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LIBRARY 

OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Accession 9.3.1.7..'? •    Class 

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8vo,  538  pp.,  14s. 

History  of  Intellectual  Development 

ON  THE  LINES  OF  MODERN  EVOLUTION. 

VOL.  I.— Greek  and  Hindoo  Thought ;  Grseco-Roman  Paganism  ; 
Judaism  ;  and  Christianity  down  to  the  Closing  of  the  Schools 
of  Athens  by  Justinian,  529  a.d. 

By   JOHN   BEATTIE    CROZIER 

(Author  of  "Civilization  and  Trogress"). 


EXTRACTS    FROM    PRESS    NOTICES:- 

The  Athenceum  says:  "Of  Mr.  Crozier's  masterly  insight  into 
the  true  bearing  of  great  intellectual  systems,  and  of  their 
relation  one  to  another,  it  is  difficult  to  speak  too  highly,  and  yet 
the  skill  with  which  he  has  marshalled  his  facts,  and  the  unfal- 
tering precision  and  lucidity  of  his  language,  always  dignified  and 
often  eloquent,  are  no  less  admirable  ...  If  the  first  volume  of  this 
scheme  may  be  accepted  as  a  fair  specimen  of  what  the  whole  is  to 
be,  the  English  philosophical  literature  will  be  the  richer  by  a 
work  of  rare  ability." 


The  Spectator  says  :  "We  do  not  know  elsewhere  in  the  English 
tongue  such  a  succinct  and  brilliant  conspectus,  in  concentrated 
form  and  in  non-technical  language,  of  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
movement  of  the  early  world  which  culminated  in  the  victory  of 
Christianity.  Nor  do  we  know  of  any  other  work  on  an  equal 
scale  and  of  the  same  scope  in  which  the  movement  of  thought  is 
so  clearly  treated  from  the  point  of  view  of  development." 


The  Rev.  Marcus  Dods,  D.D.,  says  in  the  Bookmari:  Vast  and 
complicated  as  is  the  subject  which  Dr.  Crozier  handles,  there  is 
nothing  crude  and  nothing  dims  in  its  presentation.  On  the 
contrary,  his  work  upon  any  special  department  of  thought  will 
stand  comparison  with  that  of  experts.  He  has  a  genius  for 
seizing  upon  the  essential  points,  and  for  eliminating  all  that  is 
accidental  or  mere  excrescence.  He  has  also  a  genius  for  exposition, 
concealing  all  that  is  ponderous,  and  brightening  his  pages  as  well 
as  aiding  his  reader  by  felicitous  illustration.  His  work  is  one 
of  the  most  considerable  additions  recently  made  to  philosophical 
literature,  and  is  so  devoid  of  technicalities  that  it  should  find  a 
public  beyond  the  schools  ....  There  is  no  part  of  his  work  which 
is  not  fruitful.  The  development  of  the  idea  of  God  among  the 
Jews  has  never  been  more  lucidly  or  succinctly  presented  even  by  a 
specialist.  The  messianic  idea,  its  growth  and  culmination  in 
Jesus,  will  be  better  understood  from  the  few  pages  in  which 
Mr.  Crozier  hides  an  immense  amount  of  thoroughly  digested 
reading  than  from  many  ponderous  volumes.  The  book  is  sure 
to  receive  the  attention  of  all  thoughtful  persons." 

Longmans,  Green,  &  Co.,  Paternoster  Row,  E.C. 


(  i  ) 


CIVILIZATION  AND  PROGRESS. 


PRESS    NOTICES. 


"The  book  of  a  very  able  man  ....  The  testimony  which 
we  are  compelled  to  give  to  the  high  ability  of  this  ambitious 
work  is  completely  impartial  ....  We  can  have  no  doubt  as 
to  the  great  ability  of  the  book,  nor  as  to  the  literary  power  with 
which  the  thoughts  it  contains  are  often  expressed  ....  Full 
of  original  criticism  ....  Great  literary  faculty  .... 
It  will  rectify  much  that  is  faulty  in  the  views  of  his  predecessors 
.  A  book  far  less  superficial  than  Mr.  Buckle's." — 
Spectator. 


"  The  ability  of  Mr.  Crozier  consists  in  a  remarkable  clearness 
of  detail  vision  ....  Fine  critical  observation  .... 
singular  acumen  of  distinction — the  power,  so  to  speak,  of  seeing 
through  millstones,  of  being  in  a  manner  clairvoyant  .... 
This  accurate  and  subtle  thinker." — Academy. 


"  This  is  a  work  of  real  ability.  It  is  full  of  thought,  and  its 
style  is  both  forcible  and  clear.  The  reader  is  borne  on  a  stream 
of  strong  thinking  from  point  to  point,  until  at  last,  when  he  pauses 
to  get  a  little  mental  breath,  he  finds  that  he  has  been  doing  almost 
as  much  thinking  as  the  author  himself,  so  stimulating  and 
suggestive  is  the  book,  and  so  full  is  it  of  discriminating,  vigorous, 
and  subtle  ideas  ....  This  rich  and  suggestive  book." — 
Inquirer. 


"There  can  be  no  doubt,  we  think,  that  Mr.  Crozier  has  put  his 
finger  upon  the  weak  point  in  the  speculations  of  previous  writers, 
and  that  he  has  himself  laid  hold  of  the  right  method  for  the 
adequate  treatment  of  his  subject  ....  The  work  is  one  of 
real  and  pre-eminent  merit,  and  will  deservedly  take  a  high  place 
in  the  class  of  literature  to  which  it  belongs." — Scottish  Review. 

Longmans,  Greex,  &  Co.,  Paternoster  Bow,  E.C. 


(2    ) 


MY    INNER    LIFE. 


MY  ESTNTEK  LIFE 


BEING    A    CHAPTER    IN 


Personal  Evolution  and 
Autobiography. 


BY 


JOHN    BEATT1E   CROZIER. 


Author  of 

History  of  Intellectual  Development.' 
Civilization  and  Progress?  dr.,  dbc. 


LONGMANS,     GREEN,     AND     CO., 

39    PATERNOSTER    ROW,     LONDON 

NEW    YORK    AND    BOMBAY 

1898 


4s 


o 


cv 


TO 

MY     WIFE, 

without  whose  loyal  and  untiring  co-operation 
and  encouragement  continued  through  twenty- 
one  years  of  a  happy  married  life,  my  books 
could  not  have  been  written 

i  dedicate 

This  Volume. 


93177 


PREFACE 


I  T  would  have  been  more  appropriate  and  becoming,  perhaps, 
had  this  Autobiography,  if  published  at  all,  been  deferred 
to  a  later  period  of  my  life,  but  a  threatened  failure  of  eyesight 
has  left  me  no  alternative.  In  the  uncertainty  as  to  my  being 
able  to  continue  the  research  necessary  for  the  remaining 
volumes  of  my  c  History  of  Intellectual  Development/  I  felt 
that  the  central  chapters  of  this  work  in  which  I  trace  the 
evolution  of  Modern  Thought  down  to  the  present  day,  would 
sufficiently  represent  my  views  of  this  portion  of  the  subject  to 
give  some  kind  of  unity  to  the  whole,  in  case  the  larger  work 
were  not  completed.  I  am  not  without  hope  however,  that  the 
progress  of  the  disease  may  be  so  far  arrested  that  I  may  still 
be  able  to  complete  my  larger  history  in  detail.  In  the 
meantime  the  present  book  will  serve  to  draw  together  more 
tightly  than  would  be  possible  in  the  larger  work,  views  on 
the  World-Problem  and  on  Life  which  lie  scattered  through 
earlier  volumes. 

In  the  Chapter  entitled  *  Autobiography '  in  Book  III. 
Part  II.  of  this  work,  I  have  entered  in  detail  into  the  reasons 
which  induced  me  to  write  an  Autobiography  at  all.  For  the 
rest,  I  may  say  that  for  those  who  are  interested  in  personal 
experiences,  I  have  endeavoured  as  far  as  possible  faithfully  to 
record  the  passages  of  my  outer  life  which  preceded  or  attended 
the  various  stages  of  thought  and  feeling  through  which  I  have 
passed,  and  which  are  here  detailed,  as  far  as  my  memory 
serves  me,  in  their  orderly  sequence  and  evolution. 


SUMMARY  OF  CHAPTERS. 


PART  I -CANADA. 
BOOK  I.-B0YH00D. 

CHAPTER  I. 

The   Twilight    of    Memory. 

PAGES 

Birth  and  Parentage— My  Mother— Idyllic— The  'Old  Cow.'  .  T>-12 

CHAPTER  II. 

Summer. 
Swimming — Cricket — Fishing — A  Negro  Expert.       .  13-19 

CHAPTER  III. 

Winter. 

Winter  Scenes — Snow-balling — Old  Offenders — Hand-sleighs — A  Home- 
made one — Sleigh-racing.      ....         20-30 

CHAPTER  IV. 

A    Canadian    Sabbath. 

Village  Puritanism — Sunday  Gloom — Church-going — The  Minister — The 
Singing — The  Sermon — The  Congregation — Effect  of  Sabbath  on 
my  Mother.  .  .  .  .  .31-42 

CHAPTER  V. 

Our  Neighbours. 

The  '  Old  Captain  '  and  his  young  Cavaliers — The  Effect  on  my  Mother 
— A  Separate  Code  of  Morals— My  Astonishment — Other  Neighbours 
—Friendship  of  the  'Old  Captain.'      .  .  .         43-48 


X.  SUMMARY   OF   CHAPTERS. 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Pains  and  Pleasures. 

Our  Poverty — Hunt  for  Old  Copper — A  Frog-eating  Episode —  A  Sugar 
Barrel,  Boys ! '  .  .  .  .         49-57 

CHAPTER  VII. 

A  Rhubarb  Tart. 

The  Picnic — My  Contribution — Sensitiveness — The  Day  Spoiled.     58-63 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

Fun  and  Mischief. 

Boyish  Tricks — The  Negro  Meeting — The  River  of  Jordan — Revival 
Meetings — Excitement  of  Prayers— -Penitents'  Bench — The  Hot 
Stove-pipe — Fainting  Fits — Telling  '  Experiences ' — Red  Pepper  on 
the  Stove.  .  .  .  .         04-74 

CHAPTER  IX. 

Cocks  and  Pigeons. 

The  Game-cock — How  I  Trained  It — The  Fight  at  the  '  Old  Captain's' 
— My  Love  of  Pigeons.  .  .  .  .75-79 

CHAPTER  X. 

A  Midnight  Campaign. 

The  Old  «  Red-wing'  Fantail — News  of  Fancy  Pigeons — How  were  they 
to  be  had? — Plan  of  Attack— The  Start — In  the  Barn — An 
Accident — Panic — Return — The  Owner — My  Mother's  Horror — 
A  Breach  of  Honour.  ....     80-9:5 

CHAPTER  XE 

My  Uncle  James. 

His  Arrival  in  the  Village — Accomplishments — Pride  in  '  the  Mathematics' 
—Effect  of  Drink — Enthusiasm  for  Newton — Boasting.       .     94-101 

II. 

He  leaves  us — My  Mother's  Anxiety — My  Uncle  at  the  Public  House — 
He  discusses  Colenso — '  Not  a  Single  Glass.'      .  .     101-106 

111. 

His  Return— My  Mother's  Indignation — My  Sister  and  1 — He  Sings  a 
Song — K egrets  and  Recollections.        .  .  •     106  110 


SUMMARY   OF   CHAPTERS.  XI. 

CHAPTER  XT— Mi  Uncle  James— (contd). 

IV. 

Strange  Effects  of  Drink — My  Astonishment — '  It's  the  Devil ' — My 
Mother  Locks  Him  Out — The  Tapping  at  the  Door — He  Signs  the 
Pledge— His  Death.  .  .  .  .     llfr-115 

CHAPTER  XII. 

The  Grammar  School. 

Dr.  Tassie — The  '  Old  Veterans' — The  Two  Recreants — Imperturbability 
— Pleasantries — A  Snub — My  Stinted  Vocabulary — Enthusiasm  tor 
Mathematics  -  Our  Library — Thackeray,  'Punch,'  Dickens — 
Admiration  for  Newton — Smiles'  'Self  Help' — Prepare  for 
University  Scholarship— I  Fall  111 — '  And  so  thin  too  ! '     .     116-133 


PART  I.-BOOK  II  -EARLY  SPECULATIONS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Phrenology. 

]  leave  the  University — Idleness  becomes  Oppressive — My  Lack  of  the 
Organ  of  '  Causality' — The  'Professor'  of  Phrenology — His  Lecture 
—  We  Examine  Heads — The  Barber's  Shop — The  Barber's  Head — 
Extenuations — Our  Pose  as  Phrenologists — Shakspeare  and 
Phrenology.  .  .  .  .  .     137-148 

CHAPTER  II. 

The  Man  with  the  Boot- jack. 

My  Fear  of  Him — Our  First  Meeting — A  Strange  Malady — My  Visit  to 
His  Hermitage — His  Ingenuity  in  the  Defence  of  Phrenology — His 
Fine  Influence  on  Me — How  Conquer  Vanity?  .  .     140-157 

CHAPTER  III. 

Religion. 

I  had  seen  no  Visions — Old  Associations  of  Sunday — Bible  Repelled  Me 
— Barabbas  like  no  other  robber !         .  .  .     158-102 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Pause 

What  was  Evolution  to  me  ? — Phrenology  and  Metaphysics — Barrenness 
of  Phrenology.       .  .  .  .163-166 


Xll.  SUMMARY   OF   CHAPTERS. 

CHAPTER  V. 

A  Revival  Episode. 

Amenities  of  Revival  Preachers — '  Conversion '  of  the  Old  '  Elder ' — I 
Remained  Unmoved  ! — My  Friend's  '  Conversion ' — I  Question  Him 
— Brain  or  Holy  Ghost? — My  Friend's  Doubts—  'Look  at  the  Cross' 
— Loss  again  of  Belief .  ....     167-175 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Evolution  not  to  be  Jumped. 

Butler's  Analogy — Buckle,  no  effect  on  me.  Why? — Mill  on  Sir  W. 
Hamilton— Could  not  Understand  Carlyle's  'Sartor,'  nor  Emerson 
— The  Country  Parson  suited  me! — Different  Kinds  of  Insight — 
Henry  Ward  Beecher's  Sermons.  .  .  .     170-184 


CHAPTER  VII. 

A  Change  of  Method. 

Books  never  my  Mainstay — The  Inner  Consciousness  my  Standpoint — 
Reading  Characters  at  the  Engineering  Works ! — My  Different 
Method;  its  Importance.       ....     185-189 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

A  Law  of  the  Mind — What  is  it? 

Comparison  with  Law  of  Physical  Nature — Threads  of  Relation  between 
Feelings — Why  Metaphysics  and  Phrenology  cannot  give  it — What 
Constitutes  a  Law  of  the  Mind — Othello's  sudden  Transitions — 
Comparison  with  Balance  of  Body  by  Muscles — Only  to  be  determined 
from  within— My  Standpoint  and  Method.  .  .     190-199 


CHAPTER  IX. 

The  Breakdown  of  Phrenology. 

I  leave  my  Phrenological  Friends  behind — My  Visit  to  the  New  York 
Phrenologist— Why  I  treat  of  Phrenology  here— What  «  Causality  ' 
really  depends  on — A  Form  of  *  Observation '  merely — What 
'  Language  '  depends  on — What  Comparison  depends  on — Relation 
between  Thought  and  Feeling.  .  .  .     200-208 


SUMMARY   OF   CHAPTERS.  Xlii. 

CHAPTER  X. 

The  Power  of  Language. 

My  New  Method  of  Investigation— Deficiency  in  Knowledge  of  Words — 
Why  Study  of  Classics  had  not  Remedied  it — How  we  Plodded 
through  Horace  and  Cicero — The  Way  History  was  Taught — 
Gloomy  Winter's  noo  awa' — I  read  Addison — AVashington  Irving — 
Pickwick  delights  me — '  Old  Uncle  Ned  ' — '  Crabbe's  Synonyms.' 

209-218 


CHAPTER  XI. 

My  Uncle  again. 

Not  so  Interesting  when  Sober  —  '  Hen-pecked-you-all '  —  'Vast,' 
♦Profound'  'Genius' — Dr.  Chalmers'  'Oratory' — His  disgust  at 
my  waste  of  time — Why  not  go  into  Medicine?  .  .     219-223 


CHAPTER  XII. 

The  University. 

The  Medical  School — The  Professors — The  Lectures — Teaching  of 
Anatomy — '  Like  Corpses  on  a  Battlefield' — The  Students— Literary 
Set;  four  all  told— My  most  intimate  friend  M.— How  the 
'  Personal  Equation  '  came  in — Fate  and  Us.       .  .     224-233 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

Professors. 

Shakspeare  Analyzed — A  'Metaphor,'   'a  Simile' — Kant's   Critique   of 
Pure  Reason — A  Carding  Machine.     .  .  .     234-238 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

A  New  Horizon. 

Effect  of  New  Environment — Passion  for  Light  on  Problem  of  the  World 
— '  Vestiges  of  Creation  ' — Darwin's  '  Origin  of  Species ' — '  Natural 
Selection'  not  enough — Huxley's  Lay  Sermons  and  Addresses — 
Spencer's  '  First  Principles' — His  Picture  of  the  Evolution  of  the 
Universe — The  Persistence  of  Force — Reconciliation  between 
Religion  and  Science — His  '  Principles  of  Psychology '  upsets  this 
reconciliation — Two  effects  on  me — Why  I  determined  to  come  to 
London.  .....     239-248 


XIV.  SUMMARY.  OF   CHAPTERS. 

PART   II-ENGLAND. 
BOOK    [.-THE    LOST    IDEAL. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Herbert  Spencer. 

I  start  for  England — My  search  for  the  Ideal — A  Cloud — The  wreck  of 
the  Ideal — Why  Spencer's  Doctrine  killed  the  Ideal— Summary  of 
his  explanation  of  Origin  of  Mind — Two  Special  Points — What  I 
was  not  prepared  to  admit — Difference  between  high  and  loir  requires 
no  Deity — Spencer's  Natural  Defects — His  Greatness — His  Method 
the  Secret  of  his  Fallacies.   ....     251-263 

CHAPTER  II. 

Aristocracy  and  Democracy. 

I  land  in  Glasgow — My  Surprise  at  Coldness  of  Fellow  Students- 
Characteristics  of  Democracies — What  Aristocracies  pride  themselves 
on — '  Damned  Intellect '  despised — The  '  Gentleman '  their  Ideal  — 
Counting  the  Potatoes — English  Working-man  suprised  me — Taking 
'tips' — Immortality  of  Soul — The  Negro.  .  .     264-275 

CHAPTER    III. 

Medicine. 

My  mincl  bent  on  the  practical — Medicine  compared  with  Philosophy — 
New  generalizations  few  and  far  between — I  refuse  a  Consulting 
Practice — Interested  in  physiognomy  of  disease — Old  and  youDg 
physicians — The  Baconian  method — The  scientific  army  and  its 
generals — Medicine  no  use  for  the  mind  in  health — Fine  mental 
discipline — Dependence  of  thought  on  physical  states— Effect  of 
medicine  on  Ideal — Beauty  under  the  microscope — Gloom — I  start 
practice        .......     276-288 


PART  II.-BOOK  II.-THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  LOST  IDEAL. 
CHAPTER    I. 

Macailay. 

lay  siege  to  the  problem  of  Life — The  Essayists — Macaulay  and 
Mystery—  His  lack  of  the  higher  sympathies — His  estimate  of  Bacon 
— Platitudes — Strange  theory — Style  compared  with  Shakspeare, 
Carlyle,  Emerson — Want  of  shading — His  trumpet  peals — My 
favourite  passages — The  mind  makes  its  own  world  .     291-808 


SUMMARY   OF   CHAPTERS.  XV. 

CHAPTER    II. 

A  False  Start. 

De  Quincey  compared  with  Macaulay — Hazlitt  as  a  critic— Limitation 
of  interest  affects  style — Introduces  me  to  Elizabethan  Dramatists 
— Favourite  quotations — Beaumont  and  Fletcher — Shakspeare  —  I 
turn  to  the  Historians — No  unity—  No  help  from  the  Poets  or 
Novelists      .  .  •  .  .  .  .     304-815 

CHAPTER    III. 

Ancient  Philosophy. 

I  study  the  ancient  Systems— Why  I  pass  over  the  '  Middle  Ages ' — 
Read  the  Moderns — Skip  Comte,  Schopenhauer,  and  Hegel- -Plato's 
Cosmogony — Relation  between  Scheme  of  the  World  and  our 
practical  beliefs — The  Catholic  Church:  its  Mosaic  foundation, 
Platonic  dome,  and  Shrine — The  figure  of  Plato — Scientific  dis- 
coveries— Fall  of  Platonic  Cosmogony— Use  of  Relics— Philosophy 
has  to  lean  on  Church  .....     816-328 

CHAPTER    IV. 

Some  General  Considerations. 

How  our  Ideals  are  determined — Literary  criticism  and  Word-mongering 
— Pathos  of  Shakspeare  and  of  Carlyle — Sublimity  and  intensity  of 
Milton  and  Dante— Importance  of  Cosmogony — Can  Modern 
Philosophy  furnish  foothold  for  Ideal  ? — Apologists  on  «  evidences  ' 
— Philosophers  in  search  of  the  Ideal — Repelled  by  the  '  tone  '  of 
the  Apologists         .  .  .  . .      .  .     324-830 

CHAPTER    V. 

Modern  Metaphysics. 

The  search  for  the  Ideal — The  Faculty  of  Knowledge — How  Descartes,, 
(ieuliux,  and  Malebranche  demonstrated  the  existence  of -God — 
Spinoza  falls  into  Atheism — The  Metaphysicians  take  up  the  Problem 
■ — The  two  Schools — Leibnitz — His  spiritual  'monads' — Kasjr  for 
Idealists  to  find  God  in  the  Mind — Materialists  and  the  Church — 
Soul  and  Immortality  gone — Kant  finds  God  in  the  Conscience — 
Fichte  loses  Kant's  new-found  Ideal — Jacobi  stumbles  on  important 
truths — He  scandalizes  orthodox  School — Resume — Schelling  differs 
from  Fichte  and  Kant — How  he  failed  to  explain  his  Absolute 
Being — Hegel  takes  up  the  problem — Takes  his  stand  on  the  Self- 
consciousness — Difference  from  Kant — '  The  Notion  ' — <  A  state  of 
being' — His  system  and  Herbert  Spencer's — Hegel's  Trinity— His 
Deity — The  Materialists  pull  it  all  down  again— Spencer  and  race 
utility — Church  and  Philosophy  a  pair  of  cripples— Hume  and  the 


XVI.  SUMMARY   OF   CHAPTERS. 

Illumiuati — A  curious  result  of  metaphysical  speculation — High 
qualities  merely  forms  of  low — False  method  —  Schopenhauer's  stand- 
point— Nearly  a  Poetic  Thinker — Schopenhauer's  Will  and  its 
instruments — Ideal  a  mere  beggar's  banquet — To  rid  oneself  of  the 
world — Sink  into  Nirvana — Von  Hartmann — Metaphysical  Specula- 
tion reaches  its  end  .....     881-864 

CHAPTER    VI. 

Criticisms  and  Conclusions. 

Why  the  Metaphysicians  disappointed  me — Like  boys  picking  a  watch  to 
pieces— Their  analysis  of  reverence,  love,  and  beauty— They 
construct  a  false  eye — A  central  truth  which  they  ignore — Easy  for 
Metaphysicians  to  pass  from  Real  to  Ideal — Hegel  tries  to  throw  a 
bridge  across — Why  I  set  aside  the  Metaphysicians — What  definite 
conclusions  I  had  come  to  :  Mind  as  a  whole  the  true  organon — How 
to  find  the  Ideal :  I  turn  to  the  Poetic  Thinkers   .  .     365-375 


CHAPTER    VII. 

A  VISIT  to  Carlyle. 

Effect  on  me  as  a  Colonial,  of  Latter  Day  Pamphlets — Carlyle's 
denunciations  of  the  Political  Economists — His  Style  repels  me — 
His  moral  standpoint  too  high  for  me — How  he  found  the  lost  Ideal 
— My  difficulty  a  different  one — I  decide  to  go  and  see  him— His 
portraits  not  like  him — His  conversation  astonishes  me — His  opinions 
of  Mill,  Buckle,  Spencer — His  remarks  on  Christianity — The  true 
Carlyle — Origin  of  his  diatribes — On  ages  of  transition     .     376-893 

CHAPTER    VIII. 

The  Personal  Equation. 

Study  of  Emerson — Key  to  his  system — Why  Emerson  suited  me  better 
than  Carlyle — Goethe's  special  doctrine — Why  neither  Carlyle  nor 
Emerson  could  appropriate  it — His  realism  disgusts  me — Bacon  as 
a  Poetic  Thinker — Newman's  piety  repels  me — My  '  personal 
equation'     .  .  .  .  .  .  .     394-410 

CHAPTER    IX. 

The  Poetic  Thinkers. 

Can  man  explain  Universe  ? — Neither  Spencer  nor  Hegel  can  find  the 
key — Poetic  thinkers  do  not  attempt  it  (Bacon,  Goethe,  Carlyle, 
Emerson,  Newman) — The  mind  m  a  whole  as  organon — '  Personal 
equation  '  of  these  thinkers  ....     411-426 


SUMMARY   OF  CHAPTERS.  XV11. 

CHAPTER    X. 

My  Contribution. 

Poetic  Thinkers  fail  to  give  me  a  practical  solution  of  World -problem— 
Their  view  of  the  mind— I  at  last  find  the  Ideal  in  the  mind— The 
1  Scale  in  the  Mind  '—No  room  for  Atheism— My  six  truths  not  to 
be  knoicn  by  Science— Science  not  the  organon— How  find  the  Ideal 
in  the  World?— Evil  not  absolute — *  Natural  Selection.'  Romanes  and 
Natural  Selection— Ascending  tendencies  of  the  World  and  of  the 
Mind— Unity  of  Plan— How  I  find  the  Divine—  Hegel,  Goethe, 
Emerson,  and  Carlyle's  conception  of  the  Deity — My  conception — 
Hegel's  jump  from  material  to  mental  categories — My  own  life's- 
task  .......     427-457 


PART  II.-BOOK  III.-LITERARY  EXPERIENCES, 

CHAPTER   I. 

My  First  Attempt. 

Scotland — The  Editor's  Box — Carlyle's  advice — The  Magazines — My 
round  of  men  of  eminence — Their  bewilderment ! — God  or  Force — 
At  last  I  get  it  published — Representative  thinkers — What  I  learned 
by  failure  in  getting  a  hearing — My  essay  on  '  Constitution  of  the 
World  ' — Essays  on  Herbert  Spencer,  Carlyle,  and  Emerson — The 
right  time  for  a  new  standpoint — Martineau,  Huxley,  Tyndall, 
Emerson,  Carlyle,  Darwin — Disappointment  .  .     461-478 

CHAPTER    II. 

Civilization. 

Differences  between  Carlyle  and  Emerson  on  Civilization — My  Equip- 
ment for  the  problem — Aristocracy  and  Democracy  compared  as 
forwarding  Civilization — Canada  and  England — To  find  the 
evolving  factors — Comte  and  Positivists'  Society — *  Civilization  and 
Progress'     .......     479-485 

CHAPTER    III. 

Style. 

Was  my  style  the  cause  of  my  failure?— I  start  to  remedy  the  defect — 
Addison's  '  Spectator  '—The  style  of  the  future— Prose  or  Poetry  ? 
— What  does  literary  power  consist  in? — Kinds  of  pictorial  power 
— Confusion  in  literary  criticism     ....     486-493 

A  I 


XV111.  SUMMARY   OF   CHAPTERS. 

CHAPTER    IV. 

A  Political  Instance. 

Appearance  of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill — The  way  the  Genius  of  the 
World  gets  its  ends — Democracy  and  Aristocracy  compared — Does 
Aristocracy  winnow  reputations  ? — Rise  of  the  Demagogue — Rise 
of  reputations — Effect  of  Carlyle's  Edinburgh  Address — Effect  on 
his  wife — Value  of  Press  recognition — Effect  of  advertisement  on 
popularity  of  preachers— On  actors— On  young  poet — How 
Press  hypnotized  Public — How  Public  coerced  Press — My  pre- 
diction—Rise to  power  of  Lord  Randolph — My  book  on  his 
rise  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  494-501 

CHAPTER    V. 

The  Daemonic  Element. 

My  book  too  *  original' — Its  shabby  appearance — No  reviews — 'The 
Thirty-nine  ' — Refusal  of  space  for  a  short  review — Review  in 
'  Spectator '  at  last — Mrs.  Lynn  Linton's  advice — A  cheap  edition 
issued — A  '  record  '  experience  in  books     .  .  .     502-508 


CHAPTER    VI. 

Political  Economy. 

Publishers'  proposal — I  read  ninety  volumes  ! — Adam  Smith — Mill's 
'  Economic  Man  ' — Jevons  on  the  '  margin  of  cultivation  ' — Ruskin  : 
Why  pay  sixpence  only? — Karl  Marx's  shibboleths — I  am  attracted 
to  Henry  George — Boehm-Bawerk's  criticism  on  George — Gluts  of 
shirts  and  '  bare  backs  '  in  streets — Gunton  on  Distribution — 
Mummery  and  Hobson — The  work  is  taken  out  of  my  hands — 
Products  should  circulate  like  food — Mallock         .  .     509-517 


CHAPTER    VII. 

Autobiography. 

Why  I  write  my  autobiography — The  '  personal  equation ' — '  Shuffle  the 
cards'  .......     518-520 

CHAPTER    VIII. 

Interstitial  Thinkers. 

Arnold  on  *  Culture  ' — The  ■  gentlemanly  '  style  in  literature — His  con- 
tempt for  Middle  Class  '  Philistines  ' — His  criticism  of  Comte — His 
want  of  insight  in  Biblical  Criticism — Huxley  compared  with 
Arnold — His    Biblical  studies — Hutton  of  the    '  Spectator  ' — '  The 


SUMMARY    OF   CHAPTERS.  XiX. 

point  of  a  needle  ' — Literary  criticisms — John  Morley  :  His  literary 
pedigree — Comte,  Mill,  and  Burke — Where  he  differs  from  Comte 
— Liberty  and  compromise — Historical  studies — Leslie  Stephen  : 
Sense,  humour,  pessimistic — Ruskin  :  his  study  of  imagination — 
Carlyle's  view  of  him — John  Stuart  Mill :  His  purity — Not  con- 
vincing— His  '  econon.ic  man,' — '  Laissez  faire,' — Want  of  Historical 
perspective — A  colossus  with  one  foot  on  Old  World  and  one  on 
New 521-536 


CHAPTER    IX. 

Isolation  and  Depression. 

History  of  Intellectual  Development ' — Medical  Clubs — Loss  of  income 
— The  Medical  Council — Intellectual  Isolation — My  opinions — 
Has  public  interest  in  serious  literature  declined? — Instances — 
Depression  —  A  Vision  of  Death  —  Success  of  my  History  — 
Recognition  by  the  Treasury — My  eyesight  .  .     537-551 


PART  I. 


CANADA 


MY    INNEK    LIFE, 

BEINGS   A   CHAPTER   IN 

PEESONAL      EVOLUTION     AND 
AUTOBIOGKAPHY. 


PAKT    I.— CANADA. 


BOOK  I.  — BOYHOOD. 

THE    TWILIGHT    OF   MEMORY.  A    RHUBARB    TART. 

SUMMER.  FUN   AND   MISCHIEF. 

WINTER.  COCKS   AND    PIGEONS. 

A    CANADIAN   SABBATH.  A   MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN. 

OUR   NEIGHBOURS.  MY   UNCLE   JAMES. 

PAINS   AND    PLEASURES.  THE    GRAMMAR   SCHOOL. 


\BR 

OF  THE' 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

PTEE 


THE    TWILIGHT    OF     MEMORY. 

WAS  born  in  Gait,  a  village  in  the  far  west  of  Canada  on 
the  23rd  day  of  April  1849.  My  parents  had  a  few  years 
earlier  left  their  native  village  on  the  Borders  of  Scotland — that 
Liddesdale  so  familiar  to  the  readers  of  Sir  Walter  Scott — and 
were  among  the  number  of  those  emigrants  who  in  the  beginning 
and  early  half  of  the  present  century  sailed  from  the  shores  of 
the  Old  World  to  better  their  fortunes  in  the  New.  My 
father's  family  had  been  settled  in  and  around  the  Borders  for 
generations,  and  were  among  the  descendants,  as  an  old  ballad 
verse  still  testifies — 

'  Elliots  and  Armstrongs 
Nixons  and  Croziers 
Raid  thieves  a' — ' 

of  those  ancient  raiders  who  by  their  feuds  and  forays  had 
for  centuries  kept  the  border-land  in  a  state  of  turmoil.  My 
mother  was  also  a  native  of  this  same  part,  and  was  married  to 
my  father,  as  I  have  heard  her  say,  on  the  morning  of  the  day 
on  which  they  set  out  for  America.  After  a  long  and  stormy 
voyage  they  reached  the  shores  of  Canada  in  safety,  and  a 
dreary  and  tedious  journey  in  jolting  waggons  through  the  wild 
interior  of  the  country  at  last  brought  them  to  Gait,  at  that 
time  a  small  Scotch  settlement  only  recently  reclaimed  from 
the  virgin  forest  and  containing  a  population  probably  of  three 
or  four  hundred  souls.     After  taking  up  their  abode  for  a  time 


4  THE    TWILIGHT    OF   MEMORY. 

in  a  little  log  cabin  on  the  margin  of  the  pine  woods  where  the 
howling  of  the  wolves  alone  broke  the  silence  of  the  night,  and 
shifting  thence  to  other  the  like  quarters  as  necessity  or 
convenience  determined,  my  father  at  last  was  able  as  his  affairs 
became  more  prosperous  to  build  for  himself  a  home  in  the 
village — a  low,  one  storied  house,  making  up  in  length  for  what 
it  lost  in  height,  and  with  stone  walls  as  thick  as  a  citadel — and 
in  this  house  nine  years  after  their  first  arrival  in  the  country 
I  had  the  good  or  evil  fortune  to  be  born.  I  was  the  youngest 
of  five  children  all  of  whom  except  an  elder  sister  died  in 
infancy  and  before  my  birth.  While  I  was  still  a  child  my  father 
was  seized  with  consumption,  and  the  fell  disease  after  lingering 
for  a  time  in  uncertainty,  at  last  hastened  its  ravages  and  before 
I  was  three  and  a  half  years  of  age  it  had  snatched  him  from 
our  household,  leaving  my  mother  to  face  the  world  with  my 
sister  and  myself  dependent  on  her,  and  with  no  means  of 
subsistence  but  the  few  pounds  saved  by  my  father,  together 
with  the  house  and  a  small  plot  of  ground. 

My  Mother,  although  over  fifty  years  of  age  at  the  time  of 
which  I  am  writing,  was  a  woman  of  magnificent  physique  and 
extraordinary  physical  vitality,  erect  and  columnar  as  a  statue 
of  Minerva,  her  head,  hands  and  feet  small,  but  with  neck  and 
shoulders  massive  and  finely  proportioned.  In  mind  she  was 
simple  and  guileless  as  a  child,  her  whole  aim  in  life  being  to 
keep  free  from  debt,  to  save  intact  the  little  capital  which  my 
father  had  left  her,  and  to  bring  up  her  children  in  the  fear  and 
admonition  of  the  Lord.  Her  one  book  was  the  Bible,  her  one 
place  of  resort  the  Kirk,  her  one  object  of  reverence  the 
Minister,  her  one  object  of  awe  the  Kirk-Elder.  She  mixed  little 
with  her  neighbours,  and  amidst  the  varied  dialects  of  the 
colonists  among  whom  she  had  lived  for  so  many  years  she  still 
reverted  in  moments  of  excitement  to  the  broad  accent  of  her 
native  land.  For  many  years  she  was  my  sole  companion  (my 
sister  who  was  some  years  my  senior  having  interests  and  com- 
panions of  her  own),  but  owing  to  my  regardlessness  as  she  called 


THE    TWILIGHT    OF   MEMORY.  h 

it,  my  disobedience,  love  of  mischief,  and  general  pagan  absorption 
in  the  things  of  this  world,  I  must  during  all  those  years  have 
grieved  her  good  heart  more  than  enough.  We  were  always 
quarrelling  and  making  it  up  again ;  but  with  it  all,  the  fear  of 
losing  her  in  one  of  the  attacks  of  palpitation  to  which  she  was 
subject,  was  the  standing  anxiety  of  my  boyhood. 

Of  the  few  reminiscences  of  my  childhood,  the  sweetest  and 
most  rose-coloured  are  of  the  visits  which  in  summer  time  I 
made  with  her  to  friends  living  in  the  little  houses  and  farm- 
steads surrounding  the  village.  On  these  occasions  we  usually 
started  out  in  the  early  afternoon  after  dinner,  returning  in  the 
cool  of  the  evening  and  carrying  with  us  baskets  or  cans  which 
we  brought  home  laden  with  flowers,  fruit,  new  milk,  and  the 
like.  These  little  outings  were  all  more  or  less  alike  in  character 
but  there  was  one  which  especially  delighted  me  and  which 
stamped  itself  on  my  imagination  with  an  impress  which  I  still 
retain.  This  was  our  annual  visit  to  my  aunt — my  mother's 
sister — who  since  her  husband's  death  had  been  living  all  alone 
in  a  little  log  cabin  by  the  road-side  in  the  middle  of  the  dense 
pine  forest  surrounding  the  village.  A  few  years  before  my 
parents'  arrival  in  the  country,  the  whole  region  of  country 
round  about  was  one  dense  forest  of  pine  and  maple  and  elm 
shelving  down  the  hills  on  either  side  to  the  margin  of  the  river 
that  ran  through  the  centre  of  the  valley  on  which  the  village 
afterwards  stood,  and  peopled  only  by  Indian  trappers  and 
hunters,  to  whom  in  early  days  it  had  been  granted  as  a  reser- 
vation by  the  Crown.  When  I  was  a  boy,  nearly  all  that 
portion  of  the  forest  that  lay  in  the  valley  flanking  the  river  on 
either  side  had  been  cut  down  as  the  village  grew,  but  it  still 
reached  forward  to  the  browr  of  the  surrounding  hills  where  its 
tall  dark  pines  continued  in  my  boyhood  to  frown  over  the 
village  in  the  evening  twilight  like  dour  and  dusky  sentinels. 
On  the  side  of  the  river  on  which  my  aunt  lived,  however,  the 
wood  had  been  cut  back  from  the  brow  of  the  hill  for  a  distance 
of  about  half  a  mile,   and   was  marked  off  from  the  portion 


6  THE   TWILIGHT    OF  MEMORY. 

intervening  and  now  under  cultivation  by  a  sharp  clean  cut 
margin,  standing  out  against  it,  as  one  approached,  like  the  uncut 
portion  of  a  field  of  corn.  It  was  on  the  side  of  the  road  leading 
through  this  wood,  and  about  half  a  mile  from  where  it  entered 
the  forest,  that  the  little  log  cottage  in  which  my  aunt  lived  lay 
embosomed  among  the  surrounding  pines.  I  still  remember  our 
setting  out  from  home  on  the  sultry  summer  afternoons  beneath 
the  burning  sun, — I  cleanly  and  neatly  dressed  in  loose  tartan 
jacket  with  belt  and  big  brass  buckle  on  which  a  bear  or  wolf's 
head  was  embossed ;  my  mother  with  her  parasol,  black  bonnet, 
and  dress  of  some  thin  black  shiny  material  spotted  and  inter- 
spersed here  and  there  with  white.  We  usually  proceeded 
leisurely  and  by  easy  stages  on  foot,  wending  our  way  up  the 
hill  side  and  onwards  along  the  road  to  the  wood  ;  my  mother 
with  her  parasol  up,  and  keeping  close  to  the  shadow  of  the  high 
board  fence,  while  I  trotted  along  by  her  side  or  scampered  off 
in  front  of  her.  Occasionally  she  would  sit  down  to  rest  awhile 
in  the  shade  of  the  fence,  while  I  disdainful  of  the  sun  ranged 
about  ahead  of  her  looking  out  for  nests  or  watching  the  move- 
ments of  the  birds  and  squirrels.  When  at  last  we  came  up  to 
the  entrance  to  the  wood  and  passed  within  its  grateful  shade, 
we  would  usually  sit  down  a  second  time  to  rest ;  my  mother's 
conversation  which  up  to  this  point  had  been  strictly  mono- 
syllabic, now  becoming  more  free  and  unrestrained,  although  still 
preserving  its  neutral  character  and  confined  to  the  heat,  the  flies, 
the  prospect  of  rain,  and  the  like  ;  or  with  pathetic  reference 
perhaps  to  the  good  firewood  in  the  shape  of  fallen  branches 
lying  scattered  around  and  going  to  waste  and  decay  !  As  we  sat 
there  I  can  still  see  the  caloric  rising  in  shimmering  wavelets 
from  the  burning  road  along  which  we  had  just  passed,  and 
the  long-tailed  squirrel  oppressed  by  the  breathless  heat  hopping 
lazily  along  the  top  of  some  irregular  rail-fence  bounding  a 
distant  cornfield.  And  as  I  listened  to  the  pine  tops  waving  in 
the  clear  blue  sky  above  me,  to  the  confused  humming  of  innu- 
merable insects  from  the  wood,  to  the  solitary  tapping  of  the 


THE    TWILIGHT    OF   MEMORY.  7 

lonely  woodpecker  on  the  trunk  of  some  distant  tree,  or  peered 
into  the  darkening  recesses  of  the  forest  enveloped  in  gloom 
even  at  noonday,  a  feeling  of  far  off  intangible  beauty  strangely 
mingled  with  awe,  would  come  over  me  as  I  sat  by  my  mother's 
side ;  a  feeling  which  has  ever  since  remained  with  me,  and  which 
I  can  still  in  imagination  in  a  measure  reproduce.  As  we  walked 
up  the  gentle  ascent  of  the  road  through  the  wood  and  neared 
the  cottage,  my  aunt  pleased  and  surprised  at  our  approach 
would  come  out  to  meet  us,  her  face  beaming  with  a  mild  delight ; 
and  throwing  aside  the  work  she  happened  to  have  in  hand, 
would  at  once  make  preparations  for  tea ;  while  I  went  prying 
about  in  the  little  garden  adjoining  the  house,  picking  and  eating 
apples  and  currants  and  pears,  listening  to  the  cawing  of  the 
rooks,  or  peering  through  the  fence  in  conscious  security  into 
the  wood  beyond,  which  however  I  was  too  frightened  to  enter 
alone.  We  usually  remained  till  late  in  the  afternoon,  and  when 
the  high  pines  had  ceased  to  throw  their  shadows  across  the 
glowing  road,  and  the  dusky  evening  had  settled  on  the  woods, 
we  would  start  again  on  our  homeward  journey  ;  my  aunt 
accompanying  us  a  little  way  down  the  descent  from  the  cottage. 
When  we  parted  from  her  and  got  farther  along  our  winding 
way,  my  bright  wonder  of  the  afternoon  would  be  all  exchanged 
for  a  vague  chilly  fear;  instead  of  skipping  in  front  of  my 
mother  I  would  draw  close  to  her  side,  holding  by  her  dress, 
casting  half  frightened  glances  into  the  gloomy  darkness  of  the 
wood  now  all  hushed  on  each  side  of  us,  but  in  which  bears  and 
wolves  were  occasionally  still  to  be  found,  and  conjuring  up 
vague  images  of  unknown  terrors  which  pressed  on  my  young- 
heart  until  we  got  into  the  open  again.  These  vague  and 
unpleasant  feelings  would  still  continue  more  or  less  to 
accompany  me  as  I  went  chattering  along  the  road  by  my 
mother's  side  until  we  arrived  at  the  brow  of  the  hill  overlook- 
ing the  village,  when  the  cheerful  laughing  voices  of  the  boys 
playing  on  the  village  green  below,  would  bring  back  the  lively 
and  comforting  sense  of  companionship  with  the  world  again — 


«  thp:  twilight  of  memory. 

a  feeling  which  remained  with  me  till  we  reached  home  and  the 
gentle  twilight  passed  softly  and  not  without  a  vague  sense  of 
infinitude  into  the  peaceful  night. 

It  was  on  one  of  these  occasions  as  we  were  nearing  home 
that  I  have  a  vivid  remembrance  of  the  sky  changing,  the  wind 
beginning  to  rise,  the  lightning  playing  on  the  hills  at  the  back 
of  the  house,  and  everything  giving  signs  of  a  coming  storm. 
When  we  arrived  my  mother  went  into  the  garden  at  the  back 
to  see  that  all  was  right  for  the  night,  and  on  returning 
remarked  ominously  in  her  broad  Scotch  vernacular  and  as  if 
conscious  of  some  impending  evil,  *  She'll  be  in  again  to-night. 
Its  lightning  at  the  back.  She  kens  as  weel  as  a  body  ! '  The 
she  in  question  of  whom  we  had  had  such  disastrous  experience, 
and  whom  to  affect  not  to  know  would  have  been  an  insult  to 
my  mother,  was  none  else  than  an  old  cow— an  old  red  hornless 
cow — who  for  years  had  been  in  the  habit  of  breaking  into  our 
garden  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  eating  such  vegetables  as 
were  planted  there — cauliflower,  lettuce,  cabbage  and  the  like — 
and  departing  quietly  before  daybreak  leaving  wide  ruin  and 
desolation  behind  her.  This  cow  was  at  once  the  despair  and 
desperation  of  my  mother,  and  all  methods  to  keep  her  out  of 
the  garden  had  hitherto  proved  unavailing.  The  way  in  which 
the  cow  entered  was  by  a  gate  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden, 
which  was  secured  in  the  summer  months  both  by  latch  and 
rope  ;  and  it  always  remained  a  mystery  to  the  last,  how  the 
cow,  especially  as  she  was  without  horns,  could  undo  the  latch 
a,nd  unfasten  the  rope.  My  mother  who  firmly  believed  that 
all  the  movements  of  the  animal  were  the  results  of  deep 
deliberation  and  reflection,  affirmed  that  she  selected  just  such 
windy  and  rainy  nights  as  best  ministered  to  her  nefarious 
designs,  bringing  to  the  task  all  the  ingenuity,  subtlety,  and 
resource  of  the  most  experienced  house-breaker.  Whether  my 
mother's  hypothesis  were  right,  that  the  cow  selected  these 
particular  nights  because  she  thought  that  in  the  whistling  of  the 
wind,  the  rattling  of  the  rain,  and  the  creaking  of  doors  and 


THE    TWILIGHT    OF   MEMORY.  9 

hinges  she  could  pass  through  the  gate  undetected  by  her  (for 
my  mother  always  figured  the  old  cow  as  watching  her  with 
the  same  suspicion  that  she  watched  the  cow !)  I  cannot  pretend 
to  say,  but  certain  it  was  that  the  cow  almost  always  selected 
these  windy  rainy  nights  for  her  operations,  and  so  far  added 
the  weight  of  positive  testimony  to  a  hypothesis  which,  as  we 
shall  see,  my  mother  had  arrived  at  from  a  priori  speculations 
on  the  innate  nature  of  the  cow  herself.  On  such  nights  as 
the  one  I  am  describing  we  would  all  retire  to  bed  uneasily, 
my  mother  giving  evidence  by  her  general  silence  of  the  weight 
that  hung  over  her  mind.  When  we  got  to  bed  it  was  usual 
with  me  to  go  off  to  sleep  at  once  regardless  of  cow  or  cabbages, 
but  my  mother  would  lie  awake  listening  intently  between  the 
gusts  of  wind  for  sounds  of  the  enemy's  approach.  And  sure 
enough  as  she  had  predicted,  I  would  be  roused  in  the  middle 
of  the  night  by  my  mother  getting  quickly  out  of  bed,  and  on 
my  inquiring  in  a  startled  manner  as  to  what  was  the  matter, 
she  would  reply  in  an  excited  undertone,  as  if  the  old  cow 
might  hear  her  before  she  could  compass  her  revenge, — '  She's 
in ! '  These  mystic  monosyllables  were  sufficient ;  I  under- 
stood it  all,  and  as  my  mother  after  throwing  on  hurriedly  some 
light  superficial  covering,  sallied  forth  taking  with  her  a  long- 
thick  maple  pole  with  which  we  used  to  poke  up  the  logwood 
fire,  I  would  sit  up  in  bed  to  listen  to  the  coming  fray  with  a 
light  frivolity  and,  I  fear,  secret  delight,  which  in  a  matter  so 
serious,  had  my  mother  known  it,  would  have  cost  me  dear. 
I  had  not  long  to  wait  however,  for  presently  1  would  hear  the 
muffled  thuds  reverberating  from  the  sullen  ribs  of  the  old 
marauder,  until  at  last  a  strain  and  crash  as  the  cow  forced 
her  distended  bulk  through  the  too  narrow  gate  and  fell  on  the 
slippery  boarding  underneath,  would  reach  my  ear ;  when  all 
would  be  silent  again  except  the  whistling  winds.  A  few 
moments  later  my  mother  after  refastening  the  gate  would 
reappear  in  the  bedroom  muttering  exasperation,  or  dejectedly 
murmuring  as  if  she  saw  no  end  to  these  encounters  but  the 


10  THE   TWILIGHT   OF   MEMORY. 

grave  '  She's  given  me  my  death  of  cold  again  to-night/ 
adding  however  with  that  touch  of  self-gratulation  which  the 
consciousness  of  the  summary  justice  she  had  executed  on  the 
brute  inspired,  '  I've  given  her  such  a  drilling,  however,  that 
she'll  not  dare  be  back  again  to-night,  I'll  promise  her,' — after 
which  partial  consolation  and  relief  to  her  feelings  she  would 
return  to  bed  and  sleep  without  further  anxiety  until  the 
morning. 

So  periodical,  indeed,  did  these  visitations  year  after  year 
become,  that  I  grew  up  to  regard  them  as  part  of  the  established 
order  of  things,  and  as  being  no  more  extraordinary  than  the 
return  of  the  seasons  or  the  regulated  changes  of  the  moon. 
But  as  1  grew  older  and  began  to  think  for  myself,  it  occurred 
to  me  that  instead  of  accepting  them  with  the  Hindoo  passivity 
and  resignation  of  my  mother,  they  might  be  prevented  in  a 
great  measure  at  least  by  complaining  to  the  owner,  or  if  that 
failed  by  appealing  to  the  authorities  themselves.  Accordingly 
on  the  morning  after  one  of  these  midnight  encounters,  when 
my  mother  seemed  deeply  depressed,  I  ventured  to  suggest  this 
as  a  reasonable  course  to  follow  under  the  circumstances ;  but 
instead  of  receiving  it  as  a  happy  thought  it  seemed  to  strike 
her  with  amazement,  and  with  a  confused  cry  of  '  Hush ! '  in 
which  fear  and  surprise  curiously  mingled,  she  subsided  into 
silence.  The  reason  of  this  show  of  alarm  which  she  seemed  so 
anxious  to  hide,  I  afterwards  discovered  to  be  that  she  regarded 
the  owner  of  the  cow — a  woman  living  at  the  head  of  the  street 
— with  even  more  dread  if  possible  than  the  cow  herself ! 
This  old  '  mischief  maker,'  as  she  was  in  the  habit  of  desig- 
nating the  owner,  used  to  stand  during  the  greater  part  of  the 
day  in  the  gateway  in  front  of  her  house  with  arms  akimbo, 
her  thick  frame  in  short  skirts  almost  blocking  the  entrance, 
and  her  hair  twisted  menacingly  and  as  if  for  an  encounter 
around  the  back  of  her  short  thick  neck  and  thick  square  head  ; 
and  from  this  gateway  every  now  and  again  she  would  issue 
and  range  up  and  down  the  street  in  front  of  her  house  with  a 


THE    TWILIGHT    OF   MEMORY.  11 

slow  and  deliberate  but  tread-on-the-tail-of-my-coat  attitude 
and  mien,  seizing  such  opportunities  as  afforded  themselves  for 
picking  a  quarrel  (as  for  example  when  a  neighbour's  boy  had 
had  a  row  with  one  of  her  boys)  and  when  she  had  at  last 
succeeded,  falling  on  her  opponent  with  such  precipitation  and 
show  of  violence  as  to  have  become  the  terror  of  the  whole 
surrounding  neighbourhood.  This  it  was  which  accounted  for 
my  mother's  refusal  to  comply  with  my  suggestion,  and  for  her 
startled  cry  of  '  hush '  when  I  ventured  to  bring  it  before 
her.  The  fact  was,  the  old  cow  and  her  owner  had  evidently 
become  so  associated  or  even  identified  in  nature  and  attribute 
in  my  mother's  mind,  that  she  could  not  contemplate  them 
apart.  When  she  saw  the  cow  she  thought  of  her  owner,  and 
when  she  saw  the  owner  she  thought  of  the  cow !  But  you 
could  see  that  although  not  given  to  contemplation,  when  she 
took  time  to  consider  the  matter,  her  real  opinion  was  that  the 
qualities  of  the  cow  were  really  not  so  much  original  in  her  as 
in  some  mysterious  way  derived  from  her  owner.  The  in- 
tellectual acuteness  and  subtlety  which  in  unfastening  ropes 
and  opening  latches  she  so  much  feared  and  admired,  she 
seemed  to  regard  as  due  rather  to  a  moral  depravity,  and  the 
moral  depravity  again  she  fully  believed  to  be  directly  due 
in  some  occult  way  (analogous  to  witchcraft  I  often  thought 
she  figured  it !)  to  the  malignant  disposition  of  the  owner.  And 
I  verily  believe  that  could  the  cow  have  been  sold  to  a  different 
owner  or  in  any  other  way  been  taken  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
malign  influence  of  her  own  mistress,  my  mother  would  have 
had  a  vague  but  real  hope  of  her  reformation.  But  this  was 
not  to  be.  The  cow  remained  with  her  original  owner,  and  for 
some  years  longer  her  nocturnal  depredations  continued  as 
before.  At  last  however  as  the  cow  grew  older,  and  the  arrange- 
ments about  the  gate  had  been  completely  altered,  these  forays 
ceased  altogether  or  grew  much  more  intermittent :  and  finallv 
after  I  had  grown  to  be  quite  a  big  lad,  the  old  cow  herself  was 
sent  to  her  long  and  last  account  by  a  stroke  of  lightning  on 


12  THE    TWILIGHT    OF   MEMORY. 

the  top  of  the  hill  overlooking  the  village.  I  heard  the  news 
from  some  of  the  boys,  and  on  proceeding  to  the  spot  to 
ascertain  the  truth  for  myself,  I  came  on  the  swollen  carcase  of 
the  old  brute  still  warm  and  lying  on  its  side,  with  a  scathed 
and  blackened  streak  passing  from  the  spine  over  the  distended 
ribs  ;  and  can  well  remember  my  mingled  feelings  as  I  realized 
that  the  old  general  had  actually  been  brought  to  the  ground 
at  last.  I  rushed  home  full  of  the  glad  event,  and  when  I 
announced  the  welcome  news  to  my  mother  she  at  first  looked 
incredulous  as  if  it  were  too  good  to  be  true,  but  on  my  detail- 
ing the  time,  place,  and  occasion  with  all  circumstantiality,  she 
paused,  and  as  the  memories  and  vicissitudes  of  their  long 
struggles  came  over  her  mind  she  turned  aside,  and  in  a  tone  of 
mingled  pathos  and  relief  murmured  audibly  *  the  auld  sorrow ! 
She's  weel  gane  !  she's  weel  gane  ! 


CHAPTEE     II. 


SUMMER. 

PT^HE  games  and  amusements  of  my  boyhood  included  nearly 
-*-  all  those  in  vogue  in  England  at  the  present  time — 
marbles,  tops,  swimming,  boating,  cricket,  skating,  foot-ball 
and  the  like — together  with  others  altogether  unknown  here,  or 
from  the  nature  of  the  climate  practised  under  different 
conditions. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  settlement  a  great  dam  had  been 
built  across  the  river  at  the  head  of  the  village,  in  order  that 
its  water  might  be  diverted  into  canals  which  had  been  dug 
parallel  with  it  on  either  side,  and  so  afford  the  power 
necessary  to  run  the  various  woollen,  flour,  and  other  mills  which 
then  or  afterwards  were  built  along  the  line  of  its  banks.  At 
the  junction  of  this  dam  with  the  bank  of  the  river  on  the 
side  on  which  I  lived,  a  great  rock  shelved  down  in  horizontal 
strata  to  within  three  or  four  feet  of  the  water ;  and  around  it 
as  around  a  promontory  the  river  flowed  gently  over  the  fall  of 
the  dam.  From  off  this  rock  I  got  my  first  lesson  in  swimming, 
having  been  thrown  from  it  into  the  deep  dark  waters  one 
evening  by  one  of  the  elder  boys  who  immediately  plunged  in 
after  me  before  I  had  time  to  sink,  and  getting  behind  me 
upheld  me  while  I  splashed  and  spluttered  my  way  back  as  best 
I  could  to  the  shore. 

But  our  principal  summer  amusement  was  Cricket.     During 


14:  SUMMER. 

the  long  vacation  and  in  the  intervals  of  bathing,  a  number  of 
us  boys  might  be  seen  going  to  one  or  other  of  the  open  spaces 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  and  there  after  pitching  our 
wickets  and  choosing  our  sides,  preparing  to  have  a  game.  To 
this  game  I  was  intensely  devoted,  and  expended  on  it  more 
time,  energy,  and  perseverance  than  I  have  since  given  to  the 
gravest  pursuits ;  although  in  my  earlier  years  it  had  to  be 
played  under  the  most  primitive  and  unfavourable  conditions. 
Our  wickets  were  made  usually  of  broomsticks  sawed  into  equal 
regulation  lengths  and  sharpened  at  the  points,  their  tops  being 
notched  for  the  reception  of  little  pieces  of  twig  which  we  used 
as  'bails.'  The  balls  were  home-made,  consisting  of  a  central 
nucleus  of  cork  around  wrhich  were  disposed  various  layers 
of  rags,  strips  of  cotton,  and  old  bits  of  twine,  all  cemented 
together  into  a  hard  homogeneous  rotundity  by  means  of  pitch, 
tar,  or  the  gummy  distillations  of  the  pine  trees.  The  ball 
thus  prepared  was  then  taken  to  the  local  shoemaker  to  be 
covered  with  leather,  and  was  returned  to  us,  hard,  indeed, 
and  more  or  less  round,  but  standing  out  at  the  seams  like 
mountain  ranges,  in  high  embossed  ridges  without  modesty  or 
attempt  at  concealment !  The  bats  too  were  usually  home-made, 
each  boy  making  his  own  for  himself  out  of  pine  or  beechwood, 
in  such  style  and  configuration  as  most  suited  his  fancy.  They 
were  usually  free  from  any  attempt  at  artistic  beauty,  and  rarely 
had  their  surfaces  planed,  much  less  varnished  or  even  covered 
with  a  rough  coating  of  paint;  but  when  as  sometimes 
happened  one  of  the  boys  would  bring  to  the  field  a  proper  bat 
made  of  willow, — light,  flexible,  beautifully  varnished  and  with 
handle  nicely  wound  and  corded, — it  was  passed  around  among 
the  rest  of  us  for  inspection,  and  handled  with  a  species  of 
idolatry.  The  ground,  too,  on  which  we  played  had  to  be 
sought  for  and  found  among  and  between  the  stumps  that 
dotted  the  hills,  commons,  and  other  vacant  spaces  of  the 
village.  We  would  usually  divide  into  parties  of  two  on  these 
occasions,  and  would  scour  the  country  in  all  directions  like  so 


SUMMER.  15 

many  surveyors;  halting  here  and  there,  and  turning  to  all 
points  of  the  compass  until  we  came  on  a  stretch  of  ground 
between  the  stumps  sufficiently  level  to  justify  us  in  pitching 
the  wickets. 

In  those  days  the  great  English  Eleven  had  just  visited  the 
Province,  and  the  fame  of  their  achievements  had  spread  far  and 
wide  among  the  boys.  *  Round-arm  '  bowling,  as  it  was  called, 
was  our  great  ambition,  and  from  the  great  difficulty  of 
pitching  the  balls  straight  when  delivered  in  that  way,  offered 
to  those  who  could  compass  it  the  shortest  and  most  certain 
cut  to  distinction.  Like  the  rest  of  the  boys  I  was  fired  with 
the  ambition  of  becoming  a  round  arm  bowler,  and  used  to  rise 
in  the  early  morning  before  the  dew  was  off  the  grass,  set  up  a 
single  wicket  (of  broomstick)  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  and 
with  an  adjoining  fence  and  barn  as  back-stop  behind,  bowl 
away  at  it  by  the  hour  together.  But  in  spite  of  incessant 
and  assiduous  practice  continued  over  many  years,  and  in  spite 
of  the  speed  with  which  I  could  deliver  the  balls,  I  never 
attained  either  in  pitch  or  directness  of  aim  to  anything 
beyond  a  respectable  proficiency.  With  my  batting,  too,  I 
was  equally  assiduous  but  not  more  successful ;  for  although  a 
free  hitter  when  the  balls  were  off  the  wicket,  and  a  diligent 
observer  and  speculator  as  to  the  way  in  which  the  various 
balls  were  best  to  be  played,  I  was  uncertain  in  my  stop,  and 
was  never  able  to  place  the  balls  in  the  field  with  any  sureness 
or  satisfaction  to  myself. 

When  the  weather  was  unfavourable  for  swimming,  cricket, 
or  kite-flying,  I  was  usually  to  be  found  fishing  off  the  rocks 
that  lined  the  banks  of  the  river  at  and  below  the  dam  at  the 
head  of  the  village.  This  sport  too,  like  cricket,  had  to  be 
pursued  with  materials  of  a  very  primitive  and  rudimentary 
kind.  So  far  as  I  can  remember,  a  fishing-rod  in  the  proper 
and  accepted  sense  of  that  term,  with  its  joints  and  sections 
and  reel,  and  its  light,  lithe,  and  elastic  structure,  was 
unknown  among  the  boys  of  the  time.     The  rods  in  use,  or 


16  SUMMER. 

4  poles '  us  they  were  called,  consisted  originally  of  saplings  of 
elm,  tamarack,  and  cedar  which  grew  in  the  woods  or  dense 
swamps  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  village,  and  which  were 
selected  because  in  proportion  to  their  length  they  were  either 
lighter  and  straighter,  or  thinner  and  tougher  than  any  other 
wood ;  the  cedar  and  tamarack  being  especially  light  and 
straight,  the  elm  and  beech  especially  tough  and  thin.  To 
obtain  these  saplings  we  were  in  the  habit  of  going  to  the 
woods  or  swamps  in  parties  of  two  or  three,  and  after  selecting 
as  many  as  we  wanted,  cutting  them  down,  and  removing  the 
smaller  branches,  we  would  throw  them  over  our  shoulders  and 
start  again  on  our  way  homewards.  When  we  got  home  we 
would  remove  the  bark  and  hang  the  poles  up  to  dry  for  a 
time  in  the  open  air,  after  which  they  were  ready  for  use ; 
precautions  having  already  been  taken  to  remove  a  sufficient 
portion  of  the  thin  and  tapering  top  to  ensure  the  strength 
necessary  to  stand  the  dead  weight  and  pull  to  which  they 
were  afterwards  to  be  subjected.  The  lines  we  used  were  tied 
to  a  notch  cut  on  the  end  of  the  *  pole,'  and  consisted  of 
cording  of  such  strength  and  thickness,  that  judiciously 
expended  from  a  proper  reel  they  might  have  secured  or 
impeded  the  escape  of  some  of  the  greatest  monsters  of  the 
deep  !  At  the  end  of  the  line  a  hook,  large,  bare  and  ugly 
looking,  was  attached,  and  above  the  hook  a  '  sinker '  made  of 
a  piece  of  lead  and  welded  to  the  line,  and  of  such  size  and 
weight  that  when  it  was  thrown  into  the  water  it  was  like  the 
heaving  overboard  of  a  small  anchor  !  The  bait,  too,  was  of 
the  most  simple  character.  No  gaudy  flies  of  variegated 
plumage,  no  hooks  fantastically  dressed  with  the  softest  tail 
feathers  of  the  eagle-owl — nothing  but  the  simple  garden  worm 
transfixed  in  a  series  of  involutions  by  the  bare  and  ruthless 
hook  (on  which  indeed  it  continued  to  wriggle  after  being 
thrown  into  the  water)  and  without  further  effort  at  conceal- 
ment. The  spot  usually  selected  by  us  for  fishing  was  the 
comparatively  still  water  which  eddied  back  into  the  side  of 


SUMMER.  17 

the  bank  just  below  the  dam  ;  and  here  in  the  evening  after 
school  hours  some  eight  or  ten  of  us  might  be  seen  sitting  in 
line,  '  poles '  in  hand,  on  the  perpendicular  rocks  overhanging 
the  water,  watching  the  old  bottle-corks  which  we  used  for 
floats,  with  a  keen  and  absorbing  interest.  Nor  in  the  fishing 
to  which  we  were  accustomed  was  it  essential  to  success  that 
we  should  continually  thrash  the  water  with  our  lines  as  the 
current  carried  them  down ;  on  the  contrary  when  once  the 
sinker  was  thrown  in,  it  itself  sought  the  bottom  with  such 
directness  and  precipitation,  and  lay  there  with  such  an 
evident  determination  not  to  move,  that  you  could  prop  your 
pole  between  a  couple  of  stones  and  go  away  and  leave  it  for 
an  hour  or  so,  with  the  certainty  of  finding  your  line  in 
precisely  the  same  spot  on  your  return,  unmoved  by  wind  or 
stream !  The  fish  that  haunted  the  river  were  freshwater  fish 
about  the  size  of  a  sea  trout  or  very  small  salmon  ;  and  were 
known  by  such  homely  or  expressive  epithets  as  '  suckers/ 
4  stone-carriers,'  '  mullets,'  and  the  like.  These  fish  were  all 
very  bony,  especially  the  mullets,  a  circumstance  which  gave 
rise  to  the  hypothesis  by  a  local  philosopher,  that  they  were  the 
last  fish  the  Lord  had  made,  and  that  he  had  thrown  the  bones 
in  by  handfuls !  When  once  the  bait  was  taken,  no  fine  or 
dextrous  manipulation  was  necessary  to  land  the  fish,  no 
running  them  up  and  down  the  stream  for  half  an  hour  at  a 
stretch  playing  out  line  and  taking  it  in  again,  and  the  whole 
executed  with  the  greatest  skill  and  caution.  The  line  was  so 
thick  that  it  would  not  break  under  the  most  extreme  strain 
brought  to  bear  on  it  (I  have  known  one  bear  the  strain  of 
three  boys  pulling  at  it  with  all  their  might,  when  it  had  got 
stuck),  and  the  '  poles '  although  absolutely  small,  were 
relatively  to  an  ordinary  rod  as  the  mast  of  some  great 
admiral !  The  landing  of  a  fish  was  in  consequence  a  matter 
purely  of  what  I  have  heard  characterized  as  '  main  strength  and 
ignorance  ! '  It  was  raised  out  of  the  water  by  one  long  dead 
heave,  which  lifted  it  high  into  the  air  over  the  shoulder  of  its 

C 


.18  SUMMER. 

raptor  and  flung  it  foul  against  the  rocks  behind  with  such 
ruthless  violence,  as  to  leave  one  under  no  necessity  of  after- 
wards putting  it  to  death.  And  so  it  went  on,  first  one  boy 
and  then  another  stolidly  and  without  sense  of  humour  flinging 
the  fish  behind  him  on  to  the  relentless  rocks ;  until  the 
evening  closed  around  and  one  after  another  picking  up  his 
own  fish  and  slinging  them  on  a  line  or  piece  of  twig,  took 
each  his  several  homeward  way. 

Personally  I  cared  little  at  any  time  for  fishing.  I  did  not 
like  freshwater  fish  as  an  article  of  diet,  nor  did  I  care  for  the 
sport  in  itself.  When  the  fish  were  taking  well  and  were 
being  flung  into  the  air  in  flights  on  all  sides  of  me,  it  soon 
became  monotonous ;  when  they  would  not  take  at  all,  it  was 
uninteresting.  Besides  I  was  restless  and  kept  changing  my 
position  too  often,  I  was  careless  about  my  worms,  or  would 
go  away  and  leave  my  pole  propped  up  between  two  stones  for 
too  long  together,  and  more  than  all  when  I  did  get  a  i  take ' 
I  was  so  eager  to  secure  it  that  I  often  either  missed  it 
altogether,  or  pulled  the  hook  sheer  through  the  creature's 
mouth  !  The  result  as  might  be  expected  was  that  I  was  in 
general  unsuccessful.  But  as  is  so  often  seen  even  in  the 
smallest  village,  there  was  one  boy  among  us  who  seemed  to 
the  rest  of  us  to  have  a  kind  of  genius  for  fishing.  He  was  a 
negro  boy  who  through  lameness  was  obliged  to  walk  with  a 
crutch,  but  a  boy  of  great  humour  and  sagacity,  one  of  the  best 
scholars  in  the  school,  and  much  respected  and  even  feared 
(for  he  used  his  crutch  with  effect)  by  the  rest  of  the  boys. 
In  order  to  try  and  divert  the  fish  to  our  own  hooks,  we  were 
in  the  habit  of  getting  to  the  river  before  him  and  taking  our 
seats  in  those  favoured  positions  from  which  we  had  seen  him 
pull  them  out  so  brilliantly ;  hoping  thereby  that  some  of  his 
luck  might  attend  us.  But  it  was  of  no  avail.  When  he 
came  too  late  he  would  sit  down  anywhere,  laying  his  crutch 
down  by  his  side  and  arranging  his  hooks  and  worms  with  the 
greatest  composure ;  and  after  we  had  perhaps  been  waiting  in 


SUMMER.  19 

vain  all  the  evening  for  a  '  bite/  he  would  presently  *  throw  in,' 
and  in  a  short  time  would  begin  pulling  out  the  fish  before  our 
very  eyes  as  if  he  had  been  on  his  own  favoured  spot,  to  our 
mingled  disgust,  admiration,  and  despair.  The  secret  of  his 
success  always  remained  more  or  less  a  mystery  to  us,  although 
any  number  of  theories  were  started  by  the  boys  to  account  for 
it.  Some  believing  in  the  doctrine  that  a  rolling  stone  gathers 
no  moss,  thought  that  his  lameness  rendering  him  disinclined 
to  change  his  place  was  the  cause  of  his  success ;  others 
believed  that  it  lay  in  a  point  of  disposition  or  character,  and 
was  owing  to  the  fact  that  he  sat  so  quietly  and  let  fall  the 
'  sinker '  so  gently  that  in  spite  of  its  portentous  size,  the  fish 
were  not  frightened  or  disturbed;  while  others,  again,  with 
some  more  or  less  confused  idea  of  a  Special  Providence,  felt 
that  it  was  because  his  family  had  nothing  else  to  live  upon,  it 
having  been  reported  that  in  the  summer  months  fish  was  their 
chief  if  not  only  article  of  food.  But  the  truth  was  perhaps, 
little  as  we  liked  to  admit  it,  that  his  success  was  due  to  his 
better  knowledge  of  the  art — of  how  to  adjust  his  worm,  of 
where  the  fish  were  likely  to  be  lying,  and  of  how  best  to  hook 
them  when  they  had  taken  the  bait. 


CHAPTEE     III 


WINTER. 

POURING  the  long  and  frosty  months  of  the  Canadian 
-^^^  winter,  the  face  of  the  country  was  covered  with  a 
continuous  and  unbroken  sheeting  of  snow,  all  agricultural 
operations  had  in  consequence  to  be  suspended,  and  beyond 
the  feeding  of  horses  and  cattle  there  was  little  for  the  farmers 
to  do.  They  accordingly  seized  the  opportunity  thus  afforded 
them,  to  bring  into  town  for  sale  on  their  smoothly  running 
sleighs,  great  loads  of  the  fire-wood  which  lay  in  the  country 
round  in  accumulating  piles  as  the  original  forests  were 
cleared  and  the  land  brought  under  cultivation ;  and  which  at 
that  time  was  almost  the  sole  article  of  fuel.  Corn  also  had  to 
be  withdrawn  from  the  bins  and  brought  into  town  for  the 
supply  of  the  local  flour  mills,  and  hay  and  straw  for  the  horses 
and  cows  that  were  kept  by  numbers  of  people  of  all  classes. 
The  streets  were  thus  kept  alive  and  busy  during  the  dreary 
winter  months  by  the  appearance  in  all  quarters  of  the  town  of 
farmers  seated  on  the  tops  of  their  loads  of  wood  or  corn,  and 
muffled  up  to  the  ears  with  blankets  and  furs,  through  which 
their  beards  projected  hoary  with  frost  or  matted  with  the 
icicles  deposited  from  their  condensed  and  steaming  breath. 
Besides  farmers,  there  were  also  to  be  seen  in  the  streets  local 
carriers  who  made  their  living  by  removing  furniture,  wood, 
and  other  odds  and  ends  from  place  to  place,  as  well  as  the 


WINTER.  21 

staff  of  permanent  officials  employed  by  the  large  manu- 
facturers in  carrying  flour,  hardware,  machinery  and  other 
merchandize  to  and  from  the  station.  And  as  the  evening 
approached,  light  and  ornamental  sleighs — *  cutters '  they  were 
called — made  their  appearance  in  the  leading  thoroughfares, 
drawn  by  fast-trotting  horses  driven  by  opulent  citizens  out 
for  a  drive,  who  with  their  wives  and  families  enveloped  in 
muffs  and  furs  reclined  on  bear  or  tiger  skins,  the  margins  of 
which  hung  as  ornament  over  the  back  and  sides  of  the  sleigh. 
With  this  mingled  stream  of  traffic  the  town  was  kept  merry 
all  day  long  with  the  jingling  of  the  sleigh-bells  which  ranged 
through  all  the  gamut  of  sound  from  the  light  merry  tinkling 
of  the  open  silver  bells  on  the  fast-stepping  trotters,  to  the 
dull  heavy  monotone  of  the  round  closed  metal  hung  in  rows 
around  the  necks  of  the  farmers'  drays.  One  of  our  main 
amusements  on  our  way  to  and  from  the  school  was  to  jump 
on  these  sleighs  as  they  passed  and  repassed,  ride  with  them 
to  the  point  at  which  they  turned  out  of  the  main  line  of 
traffic,  and  return  with  others  passing  in  the  opposite 
direction,  and  so  on  up  and  down  for  hours  together. 

During  the  month  of  January  a  thaw  usually  set  in,  and  the 
greater  part  of  the  snow  covering  the  face  of  the  country  almost 
disappeared.  This  change  in  the  weather  lasting  as  it  generally 
did  a  week  or  more,  was  known  as  the '  January  thaw,'  and  was 
the  only  break  in  the  long  monotony  of  frost  and  snow  that 
covered  the  ground  from  the  beginning  of  December  to  the 
end  of  March.  At  this  period,  and  again  in  the  Spring  when 
the  snow  was  finally  disappearing,  the  weather  was  so  mild, 
and  the  roads  so  sloppy,  that  there  ceased  to  be  the  active 
pleasure  felt  in  hanging  on  sleighs  that  there  was  in  the  period 
of  keen  and  bracing  frost.  Skating  being  out  of  the  question, 
the  only  amusement  that  remained  open  to  us  was  snowballing, 
a  sport  to  which  the  very  softness  of  the  snow,  and  the  ease 
with  which  it  could  be  made  into  balls,  invited  us.  The 
pleasure  derived  from  this  sport  was  greatly  enhanced  by  the 


22  WINTER. 

opportunity  it  afforded  us  of  paying  off  some  of  the  old  scores 
which  had  been  gradually  accumulating  at  compound  interest 
since  the  beginning  of  the  season.  As  a  species  of  warfare, 
snowballing  was  carried  on  sometimes  in  an  irregular  guerilla 
manner,  each  one  skirmishing  for  his  own  hand  from  behind 
fences  and  street-corners,  and  sometimes,  especially  when  the 
enemy  was  strong,  in  regular  platoons  drawn  up  in  force  and 
drilled  to  harmonious  and  concerted  action.  In  the  latter  case 
we  were  in  the  habit  of  selecting  for  our  base  of  operations 
certain  positions  in  the  various  streets,  which  from  their 
situation  and  surroundings  were  peculiarly  adapted  for  attack 
or  defence.  The  most  favoured  of  these  was  connected  with  a 
carriage-shop  in  one  of  the  main  thoroughfares,  and  consisted 
of  a  permanent  open  plateau  or  platform  some  twenty  feet 
above  the  ground,  supported  on  wooden  pillars,  and  used  for 
the  exposure  of  waggons  and  carriages  previous  to  their  being 
finished  in  the  adjoining  work-rooms.  To  this  spot  we  were  in 
the  habit  of  repairing  in  numbers  during  the  snow-balling 
season,  there  to  await  such  objects  of  our  wantonness  or 
revenge  as  might  chance  to  pass  along  the  street  and  pave- 
ments below.  We  were  all  as  a  rule  good  marksmen,  it  being 
one  of  our  chief  amusements  to  go  in  the  early  summer 
mornings  to  the  surrounding  hills,  our  pockets  full  of  stones, 
to  chase  the  birds  which  were  to  be  found  there  in  great 
numbers  and  which  rose  on  all  sides  of  us  as  we  walked  along. 
There  was  therefore  little  hope  of  escape  for  any  unhappy 
wight  who  chanced  to  pass  along,  and  on  whom  we  were 
resolved  to  open  fire.  But  we  had  to  be  very  wary  and 
prudent  in  our  selection  of  the  objects  of  attack.  For  although 
we  were  to  a  certain  extent  covered  in  our  rear  by  various  lofts 
and  lumber  rooms  to  which  we  could  retreat  when  pursued, 
and  although  we  could  escape  by  one  staircase  as  our  pursuer 
came  up  the  other,  still  we  could  not  always  depend  on  these 
advantages  when  pressed  by  an  enraged  and  determined  foe. 
In  a  general  way  therefore  we  were  chary  of  meddling  with 


WINTER.  23 

foot-passengers,  especially  those  who  if  really  aggravated  could 
give  successful  chase  ;  for  when  caught  we  were  almost  sure  to 
have  our  faces  washed  with  snow,  a  punishment  regarded  by 
the  boys  as  more  or  less  of  a  stigma  and  personal  disgrace. 
Women,  too,  of  all  ages  and  conditions  were  from  a  habitual 
chivalry  exempt  from  attack,  as  were  also  lawyers,  constables,, 
schoolmasters,  and  others  directly  or  remotely  associated  in 
our  minds  with  some  form  of  retribution,  and  towards  whom,. 
I  remember,  we  stood  in  a  secret  and  unavowed  but  real  and 
habitual  awe !  But  the  appearance  of  an  uproarious  inebriate 
rolling  along  was  always  the  signal  for  a  universal  fire,  and 
great  was  our  excitement,  while  waiting  until  he  came  within 
range,  as  we  heard  in  imagination  the  snowballs  squashing  on 
his  back  and  sides,  and  figured  to  ourselves  the  look  of  helpless 
impotence  and  rage  with  which  he  would  regard  us.  One  old 
chronic  and  besotted,  but  silent  and  sullen  toper,  with  face 
purple  and  bloated  as  a  London  cabman,  and  who  lived  alone  a 
mile  or  two  out  of  the  town,  used  to  pass  regularly  every  day 
all  the  year  round  on  his  way  to  the  dram-shop  for  his  daily 
supply  of  whiskey  (a  quart  it  was  said  !),  carrying  under  his 
arm  the  old  brown  stone  jar  in  which  it  was  contained.  This 
old  sot  furnished  to  us  boys  all  the  conditions  of  an  ideal 
target,  and  his  appearance  in  the  distance  was  hailed  with  as 
much  excitement  by  us  as  a  fox  at  covert;  for  although  we 
rained  snowballs  on  him  from  head  to  foot  as  he  passed  along, 
he  gave  no  sign  of  pause,  shewed  no  emotion  either  of  surprise 
or  fear,  and  except  the  muttered  curses  which  were  suspected 
of  escaping  from  him  when  the  fire  was  at  its  height,  he  passed 
through  his  heavy  ordeal  (holding  fast  to  his  whiskey  bottle  !)  in 
sullen  silence.  But  our  fixed  and  habitual  victims  were  the 
farmers,  especially  those  who  in  the  frosty  weather  had  been 
laying  up  long  and  unpaid  scores  by  whipping  us  off  their 
sleighs.  Their  hour  had  at  last  come,  and  as  they  could  not 
leave  their  horses  to  give  chase,  they  were  completely  at  our 
mercy ;  and  besides  in  their  cramped  and  confined  positions  on 


24  WINTER. 

their  sleighs  they  had  not  sufficient  margin  and  freedom  to 
dodge  or  escape  the  fire  which  we  poured  on  them  with 
scathing  and  relentless  severity.  As  they  came  gaily  along  in 
the  distance  seated  on  the  tops  of  their  wood-piles  or  bags  of 
corn,  capering  and  even  lightly  coruscating  with  their  whips  in 
a  pleasing  self-complacency  and  unconscious  of  what  was 
awaiting  them,  we  would  squat  down  in  line  at  a  little  distance 
from  the  edge  of  the  platform  with  a  dozen  or  more  snowballs 
each  ready  at  our  feet,  like  so  many  cannon  balls,  and  when 
they  came  within  range,  we  would  start  up  like  the  old  Guard 
at  Waterloo,  and  rain  such  a  concentrated  fire  on  their  unlucky 
persons  as  to  annihilate  all  emotions  save  that  of  instant  and 
unconditional  escape.  Others  coming  behind  and  witnessing 
the  fate  of  their  predecessors,  conscious  too  of  their  own  un- 
popularity, and  seeing  no  alternative  but  to  turn  or  push  their 
way  through,  would  cover  their  faces  and  heads  with  their 
blankets,  and  putting  the  whip  to  their  horses,  like  old 
Romans  would  submit  to  their  fate  without  a  word ;  while 
others  again,  guarding  their  heads  as  best  they  could  with  their 
arms  and  furs,  would  good-humouredly  run  the  gauntlet, 
turning  round  when  out  of  range  and  by  impudent  gestures 
conveying  to  us  their  sense  of  defiance  and  contempt.  But 
the  friends  of  the  boys,  the  old  farmers  who  had  let  us  mount 
their  sleighs  and  climb  up  around  them,  and  who  seemed 
assured  of  our  good  intentions  towards  them,  would  come 
smiling  along  in  conscious  security  ;  nor  was  their  confidence 
abused,  for  as  they  came  sailing  past  us  waving  their  hands 
towards  us  in  token  of  good  will,  we  would  drop  our  snowballs, 
and  giving  them  three  lusty  and  rousing  cheers  as  a  mark  of 
oar  esteem,  would  wave  them  on  their  journey  God-speed. 

Along  both  sides  of  the  river-basin  on  which  the  town  was 
built,  the  hills  rose  perpendicularly  from  the  bosom  of  the 
valley,  and  the  roads  running  out  over  them  into  the  country 
instead  of  passing  directly  up  the  steep  ascent,  which  would 
have    made    traffic    almost   impossible,   followed   a   somewhat 


WINTER.  25 

winding  and  circuitous  course  along  the  brow  of  the  hill.  There 
were  two  or  three  of  these  roads  on  each  side  of  the  town,  and 
one  of  our  principal  amusements  in  winter  when  there  was  no 
skating,  consisted  in  riding  and  racing  down  them  in  'hand 
sleighs.'  These  sleighs  were  made  of  a  pair  of  parallel  runners 
three  or  four  feet  in  length  turned  up  in  front  and  shaped  like 
the  runners  of  a  skate ;  the  runners  were  fastened  together  by 
two  crossbars,  and  the  whole  (which  stood  about  a  foot  above 
the  ground)  covered  by  a  smooth  planed  board,  and  painted 
and  ornamented  according  to  the  taste  and  fancy  of  the  owner. 
Like  race-horses,  these  sleighs  had  each  its  own  name  which  was 
painted  on  its  upper  surface,  and,  as  with  race-horses,  these 
names  had  their  origin  in  associations  of  an  accidental, 
capricious,  or  appropriate  character.  Like  race-horses,  too,  the 
sleighs  gradually  worked  themselves  into  the  affections  of  their 
owners,  and  wTere  regarded  often,  especially  if  they  were  swift 
coursers,  with  a  species  of  fondness  bordering  on  love.  They 
could  be  either  bought  ready-made  at  the  shops  or  made 
according  to  order  at  one  or  other  of  the  carriage-works  in  the 
town ;  and  when  built  of  the  best  wood,  shod  with  the  best 
iron,  and  ornamentally  finished  and  painted,  bore  a  higher  price 
than  was  within  my  reach.  Among  my  earliest  remembrances 
is  that  of  standing  shivering  on  one  of  the  hill-tops  while  the 
boys  were  riding  down  on  their  sleighs,  and  soliciting  a  ride 
first  from  one  and  then  from  another,  in  return  for  which  I 
would  give  them  perhaps  a  piece  of  chewing-gum,  or  accompany 
them  on  an  errand,  or  help  them  with  any  odd  jobs  which 
they  had  to  do  about  their  own  homes.  As  was  natural 
I  longed  painfully  for  a  sleigh  of  my  own,  and  importuned 
those  of  the  boys  who  had  them,  to  exchange  theirs 
with  me  for  any  or  all  of  the  articles  in  my  possession — 
jack-knives,  straps,  old  pairs  of  skates  and  the  like.  But 
all  was  in  vain,  for  the  whole  inventory  of  my  belongings 
did  not  approach  in  value  the  poorest  and  meanest  of  these 
sleighs,  and  my  unsatisfied  longings  in  consequence  became  in 


26  WINTER. 

time  so  acute  and  intense  that  could  I  have  stolen  one  without 
the  chance  of  detection  I  must  have  done  so.  I  was  not  to  be 
beaten,  however,  and  finding  that  I  could  get  one  in  no  other  way 
I  at  last  endeavoured  to  make  one  for  myself.  I  got  together 
some  old  pinewood  planks,  cut  them  into  proper  lengths, 
borrowed  a  plane  and  smoothed  them,  marked  out  the  curve  of 
the  runners  with  a  pencil,  and  by  means  of  knife,  saw,  and 
plane,  managed  to  rough-hew  them  into  some  sort  of  shape. 
I  then  united  them  together  with  cross-bars,  and  covered  the 
whole  with  a  simple  unpainted  board.  It  was,  I  must  confess, 
a  rude  and  unpolished  structure,  but  would  have  answered  its 
purpose  sufficiently  well,  could  I  have  had  its  runners  shod  with 
the  kind  of  iron  necessary  to  give  it  speed  ;  for  this  was  of 
course  the  one  absolute  necessity  in  a  sleigh,  without  which  all 
other  qualities  counted  for  nothing.  The  iron  required  was 
wrought-iron,  half-round  or  flat,  and  of  such  thickness  that  the 
heads  of  the  screw-nails  with  which  it  was  fastened  to  the 
runner,  could  be  sunk  into  it  and  so  present  a  surface  of  polished 
glassy  smoothness  to  the  snow.  But  to  get  this  iron  and  to 
have  it  fastened  to  the  runners  was  quite  beyond  my  power,  as 
it  was  perhaps  the  most  expensive  of  the  items  that  went  to 
make  up  the  entire  cost.  I  was  obliged  therefore  to  put  up 
sorrowfully  with  such  inferior  iron  as  I  could  find  ;  and  after 
some  searching  I  at  last  came  upon  some  old  rusted  sheet-iron 
hoops  among  the  debris  of  an  old  water-barrel  which  had  fallen 
to  pieces  and  lay  rotting  on  the  ground  at  the  bottom  of  our 
garden.  But  my  misery  was  only  then  beginning,  for  owing 
to  the  thinness  of  these  hoops  you  could  neither  sink  the  screw- 
heads  into  their  substance,  nor  could  you  file  them  down  to  the 
level  of  the  iron,  without  the  danger  of  their  slipping  through 
altogether.  I  was  obliged  therefore  to  let  them  project  more 
or  less,  thus  impeding  by  their  friction  the  movement  of  the 
sleigh,  and  forever  destroying  its  chance  of  becoming  a  racing- 
star  of  the  first  or  even  the  tenth  magnitude.  Nevertheless 
such  for  a  time  was  my  fondness  for  this  rude  and  misshapen 


WINTER.  27 

offspring  of  my  own  labour,  that  like  a  mother  with  her 
deformed  and  rickety  child,  I  watched  over  it  with  an  anxiety 
and  care  that  I  could  not  have  bestowed  on  the  most  beautiful 
and  highly-finished  production  of  the  shops  !  As  nothing, 
however,  could  make  its  appearance  presentable,  I  concentrated 
all  my  energies  on  endeavouring  to  make  the  irons  as  smooth 
and  bright  as  possible.  I  filed  away  at  the  projecting  screw- 
heads,  rounding  off  their  edges  as  far  as  was  possible  without 
filing  them  off  altogether,  rubbed  the  irons  down  daily  with  a 
brick  to  get  off  all  the  rust,  and  seized  every  opportunity  that 
offered  of  attaching  it  to  a  horse-sleigh,  and  riding  it  a  mile  or 
two  into  the  country  with  the  view  of  giving  to  the  runners 
the  last  degree  of  smoothness  and  polish  of  which  they  were 
capable.  So  interested,  indeed,  was  I  in  the  progress  they 
were  making,  that  after  every  ride  down  the  hill  I  would  turn 
up  the  sleigh  to  see  whether  there  was  any  difference  in  their 
smoothness  and  brilliancy.  One  frosty  moonlight  night, 
accordingly,  on  turning  up  the  sleigh  in  this  way  in  front  of 
our  house,  I  fancied  in  the  silvery  light  that  I  noticed  a  greater 
degree  of  smoothness  and  brightness  than  usual,  and  proceeded 
to  run  my  finger  along  the  runners  to  feel.  But  not  being  able 
to  satisfy  myself  in  this  way,  it  occurred  to  me  that  the  tongue 
was  a  finer  and  more  sensitive  organ  than  either  the  eye  or  the 
finger,  and  accordingly  I  stooped  down  and  put  my  tongue  to 
the  iron  intending  to  run  it  along  it  as  I  had  done  my  finger, 
when  to  my  horror  T  found  it  had  stuck  fast  to  the  iron  and 
could  not  be  removed !  Thereupon  I  set  up  such  a  yell  that  my 
mother  hearing  me  from  within  the  house  rushed  out  to  see 
what  wras  the  matter,  and  finding  me  on  the  ground  fast  in  the 
embraces  of  the  sleigh,  breathed  on  the  cruel  and  all  too 
tenacious  steel  at  the  point  of  its  adhesion,  and  in  a  little  while 
succeeded  in  releasing  me.  In  my  struggles  however  I  had 
torn  the  leaders  of  my  tongue,  my  mouth  was  full  of  blood,  and 
to  this  circumstance  my  mother  always  attributed  a  slight  lisp 
which  remains  with  me  to  this  day.     As  I  grew  older  I  began 


28  WINTER. 

to  lose  interest  in  and  to  be  ashamed  of  this  old  home-made 
sleigh.  It  was  so  ugly  and  clumsy  that  the  boys  were  con- 
stantly making  fun  of  it ;  its  runners  too  being  made  of  a  full 
broadside  of  wood  instead  of  a  light  rim  supported  by  upright 
pillars,  it  roared  as  it  ran  down  the  hill  like  the  noise  in  the 
night-wind  of  some  distant  train !  But  worse  than  all  it  had  no 
speed,  and  in  spite  of  all  the  care  I  had  lavished  on  it,  was 
distanced  and  left  behind  by  the  slowest  laggard  on  the  hill. 
I  accordingly  broke  it  up  at  last  in  disgust,  and  used  it  for 
firewood  ;  and  after  a  time  succeeded  in  acquiring  (by  exchange 
as  usual)  another  and  properly  made  one,  which  from  the  colour 
of  the  stripes  painted  on  the  seat  became  known  to  the  boys  as 
the  *  Red  White  and  Blue.'  It  belonged  to  a  lame  boy  who 
could  not  use  it  to  advantage,  but  it  had  as  I  saw  from  the 
first,  all  the  points  of  a  first-class  racer ;  and  it  was  not  long 
before,  with  good  jockeying,  it  came  to  be  regarded  in  popular 
phrase  as  ■  the  bully  of  the  hill.' 

Sleigh-racing  was  with  us  boys,  as  the  reader  will  already  have 
surmised,  a  source  of  the  keenest  and  most  intense  excitement 
and  enjoyment.  In  the  afternoon  after  school-hours  and  in  the 
moonlight  evenings,  great  droves  of  boys  would  congregate  with 
their  sleighs  from  all  parts  of  the  town  at  the  hill  which  was 
known  to  be  in  the  best  condition,  and  once  there,  it  was 
inevitable  that  the  sleigh-riding  would  sooner  or  later  end  in 
racing.  For  this  end  the  sleighs  were  taken  back  a  little  distance 
from  the  brow  of  the  hill,  and  handicapped  according  to  their 
reputed  merits  at  various  distances  behind  each  other — the 
slowest  being  stationed  in  front,  the  fastest  at  the  farthest 
point  in  the  rear.  At  a  given  signal  they  all  started,  the  boys 
stooping  down  over  their  sleighs  and  pushing  them  with  a  run 
to  the  edge  of  the  hill,  at  which  point  they  all  jumped  on  and 
went  sailing  along  down  the  hill  one  after  another  at  great  speed, 
the  faster  sleighs  gradually  coming  up  to  and  overtaking  the 
slower,  until  they  reached  the  plain,  when  they  gradually  got 
slower  and  slower  until  at  last  they  came  to  a  full  stop  at  various 


WINTER.  29 

points  (in  some  instances  a  quarter  of  a  mile)  from  their  starting 
point — the  fastest  of  course  going  the  farthest  before  it  came 
to  rest.  The  boys  would  then  all  walk  leisurely  up  the  hill 
again,  dragging  their  sleighs  after  them  by  ropes  attached  at 
each  end  to  the  runners,  and  when  they  reached  the  top,  after 
some  re-arrangement  perhaps  of  the  handicapping,  they  would 
start  again  on  another  race,  and  so  on  over  and  over  again  for 
hours  together.  Little  episodes,  too,  were  constantly  occurring 
to  give  variety  and  add  excitement  to  the  racing.  Sometimes 
one  sleigh  would  run  into  another  and  the  two  getting  hopelessly 
entangled  all  would  upset  together ;  at  other  times  a  sleigh 
would  get  off  the  beaten  track  and  running  against  a  lump  of 
ice  or  stone  would  upset,  and  rider  and  sleigh  would  go  rolling 
one  over  another  in  the  snow  ;  or  again,  if  the  rider  happened  to 
be  a  novice  and  did  not  know  how  to  steer,  the  sleigh  would 
run  away  with  him  over  an  embankment,  up  against  a  stump, 
or  into  a  fence  or  stone  wall ;  but  in  most  cases  without,  to  my 
recollection,  any  very  serious  damage  to  either  rider  or  sleigh. 

In  sleigh-racing  as  in  horse-racing,  success  was  almost  as 
much  due  to  good  jockeying  as  to  the  inherent  qualities  of  the 
sleigh,  the  object  being  to  know  in  each  instance  at  what  point 
of  the  sleigh  to  throw  the  main  weight  of  the  body,  and  how 
to  distribute  this  weight  over  the  whole  surface  so  as  to  subject 
the  sleigh  to  the  least  possible  amount  of  friction  from  the  snow. 
If  you  threw  your  weight  too  far  forwards  the  front  of  the 
runner  ran  into  the  snow  like  a  plough,  if  too  far  backwards, 
the  back  ran  into  it  like  a  brake.  There  were  two  methods  of 
riding,  in  the  one  the  rider  lay  flat  on  his  stomach  and,  as 
with  a  pair  of  sculls,  steered  by  touching  the  points  of  the  toes 
to  the  ground  on  each  side  as  occasion  required  ;  in  the  other  he 
sat  upright  on  one  hip,  and  steered  by  working  the  free  foot 
from  side  to  side  like  a  rudder.  Both  methods  were  employed 
in  racing  according  to  the  choice  of  the  rider,  but  the  first 
method  was  best  for  speed,  as  it  offered  less  surface  to  the  wind, 
and  you  could  more  equitably  distribute  your  weight  over  the 


30  WINTER. 

entire  surface  of  the  sleigh ;  the  second  method,  riding  side-saddle 
as  it  was  called,  was  the  only  one  that  could  be  employed  when 
more  than  one  person  was  seated  on  the  sleigh,  a  circumstance 
which  was  not  unfrequent,  the  largest  sleighs  carrying  sometimes 
as  many  as  five  or  six.  In  these  cases  you  sat  your  companion  on 
the  sleigh  in  front  of  you  and  let  him  hold  the  rope,  as  if  it  were 
a  rein,  in  his  hands,  at  the  same  time  keeping  his  head  well  on 
one  side  that  you  might  be  able  to  see  the  direction  in  which 
you  were  steering.  Little  girls  came  out  frequently  to  the  hill 
either  alone  or  with  their  brothers,  and  I  well  remember  the  little 
internal  flutter  with  which  we  would  offer  them  a  ride,  the 
gentleness  with  which  we  would  put  them  on  the  sleigh,  the 
swelling  pride  and  importance  with  which  we  would  steer  them 
down  the  hill,  and  the  gallantry  with  which  instead  of  letting 
them  walk  we  would  ourselves  draw  them  up  again. 


CHAPTEE     IV 


A    CANADIAN    SABBATH. 

TP  to  this  point  in  my  history,  my  week-day  life  with  its 
^  free  and  joyous  absorption  in  the  games  and  sports  of 
boyhood,  had  been,  in  spite  of  the  restriction  put  on  me  at 
home  by  our  narrow  means,  a  pure  and  undiluted  happiness — 
throwing  off  gaily  all  obstructions  from  its  path,  and  con- 
tracting no  stain  from  its  various  and  manifold  activities.  But 
the  compensation  and  Nemesis  came  with  the  Sundays,  into 
which  I  was  duly  plunged  as  the  weeks  came  round  as  into  a 
bath,  but  which,  far  from  purifying  me,  left  a  trail  over  all  my 
boyhood,  and  produced  lasting  effects  in  after  years.  The 
village  in  which  1  was  brought  up  was  dotted  on  all  sides  for 
miles  around  with  the  homesteads  of  the  farmers  who  in  the 
<3arly  days  of  the  settlement  had  come  from  Scotland  with 
their  wives  and  families,  and  had  taken  up  the  land  in  freehold, 
bringing  with  them  the  stern  Calvinism  of  their  native  land 
with  all  its  harsh  and  gloomy  traditions.  The  village  itself, 
too,  had  been  settled  and  filled  in  largely  by  people  of  the  same 
extraction,  but  included  as  well  a  number  of  English 
Methodists  from  Devon  and  Cornwall,  speaking  with  strong 
provincial  accents,  and  a  sprinkling  of  Yankees  ever  on  the 
wing,  but  bringing  with  them  the  Puritan  traditions  of  New 
England.  The  consequence  was  that  the  genius  of  Puritanism 
everywhere  reigned  supreme,  colouring  more  or  less  perceptibly 
the    everyday   life  and   habits  of  the  people,  but  setting  its 


32  A   CANADIAN   SABBATH. 

indelible  seal  and  impress  on  what  my  mother  called  '  the 
Sabbath  Day.'  On  that  day  all  labour  even  to  the  most 
elementary  operations  of  cooking  was  suspended  or  reduced  to 
a  minimum ;  no  sound  of  traffic  was  anywhere  to  be  heard  ;  the 
streets  were  hushed  and  deserted ;  the  inhabitants  remained 
within  doors  between  the  hours  of  service  as  if  divine  judg- 
ment were  abroad  ;  and  when  they  appeared  at  church-time, 
walked  softly  along  with  their  Bibles  under  their  arms ;  while 
the  reverberation  of  the  melancholy  bells  calling  to  one  another 
from  hill  to  valley,  seemed  to  announce  an  universal  expiation. 
On  my  mother's  simple  mind  all  this  fell  as  naturally  as  the 
return  of  morning  and  evening ;  to  her,  Sundays  were  in 
their  essence  holy  days,  and  the  ministers  who  held  the  key  to 
Scripture  and  were  believed  to  gather  up  in  themselves  the 
decrees  and  ordinances  of  God,  were,  like  Brahmins,  regarded 
by  her  as  sacred.  '  They  are  all  good  men '  she  used  mourn- 
fully to  say  on  the  occasion  of  some  revolt  of  mine ;  and  as  the 
accredited  exponents  of  all  that  pertained  to  religion  and 
morals,  they  were  believed  by  her  to  be  in  essential  nature 
superior  to  criticism  ;  the  only  freedom  of  comment  she  per- 
mitted either  herself  or  me  being  such  purely  personal 
preferences  as  might  be  felt  for  one  of  their  number  over 
another.  Accordingly  when  Sunday  came  round  with  its 
silence  and  gloom,  it  already  found  her  ready  to  follow  all  its 
ordinances  and  submit  to  all  its  renunciations  in  a  spirit  of 
pure  and  simple  piety.  With  myself  on  the  other  hand  the 
eclipse  of  a  day  would  under  any  circumstances  at  that  time 
have  been  a  real  hardship,  but  the  peculiar  gloom  and  solemnity 
of  the  special  religious  services  through  which  I  had  to  pass, 
became  more  and  more  as  time  went  on,  a  personal  infliction 
pure  and  unredeemed.  The  reader,  therefore,  will  readily 
understand  that  on  waking  on  the  sunny  Sunday  mornings 
with  the  little  birds  twittering  on  the  lilac  trees  at  the  back  of 
the  house,  and  the  smell  of  the  apple-blossoms  coming  through 
the  partially  opened  windows,  at  the  remembrance  that  it  was 


A    CANADIAN   SABBATH.  33 

Sunday  the  gloom  as  of  some  great  ordeal  oppressed  me,  and 
in  that   half-conscious  state  between  sleep  and  wake  when  all 
sensations,  but  especially  those  of  pain,  are  magnified,  and  fall, 
as  it  were,  raw  on  the  soul,  without  those  intervening  cushions 
which  the  whirling  activities  of  life  place  between  us  and  our 
sorest  troubles,   a  confused  pain  as  of    some  troubled    dream 
would   settle   on  my  mind.     When   I  rose   and   dressed,   the 
acuteness   of   this   feeling  would   pass  off  somewhat,   leaving 
behind  it  only  a  general  deadness  and  depression  as  I  realized 
in  imagination  the  dreary  stretch  of   day  before  me.     At  the 
breakfast-table  my  mother  sat  silent  and  reserved,  and  on  her 
face  the  full  solemnity  of  the  day  on  which  we  had  entered 
seemed  to  have  settled  with  all  its  force.     The  expression  she 
wore  was  not   so  much  that  of  severity  or  of  sanctity  as  of 
injury ;  an  expression  which  from  long  experience  I  knew  well 
how  to  interpret,  and  which  was  intended  to  plainly  tell  me 
that  on  this  day  of  reckoning  she  was  feeling  the  weight  not 
so  much  of  her  own  (for  her  life  was  pure  and  guileless)  as  of 
my  transgressions  and  sins  !     Accordingly  whenever  I  ventured 
to  ask  a  question  or  make  an  observation  however  inoffensive 
or  neutral,  she  would  answer  me  in  monosyllables  and  in  a  tone 
of  calm  but  injured  solemnity.     Everywhere  the  house  had  the 
air  as  if  some  great  expiation  were  going  on,  as  if  sin  and  guilt 
clung  to  the  door-posts  ;  and  to  this  impression,  the  words  of 
my  sister  as  she  sat  repeating  to  herself  aloud  the  lesson  from 
the  shorter  catechism  in  a  monotonous  sing-song,  lent  additional 
emphasis.     For  this  catechism,  it  may  be  necessary  to  inform 
the  reader,  contained  not  only  the  Ten  Commandments  and 
other  plain  precepts  of  morality,  but  abounded  in  definitions 
and  proofs  from  Scripture  of  such  high  and  abstruse  themes  as 
the  '  effectual  calling,'  'justification  by  faith,'  '  original  sin  '  and 
the  like  ;  and  behind  all  these  and  the  iron  predestination  that 
hemmed  them  in,  the  presence  of  a  frowning  and  angry  Deity, 
whom  for  a  long  time  I  remember  figuring  as  some  righteous 
and  incensed  Kirk  Elder,  everywhere  unpleasantly  loomed ! 

D 


34  A   CANADIAN  SABBATH. 

To  escape  from  an  atmosphere  so  joyless  and  depressing,  I 
was  glad  to  steal  out  into  the  shed  at  the  back  of  the  house, 
and  there,  beyond  the  eye  of  my  mother,  indulge  my  fantasy 
in  designs  for  kites,  cricket-balls,  or  other  materials  of  play, 
wearying  for  the  morrow  to  come  to  carry  them  into  execution ; 
or  I  would  wander  out  into  the  garden,  and  climbing  to  the  top 
of  the  fence  would  look  wistfully  up  and  down  the  street  to  see 
if  anything  were  stirring,  or  any  of  my  playfellows  were  abroad. 
But  the  streets  were  usually  as  silent  as  the  house,  and  my 
schoolfellows,  more  trained  to  habits  of  obedience  or  subdued 
to  the  genius  of  the  day  than  myself,  if  seen  at  all  would  be 
seen  sitting  reading  at  their  windows,  indifferent  to  the  salutes 
which  I  waved  them  from  the  distance. 

But  long  before  the  Church  bells  began  ringing,  my  mother 
already  dressed  and  prepared  to  start  would  call  me  in  from 
the  garden,  and  in  my  very  early  days  would  take  me  by  the 
hand  or  allow  me  to  hold  on  by  her  skirts,  ever  and  again  as  I 
dragged  behind  to  look  at  the  birds  or  the  fruit  trees  on  the 
way,  pulling  me  to  her  side  as  from  some  evil  and  forbidden 
thing.  As  I  grew  older,  however,  I  was  allowed  to  find  my 
own  way  to  church,  and  this  in  itself  proved  a  vast  comfort, 
and  helped  greatly  to  relieve  the  tedium  and  length  of  the 
morning.  For  thus  loosened  from  my  moorings  and  my 
mother  out  of  the  way,  I  was  free  to  roam  about  as  I  pleased, 
and  when  at  last  after  locking  the  front  door  and  stealthily 
secreting  the  key  behind  the  window  sill,  she  sallied  forth,  I 
would  watch  her  unobserved  from  some  street  corner  in  the 
distance  until  she  passed  out  of  sight.  Onwards  she  would 
saunter  softly  along  the  grass  by  the  side  of  the  street,  her 
parasol  up,  and  in  her  best  Sunday  dress  and  shawl — a  Paisley 
one,  I  remember,  which  she  wore  inside  out  the  better  to 
preserve  it ! — onwards  and  along  beneath  the  overhanging  trees 
with  their  sweet-smelling  blossoms  until  she  turned  the  corner 
of  the  market-place  (I  following  at  a  distance)  and  was  lost  to 
view.     When  she  was  once  well  out  of  the  way,  I  was  free  to 


A    CANADIAN   SABBATH.  35 

roam  as  I  have  said  where  I  chose,  until  the  church  bells  began 
to  ring,  amusing  myself  for  the  most  part  by  looking  for  birds- 
nests  in  the  hollows  of  stumps  or  among  the  shrubs  and 
brushwood  of  the  surrounding  hills,  or  by  pelting  the  frogs 
in  the  mill-pond  at  .the  back  of  the  church. 

This  church,  or  *  meeting-house  '  as  my  mother  called  it,  was 
a  large  and  roomy  wooden  edifice  built  after  the  manner  of  an 
English  Dissenting  Chapel,  with  the  pulpit  at  one  end,  which 
was  approached  by  a  double  flight  of  stairs,  and  with  galleries 
running  around  its  remaining  sides.  The  pew  which  my 
mother  occupied  was  in  the  front  row  of  the  gallery  near  the 
pulpit,  and  from  this  point  of  vantage  the  whole  congregation, 
with  the  exception  of  that  part  lying  immediately  beneath  us, 
lay  stretched  out  around  and  below  us  on  all  sides.  To  this 
pew  in  the  early  summer  morning  and  long  before  the  church 
bells  began  to  ring  or  the  dust  from  the  morning's  sweeping 
had  had  time  to  settle,  would  my  mother  come,  and  taking  her 
seat  in  the  silent  and  empty  tabernacle  would  sit  there  calm 
and  motionless  with  an  expression  on  her  face  of  serene  and 
tranquil  enjoyment,  her  thoughts  unknown  to  me,  but  her 
whole  being  seeming  to  derive  some  real  though  mysterious 
satisfaction  from  the  presence  of  the  sanctuary. 

When  the  church  bells  began  to  ring,  I  would  enter  and  take 
my  seat  by  my  mother's  side,  and  a  few  minutes  before  they 
ceased,  the  congregation,  many  of  whom  had  been  standing 
outside  in  groups  talking  of  the  weather  and  the  crops,  would 
begin  to  drop  in  one  by  one  and  moving  softly  along  the 
matted  aisles  take  their  seats  in  silence.  They  consisted 
almost  entirely  of  farmers  from  the  country  round,  their  wives, 
and  grown  up  sons  and  daughters — old  men  bent  and  tottering, 
with  heads  grey,  bald,  and  bedewed  with  perspiration  which 
ever  and  again  they  wiped  with  their  faded  old-fashioned  red 
pocket-handkerchiefs ;  young  men  and  men  of  middle  age  in 
homespun,  sunburnt  up  to  the  ears,  and  with  their  coarse  hair 
•cropped  close  and  short  and  standing  stiffly  on  end  about  the 


36  A   CANADIAN   SABBATH. 

crown  like  the  surface  of  an  upturned  brush  :  old 
shakey  and  lean,  their  mouths  fallen  in  and  faces  wrinkled  like 
parchment ;  and  young  women  in  wide  circumambient  crinoline, 
wearing  huge  brooches  and  ear-rings,  and  with  their  well-oiled 
hair  brushed  in  wavy  lines  off  the  forehead  in  a  style  which 
to-day  is  no  longer  anywhere  to  be  seen.  In  they  came  one 
after  another  in  solemn  silence,  defiling  as  they  went  along 
from  the  different  aisles  into  their  respective  pews  until  the 
whole  church  was  filled.  Presently  the  door  of  the  side  aisle 
would  open  and  through  it  would  enter  the  Care-taker,  carrying 
the  big  Bible  as  solemnly  as  if  it  had  been  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant,  and  after  depositing  it  on  the  pulpit  desk  with  all 
the  regulated  pomp  and  decorum  of  a  court-usher,  he  would 
withdraw  again,  to  be  followed  almost  immediately  by  the 
Minister  himself  who  ascended  the  stairs  with  figure  erect 
enough,  indeed,  but  head  bent  at  that  nice  angle  between 
humility  and  sanctity  which  met  with  most  acceptance  from 
the  congregation.  After  a  formal  glance  around  the  building 
to  see  that  all  was  well,  he  would  at  once  proceed  to  open  the 
service  by  announcing  and  reading  out  the  Psalm ;  whereupon 
the  '  Precentor,'  as  he  was  called,  who  sat  in  a  little  box  at  the 
base  of  the  pulpit,  and  whom  we  boys  regarded  as  second  only 
in  importance  to  the  minister  himself,  would  strike  his  tuning- 
fork  against  the  edge  of  the  desk,  and  quickly  running  up  the 
gamut  in  an  under-hum  until  he  reached  the  note  required, 
would  lead  off  the  singing.  An  interval  followed  in  which  the 
precentor's  voice  alone  was  heard,  but  the  congregation 
presently  joined  in,  and  in  a  few  moments  the  sound  rose  in 
great  volume  from  hundreds  of  harsh  and  untuned  throats, 
and  rolled  full  against  the  concave  roof.  Many  of  the 
congregation,  you  noticed,  lingered  on  the  notes  with  a 
kind  of  desperate  affection  as  if  they  could  not  let  them 
go,  but  falling  far  into  the  rear  and  threatening  to  be  left 
behind,  they  had  to  be  brought  up  to  time  again  by  an 
emphatic  jerk  of  the  psalm-book  which  the  precentor  held  in 


A   CANADIAN    SABBATH.  37 

his  hands  and  which  he  used  as  a  conducting  rod.  Now  I 
know  not  how  others  were  affected  by  all  this,  although  by 
their  appearance  they  seemed  to  enjoy  it,  but  as  for  myself  I 
can  truly  say  the  higher  and  louder  the  volume  swelled  the 
lower  did  my  spirits  fall.  No  funeral  march  in  the  long 
procession  of  the  dead,  no  eclipse  of  the  sun  at  noonday,  no 
moaning  of  the  winter's  wind,  or  wail  of  howling  dogs  in  the 
night  watches  ever  in  after  years  let  down  my  soul  to  a  pitch 
so  low  as  did  these  dreary  melancholy  psalms  rising  and  falling 
in  their  harsh  and  sullen  monotony  like  the  moan  of  some 
distant  midnight  sea  against  a  deserted  shore ;  and  to  this 
hour  whenever  I  hear  them,  they  produce  the  same  dreary  and 
depressing  effect  on  my  mind.  Nothing  indeed  could  better 
express  than  these  psalm  tunes,  the  genius  and  spirit  of  the 
institutions  and  creeds  out  of  which  they  arose.  The  first  two 
lines  (written  generally  with  an  abundance  of  flats  or  in  a 
minor  key),  bare  and  harsh  as  the  soul  of  Calvinism  itself,  and 
which  were  always  associated  in  my  mind  with  the  cries  of 
damned  spirits  or  the  groans  of  hunted  covenanters  lifting 
their  voices  to  God  for  mercy,  sufficiently  expressed  the 
prevailing  feeling  of  abasement  and  contrition ;  when,  having 
touched  the  lowest  depths  of  all,  in  the  third  line,  again,  the 
notes  would  rise  in  reaction  in  swelling  strains  of  exultation 
and  triumph,  until  in  the  last  line  they  died  away  into  the  old 
wail  of  stricken  humiliation.  The  names  of  one  or  two  of  the 
more  obnoxious  of  these  old  psalm  tunes  still  abide  in  my 
memory,  one  especially,  called  '  Coleshill,'  which  was  dolefully 
wailed  and  chanted,  like  the  tom-tom  in  some  Indian  exorcism, 
when  sacrament  was  being  administered,  being  my  peculiar 
bane  ;  and  to  this  day  I  cannot  hear  them  without  the  old 
feeling  of  dreariness  and  pain. 

After  a  prayer  which  for  sheer  length  distanced  all 
subsequent  parallels  in  my  experience,  the  Minister,  thawed  in 
utterance  and  full  of  zeal,  would  at  once  set  out  on  the  main 
feat  and  business  of  the  day,  which  was  nothing  less  than  the 


38  A    CANADIAN   SABBATH. 

delivery  of  two  sermons  in  succession  with  little  or  no  interval 
between  them  !  He  was  a  North  of  Ireland  man,  of  medium 
stature,  well-built,  thick-set,  and  in  the  prime  of  life,  with  a 
short-cut,  brown,  stubby  beard,  coarse,  thick  and  wiry,  and 
wearing  his  dark  hair  double-parted  on  the  sides  so  that  the 
combined  intervening  locks,  gathered  and  brought  to  a  ridge  at 
the  top,  curled  and  broke  to  the  one  side  like  the  crest  of  a 
falling  wave.  A  good  man  I  verily  believe,  and  true  as  steel  to 
his  convictions,  and  in  private  life  amiable,  gentle,  and 
honourable  to  a  degree — I  still  remember  with  gratitude  and 
affection  his  kindly  words  wdien  he  met  and  spoke  to  me  in 
the  street — but  in  public  and  at  the  only  angle  at  which  I  was 
accustomed  to  see  him,  he  was  stiff,  unbending,  and  un- 
conciliatory.  His  voice  was  rough,  harsh,  and  without  compass 
or  melody,  and  his  delivery,  unlike  that  of  his  southern  country- 
men, was  constrained  and  jerky,  and  without  fluency,  facility  or 
grace.  The  pulpit  style  which  he  most  affected  was  that  of 
the  cold,  argumentative,  and  severely  logical  theologian  rather 
than  the  persuasive  winner  of  souls,  but  when  warmed  into 
passion  by  the  presence  in  his  path  of  some  invisible  foe — 
Catholic  or  Arminian — instead  of  sawing  the  air  or  beating 
the  pulpit  with  his  fist,  as  w^as  the  manner  of  some  of  his 
professional  brethren,  he  would  clap  his  arms  tightly  to  his  side, 
and  fall  on  his  antagonists  in  a  series  of  short  energetic  jerks  of 
the  shoulder,  each  jerk  an  argument,  much  in  the  manner  of  the 
principal  performer  in  a  Punch  and  Judy  show.  As  for  the 
text  and  ostensible  motif  of  his  sermon  it  mattered  little ;  he 
would  start  anywhere,  ranging  freely  and  without  apparent 
preference  through  all  parts  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament, 
but  after  a  formal  and  merely  complimentary  glance  at  the 
context  and  environment  of  his  subject,  he  would  be  swiftly 
drawn  into  the  vortex  of  Calvinistic  Theology  and  carried  along 
its  rocky  bed  to  its  predestined  end.  No  word  of  general 
human  interest,  nor  hint  of  any  personal  experience  of  his  own 
or  another's,  no  lively  anecdote  such  as  those  with  which  the 


A   CANADIAN    SABBATH.  39 

street-preacher  interests  or  animates  his  hearers,  warmed  these, 
to  me,  dreary  discourses,  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  during  all 
those  years ;  indeed  all  such  trivial  personal  matter  he  would 
have  regarded  as  beneath  the  dignity  and  solemnity  of  his  high 
theme  ;  but  the  soul  and  centre  of  every  discourse,  the  hinge  on 
which  all  turned  was  what  he  called  the  '  Scheme  of  Salvation  ; '  a 
high  and  logical  structure  erected  with  vast  labour  and  ex- 
penditure of  thought,  and  supported  on  two  massive  pillars,  the 
Covenant  of  Works  and  the  Covenant  of  Grace,  beneath  whose 
cold  and  lofty  arches,  indeed,  the  multiform  concrete  sins  and 
temptations  of  poor  erring  men  and  women  might  have  walked 
in  and  out  unheeded.  Occasionally,  but  at  rare  intervals  only, 
some  great  name  or  incident  from  profane  history,  giving 
promise  of  a  story,  would  lift  its  head  in  the  midst  of  his 
discourse — the  name  of  Byron  I  remember  was  once  mentioned 
— and  then  all  ears  were  pricked  to  hear  what  the  upshot  and 
denotement  would  be,  but  we  were  speedily  disabused,  for  instead 
of  carrying  the  incident  to  its  natural  conclusion,  he  would 
summarily  cut  it  short  at  the  point  where  it  began  to  be 
interesting,  leaving  us  with  only  that  smallest  section  of  it  which 
fitted  into  his  theological  design ;  and  the  seductive  personality 
after  turning  up  its  shining  side  for  a  moment,  would  be  swiftly 
drawn  down  into  the  theological  maelstrom  again,  never  to 
emerge. 

The  congregation,  meanwhile,  who  had  sat  erect  and  attentive, 
and  to  many  of  whom  a  theological  dissertation  was  as  fascinating 
as  a  tale  of  fiction,  even  they  would  at  last  begin  to  show  signs 
of  nagging,  and  here  and  there  a  head  accustomed  to  the  open 
air  of  the  fields  and  oppressed  by  the  sultry  heat,  would  be  seen 
to  fall  back  softly  in  slumber  against  the  back  of  the  pew,  until 
as  it  receded  back  farther  and  farther  and  the  jaw  in  consequence 
dropped  lower  and  lower,  a  sharp  harsh  snore,  cut  short  in  the 
middle,  would  arrest  the  attention  of  the  drowsy  worshipper  and 
startle  him  into  propriety  again.  My  mother  who  held  out 
heroically  against   the  combined   effects  of   the  heat  and  the 


40  A   CANADIAN   SABBATH. 

discourse,  nerved  to  it  alike  by  duty  and  piety,  maintained  a 
fixed  and  rigid  attention  throughout,  and,  except  when  disturbed 
by  some  fresh  vagary  of  mine,  accompanied  the  words  of  the 
preacher  by  a  mute  movement  of  her  lips  as  if  there  were  magic 
in  the  sound.  But  in  spite  of  the  efforts  I  made  to  sit  still,  the 
feeling  of  restlessness  and  ennui  became  at  last  so  intolerable 
that  I  would  begin  to  yawn  and  fidget,  scratching  the  Bible  or 
the  seat  with  pins,  scraping  with  my  feet,  or  worse  than  all 
committing  that  prime  offence  against  decorum,  the  rolling  of 
my  head  from  side  to  side  on  the  desk  in  front  of  me ;  when  my 
mother,  who  all  the  while  sat  calm  and  motionless  but  secretly  keep- 
ing her  eye  on  me,  becoming  inwardly  more  and  more  exasperated 
by  the  attention  I  was  drawing  on  myself,  would,  without  word 
of  warning  or  other  trace  of  visible  emotion,  reach  out  her  hand 
beneath  the  desk  and  fall  on  my  leg  or  ribs  with  such  precipi- 
tation as  to  bring  me  swiftly  to  the  perpendicular  again ;  her 
face  the  while  remaining  unruffled  as  before  !  So  constant, 
indeed,  did  these  reminders  become,  and  with  such  unfailing 
punctuality  were  they  administered,  that  I  had  long  ceased  to 
resent  or  even  to  question  them,  and  they  finally  took  their  place 
in  my  experience  as  one  more  only  of  the  many  trials  and 
afflictions  which  on  that  day  I  had  to  endure.  And  all  the 
while  the  monotonous  roll  of  dialectic  and  exposition  proceeded, 
4  predestination,'  '  original  sin,'  '  the  potter  and  the  wheel,'  the 
*  Church  militant  and  triumphant,'  and  other  such  phrases 
ever  and  again  falling  on  the  ear  as  they  wheeled  in  and  out 
round  the  central  theme  of  which  they  were  the  abutments  and 
outlying  logical  appendages ;  until  the  arena  at  last  being  cleared 
of  all  heresies  and  unsoundnesses,  and  the  minister  having  laid 
all  the  antagonists  that  rose  in  his  path,  the  entire  Scheme  of 
Salvation,  perfect  and  complete  in  all  its  parts,  stood  clear  and 
unassailable  before  us.  A  few  words  of  '  application,'  as  the 
minister  phrased  it,  invariably  followed,  in  which  the  whole 
artillery  of  penalty  which  had  never  been  entirely  absent,  but 
whose  low  rumble  you  heard  in  the  distance,  and  whose  fire  you 


A   CANADIAN   SABBATH.  41 

saw  breaking  dull  and  fuliginous  through  the  various  openings 
of  the  discourse,  was  concentrated  and  drawn  up  at  the  back  of 
the  unbeliever,  in  the  hope  that  should  the  logic  of  the  preacher 
fail,  the  sinner  might  by  this  show  of  force  be  persuaded  to 
enter  the  fold.  With  this  the  sermon  closed,  but  only  to  be 
succeeded,  as  I  have  said,  by  a  second,  which,  starting  it  is  true 
from  a  different  text,  after  a  pass  or  two  was  drawn  into  the 
same  old  vortex,  and  revolved  around  the  same  old  theme ;  until 
at  the  end  of  a  prolonged  sitting  of  two  hours  and  a  half,  the 
congregation,  worn  out  by  weariness  and  hunger,  were  at  last 
dismissed  with  the  benediction  to  their  homes. 

