Essays and addresses

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ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES

BY

BERNARD BOSANQUET, M.A.

Formerly Fellow of University College, Oxford

SECOND

EDITION

LONDON

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.

PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1891

Butler & Tanner,

Thr Selwood Printing Works,

Frome, and London.

PREFATORY REMARKS.

THE Essays and Addresses contained in this volume are
arranged with reference to their subject-matter, and not
in the order in which they were written or delivered.

I have to thank the publishers of Time for permission to
reprint the paper on " Social and Individual Reform," and the
publishers of Mind for permission to reprint the paper on
" The Philosophical Importance of a true Theory of Identity."
The essay " On the true Conception of another World " formed
the introduction to my translation of a portion of Hegel's
" Esthetic," and is now reproduced as throwing some light
on the subjects of which the present volume treats. The
occasions on which the several addresses were delivered are
indicated in footnotes to each of them.

It may be of interest to some readers to know that t.'»e
Ethical Society, on behalf of which four of the addresses were
given, is a small association in London, modelled on the
more powerful Ethical Societies of the United States, which
have for their object to contribute by precept and in practice
to spreading moral ideas and strengthening moral influences
on a non-dogmatic basis.

IV PREFATORY REMARKS.

I am well aware that I may incur a charge of presumption
by enunciating definite views on certain social problems,
without possessing an appreciable fraction of the practical
experience which gives weight to the words of such author-
ities as Mr. and Mrs. Barnett, of Whitechapel. I can only
plead that to me, as to others, there comes in various ways a
definite though not extensive acquaintance with social facts,
while those better instructed than myself are always willing
to supply the deficiencies of my limited knowledge. I cannot
^ihink that any man with open and attentive eyes, and with
confidence in his own impartiality, as based" upon a rational
view of life, does wrong in uttering the best reflections he can
make on the way in which things are going, or the way in
which he thinks they should go.

I should feel less diffidence in repelling any similar charge
that might be brought on the score of the paper, " How to
read the New Testament."

It is true that I have not a wide acquaintance with apologetic
literature ; but the demand for such an acquaintance as the
condition of competence in dealing with these subjects may
rest perhaps on z. petitio principii^ depending as it does on an
isolation of phenomena which belong prima /aa'e to the general
province of philosophy and critical history. And the thought
u/i// not be entirely banished, that if those who are set down
as mere dabblers in apologetic literature were to retort in kind
and on their side to erect tests of competence, the tables
might conceivably be turned. Moreover, in dealing with a
positive question, we have nothing to do with sects and parties.
I am not bound to know whether, in reading Reuss or Keim,

PREFATORY REMARKS. V

I am reading apologists or assailants; these labels have no
positive import, and are relative to the ideas of the partizans
who assign them. As a matter of fact, so far as the dates
and discrepancies of writers are concerned, I could accept
without any sacrifice of principle, statements which are to be
found in the " Speaker's Commentary."

The three more strictly philosophical papers, V., VIII., and
IX, offer some considerations respecting the true nature of the
" Idealist " revival in Germany and in England. As a return
to the human and the concrete, finding its supra-sensuous
world in the mind and activities of man, this intellectual
impulse has been active amongst other vital forces in the
nineteenth century movement. But like every great origination
— Christianity is a case in point — it has developed a wealth of
conceptions and formulae which have tended to become hostile
to the spirit which generated them, and has thus made foes of
friends, and friends of foes. Like Christianity, also, it has
produced its effect in spite of misconceptions, and has every-
where carried with it the organic ideas of an enlarged and
purified Hellenism.

I will take the freedom to insist a little upon this aspect
of the so-called German Idealism, because, owing in a large
measure to the abundance and energy of its achievements,
which needed for their expression an elaborate philosophical
terminology, the enlightened public is hardly, perhaps, aware
to how great an extent, as a mere matter of fact, it originated
in a human enthusiasm wholly antagonistic to remote Ontology.
It is quite true that the form taken by the revolutionary effort
was that of transferring ontology and orthodoxy into a sphere

b

VI PREFATORY REMARKS.

and medium in which they should have real significance, rather
than that of making a clean sweep of them altogether. It is
impossible to estimate the positive and negative aspects of such
a transformation in a few sentences ; but I wish to express my
conviction, in contrast with the views which underlie certain
recent criticisms of Hegel, that the human and vital import of
his philosophy is its element of permanent value; and that
the recognition of the human spirit as the highest essence of
things, which is a stumbling-block to those whose hearts are
with the orthodoxy which Hegel revolutionized, is the true and
enduring result of the great epoch currently symbolized by his
name. I will quote two passages from letters written by Hegel
at the age of twenty-five ; not that such letters, displaying as
they do hesitation on essential matters, can be in any way
decisive of controverted points in the philosopher's matured
system of thought, but because they are startling illustrations
of what, on reviewing the whole matter, I firmly believe to
have been his dominant temper and purpose.

Hegel* to Schelling.

^^ January, 1795.
"... What you tell me of the theological and Kantian
march of philosophy at TUbingen causes me no surprise.
Orthodoxy cannot be shaken as long as its profession is inter-
woven with worldly advantage, and bound up with the structure
of the State. An interest like this is too strong to be readily
surrendered, and has an eflfect as a whole of which people are

* Rosenkranz's "Life of Hegel," p. 66 flF; and Hegel's " Briefe, Heraus-
gegeben von Karl Hegel," p. 1 1 ff.

PREFATORY REMARKS. Vll

hardly aware. While this is so, it has on its side the whole troop
— ever the most numerous — of clamorous devotees, void of
thought and of higher interests. If a mob like this reads
something opposed to their convictions (if one is to do their
pedantic jargon the honour of calling it by that name), the
truth of which they cannot deny, they will say, ' Yes, I suppose
it is true,' and then go to bed, and next morning drink their
coffee as if nothing had happened. Besides, they will lay hold
of anything that presents itself, which will maintain them in
their old routine. But I think it would be interesting to
molest, in their ant-like industry, the theologians who are
fetching up critical [Kantian] materials to prop their Gothic
temple, to whip them out of all their refuges, till they could
find no more, and should have to reveal their nakedness before
the sun. Still, among the timbers which they drag off the
Kantian bonfire in trying to arrest the conflagration of their
fabric of dogmas, they will carry home with them some burning
embers ; they are bringing the terminology into general cir-
culation, and are facilitating the general dispersion of philo-
sophical ideas. I shall do all I can ; I am convinced that
nothing but perpetual shaking and shocking on all sides gives
a chance of any ultimate effect of importance ; something will
always stick, and every contribution, even if it contains nothing
new, has its value as encouraging and reinforcing intercom-
munication and sympathetic labour. Let us often repeat your
appeal, 'We do not mean to be behind.' . . . Our watch-
word shall be Reason and Freedom, and our rallying-point
the invisible Church."

vul prefatory remarks.

The Same to the Same.

April, 1795.
" . . . Froifi the Kantian system and its final completion
I expect a revolution in Germany, starting from principles
which are already present, and which only need to be system-
atised and applied to existing knowledge as a whole. No
doubt there will always be an esoteric philosophy, and the idea
of God as the absolute Ego will belong to it. In my most
recent study of the " Postulates of Practical Reason " [Kant] I
had had forebodings of what you plainly expounded to me in
your last letter, and what Fichte's "Grundlage der Wissen-
schaftslehre " will completely open up to me. The conse-
quences which will issue from these ideas will astonish a good
many people. They will be dazzled at this supreme elevation
by which man is so greatly exalted ; yet why have people
been so slow to form a higher estimate of man's dignity, and
to recognise his capacity of freedom, which places him on a
par with any spiritual beings ? I think that there is no better
sign of the times than this, that humanity is represented as so
estimable in itself; it is a proof that the halo round the heads
of the oppressors and gods of this world is disappearing. The
philosophers will prove man's dignity, the people wi'l learn to
feel it, and will — not demand, but — simply ai)propriate their
trampled rights.* Religion and politics have played each
other's game ; religion has taught what despotism desired, con-
tempt for the human race, its incapacity for all good, its
powerlessness to be anything in its own strength. But with

* Almost the same expressions occur in the fifth of Schiller's letters on
Esthetic Education, which are expressly referred to as a masterpiece in
this same letter of Hegel. Hegel continued to consider these letters of
Schiller as marking an epoch in the history of philosophy.

PREFATORY REMARKS. IX

the spread of ideas as to how all should be, the nonchalance
of respectable people in accepting all as it is, will vanish.
. . . I constantly exhort myself out of [Hippel's] * Lebens-
laufe,' 'Strive upwards to the sun, my friends, that the
welfare of humanity may ripen soon. What matter for the
hindering leaves and branches ! Struggle through to the sun,
and if you are weary, never mind ! You will sleep all the
better.'"

Now I am convinced that the feeling which blazes out in
these letters persisted through Hegel's life as the fusing heat
of his system. It is improbable that he was in all respects
consistent ; and no sensible man, above all, no Hegelian,
could suppose that the main work of philosophy, after the
lapse of half a century, is to repeat the formulae in which his
views were cast. But I believe that in the papers on philo-
sophical questions which are printed in this volume I have
rather understated than overstated the elements by which
recent idealism is bound up with the humanising movement
of this century, and will consequently affect the future of
English philosophy.

BERNARD BOSANQUET.

'.•if

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Two Modern Philanthropists i

Individual and Social Reform 24

Some Socialistic Features of Ancient Societies . 48

Artistic Handwork in Education 71

On the True Conception of Another World . . 92

The Kingdom of God on Earth 108

How TO Read the New Testament . . . .131
The Philosophical Importance of a True Theory

OF Identity 162

On the Philosophical Distinction between "Know-
ledge" AND "Opinion" 181

ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES.

I.

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS*

THIS lecture is not exactly about a great man, or great
men.f The men of whom I am going to speak are two
very respectable tradesmen. Very likely there have been people
counted as heroes, who were much less noble and much less
useful than either of them. But what I should like would be
not so much to make heroes of them as to try and understand
their lives, not only their successes but their failures, and see
why and how they were useful, and what teaching we ought
to get from the way in which they were useful. The two
philanthropists whom we are to talk about are the Englishman,
George Moore, and the Frenchman, Jean Leclaire, I came
to think of taking them for a subject in this way. Just a day
or two before I was asked to lecture here, I had the good luck
to listen to a lecture from a friend who was speaking about the
religion of people who try to do good to others, about their
real notions and beliefs as to their duties, and as to what sort
of men they ought to be. And he said what a sad thing it

• A lecture given at a workman's club in Londoiu
t The lecture was one of a series on great men.

I B

2 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

was to see a man full of strength, energy, courage, and
religious feeling, after he had made a large fortune and begun
to give up his life to good works, just lose his way in a fog.
The man he was speaking about w^as the merchant, George
Moore, who spent the best part of half a century, an immense
quantity of money, and enormous labour in trying to do all the
good he could think of to all who needed help and teaching.
So I thought I would read his life carefully, and see how it
came out when one looked close at it. And then I thought I
might put alongside it the life of another tradesman, who also
made a big fortune (not so big as Moore's), and who also
spent the best part of half a century, a great deal of money,
and untiring energy in trying to help those who live by their
labour.

This man was a Frenchman, and his name was Leclaire.
He was born in 1801, five years before Moore, and died in
1872, four years before him. Each of them lived just about
seventy years, and very nearly the same seventy years. They
might have met after the siege of Paris, when Moore was in
Paris, relieving the starving French (he took seventy tons of
food there) ; but we do not hear that they did meet. Very
likely they never knew each other's names.

These two men lived through a time of greater change,
perhaps, than there has ever been before. In different ways
they played their parts in this change ; and the interest we
have in them is to see how their work looks now, as time is
making clearer what direction the changes have really been
taking. It seems pretty plain now that all through Europe
the great business of this century has been to arrange society
m a more human way than before. I mean by arranging it
in a human way, arranging it so that every man should be
treated as a human being, capable of doing a man's work and

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS., 3

of exercising a man's will. The old arrangements, which some
people say were better in their time than there have been
since, the small workshop, and the personal loyalty to the
master, were broken down, both by new ideas of human rights
and duties, and also by new facts such as the growth of the
industrial class, so that some changes had to come.

Carlyle says the French Revolution was really a revolution
in men's minds, every one getting new thoughts as to what he
ought to put up with, and what he might expect to do ; and so
every change in society is really a change in men's minds and
characters ; and the object in making social arrangements is, I
suppose, just to give people the rights and duties which belong
to their characters, and which will therefore preserve and
strengthen the whole foundation of society. For the whole
foundation of society is character. That is what we have to
rely upon in employers and employed, in our fellow-citizens
and in our children. If we cannot rely on a person's character,
we do not know where to have him, and we cannot make a
contract with him, or depend upon him in any way. So when
there are a new set of ideas and new circumstances, when you
have enormous masses of people, and these people have quite
new claims and ideas in -Jtheir minds, then there must be a
time of great change, until their minds are suited to new
arrangements, and new arrangements suited to their minds.
This was what so many good men, who used to be called
philanthropists, only learnt very slowly and in part Their
idea was rather to patch up the old machinery and not to
think of what men's characters demanded ; or rather, it was like
as if you had a machine beginning to break down, and instead
of renewing it out and out, you set another machine to help it
These philanthropists make one think of the captain of a ship
who should come to one and say, ** Look at my splendid pumps

4 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

pouring out tliousands of gallons in the hour." " Yes," we
should say; " but what a leak you must have in the ship. Can't
you stop the leak ? " And the illustration falls short, for our
social pumps make the leak worse. I mean in this way. Sup-
pose there is a trade which is very much underpaid or very
irregular, so that every year a great many people in it are left
without anything, or die, or leave widows and children without
anything. What I call patching, or tinkering, or setting up
pumps, is to establish a big charity to look after these people,
to provide for the children, and to help the men who fall out
of work. What you really want is to get the trade better
arranged, so that the men in the trade shall have the right and
the duty of providing for themselves and their families, and
shall be able to carry it out. That is stopping the leak.
We have all heard that prevention is better than cure ; but
the truth is, that in these great social matters there is no cure
except prevention. London is all full of great machines for
doing good, great societies for relieving people in distress ; but
their work does not come to an end. It goes on, and they are
rather proud that it goes on. George Moore was one of these
philanthropists, and had to do with starting numbers of these
great machines.

His life is shortly told in outline ; it is one of those lives of
which in England we are rightly proud — the life of the self-made
man. Generally, I think, these lives are more interesting for
the first half than for the second, more interesting before he
marries his master's daughter — they always marry their master's
daughter — than after ; but with George Moore the interest is
kept up. He was not a commonplace man. He was born in
1806, in Cumberland, son of a small landowner who farmed
his own land, what they call in Cumberland a " statesman.''
He was a bold, strong boy, and soon became a tremendous

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 5

wrestler, which was the fashion in Cumberland. At thirteen
he was apprenticed to a provincial draper, but he was deter-
mined to get to London, and at nineteen he got up to London,
having learnt all he could in Cumberland about the draper's
business. He was a week without finding work, but he did
pretty well in a public wrestling match, and I should say he
was pretty near becoming a professional ^vrestler. Then at
last a Cumberland man, who knew about his father, gave him
a place in his big shop. Moore at once- put himself to the
evening school, for he was terribly ignorant.- Education was
scandalous in Cumberland, as Moore remembered when he
became a rich man. But he did not like the retail work in the
draper's, and in a year's time he got a place in a big wholesale
lace house (1826).

Then it came out what he really was fit for. He was the
most tremendous commercial traveller that ever was seen.
They soon began to call him the Napoleon of travellers, the
great general of salesmen, who could conquer and capture
any customer. He was a little more like Napoleon, than one
can quite approve. " George * once met Groucock at a town
in the North of England. Groucock invited him to sup with
a friend after the day's work was over. The invitation was
accepted. In the course of the evening their plans were
discussed. George openly mentioned the town to which he
was next due, and at what hour he would start. He after-
wards found that Groucock had started the day before him,
reached Belfast, and taken up all the orders for lace in the
place. This caused some bitterness of feeling between the
two travellers. But George, not to be outdone, immediately
left Ireland for Liverpool. He worked the place thoroughly,

• Smiles' " Life of George Moore," page 79.

6 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

then started for Manchester, and travelled through the great
northern towns, working night and day, until he had gone
over the whole of the ground, and returned to London full
of orders. This in its turn greatly chagrined Groucock, who
had intended to take Lancashire on his way home." " Many*
are the stories still told by commercial travellers about George
Moore's determination to get orders. He would not be
denied. If refused at first, he resorted to all sorts of ex-
pedients until he succeeded. On one occasion he sold the
clothes off his back to get an order. A tenacious draper
in a Lancashire town refused to deal with him. The draper
was quite satisfied with the firm that supplied him, and he
would make no change. This became known amongst the
commercial travellers at the hotel, and one of them made
a bet of ;^5 with George Moore that he would not obtain
an order. George set out again. The draper saw him
entering the shop, and cried out, * All full ! all full, Mr.
Moore ! I told you so before !' ' Never mind,* said George ;
'you won't object to a crack.' *0h, no!* said the draper.
They cracked about many things, and then George Moore,
calling the draper's attention to a new coat which he wore,
asked, 'What he thought of it?' 'It's a capital coat,' said
the draper. 'Yes, first-rate; made in the first style by a
first-rate London tailor.' The draper looked at it again,
and again admired it. ' Why,' said George, ' you are exactly
my size ; it's quite new. ' I'll sell it you.' ' What's the
price?' 'Twenty-five shillings.' 'What! that's very cheap.'
* Yes, it's a great bargain.' * Then I'll buy it,' said the
draper. George went back to his hotel, donned another
suit, and sent the 'great bargain' to the draper. George

• Smiles' " Life of George Moore," pages 86, 87.

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 7

calling again, the draper offered to pay him. * No, no,'
said George, * I'll book it ; you've opened an account.' Mr.
Moore had sold the coat at a loss, but he was recouped by
the ;^5 bet which he won, and he obtained an order besides."
The draper afterwards became one of his best customers.
He fairly beat every one else off the road. I'll say a word
later on about this part of his life. However, the result was
that Groucock offered him a high salary to leave the house
he was travelling for, and travel for them. Moore stood out
for a partnership, and got it. This was in 1830, and this
was the beginning of the great house in Bow Churchyard,
Groucock, Moore & Copestake.

Then began Moore's hardest struggle ; for eleven years he
did not take a day's rest, and hardly a decent night's rest,
travelling for the house all the time. And by about 1840
the house was thoroughly established, had three town travellers
and ten country travellers. In 1841 he married his former
master's daughter; in 1845 they set up a lace factory in
Nottingham ; in 1854 he took a big private house in Ken-
sington Palace Gardens ; in 1858 he bought an estate in
Cumberland, including the place where he was born. Now
we have seen him safe through ; and if he had been a
common man, he would have become an M.P. and a baronet,
and perhaps we should have lost our interest in him. He
was not a common man. He was asked to go into Parliament
for Nottingham, and later on even for the city of London,
and he refused. He thought he was not educated enough ;
and, besides, his time was quite full.

He had been a philanthropist as soon as he had any money
at all, by subscribing to the Cumberland Society, a society
for helping Cumberland men who fell into poverty in London.
After 1 84 1, when he lived more in London, and did not travel

8 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

SO hard, he became what one might call a professional
philanthropist. He had a sort of rage for collecting money
for charitable and religious institutions ; he collected for
them just as he used to canvass customers for his firm. He
said he wore out a pair of boots in collecting for one charity.
He gave very large sums of money himself, and forced his
friends to give large sums. In 1858 he was connected with
thirteen institutions ; and he worked hard, as a rule, for
all institutions he was connected with. Now I want you
to look at the chief things he did ; and then afterwards we
will try to make out the rights and wrongs of it.

First, in private life he put an immense number of young
men in good situations, where they did well. Especially
he made it his business to look after young Cumberland
men when they came up to London.

Secondly, he paid great attention to the welfare of his
employes in the warehouse. He insisted on their insuring
their lives, and he was very anxious to provide religious
services and religious instruction for them. I shall have a
word to say about this.

Thirdly, he did a really great work in reforming education
in Cumberland, his native county. He had suffered by the
scandalous education in Cumberland in his boyhood. He
got new schools built, new masters appointed, the endowed
schools better managed. He went down and presided at the
examinations, and gave prizes for them. And he arranged
what he called a "walking library"; a library kept up by
the subscriptions of nine villages, to which the books were
taken round by a walking messenger. He did this a good
deal because he felt the need we feel so strongly now, for
helping people to carry on some sort of education after
leaving school.

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 9

Fourthly, he started or kept going a great number of
London charities. I will mention a few. The Cumberland
Benevolent Society, which I have spoken of already. The
Commercial Travellers' Schools, for the maintenance and
education of the orphan children of commercial travellers.
The Royal Free Hospital, for destitute cases only, and with-
out letters of recommendation. He had a great deal to do
with the Ragged Schools Movement, and started a Refor-
matory for discharged prisoners. And alongside of this it
is most noticeable that he started in Cumberland the system
of boarding out children instead of keeping them crowded
together in workhouses. These things are only a few speci-
mens of the work done by his restless energy. He also
built a church and schools at Somers Town.

If we look back now at his long life, devoted to work of
this kind, it seems to me that we must think that he had only
mastered half the lesson of the nineteenth century. Of course
such a life shows a great awakening in society — a real convic-
tion of sin — a conviction that some attempt must be made to
set things straight. And, further, it shows an immense advance
in everything where what was wanted could easily be seen,
and only better machinery was required. The improvement
of education is the plain example of this.

Moore did a great deal, as a man of business, to reform
Christ's Hospital (the Blue-coat School), as well as the Cum-
berland Schools. And then his energy in helping young
men privately, and using his influence to keep them straight,
was admirable. And, again, thorough religious principle was
the motive of his action, and gave him his extraordinary faith
and power. But here we must pause a moment and reflect.
His religion was thoroughly genuine and earnest. But we
might perhaps do well to ask one question : Did this religion

lO TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

really mean a practical belief in the best human life ? I
suppose a man's religion is what he really believes in — what
governs him from head to foot — what he thinks the only thing
worth having and the only thing worth giving.

Now, what Moore was especially ready to give was, on the
one hand, money and charitable machinery, and, on the other
hand, religious instruction by books and missionaries. We
can hardly help smiling when we hear that he bought hundreds
and thousands of copies of religious books to send about the
country, and he was a great supporter of home missions. The
other practical duty constantly present to his mind was that
of giving money. "What I gave, I have," was his favourite
motto ; that is, what he gave was not a loss to him. He felt,
indeed, that all was worthless without sympathy ; but still we
must admit that his sympathy was not thoroughly thought out,
and his religious work and his charitable work seemed to be
separate. His charitable work did not consist in the attempt
to build up a life, to arrange men's places and duties so as to
meet the powers and needs of human character. And this
building up is what I suppose is going to be the second half
of the lesson of the nineteenth century. Take, for instance,
his treatment of his own clerks and workmen in Bow Church-
yard and in the factory at Nottingham. He was eager to give
them daily prayer and religious instruction, and he was both
just and benevolent in the way he paid them. But it is
curious that in the last year of his life he suddenly gave away
some ;^4o,ooo among them, feeling that they had done so
much to make his fortune. This was tremendously munificent ;
but it occurs to one that it seems just to have struck him then
that they had something to do with making his fortune,
and money given like that is not as wholesome as what you
earn.

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. XI

There is a story of his old porter which rather annoys me.*
Amongst those who were invited to the Hallt were the porters
from Bow Churchyard. Some of the elder porters came first,
amongst them John Hill, the oldest in the establishment.
During their visit, Mrs. Moore went out one morning, and was
crossing the park, when she came upon a venerable person,
standing on a rising ground, staring about him with astonish-
ment at the gardens and buildings. " Are you looking for
somebody ? " asked Mrs. Moore. " No," he said ; " I am just
looking round about, and thinking what a fine place it is, and
how ive helped to make it I have really a great pride in it ! "
With tears in his eyes, old Hill told how he had worked forty
years for the firm ; how they had all worked hard together.
" I was the only porter then," he said. " All has changed
now. We are the biggest firm in the city. And yet," he
continued, "those days do not look so far off either." John
went up to the top of the Peel Tower and the Harbybrow.
He looked along the valley to Whitehall, and round the
surrounding hills. It was a grand estate, " Yes," he said,
« we did it."

It seems to have been a sort of accident that Moore
thought of treating the people as if they had something to do
with the money they made. The old porter ought to have
felt that he had made his own fortune too. And, again,
observe Moore's tricks as a commercial traveller. They were
not dishonourable ; he never lost a friend by them ; but they
mean that trade was like war to him. All's fair in war, they
say. He would do anything to sweep all the customers into
his own net. His ideas were all in patches and scraps. He
never thoroughly brought his religion to bear upon his trade.

* Smiles' '• life," page 287. + The house in Cumberland.

12 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

Take another question. His favourite institution was the
Commercial Travellers' Schools. His very reason for urging
their claims was that the Commercial Travellers were so badly
paid; he said so in so many words. He fought like a lion
for these schools, simply compelling people to subscribe. He
said in his speeches he knew of cases of destitution among
the travellers merely from being underpaid. He did tell the
employers they should pay their men more ; but if he had
fought for that, as he fought for the charity, he might have
saved these men from the prospect of their children having to
depend on charity at all. I think that charity might very
likely keep down their wages. The Royal Free Hospital is
another case worth considering. We ought to know why it
was established. "The Royal Free Hospital,* to which atten-
tion has been called, was founded in this way. In the winter
of 1827, a wretched girl, under eighteen years of age, was seen
lying on the steps of St. Andrew's churchyard, Holborn Hill,
after midnight, actually perishing from disease and famine.
All the hospitals were closed against her, because at that time
letters of recommendation were required before patients could
be admitted to the public hospitals, and then only on certain
specified days. The girl died two days after, unrecognised by
any human being. This distressing event being witnessed
by the late Mr. W. Marsden, surgeon, he at once set about
founding a medical charity, in which destitution and disease
should alone be the passport for obtaining free and instant
relief. On this principle the Free Hospital was established
in 1828. Look at me ! I am sick, I am poor, I am helpless,
I am forlorn ! such were the patient's credentials." "If
have continued to stick to it because it is free to all who are

• Page 211. t Page 212.

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. IJ

poor and destitute, without any order of admittance. I am
sure this hospital is less abused than any other in London —
as every applicant undergoes a strict ordeal of inquiry into his
circumstances and position ; whereas, at other hospitals the
orders from governors get sadly abused, and many people who
are able to pay get their medical attendance for nothing ; the
tendency of this arrangement being to pauperise the popula-
tion." Moore collected immense sums of money for this. It
was in begging for this that he wore oflf the soles of a pair of
boots. Now, of course, there ought to be hospitals, because
they can give treatment, skill, and attendance which people
cannot get in their own homes, and also because they give
experience to the doctors ; and so it was very likely a right
thing to do to set up this hospital. But we must notice that
this is not quite the reason why the Royal Free was set up.
It was set up not merely to relieve disease, but to relieve
disease and destitution. This was his idea of not permitting
it to be abused, to confine it to the destitute. But a free
hospital is no cure, though it may be a relief for destitution.
On the contrary, demand creates supply. If you put up a
big house for destitute cases, you will have destitute cases to
put in it. It was a simple, straightforward thing to do, to set
up a great hospital ; but it was not really even the beginning
of the work of preventing the cases that it was meant to
relieve. That requires arrangements to be made which go
much deeper into people's circumstances, and put their life
on a solid foundation — which cure by prevention. Another
example. The Reformatory for Discharged Prisoners was a
plan in which Moore took a great interest This broke down;
no satisfactory manager could be got. Here I think the
reason is plain, and is shown by the way in which the same
work is done more successfully now. I heard a letter read

14 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

only the other day from the Secretary of the Discharged
Prisoners' Aid Society, which does a very good work now.
He said,* "The length of time it takes to set discharged
prisoners on their legs again is the length of time it takes
to get them mixed up in common society, and their past
forgotten." So that having an institution was absolutely op-
posed to the object to be attained. In a reformatory they
were all kept together, and marked men for so much longer.
Contrast with this Moore's very wise steps for boarding-out
workhouse children, f To quote his own wise words :
" The leading principle of the boarding-out system is to restore
the child to family life, to create around it natural relations
and natural ties. Under these conditions physical and moral
health is improved, the natural affections are brought into
play, and the child enjoys the liberty and variety of a home
life. Thus sympathy is produced, the true basis for religious
principles in after life. Family life is the means which God
has instituted for the training of the little ones, and in so far
as we assimilate our method to His, so far will be our success."
This just shows how he hit on a truth where he had a simple
experience to go upon. He knew what family life was, and
that children ought to have it ; but to deal by natural means
with those other evils, pauperism, criminal class, underpaid
labour, was what he did not think of. I ought to say that
he set up the Porters' Benevolent Society, which was partly a
charity, but I suppose a great deal supported by the trade.
That was a step towards organising a trade.

Thus, though it is very dangerous to try and make general
criticisms on a life so full of all kinds of good work, I would
suggest that we should thmk of the time of Moore's life as a

• He was writing against any system of watching people by the police.
Quoted from memory. t Page 371.

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. IS

philanthropist in England, from 1841 about to 1876, as a time
in which people were being awakened to their duties, and were
trying to do what was necessary by money and machinery.
For I think even the spread of religious knowledge is mere
machinery, if it does not mean a religious life, a good, solid,
honest life, thoroughly carried out through all its duties. But
of course immense good was done both by obvious reforms in
repealing bad laws, in starting education, in waking up the
clergy — George Moore was a great hand at waking up the
clergy, — and also by the failures or doubtful successes. To go
back to the illustration I used, when you see the pumps pour-
ing out their thousands of gallons an hour, you know there is
a leak somewhere ; and it is something to know that. When
a man builds a reformatory for prisoners, and it breaks down,
because no one can manage them, at least it shows that there
is something to be done. But what was not on the whole
grasped by the English religious philanthropists was that
institutions have a tendency to take the place of duties ; just
as where rich people used to get their old servants into the
charities which received candidates by votes. If they want to
pension their old servants, let them do it themselves. Or, to
put the same thing in other words, the real thing to work for
is that every private person, and every trade, and every place
or district, shall do his or its duties in a thorough and well-
considered way, dealing with people who are tlieir own
belongings as really belonging to them. This life, in which
your duties and purposes bind you together with other people,
is, I suppose, what we ought to mean by the religious life or
the best life ; and it might be said that a philanthropist or
reformer can do nothing at all unless he has this life himself,
and sees how to make it possible for others. Of course you
must have machinery, you must have hospitals and convalescent

l6 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

homes, and perhaps endowed schools, but all these things
ought to be merely instruments in the hands of men and of
bodies of men, who do not forget their own immediate duties,
and all that springs out of these duties.

Now I want to give you a sketch of a very different man.
Leclaire was the son of a village shoemaker in France, born
1801. He left the village school at ten, and could then hardly
read or write. He looked after cattle in the fields till he was
twelve, and was sometimes mason and sometimes agricultural
labourer for five years more. Then, at seventeen, he saw some
haymakers returning to Paris and joined them, and on arriving
in Paris, got a place with a house-painter as apprentice. He
had a hardish time as apprentice, but in three years he seems
to have become principal workman. Then, as soon as he got
regular pay, he had to provide against being drawn for a
soldier; that cost him ;^24, which he managed to save out of
his first year's wages. Then, at about twenty, just as George
Moore put himself to school, Leclaire got hold of books and
taught himself all he could. And at twenty-six he set up for
himself as painter and glazier, and two years later he got a
contract to paint and glaze seven houses. He worked with
his men, and paid them above the current rate of wages, and
the work was unusually well and quickly done. In three or
four years' time he had some large contracts, and his fortune
was made, and soon after 1835 he was employing three
hundred workmen. It was soon after this that he took the
first step towards profit sharing, unless we call it profit sharing
when he paid his men above the current rate. People are
fond of asking where a man got his ideas. Where did I^eclaire
get the idea of profit sharing ? In the first place Leclaire had
a hard apprenticeship, and found it difficult to make his
master pay him fairly ; but I suppose many men have gone

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 1 7

through that experience without becoming social reformers
in consequence. But no doubt that helped to fix it in
Leclaire's mind that as things then stood the workman and
master had opposite interests. Then, of course, at that time
France was full of all sorts of theories. It is curious that
Thomas Carlyle was writing to old Goethe, the German poet,
in 1830, and he asks Goethe about the Saint Simonians, a
society of people in Paris who were full of ideas about the
right way of distributing the produce of labour. Carlyle says
to Goeihe what you may also read in " Sartor Resartus," last
page but one : " Here also are men who have discovered, not
witliout amazement, that Man is still Man ; of which high,
long-forgotten Truth you already see them make false applica-
tion." Leclaire seems to have been influenced by the writings
of their founder St. Simon, and Leclaire's application of the
truth that Man is still Man was not a false application. He
took up their inspiration without their nonsense. Besides this
he studied both books and men ; and they say that it was an
economist who gave him the first hint that profit sharing was
the only way to make the men's interest agree with the
employer's. The first idea,* it seems to me, was to divide the
extra profit among them ; i.e., all the profit they could make
after the employer had had what he thought fair ; and then
later on, to make the workmen themselves gradually owners
of the business, which they are now. This was about 1835.
But we must remember that before he tried even the first step,
Leclaire had already won the confidence of his men, and got
a good set of men round him. In 1838 he started a Mutual
Aid Society, something like one of our clubs, which the men
subscribed to. The subscription was about \s. Sd. a month,

* The details of Leclaire's work are largely drawn from Miss Hart's
pamphlet on Leclaire.

C

1 8 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

and the sick pay i^-. 8d. a day for three months. Well, this
Society had a rule that the members might break it up and
divide the money belonging to it at the end of fifteen years ;
that would be in 1853. We shall see the end of that In
1842 he began regular profit sharing ; that is, he divided a
share of the profits of the year among his forty-four best work-
men, about ;^io a head, and the profits went on increasing.
He had a good deal of trouble about introducing this ; once
the government would not let him have a meeting of his
men ; — they thought it too much like Socialism : and the
men, before the first year's profits were paid them, were
inclined to think it was all a humbug, to bring wages down.
He overcame their doubts by paying the money.

Then another difficulty came ; the year 1853 came round — the
end of the fifteen years — and the Mutual Aid Society was
broken up, and the money divided, according to the rule. Each
member got about ;!^2i. This was not at all what Leclaire
wanted ; he wanted the money kept together, and pensions
paid out of it to men past work, and its capital to become
part of the capital of the business. So the Society was started
again next year, for another fifteen years, that would be till
'69, but without any subscription from the men. Leclaire gave
it a share of the profits instead ; and this enabled him, six
years later, in 1863, to get rid of the rule which permitted the
Society to be broken up ; because he threatened to stop the
share of profits. In 1863, when the Society was made perma-
nent, he did what he had no doubt intended all along, he made
the Mutual Benefit Society a partner in the firm, and paid it
5 per cent, on its capital, and a share of the profits, the work-
men a/so receiving a share of the profits directly, paid to each
man. From this time the men began to own a part of the
business, because the Society legally represented them. la

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 1 9

handing over the new statutes in 1864, Leclaire said to the
men: "You are no longer day-labourers, working like machines,
leaving off work when the hour has done striking. You are
partners, working on your own account, and, as such, nothing
in the workshop can be indifferent to you. Every one of you
ought to look after the plant and the materials as if you had
been especially appointed guardians of them." This was all
settled in 1864, and then Leclaire retired to his country house
near Paris, in order to let the men learn to manage without
him ; and some more changes were made, after the workmen
had been consulted about them, in 1869. After 1869 Leclaire
himself only drew 5 percent, on his capital and took no profits;
so that since that the men have really been owners of the
business. Of course all this sounds a little as if it was just the
fancy of a rich man to let them have his capital cheap and a
share of his profits. But Leclaire always said it was not so,
and that he would not have done as well for himself if he had
kept on the common way of working. He said it was like
earning ^4 and giving JQ2 to his workmen, instead of earning
only ;^i and keeping it all to himself. Certainly the success
of the house was extraordinary; it now employs some 1,100
workmen.

Now I will explain very shortly what the arrangements of
the business are. There are two chief points in a business
of this kind : who has the management, and what sort of
position and prospects does the profit sharing give to the men.
The concern is governed by the workmen, but not by the
whole mass of them. There is a nucleus of picked men,
some three hundred in number at present (the number is not
fixed) which is the governing body. These men in their meet-
ing elect the foremen every year, and when either of the two
managing partners dies or resigns, they elect his successor.

20 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

The management of the business is left with these partners.
The nucleus or *' noyau " elects its own members, on recom-
mendation of its own committee, and subject to the rules.
Candidates must have worked five years for the house, and be
between twenty-five and forty years of age.

