 
 is the redudio ad absurdum of the sensational philo-
 
 182 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 sophy ; and it is so because, in the first place, he 
 carries out that philosophy to its logical results, and 
 frees it from the inconsistent ontological elements 
 which by his predecessors of the same school had 
 been mixed up with it ; and because, in the second 
 place, he has demonstrably failed in his attempt to 
 account for our conscious experience on a sensational 
 basis. A philosophy which reduces all thought to 
 chaos is condemned by its own showing. It may 
 be true that much or all of what we deem knowledge 
 is unreal and illusory ; but if it be so, philosophy is 
 at least bound to account for the illusion. But the 
 philosophical school of which Hume is the acutest 
 and most thorough-going representative, whilst it 
 undoubtedly proves that if our knowledge be of a 
 purely sensational origin, the greater part of what 
 we so designate is sheer fiction, when it further 
 attempts to explain how it is that we mistake fiction, 
 subjective illusions, for objective facts, only, as we 
 shall see, betrays its own weakness. In other words, 
 sensationalism, pure and simple, not merely fails to 
 account for our knowledge, but it fails to account 
 even for the spurious product which we mistake for 
 knowledge. It professes to expose the trick by which 
 we have long believed phantoms to be realities, but 
 when this attempted exposure breaks down, all it 
 really exposes is only the shallowness of its own 
 pretensions,
 
 DAVID HUME. 183 
 
 There are no such things, said Locke, as innate 
 ideas. The mind, at the outset, is a blank tablet, a 
 sheet of white paper, and all our knowledge is simply 
 what is impressed or written on this blank surface 
 through the medium of the senses. But since, 
 according to this view, all we are conscious of is our 
 own sensations, we have no right to speak of anything 
 beyond them, and a man can no more get outside 
 of his own consciousness than he can leap off his 
 own shoulders, to start thus with an outward world 
 stamping impressions on the mind, is, as Berkeley and, 
 after him, Hume saw, a purely gratuitous assumption. 
 A thorough-going sensationalism knows no distinction 
 of outward and inward, and must, in giving account of 
 our knowledge, dismiss all other materials than those 
 which sense supplies. The problem, therefore, which 
 lay before Hume, was to account for the whole content 
 of our consciousness by what he called " Impressions," 
 and " Ideas," which are merely fainter copies of 
 Impressions. Everything in our thoughts that cannot 
 be traced back to some distinct sensitive impression, 
 must be regarded as a mere illusion or irrational 
 assumption. 
 
 Armed with this all-potent solvent, he finds a 
 whole world of ideas, notions, beliefs, which, at 
 its touch, dissolve away into unreality. Our supposed 
 knowledge of an external world, e.g. whether in the 
 mere rude common-sense conception of the popular
 
 184 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 mind, or in the systematized conceptions of science, 
 rests on the notion of causality, on the assumption, 
 that is, of a necessary relation between cause and 
 effect. But this assumption is a purely fictitious one. 
 When we go back to the sole fountain-head of know- 
 ledge, we find nothing corresponding to it. All that 
 sense gives us is, as Hume taught, simply one sensation 
 or impression, and then another, and another a series 
 of isolated impressions with no intervening or con- 
 necting link between them. No doubt, in ordinary 
 thought we do interpose such a link or bond of 
 necessary connection between successive phenomena. 
 But the sole reason for that is that custom or habit 
 leads us in an inexplicable way to expect that pheno- 
 mena which have often or always in our experience 
 succeeded each other, will and must in future succeed 
 each other. The only relation between successive 
 events of which we know anything is that of time, 
 but by a trick of imagination we come to suppose 
 an actual nexus between them. All that we really 
 perceive is, first the spark and then the explosion of 
 the gunpowder; at one moment we see the flame, at 
 the next we feel the heat ; now the impact of one 
 billiard ball and immediately afterwards the motion 
 of the second. But when we instinctively interpose 
 a link of necessity between any two of these pheno- 
 mena and say that the one is the cause of the other, 
 this is an assertion which Hume maintains, and
 
 DAVID HUME. 185 
 
 from his point of view rightly maintains, to be 
 purely groundless. But if the notion of causality 
 be thus annulled, it does not fall alone. Withdraw 
 the link of necessity, and the whole fabric of our 
 knowledge of an outward world crumbles away into 
 arbitrariness and nonentity. Our belief in any per- 
 manent external object, our belief in the uniformity of 
 nature, our belief in a First Cause, all of which are 
 bound up with the notion of necessary causation, 
 perish with it; and what is left instead of a stable 
 and ordered universe, is only the individual sensitive 
 consciousness and the series of unconnected sensations 
 that flit arbitrarily athwart it. 
 
 But not even this remains to us. The inward 
 world is as powerless as the outward to resist the 
 disintegrating touch of sensationalism. " Bishop 
 Berkeley," as in his smart way Sydney Smith puts 
 it, " destroyed the outward world in one volume 
 octavo, and nothing remained after his time but mind, 
 which experienced a similar fate from Mr. Hume in 
 1739." And the way in which this catastrophe 
 came about may be anticipated. The notion of a 
 permanent self is obviously as groundless on sensa- 
 tional principles as the notion of a permanent outward 
 world. If all our knowledge consists of sensitive 
 impressions, to what impression can we point as that 
 which gives us the notion of personal identity ? To 
 intercalate between the isolated moments of feeling
 
 186 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 a something we call mind or self, is only to sanction 
 vulgar instinct by the creation of a philosophical 
 figment. 
 
 The old nominalists had maintained that general 
 ideas are mere abstractions, and that the only real 
 existences are individuals. There is no such thing 
 as a general colour which is not black or red or 
 green, or some particular colour. There is no such 
 thing as a generic tree which is not an oak or elm 
 or ash, or some other particular tree. Neither is 
 there any such existence as man or humanity apart 
 from the individual men who make up the race. The 
 individuals are the only existing units, and the genus 
 is only a name for the invention of the abstracting 
 intellect. But Hume was too acute a logician not 
 to see that the principle of nominalism, to be true 
 to itself, must go much further. You have no more 
 right to take the manifold experiences that constitute 
 our conscious life from infancy to old age, and, 
 omitting their differences, combine them under the 
 abstract term " individual man " or " personal identity," 
 and call that an actual existence, than you have, 
 abstracting from the differences of an infinite number 
 of living beings, to invent a term " animal " and say 
 that that is a real existence. The only realities in 
 our consciousness are particular sensations, or the 
 series or collection of particular sensations ; the 
 general self or individual is a mere abstraction, a
 
 DAVID HUME. 187 
 
 fictitious creation of the mind. Thus sensational 
 scepticism puts the final stroke to its work of nega- 
 tion or destruction. The external world is but one 
 phantom conjured up by mind, which is itself but 
 another phantom, and the only thing that with strange 
 inconsistency seems to be left is the sensational philo- 
 sopher himself looking with complacent cynicism at 
 both. 
 
 Such then is the nihilistic conclusion to which this 
 school of philosophy in its acutest exponent, by strictly 
 logical development, led. But it is obvious that in the 
 final inconsistency I have just noticed lies at once the 
 proof of its suicidal character, and the starting-point of 
 a higher and truer philosophy. A scepticism which 
 evaporates all thought, evaporates at the same time the 
 sceptical evaporator. If mind is an illusion, so of 
 necessity are all the theories it forms of its own 
 nature. You cannot destroy, the conscious self for 
 every other purpose and retain it for the one purpose 
 of destroying itself. The sceptic sits on the branch of 
 the tree he is sawing off, and when he has succeeded 
 in severing it, topples down himself along with it. 
 
 And it is this that indicates the direction in which 
 the refutation of sensationalism and the beginning of a 
 new philosophy is to be found. In other directions, it 
 is true, that refutation has been often attempted. The 
 beliefs which Hume explained away, Eeid and his 
 followers tried to rehabilitate by the simple method
 
 188 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of re-asserting them and taking no denial. As Dr. 
 Johnson thought he disproved Berkeleianism by kicking 
 a stone and saying, " Thus I refute it," so the Scotch 
 philosopher's way of answering Hume was by virtually 
 the same appeal from philosophy to vulgar instinct. 
 When a merciless logic has set reason at variance with 
 popular uncritical beliefs, it is but a poor defence 
 merely to dress up the latter under the big names of 
 " original and necessary principles of consciousness," 
 " primitive intuitions," " fundamental beliefs," etc. 
 Simply to insist that there is an irresistible and 
 universal belief in the independent existence of an 
 eternal world, or that we have a primary belief in 
 the existence of substances behind qualities, or that 
 it is contrary to common-sense to deny the notion of 
 necessary causation this is not to answer the critical 
 doubts of reason, but to try to silence them either by 
 an appeal to numbers, or by a mere dogmatic reitera- 
 tion in more solemn tones of the notions impugned. 
 Mere belief, whether individual or general, is a purely 
 subjective thing, and in order to be trusted, it must 
 give a rational account of itself, it must prove its 
 claims on objective grounds, it must justify itself before 
 the judgment-seat of reason. 
 
 No doubt ordinary, uncritical beliefs may serve 
 well enough as working hypotheses and for practical 
 purposes. Philosophy and scientific criticism are not 
 popular necessities. We can use and enjoy nature
 
 DAVID HUME. 189 
 
 with the rudest and most wrong-headed ideas of our 
 relation to it; we can see and walk about by the 
 light of the sun and stars with conceptions that belie 
 the most elementary principles of astronomy. 
 
 These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, 
 
 That give a name to every fixed star, 
 Have no more profit of their shining nights 
 
 Than those that walk, and wot not what they are. 
 
 But one thing is inevitable. If you begin with 
 reason and criticism, you must go on with them. 
 You cannot, when their first teachings disturb old 
 notions, or seem to undermine cherished beliefs, hark 
 back to what you call " common-sense," or shelter 
 yourself from the smart of reason's arrows behind the 
 old bulwark of authority, whether that of consciousness 
 or any other. The wounds of reason can only be 
 healed by reason. If the first draught of philosophy 
 have confused and unsettled us, it is only by deeper 
 draughts that we can overcome its intoxicating effects. 
 " Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring." And 
 it was virtually this principle which, unfolding his 
 own philosophical experience to mankind, a great 
 speculative thinker announced to the world as the 
 real cure of scepticism ; and the world is only 
 yet beginning to appreciate the full meaning and 
 value of his lessons. " It was," says Kant, " the 
 teaching of David Hume which first broke up my 
 dogmatic slumbers, and gave a wholly new direction
 
 190 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 to my enquiries in the field of speculation." What 
 that direction was how this great thinker surveyed 
 the whole field of human experience, and instead of 
 blindly asserting a deeper element in it than that on 
 which the sensationalism was based, sought by a new 
 and profounder method, to prove it, and so began the 
 noble work which others have since carried on, of 
 rearing again the crumbling edifice of human know- 
 ledge ; how, if I may so express it, by their efforts, 
 from the ruins of the former temple a new and more 
 stately edifice gradually arose, and the second temple 
 has been found to be more glorious than the first 
 the account of this splendid and, as I believe, 
 imperishable enterprise, I must leave to othef and 
 more competent hands.
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 
 
 November 11, 1882. 
 
 IN former addresses of this kind I have brought 
 before you some examples of those who are recognized 
 as masters in the various departments of knowledge. 
 There is one of these departments, however, on which 
 I have not yet ventured to touch. The studies of 
 this place are very varied, and it is almost impossible 
 to find a subject which, however interesting to some, 
 would not be regarded with indifference or even 
 aversion by others. But in an audience, a consider- 
 able part of which consists of those who are, either 
 actually or prospectively, divinity students, there is 
 an obvious call to treat of the science with which 
 they are specially concerned, and of some typical 
 specimen of the career to which they are destined. 
 But the same reasons which have hitherto kept me 
 from venturing on this ground, make it expedient that 
 I should not select as my subject any one whose 
 
 name is associated with the theological and ecclesias- 
 
 191
 
 192 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 tical strifes and divisions of our own or very recent 
 times. Casting about for a name that fulfils this 
 condition, and is yet not so remote as to lose interest 
 in some respects for the modern theological student, 
 I have resolved to call your attention to the career 
 and work of a great English theologian of the last 
 century, whose writings are still an authority in their 
 own province I mean, BISHOP BUTLEK. 
 
 If it must be acknowledged that the influence of 
 Butler and the school to which he belonged has all 
 but passed away, yet his works at least afford a land- 
 mark by which we may measure the distance, whether 
 in advance or retrogression, that separates the theo- 
 logical mind of the eighteenth century from that of 
 our own day. 
 
 The biographies of Butler are singularly meagre 
 in personal details. Indeed there are few modern 
 writers of equal eminence of whose outward life we 
 know so little. Partly this arises from the character 
 of the man, partly from that of his time. There are 
 some men whose avocations imply a certain measure 
 of publicity, and who, despite of native reserve, cannot 
 help being much in the eye of the world. There 
 are other men who like to take the world into their 
 confidence, credit the public with an interest in the 
 most minute details of their private life, and to 
 whom publicity and popularity is the very breath 
 of their nostrils. Butler belonged to neither of these
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 193 
 
 classes. However little we know of his personality, 
 we know this much, that he was a man of singular 
 simplicity and self-forge tfulness, absorbed in the work 
 to which his life was devoted, and thinking so little 
 about himself that it never seems to have occurred 
 to him that the world would be of a different opinion. 
 In Butler's time, moreover, society had not yet 
 developed the nineteenth century taste for personal 
 gossip, nor did it possess the organized means of 
 gratifying that taste, which is the privilege of our 
 time. Had he lived now, no fence of native reserve 
 could have protected him from public curiosity or 
 from those who earn a somewhat ignoble living by 
 pandering to it. A remarkable man in our day, in 
 whatever line of attainment, is the sure prey of 
 interviewers and newspaper correspondents. From 
 the moment he does or writes anything noteworthy 
 his privacy is gone. The incidents of his outward 
 life on which he himself never wasted a thought, 
 his appearance, dress, domestic relations, his hours 
 of getting up and going to bed, his private opinion 
 as to the character of his neighbours and friends, 
 what he thinks on all sorts of questions, grave or 
 insignificant all this is deemed common property, and 
 his refusal to acknowledge the claim is regarded almost 
 as an insult to an intelligent and admiring public. 
 Happily for Butler he lived at a time when it was 
 possible for the solitary student to pass his days
 
 194 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 unmolested by the parasites of literature, and when 
 the privacy so congenial to his modest, unobtrusive 
 nature was not as yet the prerogative only of dul- 
 ness and mediocrity. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that a better motive than vulgar 
 curiosity may awaken our interest in the events of a 
 great writer's life. There are writers whose life and 
 thought are so closely interwoven that each reflects 
 light on the other, and neither can well be under- 
 stood apart. But, on the other hand, there are 
 many books and classes of books, the understanding 
 of which is not the least helped by acquaintance 
 with the author's personality. In science and philo- 
 sophy the value of a man's contributions to know- 
 ledge is not determined by anything we know of 
 himself. Newton's Principia would neither lose nor 
 gain for the scientific intelligence if it had been an 
 anonymous production. Kant's Critique or Hegel's 
 Encydopadie would be a neither more nor less 
 important contribution to speculative science had it 
 dropped from the clouds. In theology, indeed, ex- 
 perience would seem to show that there is more 
 room for the betrayal of the subjectivity of the 
 writer than in other sciences. But though religion 
 is the domain of feeling, it may be maintained that 
 the more nearly theological investigations approximate 
 to a purely scientific character, so much the more do, 
 not merely the peculiarities of the sect or school, but
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 195 
 
 individual feelings and tendencies cease to colour the 
 investigator's views and opinions, so much the more 
 does his mind become the pure mirror of objective 
 truth. 
 
 In what measure Butler's writings partake of this 
 purely scientific character, we shall immediately see; 
 but there can be no doubt that, whether from this 
 or other causes, they are singularly devoid of personal 
 colouring. His main work, the Analogy, might, for 
 all that appears of the individuality of the writer, 
 have been composed by an intellectual machine. 
 Facts, inductions, principles, inferences, exceptions, 
 guarded and limited conclusions, succeed each other 
 with an air of self-acting ratiocination, undeflected 
 from its operation by any arbitrariness of personal 
 tendency. If a subdued glow of feeling may, on 
 closer inspection, be discerned pervading the whole 
 work, it is a kind of feeling almost as impersonal, 
 so to speak, as the universality of reason itself the 
 love of truth and the desire of its prevalence. In 
 short, whilst the meagreness of external information 
 as to the personality of a writer is sometimes supple- 
 mented by the self-revelations to be found in his 
 works, from the pages of this grave, calm, self- 
 effacing writer we derive absolutely no such help to 
 our conception of his individuality and of his outward 
 career. Let me narrate to you the few incidents of 
 Butler's life that have come down to us, and then
 
 196 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 briefly consider what contributions he has made to 
 ethical and theological thought. 
 
 The tendency of an aristocracy to become a caste 
 is, in English society, greatly modified by the relations 
 of the aristocracy to the legal and ecclesiastical pro- 
 fessions. The foremost places of social rank may be, 
 and have often been, held by men who have sprung 
 from the people, and, by the natural selection of 
 mental power, have forced their way into the privi- 
 leged order. The future ecclesiastical dignitary whose 
 life I am to narrate was of humble birth. He was the 
 son of a retired linen-draper, and was born in the 
 year 1692 at Wantage, a small country town in 
 Berkshire. His father was a Presbyterian, and the 
 son, whether from his own choice or his father's 
 wishes, was destined to the ministry of that com- 
 munion. He was placed, with that view, in a dis- 
 senting academy taught by a Mr. Samuel Jones, of 
 whose professional ability some indication may be 
 gathered from the eminence attained by not a few 
 of his pupils. Amongst Butler's school companions, 
 one at least of whom was his life-long friend, have 
 been named Seeker, who became primate of the English 
 Church; Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and 
 Samuel Chandler and Nathaniel Lardner, well known 
 for their subsequent eminence as nonconformist 
 divines. 
 
 Of his studies in this seminary nothing is known
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 197 
 
 except what can be gathered from a single incident 
 of which, in the paucity of information about him, 
 much has been made by his biographers. Dr. 
 Samuel Clarke had recently published a book which, 
 though long ago consigned to the theological lumber 
 room, attracted some attention in its day his so- 
 called Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of 
 God; and the young student fledged his theological 
 wing by writing some critical notes on this book, 
 and getting them conveyed to the author. All that 
 can now be said of these strictures is that they were 
 at least as good as the matter criticised. They sug- 
 gested ingenious objections to meaningless arguments. 
 An air of metaphysical subtlety and a pretence of 
 demonstrative reasoning cannot disguise the essentially 
 fictitious character of Clarke's whole production. Any 
 traces of philosophical insight to be found in it are 
 merely reflexions from the writings of Descartes, 
 Spinoza, and Leibnitz. Of its value as a serious con- 
 tribution to speculative theism we may judge from 
 one remarkable proof of the divine existence on which 
 great stress is laid. " Space and time," says Clarke, 
 " are necessary existences because the sine qiut non 
 of all other existences. But space and time are 
 evidently not substances, but only properties or modes. 
 Of these necessary properties there must therefore be 
 a necessary substratum or substance, i.e. there must 
 be a God." Well might Butler answer that " to say
 
 198 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 that the self-existent substance is the substratum of 
 space is scarcely intelligible, or at least not self- 
 evident." In truth, the whole argument is a piece of 
 meaningless jargon, a nest of unsifted metaphysical 
 assumptions, from which it seems incredible that any 
 sane being should derive the slightest satisfaction. 
 
 The next remarkable incident in Butler's life, and 
 one which determined his whole future career, was his 
 abandonment of dissent for the established church. 
 Of the reasons which led to this important step we 
 know nothing. All we do know is that it was taken, 
 not without parental and other remonstrance. At his 
 father's instance, certain neighbouring Presbyterian 
 ministers were summoned to confer with the unsettled 
 youth ; but, as we may easily suppose, on a question 
 of ecclesiastical polity, or indeed on any question, 
 Butler was more than a match for any number of 
 country ministers : and the result was that, with his 
 father's reluctant acquiescence, he had his own way, 
 and was in March, 1714, entered at Oriel College, 
 Oxford. From what we know of Butler's character, 
 it is impossible to doubt that this step was due to 
 conscientious conviction ; but in a man of less trans- 
 parent simplicity of nature it would certainly have 
 been open to suspicion. Conversions which coincide 
 with worldly interest and ambition may doubtless be 
 sincere, but their sincerity is not self-evident to 
 outsiders ; nor, in general, so far as experience proves,
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 199 
 
 does the one Church lose much by the desertion, or 
 the other gain much by the accession, of such converts. 
 In Butler's case the loss or gain was for once a most 
 notable one nothing less than that of a mind which 
 would have conferred lustre on the obscurest sect, as 
 it ere long eclipsed all the lesser intellectual lights of 
 the larger and more powerful communion to which he 
 turned. 
 
 Passing by Butler's Oxford career, of which we 
 know nothing save that he formed with Edward 
 Talbot, son of the Bishop of Durham, a most intimate 
 friendship to which he was in some measure indebted 
 for his subsequent preferment in the Church, we find 
 him, shortly after taking orders, appointed in 1718, at 
 the age of twenty-six, " preacher at the Eolls." In 
 this office he laid the foundation of his future fame by 
 delivering his now famous Sermons on Human Nature. 
 The sermons, which are only fifteen in number, are 
 merely a selection he himself says, an accidental 
 selection from those which he delivered in the 
 course of the eight years during which he held 
 this appointment. A story is told by a recent 
 writer, on what authority he does not say, that long 
 after Butler's death " some one discovered the widow 
 of a country rector in the act of destroying, for 
 culinary purposes, the last remains of a box of 
 sermons"; that on examination they were found to be 
 by no less an author than Bishop Butler, and that
 
 200 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 all the culprit could say in self-defence was that she 
 thought the sermons were those of her late husband. 
 Whatever indication this incident gives of conjugal 
 respect on the part of the lady, perhaps, in ordinary 
 cases, such a catastrophe would involve no very 
 serious loss to the world. In this case the loss 
 would have been an exceptive one ; but as Butler's 
 papers were destroyed in accordance with directions 
 in his will, there is probably no truth in the story. 
 Of the ethical theory, which is the essential element 
 of these sermons, I shall not here speak ; but looking 
 at them simply as specimens of pulpit literature, they 
 stand out in marked contrast from the contemporary 
 style of sermonizing, and in some measure serve to 
 account for the rapid professional success of their 
 author. The dulness of the pulpit is, in our day, a 
 stock theme for small critics. It is not for me to say 
 whether the current criticism is just whether the 
 average sermon is not as respectable and interesting 
 a production as the average specimen of any other 
 kind of speech or writing produced under similar 
 conditions. But most certainly, judging from what 
 has come down to us, of all the trials of human 
 patience, listening to sermons in the eighteenth 
 century must have been one of the severest. A 
 speaker may be interesting when he appeals either 
 to intelligence or feeling. It is not given to all 
 men to be original thinkers, but, without saying
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 201 
 
 anything new, a preacher may awake attention either 
 by reproducing accepted opinions in new aspects and 
 applications, or by touching the springs of moral and 
 spiritual emotion, or, failing all other claims on our 
 interest, by being himself in dead earnest about the 
 subject of his talk. 
 
 But the pattern sermon of the Georgian era seems 
 to have been constructed almost expressly to steer 
 clear of all possible ways of getting human beings 
 to listen to it. The preacher might in most cases 
 have quoted in a literal sense the inspired declara- 
 tion, " I have fed you with milk and not with 
 strong meat." The spiritual ideas of the Gospel 
 were watered down to a kind of washy optimism. 
 Moral truisms backed up by reference to a sort of 
 good-natured potentate designated " the all-wise and 
 beneficent Author of the universe," ethical precepts 
 enforced by platitudes about the happiness of a 
 virtuous life, the baneful influence of vice on a 
 man's prospects in this world, and the wisdom of 
 having regard to "a future state of rewards and 
 punishments," such were the stock materials of the 
 eighteenth century sermon. No idea more profound 
 than the most incontrovertible common-places, no 
 morality more elevated than that of copy-book head- 
 ings, were ever advanced in it; all appeals to feeling 
 were excluded as offences against the received canons 
 of moderation and good sense, and the only occasion
 
 202 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 on which the preacher ever betrayed emotion was 
 when denouncing what was called " enthusiasm " as 
 inconsistent with sober piety. 
 
 Now Butler's sermons, though in some measure 
 reflecting the characteristic tendencies of the time 
 are marked by qualities which, to an educated audi- 
 ence accustomed to the conventional style of preaching, 
 must have been a new experience. In the absence 
 of the dogmatic and sacerdotal element, in the empha- 
 sizing of practical morality, and the tendency to regard 
 religion mainly as the supernatural sanction of ethical 
 duties, and in the unimpassioned and unrhetorical 
 tone which pervades these sermons, they are moulded 
 by the spirit of the time. But they are full of ideas 
 which, whatever their speculative value, are the result 
 of independent thinking, and to minds accustomed to 
 the vapid common-place of the typical sermon of the 
 day, must have seemed full of originality and power. 
 In some of them, as, for instance, the sermons on " Self- 
 deceit " and on the " Character of Balaam," there is an 
 insight into human nature, a calm yet merciless dis- 
 section of motives, and exposure of the disguises to 
 which selfishness and baseness betake themselves, 
 that have all, and more than all, the effect of the 
 bitterest invective. Addressed to an audience com- 
 posed of the courtiers, lawyers, politicians, men and 
 women of fashion of that age of social laxity, skinned 
 over by a thin surface of Chesterfield politeness, we
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 203 
 
 can well conceive how these discourses produced an 
 effect and awakened an interest, all the more vivid 
 by contrast with the normal dulness of the pulpit of 
 the day. 
 
 The subsequent incidents of Butler's career I can 
 only briefly summarize. He attracted the notice of 
 Queen Caroline, one of the most sagacious and clear- 
 headed women of her time. Besides managing her 
 well-meaning but somewhat stupid and very gross- 
 living husband, George II., and exercising through 
 him a vigorous and wholesome influence on public 
 affairs, the Queen found time for society, and, by pre- 
 ference, for a kind of society in which great ladies do 
 riot often take delight. It was her custom to take 
 refuge from the cares of state and the company of 
 court officials, male and female, in that of a select 
 group of philosophers and divines, and to set them 
 talking and discussing on moot points in metaphysics 
 and theology. Of these symposia no record has been 
 preserved. All we know of them is that Clarke, 
 Hoadley, Sherlock, Seeker, Berkeley most of them 
 latitudinarian, or, as we should say, Broad-Church 
 divines took part in them, and that in the discussions, 
 whether from her own ability or the self-restraint of 
 courtly ecclesiastics towards a royal polemic, the 
 Queen was said to be able to hold her own. To this 
 strange privy council Butler, whose merits so sagacious 
 a judge of character as Queen Caroline was sure to
 
 204 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 recognize, was admitted ; and thenceforth court favour 
 and professional preferment flowed in upon him. He 
 was appointed " Clerk of the Closet " ; he was pre- 
 ferred to the rectory of Stanhope, the richest living 
 in the Church of England ; he was appointed succes- 
 sively Dean of St. Paul's, Chaplain to the Lord 
 Chancellor Talbot, Bishop of Bristol, and finally, to- 
 wards the close of his life, Bishop of Durham, and 
 there is some ground to believe that he refused the 
 Primacy. 
 
 It is no doubt greatly to the credit of the dis- 
 pensers of patronage in those days that a man of 
 Butler's merit should have risen so rapidly and so 
 high. Even in churches whose constitution is of a 
 more popular kind, success, to say the least, does not 
 always go by merit. What are called " popular gifts " 
 are sometimes only the disguise of shallowness, and 
 of the selection of ministers to vacant charges it may 
 perhaps, in a slightly different form from the original 
 sense of the text, be said that " not many wise men 
 are called." Of course arbitrary selection to posts of 
 honour is even more possible in churches moulded 
 on a less popular type. We need not accept as 
 absolutely true Mr. Goldwin Smith's definition of a 
 bishop ; but sarcasm would be pointless if it were not 
 at least founded on fact. " I trust," says he in his 
 incisive way, in answer to a writer whose adulation 
 of a departed prelate he deemed excessive, " I trust
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 205 
 
 I am not wanting in respect for those who, by their 
 eminent virtues, the cautious character of their theo- 
 logical opinions, and the coincidence of their political 
 principles with those of the First Minister of the Crown, 
 have been raised to the highest preferment in the 
 Established Church. But to me an Episcopal philo- 
 sopher is a philosopher and nothing more ; to me a 
 dead bishop is only a dead man." 
 
 None of the qualifications for the mitre here adduced 
 could be ascribed to Butler. Neither in theology nor in 
 politics could he be called a trimmer or a time-server ; 
 and it would have been impossible to speak ironically 
 of the "eminent virtues" of a man so simple, so blame- 
 less, so unselfish. Whatever be the true account of 
 the matter, there can be no doubt that Butler's pro- 
 motion, as it came to him unsought, left him to the 
 last as simple-minded, unworldly, unstained by the 
 vices of great place and power, as it found him. His 
 personal habits were as unluxurious as those of a 
 monk. From the large revenues of his see he accumu- 
 lated no fortune ; his vast patronage he used with 
 such unwonted superiority to nepotism that a dis- 
 appointed relative declared it to be a misfortune for 
 a candidate for preferment to be connected with the 
 bishop. Books, retirement, leisure for quiet study and 
 thought these were the treasures he valued most. 
 And though he discharged his episcopal duties with 
 a fidelity remarkable according to the standard of the
 
 206 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES, 
 
 time, he probably felt the cares of office and the 
 external exigencies inseparable from it to be rather 
 a distraction from the work for which, by tempera- 
 ment and taste, he was best fitted. " He belonged," 
 it has been said, " to the small class of men who find 
 in abstract speculation not merely the main employ- 
 ment, but almost the sole enjoyment of their lives." 
 And though in him there was nothing of the help- 
 lessness and almost imbecility in practical affairs 
 which it sometimes amuses the world to witness in 
 such men, it is obvious that his bent was to a life 
 of contemplation rather than of action. He was any- 
 thing but an impractical dreamer; an ethical and 
 practical aim dominated all his studies ; but it was 
 man and not men, humanity in its universal powers, 
 wants, hopes, fears, aspirations, limitations, rather than 
 individual human beings with their accidental and 
 infinitely varied characteristics, in which he felt most 
 interest. It is not difficult to understand how one 
 of such temperament and tendencies should pass 
 through life without either attracting warm personal 
 attachments or provoking personal hostility. 
 