Such  is  a  faithful  account  of  the  service  in  which  I  was 
immersed  Sunday  after  Sunday  for  many  years,  but  it  was  only 
on  reaching  home  that  the  real  effect  of  it  all  on  my  mother 
began  fully  to  manifest  itself.  On  her  simple  nature  the  sermon, 
with  all  the  theological  impedimenta  it  carried  along  with  it, 
instead  of  relieving  seems  only  to  have  added  to  her  mental 
perplexity  ;  and  accentuating  as  it  did  the  contrast  between  that 
doctrine  of  works  in  which  she  at  bottom  secretly  believed  and 
trusted,  and  the  fixed  and  iron  predestination  on  which  the 
preacher  insisted,  it  seemed  to  act  only  as  a  source  of  pure 
irritation ;  chastising  rather  than  cheering  and  consoling  her, 
and  instead  of  allaying  the  injured  feeling  of  the  morning, 
converting  it  into  a  sullen  moroseness.  The  fixed  expression  of 
her  face,  and  the  irritable  look  about  the  eye,  as  well  as  the 
peculiar  silence  that  came  over  her  as  we  walked  slowly  home, 
were  a  sufficient  indication  to  me  of  her  state  of  feeling,  and 
warned  me  of  what,  if  I  were  not  careful,  I  had  to  expect.  Nor 
was  I  mistaken,  for  the  slightest  levity,  noise,  or  approach  to  a 
worldly  remark  on  the  part  either  of  myself  or  my  sister,  was 
sufficient  to  ignite  her,  and  brought  down  on  us  such  a  whirlwind 
of  pent-up  wrath,  such  a  raking  up  of  all  our  past  misdeeds, 
ungodlinesses  and  sins,  that  we  were  glad  to  keep  out  of  the  way 
for  a  time. 

In  the  afternoon  the  same   gloom  and  monotony  fell  over 


'   OF  THE 


UNIVERSITY 


42  A    CANADIAN    SABBATH. 

everything  within  and  without  the  house  as  in  the  morning.  My 
mother  sat  usually  in  the  recess  of  the  window,  reading  through 
her  spectacles  a  chapter  of  the  Bible  or  some  religious  tract,  my 
sister  engaged  in  like  manner  sat  listlessly  apart,  separated  from 
me  both  in  feeling  and  in  sympathy ;  and  in  the  corner  of  the 
room  the  old-fashioned  clock,  inaudible  in  the  din  of  tHe  week- 
day, ticked  out  loud  and  oppressive  in  the  silence.  Forbidden 
to  go  out  of  doors  I  would  steal  quietly  out  into  the  back  garden 
among  the  trees,  and  there,  too,  all  was  silent  in  the  drowsy 
heat  except  the  chirping  of  the  crickets  in  the  grass.  Peering 
through  between  the  fence  rails  into  the  street,  all  was  silent 
and  deserted,  and  no  playfellow  was  anywhere  to  be  seen, 
except,  perhaps,  at  some  distant  window  reading  or  listlessly 
making  figures  with  his  fingers  on  the  panes.  The  roll  of 
existence  seemed  to  have  ceased ;  and  in  spite  of  the  fierce  glare 
of  the  sun  and  the  blue  sky  of  the  afternoon,  a  feeling  would 
often  come  over  me,  I  can  still  remember,  as  if  I  were  lost  in 
the  woods ;  while  the  melancholy  sound  of  the  Sunday-school 
bell  broke  in  on  the  silence  as  if  tolling  the  knell  of  some 
departing  soul.  Returning  again  to  the  garden,  and  lying  down 
on  the  grass  in  the  shade  of  the  apple  trees  in  a  dull  and  listless 
reverie,  there  would  come  to  me  from  some  distant  cottage  the 
melancholy  moan  of  one  or  other  of  the  same  old  psalm  tunes  of 
the  morning;  and  as  the  sound  came  wafted  to  me  intermittently 
on  the  wind  across  the  intervening  distance,  it  struck  in  on  the 
heart  like  the  wailing  of  confined  and  restless  spirits. 

After  tea  the  atmosphere  of  the  house  usually  cleared 
somewhat  and  seemed  less  closely  invested  with  gloom ;  it 
seemed  in  the  interval  to  have  mellowed  imperceptibly  and  to 
be  as  the  difference  between  an  evening  and  a  morning  twilight; 
the  back  of  the  day  seemed  to  have  been  broken,  and  its  stern 
genius  to  be  dissolving ;  and  my  mother's  thoughts,  if  one  could 
judge  by  her  air  and  expression,  to  be  turning  to  the  morning 
and  the  ordinary  work  of  the  world  again. 


CHAPTEE     V 


OUR  NEIGHBOURS. 

TN  these  early  years  there  came  to  the  village,  to  fill  some 
small  office  in  the  Customs,  an  old  English  officer  who 
took  up  his  residence  in  the  large  stone  house  adjoining  our 
own,  and  there  in  a  genteel  kind  of  way  with  his  wife  and 
daughters,  strove  to  maintain  some  outward  appearance  of  his 
former  state.  This  '  old  Captain/  as  we  called  him,  was  an 
aristocratic  looking  man  with  silvered  locks,  but  now  fast 
getting  stooped  and  tottery,  and  although  simple  and  genial  in 
his  manners,  had  a  temper  of  great  irascibility  and  was,  after 
the  manner  of  the  '  old  school '  to  which  he  belonged,  much 
given  to  profane  swearing.  At  almost  any  time  of  the  day  you 
might  hear  his  oaths  sputtering  off  like  fireworks  here  and 
there  in  and  about  the  garden  and  the  street ;  but  it  was  only 
at  night  when  his  own  dogs  or  his  neighbours  cats  disturbed  his 
rest,  that  he  reached  his  full  range  and  compass.  On  these 
occasions  he  would  appear  in  loose  deshabille  on  the  balcony, 
and  would  storm  up  and  down  it  regardless  of  all  human 
presence,  his  full  round  oaths  booming  and  resounding  like 
minute  guns  in  the  peaceful  silence  of  the  evening,  and  borne 
on  the  night  winds  far  and  wide.  He  was  much  addicted  to 
wine  and  wassail,  too,  as  his  blood-red  face  sufficiently  attested, 
and  although  of  strict  honour  according  to  the  code  accepted 
in  military  circles,  report  went   that  he  was  deeply  in   debt ; 


44  OUR   NEIGHBOURS. 

and  while  in  the  eye  of  his  neighbours  maintaining  a  high 
standard  of  luxury,  living  sumptuously  and  carousing  freely, 
was  said  to  be  indifferent  alike  to  the  importunities,  the 
clamours,  and  the  threats  of  his  creditors.  His  sons  were 
already  grown  up,  and  only  occasionally  to  be  seen  at  home ; 
but  his  daughters  ! — I  can  see  them  still  in  their  haughty  grace 
and  gossamer-like  beauty,  as  gliding  from  the  verandah  into  the 
street  they  swept  athwart  the  line  of  sight,  with  their  long 
trains  flowing  softly  behind  them,  their  proud  necks  curved 
like  swans,  and  their  feet  but  seeming  to  kiss  the  glowing 
pavement  o'er  which  they  passed ;  while  I  watched  them  from 
our  doorstep  in  the  distance,  with  an  idolatry  which  in  its 
purity  and  devotion  the  Seraphim  themselves  might  not  have 
despised.  To  pay  court  to  these  beautiful  daughters,  a  number 
of  young  officers  were  in  the  habit  of  coming  to  the  village  on 
Saturday  nights  in  the  summer  months;  and  on  Sunday 
afternoons  after  luncheon  were  to  be  seen  sitting  in  the  shade 
of  the  open  verandah,  the  old  Captain  himself  in  the  midst  of 
them,  smoking,  drinking  and  guffawing  loudly,  like  a  party  of 
dissolute  Cavaliers  among  their  Puritan  surroundings. 

Now  the  effect  of  this  on  my  mother  was  peculiar.  She  had 
always  held  fast  to  the  Bible  as  her  sure  defence  and  hope 
as  she  groped  her  way  through  the  vast  unillumined  night 
by  which  she  was  encompassed ;  keeping  its  sacred  lamp 
perennially  burning  in  her  heart,  to  fright  away  the  night- 
spectres  that  glared  in  on  her  from  the  darkness  ;  much  in  the 
same  way  as  in  her  early  days  in  Canada  she  had  kept  alive 
her  hearth-fire,  to  fright  away  the  hungry  wolves  that  prowled 
around  her  little  cabin  in  the  wood,  '  fearsome  creatures '  as  she 
called  them ;  and  whose  eyeballs  blazing  like  burning  stars 
encountered  hers  as  she  peered  out  wistfully  into  the  night. 
To  this  Bible  or  Divine  Word  she  clung  tenaciously  as  to  a 
sacred  ark :  accepting  it  not  critically  and  as  distinguishing 
between  kernel  and  husk,  essence  and  accident,  or  such  like 
refinements  of  later  days,  but  traditionally  and  in  the  lump,  in 


OU1I   NEIGHBOURS.  45 

a  spirit  of  pure  and  simple  belief,  as  one  single  divine  dispensa- 
tion and  deposit — one  single  and  entire  whole,  which  with  her 
embraced  not  only  Sunday  and  Kirk,  but  minister,  precentor, 
elders,  Church-members  and  all;  even  the  care-taker  being 
invested  in  her  eyes,  on  Sundays  at  least,  with  a  certain 
distinct  and  peculiar  odour  of  sanctity. 

With  these  simple  ideas  as  her  beacon  lights,  it  is  evident 
that  the  particular  vices  of  the  old  Captain — his  profanity, 
sumptuosity,  debt,  and  above  all  his  Sunday  desecration — could 
not  have  been  indifferent  to  her;  and  yet  to  my  surprise, 
although  fully  cognizant  of  them,  she  seemed  disposed  to  pass 
them  over  without  that  freedom  of  comment  which  in  a  like 
case  she  would  have  permitted  herself  with  her  other 
neighbours.  But  to  me,  always  on  the  look-out  for  a  precedent 
with  which  to  justify  my  own  Sunday  backslidings,  this 
conduct  of  the  Captain  came  as  a  kind  of  godsend;  and  I  at 
once  seized  on  it  as  a  weapon  wherewith  to  extract  from  my 
mother  some  mitigation  of  the  severe  penance  to  which  I  was 
subjected.  I  flattered  myself  I  had  got  her  in  a  dilemma  from 
which  there  was  no  escaping,  and  that  she  must  either  condemn 
the  Captain  outright,  or  grant  me  that  relaxation  of  my 
Sunday  discipline  on  which  my  mind  was  really  bent.  In  this, 
however,  1  was  mistaken  ;  for  on  citing  in  my  own  justification 
the  example  of  the  old  Captain  and  his  train  of  young  Cavaliers, 
she  eluded  and  outflanked  me  by  a  movement  which  in  its 
simplicity  was  as  effective  as  if  it  had  been  the  result  of  the 
most  strategic  combination ; — by  declaring,  viz,  that  the  cases 
were  not  at  all  parallel,  and  that  what  was  done  by  military 
folk  was  no  rule  at  all  for  me.  She  seemed  to  regard  them  as 
a  different  order  of  beings,  whose  movements  were  not  to  be 
measured  by  the  same  moral  categories  as  the  ordinary  human 
creature ;  and  conduct  which  she  would  have  freely  reprobated 
in  her  humbler  neighbours,  she  was  disposed  to  allow  to  them 
as  natural  and  a  thing  of  course;  much  as  one  might  allow  a 
plurality  of  wives  to  a  Mahommedan  or  Mormon.     The  truth 


46  OUR   NEIGHBOURS. 

was,  she  still  retained  in  her  simple  way  the  traditions  she  had 
brought  with  her  from  her  native  land ;  the  old  associations  of 
the  license  allowed  to  the  military,  lying  side  by  side  in  her 
mind  with  the  antagonistic  code  of  ordinary  morality,  not  only 
without  offence,  but  like  those  old  cats  and  dogs  which  have 
been  brought  up  in  the  same  family,  even  with  a  kind  of 
affection.  On  me  however  all  this  fell  like  a  new  revelation. 
Born  and  brought  up  in  a  roaring  democracy  that  had  levelled 
all  distinctions  to  the  ground,  it  was  the  first  hint  I  had  given 
me  that  there  did  anywhere  exist  in  this  world  human  beings 
who  fell  under  special  categories  of  moral  judgment.  And 
although  this,  the  first  footprint  of  the  Old  World  that  I  had 
seen  left  on  the  sands  of  the  New,  was  soon  washed  away  by 
the  in-rolling  tide  of  democracy  that  beat  high  against  every 
shore  of  thought  and  action,  still  for  the  time  being  it  utterly 
mixed  and  confounded  my  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  and  made 
an  indelible  impression  on  my  mind.  Still,  spite  of  this 
Old  World  tradition  of  my  mother's,  against  which  I  found  it 
hopeless  to  argue,  I  continued  to  fall  back  on  the  precedent 
of  the  old  Captain  whenever  my  Sunday  escapades  brought 
down  on  me  the  censure  of  the  other  neighbours. 

These  neighbours  were  a  peculiar  and  miscellaneous  assort- 
ment of  various  shades  and  qualities,  but  all,  like  Carlyle's 
pitcher  of  tame  vipers,  striving  to  get  their  heads  above  one 
another ;  and  all,  in  consequence,  with  eyes  armed  like  needles 
for  the  pricking  and  detection  of  each  other's  transgressions. 
Among  those  of  them  whom  I  remember  most  vividly,  were  a 
pair  of  old  widowed  sisters  of  great  sanctimoniousness  and 
piety,  who  lived  in  one  of  the  houses  in  the  rear  of  our  own. 
At  the  windows  of  the  upper  story  of  this  house,  these  old 
ladies  were  to  be  seen  at  all  hours  of  the  day,  sitting  sewing 
with  one  eye  on  their  needle  and  the  other  on  the  street ; 
nothing  that  passed  below  escaping  their  censorious  vigilance  ; 
especially  if  it  in  any  way  ministered  to  that  secret  love  of 
scandal  which  in  spite  of  their  piety  was  their  chiefest  pleasure. 


OUR   NEIGHBOURS.  47 

Next  door  to  them  again  lived  the  old  woman  whose  cow  had 
wrought  such  depredation  in  our  cabbage  garden,  and  between 
whom  and  the  beast  my  mother  had  discovered  sucli  strange 
psychological  affinities.  When  we  boys  were  playing  in  the 
evenings  in  front  of  her  house,  she,  ever  vigilant,  would  emerge 
from  the  gate  and  range  up  and  down  the  pavement  alongside 
of  us  to  keep  us  in  awe  ;  her  arms  akimbo  and  her  thick  neck 
set  like  an  angry  bull,  sniffing  the  air  for  any  commotion  that 
might  arise  among  us  in  which  her  own  boys  were  involved, 
and  in  which  she  might  intervene.  Across  the  way  from  us 
again,  lived  in  easy  circumstances  an  American  family  of 
Dutch  descent  whose  boys,  clumsy,  ungainly,  and  of  coarse  and 
overgrown  fibre,  were  much  given  to  a  rough  kind  of  horse-play, 
and  whose  backwardness  at  school  had  earned  for  them  the 
opprobrious  appellation  of  dunces.  The  mother,  a  woman  of 
delicate  faded  American  mould,  rarely  appeared  outside  the 
walls  of  her  home,  but  sat  for  the  most  part  in  her  own  room 
posing  in  her  various  hypochondrias  as  the  graceful  invalid, 
and  raying  out  at  times  in  her  slow-drawling  way  many  curious 
and  pregnant  sarcasms  on  her  neighbours  and  the  world  around 
her.  Behind  and  beyond  them  lived  a  number  of  Methodists 
of  the  English  Puritan  type,  simple  in  their  lives  and  habits 
and  much  given  to  revivals  in  religion ;  besides  some  negro 
families  ;  while  here  and  there  among  the  rest  lived  people  of 
drunken,  worthless,  and  disreputable  lives,  who  were  shunned 
by  their  respectable  neighbours,  and  with  whom  little  or  no 
intercourse  was  possible. 

With  most  of  these  neighbours  my  love  of  mischief  and 
absence  of  Puritanic  affinities  had  made  my  relations  some- 
what strained,  but  with  the  old  Captain  it  was  different.  With 
his  old-fashioned  code  of  honour  he  looked  on  the  strait-laced 
morality  of  his  neighbours  with  good-humoured  contempt ;  and 
the  various  escapades  and  general  paganism  which  so  offended 
them  in  me,  belonged  precisely  to  the  class  of  faults  to  which 
he  was  most  indifferent.     My  school  reputation,  on  the  other 


48  OUR   NEIGHBOURS. 

hand,  which  had  somehow  reached  him,  filled  the  good  old  man 
with  enthusiastic  admiration;  he  nicknamed  me  'the  Doctor,' 
and  when  he  met  me  in  the  street  on  the  way  to  or  from  school 
and  had  had  just  sufficient  wine  to  mellow  him  and  soften  the 
edge  of  his  irritability,  he  would  stop  me,  his  red  face  over- 
flowing with  kindness,  and  in  his  characteristic,  abrupt,  way 
open  on  me  with  '  By  G — ,  Doctor,  they  tell  me  you're  a 
devilish  clever  fellow,  what  are  you  going  in  for,  my  boy  % 
The  Army,  the  Bar,  the  Church  !  Eh  %  '  To  which,  I  replying 
that  I  did  not  know,  he  would  cheerily  pat  me  on  the  shoulder 
in  parting,  and  with  a  phrase  that  had  become  quite  a  formula, 
so  often  would  he  repeat  it,  say,  '  Stick  to  your  books  my  lad, 
and  you  will  become  Attorney-General  of  Canada  some  day ! ' 
though  why  specially  this  particular  position  in  the  official 
hierarchy  I  have  never  been  able  to  divine. 


CHAPTEK    VI. 


PAINS   AND   PLEASURES. 

nnHE  long  stretches  of  time  which  sometimes  intervened 
between  our  games  and  sports,  especially  in  the  summer 
vacation,  were  passed  by  us  boys  in  the  promiscuous  life  of  the 
streets,  and  were  spent  chiefly  in  the  endeavour  to  gratify 
those  cravings  of  the  senses  and  imagination,  of  the  eye  and 
the  appetite,  which  are  ever  the  most  exorbitant  with  boys, 
but  which  were  for  me  especially  difficult  of  realization.  Huge 
cakes  of  rock-candy,  butter-scotch,  or  toffy  might  be  sunning* 
themselves  in  the  little  sweet-shop  windows,  protected  from 
the  predatory  swarms  of  flies  by  old  pieces  of  faded  yellow 
gauze  ;  baskets  of  peaches,  plums,  and  strawberries  might  be 
exposed  in  the  open  street;  clowns  might  jest,  wild  beasts 
roar,  and  fairy  muslined  acrobats  witch  the  eye  with  wondrous 
horsemanship  behind  the  thin  wall  of  circus-canvas  ;  but  from 
all  this,  for  want  of  the  necessary  money,  I  was  inexorably  shut 
out,  and  by  a  ring  as  impassable  as  ever  was  castle-moat  across 
which  lover  sighed.  Most  of  my  playfellows  could  command 
from  their  parents  the  occasional  penny  for  sweetmeats  and 
other  delicacies,  or  even  the  sixpence  which  would  admit  them 
to  the  wonders  of  the  menagerie  or  circus,  and  in  the  matter  of 
fruits  and  sweets,  which  could  be  divided,  I  remember  with 
pleasure  the  generosity  with  which  they  usually  shared  them 
with  those  of  us  less  fortunate  than  themselves.     But  it  was 

E 


50  PAINS   AND   PLEASURES. 

not  the  same  thing  as  having  a  penny  of  one's  own ;  you  still 
felt  yourself  a  pensioner,  without  power  of  individual  initiative 
or  choice ;  and  that  royal  prerogative  of  exercising  absolute 
sovereignty  on  one's  own  account  which  boys  so  much  love, 
was  wanting  to  our  perfect  felicity.  Many,  in  consequence, 
were  the  entreaties  and  strong  and  steady  the  pressure  which  I 
brought  to  bear  on  my  mother,  for  a  penny  of  my  own  to  do  as 
I  liked  with,  but  all  in  vain.  Not  the  most  vigorous  and 
sustained  importunity,  or  the  most  plausible  and  insidious 
appeals,  could  move  her  from  her  fastness.  At  the  very 
mention  of  money  her  parsimony  took  fright,  and  the  imagin- 
ative horror  she  felt  lest  by  concession  she  should  establish  a 
precedent  for  the  future,  was  sufficient  to  shut  her  purse 
against  all  appeals.  To  baffle  me  she  was  equal  to  any 
expedient,  but  for  the  most  part  entrenched  herself  within  a 
ring  of  stock  phrases  which  she  turned  towards  every  point 
and  angle  of  attack.  If  I  wanted  the  money  for  sweets — they 
were  ruinous  to  the  teeth;  if  for  fruit — it  would  give  me 
cholera  or  colic ;  and  as  for  the  menagerie  and  circus, — the  very 
devil  himself  was  in  them,  and  there  was  pollution  in  the  very 
sound ! 

Most  of  my  play -fellows,  as  I  have  said,  could  command  the 
occasional  penny  necessary  to  keep  life  and  imagination  sweet 
and  active,  but  there  were  always  a  few  who  like  myself  seemed 
condemned  to  a  perpetual  penury ;  and  many  in  consequence 
were  the  expedients  to  which  we  had  recourse,  and  vast  the 
designs  we  entertained  to  raise  the  wind ;  but  all  with  in- 
adequate result.  One  old  Irishman — 'old  Paddy' — who  kept 
a  coal-yard  near  the  station,  had  recently  announced  to  the 
public  by  the  usual  sign-boards,  that  he  was  prepared  to  pay  in 
cash  for  all  kinds  of  old  iron,  brass,  copper,  and  the  like,  at  so 
much  a  pound  respectively.  Now  although  it  took  a  consider- 
able time  to  collect  as  much  old  iron  as  would  sell  for  a  penny, 
and  old  brass  or  copper  were  only  occasional  finds,  still  in  the 
absence  of  any  other  mode  of  obtaining  the  toffy  and  rock- 


PAINS   AND   PLEASURES.  51 

candy  for  which  we  so  longed,  we  were  glad  to  avail  ourselves 
of  this ;  and  entered  on  the  search  for  these  articles  with 
characteristic  energy  and  thoroughness.  Laying  out  the 
village  in  sections,  I  remember,  we  ransacked  every  nook  and 
corner  of  it — scouring  the  railway  track  for  old  iron  spikes, 
searching*  the  bed  of  the  river  beneath  the  bridge  when  the 
water  was  low,  overhauling  the  old  rubbish  heaps  that  lay  on 
the  commons  or  at  the  backs  of  fences,  and  even  overleaping 
the  fences  themselves  and  trespassing  on  the  gardens  of  private 
householders.  No  vultures  could  more  surely  find  their  way 
by  some  mysterious  instinct  to  the  decaying  carcass,  or  colony 
of  white  ants  to  the  dead  branches  of  fallen  trees,  than  we  to 
the  most  hidden  object  of  our  desire.  Nothing  escaped  us. 
Was  an  old  pot  or  brass  candlestick  buried  beneath  some  dust- 
heap  ?  Sooner  or  later  it  must  yield  itself  up.  Was  an  old  tea- 
kettle lying  anywhere  about  neglected  in  the  nooks  or  corners 
of  some  back  garden?  It  would  be  speedily  noted,  and 
presently  you  would  see  one  of  us  boys,  then  another,  and 
then  a  third,  mount  to  the  top  of  the  fence,  and  after  sitting 
there  a  few  moments  in  solemn  conclave,  like  rooks  on  a  tree, 
surveying  the  field  around,  one  of  us  would  swoop  down  on  it, 
and  climbing  over  the  fence  with  it  without  more  ado,  would 
consign  it  to  the  common  receptacle.  Private  property  as  such 
we  always  treated  in  these  raids  with  punctilious  respect,  but 
any  neglect  on  the  part  of  a  householder  to  make  the  dividing 
line  between  meum  and  tuum  sufficiently  clear  and  distinct,  was 
the  signal  for  our  taking  the  object  into  our  own  hands  without 
apology  or  remark.  So  long,  for  example,  as  a  pewter  pot, 
say,  stood  erect  on  its  own  basis  on  a  garden  seat  near  the 
house,  scoured  and  cleaned  as  if  it  were  carefully  looked  after, 
it  was  safe,  and  had  nothing  to  fear  from  us ;  and  the  rights  of 
its  owner  were  in  all  cases  religiously  observed ;  but  should  it 
be  found  in  an  outlying  part  of  the  garden  all  battered  in  and 
bespattered,  or  have  rolled  over  on  its  side  in  the  grass,  or  lain 
down  in  the  mud  and  become  embedded  there  as  if  it  intended 


52  PAINS   AND    PLEASURES. 

to  remain,  or  in  any  other  way  given  sign  of  desertion  or  neglect, 
we  had  no  hesitation  in  taking  it  under  our  wing  and  protection, 
and  placing  it  in  safe  custody  in  the  common  bag  with  the  rest. 
But  as  copper  or  brass  were  rare  and  uncertain  finds,  and  as 
it  took  days  or  perhaps  weeks  scavenging  for  old  iron  to  make 
a  few  pence,  great  was  our  exultation  when  we  heard  from  one 
of  the  boys,  that  a  gentleman  living  in  the  village  was  prepared 
to  buy  the  hind  legs  of  frogs  at  the  rate  of  a  shilling  a  dozen. 
Rumours,  indeed,  had  for  some  time  been  floating  about  among 
us  boys,  to  the  effect  that  some  of  the  more  wealthy  epicures 
were  in  the  habit  of  resorting  under  cover  of  night  to 
one  of  the  saloons  or  refreshment  rooms  off  the  main 
street,  and  there  secretly  regaling  themselves  on  a  dish 
which  though  evidently  regarded  by  them  as  a  delicacy,  struck 
us  with  as  much  horror  and  disgust  as  the  rat-eating  legends 

o  of? 

reported  of  the  Chinese.  Still,  as  the  frogs  could  be  had  by 
the  hundred  at  any  time  from  the  pond  that  lay  by  the 
side  of  the  railway-line  on  our  way  to  school,  these  rumours 
always  excited  a  certain  amount  of  interest  in  us  boys,  an 
interest  which  died  away  again,  however,  when  no  sufficient 
authority  could  be  found  for  them.  But  when  word  was 
brought  us  which  by  its  definiteness  lent  colour  to  these 
rumours,  such  a  Golconda  was  opened  up  in  our  dreams,  as  we 
had  not  before  known.  The  gentleman  in  question,  who  was  to 
purchase  the  frogs,  was  a  well-known  barrister  of  local  repute, 
who  lived  in  high  and  sumptuous  state  in  a  spacious  mansion 
situated  on  the  brow  of  the  hill.  He  was  a  man  of  enormous, 
even  portentous  bulk,  and  so  overgrown  with  fat,  that  at  the 
time  of  his  death,  as  I  was  credibly  informed,  it  stood  out  on  his 
ribs  in  solid  mass  to  the  depth  of  some  four-and-a-half  inches. 
As  he  moved  along  he  puffed  and  panted  from  this  excess  of 
fat  like  an  enormous  porpoise ;  and  when  on  his  way  to  his 
office  he  entered  that  side  of  the  bridge  set  apart  for  foot- 
passengers,  pushing  his  great  circumference  before  him  through 
the  narrow  straits,  and  larding  its  railings  with  his  distended 


PAINS   AND   PLEASTJKES.  53 

sides,  he  filled  the  whole  available  space  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
other  occupants  of  the  bridge,  who  were  obliged  to  stand  aside 
till  he  passed.  Like  many  men  of  this  type,  although 
essentially  generous  and  kind-hearted,  he  was  bombastic  and 
domineering  in  temper,  with  much  Falstaffian  bluster  and 
blasphemy  which  he  took  no  pains  to  suppress ;  and  when  put 
out,  which  he  affected  easily  to  be,  roared  and  stormed  like  an 
angry  sea.  Even  in  ordinary  conversation  he  spoke  in  tones  so 
loud  that  you  were  apprized  of  his  approach  long  before  he  came 
in  sight,  and  could  hear  every  word  distinctly  at  a  distance  of 
some  hundreds  of  paces.  As  he  came  along  puffing  and  blowing 
as  I  have  described,  he  would  stare  through  his  spectacles  at 
every  object  or  person  he  met,  as  if  to  say  '  well  what  business 
have  you  here  % '  his  face  puckered  into  a  peculiar  grin  from 
the  retraction  of  the  upper  lip,  and  disclosing  a  row  of  teeth  of 
such  length,  size,  and  aggressiveness,  that  in  the  mounting  sun 
of  the  morning  they  shone  in  the  distance  as  he  approached,  like 
burnished  ivory.  When  close  to  him  you  saw  that  he  was  a 
man  who  was  especially  well-kept;  not  only  his  immaculate 
white  shirt  and  waistcoat,  but  the  very  brush  of  his  grey 
whiskers,  the  clean-shaven  softness  of  the  skin,  as  well  as  the 
polished  enamel  of  the  teeth  (less  common  at  that  time  than 
now),  all  gave  the  impression  of  a  man  to  whom  the  finer 
delicacies  of  the  palate  were  as  essential  as  its  grosser  delights. 
It  was  doubtless  due  to  the  impression  left  unconsciously  on  us 
boys  by  his  personal  appearance,  that  when  the  report  once 
took  shape  that  he  was  a  frog-eater,  so  great  seemed  its  inherent 
probability,  that  although  purely  apocryphal  as  it  afterwards 
proved,  it  only  required  to  be  stated  to  command  at  once  and 
without  further  evidence  our  unhesitating  and  unqualified 
assent ; — and  we  went  to  bed  that  night  on  the  strength  of  it 
with  our  heads  full  of  the  happiest  dreams.  Next  morning  we 
rose  early  and  went  to  the  frog-pond,  making  up  our  minds  on 
the  way  to  catch  only  a  dozen  at  first  by  way  of  experiment. 
The  frogs  lay  sunning  themselves  by  the  score  on  the  green 


54  PAINS   AND   PLEASURES. 

banks  of  the  pond,  or  on  the  old  fallen  trunks  of  trees  that  lay- 
athwart  it  in  every  direction,  and  on  our  approach  leapt  into  it 
one  after  another,  with  a  flop  as  they  went  under,  like  the 
drawing  of  reluctant  corks.  We  soon  caught  a  dozen  without 
much  difficulty,  and  after  cutting  off  their  hind  legs,  skinning 
them,  and  placing  them  in  a  pail  of  pure  spring  water  from  the 
fountain,  we  started  off  to  catch  the  old  lawyer  about  the  time 
he  arrived  at  his  office.  On  our  way  it  was  voted  by  the  other 
boys,  that  I  should  be  the  one  to  take  in  the  frogs  and  transact 
the  sale.  Now  although  equal  to  any  ordinary  enterprise  of 
devilment  or  audacity,  I  was  always  morbidly  shy  in  the 
presence  of  others,  especially  of  strangers,  and  had  a 
preternatural  horror  of  doing  or  saying  anything  foolish  or 
unusual  that  would  expose  me  to  ridicule  or  rebuff.  This 
feeling  which  was  due,  so  far  as  I  can  analyze,  to  an  unfortunate 
combination  of  pride  and  sensitiveness,  went  so  far  as  to  make 
it  a  matter  of  the  greatest  difficulty  for  me  to  ask  the  simplest 
question  of  a  stranger  in  the  street,  or  to  enter  a  shop  for 
anything  at  all  out  of  the  way  or  of  the  exact  technical  name  of 
which  I  was  ignorant;  and  all  for  fear  of  calling  forth  some 
snub  or  sneer  on  the  face  of  the  person  addressed,  which  I 
could  not  take  up,  and  which  I  knew  would  cause  me  much 
mortification.  A  direct  insult  I  could  always  directly  challenge 
by  counter  insolence  or  defiance,  but  those  slight  and  peculiar 
changes  of  expression  which  mark  the  finer  shades  of  derision  or 
scorn,  but  which  at  the  same  time  are  so  subtle  and 
unsubstantial  that  they  can  neither  be  challenged  nor  ignored, — 
these  I  never  could  face.  To  imagine,  therefore,  that  I  should 
walk  calmly  into  that  lawyer's  office  in  the  face  of  all  his  clerks, 
with  a  pail  in  my  hand,  and  that  pail  containing,  too,  above  all 
things  frogs'  hind  legs  dressed  and  skinned !  When  I  figured 
it  to  myself,  and  thought  of  all  the  latent  quips  and  gibes  which 
it  might  draw  forth  at  my  expense  in  case  we  should  have  been 
mistaken, — no  money  would  have  tempted  me.  As  the  other 
boys,  however,  did  not  seem  to  feel  any  hesitation  on  that  score — 


PAINS   AND   PLEASURES.  55 

a  state  of  mind  which  I  have  always  looked  on  with  envy  and 
admiration — one  of  them  on  my  refusing,  took  the  pail  from  my 
hand  and  started  across  the  street  with  it  to  the  office  door, 
while  the  rest  of  us  sat  down  in  the  shade  of  the  fence  opposite, 
to  await  the  issue  so  big  with  fortune  to  ourselves.  What  our 
surprise  and  disgust  were,  therefore,  what  our  descent  from  our 
golden  cloud-land,  when  the  boy  as  suddenly  emerged,  looking 
disappointed,  crestfallen,  and  partly  frightened ;  and  what  our 
laughter  afterwards  when  we  learned  from  him  that  on  offering 
the  frogs  the  old  lawyer  looked  at  him,  then  stared,  then  in 
horror  roared  at  him,  rising  and  threatening  to  stick  his  head  in 
the  pail ; — all  this  may  best  be  left  to  the  imagination  of  the 
reader.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  when  we  got  round  the  first 
corner,  where  we  could  not  be  seen,  we  incontinently  flung  the 
contents  of  the  pail  into  the  first  gutter,  and  fallen  from 
the  empyrean,  betook  ourselves  to  the  common  highway  again. 
When  all  other  resources  failed  and  not  a  penny  could  be 
raised  among  the  whole  troop  of  us,  we  would  fall  back  upon 
our  aboriginal  instincts,  and  scouring  the  country  round  would 
fall  on  the  apple-trees  in  the  farmers'  orchards,  or  gather  the 
raspberries  that  grew  wild  along  the  railway  track  or  on  the 
margin  of  the  woods  ;  at  the  same  time  keeping  our  eye  on 
whatever  godsend  chance  might  throw  in  our  way  in  the  town 
itself.  One  of  the  happiest  of  these  chance  prizes,  and  one 
which  could  be  calculated  on  with  a  certain  periodicity,  was 
the  occasional  sugar  hogshead  which  after  being  emptied  by 
the  grocer  of  its  contents,  would  be  thrown  out  into  the 
open  yard  that  lay  at  the  back  of  the  shops  lining  the  main 
street.  One  or  other  of  the  boys  was  always  on  the  watch  in 
the  capacity  of  informal  scout,  to  give  notice  to  the  rest  of 
us  when  a  fresh  hogshead  appeared  in  the  yard ;  and  when  he 
chanced  to  come  on  one,  after  helping  himself  liberally  first, 
he  would  come  running  to  the  mill-pond  where  we  were  most 
likely  bathing,  and  shouting  out  '  A  sugar-barrel,  boys ! '  would 
throw  us  into  a  state  of  excitement  and  exaltation  as  great  as 


56  PAINS   AND    PLEASURES. 

the  unexpected  announcement  by  our  teacher  of  a  school-treat 
or  holiday.  Out  of  the  water  we  would  rush  in  hot  haste,  and 
making  for  the  place  where  our  clothes  lay,  would  hurriedly 
iling  on  our  shirt  and  trousers,  and  snatching  the  rest  up  under 
our  arms  in  the  fear  of  being  left  behind,  would  start  off  in  the 
direction  of  our  guide ;  dressing  as  we  went  along.  On  we 
went  in  a  scattered  line  like  a  train  of  eager  camp-followers, 
picking  our  way  with  our  bare  feet  among  the  stones  and  dead 
tree-roots  that  rose  above  the  level  of  the  ground,  our  guide  in 
front,  and  the  slower  among  us  bringing  up  the  rear  in  a  kind 
of  easy  trot ;  onward  and  over  the  mill-race  and  around  by  the 
mill,  to  the  entrance  of  the  lane,  and  down  the  lane  itself  to 
the  particular  place  where  our  prize  lay. 

In  a  few  minutes  from  the  first  summons  we  would  all  be  on 
the  spot,  and  on  entering  the  yard,  there,  sure  enough,  would 
be  seen  the  huge  hogshead  lying  rolled  on  its  side  with  its 
mouth  fronting  us  like  the  entrance  to  a  tunnel,  and  a  floor  on 
which,  to  our  young  imaginations,  whole  armies  might  have 
encamped  !  On  our  approaching  it,  great  clouds  of  flies  would 
rise  from  it  in  buzzing  swarms,  darkening  the  air  and  filling  the 
whole  yard  as  they  dispersed  with  their  drowsy  sweetness. 
Into  the  hogshead  without  further  ado  we  would  rush  pell-mell, 
without  rank,  order,  or  precedence,  crowding  in  on  one  another 
until  the  floor  was  packed ;  the  last  comers  waiting  outside  for 
their  turn,  or  impatiently  reaching  inwards  for  such  of  its 
contents  as  they  could  secure  from  the  outside.  The  golden 
sugar  still  lay  soft  and  luscious  in  the  cracks  and  seams  formed 
by  the  imperfect  junction  of  the  staves  on  its  huge  circum- 
ference, or  where  the  sides  made  angle  with  the  bottom ;  and  at 
once  we  would  set  to  work  on  it  like  a  gang  of  labourers  on  a 
building,  picking  out  the  rich  seams  of  sugar  from  the  over- 
arching roof  and  sides  with  our  pocket-knives,  or  failing  these, 
with  bits  of  stick  or  shingle  which  we  had  picked  up  on  the 
way,  and  had  wiped  on  our  coat  sleeves  as  we  came  along. 
And  there  we  would  sit,  eating  until  we  were  gorged  and  could 


PAINS   AND   PLEASURES.  57 

go  on  no  longer,  each  one  as  he  emerged  filled,  making  room  for 
those  who  were  waiting  their  turn  outside,  until  all  at  last  were 
satisfied ;  what  remained  in  the  hogshead  being  left  for  the 
flies,  or  the  next  troop  of  boys  that  chanced  to  pass  along. 


CHAPTEE    YII 


A    EHUBARB    TART. 

rpiHE  pains  with  which  the  penury  of  my  boyhood  had  so 
-1-  dashed  and  intermingled  its  otherwise  buoyant  pleasures, 
were  doubly  aggravated  by  that  constitutional  sensitiveness  to 
which  I  have  just  referred,  and  which  an  unhallowed  combination 
of  shyness  and  pride  seems  to  have  fixed  deeply  in  the  roots  of 
my  nature.  For  some  months  in  the  course  of  one  summer,  I 
was  in  the  habit  of  attending  with  my  mother's  sanction,  and  as  a 
welcome  relief  from  the  prison  limits  of  our  garden,  a  Sunday- 
school  which  had  recently  been  opened  in  connection  with  one 
of  the  Methodist  denominations  of  the  village.  One  of  the 
leading  men  in  the  school,  and  a  main  pillar  of  the  chapel  to 
which  it  was  attached,  was  a  Cornish  immigrant  who  in  the 
early  days  of  the  settlement  had  taken  up  a  portion  of  the 
primitive  forest,  and  by  dint  of  hard  labour  had  at  the  time  of 
which  I  am  writing,  transformed  it  into  a  rich  and  beautiful 
farm.  Wishing  to  give  us  children  a  treat,  he  had  arranged  for 
a  pic-nic  to  be  held  in  one  of  the  little  clumps  of  wood  that  still 
lay  scattered  here  and  there  in  primitive  wildness  among  his  rich 
and  waving  cornfields.  It  was  arranged  that  we  should  each 
bring  with  us  our  own  provisions — pies,  tarts,  jams,  and  the  like — 
and  these  after  being  brought  to  the  chapel,  were  to  be  thrown 
promiscuously  into  a  common  stock,  of  which  all  alike  should 
partake.      My  mother  who  had  at  first  looked  askance  at  the 


A   RHUBARB    TART.  59 

matter,  had  at  last  after  some  importunity  consented  to  have 
something  prepared  as  my  share  in  the  general  contribution ; 
and  accordingly  on  my  returning  from  school  at  noon  on  the 
day  of  the  pic-nic,  and  asking  her  for  it,  she  pointed  with  an  air 
of  indifference  to  an  object  which  lay  on  the  far  corner  of  the 
table  behind  me,  and  which  had  escaped  my  notice  on  my  first 
entrance.  It  was  a  little  rhubarb  tart,  which  had  been  baked  in 
a  coarse,  blue,  stone  dish, and  which  wore  on  its  wizened,  pinched, 
and  wrinkled  crust  (in  spite  of  being  newly  baked)  that  look  of 
age  and  poverty  which  could  only  have  come  from  the  absence 
in  its  composition  of  any  elements  more  generous  than  flour  and 
water.  Through  a  hole  or  gash  in  the  centre  of  this  crust,  a 
thin  acrid-looking  juice  exuded,  which  coloured  the  parts  around, 
and  still  further  heightened  the  disagreeable  impression  left  by 
its  general  appearance  ;  and  at  sight  of  it  my  spirits  fell.  I  was 
ashamed  of  it,  and  began  loudly  to  protest  that  a  thing  so 
pinched  and  miserable,  so  sour  and  acrid-looking  that  pounds  of 
sugar  would  be  lost  on  it,  was  not  fit  to  be  seen  at  a  respectable 
pic-nic,  and  that  I  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  it,  To  all  of 
which  my  mother  merely  replied  calmly, i  If  you  don't  like  it  you 
can  leave  it ;  it  will  do  well  enough.'  As  there  was  no  alternative, 
therefore,  but  either  to  take  it  or  deprive  myself  of  a  treat  to 
which  1  had  been  looking  forward  with  much  pleasure,  I  was 
obliged  to  make  the  best  of  it ;  and  wrapping  it  up  in  a  cloth 
the  better  to  conceal  it,  I  started  off  with  it  at  once  to  the  chapel, 
in  the  hope  that  if  I  could  get  there  before  the  rest  arrived,  I 
might  deposit  it  among  the  other  provisions  without  anyone 
knowing  it  was  mine ;  my  mother  charging  me  strictly  as  I  left 
the  house,  to  be  sure  and  bring  back  the  little  blue  dish  with  me 
on  my  return.  Arrived  at  the  chapel  I  found  the  door  ajar,  and 
walking  in  quietly,  looked  nervously  about  me  to  see  where  I 
was  to  put  my  contribution  down.  Within,  all  was  silent  and 
empty,  no  human  being  was  anywhere  to  be  seen ;  but  crowded 
on  a  side-table  beneath  one  of  the  windows,  lay  the  entire  stock 
of  provisions  which  had  been  brought  there  in  the  morning. 


GO  A    RHUBARB    TART. 

They  were  of  every  description  and  variety — immense  pies  with 
their  rich  and  yellow  crusts  puffed  and  raised  into  high  embossed 
mounds ;  open  tarts  with  their  edges  beautifully  crimped,  and 
covered  with  thick  layers  of  jam  or  pumpkin,  across  which  fine 
strips  of  pastry  ran  as  ornament ;  cakes  so  light  and  brittle  that 
they  seemed  as  if  they  would  crumble  at  a  touch ;  pots  of  jelly 
and  jam ; — and  all  giving  off  the  most  sweet  and  appetizing 
odour.  At  the  sight  of  this  unexpected  magnificence,  my  heart 
sank  still  lower  within  me,  and  taking  the  little  tart  out  of  the 
cloth  in  a  state  of  nervous  trepidation,  I  deposited  it  as  quickly 
as  1  could  among  the  rest,  and  hastened  back  to  the  door ;  and 
once  well  outside  again  I  inwardly  resolved  that  I  should  disown 
that  tart  if  challenged  ! 

Presently  the  party  arrived ;  the  boys  and  girls  marshalled  by 
the  teachers  soon  fell  into  line,  and  marched  merrily  along  the 
streets  to  the  outskirts  of  the  village ;  then  onward  and  along 
by  the  side  of  the  dusky  pine  woods  to  the  gate  of  the  farm 
itself;  the  wagon  containing  the  provisions  bringing  up  the 
rear  amid  clouds  of  dust.  As  we  passed  through  the  gate,  the 
green  fields  of  the  farm  opened  before  us  in  all  their  summer 
beauty,  stretching  downwards  along  a  gentle  declivity  to  the 
margin  of  the  flat  belt  of  wood  where  the  pic-nic  was  to  be  held. 
Arrived  on  the  spot  we  dispersed  in  groups  and  parties,  and 
scampered  off  here  and  there  in  all  directions  through  the  wood ; 
now  playing  hide  and  seek  or  throwing  sticks  at  the  acorns  and 
beech  nuts ;  now  chasing  the  squirrels  from  tree  to  tree ;  or 
again  joining  with  the  girls  in  the  excitement  of  'kiss  in  the 
ring  '  and  other  games.  The  older  people  meanwhile  were  busy 
spreading  the  table-cloth  in  a  shady  open  space  in  the  middle 
of  the  wood,  disposing  the  provisions  around  it  with  impartiality 
on  all  sides,  but  with  an  eye  as  well  to  picturesqueness  and 
beauty  of  effect. 

Now  although  entering  into  the  games  that  were  going  on, 
with  the  utmost  zest,  and  even  entirely  forgetting  myself  in 
them  for  the  time  being,  still  ever  and  again  I  would  be  troubled 


A    RHUBARB    TART.  ()1 

about  ray  little  tart,  and  whenever  I  had  an  opportunity  would 
keep  secretly  returning  to  the  spot  where  the  table  was  being 
laid,  circling  round  it  apparently  only  in  play,  but  really  drawn 
to  it  by  a  fascination  as  irresistible  as  if  it  had  been  the 
scene  of  some  crime.  The  greater  part  of  the  provisions  had 
already  been  set  out  on  the  table,  but  so  far  as  I  could  see 
from  the  single  passing  eye-glance  I  dare  give  them,  the  little 
tart  had  not  yet  made  its  appearance ;  and  I  can  still  remember 
the  feeling  of  shame  and  mortification  that  seized  me,  as  the 
conviction  flashed  on  my  mind,  that  to  these  people  as  to  myself 
the  first  sight  of  it  had  been  enough,  and  that  they  had  prudently 
decided  to  leave  it  in  veiled  seclusion  in  the  background.  In 
this,  however,  I  was  mistaken,  for  on  the  next  stealthy  circuit 
I  made  around  the  spot,  it  was  with  a  feeling  of  real  relief 
that  I  saw  that  they  had  at  last  brought  it  forward,  although 
relegating  it  to  an  inconspicuous  position  on  the  flank  near  the 
bottom  of  the  table. 

Presently  all  was  ready,  and  at  a  word  from  our  host  we 
drew  in  on  all  sides  from  our  games  to  the  table,  but  we  had 
hardly  sat  down  before  a  second  fear  more  absorbing  than  the 
first,  and  one  too  which  all  along  had  been  present  in  the  back- 
ground of  my  mind,  took  possession  of  me  ; — the  fear  namely, 
that  now  that  the  tart  was  in  visible  presence,  it  would  to  a 
certainty  attract  attention  to  itself,  aud  be  made  the  butt  for 
the  wit  and  gibes  of  the  other  boys.  In  order  to  be  out  of 
the  range  of  any  shots  of  this  kind  that  might  be  discharged  at 
it,  and  which  had  they  reached  my  ears,  I  knew  from  my  habit 
of  blushing  on  all  occasions,  would  have  put  me  to  open  shame, 
I  had  instinctively  taken  my  seat  at  the  opposite  end  of  the 
table ;  and  while  trying  to  disarm  suspicion  by  an  affected 
gaiety,  still  kept  my  eye  furtively  on  the  tart,  which  sat  there 
it  seemed  to  me  among  its  more  august  neighbours  like  a  poor 
relation  in  the  society  of  purse-proud  friends  !  Around  it  on  all 
sides  the  battle  raged ;  hands  thrust  out,  met  and  crossed  one 
another  in  their  efforts  to  reach  this  or  the  other  pampered 


62  A   RHUBARB    TART. 

delicacy  that  lay  around  it ;  vast  pies  were  cut  up,  helped  out 
and  passed  round,  until  they  had  all  melted  away  and 
disappeared ;  but  still  the  little  tart  sat  there  on  the  spotless 
damask  like  a  faded  wall-flower,  in  cold  neglect !  Had  the 
milky-blue  dish,  the  aged  and  withered  look,  and  the  thin  and 
acrid  juice  that  distilled  and  bubbled  through  its  wrinkled 
crust,  stayed  the  hands  of  all  who  saw  it  f  I,  at  least,  had  no 
doubt  of  it,  and  the  thought  made  me  hot  within,  and  added  a 
new  pang  to  my  mortification.  Whether  it  were  being  made 
the  butt  for  the  young  wit,  whether  any  or  what  shafts  and 
gibes  were  being  levelled  at  it,  I  could  not  tell ;  as  I  could  not 
hear  or  distinguish  clearly  what  passed,  amid  the  din  and 
merriment  that  went  on  around  the  table  ;  but  so  acute  were 
my  suspicions,  that  when  I  had  for  the  moment  forgotten  it, 
lost  in  the  pleasure  of  some  dainty  morsel  on  my  own  plate, 
any  sudden  outbreak  of  laughter  coming  to  me  from  the  other 
side  of  the  table,  would  turn  me  hot  with  fear  and  shame  ;  and  I 
would  raise  my  eyes,  scared  and  furtive  like  another  Macbeth, 
in  full  expectation  that  now  at  last  the  ghost  which  had  so 
haunted  me,  would  rise  and  confront  me.  But  as  the  alarm 
was  apparently  false,  and  nothing  definite  could  be  seen  or 
heard,  I  was  soon  lost  in  the  pleasures  of  the  feast  again ;  and 
felt  a  kind  of  pseudo-relief  in  the  thought  that  at  any  rate  I  was 
too  far  off  for  their  gibes  to  reach  me  or  those  around  me.  Then 
I  would  have  a  reaction  of  feeling,  in  which  I  would  comfort 
myself  with  the  assurance  that  I  had  so  secretly  deposited  the 
tart  in  the  chapel,  that  no  one  could  possibly  know  it  was 
mine,  as  well  as  with  the  reiterated  determination  that  if  the 
worst  came  to  the  worst  I  would  disown  it ;  when  in  the  midst 
of  these  heroic  resolves  another  gust  of  laughter  would  reach 
my  ears,  and  startle  me  into  shame  and  mortification  as  before. 
In  this  alternation  between  the  solid  enjoyment  of  the 
provisions  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  shame,  fear,  and  mortifica- 
tion (spite  of  an  affected  gaiety  and  nonchalance)  on  the  other, 
the  afternoon  wore  itself  away  and  the  meal  at  last  came  to  an 


A   RHUBARB    TART.  63 

end ;  and  the  little  tart  which  in  my  preternatural  sensitiveness 
I  had  so  ignobly  forsaken  and  disowned,  was  carried  away 
with  the  rest  of  the  fragments  to  another  part  of  the  wood. 
There  on  the  rising  ground  at  the  foot  of  a  great  elm  tree  I 
saw  it  for  the  last  time,  resting  on  the  crumpled  table-cloth, 
with  a  group  of  people  around  it  claiming  and  sorting  out  from 
the  general  debris  the  plates  and  dishes  belonging  to  them. 
But  now  more  than  ever  it  behoved  me  not  to  approach  it, 
knowing  well,  as  I  did,  that  when  its  ownership  was  asked  for, 
my  face  would  be  sure  to  betray  me,  and  feeling  that  having 
escaped  so  far  I  must  now  be  doubly  careful  to  keep  out  of 
the  way.  I  gave  it  therefore  a  still  wider  berth  than  before, 
and  making  pretence  of  amusing  myself  by  looking  for 
squirrels  among  the  distant  trees,  waited  until  the  sorting  of 
dishes  was  over  and  the  hour  for  our  return  home  had  arrived. 
As  for  the  little  dish  which  my  mother  had  so  strictly  charged 
me  to  bring  back  with  me,  I  had  long  ago  determined  to  leave 
it  to  its  fate,  for  although  knowing  what  I  had  to  expect  if  I 
returned  without  it,  I  would  as  soon  have  claimed  relationship 
with  the  Prince  of  Darkness  himself  as  with  it !  At  last  we  all 
started  for  home,  the  farmer  and  his  wife  accompanying  us  to 
the  gate,  and  it  was  not  until  I  was  well  out  on  the  highway,  and 
there  was  no  longer  any  chance  of  my  tart  being  identified  or 
my  fears  realized,  that  I  recovered  my  usual  light-heartedness 
and  gaiety  again ;  and  so  brought  to  its  close  a  day  which  with 
so  many  normal  elements  of  pleasure  in  it,  had  through  pure 
sensitiveness  alone,  been  for  me  so  dashed  and  mingled  with 
pain. 


CHAPTEE    VIII 


FUN    AND    MISCHIEF. 

/^VNE  of  the  most  entrancing  delights  perhaps  of  those  young 
^^  years,  was  the  fun  and  mischief  that  went  on  at  night  in 
the  early  frosts  of  autumn  beneath  the  crystal  October  moon, 
when  great  troops  of  us  boys  would  collect  around  the  market 
place  or  at  the  street  corner,  and  thence  as  from  a  common 
rendezvous  would  go  the  round  of  the  town  on  the  maddest 
and  wildest  escapades.  Filling  our  pockets  with  sand  or  gravel 
before  starting,  we  would  take  the  houses  that  came  forward  to 
the  street,  and  discharging  volleys  at  the  windows  as  we 
passed,  would  enjoy  the  pursuit  of  the  indignant  householder 
who  often  gave  chase  but  whom  we  almost  invariably  baffled 
by  our  doublings  in  and  around  the  side  streets,  or  by  our 
knowledge  of  the  lofts,  sheds,  or  timber  yards  that  offered 
places  of  concealment  until  the  danger  was  passed.  At  other 
times  we  would  slip  quietly  along  on  tip-toe  from  the  open 
road,  across  the  pavement,  to  the  front  door  of  a  dwelling- 
house,  and  setting  up  against  it  a  round  stick  of  wood  just 
large  enough  to  startle  without  hurting,  would  knock  loudly, 
and  then  stealing  away  as  quietly  as  we  came,  enjoy  from  a 
distance  the  effect  on  the  unlucky  inmate  of  the  in-falling  of 
the  wood  when  the  door  was  opened. 

It  was  during  one  of  these  years  of  mischief  that  the  negroes 
who  had  already  accumulated  in  considerable  numbers  in  the 


FUN   AND    MISCHIEF.  65 

village,  were  enabled  with  a  little  outside  assistance  to  raise 
sufficient  funds  to  build  for  themselves  a  chapel.  It  was  a 
small,  unpretentious  building  of  lath  and  plaster,  and  was 
erected  on  a  piece  of  vacant  land  fronting  the  open  common 
immediately  in  the  rear  of  our  house.  Although  services  were 
being  held  in  it  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing,  it  was  still 
only  partly  finished,  and  for  door- steps  a  number  of  round 
cedar  logs  rolled  side  by  side  and  piled  on  one  another,  formed 
a  kind  of  footway  over  which  the  congregation  passed  in  and 
out.  Meetings  were  occasionallv  held  during  the  week  nights, 
and  when  the  windows  were  open  the  sound  of  the  hymns 
would  come  wafted  to  us  across  the  intervening  distance,  as  we 
sat  in  the  garden  enjoying  the  evening  breeze.  Chancing  to 
pass  along  that  way  one  dark  night,  a  number  of  us  boys  who 
were  probably  returning  from  some  other  devilment  or  mischief, 
noticing  that  service  was  being  held  and  seeing  the  cedar  logs 
that  were  doing  duty  for  door-steps,  it  occurred  to  us  that  it 
would  be  a  rare  piece  of  fan  to  remove  those  logs,  and  see  what 
would  befall!  Taking  hold  of  them  at  each  end  we  soon 
removed  them  out  of  the  way,  leaving  a  clear  drop  of  two  feet,, 
perhaps,  between  the  door  and  the  ground  below.  This  done, 
we  secreted  ourselves  in  the  darkness  behind  the  stumps  on  the 
common  in  front  of  the  chapel,  there  to  await  results.  The 
meetings  usually  broke  up  with  a  hymn,  which  the  congregation 
continued  to  sing  as  they  left  the  building,  and  on  the  particular 
night  I  am  describing,  the  hymn,  I  remember,  was  the  good  old 
Methodist  one  beginning 

1  When  we  cross  the  river  of  Jordan, 

Happy !  Happy  ! 
When  we  cross  the  river  of  Jordan, 
Happy  in  the  Lord  ! ' 

We  had  not  long  to  wait,  for  presently  from  our  places  behind 
the  stumps  we  heard  the  hymn  started  within,  and  in  a  moment 
or  two  after,  the  front  door  was  thrown  open,  and  we  were  all 
on  end  with   suppressed  excitement.     The  doorway,  at  best  a 

F 


66  FUN  AND   MISCHIEF. 

narrow  one,  was  made  still  narrower  by  one  fold  of  it  being 
kept  fastened,  so  that  only  one  person  could  pass  through  the 
opening  at  a  time.  The  consequence  was  that  when  the  door 
was  thrown  open,  although  the  chorus  of  voices  within  gave 
forth  only  muffled  and  indistinct  sounds,  the  one  particular 
voice  that  occupied  the  doorway  rang  out  clear  and  strong, 
every  word  distinctly  audible  in  the  dark  and  silent  night. 
Scarcely,  however,  had  this  voice  time  to  burst  on  the  ear  with 

the  words  *  when  we  cross  the  river  of  ,'  when  it  was  as 

suddenly  extinguished,  cut  short  in  its  rolling  jubilation  as  by 
the  scissors  of  Fate  itself!  The  unhappy  possessor  planting 
his  foot  forward  in  conscious  security  without  a  thought,  had 
instead  of  resting  on  the  old  familar  cedar  logs,  walked  into 
vacancy  and  gone  over  the  edge  of  the  precipice  into  what 
although  only  two  feet  in  depth,  must  have  seemed,  as  to 
Kent  in  *  Lear,'  like  a  bottomless  abyss.  Following  close  in 
the  track  of  the  first,  and  unconscious  of  his  fate,  came  a 
woman,  and  as  her  figure  in  the  door-way  from  the  lights 
behind  stood  out  in  distinctness  in  the  darkness,  her  voice  too 
rang  out  sweet  and  clear  into  the  summer  night,  but  before  she 

had   got   to   the   end   of  the  line   *  Happy  in  the ,'  the 

inexorable  shears  clipped  short  her  high  refrain,  and  she,  too, 
like  her  predecessor,  went  over  into  the  abyss.  By  this  time 
the  merriment  of  us  boys  behind  the  stumps  was  at  its  height, 
the  contrast  between  the  high  jubilation  and  the  sudden 
extinction,  between  the  passage  of  the  river  of  Jordan  and  the 
passage  from  the  doorway  to  the  street,  tickling  our  fancy 
beyond  measure.  But  still  they  came  on  one  after  another, 
each  singing  out  loud  and  triumphant  as  they  advanced  to  the 
door-way,  and  each  stepping  forward  gaily  and  in  all  simplicity 
as  on  to  the  solid  adamant ;  but  one  and  all  extinguished  in  a 
moment,  their  voices  punctually  stopped  at  those  various  points 
in  the  verse  where  the  unkindly  fates  reaped  them  away ;  until 
some  six  or  seven  of  them  lay  tumbled  on  one  another  like 
heaps  of  slain,  groaning  and  howling  in  the  darkness.     At  last 


FUN  AND   MISCHIEF.  67 

the  hubbub  outside  became  so  great  that  the  crowd  inside 
hearing  it  began  to  recoil  from  the  doorway  until  the  cause  of 
the  disturbance  was  ascertained.  When  this  was  once  known, 
a  kind  of  wild  and  universal  execration  arose  ;  shouts  of  '  Who 
did  it?'  '  Where  are  they?'  *  White  trash!'  'Fetch  the 
constable ! '  and  the  like  exclamations  following,  until  wre  boys 
beginning  to  fear  lest  someone  might  have  been  hurt,  and  that 
if  search  were  made  and  we  were  discovered  the  consequences 
were  likely  to  be  serious,  decamped  across  the  common  under 
cover  of  the  darkness;  each  taking  his  several  way  home 
before  suspicion  had  time  to  fasten  on  him.  No  one  was  really 
hurt,  and  although  next  day  there  was  some  talk  of  information 
having  been  laid  before  the  magistrate,  nothing  farther  came  of 
it ;  and  we  escaped  without  the  punishment  which  we  so  richly 
deserved. 

When  the  long  autumn  nights  had  deepened  into  winter  and 
the  snow  lay  thick  on  the  ground,  a  favourite  haunt  of  us  boys 
was  one  or  other  of  the  revival  meetings  that  were  held  in  the 
little  chapels  of  the  village.  Attracted  by  the  singing  or  the 
noise  of  the  prayers,  we  would  step  softly  through  the  partially 
opened  door  and  take  our  seats  quietly  in  one  of  the  side  pews 
near  the  back,  whence  we  could  see  all  that  was  going  on  and 
at  the  same  time  pass  in  and  out  without  observation  or 
disturbance.  The  older  people  at  the  meeting  were  usually 
pleased  to  see  us  come  in,  hoping  perhaps  that  some  chance 
word  or  phrase  might  be  dropped  which  would  sink  into  our 
hearts  and  lead  to  our  conversion  ;  still  in  spite  of  this  I  noted 
that  one  or  other  of  the  care-takers  felt  it  necessary  to  keep  an 
eye  on  us,  and  when  our  titter  and  merriment  passed  the 
bounds  of  decorum  to  give  us  plainly  to  understand  that  we 
must  either  be  quiet  or  leave  the  room.  The  meetings 
generally  opened  with  the  singing  of  a  hymn  in  which  we  all 
joined  lustily,  and  when  this  was  over  the  member  presiding 
would  call  on  one  of  the  congregation  to  engage  in  prayer. 
At  this  announcement  the  whole  assembly  would  sink  down  on 


68  FUN    AND   MISCHIEF. 

their  knees  with  their  faces  to  the  back  of  the  pews,  and  in 
this  position  would  remain  without  moving  during  the  greater 
part  of  the  service.  For  the  prayers,  it  may  be  necessary  to 
explain,  when  once  started  went  on  as  it  were  of  themselves, 
being  caught  up  by  one  member  after  another  as  the  inward 
fire  leapt  from  each  to  each,  until  all  were  exhausted.  Accord- 
ingly all  being  silent  for  a  moment,  the  member  called  upon 
would  besrin  from  below  the  level  of  the  seat  in  a  low  voice 
and  in  measured  steady  accents,  with  little  or  no  excitement 
or  fervour;  but  presently,  as  the  sense  of  his  own  and  others' 
sins  fell  o'er  his  mind,  and  the  thought  of  the  burning  pit  where 
fiends  snatching  at  him  had  only  just  missed  him,  and  from 
which  by  grace  alone  he  had  been  delivered,  rose  again  before 
his  inward  eye,  he  would  raise  his  head  from  its  lowly  posture ; 
his  voice  trembling  with  emotion  would  rise  in  power  and 
compass ;  the  cold  sweat  would  stand  on  his  brow ;  his  words 
would  pour  forth  in  frothing  torrents — interjections,  exclama- 
tions, entreaties  and  appeals  rolling  and  tumbling  over  one 
another  pell-mell  in  the  throes  of  his  great  and  awful  agony — 
until  all  the  rounds  and  aspects  of  his  life,  all  his  inner  hopes, 
aspirations,  and  fears  being  upturned  and  exhausted,  he  would 
draw  slowly  to  a  close,  or  from  sheer  prostration  sink  forward 
on  to  the  seat.  So  violent  indeed  did  the  excitement  some- 
times become,  (especially  when  after  one  or  two  prayers  the 
whole  atmosphere  of  the  meeting  was  surcharged  with  pent-up 
emotion)  that  I  remember  an  old  man — a  negro — who  beginning 
in  a  subdued  and  gentle  voice  at  the  end  of  the  seat  immediately 
in  front  of  the  pulpit,  would,  to  give  himself  freer  play  and 
expansion  as  his  passion  rose,  first  roll  up  one  sleeve,  then  the 
other,  then  strip  off  in  turn,  and  all  unconsciously,  his  coat, 
waistcoat,  and  neckcloth  respectively,  untilj  the  whirlwind  of 
emotion  being  at  its  height,  in  desperation  he  tore  off  his  collar 
with  both  his  hands,  and  bared  his  black  shining  breast  to  the 
air ;  then  only  gaining  the  freedom  necessary  to  enable  him  to 
sail   along   the   course  of   his   inner  rhapsody  without   let   or 


FUN   AND   MISCHIEF.  <)9 

obstruction ; — and  all  the  while  keeping  time  to  the  rhythm  of 
this  rolling  stream  by  a  series  of  movements  sideways  on  his 
knees,  which  ended  by  landing  him  at  the  end  of  the  pew 
opposite  to  that  from  which  he  started.  Now  all  this  fine 
frenzy,  this  tempestuous  emotion,  which  so  stirred  the  con- 
gregation to  its  depths,  and  was  regarded  as  an  index  and 
measure  of  the  divine  afflatus  and  of  the  presence  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  Himself,  was  to  us  boys  a  matter  of  entire  indifference, 
a  mere  spectacle  without  ulterior  significance,  a  phenomenon 
to  which  we  had  got  accustomed ;  all  our  interest  being  reserved 
for  the  various  incidents  that  turned  up  during  the  evening, 
and  for  which  we  kept  an  intent  and  eager  eye. 

At  the  foot  of  the  pulpit  and  partially  encircling  it  was  placed  a 
plain  wooden  bench  known  to  the  people  as  the  'penitent's  bench.' 
At  the  beginning  of  the  service  it  was  usually  empty,  but  when 
once  the  prayers  were  well  underway,  and  the  electric  contagion 
of  the  speakers  had  begun  to  take  effect,  half  stooped  figures 
would  be  seen  gliding  softly  from  seat  to  seat  in  the  dimly-lighted 
room,  bending  down  to  the  ears  of  the  kneeling  men  and  women 
among  the  unconverted,  and  whispering  softly  and  gently  to 
them  of  their  souls.  As  result  of  these  confidences  you  would 
presently  see  issuing  from  one  of  the  pews  into  the  side  aisle 
the  form  of  some  young  maiden  perhaps,  who  with  hair  down 
her  back  and  bended  head  would  walk  slowly  forward,  weeping, 
to  take  her  place  at  the  penitent's  bench,  kneeling  before  it, 
and  burying  her  face  in  her  hands.  After  a  little  interval  a 
young  man,  perhaps,  from  an  opposite  quarter  of  the  room  would 
rise,  and  walking  forward  in  the  same  direction  would  softly 
kneel  beside  her ;  then,  perhaps,  an  old  man  or  woman,  until 
the  whole  bench  was  filled  with  a  miscellaneous  collection  of  all 
ages;  their  row  of  rounded  backs  as  they  knelt  being  alone 
visible  to  us  as  we  rose  in  our  seats  to  see.  This  exodus  and 
procession  of  figures  from  the  pews  to  the  penitent's  bench, 
unlike  the  mere  uproar  of  the  prayers,  had  a  great  fascination 
for  us  boys,  and  as  the  folk  issued  from  the  various  quarters  of 


70  FUN   AND   MISCHIEF. 

the  room  we  would  count  them  faithfully,  taking  the  liveliest 
interest  in  their  numbers,  movements,  and  personalities,  and 
often  whispering  and  talking  so  loudly  to  each  other  as  to  bring 
down  on  us  the  threats  of  the  care-taker.  The  prayers  meanwhile 
suffered  no  interruption  by  these  movements,  but  on  the  contrary 
rose  ever  higher  and  higher  in  their  ecstasy,  lashing  the  roof 
and  sides  of  the  chapel  in  their  gusty  tempestuous  violence ; 
and  the  congregation  who  had  hitherto  been  almost  silent  now 
became  deeply  moved.  At  first  only  an  occasional  *  Amen '  had 
at  intervals  risen  from  beneath  the  pews  in  response  to  the 
words  of  the  prayer,  but  as  the  air  became  more  electric  and 
the  vault  re-echoed  with  the  thunder  of  the  appeals,  a  whole 
orchestral  symphony  of  voices  kept  time  and  accompaniment  to 
the  movements  of  its  varying  theme,  running  like  the  chorus 
and  evening  calls  of  frogs  in  the  village  marshes  through  all  the 
gamut  of  sound  from  the  sharp  emphatic  '  Praised  be  God ! '  of 
the  recent  convert,  through  the  quavering,  bleating,  appealing 
'  Do,  Lord ! '  of  the  still  anxious  penitent  to  the  deep,  guttural 
'  Amen ! '  of  the  old  and  settled  believer  assured  of  his  safety. 

Up  to  this  point,  however,  in  spite  of  the  underground  swell 
and  roar,  nothing  was  visible,  so  that  when  you  swept  your  eye 
across  the  waste  expanse  of  pews  and  benches,  save  the  rounded 
backs  of  the  penitents  and  the  tempest-tost  head  of  the  member 
engaged  in  prayer,  no  human  soul  was  anywhere  to  be  seen,  and 
all  seemed  as  deserted  as  the  sea.  Presently,  however,  certain 
manifestations  as  in  a  spiritualistic  seance  began  to  make  their 
appearance  here  and  there,  and  as  the  prayer  mounted  ever 
higher  and  higher  in  its  rhapsody,  first  a  pair  of  hands,  perhaps, 
clenched  and  rigid  would  be  thrown  above  the  general  level  of 
the  pews,  and  after  clasping  each  other  in  a  spasm  of  agony 
would  be  suddenly  relaxed  and  drawn  down  again ;  a  heavy 
groan  marking  the  spot  whence  they  arose.  In  another  part  of 
the  room  a  second  pair  would  be  seen  grasping  the  back  of  the 
seat  and  clinging  on  desperately  as  in  that  picture  of  the 
1  Rock  of  Ages,'  till  the  knuckles  were  white  and  bloodless  with 


FUN   AXD   MISCHIEF.  71 

intensity ;  while  ever  and  again  at  regular  intervals  the  broad 
expansive  face  of  an  old  woman  in  the  corner,  in  an  encircling 
bonnet  of  straw,  would  rise  like  the  moon  above  the  horizon,  and 
after  opening  its  mouth  and  heaving  a  deep  sepulchral  groan 
would  sink  under  again  without  further  sign.  One  old  woman, 
I  remember. — an  old  milk-woman  of  the  village — who  sat 
immediately  under  the  stove-pipe  that  ran  along  the  centre  of 
the  room,  suddenly  one  evening  in  a  fit  of  ecstasy,  and  to  the 
great  excitement  of  us  boys,  jumped  up  with  a  yell  and  clasped 
the  burning  pipe  in  her  arms,  thinking  it  to  be  the  very  form 
and  presence  of  her  Saviour  Himself  !  and  when  next  morning 
she  appeared  at  our  door  as  usual  with  her  milk  can,  except  that 
her  hands  and  arms  were  wrapped  in  thick  masses  of  cotton  wool, 
no  reference  was  made  in  any  way  to  her  ordeal  of  the  night 
before. 

In  the  midst  of  these  manifestations,  and  above  the  din  of 
sobs  and  groans,  suddenly  a  great  thud  would  be  heard  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  penitent's  bench,  which  would  bring  us 
boys  to  our  feet,  craning  our  necks  to  see  what  had  happened. 
It  was  usually  one  of  the  female  penitents  who  as  the  prayer 
proceeded,  and  the  unconverted  were  being  shaken  in  wrath 
over  the  very  mouth  of  the  pit,  had  fallen  backwards  on  the 
floor  in  a  hysterical  faint,  ('  struck  by  the  Holy  Spirit '  as  these 
good  people  admiringly  phrased  it),  but  except  that  the  sound 
of  her  fall  served  only  to  redouble  the  fervour  of  the  prayer  and 
to  swell  and  deepen  the  chorus  of  interjections  and  groans,  it 
had  no  other  effect  on  the  congregation.  The  prayer  went  on 
as  usual,  no  one  rose  in  alarm  from  his  place  or  appeared  to 
notice  what  had  happened,  but  quietly  and  as  a  matter  of  course 
two  figures  of  men  stepped  noiselessly  forward,  and  picking  up 
the  fallen  as  on  a  battle-field,  carried  her  to  the  rear,  there  to 
give  her  fresh  air  and  cool  her  wrists  and  temples  with  the  snow. 
Sometimes,  but  especially  when  the  atmosphere  was  electric  with 
sympathy  and  the  tide  of  emotion  ran  high,  three  or  four  females 
would  be  thus  *  struck '  in  the  same  evening  and  carried  to  the 


72  FUN   AND   MISCHIEF. 

rear ;  and  although  little  was  said,  it  was  evident  from  the 
increased  fervour  of  the  groans  and  sighs  that  this  was  regarded 
by  the  people  themselves  as  a  peculiar  and  undeniable  evidence 
of  the  more  intimate  presence  among  them  on  that  evening  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  Himself. 

The  round  of  prayers  being  at  last  exhausted  the  congregation 
would  rise  from  its  knees,  and  after  a  hymn  or  two  would  begin 
what  was  called  the  'telling  of  experiences '  with  which  the 
meetings  closed.  In  this  exercise  old  and  young  converts 
alike  joined,  and  while  affording  us  boys  only  one  more  source 
of  amusement  they  were  listened  to  by  the  more  serious  part  of 
the  congregation  with  all  attention  and  gravity ;  and  as  each 
confessed  in  turn  to  the  secret  or  open  sins  of  which  all  alike 
were  conscious,  the  narration  seemed  to  be  received  with  a  vague 
and  incommunicable  delight.  Many  of  these  experiences  were 
told  with  a  humility  and  candour  most  touching  in  their 
simplicity,  especially  by  the  older  converts  who,  long  since 
subdued  from  their  first  ecstasy,  could  look  back  at  their  past 
lives  with  calmness  and  judgment ;  but  among  the  more  recent 
converts  the  lights  and  shades  of  the  revelations  they  made  were 
so  deepened  and  intensified  by  new-born  emotion  as  to  present 
eontrasts  and  transitions  at  times  astounding  in  their  violence. 
Some  told  of  their  previous  drunken  habits ;  others  (sailing  often 
perilously  near  the  wind)  of  their  carnal  lusts ;  others  of  the 
hopeless  deadness  and  ennui  of  their  lives.  Some,  again,  dwelt 
on  their  brutality,  their  dishonesty,  or  their  downright  criminality, 
and  on  how  all  this  had  been  changed  by  the  new  spirit  born 
within  them ;  and  with  all  of  these  the  congregation  testified  its 
sympathy  by  the  usual  running  commentary  of  exclamations  and 
groans. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  scenes  like  these  that  one  evening 
two  or  three  of  what  we  called  the  '  big  boys  ' — boys  some 
three  or  four  years  older  than  ourselves — unexpectedly  entered 
the  chapel  and  sat  down  near  the  back,  in  the  pew  immediately 
in  front  of   where  we  were  sitting.     There  was   something   in 


FUN   AND   MISCHIEF.  73 

their  very  presence  at  one  of  these  meetings,  as  well  as  in  the 
peculiar  air  and  attitude  with  which  they  took  their  seats,  that 
made  us  younger  boys  suspect  there  was  mischief  in  the  wind. 
What  it  was,  however,  we  knew  not,  nor  dared  we  ask  (for 
your  big  boy  had  always  a  royal  gift  of  snubbing  the  smaller 
ones)  but  presently  while  the  roll  of  the  prayers,  with  its 
orchestral  swell  of  sobs  and  groans  was  at  its  height,  a  sneezing 
set  in  here  and  there  from  beneath  the  seats.  Confined  at 
first  to  the  neighbourhood  of  the  front  pews  and  those  parts 
of  the  building  farthest  away  from  the  stove  in  the  entrance,  it 
spread  rapidly  and  soon  attacked  promiscuously  all  parts  of  the 
congregation.  The  member  engaged  in  prayer  was  the  first  to 
suffer,  his  surging  tide  of  words  being  rolled  back  again  and 
ever  again  with  the  violence  of  the  seizures,  while  he  still  held 
desperately  on ;  here  a  groan  was  cut  short  in  the  middle  as  by 
an  explosion ;  while  there  some  exultant  and  happy  soul  who 
had  started  out  in  the  simple  faith  of  being  able  to  deliver 
himself  of  his  *  Praised  be  God '  in  safety,  would  get  no  farther 
than  '  Praised  be  ' — when  a  paroxysm  like  a  cannon  ball  would 
blow  his  jubilation  and  his  sentiment  alike  into  extinction. 
The  old  woman  in  the  straw  bonnet  whose  moon-like  face  rose 
periodically  in  the  corner,  being  seized  as  she  rose,  would  be 
blown  under  again  without  having  time  to  emit  her  customary 
groan  ;  hands  thrown  up  in  ecstasy  would  disappear  as  by 
magic  ;  while  all  around,  alternating  with  the  violence  of  the 
paroxysms,  the  blowing  of  noses  called  to  one  another  from 
beneath  the  seats  like  trumpet-blasts  !  All  were  seized,  young 
and  old  alike ;  we  boys  as  well  as  the  rest,  though  unlike  them 
enjoying  the  fun  of  it  amazingly.  So  persistent  and  violent, 
indeed,  did  the  paroxysms  become  when  they  had  once  fairly 
set  in,  that  in  spite  of  the  heroic  efforts  made  to  hold  out,  the 
sneezing  succeeded  at  last  in  entirely  quenching  the  groans, 
cooling  the  rapture,  and  damping  the  fire  of  rhapsody  and 
prayer.  Groans,  prayers,  interjections,  exclamations  and 
appeals  all  alike  ceased ;  the  congregation  rose  spontaneously 


74  FUN   AND   MISCHIEF. 

as  by  a  common  impulse  from  their  knees ;  all  handkerchiefs 
were  put  into  requisition ;  and  for  some  time  nothing  was  heard 
but  the  violence  of  the  convulsions  and  the  blare  of  trumpet- 
responses  by  which  they  were  followed.  Soon  all  was  con- 
fusion, dismay  and  disorder ;  until  at  last  one  old  bald-headed 
gentleman  unable  to  contain  himself  any  longer,  and  making 
himself  the  mouthpiece  of  the  general  indignation,  leapt  nimbly 
on  to  the  window-sill,  drew  down  the  window  to  the  bottom, 
and  then  turning  round  and  facing  the  meeting  in  fury 
(sneezing,  too,  all  the  time  !)  offered  to  give  five  dollars  from 
his  own  pocket  to  anyone  who  would  discover  the  offender. 
But  it  was  of  no  avail,  the  secret  was  inviolably  kept,  the 
meeting  broke  up  in  confusion  and  dispersed  in  indignation ; 
and  except  that  it  was  generally  believed  to  be  the  work  of 
one  of  the  'big  boys'  who  had  stealthily  placed  some  red 
pepper  on  the  stove  when  he  entered,  the  special  hand  that 
wrought  the  mischief  remains,  for  aught  I  know,  undivulged  to 
this  day. 


CHAPTEK    IX 


COCKS    AND    PIGEONS. 

T7ROM  my  earliest  years  I  had  been  very  fond  of  domestic 
-*-  animals — dogs,  cats,  fowls,  pigeons,  and  pets  of  all  kinds 
— but  in  my  boyhood  this  fondness  attained  almost  to  the 
nature  of  a  passion.  For  several  years  I  lived  more  or  less  in 
the  thought  of  them,  carrying  them  about  with  me  in  my 
imagination  wherever  I  went,  wondering  what  they  were  doing 
when  I  was  out  of  the  way,  and  hastening  back  from  any 
errand  on  which  I  was  sent,  to  be  again  beside  them. 

After  keeping  a  number  of  ordinary  barnyard  fowls  for  a 
time,  and  then  selling  them  off,  my  interest  was  one  day 
aroused  by  hearing  that  a  German  lad  from  a  neighbouring 
settlement,  had  brought  to  the  village  a  pure  bred  silver  grey 
game-cock,  and  had  sold  it  to  one  of  our  boys.  So  excited 
was  I  on  learni ug  this,  and  so  full  was  my  imagination  of  the 
thought  of  possessing  it,  that  1  at  once  hastened  to  see  it,  and 
was  so  pleased  with  its  appearance  that  I  offered  to  give  my 
most  valued  possession,  a  little  iron  hand-sleigh,  in  exchange  for 
it.  The  offer  was  accepted  and  I  brought  the  bird  home  with 
me,  lodging  him  for  the  time  being  in  a  little  coop  which  stood 
at  the  bottom  of  the  garden.  He  was  a  magnificent  bird,  with 
great  long  neck  and  legs,  and  an  eye  which  on  sight  of  an 
enemy  turned  blood  red  and  flashed  like  fire.  But  he  had 
grown  rather  fat  and  out  of  condition,  and  my  first  concern  was 


76  COCKS   AND   PIGEONS. 

to  bring  him  into  fighting  form  again.  I  put  him  in  a  bag  to 
which  I  had  attached  a  long  piece  of  rope,  and  getting  high  up 
on  the  rafters  of  the  shed,  swung  him  from  them  backwards 
and  forwards  like  a  pendulum.  I  also  fed  him  on  pieces  of  raw 
meat,  hearing  it  was  the  right  thing  to  do,  and  when  I  had 
brought  him  into  what  I  considered  proper  fighting  form,  the 
desire  of  seeing  how  he  would  acquit  himself  in  a  pitched  battle 
grew  so  strong  on  me  that  I  could  not  rest  until  I  had  gratified 
it.  Accordingly  one  day  I  took  him  under  my  arm,  and 
sallying  forth  on  to  the  common  at  the  back  of  our  house, 
where  a  number  of  the  neighbours'  fowls  roamed  at  large  in  the 
day  time,  I  dropped  him  down,  and  a  fight  at  once  began. 
But  scarcely  had  he  time  to  show  his  prowess,  when  the  head  of 
the  old  negress  to  whom  the  other  bird  belonged,  appeared 
over  the  fence  at  the  bottom  of  her  garden,  threatening  to 
inform  on  me;  so  that  1  was  obliged  to  pick  up  my  bird  and 
run.  T  then  thought  of  the  '  old  Captain  '  who  lived  next  door 
to  us,  and  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken.  He  kept  a  number 
of  fowls  in  the  yard  adjoining  our  garden,  presided  over  by  an 
immense  Cochin-China  cock  of  about  twice  the  size  and  weight 
of  my  own  bird.  The  awe  in  which  I  stood  of  the  'old 
Captain '  had  alone  prevented  me  ere  this  from  matching  my 
bird  with  his,  but  as  I  grew  more  and  more  restless  under  my 
enforced  inactivity  I  resolved  one  day  to  venture  on  it ;  and 
choosing  a  time  when  I  thought  no  one  was  looking,  I  threw 
my  cock  over  the  close-boarded  fence  that  separated  us,  and 
watched  the  ensuing  fight  through  a  knot-hole  in  the  fence 
unobserved.  The  old  Cochin-China  fought  stoutly  but 
ineffectually,  his  great  fat  bulk  and  slow  unwieldy  movements 
being  but  sport  for  the  dashing  spring  and  untrammelled  flight 
of  my  light-limbed  Apollo ;  and  in  a  few  moments  his  great 
comb  was  all  bleeding  and  torn.  In  the  meantime  an  old 
Turkey-cock  that  was  feeding  in  the  yard  with  the  other  fowls, 
seeing  what  was  going  on  approached  the  combatants  and  began 
to  take  part  with  its  own  side  against  the  intruder ;  hovering 


COCKS   AND   PIGEONS.  77 

about  the  fight  and  dashing  in  at  my  bird  whenever  it  saw  an 
opening.  My  cock,  however,  was  not  the  least  daunted  by  this, 
but  held  its  own  gaily  between  both  its  antagonists,  dashing 
first  at  one  and  then  at  the  other ;  when  suddenly  as  bad  luck 
again  would  have  it,  the  '  old  Captain  '  who  was  always  fussing 
about  his  premises,  appeared  at  the  end  of  the  verandah  over- 
looking the  yard,  and  seeing  what  was  going  on  shouted  out 

in  his  loud  resounding  way,  '  By  G there's  a  strange  cock 

in  the  yard ! '  The  next  moment  he  had  passed  in  high  rage 
through  the  gate,  his  stick  held  menacingly  in  front  of  him,  and 
swearing  as  he  went.  Fearing  lest  he  might  fall  on  my  bird 
with  his  stick,  I  jumped  up  from  the  knot-hole  where  I  had  been 
watching  the  contest  with  bated  breath,  and  throwing  myself 
over  the  fence,  ran  forward  to  pick  up  the  bird.  But  the  sight 
of  me  (who  had  always  been  a  great  favourite  with  the  Captain) 
acted  on  the  old  man  like  a  sedative.  Walking  over  to  the 
place  where  I  was  standing,  while  I  was  stammering  out  my 
apologies  and  excuses,  instead  of  venting  his  rage  on  me  as  I 
had  expected,  he  fell  into  an  outburst  of  enthusiasm,  his  face 
beaming  with  admiration  as  he  related  to  me  as  if  it  had  been 
the  charge  of  the  Guards  at  Waterloo,  how  my  bird  had  led  on 
the  attack  against  each  antagonist  in  turn,  how  it  had  dashed 
and  ducked  and  wheeled  and  parried,  first  one  and  then  the 
other,  (all  of  which  he  described  on  the  ground  with  his  stick) 

and  ending  up  with  '  By  G Doctor,  he's  a  noble  bird,  and 

between  ourselves  he  would  have  killed  mine  if  he  had  had  fair 
play  ;  ' — and  then  in  a  whisper,  tapping  me  on  the  shoulder 
confidentially,  and  reverting  to  his  first  sensation  by  the  gentlest 
of  hints,  '  But  get  rid  of  him  my  lad,  or  he  will  get  you  into 
trouble. ' 

Scarcely  had  my  interest  in  fowls  and  game-cocks  begun  to 
decline,  when  a  new  fancy,  the  love  of  pigeons,  arose  within 
me,  and  so  fired  and  fascinated  my  imagination,  that  for  a  year 
or  two  they  were  the  sole  objects  of  my  idolatry.  Beginning 
at  first  with  a  few  pairs  of  the  commonest  sort,  I  gradually 


78  COCKS   AND   PIGEONS. 

added  to  my  stock  by  breeding  or  exchange,  until  in  the  end 
I  must  have  had  two  or  three  score  or  more.  The  shed  in 
which  I  kept  them,  and  to  which  I  have  already  referred,  was 
under  the  same  roof  as  our  house  itself,  but  was  only  partially 
built  in,  and  was  used  principally  as  a  place  for  the  bestowal  of 
firewood.  It  had  no  ceiling,  so  that  from  floor  to  roof  only 
the  great  beams  and  rafters  that  rested  on  the  stone-work  and 
stretched  across  it  from  side  to  side  were  to  be  seen.  In  the 
nooks  and  angles  of  these  rafters  I  had  boarded-in  little 
triangular  spaces  for  the  pigeons  to  build  their  nests,  besides 
disposing  a  number  of  moveable  cotes  made  out  of  old  tea 
boxes,  here  and  there  along  the  beams.  My  mother  as  usual 
protested  at  first  against  my  keeping  the  birds,  but  as  I  knew 
that  flying  about  on  the  rafters  above  they  were  as  inaccessible 
to  her  as  if  they  had  been  on  mountain  peaks,  I  paid  no  heed 
to  her  remonstrance.  I  myself,  indeed,  could  only  reach  them 
by  first  mounting  on  to  the  wood-pile,  and  from  thence 
climbing  by  means  of  a  number  of  uncertain  and  slippery  foot- 
holds which  I  had  cut  in  the  side  of  the  wall.  The  pigeons  in 
consequence  were  allowed  to  remain  undisturbed,  and  as  they 
flew  from  beam  to  beam,  fighting  and  flapping  and  cooing  and 
making  the  rafters  ring  with  their  merry  notes,  I  watched  their 
every  movement  from  the  doorstep  below  with  feelings  of 
strange  and  intense  delight.  They  had  not  been  long  settled, 
however,  before  I  began  to  weary  for  some  new  sensation,  and 
in  my  restless  desire  to  see  what  they  would  do  under  different 
conditions,  I  thought  I  would  try  the  effect  of  a  new  com- 
bination. I  pulled  down  the  boarding  from  the  places  which 
I  had  built  in,  and  having  removed  the  old  tea-boxes  from  their 
accustomed  places  as  if  they  had  been  so  many  pieces  on  a 
chess-board,  set  them  up  again  in  new  positions  on  the  beams. 
The  pigeons  thus  evicted  from  their  prescriptive  and  accus- 
tomed domains,  and  uncertain  of  their  whereabouts  in  this 
break-down  and  confusion  of  all  their  ancient  landmarks,  flew 
about  in  affright  from  rafter  to  rafter  without  finding  rest  for 


COCKS   AND   PIGEONS.  79 

their  feet.  Some  followed  their  own  tea-boxes  to  their  new 
positions,  others  in  their  uncertainty  took  refuge  in  the  old 
corners  where  their  cotes  had  once  been  ;  here  a  couple  of 
cocks  finding  themselves  in  strange  places  would  be  seen 
eyeing  one  another  with  an  air  of  deprecation  and  apology, 
there  another  couple,  throwing  away  all  ceremony,  would  be 
fighting  for  their  own  hands  like  old  feudal  barons ;  and  the 
whole  place  was  kept  alive  with  the  stir  and  confusion,  until 
having  at  last  settled  down  in  their  new  places,  order  was  re- 
established and  the  old  routine  went  on  as  before.  But  hardly 
had  they  begun  to  get  accustomed  to  their  new  quarters,  when 
some  fresh  fancy  would  seize  me,  and  once  engendered, 
between  its  conception  and  execution  there  was  no  pause.  I 
got  tired,  I  remember,  of  seeing  them  sitting  about  listlessly 
on  their  respective  cotes  or  flying  merely  from  rafter  to  rafter, 
and  thought  how  grand  it  would  be  to  see  them  perched  high 
up  against  the  very  roof  itself  and  flying  down  from  these  high 
points  as  from  some  eagle's  nest  for  food,  or  carrying  up  in 
their  beaks  the  straw  with  which  to  build  their  nests.  No 
sooner  thought  than  executed.  Once  more  the  scaffolding 
was  removed,  the  spaces  formed  by  the  ridge  of  the  roof  were 
boarded  in,  the  old  tea-chests,  after  having  their  corners  sawn 
off  to  fit  them  into  the  angles  of  the  roof,  were  placed  in  their 
new  positions,  and  all  being  ready,  the  pigeons  were  caught 
and  shut  up  in  their  cotes  until  they  had  got  accustomed  to 
their  new  environment ;  and  my  mind  was  once  more  at  rest. 


CHAPTEK    X 


A  MIDNIGHT   CAMPAIGN. 

nnHIS  rage  for  pigeons  having  once  set  in  soon  became 
-^  general  among  us  boys,  and  cotes  were  set  up  on  all 
hands,  on  the  tops  of  poles  and  sheds,  in  stables,  outhouses, 
and  barns.  In  our  spare  time  between  and  after  school  hours, 
we  would  visit  each  other's  yards  to  watch  our  respective 
birds,  discussing  freely  their  points  of  beauty  or  deformity, 
devising  new  schemes  of  crossing  and  breeding,  or  bargaining 
with  one  another  for  their  sale  or  exchange.  In  all  this  our 
young  energies  found  free  and  abundant  scope,  but  in  our 
quiet  moments  when  our  imaginations  took  a  wider  range,  one 
thing  was  felt  by  all  to  be  wanting  to  our  full  content.  Our 
pigeons  were  all  common  birds,  and  although  we  discussed  the 
colour  of  a  feather  or  turn  of  a  wing  with  as  much  seriousness 
and  gravity  as  if  they  were  the  last  refinements  of  the  breeder's 
art,  we  still  longed  for  those  fancy  birds  of  which  we  were 
never  weary  of  talking,  and  of  whose  beauties  we  had  heard  so 
much.  But  in  all  the  village  and  country  round  none  such 
were  to  be  found,  our  sole  extant  representative  of  birth  and 
breeding  being  an  old  half-bred  cock  fantail  with  red  wings, 
which  in  some  way  or  other  had  come  into  the  possession  of 
one  of  the  boys.  This  bird  had  long  been  the  centre  of  interest 
to  all  those  of  us  who  kept  pigeons ;  the  yard  in  which  he  was 
kept  was  seldom  without    one  or  more  of  us  boys  watching 


A   MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN'.  81 

every  movement  of  his  neck  and  tail  with  intense  and  absorbing- 
interest ;  while  the  fortunate  owner  carried  himself  with  as 
much  dignity,  and  was  invested  by  the  rest  of  us  with  as  much 
importance,  as  the  greater  magnates  of  the  City  or  'Change  by 
the  lesser  brethren  of  the  guild.  Unfortunately,  however,  for 
want  of  a  hen  of  the  same  rank  with  which  to  mate  our 
favourite,  he  had  to  be  paired  with  a  common  pigeon  ;  and  this 
mesalliance  which  profoundly  outraged  our  sense  of  the  fitness 
of  things,  was  as  much  deplored  by  us  all  as  if  the  bird  had 
been  our  own. 

It  was  while  thus  deeply  immersed  in  the  subject  of  pigeons, 
that  suddenly  one  day  word  was  brought  to  us  by  one  of  the 
boys  that  a  number  of  those  fancy  birds  for  which  we  had  so 
often  longed,  were  being  kept  by  a  large  and  wealthy  manu- 
facturer who  lived  in  a  fine  mansion  far  out  on  the  hill  behind 
the  village.  On  the  receipt  of  this  news  which  ran  from  boy 
to  boy  like  a  fiery  cross,  we  lost  no  time  in  starting  off  in  a 
body  to  ascertain  the  truth  for  ourselves.  And  sure  enough 
when  we  reached  the  place,  there,  sunning  themselves  on  the 
roof  of  an  old  barn  or  shed  before  our  entranced  and  delighted 
eyes,  were  the  pigeons  in  question  in  all  their  haughty  beauty — 
fantails  of  spotless  white,  whose  curved  and  quivering  necks 
lay  on  their  great  fringed  background  of  tail  as  on  a  cushion  ; 
great  pouters  with  feathered  feet,  standing  almost  erect,  with 
their  breasts  blown  out  and  wings  clapped  tightly  to  their  sides 
like  old  sentinels  on  guard ;  nuns  with  head  and  wings  tipped 
with  ebony  ;  and  jacobins  of  richest  chocolate,  whose  reversed 
and  upturned  feathers  encircled  their  dainty  little  heads  and 
necks  like  the  ruffs  of  olden  queens.  The  sight  of  these 
radiant  creatures,  falling  like  a  gleam  of  the  ideal  athwart  the 
poor  world  of  reality,  struck  us  with  envy  and  despair,  leaving 
behind  it  a  sense  of  longing  and  unsatisfied  desire  which 
poisoned  all  our  present  possessions.  On  our  return  home  our 
own  common  pigeons  once  so  lovely,  now  looked  poor  and 
mean ;   we  lost  all  interest  in  them  ;   even  the  '  old  red-wing  ' 

G 


82  A   MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN. 

himself,  whose   half-bred  tail  we  had  so  much   admired,   fell 

from  favour  as  a   poor  bedraggled  impostor,   and  we  walked 

contemptuously  by  him  as  by  a  deposed  king !    And  still  the 

vision  of  those  beauteous  birds  burned  within  ns  like  a  new-born 

love  unquenchable  ;  and  ever  as  we  went  to  feast  our  eyes  on 

the  glorious  vision,  we  returned  more  desolate  and  dissatisfied 

than  before.     But  as  our  love  and  longing  grew,  so  grew  our 

determination   to   possess    them,    and   although   at   first   they 

seemed  as  inaccessible  to  us  as  that  golden  fruit  which  hung  on 

the  fabled  tree,  our  determination  was    only  whetted  by  the 

difficulty,  until  it  became   our  only  object   of  thought.     But 

how  to  get  them  ?     For  the  rights  of  the  owner  we  had  no 

respect,  or  such  only  as  some  young  gallant  has  for  the  old  and 

sapless  husband  who  stands  between  him  and  the  young  and 

beauteous   bride.      What    could  he  want  with  them,  we  felt 

rather  than   definitely  thought — he.  whose  withered  affections 

were  too  old  and  seared  to  appreciate  his  prize,  and  who  had 

no  boys  of  his  own  to  enjoy  them?     Him,  therefore,  we  set 

aside  as  a   disagreeable  obstacle   to  be   overcome,   a  piece  of 

obstruction  merely  ;  and  still  the  problem  of  how  to  get  them 

kept  returning  and  swallowed  up  every  other  thought.     We 

first  thought  of  trapping  them,  but  it  soon  became  evident  that 

they  were  too  far  off  over  the  hill  to  come  within  the  flight  and 

circuit  of  our  own  birds  and  be  enticed  by  them  to  our  homes, 

and  this  scheme  had  to  be  abandoned.     Next  we  thought  of 

buying  one  or  more  of  them — a  thing  quite  within  the  reach 

of  some  of  the  boys,  whose  parents  would  gladly  have  supplied 

the  money — but  we  felt  it  unlikely  that  the  owner  would  part 

with  them ;  and  the  gruff  reply  of  the  gardener  (to  whom  we 

had  sent  a  boy  to  ask)  that  they  were  not  for  sale,  convinced 

us  that  it  was  useless  to  proceed  any  farther  in  that  direction. 

There  was  nothing  for  it  therefore  but  to  make  a  descent  on 

them  bodily  and  carry  them  off  like  Sabine  brides ;  and  this 

course  once  felt  to  be  inevitable,  we  concentrated  on  it  all  our 

energies,  laying  out  our  plan  of  campaign  with  all  the  wariness 


A    MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN.  83 

of  old  generals  and  the  cool  effrontery  of  the  most  hardened 
and  accomplished  villains  !  We  surveyed  the  ground  in 
couples,  sending  out  scouts  on  all  hands  to  ascertain  whether 
there  were  any  dog  about  the  premises,  and  if  so  where  it  was 
kept;  whether  the  old  gardener  slept  in  the  house  or  was  only 
there  in  the  daytime ;  what  were  the  best  modes  of  approach, 
and  what  the  facilities  of  escape  in  case  of  a  surprise,  and  so 
on.  These  points  being  all  accurately  determined,  an  informal 
council  of  war  was  held  in  which  we  all  took  part,  each  giving 
his  opinion  with  all  the  air  and  authority  of  the  most 
experienced  veteran ;  and  after  discussing  all  the  probabilities, 
such  as  whether  with  a  fair  start  we  could  out-run  either  the 
old  gardener  or  the  manufacturer  himself,  we  soon  matured 
our  plan  of  attack  and  now  only  awaited  a  favourable  moment 
for  putting  it  into  execution. 

The  out-house  in  which  the  pigeons  were  kept  had  at  one 
time  been  a  barn  or  stable,  and  stood  by  itself  in  grounds 
separated  from  the  long  garden  immediately  behind  the 
dwelling-house  by  a  broad  public  lane,  which  from  the 
comparative  absence  of  traffic  still  retained  its  primitive  green- 
ness. The  barn  itself  was  encircled  by  a  grove  of  young  pine 
trees,  and  behind  it,  and  stretching  for  a  mile  or  more  between 
it  and  the  village,  was  the  great  common  of  the  hill,  still 
covered  with  the  stumps  of  pines  cut  down  at  the  opening  up 
of  the  settlement.  The  door  of  the  barn  was  kept  permanently 
locked  ;  and  the  pigeons  instead  of  finding  their  way  into  the 
loft  through  the  ordinary  little  pigeon-holes,  entered  by  a  small 
window,  the  lower  sash  of  which  had  been  specially  removed 
for  this  purpose.  From  this  window  again,  projected  a  large 
foot-board  for  them  to  alight  on,  and  I  can  still  see  them 
walking  majestically  in  and  out  as  under  a  triumphal  arch, 
carrying  their  glorious  tails  above  them  like  banners.  Now  as 
this  window  was  some  eight  or  ten  feet  from  the  ground,  and 
the  opening  in  it  just  large  enough  for  us  boys  to  crawl 
.through,  the  problem  before  us  became  simply  how  to  reach 


84  A    MIDKIGHT    CAMPAIGN. 

the  window.  By  a  ladder  of  course,  was  the  universal  cry,  but 
as  that  was  likely  to  expose  us  to  observation  at  the  outset,  and 
might  prove  highly  inconvenient  in  the  event  of  a  hasty 
retreat,  it  had  to  be  set  aside  and  some  other  means  must  be 
devised.  It  was  felt  by  us  all,  therefore,  as  a  happy  thought, 
when  one  of  the  boys  suggested  that  we  should  construct  a 
special  ladder  for  the  purpose,  one  made  of  thin  strips  of  pine 
of  just  sufficient  strength  to  bear  our  weight,  and  with  a  hinge 
in  the  middle  by  which  it  could  be  folded  on  itself  like  a 
carpenter's  foot-rule,  so  that  when  covered  with  a  piece  of 
baize  or  oil-cloth  it  could  be  carried  under  the  arm  like  a 
portfolio.  Evidently  just  the  thing,  and  at  once  we  set  to 
work  on  it  with  all  our  zeal;  and  long  before  its  completion, 
that  love  and  longing  for  the  pigeons  which  like  the  love  for 
Helen  of  Troy  had  been  the  immediate  cause  of  the  campaign, 
was  swallowed  up  and  lost  in  the  fun  and  excitement  of  the 
adventure  itself. 

All  at  last  being  ready,  we  determined  to  wait  until  the 
nights  were  moonless,  and  to  meet  at  a  pre-concerted  hour  after 
our  parents  had  gone  to  bed,  at  the  corner  of  the  cross  road  at 
the  top  of  our  street.  At  the  appointed  time  all  were  there, 
some  having  stolen  quietly  out  of  their  bedrooms  when  the 
rest  were  asleep,  others  having  passed  out  through  the  back 
doors,  and  others,  again,  who  slept  in  the  upper  stories,  having 
let  themselves  down  from  the  window  on  to  an  adjoining  shed,, 
and  from  thence  on  to  the  ground.  There  were  six  of  us  in 
all,  as  far  as  I  can  now  remember,  and  all  animated  with  a 
spirit  so  bold  and  full  of  adventure  as  in  our  swelling 
estimation  and  conceit  to  be  ready  for  the  most  dangerous  and 
desperate  designs.  Carrying  the  ladder  with  us  folded  up 
under  an  old  piece  of  oilcloth,  we  started  off  in  high  glee, 
talking  and  swaggering  and  giggling  as  we  passed  along  the 
quiet  street  in  which  all  the  lights  were  now  out,  in  a  way  that 
threatened  speedily  to  destroy  all  discipline,  and  to  expose  us 
to   the   observation   of    our    neighbours.     Then   as   some   yet 


A   MIDNIGHT   CAMPAIGN.  85 

louder  or  more  meaningless  titter  than  the  rest  broke  out  on 
the  night,  one  of  us  would  call  out  in  irritation  '  for  goodness' 
sake  make  less  noise  or  we  shall  be  seen,'  when  we  would  all 
contract  ourselves  to  a  whisper  again;  and  thus  in  our  loose 
irregular  way,  now  boisterous  and  now  subdued,  we  passed 
beyond  the  open  street  and  reached  the  foot  of  the  hill. 
Keeping  straight  along  over  its  face  and  brow,  we  soon  found 
ourselves  on  the  wide  expanse  of  open  common  on  the  top,  and 
as  we  picked  our  way  among  the  stumps  in  the  silent  midnight 
under  the  lonely  moonless  sky,  the  feeling  of  tension  which  up 
to  now  had  been  noticeable  only  in  our  unwonted  gaiety, 
became  more  deeply  accentuated.  We  began  to  draw  more 
closely  together  and  to  lose  somewhat  of  the  careless  easy 
swagger  with  which  we  started ;  we  became  less  talkative,  and 
although  still  eager  and  aglow  with  excitement,  kept  our 
thoughts  more  concentrated  on  the  enterprize  before  us. 
Moving  forward  in  this  way  and  threading  our  course  carefully 
among  the  stumps,  our  eyes  and  ears  sharpened  to  acuteness, 
we  would  presently  be  startled  by  one  of  our  number  stopping 
and  whispering  excitedly,  *  listen,  boys,  what's  that  noise  1  ' 
Whereupon  we  would  all  draw  up  on  the  spot,  and  giving  our 
ears  to  the  surrounding  night,  listen  intently ;  then  hearing 
nothing,  would  dismiss  it  with  a  contemptuous  *  Oh !  it's 
nothing,'  and  resume  our  interrupted  way  again.  But  we 
would  not  have  gone  far  when  another  fancying  he  saw  some 
suspicious  figure  in  the  distance,  would  stop,  and  with  a  '  look ! 
what's  that !  '  again  bring  us  to  a  halt,  all  eyes  concentrated 
in  the  direction  in  which  he  was  looking;  but  on  once  more 
finding  it  was  nothing,  or  only  a  stump,  we  would  all  laugh  at 
his  fears  as  a  good  joke,  and  start  on  again  as  before.  In  this 
way  we  had  covered  the  greater  part  of  our  journey  and  had 
reached  the  fence  that  led  down  to  the  barn.  We  now  began 
to  advance  more  cautiously,  keeping  close  to  the  fence  and 
moving  forward  in  single  file,  holding  our  breath  and  speaking 
in  whispers ;  now  stopping  to  listen,  and  again  going  forward 


86  A  MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN. 

on  tiptoe,  but  cautiously  and  ever  more  cautiously  as  we  went, — ■ 
till  we  came  to  the  end  of  the  fence  around  the  corner  of 
which  was  the  barn  in  which  our  prize  lay.  Here  we  drew  up, 
our  heads  all  gathered  together  in  a  knot,  and  peered  out  from 
around  the  corner  up  and  down  the  lane,  our  ears  all  agleg  and 
our  hearts  (mine  at  least)  beating  violently  against  the  ribs, 
listening  to  every  sound.  But  nothing  was  to  be  heard,  the 
lights  in  the  windows  of  the  dwelling  had  all  gone  out,  and  all 
was  silence  around.  After  steadying  ourselves  for  a  moment 
as  for  a  plunge,  we  issued  forth  from  the  corner,  and  with  a 
whisper  of  '  Now,  boys,  come  on  ! '  stepped  across  the  interven- 
ing space  like  old  stage  villains ;  and  hastily  uncovering  the 
ladder,  straightened  it  out  and  set  it  up  beneath  the  window 
in  front  of  the  barn.  I  went  up  first,  I  remember,  with  a  box  of 
matches  in  my  hand,  and  clambering  on  to  the  foot-board, 
pushed  my  head  and  shoulders  through  the  opening  of  the 
window,  and  for  a  moment  or  two  lay  there  flat  on  my  stomach 
with  my  head  within  and  feet  without.  Inside  all  was  dark  as 
night,  and  I  could  not  feel  sure  whether  there  were  a  floor  to 
the  loft  or  not,  or  whether  I  might  really  be  gazing  over  the 
edge  of  an  abyss  which  had  no  bottom  but  the  foundation 
itself.  Striking  a  light  as  I  lay,  I  saw  by  its  feeble  glimmer  a 
plain  boarded  floor  beneath  me,  with  neither  hay  nor  straw  to 
cover  it,  and  around  and  in  the  angles  made  by  the  sides  of  the 
building  with  the  roof,  the  dim  form  of  the  pigeons,  and 
standing  out  among  them  in  all  their  distinctness,  the  white 
outlines  of  the  fantails.  Pulling  myself  through  and  getting 
my  feet  on  the  floor,  I  then  put  my  head  out  of  the  window, 
and  whispering  *  all  right,  boys ! '  gave  them  the  signal  to 
ascend.  In  quick  haste  they  followed  me,  mounting  one  after 
the  other  and  crushing  their  way  through  the  window,  three  of 
them  in  all,  the  other  two  being  left  outside  to  mind  the  ladder 
and  keep  watch  on  the  country  round. 

Once   well   inside,  we    stood   on   the  floor  in  the  darkness 
uncertain  where  to  begin,  and  giggling  nervously  in  our  per- 


A   MIDNIGHT   CAMPAIGN.  87 

plexity ;  for  it  was  now  apparent  that  all  the  fine  coolness  with 
which  we  had  planned  the  campaign  and  in  which  we  had 
figured  ourselves  as  sweeping  the  loft  with  as  much  sang-froid 
as  if  we  were  a  party  of  bailiffs  taking  inventory  of  its  con- 
tents, was  fast  ebbing  out  at  our  fingers'  ends.  Indeed  could 
we  have  found  any  plausible  excuse,  I  am  sure  we  should  have 
bolted  without  striking  a  blow,  but  from  this  our  pride  withheld 
us,  and  summoning  all  our  courage,  we  lighted  another  match 
to  see  where  the  pigeons  lay,  holding  ourselves  in  readiness  to 
spring  forward  and  make  one  captive  at  least  before  we  fled. 
But  scarcely  had  the  match  been  lit,  when  the  pigeons  grown 
wild  from  long  neglect  and  unaccustomed  to  such  midnight 
visitations,  flew  distractedly  about  in  every  direction,  striking 
the  sides  and  roof  in  the  uncertain  light  and  dropping  heavily 
on  the  floor,  or  hanging  on  by  their  feet  and  fanning  the  sides 
of  the  wall  with  their  wings.  Disconcerted  by  this  unexpected 
departure,  we  were  now  still  more  anxious  to  finish  our  work, 
and  pulling  ourselves  together  with  a  kind  of  desperate  courage 
and  each  fixing  his  eye  on  some  one  bird  before  the  light  went 
out,  we  plunged  forward  into  the  darkness  in  the  direction  in 
which  we  had  last  seen  them  or  whence  issued  the  sound  of  the 
still-continued  flapping  of  their  wings.  The  boards  of  the  floor 
only  loosely  laid  down,  creaked  and  groaned  and  rattled  at 
every  step  as  we  stumbled  and  scuffled  about  in  the  darkness ; 
here  one  boy  having  got  hold  of  his  bird  by  the  wing  only, 
was  trying  to  secure  it  while  it  flopped  and  fluttered  on  the 
floor ;  there  another  having  secured  his  first  prize  and  put  it 
under  his  waistcoat,  would  while  groping  about  in  corners 
trying  to  get  a  second,  come  against  the  wrall  with  his  head, 
getting  a  blow  which  dazed  him  ;  while  a  third,  baulked  of 
his  prize  and  in  fright  at  the  noise  we  were  making,  increased 
the  turmoil  by  calling  out  to  us  to  make  less  noise  or  we  should 
certainly  be  caught.  By  this  time  what  with  the  darkness,  the 
noise  of  the  birds,  the  rattling  of  the  floor,  and  the  time  we 
seemed  to  have  been  engaged  (for  although  we  had  really  not 


88  A    MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN. 

been  in  more  than  a  minute  or  two  it  seemed  to  us  an  hour !  ) 
we  were  getting  thoroughly  demoralized  and  confused ;  the 
panic  which  had  seized  the  pigeons  thad  spread  to  us  also ; 
when  just  as  we  were  beginning  to  feel  that  if  we  did  not  get 
out  we  should  to  a  certainty  be  caught,  and  were  on  the  point 
of  retreating  with  what  we  had  got,  one  of  the  boys  who  had 
followed  the  sound  of  a  pigeon  to  the  back  of  the  loft,  suddenly 
went  overboard  through  an  unsuspected  gap  in  the  floor  and 
was  precipitated  into  the  manger  below,  uttering  a  cry  of  horror 
as  he  fell!  Paralyzed,  bewildered,  and  utterly  panic-stricken 
by  this  catastrophe,  we  lay  glued  to  the  floor  on  our  hands  and 
knees  in  the  corners  where  we  had  been  groping,  afraid  to 
move  for  fear  of  pitfalls  within,  and  in  terror  of  enemies  with- 
out, unwilling  to  leave  our  comrade  to  his  fate,  and  yet  fearing 
to  stay  lest  we  should  ourselves  be  caught.  We  were  racked 
with  horror  and  uncertainty.  The  boy  himself,  meanwhile,  had 
no  sooner  gone  overboard  than  struggling  violently  and 
desperately  in  the  darkness,  unconscious  of  his  hurts,  he  came 
on  the  horizontal  bars  that  served  as  a  ladder  from  the  manger 
to  the  loft,  and  was  on  the  floor  again  before  we  had  had  time  to 
make  up  our  minds.  And  now  as  by  a  common  impulse,  the 
spell  which  bound  us  being  broken,  we  rushed  in  full  course 
pell-mell  to  the  window,  making  a  great  clatter  as  we  went,  and 
crushing  through  it  one  after  another,  our  terror  increased  by 
the  delay,  scrambled  down  the  ladder  and  took  to  our  heels,  the 
last  boy  being  left  to  leave  or  take  the  ladder  as  he  would. 

The  boys  meanwhile  who  had  been  left  outside  to  watch, 
hearing  the  noise  and  scuffle  within  and  unable  in  their  inaction 
to  bear  the  strain  of  the  situation  any  longer,  had  deserted  the 
ladder  and  fled  round  the  corner ;  and  as  we  rounded  it  after 
them  in  full  flight,  their  heels  in  the  now  rising  moon  could  be 
seen  flung  up  behind  them  among  the  stumps  ahead.  Seeing 
them  flying,  and  never  doubting  but  that  they  must  have  seen 
something,  we  redoubled  our  speed,  while  they  seeing  us  tearing 
after  them,  felt  sure  we  must  be  chased  and  flew  like  the  wind. 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

caufo^ 
a  midnight  campaign.  89 

Over  the  common  we  went,  sweeping  the  ground  in  a  kind  of 
dead  intensity  of  fear  without  looking  behind,  unconscious  of 
body  or  limb  in  our  unfettered  flight  as  if  we  had  been 
disembodied  spirits  ;  taking  the  knolls  and  hollows  of  the  ground 
which  we  scarcely  seemed  to  touch  and  which  smoothed 
themselves  out  before  us  like  a  carpet,  with  the  ease  and 
lightness  of  antelopes.  On  and  around  the  corner  of  the  fence 
in  the  rear  of  the  barn  we  flew,  and  then  along  the  hill  among 
the  stumps  for  a  quarter  of  a  mile  or  more  before  we  ventured 
to  look  behind,  and  then  drew  up  breathless  and  exhausted :  the 
boy  with  the  ladder,  who  alone  had  kept  his  head  and  who  had 
been  left  far  in  the  rear,  now  joining  us  in  hot  indignation. 
*  You're  a  fine  lot  of  fellows  to  run  away  like  that !  What  were 
you  frightened  of  !  '  he  exclaimed  contemptuously,  and  we 
finding  that  the  immediate  danger  was  passed,  or  indeed  had 
never  existed,  began  heaping  abuse  and  recrimination  on  one 
another  in  our  turn.  '  Pretty  fellows  you  to  leave  the  ladder  in 
that  way,'  said  we  to  the  two  recreants  from  their  post,  *  did 
you  hear  or  see  anything  t '  to  which  they  seeking  to  justify 
themselves  would  retort,  '  you  made  noise  and  clatter  enough 
inside  to  raise  the  whole  house,  and  we  should  soon  all  have 
been  caught.  What  did  you  run  for?  '  and  so  on  until  we  had 
exhausted  our  vein  and  recovered  breath  and  temper. 

Having  come  to  ourselves  again,  we  now  began  to  recount 
amid  much  fun  and  laughter  the  various  incidents  of  the  barn — 
of  our  crushing  through  the  window,  our  experiences  on  the 
floor,  of  the  falling  through  into  the  manger,  and  our  feelings 
thereupon — till  after  walking  on  together  for  some  time  with  an 
occasional  glance  behind  to  see  that  all  was  well,  we  at  last 
bethought  us  of  the  pigeons  themselves,  whom  in  our  excitement 
we  had  almost  forgotten ;  and  taking  them  out  from  under  our 
waistcoats  which  had  held  them  safely  pressed  against  our  breasts, 
we  proceeded  with  much  curiosity  to  inspect  our  prize.  There 
were  only  three  birds  in  all,  each  of  us  with  the  exception  of  the 
boy  who  fell  through  into  the  manger,  having  secured  one  ;  my 


DO  A   MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN. 

particular  capture,  I  remember,  being  one  of  the  white  fantails 
that  had  so  aroused  my  love  and  longing.  Standing  in  a  group 
on  the  open  hill  under  the  silver  midnight  moon,  we  held  them 
in  our  hands  stroking  and  caressing  them,  and  I  can  still 
remember  how  the  great  mass  of  tail  which  mine  displayed,  all 
f  ringed  at  the  ends,  so  different  from  the  '  old  red-wing, '  and 
still  crumpled  with  the  pressure  it  had  undergone,  again  affected 
me  with  the  old  feeling  of  its  loveliness  and  beauty.  But  as  we 
walked  along,  the  fact  that  although  it  was  now  mine  it  was  yet 
not  mine,  began  to  damp  the  pride  I  felt  in  the  possession.  I 
began  to  think  of  the  consequences,  and  to  feel  that  the  loss  of 
a  creature  so  radiant  as  this,  could  no  more  be  passed  over 
without  raising  the  village,  or  the  State  for  that  matter,  than  if 
it  were  the  Koh-i-noor  itself !  Thoughts  of  what  I  should  do 
with  it,  where  I  should  put  it,  what  I  should  say  about  it,  kept 
shuttling  in  a  most  disagreeable  way  through  the  background 
of  my  mind,  dashed  and  interlaced  with  yet  more  painful 
associations  of  the  owner,  the  schoolmaster,  the  constable,  and 
even  the  lock-up  itself.  That  this  feeling  was  shared  by  the 
other  boys  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  according  to  their  varying 
dispositions  or  temperaments,  was  soon  evident ;  for  on  the 
question  arising  as  to  what  we  were  now  to  do  with  the  pigeons,  we 
each  began  secretly  to  try  and  shift  the  burden  of  responsibility 
on  to  the  others.  '  Perhaps  you  had  better  keep  them  for  a  day 
or  two,'  one  would  remark  with  apparent  indifference  ;  '  No,  you 
had  better  take  them,'  the  other  would  reply  in  the  same  tone , 
a  third  adding  carelessly  and  as  if  without  the  least  afterthought, 
'  My  box  is  not  large  enough  for  them  all ; '  and  all  giving  more 
or  less  plausible  excuses  for  the  disinclination  which  they  dared 
not  avow.  But  the  more  we  each  perceived  this  disinclination 
on  the  part  of  the  rest,  the  more  alarmed  did  we  become,  and 
the  more  did  the  coil  of  consequences  which  threatened  us  grow 
and  gather  until  it  overspread  the  whole  field  of  thought.  So 
far  indeed  did  it  go,  that  as  we  were  approaching  the  brow  of 
the  hill  and  were  soon  about  to  separate,  one  of  the  more  timid 


A  MIDNIGHT   CAMPAIGN.  .  91 

of  us  suggested  that  we  should  let  them  go,  and  they  would  fly 
home  again  in  the  morning.  But  having  carried  out  our  plan 
so  far  apparently  without  observation  or  pursuit,  this  proposal 
was  resented  by  the  rest  of  us ;  the  beauty  of  the  birds  was  too 
much  for  us  ;  and  after  more  deliberation  and  discussion,  I  at 
last  undertook  to  take  them  and  keep  them  under  a  basket  in  a 
dark  and  secluded  part  of  our  shed,  until  the  danger  had  blown 
over.  All  being  now  arranged  we  separated  each  to  his  own 
home,  and  I  slipping  quietly  into  the  shed  and  putting  the  birds 
under  the  basket  for  the  night,  lifted  the  latch  and  stole  softly 
along  the  passage  to  my  bed-room  and  was  soon  fast  asleep. 

For  a  few  days  all  went  well,  the  pigeons  were  kept  as 
studiously  secluded  as  nuns,  my  visits  to  them  to  feed  or  fondle 
them  being  made  with  the  greatest  secrecy  for  fear  of  arousing 
my  mother's  suspicions.  When  the  other  boys  came  to  see 
them  and  we  took  them  out  into  the  light  to  have  a  good  look 
at  them,  we  would  speak  in  whispers,  and  at  the  sound  of  my 
mother's  footsteps  hastily  return  them  under  the  basket  again. 
All  seemed  serene  as  in  a  cloudless  sky,  no  whisper  of  suspicion 
was  anywhere  heard,  and  we  were  just  beginning  to  feel  that 
all  danger  of  discovery  was  now  past,  when  suddenly  on  my 
return  from  school  one  afternoon  my  mother  met  me  in  the 
doorway  in  an  agony  of  grief  and  rage,  and  broke  out  on  me 
violently  with  '  You've  disgraced  me  !  you've  disgraced  me  !  '  I 
saw  it  all  and  read  it  in  her  face,  and  with  horrible  visions  of 
the  constable  floating  before  me,  awaited  her  indictment  and 
recital  in  dumb  and  petrified  terror.  One  of  the  boys  as  it 
afterwards  appeared,  had  as  usual  confided  the  incidents  of  our 
midnight  campaign  under  pledge  of  deepest  secrecy  to  a  special 
comrade  of  his  own;  he  in  turn  had  told  the  old  gardener; 
the  gardener  his  master;  and  the  master  had  called  at  our 
house  to  make  enquiries,  after  I  had  gone  to  school  in  the 
afternoon.  When  he  announced  the  object  of  his  visit,  my 
mother  in  her  fear,  anxiety,  and  shame,  and  to  give  him  every 
facility  for  his  search,  had  lit  the  candle  and  conducted  him 


92  .  A   MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN. 

through  the  shed,  and  there  under  the  basket  in  its  darkest 
recess  he  had  come  on  his  pigeons  and  taken  them  away.  Now 
although  struck  dumb  at  the  outset,  my  mind  during  my 
mother's  recital  of  what  had  taken  place  had  not  been  idle,  and 
before  she  had  finished  1  was  prepared  for  her.  Determining 
to  face  it  out  I  affected  great  surprise,  protested  that  I  knew 
nothing  whatever  of  the  affair,  and  lying  like  a  diplomatist, 
assured  her  that  1  had  got  the  pigeons  from  another  boy,  whom 
I  named,  in  exchange  for  some  of  my  own,  that  he  had  bought 
them  from  a  third,  and  the  third  I  was  going  to  say  had  trapped 
them,  but  not  being  able  to  stop  at  any  one  for  fear  of  bringing 
home  guilt  to  that  one,  I  had  to  keep  ever  on  the  wing,  until 
the  series  and  chain  of  links  and  removes  through  which  the 
pigeons  had  come  to  me  became  as  confusing  as  a  genealogical 
tree,  losing  itself  in  distant  antiquity  like  a  pedigree ! — a 
procedure  of  mine  I  may  say,  which  had  not  my  mother  made 
up  her  mind  I  was  lying  from  the  first,  and  had  my  own  sense 
of  humour  not  lain  crushed  for  the  moment  under  my  fears,  must 
infallibly  have  damned  me.  The  owner  had,  it  appears,  on 
leaving,  thrown  out  some  hints  of  the  magistrate,  which  my 
mother  took  care  to  emphasize,  and  for  days  after  in  my  unrest 
and  uncertainty  as  to  the  consequences,  the  sight  of  the 
constable  in  the  distance  was  the  signal  for  me  to  betake  myself 
down  the  first  by-street  and  disappear  from  public  view. 
Nothing  farther,  however,  was  heard  of  the  affair,  and  in  a 
short  time  we  had  all  resumed  our  usual  gaiety  again  and  life 
went  on  as  before. 

After  the  incident  above  narrated,  my  interest  in  pigeons 
gradually  began  to  decline ;  I  no  longer  cared  for  the  common 
birds  as  I  had  done  before  the  vision  of  those  fancy  ones  fired 
my  imagination ;  and  besides,  the  period  during  which  any  one 
special  hobby  retains  its  hold  over  the  imagination  of  a  growing 
boy,  was  now  approaching  its  close.  But  I  still  continued  to 
keep  them,  rather  from  habit  than  from  any  active  love ;  until 
an  incident  occurred  which  adding  as  it  did  the  last  straw  to 


A    MIDNIGHT    CAMPAIGN.  03 

my  growing  indifference,  determined  me  to  part  with  them 
altogether.  One  evening  as  we  were  sitting  quietly  at  home, 
my  mother  hearing  a  noise  in  the  shed,  put  down  her  knitting 
and  taking  up  the  candle  from  the  table,  went  out  along  the 
passage  to  ascertain  the  cause.  I  followed  her,  and  on  opening 
the  door  into  the  shed,  a  figure  squatting  low  on  the  wood-pile 
and  holding  a  pigeon  in  its  hand,  confronted  us.  It  was  the 
boy  who  had  fallen  through  the  loft  into  the  manger,  and  to 
my  infinite  surprise  here  he  now  was,  caught  in  the  very  act  of 
stealing  my  birds.  Putting  the  best  face  on  it  he  could,  he 
professed  to  have  come  to  take  away  one  of  his  own  which  he 
said  he  had  seen  flying  at  nightfall  in  the  direction  of  our 
house  ;  but  as  he  was  himself  obliged  to  admit  that  the  bird 
he  held  in  his  hand  was  not  his,  but  mine,  his  treachery  was 
only  too  manifest.  80  thoroughly  shocked  and  disgusted  was  I 
with  this  breach  of  honour  on  the  part  of  one  of  the  boys  of  our 
own  set, — for  the  rest  of  us  I  am  sure  would  as  soon  have 
thought  of  shooting  one  another  as  of  trapping  or  stealing  each 
other's  birds — that  I  sold  off  my  whole  collection;  and  so 
brought  to  an  end  a  chapter  in  my  history  which  lingers  in  the 
memory  of  those  far-off  years  with  peculiar  vividness  and 
delight. 