The Mutual Aid Society contains about two hundred mem-
bers, who must belong to the nucleus. It is managed by
a committee of its own members. There is no subscription
from the men, but it gets its funds from a share of the profits
of the house. It has now an enormous reserve fund, and
gives very high benefits to its members : life pensions of ^^48
to workmen over fifty, who have worked twenty years for the
house, and half the pension continued to their widows. I am
not quite sure if they give anytliing to workmen who are not
yet members of the Society, except in case of accidents. In
the ordinary course a workman may expect to be elected a
member, and the number may increase.

The profit sharing is managed like this. First, the workmen
have their regular wages. Five per cent, is paid on capital as
a first charge, I presume after wages are paid, then the net
profits are divided into one half and two quarters. The one
half is divided among all the workmen employed by the firm
in proportion to their wages. This has been of late years
pretty near twenty per cent., that is 4J. on every pound of
wages. One of the two quarters of the profits goes to the
two managing partners ; and I must explain here, that the man-
aging partners must have some capital in the business. So you
may ask. How can a working man be elected managing partner,
seeing that he will not have any capital ? It is arranged in
this vsay : the outgoing partner is not allowed to realize his
capital till the incoming partner has bought him out, by means
of his share of the profits. So this is a genuine arrangement.

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 21

It is really the fact that there is nothing to prevent quite a
poor man from being elected partner, if his mates think him
the best man.

Then there is still one quarter of the profits to account for ;
this goes to the Mutual Aid Society. So it comes to this, that
three-quarters of the profits go to the workmen, directly and
indirectly. There are about i,ioo workmen altogether. And
beyond that, they can have capital in the business, and if so,
the interest on capital so far goes to them. The Mutual Aid
Society has about half its capital in the business, about
;^2o,ooo, and some of the workmen have capital in it. They
just get five per cent, on that. Capital gets no profits, only
interest.

When a workman joins such a society, his future is, humanly
speaking, in his own hands, and in the hands of all his mates.
His profits depend upon how he works, and upon how they
work ; and his prospects depend upon his own good conduct,
and upon the justice of the others — I mean their justice as
to the rules about the benefits of the society, and as to his
election into the nucleus, or to be foreman, or to the partner-
ship. Of course, if the men are not wise and just, they will
wreck the concern, and they will deserve to. And of course
a business like this may fail, just as any business may fail,
from ill-fortune, though I think it is not likely to fail from
incautious speculation. All one can say in general is, that in
a society like this, bar accidents, every man has open to him
a really human life, in which the welfare of all depends on the
heartiness and on the wisdom with which every man works
for the common purpose, that is to say, does his duty.

I am not here to preach co-operation or profit sharing. I
am merely speaking of the way in which Leclaire looked at
the great duty of making a good solid life possible for the

22 TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS.

people in his trade. There may be other ways of doing the
same thing, and there are very great difficulties in doing it in
this way. But I think every one must agree so far as this,
that Leclaire had the right object before him, and went to work
in the right spirit — in the only spirit in which a man can do
any good, and in a spirit which always does good in any walk
,of life; that is to say, he made his reform by hving his own
life and doing his own duties with good heart and good sense,
and contriving from time to time the arrangements which came
naturally out of his relations in the way of business, when
he looked at his business as a duty towards human beings.
In his whole life nothing strikes me more than the singleness
of his purpose and his extraordinary patience and foresight.
It was forty years' persevering work from 1829, when he first
paid his men more than the current rate of wages, till 1869,
when he signed the last rules of the house. How thoroughly
he saw that the whole success depended on intelligence and
character ; and what faith he had in producing them by edu-
cation and habit ! How gradually he began his work, — higher
wages, then the Mutual Aid Society, then profit sharing, then
the Mutual Aid Society broken up — he had to let them get
confidence in the thing — then another Mutual Aid Society,
which he at last persuaded them not to break up ; and then
finally, when he was over sixty, the putting the Society on a
legally permanent footing, so that there should be pensions for
every one. And then what foresight and self-denial, which
shows the greatness of his character more than anything, in
retiring from the direction of the business in 1864, so that
they might learn to go on without him. After retiring in
1864, he wrote to the managing partner, "Every time that you
see me in Paris say to me, * What do you come here for ? We
don'i want you ; you forget that you are sixty-five years of age,

TWO MODERN PHILANTHROPISTS. 23

and that it is indispensable that we should learn to go on with-
out you.' " But it is touching that in the time of the Com-
mune, at the beginning of 187 1, he went back to Paris. He
said, " If Paris is blown up, I will be buried in its ruins with
my workmen." He died in 1872, but till now the house has
gone on prosperously under the management of the men.

This was what seems to me to be a thorough and single-
hearted religious life, a life good in itself, and good in its
effects on others. Leclairq's dream was, he said, " that a
workman and his wife should in their old age have the where-
withal to live in peace, without being a burden upon any one."
His life is not split up, not feverish, not patchy, like the other
life we were speaking of. He was before his age ; he grasped
the true direction of the nineteenth century. His influence may
seem at first sight narrower than that of our worthy George
Moore, who had his finger in every pie, and was so devoted
to missionaries. But think of this, 1,100 workmen for several
years without a case of drunkenness ! A great many hospitals
might be built, and many hundreds and thousands of religious
books might be distributed, without even beginning to lay the
foundation of the good, self-supporting, well-arranged life which
this son of a village shoemaker was able to bring into existence
by straightforwardly managing the business of a painter and
decorator as a duty towards human beings.

II.

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM*

MY object in speaking here this evening is twofold. It
is in the first place to illustrate, by two or three
examples, what I take to be the true connection between the
reform of individual life by individual exertions and the
reform of social arrangements by the power of society; and in
the second place, while discussing these examples, to indicate
what seem to me to be some chief elements in a not remotely
practicable social ideal.

I hope no one will think that I intend to disparage one of
these kinds of reform in order to exalt the other. There are
people whose minds are like a pair of scales : they can only
hold two things at a time, and if one of the things goes up, the
other must go down. I had better say plainly at once, that
what I want to plead for is just the opposite of such an atti-
tude. What has always impressed me as the most striking
feature of social progress is the inseparable identity between
these two aspects of reform. The operation of law seems to
me to consist in ratifying by the sanction of the public power
certain expressions and resolutions of the public mind ; and
the public mind is the mind of individuals, in so far as they
co-operate for social judgment or for social action. Laws may
be compared to the wood of a tree, or the skeleton of an

* An address given for the Ethical Society, and subsequently published
in Time.

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 25

animal, each of which is indeed a rigid framework, but has
been entirely moulded by the growth of the flexible parts
which seem to hang upon it. But the illustration is not
strong enough. Wood or bone may die, and yet retain its
strength ; but a dead law has no strength at all, and a law can
be a dead letter without being repealed. Law has its strength
as well as its birth in the public will. Thus the process which
I want to look at is the process by which changes in the life
of a people find their expression and completion in the acts
of the public power, and by which, also, the acts of the public
power are able to strengthen and support the life of a people.
And the light in which I want to consider this process is that
of a single movement and development, which takes the shape
of law, or of public opinion, or of individual initiative, accord-
ing to the needs of the moment ; but is always in reality a
growth of moral life, an extension and animation of our ideas
of social duty.

I shall be sorry if the first example which I want to consider
appears too trivial to bring before this audience. I confess that
I do in part wish to insist on the enormous importance of cer-
tain duties and capacities that we are apt to regard as trivial.

On any Friday evening during the past winter you might
have seen in a room, not five minutes' walk from this hall,
two or three volunteer teachers, ladies, one of them a member
of the Ethical Society, instructing six or eight lads in the
elements of woodcarving. In Stepney and Ratcliif you might
have seen similar classes, and others in a good many quarters
of London. The teaching is not meant to be a preparation
for the woodcarver's trade ; it is less than that in one way, and
more in another. It is less, because it does not aim at turning
out finished workmen who could compete with professionals —
in fact, the lads who are taught are already occupied in other

26 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM,

trades. It is more, because it does aim at awakening the
more general interests and enjoyments of artistic knowledge,
and at pointing out some of the features which constitute
beauty in art and in nature. Of course there are many
failures, and there are not any very grand results. Still, if a
pupil is able to attend for any length of time, a certain change
is produced in his mind; a new perception is awakened, a
new interest is acquired ; he sees things to which he was blind
before, and enjoys things to which he was insensible before.

This is a small affair, and it does not seem very gigantic
when we say that in Great Britain and Ireland there are more
than four thousand such pupils undergoing such instruction,
which is sought by the pupils and imparted by the teachers
purely for love of the subject. In some cases these teachers
are labouring men, who give their evenings to the work with
that devotion which characterises hard-working men when
their interest is awakened. Of course woodcarving is not the
only subject taught. All the decorative, or lesser arts, find a
place, and the nature of beauty and some idea of design is
meant to be taught along with all of them.

Now I want first to look back ten years in the history of
this movement, and then to look forward ten years.

Ten years ago there was nothing of all the teaching I have
referred to, except just one lady in Shropshire, teaching one
or two classes of country lads round her own home. Go a
few years further back still, and there was not even this.
There was nothing then but the writings and influence of Mr.
Ruskin, and perhaps, for all I know, of Mr. William Morris,
working on the genius of this lady, whose mind was being
filled with the behef in the moral and educational value of
beautiful handicraft. Gradually she set to work, gathered
friends round her, adopted suggestions from others, formed a

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 27

small society. Three years ago this society took root in
London, and it has now reached about six times the extent
which it had then attained. " Good seed flies on the wings
of the wind " ; and the ideas of a great art-critic, and the daily
toil of one woman in a remote country district, have already
developed into a practical influence that is brightening thou-
sands of lives.

But now suppose we look forward ten years. This is a
more varied problem, because almost every plant branches
out as it grows up. I will select three out of many possible
ways in which I hope that this advance in educational practice
will affect our institutions, and even our statute book.

1. Every one is crying out in his own particular language,
whether with prayers or with curses, for educational reform.
At the same time we all desire, I suppose, and it seems that
we are to have, something or other in the way of local self-
government. Now I do trust all this will end in throwing on
the citizens of every locality the main power and reponsibility
with regard to the education of their children, and of their
lads and girls, who are growing up to manhood and woman-
hood. This is a branch of administration upon which the
moral and material welfare of the people of these islands
absolutely depends. Who is going to look after this branch
of administration ? There is only one answer. If you want
a thing well done, do it yourself. I will quote the last words
on education of a great man recently dead, who was for five-
and-thirty years an English inspector of schools. Matthew
. Arnold wrote in February, 1888 : —

" I wish to indicate certain points to which those for whose
use the Report* is now designed will do well, I think, to

* *' Special Report on certain points connected with Elementary Educa-
tion in Germany, Switzerland, and France."

2 8 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

direct their minds. The first of these points is the need that
those who use the popular school should arrive at clear and
just notions of what they want their own school to be, and
should seek to get it made this. At present their school is
not this, but it is rather what the political and governing
classes, establishing a school for the benefit of the working
classes, think that such a school ought to be. The second
point is, that our existing popular school is far too little for-
mative and humanising, and that much in it, which ad-
ministrators point to as valuable results, is in truth mere
machinery."

Therefore I say, that to create in every quarter of our large
towns, and in every country district, a circle of men and
women of the wage-earning class, who have had something of
a humanising and formative training, and who are, as is always
the result of such a training, enthusiasts for education in the
largest sense, is a work of paramount importance for the future
of our popular schools. It is a work which in ten years' time
will leave a deep mark on our educational code, on our school
buildings, and on our system of school management. And I
will venture to say that no other equality of chances has a
tenth part of the importance that belongs to equality in
education.

You can secure this by taking in hand the management of
the popular schools, and you cannot secure it in any other way.

2. I pass to another point of social equality. The dis-
tinguishing mark of social equality is, to my mind, identity
of enjoyments. We used to be told by the good old school
that the hunting-field and the racecourse kept English society
together ; and perhaps, before the growth of the great towns
with their highly educated workmen, there was something in
this. But of course the poorer people were lookers-on at these

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 29

things, rather than participators ; they are not really amuse-
ments for the million, except in as far as the million take to
betting. Now no doubt we all hope that, with proper pro-
vision of open spaces and public buildings, games and gym-
nastics will be more and more generally practised ; but I want
to refer now to other forms of enjoyment.

One is rather disinclined to say very much about museums
and picture galleries and public libraries as means of enjoy-
ment, because these places are now apt to be so very doleful
and unattractive. This is partly the fault of the management,
and partly the fault of the visitors. But when our common
education gives us a little more feeling and insight for the
human side of art and craftsmanship, then I think we shall
care more to become acquainted with the history and fortunes
of arts and crafts, the products of which are the direct outcome
and record of the lives and feelings and labours of unnamed
millions of our race. This is a point of view which we owe
largely to Mr. Morris. Then I think the management, which
will depend upon the local authority, will become more ener-
getic and zealous, and the visitors will be more interested ;
and this will have the effect of making the museums and
galleries less desolate and more hospitable and cheerful ; and
perhaps some day we may get as far as to have a public
orchestra playing in some public room. When an interest like
this becomes common and natural, it will no longer be thought
priggish to care about these things, and they will be an im-
portant feature of our holiday life. This would be the begin-
ning of a great social change, because all sensible people would
more and more tend to spend their Sundays and holidays in
the same way, and the rich people might lose something of
their vulgar exclusiveness, and the poorer people something of
their enforced narrowness of outlook. And a certain social

30 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

pride, in a citizenship that means a common life worth living,
will grow up, and replace the brutal exclusiveness of classes.
We should all feel that the best things were now for all, and
not for the few, and that this was enough to prove that they
were really the best things, because it is only the best things
that can be for all. And this social pride would react on the
administrative work of the local authority, and increase its
energy, its thoroughness, and its public spirit.

And the same influences would leave their mark on a pri-
vate life — the life of the family. I know quite well that the
wealthy and orthodox infidel will say, with an affectation of
practical insight, that people whose lives are a struggle cannot
be expected to take pleasure in beauty and knowledge. And
I agree so far as this — that they cannot be expected to take
such pleasure. All I know is, that they do take it. I con-
stantly hear and see conclusive proofs of this. A lady de-
scribed to me the other day the resolution and enjoyment with
which an Irish lad pursued his woodcarving in a mud cabin, in
county Limerick ; and it is not long since I heard how some
Scotch lads actually preferred decorating their own homes to
turning a penny by selling their work. This sounds like a
miracle, but has the advantage of being a fact.

3. And these educational influences will ultimately produce
an effect on the organisation of industry itself. The mere fact
that the two greatest English writers on art of this or of any
century have found it necessary to become writers on social
economy, is enough to prove, if it wanted proving, that the
national appreciation of workmanship and the national organi-
sation of industry are but two aspects of the same thing. If I
were to venture in passing to criticise the ideas of John Ruskin
and of Mr. William Morris, I should say that the lifework of
these two great men, co-operating with other influences, has

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 3 1

done more for us than they are themselves aware. It is our
duty, I admit, at least to listen with respect to those from
whom we have already learnt so much ; but it is my own firm
conviction that there is far less to be gained from their detailed
speculations in social economy than from the nineteenth-
century renaissance, the new birth, which they have been the
chief agents in bringing about. Such teaching operations
as those to which I have referred in the beginning of this
lecture are merely an attempt to popularise what these great
men have done, and belong, in a humble way, to the same
line of advance. After all, no progress is isolated. The
awakening of Europe is continuous, from the time of Goethe
tiU to day.

The organisation of industry will be affected by educational
progress in various ways.

First, the public mind will learn to see in the productions
of handicraft the expression of the life of the craftsmen, and
will realize that a sense of beauty or fitness in the production
cannot be divorced from a sense of duty towards the producer.
Only health and happiness can produce sound workmanship
and pleasant decoration. It is a saying of the fishermen's
wives in Scotland when they are selling the fish, " It's no fish
you're buying; it's men's lives." This is what we all must
come to feel. In all the transactions of industry we are
trafficking in the lives of men and women ; and therefore we
shall be ready to give aid and encouragement to organising
their lives, we shall be ready and willing to legislate for their
better health and comfort, and, above all things, we shall insist,
for their sakes as for our own, that the workmanship shall be
good and sound.

Secondly, then, I look for a change in the dignity of the
craftsman. The old economy said that a respectable calling

32 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

was apt to be underpaid, because it took out part of its wages
in public esteem. Tliis view has its truth ; but 1 feel sure
that in the long-run public esteem promotes material welfare.
Public opinion can strengthen organisation, and can to some
extent prohibit unjust terms of partnership, though it cannot,
of course, determine shares of profit in particular cases. It
can confer importance and eminence, and these things react
upon material welfare. At present I have no doubt that the
skilled workman is under-esteemed and underpaid by com-
parison with persons of financial or secretarial skill, or with
the so-called designer or architect. The reason is in part that
the craftsman himself is not what he should be, is not an
artist or a man of science, but is a mere mechanic ; and then,
as always happens, he is not expected to be more than this,
and, because he is not expected to be, he is not. Two
changes must come together : the craftsman must assert him-
self by becoming an artist, and the public must recognise him
if he is, and condemn him if he is not. As a detail, I may
say, in all high-class work, the workman should have the credit
of what he makes with his own hands. His mark should be
on it. I am told that an excellent start in this direction is
being made at Toynbee Hall.

And further, the terrible problem of unskilled labour would
not be left untouched. The range of skilled hand labour
would be vastly extended ; the field of unskilled labour might,
in a corresponding proportion, be left to machinery. I can-
not enter into this at length. It seems plain that the worst
pinch is in the long hours of monotonous, soul-destroying, un-
skilled labour. I hope much from supplanting a good deal
of this by interesting skilled labour, and frankly helping out
the rest by machinery and shortening its hours.

These are the changes which we see before us, when we

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 33

look forward ten years from the educational point of view
alone. It is impossible to draw the line between the indi-
vidual and the social character of such reforms. The move-
ment in question will, e.g., probably affect the drafting of the
Technical Education Bill ; it will certainly affect its working.
Converging results will spring from other influences. And it
is as certain as any human prospect can be, that if we jointly
and severally do our duty as friends, parents, electors to the
local authority, managers of evening and of primary schools,
and as human beings with humanising interests of our own,
we can bring about changes of this kind in our social, edu-
cational, industrial, and recreative organisation, which will
amount, in their cumulative effect, to no small instalment of a
social revolution.

Now I turn to a subject which apparently differs from the
last, in as far as the attempt to initiate progress has arisen
more distinctly from legislation. But here, too, we shall find
that we are really dealing with a thoroughgoing advance in
the mind and character of the people.

It is only within the last half-century that the public atten-
tion has been given to the dwellings of the wage-earning class
with the definite purpose of improving their condition. The
statement needs this qualification, because the danger and
misery of a mass of overcrowded tenements were observed in
London as early as the time of Elizabeth.

The confluence of the people to London was even then

largely caused by the unwise charity of the Londoners ; and

the growth of the population outside the city gates frightened

the city for its trade, and the government both for health and

4ox order.

But their remedy was not what we should call a construc-
tive remedy. It consisted in proclamations against fresh

D

34 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

buildings within three miles of the city gates, and against
overcrowding, and against inhabited cellars. People living in
cellars in London are first mentioned about 1640, and Irish
poor in St. Giles' in that year.

These proclamations did no good. I^ondon went on grow-
ing, and becoming more and more unhealthy. A writer about
two hundred years ago says, "One way with another, a plague
happeneth in London every twenty years."

There was more regulation within the city walls, but chiefly
to secure cleanliness in the streets, and to provide against fire.

So it remains true that there was no attempt to improve the
people's dwellings till half a century ago. In fact, there were
no sanitary principles recognised in any dwellings before that
time. I should suppose that our sanitary discoveries and
legislation, and therefore our future system of local govern-
ment, largely owe their origin to the labours of the men of
science who perfected the compound microscope between
1820 and 1830. We may call to mind that the Prince Con-
sort died of typhoid fever, and the Prince of Wales narrowly
escaped a similar death. So our negligence in purely sanitary
matters was tolerably impartial.

But a variety of philanthropic and political motives contri-
buted in the years following 1832 to push forward this ques-
tion. In particular, the outbreak of cholera in 1831, with a
terribly unhealthy year in 1837, when a return of cholera was
dreaded in London, acted strongly on the minds of reformers,
which were then directed to the condition of the working
classes. A whole heap of public inquiries were instituted,
one of which resulted in Mr. Chadwick's report of 1842, "On
the Condition of the Labouring Classes of Great Britain."

It is from about this time, in the Forties, that we must date
the effective growth of public interest in the problem. This

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 35

interest, and the action taken in consequence of it, shows a
pretty marked development, which it is worth while to glance
at, although it is so complicated a subject that one can only
touch a few typical points here and there.

To begin with, the movement has left its record in forty
years of legislation, from 1845 to 1885. This legislation
shows on the whole two tendencies : first, a tendency to widen
the conception of the problem ; and, secondly, as a result of
this widening conception, to rely increasingly upon local
authorities. The widening of the problem shows itself in the
advance from legislation directed to removing a nuisance, an
annoyance, or danger to the neighbours, to legislation directed
to clearing whole areas that were unhealthy, and rebuilding on
them to the best advantage ; that is to say, recognising the pro-
vision of dwellings as a matter of public policy.

The Nuisance Removals Acts begin, I believe, in 1846. In
1855 the meaning of a "nuisance" is extended to include
anything dangerous to the inhabitants of the house itself, such
as overcrowding ; in 1868, Torrens' Act marks a turning-point,
because it provides for demolishing unsanitary houses, and
rebuilding on their sites ; and Cross's Act of 1875 applies- the
same principle to large areas. Both of these Acts attempt
to keep the compensation down in the public interest ; and
Cross's Act forces the public authority to incur loss, if neces-
sary, in selling the sites for the purpose of dwellings. This
means that the public mind has passed from a negative to a
positive idea of the remedy for the evil of bad dwellings.

There was one curious exception to this order of advance.
In 1851 Lord Shaftesbury carried an Act which enabled the
local authority to construct and hold buildings for lodging the
wage-earning class. It did not give compulsory powers, but
much could have, been done without them. But the public

^6 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

interest was not then awakened ; no one stirred up the local
authorities ; and four years ago Lord Shaftesbury said he sup-
posed no one but himself knew that the Act existed. It has
been an absolute dead letter.

But on the whole the conception of the problem steadily
widened from 1845 to 1875, and we may even say to 1885
considering that the commission which reported in that year
took evidence on the question of the relation between rent
and wages. The Charity Organisation Society's Committee
of 1 88 1 had previously gone into this difficult question. This
shows that the mere sanitary problem had expanded into
a set of problems affecting the whole position of the working
class.

As to reliance upon local authorities, not to speak of the
abortive Act of 1851, we may remember that thfr Metropolitan
Board of Works was created in 1855. The vestries were
enabled by that Act to appoint medical officers of health, and
were given enormously important powers of making bye-laws
under an Act of 1866. Torrens' Act of 1868 depended on the
vestries ; and Cross's of 1875 on the Board of Works,

Now I turn to the other side of the subject. Who were at
work in and under all this legislation, and what did they effect ?
There have been, roughly speaking, four classes of reformers,
beginning one after the other, but going on together.

First came a band of experts and philanthropists, like Lord
Shaftesbury and Mr. Chadwick. It was they, I think, who
set the ball rolling, partly as public men, by blue-books and
Aets of Parliament. I do not think they can have effected
very much before 1855 ; but they did slowly arouse public
opinion, being ably seconded by three fearful visitations of
cholera.

Secondly, as a first result of the wider public interest, came

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 37

the Model Dwellings Companies, started by people like Lord
Shaftesbury, but consisting of middle-class citizens and men of
business, who wanted to thrash out the question practically,
and see what could be done by ordinary decent landlords.
The first societies were more experimental and charitable ;
then, as the work was shown to be possible, they got bigger
and more commercial. The first block of model dwellings
was opened in London in 1847, the second in 1850 ; six more
companies were formed in the next twelve years. In 1862,
Mr. Peabody's first gift of ;^i 50,000 gave an impetus to the
movement. Still the actual work done by all the societies
together was in itself next to nothing. They housed about
17,000 individuals by 1868, over 30,000 by 1873, and 40,000
or 50,000 by 1 88 1.

The population of London is supposed to increase by 65,000
5 every year, of whom 40,000 are of the wage-earning :lass, and
the total number of houses built since 1848 is said 10 be hard
upon half a million. So that, considered as a supply of dwell-
ings, the work of the companies is a drop in the ocean. It
has some uses, which I will speak of later.

Then, thirdly, the problem deepened zs, there arose a simpler
and a deeper view of it. It is strange, but true, that in moral
matters the simplest view comes last. Everything else catches
our eye before our own most obvious duties, and they often
have to be suggested to us by a great genius. It was, I
believe, in the first instance, John Ruskin to whom the idea
was due, in about 1864, of what is now known as the Octavia
Hill system, which depends on the simple but not familiar
idea that a landlord has a moral duty to his tenant. The
system consists in the employment of trained women as agents
and rent-collectors, who manage the property as any decent
owner ought to manage it, but with a good deal of individual

38 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

supervision. This system is not essential or even desirable
for the houses of first-rate artisans, but it is absolutely indis-
pensable for the houses of people who have lost the habit of
living in comfort and cleanliness. Without such a system no
house that can be built would remain sanitary for a month
with inhabitants of this class. This is not now a mere philan-
thropic experiment. It is a mode of managing house property
extensively applied, under which probably several thousand
families live decently and with a tendency to improve, who
would otherwise live miserably with a tendency to deteriorate.

Lastly, about the same time a chance was given to the local
authorities to do their duty, of which excellent use was made
in two or three cases. The power to make bye-laws for
inspection and registration of tenement houses under the Act
of 1866 afforded the most simple means of controlling the
state of the dwellings supply in every district. Down to 1884,
however, only two districts had thoroughly gone into this work,
with the result that in one district ten thousand persons, and
in another thirty thousand were living in houses inspected and
warranted as in fair sanitary condition. I am quite unable to
understand why the ratepayers have not insisted on this simple
process being adopted in every district of London. It costs
the public nothing, so far as I know.

And under the head of the practical moral reformers I may
mention the work familiar to most of us as that of the Com-
mittee of the Mansion House Council.

The connection between the reformers and the reforms is
curious and interesting. It is a perpetual meeting of ex-
tremes. The private enterprise dwellings companies find they
can build tenements, but they want cheap sites. The very
unsocialistic Charity Organisation Society, five years after its
foundation, examines into this question by its committee of

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 39

1873, ^^^ does much to procure Cross's Act of 1875, which
deals with the problem of procuring cheap sites ; and from
the working of that Act the more drastic ideas now current
have largely sprung. For instance, the Birmingham improve-
ments were carried on under that Act. But these more drastic
ideas, as represented in the Commission of 1885, have again
forced us back to the conclusion that we musi have more
public interest, afid a public authority more in touch
with the public interest. The Act of 1885 says — I am not
speaking in legal phrase — that it is the duty of the local
authority to do its duty ; and that is about the practical con-
clusion to which forty years of legislation have brought us.
Just as private enterprise led up to legislation, so legislation
leads up to individual duty. When you have not a good
local authority with good servants, your law is a dead letter
When you have, there is little, though there is something, to
be desired.

Thus it seems that the widening and the deepening of the
problem are not antagonistic to one another. The legislative
reformer of to-day knows well that he is only arming with the
public power a spirit and a purpose which the community
must supply. The private enterprise reformer of to-day is not
the laissez-faire economist, but is the citizen actuated by
moral claims, and determined, whenever it is useful or needful,
to transform his private action into that of the public power.
The only question that arises is concerned with the precise
degree of this use and need. In my opinion, such a matter of
degree can only be determined in detail. I will illustrate the
difference and the coalescence of the two points of view by read-
ing some answers given by Miss Hill before the Commission of
1885 (p. 296). Miss Hill had been saying that she thought
the ground landlord should be taxed, especially in view of the

40 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

enormous increase of value which he gets when his leases fall
in. Lord Salisbury, in consequence of this answer, asks : —

Q. " You have not much sympathy for the ground land-
lord?"

A. " I have great sympathy for the ground landlord ; he is
a man whose power for good I believe in, and I have spent
much of my life in getting people to become ground land-
lords."

Q. " You wish to multiply him, but to tax him ? "

A. " Yes, and to see him tax himself. ^^

It is fair to say that this has been done by the Duke of
Westminster and others who have let land at reduced rates for
dwellings. The line which she takes throughout is that only
when private action runs against a barrier, it must have the
pow^er of transforming itself into public action. She thinks
private action more flexible and more adapted to the particular
problems with which she has to do. It is a question of effi-
ciency, of setting forces at work on which you can really rely
to produce the required effect.

I will not discuss these questions in general, but will say at
once what sort of solution will, in my opinion, probably be
found adequate.

The required agency is the performance of social duty, both
on a large scale and in very minute matters of every-day life,
guided by intimate local knowledge, inspired by neighbourly
friendliness, and in case of necessity employing the public
power. The agents in such an activity would naturally be the
people of the community, in their various relations as neigh-
bours, landlords, and tenants, or as builders, buyers, and
sellers of houses ; but the community must be able, in case
of necessity, to transform itself into the public power— that is,
in other words, it must enjoy an efficient system of local self-

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 4 1

government. This is the expression, the outward and visible
sign, of the relations of neighbours with one another; and it
will be what it deserves to be — just as good or as bad as the
people themselves choose to make it.

To a really efficient government of this type very stringent
powers might be entrusted, which it would be madness to en-
trust to any ill-informed or over-centralised authority.

Powers connected with building divide themselves into
destructive and constructive powers. There are also important
preventive powers, regulating the structure and surroundings
of netu houses. These preventive powers are pretty well
agreed upon, I believe, and I need say no more about them
except that they ought to be exercised. So, too, with the
destructive powers. We are all of one mind that bad, unim-
provable houses should be stamped out, without compensation
to the owners for the buildings (the words of the Act of 1879
seem to me sufficient), and that bad but improvable houses
should be inspected, and improved at the owner's expense,
and kept under inspection. We start from this. What
supply of houses there ought to be, admits of some question ;
but that bad houses should no more be tolerated than food
unfit for human consumption admits of no question. The
present law, if consolidated and acted upon, is sufficient to
secure this.

The question of constructive powers is more difficult. I
may put my view most clearly by saying that the local authority
should have power to consti*uct and manage dwellings for the
working class ; but that if I were elected on such an authority,
I should strenuously oppose the use of the power except in
extreme cases — that is to say, in order to disconcert anything
like a ring or combination against the public interest.

The Glasgow improvers, whose work is the most successful

42 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

tliat has been done, had the power to build, but did not find
any need to exercise it. The objections to exercising such a
power largely are twofold : —

(i) If the public authority takes much of the burden, it
must take it all, because it will drive private enterprise out of
the field ; and private enterprise can do the easy part of the
work— providing high-class dwellings — as well as the public
authority, and the hard part of the work — housing the classes
who require Miss Hill's system — much better. Thus the
community would be taking on itself a needless burden, and
destroying a useful work. (2) The desirable course is to
house in London only those people who must be there. To
do this you must adjust the dwellings supply very carefully
to the absolute need. If you build on a large scale at an
artificially lowered rent, you actually subsidise employers
of labour by building barracks for their employes. There are
three hundred policemen and a number of letter-carriers living
in the Peabody dwellings. This makes their pay equivalent
to a higher pay, I suppose, and helps to induce them to stay
in London or come to London.

Some clearances under Cross's Act are said to have cost
;^25o per family to be housed on them. No doubt this was
very ill-managed. But if one was going to spend anything Hke
that sum of money, would it not be better to get some em-
ployer to set up his trade in the country, and build him a nice
healthy village away from London? You can build a beautiful
four-roomed house for ;;^2 5o in the country. I cannot doubt,
though these things are hard to prove, that any really large
operations in supplying dwellings under cost price in London
must lower wages, and aggravate the congestion of population.
We must make a stand some time, and say, "This area is
full " ; and I do not see why we should wait to do this until

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 43

we have massed the population in six-storey blocks to the
verge of possible existence. The densest population in ordi-
nary houses is two hundred and fifty per acre ; the blocks
house near a thousand.

Between destruction and construction there is the link of
replacement. I said I would not encourage congestion ; but
I certainly would not permit forcible depopulation. At this
moment the population of Central London is supposed to be
decreasing. This is /« /^jrr/ a healthy movement. The nearer
the country the better for the wife and children. All one can
say in general, is that the local authority should have stringent
and flexible powers to take sites for necessary improvements,
and to forbid demoHtion, or to annex conditions to it, or to
enforce replacement, and perhaps to impose conditions on the
laying out of new estates.

I will give as an illustration the way in which this system
would have affected the person who projected the late demoli-
tions in Chelsea. I am informed that over two hundred small
houses were demolished on two sites, which do not comprise
all the land that was cleared. Between one and two thousand
persons must have been displaced. The rent of the smaller
houses in Chelsea must rise in consequence, unless a large
migration is caused. The owner may be about to replace, but
I see no signs of it. Now he would have had to come to the
local authority for permission, simply on the public ground that
he was projecting an alteration in the dwellings supply of
London. He might then have been forbidden to make his alter-
tion, or some public improvement might have been exacted as a
condition ; all that depends on the circumstances of the case,
as they might appear to persons with intimate local knowledge.

One word as to the rights of property. I would substitute
for this rigid conception the more flexible conception of the

44 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

"continuity of society," meaning by this that you and I are
bound to recognise in a reasonable way what your father and
mine permitted to exist. How far, in what special degree, you
recognise it is a question of detail. The things to be avoided
are the sudden dislocation of life, and measures aimed at indi-
viduals.

The present state of things is this — the model dwellings
companies and Miss Hill's system house altogether somewhere
near a hundred thousand individuals — not less, maybe more.
Their function is not to provide the dwellings supply of Lon-
don. Private builders and workmen's building societies are
well able to do this in the ordinary way.

What the model dwellings and Miss Hill's system can do is
to extirpate, or make it possible to extirpate, the very worst
plague-spots of London, because they attend to the needs of
the class too troublesome for the private builder, and build on
sites too awkward for the private builders. They have also
shown the way to adapt buildings to the needs of various
classes ; the successive sets of dwellings are more cheaply
built and better adapted to their purpose.

We must remember how influences radiate from every
centre. Twenty thousand decent dwellings, a great part of
wliich are in place of thoroughly bad ones, have a good deal
of importance even in London.

The private builders have in part learnt their lesson, and
are beginning to compete with the model dwellings. When
tliey can do so successfully the main problem is really solved.*

• In so far as the low dividends of dwellings companies are caused, as
has been recently in part the case, by the competition of private builders
erecting houses of the same class, this lowness goes to show, not that the
problem is insoluble, but that, in the quarter of London in question, it is
solved, supply exceeding demand.

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 45

Tlieyand the companies can replace the unimprovable houses;
it is for the local authority, aided and incited by private
citizens, to demolish these, and to force improvement of the
improvable houses. The worst pressure, due to the neglect
of generations, ought never to recur. The worst faults of the
old houses ought to be now impossible. A terrible amount
remains to be done, but nothing which cannot be done by the
due execution of the law, backed by the sympathy and activity
of individual citizens.

Thus our two examples coalesce in a practical and practi-
cable ideal ; we look forward to a society organised in con-
venient districts, in which men and women, pursuing their
different callings, will live together with care for one another,
and with in all essentials the same education, the same enjoy-
ments, the same capacities. These men and women will work
together in councils and on connnittees ; and while fearlessly
employing stringent legal powers in the public interest, yet
will be aware, by sympathy and experience, of the extreme
flexibility and complication of modern life, which responds so
unexpectedly to the most simple interference ; they will have
a pride in their schools and their libraries, in their streets and
their dwellings, in their workshops and their warehouses. In
such a society it appears to me to be a mere question of
practical efficiency how far the organisers of labour should be
the salaried servants of the State, or, as they are now, its moral
trustees. This presents itself to me simply as a question of
the amount of line, the degree of initiative, which the com-
munity allows to its agents in the performance of their duties.
The only thing that I dread in the system known as Socialism
is the cutting off individual initiative outside certain duties
specified by rule. I do not see how either of the two great
movements of which I have spoken this evening could have

46 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM.

made its way under a rigidly socialist regime. In England —
and perhaps we differ in this from the Continent — our way of
showing that a thing can be done is simply to go and do it.
I do not see how Mr. Morris's influence could have reached
its present extent if he had had to begin by knocking at the
doors of a Science and Art Department, or of a School Board.
On the other hand, of practical Socialism, i.e., of the work-
man's ownership of the means of production, we cannot have
too much.