 It was impossible indeed that so remarkable a 
 man should altogether escape criticism, and there are 
 always people to whom the reserve of an elevated 
 nature is a kind of tacit offence, and whose suspicions 
 are awakened by the very simplicity which should 
 disarm them. But the worst that such critics ever
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 207 
 
 ventured to insinuate of Butler was a ridiculous charge 
 of leanings to the Catholic Church. He was known 
 to have read the Lives of the Saints, he had a taste 
 for stained glass, he had adorned the wall of his 
 private chapel with a marble cross. And so, on no 
 better ground than such wretched gossip, the sort 
 of people with whom in our own day we are not 
 unfamiliar who have a morbid scent for heresy, and 
 hunt out the faintest traces of what they call " popish 
 errors " with the zeal of a detective proclaimed to 
 the world their belief that Butler lived and died a 
 papist. Butler, we may be sure, if anything of the 
 kind ever reached his ears, never condescended to 
 answer such vulgar slander, and those who honour his 
 memory will imitate his own magnanimous silence. 
 
 Butler's title to fame as a writer rests on his 
 contributions to ethical science and on his Analogy. 
 Space compels me to omit what I intended to say on 
 his ethical theory, and to confine my remarks to 
 his greater work. 
 
 Butler's Analogy affords an example of the survival 
 of a book in an age that has long passed away from 
 the standpoint on which it is based. The evidential 
 literature of the eighteenth century, with its hard 
 and fast distinction between natural and revealed 
 religion, its anthropomorphic ruler of the world 
 proved by the argument from design, its appeal to 
 reason to demonstrate the authority, whilst denying
 
 208 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 its right to deal with the contents of Scripture, its 
 general tendency to regard religious belief as the 
 result of a process of argument has, for the most 
 part, ceased in our day to have any other than a 
 historic interest. The conflict between the assailants 
 and defenders of the faith is still as hotly waged as 
 in the days of the Deistical controversy, but it has 
 shifted to new ground and it is fought with different 
 weapons. Agnostics, materialists, evolutionists, pes- 
 simists, historical and critical rationalists he who 
 undertakes to meet these and the like opponents 
 would in vain arm himself with the old weapons 
 that drove Tindal and Collins and Chubb and their 
 coadjutors routed from the field. 
 
 But if much of a once famous apologetic liter- 
 ature is now forgotten if Leslie and Chandler, 
 Sherlock and Warburton are unread, if even the 
 writers of a time nearer our own have shared their 
 fate, if the laborious research of Lardner, the clear- 
 ness and argumentative skill of Paley have not 
 saved them, or only partially saved them, from 
 the neglect that falls on the champions of extinct 
 controversies how can we account for the fact that 
 Butler, who is in many respects identified with the 
 ideas and the spirit of his time, should retain a place 
 of honour in the religious literature of our own day. 
 It is not a sufficient explanation of this survival 
 that Butler had the good fortune to be selected as
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 209 
 
 a standard theological authority by the English Uni- 
 versities, and that the artificial sanctity in which he has 
 been embalmed in these great seats of learning has, 
 in his case, counteracted the law of natural selection. 
 There is a limit to the antiseptic powers even of 
 the greatest academic authorities ; they may some- 
 times prolong a moribund reputation, but where there 
 is no inherent vitality they cannot arrest the process 
 of dissolution. Perhaps the true answer to the 
 question will be found in the fact that, whilst Butler 
 is, in one point of view, a thorough representative of 
 the religious attitude of his time, and whilst the 
 argument of his great work is, in some respects, 
 fallacious and untenable, there is nevertheless, in the 
 spirit of his teaching, much that was in advance 
 of his time and that is of essential and permanent 
 value. 
 
 I. An examination of Butler's great work would 
 lead us into theological discussions beyond the scope of 
 a lecture such as this. All I can here attempt is to 
 indicate the general point of view which is common 
 to Butler with the other evidential writers of his 
 time. But before doing so, I may offer one or two 
 brief remarks on the argument of the Analogy, and 
 its success in dealing with the religious difficulties it 
 attempts to meet. 
 
 The more important part of the book is an elaborate 
 attempt to silence the objections of a theist to
 
 210 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 revealed religion, by showing him that revelation does 
 not contain more or greater difficulties than he must 
 have already got over in order to retain his belief in 
 a God. For everything in Christianity that seems 
 unintelligible, contradictory, or unworthy of a divine 
 author, something precisely analogous could be pointed 
 out in " the constitution and course of nature," which, 
 nevertheless, the theist believes to be of divine origin. 
 There is nothing, in other words, in the system of 
 Christian doctrine which does greater violence to 
 reason and conscience than the facts of nature 
 (meaning by the word, not physical nature, but the 
 natural course of events in human life). " Let any 
 one," says a modern expounder of Butler, summarizing 
 his argument, "let any one who objects to Chris- 
 tianity that its leading doctrines are opposed to our 
 moral instincts, test his principle by carrying it with 
 him to a like scrutiny into the constitution and course 
 of nature. He must acknowledge that, thus judged, 
 the moral order of the world appears defective and 
 inexplicable. Is he offended at the arbitrary dis- 
 tinction made in the scheme of salvation between the 
 elect and the reprobate ? But in nature is not one 
 man born to honour and another to dishonour ? Is it 
 from any regard to the merits of individuals that one 
 man comes into the world inheriting wealth and 
 friends, bodily health and mental dispositions towards 
 virtue, while another creeps into existence diseased
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 211 
 
 and prone to vice ? Is it shocking to justice that the 
 innocent should suffer for the sins of the guilty ? But 
 this is the ordinary, everyday course of things. The 
 punishment of sin does not always fall on the head of 
 the sinner himself. It is not only that his innocent 
 family and connections must suffer with him, but 
 sometimes he appears not to suffer at all, or not in 
 proportion to his guilt," and a great deal more to the 
 same effect. 
 
 Now on this argument it may be remarked that, 
 whatever consolation it might bring to those who 
 adopt its presuppositions, there are not many persons 
 who are in the state of mind to which it is addressed. 
 They must be persons who, besides other assumptions, 
 accept the author's account both of the contents of 
 Scripture and of " the course and constitution of 
 nature." The doctrines at which reason is supposed 
 to stumble, and which, it is taken for granted, are 
 those of the Christian religion, are simply the system 
 of doctrines regarded as orthodox by the divines of 
 Butler's day. But to any one who holds, for instance, 
 that the doctrine of arbitrary election and reprobation, 
 according to which God is represented as allotting 
 eternal bliss to some and eternal misery to others for 
 no reason save that it is His sovereign will and 
 pleasure to do so, that is, for no reason at all, to any 
 one, and there are, I hope, multitudes in that case, 
 who holds that this monstrous dogma is not really
 
 212 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 taught in Scripture, the difficulty which this elaborate 
 argument attempts to meet, ceases to exist. Nature 
 need not be ransacked for something parallel to it. 
 The spectre he would lay is one of the author's own 
 conjuring. 
 
 And the same thing may be said of most of the 
 other doctrines which are supposed to offend our 
 moral instincts, such as the punishment of the 
 innocent for the guilty, or, in general, the transference 
 of moral merit and demerit. If the Bible contained 
 such a doctrine as that the moral demerit of a bad 
 man or merit of a good one can be simply transferred 
 to another by a divine act, this would not merely 
 be a difficulty for reason, to be got over by finding 
 something parallel to it elsewhere. Indeed, the only 
 relevant kind of parallel would be a constitution 
 and course of nature in which it was found possible to 
 transfer to a triangle the properties of a square, or to 
 impute to the former the merit of having four angles 
 and four sides. Here again, for those who do not find 
 any such doctrine in Scripture, who believe that it 
 has only been read into Scripture by a false dogmatism, 
 the difficulty in question, the seeming stone of 
 stumbling and rock of offence for reason, evaporates 
 into space. 
 
 On the other hand, if there are comparatively few 
 who now find Butler's difficulties in revealed religion, 
 there are equally few who would discover his con-
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 213 
 
 solatory facts in nature. ISTo doubt the course of 
 nature, that is, of human life, regarded from an indi- 
 vidualistic point of view, contains much that is 
 inexplicable and unjust. Whether the implication 
 of the individual members of human society with 
 each other for good or evil is a problem which 
 may not find its solution in some such idea as the 
 organic unity of the race, is not the question here. 
 But that the course of nature contains anything 
 parallel to the punishment of one man or of many 
 innocent men for the sins of another, is a premiss 
 of Butler's argument which few would concede. 
 The innocent child of the profligate, it is true, 
 suffers terribly for the father's misdeeds ; but who 
 will say that in this and other such cases there is 
 any transference of guilt, or that, in the proper 
 sense of the word, the suffering of the child can be 
 called punishment ? 
 
 Is there, again, anything in nature parallel to 
 the arbitrary election of men to eternal bliss or 
 woe ? Suppose it were admitted that men enjoy 
 and suffer much in this brief life for which the 
 principle of exact distributive justice cannot account, 
 and that, so far, the good and evil of life is 
 arbitrarily allotted, is this an exact parallel to their 
 being called into existence by an omnipotent will, 
 only to be, irrespective of all reason but that will, 
 blessed or damned to all eternity ? Surely these
 
 214 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 necessary postulates of the argument from analogy 
 take a little too much for granted. In fact, if 
 its representations of nature and of revelation were 
 anything else than a hideous fancy-picture, the true 
 result would be, not consolation for doubting souls, not 
 a redintegrated faith in religion, but a horrible sense 
 of chaos and confusion, or a belief that both nature 
 and revelation have their origin, not in infinite wisdom 
 and goodness, but in the caprice of some mocking 
 Moloch making grim sport of his own creation. 
 
 The only other observation I shall make on the 
 argument of the Analogy is, that even if the paral- 
 lelism of difficulties were much more exact than we 
 have seen it to be, it would surely be but a poor 
 defence of a supernatural revelation that, instead of 
 throwing light on our moral difficulties, it only 
 exactly reproduces them. The perplexed traveller 
 would not be encouraged to place his faith in a 
 guide book, by the information that as to the right 
 route it contained parallel difficulties to his own. 
 Yet here the theist, perplexed by the mystery of 
 life, struggling hard to keep his faith in God despite 
 of manifold seeming anomalies and contradictions, 
 and longing for new light from heaven, is expected 
 to believe in or at least not to reject a professed 
 supernatural revelation, on the ground, not that it 
 removes these anomalies and contradictions, but that 
 it adds to them others precisely of the same sort.
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 215 
 
 II. The theological literature of the age to which 
 Butler's Analogy belongs was mainly employed in 
 " proving the truth of Christianity " without touching 
 its content and substance. The divines of that day 
 did not trouble themselves much about dogma, or 
 exegesis, or experimental religion. The only concern 
 they seemed to have with the doctrines of Christianity 
 was to force men by logical arguments to accept them 
 in the lump as of divine authority. The whole en- 
 quiry into their truth was to be conducted very much 
 like a question of legal evidence, and the truth or 
 falsehood of religion was to be determined in the 
 same way as the innocence or guilt of a prisoner at 
 the bar of a court of justice. There is scarcely any 
 caricature of the attitude of the evidence-mongers 
 towards religion in Johnson's saying, that "the Apostles 
 were being tried once a week for the capital crime 
 of forgery." 
 
 The presupposition with which this method of 
 enquiry started was that religion belonged to the 
 domain not of demonstrative but of probable truth, 
 and that it must stand or fall with the preponderance 
 of evidence for or against it. The whole matter is 
 surrounded with difficulties. Much can be said on 
 both sides. You cannot expect absolute certainty. 
 There is a great number of arguments against both 
 natural and revealed religion, but there is a greater 
 number in its favour. Every man is bound to weigh
 
 216 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the arguments on both sides, and strike the balance 
 between them. And the point which the defenders of 
 the faith had to make good was, that if you went into 
 this question in a candid spirit, you would find that 
 the arguments against religion kicked the beam ; or, 
 to put it differently, that after a careful examination 
 and cross-examination of the witnesses, an honest jury 
 would be sure to bring in a verdict for the defender. 
 
 Butler was too honest a man to overstate the value 
 of this kind of proof. The truculent dogmatism of 
 such a combatant as Warburton, who claimed all but 
 demonstrative certainty for his conclusions, could 
 account for hesitation to accept them only by the 
 moral depravity of the doubter, and tried to get the 
 verdict he wanted by brow-beating the witnesses and 
 threatening the jury. This style of judicial fairness 
 was abhorrent to Butler's candid and truth-loving 
 nature. " Probable evidence," he says, " in its very 
 nature, affords but an imperfect kind of information." 
 " It is most readily acknowledged that the foregoing 
 treatise is by no means satisfactory," he writes at the 
 close of the Analogy ; " very far indeed from it : but 
 so would any natural institution of life appear, if 
 reduced into a system, together with its evidence." 
 
 But to this admission Butler adds the curious 
 argument, which has been frequently repeated by the 
 school to which he belongs, that in a matter of such 
 moment as religion, probable evidence ought to have
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 217 
 
 the practical effect of demonstration. " Probability," 
 says he, " is to us the very guide of life." " In 
 matters of speculation and in matters of practice," we 
 are often under an obligation to act upon probability, 
 " though it be so low as to leave the mind in very 
 great doubt what is the truth." " From the natural 
 constitution and course of things we must, in our 
 temporal concerns, almost continually, and in matters 
 of great consequence, act upon evidence of a like kind 
 and degree to the evidence of religion " ; and " if the 
 interest which religion proposes to us be infinitely 
 greater than our whole temporal interest, there must 
 be proportionally greater reason for our believing and 
 acting on such evidence." " When so much is at 
 stake, even a serious apprehension that Christianity 
 may be true lays persons . . . under the obligation 
 of a regard to it, not the same exactly, but in many 
 respects nearly the same, with what a full conviction 
 of its truth would lay them under." 
 
 To the same effect a modern follower of Butler 
 writes : " Faith in the same sort of evidence which 
 the sceptic rejects when urged in behalf of religion, 
 prompts the farmer to cast in his seed, though he 
 can command no blink of sunshine nor a drop of 
 rain ; the merchant to commit his treasures to the 
 deep, though they all may go to the bottom ; the 
 physician to essay the cure, though often half in 
 doubt whether the remedy will kill or save. God
 
 218 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 says to us in effect, ' On such evidence you must and 
 shall act,' and shows us that we safely may." 
 
 The drift of this is, we do and must often in daily 
 life make up our minds to act on probable evidence ; 
 why should we hesitate to accept the same sort of 
 evidence as a sufficient ground for action in religion ? 
 Consequences so awful are involved in our accepting 
 or denying the truth of religion, that, in this case, we 
 ought to let a very slight preponderance of evidence 
 have on our minds the effect of demonstration. 
 Suppose there are three chances to one for the truth 
 of religion, you ought to act as if it were absolutely 
 certain, rather than run the risk of losing your soul 
 by doubting or denying it. 
 
 Now it is no irreverence to a great name to say 
 that the thought of our day has got beyond the whole 
 attitude of mind to which this kind of argument is 
 addressed. What we now see at a glance is, that it 
 is really an impossible or self-contradictory attitude, 
 and that even if it were possible, the idea of religion 
 which it involves is superficial and degrading. In the 
 first place, we are told that in religion we ought to 
 act on probable evidence, as we often do in our 
 temporal concerns. But the answer is obvious ; in 
 religion belief is action, and to believe with a mind 
 half-convinced is a contradiction in terms. Eeligion 
 does not consist in doing, like the farmer or doctor, 
 certain outward acts, which, for the sake of possible
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 219 
 
 ulterior benefits, we might run the chance of doing, 
 though still far from certain as to the result. But 
 to be religious is to believe, to grasp by faith spiritual 
 realities ; to have, not a hesitating expectation, but 
 a profound conviction of the truth of the things unseen 
 and eternal. Now this is a kind of action which 
 obviously cannot be done on evidence that leaves 
 room for doubt. To believe for certain on probable 
 evidence is to believe more than the grounds of belief 
 warrant. Suppose that out of twenty possible reasons 
 fifteen are for religion and five against it, how can 
 you force your mind to let the fifteen have the effect 
 of twenty. The legitimate result is not certainty, but 
 an approximation to it in the ratio of three to one. 
 
 Moreover, to let probability have the force of 
 certainty is not only an irrational but an immoral 
 act. Doubt is a duty where evidence is imperfect, 
 and to make-believe that we have certainty where 
 we have only probability, is as immoral as to take 
 credit in money matters for capital we do not 
 possess. Instead of saving our souls by such faith 
 we are already losing them by intellectual and moral 
 dishonesty. The alleged parallels from our present 
 life are not truly analogous. The farmer, the mer- 
 chant, the physician, act ; they do not believe. They 
 do not even act as if they believed in a certain result ; 
 they merely take their chance that it may come about. 
 The farmer does not believe for certain, nor even act
 
 220 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 as if he believed, that the seed will produce a crop. 
 His acquaintance with well-known laws of nature 
 assures him that, if he fulfil certain conditions, there 
 is a strong probability that his end will be gained ; 
 but he also knows that unforeseen contingencies may 
 frustrate all his hopes. But where is there anything 
 parallel to this in religion ? Or, if in the spiritual 
 life anything like this were possible, would it deserve 
 the name of religion ? Is a man a believer in God 
 who resolves to act as if there were a God, thinking at 
 the same time that it may possibly turn out that 
 no such being exists. Is a man a Christian when 
 he simply determines to run his chance of Christianity 
 proving true, with a reservation in his mind that the 
 whole thing may prove a delusion ? The prudential 
 motive that is to turn the scale, so far from rendering 
 religion more obligatory, really vitiates the so-called 
 religious act. In a matter of such consequence you 
 should act, it is said, as if religion were true ; i.e. act 
 as if you believed, because it is safer to do so ; 
 religion will do you no harm if it should turn out 
 to be false, and if it be true you will be on the safe 
 side ; you will be no loser by believing, and if you 
 do not believe, you may possibly be damned. It is no 
 caricature of this style of teaching when it is repre- 
 sented as exhorting us " to believe in a God, lest if 
 there should happen to be a God he may send us to 
 hell for doubting the fact of his existence."
 
 BISHOP BUTLER AND HIS THEOLOGY. 221 
 
 These observations lead us, I think, to the con- 
 clusion that the mental attitude of the evidential 
 school is a false one. Genuine religious conviction 
 can never be the result of a balancing of logical 
 arguments ; it cannot be a belief produced by a series 
 of external proofs, and which implies no relation of 
 the spirit of man to the thing believed. The proof 
 of religion cannot be separated from its essence. 
 You can no more argue a man into a belief in religion 
 than into a belief in art or morality. He who 
 believes in these things, believes in them on grounds 
 to which an unlimited supply of supernatural or 
 other credentials is wholly irrelevant. A man whose 
 soul is vibrating to the beauty of nature would not 
 have his faith strengthened by any amount of miracles 
 and prophecy to prove that nature is beautiful. 
 Belief in the reality of righteousness, purity, love, 
 goodness, could neither be produced nor fortified by 
 signs and wonders the most portentous, wrought 
 before your eyes, much less by elaborate arguments 
 to show that the preponderance of proof is in favour 
 of such signs and wonders having been wrought about 
 two thousand years ago. 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, if you do really believe 
 in such things as righteousness and goodness, can 
 they for you belong to what these reasoners call 
 'probable,' as distinguished from 'demonstrative,' truth. 
 Honour, veracity, justice, fortitude, purity, charity,
 
 222 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 if you believe in these at all, you believe in their 
 reality and nobleness, and, on the other hand, in the 
 baseness of treachery, cowardice, injustice, sensuality, 
 selfishness, with an absolute certitude which admits 
 of no shadow of doubt, which no conceivable external 
 proof could shake, which would remain unshaken 
 though the heavens should fall. And if Christianity 
 is not the revelation merely of an almighty anthro- 
 pomorphic governor of the world, but of that infinite 
 righteousness, goodness, love, which found its highest 
 human expression in the life of Christ ; then to 
 believe in Christianity is not to believe in a highly 
 probable God, for whose existence there are many 
 strong arguments balanced by some grave objections; 
 but it is to believe in that which is surer to us 
 than life, on which all life, all thought and being 
 rests, and our faith in which neither life nor death, 
 nor things present nor things to come can subvert 
 or shake.
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTOEY. 
 
 November 8, 1884. 
 
 BEFOKE proceeding to the business for which we are 
 met, I think it right to advert in a single sentence 
 to the loss which this University has sustained by 
 the sudden death of the Lord Rector. 
 
 This is not the time or the place for any attempt 
 to delineate the character or retrace the career of 
 Mr. Fawcett. I will only venture to say now that 
 in him there seems to have been a beautiful com- 
 bination of qualities seldom united in the same person. 
 He seems to have been not more remarkable for 
 intellectual vigour than for moral force of nature. 
 Fortitude, indomitable strength and self-reliance, an 
 almost stern devotion to duty, were found in him 
 not incompatible with a genial benignity and affability 
 and an utterly unselfish simplicity of nature that 
 drew to him the love and trust of many friends. 
 The contemplative and the active life are often con- 
 trasted. Not many are capable of achieving excellence 
 
 223
 
 224 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 in both, and men are drawn by individual genius 
 and temperament, some to the former, some to the 
 latter. But our late Lord Eector seems to have 
 possessed the capacities that fitted him for a career 
 in which both elements were brought into play. He 
 found himself at home alike amidst the active avoca- 
 tions of the statesman and administrator, and in the 
 quiet and studious life of a University teacher. 
 
 Nor did the diversity and seeming incongruity of 
 his spheres of labour result only in that mediocrity 
 which is often the consequence of scattered energies. 
 Universal recognition places him, if not in the front 
 rank of political eminence, at least not far behind 
 the foremost, and as a thinker he was in one branch 
 of science a man of distinct originality, and one whose 
 writings have helped in no slight measure to mould 
 the thought of his time. It is sad to think that a 
 career so fair, so honourable, so full of usefulness to 
 mankind, should have been suddenly arrested. It 
 was only the other day that I expressed to you the 
 hope that we should soon have the happiness of 
 seeing him amongst us and listening to the voice 
 that is now and for ever silent. I know that he felt 
 no common pride in being selected by your suffrages 
 to fill the place of your Academic chief, and I am 
 sure that you will unite with me in the expression 
 of our unfeigned regret that he has passed away in 
 the midst of his years and his usefulness, of our
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 225 
 
 sense of the loss which the nation has sustained by 
 his removal, and of our sympathy with those who 
 were related to him by the sacred ties of love and 
 home. 
 
 Amongst the many projected improvements in our 
 University system one of the most important is the 
 foundation, if not of a school, at least of a Chair of 
 History. The professor of Ecclesiastical History is 
 indeed by his commission also professor of Civil 
 History ; but even if his Chair did not properly 
 belong to the Divinity Faculty, either of the two 
 provinces of history is more than enough for the 
 work of one man. "We regard it," say the Uni- 
 versities' Commissioners of 1858, "as most undesirable 
 that this defect in the University system should be 
 allowed to continue," and " we think it of great 
 importance for the students in the Faculties of Arts 
 and Law that this (Glasgow) University should be 
 provided with a professor of History who should be 
 a member of each of these Faculties." In selecting 
 a topic for the present lecture I have thought that, 
 partly because it might serve to draw attention once 
 more to this admitted defect, partly because of , the 
 interest of the subject in itself, I could do nothing 
 better than offer you a few remarks on the nature 
 and uses of the study of History. 
 
 The expediency of introducing the study of history 
 into a University curriculum turns upon the question
 
 226 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 whether history is capable of scientific treatment. 
 Knowledge which has not yet been elevated out of the 
 domain of facts and details, which has not submitted 
 itself to the grasp of principles, or become in some 
 measure illuminated and harmonized by the presence 
 of law, cannot, I suppose, be regarded as a fit instru- 
 ment of the higher education. History, as well-known 
 examples show, may be made interesting without 
 pretending to be scientific. The story of past times 
 and events may be told in a picturesque, lively, and 
 graphic manner ; by judicious selection and elimination 
 it may be made to consist mainly of stirring and 
 exciting narration, clever and life-like portraiture of 
 character, vivid and brilliant descriptions of scenes and 
 places and personages ; the lights and shadows may be 
 so arranged, the characters may be so grouped and 
 contrasted, the succession of incidents so skilfully 
 manipulated, as to sustain without effort the reader's 
 interest and lend to a narrative of real events all the 
 charin and excitement of a work of imagination. 
 
 But this kind of history can no more claim a place 
 among scientific studies than a course of novel reading. 
 It has as much and as little right to be regarded as an 
 intellectual discipline as a competent acquaintance with 
 the works of Dickens or Bulwer or Sir Walter Scott. 
 It is quite true that writings which belong to this 
 pseudo-historical class may have great merit in a 
 literary and artistic point of view, and that, regarded
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 227 
 
 simply as literature, they may be replete with the 
 qualities which constitute the brilliant dramatist or 
 writer of fiction, and so may furnish the student with 
 illustrations of the canons of literary criticism. It is 
 true again that a great historian, along with other and 
 higher qualities, will be all the greater if he possess 
 some measure of those which belong to the pictorial 
 writer of history. It is no mean achievement to make 
 the past live again, to enable us to see in the men and 
 events of bygone times, not mere materials wherewith 
 to cram the memory, counters in the game of politics, 
 data for the working out of social problems, bloodless 
 phantoms flitting athwart the dim-lighted stage of the 
 past, but living and breathing realities, by the rare 
 art of a creative imagination to make them live again, 
 to bring up before us the statesmen, soldiers, kings, 
 courtiers, citizens, peasants, rulers, subjects, of a far 
 distant age, warm with the life of the present, and to 
 see in their actions and in all the events of their 
 history the ever- varying expression of the same passions 
 which throb in our own breasts. 
 
 Moreover, that we may not misconceive or exaggerate 
 the educative function of scientific history, it must be 
 conceded that there are moral influences of a salutary 
 kind which, even when it does not concern itself with 
 scientific problems, history may exert on the ordinary 
 reader's mind. The practical lessons of history, like 
 the practical lessons of common life, may be taught
 
 228 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 by preachers who have no pretensions to philosophy, 
 and learnt by pupils who have no interest in it. For 
 one thing, history, like foreign travel, widens a man's 
 horizon and can scarce fail to broaden his views of 
 life, to correct his prejudices, break down his narrow- 
 ness of thought and feeling, and give his sympathies 
 a wider range. The parochial or insular habit of 
 mind, the tendency to measure all things by local or 
 provincial standards, can scarce survive much converse 
 with the wider world of history, any more than with 
 the men, the customs, ideas, institutions, of other 
 countries and climes. It is philosophy alone, indeed, 
 that looks at things from a purely universal stand- 
 point ; but apart from that, it is an immense gain for 
 a man to get his views of things broadened by a 
 wider basis of induction than his own locality or time 
 supplies. We have all learned to laugh at the typical 
 John Bull who goes abroad looking at all things with 
 insular eyes, foolishly contemptuous of everything that 
 diverges in the smallest measure from the orthodox 
 British standard, and even half-convinced that it is 
 pure ignorance or stupidity that makes men anywhere 
 talk French or German, instead of English with 
 redundant or defective h's. Yet even he cannot return 
 home without some glimmer of doubt as to the 
 universal applicability of the Cockney criterion of the 
 universe ; and I need not stay to show how, in like 
 manner, history tends to give rise, even in the most
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 229 
 
 superficial mind, to some faint appreciation of the true 
 proportion of things. 
 
 Again, history obviously tends to train us to a 
 habit of impartial judgment by removing us beyond 
 the influence of the interests and passions of our 
 own time. In an age and country like ours, in which 
 political, ecclesiastical and other differences are so 
 prevalent, it is difficult for even the calmest and most 
 judicial mind to judge impartially of the character and 
 doings of contemporaries. Even educated men can 
 seldom disabuse themselves of the fanaticism of party, 
 or see the persons and events around them, not through 
 the refracting medium of partizan feeling, but in the 
 pure light of truth. It is only what we might expect 
 when the unreflecting herd of camp-followers are heard 
 shouting indiscriminate denunciations of Tories or 
 Liberals, Papists or Protestants, Churchmen or Dis- 
 senters ; but it is surely a pitiful thing to listen to 
 the fierce, intolerant criticisms of rivals, political and 
 other, in which even highly-cultured men, the very 
 foremost of their time, are wont to indulge. 
 
 Historic judgments, indeed, are not altogether exempt 
 from this false bias. I could name big books of history 
 which are only covert political pamphlets, lives of 
 Ivoman Emperors which are but transparent pleas for, 
 or attacks on, modern Ctesarism, tendence-histories of 
 Greece which are long and laboured arguments for 
 democracy, histories of England which, with some show
 
 230 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of reason, have been described as designed to show 
 that Providence is always on the side of the Whigs. 
 Nevertheless it may still be maintained that history, 
 especially the history of remote times and nations, 
 breathes around us an atmosphere no longer heated 
 by modern divisions and conflicts. Modern analogies 
 for the most part fail us, the passions of modern 
 conflicts cease to stir us, when we read of the great 
 men and great strifes of former days. The battle 
 cries of modern party-warfare die away upon the ear 
 as we enter into the still region of history. The 
 triumphs and failures that meet us there do not affect 
 our personal interests. We can study the actors and 
 the conflicts of past times, the characters of the 
 combatants and the varying fortunes of the causes for 
 which they lived and died, with the unimpassioned 
 calmness of the observer of the phenomena of nature. 
 And, so far, this kind of study is a discipline in 
 candour and moral impartiality. 
 
 Lastly, to name only one other of the moral 
 influences of the study of history, it tends to give 
 us a true conception of what is transient as compared 
 with what is lasting in human life. We can scarcely 
 pass in review the events which mark the story of 
 any great nation or period without perceiving how 
 subversive of contemporary judgments of greatness 
 and littleness is the verdict of history. The men 
 whose names survive are seldom those who looked
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 231 
 
 biggest in their own day. Time takes little account 
 of conventional greatness, and consigns whole hosts of 
 those who possess only arbitrary claims to honour 
 kings, courtiers, dignitaries, serene highnesses, and 
 important personages of all sorts to oblivion, and 
 confers historic immortality on many who, in their 
 own day, were obscure or little-noted. 
 
 And as with the agents, so with the events in 
 which they were concerned. Almost irresistible is the 
 tendency to magnify the importance of the questions 
 and conflicts of our own day or of our own corner 
 of the world. To those who are engaged in the con- 
 troversies of a little circle or sect, it sometimes seems 
 as if all Christendom were looking on, or as if some 
 petty ecclesiastical or political squabble were big with 
 the fate of nations. Yet, when we turn to the page 
 of history, we find that, age after age, men have 
 contended with like eagerness for objects which now 
 look ludicrously disproportionate to the interest they 
 called forth. On some of the causes and controversies 
 which fired the passions of communities or countries, 
 kindled fierce animosities, rent asunder domestic and 
 social ties, the grave historian scarce thinks it 
 necessary to bestow more than a page or a paragraph, 
 on others he does not waste a line. On the map 
 of history the molehill that seemed a mountain is 
 left unmarked. A little time elapses and the loud- 
 sounding storm that seemed to men to shake the
 
 232 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 world leaves perhaps not the faintest echo on the ear 
 of succeeding generations. It was after all but the 
 brawling of a petty brook, deafening to the bystander, 
 but, a mile off, lost in the silence of nature. 
 