CHAPTEE     XI 


MY    UNCLE    JAMES. 

QOME  time  in  the  hot  early  days  of  July  there  might  be 
seen  entering  the  village  in  successive  years,  a  well- 
dressed,  thick-set,  but  slightly  round-shouldered  man  of  about 
fifty,  black-browed,  and  clean-shaven  as  a  priest,  with  a  light 
straw  hat  clapped  down  on  the  back  of  his  head,  and  showing 
a  spotless  white  waistcoat  and  high  black  stock  under  the  light 
alpaca  coat  that  he  wore  loosely  as  protection  against  the  dust 
and  heat.  As  he  sauntered  along  the  streets  with  his  thin  lips 
tightly  compressed,  and  his  long,  slightly  upward-curving  nose, 
to  which  he  ever  and  again  gave  snuff,  carried  before  him  as  if 
sniffing  the  air,  his  grey  eyes  looked  out  from  under  their  dark 
eyebrows  on  the  persons  and  objects  passing,  with  the  curious 
but  bewildered  expression  of  a  stranger,  or  of  one  who  coining 
from  some  alien  world  of  speculation  finds  himself  out  of  touch 
with  the  currents  of  life  and  business  around  him.  This  man 
was  my  Uncle  James  the  schoolmaster — my  mother's  brother — 
who  had  come  to  town  to  spend  his  summer  vacation,  and  to 
enter  on  one  of  those  periodical  drinking  bouts  that  wrung  my 
mother's  heart,  but  which  by  the  enthusiasms  thrown  up  in 
the  course  of  their  eruptions,  gave  such  stimulus  to  my 
youthful  dreams  as  to  leave  abiding  traces  in  the  coming  years. 
In  his  early  days  he  had  received  a  good  education,  and  when 
quite   a  youth  had  gone,   his   mother's    pride,   to  Sweden   as 


31 Y    UNCLE   JAMES.  95 

English  tutor  in  a  Swedish  family.  There  he  remained  for  a 
few  years,  and  after  acquiring  during  his  stay,  from  the  habit 
of  toasting  one  another  over  the  table,  that  love  of  strong  drink 
which  was  his  bane,  he  returned  to  Scotland  a  confirmed 
drunkard,  to  break  his  mother's  heart.  After  teaching  for  a 
while  there,  and  doing  little  good  for  himself,  he  was  at  last 
persuaded  or  coerced  into  emigrating  to  Canada ;  and  had  now 
for  many  years  past  been  engaged  as  schoolmaster  in  one  or 
other  of  the  country  schools  in  the  vicinity  of  our  village. 
These  schools  he  again  and  again  lost  through  his  outbursts 
of  drunkenness,  and  again  and  again  reconquered,  on  probation 
at  least,  by  the  kindly  feeling  which  he  everywhere  inspired 
and  the  high  general  esteem  in  which  he  was  held  as  a  teacher. 
But  although  managing  in  a  general  way  by  desperate  efforts 
of  self-restraint,  to  hold  out  against  his  enemy  during  the 
terms,  regularly  as  the  vacation-time  came  round  he  would 
appear  in  the  village  with  his  salary  in  his  pocket,  and  after 
remaining  a  night  or  two  at  my  mother's  house,  would  be 
swiftly  drawn  into  the  current  of  his  temptation ;  and  sitting 
himself  down  in  one  of  the  taverns  in  the  place,  would  not  rise 
again  until  his  money  was  all  spent,  and  he  himself,  reduced  to 
the  last  stage  of  degradation,  was  flung  out  helpless  and  head- 
long into  the  street. 

On  his  first  arrival  in  the  village  he  would  call  at  our  house, 
and  on  my  return  from  school  in  the  afternoon,  he  would  rise 
to  greet  me  in  a  friendly  way,  but  with  the  somewhat  precise 
and  formal  manner  of  the  pedagogue,  and  after  remarking  on 
how  tall  I  had  grown  since  he  last  saw  me,  and  making  enquiry 
as  to  my  progress  in  my  various  studies,  he  would  sit  down 
again  and  resume  his  pipe.  About  his  whole  air  and  manner 
there  wTas  the  unmistakeable  stamp  of  the  old  bachelor.  He 
dyed  his  hair  and  disposed  it  with  the  greatest  care,  his  chief 
effort  being,  I  remember,  to  keep  it  plastered  down  on  the 
temples  in  front  of  the  ears  ;  and  every  now  and  again  in  the 
course  of  the  afternoon  he  would  rise  from   his  seat  without 


96  MY    UNCLE   JAMES. 

speaking,  and  walking  across  to  the  mirror  on  the  opposite 
wall,  would  take  a  small  comb  from  his  pocket  and  looking  at 
himself  first  on  one  side  then  on  the  other,  give  the  recalcitrant 
and  errant  locks  that  extra  touch  necessary  to  give  them 
smoothness  and  bring  them  into  line  again  ;  and  then  would 
resume  his  seat.  But  in  this,  as  indeed  in  all  his  movements, 
there  was  something  simple,  inoffensive,  and  abstracted ;  so 
much  so  that  my  mother  in  her  anxiety  for  him  when  he  had 
fallen  into  drink,  always  spoke  of  him  pathetically  as  a  poor 
harmless  creature  with  none  to  care  for  or  look  after  him,  and 
who  couldn't  take  care  of  himself.  It  was  not,  however,  from 
any  want  in  either  eyes  or  hands  that  he  had  this  aloof  and 
abstracted  air ;  on  the  contrary  he  was  master  of  a  number  of 
the  smaller  practical  accomplishments,  of  which  when  sober  he 
said  little,  but  which  when  drunk  he  aired  and  ventilated  in  a 
way  that  gave  him  great  vogue  and  reputation  among  the 
vulgar.  He  had  been,  for  example,  a  great  athlete  in  his 
youth,  was  still  excellent  with  the  rod  and  gun,  and  knew  all 
qualities  of  bait  and  hook-dressing  with  a  learned  and 
experienced  eye.  Then  too  he  played  the  flute  and  guitar 
well,  sang  readily  by  note,  and  could  write  a  hand,  as  my 
mother  admiringly  declared,  that  *  looked  like  copper-plate/ 
He  would  do  you  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  every  variety  of  Old 
English  character,  and  so  artistically  withal  as  to  be  thought 
worthy  of  being  framed  by  bis  admirers  and  hung  up  in 
drawing-rooms ;  and  as  for  a  Bank  of  England  note,  he  could 
execute  it  with  pen  and  ink  with  such  fidelity  as  in  the  opinion 
of  many  to  deceive  the  very  elect.  But  more  wonderful  than 
all  to  most  of  them  and  to  me,  he  made  wooden  sun-dials  with 
his  own  hand,  with  mystic  scraps  of  Latin  around  the  edges, 
doing  the  joining,  painting,  and  lettering  himself  ;  and  more 
mysterious  still,  could  actually  set  them  up  in  a  garden  in  such 
a  position  that  they  would  tell  the  time  of  day  !  It  was  not  in 
such  matters  then,  that  his  simplicity  and  unpractically 
appeared,  but  rather  in  his  apparent  want  of  interest  in  the 


MY    UNCLE   JAMES.  97 

world  around  him,  with  its  roar  and  bustle  of  ambitions,  its 
pushings  and  strivings  and  money-gettings,  through  all  of 
which  but  especially  through  its  trimmed  and  regulated 
decorums,  he  picked  his  simple  and  harmless  way  without 
offence  as  through  some  trimly-laid  garden,  absorbed  apparently 
in  some  far-off  unworldly  contemplation  of  his  own.  This  as 
you  soon  discovered  was  the  great  unsounded  world  of  book  or 
school  learning  in  which  he  was  immersed,  a  world  in  which  an 
error,  especially  one  of  detail,  was  the  primal  sin,  and  ignorance 
the  sole  object  of  censure.  Indeed  the  only  occasions,  perhaps, 
on  which  his  usually  even  temper  was  ruffled,  were  when  the 
authority  of  the  vulgar  was  invoked  in  support  of  some  well- 
worn  fallacy  or  truism  (it  mattered  little  which)  connected 
with  one  or  other  of  those  subjects  which  he  regarded  as 
peculiarly  his  own.  With  an  outburst  of  scornful  laughter,  his 
face  reddening  as  if  he  had  suffered  a  personal  affront,  he 
would  close  his  lips  tightly  and  burst  out  with  *  the  man  is 
utterly  ignorant  and  can  know  nothing  whatever  about  it,'  then 
shutting  them  again  with  the  old  emphasis,  would  silence  all 
further  conference.  His  interest  and  delight  in  these  themes 
ran  out  in  many  directions,  but  his  special  field  and  the  one  in 
which  he  secretly  most  prided  himself  was  '  the  Mathematics  * 
as  he  called  it,  especially  Astronomy,  the  vast  reaches  of  which 
had  fascinated  his  simple  and  wondering  imagination,  and  to 
whose  mysterious  depths  he  alone  among  his  own  circle  was 
believed  to  hold  the  key.  To  pretend  to  a  knowledge  of  this 
high  theme  without  the  special  imprimatur  of  a  University 
degree,  was  an  impertinence,  almost  a  blasphemy ;  and  to  be 
ignorant  of  it,  was  at  once  and  forever  to  condemn  you  to 
shallowness  and  superficiality. 

After  unpacking  his  trunk  he  would  leave  the  house,  my 
mother  in  spite  of  the  awe  in  which  she  stood  of  him  when  sober, 
not  being  able  to  resist  hinting  timidly  to  him  as  he  left,  to 
beware  of  temptation — a  remark  which  always  seemed  to  annoy 
him,  and  to  which  he  usually  made  no  answer.     From  this  time 

H 


38  MY   UNCLE   JAMES. 

nothing  more  would  be  seen  of  him  until  the  evening,  when  as  we 
sat  outside  enjoying  the  cool  night-breeze,  he  would  be  seen  in 
his  white  hat  and  waistcoat  rounding  the  corner  of  the  cross-street 
and  advancing  quietly  along  the  gentle  ascent  that  led  to  our 
house.  And  now  all  would  be  changed  with  him ;  it  was  evident 
that  he  had  had  just  sufficient  drink  to  stimulate  and  excite 
without  stupefying  him.  His  round,  clean-shaven  face,  usually 
somewhat  heavy  and  solid,  would  now  beam  and  glow  with  a 
kind  of  inward  illumination;  the  eyes,  dull  in  repose,  would 
glisten  in  the  rising  moon  like  watery  jewels ;  and  the  stiffness 
and  reserve  which  usually  characterized  him,  all  thawed 
.and  melted  away  in  the  generous  wine,  would  have  passed  into 
that  genial  unsuspecting  good-fellowship  in  which  all  were 
friends  and  brothers.  Shaking  hands  with  us  all  round  as  if  he 
had  not  seen  us  before,  and  sitting  down  beside  us,  it  would  not 
be  long  before  the  real  simplicity,  the  sense  of  wonder  that  lay 
at  the  root  of  his  nature,  would  begin  to  show  itself,  and  freed 
as  it  now  was  from  its  superincumbent  folds  of  stiffness  and 
reserve,  would  bare  itself  to  the  stars  and  the  night  as  if  to 
drink  them  in.  Prompted  by  the  inner  dance  and  music  that 
the  wine  was  making,  he  would  by  way  of  preliminary  break  out 
into  scraps  of  song;  but  soon  breaking  off,  by  some  sudden 
transition  of  thought  or  feeling  would  be  drawn  aside  into 
poetry.  His  favourite  passages,  I  remember,  were  Satan's 
address  to  the  Sun,  in  Milton,  and  Byron's  lines  in  Don  Juan 
describing  the  shipwreck,  beginning  '  Then  rose  from  sea  to  sky 
the  wild  farewell.'  Pushing  out  boldly  and  hurrying  over  the 
consonants  as  impediments  which  his  short  upper  lip  found  it 
difficult  to  compass,  he  would  be  soon  in  full  sail,  his  head 
keeping  time  to  the  recurring  cadence  of  the  lines,  and  waving 
over  them  like  some  high  tree-top  rocked  by  the  rising  breeze. 
When  he  had  finished  and  had  sealed  his  high  delivery  with  an 
emphatic  closure  of  his  mouth,  he  would  pause,  and  after  sufficient 
time  had  elapsed  to  allow  the  echo  of  this  organ  peal  to  take 
full  effect  on  his  imagination,  would  rise  and  with  unaffected 


MY   UNCLE   JAMES.  99 

rapture  exclaim  abruptly,  i  Grand !  such  language  !  such  sub- 
limity ! '  It  was  evident  that  he  was  now  in  the  full  tide  of 
enthusiasm,  the  poetry  serving  but  as  whet  and  foretaste  to  the 
grandeur  of  his  great  theme — Astronomy — on  which  he  would 
now  embark.  Rising  and  standing  on  the  pavement  in  front  of 
us,  the  bareness  of  his  well-rounded  temples  catching  the  rays 
of  the  slanting  moon,  he  would  gaze  into  the  starry  heavens 
around  and  above  him,  and  as  he  gazed  his  sense  of  wonder 
seemed  to  rise  and  swell  before  the  vast  depths  of  their  silent 
orbs,  as  the  tides  on  some  inland  stream.     Standing*  there  like 

7  o 

some  rapt  celibate  of  the  olden  time,  he  would  begin  by 
expatiating  on  the  '  sublimity '  of  his  high  theme  ;  and  on  the 
*  profound  '  knowledge  of  the  mathematics  it  required ;  spoke  of 
the  ■  vast  genius '  of  Newton,  as  if  he  saw  it  stretching  athwart 
the  arch  of  heaven  before  him  like  a  galaxy,  and  of  his k  gravitation' 
and  '  method  of  fluxions '  as  if  they  were  the  last  apocalypse  ; 
until  the  very  night  seemed  hushed  and  my  hair  would  creep 
with  admiration  !  Then  descending  to  particulars  he  would  tell 
of  the  calculations  of  eclipses,  the  very  names  of  which  he 
pronounced  with  awe,  and  of  how  by  these  high  methods  they 
could  '  be  predicted  to  the  very  fraction  of  a  minute; '  investing 
even  figures  in  his  ecstasy  with  as  much  majesty  and  importance 
as  if  they  were  the  poles  on  which  the  frame  of  things  them- 
selves revolved,  and  rolling  out  the  exact  distance  in  miles  of  the 
moon  from  the  earth,  as  triumphantly  and  with  as  much  serious 
solemnity  as  if  he  were  announcing  a  new  planet.  Rising  higher 
and  ever  higher  in  his  enthusiasm,  he  would  continue  in  this 
way  until  in  his  efforts  to  pluck  at  the  stars  and  to  expand  to 
the  greatness  which  he  contemplated,  like  the  crest  of  some 
great  mountain- wave  reaching  at  the  moon,  he  would  at  last 
break  and  fall ;  and  in  the  alternation  and  recoil  would  be  carried 
down  into  the  troughs  and  hollows  of  thought,  whence  after 
falling  into  admiration  of  himself  and  his  own  perfections  and 
rocking  himself  in  them  for  awhile,  he  would  rise  to  a  height 
of  boasting  of  his  own  achievements  as  colossal  and  sublime  as 


100  MY    UNCLE   JAMES. 

if  he  had  himself  given  these  shining  spheres  their  law  and 
harmony!  In  this  way  he  would  continue  his  harangue,  now 
losing  himself  in  the  grandeur  of  his  theme,  now  falling  into 
admiration  of  himself  and  his  own  exploits,  until  I  began  to 
think  him  a  real  Heaven-Compellor  and  Trismegistus,  and  was 
lost  in  admiration  and  wonder.  It  was  not  so  much  from  what 
he  definitely  said,  as  from  the  awe  and  rapture  with  which  he 
gave  utterance  to  such  magic  phrases  as  '  sublime,'  '  profound,' 
'vast  genius,'  'power  of  language,'  and  the  rest,  all  of  which 
sovereign  controllers  of  men's  thoughts  seemed  to  me  as  to 
himself  to  partake  rather  of  the  nature  of  divine  essences,  than 
as  marking  shades  of  distinction  among  merely  human  souls. 
It  was  this  that  fascinated  and  enchained  my  imagination,  and 
not  his  facts,  of  which  I  as  yet  knew  or  understood  little ;  but 
as  I  had  already  begun  to  make  for  myself  a  reputation  at  school 
in  the  elementary  mathematics,  the  tramp  of  these  words  and 
phrases  as  they  boomed  and  echoed  through  the  brain  like  some 
great  war-cry,  sounded  the  knell  of  all  baser  ambitions,  and 
inflamed  my  imagination  to  the  full.  Presently  I  would  ask  him 
whether  he  himself  were  good  at  Mathematics  ?  At  the  sound 
of  the  word  his  mood  would  instantly  change,  and  with  an 
outburst  of  scornful  laughter  he  would  exclaim  in  a  kind  of 
indignant  surprise  '  Good  at  the  mathematics  !  Ha !  Ha ! '  then 
giving  his  head  that  magnificent  roll  as  if  he  saw  in  vision 
before  him  his  own  excellence  blazoned  on  the  canopy,  '  Good 
at  the  Mathematics !  One  of  the  very  best !  I  have  solved  the  most 
difficult  problems  in  algebra,  cubics,  and  the  higher  Mathe- 
matics ! '  winding  up  with  a  supreme  touch  and  with  great 
emphasis  '  No  man  in  Canada  can  beat  me  ! ' 

Now  all  this  was  said  with  such  reach  and  magnificence  of 
sweep,  with  so  much  emphatic  boldness,  and  serious  solemnity 
of  tone,  that  I  was  deeply  impressed  by  it  and  would  perhaps 
venture  to  ask,  partly  in  good  faith  and  partly  to  hear  what  he 
would  say,  whether  he  were  not  perhaps  equal  to  the  great 
Newton  himself !     But  the  mere  mention  of  Newton's  name, 


MY   UNCLE   JAMES.  ]0l 

as  if  there  were  magic  in  it,  would  send  him  off  again  into  such 
raptures  of  admiration,  that  his  own  humble  achievements  which 
a  moment  before  had  filled  his  sky  from  the  zenith  to  the  sea, 
now  seemed  to  dwarf  themselves  into  nothingness.  'Newton  ! ' 
he  would  exclaim  in  indignant  scorn  of  me  for  asking  so  absurd 
a  question,  '  Sir — Isaac — Newton  ! '  each  word  being  separately 
repeated  as  if  it  were  hallowed  and  belonged  to  a  being  of 
another  order,  '  The  boy's  mad;'  then  falling  into  a  kind  of 
reverie  he  would  continue  repeating  to  himself  as  if  rapt  in 
wonder  and  admiration,  *  Newton !  Eh !  me !  such  a  genius  ! 
such  a  dungeon  of  a  mind  ! '  After  which,  rousing  himself  to 
particulars,  he  would  with  great  gusto  tell  the  story  of  how 
Leibnitz  the  great  French  mathematician  had  sent  a  problem 
across  the  Channel  to  Newton,  thinking  thereby  to  'baffle' 
him ;  and  how  Newton  had  at  once  solved  it  and  sent  it  back 
to  him  the  same  night ; — and  at  the  thought  of  this  stroke  of 
genius,  at  once  so  unprecedented,  so  profound,  and  withal  so 
improvised,  he  would  weep  tears  of  admiration. 

And  so  he  would  go  on,  throwing  himself  alternately  into 
ecstasy  and  tears  by  the  mere  mention  not  only  of  such  high 
and  hallowed  names  as  Newton  and  Laplace,  but  by  such  merely 
abstract  phrases  as  '  the  binomial  theorem,'  *  the  higher 
mathematics,'  'the  calculus,'  'the  method  of  fluxions,'  'the  law 
of  gravitation,'  and  the  like; — all  of  which  seemed  to  him  to 
savour  of  the  divine  ;  until  the  craving  for  drink  becoming  so 
overpowering  that  he  could  no  longer  resist  it,  he  would  rise 
and  make  his  way  back  to  the  hotel  again. 

II. 

The  ease  and  play  of  movement,  the  rapture  and  elevation 
which  the  drink  had  given  to  his  long-confined  and  costive 
spirit,  as  well  as  the  fire  which  it  had  started  coursing  through 
his  blood,  made  it  evident  to  us  all  that  nothing  would  now 
arrest  him,  but  that  once  entered  on  his  downward  course,  he 
would  continue  until  he  had  drained  the  cup  of  misery  and 


102  MY   UNCLE   JAMES. 

degradation  to  the  lees.  Accordingly  in  the  morning  and  in 
spite  of  my  mother's  entreaties  to  remain,  he  would  leave  the 
house  after  breakfast,  and  sending  for  his  trunk  shortly  after- 
wards, would  take  up  his  quarters  at  one  of  the  taverns,  where 
remote  from  my  mother's  eye  he  could  drown  at  once  his 
reason  and  his  cravings  unrebuked.  So  long,  indeed,  as  he 
had  remained  in  the  house,  my  mother  although  with  no  real 
substance  of  hope  still  snatched  at  its  flattering  shadow,  and 
comforted  herself  with  the  thought  that  if  she  could  keep  him 
with  her,  he  might  be  weaned  from  his  temptation ;  but  now 
that  he  had  gone,  and  even  this  poor  dream  had  vanished,  she 
gave  herself  up  to  unavailing  sorrow.  He  had  been,  as  I  have 
said,  his  mother's  pride,  and  the  rising  hope  of  the  family  when 
they  were  young  together,  and  the  tradition  and  memory  of 
this  early  time  undimmed  by  the  fast-fading  years,  in  spite  of 
the  disastrous  sequel, — this,  together  with  the  feeling  that  he 
was  now  a  poor  helpless  old  bachelor  with  no  one  to  care  for 
or  look  after  him  but  herself,  united  to  give  her  that  active 
anxiety  and  tenderness  for  him,  which  was  so  marked  a  feature 
in  her  life.  Now  that  he  had  gone,  therefore,  and  had  set  out 
deliberately,  poor  helpless  wight,  to  stagger  and  plunge  from 
depth  to  depth  of  drunkenness,  until  he  was  at  last  flung  out 
on  the  rude  world  in  hopeless  degradation,  she  could  not  rest ; 
but  wandered  about  the  house  from  morning  to  night,  moaning 
and  sighing  to  herself,  going  ever  and  again  to  the  door  to  look 
wistfully  up  and  down  the  street,  while  her  mind,  whipped  by 
scorpion  thoughts,  passed  in  its  efforts  to  relieve  itself,  from 
mood  to  mood  in  restless  alternation.  Now  it  was  indignation, 
as  she  thought  of  the  disgrace  he  was  bringing  of  his  own  free 
will  on  himself  and  her ;  now  disgust,  as  she  saw  in  imagination 
all  his  year's  salary  flung  on  the  counter  for  drink;  next 
moment  it  was  rage  against  tbe  publicans  whom  it  seemed  to 
relieve  her  to  figure  as  monsters  lying  in  wait  to  entice  him  to 
their  dens,  there  to  fleece  him  and  then  fling  him  into  the 
streets ;  and  when  all  these  had  spent  themselves,  she  would 


MY   UNCLE   JAMES.  103 

revert  again  to  her  first  anxiety  for  himself,  as  she  pictured 
him  wandering  about,  poor  simple  soul,  from  tavern  to  tavern ; 
a  prey  to  passing  kites,  and  rolling  ever  the  deeper  in  dirt  and 
degradation.  And  worse  than  all,  the  conviction  which  as 
time  went  on  deepened  into  a  certainty,  that  he  would  soon 
return  upon  her  hands  a  drunken  ruin  on  the  verge  of  delirium, 
his  money  all  spent,  and  he  himself  a  loathsome  object,  struck 
terror  to  her  heart.  '  Have  you  seen  anything  of  him  ! '  she 
would  anxiously  ask  of  me  every  day  on  my  return  from  school, 
and  if  some  days  passed  without  my  seeing  or  hearing  anything, 
she  would  begin  to  beguile  herself  with  the  hope  that  perhaps 
some  one  of  the  farmers  among  whom  he  had  many  friends, 
might  have  weaned  him  from  the  drink  and  taken  him  with 
him  to  his  own  home.  But  when  I  at  last  returned  to  tell  her 
that  on  my  way  to  school  or  at  play  I  had  seen  him  rounding 
the  corner  of  some  public-house  and  making  haste  to  enter  it 
by  the  side  door  as  if  ashamed,  or  had  caught  sight  of  his  back 
as  he  ploughed  his  way  in  lines  of  uncertain  straightness 
between  one  tavern  and  another,  his  coat-tails  floating  behind 
him  in  the  wind,  then  would  come  her  fit  again ;  and  rage  and 
grief,  indignation  and  despair  gnawing  at  her  heart  would  wear 
her  almost  to  distraction. 

In  this  way  the  days  would  pass,  until  unable  at  last  to  bear 
the  strain  any  longer,  she  would  send  me  around  to  the  taverns 
with  instructions  to  search  him  out,  and  after  praying  the 
landlords  to  give  him  no  more  drink,  to  beseech  him  for  her 
sake  to  come  home  with  me.  These  were  my  first  experiences  of 
bar-rooms,  and  I  can  well  remember  the  shyness  with  which 
I  approached  the  fat  and  genial  publicans  who  leaned  over  the 
bar  in  their  shirt- sleeves,  and  the  peculiar  smile,  sometimes 
ironical,  sometimes  frank  and  sympathetic,  with  which  they 
listened  to  my  message  and  gave  it  their  assent.  I  would 
perhaps  have  to  go  the  round  of  two  or  three  taverns  before  I 
came  upon  him,  but  in  the  end  I  was  sure  to  find  him  in  one 
or  other  of  them,  sitting  usually  on  one  of  the  wooden  benches 


,104  MY    UNCLE   JAMES. 

that  lined  the  room,  in  the  midst  of  a  number  of  chronic  or 
occasional  topers  like  himself,  treating  and  being  treated  in  turn. 
There  he  sat  among  the  *  ignorant  herd'  (as  he  called  them) 
whom  when  sober  he  most  despised,  loosed  from  all  sublunary 
moorings  and  floating  high  above  it  all  in  a  kind  of  drunken 
ecstasy  ;  his  straw  hat  all  battered  and  torn  at  the  seams,  his 
waistcoat  all  covered  with  snuff  and  tobacco-ash,  and  the  old  alpaca 
coat  all  crumpled  and  dirt-besoiled  beyond  recognition.  His 
clean-shaven  face  now  covered  with  a  short,  grey  stubble,  and 
bloated  and  inflamed  to  the  eyes  and  roots  of  the  hair,  ran  over 
in  weeping  streams  of  maudlin  good  nature ;  all  that  peculiar 
aloofness  with  which  he  held  himself  towards  the  crowd,  had 
melted  and  floated  down  from  the  high  pedantic  peak  on  which  it 
usually  ensconsed  itself,  and  mingled  in  their  turbid  stream. 
All  his  dignity,  reserve,  and  self-respect  were  gone ;  and  at  each 
deliverance  of  himself  or  another,  followed  by  a  roar  of  drunken 
laughter,  he  would  slap  his  comrades  on  either  side  of  him  on 
the  back  or  legs,  with  vile  familiarity.  It  was  clear  that  he  was 
now  content  and  at  peace  with  himself  and  all  the  world,  and  as 
he  puffed  away  at  his  pipe  or  spread  himself  out  in  long  lines  of 
boasting,  the  attentive  crowd  would  listen  to  his  harangue  in 
silent  deference,  interrupted  only  by  some  vain  or  captious 
interrogatory,  or  drunken  hiccough  of  assent. 

His  theme  on  these  occasions  was  as  usual  *  the  mathematics ' 
and  their  dependencies,  (for  there  was  nothing  low  in  his 
conversation  at  any  stage  of  his  descent)  but  on  the  special 
occasion  that  remains  with  me  most  vividly,  his  talk,  I  remember, 
was  of  Colenso  and  the  Pentateuch.  His  orthodoxy  which  had 
up  to  this  time  been  untainted,  and  which  in  after  years  I  have 
seen  to  stand  fronting  the  in-rolling  tide  of  scepticism  serene 
iind  smiling  as  some  mountain  base,  had  for  the  moment  been 
sadly  shaken  by  Colenso's  book,  which  he  had  just  been  reading. 
For  although  insensible  at  all  times  to  such  higher  arguments 
against  Revelation  as  might  be  drawn  from  the  nature  and 
action  of  the  human  mind,  or  a  deeper  insight  into  the  world, 


MY    UNCLE   JAMES.  10,5 

a  mathematica  argument  or  calculation  always  touched  him 
nearly,  and  at  the  one  point  where  he  was  entirely  vulnerable; 
and  about  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing  these  arguments  of 
Colenso  had  gone  so  far  as  almost  to  have  wrecked  Revelation, 
and  wrenched  Scripture  itself  from  its  fixture.  And  although 
when  sober  he  had  from  prudence  or  policy  kept  his  doubts  to 
himself,  now  that  drink  had  overcome  his  circumspection  he  was 
most  voluble  in  their  utterance  ;  and  when  I  entered  the  bar-room 
was  just  about  sealing  his  demonstration,  amid  the  boisterous 
dissent  and  uproar  of  his  auditors  (whose  orthodoxy,  on  the 
contrary,  drink  had  only  inflamed)  by  emphatically  declaring, 
as  if  the  foundations  of  Religion  itself  had  been  rocked,  that 
*  in  this  book  it  was  proved  by  the  most  indisputable  calculation 
of  mathematics,  that  the  Ark  could  not  have  contained  the 
animals  that  were  said  to  have  entered  it.' 

I  had  already  asked  the  landlord  behind  the  bar  to  give  him 
no  more  drink,  before  my  uncle  noticed  my  entrance,  but  on 
catching  sight  of  me  as  he  rose  to  replenish  his  glass,  instead 
of  regarding  me  as  a  disturber  of  his  revels,  he  came  forward  in 
his  most  smiling,  beatific  manner  to  shake  hands  with  me,  all 
the  cares  and  troubles  of  his  life  long  since  forgotten  and  lost  in 
his  drunken  dreams.  Swaying  backwards  and  forwards  like 
some  tower  about  to  fall,  he  poised  himself  before  me,  and  as 
the  sense  of  my  mother's  real  anxiety  and  concern  for  him  which 
had  brought  me  there,  broke  like  the  fleeting  memory  of  some 
forgotten  love  on  his  confused  consciousness,  with  the  tears  in 
his  voice  and  eye  he  murmured  to  himself,  '  Eh,  Nan !  poor  thing  ! 
poor  thing  !  '  Then  glancing  at  the  landlord  and  taking  in 
more  clearly  the  object  of  my  visit,  he  steadied  himself  against 
the  bar,  and  with  as  much  solemnity  as  if  on  oath,  and  in  the 
tone  of  one  suffering  an  injustice,  exclaimed,  •  But  she's  wrong ! 
quite  wrong  !  I've  not  had  a  single  glass  !  not  a  solitary  glass  ! ' 
NowT  this  solemn  and  startling  declaration  which  made  the 
landlord  stare,  was  so  familiar  to  me,  it  had  become  so  habitual 
a   formula  with  him  when  accused  or  suspected  of  drinking, 


10b*  MY    UNCLE   JAMES. 

(never  varying  more  than  from  *  only  a  single  glass '  when  he 
was  still  in  his  senses,  to  '  not  a  single  glass '  when  he  was  no 
longer  responsible),  that  I  took  no  notice  of  it,  but  went  on 
quietly  to  say  that  my  mother  had  sent  me  to  ask  him  to  come 
home  with  me.  But  in  his  then  state  of  mind,  this  ordinary 
request  so  tickled  him,  and  grew  into  such  a  mountain  of 
humour  or  absurdity  as  it  made  its  way  into  his  mind,  that  he 
overflowed  at  last  in  a  boundless  outburst  of  laughter,  and  patting 
me  on  the  head  affectionately,  went  on  to  tell  me  I  was  a  *  capital 
boy,'  a  'grand  scholar,'  then  turning  round  to  his  comrades  he 
was  about  proudly  to  exhibit  me  and  descant  on  my  'abilities  ' 
as  he  called  them,  when  I  took  the  opportunity,  his  back  being 
turned,  to  steal  quietly  out  of  the  door  into  the  street  again. 
There,  very  generally,  one  or  other  of  the  old  habitues  who  was 
lounging  at  the  corner  smoking,  and  who  had  been  in  and  out 
and  caught  snatches  of  my  uncle's  discourse,  and  been  much 
impressed  like  myself  by  his  high-sounding  epithets,  would 
beckon  me  aside,  and  remark  in  all  sincerity,  *  Extraordinary 
clever  man,  your  uncle  !  What  a  pity  it  is  !  Might  have  held 
the  first  positions  in  Canada  if  he  had  liked !     Great  pity ! ' 

III. 

In  this  way  he  would  continue  staggering  daily  downward 
through  lower  and  lower  depths,  until  his  money  being  all  spent, 
he  was  unable  to  pay  for  board  and  lodging  any  longer  at  the 
tavern,  and  would  be  turned  out  into  the  street ;  and  as  my 
mother  had  predicted,  obliged  to  fall  back  on  her  for  shelter  and 
maintenance.  It  was  usually  about  tea-time  that  he  made  his 
re-appearance  at  our  house,  and  my  sister  and  myself  as  we  sat 
playing  on  the  door-step  in  the  summer  afternoon  and  saw  his 
stooped  and  heavy  figure  staggering  in  our  direction,  would 
hasten  within,  our  hearts  beating  high  in  expectation,  to 
await  the  scene  that  was  about  to  follow.  Presently  his  footsteps 
would  be  heard  outside,  and  next  moment  his  face,  now  glowing 
like  a  furnace  with  drink  and  heat,  would  appear  in  the  doorway 


MY   UNCLE   JAMES.  107 

of  the  room  in  which  we  were  sitting.  Here  he  would  pause  for 
:i  moment,  and  smiling  in  on  us  apologetically  with  the  fatuous, 
guilty,  and  half-silly  look  of  the  old  drunkard  conscious  of  his 
sins,  would  with  an  effort  at  formal  politeness,  and  as  if 
uncertain  of  the  reception  he  was  about  to  receive,  stammer  out 
*  How  are  you  % ' — each  word  being  pronounced  slowly  and 
separately,  as  if  the  situation  were  one  of  more  than  usual 
gravity.  Then  taking  no  further  notice  of  us,  but  closing  his 
lips  firmly,  he  would  fix  his  eye  on  a  chair  that  stood  near  the 
fire-place,  and  picking  his  way  across  the  room  towards  it, 
struggling  hard  to  keep  up  the  appearance  of  sobriety,  would  in 
his  efforts  to  sit  down  on  it  treat  it  as  tenderly  and  carefully 
as  if  it  were  made  of  glass !  Once  securely  seated,  he  would 
take  off  his  old  torn  and  tattered  hat,  and  sinking  his  chin  into 
his  hand  and  laying  his  forefinger  along  the  side  of  his  nose  as 
if  in  thought,  would  fall  into  a  kind  of  torpor,  broken  only  by  an 
occasional  emphatic  '  aye !  aye  ! '  as  if  in  response  to  some 
inward  soliloquy  of  his  own. 

Presently  footsteps  would  be  heard  in  the  passage,  and  my 
mother  who  had  been  bustling  about  in  the  garden  or  shed, 
and  was  quite  unconscious  of  his  arrival,  would  come  into  the 
room,  and  as  she  stood  gazing  at  him  in  surprise  without 
speaking,  he  would  rouse  himself  to  turn  round,  and  with  the 
same  guilty,  half-silly  smile  with  which  he  had  greeted  us, 
would  make  bold  to  say  '  How  are  you  Nan  !  '  But  the  sight  of 
his  flushed  and  drunken  face,  daring  thus  with  shameless 
effrontery  to  confront  her  with  '  How  are  you  ?  '  added  to  the 
deep  indignation  she  felt  at  what  she  had  predicted  having  now 
come  true,  was  more  than  she  could  endure;  and  without 
acknowledging  his  greeting  she  would  step  forward,  and 
contrary  to  her  usual  quiet  and  gentle  manner  would  break  out 
into  a  violent  rage,  ending  up  with  '  You  may  go  back  to 
where  you  came  from,  for  you  will  not  come  here  to  disgrace 
my  house,  I  assure  you ! '  Too  far  gone  to  make  any  effective 
reply  to  this  outbreak,  he  would  fall  back  in  defence  as  usual 


108  MY    UNCLE   JAMES. 

on  his  old  formula,  stammering  out  with  difficulty  but  with  all 
the  emphasis  he  had  at  his  command,  *  You're  wrong  Nan !  you're 
quite  wrong !  I've  not  had  a  single  glass  !  not  a  solitary  glass  ! ' 
Now  had  my  mother  been  possessed  of  any  sense  of  humour, 
this  astonishing  remark  must  have  certainly  outflanked  her,  and 
shown  her  how  futile  it  was  to  argue  with  him ;  but  in  her 
present  outraged  mood,  and  although  she  now  heard  it  for  the 
hundredth  time,  she  still  treated  it  as  seriously  as  if  it  had 
been  made  on  oath  for  the  first ;  and  its  barefacedness  only 
served  to  inflame  her  the  more.  Opening  her  eyes  wide  in 
amazement,  and  standing  rooted  to  the  spot  as  if  entirely 
unable  to  do  justice  to  it,  she  would  turn  round  to  us 
appealingly,  and  say,  'Did  you  ever  hear  the  like  of  that?' 
then  striding  towards  him  and  bending  over  him  would 
point  to  his  bloated  face  and  general  disreputable  condition, 
and  exclaim  indignantly,  'How  dare  you  tell  me  you  have 
not  been  drinking?  Have  you  not  been  sitting  at  old  B — 's ' 
(the  public-house  in  question)  '  for  the  last  six  weeks,  until 
you  have  spent  all  your  money  and  been  turned  out  at 
last  ignominiously  into  the  street  ? '  Then  after  a  pause  in 
which  there  was  no  reply,  gathering  herself  up  and  exclaiming 
with  reiterated  emphasis,  '  But  you  may  go  your  way  again,  for 
you'll  not  stop  here,'  she  would  sweep  in  a  tumult  of  rage  and 
despair  out  again  by  the  back  door  into  the  garden. 

When  she  had  gone,  he  would  look  round  at  us  suspiciously, 
as  if  we  too  were  enemies,  and  in  an  aggressive  manner  would 
repeat  with  the  same  tone  of  emphasis,  '  She's  quite  wrong ! 
I've  not  had  a  single  glass !  not  a  fraction  of  a  glass ! ' 
and  sink  into  silence  again.  But  as  we  responded  with 
'  Never  mind  Uncle,  it's  all  right,  it's  all  right ! '  the  cheerful 
and  sympathetic  tone  of  our  words  seemed  to  reassure  him,  that 
in  a  moment  he  would  become  quite  confidential,  and  with  a 
shake  of  the  head  and  a  '  poor  Nan '  (as  if  she  and  not  he  ought 
to  apologise ! )  would  then,  glancing  around  at  the  door  as  if  he 
saw  my  mother's  flaming  figure  re-entering,  add  in  an  excited 


MY    UNCLE   JAMES.  10!) 

under-tone,  almost  a  whisper,  '  Sh ! — or  she'll  hear  you.'  All 
being  now  comfortable  between  us,  we  would  then  jump  on  the 
table  and  seating  ourselves  there  as  audience,  ask  him  to  sing  us 
a  song.  This  request  in  the  maudlin  state  in  which  he  then 
was,  and  in  which  his  moods  could  be  turned  on  and  off  like  a 
tap,  seemed  to  please  him  greatly  as  a  homage  done  to  his 
abilities,  and  with  a  laugh  of  satisfaction,  all  his  cares  forgotten, 
he  was  soon  well  under  way,  his  head  rolling  and  face  suffused 
with  inner  ecstasy ;  while  we  tittering  and  giggling  and  pinching 
one  another  in  our  delight,  roared  with  laughter  at  the  fun. 
But  our  boisterous  hilarity  was  soon  summarily  extinguished 
by  the  re-entrance  of  my  mother.  She  had  been  walking  up 
and  down  the  shed  in  restless  misery,  all  torn  and  fretted  by 
agitation  and  grief,  when  our  hilarious  laughter  broke  on  her 
ear  and  blew  her  troubled  spirit  into  a  flame  of  rage  again.  That 
this  *  old  sorrow,'  as  it  relieved  her  to  call  my  uncle,  should 
instead  of  hiding  his  disgrace  and  sitting  in  sackcloth  and  ashes 
repenting  of  his  sins,  be  so  lost  to  all  sense  of  shame  as  to  dare 
come  to  her  house  and  turn  it  into  a  very  bar-room  of  uproarious 
mirth  and  laughter,  weakening  her  discipline  and  destroying  the 
morale  of  her  home,  and  worse  still  that  we  her  children  instead 
of  frowning  him  off  in  silent  frigidity  and  disapproval,  should 
by  our  sympathy  and  encouragement  gild  and  smooth  over  his 
shame,  was  an  affront  more  than  her  nature  could  bear.  Burst- 
ing into  the  room  in  the  middle  of  the  song,  she  would  rush  first 
at  my  sister  and  myself  as  the  prime  offenders  in  the  disturbance ; 
but  we  would  already  have  read  her  intention  in  her  eye,  and 
jumping  off  the  table  would  be  outside  the  door  before  she  could 
reach  us.  Foiled  with  us,  she  would  then  turn  round  on  my 
uncle,  and  crying  in  her  rage  *  How  dare  you  come  here  to  turn 
my  house  into  a  Bedlam  ! '  would  enter  on  a  detailed  catalogue  of 
her  grievances  and  his  delinquencies,  until  she  had  unbosomed 
herself  of  the  weight  of  the  indignation  that  was  oppressing  her, 
and  exhausted  her  last  epithet  of  opprobrium  and  shame.  But 
as  the  poor  inoffensive  creature  sat  there  hearing  this  recital 


110  MY    UNCLE   JAMES. 

without  a  murmur,  she,  now  all  upset  at  what  she  had  said, 
would  in  a  sudden  access  of  remorse  fall  from  her  high  indignation 
into  a  plaintive  and  pathetic  lament.     '  If  instead  of  going  to 

old  B 's,'  she  would  continue, '  and  staying  there  till  all  your 

money  was  gone,  and  you  were  turned  out  into  the  street,  you 
had  but  come  here  and  given  it  to  me  to  keep  for  you,  I'm  sure 
I  would  have  been  glad  to  take  you  in  and  to  have  made  you 
comfortable ;  so  that  you  could  have  gone  back  to  your  school 
xigain  and  had  something  to  put  aside  for  yourself  when  you 
were  too  old  for  work.  But  now,  all  dirt  and  misery,  you  have 
no  clothes  fit  to  wear ;  you'll  have  lost  your  school ;  and  have 
none  to  take  you  in.  Oh !  if  you  would  but  drop  that  drink 
which  broke  your  mother's  heart !  if  you  would  but  drop  that 
drink ! '  These  words  of  my  mother's,  the  pathos  in  her  voice, 
and  the  essential  love  for  him  which  they  revealed,  and 
especially  the  mention  of  his  mother's  name,  were  sufficient  in 
his  drunken  mood,  like  the  pull  of  a  trigger,  to  set  him  off 
weeping  like  a  child.  In  an  overflow  of  remorse,  the  tears 
streaming  down  his  bloated  cheeks,  the  poor  creature  would  sit 
there  in  helpless  misery,  declaring  that  my  mother  was  the  best 
of  all  his  sisters,  and  sobbing  out  in  broken  ejaculations 
'You're  right  Nan,  and  I'm  wrong!  My  poor  mother!  I'm 
wrong,  I'm  wrong ! '  the  tears  continuing  to  flow  with  his 
words,  until  my  mother,  her  memory  crowded  with  associations 
of  years  gone  by,  which  the  scene  had  let  loose,  was  unable  to 
bear  it  anv  longer  and  left  the  room. 


IV. 

After  a  scene  like  this  he  would  go  back  to  the  tavern,  and 
on  his  return  would  open  the  door  gently,  and  passing  through 
the  room  in  which  I  was  sleeping,  would,  without  lighting  a 
candle,  grope  his  way  through  the  darkness  into  a  passage 
leading  to  the  back  of  the  house.  There,  on  a  mattress  which 
my   mother   had   spread   for  him  on  the  floor,  he  would  lay 


MY    UNCLE   JAMES.  Ill 

himself  down,  clothes  and  all,  without  a  murmur,  not  daring  to 
come  into  my  room  in  the  face  of  my  mother's  indignation. 
But  at  last,  his  money  having  long  since  run  out,  the  publicans, 
to  my  mother's  great  satisfaction,  would  refuse  to  serve  him 
with  any  more  drink,  and  he  would  soon  be  quite  sober  again. 
So  great  was  her  joy  at  this  consummation,  that  she  loaded 
him  with  small  attentions;  treating  him  with  all  her  old 
traditional  respect,  and  even  when  in  moments  of  ill-humour 
the  shadow  of  his  misdemeanours  happened  to  fall  over  her 
mind,  relieving  herself  of  her  irritation,  not  in  the  free  and 
direct  way  we  have  seen,  but  by  a  mild  and  distant  kind  of 
insinuation  only,  which  amused  me  very  much,  but  of  which 
he  took  no  notice.  And  now  it  was  that  the  deep  effects  of 
his  long  drinking  began  to  show  themselves.  He  could  not 
sleep,  and  his  hand,  especially  in  the  mornings,  trembled  so 
violently  that  he  had  great  difficulty  in  lighting  his  pipe  or 
holding  his  cup  of  tea  without  spilling  it.  He  mooned  and 
wandered  up  and  down  the  house  all  day  long,  now  going  to 
the  door,  now  into  the  shed  or  garden,  moving  about  as  one 
impelled  from  within  by  some  haunting  dream  and  unable  to 
rest.  All  of  a  sudden  as  he  sat  at  table,  he  would  draw  his 
arms  up  as  if  levelling  a  gun  to  shoot,  then  making  motion  as 
if  laying  it  by  his  side  again  would  finish  his  meal  in  silence. 
At  other  times  he  would  rise  from  his  seat  in  the  middle  of  his 
discourse,  and  going  to  the  wall  of  the  room  immediately 
opposite  to  where  he  sat,  would  squat  like  a  crouching  cat  for 
a  moment,  then  springing  suddenly  up,  would  sweep  his  hand 
across  the  wall  as  if  he  were  catching  flies,  and  then  resume  his 
seat  again.  Now  as  he  was  quite  sober  at  the  time,  arid  spoke 
quietly  and  naturally,  this  extraordinary  procedure  so  astounded 
me  that  I  took  the  first  opportunity  when  he  was  out  of  the 
way  to  ask  my  mother  what  it  all  meant.  But  to  this  she 
would  only  reply  that  it  was  all  the  drink,  that  she  had  often 
seen  him  like  it  before,  adding  significantly,  '  He'll  have  the 
delirium  tremens  before  long,  you'll  see.' 


112  JVIY   UNCLE   JAMES. 

My  mother  in  the  meantime  would  have  washed  and  scrubbed 
him  into  decency  again,  and  now  that  he  was  sweet  and 
wholesome  he  was  allowed  to  sleep  with  me.  One  night  we  had 
gone  to  bed  early,  leaving  the  big  log  fire  burning  brightly  on 
the  hearth  in  front  of  us,  but  I  had  not  been  asleep  long  when 
I  was  rudely  wakened  by  his  grasping  my  arm  and  in  an  excited 
under-tone  calling  me  by  name.  Starting  up  alarmed,  I  found 
him  sitting  up  beside  me  and  gazing  fixedly  at  the  foot  of  the 
bed.  '  Do  you  not  see  them  t '  he  whispered  excitedly  when  he 
saw  I  was  awake,  and  still  keeping  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  bed ; 
but  except  the  ruddy  glow  of  the  dying  embers  suffusing  the 
walls  of  the  room,  and  the  loud  ticking  of  the  clock  in  the 
silence,  I  saw  or  heard  nothing.  *  Mercy  !  Do  you  not  see 
them  ?  '  he  repeated  still  more  excitedly,  and  as  if  annoyed  at 
my  stupidity,  as  in  my  gathering  fears,  now  multiplied  tenfold 
by  his  voice  and  manner,  I  continued  staring  in  the  direction  in 
which  he  was  looking.  But  before  I  had  time  to  speak,  shrinking 
behind  me  as  if  seized  by  some  preternatural  terror,  he  called 
out,  '  It's  the  devils  !  Do  you  not  see  %  See  !  they're  coming ! ' 
his  eye  still  fastened  in  horrid  fascination  on  the  bed-cover,  over 
which  legions  of  evil  spirits  in  steady  infernal  file  were  trooping 
with  inexorable  feet  towards  him.  And  when  at  last,  the 
seconds  counting  hours  with  him,  they  were  just  about  as  he 
thought  to  clutch  him,  with  a  horrid  yell  he  leapt  over  the  bed, 
and  sweeping  through  the  door,  his  night-shirt  blown  behind 
him  in  the  wind  of  his  flight,  passed  out  into  the  shed.  Without 
pause  or  interval  I  leapt  after  him,  distilled  with  fear,  but 
taking  the  opposite  direction  swept  in  a  wide  circuit  around 
the  foot  of  the  bed  into  my  mother's  room,  and  jumped  in 
beside  her.  '  It's  all  the  delirium '  was  my  mother's  only 
comment,  as  in  irritation  she  heard  my  story  and  tried  to 
persuade  me  to  return  to  my  own  bed  again ;  but  it  was  of  no 
avail,  I  was  not  to  be  dislodged,  and  there  I  remained  till  the 
morning,  when  nothing  further  was  said  of  the  matter  and  all 
went  on  as  before.     In  a  few  days  one  or  other  of  his  friends 


MY   UNCLE   JAMES.  113 

among  the  farmers  would  in  all  probability  call  at  the  house  and 
take  him  with  them  into  the  country,  to  live  with  them  until  he 
had  quite  recovered,  and  a  school  had  again  been  found  for  him. 
But  it  was  not  always  so  easy  to  get  him  sober  even  when  his 
money  had  all  been  spent,  and  sometimes,  indeed,  especially  at 
the  Christmas  holidays,  the  difficulty  was  so  great  as  to  reduce 
my  mother  almost  to  despair.  The  farmers  from  the  country 
round,  many  of  whom  were  his  friends,  thronged  the  taverns  in 
festive  jollity,  spending  their  money  freely,  so  that  what  with 
borrowing  from  them  or  being  treated  by  them  in  the  daytime, 
and  the  shelter  our  house  afforded  him  at  night,  there  seemed 
no  reason  why  his  drinking-bout  should  not  be  prolonged 
indefinitely.  This  uncertain  continuance  of  his  drunkenness,  by 
foiling  my  mother's  design  of  getting  him  cleaned  up  and  in  fit 
state  to  return  to  his  school  again,  so  fretted  and  worried  her 
that  at  last  in  desperation  she  resolved  to  end  it  by  locking  him 
out  altogether. 

It  was  on  a  cold  and  frosty  night  about  the  New  Year's  time 
I  remember,  when  about  midnight  1  was  wakened  out  of  my 
sleep  by  the  sound  as  of  a  gentle  tapping,  and  sitting  up  in  bed 
to  listen,  a  low  and  monotonous  moan,  as  of  someone  weeping,  was 
borne  in  on  us  intermittently  from  the  doorstep  ;  and  presently 
a  voice  like  the  far-off  wail  of  some  poor  creature  in  distress, 
moaned  cut  plaintively,  'Nan,  Nan!  let  me  in!  let  me  in!' 
'  It's  that  old  sorrow  come  back  again,'  exclaimed  my  mother,  as 
she  heard  me  sitting  up  in  bed  beside  her  to  listen ;  then 
after  a  pause  in  which  his  multiplied  iniquities  seemed  to  fall 
thick  upon  her,  she  continued  in  a  tone  and  voice  as  if  the 
roads  to  her  heart  were  stopped  to  all  pity,  '  But  he  may  go 
back  to  those  who  gave  him  the  drink,  he'll  not  stop  here.' 
Now  I  was  quite  old  enough  at  this  time  to  feel  that  this  habit 
of  his,  of  first  spending  all  his  money  at  the  tavern,  and  tiien 
falling  back  on  my  mother  to  keep  him,  was  not  right  or  fair 
to  her;  aud  I  tried  to  reinforce  her  in  her  good  resolution. 
But  without  paying  any  heed  to  me,  or  else  telling  me  to  hold 

I 


114  MY    UNCLE    JAMES. 

my  tongue,  she  continued  her  own  course,  going  through  her 
stereotyped  round  of  denunciation  in  her  own  way,  now  in 
soliloquy  to  herself,  and  now,  after  snubbing  me,  addressing 
herself  to  me  again  as  audience;  at  one  moment  buttressing 
herself  in  high  indignation,  and  again  falling  off  into  plaintive 
lamentations,  but  still  without  showing  any  sign  of  wavering 
in  her  resolution  ;  when  all  of  a  sudden  the  sounds  from  the 
doorstep  ceased,  and  for  some  little  time  all  without  was  as 
silent  as  the  night.  This  interval  of  silence,  in  her  present 
high  tension  and  uncertain  mental  poise,  was  sufficient  to  give 
a  new  direction  to  her  thoughts,  as  she  seemed  to  see  the  poor 
inoffensive  creature  lying  there  on  the  doorstep  in  this  deadly 
winter  night,  in  a  drunken  sleep  from  which  he  might  never 
awake  ;  and  it  was  with  a  feeling  of  relief  that  a  few  minutes 
afterwards  we  heard  the  tapping  recommence,  with  the  low 
murmur  as  of  someone  weeping,  in  the  pause  and  interval  of 
the  sounds.  Her  good  heart  could  bear  it  no  longer,  and, 
jumping  out  of  bed,  she  threw  on  her  clothes,  and  murmuring 
1  T  cannot  leave  him  there  to  perish  in  the  cold/  went  to  the 
door  and  let  him  in.  But  scarcely  had  she  done  so  and  the 
door  had  closed  again  behind  them,  when  I  heard  a  confused 
noise  like  the  fall  of  some  great  tree,  come  from  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  door !  It  was  my  uncle  who  had  fallen  in  a 
confused  heap  in  the  entrance  when  the  door  was  opened  for 
him ;  and  once  down  he  was  unable  to  rise.  There  was  nothing 
for  it  therefore  but  for  her  to  take  him  by  the  coat-collar  and 
without  further  ceremony  to  drag  him  along  the  floor  to  his 
mattress  in  the  passage,  and  this  owing  to  her  magnificent 
physique  she  was  able  easily  to  do  ;  and  after  all  these  years  I 
can  still  hear  the  sound  of  his  heels  as*  they  scraped  the  floor, 
marking  the  course  of  the  trail  from  stage  to  stage  !  Leaving 
him  there  for  the  night,  she  then  returned  to  bed  all  breathless 
and  unstrung,  to  continue  her  laments,  while  I,  now  that  the 
excitement  of  the  little  drama  was  over,  in  the  midst  of  it  fell 
fast  asleep. 


MY   UNCLE   JAMES.  115 

And  so  it  continued  on  and  off  for  years,  until  I  grew  into  a 
big*  lad,  when  my  uncle  falling  under  the  influence  of  some 
revivalists  who  had  visited  the  town,  was  induced  to  sign  the 
pledge ;  and  from  that  time  onwards  until  I  left  home,  he  re- 
mained true  to  his  vow  never  again  to  touch  the  accursed  thing. 
Through  the  influence  of  his  friends  a  school  was  easily  secured 
for  him  near  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  he  lodging  with  us  and 
walking  to  and  from  it  night  and  morning.  Once  installed,  he 
was  quite  the  old  gentleman  again,  and  might  be  seen  in  the 
summer  evenings  sauntering  along,  his  face  clean  shaven,  and 
sniffing  the  air  with  his  long  up -curving  nose,  dressed  in  new 
alpaca  coat  and  straw  hat,  and  showing  underneath  his  spotless 
white  waistcoat  just  that  degree  of  growing  corpulency  which 
lent  dignity  and  importance  to  his  figure.  But  he  still  remained 
the  old  bachelor  in  all  his  habits  and  ways  ;  still  rose  from  his 
seat  every  now  and  again  to  look  at  himself  in  the  glass  ;  and 
although  ceasing  to  dye  his  hair,  still  carried  with  him  the 
small  pocket-comb  with  which  when  opportunity  offered  he 
gave  his  scattered  locks  that  smoothness  of  disposal  about  the 
temples  which  he  considered  essential  to  his  complete  toilet. 
He  died  shortly  after  I  left  Canada  for  England ;  and  some 
years  later  my  mother  followed  him  to  the  grave,  and  with  the 
memory  of  their  early  years  still  unsullied  by  the  intervening 
conflicts  and  sorrows,  her  last  expressed  wish  was  that  she 
should  be  laid  beside  him,  so  that  in  death  as  in  life  they  might 
not  be  divided. 


CHAPTER    XII 


THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL. 

TN  the  open  fields  far  back  from  the  highway  and  on  the 
extreme  ridge  of  ground  that  rose  above  the  deep  waters 
of  the  river,  stood  a  small,  plain,  unpretentious  stone  building, 
solitary  among  the  wide  expanse  of  stumps  that  surrounded  it, 
and  showing  its  grey  and  dingy  front  to  the  passing  traveller 
as  he  journeyed  northward  along  the  road  leading  over  the  hill 
from  the  village  to  the  open  country  beyond.  This  rude  and 
primitive  structure  was  the  celebrated  Grammar  School  of 
Gait,  which  already  in  those  years  had  flung  its  shining  beams 
athwart  the  entire  breadth  of  the  Dominion,  and  had  drawn  to 
itself  pupils  from  the  wide  extent  of  territory  lying  between 
the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Atlantic  shore.  Hither  as  to  some 
great  public  school  of  the  Middle  Ages,  attracted  by  the  fame 
of  its  Head  Master,  and  the  roll  of  distinguished  pupils  it  had 
sent  to  the  Universities,  came  in  winged  flights  from  far  and 
near  the  sons  of  the  influential  and  well-to-do,  as  well  as  boys 
from  the  village  itself,  and  a  small  sprinkling  of  old  veterans 
who  having  been  teachers  themselves  had  come  to  acquire  that 
knowledge  of  Classics  necessary  to  qualify  them  for  higher 
grades  of  responsibility  in  their  own  sphere.  And  here,  too, 
from  out  the  fun  and  mischief  in  which  I  had  hitherto  been 
disporting  myself,  I  was  duly  entered  as  a  pupil  in  my 
fourteenth  year,  without  ulterior  or  definite  aim  of  any  kind  on 


THE   GRAMMAR   SCHOOL.  117 

my  part,  but  the  good  fortune  that  had  awarded  me  the 
scholarship  which  was  open  every  other  year  to  the  most 
advanced  pupil  in  the  village  school.  At  the  time  of  my 
entrance  there  were  some  hundred  and  fifty  pupils  or  more  in 
attendance,  most  of  whom  coming  from  a  distance,  boarded 
with  the  Head  Master,  or  in  houses  under  his  direct  superin- 
tendence ;  the  rest,  except  those  of  us  who  lived  at  home  in 
the  village,  being  quartered  at  the  homesteads  of  the  farmers  in 
the  country  round. 

The  high  reputation  which  the  school  enjoyed  was  due 
entirely  to  the  untiring  energy  of  its  Head  Master,  the  great 
Dr.  Tassie,  then  a  B.A.  of  Dublin  University,  but  afterwards 
honoured  for  his  services  with  the  title  of  LL.D. — who 
beginning  some  ten  years  before  with  only  a  dozen  pupils,  had 
by  his  force  of  character  and  unique  personality  brought  the 
school  up  to  its  present  high  position,  and  to  a  condition  of 
working  efficiency  unexampled,  perhaps,  among  the  institu- 
tions of  the  time.  He  was  a  stout  thick-set  man  of  about  fifty 
when  I  first  came  under  his  ferule,  and  although  carrying  with 
him  an  easy  rotundity  and  corpulence,  still  walked  with  firm, 
elastic  step,  and  bore  himself  with  great  stiffness,  erectness,  and 
dignity.  In  the  sunny  summer  mornings  a  number  of  us  boys 
were  wont  to  congregate  about  the  school-door  awaiting  his 
arrival,  and  with  that  latent  defiance  of  all  constituted  authority 
which  is  ever  ready  to  spring  up  in  boys  when  they  get  together, 
to  beguile  the  time  and  snatch  a  momentary  relief  from  the 
deep  awe  with  which  we  secretly  regarded  him,  we  would 
profess  to  treat  him  as  a  good  jest,  making  jokes  at  his  expense 
and  speaking  of  him  lightly,  and  with  easy  braggadocio  as  '  Old 
Bill.'  But  when  his  inevitable  '  white  plug '  as  someone 
irreverently  called  the  white  top-hat  he  habitually  wore,  made 
its  appearance  on  the  brow  of  the  hill,  and  he  moved  towards 
us  over  the  dewy  morning  grass  and  among  the  stumps  with  a 
tread  steady  and  resolute  as  Fate,  and  especially  when  he 
came  near  enough  for  us  to  see  the  great  whites  of  his  eyes  as 


118  THE    GRAMMAR   SCHOOL. 

he  threw  them  sideways  at  us  over  his  nose  without  moving  his 
head,  like  some  old  Field  Marshal,  we  involuntarily  composed 
our  features  to  a  due  decorum  and  respect,  as  knowing  well 
that  the  suspicion  of  a  smile  now  would  be  our  doom.  Onward 
he  would  come,  with  the  sternness  and  rigour  of  the 
disciplinarian  in  his  whole  carriage  and  movement,  and  as  if 
conscious  of  his  own  footsteps ;  holding  his  stick  poised  in  his 
hand  with  a  punctilious  lightness  as  if  it  were  for  dignity 
rather  than  use.  His  dark  and  sallow  face,  clean  shaved  with 
the  exception  of  a  pair  of  light  tufts  near  the  ears,  was  large, 
square,  and  regular  in  outline,  and  although  mounted  and 
embossed  with  a  full,  round,  Roman  nose  studded  over  with 
pores  like  a  thimble,  was  decidedly  handsome ;  his  whole 
countenance,  indeed,  when  in  repose  and  with  nothing  to  ruffle 
it,  falling  into  lines  of  great  softness,  and  wearing  by  the 
confession  of  all,  an  expression  of  singular  pleasantness  and 
courtesy.  This  expression,  together  with  the  soft,  rich,  tones 
of  his  voice,  which,  however,  had  always  a  snap  as  of  metal 
somewhere  in  the  rear  of  them,  would  by  itself  have  misled  the 
unwary,  had  it  not  been  for  the  iron  dominion  of  his  eye  which 
swept  over  us  like  a  blast,  and  scorched  and  abashed  all  that  it 
looked  upon.  These  formidable  weapons,  before  which  the 
oldest  veterans  trembled,  were  of  light  grey  colour,  and  so 
prominent  as  to  show  almost  a  disc  of  white  around  their  small 
central  bull's-eye  of  grey ;  and  had  besides,  that  uncertain 
scintillation  and  suggestion  of  the  tinder-box  about  them, 
which  made  you  feel  that  they  would  strike  fire  at  a  scratch 
and  set  all  in  a  blaze.  They  come  back  to  me  now  as  more 
like  the  eyes  one  sees  in  the  portraits  of  Frederick  the  Great 
than  any  others  I  remember  to  have  seen,  and  when  he  raised 
them  on  us  quite  unconsciously  and  mechanically  as  he  passed 
us  on  his  way  towards  the  door,  rebellion  itself  turned  pale  and 
nascent  defiance  withered  and  melted  away.  Walking  in 
behind  him  in  respectful  silence,  we  would  take  our  seats,  and 
when  the  hand-bell  had  rung  to  call  in  the  rest  of  the  boys 


THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL.  119 

who  were  playing  about  in  the  field,  after  a  short  prayer  which 
he  read  from  a  printed  card,  the  work  of  the  day  would  begin. 

High  on  a  raised  platform  at  the  upper  end  of  the  room,  and 
commanding  the  whole  of  the  open  area  between  the  row  of 
desks  set  apart  for  the  senior  boys  on  the  one  side,  and  the 
long  row  of  benches  lining  the  wall  crowded  with  juniors  on  the 
other,  sat  the  Head  Master  himself  in  all  his  dignity  and  state ; 
bending  his  ear,  book  in  hand,  as  he  listened  to  the  lessons  that 
were  being  rehearsed  to  him  by  a  select  number  of  advanced 
pupils,  on  a  semi-circular  wooden  form  before  him.  The  rest  of 
the  boys  would  be  either  sitting  in  their  seats  waiting  for  their 
turn  to  be  heard,  or  standing  at  the  bottom  of  the  room  reciting 
their  task  to  the  assistant  teacher;  and  for  a  time,  except  for 
the  shouts  of  '  silence '  that  rose  ever  and  again  from  the 
Master,  and  rang  like  a  trumpet  over  the  rising  hum,  coercing  it 
into  limits  again,  all  would  go  smoothly  and  well.  But 
presently  some  more  flagrant  misconduct  on  the  part  of  one  of 
the  elder  boys,  or  excess  of  trifling  in  a  junior,  would  arrest  his 
eye  as  he  raised  it  casually  from  the  lesson -book  to  take  survey 
of  the  room.  In  a  moment  his  face  would  darken,  and  a 
burning  flush  mounting  to  his  brow,  he  would  start  from  his  seat, 
and  taking  the  '  tawse '  from  the  drawer  beside  him,  would 
descend  from  his  platform  to  the  arena  below  like  some  great 
Olympian ;  his  eyes  all  ablaze  with  passion,  their  great  whites 
rolling  red  with  blood,  and  flushing,  as  was  well  said,  literally 
like  a  game-cock.  Keeping  the  tawse  tightly  in  his  hand 
behind  his  back,  he  would  move  towards  his  victim  with  a  tread 
that  shook  the  foundation  and  made  the  very  windows  tremble ; 
and  coming  up  to  the  culprit  without  further  remark  or  word 
of  explanation  than  'your  hand,  sir,'  would  lay  on  to  it 
apparently  with  all  his  force,  but  in  reality  with  a  self-restraint 
so  admirable  and  the  stripes  in  number  so  nicely  adjusted  to  the 
gravity  of  the  offence,  that  the  punishment  which  seemed  at  first 
like  an  eruption  of  Nature,  might  have  been  but  the  execution 
of  some  unimpassioned   decree.     After  which,   turning  round 


120  THE   GUAMMAE   SCHOOL. 

with  a  majesty  and.  dominion  in  his  eye  under  which  we  all  sat 
cowering,  he  would  move  back  to  his  seat  again  with  a  tread 
more  firm  and  resolute  than  before.  It  was  this  steadiness  of 
gait  and  movement  when  in  the  very  high  wind  of  passion,  that 
uniting  with  the  terror  of  his  eye,  gave  him  that  absolute 
dominion  over  our  wills  which  made  us  plastic  in  his  hands. 
Had  he  been  flustered,  shrieky,  or  hysterical  in  his  violence,  we 
should  at  once  have  seen  his  weakness  and  revolted,  (for  the 
mind  even  in  boys  must  be  first  subdued)  but  this  firm  and  even 
tread,  steady  as  the  tramp  of  a  battalion,  and  keeping  time  as 
it  seemed  to  some  mighty  and  invisible  will,  annihilated  all 
thoughts  of  resistance  ;  and  for  the  time  being  stood  to  us  as  the 
moving  image  of  an  overmastering  fate.  Occasionally,  on  the 
occurrence  of  some  more  than  usual  aggravation  or  stupidity,  he 
would  lose  his  temper  outright,  and  jumping  up  book  in  hand, 
would  administer  a  series  of  cuffs  with  it  on  the  head  of  the 
offender,  hissing  out  at  the  same  time  between  his  teeth,  '  you 
little  goat,  you ! '  and  following  it  up  if  necessary  where  he  saw 
signs  of  obduracy  with  *  I'll  teach  you,  you  little  cross-grained 
cat,  you ! '  (favourite  expressions  these  of  his  both,  when  for  the 
moment  he  had  lost  his  even  balance),  but  it  was  only  for  a 
moment,  for  in  the  next  he  would  stalk  back  to  his  place  again 
with  great  majesty,  the  very  floor  creaking  under  his  iron  heels, 
as  if  in  this  high  hour  his  sovereign  will  had  'stomach  for  us  all.' 
This  inevitableness  and  rigour  ran  into  all  the  appointments 
of  the  school,  and  by  crushing  out  all  opposing  wills,  made 
evasion,  opposition,  or  escape  hopeless  and  impossible.  On  his 
desk  lay  a  slate,  new-wiped  each  morning,  and  on  it  the  names 
of  those  who  had  missed  their  lessons  were  duly  written  down ; 
and  when  noon  came,  and  the  list  was  read  aloud  in  a  voice 
steady  and  remorseless  as  the  roll-call  of  the  doomed  whom  the 
guillotine  mowed  away,  we  knew  all  hope  of  dinner  for  that 
day  was  at  an  end,  and  submitted  to  the  ominous  word 
'  confined  '  that  followed,  as  to  some  inevitable  decree.  When 
the  roll  happened  to  be  a  long  and  aggravated  one,  he   would 


THE    GRAMMAR   SCHOOL.  121 

himself  remain  with  us,  and  have  his  dinner  brought  to  him 
by  one  of  the  boys ;  presiding  over  the  hurly-burly  himself, 
like  some  incarnate  spirit  of  order, — thrashing,  admonishing 
threatening,  acquitting, — until  in  all  things  the  utmost  syllable 
of  his  will  was  done  ;  and  the  day  itself  could  not  close,  until 
the  last  name  had  been  wiped  from  the  slate. 

When  the  culprit  was  too  old  to  punish,  he  relied  on  the 
terror  of  his  frown,  which  was  still  more  formidable.  Among 
the  '  old  veterans '  who  entered  the  school  in  my  time,  there 
were  three  who  in  years  at  least,  must  have  been  the  equals  of 
the  Master  himself.  Coming  with  the  special  object  of 
acquiring  a  knowledge  of  Classics,  they  had  been  put  into  a 
separate  class  by  themselves ;  and  although  sensible  men  all, 
who  had  themselves  held  command  as  teachers,  the  difficulty 
they  found  in  acquiring  and  retaining  without  confusion  the 
most  elementary  forms  of  verbs,  conjugations,  or  particles, 
seemed  to  be  almost  insuperable ;  and  for  sheer  stupidity  in 
that  line,  the  school  had  not  their  parallel.  To  bring  them 
forward  more  quickly,  the  Master  had  taken  them  under  his 
own  especial  charge,  and  at  a  regular  hour  in  the  morning,  they 
might  be  seen  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  open  floor,  await- 
ing in  fear  and  anxiety  what  should  befall  them.  A  more 
singular  and  peculiar  three,  perhaps,  or  happier  subjects  for  the 
wit  of  boys,  could  nowhere  have  been  found.  There  was  old 
G —  *  the  single-barrelled,'  with  his  one  eye,  and  shock  of  red 
hair,  and  a  breath  that  would  have  scented  the  landscape; 
old  C —  '  the  silent,'  who  rarely  spoke,  but  muffled  up  to  his 
eyes  in  his  rough  and  grizzled  beard  was  so  deaf  and  harsh  of 
voice,  that  we  used  to  amuse  ourselves  by  mumbling  to  him 
something  he  could  not  hear,  for  the  express  purpose  of  hearing 
its  rasp ;  and  lastly  M — ,  younger  than  the  rest  and  something 
of  a  dandy,  with  his  clean-shaved  chin  and  flowing  side- 
whiskers  trimmed  with  the  greatest  care,  but  with  eye-lids  red 
and  devoid  of  lashes  as  if  they  had  been  singed,  and  who 
blushed  like  a  maid  when  he  missed  his  lessons  and  caught  us 


122  THE   GRAMMAR   SCHOOL. 

boys  giggling  at  him  from  behind  our  books.  There  the  three 
stood,  with  us  boys  poking  general  and  particular  fun  at  them 
in  a  good-humoured  way,  all  of  which  they  took  in  excellent 
part,  when  presently  the  Head  Master  would  move  majestically 
down  the  room  to  where  they  were  standing,  and  taking  the 
book  from  the  hand  of  the  nearest,  would  with  great  dignity 
and  a  certain  air  of  sub-conscious  cynicism,  open  the  lesson 
with  'Now  Mr.  C —  proceed.'  The  exercise  for  the  day 
would  perhaps  be  the  declension  of  some  simple  Greek  noun, 
but  C —  would  not  have  gone  far  in  it  before  feeling  himself 
in  a  maze,  he  would  begin  to  halt  and  stammer,  and  finally 
getting  the  genders  of  the  noun  and  particle  hopelessly  inter- 
twined, would  be  stopped  short  by  the  Master  turning  to  M — 
and  calling  out  '  Tell  him  next.'  But  M — ,  already  red  to  his 
eyeballs  as  he  saw  us  boys  watching  his  confusion  from  our 
seats,  had  hardly  set  out  before  he  too  would  founder  on  the 
same  rock  as  C — ,  when  the  Master  again  looking  over  his 
nose  in  despair  at  old  G — , '  the  single-barrelled,'  who  was  the  last 
in  the  line,  would  with  lip  compressed,  and  as  if  the  case  were 
desperate,  say  'Now  G — ,'  at  the  same  time  raising  the  ball  of 
his  toe  and  keeping  it  suspended  there  like  an  auctioneer's 
hammer  awaiting  the  inevitable  collapse  ;  and  when  at  last  it 
came  the  ball  of  the  toe  would  fall,  and  with  an  *  Enough ! 
gentlemen,'  he  would  move  off  it,  thrusting  rather  than 
handing  the  book  to  them,  and  stalking  back  majestically  to 
his  seat  with  a  frown  of  scorn  more  withering  than  the  lash, 
would  leave  the  hopeless  three  cowed,  dumbfoundered,  and 
speechless,  to  address  themselves  to  their  task  again. 

Among  these  older  pupils,  however,  there  were  two  much 
younger  than  the  rest,  whose  progress  in  their  studies  had  been 
so  rapid,  that  the  Head  Master  feeling  that  they  would  do 
honour  both  to  the  school  and  to  himself,  had  taken  special 
pains  to  prepare  them  for  the  University  Matriculation.  When 
all  was  ready  and  they  were  within  a  week  or  two  of  the 
examination,  they  suddenly  changed  their  minds,  and  resolved 


THE    GRAMMAR   SCHOOL.  123 

to  enter  another  University  instead,  situated  in  a  distant  part 
of  the  Dominion,  and  in  which  the  master  for  some  reason  or 
other  felt  no  interest  or  concern.  Instead,  however,  of  straight- 
forwardly telling  him  of  their  intention,  they  chose  rather,  as 
unable  to  meet  the  terror  of  his  eye,  to  quietly  absent  them- 
selves from  school,  where  their  presence  was  no  more  seen.  On 
learning  the  cause  of  their  absence  the  master  said  nothing,  but 
before  many  days  had  elapsed  he  came  upon  one  of  them  in  the 
open  street  of  the  village,  at  a  point  where  escape  was  im- 
possible. Moving  towards  him  with  great  stateliness,  and  a 
countenance  dark  as  night,  he  affected  not  to  see  him,  and  the 
trembling  absconder  was  beginning  to  hope  that  he  might  pass 
him  by  unheeded.  But  just  as  they  were  about  to  pass  one 
another,  the  master  suddenly  drew  up,  and  laying  the  tip  of 
his  forefinger  on  the  other's  shoulder,  called  out  in  a  voice  of 
command,  '  Stop,  Sir ! '  then  bending  over  him  with  great 
dignity,  and  looking  past  him  but  not  at  him,  delivered  himself 
with  measured  emphasis  of  this  brief  and  lofty  censure,  '  Very 
foolish  course  indeed,  Sir  !  Very  foolish  course  indeed !  Most 
foolish  course  !  Enough  ! '  And  with  this  word  sealing  up 
with  laconic  severity  all  opportunity  of  reply,  left  him,  and 
swept  on  his  lordly  way  in  triumph. 

Now  this  imperial  mien  of  his,  joined  to  his  fate-like  steadi- 
ness of  movement  and  the  terror  which  his  eye  inspired,  would 
of  themselves  have  been  enough  to  mesmerize  our  wills  and 
drive  us  flock-like  before  him  as  by  the  simple  movement  of  a 
wand ;  but  to  close  up  all  outlets  of  license,  or  vents  through 
which  doubts  could  be  blown  which  might  unsettle  his  prestige, 
he  further  intrenched  himself  in  the  most  impenetrable  out- 
works of  condescension,  dignity,  and  reserve,  that  I  ever 
remember  to  have  seen.  During  all  those  years  I  never  saw 
him  unbend,  or  appear  in  undress ;  on  the  contrary  he  was 
lordly  always,  even  the  pleasantries  in  which  he  occasionally, 
but  rarely,  indulged,  having  all  the  stateliness  of  a  court  cere- 
monial.    A  polished  visor  concealed  his  natural  lineaments  as 


124  THE   GRAMMAE   SCHOOL. 

effectively  as  an  iron  mask,  and  whether  he  were  not  entirely 
a  mask  might,  but  for  the  anger  that  shone  through  this  visor, 
have  been  an  open  question.  He  had  doubtless  like  the  moon 
other  sides  to  his  mind  than  those  we  saw,  but  like  the  moon, 
the  face  he  kept  turned  towards  us  was  always  the  same.  One 
does  not  of  course  expect  one's  teacher  to  wear  his  heart 
altogether  on  his  sleeve,  but  during  years  of  daily  intercourse, 
one  does  expect  to  see  some  glimpses  of  natural  predilection, 
affinity,  or  humour  peering  through.  With  him,  however, 
none  such  appeared.  Whether  he  were  fond  of  his  office  or 
his  boys,  or  had  any  preference  for  one  boy  over  another ; 
whether  he  had  any  choice  of  friends  or  books ;  any  loves  or 
hatreds;  any  ulterior  aims  or  ambitions  beyond  his  own  school; 
any  private  griefs  or  sorrows,  or  indeed  were  subject  to  such 
incidents  of  human  life  at  all,  nowhere  could  be  seen ;  nothing 
but  the  enamelled  encasement  with  the  great  eyeballs  glaring 
through.  You  could  never  surprise  him  in  any  play  of 
thought,  in  any  natural  reaction  of  pity  or  of  joy,  never  could 
catch  any  emotion  on  the  rise,  unless  indeed  it  were  anger, 
and  whether  that  were  altogether  human  or  in  large  part  pro- 
fessional merely,  could  not  be  divined.  It  was  shrewdly 
suspected  that  his  knowledge  of  classics,  which  was  accurate 
and  thorough  as  far  as  it  went,  was  limited  to  the  requirements 
of  the  University  Matriculation  examination,  but  if  this  were 
so,  we  never  got  farther  than  mere  suspicion,  so  cunningly  did 
he  hedge  himself  with  all  the  arts  and  infoldings  of  reserve. 
Indeed  from  the  easy  assurance  with  which  like  a  confident 
swordsman,  he  took  the  book  from  you  and  asked  you  to  begin 
anywhere,  he  might  have  been  an  Erasmus  or  a  Bentley  !  When 
we  sent  in  our  Latin  verses  to  be  corrected,  he  was  in  the 
habit  of  taking  them  home  with  him  at  night  under  colour  of 
there  being  no  time  during  school  hours,  but  the  boarders 
declared  that  it  was  in  order  to  enable  him  to  correct  them 
from  the  key  which  he  kept  locked  in  his  drawer.  Occasionally 
on  some  difficulty  arising  at  the  bottom  of  the  class  as  to  a 


THE   GRAMMAR    SCHOOL.  125 

conjugation  or  quantity,  a  shade  of  uncertainty  might  have 
been  seen  in  his  look  and  manner ;  but  he  was  not  to  be  caught, 
and  turning  promptly  round  to  the  head  boy  as  if  to  test  his 
knowledge,  but  really,  perhaps,  to  settle  his  own  doubts,  he 
would  ask  :  '  Is  he  right  !  '  If  the  reply  were  in  the  affirmative 
he  would  proceed  as  if  nothing  had  happened ;  but  should  a 
murmur  of  dissent  arise  anywhere  on  the  ruling,  he  would  at 
once  break  up  the  class  with  a  stern,  'Look  it  up,  Sirs,'  as  if  to 
fix  the  correct  answer  more  firmly  in  our  memories.  When  the 
dispute  had  been  settled  by  a  reference  to  the  Greek  or  Latin 
Lexicon  kept  for  that  purpose  in  the  cupboard,  he  would  return 
to  his  seat  again,  and  picking  up  the  book,  would  say  with  the 
utmost  sang-froid  and  indifference,  '  Well? ' — and  the  correct 
answer  being  given  him,  would  proceed  as  if  he  had  himself 
known  it  all  the  while. 

Even  his  pleasantries,  as  I  have  said,  had  about  them  all  the 
air  of  a  Court,  and  were  guarded  from  familiarity  by  all  the  arts 
with  which  majesty  keeps  unstaled  its  state.  You  were 
expected,  indeed,  to  respond  to  his  facetiw,  but  it  must  be  only 
by  a  simple  yea  or  nay ;  and  to  have  ventured  beyond  this  and 
to  have  indulged  in  any  slight  pleasantry  on  your  own  account, 
would  have  been  at  your  instant  peril.  For  to  his  majestic 
condescension  he  united  a  facility,  almost  a  pleasure  in  snubbing, 
still  more  royal  in  its  suddenness  and  rigour ;  and  with  a  word, 
a  look,  or  even  a  movement  of  the  head,  he  would  smite  you 
without  compunction  to  the  earth.  Sometimes  during  the 
afternoon  when  the  day  had  gone  smoothly,  and  we  were  waiting 
quietly  for  the  clock  to  strike  the  hour  of  our  dismissal,  he 
would  sit  musing  to  himself  in  his  chair  of  state  overlooking 
the  room,  with  that  seductive  graciousness  in  his  countenance, 
at  once  so  sweet  and  yet  so  fatal,  which  his  features  wore  when 
in  repose.  Presently  he  would  call  one  of  the  boys  up  to  him, 
a  monitor  perhaps,  and  looking  over  his  nose  at  him  with  an  easy 
nonchalance  and  something  of  archness  in  his  smile,  as  if  what 
he  was  about  to  say  were  an  exquisite  pleasantry,  would  remark 


1"2()  THE    GRAMMAR   SCHOOL. 

in  the  form  of  an  interrogatory,  '  Do  you  think is  a  goat  1 ' 

(his  synonym  for  a  mixture  of  dunce  and  fool),  and  bending 
slightly  towards  him  and  giving  him  his  ear  rather  than  his  eye, 
he  would  await  his  reply.  But  when  the  boy  had  answered  yes 
or  no  as  the  case  might  be,  to  stop  further  familiarity  and  to 
forbid  any  suspicion  he  might  have  that  he  was  being  invited  to 
participate  in  the  pleasantry,  the  Master  would  draw  himself  up 
again,  and  with  his  emphatic  '  enough !  '  would  seal  the 
interview  and  dismiss  him  to  his  seat.  1  sometimes  met  him  on 
my  way  to  school  at  a  point  where  our  two  paths  converged,  but 
as  a  rule  he  would  pass  on  before  me  without  speaking  or  taking 
any  notice  of  me.  On  one  occasion,  on  meeting  him  when  he 
was  in  specially  good  humour,  he  happened  to  make  some 
pleasant  allusion  to  the  weather,  or  the  state  of  the  ice  on  the 
river  below :  to  which  I,  prompted  doubtless  by  the  honour  he 
had  done  me,  and  the  nervousness  which  made  me  feel  that  I  must 
say  something  to  break  the  silence  as  we  walked  along,  ventured 
unthinkingly  to  add  some  opinion  of  my  own  as  to  the  prospects 
of  the  weather  or  the  ice ;  when  without  pause,  in  a  tone  most 
smooth-tongued  but  deadly,  he  snubbed  me  with  a  word,  so  that 
my  cheeks  burned  to  the  bone ;  and  ever  after,  my  dread  of 
meeting  him,  even  when  I  was  at  the  head  of  the  school  and 
was  being  specially  prepared  by  him  for  the  University,  was  so 
great,  that  I  would  have  gone  miles  out  of  my  way  to  avoid  him. 
Many  years  afterwards,  when  I  had  long  left  the  school  and  was 
settled  in  London,  he  called  on  me  when  on  a  visit  to  England ; 
and  on  my  accompanying  him  afterwards  to  the  station,  I 
happened  unthinkingly  to  address  him  as  Mr.  Tassie,  forgetting 
for  the  moment  that  in  the  meantime  he  had  had  the  degree  of 
LL.D.  conferred  on  him,  when  in  a  moment,  as  of  yore,  with 
that  look  in  his  eye  which  I  knew  so  well,  he  stopped  me  short, 
and  in  a  tone  smooth  as  a  razor  and  as  cutting,  said,  *  I  am 
Dr.  Tassie  now ;  '  and  in  spite  of  the  years  that  had  elapsed, 
some  ten  or  more,  I  felt  as  snubbed  and  humiliated  as  when  a 
boy. 


THE   GRAMMAR   SCHOOL,  127 

My  own  progress  in  the  school  was  rapid.  The  Head  Master 
being  mainly  a  classical  scholar,  Mathematics  had  been  allowed 
to  fall  into  decay,  and  when  I  entered,  had  already  been 
relegated  to  an  assistant  master  in  an  adjoining  room.  From 
the  first  my  knowledge  of  it,  thanks  to  the  excellent  training  I 
had  had,  was  more  advanced  than  that  of  the  rest  of  the  boys ; 
and  this  among  other  things  helped  to  give  me  that  general 
reputation  for  ability  which  I  always  bore,  but  which  was 
quite  out  of  proportion  to  my  real  deserts.  Indeed  with  the 
exception  perhaps  of  Mathematics,  there  was  no  single  subject 
in  which  there  were  not  some  one  or  more  boys,  my  natural 
superiors.  I  had  a  quick  memory,  and  could  cram  in  great  masses 
of  material  in  a  short  time,  but  it  was  wanting  in  tenacity,  and 
the  knowledge  thus  speedily  acquired  was  as  speedily  forgotten. 
History  I  learned  rapidly,  but  there  were  others  who  retained 
it  better ;  and  as  for  Classics,  although  accurate  enough  in  all 
details  of  conjugation,  declension,  and  the  like,  there  was  still 
some  obstruction  in  my  mind  which  made  me  construe  badly, 
and  translate  with  difficulty.  My  vocabulary,  too,  was  stinted, 
owing  chiefly,  I  imagine,  to  my  not  having  read  any  of  the 
ordinary  story-books,  where  shades  of  thought  and  feeling 
unknown  in  the  talk  of  the  play-ground  find  firm  and  definite 
expression.  1  had,  in  consequence,  great  difficulty  in  finding 
meanings,  definitions,  or  synonyms  for  words  impromptu ;  in 
turning  verse  into  prose,  or  prose  into  verse ;  and  when  for 
exercise  in  English  Composition,  we  were  given  such  a  theme, 
for  example,  as  *  that  the  ages  of  man's  life  are  like  the  seasons 
of  the  year,'  I  can  remember  standing  amazed  at  the  fertility 
and  volume  of  imagination  and  fancy  with  which  the  other 
boys  illustrated  and  adorned  the  theme,  while  I,  struck  with 
utter  barrenness,  had  not  a  word  to  say.  I  had,  besides,  little 
power  of  continuous  effort,  was  better  at  a  spurt  than  a  steady 
pull,  had  no  toughness  of  mental  fibre,  and  although  resolute  in 
always  returning  to  my  task,  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in 
keeping  my  mind  from  wandering  perpetually  from  the  page. 


128  THE    GRAMMAR   SCHOOL. 

But  it  was  only  the  smallest  part  of  my  conscious  thought 
that  I  gave  to  my  lessons,  which  were  confined  to  the  school 
itself  and  the  half  hour  or  so  before  bedtime  when  the  fun  of 
the  day  was  over  and  my  companions  had  all  gone  home  for 
the  night.  For  my  whole  mind  was  still  centred  on  our  games 
and  play,  on  dogs  and  pigeons,  on  cricket  and  swimming,  and 
on  such  miscellaneous  mischief  as  raids  on  the  farmers'  orchards, 
or  the  more  dangerous  enterprise  of  robbing  the  wild  bees* 
nests.  Flitting  fancies  of  future  distinction  as  a  scholar,  some- 
times rose  before  me,  but  they  were  quickly  swallowed  up  in 
play  again,  and  it  was  not  until  I  had  entered  on  the  last  of 
the  three  years  of  my  scholarship,  that  I  began  to  seriously 
entertain  them.  Stimulated  at  once  by  the  successes  of  the 
pupils  who  had  gone  before  me,  by  the  high  reputation  I 
myself  enjoyed,  by  the  flattering  expectations  of  the  Master 
and  the  boys,  by  my  growing  years  and  the  necessities  of  the 
nearing  future,  my  thoughts  turned  vaguely,  and  almost 
insensibly  at  first,  to  some  kind  of  intellectual  ambition ;  and 
as  Mathematics  was  the  field  in  which  I  had  won  the  most 
flattering  opinions,  I  naturally  fixed  on  it  as  the  aim  and  centre 
of  my  hopes,  and  almost  before  I  was  aware  of  it,  found 
myself  walking  about  encompassed  with  the  most  radiant  and 
glowing  fancies.  I  longed  to  become  a  great  mathematician ; 
the  very  words  had  to  my  ears  that  grandeur  and  sublimity 
that  of  themselves  drew  on  the  mind  ;  and  the  rhapsodies  of 
my  uncle,  which  had  so  often  afforded  me  amusement,  now 
seemed  all  too  inadequate  for  the  great  and  glorious  theme. 
I  would  walk  about  the  streets,  solving  problems  in  algebra  and 
geometry  as  I  went  along,  or  would  lie  on  the  doorstep  in  the 
evening  or  on  the  grass  at  noonday  under  the  shade  of  the 
sweet-smelling  pines,  and  give  myself  up  to  reverie,  the  over- 
arching canopy  of  my  fancy  flecked  with  golden  dreams. 

In  the  village,  or  town  as  it  had  now  become,  a  Reading  Room 
had  been  opened  some  years  before,  and  on  its  table  lay  the 
choicest  of   the  English  and  American  periodicals.     To   this 


THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL.  12& 

Reading  Room  a  Library  was  attached,  containing  the  best 
known  works  in  biography,  history,  and  fiction.  It  was  here  I 
first  came  upon  '  Punch,'  and  I  can  still  remember  how  strange 
and  unintelligible  to  me  were  its  cartoons  and  illustrations  of 
London  life,  where  cabmen,  boot-blacks,  and  crossing-sweepers 
mingled  and  jostled  in  unknown  dialects  with  squires  and  parsons 
and  footmen  in  cockades.  Here,  too,  I  first  came  on  the  works  of 
Thackeray,  and  on  dipping  here  and  there  into  his  conversations 
and  dialogues,  with  their  subtle  observances  of  place,  priority, 
and  degree,  and  their  modes  of  address  all  accurately  shaded  to 
the  rank  and  position  of  the  various  actors ;  and  all  so  foreign 
to  anything  I  had  known  or  seen ;  I  again  felt  the  same  sense  of 
strangeness  and  bewilderment.  But  it  was  not  for  this,  or  for  any 
curiosity  as  to  the  contents  of  journals,  novels,  or  histories,  that  I 
haunted  these  rooms ;  it  was  to  read  the  lives  and  achievements 
of  the  Mathematicians.  I  soon  came  on  what  I  wanted  in  an 
old  Biographical  Encyclopedia,  where  I  devoured  all  particulars 
of  the  lives  and  labours  of  such  men  as  Newton,  Pascal,  and 
Laplace ;  brooding  and  dreaming  over  them  as  over  some  fairy- 
tale of  my  childhood,  and  filled  with  a  vague  ambition  that 
when  I  became  a  man,  I  might  be  able  to  add  to  their  labours 
by  some  great  discovery  of  my  own.  I  was  always  filled,  I 
remember,  with  a  special  joy  when  I  found  any  point  of 
analogy  or  correspondence  between  the  circumstances  of  their 
boyhood  and  my  own;  and  coming  one  day  on  a  portrait  of 
Newton  in  an  old  Magazine, — with  his  large,  clean-shaven, 
square-jawed,  dreamy  face,  and  his  long  hair  flowing  softly  like 
a  woman's  over  his  ears, — and  not  finding  any  point  of 
resemblance  sufficiently  to  my  satisfaction,  I  felt  sad  and 
depressed.  But  when  I  went  on  to  read  the  article  itself,  and 
came  on  the  famous  saying  attributed  I  think  to  Leibnitz,  that 
Newton  '  seemed  to  him  a  celestial  genius  quite  disengaged 
from  Matter,'  the  picture  raised  in  my  mind  by  the  phrase, 
threw  me  into  such  a  transport  of  admiration,  that  I  kept 
repeating  it  over  and  over  until  I  had  woven  it  into  the  tissue  of 

K 


130  THE    GRAMMAR   SCHOOL. 

my  dreams.  But  all  this  fine  excess  of  admiration  was  not  mere 
waste  and  evaporation;  on  the  contrary  it  was  a  real  stimulus, 
and  left  behind  it  a  solid  precipitate  of  work ;  for  after  giving 
full  rein  to  my  day-dreams  I  would  be  so  fanned  and  refreshed 
by  these  currents  which  had  blown  through  me  like  an  April 
breeze,  that  on  my  way  home,  recalled  to  reality  again,  I  Would 
set  to  work  on  some  problem  that  before  had  baffled  me,  and 
would  not  leave  it  until  it  was  solved. 

It  was  in  this  library,  too,  and  at  about  this  time  that  I 
came  on  the  first  book  outside  my  school  work  that  I  can 
really  be  said  to  have  read.  This  was  Smiles'  '  Self  Help,' 
and  as  I  read  in  his  pages  of  how  from  among  the  waifs  and 
strays  of  the  gutter  and  the  street,  the  poor,  the  sickly,  and 
the  deformed,  here  and  there  some  rarer  spirit  would  like  a 
way-side  flower  venture  from  amid  the  garbage  in  which  it 
grew,  to  lift  its  petals  to  the  sun  like  the  children  of  the 
happiest  climes ;  or  of  how  from  among  those  as  little  favoured 
by  fortune  as  myself,  a  few,  more  stiff-ribbed  than  the  rest, 
had  carved  their  way  up  to  eminence  and  renown,  I  was  all 
aglow  with  youth  and  resolution  and  hope,  and  resolved  that 
one  day  I  too  should  make  a  strike  for  distinction  and  fame  ! 

Meanwhile  the  term  of  my  scholarship  was  drawing  to  a 
close,  having  but  three  months  to  run.  I  was  now  the  head 
boy  in  the  school,  and  the  next  step  would  be  to  prepare  to 
gain  a  scholarship  at  the  University ;  but  still  the  master 
remained  severely  reticent  and  gave  no  indication  of  what  he 
intended  to  do  with  me.  I  began  to  feel  very  anxious  and 
uncomfortable,  when  one  afternoon  in  the  autumn  he  called  me 
up  to  him,  and  asked  me  if  I  were  willing  to  prepare  for  the 
University  Examination  of  the  succeeding  year.  It  was  what 
I  had  been  so  long  waiting  and  hoping  for,  and  so  overjoyed 
was  I  at  the  new  prospect  which  opened  out  before  me,  that 
like  another  Hamlet,  from  that  moment  I  resolved  to  renounce 
all  fun  and  mischief,  to  wipe  from  my  mind  all  trivial  thoughts 
of  play   and  to  let  the   University  Scholarship  shine  alone  in 


THE   GRAMMAR   SCHOOL.  131 

my  sky  like  a  fixed  constellation.  I  was  now  sixteen  years  of 
age,  and  except  for  the  thorough  grinding  I  had  had  in  the 
rudiments  and  groundwork  of  Classics,  the  entire  work  of  the 
curriculum  was  new  to  me.  It  was  therefore  with  more  than 
usual  energy  and  determination  that  I  set  to  work  on  it,  under 
the  personal  supervision  of  the  Master.  The  honour  and  pass- 
work  together,  included  certain  books  of  Homer,  Virgil,  Livy, 
Horace,  Cicero,  Xenophon,  Ovid,  Lucian,  and  Sallust;  but 
what  with  the  radiant  fancies  and  dreams  of  ambition  with 
which  I  walked  encompassed,  and  which  threatened  at  times  to 
push  from  my  mind  the  very  means  by  which  they  were  to  be 
achieved,  the  work  itself;  what  with  the  tendency  I  had  to 
keep  chasing  all  kinds  of  meteoric  fancies;  what  with  the 
difficulty  of  keeping  my  mind  steadily  down  to  my  work. — what 
with  all  this,  together  with  the  want  of  toughness  in  my 
mental  fibre,  and  the  nervous  exhaustion  which  attended  any 
sustained  mental  exertion,  it  was  only  by  a  series  of  swoops 
and  sallies,  ever  leaving  the  work  and  ever  again  returning 
to  it,  that  I  made  any  progress.  Besides,  in  spite  of  my 
renunciation  of  sport,  I  was  still  too  young  for  so  heroic  a 
resolve,  and  lost  much  of  my  time  at  play.  But  in  the  interim 
it  too  had  changed  with  the  silent  revolutions  of  my  mind,  and 
was  not  to  me  what  it  had  been  before.  It  was  now  rather  as 
a  casual  outsider  that  I  took  part  in  the  games,  than  as  an 
active  participant ;  so  that  whereas  formerly  play  was  the  ideal 
world  which  encompassed  the  hard  and  earthy  work  of  the 
school  like  a  gilded  firmament,  now  it  had  become  a  mere 
relaxation,  into  which  the  romance  of  scholarships  and 
examinations  dipped  and  played,  softly  folding  it  in,  and 
lending  to  it  the  greater  part  of  its  sweetness. 

In  this  way  the  moving  year  crept  on  apace,  and  on  it  the 
web  of  my  little  life  with  its  mingled  tissue  of  work  and  play, 
all  shot  through  and  through  with  golden  threads  of  gossamer 
and  dreams,  stretched  and  unfolded  itself  as  on  a  loom ;  when 
suddenly  about  a  fortnight  before  the  time  of  my  going  up  for 


132  THE   GRAMMAR   SCHOOL. 

examination,  I  was  taken  ill.  It  was  nothing,  a  mere  passing 
disorder,  but  catching  my  spirits  at  their  ebb,  it  raised  in  my 
imagination  a  haunting  fear  of  consumption  which  I  could  not 
shake  off;  and  I  could  neither  eat  nor  sleep.  The  master, 
prompted  at  once  by  real  kindness  and  the  fear  lest  I  might  be 
unable  to  go  up  for  examination,  had  ordered  to  be  sent  to  the 
house  a  basket  laden  with  the  richest  soups  and  meats,  together 
with  a  bottle  of  wine,  with  instructions  that  when  empty  it 
should  be  returned  to  be  replenished.  Feeling  better,  I  set 
out  myself  for  his  house  after  nightfall,  with  the  basket  on  my 
arm,  and  on  knocking,  the  door  was  opened  by  the  Master's 
wife — a  very  tall  Irish  lady,  with  a  spontaneous  kindness  of 
heart  in  her  voice  and  manner — who  at  once  in  a  kind  of  mild 
surprise  confronted  me  with  *  Are  you  Crozier  ? '  On  my 
replying  in  the  affirmative,  she  stood  silent  a  moment  and 
surveyed  me  from  head  to  foot,  then  opening  her  eyes  wide  in 
a  fine  Irish  surprise,  spontaneously  exclaimed  as  if  in  soliloquy, 
4  And  so  thin  too  ! '  After  which  sympathetic  outburst,  she  took 
the  basket  from  me  and  hastened  away  to  refill  it ;  and  returning 
with  it  laden,  placed  it  in  my  hand  with  as  much  sympathy  and 
kindness  in  her  voice  and  manner  as  if  I  had  been  her  own 
boy;  and  sent  me  forth  on  my  way  again.  But  as  I  walked 
down  the  hill  by  the  winding  path  from  the  house,  her  words 
'  and  so  thin  too,'  which  at  the  time  had  struck  a  momentary 
chill  through  me,  now  came  over  me  under  the  mild  September 
moon  with  all  their  force,  and  I  seemed  to  know  that  I  was  going 
to  die.  It  was  the  first  sensation  of  that  nature  that  I  had  ever 
experienced,  and  its  association  with  the  basket  which  I  carried, 
and  the  soft  autumnal  moonlight,  together  with  the  peculiar 
unearthly  feeling  that  came  over  me  as  I  saw  myself  struck  by 
a  mortal  disease  gradually  wasting  away,  made  an  impression 
on  my  mind  which  time  has  not  effaced.  But  my  speedy 
restoration  to  health  soon  blew  all  these  vapours  from  my  head, 
and  on  the  eve  of  the  examination,  after  a  few  parting  words  of 
instruction  from  the  Master,  I  started  off  for  the  University, 


THE   GRAMMAR   SCHOOL.  133 

bringing  back  with  me  when  I  returned  the  scholarship  which 
for  so  long  had  been  the  immediate  prize  of  my  ambition ;  and 
so  brought  to  a  close  my  period  of  boyhood  proper, — from 
which  time  forth  my  life  entered  on  another  stage. 


PART   I. 

CANADA 
BOOK  n. 


MY     INNEK     LIFE, 

BEING  A   CHAPTER  IN 

PEESONAL     EVOLUTION     AND 
AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 

PART    I.— CANADA. 


BOOK    II.— EARLY    SPECULATIONS. 

PHRENOLOGY. 

THE    MAN    WITH    THE    BOOT-JACK. 

RELIGION. 

PAUSE. 

A   REVIVAL   EPISODE. 

EVOLUTION   NOT   TO   BE   JUMPED. 

A   CHANGE    OF   METHOD. 

A  LAW   OF   THE   MIND — WHAT   IS   IT? 

THE   BREAK-DOWN   OF   PHRENOLOGY. 

THE   POWER   OF   LANGUAGE. 

MY    UNCLE   AGAIN. 

THE    UNIVERSITY. 

PROFESSORS. 

A   NEW  HORIZON. 


BR  A  Rp 

OF  THE 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 

£4LIF0ftt^ 


CHAPTEE    I. 


PHRENOLOGY. 

WAS  between  seventeen  and  eighteen  years  of  age  when  I 
■*•  entered  the  University,  but  I  had  not  been  there  more  than 
a  week  or  two,  when  to  the  annoyance  of  my  family  and  the 
disgust  of  my  old  Master,  I  threw  up  the  career  on  which  I 
had  entered  with  so  much  promise,  and  returned  to  my  native 
town.  For  now  that  the  examination  was  over,  and  the 
honours  for  which  I  had  been  striving  were  duly  won,  a 
reaction  set  in ;  and  I  had  scarcely  entered  on  my  new  course 
of  studies  when  I  longed  to  get  home  again.  In  this  curious, 
and  to  me  quite  unexpected  revulsion  of  feeling,  a  number  of 
strands  of  various  complexion  seem  by  a  kind  of  unhappy 
conjunction  to  have  intertwined  and  knotted  themselves 
together.  Among  other  things,  I  had  not  yet  recovered  from 
the  nervous  strain  incident  on  the  long  and  severe  preparation 
for  the  examination ;  and  the  presence  of  some  trifling 
symptoms  of  bodily  disorder  was  sufficient  to  engender  in  me 
the  settled  conviction  that  I  had  not  long  to  live.  It  was  the 
first  time,  too,  that  I  had  been  from  home,  and  in  my  low  and 
morbid  humour  the  students  with  whom  I  lived,  nearly  all  of 
whom  were  strangers  to  me,  seemed  to  wear  a  cold  unfriendly 
look,  as  if  separated  from  me  by  some  infinite  distance ;  and  as 
I  walked  to  and  from  the  college  a  feeling  of  loneliness  and 
desolation  attended  me,  which  only  deepened  the  more  as  the 


1 38  PHRENOLOGY. 

days  passed  on.  And  worse  than  all,  if  I  must  confess  it,  I 
had  fallen  desperately  in  love  some  months  before  leaving  home, 
and  the  sickening  sense  of  longing  that  arose  in  me  when  I 
ventured  to  look  athwart  the  interval  of  time  and  distance  that 
separated  me  from  the  loved  one,  was  the  most  operative, 
perhaps,  of  all  the  causes  leading  to  my  return.  But  besides 
all  this  I  was  tired  of  the  class-room,  and  the  barren  exercita- 
tions  of  the  Mathematics  and  Classics  on  which  I  had  been  fed 
so  long ;  and  was  thirsting  for  some  more  immediate  contact 
with  the  world  and  human  life ;  and  as  the  prospect  of  having 
to  spend  four  years  more,  grinding  in  the  same  old  mill,  came 
over  my  mind,  it  was  more  than  I  could  bear.  Accordingly 
with  a  feeling  of  secret  shame  at  the  step  I  was  taking,  and 
without  acquainting  anyone  with  my  intentions,  I  suddenly 
took  leave  of  the  University  and  reappeared  at  home. 

Low  and  morbid  in  humour,  oppressed  with  desolate  fore- 
bodings of  ill-health,  and  with  my  heart  all  in  a  ferment  of 
confused  passions  and  desires,  it  was  natural  that  for  some 
time  at  least  I  should  have  sufficient  to  occupy  my  thoughts  ; 
but  as  time  went  on,  with  nothing  to  do,  I  began  to  feel  the 
want  of  some  more  purely  intellectual  aim,  such  as  I  had  had 
in  my  long  preparation  for  college,  partly  as  refuge  from  and 
partly  as  alternative  or  counterpoise  to  these  harassing  doubts 
and  fears.  I  had  never  been  a  great  reader  of  books,  as 
indeed  my  school  work  had  left  me  little  time  for  such 
recreation,  and  my  imagination  naturally  found  more  delight 
in  the  games  and  amusements  of  the  playground  than  in 
reading,  and  was  more  stimulated  by  the  characters,  fortunes, 
and  achievements  of  the  boys,  and  by  observing  the  life  going 
on  around  me,  than  by  books.  In  my  later  days  at  school 
when  my  heart  was  set  for  the  time  on  academic  honours,  it  is 
true  I  had  conceived  a  great  admiration  for  intellectual 
ability,  and  having  won  for  myself  some  little  distinction  in 
Mathematics,  I  was  naturally  led  to  regard  the  illustrious 
name    of    Newton,  for   instance,  as  the  symbol    and    ideal    of 


PHRENOLOGY.  139 

intellectual  greatness.  But  now  that  I  had  abandoned  all 
these  academic  ambitions,  and  was  arriving  at  an  age  when 
the  very  uprising  of  new  desires  of  itself  leads  the  mind  to 
wider  interests  and  horizons,  this  admiration  for  intellectual 
ability  continued,  indeed,  but  gradually  and  insensibly  began  to 
change  its  form  and  to  centre  around  the  more  practical  types 
of  greatness,  such  as  men  of  the  world  and  affairs,  and  the 
great  thinkers  on  the  world  and  human  life.  Accordingly 
after  a  prolonged  holiday,  when  the  lull  and  pause  in 
intellectual  activity  was  becoming  oppressive,  I  began  to  cast 
round  me  in  the  hope  of  discovering  some  study  or  subject  of 
interest,  that  would  again  give  scope,  activity,  and  direction  to 
the  more  purely  intellectual  powers. 

It  was  not  long  before  this  desire  was  to  be  gratified  by  the 
arrival  in  town  of  an  itinerant  Phrenologist,  who  in  lofty  and 
high-sounding  terms  and  with  much  assurance,  announced  his 
ability  to  read  the  minds  and  characters  of  men  by  the 
elevations  and  depressions  on  their  skulls.  A  friend  of  my 
own  age  with  whom  I  was  intimate,  had  gone  to  the  opening 
lecture,  and  on  our  meeting  as  usual  next  day,  dilated  on  the 
new-fangled  philosophy  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  a  devotee. 
I  knew  little  or  nothing  of  the  subject  myself,  and  had  no  idea 
whatever  as  to  its  truth  or  falsehood,  but  as  he  unfolded  before 
me  a  chart  or  map  of  the  faculties  which  he  had  brought  with 
him  from  the  lecture,  and  went  on  to  illustrate  its  meaning  by 
a  comparison  of  his  own  head  and  mine,  much  to  my  dis- 
advantage I  remember,  and  on  a  point,  too,  which  touched  me 
nearly,  1  began  to  feel  decidedly  sceptical  and  hostile  !  For  it 
so  chanced  that  in  the  jargon  of  the  phrenologists  there  was 
one  organ  or  faculty  which  loomed  so  high  above  the  rest,  and 
carried  itself  with  so  imperious  and  mighty  a  port,  that  without 
it  all  the  environing  faculties  and  powers  were  condemned 
to  feebleness,  shallowness,  and  superficiality.  This  was  the 
great  organ  of  Causality  as  it  was  called,  the  organ  that 
penetrated   to   causes   and    effects,    the    organ  of   philosophv. 


140  PHRENOLOGY, 

of  profundity,  of  genius.  Its  seat  was  the  top  and  sides 
of  the  forehead,  and  by  the  reverence  paid  to  it  by  the 
phrenologists  I  was  led  to  figure  it  when  largely  developed  as 
some  frowning  keep  in  whose  inner  recesses  were  great  dungeons 
of  thought  of  vast  depth  and  immensity.  Now  my  friend  had 
this  organ  largely  developed,  as  he  was  careful  to  point  out  to 
me,  and  so  proud  was  he  of  his  endowment,  that  he  was  in  the 
habit  of  brushing  his  hair  well  back  from  his  forehead  in  order 
to  bring  it  into  greater  prominence.  My  head,  on  the  contrary, 
had  none  of  this  obtrusiveness,  but  was  modestly  and  even 
poorly  developed  in  this  region,  and  my  friend  in  consequence 
was  inclined  to  assume  a  quite  royal  air  of  intellectual 
superiority  which  my  vanity  was  by  no  means  disposed  to 
allow.  For  I  had,  be  it  remembered,  but  recently  acquired  a 
great  reputation  in  Mathematics,  and  associating  as  I  did 
superiority  in  this  branch  of  study  with  the  great  name  of 
Newton,  and  Newton's  name  being  everywhere  synonymous 
with  profundity,  I  naturally  enough  plumed  myself  on  the 
possession  of  some  small  portion  of  that  same  great  quality, 
and  was  much  piqued  that  my  friend  who  had  always  been 
backward,  if  not  dull,  at  school,  should  give  himself  such  airs 
of  superiority  on  a  basis  so  shadowy.  Not  that  he  was  unaware 
of  my  reputation  or  disposed  to  dispute  it,  but  Phrenology  had 
taught  him  to  make  little  of  the  pretensions  of  Mathematics, 
which  indeed  it  had  relegated  to  a  small  organ  above  the  outer 
angle  of  the  eye — the  organ  of  Calculation  namely — as  a  thing 
of  no  mark  or  circumstance,  an  organ  which  when  compared 
with  the  great  organ  of  Causality  overlooking  the  whole  field 
of  thought  with  sovereign  eye,  was  held  in  as  little  esteem  as 
was  the  playing  of  the  flute  by  Themistocles !  Hence  it  was 
that  on  finding  this  organ  of  Calculation  sufficiently  developed 
in  me  to  account  for  my  mathematical  reputation,  he  felt 
himself  free  to  range  at  large  over  the  rest  of  my  head  and  to 
label  and  pigeon-hole  me  and  my  capabilities  in  a  manner  by 
no  means  to  my  taste.      Hence,  too,  the  distrust,  suspicion, 


PHRENOLOGY.  141 

and  hostility  with  which  I  regarded  this  new  and  pretentious 
science.  But  I  had  grounds  more  relative  than  this  of 
wounded  vanity  for  my  scepticism.  For  while  my  friend  was 
so  complacently  summing  me  up,  I  was  quietly  running  over  in 
my  mind  the  heads  of  the  boys  whom  I  had  but  recently  left 
behind  me  at  school,  and  on  comparing  them  with  the  various 
powers  of  memory,  music,  calculation,  language,  and  the  like, 
which  they  were  well  known  to  possess,  I  could  find  no  corres- 
pondence. It  was  with  but  languid  interest  therefore,  in  spite 
of  my  friend's  enthusiasm,  and  with  much  misgiving  as  to  the 
value  of  anything  I  was  likely  to  get  from  it,  that  1  consented 
to  accompany  him  to  the  lecture  on  the  same  evening. 

The  Professor,  as  he  was  pleased  to  style  himself,  was  a 
huge  immeasurable  mass  of  fat;  dew-lapped,  double-chinned, 
and  of  middle  age ;  dressed  in  black  like  a  dissenting  preacher, 
and  with  face  livid  and  congested  as  if  he  had  come  up  in  a 
diving-bell  from  the  deep  sea !  It  was  studded  and  embossed, 
too,  with  carbuncles  like  a  shield,  and  on  every  side  widened 
and  expanded  into  such  a  desert  waste,  as  to  blur  all  the 
ordinary  lines  of  character  and  blast  all  the  ordinary  criteria 
of  judgment.  But  in  spite  of  his  great  bulk,  he  was  active, 
even  rapid,  in  his  movements;  and  as  he  walked  to  and  fro 
around  and  in  front  of  the  table,  expatiating  with  unctuous 
fluency  on  his  great  theme,  his  trousers  wide  and  straight  as 
bags,  and  many  inches  too  short,  swished  and  swirled  around 
his  legs  like  breakers  around  a  pier !  Around  the  room  and 
covering  great  expanses  of  the  wall  on  each  side  of  him,  were 
hung  rough  portraits  in  black-and-white  of  the  great,  the 
notorious,  the  infamous  of  all  ages — the  poets,  philanthropists, 
philosophers,  and  murderers — each  in  a  group  by  themselves ; 
and  as  he  illustrated  his  subject  from  these  diagrams,  pointing 
now  to  the  high  and  massive  foreheads  of  a  Shakspeare,  a  Bacon, 
or  a  Buonaparte,  and  comparing  them  with  the  pinched  and 
stinted  brows  of  the  idiots;  now  to  the  low  and  squat  foreheads 
of   the   villains   compared   with    the  high  and   sunny  tops  of 


142  PHRENOLOGY. 

the  philanthropists ;  or  again  to  the  small  occiputs  and  necks 
of  the  saints,  with  the  thick  bull-necks  of  the  criminals, — some 
of  them  with  ears  standing   out  from  their  heads  like  sails, 
others  with   them  lying  close  and  flat  against  the  head  like 
crouching  tigers, — the  room  was  roused  to  bursts  of  admiration 
and  applause.     After  the  lecture  the  audience  were  invited  to 
send  up  to  the  platform  two  or  more  of  their  number  to  have 
their  heads  examined ;  and  when  the  Professor  with  one  eye 
on  the  audience  and  the  other  on  the  subject  he  was  manipu- 
lating, groped    his  way  among  the  bumps  with  his  fat    and 
greasy  fingers,  and  one  by  one  picked  out  those  peculiarities 
of  character  or  ability  in  his   subject  which  everyone  at  once 
recognized,  the  room  rang  loud  with  wonder  and  delight.     I 
was  myself  much  impressed  with  the  truth  of  these  readings, 
and  although  still  sceptical  for  the  reasons  I  have  given,  was 
so   far   carried  away  by   the    skill  of   the   Professor  and  the 
contagious   enthusiasm   of  my  friend,  as   to  throw  myself  into 
the  subject  with  all  the  ardour  with  which  at  school  I  had  set 
to  work  on  some  new  and  engaging  problem.     My  friend  was 
convinced  already,  but  to  master  the  subject   completely  we 
obtained  a  copy  of   Combe's  Phrenology — the   classical  text- 
book on  the  subject — and  went  through  it  over  and  over  again 
with  the   greatest   care,  discussing  with  much  animation  and 
heat    the    metaphysical    questions    (such   as    the    distinction 
between  wit  and  humour,  for  example),  which  like  impalpable 
gossamer  arose  here  and  there  out  of  a  text  where  for  the  most 
part  character  and  genius  were  ladled  out  by  the  pound  as 
from  a  grocer's  scales  !     In  these  discussions  my  friend  whose 
head  the    science   flattered   so   highly,  supported  usually  the 
doctrines  laid  down  in  the  text,  while  I,  still  smarting  from 
wounded  vanity  and  with  my  old  difficulties  still  unresolved, 
for  the  most  part  found  myself  in  opposition. 

We  were  not  content,  however,  with  mere  reading,  but  set 
to  work  at  the  same  time  to  investigate  the  subject  by  the  true 
Baconian  method  of  observation  and  comparison.     Of  the  boys 


PHRENOLOGY.  143 

in  the  town  most  were  known  to  us  intimately  and  personally, 
and  of  the  grown  men  and  old  people  nearly  all  were  known  by 
reputation  or  report.  On  meeting  any  of  the  boys  in  the  street, 
especially  if  there  were  anything  peculiar  about  them,  we 
would  be  seized  with  the  eager  desire  of  seeing  whether 
the  head  corresponded  with  the  known  character,  and  the 
manoeuvres  we  employed  for  this  end  were  characterized  alike 
by  wariness  and  boldness.  The  hats  of  the  smaller  boys  we 
would  snatch  off  ruthlessly  and  without  apology  or  remark,  as 
we  passed  them,  while  the  bigger  boys  we  would  crimp  or 
impress  by  violence,  and  if  necessary  lay  them  down  on  their 
backs  like  sheep,  until  we  had  made  the  necessary  inspection 
and  examination  !  But  with  the  boys  of  our  own  age  we  had 
more  difficulty.  They  had  to  be  approached  by  the  more 
circuitous  routes  of  flattery  and  persuasion,  and  to  be  made  to 
feel  that  consequences  of  great  moment  hung  on  the  exact 
configuration  of  a  certain  portion  of  their  cranium ;  while  the 
old  men,  again,  like  patients  conscious  of  being  the  subject  of 
some  malady  unusually  interesting  to  the  faculty,  were  usually 
with  a  little  coaxing  easily  flattered  into  acquiescence.  So  far, 
indeed,  did  we  carry  our  curiosity,  that  no  head  could  anywhere 
raise  itself  uncovered  in  church,  or  street,  or  public  meeting  in 
our  presence,  but  we  would  instantly  pounce  on  it  like  American 
interviewers,  and  noting  down  its  characteristic  features,  store 
them  away  in  memory  for  future  use.  And  so  strong  and 
accurate  did  our  memory  of  faces  and  forms  become  by  this 
exercise,  that  even  after  great  lapses  of  time  scarcely  a  hair 
could  be  displaced  from  its  former  position  without  our  instantly 
detecting  it ! 

But  the  main  field  of  our  observation  was  the  Barber's  shop 
in  the  chief  thoroughfare  of  the  town.  Here  in  the  evening 
were  in  the  habit  of  congregating,  as  in  the  Florence  of 
'  Romola,'  the  local  politicians  who  had  dropped  in  to  read  the 
newspapers  or  talk  with  the  barber  on  the  affairs  of  the  country ; 
the   weather-prophets;    the   tradesmen   intent   on    prices   and 


144  PHRENOLOGY. 

prospects;  and  young  men  reposing  on  the  luxurious  lounges 
and  waiting  their  turn  to  have  a  '  brush  up  '  before  going  out 
for  the  night.  After  our  usual  evening  walk  we  would  look  in 
as  we  passed,  and  take  our  seats  among  the  rest ;  and  as  each 
customer  in  turn  took  off  his  hat  and  defiled  along  the  passage 
to  the  barber's  chair,  we  would  exchange  significant  glances  at 
one  another  from  behind  the  newspapers  which  we  only  affected 
to  read,  or  if  we  were  sitting  together,  would  whisper  into  each 
other's  ears  as  if  by  a  common  impulse  at  the  same  moment, 
'  great  Causality,'  *  large  Observation,'  or  if  the  head  were  a  bald 
one  so  that  we  could  see  the  top,  '  want  of  Firmness,'  '  no  Self- 
esteem,'  'low  Reverence,'  or  the  like.  Occasionally  some 
stranger  would  enter,  and  on  taking  his  seat  in  the  barber's 
chair  would  exhibit  such  a  boldness,  breadth,  and  capaciousness 
of  forehead  that  we  were  constrained  to  believe  that  here  at 
least  was  a  genius  of  sublime  and  heaven-born  intellect  and 
powers  !  As  he  rose  to  go,  we  would  seize  the  opportunity  of 
starting  a  conversation  with  him  with  the  object  of  drawing 
forth  these  wonderful  gifts ;  but  when  as  generally  happened 
we  got  no  more  for  our  pains  than  did  Coleridge  from  the 
bumpkin  who  sat  opposite  to  him  at  table,  and  whom,  for  a  like 
reason,  he  mistook  for  a  philosopher,  we  were  not  in  the  least 
daunted  or  disconcerted,  but  made  our  exit  airily  from  the 
situation  by  one  of  those  .numerous  backstairs  which,  as  we 
shall  see,  Phrenology  so  liberally  provided  for  awkward  and 
inconvenient  facts.  The  poor  victims  of  this  curiosity  of  ours, 
guiltless  of  the  genius  thrust  on  them,  were  usually  quite 
unconscious  of  the  homage  that  was  being  paid  them,  but  some 
of  the  more  vain  among  them,  apprised  like  Malvolio  of  a 
greatness  in  themselves  which  they  had  never  suspected,  would 
become  suddenly  self-conscious,  and  pushing  back  their  hats 
or  brushing  back  their  hair,  would  strut  about  with  much 
satisfaction  !  Conspicuous  among  these  latter  was  the  Barber 
himself,  a  huge  mulatto,  with  a  forehead  that  rose  above  his 
eyes  dusky  and  steep  as  a  mountain  cliff,  and  frowned  o'er  its 


PHRENOLOGY.  145 

base  like  a  great  sea-wall !  This  noble  and  capacious  front  we 
were  in  the  habit  of  comparing  with  the  massive  head  of  the 
great  Daniel  Webster  himself, — always  a  kind  of  Olympian 
Jove  among  the  phrenologists, — and  before  the  soul  that  lay 
behind  it,  we  bent  in  undisguised  admiration  and  reverence, 
listening  to  the  lightest  word  that  fell  from  the  oracle,  as  if  it 
were  from  the  mouth  of  some  ancient  sage.  But  the  barber 
like  other  oracles  was  much  too  wary  to  be  entrapped  into 
giving  himself  away,  and  with  a  prudence  and  caution  equal  to 
his  vanity,  was  dumb  for  the  most  part,  looked  wise,  and  if 
pressed  too  hard  would  end  the  discussion  by  emphatic  mono- 
syllables merely.  So  flattered  was  he  by  our  admiration  and 
the  sweet  oblations  which  we  heaped  upon  him,  that  as  he 
looked  down  from  his  height  on  the  meaner  heads  of  the 
customers  he  was  manipulating,  he  would  curl  his  lip  in 
scorn,  and  to  draw  our  attention  privately  to  the  marked 
contrast  between  his  own  head  and  theirs,  would  look  over  at 
us  and  wink  most  knowingly ! 