But though our judgment may differ on such questions as
these, I wish to conclude by insisting that all I have said to-
night remains true notwithstanding. If Socialism is to come,
it will come quicker in this way ; and neither it nor any other
system can be good unless these things are done. If we
simply stick to our work, the children who are born this year
will be educated on a better system, and will find themselves,
as they grow up, in a revolutionised society. Not that the
revolution is something now future, which will one day be past.
The revolution always has been going on, always is going on,
and, above all, always will be going on. But there are critical
moments when the public mind matures rapidly, and perhaps
this is one of them. Our birthright is within our grasp, if we
choose to grasp it. What is wanted is the habituation of the
English citizen to his rights and duties, by training in organi-
sation, in administration, in what I may call neighbourly public
spirit. If, for example, London had the same traditions of
public service as Berlin, we should have (allowing for the
difference of size) an army of 7,200 citizens engaged in the
administration of poor law relief as unpaid officials, with public
authority, and with individual discretion. Unless we ap-
prentice ourselves to the trade of citizenship, the days that are
coming in England may show more disastrous specimens of

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 47

municipal government than New York itself has displayed.
Warnings are not wanting. Such as the citizen is, such the
society will be ; and the true union of social and individual
reform lies in the moulding of the individual mind to the
public purpose.

III.

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF
ANCIENT SOCIETIES.^

IT always appears to me that the ideal of modern life may
be simply summed up in the phrase "Christian Hellenism,"
or if this is ambiguous, then " humanised Hellenism,"

I will begin by quoting, in the words of the greatest Greek
statesman, reproduced by the greatest Greek historian, a de-
scription of Hellenism at its best. My quotations are drawn
from the famous speech of Pericles, delivered 430 years before
Christ, at the funeral of the Athenian citizens who fell in the
first year of the war between Athens and Sparta, There is
little doubt that Thucydides, who probably heard the speech,
has fairly represented the topics and the spirit of it,

t " Before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by
what principles of action we rose to power, and under what
institutions and through what manner of life we became great.
For I conceive that such thoughts are not unsuited to the
occasion, and that this numerous assembly of citizens and
strangers may profitably listen to them.

" Our form of Government does not enter into rivalry with
the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours,
but we are an example to them. It is true that we are called

• A lecture delivered for the Ethical Society,
+ Jowett's Thucyd. ii. 35 ff.
48

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 49

a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the
many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal
justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excel-
lence is also recognised ; and when a citizen is in any way
distinguished, he is preferred to the public service not as a
matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit Neither is pov-
erty a bar, but a man may benefit his country, whatever be the
obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our
public life, and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious
of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what
he likes ; we do not put on sour looks at him, which, though
harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained
in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our
public acts ; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect
for authority and for the laws, having an especial regard to
those which are ordained for the protection of the injured, as
well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the trans-
gressor the reprobation of the general sentiment.

" And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits
many relaxations from toil ; we have regular public competi-
tions [dramatic, musical, and athletic] and religious ceremonies
throughout the year ; at home the style of our life is refined ;
and the delight which we daily feel in these things helps to
banish melancholy." " We are lovers of the beautiful, though
simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of
manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation,
but when there is a real use for it. To avow poverty with us
is no disgrace ; the true disgrace is doing nothing to avoid it.
An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he
takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who
are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We
alone regard a man who takes no share in public business not

£

50 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

as a harmless but as a useless character ; and if few of us are
originators, we are all sound judges of a policy. The great
impediment to action is in our opinion, not discussion, but the
want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion prepara-
tory to action." " We alone do good to our neighbours not
upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of free-
dom and in a frank and fearless spirit. To sum up : I say
that Athens is the school of Greece, and that the individual
Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of
adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the
utmost versatility and grace." " Such is the city for whose sake
these men nobly fought and died ; they could not bear the
thought that she might be taken from them ; and every one of
us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf."

These pretensions were not too highly pitched. In the year
in which this speech was delivered, the roll of Athenian citi-
zens, numbering not more than 20,000 men capable of bearing
arms, included not one or two only, but several of the greatest
men of all time. Socrates was entering upon his missionary
activity. Thucydides was gathering the ideas which were to
be embodied in his immortal history. Pericles was ruling the
fierce democracy by his intellect and his eloquence. Three of
the world's greatest poets, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristo-
phanes, were moving the Athenians to tears and laughter,
^schylus had passed away just a quarter of a century before.
Plato was to be born within two years after. Not six years
had elapsed since those inimitable works of sculpture, which
by an extraordinary chance have found their last refuge within
a mile of this lecture-hall, had been hoisted into their places
on the temple of Athene. Other buildings and their orna-
ments, hardly less splendid, were still in the minds or under
the hands of Athenian artists. It is worth while to visit the

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 5 1

Elgin marble room at the British Museum, and to look at the
majestic female figure which with five others was erected in
the year 409 before Christ to support an Athenian temple
roof, and to reflect on the high-minded energy of a people
which could enrich the world by such a monument, after the
first twenty years of a desperate struggle for existence.

Pericles was well within the mark when he called Athens
the school of Greece. Not only was it the school of Greece,
but it was the nursery of Europe. If we hold sacred the
earliest source of that "virtue," or manlmess, which is the
morality of the free European citizen, it is not to Palestine
but to Athens that we should make our pilgrimage. For the
first time in the history of the world, so far as we know or can
conjecture, the problem of uniting public authority with indi-
vidual freedom was solved, and magnificently solved, in the
free commonwealths of Greece. And when Socrates and his
followers had expressed in undying language the essence of
the civic life of their time, the moral consciousness of Europe
had received the general outline and impress which, in spite of
qualitative and quantitative variations, it still retains. I will
read on this subject the words of a writer, who, whatever
honour he might pay to Greece, stood second to none in his
recognition of the peculiar claim of Christianity. The late
Professor Green wrote in his work on Ethics : —

* " The habit of derogation from the uses of ' mere philoso-
phy,' common alike to Christian advocates and the professors
of natural science, has led us too much to ignore the immense
practical service which Socrates and his followers rendered to
mankind. From them in effect comes the connected scheme
of virtues and duties within which the educated conscience of

• "Prolegomena to Ethics," pp. 269-276.

52 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

Christendom still moves, when it is impartially reflecting on
what ought to be done. Religious teachers have no doubt
affected the hopes and fears which actuate us in the pursuit
of virtue, or rouse us from its neglect. Religious societies
have both strengthened men in the performance of recognised
duties, and taught them to recognise relations of duty towards
those whom they might otherwise have been content to treat
as beyond the pale of such duties ; but the articulated scheme
of what the virtues and duties are, in their difference and in
their unity, remains for us now in its main outlines what the
Greek philosophers left it.

"When we come to ask ourselves what are the essential
forms in which, however otherwise modified, the will for true
good (which is the will to be good) must appear, our answer
follows the outlines of the Greek classification of the virtues.
It is the will to know what is true, to make what is beautiful,
to endure pain or fear, to resist the allurements of pleasure
{i.e., to be brave and temperate), if not, as the Greek would
have said, in the service of the State, yet in the interest of
some form of human society ; to take for one's self, and to give
to others, of those things which admit of being given and
taken, not what one is inclined to, but what is due."

This, then, is Hellenism, perhaps the most splendid product
of any single epoch in the world's history. But Hellenism
alone will not suffice for us. For Hellenism was founded on
slavery; and the curse of this slavery may be seen in its
philosophy, and even in its perfect art, exhibiting as it does a
rigid severity in those ornaments and accessories which are the
vehicle, for the free workman, of his humorous and inventive
enjoyment. We demand, then, a human or Christian Hel-
lenism ; a Hellenism which shall realise the true freedom of
every human being, not merely as the Greek thinker would

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 53

say, if his nature were unfit for slavery, but because his nature
is unfit for slavery. It was Christianity that first in principle
and then in practice broke down the distinction between Jew
and Greek, between slave and free, and in so doing not only
enlarged the area, but transformed the quality of virtue. My
duty to humanity is not only something wider, but also some-
thing higher than my duty to my own class in my own country.
If the higher standard set by our duty to man were as magnifi-
cently achieved as the Athenian of the great time achieved the
lower standard of his duty to the body of Athenian citizens
the ideal of Christian Hellenism, or Periclean Christianity,
would be attained.

Now we have a tolerably complete knowledge of the legal
and economical system of this brilliant community ; and with-
out for a moment supposing that we can transfer laws or
usages directly from an ancient State inhabited by, say 120,000
free persons and 380,000 slaves, to a modern nation consisting
of thirty million persons, all nominally free, yet there are certain
points in their mode of attacking their social problems which
still have instructiveness for us.

Socialism in the technical modern sense, that is, the com-
plete collective ownership of the means of production, did not
exist, I believe, in any ancient State ; but socialistic features,
in the way of a very positive relation, not a merely protective
relation, between the life of the private citizen and the action
of the public authority, were for good and for evil essential to
ancient communities.

Now I do trust that no one will imagine that I want to cut
the knot either for or against socialistic ideals by a reference
to ancient history or to ancient authority. I am not so foolish.
What I do think important is this : we cannot, it seems to me,
at any moment, consciously determine more than the next

54 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES,

Step in politics. But yet we who now live are shaping the
whole future course of society ; we are shaping it to some end
which will be different from anything that we can predict, but
will be the outcome, now unknown, of the progressive moral
ideals which for a few short years are entrusted to our keeping.
It is our duty therefore, not merely to do all we know, but to
know all we can. Our action is continually altering the cir-
cumstances of life ; the unknown future will be the result of
the new circumstances combined with the ideas which men
bring to meet them. And therefore, I think, it is not well
that we should ahvays be proposing definite plans or preaching
definite crusades. It is useful too, just to let our minds be
brought to bear upon each other, to give and take ideas about
important interests of life, to teach ourselves not to shy at the
newness of a new name, but to observe how, under conditions
other than ours, human nature has succeeded or has failed in
its great continual task. We thus gain practice in distinguish-
ing the undying purposes of humanity from those methods and
rules and customs which in our own country, or nation, or rank
of life, have become perhaps too rigid, and appear inevitable.
To discriminate the means from the end, the accidental from
tlie essential, is the highest task of theoretical as of practical
judgment.

I said that some socialistic features were essential to all
ancient communities : I mean especially the Greek commu-
nities, and to some extent Latin communities. I am not
speaking of what might be called primitive communism, al-
though in Sparta, for instance, it seems as if that had joined
hands with constitutional enactment : I am speaking of the
conscious legislative and administrative policy of very highly
civilised communities.

The truth of our assertion appears to some extent if we

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 55

merely call to mind what is rather a twice-told tale, the
peculiar meaning which the term city or state bore for a Greek.
The word which they employed was that from which our term
politics is derived, but the city or state did not mean to a
Greek merely the executive power, nor did politics mean the
mere machinery of government or of legislation. To cut this
matter short, I will say that whenever, in our highest mood,
we speak of England or of Great Britain not only as our home
and kindred, but as a historic force and as an ideal that
claims our devotion, then we may have some conception ot
what a Greek meant when he spoke of my city or my country.
The thousand complications or institutions which fill our lives
with other purposes did not exist for him. It was to the
state or city that he looked for his main activities and his main
enjoyments. If, for example, we think of our great Church
Societies and voluntary schools, or public charities, or again
of the development of music or the drama, the activities which
are thus brought to our minds would to a Greek be closely
associated with the State.

And this tendency received a peculiar cast from the
economic basis of the ancient commonwealth, as regarded its
public revenue. On the whole and in ordinary times, the
ancient commonwealth expected to pay its public expenses
out of its public property, just like an Oxford College or a
City Company. For example, the famous silver mines in
Attica were the property of the State, which let them to private
lessees under various kinds of agreement, but always, I think,
so that a good part of the unearned increment would come
back to the public. I am afraid that the extreme convenience
of having silver mines at home led the State to look with
covetous eyes at certain gold mines abroad, which were not its
property. But if you are to plunder other nations, perhaps

56 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

it is as well to do so in the interests of the public as in the
interests of private individuals. Or you may more truly say :
it is better for the public to have clean hands, as, on the
whole, I believe that the people now wish to have, whatever
may be done in their name. And by this high standard we
may judge that we are perhaps a little purer than the
Athenians. However, my immediate point is that the ancient
State had its own property, such as these silver mines, and did
not rest principally upon taxation. To be taxe.i^ on the other
hand, was the mark of an alien, who paid for the protection
which a citizen had of right. Indirect taxation, again, grew up
in the great trading States, but was not, as with us, a natural
and essential source of revenue.

Thus the citizen ^elt himself in the position of a man
administering a trust fund for the common good, rather than
in that of a man contributing more or less reluctantly to
expenses which he would therefore wish to cut down. This
feature gave a distinct impress to ancient finance ; but the old
system tended to break down under the stress of war and
commerce, and then showed its vicious side in the tendency
to throw the burden on others than the citizens by exacting
tribute from dependencies and by making war self-supporting.
At the same time, in case of actual need, the State would levy
percentages on the citizens' property without any scruple what-
ever. I think it is acknowledged to-day that we do not
justify the exaction of tribute from dependencies, however we
may practically oppress them by our commercial arrangements.
The tribute paid to Athens, however, was at first a very
reasonable contribution by the Confederacy to the common
defence j it was the pressure of later circumstances that made
it more or less a mark of t) ranny.

This economic self-dependence of the State, if it had_ a

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 57

selfish aspect, had also a very noble aspect. The organized
community was there, as a material fact, to represent the
higher life of the whole body of citizens : and no one could
mistake it for a mere police organization maintained by
reluctant contributions. And in Athens, under Pericles, this
general characteristic of ancient communities took a marked
and impressive form.

A word of digression may be permitted here.

I speak of Athens under Pericles. What does this mean ?
I answer with a quotation from Hegel.* " To be the first in
the State among this noble, free, and cultivated people of
Athens, was the good fortune of Pericles ; which raises our
estimate of his individuality to a level on which few human
beings can be placed. Of all that is great for humanity the
greatest thing is to dominate the wills of men who have wills of
their own ; for the dominating individuality must be both the
deepest and the most vital ; a destiny for a mortal man which
now can hardly be paralleled." The second part of the defining
sentence is what Carlyle invariably forgot ; there is nothing
great in ruling, if those who are ruled have no wills of \heir
own ; or in plain English, " any fool can govern with a state
of siege." We will now look at the institutions of those who
were governed by Pericles.

We have all heard, I think, Aristotle's pregnant summary of
the origin and purpose of society. It originates, he said, for
the sake of life, but is for the sake oi good life ; or in modern
phrase, its origin or root is in necessity, but its purpose or its
flower is perfection. I will mention a few of the Athenian
civic institutions, separating them so far as is possible accord-
ing to this natural distinctioa

*
• "Hist of Phil.," i. 350.

58 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

First, then, as to the material or economic basis of life.

In the time I speak of, there was at Athens no complete
Poor Law. Slavery dispenses with a Poor Law. If a citizen
fell into wretched poverty, I do not know that it was any one's
duty to relieve him. But of constructive legislation to avert
citizen pauperism there was a good deal, and I believe that,
in the time I speak of, citizen pauperism was almost unknown.
The constitutional history of Athens opens with a compre-
hensive agrarian reform, a hundred and fifty years before the
speech of Pericles, which, whatever its details were, arrested
the growth of serfdom, removed the immediate burden of debt
from the cultivators of the soil, and succeeded by legislative
enactment in effectually limiting the size ol landed estates. I
say " effectually," because nearly two hundred years later, after
an enormous commercial and industrial development, we find
that two-thirds of the citizen body were owners of land.

Further, it was according to law the duty of every citizen
to teach his son a trade. Aliens who practised a trade were
exceptionally permitted to become citizens, an early and most
sagacious law, intended to encourage the introduction of new
industries. And any citizen who had no visible occupation or
means of subsistence was Hable to be summoned and punished.
This is quite just, if occupations are to be had. The children
of citizens who fell in war were brought up at the public
charge, and public support was extended to citizens crippled
in war, and, probably later, to all citizens incapable of gaining
a livelihood. But this was not done by a self-acting law, but
by a special investigation in every case.

Another aspect of material life is the health of the people.
Of course there was none of what we call sanitary science;
but the direct common sense of the Greeks seems to have
shown them the value of good air and good water. Athens

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 59

itself had been rebuilt hurriedly after the Persian War, with
many narrow streets which were very likely wretched enough ;
but the harbour town, like many later Greek towns, was laid
out on a comprehensive plan under professional advice, with
a view to beauty and convenience, and no doubt also to air
and light. The system of water-courses, public baths, drinking-
fountains, gardens, gymnasia, concert-rooms, were all works of
the State for the material good of the citizens in general. The
terrible plague which desolated Athens in the Peloponnesian
War was favoured by the over-crowding of the city with the
country population that took refuge in it, and is no indication
of the normal sanitary state of Athens.

If, again, we look at the industrial aspect of Athenian life,
we find that the State nof only encouraged industry by its
general legislation, but in particular expended enormous sums
on the harbour, the commercial harbour as well as the war
harbour, with all its docks, warehouses, and fittings. One
particular set of buildings, in which ships were laid aside for
the winter, cost, we are told, a quarter of a million sterling,
corresponding to an enormously greater sum to-day. This was
a very large and very successful manipulation of capital in the
interest of the economic development of the community. But
the State did not, I think, carry on commerce or industry
itself, — it stopped short of organising labour, — but rather
suppUed these general utilities to individuals, recouping itself
to some extent by rates and tolls. The ancient State, we
should observe, usually farmed out the public revenue and
property, a very easy plan of management, and one which
preserves the unearned increment for the public; but it leaves
the task of organising industry to private enterprise, and is
now regarded as a primitive method and as a mark of deficient
organising power, although applicable in some particular de-

6o SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

partments, for instance, in dealing with land. I fear, too, that
somewhat tyrannous navigation laws and commercial laws
were employed in order to force the trade of the Eastern
Mediterranean into the harbours and markets of Athens, and
with notable success. I do not think that expedients of this
kind are entirely strange to the modern world.

Another contrivance for the benefit of Athenian citizens
came to be felt as tyrannical. It had several times happened
that the conquered lands of uncivilised people had been
annexed and distributed among Athenian citizens, who did not
cease to be citizens, and therefore formed valuable garrisons
in important trading districts, and thus were themselves pro-
vided for. But the land-hunger growing, this was done more
than once with the lands of Greek commonwealths which had
offended the powerful city. Now, as we all know, there is
no harm in plundering uncivihsed nations, but it is a serious
matter to plunder a civilised community that has powerful
friends and knows how to make an outcry. So that this
measure did bring Athens into conflict with the moral feeling
even of that age. There is a joke in Aristophanes which
represents the Athenian farmer as quite ready to believe that
the whole world is going to be measured out and given to
Athenian citizens. These things are just the seamy side of
the single-hearted determination of the Athenians that their
city should be prosperous, I think that modern democracies
are a little more scrupulous, if they know what is going on.

Such are some of the principal ways in which the State
cared for the necessities of life or the material welfare of its
members. While I am writing this I see published in an
evening paper the opinion of an American observer on the
municipal activity of Glasgow, which appears in some respects
to illustrate what the Athenian spirit might do to-day. But of

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 6l

course the economical problem is very different for us from
what it was for a slave state, although, to meet the want of
slaves, we have machinery ; and if we can get no good results
out of the productivity of labour increased by this means, the
fault must lie somewhere in our arrangements.

Now I go on to ask what the Athenian State did for the
moral welfare of its citizens, with a view to the purpose of
good life involved in the continued existence of society, as
distinct from the material necessity in which its roots are
planted.

The larger part of what the State thus did for the citizens
consisted in its being for them what it was. I said that the
State was to them all and more that, when we are at our best,
our country is to us. We ourselves, Pericles says, have created
a large portion of our country's greatness. The pronoun "we"
is so often loosely employed, that it is hard to realise that these
words were literally accurate. It is only the citizens of a small
Sovereign State who can use such an expression with hteral
truth. No political interest known to us can compare with
this intensity of direct relation. Whether, however, we may
not, by a re-animation of the civic ideal, and the organization
of municipal duties, regain the Greek solidarity in the spirit,
though we cannot in the letter, is a question worth pondering.

But I will pass to more specific matters. It was obviously
the distinct determination of Pericles and his age that at any
cost — and the cost, both moral and material, was great —
every Athenian citizen, rich or poor, leisured, professional, or
wage-earning, should be able to exercise the essential functions
of a citizen, and should share in the essential culture and
recreations of a citizen. Citizenship to them was a life, not
one or two rights or duties. We must remember that repre-
sentative government was unknown, and therefore, if the

62 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

citizen was to share in political functions, his personal parti-
cipation was necessary, in a degree which we liave supposed
to be entirely superseded by our representative institutions.
Whether our representative institutions have not a little bit
played us a trick in this matter, and whether, though we
cannot all sit in the Imperial Parliament, yet some form of
personal participation in the management of affairs is not
necessary to the true life of a citizen — these are issues which
are coming upon us again, and in the decision of which the
spirit of the Greek ideal may possibly re-assert itself.

The conception of office or government to a Greek included
all definite exercise of political power. To take part in the
general assembly of the citizens, or in the proceediHgs of any
Council or Board possessing executive authority, was thought
of as an office or function of government, just as was the
function of general or of magistrate. There was the more
truth in this feeling because the executive officials were not
a responsible ministry, but simply carried out the decrees
of the assembly, so that any citizen might initiate some very
important resolution. When it happened that a trusted adviser
of the people was also an official, then he was rather like a
powerful Prime Minister. But this was only a coincidence.

Now no doubt a great number of citizens did actually serve
as officials in our sense of the term, all the lower offices at
least being paid offices, and most of them annual offices,
and moreover being in the shape of Boards or Commissions
composed of a great number of members. It is curious that
the more democratic way of appointing officials was always
taken to be appointment by lot rather than election by vote.
I suppose the feeling was that you want to get one of your-
selves, and not the nominee of a party, nor necessarily a
very distinguished man. It reminds one of our question

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 6^

about labour representation; do we want a distinguished
advocate briefed with labour views, or a genuine type of the
labour class? I should think the advocate more effective
for a particular measure, but the genuine man more trust-
worthy all round. It is best to have both, I should imagine.
Election by vote was applied to a few skilled officials, but
the ordinary officials were appointed by lot No one would
stand who was ridiculously incompetent ; public opinion
would take care of that in so small a society. And this
custom alone was enough to give great reality to the political
power of the citizens. If you stood for an office which went
by lot, no insignificance of \our own and no organised opposi-
tion could -prevent your getting it.

We shall never introduce the lot in modern life ; but we
might introduce the system of serving the State in rotation,
which has much the same effect in pressing ordinary people
into the public service, and often discovering them to be
much more competent than they knew. Besides, this makes
it a duty to be competent for the public service, which is a
duty worth enforcing, and makes the mass of citizens more
careful and more expert as critics of what is done.

The ordinary Athenian, therefore, who could dispense with
or intermit the exercise of his trade on condition of receiving
a small salary for his year of office, was pretty certain, if
he wished, to hold actual executive office several times in
his life.

But this was not the burning question of the fully de-
veloped democracy. The burning question was whether the
State was to take special precautions in order that the mass
of citizens should practically be able to exercise two general
governmental functions ; that of sitting as jurymen, in the
huge popular juries of 500 persons or more which were the

64 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

supreme tribunals of Athens, and that of speaking and voting
in the popular assembly, which, assisted by certain officials
and committees, actually conducted the affairs of the State.
And the tremendous step by which Pericles determined the
future of the democracy was the decision to pay the jury-
men about 4|^. every day that they served, and to make
another kind of payment with reference to the religious
festivals, which I will mention directly. These were followed
up on the proposal of some other politicians by the payment
of the citizens whenever they attended the popular assembly.

It is worth while to pause for a moment here, and to con-
sider the amount of these payments in relation to the wages
or salaries customary at Athens.

Each of them did not, in the time I speak of, exceed half
the day's wage of an ordinary workman. Even if earned
every day, they would not suffice to support a family in
comfort, and the popular assembly only took place as a
rule four days in the month, so that it at least could not
tempt a man to desert his trade. The juries, indeed, sat
nearly every day, and a citizen who was on the ])anel for
the year would hardly be able to exercise his trade that year.
But most citizens had some little property, and therefore
would be enabled by the payment to discharge their public
function, though at a slight sacrifice. The idea was not that
a man should live on his public function, but that, if anxious
to discharge it, he should not be absolutely prevented by
having to work. The risk was, of course, that the idle and
incapable people should fasten on this occupation as a means
of livelihood, and in time this evil did spring up.

We can hardly compare the actual wages or incomes of
that time with our own ; they all appear to us extraordinarily
small, partly because of the enormously different purchasing

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 6$

power of money ; partly because of a real simplicity of life.
We can, however, see that relatively speaking there was a far
greater equality in the means of existence than there is to-day.
Property was widely distributed, and regular wages or salaries
were tolerably uniform through society, in spite of the de-
pressing effect which slave labour must have produced on
the payment of manual industry, and on its reputation. The
Athenians were comparatively free from the prejudice against
manual labour, as the speech of Pericles shows. The senator,
the architect, the stone-cutter, the citizen soldier all received
their ninepence a day. But members of some fashionable
professions commanded fancy prices, i.e., actors, singers,
painters, and above all, teachers of oratory and politics. An
ambassador, on the other hand, seems to have been thought
highly salaried at half a crown a day. The truth is, that
regular cuizen callings were pretty uniformly paid from high
to low; the "stars," especially travelling artists, secured higher
remuneration.

This equality of wages is a very striking fact, and points
to a healthy state of things. I suppose that no one now-a-
days would grudge a certain recognition of special excellence
in work, which in fact the great Greek artists and teachers
did secure, in spite of prejudice and custom. But in the
first place, the gigantic differences of remuneration now
customary in society do not represent a proportional difference
in merit, but on the contrary, are often quite fatal to excellence
by changing art and science and technical skill into mere
money-making ; and, secondly, I must and will reiterate with
the philosophers and moralists, and against, if necessary, all
the existmg appearances of society, that wages or property,
one's share of the produce of society, is not there to reward
one for doing work, but either to give one work to do, or

F

66 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

to enable one to do it; and it is by that standard alone
that its adequacy must be judged. I am not saying that
this can be secured, except by a more enlightened public
opinion ; I only say that in the highly refined society of
Athens, in spite of considerable inequalities of wealth and
much class feeling, it was much more nearly secured than
now, and that the state of things in which it is secured is
far more healthy and more noble than that in which it is
not.

This was a digression. However this may be, it is certain
that in the later age of Pericles about half a good day's wage
was paid to every citizen who applied for it every time he
attended the public assembly or served on a jury. And we
see that as regards the assembly the purpose was achieved,
and all citizens were able to attend it. Socrates was once
encouraging a young man who was nervous about speaking
in public, and asked him, " Why, are you afraid of the fullers,
and shoemakers, and carpenters, and smiths, and peasants,
and merchants, and shopkeepers ? for these are the sort of
people who compose the assembly." Of course the political
experiment was precarious, and if you like, you may infer that
in the end it failed. That is to say, the city was defeated in
a disastrous war, which is admitted not to have been well
managed after the death of Pericles ; the empire, upon which
the Athenians had come to depend for their trade, was lost ;
pauperism appeared in the ranks of citizens, and all the in-
herent selfishness of the ancient commonwealth came to the
surface. Whether a different development might not have
led to equal failure, without equal achievement, is a question
that cannot now be answered. We have inherited from that
democracy an imperishable legacy of history, of morality, of
science and of beauty ; and those who have most deeply

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 67

Studied the connection between a nation's reflective thought
and its poHtical and social life, will be slowest to assert that
even Plato, or Demosthenes, or Aristotle could ever have
existed apart from the great democratic commonwealth in
which they found so much to condemn.

One more analogous institution remains to be spoken of.
The speech of Pericles alludes to games or competitions, and
sacred ceremonies. Probably we have all heard something of
the importance which the public religious festivals had in the
public culture of a Greek State. The plays which were per-
formed in the great open-air theatre were a part of these
festivals, and were full of the sort of interest which appealed
to the people, being sometimes splendid political satire and
broad farce, and sometimes great tragedies turning on moral
problems which excited and interested the Greek mind. In
fact, these tragedies were not only great poems, but played
the part of sermons and lectures and musical performances as
well. They correspond to our Church services, only they
were thoroughly popular, and yet on a much higher intellec-
tual level. The citizens, when they attended these great shows,
felt they were enjoying and profiting by something which
belonged to them as citizens, and was a part of their citizen
life. Therefore, just as we think that every one should be
educated, and the Church should be open to any one who
wants to go there — so long as it is a National Church — so it
was the determination of Pericles that no citizen should be
prevented by poverty from attending these performances. He
might have opened the theatre free, but, I suppose in order
to make the richer people pay, without having any invidious
distinction between free seats and seats that were not free, he
proposed to require a small entrance payment, but to furnish
the entrance money from the public treasury to all citizens who

68 SOME SOCIALISIIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

applied for it. This payment was at first about 2>^. of our
money ; it was, like the others, a strictly defined payment, in
order to make possible a distinct function essential to citizen-
ship, just like our grants in aid of education, or still more, like
the remission of school fees. The consequence, indeed, or at
least the end of it, was that in the next century, when the citizen
spirit had degenerated, they simply, under the pretext of a pay-
ment like this, divided among themselves the revenues which
should have adorned the State in peace, or protected it in war.
People will tell you that Peric'es introduced the thin end of the
wedge of this bad habit. Perliaps he did ; all one knows is
that great results were obtained by his measures, and might
or might not have been obtained by any other measures.

I certainly think that no harm could be done if our muni-
cipalities were, for example, to maintain or subsidise first-rate
public orchestras under really skilled direction. This would
have an effect in the long run of which we can, under present
conditions, have no conception.

On the same principles, again, rested the enormous expendi-
ture upon tlie architecture of the city. I alluded to this in
speaking of the sanitary and of the commercial foresight of
the administration ; but the most remarkable feature of all is
the artistic decoration of the public buildings. One particular
building, which took five years in erection, cost half a million,
sterling, and there are many more of equal splendour. The
largest private properties we hear of at Athens are of nothing
like the amount which was spent on a single public building
— not a tenth part of it, I should suppose. This outlay may
have been extravagance, and I fear it was partly drawn from;
the tribute of subject States ; on the other hand, it was for
the enjoyment and education of the whole citizen body, who
thus walked about among new and complete works of art, the

SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES. 69

"weather-Stained fragments of which our best art students are
glad to copy laboriously. If the public was extravagant, the
individual was simple in his tastes ; and this concentrated
magnificence was far less costly to the community than is to-
day the luxurious and tasteless ostentation of the individual
millionaire. I will read a passage from Demosthenes, delivered
just eighty years after the speech of Pericles, in which he con-
trasts in this respect the age of Pericles with his own degener-
ate days.*

" Moreover, former times were times of national prosperity
and splendour; no man then stood out above his fellows.
The proof of it is this. Some of you may know the style
of house of Themistocles or Miltiades, or of the illustrious
men of that day ; you see it is no grander than the mass of
houses. On the other hand, the public buildings and edifices
were of a magnificence and beauty such that posterity cannot
surpass them — the gateway of the Acropolis yonder, the
docks, the porticoes, and other permanent adornments of
Athens. To-day your statesmen have vast fortunes ; some of
them have built for themselves houses grander than many
of the public edifices ; some, again, have bought up more land,
than all of you who are here together hold. As for the public
buildings which you erect and whitewash, I am ashamed to
tell of their meanness and squalor."

Thus we have seen that to a very great extent, by adminis-
tration and by custom and sentiment, essential social equality
and refinement, with a general simplicity of individual life,
were secured for a time at Athens. It is just worth mention-
ing, moreover, that special burdens were imposed in rotation
on the wealthier citizens, but always conjoined with oppor-
tunities of distinction and good service. A man might be
* Butcher, " Demosthenes," p. 15.

70 SOME SOCIALISTIC FEATURES OF ANCIENT SOCIETIES.

called upon to fit out a ship of war, but then he would com-
mand it ; or to bear the cost of the performance of a play,
but then he would have credit for his taste and his liberality.
So long as there was a genuine public spirit, I think this was a
noble relation between the State and the individual. The
idea of compulsory volunteer service is one that might be
worth reviving.

One remark must be made with reference to the rapid
decay of the system which I have briefly sketched. Economi-
cal socialism is no bar against moral individualism. The
resources of the State may be more and more directly de-
voted to the individual's material well-being, while the indi-
vidual is becoming less and less concerned about any well-
being except his own. It is in this change that the decay of
Periclean Athens consists, and that the hazard lies of all posi-
tive relations between the public authority and the necessities
of individual life. The careful adjustment of means to ends,
and of advantages to the functions which demanded them,
did not save the Athenian commonwealth from a degradation
which depended perhaps on the deeper tendencies of the age.
But to this careful adjustment the measure of success that
was achieved was undoubtedly owing, and after all that can
be said against it, the system must in many respects command
our grateful admiration.

I have tried to suggest here and there how an analogous
spirit might embody itself to-day; but even if no special
lessons are deducible from this glorious past for our very
different conditions, it still is encouraging to know that a
series of great statesmen did once succeed by a definite legis-
lative and administrative policy in realizing such an ideal a?
Pericles describes, within a very highly civilized industrial and
commercial society.

IV
ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION*

MANY influences combine at the present moment in
favour of educational reform in a certain definite
direction — the direction of what is sometimes called manual
instruction.

First among these influences we might reckon the "Kinder-
garten" movement, tracing its descent from Frobel, and
through him, perhaps, from Rousseau, Schiller, and Goethe.
The principle of this movement is, in Frobel's own words, to
impart "a human education by the appropriate training of the
productive or active impulses." A fine and complete school
on this principle — not a mere kindergarten — is Dr. Adler's
school in New York, which our technical commissioners refer
to as based on a method of " creative " education.

The idea of calling into play the productive impulse was
not in itself new — the teaching of Latin versifying might be
defended on this ground — ^but in its application to manual
work, and to the early training of children, it was practically a
new departure. The kindergarten employments, especially
Frobel's highest employment, clay-modelling, are closely akin
to, and an excellent basis for, the kind of teaching which I
am to discuss to-day.

* An address delivered before the Self-Help Society, at Oxford, on
behalf of the Home Arts and Industries Association. This Association
has no connection with any other Society for which I ha\'e lectured.

72 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION.

Another influence at work in a similar direction is that of
the demand for natural-science teaching. The direct contact
with objects — letting the boy feel, as Professor Huxley has
said, the pull of the magnet for himself — the work of the
microscopical or of the physical laboratory, and the elementary
handwork required of the student in such laboratories, all tend
to confer an instinctive grasp of principle, and a habitual
accuracy of perception.

And, thirdly, we have to grapple with the urgent problem
of what is known as technical education — that is, education in
applied science and art, and in the use of tools. It is all-
important that this problem should be rightly understood, and
to a great extent I think that it is rightly understood. Assist-
ance even in our commercial perplexities cannot be obtained
from education which is not educational. In the Finsbury
Technical College, under Professor Silvanus Thompson, no
trades are taught. Sir Philip Magnus lays most stress on
teaching the use of tools. On such teaching and such prin-
ciples as are represented by him and by Professor Silvanus
Thompson I have only to say that, although excellent, they
depend for their efficiency on the material delivered to them
by the elementary school, and on the faculties awakened by
still more purely educational methods. We do not know of
what British workmen are capable till we have seen a genera-
tion thoroughly educated from the first by vital and plastic
methods.