 And the reason of this contrast of contemporary 
 and historic judgments is obvious. The men of the 
 highest order, the actions and events that affect most 
 profoundly the progress of humanity, are not those 
 which can be generally appreciated in their own 
 day. Great ideas are slow of bearing fruit, great 
 works and enterprises are long of accomplishment in 
 proportion to their magnitude. The most important 
 discoveries often require long time before the splendour 
 of the results with which they are fraught can be 
 manifested, and their value understood by the multi- 
 tude. A great thinker is often in advance of his time, 
 and must appeal from the neglect or depreciation of 
 his own day to the verdict of futurity. Though the 
 deeper tide of human progress may be with him, the 
 surface current of popular opinion may be, and often 
 is, dead against him. The very strangeness and 
 originality of his ideas rouse the hostility of the 
 slaves of custom ; or the changes he would introduce 
 interfere with the interests of individuals and classes 
 which are bound up with things as they are. If his 
 ideas be true, if his projects and aspirations are in 
 consonance with the eternal order of truth and right, 
 if, in short, his counsel be of God, it cannot come to
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 233 
 
 nought. Give it time, and it will win the day ; but 
 that day may be a far distant one from his own. The 
 spirit of the world moves slowly, and they who appeal 
 to its verdict must be content to wait. On the other 
 hand, the fame for which men of this order have to 
 wait is often the immediate reward of inferior and 
 ignoble workers. The clever exponent of some passing 
 phase of opinion or of the narrow notions of a sect or 
 clique, the man who makes himself the mouth-piece of 
 the passion of the hour, who flatters by formulating or 
 giving a dress of rationality to ignorant prejudice or 
 dull and obstinate obscurantism, the astute, ambitious 
 statesman who appeals to philistinism, to national 
 conceit or the vulgar love of military glory, for these 
 and such as these, for charlatans and popularity- 
 hunters of all sorts, wide is the gate, broad and ready 
 the way, to notoriety and immediate success. But the 
 penalty is this, that such success is as short-lived as it 
 is swiftly won. He who rises into prominence on the 
 passing wave of opinion, sinks into insignificance with 
 its subsidence ; whilst he who by his words and works 
 appeals to those elements of our being which are 
 universal and undying, to the intuitions of truth and 
 right which in the long run sway the spirit of the 
 world, he, and such as he alone, find their place on the 
 page of history amongst those names which the world 
 will not willingly let die. 
 
 Such are some of the uses of the study of history
 
 234 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 regarded from a moral point of view. But, as I have 
 said, we are at present specially concerned with that 
 study viewed as an instrument of the higher intel- 
 lectual culture, and only that kind of history can be 
 so viewed which we designate "scientific." What, 
 then, do we mean by a Science of History ? In what 
 sense can the term " science " be applied to the record 
 of the past life of man ? Now, in attempting to 
 answer this question, it is obvious that, as applied to 
 human actions, individual or collective, we cannot 
 employ the word according to the ordinary usage. 
 " Science," in the ordinary and limited sense of the 
 term, means physical science ; but we can see at a 
 glance that there are conditions and characteristics of 
 physical science which can have no place in a science 
 of history. The physical sciences are sciences of 
 observation and experiment ; but whilst in a general 
 way we may regard history also as a science of 
 observation, it is distinguished from the physical 
 sciences by this essential and all-important charac- 
 teristic, that in history the phenomena never repeat 
 themselves, and can never be reproduced. 
 
 It is the enormous advantage of the student of 
 nature that, given the same conditions, the same 
 results will infallibly recur, and that, in many depart- 
 ments of physics at least, the phenomena either do 
 recur periodically and with unvarying regularity, or 
 can be made to repeat themselves without the slightest
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 235 
 
 variation. The observations, for instance, by which 
 according to Kepler's laws, the motions of the planets 
 are determined and their places in their orbits at any 
 given time assigned, can be repeated by a thousand 
 observers age after age and all the world over. The 
 astronomer of to-day can go through the very same 
 observations by which Galileo made his discovery of 
 Jupiter's satellites, and of the periods of their revolu- 
 tions. Every one who can let drop a guinea and a 
 feather from the upper part of an exhausted glass, and 
 perceives them strike the bottom at the same moment, 
 causes nature to repeat virtually the same facts from 
 which that same philosopher concluded that " the 
 accelerating power of gravity is the same on all sorts 
 of bodies and on great and small masses indifferently." 
 And the great law which asserts that the planets are 
 retained in their orbits by a force which varies in- 
 versely as the squares of the distances, can be verified 
 to-day, to-morrow, centuries hence, by every observer 
 who can compare with the exact motions it should 
 yield the facts that take place before his eyes. 
 
 I need not waste time by adducing illustrations 
 from the other sciences relating to inorganic and even 
 to organic nature of a principle so obvious. But 
 when we turn to the materials with which a science 
 of history should concern itself, we are no longer in 
 a region in which the observations of one period or 
 time can be reproduced in another. Here the facts do
 
 236 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 not relate to a fixed and abiding order ; they cease for 
 ever with the single instance of their occurrence, and 
 can never be recalled. Observe them ever so accur- 
 ately, trace them most precisely to their causes, 
 yet the same causes, even if you could reproduce 
 them, would never give rise to the same results. 
 Reassemble the conditions of a physical fact or event, 
 and inevitably the same fact or event conies to life 
 again. Reassemble, if you can, all the conditions 
 under which a historic event takes place, proclaim that 
 you have detected an essential and invariable relation 
 between a certain environment and certain modes of 
 human activity, and that thus or thus an individual or 
 community are sure to act, and the event will almost 
 certainly prove the futility of your calculations. 
 
 And the reason is, that in the case of physical 
 nature you are dealing with an order which, for the 
 most part, is uniform and permanent ; but in the case 
 of history you are dealing with that which is not 
 permanent but progressive, or, at any rate, which is 
 continually changing, with a material which has in it 
 an element of perpetual originality, and in which the 
 same external conditions in no two instances produce 
 the same results. Nay, it may even be said, that here 
 the very fact that an act has once been done is a 
 reason why it should never be done again. For the 
 ideas and events of the past, the thoughts which men 
 have thought, the struggles, failures, triumphs, con-
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 37 
 
 quests, the whole intellectual and moral history of 
 bygone times is the material out of which has grown 
 the new life of the present. All that poets have 
 sung, and philosophers taught, and statesmen, heroes, 
 patriots have accomplished ; all the varied elements 
 that have constituted the characteristic spirit of each 
 family and nation and age of the bygone life of 
 humanity, all these are the innumerable threads that 
 are woven into the complex web of the world's present 
 life, the element which the ever-growing organism of 
 humanity has assimilated, and which make it im- 
 possible for it ever again to be what at any former 
 stage of its history it has been. 
 
 It is true that individuals may of set purpose 
 repeat their former acts, or may imitate the acts of 
 other men. But an act done with the deliberate 
 consciousness of and intention to copy a former act, 
 either of ourselves or others, is not the same as that 
 act. We have added to the motives, whatever they 
 were, which led to the typical action, the new motive 
 of intention to imitate, and this gives to the copy 
 an entirely different complexion from the original. 
 In like manner individuals or societies may attempt 
 to reproduce the past. In their admiration of a 
 former time they may set themselves to resuscitate 
 its forms and institutions, to think as men thought 
 and do as men did in an age, as they suppose, of 
 simpler motives and purer lives, or at a period that
 
 238 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 lay nearer to the fount of inspiration, when the stream 
 had not become turbid by distance from its source. 
 But, whether in political or ecclesiastical life, such 
 attempts to galvanize the dead spirit and life of the 
 past are as vain as they are foolish. Men may revive 
 what they call primitive customs, re-introduce the 
 cloister life into a world of railways and stock 
 exchanges, or deck themselves out in the gew-gaw 
 robes of mediaeval ceremonial ; just as a grown-up 
 man might set himself to speak in baby talk, or 
 clothe himself in the bibs and tuckers of his child- 
 hood. But such revivals can never be other than 
 forced and fictitious. What was once real because it 
 was the natural spontaneous expression of living 
 thought and feeling, is no longer real when done 
 consciously by men who are breathing the changed 
 life of a new time. They are only make-believe 
 revivals, as little reproducing the originals as the 
 poor player's regal strut reproduces the genuine air 
 of majesty, or as Don Quixote's tilting at windmills 
 was a real reproduction of the exploits of the knight- 
 errant in the age of chivalry. 
 
 But whilst history is not a science in the sense 
 in which we apply that designation to those sciences 
 which admit of the verification of laws by experiment 
 or the exact reproduction of past experience, must it 
 therefore renounce all claims to the name of science ? 
 In the only possible function of the historian that of
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 239 
 
 the mere annalist, or of the vivid and graphic narrator 
 of facts? Must he be content with the inferior though 
 not unprofitable task of finding out and registering the 
 events which make up the life of nations or of the 
 race, or at most of extracting from them general 
 reflexions and lessons after the manner of the 
 moralist or the preacher ? If he cannot detect in 
 the events of the past any such underlying laws 
 as will enable him exactly to predict the course of 
 events in the future, must he therefore give up every 
 attempt at generalization and explanation, and let 
 history take rank at best with those branches of 
 knowledge which are only at the stage of observation 
 and classification of facts, and where the facts have 
 not yet succumbed to any endeavour to theorize or to 
 see in them the expression of general principles or 
 laws ? We know that there are departments of science 
 in which, though as here, the phenomena never repeat 
 themselves, we can yet discern the conditions of 
 change and the laws of progression. Science has to 
 do, not merely with inorganic matter, where the 
 agents are forces that never vary and the phenomena 
 recur with undeviating regularity, but also with matter 
 in the form of organization and life, where, though the 
 objects observed never for any two successive instants 
 remain the same or react in the same way on external 
 conditions, we can yet discern invariable relations 
 between environment and function, and can trace the
 
 24-0 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 presence of permanent kws of growth or development. 
 Is there nothing analogous to this in the phenomena 
 of history ? 
 
 Now to these questions the answer, I think, must 
 be, that though history cannot claim to be an exact 
 science in the sense in which we apply the name 
 to mechanics or optics, or even to botany and 
 physiology, yet in its methods and results there is 
 at least something so far analogous to these depart- 
 ments of knowledge as to entitle it to the name of 
 science. 
 
 In the first place, the philosophic historian claims 
 not merely to observe and record facts, but also in 
 some measure to explain them. Here, as elsewhere, 
 philosophy has had to encounter the charge of being 
 contemptuous of fact, turning away from the severe 
 and stern work of research to indulge in ingenious 
 speculations, or in & priori constructions of experience 
 according to some preconceived theory. What we ask 
 of the historian, it is said, is, by careful investigation 
 and impartial weighing of contemporary and other 
 evidence, to put us in possession of the facts as they 
 actually occurred at any given time and place. The 
 future may be the field for conjecture and speculation 
 as to the course of events, or for the efforts of contend- 
 ing political theorists to mould society in accordance 
 with their ideas ; but history, as has been recently 
 said, "can have no presuppositions, her province is
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 241 
 
 to recall and not to construct, . . . and she demands 
 from the historian to make his mind simply the mirror 
 of reality, the surrender of his judgment to the decree 
 of the ages, not the projection of his fancies into a 
 region that has for ever passed from the limit of 
 creation, dead to the action and the storm of life, 
 whose tranquil expanse no breath of thought can 
 ruffle, and where the charm is broken when the mirror 
 is moved." 
 
 Plausible as this view of the matter seems to be, 
 very little reflection is needed to perceive that it is 
 impossible to reduce the historian to a merely passive 
 or receptive attitude. Even at the lowest estimate of 
 his vocation he must be something more than a mere 
 annalist or chronicler of facts. For one thing, no 
 little scientific insight and activity of mind are often 
 needed to determine what the facts really are. There 
 are periods of history with respect to which the 
 sources of knowledge are so obscure and turbid, the 
 evidence for particular events even of the most im- 
 portant character so conflicting, the residuum of fact 
 to be extricated from a mass of fable and legend, of 
 unconscious exaggeration and pious fraud so enormous, 
 that the task of the historic critic is one demanding 
 often some of the highest qualities of the scientific 
 mind. Moreover, when the facts have been ascer- 
 tained, even the least philosophic of historians cannot 
 help letting a tinge of theory infuse itself into his
 
 242 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 treatment of them. However limited the period he 
 undertakes to write of, as he cannot tell all the facts, 
 he must select, and selection involves a criterion or 
 principle of judgment as to what is more or less 
 important, that is, it involves a kind of philosophy 
 however crude. 
 
 Every historian, it is obvious, must select and epi- 
 tomize. If a man should undertake, without omission 
 or eompression, to tell us everything that was said or 
 done last week in Glasgow, the world would not 
 contain the books that should be written by him, 
 though a very small part of it would certainly con- 
 tain all the buyers and readers of them. Even those 
 writers of history whose style of narration comes 
 nearest to that of the uneducated story-teller cannot 
 escape the demand for compression. Mrs. Quickly's 
 garrulous circumstantiality is thoroughly true to life. 
 There are many people who are nothing if not circum- 
 stantial. They cannot give you an account of any 
 transaction they have witnessed without a minute 
 detail of all the incidents and episodes connected with 
 it. If you try to hurry their pace or bring them to 
 the point, you speedily find that you had better let 
 them take their own way ; for the only principle of 
 association in their minds is the order of time, and 
 they can no more omit the non-essential and get to 
 the salient points than a traveller can eliminate the 
 drearier parts of the road in order to reach those
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 243 
 
 which are worth seeing. A naive gossiping historian, 
 like Herodotus, may indeed have a charm of his own, 
 but even his prolixity has its limits, and a historian 
 who should carry the minuteness of the conversational 
 bore into literature would soon find that readers have 
 a way of escape which the courtesies of real life often 
 deny to auditors. 
 
 A historian then must sift and select ; but every- 
 thing depends on the principle according to which the 
 selection is made. He may select from a purely 
 artistic, or he may select from a scientific point of 
 view. Now it is quite possible that up to a certain 
 point the two aims may coincide. There is a sense, 
 in other words, in which the artistic historian may, 
 nay must, be an unconscious philosopher. From the 
 mass of materials which are at the command of both, 
 what the scientific historian aims at is such a selection 
 as will indicate the presence and activity of a law of 
 development either in a particular nation or period, or 
 in society as a whole. What the artistic historian 
 aims at is such a selection as will yield a life-like 
 picture of a past age, and give to the successive parts 
 of his narrative something of the unity, interconnection, 
 and the sustained and gradually deepening interest of 
 a dramatic or epic poem. 
 
 Now it is easy to see that, in the mind of a very 
 great historian of the latter class, the artistic impulse 
 may unconsciously lead to precisely that selection and
 
 244 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 grouping of events which would best subserve the 
 purposes of the philosopher. A great portrait-painter 
 may be no psychologist, but the representation he 
 produces of a subject worthy of his art may have in it 
 all the effect of careful psychological analysis. He 
 does not reproduce on the canvas everything he sees, 
 still less everything that a microscopic examination of 
 the face and form of the sitter would reveal. He 
 selects and omits; he manages light and shade so as to 
 bring into relief this feature and subdue or slightly 
 indicate that; he catches evanescent gleams of ex- 
 pression, subtle suggestions of pose and gesture; he 
 seizes on all that is most characteristic, and brings out 
 in just and accurate relative proportions what is sig- 
 nificant and what is unimportant, and so in the 
 masterly result he sets before us, by a certain instinct 
 of genius, a representation of the whole life and spirit 
 of the man which is in marvellous coincidence with 
 the results of a scientific analysis of his life and 
 character. 
 
 In like manner a great historian who aims at 
 nothing more than a life-like picture of a past epoch, 
 may, led simply by the artistic impulse, tell the story 
 of a nation's fortunes so as to produce an impression 
 singularly correspondent with the results which the 
 scientific historian brings out. Ranging over the vast 
 mass of seemingly heterogeneous materials with which 
 he has to deal, and impelled simply by the unconscious
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 245 
 
 effort after unity of effect, he seizes intuitively on the 
 events that have gone to mould or that express the 
 spirit of an age or the characteristic genius of a people. 
 From the scattered and complex details of war, con- 
 quests, migrations, of ethnological and geographical 
 conditions, of legislation, diplomacy, finance; from the 
 records of courts and camps, of the lives and char- 
 acters of kings and courtiers, of the exploits of heroes; 
 from the multifarious facts bearing on the rise and 
 progress of literature, art, science, religion, of manners 
 and customs, of commerce and industry, of culture and 
 civilization from this labyrinthine heap of details, he 
 fastens by a certain ideal instinct on those elements 
 which furnish a clue to its meaning, and which enable 
 him to give unity, connexion, relative proportion, 
 harmony and significance to the whole. Thus it may 
 happen that a writer who aims at nothing more than 
 producing a faithful and interesting narrative may, by 
 his selection and grouping of his materials, by the 
 relief in which the grander features of the picture are 
 brought out, by the ignoring of many things and the 
 slighter touches he bestows on others, by the order into 
 which the successive incidents are thrown, by the skilful 
 management of perspective, by the masterly employ- 
 ment of the many concurrent elements which contribute 
 to unity of effect such a writer may in his own way 
 produce a result which will be in wonderful coincidence 
 with the conclusions of the scientific historian.
 
 246 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Must we then conclude that the work of the latter 
 is superfluous ? If we can get the results of science 
 without the painfulness of the process by which they 
 are reached, if the severest problems of philosophic 
 investigation can be solved for us while we seem only 
 to be listening to a moving tale, why should we volun- 
 tarily undergo the mental exertion which the former 
 demands ? I answer, there are many reasons why in 
 the province of history artistic narrative cannot super- 
 sede science. Not to urge that the genius which 
 anticipates in a concrete way the results of scientific 
 enquiry is of the rarest order, it is to be considered 
 that it is, from the nature of the thing, only to a 
 very limited extent that history can lend itself to 
 the purposes of art, and that, beyond that point, it 
 can only be made to do so by the sacrifice of truth 
 to effect. The historic artist is under a strong temp- 
 tation to tamper with his materials. Amongst the 
 English historians of the last century there is perhaps 
 only one who combined conscientious accuracy with 
 gracefulness of form, and the majority of historians, 
 ancient or modern, are practical proofs of the difficulty 
 of this combination of qualities. If they are elegant, 
 they are inaccurate ; if they are accurate, they are 
 dull. And the reason is obvious. A writer who sets 
 out with the intention of being always interesting in 
 the sense in which a novel or a play is interesting, is 
 under a strong temptation to manipulate his materials,
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 247 
 
 or, at least, not to be rigidly faithful to them. If 
 the facts do not suit his purpose, he is apt to act on 
 the principle that it is so much the worse for them. 
 And the facts often do not lend themselves to the 
 purpose of dramatic effect. 
 
 A writer of fiction is never in doubt about his facts, 
 for he can create them at will ; but, as we have seen, 
 the real facts of history are often hard to reach, and 
 that only by a process of critical investigation, careful 
 appreciation of evidence, and subtle reasoning from 
 antecedent probabilities, which arrests the flow of the 
 narrative and has no interest for the unscientific mind. 
 So, again, it is an immense advantage to the writer 
 who wishes to make his story effective, that he can 
 introduce the characters and incidents at the precise 
 time and place which the development of the plot 
 requires ; that he is always behind the scenes and can 
 never be in doubt as to the motives of any one of 
 the dramatis pcrstmoR, and can make them appear 
 and disappear or finally vanish just as the exigencies 
 of the story require ; and, to name no other point, that 
 he need never introduce a single irrelevant word or 
 action, or from beginning to end let anything intrude 
 itself which does not contribute to the movement of 
 the narrative. 
 
 But, in these and other respects, history often 
 refuses to lend itself to the purposes of art. There are 
 long lapses of time in which nothing very interesting
 
 248 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 takes place, yet the record of whose dull transactions 
 cannot be omitted from the faithful historian's page. 
 The characters of real life, again, are often strangely 
 intractable from the artistic point of view : they are 
 not always in keeping with themselves ; they do not 
 group themselves so as to set off each other's qualities; 
 they come in when they are not needed, or lag on the 
 stage when the interest of the story requires that 
 they should disappear. The springs of action and 
 the causes and consequences of events are often diffi- 
 cult to trace ; and to piece out imperfect, fragmentary 
 knowledge so as to reach even probable results, 
 demands a kind of intelligence wholly different from 
 that to which the picturesque narrator appeals. And, 
 to name no other obstacle to the artistic treatment of 
 history, there is this, that neither in its parts nor as a 
 whole does history round itself off into the complete- 
 ness of a work of art. The story of each individual 
 nation or period can never possess any dramatic 
 completeness in itself, and even the history of the 
 race can have for us only the unsatisfied interest of an 
 unfinished tale, a drama that is suddenly interrupted, 
 the plot of which is as yet scarcely intelligible, and 
 the far-off denouement of which we can at best only 
 dimly guess. 
 
 But whilst thus it is from its very nature only to a 
 very limited extent that history lends itself to the 
 purposes of art, or can be invested with the attractive-
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 249 
 
 ness of art without sacrificing truth to effect, we are 
 brought back to the question whether and in what 
 sense it can be brought within the range of science ; or 
 rather, since, as we have already shown, the question 
 must, in the ordinary meaning of the word science, be 
 answered in the negative, whether philosophy, which 
 claims to be the science of sciences, to deal with the 
 ultimate problems of thought and being, to trace the 
 secret links of that chain which binds together all 
 thinking things, all objects of all thought, whether 
 philosophy can be accused of presumption when it 
 attempts to introduce the light of reason and intel- 
 ligible law into the seeming confusion and complication 
 of human history. 
 
 The examination of this question it is impossible to 
 overtake in the present lecture. Leaving it therefore 
 for future treatment, I shall only say in conclusion, 
 that if the answer to it be in the affirmative, if we can 
 discern law in history a secret order of reason in the 
 life of nations and of the world the study must be one 
 of the most profoundly interesting to which human 
 intelligence can be directed. It must possess attraction 
 for all classes of minds, but especially for the philo- 
 sopher and the theologian. Philosophy must find 
 its account in studying it, for it is true of man above 
 all other beings, that to know what he is we must 
 know what he has been. Even the individual mind 
 cannot be understood by making it simply the object
 
 250 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of immediate observation. To know it you must 
 study the process of its development, see how one 
 form or stage of consciousness rises out of another, 
 retrace the course of that genetic movement through 
 which mind or intelligence has come to be what it is. 
 
 But the individual is himself the part or member of 
 a larger whole. His consciousness is steeped in the 
 thought and life of the age in which he lives, and that 
 again is the living result of all the past stages through 
 which the thought and life of the race has run. 
 Every step by which humanity has emerged from 
 the life of nature and risen to what it now is in 
 the most civilized portions of the world, has left 
 the traces of itself in the present consciousness of 
 mankind. And though it is true that the results of 
 the process are present here and now in us, and we can, 
 in a sense, by introspection and self-observation discern 
 them, yet it casts a new and wonderful light on the 
 meaning of our own minds, and on the significance of 
 that intellectual atmosphere or spirit of the age in 
 which we live and breathe, to turn back and observe 
 the long discipline of the ages, the slow and cyclical 
 movements by which, step by step, humanity has come 
 to be what it is. 
 
 Lastly, for the theologian this study must ever be 
 one of surpassing interest ; for the philosophy of 
 history is only the scientific expression for that 
 which he means by " the providential order of the
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 251 
 
 world." To find law, order, rational sequence of 
 causes and effects in the life of nations and of the 
 race would at least be an approximation to that view 
 of human affairs which the theologian takes, when 
 he speaks of a divinity that shapes our ends, or of 
 the finger of infinite wisdom regulating the course 
 of events and determining all things according to a 
 predestined purpose. The problems ' which baffle us 
 when we look only to the individual life or even 
 to the destinies of peoples and natures, if they are 
 not solved, yet become clearer to us when we take 
 in that larger field of view which history presents. 
 The sense of justice which seems to be implanted in 
 us only to be thwarted and outraged, the reckless 
 waste of human life, the capacities, hopes, aspirations, 
 to which the poor results of the most successful lives 
 seem so miserably disproportionate, the whole aspect 
 of human existence which, when we look at it only on 
 the contracted scale of individual or even of national 
 life, seems so sombre and inexplicable, on all this 
 darkness and perplexity we discern at least some light 
 beginning to dawn, when we turn to contemplate 
 human existence on the larger scale of history. 
 
 Judged from the individual point of view, human 
 life is often, in one sense always, a failure. We are 
 never the thing we seem designed to be. There are 
 in our nature the materials and the beginnings of great 
 things, which are never realized. We can form lofty
 
 252 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 ideals of moral and intellectual perfection, but they 
 only serve to throw contempt on the poverty and 
 meanness of our actual life. And as we retrace even 
 the history of nations, and see how in the very greatest 
 of them a period of growth and energy is almost 
 invariably succeeded by a period of exhaustion and 
 decay; how ancient civilizations have sunk back into 
 barbarism ; how ancient empires and commonwealths, 
 once in the forefront of human progress, and by the 
 splendours of their art, their literature, their social and 
 political freedom, raised to the pinnacle of greatness, 
 have succumbed to slow decay and ceased to be living 
 forces in the history of the world, is there not 
 room for the despairing conclusion that human life 
 is but a thing of blind chance or even the sport of 
 some arbitrary power ? 
 
 It is here that the thoughtful study of history 
 comes in, if not absolutely to verify, at least to 
 lend new significance to the beliefs and hopes of 
 religion. For as we ponder its lessons we begin to 
 catch a glimpse of a larger and more comprehensive 
 design, which embraces and transcends the lives of 
 individuals and nations ; and the anomalies and incon- 
 gruities which perplex us in the latter begin to vanish 
 when we view them as only fragments of a larger 
 whole. As the philosophic historian leads us to 
 apprehend the underlying idea, the characteristic spirit 
 of a people, or of an age or period, to trace its influence
 
 THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 253 
 
 on succeeding ages and on the general current of 
 human progress ; or as again he enables us to see 
 gradually emerging from the chaos of declining empires 
 in the old world the richer civilization of modern 
 times, there begins to rise before us the idea of a 
 collective or colossal life, of a personality which does 
 not grow old or die, which has in it a capability 
 of infinite progress, and which, while these seem to 
 come and go like shadows, goes on from age to age, 
 broadening, deepening, developing in knowledge and 
 power and freedom. The study of the past begins 
 to inspire us with new hopes for the future of human- 
 ity. The life which, viewed from without, seems in us, 
 and thousands such as we, so petty and trivial, catches 
 a new significance and even grandeur from the thought 
 that it is not the isolated, transient thing we deemed 
 it. We begin to perceive that no earnest effort for 
 the good of humanity is ever lost, no life, however 
 obscure, that has been devoted to the highest ends, to 
 the service of mankind, to the progress of truth and 
 goodness in the world, is ever spent in vain. For 
 we can think of them as contributions to a life which 
 is not of to-day or yesterday, but of all time a life 
 which, never hasting, never resting, is through the 
 ages ever advancing to its consummation.
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTOKY. 
 
 November 7, 1885. 
 
 AT the beginning of last winter session I made some 
 remarks on the study of history. On that occasion, 
 however, I was able to undertake only a fragment 
 of the subject, and though, as you will see, the same 
 is true of the present lecture, I must, at least, before 
 leaving it, make some attempt to answer the question 
 with which I could only imperfectly deal, Is history 
 capable of scientific treatment ? 
 
 I suppose it would be universally admitted that 
 knowledge which has not been elevated above the 
 domain of facts, or of facts of mere observation which 
 have not become in some measure reduced to law, 
 illuminated and harmonized by intelligible principles, 
 cannot be regarded as a fit instrument of the higher 
 education. The expediency, in other words, of intro- 
 ducing the study of history into a university curriculum 
 turns upon the question whether history admits of 
 being scientifically treated. What then do we mean 
 by a science of history? In what sense can the term 
 
 254
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 255 
 
 " science " be applied to the record of the past life of 
 man ? 
 
 In attempting to answer the question I began last 
 session to point out certain reasons why, as applied to 
 history, we cannot employ the term "scientific" accord- 
 ing to the ordinary usage. Science, in the common 
 and limited sense of the word, means physical science ; 
 but we can see at a glance that there are conditions of 
 physical science which can have no application to 
 history. The physical sciences are sciences of observa- 
 tion and experiment ; but whilst in a general way we 
 may regard history also as a science of observation, it 
 is distinguished from the physical sciences by this 
 essential and all-important characteristic, that in 
 history the phenomena never repeat themselves and 
 can never be reproduced. Our very knowledge of the 
 past, if there were nothing else, prevents us from 
 reproducing it. We may, indeed, attempt to imitate 
 the forms and institutions of a former time ; but we 
 cannot recall the spirit that expressed itself in them. 
 And artificial revivals are as little like the originals 
 as the corpse is like the living man. We cannot, 
 therefore, have that kind of knowledge of history 
 which we have of those phenomena of nature which 
 continually repeat themselves in the same unvarying 
 cycle of change. But of this I have already said 
 enough, and I wish in this lecture to direct your 
 attention to another point.
 
 256 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 It may be maintained that the same method of 
 treatment cannot be applied to nature and to his- 
 tory, because the former belongs to the sphere of 
 physical necessity, the latter to that of consciousness 
 and freedom. Freedom, indeed, is not lawlessness. 
 The spiritual world is not the domain of incoher- 
 ence and caprice. The nearer an intelligent being 
 approaches to the true ideal of his nature, the more is 
 arbitrariness, waywardness, irregularity eliminated from 
 its actions, the more absolutely is its career determined 
 by invariable principles or laws. Irrationality is the 
 sphere of chance, rationality and morality that of 
 laws as uniform and inviolable as those which 
 determine the orbits of the stars or the course of the 
 seasons. Nevertheless, to say that the spiritual world 
 is the realm of consciousness, of intelligence and will, 
 is to say that its phenomena cannot be embraced 
 under the same categories or explained by the same 
 methods as those which are employed by the inter- 
 preter of nature. Bring with you to the study of 
 man and human life, individual or collective, only the 
 conceptions which guide the investigator of physical 
 science, and you will either find your enquiries 
 baffled, or achieve results which leave out of account 
 the very essence of the problem to be solved. 
 
 You may create a so-called science of history by 
 forcing spiritual realities through the sieve of natural 
 law ; but in so doing you have left out the very
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 257 
 
 elements which differentiate man from nature. You 
 have extended the domain of natural law so as to 
 embrace man, but it is only by reducing man to 
 the level of stones and plants, or by treating spiritual 
 life as nothing higher than the life of a beast. Over 
 the whole compass of the inorganic world the law 
 of physical causation extends : can you, save by a 
 misuse of language, comprehend within its scope the 
 thoughts, volitions, and actions of moral and spiritual 
 beings ? When you talk of motives as the causes 
 which determine the human will, or of human actions 
 as being subject to conditions as determinate as the 
 motions of the falling stone or the path described 
 by a projectile, and therefore of the possibility of 
 creating a science of " social statics " and " dynamics," 
 there is one element present in the former and not 
 in the latter, which refuses to succumb to your 
 physical organon. Force moves matter, motives govern 
 the human will. The ball struck yields to the 
 external impact ; measure the amount and direction 
 of the force, and you have all the conditions necessary 
 to determine the result ; so you say, find out the 
 predominating motive, and volition and action can 
 with like certainty be ascertained. 
 