Now  in  all  these  investigations  it  was  curious  how  well  the 
shape  of  the  head  really  corresponded  to  such  rough  general 
traits  of  character  as  self-conceit,  vanity,  combativeness, 
secretiveness,  conscientiousness,  firmness,  and  the  like.  Whether 
this  were  due  like  the  predictions  of  Zadkiel  to  a  few  striking 
coincidences,  the  exceptions  being  slighted,  overlooked,  or 
forgotten  ;  or  whether,  dominated  by  a  pre-established  harmony, 
we  unconsciously  moulded  the  character  to  the  head,  as  we 
undoubtedly  had  a  tendency  to  do  with  strangers ;  or  whether 
the  heads  of  men,  like  their  faces,  have  a  physiognomy  that  in  a 
manner  represents  the  character,  as  one  sees  in  animals,  without 
the  necessity  of  assuming  as  the  phrenologists  did  that  the 
shape  was  caused  by  the  pressure  of  the  brain  substance 
immediately  underneath ;  whether  for  one  or  all  or  none  of 
these  reasons  I  cannot  say,  but  certainly  at  the  time  the 
correspondence  seemed  to  me  to  be  established.  With  the 
purely  intellectual  qualities,  however,  it   was  quite  different ; 

L 


146  PHRENOLOGY. 

they  could  be  brought  into  correspondence  with  the  organs  in 
the  forehead  only  by  a  series  of  extenuations  and  qualifications 
that  would  have  done  honour  to  the  apologists  of  miracles  or 
the  resurrection  !  For  every  difficulty,  as  I  have  said,,  there  was 
a  back  door  of  escape.  If  a  head  were  very  large  and  there 
were  nothing  in  it,  the  fault  must  be  in  the  quality  of  its 
brain-texture;  if  small  and  betraying  unmistakable  signs  of 
power,  then  its  quality  must  be  correspondingly  good  to  make 
up  for  the  deficiency  in  size.  If  a  special  organ  were  enormously 
developed,  and  yet  the  man  gave  no  sign,  his  temperament 
must  be  flabby,  or  the  convolutions  of  the  brain  shallow  and 
shaken  out,  or  the  blood-supply  poor  in  quality  or  composition, 
or  the  brain  itself  may  not  have  matured ;  or  if  all  else  failed, 
perhaps  the  man,  like  the  hackneyed  *  Paddy's  parrot '  thought 
more  than  he  said !  But  these  shifts  instead  of  rendering  me 
more  sceptical,  fell  off  my  mind  like  dew,  and  it  was  evident 
that  from  being  sceptical,  suspicious,  and  hostile,  as  at  first,  I 
had  jumped  to  the  point  of  fixed  and  absolute  conviction  ;  and 
the  whole  process  by  which  this  took  place,  and  by  which  the 
mingled  mass  of  truth  and  falsehood  was  kept  together  and 
prevented  from  splitting  and  wrecking  itself  in  contradiction, 
has  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  fine  illustration  and  epitome  of 
the  opinions  and  beliefs  of  men.  A  few  instances  so  striking  as 
to  seem  more  than  mere  coincidences,  generate  a  belief  more 
absolute  than  a  wider  induction  of  facts  would  have  warranted ; 
and  this  belief,  or  'assent'  as  Cardinal  Newman  would  have  called 
it,  being  once  for  all  stamped  on  the  mind  as  on  a  coin,  becomes 
in  turn  itself  a  despot,  coercing  all  the  recalcitrant,  exceptional, 
or  flatly  contradictory  facts  into  the  image  of  itself,  or  huddling 
them  away  in  some  dark  box  over  which  oblivion  is  allowed  to 
settle  until  such  time  as  the  system  from  inherent  weakness, 
change  of  attitude,  or  convicted  inadequacy,  begins  to  crack 
and  split  of  itself,  its  top  and  sides  fall  in,  and  the  obnoxious 
facts,  like  disimprisoned  genii,  are  once  more  set  free  again. 
Be  this  as  it  may,   certain   it   is    that  we  were  now  both 


PHRENOLOGY.  147 

convinced  that  we  were  in  possession  of  truths  that  by  their 
very  excess  of  light  struck  all  the  past  of  the  world  into 
darkness ;  and  the  effect  of  this  on  ourselves  soon  began  to 
manifest  itself.  Although  sharing  as  usual  in  the  sports,  the 
frivolities,  the  pastimes  of  the  other  boys — in  dances  and 
parties  and  picnics,  in  skating  and  swimming  and  cricketing 
and  wrestling — we  nevertheless  in  all  matters  of  opinion  or 
belief,  held  ourselves  high  aloof,  not  so  much  with  any 
obtrusive  insolence  or  overt  affectation  of  personal  superiority, 
as  with  a  sensitive  pride  and  lofty  reserve,  like  high-caste 
Brahmins,  shrinking  from  contact  with  the  opinions  of  the 
vulgar,  with  whom  to  taste  the  pleasures  of  thought  in  common 
were  a  kind  of  degradation !  We  walked  much  alone  and  in 
couples  like  young  curates,  holding  ourselves  as  a  peculiar 
priesthood,  and  keeping  ourselves,  spiritually  at  least,  unspotted 
from  the  world.  Our  sole  book  and  gospel  was  Combe's 
Phrenology,  a  work  we  held  in  much  the  same  reverence  as  the 
Kaliph  Omar  did  the  Koran  when  he  said  of  it  that  all  the 
libraries  of  the  world  might  be  burnt,  for  their  value  was  in 
that  book.  As  for  the  world  of  thought  and  speculation  before 
Phrenology,  to  us  it  was  wrapped  in  as  much  darkness  as 
Astronomy  before  Copernicus  or  Newton ;  and  the  genius  of 
its  great  men  seemed  to  us  as  different  in  quality  from  that  of 
the  founders  of  Phrenology,  as  in  the  old  Calvinistic  theology 
natural  goodness  was  from  '  prevenient  grace '  !  And  this 
disrespect  for  the  wisdom  of  the  ages,  far  from  seeking  to 
extenuate  or  deny,  with  the  characteristic  thoroughness  of  boys 
we  carried  to  a  contempt  quite  royal  in  its  sublimity.  In  the 
course  of  our  examination  of  the  portraits  and  heads  of  great 
men,  we  had  been  often  struck  with  the  prominence  in  the 
head  of  Shakespeare  of  what  the  Phrenologists  called  the  organ 
of  s  Human  Nature,'  as  indicated  by  the  great  height  and 
prominence  (rather  than  breadth)  of  forehead  in  the  middle 
line  running  up  over  the  brow.  That  he  was  supposed  to  be 
one  of  the  greatest  men  that  ever  lived  we  knew,  and  that 


148  PHRENOLOGY. 

his  greatness  was  supposed  to  lie  chiefly  in  this  very  knowledge 
of  human  nature  we  had  often  heard,  but  we  had  never  read 
his  works.  We  resolved,  accordingly,  to  put  these  high 
pretensions  of  his  to  the  test,  and  procuring  a  copy  from  the 
library,  took  it  with  us  one  beautiful  summer  afternoon  to  the 
high  ground  above  the  river's  bank ;  and  there  in  the  shade  of 
the  sweet-smelling  pines,  opened  at  the  play  of  *  the  Tempest.* 
I  can  still  remember  how  impressed  we  were  at  the  very  opening 
of  the  first  scene,  by  his  command  of  nautical  phraseology,  and 
of  our  wondering  whether  it  were  not  in  this  sort  of  thing  that 
his  greatness  lay ;  and  how  struck,  too,  we  were  as  we  read 
along,  with  his  unexampled  power  of  language ;  but  as  to  his 
so-called  knowledge  of  human  nature, — we  were  by  no  means  so 
certain  !  We  had  expected  to  find  the  distinguishing  traits  of 
the  various  characters  clearly  cut  out  like  Chinese  figures,  and 
labelled  each  with  its  appropriate  specification  ;  and  moreover, 
to  be  told  in  plain  terms  after  the  manner  of  the  phrenologists, 
what  relative  proportions  of  vanity,  pride,  ideality,  destructive- 
ness  and  the  rest,  these  Ariels  and  Calibans  and  other  characters 
had  in  their  composition.  But  not  finding  this,  we  were  much 
disappointed,  and  thought  that  in  this  boasted  knowledge  of 
human  nature  we  ourselves  could  have  easily  given  him  a  point 
or  two !  But  then,  what  could  you  expect,  we  reflected,  from 
one  who  lived  before  Phrenology  ?  As  we  read  on,  however, 
and  came  at  last  to  the  passage  where  Caliban  speaks  of 
himself  and  his  companions  as  being  *  turned  into  barnacles  and 
apes  with  foreheads  villainous  low,'  great  was  our  admiration 
and  delight.  What  an  anticipation  of  Phrenology,  we  thought ! 
And  what  a  testimony  to  the  truth  of  our  favourite  study ! 
And  what  untutored  powers  of  observation,  too,  did  it  not 
reveal !  We  were  charmed.  Was  it  any  wonder  that  he  should 
have  had  the  organ  of  Human  Nature  in  such  amplitude  as  all 
his  portraits  showed  1  And  if  such  powers  of  observation  could 
exist  in  the  green  tree,  what  would  they  not  have  been  in  the 
dry  ?  Would  that  he  had  not  lived  before  Phrenology  ! 


CHAPTEE    II. 


THE    MAN    WITH    THE    BOOT-JACK. 

I  T  was  while  this  enchantment  was  at  its  height,  and  the 
-1-  pretentions  of  Phrenology  were  blown  so  high  as  to  fill  the 
whole  intellectual  sky,  that  there  appeared  on  the  scene  a  figure 
who  by  his  assiduous  care  and  nursing,  kept  the  bubble  a  while 
longer  from  bursting  in  my  hands ;  and  who  besides,  by  the  lofti- 
ness of  his  moral  ideal  and  the  stimulus  he  gave  to  all  that  was 
purest  in  my  own  intellectual  aims,  left  abiding  traces  on  my  after 
years.  This  was  the  '  Man  with  the  Boot-jack,'  as  he  was  called, 
a  mysterious  figure  who  suffered  from  some  obscure  affection  of 
the  brain,  which  caused  him  to  wear  under  his  chin  for  support 
to  his  head,  a  piece  of  board  cut  in  the  shape  of  a  boot-jack,  and 
who  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing  was  living  solitary 
and  alone  some  few  miles  from  the  town  in  a  little  unused 
cottage  in  one  of  the  outlying  clearings  reclaimed  by  the  early 
settlers  from  the  primitive  woods.  I  had  never  seen  him  myself, 
but  had  often  heard  of  him  as  being  deeply  learned  in  many 
things,  but  especially  in  the  mysteries  of  Phrenology,  to  whose 
innermost  secrets  he  alone  in  all  that  region  was  said  to  hold 
the  key ;  but  in  my  own  private  imagination  I  had  always  vaguely 
figured  him  as  some  long-bearded,  white-haired,  old  hermit  who 
had  gone  wrong  in  his  mind,  and  who  had  hanging  about  him, 
like  another  Faust,  an  uncanny  taint  of  the  Devil  and  the  Black 
Arts !    With  fancies  like  these  in  my  mind,  it  so  chanced  that  one 


150  THE   MAN   WITH   THE   BOOT-JACK. 

day  as  I  was  walking  along  the  High  Street,  I  saw  approaching 
me  on  the  other  side  of  the  way  a  tall,  straight,  and  almost 
stalwart  figure,  in  mud-bespattered  boots  as  if  he  had  just  come 
in  from  the  country,  and  stalking  along  with  much  animation 
and  vigour.  He  was  dressed  in  a  roundabout  coat  of  coarse 
grey  tweed,  which  hung  loosely  on  his  raw  square  shoulders  as 
on  a  screen;  and  as  he  approached,  I  observed  that  his  chin 
rested  on  a  board,  and  the  board  again  on  his  breast,  the  whole 
forming  a  structure  as  solid  as  the  beards  one  sees  on  the  statues 
of  old  Egyptian  kings  !  This  must  be  the  '  Man  with  the  Boot- 
jack '  I  thought  to  myself,  as  I  conjured  up  all  I  had  heard ;  and 
at  the  thought  a  tremor  passed  over  me,  and  my  heart  began 
to  beat  as  violently  as  if  I  had  come  on  the  figure  of  '  Nick  of 
the  Woods '  himself  !  It  was  with  some  sense  of  relief,  however, 
that  instead  of  the  old,  decrepit,  and  long-bearded  hermit  of  my 
imagination,  I  saw  a  man  of  middle  life  with  a  thick,  brown, 
short-cut  beard,  and  walking  with  a  step  free  and  elastic  as  my 
own  ;  but  as  he  came  nearer  and  I  could  see  his  pale  and  haggard 
face,  and  especially  when  from  above  their  dark  and  hollow  caves 
he  cast  his  great  eye-balls,  round  and  white  and  unearthly,  as  I 
thought,  across  the  street  at  me,  there  came  over  me  the  same 
uncanny  feeling  as  before. 

It  was  not  long  after  this,  that  one  afternoon  as  I  was 
standing  in  the  book-shop  looking  along  the  shelves,  the  same 
figure  entered,  and  seeing  me,  walked  straight  up  to  me,  and 
without  further  preliminary  held  out  his  hand,  saying  simply, 
'  I  want  to  make  your  acquaintance.'  His  voice  and  manner 
were  so  frank  and  natural  that  before  I  had  time  to  think  who 
was  addressing  me,  I  was  put  completely  at  my  ease ;  and  when 
a  moment  or  two  later  he  suggested  that  we  should  take  a  walk 
together,  I  was  willing  and  even  eager  to  go.  As  we  sauntered 
along  he  continued  chatting  in  the  most  free  and  agreeable  way, 
now  and  then  stopping  to  shift  his  boot-jack  and  ease  its  pressure 
on  his  chin ;  his  manner  altogether  being  so  simple,  direct,  and 
sincere,  so  free  from  all  trace  of  affectation  or  egotism,  that  I 


THE  MAN  WITH  THE  BOOT-JACK.  151 

was   charmed.     But   what    delighted   and  flattered   me  most, 

perhaps,  personally  was  the  way  in  which  he  allowed  me  to  fix 

the  theme  and  give  the  cue  to  the  subject  of  our  conversation, 

while    he    stepping   behind,   as   it   were,    and   listening   with 

sympathy  and  attention  to  what  I  had  to  say,  instead  of  directly 

contradicting  me   when   he  disagreed,  would  wind  round  the 

subject     circuitously,     and     float     it     gently      off     its      old 

moorings,  expanding  and  enriching  it  at  the  same  time  on  all 

sides  with  the  abundance  of  his  own  knowledge  and  experience. 

In  all  that  he  had  to  say  I  was  struck  with  his  clear  intelligence, 

and    the   admirable  appropriateness  and  common-sense  of  his 

remarks  on  the  casual  topics  that  turned  up ;  but  especially  by 

his  great  and  artistic  powers  of  expression,   the  richness  and 

fluency   of    his   speech,    which    moved    spontaneously    to    its 

predestined  end  without  pause  or  hesitation,  with  the  measured 

and   even   tread  of  a  stately  and  studied  harangue;  and  was 

decorated  all  along  its  way,  but  not  overlaid,  with  various  and 

pertinent  analogies  and  metaphors  drawn  from  the  trees,  the 

fields,  and  the  flowers.     Suddenly  when  the  conversation  was  at 

its  height  and  was  becoming  most  interesting,  he  stopped  short, 

and  without  having  shown  any  previous  sign  of  fatigue,  said  he 

must  not  go  any  farther  as  the   strain  of  conversation   was 

beginning   to  affect  his  head.     On  seeing  a  look  of   wonder 

mingled  with  my   expressions   of  sympathy,    he   went   on   to 

explain  (touching  his   boot-jack   by   way   of   token;    that   he 

suffered  from  some  obscure  affection  of  the  brain  which  had 

puzzled  and  baffled  all  the  faculty  ;  and  that  it  was  owing  to  this 

that  he  had  been  obliged  for  many  years  to  give  up  all  reading, 

and  that  even  conversation  when  it  had  passed  a  certain  point, 

fatigued  and  distressed  him.     The  sensation,  he  said,  was  as  if 

a  band  of  iron  were  being  bound  round  his  head  and  pressed 

further  and  further  into  his  temples.    Besides  he  was  particularly 

sensitive  to  all  outward  impressions ;  the  mere  presence  of  a 

person  in  his  room  when  he  was  asleep  being  sufficient  to  awake 

him,  and  even  when  awake,  to  exercise  a  distinct  influence  over 


152  THE  MAN  WITH  THE  BOOT- JACK. 

him;  some  people,  he  explained,  affecting  him  in  his  body 
chiefly,  others  in  his  head,  and  others  again  (he  went  on  to  say 
to  my  amazement,  '  yourself  for  instance  ')  in  both  body  and 
mind !  I  was  more  perplexed  than  ever  at  this,  and  began  to 
feel  a  return  of  the  old  uncanny  feeling,  but  he  not  noticing  it, 
went  on  to  say  further  that  this  sensibility  to  impressions  was 
very  marked  in  the  case  of  sounds,  and  that  he  was  obliged  to 
have  all  the  cracks  of  the  doors  and  windows  stuffed  with  wool 
to  keep  out  the  murmur  of  the  mill-stream  that  ran  by  his 
cottage  door ;  and  that  instead  of  sleeping  on  a  bed  like  other 
people,  he  was  obliged  to  lie  on  the  floor  in  order  to  keep  off 
that  fear  of  falling  down  through  infinite  space,  which  haunted 
him  when  in  bed.  As  I  listened  with  wonder  to  this  strange 
recital  of  symptoms  which  I  had  never  heard  of  before,  I 
suppose  my  face  must  have  betrayed  some  slight  shade  of 
incredulity,  for  he  quickly  changed  his  tone,  and  by  a  sudden 
transition  began  to  complain  bitterly  of  the  doctors  who 
persisted  in  treating  him  as  a  hypochondriac,  and  his  symptoms 
as  a  delusion ;  and  of  his  neighbours,  some  of  whom  thought 
that  the  '  boot-jack '  was  a  device  of  his  to  escape  from  work, 
and  others  that  his  symptoms  were  the  dreams  of  a  disordered 
imagination  merely.  And  with  these  explanations  he  shook 
hands  and  turned  back,  leaving  me  to  my  own  meditations  on 
the  strange  things  I  had  seen  and  heard. 

After  this  our  first  meeting,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  coming 
into  town  on  Saturday  afternoons  in  the  summer  months  to 
see  me,  and  that  we  might  have  a  walk  and  talk  together. 
On  these  occasions  we  retired  for  the  most  part  to  the  high 
ground  above  the  bank  of  the  river,  or  to  the  hills  that  skirted 
the  valley  on  either  side,  and  which  were  still,  at  the  time  of 
which  I  am  writing,  more  or  less  dotted  with  the  pines  left 
standing  from  the  original  clearings.  Here  lying  on  the  grassy 
slopes,  with  the  birds  and  grasshoppers  singing  and  chirping 
around  us,  or  pacing  slowly  backwards  and  forwards  in  some 
secluded  walk  under  the  trees,  he  would  listen  with  interest 


THE    MAN   WITH    THE    BOOT-JACK.  153 

and  sympathy  to  my  own  outpourings,  imaginings,  and  dreams, 
or  would  himself  discourse  to  me  in  strains  which  to  my  young 
ears  seemed  sublime  as  those  of  Plato  in  the  groves  of  Academe. 
Scarcely  a  knoll,  or  boulder-stone,  or  trunk  of  fallen  tree 
around  the  wide  circuit  of  the  hills  but  remained  in  after  years 
as  memorial  of  some  enlarging  view  of  the  world  which  he  had 
opened  out  before  me  there,  or  was  associated  with  dreams  and 
ambitions  of  my  own,  alas !  long  since  departed.  Once  and 
once  only  did  I  make  a  pilgrimage  out  to  his  hermitage  to  see 
him,  and  this  by  his  own  express  desire.  It  was  a  bright 
summer  morning,  I  remember,  when  filling  my  case  with  cigars 
I  started  off  to  do  the  distance  on  foot — some  six  or  seven 
miles  perhaps — and  after  a  long  and  dusty  journey  on  the  open 
highway,  following  the  instructions  I  had  received,  I  plunged 
into  a  little  pathway  leading  through  the  woods,  to  find  myself 
at  the  end  of  it  looking  out  into  an  open  clearing  where  far  in 
the  distance  lay  the  little  log  cabin  of  my  friend,  nestling  in 
its  solitude  among  the  trees.  It  was  past  mid-day  before  I 
arrived,  but  he  was  still  in  bed,  and  after  knocking  loudly  once 
or  twice  I  sat  down  on  the  doorstep  to  await  his  appearance. 
Presently  the  door  opened,  and  there  stood  before  me,  and 
stretching  out  his  hand  to  welcome  me,  the  philosopher  himself, 
without  his  '  boot-jack,'  and  with  his  hair  and  beard  all  rough  and 
unkempt  as  if  he  had  just  got  out  of  bed.  Glancing  around 
the  room  as  he  was  dressing,  I  noticed  that  the  doors  and  cranks 
and  chinks  were,  as  he  had  said,  all  stuffed  and  barricaded  with 
wool ;  and  in  the  inner  room  beyond,  the  mattress  on  which  he 
slept  lay  stretched  on  the  floor  itself  to  prevent  the  horrible 
feeling  of  falling  through  infinite  space,  which  haunted  him 
when  he  was  in  bed.  After  breakfast  which  he  prepared  him- 
self, frying  the  bacon  and  making  our  tea  with  his  own  hand, 
we  retired  to  the  old  saw-mill  that  lay  some  yards  from  his 
door,  and  there,  protected  from  the  sun  by  the  roof,  and  with 
the  soft  summer  breezes  blowing  fresh  and  cool  through  the 
gaps  in  its  ruined  sides,  we  sat  and  smoked  and  talked  and  read 


154  THE  MAN  WITH  THE  BOOT-JACK. 

until  tea-time,  when  we  rose  and  went  into  the  house  again. 
It  was  after  sunset  before  I  started  for  home,  when  he 
accompanied  me  through  the  wood  to  the  highway  and  for  a 
mile  or  two  along  the  road,  before  he  left  me  to  return; 
making  the  very  night  air  sweet  for  the  rest  of  my  journey 
with  the  lingering  aroma  of  his  discourse,  and  leaving  the 
memory  of  that  day  in  after  years  as  a  pure  and  delicious 
dream. 

During  the  earlier  period  of  our  acquaintance,  our  conversation 
as  was  natural  from  my  enthusiasm  for  the  subject,  turned 
chiefly  on  Phrenology ;  and  as  I  led  him  over  the  old  familiar 
ground,  he  would  follow  with  that  kindly  acquiescence  and 
deference  to  my  inclinations,  which  had  so  charmed  and  flattered 
me  on  our  first  meeting.  His  own  knowledge  of  the  subject 
was  extensive  and  of  long  standing,  and  his  belief  in  it  had  been 
and  from  first  to  last  remained  entire  and  unclouded.  He  was 
familiar,  therefore,  with  all  those  qualifications  and  extenuations 
by  which,  as  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter,  the  want  of  parallelism 
between  the  character  and  the  cranium  was  to  be  smoothed  and 
explained  away  ;  and  when,  as  often  happened,  I  would  put  to 
him  a  case  familiar  to  us  both,  where  the  breach  between  the  two 
was  so  great  as  to  pull  me  up  and  give  me  sudden  pause,  he 
would  look  at  the  difficulty  for  a  moment,  and  without  a  muscle 
moving  would  take  it  with  the  utmost  coolness  and  ease ; 
leaving  me,  if  not  always  quite  satisfied,  still  lost  in  mute 
astonishment  at  his  powers.  Indeed  for  dexterity,  ingenuity, 
and  lightness  of  touch  in  difficult  situations  of  this  nature,  he 
was  without  a  parallel,  and  as  an  honest  casuist,  might  have 
taken  rank  with  a  bishop  !  Had  it  not  been  for  him,  the  whole 
system  would  have  cracked  and  fallen  to  pieces  for  me  long 
before  it  did,  but  thanks  to  his  skill  in  propping  its  falling 
timbers  and  buttressing  its  tottering  sides,  it  continued  yet  a 
little  longer  to  hold  itself  together. 

One  of  my  chief  debts  to  this  strange  and  in  many  ways 
admirable  character,  was  the  stimulus  he  gave  to  all  that  was 


THE   MAN   WITH   THE   BOOT- JACK.  155 

pure  and  high  in  my  own  intellectual  aims.  His  own  life  was 
simple  and  unalloyed  with  worldly  emulations  and  ambitions, 
and  during  the  few  years  of  our  intercourse  we  met  and  walked 
and  talked  as  if  there  were  to  be  no  past  or  future  but  all  was 
to-day.  No  allusion  so  far  as  I  remember  was  ever  made  to 
private  or  personal  advancement,  to  trade,  to  money,  to 
business,  or  any  of  the  baser  ambitions  of  the  world,  none  to  his 
fortunes  or  mine,  to  what  I  was  going  to  be  or  to  follow ;  but 
embowered  and  enfolded  in  an  atmosphere  of  sweet  and  pure 
contemplation,  and  fed  on  angels'  food,  life  was  to  be  one  long 
holiday,  one  long  sweet  dream. 

But  his  moral  influence  was  not  less  beneficent.  For  below 
all  this  fine  serenity  and  repose  of  intellectual  enjoyment,  my 
heart  had  long  been  troubled  with  a  confused  turmoil  of 
distracting  emotions.  The  little  love-episode  that  had  helped 
to  bring  me  home  from  College,  and  which  had  begun  so  bright 
and  sunny,  had  since  then  sunk  through  lowering  clouds  of 
jealousy  and  gloom,  and  was  now  staggering  down  to  its  final 
collapse.  The  young  coquette  to  whom  I  had  given  my  heart 
had  sought  to  repay  my  constancy  (which  in  spite  of  my 
general  light-heartedness  was  all  too  deep  and  serious  in  affairs 
of  the  heart)  with  a  light  capricious  vanity  and  flirtation  by 
no  means  to  my  taste ;  and  moved  to  it  by  flattery  and  self- 
love,  was  beginning  to  welcome  each  new  face  with  a  profusion 
of  dimples  and  smiles  ever  more  seductive  and  sweet ;  while  I, 
blown  on  alternately  by  love  and  jealousy,  and  swept  by  hot 
irregular  gusts  of  indignation  and  passion,  now  in  high  access 
of  hope,  now  in  melancholy  despair,  lay  stretched  in  the  gap 
as  on  a  rack,  until  I  had  the  strength  to  cut  the  tyrannous 
chain,  and  was  free  again.  Now  in  all  this  I  had  made  my 
friend  my  confidant,  and  at  each  new  accession  of  jealousy  was 
tempted  to  some  momentary  act  of  deep  desperation  as  I 
imagined  it ;  but  on  it  all  he  sprinkled  cool  patience,  reason, 
and  a  high  morality,  for  which,  though  disagreeable  to  my  then 
temper  as  a  first  cold  plunge,  I  cannot  be  too  thankful.     Like 


156  THE    MAN   WITH    THE    BOOT-JACK. 

Socrates  of  old  he  ever  kept  his  eye  not  on  the  outward  and 
visible  effects  of  actions  whatever  they  might  be,  but  on  the 
ruinous  recoil  on  the  mind  that  follows  on  any  deviation  from 
the  straight  but  narrow  path ;  and  when  I  had  conjured  up, 
for  example,  some  scheme  for  baffling  a  hated  rival,  which  had 
pictured  itself  to  my  egotism  and  self-love  as  a  piece  of  sweet 
poetic  justice ;  and  had  hastened  to  meet  him  on  his  arrival  in 
town  to  pour  it  into  his  sympathetic  ear  ;  he  would  listen  to  my 
recital,  and  like  a  prophet  of  old  lift  up  his  hand  against  it 
unmoved  through  all  the  clouds  of  sophistry  by  which  I  sought 
to  win  his  consent,  until  my  fit  was  past  and  I  was  myself 
again. 

To  him,  too,  I  owe  my  first  serious  attempt  to  subjugate  the 
vanity  and  conceit  which  were  now  at  their  flowering  time 
with  me,  and  which  I  already  felt  to  be  reptiles  throwing  a 
trail  of  slime  and  baseness  over  all  of  good  that  I  thought  or 
did.  Of  all  the  feelings  of  the  mind,  this  of  vanity  was  the 
supreme  object  of  his  animadversion,  and  the  theme  of  his 
constant  censure ;  and  I  can  remember  in  one  of  our  talks  his 
telling  me  d  propos  of  his  '  boot-jack '  I  think,  that  when  he  was 
at  my  age  he  was  himself  particularly  under  the  dominion  of 
this  hated  weakness,  but  that  now  he  had  succeeded  in  almost 
completely  eradicating  it ;  and  yet  not  entirely,  for  on  his  bad 
days  as  he  called  them,  when  his  head  was  more  than' usually 
affected,  he  was  aware  of  being  more  self-conscious  and 
sensitive  to  other  people's  opinion  than  was  good  or  right,  and 
more  alive  to  the  impression  he  was  producing  on  others  than 
was  consistent  either  with  dignity  or  erectness  of  mind.  It 
was  the  absence  of  all  trace  of  vanity,  so  far  as  I  could  see, 
together  with  the  generous  and  noble  disregard  of  himself 
which  it  gave  him,  when  compared  with  my  own  self-conscious- 
ness and  conceit  (always  looking  in  their  own  glass  as  it  were), 
that  first  won  my  admiration  and  esteem ;  and  now  that  he  had 
definitively  admitted  that  he  had  succeeded  in  vanquishing  a 
passion  to  which  he  had  once  been  the  slave,  I  too  was  resolved 


THE    MAN   WITH    THE    BOOT-JACK.  157 

to  make  the  attempt,  and  kept  constantly  asking  him,  I 
remember,  how  he  had  set  about  its  subjugation.  But  beyond 
the  vague  general  fact  that  it  had  been  with  him  almost  entirely 
a  matter  of  time,  I  could  learn  nothing  definitely  of  his  secret, 
and  after  several  ineffectual  attempts  to  eradicate  the  vice  by 
the  direct  method  of  declaring  forcibly  and  repeatedly  to 
myself  that  I  would  no  longer  submit  to  its  yoke,  I  gave  up 
the  task  as  hopeless  and  awaited  a  more  propitious  day. 


CHAPTEE    III. 


RELIGION. 


\  ND  yet  in  spite  of  the  active  ferment  of  thought  and  emotion 
^~  that  was  going  on  within  me,  this  was  intellectually, 
perhaps,  the  happiest  time  of  my  life.  There  was  in  the  very 
narrowness  of  my  views,  a  fullness,  completeness  and  even 
harmony,  that  like  the  beatific  visions  of  the  saints  enwrapped  me 
in  supremest  peace.  My  faith  in  Phrenology  as  the  summit  and 
last  expression  of  human  wisdom  was  as  yet,  thanks  to  the  careful 
nursing  of  my  friend,  entire  and  unshaken.  I  had  no  imme- 
diately pressing  wants,  and  like  most  boys  under  twenty  was 
too  young  for  the  thought  of  the  future  to  give  me  even  a 
passing  care. 

For  I  was  still  in  the  bright  and  joyous  morning-tide  of  life, 
splashing  and  refreshing  myself  gaily  in  its  shining  waters — its 
games  and  sports  and  young  ambitions — immersed  and  absorbed 
in  its  glittering  baubles  around  which  all  the  lustres  played ; 
still  in  that  golden  time  when  the  world  over-arched  with  hope 
was  a  resplendent  vision  along  whose  vistas  no  horizon  was 
visible,  and  in  which  imagination,  insatiate  and  unbaulked,  and 
ever  on  the  wing  in  search  of  fresh  delight,  found  infinite  scope 
wherein  to  play.  Unruffled  as  yet  by  the  cares  of  life,  unworn 
by  its  sorrow,  and  sipping  its  dew  and  foam  at  every  point,  the 
Present  was  to  me  an  infinite  content ;  while  the  Future  hung 
aloof  in  the  far  off  sky  like  a  resplendent  moon,  before  as  yet 


RELIGION.  159 

the  creeping  and  inevitable  years  had  rounded  in  its  glories  to  a 
span,  or  presaging  experience,  piercing  the  mask  of  distance, 
had  unveiled  behind  its  shining  face  an  airless  rocky  globe.  I 
had  as  yet  heard  no  voices,  seen  no  visions  to  make  the  solid 
all-confiding  earth  yawn  and  quake  beneath  me,  and  I  was 
altogether  too  young  to  have  had  any  such  experience  as  that 
which  befell  St.  Paul  on  his  way  to  Damascus.  Of  Salvation, 
therefore,  in  any  sense  of  the  term  realizable  by  me,  that  is  to 
say  of  the  necessity  there  is  of  some  haven  of  harmony  and  rest, 
some  abiding  rock  on  which  to  cling  in  this  wild-engulphing 
whirlpool  of  existence,  I  felt  no  need ;  and  without  the  sense  of 
need,  the  fine  logic  of  the  remedy  as  unfolded  by  St.  Paul  in 
what  out*  preacher  called  the  *  Scheme  of  Salvation,'  and  from 
which  human  souls  for  so  many  ages  had  drawn  strength  and 
sustenance,  fell  off  my  mind  as  from  some  revolving  wheel. 
As  for  the  shadowy  realm  of  Religion  therefore,  that  other 
concern  of  mortal  men  on  which  so  many  noble  spirits  have  been 
dashed  and  broken,  I  can  neither  be  said  to  have  believed  in  it, 
nor  strictly  to  have  disbelieved  it ;  but  with  the  whole  field  of 
sentiment  in  which  it  lives  already  occupied  with  the  little  loves, 
jealousies,  and  ambitions  of  the  hour,  had  no  room  for  it,  and  in 
consequence  practically  ignored  it  or  was  entirely  indifferent  to 
it.  It  rarely  crossed  my  mind,  therefore,  and  when  it  did,  it 
brought  with  it  only  dreary  reminiscences  of  the  days  when  our 
old  Calvinistic  divine,  in  sermons  two  hours  long,  built  up  anew 
before  us  Sunday  after  Sunday  what  he  called  the  great  Scheme 
of  Salvation,  reared  on  its  two  mighty  pillars  the  Covenant  of 
Works  and  the  Covenant  of  Grace,  between  whose  high  and 
massy  portals  the  world  of  human  souls  driven  by  inexorable 
decree,  were  seen  passing  onwards  to  Heaven  or  to  Hell. 
The  consequence  was  that  not  only  did  the  recollection  of 
Sunday  repel  me  by  its  gloom, .  its  stillness,  and  its  enforced 
renunciations,  but  the  Bible  itself,  linked  as  it  was  to  it  by 
association  and  doctrine,  was  drawn  like  an  accomplice  into  the 
currents  of  my  aversion,  and  carried  down  along  with  it  in  one 


1()0  RELIGION. 

condemnation.  Its  high  and  beautiful  poetry  and  symbolism, 
wrung  from  the  stricken  or  exultant  souls  of  lonely  prophets, 
fell  on  my  young  unheeding  ears  like  sounding  brass,  and 
employed  as  they  were  for  the  most  part  in  bodying  forth  the 
majesty,  might,  or  wrath  of  Jehovah  (whose  voice  I  seemed  to 
hear  rumbling  and  echoing  from  peak  to  peak  like  the  noise  of 
distant  thunder),  they  struck  cold  rather  than  comfort  to  the 
heart ;  while  the  whole  impersonation  of  God,  associating  itself 
almost  inevitably  with  the  figure  of  the  old  Kirk  Elder  beneath 
whose  irate  and  frowning  brows  we  youngsters  cowered,  instead 
of  attracting,  left  behind  a  vague  sense  of  uneasiness  or  fear. 
But  in  spite  of  all  this  I  have  often  thought  that  had  the  genius 
and  spirit  of  the  Bible  been  distilled  from  its  connected  story, 
and  presented  so  as  to  link  itself  on  in  a  natural  human  way 
with  the  life  I  saw  around  me,  I  should  have  freely  imbibed 
and  assimilated  it.  As  it  was,  I  had  too  little  pleasure  in  its 
Sunday  associations,  and  was  too  much  immersed  in  the  games 
and  sports  of  the  passing  hour,  to  take  the  trouble  to  read  it  for 
myself,  and  was  left  in  consequence  to  the  mercy  of  such  isolated 
and  disconnected  chapters  as  turned  up  in  the  reading  lesson, 
to  fragments  of  historical  narrative,  and  to  texts.  And  here 
again  everything  in  the  mode  of  presenting  the  facts  was 
calculated  to  prevent  their  spirit  and  essential  meaning  from 
reaching  me.  Clothed  in  an  old-world  phraseology  so  different 
from  the  accustomed  vernacular  of  the  school  and  the  street, 
the  chapters  divided  into  separate  verses,  each  of  which  like 
independent  sovereigns  within  their  own  territory  promulgated 
its  oracles  and  decrees  independent  of  its  neighbours  ;  each  too 
associated  with  its  special  pulpit-voice  of  supplication  or 
contrition,  or  eye  deprecating,  upturned,  or  solicitous ;  the  whole 
became,  in  consequence,  so  magnetized  and  changed  by  these 
currents  of  emotion  which  were  passed  through  and  over  it,  so 
smooth-worn  and  enamelled  by  repetition  and  use,  as  to  lose  all 
its  own  natural  beauty,  sense,  or  significance.  Nowhere  did  the 
words,  phrases,  or  sentences  so  metamorphosed  catch  on  to  the 


JtELIGION.  1()1 

reality  as  I  knew  it  within  me  or  around  me,  but  all  hung  in  an 
enchanted  dreamland  between  heaven  and  earth  where  I  could 
not  touch  them,  as  in  some  *  Arabian  Nights ';  and  after  a  few 
passes  from  the  preacher,  the  mesmeric  sleep  that  fell  on  the 
text  reached  inwards  to  the  characters  and  actors  themselves. 
Pontius  Pilate  was  never  real  to  me  in  the  sense  in  which  any 
other  Roman  governor  was  real,  nor  was  Barabbas  even  like  any 
other   robber.     The   Jews  and  Samaritans  were  not  like  any 
other  nations  of  profane  history,  and  the  disciples,  if  fishermen 
at  all,  were  fishermen  only  in  the  merest  Pickwickian  sense; 
for  although  like  the  gods  of  Homer  they  mingled  freely  in  the 
affairs  of  men  and  partook  of  their  good  or  evil  fortunes,  they 
nevertheless  were    separated  from   them   by  that  diaphonous, 
spirit-like  transparency  which  marked  them  as  beings  of  another 
order,  bearing  the  same  relation  to  real  men  and  women  as  one 
can  imagine  the  Elijah  translated  and  transfigured  to  the  Elijah 
of  flesh  and  blood.     The  very  atrocities  of  the  Old  Testament, 
which  otherwise  would  have  poisoned  the  healthy  moral  sense, 
had    about    them    the    same    unreal,    spectral,    and   supernal 
character  which  mocked  all  attempts  to  catch  and  range  them 
in  the  category  of  ordinary  human  crime ;  and  so,  like  the  tales 
of  giant  combats  set  on  by  the  gods,  slipped  off  the  surface  of 
the  mind  without  so  much  as  rippling  its  repose.     Even  the 
soft  and  gentle  figure  of  Christ  Himself,  walking  serene  and 
majestic    by   the  shores   of    Galilee  with  his  train  of  adoring 
disciples,   and   shedding   his  beneficent  radiance    on   sickness, 
sorrow,  and  death,  had   always  the   golden   halo   of   the    old 
masters  around  its  brow,  and  was  ever  the  God  to  me  rather 
than  the  man.     The  consequence  was  that  the  fine  contagion  of 
example  which  streams  in  on  us  from  beings  constituted  in  all 
respects   like   ourselves,   was  prevented  from  reaching  me  by 
invisible  barriers  of  demarcation  not  to  be  transgressed,  and  as 
with  that  pervading  sense  of  inequality  which  prevented  the 
high-born  manners  of  the  feudal  lord  from  reaching  even  his 
attendant  serfs,  was  lost  for  purposes  of  life.     And  the  end  and 

M 


162  RELIGION. 

upshot  of  it  all  was,  that  touching  my  own  conscious  life  in  no 
part  of  its  circumference,  these  old-world  characters  and  events 
with  the  miracles  they  brought  in  their  train,  hung  for  years  in 
conscious  memory  like  figures  merely,  and  were  carried  still 
clinging  to  me  as  I  grew  into  maturity,  until  at  last  the  bleak 
and  nipping  frosts  of  scepticism  detached  them  from  their 
precarious  tenure  on  the  tree ;  and  so,  without  any  transitional 
period  of  doubt  or  uncertainty  like  that  through  which  so  many 
are  condemned  to  pass,  they  fell  silent  and  unobserved;  and 
from  that  time  until  I  started  on  my  '  History  of  Intellectual 
Development,'  with  the  exception  of  an  occasional  glance  to 
verify  some  quotation,  I  have  never  looked  into  the  Book  again. 
And  yet  in  spite  of  the  dust  that  has  settled  on  its  pages,  and 
the  gloom  with  which  in  those  early  days  it  was  invested,  it  still 
lingers  in  my  memory  with  a  soft  and  sombre  radiance  not 
untinged  with  melancholy,  now  that  the  receding  years  with 
their  mellowing  hand  have  interposed  to  soften  its  asperities, 
and  the  figures  with  whom  it  was  associated  in  my  boyhood 
have  one  by  one  departed. 


CHAPTEK     IV. 


PAUSE. 

npHE  truth  is  that  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing,  I  was 
-*~  completely  immersed  in  the  present  homy  and  in  that, 
interested  only  in  the  minds  and  characters  of  men ;  as  to  the 
past  or  future  it  had  no  existence.  The  old  men  seemed  to  me 
never  to  have  been  young,  the  middle-aged  to  have  been  the 
same  ever  since  I  had  known  them.  The  town  and  church,  the 
river  and  market-place  still  occupied  their  old  positions,  and 
even  the  old  constable  who  used  to  chase  us  when  we  were 
boys,  was  still  the  same.  And  in  a  country  of  equal  freedom 
where  no  one  stood  between  you  and  high  Heaven,  no  inter- 
posing hand  of  despot  or  priest  came  in  to  disturb  the  even 
monotony  of  the  days  and  years.  The  idea  of  Evolution,  in 
consequence,  or  of  things  having  been  different  from  what  they 
are,  never  crossed  the  mind  ;  but  all  alike  struck  out  at  a  single 
cast,  seemed  like  the  sun  and  moon  and  other  ordinances  of 
Nature,  to  have  been  there  from  all  eternity.  Hence  it  was 
that  all  the  really  intellectual  problems  of  the  world,  dealing  as 
they  do  with  the  growth,  the  progress,  and  the  declir  °  of  men 
and  nations,  of  philosophies  and  religions  and  moralities,  lay 
quite  beyond  the  range  either  of  my  experience  or  my  under- 
standing. What  were  the  laws  of  Nature  and  of  development, 
the  evolution  of  philosophies  and  religions,  of  societies  and 
civilizations  to  me,  who  saw  no  change   even  in  individuals? 


164  PAUSE. 

Or  the  flux  of  time,  when  I  was  not  yet  old  enough  to  feel  it  ? 
Or  all  the  varied  beauty  and  pathos  of  the  world,  its  wonder 
and  awe,  the  how,  whence,  and  whither  of  man  with  his  little 
life  emerging  out  of  the  silent  void,  and  passing  on  to  the 
everlasting  night— what  was  all  this  to  one  who  had  only  just 
begun  to  live  !  Besides,  what  did  it  matter  how  the  world  of 
men  got  here,  was  it  not  enough  that  they  were  here,  and  that 
I  carried  in  my  pocket  the  tape  and  calipers  that  would  search 
and  sound  them  to  the  bottom?  And  in  fine,  what  could 
history,  metaphysics,  science,  psychology,  and  all  the  varied 
learning  of  the  world  do,  but  lead  up  to  this,  their  final  flower 
and  consummation !  Was  it  not  natural,  therefore,  that  I 
should  regard  with  peculiar  complacency  and  satisfaction  this 
knowledge  of  Phrenology  which  was  to  me  the  finest  index 
and  measure  of  human  intellect  ? 

Little,  however,  as  I  could  have  imagined  it  at  the  time,  it 
was  nevertheless  quite  impossible  that  I  should  continue  long 
in  this  mood,  unless,  indeed,  I  were  always  to  remain  a  boy,  or 
to  develop  into  one  of  those  intellectual  dilettanti  who  are 
more  interested  in  discussing  the  relative  position  and  status  of 
men  of  eminence,  than  in  acquiring  the  knowledge  itself  which 
has  given  them  their  fame.  On  the  contrary  it  was  inevitable 
that  as  the  years  passed  on,  the  growing  mind  pushed  on  like 
an  opening  flower  by  the  emerging  desire  for  knowledge,  should 
tire  of  this  barren  rock  of  Phrenology  on  which  like  another 
Crusoe  I  was  for  the  time  enisled,  on  which  no  flowers  grew  nor 
fruit  ripened ;  it  was  impossible  that  I  should  continue  to 
remain  content  with  such  barren  husks,  for  example,  as  that 
this  or  that  individual  had  or  had  not  this  or  that  faculty  or 
power  which  I  could  survey  with  a  tape  or  a  pair  of  compasses ; 
on  the  contrary,  with  the  mind  just  opening  to  the  mystery  of 
the  world,  it  was  inevitable  that  I  should  be  impelled  to  ask 
what  these  faculties  had  to  teach  or  report  of  the  great  world 
in  which  they  found  themselves,  and  of  that  human  mind  of 
which  they  were  the  chess-pieces  with  which  the  real  game  of 


PAUSE.  165 

thought  was  played.  And  here  in  passing  it  may  be  proper  to 
remark  that  in  this  barrenness  of  fruit,  Phrenology  bears  a 
striking  likeness  to  the  Metaphysics  of  the  Schools,  through 
■which  I  was  afterwards  compelled  to  wade,  and  that  it  was 
owing  to  this  analogy  and  to  the  use  I  shall  hereafter  make  of 
it,  that  I  have  dwelt  on  this  exploded  system  of  Phrenology 
nt  what  must  seem  to  many  a  disproportionate  length.  For 
the  aim  and  end  of  the  teaching  of  both  is  to  prove  that  the 
mind  of  man  is  made  up  of  a  number  of  faculties  variously 
sorted,  divided,  compounded,  and  named,  according  to  the 
particular  system  in  vogue.  But  these  faculties  and  organs 
iire  not  the  mind,  but  the  tools  only  with  which  the  mind 
works,  the  instruments  and  plummets  by  which  it  takes  survey 
and  sounding  of  the  world.  If  this  be  so,  what  we  want  to 
know  is  not  how  little  or  how  much  of  the  organ  of  the 
philosopher,  the  poet,  or  the  mathematician,  you  are  gifted 
with,  but  what  truths  these  powers  have  to  reveal  when  their 
edge  and  quality  are  tested  and  broken  on  the  rugged  surface 
of  the  world  with  its  misleading  refractions,  and  the  illusory 
lustres  that  play  around  it ;  what  laws  of  the  mind  they  will 
bring  up  in  their  soundings  of  human  life  where  the  rinds  and 
wrappages  of  custom,  tradition,  and  opinion,  are  so  dense  and 
impervious  as  to  obscure  and  conceal  the  truth.  Now  not  to 
■dwell  here  on  the  central  error  in  these  early  speculations,  the 
full  bearing  of  which  will  only  be  apparent  when  we  come  to 
the  higher  regions  of  thought,  the  error  namely,  that 
Phrenology  if  true,  was  really  a  knowledge  of  the  laws 
of  the  human  mind,  instead  of  being  but  a  mere  catalogue 
of  faculties,  it  will  be  sufficient  to  remark  here  that  it  was  not 
•even  a  true  account  of  the  mental  operations  which  it  professed 
to  reveal.  And  yet  had  I  attempted  to  prove  its  falsity  by  its 
own  method  of  the  calipers  and  the  tape,  it  would  with  its 
•endless  loop-holes  of  evasion  and  escape  have  held  its  ground 
to  this  day.  But  when  I  took  to  observing  the  world  for  myself, 
and  to  watching  the  processes  involved  in  the  observation  of 


166  PAUSE. 

different  orders  of  fact,  and  their  elaboration  and  conversion 
into  thought,  I  saw  that  Phrenology  even  as  a  tenable  scheme 
of  the  division  of  the  human  faculties,  was  incredible.  Like 
the  cranks  and  wheels  of  those  engines  which  work  so  smoothly 
and  easily  in  the  air,  but  which  when  applied  to  the  rails  refuse 
to  move,  this  little  scheme  of  the  mind,  seemingly  so  round 
and  complete  in  itself,  when  applied  to  the  world  which  is  its- 
natural  counterpart,  refused  to  work,  and  finally  fell  to  pieces 
from  internal  incoherence  and  decay.  Indeed  its  essential 
barrenness  and  uselessness  for  aid  in  the  actual  processes  of 
thought  became  so  manifest  when  I  turned  my  attention  to  the 
world,  that  it  was  practically  forgotten  and  laid  aside  long 
before  its  final  collapse. 


CHAPTER    V. 


A  EEVIVAL  EPISODE. 

HPHE  first  incident  that  occurred  to  divert  my  thoughts  from 
their  exclusive  devotion  to  Phrenology,  to  break  its 
enchantment,  and  to  fix  my  mind  on  the  great  outside  world 
of  thought  and  speculation  which  was  to  be  to  me  the  grave 
of  it  and  of  all  other  metaphysical  systems,  was  the  arrival  in 
town  of  a  couple  of  .Revivalist  preachers,  who  by  the  excite- 
ment they  caused  and  the  passions  they  aroused,  split  the  town 
into  hostile  camps,  and  left  behind  them  bitter  memories  for 
many  years.  They  had  begun  their  campaign  by  preaching 
in  the  open  air  from  a  pile  of  old  scaffolding  in  one  of  the 
vacant  spaces,  but  it  was  not  long  before,  gaining  the  friendly 
sympathy  of  one  of  the  leading  preachers,  they  were  invited  by 
him  to  make  use  of  his  pulpit  in  the  large  church  in  the  centre 
of  the  town.  Once  securely  entrenched  there,  and  with  a 
large  congregation  to  listen  to  their  words,  they  began  a 
vigorous  and  systematic  attack  on  the  ministers  of  the  out- 
lying churches,  whom  they  denounced  for  their  cold-blooded, 
dead,  and  barren  formalism,  characterizing  their  religion  as 
1  filthy  rags,'  and  themselves  as  '  wolves  in  sheep's  clothing  who 
were  leading  their  flocks  to  Hell.'  To  amenities  like  these  the 
outraged  preachers  were  not  slow  in  responding  from  their 
pulpits  on  the  neighbouring  hills,  but  wakened  from  their 
long  sleep  by  the  falling  shell,  hastened  to  open  fire  on  the 


1(38  A    REVIVAL   EPISODE. 

intruders  ;  a  general  bombardment  ensued ;  and  presently  the 
whole  town  was  ablaze  with  the  fire  and  rockets  from  the  circle 
of  the  surrounding  batteries.  The  inhabitants  themselves  who 
felt  each  his  pastor's  insult  as  his  own,  now  joined  in  the  fray  ; 
the  ordinary  subjects  of  interest  and  conversation  were  for 
the  time  suspended;  excited  groups  stood  at  street  corners 
discussing  the  last  phases  of  the  controversy,  and  at  times  the 
hot  blood  ran  so  high  that,  as  in  an  old  Italian  city  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  there  was  difficulty  in  keeping  the  peace.  The 
individual  members  of  the  various  congregations,  meantime, 
who  had  sat  enchanted  or  asleep  in  the  same  old  church  and 
in  the  same  old  pews  from  the  earliest  times,  awakened  into  life 
by  the  rising  heat,  began  like  chemical  compounds  loosened 
from  their  old  combinations,  to  form  new  affinities,  and  to  pass 
from  one  church  to  another ;  leaving  the  '  old  lights '  and  join- 
ing the  'new'  or  vice  versa  according  to  the  secret  promptings 
of  their  temper  or  heart.  The  guiding  principle  in  these 
movements  was  not  one  of  family,  but  was  purely  a  personal 
one,  and  might  best  be  seen  in  the  answer  given  to  this  one 
question, — Have  you  or  have  you  not  experienced  that  change 
of  heart  known  as  '  conversion  ? '  If  you  had,  you  were 
silently  attracted  from  the  outlying  churches  to  the  revival 
camp  in  the  centre :  if  not,  shocked  by  the  outrage  done  to 
your  sensibilities  by  imputations  so  offensive  and  gross  as 
those  of  the  Kevivalists,  you  fled  for  refuge  and  sympathy  to 
your  friends  on  the  frontier.  In  this  way  family  was  divided 
against  family,  father-in-law  against  son-in-law,  mother-in-law 
against  daughter-in-law,  till  it  became  literally  and  painfully 
true  that  a  man's  foes  were  those  of  his  own  household. 

Not  less  strange  and  remarkable  were  the  sudden  curves  and 
turnings  taken  by  the  same  persons  during  the  course  of  the" 
campaign.  One  old  '  elder '  belonging  to  the  central  church,  I 
remember,  and  a  most  upright,  pious,  and  worthy  man,  was  so 
shocked  by  the  terms  in  which  the  regular  ministers  had  been 
characterized,    that   he    went   about    loudly   proclaiming  that 


A   REVIVAL   EPISODE.  169 

insolence  like  this  was  not  to  be  borne,  and  that  the  offensive 
intruders  should  be  altogether  forbidden  the  use  of  the  pulpit 
which  they  had  so  fouled  and  disgraced.  But  not  finding  a 
sufficient  number  of  sympathizers  to  support  him,  he  was  about 
to  shake  the  dust  off  his  feet  and  remove  with  his  household 
gods  to  one  of  the  outlying  congregations,  when  just  as  he  was 
gathering  up  his  skirts  to  depart,  he  was  arrested  on  the  threshold 
by  a  stray  shot  from  the  burning  repertoire  of  the  revivalist,  and 
brought  to  the  earth,  *  converted '  on  the  spot  and  in  a  moment, 
as  he  said,  like  St.  Paul  on  the  way  to  Damascus.  Henceforward 
with  the  terror  of  the  man  who  has  just  put  foot  on  the  solid 
earth  to  find  that  the  log  over  which  he  has  crossed  the  raging 
stream,  has  been  swept  away  behind  him  by  the  flood,  he  seemed 
so  horror-stricken  at  the  thought  of  the  danger  he  had  escaped, 
that  he  went  about  proclaiming  that  the  words  of  the  Revivalists, 
which  but  yesterday  he  had  declared  to  be  blasphemous,  were  in 
reality  but  the  words  of  truth  and  soberness,  and  that  he  would 
have  sat  there  in  his  sins,  trusting  to  his  piety,  his  respectability, 
tind  his  *  good  works '  until  he  had  gone  down  to  perdition,  but 
for  the  arrival  in  town  of  these  men. 

Now  of  all  this  I  was  a  silent  but  not  inattentive'  spectator. 
From  my  early  boyhood  I  had  taken  a  lively  interest  in  these 
revival  meetings,  and  when  one  had  broken  out  anywhere,  I  was 
usually  to  be  found  hovering  about  the  doors  and  side  aisles, 
looking  and  listening  to  what  was  going  on.  This  was  mainly 
out  of  curiosity,  especially  when  the  excitement  ran  high,  and 
men  and  women  '  struck '  to  the  ground  were  carried  out  fainting 
.and  speechless ;  but  as  I  grew  older  there  was  mingled  with  it  a 
thin  film  or  thread  of  another  order,  which  appeared  and 
reappeared  for  many  years.  Night  after  night  I  had  seen  boys 
and  girls  of  my  own  age,  as  well  as  full-bearded  men,  melted 
into  tears  under  the  burning  words  of  the  preacher,-  and  with 
•drooping  heads  passing  along  the  aisles  to  the  '  penitents'  bench  • 
to  make  confession  of  their  sins,  while  I  remained  unmoved. 
Was  there,  then,  something  wanting  in  me  that  I  was  deaf  to 


170  A    REVIVAL   EPISODE. 

such  appeals?  Was  it  possible  that  I  who  so  much  felt  the 
need  of  human  sympathy,  should  be  for  ever  condemned  to  walk 
apart  in  lonely  isolation,  unable  to  refresh  my  mind  by  mingling 
it  in  the  common  human  stream?  I  could  not  tell,  but  the  haunting 
s-  spicion  that  it  was  so,  came  over  my  mind  whenever  I  entered 
these  meetings,  like  an  ominous  bird ;  hence  the  fascination 
with  which  I  kept  returning  to  them  again  and  again,  as  a  man 
to  an  object  he  partly  dreads,  in  order  to  test  myself  and  see 
whether  I  should  still  remain  unmoved. 

And  so,  when  the  particular  revival  of  which  I  am  writing 
broke  out,  I  was  to  be  found  as  usual  among  the  curious 
listeners  who  hung  about  its  out-skirts  without  taking  any 
direct  part  in  its  proceedings.  I  was  usually  accompanied  by 
the  young  friend  of  whom  I. have  already  spoken,  with  whom  I 
began  the  study  of  phrenology,  and  our  custom  was  to  drop  in 
at  the  service  after  our  evening  walk,  and  to  discuss  on  our 
way  home  the  phenomena  we  had  seen  and  heard,  from  what 
we  regarded  as  our  superior  stand-point  as  philosophers.  My 
friend  especially,  I  remember,  gave  himself  great  airs  of 
superiority,  and  made  himself  very  merry  over  the  poor  dupes,, 
as  he  called  them,  who  imagined  that  these  manifestations  and 
sudden  conversions  were  due  to  the  workings  of  the  Holy 
Spirit;  comparing  them  in  their  ignorance  to  those  who 
thought  that  the  phenomena  of  epilepsy  were  due  to  possession 
by  the  Devil.  What  therefore  was  my  surprise  when  on  my 
return  after  being  absent  a  few  evenings,  I  saw  him  kneeling 
in  his  pew  when  1  entered  the  church  ;  and  my  amazement 
when  he  told  me  as  we  walked  home,  that  he  was  a  new  man, 
and  that  he  had  undergone  the  change  of  heart  known  as 
8  conversion.'  Of  the  reality  of  this  change  and  of  his  sincerity 
and  earnestness  I  could  have  no  doubt.  He  disappeared  from 
his  old  haunts  and  from  the  ball-rooms  and  parties  where  he 
had  been  so  prominent  and  welcome  a  figure,  and  was  to  be 
seen  nowhere  but  at  these  meetings.  He  gave  up  smoking 
and  drinking,  cut  himself  apart  from  all  his  old  companions- 


A    REVIVAL   EPISODE.  171 

except  myself,  and  exhibited  an  excess  of  scrupulosity  in  trifles 
which  I  had  not  before  remarked  in  him.  He  spoke  in  low 
and  subdued  tones  instead  of  in  his  usual  high  and  manly  key, 
sang  hymns  unweariedly  all  day  long,  and  on  one  occasion 
when  walking  with  me  and  talking  to  me  seriously  of  his  new- 
found joy,  on  my  lightly  dropping  some  strong  expression 
savouring  of  profanity  he  actually  burst  into  tears.  From  all 
this  it  was  clear  to  me  at  least  that  he  had  undergone  some 
remarkable  change,  and  hopeless  myself  of  being  able  to  share 
his  joy,  I  resolved  if  possible  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  it. 

After  his  conversion  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of  calling  on 
me  in  the  evenings  with  the  view  of  making  a  convert  of  me, 
but  all  his  efforts  in  this  direction  proving  unavailing,  he 
gradually  reconciled  himself  to  talking  the  matter  over 
philosophically,  as  it  were,  and  as  a  piece  of  experience ;  and 
was  quite  prepared  to  explain  to  me  as  truly  as  he  could,  the 
nature  of  the  curious  change  which  had  come  over  him,  and  in 
which  I  was  so  anxious  if  not  at  first  hand  then  imaginatively 
or  at  second  hand,  to  participate. 

The  first  question,  then,  to  which  I  sought  an  answer,  was 
whether  the  personal  experience  called  '  conversion '  was  due 
as  the  Revivalists  taught,  to  the  direct  action  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  on  the  open  and  receptive  heart,  or  not !  Now 
Phrenology  like  all  materialistic  philosophies,  making  as  it  did 
all  the  emotions  of  the  mind  to  spring  directly  from  the 
activity  of  certain  portions  of  the  brain,  was  unable  to  allow  of 
any  supernatural  or  extraneous  influences  whatever  ;  and  I  was 
anxious  therefore  to  know  from  my  friend  whether  he  could 
detect  in  the  strange  mental  experience  of  his  conversion,  any 
foreign  element  not  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  normal  activity  of 
the  human  mind  when  acted  on  by  a  sufficient  natural  stimulus. 
Of  a  keenly  analytic  turn  of  mind,  he  had  evidently  been 
pondering  this  very  point,  for  his  reply  was  prompt  and 
unhesitating.  There  was  nothing  supernatural  about  it  what- 
ever, he  said,  but  as  far  and  as  truly  as  he  could  analyze  it,  it 


172  A    REVIVAL   EPISODE. 

was  due  merely  to  the  natural  effect  on  his  better  nature,  of 
what  he  believed  to  be  a  fact, — but  a  fact  the  profound 
significance  of  which,  he  had  only  now  realized  for  the  first 
time, — the  fact  namely,  that  Jesus  Christ  the  Son  of  God  had 
actually  and  literally  died  for  him,  for  him  personally  and 
individually,  that  he  might  be  saved.  That  was  all.  On  my 
venturing  to  suggest  that  this  explanation  was  not  one  that  the 
Revivalists,  or  indeed  the  body  of  Christians  generally,  would 
be  disposed  to  accept,  he  replied  that  he  could  not  help  it,  that 
he  had  himself  undergone  the  experience,  and  that  he  could 
assure  me  that  the  character  and  quality  of  the  feeling  in  this 
change  of  heart  or  '  conversion,'  were  precisely  what  they 
would  have  been  had  some  friend  died  for  him,  and  that  its 
greater  intensity  was  simply  owing  to  the  fact  that  it  was  no 
mere  man  who  had  done  this  for  him,  but  the  Son  of  God 
Himself.  Now  this,  harmonizing  as  it  did  with  all  my  own 
beliefs,  I  had  no  difficulty  in  accepting ;  indeed  it  seemed  to 
me  at  once  the  most  simple  and  natural  explanation  of 
Christian  experience  that  I  had  yet  heard ;  an  explanation,  too, 
without  a  trace  of  metaphysics,  scholasticism  or  supernaturalism 
in  it,  and  at  the  time  (I  was  then  about  nineteen)  it  made  a 
deep  impression  on  my  mind.  If  then  I  could  only  believe 
that  Jesus  Christ  really  did  die  for  me,  I  thought.  What  then  ? 
My  next  concern,  accordingly,  was  to  ascertain  from  my 
friend  what  new  fact  or  facts,  what  new  combination  or  new 
presentation  of  them  had  been  made  to  him,  to  have  engendered 
in  him  that  new  and  peculiar  form  of  belief  or  assent  which 
was  previously  wanting  in  him,  and  which  was  known  by  the 
name  of  '  faith.'  I  had  already  been  going  over  in  my  own 
mind  the  style  and  substance  of  the  arguments  used  at  these 
meetings  as  well  as  I  could,  but  could  think  of  nothing  new 
that  could  have  been  presented  to  him  there,  beyond  what  we 
had  before  heard  over  and  over  again.  My  own  explanation 
therefore  was  that  just  as  the  senses,  the  lower  centres,  and 
the  higher  centres  of  the  brain,  if  I  may  use  an  illustration, 


A   REVIVAL   EPISODE.  173 

are  inseparable  in  the  ordinary  acts  of  life,  and  all  work 
together  as  parts  of  one  organic  whole  or  chain  known  as  the 
human  intelligence,  but  can  each  be  artificially  cut  off  from  the 
rest,  as  in  hypnotism,  with  the  curious  results  we  all  have  seen ; 
so  in  the  excitement  and  fervour,  the  din  and  uproar  of  these 
meetings,  the  image  of  Christ,  with  his  death  and  resurrection y 
cut  off  for  the  moment  as  in  a  dream  from  its  base  in  the  real 
world,  had  been  so  burnt  into  his  mind  in  all  its  awfulness  and 
beauty,  that  it  had  led  his  imagination  captive,  as  much  so- 
indeed  as  if  it  had  been  enacted  in  bodily  form  before  him; 
and  further  and  more  important  still,  that  it  was  the  love  and 
gratitude,  the  self-abnegation  and  the  free  expansion  of  mind 
and  heart  that  arose  naturally  on  this  vision  of  Christ  dying 
for  him,  that  by  their  very  blessedness,  sacredness,  and  beauty, 
(the  highest  emotions  of  the  soul)  became  of  themselves, 
evidence  and  guarantee  for  the  truth  of  the  doctrine.  A 
natural  conclusion,  I  felt,  but  one  involving  a  capital  fallacy  in 
thought — the  fallacy  namely,  that  because  the  highest  emotions 
of  the  soul  are  at  once  a  proof  and  guarantee  that  their  exercise 
is  the  true  end  of  our  being,  therefore  their  presence  proves  the 
objective  truth  of  any  particular  set  of  facts,  Christian,. 
Mahommedan,  Buddhist  or  other,  which  for  the  time  being 
happens  to  call  them  forth — a  beautiful  fallacy  I  said  to  myself, 
but  a  fallacy  nevertheless,  and  I  resolved  to  put  it  to  him  at. 
our  next  meeting. 

Accordingly  one  Sunday  morning  on  our  return  from  church,, 
as  we  stood  in  front  of  our  house  talking  of  these  high  matters, 
in  the  falling  snow,  I  ventured  to  suggest  the  explanation 
of  his  case  which  I  have  just  given,  and  to  ask  him  if  it  were 
not  the  true  one.  He  answered  I  know  not  what  now,  and  we 
soon  parted,  I  little  thinking  of  the  consequences  of  my  words,, 
for  it  was  not  long  before  they  dissolved  the  spell  which  had 
enchanted  him,  and  in  the  end  made  shipwreck  of  his  faith. 
For  a  week  or  more  I  saw  nothing  of  him,  and  it  was  not  until, 
our  next  meeting  that  I  learned  with  a  kind  of  horror  the  agonies, 


174  A   REVIVAL   EPISODE. 

he  had  undergone,  and  the  mental  torment  my  question  had 
caused  him.  Unable  to  think,  as  he  afterwards  told  me,  of  any- 
new  argument  or  proof  for  his  faith  other  than  he  had  always 
had,  racked  with  doubt  in  consequence,  and  more  than 
suspecting  that  my  words  were  true,  he  had  gone  about  like  one 
distraught — restless,  sleepless,  tearless,  unable  to  work,  unable 
to  eat,  and  with  a  weight  like  a  stone  at  his  heart  which  nothing 
would  remove.  He  had  kept  his  misery  to  himself,  and  tried  in 
every  way  to  conquer  it,  by  reading  his  Bible,  by  avoiding 
society,  by  a  closer  attendance  at  the  services,  and  by  prayer, 
but  all  in  vain  ;  whipped  by  his  own  searching  doubts  and  fears 
he  had  walked  over  the  fair  earth  as  over  burning  marl,  alone, 
and  without  a  home ;  and  his  mind  was  made  like  unto  a  wheel. 
At  last  one  day  he  chanced  to  go  into  the  barber's  shop,  and  in 
his  despair  laid  his  state  of  mind  before  the  barber  himself. 
The  old  barber  whom  we  have  already  seen,  he  of  the  portentous 
brow,  was  in  the  habit  of  preaching  every  Sunday  to  a  little 
negro  flock  of  his  own,  and  had  evidently  at  some  time  or  other 
forded  the  same  stream  and  known  its  deeper  waters,  for 
on  hearing  my  friend's  story  he  at  once  put  his  finger  on  the 
nature  and  seat  of  the  malady,  and  prescribed  its  cure.  'You 
are  looking  too  much  at  yourself  and  your  own  doubts,'  he  said, 
*  Never  mind  them,  but  look  at  the  Cross.'  Look  at  the  Cross  ! 
He  had  not  thought  of  that,  but  the  words  now  came  like  a  new 
revelation  to  his  torn  and  distracted  heart,  and  forthwith  the 
stone  rolled  away  from  it,  and  he  was  at  peace.  And  then  at 
last  after  keeping  away  from  me  so  long,  he  returned  to  detail 
the  misery  he  had  suffered,  and  the  gulfs  and  depths  he  had 
sounded,  weeping  with  joy  as  he  told  me  of  the  happiness  he  had 
again  found ;  while  I  filled  with  horror  at  the  thought  of  what  I 
had  caused,  listened,  but  with  heart  dry  as  summer's  dust,  my  own 
mind  a  confused  whirlwind  of  conflicting  thoughts  and  desires ; 
and  was  unable  to  speak.  And  then  it  was  that  there  came 
over  me  with  a  pregnancy  and  power  that  I  had  not  before 
known,  the  old  feeling  of  which  I  have  spoken,  that  there  was 


A   REVIVAL   EPISODE.  175 

something  wanting  in  me,  that  I  should  be  forever  doomed  to 
walk  the  blessed  earth  unblest,  and  that  happiness  like  his,  I 
should  never  know.  I  felt  that  I  never  could  believe,  that  I  was 
incapable  of  belief,  and  that  the  Gospel,  even  were  it  true,  must 
forever  fall  on  a  parched  and  withered  soil  from  which  no 
living  waters  spring. 

Months  passed  on  without  any  apparent  change  in  my 
friend,  but  as  the  first  excitement  of  these  meetings  spent 
itself,  and  their  fires  began  to  burn  low  on  the  hearth,  the  seeds 
of  doubt  which  I  had  implanted  in  him,  and  which  the  good 
barber  had  so  promptly  eradicated,  began  to  grow  again, 
spreading  their  roots  farther  and  wider  until  they  had  over- 
spread the  whole  field.  There  was  no  sudden  backsliding,  no 
acute  crisis  of  suffering,  no  violent  alternations  of  feeling  as 
before,  but  a  gradual  shrinking  and  loss  of  bloom,  as  in  those 
autumnal  fruits  that  still  cling  to  their  withered  stems  till  the 
winters  wind  shakes  them  from  their  frail  tenure  on  the  tree. 
I  saw  with  real  sorrow  the  work  going  on,  but  was  powerless  to 
stay  it,  or  to  give  him  either  comfort  or  help.  He  spoke  little 
of  himself  or  his  beliefs,  avoided  the  subject  rather,  but  little 
by  little  you  saw  the  old  world  re-asserting  its  sway. 

He  reappeared  in  his  old  haunts,  joined  the  society  of  his 
old  comrades,  was  seen  again  in  the  ball-room  and  in  the  field, 
and  his  voice  once  more  mingled  with  ours  in  our  joyous 
evening  songs.  And  when  all  was  over,  and  a  year  or  two  later 
we  sat  together  in  the  ball-room  resting  ourselves  awhile  and 
watching  the  dreamy  mazes  of  the  dance  before  us,  I  chanced 
to  ask  him  if  he  remembered  the  time  when  he  had  put  away 
all  these  things,  and  in  their  stead  went  about  praying  and 
singing  hymns,  and  trying  to  win  souls  to  God;  he  was 
thoughtful  for  awhile,  and  then  said  with  a  pathetic  melancholy 
that  sank  deep  into  my  heart,  '  If  I  could  believe  now  as  I  did 
then,  I  should  do  the  same  now  as  I  did  then.' 


CHAPTEK    VI. 


EVOLUTION  NOT  TO  BE  JUMPED. 

~VT7^ITH  the  little  episode  just  narrated  began  my  interest 
*  T  in  the  great  world  of  life  outside  the  barren  region  of 
mere  phrenological  speculation,  a  world  which  I  was  now  to 
try  and  reap  in  enlarging  swathes  and  circles,  and  which  was 
to  occupy  my  best  thoughts  for  many  years.  From  Phrenology 
I  had  brought  with  me  one  doctrine  at  least  in  which  I  really 
believed,  and  which  had  with  me  all  the  force  and  indisputability 
of  an  axiom,  the  doctrine  namely,  that  all  the  sentiments, 
jmssions,  emotions  and  desires  of  which  the  human  mind  was 
the  subject,  were  due  entirely  to  the  direct  action  of  the  brain 
working  after  its  own  proper  laws,  and  not  to  any  extraneous 
cause  whatever,  Devil  or  Holy  Ghost.  But  as  with  the 
evangelists  and  revivalists  everywhere  the  opposite  doctrine 
was  maintained,  and  it  was  everywhere  assumed  that  the 
particular  state  of  mind  known  as  '  conversion '  was  due  to  the 
direct  workings  of  the  Holy  Spirit, — an  assumption  which 
they  seemed  to  think  was  tested  and  proven  by  the  blessed 
state  of  mind  which  accompanied  it,  and  which  they  imagined 
naturally  enough,  could  not  be  the  result  of  any  cause  less  than 
immediately  divine, — it  was  not  surprising  that  when  these  two 
doctrines  came  into  collision,  as  they  had  done  in  my  friend's 
mind,  they  should  in  the  end,  as  we  have  seen,  have  made 
shipwreck  of  his  faith.     And  it  was  owing  to  the  pain  with 


EVOLUTION   NOT    TO   BE   JUMPED.  177 

which  I  saw  this  process  accomplishing  itself  in  him,  as  well  as 
to  the  suspicion  that  there  was  something  wanting  in  me  which 
made  me  constitutionally  deaf  to  these  emotional  appeals,  that 
I  began  to  wonder  whether  Religion  after  all  might  not  perhaps 
still  be  justified  on  higher  and  more  philosophical  grounds  than 
what  I  regarded  as  but  the  poor  though  natural  illusions  of  the 
ignorant  and  uncultivated.  It  was  while  I  was  revolving  this 
in  my  mind,  that  I  heard  or  read  somewhere  that  Butler's 
Analogy  was  one  of  the  deepest  and  most  strongly  entrenched 
bulwarks  of  Religion  that  had  ever  been  written,  and  that 
propped  on  its  many  piles  like  some  everlasting  city  of  the 
sea,  Christianity  might  forever  defy  the  inrolling  breakers  of 
scepticism  that  washed  and  broke  against  it  in  vain.  I 
accordingly  got  the  book,  and  set  to  work  upon  it  at  once 
with  all  attention,  and  with  every  faculty  of  the  mind  in  full 
strain.  It  was  one  of  the  toughest  pieces  of  reading  that  I  had 
yet  encountered,  and  taxed  my  crude  powers  of  speculation  to 
the  utmost,  but  I  was  determined  not  to  let  it  go  until  it  had 
yielded  up  its  secret,  or  at  least  such  parts  of  its  drift  and  aim, 
as  bore  on  my  own  perplexities.  Of  its  special  contents  I  can 
now  remember  little  or  nothing,  for  I  have  not  seen  it  since 
that  time  ;  even  its  general  drift  has  become  dim  and  shadowy 
to  me  in  the  lapse  of  years ;  but  I  distinctly  remember  that 
at  the  time  I  thought  its  arguments  acute  and  subtle  rather 
than  deep  and  convincing,  its  extenuations  and  apologies 
ingenious  and  laboured  rather  than  direct  and  natural,  and  that 
nowhere  in  it  could  I  walk  with  any  confidence  or  sureness  of 
foot.  I  felt  that  however  well  it  may  have  been  adapted  to 
meet  the  arguments  of  the  sceptics  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
who  believed  in  a  natural  but  not  a  revealed  religion,  and 
however  conclusively  it  may  have  shown  that  the  difficulties  of 
revealed  religion  were  matched  and  paralleled  by  the  same  or 
at  least  equal  difficulties  in  Natural  Religion,  (and  this  if  I 
remember  rightly  was  its  main  drift)  it  did  not  meet  the 
difficulties    of    the    Nineteenth     Century,    difficulties    which 

N 


178  EVOLUTION   NOT    TO    BE    JUMPED. 

were  in  the  very  air,  and  which  were  all  summed  up  for 
me  in  my  one  favourite  doctrine  of  the  absolute  dependence 
of  the  mind  on  the  molecular  action  o£  the  brain,  with  all 
that  this  involved.  And  so,  this  great  oracle  having  spoken 
without  effect,  and  his  message  having  proved  but  the  echo 
from  a  dry  and  deserted  well  rather  than  a  living  spring  of 
truth,  I  threw  him  aside  as  unable  to  give  me  any  help ;  and 
with  the  feeling  that  all  further  enquiries  in  this  direction 
would  be  unavailing,  and  hugging  to  myself  my  favourite 
formula  all  the  more  tightly,  relapsed  into  my  old  indifference 
to  the  things  of  religion — an  indifference  which  there  was 
nothing  either  in  my  experience  or  surroundings  to  disturb. 
For,  as  I  have  said,  I  had  known  no  miracles,  heard  no  voices, 
seen  no  visions;  I  was  conscious  of  no  Devil  but  my  own 
passions,  no  Holy  Spirit  but  the  promptings  of  my  own  better 
nature ;  and  felt  rather  than  distinctly  thought,  that  any 
message  from  the  other  life  that  should  concern  me  or  other 
souls,  must  be  for  ever  blazoned  on  the  high  tops  of  the  world 
for  all  men  to  see,  and  not  be  torn  from  tortured  texts,  or 
exhumed  in  tattered  fragments  of  tradition  from  the  dusty 
sepulchres  of  the  dead. 

Religion,  therefore,  I  put  aside  for  the  time,  and  with  the 
Problem  of  the  World  thus  freed  from  its  enshrouding  mysteries 
and  superstitions,  as  I  thought  them,  and  the  decks  cleared  for 
action,  I  was  now  ready  with  light  heart  and  nothing  daunted, 
and  with  all  the  banners  of  youth  and  hope  floating  gaily  in 
the  breeze,  to  take  the  high  seas  of  speculation,  and  to  advance 
to  the  subjugation  of  the  world  of  thought  by  the  purely 
intellectual  road  that  lay  through  the  great  laws  of  the  World 
and  the  Human  Mind  ;  consoling  myself  with  the  reflection  that 
as  Religion  after  all  was  only  our  idea  of  the  Cause  of  Things 
and  our  relation  to  that  Cause,  whatever  truth  there  might  be 
in  it  must  disclose  itself  and  be  taken  in  on  the  way. 

Rut  how  to  set  about  the  conquest  of  the  intellectual  world  ! 
Where  to  begin  !  and  how  to  proceed  ?  These  were  the  questions 


EVOLUTION   NOT    TO    BE   JUMPED.  179 

that  engaged  me.  For  I  had  no  one  to  guide  me,  to  tell  me 
what  to  read  or  to  avoid,  and  in  my  choice  of  books  was  left 
entirely  to  hearsay,  to  conversation,  or  to  such  works  as  I  had 
seen  mentioned  in  the  newspapers.  Practically,  however,  my 
choice  was  restricted  to  the  contents  of  the  public  library  in  the 
town,  where  I  wandered  up  and  down  at  random,  dipping  and 
tasting  here  and  there ;  and  except  that  in  a  general  way  I  wanted 
to  know  straight  off  hand  all  about  the  laws  of  the  World  and 
of  Human  Life,  not  knowing  very  specially  what  it  was  I  did 
want !  And  yet  it  was  curious  to  notice  with  what  promptness 
the  mind  as  if  by  a  kind  of  instinct,  dropped,  ignored,  or  put 
aside,  all  that  was  extraneous  to  its  own  but  partially  conscious 
aims,  or  that  covered  fields  of  thought  for  which  it  was  not  yet 
ripe  ;  only  such  books  as  lay  near  enough  to  me,  as  it  were,  to 
have  organic  connection  with  my  then  stage  of  development, 
taking  any  permanent  hold  on  me.  For  I  was  just  emerging 
from  Phrenology,  and  was  still  absorbed  in  studying  the  laws  of 
the  individual  mind ;  around  this  my  thoughts  revolved  in 
incessant  activity,  and  unless  the  books  I  read  and  the  excursions 
I  made  into  wider  fields  of  thought  could  help  me  in  this,  they 
fell  off  my  mind  again,  leaving  scarcely  a  trace  behind. 

Among  authors  read  by  me  at  this  time  and  who  were  too 
advanced  for  me,  the  most  interesting  perhaps,  was  Buckle,  who 
in  his  '  History  of  Civilization  '  which  I  had  come  upon  in  the 
library,  greatly  charmed  and  impressed  me  by  the  rolling  vigour 
of  his  style,  the  pomp  of  his  generalizations,  and  the  high 
confidence  with  which  he  stepped  along,  driving  whole  ages  and 
nations  before  him  in  flocks,  and  like  some  great  general, 
disposing  of  his  vast  miscellany  of  fact  and  inference  with 
consummate  ease.  I  had  scarcely  opened  the  book  before  I 
became  so  interested  that  I  could  not  leave  it,  and  can  still 
remember  the  pleasure  with  which  I  retailed  its  arguments  and 
conclusions  to  my  friend  with  the  '  boot-jack '  when  he  paid  me 
his  usual  visit  from  the  country  on  the  following  Saturday.  And 
yet  in  spite  of  the  pleasure  it  gave  me,   it  had  little   or  no 


180  EVOLUTION   NOT    TO    BE   JUMPED. 

influence  on  the  course  of  my  mental  evolution,  and  with  the 
exception  of  leaving  some  vague  general  ideas  behind  it,  was 
soon  forgotten.  The  reason  was  that  Buckle  dealt  almost 
entirely  with  the  laws  that  regulate  the  larger  movements  of 
societies  and  nations,  with  the  laws  of  men  in  the  mass,  while  I 
was  still  immersed  in  the  laws  of  man  as  an  individual  and  in 
his  relation  to  other  men.  His  arguments  and  conclusions 
therefore  passed  off  my  mind  without  leaving  a  trace  behind 
them,  and  had  all  to  be  taken  up  again  and  considered  anew  at 
a  future  stage. 

The  same  result  followed  the  reading  of  Stuart  Mill's 
metaphysical  work  on  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton's  Philosophy,  but 
for  a  different  reason.  Dealing  as  it  did  with  discussions  as  to 
the  analysis  of  our  faculties,  and  their  decomposition  into,  and 
reconstruction  out  of  simpler  states,  it  exhibited  I  doubt  not 
with  much  clearness,  what  a  perception  was,  what  a  judgment 
was,  what  a  cause  was,  and  the  like,  but  I  had  already  had 
enough  of  this  sort  of  thing  in  Phrenology,  and  what  I  now 
wanted  to  know  was  not  what  a  judgment,  a  perception,  or  a 
cause  was,  but  what  judgments  I  was  to  form  of  this  complex 
and  various  world,  what  things  I  was  to  perceive  in  it,  and 
what  the  causes  were  of  its  multiplex  and  ever-shifting 
phenomena — quite  another  matter.  The  consequence  was  that 
this  book  of  Stuart  Mill's  too  proved  useless  for  my  present 
aims,  and  passed  off  the  mind  without  in  any  way  affecting  the 
natural  evolution  of  my  thought. 

More  striking  still,  perhaps,  as  illustrating  how  impossible  it 
is  for  the  mind  to  overleap  the  limited  range  of  thought  in 
which  at  any  given  time  it  is  insulated  and  entrenched,  how 
impossible  it  is  for  it,  like  a  dark  lantern,  to  illuminate  anything 
beyond  the  focus  of  its  own  rays,  was  the  difficulty  I  had  in 
understanding  Carlyle  and  Emerson.  It  was  some  two  or  three 
years,  perhaps,  after  Carlyle's  address  to  the  Edinburgh 
students  on  the  occasion  of  his  being  made  Lord  Rector,  that 
the  echo  of  his  name  reached  me  in  the  far  interior  of  Canada ; 


EVOLUTION  NOT  TO  BE  JUMPED.  181 

and  not  long  after,  a  copy  of  the  cheap  edition  of  his  '  Sartor ' 
■chanced  to  find  its  way  into  our  public  library.    I  immediately  set 
to  work  on  it  with  the  earnest  desire  to  master  its  contents,  but 
beyond  the   autobiographical  portions  I    cannot  remember  to 
have  really  understood  a  single  sentence.     The  reason  was  that 
it  dealt,  in  the  difficult  parts   at  least,  not  so  much  with  the 
relations  in  which  individual  men  stand  to  each  other,  that  is 
to  say  with  the  laws  of  the  individual   mind  as   such,  as  with 
the  relations  of  Man  to  the  Universe,  to  which  I  had  not  yet 
given  any  thought ;  Carlyle  expressly  figuring  mankind  in  that 
work,  as  a  number  of  shadowy  ghosts  emerging  from  Eternity, 
and  stalking  across  this  Time-shadow  of  a  world,  to  plunge  into 
the  Inane  again  !      He  dealt,  in  a  word,  with  the  deep  illusions 
of  the  world,  while  I  was  lost  in  its  ordinary  platitudes  and 
superficial  appearances.     The   thought,  indeed,  that  anything 
could  be  an  illusion,  and  that  things  were  not  what  they  seemed, 
had  never  occurred  to  me.     On  the  contrary  everything  to  me 
was  most  serious  and  real, — the  boys,  the  girls,  the  school,  the 
market,  the  loves,  the  jealousies,  the  quarrels,  the  emulations, — 
and   in  a  democratic  state  of  opinion  where   the  comings  and 
goings  of  the  artizan  were  reported  in  the  newspapers  with  as 
much  seriousness  as  the  movements  of  royalty  itself,  each  man 
stood  on  his  own  feet  as  an  individual  of  much  consequence  in 
my  eyes.     And  as  it  would  have  surprised  me  much  to  have 
been  told  that  men  could  be  lumped  together  and  generalized  as 
4  the  herd,'   '  the  masses,'  and  the  like,  and  that  their  actions 
could  be  predicted  with  as   much  regularity  and  certainty  as 
those  of  sheep,  so  I  was  still  more  amazed  when  1  found  Carlyle 
speaking  of  them  as  shadows  emerging  from  the  Inane,  stalking 
like  astonished  ghosts  across  the  world  of  Time,  and  plunging 
back  into  the  Inane  again.     To  reach  conclusions  like  these 
would  have  required  as  complete  a  change  in  my  point  of  view, 
as  the  Copernican  Astronomy  which  regarded   the   Sun  as  the 
centre  did,  from  the   old  Ptolemaic  Astronomy  which   it  dis- 
placed ;  and   the   gap    could    no    more   be    spanned  from    my 


182  EVOLUTION   NOT    TO    BE   JUMPED. 

superficial  generalizations  of  human  life,  than  the  '  Principia  * 
of  Newton  could  from  the  elements  of  Euclid.  It  required, 
in  a  word,  a  higher  calculus  of  Thought  to  reach  it,  and  for  this 
I  was  not  yet  ready. 

It  was  much  the  same  with  Emerson.  Not  only  were  his 
'  Essays '  quite  beyond  my  comprehension,  but  such  com- 
paratively simple  studies  even  as  his  chapter  on  Napoleon  in 
his  '  Representative  Men '  were  quite  beyond  me,  and  that,  too, 
at  a  time  when  I  could  read  Mill  and  Buckle  with  comparative 
ease.  The  reason  was,  that  even  when  he  was  dealing  with 
those  laws  of  the  individual  mind  which  it  was  my  main  object 
to  explore,  he  sank  his  shafts  into  strata  so  deep  as  to  be 
entirely  cut  off  from  the  shallow  field  of  my  own  explorations ; 
and  his  generalizations  and  laws,  in  consequence,  having  no- 
uniting  links  with  those  that  I  had  already  reached,  were  quite 
unintelligible  to  me.  Like  Carlyle,  therefore,  he  too  had  to- 
be  replaced  on  the  shelves  again  to  await  a  riper  time.  The 
truth  was  that  neither  my  years,  my  experience  of  life,  nor  the 
conditions  of  evolution  itself,  would  enable  me  thus  lightly  to 
jump  out  of  my  own  skin,  as  it  were,  without  undergoing  the 
common  lot  of  plodding  laboriously  through  all  the  intervening 
stages  of  thought,  and  I  could  no  more  pretermit  any  one  of 
these  stages  in  normal  evolution,  than  could  a  chick  in  its 
passage  from  the  egg  to  the  full  grown  fowl.  I  was  entirely 
immersed,  as  I  have  said,  in  the  discovery  of  the  laws  of  the 
nature  of  men  in  their  capacity  as  individuals,  and  as  was 
inevitable  from  my  years,  in  only  the  most  superficial  of  these  ; 
and  whether  the  author  into  whom  I  dipped,  was  one  who  like 
Buckle  dealt  with  the  laws  of  men  in  the  mass  (rather  than  as 
individuals)  or  like  Carlyle  with  the  relations  of  Man  to  the 
Universe  (rather  than  to  his  fellow-man)  or  like  Emerson  with 
laws  so  wide  and  deep  as  to  be  out  of  touch  with  the  superficial 
web  of  relations  in  which  my  mind  dwelt ;  in  all,  the  result  was 
the  same ;  they  were  all  alike  shed  off  the  mind  as  off  a  water- 
proof, and  my  normal  evolution  went  on  undisturbed  as  before. 


EVOLUTION  NOT  TO  BE  JUMPED.  183 

Were  there  then  no  books  at  once  so  level  with  my  capacity 
and  so  suited  to  my  stage  of  development  as  to  yield  me  entire 
satisfaction  and  delight?  Yes;  and  chief  among  them, 
perhaps,  was  the  *  Recreations  of  a  Country  Parson '  which 
had  recently  fallen  into  my  hands,  and  which  gave  me 
precisely  the  grade  and  stage  of  platitude  I  required.  For  I 
had  arrived  at  just  that  point  of  mental  evolution  where  the 
range  and  illustration  usual  in  sermons  of  the  better  quality 
taxed  my  intellectual  grasp  to  the  utmost,  and  completely 
filled  up  the  measure  of  my  intellectual  powers.  The  insight 
displayed  may  be  described  as  a  kind  of  insight  lying  some- 
where midway  in  depth  between  the  ordinary  common  sense  of 
the  man  of  the  world,  and  that  deep  wisdom  of  life,  that  deep 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  human  mind  which  at  once 
explains  and  illuminates  vast  tracts  of  human  action,  and  which 
is  so  marked  in  men  like  Bacon,  Emerson,  and  Shakspeare ; 
a  kind  of  insight  that  may  be  sufficiently  seen  in  the  ordinary 
method  of  the  popular  preacher,  who  taking  some  old 
scriptural  character,  some  Nicodemus  or  Zacchaeus  perhaps, 
will  make  the  going  to  Christ  by  night  of  the  one,  and  the 
climbing  up  a  tree  of  the  other,  the  occasion  for  endless 
subtleties  and  distinctions,  and  for  the  most  ingenious 
dissertations  on  human  nature  and  action ;  dissertations  which 
in  those  days  when  every  thread  of  connexion  among 
human  things,  however  superficial,  was  essential  to  the 
web  of  laws  and  principles  I  was  weaving  for  myself,  quite 
charmed  and  delighted  me.  Now  of  this  class  of  teacher, 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  the  great  New  York  preacher  was  the 
supreme  type;  and  for  years  his  printed  serine ns  were  the 
main  source  of  my  instruction  and  delight.  His  range  and 
variety  in  all  that  kind  of  observation  and  subtlety  of  which 
I  have  just  spoken ;  his  width  of  sympathy ;  his  natural  and 
spontaneous  pathos;  the  wealth  of  illustration  and  metaphor 
with  which  his  sermons  were  adorned,  and  which  were  drawn 
chiefly  from  natural  objects,  from  his  orchard,  his  farm,  his 


184  EVOLUTION   NOT    TO    BE   JUMPED. 

garden,  as  well  as  from  machinery  and  from  all  kinds  of  natural 
processes ;  his  naturalism  and  absence  of  theological  bias ;  his 
knowledge  of  average  men  and  their  ways  of  looking  at  things ; 
in  a  word  his  general  fertility  of  thought,  filling  up  as  it  did 
the  full  horizon  of  my  mind,  and  running  over  and  beyond  it 
on  all  sides,  so  that  wherever  I  looked  he  had  been  there  before 
me, — all  this  delighted  and  enchanted  me,  and  made  him  for 
some  years  my  ideal  of  intellectual  greatness  ;  and  I  looked 
forward  to  the  Saturdays  on  which  his  weekly  sermon  reached 
me,  with  longing  and  a  pure  joy. 


CHAPTER     VII. 


A    CHANGE     OF    METHOD. 

TT  would  almost  seem  from  the  foregoing  chapter  that  in  setting- 
out  to  discover  the  great  laws  of  the  world  and  of  human  life, 
I  had  purposed  making  books  my  chief  if  not  my  sole  mainstay  ; 
and  that  even  when  mistaken  in  the  choice  of  them,  taking  up 
now  one  and  now  another  at  random  and  without  order  or 
sequence — now  swallowed  up  in  a  Brobdignagdian  hat  much  too 
large  for  me  and  which  I  had  to  lay  aside  again,  as  was  the  case 
with  Buckle,  Emerson,  and  Carlyle ;  now  provided  by  Beecher,  the 
'  Country  Parson,'  and  others  with  a  better  and  more  suitable  fit — 
still  it  was  on  the  right  books,  if  I  could  only  come  across  them, 
that  I  placed  my  main  reliance.  Now  at  no  period  of  my  life  wras 
this  true,  not  even  at  the  time  when  I  thought  Combe's  Phrenology 
the  last  and  only  Apocalypse ;  on  the  contrary  I  had  always 
trusted  for  my  beliefs  (as  distinct  from  my  mere  opinions)  to 
first-hand  observation  and  inspection  of  things  themselves,  and 
only  in  a  secondary  way  to  books.  These  I  had  always  read 
rather  as  furnishing  points  of  suggestion  to  be  accepted  or 
rejected  as  experience  and  observation  should  determine,  than  as 
Scriptures  to  be  received  on  authority  alone ;  and  had  used 
rather  as  sign-boards  to  direct  me  to  the  point  of  observation, 
than  as  guide-books  to  tell  me  beforehand  what  I  should  see 
wrhen  I  got  there.  But  while  thus  making  observation  and  not 
books  my  mainstay  in  the  task  I  had  before  me,  it  was  curious 


186  A    CHANGE   OF   METHOD. 

that  though  still  believing  in  Phrenology,  theoretically  at  least, 
I  should  quite  insensibly  and  unconsciously  have  slipped  away 
from  its  old  method  of  the  tape  and  the  calipers ;  and  that  not 
only  the  kind  of  things  I  now  observed,  but  my  method  of 
interpreting  them,  had  undergone  a  complete  change.  Instead  of 
looking  as  formerly  merely  at  the  configuration  of  the  head  and  the 
general  character  of  the  temperament,  I  now  tried  to  take  in  as 
far  as  possible  the  whole  circumstance  and  environment  of  men ;; 
instead  of  interpreting  their  actions  and  motives  by  a  comparison 
of  the  relative  size  and  prominence  of  the  organs  on  their  skulls,  I 
now  looked  within  myself,  into  my  own  mind  (after  putting  myself 
as  it  were  in  their  place)  for  the  law  and  cause  of  their  procedure. 
That  is  to  say,  instead  of  trying  to  explain  the  complex  web  of 
human  nature  and  action  by  any  outside  balancing  or  combination 
of  faculties,  any  addition  or  subtraction  of  them ;  I  now  took 
as  my  standpoint  of  interpretation  my  own  inner  consciousness, 
and  the  relations  and  connexions  I  found  existing  there  between 
its  various  states — its  opinions,  passions,  sentiments,  and  desires. 
And  as  this  change  of  method  was  perhaps  the  most  important 
feature  in  my  mental  evolution  up  to  the  time  of  which  I  am 
writing,  all  the  more  so  because  it  was  so  unconscious ;  and  as 
a  similar  change  of  method  had  to  be  undergone  at  each  successive 
plane  or  stage  of  my  mental  evolution  before  I  could  make  any 
further  advance,  it  is  important  that  I  should  furnish  the  reader 
at  this  point  with  some  rough  general  outline  at  least,  of  its 
nature  and  import.  The  first  trace  of  this  change  had  already 
shown  itself  when  I  was  still  in  the  very  heyday  of  phrenological 
enthusiasm.  It  was  about  a  year  after  my  return  from  the 
University,  when  tired  of  doing  nothing,  and  still  uncertain  as  to 
the  profession  I  should  choose,  I  seized  the  chance  that  happened 
to  offer  of  entering  the  office  of  one  of  the  great  engineering  works 
in  the  town,  and  which  then,  as  now,  was  one  of  the  largest 
establishments  of  the  kind  in  the  whole  Dominion.  With  little  to 
do,  and  with  much  spare  time  on  my  hands,  I  was  with  rare 
indulgence  allowed  to  loiter  about  the  work-shops  by  the  hour 


A    CHANGE    OF   METHOD.  187 

together,  talking  to  the  men  as  they  went  on  with  their  work, 
and  discussing  with  those  of  them  who  were  interested,  such 
subjects  as  phrenology,  literature,  poetry,  and  the  various 
religious  and  philosophical  questions  to  which  the  great  Revival 
I  have  already  described  had  given  a  new  life.  In  the  course 
of  these  conversations,  and  of  my  goings  in  and  out  among  the 
men,  I  naturally  saw  and  heard  much  of  the  relations  existing 
between  them  and  the  foremen  of  the  different  shops,  relations 
which  were  nearly  always  strained,  and  very  generally  bordering 
on  a  state  of  open  antagonism.  In  some  shops  the  men,  wild, 
insubordinate,  and  as  difficult  to  manage  as  Mexican  mustangs, 
were  constantly  getting  out  of  hand  ;  work  was  in  consequence 
neglected,  and  things  going  from  bad  to  worse  there  was 
nothing  for  it  but  to  try  what  a  change  of  foreman  would  do  in 
the  way  of  restoring  discipline.  Accordingly  when  a  fresh  man 
was  appointed,  speculation  was  rife  as  to  the  chances  of  his 
success,  and  all  were  eager  and  interested  in  casting  his  horo- 

3  o  © 

scope.  I  usually  gave  my  opinion  like  the  rest,  and  on  two  or 
three  of  these  occasions  was  so  fortunate  as  to  make  some 
happy  predictions  both  as  to  the  length  of  time  the  new  men 
were  likely  to  retain  their  situations,  and  as  to  the  special  causes 
which  would  ultimately  eventuate  in  their  downfall.  These 
forecasts  I  communicated  at  the  time  to  the  confidential  clerk, 
who  had  already  been  much  impressed  by  my  knowledge  of 
phrenology  and  by  the  accuracy  with  which,  as  he  expressed  it, 
I  had  read  his  character ;  and  by  him  they  were  passed  on  to 
the  heads  of  the  firm  ;  so  that  from  this  time  onwards,  when- 
ever a  new  foreman  was  wanted,  it  was  customary  for  them  to 
take  me  into  their  counsels,  on  the  understanding  that  while 
they  were  to  judge  of  the  technical  qualifications  of  those  who 
applied,  I  was  to  give  my  opinion  on  their  special  qualifications 
to  manage  the  men.  Accordingly  on  the  morning  of  the  day 
when  the  applicants  were  expected  to  arrive,  some  of  them 
from  distant  parts  of  the  Dominion,  a  note  would  be  left  on  my 
desk  by  one  of  the  firm,  informing  me  that  a  certain  number 


188  A   CHANGE    OF   METHOD. 

were  expected  during  the  course  of  the  day,  and  that  it  would 
be  necessary  for  me  to  keep  close  to  the  office  to  avoid  missing 
any  of  them ;  and  asking  me  at  the  same  time  to  '  look  them 
over  carefully.'  As  I  was  not  more  than  eighteen  or  nineteen 
years  of  age  at  the  time,  I  naturally  entered  into  the  humour 
of  a  situation  in  which  I  was  to  sit  in  judgment  on  bearded 
men,  with  much  gusto  and  sense  of  fun.  Presently  the  trains 
bearing  the  applicants  would  begin  to  arrive  from  different 
parts  of  the  country,  and  the  men  would  drop  into  the 
office  one  after  another — a  miscellaneous  assortment  truly,  of 
old  and  young,  rough  and  smooth,  tidy  and  unkempt,  fierce 
and  gentle,  open  and  reserved — and  would  take  their  seats  by 
the  stove  in  the  ante-room  where  I  sat  writing,  to  await  their 
audience  with  the  principals.  This  was  my  opportunity,  and 
walking  over  from  my  desk  to  where  they  were  sitting,  I  would 
take  up  the  poker  with  the  pretence  of  stirring  up  the  fire,  as 
an  excuse  for  starting  a  conversation  with  them.  Beginning 
with  the  weather  or  other  indifferent  matter,  I  would  gradually 
learn  from  them  where  they  had  been,  the  positions  they  had 
held,  the  experience  they  had  had  in  the  management  of  men, 
and  the  like,  and  in  the  course  of  the  conversation,  keeping 
clearly  before  my  eye  the  characteristics  and  peculiarities  of 
temper  and  disposition  of  each  of  the  men  over  whom  they 
were  to  rule,  had  to  make  up  my  mind  as  to  whether  they  were 
likely  to  succeed  or  no.  When  they  had  all  come  and  gone, 
and  I  had  heard  all  they  had  to  say,  my  report  was  sent  in,  and 
after  being  considered  in  connexion  with  their  other  purely 
technical  qualifications,  the  selection  was  made  in  due  form. 

Now  in  forming  my  judgment  in  these  instances,  I  had 
really  renounced  the  old  phrenological  method  which  had  once 
been  my  main  reliance  in  estimating  character  and  capacity, 
and  had  adopted  a  new  one  founded  on  intuitive  perceptions 
drawn  from  within  myself, — founded  that  is  to  say  not  on  the 
size  and  prominence  of  the  organs  on  the  cranium,  nor  even  on 
this  taken  into  consideration  with  the  general  character  of  the 


A    CHANGE    OF   METHOD.  18i> 

temperament,  but  on  the  tout  ensemble  of  the  personality — on 
manner,  appearance,  expression,  temperament,  opinion,  physi- 
ognomy, gait,  and  the  hundred  and  one  lesser  indications 
which  on  account  of  their  diversity  can  never  be  combined 
under  any  external  principle,  but  which  can  derive  their  sense 
and  meaning  only  from  some  inner  connexion  of  thought  and 
feeling  which  is  only  to  be  got  at  through  a  knowledge  of  your 
own  mind.  In  other  words  my  method  of  arriving  at  a 
knowledge  of  the  human  mind  had  changed  from  an  external 
to  an  internal  interpretation ;  from  combinations  existing 
outside  of  the  mind,  to  combinations  within  it.  It  is  true  that 
I  still  glanced  at  the  old  phrenological  organs  in  passing,  but 
like  those  preachers  who  still  refer  to  texts  of  Scripture  long 
after  they  have  lost  for  them  their  original  divine  authority,  it 
was  more  as  a  matter  of  old  habit,  than  as  placing  any  real 
dependence  on  them. 

Now  if  this  instinctive  change  of  method  was  so  marked 
when  I  was  still  immersed  in  the  individual,  it  became  still 
more  so  when  I  had  ceased  to  take  my  old  interest  in  the  mere 
peculiarities  of  mind  or  character  of  any  one  individual  man, 
and  was  on  the  look-out  rather  for  the  great  laws  of  the  World 
and  of  the  Human  Mind.  It  was  a  true  instinct  which  impelled 
me  to  this  change,  and  to  justify  it  I  shall  now  endeavour 
to  show  that  neither  Phrenology  (even  if  true)  nor  yet 
Metaphysics  and  Psychology,  although  all  of  them  dealing 
with  the  mind,  are  by  their  own  methods  able  to  discover  a 
law  of  the  mind.  Should  I  succeed  in  doing  this  satisfactorily,, 
it  will  throw  much  light  on  the  later  stages  of  my  mental 
growth  and  evolution; — but  first  to  explain  precisely  what, 
it  is  I  mean  by  a  '  law  of  the  human  mind.' 


CHAPTER     VIII. 


A  LAW  OF  THE  MIND— WHAT  IS  IT! 

TI^HOSE  of  my  readers  who  have  done  me  the  honour  to  read 
•*■  my  book  on  '  Civilization  and  Progress '  will  perhaps 
remember  that  in  seeking  for  some  new  method  of  interpreting 
the  great  movements  of  civilization,  I  took  my  stand  (after 
throwing  out  successively  History,  Metaphysics,  Psychology 
and  Physical  Science,  as  unable  to  give  me  what  I  wanted)  on 
what  I  called  the  Laws  of  the  Human  Mind ;  and  that  in  doing  so 
I  at  the  same  time  announced  that  whatever  new  truths,  if  any, 
should  chance  to  come  to  the  surface  in  the  course  of  the  work, 
should  in  all  fairness  be  credited  to  this  new  method  of 
interpretation  rather  than  to  myself.  It  was  with  some  surprise 
therefore,  that  after  having  explained  in  various  ways  and  as 
clearly  as  I  could,  what  I  meant,  I  was  told  by  two  of  our  well- 
known  thinkers — the  one  a  scientific  writer  of  wide  culture  and 
broad  and  catholic  sympathies,  the  other  a  metaphysician  of  the 
purest  water — that  although  agreeing  with  many  of  the  results 
at  which  I  had  arrived,  they  still  felt  themselves  unable  to  grasp 
clearly  what  it  was  I  specially  meant  by  a  law  of  the  human 
mind  ;  and  that,  too,  although  nearly  the  whole  of  the  work  was 
but  commentary,  illustration,  and  variation  on  a  few  of  these  laws. 
Now  this  inability  of  theirs  was  I  doubt  not  partly  due  to  my 
not  having  made  myself  sufficiently  clear,  but  I  am  convinced 
that  it  was  in  a  large  measure  owing  to  the  fact  that  neither  the 


A   LAW   OF   THE   MIND — WHAT    IS    IT  1  191 

Physical  Sciences,  nor  yet  the  Metaphysics  or  Psychology  of 
which  these  men  were  the  accredited  representatives,  can  by 
their  own  methods  reach  to  what  I  have  called  a  law  of  the 
human  mind,  and  on  which  I  have  made  so  much  to  depend. 
But  of  this  anon ;  for  the  present,  not  to  anticipate  but  to  keep 
to  the  stage  of  evolution  I  had  then  reached,  it  is  necessary  that 
I  should  now  show  why  it  was  that  Phrenology,  even  if  true, 
could  not  discover  those  laws  of  the  mind  of  which  I  was  in  search. 
To  make  clear  then  what  it  is  I  mean  by  a  law  of  the  human 
mind,  it  will  be  best  for  my  present  purpose,  perhaps,  to  com- 
pare it  with  a  law  of  physical  Nature,  which  merely  expresses 
the  tendency  things  have  to  unite  or  divide,  to  separate  or 
come  together,  so  that  when  one  appears  the  other  may  be  pre- 
dicted to  follow;  unless,  indeed,  some  other  law  or  tendency 
interferes  to  prevent  it.  It  always  therefore  expresses  a  move- 
ment between  two  things,  either  one  that  shall  bring  them 
together  if  they  are  separated,  or  separate  them  if  they  are 
together,  either  a  movement,  that  is,  of  attraction  or  a  move- 
ment of  repulsion.  The  law  of  gravitation,  for  example, 
expresses  the  tendency  which  all  bodies  in  the  mass  have  to 
approximate  to  each  other,  the  law  of  chemical  affinity,  the 
tendency  which  their  particles  have  to  do  the  same,  and  so 
with  all  other  physical  laws ;  so  that  in  thinking  of  a  law  of 
Nature  you  can  always  roughly  figure  it  as  made  up  of  two 
points  with  a  line  uniting  them,  whereby  when  one  point  is 
known  the  other  may  be  predicted.  It  is  clear  therefore  that 
the  greater  number  of  points  which  you  can  connect  by  such 
lines  of  relation,  the  greater  will  be  your  knowledge  of  the 
laws  of  Nature,  the  greater  your  power  of  predicting  that 
when  any  one  thing  is  present,  some  other  thing  will  follow. 
Now  precisely  this,  and  nothing  more,  is  what  I  mean  when  I 
speak  of  a  law  of  the  human  mind.  The  mind  may  be  said  to 
be  made  up  of  a  number  of  powers,  sentiments,  propensities, 
passions,  and  the  like,  to  which  such  names  have  been  given  as 
love,  revenge,  reverence,  lust,  love  of  life,  memory,  imagination, 


192  A   LAW   OF   THE   MIND — WHAT    IS    IT? 

conscience,  hope,  etc.,  names  which  correspond  to  definite 
feelings  and  affections,  and  which  are  understood  by  all  men. 
Now  these  faculties  and  powers  are  all  bound  together  by 
invisible  threads  of  relation  into  that  concrete  unity  which  is 
known  as  the  human  mind.  And  as  each  of  these  feelings  is  a 
definite  affection  of  the  mind,  and  lias  a  distinct,  independent, 
and  conscious  existence  of  its  own,  so  that  however  often  or 
seldom  it  is  aroused,  when  it  does  arise  it  is  always  recognized 
as  the  same ;  the  laws  of  the  mind  are  simply  the  different 
lines  of  connexion  that  can  be  drawn  between  any  one  of  these 
feelings  and  the  rest,  so  that  when  any  one  feeling  arises  in  the 
mind,  others  or  another  may  be  predicted  to  follow  it,  or  (as 
there  are  laws  of  repulsion  as  well  as  of  attraction)  to  be 
extinguished  or  driven  out  by  it.  This,  in  a  word,  is  what  I 
mean  by  a  law  of  the  human  mind,  and  it  is  evident  that  if  we 
were  to  represent  these  various  sentiments,  propensities,  and 
powers,  as  so  many  spots  around  the  circumference  of  a 
globe,  the  greater  number  of  lines  we  could  draw  uniting  each 
of  these  with  the  rest,  the  greater  would  be  the  number  of  laws 
of  human  nature  we  perceived,  and  the  greater  the  number  of 
actions  we  could  predict.  These  laws  would  of  course  have 
every  degree  of  value  according  to  their  range  and  depth,  and 
to  the  number  of  apparently  unrelated  sentiments  and  actions 
which  they  would  explain ;  from  the  ordinary  platitude  which 
may  be  figured  as  a  connexion  between  points  lying  so  close 
together  that  no  one  could  miss  them  ;  to  the  better  order  of 
lecture  and  pulpit  exposition  connecting  points  more  remote 
from  each  other,  and  where  the  line  must  pass  some  distance 
beneath  the  surface [;  till  we  come  to  those  great  underlying 
laws  which  connect  the  most  widely  sundered  thoughts  and 
sentiments,  and  which  covering  and  explaining  as  they  do  vast 
fields  of  human  life,  may  be  represented  by  lines  that  have  to 
run  through  great  tracts  of  underground  territory  in  order  to 
connect  zones  and  belts  of  thought  and  feeling  that  seem 
separated  by  entire  hemispheres. 


A   LAW    OF   THE   MIND— WHAT   IS    IT?  193 

And  now  with  this  conception  of  what  a  law  of  the  human 
mind  is,  we  are  in  a  position  to  see  why  it  was  that  insensibly 
and  almost  unconsciously  I  had  renounced  Phrenology  as  a 
method  of  arriving  at  the  laws  of  the  mind,  long  before  I  had 
theoretically  discarded  it,  and  why  it  is  that  Metaphysics  also 
although  dealing  with  the  mind,  should  give  us  no  insight  into 
those  laws  of  the  mind  by  which  alone  we  can  anticipate  or 
predict  the  actions  of  men.  For  in  Phrenology,  and  metaphori- 
cally speaking  in  Metaphysics  also,  the  faculties  of  the  mind 
may  be  figured  as  lying  side  by  side  on  the  surface  of  the 
cranium,  like  a  number  of  billiard  balls  large  and  small  on  a 
table ;  they  are  entirely  unrelated  to  each  other  by  any  lines 
of  internal  connexion,  their  only  relations  being  those  of 
merely  external  contact,  so  that  if  they  should  happen  to  roll 
against  each  other,  as,  for  example,  if  so  much  hope  should 
come  against  so  much  caution,  so  much  imagination  against  so 
much  fear,  so  much  reverence  against  so  much  lust,  the  activity 
or  strength  of  the  faculties  in  question,  and  therefore  of  the 
resulting  action,  would  to  that  extent  be  fortified,  diluted,  or 
neutralized,  as  the  case  might  be  ;  much  in  the  same  way  as  if 
so  much  water  had  been  added  to  one's  spirit,  or  sugar  to  one's 
tea.  But  this  union  of  the  mental  elements,  although  super- 
ficially it  looks  as  if  it  were  a  relation  between  two  things,  is 
really  only  the  diluting  or  strengthening  of  one.  It  is  not  a 
combination  of  two  elements,  such  as  in  chemistry  out  of  oxygen 
and  hydrogen  would  give  us  water  (a  new  thing  that  can  be 
predicted  to  appear),  but  is  a  mixture  or  solution  rather,  like 
that  which  out  of  oxygen  and  nitrogen  produces  air  (not  a 
new  thing,  but  only  a  diluted  oxygen),  or  out  of  salt  and 
water  gives  us  only  salt  and  water,  or  diluted  salt.  It  furnishes 
us  therefore  with  only  one  pole  or  term  of  a  relation,  and  not 
with  the  two  which  as  we  have  seen  are  necessary  to  constitute 
either  a  law  of  Nature  or  a  law  of  the  human  mind.  In  a 
word,  it  is  not  a  relation  whereby  when  one  term  is  known, 
another   and   unknown   one   can   be   predicted,   or   a   process 

O 


194  A   LAW   OF   THE   MIND — WHAT   IS   IT? 

whereby  when  you  put  in  one  thing  an  entirely  new  thing 
comes  out,  but  a  process  rather  in  which  you  bring  out  only 
what  you  have  already  put  in.  There  is  therefore  no  addition 
to  knowledge.  For  just  as  from  a  mixture  of  spirit  and  water 
you  get  only  a  diluted  spirit,  so  from  a  Phrenological  or 
Metaphysical  mixture  of  prudence  or  caution  with  imagination 
or  hope,  you  can  only  get  a  chastened  imagination,  or  a 
tempered  hope.  With  a  true  law  of  the  mind  it  is  just  the 
opposite,  as  for  example  when  you  bring  suspicion  into  relation 
with  love,  you  produce  jealousy — quite  a  new  thing,  and  one 
you  will  observe  that  could  never  be  surmised  or  predicted  by 
any  manipulation  of  the  two  things  on  a  phrenological  or 
metaphysical  chart,  but  only  by  looking  into  our  own  minds. 
A  phrenological  or  metaphysical  arrangement  of  the  faculties 
therefore,  even  if  true,  could  give  us  no  insight  into  the  laws 
of  the  human  mind. 

That  this  is  so,  may  be  still  further  seen  if  we  remember 
that  in  the  idea  of  a  law  of  the  mind,  as  of  a  law  of  physical 
Nature,  a  sequence  is  always  involved,  a  relation  of  antece- 
dent and  consequent,  a  movement  in  Time  between  one 
point  and  another,  between  one  state  of  feeling  and  another, 
so  that  due  regard  being  had  to  circumstances,  you  can 
predict  the  feeling  that  will  follow  out  of  the  existent 
one.  In  phrenological  and  metaphysical  relations  on  the 
contrary,  where  the  contents  of  one  feeling  are  merely  mingled 
with  those  of  another,  strengthening  or  diluting  it  as  the  case 
may  be,  the  united  two  count  only  as  one  term  of  the  relation 
necessary  to  constitute  a  law,  and  in  the  absence  of  the  second 
term,  the  emotion  or  mental  state  which  will  next  arise  cannot, 
it  is  evident,  be  known.  For  the  feelings  and  emotions  of  the 
mind  are  not  like  a  row  of  sentry-boxes  between  which  thought 
when  once  aroused,  will  of  itself  march  mechanically  first  to 
the  one  next  it,  then  on  to  the  next  again,  and  so  on  till  it 
has  completed  the  entire  circuit.  On  the  contrary,  like  forked 
lightning  it  takes  the  most  unexpected  cuts  and  turns,  forwards 


A    LAW   OF   THE    MIND WHAT    IS   IT?  195 

and  backwards,  zigzag,  crossways,  and  in  all  directions  from 
one  to  the  other ;  now  accumulating  at  fixed  points  like 
electricity,  anon  discharging  itself  and  heaping  itself  up  on  its 
opposite,  in  a  manner  to  which  neither  Metaphysics  nor 
Phrenology  can  give  us  any  clue.  The  relative  natural 
strengths  of  the  various  passions,  although  affecting  the  amount 
of  feeling  evolved  at  any  given  point,  can  tell  us  nothing  about 
the  line  of  direction  that  thought  will  take  as  it  cuts  across  the 
feelings.  This  can  be  known  only  from  within  our  own  minds, 
i.e.  from  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  mind.  And  it  is  just 
the  relation  between  one  emotion  and  another,  one  sentiment 
and  another,  whereby  when  one  is  given  the  other  may  be 
predicted,  that  constitutes  a  law  of  the  mind.  To  see  this 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  mind  exemplified  on  the  grand 
scale,  you  have  only  to  take  down  the  play  of  Othello,  and 
mark  the  series  of  effects  on  the  broad  unsuspecting  mind  of 
the  Moor,  of  the  drop  of  poisoned  suspicion  instilled  into  it 
by  Iago.  First  or  last,  it  is  true,  the  jealousy  aroused  does 
indeed  travel  the  full  round  of  the  mind,  and  draw  in  one  after 
another  all  or  nearly  all  of  the  leading  passions  and  desires  ; 
but  it  does  not  touch  each  of  these  keys  in  turn  one  after 
another  in  any  mechanical  way  as  a  piano-tuner  might  do,  or 
in  any  sequence  that  could  be  determined  by  estimating  the 
original  strengths  of  the  various  passions  involved  (though  this 
too  is  a  factor  in  the  completed  result),  but  flies  backwards 
and  forwards  among  the  keys  after  the  manner  of  the  great 
virtuoso,  and  in  an  order  that  depends  on  the  secret  connexions 
between  the  various  passions,  and  can  be  known  only  by  the 
mind  itself  when  observing  the  sequences  and  connexions  of 
its  own  states.  The  sudden  turns  which  the  passion  takes  in 
the  play,  its  rapid  transitions  from  one  extreme  to  another,  its 
movement  first  from  suspicion  to  doubt,  then  from  doubt  to 
indignation,  and  from  indignation  back  again  to  trust ;  the 
return  again  of  doubt,  and  the  ngony  of  despair  which  accom- 
panies it,  followed  by  the  brutal  assault  on  Iago  in  whom  the 


196  A   LAW   OF   THE   MIND — WHAT   IS   IT? 

Moor  still  believes ;  then  the  sense  of  uncertainty  deepening 
into  the  probability  of  guilt,  the  vows  of  vengeance,  and  the 
ascent  of  passion  to  a  height  where  for  a  moment  it  balances 
itself  on  calm  extended  wing,  circling  around  itself  like  an 
eagle  before  its  swoop ;  the  return  again  of  doubt  as  to 
Desdemona's  real  guilt,  but  on  the  proof  of  it,  revenge  fixed 
and  deep,  which  in  its  recoil,  however,  still  continues  to 
alternate  and  rock  itself  amid  momentary  and  conflicting  gusts 
of  love,  of  pathos,  of  anger,  of  pity  ;  till  hardening  itself  again 
it  settles  finally  into  a  fixed  frenzy  of  revenge  which  passing 
on  to  action  swallows  up  its  victim,  ending  at  last  in  despair 
and  death ;  and  all  this  following,  as  it  does,  the  deep  laws  of 
the  human  mind  so  closely,  that  with  insight  enough,  and  due 
allowance  being  made  for  the  attendant  circumstances,  each 
movement  might  in  a  manner  be  seen  to  be  the  effect  of  all 
that  preceded,  and  the  cause  of  all  that  followed  it.  And  in 
fine,  in  all  this  it  is  evident  that  this  jagged,  uncertain,  and 
zigzag  line  of  passion,  leaping  like  living  fire  from  peak  to  peak, 
could  never  be  determined  by  any  external  phrenological  or 
metaphysical  compounding  of  suspicion,  fear,  jealousy,  pity, 
pathos,  or  revenge,  but  only  from  those  internal  connexions  or 
laws  which  the  mind  discovers  by  looking  into  itself. 

The  same  conclusions  will  be  strengthened  if  we  take  a  still 
more  general  survey  of  the  field.  In  a  broad  and  general  way 
it  may  be  affirmed  that  the  mind  of  man  stands  up  against  the 
circumstances  that  would  subdue  it,  as  the  body  of  man  keeps 
its  erect  posture  against  the  forces  of  Nature  that  would  bring 
it  to  the  ground ;  and  that  the  play  of  thought  and  emotion 
that  is  set  up  in  the  mind  when  anything  occurs  to 
disturb  its  equanimity,  is  analagous  to  the  action  of  the 
muscles  of  the  body  when  anything  occurs  to  upset  the 
balance.  And  as  the  object  of  the  action  of  the  muscles  is  to 
restore  the  bodily  equilibrium,  so  the  object  of  the  play  of 
thought  and  passion  is  to  bring  the  mind  back  to  its  original 
equanimity  ;  as  is  well  seen  in  the  play  of  Othello  to  which  we 


A   LAW   OF   THE   MIND WHAT    IS    IT?  197 

have  just  referred,  where  it  is  evident  that  the  whole  struggle 
in  the  mind  of  the  Moor, — his  violent  upheavals  and  the 
to-and-fro-conflicting  outbursts  of  passion, — is  to  get  back  to  his 
old  composure,  to  'that  sweet  sleep  which  he  owed  yesterday,' 
even  although  that  sleep  could  in  the  nature  of  the  case  be  none 
other  than  the  sleep  of  death.  And  one  may  go  still  farther 
and  affirm  that  just  as  the  slightest  deflection  of  the  trunk  may 
in  certain  positions  of  the  body,  throw  into  action  muscles  so 
remote  even  as  those  of  the  foot  or  heel  before  it  can  be  brought 
back  to  the  perpendicular ;  or,  to  vary  the  metaphor,  just  as  in 
an  orchestral  symphony  the  spirit  and  harmony  of  the  whole 
can  perhaps  only  be  maintained  by  the  recurrent  intrusion 
from  the  rear  into  the  stream  of  sound,  of  some  deep  bassoon 
with  its  perplexed  and  troubled  note  ;  so  the  smallest  seed  of 
suspicion  dropped  into  the  mind,  may  set  in  motion  thoughts 
and  passions  the  most  distant  and  apparently  unrelated,  before 
its  equilibrium  can  be  restored.  Nor  is  this  all.  For  just  as 
the  movements  of  the  muscles  necessary  to  restore  the  body  to 
its  erect  posture,  follow  one  another  according  to  laws  of 
correlation  fixed  deep  in  the  spinal  cord ;  and  the  order, 
combination,  and  sequence  of  instruments  in  an  orchestra  are 
determined  by  the  deep  laws  of  harmony  in  the  composer's 
mind ;  so  the  movements  of  thought  and  passion  which  must 
intervene  before  tranquillity  can  be  restored  to  the  distracted 
mind,  are  determined  by  laws  that  lie  deep  in  the  mind  itself. 
The  inference  therefore  is  obvious  ; — that  just  as  the  muscles  of 
the  body  can  be  separated,  numbered,  and  set  down  in  position 
in  an  anatomical  chart,  and  yet  the  particular  muscles  that 
would  have  to  be  put  in  motion  to  restore  the  balance  after  any 
departure  from  the  equilibrium,  could  never  by  reason  of  their 
complexity  (as  can  be  seen  in  cases  of  locomotor  ataxia)  be  known 
by  any  outward  balancing  of  their  sizes,  positions,  or  functions, 
but  only  by  the  co-ordination  of  centres  of  the  greatest  delicacy 
and  poise,  in  the  spinal  cord, — co-ordinations  which  if  the  cord 
were  conscious  and  could  think,  could  be  written  out  as  laws  of 


198  A   LAW    OF    THE    MIND — WHAT    IS    IT? 

muscular  action ;  so  in  the  same  way  you  may  have  accurately 
analyzed,  numbered,  and  set  down  in  your  chart  of  the  mind, 
phrenological  or  other,  all  the  faculties,  passions,  and  sentiments 
of  the  mind  in  their  relative  sizes  and  strengths,  and  yet  the 
way  in  which  they  would  follow  and  relate  themselves  to  each 
other  in  the  face  of  any  complex  combination  of  circumstances 
from  without  tending  to  upset  the  mind's  tranquillity  (in  other 
words  the  laws  of  the  mind  they  would  follow),  could  never  be 
determined  from  without,  by  any  observation  however  complete 
and  accurate  of  their  relative  sizes  or  strengths,  but  only  from 
within,  by  observing  their  sequences  and  connexions  in  our  own 
minds. 

And  now  if  by  means  of  these  various  illustrations  and 
analogies  I  have  succeeded  in  making  clear  to  the  reader  what 
it  is  I  mean  by  the  laws  of  the  human  mind,  and  how  we  are  to 
set  about  discovering  them,  he  will  at  once  perceive  how  it  was 
that  insensibly  and  unconsciously,  as  I  have  said,  I  had 
practically  abandoned  the  old  method  of  Phrenology  long  before 
I  had  theoretically  discarded  its  philosophical  basis.  He  will 
see  too  that  my  only  alternative  after  rejecting  the  outside 
method  of  Phrenology  was,  after  putting  myself  in  the  place  as 
it  were  of  the  person  or  persons  whose  conduct  or  action  I 
wished  to  explain  or  account  for,  to  search  in  my  own  mind  for 
the  relations  and  connexions  of  thought  and  feeling  that  would 
be  likely  (due  allowance  being  made  for  circumstances)  to 
produce  the  same  result  in  myself ;  and  if,  besides,  I  found  that 
the  same  principles  seemed  adequate  to  explain  the  like  conduct 
or  action  in  other  men  under  similar  circumstances,  I  should 
consider  that  I  had  discovered  not  only  the  true  explanation  of 
the  particular  conduct  or  action  in  question,  but  a  true  law  of  the 
human  mind  as  well.  Instead  therefore  of  looking  at  the  bumps 
on  the  head  or  forehead  for  the  explanation  of  the  actions  of 
particular  individuals,  or  at  their  relations  on  the  chart  for  the 
laws  of  the  human  mind  in  general,  my  method  was  to  take  as 
my  standpoint  of  interpretation  my  own  mind  with  the  sequences 


A   LAW    OF    THE    MIND — WHAT    IS    IT?  199 

and  relations  between  the  thoughts,  sentiments,  and  passions 
which  I  found  there ;  and  as  my  method  of  investigation  the 
minute  and  careful  observation  and  study  of  the  facts  themselves. 
That  is  to  say,  internal  observation  was  my  standpoint  of 
interpretation,  external  observation  my  means  of  investigation 
merely. 