In presence of these new influences there is a certain danger
that the attitude of reformers to existing educational methods
should be unduly hostile. The three movements to which I
have referred are each of them capable of being regarded as a
revolution against mere book-learning. With any such atti-
tude those who care for education can have no sympathy;

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 73

unless mere book-learning means book-learning which is not
intelligent, and which arouses no interest. The cure for that
defect would be, not less book-learning, but more. A pupil
who in a true sense has learnt to read, has mastered a more
valuable art than any handicraft. I do not say that there are
ver}' many such pupils in our elementary schools. But educa-
tional reform, as I understand it, aims, by a more vital and
active instruction, at arousing the interest of the pupils, and
at stimulating their craving for knowledge. We should regard
the educational movement of this century as a single, many-
sided progress. I am impatient when I hear our own faults
laid at the door of our zealous and progressive educationists.
Our own grudging spirit towards elementary education, our
own cast-iron regulations, and our own demand to see some-
thing for our money, are the main causes of its mechanical
character. I have spoken to an energetic teacher in a London
school, skilled in kindergarten methods, and when I asked
her, "Can you use kindergarten employments in your
school?" she replied, "I do all I can with a division of sixty
children." All work of this type needs separate and distinct
preparation for each single pupil. If we are tempted to fancy
that our educationists have no zeal for improved educational
methods, we should bear in mind that the London School
Board has tried to set up a carpenter's shop, but was promptly
surcharged for it by the auditor ; that this same Board employs
a most efficient kindergarten instructress to supervise its infant
schools ; that in some large Board Schools, especially in
Bradford and Birmingham, there is excellent elementary
science teaching, all of which is training of hand and eye ;
and that an exhibition of appliances for improved geographical
instruction has been held 'under the auspices of the Bradford
School Board, at which there were shown models of the sur-

74 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN BDUCATION.

rounding district made by local schoolmasters, that prove their
will and capacity to teach, by the modelling process, the
structure of hill and valley in that beautiful region of York-
shire. I may add that Her Majesty's Inspector at Bradford
himself devotes two evenings in the week to holding a class in
joiners' work in a cellar under a Board School, at which he is
assisted by elementary teachers ; and one teacher, he hopes,
will shortly open a class for drawing, followed by construction
of objects. I call that pretty good for a man who actively
superintends the education of 80,000 children. America, too,
affords good examples of the solidarity of the educational
movement. Manual instruction is there becoming well estab-
hshed, and is splendidly successful. There is a fine Manual
School in Chicago, estabhshed by the Commercial Club (a
dining club of leading citizens) out of their own pockets, and
worked with the best results. At the great Pullman works the
woodcarving is all artistic handwork of a high class ; and the
decorative design throughout the States is said to be superior
to what we have in England. " Oh, yes," it may be said, " this
is the commercial and industrial acuteness of the Americans ;
no doubt they organize their education with a special view to
industrial aptitude." But I believe that is just the reverse of
the truth. The success of their education is due, I am in-
formed, to the large ideas with which it is organized, and to
their constantly aiming, as their central purpose, at the moral
development of citizens.

In treating of the requirements of educational reformers, I
have thus far spoken simply of instruction in the principles of
industrial handicrafts. No one would deny the value of such
training — the system known as "Slojd" is a very valuable
form of it — and I hope to see a carpenter's shop attached to
every elementary school throughout the country.

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 75

But there is something more that can be done, and that has
been done, and this is, to combine with instruction in the
general elements of handicraft a training in some branch of
work that has artistic quality. We are not now speaking of
great art ; not of picture painting, for instance, or of any art
that deals directly with human action and passion. We are
speaking of what are called the lesser arts. It is not quite
easy to define them. They might be called the decorative
arts, but they include, for instance, glass blowing and pottery,
which are not merely decorative, because the ivhole object has
to be made in beautiful form. But all the lesser arts are
decorative in the widest sense, that is to say, they are not
independent ; they have something to do with useful objects.
They do not make a thing like a picture or a statue, having its
whole reason of existence in its artistic value ; at least, it is my
feeling that when they try to do this, they are beginning to go
astray. But yet, though not ivholly independent, these arts
are in some degree independent or free, and if they were not,
they could not be fine art at all. It must be possible in a fine
art for the craftsman to indulge himself, and express his enjoy-
ment and his fancy, in the lines of the form or in the patterns
and colours of the surface. This freedom has many degrees,
and it is true that fine art is rooted in sound workmanship and
fitting construction, and it is a little dangerous to distinguish
fine art from handicraft. Still the distinction must be made,
although it must be cautiously handled. Common joiners'
work has not the same capabilities of expression as decorative
carving, although, of course, a box or a door may be turned
out in a pleasing way or in an ugly way.

Then, before going further, we must take notice of the point
we have reached ; that is to say, that the lesser fine arts are
handicrafts, although they are something more. In learning

76 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION.

one of these arts, the pupil is trained from the beginning in
the care of tools, the use of tools, precise measurement, certain
and accurate cutting or modelling, and, above all, in the love of
true and good execution, and I suppose this love of truth, if
I may call it so, is the meeting-point of handicraft and fine art.

And then, moreover, these lesser arts, still considered as
mere handicrafts, exercise those mental qualities which we call
physical, aptness and precision of hand and eye, with great
economy of muscular labour. The work is less of a mechani-
cal toil, and more of a plastic training, than is the case, for ex-
ample, with the blacksmith's trade. And this is of the utmost
importance when we remember that we are speaking of evening
classes for lads who will have been all day in the field or in
the workshop. Great versatility and flexibility of talent is found
to be imparted by training in these arts. Of course, however,
there should be at the root of the whole system instruction
in carpentering and in the way objects are put together.

But now we go a step further. I said that these arts are
something more than handicrafts ; however humble, yet they
are branches of fine art, and are capable of beauty. I need
not spend time in proving, here in Oxford, that the enjoyment
of beauty is a good thing. I may assume, I think, not only
that it is one of the best things in life, but that it is eminently
wholesome for everybody. But I had better just point out
how, in particular, the enjoyment and perception of beauty
display their value in the sort of education which is our subject
to-day. I am not going to say that beauty is valuable because
it is useful ; but I should like to point out how it becomes
useful by reason of being so valuable.

The perception of beauty implies, above all things, an
awakened mind. It consists in an active sympathy and in-
sight, a fresh and vigorous spirit, that apprehends the expres-

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 77

sion, and the life, or truth, of all that it meets wiih, just as a
great portrait-painter seizes a face or a figure. And so, when
the sense of beauty is ever so little aroused, the mind has
acquired a new organ. Nature, in the first place, with all its
forms and movements and colours, becomes an endless source
of interest. Experience shows, what we should expect, that
plain country boys can thus have their eyes opened and see
what they never saw before. You have a country wheelwright,
who can carve a panel of oak leaves from nature, and who
becomes an enthusiast for naturalistic design. This means
that he has acquired the love of form, and the world is a
different place to him after his eyes are thus opened. And,
in the second place, this same awakening of the mind involves
an appreciation of beauty in art. To begin with, the work of
good art-workmen of to-day is put before the pupil as a model ;
and then his attention can be and should be gradually directed
to the work of craftsmen belonging to other times and
countries. It is something, for example, to open the eyes oi
Englishmen to the beauty of the stone or wood-carving of
their Cathedral Churches ; and we can hardly suppose that
this beauty can be felt without strengthening the sense of a
human and national inheritance, which is worth preserving
and ennobling. And when we have, in every locality, those
perfectly arranged and bounteously-filled museums of beautiful
work, which are among the dreams that demand to be realized,
then we may come to see what a force of interest and
sympathy is implied in the awakened sense of beauty in art.

So far, then, we may fairly conclude that the lesser arts, not
to speak of their advantages as handicrafts, are, as fine art,
capable of doing for those whose education is necessarily
short and practical, something analogous to what great litera-
ture ought to do for those whose education is longer and more

7S ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION.

general. I am not admitting, of course, that any education
ought to be wholly without literature.

It is my conviction that a Self-Help Society, in as far as it
operates by educational means, will attain its purpose more
successfully the more definitely it adheres to the largest view
of education. And I mean by the largest view of education
the persuasion that there is no form of training, the value of
which is not ultimately moral. To aim in education at quick
returns, at results commercially available, is simply to court
failure. What can certainly — I had almost said easily — be
done by a training in some branch of art, is to intensify the
sense of the value of life. This sense, I take it, is the very
root and spring of Self-Help. To heighten it, is to make life
more worth living, and therefore more worth developing. I
am anxious to make this point quite clear. Of course, in a
society such as the Home Arts and Industries Association,
many purposes and feelings are legitimately represented. But
I think that I am justified in disclaiming for the Association
any main intention of training professional art-workmen, or of
encouraging amateurs of any class to gam a livelihood by the
production of knick-knacks to sell at exhibitions or bazaars.
The object of the Association, as I understand it, is educa-
tional in the largest sense. That is to say, its efforts are
directed towards developing a capacity which is the birthright
of a civilized human being. And this purpose is general,
dealing with the leisure time of all working people, and 7iot
chiefly or exclusively with those who are engaged in the
decorative trades.

Of course we are glad enough that men or boys should
earn something in their evening hours, and we earnestly
desire that local industries should be revived, and that the
whole trade of decoration and design in this country should be

Artistic handwork in education. 79

set upon the only solid foundation, that of a genuine love of
beauty, and habit of beautiful production, engrained in the
national mind. But- none of these results can be securely
attained except by a thorough-going devotion to the perception
of beauty as one of the best things in life. If we teach in any
other spirit than this, we instil the principles of ugliness in
imparting the principles of beauty. Speaking for myself alone,
the sort of tidings from our classes which I am glad to hear
is, not that a lad is making a lot of money by selling his
carving or his brass work, but, as I heard this spring, that a
pitman in Midlothian walks a couple of miles to the class in
the evening, because he enjoys the work ; or that a gardener
says he has been a gardener all his life, but he never knew
the beauty of flowers till he was taught it in the Home Arts
Class ; or that the boys of a club in Whitechapel have made
a bit of clay modelling or a window box of mosaic tiles to
decorate their clubhouse; or that an Irish lad pursues his
wood-carving, literally through thick and thin, in an Irish
cabin where there is hardly a clean place to lay it down.

It was, I believe, in the simple determination to do
something towards reviving the love of beauty among the
people, that a lady several years ago established some small
classes in wood-carving near her country home. At a later
time these classes were united with others in different parts
of England, Scotland, and Ireland for the purpose of sharing
the use of models and designs, and generally with a view to
the interchange of experience. The name first adopted was
Cottage Arts Association ; but by the time that, in the begin-
ning of 1885, the London studio and office were established, the
present name, " Home Arts and Industries Association," had
been adopted. Three annual exhibitions have been held in
London, the first in the summer of 1885, the third in the summer

8o ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION.

of 1887. In the interval between these two dates the classes
increased from 60 to about 200, and the number of pupils from,
I suppose, 400 or 500 to about 2,000. (Now, January, 1889,
there are over 4,000 pupils.)

The Association, as it stands at present, consists of two
parts : —

1. Its actual mission is carried out by means of little
evening classes, held chiefly by lady volunteers, also by many
clergy and \vorking men in vaiious places throughout Great
Britain and Ireland. In these classes the different branches
of artistic handwork are taught to working lads and men, and
I daresay to some girls, all of whom are simply attracted by
the love of the pursuit. No previous knowledge is demanded
of the pupils, and if any charge is made, it is very trifling.

2. These classes, however, would be of comparatively little
value, but for the operations of the London centre. The office
and studio there are in charge, not of mere letter-writing
secretaries, but of ladies who thoroughly understand the various
branches of the work, and are practically skilled in them.
Advice and guidance, which are perpetually needed, go from
there constantly to the little classes in London and the
country, and more especially the entire artistic nutriment is
supplied from that centre — that is to say, there is a special
committee which collects and selects and produces designs
such as seem good in themselves and suitable for instruction.
These designs are circulated among the classes, just as if the
office was a large circulating library of these things. And
equally important .with the designs are the models : bits of
work of different kinds actually carried out by a good work-
man, and sometimes with part of the work only just begun, so
as to show the process. These models are sent about by post,
with the corresponding designs, and they show the pupils not

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 8 1

only how to set to work upon a particular design, but how to
interpret outline designs in general, and what good work looks
like. They are unanimously said to have a most inspiring
effect on the pupils. It is exceedingly hard to meet the
demand of the classes for supplies of these things ; it is a
question partly of money and partly of labour — labour so
highly skilled as not to be reducible to a question of money.
The society has had a roughish time of poverty, during which
it has depended for its daily work mainly on the self-sacrificing
labour of a band of good women. There can be no doubt
whatever, although invaluable help has been given by men,
that from the very beginning of the work the burden and heat
of the day has been borne by women. The Society, though by
no means wealthy, has now a certain breathing time, which it
will use in placing itself fully on a level with all demands that
can be made upon it.

Then, further, besides all this correspondence and supply of
nutriment, the London studio organizes training classes, where
intending teachers are trained in the work by professional
instructors. And, also, all the appliances for work being there,
and competent teachers on the spot, class-holders who come
up to town for a day or two can go there and get special
difficulties solved, and can have a single lesson in their subject,
which is often of the very greatest use to them. These lessons,
I ought to say, have to be paid for, and so have the courses of
training at the studio. I believe 2S. 6d. a lesson is the fee.

It is this constant communication with a centre where work
is being carried on, and where competent and energetic
workers are collecting experience and gathering stores of
designs, that forms the distinctive merit of the Home Arts
Association. But this subject of centralization raises some
more questions of great interest which I will touch on very

G

82 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION.

shortly, viz., centralization in the supply of designs, in finance,
and in control over the goodness of the class-work. After
speaking shortly of these questions, I will return to what is
perhaps of most immediate interest, the work of the little
classes scattered up and down throughout the country.

I listened the other day to a most excellent paper upon
Technical Education, read by a working man — a compositor
by trade — and I was much struck by his horror of centraliza-
tion. Whatever you do, he said in effect, for Heaven's sake do
not centralize. Leave the localities free to find out the educa-
tion that suits themselves. Don't let them be hampered with
a board of theorists in London. His anti-governmental ardour
was partly explained by the fact that he had been reading
Herbert Spencer.

But the existence of this strong and healthy local self- feeling
illustrates the point which I want to make about centralization
in the supply of designs. I ought to observe, however, that
our centre is not managed by theorists, but is a working
school, which makes a great difference. Apart from this, the
function of the centre, as I think we all understand it, is to be
the focus of the capacities and resources of the Association.
Of course, it must also keep the Society in contact with all
other sources of help ; it has books and museums within reach,
and it welcomes the aid of men practically skilled in artistic
subjects, but not exclusively devoted to Home Arts work. So
that, especially in the beginning, the centre does seem a little
independent, even despotic, and it will always have certain
advantages in this way from its position in a metropolis.
Merely to have the South Kensington Museum at command is
an enormous advantage. Still, all the branches ought, as they
come to have any independent ideas or talents, to re-act upon
the centre. They ought all to help in the collection of

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 83

designs, which is a most laborious task. They can send up
pieces of good work on loan ; they can send up drawings,
photographs, rubbings of beautiful things hidden away in
country houses or in local museums. They can hunt up local
carvers, and help in the laborious and costly work of providing
models. And I hope, speaking for myself,. that there is more
than all this in the future. If the teaching given falls on good
ground, if the love and perception of beauty revive throughout
the country, together with a common practice of art, there will
be some minds in which the perception will assume a creative
form, and the practice of art will lead to the progress of design.
If the movement has hfe in it, I think this must happen.
Already some localities, especially Scotland and Ireland, have
preferences for this or that class of design. These local
preferences show the frame of mind out of wliich local schools
might spring, and will at any rate influence in their degree the
work of the whole Society. Centralization in this sense, an
interchange of influences throughout the whole country by
means of the centre, is the very life of an organization.

I just allude to the matter of finance, because it is- ana-
logous to that of design. At present the Society gets its
money, as to some extent it gets its designs,, wherever it
can — from the general public ; and it expends on the nutri-
ment supplied to the classes immensely more than the
minimum subscription covers. This must be so at first, and
while the work is, as at present, rapidly progressing, because
the classes are naturally poor when they first start, and have
enough to do to meet their own expenses. But when classes
become rich by sale of work, which is made possible for
them by the assistance they receive at so very cheap a rate
(55. a year for each class), it will obviously become a recog-
nised obligation that they should tax themselves to help in

84 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION.

extending to others the advantages by which they have so
largely profited. This has, in fact, been done in some few-
cases ; and such cases should supply a large item in the
revenue of the Society, as the proportion of well-established
classes to new ones increases. It should not be all giving
on the side of the Central Society, either in the work of
furnishing designs, or in the matter of expenditure. One-
sidedness is equally unhealthy in both concerns.

I may be asked, — Then why do you not have a higher
subscription for the classes? This subscription was originally
2^. 6i/., but has been raised to 5^., and I think, personally,
that there is an unanswerable reason for raising it no higher.
You cannot have a tariff according to the wealth of your
locality ; many localities are very poor ; your teachers, when
they start a class, may be put to the expense of a pound
or two for materials and tools; and it may often happen
that they have not at first been able to interest many friends.
Obviously the classes would often not be started at all if
you asked for half a-guinea or a guinea from a teacher who
is to do hard work as a volunteer, and may besides be
involved in some slight expense. On the other hand, I feel
strongly that those who wish well to the cause, and whose
locality is profiting in this way, ought to think about be-
coming ordinary guinea subscribers to the Association.

Then again : I have been asked at one of these lectures
whether the Society has any co7itrol over the competence of
the volunteer teachers throughout the country, and over the
way in which they do their work. Well, the genius loci
suggests the idea of an examination, but there is no entrance
examination in which an intending teacher could be ploughed !
But there is much more control in practice than one might
think possible when any one can take or leave the work at

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 85

pleasure. The root of all the control is that most people
who take up this work are in earnest and mean to do their
best. . That being so, the mere fact of receiving good designs
and models, which they are glad to accept if only because
they do not know where else to get any, has from the
first an educating influence. Many volunteers, of course, are
highly competent 'teachers when they begin; but nearly all
are glad to receive advice and criticism from the studio ;
they appeal to it in their perplexities ; and if they show
work at the Exhibition, which they are eager to do, they
find that it has to stand beside really good productions, of
which I am happy to say there is now a pretty large supply.
The work is judged, and obtains or does not obtain a certifi-
cate; the teacher is perhaps taken round the Exhibition
by some competent person, or has a letter of criticism written
to him or her. I do not speak as an expert ; but I am
informed that it is really wonderful to see the improvement
which is thus effected in the work of a class. And, of
course, the teachers are very eager, too eager, to sell ; and
on the whole, the best work sells best. When you see it all
in a room together, the difference is striking even to a not
highly-trained eye. I do not doubt that some horrors are
perpetrated in the dark places of the land ; we can only
say that a steady pressure is kept up, which gradually raises
the level of the work. Such a movement as this is essentially
two-sided. A good teacher, it is said, will always be a
learner ; and it most be brought home to all of us who
are interested in the progress of education, that in the mission
which we find so fascinating, of educating the working classes,
there is involved the corresponding mission of educating
ourselves.

And now I will return to the point at which the organiza-

86 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION,

tion actually performs the function for the sake of which
it exists ; that is, to the little evening classes in London and
the country, in which different branches of art are taught
to working lads and men.

First, I will speak very shortly and generally of what is
necessary in order to start a class, and then a little more
fully of what, as it seems to me, should^ be the teacher's
point of view in the education that is given.

In order to start a class, I believe that very little is wanted
besides pupils and a teacher. You may ask me, with Scott's
Antiquary, " And a httle money would be necessary also,
would it not?" and I should reply, with Hermann Douster-
svvivel, ** Bah ! one trifle, not worth talking about, might be
necessaries." It is necessary to raise enough money to start
with tools and materials, and to supply the class with them
for some little time ; because the work done at first will
not be saleable. This may cost from £,1 to jQ2> fo'" ^ small
class \ the subscription to the Society for one branch of
woik is 5^. a year. This class ought to be small, especially
if the pupils are all new to the work ; some say four pupils,
some say six ; that is for one evening a week, and one
teacher. The lesson is usually two hours; even that time
is not too much to give the pupils the constant individual
attention which they require. Of course, when some of them
are a little advanced, more can be taken. The smallness
of the class makes it easier to get a room. It is not difiicult,
as a rule, to get such a room for nothing, as will hold
ten or a dozen pupils ; many ladies hold classes at their
own houses ; many are held at mission rooms, or parish
rooms, or working men's or boys' clubs. If there is rent,
that is the most serious expense. Otherwise the expense
is trifling. When work becomes saleable, a percentage should

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 87

be taken from the proceeds for the expenses of the class.
On determining to start a class, the intending teacher should
consult our secretary at the Royal Albert Hall, mentioning
what branch of work is to be adopted, and will then receive
instructions as to tools and materials, and leaflets of instruc-
tions in the process.

Of course there is the further question of what training
the teacher may have had. I believe that any one who cares
for the subject, and has a sound knowledge of drawing, can
acquire the capacity of teaching one of these arts without
any very lengthy training. But people differ immensely in
the rapidity with which they learn. I should say that any one,
even if familiar with the work already, would do very well
to go through some lessons at the studio in order to become
familiar with the way in which our teaching is usually carried
on ; or, it is possible to have a trained instructor down to
start the class and prepare the teachers ; and if a number
of teachers or amateurs combine to take lessons, this need
not be costly. Help can often be obtained from a local
carver or metal-worker, who can ground the class thoroughly
in the handicraft part of the work. It is really wonderful
what has been done in remote classes by help of local pro-
fessional teachers, and by something of a gift and strenuous
self-education on the part of the class-holder. A great deal
can be done by any one who will really take pains.

I ought to say that there are no general rules as to making
the pupils pay for the lessons ; personally, I am a strong
charity organizationist, and I think that every one should
be made to pay wherever it is possible. But I believe the
classes are generally free, or the payments of i^. a week or
so are counted as instalments by which the pupils buy their
tools.

88 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION.

The pupils are chiefly lads between thirteen and eighteen,
some adult working-men, and some girls. It is particularly
noticeable that the Association is as much, I had almost said
more, for the roughest unskilled class than for the skilled
mechanics. The classes include agricultural labourers (here is
a beautiful piece of work by a country cowboy), shoeblacks,
carmen, bricklayers, country carpenters, pitmen, as well as
brass founders, watchmakers, and other town mechanics. All
the instruction being evening and amateur, it interferes in no
way with apprenticeship. On the contrary, it may be worked
along with a gymnastic room or musical drill, to the extreme
benefit of town lads. The Corstorphine class of twenty-eight
boys, from which I have some beautiful brass work here, is
worked in that way. The arts taught are wood carving, metal
repoussd (brass, cppper, or silver) and incised work, bent iron-
work, sheet ironwork, clay modelling, carving in hardened
chalk, mosaic of broken china or of tesserae, and leather work.
The report gives a tabular list of the classes, with their number
and the kind of work.

The mode of teaching is hardly for me to speak of; but I
will venture on one or two generalities which seem pretty
clear. The object, of course, is not recreation, but yet the
classes must be recreative in the sense that the pupils must
come because they enjoy coming, and this, I believe, is one
reason for beginning, as our teachers do, at once with manual
work proper, and not, for example, with freehand drawing.
Any boy likes to cut wood, or handle clay or cement, but the
elementary part of drawing is less immediately attractive. And
I believe this plan to be fight in theory also. I do not think
that design can be rightly created or rightly interpreted except
through a mastery over the material for which it is intended.
Of course, when the instinct of form is aroused, it demands

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 89

furlher cultivation by means of drawing, and in my view, the
carving or modelling classes ought to act as feeders to any
drawing classes within reach. This has actually happened in
one case. A drawing class that was languishing was revived
by the establishment of a carving class in the same locality.
That is the ideal, I think.

I understand, too, that our elementary designs, even those
which are little more than exercises, aim at showing beauty of
outline, and some element of style. The boys are not kept at
mere tool exercises in surface modelling, so as to acquire skill
in finish before they goon to cut complete patterns. In short,
the pupils are carried on rather fast, and taken into the spirit
of the thing, rather than worried about pure mechanical finish.
This does not mean that they are not made to cut their curves
true and clean ; if the workman fails in this, the spirit is gone
at once. And I understand it to be the distinct duty of the
teacher to labour at awakening the perception of beauty, to
point out what is true and beautiful in design and what is not,
to communicate, as occasion serves, something of the great
ideas which govern such a writer as Mr. Ruskin, or, in art
only,- Mr. William Morris, and to explain, or at least to make
familiar by well-chosen examples, the modifications undergone
by tlie beauty of nature in passing into the beauty of decora-
tive art. Here, for instance, is a description which I havje
.heard of a lesson given by a lady who has a singular faculty of
teaching. She used to show her pupils a drawing of a flower
in a botany book (the class was held in winter — she would
prefer to use the flower itself), and obtain their suggestions as
to conventionalising it into a decorative design ; she criticised
their suggestions, pade suggestions .of her own, and at last de-
cided upon a form which she drew on tlie blackboard ; the
class then moulded it in clay, and finally carved it in wood.

90 ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION.

As to the results obtained, I wish to speak chiefly of the
educational results pure and simple. But I will just say that
in the first place the purely moral results of the mode in which
the work is done is striking and obvious. The influence of
the teacher, through perfectly natural intercourse, reaches the
pupils without any admixture that might make them kick.
The wholesome and interesting occupation, besides its positive
value, is a substitute for things that are not desirable. I don't
want to talk too like a missionary magazine, but I could tell
you cases of parents' anxiety removed, and of lads kept straight
and set straight, by the combined influence of the work and
the teacher. Economically, in trades like the joiner's, of
course a thoroughly neat-handed workman, who has taste and
can do a nice bit of carving, is a valuable man, and the amateur
workers make something by their work. They also acquire
the habit of decorating their own homes, which is what we
particularly wish. And then, educationally, with reference to
the work itself, it is very hard to give a fair idea of the average
productions, because they vary enormously. Not all the pro-
ductions are in any way equal to the best of the exhibits here
to-day, but it is obvious that the same teaching which produces
excellent work from a man who has the gift, will produce work
of the right spirit from a man of less natural talent. We must
face the fact that we are speaking of purely amateur work, and
we must not look to the mechanical perfection of things, but
the training which is implied in the power and habit, acquired
by rough working lads, of producing such things in their
leisure time.

Before I sit down, I have just two more things to say. Tlie
first is, that it is all-important in any particular locality to
make a beginning. The occupation of teaching is attractive,
and is soon felt to be of extreme value. The relation to the

ARTISTIC HANDWORK IN EDUCATION. 91

pupils is exceedingly civilizing for them, and does quite unob-
trusively produce an enormous effect on their manners and on
their lives. It is therefore, as a rule, not very hard to get
helpers when a class is once seen at work. But some one, of
course, must take the plunge and set the matter going. It is
very easy to set going ; the arrangements could not be more
simple than they are. But if the first step is not taken by
some one, of course there can be no result.

And the last thing I have to say is this. Do not let us
imagine our efforts superfluous, from the idea that the State or
the locality may shortly take up this task with larger means
than ours. Whatever form the new system may assume, its
actual working must depend on the material with which it has
to work. Education does not consist in buildings, not even in
workshops, nor in grants of money from Parliament, or out of
the rates ; it consists in the desire and the capacity of human
minds to teach and to be taught. To awaken this desire, and
to create this capacity, in a new direction, is the achievement
not of years but of generations. Methods have to be evolved,
and to become easy and familiar to teachers ; an order of
teachers has to be created, uniting experience with enthu-
siasm ; the mind of the upper classes, as of the lower, has to
be penetrated with a new sense of what makes life worth living.
This, and nothing less, is the work in which we have the
chance of helping, and any future organization must entirely
depend for its efficiency on the progress which this work shall
have made.

V.

ON THE TRUE CONCEPT/ON OF ANOTHER
WORLD*

" With such barren forms of tliought, that are always in a world be-
yond, Philosophy has nothing to do. Its object is always something con-
crete, and in the highest sense present." — Hegel's " Logic," Wallace's
translation, p. 150.

IT will surprise many readers to be told that the words which
I have quoted above embody the very essence of Hegel-
ian thought. The Infinite, the supra-sensuous, the Divine, are
so connected in our minds with futile rackings of the imagina-
tion about remote matters which only distract us from our
duties, that a philosophy which designates its problems by such
terms as these seems self-condemned as cloudy and inane.
But, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Hegel is
faithful to the present and the concrete. In the study of
his philosophy we are always dealing with human experience.
" My stress lay," says Mr. Browning,t " on the incidents in
the development of a soul ; little else is worth study." For
"a soul "read '"'the mind," and you have the subject-matter
to which Hegel's eighteen close-printed volumes are devoted.

• This Essay has been previously published as the introduction to a
translation of a fragment from Hegel's " .(lisihetic."

+ Preface to " Sordello."

ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 93

The present remarks are meant to insist on this neglected
point of view. I wish to point out, in two or three salient
instances, the transformation undergone by speculative notions
when sedulously applied to life, and restrained from generating
an empty " beyond," or other world, between which and our
present life and knowledge there is a great gulf fixed. That
the world of mind, or the world above sense, exists as an actual
and organized whole, is a truth most easily realized in the study
of the beautiful. And to grasp this principle as Hegel applies
it is nothing less than to acquire a new contact with spiritual
life. The spiritual world, wliich is present, actual, and con-
crete, contains much besides beauty. But to apprehend one
element of such a whole must of course demand a long step
towards apprehending the rest. It is for this reason that I
propose to explain, by prominent examples, the conception
of a spiritual world which is present and actual, in order to
make more conceivable Hegel's views on the particular sphere
of art. So closely connected, indeed, are all the embodiments
of mind, his " Philosophy of Fine Art " may be said to contain
the essence of his entire system.

We know, to our cost, the popular conception of the
supra-sensuous world. Whatever that world is, it is, as com-
monly thought of, not here and not now. That is to say, if
here and now, it is so by a sort of miracle, at which we are
called upon to wonder, as when angels are said to be near us,
or the dead to know what we do. Again, it is a counterpart
of our present world, and rather imperceptible to our senses,
than in its nature beyond contact with sense as such. It is
peopled by persons who live eternally, which means through
endless ages, and to whose actual communion with us, as also
to our own with God, we look forward in the future. It even,
perhaps, contains a supra- sensuous original corresponding to

94 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD.

every thing and movement in this world of ours. And it
does not necessarily deepen our conception of life, but only
reduplicates it.

Such a world, whatever we may think about its actual ex-
istence, is not the " other world " of philosophy. The " things
not seen" of Plato or of Hegel are not a double or a projec-
tion of the existing world. Plato, indeed, wavered between
the two conceptions in a way that should have warned his
interpreters of the divergence in his track of thought. But in
Hegel, at least, there is no ambiguity. The world of spirits
with him is no world of ghosts. When we study the embodi-
ments of mind or spirit in his pages, and read of law, property,
and national unity, of fine art, the religious community, and
the intellect that has attained scientific self-consciousness, we
may miss our other world with its obscure "beyond," but we
at any rate feel ourselves to be dealing with something real,
and with the deepest concerns of life. We may deny to such
matters the titles which philosophy bestows upon them ; we
may say that this is no " other world," no realm of spirits,
nothing infinite or Divine \ but this matters little, so long as we
know what we are talking about, and are talking about the
best we know. And what we discuss when Hegel is our guide,
will always be some great achievement or essential attribute of
the human mind. He never asks, "Is it?" but always, "What
is it ? " and therefore has instruction, drawn from experience,
even for those to whom the titles of his inquiries seem fraudu-
lent or bombastic.

These few remarks are not directed to maintaining any
thesis about the reality of nature and of sense. Their object
is to enforce a distinction which falls within the world which
we know, and not between the world we know and another
which we do not know. The distinction is real, and governs

ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 95

life. I am not denying any other distinction, but I am insist-
ing on this.. No really great philosopher, nor religious teacher,
— neither Plato, nor Kant, nor St. Paul— can be understood,
unless we grasp this antithesis in the right way. All of these
teachers have pointed men to another world. All of them,
perhaps, were led at times by the very force and reality of
their own thought into the fatal separation that cancels its
meaning. So strong was their sense of the gulf between the
trifles and the realities of life, that they gave occasion to the
indolent imagination — in themselves and in others — to trans-
mute this gulf from a measure of moral effort into an inacces-
sibility that defies apprehension. But their purpose was to
overcome this inaccessibility, not to heighten it.

The hardest of all lessons in interpretation is to believe that
great men mean what they say. We are below their level, and
what they actually say seems impossible to us, till we have
adulterated it to suit our own imbecility. Especially when
they speak of the highest realities, we attach our notion of
reality to what they pronounce to be real. And thus we baffle
every attempt to deepen our ideas of the world in which we
live. The work of intelligence is hard ; that of the sensuous
fancy is easy ; and so we substitute the latter for the former.
We are told, for instance, by Plato, that goodness, beauty,
and truth are realities, but not visible or tangible. Instead of
responding to the call so made on our intelligence by scruti-
nizing the nature and conditions of these intellectual facts —
though we know well how tardily they are produced by the
culture of ages — we apply forthwith our idea of reality as some-
thing separate in space and time, and so " refute " Plato with
ease, and remain as wise as we were before. And it is true
that Plato, handling ideas of vast import with the mind and
language of his day, sometimes by a similar error refutes him-

96 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD.

self.* He makes, for instance, the disembodied soul see the
invisible ideas. Thus lie travesties his things of the mind as
though they were things of sense, only not olour sense — there-
by destroying the deeper difference of kind that alone enables
ihem to find a place in our world. That his doctrine of ideas
was really rooted, not in mysticism, but in scientific enthu-
siasm, is a truth that is veiled from us partly by his inconsis-
tencies, but far more by our own erroneous preconceptions.f

There is, however, a genuine distinction between " this "
world and the " other " world, wliich is merely parodied by
the vulgar antitheses between natural and supernatural, finite
and infinite, phenomenal and noumenal. We sometimes hear
it said, " The world is quite changed to me since I knew
such a person," or " studied such a subject," or *' had suggested
to me such an idea." The expression may be literally true ; and
we do not commonly exaggerate, but vastly underrate its im-
port. We read, for instance, in a good authority, " These twenty
kinds of birds (which Virgil mentions) do not correspond so
much to our species as to our genera ; for the Greeks and
Romans, I need hardly say, had only very rough-and-ready
methods of classification, just as is the case with uneducated
people at the present day." % Any one may verify the same
fact as regards the observation of flowers. Every yellow
ranunculus is called a " butter-cup," every large white umbel-
lifer a " hemlock." These, with hundreds of other differences

* "Endless duration makes good no better, nor white any whiter," is
one of Aristotle's comments on Plato's "eternal" ideas, and is just, unless
" eternal " conveys a difference of kind. ^

+ We are apt to misinterpret Plato's language about astronomy in this
sense. Plato is not decrying observation, but demanding a theoretical
treatment of the laws of motion — a remarkable anticipation of modem
ideas.

{ " A Year with the Birds," by an Oxford Tutor.

ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 97

of perception, affect the surroundings in which men con-
sciously live, at least as much as a considerable degree of
deafness or blindness. It is no metaphor, but literal fact, to
say that man's whole environment is transformed by the train-
ing even of his mere apprehension of natural objects. But
there is more in the matter than this. Without going into
metaphysics, which I wish to avoid, I cannot, indeed, main-
tain that mind " makes " natural objects, although by enabling
us to perceive them, it unquestionably makes our immediate
conscious world. My individual consciousness does not make
or create the differences between the species of ranunculus,
although it does create my knowledge of them. But when we
come to speak of the world of morals, or art, or politics, we
may venture much further in our assertions. The actual facts
of this world do directly arise out of and are causally sustained
by conscious intelligence j and these facts form the world
above sense. The unity of a Christian church or congrega-
tion is a governing fact of life ; so is that of a family or a
nation ; so, we may hope, will that of humanity come to be.
What is this unity ? Is it visible and tangible, like the unity
of a human body ? No, the unity is " ideal ; " that is, it exists
in the medium of thought only ; it is made up of certain senti-
ments, purposes, and ideas. What, even of an army ? Here,
too, an ideal unity is the mainspring of action. Without
mutual intelligence and reciprocal reliance you may have a
mob, but you cannot have an army. But all these conditions
exist and can exist in the mind only. An army, qua army, is
not a mere fact of sense ; for not only does it need mind to
perceive 'it — a heap of sand does that — but it also needs mind
to make it.

The world of these governing facts of life is the world of
the things not seen, the object of reason, the world of the

H

98 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLt),

truly infinite and Divine. It is, of course, a false antithesis to
contrast seeing with the bodily eye and seeing with the mind's
eye. The seeing eye is always the mind's eye. The distinc-
tion between sense and spirit or intellect is a distinction with-
in the mind, just as is St. Paul's opposition between the spirit
and the flesh. Nevertheless the mind that only sees colour —
sense or sense-perception — is different from the mind that sees
beauty, the self-conscious spirit. The latter includes the for-
mer, but the former do.*s not include the latter. To the one
the colour is the ultimate fact ; to the other it is an element in
a thing of beauty. This relation prevails throughout between
the world of sense and the world above sense. The " things
not seen," philosophically speaking, are no world of existences
or of intelligences co-ordinate with and severed from this pre-
sent world. They are a value, an import, a significance, super-
added to the phenomenal world, which may thus be said,
though with some risk of misunderstanding, to be degraded
into a symbol. The house, the cathedral, the judge's robe,
the general's uniform, are ultimate facts for the child or the
savage ; but for the civilized man they are symbols of domestic
life, of the Church, and of the State. Even where the supra-
sensuous world has its purest expression, in the knowledge
and will of intelligent beings, it presupposes a sensuous world
as the material of ideas and of actions. " This " world and
the " other " world are continuous and inseparable, and all
men must live in some degree for both. But the completion
of the Noumenal world, and the apprehension of its reality
and completeness, is the task by fulfilling which humanity ad-
vances.