 Yes, but there is one thing here that was not there 
 the mind does what the material agent does not ; it 
 thinks the force that moves it. The external influence 
 is nothing till it is taken up into the sphere of
 
 258 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 consciousness. A motive does not drive or shove the 
 mind from without, it is the mind and spirit of the 
 man himself that creates it and lends it all its force. 
 It is that which is moved which gives its existence 
 and its constraining power to the thing that is con- 
 ceived to move it. In no single human experience 
 can you treat the agent as a passive thing impelled 
 by a foreign force. And so when, in the misdirected 
 craving for simplicity, you try to extend the domain 
 of natural law over the subtle, impalpable phenomena 
 of spirit, you may say that, as force is the cause of 
 motion, so the love of money is the cause of theft, 
 so injuries are the cause of hatred, and hatred and 
 malice the cause of cruelty, or, in general, that the 
 desires and passions and the things that appeal to them 
 are the causes of the infinitely varied and complicated 
 phenomena of human life and history ; but it is only 
 to the ear that there is any identity of relations in 
 the two cases, and only because of that verbal identity 
 that you can embrace things essentially so different 
 under a common formula. 
 
 In like manner, again, in regard to the organic 
 world, we may speak of biological laws extending to 
 the spiritual world, of the " relation between function 
 and environment," of "natural selection," and the 
 "survival of the fittest," and I know not what else, 
 as formulae which will explain the relations of the 
 world of thought and life. But here again, that
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 259 
 
 which constitutes the distinctive character of the 
 spiritual world is just that which makes such ex- 
 planations inapplicable and futile. It is because man 
 is a spirit and not an animal that history is the 
 record of a progress to which the biologist expert 
 has no key. 
 
 Civilization is not the result of the forces of nature, 
 but the issue of a struggle with them. Its best 
 results are those in which an agent physically weak 
 sets at naught the power of matter and material 
 environment. In the struggle for spiritual existence 
 physical strength counts for little, and a grain of 
 thought goes further than any amount of rude, un- 
 disciplined animal power. And still more does 
 religion, the mightiest of all social agencies, suspend 
 and overrule the forces of nature. In the spiritual 
 world there can be no competition for supplies, of 
 which it is the very essence to be infinite. If in 
 the natural world we have a sphere in which the 
 results are determined by individual strength and 
 fitness, in which the strongest survive and the weak 
 inevitably go to the wall ; in the spiritual world we 
 have a sphere of which it is a primary law that 
 the strong shall take upon themselves the burden of 
 the weak, arrest the natural results of infirmity, and 
 prevent the exterminating activity of natural law. 
 
 Not to dwell further on this point, I will only 
 add that there is one presupposition which all
 
 260 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 attempts to find in human history a field for the 
 application of strictly scientific laws necessarily in- 
 volve. On one condition you can create a science 
 of human life and action, viz., that man is no more 
 than nature a rarer combination of matter, a more 
 complex animal organism than all others, it may be, 
 but still essentially material. There are, indeed, 
 human beings, it is not to be denied, of whom this 
 presupposition is not far from being true. There are 
 individuals and societies of whom it may be said 
 that they are little more than products of nature, 
 and whose existence from beginning to end presents 
 no other and deeper problem than the life of plants 
 and animals. Even in the very heart of civilization 
 there are men, not a few, who exist and act as if 
 the intellectual element had been omitted from their 
 composition. They vegetate through existence 
 occupy a certain space, consume so much food, grow 
 up, continue the species, decay, and then vanish 
 from the face of things. Or if this harmless sim- 
 plicity pertains to few, there are multitudes whose 
 life differs from the animal life only in the possession 
 of a sufficient measure of intelligence to deprive it 
 of its innocence. And outside the pale of civilization 
 there are whole races of human beings who are, and 
 for aught we know have remained for ages, at an 
 almost purely animal level, or in whom the passions 
 of the animal are tempered only by childish super-
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 261 
 
 stitions and attempts at language rude as the 
 babblings of infancy. Such men and races have no 
 history any more than herds of cattle. You can 
 predict their actions as surely, because the conditions 
 of them are as automatic, as those of societies of 
 ants and bees. If all men were such as these, the 
 phenomena of human thought and life could be 
 scientifically treated, because they would constitute 
 simply a branch of zoology ; and that all men are 
 no more than this, is the principle on which a so- 
 called science of history must proceed. 
 
 But whilst it is just the fact that man is capable 
 of a history that renders his life incapable of being 
 treated scientifically (in the limited sense of the word), 
 it does not follow that we must abandon the attempt 
 to penetrate to the meaning of human life, and regard 
 the phenomena of history as only a chaos of events 
 in which no order or rational significance can be 
 discerned. Though you cannot contemplate human 
 actions as you do the lines, surfaces, solids, of a 
 mathematical problem, or foretell their results as you 
 can those of a chemical experiment or even of a 
 biological process, human life is yet not without an 
 order of its own which reason may attempt to grasp. 
 All education is based on the presupposition that 
 there are definite laws of human development on 
 which you may proceed in shaping the course of a 
 human spirit towards an ideal end ; and this suggests
 
 262 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the enquiry whether, underneath much that is 
 irrelevant and accidental on the surface of history, 
 there may not be going on through the ages the silent 
 progressive course of an education of the race. 
 
 All epic and dramatic poetry again is the un- 
 conscious expression of the belief that there is an 
 intelligible rhythm in human life. The mirror which 
 poetry holds up to life does not simply reflect un- 
 changed the facts and events that pass before it: a 
 dull prosaic reproduction of our own sayings and 
 doings would fail to interest or move us. Led by the 
 unconscious instinct of genius, the poet, by selection, 
 omission, and grouping of materials, by ignoring what 
 is irrelevant and managing details with a view to 
 unity of effect, by making the whole movement and 
 succession of incidents work up to a foreseen result, 
 by these and other means seeks to present to us a 
 picture or suggestive image of the deep moral signifi- 
 cance that underlies the common life of man. And to 
 that hidden element which, led by an artistic impulse, 
 the poet seizes and reproduces on a smaller scale, may 
 there not, we are led to ask, be something correspond- 
 ing on the grander stage of human history as a whole? 
 If it is only to the unreflective eye that the life of 
 humanity seems but 
 
 "The fretful foam 
 
 Of vehement action without scope or term 
 Called History" ;
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 263 
 
 if it be at least possible that there is in it something 
 of the ordered sequence, the moral significance, the 
 movement and convergence of events towards a 
 definite end, which we imply when we speak of the 
 drama of human life, it is conceivable that the 
 philosophic historian may be able in some measure 
 to grasp in the form of reason and reflection what 
 in Ids own more limited sphere the dramatic poet 
 intuitively represents in pictorial form. 
 
 Whether philosophy possesses any organon of 
 knowledge by which this result can be achieved, it is 
 impossible here to discuss. All that I can do within 
 the course of a single lecture is to indicate in briefest 
 fashion some of the ways in which it has been 
 attempted to give unity to the facts of history. The 
 phenomena of history consist of human thoughts, 
 actions, passions, and when we address ourselves to 
 the effort to give unity and continuity to such 
 phenomena, it is natural that we should turn first 
 to the only type of such unity and continuity with 
 which we are conversant that of our own individual 
 life. The first suggestion of an explanation that 
 is likely to occur to a human observer of the life 
 of humanity is that he may find himself writ large in 
 it that the story of mankind may be only the story 
 of individual life on a larger scale. May not the 
 progress of man from childhood to age, the dawn 
 and development of intelligence, the emergence of
 
 264 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 reason from impulse, the struggles and conflicts of the 
 passions, the joys and sorrows, successes and failures, 
 the chequered incidents which mark the career of each 
 human soul, the formation of its character and the 
 shaping of its destiny from birth to death, find them- 
 selves reflected in the life of a larger personality 
 whose fortunes pass before us on the moving canvas of 
 history ? This conception may seem at first little 
 more than a figure or poetic analogy, but there are 
 not wanting considerations which give it at least a 
 prima facie plausibility. 
 
 The dawn of human history has often been conceived 
 of and depicted as a period of childlike innocence, 
 when man was but the child of nature, in harmony 
 with nature and with himself. Pious or poetical 
 imagination has delighted to dwell on the idyllic 
 dream of a state of innocence, when life was but one 
 long holiday, when spontaneous impulse was its only 
 law, when its unsought happiness was undisturbed 
 by the fatal boon of knowledge, by the strife of 
 reason with impulse, by the restlessness of unsatisfied 
 desires, by the conflict of the passions, by the pangs 
 of disappointment or the stings of conscience. 
 
 It is easy, again, to follow out the analogy through 
 the further stages of life to find, for instance, in 
 the early historic annals of mankind the traces of 
 a long minority of the race, or, at any rate, of 
 particular nations, in which they were " under tutors
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 265 
 
 and governors," and the yet undisciplined desires 
 and passions of the natural man were subjected to 
 the iron rule of external authority and law. Our 
 sacred records tell us of a race who were for ages 
 at school, isolated from the wide world around them 
 by stern limits which no truant impulse was per- 
 mitted to transgress, of a period when the immature 
 spiritual intelligence, unable to apprehend truth in 
 its abstract purity, was trained by a pictorial ritual 
 in which ideas were conveyed in the form of illus- 
 tration and symbol, and when the moral nature, 
 yet incapable of self-government, was subjected to an 
 elaborate system of rules, prescriptions, prohibitions, 
 extending to almost every action of human life. And 
 then the same records lead us to contemplate the 
 course of human education advancing through long 
 ages and varying fortunes, in which the magic circle 
 of isolation was gradually broken, and by conquests, 
 by distant captivities, by foreign emigrations, the 
 influence of the thought and experience of the Eastern 
 and Western world was brought to bear on the 
 adolescent spirit of the long secluded race ; till at 
 length, " in the fulness of times," a period came when 
 the school discipline with its arbitrary rules and 
 restraints passed away, when outward authority gave 
 place to the inward light of heaven-born truth, and 
 the spirit of man, having reached its maturity, 
 started on a new career of freedom, with new
 
 266 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 dangers and trials, yet with new and grander hopes 
 and aspirations. 
 
 My limits forbid me to follow into further detail 
 this notion of a life of humanity analogous to that 
 of the individual. That it is defective as the prin- 
 ciple or basis of a scientific theory, it needs but the 
 briefest reflection to see. Its main defect may be 
 said to be this, that it is an attempt to explain 
 the whole by that which is only a part or member 
 of it. A member of an organism can only be 
 understood by the nature of the whole, not the 
 whole by the nature of any particular member. The 
 parts of a stone or other homogeneous substance are 
 only repetitions of each other, and any bit or 
 fragment may be taken as a specimen of the whole. 
 But a living organism is not a mere aggregate; it 
 is a systematized unity, each portion of which has 
 its place and function. The totality is something 
 more than the sum of the parts. There is besides 
 the invisible element of order, proportion, diversity of 
 form, distribution of function according to a general 
 idea or end ; and that idea you must grasp in order 
 to understand the nature of any individual part. 
 Moreover, whenever we introduce the idea of growth 
 or development, it is impossible to understand the 
 present aspect or state of any individual part with- 
 out taking the past of the whole organism into 
 account. The fruit or flower is not the fruit or
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 267 
 
 flower of any one portion of the plant, but of its 
 whole past life. 
 
 Now of man above all other beings it is true that 
 it is impossible to understand the individual as an 
 individual without reference, that is, to the social 
 environment in which he lives, and the history of 
 the family, the nation, the race to which he belongs. 
 As an isolated individual he is as unintelligible as a 
 severed limb if we knew nothing of the body to which 
 it belongs. His consciousness involves the life and 
 consciousness of others, and is steeped in the thought 
 and life of the intellectual and moral atmosphere 
 in which he lives. Take away from him all that 
 is his by inheritance, all that is in him simply 
 as a relation to other beings around him all affection 
 and sympathy, language and the ideas dependent on 
 it, beliefs, habits, customs, conventions which grow 
 out of his social life, all that is in him as a member 
 of a particular family, as participating in the spirit 
 and genius of a particular nation, as the child of this 
 century and not of any prior one, as breathing the 
 spirit of his own time take away all these consti- 
 tuents of. his being, and what you have left is not 
 the man but a bare abstraction. 
 
 And the contemporary environment itself is no 
 self-originated, self-intelligible thing. It is the living 
 result of all the various streams of culture which 
 make up the progressive civilization of the world.
 
 268 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Every one of these lives in it, transmuted but not 
 annihilated. The form of time has dropped from the 
 early struggles of man with nature, from those in- 
 numerable events and actions which in successive ages 
 distilled themselves into great movements of thought 
 and epochs of history, from the migrations of the 
 Aryan race, from Jewish, Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, 
 Roman civilizations ; but there is not one of them 
 which in its vital results has not been absorbed into 
 the living spirit of the present age. Thus the whole 
 existence and career of the individual is conditioned 
 by history, and cannot therefore be taken as the 
 explanation of it. To know social man we must 
 know society, to know historic man we must know 
 history. 
 
 But if thus we cannot derive from the individual 
 life an explanation of history, are we not led to ask 
 whether some light on the meaning of both may not 
 be derived from reversing the process, and trying to 
 find in history, in the life of nations and of the race, 
 that which explains the seeming anomalies in the life 
 of individual man ? The beginning and end, which 
 we never find in any single life, or even in all contem- 
 porary lives, may we not find in a life which embraces 
 and transcends them ? The sense of justice, of drama- 
 tic finish and equipoise, which is utterly baffled when 
 we stop short with the career of the individual, does 
 it find any satisfaction in watching the entail of good
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 269 
 
 and evil in the life of nations or in the common 
 fortunes and destiny of the race ? Is it a mere 
 realistic fiction when we speak of a nation as 
 something more than a collection or sum of indi- 
 viduals as a real living personality, endowed with a 
 consciousness, a will, a continuous life, of which 
 individuals are only the specialized organs, and as 
 receiving through successive ages the reward or 
 penalty of its good or evil deeds. 
 
 When we contemplate the rise and progress of any 
 great modern nation our own, for example its slow 
 emergence from barbarism, its gradual advancement 
 in industry, in the arts of life and the wealth that 
 springs from them; when we see it gathering strength 
 to resist foreign aggression and secure a free path 
 for the working out of its own destiny ; when we 
 notice how its nascent sense of freedom rises in 
 revolt against the deadweight of tyranny and of 
 arbitrary power in individuals or classes, and enables 
 it to quell the internal diseases of lawlessness and 
 disorder ; how there come to it times of rapid 
 advance, succeeded by times of reaction and relapse 
 now a crisis of effort and aspiration, now a long 
 period of lassitude and intellectual and moral relaxa- 
 tion ; how, finally, through the long discipline of ages 
 it gradually awakens to the consciousness of its own 
 greatness and of the obligations it involves, acquires 
 a distinctive moral type of character, a reputation
 
 270 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 for justice and veracity and honour which it dare not 
 sully, which it feels impelled to maintain in the eyes 
 of the nations, in the public opinion of the world, 
 when we contemplate thus the unity and continuity 
 of a nation's life, the sure transmission and growth 
 from age to age of character, and of the honour, 
 power, and greatness which are its rewards, is it not 
 something more than a mere figure when we ascribe 
 to it a personality whose larger, wider destinies trans- 
 cend and explain the anomalies of the individual life ? 
 
 And is not the converse aspect of the same idea 
 equally sanctioned by history, when we contemplate 
 in the corporate life of a nation the chronic social 
 disorders, or the general decay and decrepitude, which, 
 though they profoundly affect the happiness of 
 individuals, are from an individual point of view 
 inexplicable ? That demand of the conscience for 
 retributive justice, which is often bewildered and 
 baffled when we contemplate unpunished wrongs, 
 prosperous baseness, selfishness, and the like, is it 
 not at least partially met when we turn to observe 
 the sure entail of evil in the moral life of nations ? 
 A man may prey upon his kind and suffer no loss, 
 but a nation cannot. It is only in fiction that the 
 villain comes to an untimely end ; in real life he not 
 seldom dies in the odour of sanctity : but for the sins 
 of society the day of vengeance never fails to come. 
 
 Is there no running sore, no internal ulcer troubling
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 271 
 
 and harassing at this moment the corporate life of 
 England, and of which the explanation can only 
 be sought in the selfish recklessness, oppression, 
 and wrong of a bygone period of her history ? Are 
 there not nations, European and Asiatic, in other days 
 the greatest and most powerful, the envy or the terror 
 of mankind, filling the world with the fame of their 
 warlike virtues and the splendour of their social life, 
 or illustrious for their literature, their art, their com- 
 merce, their conquests, their political power, their far- 
 spread dominions by sea and land, now sunk to the 
 very dregs of social and political imbecility, the pity 
 and scorn of the world, with none so poor and weak 
 amongst the community of nations as do them rever- 
 ence ? And in this their present degradation can we 
 not discern the silent operation of that eternal justice 
 which, though its cyclic movement far exceeds the 
 compass of our little life, yet in the long run, seen on 
 the vaster scale of history, visits iniquity and wrong 
 with a slow but inevitable retribution. 
 
 I find that I must at this point arrest the discussion 
 of the subject. There is, however, one question which 
 the foregoing train of thought suggests, and on which, 
 in conclusion, I will make a single remark. We have 
 seen that the analogy of the individual to the national 
 or corporate life is a very imperfect one, and amongst 
 the points in which it fails there is one to which I 
 have not yet adverted. In the individual life there is
 
 272 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 in all cases, and by a necessary law, decay as well as 
 growth. The vital forces in the individual reach their 
 maximum of energy, and then begin to fail and become 
 gradually exhausted. Is this true also of the life of 
 nations ? Do they too, by an inevitable law, grow old 
 and die ? As we retrace the course of history, we 
 tread on the ruins of ancient civilizations, of empires 
 and commonwealths which flourished for longer or 
 shorter periods and then passed away. The course 
 they ran was sometimes rapid. Successions of hardy 
 and warlike tribes emerge from a prehistoric existence, 
 rise into power and prominence, and then, enervated 
 by luxury, lose speedily the qualities that enabled 
 them to conquer, and succumb, each to the next tribe 
 or horde that appears armed with the fresh energy of 
 barbaric youth. Others have a career that seems for 
 a while to promise perpetuity ; but even in the case of 
 the very greatest of them, we see a period of growing 
 energy, physical and intellectual, succeeded by a time 
 of arrested progress, of social and political decay and 
 dissolution. 
 
 And the philosophic historian will perhaps tell 
 us that in this we see the manifestation of a 
 universal and necessary law. A nation, like an 
 individual, may repel the stroke of violence, may 
 survive the paroxysms of civil strife and revolution, 
 may stretch out its life beyond the average term ; but 
 the inevitable hour comes when its work is done, its
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 273 
 
 destiny accomplished. In the great drama of human 
 history each nation has a special role ; its institutions, 
 habits, traditions, are the expression of a definite form 
 of civilization, its achievements constitute a scene or 
 act in the movement of the play ; and when that 
 particular part has been acted, its interest is over, it 
 cannot prolong or repeat itself; the curtain drops, and 
 the representatives of a new portion of the plot enter 
 on the stage. Thus for ever is it a law that the old 
 order changes, giving place to new ; and the nations 
 that are identified with the ideas and spirit of a time, 
 can no more prolong their existence than the actors 
 can refuse to quit the stage when their part is done. 
 
 But if such considerations check our patriotic 
 ardour, if in the hour of national pride and self- 
 confident strength the lesson of the past seems to be 
 prophetic of the inevitable doom that hangs over us, 
 there is one remarkable difference between the ancient 
 and modern world which may serve at least to modify 
 our despondency. In the modern world a nation is 
 no longer, as in ancient times, the type of a single 
 narrow and exclusive form of life. Material and intel- 
 lectual barriers do not now, as they once did, impose a 
 limit on a nation's energy and impoverish its vital and 
 recuperative force. There was a time when geo- 
 graphical boundaries, " the dividing mountain, the 
 estranging sea," the pathless desert, shut up in almost 
 
 absolute isolation the various members of the human 
 
 s
 
 274 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 family. The course of a river, the position of a range 
 of mountains, caused civilization to take an inde- 
 pendent direction on the hither and further side. 
 There were peoples and tribes that had dwelt so long 
 under the influence of the same climate and soil, the 
 same suns and seasons, the same abiding forms and 
 aspects of nature, that these conditions grew into their 
 being and formed them on one narrow and exclusive 
 type. Language and racial peculiarities added spiritual 
 to material causes of insulation, and prevented the 
 access of a richer and fuller life into the localized 
 spirit and genius of the people. Special institutions 
 and traditions became petrifactions, arresting all flexi- 
 bility and progress. National superstitions and pre- 
 judices became invested with the sacredness of eternal 
 laws. And whatever causes of social corruption 
 betrayed themselves were left to operate unchecked 
 till their destructive force had worked its fatal 
 results. 
 
 When we turn to the modern world, it is under 
 very different conditions that we find the career of 
 nations' determined. Nationality still exists, and the 
 suppression of it, the crushing out of the peculiar 
 genius and spirit of individual peoples, and the ex- 
 change of patriotic virtues for a vague cosmopoli- 
 tanism, is as impossible as it is undesirable. But 
 within the pale of civilization, the conditions that 
 created the diseases of isolation and prevented their
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 275 
 
 cure no longer exist. The free current of a common 
 intelligence and a common moral atmosphere suffer 
 no modern nation to be stifled by its own breath. 
 Neither material nor spiritual barriers intercept now 
 the free exchange of ideas, the reciprocity of moral 
 and political principles, all over the civilized world. 
 The discoveries of science speedily become common 
 property. The great productions of literature belong 
 to no one race or people. The mind of educated 
 England is moulded as much by the philosophy, the 
 poetry, the theology, the economic and political 
 science of Germany and France, as by its own native 
 products. 
 
 There may still exist such a vice as national 
 arrogance or pride of race. The Frenchman (the 
 rude lessons of experience notwithstanding) may still 
 look on Paris as the centre of the universe. The 
 secret conviction that Great Britain is the foremost 
 of the nations of the world creeps out in our 
 periodical literature and our daily talk, and amongst 
 the half-educated middle class there is often a rooted 
 contempt for foreign ideas and institutions, and for 
 everything that deviates from the orthodox British 
 standard. But the Christian idea of the unity of 
 the race has silently sapped the spiritual exclusive- 
 ness that characterized the ancient nationalities, and 
 the modern means of intercommunion have put an 
 end to outward isolation. Thus the diseases incident
 
 276 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 to a single national type or constitution, if they are 
 not rendered altogether impossible, are greatly miti- 
 gated by the free circulation of the blood through 
 the various members of the corporate unity of nations. 
 Bad laws and institutions, dangerous monopolies, false 
 relations between the various ranks of society, an 
 unwholesome tone of social morality, political abuses 
 and errors, these and the like causes of national 
 corruption and decay, which, left to themselves, might 
 slowly sap the vital strength of a people, or come 
 to a head in outbreaks of revolutionary violence, 
 are often neutralized and corrected by the influence 
 of international public opinion and the free access of 
 ideas from without. Or, to change the figure, a single 
 nation, like an Alpine climber, ventures sometimes 
 where its footing is insecure, and if left alone, by no 
 effort of its own might be able to save itself from 
 ruin : but it is bound hard and fast to its fellows, 
 and by the all potent international bond the down- 
 ward impulse is arrested and the danger averted. 
 
 Thus, to revert to the analogy with which we 
 started, even if we might speak of the youth, the 
 manhood and maturity of modern nations, our own 
 or any other, there is no reason to carry out the 
 figure and to talk of its inevitable exhaustion and 
 decay. Cassandra prophets may tell us that we 
 have passed our national prime. Ehetoricians may 
 talk of the New Zealand traveller who shall one
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 277 
 
 day moralize on the broken arch of Westminster 
 Bridge over England's by-gone greatness. But it is 
 a truer as well as a more hopeful and cheering 
 philosophy which teaches us that, wherever the 
 national mind is open to the teaching of experience 
 and the lessons of history, capable of rising above 
 insularity of thought, receptive of all salutary lessons 
 from the thought and life of the past, of all that 
 streams in upon it from the world-wide thought 
 and life of the present, there the only old age 
 that can come to it is one which it need not fear 
 the old age of tolerance and equanimity and charity, 
 of superiority to passion and impulse and the 
 illusions of immaturity, of that self-confidence and 
 self-respect which long experience breeds an old 
 age of peace that has been purchased by many a 
 struggle, and of the rest that comes of ripened 
 wisdom and self-control.
 
 THE STUDY OF AET. 
 
 November 6, 1886. 
 
 LAST year, as some of you may remember, I called 
 your attention to the fact that, amongst the many 
 projected improvements in our University system, one 
 of the most important is the foundation, if not of a 
 School, at least of a Chair of History, and I took 
 occasion to make some remarks on the nature and 
 uses of the study of history. Another and in some 
 respects not less important branch of study is equally 
 conspicuous by its absence from our curriculum. In 
 the sister University of Edinburgh there exists a Chair 
 of the Fine Arts, and also a Chair specially devoted to 
 one of these Arts, that of Music. Here, though the 
 study of Art has a special bearing on many of those 
 industries to which Glasgow owes its wealth, and 
 though there are many indications that in this great 
 community the love of Art and Song is not an extinct 
 or undeveloped susceptibility, we have not hitherto 
 
 been so highly favoured. In selecting, therefore, a 
 
 278
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 279 
 
 topic for the present address, I have thought that, 
 partly because it might serve to draw attention to this 
 gap in our educational system, partly because of the 
 interest of the subject in itself, I could do nothing 
 better than offer you a few remarks on the study of 
 Art. 
 
 If the higher education ought to embrace all de- 
 partments of human culture, there is besides science, 
 philosophy, languages and literature besides those 
 studies which are already included in our University 
 curriculum one other important department which 
 should not be ignored, viz., that which is somewhat 
 vaguely designated by the word " art." The study of 
 nature is not exhausted when it has been viewed in 
 those aspects of which the scientific investigator takes 
 cognizance. Through the forms, colours, sounds of the 
 material world certain intuitions and emotions are 
 awakened in us which pertain strictly, neither to the 
 intellectual nor the moral, but to what we term the 
 aesthetic side of our nature. And in minds of special 
 susceptibility these ideas and emotions crave for 
 expression in a class of works capable of calling forth 
 kindred thoughts and feelings in those who contem- 
 plate them. In the productions of the great masters 
 of the plastic, pictorial, and other arts are embodied 
 ideas and experiences of an altogether peculiar kind, 
 appealing in a special way to our capacities of admira- 
 tion, tenderness, aspiration, awe ; touching the springs
 
 280 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 of passionate and pathetic emotion within the breast, 
 and capable of lifting us above ourselves and the 
 conditions of our common life into an ideal world of 
 beauty, which has an existence not less true than what 
 we call the real world for those who have the power 
 to perceive it. 
 
 But when we claim for art a place in our scheme 
 of education, it must be admitted that the function of 
 education with reference to art is subject to one 
 obvious limitation which does not apply to the other 
 branches of knowledge. Languages, science, philo- 
 sophy, history, can be taught by experts, and, with 
 ordinary diligence, every fairly intelligent pupil can 
 become a proficient in them; but no amount of culture, 
 no intellectual application however unwearied, can 
 make a man an artist. Proficiency in this case in- 
 volves an element which the best cultivation cannot 
 communicate. There is indeed a part, and that a 
 necessary part, of the artist's equipment which can be 
 taught and acquired. To draw, paint, model, to be 
 master of the various methods of execution in the 
 pictorial and plastic arts, are not accomplishments 
 which come by nature or can be attained without long 
 and patient study and practice. Betwixt the fine 
 arts and the industrial arts, there is a wide gap, but 
 they agree in this, that it requires a long and laborious 
 apprenticeship before the learner can become a skilled 
 artificer. The technical skill, for example, which is
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 281 
 
 involved in the reproduction by the landscape painter 
 on his canvas of the facts of form, of light and shade, 
 of colour local and reflected, of arrangement and 
 grouping of objects so as to give unity of effect, is so 
 great, implies the knowledge of conditions so many, so 
 subtle and delicate, that it can be fully appreciated 
 only by a critic who is himself an expert in the art he 
 criticises. So large an element of success does this 
 technical part of an artist's equipment constitute, that 
 it is apt to assume in the view of experts an exag- 
 gerated importance, if not to become the sole criterion 
 of merit. The scorn of popular and uninstructed 
 judgment amongst artists and connoisseurs, and the 
 tendency of art-criticism to become a sort of esoteric 
 mystery, turning on special knowledge and expressing 
 itself in technical jargon, is due to the fact that 
 success in art does imply, as much as success in 
 mathematics or chemistry, a special knowledge and a 
 special skill in the application of it, which can only be 
 attained by severe intellectual toil Nevertheless they 
 can be attained, and they require in order to their 
 attainment qualities and aptitudes no more rare or 
 exceptional than those which are possessed by the 
 average student in other lines of culture. If this were 
 all, there would be no reason why art should not rank 
 with the other departments of academic culture, or 
 why a college should not turn out poets, painters, 
 musicians, sculptors, just as it produces scholars,
 
 282 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 doctors, lawyers, divines, in regular and sufficient 
 supply to meet the world's demand for them. 
 
 But the difficulty of making art a branch of academic 
 culture is that it presupposes in the pupil a capacity 
 which is not universal, or rather which is so rare as to 
 be practically arbitrary. Poets are not manufactured 
 articles. No methodical discipline, however severe 
 and prolonged, can communicate to the spirit that 
 spark of heaven's fire which transforms talent into 
 genius, and endows intelligence with that nameless, 
 indefinable insight and productive power which is the 
 prerogative of the genuine artist. 
 
 In the case of other professions, the function of 
 education is a very comprehensive one, because there 
 is room in these professions for practitioners of almost 
 every order of intellect above the lowest. The world's 
 work would not be done, the demand would far exceed 
 the supply, if it did not content itself often with second 
 or third-rate lawyers, physicians, preachers, etc. But 
 the peculiarity of the artistic vocation is that there is 
 no use in it for mediocrity. Houses to live in, raiment 
 to wear, we all must have, and if we cannot afford to 
 pay for the best, we must needs be content with an 
 inferior and cheaper article. But the world has no 
 need for second-rate poems or pictures. It would not 
 be physically or mentally a loser, if all the producers 
 of such articles turned their attention to an honest 
 trade. The soul of man is not rendered in any sense
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 283 
 
 richer by reading doggerel verse or looking at vulgar 
 portraits and feeble or indifferent attempts at figure or 
 landscape painting. Inferior technique it may well 
 afford to pardon, if one touch of genius inspires its 
 product. The simplest song or ballad that has in it 
 the ring of genuine inspiration, the rudest wood-cut in 
 which a touch of imaginative feeling or inventive 
 power can be discerned, the roughly-wrought clay cup 
 or vase in whose form and modelling a genuine instinct 
 for beauty can be traced these and the like constitute 
 a real addition, however slight, to the world's spiritual 
 wealth. But, to make it such, some scintillation of 
 the higher incommunicable element it must possess. 
 And if elimination could be made of all productions 
 which are absolutely destitute of it, if a holocaust could 
 be made of all the vast accumulated lumber of bad or 
 indifferent poems, paintings, and other so-called books 
 of art that occupy space on this globe at the present 
 moment, it is far less than the whole truth to say 
 that the world would be no loser by the catastrophe. 
 If then there be any truth in these remarks, how 
 can we claim for art a place amongst the other 
 branches of academic culture ? If all that can be 
 taught is the technical part, skill in the use of the 
 tools of art (and this, of course, it is not the province 
 of a University to teach), and if the indispensable 
 qualification for the vocation of an artist is one which 
 instruction can never communicate, is not this tanta-
 
 284 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 mount to saying that art-culture is incapable of 
 becoming an element of the higher education ? In 
 answer to this question, I shall ask your attention to 
 one or two observations on the possibility and uses of 
 the study of art. 
 