How  this  method  was  abandoned  for  a  time  when  I  came  to 
the  great  Problem  of  the  World  as  distinct  from  the  laws  of  the 
Human  Mind,  and  how  I  was  obliged  to  take  it  up  again  before 
I  could  advance  a  step,  will  be  seen  in  future  chapters  as  the 
course  of  this  evolution  proceeds. 


CHAPTEE    IX. 


THE  BREAKDOWN  OF  PHRENOLOGY. 

X\7"HILE  I  was  thus  silently  and  unconsciously  drifting 
"  *  from  my  old  moorings,  and  was  deserting  Phrenology 
as  unable  by  its  method  to  give  me  any  further  help,  the 
comrades  who  had  set  out  with  me  and  accompanied  me  thus 
far  on  my  way,  still  remained  loyal  to  their  old  allegiance,  and 
refusing  to  move,  continued  contentedly  sitting  around  the  old 
embers  that  had  warmed  and  comforted  them  so  long.  The 
younger  of  the  two,  my  friend  of  the  'Revival'  episode, 
although  active,  enquiring,  and  full  of  intellectual  energy,  was 
naturally  averse  to  opening  his  eyes  too  widely  to  the  flaws  of 
a  system  which  so  flattered  his  own  personal  pretensions,  and 
which  by  the  large  powers  of  Causality  it  endowed  him  with, 
gave  him  so  much  distinction  and  radiance  in  his  own  imagina- 
tion ;  while  the  elder,  he  of  the  *  Boot-jack,'  had  so  long 
nourished  his  soul  on  it  in  solitude,  that  he  was  now  too  old  to 
change  ;  and  with  the  affection  of  some  old  Arab  of  the  desert 
for  the  good  camel  that  had  served  him  so  well,  striking  his 
spear  into  the  earth,  was  prepared  to  take  up  his  everlasting 
rest  beside  it.  Accordingly  I  had  to  leave  them  behind,  and 
go  forward  alone ;  but  I  cannot  remember  that  my  movements 
gave  them  the  least  curiosity  or  concern.  For  I  was  but 
modestly  endowed  as  I  have  said,  with  that  sovereign  organ  or 
*  bump '  of  Causality  which  was  so  conspicuous  in  the  heads  of 


THE   BREAKDOWN   OF   PHRENOLOGY.  201 

both  these  friends ;  and  the  consequence  was  that  when  I 
returned  to  them  from  my  various  excursions,  bringing  with 
me  the  gleanings  of  mv  own  observation  and  reflection — and 
which  consisted  for  the  most  part  of  such  lighter  laws  and 
threads  of  connexion  as  served  to  stitch  together  those  thoughts 
and  feelings  which  Phrenology  had  left  isolated  and  unrelated, 
— it  was  rather  with  a  kind  of  mild  surprise  than  with  any 
deeper  interest  in  my  speculations,  that  they  regarded  me ;  — 
as  much  as  to  say,  '  Is  it  really  possible  that  you  could  have 
discovered  this  1 '  So  strong  a  pre-conception  indeed  had  they 
formed  of  my  inability  to  trace  the  relations  of  cause  and  effect 
from  the  mere  configuration  of  my  head,  that  to  escape 
allowing  me  this  capacity  they  were  willing  to  credit  me  with 
the  possession  of  any  number  of  subsidiary  or  auxiliary  faculties 
and  powers  ;  my  young  friend  being  disposed  to  attribute  my 
successes  chiefly  to  a  power  of  observation  which  he  thought 
he  saw  in  me,  and  of  which  '  bump  '  indeed,  he  allowed  that  I 
had  a  sufficiency ;  while  my  old  friend  of  the  '  Boot-jack '  was 
inclined  rather  to  refer  them  to  what  he  was  pleased  to  call  my 
*  nervous  temperament,'  and  which  you  were  to  figure  as  a  kind 
of  machine  which  made  more  revolutions  a  minute  than  was 
usual,  and  so  made  up  in  velocity  for  what  it  lost  in  power ! 
Now  I  must  confess  that  this  indisposition  of  theirs  to  give  me 
credit  for  the  work  I  was  doing,  sincere  doubtless  as  it  was, 
for  a  time  piqued  my  pride  and  vanity  not  a  little ;  the  more 
so  as  I  flattered  myself  that  by  my  new  method  I  was  reducing 
large  tracts  of  the  more  superficial  aspects  of  life  and  nature 
under  their  true  laws  and  causes,  while  they  in  my  judgment 
were  wasting  their  time  revolving  round  the  same  old  theme 
and  dreaming  over  the  excellence  of  their  own  powers.  I  soon 
became  accustomed  to  this  attitude  of  theirs  however,  and 
despairing  of  altering  it,  ceased  after  a  time  to  take  further 
notice  of  it,  but  went  on  my  own  way  unheeding. 

Meanwhile  having  thrown  off  the  methods  of  Phrenology,  and 
so  blown  away  the  haze  with  which  affection  and  enthusiasm 


202  THE    BREAKDOWN    OF   PHRENOLOGY. 

had  for  a  time  invested  it,  I  was  enabled  to  see  in  greater 
sharpness  of  outline  the  flaws  and  gaps  in  its  structure ;  and  all 
the  old  unresolved  cases  which  when  my  enthusiasm  was  at  its 
height  had  been  silently  hidden  away  as  in  a  box,  under  lock 
and  key,  now  revived  in  all  their  force.  But  besides  these  old 
instances,  new  ones  were  constantly  arising  in  which  the  gaps 
between  the  character  and  the  cranium  were  so  wide,  that  not 
all  the  ingenuity  of  my  friend  of  the  '  Boot-jack '  could  bridge 
them,  not  even  his  ever  ready  extenuations  and  distinctions 
could  be  stretched  so  as  to  cover  them  without  cracking.  And 
yet  so  gradual  is  the  process  of  uncoiling  oneself  from  the  folds 
of  a  belief  which  one  has  once  deeply  entertained,  that  my 
incredulity  for  some  time  was  kept  within  very  definite  limits. 
For,  so  far,  I  had  never  doubted  that  these  organs  of  the 
Phrenologists  were  the  true  and  scientific  divisions  of  the  human 
mind,  and  that  such  so-called  intellectual  faculties  as  Observation, 
Causality,  Comparison,  Language,  and  the  rest,  were  quite 
distinct  and  independent  powers.  What  I  doubted  was  merely 
whether  these  faculties  had  been  assigned  in  all  instances  to 
their  proper  positions  on  the  cranium.  But  I  was  now  to  see 
that  not  only  were  they  not  true  divisions  of  the  mind  at  all, 
but  that  they  could  not  have  distinct  and  independent  existences 
of  their  own  ;  and  therefore  that  they  could  not  have  occupied 
the  positions  assigned  them. 

Not  having  been  well  for  some  time  I  had  gone  to  New  York 
for  a  course  of  sea-bathing,  when  as  I  sauntered  along  the  street 
one  afternoon  I  chanced  to  find  my  way  into  Barnum's  museum  ; 
and  there  among  other  wonders  and  surprises  I  found  that  in  a 
little  ante-room  at  the  top  of  the  main  staircase,  a  Phrenologist 
had  opened  his  sanctum,  and  was  prepared  to  furnish  the  public 
with  the  fullest  particulars  on  all  points  of  ability  or  character, 
oral  or  written.  Prompted  mainly  by  curiosity  I  sat  down  on 
his  chair  to  have  my  head  manipulated,  and  in  the  course  of  the 
conversation  that  ensued,  was  interested  to  learn  from  him  that 
he  had  discovered  and  developed  an  entirely  new  system,  in 


THE    BREAKDOWN   OF   PHRENOLOGY.  203 

which  while  some  new  organs  were  added,  many  of  the  old  ones 
had  changed  their  positions,  and  not  a  few  had  been  discarded 
altogether !  Of  the  particulars  of  this  new  system,  I  have  now 
but  a  most  imperfect  recollection,  but  such  a  sudden  shifting 
and  transformation  of  the  very  foundations  of  the  science,  was 
sufficient  in  my  sceptical  humour  to  set  me  considering  whether, 
after  all,  these  intellectual  faculties  about  which  my  friends 
were  so  enthusiastic,  had  really  any  independent  existence  at 
all ;  and  the  question  once  raised,  it  was  not  long  before  I  found 
that  under  analysis  they  nearly  all  melted  away  into  mere 
forms  of  other  sympathies,  affections,  and  desires  ;  and  so  as 
independent  entities  had  no  existence.  If,  therefore,  I  should 
ask  the  reader  to  follow  me  in  this  demonstration,  it  is  not 
because  I  feel  it  necessary  to  resurrect  for  dissection  an  old  and 
exploded  system  like  Phrenology,  but  because  the  subject 
itself  has  an  importance  far  beyond  the  special  speculations  out 
of  which  it  grew,  and  has  most  important  bearings,  as  we  shall 
see,  even  on  the  latest  and  most  developed  forms  of  Modern 
Scientific  Psychology. 

In  Phrenology  as  I  have  said,  the  various  faculties,  sentiments, 
and  propensities  of  the  mind  lie  around  the  circumference  of 
the  cranium  like  a  number  of  billiard  balls  great  or  small  on  a 
table,  each  being  as  separate  and  distinct  from  the  rest  as  if  it 
were  an  Emperor  in  its  own  right.  And  not  only  was  each 
individual  faculty  separate  and  distinct  from  the  rest,  so  that  it 
might  be  large  while  they  were  small  or  vice  versa,  but  each  of 
the  groups  of  faculties — the  intellectual,  the  moral,  the  aesthetic, 
the  animal, — was  equally  distinct  and  independent  of  its 
neighbours.  But  what  I  wish  specially  to  note  here  is  that  the 
intellectual  group  on  the  forehead,  consisting  as  it  did  of 
Observation,  Memory,  Causality,  Comparison,  Language,  and 
the  rest,  was  entirely  cut  off  from  all  connexion  wTith  the 
sentiments,  affections,  and  propensities  which  lay  on  the  top, 
sides,  and  back  of  the  head  respectively.  Now  on  taking  up 
Causality,    the  first  organ  to  which  I  happened  to  direct  my 


204  THE  BREAKDOWN  OF  PHRENOLOGY. 

attention,  and  in  thinking  over  what  was  involved  in  the 
discovery  of  the  law  or  cause  of  any  circumstance  or  set  of  facts 
in  the  natural  world,  I  at  once  perceived  that  in  essence  it 
depended  mainly  on  the  breadth  and  subtlety,  the  minuteness 
and  accuracy  of  our  observation  of  the  sequence  and  connexion 
of  things ;  and  that  then  the  law  or  cause,  which  was  but  the 
element  common  to  all  the  facts,  could  be  skimmed  off  them  by  a 
process  of  abstraction  or  generalization  as  formal  and  mechanical 
as  that  by  which  the  cream  is  separated  from  the  milk.  That 
is  to  say,  the  essence  of  Causality  lay  in  the  power  of  observation, 
and  its  form  only,  in  the  process  of  generalization  or 
abstraction.  But  as  the  Phrenologists  had  already  a  separate 
organ  of  Observation  to  which  they  had  assigned  a  distinct 
place  among  the  other  intellectual  powers,  the  consequence  was 
that  you  had  two  organs  practically  performing  one  and  the 
same  function — which  was  absurd.  But  when  on  going  still 
farther  back,  I  asked  myself  on  what  this  power  of  observation 
itself  in  turn  depended,  I  saw  that  it  depended  on  the  number, 
complexity,  and  fineness  of  our  affinities,  sympathies,  and  points 
of  sensibility  ;  or  in  other  words  on  Feeling.  For  whether  your 
power  of  observation  be  confined  to  Man  or  Nature,  to  Society 
or  the  Individual,  to  Politics  or  Trade,  to  Animals  or  Men,  to 
Public  Opinion,  Dress,  Form,  Feature,  or  Manners ;  or  whether 
it  include  or  embrace  them  all ;  it  will  be  found  (the  mere 
bodily  eyesight  being  supposed  to  be  common  to  all)  to  be  always 
set  in  motion  by,  and  to  have  its  roots  deep  dowTn  either  in 
sympathy,  affection,  desire,  or  in  your  natural  affinity  with  the 
class  of  objects  observed  ; — whether  it  be  the  desire  which 
gives  the  fox  his  eye  for  the  goose,  the  thief  for  the  money- 
chest,  the  cabman  for  his  fare,  the  rook  for  the  pigeon,  the 
politician  for  a  vote,  the  alderman  for  respectability  and  signs  of 
solvency,  the  practical  man  for  a  new  opening  or  investment,  or 
mode  of  transport  or  communication,  the  scientist  for  a  new 
bacillus  or  cell,  the  dramatist  and  novelist  for  character,  situation, 
or  plot,  the  poet  and  artist  for  beauty  in  form  or  colour,  in 


THE  BREAKDOWN  OF  PHRENOLOGY.  205 

landscape  or  in  human  life.  That  is  to  say,  your  power  of 
observation  will  depend  either  on  such  low  and  selfish  stimuli 
as  the  love  of  money  or  of  power,  on  pride,  vanity,  or  self-love ; 
on  such  mixed  and  neutral  impulses  as  those  of  enterprise, 
ambition,  distinction,  emulation;  or  on  such  high  and  noble 
loves  as  those  of  beauty,  goodness,  or  truth.  The  greatest 
all-round  observer  therefore  will  be  he  who  like  Shakspeare  has 
the  greatest  number,  complexity,  and  fineness  of  points  of 
sympathy,  affection,  and  sensibility  ;  or  in  other  words,  the 
greatest  variety,  range,  height,  and  delicacy  of  feeling.  But 
these  feelings — moral,  sentimental,  aesthetic,  animal, — are  placed 
by  the  Phrenologists  as  I  have  said,  in  groups  by  themselves, 
distinct  and  separate  from  the  intellectual  powders.  If  Causality, 
therefore,  is  practically  only  another  name  for  breadth  and 
subtlety,  range  and  accuracy  of  observation ;  and  observation 
has  its  root  deep  down  in  the  sympathies,  sentiments,  and 
affinities  by  which  it  is  prompted  and  out  of  which  it  springs  ; 
it  is  evident  that  Causality  should  have  its  seat  among  the 
Feelings  rather  than  among  the  Intellectual  Powers.  Either 
way  therefore,  it  is  an  illusion.  For  either  it  is  only  a  form  of 
Observation,  in  which  case  you  have  two  distinct  organs 
performing  practically  the  same  function ;  or  it  has  its  root  in 
the  impulses,  sentiments,  and  desires,  in  which  case  it  should 
have  had  its  place  among  the  feelings,  and  not  among  those 
intellectual  powers — such  for  example  as  the  various  kinds  of 
memory — which  can  have  in  a  great  measure,  a  distinct  and 
independent  existence  of  their  own. 

The  Reader  will  readily  imagine  the  sense  of  triumph  with 
which  I  returned  to  retail  the  above  arguments  to  those  comrades 
who  had  so  long  ignored  my  speculations  on  the  ground  of  my 
deficiency  in  that  very  organ  of  Causality  which  had  now  broken 
in  my  hands  ; — and  the  surprise  with  which  they  received  them. 
My  young  friend  was  palpably  impressed  by  them,  but  the 
elder,  he  of  the  '  boot-jack,'  after  listening,  considering  for  a 
while,  and  finding  himself  unable  to  stretch  his  ingenuity  enough 


206  THE  BREAKDOWN  OF  PHRENOLOGY. 

to  cover  them,  turned,  over  on  his  side  again ;  and  some  months 
later  on  my  return  from  the  University  to  which  I  had  gone  a 
second  time,  I  found  him  still  sitting  unchanged  beside  the  old 
camp  fire.  He  was  joined  to  his  idols,  and  I  let  him  alone ;  and 
during  the  short  time  that  I  was  to  be  with  him  before  I  left  home 
for  England,  the  subject  was  never  again  discussed  between  us. 

But  it  was  not  only  Causality  as  a  separate  and  independent 
entity  that  melted  away  under  analysis  ;  all  the  higher  intellectual 
powers  shared  the  same  fate.  Take  Language,  for  example, 
which  is  placed  by  the  Phrenologists  as  a  separate  faculty  among 
the  other  intellectual  powers.  Now  as  the  mere  names  of  things 
may  be  assumed  as  practically  common  to  all  educated  and 
cultured  people,  it  is  evident  that  the  web  and  pattern  into 
which  words  shall  be  woven  in  expressing  our  thoughts,  will 
depend  not  on  the  mere  knowledge  of  words  as  such,  but  on  the 
number  of  things  that  make  the  same  impression  on  our 
sensibilities,  and  which  therefore  can  be  used  as  words  or  images 
by  which  to  paint  out  our  meaning ;  and  this  again  will  depend 
on  the  number,  complexity,  and  fineness  of  our  points  of  affinity, 
sympathy,  and  sensibility ;  so  that  whether  your  language  shall 
be  hard,  barren,  constrained,  and  suggestive  of  nothing  beyond 
the  most  gross  and  tangible  aspect  of  your  thought ;  or  on  the 
other  hand  shall  be  rich,  various,  and  running  over  with  subtle 
allusions  which  shall  bring  out  its  finest  shading,  glancing  and 
sparkling  from  it  as  from  the  facets  of  a  gem ;  will  depend  not 
on  your  knowledge  of  words  as  such,  not  on  your  mere  power  of 
language  as  such,  but  on  the  richness,  fineness  and  complexity 
of  your  sympathies  and  sensibilities;  in  a  word,  on  Feeling. 
Language  therefore,  like  Causality  and  Observation,  can  have 
no  independent  intellectual  existence  of  its  own,  but  like  them, 
has  its  roots  deep  down  among  the  sympathies,  feelings,  and 
moral  affinities. 

The  same  result  would  follow  on  an  analysis  of  the  organ  of 
Comparison,  the  organ  which  discovers  likenesses,  and  gives  to 
those  endowed  with  it  the  power  of  analogy,  of  metaphor,  of 


THE   BREAKDOWN   OF   PHRENOLOGY.  207 

illustration.  For  either  the  objects  which  we  compare  have 
an  external  likeness,  or  they  make  an  identical  impression  on 
our  sensibilities.  In  the  first  case  the  power  of  analogy  will 
depend  on  our  power  of  retaining  in  our  mind  the  exact  like- 
ness of  things,  that  is  to  say,  on  the  memory  of  forms, — an 
organ  which  has  a  separate  place  assigned  it  among  the 
intellectual  faculties ;  in  the  second  case  it  will  depend  like  the 
others,  on  the  number,  complexity,  and  fineness  of  our  points 
of  sensibility,  that  is  to  say  on  Feeling,  and  can  have  no  place 
therefore  among  the  intellectual  faculties.  But  enough  I  trust 
has  been  said  to  show  that  the  higher  qualities  of  the  intellect 
have  their  core  and  root  deep  down  among  the  feelings,  and 
depend  for  their  fullness  or  poverty  on  the  richness,  fineness, 
and  complexity  of  these  feelings  ;  and  that  any  system  therefore 
that  would  divorce  Intellect  from  Feeling  by  putting  them 
into  separate  categories,  as  if  they  ground  out  their  special 
products  independently  of  each  other,  is  convicted  of  shallow- 
ness, superficiality,  and  absurdity. 

But  if  further  proof  were  wanting  that  the  higher  qualities 
of  intellect  have  their  roots  in  the  deeper  regions  of  the  mind, 
and  not  in  any  mere  overgrown  organ,  it  may  be  seen  in  such 
well-known  facts  as  that  the  great  rhymesters  and  improvisatori 
are  not  the  great  poets ;  the  lightning  calculators,  not  the 
great  mathematicians ;  those  best  endowed  with  physical 
eyesight,  not  the  great  observers ;  the  great  memorists  of  form, 
not  the  great  painters ;  or  of  tune,  the  great  composers. 

So  fell  Phrenology,  but  from  its  wreck  and  break-down  one 
real  and  positive  result  had  emerged,  a  relation  namely,  between 
two  separate  and  apparently  unrelated  facts  of  our  nature, 
between  Thought  and  Feeling,  between  Intellect  and  the 
emotional  sympathies.  But  although  I  saw  this  implicitly,  I 
had  neither  the  boldness  nor  the  clearness  at  the  time,  to 
formulate  it  in  a  definite  principle ;  and  being  soon  afterwards 
drawn  away  from  the  subject  by  the  current  of  my  thoughts 
having  turned  to  the  larger  problem  of  the  World,  it  was  not 


208  THE  BREAKDOWN  OF  PHRENOLOGY. 

until  two  or  three  years  had  elapsed  that  I  found  it  had  been 
formulated  by  Carlyle  in  his  well-known  doctrine  that  '  the 
Intellectual  and  the  Moral  are  one ;'  and  that  I  discovered  that 
on  this  single  principle  as  basis,  the  whole  series  of  his  historical, 
literary,  and  biographical  portraits  without  exception — his 
Burns,  Johnson,  Voltaire,  Schiller,  Scott,  Goethe,  Mirabeau, 
Sterling,  Frederick,  Cromwell  and  the  rest — were  avowedly 
and  consciously  constructed.  With  what  avidity  I  seized  this 
doctrine  when  once  I  found  that  another  mind  had  already 
seen  it  and  given  it  expression ;  and  how  I  went  about  painting 
with  it  until  I  began  to  see  that  it  would  have  to  be  more 
carefully  defined  before  it  could  be  available  for  general  use, 
and  must  be  united  with  other  laws  equally  important  before 
it  could  explain  the  nature  of  any  given  individual  mind — all 
this  will  be  seen  more  fully  in  a  subsequent  chapter. 


CHAPTEE     X. 


THE    POWER    OF    LANGUAGE. 

FN  this  break-up  of  Phrenology  which  had  thus  given  way 
-*-  beneath  me,  I  was  again  left  drifting  on  the  open  sea  of 
speculation,  far  from  sight  of  land.  For  I  was  still  fully 
immersed  in  the  discovery  of  the  laws  of  the  individual  mind, 
and  although  on  the  right  track,  had  not  yet  attained  to  any 
sufficient  insight  into  them  to  modify  my  views  of  Life  as  a 
whole.  As  for  the  laws  of  the  Universe,  or  of  the  world  of 
Nature,  they  were  still  beyond  my  range  of  speculation.  Of 
Laplace's  theory  of  the  formation  of  the  Universe,  and  of  how 
suns  were  condensed  from  diffused  nebulae,  planets  from  suns, 
and  satellites  from  planets,  I  had  not  yet  even  heard ;  nor  had 
I  as  yet  the  least  interest  in  the  subject  ;  it  was  too  wide,  too 
vague,  and  had  too  little  of  human  life  in  it  to  attract  me.  It 
was  the  same,  too,,  with  Spencer's  Philosophy  of  Evolution, 
and  with  Darwin's  explanation  of  the  evolution  of  plants  and 
animals,  by  the  process  of  '  spontaneous  variation,'  *  natural 
selection,'  and  the  '  survival  of  the  fittest;'  neither  of  which  I 
had  yet  read.  The  consequence  was  that  having  arrived  at  no 
unity  either  in  my  view  of  the  World  or  of  the  Human  Mind, 
I  had  no  new  basis  for  a  change  in  my  views  of  Religion, 
which  indeed  had  slept  undisturbed  from  the  days  when 
Butler's  Analogy  failed  to  wean  me  from  that  passive  attitude 
of  sceptical  indifference  engendered  in  me  by  the  phrenological 

P 


210  THE    TOWER   OF    LANGUAGE. 

doctrine  of  the  dependence  of  the  emotions  and  activities  of 
the  mind,  on  states  of  the  brain. 

Still,  although  land  was  nowhere  in  sight,  either  in  the  form 
of  a  Philosophy  of  Nature  or  a  Theory  of  Religion,  I  was  not 
as  I  have  said  without  a  rudder  of  my  own  with  which  to 
direct  my  course.  For  underneath  the  old  shell  and  husk  of 
Phrenology,  whose  methods  I  had  now  entirely  cast  off,  the 
new  method  which  I  have  already  described  had  taken  firm  and 
abiding  root.  This  method,  to  repeat  it  again,  consisted  in 
taking  as  my  standpoint  for  the  interpretation  of  human  life, 
the  laws  of  the  mind  which  I  discovered  in  myself,  that  is  to 
say,  those  fixed  connexions  between  its  various  sentiments, 
emotions,  and  desires,  whereby  when  any  one  was  given,  some 
other  could  be  predicted  to  follow  or  attend  it ;  and  going  out 
into  the  world  with  these  laws,  to  seek  to  enforce,  modify,  or 
give  greater  clearness  to  them,  as  the  case  might  be,  by 
observing  the  extent  to  which  they  held  true  of  other  minds. 
In  this  way  I  gradually  wove  for  myself  a  web  of  laws  of  the 
mind,  which  however  superficial  they  might  be  at  first,  had  as 
prime  virtue  the  capacity  of  growth  and  increase  with  time, 
and  so  gradually  spread,  twined  themselves  together,  and 
pushed  their  roots  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  soil ;  thus 
preparing  the  way  for  those  profounder  laws  of  the  mind  on 
which  as  we  shall  see  in  the  sequel,  the  solution  of  the  great 
problems  of  Life  and  Religion  ultimately  depend. 

With  this  quiet  and  gradual  evolution  of  my  own  thought, 
undisturbed  by  any  intrusion  into  it  from  without,  I  was  for 
the  time-being  content.  I  was  in  truth  in  a  transition  state 
between  the  breakdown  of  one  system,  Phrenology,  which  I 
had  outgrown,  and  the  uprise  of  another,  Spencer's  Philosophy 
of  Evolution,  which  was  just  on  the  horizon  ;  and  in  the  lull 
and  pause  between  them  I  had  leisure  to  look  round  me  and 
take  stock  of  the  deficiencies  in  my  own  intellectual  outfit. 
The  first  thing  that  struck  me  as  standing  in  need  of  repair, 
was  a  want  in  the  power  of  expression.     Of  this  I  was  first 


THE   POWER   OF   LANGUAGE.  211 

made  aware  in  my  conversations  with  my  friend  of  the  *  Boot- 
jack.' The  ease  and  fluidity  of  his  discourse,  the  copiousness, 
flexibility,  and  appropriateness  of  the  language  lie  used  when 
compared  with  my  own  stinted  and  barren  utterance,  impressed 
me  deeply,  and  I  was  anxious  if  possible  to  correct  my  own 
deficiency.  And  when  I  observed  further  the  multitudes  that 
flocked  to  hear  the  popular  preachers  and  platform  orators  who 
occasionally  visited  the  town,  and  the  admiration  with  which 
their  performances  were  regarded,  I  felt  doubly  determined 
that  come  what  would,  I  must  acquire  this  facility.  For  my 
deficiency,  to  put  it  definitely,  was  not  so  much  in  the  power 
of  translating  thoughts  and  ideas  into  pictures,  for  this  in  a 
manner  was  natural  to  me ;  nor  in  the  power  of  striking  out 
images  and  likenesses,  for  in  this  exercise  my  mind  was  fairly 
fertile  ;  but  was  simply  a  want  of  knowledge  of  words,  of  the 
names  of  things.  This  deficiency  was  due  perhaps  to  my 
excessive  devotion  to  sports  and  outdoor  amusements  during 
the  whole  period  of  my  boyhood ;  to  my  entire  want  of  interest 
in  anything  that  had  to  do  with  business,  or  politics,  or  trade, 
and  to  the  consequent  absence  of  a  large  stock  of  words  or 
phrases  in  ordinary  use,  taken  from  these  pursuits ;  but  more 
than  all  perhaps  to  my  never  having  read  any  of  the  ordinary 
story  books  and  tales  of  adventure,  where  shades  of  thought 
and  feeling  unknown  in  the  talk  of  the  playground,  find 
abundant  and  accurate  expression. 

And  yet  I  had  been  educated  at  one  of  the  best  schools  of 
the  time ;  at  this  school  I  had  spent  the  greater  part  of  four 
years  in  almost  exclusive  devotion  to  Classical  studies,  and  at 
the  end  of  that  time  had  taken  high  honours  in  these  subjects 
at  the  University  Examination.  The  reader  therefore  may 
feel  interested  to  know  how  it  was  that  with  such  training:  1 
should  have  left  the  school,  not  only  without  any  of  those 
felicities  of  thought  and  expression  for  which  the  Classics  are 
supposed  to  be  so  admirable  an  exercise,  but  without  even  an 
ordinary  command  of  words,  the  greater  number  of  which  were 


212  THE    POWER    OF   LANGUAGE. 

derived  from  these  very  languages  !  The  answer  to  this  will 
not  only  throw  light  on  the  much-debated  question  as  to  the 
value  of  a  classical  education  as  a  discipline  of  the  mind,  and 
as  to  the  best  mode  of  imparting  it,  but  will  in  a  measure  serve 
also  to  explain  the  particular  deficiency  in  myself  which  I  am 
now  considering.  The  fact  was  that  during  the  three  or  four 
years  of  my  attendance  at  school,  we  were  given  only  such 
portions  of  Homer,  Virgil,  Horace,  Livy,  Cicero,  Ovid, 
Sallust,  and  Lucian,  as  were  set  down  in  the  University 
Curriculum;  and  when  we  had  learned  to  translate  them 
literally,  to  read  and  scan  them  without  false  quantity,  to  know 
all  about  iambics,  choriambics,  dactyls,  spondees,  and  the 
caesura ;  when  we  had  learned  the  genealogy  of  the  gods  and 
demigods,  the  exploits  of  the  heroes,  the  speeches  they  had 
delivered,  or  the  battles  they  had  lost  or  won,  together  with 
the  mythological  allusions  that  lay  scattered  everywhere  up 
and  down  the  page,  our  outfit  was  considered  complete;  and 
according  to  the  extent  and  accuracy  of  this  knowledge,  did 
we  take  rank  and  position  in  the  school.  Into  this  mould  we 
were  all  methodically  pressed,  any  branching  luxuriances  or 
offshoots  of  thought  being  incontinently  lopped  off,  as  incon- 
gruous with  the  end  in  view.  Indeed  to  have  endeavoured  to 
catch  from  some  rising  ground  a  glimpse  of  the  beauteous 
fields  of  poesy  that  lay  on  either  side  of  the  dusty  highway 
along  which  we  were  driven,  and  to  which  these  pedantries 
were  but  the  entrance  and  doorway ;  to  have  asked  wherein 
the  odes  of  Horace  or  speeches  of  Cicero  were  specially 
beautiful  or  great  •  or  whv  this  which  was  said  or  done  was 
specially  appropriate  to  the  occasion,  would  have  been  resented 
by  the  Master  as  an  impertinence.  But  of  this  indeed  there 
was  little  danger,  for  as  we  staggered  along  under  the  heavy 
load  of  pedantry  we  had  to  bear,  groping  our  way  among  the 
rocks  and  briars,  from  word  to  word  and  sentence  to  sentence 
as  if  for  very  life,  we  had  neither  the  time,  inclination,  nor 
power  to  discern  the  poetic  beauties   of  the  landscape,  to  us 


THE    POWER   OF   LANGUAGE.  213 

invisible ;  and  all  oversight  of  the  field  as  a  whole,  in  which 
alone  intelligent  apprehension  consists,  was  impossible.  Of 
any  such  poetic  or  rhetorical  graces  or  felicities  we  were 
neither  expected  nor  required  to  know  anything ;  nor  did  our 
teacher  give  us  any  the  slightest  indication  that  he  himself 
either  knew  or  cared.  On  the  other  hand,  not  to  know  the 
various  labours  of  Hercules,  the  names  and  numbers  of  the 
Fates,  the  Furies,  and  the  Winds,  and  the  seven  cities  that 
contended  for  the  honour  of  being  the  birthplace  of  Homer, 
that  indeed  was  a  fault  on  which  he  was  inexorable !  The 
consequence  to  us  was,  that  the  language  of  Homer  in  so  far 
as  it  was  a  discipline  or  exercise  of  the  taste  and  understanding, 
stood  on  precisely  the  same  level  as  the  language  of  the 
Maories  or  Hottentots,  and  a  knowledge  of  his  heroes  as  a 
knowledge  of  their  chiefs. 

It  was  the  same  with  History.  No  attempt  was  anywhere 
made  to  winnow  the  record,  to  separate  the  chaffy  and  merely 
imposing  parts  from  the  significant  and  far-reaching ;  to 
exhibit  the  roots  and  stems  of  events  in  geographical  situation 
and  surroundings,  or  in  economic  or  political  necessity. 
Nothing  of  all  this  was  vouchsafed  us,  but  we  were  set  instead 
to  batten  on  a  barren  and  wintry  inventory  of  battles,  dates, 
and  kings,  without  intellectual  connexion  or  cohesion,  and  as 
useless  for  real  culture  as  an  inventory  of  the  old  turnpikes  and 
tavern-signs  on  a  road  long  since  closed,  and  on  which  the 
world  was  never  again  to  travel.  In  a  word,  there  was  nothing 
human  in  his  mode  of  teaching,  nothing  to  show  us  that  real 
identity  in  human  nature  which  links  those  olden  times  to  the 
familiar  life  of  to-day ;  the  consequence  being  that  the  o'er- 
freighted  memory,  worn  out  with  the  effort  to  retain  this  dead 
heap  of  facts,  without  continuous  string  of  connection  to 
thread  them  on,  hastened,  when  the  examination  was  past,  to 
let  them  fall  into  oblivion.  The  truth  was,  the  Head  Master 
made  no  pretence  of  teaching  in  any  genuine  sense  of  that  term, 
but  only  of  hearing  our  lessons.     He  made  no  comments  of  his 


214  THE   POWER    OF   LANGUAGE. 

own  as  we  went  along ;  neither  expatiating  on,  nor  seeking  to 
develop  the  immediate  theme,  nor  in  any  way  attempting  to 
unite  the  particular  verse,  sentence,  or  chapter  with  what  went 
before  or  after,  so  as  to  present  a  continuous  chain  of  thought 
or  sentiment  along  which  the  young  mind  groping  its  way  to 
clearness,  could  creep  from  link  to  link.  During  all  those  years, 
indeed,  I  can  recall  but  one  solitary  comment  of  his,  which  in 
any  way  helped  to  give  resurrection  and  life  to  that  antique 
world,  or  to  rescue  it  from  the  cerements  of  pedantry  in  which 
it  lay  entombed,  uniting  it  for  the  moment  with  the  present, 
the  familiar,  and  the  known ;  and  the  peculiar  sensation  it  gave 
me,  made  an  impression  on  me  which  remains  to  this  day.  T 
was  reading  Horace  at  the  time,  alone  with  the  Master, 
preparatory  to  the  University  Examination,  and  when  we  came 
to  the  ode  which  tells  how  severe  winter  was  melting  away 
under  the  genial  influence  of  spring,  and  I  was  groping  my 
way  through  the  first  line  or  two,  piecing  the  words  together 
with  as  little  sense  of  their  beauty,  or  indeed  of  their  meaning, 
as  if  I  had  been  engaged  in  making  out  an  acrostic,  he  suddenly 
stopped  me,  and  moved  apparently  by  some  passing  reminiscence, 
looked  over  his  nose  at  me  facetiously  and  said,  paraphrasing  the 
line,  '  Gloomy  Winter's  noo  awa'. '  Surprised  that  the  old 
Roman  poet  could  have  meant  anything  so  simple,  natural,  and 
intelligible  as  this,  I  paused  a  moment  looking  up  at  him,  when 
he  asked  me  if  I  knew  whose  the  line  was,  and  on  my  answering 
at  a  venture  '  Burns,'  he  said  in  his  lofty  way  '  No,  Tannahill,' 
and  went  on  with  the  task  as  before.  This  wTas  the  first  and 
last  indication  I  ever  had  from  him,  that  anything  we  heard  or 
read  within  the  walls  of  the  school,  could  possibly  have  any 
analogy  with,  or  bearing  however  remote  on  the  world  in  which 
I  lived  and  moved,  or  the  thoughts  and  feelings  with  which  I 
was  familiar. 

From  all  this  it  will  be  apparent  to  the  reader  that  the 
deficiencies  in  my  vocabulary  due  to  the  causes  I  have 
mentioned,  were   not   likely  to  be   repaired   by  the  Classical 


THE    POWER   OF   LANGUAGE.  215 

training  I  had  received — a  training  in  which  translation  was 
confined  entirely  to  the  literal  and  dictionary  meaning  of  the 
words,  and  in  which  a  free  rendering  which  might  have 
strengthened  one's  choice  of  words,  was  forbidden.  But  how 
to  set  about  repairing  this  deficiency?  This  was  now  the 
question  with  me. 

I  remembered  having  heard  or  read  somewhere  that  Addison 
was  the  great  master  of  pure  and  classic  English,  but  on 
getting  a  copy  of  the  Spectator,  his  many  beauties  and  felicities 
of  diction  as  well  as  his  exquisite  humour,  diffused  as  a  subtle 
essence  over  whole  passages  rather  than  concentrated  in  single 
sentences,  were  quite  lost  on  me.  The  truth  was  T  was  not  on 
the  look-out  for  either  fine  humour  or  felicity  of  expression ; 
what  I  really  wanted  was  words,  high-sounding,  many-syllabled 
words,  and  the  more  of  them  the  better !  and  I  soon  began  to 
feel  that  I  might  have  to  plod  through  whole  volumes  of  this 
simple  diction,  before  I  came  on  the  style  of  phrase  of  which  I 
was  in  search.  I  could  do  this  sort  of  thing  myself,  I  thought, 
and  putting  aside  the  volume,  turned  to  the  works  of 
Washington  Irving;  whom  I  had  seen  bracketed  somewhere 
with  Addison  as  a  master  of  English  Prose.  But  he  too,  like 
his  great  predecessor,  although  his  thoughts  were  enveloped  in 
a  warmer,  softer,  and  more  sunny  atmosphere,  and  were 
pervaded  with  a  gentler  and  more  pathetic  melancholy,  was  too 
pure  and  simple  in  expression  for  my  purposes,  and  had  to  be 
laid  aside.  And  then  I  came  casually  across  a  copy  of  Burns* 
letters  which  pleased  me  better.  Their  stilted  sentiments 
and  high-flown  expressions  of  compliment  and  adulation,  like 
the  stock  models  in  the  'polite  letter  writer,'  seemed  to  me 
very  fine  indeed ;  and  I  can  remember  copying  out  some  of 
the  more  striking  of  them,  as  models  for  myself  in  letters  of 
the  same  kind  which  I  had  in  contemplation!  But  these  too 
had  the  same  fault  as  the  essays  of  Addison ;  there  were 
too  few  of  the  *  purple  patches '  in  a  given  space ;  and  1 
next   betook   me   to  the  public  library  where   years  before  I 


216  THE   POWER   OF   LANGUAGE. 

remembered  having*  glanced  into  the  works  of  Dickens. 
With  him  I  was  not  disappointed,  for  besides  his  humour,  I 
found  in  him  a  style  of  phrase  and  epithet  which  gave  me 
much  satisfaction.  When,  for  example,  he  describes  an  old- 
clothes  shop  as  "  one  of  those  convenient  emporiums  where 
gentlemen's  new  and  second-hand  clothes  are  provided,  and 
the  troublesome  and  inconvenient  formality  of  measurement 
dispensed  with,"  or  in  speaking  of  Zephyr  in  the  debtor's 
prison  remarks  that  "  Mr.  Pickwick  struck  the  Zephyr  so  smart 
a  blow  on  the  chest  as  to  deprive  him  of  a  considerable  portion 
of  the  commodity  which  sometimes  bears  his  name,"  or  in 
depicting  the  dispute  at  Bob  Sawyer's  party  says  that  "  one 
individual  expressed  his  decided  unwillingness  to  accept  any 
*  sauce '  on  gratuitous  terms  either  from  the  irascible  young 
gentleman  with  the  scorbutic  countenance  or  any  other  person 
who  was  ornamented  with  a  head,"  I  was  charmed,  and 
thought  it  wonderfully  clever,  and  the  power  of  language  it 
exhibited  quite  unique !  But  passages  so  suitable  to  my 
purpose  as  these,  occurred  only  at  considerable  intervals ;  and 
in. my  state  of  word-hunger  by  no  means  satisfied  me.  Full 
fruition,  however,  was  not  long  in  coming,  for  just  about  this 
time,  one  of  the  daily  papers  for  the  entertainment  of  its 
readers,  took  to  dressing  up  the  Police  Reports  in  a  style 
of  mingled  bombast  and  high-flown  grandeur  which  was 
precisely  to  my  mind,  and  in  a  form  too,  compact  enough 
to  satisfy  my  utmost  demands  for  concentration.  The  news- 
paper was  taken  in  at  the  Barber's  Shop — the  common 
rendezvous  for  gossip  of  all  classes — and  it  was  understood 
that  the  customer  or  lounger  who  should  first  secure  the 
paper,  should  read  the  reports  aloud  to  the  rest  of  the  company. 
The  result  was  immediate  and  decisive  ;  with  one  accord  we  all 
declared  them  to  be  productions  of  the  rarest  and  purest  genius ! 
The  style  of  these  productions  it  is  somewhat  difficult  to 
reproduce,  but  it  was  much  after  the  manner  of  the  passages  I 
have  just  quoted  from  Dickens,  but  with  still  more  exaggeration  of 


THE    POWER   OF   LANGUAGE.  217 

epithet  and  phrase ;  and  I  cannot  perhaps  better  illustrate  it  than 
by  the  Christy  Minstrel  version  (which  I  have  used  in  another 
place)  of  the  old  negro  ballad  of  '  Old  Uncle  Ned,'  where  the 
lines  '  He  had  no  hair  on  the  top  of  his  head,  just  the  place 
where  the  hair  ought  to  grow'  are  rendered  by  'He  had  no 
capillary  substance  on  the  summit  of  his  pericranium,  just  in 
the  position  where  the  capillary  substance  ought  to  vegetate  ! ' 
or  by  the  high-sounding  phraseology  of  the  old  Spelling-Bee 
exercise, — '  It  is  amusing  to  conceive  the  harassing  and 
unparalleled  perplexity  of  a  paralyzed  pedlar  gauging  the 
symmetry  of  a  pear  peeled  for  a  pony  ! '  Now  in  all  this  the  trick, 
for  trick  it  was,  consisted  merely  in  the  substituting  of  long, 
high-sounding  words  of  Greek  or  Latin  origin  for  their 
equivalents  in  plain  Anglo-Saxon ;  and  not  in  any  addition  to 
the  many-sidedness,  complexity,  or  luminousness  of  the  images 
raised,  in  which  indeed  great  power  of  expression,  (as  we  shall 
see  farther  on  when  we  come  to  the  question  of  style)  really 
consists.  And  yet  I  am  bound  to  confess  that  in  such  trash  as 
this,  I  fancied  I  saw  more  genius  than  in  the  works  of  the 
greatest  masters  of  thought  and  expression.  Nor  was  I  alone 
in  this,  for  I  am  convinced  that  had  a  vote  been  taken,  the 
majority  of  the  room  would  have  shared  my  opinion.  After  a 
year  or  more,  these  reports  having  lost  their  freshness  and 
flavour,  or  the  writer  of  them  having  exhausted  his  invention, 
ceased  altogether  to  appear,  to  my  great  regret ;  but  in  the 
meantime  they  had  so  whetted  my  appetite  for  words,  that  not 
getting  enough  of  them  in  the  ordinary  way,  I  boldly  threw 
away  all  pretence  of  reading  either  for  the  humour,  the  pathos, 
or  the  invention  of  the  work  in  hand,  caring  for  its  words  only, 
and  did  not  rest  satisfied  until  I  had  got  hold  of  Crabbe's  book 
of  Synonyms  and  set  to  work  on  it  as  I  would  on  a  dictionary  ; 
beginning  at  the  beginning  and  learning  the  words  by  heart 
straight  through  to  the  end!  It  had  to  come  to  this,  and 
nothing  less  would  satisfy  me,  and  for  six  months  or  more  I 
glutted  and  gorged  myself  on  nouns  and  adjectives  and  synonyms, 


218  THE    POWER   OF   LANGUAGE. 

until  I  thought  I  had  the  command  of  a  sufficient  number  for 
ordinary  purposes  of  expression  ;  after  which  I  returned  to  my 
old  studies  which  if  not  entirely  neglected,  had  in  the  interval 
been  pushed  into  the  background  of  thought. 


CHAPTEE     XL 


MY    UNCLE    AGAIN. 

FN  this  way  I  might  have  gone  on  speculating  and  dreaming 
A  and  philosophizing  for  ever,  mingling  freely  with  the  tide 
of  human  life  on  the  side  of  its  lighter  amusements,  its  cricket- 
ing and  dancing  and  love-making,  without  care  for  the  morrow 
or  its  interests  of  business  and  money  getting,  had  I  not  been 
shaken  out  of  it  and  my  life  turned  into  a  new  channel  by  the 
arrival  on  the  scene,  of  one  who  in  my  earlier  years  had  given 
me  that  high  regard  for  things  of  the  mind  which  I  still 
retained.  This  was  my  Uncle  James  the  old  bachelor,  who  after 
some  years'  absence  had  returned  quite  reformed  and  weaned 
from  his  old  enemy,  to  live  with  us  again  for  awhile.  But 
unfortunately  I  had  to  confess  to  myself  that  robbed  of  the 
lustres  which  played  about  him  when  under  the  influence  of 
drink,  he  no  longer  interested  me  as  he  had  done  before.  He 
no  longer  lost  himself  in  raptures  over  his  high  themes,  flinging 
himself  at  them  like  some  great  geyser  spouting  against  the 
sky  ;  but  like  a  bubbling  cauldron  now  grown  cold,  contracted 
himself  into  a  stiffish,  pedantic  reserve,  holding  his  eye  and 
tongue  in  readiness  rather  for  a  slip  or  a  gibe,  than  for 
enthusiasms  and  admirations  as  of  yore.  He  was  no  longer 
the  great  Trismegistus  and  Encyclopaedist  of  my  earlier  years  ; 
for  with  my  own  increase  in  knowledge,  the  vaunted  learning 
which  had  so  excited  mv  awe  and  admiration  now  showed  in  its 


220  MY    UNCLE    AGAIN. 

true  proportions  ;  the  canopy  which  had  seemed  so  vast  and 
all-embracing,  showing  its  rim  and  borders,  and  the  web,  its 
loose  ends  and  inner  linings  ;  and  he  had  to  take  his  place 
among  the  rank  and  file  of  ordinary  pedants.  His  knowledge 
of  Mathematics  which  had  loomed  so  large  when  he  was  in 
drink,  he  now  modestly  enough  confessed  to  be  bounded 
within  the  limits  of  Colenso's  Algebra  and  the  Geometry  of 
Euclid  !  And  although  he  had  pushed  his  private  excursions 
into  the  outlying  fields  of  Trigonometry,  it  was  only  to  take 
from  thence  a  Piso^ah  view  of  those  higher  mathematics  which 
he  was  not  destined  to  enter.  Of  his  favourite  Astronomy  he 
knew  little  beyond  the  ordinary  text-books  and  Sir  John 
Herschell's  lectures, — a  knowledge  which  consisted  rather  in 
the  belief  that  eclipses  could  be  predicted  '  to  the  fraction  of  a 
minute '  than  in  the  power  of  so  predicting  them  himself. 
His  literature  was  confined  to  certain  selected  passages  from 
Milton  and  Byron  whom  he  admired  for  what  he  called 
their  '  power  of  language,'  giving  me  I  remember  as  instance 
of  the  latter's  poetry,  his  feat  in  Don  Juan  of  making 
intellectual  rhyme  with  *  hen-pecked-you-all ! '  In  a  word,  he 
was  a  pedant  not  only  in  the  narrower  but  in  the  wider  sense 
of  that  term.  With  a  certain  simplicity  of  nature,  and  love 
for  the  vast  and  sublime,  which  with  other  endowments  com- 
mensurate might  have  carried  him  far,  he  was  deficient  in 
intellect  proper ;  and  instead  of  expanding  to  the  dimensions 
of  Truth,  and  moving  easily  and  lightly  into  the  higher  air  of 
thought,  he  was  hooked  and  impaled  on  the  merest  twigs  and 
phrases,  from  which  like  a  balloon  grappled  by  some  scrubby 
tree,  he  could  not  detach  himself,  but  hung  there  enchanted 
from  youth  to  age.  An  idolator  of  all  that  bore  the  name  of 
'  intellectual,'  like  a  gold-stick  in  waiting  he  was  impressed 
rather  with  the  trappings  and  pose,  the  casings  and  clothes  in 
which  thought  was  contained,  than  with  the  things  themselves; 
and  like  a  miser  hugged  these  poor  coins  and  counters  as  if 
they  were  the  very  bread  of  life.     He  was  not  open  to  new 


MY   UNCLE    AGAIN.  221 

thought,  or  indeed  to  thought  at  all,  but  continued  to  fish  in 
the  old  pools  where  he  so  long  had  puddled,  thrashing  the 
waters  only  to  land  such  fish  as  had  previously  been  put  on  his 
hook  by  hearsay  and  public  opinion,  and  which  he  thought  were 
his  own.  Encompassed  thus  in  a  galaxy  of  phrases  like  a 
religion,  he  lived  in  them  as  in  an  ideal  world,  doing  reverence 
and  worship  to  them  daily,  and  finding  their  fragrance  so  sweet 
and  satisfying  as  to  enable  him  to  dispense  with  all  more 
intimate  knowledge.  It  was  the  word  '  vast '  when  applied  to 
the  Heavens,  the  word  *  sublimity '  applied  to  Astronomy,  the 
word  '  profound  '  applied  to  mathematics,  which  enchained  and 
delighted  his  imagination,  and  not  the  things  themselves.  It 
was  the  epithet  *  classical '  which  he  had  read  or  heard  applied 
to  Sir  John  Herschell's  lectures,  that  called  forth  his  en- 
thusiasm, and  not  their  particular  contents ;  the  *  oratory  '  of 
Dr.  Chalmers,  of  which  he  often  spoke  as  if  it  existed  as  a  thing 
apart,  and  not  what  was  specially  said ;  and  as  for  the  way  in 
which  he  rolled  out  the  '  genius  '  of  Newton,  it  was  as  if  he 
conceived  it  to  be  a  mighty  reservoir  of  mystic  unknown  force, 
quite  independent  of  the  trains  of  thought  which  his  special 
problems  involved.  Nevertheless  the  stimulus  which  these 
phrases  had  given  me  in  my  earlier  days,  long  out-lived  my 
disillusion  in  regard  to  himself,  and  in  my  rising  ambitions 
played  a  most  potent  part  for  many  years  to  come. 

And  now  having  returned  to  live  with  us,  he  was  deeply 
mortified  to  learn  that  I  had  suddenly  left  the  University  some 
years  before  without  having  taken  my  degree.  I  had  lost  my 
chance  of  ever  doing  anything  or  becoming  anything,  he  went 
on  to  say,  and  had  thrown  away  the  golden  opportunity  of 
being  able  to  write  the  mystic  letters  B.A.  after  my  name, — 
an  honour  in  his  opinion  second  to  none.  And  when  he  had 
ascertained  further  that  I  had  spent  the  intervening  years 
dawdling  about  an  engineer's  office  doing  practically  nothing, 
but  busying  myself  with  such  fruitless  speculations  as  the 
Problem  of  the  World   and   the    Human   Mind — speculations 


222  MY    UNCLE   AGAIN. 

these  which  were  closed  and  sealed  to  him  by  orthodox 
Christian  doctrine  and  which  none  might  rashly  venture  to 
reopen — and  worse  than  all  when  he  learnt  that  for  the  greater 
part  of  the  time  I  had  been  occupying  myself  with  such  cheap 
trash  as  Phrenology,  he  was  enraged  and  disgusted  beyond 
measure,  and  closing  his  lips  with  much  emphasis  declared  that 
it  was  a  disgrace  to  me  and  to  all  concerned  in  allowing  it. 
So  deeply  disappointed  was  he  with  the  course  I  had  taken, 
that  he  could  not  let  the  matter  drop,  but  kept  returning  to  it 
again  day  after  day.  I  was  now  twenty  years  of  age  he 
reminded  me,  and  having  lost  my  one  great  opportunity  of  a 
degree  in  Arts,  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  that  I  should  at 
once  and  without  further  loss  of  time,  prepare  for  one  of  the 
'  learned  professions '  as  he  called  them,  closing  his  lips  as  he 
pronounced  each  word  separately,  and  rolling  the  whole  under 
his  tongue  with  much  gusto.  Now  I  had  already  been 
thinking  of  some  such  course  myself,  but  the  delight  I  found 
in  philosophizing  and  dreaming  and  amusing  myself  generally, 
had  practically  put  my  good  intentions  among  the  category  of 
perpetual  postponements.  Besides,  I  felt  no  inward  call  to 
either  of  these  professions  ;  not  to  the  Church,  by  reason  of  my 
disposition  and  opinions ;  not  to  Law,  from  an  imaginative 
aversion  to  what  I  now  recognize  to  be  a  most  important  and 
interesting  study  ;  not  to  Medicine,  because  of  my  pre-occupa- 
tion  with  those  other  philosophical  studies  between  which  and 
medicine  I  did  not  then  know  that  there  was  any  connexion. 
It  was  to  a  great  extent,  therefore,  a  matter  of  indifference  to 
me  as  to  which  of  them  I  should  enter,  but  pressed  as  I  was  by 
my  uncle  daily,  I  felt  compelled  at  last  to  make  a  choice  which 
in  the  end  was  determined  by  the  merest  chance.  Plappening 
one  day  to  meet  one  of  our  local  medical  men  in  the  street,  he 
asked  me  what  I  was  going  to  do,  and  on  my  answering  that  I 
did  not  know,  he  said  *  Why  not  go  in  for  medicine  ?  '  adding 
that  if  I  liked  I  could  read  with  him  in  his  office  preparatory 
to   going   up  to   the  medical   school   in    connexion   with   the 


MY    UNCLE   AGAIN.  "2'2?J 

University.  Why  not  1  I  thought  to  myself,  and  languidly 
assented  and  before  I  had  time  to  properly  realize  what  I  had 
done,  he  had  written  for  a  skeleton  from  which  I  was  to  study 
the  bones  (and  which  I  scented  with  attar  of  roses  I  remember, 
to  my  sorrow  !)  and  a  list  of  the  books  I  was  to  read.  In  this 
way  I  drifted  into  a  profession  without  conscious  forethought, 
and  from  the  mere  impossibility  of  choice  among  a  number  of 
indifferent  oppositcs ;  and  in  the  following  Autumn,  again 
attached  myself  to  the  Medical  Department  of  the  University 
which  I  had  left  so  suddenly  just  four  years  before. 


CHAPTEK    XII. 


THE    UNIVERSITY. 

ri^HE  Medical  School  in  which  I  was  now  to  pursue  my  studies, 
-*•  was  a  large  stone  building  embosomed  among  the  trees 
of  the  public  park,  and  situated  but  a  few  hundred  yards  from 
the  College  to  which  it  was  affiliated.  For  a  little  while  at 
first  I  felt  somewhat  strange  and  uncomfortable  in  my  new 
surroundings.  The  figures  of  the  students  moving  here  and 
there  solitary  or  in  groups  among  the  trees  or  athwart  the  lawns, 
on  their  way  to  and  from  the  University  lectures,  and  looking 
in  their  caps  and  gowns  like  beings  of  another  order ;  the 
coldness,  aloofness,  and  even  contemptuousness,  as  I  thought, 
with  which  we  freshmen  were  regarded  by  the  elder  students ; 
the  old  janitor  himself  who  was  coeval  with  the  place,  and  who 
made  a  point  of  snubbing  us  mechanically  and  as  a  matter  of 
form  on  our  first  entrance,  so  that  we  might  afterwards  know 
how  to  keep  our  places ;  even  the  very  smell  of  the  building 
itself  through  which  the  tainted  atmosphere  of  the  dissecting 
room  at  all  times  faintly  diffused  itself ;  all  helped  to  affect  me 
strangely  and  more  or  less  unpleasantly.  It  was  not  long, 
however,  before  I  felt  myself  quite  at  home  in  my  new 
environment,  mingling  freely  with  the  other  boys  and  entering 
into  all  their  sports  and  pranks  with  much  ardour  and 
enthusiasm.  But  in  steady  application  to  the  work  of  the 
School  I  was  sadly  deficient,  owing  partly  to  the  manner  in 


THE    UNIVERSITY.  225 

which  the  subjects  were  taught  there,  but  chiefly  perhaps  to 
that  pre-occupation  with  literature  and  philosophy  which  I  had 
brought  with  me  from  home. 

The  Professors  as  a  body  were  of  the  ordinary  type  and  were 
average  specimens  of  their  class.  In  private  life  and  among 
their  own  friends  they  were  men,  I  doubt  not,  of  many  and 
various  accomplishments,  but  in  their  official  capacity  as 
lecturers,  they  turned  like  the  moon  but  one  face  towards  us,  and 
once  ensconced  in  their  professorial  chairs,  rayed  out  from  these 
high  and  sunless  peaks  mere  cold  and  darkness,  without 
enthusiasm,  humour,  or  human  geniality.  Some  of  them  were 
pompous  and  fussy,  others  deprecating  and  solicitous  of  our 
good  opinion  ;  some  were  shy,  sensitive,  and  so  easily  offended 
that  on  the  slightest  noise  or  sign  of  inattention  they  would 
flush  with  indignation  as  if  they  had  met  with  a  personal  affront ; 
others  were  callous  and  indifferent,  and  coming  in  generally 
late,  would  mount  the  platform  and  unrolling  their  manuscript, 
gallop  through  its  contents  as  through  a  catalogue,  then  rolling 
it  up  again  would  bow  stiffly  and  hasten  from  the  room ;  while 
others,  again,  were  so  nice,  and  overscrupulous  that  they  would 
walk  up  to  their  desks  as  to  an  execution,  their  brows  freighted 
and  over-hung  with  the  gravity  of  the  message  they  had  to 
deliver,  and  would  proceed  to  dilate  with  so  much  scrupulosity 
and  exactitude  on  the  precise  way  in  which  we  were  to  tie  a 
string  or  support  a  back,  that  at  the  thought  of  ever  being 
called  upon  to  perform  operations  at  once  so  delicate  and 
momentous,  we  grew  pale  in  our  seats  as  we  sat ! 

As  to  the  matter  of  the  lectures  it  was  perhaps  all  that  could 
be  expected  in  the  absence  of  cases  and  specimens  on  which  to 
base  a  sure  and  firm  opinion,  and  consisted  for  the  most  part,  of 
the  ordinary  contents  of  the  text  books,  interspersed  here  and 
there  with  extracts  culled  from  a  wider  range  of  authorities, 
especially  on  points  of  dispute;  the  whole  being  flung  at  us 
pell-mell  without  word  of  guidance,  and  leaving  us  standing 
helpless,  bewildered,  and  starved  in  the  midst  of  what  seemed  a 

Q 


226  THE    UNIVERSITY. 

superabundance  of  wealth.  No  effort  was  made  to  correlate  or 
co-ordinate  the  signs  and  symptoms  of  disease,  to  marshal  them 
in  the  hierarchy  of  their  importance,  or  to  smelt  out  the  variable 
and  unessential  elements  from  the  cardinal  and  significant,  but 
all  alike  were  spread  out  before  us  as  on  an  open  stall  from  which 
we  were  to  pick  and  choose  as  we  pleased.  Occasionally  a 
question  would  arise  which  threatened  to  be  interesting  and 
illuminating,  but  it  would  speedily  degenerate  into  a  fruitless 
skirmish  on  the  mere  frontiers  and  outskirts  of  the  subject,  the 
battle  being  fought  out  and  waxing  hottest  on  the  most  poor 
and  idle  pedantries.  The  consequence  was  that  we  got  no 
picture  of  the  ensemble  of  disease,  no  image  of  the  relations  and 
connexions  of  symptoms  and  signs  as  they  present  themselves 
in  reality,  and  I  can  truthfully  say  that  it  was  not  until  I  had 
been  some  years  in  practice  for  myself,  that  I  had  the  slightest 
idea  of  what  to  look  for,  what  questions  to  ask,  or  how  to 
interpret  the  various  signs  and  symptoms  of  the  cases  that  came 
before  me.  One  alone  of  all  the  professors  made  an  effort  by 
means  of  specimens  and  diagrams  to  put  us  in  his  place,  as  it 
were,  at  the  bed-side  of  the  patient,  and  to  bring  home  to  us  the 
fruits  of  his  own  experience,  but  this  method  though  fruitful, 
was  so  slow  and  fragmentary  that  at  the  end  of  the  session  more 
than  half  of  his  subject  remained  still  unexplored. 

It  was  the  same  with  the  teaching  of  Anatomy  and  Physiology. 
For  although  we  had  here  the  advantage  of  subjects  and 
specimens,  the  demonstrations  ended  as  they  began  in  the 
analysis  and  dissection  merely  of  the  dead  organs  and  tissues  of 
the  body  down  even  to  the  minutest  twig  of  artery  and  nerve, 
but  with  no  attempt  at  their  recomposition  and  synthesis  as 
parts  of  an  organic  whole.  There  was  no  exhibition  of  the 
beauties  and  ingenuities  of  structure  and  mechanism  that  are 
everywhere  present  in  the  body — levers,  pulleys,  balances  and 
the  like, — or  of  those  contrivances  by  which  space  is  economized 
and  the  greatest  strength  given  at  the  least  expense  of  bulk ; 
no  explanation  of  the  way  in  which  the  various  structures  are 


THE    UNIVERSITY.  227 

related  to  one  another  and  to  the  great  environment  of  the  world 
in  which  they  have  to  work ;  and  more  than  all,  no  comparison 
of  the  various  structures  and  organs  with  their  analogues  in  the 
lower  animals,  with  the  view  of  exhibiting  the  way  in  which 
differences  of  function  or  environment  have  necessitated  the 
differences  of  structure  observed ; — nothing  of  all  this,  without 
which,  indeed,  intelligent  understanding  of  the  body  of  man  is 
impossible.  In  truth,  so  far  as  I  can  remember  no  hint  was 
ever  given  us  that  man  had  such  a  thing  as  an  environment  at 
all,  or  if  he  had,  that  it  had  anything  whatever  to  do  with  the 
teaching  of  anatomy  or  physiology  ;  and  had  it  not  been  for  the 
visible  presence  before  us  on  the  dissecting  table  of  the  human 
body  itself,  it  might  (for  anything  distinctive  that  was  taught 
us)  have  been  the  body  of  a  fish,  a  reptile,  or  a  monkey.  On 
the  other  hand  each  little  detail  of  structure  or  composition,  as 
for  example  the  number  of  little  holes  in  the  bones  for  the  passage 
of  blood-vessels,  or  of  the  bosses  and  ridges  on  their  surface  to 
which  muscles  were  attached,  was  dwelt  on  at  length  and  with 
much  satisfaction,  even  enthusiasm.  The  consequence  was  that 
the  students  who  were  going  up  for  honours  or  scholarships, 
feeling  that  they  only  got  from  the  lectures  what  they  could 
read  up  as  well  at  home  and  with  much  less  trouble,  came  in 
late  and  hurried  away  again  as  soon  as  possible ;  and  after  putting 
in  the  regulation  number  of  compulsory  lectures,  ceased  to  attend 
altogether  As  for  the  rest  of  us  who  took  matters  more  leisurely 
and  easily,  we  yawned  away  the  time  lying  listlessly  about  the 
seats,  and  paying  little  attention  to  what  was  said  (except  perhaps 
where  the  lecturers  were  also  examiners  and  then  we  took  copious 
notes !) ;  and  particularly  during  the  evening  lectures  ws  might  be 
seen  dozing  and  snoring  on  the  floor  of  the  open  plateau  above 
the  level  of  the  amphitheatre,  so  that  a  stranger  entering  by  the 
upper  door  in  the  shaded  light,  might  have  stumbled  over  body 
after  body  of  us  as  we  lay  strewn  about  like  corpses  on  a 
battlefield ! 

As  to  the  students  themselves,  although  of  every  variety  of 


228  THE    UNIVERSITY. 

type  individually,  they  might  all  in  so  far  as  I  was  affected  by 
them,  be  reduced  under  two  or  three  categories.  There  were 
first  the  readers  who  were  going  up  for  scholarships,  and  who 
to  avoid  the  loss  of  time  incident  on  attendance  at  the  lectures, 
rarely,  as  I  have  said,  put  in  an  appearance  at  the  School.  As 
a  body  they  were  steady  and  hard-working,  but  with  no  aims 
beyond  the  scholarships  which  lay  immediately  ahead  of  them, 
and  to  which,  indeed,  they  were  ready  for  the  moment  to 
sacrifice  even  their  real  professional  interests,  shirking  the 
practical  work  at  the  Hospital  no  less  than  the  lectures  at  the 
School.  Personally  they  were  uninteresting  men  for  the  most 
part,  and  had  as  a  rule  no  gifts  beyond  tenacious  memories  and 
steady  powers  of  application.  Having  little  in  common  with 
them  therefore,  either  in  tastes  or  in  aims,  I  naturally  saw  little 
of  them  and  was  more  attracted  by  the  second  set,  namely  the 
great  mass  of  ordinary  students.  These  were  mostly  what  one 
may  call  good  fellows,  men  who  had  sufficient  range  and 
variety  of  human  interests  to  resist  being  altogether  absorbed 
in  the  cramming  necessary  to  pass  the  honours  examinations. 
They  were  not  so  steady  as  the  readers,  it  is  true,  nor  so 
ascetic  as  some  of  my  philosophic  friends,  but  they  had  a 
rough  geniality,  a  fondness  for  games  and  pranks  and  enjoy- 
ment generally,  which  united  easily  with  the  life  I  had  left 
behind  me  at  home.  Always  ready  to  take  a  night  out  at  the 
theatre  or  opera,  or  even  at  the  minstrels  or  variety  entertain- 
ments that  were  going  on,  their  genial  optimism  and  joyous 
minodin£  with  the  actual  currents  of  the  world,  delighted  me, 
and  when  at  the  close  of  the  session  the  school  went  down 
town  in  a  body  for  a  night's  revels — escapades,  rather,  which 
generally  brought  us  into  conflict  with  the  police  before  the 
night  wras  over  ! — I  was  usually  to  be  found  in  the  crowd 
among  them.  But  as  a  rule  they  had  no  aims  or  interests 
higher  than  that  of  making  money  by  their  profession;  and 
although,  therefore,  on  the  most  friendly  terms  with  them  as  a 
body,  I  formed  with  a  few  exceptions,  no  intimate  friendships 


THE    UNIVERSITY.  229 

with  them  personally.  These  I  reserved  for  the  little  circle 
that  constituted  what  I  may  call  the  Literary  Set.  There 
were  only  four  of  us,  all  told,  and  in  spite  of  wide  differences  in 
temperament  and  disposition  we  were  all  united  in  one  common 
devotion  to  Literature  and  Philosophy  as  the  goal  of  culture ; 
and  in  repudiating  money-getting  as  the  supreme  object  in  life, 
regarding  it  rather  as  a  hateful  expedient,  a  disagreeable 
necessity.  We  had  early  found  one  another  out,  as  by  a  kind 
of  instinct,  after  the  opening  of  the  session ;  and  our  friendship 
and  intercourse  once  begun,  continued  unbroken  throughout  the 
whole  of  our  college  course.  And  although  since  then,  all- 
divorcing  Time  has  flung  us  far  and  wide  athwart  the  world, 
their  figures  as  they  rise  before  me  in  those  far  off  years  still 
haunt  my  memory  with  a  delicious  sweetness.  Little,  indeed, 
did  we  dream  in  those  joyous  happy  days,  as  we  walked  about 
encompassed  with  stars  and  with  the  very  sky  above  us  flecked 
with  golden  dreams,  little  did  we  think  of  the  Future,  and  of 
the  varying  fortunes  that  lay  hid  in  it,  or  of  the  distant  isles 
on  which  it  would  enwaft  us.  There  was  A — ,  the  apostle  of 
temperance  in  the  set,  huge  in  bulk  and  good-nature,  and  of 
great  volubility,  loving  the  theatre,  the  poems  of  Byron,  the 
opera,  and  wrapped  up  in  literary,  theological,  and  philosophical 
controversy,  but  who  after  a  short  period  of  practice  in  the 
country  succumbed  to  temptation,  and  died  ultimately  of  the 
vice  which  he  had  so  long  and  so  eloquently  denounced.  Then 
there  was  the  buoyant,  the  ever-genial,  ever-hopeful  C — , 
flaccid  of  purse  but  careless  of  the  morrow  and  easy-going  to  a 
fault,  yet  with  a  high  honour  and  sensitive  pride  that  resented 
a  rudeness  as  a  stain,  and  to  whom  poetry,  literature,  and 
philosophy  were  as  his  daily  bread.  Cheerful  and  light-hearted 
as  the  morning  in  the  society  of  his  friends,  he  had  when  alone 
a  deep  vein  of  pathetic  melancholy  which  led  him  to  ask  in 
imagination  of  everyone  he  passed  in  the  street,  'I  wonder 
are  you  happy  ?  '  and  if  he  decided  not,  to  picture  to  himself 
their  condition,  and  rehearse  in  imagination  the  circumstances 


230  THE    UNIVEKSITY. 

of  their  lives  with  a  real  and  unfeigned  sympathy.  But  for 
him  a  happier  destiny  was  reserved,  for  he  is  now  the  kind 
father,  the  genial  host,  the  prosperous  physician ;  still  retaining 
undimmed  through  the  lapse  of  years  all  his  old  love  for  the 
things  of  the  spirit. 

The  last  of  our  set  and  the  one  with  whom  as  a  fellow 
boarder  I  was  thrown  most  intimately  into  contact  was  M — , 
now  a  Professor  himself  and  well  known  in  the  world  of 
Science,  between  whom  and  myself  in  spite  of  an  aboriginal 
difference  in  mental  constitution  almost  polar  in  its  antagonism, 
there  existed  the  strongest  points  of  affinity ;  so  that  while  we 
were  for  ever  being  repelled  by  the  differences  in  our  sympathies, 
we  were  ever  united  again  by  our  community  of  ideals  and 
aims.  He  was  a  long,  gaunt,  and  hollow  figure,  with  pale 
emaciated  face,  but  with  an  expression  in  his  smile  and  in  the 
soft  tones  of  his  voice,  in  which  you  read  at  once  all  the 
modesty,  truthfulness,  and  childlike  simplicity  of  his  nature. 
But  deep  down  in  the  core  of  his  being  was  an  ascetic,  puritanic 
strain,  a  tendency  when  judging  not  only  of  men  and  things 
but  of  himself,  to  dig  down  below  the  conventional  code  of 
morality  which  the  ordinary  worldling  finds  it  sufficient  to 
follow  and  observe,  to  a  deeper  stratum  ;  and  to  apply  to  them 
a  more  delicate  and  sensitive  reagent — a  reagent  which 
should  search  the  very  soul  itself  to  find  its  hidden  spots  and 
drag  them  forth.  With  me,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  quite 
different.  I  had  never  had  the  slightest  tendency  to  this  kind 
of  moral  introspection,  this  searching  of  the  heart  as  if  it  were 
some  old  trunk,  with  the  object  of  turning  out  any  questionable 
motives  that  might  be  suspected  there,  but  borne  along  on  the 
tide  of  life,  lived  in  the  passing  hour  without  memory  or 
remorse,  and  with  no  higher  code  of  morality  than  was  common 
among  the  average  young  men  of  the  time.  The  consequence 
was  that  while  I  could  mingle  with  the  easy-going,  pleasure- 
loving,  theatre-haunting,  wine-bibbing  throng  of  good  fellows, 
entering  into  their  revels  and  loving  imaginatively  to  realize  in 


THE    UNIVERSITY.  231 

myself  their  spirit,  aims,  and  point  of  view ;  and  while  in  this 
companionship,  too,  I  could  find  food  for  my  own  thoughts 
and  ideals,  extracting  from  it  those  laws  of  the  mind  of  which 
I  was  always  in  search,  and  gathering  from  it  wisdom  and 
experience  with  which  to  compose  my  picture  of  the  world,  my 
friend  in  spite  of  his  openness  of  mind  and  his  real  desire  to 
unite  himself  morally  and  sympathetically  with  his  fellows  (he 
often  used  to  say  he  envied  me  the  ease  with  which  I  mingled 
with  the  average  sensuous  man),  was  repelled  by  some  inner 
barrier  not  to  be  transgressed,  and  would  have  felt,  with  his 
more  sensitive  conscience,  any  more  intimate  contact  as  a  stain. 
In  spite,  however,  of  these  differences  in  feeling  and  sympathy, 
we  were  united  by  a  bond  equally  strong  in  our  common 
indifference  to  the  worldly  ambitions  of  money,  of  social,  and 
even  of  professional  success  ;  and  in  our  living  in  an  ideal 
world  of  high  aims,  where  Truth  for  its  own  sake  was  our 
only  object,  in  the  pursuit  and  discovery  of  which,  all 
our  merely  personal  ambitions,  and  they  were  strong  enough 
too,  were  to  find  their  home  and  arena.  And  yet  no  sooner 
did  we  come  to  the  question  of  what  the  truth  was  in  any 
particular  instance,  than  the  deep  cleavage  in  our  sympathies 
and  moral  estimates  at  once  began  to  make  itself  felt.  Especially 
was  this  the  case  in  all  questions  of  human  life  as  distinct 
from  abstract  speculations  merely; — those  concrete  questions 
in  which  the  good  and  evil  that  pertain  to  all  mortal  things 
are  so  subtly  and  inextricably  blended.  Questions  like  these, 
in  our  little  circle,  were  constantly  arising  out  of  the  fixed 
ideas  or  personal  predilections  of  one  or  another  of  us, — such 
questions,  for  example,  as  Teetotalism,  the  poetry  of  Byron, 
the  influence  of  the  Theatre,  the  relations  of  the  Sexes, 
and  the  great  question  of  Human  Liberty.  On  all  these  the 
views  of  my  friend  and  myself  were  more  or  less  at  variance, 
but  especially  was  this  the  case  on  the  last,  as  lying  at 
the  base  of  all  the  rest.  The  whole  emphasis  of  my  mind 
and   the    set    of    all    its    currents — its   aspirations,    its    pride. 


232  THE   UNIVERSITY. 

its  sensitiveness,  its  hatred  of  control, — ran  in  the  direction 
of  making  the  expansion  and  elevation  of  the  individual 
mind  the  end  and  aim  of  human  life.  Liberty,  therefore,  in  its 
widest  sense  was  my  ideal,  and  although  I  had  as  yet  thought 
little,  or  indeed  not  at  all,  on  forms  of  government  or  politics,  I 
naturally  gave  my  full  sympathy  to  such  institutions  and 
arrangements  of  society  as  favoured  this  end,  ignoring  or  making 
but  little  of  the  tendency  which  an  uncontrolled  liberty  has,  to 
pass  in  individual  instances  into  license  or  immorality.  My 
friend,  on  the  contrary,  making  a  high  personal  morality  his  aim 
and  ideal,  and  moral  order  rather  than  individual  expansion  the 
supreme  end  of  society ;  and  observing  moreover,  how  the 
rowdyism  of  the  world  increases  as  you  descend  to  its  lower 
strata;  had  naturally  more  sympathy  with  those  milder 
despotisms  which  would  if  possible  compel  men  to  be  good  and 
respectable,  than  with  that  democratic  spirit  which  in  permitting 
them  to  expand,  at  the  same  time  opened  the  door  to  personal 
immorality  and  grossness.  The  consequence  was  that  each 
taking  quite  unconsciously  the  premises  of  his  argument  from 
his  own  special  sympathies,  affinities,  repulsions,  and  moral 
ideals  (to  which,  indeed,  he  gave  an  inordinate  degree  of 
importance)  could  not  understand  how  it  was  that  on  applying 
them  to  the  question  in  hand  with  a  logic  that  seemed  so 
irrefragable,  the  other  should  fail  to  be  convinced  ;  and  in  the 
rising  heat  of  discussion  would  at  last  begin  to  suspect  and 
even  to  hint  that  he  was  being  unfairly  dealt  with,  I  accusing 
my  friend,  I  remember,  of  shuffling,  he,  me  of  sophistry,  until 
the  altercation  rising  higher  and  higher  we  were  only  kept  from 
a  downright  rupture  by  our  companion  throwing  oil  on  the 
troubled  waters ;  after  which  all  would  go  on  again  as  before. 
It  was  a  pretty  comedy  or  even  puppet  show  all  this,  with 
Fate  pulling  smilingly  at  the  wires,  and  yet  when  I  think 
of  how  deadly  in  earnest  we  both  were  in  our  opinions,  it 
was  not  without  a  pathetic  significance  as  an  emblem  of 
human  life.      Like  a  skilful  hypnotist,   Fate  overlooking  the 


THE    UNIVERSITY.  233 

whole  field  of  life  with  her  controlling  eye,  takes  this  natural 
illusion  of  ours  by  which  we  turn  our  own  special  sympathies 
and  moral  predilections  into  criteria  of  eternal  truth ;  and  playing 
on  it,  uses  it  as  the  means  to  work  out  her  own  great  ends. 
There  is  perhaps  no  deeper  secret  of  the  world  than  this  whereby 
mortal  natures  like  coral-builders  are  made  the  instruments  of 
working  out  designs  more  deep  and  complex  than  those  they 
know,  and  more  spacious  than  can  be  grasped  within  the 
contracted  compass  of  their  souls ;  and  by  which  to  keep  us  to 
our  work,  we  are  armed  with  these  partialities  of  antagonism  or 
of  sympathy  which  although  deciduous  as  the  forest  leaves,  and 
fugitive  as  the  generations  of  mortal  life,  we,  poor  creatures  of 
the  hour,  identify  with  the  Ideal  and  Eternally  True.  I  was 
not  as  old  then  as  I  am  now,  and  did  not  then  see  what,  indeed, 
the  succeeding  years  have  taught  me  in  all  its  fullness,  namely, 
that  in  all  things  human  as  distinct  from  things  mathematical 
or  abstract,  not  only  the  cut  and  colour  of  our  opinions  but 
even  their  very  skeleton  and  framework,  in  their  most  general 
configuration  and  aspect,  are  moulded,  fashioned,  and  determined 
by  our  moral  sympathies,  and  by  the  desires  and  affections  of 
the  heart.  And  although  neither  I  nor  another  shall  in  our 
thinking  succeed  in  altogether  jumping  this  necessity  imposed 
on  us  by  what  is  called  our  '  personal  equation,'  I  trust  if  not 
proof  against  it,  at  least  never  again  to  be  unmindful  of  it,  and 
while  marking  its  influence  on  the  various  Thinkers  and 
Philosophers  whom  I  am  about  to  pass  in  review,  am  well  aware 
that  the  reader  will  have  ample  opportunity  of  discounting  its 
influence  in  reference  to  myself. 


^=M- 


OFTHE 

UNIVERSITY 

^LU  FORNIX 


CHAPTEK    XIII 


PROFESSORS. 

X\7^HILE  these  discussions  were  going  on  so  merrily  in  our 
little  literary  coterie,  and  our  minds  were  so  full  of 
poetry,  the  theatre,  Byron,  and  literary  and  philosophical 
questions  generally,  it  was  suggested  by  one  of  our  number 
that  as  we  had  some  spare  time  on  our  hands,  we  should  take  the 
fourth  year  courses  in  English  Literature  and  Metaphysics 
which  were  being  delivered  in  the  Arts  department  of  the 
College,  only  a  few  hundred  yards  from  the  Medical  School. 
Now  having  been  but  recently  so  deeply  concerned  in  repairing 
the  deficiencies  in  my  vocabulary  and  in  my  command  of 
language  generally,  I  readily  assented  to  this,  but  remembering 
the  barrenness  of  the  old  academic  teaching  at  the  Grammar 
School,  it  was  not,  I  confess,  without  some  misgiving  as  to  the 
result.  The  subject  of  the  particular  lectures  on  English 
Literature  which  we  were  most  anxious  to  hear  was  the  second 
part  of  Shakspeare's  play  of  Henry  the  Fourth,  and  it  so 
chanced  that  we  made  our  entrance  into  the  class-room  when 
the  lecturer  had  reached  that  part  of  the  play  where  the  rebels 
are  debating  among  themselves  as  to  whether  they  are  strong 
enough  to  meet  the  forces  of  the  king,  and  at  the  point  where 
Lord  Bardolph  in  a  long  speech  compares  the  folly  of  their 
going  to  war  before  they  had  accurately  ascertained  the  amount 
of  assistance  they  were  to  receive  from  Northumberland,  to  the 


PROFESSORS.  235 

folly  of  the  man  who  should  begin  to  build  a  house  before  he  had 
first  ascertained  its  cost,  and  who,  in  consequence,  might  be 
compelled  to  stop  the  work  for  want  of  means  to  carry  it  on ; 
and  so  leave,  as  he  says,  '  his  part-created  cost  a  naked  subject 
to  the  weeping  clouds,  and  waste  for  churlish  winter's  tyranny.' 
This  looked  promising  enough,  and  although  with  no  definite 
idea  as  to  what  I  was  to  expect  from  these  lectures,  I  still 
entertained  the  hope  that  the  great  superiority  of  Shakspeare 
over  all  other  writers,  of  which  I  had  read  and  heard  so  much, 
should  now  be  demonstrated  and  made  clear  to  me,  either  in  his 
knowledge  of  the  human  mind,  as  exemplified  in  the  sequence 
and  connexion  of  thought  and  feeling  in  his  dialogues,  or  in  his 
power  of  expression  and  command  over  the  keys  of  language  ; 
instances  of  either  of  which  superiorities  were  to  be  found  on 
almost  every  page.  But  instead  of  this,  the  Professor,  who  has 
always  remained  with  me  as  perhaps  the  most  perfect  type  of  the 
academic  book-worm  whom  I  remember  to  have  seen, — a  tall, 
crane-necked,  skin-dried  figure  in  spectacles,  with  small,  wizened 
face,  and  nose  with  which  he  sniffed  the  air  as  he  moved 
through  the  Park  on  his  way  to  and  from  the  College,  his  hair 
streaming  behind  him  like  a  comet, — instead  of  picking  out 
phrases  and  sentences  with  the  view  of  exhibiting  their  special 
beauty  or  appropriateness,  broke  them  up  into  particles  and 
fragments  like  a  grammarian,  to  show  us  the  parts  of  speech 
they  were  made  up  of !  '  What  figure  of  speech,  Mr.  Brown; 
he  would  say,  addressing  one  of  the  students,  '  does  Shakspeare 
use  in  this  line?'  'A  metaphor,  Sir!'  *  Quite  right.  And 
you,  Mr.  Smith,  what  in  the  next  line  !  '  '  A  simile.'  *  Very 
good,'  and  so  on  throughout  the  whole  lecture.  And  this  sort 
of  thing,  which  might  have  been  in  place  in  the  higher 
standards  of  a  Board  School,  was  what  in  the  University 
conspectus  of  the  lectures  was  called  *  an  analysis  of  the  play ! ' 
We  were  all  grievously  disappointed,  but  thinking  perhaps  that 
this  exquisite  trifling  might  have  been  only  an  accidental  or 
subsidiary  part  of  the  scheme,  we  resolved  to  persevere  for  a 


236  PROFESSORS. 

while  longer,  only  to  find,  however,  that  the  same  thing  was 
repeated  from  day  to  day  until  we  could  stand  it  no  longer,  and 
ceased  altogether  to  attend. 

Disappointed  and  even  disgusted  with  these  lectures  on 
English  Literature,  one  or  two  of  us  resolved  to  try  the  course 
on  Metaphysics  to  see  if  it  would  yield  us  anything  more  fruitful 
and  satisfactory ;  and  took  our  seats  accordingly  among  the 
fourth  year  students  who  wrere  preparing  to  take  their  degree. 
The  professor,  in  this  case  a  simple,  open-minded  man  of  much 
metaphysical  subtlety  and  acuteness,  and  whom  I  greatly 
esteemed  for  the  modesty  and  gentleness  of  his  demeanour,  was 
at  the  time  of  our  entrance,  lecturing  on  the  Philosophy  of  Sir 
William  Hamilton.  He  had  got  to  that  part  of  the  discourse 
where  Hamilton  is  explaining  the  difference  between  a  perception 
and  a  sensation,  and  in  labouring  to  make  this  distinction  clear 
to  us,  nearly  the  whole  time  of  the  lecture  was  taken  up.  We 
are  going  to  be  fed  on  the  husks  again,  I  thought  to  myself, 
remembering  our  professor  of  Literature  and  his  anxiety  that 
we  should  understand  the  precise  difference  between  a  metaphor 
and  a  simile  ;  and  as  I  reflected  that  this  analysis  and  distinction 
between  a  sensation,  a  perception,  and  the  like,  was  merely  a 
part  of  the  grammar  of  thought,  I  felt  that  it  could  have  no 
more  influence  on  the  production  of  thought,  in  which  alone  I 
was  interested,  than  the  mere  grammar  of  sentences  has  on  the 
formation  of  style.  In  a  word,  it  was  purely  negative,  pedantic, 
and  barren,  and  long  before  the  lecture  was  over  I  had  ceased  to 
take  the  slightest  interest  in  it.  In  the  next  and  succeeding 
lectures,  however,  the  subject  was  changed,  and  the  Professor  was 
endeavouring  to  explain  to  us  the  *  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  '  of 
Emanuel  Kant,  which  soon  interested  me  like  a  puzzle  by  the 
difficulties  of  its  phraseology,  difficulties  which  had  already 
brought  the  most  advanced  students  to  a  stand-still.  The 
problem  of  the  '  Critique  '  was  to  explain  how  our  minds  which 
are  contained  within  the  circle  of  their  own  sensations,  as  it 
were,  can  by  any  possibility  get  out  of  themselves  so  as  to  get 


PROFESSORS.  237 

a  knowledge  of  things  which  lie  quite  outside  of  them ;  or  in 
other  words,  how  our  minds  which  are  conscious  only  of  a  series 
of  sensations  passing  across  them  like  scenes  in  a  panorama, 
each  one  swallowing  and  being  swallowed  up  in  turn,  can  ever 
arrive  at  such  a  continuous,  definite,  and  abiding  impression  as  is 
involved  in  the  idea  of  an  external  object ;  and  in  listening  to 
the  patient  attempts  of  the  lecturer  to  make  the  process 
clear  to  us,  I  was  as  much  at  sea,  I  confess,  as  the  rest 
of  the  students.  And  there,  indeed,  I  should  have  remained, 
had  I  not  taken  to  piecing  the  parts  together  for  myself, 
and  at  last  managed  to  picture  the  whole  process  under 
the  figure  of  one  of  those  carding  machines  in  a  woollen 
factory,  where  the  separate  scraps  of  wool  which  are  put  in  at 
one  end,  come  out  a  definite  and  continuous  thread  of  yarn  at 
the  other!  The  raw  wool  corresponded  to  the  raw  material 
of  sensation  received  by  our  various  senses  of  sight,  touch, 
hearing,  and  the  like ;  this  was  then  passed  through  a  couple  of 
grooves  or  rollers, — Time  and  Space, — belonging  to  the  mind 
and  called  *  the  forms  of  sense,'  which  impressed  their  shape  on 
the  raw  material  much  in  the  same  way  as  a  sausage  machine 
does  on  the  meat  that  passes  through  it ;  this  done,  the  larger 
cords  and  strands  thus  produced  were  next  passed  up  through 
another  but  finer  series  of  grooves  and  rollers,  also  belonging 
to  the  mind,  called  the  'categories,'  by  which  another  set  of 
attributes,  such  as  '  causation,'  '  reciprocity,'  '  modality,'  and 
the  like  were  added,  until  at  last  all  these  various  unlike 
strands  were  brought  into  one  by  being  passed  through  what  was 
called  the  *  unity  of  self-consciousness ;  '  and  so  at  last  issued 
in  that  definite  judgment  or  piece  of  knowledge,  continuous 
amid  the  fleeting  sensations,  which  corresponded  in  the 
carding-machine  to  the  definite  thread  of  yarn  !  This  was  but 
a  superficial  view  of  the  '  Critique '  as  a  whole,  I  am  aware, 
but  by  enabling  me  to  translate  the  several  parts  of  the  picture 
back  into  the  corresponding  phraseology  of  Kant,  it  was  of 
great  service  to  me  in  those  class  examinations  at  the  end  of 


238  PROFESSORS. 

the  week,  in  which  the  teaching  of  the  previous  days  was 
summed  up  and  recapitulated.  But  with  it  all,  I  felt  still  what 
I  had  felt  years  before  when  reading  John  Stuart  Mill,  that  if 
this  were  Metaphysics,  it  was  only,  after  all,  an  attempt  more 
or  less  successful  to  define  what  a  sensation  was,  a  perception 
was,  a  judgment  was,  a  cause  was,  and  the  like,  or  in  other 
words  to  tell  us  in  what  the  act  of  knowing  consisted,  when 
my  mind  was  hungering  and  thirsting  for  the  knowledge  itself 
of  what  specially  I  was  to  feel,  what  to  judge,  what  to  believe 
of  this  great  and  various  world  around  me.  I  soon  began  to 
think  it  all  a  bore  and  sheer  waste  of  time,  in  a  world  where 
there  was  so  much  that  it  concerned  one  to  know,  and  so 
short  a  span  of  life  to  know  it  in ;  and  in  no  long  time  ceased 
altogether  to  attend  these  metaphysical  classes  as  I  had  previously 
done  the  literary  ones.  With  these  specimens  of  College 
teaching,  and  with  the  added  conviction  of  how  little  I  had 
really  lost  in  not  going  on  with  the  Arts  course  on  which  I 
had  entered  some  time  before,  I  returned  to  my  old  studies, 
uninfluenced  in  any  way  in  the  evolution  of  my  thought  by  the 
experiences  through  which  I  had  passed. 


CHAPTEE     XIV 


A    NEW    HORIZON. 

A  T  the  outset  of  these  early  speculations  I  was  engaged  it 
•^~  may  be  remembered  in  the  attempt  to  get  at  a  knowledge 
of  the  mind  from  the  outside,  as  it  were,  by  the  phrenological 
method  of  taking  measurement  and  survey  of  the  bumps  and 
organs  on  the  cranium,  and  this  plan  proving  barren  and 
unavailing  I  then  tried  the  opposite  one  of  getting  at  it  from 
the  inside,  that  is  to  say  by  observing  the  connexion  and 
relationship  of  thoughts  and  feelings  within  myself;  working 
in  this  way  gradually  from  the  most  simple  and  superficial 
platitudes  of  thought,  through  such  successive  strata  as  were 
reflected  in  lectures,  sermons,  and  other  the  like  dissertations 
on  human  life,  and  so  on  down  to  the  deeper  and  more  recon- 
dite laws ;  with  the  feeling,  implicit  rather  than  definitively 
formulated,  that  if  I  could  but  sound  the  laws  of  the  mind  to 
the  bottom,  in  so  doing  I  should  in  some  way  or  other,  I  knew 
not  precisely  how,  come  to  understand  also  that  World  of 
Nature  in  which  as  yet  I  had  taken  but  little  interest,  as  well 
as  solve  the  perplexing  problem  of  Religion  which  from  want 
of  fresh  material  had  lain  in  abeyance  from  the  time  when  the 
failure  of  Butler's  Analogy  to  give  me  satisfaction,  had  banished 
the  subject  from  my  mind.  Time  meanwhile  had  been  softly 
passing  on,  and  new  thoughts  and  ideas  outside  the  range  of 
merely  human  life,  were  beginning  to  awaken  in  me  and  to 


240  A    NEW    HOKIZON. 

demand  satisfaction  for  themselves ;  and  I  had  not  been  long 
at  the  University,  before  stimulated  by  the  new  life  about  me 
and  by  the  discussions  in  our  little  literary  coterie,  the  great 
problems  of  life  and  of  human  destiny,  of  the  whence,  why, 
and  whither,  of  mortal  things,  arose  in  me  and  took  possession 
of  me  with  all  their  force.  But  this  new  environment  which 
in  connexion  with  my  growing  years  had  awakened  and 
quickened  in  me  these  new  problems,  had  so  far  done  little  or 
nothing  towards  solving  them.  The  greater  experience  of  men 
which  I  had  got  from  the  more  intimate  knowledge  of  the 
characters  and  modes  of  life  of  so  many  students,  had  served 
only  to  widen  my  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  Mind,  but  not 
of  the  laws  of  Nature  or  of  the  World,  and  therefore  threw  no 
new  light  on  the  problem  of  Human  Destiny ;  and  the 
discussions  in  our  literary  set  although  awakening  and 
stimulating,  had  added  nothing  of  sufficient  weight  or  origin* 
ality  to  modify  either  my  opinions,  my  method,  or  my  point 
of  view.  And  as  this  plan  of  mine  of  attacking  the  Problem 
of  the  World  from  within,  that  is  to  say  from  a  widening 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  human  mind,  had  so  far  thrown 
no  light  on  the  new  problems  that  were  agitating  me,  and 
seemed  in  my  impatience  to  be  very  slow  in  its  operation,  I 
was  just  in  that  state  of  mind  in  which,  like  a  chemical 
solution,  I  was  ready  to  crystallize  around  the  first  great 
external  principle  or  generalization  (the  law  of  evolution  or  what 
not),  which  while  doing  no  violence  to  these  laws  of  the  mind 
I  had  so  long  been  gathering  (and  which  had  a  scientific 
validity  in  themselves  independent  of  any  or  all  theories  of  the 
World),  would  give  satisfaction  to  this  newly  awakened  passion 
for  light  on  the  great  problems  of  Religion,  of  Nature,  and  of 
Human  Destiny. 

I  had  but  recently  come  across  a  little  anonymous  work — 
1  The  Vestiges  of  Creation ' — which  had  deeply  interested 
me  by  the  boldness  with  which  it  attempted  to  show  that  the 
great  variety  and  diversity  of  animal  and  vegetable  life  on  the 


A   NEW   HORIZON.  241 

globe,  had  arisen  by  a  process  of  natural  evolution,  the  lowest 
forms  having  themselves  sprung  from  the  inorganic  world  under 
favouring  conditions  of  the  environment.  Now  having  for  a 
long  time  doubted  the  truth  of  the  doctrine  of  *  special  creations ' 
as  revealed  in  Genesis,  I  was  quite  prepared  to  accept  some  such 
theory  as  this ;  but  owing  to  the  crudeness  with  which  it  was 
worked  out  in  detail,  beyond  a  vague  idea  of  evolution  in  general, 
I  got  little  from  it  of  permanent  value  ;  and  the  book  itself  as  a 
whole  had  little  influence  on  the  course  of  my  speculations. 

I  next  came  across  Darwin's  great  work  on  the  '  Origin  of 
Species,'  and  can  still  remember  how  impressed  I  was  with  the 
evidences  it  furnished  of  the  a  priori  possibility  of  Evolution, 
drawn  from  the  great  organic  changes  that  can  be  wrought  in 
the  various  breeds  of  dogs  and  pigeons,  by  the  simple  process 
of  artificial  selection  ;  as  well  as  of  the  truth  of  Evolution  by 
the  fact  of  the  existence  in  certain  animals  of  aborted  or 
rudimentary  organs, — teeth,  tails,  and  the  like, — organs  which 
could  serve  no  useful  function  in  the  existing  species,  and  are 
explicable  only  on  the  hypothesis  that  they  have  been  derived 
from  ancestors  in  whom  they  existed  in  full  and  normal 
development.  But  as  the  4  Vestiges  of  Creation  '  had  already 
prepared  me  to  accept  the  general  doctrine  of  Evolution,  and 
as  I  was  not  specially  qualified  to  judge  of  the  value  of  much 
of  the  scientific  evidence  adduced  by  Darwin  in  its  support,  I 
was  not  so  deeply  impressed  with  the  discovery  of  the  great 
principles  of  '  Natural  Selection '  and  the  *  Survival  of  the 
Fittest '  as  the  Scientific  World  in  general  had  been ;  and  can 
remember  feeling  vaguely  that  although  both  'Natural 
Selection '  and  the  '  Survival  of  the  Fittest '  were  doubtless 
factors  of  great  and  even  cardinal  importance,  there  was  some- 
thing more  in  this  steady  ascent  of  the  world  upwards  to  a 
greater  fullness,  harmony,  and  perfection  of  life,  unbaulked  as 
it  had  all  along  been  either  by  Time  or  accident,  than  could  be 
fully  accounted  for  by  this  mere  wind-swept  winnowing  of 
things  by  a  blind,  undiscriminating,  unregarding  Fate. 


242  A  NEW   HORIZON. 

Following  close  on  the  'Origin  of  Species'  came  Huxley's 
*  Lay  Sermons  and  Addresses,'  then  recently  published,  which 
not  only  added  greatly  to  my  knowledge  of  the  special  subjects 
passed  under  review,  and  deepened  my  belief  in  the  general 
doctrine  of  Evolution  by  the  fresh  evidences  of  its  truth  which 
they  furnished,  but  delighted  me  also  by  the  boldness  and 
vigour  of  their  attacks  on  the  old  theological  strongholds  of 
superstition,  and  by  the  support  which  they  gave  to  my  old 
belief  in  the  intimate  and  even  exact  correspondence  of  all 
mental  manifestations  whatever,  with  physical  conditions  of 
the  brain  and  nervous  system.  But  what  charmed  me  still 
more  in  these  discourses  was  the  clearness,  trenchancy,  and 
brilliance  of  their  style,  and  I  can  still  remember  the  admiring 
•delight  with  which  I  regarded  the  following  sentence  in  one  of 
the  addresses,  summing  up  as  it  did  in  the  smallest  compass  all 
the  trenchancy,  picturesqueness,  and  anti-theological  animus 
of  the  author's  manner ;  — '  Extinguished  theologians  lie  about 
the  cradle  of  every  science  like  the  strangled  snakes  around 
that  of  Hercules ' — a  sentence  which  fixed  itself  in  my  memory 
for  many  a  day,  and  to  which  as  a  model  of  expression  I  kept 
reverting  with  admiring  despair. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  I  returned  home  for  the  vacation, 
that  I  came  across  the  book  which  by  putting  this  theory  of 
Evolution  once  for  all  on  a  deep  philosophic  basis,  filled  up  the 
gaps  in  my  theory  of  the  World,  revolutionized  my  method  of 
thought,  and  for  a  time  solved  for  me  the  great  problems  of 
Life,  of  Nature,  and  of  Human  Destiny.  This  was  Herbert 
Spencer's  *  First  Principles,'  the  first  volume  of  his  great 
system  of  Evolutionary  Philosophy,  a  book  that  fell  on  the 
orderly  line  of  my  mental  evolution  like  a  shell,  blasting  and 
wrecking  it,  and  which  even  when  it  ultimately  failed  to  satisfy 
me,  yet  left  me  with  a  foundation  so  solid  for  the  super- 
structure of  Idealism  which  I  was  afterwards  to  erect  upon  it, 
that  it  has  remained  unshaken  to  this  day.  For  here,  on  a 
mind  blank  as  a  sheet  of  white  paper,  as  it  were,  and  with  no 


A   NEW   HORIZON.  243 

antecedent  theories  to  be  wiped  away,  was  sketched  as  at  a 
single  sitting  in  all  its  complexity,  and  with  but  a  minimum  of 
trouble,  too,  on  my  part,  a  complete  picture  of  the  Universe  ; 
of  the  Stars,  of  the  Solar  System,  of  Nature,  of  the  formation 
of  the  Earth  and  the  changes  it  had  undergone,  its  oceans 
and  rivers,  its  mountains  and  valleys,  its  rocks  and  soils,  its 
plants  and  animals  in  all  their  variety  from  the  lowest  up  to 
man  himself,  the  races  of  men,  and  the  structure  of  the  societies 
they  have  built  for  themselves ;  and  all  following  the  same 
order  and  course  of  development,  all  alike  both  in  their 
msemble  and  in  their  parts  passing  like  an  egg  from  the  simple 
to  the  complex,  from  the  incoherent  to  the  coherent,  from  the 
indefinite  to  the  definite.  And  not  only  this,  but  better  still, 
the  reason  why  everything  passed  through  this  particular  order 
and  course  of  development  and  not  another,  was  clearly  set 
forth  ;  and  it  was  demonstrated  that  the  whole  process  was  but 
the  mathematical  and  physical  corollary  of  a  simple  universal 
fact, — a  fact  taken  for  granted  as  an  axiom  in  all  argument,  all 
reasoning,  all  proof — the  fact  namely  that  the  Universe  is  made 
up  of  a  fixed  quantity  of  force  existing  under  the  antagonistic 
forms  of  attraction  and  repulsion,  or  if  you  will,  of  a  fixed 
quantity  of  Matter.  And  just  as  the  water  in  some  great 
but  strictly  limited  reservoir  far  up  on  the  mountains,  when 
the  flood-gates  are  opened  moves  downwards  towards  the  sea, 
rolling  and  tumbling  and  bubbling  and  hissing,  until  when  it 
reaches  the  plain  it  spreads  itself  softly  outwards  on  all  sides, 
breaking  on  its  outmost  rim  and  confines  into  the  most  varied 
and  beautiful  scintillations  of  fringe  and  foam,  and  yet  at  each 
stage  in  its  journey  the  whole  mass  remains  in  quantity  the 
same  as  that  which  first  burst  from  its  mountain  home ;  so 
when  Creation  opens  and  the  forces  imprisoned  in  the 
homogeneous  cloud-wrapt  Matter  of  the  World  are  left  free  to 
play,  the  wdiole  gathers  itself  together  and  rolls  and  concen- 
trates itself  into  great  balls  and  systems  and  suns,  roaring  and 
howling  through  the  vacant  depths  of  Time  until  on  this  its 


244  A   NEW    HORIZON. 

outmost  wave  we  see  it  softly  pulsating  and  breaking  into  all  the 
beautiful  promiscuity  of  land  and  sea ;  of  rock  and  crystal,  of 
flower  and  animal  and  tree ;  but  all  the  while  and  through  all  its 
changes  the  original  store  of  energy  and  power  remaining  in 
quantity  the  same.  And  furthermore  according  to  Spencer  it 
was  precisely  because  the  quantity  of  Force  was  fixed,  and 
existed  in  these  antagonistic  forms  of  attraction  and  repulsion, 
that  the  ball  was  first  set  a  rolling  and  afterwards  continued  in 
its  evolution,  until  at  last  it  broke  into  this  vast  miscellany  and 
diversity  of  forces,  these  shining  individual  existences ;  all  alike 
passing  by  a  mathematical  and  physical  necessity  from  the  single 
to  the  complex,  from  the  incoherent  to  the  coherent,  from  the 
indefinite  to  the  definite.  Or  to  put  the  essence  of  the  theory 
in  another  way : — Given  a  fixed  quantity  of  Force  existing  in 
the  antagonistic  forms  of  attraction  and  repulsion,  or  what  he 
calls  the  'Persistence  of  Force,'  you  could  predict  beforehand 
that  the  mass  would  and  must  by  a  mere  mechanical  and 
physical  necessity  evolve  into  just  such  a  Universe,  just  such 
a  Solar  System,  just  such  a  world  of  Nature  and  Life,  just 
such  types  and  variety  of  tree  and  animal  and  flower  as  those 
we  know;  and  had  one  an  intellect  capacious  as  a  god's 
to  grasp  the  entire  movement  in  all  its  complexity,  not  a  hair 
on  a  nettle,  or  vein  on  a  leaf  but  could  have  been  anticipated 
and  foreseen.  It  was  a  magnificent  generalization,  carefully 
wrought  out  in  all  its  parts ;  and  in  its  contemplation  I  was  lost 
in  wonder  and  admiration.  For  some  time  I  had  been  anxious 
for  light  on  the  great  Universe  of  planets  and  stars,  and  here 
it  was  ;  for  some  theory  of  the  world  more  credible  and  assured 
than  the  six  days  Creation  of  Genesis,  some  theory  of  the 
origin  and  significance  of  the  great  variety  of  animal  life  about 
me,  a  theory  which  if  not  solving,  must  by  the  analogies  it 
would  afford,  largely  influence  one's  view  of  the  great  problem 
of  human  destiny ;  and  here  it  was.  I  was  delighted,  and 
whirled  away  for  the  time  by  the  splendour  of  these  great 
generalizations  of  the  World  and  Nature,  entirely  lost  my  own 


A    NEW    HORIZON.  245 

centre  of  gravity  and  lived  in  a  kind  of  delicious  intellectual 
dream. 

Now  had  the  book  done  nothing  more  than  this  for  me,  it 
would  merely  have  filled  up  the  gaps  in  my  knowledge  of  the 
world  of  outward  Nature,  and  at  most  have  given  but  greater 
scientific  precision  or  a  deeper  philosophical  basis  to  views 
which  I  had  already  received  from  the  *  Vestiges  of  Creation  ' 
and  the  '  Origin  of  Species.'  But  it  did  more.  It  reconciled 
for  the  first  time  (by  over-arching  the  breach  between  them, 
and  showing  that  at  bottom  they  both  rested  on  the  same  basis, 
namely,  the  Persistence  of  Force),  Eeligion  and  Science,  which 
I  had  always  felt  instinctively  to  be  antagonistic  both  in  their 
methods  and  their  aims;  in  this  way  furnishing  me  with  a 
solution  of  that  great  problem  of  Religion  which  for  want  of 
material  had  lain  so  long  in  abeyance.  It  was  this  part  of  the 
book  that  interested  me  more  than  any  other.  The  whole 
demonstration,  which  we  shall  see  in  its  proper  place  farther  on, 
was  so  clear,  so  connected,  so  logical,  that  I  was  forced  to  yield 
my  assent ;  and  as  my  anxiety  on  the  subject  of  Religion  was 
rather  that  of  one  who  wishes  for  something  that  will 
harmonize  his  views  of  the  world  with  the  high  ideals  and 
aspirations  of  the  heart,  than  of  one  who  is  looking  out  for 
some  object  of  devotion  or  worship,  I  was  for  the  time  being 
satisfied.  It  was  not  until  about  a  year  after,  when  I  came  to 
the  '  Principles  of  Psychology,'  that  I  began  to  feel  how 
hollow  was  this  pretended  reconciliation  of  Religion  and 
Science,  how  materialistic  w^as  its  method  in  spite  of  all 
protestations  to  the  contrary,  and  how  surely  the  theory  when 
stripped  of  its  disguises,  instead  of  harmonizing  with  the  high 
ideals  of  the  heart,  cut  sheer  into  their  very  core.  But  of  all 
this,  and  the  mental  misery  it  entailed  on  me  for  the  next  few 
years;  of  my  efforts,  for  a  long  time  unavailing,  to  put  my 
finger  on  the  secret  fallacy  which  I  felt  to  be  lurking  some- 
where in  these  calm,  closely-reasoned  and  unimpassioned 
pages ;  of  my  finding  it  at  last  and  the  release  it  gave  to  my 


246  A   NEW   HORIZON. 

imprisoned  spirit;  of  all  this  we  shall  see  more  anon.  Mean- 
while it  is  sufficient  here  to  say  that  a  new  horizon  had  been 
opened  up  before  me ;  an  entirely  new  system  of  thought  had 
been  flung  into  the  midst  of  my  speculations,  the  first  effect  of 
which  was  to  wean  me  entirely  from  my  old  concentration  on 
the  individual  mind,  on  physiognomy,  on  human  nature,  on  the 
diagnosis  of  individual  character,  and  the  like,  and  to  centre 
my  intellectual  interest  for  years  to  come  on  the  great  problem 
of  Life  and  the  World.  Its  second  effect  was  to  change  my 
subjective  method  for  an  objective  one,  that  is  to  say  instead 
of  trying  to  get  at  the  Problem  of  the  World  from  within,  by 
a  study  of  the  laws  of  the  human  mind  and  the  nature  of  the 
soul,  I  was  made  to  look  without,  to  some  external  physical 
principle  such  as  the  fixed  quantity  of  Force  in  antagonistic 
forms,  or  in  other  words  the  'Persistence  of  Force,'  for  my 
solution  of  the  enigmas  of  life. 

Accordingly,  when  the  session  opened,  I  hastened  to  pour 
into  the  ear  of  the  friend  and  fellow-student  with  whom  I  had 
already  had  so  many  discussions,  the  principles  of  the  new 
Philosophy  which  had  so  enthralled  me ;  dilating  on  them, 
pointing  out  their  range  and  depth  and  scope,  and  dwelling 
especially  on  the  splendid  demonstration  by  which  at  last 
Religion  and  Science  had  been  reconciled.  But  to  my 
annoyance  and  surprise  he  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  my  new  found 
theory  as  if  he  scented  some  taint  of  materialism  about  it,, 
talked  vaguely  of  having  found  something  more  real  and  soul- 
satisfying  in  Carlyle,  but  admitted  at  the  same  time  that  he  was 
not  precisely  prepared  to  put  his  finger  on  what  was  wrong,, 
although  feeling  that  it  did  not  fill  up  the  necessities  of  his 
heart.  He  was  right,  as  we  shall  see  anon ;  but  meantime  in 
spite  of  his  protests  my  belief  in  the  system  was  entire  and 
unshaken,  and  I  went  about  among  the  members  of  our  little 
philosophical  party  as  an  undisguised  propagandist.  I 
introduced  the  book  to  the  notice  of  the  fourth  year 
metaphysical  students  at  the  College,  to  whom  it  was  up  to 


A  NEW   HORIZON.  247 

that  time  unknown ;  and  instead  of  attending  as  I  should  have 
done  to  my  medical  studies,  spent  most  of  my  time  in  conver- 
sations and  discussions  on  the  new  Philosophy. 

Meanwhile  time  was  moving  on,  and  the  final  examination  for 
my  medical  degree  was  already  in  sight.  Although  my  mind 
during  the  whole  period  of  my  college  course  had  been  more 
immersed  in  Literature  and  Philosophy  than  in  Medicine,  I 
had  nevertheless  been  fairly  regular  in  my  attendance  at 
lectures,  and  had  managed  in  one  way  or  another  to  pick  up 
without  much  reading,  sufficient  knowledge  to  justify  me  in 
going  up  for  my  degree.  But  as  the  days  of  examination  drew 
nearer,  my  thoughts  turned  more  and  more  to  the  future. 
Was  I  to  settle  down  to  the  humdrum  life  of  a  country  doctor, 
or  should  I  remain  in  the  city  where  I  could  combine  the 
pursuits  of  Literature  with  the  practice  of  medicine  1  I  could 
not  decide,  and  at  bottom  liked  neither  alternative.  I  was 
determined  if  possible  not  to  take  a  country  practice,  and  on 
the  other  hand  I  could  not  very  well  see  how  my  literary 
designs  were  to  be  furthered  by  remaining  in  the  city.  For 
in  our  literary  set,  we  had  noticed  and  often  remarked  that 
nearly  all  our  text-books,  as  well  as  books  on  Literature  and 
Philosophy,  were  of  foreign  importation,  American  or  English ; 
and  that  such  of  our  Canadian  aspirants  as  had  ventured  on 
publication  were  not  likely,  from  the  tone  in  which  they  were 
spoken  of  by  the  students,  to  be  accorded  much  honour  in  their 
own  country.  It  was  this,  perhaps,  more  than  anything  else 
that  finally  determined  me  to  come  to  London,  where  after 
taking  my  diploma  I  could  start  practice,  and  at  the  same  time 
have  the  advantage  of  the  great  public  libraries  in  which  to 
pursue  my  favourite  studies  in  the  intervals  of  work — studies, 
which  if  they  ever  saw  the  light,  would  start  with  no 
disadvantage  either  from  their  place  of  publication,  or  from  the 
country  of  my  birth.  The  more  I  thought  of  this  course  the 
more  determined  I  was  to  carry  it  through  ;  and  accordingly 
after  passing  my  examination  and  getting  my  degree,  I  bade 


248  A   NEW  HORIZON. 

farewell  to  my  old  friends,  and  in  the  following  week  embarked 
for  England  ;  resolved  in  my  youthful  dreams  to  conquer,  if 
application  and  study  could  do  it,  the  great  world  of  Literature 
and  Philosophy ! 


PART    II. 


ENGLAND. 


MY    INNEE     LIFE, 


BEING   A   CHAPTER   IN 

PEESONAL     EVOLUTION     AND 
AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 


PART    II.— ENGLAND. 


BOOK    I.— THE    LOST    IDEAL. 

HERBERT    SPENCER. 
ARISTOCRACY   AND   DEMOCRACY. 
MEDICINE. 


CHAP  TEE    I. 


HERBERT  SPENCER. 

A  CCORDINGLY  one  sunny  afternoon  in  May,  light  of 
heart  and  nothing  doubting,  I  embarked  on  unknown 
waters  for  an  unknown  shore,  with  such  poor  equipment  and 
outfit  of  accomplishments  for  my  enterprise  as  the  reader  may 
imagine,  and  with  no  other  possessions  but  those  of  youth  and 
hope ;  and  for  quest,  not  gold  nor  any  merely  material  or 
sensuous  prosperity,  but  the  Ideal  itself,  which  burnt  within 
me  with  an  intense  and  steady  glow,  and  which  as  I  lay  idly 
dreaming  on  the  deck,  seemed  to  ride  before  me  in  the  sky 
blazoned  above  the  masts  high  over  the  wind  and  sea.  This 
ideal  it  was  that  in  years  gone  by  had  weaned  me  from  the 
games  and  sports  of  my  boyhood  and  kindled  in  me  the  desire 
for  mathematical  distinction;  which  had  superseded  this  in 
time  by  the  longing  for  a  broader  and  more  genial  range  of 
thought  and  culture ;  and  which  now  in  opening  up  before  me 
still  wider  intellectual  problems,  and  stimulating  me  to  still 
higher  ambitions,  was  impelling  me  over  the  seas  to  a  land 
where  better  opportunities,  as  I  thought,  existed  for  their 
solution  and  realization.  The  special  problem  in  which  I  was 
now  immersed  and  the  one  into  which  all  particular  rills  of 
thought,  begin  where  I  would,  eventually  flowed,  was  the 
problem  of  problems,  the  great  Problem  of  the  World  and  of 
Human  Existence,  of  the  end  and  aim,  the  meaning  and  destiny 


252  HERBERT    SPEXCER. 

of  mortal  things ;  and  to  find  some  solution  of  it  that  while 
meeting  all  the  demands  and  tests  of  truth  should  at  the  same 
time  satisfy  the  high  ideals  of  the  heart,  was  now  the  increasing 
object  of  my  thoughts.  For  in  spite  of  the  load  of  smaller 
scepticisms  as  to  revelation,  inspiration,  miracles,  and  the  like, 
that  I  carried  about  with  me,  my  belief  in  the  dignity  of  the 
human  mind  and  the  high  destiny  of  the  world  and  the  human 
soul  was  still  unclouded.  Not  indeed  that  I  was  in  search  of 
any  supernatural  object  in  which  to  find  satisfaction  for  the 
ordinary  religious  feelings  of  awe,  and  worship,  and  prayer ; 
for  the  figures  of  the  old  kirk  elders  of  my  boyhood  as  they 
rose  before  me  lifting  their  harsh  and  untuned  voices  in 
supplication  to  a  Jehovah  harsh  and  inexorable  as  themselves, 
wrould  have  effectually  poisoned  these  springs  of  emotion  if 
indeed  they  had  ever  existed  in  me ;  rather  the  object  of  my 
search  was  some  Spirit  or  Soul  of  Truth  and  Beauty  in  Things, 
which  should  give  support  and  guarantee  to  the  Ideal  which  T 
felt  working  within  myself,  and  which  I  instinctively  felt  must 
somewhere  in  the  wide  world  have  its  home ;  a  Spirit  or  Soul  in 
the  discovery  and  exhibition  of  which  my  purely  personal  and 
selfish  ambitions,  far  from  being  extinguished,  should  find 
their  field  of  exercise,  their  object  and  their  goal. 

But  I  had  not  been  many  days  at  sea,  before  a  cloud  scarcely 
larger  than  a  man's  hand  appeared  on  the  horizon  of  my  dreams, 
and  gradually  overspreading  the  sky,  deepened  and  darkened 
until  it  settled  at  last  into  absolute  night ;  and  behind  it  for  a 
time  all  the  ideals  in  which  I  lived,  all  the  aims  and  ambitions 
which  I  held  most  dear,  wasted  as  in  disastrous  eclipse.  This 
strange  and  to  me  most  unexpected  result  arose  on  the  perusal 
of  Spencers  'Principles  of  Psychology' — the  fourth  volume 
in  his  System  of  Philosophy — which  I  had  begun  before  leaving 
home  and  had  now  just  finished,  especially  of  those  portions 
where  he  explains  the  precise  relation  he  conceives  to  exist 
between  Mind  and  Brain,  and  between  both  and  the  great 
general  laws  of  Matter,  Motion,  and  Force.     A  rough  outline  of 


HERBERT    SPENCER.  253 

his  doctrine  on  these  important  questions,  was  indeed  contained 
in  the  volume  on  '  First  Principles '  over  which  I  had  grown  so 
enthusiastic  at  College,  but  embedded  as  it  was  amid  so  many 
new  and  startling  generalizations  of  other  orders,  it  had  for  the 
time  being  quite  escaped  my  notice,  the  more  so  indeed  as  in 
general  outline  it  was  practically  identical  with  a  doctrine  I  had 
myself  long  held,  namely,  of  the  intimate  dependence  of  the 
mind  on  the  molecular  activity  of  the  brain  and  nervous  system. 
But  the  chief  reason  perhaps,  why  the  outline  of  Spencer's 
doctrine  in  '  First  Principles '  made  so  little  impression  on  me, 
was  that  in  that  work  he  had  by  a  subtle  but  contradictory  and 
shifting  use  of  the  term  '  Persistence  of  Force/  managed  to 
underprop  all  the  phenomena  of  the  world  both  mental  and 
physical  with  what  he  called  an  Unknown  Power — a  kind  of 
background  of  Being  which  was  to  be  the  object  of  Religion, 
and  in  a  way  to  take  the  place  of  our  ordinary  conception  of 
God,  and  which  therefore  instead  of  destroying  the  high  ideals 
of  the  mind,  would  give  them  rather,  I  imagined  a  certain  basis 
and  support.  But  when  I  arrived  at  the  volume  in  the 
'Principles  of  Psychology'  where  the  whole  subject  of  the 
origin,  genesis,  and  development  of  mind  in  its  relation  to  the 
genesis  and  growth  of  the  nervous  system  was  worked  out  in 
detail,  and  epecially  where  the  relation  borne  by  the  higher  and 
nobler  emotions  of  the  mind  to  its  baser  and  unworthier 
elements,  was  brought  clearly  into  view,  then  it  was  that  the 
ideal  within  me  struck  to  the  heart,  shrivelled  and  collapsed,, 
and  all  the  flowers  that  had  sprung  up  in  the  mind  under  the 
genial  influence  of  youth  and  hope,  faded  and  withered.  To 
exhibit  this  doctrine  of  Spencer's  in  sufficient  detail,  and  to 
explain  how  it  was  that  the  ideals  which  had  waved  and 
bloomed  unheeding  over  the  materialism  of  my  early  speculations, 
and  in  spite  of  it,  should  at  the  touch  of  his  hand  have  lain  for 
many  a  day  crushed  and  cold  and  dead  as  if  a  glacier  had  passed 
over  them,  shall  be  the  aim  of  the  present  chapter. 

The   enthusiasm   aroused   in   me    by   the   perusal  of  'First 


254  HERBERT    SPENCER. 

Principles,'  was  chiefly  owing  to  the  splendid  attempt  made  in 
that  work  by  Spencer  to  show  that  the  whole  procession  of 
phenomena  in  the  Universe,  the  vast  miscellany  of  nebula  and 
star,  of  sun  and  planet,  of  earth  and  air,  of  land  and  sea,  of 
crystal,  flower,  animal  and  tree,  were  deducible  as  a  physical 
and  mathematical  corollary  from  the  simple  fact  that  the  quantity 
of  Force  in  the  Universe  is  fixed  and  unchanging,  and  that  it  exists 
under  the  antagonistic  forms  of  attraction  and  repulsion.  Now  the 
way  in  which  Mr.  Spencer  showed  that  the  quantity  of  force  is 
fixed  and  unchanging,  was  by  pointing  out  that  this  fact  was 
taken  for  granted  in  all  knowledge,  and  that  on  the  assumption 
of  its  truth  all  our  reasoning  was  based.  For  if  Force  were  not 
always  a  fixed  and  unchanging  quantity,  but  could  come  into 
existence  or  go  out  of  it  capriciously  and  without  a  cause,  no 
reliance  could  be  placed  from  hour  to  hour  on  the  weights  and 
measures,  the  scales  and  other  instruments  by  which  in  the  last 
resort  our  reasonings  and  conclusions  are  tested.  Thought,  in 
consequence,  or  the  establishment  of  definite  relations  between 
things,  could  not  exist,  and  all  knowledge  would  be  rendered 
impossible.  That  the  quantity  of  Force  in  the  Universe 
therefore  is  fixed  and  unchanging,  is  not  so  much  a  proposition 
to  be  proved,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term,  as  an  absolute 
necessity  of  thought  involved  in  all  proof,  and  the  basis  of  all 
proof.  And  that  this  Force  exists  everywhere  under  the  two 
antagonistic  and  polar  forms  of  attraction  and  repulsion,  may  be 
seen  in  every  particle  of  Matter,  which  will  equally  resist  you 
whether  you  try  to  compress  it  together  or  pull  it  apart. 

Now  starting  from  this  simple  principle  of  the  fixed  and 
unchanging  quantity  of  Force  in  antagonistic  forms  —  the 
greatest  contribution  to  philosophy  in  my  judgment  since  the 
time  of  Kant,  and  the  one  with  the  widest  range  of  applicability 
and  implication, — Spencer  deduces  at  once  from  it  as  its 
corollaries  some  of  the  most  important  laws  of  Physics,  as  for 
example  that  Force  follows  the  line  of  least  resistance  or  of 
greatest  traction,  that  all  motion  is  rhythmical,  and  the  like,  as 


HERBERT    SPENCER.  255 

well  as  the  great  scientific  doctrine  of  our  age,  namely,  that  the 
laws  of  Nature  are  uniform,  and  admit  of  no  variability  or 
shadow  of  change  —  propositions  all  of  them  which  were  first 
established  by  separate  scientific  inductions  on  their  own  account, 
but  which,  like  the  laws  of  Kepler  after  the  discovery  of 
gravitation,  were  at  once  perceived  to  be  necessary  corollaries 
from  a  fixed  quantity  of  Force  in  antagonistic  forms,  when  once 
that  great  doctrine  had  been  enunciated ;  the  proof  that  they 
are  corollaries  being,  in  a  word,  and  without  going  farther  into 
it  here,  that  to  deny  any  one  of  them  would  involve  the 
consequence  that  Force  might  appear  without  cause  or  disappear 
without  result,  and  this  would  be  to  deny  the  very  datum  of  all 
thought,  namely  the  fixity  and  persistence  of  Force. 

If  we  permit  Spencer  therefore  to  start  with  his  fixed  quantity 
-of  force  in  antagonistic  forms,  and  to  assume  this  force  to  be  in 
that  diffuse,  homogeneous  condition,  or  mist,  which  modern 
Astronomy  renders  probable,  he  has  little  difficulty  in  showing 
that  this  homogeneous  mass  being  differently  conditioned  at 
the  centre  and  at  the  circumference  respectively,  must  by  reason 
of  the  antagonistic  traction  of  its  opposing  forces,  begin  to  move, 
then  to  revolve,  and  condensing  as  it  revolves,  to  throw  off  from 
its  circumference  portions  of  itself  as  balls  and  suns,  the  suns  in 
their  turn  planets,  and  the  planets,  moons;  and  that  coming  down 
to  our  own  system,  the  earth  gradually  cooling  and  contracting 
must  separate  into  hill  and  dale,  land  and  water,  and  in  the  end, 
like  some  great  sea  breaking  in  multitudinous  waves  on  the 
pebbly  shores  of  the  world,  must  by  reason  of  the  infinite 
complexity  of  its  forces,  split  on  its  rim  and  confines  into  the 
infinite  multiplicity  of  individual  forms  with  which  we  are 
familiar,  plant  and  crystal,  animal  and  flower,  and  tree. 