I pass to the interpretation, neither technical nor contro-
versial, of one or two of Hegel's most alarming phrases.

The " infinite " seems to practical minds the very opposite

ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 99

of anything real, present, or valuable. As the description of
life, it is the mere negation of the life we know ; as the de-
scription of a purpose, it is the very antithesis of any purpose
that we can conceive to be attainable; as the description of
a being, it appears to be formed by denying every predicate
which we attach to personality. And I could wish that Hegel
had not selected this much-abused term as the distinctive
predicate of what is most real and most precious in life. He
adhered to it, no doubt, because his infinity, though different
in nature to that of common logic, yet rightly fills the place
and meets the problem of that conception. I will attempt to
explain how this can be, and what we are discussing when we
read about infinity in the Hegelian philosophy.

It is an obvious remark, that infinity was a symbol of evil
in Hellenic speculation, whereas to Christian and modern
thought it is identified with good. Much idle talk has arisen
on this account, as to the limitation of the Hellenic mind.
For, in fact, the Finite ascribed to Pythagoras, and the idea
of limit and proportion in Plato or in Aristotle, are far more
nearly akin to true infinity than is the Infinite of modern
popular philosophy. Infinite means the negation of limit.
Now, common infinity, which may be identified in general
with enumeration ad iiifinitum — the false infinity of Hegel —
is the attempt to negate or transcend a limit which inevitably
recurs. It arises from attempting a task or problem in the
wrong way, so that we may go on for ever without making any
advance towards its achievement. All quantitative infinity —
which of course has its definite uses, subject to proper reser-
vations— is of this nature. A process does not change its
character by mere continuance, and the aggregate of a million
units is no more free from limitation than the aggregate of ten.
A defect in kind cannot be compensated by mere quantity.

lOO ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD.

We see the fallacious attempt in savage, barbaric, or vulgar
art. Meaningless iteration, objectless labour, enormous size,
extravagant costliness, indicate the effort to satisfy man's need
of expression by the mere accumulation of work without ade-
quate idea or purpose. But such efforts, however stupendous,
never attain their goal. They constitute a recurrent failure
to transcend a recurrent limit, precisely analogous to enumera-
tion ad infinitum. A hundred thousand pounds' worth of
bricks and mortar comes no nearer to the embodiment of
mind than a thousand pounds' worth. To attempt adequate
expression by mere aggregation of cost or size is therefore to
fall into the infinite process or the false infinity.

Another well-known instance is the pursuit of happiness in
the form of "pleasure for pleasure's sake." The recurrence
of unchanging units leaves us where we were. A process which
does not change remains the same, and if it did not bring
satisfaction at first, will not do so at last.* We might as well
go on producing parallels to infinity, in the hope that some-
how or somewhere they may meet. An infinite straight line
may serve as a type of the kind of infinity we are considering.

Infinity in the Hegelian sense does not partake in any way
of this endlessness, or of the unreality which attaches to it
Its root-idea is self-completeness or satisfaction. That which
is " infinite " is without boundary, because it does not refer
beyond itself for explanation, or for justification; and there-
fore, in all human existence or production infinity can only be
an aspect or element. A picture, for instance, regarded as a
work of fine art, justifies itself, gives satisfaction directly and
without raising questions of cause or of comparison, and is in
this sense — i.e. in respect of its beauty — regarded as "infinite."

* See note above, p. 96.

ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. 101

When, on the other hand, we consider this same work of art
as an historical phenomenon, as a link in a chain of causation
— e.g., as elucidating the development of a school, or proving
the existence of a certain technical process at a certain date —
then we go beyond itself for its interest and explanation, and
'depress it at once into a finite object. The finite is that which
presents itself as incomplete ; the infinite, that which presents
itself as complete, and which, therefore, does not force upon
us the fact of its limitation. This character belongs in ihe
highest degree to self-conscious mind, as realized in the world
above sense ; and in some degree to all elements of that world
— for instance, to the State — in as far as they represent man's
realized self-consciousness. It is the nature of self-conscious-
ness to be infinite, because it is its nature to take into itself
what was opposed to it, and thus to make itself into an orga-
nized sphere that has value and reality within, and not beyond
itself. If false infinity was represented by an infinite straight
line, true infinity may be compared to a circle or a sphere.

The distinction between true and false infinity is of the
profoundest moral import The sickly yearning that longs
only to escape from the real, rooted in the antithesis between
the infinite and the actual or concrete, or in the idea of the
monotonous ^*injini" which is one with the '^ abbne" or the
^^gouffre" is appraised by this test at its true value. It is
seen to rest on a mere pathetic fallacy of thought and senti-
ment. So far from the infinite being remote, abstract, unreal,
nothing but the infinite can be truly present, concrete, and
real. The finite always refers us away and away through an
endless series of causes, of effects, or of relations. The infinite
is individual, and bears the character of knowledge, achieve-
ment, attainment. In short, the actual realities which we have
in mind when, in philosophy, we speak of the infinite, are

102 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD.

such as a nation that is conscious of its unity and general will,
or the realm of fine art as the recognition of man's higher
nature, or the religious community with its conviction of an
indwelling Deity.

Now, whether we like the term Infinite or not, whether or
no we think that man's life can be explained and justified
within the limits of these aims and these phenomena, there is
no doubt that these matters are real, and are the most mo-
mentous of realities. In acquainting ourselves with their
structure, evolution, and relation to individual life, we are at
least not wasting time, nor treating of matters beyond human
intelligence.

There is a very similar contrast in the conception of human
Freedom. " Free will " is so old a vexed question, that,
though the conflict still rages fitfully round it, the world hardly
conceives that much can turn upon its decision. But when in
place of the abstract, " Is man free ? " we are confronted with
the concrete inquiry, " When, in what, and as what, does man
carry out his will with least hindrance and with fullest satis-
faction?" then we have before us the actual phenomena of
civilization, instead of an idle and abstract Yes or No.

Man's Freedom, in the sense thus contemplated, lies in the
spiritual or supra-sensuous world by which his humanity is
realized, and in which his will finds fulfilment. The family,
for example, property, and law are the first steps of man's
freedom. In them the individual's will obtains and bestows
recognition as an agent in a society whose bond of union is
ideal — i.e., existing only in consciousness ; and this recognition
develops into duties and rights. It is in these that man finds
something to live for, something in which and for the sake of
which to assert himself. As society develops he lives, on the
whole, more in the civilized or spiritual world, and less in the

ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. I03

savage or purely natural world. His will, which is himself,
expands with the institutions and ideas that form its purpose,
and the history of this expansion is the history of human free-
dom. Nothing is more shallow, more barbarously irrational,
than to regard the progress of civilization as the accumulation
of restrictions. Laws and rules are a necessary aspect of
extended capacities. Every power that we gain has a positive
nature, and therefore involves positive conditions, and every
positive condition has negative relations. To accomplish a
particular purpose you must go to work in a particular way,
and in no other way. To complain of this is like complaining
of a house because it has a definite shape. If freedom means
absence of attributes, empty space is " freer " than any edifice.
Of course a house may be so ugly that we may say we would
rather have none at all. Civilization may bring such horrors
that we may say, " Rather savagery than this " ; but in neither
case are we serious. Great as are the vices of civilization, it is
only in civilization that man becomes human, spiritual, and
free.

The effort to grasp and apply such an idea as this can
hardly be barren. It brings us face to face with concrete facts
of history, and of man's actual motives and purposes. True
philosophy here, as everywhere, plunges into the concrete and
the real ; it is the indolent abstract fancy that thrusts problems
away into the remote "beyond," or into futile abstraction.
Plato, the philosopher, knows well that the mind is free when
it achieves what, as a whole, it truly wills. But Plato, the
allegorist and imaginative preacher, refers the soul's freedom
to a fleeting moment of ante-natal choice, which he vainly
strives to exempt from causal influence. Pictorial imagination,
with its ready reference to occurrences in past and future, is
the great foe to philosophic intelligence.

I04 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD.

Finally, it is impossible to omit all reference to the notion
of an immanent Deity, which forms the very centre of Hegel's
thought. When an unspeculative English reader first meets
with Hegel's passionate insistence that God is not unknowable;
that He necessarily reveals himself as a Trinity of persons,
and that to deny this is to represent men as "the heathen
who know not God," he feels as if he had taken sand into his
mouth. He is inclined to ask what these Neo-Platonic or
mediaeval doctrines are doing in the nineteenth century, and
why we should resuscitate dead logomachies that can have no
possible value for life or conduct. Now, I must not attempt
here to discuss the difficult question of Hegel's ultimate con-
ception of the being of God, and I am bound to warn any one
who may read these pages that I only profess to reproduce
one — though by far the most prominent — side of that concep-
tion. But, subject to this reservation, I have no hesitation in
saying, that our own prejudices form the only hindrance to our
seeing that Hegel's subject-matter is here, as elsewhere, human
life. He gives us what he takes to be the literal truth, and
we will have it to be metaphor. Verbally contradicting Kant,
he accepts, completes, and enforces Kant's thought. " Reve-
lation can never be the true ground of religion," said Kant ;
"for revelation is an historical accident, and religion is a
rational necessity of man's intelligent nature." " Revelation
is the only true knowledge of God and ground of religion,"
says Hegel, "because revelation consists in the realization rf
God in man's intelligent Jiature." We are, however, not unac-
customed to such phrases, and our imagination is equal to its
habitual task of evading their meaning. We take them to be
a strong metaphor, meaning that God, who is a sort of ghostly
being a long way off, is, notwithstanding, more or less within
the knowledge of our minds, and so is " in " them, as a book

ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. I05

which is actually in London may be in my memory when I
am in Scotland. Now, right or wrong, this is not what Hegel
means. He means what he says ; that God is spirit or mind,*
and exists in the medium of mind, tvhich is actual as intelli-
gence, for us at any rate, only in the human self-consciousness.
The thought is hard from its very simplicity, and we struggle,
as always, to avoid grasping it We imagine spirits as made
of a sort of thin matter, and so as existing just like bodies,
although we call them disembodied. And then we think of
this disembodied form as an alternative to human form, and
suppose spirit to have somehow a purer existence apart from
human body. This error really springs from imagining the
two as existences of the same kind, and so conflicting, and
from not realizing the notion of spirit as mind or self-con-
sciousness, which is the only way of conceiving its actual
presence in our world. Mind uses sensuous existence as its
symbol ; perhaps even needs it. The poet who has hit Hegel's
thought so nearly,t fails here : —

" This weight of body and limb.
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?"

Here we leave the track of the higher Pantheism for that of
vulgar mysticism. Spiritual being is conceived as somehow
incompatible with bodily shape, either because incapable of
any concrete embodiment, or because it has a quasi-material
shape of its own. Now, this is just the reverse of the Hege-
lian idea. According to Hegel, it is only in the human form

* The fusion of these meanings in the German " Geist " gives a force to
his pleading which English cannot render. He appeals, e.g., triumphantly
to "God is a Spirit," i.e. not "a ghost," but " mind."

+ See Tennyson's " Higher Pantheism," especially the fine lines : —
" Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with spirit can meet.
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."

Io6 ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD.

that intelligence can for us find its full expression. The
notion of a spiritual body other than and incompatible with
the natural body does not arise. Spirit exists in the medium
of consciousness, not in a peculiar kind of matter. The
spiritualization of the natural body is not to be looked for in
an astral or angel body, but in the gait and gesture, the signifi-
cance and dignity, that make the body of the civilized man
the outward image of his soul, and distinguish him from the
savage as from the animal. The human soul becomes actual
itself, and visible to others, only by moulding the body into
its symbol and instrument. It ought to have been an axiom
of physiology, Hegel says, that the series of animated forms
must necessarily lead up to that of man. For this is the only
sensuous form in which mind could attain adequate manifesta-
tion. Thus anthropomorpliism in fine art is no accident, nor
an unworthy portrayal of Divinity. If the Deity is to be
symbolized to sense, it must be in the image of man. The
symbol is not, indeed, the reality, as the sensuous image
is not conscious thought ; but this is a defect inherent in
artistic presentation, and not attributable to anthropomor-
phism in particular.

It is obvious that, in the light of such a conception, a
speculative import can be attached to the doctrine of the
Incarnation, and Hegel's reading of Christian ideas is, in fact,
to be interpreted entirely in this sense. This is not the place
to go deeper into such views, which, however profound, may
perhaps continue to seem non-natural expositions of Christian
dogma. I am only concerned to show how here, also, the
speculative idea, operating upon the concrete and actual,
generates a fresh and inspiring insight into life and conduct.
Few chapters of anthropology are more thorough, profound,
and suggestive than Hegel's account of the "actual soul";

ON THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF ANOTHER WORLD. loy

t.e.y of the habits and attributes which make the body dis-
tinctively human by stamping it with the impress of mind.
Nor has philosophic insight ever done better service to the
history of religion than in grasping the essence of Christianity
as the unify (not merely the union) of the Divine and human
nature.

Among the things which are spiritually discerned, an im-
portant place belongs to beauty. As a boundary and transi-
tion between sense and thought, it is peculiarly fitted to
illustrate the reality which we claim, in contradistinction to
mere sensuous appearance, for what is best in life. Many
who distrust Hegelian formulce are convinced that beauty at
least is real. They will admit that fine art and the recogni-
tion of beauty are not trifles, not amusements, but rank high
among the interests that give life its value. All such will
find themselves in sympathy with the purpose of a great
philosopher who has bent all the power of his genius and his
industry to vindicating a place for art as an embodiment of the
Divine nature, that is to say, of the fundamental purpose which
reveals itself in the history of the human spirit.

\

VI.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH*

MUCH is said in the New Testament, with very various
meanings, about the Kingdom of Christ or the King-
dom of God. I want to consider, this evening, some of the
forms which this idea has taken in the New Testament and
elsewhere, and what meaning it can have for us to-day.

I. " Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven." " Grant that we may sit, the
one on Thy right hand, and the other on Thy left, in Thy
kingdom." " Now he is comforted, and thou art tormented."
In such passages as these we think that we find two ideas
which have had enormous influence on the world.

I. Heaven is to right the wrongs, and to compensate the
injustices of this world. " Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy
good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things ; but now he is
comforted, and thou art tormented." Part of this natural con-
ception has been a comfort to those for whom the world
seemed to have nothing but misery, and part has rudely
represented a wild feeling of justice. But at all times, and
especially in modern times, it has had another and a very
mischievous influence. It can be turned round the other way.
God, we think, will look after those who are ill-off on earth,
• An address given for the Ethical Society.

Io8

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. I09

and therefore we need not trouble ourselves about them.
Heaven becomes a sort of poor-law, to which we refer the
cases of distress that we do not know how to deal with. We
even feel very virtuous in doing this. It is so humble of us
to be content with this world's goods, and to leave the next
world to our poorer neighbours. And it makes everything
easy ; it cuts the knot of all those troublesome questions, how
every member of a great nation can have a man's share in the
work and knowledge of the world. Let him read his Bible
and believe what he is told, and then, after a few years, which
do not much matter, he will be as well off as an emperor; or
perhaps better, for he will go to heaven, and many emperors
will not.

This belief has great power for good and for evil. It has
raised men's estimate of their dignity, and has made them feel
the value of a soul. But it has made them careless of the
world in which they live, and has narrowed their notions of
duty and of manliness. Life must not be split up into a
present of endurance, and a future of enjoyment. Injustice
must be redressed, beauty enjoyed, knowledge won, and good-
ness attained, here on this earth of ours.

2. Then there is the other common idea, very like the
last. "Great is your reward in heaven." "Thy Father
which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." This is the
notion, not very marked, I think, in the New Testament, of a
moral government of the world by rewards and punishments.
The Churchmen who write about religion have made a fatal
delusion out of this conception too. But I do not think that
sensible people have taken it very seriously. We all know
that we are not to do good for the sake of what we expect to
get by it ; and if a preacher tells us that we are to be good
Christians in order to go to heaven and keep out of hell, we

no THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

think that he does not quite understand what he is saying. A
man who tells you that is mixing up two notions. One notion
is that you are to obey God's will in order to gain the pleasure
of heaven and escape the pains of hell. And the other
notion is that you are to obey God's will, because in doing
that you get rid of the bad in your own heart, and make your
will rest or repose in the good will. This hope of finding
peace, of resting your will in something greater than yourself,
of being at one with the good purpose of humanity, is the very
mainspring of life. But it is here on earth that we want our
will to be good, and to get rid of the bad in our own hearts.
There is no reason in putting it off to a future life, of which
we know nothing. If we must have something future to hope
for, let us put our hopes on our children, and do something
to carry them out. However, this desire to be good and to
be at one with a society of good people is the root of our
life. But that other notion, that we are to be good in order
to gain the pleasures of heaven, is very wrong, or rather, it is
absolute nonsense. I should hke to explain why I say that
it is absolute nonsense.

A man is good when his will is good, and bad when his
will is bad. It all depends upon what kind of thing he really
has at heart when he acts. It does not depend on what he
does, if you look at it from the outside. If a man says he
meant well, when he did not, then he is a hypocrite. But we
all know that a man may really mean well, and yet may make
a mistake and do great harm. Then we do not call him a
bad man, though we may call him a fool. This shows that it
is the will which makes a man good or bad," and a man's will
is his choice ; it is what his heart is really set on when he acts.
So, when we talk of being good or doing good, for the sake of
what we can get by it, this can only be a pretence of being or

THE KINGDOM OF COD ON EARTH. Ill

doing good. You may do, for reward, something that on the
outside looks like doing good, but it is not doing good,
because the will is selfish — your heart is set on your own
pleasure or comfort, and not on a substantial good for its own
sake. A man who really thought of nothing but getting safe
to heaven would be as bad as a man in a shipwreck who
thought of nothing but getting himself safe into a boat. There
are a few such people, I daresay. But of course most people
are better than they make out. When they speak of reward
and punishment, they do not mean merely pleasures and pains ;
they mean, in part at least, the goodness which causes the
pleasure, and the badness which causes the pain. We can see
that true Christians have never thought the reward the chief
thing. St. Paul was ready to give up his own reward, to be
accursed from Christ, if that would save the souls he loved.
And to go from great things to small, there is a fine scene in
a novel which I once read. A young man is afraid to go to
the rescue of some people in a flood, because he has a con-
viction that if he is drowned then, he will go to hell. And
the old man, an old Scotchman, to whom he tells this, shouts
out to him in reply, " Better be damned doing the will of God
than saved doing nothing." This is the instinct of true religion
revolting against the false doctrine of rewards ; and I believe
that this revolt has the sympathy of all true Christians.

Of course this fancy of rewards and punishments has had
its uses. It has enabled people to believe against appear-
ances that good was stronger than evil. And it has helped to
make good stronger than evil. We cannot judge these old
beliefs fairly, unless we think of the power they had and the
way in which they were used. In rough ages it was a gain
that men should recognise anything as above themselves.
There is a striking picture in a poem of Longfellow's of a

112 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

monk forcing a Norman Baron in England, on his death-bed,
to set his serfs free.

" In his chamber, weak and dying,

Was the Norman Baron lying ;
* * * *

And, as on the sacred missal.

He recorded their dismissal,

Death relaxed his iron features.

And the Monk replied, ' Amen. ' "

I do not say that this picture represents a fact ; but no one
can doubt that the thought of heaven and hell must often have
reinforced the appeal of conscience, and kept alive the per-
suasion that there was a power higher than the sword.

These were the old convictions about heaven and the
kingdom of God, — that it was an invisible future world, in
which wrong was to be righted, and good and bad men re-
warded and punished. These fancies have not in reality a
great place in the New Testament ; but they were known to the
Greeks and to many other nations. Plato speaks with scorn
of the priests and charlatans of his time, four centuries before
Christ, who go about telUng men that they can make it all safe
for them in the next world by their prayers and ceremonies. So
these notions are as old as civilized mankind ; and the right
way to look at them is to see that people naturally came upon
tliem when they felt sure that there was a right somewhere, and
that it was better to be good. The last thing people under-
stand is what is before their eyes. It is so much easier just
to fancy that something used to be, or that something will be,
instead of looking patiently at what actually is. Men look
round them and see that the world seems very bad, but they
feel sure that there is a real good somewhere ; and so they
make up a story that it was all very good once, and then the
devil put it wrong ; but God will put it all right again some

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. II3

day, — at least for some of us. It is just as people say, "How
do there come to be so many kinds of plants and animals ? "
And they answer that God created them a long time ago, and
Adam gave them names. Well, of course, if we look care-
fully at what is under our eyes, we see that this is a fantastic
idea. The kinds of plants and animals are always changing
now, precisely as they always have been changing since they
began.

Just in the same way, when you look patiently and carefully
at the world we live in, you see that those ideas of another
world are nothing but imperfect explanations or reflections of
the good that is being worked out in this world, and are of no
value, excepting as they contribute to the furtherance of this
real good. Good is not a thing which can be made up by
deferred payments.

3. In the same way, again, God has been thought of as a
king or master, somewhere outside the world we live in, and
the Bible as the book of his decrees ; as if God could make
anything right by choosing to command it. This is the old
meaning of revelation ; that man had no way of knowing God's
will, and so God had this book written to tell us what his will
was, and we have to do everything that is commanded in this
book. Of course this idea turns things upside down. Things
are not right because the Bible says them, but the Bible says
them, if it does say them, because they are right. And when
W2 say now that anything is God's command, we ought to
know that we are using a figure of speech, which means some-
thing quite difierent from the command of a person outside
ourselves and having power over us.

4. And this makes an enormous difference; because, if you
have a master in heaven, whose orders you must obey, and if
he has had a book written to tell you what to do, then the

I

114 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH,

ipost important people in the world are the people who spend
their lives in interpreting this book. And in fact, as you and I
have not time to be studying a book written in Hebrew and
Greek all our lives, we should be under the thumb of these
gentlemen, who say they know all about it, and some of them
even say they have a special commission from God to tell us
about it, and we are not to listen to any one else. This is
plainly a mere dream. There is no great harm in talking of a
revelation, but it means nothing in the world but our own
common sense and reason, dealing with the circumstances of
our lives.

All these ideas, — compensation, rewards and punishments,
God's commands in the Bible, the authority of the clergy, — are
closely connected together. They are all fancies that men
have had, just as though they were children, and being
children, knew that they must be treated like children.
Children do things because they are told, until they have learnt
to behave themselves. And so men had to learn to behave
themselves, only they had to fancy that there was a parent or
schoolmaster looking after them. They naturally invented the
only sort of instruction they could receive.

II. But then, in the New Testament we find yet other ideas
mixed with those which we have been speaking of. The
kingdom of God is within you (or perhaps "among you"); it is
like leaven ; it is like a seed ; it is not of this world. This
might mean it is in heaven, but I do not think it does ; I
think it means that the kingdom of God is not what people in
this world call a kingdom. The New Testament writers did,
in fact, think that the next world was to be on earth, and that
it was to begin soon, and had in truth begun already. But we
must not count this altogether on our side, because there was
to be a miraculous end to the old earth, and a new one was to

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. II5

be made. Still, we may fairly say that they thought the
kingdom of God was a moral kingdom ; that it was to come on
earth; that it was something quite close to them ; and that it
had partly begun with Christ's life. The idea of the Church
grew up in place of this conviction, when the belief in Christ's
coming gave way.

This moral kingdom of God is what is meant in the prayer,
"Thy kingdom come," which is explained by the next
petition, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Most of the New Testament writers, and, it would seem,
Christ himself, expected this kingdom to come within a man's
lifetime. We may leave out these words, "as in heaven,"
which belong to the fancies of which we have been speaking,
fancies that the good which we do not see here is real some-
where else.

But the kingdom of God on earth, is here, as the Lord's
prayer implies, in as far as what we call God's will is done on
earth. But now there is a question which stares us in the
face.

What have we men to do with God's will ^ The question
has two forms : —

1. How are we to know what is God's will? and.

2. Why should we do God's will when we do know it ?

We have destroyed the vulgar answers to these two ques-
tions. I will repeat briefly how we have destroyed them.
They were — " We are to know God's will from his inspired
revelation in the Bible," or "from the Catholic Church" — a
very mischievous doctrine ; and " we are to do God's will
because he will reward or punish us according as we do it or
not." The first of these answers is a mistake, because books
and men are just books and men, and they cannot have
authority except by convincing our own minds. And the

Il6 THE KINGDOM OK GOD ON EARTH.

second is an absurdity, because the nature of what we do
depends upon our will in doing it ; and if what we will is to
get a reward, then our action is not good. Rewards and
punishments are legal sanctions and not moral influences.

There is only one true way of answering these questions.
We must know what is right, what we call God's will, by find-
ing it in our own will. And we must do what is right, what
we call God's will, because we find that it is our own will.
We must look at it in this way.

If we come to think over our lives, and to ask ourselves
what fills up the greater part of our thoughts and purposes, we
shall find, if we are decent people, that it mostly comes back
to our station in life,* and the duties that are recognised by
ourselves and by others as belonging to it ; and also in certain
duties and interests, usually connected with our station, which
we have taken up and made our own. A man can hardly live
without something or other which is required of him by others,
and which he requires of himself. Those whom we call idle
people have their duties, but partly they are mistaken about
them, partly they neglect them. In judging morally you must
take a man's own point of view, at least in part. You and I
may think fox-hunting a waste of time and money; but a
master of fox-hounds does not think himself an idle or useless
man. He does what he and all his friends believe to be a
social duty ; and it is very necessary that we should recognise
this, because it helps us to see that man really does not exist
as man without so?ne station and duties. Our station and its
duties are the greatest part and the simplest part of the right
will or the good will, which is also our own will. Without

* This portion of the address consists in the main of an attempt to
popularise the ideas contained in Mr. F. H. Bradley's "Ethical Studies,"
and especially in Essay V. of that work, *' ^^y Station and its Duties."

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. II7

this object and interest in life, a man is like a boat without
sail or helm. This sounds rather commonplace, and it is
rather commonplace. If it were not, in a sense, known to
every one, I do not see how it could be imagined to be every
one's guide through life. If a preacher should come here and
tell us that he had a brand-new set of duties, which we never
heard of before, that we ought to do, I should myself be in-
clined to vote for sending him away again. Still, most things
that we know have a good deal in them that we do not notice.
And I will try to point out some truths about our station and
its duties which we are apt to forget.
Our station and its duties : —

1. Tells us what to do, for it is the very heart and spirit of
our little individual life ; and

2. It gives the reason for doing what we ought to do ; for,
just because it is the heart of our individual life, it raises our
weak and ignorant will into the good will, which is the rea/
will that unites mankind together.

I. Our station and its duties is the heart and spirit of our
own little life. I may say that I make no distinction, morally,
between rights and duties. That which our station demands
of us is a duty, if the difficulty in doing it is in ourselves, and
a right if the difficulty is in some one else. Suppose you are
the head of a family. That is part of your station. It is the
dufy of the head of a family to rule and educate his children ;
and it is the right of the head of the family that his children
should obey him, and that they should attend to their school-
ing ; and it is his rigAf, moreover, that society should provide,
somehow, that there shall be schools and teachers. Then,
again, it is the rig/it of the children to be properly ruled and
taught to behave, and to be educated ; and it is the duty of
the children to obey the head of the family, and to make the

H8 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

best use of their schooling. It is the duty of society to see
that there shall be schools and teachers, and it is the right of
society that both the head of the family and the children shall
do their part in making proper use of the schools and teachers.
The same social good or social purpose is a right or a duty,
according to the source of the opposition it meets with.

Now these requirements or demands, which are recognised
by society, and which we recognise in our turn, make us what
we are. Apart from them we should be nothing at all.
Suppose a man has a brain fever, and all these ideas and
purposes are wiped out of his mind. Suppose he forgets that
he has a wife and children, forgets how to do his daily work,
and does not know his friends when he meets them, does not
remember the kindnesses which have been done him, nor the
services which he owes to others ; the man may still be alive,
and you may know his face, but his own self, all that made up
his individual life, is lost and has vanished. I have heard of
some one to whose wife this happened ; and when, two years
after the loss of her mind, the poor lady died, her husband
said, " In fact, I lost my dear wife two years ago."

This helps to show how we ourselves are really made up of
all these ties and relationships, all these rights and duties, pur-
poses, feelings, and hopes. We spoke about people's ideas of
the invisible world. Here is the invisible world which really
does concern us, which is our own very self, which we and all
others recognise, and which has its existence simply in this
invisible fact, that it is so recognised. And this, our own
self, is what makes up our own will, by giving us something
definite to do, which is the particular purpose of our own
particular self. This is the chief thing that tells us what to do.

Perhaps this seems too simple, and it may be said, " Every
decent man does the duties of his station ; cannot something

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. II9

be suggested which is higher and harder than that ? " I
shall try to answer this question in part, presently, but first
I must confess that the whole principle of what I am saying
is against overmuch dictating and giving moral advice. I
know well enough what / ought to do ; but it is very diffi-
cult to talk about what other people ought to do, because
one does not know the ins and outs of their station. But
if any one says that he habitually does all the duties of his
station, thoroughly, with good heart and good sense, one
would be inclined to suspect in one's own mind that his stan-
dard is rather low. A few points may be enumerated, by
way of illustrating what one's station really means. There
are the simple duties of honesty and thoroughness in all
work ; there is education ; there is wise and painstaking help
of our neighbours ; there is wise management of societies
or clubs which we have to do with ; there is forming an en-
lightened judgment on trade questions and on questions that
concern us as citizens ; and there is the attempt to make the
tone of our society a little higher, more full of real interests,
more free from vice and vulgarity. Every man is responsible
for the tone of the society in which he moves, and for the
influence which he spreads round him, hour by hour.

I do not know whether all this is really so simple, when you
come to act upon it. Plato wrote an account of an imaginary
commonwealth, in which goodness was to be the ruling prin-
ciple. And the one great root of all virtue in this common-
wealth was simply this, that in it every one w^as to mind his
own business. Plato thus thought one's station and its duties
the root of all the virtues. And he was right. But Plato's
commonwealth, in which every one was to mind his own busi-
ness, has become a by-word for an impossible imagination.

2. Then, again, I said our station and its duties give the

I20 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

reason for doing right. It not only gives us something to do,
but it makes us feel that what we do is right. This is the very
root of the matter.

There are two ways of doing what you have to do. You
may do it like a machine, or you may do it like a man. If
you do it like a machine, that is not really doing the duties of
your station, for our station is, above all things, to be men.
He who is a machine has no heart in his work. His family
and his country mean nothing to him. Most likely it is not
his own fault, but all the same this is very sad. But now I
want to speak of the other way of working. VVe all know
what it is to feel that we are not alone in our work ; that we
are working together with others for a common good, and each
doing the best he can. One who feels this about the duties of
his station is a man, and not a machine. He knows, indeed,
that he can do very little with his single arm. Even a great
statesman or a great poet is merely guiding the forces or
uttering the feelings of mankind. If a man thinks of the com-
mon purpose, of the good cause, and knows his will and
effort are devoted to it, then he will not complain because he
can do so little. The great thing is that his will is at one with
the real will or the right will ; and because it is so, he is con-
tent in the common work, and knows he is doing right. Think
of a family all working hard to make their living. One of the
children will earn only a little compared with the father ; but
if the child does his best, and puts his heart into it for the
common good, then he has a right to be satisfied in the happi-
ness of the family as the achievement of his purpose. A man
who does the duties of an undistinguished station with good-
will is just the same in society as such a child is in a family.
He is not a wheel in a machine, nor an animal trying to get
food ; but he is a man whose will is inspired by the common

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 121

purpose of mankind, and whose little private piece of work is
a pledge to him that the general purpose is his purpose.

This, then, is why we should do God's will, that is, why we
should do our duty. If " why " meant a reason outside the
duty, like a reward or punishment, then it would be nonsense,
as we saw, to ask u'hy we should do our duty. But the reason
why we do it is that we find the good will to be really and at
bottom our own will. That is to say, it is through our station
and its duties that we take hold of our humanity and bring it
home to our particular selves. On the one hand, the good
will is ourself ; and on the other hand, it is the common aim
and spirit of society and of mankind. The goodness of our
own particular private will consists in grasping this common
aim and spirit, and applying it in the particular duties of our
daily life, which gains all its reality and vigour from its par-
ticular form of this aim or purpose, and vanishes, as we saw, if
the common purpose is entirely destroyed in us — if a man
forgets his family, and his work, and his friends.

All that we mean by the kingdom of God on earth is the
society of human beings who have a common life and are
working for a common social good. The kingdom of God
has come on earth in every civilized society where men live
and work together, doing their best for the whole society and
for mankind. When two or three are gathered together, co-
operating for a social good, there is the Divine Spirit in the
midst of them.

And there is something more, which may meet a difficulty
that I mentioned just now, A man may be a good doctor or
a good painter, or a good engine-driver, and yet he may be a
brute, or a liar, or a cheat. How will the duties of his station
prevent this? First, we saw just now that there is a good
deal belonging to our station which we are apt to forget. A

122 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

man's station is not merely his trade. His family and his
neighbours and the commonwealth are part of it If he does
his duty to all of these with sense and goodwill, there will not
be room for very much vice. But then, secondly, we must
bear in mind that he is to make his own particular will har-
monize with the purpose of society ; now any vice or sin
would so far cut him off from that, and make a contradiction
between the spirit in which he seeks his own particular pleasure,
and the spirit in which he seeks the common good. No man
can serve two masters. The bad will is our own particular
will, when it rebels against the moral spirit of society.

And this common spirit or conviction of society explains
another difficulty. It may be asked. Are we to stand still for
ever ? Are we not to try to be better than people are now ?
Are we to obey society, and never to reform it ? I do not
think that this difficulty really perplexes any one, though it
sounds very formidable. Of course every society is moving,
and has a spirit of reform in it, and an ideal before it. We
can only live by striving after an ideal ; but our ideal must
not be a whim of our own vanity, not something all for our-
self and by ourself. It must be a social ideal, rooted in and
founded upon what is real. Every sound ideal grows out of
something real. For we saw that our very self, our life, is a
purpose ; and this purpose is the ideal which is in great part
real as well as ideal. Thus a great nation, such as England, is
a living real purpose, which exists, and prescribes our ideal to
us. To-day is real and to-morrow is ideal, but you cannot
draw a line between them. Our own life, and still more the
life of a nation, is something that goes beyond the present
moment ; and so, in trying to be better and to do better, we
are only carrying out the higher mind of society. We are
born into our ideal, just as we are into our actual life. Of

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 1 23

course the reformer does not in truth invent his ideal ; it is
" in the air.".

I do not think it matters whether we call the community in
which we have our station a Christian community. If we keep
the substance of Christianity, we may let the shadow, the
name, take care of itself.

III. Is the kingdom of God on earth a Church ? I will say
a very few words about this. Wherever there is a community
of persons working together for a social good, there is a
portion of the kingdom of God on earth. A visible Church,
like the Church of England, or of Rome, if it is useful for good
life, may be a part of the kingdom of God on earth. But a
family, or a nation like the English nation, is a far more sacred
thing than any Church, because these are what prescribe our
duty and educate our will.

What we are to remember about a visible Church, like the
Church of England, is this. It is a good thing if it makes our
wills good, and points out, or helps us to feel, duties which
form a part of the good will. We judge whether a Church is
a useful society just as we judge any other society. " By their
fruits ye shall know them." But we must remember that no
visible Church, Christian or Comtist, has any authority ; and
no church service is a duty, except in as far as it makes us
better.

On the other hand, we may say if we like, that the kingdom
of God on earth is the same thing as the invisible Church ;
" the blessed company of all faithful people." I will explain
directly what I mean by faithful. The invisible Church, like
true religion, is wide enough for all mankind. It is invisible,
not because it is in heaven — for it is on earth, — but because
it extends so far in past and future, and is bound together
not by such symbols as buildings or creeds, or books, but by

124 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH^

the great achievements and purposes which form the Hfe of
mankind.

IV. I wish, before I conclude, to say something of what we
mean By religion. I have been speaking about the duties of
our station and the spirit in which we ought to do them. I
said that we ought to feel that we are not alone in our work,
and that the good purpose which others achieve is ours, just as
our good purpose is theirs. This is, so far, morality.

Even this morality requires some faith. It is not possible
to act, unless you believe that what you are trying to do can be
done. In every-day life we do not trouble ourselves with a
general belief; but we never doubt that the particular aim
which we have in view is possible in the nature of things. If
we did not believe this, we should be paralysed. We should
not even eat, if we did not believe that food would sustain life.