 I. In the first place, it is to be observed that, though 
 education cannot make men artists, it may help most 
 men to enjoy and appreciate works of art. It is not 
 inconsistent with what I have said to maintain that, 
 though the power to produce may be rare, the power 
 to relish is all but universal. Perhaps, indeed, careful 
 reflection might suggest doubt as to any hard and fast 
 distinction such as I have just referred to between the 
 higher and lower orders of mind. At any rate, it cannot 
 be questioned that the power to recognize and respond 
 to what is true or beautiful in the products of human 
 thought may be possessed by multitudes, who are 
 destitute of the power to create or originate them. 
 
 In philosophy and science the men who stand peer- 
 less for speculative power or for capacity to penetrate 
 the arcana of nature have been few, but thousands in 
 their own and every successive age have grasped their 
 ideas, apprehended and verified the discoveries they 
 brought to light. The immortal masters of art and 
 song whose names live for ever on the roll of fame it 
 would not take long to count, but the very greatness 
 their names have attained has arisen from the fact that 
 they spoke to feelings and intuitions that are universal.
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 285 
 
 They would have had no power to charin and thrill the 
 minds of men, if they had not interpreted them to 
 themselves, if there were no slumbering element in 
 the human soul which they had the capacity to awake, 
 no dim, inarticulate thoughts and emotions for which 
 they found a voice. The secret of their world-wide 
 undying empire lay in this, that the living fire of their 
 genius found a fuel of its own waiting to be kindled in 
 the common heart, that the creative imagination in 
 them spoke to a dormant imagination which it elicited 
 and developed in the mind and spirit of humanity. 
 
 On this point I cannot dwell further than to say, 
 that human experience is full of indications of what I 
 may call the universality of the art-instinct. The 
 capacity to appreciate the higher kinds of art may be 
 the privilege of the initiated, but even amongst the 
 ignorant and uneducated, and at the earliest stages of 
 human progress, the art-instinct, rude, untutored, 
 blind, it may be, manifests its presence. The 
 faculty to which art appeals, the pictorial and poetic 
 imagination, the power to glorify the hard, external 
 facts of outward experience, and to create out of the 
 forms of sense an ideal world of wonder and delight, 
 quickens within the mind at the first dawnings of 
 intelligence. The rough discipline of life may all 
 too soon extinguish the idealizing repulse, but there 
 is a sense in which it may be said that every child 
 is an unconscious poet and artist, and that song
 
 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 comes earlier than articulate speech. In its moment 
 of exuberant joyfulness, disporting itself in summer 
 hours amidst flowers and sunshine, you will hear the 
 child crooning to itself a low murmur of baby music 
 that gives vent to emotions for which it has as yet no 
 other medium of expression. We know too how vivid 
 is the idealizing faculty in childhood its capacity to 
 infuse vitality and consciousness into the lifeless 
 objects that surround it, to work up with a kind of 
 incipient dramatic instinct little scenes and plots out 
 of the barest materials ; and how, as it wanders by 
 wood and stream, prattles to the running brook, 
 apostrophizes the sunbeam or runs to catch the flying 
 shadow, it can create for itself a little world of 
 imagination that will charm it for hours and days into 
 forgetfulness of the real world in which it lives. 
 
 And the same thing is true of the infancy of the 
 race, and of the undeveloped intelligence at all stages 
 of civilization. Wherever men attempt to rise above 
 mere utility and make some effort, however feeble, to 
 adorn and beautify life, the art-instinct betrays itself. 
 The savage who tatooes his limbs, stains his person 
 with streaks of colour or decorates it with feathers and 
 shells, or carves some rude imitation of animal forms 
 on club or spear or paddle, is manifesting the germs 
 of the same tendency which expresses itself in the 
 delicate fabrics and harmonious colours which set off 
 the charms of the modern beauty, in the gems which
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 287 
 
 sparkle on her fingers and the jewels and flowers that 
 adorn her hair. The buffalo or tiger-skin with which 
 the Indian adorns his wigwam, the rude trophy con- 
 structed from the spoils of the chase which he hangs 
 on its walls, are low developments of the same instinct 
 which fills our modern mansions with art- treasures, 
 our rooms and picture galleries with the masterpieces of 
 painting or sculpture. 
 
 Eacial peculiarities or historic and other conditions 
 may keep this instinct at a low point of development, 
 or for a time in some directions wholly suppress it. 
 In our own country, for instance, for reasons which 
 we need not pause to investigate, the artistic side 
 of our nature, so far as the pictorial and plastic 
 arts are concerned, has, till lately, only feebly and 
 rarely manifested itself; but other expressions of its 
 presence have not been lacking. As one amongst 
 ourselves, 1 following in the footsteps of "Walter Scott, 
 and with a kindred sympathetic insight into the 
 nobler elements of the Scottish character, has taught 
 us, in the ballads and songs, the folk-lore and fairy 
 legends of our country simple, inartificial, naive in 
 form, yet instinct with the pathos and power, the 
 yearning after the invisible and the ideal, the wonder 
 and awe and mystery of a genuine imaginative in- 
 spiration, in these spontaneous expressions of the 
 genius of the Scottish people, we have the proof that 
 
 1 The late Professor Veitch.
 
 288 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 amongst a rude and unlettered race, and in a social 
 state only a slight remove from barbarism, the presence 
 of an unmistakable sensibility for art may be found. 
 
 But in this as in other cases instinctive feeling 
 needs and is capable of cultivation and discipline. 
 That which is implanted in man's nature only as an 
 unreflecting intuition must, in order to its perfection, 
 undergo the discipline of education. The spontaneity 
 of nature, though sometimes and in the case of rarely 
 gifted souls it may excel the laboured productions of 
 art, is limited in its range of achievement, and amongst 
 ordinary men the mere natural instinct for beauty will 
 carry them but a little way in appreciating what is 
 really worthy of admiration. In what are called 
 distinctively the Fine Arts an uninstructed taste is, 
 in a great majority of instances, bad taste, and beyond 
 a certain very limited range it will remain insensible, 
 not only to what belongs to the technique of art, to 
 skill, refinement and subtlety of execution, to delicacy 
 of drawing, colouring, modelling, to the things, in short, 
 which charm the expert, but even to the inner elements 
 of grandeur or beauty of conception, of which technical 
 skill is only the vehicle. In the region of feeling 
 we often indulge the thought that taste is a purely 
 arbitrary thing, and that pleasure or delight is the 
 only test of merit. If a man is pleased in a picture 
 by flashy vulgarity, or coarse literalism, or weak 
 sentimentality, or clever sleight-of-hand, at which
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 289 
 
 a more refined taste shudders, he will not seldom express 
 unhesitating commendation without a suspicion of its 
 justice ; and, if everything rests on feeling, who is to 
 dispute his verdict ? 
 
 The answer is, that art, no more than morality of 
 religion, is a purely subjective and arbitrary thing. 
 Without going into the metaphysics of the subject, 
 which is at present impossible, I venture to pronounce, 
 that in the one case as in the others, there are 
 principles and standards of judgment to which 
 individual opinion must learn to bow, and that we 
 are no more bound to accept in art the verdict of 
 undisciplined feeling than the Christian moralist is 
 bound to accept, as of equal validity with his own 
 ethical judgments, the crude moral notions of primitive 
 times and barbarous races. What the canons of art criti- 
 cism are, by what methods of instruction the educator 
 is to proceed in developing and training to a refined 
 and rational activity the mind and judgment of his 
 pupil, it is not for me to pronounce. Enough, perhaps, 
 has been said to show that there is nothing in the 
 nature of art to render the study of it impossible as a 
 branch of general culture. 
 
 II. But granting that art is a possible study, is it 
 also a useful one ? What benefits inward or outward 
 is the student to gain from it ? In answer to this 
 question, I shall now say a word or two as to the uses 
 
 of art as an element of human culture. 
 
 T
 
 290 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 It would seem at first sight that an enquiry into 
 the uses of art involves a contradiction in terms. 
 "What we seek in a work of art is not instruction or 
 information, not material or other advantages, but 
 simply pleasure or enjoyment. Music, painting, 
 poetry, and the other fine arts, whatever they do 
 for the embellishment or decoration of human life, 
 obviously contribute nothing to the supply of its 
 practical necessities. They may form the luxury of 
 idleness or the innocent pastime of our hours of 
 leisure, but in themselves they haye no moral purpose 
 or practical utility; and whenever pleasure clashes 
 with profit, they may even become noxious diverting, 
 as they do, time and thought from the serious work 
 or sterner tasks of life. 
 
 Moreover, the view of the function of art which 
 relegates it to the province of the ornamental as dis- 
 tinguished from the useful, seems to be sanctioned not 
 merely by popular thought, but also by philosophic 
 theory. Amongst those who speculate on the subject 
 the accepted theory seems to be that which is em- 
 bodied in the phrase, " Art for art's sake," meaning by 
 that, that art is to be prosecuted for itself, and not 
 for any ulterior end. The end of a work of art is 
 not to point a moral or to convey a lesson in science 
 or philosophy, or even to soften the manners and 
 refine the habits of society ; but to be, in and for 
 itself, a source of delight. It appeals to what has
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 291 
 
 been called the " play impulse " in human nature, to 
 the spontaneous enjoyment of activities which men 
 put forth, not for the wages they are to earn or the 
 benefits they are to procure thereby, but simply 
 because they find in the free play of their energies an 
 immediate satisfaction and joy. When the sym- 
 pathetic observer stands in rapt admiration before 
 some great masterpiece of painting or sculpture, or 
 when ear and soul yield themselves up to the charm 
 of the great composer's art in song, cantata, opera, 
 oratorio, and vague, undefined emotions, passionate or 
 pathetic, are awakened within the breast, no thought 
 of ulterior use or profit crosses the mind. Its experi- 
 ence is that of absorption in present, immediate 
 enjoyment. And, on the other hand, if we think of 
 the attitude of the artist's mind in producing, equally 
 foreign to it is the aim at anything beyond the work 
 itself. He paints or sings or writes simply because 
 the creative impulse is upon him, and he cannot 
 choose but give it vent ; because a dream of beauty 
 has taken possession of his soul, and it is joy or 
 rapture to him to express it. 
 
 But whilst this view of the essentially non-utili- 
 tarian character of art may be freely conceded, there is 
 nothing inconsistent with the concession in claiming 
 for works of art a higher function than that of recrea- 
 tion or amusement, or in the assertion that they 
 contribute in no slight or inappreciable measure to
 
 292 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the formation of character and the intellectual and 
 moral education of the community. 
 
 In making this claim, however, it must be admitted 
 that, in one point of view, the principle of "art for 
 art's sake" is profoundly true. The educative function 
 of art is, at best, an indirect one. Whatever intellectual 
 enlightenment or moral elevation is to be gained from 
 works of imagination, to communicate such benefits 
 cannot be the conscious aim of the artist ; nor is the 
 merit of his work to be estimated by its didactic 
 excellencies. Bad or indifferent painting or poetry 
 is no more redeemed from artistic inferiority by the 
 moral or religious aim of the author than ill-dressed 
 food or ill-made clothes by the respectability or piety 
 of the cook or tailor. And, on the other hand, a poem 
 or picture may have many of the highest qualities of 
 art, though the subject may be coarse or voluptuous, 
 or the treatment such as to offend our moral sus- 
 ceptibilities. 
 
 The poetry of Shelley and Byron contains much 
 which, from a religious or moral point of view, cannot 
 escape censure, whilst the literary form is of the 
 highest artistic merit. The works of Dr. Watts and 
 Mr. Tupper are full of pious teaching and unexcep- 
 tional moralizing, yet, regarded as poetry, both are 
 execrable. The deepest truth, in short, the noblest 
 moral lessons may be conveyed in a form of art, but it 
 is as unconsciously, with as little of a didactic aim, as
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 293 
 
 are the lessons which Nature herself is ever teaching. 
 The teachings of rock and stream and sea, the moralities 
 addressed to us by stars and flowers, by autumn woods 
 and mountain solitudes, do not reach us in the form 
 of argumentative disquisitions, but of feelings and 
 emanations which win their way insensibly into the 
 soul. There are better sermons in stones and books 
 and in the running brooks than human pen ever 
 endited, but the lessons which these unconsecrated 
 preachers address to us are innocent of logic or formal 
 admonition. 
 
 " Oh, to what uses shall we put 
 
 The wild-weed flower that simply blows 
 And is there any moral shut 
 
 Within the bosom of the rose ? 
 But any man who walks the mead 
 
 In bud or blade or bloom may find, 
 According as his humours lead, 
 
 A meaning suited to his mind ; 
 And liberal applications lie 
 
 In Art, like Nature, dearest friend, 
 So 'twere to cramp its use if I 
 
 Should hook it to some useful end." 
 
 And the reason for what has now been said is 
 obvious. It arises from the very nature of art as 
 distinguished from science. Works of imagination and 
 works of instruction may treat of common subjects. 
 The painter may depict, the poet sing, of the same 
 scenes, persons, events, objects, whereof the naturalist, 
 the historian, the philosopher discourses. But the
 
 294 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 aspects in which the two sorts of observers contemplate 
 the common objects are essentially different ; nor is it 
 possible to combine in the same work an artistic 
 and a scientific view of a subject, without sacrificing 
 the peculiar excellence of both. In proportion to its 
 merits as a work of science it will be bad as a work of 
 art, and the very qualities which make it good art 
 will make it bad science. The same tract of country, 
 to take a palpable illustration, may be represented in 
 landscape painting and in a map. But the painter 
 who tried to embody in his work the precise and 
 definite information of the map, would make it a 
 wretchedly bad picture, and the geographer would spoil 
 his map, if he tried to introduce the artistic effects of 
 light and shade into his delineation of the boundaries 
 of countries and of mountains, rivers and streams. An 
 anatomical drawing or model and a figure in sculpture 
 deal both with the human frame ; but if the sculptor 
 is moved by the desire to display his anatomical know- 
 ledge, the ineffable grace and beauty we demand in a 
 work of art vanishes, and what we get is neither 
 science nor art, but only artistic pedantry. Or, to 
 take but one other example, the conflicting and essen- 
 tially inconsistent aims of science and art are exemplified 
 in so-called didactic poems and novels with a purpose. 
 A novel, say, may be written to illustrate some 
 theory of life or to expose some social or political 
 abuse the evils of intemperance, the bad effects of the
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 295 
 
 land or marriage laws, or what not. But what will be 
 the inevitable result? The writer may be in the 
 structure of his mind either mainly artist or mainly 
 theorist. If the art-instinct predominates, there will 
 be a constant temptation to sacrifice the didactic 
 purpose to the exigencies of artistic treatment. When- 
 ever the effective development of the plot would be 
 marred by a too copious introduction of facts or a 
 strict adherence to theory, the art impulse triumphs 
 and fact or theory are ruthlessly sacrificed. If, on the 
 contrary, the writer is too conscientiously bent on the 
 communication of information or the advocacy of a 
 doctrine to care punctiliously for artistic effect, the 
 result is a nondescript performance which gives neither 
 information nor delight. 
 
 Though, however, it is not the direct function of art 
 to teach, yet it does teach. Without direct scientific 
 or ethical aim, works of imagination are not only the 
 means of purest enjoyment, but they convey to us an 
 order of ideas of an altogether peculiar kind, reveal to 
 us in nature and in human life much which it lies 
 beyond the province of science or philosophy to dis- 
 close, and exert over the moral nature an elevating 
 and ennobling influence, in some respects the more 
 potent that it is not their direct purpose to produce it. 
 
 What then, let me ask, is the sort of teaching which 
 it is the unconscious vocation of art to communicate, 
 what is the peculiar class of ideas of which works of
 
 296 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 imagination, in distinction from all other productions 
 of human thought, are the vehicles ? The answer to 
 this question may be summarily given by saying that 
 it is the office of art to idealize nature and life, or 
 to present their facts and phenomena in their ideal 
 aspect. 
 
 Does this answer mean that human art can improve 
 on nature as God made it, or on human life as Provi- 
 dence has ordered it ? Can the loftiest genius invent 
 a fairer world, can the most soaring imagination con- 
 ceive, or the resources of art depict, forms more lovely, 
 lights more dazzling, harmonies of tone and colour 
 more subtle and various than those which we have but 
 to open our eyes to behold. Bring before your minds, 
 for example, any one of nature's ever-changing aspects, 
 and say if the attempt faithfully to render it would not 
 be employment sufficient for the rarest skill of the 
 most ambitious limner who ever handled brush and 
 palette ? Light softly tinting the mountain edge at 
 morning, or flooding meadow and woodland and stream 
 with the golden rain of noontide, or flinging abroad 
 with munificence of departing greatness its treasures 
 of purple and vermilion and gold, ere it passes away 
 with infinite gradations of fading splendour beneath 
 the western horizon : the sea rippling up with gentle, 
 scarce perceptible insinuation over the long reaches of 
 the pebbly shore, or rushing with wild impetuosity and 
 hoarse clang of assault on the cliffs of an iron-bound
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 297 
 
 coast : a mountain lake " in the light of the rising 
 moon and of the first stars twinkling against the dusky 
 silverness of twilight " : what, it may be said, has 
 human art to do with its own inventions when, in 
 myriads of such scenes and aspects, with inexhaustible 
 wealth of loveliness, nature awaits, yet baffles man's 
 utmost skill to copy her ? Nay, before he presumes to 
 draw on the resources of his own imagination, let the 
 artist take the commonest natural objects, the merest 
 patch of earth or sea or sky a pool, a spray of haw- 
 thorn, a clump of heather, a cloud floating on the 
 summer sky and say, whether, after his most patient 
 and protracted toil, he has succeeded in reproducing 
 an exhaustive representation of what is before his 
 eyes ? 
 
 To this the answer is that, even if it were true that 
 the artist has no other function than to record what he 
 sees in nature, it is not every eye that can see what he 
 sees. Nature reflects herself in the mirror of man's 
 mind, but the mirror in most cases is opaque or dim, 
 sometimes distorted and fractured, and the reflexion 
 takes its character from the medium by which it is 
 produced. For the scientific man the outward facts, 
 confused, accidental, unordered, which are all that 
 the ordinary observer perceives, become luminous with 
 the presence of hidden laws and relations. For the 
 artistic or poetic observer, for the mind that is in 
 sympathy with the soul of things sensuous forms,
 
 298 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 colours, motions, are alive with the spirit of beauty, 
 transfigured with the hidden glow and splendour of a 
 light that other eyes see not a light that never was 
 on land or sea. And it is his high vocation, not 
 merely to copy, to tickle our imitative susceptibilities 
 by a matter-of-fact imitation of what we saw before, but 
 through the language of imagination to interpret nature, 
 and make us look upon her face "with larger, other eyes 
 than ours." 
 
 But we may go further than this, and boldly say 
 that there is a sense in which art does " improve on 
 nature." All art that is worthy of the name is crea- 
 tive, calls into existence something more than the bare 
 facts which the outward world offers to the senses. 
 These are the materials on which it works, but it does 
 not leave them unchanged. It takes them up, pours 
 them, so to speak, into the crucible of imagination, 
 flings aside the mere dross of accident, fuses them anew 
 in the fire of thought and feeling, shapes and moulds 
 them into conformity with its own ideals, and, lo ! from 
 its creative hand, forms which eye hath not seen, 
 embodied visions of a land that is very far off, and of 
 which only in our most exalted moments we catch a 
 glimpse, start into life and beauty. 
 
 That there is nothing presumptuous in thus claiming 
 for the imaginative arts the power to add something to 
 nature, we may see by reflecting on what takes place 
 even in the domain of what are called the industrial
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 299 
 
 arts. Every piece of mechanism has in it something 
 more and higher than nature contains. Watches, loco- 
 motives, power-looms, steam engines, are not mere 
 natural products. They derive their materials from 
 nature, they take advantage of natural forces and laws, 
 but in their production a new, commanding, selecting, 
 transforming element comes into play, compelling 
 nature's raw materials into new combinations, itself the 
 supreme force amidst nature's forces, to wit, the element 
 of thought, the idea or conception of the inventor. And 
 in like manner in that which we call by eminence the 
 realm of art, i.e. everything is based on nature and must, 
 in a sense, be true to her ; but that which constitutes 
 the most precious element in the great work of art, that 
 which arrests and holds the appreciative mind, is not 
 nature slavishly copied, literally, mechanically repro- 
 duced, but the idea, the inspiring thought, the soul of 
 the artist speaking to our soul and causing nature 
 to shine for us with a supernatural significance and 
 glory. 
 
 It is of course true that there is a kind of art which 
 possesses nothing of this ideal element ; and that, as 
 there are uninspired day-labourers in art who can, at 
 most, by technical skill produce mechanical copies of 
 common facts and incidents, so there are innumerable 
 patrons of art of the same order, in whose eyes vulgar 
 imitation is the highest or only criterion of merit. But 
 the highest praise which such productions deserve is that,
 
 300 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 at most, of clever mimetic legerdemain. They come no 
 nearer to true art than the feats of the ventriloquist to 
 eloquence, or the representations of political and other 
 celebrities in Madame Tussaud's gallery to sculpture. 
 
 Who amongst us cannot recall hundreds of exact, 
 speaking likenesses of nobodies, prosaically accurate as 
 the armchairs on which they sit, or the official robes with 
 which they are bedecked portraits of which the best 
 that can be said is that the subject and the limner 
 were worthy of each other ? And to see what true 
 art can do, compare the wooden fidelity of such pro- 
 ductions with the relation which a characteristic portrait 
 of a man, worthy of a great painter's powers, bears to 
 the actual fleshly form and features of the subject. 
 Here you have no reproduction of facts as you could 
 measure them by rule and compass. A thousand 
 irrelevant details that would only mislead and distract 
 are left out. What is most significant of the soul and 
 spirit is disengaged from what is purely arbitrary. 
 What belongs to the inner essence of the man is so 
 grasped and rendered that all that meets the eye 
 look, attitude, action, expression is instinct with 
 meaning, and everything else is subordinated to that 
 in which the man was most himself, and which made 
 him the special individuality he was. Of a work 
 which thus fulfils the conditions of true art it may be 
 said that in it the subject stands revealed to us more 
 clearly than in his actual presence the common eye
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 301 
 
 could discern him. Its power to evoke reality is like 
 that which our greatest poet ascribes to memory 
 recalling the image of a dear face and form we see 
 no more : 
 
 " The idea of her life shall sweetly creep 
 Into his study of imagination ; 
 And every lovely organ of her life 
 Shall come apparelled in more precious habit, 
 More moving delicate and full of life, 
 Into the eye and prospect of his soul 
 Than when she lived indeed." 
 
 And this leads me to add, lastly, that it is the 
 function of art to idealize not only nature but human 
 life ; and it is by the highest of all arts, poetry, and 
 that which differs from poetry only in form, prose 
 fiction, that this function can best be fulfilled. What 
 a characteristic portrait is to an individual a great epic 
 poem may be said to be to the life of a nation or the 
 spirit of an age. A great dramatic poem or work of 
 prose fiction, by the selection of its characters, actions, 
 events, by the elimination of what is accidental and 
 irrelevant to the main design or motive, by the evolu- 
 tion of the plot and the gradual and natural movement 
 towards the denouement, compresses into brief compass 
 an ideal of the moral life of man which no literal 
 record of facts could convey. Here, too, realism is not 
 art, or at best only an inferior kind of art, and it is 
 only by the presence of the ideal element that the 
 profoundest truth can be obtained.
 
 302 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 No writer can reproduce the whole of human exist- 
 ence or more than a very limited part of it within the 
 brief compass of a drama or story. To give us a 
 representation of life, all that a writer can do is either 
 to copy a small bit of it with minute and painstaking 
 fidelity, to tear out a leaf or two from the book of 
 human life, so that we shall have it line for line and 
 letter for letter and this is the method of realistic 
 fiction ; or, instead of a fac-simile of a portion of human 
 experience, he may try to make his work a representa- 
 tion on a small scale of what he conceives to be its 
 significance as a whole, or at least of the hidden moral 
 meaning of some phase or section of it. From the 
 innumerable phenomena in their confusion and com- 
 plexity of aspect as they appear to the ordinary 
 observer, he can pick out a limited number of char- 
 acters and incidents, giving relief to some, throwing 
 others into the shade or rejecting them as mere 
 surplusage, and group, arrange, order what is left, so 
 as to convey to the reader some idea of the unity, the 
 harmony, the moral significance of the whole. And 
 this obviously is a task which, though it admits of 
 infinite varieties of excellence, implies in order to its 
 worthy fulfilment, powers of the very highest order, a 
 mind that is not merely observant but creative or poetic, 
 a capacity, in other words, not simply of reflecting 
 what lies on the surface, but of seeing under it and 
 getting at the heart of life's mystery a capacity of
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 303 
 
 taking up the scattered materials of experience and 
 fusing them in the fire of imagination into a new 
 organic whole, every element in which is full of 
 significance. 
 
 It is true that realism often implies no common gifts. 
 It needs powers of observation and graphic delineation, 
 such as few possess, to produce a vivid picture of even 
 the superficial aspects of life. It is no despicable 
 talent which enables a man to catch up and arrest the 
 evanescent, fugitive play of light and shade on the 
 surface of society, to reflect in fixed colours the light 
 flow and ripple of its follies, its vanities, its absurdities, 
 or to portray without exaggeration its vulgarity, its 
 meanness, its baseness. Yet with all the talent dis- 
 played in popular realistic fiction of the last and 
 present centuries, it may be questioned whether the 
 result even at the best is one to which the honour of 
 true art can be ascribed. Truthfulness and reality are 
 great qualities in an artist, but the realism that copies 
 the surface only is often more untrue to nature than 
 the wildest vagaries of fancy. Verisimilitude that is 
 faithful only to the outside is not seldom as deceptive 
 as downright falsehood. The life of clubs and drawing 
 rooms, of gossip, flirtation and match-making, of dining 
 and dressing, of flippant talk and conventional manners 
 this, even among those whom it purports to repre- 
 sent, is not the true life of men and women, even the 
 meanest of them. If it were, so far from laboriously
 
 304 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 recording, it were better for us in shame and sorrow to 
 ignore or forget it. And the same is true of the 
 realistic novel of low life. The literalism, however 
 clever, is surely unprofitable, which invites us to 
 occupy time and thought with minute and wearisome 
 details of the dress, the surroundings, the food, the 
 manner of speech, of the dwellers in London back 
 lanes and hovels with the slang of costermongers 
 and the chaff of omnibus-drivers, with inventories of 
 the furniture of the tap-room or of the articles on the 
 shelves of the pawnbroker's shop. 
 
 In contrast with this crude realism, it is the 
 function of the true artist so to represent life as to 
 enable us to penetrate beneath its superficial aspects, 
 and to perceive the grandeur that is hid under its 
 apparent meanness, the good that lies at the basis of 
 its seeming evil. Life is not really for any of us the 
 poor, bare, barren thing it often seems. A treasure of 
 beauty and joy of which we often wot not lies scattered 
 about our daily path. Its dulness, its monotony and 
 lack of interest, arise only from ignorance of the deeper 
 forces that are at work underneath it. Its hardness 
 and unloveliness are but the veil of a strange beauty 
 which is ever ready to be revealed. It needs but the 
 insight of the master-mind to see, and the ouch of the 
 master-hand to disclose, the wonder and greatness that 
 are often latent in its homeliest details all the passion 
 and the power, the pathos and tenderness, the often
 
 THE STUDY OF ART. 305 
 
 more than tragic interest with which our common life is 
 replete. Materials for art, Subjects for song or 
 story, if he can but detect and disentangle them, lie 
 ready to the true artist's hand. Under a thousand 
 varieties of forms and circumstance the essential 
 greatness, the boundless possibilities of man's nature, 
 the obstacles which resist and the strength of will 
 which makes him master of his destiny, the struggle 
 of duty with necessity, the collisions and conflicts, the 
 play and strife of the great normal passions by which 
 character and happiness are made or marred, the 
 unsounded depths of sorrow and joy which human 
 hearts contain, the golden threads of love and charity 
 and truth and tenderness that are woven into every 
 human life, and the sweet wonders of the common 
 earth and skies which encompass it these things 
 constitute the materials which make human life an 
 inexhaustible field for the sympathetic insight and 
 inventive power of art. 
 
 So long as man's life is what it is, the strange story 
 of " a being breathing thoughtful breath, a traveller 
 'twixt life and death," so long as, in innumerable ever- 
 varied aspects, the moral elements of love and sorrow 
 and hope and disappointment, of short-lived raptures 
 and enduring cares, of temptations issuing in the 
 strength of conquest or the weakness of discomfiture 
 the wondrous medley of greatness and littleness, of 
 
 things mundane and things celestial, of contrasts that 
 
 u
 
 306 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 move, now our laughter at their incongruity, now our 
 terror at their awfulness in one word, the strange 
 swift course run out beneath the silent heavens, with 
 the shadow of the awful future creeping ever more near 
 till we are lost in its impenetrable mystery so long as 
 life contains such elements, the mind that can strip 
 away the mask of accident that conceals them and by 
 the power of genius vividly reflect them, will find in it 
 scope for the grandest efforts of imagination, and such 
 minds will be numbered among the wisest teachers of 
 mankind,
 
 THE PEOGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 
 
 November 5, 1887. 
 
 LAST year, partly to draw attention to a gap in our 
 educational system, and also because of the interest of 
 the subject in itself, I offered you some remarks on 
 the study of art, and in particular on the question 
 whether and how far it can be made a branch of 
 academic culture. I shall not waste time by recap- 
 itulation ; but the subject is too wide to be exhausted 
 in a single lecture, and there is one aspect of it on 
 which many years ago I had occasion to touch, and 
 which I think sufficiently important and interesting to 
 recur to as a sequel to last year's lecture. 
 