But  the  World  consists  of  Mind  as  well  as  Matter,  of  thought 
and  feeling  as  well  as  of  earth  and  crystal,  of  animal,  and  flower, 
and  tree.  Accordingly  in  the  'Principles  of  Psychology,'  at 
which  I  had  now  arrived,  Spencer  makes  an  attempt  to  show  how 
Mind  can  be  so  brought  into  relation  with  material  things,  that 


25()  HERBERT    SPENCER. 

like  light,  heat,  electricity  and  other  modes  or  manifestations  of 
Matter  and  Motion,  it,  too,  may  be  seen  to  be  a  necessary 
deduction  from  the  fixity  and  persistence  of  Force.  To  do  this 
he  has  first  to  find  some  matrix  or  material  out  of  which  Mind 
may  develop  itself,  and  begins  accordingly  by  pointing  out  that 
among  the  infinite  multiplicity  of  chemical  substances  into 
which  by  reason  of  its  collisions  and  repulsions,  its  affinities  and 
attractions,  the  original  homogeneous  mass  of  Matter  in  the 
world  splits  itself,  you  at  last  come  on  one  of  highly  complex 
composition,  and,  in  consequence,  of  a  high  degree  of  chemical 
instability.  This  substance  instead  of  exploding  outright  like 
gunpowder,  on  the  impact  of  any  incident  force,  and  so 
disappearing  into  other  forms,  expends  the  energy  communicated 
to  it,  on  the  contrary,  in  transformations  of  its  own  substance, 
in  waves,  tremors,  or  rhythms  which  pass  through  its  mass,  but 
leave  it  in  the  end  practically  the  same  as  before.  Such  a 
substance  is  albumen,  or  the  protoplasmic  specks  of  jelly  of 
which  the  lowest  organisms  are  composed.  Now  whether  we 
consider  that  such  a  substance  is  impelled  by  some  inner 
prompting  to  seize  its  prey  or  escape  from  its  enemies,  or  whether, 
with  Spencer,  we  prefer  to  think  that  it  has  some  molecular 
affinity  with  or  repulsion  from  its  prey  and  enemies  respectively, 
whereby  when  they  approach  it  too  nearly,  like  a  magnetic 
needle  it  turns  its  head  as  it  were  to  the  one  and  tail  to  the  other, 
it  is  evident  that  any  incident  force  or  disturbance  falling  on  an 
organism  so  sensitive,  as  for  example  the  shadow  of  a  passing 
enemy,  the  commotion  it  makes  in  the  water,  or  the  quality 
communicated  to  the  water  by  particles  of  food  floating  by,  or 
what  not,  will  set  up  a  molecular  movement  in  the  mass,  a  move- 
ment which  like  the  splash  of  water  falling  on  the  ground,  will 
propagate  itself  at  first  indefinitely  in  any  or  all  directions,  but 
which  on  sufficient  repetition  will,  like  the  same  water  continuing 
to  run,  tend  to  follow  a  definite  line,  the  line  of  all  motion,  namely 
the  line  of  least  resistance ;  say  from  the  point  where  force  is 
generated  by  the  impact  of  the  enemy's  shadow  or  the  proximity  of 


HERBERT    SPENCER.  257 

food,  to  the  point  where  it  is  expended  in  moving  the  organism 
out  of  the  way  of  danger  in  the  one  case,  or  in  enabling  it  to  close 
around  its  prey  in  the  other ;  the  special  molecules  lying  in  the 
line  along  which  the  vibrations  pass,  becoming  converted,  like 
iron  that  has  had  a  magnetic  current  passed  through  it,  into  a 
specially  modified  kind  of  tissue  known  as  nerve  tissue  or  nerve. 
Having  got  this  special  kind  of  vibrating  tissue,  Spencer  sees 
little  difficulty  in  explaining  how  the  rudiments  of  mind  arise. 
For  just  as  a  mere  sound  or  ordinary  noise  will  if  repeated  with 
sufficient  frequency,  say  sixteen  times  to  the  second,  or  there- 
abouts, give  rise  to  something  so  apparently  different  in  nature 
as  what  we  call  a  musical  tone,  so  what  is  at  first  a  mere  blow 
or  nervous  shock,  will,  he  says,  when  it  passes  into  vibrations 
of  sufficient  frequency,  become  a  sensation  or  feeling. 

Having  in  this  way  bridged  the  gulf  between  Mind  and 
Matter,  (and  this  after  all  is  the  very  nodus  of  the  problem  to 
be  solved)  and  having  got  out  of  his  protoplasmic  and 
albuminoid  substance,  not  only  nerves  but  vibrations  of  these 
nerves  in  the  shape  of  sensations  and  feelings,  Spencer  has 
henceforward  little  difficulty  in  showing  how  they  both  go 
on  developing  together  as  life  becomes  more  complex  and 
difficult ;  and  that  just  as  a  cricketer  to  meet  the  wide  range 
of  velocity,  pitch,  direction,  and  distance  of  the  ball,  must 
have  an  equally  wide  range  of  nervous  adjustment  between 
eye,  hand,  muscle  and  limb,  so  to  cope  with  enemies  coming  in 
all  directions,  and  of  all  shapes,  sizes,  colours,  velocities  and 
disguises,  or  to  seize  prey  under  the  like  difficulties,  an  animal 
must  have  a  complex  nervous  system  in  which  lines  of  nerve 
shall  run  in  all  directions  through  its  body,  and  connect  all  its 
parts  together.  And  just  as  in  some  great  postal  system, 
besides  the  smaller  out-lying  offices  there  are  larger  and  larger 
central  ones  where  letters  and  messages  are  brought  to  be 
sorted  and  re-dispatched  to  the  points  for  which  they  are 
intended,  so  in  man  and  the  higher  animals  nerve  centres  of 
ever  increasing  size  and  complexity  up  to  the  central  brain 

s 


258  HERBERT   SPENCER. 

itself,  receive  and  re-adjust  the  impressions  brought  to  them 
from  all  parts  of  the  organism,  and  send  out  responses  to  meet 
them,  in  the  shape  of  thought  and  action.  In  this  way 
according  to  Spencer,  Mind  arises  from  the  vibrations  of 
nervous  molecules ;  the  great  variety  of  thoughts  and  feelings 
thus  set  vibrating  to  the  touch  or  suggestion  of  outer  things, 
or  from  their  own  inner  activity,  being  but  the  compounding 
and  re-compounding  in  more  complex  centres,  of  the  vibrations 
of  that  simple  original  blow  or  shock  which  is  the  primitive 
unit  of  consciousness. 

Now  the  points  in  the  above  explanation  which  I  most 
specially  wish  to  emphasize,  either  as  being  the  most  important 
in  themselves  philosophically  and  in  their  bearing  on  the  beliefs 
and  opinions  of  men,  or  as  having  had  the  deepest  influence  on 
myself  personally  at  the  time  are, 

First, — That  thought,  feeling,  and  sensation,  or  in  a  word 
Mind,  arise  out  of  the  molecular  vibrations  of  Matter  of 
one    species   of   chemical   composition,   namely    nerve- 
substance,  in  the  same  way  as  light,  heat,  and  electricity 
do  out  of  the  vibrations  of  another,  as  for  example  iron, 
copper,    and   the   like ;    and   that    both   alike   are   but 
transformations  taking  place  in  the  course  of  evolution 
in    that    fixed    and   unchanging   quantity   of   force   in 
antagonistic  forms,  from  which  all  things  proceed. 
Second, — That    the  only    difference    in    essential   nature 
between  one  feeling  and  another,   between  the  lowest 
animal  sensation,  for  example,  and  the  highest,  purest, 
and  noblest  emotion,  is  merely  the  number  and  com- 
plexity of  the  molecular  vibrations  of  which  they  are 
composed. 
Now  the  first  of  these  doctrines,  namely  that  Mind  arises  out 
of  the  vibrations  of  the  molecules  of  the  brain  and  nervous 
system,  I  already  implicitly  believed,  but  only  in  a  very  general 
way,  partly  as  a  heritage  from  my  old  phrenological  days,  and 
partly  from  the  accounts  constantly  to  be  met  with,  of  the 


HERBERT    SPENCER.  259 

effects  on  consciousness  of  injuries  to  the  head,  depression  of 
the  skull,  and  the  like,  and  of  how  the  ensuing  coma  or  loss  of 
consciousness  was  at  once  relieved  by  the  simple  operation  of 
raising  the  depressed  portion  of  bone ;  all  of  which  facts 
seemed  to  show  that  there  was  a  real  causal  connexion  between 
the  activity  of  the  brain  and  the  manifestations  of  thought  and 
intelligence.  What  Spencer  did  was  to  give  this  doctrine  its 
complete  scientific  proof  and  expression,  so  that  to  doubt  that 
Mind  was  bound  up  with  the  molecular  motions  of  the  brain 
down  to  the  last  fibre  of  thought  and  the  remotest  and  most 
evanescent  flutter  of  sensation,  was  for  the  future  rendered  for- 
ever impossible.  It  was  without  any  feeling  of  surprise 
therefore,  that  I  learned  from  Spencer  that  just  as  a  piece  of 
iron,  cold  and  dead,  can  be  made  to  glow  with  light  and  heat 
when  its  molecules  are  thrown  into  vibration  by  the  passage  of 
a  current  of  electricity  through  it,  so  the  nerves  and  nerve- 
centres  of  the  body  and  brain,  cold  and  unconscious  when 
asleep  or  at  rest,  can  by  a  stimulus  from  within  or  without, — a 
vision  of  beauty,  a  happy  thought,  a  sweet  smile,  a  poetic 
landscape, — be  set  aglow  with  thought,  emotion,  and  passion. 
Nor  was  I  disposed  to  deny  the  counterpart  of  this  doctrine, 
namely  that  no  idea  or  emotion  whatever  can  arise  without  the 
expenditure  of  some  physical  force  ;  or  that  other  proposition 
of  Spencer,  that  light,  heat,  and  chemical  affinity  are  as  trans- 
formable into  sensation,  emotion,  and  thought,  as  they  are 
transformable  into  each  other.  All  this  I  was  prepared  to 
admit,  nor  did  it  disturb  me  the  least  to  be  told  that  the 
higher  and  nobler  emotions  and  sentiments  are  subject  like  the 
lower  when  under  the  influence  of  disease  or  fatigue,  of 
stimulants,  narcotics,  or  drugs,  to  fluctuations  of  rise  and  fall, 
to  revival  or  stupefaction,  to  alternation  or  eclipse,  or  indeed 
to  any  other  consequence  that  might  at  first  seem  to  be  a 
derogation  from  the  high  dominion  of  the  mind,  and  its 
inalienable  freedom  as  a  pure  immortal  spirit.  Nothing  of  all  this 
touched  me,  and  I  was  already  prepared  to  admit  it  all  or  more. 


260  HERBERT    SPENCER. 

But  what  1  was  not  prepared  to  admit  was  that  between  the 
high  and  the  low,  the  noble  and  the  base,  the  false  and  the 
true,  there  was  no  other  difference  in  essential  nature  than  the 
number  and  complexity  of  the  molecular  vibrations  of  which 
they  were  composed.  For  however  much  one  might  be 
disposed  to  admit  that  the  higher  sentiments  and  emotions 
are,  like  the  lower,  subject  to  injury  or  disease,  to  exhaustion, 
or  to  wine,  one  still  felt  instinctively  that  in  essential  nature 
between  the  two  there  was  a  great  gulf  fixed,  a  toto  coelo 
difference  in  kind  and  quality,  which  no  mere  difference  in  the 
number  of  molecular  vibrations  out  of  which  they  arose,  could 
either  explain  or  explain  away.  Now,  in  the  old  phrenological 
materialism  of  my  earlier  days,  this  difficulty  had  not 
arisen,  for  although  all  the  faculties  and  emotions 
alike,  the  higher  as  well  as  the  lower,  depended  for  their 
manifestation  on  the  size  and  activity  of  the  corresponding 
portions  of  the  brain,  yet  such  higher  faculties  as  veneration, 
benevolence,  conscientiousness,  and  the  like,  were  regarded  as 
quite  distinct  in  essential  nature  from  low  ones  like  revenge, 
lust,  vanity,  cowardice  and  conceit,  which  they  had  to  control 
and  keep  in  awe,  and  one  could  still  vaguely  feel  that  some- 
where in  the  circuit  of  the  Universe  there  must  exist  some 
Essence,  or  Spirit,  or  what  you  will,  some  Power  in  which 
they  were  realized,  and  which  should  be  their  support  and 
guarantee,  and  be,  as  it  were,  the  soul  and  inner  reason  of  their 
high  claims. 

With  Spencer,  on  the  contrary,  all  this  was  changed,  for  with 
him  all  the  faculties  alike,  the  high  and  the  low,  the  noble  and 
the  base,  the  heroic  and  the  self-indulgent,  lay  on  a  dead  level 
of  moral  and  spiritual  equality,  without  hierarchy,  ranking,  or 
difference,  and  with  no  other  distinction  among  themselves  save 
the  number  and  complexity  of  the  molecular  vibrations  out  of 
which  they  arose.  And  just  as  the  differences  between  light 
and  heat,  which  are  mere  differences  of  molecular  vibration  in 
one  kind  of  matter,  require  no  Deity  to  explain  them ;  neither 


HERBERT    SPENCER.  261 

do  differences  between  the  high  and  low,  the  noble  and  base, 
which  are  but  differences  in  the  molecular  vibrations  of  another 
kind  of  matter  ;  all  alike  being  explainable  as  but  transformations 
arising  in  the  course  of  evolution,  of  that  original  fixed  and 
unchanging  quantity  of  Force  in  antagonistic  forms,  of  which 
the  Universe  is  composed. 

Here  indeed  was  Materialism  pure  and  undiluted,  I  thought 
to  myself,  all  alike,  the  high  and  the  low,  the  noble  and  the  base, 
being  but  vibrations,  vibrations,  vibrations,  nothing  more ;  and 
at  sight  of  it  my  spirits  fell.  Its  first  and  indeed  chief  effect 
was  to  blot  out  of  my  life  the  Ideal  itself  in  which  up  to  that 
time  I  had  lived,  that  Ideal  whose  very  existence  depends  on 
the  distinction  which  the  mind  itself  makes  between  the  high 
and  the  low,  the  noble  and  the  base,  the  infinite  and  the  finite, 
the  narrow  and  confined  and  the  boundless  and  free,  and  which 
gives  to  life  in  consequence  all  that  it  has  of  glory  and  elevation, 
of  richness,  of  pathos,  and  of  beauty.  But  now  that  the  mast 
was  shivered  whose  top  it  crowned,  and  over  which  its  banner 
had  so  gaily  waved,  the  dethroned  Ideal  fell  prone  and  headlong 
on  the  deck,  like  a  false  and  usurping  spirit ;  and  my  mind 
bereaved  of  that  which  had  been  its  life,  settled  into  a  deep, 
and  what  for  a  year  or  two  threatened  to  be  a  permanent 
intellectual  gloom. 

For  it  all  seemed  so  true,  so  irrefragable  ;  and  the  argument 
washing  on  its  way  the  extremest  shores  of  Nature,  and  drawing 
to  itself  all  the  riches  they  contained,  moved  to  its  consummation 
steadily  but  irresistibly  like  some  deep  ocean  stream.  One  felt 
it  was  no  mere  logical  castle  this,  built  of  air,  and  definitions,  and 
assuming  in  its  premises,  like  the  systems  of  the  metaphysicians, 
the  very  difficulties  to  be  explained  ;  but  a  great  granite  pile 
sunk  deep  on  the  bed-rock  of  the  world,  and  standing  there  in 
its  completeness,  so  hard,  so  regular,  so  harmonious,  each  stone 
a  scientific  truth,  and  all  so  compacted,  dovetailed,  and  joined 
together,  that  nowhere  in  its  well-knit  structure  could  so  much 
as  a  pin-point  be  inserted  on  which  a  serious  demurrer  could  be 


262  HERBERT    SPENCER. 

hung.  Indeed  on  glancing  through  these  works  again  the  other 
day  to  refresh  my  memory  of  those  olden  times,  I  was  as  much 
impressed  as  before  with  the  amazing  fertility,  originality,  and 
breadth  of  scientific  generalization  they  displayed ;  with  the 
great  wariness  of  the  mind  that  appeared  through  them,  and 
which  was  as  subtle  and  ingenious  as  it  was  broad  and 
comprehensive ;  as  well  as  with  the  evidences  they  afforded 
of  an  accuracy,  a  suggestiveness,  and  a  power  of  physical 
observation,  which  if  they  had  not  made  Spencer  the  prince  of 
Scientific  Thinkers,  must  have  made  him  the  most  eminent  of 
scientific  specialists. 

With  an  imagination  restricted  almost  entirely  to  the 
relations  of  material  things  and  forces,  or  to  such  aspects 
of  human  life  as  can  in  any  way  be  reducible  into  them  or 
construed  in  terms  of  them  (his  theory  of  literary  style  even  is 
practically  that  of  Force  following  the  lines  of  least  resistance 
and  taking  the  shortest  cut  to  its  end !),  he  is  apparently 
almost  insensible  to  those  higher  and  finer  intuitions  of  the 
mind,  which  though  as  fixed  and  constant  in  their  laws  as  the 
material  forces,  are  nevertheless  so  subtle,  so  many-glancing, 
and  so  evanescent,  that  when  attempted  to  be  roughly  seized 
they  escape  through  the  hand,  and  can  only  be  apprehended 
by  the  finest  poetic  sensibility.  But  in  spite  of  these  natural 
defects,  like  those  great  chess  players  whose  far-sighted  com- 
binations of  movement  and  position  amaze  and  perplex  the 
ordinary  professors  of  the  game,  he  has  always  seemed  to  me 
to  be  in  his  own  line,  of  all  thinkers  ancient  or  modern,  the 
one  whose  power  of  analyzing  and  decomposing,  and  combining 
the  complex  web  of  Matter,  Motion,  and  Force,  is  the  most 
incontestable  and  assured ;  so  that  were  the  Problem  of  the 
World  an  affair  merely  of  Matter,  Motion,  and  Force,  and  did 
the  solution  of  its  riddle  demand  merely  the  unravelling  of 
their  infinite  complexities,  here  indeed  were  the  Philosopher 
would  give  it  us. 

As  it  is,  he  has  in  my  judgment  rendered  forever  obsolete 


HERBERT    SPENCER.  263 

and  antiquated  the  systems  of  those  Materialistic  Thinkers  who 
from  the  days  of  Democritus  and  Epicurus  downwards,  have 
based  their  speculations  on  the  imperfect  conceptions  of  their 
time  as  to  the  nature  and  relations  of  Matter,  Motion,  and 
Force,  as  well  as  of  those  Idealists  who  have  figured  the  spiritual 
world  in  images  and  analogies  drawn  from  these  conceptions ; 
and  to  those  whose  time  is  valuable,  both  alike,  except  as 
ancient  history,  may,  like  the  old  theories  of  physiology  and 
chemistry,  be  wiped  from  the  tables  of  the  memory  as  but 
hindrances  and  obstructions  to  truth.  And  as  for  the  Spiritual 
Philosophies  of  the  future,  they  must,  in  my  judgment,  for 
many  years  to  come,  either  consent  to  build  themselves  on  these 
scientific  speculations  of  Spencer  as  a  foundation  (or  on 
something  akin  to  them),  or  be  as  if  they  had  never  been.  As 
for  myself,  indeed,  neither  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing 
nor  for  years  afterwards,  in  spite  of  the  havoc  it  made  of  my 
ideal  of  the  world  and  of  human  life,  could  I  detect  any 
essentially  weak  or  imperfect  link  in  the  great  web  of  scientific 
thought  and  speculation  of  which  these  volumes  were  composed. 
And  it  was  not  until  my  mind  was  directed  to  the  question  of 
Spencer's  Philosophic  Method  as  distinct  from  his  particular 
opinions,  and  especially  as  to  the  bearing  of  this  method  on  the 
great  problems  of  Religion,  that  I  got  my  eye  on  the  central 
fallacies  by  which  his  philosophy  as  a  whole  was  pervaded,  and 
by  which  in  the  end,  and  as  a  complete  Philosophy  of  Life,  it 
must  inevitably  fall, — all  of  which  will  be  exhibited  in  their 
proper  place  as  the  course  of  this  evolution  proceeds. 


CHAPTER    II 


ARISTOCRACY   AND   DEMOCRACY. 

f  I^HE  shock  which  on  the  voyage  my  youthful  ideals  had 
sustained  by  the  perusal  of  Mr.  Spencer's  writings,  was 
not  lightened  on  my  landing  in  Glasgow,  for  here  I  was 
confronted  with  what  I  had  never  before  seen,  the  spectacle  of 
women  crowding  the  gin-shops  swearing  and  blaspheming,  and  of 
men,  dirty,  ragged  and  unkempt,  walking  boldly  barefoot  in  the 
open  streets.  Nor  were  matters  any  better  in  London  where  in 
the  twilight  dimness  of  the  winter  fogs  on  my  way  to  and  from 
the  hospitals,  the  figures  of  women  in  old  black  shawls,  blue 
and  besotted  with  gin  and  cold,  were  to  be  seen  making  their 
way  from  public-house  to  public-house  like  lost  and  belated 
vspirits.  It  was  not  that  sights  like  these  were  unknown  in  the 
great  cities  of  America  and  the  Colonies,  but  only  that  I  had  not 
myself  seen  them ;  for  in  the  town  where  I  was  born  and 
brought  up,  pauperism  was  unknown,  and  my  only  experience  of 
the  tramp  was  the  appearance  once  in  several  years,  perhaps,  of 
some  peripatetic  and  swarthy  Italian  with  monkey  and  hand- 
organ,  playing  for  pence  and  bread  from  door  to  door;  while 
during  my  residence  at  the  University,  living  far  away  from  the 
slums  and  back-streets  of  the  city,  if  tramps  and  paupers  were 
to  be  seen  there,  I  was  unaware  of  their  existence. 

But  in  London  other  experiences  of  an.  equally  unexpected 
but  less  tangible  kind  awaited  me.     On  my  arrival  alone  and 


ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY.  265 

without  friends  I  saw  little  of  English  life  for  some  time, 
coming  into  contact  practically  only  with  my  landlady  and  the 
young  men  with  whom  I  walked  the  hospitals ;  but  even 
through  these  narrow  chinks  I  soon  became  aware  that  I  had 
come  to  a  land  where  the  aims  and  ideals  of  men,  their  categories 
of  moral  judgment,  and  their  views  as  to  the  relations  in 
which  the  different  classes  of  society  stood  to  each  other,  were 
diametrically  opposed  to  those  I  had  left  behind  me  at  home. 
For  the  students  with  whom  I  came  into  contact  and  with 
whom  I  tried  to  enter  into  friendly  relations,  though  polite  and 
courteous  enough,  were  cold  and  reserved  in  manner ;  and 
conversation  with  them,  after  a  pass  or  two,  had  a  tendency 
suddenly  to  collapse  into  monosyllables  ;  any  attempt  to  carry 
it  outside  the  limits  of  a  certain  conventional  circuit,  to 
heighten  its  pitch,  or  to  give  it  either  a  personal  or  abstract 
tone,  being  nipped  as  by  a  sudden  frost ;  the  echo  of  your  voice 
being  returned  to  you  from  these  hard  and  frigid  exteriors  as 
from  marble  vaults.  Students  without  enthusiasm  or  ideals, 
sensuous  and  unaspiring  natures,  I  had  indeed  left  behind  me  by 
the  score,  but  here  I  felt  was  a  something  palpably  different,  and 
of  which  at  the  time  I  could  give  no  explanation.  And  still 
more  surprised  was  I  to  hear  in  the  outside  departments  of  the 
hospital,  patients  spoken  to  by  the  young  physicians  and  their 
assistants  in  a  tone  of  unconscious  hauteur  and  authority  that 
would  have  raised  an  insurrection  at  home :  and  what  was  still 
more  amazing  to  me,  to  find  that  to  these  words  of  command, 
delivered  as  they  were  in  tones  of  the  most  perfect  calmness,  the 
patients  moved  as  if  they  were  automata.  It  was  in  reality  the 
tone  and  manner  of  men  brought  up  in  an  aristocratic  state  of 
society  with  which  I  had  now  come  for  the  first  time  in  contact, 
and  it  filled  me  with  as  much  bewilderment  and  surprise  as  if  I 
had  been  suddenly  let  down  into  a  community  of  Chinamen  or 
Hindoos. 

In  democratic  communities  like  America  and  the   Colonies, 
which  are  founded  on  the   principle   of  a  common  humanity, 


26(3  ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY. 

and  of  the  absolute  equality  of  man  as  man,  the  mind  released 
from  all  suspicion  or  fear  of  superiority,  gives  itself  up  to  that 
genial  good-fellowship  and  craving  for  sympathy  with  other 
minds,  which  when  once  all  hope  of  personal  domination  is 
absolutely  shut  out,  is  the  most  immediate  and  pressing  desire 
of  the  heart.  Accordingly  as  we  might  expect  in  so  congenial 
an  atmosphere,  all  the  infinite  variety  of  men's  moods,  feelings, 
and  desires,  are  invited  and  even  encouraged  to  come  out  and 
sun  themselves,  like  the  fauna  of  some  tropical  clime  ;  all  alike 
as  they  happen  to  arise,  without  regard  to  rank  or  distinction, 
and  without  selection,  repression,  or  reserve.  The  consequence 
is  that  in  conversation  men  give  themselves  up  to  the  expression 
and  interchange  of  their  hopes  and  fears,  their  business  or 
pleasure,  their  private  humours,  personal  curiosity,  bodily 
ailments,  what  they  have  eaten  and  how  they  have  slept,  with 
equal  naivete  and  impartiality ;  the  only  limitation  put  on  this 
wide  range  of  promiscuity,  being  the  ordinary  decencies,  the 
sacred  reserves  of  life ;  and  even  these,  the  good  Walt 
Whitman  pushing  the  democratic  instinct  to  its  farthest 
expression,  but  with  perfect  purity  of  intent,  would  throw 
open  without  after-thought,  affectation  or  shame.  And  further, 
in  the  absence  of  any  even  the  shadow  of  superiority  to  coerce 
or  chasten,  this  wide  license  of  expression  is  apt  to  run  into  all 
the  appointments  of  life,  which  as  we  see  among  Americans 
have  all  this  motley  variegated  character, — their  dress,  their 
furniture,  their  ornaments,  their  dinner-tables,  and  more 
especially  their  language,  which  loose,  irregular,  and  uncon- 
ventional as  the  variety  of  angles  at  which  their  slouch  hats 
are  tilted,  has  that  personal  and  peculiar  flavour  which  is  so 
characteristic ;  made  up  as  it  is  of  .  slang,  hyperbole,  and 
picturesque  metaphor  drawn  from  the  familiar  and  popular 
experiences  of  the  race-course  and  card-table,  the  minstrel- 
troupe,  the  music-hall,  and  the  streets.  Now  in  communities 
like  these,  where  all  the  moods,  sentiments,  and  feelings  of  the 
mind  have  an  equal  right  to  expression,  and  where  the  attempt 


ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY.  267 

is  made  so  to  coerce  them  down  and  run  them  all  together  that 
they  shall  confer  no  distinction,  but  like  a  common  highway 
though  open  to  all  shall  be  the  prerogative  of  none,  it  is  natural 
that  no  offence  should  be  more  severely  punished  by  public 
opinion,  than  any  attempt  to  upset  this  democratic  basis  by  the 
assumption  of  airs  of  superiority  founded  on  personal  pride  or 
reserve,  on  tone,  attitude,  speech,  or  manners,  in  a  word  on  the 
pruning  and  trimming  of  the  sentiments  and  behaviour.  But 
as  in  every  man  the  love  of  distinction  and  superiority  is  as 
strong  when  once  his  equality  is  assured,  as  is  his  love  of 
equality  while  he  himself  is  kept  down ;  and  as  all  attempts  to 
obtain  distinction  or  superiority  by  the  cultivation  of  a 
particular  manner,  tone,  attitude,  or  form  of  speech,  are  alike 
deprecated  by  public  sentiment  and  opinion,  as  savouring  of 
old  aristocratic  pretentions,  it  is  evident  that  the  passion  for 
inequality  or  distinction  must  seek  satisfaction  in  the  only 
other  way  open  to  it,  namely  in  superiority  of  knowledge,  skill, 
ingenuity,  that  is  to  say  in  superiority  of  Intellect  as  distinct 
from  superiority  of  Sentiment  or  Form.  And  accordingly  as 
we  see,  in  democracies  the  utmost  latitude  is  allowed  for  the 
exhibition  and  demonstration  of  individual  talent ;  whether  it 
be  physical,  mechanical,  or  professional  skill,  '  smartness  '  and 
success  in  money-making,  or  eminence  in  music,  literature,  the 
drama,  oratory,  or  art.  But  as  among  such  a  wide  sea  of  heads 
all  on  a  level  of  equality,  with  no  division  into  classes  rising 
above  one  another  like  the  seats  in  an  amphitheatre,  whereby 
the  rank  and  quality  of  each  may  be  clearly  seen,  every  man  is 
so  shouldered  in  among  his  neighbours  as  to  be  in  danger  of 
losing  his  importance  and  individuality  altogether  unless  by 
strenuous  self-assertion,  each  one  accordingly  is  permitted  to 
shout  aloud  and  call  attention  to  his  talents,  as  to  the  wares  of 
his  shop,  with  the  entire  sympathy  and  good-will  of  the 
bystanders. 

Such  then  are  the  characteristics  of  young  democracies  that 
have  not  been  grafted  on  old  aristocratic  stocks,  namely,  the 


268  ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY. 

free  expression  and  interchange  in  conversation  of  all  feelings, 
moods,  and  sentiments  alike ;  the  making  of  intellect  and 
knowledge  supreme  in  public  estimation;  and  the  free  scope 
given  to  personal  self-assertion  ;  all  of  them  characteristics  of  the 
democratic  society  in  which  my  own  early  years  were  passed ; 
and  to  these  the  spirit  of  aristocracy,  as  I  was  soon  to  discover, 
opposed  itself  point  to  point. 

In  old  aristocracies  like  England  for  example,  where  society 
was  originally  founded  on  force  and  on  the  serfdom  of  the 
masses,  the  inequality  of  rank  that  naturally  grew  out  of  this 
inequality  of  conditions,  was  perpetuated  by  tradition  and 
sentiment,  long  after  the  original  power  on  which  it  rested  had 
decayed.  And  as  the  love  of  power  and  domination  is  always 
stronger  in  the  human  heart  when  it  has  a  chance  to  exert  itself, 
than  the  feeling  of  sympathy  with  those  who  are  regarded  as 
inferiors,  instead  of  the  universal  sympathy  with  all  white  men 
which  characterizes  democracies,  the  rulino;-classes  in  aristocracies 
have  a  tendency  to  restrict  their  sympathies  to  their  own  order, 
and  have  no  desire,  but  an  aversion  rather,  to  interchange 
feelings  and  experiences  with  their  inferiors,  or  to  mingle  their 
sentiments  in  the  common  human  stream.  On  the  contrary 
they  seek  by  every  artifice  to  set  up  barriers  against  such 
interchange,  and  in  order  to  distinguish  themselves  from  the 
masses  whom  they  allow  to  revel  in  the  free  and  miscellaneous 
interchange  of  whatever  mood,  sentiment,  or  feeling  chances  to 
arise,  surround  themselves  with  an  atmosphere  of  pride  and 
reserve,  of  choice  and  selected  sentiments,  language,  and 
behaviour.  For  on  whatever  qualities  aristocracies  were 
originally  founded,  whether  on  intellectual  or  spiritual 
superiority  as  with  the  Brahmins  and  Chinese  Mandarins,  on 
industry  and  money  as  with  the  mediaeval  Italian  aristocracies, 
or  on  force  and  land  with  the  concomitants  of  rank  and 
title  as  with  the  existing  remnants  of  feudal  aristocracy  in 
Europe,  they  can  only  maintain  themselves  (so  long,  that  is, 
as  the  institution  of  the  family  lasts  as  an  independent  social 


ARISTOCRACY    AND    DEMOCRACY.  209 

factor),  by  personal  tone,  manner,  attitude,  and  speech,  or 
what  is  known  as  *  form '  or  breeding,  that  is  to  say  by 
the  artistic  culture  of  the  sentiments  and  feelings.  And 
this  for  various  reasons.  In  the  first  place  that  quality 
in  men  which  a  celebrated  politician  once  contemptuously 
spoke  of  as  '  damned  intellect '  is  always  the  prerogative  of 
individuals  not  of  families  or  classes,  and  to  those  who  share  his 
sentiments  the  prospect  of  a  motley  herd  of  intellectual  tailors, 
shoe-makers,  or  other  artisans,  of  needy  philosophers,  or  of 
broken  down  litterateurs  of  genius  installed  in  the  seats  of  honour 
and  consideration,  would  indeed  be  '  to  rock  the  settled  calm  of 
States  quite  from  its  fixture  ' !  Besides,  the  social  order  arising 
as  it  did  originally  out  of  a  political  order  in  which  command  on 
the  one  hand,  and  obedience  on  the  other,  were  the  habitual 
mental  states,  a  certain  aloofness,  constraint,  and  reserve  had  to 
be  put  on  the  outward  manifestations  of  the  feelings  in  order  to 
preserve  discipline ;  as  even  the  most  democratic  of  modern 
communities  still  find  necessaiy  in  the  army  in  the  relations 
between  officers  and  men.  And  this  again  has  its  root  in  the 
still  more  profound  truth,  that  just  as  we  saw  in  a  previous 
chapter  that  all  high  intellectual  superiority  rests  not  on 
over-grown  special  '  organs,'  or  on  trains  of  logic,  but  on  the 
width,  depth,  and  fineness  of  sympathy  and  sensibility,  that  is 
to  say  on  one  kind  of  feeling ;  so  personal  superiority  as  distinct 
from  merely  intellectual,  rests  for  the  great  masses  of  men  on 
superiority  of  tone  and  sentiment,  that  is  on  another  kind  of 
feeling.  This  need  not  necessarily  be  a  purely  spiritual  or 
moral  superiority,  as  we  shall  see,  but  rather  an  artistic  or 
aesthetic  one,  in  wrhich  refined  and  cultured  forms  of  conduct 
and  behaviour  whether  innate  or  acquired,  shall  be  habitually 
turned  towards  the  beholder,  to  the  exclusion  or  suppression  of 
all  that  is  vulgar,  common,  or  low. 

Now  this  artistic  culture  of  the  sentiments,  this  selection, 
trimming  and  pruning,  or  if  you  will,  even  galvanizing  of  them 
into  fixed  attitudes,  this  art  and  skill  in  knowing  what  you  are 


270  ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY. 

to  do  or  avoid,  to  think  or  to  feel,  to  say  or  refrain  from  saying 
on  all  the  occasions  of  life,  is  not  left  to  the  waywardness  of 
individual    caprice,    but    has    alwaj^s    been    moulded    on    one 
recognised   pattern-figure,   the  figure  which   in  all   European 
countries  is  known  as  the  '  gentleman.'     This  is  by  no  means 
an  ideal  figure,  all  of  a  piece,  and  an  embodiment  of  all  the 
virtues,  holding  on  high  the  Ten  Commandments  like    some 
ascetic  of  old ;   for  the  aristocracy  have  always  permitted  to 
themselves  a  greater  license  in  affairs  of  gallantry  and  the  like, 
than  they  have  allowed  to  the  common  herd,  and  have  been 
little    scrupulous    in    many    of    the    ordinary    moralities    not 
essential  to  their  own  preservation  as  a  class;    but  rather  a 
Nebuchadnezzar  image,  partly  of  gold  and  partly  of  clay,  and 
rising  no  higher  in  purity  than  to  the  level  of  the  stage   of 
civilization  in  which  it  is  found  ;   the  whole  operating  on  the 
minds  of  men  not  through  the  inculcation  of  the  Decalogue, 
but   rather  by  the  power  of  an  artistic  and  interesting  per- 
sonality, in  which  honour,   esprit,  and  elevation  of  sentiment 
are  artistically  combined  with  the  suppression  of  all  that  is 
vulgar,   common,    or   eccentric   in   manners,   or   personal   and 
boastful    in    conversation.     If    then,    as    we    have    seen,    in 
democracies    intellectual    skill,    '  smartness,'    knowledge     and 
ability   are  the   points    of   distinction,    the   ideal,   and   object 
of  admiration  among   men;   in  aristocracies    on   the  contrary, 
the  ideal  and  point  of  distinction  is  the  '  gentleman '  with  all 
that  the  term  implies  ;  and  all  attempts  to  establish  a  claim  to 
superiority  on  merely   intellectual    grounds,   are   resisted    and 
contemned  as  contrary  to  their  essential  spirit.     So  that  we 
have    this    curious    result,   that    while    in    democracies    public 
opinion  is  tolerant  of  all  kinds  of  intellectual  distinction,  but 
not  of  that  which  depends  on  the  culture  of  the  sentiments 
and  feelings,  in  aristocracies  on  the  contrary  it  is  tolerant  of 
all  distinctions  arising  out  of  rank  and  birth,  or  founded  on 
sentiment  and  feeling,  but  not  of  those  founded  on  knowledge, 
skill,  or  intellect.     A  gentleman,  as  with  Charles  I.,  is  supposed 


ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY.  271 

to  know  as  much  only  as  is  necessary  for  a  gentleman  ;  the 
good  taste  and  common-sense  in  trifles  which  is  so  marked 
and  essential  an  ingredient  in  his  composition,  being  esteemed 
not  so  much  as  intellectual  products  (which  they  in  a  sense 
are),  as  artistic  features  necessary  to  the  conception  and  very 
existence  of  the  figure.  The  consequence  is  that  to  minds 
thus  moving  through  a  certain  fixed  and  definite  number  of 
constellations,  any  wide-ranging  enthusiasm  for  intellectual 
ideals  or  abstract  culture,  for  new  horizons  of  moral  or  spiritual 
expansion,  however  much  it  may  be  entertained  in  the  private 
heart  (and  indeed  this  must  be  so  in  a  community  which 
comprises  a  large  Professional  and  Middle-Class  founded  on 
intellect  and  character  as  its  basis),  must  not  too  forcibly 
intrude  itself  into  general  conversation ;  and  if  it  does,  will  be 
met  by  a  certain  air  of  coldness  and  reserve.  Even  in  those 
aristocratic  groups  that  are  attempting  to  arise  and  nourish 
themselves  on  a  democratic  soil,  as  in  some  of  the  American 
cities  like  Boston  for  example,  the  artistic  cultivation  of  the 
sentiments  and  feelings  is  at  bottom  made  the  real  point  of 
social  distinction,  and  not  mere  intellectual  superiority  as  one 
would  have  imagined ;  but  owing  to  the  absence  of  material  on 
which  to  operate  in  the  shape  of  '  lower  orders '  and  the  like, 
they  have  none  of  the  genial  character  of  the  older  aristocracies, 
but  can  exist  only  by  keeping  themselves  unspotted  from  the 
world,  or  in  other  words,  by  coldness,  exclusion,  negation,  and 
reserve. 

Now  it  was  on  these  characteristics  of  an  aristocratic  society 
that  I  struck,  as  on  a  bed-rock,  when  in  my  attempts  at  conver- 
sation with  the  students  at  the  hospital  my  youthful  enthusiasms 
were  met  with  so  much  unaccountable  frigidity ;  and  in  my 
friendless  isolation  in  a  great  city,  coming  as  it  did  on  the  blows 
which  my  ideal  had  just  recently  received  from  the  Spencerian 
philosophy,  it  still  further  depressed  my  spirits.  I  felt  that  the 
whole  tone  of  sentiment  and  opinion,  the  entire  way  of  looking 
at  men  and  things,  was  in  some  way  essentially  antagonistic  to 


272  ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY. 

that  to  which  I  had  been  accustomed,  but  as  to  the  reason  of  it 
I  could  form  no  conjecture.  Of  the  same  race  and  religion  and 
with  a  common  language  and  ancestry,  I  could  have  no  conception 
that  there  could  possibly  be  any  difference  in  sentiment  and 
opinion  between  the  colonies  and  the  Mother  Country ;  and  in 
my  depressed  and  sensitive  humour  began  to  imagine  that  the 
fault  must  be  personal  to  myself ;  when  suddenly  one  day  on  my 
return  from  the  hospital  I  got  my  first  inkling  of  how  the  matter 
stood,  by  the  entrance  into  my  room  of  my  landlady  who  with 
much  knowingness  and  show  of  contempt,  confided  in  me  that 
one  of  the  lodgers  who  was  in  the  habit  of  giving  himself  great 
airs  of  superiority  about  the  house,  was  no  gentleman,  as  he  had 
actually  been  guilty  of  counting  his  potatos !  Now  in  my  time 
in  Canada  the  word  Gentleman  was  rarely  if  ever  used,  and  to 
say  that  a  man  was  not  a  gentleman  implied  that  he  had  been 
guilty  not  of  'bad  form,' or  some  breach  of  conventional  propriety, 
but  of  positive  immorality.  But  on  my  best  reflection  (for  my 
own  withers  being  unwrung  in  this  matter  of  the  potatos,  I  was 
able  to  give  myself  up  to  the  contemplation  of  the  incident 
with  calmness  and  impartiality),  I  could  not  for  the  life  of  me 
understand  why  a  man's  counting  his  own  potatos  should  make 
him  no  gentleman;  when  suddenly  it  began  to  dawn  on  me  that 
the  word  must  be  used  in  some  special  and  esoteric  sense  to 
which  I  had  not  yet  found  the  key  ;  and  this  sense,  as  I  afterwards 
discovered,  was  that  of  the  trimmed  and  cultured  personality 
we  have  just  seen,  whose  artistic  and  refined  manner  and 
behaviour  were  the  hall-mark  that  distinguished  him  from  the 
vulgar  throng,  who,  on  the  other  hand,  by  rolling  and  disporting 
themselves  in  the  expression  and  exhibition  of  every  sentiment 
that  happened  to  come  to  the  surface  of  their  minds,  cut 
themselves  off  from  grace  as  by  inevitable  decree. 

Associated  with  this  aristocratic  spirit,  partly  as  direct  effect 
and  partly  as  historic  survival  from  an  earlier  time,  was  another 
phenomenon  of  society  which  cut  still  more  directly  into  the 
inexperienced  ideals  of  my  youth,  already  so  deeply  scarred  and 


ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY.  273 

trenched  by  the  philosophic  scepticism  of  Spencer ;  and  this  was 
the  condition  and  outlook  of  the  Working  Man.  In  the  Colonies, 
where  democratic  sentiment  covered  the  whole  field  of  human 
activity,  and  where  all  men  alike  were  free  and  equal,  the  working- 
man  after  his  day's  work  was  done,  was  in  no  way  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  general  body  of  citizens,  but  moving 
freely  among  them,  took  part  in  all  the  affairs  of  the  community 
with  perfect  equality,  in  no  way  marked  off  from  the  rest  of  his 
fellows  in  dress,  manners,  dialect,  or  personal  dignity.  But  in 
London  I  was  confronted  with  the  spectacle  of  working  men 
appearing  in  the  street,  in  public  places,  at  their  clubs,  and  at 
lectures  in  their  ordinary  working  clothes,  speaking  a  different 
dialect  from  the  other  classes  of  society,  and  instead  of  mingling 
freely  with  them,  separated  off  from  them  as  it  were  in  special 
compartments,  in  railways,  restaurants,  theatres  and  other  places 
of  public  resort;  and  more  than  all,  so  subdued  apparently  by 
the  traditions  in  which  they  had  been  brought  up,  and  by  their 
own  belief  in  the  inherent  superiority  of  the  classes  above  them, 
that  in  token  of  the  same  they  were  to  be  seen  touching  their 
hats  and  taking  '  tips '  in  open  day  and  without  shame.  Now 
all  this  was  to  me  so  new,  so  strange,  so  unaccountable,  that 
appearing  as  it  did  in  men  whom  I  soon  recognized  to  be 
otherwise  so  robust,  manly  and  brave,  it  fell  on  my  mind  like  a 
stain;  and  living  as  I  did  entirely  in  the  high  ideals  of  the 
mind,  and  not  in  the  calculations  of  any  merely  pecuniary  or 
sensuous  good,  it  was  as  if  the  human  mind  itself  had  suffered 
some  inherent  degradation.  But  long  before  I  could  give  any 
satisfactory  explanation  of  it  to  myself,  it  had  produced  a  quite 
peculiar  speculative  effect  on  a  subject  no  less  remote  from  the 
sublunary  concern  out  of  which  it  grew,  than  that  of  the 
immortality  of  the  soul. 

For  in  America  and  the  Colonies  generally,  where  all  men 
alike  are  equal,  independent,  and  free,  the  bright  and  unfettered 
dominion  of  the  mind,  its  free  elevation  and  expansion,  which 
result  from  there  being  nothing  between  it  and  high  heaven 


274  ARISTOCRACY   AND   DEMOCRACY. 

to  crush  or  subdue  the  spirit,  give  to  every  man  the  appearance 
of  an  illimitable  nature  to  which  no  boundaries  are  visible. 
That  such  a  nature  should  be  immortal  was  readily  conceivable 
without  any  breach  of  continuity,  and  whatever  difficulties 
in  consequence  the  doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
might  meet  with  from  the  physical  or  material  side,  it  could 
meet  with  none  from  the  nature  of  man  himself.  But  in 
England  where  men  were  distributed  into  classes  whose  opinions 
and  prejudices  and  the  circuit  of  thought  and  sentiment  in 
which  they  moved,  and  beyond  which  like  rooted  trees  they 
could  not  pass,  were  easily  surveyable  on  all  sides,  the  nature 
of  man  seemed  to  lose  its  illimitable  character ;  and  I  kept 
saying  to  myself  as  I  went  along,  these  are  not  immortal 
spirits,  there  is  ho  immortality  of  the  soul !  It  was  a  strange 
conclusion,  I  admit,  to  have  arisen  out  of  an  environment 
so  foreign  to  itself  as  the  relations  in  which  the  different 
classes  of  a  particular  country  stood  to  each  other ;  but  from 
the  first  real  glimpse  which  I  got  that  the  nature  of  man  was 
not,  as  I  had  thought,  illimitable  and  free,  it  followed  of 
necessity,  sinking  into  my  mind  and  still  further  depressing 
my  ideal  of  life,  and  curiously  colouring  the  course  of  my 
general  speculations  during  the  immediately  succeeding  years. 

It  is  true  that  in  Canada  we  had  the  negro,  but  for  the  time 
I  had  quite  forgotten  him ;  for  he  was  regarded  by  us  young 
men  at  least  as  something  so  peculiar  and  apart,  that  we  took 
little  or  no  thought  of  him  ;  and  when  we  did,  we  vaguely  felt 
that  if  immortality  were  to  be  his  lot,  it  would  be  in  some 
separate  compartment  of  heaven,  as  it  had  already  been  on 
earth !  From  which  it  is  evident  that  we  were  as  much  the 
creatures  of  tradition  and  opinion  in  the  Colonies  as  in  England, 
the  only  difference  being  that  in  the  Colonies  public  opinion 
being  a  universal  and  homogeneous  element,  pressed  so  evenly 
on  all  sides  of  us  that  like  the  air  we  breathe  or  the  water  in 
which  the  fishes  swim,  we  were  almost  unconscious  of  its 
existence.     For  my  part  it  was  not  until  I  had  been  transported 


ARISTOCRACY   AND    DEMOCRACY.  275 

to  the  quite  different  and  as  we  have  seen,  quite  antagonistic 
social  order  of  England,  that  I  got  a  second  point  of  view 
outside  of  myself  from  which  to  see  myself,  and  so  became 
aware  of  my  former  slavery.  But  when  once  I  got  my  eye  on 
it,  then  dissolved  for  ever  like  a  transformation  scene,  that 
fond  illusion,  not  only  of  youth,  but  of  the  unreflecting,  the 
uncultivated,  and  the  untravelled  everywhere,  the  illusion, 
namely,  that  all  the  settled  arrangements  and' institutions  of 
society — its  Church  and  State,  its  hierarchies,  authorities,  and 
powers,  as  well  as  the  creeds,  beliefs,  and  prejudices  in  which 
men  are  brought  up, — have  their  roots  in  eternal  nature  and 
have  been  there  from  all  time ;  and  in  its  place  arose  the 
perception  (of  so  much  importance,  as  we  shall  see,  in  political, 
and  social  speculation),  that  all  these  are  fugitive  and  temporary, 
have  had  their  causes  and  origins  and  will  have  their  decease, 
and  that  having  arisen  originally  out  of  a  few  simple  elements 
of  character  and  environment,  they  are  as  predicable,  so  long 
as  these  last,  as  are  the  movements  of  sheep  before  the 
shepherd ;  all  individual  prejudices,  sentiments,  and  beliefs 
being  driven  before  these,  their  life  and  soul,  as  snow-flakes 
before  the  wind.     But  this  is  to  anticipate,  and  I  must  return. 


CHAPTBK    III. 


MEDICINE. 

T70R  some  years  after  my  arrival  in  London,  with  the  view 
of  supplementing  the  mere  book  knowledge  in  which  we 
Canadian  students  were  more  than  usually  proficient,  by  the 
medical  knowledge  of  the  bedside,  I  was  in  the  habit  of 
walking  the  hospitals  daily ;  not  attaching  myself  to  any  one 
in  particular,  but  moving  freely  to  and  fro  among  them  all ; 
now  giving  myself  up  unreservedly  to  some  distinguished 
clinical  teacher  here,  now  to  some  distinguished  therapeutist 
there,  now  listening  to  the  bedside  talks  of  Sir  William  Jenner 
at  University  College,  now  attending  the  operations  of  Sir 
William  Ferguson  at  King's ;  at  one  time,  and  for  long  periods 
together,  taking  courses  on  special  subjects  such  as  diseases  of 
the  heart  or  lungs,  diseases  peculiar  to  women  and  children, 
and  the  like,  and  then  returning  again  to  the  wards  of  the 
general  hospitals  to  take  survey  of  the  whole  field.  But  in  all 
these  activities  it  was  entirely  on  the  practical  that  my 
thoughts  were  bent,  on  what  was  solid,  demonstrable,  and  if 
possible  predicable  in  Medicine  and  disease,  and  not  on  what 
was  still  in  the  air  and  in  the  region  of  hypothesis  merely. 
For  Medicine  as  an  Art,  that  is  to  say,  in  so  far  as  it  was  a 
practically  limited  body  of  principles  which  remained  stationary 
over  any  one  decade  or  generation,  and  which  were  to  be 
applied  day  after  day  to  the  same  or  similar  cases  in  wearisome 


MEDICINE.  277 

routine,  I  had  no  inclination ;  for  from  the  time  when  my  mind 
was  first  fired  with  the  ambition  for  literary  and  philosophic 
distinction,  the  thought  of  having  to  spend  my  life  either  in 
threshing  away  at  the  same  old  straw  of  theological  dogma  like 
the  preachers,  or  ringing  the  changes  on  the  same  old  stock  of 
motives  involved  in  crime  like  the  lawyers,  or  like  the  doctors 
feeling  pulses  and  looking  at  tongues  from  youth  to  age,  came 
over  my  mind  with  a  special  and  peculiar  horror.  I  had  been 
taken  possession  of  for  the  time  being,  I  may  remind  the 
reader,  by  a  rapacious  and  exorbitant  ideal  which  would  be 
satisfied  with  no  theme  that  did  not  give  infinite  scope  for 
speculation  and  thought.  And  although  one  might  have 
imagined  that  in  Medicine  the  wide  penumbra  of  misty  and 
unproven  hypothesis  which  surrounds  its  small  nucleus  of  fixed 
and  definite  truth,  might  have  afforded  me  a  wide  enough  field, 
yet  this  in  reality  was  not  what  I  wanted.  For  with  the  ideal 
within  me  bruised  and  crushed  by  the  Spencerian  materialism 
which  now  lay  on  my  spirits  like  the  night,  and  with  the  great 
world  of  Nature  and  Human  Life  lying  around  me  and  waiting 
to  be  explored,  if  haply  by  some  deeper  perception  of  its 
workings  I  might  shift  and  dislodge  the  incubus  that  was 
pressing  on  my  heart,  I  had  not  the  time  to  give  to  mere 
speculations  on  the  origin  and  nature  of  disease,  which  even  if 
reduced  to  truth,  could  in  no  way  affect  the  solution  of  the 
great  problems  that  were  uppermost  in  my  mind.  Neither 
could  I  consent  to  devote  myself  to  the  long  and  patient 
investigation  necessary  if  one  would  help  on  the  advance  of 
Medicine  as  a  Science  in  even  the  smallest  of  its  many 
branches  and  subdivisions.  For  what  in  my  youthful  ardour  I 
most  desired,  was  some  problem  or  theme  which  would  engage 
the  whole  mind,  with  all  its  armoury  of  intellectual  and  spiritual 
weapons — analogy,  observation,  penetration,  intuition, — and 
which  would  allow  it  to  move  along  these  from  point  to 
point  in  endless  perspective,  weaving  its  own  web  as  it  went 
along ;    some  theme  that  would   admit   of   a  free  unimpeded 


278  MEDICINE. 

flight  down  the  wind  of  thought,  unclogged  by  earthly  details, 
and  exempt  from  the  necessity  of  waiting  for  a  full  and 
complete  explanation  of  physical  Nature,  before  it  could  begin  ; 
some  problem  in  a  word,  which  should  allow  of  its  secrets 
being  penetrated  from  the  side  of  the  mind  and  its  laws — those 
laws  in  which  I  was  immersed  when  the  Philosophy  of  Spencer 
fell  on  me  out  of  the  blue  sky,  dashing  my  ideal,  and  breaking 
up  for  the  time  being  the  ordered  continuity  of  my  thought. 
And  such  a  theme  was  the  great  Problem  of  the  World  and  of 
Human  Life,  and  in  my  then  mood  and  temper  nothing  less 
would  content  me  as  worthy  to  claim  the  devotion  of  a  life. 

Now  Medicine  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  department  of  Physical 
Science,  has  to  do  with  the  human  body  as  a  part  of  Nature 
merely,  and  like  all  Physical  Science  has  to  deal  with  an 
infinite  complex  of  forces, — physical,  chemical,  mechanical, 
electrical,  vital, — the  laws  of  whose  action  can  never  be  anti- 
cipated or  known  beforehand  by  any  combination  of  mere 
thought  however  subtle  or  far-reaching,  but  on  the  contrary 
must  await  the  slow  and  dilatory  results  of  observation  and 
experiment ;  in  this  respect  differing  entirely  from  Poetry  and 
Philosophy  which  on  the  self-same  basis  of  physical  Nature, 
can  rear,  as  has  so  often  been  seen,  vast  pyramids  of  truth  by 
the  combinations  of  individual  genius  alone.  In  other  words, 
while  in  Philosophy  a  single  mind  of  sufficient  power  can,  like 
a  great  chess-player,  by  new  combinations  of  the  same  old 
pieces  make  vast  advances  in  thought;  in  Physical  Science 
and  Medicine  on  the  other  hand,  the  smallest  general  advance 
can  only  be  made  by  an  innumerable  body  of  workers 
stretching  athwart  the  field  like  an  army,  and  under  the 
guidance  and  inspiration  of  some  great  general  principle  to 
direct  their  labours — Gravitation,  the  Atomic  theory,  Natural 
Selection,  the  Germ  theory,  Evolution,  and  the  like — breaking 
up  the  soil  in  every  quarter  of  the  field,  and  so  gradually 
reducing  the  recalcitrant  phenomena  of  Nature  to  order  and 
law.     But  as  it  is  not  once  in  a  generation  or  perhaps  in  a 


MEDICINE.  279 

century  even,  that  the-  existing  stage  of  scientific  progress  is 
ripe  for  the  new  generalization  of  a  Newton,  a  Darwin,  or  a 
Pasteur,  it  is  evident  that  in  these  scientific  labours  Speculation 
can  have  no  unimpeded  flight  along  the  mental  lines  of  analogy, 
intuition,  and  poetic  interpretation,  but  on  the  contrary,  con- 
fronted at  every  turn  with  unconquered  facts  whose  laws  and 
causes  have  still  to  be  explored,  must,  like  the  snake  in  Goethe's 
4  Tale,'  ever  bend  itself  to  the  earth  again  before  it  can  make 
the  smallest  advance.  And  hence  it  is  that  not  only  in 
Medicine  but  in  all  the  Physical  Sciences  you  have  the 
spectacle  of  thousands  of  diligent  and  conscientious  workers 
spending  their  lives  in  observing  and  reporting  each  some 
small  section  of  the  vast  and  unexhausted  field,  and  with  their 
microscopes,  telescopes,  stethoscopes,  spectroscopes,  and  the 
rest,  moving  athwart  the  broad  expanse  of  Nature  like  an  army 
of  locusts  (beneficent  and  not  destructive),  analyzing,  decom- 
posing, separating,  and  breaking  up  the  gross  concreteness  of 
things  into  their  elemental  forms ;  content  to  spend  their  lives  in 
this  pursuit,  if  so  be  they  may  add  some  genuine  contribution 
however  small,  to  that  common  stock  of  knowledge  which  is 
necessary  before  the  next  great  general  advance  is  possible  ; 
but  of  whom  the  most  alas !  are  condemned  to  die  before  the 
promised  land  is  in  sight.  But  in  spite  of  my  natural  love  of 
reality,  and  the  fascination  which  Nature  and  her  processes  had 
always  exercised  over  my  mind,  I  could  not  reconcile  myself 
to  making  any  one  or  other  of  the  departments  of  Science  or 
Medicine,  the  object  of  my  life's  devotion.  What  with  the 
great  Problem  of  Life  to  which  I  had  already  dedicated 
myself,  lying  still  unsolved  before  me,  and  with  the  Spencerian 
Philosophy  pressing  on  me  like  a  nightmare;  what  with  the 
limited  scope  that  any  special  department  of  Science  permits 
for  the  free  exercise  of  the  whole  range  of  mental  faculties, 
and  with  an  exorbitant  ideal  which  would  be  satisfied  with 
nothing  less  as  its  province  than  the  whole  interests  of  Man ; 
what  with  the  fact  that  I  had  taken  as  the  basis  and  ground- 


280  MEDICINE. 

work  of  my  thinking,  the  doctrine  of  Evolution  which  was  not 
to  be  affected  in  any  of  its  greater  implications  by  any  minor 
scientific  discovery  ;  what  with  all  these,  and  other  subordinate 
considerations,  it  was  impossible  that  I  should  give  the  full 
allegiance  of  my  mind  to  Medicine.  And  accordingly  when 
one  of  our  most  distinguished  physicians  made  me  the  offer  of 
collaborating  with  him  in  certain  scientific  investigations,  the 
results  of  which  were  to  be  published  under  our  conjoint 
names,  and  assured  me  at  the  same  time  that  if  I  accepted  his 
offer  it  would  lead  almost  to  a  certainty  in  a  year  or  two  to  a 
chair  as  lecturer  in  one  or  other  of  the  medical  schools,  I  felt 
obliged  to  decline  the  kind  and  all  too  generous  proposal. 
That  it  was  the  parting  of  the  ways,  and  would  decide  the 
entire  course  of  my  after  years  I  was  well  aware,  but  in  spite 
of  the  material  and  professional  advantages  that  would  have 
accrued  to  me  from  my  acceptance  of  it,  it  was  without  hesi- 
tation or  afterthought  that  I  deliberately  chose  Philosophy  as 
my  bride,  content  to  endure  with  her  whatever  in  the  future; 
might  befall. 

But  while  neither  Medicine  as  an  art,  requiring  the 
application  of  a  limited  set  of  principles  to  the  endless  details 
of  practice,  nor  Medicine  as  a  science,  involving  the  patient  and 
laborious  work  of  adding  to  these  principles  in  some  one  or 
more  sections  of  its  wide  field,  could  in  my  then  state  of  mind 
secure  my  full  and  free  allegiance,  I  was  nevertheless  deeply 
interested,  as  I  have  already  said,  in  all  those  truths  which  were 
immediately  practical,  which  had  stood  the  test  of  time  and 
were  no  longer  in  the  region  of  hypothesis  ;  or  in  other  words, 
in  Medicine  in  so  far  as  it  was  a  system  of  truths  capable  of 
demonstration,  prediction,  and  verification.  I  was  not  slow, 
therefore,  to  avail  myself  of  the  labours  of  others,  and  not  only 
tried  to  make  myself  master  of  the  grosser  symptoms  and 
signs  of  disease,  but  looked  out  eagerly  for  those  finer  minutice 
of  distinction  among  symptoms,  which  pointed  to  subtler 
shades  of  disorder,  and  which  were  not  to  be  had  from  books. 


MEDICINE.  281 

And  as  the  great  difficulty  was  to  get  a  grasp  of  the  hierarchy 
of  symptoms,  or  in  other  words  to  determine  out  of  a  long 
catalogue,  which  were  the  significant  and  which  the  unimportant, 
I  was  greatly  interested  in  what  I  may  call  the  physiognomy  of 
disease.  For  just  as  individual  character  is  to  be  read,  not  by 
any  mere  inventory  or  catalogue  of  features  however  accurate 
or  complete,  but  by  the  ensemble  of  features,  out  of  which  a  fine 
intuitive  perception  is  always  able  to  pick  the  one  or  more  that 
gives  the  key  to  the  character,  so  among  a  great  complication  of 
symptoms,  some  of  them  perhaps  apparently  mutually  conflicting, 
to  decide  which  are  the  significant  and  important,  and  which 
the  subsidiary  or  unimportant,  requires  in  addition  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  grosser  elements,  an  intuitive  perception  of 
those  indefinable  elements  which  constitute  what  may  be  called 
the  physiognomy  of  disease.  To  attain  this  knowledge  which 
is  the  last  refinement  of  the  physician's  art,  I  made  a  point  of 
assiduously  attending  the  post-mortem  examination  of  patients 
I  had  seen  in  the  wards,  with  the  view  of  ascertaining 
accurately  the  exact  nature  of  the  disease  from  which  they  had 
been  suffering,  in  order  that  I  might  connect  it  with  the 
symptoms,  physiognomy,  and  general  appearance  in  life.  I  also 
went  from  hospital  to  hospital  to  attach  myself  to  those 
physicians  who  either  from  their  special  knowledge  or  exceptional 
insight,  were  most  likely  to  give  me  what  I  wanted.  These 
were  usually  the  older  heads  in  the  profession,  men  who  dealt 
little  in  mere  theory,  but  whose  knowledge  was  of  that  wary, 
intuitive,  unwritten,  and  scarcely  communicable  kind  which 
only  long  experience  can  give,  and  which  therefore  was  not 
so  common  among  the  younger  men.  The  difference  between 
the  two  cannot  perhaps  be  better  conveyed  to  the  reader,  than 
by  the  reply  of  an  old  physician  to  a  freshling  who  with  all  the 
latest  theories  and  newest  remedies  at  his  finger-ends,  was 
inclined  banteringly  to  reproach  the  elder  with  being  an  old 
fogey  who  had  lost  touch  somewhat,  and  was  just  a  little  behind 
the  times.     '  These  new  things  '  replied  the  other  *  which  you 


282  MEDICINE. 

know  but  of  which  I  am  ignorant,  you  have  only  to  tell  me, 
and  I  shall  then  know  them  as  well  as  you,  but  the  things  that 
I  know  and  of  which  you  are  ignorant,  it  would  take  me  years 
to  teach,  and  you  years  to  learn.' 

Of  the  present  Method  of  Medicine,  that  is  to  say  of  the  way 
in  which  it  sets  out  to  discover  the  laws  and  causes  of  disease, 
one  cannot  speak  too  highly.  Discarding  alike  all  those  old 
a  priori  conceptions  under  which  it  at  one  time  worked,  such  for 
example  as  the  homoeopathic  and  allopathic  shibboleths,  the 
doctrine  of  '  vital  spirits  '  and  the  belief  in  the  beneficent  or 
malign  influences  of  certain  organs,  as  the  liver,  spleen,  heart, 
(all  of  which  metaphysical  or  semi-theological  conceptions 
served  like  concealed  magnets  to  deflect  the  mind  from  its 
native  affinity  to  truth)  it  has  thrown  itself  once  for  all  entirely 
and  unreservedly  on  observation  and  experiment  alone ;  working 
on  true  Baconian  lines  in  all  its  departments,  mental  as  well  as 
physical ;  now  by  crucial  experiment  distinguishing  real  causes 
from  mere  coincidences ;  now  by  the  method  of  exclusion 
reducing  what  is  vague  and  hypothetical  to  greater  definiteness 
and  certainty;  now  isolating  organs  and  functions  with  the 
view  of  keeping  their  separate  influences  distinct  and  apart ;  and 
now  by  comparison,  classification,  and  generalization,  bringing 
all  this  knowledge  to  a  point,  and  so  rearing  still  higher  the 
pyramid  of  truth ;  and  at  each  point  in  the  process  surrounded 
and  ministered  to  by  a  whole  armoury  of  instruments — 
microscopes,  stethoscopes,  ophthalmoscopes,  and  the  rest — 
which  are  fitted  to  penetrate  and  lay  bare  the  secrets  of  the 
most  hidden  parts.  And  if  the  progress  of  Medicine  is  impeded, 
and  the  zeal  of  its  votaries  restrained  for  the  time  being,  in 
these  islands,  by  the  restrictions  put  on  the  practice  of 
vivisection — a  practice  by  the  way,  which  by  the  opportunities 
it  gives  for  free  experimentation,  and  for  the  application  of  the 
Baconian  method  to  creatures  allied  physically  to  ourselves,  is 
of  all  instruments  of  research  the  most  potent  for  the  discovery 
of  those  deeper  causes  of  disease  which  lie  immediately  before 


MEDICINE.  283 

us — if,  in  our  endeavours  to  put  restrictions  on  the  abuse  of 
this  practice,  we  have  perhaps  overshot  the  mark  and  put 
restrictions  on  its  legitimate  use,  it  still  goes  forward  nevertheless 
in  other  lands  (so  immoral  is  Nature  when  she  has  her  own 
ends  to  attain),  lands  where  owing  partly  to  race,  and  partly  to 
the  traditions  of  despotism  out  of  which  their  peoples  have 
scarcely  yet  emerged,  there  are  wanting  those  finer  sentiments 
of  humanity  and  pity  which  are  a  barrier  to  its  practice  here. 

But  while  the  method  of  Medicine  equally  with  that  of 
Physical  Science  generally,  is  the  true  one,  and  the  results 
attained,  like  the  Pyramids  or  coral-reefs,  great  and  enduring, 
the  mental  symmetry  of  the  vast  army  of  workers  by  whom 
the  great  edifice  is  being  reared,  is  (as  Darwin  himself  pointed 
out),  like  the  backs  of  the  old  Egyptian  slaves,  sacrificed  to  it ; 
and  their  culture  in  consequence  rendered  one-sided  and 
incomplete.  It  is  not  in  every  generation  or  even  century,  as 
I  have  said,  that  an  all-embracing  law  like  Evolution  or  Gravi- 
tation is  ripe  for  discovery ;  and  in  the  meantime  accordingly, 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  scientific  army  stretching  athwart  the 
field  of  Nature,  and  moving  forward  under  the  command  of 
their  captains  to  the  beat  and  inspiration  of  the  last  great 
scientific  conception,  are  engaged  each  with  the  minutice  of  his 
own  special  work,  analyzing,  dividing,  combining,  and  breaking 
up  the  soil  on  which  he  is  occupied,  for  the  better  exhibition 
of  its  constituents  and  laws;  the  very  air  above  them  thick 
with  the  mist  and  smoke  of  hypothesis  arising  during  the 
progress  of  the  work,  which  ever  again  collecting,  the  winds  of 
each  new  day  are  for  ever  blowing  away.  And  hence  it  is 
that  each  man  with  the  exception  of  the  greater  generals  of 
division,  being  confined  to  his  own  narrow  plot,  there  is  little 
scope  for  those  great  general  views  without  which  culture  must 
ever  be  partial  and  incomplete  ;  such  generalizations  as  chance 
to  be  turned  up  by  each  in  the  course  of  his  labours,  covering 
rather  his  own  special  mole-hill  of  thought  like  a  night-cap, 
than  like  a  canopy  over-arching  the  whole  field.     And  when  at 


284  MEDICINE. 

last  these  individual  contributions  piled  up  along  the  line  of 
march,  begin  to  unite  their  borders  and  to  inter-penetrate, 
fertilize,  and  throw  light  on  each  other,  some  great  general 
like  Newton,  or  Spencer,  or  Pasteur,  casting  his  eye  along  the 
line,  announces  the  new  law  of  gravitation,  evolution,  the  germ 
theory,  or  what  not,  to  which  all  the  facts  are  seen  to  conform ; 
the  old  banner  is  then  taken  down,  the  new  one  is  hoisted  in 
its  place,  and  under  its  fresh  inspiration  the  vast  army  led  by 
its  generals  and  its  greater  officers  of  division,  moves  onwards 
as  before. 

But  the  violence  done  to  the  culture  of  the  individual  workers 
in  Medicine  or  Science  involved  in  this  comparative  restriction 
of  their  field  of  vision,  is  quite  neutralized  and  compensated 
by  the  wonder  and  sense  of  illumination  that  attends  the 
observation  and  discovery  of  even  the  smallest  of  Nature's  real 
operations,  as  well  as  by  the  endless  artifices  and  ingenuities  to 
which  recourse  must  be  had  before  the  smallest  new  truth  can 
be  dragged  from  its  hiding  place.  And  in  spite  of  the 
limitation  of  its  subject-matter  to  what  is  purely  physical  and 
material,  or  to  what  can  only  be  got  at  through  the  medium  of 
physical  and  material  organization,  Medicine,  like  Physical 
Science,  has  its  compensations  in  the  training  it  gives  to  the 
mind  in  habits  of  accurate  observation,  in  patience,  in  the 
suppression  of  personal  bias,  and  the  elimination  of  the  personal 
equation,  in  the  keeping,  in  a  word,  the  wheels  of  the  mind,  in 
Bacon's  phrase,  concentric  with  the  wheels  of  Nature.  But  its 
chief  merit  at  the  present  time  is  the  healthy  scepticism  it 
engenders  in  reference  to  a  state  of  opinion  in  which  the 
operations  of  Nature  are  still  encumbered  by  a  whole 
metaphysical  and  theological  over-growth  of  divine  inter- 
positions, special  providences,  six  days'  creations,  metaphysical 
entities,  and  other  the  like  superstitions  of  the  vulgar,  which 
serve  only  to  pervert  and  obscure  the  truth. 

The  effect  on  my  mind  of  all  this  study  of  medicine,  was 
still  farther  to  deepen  the  Materialism  which  the  Spencerian 


MEDICINE.  285 

Philosophy  had  fastened  on  me,  and  to  choke  outright  those 
few  remaining  avenues  and  approaches  to  the  Ideal,  which  that 
philosophy  had  still  left  open.  If  I  had  ever  had  any  doubts 
as  to  the  intimate  and  entire  dependence  of  all  mental  states 
whatever  on  conditions  of  the  brain  and  nervous  system,  they 
had  long  since  been  dissipated  by  my  experiences  of  the  hospital 
wards  and  post-mortem  rooms ;  and  as  I  walked  to  and  fro 
between  the  hospitals,  meditating  on  the  bearings  of  all  this 
medical  knowledge  on  the  great  Problem  of  Life  on  which  I 
was  engaged,  I  kept  saying  to  myself,  if  we  are  ever  again  to 
have  a  high  Spiritual  Philosophy  of  the  World  which  shall 
give  satisfaction  alike  to  the  deeper  intuitions  of  the  mind  and 
heart,  it  must  be  by  a  frank  acceptance  once  for  all,  of  this 
dependence  of  all  thought  and  emotion  whatever  on  physical 
states,  and  not  by  seeking  to  contradict,  dodge,  or  ignore  this 
truth ;  it  must  be  reared,  in  a  word,  on  Materialism  as  its 
groundwork  and  basis ;  must  be  seen  to  grow  out  of 
Materialism  as  the  flower  from  its  root,  and  not  apart  from  and 
independent  of  it.  At  this  period  of  my  life,  however,  I  was 
far  indeed  from  dreaming  that  such  a  Spiritual  Philosophy 
would  ever  again  dawn  on  me.  The  habit  of  looking  on 
human  beings  as  bodies  merely,  which  the  constant  familiarity 
with  illness  and  disease  had  a  tendency  in  my  then  mood  to 
induce  in  me,  still  further  depressed  my  spirits ;  for  this 
attitude  of  the  hospital  I  carried  with  me  into  the  street,  and 
the  men  and  women  whom  I  passed  or  with  whom  I  conversed, 
became  to  me  but  a  series  of  medical  cases,  healthy  or  diseased, 
of  material  substances  merely,  in  better  or  worse  repair.  This 
materialistic  way  of  looking  at  human  beings,  following  closely 
as  it  did,  on  the  blows  which  my  mind  had  but  recently 
sustained  from  the  Spencerian  Philosophy,  wiped  and  blotted 
out  from  my  life  for  the  time  being,  the  last  lingering  traces  of 
the  Ideal  which  had  survived  there ;  and  in  the  ensuing  gloom,, 
unirradiated  by  any  star,  my  spirit  falling,  falling,  touched  at 
last  the   bottommost  deep    of   unbelief  and   despair.     Search 


286  MEDICINE. 

where  I  would,  nowhere  was  the  lost  Ideal  to  be  found.  If  I 
looked  out  into  the  Universe,  there  a  fixed  quantity  of  Force 
breaking  on  its  confines  into  individual  conscious  existences 
not  by  any  Divine  decree  but  by  the  cold  inhuman  pull  of 
opposing  forces  merely,  moved  through  the  dark  abyss  of  Space 
as  through  the  waste  and  emptj  night,  and  reigned  as  in 
Eternal  Silence  without  a  God.  If  I  looked  into  the  human 
mind,  there  the  noblest  and  divinest  emotions  of  the  soul  were 
no  more  than  the  rhythm  or  explosions  of  nervous  forces 
making  their  way  through  the  higher  nerve-centres  of  the 
brain  along  lines  of  least  resistance,  and  the  like  ;  and  dying 
away  again  when  these  explosions  out  of  which  they  arose, 
had  spent  themselves.  If  I  looked  into  society  around  me, 
there  too,  human  beings  separated  from  each  other  as  by 
Egyptian  castes,  like  beings  of  different  spheres,  looked 
hopelessly  through  the  intervening  distance  at  one  another 
from  behind  the  barriers  of  fixed  ideas  in  which,  like  the  lost 
souls  in  Dante,  their  spirits  were  confined,  and  around  which 
as  in  great  cages  they  continued  forever  to  turn,  like  slowly 
revolving  wheels.  If  I  looked  into  the  streets,  there  too 
the  most  engaging  personalities  lost  their  charm,  and  men 
and  women  having  like  myself  lost  their  souls,  walked  about 
like  material  corpses  merely ;  even  the  beauty  of  woman,  to 
which  I  had  always  been  most  susceptible,  turning  its  wrong 
side  out  as  I  looked  at  it,  and  under  the  blight  of  an  eye  from 
which  the  ideal  had  departed,  losing  its  bloom  and  fading  as  at 
the  touch  of  some  devilish  and  invisible  hand.  Wherever  I 
looked  the  bright  landscape  of  life  turned  itself  into  a  desert, 
around  and  about  which  I  wandered  as  in  a  dream,  ever  and 
again  to  wake  up  and  ask  myself,  in  a  moan  of  bereavement  and 
despair,  where  now  is  that  bright  ideal  of  life  which  encompassed 
me  in  the  days  when  with  my  philosophic  friend  I  walked 
xadiant  beneath  the  sweet-smelling  pines  by  the  river's  bank,  as 
in  the  groves  of  Academe  1  Where  now  that  promise,  believed 
in  as  the  love  of  plighted  hearts,  which  both  Nature  and  my 


MEDICINE.  287 

own  soul  gave  me,  and  which  I  took  so  seriously,  that  promise 
which  music  and  heroic  story  foretold  when  the  blood  was 
thrilled,  and  which  like  the  rainbow,  more  glorious  than  the 
world  it  spanned,  the  more  it  receded  the  more  it  was  pursued  1 
Where  was  it  now  1  Gone,  as  Desdemona's  love  to  Othello's 
mind,  and  I  was  abused ;  and  with  it  all  the  beauty  and  glory 
of  the  world  it  presaged.  Gone  now,  and  some  of  them  forever 
gone,  those  illusions  that  played  like  glancing  lights  around 
the  personalities  and  interests,  the  toys  and  ambitions  of  the 
world,  and  which  lent  them  all  or  mostly  all  their  charm.  Did 
a  vision  of  beauty  rise  before  me,  I  immediately  turned  it  into 
dust  and  worms,  or  thought  of  how  its  glowing  eye  or  cheek 
would  show  under  the  microscope.  Of  Intellect, — I  at  once 
thought  of  the  difference  in  number,  size,  and  activity  of  the 
nervous  cells  that  alone  constituted  its  distinction  from  dullness 
and  stupidity.  Of  Heroism, — I  figured  it  as  for  the  most  part 
but  duller  nerves  merely,  or  livelier  bubbles  in  the  blood.  Of 
Virtue,  Honour,  Duty — pshaw !  they  were  either  phantasms, 
words,  or  false  impositions,  as  with  Falstaff,  or  but  cunningly 
devised  fables  of  man's  invention  for  the  furtherance  of  his  own 
selfish  designs,  but  having  in  them  no  touch  or  effluence  of  the 
Divine.  Whatever,  in  a  word,  of  greatness,  goodness,  or  beauty 
my  eye  looked  upon,  was  poisoned  by  my  own  mind  before  I 
could  touch  it,  or  taste  it,  or  enjoy  it.  For  years  I  can 
truthfully  say  I  never  rose  from  a  book  without  a  sense  of  pain 
and  desolation,  however  eagerly  while  reading  it  I  may  have 
enjoyed  it ;  and  in  all  this  undertone  of  misery  the  ground  note 
was  ever  the  same — the  worthlessness  of  life  and  the  vanity  of 
mortal  things.  Cui  bono ?  what  is  the  good?  was  the  ever-renewed 
refrain  that  with  its  sullen  monotone  of  despair  rounded  in  the 
close  of  every  train  of  thought,  every  new-sprouting  ambition, 
every  resolve.  That  I  had  these  resolves  and  ambitions  was 
true,  in  spite  of  the  general  undertone  of  gloom  ;  for  my  mind 
was  young  then,  and  ideal  or  no  ideal,  would  start  more  hares 
of  speculation  and  fancy  in  a  night  than  it  could  run  down  in  a 


288  MEDICINE. 

lifetime ;  so  light  and  irrepressible  are  youth  and  vanity  ! 
With  a  temperament  naturally  buoyant,  little  of  all  this  gloom 
appeared  in  society  or  conversation,  but  when  I  was  alone,  in 
those  solitary  hours  of  contemplation  and  study  in  which  our 
best  thoughts  and  aspirations  take  their  rise,  I  looked  out  on 
this  wilderness  of  blasted  ideals,  and  was  confronted  with  this 
vacant  night  in  which  there  were  no  stars. 

It  was  not  surprising  therefore  that  in  this  peculiar  mood 
and  humour,  my  outward  and  merely  worldly  fortunes  should 
have  given  me  little  concern.  I  had  now  been  walking  the 
hospitals  regularly  for  a  year  or  two,  taking  little  or  no  thought 
of  the  morrow,  when  my  originally  small  stock  of  capital  began 
to  show  signs  of  giving  out,  and  I  was  compelled  at  last  to 
bestir  myself.  Accordingly,  taking  rooms  with  a  friend  in 
the  West  End,  I  began  the  practice  of  medicine  on  my  own 
account ;  but  after  fruitlessly  waiting  for  another  year  or  two, 
during  which  time  I  continued  assiduously  my  work  at  the 
hospitals,  my  means  became  so  exhausted  that  but  for  the 
temporary  assistance  of  my  friend  I  should  have  been  seriously 
embarrassed.  While  I  was  engrossed  in  my  philosophical 
dreams  the  keel  of  my  little  bark  had  actually  grazed  the 
bottom,  and  was  threatening  to  stick  hopelessly  fast  there, 
when  all  at  once  fortune,  in  the  opportune,  but,  to  one  so 
young,  quite  unusual  shape  of  a  handsome  legacy  from  a 
grateful  patient,  came  to  my  assistance  and  set  me  on  my  feet 
again ;  thus  enabling  me  to  hold  out  in  the  struggle  both  with 
external  circumstances  and  with  my  own  mind,  for  some  years 
to  come. 


PART    II. 

ENGLAND. 

BOOK  II. 


MY     INNEK     LIFE, 

BEING   A   CHAPTER   IN 

PEKSONAL     EVOLUTION     AND 
AUTOBIOGBAPHY. 


PART    II.— ENGLAND. 


BOOK  II.— THE  SEARCH  FOR  THE  LOST  IDEAL. 

MACAULAY. 

A   FALSE    START. 

ANCIENT   PHILOSOPHY. 

SOME    GENERAL    CONSIDERATIONS. 

MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

CRITICISMS   AND    CONCLUSIONS. 

A   VISIT    TO    CARLYLE. 

THE    PERSONAL   EQUATION. 

POETIC    THINKERS. 

MY   CONTRIBUTION. 


CHAPTER    I. 


MACAULAY. 

OITTING  one  beautiful  sunny  morning  in  Spring  beneath 
^  the  ancient  elms  that  led  up  from  the  highway  to  the  old 
country-house  in  Kent  where  for  the  time  I  was  residing,  there 
suddenly  came  over  my  mind  a  resolve  which  doubtless  had  for 
some  time  been  silently  maturing  itself  there,  the  resolve, 
namely,  that  now  that  my  duties  to  my  patient  would  leave  me 
ample  time  for  meditation  and  study,  I  would  instead  of 
wandering  aimlessly  about  the  intellectual  world,  concentrate 
my  whole  mind  on  the  one  supreme  object  of  removing  if 
possible  by  some  deeper  insight  than  I  had  yet  attained,  the 
manifold  spiritual  burdens  and  contradictions  that  were 
oppressing  me,  burdens  and  contradictions  under  which  I 
imagined  many  others  besides  myself  must  of  necessity  be 
lying.  It  was  now  two  years  or  more  since  I  first  made 
acquaintance  with  the  Spencerian  Philosophy,  and  so  far  I  had 
not  been  able  to  detect  any  inaccuracy  in  its  facts,  any  fallacy 
in  its  reasoning,  any  rent  or  breach  in  the  seams  of  its  compact 
and  well-built  structure.  And  yet  I  felt  that  there  was 
something  wrong  with  it  somewhere,  and  my  hope  was  that 
even  if  I  could  not  dispose  of  its  separate  facts  and  reasonings, 
I  might  still  by  some  new  way  of  looking  at  them,  some  new 
arrangement  or  combination  of  them,  some  fresh  turn  given  to 
them,  bring  back  that  harmony  and  concord  to  the  mind,  which 


292  MACAULAY. 

I  had  lost.  Surely,  I  said  to  myself,  the  constitution  of  things 
must  have  some  satisfactory  answer  to  give  to  the  questions  which 
that  very  constitution  has  raised ;  and  if  so,  then  the  Ideal  which 
lay  crushed  within  me,  and  which  on  any  theory  of  Evolution  had 
been  bred  and  nurtured  by  the  environment,  must  by  a  deeper 
reading  of  that  environment  find  again  the  spirit  or  soul 
which  produced  it,  and  which  in  the  theory  of  Mr.  Spencer  it 
had  lost.  It  was  with  a  kind  of  white  intensity  of  earnestness 
therefore,  that  I  sat  myself  down  to  lay  siege  to  the  problem 
before  me,  resolved  not  to  rise  from  it,  so  long  at  least  as  my 
means  held  out,  until  I  had  conquered  it. 

But  where  to  begin  ?  where  to  make  a  fresh  start  1     I  could 

no  longer  in  my  perplexity  fall  back  on  the  old  weapons  of  the 

orthodox  creed,  for  was  not  one  of  the   first  effects   of   the 

Spencerian  Philosophy  to  kill  outright  for  me  any  remnant  of 

value  or  credibility  that  may  still  have  attached  to  that  creed  ! 

Nor  was  I  at  all  inclined  to  seek  assistance  from  the  Metaphysics 

or   Philosophy  of  the  Schools;  for  with  the  remembrance   of 

Locke  and  Descartes,  of  Hamilton  and  Mill,  in  my  mind,  I  had 

a  shrewd  suspicion,  justified  as  we  shall  see  farther  on,  that  all 

these  pre-Darwinian  philosophers,  great  and  admirable  though 

they   were,  were  swallowed   up   and   superseded   by    Spencer 

himself.     And  as  for  the  more  recent  seers,  Coleridge,  Carlyle, 

and  Emerson,  my  remembrance  of  the  difficulty  I  had  had  in 

understanding  the  *  Sartor   Kesartus  '    of   the    one,    and    the 

'  Representative  Men '  of  the  other,  was  sufficient  to  deter  me 

from  turning  to  them  for  help  for  some  time  to  come.     Where 

then  was  I  to  turn  1     To  first-hand  observation  of  Nature  and 

of  men  my  own  inclination  prompted  me,  but  as  this  is  not 

always  available,  but  only  in  glimpses  and  at  long  intervals,  I 

was  glad  in  the  meantime  to  supplement  the  paucity  of  direct 

observation  by  the  more  concentrated  and  accessible  treasures 

of  books  ;  and  accordingly  without  further  delay  embarked  on 

a  voyage  of  intellectual  discovery,  on  a  circumnavigation  of  the 

world  of  thought. 


MACAULAY.  293 

I  began,  1  remember  with  the  Essayists,  partly  in  search 
of  definite  points  of  insight,  partly  on  account  of  their 
discursiveness  and  the  variety  of  topics  with  which  they  dealt, 
which  enabled  me  to  pick  out  what  most  interested  me  without 
the  tear  of  protracted  boredom,  but  chiefly,  perhaps,  because  I 
imagined  they  would  serve  as  finger-posts  to  direct  me  to  those 
greater  names  of  the  past  who  were  most  likely  to  give  me 
what  I  required. 

The  first  of  the  Essayists  I  chanced  to  take  up  was  Macaulay, 
and  although  I  found  him  powerless  to  help  me  to  the  solution 
of  the  great  problems  of  the  world  that  were  oppressing  me, 
nevertheless  open  him  where  I  would  I  was  speedily  drawn 
within  the  currents  of  his  attraction,  and  swept  down  along 
with  him  to  the  end.  Every  page  wras  ablaze  with  the  jewelled 
tropes  that  as  we  went  along  turned  up  their  gleaming  sides  to 
the  light  in  the  fierce  noon-tide  glare  under  which  all  was 
exposed,  and  as  I  sat  amid  it  all  dazzled  and  enchanted,  I  was 
content  to  be  borne  along  without  effort  on  a  stream  which 
carried  on  its  bosom  a  vaster  freightage  of  literary  and 
historical  erudition  than  any  I  had  yet  known  ;  and  which  in 
a  way  carried  all  before  it.  In  the  higher  ranges  of  thought 
he  was,  indeed,  sadly  limited,  more  limited  perhaps  than  any 
other  writer  who  has  climbed  so  high  and  enjoyed  so  long  and 
universal  a  popularity.  On  all  those  great  problems  of  the 
world  and  of  human  life  which  for  the  last  hundred  years  have 
been  agitating  and  perplexing  the  minds  of  men,  problems 
which  at  the  time  when  he  began  to  write  had  already  emerged 
on  the  horizon  and  stood  around  him  confronting  him  like 
sphinxes,  he  has  uttered  no  word,  and  either  has  no  solution  to 
offer  or  has  fallen  back  on  his  early  creed.  The  great  mysteries 
of  existence,  of  good  and  evil,  of  life  and  death,  of  time  and 
eternity  seem  to  have  awakened  no  echo  in  his  soul ;  and  in  the 
presence  of  that  great  empire  of  silence,  immensity,  and  night, 
with  which  our  little  islet  of  knowledge  is  surrounded,  and  in 
which  it  lies  embosomed,  instead  of  bending  before  it  in  awe- 


294  MACAULAY. 

stricken  humility  like  Pascal  and  Carlyle,  he  walks  abroad 
amid  it  all,  hat  on  head,  viewing  it  with  unembarrassed 
complacency  as  if  with  it  he  had  no  concern.  Nowhere  in  his 
writings  so  far  as  I  remember,  is  there  any  hint  that  he  had 
ever  felt  the  pathos  of  human  life,  the  '  sense  of  tears  in  mortal 
things ' ;  nowhere  does  he  disclose  any  poetic  melancholy,  any 
tenderness  of  imagination,  any  dreamy  moonlight  fancy,  any 
depth  or  elevation  of  sentiment,  any  of  those  exquisite  aromas 
of  the  imagination,  in  a  word,  which  like  the  bouquets  of  the 
choicest  wines,  are  unanalyzable  and  incommunicable ;  and 
which  exhale  from  the  writings  not  only  of  poets  like 
Shakspeare,  Milton,  Shelley,  Wordsworth,  and  Keats,  but  of 
prose  writers  like  Ruskin,  Emerson,  Carlyle,  Pascal,  Senancour, 
Loti,  giving  to  each  his  characteristic  and  peculiar  charm. 
With  gaps  like  these  not  only  in  the  range  and  depth  but  in 
the  fineness  and  delicacy  of  his  sensibilities,  one  would  expect 
to  find  corresponding  limitations  in  his  general  powers  of 
thought.  For  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  these  highest 
sympathies  and  sensibilities  in  which  he  was  so  lacking,  are  not 
as  he  would  have  us  believe,  mere  feelings  of  the  mind, 
sublimated  and  refined  perhaps  by  culture  but  bred  and 
begotten  of  vulgar  hopes,  superstitions  and  fears ;  mere  poetic 
dreams  which  with  the  advance  of  Science  and  enlightenment 
must  wither  and  fade  away  ;  but  are,  rather,  real  higher  senses 
which  emerging  on  the  outermost  rim  of  evolution,  are  the 
standpoint  of  interpretation  and  key  to  all  the  lower  faculties 
of  the  human  mind,  as  these  in  turn  are  to  those  of  the  brutes ; 
they  are  real  inner  lights,  inner  senses  we  may  call  them,  which  by 
the  subtle  alchemy  of  Nature  have  been  distilled  from  lower 
forms  and  constitute  what  is  called  genius,  giving  to  their 
possessors  a  power  of  penetrating  the  secrets  of  the  special 
sides  of  Nature  to  which  they  are  allied,  which  is  beyond  the 
reach  of  any  combinations  of  the  understanding,  however 
ingenious  or  profound. 

It  is  little  wonder  therefore,  that  this  deficiencv  of  Macaulav 


MACAULAY.  295 

in  the  higher  sensibilities  of  the  mind,  higher  senses  we  may 
call  them,  should  be  seen  in  all  his  performances, — his 
philosophy,  his  poetry,  his  history,  his  criticism  and  his  style. 
Nowhere,  indeed,  in  his  philosophy  does  he  rise  above  the 
region  of  commonsense  and  commonplace.  For  although  he 
had  ransacked  the  belts  of  thought  from  the  equator  to  the 
poles,  and  although  his  prodigious  memory  had  laid  all  the 
riches  of  literature  and  poetry  at  his  feet,  to  be  used  as  occasion 
required,  for  precedent,  for  argument,  for  analogy,  for  illustra- 
tion, for  ornament,  still  in  his  own  innermost  thoughts  he  lived 
and  moved  habitually  in  that  comparatively  narrow  belt  of 
intellectual  interest,  that  temperate  zone  of  practical  activity 
in  which  secular  progress  and  material  prosperity  are  the  ends, 
political  machinery  the  means,  and  public  and  private  virtue 
and  liberty  the  reward.  Accordingly,  when  stripped  of  the 
rhetoric,  the  historical  and  literary  allusion  and  metaphor 
which  his  over-laden  memory  sheds  around  him  as  he  goes 
along,  and  which  give  his  thoughts  a  kind  of  meretricious 
splendour,  you  find  beneath  it  all,  the  figure  of  the  slashing 
political  leader-writer,  the  slashing  literary  reviewer,  a  kind  of 
first-class  House  of  Commons  debater,  a  Philistine  (of  culture 
indeed)  who  from  out  of  the  dust  of  antique  archives  will 
interest  and  detain  you  by  the  hour  together  in  proving  to  you 
that  Charles  I.  was  not  the  sainted  martyr  he  was  supposed  to 
be,  that  Bacon  though  a  great  philosopher,  was  a  mean  man,, 
and  that  the  times  of  Charles  II.  were  the  most  disgraceful  in 
our  annals.  And  accordingly  when  Bacon,  whose  magnificent 
genius  he  celebrates  for  pointing  the  way  to  the  realization  of 
those  secular  dreams  which  he  had  so  much  at  heart,  when 
Bacon,  I  say,  gives  evidence  of  his  real  genius  for  speculation 
by  ascending  to  the  very  fountain  head  of  Philosophy  itself, 
and  pausing  there  for  a  moment,  proceeds  to  announce  the 
subtle  laws  which  play  through  this  high  region  of  the 
sympathies  and  sensibilities,  and  which  unite  them  by  a  deep 
inner  unity  to  the  ordinary  laws  of  physics,  chemistry,  morals 


29()  MACAULAY. 

and  society  (a  unity  which  the  most  ordinary  reader  of 
Spencer  can  now  find  demonstrated  for  him),  Macaulay  opens 
his  eyes  on  it  all  as  on  so  much  moonshine,  attributes  it  to  an 
imagination  which  in  its  excess  has  become  diseased,  and 
stalking  over  it  as  over  a  flower-bed  with  brutal  ruthlessness, 
tramples  it  down  and  disposes  of  it  all  with  a  complacent 
cocksureness  which  would  have  been  intolerable  had  it  not 
been  so  evidently  honest  and  sincere. 

And  yet  when  his  own  philosophy  peeps  out  here  and  there 
along  his  pages,  we  find  him  devoting  long  paragraphs  to  the 
elaboration  of  such  platitudes  and  commonplaces  for  example, 
as  that  the  advance  of  liberty  is  not  a  steady  and  continuous 
movement  but  like  the  incoming  tide  is  an  alternate  one  of 
advance  and  retrogression  ;  or  this,  that  men  must  be  gradually 
educated  to  liberty  as  the  bandaged  eye  must  be  to  light ;  or 
that  other  strange  doctrine  of  his,  that  as  the  judgment 
strengthens  the  fancy  and  imagination  decay,  and  that,  in 
consequence,  with  the  advance  of  science  and  enlightenment 
Poetry  must  first  decline  and  then  pass  away.  In  working  out 
this  curious  theory  which  is  perhaps  the  main  article  of  his 
literary  creed,  reappearing  as  it  does  in  almost  the  same  form 
in  the  essays  on  Milton,  Dryden,  and  Bacon,  one  sees  at  once 
that  he  regards  poetry  not  as  an  exhibition  of  the  connexion 
and  interplay  of  the  higher  sensibilities  among  themselves,  nor 
of  their  connexion  with  the  lower  passions  of  the  soul,  not,  that 
is  to  say,  as  a  higher  kind  of  judgment  or  criticism  of  life,  but 
rather,  as  we  have  already  seen,  as  a  mass  of  mingled  hopes, 
superstitions  and  fears,  bred  in  the  darkness  and  in  the  infancy 
of  knowledge,  but  which  on  the  dawn  of  Science  shall  like  the 
ghost  in  Hamlet  melt  and  fade  away.  Now  it  is  no  doubt  true 
that  with  the  decay  of  Greek  Mythology  there  will  be  no  more 
Iliads,  with  the  downfall  of  Satan  no  more  Paradise  Losts,  or  of 
Mediaeval  Catholicism  no  more  Infernos,  but  to  dream  that  when 
Science  shall  have  killed  all  these  as  well  as  the  Jack  the 
Giant-Killers    of  our  childhood,  to   dream,  I   say,  that  those 


MACAULAY.  297 

mystic  faculties  of  the  soul  which  give  birth  to  poetry  and  of 
which  these  superstitions  are  but  an  early  fruitage,  shall 
themselves  disappear,  is  itself,  perhaps,  the  most  singular 
superstition  in  the  history  of  letters.  As  well  imagine  that  the 
life  of  the  tree  must  go  with  the  fruitage  of  the  season,  and  of 
the  vine  with  the  vintage  of  the  year,  as  that  the  poetry  of 
Othello  must  die  with  the  belief  in  the  magic  virtues  of  the 
handkerchief,  or  of  Hamlet  and  Macbeth  with  that  of  their 
ghosts  and  witches  !  But  one  can  scarcely  do  justice  to  views 
like  these,  and  it  only  shows  us  how  much  Macaulay  has  lost  in 
losing  those  higher  sensibilities  of  the  mind.  For  although  he 
is  a  master  of  pause  and  cadence,  of  smoothness,  terseness  and 
vigour,  and  although  like  all  men  of  culture  he  knows  a  sublime 
image  or  pathetic  touch  when  he  sees  it  (as  even  the  most 
flinty-hearted  of  men  may  know  the  significance  of  tears),  still 
he  has  not  strength  enough  in  the  higher  sympathies  and 
sensibilities  to  maintain  himself  permanently  in  their  region,  to 
share  their  life  and  become  part,  as  it  were,  of  their  being,  and 
so  in  his  own  writings  to  give  off  their  peculiar  fragrance  and 
perfume.  And  in  his  criticism  of  the  poetry  of  others  although 
his  excellent  commonsense  makes  him  quick  to  detect  such 
grosser  forms  of  bad  workmanship  as  slovenly  or  involved  lines, 
faulty  metre,  vulgar  or  tawdry  metaphors,  ridiculous  affectations 
or  conceits,  and  although  too,  his  immense  memory  at  once 
enables  him  to  detect  the  most  remote  suspicion  or  shadow  of 
plagiarism  ;  still,  having  little  or  no  sense  of  the  Ideal  in  himself, 
he  dwells  rather  on  the  mechanical  differences  of  the  images 
used — as  for  instance  as  to  whether  they  are  vague  and  shadowy 
like  those  of  Milton,  or  pictorial  and  precise  like  those  of  Dante, 
— than  on  those  delicate  aromas,  those  exquisite  and  elusive 
charms  which  characterize  the  poetry  of  Shelley  or  Keats,  or 
those  deeper,  more  complex,  more  elevated  sympathies  and 
passions  which  distinguish  the  great  ones  of  all  time. 

The  popular  effectiveness  of  Macaulay  therefore,  is  neither 
to  be  found  in  his  poetry  nor  in  the  depth  or  range  of  his 


298  MACAULAY. 

thought,  but  rather  in  those  rhetorical  arts  which  he  carried  to 
so  high  a  perfection,  fed  and  nourished  as  they  were  by  a 
memory  the  most  capacious  and  accurate  perhaps,  as  he  himself 
said  of  Sir  James  Macintosh,  that  was  ever  given  to  mortal. 
Considering  the  serious  nature  of  the  subjects  with  which  he 
deals,  and  his  serious  manner  of  dealing  with  them — a  manner  by 
the  way  which  does  not  allow  of  raillery  or  the  more  delicate 
forms  of  humour,  in  all  of  which  he  is  naturally  deficient, — there 
is  not  a  weapon  in  the  whole  armoury  of  rhetoric  which  he  has 
not  employed  with  a  skill  which  has  rarely  been  equalled,  and 
so  far  as  I  know  never  been  surpassed.  Indeed  in  turning  to 
his  pages  again  as  I  write,  and  judging  him  from  a  relative 
and  not  an  absolute  standard  of  perfection,  I  feel  a  sense  of 
reproach  in  the  face  of  such  brilliant  and  various  excellence,  in 
having  offered  him  even  the  show  of  detraction.  Clearness, 
rapidity,  polished  epigram,  antithesis,  metaphor,  precedent  and 
analogy  drawn  from  literature,  history,  and  fairy-tale;  climax  and 
anti-climax,  the  repetition  of  clauses,  the  cumulation  of  effects, 
abstract  qualities  turned  into  concrete  instances,  concrete 
instances  compressed  again  into  abstractions,  are  all  in  turn 
brought  into  play  as  occasion  requires  with  the  greatest  felicity 
and  ease,  keeping  the  mind  in  perpetual  exhilaration  ;  while  to 
give  heat  and  passion  to  it  all,  he  has  recourse  to  those  arts  of 
the  melodramatist  and  orator  which  are  most  effective  with  the 
less  cultured  minds — the  avoidance  of  all  delicate  nuances,  and 
the  heightening  by  means  of  gorgeous  colouring,  of  the  lights 
and  shades  of  his  picture,  of  virtue  and  vice,  of  greatness  and 
meanness,  happiness  and  misery,  glory  and  shame. 

And  yet. to  deal  strictly  with  him  one  is  obliged  to  confess 
that  in  the  highest  regions  of  style,  neither  his  rhetoric,  his 
historic  pageantry,  nor  his  literary  allusions  have  availed  him 
anything.  For  although  he  has  great  rapidity,  terseness,  and 
vigour,  and  moves  from  sentence  to  sentence  with  lightness 
and  ease,  and  although  between  his  longer  paragraphs  the 
transitions  are  effected  with  spontaneity,  simplicity,  and  grace, 


MACAULAY.  299 

still  no  single  sentence  exhibits  any  richness  or  pictorial 
complexity,  any  distinctive  aroma  or  organic  vitality,  but  each 
like  the  individual  soldier  in  a  corps  whose  general  movements 
and  evolutions  are  easy  and  graceful,  has  a  certain  artificial 
and  mechanical  stiffness  about  it,  and  when  made  to  step  out 
from  the  ranks  for  inspection,  gives  out  on  tapping,  not  a  soft 
and  mellow  but  a  hard  metallic  ring.  With  no  true  poetic  fire 
to  smelt  the  treasures  which  his  over-freighted  memory  brings 
him,  he  cannot  work  them  into  the  fibre  of  his  sentences  as  he 
goes  along ;  he  cannot,  like  Turner,  by  the  dashing  and  inter- 
mixing of  a  hundred  shades  get  a  complex  pictorial  unit  in 
every  square  inch  of  canvas,  nor  like  Shakspeare  a  single 
complex  image  in  every  line,  out  of  the  glancing  facets 
and  crosslights  of  words ;  but  gets  his  effects  rather  by 
accumulation  and  addition  than  by  transmutation,  by  drawing  his 
treasures  out  in  single  file  and  in  successive  sentences  or  clauses 
like  beads  on  a  string,  rather  than  by  distillation  and  compression. 
Not  that  his  sentences  are  slovenly  or  involved,  on  the  contrary 
they  are  clipped  and  trimmed  like  Dutch  Yew-trees,  and  fitted 
to  the  figure  like  the  uniforms  of  the  Guards ;  are  as  balanced 
and  easy  in  their  antithetic  swing  as  the  movement  of  a 
pendulum,  and  as  fresh  and  pellucid  as  a  running  stream.  But 
they  have  no  organic  life  of  their  own,  if  you  cut  them  they 
wiil  not  bleed,  but  each  hanging  on  by  the  skirts  of  its  neigh- 
bour for  support,  gets  all  its  virtue  from  the  whole  paragraph 
of  which  it  forms  a  part ;  all  its  effectiveness  from  the  rapidity, 
brilliancy,  and  sparkle  of  the  whole.  His  style  in  a  word,  to 
borrow  a  term  from  the  physicists,  has  a  dynamical  rather 
than  a  statical  excellence,  an  excellence  of  movement  rather 
than  of  separate  and  particular  beauty.  How  different  from 
Shakspeare,  Carlyle,  Emerson,  and  those  other  great  masters 
of  expression  whom  one  should  always  keep  near  one  as  standards 
and  ideals.  These  great  writers  are  characterized  by  the 
richness  and  vitality  of  their  separate  sentences  ;  and  this  they 
get  by  bringing  the  radiance  of  the  whole  mind  with  all  its 


300  MAC  AULA  Y. 

higher  sympathies  and  senses  fused  and  at  a  white  heat,  full 
and  complete  on  each  point  as  it  were,  as  one  brings  the  whole 
eye  in  its  complex  organic  integrity  on  each  object,  in  order 
to  unite  its  different  parts  into  one  single  definite  image.  But 
Macaulay,  wanting  in  those  higher  inner  senses  and  sensibilities 
which  he  affected  to  despise,  has  no  wholeness  of  eye  or  mind 
to  bring  to  his  object,  but  has  to  build  up  his  pictures  by 
a  catalogue  of  particulars,  like  the  features  of  a  man  seen 
through  a  hole  in  a  cardboard,  rather  than  by  flashes;  by 
accumulation  and  addition  rather  than  by  a  single  impression. 
So  that  if  in  the, end  he  does  succeed  in  convincing  us  of  the 
truth  of  his  characterizations,  it  is  rather,  as  in  a  question  of 
disputed  identity,  by  an  accumulation  of  unrelated  particulars, 
a  scar  on  the  brow,  a  mole  on  the  cheek,  the  loss  of  a  tooth 
or  finger,  than  as  in  a  living  body  by  the  coherence  and 
connexion  of  all  the  parts  as  members  of  one  organic  whole. 

And  at  what  a  sacrifice  has  all  his  brilliancy  been  attained. 
To  get  the  epigrams,  the  antitheses,  the  precedents,  the 
parallels,  the  light  and  shade  necessary  to  give  '  go '  and 
interest  to  the  narrative  and  to  carry  the  reader  along  with 
him,  his  materials  have  all  to  be  torn  and  wTenched  from  the 
soil  in  which  they  naturally  and  spontaneously  grow : — 
historical  precedents  from  the  circumstances  of  the  time  in 
which  they  arose,  special  qualities  from  the  whole  character, 
the  whole  character  from  the  general  ends  for  which  it  works, 
single  motives  from  the  complex  web  in  which  they  lie,  crude 
sentiment  from  the  subtlety  of  shading  necessary  to  give  it 
truth, — and  all  for  what  I  To  establish  some  new  or  striking 
estimate  of  Charles,  of  Bacon,  of  Cromwell,  of  Hastings,  of 
Temple,  or  of  Clive.  And  when  all  is  done  and  the  facts  and 
arguments  so  maimed  have  been  teazed  and  disentangled  from 
their  complexities,  have  been  trimmed  and  cut  to  pattern, 
marshalled  in  logical  file  and  adorned  with  cut  flowers  of 
rhetoric  of  every  variety  and  hue,  and  are  then  set  spinning 
across  the  landscape  before  us  like  a  railway  train ;  the  whole, 


MACAULAY.  30  L 

while  communicating  to  the  onlooker  a  wonderful  sense  of 
exhilaration  and  delight,  yet  having  no  root  in  the  soil  over 
which  it  moves,  leaves  no  abiding  trace  in  the  memory.  Since 
those  early  days  I  must  at  one  time  or  another  have  read  these 
Essays  of  Macaulay  half  a  dozen  times  or  more,  but  beyond 
their  general  drift,  the  details  though  always  read  with  equal 
freshness  as  at  first,  pass  over  the  mind  like  a  dream,  and  are 
forgotten. 

And  yet  in  my  then  depression  I  was  deeply  indebted  to 
Macaulay  for  rousing  me,  even  if  for  moments  only,  out  of  the 
torpor  into  which  I  had  fallen,  by  his  praise  of  literature  and 
culture,  by  the  trumpet-peals  of  his  rhetoric,  by  the  clash  of 
arms  and  gleams  of  steel,  and  by  the  blows  which  he  made 
rattle  like  hail  on  the  heads  of  the  ungodly  ;  as  for  example  in 
his  essay  on  Milton,  wdiere  characterizing  the  reign  of  Charles  II. 
he  begins,  *  Then  came  those  days  never  to  be  recalled  without 
a  blush,  the  days  of  servitude  without  loyalty  and  sensuality 
without  love,  of  dwarfish  talents  and  gigantic  vices,  the 
paradise  of  cold  hearts  and  narrow  minds,  the  golden  age  of 
the  coward,  the  bigot,  and  the  slave.'  Splendid  !  I  said  to 
myself,  and  its  high  rhetorical  indignation  made  the  blood 
thrill  along  my  veins  in  sympathetic  response.  Then  there 
was  the  eloquence  of  the  superficial  but  highly  coloured 
antithesis  in  his  description  of  the  Puritans,  *  If  they  were 
unacquainted  with  the  works  of  philosophers  and  poets,  they 
were  deeply  read  in  the  oracles  of  God.  If  their  names  were 
not  found  in  the  registers  of  heralds,  they  were  recorded  in 
the  Book  of  Life.  If  their  steps  were  not  accompanied  by 
a  splendid  train  of  menials,  legions  of  ministering  angels  had 
charge  over  them.  Their  palaces  were  houses  not  made  with 
hands ;  their  diadems  crowns  of  glory  which  should  never 
fade  away.' — and  so  on,  all  of  which  I  thought  very  fine.  But 
he  did  more  for  me.  For  in  the  teeth  of  my  broken  ideals 
and  at  a  time  when  all  greatness  of  soul  seemed  to  me  a 
figment  of  the  imagination  which  the  Spencerian  philosophy 


302  MACAULAY. 

had  for  ever  dispelled,  and  when  all  distinctions   of  character 

and  intellect,  depending  as  they  did  on  the  activity  of  brain- 
cells  which  in  themselves  could  have  no  gradation  in  ranking 
or  degree,  seemed  to  me  an  illusion,  these  highly  charged 
portraits  of  Macaulay,  rousing  me  for  the  moment  to  the  old 
belief  in  greatness,  came  like  trumpet  peals ;  and  all  the  more 
so  by  reason  of  that  contrast  of  light  and  shade  which  like  the 
vices  of  the  chivalrous  and  fascinating  highwayman,  served 
rather  to  set  off  their  splendour  than  to  dim  it,  to  intensify 
and  inflame  the  imagination,  rather  than  to  cool  it.  The 
passages  of  this  kind  on  which  I  most  loved  to  dwell  in  my 
habitual  torpor  of  spirit,  were  such  for  example  as  where  he 
says  of  Strafford,  '  But  Wentworth, — who  ever  names  him 
without  thinking  of  those  harsh  dark  features,  ennobled  by 
their  expression  into  more  than  the  majesty  of  an  antique 
Jupiter ;  of  that  brow,  that  eye,  that  cheek,  that  lip,  wherein, 
as  in  a  chronicle,  are  written  the  events  of  many  stormy  and 
disastrous  years,  high  enterprise  accomplished,  frightful  dangers 
braved,  power  unsparingly  exercised,  suffering  unshrinkingly 
borne;  of  that  fixed  look,  so  full  of  severity,  of  mournful 
anxiety,  of  deep  thought,  of  dauntless  resolution,  which  seems 
at  once  to  forebode  and  to  defy  a  terrible  fate,  as  it  lowers  on 
us  from  the  living  canvas  of  Vandyke?  Even  at  this  day  the 
haughty  Earl  overawes  posterity  as  he  overawed  his  contem- 
poraries, and  excites  the  same  interest  when  arraigned  before 
the  tribunal  of  history,  which  he  excited  at  the  bar  of  the 
House  of  Lords.'  Or  of  Swift,  '  In  the  front  of  the  opposite 
ranks  appeared  a  darker  and  fiercer  spirit,  the  apostate 
politician,  the  ribald  priest,  the  perjured  lover,  a  heart  burning 
with  hatred  against  the  wdiole  human  race,  a  mind  richly  stored 
with  images  from  the  dunghill  and  the  lazar-house.'  And 
again  his  really  beautiful  panegyric  on  the  intellect  of  Bacon, 
'  With  great  minuteness  of  observation,  he  had  an  amplitude 
of  comprehension  such  as  has  never  yet  been  vouchsafed  to  any 
other  human  being.'     '  His  understanding  resembled  the  tent 


MACAUIiAY.  ?)()?> 

which  the  fairy  Pari  ban  ou  gave  to  Prince  Ahmed.  Fold  it  ; 
and  it  seemed  a  toy  for  the  hand  of  a  lady.  Spread  it ;  and 
the  armies  of  powerful  Sultans  might  repose  beneath  its  shade.' 
But  even  more  than  all,  his  quotation  of  Ben  Jonson's  eulogy 
on  Bacon,  'My  conceit  of  his  person  was  never  increased 
towards  him  by  his  place  or  honours;  but  I  have  and  do 
reverence  him  for  the  greatness  that  was  only  proper  to 
himself ;  in  that  he  seemed  to  me  ever,  by  his  work,  one  of  the 
greatest  men  and  most  worthy  of  admiration,  that  had  been 
in  many  ages.  In  his  adversity  I  ever  prayed  that  God  would 
give  him  strength ;  for  greatness  he  could  not  want.' 

From  all  of  which  it  would  seem  that  the  depression  from 
which  I  was  suffering  was  not  so  profound  as  at  the  time  I 
imagined  it  to  be,  that  it  rather  overhung  the  other  activities 
of  the  mind  like  a  cloud  than  dyed  and  interpenetrated  them 
wTith  its  own  gloom,  so  that  no  sooner  was  the  weight  of  the 
philosophical  doubt  which  held  them  down,  for  a  moment 
removed,  than  they  sprang  up  under  the  influence  of  youth 
and  hope  with  all  the  old  enthusiasm  and  delight.  So  true, 
indeed,  is  it  that  however  much  circumstances  may  in  the 
long  run  be  said  to  shape-  and  mould  our  minds,  still,  at  any 
given  point  of  time,  the  dominant  mood  selects  like  a  magnet 
from  the  passing  world  only  what  is  the  counterpart  to  itself, 
letting  all  the  rest  pass  by  unheeded ;  and  so,  in  a  word  and  in 
strict  truth  may  be  said  to  make  its  own  world  as  a  bird  builds 
its  own  nest. 


CHAPTER    II 


A   FALSE    START. 

I  HAVE  dwelt  at  greater  length  on  the  characteristics  of 
Macaulay's  style  and  manner  than  I  should  have  done  had 
it  not  been  that  like  a  broadly-marked  foot-rule  they  serve  as 
an  easy  standard  of  comparison  by  which  to  measure  the 
excellences  and  defects  of  other  men.  The  first  to  whom  I 
applied  this  standard  of  comparison  was  De  Quincey  who  was 
the  next  of  the  Essayists  that  chanced  to  fall  in  my  way  and 
was  almost  the  exact  antithesis  to  Macaulay  in  style,  matter  and 
treatment.  His  mind  had  a  much  wider  range,  was  richer  in 
its  contents,  and  dwelt  habitually  in  a  higher  region  of  thought 
and  contemplation.  His  works  in  consequence  had  a  much 
greater  interest  for  me,  they  carried  a  much  more  precious 
cargo,  and  left  behind  them  a  richer  deposit  of  thought. 
Instead  of  dealing  mainly  with  History,  Criticism,  and  Politics, 
they  ranged  over  almost  every  subject  of  human  interest — 
Philosophy,  Poetry,  Metaphysics,  Religion,  Political  Economy, 
Criticism,  and  Style.  His  history  of  the  Cassars,  his  theory  of 
the  Greek  Drama,  his  account  of  the  Pagan  Oracles,  of  the 
Essenes,  of  the  Roman  Meals,  his  new  estimate  of  Herodotus, 
his  dissertations  on  Style,  and  on  the  difference  between  what 
he  calls  the  literature  of  knowledge  and  the  literature  of  poicer, 
the  charming  literary  illustrations  of  his  Political  Economy,  his 
peculiar  humour  as  seen  in  his  '  Murder  as  a  Fine  Art/  which 
reminds  you  now  of  Swift,  now  of  Charles  Lamb,  and  now  of 
Jean    Paul;    his    critical    estimates    of    Pope,    Wordsworth, 


A    FALSE    START.  305 

Coleridge,  and  other  of  his  literary  contemporaries;  and  the 
out-of-the-way  anecdotes  and  erudition  with  which  he  adorns  it 
all,  were  for  a  month  or  two  a  perpetual  feast  to  me ;  and  to  this 
day  I  know  of  no  body  of  literary  work  at  once  more  interesting 
and  instructive,  more  rich  in  suggestion  or  more  stimulating  to 
the  young  aspiring  mind.  And  with  this  greater  richness 
and  variety,  it  was  interesting  to  note  the  corresponding 
characteristics  of  his  style  and  manner  of  treatment.  Macaulay, 
whose  main  end  it  is  to  convince  you  on  some  one  more  or  less 
narrow  and  limited  issue,  seizes  on  what  he  conceives  to  be  the 
central  truth  of  his  subject  at  the  outset,  and  proceeds  to  cut 
his  way  out  to  the  circumference  by  as  straight  a  course  and  with 
as  much  rapidity  as  the  obstacles  in  his  path  will  permit.  De 
Quincey  on  the  other  hand,  equally  desirous  of  exhibiting  to  the 
reader  his  treasures  of  curious  and  out-of-the-way  learning  as  of 
convincing  him  of  his  main  contention,  prefers  to  begin  leisurely 
at  the  circumference,  and  drawing  a  cordon  of  preliminary 
hypothesis  around  it,  to  move  inward  as  in  a  siege,  tightening 
the  line  as  he  advances,  until  he  closes  at  last  full  on  the  truth 
in  the  centre.  And  hence  it  is  that  while  Macaulay  in  his  haste 
has  to  snatch  as  it  were  his  flowers  of  rhetoric  from  their  stems 
in  passing,  and  is  obliged  to  leave  behind  him  in  the  soil  the 
richness  and  beauty  of  the  whole  plant,  De  Quincey  on  the  other 
hand,  by  means  of  the  large  circuit  he  has  to  occupy  before 
reaching  the  centre,  is  enabled  to  transplant  entire  from  the  bye 
fields  of  learning,  great  masses  of  curious  and  interesting 
knowledge,  all  clustered  and  disposed  in  circlets  of  easy  and 
graceful  digression  around  the  central  truth.  And  accordingly 
instead  of  the  rapid  movement  of  Macaulay,  dazzling  your  eye 
by  his  bright  metallic  gleam,  and  keeping  up  your  interest  to 
the  end  by  the  very  wind  and  sweep  of  his  motion,  as  well  as  by 
the  variety  and  colour  of  the  paper  flowers  of  rhetoric  which 
storm  in  on  you  in  showers  as  you  are  whirled  along,  De 
Quincey  moves  slowly  and  leisurely  to  his  end  in  sentences  of 
high-swelling  cadence  and  richly  involuted  phrase,  turning  now 

W 


306  A   FALSE   START. 

to  this  side,  now  to  that,  in  endlessly  interesting  digression,  and 
yet  amid  it  all  picking  his  steps  with  a  pedantic  fastidiousness, 
a  kind  of  old-fashioned  gentility  and  concern  for  the  skirts  of 
his  robes,  which  is  quite  spinster-like  in  its  solicitude.  And  yet 
in  spite  of  his  encyclopaedic  knowledge,  his  keen  powers  of 
analysis,  his  metaphysical  subtlety  and  precision,  this  Dryasdust 
and  Encyclopaedist  of  genius,  has  like  Macaulay  neither  depth 
nor  penetration  enough  to  fuse  his  separate  essays  into  unity, 
neither  co-ordinating  power  nor  originality  enough  to  carry 
them  up  to  a  single  higher  principle  ;  but  on  the  contrary  leaves 
them  standing  around  the  field  in  separate  tents,  each  infolded 
in  its  own  peculiar  completeness,  but  without  relation  to  the 
deeper  problems  of  the  world  as  a  whole.  Even  his  style,  when 
compared  with  that  of  the  great  masters  of  expression,  is  in  its 
lower  levels  at  least,  so  loaded  with  many-syllabled  epithets  and 
adjectives,  runs  into  such  verbosity,  circumstantiality,  and 
affectation  of  precision,  as  to  become  positively  heavy ;  while  in 
its  more  ambitious  flights,  in  the  opium  dreams  for  example,  it 
gets  its  bravura  effects  by  piling  mountain  on  mountain  and 
turret  on  turret  of  grandiloquent  imagery,  pathetic  or  sublime, 
but  hazy  and  indistinct  in  outline  as  cloud  phantasmagory,  and 
wanting  in  real  coherence  and  complexity  of  internal  structure. 
It  has  not,  in  a  word,  that  high  pictorial  intensity  which  scorches 
words,  as  by  flame  of  fire,  into  images  burning  and  unforgettable. 
Him,  too,  therefore  like  Macaulay  I  found  unable  to  forward 
me  on  my  own  special  journey,  and  after  enjoying  for  a  season 
the  rich  spoil  with  which  he  had  supplied  me,  I  turned  to  that 
other  of  the  great  Essayists  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  century — 
a  man  in  many  respects  so  different  from  them  both — the 
much-abused  but  admirable  Hazlitt. 

To  begin  with,  Hazlitt  has  neither  the  wealth  of  erudition  of 
Macaulay,  nor  the  range  of  intellectual  interest  of  De  Quincey. 
His  philosophy  is  concerned  almost  entirely  with  the  nature  of 
men  as  he  saw  them  around  him,  and  not  with  German 
metaphysics  and  the  history  of  Speculation;  his  politics,  with 


A    FALSK    START.  307 

the  actual  condition  of  peoples  in  his  own  time,  and  not  with 
their  historical  evolution ;  his  literature,  with  the  broad  high- 
way open  to  all,  and  what  is  of  wide  human  import,  and  not 
with  its  out-of-the-way  nooks  and  corners  or  subtleties  of 
erudition  and  scholarship.  But  to  make  amends  for  this 
limitation  in  the  extent  of  his  knowledge,  he  has  greater 
penetration  than  either,  deeper  insight  into  the  world  of  men 
and  things  than  De  Quincey  with  all  his  Metaphysics,  finer 
literary  delicacy  and  sensitiveness  than  Macaulay  with  all  his 
superabundant  memory  and  power  of  quotation.  To  take  for 
example  the  main  doctrine  that  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  his 
critical  philosophy,  namely  that  the  finest  insight,  whether  in 
matters  of  ordinary  judgment  or  in  works  of  genius,  is  derived 
from  intuition  and  feeling  rather  than  from  trains  of  conscious 
logic,  and  that  in  consequence,  men's  higher  sensibilities  and 
sympathies  are  real  inner  senses,  real  intellectual  faculties,  the 
range,  delicacy,  and  strength  of  which  are  the  true  measure  of 
intellectual  power.  This  doctrine  in  itself,  I  say,  is  worth 
whole  volumes  of  ordinary  metaphysics,  and  gave  Hazlitt  this 
great  advantage  as  a  critic,  that  it  put  him  at  the  outset  at  the 
right  angle  and  focus  for  judging  of  poetry  and  works  of  art, 
inasmuch  as  these  springing  as  they  do  from  the  depths  of 
feeling  and  of  passion  can  only  be  rightly  approached  and 
interpreted  through  the  same  medium,  and  not  through  any 
estimates  of  the  mere  mechanical  understanding.  And  it  was 
precisely  this  justness  of  view  which  when  united  with  his  fine 
natural  delicacy  and  sensibility,  gave  him  that  levelness  of 
critical  judgment,  that  fine  palate  for  differences  in  literary 
flavours,  that  keen  sense  of  propriety  in  all  that  concerns 
sentiment,  dialogue,  and  the  fluctuation  of  passion,  which  have 
made  his  lectures  on  poetry  and  on  the  characters  in  Shaks- 
peare's  plays,  the  finest  body  of  poetic  and  dramatic  criticism 
in  my  opinion  that  as  yet  exists  in  our  language. 