Thus, in every-day life we need the belief that the good is
a reality. If we hold this belief more distinctly and more
intensely, it amounts to this, that nothing but good is a reality.

This faith is what people mean by religion. Of course it is
a faith in spite of appearances. But it does not recognise the
appearances against it as worth noticing. A man, in as far as
he has this faith, does not admit that the bad in his own heart
is his real self at all, and so he does not admit that the bad
in the world is the reality of the world. This has been twisted,
like everything, as if religion could mean that you were to be
indifferent to sin, because you say, " It really does not belong
to me." That is sham religion. The truth is that nothing
gives such force in getting rid of evil as this belief that the
good is the only reality. Nothing gives such confidence in
a battle as thinking that your enemy is only a sham. Stopping
short of the good seems something mad and incredible, when
you believe that nothing else is real. Yet, on the other hand,

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. .I25

the man who has this faiih is not worried or uneasy. He
knows that he is on the side of the reaUty, and his lieart is
one with it, and he is not afraid of anything. Even his own
wickedness is like something that comes to nothing, and is
sure to fade away, as long as his heart is really and truly set
right.

The difference between morality and religion seems then to
be that in morality we know that the good purpose is real, in
religion we believe that nothing else is real. It is the same
faith, differently held.

An all-important truth follows from this — from religion and
morality being the same in principle. 1 he duties of religion
are the same as the duties of morality. If we speak of duties to
God, we mean the same duties as duties to man. Worship or
prayer, in the sense of meditation, are good things if they help
us to do our real duties. But it is a sad degradation of words
to speak of a ceremony in a church as Divine Service.

And it follows from this that there is only one religion ;
though there are many creeds, and for every creed a particular
book and tradition. All these creeds and Churches and
ecclesiastical precepts are mere vehicles of one religion, and
what each of them superadds in forms, ceremonies, and doc-
trines are mere historical accident, and belong to the child-
hood of humanity.

These ideas are not new. It would be ridiculous to try and
invent new ideas about what men are to find in their inmost
hearts. European morality, in all its essentials, was built
up in life and expressed in language more than two thou-
sand years ago, by men who lived and spoke and wrote in
the cities of ancient Greece. One of such men, the story
goes, being asked by another, " How shall I educate my
son ? " replied, " Make him a citizen of a city that has good

126* THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH

laws." And when three hundred citizens of Sparta had fallen
before overwhelming numbers in a battle that largely con-
tributed to save Europe from an Asiatic despotism, a great
Greek poet could devise for their grave no better epitaph than
the two simple lines which say, " Go, you who pass by, and
tell the Spartans that we lie here in obedience to their com-
mands."

And the citizen of Athens, when he attained the age of
eighteen, and his name was entered on the civic register,
received in an ancient temple the shield and spear which
symbolised his entrance into the citizen array, and publicly
made oath to the following effect : " I will not dishonour my
sacred shield. I will not abandon my fellow-soldier in the
ranks. I will do battle for our altars and our homes, whether
aided or unaided. I will leave our country not less but
greater and nobler than she is now entrusted to me. I will
reverently obey the citizens who shall act as judges. I will
obey the i^ws which have been ordained, and which in time
to come shall be ordained, by the national will. And whoever
would subvert the laws, or would disobey them, I will not
suffer him, but I will do battle for them, whether aided or
unaided. And I will reverence our ancestral temples. Of
which things the gods are my witness." This formula errs,
to our minds, both by omission and commission,* yet the root
of the matter is in it, and I have always regarded it with
reverence as, to the best of my knowledge, the earliest
European creed.

The Christian religion deepened and widened these con-
victions, and proclaimed that the freedom of living well was
the birthright of humanity, and not merely of the noble, the

* The word translated "greater" means in the first instance "larger,"
and I fear that this meaning was realized in the Athenian disposition.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 1 27

citizen, the wealthy, or the wise. For Divinity, the Christian
rehgion said, was to be looked for in the spirit of man, implying,
as we now see, that it need be looked for nowhere else. This
was the distinct announcement of what had really been working
in the mind of Greece and Rome. I should like to read you
a paraphrase of some verses by Lucan, written, I suppose, a
it"^ years before the date at which the Gospel of Matthew was
composed. The hero of his poem, Cato, had been asked by
a friend to make some inquiry of the oracle of Jupiter Ammon
in Africa, which they passed in their march. And Cato, in
the poem, answers thus : —

*' What wouldst, my friend, that Cato should inquire ?
Needs he be told what conscience bids desire ?
Whether 'twere better die in arms, and free,
" - Than see Rome sink inlo a tyranny ?

If man's mere life be nought tliat merits praise,
And to live long but lengthens out his days ?*
If that the just can fear no violence,
Nor fortune against virtue do offence ?
If 'tis enough that men will what they should,
And triumph adds no lustre to the good ?
All this we know, nor is our certain sense
One jot more sure for Ammon's evidence.
Heaven lies about us, and we do its will,
Not uninspired, though all the shrines be still ;
God needs no language, for at birth he taught
All man can know, and that is all he ought :
Nor has Jove willed in Afric's burning zone
To preach his truth to wandering tribes alone ;
Nor buried here, amid the shifting sands,
That revelation all the world demands ;
For where is God, but in the earth and sea,
And clouds and sky — and truth and purity ?
Why blindly seek we other gods to know ?
God is where'er we look, where'er we go."

• He implies that life is desirable not for its length, but only for its
nobleness.

128 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

And if I may conclude with a further quotation — for I think
that it strengthens us to feel that we are not alone — I will read
an extract from a work written one hundred years ago by a
man whose name is honoured wherever the great thinkers of
Europe are known. By this work, the philosopher Kant
sounded the death-knell of European superstition in a deeper
strain than his contemporaries Hume or Voltaire. And the
new reformation which began in that springtime of genius has
advanced steadily during the present century, which it will un-
doubtedly characterize in history. Kant wrote as follows
in his work entitled, *' Religion within the Limits of Pure
Reason " : —

" The moral capacity of man is the foundation and the
interpreter of all religion. Religion, for this reason, must
come to be gradually liberated from all arbitrary ordinances,
from all commands which rest merely on history, and which
unite men in the advancement of the good for a time only, and
by means of the creed of a Church. . . . The leading
strings of sacred tradition, with its appurtenance of rules and
observances, which did good service in their time, gradually
become superfluous, and even become a bondage when man
approaches years of discretion. When he was a child he
understood as a child, and he found that scriptural learning
and even a sort of church-philosophy agreed very well with
commands imposed upon him from without. But when he
becomes a man, he puts away childish things. The degrading
distinction between layman and priest disappears. True free-
dom demands equality. But equality is not anarchy, because
every one obeys the law — not a command imposed upon him,
but the law which he dictates to himself This law he cannot
but regard at the same time as the will of the Ruler of the
world, presented to man by his own reason. And this will

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH. 1 29

unites all men invisibly into a community, which before was
very meagrely represented and foreshadowed by the visible
Church." (The conception of a Ruler of the world, apparently
external to the spirit of man, and of a future life, continued in
Kant's philosophy as survivals, though they are, in my judg-
ment, quite unessential to it.) " All this is not to be expected
from an external revolution " (Kant was writing during the
French Revolution), "which is attended with storm and violence,
and yet has an effect largely dependent upon chance. In
a new constitution thus created, any maladaptation has to be
reluctantly borne with for centuries, because it could not be
altered without another equally dangerous revolution.

" The transition to a new order of things ought rather to be
effected by the principle of a pure religion according to reason,
considered as a Divine revelation constantly being made to all
men through their reason only. Such a principle, when once
grasped by mature consideration, will be realized by gradually
progressive reform, in so far as its realization depends upon
human intelligence; revolutions are providential, and you can-
not reckon on their results.

" But we may reasonably say that the kingdom of God is
come on earth, as soon as ever the principle has taken root,
generally, and in the public mind, that the creeds of the
Churches have gradually to pass into the universal religion
of reason, and so into a moral, that is, a Divine community
on earth ; although the establishment of such a community
may still be infinitely remote from us. For this principle, be-
cause it contains the motive force of a continual approach to
perfection, is like a seed which grows up, and scatters other
seed such as itself ; and it bears within it invisibly the whole
fabric which will one day illuminate and rule the world.
Truth and goodness have their basis in the natural disposition

K

IJO THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

of every human being, both in his reason and in his heart.
And because of this affinity with the moral nature of rational
beings, truth and goodness will not fail to spread in every
direction. Hindrances arising from political and social causes,
which may from time to time interfere with this expansion,
serve rather to draw closer the union of hearts in the good.
For the good, when once it has been clearly perceived, never
abandons the mind.

" This, then, though invisible to the human eye, is the con-
stantly progressive operation of the good principle. It works
towards erecting in the human race, as a community under
moral laws, a power and a kingdom which shall maintain the
victory over evil, and secure to the world under its dominion
an eternal peace."

These words were published in 1793, and in consequence of
the book which contained them, the veteran philosopher, then
in his seventieth year, received a warning from the Prussian
Governniv-'ut, and had to undertake to teach no more about
religion. And we may be glad that they now appear to us to
be no dangerous speculation, but the utterance of the most
sober common sense ; for it is none the less true that they
contain the essence of European civilization, — a hard-won in-
heritance, which it is our duty, in the words of the Athenian's
oath, to leave to others, "not less, but greater and nobler,
than it is now intrusted to us."

VII.
HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.*

I HAVE planned this lecture in the hope that I may,
perhaps, interest or help some among us by explaining
some considerations which have forced themselves on my
mind in my own attempts to understand the New Testament.
I am not a theologian or critic by profession, but I claim that
we all have a right to apply our intelligence to these questions,
using such books as are generally accessible ; and I believe
that in this way, if we are fairly cautious, we may attain to
substantial knowledge and ideas valuable for our lives.

The volume which we are accustomed to call the New
Testament is a collection of twenty-seven separate writings by
a variety of authors. The title which is still given to it (as I
have it here on the title-page of the Revised Version), " The
New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," indi-
cates the light in which the volume is regarded.

It is regarded, by all who think of it according to the
description I have quoted, as a book written by a special
inspiration for the instruction of later ages, containing an
authentic history and a systematic doctrine revealed as the
official charter of the Christian Church. And the book is
therefore employed for the purpose of establishing certain
matters of history and doctrine forming the faith and the creed

♦ An address given for the Ethical Society

131

132 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

of a certain set of Churches which are founded on this sup-
posed historical revelation.

If we wish ever to understand the New Testament, we must
put away from us all these ideas. We must not regard it as
written by a special inspiration in order to reveal the truth to
later ages. We must not regard all the twenty-seven books
as of equal value. We must not suppose that all the writers
of these books had the same principles, or the same purposes,
or the same capacity, or the same nearness to the time and
ideas of Jesus Christ. We must not think that the language
of these writings has a supernatural depth, wKich in theory is
too profound for human apprehension, and in practice admits
of any interpretation we may choose. We must not, above
all, clog ourselves in reading the New Testament with the
theological ideas of the Cathohc or Protestant Church, which
are wholly strange to the grand and simple sentiments that
influenced the Apostolic age. We must not, in short, consider
the New Testament as the Holy Scripture of a Church. His-
tories and letters which are used as the sacred books of a
Church can never be understood in their actual meaning. A
Church must have a theology, and its theology must grow with
its necessities. And all the theology which its requirements
force upon it will certainly be proved out of its Holy Scriptures,
if it has any.

I have one word of explanation to offer before I go further.
It is often said that we should avoid negative teaching; that
we should never pull down, but only build up. I accept the
spirit of this precept, which appears to me to contradict its
^ letter. Denial, a wise writer * has said, is the rejection of a
lesser truth in favour of a greater, and at least in presence of

• Oliver Wendell Holmes.

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 133

doctrines which bar us out from a spiritual treasure, it has
Ipeen my own experience that a few plain denials are welcome,
because they alone can open the avenues of hope. Nor,
perhaps, is this explanation necessary here to-night. The
idols which we must gently push out of our way are sadly
timeworn, and I doubt if they are held very precious.

So I want you to accompany me to-night in casting a glance
at the writings of the New Testament in the time of their
origin, before any one thought of them as an official revelation
or as the charter of a new religion.

I will read from a very respectable and popular work an
extreme statement of the ideas which make havoc with popular
interpretation of the New Testament, both orthodox and
hostile. We must remember this ; these unwarranted ideas
shut up this book against thousands who might find it a help
to right feeling and to good conduct.

" * Now, again (when the New Testament was written), holy
men are moved by the Holy Ghost, and their office in connec-
tion with this latter revelation is first to record, in the four
Gospels, the life, death, and resurrection of the Word who was
made flesh and dwelt among us; secondly, in the Acts of the
Apostles, to narrate some results of His servants' 'testifying to
him in Jerusalem, in Judea, and in Samaria, and in the utter-
most parts of the earth ' ; then, ' in their Epistles, to unfold the
truths respecting Him 'in all the fulness of the blessing of the
Gospel of peace ' ; and finally, in the Apocalypse, ' to show
unto His servants the things which must shortly come to pass
in relation to the destinies of His kingdom in the world.' This
part of Holy Scripture (i.e. the New Testament) is therefore
emphatically the revelation of Jesus Christ."

• Paragraph Bible, Pref. Remarks, The italics are mine.

134 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Fewwriters now, I am well aware, would put forward such con-
ceptions as these in such guileless innocence. Yet their main
result and purport lingers even where we least expect to find it.
All who shrink from handling the New Testament as they would
handle any other book are in some degree the heirs of this false
tradition. Not only in orthodox literature, but in Unitarian
writings and in works of the advanced Continental school I
find a tendency to substitute unintelligent praise for appreci-
ative study, and to treat the character of Jesus as something
so high that it is beyond the reach of human apprehension.

But, it may be asked, are we not to study a great character,
and the records of a great age, with reverence! The question
is rather, to my mind, have we earned the right to be reverent?
Reverence is not a cheap and easy frame of mind ; it is the
hard-earned privilege of worshipping the greatness which we
have trained ourselves to know. It is easy to say to Jesus,
"Lord, Lord;" it is not so easy to learn the lessons which
Jesus tauglit. Let us handle the New Testament fearlessly ;
let us enter into its spirit thoroughly ; and then we shall have
the right to reverence its greatness.

Now I turn to glance at the origin and leading ideas of the
New Testament, and first a few words about the name New
Testament itself.

The name New Testament, or new Covenant — Testament
is probably a mistranslation — indicates the idea of a single
revelation, the charter of a new religion. This idea grew up
by degrees in about 150 years after the death of Jesus.* It
was not till after that interval of time that a collection of
writings was called " Tlie New Testament," and was reckoned
as standing on the same level with the law and prophets of
the Old Testament scriptures. There are only two places in
* Reuss, "Gesch. d. Kanons," sect. 217.

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 35

the New Testament writings where the name "Scripture"
seems to be given to any New Testament book. One of these
is in the 2nd Epistle of Peter,* a late and not very valuable
writing; tlie other is in i Timothy, also a very late book,
where the word scripture probably applies only to the quotation
from the Old Testament. The name New Testament was no
doubt derived from the words of Jesus, which really rest on
the authority of Paul (i Cor. xi. 23), followed by Matthew
xxvi. 28, "This is my blood of the covenant" (or new cove-
nant)— the idea being worked out by Paul in Galatians iv.
24, in an argument which compares the new covenant of
Christ's Gospel with the old covenant of the law given from
Sinai Then, as the writings that concerned Christ's hfe and
teaching came to be collected and appealed to, first by heretics
and then by the orthodox, as evidence of what the original
gospel was, these writings very gradually became an authority
on matters of belief Then — and it is just an instance of the
strange legal, literal interpretation of those days — these books
were sometimes called the " deed " of the new covenant, as
if you were speaking of a memorandum of a lease, or perhaps
of a treaty between two nations. And then, for shortness sake,
instead of "the deed of the new covenant," the collection of
books was called the new covenant, or, probably by a mis-
translation, the New Testamentf or will. This was, as I said,
150 years after the death of Christ, and it was about the same
time that the writings began to be called Scripture, which is
the word for inspired or infallible writings. " Scripture " in the
New Testament itself, except in the places I mentioned, always
refers to the law and the prophets of the Old Testament. The

• 2 Pet. iii. 16 ; I Tim. v. i8.

t " Novum Testamentum" first in TertuUian (d. about 223 A. D.). Rcuss,
"Geschiclite des Kanons," sect. 303

136 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

New Testament writers regarded the law and the prophets as
inspired, and interpreted them quite as badly as the later
Church interpreted the New Testament writers. It might be
possible to think for a moment that i Cor. xv., " Christ died
.or our sins 'according to the Scriptures,'" referred to the
Gospel history, standing as the Gospels do in our New Testa-
Ptent before the Epistles ; but of course the Gospels were not
written till after Paul's death. "According to Scripture"
means "in fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies," *

Thus, by the time when the writings of which we are
speaking had come to be called the New Testament, being
thus put on a level with the Old Testament, and to be treated
as Holy Scripture, the ideas of the age of Jesus and of Paul
had passed away, the theologians, both heretic and orthodox,
had begun their work, and the New Testament record had
become their battle-field. From this time forward the New
Testament became more and more the official charter of a
Church, its dignity and authority increased, and the possibility
of understanding it diminished.

If we want to come to close quarters with the New Testa-
ment writings, we must first of all get some idea (I.) Of the
dates at which, and of the order in which they were written,
and then (II.) we must go on to put together, chiefly out of
the books themselves, the general movement of ideas and
lentiments which they share, in spite of the very different
purposes with which they were severally written.

I. The production of the more important books of the New
Testament began about twenty years after the death of Jesus ;
and extended over a period of about a century. I may divide
this period for convenience sake into four lesser periods.

I. The first period is from about 54-55 a.d., when the first

• Isaiah liii. 9, 10 ; Ilosea vi. 2.

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 37

of Paul's Epistles which we have was written, to Paul's death,
probably in 64 a.d., in the persecution under Nero, at Rome.
In this ten years, there were written, for certain, the four great
Epistles of Paul, Galatians, two to Corinthians, and Romans,
in this order. The historical notices in these Epistles are the
earliest and most certain records about Christianity. Espe-
cially, the first two chapters of Galatians are of surpassing
historical interest.

On the other hand, it is quite certain that the Epistle to the
Hebrews was not written by Paul, and it probably does not
belong to this ten years.

All the other Epistles are doubtful in various degrees, which
we need not enter into now. Any one who wants to enter
into the mind of Paul, should certainly go first to the; four
undoubted Epistles, and of these, first to Galatians.

2. The second period may be taken as from the death of
Paul to the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans ; six yedrs,
64-70, A.D. This capture is a great landmark in the history
of the New Testament writings, because it put an end to all
present hope of a triumphant restoration of the Jewish
monarchy. In that way it did much to spread the' true inter-
pretation of Christ's gospel of the kingdom ; and in judging
of the date of any New Testament writing, it is always an
important question whether that writing seems to assume that
the temple services, which ceased after 70 a.d., are still going
on at Jerusalem. The two important writings that clearly
belong to this time are the Epistle to the Hebrews and the
Revelation of St. John, both of them in different ways being
full of allusions to Jerusalem and the temple-worship, and the
Revelation recording the history of a particular time in the
war.

3. The third period we may take from the destruction of

138 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Jerusalem (a.d. 70) to the writing of the fourth Gospel. In it,
first of all, there grew up gradually the first three Gospels,
Luke being decidedly later than Matthew and Mark,* The
Acts of the Apostles followed not very long after Luke, and
the Gospel called St. John's was very likely later still. The
Epistles called St. John's seem of the same time as the Gospel
called St. John's. As to the date of this Gospel, we really do
not know it. No one thinks of placing it much before 100
A.D., and some think it was more nearly 150. These dates
make no difference of principle. Even if it was written in the
year 100 a.d., John, the disciple of Jesus, did not write it. It
was not written by an old man of 90 or 100. We see, then,
that the history and philosophic divinity come last in order of
time, as the need for them begins to be felt.

4. And then we may just notice a fourth period, which may
fall within the last, because the end of the last is uncertain ;
but I have made it sequent, because we can fix the beginning
of this by the persecution under Trajan. It extends from the
first systematic persecution, beginning soon after 100, to the
organization of the Catholic Church as a kingdom of this
world. I Peter and 2 Timothy seem to allude to the per-
secution, while Titus and i Timothy show the later growth of
Church and creed, i Timothy iii. 16 reads like the fragment
of a liturgy.

We see, therefore, how very gradually the New Testament
writings came into being ; and we must remember that they
came into general knowledge still more gradually. There is,
as a rule, no trace of any care on the part of the writer or of
the congregation for the preservation of his writings, for public
instruction in them, or for their collection into a volume. The
writers of the New Testament, at least the earlier ones, treated
• Internal evidence is in favour of regarding Mark as the latest of the three.

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 39

their books as carelessly as Shakespeare treated his plays.
Some of Paul's letters are certainly lost. Among " spiritual
gifts," such as prophecy and exhortation, no place is given to
teaching by means of the pen. The great Church Historian
writes (* Euseb., "Hist. Eccles." iii. 24, quoted in Reuss,
^'Histoire du Canon," p. 21) : "Guided by the Holy Spirit and
endowed with miraculous power, the apostles carried every-
where the tidings of the kingdom of God, taking very little care
to communicate it in writing because they had to fulfil a more
exalted task. . . . Paul, the first of them in power of speech
and truth of ideas, left behind him only a very few letters, and
those exceedingly short, although he miglit have said much
more which had been revealed to him alone. The other com-
panions of the Lord, the twelve apostles and the seventy
disciples, were just as well informed as those who made written
records, and yet only two did this, and they for special reasons."
And a very early writer says (Papias, first half of second cen-
tury, in Euseb. Pv.euss, ib.), "I did not think that the books
were so valuable to me, as what I learnt from a living and
abiding voice" {i.e. from tradition). And so we find that
letters belonging to the early part of the second century seem
to quote these books as a matter of convenience, but without
assigning them any authority whatever.

From all these dates and facts we see how hopelessly unreal
is the notion of a systematic inspired revelation, built upon a
solid historical basis. There was no system. There was no
idea of a special inspiration like that ascribed to the Old Testa-
ment prophets. Paul, at any rate, went on no solid historical
basis. The order of the books was ?tot Gospels first as foun-
dation of fact, then Epistles as commentary on Gospels, then
prophecy to complete the book by a revelation of the future.
• Euseb. d. 340 a.d.

140 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

The real succession of the writings was less simple, but more
natural. First there came the fiery letters of the missionary
to the Gentiles, with few or no facts and confused artificial
reasonings, but glowing with the first flush of a great human
idea ; then came the prophecy of the Jewish believer, ex-
pressing his hope even in the crisis of his country's agony,
which he took to be the sign of the Lord's immediate return ;
and at last, after this hope had proved a delusion, came the
late and gradual attempts to commit to writing, and to in-
terpret worthily, the fragmentary tradition of the life that was
beginning to seem distant after the interval of more than half
a century.

II. And now we must attempt to sketch some growth of
ideas in the first age of Christianity, such as to be in harmony
with the true arrangement and fair interpretation of the New
Testament writings. We shall again, as it happens, take four
periods, but they are not the same that we took in speaking
of the books ; because now we have to begin with the preach-
ing of Jesus, which was, of course, not recorded in a book
at the time. It is worth mentioning, as regards the relation
of the books to any general ideas or doctrines, that nearly all
of the books, especially the earlier ones, were written on par-
ticular immediate occasions, and in no sense for the benefit
of posterity. The exceptions are, perhaps the Epistle to the
Hebrews, certainly Luke's Gospel, and "John's" Gospel, both
of which profess to be written with a view to instruction.
(Westcott, " Social Aspects of Christianity," p. 179.) "The
Epistles to the Thessalonians were due to an exceeding desire
to learn something of the state of the Church from which Paul
had been suddenly hurried away, when ' once and again Satan
had hindered him ' * from visiting them. The Corinthians,

I Thess. ii. 18.

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 14!

by their divisions and disorders, no less than by their ques-
tions, drew from him the portraiture of love and the apostolic
statement of the gospel of the resurrection. The apostasy of
the Galatians stirred him to a burning denunciation of legal
righteousness. Even the studied exposition of the Faith to
the Romans was due, in part, to the frustration of his purpose
to visit them." *

We shall see, moreover, that the New Testament writers
lived entirely in the belief that Christ's second coming was
at hand, which prevented any suggestion of the need for a
written revelation from ever entering their minds, at least until
after the destruction of Jerusalem.

I will divide the early Christian movement, for mere con-
venience sake, into four epochs, to which we may give the
following names, from their principal characteristics. Of
course, such divisions and names are only meant to give a
clue in reading ; they cannot help leaving out a very great
deal.

1. The principle. "The kingdom of God is within you"
(Luke xvii. 21). Christ's Gospel of the Kingdom. From
about 33 A.D.

2. Its application. " Whether Jews or Greeks, whether
bond or free"(r Cor. xii. 13). Paul's Gospel of Humanity.
Paul's Mission to Gentiles. From about 40 a.d.

5. The Divine ideal. "God is a Spirit, and they that
worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth." " Ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free " (John
iv. 24, and viii. 32). "John's" Gospel. 130 (?) a.p.

4. The worldly reality. " The Church of the living God,
the pillar and ground of the truth" (i Tim. iii. 15), The
Catholic Church. 150 a.d. and later.
• Rom. i. xx.

142 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

I. The teaching of Jesus is described in Matthew's Gospel
as preaching the gospel of the kingdom, wliich is more fully
called either the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God.
This gospel or message, though perfectly simple and straight-
forward, was so thorough and so true, that it affected at once
the two chief aspects of human life — man's own heart and his
relations in society.

We must clear away from our minds all such ideas as that
the kingdom of heaven means a future life in Paradise, that
salvation means being saved from eternal punishment, that
eternal life means living for ever in another world, or that
forgiveness of sins means the doctrine of the atonement by
the merits of Christ. Jesus may have had some ideas which
we must pronounce quite unreasonable, but tradition con-
stantly misunderstood him, so that it is impossible to say
exactly, for example, how far he believed in his own miraculous
second coming to judge the world, or in eternal punishment.
It is quite possible that he did more or less accept these
ideas. But of course he did not say what is put in his
mouth about the siege of Jerusalem, and so the sayings about
his second coming and the judgment may not be authentic
either.

We must go upon the bulk of the simple sayings and
parables, which there is no special reason to doubt, in the
tirst three Gospels ; and if any one persists that we cannot
really tell what Jesus said, then I can only answer that it does
not really very much matter, for in that case we must con-
gratulate ourselves that the Gospel-writers were so lucky as to
invent these things. A schoolboy once said that it was not
at all certain whether Homer's poems were written by Homer
or by another person of the same name. So I do not much
care whether Christ's sayings were said by Christ or by another

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. I45

person of the same nature. But the tremendous contrast of
the first three Gospels with the fourth makes us think the first
three historical by comparison.

Take as the key to the whole, the words (Luke xvii. 21)
" The kingdom of God is within you," or " is already among
j you." Remember that this expectation of a kingdom was the
form under which the Jews were familiar with the notion of
/ a good time coming, and some of them no doubt thought of
t it more as a time of greatness and glory, others as a time of
reform and righteousness. Kingdom of "heaven" is the
same as kingdom of God j it was only used, I believe, because
the Jews did not like mentioning the name of God, just as
people say, "Thank Heaven," instead of "Thank God."
Salvation, eternal life, the world to come, forgiveness of sins,
must all be interpreted in the same way as the kingdom of
heaven ; partly meaning a state of mind which begins at once
and is the essential change, and partly certain consequences,
such as being fit for the miraculous community of the saints
on earth. The new Jerusalem in John's Revelation is on
earth ; it comes down from heaven. This was the universal
expectation. When Jesus says, " Thou art not far from the
kingdom of God," it is just like saying, You have very nearly
obtained salvation or eternal life, or forgiveness of sins. You
have nearly brought yourself to the true will to be righteous
which is eternal life. And consequently the world to come
does not mean a life in heaven ; it means the whole good
time which had begun with Christ's first coming. Then, starting
from this centre, the idea of a good time, or time of reform,
which was coming and had already begun, you find it naturally
involving two sides, which cannot really be separated. One
of these you have in the sermon on the mount, and the other
especially in the parables that deal with the kingdom of heaven,

144 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

especially the parables of the grain of corn and the mustard
seed (Mark iv. 26 ; Matt. xiii.).

That is to say, the good time, on the one hand, is to con-
sist in righteousness of heart and life, in genuine human
morality, in putting away the selfish will. " He that loseth
his life shall find it," And it is to consist, for this very
reason, on the other hand, in a purification of human society
and the formation of a righteous community not restricted
to any nation, rank, or creed. John the Baptist strikes the
note to begin with. " Think not to say within yourselves.
We have Abraham to our father; for I say imto you, God
is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."
If human righteousness and love are the one thing needful,
then all the barriers of class and of caste and rank and creed
are condemned already, and must go. It is again impossible
to make out how far Jesus threw away the national pre-
tensions of the Jews. It was a question that split the
Apostolic society to its foundation, and the tradition of
what Jesus did and said flatly contradicts itself* It con-
stantly happens that a man stops short m the application

• Matt. X. 5,6. — Instructions to the Twelve not to go to Samaritans
or Gentiles. (This in Matthew only.)

Matt. XV. 24. — Jesus says he was only sent to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel , and in Mark vii. 24, there is the same story, without
those words, but still bearing strongly against helping the heathen ; but
the moral of the story is that the faithful heathen may be accepted,
^.ccording to Luke, which is supposed to be the Pauline Gospel, Jesus
went through Samaria (so, too, in John), and Luke alone gives the famous
parable of the Good vSamaritan. The idea of preaching to all nations is
in all the Gospels, but, so far as the Synoptics are concerned, in the most
legendary part of them. Of course you may say that it only means the Jews
in foreign countries, but I do not know that any one will believe you. And
then there are the para.bles of the Vineyard ant the Marriage Feast, in-
volving the rejection of the Tewi

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. I45

of his own principles in what a looker-on thinks quite an
unaccountable way. And Jesus may have stopped short in
this way. At best he cannot have said quite plainly how far
he went, or the disciples could hardly have quarrelled about
it afterwards ; and the one thing we know for certain is that
they did.

But there is one set of Jesus' sayings which leave no
mistake about the two aspects of his gospel — and these are
his indignant sayings. Indignation is not compatible with
I Divinity ; if Christ knew that he was God, and had created
these poor priests and pedants, it would have been a bit
of stage- play to be indignant against them. But apart from
this question, the point is that a spiritual religion, which
demands rightness of heart and character as the only law,
can make no truce with idle forms and ceremonies, or with
the orthodoxy of a priestly caste, or with the selfishness of
classes, or the exclusiveness of nations. The kingdom of
heaven, which is a kingdom of the heart and mind, must
ilso, and for that reason, be founded on freedom, and be as
wide as humanity. Take such a saying as " Not that which
goes into the mouth defiles a man " ; or again, " The Sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath"; "who
devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long
prayers"; "love to pray in the synagogues or in the corners
of the streets." " Why do ye transgress the commandments
of God because of your tradition?" And consider the act
of cleansing the Temple, which was a direct defiance to the
priestly system. All these things show just how a moral or
rational religion must be free and universal. They carry out
John the Baptist's saying, mentioned above, that it is no use
claiming to be Abraham's children ; for " God is able of
these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."

L

146 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

I do not speak of the whole morality of Christ's gospel,
simply because we have no time to-night, and I only hope
to give a clue to the main idea of it. But in order to show
what I mean by handling the New Testament fearlessly, I
will say that one great sentiment of Jesus runs very near to
sentimentalism. I mean the warnings against worldliness.
Nothing, indeed, was ever more brilliantly true than the say-
ing about the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of
riches, which choke the word, so that men's lives become
barren. It means, I suppose, much what I heard a friend say
the other day, when he observed of a particular class of
persons in a particular town, " Those respectable people are
the very devil." Still I say that it is a perilous position to
go about telling people to take no thought for the morrow,
and to sell all they have and give to the poor. The spirit
of it is that they should give themselves and all they have to
the good cause j but here, as elsewhere, the letter killeth. If
there is nothing baser than a life of decorous self-indulgence,
there is nothing nobler than a life of thoughtful and dutiful
citizenship ; and here I think that Jesus had something to
learn from Pericles. Hear what the greatest of Greek states-
men ' says : " We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in
our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manli-
ness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but
when there is real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no
disgrace ; the true disgrace is in doing nothmg to avoid it.
An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he
takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who
are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We
alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs
not as a harmless but as a useless character ; and if few of us
are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy." To my

HOW TO "READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. I47

ear there is a manliness in these words which just at some
moments I could fancy that I miss in the sermon on the mount.

I repeat before going further ; the principle of Jesus was
certainly hostile to the exclusiveness of the Jews, and ivtplied
that his religion was a religion for the whole world. And he
evidently made this plain to his enemies. The suggestion
that was fatal to him was that he would destroy the Temple.
Probably he had said that the Temple service was doomed.
There is no reason to suppose the witnesses against hira were
false witnesses, except in the sense that they were hostile
witnesses. On the other hand, he started on a reform of
Judaism^ and there is no sign that he meant to found a new
religion. There were no Christians in Jesus' lifetime. It
makes one think of John Wesley, who was for the greater
part of his life under the delusion that he could avoid break-
ing from the Church of England. In both cases it was the
necessities of the foreign missions that brought about the
decision.

2. Now we go on to the second period, the application of
the principle, and what we find at first is, that though Christ
had been put to death as a heretic, yet the community of
disciples, not yet called Christians, were able to continue at
Jerusalem after his death. This must mean that they had
fallen back into a more liberal sect of Jews ; there were
plenty of sects among the Jews, and one more was nothing
remarkable. This is not at all unlikely ; it is rather the
more likely thing. A new movement would tend to attract
numbers of people who did not know really what it meant,
and when the great leader was taken away, their common-
place ideas would assert themselves. We can see that neither
the disciples nor the Gospel-writers understood Jesus. Even
the author of the fourth Gospel explams the saying about

140 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

destroying the Temple by a forced interpretation about the
resurrection (John ii. 19),

But, in a short time, at Jerusalem, some events happened
which the Book of Acts — written sixty years or more afterwards
— has evidently confused and disguised. Some of the Jews
belonging to Greek towns, who were in Jerusalem, could not
agree with the old Jewish congregation ; the historian puts it
down to a complaint about the distribution of the charity.
Well, most of us know what a quarrel is ; it is seldom on one
point only. But you will observe that the men who were
appointed in consequence of the dispute do not merely look
after the charity, but evidently initiate a religious advance, in
which Stephen's preaching is a chief element. And then, im-
mediately, a persecution begins, just on the same charge that
was fatal to Jesus. The false witnesses (there is no reason to
suppose they did not tell the truth) affirmed they had heard
Stephen say that " Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place
(the temple), and change the customs which Moses delivered
us." And the speech ascribed to Stephen confirms the charge
in effect. "The Most High," he says, "dwelleth not in a
temple made with hands " (a quotation from i Kings viii. 36).
Then Stephen was put to death and the disciples had to leave
Jerusalem, and some of them went to Antioch and, apparently,
preached to the Greeks (not merely Grecian Jews) there ; and
we are told the name *' Christians " arose there (it is a Latin
name, but might easily be introduced there).

This account in the Acts leaves not much doubt as to what
had really happened. The Greek-speaking Jews, compared to
the orthodox Hebrew disciples, were like English-speaking
members of some little Welsh or Irish congregation ; they
spoke the tongue of the civilized world, and were accustomed
to its life and thought. Such men would naturally seize on

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. I49

the universal side of the gospel, and say, — " This is not an
affair of reforming your little local Church ; it is a matter for
the whole world, and we shall go and preach it to everybody."
(Just notice the exact point here ; the Jews were always willing
to receive Gentiles who would become Jews, and their prophets
had prophesied that all the world would come into the
kingdom of the Messiah. What the Jews could not endure
was preaching that men might enter into the Kingdom of God
without becoming Jews.) And further ; of course Jesus and
Paul are both hard on the wisdom of this world ; and it is true
that simple straightforward minds are specially accessible to
new truths. Nevertheless, Greek was the language of Christi-
anity. Jesus no doubt spoke a dialect of Hebrew, but the
Roman world could no more be converted in Hebrew than the
world of to-day could be converted in Welsh. Christianity
became a universal religion when it was preached in Greek ;
and it gained by the change, in capacity of development and
application, if it lost in becoming subject to theological super-
stition. The fourth Gospel could not have heen written in
Hebrew, and I question if Paul's noblest ideas could have
been thought or expressed in Hebrew.