 The history of knowledge is, on the whole, a history 
 of progress. This characteristic is obviously true of 
 the physical sciences, in which we see at a glance that 
 modern times are at an almost incalculable distance 
 in advance of ancient; and there are obvious 
 reasons on which we may base the conviction that the 
 
 progress of these sciences will be still greater and more 
 
 307
 
 308 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 rapid in the future. But is there not some ground for 
 maintaining that, in some branches of literature and in 
 almost all that belongs to the province of art, a point 
 of excellence was reached in past ages which has never 
 been transcended, and that here all that is left for 
 modern times is only the attitude of reverent study 
 and admiration, the humbler task of imitating those 
 exquisite works of the genius of antiquity which we 
 can never hope to excel ? Moreover, if we reflect on 
 the conditions by which progress is determined, may 
 it not be argued that science and art stand on alto- 
 gether different grounds ? The causes which conduce 
 to the progressive advancement of the former do not 
 apply to the latter, and it might even, with some show 
 of reason, be maintained that the growth of scientific 
 knowledge constitutes a hindrance to artistic origin- 
 ality and productiveness, so that as science advances 
 art must necessarily decline. How far, let us ask, is 
 this contrast true, and what are the lessons which, as 
 students in both these provinces of human thought, 
 we may gather from it ? 
 
 I. In the first place, it is obvious that in art (and under 
 this general term I include not only what are ordinarily 
 meant by the fine arts, but also that which may be 
 regarded as the highest of them, poetry) attainment 
 depends much more on individual ability and genius 
 than in science. A modern man of science may not 
 be of greater mental power than many of its earlier
 
 THE PROGRESS1VENESS OF ART. 309 
 
 pioneers, but he is immeasurably in advance of the 
 latter in a sense in which we cannot say that a 
 modern poet or sculptor is in advance of Homer or 
 Pindar, of Phidias or Praxiteles. In those depart- 
 ments of human attainment in which observation and 
 experiment are the instruments of knowledge, or 
 again in those which, though they do not advance 
 by the mere accretion or accumulation of facts and 
 results, have in them a principle of development by 
 which each successive age absorbs and uses up the 
 thought of the past, it is plain that, with the same 
 ability, the modern enquirer has immense advantages 
 over the investigator of bygone times. Every real 
 contribution which any past observer or thinker has 
 made to science is, to him who begins now to labour in 
 the same field, not only a ready-made part of knowledge, 
 but a means of further discovery. Even a student of 
 ordinary ability and diligence may in a few years make 
 himself master of the best results of the life-long labours 
 of those who have contributed to the marvellous pro- 
 gress of physical science since the close of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 Nor does it need any great or exceptive powers of 
 mind, any genius akin to that of the Keplers, Galileos, 
 Newtons, of past times, to be able to advance beyond 
 their point of knowledge and to carry on the march of 
 discovery into regions which it was not given to them 
 to penetrate. For every new fact, every fresh applica-
 
 310 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 tion of a principle or law, is a distinct addition to the 
 existing body of knowledge ; and so science progresses 
 not merely by the intellectual activity of the highest 
 minds, but by the patient toil of those who can only 
 furnish materials for fresh induction or work out appli- 
 cations of ascertained principles. In science it is not 
 men of genius only who are capable of doing anything; 
 laborious mediocrity has here also its most useful part 
 to play, and even the veriest intellectual day-labourers 
 the hewers of wood and drawers of water may do 
 something to help on the common work. 
 
 Moreover, from the same cause it arises that the 
 work of many of the greatest contributors to science 
 speedily loses any other than an historical interest. 
 However valuable what they did in their own day, 
 their methods of investigation are no longer followed, 
 their books are not read, the precise results of their 
 researches are not attended to in ours. All that is 
 of permanent value in them is to be found in a more 
 accurate, or at least in a more easily understood form, 
 in our modern scientific manuals, and the ordinary 
 student has no need to go back to the works of the 
 original discoverers. 
 
 But if we turn to that department of human 
 activity which is embraced under the general designa- 
 tion of art, it is obvious that the conditions of progress, 
 if here there be any such thing, are altogether different. 
 The achievements of the painters, sculptors, poets of
 
 THE PROGRESS1VENESS OF ART. 311 
 
 the past are not handed on to their successors like 
 those of the men of science, so as to make it certain 
 that each succeeding age shall be in advance of all that 
 went before. Here what a man does depends compara- 
 tively little on what others have done before him, but 
 mainly on the quality and temper of his own mind. 
 It is true that, as time progresses, there may be a 
 greater command of the accessories of art, and also 
 that the works of the great masters, as they increase 
 in number, furnish more examples to kindle the artistic 
 enthusiasm, and to guide the efforts of later generations. 
 To get his ideas conveyed to us, the painter uses the 
 language of lines and colours, the poet of melodious 
 words, and the traditions of their craft may do some- 
 thing to perfect both in the use of the organs of 
 expression they employ. But the chief element in 
 the perfection of a work of art lies in that which is 
 deeper than expression, the creative faculty, the 
 ineffable gift of genius. It lies in that intuitive insight 
 into the life of nature and man, that strange suscepti- 
 bility to what is noble and tender and beautiful, which 
 touches and thrills us in the works of the great masters 
 of art and song. 
 
 Now, this is an element which cannot be transmitted 
 or handed down. It is independent of tradition and 
 education, it comes as an inspiration on elected souls 
 fresh from the eternal fount of light, and the men of 
 later times have no nearer or freer access to it than
 
 312 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 those of ages the most remote. As the world grows 
 older, and the arts can look back on a longer history, 
 it becomes, indeed, easier for minds of average ability 
 by dint of culture to get up the external accessories of 
 art, to mimic the voice, the tone, the manner, the forms 
 of expression, which, once peculiar to genius, are now 
 the stock conventions of the poet's or painter's craft. 
 By laborious study of models and of varieties of style 
 and treatment, the clever art-aspirant may gain a 
 specious facility of execution, and so qualify himself 
 to produce manufactured articles that impose on the 
 unpractised, and pass with many for the genuine fruit 
 of inspiration ; or he may so steep himself in the 
 atmosphere of some great master as to catch the trick 
 of his manner, and produce on undiscerning minds an 
 impression in some faint measure akin to his. 
 
 It is one result again of the varied literary culture 
 of our time to render it easier for talent and cleverness 
 to write well, to write with a seeming flow of ideas and 
 facility of language which at an earlier time would 
 have been to the mass of clever bookmakers an alto- 
 gether impossible achievement. The stage properties 
 of literary art have gone on accumulating for many 
 ages, and are now accessible to all. Not only the 
 machinery of versification, the knack of an ingenious 
 and pleasing arrangement of melodious syllables, but a 
 vast repertory of poetical effects, choice words, happy 
 epithets, graceful images, metaphors, similes from every
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 313 
 
 realm of nature has so accumulated that a competent 
 literary artizan, endowed with a retentive memory, a 
 cultivated taste, and a light and facile touch, may 
 easily throw off lyrics, sonnets, epics, dramas by the 
 dozen electroplate productions so closely resembling 
 the real metal that very many purchasers never know 
 the difference. 
 
 But how little this increased facility of production 
 is any sign of real progress in art is made evident by 
 the fact that, though a great poet or painter may, as in 
 well-known instances, have a most perfect mastery of 
 the medium of expression, yet the soul of art may 
 shine through the rudest and most imperfect forms, 
 and that with an ineffable force and fervour which at 
 once eclipses the borrowed light of laborious culture. 
 A few rude scratches from the pencil of genius, a note 
 or two struck from the lyre by a hand all innocent of 
 artificial culture, but in sympathy with the soul of 
 nature, and vibrating in response to " the still sad 
 music of humanity," may be instinct with a power and 
 pathos, a capacity to charm and elevate and delight, 
 which are the irrefragable tokens of a true inspiration. 
 
 From the same cause it follows that great works of 
 art do not, like the works of many great scientific 
 writers, become in course of time antiquated and 
 obsolete. If science possesses a character of progress- 
 iveness which art cannot claim, those who labour in 
 the realm of art have this compensation, that here
 
 314 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the results of individual effort have a permanence 
 which is impossible in science. A great work of art 
 has a value which is all its own, which is independent 
 of any step it marks in the progress of art, and which, 
 therefore, it never loses. So long as the material 
 form lasts, men do not cease to admire and cherish it, 
 and even in the most distant ages, amidst a thousand 
 changes in the thought and life of the world, it 
 remains, in and for itself, a cherished possession of 
 mankind. Not less now than when the chisel of the 
 Athenian sculptor gave the last touch to the Theseus 
 of the Parthenon, or the groups of citizens gazed for 
 the first time on the glorious procession of festive 
 forms moving, leaping, dancing amidst garlands and 
 song, to which the hand of genius had given immortal 
 expression in the frieze that swept round the great 
 Temple of the Acropolis with not less admiration in 
 this far-distant age, torn away though they be from 
 their place, and little more than defaced fragments of 
 the great originals, do thousands from all lands gaze on 
 these monuments of ancient genius preserved for us in 
 the great English repository of art. 
 
 And so, too, are not this and other schools of learning 
 in this country bearing daily their silent testimony to 
 the undying interest which the world retains in what- 
 ever survives to us of the treasures of ancient literature. 
 Time has not antiquated the great classical writers of 
 antiquity, nor the progress of knowledge rendered their
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 315 
 
 thoughts obsolete. Their ideas have indeed been 
 assimilated by the minds and absorbed into the language 
 and literature of succeeding ages, but not less do their 
 works themselves, in their original form and shape, 
 remain the subjects of our study and admiration. Our 
 best intellects teach and comment on them. Our 
 most skilled critics spend their lives in eliciting and 
 setting in fresh light their beauty of thought and 
 exquisite perfection of form. We are not satisfied to get 
 their contents conveyed to us through the medium of 
 our own language ; for we feel that, in a work of art, 
 thought and language, idea and form, so interpenetrate 
 each other, the impression produced is a result of 
 substance and expression so subtly interblended, that 
 we have only an imperfect reflection of the great epic 
 or tragic poem, or the ode or elegy, until we can know 
 and experience for ourselves all the flow and rhythm 
 of its verse, all the delicate point and precision of its 
 expression, all the majestic pomp or the tender music of 
 the language. As there are wines which, it is said, 
 can only be drunk in the country where the vine 
 grows, so the flavour and aroma of the best works of 
 art are too delicate to bear importation into the speech 
 of other lands and times; to appreciate them truly, we 
 must breathe the very air and steep ourselves in the 
 spirit of their own age and country, and receive them 
 in the very form in which they were produced fresh 
 and fragrant, on the soil to which they are indigenous,
 
 316 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 II. We have seen, then, that in whatever sense 
 progressiveness can be predicated of art, inasmuch as 
 excellence in this department depends more than in 
 any other on an original creative activity which know- 
 ledge and culture cannot produce, and the results of 
 which are not, like those of scientific research, capable 
 of being antiquated or absorbed by those of later 
 times, the conditions which determine the advance- 
 ment of science and philosophy do not apply to art. 
 
 But not only is art thus incapable of sharing in the 
 progress of science ; there are some considerations 
 which might seem to favour the notion that the 
 capacities which lead to progress in science are 
 inimical to artistic excellence, so that as science 
 advances art must necessarily decline. An age or 
 period of the world's history which is marked by great 
 scientific advances cannot, it may be held, from the 
 very nature of the thing, be one of great artistic pro- 
 ductiveness. As in the individual life, so in the 
 intellectual life of the world, there is a period before 
 reflexion and rational observation have been awakened, 
 when the only explanations we can give of ourselves, 
 and of the world around us, are those which imagina- 
 tion furnishes. If it be the function of art to idealize 
 the world, the child is often an unconscious artist ; 
 for, out of the common matter-of-fact world of sense 
 and sight, it creates a new and brighter world, or 
 sheds around the real world an atmosphere in which
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 317 
 
 ordinary objects and appearances are transformed, 
 refracted, recombined. To its eyes dead nature be- 
 comes animate with a life akin to our own, fanciful 
 explanations are read into its phenomena, and a 
 thousand dreams, stories, legends, are woven around 
 its ever-changing forms and aspects. 
 
 So, it may be said, there is in the general history 
 of human intelligence a stage analogous to this, which, 
 like this, passes silently away when awakening reason 
 dissipates the illusions and visionary interpretations of 
 things in which the imagination runs riot. When that 
 change has come, when the world has out-grown its 
 intellectual immaturity, we may still of set purpose play 
 with the illusory creations of imagination; but when 
 scientific knowledge has obtained a firm hold of human 
 intelligence, any other than rational explanations of 
 nature and life can only be to ourselves a conscious im- 
 posture. The charm they once had for us is impossible 
 when we must get ourselves into an attitude of make- 
 believe in order to feel it. As the sport of idle hours they 
 may be permitted to survive, but as a genuine form of 
 human experience, the age of poetry and art is gone, 
 never to be recalled. 
 
 Something like this is the view of the relations of 
 art and science, and of the fatal influence of civilization 
 and scientific progress on the production and enjoy- 
 ment of works of art, which has been set forth with 
 his usual rhetorical effectiveness by Lord Macaulay in
 
 318 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 a well-known essay. " We think," says he, " that as 
 civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. 
 Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, 
 without a certain unsoundness of mind. By poetry 
 we mean the art of employing words in such a manner 
 as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of 
 doing, by means of words, what the painter does by 
 means of colours. Thus the greatest of poets has 
 described it in lines which convey a just notion of his 
 art: 
 
 ' As imagination bodies forth 
 The form of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings 
 A local habitation and a name.' 
 
 Truth," he goes on, "is indeed essential to poetry, 
 but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are 
 just, but the premises are false. . . . Hence of all 
 people children are the most imaginative. They 
 abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. 
 Every image which is strongly presented to their 
 mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. In 
 a rude state of society men are children with a greater 
 variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of 
 society that we may expect to find the poetical tem- 
 perament in its highest perfection. In an enlightened 
 age there will be much intelligence, much science, 
 much philosophy ; abundance of verses, and even good 
 ones, but little poetry."
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 319 
 
 The gist of this argument is that poetry and art 
 produce their effects by an illusion, which advancing 
 knowledge dissipates, and that they lose their hold 
 over society when the scientific habit of mind, which 
 rejects everything but exact knowledge and reality, 
 has begun to predominate. 
 
 I cannot but think, however, that the argument 
 partakes of that weakness which its author ascribes 
 to art, viz., that its premise is false. True art does 
 not produce its effects by illusion, and therefore the 
 progress of science does not tend to subvert its power. 
 The progress of science is fatal to folly, to superstition, 
 to all kinds of false admiration and reverence to the 
 realm of falsehood and lies in general ; but I do not 
 think that in its furthest advances it will ever intrude 
 a hostile step into the domain of imagination, or lay 
 rude hands on a single fair creation which the true 
 life of art has ever inspired. Nature and art, the 
 world of sensuous existences in time and space, and the 
 world of ideas which thought produces, cannot be con- 
 trasted as reality and unreality. The notion lurking 
 in many minds is that the external objective world of 
 earth and rocks, and streams and mountains, is a 
 reality which God created, whilst the thoughts about 
 it, even of the most brilliant minds, are mere human 
 speculations and fancies, devoid of any claim to be 
 called real substantial existences. 
 
 But if it be the divine creative power which entitles
 
 320 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 anything to be called real, is there more of it in stones 
 than in self-conscious thought ? Have dead rocks and 
 streams more of a divine presence and activity in them 
 than the ideas of the intelligences which have been 
 made in the divine likeness ? The smallest original 
 invention in the mechanical arts contains in it some- 
 thing which has never yet existed in the world of 
 outward realities, and in that sense is unreal, a mere 
 fiction of the brain. But even before it has been 
 embodied in material shape, shall we say that lumps 
 of iron or brass or zinc inorganic matter, and the 
 forces of material nature out of which the machine 
 is to be constructed, are realities, and the conception 
 springing from the creative realm of thought, that is 
 to infuse into them new power, and compel them into 
 new relations, has as yet only an existence that is 
 unreal and illusory ? And when the matter-of-fact 
 world of nature and of human life has yielded up its 
 most precious content to furnish materials for the con- 
 ception of genius, and they are reproduced on the 
 canvas of Kaphael or Perugino, or on the page of 
 Homer or Dante, or Shakespeare or Goethe, in a form 
 of living harmony and beauty, such as the eye of sense 
 has never seen or can see, shall we say that a lump of 
 clay or a block of stone is a reality, that the details of 
 domestic life or the vulgar incidents which a daily 
 newspaper chronicles, forgotten ere the eye has ceased 
 to skim them, are true and real, and the noble crea-
 
 THE PROGRESS1VENESS OF ART. 321 
 
 tions of genius which live in our thoughts for ever are 
 only empty phantoms which produce an impression of 
 reality on us by a childish illusion ? 
 
 But we may go further than this. So far from 
 conceding that the creations of art are unreal, there 
 is a sense in which it may be maintained that all great 
 works of art are more real, certain, and express a 
 deeper truth, than the matter-of-fact world for which 
 exclusive reality is claimed. For truth or reality is 
 not that which lies on the surface of things and can 
 be perceived by every cursory observer. "What meets 
 the eye or is the object of immediate observation is 
 but a chaos of accidental and transient phenomena, of 
 facts and occurrences succeeding or crossing each other 
 in endless complexity and multiplicity. To know the 
 truth of things, to have cognizance of that which is 
 real, we must penetrate beneath the surface, eliminate 
 the accidental and irrelevant, and grasp the principle 
 or essence which underlies and interprets appearances. 
 
 Now, whilst this hidden reality is unveiled to us in 
 one way by science and philosophy, it is the function 
 of art to reveal it to us in another and, for many 
 minds, a more expressive and intelligible way. Art 
 does not analyze, or abstract, or classify, or generalize ; 
 it does not lay bare the mechanism of thought, or 
 evolve by the process of a rigid dialectic the secret 
 order and system of nature and history. But the 
 idea which, gazing on nature and human life, by the
 
 322 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 intuitive force of imagination the great artist has 
 divined, he incarnates anew in sensible forms and 
 images, borrowed indeed from the actual world, but 
 closer to thought, more speaking and significant, more 
 true than nature and life itself. For there is a sense 
 in which it may be said that nature speaks her own 
 meaning with an indistinct and faltering voice, and 
 needs some inspired interpreter to make music of her 
 stammering accents. And though our common life is 
 replete with spiritual significance, yet its pathos, its 
 beauty, its harmony, the secret rhythm that runs 
 through it, and the more than tragic interest that 
 underlies it, are but too often obscured and lost amidst 
 the perplexing confusion of its accidents and the 
 triviality of its meaningless details. Now it is the 
 mission of art to speak, indeed, in nature's language, but 
 to lend to her a voice more clear and articulate than 
 her own ; to represent human life, but to represent it 
 in such a way that through the forms of the ideal 
 world, the obscured plot of the real world shall unfold 
 itself in its true significance and grandeur. 
 
 III. I can only refer, lastly, in briefest form, to one 
 other consideration derived from the very nature of art 
 which has been urged in proof of its unprogressive 
 character. If there ever was a time when art could 
 be a religion, drawing into its own sphere all the force 
 of the religious element of man's nature, must not that, 
 of necessity, have been the time when art reached its
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 323 
 
 culminating point ? Can we conceive of a period of 
 human development at which religion is the worship of 
 the beautiful, when our deepest thoughts about our- 
 selves, about nature, about things invisible and spiritual, 
 our highest hopes, our loftiest admirations, our most 
 exalted reverences, could all find adequate expression in 
 the beautiful forms of sense ? There may be in man's 
 nature that which transcends the capabilities of ex- 
 pression contained in sensuous form ; ideas, emotions, 
 experiences, which matter, however moulded, can only 
 obscurely symbolize, or which, from their very nature, 
 are at war with and make havoc of material grace and 
 beauty. When the human consciousness has become 
 receptive of these higher experiences, it is indeed, it may 
 be granted, at a more advanced stage of its spiritual 
 career; but is it not one of the penalties of such 
 advancement that it has left behind it for ever that 
 bright and sunny region where it could make a home 
 of art ? In the year's course, the fruit season may be 
 the most valuable, but when it has come, the time of 
 gay-tinted blossoms has passed away. 
 
 On the other hand, can we conceive the race as 
 having just reached and not yet passed the point at 
 which the mind has indeed awakened to a sense of 
 inward freedom, when it has fermenting in it a thousand 
 thoughts, desires, ambitions, such as lend its joyous 
 fervour and hopefulness to the heart of youth, but has 
 as yet never turned inward to brood over itself, or felt
 
 324 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the shadow of spiritual doubt and conflict creeping 
 over and marring its light-hearted enjoyment of the 
 bright world without ? In one word, can we 
 go back in thought to a time when man's highest 
 ideal neither fell below nor yet surpassed what 
 lovely forms of human grace and nobleness, only with 
 the stain of human imperfection removed from them, 
 could perfectly express ; and therefore a time in which 
 the aesthetic and religious elements were inextricably 
 interwoven, and man's deepest spiritual susceptibilities 
 could find vent in the worship of the beautiful ? Then 
 must not such a time have been, beyond all others, in 
 the history of our race, that whose conditions were 
 most favourable to the perfection of art ? 
 
 Now it is precisely such a stage of human 
 development which was realized at a definite historic 
 period in the life of ancient Greece. There, for once 
 in man's history, art and religion were all but identified. 
 Greek religion was the worship of the beautiful. In 
 the conceptions of its poets, in the creations of its 
 sculptors, in its beautiful temples and shrines, it is 
 nearly impossible to discriminate between the aesthetic 
 and the sacred, the poetical and the mythological. It 
 is the poets and artists of Greece who are at the same 
 time its prophets, the creators of its divinities, and the 
 revealers of its theological beliefs ; and that conception 
 of the divine which the genius of Homer and Hesiod 
 originated, found its perfect embodiment in those sculp-
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 325 
 
 tured types of human beauty and nobleness in which 
 the spiritual motive and the exquisite finite form were 
 indistinguishably united. Greek thought had reached 
 but not passed beyond the stage at which its highest 
 ideal could find adequate expression in sensuous form, 
 and especially in that individual human form in 
 which soul and sense are most closely implicated. 
 No mystic dreams of an ascetic piety had come to 
 trouble the tranquillity of its humanistic devotion. No 
 sense of humiliation before an infinite standard of right 
 had darkened the bright horizon of the present and the 
 finite. The spectral form of an awful fate dominating 
 all things human and divine might lurk in the back- 
 ground, but it did not obtrude itself or mar the fairness 
 and completeness of that seemly human life in which 
 the spirit found satisfaction and rest. Sin and sorrow 
 and pain, the hidden overruling presence of inexorable 
 moral powers working out in the predestined doom of 
 mortals the solution of moral conflicts, might constitute 
 the main motive of Greek tragedy ; but it never inter- 
 fered with that air of victorious serenity which art 
 imprinted on brow and face and form of its beautiful 
 humanized divinities. 
 
 Thus the Hellenic ideal was simply that of finite 
 completeness, of a finite consciousness in harmony 
 with itself and the world. And for the expression 
 of that ideal the resources of art were quite sufficient; 
 in representing it, art had its congenial function.
 
 326 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 A felicity untroubled by internal struggles or outward 
 infirmities, a self-complacent repose superior to acci- 
 dents and ills, a serene fairness unmoved by passion, 
 or want, or care what was there in all that that 
 could not be fitly and fully expressed by external 
 sensuous symmetry and fairness ? And so, as the 
 modern artist contemplates those antique forms in 
 which Greek plastic art embodied its ideal of the divine, 
 as he notes the free and bold yet delicate modelling of 
 shape and outline, the charm of rounded fairness and 
 unworn strength in feature and limb, the delicate grada- 
 tion of curves that melt into each other by insensible 
 transitions, the poise and dignity of attitude, the 
 suppression or the subtle hinting of minor details, and 
 finally, the exquisite art that can suggest, in its colour- 
 less purity, a nature free from the vulgarizing taint of 
 passion, or from those sad experiences that grave their 
 record deep on mortal face and form what wonder 
 that he should declare, to use the words of one of 
 the most famous of the sculptors of our day, that to 
 surpass the best works of the Greeks is a hopeless 
 task, to approach them a triumph ? 
 
 But now, admitting the force of this argument, 
 granting that the Greek of a definite historic age 
 was endowed with a genius for art, which, in one 
 point of view, has never been surpassed, the answer 
 which I can now only indicate is simply this, that 
 art has not exhausted its resources of expression when
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 327 
 
 it has told all that the perfect loveliness of corporeal 
 form can express. There are secrets of the human 
 heart, there is a whole world of moral and spiritual 
 ideas, which lie beyond the range of the one art 
 that of sculpturesque beauty, in which the excel- 
 lence of Greek genius is undisputed. Through the rent 
 veil of mortal flesh a diviner light has streamed on 
 Christian thought than when it was only a seamless 
 garment which the spirit wore. The art that can 
 leave behind it the superficial serenity that ignores 
 or defies pain and sorrow and unrest, to grasp 
 the ideal of a purity that has been won by 
 struggle and conquest, and a peace that has known 
 and triumphed over temptation and evil, is surely 
 nobler far. Even in the one art of sculpture, the per- 
 fection which Greek genius achieved, however admir- 
 able, is but a limited perfection. It could print the 
 idealized likeness of sensuous bliss on many a fair 
 and stately brow ; but if hidden springs of joy 
 deeper than pagan thought knew have been opened 
 up to the heart of man, if the radiance of a loftier 
 hope, the light of a deeper, diviner blessedness, has 
 kindled on many a human face since pagan art passed 
 away, surely to the art that has that to portray 
 grander possibilities of excellence have been afforded : 
 
 " Shall man, such step within his endeavour, 
 Man's face, have no more play and action 
 Than joy which is crystallized for ever, 
 Or grief, an eternal petrification ? "
 
 328 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 And if we turn to that which, in one point of view, 
 may be regarded as the highest of all arts, poetry, 
 surely the deeper, fuller, more various, more complex 
 life of the new world supplies materials for the 
 creative imagination to work on richer far than the 
 old world possessed. A religion which strips human 
 life of its completeness, which accentuates the spiritual 
 in contrast with the material, and turns from the 
 pomp and glory of the present and visible life to gaze 
 with eager, trembling hope and aspiration on the 
 future and invisible, can no longer identify itself with 
 art. For the very reason that its ideas transcend 
 the highest existing forms of art, they infuse into 
 these forms a deeper interest and significance. A 
 richer, deeper tone is breathed into lyric song when it 
 is no longer the light effusion of sprightly feeling or 
 sensuous desire, but the utterance of a heart whose 
 most transient emotions are touched by the pathos of 
 an infinite destiny. And if the interest of the game 
 becomes more absorbing when the stakes are incal- 
 culably increased, surely the materials which human 
 life now supplies to the dramatic poet give him a 
 power to move our pity and our terror, such as ancient 
 tragic art in the period of its greatest splendour did 
 not and could not possess. All the passions, situa- 
 tions, characters, collisions, out of which genius 
 weaves the great work of dramatic art, are replete 
 with richer possibilities, now that on the stage of
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 329 
 
 life is thrown back the reflexion of the awful mys- 
 teries of the world unseen. Love has caught a new 
 touch of passionate tenderness, courage, fidelity, 
 generosity, honour, self-sacrifice, the glow of a loftier 
 heroism ; hate and fear, and remorse and crime, have 
 in them the capacity of stirring in us a horror of 
 moral repugnance such as pagan art has no means of 
 awakening; and the ideas of man's spiritual worth 
 and immortal destiny offer to the imagination 
 that can comprehend them, contrasts which the 
 most daring invention of an earlier time could 
 not have surpassed contrasts of greatness and 
 littleness, of weakness and nobleness, of inward 
 essence and outward circumstance, of things infinite 
 and eternal, hustled in the crowd by things of the 
 passing hour contrasts which move now our laughter 
 at their incongruity, now our terror at their awfulness. 
 The conclusion, then, to which these reflections 
 lead us is, that there is nothing in the nature of 
 art to exempt it from that character of progress- 
 iveness which, as we have seen, belongs to science 
 and philosophy, and in general to all spheres of 
 intellectual activity. Art is but one of the ways 
 in which the thought and culture, the spirit of an 
 age expresses itself. It is, in one sense, the deposi- 
 tory of its richest intuitions, its deepest reflexions, 
 its purest aspirations. If man progresses, therefore, 
 art must progress.
 
 330 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 But though this be so, there is one great advan- 
 tage attendant on the study of the productions 
 of ancient art, and especially on the study of 
 the poets, orators, historians of classical antiquity, 
 viz., that they furnish models of a kind of perfection 
 which in modern times we cannot hope to surpass. 
 The ideal of modern art may be far in advance of 
 ancient, but in point of literary form, in precision, 
 purity and beauty of expression, no modern literature 
 can cope with the best literature of ancient times. It 
 may be that, from their structure and genius, the Greek 
 and Latin languages lent themselves to greater perfec- 
 tion of form than is possible for our own or any 
 other modern tongue. But, apart from that, the exi- 
 gencies of modern life lower, necessarily, our standard 
 of excellence, and render us less fastidious. We write 
 and speak more, and therefore we write and speak 
 worse, at least in style and manner, than the great 
 authors and orators of the past. Not to speak of 
 the host of smaller men whose poor thoughts clothe 
 themselves on the platform and through the press in 
 poorer words, no one can read the speeches of even 
 our foremost statesmen, or the novels, poems, essays, 
 articles that pour forth with such rapidity from the 
 pens of our most notable writers, without being con- 
 strained to admit that, in comparison with the great 
 orators and authors of the past, we have fallen on 
 degenerate times. " They had more time to write,"
 
 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF ART. 331 
 
 says Mr. Mill, " and they wrote chiefly for a select 
 class. To us, who write in a hurry for people who 
 read in a hurry, the attempt to give an equal degree 
 of finish would be loss of time." But it will be no 
 loss of time for those to whom, by reason either of 
 their special vocation in life, or of their general 
 position and exigencies as educated men, the capacity 
 to speak and write well will in future years be an 
 invaluable endowment it will be no loss to them to 
 become familiar by patient study with those un- 
 approachable models of the art of expression which 
 are supplied to us by the literature of ancient times.
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 
 
 November 9, 1889. 
 
 As on former occasions, I deem it expedient to defer 
 till the close of the session any reference to the inci- 
 dents and details of our academic life, and to make 
 use of the present opportunity to bring before you 
 some subject of a more general character, connected 
 with the studies of this place. I might indeed be 
 tempted to deviate from this custom by the remarkable 
 changes that have recently taken place in our pro- 
 fessorial staff. It is often only when we have lost 
 them that we learn fully to appreciate the value of 
 our possessions, and I know that I should carry with 
 me the sympathy of both professors and students in 
 giving expression to the universal feeling of regret for 
 the loss which the University has sustained by the 
 resignation of three of her most valued teachers. 1 The 
 subject, however, is one which deserves more than the 
 brief reference I could make to it on the present 
 
 1 Professors Nichol, Jebb, and James Thomson. 
 332
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 333 
 
 occasion, and other opportunities will arise for dealing 
 with it. Even now, however, it would not be well to 
 pass by, without more special notice, another gap in 
 the number of our teachers which has been created by 
 the hand of death. Owing to the comparatively 
 limited and technical nature of the subject he taught, 
 Professor Koberton was not brought into contact with 
 the general body of students, but his clear and vigorous 
 intelligence, his exact and comprehensive knowledge, 
 his great experience and his powers of lucid exposition, 
 made him a most useful and successful teacher; and 
 beyond his own particular department, his great social 
 influence and his strong academic sympathies enabled 
 him to render many remarkable services to the Uni- 
 versity. On the minds of his colleagues and of those 
 who were honoured by his friendship he has left the 
 impression of a singularly clever, vivacious nature, of a 
 mind enriched by varied culture and by stores of 
 historical and other knowledge held firm in the grasp 
 of a tenacious memory, and ready to be poured forth 
 on all fitting occasions ; and lastly, of a disposition 
 and temperament of unfailing geniality and kindliness. 
 He was a man who never made an enemy, and whom 
 it was impossible to know without liking. 
 