Now  with  the  limitation  of  Hazlitt's  intellectual  interests  to 
things  as  they  are,  rather  than  to  their  history ;  to  their  present 


308  A   FALSE    START. 

condition,  rather  than  to  their  evolution  in  the  past ;  to  what 
is  complete  in  itself  and  can  be  turned  round  and  surveyed  on 
all  sides  like  a  wheel,  rather  than  to  what  like  a  snowball  grows 
under  your  hand  and  changes  from  moment  to  moment ;  to  the 
statical  in  a  word  rather  than  the  dynamical  aspect  of  things; 
with  this  limitation,  I  say,  it  is  interesting  to  observe  a  similar 
limitation  in  the  subject,  method,  and  style.  He  takes  for 
examples  such  separate  themes  and  studies  of  life  as  '  on  living 
to  oneself,'  *  on  people  with  one  idea,' '  on  paradox  and  common- 
place,' *  on  vulgarity  and  affectation,'  '  on  patronage  and 
puffing,'  '  on  thought  and  action,'  and  the  like,  or  such  artistic 
subjects  as  '  on  genius  and  commonsense,'  '  on  the  picturesque 
and  the  ideal,'  on  '  familiarity  of  style,'  and  so  on  ;  and  turning 
each  in  its  completeness  round  its  own  axle  like  a  many-sided 
wheel,  proceeds  to  note  and  comment  on  every  part  and  angle 
of  its  circumference  as  it  comes  under  his  eye,  in  a  number  of 
shrewd  observations,  of  acute  but  isolated  splinters  of  reflection, 
rather  than  in  a  coherent  web  of  everywhere  connected  thought. 
And  corresponding  to  this,  his  style  has  little  or  no  movement 
in  it,  has  neither  the  rapidity  and  animation  of  Macaulay,  nor 
the  undulating  swell  of  De  Quincey,  but  breaks  itself  into 
single  scintillations  and  points  of  light,  often  of  much  sparkle  or 
brilliancy,  rather  than  diffusing  itself  in  a  single  continuous  ray. 
But  in  spite  of  his  insight  into  those  ideal  regions  of  the  mind 
where  art  and  poetry  dwell,  as  well  as  into  the  lower  haunts  of 
vulgarity,  vanity,  and  pride ;  in  spite  of  the  ease  and  sureness 
with  which  he  refers  all  the  productions  of  genius  and  art  to 
their  correct  categories  in  the  human  mind ;  and  in  spite,  too, 
of  the  delicacy  of  his  literary  sensibilities ;  he  had  neither  the 
capaciousness  to  gather  up  his  refractory  materials  into  unity, 
the  pictorial  intensity  to  make  them  live  of  themselves,  nor  the 
elevation  of  feeling  necessary  to  burn  them  indelibly  into  the 
heart.  So  that  his  images  and  metaphors,  often  brilliant^ 
served  rather  to  point  out  his  meaning  into  greater  precision, 
than  to  lend  to  it  any  distinction,  colour,  or  flavour  of  its  own. 


A   FALSE    START.  309 

And  hence  while  enjoying  to  the  full  his  shrewd  observation 
and  felicity  of  phrase,  he  neither  stimulated  me  by  rhetorical 
appeal  like  Macaulay,  nor  led  me  through  wayward  and 
delightful  pastures  like  De  Quincey,  nor  yet  did  he  minister 
directly  to  those  trains  of  melancholy  reflection  in  which  in  my 
depression  I  habitually  lived — on  the  mystery  of  life,  the  flight 
of  time,  the  pathos  of  mortal  things,  the  tragedy  of  human 
affection  and  of  love.  But  indirectly  he  did  much  more  for  me. 
He  introduced  me  in  his  quotations  from  the  Elizabethan 
Dramatists  to  the  beauties  of  Shakspeare,  to  whom  as  yet  I  had 
not  thought  of  turning,  feeling  as  I  did  that  as  a  poet  engaged 
in  representing  the  characters  of  men,  he  would  not  be  likely  to 
forward  me  much  in  solving  the  problem  of  the  World.  But  in 
these  quotations  I  found  what  more  than  gave  echo  to  my  mood, 
and  body  to  my  particular  griefs,  soothing  them  like  a  lullaby 
or  accompanying  them  like  a  requiem.  Among  these  my 
favourite  in  the  grand  style  was  that  splendid  panegyric  in 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  where  Caesar  in  sublime  disdain  of  the 
pretensions  of  even  the  Egyptian  pyramids  to  be  mausoleum  fit 
for  the  great  soul  of  Pompey,  is  made  to  say : — 

•No,  brood  of  Nilus  ! 
Nothing  can  cover  his  high  fame  but  heaven ; 
No  pyramids  set  off  his  memories 
But  the  eternal  substance  of  his  greatness, 
To  which  I  leave  him. ' 

Or  again,  those  beautiful  lines  in  Cymbeline  where  Aviragus 
bringing  in  the  body  of  Imogen  whom  he  supposes  to  be  dead, 
proceeds  in  tones  sweet  and  tender  as  the  flowers  with  which  he 
would  bestrew  her  grave  : — 

'  With  fairest  flowers 
Whilst  Summer  lasts,  and  I  live  here  Fidele, 
I'll  sweeten  thy  sad  grave  ;  thou  shalt  not  lack 
The  flower  that's  like  thy  face,  pale  primrose,  nor 
The  azured  harebell,  like  thy  veins  ;  no,  nor 
The  leaf  of  Eglantine,  which  not  to  slander 
Out-sweetened  not  thy  breath.' 


310  A    FALSE    START. 

As  instance  again  of  that  high  pictorial  power  which  cannot 
as  I  have  said  be  got  by  any  addition  or  accumulation  of  detail 
however  accurate  or  prolonged,  but  only  by  the  mind  at  white- 
heat  fusing  its  materials  as  by  lightning,  there  was  that 
magnificent  description  of  the  storm  at  sea  in  Othello,  where 
the  spectator  in  glowing  hyperbole  exclaims, 

'  Do  but  stand  upon  the  foaming  shore 

The  chidden  billow  seems  to  pelt  the  clouds 

The  wind-shak'd  surge  with  high  and  monstrous  mane 

Seems  to  cast  water  on  the  burning  bear 

And  quench  the  guards  of  the  ever-fixed  pole, 

I  never  did  like  molestation  view 

On  the  enchafed  flood.' 

Or  again  the  exquisite  pathos  of  the  scene  that  followed  close 
upon  it,  where  Othello  in  landing  after  the  storm,  finds 
Desdemona  awaiting  him,  and  where  in  his  ecstasy  of  joy  there 
comes  over  him  as  he  embraces  her,  that  fateful  sense  of 
foreboding  which  subdues  his  mind  to  awe  and  solemnity,  as  if 
in  this  brief  life  such  pure  and  absolute  peace  could  never 
again  be  vouchsafed  him, 

'  If  it  were  now  to  die 
T'were  now  to  be  most  happy  ;  for  I  fear 
My  soul  hath  her  conteot  so  absolute 
That  not  another  comfort  like  to  this 
Succeeds  in  unknown  fate.' 

where  the  very  sound  and  fall  of  the  words  have  in  them  a  kind 
of  foretaste  and  far-off  echo  of  doom. 

But  more  than  all,  I  loved  to  dwell  on  the  death-scenes  of  the 
leading  characters  in  his  great  tragedies ;  whether  of  the  old, 
broken  with  ingratitude  or  care,  or  of  those  in  the  morning  of 
life,  so  noble,  so  perplexed,  so  misunderstood,  where  what  I  may 
call  the  note  of  world-pathos  everywhere  arises  like  a  purified 
soul  out  of  the  body  of  their  particular  sorrows — a  form  of 
pathos  I  may  add,  which  from  that  time  disappeared  almost 
entirely  from  our  literature,  until  its  note  was  again  heard  in  our 
own  day  in  the  writings  of  Euskin  and  Carlyle.     Listen  to  it 


A   FALSE    START.  311 

in  Lear,  where  the  good  Kent  deprecates  all  further  attempts 
to  revive  his  weary  heart-broken  master, 

;  Vex  not  his  ghost,  O  let  him  pass :  he  hates  him  much 
That  would  upon  the  rack  of  this  tough  world 
Stretch  him  out  longer. ' 

Or  in  the  dying  words  of  Hotspur  to  young  Prinee  Harry,  who 
has  killed  him  in  battle  and  now  bends  over  his  prostrate  body 
to  catch  his  last  expiring  accents, 

'  O  Harry  thou  hast  robbed  me  of  my  youth 

I  better  brook  the  loss  of  brittle  life 

Than  those  proud  titles  thou  hast  won  of  me 

They  wound  my  thoughts  worse  than  thy  sword  my  flesh, 

But  thoughts  the  slave  of  life,  and  life  time's  fool, 

And  time  that  takes  survey  of  all  the  world 

Must  have  a  stop. — O!  I  could  prophesy 

But  that  the  earthy  and  cold  hand  of  death 

Lies  on  my  tongue.     No,  Percy,  thou  art  dust 

And  food  for 

(The  Prince) 

For  worms,  brave  Percy,  fare  thee  well,  great  heart.'  etc. 

Or  the    parting  words  of  Timon  to  the  Athenian  Senators 

who  have  come  out  to  his  cave  to  persuade  him  to  return  to 

Athens, 

'  Come  not  to  me  again,  but  say  to  Athens 
Timon  hath  made  his  everlasting  mansion 
Upon  the  beached  verge  of  the  salt  flood 
Who  once  a  day  with  his  embossed  froth 
The  turbulent  surge  shall  cover ;  thither  come 
And  let  my  grave-stone  be  your  oracle.' 

Or  the  moving  soliloquy  of  Alcibiades  when  he  reads  the  copy 
of  Timon' s  epitaph  which  has  been  brought  to  him, 

'  These  well  express  in  thee  thy  latter  spirits 
Though  thou  abhorrd'st  in  us  our  human  griefs 
Scornd'st  our  brains  flow  and  those  our  droplets  which 
From  niggard  nature  fall,  yet  rich  conceits 
Taught  thee  to  make  vast  Neptune  weep  for  aye 
On  thy  low  grave,  on  faults  forgiven.' 

Or   more  pathetic  than  all,  the  dying  words  of  Hamlet  to 


312  A    FALSE    START. 

Horatio  when  after  snatching  the  poisoned  cup  from  him,  there 
comes  over  his  mind  in  the  mid'st  of  the  carnival  of  blood  that 
surrounds  him,  the  wounds  his  good  name  must  sustain,  with 
his  cause  unknown,  himself  misunderstood,  and  men's  minds 
unsatisfied : — 

'  O  good  Horatio  what  a  wounded  name, 

Things  standing  thus  unknown  shall  live  behind  me 

If  ever  thou  did'st  hold  me  in  thy  heart 

Absent  thee  from  felicity  awhile 

And  in  this  harsh  world  draw  thy  breath  in  pain 

To  tell  my  story. ' 

These  and  the  like  extracts  from  Shakspeare  first  taught  me 
what  great  writing  really  was, — the  combination  of  high  pictorial 
concentration  and  complexity  in  the  phrasing,  with  such  subtlety 
of  movement  and  fall  in  the  rhythm  of  the  sentences  as  shall 
express  shades  and  combinations  of  thought  and  feeling, — of 
tenderness,  pathos,  indignation,  pride,   and   the   like — beyond 
the  reach  of  the  mere  words  themselves  ; — and  from  that  hour  I 
have  never  been  quite  satisfied  with  any  other.     But  time  was 
speeding  on,  and  while  I  could  have  still  gone  on  reading  this 
miscellaneous  writing  with  delight,  I  now  began  to  feel  that  it 
was  not  advancing  me  in  the  main  object  of  my  quest, — the 
solution  of   the  Problem  of  the  World.     The  fact  was  these 
Essayists — Macaulay,   De    Quincey,    Hazlitt   and   the    rest — 
belonged  to  that  older  school  of  writers  beginning  with  Addison 
and    Steele,    who   confined    themselves   to   isolated   points    of 
knowledge,  whether  of  human  life  or  manners,  of  literature  or 
history,  but  without  connecting  their  special  opinions  with  their 
views  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  religious  or  philosophical.     For 
whether  they  held  to  the  old  creed  with  more  or  less  tenacity 
like  Macaulay  and  De  Quincey,  or  frankly  denied  it  like  Hazlitt, 
they  never  dreamt  of  carrying  their  speculations  on  life  or  books 
up  to  those  higher  fountains  of  thought  to  be  vivified   and 
interpenetrated    thence     by    their     life-giving     or     thought- 
compelling  streams.     And  it  was  not  until  the  influx  of  German 


A    FALSE    START.  313 

thought  into  England  with  Coleridge  and  Carlyle,  that  a  new 
era  began  which  has  since  changed  the  entire  face  of  English 
Literature.  But  it  was  some  time  yet  before  I  made  practical 
acquaintance  with  these  great  writers,  and  in  the  meantime, 
dropping  the  Essayists  with  as  much  haste  as  I  had  taken  them 
up,  by  a  sudden  wheel  of  caprice  I  turned  to  the  Historians. 

I  began,  I  remember  with  Herodotus,  the  sweetly-moving 
simple  minded  Herodotus,  and  passing  on  from  him  to  the  cold 
but  sagacious  Thucydides,  went  swiftly  along  through  Livy, 
Suetonius,  Tacitus  and  the  other  historians  of  ancient  times,  till 
I  came  to  the  monumental  Gibbon  with  his  pompous  tread, 
and  descending  with  him  in  his  stately  and  triumphant  march 
across  the  vale  of  the  Dark  Ages,  emerged  again  on  the 
hither-side  into  the  full  light  of  Modern  Civilization,  to  be 
conducted  thence  by  the  careful  and  judicious  Hallam,  the 
philosophical  Hume,  the  fair-minded  Robertson,  the  brilliant 
Macaulay  and  the  rest,  down  to  our  own  time.  Now  in  all  these 
without  exception,  the  narrative  portions  of  their  histories  are 
interspersed  with  philosophical  and  other  reflections  which  serve 
as  connecting  link  to  the  order  and  sequence  of  events.  But 
instead  of  attaching  supreme  importance  to  the  general  material 
and  social  conditions  of  their  respective  times — whether  intel- 
lectual, moral,  geographical,  or  political, — and  making  the 
greatness  of  Emperors  and  Kings  depend  on  the  clearness  with 
which  they  saw,  and  the  readiness  with  which  they  fell  in  line 
with  this  general  march  and  trend  of  things,  they  on  the 
contrary  have  everywhere  given  the  first  place  to  the  capricious 
wills  of  these  Emperors  and  Kings,  and  have  either  entirely  cut 
them  off  from,  or  but  intermittently  connected  them  with,  those 
material  and  social  conditions  in  the  evolution  of  which  alone  is 
any  general  law  of  progress  to  be  seen.  The  consequence  was 
that  in  the  works  of  these  men  no  such  unity  was  discoverable 
in  the  movement  of  ages  and  nations  as  might  have  given  me  a 
<;lue  to  the  general  plan  of  the  World;  and  except  therefore  for 
the   delectation  which  their  works   gave   to  a  mind  at    once 


314  A   FALSE   START. 

hungering  for  knowledge  and  intent  on  understanding  the  nature 
of  things,  they  left  me  in  much  the  same  position  as  they  found 
me;  and  I  turned  not  without  doubt,  but  still  with  a  glimmering 
of  hope,  to  some  of  the  more  recent  of  our  Poets  and  Novelists — 
to  Tennyson,  Matthew  Arnold,  George  Eliot,  Charlotte  Bronte 
and  others  of  less  title  to  fame. 

I  had  already  dipped  into  these  writers  here  and  there  at  odd 
moments,  and  had  gathered  enough  from  their  contents  to 
convince  me  that  they  also  like  myself  had  suffered  from  the 
manifold  spiritual  burdens  and  perplexities  of  the  time ;  and 
I  now  hoped  that  a  more  careful  study  of  their  works,  by 
exhibiting  the  process  by  which  they  had  emerged  from  their 
difficulties,  would  help  me  in  some  measure  to  the  solution  of 
my  own.  But  to  my  disappointment  I  found  that  instead  of 
making  these  difficulties  the  fore-court  or  vestibule  by  which, 
as  I  had  hoped,  I  was  to  enter  into  their  solution,  they  were 
used  rather  as  themes  on  which  to  ring  the  changes  of  poetic 
regret,  or  as  foils  for  the  loves  or  aversions  of  the  maidens  and 
heroes  of  their  story.  And  admirable  as  is  their  knowledge  of 
human  nature  within  the  limits  they  have  marked  out  for 
themselves,  their  flight  nevertheless  stops  short  on  the  confines 
of  that  higher  region  of  the  mind  which  we  may  call  the  region 
of  the  Ideal.  They  get  their  acceptance  from  their  insight 
into  the  workings  of  the  ordinary  passions  and  interests  of  our 
nature,  and  like  meteors  which  can  give  no  light  in  the  upper 
regions  of  the  ether  but  only  when  they  strike  the  denser 
medium  of  our  atmosphere,  they  continue  to  revolve  within 
that  narrower  circle  of  relations  of  which  love,  jealousy, 
revenge,  or  some  other  tangible  human  feeling  is  the  centre, 
rather  than  illuminating  like  suns  those  laws  of  the  spiritual 
and  ideal  nature  of  man,  which  alone  when  contemplated  in 
all  their  bearings  can  throw  light  in  the  Problem  of  the  World. 

All  alike  therefore,  Essayists  and  Historians,  Poets  and 
Novelists,  in  whose  various  felicities  of  style  or  of  thought 
I  had  found   so  much  temporary  solace  and  delight,  but  from 


A   FALSE    START.  315 

whom,  feeling  that  they  were  not  really  advancing  me  on  my 
journey,  I  never  rose  without  pain ;  all  had  to  be  dropped  in 
turn,  and  in  despair  I  reluctantly  turned  to  the  great  World- 
Thinkers  of  the  Past,  and  opened,  I  remember,  with  Plato. 


CHAPTEK     III. 


ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

WAS  charmed  with  Plato,  and  with  every  aspect  of  him ; 
■*■  charmed  with  his  massive,  imposing,  and  cathedral-like 
architecture  of  the  Universe ;  with  his  delicacy  and  lightness 
of  touch,  his  perfection  of  culture,  and  his  exquisite  refinement 
and  sensibility  ;  and  in  later  years  dwelt  on  his  works  lovingly 
and  long.  But  as  at  the  time  of  which  1  am  writing  he  had 
no  answer  to  give  to  the  particular  perplexities  from  which  I 
was  suffering,  no  balm  for  my  wounded  spirit,  nor  power  of 
restoring  to  me  my  lost  ideal,  I  was  obliged  to  quickly  pass 
him  by ;  and  ran  in  rapid  succession  through  the  various 
systems  of  the  Aristotelians,  the  Stoics,  the  Sceptics,  the 
Epicureans,  and  the  Neo-Platonists ;  concentrating  in  particular 
on  the  later  writers,  Cicero,  Lucretius,  Seneca,  Philo, 
Plutarch  and  Marcus  Aurelius;  and  skipping  altogether  not 
only  the  early  Church  Fathers — Tertullian,  Athanasius,  Origen, 
and  Augustine — but  the  great  Catholic  Theologians — Thomas 
Aquinas,  Duns  Scotus  and  the  rest — with  the  feeling  mainly 
that  however  profound,  subtle,  and  coherent  they  might  be 
(and  some  of  them  like  Augustine  and  Aquinas  as  I  afterwards 
found,  belong  to  the  imperial  race  of  Thinkers),  their  systems 
although  having  all  the  harmony  and  elaborateness  of 
orchestral  symphonies,  could  after  all  be  but  expansions  of 
the  Gospel  *  Scheme  of  Salvation '  which  from  temper,  training, 


ANCIENT    PHILOSOPHY.  317 

and  the  painful  associations  of  my  boyhood,  I  had  long  since 
rejected.  Having  passed  thus  lightly  over  the  entire  Middle 
Ages,  I  plunged  again  with  much  ardour  into  the  modern 
Philosophies  beginning  with  Descartes,  under  the  impression 
that  as  they  were  nearer  to  me  in  point  of  time  than  the 
Ancients,  they  were  more  likely  to  give  me  what  I  wanted. 
Accordingly  having  gone  in  succession  through  Malebranche, 
Spinoza,  Locke,  Hume,  Berkeley,  Leibnitz,  Kant,  Fichte,  and 
Schelling,  and  not  found  an  answer  to  my  difficulties,  I  turned 
to  the  English  and  Scotch  Schools,  to  Dugald  Stewart,  Reid, 
Brown,  etc.,  and  did  not  rest  until  I  had  come  down  to  our 
own  time,  finishing  with  the  works  of  Hamilton,  Mansell,  and 
Mill.  Unfortunately  the  three  Thinkers  who  would  have  been 
of  use  to  me,  and  who  as  we  shall  see  farther  on  influenced  my 
course  of  thought  in  later  years  in  not  a  few  important  particulars^ 
namely  Hegel,  Schopenhauer,  and  Comte,  were  entirely 
passed  over  by  me,  either  from  misapprehension,  misunder- 
standing, or  prejudice  ;  Hegel,  because  of  some  unfavourable 
impression  I  had  received  of  him  in  earlier  days,  on  taking  up 
by  chance  a  copy  of  Hutchinson  Stirling's  book  on  the  *  Secret 
of  Hegel ' ;  Schopenhauer,  because  of  his  reputation  for 
pessimism  from  which  in  my  then  humour  I  shrank  with 
aversion ;  and  Comte,  because  of  the  unfavourable  impression  I 
had  received  of  him  from  Spencer's  essay  on  the  '  Classification 
of  the  Sciences,'  the  impression,  namely,  that  his  whole 
system  rested  on  a  basis  of  false  and  exploded  scientific 
conceptions  with  which  it  would  be  a  waste  of  time  to  concern 
myself.  With  the  exception  then  of  these  three  whom  I  did 
not  read,  one  and  all  of  the  great  Philosophers  of  the  Ancient 
and  Modern  World  whom  I  have  mentioned,  were  uncere- 
moniously put  aside  by  me  as  unable  to  help  me  out  of  the 
difficulties  which  had  been  flung  into  Philosophy,  not  to  speak 
of  Theology,  by  the  4  Origin  of  Species,'  and  by  the  great 
generalizations  which  Spencer  had  founded  on  the  most  recent 
results  of  Physical  Science. 


818  ANCIENT    PHILOSOPHY. 

Now,  that  I  was  not  capricious  or  frivolous  in  disposing  thus 
lightly  and  with  such  easy  nonchalance,  of  thinkers  who  in  their 
age  and  time  were  among  the  master  spirits  of  the  world,  but 
that  on  the  contrary  I  proceeded  on  definite  and  what  appeared 
to  me  substantial  grounds,  a  few  illustrations  will  make 
manifest.  Among  the  Ancient  Philosophers,  for  example,  I 
found  that  Plato  regarded  the  fixed  stars  not  as  incandescent 
masses  of  Matter  as  we  now  know  them  to  be,  but  as  real  gods, 
pure  and  immortal  natures  quiring  like  angels  their  everlasting 
harmonies  around  the  throne  of  the  Eternal  Beauty,  which  they 
contemplated  with  perennial  delight.  I  found  too  that  he 
regarded  even  the  planets,  including  the  sun  and  moon,  as 
gods,  though  gods  of  more  earthy,  impure,  and  mixed  natures 
than  the  fixed  stars;  and  sincerely  believed  their  function  to 
be  that  of  time-keepers  for  the  rest  of  the  Universe,  as  well  as 
the  instruments  of  Fate  for  men ;  controlling  as  they  did  the 
destinies,  and  marking  out  by  their  revolutions  and  con- 
junctions, the  years  and  the  hours  for  mortal  souls.  Nor  were 
his  Chemistry  and  Physics  any  more  satisfactory.  Fire,  Air, 
Earth,  and  Water,  he  conceived  as  made  up  of  little  triangles ; 
the  difference  in  the  nature  and  properties  of  these  elements 
being  due,  he  thought,  to  the  way  in  which  the  little  triangles 
were  combined  into  larger  figures ;  Fire  with  its  sharp, 
penetrating,  and  stinging  quality,  because  they  were  built  up 
into  the  form  of  sharp-pointed  pyramids;  Earth  with  its 
dullness,  grossness,  and  density,  because  they  were  compacted 
into  solid  cubes,  and  so  on.  His  Physiology  and  Psychology, 
too,  were  little  better.  The  Soul,  or  at  least  the  mortal  part 
of  it,  or  what  we  should  call  the  '  vital  principle,'  was  conceived 
by  him  as  having  extension,  and  as  pervading  the  body  like  an 
ether,  as  a  finer  form  of  Matter,  in  short ;  the  sentiments  and 
passions  having  their  seats  in  separate  parts  or  organs  of  the 
body;  courage  in  the  breast,  and  the  darker  and  grosser 
passions  in  the  liver,  spleen,  and  other  abdominal  viscera; 
while  he  represented  disease  as  resulting  either  from  the  cold 


ANCIENT    PHILOSOPHY.  319 

freezing  the  material  fluids,  the  fluids  soaking  and  swelling  the 
solids,  or  the  heat  pricking  the  various  internal  organs  with  its 
little  needle-pointed  triangles,  and  inflaming  them,  and  so 
on.  Aristotle,  again,  although  making  a  great  advance  in 
Physiology  and  Zoology,  was  in  his  astronomical  conceptions 
almost  as  crude  as  Plato.  Like  him,  he  believed  the  Earth  to 
be  the  centre  of  the  Universe,  and  to  be  fixed  and  rooted  in 
eternal  rest ;  while  all  motion  whether  on  the  earth  or  in  the 
heavens,  was  derived  from  a  vast  reservoir  of  ether,  which  he 
figured  as  surrounding  all  things  and  distributing  motion  to 
them  as  required ;  much  as  a  mill-dam  supplies  the  water 
which  gives  motion  to  the  mill-wheel.  What  then  could  one 
do  with  philosophies  like  these  ?  What  but  reject  them,  in 
spite  of  the  profound  observations  they  contained  on  human 
life,  on  morals,  on  society,  on  politics,  on  poetry,  on  art, 
observations  as  true  to-day  as  when  they  were  written,  and 
good,  many  of  them,  for  all  time.  For  it  cannot  be  overlooked 
that  the  answers  which  we  shall  give  to  the  great  and  ever- 
pressing  problems  of  the  nature  and  destiny  of  man  and  of  his 
place  in  the  Universe,  of  the  nature  of  God  and  of  the  human 
soul,  of  immortality,  and  so  on,  must  if  not  absolutely  depend 
on,  still  be  greatly  modified  by,  the  answers  we  give  to 
precisely  these  astronomical,  physical,  chemical,  physiological, 
and  psychological  problems.  Does  it  make  no  difference,  for 
example,  to  what  we  are  prepared  to  believe  as  to  the  destiny 
of  man  and  his  place  in  the  Universe,  whether  on  the  one 
hand  we  regard  our  earth  as  the  centre  of  the  Universe,  and 
man  as  the  centre  of  the  earth,  for  whom  all  things  on  it  exist ; 
or  whether  on  the  other  hand  we  regard  the  earth  as  but  an 
insignificant  planet  among  billions  of  mighty  constellations, 
and  man  as  but  one  species  of  animal  among  many  others,  all 
alike  engaged  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  existing  not 
for  the  sake  of  man  but  for  themselves  alone  ?  Again  does  it 
make  no  difference  as  to  what  we  shall  believe  on  the  disputed 
question  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  whether  with  Plato  we 


62V  ANCIENT    PHILOSOPHY. 

regard  each  soul  as  an  immortal  existence  separately  fashioned 
by  the  gods  and  let  down  from  heaven  for  a  season  to  be 
imprisoned  in  a  mortal  body,  from  which  when  released  by 
death  it  returns  to  its  home  again  among  the  stars ;  or  whether 
with  Spencer  we  believe  it  to  be  but  a  transient  product  of 
the  molecular  motion  of  the  brain,  in  the  same  way  as  heat  is 
the  transient  product  of  the  molecular  motion  in  a  bar  of  iron, 
each  alike  being  active  when  the  molecular  motion  is  intense, 
but  absent  or  dead  when  the  molecular  motion  slackens  or 
ceases  to  be?  And  when  we  remember  that  down  to  the 
advent  of  Modern  Science  the  entire  fabric  both  of  Philosophy 
and  Theology  reposed  on  these  doctrines  of  Plato  and  Aristotle, 
variously  modified  in  detail  indeed,  and  supplemented  in  the 
case  of  Theology  by  the  Mosaic  Cosmogony,  what  could  one 
do  but  reject  them?  To  reject  Christianity  because  the 
Mosaic  Cosmogony  ran  counter  to  Modern  Science,  and  then 
to  fall  down  before  Plato  and  Aristotle,  mere  mundane 
philosophers  whose  systems  were  in  their  scientific  aspect 
equally  primitive  and  crude,  would  indeed  have  been  an 
incongruity  and  absurdity.  As  well  go  back  to  the  Ptolemaic 
Astronomy  at  once. 

My  reasons  for  rejecting  the  Modern  School  of  Metaphysicians, 
although  different  in  kind  were  quite  as  definite  in  character, 
but  to  make  these  clear  some  preliminary  observations  are 
necessary.  In  a  general  way  we  may  say  that  at  the  period 
immediately  following  the  Kevival  of  Learning  and  before  the 
full  tide  of  Modern  Thought  had  fairly  set  in,  two  systems  of 
Thought  or  Doctrine  stood  confronting  one  another,  in  each  of 
which,  though  in  different  ways,  the  ideals  of  the  heart  might 
still  find  a  home.  The  one  was  the  Catholic  Church  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  the  other  was  the  great  system  of  Platonic 
Philosophy.  The  former  which  had  been  slowly  rising  through 
the  ages  like  some  vast  cathedral  over  the  simple  shrine  of 
Jesus,  was  a  composite  structure  of  great  complexity,  and  had 
taxed  the  genius,  the  speculation,  and  the  organizing  power  of 


ANCIENT    PHILOSOPHY.  321 

fifteen  centuries  to  bring  it  to  its  present  state  of  elaborate  and 
harmonious  completeness.  It  had  for  foundation  and  outer 
abutments  the  Mosaic  Cosmogony,  with  the  six  days  Creation, 
the  Fall  of  Man,  Original  Sin,  and  the  like;  for  dome,  the 
Godhead  bequeathed  as  a  legacy  from  Judaism,  but  shaped  by 
the  cunning  hand  of  Platonism  into  a  Trinity  of  Persons,  each 
with  His  appropriate  office  and  function,  and  yet  all  constituting 
but  One  God  ;  and  for  internal  organization  and  worship,  an 
elaborate  and  complex  ritual  and  hierarchy  modelled  on  the 
Roman  Imperial  System,  informed  with  the  spirit  of  Roman 
Law,  and  wrought  into  a  harmonious  whole  by  principles  drawn 
from  the  Philosophy  of  the  Stoics  and  Aristotle.  When  the 
Reformation  came,  all  this  elaborate  internal  organization,  wTith 
its  bishops  and  priests,  its  altars,  its  masses  and  its  penances, 
its  saints  and  images,  its  fasts  and  pilgrimages,  together  with 
the  grossness  by  which  of  late  their  original  purity  had  become 
denied,  was  swept  away  as  by  an  inundation ;  but  there  still 
remained  untouched  the  Mosaic  foundation,  the  Platonic  dome, 
and  the  simple  shrine  around  which  men  wept  and  loved  and 
prayed ;  while  through  the  wide-open  portals  the  simple  and 
devout  of  all  ages  and  conditions  could  walk  in  and  out,  and 
still  find  satisfaction  somewhere  along  its  echoing  aisles  for 
every  ideal  and  longing  of  the  heart,  could  still  find  there  a 
God,  a  Heaven,  a  hope  of  Salvation,  and  an  Immortality. 

For  the  cultured,  again,  there  stood  side  by  side  with  the 
Church,  and  in  all  its  original  splendour,  the  colossal  figure  of 
Plato,  newly  resurrected  by  the  Renaissance  from  the  earth  in 
which  it  had  been  buried  for  a  thousand  years,  and  now  again 
set  on  its  pedestal  for  the  admiration  and  despair  of  mankind. 
There  he  stood  in  his  pure  and  exquisite  symmetry  and 
completeness,  in  his  severe  and  silent  majesty  and  beauty,  over- 
looking the  night  of  the  Middle  Ages  which  he  had  left  behind 
him,  like  those  Egyptian  colossi  that  still  overlook  the  desert ; 
and  making  music  in  this  sunrise  of  the  world  like  the  fabled 
statue  of  Memnon.     And  around  him  clustered  the  cultured, 

X 


322  ANCIENT   PHILOSOPHY. 

the  erudite,  the  sceptical,  the  disillusioned,  all  those  who  could 
find  no  home  in  the  Church  and  who  sought  in  the  harmony, 
proportion,  and  completeness  of  his  great  scheme  of  the  World, 
u  place  for  their  starved  ideals — for  their  sense  of  beauty,  of 
the  high  destinies  of  the  soul,  and  of  immortality. 

But  suddenly  and  without  a  note  of  warning  there  fell  on 
the  world  like  a  succession  of  bombs,  a  series  of  scientific 
discoveries  which  burst  both  on  the  Church  and  on  ancient 
Philosophy  with  damaging,  and  in  the  case  of  Platonism  with 
immediately  disastrous  effect.  The  first  of  these  discoveries 
was  the  Copernican  Astronomy,  which  striking  the  colossal 
system  of  Plato  in  its  most  vital  part,  namely  its  Cosmogony, 
brought  it  in  a  confused  heap  to  the  earth,  where  to  this  hour, 
like  the  giant  figure  of  Ramases  outside  the  ruins  of  Thebes, 
it  lies  prostrate,  and  from  which,  except  in  its  spirit  and  soul 
which  are  immortal,  it  can  never  rise.  For  in  this  system  it 
was  the  planets  and  fixed  stars,  it  will  be  remembered,  that 
were  the  immortal  gods ;  it  was  these  that  fashioned  the 
immortal  souls  of  men  and  placed  them  in  their  immortal 
bodies ;  it  was  by  these  that  the  ideals  of  men  were  implanted 
in  their  souls ;  and  it  was  to  these  that  the  soul  returned  when 
it  had  left  the  body,  to  enjoy  with  them  a  blissful  immortality. 
And  with  the  fall  of  Platonism  fell  once  and  for  all  Ancient 
Philosophy  itself ;  and  in  its  ruins  were  crushed  as  at  a  blow 
the  ideals  of  all  those  whom  the  Church  had  expatriated,  and 
who  unless  they  could  return  again  to  her  bosom  were  without 
sl  home,  without  a  God,  a  soul,  or  an  immortality.  But  the 
Church  itself  had  been  badly  struck  by  the  same  shells  that 
had  brought  to  ruin  Ancient  Philosophy ;  and  although  the 
blow  was  not  at  once  mortal  (for  the  Christian  '  Scheme  of 
Salvation  '  could  more  easily  survive  the  destruction  of  the 
Mosaic  Cosmogony  with  which  it  was  bound  up,  than  could 
Plato's  doctrine  of  the  soul  and  immortality  survive  the 
Platonic  Cosmogony),  still  in  the  long  run  and  when  the 
discoveries  of  Copernicus  were  followed  up  by  those  of  Galileo, 


ANCIENT    PHILOSOPHY.  323 

Kepler,  and  Newton,  its  ultimate  downfall  was  but  a  matter  of 
time.  For  by  degrading  Man  from  his  proud  position  as  the 
centre  of  the  Universe  and  the  cynosure  of  gods  and  angels,  to 
the  position  of  a  poor  bewildered  spectator  on  its  confines 
merely,  who  neither  knew  where  he  was  nor  whither  he  was 
going ;  with  the  world  all  turned  upside  down,  and  with 
neither  an  above  for  Heaven  nor  a  below  for  Hell ; — with  all 
this,  these  discoveries  by  undermining  the  foundations  of  the 
Church  and  making  gaps  in  her  walls,  had  left  her  a  standing 
mark  for  the  missiles  of  her  enemies.  But  the  magnificent 
dome  of  the  Godhead  still  rose  clear  and  flawless  in  the 
morning  sunlight,  untouched  by  the  falling  shells ;  and  within 
was  still  the  little  shrine  of  Jesus,  around  which  the  faithful 
could  watch  and  pray  as  of  yore.  For  although  these  without 
the  Mosaic  Creation  and  the  Fall  of  Man  which  were  their 
foundation,  were  but  like  decapitated  heads  severed  from  their 
now  worthless  trunks,  or  like  flower  and  fruit  which  cut  from 
their  roots  needs  must  wither ;  still,  like  those  bones  and  relics 
of  the  saints  and  martyrs  which  kept  the  devotions  of  the 
simple  as  much  alive  and  aglow  as  the  saints  themselves  in  the 
flesh  could  have  done,  these  relics  of  Christianity  served  for 
many  ages  to  stave  off  from  the  souls,  and  therefore  from  the 
ideals  of  men,  putrefaction  and  death ;  and  from  them  Modern 
Philosophy  now  orphaned  of  its  ideals  by  the  death  of  Ancient 
Thought,  had  to  help  itself  at  a  pinch,  as  we  shall  now  see, 
when  in  the  alternations  of  its  successive  systems  it  fell 
periodically  into  Atheism,  Pessimism,  and  Scepticism. 


CHAPTER     IY 


SOME  GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS. 

T7ROM  the  above  imperfect  sketch  we  should  seem  justified 
-*~  in  concluding  that  if  Philosophy  and  Religion  are  ever 
again  to  give  life  and  soul  to  our  ideals  as  they  did  in  the  Past, 
they  must  find  for  themselves  some  comprehensive  Scheme  of 
the  World  in  which  these  ideals  may  find  their  appropriate 
setting,  and  on  which  they  can  be  engrafted  as  easily  and 
naturally  as  they  once  were  on  Platonism  and  Mediaeval 
Catholicism,  before  the  Copernican  Astronomy  had  shattered 
the  boughs  on  which  they  hung  as  the  golden  fruit.  For  it 
cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  it  is  from  our  mode  of 
regarding  the  World  as  a  whole  and  our  relation  to  it,  that  our 
ideals  are  in  the  long  run  determined,  and  at  no  time  perhaps, 
has  this  truth  required  a  more  frequent  restatement  and 
re-enforcement  than  at  the  present.  Many  of  our  modern  critics 
would  have  us  believe  that  the  influence  of  Carlyle,  for  example, 
was  due  to  his  power  of  personal  characterization,  or  to  the 
picturesqueness  of  his  literary  style  ;  of  Ruskin,  to  his  beauty 
of  language,  or  his  high  and  severe  aesthetic  morality ;  of 
Emerson,  to  his  elevation  and  serenity  of  mind,  to  his  practical 
shrewdness,  or  to  the  stimulus  which  he  gave  to  men  to  live  in 
the  Spirit;  forgetting  all  the  while  that  these  men  by  their 
own  express  admission  would  not  have  taken  off  their  coats, 
metaphorically  speaking,  to  write  either  the  'French  Revolution,' 


SOME    GENERAL    CONSIDERATIONS.  325 

the  '  Modern  Painters,'  or  the  '  Essays,'  were  it  not  that 
they  found  in  these  the  best  media  for  enforcing  those  great 
conceptions  of  the  World  as  a  whole  and  of  man's  relation  to 
it,  in  which  they  habitually  lived.  Even  a  man  like  Cardinal 
Newman  gets  his  importance  in  the  eyes  of  many  critics  from 
his  being  i  a  master  of  prose  style  '  as  they  call  it,  (a  matter 
about  which  it  would  seem  he  was  quite  indifferent)  rather 
than  from  his  intellectual  penetration  and  subtlety,  and  from 
those  fine  constructive  speculations  by  which  he  sought  to 
connect  the  Catholic  Church  with  that  unseen  world  on  which 
his  heart  and  soul  were  ever  fixed.  It  were  as  reasonable  to 
imagine  that  his  intellectual  position  was  due  to  his  violin- 
playing,  an  exercise  in  which,  as  in  his  manipulation  of  language, 
he  is  said  to  have  attained  to  a  high  degree  of  proficiency. 
But  this  tendency  to  divorce  literary  criticism  from  all  issues 
larger  than  that  of  mere  word-mongering,  is  nowhere  better 
seen  perhaps,  than  in  the  case  of  the  late  Walter  Pater,  who 
wrote  a  book  on  Plato  to  show  that  his  great  system  of 
Philosophy  which  illuminated  the  minds  of  men  for  twTenty 
centuries,  was  after  all  a  mere  incident  and  circumstance  in 
his  activity,  but  that  his  really  great  and  abiding  excellence 
was  his  literary  felicity  and  charm.  Literary  fiddlesticks  !  one 
is  tempted  to  exclaim ;  for  if  we  consider  it,  literary  expression 
is  not  to  be  brought  to  perfection,  like  flowers  in  hothouses, 
by  artificial  cultivation  merely,  however  assiduous  or  prolonged ; 
on  the  contrary  its  higher  ranges  of  excellence  whether  in  prose 
or  in  verse,  can  no  more  be  had  except  from  those  whose 
thoughts  have  their  roots  deep  down  in  the  subsoil  of  the 
world  and  of  human  life,  or  in  some  wide  general  aspect  of 
these;  than  can  the  spreading  foliage  of  an  oak  be  got  from  a 
gardener's  flower-pot.  Where,  for  example,  can  we  find  pathos 
to  compare  with  the  World-pathos  of  writers  like  Shakspeare 
and  Carlyle,  who  habitually  saw  men  as  ghosts  mistaking 
themselves  in  their  dreams  for  realities,  fighting,  cursing, 
hating,  and  loving,  *  their  little  lives  rounded  with  a  sleep  ?  ' 


32  (>  SOME   GENERAL    CONSIDERATIONS. 

Where,  again,  can  you  find  sublimity  to  compare  with  the 
World-sublimity  of  Milton,  who  seeing  the  Fall  of  Man  and 
the  Gospel  Scheme  of  Salvation  painted  on  the  walls  of 
Eternity,  lived  in  them,  and  with  awe-struck  solemnity  walked 
in  the  sight  of  them  '  as  ever  in  his  great  Task-master's  eye?  ' 
What  picturesqueness  of  expression  can  be  compared  with  that 
of  Shakspeare  again,  who  with  an  eye  for  the  world  as  wide 
and  open  as  the  morn,  brings  all  its  radiances,  riches,  and 
glancing  beauties  to  a  focus,  as  it  were,  on  each  and  every 
point  he  is  describing  1  Or  what  pictorial  intensity  with  that 
of  Dante,  whose  heart  torn  and  on  fire  with  the  tragedy  of  the 
world,  burnt  its  sorrows  into  his  page  with  furrows  as  deep  as 
those  by  which  they  had  ploughed  his  own  soul,  and  whom 
men  pointed  to  as  he  walked  along  as  the  man  who  had  been  in 
Hell  %  If  this  be  true,  and  if  the  merely  outward  qualities  of 
literary  expression  get  all  their  value  and  vitality  from  the 
deep  wells  of  thought  and  feeling  by  which  they  are  watered, 
how  much  more  true  must  it  be  that  the  ideals  by  which  men 
live  and  work,  must  flourish  or  wither  according  as  they  can  or 
cannot  be  grafted  on  some  large  general  scheme  of  the  World 
and  of  Human  Life.  It  was  because  Plato's  doctrine  of  the 
nature  and  destiny  of  the  soul  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
natural  corollary  and  outcome  of  his  general  Cosmogony  or 
Scheme  of  the  World,  that  he  claimed  validity  for  those  ideals 
of  life  which  naturally  grow  out  of  this  conception  of  the  soul, 
and  that  these  ideals  continued  to  sway  the  lives  and  thoughts 
of  men  for  a  thousand  years.  It  is  because  the  Christian 
1  Scheme  of  Redemption '  had  its  natural  roots  in  a  Cosmogony 
in  which  the  Earth  was  the  centre  of  the  Universe,  man  the 
centre  of  the  Earth,  and  the  Devil  the  author  of  all  evil  and 
discord,  that  Christianity  in  its  turn  has  ruled  the  beliefs  of 
men,  and  given  basis  and  support  to  their  ideals  for  so  many 
ages.  Without  such  Cosmogony,  indeed,  the  Gospel  '  Scheme 
of  Salvation '  could  not  have  arisen  at  all,  much  less  grown  and 
overspread  the  world ;  and  without  the  Gospel  Scheme,  what 


SOME   GENERAL   CONSIDERATIONS.  327 

would  have  become  of  the  high  ethical  precepts  of  Jesus, 
which  it  was  the  mission  of  Christianity  to  propagate  !  Why 
this,  that  without  a  Church  founded  on  this  Scheme  of 
Salvation  as  suitable  soil  in  which  to  grow  and  propagate 
themselves,  these  attempts  as  being  in  themselves  but  the 
personal  sentiments  of  a  highly  gifted  nature,  would  long  since 
have  been  washed  away  in  the  great  Pagan  stream. 

If  this  be  true,  we  have  now  to  ask  whether  Modern 
Philosophy  beginning  with  Bacon  and  Descartes,  was  likely 
to  find  for  itself  a  Cosmogony  or  general  Scheme  of  the  World 
which  should  furnish  as  natural  and  harmonious  a  framework 
and  setting  for  men's  ideals,  as  was  formerly  found  for  them  in 
Platonism  and  Mediaeval  Catholicism  respectively.  And  to 
ask  the  question  is  already  to  have  gone  a  long  way  towards 
answering  it.  For,  to  begin  with,  it  is  only  within  living 
memory  that  the  separate  sciences  necessary  for  a  complete 
Cosmogony  have  been  so  perfected,  so  marshalled  and  brought  up 
into  line,  as  it  were,  that  from  their  harmonious  combination 
any  great  scheme  of  the  World  which  should  either 
support  men's  ideals  on  the  one  hand,  or  bar  them  out  on  the 
other,  has  been  possible  at  all.  Scientific  Astronomy  with  its 
Law  of  Gravitation  has  been  with  us,  it  is  true,  since  the  days 
of  Newton  ;  but  then  the  orderly  movements  of  the  Universe 
which  it  disclosed,  could  be  appealed  to  either  to  support  our 
ideals  or  to  negative  them;  to  support  them  if  looked  at  in 
one  way,  as  pointing  to  a  Providence  which  had  made  so 
exquisite  a  provision  for  the  order  of  the  Universe  as  a  whole ; 
to  negative  them  if  looked  at  in  another,  as  demonstrating  that 
the  affairs  of  men  are  at  the  mercy  of  a  purely  mechanical  and 
all-embracing  Fate.  As  for  the  other  sciences  again,  which 
like  Chemistry,  Philosophy,  Biology,  and  Psychology,  bear 
directly  on  the  questions  of  the  existence  of  a  Soul,  a  Free- 
Will,  and  an  Immortality,  they  had  scarcely  attained  to  the 
dignity  of  sciences  until  our  own  time ;  and  so  far  as  they  go, 
the  conclusions  to  which  on  their  own  plane  they  point,  would 


328  SOME    GENERAL   CONSIDERATIONS. 

as  we  have  seen  from  Spencer,  rule  out  from  the  purview  of 
our  hopes  and  dreams  not  only  the  existence  of  God,  but  of 
the  Soul,  of  Free- Will,  and  of  Immortality.  It  is  evident, 
therefore,  that  Modern  Philosophy  since  the  time  of  Descartes, 
could  not  afford  the  same  universal  support  for  the  ideals  of  men, 
that  they  had  had  in  Platonism  and  Catholicism  respectively. 
For  Astronomy  having  been  ruled  out  as  affording  no 
vsure  or  definite  support  either  way  ;  and  the  other  sciences 
which  bear  directly  on  the  existence  and  reality  of  our  ideals, 
not  yet  having  come  into  existence,  any  support  which  these 
ideals  could  find,  could  have  been  but  a  thing  of  shreds  and 
patches  merely,  made  up  of  those  parts  of  Catholicism  and 
Ancient  Philosophy  which  the  Copernican  and  Newtonian 
Astronomy  had  left  untouched,  supplemented  by  such  new 
*  finds'  as  had  come  from  regions  which  both  Ancient 
Philosophy  and  Catholicism  had  left  unexplored.  These  latter 
might  be  summed  up  on  the  one  hand  as  the  deductions  which 
were  legitimately  to  be  drawn  from  the  operations  of  Nature 
on  our  own  planet,  and  on  the  other  as  deductions  which  were 
to  be  drawn  from  the  results  of  the  analysis  of  the  powers  and 
faculties  of  the  human  mind.  And  accordingly,  as  we  shall 
now  see,  it  was  on  one  or  other  of  these  that  both  the  Modern 
Apologists  and  the  Modern  Philosophers  pitched  as  the  field 
of  their  operations ;  the  Apologists  taking  as  was  natural,  the 
more  popular  and  easily  apprehended  subjects  as  their  province ; 
the  philosophers,  the  more  abstruse  and  difficult  ones.  Some- 
times it  was  on  the  evidences  of  design  in  nature,  that  the 
Apologists  and  Natural  Theologians  pitched  as  the  best 
supports  of  Christianity  and  of  the  ideals  that  Christianity 
carried  with  it ;  these  evidences  being  mainly  drawn  from  the 
exquisite  adaptation  of  creatures  to  their  environment,  or  from 
the  ingenuities  of  mechanism  in  the  structure  of  animals  and 
plants,  and  the  like.  Sometimes  it  was  on  what  was  called  the 
Providence  of  God  in  History,  as  seen  in  the  rise  and  fall  of 
Empires  and   States,   in  the   history  of  Judaism,  and  in  the 


SOME    GENERAL    CONSIDERATIONS.  329 

conquest  of  the  world  by  a  handful  of  Galilean  fishermen  ; 
sometimes  again,  it  was  on  the  guiding  hand  of  Providence  as 
exemplified  in  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  individuals,  the  triumphs 
of  the  good,  the  confusion  of  the  wicked,  and  so  on;  and 
sometimes  on  a  general  survey  of  the  whole.  The  Philosophers 
on  the  other  hand,  not  having  at  their  command  a  sufficient  body 
of  scientific  truth  on  which  to  construct  a  new  and  harmonious 
Cosmogony  of  their  own,  as  Spencer  has  recently  done,  and 
having  resigned  the  justification  of  the  ways  of  God  to  Man,  for 
the  most  part,  into  the  hands  of  the  Apologists  and  Natural 
Theologians,  had  nothing  left  them  as  their  special  and  peculiar 
province,  but  the  Human  Mind  itself.  And  accordingly,  just 
as  the  older  physiologists  and  physicians  when  they  had  given 
up  all  hope  of  explaining  the  phenomena  of  disease  by  the  old 
hypothesis  of  demoniacal  agency  and  the  like,  at  last  set  to 
work  on  the  human  body  itself,  to  see  if  by  dissecting  it  they 
could  not  find  out  the  real  causes  at  work ;  so  the  Philosophers 
when  they  had  given  up  all  hope  of  any  longer  finding  their 
ideals,  as  formerly,  in  the  Church  or  Ancient  Philosophy,  set 
to  work  on  the  human  mind  itself,  to  see  if  by  analysis  and 
dissection  of  it  they  could  not  find  them  there ;  now  settling 
on  the  faculty  of  Intelligence  and  the  phenomena  of  knowledge, 
now  on  the  Conscience,  and  now  on  the  Heart.  Hence  they 
are  known  as  the  Modern  Metaphysicians,  inasmuch  as  most  of 
them  deal  mainly  with  the  human  mind,  and  not  like  the 
Ancient  Philosophers  with  the  World  as  a  Whole. 

As  for  the  Apologists,  the  compilers  of  the  works  on  Natural 
Theology,  and  the  long  line  of  Theologians  stretching  from 
Butler  and  Paley  to  the  Bampton  and  other  University 
Lecturers  of  our  own  day,  with  these  I  gave  myself  at  the 
time  of  which  I  am  writing  little  or  no  concern.  Comino-  to 
them,  as  I  did,  fresh  from  the  speculations  of  Darwin  and  of 
Spencer,  and  from  the  most  recent  discoveries  in  science,  I 
regarded  their  works  as  a  series  of  exploded  fallacies,  and  with 
my  youthful  contempt  for  Christianity  as  an  old  and  decaying 


330  SOME    GENERAL   CONSIDERATIONS. 

superstition,  still  strong  upon  me,  I  resented  the  idea  of  being 
asked  to  consider  seriously  at  this  time  of  day,  what  I  regarded 
as  the  bad  science,  the  forced  interpretation,  and  the  arbitrary 
conclusions  of  these  so-called  '  Evidences  of  Christianity.' 
For  I  was  in  deadly  earnest  in  this  business,  and  having  lost 
my  own  ideals  I  was  not  to  be  put  off  with  what  I  regarded 
as  the  clap-trap  of  the  Theologians,  any  more  than  with  the 
popular  clap-trap  of  the  pulpit,  but  insisted  that  all  those  with 
whom  I  should  have  any  dealings  in  these  matters  should  come 
to  the  facts  as  I  imagined  myself  to  have  done,  with  minds  as 
free  and  disengaged  from  all  bias  or  prejudice  whatever,  as  if 
they  had  been  let  down  from  another  planet.  And  hence  it 
was  that  I  was  repelled  by  what  I  imagined  to  be  the 
professional  bias,  the  sleek  and  well-paid  advocacy  of  these  high- 
placed  divines,  but  especially  by  the  tone  of  their  Apologies  when 
considering  the  dealings  of  God  with  man,  which  in  my  then 
revolutionary  temper  seemed  to  me  like  the  tone  of  those  who 
would  whitewash  the  worst  and  vilest  scoundrelisms  of  the 
great  and  powerful,  until  they  looked  like  positive  virtues! 
And  so  with  a  bias  and  prejudice,  perhaps,  as  great  as  that 
which  I  denounced,  I  ruled  them  one  and  all  from  out  the 
scope  of  my  speculations,  and  turned  to  the  Metaphysicians 
properly  so  called. 


CHAPTER     V, 


MODERN    METAPHYSICS. 

A  MONG  the  other  fragments  of  Platonism  and  Mediaeval 
Catholicism  that  had  been  bequeathed  by  Modern 
Philosophy,  was  the  belief  in  the  existence  of  the  Soul  as  an 
entity  distinct  from  and  independent  of  the  body  ;  and  from 
this  belief  to  the  belief  in  its  immortality  as  a  spiritual  and 
presumably  therefore  indestructible  entity,  was  but  a  step. 
Hence  it  was  that  when  the  Metaphysicians  of  the  Modern 
World  settled  on  the  human  mind  as  the  field  of  their 
operations,  and  sought  by  analysis  to  discover  in  it  some  more 
certain  evidence  of  the  existence  of  God,  Immortality,  and  the 
Ideal,  than  that  of  mere  traditional  belief  or  surmise,  their  main 
concern  was  not  so  much  to  demonstrate  the  existence  of  Free 
Will  and  Immortality  (for  these  as  I  have  said  were  almost 
corollaries  from  its  spiritual  essence),  but  rather  to  demonstrate 
the  existence  of  God — without  which  indeed,  in  those  days  at 
least,  none  of  the  high  ideals  of  the  mind  could  have  any  real 
root  at  all.  They  began  their  operations,  as  it  chanced,  by 
fastening  on  the  Intellectual  Faculty,  the  Faculty  of  Knowledge, 
as  the  field  of  their  activity,  and  particularly  on  the  problem  of 
how  it  comes  about  that  we  can  have  any  knowledge  of  a 
world  existing  outside  of  ourselves  ;  and  it  was  in  the  analysis 
of  this  process  of  knowledge,  that  the  three  first  of  these  great 
Metaphysicians  —  Descartes,    Geulinx,    and    Malebranche,  — 


332  MODERN    METAPHYSICS. 

found  their  main  proof  for  the  existence  of  God.  For  inasmuch 
as  the  objects  in  the  world  around,  as  well  as  our  own  bodies, 
are  characterized  by  the  properties  of  extension,  materiality, 
and  divisibility,  whereas  our  minds  have  neither  extension, 
materiality,  nor  divisibility,  it  was  argued  that  it  was  a  natural 
impossibility  that  material  and  extended  things  should  make 
an  impression  on  an  immaterial  unextended  thing  like  Mind, 
so  as  to  produce  in  it  what  wTe  call  knowledge ;  while  on  the 
other  hand  it  was  considered  equally  impossible  that  our  minds 
should  so  act  on  our  bodies,  as  to  move  them  or  the  objects 
around  us.  The  two  things  were  believed  to  be  as  absolutely 
incompatible  as  oil  and  water,  and  it  was  contended  that  it  was 
as  hopeless  to  get  any  knowledge  or  increase  of  knowledge  by 
bringing  them  together,  as  it  would  be  by  bringing  together 
a  colour  and  a  sound.  But  as  it  was  admitted  that 
knowledge  did  in  point  of  fact  actually  pass  to  and  fro 
between  them  and  was  increased  in  the  passage.,  some 
bridge  it  was  evident  there  must  be.  And  if  not  a  natural 
bridge,  then  it  must  be  a  supernatural  one ;  and  if  so  what 
could  it  be  but  God  i  This  reasoning  seemed  absolutely  valid 
to  Descartes,  who  had  already  convinced  himself  on  indepen- 
dent grounds  that  the  existence  of  an  all-powerful,  all-perfect 
Being  was  as  much  involved  in  the  consciousness  of  our  own 
imperfections  and  limitations,  as  any  other  member  of  a  pair  of 
opposites  is  in  the  other,  as  black  is  in  white,  as  good  in  bad, 
and  the  like  ;  and  had  therefore  the  same  certainty  as  our  own 
existence.  And  he  argued  further  that  if  the  outer  world  does 
not  really  exist,  either  God  who  has  put  the  belief  of  its 
existence  into  our  minds  is  a  liar,  or  our  knowledge  of  it,  owing 
to  the  impossibility  of  our  minds  getting  across  to  it,  must  be 
a  dream. 

Geulinx  and  Malebranche  took  up  practically  the  same 
position  in  regard  to  knowledge  as  Descartes,  and  maintained 
like  him,  the  impossibility  without  the  help  of  God,  of  our 
knowing  anything  beyond  the  fact  of  our  own  existence  and 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  333 

His  ;  owing  to  the  impossibility  of  a  material  thing  acting  on  an 
immaterial  one  like  Mind;  the  only  difference  between  them 
being  that  whereas  Descartes  figured  the  union  as  effected  by 
God  Himself  standing  in  the  breach,  as  it  were,  with  one  foot  on 
the  external  world  and  the  other  on  Mind,  and  so  bridging  over 
the  gulf  between  them ;  Geulinx  figured  God  as  intervening, 
rather,  after  the  manner  of  a  watch-maker  who  occasionally 
interposes  to  set  one  watch  to  keep  time  with  the  other ;  while 
Malebranche,  who  imagined  that  even  if  material  things  could 
make  an  impression  on  the  mind,  these  impressions  must  cancel 
and  obliterate  each  other  like  posters  placed  on  the  top  of  each 
other  on  a  hoarding,  figured  Mind  and  Matter  as  like  two  men 
tied  back  to  back,  who  although  they  cannot  catch  sight  of  each 
other  directly,  can  nevertheless  manage  to  do  so  sideways,  as  it 
were,  if  they  are  reflected  in  the  mirror  of  another  mind  which 
can  equally  reflect  them  both ;  and  that  mirror  is  God. 

To  these  philosophers  who  had  thus  demonstrated  the 
existence  of  God  and  the  Ideal  World  to  their  own  satisfaction, 
succeeded  Spinoza,  that  rare  and  beautiful  spirit,  who  during 
the  progress  of  the  controversy  had  become  so  fascinated  with 
the  problem  of  knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  that  in  his 
endeavour  to  free  it  from  the  perpetual  interposition  of  God 
deemed  necessary  to  explain  it,  he  unwillingly,  like  a  man  so 
intent  on  star-gazing  that  he  falls  into  the  water,  fell  into  a  species 
of  Atheism ;  and  so  practically  lost  sight  of  the  Ideal  altogether  \ 
For  to  get  rid  of  this  perpetual  miracle  against  which  his 
common  sense  revolted,  he  figured  Mind  and  Matter  (although 
like  his  predecessors  he  regarded  them  as  absolutely  distinct  and 
unbridgeable)  as  the  two  correlated  sides  or  aspects  of  one  and 
the  same  Thing,  Cause,  or  Substance ;  which  Substance,  again 
as  he  called  it,  included  not  only  them  as  its  attributes,  but 
innumerable  other  attributes  or  forms  of  existence  as  well,  of 
which  our  minds  can  have  no  knowledge  ;  much  in  the  same  way 
as  there  is  a  fourth  dimension  in  Space  with  which  the  higher 
Mathematics  deals,  but  of  which  in  our  present  life,  conditioned 


334  MODEKN    METAPHYSICS. 

as  it  is  by  Space  of  three  dimensions  only,  we  can  have  no 
knowledge  or  experience.  In  this  way,  Spinoza  by  making  Mind 
and  Matter  the  two  parallel  and  corresponding  sides  of  one  and 
the  same  Original  Substance,  found  a  solution  for  the  difficulty 
of  so  uniting  the  material  and  the  immaterial  as  to  produce 
knowledge,  without  the  necessity  of  a  God  to  accomplish  the 
feat.  It  was  only  when  he  came  to  the  consideration  of  what 
was  to  be  done  with  the  particular  aspects  of  Mind,  such  as 
reason,  imagination,  sense,  emotion,  sentiment,  and  passion,  that 
in  the  course  of  his  reflections  he  fell  into  a  practical  Atheism. 
For  these  he  regarded  as  only  special  modes  or  forms  of  the 
general  attribute  Mind,  in  the  same  way  as  a  horse,  a  tree,  a 
mountain,  or  a  table,  are  only  special  forms  of  the  attribute 
Matter ;  and  he  considered  that  it  would  be  as  absurd  to  endow 
the  original  Substance,  or  Cause,  with  these  special  qualities  of 
Mind,  as  it  would  be  to  endow  it  with  the  special  qualities 
pertaining  to  a  horse,  a  tree,  a  mountain,  or  a  table.  All  these 
mental  qualities  he  regarded  as  but  the  necessary  splinters  into 
which  the  attribute  Mind  or  Thought  is  broken  as  it  makes  its 
•entrance  into  the  World  of  Time,  like  the  sputter  and  foam  into 
which  the  waters  of  a  placid  mountain  stream  are  broken  on  its 
edge  and  confines,  when  it  descends  to  the  plain.  They  are  but 
the  evanescent  bubbles  thrown  up  without  will  or  choice  of  their 
own,  but  of  inevitable  necessity,  from  the  obstructions  they  meet 
with  from  each  other ;  coming  into  being  and  ceasing  to  be ; 
while  the  One  Eternal  Substance,  with  its  eternal  attributes  of 
Thought  and  Extension,  alone  abides.  And  thus  it  was  that 
Spinoza  with  this  conception  of  the  World  and  of  Human  Life 
as  but  the  outcome  of  a  fixed  and  inexorable  Fate,  fell  in  his 
large  and  massive  way  into  a  kind  of  unconscious  but  not 
ignoble  Atheism,  and  so  in  his  dreams  lost  sight  of  our  petty 
human  ideals  altogether;  and  when  he  at  last  awoke  and 
bethought  himself,  the  most  that  he  could  recover  of  them,  like 
a  King  who  had  dreamed  away  his  crown,  was,  as  with  the 
Stoics,  the  poor  human  joy  and  serenity,  the  absence  of  pining, 


MODERN    METAPHYSICS.  335 

discontent,  and  misgiving,  which  the  spectacle  of  this  Infinite, 
Eternal,  and  Inexhaustible  Energy,  leaving  no  loop-hole  for 
freedom  save  in  resigned  obedience,  was  calculated  to  engender 
in  the  philosophic  spirit,  and  which  he  in  his  purity  and 
simplicity  imagined  was  all  that  was  needful  or  right  that  man 
should  attain. 

The  attempt  to  get  God,  Immortality,  and  the  Ideal,  out  of 
the  Intelligence,  by  the  analysis  of  the  mechanism  of  knowledge, 
having  failed  ;  and  philosophy  having  run  itself  on  these  lines 
in  the  hands  of  Spinoza,  into  a  practical  Atheism,  and  the 
annihilation  of  our  ideals ;  two  courses  were  now  open  to  the 
Metaphysicians.  They  could  either  continue  still  further  the 
analysis  of  the  Intelligence,  and  see  what  would  come  of  it,  or 
they  could  shift  their  tents  to  some  other  region  of  the  mind, 
with  the  chances  of  a  better  fortune  for  the  Ideal  in  the  new 
field.  On  consideration  it  was  resolved  that  Spinoza's 
conception  of  Mind  and  Matter  as  two  sides  or  aspects  of  the 
same  thing,  was  premature ;  that  it  was  too  generalized ;  and  in 
fact  that  there  was  no  scientific  proof  of  it.  For  it  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  the  intimate  connexion  between  the 
manifestations  of  mind  and  the  physical  condition  of  the  brain 
and  nervous  system,  which  to-day  is  almost  an  axiom  of  scientific 
thought,  was  then  unknown.  The  suspicion  naturally  then 
suggested  itself  as  to  whether  instead  of  Mind  and  Matter,  as 
with  Spinoza,  being  regarded  as  parallel  and  corresponding  sides 
of  a  common  cause,  one  of  them  might  not  rather  be  found  on 
further  analysis  to  be  the  cause  of  the  other.  The  first  of  the 
two  alternatives  open  to  the  Metaphysicians  was  accordingly 
chosen,  and  a  still  more  minute  and  thorough  analysis  of  the 
Intelligence  I  was  resolved  upon,  and  two  new  Schools  of 
Philosophy  at  once  arose ;  the  first,  represented  by  Locke, 
regarding  the  outer  world  of  Matter  as  the  real  source  and  origin 
of  all  our  ideas,  of  all  that  can  properly  be  called  Mind ;  the 
second,  represented  by  Berkeley  and  Leibnitz,  regarding  the 
Mind  as  the  source  of  all  those  appearances  known  to  us  as  the 


336  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

outer  world,  the  world  of  Matter.  And  the  discussion  of  the 
problem  of  knowledge  once  entered  upon,  the  rival  schools 
became  like  Spinoza  so  absorbed  in  it,  that  they  quite  forgot 
for  the  time  being  the  real  question  which  the  world  was 
waiting  to  have  solved  for  it,  namely  as  to  the  existence  or  not 
of  sufficient  grounds  for  its  belief  in  God,  Immortality,  and  the 
Ideal,  a  question  which  the  philosophers  were  apparently 
disposed,  until  pricked  to  it  by  the  Church  and  cultured  opinion, 
to  leave  to  the  chances  of  war ! 

Leibnitz  was  the  first  of  the  great  philosophers  to  enter  the 
field  on  the  side  of  the  Idealists,  that  is  to  say  on  the  side  of 
those  who  believed  that  the  Mind  was  the  real  cause  of  Matter, 
and  that  the  outer  world,  in  consequence,  was  but  an  appearance 
or  after  effect  of  Mind.  He  conceived  the  world  of  men  and 
things  to  be  made  up  of  an  infinite  number  of  infinitely  small 
spiritual  substances  or  monads,  as  he  called  them,  little  minds 
or  souls,  as  it  were,  of  which  God  was  only  one  among  the 
rest, — much  in  the  same  way  as  the  Materialists  of  antiquity 
regarded  it,  and  as  the  Scientists  of  our  own  time  still  regard  it, 
as  made  up  of  an  infinite  number  of  material  atoms  or  molecules ; 
— and  he  considered  that  the  difference  of  intelligence  among 
creatures  (and,  in  consequence,  of  what  image  or  representation 
they  would  form  to  themselves  of  the  world),  was  due  entirely 
to  the  degree  of  clearness  or  cloudiness  with  which  these  little 
irridescent  monads  reflected  each  other  ;  in  the  same  way  as  in 
the  great  Vedanta  Philosophy  of  the  Hindoo  sages,  the  amount 
of  Truth  which  men  can  see  will  depend  upon  the  number  of 
i  veils  of  illusion,'  as  they  call  them,  or  coloured  spectacles,  as  it 
were,  which  are  interposed  between  the  soul  and  the  reality  of 
things ;  but  with  this  difference,  that  whereas  in  Hindoo 
Philosophy,  owing  to  its  making  a  diffused  Unconscious  Soul  its 
supreme  object  of  contemplation,  the  mind  that  shall  come 
nearest  to  the  sight  of  this  Supreme  Reality,  is  the  one  that  like 
an  Oriental  Beauty  lies  in  a  soft  dreamless  sleep  in  which  only 
the  thinnest  gauze,  as  it  were,  conceals  its  infinite  loveliness 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  337 

and  charm ;  in  European  Philosophy  on  the  contrary,  and  with 
Leibnitz  among  the  rest,  the  Supreme  Reality  being  the  most 
clear-eyed  Conscious  Intelligence,  the  mind  that  shall  come 
nearest  to  the  sight  of  it  is  the  one  that  is  the  most  wide-awake 
and  clothed  with  powers  of  perception  as  in  open  day.  And 
accordingly  he  represented  the  mineral  kingdom  as  the  condition 
of  those  monads  who  were  in  a  dreamless  sleep  or  swoon ;  the 
vegetable  kingdom  as  the  condition  of  those  who  were  beginning 
to  stir  and  show  signs  of  life ;  the  animal  kingdom  as  the 
condition  of  those  who  were  alive  but  in  a  dream ;  the  human 
world  as  the  condition  of  those  who  were  fully  awake  and 
self-conscious ;  and  God  as  the  monad  of  monads,  the  one  that 
reflected  all  things  with  the  most  crystal  clearness,  and  therefore 
with  the  most  omniscient  and  omnipresent  intelligence.  And 
the  way  in  which  these  airy  spirits,  the  dull  and  the  bright,  the 
stupid  and  the  intelligent,  are  made  to  keep  true  to  the  beautiful 
harmony  of  the  world,  of  inner  to  outer,  of  Mind  to  Matter,  is 
represented  not  as  in  Geulinx,  by  God  interposing  like  a 
watch-maker  at  every  turn  to  set  them  so  that  they  shall  keep 
time  together,  nor  as  in  Malebranche,  by  God  being  Himself 
the  omnipresent  mirror  in  which  they  can  all  see  themselves  at 
one  and  the  same  time,  but  by  a  *  pre-established  harmony,'  as 
he  called  it,  so  perfect  in  its  mechanism  from  the  outset,  that 
each  in  perfect  independence  of  the  rest,  shall  keep  time  to  the 
music  of  the  Divine  Will. 

But  Leibnitz  in  this  curious  and  unique  system  of  his,  had  not 
quite  reached  the  haven  of  pure  Idealism.  For  these  little 
spiritual  monads  had,  it  will  be  observed,  an  independent 
existence  outside  of  one  another,  and  so  were  in  reality  an  outer 
world  to  each  other.  And  accordingly  the  next  move  necessary 
to  bring  it  to  pure  Idealism  was  taken  by  Berkeley,  who  made 
not  only  the  external  world  but  all  other  minds  as  well,  the  pure 
creation  of  the  individual  mind.  Not  that  the  world  outside  of 
ourselves  had  no  real  existence  anywhere,  but  only  this,  that  on 
the  old  principle  that  no  object  whatever  having  extension  and 

Y 


338  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

materiality,  be  it  angel,  animal,  or  man,  can  make  an  impression 
on  a  purely  immaterial  substance  like  Mind,  the  outer  world 
can  have  existence  in  the  Mind  of  God  alone,  who  in  turn 
communicates,  as  with  Descartes  and  Malebranche,  this 
knowledge  to  us. 

Now  as  far  as  the  Ideal  was  concerned,  it  is  evident  that 
these  Idealists  were  able  to  score  an  easy  victory  in  its  support. 
For  beginning  with  Mind  as  an  indestructible,  immaterial,  and 
indivisible  entity,  immortality  was  a  natural  corollary,  and  God 
in  consequence,  as  a  spiritual  immaterial  Being  also,  was  but  the 
natural  Cause  in  which  these  minds  as  in  a  mirror  reflected 
themselves. 

The  opposite  School  headed  by  Locke  and  Condillac,  kept 
also  mainly  to  the  problem  of  Knowledge,  and  got  over  the 
difficulty  by  making  Matter  and  the  sensations  it  produces  on 
our  organs  of  sense,  the  cause  and  origin  of  all  our  ideas,  and 
therefore  of  what  we  call  the  mind,  which  these  Thinkers  figured 
as  a  sheet  of  white  paper,  absolutely  blank  until  Matter  and  the 
sensations  it  causes  in  us  scribbled  their  impressions  and  ideas 
on  it,  or  as  a  room,  dark  and  empty  until  the  light  of  the  outer 
world  is  gradually  let  into  it.  And  so  with  nothing  in  the  mind 
but  what  comes  through  the  senses,  their  ingenuity  was 
severely  taxed  to  get  out  of  it  either  a  God  or  an  Ideal  World ; 
and  in  their  perplexity,  when  pressed,  they  were  obliged  to  fall 
back  on  the  Church,  and  on  the  stock  arguments  of  its 
Theologians  and  Apologists,  for  their  belief  in  a  God  and  in  a 
Future  Life.  But  when  the  doctrines  of  this  School  were 
carried  to  their  logical  extreme  by  Hume,  and  by  the  French 
Philosophers  of  the  Illumination — by  Helvetius,  DTIolbach, 
La  Mettrie,  and  others — nothing  was  left  in  the  mind  but  an 
onward  flux  of  sensations,  with  no  order,  coherence,  or 
connexion,  no  law  or  cause  beyond  such  chance  associations  as 
habit  or  custom  may  for  the  time  being  have  given  them. 
With  the  soul  gone,  immortality  went  also  ;  and  with  the  belief 
in  necessary  causation  gone,  went  the  belief  in  God,  until  at  the 


MODERN  METAPHYSICS.  339 

end  of  the  period  of  the  French  Illumination,  God,  the  Soul, 
and  Immortality  had  been  wiped  out  as  with  a  sponge  from  the 
purview  of  men ;  the  philosophers  themselves  being  left  with 
nothing  to  console  them  but  that  love  of  Truth  for  its  own 
sake,  which  is  the  last  flower  of  the  ideal  that  continues  to 
bloom  after  all  else  is  faded. 

In  the  lull  and  pause  which  ensued  before  a  new  School  of 
Philosophy  should  arise  which  could  restore  to  men  their  lost 
ideals,  the  world  had  to  draw  on  the  Church  for  them,  on  that 
old  Church  which  hardly  beset  itself,  still  hung  out  its  old  flag 
of  '  Verbal  Inspiration '  from  its  beleaguered  citadel,  until  help 
from    without   should   come.     Nor  had  it  long  to  wait.     For 
the  Metaphysicians  who  had  started  out  so  gaily  with  Descartes, 
fondly    imagining   that    they  had   found    a   triumphant    proof 
of   the   existence  of  God  and  the   Ideal    World   in   what   lay 
latent  but  unexpressed  in  the  mysterious  act  of   Knowledge, 
now  found  to   their    discomfiture    that    in    the     speculations 
of    Hume  and  the  Materialists  of   the    French    Illumination, 
Philosophy    had    shifted    its    bearings   and   veered   round   to 
the   opposite   point    of   the  compass ;  and  instead  of  pointing 
the    way   to   God  and  Immortality  as   its    pole   star,    pointed 
on   the    contrary    straight   to   Atheism.      They   were  obliged, 
accordingly    to    give    up    the    analysis    of    the    Intelligence 
and  of  the  act  of  Knowledge  as  worthless  for  their  purpose, 
and    to    shift    their    tents    elsewhere.     Accordingly   in   their 
perplexity    they    pitched   on   the    Conscience,    or   the    Moral 
Sense,  as  the  new  field  of  their  operations,  in  the  hope  that  they 
might   there   recover  the  ideals  they  had  lost,  and  perchance 
even  bring  help  as  well  to  the  Church,  and  their  endeavours 
seemed  at  first  to  be  crowned  with  entire  success.     The  man 
who  wrought  this  deliverance  both  for  Philosophy  and  Religion 
was  that  prince  of  Metaphysical  Thinkers,  Emanuel  Kant. 

Like  his  predecessors,  Kant  had  begun  by  an  analysis  of 
what  constitutes  Knowledge  and  makes  it  possible,  but  he  had 
not  gone  far  before  he  discovered  that  no   God  was  to  be  got 


340  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

out  of  the  analysis  of  that  function  of  the  mind.  He  soon 
perceived  that  the  mind  was  no  blank,  abstract,  immaterial 
entity  facing  its  opposite  but  unable  to  cross  over  to  unite  with 
it  in  the  production  of  knowledge  except  by  an  act  of  God; 
but  that  on  the  contrary  it  was  itself  a  concrete,  complex 
organism  made  up  of  various  functions  and  powers,  like  a 
machine  with  a  complex  system  of  wheels  and  rollers — Time 
and  Space,  Cause  and  Effect,  Necessity  and  Contingency,  and 
the  rest, — through  which  when  the  raw  material  of  sensation 
from  outer  objects  is  passed  in  like  separate  bits  of  wool  at 
one  end,  it  comes  out  like  a  continuous  thread  of  yarn  or  web 
of  cloth  in  the  shape  of  organized  human  knowledge  at  the 
other.  And  he  argued  that  as  neither  God,  the  Soul,  Free- 
Will,  nor  Immortality  were  to  be  found  in  the  raw  material  of 
Nature  which  had  to  be  passed  through  these  rollers  of  the 
mind,  so  by  no  ingenuity  could  they  be  got  out  of  it  as  part 
of  the  warp  and  woof  of  knowledge.  What  then  was  to  be 
done?  It  looked  as  if  our  ideals  would  have  to  be  resigned 
after  all.  But  no,  stay  a  moment,  said  Kant.  Those  ideas 
of  God  and  the  Soul  are  intuitive  and  ineradicable  beliefs  of 
the  mind,  and  are  besides  necessities  of  thought,  as  it  were, 
without  which  our  knowledge  would  be  a  chaos  of  impressions 
and  ideas  without  end,  aim,  or  reason.  For  even  if  particular 
phenomena  are  to  be  satisfactorily  explained  by  referring  them 
to  their  antecedent  causes,  as  is  our  custom  now-a-days,  still 
the  world  as  a  whole  would  remain  to  be  explained,  and  to 
what  can  it  be  referred  but  to  that  something  beyond  it  and 
transcending  it  to  which  we  have  given  the  name  of  God? 
Again,  without  a  Soul  as  permanent  and  abiding  basis  for  the 
impressions  and  ideas  of  the  mind  which  come  and  go  and 
chase  one  another  across  the  field  of  thought,  without  this 
Soul  as  a  single  self  to  which  our  ideas  adhere,  and  which 
gives  them  unity,  what  could  these  ideas  be  but  a  distracted 
mob  or  multitude  of  impressions,  emotions,  and  sensations 
without   relation   or   belongings,  without    meaning;,  reason   or 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  341 

significance  1  But  as  we  cannot  get  any  knowledge  or  proof 
of  the  existence  of  God  or  the  Soul  through  the  ordinary 
avenues  of  the  senses  and  understanding,  is  it  not  evident, 
says  Kant,  that  if  we  look  carefully  enough  we  shall  find  the 
justification  of  our  belief  in  their  existence  and  reality,  in  some 
other  quarter  of  the  mind  ?  It  seemed,  indeed,  most  probable ; 
and  accordingly  after  some  search  Kant  announced  that  he 
had  discovered  such  justification  in  the  Conscience  or  Moral 
Sense  in  man,  which  he  declared  would  be  found  to  point 
like  a  fixed  finger  steadily  to  the  Ideal  World — to  God  and 
the  Soul,  to  Free- Will  and  Immortality.  For,  said  he,  when 
Conscience  like  an  Emperor  says  to  a  man  ■  You  must  do  so 
and  so,'  at  the  very  time  perhaps  when  his  natural  inclinations 
all  tend  in  the  opposite  direction,  does  that  not  prove  that  he 
can  obey  the  command  if  he  choose  ?  for  to  give  an  order 
without  the  means  of  executing  it,  were  a  stultification.  And 
if  this  be  so,  does  it  not  prove  that  you  have  a  free-will  which 
can  act  apart  from  and  in  spite  of  your  natural  inclinations  and 
desires?  And  if  a  free-will  then  a  soul  independent  of  the 
body  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  successive  mental  states  that 
pass  across  it  and  are  affections  of  it  on  the  other  f  And  if  this, 
again,  be  true,  and  if  further  the  commands  of  this  Conscience 
or  Moral-Sense  are  always  universal  commands,  that  is  to 
say  commands  which  if  carried  out  would  benefit  humanity 
at  large,  or  others  as  well  as  yourself,  does  not  that  prove  that 
these  commands  must  have  issued  from  a  Being  who  has  equal 
care  for  all  His  creatures,  and  therefore  in  a  word,  from  the 
Being  we  call  God?  And  if  further,  our  indisposition  to  obey 
these  commands  is  due  to  our  being  like  a  half-awakened 
sleeper,  hampered  and  restrained  by  the  drowsy  inclinations  of 
desire,  is  it  not  evident,  says  Kant,  that  as  God  is  the  author 
both  of  the  commands  to  virtue  and  the  desire  for  happiness, 
and,  in  consequence,  must  wish  the  moral  man  to  be  happy  and 
the  happy  man  to  be  moral ;  is  it  not  evident  that  if  this  con- 
junction of  virtue  and  happiness  is  not  to  be  had  in  the  present 


342  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

life,  a  future  life  (if  His  will  is  not  to  be  frustrated)  must  be 
provided  to  realize  it  in  !  In  this  way,  then,  Kant  proposed  to 
restore  to  men  those  great  ideals  of  the  mind  which  demanded 
a  God,  Soul,  Free- Will,  and  Immortality  as  their  basis  and 
support,  but  which  in  the  hands  of  his  predecessors  had  been 
up-rooted  by  Atheism  and  Materialism.  With  the  succour 
thus  brought  to  them  in  their  perplexity  the  Church  and 
Religion  were  overjoyed,  and  the  echo  of  their  jubilation  has 
continued  to  be  heard  almost  to  our  own  time.  But  the 
Metaphysicians  could  not  let  well  enough  alone,  as  it  were,  and 
scarcely  had  Kant's  doctrines  had  time  to  become  generally 
diffused  when  his  followers  put  a  damper  on  the  new-born 
hopes  of  men,  by  pushing  his  philosophy  to  a  point  where  the 
Ideal  so  hardly  won,  had  to  be  renounced  again. 

Fichte  was  the  first  of  the  followers  of  Kant  to  so  modify 
the  views  of  his  master  as  to  lose  again  the  ground  which  that 
great  thinker  had  re-conquered  for  the  Ideal.  He  began  by 
taking  the  Moral  Consciousness  and  Free- Will  which  Kant 
had  walled  off,  as  it  were,  in  a  separate  compartment  of  the 
mind  from  the  faculty  of  knowledge,  and  proposed  to  bring 
unity  into  the  kingdom  thus  divided,  by  demonstrating  that 
the  separate  parts  of  the  faculty  of  Knowledge  (the  wheels 
and  rollers  of  our  machine)  could  be  deduced  in  an  orderly 
evolution  one  after  another  out  of  this  Moral-Sense  or 
Conscience  which  he  now  made  the  Personal  Ego,  and  in 
which  as  corollaries,  these  categories  he  contended  lay  latent, 
waiting  to  be  evolved.  This  he  did  by  assuming  at  the  outset 
that  there  was  in  the  essence  of  this  Self-consciousness  itself, 
this  Personal  Ego,  a  negative  or  obstructive  element,  which 
when  the  energy  of  the  Ego  or  Free- Will  encountered  it,  would 
itself  make  in  its  successive  rebounds  these  very  categories  of 
Kant,  through  which  when  the  raw  material  of  the  outer  world 
was  passed  in  the  form  of  sensations,  there  came  out  the  forms 
of  what  we  call  our  organized  knowledge  of  the  outer  world; 
much  in  the  same  way  as  in  Hindoo  Philosophy  the  various 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  343 

kinds  of  knowledge  in  its  different  grades,  come  from  the 
obstructions  and  diffractions  which  the  pure  white  light  of  the 
Soul  suffers  when  it  has  to  pass  through  the  different  *  veils  of 
illusion,'  or  coloured  spectacles,  which  are  successively  put  up 
before  it ;  these  veils  being  in  the  order  of  their  fineness  and 
transparency,  first  the  finest  and  highest  intuitions,  then  the 
higher  sentiments,  then  the  nobler  passions,  then  the  appetites, 
then  the  senses,  and  lastly  the  gross  material  body  itself ;  the 
great  difference  being  that  whereas  in  Hindoo  Thought  these 
veils  or  spectacles  are  not  parts  of  the  Soul  itself,  but  are  rather 
foreign  substances  that  come  before  it  to  obscure  it,  in  Fichte 
they  are  inherent  in  the  very  constitution  of  the  Soul  or  Ego 
itself.  And  the  consequence  is  that  when  with  Fichte  the 
energy  of  the  Soul  encounters  this  obstruction  in  itself,  it 
suffers  by  the  limitation  to  which  its  free  activity  is  subjected, 
a  kind  of  affection  of  itself  which  it  imagines  to  be  something 
coming  from  the  outside,  and  which  like  a  man  under  a 
hallucination,  it  imagines  it  sees  as  something  existing  in  a 
world  outside  of  itself.  And  as  at  each  revolution  on  itself  it 
encounters,  as  it  were,  a  fresh  obstruction  made  up  of  the  new 
added  to  the  last  and  to  all  that  preceded  it,  it  imagines  it  sees 
some  new  kind  of  thing  or  property  of  things  in  the  external 
world,  corresponding  to  this  fresh  obstruction ;  in  the  same 
way  as  when  white  light  is  passed  through  a  number  of  coloured 
glasses  put  up  successively  one  behind  the  other,  it  produces  a 
new  colour  each  time,  formed  of  the  complex  of  all  the  old 
with  the  newest  and  last.  Now  these  successive  colours  or 
affections  which  the  Soul  or  Ego  suffers  in  its  successive 
revolutions,  Fichte  undertakes  to  prove  to  be  precisely  those 
very  '  forms  of  sense '  (Time  and  Space)  and  '  categories  of  the 
understanding  '  (quantity  and  quality,  relations  of  cause  and 
effect,  of  substance  and  accident,  of  reciprocal  action,  of  existence 
and  non-existence,  necessity  and  contingency,  and  the  rest) 
into  which  Kant  has  decomposed  the  faculty  of  understanding 
or  Knowledge  ;  but  with  this  difference,  that  whereas  Kant 


344  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

had  picked  them  up  hap-hazard,  as  it  were,  and  flung  them 
down  in  an  isolated  and  independent  way  without  connexion 
or  evolution,  Fichte  undertook  to  show  that  they  could  be 
deduced  from  one  another  in  a  regular  order  of  succession  as 
stages  and  landing-places  in  an  ascending  staircase  of  evolution, 
and  all  from  the  constitution  of  the  Ego  itself  when  from  the 
obstructions  it  meets  with  it  begins  to  turn  on  itself.  He 
undertakes,  in  a  word,  to  demonstrate  that  Matter  itself,  Time 
and  Space,  and  all  the  qualities  of  Matter,  Mind,  and  the 
External  World,  are  really  the  products  of  each  individual's 
own  mind.  The  consequence  was  that  as  he  could  not  find 
anything  anywhere  that  had  not  its  origin  within  the  circuit 
and  confines  of  our  own  skulls,  he  could  find  no  place  outside 
of  himself  either  for  a  God  or  for  an  Immortality,  and  so  was 
obliged  to  confess  that  the  Moral  Consciousness  from  which 
in  his  opinion  all  our  categories  of  knowledge  can  be  deduced 
and  evolved  as  by  a  mathematical  necessity,  was  the  only 
Divinity  he  knew.  And  hence  it  was  that  he  lost  again  among 
the  meshes  of  his  analysis,  all  those  ideals  of  the  mind  which 
Kant  had  with  so  much  patience  and  labour  re-conquered  and 
restored  to  men. 

But  the  ideals  which  Fichte  had  lost,  Jacobi  another  of 
Kant's  disciples  recovered,  only  for  a  moment  however,  as  it 
were,  and  as  a  passing  diversion  from  the  ordinary  course  of 
Metaphysical  Thought.  Like  Socrates  who  by  throwing 
over-board  most  of  the  stock  inquiries  of  the  Greek 
Philosophers,  stumbled  by  happy  accident  almost  on  to 
Christian  Theism  and  its  argument  from  Design  before  its 
time  ;  so  Jacobi  by  brushing  away  many  of  the  metaphysical 
cobwebs  and  subtleties  with  which  his  contemporaries  perplexed 
themselves,  came  on  some  important  truths  almost  without 
knowing  it,  and  long  before  the  ground  had  been  fully  prepared 
for  them  ;  much  in  the  same  way  as  some  old  Greek,  dissatisfied 
with  the  Ptolemaic  Astronomy,  might  by  the  mere  impulse  to 
counter-assertion   have    struck   on   the   truth   that   the   earth 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  345 

revolved  around  the  sun  and  not  vice-versa,  long  before  the  true 
grounds  for  this  belief  could  have  come  within  the  focus  of 
advancing  thought.  For  having  accepted  from  Kant  the 
doctrine  that  neither  God  nor  the  Soul  nor  Free- Will  can  be 
proved  through  the  ordinary  avenues  or  by  the  ordinary 
processes  by  which  knowledge  is  acquired,  but  only  as  necessary 
postulates  demanded  by  the  moral  sense  in  man,  Jacobi  boldly 
asserted  that  the  existence  of  God,  the  Soul,  and  Free-Will, 
were  as  much  intuitive  beliefs  of  the  mind  and  had  as  much 
validity,  as  the  belief  in  the  existence  of  Time,  Space,  and  the 
External  World  was  an  intuitive  belief  postulated  by  the 
demands  of  our  ordinary  outer  senses.  They  are  all  alike, 
Jacobi  contended,  matters  of  belief  rather  than  of  knowledge, 
that  is  to  say  they  are  the  bases  on  which  all  knowledge  and 
experience  must  rest,  and  cannot  therefore  be  proven  by  the 
ordinary  processes  of  knowledge  and  experience.  He  contended, 
accordingly,  that  Time  and  Space  had  a  real  objective  reality, 
and  were  not  as  Kant  had  contended  merely  '  forms '  of  our 
own  sensations,  moulds  of  the  mind,  at  it  were,  through  which 
the  impressions  from  the  external  world  had  to  pass  before 
we  could  see  that  world,  or  imagine  ourselves  to  see  it,  as  a 
world  existing  in  Space  and  Time.  He  might  have  added  that 
when  the  mind  of  man  is  so  constituted  as  to  see  and  believe 
and  to  act  on  and  be  justified  in  the  belief  that  the  world  of 
space  and  time  exists  outside  of  us ;  to  imagine  that  by  any 
ingenious  hocus-pocus  of  metaphysical  subtlety  you  are  going 
to  prove  to  men  that  it  really  is  inside  of  them  as  '  forms  of 
sense '  only,  is  gratuitous.  But  as  he  was  at  bottom  a  meta- 
physician like  the  rest  (although  he  had  kicked  over  the 
metaphysical  traces  for  the  moment),  and  went  about  like 
them  with  his  sounding-rod  which  he  dipped  into  the  mind 
here  and  there  in  the  hope  that  he  might  bring  up  the  Ideal  in 
his  soundings,  this  was  perhaps  too  much  to  expect.  And 
accordingly  after  this  irregular  improvisation  of  Jacobi,  which 
scandalized  the  metaphysicians  as  much  as  the  early   scientific 


346  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

sceptics  scandalized  the  orthodox  believers  in  the  possibility 
of  perpetual  motion,  Metaphysics  continued  on  its  own  proper 
course  as  before. 

On  Fichte  and  Jacobi,  accordingly,  followed  in  due  time 
Schelling,  who  incontinently  threw  Jacobi  out  of  his  purview  on 
account  of  his  heresy  in  the  matter  of  belief  (much  in  the  same 
way  as  the  orthodox  schools  of  Greek  Philosophy  threw  out 
Socrates),  and  continued  instead  in  the  course  marked  out  for 
him  by  the  long  line  of  his  orthodox  predecessors  from  Descartes 
and  Spinoza  to  Kant  and  Fichte.  And  although  in  his 
philosophizing  he  went  through  as  many  stages  and  transfor- 
mations as  a  grub  does  before  it  becomes  a  butterfly,  he 
nevertheless  by  the  thoughts  he  added  in  his  prime,  pushed  the 
solution  of  the  problems  of  Metaphysics  a  stage  further  on  the 
course  which  they  were  destined  to  follow  before  they  reached 
their  goal.  But  the  precise  contribution  which  he  made  to  the 
problem  will  be  better  seen  perhaps  if  we  again  cast  a  hurried 
retrospective  glance  over  the  main  steps  which  had  been  taken 
by  his  predecessors  to  lead  up  to  it.  It  will  be  remembered, 
then,  that  Descartes,  Malebranche,  and  the  earlier  Meta- 
physicians had  figured  the  World  as  in  its  ultimate  essence 
made  up  of  two  primordial  substances,  Mind  and  Matter, 
Thought  and  Extension,  which  stood  facing  each  other  in  blank 
abstraction  and  isolation  like  a  pair  of  sphinxes,  each  unable  to 
cross  over  and  communicate  with  the  other  so  as  to  produce 
what  we  call  Knowledge,  without  the  intermediation  of  a  Deity 
who  stood  over  them  both  and  interpreted  them  to  each  other. 
Spinoza  who  followed,  imagined  he  had  got  over  the  difficulty 
by  making  Mind  and  Matter,  or  Thought  and  Extension,  in  their 
ultimate  essence  but  two  sides  of  the  same  thing  or  substance, 
and  requiring  therefore  no  God  to  put  them  in  communication. 
After  some  intermediate  preliminary  skirmishing  by  other 
philosophers  to  clear  the  foreground  of  the  problem  of  minor 
complications,  Kant  appeared  on  the  scene  and  at  once  separated 
the  two  walls  of  Mind  and  Matter  which  Spinoza  had  brought 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  347 

together,  and  kept  them  apart  again.  He  left  Matter,  what  he 
called  *  the  Thing  in  itself,'  standing  in  its  ultimate  essence 
stark  and  naked  as  before  (its  properties  being  skimmed  off  by 
the  categories)  but  on  the  other  hand  he  endowed  the  mind 
with  an  elaborate  mechanism  of  grooves,  'forms  and  categories,' 
as  he  called  them,  which  when  the  outer  world  of  Matter  in  its 
concrete  form  was  passed  through  them,  gave  to  things  all  those 
properties,  qualities,  and  relations  which  we  call  the  'knowledge ' 
of  the  object  or  thing.  When  Fichte  in  turn  followed  on  Kant, 
his  first  step  was  to  get  rid  of  the  blank  wall  of  Matter  which 
Kant  had  left  standing  outside  of  the  mind,  by  withdrawing  it 
inside  into  the  mind  itself,  where  now  as  integral  part  of  the 
mind  it  stood  as  a  kind  of  negative  pole  or  background,  a  kind 
of  obstruction  or  chopping-block  against  which  when  the  Ego 
or  Soul  beat  and  impinged,  it  was  thrown  back  on  itself,  as  it 
were,  in  the  form  of  some  definite  quality  or  category  of  thought, 
which  it  now  by  a  hallucination  imagined  it  saw  as  a  quality  in 
Nature ;  in  the  same  way  as  light  is  as  black  as  darkness 
while  travelling  through  the  inter-planetary  spaces,  and  it  is 
only  when  it  strikes  the  atmosphere  of  our  earth  that  it  is 
broken  into  the  beautiful  blue  of  the  sky.  And  so  the  soul 
continuing  to  strike  against  this  polar  opposite  which  had  been 
incorporated  with  it  as  its  unwilling  bride,  formed  at  each 
impact  a  new  category  which  it  applied  to  Nature,  and  as  these 
activities  were  confined  within  the  circuit  of  the  mind  itself,  the 
categories  which  grew  out  of  one  another  were  forced  upwards 
like  an  ascending  spiral,  flight  on  flight,  each  turn  of  the  spiral 
disclosing  (as  when  a  landscape  is  seen  from  higher  and  higher 
windows)  new  and  wider  vistas,  qualities,  and  relations,  which 
we  fondly  imagine  in  our  dreams  to  exist  as  realities  in  the 
outer  world  of  Nature  herself.  And  accordingly  when  Schelling 
came  to  review  the  ground  traversed  by  Fichte,  he  saw  that 
although  Fichte  was  right  in  believing  the  mind  to  be  in  its 
essence  really  a  bi-polar  thing,  and  not  the  mere  blank  wall  or 
abstraction  which  the  earlier   Metaphysicians  had  figured  it, 


348  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

containing,  as  it  did,  the  negative  pole  necessary  for  the  active 
side  of  the  soul  to  break  itself  against  if  it  were  to  splinter 
itself  into  the  qualities  constitutive  of  Nature  and  Thought ; 
yet  this  negative  element  could  not  be  the  blank  wall  of  Matter 
which  Fichte  had  brought  from  the  outside  and  set  up  in  the 
mind  itself.  On  the  contrary  he  maintained  that  the  outer 
world  was  too  much  in  evidence  to  be  thus  lightly  disposed  of, 
and  that  let  Metaphysics  say  what  it  would,  Matter  and  Nature 
had  still  an  independent  existence  apart  from  and  separate  from 
the  mind.  It  occurred  to  him,  accordingly,  that  if  he  could 
prove  that  this  Matter  too,  was  in  its  ultimate  constitution  no 
mere  blank  wall  or  abstraction  as  Kant  had  left  it,  but  in  reality 
a  bi-polar  thing  like  the  mind  ;  (and  this  he  had  no  difficulty  in 
doing ;  for  the  centripetal  and  centrifugal  motions  of  Astronomy; 
the  action  and  reaction,  attraction  and  repulsion,  positive  and 
negative,  in  Physics,  Chemistry,  and  Electricity  ;  the  sensory 
and  motor  reactions  of  animal  life,  and  the  like,  all  proclaimed 
it) ;  and  if  further  it  could  be  thus  shown  that  the  laws  of 
Matter  and  the  laws  of  Mind  were  identical,  would  this  not 
prove  that  both  the  Soul  and  Nature,  Mind  and  Matter  were  the 
offspring  of  one  and  the  same  Supreme  Cause,  and  that  that 
Cause  must  in  its  nature  be  bi-polar  also, — a  Being  constituted 
of  Mind  and  Matter  indifferently,  who  constructed  the  World 
out  of  His  own  inner  being,  but  mixed  the  elements  of  His  own 
essence  in  different  proportions  in  Mind  and  Matter  respectively ; 
putting  an  excess  of  Mind,  as  it  were,  into  the  mental  side  of 
things,  but  with  just  sufficient  dash  of  Matter  in  it  to  form  that 
negative  or  obstructive  element  in  Mind  which  is  so  necessary, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  evolve  its  categories,  and  so  to  give  us  an 
ordered  world  of  objects ;  and  an  excess  of  Matter  into  the 
physical  and  material  side  of  things,  but  with  mind  enough  in 
the  shape  of  laws  of  Nature,  to  make  it  instinct  with  thought 
and  reason. 

With  the  conception  of  the  World  as  made  up  of  Mind  and 
Matter  which   faced    each   other   not   as   two   blank   abstract 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  349 

entities,  but  as  two  highly  concrete  bi-polar  substances  under- 
propped by  an  absolute  Being,  also  bi-polar,  as  their  Cause, 
Schelling's  contribution  to  the  solution  of  the  problems  of 
metaphysical  philosophy,  practically  ends, — his  later  work 
falling  out  of  the  main  trend  of  evolution  and  running-  into  the 
sands  of  Mysticism  and  Neo-Platonism.  But  these  two  sides  of 
the  World  although  built  on  the  same  bi-polar  plan,  and 
arguing  therefore  a  common  bi-polar  Cause,  were  still  left 
confronting  each  other  as  isolated  and  separate  existences.  To 
unify  them  and  knit  them  together  in  the  same  way  as  they 
had  each  been  separately  unified  and  knit  together 
out  of  the  bi-polar  elements  of  which  they  were 
respectively  composed,  it  was  not  enough  merely  to  under- 
prop them  with  an  Absolute  Being  to  whom  was  ascribed 
a  bi-polar  nature  like  their  own.  That  would  no  more  have 
been  a  genuine  explanation  of  them  than  it  would  be  a  genuine 
explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  life  to  say  that  they  are  due  to 
the  '  vital  principle.'  What  was  necessary  was  to  trace  them 
back  to  some  Being,  and  to  show  that  both  their  bi-polarity 
and  their  difference  in  nature  would  be  the  necessary  result  at  a 
certain  stage  of  their  evolution,  of  principles  inherent  in  that 
Being ;  in  the  same  way  as  our  present  Solar  System  with  its  sun 
and  planets  and  moon,  would  be  said  to  be  truly  explained  if  it 
could  be  shown  to  be  the  necessary  result  in  Time  of  the  evolution 
of  a  primordial  homogeneous  Force  fixed  in  quantity  and 
existing  in  the  antagonistic  forms  of  attraction  and  repulsion,  as 
Spencer  in  adopting  the  Nebular  Hypothesis  has  conceived  it  to 
be.  But  Schelling  attempted  nothing  of  the  kind.  On  the 
contrary,  as  Hegel  said,  he  shot  his  Absolute  Being  out  of  his 
bi-polar  World  of  Mind  and  Matter  as  out  of  a  pistol,  (as  if  he 
had  said  that  the  cause  of  the  loss  of  hair  was  baldness),  instead 
of  deducing  this  bi-polar  world  as  the  necessary  consequence  of 
the  principles  latent  in  the  Original  Cause.  Now  this  last  step 
necessary  to  knit  together  the  world  of  Mind  and  Matter  so  that 
they  should  form  a  unity,  in  the  same  way  as  Schelling  had 


350  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

already  knit  together  the  two  poles  of  each  separately,  was 
taken  by  Hegel ;  and  the  reasoning  by  which  he  accomplished 
the  feat,  although  it  has  always  been  a  stumbling-block  and 
rock  of  offence  to  the  non-metaphysical  reader,  may  after  what 
has  been  already  said,  be  indicated  in  a  general  way  with 
sufficient  clearness  to  the  intelligible. 

What  Hegel,  then,  practically  saw  was  this,  that  the  world 
of  Mind  and  Matter  could  actually  be  seen  in  the  process  of 
being  knit  together  and  unified  every  hour  of  our  lives,  in  what 
we  call  the  act  of  knowledge;  and  that  the  reason  why 
preceding  thinkers  had  been  unsuccessful  in  their  attempts  to 
solve  the  World-problem,  was  because  they  did  not  see  deeply 
enough  into  the  mechanism  of  this  process  of  knowledge. 
With  the  earlier  Metaphysicians — Descartes,  Malebranche,  and 
the  others — knowledge,  as  we  have  seen,  was  only  regarded  as 
possible  through  the  continuous  mediation  and  intervention  of 
God.  With  Kant  all  the  phenomenal  or  outside  appearances 
of  things  were  passed  like  heads  of  corn  through  the  categories 
of  the  mind  as  through  the  rollers  of  a  machine,  and  so  came 
out  in  the  form  of  knowledge ;  but  their  real  root  and  stalk, 
the  '  Thing-in-itself,'  as  he  called  it,  was  left  standing  outside, 
unknown,  and  was  not  to  be  brought  within  the  ordinary 
processes  of  knowledge.  Fichte,  on  the  other  hand,  got  his 
eye  so  far  on  the  true  method  of  knowledge  as  to  perceive  that 
the  mind  or  Ego  had  in  itself  a  negative  or  passive  element, 
against  which  when  it  broke  it  was  turned  back  on  itself  in 
the  form  of  new  categories,  which  in  this  way  it  successively 
evolved  from  itself,  as  it  were.  And  so  having  gathered  all 
the  qualities  and  properties  of  Nature  into  itself,  it  left  Nature, 
the  shadow  of  itself,  standing  out  there  as  the  mere  phantom 
or  dream  of  its  own  working.  But  Schelling  saw  that  the 
human  mind  were  it  dilated  to  ten  times  its  bulk,  could  no 
more  swallow  and  dispose  of  Nature  thus  easily  than  a  mere 
crocodile  could ;  and  so  he  left  Nature  with  her  bi-polar  laws, 
standing    as   an   independent   entity    obstinately   confronting 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  351 

Mind  with  her  bi-polar  categories,  and  refusing  to  be  disposed 
of.  It  was  at  this  point  that  Hegel  took  up  the  problem.  He 
began  by  reproaching  Kant  for  his  faint-heartedness  in 
deserting  the  field  of  Knowledge,  and  pitching  his  tent  over  the 
Conscience  as  the  sphere  of  his  operations  for  solving  the 
problem  of  the  World  and  the  question  of  the  existence  or 
non-existence  of  the  Ideal- World;  contending  that  if  we 
could  once  understand  the  true  mechanism  by  which  know- 
ledge is  acquired,  all  we  should  have  to  do  would  be  to  project 
this  process  like  a  lantern  image  on  to  the  great  screen  of  the 
world,  in  order  to  bring  the  whole  realm  of  Nature  with  the 
bi-polar  opposites  of  Mind  and  Matter  which  Schelling  had 
left  standing  in  unresolved  antagonism,  within  the  sweep  and 
circuit  of  its  evolving  coils.  Now  what,  according  to  Hegel, 
is  the  true  process  and  mechanism  of  knowledge  !  To  begin 
with,  if  we  take  it  as  it  is  seen  in  its  most  perfect  example, 
namely  the  self-consciousness  of  man,  we  shall  find  that  it 
consists  essentially  in  the  three-fold  movement  by  which  the 
mind  starting  from  a  given  point  anywhere,  goes  out  of  itself, 
as  it  were,  to  observe  the  world  around,  and  returns  again  to 
itself  enriched  like  a  bee  with  what  it  has  gathered ;  then 
starting  afresh  with  the  new  knowledge  and  experience  thus 
acquired,  goes  out  again  in  search  of  more  minute  particulars 
bearing  on  the  subject  it  is  considering,  to  return  again  still 
further  enriched  with  new  knowledge  and  experience,  and  so 
on.  And  now  if  we  look  minutely  into  this  process  of  self- 
conscious  knowledge,  with  the  view  of  ascertaining  in  what  it 
consists,  what  do  we  discern?  First,  we  have  the  consciousness 
of  our  own  minds  and  of  the  inner  knowledge  and  experience 
with  which  we  start ;  second,  we  have  the  consciousness  of  the 
World  and  Nature  outside  and  around  us  ;  and  third,  we  have 
the  consciousness  of  the  something  known  to  us  as  the  Self- 
consciousness,  which  by  being  conscious  at  once  of  ourselves 
and  of  the  world  without,  is  the  agent,  as  it  were,  which  brings 
outer  and  inner  together  and  so  unites  them  in  a  natural  way 


352  MODERN    METAPHYSICS. 

into  what  we  call  knowledge,  without  the  aid  of  any  super- 
natural machinery  whatever.  Now  it  is  true  that  Kant  also 
had  declared  that  knowledge  is  possible  only  when  the  outer 
and  inner  world  are  brought  together  in  the  unity  of  Self- 
Consciousness  ;  but  the  difference  between  them  was  this  : 
that  whereas  the  Self-Consciousness  of  Hegel  is  a  triple-headed 
thing,  a  kind  of  Trinity  in  Unity  as  it  were,  which  moving 
upwards  like  the  spiral  of  an  ascending  staircase  leads  to  ever 
higher  and  higher  realms  of  knowledge,  or  like  a  torch  which 
by  every  fresh  addition  of  light  it  thus  receives  is  enabled  to 
irradiate  more  fully  the  chinks  and  crannies  of  the  darkness 
which  still  lies  before  it ;  the  Self-Consciousness  of  Kant  is 
but  a  point,  as  it  were,  a  merely  formal  unity  which  has  no 
other  function  than  that  of  forming,  like  the  apex  of  a  triangle, 
the  meeting  point  of  the  outer  and  inner  experiences  that 
successively  lead  up  to  it ;  and  so  gives  us  assurance  that  they 
are  the  experiences  of  one  and  the  same  mind  or  person  and 
not  of  two  or  more.  In  a  word,  while  the  Self- Consciousness 
of  Kant  is  like  a  pit  or  well,  the  common  receptacle  of  all  that 
is  thrown  into  it  but  from  which  nothing  comes  forth  ;  the 
Self-Consciousness  of  Hegel  is  like  a  Bank  in  which  all  that  is 
received  into  it  is  at  once  re-invested  as  accumulated  capital 
for  the  opening  up  of  fresh  fields  of  enterprise  and  knowledge. 
Having  shown  in  this  way  that  Mind  and  Matter,  the  Outer 
and  the  Inner  World,  are  progressively  unified  in  the  process 
of  knowledge  with  its  organized  triplicity  of  movement  and 
relations  known  as  the  Self-Conciousness,  all  you  have  to  do, 
says  Plegel,  if  you  would  see  how  the  Universe  of  Mind  and 
Matter  as  a  whole  has  been  unified  and  evolved,  is  to  take  the 
movement  of  self-consciousness  that  constitutes  Knowledge,, 
strip  it  of  all  that  is  personal,  particular,  or  concrete,  and 
project  it  into  the  Universe  as  its  organizing  and  informing 
principle  ;  much  in  the  same  way  as  if  you  wished  to  solve  a 
practical  problem  involving  the  higher  mathematics,  you  would 
strip  it  of  everything  concrete  and  particular,  and  reduce  it  to 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 
MODERN    METAPHYSICS.  ^£* L I F0g}^^53 

the  relations  of  ideal  lines,  curves,  symbols,  and  so  forth.  And 
now  if  we  take  self-consciousness  as  we  see  it  in  the  act  of 
knowledge,  starting  from  itself,  going  out  of  itself,  and 
returning  again  to  itself  enriched  with  new  knowledge  and 
experience,  and  strip  it  of  all  that  is  personal  or  particular,  in 
the  same  way  as  we  might  detach  the  polar  forces  of  a  magnet 
from  the  magnet  itself,  what  have  we  got  !  A  unity  in  triplicity, 
as  it  were,  of  essence  and  movement  which  Hegel  calls  *  the 
Notion,'  and  which  he  conceives  to  be  the  agency  at  work 
wherever  in  the  Universe  Mind  and  Matter  are  to  be  united. 
It  is  on  this  triplicity  in  unity  of  essence  with  its  spiral 
movement  of  going  out  of  itself  and  returning  to  itself  in 
ascending  knowledge  that  Hegel  makes  the  whole  framework 
of  things  revolve  ;  it  is  this  that  is  the  invisible  strand,  the 
'  diamond  net-work '  around  which  the  World,  like  a  huge 
magnet,  has  crystallized  and  taken  shape,  solidity,  and  flesh- 
and-blood  reality ;  and  it  is  by  this  that  all  things  are  held 
together  in  their  polar  opposition  at  once  of  attraction  and 
repulsion. 

But  the  world  as  we  know  it,  with  its  bi-polar  constitution  of 
self-conscious  Mind  on  the  one  hand,  and  its  bi-polar 
constitution  of  Nature  and  her  laws  on  the  other,  which  it  was 
left  for  Hegel  to  unify,  is  not,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  the  earliest 
but  rather  the  latest  stage  in  the  process  of  evolution ;  in  the  same 
way  as  the  moon  as  it  now  stands  confronting  the  earth,  with  its 
own  separate  identity,  its  own  separate  and  independent  move- 
ments, belongs  to  the  latest  and  not  to  the  earliest  stage  in  the 
evolution  of  the  Solar  System.  To  get  the  starting  point, 
accordingly,  from  which  to  apply  his  triplicity  of  movement 
and  essence,  Hegel  was  obliged  to  begin  at  the  beginning, 
namely  with  simple,  pure,  undifferentiated  Being  or  Existence  ; 
in  the  same  way  as  in  the  Nebular  Hypothesis  we  begin  with 
simple,  pure,  undifferentiated  Force,  to  which  we  apply  the 
polarizing  forces  of  attraction  and  repulsion.  Starting  then 
from  this  point,  the  movement  of   Hegel's   principle   carries, 

Z 


354  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

pure  Being,  (the  positive  magnetic-pole  as  it  were  within  the 

magnet  itself),  to  Non-being,  its  polar  opposite,  from  which  it 

returns  again  into  itself,  but  this  time  holding  both  Being  and 

Non-being  in  solution  as  it  were.     This  is  called  by  Hegel  a 

becoming,  and  when  arrested  at  any  given  point  this  coming  to 

be  or  ceasing  to  be  constitutes  what  he  calls  a  state  of  being,  and 

when  this  definite  state  again  separates  itself  in  thought  from 

everything  but  itself,  it  becomes  a  limited  state,  or  what  for  the 

first   time  the  ordinary  mortal  would  call  a  reality,  a  definite 

something,    the    actual    magnet    of   our   analogy.     If    then    we 

separate  this  something  from  everything  else,  and  divide  it  in  its 

relations  to  itself  into  still  further  and  further  distinctions,  we 

get  such  categories  of  existence  as  those  which  are  known  to  us 

as   inner   and   outer,  essence   and  form,  substance  and  accident, 

force  and  manifestation,  cause  and   effect,  action  and  re-action, 

soul  and  body,  and  that  interdependence  of  each  part  on  every 

other  which  is  the  note  of  organic  bodies.     And  lastly  we  get 

that  which  we  set  out  to  explain,  namely  Mind  and  Matter  in 

the  form  of  a   bi-polar    Self-consciousness    in   man    (with   its 

triplicity  in  unity  of  movement)  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  bi-polar 

world  of  Matter  on  the  other ;  each  standing  in  apparently  but 

not  really  absolute  antagonism  to  the  other ;  the  whole  process 

being  analagous  to  that  of  the  evolution  of  the  Solar  System,  in 

which      beginning      with      a      blank,      undifferentiated      and 

homogeneous    Force    existing    in    the    antagonistic    forms    of 

attraction  and  repulsion,  you  have  the  whole  integrating  and 

condensing,   through   the   play   of  these  opposite  forces,  into 

what  we  call  Matter;  which  in  turn  throws  off  the  planets,  and 

the  planets  moons,  each  repeating  the  movements  of  its  parents 

as    it    were ;  and    all    alike,    though    seeming   to    be    separate, 

independent  existences,  being  in  reality  but  the  necessary  and 

correlated    effects    following    in    Time    from    the    primitive, 

homogeneous    and    diffused  Force  in  its  antagonistic  poles  of 

attraction  and  repulsion.     The  truth  is,  this  system  of  Hegel's 

and  the  system  of  Herbert  Spencer  are  practically  one  and  the 


MODERN    METAPHYSICS.  355 

same,  only  seen  from  the  opposite  stand-points,  the  one  of 
Mind,  the  other  of  Matter.  Spencer's  definition  of  Knowledge 
as  a  continuous  process  of  differentiation  and  integration,  is 
practically  the  same  as  Hegel's  description  of  it  as  the  self- 
consciousness  going  out  of  itself  to  break  itself  into  a 
multiplicity  of  particulars,  from  which  it  returns  to  itself 
enriched  by  their  re-integration.  Spencer,  again,  evolves  the 
Universe  from  a  simple,  homogeneous,  undifferentiated  Force, 
by  applying  to  it  the  mechanical  categories  of  attraction  and 
repulsion,  Hegel  evolves  it  from  pure  Being,  by  applying  to  it 
the  polar  categories  involved  in  self-consciousness  or  the 
*  notion.'  With  neither  Spencer  nor  Hegel  are  Mind  and 
Matter  the  absolute  opposites  they  are  generally  conceived  to  be, 
but  only  relative  opposites  ;  otherwise  they  could  not  be  united 
in  the  process  of  knowledge.  With  neither  Hegel  nor  Spencer 
is  the  logic  which  deals  with  the  World  as  a  whole  the  same  as 
the  ordinary  logic  which  deals  with  the  relations  to  each  other 
of  the  separate  things  in  the  world ;  for  while  in  the  latter  A 
excludes  B  absolutely  as  it  were,  in  the  former  A  and  B  being 
both  effects  or  products  of  a  common  Substance,  both  parts  of 
one  world,  must  have  something  in  common,  and  so  not  only 
exclude  each  other  but  involve  each  other  as  well.  Again, 
both  Hegel  and  Spencer  have  attempted  to  deduce  Mind  and 
Matter  from  some  common  ground  that  shall  include  both  ; 
but  it  will  be  found  on  close  inspection  that  they  have  really 
deduced  each  from  the  other  ;  Hegel  deducing  Matter  from  the 
processes  of  Mind,  Spencer  Mind  from  the  processes  of  Matter. 
But  both  have  failed,  because  in  the  attempt  to  bridge  the  gulf 
that  separates  Mind  from  Matter  each  has  been  obliged  to 
smuggle  into  the  process  the  very  product  which  it  was  the 
object  of  his  demonstration  to  evolve  from  it. 

And  thus  it  was  that  Hegel  claimed  to  have  discovered  a 
principle  which  should  account  in  a  natural  way  for  the  bi-partite 
division  of  Nature  into  a  bi-polar  self-conscious  Mind  and 
bi-polar  laws  of  Matter,  separate  and  yet  united,  and  without 


35$  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

invoking  the  aid  of  the  Deity  to  explain  it,  as  was  found 
necessary  by  Descartes,  Malebranche,  and  the  earlier  Meta- 
physicians ;  a  principle  which  would  account  for  the  categories 
of  the  Mind  and  the  phenomenal  appearances  of  Nature  as  with 
Kant,  as  well  as  for  the  laws  of  Mind  and  the  laws  of  Nature 
as  with  Fichte  and  Schelling  respectively.  It  was  for  these 
reasons,  as  well  as  for  the  affinity  which  his  principle  with  its 
triplicity  in  unity  had  with  the  Trinity  in  Unity  of  Christianity, 
that  Hegel  acquired  that  influence  over  metaphysical  and 
theological  thinkers  which  he  still  enjoys. 

But  to  return  to  our  point  of  departure,  we  have  still  to  ask 
how  this  system  of  Hegel  stands  in  reference  to  the  ideals  of 
men — to  God,  the  Soul,  Immortality — with  which  in  these 
chapters  we  are  mainly  concerned  1  To  begin  with,  it  is  evident 
from  what  we  have  said,  that  just  as  the  whole  life  and  work  of 
an  individual  from  youth  to  age  is  the  product  not  of  one  fixed 
unchangeable  mind,  but  of  a  growing  and  developing  one,  so  the 
evolution  of  Nature  in  Time  with  its  living  Present  and  its  dead 
and  fossil  Past,  is  in  the  philosophy  of  Hegel  the  product  not 
of  a  fixed  and  unchanging  Deity,  but  of  a  growing  and  developing 
Deity  rather.  And  hence  it  is  that  when  a  self-conscious  being 
like  Man  arises  in  Nature  in  the  course  of  evolution,  this  fact 
itself  is  a  guarantee  that  the  Deity  has  Himself  become 
self-conscious.  And  so,  too,  when  Compassion  and  Morality 
emerge  in  Man,  it  is  the  sign  that  the  Deity  Himself  is  just  and 
merciful.  So  that  at  each  point  in  the  progress  of  created 
existences,  the  Deity  will  be  found  to  embrace,  support,  and  reflect 
the  ideals  which  at  that  time  have  arisen.  Now  this  mode  of  con- 
ceiving the  Deity  as  a  process  or  growth,  has  the  advantage  over 
the  God  of  Pantheism,  that  it  represents  God  as  existing  apart  from 
and  transcending  the  Universe  which  He  has  created  ;  it  has  the 
advantage  over  the  God  of  Philosophical  Theism  again,  in  this, 
that  by  making  Nature  a  fluid,  evolving  process  within  the  bosom 
of  the  Infinite,  it  enables  us  to  conceive  the  relation  of  the 
Infinite  to  the  Finite  in  a  way  impossible  in  a  doctrine  in  which 


MODERX   MET  A  PHYSIOS.  357 

these  stand  to  each  other  in  the  relation  of  stolid  and  independent 
opposites. 

But  hardly  had  the  old  ideals  been  set  on  their  pedestals  again 
by  Kant,  and  in  a  less  degree  by  Hegel,  who  had  to  strain  his 
system  to  get  a  personal  immortality  out  of  it;   hardly  had 
Conscience  and  the  Moral  Law  been  so  planted  as  to  point  with 
fixed  finger  steadily  towards  these  ideals,  than  a  succession  of 
thinkers  sprang  up  on  all  hands  who  were  prepared  to  show  that 
this  much-vaunted  Moral-sense  with  its  categorical  imperative, 
far  from  being  the  everlasting  rock  on  which  Religion  and  the 
Ideal  were  forever  to  rest  secure,  was  at  bottom  only  a  form  of 
Self-interest  variously  disguised.     Some,  like  Helvetius,  declared 
it  to  be  only  a  more  subtle  form  of  self-love ;  others  like  Hume 
and  Adam  Smith,  that  it  was  a  kind  of  inverted  sympathy ; 
others  again,  like    Diderot,  that   it  was  a  form  of   selfishness 
although  one  which  made  for  the  general  good ;  while  in  later 
times  men  like  Bentham  and  the  Mills  declared  that  it  was  only 
a  form  of  expediency  and  enlightened  self-interest.    And  so  it  was 
decomposed  by  one  after  another  of  these  Materialist  Thinkers 
until  in  our  own  time  Spencer  gave  to  the  analysis  its  most 
complete  scientific  form  by  treating  it  from  the  social  rather 
than  from  the  individual  stand-point,  and  by  making  it  a  matter 
of   race  utility  rather  than  of   personal   or  private    utility  or 
expediency.     In  the  same  way  when  Beauty,  Love,  Reverence, 
Pity,  and  the  rest  were  placed  under  the  microscope  by  these 
remorseless  analysts,  they  were  made  to  forfeit  all  their  ancient 
lustre,  quality,  and  dignity,  and  were  all  alike  declared  to  be 
impostors,  with  plebian  pedigrees  at  the  first  or  second  remove. 
Beauty  was  resolved  into  the  pleasure  merely  that  comes,  through 
the  power  of  association,  from  objects  whose  rougher  corners 
have  been  fined  down  in  the  imagination,  or  memory  by  time 
or  distance ;  or  from  functions  that  have  ceased  to  be  given  to 
work  and  are  now  devoted  to  play,  and  so  on ;  while  Love  was 
decomposed  into  a  complex  of  qualities,  with  lust  as  its  chief 
ingredient ;  and  Reverence  into  fear,  with  its  margins  sufficiently 


358  MODERN    METAPHYSICS. 

concealed  to  prevent  it  from  being  altogether  contemptible  and 
degrading. 

And  thus  it  was  that  the  Church  and  Philosophy  both  alike 
undermined  by  scepticism,  could  only  keep  themselves  erect, 
as  it  were,  like  a  couple  of  crippled  paralytics,  by  leaning  one 
against  the  other !  Both  were  wanting  in  any  general 
Cosmogony  into  which  as  framework  their  doctrines  could  fit 
harmoniously  ;  and  in  consequence  the  Church  continued  to 
hold  on  desperately  to  the  Mosaic  account  of  Creation  and  to 
the  Verbal  Inspiration,  which  were  to  be  her  bane ;  accepting 
with  gratitude  the  arm  of  the  Kantian  Philosophy  as  a 
temporary  support  in  her  perplexity,  while  the  Metaphysicians 
leant  on  the  Church  in  turn,  and  were  grateful  for  a  crumb  of 
comfort  from  her,  when  their  own  leaders  fell  from  time  to  time 
into  Materialism  or  Atheism. 