It is clear that Stephen and his party to some extent
anticipated the ideas of Paul, drew upon themselves a furious
persecution, and in their dispersion gave rise to Gentile
Christianity (that is, to Christianity as a new religion). These
events might be perhaps two years after the death of
Jesus.

Then happened what, second to the ministry of Jesus,
is the most important event in the history of the world —
the conversion of Paul. His own plain story of this and of his
conduct in consequence is in Galatians (first two chapters),
and we should put together with that his account of the

150 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

appearances of Jesus in i Cor. xv., of the Lord's Supper in
I Cor. xi. 23, and the passage in 2 Cor. xii., which shows that
he was subject to trances. The account in the Acts is in-
tended to represent Paul as always guided by the old Church
at Jerusalem, and to give Peter an equal initiative in preaching
to the Gentiles. It is quite unhistoiical.

What forces itself upon us as the true account is this : Paul,
when he used to persecute the Christians, of course had heard
their story about the resurrection and the appearances, and we
must suppose did not believe it. Then he had a trance or
vision in whicli he thought he saw Christ, and that turned him
round and made him believe it was all true. That explains
how he persists in saying apparently, that he received all his
gospel, facts and all, directly from the Lord. This is not
certain of i Cor. xv. about the death and resurrection of Jesus,
but comparing the other places it is far the most natural
interpretation ; and anyhow he says it of the Lord's Supper.
One does not like to suppose that this account was a mere
hallucination, and passed from Paul into the Gospels, but if he
never heard it from anybody, it must have been so.

But, however he came to his views, we have his own writings
to tell us what they were, and so far we are better off than
trying to learn about Christ. The centre of his doctrine was
what I have ventured to call the Gospel of Humanity, and
was implied rather than affirmed in Christ's gospel of the
kingdom. The extraordinary force of this gospel is shown by
the hold which the new religion gained in Paul's lifetime on
the very centre of the civilized world.

The central doctrine of Paul had, like all sound moral con-
ceptions, a double aspect, just as was the case with the gospel
of the kingdom, and I may add, just as was the case with
Plato's idea of righteousness. I suppose we might speak of

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 151

Paul's central idea as "justification by faith only."* To
mention this doctrine fills the mind with echoes of theological
dispute. I will only make two suggestions with a view to
helping any one who is reading St. Paul. First : he saj-s in so
many words f what the faith is — a belief in the risen Christ
and in his Divinity — and secondly, if you ask what that belief
means, for Paul, you must look for the answer in his idea of

' the spiritual oneness of all believers in and with Christ. These
— in and tvith Christ — are the two aspects of Paul's doctrine.
Being one with the risen Christ, means that the particular
believer has put away his bad will, is dead to sin, and has
thoroughly submitted his heart and soul to the dominion of the
good will, that is, the mind of Christ.| Being one in the risen
Christ means that the society of believers form what Paul
calls the " body of Christ," that is, a spiritual unity which is
Divine and yet human, and as wide as humanity. Faith
means realizing this oneness in and with Christ. This great
comparison of the relation between human beings in society
to that between the parts of a living body was introduced
into moral thought by Plato, and has been, perhaps, the
most fruitful of all moral ideas. I will put side by side a
text from Plato and one from Paul. Plato writes in his
dialogue about a Commonwealth § (notice that his principle,
like Paul's and Christ's, is two-sided ; he starts to show what
righteousness is, and embodies it in the form of a society) :
" Is not that the best-ordered State which most nearly ap-
proaches to the condition of the individual, — as in the body,
when but a finger is hurt, the whole frame, drawn towards
the soul and forming one realm under the ruling power

' thereof, feels the hurt and sympathizes all together with

* e.g. Rom. iii. 28. f Rom. x. 9.

\ 2 Cor. iv. 10 ; Rom. vi. 5. § Republic, v. 462.

152 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

the part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in his'
finger ; and the expression is used about any other part, which
has a sensation of pain at suffering, or of pleasure at the
alleviation of suffering ? Very true, he replied, and I agree
with you that in the best-ordered State there is the nearest
approach to this common feeling which you describe. Then,
when any one of the citizens experiences any good or evil,
the whole State will make his case their own, and either re-
joice or sorrow with him ? Yes, he said, that is what will
happen in a well-ordered State." Compare with this i Cor.
xii. 12. "For as the body is one and hath many members,
and all the members of the body, being many, are one body,
', so also is Christ. For in one spirit were we all baptized into
one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and
were all made to drink of one spirit. . . . And whether
one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it ; or one
member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now
ye are the body of Christ and severally members thereof."
Plato was speaking of a very limited visible community, Paul
of the invisible community of all faithful people. Those
splendid words, " whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or
free," just make all the difference. They are the war-cry of
the enthusiasm of humanity. And the battle which Paul
fought so hotly against Judaism or " the law,'' in phrases and
arguments very strange to our ears, about the works of the
law and the two covenants, and the circumcision, and the
gospel preached to Abraham — this was our battle, the battle
of freedom for all time. " Ye, brethren, were called for free-
dom— for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this,
' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " (Gal. v. 13). I do
not know how a man could speak plainer than Paul speaks in
that particular text

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 53

Thus I need hardly go back to say that justification by faith
does not mean salvation from eternal punishment by believing
historical facts. It means, as Paul says elsewhere, a new
creation of the man, a conviction that right is the law of the
world, and an entire devotion to this law which gives strength
for or rather is a complete victory over sin (Gal. vi. 15). I
do not suggest that any one can now believe these doctrines as
Paul believed them, encumbered with the resurrection of the
body and the Divinity of Christ, and with a sort of general
imputation against human nature, what he calls the flesh,
which implies a confusion between two different things, natural
impulse, and wilful selfishness. We cannot believe these
things, but any one who reads carefully will find that they are
a very small proportion of Paul's convictions, in comparison
with the simple human truth of his gospel.

3. Now I have hardly enough time to speak of the two re-
maining periods. But I will just point out with regard to the
Divine ideal, the fourth Gospel, that it is not a pwe advance
on Jesus and Paul. It gives in one sense the most rational
account of religion ; but it also shows a beginning of theologi-
cal superstition, and, in addition, it shows a very coarse and
material fancy, a heightening of the miraculous details which
is almost painful to read. The most startling miracle, the
raising of Lazarus, is in it only, and is exaggerated by the
allusion to the time the body had been in the grave. And at
Cana, " Thou hast kept the good wine until now," is a coarse
exaggeration. The fourth Gospel is wholly unhistorical in the
narrative, and the Divinity of Christ, which originates in the
Messiahship of Jesus, is here represented in an extreme, far
beyond even Paul's idea of it, as something which Christ re-
membered himself to have had before he came on earth.

On the other hand, *' John " treats all the disputes of Paul's

154 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

time as settled and done with. The universal destiny of
Christianity is a simple fact with him.* Instead of the second
coming of Christ to judge the world, Paul's idea of spiritual
oneness is carried out in the notion of the Holy Spirit, which
is to represent Christ and God in the mind of man. The
intellectual position of Christianity is quite new, and much
bolder than it was ; it stands complete as the absolute truth
and freedom, with a calm acceptance of what Paul seemed to
puzzle out with pain and labour.

This ideal marks the turning-point of Christian thought ; in
one sense it brings insight into the spirit of Christ to its highest
perfection ; in another sense it begins the degeneration of
spiritual religion into theological superstition ; a doctrine
something like that of the Trinity begins to show its head,
and the whole simplicity of the life of Jesus is destroyed. We
do not reahze the enormous gulf between the fourth and the
first three Gospels, because, in reading the first three, we start
with ideas which we, or others for us, have drawn from the
fourth. f I will read a striking passage from a good orthodox
critic (Westcott, v. n).

" The first three Gospels differ at first sight as to the time,
the scene, the form, and the substance of the Lord's teaching.
If we had the first three Gospels alone, it might be supposed
that the Lord's ministry was completed in a single year ; that
it was confined to Galilee till the visit to Jerusalem, at the
Passover, by which it was terminated ; that it was directed in
the main to the simple peasantry, and found expression in

* The great text in St. John, and in many ways the greatest in the ^'ew
Testament, is iv, 23, " The hour conieth, and now is, wlien the true vor-
shippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. God is a spirit,
and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth."

+ Westcott in " Speaker's Commentary," Introduction to St. Jolm's
Gospel, p. 77 ; quotation is from p. 79.

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 155

parables and proverbs, and clear, short discourses which reach
the heart of the multitude ; that it was a lofty and pure, yet
practical exposition of the law by One who spake as man to
men. [I may say plainly that all this is just what I do be-
lieve.] But, if we look at St. John, all is changed. In that,
we see that the public ministry of Christ opened as well as
closed with a Paschal journey; that, between these journeys,
there intervened another Passover and several visits to Jeru-
salem ; that He frequently used modes of speech which were
dark and mysterious, not from the imagery in which they
were wrapped, but from the thoughts to which they were
applied ; that, at the outset, he claimed in the Holy City the
highest prerogatives of Messiah, and, at later times, constantly
provoked the anger of His opponents by the assumption of
what they felt to be Divine authority." And then he goes on
to show that the first three Gospels and the fourth have, even,
very few facts in common.

Of course he has to demonstrate that both narratives are
historical ; I can only say that I am glad / have not the task
before me. The fourth Gospel was written, as we saw, from
forty to seventy years after Paul's death, and from seventy to
a hundred years after Christ's.* It belongs altogether to
another atmosphere from theirs.

I must point out one simple sign of increasing remote-
ness from history at this point. The story of the Ascension
is not in Matthew's Gospel. It is not in Mark's, if you omit
what is shown as a later addition in the Revised Version.
In Luke, the Ascension is the same day as the resurrection,
obviously, as Christ passed upwards from the place of departed

* Taking Westcott's date for the gospel, 97 A.D., the intervals would lie
thirty-three years and sixty-two years respectively. Can this make any
i3;'>'e»"ce of principle ?

156 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

spirits to heaven. (Same belief explicitly in the " Ep. of Barna-
bas," Reuss, G. d. K. 234, n.) In John, if you omit chapter xxi.,
which is late, Christ was on earth eight days after the resurrec-
tion, and taking chapter, xxi., more than eight days. In the
Acts of the Apostles, forty days is the interval. There is the
legend growing before your eyes. What did Paul think, being
the earliest of our witnesses ? I should imagine that he did not
distinguish the resurrection from the ascension, and that the
appearances of which he speaks took place from heaven ; he
does not distinguish them as different from his own vision.

4. This epoch had begun, of course, long before the fourth
Gospel was written ; in a sense, Paul writes about Church
discipline to the Corinthians. But if you look carefully at i
and 2 Timothy, which are not genuine letters of Paul, you will
agree, I think, that they attach enormously greater importance
to questions of organization, and belong to a quite new order
of ideas as compared with St. Paul, and a divergent order of
ideas as compared with the author of John's Gospel ; which
Gospel, however, does show, both in its systematic method and
in its theological substance, the influence of an organized
Church. Very likely both these books were written about the
same time as the fourth Gospel.

You will notice that in these books there is great anxiety
about " the faith," almost as if it were a creed ; I doubt if Paul
uses the word thus in the four certain Epistles ; in the begin-
ning of Galatians he says rather " the gospel," that is simply
the message he had preached, not anything traditional or fixed
in a Church. Instructions about the officers of the Church
are given in detail. That is to say, the distinction of clergy
and laity is beginning to show its head, which led to our hor-
rible use of" ecclesiastic " and even of " church " as confined to
the ofliicials of the Church, Both Jesus and Paul would have

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 57

fought to the death against any distinction, except one of mere
convenience, between clergy and laity. And in the Second
Epistle of Peter, as we saw, Paul's letters are alluded to as
Scripture, which means that an official collection was becoming
recognised as an authority ; and the same Epistle shows that
Christ's second coming, or at least, the nearness of it, was be-
ginning to seem doubtful, and that it was also beginning to be
regarded as dreadful. Nothing could be more significant than
the loss of faith in the second coming, combined with turning
to a written record.

It is clear, too, from these Epistles, and from other history,
that the clamour of all sorts of wild theorizing became louder
and louder in the second century, and the Church organized
its theology in self-defence. Definitions and distinctions were
introduced quite foreign to the mind of Christ or Paul. Every
phrase that an Evangelist or St. Paul had used to force the
great facts of religion upon men's minds, was interpreted
coarsely and literally, or wildly and fantastically. Ideas of au-
thority, permanence, infallible tradition, scriptural inspiration,
took the place of the idea of membership iji the kingdom of
heaven.

Synods and councils came to be held, having authority in
matters of faith. Some of the earliest synods were about the
burning question when Easter was to be celebrated.* Paul
had had a word to say about such observances to the Gala-
tians : " Ye observe days and months and seasons and years.
lam afraid of you, lest by a7iy means I have bestozced labour
upon you in vain" (Gal. iv. 10).

In short, the religion of the Catholic Church became a law,
like that against which Paul had fought, but no doubt with

• Gibbon, vol. ii., p. 193 (ch. 15). Guizot's note.

158 HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

larger and nobler elements ; and Christendom has lived under
this law and has called it Christianity to the present day. The
difference is, that the Church has preserved in its books the
principle of truth and freedom, and it has at some times and
in some degree borne witness to this principle. There is
nothing at all strange in the fact that we now, after seventeen
centuries, can see the meaning of the New Testament more
truly than it has been seen since it was written. It is quite in
accordance with experience that this should be so. The ideas
of great men are apprehended very slowly, and a free and
rational society must in part exist before the dream of such
a society can be rightly interpreted. This does not at all
deny that the earlier and less free interpretations of the New
Testament, with the imperfect societies in which they arose,
have been conditions of the more free and more rational
society of to- day.

Now I should like to sum up a few suggestions which I have
found useful.

(i.) We should read chiefly the chief books, the undoubted
letters of Paul, and the four Gospels. The other books
should be judged by these, and used to fill up our knowledge
of the age and its varying tendencies. Acts especially should
be carefully compared with what Paul's own letters say. It is
well to get hold of some of the books which are not in the
New Testament collection to see the same tendencies getting
more extravagant.* (No one doubts, I believe, that every
Gospel and Epistle in the New Testament is better than any
book of the same kind which was not received into the New
Testament. This is the sole foundation, in fact, for the
idea of inspiration. The first century was a great religious
epoch.)

* "Bible for Young People," vol. 5, p. 105.

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. 159

(2.) We should read patiently, but not slavishly. If, after
giving careful attention, we fail to understand a passage, or
we think it is plainly wrong and foolish, let it be so. We
must not twist the meaning to make it come right. I hold
that the English intellect has been kept back a hundred years
by the habit of intellectual evasion, which has its roots in
our slavish fears of the Bible. We must not go text-hunting;
we must read continuously, and follow the writer's meaning.

(3.) We should bear in mind the order and something like
the dates of the books — at least so as to know when they were
noi written. More particularly, we must remember that all the
Gospels are later than Paul's letters ; that the Acts is very much
later than Paul's letters, and puts a gloss on the facts ; and
that John's Gospel belongs to quite a different age from the
other Gospels. We must not expect the same kind of thing
from the different books. If we ask the right questions they
will tell us no lies.

(4.) We must be on our guard against the language of our
own translation. Every important word in it (nearly every
word) is charged for us with the results of 1,700 years of con-
troversy, none of which could be in the minds of those who
used the words in the original. Learning to interpret is like
learning to draw ; we have to get rid of our acquired ideas,
and try only to see what is simply given to our eye. " Father"
and " Son " are simple words. But when I read them in the
New Testament I am assaulted by ideas about the Trinity ;
and so, too, when I read about the Holy Spirit, notions about
z. person come to my mind. Try as we may, we shall hardly
regain the simplicity of these ideas. On the other hand, it
is silly to speak as if writers meant nothing by their words :
yet their meaning was not, except in John, philosophical.
Their words were expressions for a fact, not definitions of

l6o HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT.

a system. In R.V. Romans v. ii, *' reconciliation " now
stands in place of " atonement," — a great gain. The idea of
expiatory sacrifice is much strengthened by Hebrews, which is
not Pauline.

(5.) I find it useful to read advanced criticism — useful morally
as well as intellectually. It stimulates attention, strengthens
grasp, makes the writer's mind intelligible, and so brings it
near and enables us to enter into it. People call it " picking
holes "; but this is great nonsense. When we feel our writer
to be of like passions as we are, then it is, and not till then,
that we can sympathize and appreciate. Did you ever notice
that there are five warnings in dreams in the first two chapters
of Matthew ? or that in Luke the ascension is the same day
as the resurrection ? These little things, and others greater,
just take us into the heart of the world we are dealing with. I
would read Matthew Arnold's *' Literature and Dogma " and
" St. Paul and Protestantism ; " and, if you can get them in a
library, " The Bible for Young People," or " The Protestant
Commentary." Of course you will find no book without faults.

(6.) And lastly, our power of understanding the New Testa-
ment will depend largely upon experience of other books — not
specially critical books. Generally, we can only gain judgment
and insight by reading; and specially, we must be familiar
with other great ages and great ideas if we want to understand
early Christianity. It is a remarkable and a noble admission
of the great orthodox divine whom I have quoted to-day, that,
in his account of the social gospel of the New Testament, he
has owed much to his study of Comtism. It would be a
shallow and ungenerous retort to suggest that Comtism miglit
have been enough for him without the New Testament. We
want all the light we can get ; there would be no sense in
casting aside a great religious record because a great writer has

HOW TO READ THE NEW TESTAMENT. t6l

helped us to see its value. I would certainly read VVestcott's
"Social Aspects of Christianity." Where he says you must
believe in the Fall of Man and in the Resurrection, I should
simply say, " No, I must not." But it is a good book, with
especially interesting notices of Francis of Assisi, who was
never a priest, it seems, but a great secular reformer, and of
George Fox, the Quaker.

Robert Owen's clear views illustrate the opposition to reli-
gion as external law. He said the first condition of reform
was to put an end to all religiofis as diverting attention f.om
the real conditions which determine character; he thought
this the only chance for religion. His view of human nature
was shallow ; but practically, as against the prejudices of his
time, his suggestions were almost entirely right. He wrote a
book called " The New Moral World " — this name is a very
good equivalent for Christ's phrase The Kingdom of Heaven.
Mazzini, or any work dealing with his life or views, is also well
worth reading.

No one can feel more acutely the extreme difficulty of read-
ing the New Testament aright than one who has enjoyed
what is ironically called a good religious education. And I
have often wished, in the bitterness of my heart, that the New
Testament could be buried for a hundred years, and discovered
afresh in a wiser age. But man must untie, with patience and
labour, the knots which man has tied ; and it is our task, and
the task of a future moral education, to regain, for ourselves
and for our children, some clue to the religion of Jesus and of
Paul.

M

VIII.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF A

TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY.*

I SHOULD like to explain very shortly why I have chosen
this particular subject. Those of us who are especially
accused of being interested in German philosophy are tempted
either to give battle along the whole line, as by discussing the
nature of reality, or to make everything seem all the same in
all systems, as may easily be done by a sympathetic treatment
of any special subject. I was desirous, if I could, to select a
point which should be important in its bearings, but yet
perfectly definite, so as to be explained, I hope, with some
approach to precision. I believe myself that this is the only
fundamental question which is or ever has been at issue be-
tween distinctively English thinkers and German idealist
thinkers, as such ; but when I say the only question, of course
I include in it its consequences, and it is the object of this
paper to indicate very briefly how far-reaching these are.
Other alleged differences, such as the distinction between a
priori and experiential philosophy, or that between a belief
in the absoluteness and in the relativity of knowledge, I take
to be pure misunderstandings.

In order to state the question precisely, I will take it first
in its logical form, although in this particular form English

• Read before the Aristotelian Society, and subsequently published in
Mini.

IMPORTANCE OF A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 163

writers have sometimes seen and satirised the absurdity of the
view which, in my opinion, they accept in all other provinces
of philosophy.

The logical law of Identity, A is A, is susceptible of many
interpretations ; but they all fall, 1 think, between two ex-
tremes. The one extreme is to take the principle as a
demand that in every judgment there shall be some identity
or positive connection between subject and predicate, which
is merely symbolised by the repetition of an identical letter.
This view we need not trouble ourselves with ; it is nothing
at all, unless further explained. But the other extreme is to
take A is A as a statement of the J^r/ of identity which the
judgment aims at : i.e., as a type of the fullest, completest,
most thorough identity, compared with which the identity in
an ordinary intelligible judgment is incomplete and falls short
of being genuinely identity at all. Hamilton's statement
("Logic," i. 80) is of this kind. The law of Identity means
" Everything is equal to itself." I should state the view, then,
which I propose to apply and to controvert as being that
perfect identity consists in the entire exclusion of difference.

The importance of this view consists in its atomic tendency.
If we were to attach moral implications to theoretical views,
this doctrine might be burdened, more fairly than materialism,
with the c'lief associations which are supposed to be objec-
tionable in materialistic conceptions. I say this by way of
illustration of its importance, and not in the least believing
that such associations ought to be introduced into philo-
sophical reasoning. But the ground for connecting any such
associations with this ideal of perfect Identity without differ-
ence lies in what Plato would have called its eristic character,
that is, its tendency to exclude from judgment, and therefore
/rom truth and knowledge, all ideal synthesis. Not, of course.

164 TUB PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OP

that ideal synthesis ever has been or can be excluded from
judgment; less deception would be possible if this were so;
but what may and does happen is that an arbitrary line is
drawn across various contents of knowledge, and their identity
is denied from the point at which some little effort or some
little education begins to be needed in order to recognise it.
In fact, all ideal syntheses which we can find out to be such
are pronounced to be fictions.

If we take A is A in the sense to which I object, as meaning
that the real type which underlies the judgment is an identity
without a difference, we simply destroy the judgment. There
is no judgment if you assert nothing; and if there is no
difference between predicate and subject, nothing is asserted.
Of course in " A man's a man ' we make some difference
between the two terms : one means man in his isolation, the
other man in his common nature, or something of that sort.

If I were asked how I should represent a true Identity,
such as a judgment must express, in a schematic form with
symbolic letters, I should say the problem was insoluble.
Every A is B would be much better than Every A is A ; but
as the letters are not parts in any whole of meaning, they are
things " cut asunder with an axe," and such a formula could
only correspond to a proposition like " London Bridge is one
o'clock," i.e., to a spurious judgment, which would be mere
nonsense.

One might try Every A is AB, which would be suitable in
some respects ; but then, what is the use of repeating the A
when you have it once already in the subject ? The whole
difficulty would arise again in endeavouring to explain the
connection between A and B in AB ; and besides, a qualifica-
tion in the subject would be demanded to account for the
qualification in the predicate, and we should have to recur to

A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 165

AB is AB. In point of fact, the letters, taken as mere letters,
are atomic existences, and the judgment cannot be repre-
sented by their help. If they are used algebraically, i.e., for
elements in a numerical whole, the question is different.

What, then, is Identity ? The judgment is the simplest
and perhaps the ultimate expression of it. An identity is a
universal, a meeting-point of differences, or synthesis of differ-
ences, and therefore always, in a sense, concrete. Or we may
speak of it as the element of continuity that persists through
differences. We may illustrate this idea by comparing it with
Locke's notion of identity. " In this consists identity, when
the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they were
thatraoment wherein we considered their former existence, and
to which we compare the present" (" Essay," Bk. ii., ch. 27).
In spite of this demand for the exclusion of difference, Locke
gives a very fair working account of personal identity, by limit-
ing the points within the personality which do not vary, and
ascribing identity in virtue of them. But he forgets that the.-.e
points are not isolable from differences, and cannot be treated
as identities simply on the ground of their not varying. If a
thing is pronounced truly identical with itself only in as far
as we exclude the differences of its states, attributes and rela-
tions, identity falls into tautology, which is really incompatible
with it.

Let us take such a judgment as "Csesar crossed the
Rubicon." In order to give this its full meaning we must
not try to cut it down as Lotze in one place does (" Logic," §
58), reducing Caesar to mean merely a creature that crossed the
Rubicon ; this would be A is A again. Precisely the point
of the judgment is that the same man united in himself or
persisted through the different relations, say, of being con-
queror of Gaul and of marching into Italy. The Identity is

l66 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF

the Individual, or the concrete universal, that persists through
these relations. And if you ask what in particular this is, and
try to whittle away the differences and leave the identity, you
will find that when the differences are all gone the identity
is all gone too. In the case of two outlines which partly
coincide, you cannot speak of the coincident part as the same,
except by an ideal synthesis which identifies it first with one
of the two outlines and then with the other.

Identity, then, cannot exist without difference. In other
words, it is always more or less concrete ; that is to say, it
is the centre or unity or continuity in which different aspects,
attributes, or relations hold together, or which pervades those
aspects, or persists through them. It is quite accurately dis-
tinguishable from difference in known matter, but it is not
isolable from difference. The element of identity between two
outlines can be accurately pointed out and limited, but the
moment they cease to be two, it ceases to be an identity.

This is the most vital point of recent Logic. The universal
is no longer treated as an abstraction, but, so to speak, as a
concretion, so that violent hands are laid even on the inverse
ratio of intension to extension. We can no longer see why
the universal, within which a certain element falls, should be
more abstract than that element ; why, for example, the state
should be a more abstract existence than the citizen.

A very good instance of this way of looking at universals
is the treatment of proper names* as indicating universals,
because they indicate persistent subjects. Most people have
some sort of schema which helps them to handle their philoso-
phical ideas. The traditional schema of the universal — even
Mill's, I should say, though he helped to show the way out

• E.g., Sigwart, "Logik," i. 83.

A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 167

of it — was, I suppose, extent of area. The greater universal
included the wider surface, and was more abstract. The
schema I should now use would be more like a centre with
radii, or simply a subject with attributes, the greater universal
having the more or more varied radii or attributes, and being
therefore the more concrete. Such a schema is particularly in
harmony with taking an individual as designated by a proper
name for the example of a universal.

The recognition that a universal is an identity, and vice
versd, is to be seen dawning on Mill, who usually denies the
operation of identity in inference, in a very interesting foot-
note in the "Logic" (i. 201) directed against Mr. Spencer, who
answers it in "Psychology" (i. 62, note). Mr. Spencer is more
of an atomist, I believe, than any one else has ever been,
for he says that the syllogism must have four terms; i.e.^ the
middle term is not identical in its two relations, but only
similar.

The concrete view of the universal has a result antagonistic
to the whole tendency which began with the class-theory of
predication (closely connected with the law of Identity), and
ended with Quantification of the Predicate and Equational
Logic. Of course these researches have been both curious
and important; but in as far as they aim at reducing the judg-
ment to an identity without difference, they are off the track
of living thought. Jevons's idea of Identity is very difficult ;
I can hardly suppose it to be thought out. But what he says
("Principles of Science," pp. 16, 17) about the negative symbol
which indicates difference, " or the absence of complete
sameness," means, I think, that he considers difference an
imperfection in identity. Jevons writes the judgment, "All
Dicotyledons are Exogenous," as " Dicotyledons = Exogens,"
which he takes to mean, I suppose, that the two classes are

1 68 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF

composed of the same individuals ; i.e. their identity is in the
mere sameness of the individuals. What this judgment really
means is that in a particular kind of subject, a kind of tree,
the different attributes of having two seed-leaves and of making
fresh wood on the outside are conjoined, with a slight pre-
sumption of causality. The whole point and significance of
the identity depends on the depth of the difference. So that
though you can, under certain conditions, take the one term
and deal with it as if it was the other, yet that is only a
consequence of the real import of the judgment; the real point
and import is to look at the two together, as united in the
same subject

In Psychology the difference between the conception of
concrete and abstract identity shows itself in the theory of
Association, especially in the attitude taken up towards the
law of Association by Similarity. If Identity is atomic or
abstract, i.e.^ e"ccludes difference, then you cannot speak of
your present impression as being identical, or having identical
elements with a former impression which, qiiA former, is by
the hypothesis different ; and, consequently, you mast say that
the first step in Association always is to go from your present
impression back to another impression which is like it, before
you can get to the adjuncts of that former impress-on, of which
adjuncts the revival by association is to be explained. This
first step is Association by Similarity, which, according to what
was till recently, I believe, the received English theory, must
always precede Association by Contiguity, that is, the transi-
tion to those adjuncts of the former impression, the recalling
of which by something in present consciousness is the problem
to be explained. The theoretical question at issue is mainly
the degree in which the processes of consciousness are homo-
geneous at its different levels. Association of particulars

A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 1 69

might lead up to Inference from particulars to particulars, but
could never lead up to the activity of judgment and inference
considered as the interconnection of universals.

The question of fact which is involved in this quesiion of
theory is one of extreme interest. It is whether we do, in
what is called transition by association, go from the presented
element to the quite different context which it recalls, through
a distinct particular reproduction of a former impression
similar to that now presented. If this is so, we go to Con-
tiguity always through Similarity, and in doing so we revive
our former impression (I adopt the language of the theory,
though, if there is no identity, we cannot revive a former
impression, but only one like it) with complete exactness, just
as if we were taking a print out of a portfolio. And the idea
that we do this is attractive, because in some cases we appear
to be aware of doing it in a striking way — of going right back
into a former and similar state of consciousness, before we go
on to the further adjuncts contiguous with that former state
of consciousness.

But I do not think that this popular idea will really bear
examination in the light of facts. It is plain that, as a rule,
the element in present perception which sets up an associa-
tion is not a particular complete in itself, and operative by
calling up a former separate or self-complete particular resem-
bling it. On the contrary, the element which sets up an
association can be seen very easily (if we think of hourly,
normal occurrences of the process, and not merely of striking
examples in which a picturesque memory is at work), to be
a characteristic in a present complex perception, not itself
sensuously isolable, but identical with something /// a former
complex perception, and recalling directly, without interme-
diation of a similar particular, some adjunct of the former

TJ'O THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF

complex perception. And this adjunct, the idea whose re-
production is to be explained, is not itself a particular, but is
a complex dominated by a type or rule of interconnection,
which does not appear in the mind with its old particular
content, but with a new one largely furnished and modified
by the present content of consciousness.* The more closely
we examine the matter, the less we shall think that contents
brought up by association reappear in their old form, like
prints out of a portfolio, or involve an intermediate repro-
duction of the old case similar to the new perception which
starts the process. The illusion comes from seeking out very
elaborate examples. The common cases in which association
and inference can barely be distinguished are perfectly good
instances, and show the continuity of the intellectual function.
I hear a rumbling in the street and think that an omnibus is
passing, or a double knock and know that the letters have
come. I do not go back to the last particular rumble or post-
man's knock, or expect letters like the last which came.

The interest of those who believe in concrete Identity, in
thus reducing the two " Laws of Association " to the one Law
of Contiguity, is to enforce the idea that the content of con-
^sciousness is never merely simple or particular, and that in
association, as in judgment, the universal or meeting-point of
differences furnishes the true guide to the intellectual process.

This reduction is beginning to be accepted {e.g., Mr. Sully
mentions it, and Mr. Ward in some degree adopts it), not
perhaps in the full sense here claimed for it, but merely as a
preferable statement of the operation of ideas which are
particulars. I doubt, for example, whether Mr. Sully has

• It will be obvious to all who are familiar with the subject, that I am
borrowing largely from Mr. Bradley's chapter on "Association "in " Prini
ciples of Logic"

A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. IJf

abandoned the Scotch or English ground of atomisna in ideas.
But to recognise identity as the universal makes the associative
process far simpler, and homogeneous with the whole remain-
ing evolution of consciousness.

In Ethical Philosophy the desire to exclude difference from
identity produces analogous difficulties to those which we have
noticed in Logic and Psychology. If, in short, difference is
excluded from identity, how are you ever to get from one self-
identical particular to another, whether in inference, or in
association, or in moral purpose, or in political obligation ?
In the sciences that deal with human action the natural
atom to start from is, simply putting atom into Latin, the
individual human beinj^. Of course an individual human
being is a concrete universal, as we saw in speaking of what is
meant by a proper name ; but as his unity is pressed upon us
by merely perceptive synthesis, we are apt to treat it as a
datum, or to draw a sharp line between the unity of the
individual human being, as a datum of reality, and the unity
of human beings in identical sentiments, ideas, purposes or
habits, as something not a datum, not real, the mere creation
of our comparing intelligence, A striking example of such a
point of view on Ethical ground is the passage in " Methods of
Ethics," p. 374, where Prof. Sidgwick speaks of testing the
feeling of common sense towards the sum of pleasure as an
ethical end, by supposing that there was only a single sentient
conscious being in the universe. Of course it is allowable to
suppose, for the sake of argument, alteration in a state of
things which we know to be actual ; but nobody — least of all
so cautious a writer as Prof. Sidgwick — would remove in his
supposition so enormous an element of the case as man's social
life, unless he supposed it to belong less really to the indi-
vidual's moral identity than his existence as a living body does.

172 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF

This is simply not the fact. Of course, if a plague carried off
all men in the world but one, that one might retain his social
consciousness and habit of mind. But apart from further
religious assumptions, that consciousness would be an illusion,
and the man's self would be a mutilated fragment for which no
real life was possible. The fairer case to put, which we can
observe in fact but too often, is to suppose that the body lives
on, but that the real identity with society and humanity — the
universal consciousness — is extinguished in that one body by
disease. Then we see that it was not in the least a metaphor,
but an absolutely literal truth, to say that the man's real self —
what he was as a moral being and in part as a legal person —
consisted in a system of universals, or identities including
difference — viz., the consciousness of certain relations which,
as identities in difference, united him with family, friends and
fellow-citizens. "Identities in difference," such, e.g., as a man's
relation to his son ; it is like the case of the two outlines which
I mentioned. The two men are bound together by certain
facts known to both of them, certain sentiments and purposes,
all of which they both share, but in regard to which each of
them has a different position from the other, apart from which
difference the whole identity would shrink into nothing.

In Political Philosophy, again, we may notice Mr. Spencer's
social atomism, curiously doubled with a comparison of the
body politic to the living body, in which the state is taken,
roughly speaking, as a unit, among units, instead of being taken
as a real identity throughout the whole. It is a strange fate
for Plato's famous simile of the organism to have its contention
retorted in this way. A justification might be found for Mr.
Spencer by pressing home the idea of a spiritual identity as
against an external or legal one, and probably that is the sort
of meaning which he has in mind, but he is barred from saying

A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 173

SO by disbelieving in identity altogether; and it would not be
true, fw a spiritual identity will always express itself as a legal
one.

I should like to try and illustrate this point of real identity
by one further example. We here, the members of the
Aristotelian Society, have in our minds, qua members, a
really identical purpose and endeavour, and consciousness
of certain facts, just as actually and truly as we are actually
and truly sitting round an identical table. It is not the fact
that we are a number of separate individuals or atoms, each
completely real in his sensuous identity, and merely cherish-
ing, in addition, certain ideas which happen to resemble
each other. In as far as this is fact, it is so in the sense
that our moral being has enough in other relations to fill
it up and make it real, apart from what we are and do as
members of this Society. But in as far as our membership
plays any part in our consciousness, so far this real identity
actually and in sober earnest forms a part of our being as
the individuals that we are, and our solidarity as a Society
is only another aspect of a real identity which is recognised
in a different form by each several member of the Society,
according to his individual relations to it. It may be said :
" But our ideas and purposes in respect of the Society are
not all the same ; they are probably not all even in agree-
ment." But our ideas of the table are not all the same;
our perceptions of it are certainly all different — the different
angles at which we see it answer for that. No one can
prove that we all see it of the same colour, and if we do not,
our perceptions of it are even discrepant. Yet we say it
is the same table, because, in our worlds which we severally
construct and maintain, it fills a corresponding place, and so
we do not say that there are as many tables as people; but

174 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF

we call it one and the same table which we all perceive.
And so, because this Society to which we belong is recog-
nised by each of us in certain purposes which are relative
to the corresponding purposes of others, and which assign
different people the places necessary to common action, we
call it the same Society, which really exists in the ideal and
practical recognition of it by its members, and is something
in them which is the same in all of them, and without which
they would be so far devoid of a real solidarity which they
now possess.

If we once begin trying to exclude difference from identity,
we can never stop. The comparison of Locke's discussion
with Hume's is interesting in this respect. Hume follows
much the same lines as Locke, but bears more distinctly
in mind that in explaining an identity which includes differ-
ence— e.g , personal identity — he is not expounding a fact,
but is, according to his own principle, accounting for a
fallacy. The problem is, of course, as old as Heraclitus.
If we want to free identity from differences, we must go to
atomic sensation, and then we cannot. Any limit which
we place upon real identity has only a relative value, de-
pending upon the aspect in which the terms are compared.
If we try to make such a limit absolute, it at once becomes
arbitrary.