 I now turn to the special subject of my lecture. 
 The interest that has been excited during the last few 
 months on behalf of the Students' Union, which is to 
 be in future the home of the Dialectic and kindred
 
 334 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 societies, has drawn my attention to the fact that such 
 societies afford the only direct discipline in an art 
 which plays a large part in more than one of what 
 are called the " learned professions," and in modern 
 civic and political life. I should like therefore to-day 
 to offer you a few remarks on the art of public 
 speaking and debate, and on the best ways of acquiring 
 proficiency in it. 
 
 Of all intellectual agencies, the faculty of public 
 speaking is perhaps that which, in proportion to its 
 practical influence and importance, has received the 
 least attention in our educational system. Of course, 
 seeing that the first condition of good speaking is that 
 the speaker should have something to say, indirectly all 
 education is an education of the orator. External gifts 
 of voice and manner, apart from more solid acquire- 
 ments, may deceive and dazzle the unwary and make 
 a slender stock of ideas go a long way with an unedu- 
 cated or half-educated auditory. But such superficial 
 qualities in the long run lose their effect, even on 
 uncritical ears, and to the better instructed may even 
 become offensive as a kind of tacit insult to their 
 judgment. Knowledge and a disciplined intelligence 
 therefore constitute the first condition of effective 
 speaking. But if it be true, as we must all admit, 
 that the possession of knowledge does not imply the 
 power of imparting it, that profound thinkers and ripe 
 scholars may be poor and ineffective speakers ; if ex-
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 335 
 
 perience proves that men who are strong in the study 
 may be weak on the platform or in the pulpit, and that 
 even men whose books evince a masterly grasp of their 
 subject may be distanced as teachers or preachers or 
 public speakers by persons of greatly inferior gifts and 
 attainments, then it is obvious that something more 
 than the possession of ideas goes to the making of the 
 orator, and that that system of education is incomplete 
 which confines itself to the acquirement of knowledge 
 and neglects the art of oral expression. 
 
 Every one knows of the immense pains that were 
 bestowed on the cultivation of this art in ancient 
 times. " Ancient oratory," writes Professor Jebb, " is 
 a fine art, an art regarded by its cultivators as 
 analogous to sculpture, to poetry, to music." Already 
 before the art of rhetoric had become an elaborate 
 system, the orators were accustomed to prepare them- 
 selves for their task, first in composition, then in 
 delivery. " Great is the labour of oratory," says 
 Cicero, " as is its field, its dignity, its reward." And 
 thoughMt may be true that in this as in other arts, 
 nature and original aptitude count for much, and the 
 highest eminence is attainable by few, yet moderate 
 success is not beyond the reach of average ability 
 industriously and carefully cultivated. How then 
 shall we explain the comparative neglect into which 
 in our modern educational system this art has fallen ; 
 how shall we account for the fact that whilst every
 
 336 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 other art has its principles and methods, its long and 
 laborious discipline, its assiduous study of the best 
 models, the acquisition of this art is for the most part 
 left to chance or to such proficiency as can be gained 
 in course of time and at the expense of long-suffering 
 audiences ? How is it that in our schools and colleges 
 everything is done for the attainment of knowledge, 
 and nothing at all for the capacity of communicating 
 it? 
 
 At first sight we might suppose that this neglect is 
 to be ascribed to the diffusion of literature and the 
 growing influence of the press. Oral teaching, we 
 might naturally suppose, would count for more in 
 times when there was almost no other access to 
 the popular mind, and, with the spread of education 
 and the multiplication of books, would gradually be 
 superseded by instruction conveyed in a literary form. 
 That the gift of eloquence should be rated high, and 
 should be sedulously cultivated in an age before books 
 existed in printed form, or when books were few and 
 costly and readers a very limited class, and when for 
 the great mass of men the preacher or public speaker 
 was in himself all that books, newpapers, magazines, 
 pamphlets, popular manuals, organs of political parties 
 and religious sects, the vast and varied mass of publi- 
 cations that are constantly pouring forth from the 
 press, are for us in the present day that at such a 
 period the faculty of oral address should be supremely
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 337 
 
 important is only what we might expect. But as 
 education advances, and ideas in the more exact and 
 permanent form of printed matter, suited to every 
 variety of taste and intelligence, become almost uni- 
 versally accessible, we might also expect that the 
 speaker's function, if it did not become extinct, would 
 fall into the background ; and also that, in so far as it 
 survived, the improved taste of society would tend at 
 once to diminish the quantity and to raise the quality 
 of public speaking. 
 
 How groundless such expectations would prove you 
 need not be told. The vocation of the speaker has 
 not only lost nothing, but has enormously gained in 
 public consequence with the gradual diffusion of know- 
 ledge in printed form. There never was a time, in 
 modern history at least, when it constituted so potent 
 a factor in the national life as in our own day. There 
 never was a time when the gift of oratory or the talent 
 for debate brought so much influence, social, political, 
 ecclesiastical, or when he who was endowed with it 
 found the power of ready utterance so much in 
 demand. In this country at least the man who can 
 speak is under a perpetual pressure to exercise his 
 gifts. Lectures, platforms, public meetings, associations 
 for all sorts of objects, festivals, banquets, cere- 
 monials, conferences, anniversaries, meetings to offer 
 testimonials to retiring, or to organize memorials to 
 departed, officials and celebrities, great and small
 
 338 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 public occasions of all sorts, in short, create a perpetual 
 call on his power of utterance. Nor is the demand 
 confined to public occasions. The rage for oratory 
 pursues him in his hours of relaxation and into the 
 retreats of social and private life. In the pauses of a 
 railway journey admiring auditors insist on a modicum 
 of their favourite stimulant. At a private dinner or a 
 garden party, the reporter, note-book in hand, is either 
 openly or furtively introduced ; and, sometimes it must 
 be confessed not without his own connivance, oppor- 
 tunity is afforded to the oratorical celebrity to give the 
 world another taste of his quality. 
 
 Moreover, it is to be observed, that, contrary to the 
 natural anticipation I have just suggested, the public 
 taste for oral qualification does not become more 
 fastidious with the progress of education. Public 
 speaking, with rare exceptions, does not in our day 
 improve in quality. The palmy days of oratory, when 
 it was regarded as an art on a level with painting and 
 sculpture and poetry, when the severest canons of 
 criticism were applied to it, when the great speaker 
 cultivated his gift by laborious and varied discipline, 
 speaking seldom, and only on occasions worthy of his 
 powers, and grudging no pains to meet the claims of an 
 exacting but appreciative audience these days are long 
 passed away. How could it be otherwise? An epicure 
 could not expect a chef in the culinary art to send 
 up, day after day, at a moment's notice a perpetual
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 339 
 
 series of recherch<? viands ; and from even men of the 
 highest abilities it would be too much to ask for the 
 production of off-hand, extempore, oratorical feasts. 
 Hence we need not wonder if, when we examine the 
 speeches of even the most renowned purveyors of 
 modern oratory, political and other, we should find 
 that in the best qualities of eloquence, in clearness 
 of thought, precision of aim, consecution of argument, 
 force, aptitude and elegance of expression, they fall 
 miserably short of the best types of ancient oratory ; 
 and that loose, slip-shod and ambiguous phraseology, 
 involved and interminable sentences, sounding but 
 empty declamation, perplexed and inconclusive argu- 
 ment, and the cheap impressiveness of appeals to 
 vulgar prejudice and passion, should be their too 
 common characteristics. 
 
 There are, however, some considerations which may 
 serve to abate the severity of the censure we pass on 
 these and other defects of modern oratory. Much, of 
 course, depends on our canons of criticism. "We must 
 consider how far the blemishes on which we animad- 
 vert arise, not from the incapacity or carelessness of the 
 artist, but from the necessary limits and conditions of 
 his art. It is obvious, for one thing, that we cannot 
 apply the same standard, either as to matter or form, 
 to written and spoken prose composition. It is even 
 possible that the speaker who should aim at literary 
 excellence would be going on a false quest, and that
 
 340 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the qualities which made his work good as literature 
 would mar or vitiate it as oratory. A reported 
 speech, indeed, becomes literature, but it is not to be 
 judged of as such, but as a composition primarily 
 addressed to the ear, and producing its effect, whether 
 instruction or persuasion, whether intelligent conviction 
 or emotion and action, under the condition of being 
 rapidly spoken and rapidly apprehended. And this 
 condition obviously implies that many qualities which 
 are meritorious in a book or treatise profundity or 
 subtlety of thought, closeness and consecution of 
 argument, elaborate refinement and beauty of style, 
 expression nicely adapted to the most delicate shades 
 of thought, would not only involve a waste of labour 
 in a spoken address, but might mar or frustrate its 
 effectiveness. A realistic painter who bestows infinite 
 pains in copying the form and colour of every pebble 
 on the bank of brook or stream, and every reticulation 
 of each leaf on the spray that overhangs it, not only 
 squanders effort in achieving microscopic accuracy, but 
 distracts by irrelevant detail the eye of the observer, 
 and destroys the general idea or impression of the 
 landscape. And a like result may attend elaboration 
 of thought and fastidious nicety of form in a spoken 
 composition. Such minute finish is either lost and 
 unappreciated by the auditor, or, while he pauses to 
 admire it, his attention is diverted, and he loses the 
 thread of the discourse or argument.
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 341 
 
 Moreover, in studying a written composition, a 
 reader has no right to complain of compression or 
 conciseness, or, on the other hand, of the space occu- 
 pied in the development of the thought. If the sense 
 be not immediately obvious, or if he fails to catch it 
 on a first reading, he can pause on a phrase or sen- 
 tence, he can go back on a paragraph ; if the matter 
 sets his own mind a-working in a different track, he 
 can suspend his reading to follow out the suggested 
 train of thought, and then come back to take up the 
 interrupted sequence of the author's argument ; or 
 again, if the strain on his attention or intelligence 
 becomes too great, he can stop and resume his reading 
 at will. 
 
 But an oral address admits of no such delays 
 and interruptions. The meaning must be understood 
 at a first hearing or not at all, the discourse must be 
 so framed that the mind of the hearer can move on at 
 least as fast as that of the speaker ; and seeing you 
 cannot, on many occasions at any rate, shut up a 
 speaker as you can a book, there are limits of length 
 to which every public address must conform. Obviously, 
 therefore, oral composition not only admits, but 
 requires, certain characteristics which would be not 
 only illegitimate, but positive blemishes in matter 
 intended to be read. Hearers, of course, vary in 
 quickness of apprehension, and no speaker is bound to 
 be plain to auditors whose intelligence must be supple-
 
 342 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 mented by a surgical operation. But though it is true 
 that greater condensation is possible in addressing a 
 select audience, an average audience cannot be fed 
 with intellectual pemmican. To present the same 
 thought in varied language or in diversified aspects, 
 to make use of pictorial forms and abundant and 
 familiar illustrations, to go at a slow pace in argument, 
 to avoid rapid transitions and elliptical reasoning, to 
 arrest wavering attention at the cost even of irrele- 
 vancy and digression, to be not over-scrupulous as to 
 grammatical and dialectic proprieties or telling rough- 
 nesses that jar on a fastidious ear, to make sure not 
 merely that the ideas are there, but that they are so 
 presented as to interest, strike, sustain the attention, 
 and tell on the heart and soul of the hearers these 
 and such as these must be aims present to the mind 
 of the public speaker and controlling the form and 
 substance of his talk. But all this implies that a 
 certain latitude must be conceded to oral, which is 
 denied to written composition, and that the very 
 effectiveness and success of a speech may be due 
 to its offences against the strict canons of literary 
 criticism. 
 
 It is on this principle we explain the fact that 
 good speakers are often bad writers, good writers bad 
 speakers, and that the instances are rare in which men 
 attain to great and equal excellence as authors and 
 as orators.
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 343 
 
 Following out a little further this comparison of 
 speaking and writing, or of oral and written prose 
 composition, there is another characteristic by reason 
 of which, at first sight at least, we must ascribe an 
 inferior value to the former, viz., its evanescence. 
 Written or printed matter has the advantage not 
 only of greater precision but of greater permanence. 
 A great book is a treasure for all time. The thinker 
 passes away, but the thoughts that are enshrined in 
 the literature of the past live on for the instruction 
 and delight of succeeding generations. It is of the 
 very essence of oratory, on the other hand, to be 
 ephemeral. Its most brilliant effects, like the finest 
 aspects of nature, vanish in the very moment of 
 observation. They can no more be arrested than the 
 light of morning on the mountain summit, or the 
 flashing radiance on the river's rippling waves, " a 
 moment here, then gone for ever." The words that 
 touch us by their pathos, or rouse us by their lofty 
 eloquence, pass away like the successive notes of a 
 song in the very act of falling on the enraptured ear. 
 
 It may even be said that the best and noblest effects 
 of oratory are more evanescent than those of music. 
 The song may be sung, the great composer's work 
 that delights us at a first hearing may be repeated 
 with equal or higher artistic skill. But often the 
 power of spoken words depends on a combination of 
 circumstances that can never be reproduced. The
 
 344 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 speech of a great statesman in debate say on some 
 critical emergency when the vote is about to be taken 
 that is to decide the fate of a ministry, or the passing 
 of a measure of reform or of domestic or foreign policy 
 on which the interests of millions are staked; or again, 
 the speech spoken by an illustrious pleader in a great 
 state trial, and before an audience composed of all the 
 elements, social and intellectual, that stimulate to their 
 very highest an orator's powers ; or, to name no other 
 instance, the words in which one who knows how 
 to sympathize with and touch the hidden springs of 
 human emotion, gives expression to the sorrow of a 
 community for departed greatness, or the proud re- 
 action with which it rises to face some national 
 calamity or peril in these and many similar instances 
 the conditions of a great speech, and therefore the 
 speech itself, can never recur. A song may be sung 
 again by the same or other voice, but the speech can 
 never be re-spoken even by the voice that uttered it ; 
 and that not merely because, under the inspiration 
 of a great occasion, it may have reached the climax 
 of its powers, but because the moving panorama of 
 history never repeats itself, never revives again the 
 circumstances that gave it its power to affect us. 
 And when the eloquent voice has itself been silenced, 
 unlike the song, no other voice can reproduce its 
 music. On the lips of ^Eschines it may seem still 
 instinct with power, but all his art cannot make
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 345 
 
 us feel as we should have done, had we heard 
 Demosthenes. 
 
 But if we reflect for a moment on this distinction 
 between oral and written composition, may not the 
 very fact of the evanescence of the former suggest 
 to us that there is in good oratory an element of 
 power which written or printed matter does not 
 and cannot possess. Society will never, by reason 
 of advancing culture and the diffusion of literature, 
 outgrow the relish and demand for good speaking, 
 for this, if for no other reason, that, besides outward 
 circumstances and accessories, there is something in 
 what we call eloquent speech which by no effort 
 or artifice can be reproduced in literary form, With- 
 out analyzing the process every one knows and feels 
 it to be so. The disappointment and revulsion of 
 feeling, for instance, with which, after listening to 
 some great display of oratorical power, we read the 
 verbatim report of what has so strangely stirred us, 
 shows that, whatever it be, an element of mental 
 influence was called into play by the living voice 
 which has vanished when we are no longer under 
 its spell. 
 
 A still more conclusive proof of this is to be 
 found in the difficulty we often experience of 
 accounting for the recorded influence of speeches or 
 sermons on the auditory to whom they were addressed. 
 A little seems to go a long way in public speaking.
 
 346 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 We hear of audiences being moved to laughter or 
 melted to tears by words which, as we read them, 
 scarce excite in our minds a ripple of emotion. The 
 reported witticism, or joke, or sarcastic allusion which 
 called forth irrepressible signs of amusement in the 
 crowded meeting, seems to the reader but a poor play 
 of words, scarce deserving of a smile. The appeal 
 which, we are told, was so effective, the simile or 
 illustration which was so rapturously applauded, the 
 invective that was so terrible to listen to, the burst of 
 lofty eloquence that made a whole congregation hold 
 their breaths, seem, as with unquickened pulse we read 
 them on the printed page, marvellously inadequate 
 to the effects they produced. There are, as has been 
 remarked, scarcely any of the speeches of the great 
 Parliamentary orators of the last century Chatham, 
 Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and others which have come 
 down to us, that seem to justify their renown. 
 
 And as to pulpit orators, not to speak of the great 
 French preachers, the marvellous effects of whose some- 
 what theatrical eloquence must in great part be ascribed 
 to the peculiar genius of the French nation, any of 
 you who have read of the effects of the preaching 
 of Whitfield, or Kirwan, or others nearer our own day 
 how, for instance, men so unemotional as Franklin 
 emptied their purses and women divested themselves 
 of their jewels under the irresistible influence of one 
 preacher's appeal at the close of a charity sermon;
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 347 
 
 how the sobs and expressions of emotion rendered 
 another preacher's voice inaudible at one point of his 
 sermon ; and how, as the peroration of a third rang on 
 their ears, the whole audience, as if moved by a 
 simultaneous electric shock, sprang to their feet I 
 daresay some present will corroborate my own ex- 
 perience when I say that when, after reading of such 
 incidents, I have turned to the sermons which gave 
 rise to them, if not compelled in honesty to pronounce 
 the thought poor and jejune, the pathos forced, the 
 declamation extravagant, I have found myself either 
 irresponsive or but faintly responsive to the eloquence 
 to which such effects are ascribed. 
 
 Shall we say then that these effects are due simply 
 to illusion ? Objects look larger than reality in a par- 
 ticular state of the atmosphere ; is there a similar 
 deceptive intellectual atmosphere in a crowd, so that 
 small ideas look big, and feeble jocularities affect us as 
 brilliant flashes of wit ? To say this would only be an 
 explanation to the ear ; it would be to substitute 
 a re-statement for an explanation of the problem. Or 
 are we to ascribe the result in question to that which 
 undoubtedly differentiates spoken from written words, 
 the added charm of voice, manner, delivery ? 
 
 No doubt much of the effectiveness of public speaking 
 is due to these accessories. We can scarcely over-rate 
 the power which a good or bad manner has to help or 
 hinder oratorical success. There are many men of
 
 348 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 good parts so heavily handicapped in this respect by 
 nature that, however excellent the matter of their talk, 
 it is scarcely possible to listen to them with patience. 
 It would, of course, be invidious to mention names, but 
 we have all known men who can write sensibly or, at 
 any rate, inoffensively, yet to listen to whose speeches 
 or sermons for any length of time is a terrible inflic- 
 tion. A harsh, rasping, unmodulated voice, every note 
 of which grates on the sensitive ear like the sharpening 
 of a saw, or a monotonous sing-song, rising and falling 
 with a uniform cadence, wholly irrespective of the 
 matter, or a delivery flat, cold, colourless, or again 
 loud and declamatory, full of exaggerated force, false 
 emphasis and simulated fervour, and accompanied by 
 floundering, ungraceful, vehement gesticulation let 
 an unfortunate speaker be weighted by these and 
 similar accidents of manner, of which almost certainly 
 he himself will be utterly unconscious, let him go on 
 protracting his discourse from point to point to the 
 utmost conventional limit, and I daresay there is no 
 one here whose experience will not bear me out when 
 I say that an hour or more of such oratory, whatever 
 its substance, amounts to a kind of intellectual torture 
 almost beyond human endurance. On the other hand, 
 one could name speakers to whom, apart from their 
 good matter, simply for the sweetness and melody of 
 the voice, the rhythmical flow of the sentences, the 
 refined yet unstudied grace of the manner, it is a
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 349 
 
 pleasure to listen. Even if you withdraw your 
 attention from the sense, the sound falls on the ear 
 with the charm of a summer brook or the melody of 
 the Eolian harp. 
 
 But though the attractive qualities of voice and 
 manner may partially account for the different effects 
 of spoken and written words, that this is far from a 
 complete and satisfactory explanation is, I think, proved 
 by the fact that there are instances not a few, in which 
 the nameless something that makes a man a great 
 orator unmistakably asserts its presence despite of a 
 manner characterized by almost every possible defect. 
 To adduce but a single example. I think there never 
 was a proof of the power of genuine eloquence to 
 triumph over extrinsic defects of voice and manner so 
 remarkable as that of our greatest modern Scottish 
 preacher, Chalmers. Few if any here are old enough 
 to have heard him, but if there be any one who has 
 chanced to listen to one of his great sermons or 
 speeches, I need not remind him how little the con- 
 ventional graces of oratory contributed to their 
 marvellous effect. No grandeur or dignity of person, 
 no polish or refinement of speech or gesture, a voice 
 without sweetness or melody, an articulation thick and 
 guttural, an accent not merely broadly Scottish but of 
 undisguised provincialism ; instead of commanding and 
 varied action aptly following the changeful turns of 
 thought and feeling, a continual see-sawing of the air
 
 350 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 with one hand, whilst the other followed the lines of 
 the closely-read manuscript such were the physical 
 conditions which, in the case of this great orator, 
 seemed to render anything approaching to eloquence 
 impossible. Yet he broke through them all. To him 
 these outward hindrances were but as withes and 
 small cords, when under that inspiration, be it what 
 it may, which gives a great speaker resistless sway 
 over the souls of men. It was said that when 
 Canning and Grey men themselves not only of great 
 intellectual power but remarkable for those accessories 
 of voice and manner that can hold listening assemblies 
 enthralled for hours went to hear Chalmers in Lon- 
 don, these old and practised parliamentary hands could 
 not resist the magic power of his eloquence, and that, 
 as the last words fell from his lips, Canning whispered 
 to his neighbour, " The Scotsman beats us all." 
 
 But then the question recurs : If the greater effec- 
 tiveness of spoken than of written words can be set 
 down neither to inexplicable illusion, nor, save partially, 
 to the outward charm of voice and manner, to what 
 shall we ascribe it ? Perhaps the simplest account of 
 the matter is to -be found in this, that a book or 
 printed page does not think or feel, but a good speaker 
 does. Words, spoken or written, are only counters for 
 thought ; but in the one case they are but dead con- 
 ventional signs, in the other they are signs animate, 
 glowing, suffused with the spiritual life they represent.
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 351 
 
 Even if the signs were in the case of both author and 
 speaker purely arbitrary, as employed by the latter 
 they are accompanied and interpreted by the running 
 commentary of emphasis, tone, modulation of voice, 
 and by what we mean when we speak of " suiting the 
 action to the word." The various expedients of the 
 printer's art, stops, italics, marks of interrogation, 
 sentences, paragraphs, parentheses, etc., are only cum- 
 bersome attempts to overtake by symbols submitted to 
 the eye, what a good speaker, by the infinite flexibility 
 and compass of the instrument he employs, can 
 instantaneously suggest to the ear of his auditor. No 
 printer's symbols can keep pace with the variations 
 of thought and feeling which intuitively the living 
 voice can express. 
 
 And besides this, there is this almost incalculable 
 difference, that in the one case the symbols are 
 arbitrary and artificial, in the other they are, for 
 the most part, natural and instinctive. It is only by 
 custom and education that we learn the arbitrary 
 significance of words, and the verbal symbols of the 
 same ideas are numberless as the varieties of human 
 speech. But there is a universal language which, 
 long ere we have mastered the meaning of articulate 
 words, carries with it for each and all of us its own 
 interpretation, and with the potent aid of which the 
 most consummate linguist can never dispense. Be- 
 twixt parent and child in all lands and climes, the
 
 352 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 light in the eye, the suiile on the cheek, the tones of 
 the voice, the thousand movements, touches, caresses 
 of the enfolding arms, constitute a medium of com- 
 munication intuitively understood, which not art but 
 nature has taught. And this too is a language which 
 we never outgrow, and which in the hands of one who 
 knows how to use it, reinforces and in some measure 
 transcends the capacities of oral address. The artifices 
 of the printer, the notation of the musician, can no 
 doubt do much to reduce this language of nature to 
 formal expression. But even musical notation, though 
 much more complete than any that could be adapted 
 to speaking, leaves, as any one knows who has ever 
 listened to a great artist and compares his singing or 
 playing with that of an inferior and common-place 
 performer, an almost boundless latitude of expression 
 to individual taste and feeling. 
 
 And even more remarkable is this untaught and 
 unteachable power in the case of the speaker. What 
 ingenuity could invent a written or printed notation 
 that would represent the infinite, nicely-discriminated, 
 subtle shades of tone and accent which a great speaker 
 instinctively employs, and which the ear and soul of a 
 sympathetic auditory instinctively interprets. Even in 
 deliberate speech, in exposition, narrative, calm and 
 unimpassioned argument, there are innumerable subtle 
 changes by which corresponding variations of thought 
 are indicated. And when he rises to the region of
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 353 
 
 emotion, has not nature wedded its own symbols 
 to the whole gamut of feeling entreaty, passion, 
 pathos, tenderness, grief subdued or unrepressed, 
 remonstrance, anger, scorn, sarcasm, reverence, awe, 
 aspiration, homage, the agony of the penitent, the 
 hope and trust of the believer, the mystical rapture 
 of the saint has not each of these and a thousand 
 other varieties of feeling its own appropriate form 
 of expression, so that, through the whole continuity 
 of speech or sermon, a speaker can suffuse articulate 
 language with this deeper, subtler, underlying and 
 all-potent language of nature ? Lacking this organ 
 of spiritual power a discourse may have every 
 intellectual excellence, but it will fall short of the 
 highest effect. For often 
 
 " Words are weak and far to seek 
 
 When wanted fifty-fold, 
 And so if silence do not speak, 
 And trembling lip and tearful cheek, 
 
 There's nothing told." 
 
 In one word, the ultimate reason for the greater 
 effectiveness of spoken than of written matter is 
 simply this, that the latter is dead and silent, the 
 former quick with the glow and vitality of intelligence 
 and emotion. In certain scientific observations you 
 must eliminate what is called the personal equation ; 
 but in good speaking, the personality of the speaker, 
 instead of needing to be discounted, is that which
 
 354 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 lends its special value to the result. What reaches 
 the auditor is not thought frozen into abstract form, 
 but thought welling warm and fluent from a living 
 source. In reading a book or report the whole 
 burden of the process is thrown upon the reader. In 
 listening to a spoken address more than half the burden 
 is borne by the speaker ; or rather, activity and recep- 
 tivity become almost indistinguishable. Charged alike 
 with the electric force of sympathy, the minds of 
 speaker and hearer meet and mingle in a common 
 medium of intelligence and emotion. 
 
 I must here for the present arrest this discussion, 
 leaving the further treatment of it and of the practical 
 results to be deduced from it for a future occasion. 
 Is good speaking an art that can be taught and learnt, 
 and, if so, what are the best ways of teaching and 
 acquiring it ? These are questions with which I can- 
 not now attempt to deal. I shall content myself with 
 remarking that whilst the faculty of expression is 
 capable of and needs cultivation, and whilst in this 
 as in other arts there is something that can be taught 
 and learnt it is my opinion that the teaching must 
 have regard mainly to the intellectual substance rather 
 than to the mere elocutionary form. And by the in- 
 tellectual substance I mean, not merely the knowledge 
 which all education aims to communicate, but the art 
 of reproducing that knowledge in the best way in 
 which, under the conditions of oral address to which
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 355 
 
 I have adverted, it can be done. These conditions, 
 whilst to some extent coincident with those of literary 
 expression, are, as we have seen, in many respects 
 peculiar to the art of spoken address, and demand a 
 special study and discipline. But without entering 
 at present on the nature of that study and dis- 
 cipline, I venture to express my conviction that 
 with it what may be called the training of the 
 orator ends. To the artifices of the elocutionist 
 I have never been able to attach much importance. 
 
 There may indeed be natural defects or acquired bad 
 habits as to manner, voice, accent, etc., which, though 
 genius or commanding ability may triumph over them, 
 in the case of a man. of ordinary gifts may prove fatal 
 to success. We may get over a halting, embarrassed, 
 disagreeable delivery for the sake of the originality 
 and interest of the ideas of a powerful mind; but 
 if to commonplace thought be added an awkward, 
 hesitating, unattractive manner, the less a man 
 courts publicity for his oratorical gifts the better. 
 A speaker who has little to say is under a 
 double obligation to say that little well, and it is 
 surprising how much, under the guidance of a com- 
 petent instructor, by diligent practice, may be made of 
 the most unpromising materials. 
 
 But when all this has been conceded, I fall back 
 on the assertion that it is the intellectual discipline 
 mainly which goes to the production of a good speaker,
 
 356 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 and that it is only by that discipline that the perfec- 
 tion of form can be reached. Know and feel your 
 subject, and learn how to express it clearly and 
 vividly, and you may leave manner and delivery to 
 take care of itself. Elaborate systems of elocutionary 
 discipline have been devised for the manufacture of 
 pulpit and other orators, but their utility seems to me 
 more than doubtful. I believe, to say the least, that 
 there is a point beyond which artificial elocutionary 
 training is always useless and often noxious. And 
 one reason for this, as Whately and others have 
 pointed out, is that such expedients are only circuit- 
 ous methods of reaching the end aimed at. They are 
 like teaching a man what muscles he should use in 
 the act of walking, or how he should manage tongue, 
 palate, and lips in the act of speaking. If you ask 
 why such and such tones of voice, gestures, attitudes, 
 should be employed in expressing this or the other 
 thought or sentiment, the only answer that can be 
 given is, that they are the language in which nature 
 teaches us to express them. Then, is the obvious 
 rejoinder, why not leave nature to fulfil its own 
 function ? Instead of studying and elaborately mimic- 
 ing the tones and gestures by which joy, sorrow, 
 penitence, hope, love, gratitude, naturally express 
 themselves, or by which a speaker indicates assent, 
 dissent, conviction, entreaty, interrogation, surprise, 
 etc. a process which not only involves vast labour,
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 357 
 
 but at the best can be only partially successful, is not 
 the simpler, shorter, infinitely more effective method 
 to inspire mind and soul with the feelings and senti- 
 ments themselves, and let them find their natural 
 vehicle of expression ? Suppose we adopted the same 
 artificial expedient in private life, could anything be 
 more ridiculous than to prescribe the emphasis, tones, 
 pauses, gesticulations, by which the parental, conjugal, 
 filial, and other sentiments may be appropriately ex- 
 pressed ? How to sharpen or subdue the intonation, 
 how dispose of the hands and put down the foot, 
 when in domestic life we desire to express senti- 
 ments the reverse of amicable ; what is the proper 
 pitch of voice by which an indignant parent shall 
 indicate his displeasure at the profuse expenditure or 
 other folly of his offspring ; or what, on a most 
 interesting and critical occasion for the youth of 
 either sex, shall be the due and fitting degree of 
 tenderness to infuse into eye and voice I suppose 
 we should make short work with an instructor who 
 sought to prescribe to us on these and similar points. 
 And the maxim which applies to private colloquy 
 is not less applicable to public speaking. Think, 
 feel, be master of your subject, let your imagination 
 and heart be enkindled by it, and the appropriate 
 form will come of itself. 
 