And by accepting such a limit we may be driven into an
opposite extreme, through lumping together all that lies
beyond our limit. It seems to me that the Comtists do this
in erecting Humanity as an object of worship ; they know
that all ideas of solidarity or real identity among men are
apt to be taken as fiction, and they think it as cheap to
have a big fiction as a small one. So they take an object,
\ think, in which it is really very hard to show a centre

A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. 175

of identity. You can do something with an ideal human
nature embodied in an individual, or with a national con-
sciousness and history ; but is there really anything at once
definite and valuable that links together all humanity as
such, including the past ?

It often occurs to one to ask oneself, whether all this
question is not largely verbal. Supposing we take identity
to exclude difference, and therefore practically banish identity
from the world altogether, and instead of it use the term
similarity or resemblance, and attach certain consequences
to certain degrees and kinds of similarity, would philosophy
suffer any loss ? When Hume explains continued identity
as a current fiction, does he not explain it quite as well as
any one could who called it a fact ? When Mill treats con-
sciousness as an ultimate inexplicability, does he not in that
very passage state the nature of consciousness as well as
any one could who professed to be able to explain it ? There
is something in this, in so far as we analyse contents, as
Locke and Hume do in their discussions, and distinguish
what consequences attach to what resemblances, or, as Hume
would call them under protest, identities.

This can be done, by the process of defining and precisely
limiting the points of resemblance in respect of which in-
ferences are drawn, fcuch as those inferences which we draw
from what we call personal identity. An indiscernible re-
semblance between two different contents, in specified respects,
will do whatever identity will do, because it is identity under
another name. The self-contained identity of the separate
contents is broken down when you admit that one of them
can be indiscernibly like the other, and yet also remain differ-
ent from it. In that case the contents form a coherent system
or unity in multiplicity, which is the essence of identity.

176 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF

The only objection to this is the confusion of terminology,
and so of thought, which is involved in putting ordinary
similarity, the essence of which is not to be precisely analysed
and not to establish a middle term or centre, on the same
level as " exact likeness," which establishes a middle term
or centre of unity. We know that in ordinary similarity the
things pronounced similar remain separate, and you cannot
infer from one to the o<her. On the other hand, in indis-
cernible likeness or identity there is a systematic unity between
he elements in question, which is as real as the elements
themselves. Therefore, to dispense with concrete identity
involves a confusion of the case in which the transition 01
unity is "objective" — i.e., as real as the content itself — with
the case in which the content is self-contained and merely
has a certain echo of another content, so that the similarity
of the two may be called subjective ; that is to say, thai
it is not precisely referred to any element in the content itself.
Jn the one case the unity of the contents is real, in the
sense that it is definitely a part of themselves ; in the othei
case it is a fiction, in the sense of being somehow added
on to them by a confused perception.

It is quite possible to examine into the bearings and nature
of a fiction or artificial structure, and English philosophy,
from Hobbes to Mill, has done much good work in this
attitude. But putting aside the theoretical inconvenience,
which I have tried to point out in detail, of assuming the
wrong kind of unit, there is also an important practical effect
on the theoretical interest. People will not pay the same
attention to what they think secondary or artificial as to what
they think a reality in its own right. Reality means to us
something that resists efforts to destroy it, and refuses to tc
remodelled at our pleasure, and everything which is artificiit

A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY, 177

or made up, though of course it exists, seems arbitrary and
capable of being remade in another way, especially if we
believe that the units when separated would retain a value
which, in fact, they only have in synthesis. And for that
reason anything artificial seems less fundamental, and less
worth detailed investigation, than what is thought to have a
nature that cannot be got rid of, and that includes all we
need care about.

I should like, in conclusion, to illustrate this effect by more
general considerations. The effect is, I repeat, the outcome
or embodiment of an idea that difference is detrimental to
identity (the logical formulation of the doctrine is not, of course,
responsible for the whole effect or embodiment) ; and it con-
sists in a sceptical attitude towards the real unity of every
system or synthesis which can be seen to be a synthesis.
And by " real " I mean having equal reality with the in-
dividuals which enter into the synthesis, so as to form an
integral part of their nature, and not to rank as something
which may be thus or otherwise without fundamentally affect-
ing those individuals.

This feature is extremely remarkable in the otherwise bril-
liant history of British philosophy. I suppose that in the
theory of material evolution England stands unrivalled. In
the theory of spiritual evolution, apart from some excellent
recent treatises on the simpler phases of anthropology, and
apart from the recent Germanised movement itself, England
has not a single work of the first class, and hardly a single
work of the second class, to show. Of course Herbert Spencer
fills a large place in the world's eye, and has no doubt made
important general contributions to the theory of evolution.
But I think it would almost be admitted that he is more of a
theorist than of a historical inquirer, and at best his inquiries

N

178 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF

are very limited in range. On the evolution of fine art we have
not merely no philosophy, but we have not the material for it ;
we have no native history of fine art of any distinction, if we
except the life-work of Mr. Ruskin. The history of religion,
of morals, of law, of philosophy, and also history as such, have
met with no complete philosophical treatment. I believe
there is no tolerably good edition of Plato's "Republic," or of
Aristotle's " Ethics " or " Politics " (till the.last few days),* that
has been made by an Englishman for the use of Englishmen.
The same is true of the New Testament, though there I am
told that other nations share our deficiency ; but they do not
share the deficiencies of our general treatment of theological
subjects, which till lately testified to the same curious apathy
on the part of philosophical students.

Our logic, even, has only of late — I should say not till Mill's
" Logic " appeared — really attempted to assume a vital and
organic character as a genuine analysis of the intellectual
world. Our analytic psychology and metaphysic, while it has
from time to time shaken the world by the acuteness of its
questions, has, as it always seems to me, almost wilfully de-
clined to engage in the laborious task of answering them.

Such observations as these may be taken as an attack on
British philosophy. I do not mean them to be so ; I do not
doubt that the philosophy of Great Britain will creditably stand
comparison with that of any nation in the world, excepting
always, in my judgment, the ancient Greeks. But I do think
that not enough attention is usually paid to what is, so far as I
know, the wholly unparalleled fact, which a mere glance at a
bookshelf containing the works of the great British philosophers
will convince us of, that they have understood the limits of

• Mr. Newman's edition of the "Politics" was published. shortly before
this paper appeared in Mind.

A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY. I79

their subject quite differently from the philosophers of other
countries. The qualities which have hitherto been displayed
in British philosophy — I mean in the really effectual part of it
— have been, as it seems to me, only a portion of the charac-
teristics of the race which has produced it. Penetration and
audacity, a power (so to speak) of leading the forlorn hope,
have been the characters by which British philosophy has at
times left a decisive mark on the thought of the world ; but
it has hardly shown the power of comprehensive organization
and continuous growth which in practical life, and I suppose
in physical science, put the British people at the head of the
nations. We do hear sometimes that even in practical organi-
zation, when it has grown so elaborate as to demand conscious
and reflective development, we tend to come short; e.g., in
education and in the means of modern war.

This national peculiarity, which can hardly as a matter of
fact be denied, is no doubt a defect of our good qualities ; and
it is perhaps not fanciful to connect it with our insular
position, which may cut us off more than we are aware from
the impression of a real unity and continuity in a very various
life. No one can read Goethe's recollections of his boyhood
without feeling how, for example, the pageants of the empire
which he witnessed at Frankfort helped to call out his preg-
nant sense of organic continuity. More especially I suppose
that the secondary results of the Renaissance which led up
to the splendid development of genius in Germany, about a
hundred years ago, were choked in England largely by the poli-
tical causes which led to the victory of Puritanism.

It seems to me, therefore, that the recent interest in German
philosophy, which has shown itself in some meritorious and
perhaps in some rather laughable forms, is not an accident,
but is an aspect, however humble, in the great intellectual

l8o IMPORTANCE OF A TRUE THEORY OF IDENTITY.

movement of the nineteenth century, and brings with it, how-
ever awkwardly, an element in which the abstract thought of
this country has hitherto been deficient ; that is, a faith in
those higher forms of human solidarity which are only created,
maintained, and recognised by intelligent effort. We must
remember that while Kant and Hegel are annoying our philo-
sophers, Rousseau, Schiller, and Goethe, who have the same
ideas in their practical shape, are at the other extreme of
society, under the name of Froebel, reforming our infant and
elementary schools, and that perhaps our very economical and
commercial existence is at stake in the degree to which the
national mind can be awakened to the real value of the world
of truth and beauty. The actual history of the Germanising
movement in England would be well worth tracing. I sup-
pose Coleridge and Carlyle represent two early aspects in it ;
Carlyle's laborious historical work is quite as characteristic
of it as Coleridge's rather ineffective philosophising.

The logical aspect of such a movement as this is the tran-
sition from an idea of exclusive or abstract identity to one of
pregnant or concrete identity. I should say the transition
began in England between Hamilton and Mill. This idea
has not been overwhelmed by the reaction which has set in in
Germany against Hegelianism, but remains a permanent and
vital gain to logic. A nation does not lose what a teacher
like Goethe, not to speak of Hegel, has taught it; and we
should be much mistaken if we fancied that our common logic
was already on a level with that of Prantl and Sigwart, because
it is innocent of Hegelianism, against which they are in re-
action. The reaction is simply a way of thoroughly appro-
priating what has been done, and making sure that we under-
stand it The state of innocence is something very different
and inferior.

IX.

ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION BE-
TWEEN ''KNOWLEDGE'' AND ''OPINION."*

I AM privileged to speak this evening before a society of
philosophical students in the city which has been called
the modern Athens. It appeared to me, therefore, that I might
not inappropriately lay before the Society some thoughts on
that central question by the treatment of which in ancient
Athens the first foundations were laid of a European philo-
sophy.

The question, " Is there such a thing as knowledge, and, if
there is, by what features may we recognise it ? " had, I take
it, a far more radical bearing in Plato's time than in our own.
For us, it is a matter of extreme scientific and also of ethical
interest to define the grounds and principles on which, and
subject to which, human thought can claim to apprehend the
nature of things. The idea of the unity of the world is vital
even to those who think that they deny it. But, except in
some remote theoretical sense, no one does, or can deny it to-
day. The great inheritance of science and philosophy is to
logic, as civilized law and religion to moral reflection, or as
the fine art of the world to the perception of beauty. If any-
thing bewilders us in the proceedings of nature, we set it
down, as a mere matter of course, to our own ignorance. Nor

• An address given before the Edinburgh University Philosophical
Society.

1 82 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION

does any one seriously dispute the main content of civilized
morality, or the universal value of beauty. Our theories are
tested by these things, and not these things by our theories.
But in Plato's time these great objective supports were largely
wanting to philosophy ; though doubtless the civilization which
he knew seemed much larger to him than, by comparison, and
owing to our ignorance, it now seems to us. In the way of
systematic knowledge, we think there was only a little mathe-
matics J in the way of moral consensus, only the institutions, and
the not very stable convictions of his own small country, and
to some extent of the Hellenic world ; in the way of realized
beauty, the products of the short-lived maturity of one only,
though that the most gifted, among nations. I cannot but
think that the suggestion that these principles and activities
belonged to no coherent unity, and possessed therefore no
absolute and universal validity, was in his day a natural and
probable suggestion to a degree which we cannot for a moment
imagine. If now, for example, the mysterious debility were
to strike Great Britain, which has struck other nations that in
their time have led the world, we should look, I suppose,
with confidence to Europe and to America for successors who
could carry on the torch of science and of civilization. But if
in Plato's time the educated and politically civilized society of
Hellas, and more especially of Athens, was to be crushed, or,
as he clearly foresaw, to deteriorate, where was the philosopher
to look for the hope of humanity ?

Therefore, it seems to me, we should consider Plato's
account of scientific knowledge, although drawn from the
acutest analysis of experience, as in part a prophecy^ which the
later history of the world has wonderfully accom])lished and
defined. To complain that Plato did not say, and did not
indeed know in precise detail, what he meant by his dialectic,

BETWEEN "knowledge" AND "OPINION. I S3

is to complain of a philosopher for possessing the genius that
could lay down the universal conditions of a science for which
the actual materials did not in his time exist. He had to
work with only a few fragments of organized experience, and
in face of a world apparently relapsing into moral chaos ; but
perhaps the difficulty thus occasioned is compensated not
only by his genius, but by the burning reality which the ques-
tions of philosophy thus acquired for him.

Of these burning questions the chief and typical one was
that which I mentioned : Is there such a thing as knowledge,
and what are its distinctive features ?

We all know how the question is introduced in the fifth
book of the " Republic." Politics, Plato says in effect, are a
science ; you will never get government properly organized
till it is in the hands of people who have some grasp of
principles. And in support of this suggestion he goes on to
explain where the distinction lies between the mind as grasp-
ing a unity of principle, and the mind as wandering through
a variety of particulars. I will not follow the discussion in
Plato's sense, but will merely mention what throws light on
the question before us. Plato draws many contrasts between
the world of opinion and the world of science ; but the cen-
tral contrast which is the focus of all the others is this, that
opinion may make a mistake, but science is infallible. And
the fundamental question which I should like to discuss this
evening is what we mean by any such conception as that of
the infallibility or necessity of science, and what limitations we
must observe in applying it

In the main, we shall not improve much upon Plato.
According to him Opinion was liable to err because, in fact,
it constantly contradicted itself. And it contradicted itself
because its content was relative^ but not defined. And its

1 84 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION

content was not defined, because it was merely an aggregate
of perceptive or traditional judgments, which no attempt had
been made to analyse or to reconcile. The " many " or
" manifold," which is constantly recurring in Plato, as the
characteristic content of popular opinion, obviously means not
merely separate objects or sefisatiofis, but isolated and therefore
con^icXmg judgments. Thus we hear of the many popular for-
mulae, vofiifid, of " beauty and justice," and again of " the many
justices," that is, cases of justice regarded as rules of justice ;
and so of the " many beauties," i.e. conflicting standards of
beauty. He is thinking of minds filled with unrationalised
instances which appear as fluctuating standards and conflicting
judgments.

And because its content is unrationalised, therefore the
world of opinion tends to coincide with the world of sense,
and is, of course, spoken of as the world of the things that are
seen in contrast with the world of the things that are under-
stood. The Greek expressions 86ia and SokcI (" seeming," and
"it seems to me") lend themselves to this distinction. I do not
suppose that these words indicate sensuous appearance, as do
<j)aive(T6ai and (fyavraa-ia^ but they do indicate a contrast with
active thought, a sort of personal acceptance as opposed to a
universal conviction. And Plato, in the " Republic," as we
know, sweeps into the category of opinion or fallacious appear-
ance even the representations of fine art, because they can be
considered as images or imagery, and therefore as sensuous.

Science, or knowledge, on the contrary, was infallible, in the
sense that its content was single, and its inmost nature there-
fore excluded the possibility of contradiction or fluctuation.
Not that its content was other than relative, but then, being
relative, it was defined. Of course there is no confusion or
contradiction in relativity when you know to what your terms

BETWEEN "knowledge" AND "OPINION." 185:

are relative. Relativity in this sense is the root of scientific
necessity.

And thus, moreover, being defined, the content of science
\yas necessarily intellectual. It is impossible to have a con-
nected system of conditions in the shape of unanalysed percep-
tion or traditional judgments. And so the object or content
of science was spoken of as the world of things understood, in
contrast to the world of things perceived by sense. We are
not here concerned with any materialising misconceptions, of
Plato's or of our own, respecting that intelligible world. There
is no question whatever that the unseen world which Plato
was labouring to describe was the world of science and of
morality — the connected view which gives meaning at once
to nature and to human life.

I suppose that the account which we should now accept of
this distinction between knowledge and opinion would be es-
sentially founded on that of Plato; but the conditions of
modern thought have driven home one or two important points
on which his language is not and could not be absolutely un-
ambiguous.

In the first place, we must be very cautious in accepting the
opposition between the world of science and the world of
sense. We have not in exclusive use the convenient Greek
term, " it appears to me." We recognise no peculiar connec-
tion between opinion and sense. We speak without a blush
of " scientific opinion" and even of " scientific authority.''^ Our
opinions are a sort of debris of antiquated science and political
or theological tradition, of general maxims and half-understood
principles. They have not, we are inclined to think, enough
immediate touch with the world of sense-perception. Their
fault is rather intellectual confusion than imperfect abstraction
from sense.

l86 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCflON.

Our science, on the other hand, seems closely bound up
with sense-perception. Nor, again, should we ever dream of
ranking Fine Art among unreal illusions, because it is, and
must be, largely sensuous. The extremes of our mental world
seem to have met, and even to have crossed. Our chaotic
opinion is intellectualised, and our coherent science is material-
ised. If we try to distinguish the world of things seen from
the world of things understood, where are we to bestow that
act of seeing which a distinguished microscopist begins by
describing as " an act of the pure understanding " ?

The fact is, that there are correlative misapprehensions at-
taching to this idea of a world of sense-perception, which we
must take care to avoid. Sensation, we are too apt to say, is
illusory or false. This is incorrect. What we ought to mean
is that sensation is not true ; but for the same reason for which
it is not true, it is also not false ; for it is not a judgment at all,
and nothing but judgment can be true or false. On the other
hand, if we mean to say that sense-perception, such as human
seeing or hearing, is illusory, as Plato too often appears to
imply — that mayor may not be ; these activities are judgments,
and may no doubt be false, but also may be true.

There is, indeed, a secondary difficulty affecting the truth
of any perceptive judgment which is bond, fide a singular judg-
ment, because its subject is to some extent unanalysed, and
therefore not accurately conditioned. But when you are once
fairly started on the continuous evolution of judgment, you
will find it very hard to draw any intelligible line between
judgments affected by this secondary difficulty, and judgments
which are not so affected, or are so in a less degree. And
granting that judgments affected by it may intelligibly be called
" nearer to sense," it still remains quite -untrue that judgments
dealing with the determinate concrete objects of our perceptive

BETWEEN "knowledge" AND "OPINION." 187

world are necessarily judgments thus near to sense. As Plato
says, our primary remedies against sensuous illusions are
number and measure ; and so-called sensuous objects, as they
exist for civilized and for scientific minds, are penetratingly
determined at least by measurement and enumeration.

Thus, we must clearly realize that knowledge and opinion
both exist in the medium of judgment, that is, of thought.
That marvellous dialectician, common language, forces us
most commonly to say, " I think," when a Greek would have
said, "It seems to me." And though one may be tempted in
a moment of irritation to exclaim with Dr. Whewell, " Do you
call that thinking 1" yet, philosophically speaking, if a judgment
is made, it is thinking, and we must be quite clear that our
distinction between science and opinion is a distinction within
the world of thought, which is a single world, and to which the
objects of human sense-perception emphatically do belong.

Then, in the second place, and as a consequence of this
generic oneness of our world, we must guard ourselves against
finding the differentia of knowledge in any isolated principle
which may seem to commend itself to us as peculiarly intel-
lectual in origin or by contrast. We shall do no good by com-
paring one isolated judgment with another in order to accept
that which is more remote from experience or concrete reality.
We need not hope, that is to say, to distinguish part of know-
ledge as the content from part as the form of thought, or to
enumerate a list either of innate or of a priori principles of
the mind. It has been said, and by an illustrious Idealist
thinker, " Two pure perceptions, those of time and space, and
twelve pure ideas of the understanding, were what Kant
thought he had discovered to be the instruments with which
the human spirit is furnished for the manipulation of experi-
ence. Whence these strange numbers ? " Directly you men-

l88 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION

tion them, you feel that you cannot insist on them in that
rigid form. And if, or in as far as Plato meant that science
was in the long run to hit upon an abstract ultimate first
principle, or principle external to its content, from which
knowledge was to be suspended as a coat hangs from a peg,
then, and so far, he wavered in his conception of the nature
of truth. It might be questioned, for example, what he had
in his mind when he said of the mathematical sciences, " How
can the whole system amount to knowledge, when its begin-
ning, middle, and end are a tissue of unknown matters ? It
is, in fact, no more than an elaborate convention." We should
of course say, and should have expected him to say, that in
any conceivable system of knowledge the beginning, middle, or
end are only known by being in the system, and ipso facto be-
come unknown, if regarded in abstraction from it. And I do
not think this would be at variance with what he had in his
mind. Probably his difificulty was that, as he constantly hints,
the greater whole of knowledge was beyond his power to con-
struct ; there was, therefore, a saltus or discontinuity round
the edge of the mathematical sciences relatively to the whole
of knowledge. It was not that he expected to find some law
of Causation, or law of Uniformity, or Principle of Identity to
which they could all be attached. He evidently was convinced
that *' the truth is the whole."

Thus we must look for the infallibility or necessity which
distinguishes knowledge from opinion, tiot in the distinc-
tion between intellect and sense, nor in the distinction between
an empirical and a necessary judgment (unless explained in
quite a peculiar way), but in the degree of that characteristic
which makes it in the first place thought, and in the second
place, knowledge, at all.

All thought is determination, or connection, or definition;

BETWEEN "knowledge" AND "OPINION." 189

but popular thought is insufficient determination, and for that
reason is self-contradictory. Every judgment determines a
unity by a relation ; but as every unity is a centre of relations,
it is plain that until the unity has been exhaustively analysed,
all its different relations will seem to conflict, because each of
them will claim to include the whole of it. And the only
remedy for such conflicts is, accordingly, further determination,
as Plato explains with unsurpassed clearness in the seventh
Book. As determination progresses, then, the unity of thought
is maintained ; but its differences, which were at first merely
found together, come to be systematically arranged, and to
have their reciprocal bearings quite precisely defined. So then
every part of the system becomes charged with the meaning
of the whole, and the relativity of the different elements be-
comes a source of necessity, instead of a source of confusion.
Two terms are relative in this scientific sense when you can
tell what form the one will have, by looking at the form of
the other. Plato is apt to allude to the apparent contradiction
between the appearance of an object seen at a distance, and
that of the same object seen close at hand. But of course to
an educated eye there is no such contradiction ; the one ap-
pearance under one condition necessarily involves the other
under another condition. The contradiction would arise if
the angle subtended by the object were the same at two
different distances. The estimate of real size, as formed by an
educated eye, is a consequence or combination of the various
appearances combined with other evidence, and does not vary
with the distance at which the object happens to be seen.
We do not judge a man to be very small when we see him a
long way off", nor to grow bigger as he comes nearer. In fact,
we more generally make too much allowance for distance, and
think a man taller at a distance then he really turns out to

IQO ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION

be when we see him near. The various angles subtended at
different distances do not contradict but confirm one another,
because their conditions are made explicit ; if we confuse
their conditions, they will contradict one another. A railway
engine coming towards one at full speed does seem to swell,
because one has no time to adjust the perception of distance
to the angle subtended by the object, i.e.^ to distinguish the
perception under one condition from the perception under
another.

Thus it results that the possibility of contradiction is removed
and turned into confirmation in as far as experience is organized
as a single system of determinations. It is in this sense alone
that science has a claim to be infallible or necessary.

But now, if this is so, how far does this kind of infallibility
take us ? To what extent does it justify us in even asserting
that we have knowledge at all ?

To begin with, we cannot show, strictly speaking, in this
way or in any other, that it is impossible for a change of
relations to occur without a change of conditions. We can
only say that the suggestion is unmeaning to us, as it involves
the saying and unsaying, or being and not-being of the same
matter in the same relation. To do and undo is for us simply
to leave nothing done ; we therefore disregard this contingency;
in other words, we assume the unity of reality, which assures
us that what is once true is always true, and that what turns
out to be not true never was true. Our problem is, how can
we be assured that we are making no mistakes ? We are
powerless if it is suggested that we may be making no mistake,
and yet may be in error. That falls outside our discussion
to-night.

But there are difficulties more relevant to our problem.

The necessity of science does not provide against our

BETWEEN "knowledge" AND "OPINION.' 19I

determinations being insufficient, as is plain from the pro-
gressive character of science.

There are at first sight two degrees of this insufficiency,
though ultimately they may have the same root.

First, there is confusion of conditions. That is to say, you
may lay down a connection between condition and consequent,
in which by some error of identification you have simply
placed one condition or consequent where you ought to have
placed another. I will give two examples, one of a more or
less debateable case, the other of an extreme case.

The old Wage-Fund theory said, as I understand it, that the
wages of labour with a given population depended on the
total amount of capital available, and destined in the minds
of capitalists, to be paid in the shape of wages. In one sense,
this is a truism, i.e., on a given pay-day the whole amount paid
divided by the number of persons to whom it is paid, gives the
average wage. But in the more real sense, viz., that this
fund is a pre-existent fixed quantity, the amount of which
actively decides the rate of wages, the doctrine is now dis-
puted, and generally held, I believe, to have been overthrown.
Wages are paid out of the produce of labour, and not out of a
pre-existing fund, and the capitalist very likely gets his hands
on the produce actually before he parts with the wages, which
therefore are not limited by the amount of a pre-existing fund.
The old Wage-Fund theory perhaps rested on a confusion
between the truism which I first mentioned, and the very real
connection that exists in various ways between the amount of
plant or stock in a country, which is Auxiliary capital, not
Wage-Fund capital, and the productivity and general employ-
ment of its labour, which in their turn affect the rate of
wages.

Now how, if at all, does the necessity of science maintain

192 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION

itself in the overthrow of this doctrine ? In some such way
as this, that the postulates and conditions which made such a
doctrine necessary to the scientific system, will continue after
its overthrow to be fulfilled by some more or less cognate
doctrine, liberated from the confusions which disfigured this
Dne. We shall still speak, I suppose, of the importance of
javing. We shall still be aware that an undertaking like the
Forth Bridge could only be carried out by a country with an
enormous command of accumulated wealth, and that, with a
given population, the best chance of raising wages lies in
increasing the amount of capital productively employed.
Only we must not restrict capital to wage- fund capital, but
must include in it, for example, machines and materials.

Now the necessity of the science consisted in the demand
for a representation of all these relations and conditions, which,
as their determinations advance in accuracy, mould and re-
mould the doctrine that is to satisfy them, but without sacrific-
ing its identity of content or function. The alteration of such a
doctrine is like the transformation of gills into lungs, or the
substitution of a Westinghouse continuous brake for a hand-
brake on a train. You pass from one fulfilment of certain
organic demands to another.

As an extreme case, where the connection seems quite
irrational, I will just mention what Swift wrote, that once when
he was half-asleep, he fancied he could not go on writing un-
less he put out some water which he had taken into his mouth.
He was confusing between writing and speaking, of course.
There really is a necessity in the background even there.

In the second place, a science may be precise as far as it
goes, but may omit some entire sphere or branch of fact, as
Euclidean geometry is now said to omit certain kinds of space.
Against this possibility there, prima facie, is no theoretical

BETWEEN "knowledge AND "OPINION. I93

resource except in a postulate oi exhaustiveness, viz., that our
knowledge bears some appreciable proportion to the whole of
Reality. I incline to think that we take this postulate on
ethical grounds, i.e., we are convinced that Reality will not so
far dwarf our knowledge as to annihilate our life or wholly
frustrate our purposes. It ought to be mentioned, too, that
probably a science which is not complete cannot be truly
systematic.

Of course you may cut the knot of all these discussions by
saying that sciences which make mistakes are not science.
But this would not help us, because then we should say
that our question is, how far the sciences are characterized by
science.

In the third place, the systematic character of scientific
necessity is in itself a limitation on the extent and application
of that necessity. For if and in as far as the systematic
character is lost, then and so far the necessity is lost too. It
has been said of political economy, that if you do not know it
all, you do not know it at all. This is true in strict theory of
every science and of all science. So that the scientific judg-
ment, transferred by the help of language into a mind not
equipped with the body of knowledge, is science no longer.
It has become mere opinion, mere authority. This explains
the curious contempt which practical men have, as a rule, for
the evidence of scientific experts. Scientific authority is a
contradiction in terms. Unhappily the scientific mind itself
often forgets this, and offers, like Thrasymachus, to put its
doctrine into men's souls by physical force. But this is im-
possible. Knowledge can only be communicated as know-
ledge. You cannot claim the necessity of science for a
scientific conclusion torn from its organism and hurled into
the sphere of opinion. Think of the popular interpretations

o

194 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION

of any such propositions as, " The soul is a substance," or,
"Sensation is subjective."

But here we have arrived at the end of our negatives, and
the balance begins to turn.

If, for the reason just stated, Knowledge cannot refute
Opinion ; neither, for the same reason, can Opinion refute
Knowledge. An individual judgment and a universal judg-
ment cannot be contradictory in the strict sense. The judg-
ment, "If A is B, then C is D," is not affected by the
judgment, " C is not D." They are in different planes, and
do not meet. Before you can bring the two into relation,
you must ascertain how A and B are behaving in the case,
when it is alleged C is not D. Then we shall find, in pro-
portion as the hypothetical judgment belongs to a thoroughly
organized body of science, that it is easy to incorporate the
new determination in the old system. I will once more take
an example from political economy. The economical doc-
trine says that prices determine rent, and rent does not
determine prices. But of course it is a common opinion that
a tradesman in a fashionable street is compelled to charge
higher prices than a tradesman in a less fashionable street, in
order to recoup himself for the higher rent which he has
to pay. If we put out of sight the alternative of his obtain-
ing a larger sale, I should suppose that this might be the
fact, although one would imagine that he would have fixed
his prices so as to obtain the greatest profit, even if his
profit was not to go in rent. But waiving this argument
again, and admitting the alleged fact, what does it amount
to ? What made his landlord ask for that high rent, and
what made the tradesman contract to pay it? Why, that
both of" them thought that the prices necessary to pay this
rent could be got out of the public in that locality. You can-

BETWEEN "knowledge" AND "OPINION." 1 95

not put up your prices just as you please ; and if you cannot
get the prices necessary to pay your rent, why, then you
cannot pay your rent out of the proceeds of the business, and
the rent must come down ; and, no doubt, if you are under
a lease, or competing for houseroom with other ocaipations
that pay better^ you may say to the pubUc, " Really I am
forced to try to keep my prices up." But strictly the reason
for this is not that the prices do not determine the rent, but
that they obviously do, and the tradesman is crushed between
two determinations of his rent, legal and economical; only,
being unable to revise his bargain, he may try to hold the
prices up with both hands, so to speak ; and with a friendly
circle of customers, or a circle who need him in their district,
to some extent he may succeed. But in some such way as
this the relation between the scientific doctrine and the popular
opinion is not, I think, very hard to see, when you look at the
matter all round. And of course it does modify the doc-
trine a little bit ; but on the whole, when you analyse the
alleged case, it joins on pretty easily to the science. The
science, of course, primarily considers what a man will freely
bargain to do ; it never denies that a man may have a loss
thrown upon him by a bad bargain which he cannot revise,
and that so far his rent, which is naturally the consequent,
will become for him the condition, because he cannot alter it.

If, then, we try to state the positive value of the so-called
infallibility of science, it appears to reduce itself to this — that
the organization of a province of experience is an affirmative
or actual achievement, which may be subsequently modified
or transformed, but cannot be lost or cancelled. We cannot
guarantee the particular formulation of an isolated principle ;
but then we know that identity does not depend on particular
formulation, but on continuity of function. I should be very

196 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION

sorry to predict in what precise terms the Principle ot Sufficient
Reason may be stated by philosophers a hundred years hence.
But that the determinate relativity of the parts of experience
will be embodied in some principle or other, is as certain,
I think, as that there will be science at all.

It may be objected that we are guaranteeing the whole of
knowledge in general, but no element of it in particular, and
that this is illusory. To those who cannot conceive a con-
crete continuous identity I think it is illusory, and ought to
be. You cannot, as they would wish, fix and separate any
portion of knowledge. Every element of it must take its
chance in the systematic development of the whole. There-
fore, when speaking of knowledge in general, you can only
affirm its self-identity in general. But to any one who can
see a meaning in saying, for example, that Christianity to-day
is the same religion that it was 1,800 years ago, this idea of
continuous pervading identity will present no difficulty. A
substantive identity, we think, can persist through difference,
and, can indeed, only be realized in differences.

While, on the other hand, if a certain difficulty attaches to
this view, yet it throws an all-important light on the nature
of knowledge. It shows us that the necessity of knowledge
depends upon its vitahty. Axioms and dogmas, traditions
and abstract principles, equally with unanalysed perception, are
not knowledge but opinion. The life of knowledge is in the
self-consciousness which systematically understands, and you
cannot have it cheaper. We know 7ioi "as much as is in
our memory," but "as much as we understand." A science
which accepts foreign matter, data to be learnt by heart, is
so far not a science. But one who has undejstood anything,
has a possession of which he cannot be deprived.

Any one who speaks thus confidently is sure to be asked,

BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE AND "OPINION. I97

" What are his metaphysical presuppositions ? " It would be
more to the point, in my judgment, to ask him if he has
obtained any metaphysical results. His only presupposition
is, I think, that there is something presented to him which
it is worth while to analyse. The principles involved in this
analysis, such as the unity of reality, are no doubt operative
from the first, but are only established in a definite form by
the analysis itself. And any view, more strictly metaphysical,
as to the precise ultimate nature of the unity of Reality, would
be a still further result, which may or may not be obtained.
That mind, in its essence, is one, and that the unity of man
with himself and with nature is a real unity, seem to be
principles demanded by the facts of science and of society.
It is also true that a reality which is not for consciousness is
something too discrepant with our experience to be intelligible
to us. But whether the human mind will ever form to itself
a conception that will in any degree meet the problem of a
total unity of Reality, is a question the answer to which must
lie in the result of analysis, and not in its presuppositions.

Thus we abide by the position that the characteristic in
which Knowledge difiers from Opinion is the degree in which,
as a living mind, it has understood and organized its experi-
ence. The criticism of Goethe's Mephistopheles on the tra-
ditional logic is perfectly just. It is well to take every mental
process carefully to pieces ; but it is essential to bear in mind
that the pieces are elements in a living tissue, in a single
judgment, and that in their detachment as " one, two, and
three," they are not knowledge. So far from being a mechani-
cal science, logic is perhaps the most vital and scientific of all
the sciences. It accepts nothing from perception or from au-
thority, and gives nothing to learn by heart. It depends on no
intuition of space, and on no list ot elements. Its only task

198 ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISTINCTION

is to understand the process of understanding, the growth and
transformations of thought.

This is the conception with which logic began in Plato, and
which has never been entirely lost. In the old Dominican
Church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence, there is a series of
frescoes illustrative of education, familiar to us through Mr.
Ruskin's description under the name of the Strait Gate. One
of these paintings has a peculiar attraction for the student of
modern logic. Next but two after the Narrow Gate itself,
which indicates the entrance to good life, there is placed over
a head of Aristotle the allegorical figure of logic. This
beautiful figure is drawn, as Mr. Ruskin points out, with
remarkable strength and grace ; it is most probably from the
pencil of Simone Memmi, of Siena, early in the fourteenth cen-
tury. In her left hand the figure holds the scorpion with its
double nippers, emblem of the dilemma or more generally
of the disjunctive or negative power of thought ; but in her
right hand she holds the leafy branch, symbolising the syllo-
gism, conceived as the organic or synthetic unity of reason.
This suggests an ideal worthy of the age of Dante, however
little it may have been attained in the explicit logical theory of
that time.

It is some such ideal of knowledge that has, as we may
hope, been making itself more and more imperatively felt
since the revival of letters in Europe ; and the view which it
involves, of the true distinction between Knowledge and
Opinion, is merely one branch of that principle of the unity of
mind, which is fraught with consequences of inestimable im-
portance for all aspects of life in the present day. We cannot
— such is the lesson we have to learn — we cannot elevate the
human mind by any fragmentary treatment, by any com-
munication or assistance which does not stimulate its healthy

BETWEEN "KNOWLEDGE AND "OPINION. 1 99

growth as a single living thing. In fine art, in the province of
social rights and duties, in morality, in politics, and especially
in the interconnection of all these spheres, it is no less true
than we have found it to be in science, that the mind must grow
and advance either all together, or not at all.

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and religion." — Daily Chronicle.

98. The Working-ClasB Movement in America.

Dr. Edward and B. Mabx Avelik
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45. Poverty : Its Genesis and Exodus. J. G. Godard.

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46. The Trade Policy of Imperial Federation. Maurice H. Hervey.

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47. The Dawn of Radicalism. J. Bowles Daly, LL.D.

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53. The Irish Peasant. Anon.

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55. The Social Horizon. Anon.

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59. The Emancipation of Women. Adele Crepaz.

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61. Drunkenness. George R. Wilson, M.B.

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63. The Agricultural Labourer. T. E. Eebbel.

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64. Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer. E. Bebnstsin.

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66. England's Foreign Trade in XlXth Century. A. L. Bowlxt.

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