 Finally, there is this further objection to all such 
 artifices, that, from their very nature, they frustrate
 
 358 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 their own ostensible end. There is an element of 
 simulation in them, where absolute sincerity and sim- 
 plicity are indispensable to the highest result. They 
 direct a speaker's attention to himself when self- 
 forgetfulness is the first and last condition of power. 
 Especially in religious address, they tend to introduce 
 sham and stageyness where reality is all in all. If a 
 speaker is thinking of himself and not of his subject, 
 of the manner and not of the matter, if his attention 
 is occupied with the modulation of his voice and the 
 aptitude of his gestures, if an undercurrent ambition to 
 be graceful, striking, emphatic, runs through all his 
 fine sentences and simulated emotions, he will be shorn 
 of genuine power. Especially if, as is almost certain 
 to be the case, the audience detects the covert motive, 
 their sense of reality is offended, they feel as if called 
 to participate in an imposture, they become cold, 
 guarded, unresponsive, and the speaker's hold on them 
 is gone. For real, oratorical effect a speaker must 
 never think of producing it. He must lose himself in 
 his subject, be for the moment his subject. His speech 
 must, so far as manner is concerned, have the spon- 
 taneity, the abandonment, the self-forgetfulness of 
 inspiration. And only then on the part of the 
 auditory will the highest response of a like self-aban- 
 donment be yielded. Only then, forgetting everything 
 else speaker, hearers, surrounding accessories in their 
 interest in the subject, will they be carried along
 
 THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. 359 
 
 unresistingly on the swift tide of thought, and feel 
 the keen delight of sympathetic emotion, the simul- 
 taneous thrill of feeling that, under the spell of a great 
 master of human speech, sweeps over a whole multitude 
 and blends them into unity.
 
 THE PEKSONAL ELEMENT IN TEACHING. 
 
 April 13, 1894. 
 
 ONE of the great sources of the superiority which, I 
 believe, belongs to academic teaching over instruction 
 got from books and private study lies in what may be 
 called the personal element. As this is a subject on 
 which in the many addresses which on similar occa- 
 sions I have delivered I have not yet touched, I shall 
 take leave to-day to say a few words on it. 
 
 What educational advantages, let me ask, does 
 University teaching possess over private study ? Com- 
 paring instruction got from books and instruction got 
 from lectures, the former has this obvious advantage, 
 that the instruction which books contain exists, not in 
 a fugitive, but in a permanent form. When, indeed, 
 the end aimed at is only general impression or persua- 
 sion, and the substance of the discourse is not beyond 
 the apprehension of a hearer of ordinary intelligence, 
 much is gained and nothing lost by the lecture form. 
 
 But when the subject calls for close attention and 
 
 360
 
 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN TEACHING. 361 
 
 hard thinking, when the treatment of it involves pre- 
 cise and accurate statement, close and consecutive 
 reasoning and sustained reflection, printed matter has 
 an obvious superiority over oral delivery. In studying 
 a scientific or philosophical treatise the reader can 
 take his own time, pause over a difficult sentence or 
 paragraph, recur to it in the light of what follows, is 
 not hurried along at a rate more rapid than his slow 
 intelligence admits. If the effort of sustained attention 
 becomes too exhausting he can stop when he likes, 
 and renew his reading with a fresh mind. 
 
 In other ways, moreover, he is not so much at the 
 mercy of the teacher. Fallacies, showy rhetoric, plau- 
 sible paradoxes, irrelevant illustrations, which pass 
 unobserved in a rapidly spoken address, are more 
 easily detected on the printed page. Besides, though 
 it is true that many men speak better than they write, 
 the converse is also true, that many a bad or ineffective 
 speaker is a weighty and impressive writer. St. Paul 
 quotes certain candid critics of his as saying that " his 
 letters were weighty and powerful, but his bodily 
 presence weak and his speech contemptible." And it 
 would be easy to adduce instances of men who have 
 made important contributions to the literature of their 
 subject, yet have lacked the teaching power, and whose 
 manner of speech adds to the intrinsic difficulty of the 
 matter. But even if the teacher is equally good with 
 the tongue and the pen, the auditor of a lecture can
 
 362 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 never, in some respects, be placed in the same position 
 as the reader. However quick his apprehension, he 
 is subjected to a strain of attention and an effort of 
 memory which is not demanded of the latter. 
 
 For these and other reasons it may be plausibly 
 maintained that teaching by lecture is only a survival 
 of a past state of things, when books were few and 
 costly and a great teacher had almost no other access 
 to the popular mind than by oral address. But with 
 the diffusion of literature and the multiplication of 
 books on every subject over the whole range of aca- 
 demical instruction, the student may well be left to 
 get up his knowledge by private study, and the pro- 
 fessor, instead of undertaking the superfluous task of 
 communicating orally what may more satisfactorily be 
 got from books, might employ himself in pointing out 
 the best sources of information, and in testing by 
 examination the extent and accuracy of the student's 
 attainments. 
 
 But when all this has been said, there are, I think, 
 many considerations in support of the assertion that, 
 notwithstanding the multiplicity of books treatises, 
 manuals, educational works on all manner of subjects, 
 scientific, literary, philosophical a place, and an impor- 
 tant place, is still left for instruction by oral address. 
 The foregoing arguments lose much of their force when 
 we consider that the alternative is not simply between 
 books and lectures. The question is not whether, if
 
 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN TEACHING. 363 
 
 we had to choose between knowledge got solely from 
 books and knowledge got solely from lectures, we 
 should not give the preference to the former; but 
 whether, with all that books can give us, there is not 
 still an invaluable element of education which can 
 reach us only through living contact with the mind 
 and personality of a teacher who is a master of his 
 subject. 
 
 I do not dwell on the obvious fact that there are 
 many branches of our studies here in which the largest 
 and most important part of the knowledge communi- 
 cated is of a kind that could not be got from books. 
 In the study of the sciences of observation and experi- 
 ment, the practical work of the laboratory under a 
 competent instructor, if it does not altogether super- 
 sede, constitutes an indispensable supplement to the 
 lecture or text-book. And if we think only of general 
 education as an intellectual discipline, of the enlarge- 
 ment of mind to be gained from it, apart from any 
 future professional use to be made of it, it is, I think, 
 impossible to exaggerate the benefit to be got from the 
 practical study of the physical and experimental 
 sciences under the guidance of an able instructor. 
 
 In this point of view it is not so much what we 
 learn as how we learn, not the matter but the method 
 that is the important thing. Much of the mere 
 information which the student acquires here may fade 
 away from his mind, but what is not lost is the
 
 364 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 training to keenness and accuracy of his powers of 
 observation, the practised ability to see what the facts 
 really are, to grasp their meaning, appreciate their 
 value, discern them in the light of their relation to 
 other facts and phenomena, weigh the force of evidence 
 for conflicting interpretations of them. Now, here we 
 have a result which only the guidance of a living 
 instructor can supply, and which is of inestimable 
 value as a preparation for the future work and conduct 
 of life. We are not all, or even the majority of us, to 
 be scientific experts, but we all of us need for success 
 in life the intellectual habits to which I have referred. 
 Half the weakness and perversity of mankind arises 
 from men's inability to see what is before their eyes, 
 and when they see, to discern what it means. In the 
 business of life there are multitudes who are afflicted 
 with defective vision, who have never learnt to fix 
 their attention, and who in consequence overlook half 
 of what they see, or think they have seen what they 
 have only imagined. There are many also who, in the 
 ever-recurring exigencies of life when the call arises 
 for independent judgment or rapid decision, from the 
 lack of trained habits of observation and inference, 
 because, in other words, the observing and reasoning 
 mechanism within them has never been habituated to 
 move with readiness and precision are comparatively 
 helpless and ineffective agents in the work of life. 
 And just that rational gymnastic which such minds
 
 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN TEACHING. 365 
 
 need is that which a thorough discipline in the 
 methods of investigation, the problems, the processes 
 of science supplies. 
 
 There are, however, other branches of study which 
 do not belong to the domain of outward facts and 
 phenomena, and in which knowledge is communicated 
 not by means of observation and experiment, but 
 simply by the passing of ideas from mind to mind. 
 And in their case, too, there is an element of instruc- 
 tion and of mental discipline which cannot be got from 
 books, and in which the personality of the teacher 
 plays a large and important part. 
 
 In the study of philosophy, of ethics, of psychology, 
 of literature, of history, one important influence, to 
 name no other, which is lost in mere book learning is 
 the quickening of the intellectual life by sympathy 
 with the spirit of the teacher. It is no doubt true, as 
 I have said, that this is a kind of influence the action 
 of which is more palpable in popular oratory than in 
 professorial teaching. Where, as in the pulpit, on the 
 platform, at the bar, in the popular lecture, or political 
 speech, the end aimed at is persuasion and general 
 impression rather than conclusions reached by severe 
 consecutive thought and ratiocination, we all know 
 how greatly the personality of the speaker, the fervour 
 of his manner, the rhetorical skill with which he 
 marshals and emphasizes his arguments, the aptness and 
 elegance of his language contribute to his success.
 
 366 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 There is something in good and effective speaking 
 which is distinct from and more than the matter of the 
 speech, and which cannot be reproduced in literary 
 form. In reading a book the whole burden of the 
 process, so to speak, is thrown upon the reader, whereas 
 in listening to the same matter spoken, much of that 
 burden is in a sense borne by the speaker, for a really 
 skilled and able speaker puts himself, as he speaks, in 
 the place of his hearers, apprehends ideas not merely 
 as he sees them, but as their minds see them ; his 
 utterances express not merely his own views of the 
 subject, but their difficulties in apprehending it ; not 
 merely his own interest in it, but the reflected interest 
 awakened in their minds by his exposition of it. Thus 
 activity and receptivity become in the process almost 
 indistinguishably blended, and the mind of speaker 
 and hearer, charged alike with the electric force of 
 sympathy, meet and mingle in a common medium of 
 intelligence and emotion. 
 
 Now, it is no doubt true that in a scientific or 
 philosophical lecture, there is little room for the graces 
 of oratory, and that emotion would even be a hind- 
 rance rather than a help to the apprehension of an 
 abstract principle or a closely reasoned train of thought. 
 Yet, besides the great advantage of the guidance of a 
 living instructor who can see, as a book cannot, whether 
 he is understood or not, who can ascertain by examina- 
 tion where we have failed to grasp his meaning, who
 
 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN TEACHING. 367 
 
 can save time by explaining difficulties over which we 
 might have puzzled for hours, who can watch our pro- 
 gress from week to week and by skilful criticism show 
 us where our weakness lies, and who can, by the proper 
 admixture of commendation and reproof, stimulate us 
 to the highest exercise of our powers, besides all this 
 discipline which it is the peculiar function of a skilful 
 teacher to exert, there is not lacking to the lectures of 
 such a teacher something of that indefinable sympa- 
 thetic influence and inspiration of which I have spoken, 
 and which may be said to be to mere book learning as 
 the living spirit to the dead letter. A really good 
 teacher, even of the most abstruse subjects, is not 
 simply the mechanical medium through which the 
 written matter of a lecture is reproduced in articulate 
 speech. He is for the moment his subject vitalized, 
 recreated, inspired with the inner power of fresh and 
 living thought, of ideas made alive by passing through 
 and absorbing a human intelligence. 
 
 And if without presumption I may in this presence 
 adduce a lesson from my own humble experience, I 
 venture to express the opinion that this element of a 
 lecturer's power will be the more potent in the measure 
 in which he is independent of his manuscript. In one 
 of his dialogues Plato makes Socrates defend the thesis 
 that in the teaching of philosophy speech is superior to 
 writing. " I cannot help feeling," says he, " that writ- 
 ing bears an unfortunate resemblance to painting; for
 
 3G8 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, 
 and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a 
 solemn silence. And the same may be said of (written) 
 speeches. You might imagine they had intelligence, but 
 if you want to know anything or put a question to them, 
 the speaker (i.e. of written words) always gives one un- 
 varying answer. May we not imagine another kind of 
 speaking far better than this and having greater power 
 viz., an intelligent writing which is graven on the soul 
 of him who learns and which can defend itself the 
 word of knowledge which has a living soul, of which 
 the written word is properly no more than an image." 
 Under the countenance of such an authority I may 
 venture to say that the repetition of the same written 
 lectures from year to year involves a loss of power, 
 sometimes, if I can trust my own observation, an 
 almost intolerable experience to both teacher and taught. 
 Whereas when, putting aside or only making partial 
 use of his manuscript, the lecturer speaks from a fresh 
 review and recasting of his ideas, with all the new 
 light and modification suggested by reading and re- 
 flexion, the new interest awakened in his own mind 
 reflects itself in the quickened and lively intelligence 
 of the hearers. Something the lecture may lose as 
 regards precision of statement and nicety of expression, 
 but what it loses in form it gains in power the power 
 which pertains to the man who is not reading but 
 thinking aloud, not trying to galvanize an effete and
 
 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN TEACHING. 369 
 
 lifeless organism, but letting living thought shape itself 
 into new and living form. 
 
 In the remarks I have now made on the special 
 advantages of University life, I have viewed it only 
 in one particular aspect, that which relates to the 
 personality and influence of the teacher. But I 
 should like to add, in conclusion, a single word on 
 another and more general point of view, in which 
 you, who have reached the end of your undergraduate 
 course, are specially concerned. We talk of College 
 work as a preparation for our future life, and so it is. 
 But there is a sense in which it may be said to derive 
 a singular value, even in that respect, from its unlike- 
 ness to the life on which you are soon to enter, from 
 the very contrast which obtains between the standard 
 of merit which prevails here, the ends which in this 
 place we aim at, the interests and ambitions that affect 
 us, and those which dominate and largely influence 
 men's minds in the various spheres of activity which 
 await you. Society is not yet organized, and probably 
 never will be, on the principle of honour and success 
 only to the ablest and best. Money, birth, rank, 
 social position, even in the most civilized communities, 
 call forth an adventitious deference, and showy but 
 superficial attainments often win a success which is 
 denied to solid merit. No existing community, for 
 instance, is superior to the vulgar respect for wealth, 
 
 a respect mistaken and irrational even where the 
 
 2A
 
 370 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 possessor has been the architect of his own fortunes, 
 still more foolish when he is only the inheritor of 
 what other men by their cleverness or industry have 
 won. Even the most democratic societies are not 
 strangers to the artificial homage paid to rank and 
 titles. And so far from knowledge and culture being 
 regarded with universal respect, we have even wit- 
 nessed in our day a thing so strange as the glorification 
 of ignorance, and an appeal on the most difficult 
 social and political questions taken from educated and 
 disciplined opinion to unenlightened and uncultured 
 instinct. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that even in the most unfavour- 
 able circumstances ability of a very high order, genius, 
 and commanding intelligence are likely to win their 
 way in the world ; but, apart from such exceptive 
 cases, place and preferment are too often determined 
 by arbitrary and accidental conditions, and pretension 
 and push succeed where modest merit goes unre- 
 warded. Now it is, I think, an immense advantage 
 of University education as a discipline of mind and 
 character, that at an early period of life, ere we have 
 entered on the struggle and stress of life, we should 
 for a term of years be members of a society in which 
 the sole bond of union lies in the things of the mind, 
 in which the standard of merit is a purely intellectual 
 one, and all arbitrary grounds of distinction are, for 
 the time at least, in abeyance. It is the glory of our
 
 THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN TEACHING. 371 
 
 Scottish Universities that they have never been places 
 of education for a class, that no costly arrangements 
 render access to them possible only for the rich or 
 well-to-do, and that when once he has crossed their 
 doors a young man finds himself in a community 
 where intellectual resource is -the only wealth that 
 wins respect, brain power the only power that tells, 
 and where honour and distinction await the ablest 
 and worthiest, and await these alone. That surely is 
 some approximation to an ideal society in which 
 arbitrary and accidental claims to superiority are of 
 absolutely no account, in which the idle, the super- 
 ficial, the incompetent, will not for any outward 
 reason have a shadow of respect paid to them, and 
 genuine intellectual power and application are sure 
 to be recognized and honoured. 
 
 And if to purely intellectual qualities we add other 
 and even higher qualities which go to constitute the 
 peculiar genius and spirit of University life, and which, 
 I rejoice to believe, animate, if not all, at least the 
 great majority of those whom I address such as a 
 high sense of honour, self-respect, superiority to low 
 motives, and ungenerous actions, scorn of meanness 
 and baseness if this be so, I think I have made out 
 my point that University life, by reason in some 
 measure of the very contrast between its standards 
 of excellence and those which too often obtain in the 
 world, forms for those who imbibe its spirit an
 
 372 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 invaluable discipline of character. It is this con- 
 trast, I think, which for many of us for whom 
 student life is only a distant retrospect, makes us 
 cherish the recollection of it with an abiding interest, 
 and lends to this stage of our history, to its intellectual 
 enthusiasms, its generous rivalries, its unconventional 
 freedom, a singular and ineffaceable charm. It is well 
 for us that it should be so, and well will it be for you, 
 may I not say, if in the coming years and long after 
 the days of youth have passed away, you preserve and 
 carry into the business, the cares and trials of the 
 world, something of the truest and best spirit of 
 your college life.
 
 ON GENERAL AND PROFESSIONAL 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 April 13, 1897. 
 
 I HAVE more than once on similar occasions adverted 
 to a problem which is one of the most important, 
 as it is one of the most difficult, in the science of 
 education namely, how to limit the range of study 
 without producing intellectual narrowness how to 
 contract the field of thought without contracting 
 the mind of the thinker. Limitation in the first 
 sense we must have, if only from the vast and ever- 
 increasing extent of the field of knowledge, and the 
 more and more definite specialization of its various 
 departments. Selection on the part of the individual 
 student is inevitable, and the plausible solution which 
 occurs to many minds is that, seeing he cannot attempt 
 to know everything, he should be guided in what he 
 selects or omits by his individual aptitudes and by that 
 which those aptitudes should determine the special 
 
 calling or career in life to which he is destined. 
 
 373
 
 374 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 The time has been when the notion of universal 
 knowledge, the attempt to gain something more than 
 a superficial acquaintance with all the various depart- 
 ments of human thought, was not so absurd as now 
 it seems to be. When books were few and life more 
 leisurely, when the vast domain of physical science 
 had scarcely begun to be explored, and even its prin- 
 ciples and methods were not understood ; when the 
 sciences of philology and of historical criticism were 
 yet in their infancy ; when political economy, sociology 
 and kindred sciences had not yet begun to be, it was 
 possible, at least for some minds, to grapple not 
 unsuccessfully with almost all the main subjects of 
 human thought, and to become conversant with every 
 important work in the whole range of literature. But 
 we have fallen on other and different times. In our 
 day it is impossible, not merely for the average 
 student, but for even those of the greatest ability and 
 application, to advance far in the work of acquiring 
 knowledge without discovering that limitation and 
 condensation are the conditions of success. Ency- 
 clopaedic knowledge can now be only another name 
 for shallowness and superficiality. To attain the 
 highest proficiency in any one branch of literature 
 or science or a fairly accurate acquaintance with 
 two or three the most ambitious student must be 
 content to be comparatively ignorant of everything 
 else, and to look on whole departments of thought
 
 GENERAL AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 375 
 
 and research as for him practically proscribed. To a 
 certain extent we must all be either specialists or 
 amateurs ; we must make our choice between real and 
 accurate, but limited, knowledge and mere dilettantism. 
 Since, then, limitation is inevitable, on what prin- 
 ciple shall we proceed in determining what is to be 
 excluded and what retained ? The answer which to 
 many seems to be beyond dispute is that the direction 
 and limitation of our studies should from the very 
 outset be determined by the use we are to make 
 of them in our future life. If we cannot learn every- 
 thing, should we not, in what we do learn, have regard 
 mainly, if not exclusively, to the account to which our 
 acquirements can be turned in the particular calling 
 or profession to which we are destined ? For most 
 of us the exigencies of life are too pressing, the period 
 of education too brief, to indulge in high-flown schemes 
 of general culture. The result aimed at in our case 
 cannot be merely to weave out of the raw material 
 of mind the best possible specimen of educated intelli- 
 gence that can be extracted from it, but to produce 
 what would yield robust service in a particular line of 
 work, make us capable men of business, clever, well- 
 informed, and successful lawyers, doctors, divines. 
 And this principle, it would be said, is becoming 
 more and more recognized in our scheme of University 
 education, in which not only do professional studies 
 occupy a large and increasing space, but by the intro-
 
 376 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 duction of new subjects into the non-professional or 
 arts curriculum, a wider option in accordance with 
 individual aptitudes and the future vocation of the 
 student has been introduced. 
 
 But though there is no doubt a measure of truth 
 in this popular and common-sense solution of the 
 problem, there are one or two things to be considered 
 before we adopt it as a complete and adequate solution. 
 Education cannot be mainly guided by professional 
 aims, because, in the first place, education is needed 
 to guide us in the selection of a profession, to enable 
 us to know what our special calling or profession is; 
 in the second place, to protect us against the narrow- 
 ing influence of all, even the so-called liberal pro- 
 fessions; and, in the third place, to fit us for important 
 social duties which lie outside of every man's pro- 
 fessional work. 
 
 A man's education cannot be determined altogether 
 by regard to his future calling, seeing that it is one 
 end of a good education to enable a man to find 
 out what his true vocation is. Though it is often 
 determined by accident, the selection of one's calling 
 in life is at once one of the most important and one 
 of the most difficult decisions which a man can form. 
 Perhaps the fair portion of my auditory will forgive 
 me for saying that it is a choice as critical as that 
 which determines a certain very close relationship in 
 life ; and I do not know whether it is not often made
 
 GENERAL AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 377 
 
 with as little reflection in the one case as in the other, 
 and whether the consequences of a wrong choice are 
 not as fatal and sometimes as irremediable. 
 
 Our usefulness, success, and happiness in life depend 
 unquestionably not a little on the measure in which 
 we are in harmony with our place and work in the 
 world. How then, the question arises, shall we find 
 out what that place and work is ? For one thing 
 this, I think it will be obvious, is a question the 
 right answer to which implies a measure of judg- 
 ment, forethought, reflexion, and a range of informa- 
 tion and intellectual experience such as presuppose 
 and are the best results of a liberal education. 
 
 We do not come into the world each ticketed off by 
 any outward mark for our special destination. There 
 may perhaps be some minds of such marked indi- 
 viduality as to betray at a very early period of life, 
 there may be even infant prodigies, in whom the future 
 poet or artist, the coming orator or statesman can be 
 discerned ere he has well left the nursery ; but I fear 
 that such forecastings are in general due only to 
 partial or parental observations, or to the biographer's 
 tendency to read back the success of subsequent life 
 into the incidents of childhood. To an impartial 
 observer, so far as mental characteristics go, all babies 
 are very much alike. The inarticulate vocal mani- 
 festations of the future poet or musician are no more 
 melodious than those of his tuneless brother. The
 
 378 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 incipient divine or philosopher does not foreshadow 
 his career in a premature air of thoughtful gravity 
 impressed on his countenance. Even when we come 
 to the stage at which education begins a few rare 
 instances of precocity excepted individual aptitude 
 is only very slightly discernible. It is not till a 
 later, in the case of some of the best minds a much 
 later period viz., when the schoolboy stage is past, 
 and that of student life has considerably advanced 
 that a youth can be said to be possessed of the 
 materials by which the choice of a career can be 
 wisely determined ; in other words, of that know- 
 ledge of the various branches of human thought, and 
 that experimental knowledge of himself and of the 
 direction and limits of his powers, by which he 
 becomes capable of such a decision as to his future 
 destiny. 
 
 And so in the process of education there is room 
 for an intermediate or transition stage between school- 
 boy discipline and strictly professional culture. There 
 are many minds in which the intellectual instincts 
 and aptitudes are slow to betray themselves ; and 
 whether the latent genius be for letters or art or 
 science or the industrial arts or practical life or 
 politics, it has been only after the rugged propae- 
 deutic of school discipline has been long left behind, 
 and the wonder and delight of the world of thought 
 has become a growing experience, and the free play
 
 GENERAL AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 379 
 
 of their powers under the discipline of a general, 
 many-sided culture has begun to be felt, that they 
 have come to discern where in the wide field of 
 human activity lies their special vocation. 
 
 Another reason, I have said, why in education we 
 should not have regard exclusively or mainly to the 
 student's future calling or profession, is that it is 
 one great aim of education to protect us from the 
 narrowing influence of all, even of the so-called liberal, 
 professions. I must pass by this point, however, with 
 only a single remark. The division of labour, as has 
 been often pointed out, is subject to this drawback, that 
 it tends to sacrifice the full development of the indi- 
 vidual to the exigencies of society. Professional or 
 technical excellence would seem to be incompatible 
 with symmetry and width of culture. It often leads 
 not merely to imperfect but also to unequal or one- 
 sided development. This is most obvious in the case 
 of manual or mechanical callings. Each trade or craft 
 exercises constantly one member or faculty or class of 
 faculties, leaving the others comparatively inactive 
 runs the whole physical energy into one limb or organ, 
 and so distends it to exaggerated dimensions, whilst the 
 others are proportionately dwarfed or enfeebled. 
 
 And the same is in a measure true of intellectual 
 work. It is the tendency of each of the various pro- 
 fessions to call into play a limited class of mental 
 activities, to dam up the spiritual force that is in a
 
 380 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 man into a particular channel, and so leave the non- 
 professional regions of his nature comparatively dry 
 and barren. Not only are most men apt to form an 
 exaggerated estimate of the importance of that which 
 is their daily occupation, but they get the stamp of the 
 shop impressed upon them, and carry their technical 
 views and principles of judgment about with them 
 wherever they go. There are many men one meets in 
 society whose only alternative is to be technical or 
 dull, to be dumb or learnedly loquacious. The narrow- 
 ing tendency in question shows itself by engendering 
 in the mind a host of class prejudices, by indisposing 
 it for wide, impartial, tolerant views ; by depriving it 
 of flexibility and the capacity to look at things from 
 the point of view of other minds and the wider one of 
 reason itself ; finally, by breeding in us a professional 
 selfishness a tendency to view all measures and plans 
 of improvement, not by their bearing on the general 
 welfare, but on the interests of a class, so that the first 
 question is not Is this opinion true, is this political 
 or ecclesiastical reform just, will it redress some crying 
 wrong, hinder or help the national weal ? but Will it 
 promote or hinder the dignity, power, and wealth of 
 the order to which I belong ? Is our craft in danger 
 and the shrine of the great goddess Diana, whom all 
 Asia and the world worship ? 
 
 I shall not prosecute this part of our subject any 
 further; but enough, I think, has been said to show the
 
 GENERAL AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 381 
 
 importance of a general as distinguished from a special 
 and professional training. As the pettiness of mind 
 incident to life in a small circle is best corrected by 
 foreign travel, so the remedy for intellectual narrowness 
 is to be free of the wide world of thought. Converse 
 with many cities and men disabuses the mind of the 
 parochial standard of judgment. So the best cure for 
 intellectual narrowness is the capacity to escape from 
 the confined atmosphere of class or craft into the wide 
 domain of letters, of science, of philosophy, of art. The 
 physician or lawyer who is a classical scholar, or at 
 any rate conversant with the treasures of either ancient 
 or modern literature, capable of finding purest enjoy- 
 ment over the pages of its poets, historians, philosophers, 
 is not likely to sink into a professional hack. The 
 divine who is also a man of scientific or scholarly 
 tastes is at least not likely to settle into the vulgar 
 zealot, absorbing his soul in the petty politics of a sect 
 or regarding its standards of orthodoxy as pillars round 
 which the universe revolves. Be it yours, in this 
 ancient home of learning, to seek after that preservative 
 from narrowness which its studies afford. 
 
 One of the most precious characteristics of such 
 institutions as this is what I may venture to designate 
 the unworldliness of the spirit which pervades them. 
 It is surely no little gain for society that at the 
 impressible stage of transition between boyhood and 
 manhood young men should be made to breathe for a
 
 382 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES. 
 
 term of years an intellectual atmosphere other and 
 purer than that which but too often pervades the 
 world on which they are about to enter that they 
 should for a time be members of a society in which 
 the scramble for material gain, the fierce and often 
 vulgarizing competition for worldly preferment, are as 
 yet things unknown. To say this, implies no high- 
 flown, sentimental disparagement of the aims and 
 ambitions that play so large a part in the world, and 
 lend movement, activity, and interest to the drama of 
 life. But it is not to the love of money or the love 
 of social advancement, or even mainly to the love of 
 honour and reputation, that we here appeal. There is 
 a passion purer, loftier, and, in those who are capable 
 of its inspiration, more intense than any of these the 
 love of truth, the passion for knowledge and intellectual 
 attainment for its own sake ; and it is our glory and 
 boast that it is this which constitutes the distinctive 
 characteristic, the very breath and life of such places 
 as this. 
 
 Poor and vain would be the result of years you have 
 passed in this place of study if, beyond the hope of 
 future success in the world, beyond all ulterior aims 
 and ambitions, there has not been awakened in you 
 some breath of the genuine student's ardour, some sense 
 of the worth and joy of intellectual effort for its own 
 sake. On the other hand, if you have learned here, 
 apart from the use of your studies as a preparation for
 
 GENERAL AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. 383 
 
 your work in the world, to know with appreciative sym- 
 pathy something of what the world's greatest minds have 
 thought or its sweetest poets have sung, or of what in 
 ancient or modern times its greatest workers have done 
 for the progress of the race ; or if there has been put 
 into your hands the key by which science unlocks the 
 secrets of nature, so that a treasure of mental resource 
 will all through your future life be open to you ; still 
 more, if you have gained or begun to gain here the 
 precious possession of disciplined faculties, of a trained 
 intelligence, strength of judgment, refinement of taste, 
 and habits of application and self-command, then, be 
 your future career what it may obscure, unrewarded, 
 unknown to fame, or brilliant and successful as the 
 most sanguine imagination can picture it not in vain 
 for you will these eventful years have passed. For 
 you will have got from them that which in all the 
 future will furnish you with an escape from the petti- 
 ness and narrowness, the vulgarizing and wearing 
 anxieties that beset most of us amidst our daily work ; 
 that will provide you with new uses for wealth and 
 property if they come to you, and, on the other hand, 
 next to religion, will prove the truest consolation of 
 adversity and disappointment, of worldly care and 
 sorrow.
 
 09206 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 PRINTED IN U S. A.
 
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