And  thus  it  was  too  that  Modern  Metaphysics,  which  unlike 
Greek  Philosophy  and  Mediaeval  Catholicism  had  no  large 
general  scheme  of  Cosmogony  in  which  as  in  a  framework  the 
ideals  of  the  mind  should  have  their  natural  and  harmonious 
setting,  was  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  taking  the  mind  to 
pieces  and  ransacking  it  as  if  it  were  some  old  dust-bin,  in  the 
hope  that  justification  for  one  or  other  or  all  of  these  ideals 
might  be  found  there — with  such  shifting,  uncertain,  and  un- 
satisfactory results  as  we  have  just  seen.  The  weapons  which 
were  forged  by  the  earlier  Metaphysicians,  Descartes  and 
Malebranche,  out  of  the  process  of  knowledge,  and  which  were 
to  be  used  with  deadly  execution  against  the  deniers  of  God 
and  the  Ideal,  were  by  the  later  metaphysicians,  by  Hume  and 
the  Illuminati  of  the  French  School,  turned  like  bayonet  points 
into  their  own  entrails ;  while  the  Conscience  which  Kant  had 
so  poised  as  to  point  to  the  stars — to  God,  Free-will,  and 
Immortality — was  so  reversed  by  the  Materialists  as  to  point 
\  to  the  earth  rather,  and  to  their  own  stomachs  mainly.  And 
what  else,  indeed,  could  we  expect  ?  To  attempt  to  demon- 
strate by  the  unassisted  human  reason  that  the   same  human 


MODERN    METAPHYSICS.  359 

reason  cannot  be  got  to  act  at  all  but  by  the  perpetual 
assistance  of  the  Deity,  is  not  this  a  curious  result  of  meta- 
physical speculation  1  Is  it  a  whit  less  absurd  than  Carlyle's 
Irish  Saint  who  proposed  to  swim  the  Channel  carrying  his 
head  between  his  teeth,  or  than  the  man  who  tried  to  lift 
himself  by  his  own  boots?  Again,  is  not  the  attempt  to  so 
manipulate  what  the  universal  consciousness  of  mankind 
regards  as  the  high  qualities  of  love,  beauty,  reverence,  right, 
duty,  and  the  like,  that  they  shall  turn  out  to  be  mere  forms  of 
the  low  ones  of  expediency,  lust,  fear,  utility,  and  so  on, — is 
this  not  to  utterly  stultify  and  confound  alike  the  common- 
sense,  the  judgment,  and  the  ordinary  conversation  of  mankind, 
which  turn  perpetually  on  precisely  this  difference  between 
what  is  high  and  what  is  low,  what  is  noble  and  what  is  base 
in  the  thoughts,  words,  and  actions  of  men?  Is  not  this 
attempt  of  the  Metaphysicians  to  box  off  certain  faculties  of 
the  mind  from  the  rest,  and  to  treat  them  as  isolated,  inde- 
pendent entities  on  which  to  found  conclusions  as  to  the 
constitution  of  the  world,  is  this  not  as  bad  in  its  way  as  the 
delusions  of  those  perpetual-motion  schemers  who  imagined 
that  by  the  ingenious  device  of  boxing  off  one  half  of  a  wheel 
from  the  influence  of  gravitation,  they  would  gain  their  end  by 
its  continual  pull  on  the  other  half  }.  And  is  it  surprising 
that  after  all  this,  the  entire  method  of  the  Metaphysicians 
should  seem  to  me  utterly  false  and  illusory,  and  that  when 
put  forward  seriously  as  the  right  method  for  solving  the 
Problem  of  the  World,  it  should  seem  superficial,  hollow,  and 
absurd?  But  as  the  future  both  of  Religion  and  Philosophy 
must  largely  depend  on  the  answer  we  give  as  to  the  validity 
or  not  of  these  methods  of  Metaphysical  Speculation  for  the 
solution  of  the  Problem  of  Existence,  I  am  compelled  to 
pursue  the  matter  still  further  in  the  next  Chapter. 

But  before  doing  so  I  should  like  to  say  a  word  or  two  of  a 
Thinker  who  can  neither  be  placed  exclusively  under  the 
category  of  the  Metaphysical  Thinkers  nor  yet  of  the  Poetic 


360  3IODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

Thinkers  with  whom  we  have  next  to  deal,  but  who  from  the 
peculiar  point  of  view  he  took  up,  was  enabled  to  exhibit  many 
of  the  best  qualities  of  both.  I  allude  to  Schopenhauer.  The 
Metaphysicians  under  Hegel  having  exhausted  the  Intelligence 
or  Understanding  of  all  the  pure  ore  that  was  to  be  found  in 
it  for  purposes  of  a  World-theory,  and  having  enunciated  what 
by  many  is  regarded  as  the  true  law  of  the  movement  of 
Thought  as  Thought ;  and  having  under  Kant  exhausted  the 
significance  of  the  Conscience  in  its  bearing  on  the  existence 
of  God,  Free- Will,  and  Immortality  ;  the  only  part  of  the 
mind  which  still  remained  virgin  soil  from  which  to  extract 
material  for  a  new  point  of  view,  was  the  region  of  the 
emotions,  sentiments,  and  passions.  And  although  as  a 
miscellaneous  collection  they  were  too  contradictory,  shifting, 
and  uncertain  to  afford  a  steady  and  definite  standpoint  for 
the  thinker,  they  nevertheless  in  their  combined  action  as 
character,  could  be  fairly  represented  by  the  Will  as  their 
practical  resultant  and  outcome.  On  the  Will,  accordingly, 
Schopenhauer  took  his  stand  as  the  central  point  for  his 
explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  the  World  and  of  Human  Life, 
and  succeeded  in  so  turning  the  world  around  this  will  as  its 
axis  as  to  give  birth  to  an  entirely  new  system  of  Metaphysical 
Philosophy.  It  is  true  that  all  Religions  and  Theologies  had 
made  the  will  their  central  point,  either  the  will  of  the  gods, 
of  God,  or  of  deified  men  and  ancestors,  but  it  was  always  a 
will,  be  it  observed,  that  was  directed  and  informed  by  the 
Intelligence.  With  Schopenhauer  on  the  contrary,  the  Will 
is  the  blind,  chaotic,  tumultuous  and  unregulated  will  of  the 
passions,  emotions,  and  desires,  a  will  which  far  from  being 
directed  by  the  intelligence,  uses  the  intelligence  as  its  slave. 
Indeed  instead  of  the  will  and  the  intelligence  acting  together 
as  a  unity,  as  they  do  in  the  normal  human  mind,  they  are 
systematically  walled  off  from  each  other  by  Schopenhauer, 
and  as  natural  enemies,  kept  in  separate  compartments  of  the 
mind.     And  it  is  because  he  has  thus  split  the  mind  into  these 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  361 

different  divisions  and  faculties  with  separate  and  independent 
functions  and  powers,  and  so  reversed  their  action  that  they 
cannot  be  brought  into  a  unity,  as  is  done  by  the  Poetic 
Thinkers,  that  I  have  set  him  down  as  belonging  essentially  to 
the  category  of  the  Metaphysicians.  And  yet,  inasmuch  as 
the  sentiments,  passions,  appetites,  and  desires,  on  which 
through  their  representative  the  Will  he  took  his  stand,  are  not 
only  the  root  and  staple  of  human  character  but  the  secret 
springs  of  human  action  and  conduct  also,  his  philosophy 
dealing  as  it  does  with  the  relations  between  these,  exhibits 
as  we  should  expect  from  a  man  of  his  natural  powers,  an 
insight  into  human  life  and  character,  a  penetration,  subtlety, 
and  comprehensiveness  of  view,  which  are  only  to  be  found  in 
men  like  Bacon,  Shakespeare,  Goethe,  and  the  other  great 
Poetic  Thinkers  of  the  world.  And  although,  owing  to  the 
pessimism  into  which  his  metaphysical  scheme  (and  perhaps 
his  own  nature  and  temper)  drove  him,  he  has  lost  much  of  the 
serenity,  sunniness,  and  wholeness  of  view  of  these  great 
masters  of  human  thought,  nevertheless  he  exhibits  in  his 
writings  a  wisdom  of  life,  a  power  of  observation,  a  pene- 
tration into  human  action  and  motive,  and  a  fund  of  wit  and 
humour,  which  can  only  be  paralleled  in  their  works,  and  to 
which  the  writings  of  the  purely  Metaphysical  Thinkers  are 
for  the  most  part  strangers. 

His  main  position,  then,  is  that  the  World  is  the  product 
not  of  an  Intelligent  Will  as  with  the  Religious  Thinkers  and 
Theologians,  nor  of  a  purely  Mechanical  Force  as  with  the 
Materialists,  nor  yet  of  a  Spirit  realizing  itself,  as  with  Hegel 
and  the  Metaphysicians,  but  of  a  blind  Force  or  Will  which 
like  some  heaving  primaeval  chaos  swarms  with  broods  of 
appetites,  passions,  and  desires,  all  struggling  like  Carlyle's 
pitcher  of  tamed  vipers,  to  get  on  to  the  stage  of  existence ;  and 
once  arrived,  all  animated  with  the  single  purpose  of  continuing 
and  perpetuating  themselves  there.  For  this  purpose  they 
make  for  themselves  organs  or  instruments  of  self-preservation 


362  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

and  reproduction ;  in  plants,  leaves  and  flowers  that  contract 
and  expand,  open  or  shut,  and  respond  to  their  appropriate 
stimuli  in  various  ways ;  in  animals,  the  brain,  with  the  eyes, 
ears,  nose,  mouth,  hands  and  feet,  horns,  hoofs,  claws,  teeth, 
and  other  the  like  organs  for  the  apprehension  of  food  or  the 
escape  from  enemies ;  while  in  Man,  the  self-conscious 
intelligence  which  is  his  glory  and  prerogative,  with  its  greater 
range,  delicacy,  flexibility  and  subtlety,  has  primarily  the 
function  merely  of  enabling  him  the  better  to  minister  to  these 
desires.  Like  a  mass  of  people  casually  collected  in  a  crowded 
thoroughfare,  the  World  as  a  whole  with  the  Will  by  which  it 
is  animated  has  no  end,  aim,  or  reason  in  itself ;  it  is  only  the 
individuals  composing  it,  that  have  intelligences  given  them  by 
which  to  realize  their  own  particular  ends  with  the  greatest 
directness  and  ease.  But  the  whole  being  without  end,  aim,  or 
reason,  what  can  it  all  mean  for  the  individual  but  suffering, 
disappointment,  misery,  sorrow,  decay,  and  inevitable  death, 
tempered  for  the  lower  creatures  by  the  ephemeral  pleasures  of 
the  hour,  and  for  the  higher,  by  the  brief  illusory  vision  of  the 
Ideal  which  still  haunts  the  mind,  but  which  as  it  can  never  be 
realized,  in  the  end  but  adds  to  the  disenchantment  and  sorrow. 
These  ideals,  which  are  the  subject  of  all  Art,  and  which 
correspond  to  those  perfect  and  eternal  types  of  things  which 
Plato  saw  peopling  the  stars  and  making  music  among  the 
spheres,  before  they  were  let  down  into  their  earthly  vestures 
of  decay — these  pictures  of  the  Ideal,  which  cannot  be  got  by 
any  process  of  addition  or  subtraction  but  only  by  an  intuition 
of  the  imagination,  and  which  by  their  aloofness  and  perfection 
calm  and  subdue  the  spirit,  have  no  more  real  significance 
according  to  Schopenhauer,  than  has  the  sight  of  a  well-spread 
banquet  to  beggars;  being  but  the  perfect  realization  of 
desires  which  owing  to  the  obstructions  and  imperfections  of 
the  actual  world,  can  never  be  fully  realized. 

And  what  then,  according  to  Schopenhauer,  is  to  be  done  ? 
Existence  having  its  essence   and   root   in   a  blind   chaos   of 


MODERN   METAPHYSICS.  363 

tumultuous  and  conflicting  passions  and  desires  lumped  together 
under  the  general  designation  of  the  Will,  (behind  which 
however  there  is  no  God),  and  hung  out  before  the  soul  like  the 
veils  of  illusion  in  Hindoo  Philosophy  to  deceive  it,  what  ought 
Philosophy  to  do  but  to  search  diligently  for  the  speediest  and 
most  effective  means  of  ridding  us  of  this  world,  and  bringing 
it  to  an  end?  And  when  we  ask  how  this  is  to  be  done* 
Schopenhauer  replies,  by  turning  the  will  against  itself  as  it 
were ;  and  this  he  proposes  to  accomplish  by  means  of  Intellect 
which  beginning  as  a  slave  yoked  to  the  service  of  the  will  and 
its  passions,  at  last  when  it  attains  to  full  self-consciousness  in 
Man  and  sees  that  the  master  of  whom  it  has  been  the  dupe  is 
no  legitimate  sovereign,  but  a  besotted  slave  like  itself,  turns  on 
it  and  rends  it.  This  it  does  on  the  one  hand  by  withdrawing 
the  mind  from  the  immediate  influence  of  the  passions,  by  the 
calming  influence  which  comes  from  the  contemplation  of  pure 
works  of  Art;  and  on  the  other  by  the  mortification  of  the 
body  and  its  desires  by  all  the  devices  of  Hindoo  asceticism, 
and  by  the  cultivation  of  that  good-will  to  others  which,  as  in 
Buddhism,  would  help  others  rather  than  exploit  them,  would 
pity  them  rather  than  be  revenged  on  them.  In  this  way  the 
Intellect  having  cleared  the  soul  of  the  delusions  by  which  it  is 
enthralled,  and  having  turned  the  will  and  its  passions  against 
themselves  to  produce  extinction,  like  those  rays  of  light  whose 
ethereal  waves  when  they  strike  their  opposites,  produce  dark- 
ness ;  the  Intellect  having  thus  done  its  work,  can  then  sink 
into  Nirvana  its  haven  of  eternal  rest,  like  those  seeds  which  in 
the  beautiful  metaphor  of  the  great  Hindoo  sage,  after  clearing 
the  water  in  the  pitcher  of  its  mud,  having  done  their  work, 
themselves  sink  to  the  bottom. 

Now  it  is  evident  that  such  a  system  as  this  could  have  no 
future  in  European  Thought,  where  the  Intellect  is  always 
regarded  as  the  master  and  director  of  the  will  and  never,  as  in 
Oriental  Thought,  its  slave.  It  is  true  that  Yon  Kartmann, 
living  closer  to  Darwinian  times,  and  perceiving  the  evidences 


364  MODERN   METAPHYSICS. 

in  Nature  and  Human  Life  of  a  more  continuous  and  unbroken 
evolution  than  did  Schopenhauer, — who  for  each  species  and 
variety  of  thing  would  have  a  separate  Platonic  Idea  or  Type 
of  Will  as  its  cause,  like  those  old  Theologians  who  in  like  case 
demanded  a  separate  act  of  creation  or  interposition  of  God — 
sought  to  correct  this  defect  of  his  master  by  arming  the  blind 
Will  with  the  intelligent  principle  of  evolution  of  Hegel — the 
ascending  spiral  movement  of  the  Idea  which  we  have  already 
seen — so  as  to  give  it  continuity,  meaning,  and  a  definite  aim. 
But  as  all  ended  as  with  Schopenhauer  in  disappointment, 
delusion,  and  sorrow,  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  like  him  to 
turn  the  will  against  itself  by  means  of  the  Intelligence,  and  so 
bring  all  to  extinction  again,  and  to  the  silence  of  the 
Unconscious,  as  he  calls  it,  from  which  it  originally  arose. 
With  this  apotheosis  of  the  blind  Will  as  the  central  principle 
of  Thought,  Metaphysical  Speculation  properly  so  called  ran  its 
full  course  and  came  to  an  end.  It  had  taken  its  stand  as  we 
have  seen,  successively  on  the  Intelligence,  the  Conscience  and 
the  Will  with  its  passions  and  desires,  and  no  part  of  the  mind 
was  now  left  as  fresh  standpoint  for  a  new  theory  of  the  World 
and  of  Human  Life.  And  accordingly  since  then  it  has 
reverted  largely  to  the  position  occupied  by  Hegel,  and  all  that 
is  left  of  the  laborious  structure  of  Schopenhauer,  is  the  ring  of 
beautiful  jewels  of  wit  and  wisdom  into  which,  like  the  snake 
in  Goethe's  '  Tale,'  it  dissolved  when  its  outer  metaphysical 
husk  and  framework  had  decayed. 


CHAPTER    VI. 


CRITICISMS    AND    CONCLUSIONS. 

r|^HE  main  reason,  perhaps,  why  the  Modern  Metaphysicians 
•*■  both  repelled  and  disappointed  me,  was  that  on  all  sides 
of  their  industry  and  activity  they  stopped  short  just  at  the 
point  where  my  interest  was  ready  to  begin.  In  the  intellectual 
region,  the  categories  with  which  they  dealt — Time,  Space,, 
quality,  quantity,  cause  and  effect,  and  the  like, — were  of  the 
cheapest  and  most  elementary  character,  and  could  as  little  be 
said  to  represent  the  subtlety  and  complexity  of  the  intellectual 
world,  as  the  foundations  of  Westminster  Abbey  can  be 
said  to  represent  the  elaborate  harmonies  and  beauties  of  its 
superstructure.  How  indeed,  could  so  shabby  an  assortment  as 
these,  all  of  which  are  common  to  the  very  brutes,  represent  the 
infinite  complexity  and  subtlety,  the  endless  variety  and 
beauty  of  Nature  and  the  Human  Mind?  And  how  could 
the  explanation  of  them  be  seriously  put  forward  as  an 
explanation  either  of  the  World  or  of  the  Human  Mind  ?  It 
was  an  explanation  of  the  substance  of  things  not  of  their  flavour, 
of  their  likeness  or  difference  not  of  their  quality,  rank,  or 
degree,  of  their  physics  not  their  vital  chemistry,  of  their  botany 
not  their  beauty.  It  was  the  same  when  leaving  the  intellectual 
region,  the  Metaphysicians  set  to  work  to  decompose  the  other 
affections  and  activities  of  the  mind ;  for  after  splitting  these 
with  much  ingenuity  and  show  of  subtlety  into  their  component 


366  CRITICISMS   AND    CONCLUSIONS. 

elements,  as  one  might  a  house  into  its  separate  bricks  or  stones, 
they  contentedly  rested  here  as  if  their  work  were  complete, 
without  attempting  to  re-unite  them  by  means  of  the  laws  and 
relations  that  exist  between  them,  into  that  living  whole  known 
as  the  organized  human  mind.  It  was  as  if  boys  after  taking  a 
watch  to  pieces  and  putting  its  separate  wheels  and  pinions 
into  different  compartments  duly  labelled,  but  unable  to  put 
them  together  again  so  that  the  watch  should  go,  should  yet 
persist  in  calling  this  a  knowledge  of  the  watch ;  or  as  if  a 
butcher  after  laying  out  the  different  parts  of  a  carcass  in  their 
respective  places  on  his  stall,  should  call  this  a  knowledge  of 
the  animal.  Now  what  I  wanted  was  not  so  much  the 
■decomposition  of  the  mind  into  its  elements,  as  the  re- 
composition  of  these  elements  by  means  of  their  relations  and 
•connexions,  into  a  living  whole  again ;  so  that  on  one  emotion 
or  sensation  arising  in  the  mind,  the  others  that  follow  on  it  or 
•out  of  it  might  be  foreseen.  This  alone  can  be  properly  called 
a  scientific  knowledge  of  the  human  mind,  and  may  be  seen 
abundantly  on  every  page  of  Bacon,  Shakspeare,  Goethe, 
Emerson,  Carlyle,  and  the  other  great  observers  of  human  life, 
hut  rarely  in  the  works  of  the  Metaphysicians  properly  so  called. 
I  was  repelled  too,  by  what  I  felt  to  be  the  intellectual 
complacency  of  the  men  who  could  seriously  imagine  that  the 
infinite  delicacy  and  subtlety  of  the  web  or  tissue  known  as  the 
mind,  and  which  had  taken  countless  ages  of  evolution  to  weave, 
could  be  adequately  sampled  and  represented  by  the  few  cheap 
and  shabby  threads  which  they  had  drawn  out  from  its  meshes. 
And  after  all,  with  what  result?  Why,  with  this,  that  all  that 
is  express  and  admirable  in  the  human  spirit  was  squeezed  out 
of  it  by  this  disintegrating  process  by  which  they  flattered 
themselves  they  were  getting  its  real  essence  ;  so  that  when  you 
read  their  definitions  of  what  love  is,  of  what  reverence  is,  of 
what  heroism  is,  of  what  beauty,  truth,  and  right  are,  all 
the  associations  by  which  they  are  endeared  to  us,  all  the 
perfume  and  delicacy  which  they  carry  with  them  and  which  as 


CRITICISMS   AND    CONCLUSIONS.  367 

their  real  and  true  essence  they  exhale,  were  driven  off  them  as 
if  they  had  been  passed  through  a  chemical  retort,  and  the  very 
words  love,  beauty,  justice,  now  that  their  virtue  was  all  sucked 
out  of  them,  afflicted  you  when  they  fell  on  your  ear,  or  when 
you  came  across  them  on  the  printed  page,  as  if  they  were  so 
many  old  shrivelled  and  empty  grape-skins.  And  as  for  the 
analysis  itself,  if  it  came  to  that,  all  this  had  already  been  done 
for  me,  and  with  much  more  thoroughness,  by  men  like  Bain. 
Spencer,  and  the  Modern  School  of  Psychologists,  and  by  means 
too  of  distinctions  which  so  far  as  they  go,  have  a  real  basis 
and  warrant  in  the  Scientific  Physiology  and  Psychology  of  the 
present  day.  But  the  worst  offence  of  all  in  my  eyes  perhaps, 
was  that  out  of  these  little  separate  bits  of  coloured  glass  into 
which  they  had  broken  down  the  faculties  and  affections  of  the 
organized  human  mind,  they  proceeded  to  compose  what  they 
would  seriously  have  us  take  for  a  real  eye  or  lens  through  which 
we  were  to  see  and  interpret  the  phenomena  of  the  world, 
instead  of  through  the  natural  eye  that  has  been  provided  us, 
the  organized  human  mind  as  it  is, — a  crowning  absurdity.  I 
missed,  too,  as  I  have  said,  in  these  Metaphysicians,  that  insight 
into  the  concrete  world  of  human  life,  that  wisdom  of  the  world, 
and  knowledge  of  men  and  things,  which  had  been  my  absorbing 
interest  since  my  old  phrenological  days,  and  which  I  demanded 
as  a  kind  of  preliminary  testimonial  and  guarantee  from  all  those 
who  should  seek  to  win  my  confidence  for  a  deeper  plunge  into 
more  abstruse  regions  of  thought  and  speculation;  on  the 
principle,  I  suppose,  expressed  by  Goethe,  that  it  is  the  man 
who  sees  farthest  into  the  present  finite  world,  who  is  the  most 
likely  to  see  farthest  into  the  world  of  the  infinite  and  unseen. 

But  my  main  reason,  perhaps,  for  ultimately  rejecting  the 
long  line  of  Metaphysical  Thinkers  stretching  from  Descartes 
to  Hegel,  was  that  none  of  them  for  want  of  sufficient  scientific 
proof,  had  properly  grasped  and  laid  to  heart  the  great  doctrine 
of  Modern  Scientific  Psychology — the  doctrine  namely  of  the 
intimate  and  exact  dependence  of  every  thought,  impulse,  and 


368  CRITICISMS   AND   CONCLUSIONS. 

emotion  of  the  mind  on  the  physical  structure  and  condition, 
the  molecular  activity,  of  the  brain  and  nervous  system ;  and 
I  felt  that  it  would  be  as  absurd  to  ignore  this  central  truth  in 
any  great  scheme  of  the  World,  as  it  would  be  to  ignore  in 
daily  life  the  effect  of  the  wine  a  man  had  drunk  on  the 
momentary  expression  of  his  feelings,  or  the  effect  of  the 
opium  he  had  taken  on  the  quality  and  texture  of  his  dreams. 
For  I  saw  that  with  an  entity  like  the  mind  as  it  is  conceived 
by  the  Metaphysicians,  an  entity,  that  is  to  say,  which  is 
independent  of  all  time,  space,  or  matter,  and  which  in 
consequence  can  pervade  the  Universe  like  an  ether  or  pass 
through  stone  walls  like  a  Mahatma,  with  an  entity  like  this  it 
was  as  easy  a  task  to  get  across  from  the  Real  to  the  Ideal — 
to  get  a  God,  a  Soul,  a  Free-will,  and  an  Immortality — as  it  is 
for  boys  at  school  to  scale  inaccessible  fortresses  or  to  construct 
impossible  bridges  over  yawning  chasms  by  means  of  ideal 
constructions  and  diagrams  on  their  slates.  For  from  the 
entity  known  as  the  Soul,  thus  disengaged  from  body,  Immor- 
tality was  an  easy  and  natural  sequence,  while  the  idea  of  a 
God  was  but  a  natural  and  obvious  inference.  But  to  bridge 
the  gulf  between  the  Real  and  the  Ideal  by  a  real  structure  of 
wood  and  stone,  by  a  mind,  that  is  to  say,  with  a  nervous 
system  yoked  to  it  and  ready  by  its  gravity  at  any  moment  to 
precipitate  the  whole  structure  into  the  abyss  below, — that  was 
quite  another  matter  and  one  by  no  means  so  easy  of  accom- 
plishment. Hegel,  I  am  aware,  is  believed  by  his  followers  to 
have  accomplished  the  feat  by  the  happy  expedient  of  beginning 
from  both  ends  at  once,  but  he  too,  as  we  have  seen,  failed  like 
the  rest ;  the  only  difference  between  him  and  his  predecessors 
being  that  while  they  imagined  they  had  got  across  it  on  the 
back  of  their  abstract  entity  called  the  Intelligence,  or  (as  in 
the  case  of  Kant),  the  Conscience,  at  a  single  bound  as  it  were, 
(like  the  men  who  in  Goethe's  '  Tale  '  got  across  it  on  the  back 
of  the  Giant's  Shadow),  Hegel  professed  to  have  got  across  by 
creeping   cautiously   from   both  ends   at   once,   throwing   out 


CRITICISMS   AND    CONCLUSIONS.  369 

bastions  and  girders  before  him  as  he  went,  until  they  should 
meet  in  the  centre.  But  it  was  found  that  the  Real  and  the 
Ideal,  Mind  and  Matter,  although  apparently  bridged,  had 
actually  as  deep  a  rift  between  them  as  before  ;  although  it  had 
been  cunningly  concealed  by  the  canopy  of  phrases  which 
Hegel  had  thrown  over  the  points  of  junction. 

Now  in  a  work  of  this  kind,  whose  aim  primarily  is  to  indicate 
as  succinctly  and  conscientiously  as  possible  the  successive 
stages  through  which  I  travelled  in  my  mental  evolution,  with 
just  sufficient  illustration  to  make  its  course  intelligible  to  the 
general  reader,  the  full  and  detailed  proof  of  all  the  positions 
taken  up  in  these  chapters  cannot  of  course  be  expected,  and 
must  be  reserved  for  its  proper  place  in  my  '  History  of 
Intellectual  Development.'  Enough,  however,  will  I  trust 
have  been  said  to  show  that  with  this  great  boulder  of  the 
dependence  of  mind  on  the  physical  conditions  of  the  brain 
and  nervous  system,  which  the  Metaphysicians  had  neglected, 
standing  in  my  way  and  blocking  the  ordinary  even  course  of 
the  philosophic  stream,  all  hope  of  regaining  my  lost  ideal 
through  the  analytic  labours  of  these  Metaphysicians,  would 
have  to  be  resigned.  And  accordingly,  after  two  or  three 
years  spent  in  these  studies,  with  my  health  permanently 
injured  by  the  overstrain  incident  on  the  thought  and  labour 
they  entailed ;  with  my  ideal  still  unfound  and  my  mind 
bereaved  as  of  a  lost  love,  I  was  obliged  to  set  them  aside  and 
to  turn  elsewhere.  Not  that  I  came  altogether  empty  away 
from  the  study  of  the  writings  of  these  thinkers ;  on  the 
contrary,  and  especially  in  the  case  of  Kant  and  Hegel,  I  was 
enriched  by  the  acquisition  of  many  precious  jewels  which  they 
had  let  fall  by  the  way.  My  only  complaint  was  that  they  had 
not  solved  for  me  the  particular  perplexities  created  by  the 
scientific  discoveries  and  generalizations  which  had  arisen  since 
they  had  completed  their  labours.  Not  that  they  were  not 
justified  in  making  Mind  rather  than  Matter  their  standpoint  for 
the  interpretation  of  the  phenomena  of  the  World  and  of  Human 

A  A 


370  CRITICISMS   AND    CONCLUSIONS. 

Life ;  (on  the  contrary  in  making  Matter  and  the  Laws  of  Matter, 
primary,  as  Spencer  has  done,  no  solution  of  the  World-problem, 
as  we  shall  see  further  on,  is  possible  at  all) ;  but  only  this,  that  in 
taking  as  their  standpoint  an  abstract  entity  called  the  mind, 
independent  of  its  connexion  with  the  brain  and  nervous 
system,  they  scored  at  best  but  a  cheap  and  easy  victory,  and 
one  having  in  it  none  of  the  elements  necessary  for  a  permanent 
and  abiding  peace.  And  yet,  before  completing  this  period  of 
my  mental  history,  I  almost  feel  as  if  some  apology  were  due  to 
the  reader  for  the  apparently  summary  way  in  which  in  this 
narrative  I  have  disposed  of  these,  in  many  ways  the  master- 
spirits of  the  world,  the  great  players  in  the  game  of  thought, 
my  only  excuse  (and  I  trust  it  will  be  regarded  as  a  sufficient 
one)  must  be,  that  had  they  lived  in  our  own  time,  and  with  the 
immense  acquisitions  of  knowledge  which  recent  science  has 
placed  at  our  command,  they  would  not  have  wished  it  other- 
wise ;  they  would  no  more  have  thought  as  they  did,  or 
constructed  their  systems  on  the  principles  they  did,  than  would 
Plato,  Aristotle,  or  Ptolemy. 

But  once  emerged  from  this  thicket  of  metaphysical  subtlety 
into  the  open  again,  I  found  myself  in  possession  of  certain 
definite  conclusions  as  to  how  the  World-problem  is  to  be 
approached,  and  the  method  to  be  employed  in  its  solution, 
which  I  had  not  seen  before  but  which  had  gradually  been 
impressed  on  me  during  the  course  of  these  wanderings  in 
search  of  the  Lost  Ideal,  and  which  may  be  set  down  here  as 
follows, — 

To  begin  with,  I  saw  that  just  as  no  subtlety  of  human 
penetration  or  analysis  can  ever,  as  Bacon  says,  exhaust  the 
infinite  subtlety  of  Nature  and  the  multiplicity  of  causes  and 
agencies  at  work  there,  so  no  analysis  of  the  human  mind  can 
exhaust  the  complexity  of  its  secret  mechanism,  or  the  vast 
and  multitudinous  chain  of  causes  that  have  been  concerned  in 
its  evolution  and  development,  and  that  in  consequence,  how- 
ever useful  the  results  of  such  analysis  may  be  as  instruments 


CRITICISMS    AND   CONCLUSIONS.  371 

or  agents  for  minor  enquiries,  they  cannot  either  separately  or 
in  combination  be  made  the  standpoint  of  interpretation  for  the 
phenomena  of  the  World  as  a  whole.  For  just  as  the  relations 
of  a  landscape  can  be  got  only  through  the  human  eye  as  an 
organic  whole,  however  much  scientists  may  differ  as  to  the 
relative  parts  played  in  the  function  of  sight  by  the  cornea,  the 
lens,  and  the  retina,  respectively ;  so  insight  into  the  World- 
problem  (so  far  that  is  to  say  as  it  is  practically  permitted  us 
to  see,)  can  be  got  only  from  the  standpoint  of  the  human 
mind  as  an  organized  whole,  however  much  Metaphysicians 
and  Psychologists  may  differ  as  to  the  ultimate  composition  of 
its  various  faculties,  affections,  and  powers.  Indeed  the  farther 
I  went  the  more  clearly  I  perceived  that  making  every  allow- 
ance for  the  endless  extension  of  knowledge  in  the  future  from 
the  appearance  or  development  of  new  and  higher  powers  in 
man ;  for  the  present  at  least,  and  for  practical  purposes  of 
life,  no  adequate  representation  of  the  World  is  to  be  had 
except  by  bringing  the  mind  as  an  organized  whole  with  all  its 
complex  radiances,  subtleties,  poetic  intuitions,  and  so  forth, 
fused  into  a  pure  white  light,  to  bear  on  each  and  every  point 
as  it  were ;  at  the  same  time  that  we  use  as  instruments  of 
investigation  such  of  its  elements  as  are  appropriate  in  each 
case  for  the  purpose  of  focussing  the  object ;  in  the  same  way 
as  in  ordinary  sight  the  eye  as  a  whole  uses  now  this  muscle, 
now  that,  to  bring  the  object  into  view;  now  contracts  the 
pupil,  now  dilates  it ;  now  swells  the  lens,  now  elongates  it,  as 
occasion  requires,  in  order  to  give  the  object  its  true  figure, 
proportion,  and  perspective  in  the  landscape. 

In  the  second  place,  I  saw  that  if  I  were  ever  to  attain  to 
such  a  harmonious  view  of  the  World  as  should  restore  to  me 
my  lost  ideals,  (not  necessarily  the  old  theological  ones,)  it 
would  have  to  be  reached  neither  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
mind  as  such  alone,  nor  from  the  standpoint  of  the  brain  and 
nervous  system  alone,  with  their  laws  of  molecular  activity,  but 
from  a  combination  of  both  as  it  were.     Not  from   the  mind 


372  CRITICISMS    AND    CONCLUSIONS. 

alone  as  an  abstract  entity  independent  of  and  unconnected 
with  the  nervous  system,  as  with  the  Metaphysicians ;  for  with 
an  instrument  of  such  ethereality  and  subtlety,  any  feat  of 
legerdemain  in  the  way  of  cutting  Gordian  knots  and  bridging 
abysses  between  the  Real  and  the  Ideal  would,  as  we  have 
seen,  be  possible.  Not,  on  the  other  hand,  from  the  brain  and 
nervous  system  alone  or  the  laws  of  molecular  motion  which 
they  obey,  as  with  Spencer  and  the  Materialists  and  Psycholo- 
gists ;  for  could  these  molecular  motions  be  calculated  in 
number,  direction,  and  velocity,  to  a  fraction  of  mathematical 
exactitude  for  each  separate  act  or  reflection  of  the  mind,  no 
idea  of  what  feeling  was  high  or  what  was  low,  what  was 
honourable,  what  base  in  the  human  spirit  could  be  got  out  of 
them,  any  more  than  the  quality  of  colours  could  be  got  from 
the  number  of  the  ethereal  vibrations  which  impinge  on  the 
retina  of  the  eye.  I  saw,  in  a  word,  that  if  I  was  ever  to  get 
an  adequate  picture  of  the  World,  and  one  that  should  give 
support  to  the  ideals  which  I  had  lost,  it  would  have  to  come 
from  the  double  standpoint  at  once  of  mind  and  of  the  matter 
of  the  brain  and  nervous  system.  Not  from  the  standpoint  of 
Mind  and  Matter  as  two  sides  of  one  and  the  same  thing,  in 
which  neither  side  has  its  distinctive  function  but  each  may  be 
used  interchangeably  with  the  other,  as  in  Spinoza ;  but  from 
such  a  division  of  functions  that  while  the  molecular  condition 
of  the  brain  and  nervous  system  shall  be  our  standpoint  for 
determining  and  explaining  the  variations  in  the  relative 
strength  and  activity  of  the  different  mental  powers,  their 
faintness  or  vividness,  their  slowness  or  rapidity,  their  mode  of 
procession  and  the  like ;  the  mind  itself  as  mind,  its  own 
goldstick  in  waiting,  shall  be  our  standpoint  for  regulating  and 
determining  their  relative  dignity,  precedence,  and  importance 
among  themselves  ;  shall  itself  settle  the  relative  weight  that  is 
to  be  attached  to  reverence  or  fear,  to  heroism  or  self- 
indulgence,  to  justice  or  expediency,  to  love  or  lust,  and  the 
like. 


CRITICISMS   AND   CONCLUSIONS.  373 

And  lastly  and  most  important  conclusion  of  all,  I  saw  that 
if  I  was  ever  to  find  the  Ideal  I  had  lost,  it  was  a  matter  of 
impossibility  that  I  should  find  it  by  the  method  of  the 
Metaphysicians.  As  well  hope  to  find  beauty  in  a  face  by 
planting  your  microscope  in  succession  over  every  square  inch 
of  its  surface,  as  to  find  the  Ideal  in  the  mind  by  the  successive 
analysis  and  dissection  of  its  separate  elements  or  powers. 
Like  Virtue,  or  Beauty,  or  Heroism,  the  Ideal  exists  only  in 
relation  to  its  opposite,  and  you  can  no  more  get  it  without  a 
JReal  to  oppose  to  it  than  you  can  get  Good  without  Evil, 
Beauty  without  Ugliness,  and  so  forth  ;  in  the  same  way  as 
if  everything  in  the  Universe  were  dark,  there  were  nothing 
to  distinguish  it  from  light,  if  all  were  negative,  there  were 
nothing  to  distinguish  it  from  positive,  so  if  all  were  Matter, 
there  were  nothing  to  distinguish  it  from  Spirit,  if  all  were 
Real,  there  were  nothing  to  distinguish  it  from  the  Ideal,  and 
vice  versa.  And  so  it  followed  of  necessity  that  if  there  were 
to  be  any  solution  of  the  World-problem  at  all  which  should 
find  room  for  the  Ideal,  it  could  only  be  had  from  taking  our 
stand  on  the  mind  as  a  whole  where  all  these  opposites  exist 
together  at  once  and  where  alone  they  can  find  their  proper 
ranking  and  precedence,  and  not  from  taking  our  stand  on  the 
separate  analysis  of  its  faculties,  and  where  you  can  no  more 
find  the  ideal  than  you  can  find  rank  in  a  king  independently 
of  his  relation  to  his  subjects,  or  than  you  can  find  the 
properties  peculiar  to  a  line  by  any  manipulation  of  the  separate 
and  successive  points  of  which  it  is  composed. 

These  various  considerations  seemed  to  me  final  as  to  the 
advantages  which  at  the  present  day  were  to  be  got  out  of  the 
study  of  Metaphysics  proper,  and  from  that  time  onward  I  put 
it  away  from  me  for  good,  and  except  for  special  purposes  as 
in  the  case  of  Heg3l  and  Schopenhauer,  I  never  returned  to  it 
again. 

But  was  such  a  system  of  Philosophy  anywhere  to  be  found, 
the  reader  will  ask,  as  one  which  should  fulfil  all  the  conditions 


374  CRITICISMS   AND   CONCLUSIONS. 

involved  in  the  above  criticism  of  the  works  of  the  Meta- 
physicians and  Psychologists?  None,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
that  fulfilled  all  the  conditions,  for  none  had  been  confronted 
with  the  complications  introduced  by  the  discoveries  of  Darwin 
and  by  the  generalizations  of  Herbert  Spencer;  but  in  my 
forced  march  through  the  philosophies  of  the  centuries  I  caught 
glimpses  of  such  a  philosophy  here  and  there  in  the  works  of 
thinkers  who  either  from  their  own  spontaneous  genius,  or  from 
the  intellectual  necessities  of  the  times  in  which  they  lived 
(usually  at  the  end  and  break-up  of  a  world-period  of  thought), 
returned  in  their  thinking  to  something  of  the  wholeness,  the 
freshness,  and  the  simplicity  of  the  Ancients  again.  Such  men 
were  as  the  reader  may  have  surmised,  Bacon  and  Shakespeare 
in  the  earlier  time ;  Goethe,  Comte,  and  to  a  certain  extent 
Schopenhauer  and  Hegel  in  the  intervening  period  ;  and  in  our 
own  time  a  few  on  whom  the  spirit  of  Goethe  had  descended, 
or  who  by  their  own  genius  had  caught  the  new  spirit  of  the 
time.  Of  these  were  Carlyle,  Emerson,  Kuskin,  and  strange 
as  it  may  seem  at  first  sight,  Cardinal  Newman.  On  these, 
for  reasons  which  will  appear  in  a  succeeding  chapter,  I  fastened 
with  a  life-and-death  intensity  and  tenacity  of  grip,  resolved  if 
possible  not  to  let  them  go  until  I  had  won  from  them  the 
secrets  they  had  to  impart  to  me.  And  although  none  of  them 
succeeded  in  altogether  removing  the  special  perplexities  and 
difficulties  under  which  I  was  labouring  (as  indeed  most  of 
them  had  done  their  life-work  before  the  '  Origin  of  Species  ' 
and  Spencer's  '  Philosophy  of  Evolution  '  had  disturbed  the 
placid  current  of  philosophical  speculation),  they  nevertheless 
besides  the  depth  and  riches  of  their  special  views  on  men  and 
things,  many  of  which  are  good  for  all  time,  left  me  with 
suggestions  as  to  points  of  view,  and  hints  as  to  philosophical 
method,  which  were  of  inestimable  value  to  me.  I  have  called 
them  the  Poetic  Thinkers  to  distinguish  them  from  the 
Metaphysical  Thinkers  whom  1  have  just  passed  under  review. 
How  I  fared  with  them  at  this  period  of  my  life,  what  I  got 


CRITICISMS   AND   CONCLUSIONS.  375 

from  them,  and  what  from  difference  in  temperament  and  in 
the  '  personal  equation '  as  it  is  called,  I  was  unable  fully  to 
appreciate  in  them — all  this  I  shall  endeavour  faithfully  to 
record  in  a  future  chapter. 


CHAPTER    VII. 


A    VISIT    TO     CARLYLE. 

FT  was  shortly  before  the  end  of  my  studies  of  the 
Metaphysical  Thinkers  whom  I  have  passed  under  review, 
that  owing  to  my  growing  dissatisfaction  both  with  their  method 
and  results  I  was  drawn  by  the  great  reputation  of  Carlyle  then 
at  the  height  of  his  fame,  to  the  writings  of  that  distinguished 
Thinker,  after  having  laid  them  aside  some  years  earlier,  as  the 
reader  may  remember,  on  account  of  the  difficulty  I  experienced 
in  understanding  his  'Sartor  Resartus.'  But  for  some  time 
this  second  attempt  seemed  likely  to  prove  as  unsuccessful  as 
the  first.  On  this  occasion  I  started  with  his  writings  on 
Social  topics,  owing  to  some  comments  made  at  the  time  on  his 
theories  by  the  Press,  and  took  up  his  '  Latter  Day  Pamphlets,' 
opening  I  remember  with  the  paper  on  the  '  Negro  Question ' 
which  was  prefixed  to  them,  and  passing  rapidly  but  with 
increasing  amazement  and  perplexity  through  the  various  papers 
on  '  Model-prisons,'  *  Downing  Street,'  *  Hudson's  Statues,' 
*  Jesuitism,'  and  the  rest,  until  I  reached  the  end.  But  if  his 
4  Sartor '  had  repelled  me  by  its  obscurity  and  difficulty,  these 
papers  although  easily  enough  understood,  repelled  me  still 
more,  not  only  by  the  views  they  inculcated  but  by  the  prophetic 
form  of  their  utterance,  and  the  peculiar  language  in  which  they 
were  expressed.  As  a  Colonial  I  was  deeply  imbued  witli 
notions  of  personal  liberty  ;  and  these  pictures  of  Carlyle's  ideal 


A    VISIT    TO    CARLYLE.  377 

State  with  its  enlightened  despot  as  King,  and  the  rest  of 
society  marching  submissively  to  his  orders,  like  those  pipe- 
clayed soldiers  whom  he  so  much  admired  in  the  Park ;  with 
his  regiments  of  the  poor  and  unemployed  packed  off  with  spade 
and  pickaxe  to  Salisbury  Plain,  there  to  earn  their  living  under 
the  surveillance  of  '  Captains  of  Industry '  who  with  military 
rigour  were  to  first  caution  them,  then  if  they  disobeyed  orders, 
to  whip  them,  and  in  the  end  if  they  proved  incorrigible  to  shoot 
them  ! — all  this  with  his  views  of  the  *  Negro  Question '  where 
you  see  the  whip  of  the  beneficent  slave-owner  descending 
on  the  bare  back  of  '  Black  Quashee  'as  he  sits  idling  and 
munching  his  pumpkins  in  the  sun ;  and  with  his  conception  of 
a  Nineteenth  Centurv  Cromwell  marching  his  dragoons  into 
St.  Stephens  and  brutally  upsetting  the  ballot-boxes  and  the 
rest  of  the  complicated  machinery  of  the  Suffrage,— its  'one 
man  one  vote,'  its  'representation  by  population,'  and  the  other 
ingenious  devices  for  the  protection  of  our  liberties  which 
our  forefathers  had  with  much  labour  and  sweat  won  from  the 
hard  hand  of  despotism — all  this  ran  full  tilt  against  my  inmost 
nature  and  the  traditions  in  which  I  had  been  brought  up.  And 
although  there  was  much  in  these  diatribes  with  which  I 
sympathized,  as  with  his  righteous  indignation  when  he  thinks 
of  those  Model  prisons  with  their  spacious  corridors  up  and 
down  which  the  scoundrels  of  society  paced  at  their  ease, 
while  the  honest  poor  in  their  cobbler's  stalls  outside,  or  in  their 
little  shops  *  with  the  herrings  and  cross-pipes  in  the  window,' 
strove  hard  to  keep  body  and  soul  together  and  to  pay  the  rates 
and  taxes  necessary  to  keep  these  scoundrels  in  their  luxury ; 
or  where  he  warns  the  'idle  classes'  who  think  the v  have  'rights 
but  not  duties,'  that  outside  their  chamber  windows  there  were 
'  mere  iron-pikes  and  the  law  of  gravitation ; '  or  again  where  he 
pictures  the  '  patent  treacle  philanthropy '  of  Exeter  Hall  as  at 
last  being  drummed  out  ignominiously  by  a  disgusted  nation, 
'the  very  populace  flinging  dead  cats  at  it; ' — although  all  this 
was  calculated  to  arrest  the  attention  of  the  thoughtful  and  give 


378  A   VISIT    TO   CARLYLE. 

them  pause,  still  it  was  not  sufficient  to  compensate  with  me  for 
the  attacks  on  personal  liberty  which  lay  at  its  root — that 
personal  independence  which  intrenched  as  it  was  strong  in 
sentiment  and  tradition  in  the  mother  country,  burned  as  I  have 
said  in  the  Colonies,  and  especially  in  the  backwoods  and 
outskirts  of  civilization  where  I  was  brought  up,  with  the 
fierceness  of  a  passion.  With  his  attacks  on  Political  Economy, 
again,  with  its  gospel  of  laissez  faire,  its  '  supply  and  demand,' 
its  '  cash  the  sole  nexus,'  and  '  Devil  take  the  hindmost,'  I  was 
concerned  only  in  so  far  as  I  conceived  them  to  be  another  form 
of  his  general  attack  on  personal  liberty;  for  at  that  time  I  had 
given  little  or  no  thought  to  these  questions.  Still  as  he 
expressly  declared  that  he  had  in  his  time  been  condemned 
for  his  sins  to  read  '  barrowfuls '  of  works  on  these  subjects, 
I  was  prepared  and  even  anxious  to  give  to  what  he 
had  to  say  the  most  careful  attention  and  consideration. 
But  the  wearisome  iteration  and  repetition  of  such  phrases  as  I 
have  mentioned,  and  the  wholesale  denunciation  of  the  principles 
expressed  by  them  without  any  attempt  at  a  formal  scientific 
refutation  or  proof,  was  sufficient  with  me  to  turn  the  scale 
against  him,  and  to  deter  me  from  prosecuting  the  subject  any 
farther  on  these  lines.  I  felt  that  however  wrong  the  orthodox 
doctrines  of  the  Economists  might  be,  these  views  of  his,  at  least, 
were  quite  impracticable.  Then  again  his  style  was  to  me  a  real 
infliction.  With  its  perpetual  repetition  of  the  same  thoughts 
in  almost  identical  language,  with  its  catchwords,  its  metaphors 
drawn  for  the  most  part  from  a  few  stereotyped  images — the 
stars,  Hell,  the  dunghill,  chaos,  or  the  bogs, — and  repeated  ad 
nauseam;  with  his  vague  appeals  to  the  Immensities  and 
Eternities,  his  tone  of  querulousness,  and  the  monotony  of  his 
diatribes,  so  long  drawn  out  as  to  lose  except  in  a  few  isolated 
passages  all  their  felicity,  point,  or  vigour,  while  the  sentences 
were  so  constructed  that  in  their  fall  they  continually  outraged 
the  ear  by  their  uncouthness  and  abruptness, — all  this  in  spite 
of  the  unquestionable  tone  of  authority  that  ran  through  these 


A   VISIT    TO    CAULYLE.  379 

utterances,  produced  on  me  the  same  peculiar  and  unpleasant 
feeling  that  is  produced  by  the  entrance  into  a  society  of  cultured 
and  well-bred  people  of  a  harsh  and  aggressive  boor.  Nor  did 
his  assumption  of  the  prophet's  mantle,  with  cries  and  screams 
and  execrations  in  the  place  of  argument  in  the  treatment  of 
questions  which  of  all  others  require  to  ensure  conviction  the 
most  passionless  and  logical  exposition  and  illustration,  impress 
me  much ;  while  the  tone  of  authority  which  ran  through  these 
discourses,  weakened  as  it  was  by  the  endless  repetitions,  the 
qucrulousness,  and  the  impatience  which  mingled  with  it  all 
and  which  was  so  unbefitting  the  temper  of  a  philosopher,  instead 
of  impressing  me  offended  me,  rather,  by  the  violence  done  to 
my  own  pride  in  so  unceremoniously  pushing  me  along  a  road 
on  which  if  I  were  to  go  at  all,  I  should  have  to  be  led  and  not 
driven.  But  if  the  tone  and  form  and  the  opinions  expressed  in 
these  pamphlets  of  Carlyle  alike  repelled  me,  even  the  high 
moral  point  of  view  assumed  throughout  with  its  fierce 
earnestness  and  sincerity,  served  rather  to  damp  and  chill  than 
to  animate  and  inspire  me.  I  felt  that  it  was  pitched  altogether 
too  high  for  me  ;  and  I  was  by  no  means  prepared  for  the  peculiar 
sacrifices  which  it  required,  and  which  seemed  to  demand  as 
their  preliminary  the  flinging  oneself  down  at  the  feet  of  some 
man  who  should  assign  to  each  the  precise  niche  he  was  to 
occupy  in  the  social  structure,  without  will  or  choice  of  his  own 
— and  all  for  the  benefit  of  some  vague  abstraction  known  as  the 
general  good.  Now  I  had  been  in  the  habit  of  feeling  that  no 
one  could  be  trusted  to  know  what  was  in  a  man,  and  to  bring 
it  out,  so  well  as  the  man  himself ;  in  the  same  way  as  with  all 
its  drawbacks  each  man  can  on  the  whole  best  be  trusted  to 
choose  his  own  wife ;  and  having  besides  no  faith  in  Carlyle's 
fabled  '  saviours  of  society,'  or  excess  of  reverence  for  them,  I 
could  not  consent  to  have  my  life  and  fortunes  thus  summarily 
disposed  of  by  some  poor  creature  like  myself.  Besides  I  am 
afraid  my  ambition  was  largely  a  personal  one,  and  consisted 
rather  in  the  desire  to  realise   some  great  ideal  with  which  I 


380  A    VISIT    TO    CAKLYLE. 

should  be  personally  identified,  than  to  sacrifice  myself  in  the 
realization  of  other  people's,  or  for  that  vague  abstraction  the 
1  public  good.'  The  fact  is  that  at  that  time  T  had  never  given 
a  thought  to  the  public  good,  and  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  it 
never  entered  into  my  calculations  at  all ;  the  utmost  that  I 
contemplated  as  regarded  other  people  in  the  effort  of  carving  my 
way  through  the  obstructions  which  I  must  necessarily  encounter 
in  realizing  my  own  ideals,  being  to  interfere  as  little  as  possible 
with  them,  to  be  tolerant  and  respectful,  and  to  make  amends  for 
my  own  shortcomings  by  not  being  too  critical  of  the  failings  of 
others.  Farther  than  this  I  was  not  prepared  to  go.  The 
consequence  was  that  all  this  high  morality  of  Carlyle's, 
with  the  prison  drill  by  which  it  was  to  be  realized,  afflicted 
me  as  with  a  kind  of  nightmare.  I  imagined  I  could  hear  the 
doors  of  my  prison-house  closing  behind  me,  and  instead  of 
tending  to  exalt  and  expand  my  particular  nature,  it  served 
only  to  depress  and  benumb  it.  I  felt  that  however  good  it 
might  be  for  others,  for  Society  as  a  whole,  or  for  the  mass  of 
scoundrelism  that  has  at  all  times  by  forcible  means  to  be 
repressed,  it  would  not  suit  me ;  and  thanking  God  that  there 
was  no  chance  of  his  ideas  being  carried  into  effect  in  my  time 
I  was  about  to  drop  Carlyle  once  and  for  all,  when  a  copy  of 
the  '  Sartor  Resartus '  again  fell  into  my  hands.  On  opening 
it  casually  at  the  autobiographical  sections  I  was  surprised  and 
interested  to  find  that  he  too  had  suffered  deeply  in  his  early 
years  from  the  decay  of  belief,  and  from  the  Materialism  and 
Utilitarianism  which  had  set  in,  as  we  have  seen,  on  the 
break-up  of  the  Kantian  doctrine  of  the  Conscience,  and  its 
decomposition  into  a  mere  form  of  self-interest  or  expediency  ; 
and  further  that  after  long  wanderings  in  the  wilderness  in  his 
search  for  the  lost  ideal,  he  had  at  last  found  it  and  been 
delivered  from  his  doubt  and  misery  mainly  through  the 
influence  of  Goethe.  I  was  deeply  interested  in  his  solution 
which  ran  somewhat  as  follows : — that  our  unhappiness  arises 
from    the    fact  that  in   this   limited  wTorld  our  desires,   which 


A   VISIT    TO    CARLYLE.  381 

unlike  those  of  the  lower  animals  are  unlimited  in  their  range 
and  variety,  never  can  be  fully  satisfied ; — no,  not  if  our  poor 
earth  were  as  big  as  the  Universe  even ; — but  we  shall  still  be 
longing  for  something  beyond;  and  that  this  being  so,  if 
instead  of  dwelling  on  our  own  wants  we  were  once  for  all  to 
renounce  them,  and  think  instead  of  how  best  we  could  minister 
to  the  wants  of  others,  we  should  find  in  this  self-renunciation 
a  blessedness  more  sweet  than  any  poor  happiness  we  can 
possibly  get  out  of  what  must  forever  be  the  incomplete 
satisfaction  of  our  own  longings.  And  this  feeling  of  blessed- 
ness it  is  on  which  Carlyle  relies  to  prove  that  self-renunciation 
is  the  true  law  of  life  for  man,  and  that  it  was  put  into  his 
heart  by  God  for  this  purpose.  *  Feel  it  in  thy  heart '  he  says 
1  and  then  say  whether  it  is  of  God.'  So  that  if  the  Ideal  is 
not  to  be  found  in  the  confused  vortices  of  the  World,  it  at 
any  rate,  according  to  Carlyle,  is  to  be  found  in  the  human 
soul  itself,  and  can  be  brought  out  thence  to  shape  and  guide 
the  life  and  work  of  every  day  to  ideal  ends.  Now  all  this 
was  very  true,  but  what  I  wanted  was  to  find  evidence  of  it  in 
the  World ;  and  the  reasons  why  this  Goethe-Carlyle  solution 
did  not  meet  my  own  peculiar  difficulties  were  as  follows. — In 
the  first  place,  I  did  not  in  point  of  fact  specially  complain  of 
unhappiness  as  such;  on  the  contrary  in  a  world  where  the 
Ideal  if  it  exist  at  all,  must  be  wrought  out  by  the  exertions  of 
individuals  each  of  whom  being  born  to  die,  must  in  the 
struggle  to  realize  that  ideal  be  subject  to  the  chances  of  Time 
and  Fate, — in  such  a  world  unhappiness  of  some  kind  is  a 
necessity  ;  and  I  was  not  prepared  to  condemn  the  ground-plan 
on  which  the  Universe  is  constructed,  merely  because  I  was 
unhappy.  My  difficulty  was  rather  this,  that  if — as  was 
taught  by  Spencer  and  the  Materialists — intellect,  virtue,  genius, 
justice,  heroism,  and  the  rest  are  but  molecular  motions  in  the 
brain  substance,  in  the  same  way  as  heat  is  molecular  motion  in 
a  bar  of  iron ;  and  are  only  forms  of  self-interest  and  expediency 
variously  disguised,  all  alike  to  end  in  dust  and  ashes;  if  this 


382  A    VISIT    TO    CARLYLE. 

be  so,  then  nothing  great  or  ideal  exists  in  the  world  at  all, 
nothing  worthy  of  a  life's  devotion,  or,  if  you  will,  of  a  life's 
ambition,  not  even  of  an  honest  vanity  or  pride;  and  the 
blessedness,  in  consequence,  which  was  to  be  got  out  of  self- 
sacrifice,  and  of  which  so  much  was  made  by  Carlyle  and 
Goethe,  instead  of  demonstrating  the  existence  of  an  ideal  in 
the  mind,  only  went  so  far  as  to  prove  that  the  mind  could  be 
so  manipulated  as  to  get  satisfaction  out  of  what  was  at  best 
essentially  but  a  bad  business ;  much  in  the  same  way  as  a  man 
•can  be  hypnotized  and  made  to  feel  happy  in  circumstances  or 
situations  where  he  neither  is  nor  ought  to  be  happy  at  all. 
And  as  I  had  neither  a  desire  to  live  to  make  money,  nor  for  the 
pleasures  of  the  table,  nor  yet  to  gain  vulgar  applause  for  some 
hollow  or  cheap  achievement,  my  feeling  was  that  if  there  were 
no  Ideal  in  the  world,  and  no  Being  in  the  Universe  higher  and 
greater  than  man,  and  if  in  consequence  there  were  no  more 
significance  in  the  glorious  emotion  of  self-renunciation  than  in 
the  vulgar  emotion  say,  which  Socrates  felt  on  scratching  his 
leg  after  his  prison  chains  had  been  removed  ;  then  indeed  life 
were  not  worth  living  at  all ;  and  instead  of  renouncing  it 
piecemeal,  as  it  were,  in  small  daily  sacrifices  which  had  no 
end,  aim,  or  reason  in  them,  it  were  more  logical  to  sacrifice  it 
altogether  and  once  for  all.  I  was  aware,  of  course,  that  a  man 
might  sit  so  long  revolving  round  himself  and  his  own  sensations, 
that  in  time  he  would  become  so  hyper-sensitive  and  ultra- 
particular  that  common  life,  common  ambition,  and  common 
success  w^oulcl  not  be  good  enough  for  him ;  that  he  would  want 
better  bread  than  is  made  of  flour;  and  for  this  mood,  which 
was  partly  my  own,  the  true  regimen  to  be  prescribed  would 
doubtless  be  to  be  thrust  into  the  common  human  stream  where 
one  would  have  to  take  one's  place  in  healthy  action  in  the 
service  of  others.  But  I  still  felt  that  though  this  was  a  good 
working  rule  it  did  not  solve  my  difficulty,  for  if  the  question  was 
to  prove  that  the  world  had  in  it  an  Ideal  towards  which  it  was 
.steadily  working,  the  means  of  demonstrating  its  existence  to 


A   VISIT    TO   CARLYLE.  383 

those  who  doubted  it,  ought  to  be  accessible  to  the  natural  human 
faculties ;  otherwise  how,  once  in  doubt,  are  you  to  get  rid  of  the 
haunting  suspicion,  so  paralyzing  to  all  great  action,  whether  in 
all  you  are  doing  for  others  you  are  not  merely  ploughing  the 
sands  1  I  was  not  satisfied  therefore  with  Carlyle's  solution  in 
the  '  Sartor,'  as  feeling  that  it  did  not  precisely  meet  my  case, 
and  it  occurred  to  me  that  he  might  not  take  it  amiss  if  I  were 
to  write  to  him  explaining  my  difficulty,  with  the  view  to  a 
possible  interview  on  the  subject.  This  he  readily  granted, 
though  strictly  stipulating  that  it  should  not  exceed  ten  minutes 
in  duration.  When  I  arrived  at  his  house  in  Chelsea,  the  street 
outside  was  lined  with  carriages  for  some  distance  from  the  door, 
and  inside  in  the  waiting  room  a  group  of  men  and  women  all  of 
whom  were  apparently  acquainted  with  each  other,  stood 
discussing  or  recounting  what  Carlyle  had  said  to  them,  or  were 
waiting  their  turn  to  go  upstairs  to  see  him.  When  my  turn 
came  and  I  entered  the  room,  I  saw  sitting  in  the  middle  of  it 
at  a  little  table,  an  old  man  with  grey  beard  and  a  thick  mop  of 
iron-grey  hair,  his  spare  figure  encased  in  a  long  brownish-yellow 
overcoat  which  extended  to  his  feet  and  answered  the  purpose 
of  a  dressing-gown.  In  his  hand  which  was  shaking  with  a  kind 
of  palsy  he  held  a  paper-cutter,  and  as  he  rose  to  receive  me 
with  deeply-bent  back  and  tottering  gait,  I  noticed  that  his  face 
and  cheeks  had  still  a  rich  healthy  bloom  upon  them,  and  that 
his  eyes  (although  the  lower  lids  were  slightly  turned  down  from 
age,  and  showed  the  red  lining)  were  of  a  hawk-like  clearness 
and  penetration.  This  appearance  of  the  eye  with  its  everted 
lids  I  may  observe  in  passing,  together  with  the  high  cheek-bones 
and  the  deep  red  of  the  face,  gave  when  he  contracted  his  brows, 
which  he  habitually  did,  the  impression  of  great  irascibility. 
When  he  resumed  his  seat,  and  the  light  from  the  window 
behind  fell  aslant  the  back  of  his  head  and  the  side  of  his  face, 
I  observed  as  a  peculiarity  that  the  upper  eye-lashes  were  so 
curled  upwards  that  the  light  which  passed  over  his  brow  and 
fell  on  them,  lit  up  their  tips  like  a  fringe.    But  the  unforgettable 


384  A   VISIT    TO    CARLYLE. 

feature  of  the  face  was  the  lower  jaw  which  was  so  long  as  to  be 

out  of  all  proportion  to  the  rest  of  the  features,  projecting  so  far 

forward  at  the  chin  as  to  give  him  the  appearance  of  being 

underhung,  and  was  so  massive  in  structure  that  when  he  worked 

it  in  conversation  it  moved  backwards  and  forwards  like  a  beam. 

Not  a  handsome  face  by  any  means,  nor  with  the  exception  of 

the  eyes  a  remarkable  one ;  the  best  representations  of  him  at 

the  time  of  which  I  am  writing  (he  must  have  been  close  on 

eighty  years  of  age)  being  the  statue  by  Boehm,  and  the  picture 

by  Whistler;  the  worst  perhaps,  except  for  its  look  of  irascibility, 

the  picture  by  Watts  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery.     *  No,' 

he  began   abruptly  in  allusion  to  the    contents  of  my  letter, 

1  neither  you  nor  I  have  had  as  bad  a  time  as  Goethe.     He  was 

so  depressed  by  the  loss  of  his  ideal  as  a  young  man,  that  he  at 

last  determined  to  end  it  all  by  suicide,  and  feeling  that  the 

passive  forms  of  self-destruction,  such  as  letting  yourself  fall  off 

precipices,  or  falling  on  your  sword,  were  ignoble,  and  that  the 

only  manly  way  was  that  of  the  Emperor  Otho  who  with  his 

own  hand  plunged  the  dagger  into  his  breast,  he  procured  a 

weapon,  but  after  trying  night  after  night  to  execute  the  deed 

on  himself  and  not  being  able  to  screw  his  courage  to  the  sticking 

point,  threw  away  the  dagger,  and  resolved  to  go  on  living  and 

to  make  the  best  of  it.'     ■  And  now  my  man '  he  continued  '  you 

will  just  have  to  do  the  same ;  you  must  just  go  on  in  the  best 

way  you  can,  in  the  sure  belief  that  the  seeds  of  the  Ideal  that 

are  planted  by  God  in  every  honest  mind,  will  bear  fruit,  and 

you  will  in  time  find  the  work  in  which  you  can  labour  with 

satisfaction  to  yourself  and  to  the  world.'  All  this  was  delivered 

in  a  high  key  and  in  a  sing-song  style  as  a  kind  of  soliloquy, 

with  his  brows  knit,  and  his  eyes  fixed  not  so  much  on  me  as 

on  some  imaginary  point  on  the  floor;  and  then  turning  and 

looking  sharply  at  me,  he  asked  '  But  what  may  ye  be?  '   1  told 

him  I  was  a  medical  man  and  that  I  had  just  started  in  practice 

in  London,  but  that  I  had  come  from  Canada  mainly  with  the 

view  of  going  in  for  Literature  ; — and  was  just  going  on  to  add 


A    VISIT    TO    CAULYLE.  385 

that  the  depression  of  mind  into  which  I  had  fallen  made  me 
feel  that  nothing  was  worth  troubling  about,  when  he  stopped 
me  and  said  in  a  hard  irritable  tone,  '  Na,  na,  that  winna  do. 
Ye'd  better  stick  to  your  profession,  young  man.  It's  time 
enough  to  think  of  Literature  when  yeVe  cleared  your  own 
mind  and  have  something  worth  saying.  Medicine  is  a  noble 
calling.'  I  felt  rebuked,  and  was  most  uncomfortable,  but 
without  noticing  me  he  continued,  '  yes,  it  is  a  noble 
profession,  but  sadly  fallen  into  quackery  in  these  days.  The 
least  known  men  in  it  arc  often  the  best.  The  best  doctor 
I  ever  knew  was  a  village  practitioner  in  Scotland.  Man,  he 
could  look  you  through  by  a  kind  of  intuition  in  an  instant ; 
but  the  great  London  doctors  that  come  about  me  here,  drive 
up  in  their  carriages  and  are  off  again  (after  looking  at  their 
watches  mainly,'  he  added  satirically)  leaving  neither  me  nor 
themselves  better  or  worse  than  before ; '  winding  up  in  a 
derisive  almost  bitter  tone  with  '  the  public  is  a  great  ass ! '  I 
knew  these  doctors  who  professed  to  see  through  your  inner- 
most vitals  by  an  eye-glance,  and  was  not  impressed  by  the 
remark ;  but  he  continuing,  by  a  sudden  transition  and  as 
another  instance  of  the  general  wrong-headedness  of  the  public 
in  its  estimate  of  men,  said,  "  Do  you  know  George  III.  was  not 
the  fool  he  is  taken  for !  In  fact  he  was  one  of  the  clearest 
headed  men  of  his  time.'  I  was  indeed  surprised,  and  my 
opinion  of  his  judgment  and  penetration  was  not  gaining 
ground,  but  he  went  on  *  Yes,  there's  no  doubt  about  it.  When 
I  was  writing  *  Frederick,'  and  could  get  the  book  or  map  I 
wanted  nowhere  else,  I  was  sure  to  find  it  in  his  library  in  the 
British  Museum,'  adding  impressively,  *  And  I  believe  he 
superintended  the  selection  himself.'  Having  exhausted  this  vein, 
he  suddenly  turned  to  me  as  if  remembering  something,  and  said 
sympathetically,  'And  which  of  our  authors  have  ye  been 
reading  that  ye  have  been  brought  into  this  frame  of  mind  % y 
alluding  again  to  the  contents  of  my  letter.  I  began  to 
enumerate  them  in  a  haphazard  way,  and  had  got  as  far  as  Mill 

BB 


386  A   VISIT    TO    CARLYLE. 

and  Buckle  and  Darwin — and  ,was  about  to  add  Herbert 
Spencer — when  he  broke  in  with  '  Oh  !  Aye  !  Poor  Mill !  He 
used  to  come  to  me  here  with  his  Benthamism,  his  Radicalism, 
his  '  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number,'  and  a'  that 
nonsense,  but  I  had  at  last  to  tell  him  it  was  a'  moonshine, — 
and  he  didna'  like  it.  But  he  was  a  thin,  wire-drawn, 
sawdustish,  logic-chopping  kind  of  body  was  poor  Mill !  When 
his  book  on  '  Liberty '  came  out  he  sent  me  a  copy  of  it  to  read, 
but  I  just  had  to  tell  him  that  I  didn't  agree  with  a  single  word 
•of  it  from  beginning  to  end.  He  was  offended  and  never  came 
back  to  me  ;  and  when  I  wrote  to  him  to  ask  him  to  meet  some 
Americans  who  had  come  over,  he  never  answered  my  letter  and 
never  came,  and  I  never  saw  him  again.'  But  as  the  memory  of 
their  early  friendship  came  over  his  mind,  he  seemed  lost  in 
thought  for  a  moment,  and  then  added  with  a  sigh  and  as  if  in 
soliloquy  with  himself,  '  Aye !  but  he  was  a  pure-minded  man, 
John  Mill ! '  And  then  after  a  pause,  and  as  if  he  could  not 
icfrain  from  expressing  his  last  thought  on  the  subject,  'But  I 
will  tell  you  what, — his  father,  James  Mill,  a  great,  big,  burly 
fellow  whom  I  used  to  see  at  the  India  House,  was  essentially 
by  far  the  greater  man  of  the  two.'  My  traditional  estimates 
of  men  were  by  this  time  so  shaken  up  that  I  must  have  looked 
■quite  blank  as  he  said  this,  but  he  was  now  in  full  sail,  and  with 
his  brow  knit  and  his  eyes  bright  and  intense  as  those  of  a  bird 
•of  prey,  he  continued  his  soliloquy  in  his  high  sing-song  voice, 
looking  straight  before  him  as  at  some  object  he  was  bent  on 
rending,  his  head  waving  from  side  to  side  and  his  jaw  working 
with  tremendous  vigour,  every  now  and  then  being  shot  forward 
to  emphasize  his  words,  and  fixed  there  until  he  drew  in  a  long- 
breath  and  released  it  again.  '  But  of  all  the  blockheads,'  he 
went  on,  '  by  whom  this  bewildered  generation  has  been  deluded, 
that  man  Buckle  you  have  just  mentioned,  was  the  greatest ! ' 
and  at  the  thought  of  him  he  raised  a  laugh  so  loud  that  it 
would  have  startled  all  Tattersall's,  as  he  says  of  Teufelsdrock ; 
and  then  went  on  as  if  in  an  ecstasy  of  enjoyment  of  his  own 


A   VISIT    TO   CARLYLE.  387 

sardonic  humour,  *  People  had  kept  pestering  me  to  read  his 
book,  and  at  last  I  sat  down  to  it  in  the  garden  with  my  pipe, 
determined  to  give  a  whole  day  to  it.  But  a  more  long-winded 
conceited  blockhead,  and  one  more  full  of  barren  empty 
formulas  about  the  progress  of  the  species,  progress  of  this, 
progress  of  that,  and  especially  of  the  progress  of  Science,  I 
never  came  across.  A  poor  creature  that  could  be  of  service  to 
no  mortal !  I  would  sooner  meet  a  mad  bull  in  the  street ! ' 
And  then  coming  down  to  the  conversational  tone  again  he  went 
on,  '  He  had  plenty  of  money  I  believe,  and  lived  down  by  the 
Thames,  and  had  never  been  heard  of  before  he  wrote  his  book. 
But  the  only  good  thing  I  ever  heard  of  him  was  his  affection 
for  his  mother.'  I  was  now  so  dumbfoundered  and  amazed  at 
these  estimates  of  men  at  whose  feet  I  had  sat,  that  not 
knowing  the  point  of  view  from  which  they  were  delivered,  nor 
allowing  for  his  habitual  exaggeration  of  expression,  I  began  to 
feel  that  the  unfavourable  impression  I  had  formed  of  him  from 
the  *  Latter  Day  Pamphlets '  was  the  right  one,  and  that  he  was 
pig-headed,  narrow-minded,  and  no  longer  open  to  the  reception 
of  new  ideas,  but  so  fixed  in  his  opinions  that  nothing  could  move 
him ;  and  to  this  his  whole  appearance  and  manner  such  as  I 
have  described  it,  corresponded — the  bitter  querulous  tone,  the 
sing-song  delivery  as  if  unconscious  of  the  presence  of  a  listener, 
and  especially  the  under-jaw,  which  when  shot  forward  to  give 
emphasis  to  his  words,  and  fixed  there,  made  one  feel  that  it  would 
require  a  crow-bar  to  shift  it !  I  was  on  the  point  of  asking 
him  what  he  thought  of  Herbert  Spencer,  with  the  view  of 
brino'iiw  him  back  to  a  consideration  of  the  difficulties  I  had 
mentioned  in  my  letter,  but  the  fear  that  he  might  say  some- 
thing unworthy  of  the  distinguished  Thinker  by  whom  I  had 
been  so  deeply  influenced,  held  me  back.  Carlyle  in  the 
meantime  had  gone  off  on  to  the  account  of  his  own  early  life, 
relating  with  entire  simplicity  and  absence  of  pose,  and  with  a 
singular  transparency  of  nature  which  was  very  charming, 
incidents  of  his  home  life  and  his  life  in  Edinburgh  as  a  student, 


388  A   VISIT   TO   CARLYLE. 

going  off  into  roars  of  laughter  as  he  described  with  infinite 
zest  and  sense  of  humour  the  various  passages  that  had  befallen 
him  there;  and  then  he  turned  to  the  subject  of  Religion. 
Among  other  things,  he  said  that  when  in  Edinburgh  he  had 
noticed  that  many  of  the  intellectual  lights  of  the  time  absented 
themselves  from  church;  and  going  on  from  that,  he  worked 
himself  up  into  a  riotous  humour,  exploding  in  peals  of  laughter 
when  he  thought  of  the  colossal  imposture  of  the  Church  which 
could  gravely  state,  as  set  down  by  Gibbon,  that  on  a  certain 
day  by  the  merits  of  some  saint  or  other,  so  many  thousand 
souls  had  been  raised  from  the  dead !  '  Up  to  that  time  '  he 
said  gravely,  *  I  was  a  nominal  Christian,  but  from  that  hour  I 
saw  that  the  accepted  dogmas  of  Christianity  were  not  true.' 
1  As  for  Jesus  Christ  himself,'  he  went  on  '  he  was  a  good 
young  man  disgusted  with  the  shams  and  hypocrisies  of  his 
time  which  his  soul  could  not  abide ;  and  venturing  with  calm 
indifference  as  to  his  fate  into  the  lion's  den  of  the  Chief 
Priests  and  Scribes  at  Jerusalem,  nobly  met  his  death,  as 
indeed  such  as  he  in  all  times  and  places  have  to  do.'  'But 
now,'  he  added  in  a  tone  of  bitter  irony,  '  we  have  reached  the 
comfortable  conclusion  that  God  is  a  myth,  that  the  soul  is  a 
gas,  and  the  next  world  a  coffin  ;  and  have  no  longer  any  need 
in  consequence,  of  such  heroic  souls.'  Now  this  was  just  the 
opportunity  for  which  I  had  been  waiting,  and  before  he  had 
the  chance  of  getting  away  from  the  subject  I  abruptly  burst 
in  with  '  Yes,  Herbert  Spencer  has  shown  that  mind  is  merely 
a  molecular  motion  in  brain  substance  as  heat  is  in  iron ;  and 
that  is  just  my  difficulty,  and  why  I  felt  that  your  explanation 
in  the  '  Sartor '  did  not  quite  ' — '  meet  my  case  '  I  was  going 
to  say,  when  he  contracted  his  brows  like  a  hawk,  and  shrieked 
'  Spencer  !  shewn ! '  and  went  off  into  a  peal  of  derisive  laughter 
that  almost  raised  the  roof,  as  he  thought  of  him  ;  and  after  a 
pause,  and  in  allusion  perhaps  to  the  extent  of  Spencer's 
writings,  he  exclaimed  contemptuously, '  An  immeasurable  ass  !' 
Then  after  another  explosion  over  Cabanis,  who  taught  that 


A   VISIT    TO    CARLYLE.  389 

thought  was  secreted  by  the  brain  as  bile  is  by  the  liver,  he 
went  on  *  And  so  ye  have  been  meddling  with  Spencer  have 
ye  ?  He  was  brought  to  me  by  Lewes,  and  a  more  conceited 
young  man  I  thought  I  had  never  seen.  He  seemed  to  think 
himself  just  a  perfect  Owl  of  Minerva  for  Knowledge?'  And 
then  looking  fiercely  at  me  '  ye'll  get  little  good  out  of  him, 
young  man !  '  With  this,  my  discomfiture,  irritation,  and 
disappointment  were  complete.  But  the  ten  minutes  had  long 
elapsed,  and  looking  at  the  clock  he  rose  and  with  great 
cordiality,  and  as  if  we  had  had  the  most  pleasant  time 
imaginable,  expressed  the  hope  that  he  might  hear  from  me 
again,  and  saw  me  to  the  door.  As  I  walked  home  the  im- 
pressions left  on  me  by  this  strange  interview  were  very 
mixed  ;  the  preponderating  one  being  that  he  was  a  very  over- 
rated man  ;  that  he  was  querulous,  cantankerous,  and  altogether 
too  critical  and  exacting  for  ordinary  humanity ;  and  that  he 
was  so  wrapped  up  in  his  own  opinions  as  to  be  no  longer 
capable  of  new  ideas.  And  yet  the  simplicity,  naturalness, 
and  charm  with  which  he  had  related  the  incidents  of  his  early 
life,  as  well  as  his  world-wide  reputation  which  I  felt  could  not 
have  been  got  for  nothing,  gave  me  pause ;  and  when  I 
remembered  the  power  and  pathos  of  many  of  his  descriptions 
in  the  '  Sartor,'  I  resolved,  especially  as  he  had  not  answered  my 
questions,  that  I  would  now  get  and  study  those  works  of  his 
that  were  written  in  his  prime,  and  before  poverty  and  dyspepsia 
and  disappointment  had  soured  his  temper,  and  a  naturally 
exacting  and  querulous  disposition,  combined  with  a  Puritanic 
severity  of  moral  judgment  in  all  things,  had  put  him  out  of 
sympathy  with  the  men,  measures,  and  institutions  of  his 
time. 

I  started  this  time,  I  remember,  with  his  *  Life  of  Sterling,' 
which  to  my  surprise  I  found  had  been  written  after  and  not 
before  the  '  Latter  Day  Pamphlets.'  I  was  charmed  with  the 
softness  and  loving  gentleness  of  tone  which  pervaded  it,  (so 
different   from    the   roughness    of   the   Pamphlets)  ;    with  its 


300  A   VISIT   TO    CARLYLE. 

tolerance,  its  sympathy,  its  almost  paternal  indulgence  and 
generosity  of  estimate,  and  with  its  exquisite  pathos — all  of 
which  showed  the  other  side  of  Carlyle's  nature,  and  almost 
atoned  to  me  for  the  harshness  and  brutality  of  his  conversation. 
From  this  book  I  passed  on  to  his  early  Essays,  those  noble 
productions  which  marked  the  advent  of  a  new  spirit  and  power 
in  English  Literature,  with  their  critical  sanity  and  sobriety, 
their  strong  common-sense,  their  moral  elevation  and  sincerity, 
their  intellectual  penetration  and  catholicity  of  culture,  and  the 
absence  of  all  mere  smartness, — of  epigram,  pun,  or  other  petty 
literary  artifice  ;  works  which  took  serious  literature  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  mere  litterateur  who  had  played  the  clown  too  long, 
and  made  it  the  moral  force  it  is  to-day.  These  essays,  together 
with  the  '  Sartor,'  were  my  chief  literary  food  for  months  and 
even  years,  and  it  was  owing  largely  to  the  noble  panegyrics 
on  great  literature  scattered  through  them,  that  I  was  kept 
steady  to  my  own  poor  task  through  years  of  disappointment 
and  failure.  And  then  it  was  that  I  saw  that  the  Carry le  of  the 
Pamphlets,  the  bitter,  querulous,  exacting  and  fault-finding 
Carlyle  was  not  the  only  or,  indeed,  the  real  Carlyle,  but  was 
the  Carlyle  of  neglect  and  disappointment,  and  of  that  isolation 
which  befalls  the  man  who  is  placed  in  a  society  and  environ- 
ment with  whose  aims  and  methods  he  has  no  sympathy,  and 
which  has  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  all  the  convictions  that  lie 
nearest  his  heart. 

Now  among  these  Essays  there  were  two  in  which  Carlyle's 
mode  of  viewing  the  world  of  the  Past  and  the  Present  were 
practically  summed  up ;  as  indeed  they  were  the  works  by 
which  he  had  attracted  the  attention  of  Mill,  Emerson,  and  the 
other  rising  young  thinkers  of  England  and  America.  These 
were  his  essay  on  the  '  Signs  of  the  Times '  and  his  essay  on 
\  Characteristics '  and  from  them  when  carefully  read,  the 
secret  of  his  dissatisfaction  wTith  all  modern  institutions 
political  and  social,  and,  in  consequence,  of  the  diatribes  and 
denunciations   with   which   his   '  Latter   Day  Pamphlets,'   his 


A   VISIT   TO   CAKLYLE.  391 

•  Past  and  Present,'  his  '  French  Revolution,'  and  his 
'  Frederick  the  Great '  are  filled,  is  clearly  visible.  Broadly 
speaking  we  may  say  that  the  object  of  the  '  Signs  of  the 
Times '  was  to  show  that  the  great  and  fruitful  ages  of  the 
world  were  those  in  which  men  acted  in  a  body,  from  some  one 
or  other  of  the  great  primary  passions  or  emotions  of  the 
heart — from  Love,  or  Hate,  or  Fear,  or  Admiration,  or  Religion, 
as  in  the  rise  of  Christianity  and  Mahomme danism,  in  th^ 
Crusades,  in  the  Reformation,  and  in  the  French  Revolution. 
In  these  ages  he  shows  that  the  aim  of  the  society  and  the  aim 
of  each  of  its  members  being  the  same,  the  mind  of  man  acts 
as  a  single  undivided  force,  with  all  its  powers  yoked  to  the 
service  of  the  dominant  emotion  or  passion  of  the  time, 
and  therefore  works  as  unconsciously  and  smoothly  as  a 
wheel  in  a  large  and  well-oiled  machine  ;  every  side  of  its 
nature  being  in  full  activity,  and  every  ideal  being  already 
provided  for  in  the  dominant  aim,  emotion,  or  passion  of  the 
society  itself.  From  these  ages,  whatever  the  immediate 
results  may  be,  the  world  emerges  transformed  and  raised  to  a 
higher  social  or  moral  plane. 

In  the  transitionary  or  unfruitful  ages  of  the  world,  on  the 
contrary,  in  which  society  merely  marks  time  as  it  were, 
awaiting  the  next  move  that  is  to  raise  it  to  a  higher  stage, 
men  act  not  from  any  great  passion  or  emotion  common  to  all 
the  members  of  the  community  or  society,  but  from  passions 
and  emotions  private  and  peculiar  to  themselves,  and  not, 
therefore,  at  one  with  those  of  their  neighbours,  but  antagonistic 
to  them  rather.  The  consequence  is  that  as  they  have  neither 
a  common  political,  nor  social,  nor  religious  goal  to  unite  them, 
they  can  only  be  kept  from  preying  on  each  other  by  the 
policeman,  or  by  such  mechanical  devices  as  the  ballot-box, 
representation  by  population,  universal  suffrage,  and  the  like  ; 
each  one  having  to  find  out  by  his  own  thought  and  analysis, 
his  religion,  philosophy,  or  social  and  political  creed  and  ideals 
for  himself.     In  the  essay  on  '  Characteristics,'  Carlyle  traces 


392  A    VISIT    TO    CARLYLE. 

the  baleful  consequences  of  this  conscious  analysis  of  Religion 
and  Philosophy  and  of  all  things  human  and  divine  into  their 
elements  with  the  view  of  finding  out  the  truth  for  oneself,  (as 
contrasted  with  the  unconscious  activities  of  the  mind  when 
these  ideals  are  ready-made  for  us)  with  masterly  penetration 
and  force  ;  and  from  a  point  of  view  so  central  and  command- 
ing that  the  essay  is  as  fruitful  and  nourishing  to-day  as  it  was 
at  the  time  it  was  written.  In  both  of  these  essays  as  well  as 
the  '  Sartor  Resartus  '  and  in  his  interpretation  of  Goethe's 
*  Tale/  he  sees  and  traces  with  unusual  clearness  and  depth  as 
well  as  with  philosophical  sobriety  and  calm,  the  parts  played 
in  Modern  Civilization  by  Religion,  Philosophy,  Science, 
Metaphysics,  and  Material  and  Social  Conditions.  As  a  result 
of  his  survey  he  concludes  that  the  present  age  is  an  age  of 
transition,  an  age  of  Machinery  ;  and  throwing  as  he  did  from 
nature,  temperament,  and  training,  so  much  more  weight  on 
Religion  and  Morality  than  on  Science,  Politics,  and  the  Arts 
of  Life,  he  was  led  as  he  grew  older  to  so  disparage  the  latter, 
that  although  in  his  early  writings  he  had  proved  that  the  ages 
in  which  machinery  and  the  calculations  of  political  and  social 
expediency  were  predominant,  as  at  present,  w^ere  both 
necessary  and  inevitable  stages  in  the  evolution  of  Society,  he 
arrived  at  last  at  the  point  where  he  would  allow  them  no  value 
at  all.  Hence  the  exaggerations  and  denunciations  of  his  later 
writings,  his  apotheosis  of  tyrants,  and  his  panegyrics  on  the 
methods  of  brute  force — all  of  which  by  mixing  and  con- 
founding the  roles  of  prophet  and  preacher  with  those  of  poet 
and  thinker,  have  weakened  his  influence  and  destroyed  his 
philosophical  fame.  And  yet  when  I  consider  all  that  his 
writings  did  for  me,  my  conviction  is  that  until  he  took  up  the 
screaming  role  of  prophet  and  preacher,  no  intellect  more 
original  or  penetrating,  more  comprehensive  or  subtle  has 
appeared  in  England  since  the  days  of  Bacon  and  Shakspeare. 

In  the  next  chapter  when  I  come  to  compare  his  work  with 
that  of  the  other  Poetical  Thinkers  with  whom  I  have  classed 


A    VISIT    TO    CARLYLE.  393 

him,  I  shall  endeavour  to  let  the  reader  see  precisely  what  it 
was  he  did  for  me  in  the  higher  regions  of  Thought.     In  the 

O  CD  O 

meantime  I  have  only  to  add  that  it  was  by  his  writings  that 
I  was  naturally  led  to  the  writings  of  Emerson, — a  Thinker  by 
whom  I  was  even  more  influenced  than  by  Carlyle, — and  from 
them  both  to  the  writings  of  their  common  master,  Goethe. 


CHAPTER    VIII 


THE    PERSONAL    EQUATION. 

WAS  led,  as  I  have  said,  from  the  study  of  Carlyle  to  the 
study  of  Emerson,  who  has  always  been  so  intimately 
associated  with  him  in  the  public  mind  ;  and  I  still  retain  a 
vivid  recollection  of  the  despair  into  which  I  fell  when  I 
attempted  to  read  him  for  the  second  time,  having  put  him 
aside,  as  I  had  Carlyle,  some  years  before,  owing  to  the  difficulty 
I  found  in  understanding  his  little  book  on  '  Representative 
Men.'  I  began  this  time,  I  remember,  with  his  Essays,  starting 
with  the  first  of  the  series,  that  on  '  History,'  I  read  the  first 
sentence  ;  it  was  an  enigma  ;  I  passed  on  to  the  second ;  it  was 
still  more  so  ;  then  to  the  third  and  fourth  with  increasing 
bewilderment  and  mystification,  until  when  I  reached  the  end 
of  the  first  paragraph  I  was  fain  to  confess  as  he  himself  some- 
where says  of  Life  in  general,  *  All  is  riddle,  and  the  key  to  one 
riddle  is  another ! '  I  started  a  second  time,  bending  all  my 
powers  of  speculation  with  redoubled  concentration  and  attention 
on  these  mystic  utterances,  but  again  could  make  nothing  of 
them.  It  then  occurred  to  me  that  the  concrete  illustrations 
might  help  me,  and  I  dipped  in  here  and  there  among  them, 
picking  them  out  one  by  one;  but  they  turned  out  to  be 
almost  as  mysterious  as  the  run  of  abstractions  at  the  beginning, 
and  it  was  not  until  after  some  time  and  trouble  that  I  began  to 
get  an  inkling  of  what  it  was  all  about.       At  last  by  shuttling 


THE   PERSONAL   EQUATION.  395 

backwards  and  forwards  and  trying  each  of  the  illustrations  in 
turn  to  see  if  it  would  fit  one  or  other  of  the  abstractions  as  its 
key,  I  succeeded  in  getting  a  pretty  fair  idea  of  the  drift  of  the 
Essay  as  a  whole.  But  at  what  a  cost !  And  the  worst  of  it 
was  that  the  same  difficulty  had  to  be  encountered  with  each  of 
the  essays  in  turn  ;  the  reason  being  that  Emerson  had  every- 
where withheld  the  principle  that  was  the  key  to  the  particular 
essay,  or  had  wrapped  it  in  such  a  mystic  form  of  words  that  it 
passed  the  ordinary  comprehension  to  understand  it.  It  was  a 
mistake,  as  I  now  think,  and  must  have  cost  him  thousands  of 
the  best  readers  ;  and  yet  do  what  he  would,  the  essays  could 
never  have  been  made  altogether  easy  reading.  For  the  separate 
sentences  being  the  result  of  separate  acts  of  insight  or 
observation,  are  not  to  be  apprehended  like  a  train  of  physical 
or  mathematical  reasoning  where  each  proposition  hangs  on  to 
the  skirts  of  the  one  before  it,  and  so  can  be  followed  by  the 
ordinary  intelligent  schoolboy  ;  they  are  rather  separate  aspects 
or  sides,  as  it  were,  of  some  common  spiritual  principle  which 
they  illustrate,  and  around  which  as  their  common  centre,  like 
signs  of  the  Zodiac,  they  lie  without  connexion  among  them- 
selves, and  so  can  be  seen  only  by  those  who  have  had  a  wide 
experience  of  life,  and  are  possessed  of  natural  gifts  of  insight 
and  observation.  And  hence  I  have  always  regarded  these 
essays  of  Emerson  as  a  kind  of  touchstone  of  intellectual  power 
and  penetration.  But  of  them  all  the  one  that  gave  me  most 
trouble  and  was  most  difficult  to  follow,  was  the  essay  on 
*  Experience  '  In  it  the  leading  ideas  of  most  of  the  other 
essays  exist  in  combination,  and  I  must  have  spent  more  time  in 
trying  to  unravel  it  than  on  any  other  piece  of  writing  of  equal 
length  whatever,  with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  some  parts  of 
Hegel.  And  as  in  my  judgment  it  is,  perhaps,  the  greatest 
essay  on  human  life  that  has  ever  been  digested  within  the 
compass  of  so  few  pages,  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  if  I  venture 
to  offer  some  suggestions  that  may  help  the  reader  to  an  under- 
standing of  the  ground-plan  of  an  essay  which  Emerson  has 


390  THE    PERSONAL   EQUATION. 

inlaid  with  such  precious  mosaics  of  thought.  If  then  we  begin 
by  figuring  the  human  mind  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  world 
through  which  it  passes  from  youth  to  age  on  the  other,  as  two 
cylinders  which  are  in  contact  with  each  other  and  which  roll 
continually  on  each  other,  each  turning  on  its  own  axis  ;  and  if 
we  further  represent  the  mind  which  in  each  person  starts  with 
a  special  bias,  temperament,  or  tendency,  known  as  the  nature 
of  the  individual,  as  the  smooth,  hard,  outer  surface  of  the  one 
cylinder,  it  is  evident,  is  it  not,  that  if  there  were  no  holes  or 
openings  in  this  cylinder,  it  might  roll  for  ever  against  its 
opposite  cylinder  the  world,  and  like  the  lower  animals,  would 
gain  nothing  from  experience,  but  would  go  on  doing  and 
thinking  the  same  things  over  and  over  again  for  ever.  But, 
says  Emerson,  however  much  the  minds  of  men  may  be  shut 
up  within  themselves,  as  it  were,  by  the  hard  rind  of 
temperament  and  natural  bias,  there  are  always  openings 
in  them  through  which  the  Universal  Spirit  or  Soul  of 
the  World  has  entrance  to  our  souls.  The  consequence 
is  that  as  we  pass  through  life,  when  one  of  these  openings 
in  the  mind,  falls  opposite  some  new  or  strange  fact  or 
experience  in  the  world,  that  fact  or  experience  will  suddenly 
and  when  least  expected  be  found  to  have  entered  through  the 
opening  and  slipped  magically  into  the  mind,  there  like  a  seed, 
to  germinate  and  otow.  Sometimes  it  is  a  casual  remark 
dropped  by  a  friend  in  an  open  or  serious  hour,  sometimes  an 
incident  of  the  wayside  or  in  the  street,  sometimes  an  excep- 
tional natural  fact  that  arrests  attention,  or  a  winged  and 
magic  word  in  a  book  ;  sometimes  it  is  the  death  of  friends  or 
children,  the  reverses  of  fortune,  disappointed  hopes,  loves,  or 
ambitions,  or  the  satieties  of  society  and  the  world.  And  hence 
it  is  with  men  as  with  barrel-organs,  it  is  the  particular  pins  in 
the  one  cylinder  which  happen  to  gain  entrance  through  the 
openings  in  the  other,  that  determine  what  each  man's  moral 
and  spiritual  experience  shall  be,  and  in  consequence,  the  tune 
his  life  shall  play  ;  and  hence  it  is  too,  that  unlike  the  lower 


THE    PERSONAL    EQUATION.  31)7 

animals,  no  two  tunes  are  quite  the  same.  Now  in  this  simple 
framework  (which  however,  as  we  shall  see,  I  myself  by  no 
means  accept)  Emerson  has  contrived  to  work  in  thoughts  on 
human  life  more  central  and  commanding,  more  ultimate  and 
final,  and  of  more  universal  application  than  are  to  be  found 
within  the  same  compass  in  the  literature  of  any  age  or  time, 
thoughts  which  rise  to  the  mind  as  naturally  and  spontaneously 
when  the  deeper  secrets  of  life  are  in  question,  as  proverbs  do 
in  its  more  obvious  and  superficial  aspects.  For  penetration 
and  depth  Bacon  is  cheap  and  superficial  in  comparison.  Let 
the  reader  who  has  been  baulked  by  the  difficulty  of  the  Essay 
on  *  Experience '  try  it  again  with  the  simple  key  I  have  given 
him,  and  say  whether  this  is  not  so.  What  a  fine  piece  of 
insight,  for  example,  is  the  following,  '  A  man  is  like  a  bit  of 
Labrador  spar,  which  has  no  lustre  as  you  turn  it  in  your  hand 
until  you  come  to  a  particular  angle,  and  then  it  shows  deep 
and  beautiful  colours.  There  is  no  universal  adaptation  or 
applicability  in  men,  but  each  has  his  special  talent,  and  the 
mastery  of  successful  men  consists  in  adroitly  keeping  them- 
selves where  and  when  that  turn  shall  oftenest  have  to  be 
practised.'  But  every  essay  is  full  of  such  gems.  Take  for 
instance  the  following,  in  reference  to  the  illusion  by  which 
men  have  a  tendency  to  attribute  to  the  men  whom  they 
admire  for  particular  traits,  an  all-round  completeness  and 
excellence,  *  On  seeing  the  smallest  arc  we  complete  the  circle/ 
Or  this,  as  a  definition  of  character,  '  Character  is  moral  order  as 
seen  through  the  medium  of  an  individual  nature.'  Or  again, 
in  reference  to  the  way  in  which  we  are  dominated  by  general 
ideas  or  abstractions,  by  mere  phrases  or  names,  such  as  king> 
nobleman,  clergyman,  policeman,  etc.,  in  the  teeth  of  adverse 
facts,  *  General  ideas  are  essences,  they  are  our  gods.'  Or 
lastly,  this  on  self-reliance,  which  was  a  great  stimulus  to  me 
personally,  '  Meek  young  men  grow  up  in  libraries,  believing  it 
their  duty  to  accept  the  views  which  Cicero,  which  Locke, 
which  Bacon,  have  given ;    forgetful  that   Cicero,   Locke,  and 


398  THE    PERSONAL   EQUATION. 

Bacon  were  only  young  men  in  libraries  when  they  wrote 
these  books.'  Nowhere  indeed,  will  you  find  greater  penetra- 
tion and  profundity,  or  greater  refinement  and  delicacy  than  in 
these  essays,  so  much  so  that  whenever  I  come  across  a  thought 
of  more  than  usual  penetration  or  distinction  among  recent 
writers,  as  in  Stevenson,  or  Ibsen,  or  Meredith,  or  in  some  of 
the  work  of  Olive  Schreiner,  I  am  at  once  reminded  of 
Emerson ;  and  rarely  do  you  come  on  a  remark  of  universal 
application  anywhere,  but  it  can  be  paralleled  and  matched 
by  one  of  similar  import  in  his  works.  I  have  only  just  read 
again  for  purposes  of  this  chapter,  after  a  lapse  of  ten  or  fifteen 
years,  the  essay  on  '  Experience '  of  which  I  have  just  spoken, 
and  I  am  bound  to  confess  that  my  opinion  of  its  merits 
remains  the  same  as  before.  No  increase  of  experience  or 
reflection  during  the  intervening  years,  has  enabled  me  to  add 
•or  suggest  aught  by  way  of  commentary  on  these  great  and 
penetrating  observations  on  human  life,  that  is  not  either  more 
superficial  or  less  true.  It  is  not  that  I  do  not  differ  profoundly 
from  him  as  to  the  truth  of  the  general  framework  which  I 
ihave  already  described,  and  which  he  has  inlaid  with  such 
precious  gems  of  thought ;  I  refer,  rather,  to  his  isolated 
observations  and  reflections  on  all  that  concerns  human  life  and 
the  laws  and  operations  of  the  human  mind  and  heart.  But 
unfortunately  these  writings  are  robbed  of  half  their  value 
owing  to  the  difficulty  of  understanding  them.  I  trust  some 
day  to  make  them  more  accessible,  by  furnishing  the  reader 
with  such  a  preliminary  account  of  the  principles  involved  in 
each  essay,  as  will  make  the  understanding  of  them  as  easy 
to  the  intelligent  student  of  thirty,  as  a  page  of  Macaulay  or 
a  column  of  the  '  Times.'  For  until  Emerson  is  understood, 
no  observer  of  human  life  making  any  pretension  to  originality 
can,  in  my  judgment,  consider  his  reputation  safe,  or  his  work 
free  from  the  danger  of  being  undermined  by  this  great  master 
of  human  thought. 

From  this  panegyric  which  I  have  for  years  been  longing  to 


THE   PERSONAL   EQUATION.  399 

utter,  the  reader  will  already  have  guessed  that  in  my 
sympathies  and  bent  of  mind  I  have  much  greater  affinity  with 
Emerson  than  with  Carlyle ;  and  so  it  is.  For  although  as  we 
shall  see  farther  on,  their  intellectual  mode  of  viewing  the 
Universe  as  a  whole  and  in  its  largest  construction  was 
practically  the  same ;  in  all  that  concerns  conduct  and  action 
and  in  the  estimate  they  put  on  things,  they  were  almost 
diametrically  opposed.  And  hence  it  was  that  while  Carlyle 
ran  counter  to  my  Colonial  passion  for  personal  independence, 
and  damped  my  youthful  ardour  to  do  something  on  my 
own  account  by  the  exaggerated  importance  he  attached  to 
our  each  finding  some  high-handed  despot  to  fall  down 
before ;  Emerson  stimulated  me  by  his  more  manly  doctrine  of 
Self -Reliance,  and  by  the  way  in  which  he  opened  up  to  men  all 
the  avenues  of  intellectual,  moral,  or  social  power,  according  to 
the  measure  of  their  genius  or  virtue.  If  Carlyle,  again, 
offended  what  I  may  be  pardoned  for  calling  my  sense  of 
intellectual  dignity,  by  the  brutal  way  in  which  he  proposed  to 
thrust  his  political  and  social  dogmas  down  the  throats  of  all 
and  sundry,  without  distinction;  Emerson,  on  the  contrary, 
caressed  and  flattered  the  self-respect  of  his  readers  by  the 
deference  with  which  he  approached  them,  and  by  his  offer  to 
throw  down  the  keys  of  his  castle  to  whatever  son  of  Adam 
should  legitimately  claim  them  by  virtue  of  the  possession  of 
new  and  higher  truths.  Then  again,  if  Carlyle  outraged  my  ear 
by  the  uncouthness  and  barbarism  of  his  later  writings,  and  my 
sense  of  form  and  measure  as  well  as  of  philosophic  decency,  by 
his  shrieks  and  groans  ;  Emerson  drew  me  on  by  the  simplicity 
and  dignity  of  his  utterances,  by  their  urbanity,  serenity,  and 
freedom  from  exaggeration  and  personal  abuse.  And  lastly,  if 
Carlyle  depressed  me  by  preaching  an  ideal  of  political  and 
social  morality  and  self-abnegation  quite  beyond  the  power  of 
my  poor  unregenerate  nature  to  attain ;  Emerson  comforted  me 
by  the  assurance  that  I  could  give  to  personal  ambition  its 
fullest   rein — provided   always,    that  it  was  on  a  moral  basis, 


400  THE    TEltSOXAL   EQUATION. 

and  that  I  was  willing  to  pay  the  cost  in  spirituality  which  all 
undue  worldly  activity  entails.  For  although  his  writings 
everywhere  exhale  the  highest  morality  as  their  essence,  his 
attitude,  nevertheless,  is  always  that  of  the  philosopher,  never 
that  of  the  preacher  or  professional  moralist.  And  not  having 
pitched  his  morality  too  high  for  the  present  world,  as  Carlyle 
did,  he  is  nowhere  led  into  empty  denunciations  of  the  world 
because  it  has  not  yet  reached  the  Ideal,  but  contents  himself, 
as  he  says  of  Goethe,  with  quietly  placing  a  ray  of  light 
behind  the  dark,  tortuous,  and  recalcitrant  facts  of  life,  in  the 
belief  that  when  men  see  what  the  truth  is,  those  whom  it 
concerns  will  themselves  take  steps  to  realize  it,  without  being 
goaded  to  it  either  by  the  whip  of  the  despot  or  the  shrieks  of 
the  philanthropist  or  moralist.  He  saw,  in  a  word,  that 
morality  depended  so  much  on  environing  conditions,  that  the 
standing  iniquities  of  the  world  were  not  to  be  blown  down  like 
the  walls  of  .Jericho,  merely  by  trumpet- blasts  of  denunciation. 
And  yet  I  must  confess  that  after  a  time  I  more  or  less  cloyed 
of  so  much  intellectual  sweetness  and  serenity,  of  this  majestic 
calm  so  approaching  to  moral  indifference  (in  appearance  at 
least)  in  the  face  of  the  scarlet  iniquities  of  the  world,  and 
began  at  last  to  long  for  a  little  more  of  Carlyle's  fiery 
vehemence  and  righteous  indignation.  I  felt  somewhat  like 
Sir  David  Dundas  who  when  Lord  Eea  exclaimed  at  the  sisdit 

CD 

of  the  immoralities  of  the  time  '  Well,  God  mend  all ! '  replied 
4 Nay,  by  God!  Donald,  we  must  help  Him  to  mend  them!" 
Otherwise,  Emerson,  along  with  Goethe,  has  ever  been  for  me, 
and  still  is,  in  temper,  tone,  and  point  of  view,  the  ideal 
philosop'her. 

From  the  study  of  Emerson  and  Carlyle  I  was  naturally  led 
to  the  study  of  Goethe.  But  I  soon  found,  that  like  the 
Will-o'-the-Wisps  who  in  the  marvellous  '  Tale  '  to  which  I 
have  so  often  referred,  contrived  to  lick  out  all  the  veins  of  gold 
from  the  colossal  figure  of  the  Composite  King,  these  thinkers 
had  already  licked  out  most  of  the  veins  of  wisdom  from  the 


THE  PERSONAL  EQUATION.  401 

great  and  many-sided  works  of  their  master,  and  so  had  left  me 
comparatively  little  hard  reading  to  do.  The  consequence  was 
that  with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  parts  of  'Faust,'  and 
1  Wilhelm  Meister,'  the  '  Tale,'  and  his  collection  of  *  Maxims/ 
my  reading  of  him  at  that  time  was  rapid,  and  in  a  measure 
perfunctory.  But  I  found  in  him  all  the  wisdom,  penetration, 
and  many-sidedness  which  I  had  been  led  by  Carlyle  and 
Emerson  to  expect  ;  and  I  found  besides,  repeated  in  him  in 
ever-varying  application  to  the  matter  in  hand,  the  solution  of 
the  practical  problem  of  life  which  I  had  got  from  the  *  Sartor/ 
namely  that  we  were  to  waste  no  time  over  insoluble  problems 
either  as  to  this  world  or  the  next,  but  for  all  doubt,  uncertainty, 
or  irresolution,  whether  practical  or  speculative,  we  were  to 
find  the  remedy  in  Work  and  Action,  and  in  cheerfully 
renouncing  ourselves  for  the  benefit  of  others ;  that  we  were  to 
apply  the  Ideal  which  exists  in  us  all,  to  the  common  life  of 
every  day  and  to  the  task  or  duty  that  lies  nearest  us,  in  order 
that  we  might  impress  on  the  transient,  fleeting,  and  imperfect 
Present,  something  of  the  stability,  the  permanence,  and  the 
beauty,  of  Eternity ;  and  for  the  rest,  we  were  to  leave  all  to 
the  Higher  Powers.  But  there  was  one  doctrine  that  I  found 
in  Goethe,  which  I  did  not  find  in  Carlyle  or  Emerson,  and 
which  for  reasons  we  shall  presently  see,  they  were  not  able 
fully  to  appropriate.  It  was  the  doctrine  that  all  the  higher 
powers  and  sentiments  proper  to  man,  such  as  Reverence, 
Gratitude,  Chastity,  love  of  Truth,  of  Justice,  and  so  on,  are 
really  not  natural  products  at  all,  but  like  the  fancy  breeds  of 
dogs  and  birds,  are  artificial  rather,  being  the  result  of  centuries 
of  cultivation  under  the  constant  pressure  of  force  or  of  public 
opinion ;  and  are  only  to  be  kept  from  relapsing  again  to  the 
wild  stock,  as  fancy  breeds  continually  tend  to  do,  by  an 
incessant  and  unremitting  attention  and  care.  And  hence  it 
was  that  he  preached  as  the  gospel  of  salvation  for  all,  an  all- 
round  and  never-to-be-relaxed  Culture.  Reverence,  for  example, 
is  regarded  by  him  as  an  artificial  product  reared  by  constant 

CC 


402  THE   PERSONAL    EQUATION. 

cultivation  through  long  ages  from  the  vulgar  element  of  Fear, 
and  which,  as  being  necessary  for  the  progress  of  mankind,  is 
none  the  less  natural  and  inevitable  in  the  scheme  of  things, 
because  it  has  been  delegated  and  entrusted  to  men  to  develop 
for  themselves  under  the  guidance  and  example  of  certain  highly 
favoured  individuals.  And  accordingly,  in  '  Wilhelm  Meister  ' 
we  find  him  advising  the  training  of  youths  from  their  earliest 
years  in  the  practice  of  it,  by  suitable  exercises  of  act,  sign,  and 
symbol, — reverence  for  what  is  above  them,  reverence  for  their 
equals,  and  more  than  all,  reverence  for  what  is  beneath  them — 
that  '  Worship  of  Sorrow '  which  it  was  the  mission  of  Jesus 
Christ  to  introduce  into  the  world,  and  which  once  here,  can 
never,  Goethe  thinks,  be  suffered  again  to  pass  away.  Gratitude, 
again,  Goethe  tells  us  is  an  artificial  product,  which  he  set 
himself  sedulously  to  cultivate  in  himself  by  recalling  at  stated 
intervals  the  benefits  he  had  received  from  others,  and  the 
kindnesses  that  had  been  done  him,  by  dwelling  on  these 
kindnesses  and  setting  them  before  his  imagination  in  their 
most  appropriate  and  agreeable  light.  The  love  of  Truth,  again, 
which  he  himself  cultivated  so  laboriously  during  his  long  life, 
is  not,  he  tells  us,  natural  to  man  as  the  love  of  error  is ;  for 
instead  of  flattering  us  like  error,  with  the  sense  of  our 
unlimited  powers,  it  on  the  contrary  places  limits  on  us  on  all 
sides.  Chastity,  too,  falls  under  the  same  category,  as  not 
natural  to  the  human  animal ;  for  as  Renan  says,  thousands 
of  women  had  to  be  stoned  to  death  before  the  seventh 
commandment  could  be  recognized  as  sacred  and  binding  on  all. 
And  so  too  with  the  love  of  Justice,  and  the  rest. 

Now  all  this  which  is  profoundly  true,  and  which  runs  in 
harmony  with  the  most  certain  facts  of  modern  evolution, 
could  neither  be  recognized  nor  assimilated  either  by  Carlyle 
or  Emerson.  Not  by  Carlyle;  for  he  did  not  believe,  for 
reasons  that  will  afterwards  appear,  that  the  higher  attributes 
of  man  were  delegated  to  him  by  successive  increments,  in  the 
gradual  process  of  Evolution  ;  but  Puritan  as  he  was  by  temper 


THE   PERSONAL   EQUATION.  403 

and  breeding,  he  believed  them  to  have  been  implanted  by  the 
Creator  entire  and  complete  from  the  beginning ;  and  that  the 
differences  between  men  in  regard  to  them  were  due  entirely 
to  perversions  of  the  will ;  to  disobedience,  in  short,  which  was 
to  be  eradicated  not  by  the  slow  and  gradual  culture  of  the 
race,  but  by  the  beneficent  despot  and  his  whip.  Nor  could 
this  doctrine  of  Goethe's  be  appropriated  by  Emerson ;  for  he, 
again,  believed  that  man  lay  open  on  one  side  of  his  nature  to 
the  entire  mind  of  God,  which  rolled  in  and  out  of  him  like  the 
ocean  tides  in  some  inland  stream ;  that  reverence,  justice, 
gratitude,  truth,  and  so  on,  were  the  influxes  from  thence, 
casual  and  intermittent  in  the  ordinary  course  of  life  (through 
the  holes  of  the  cylinder  in  our  former  analogy),  but  in  full 
tide  in  the  eminent  instances  of  '  conversion,'  of  *  illumination,' 
of  '  vision,'  etc.,  as  with  Paul,  with  Boehme,  and  with  Sweden- 
borg.  So  that  when  the  tide  is  in,  as  he  wTould  say,  we  become 
saints,  or  geniuses,  or  heroes  ;  when  it  is  out,  we  become  sinners 
and  dullards  and  cowards;  or  as  he  somewhere  expresses  it, 
1  we  are  now  gods  in  nature,  now  weeds  by  the  wall.'  To  a 
man  holding  such  a  doctrine,  Goethe's  belief  in  the  growth  of 
Virtue,  Reverence,  Truth,  Chastity,  and  Humanity,  only  by  the 
slow  process  of  assiduous  cultivation,  must  have  been  an  offence, 
and  could  neither  be  appropriated,  nor  woven  into  his  own 
system  of  thought. 

Now  although  I  felt  this  doctrine  of  Goethe  to  be  true,  and 
his  prescription  of  an  all-round  Culture  reasonable  in  conse- 
quence, it  nevertheless  fell  off  my  mind  at  the  time  without 
producing  any  result.  For  nothing  was  farther  from  my 
thought  then,  than  the  wish  to  so  prune  and  trim  and  restrict 
myself  on  all  sides  as  to  make  myself  more  like  what  a  man 
should  be,  and  what,  if  the  world  is  ever  to  be  made  worthier 
of  the  ideal  in  the  mind,  he  must  become.  No,  what  I  wanted 
was  not  to  make  myself  approach  nearer  to  the  ideal  of  what  a 
man  should  be,  (and  that,  I  take  it,  is  the  highest  task  a  man 
can  impose  on  himself),  but  first  as  we  have  seen,  to  ascertain 


404  THE    PERSONAL    EQUATION. 

whether  the  ideal  itself  had  any  real  existence  or  not :  and  if  it 
had,  then  instead  of  trying  to  trim  myself  as  far  as  might  be  to 
the  pattern  of  this  ideal,  to  clear  a  space  for  myself  rather,  in 
which  my  nature  such  as  it  was  should  have  room  to  disport 
and  spread  itself, — ideals,  ambitions,  eccentricities,  crudities, 
vulgarities,  and  all !  And  accordingly  I  was  inclined  at  first  to 
vote  Goethe  an  exquisite  and  something  of  a  bore.  I  did  not 
see  that  however  necessary  it  may  be  for  the  world,  that  the 
great  masses  of  men  should  thus,  as  Emerson  thinks,  push  their 
individualities  to  the  utmost,  the  endeavour  of  Goethe  to  so 
prune,  restrict,  or  stimulate  all  the  sides  of  his  nature  as  to 
bring  them  up  to  a  general  rotundity,  was  the  first  duty  of  one 
aspiring  to  the  role  of  a  philosopher.  Nor  did  I  then  see  how 
much  more  virtue  it  requires  in  a  man  to  thus  severely  discipline 
himself,  than  it  does  to  struggle  merely  to  gain  for  himself  a 
vantage  ground  on  which  his  crudities,  vulgarities,  sensualities, 
pieties,  and  idiosyncracies  generally,  may  like  a  garden  of 
overgrown  cabbages  have  the  whole  field  to  themselves !  But 
besides  this,  there  were  other  peculiarities  in  Goethe  which  at 
the  time  of  which  I  am  writing  lent  themselves  to  my  some- 
what indifferent  feeling  in  regard  to  him.  There  was  a  certain 
softness  and  absence  of  back-bone,  I  felt,  in  some  of  his 
writings,  a  want  of  snap  and  '  go '  in  his  characters,  a  certain 
undue  emphasis  laid  on  trifles,  on  eating,  drinking,  and  love- 
making,  which  after  the  severity  of  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  went 
far  to  my  mind  to  justify  Jeffrey  in  the  charge  of  insipidity 
and  even  vulgarity  which  he  brought  against  him.  And  then, 
again,  I  was  to  a  certain  extent  out  of  patience,  as  Carlyle  was, 
with  what  I  thought  were  his  dilettantisms  and  with  the  large 
tract  of  his  writings  in  which  aesthetic  standards — art  for  art's 
3ake  and  the  like — are  set  up.  For  like  those  young  painters 
who  used  to  regard  no  subject  less  magnificent  than  some  great 
historic  theme  as  worthy  of  their  brush,  so  nothing  less  than 
some  monumental  History  or  System  of  Philosophy  or  Politics 
seemed    to   me   at   that    time   to   be   worthy   the   dignity   of 


THE   PERSONAL   EQUATION.  405 

Literature,  and  I  can  remember  always  feeling  a  shade  of 
contempt  come  over  me  when  I  thought  of  Thackeray  with  his 
big,  burly,  manly  frame,  spending  his  life  in  writing  love- 
stories.  It  was  enough  for  me  that  eating  and  drinking  and 
falling  in  and  out  of  love  had,  like  the  measles,  to  be  undergone 
and  endured,  but  to  elevate  a  description  of  it  all  into  literature, 
under  the  pretence  of  delineating  what  is  called  human  nature, 
seemed  to  me  a  degradation.  It  had  not  then,  I  admit,  been 
carried  as  far  as  it  has  been  since  by  Zola  and  Flaubert  or  even 
by  Tolstoi  who  in  one  of  his  books  makes  each  particular 
cough  and  expectoration  of  one  of  his  characters  who  is  suffering 
from  consumption,  call  for  a  separate  comment ;  but  the 
philanderings  and  vulgarities  of  Wilhelm,  Philina,  and  the  rest 
carried  through  volumes  with  the  minuteness  of  a  catalogue, 
afflicted  me  much  as  George  Eliot's  characters  in  the  '  Mill  on 
the  Floss '  did  Ruskin,  who  declared  that  their  conversations 
were  about  as  important  and  worthy  of  record  as  the  '  sweepings 
of  a  Pentonville  omnibus.'  I  did  not  see  then  as  I  do  now, 
that  the  handling  is  all,  or  as  Carlyle  has  it,  '  What  matters 
what  the  material  is,  so  that  the  form  thou  give  it  be  poetic  1 ' 
and  that  by  penetration  and  insight,  and  skill  in  the  art  of 
presentation,  the  deepest  truths  can  often  be  got  out  of  the 
poorest  and  simplest  materials.  And  it  was  only  when  I 
perceived  that  these  cheap  and  uninteresting  figures  which 
throng  the  pages  of  Goethe  and  occupy  so  apparently 
disproportionate  an  amount  of  his  time  and  attention,  were  but 
means  to  his  great  end  of  a  universal  culture,  that  I  became 
reconciled  to  them.  But  in  his  handling  of  great  themes  he 
was  always  supreme.  The  ease  and  naturalness  with  which  he 
gives  all  things  their  true  focus  so  as  to  bring  out  their  hidden 
bearings,  relations,  and  proportions ;  the  massiveness,  serenity, 
and  repose  of  his  judgment ;  his  intellectual  intuition  and 
clairvoyance,  as  seen  in  the  *  Tale '  for  example, — all  made  me 
feel  before  I  left  him  that  we  had  in  him  the  supreme  legislator 
of  souls  in  the  modern  world  as  Plato  was  in  the  Ancient. 


406  THE   PERSONAL   EQUATION. 

Bacon  I  had  already  read  when  occupied  with  the  Meta- 
physical Thinkers,  and  was  charmed  with  the  contrast  he  offered 
to  them,  both  in  his  method  and  aims.  Indeed  in  him  the 
whole  difference  in  these  respects  between  the  Metaphysical  and 
Poetic  Thinkers  may  be  seen  as  in  a  glass,  and  I  cannot  refrain 
from  taking  an  occasion  so  opportune  for  bringing  it  out.  In 
the  first  place  then,  instead  of  trying  to  explain  the  world  by 
the  evolution  of  some  single  principle,  physical  or  metaphysical, 
as  Hegel  and  Herbert  Spencer  do,  he  contents  himself  with 
referring  it  in  the  most  general  way  to  some  Supreme  Cause, 
without  reference  at  all  to  the  ways  and  means  by  which  it  is 
brought  about,  and  which  he  regards  as  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
human  faculties  ;  or  to  the  Final  Ends  or  Causes  for  which 
things  exist,  which  he  feels  to  be  useless  for  human  purposes, 
comparing  them  in  his  beautiful  way  to  those  Yestal  Virgins 
who  'barren  of  fruit  were  dedicated  to  God.'  Then  again, 
instead  of  analyzing  the  intellect  into  such  shabby  and 
pinchbeck  categories  as  we  have  seen  in  Kant  and  Hegel,  and 
then  interpreting  the  world  through  them,  as  if  you  should 
break  up  the  pure  white  light  into  its  separate  colours ;  and 
taking  a  few  of  them  should  insist  on  looking  at  the  world 
through  them,  instead  of  this  he  seeks  rather  to  clear  the 
intellect  of  the  illusions  that  come  from  the  diffracting  media 
of  the  emotions,  and  obscure  its  sight,  those  idols  of  the  den, 
the  theatre,  and  the  market-place,  as  he  calls  them,  so  that  it 
may  accurately  mirror  and  represent  the  world.  Again, 
instead  of  exercising  himself  like  the  metaphysicians,  as  to 
whether  love  after  all  is  not  a  form  of  lust,  reverence  of  fear, 
justice  of  expediency,  and  the  like,  (as  if  one  were  to  take  one 
pole  of  a  battery  and  insist  that  it  must  be  after  all  only  a  form 
of  the  other  pole,)  he  ignores  the  whole  controversy  as 
irrelevant,  and  boldly  points  out  that  look  where  you  will 
throughout  Nature  and  Human  Life  you  will  find  provision 
made  at  once  for  the  interests  of  the  individual  and  the  interests 
of  the  species,  of  the  particular  and  the  general,  of  man  and  of 


THE    PERSONAL   EQUATION.  407 

God,  of  the  selfish  and  of  the  unselfish  interests,  of  the  private 
and  of  the  public  good.  This  broad  division  of  all  things  into 
two  opposite  poles  he  calls  their  private  and  their  public  nature 
respectively,  and  it  no  more  concerns  him  that  he  cannot  get 
right  or  justice  or  elevation  out  of  the  individual  by  himself, 
than  it  does  that  he  cannot  get  music  out  of  half-a-dozen  notes 
picked  out  of  an  oratorio,  or  a  character  out  of  a  few  actions  cut 
out  of  a  man's  life,  or  cause  and  effect  out  of  a  single  isolated 
sequence,  or  the  like.  On  the  contrary  he  sees  that  to  get  the 
harmonies  of  the  world  you  must  so  focus  your  mind  as  to  bring 
it  to  bear  on  what  may  be  called  a  natural  whole ;  and  in  this 
case  the  natural  whole  is  not  a  man  isolated,  but  man  in  society ; 
so  that  if  you  cannot  get  justice  or  right  out  of  men  by  them- 
selves, you  will  get  it  out  of  them  by  the  pressure  put  on  them 
by  their  fellows  either  through  force,  law,  or  public  opinion. 
It  was  by  the  massiveness,  simplicity,  and  naturalness  of 
generalizations  like  these,  that  he  charmed  me — these  strokes  that 
cut  Nature  down  the  middle  and  laid  its  method  bare  at  a  single 
sweep,  as  it  were ;  instead  of  doing  as  the  metaphysicians  did, 
namely  boring  holes  here  and  there  into  the  mind,  which  they 
call  the  analysis  of  it  but  which  close  over  again  leaving  you  no 
wiser  than  before. 

But  while  admiring  the  intellectual  sweep  which  enabled 
him  thus  to  overlook  the  whole  field  of  thought,  and  to  point 
out  to  men  of  science  the  way  in  which  they  must  walk  if  their 
labours  were  to  bear  fruit  in  the  discovery  of  truth,  I  was 
repelled  rather  than  otherwise  by  the  excess  of  worldly  wisdom 
with  which  his  essays  abound.  For  although  any  deficiency  in 
this  is  to  be  deprecated,  still  these  essays  of  his  on  '  cere- 
monies,' on  '  reputation,'  on  '  negotiating,'  on  '  simulation  and 
dissimulation,'  on  'envy,'  on  'cunning,'  on  'counsel,'  on 
1  suspicion,'  on  '  suitors,'  on  '  ambition,'  and  the  rest,  these 
instructions  to  princes,  nobles,  and  rulers — who  alone  were  of 
consequence  in  his  time — as  to  the  manner  in  which  they  are  to 
hold  and  conduct  themselves  for  their  own  advancement   in 


408  THE   PERSONAL   EQUATION. 

person  or  estate,  or  as  to  the  wiles  by  which  they  are  to  over- 
reach each  other  or  aggrandize  themselves  at  each  others 
expense,  or  as  to  the  best  hand  of  cards  to  hold  in  these 
encounters  and  how  best  to  play  them.  All  this  I  must 
confess  seemed  to  me  to  indicate  a  mind  wanting  in  dignity 
and  self-respect,  and  worthy  rather  of  some  foxy  detective 
watching  the  rat-holes  of  life,  than  of  a  great  and  sovereign 
spirit. 

It  was  at  about  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing,  that  owing 
to  a  controversy  which  had  been  started  by  Gladstone  on  the 
political  influence  of  the  '  Vatican  Decrees,'  then  but  recently 
promulgated,  I  was  first  led  to  the  writings  of  Cardinal 
Newman  who  had  taken  up  the  challenge  which  Gladstone  had 
thrown  down.  But  nothing,  indeed,  could  have  been  farther 
from  my  expectations  at  that  time  than  that  I  should  get  any 
access  of  insight  or  intellectual  help  from  a  Theologian  of  any 
school,  much  less  from  a  Theologian  of  the  Catholic  Church 
which  I  identified  with  the  very  spirit  and  genius  of  reaction 
itself.  But  I  had  not  gone  far  in  the  perusal  of  his  writings 
before  I  discovered  that  he  too  belonged  to  the  sovereign  race 
of  Poetic  Thinkers  from  whom  stimulus  and  suggestion  at 
least  were  always  to  be  looked  for,  however  much  the  con- 
clusions of  the  author  might  differ  from  one's  own.  For  in 
Newman  I  came  unexpectedly  on  an  intellect  of  the  highest 
order, — subtlety,  delicacy,  penetration,  clearness,  compre- 
hensiveness, serenity,  knowledge  of  the  world  and  of  human 
life,  being  visible  on  every  page, — and  one,  besides,  occupying 
an  intellectual  point  of  view  (as  was  to  be  expected  from  a 
thinker  who  had  in  middle  life  embraced  a  creed  alien  to  his 
traditions)  more  commanding  than  the  particular  creed  to 
X^-which  he  had  given  his  adhesion,  though  in  this  creed  he 
found  the  best  expression  and  embodiment  of  his  ideal  of  life, 
and  in  the  Church  to  which  it  was  attached  all  that  was  best 
in  him  found  for  itself  a  home.  Indeed  he  expressly  tells  us 
that  it  was  by   reason   of   certain   large,  general,  intellectual 


THE   PERSONAL   EQUATION.  409 

views,  which  we  shall  see  in  the  next  chapter,  that  he  was  led 
to  the  Catholic  Church  as  the  institution  which  best  met  and 
harmonized  with  them.  And  if  in  the  end  I  was  actually  less 
influenced  by  him  in  the  particular  conclusions  at  which  I 
arrived  than  by  the  other  great  Poetic  Thinkers  whom  I  have 
passed  in  review,  it  was  due  rather  to  differences  in  what  I 
have  called  *  the  personal  equation,'  that  is  to  say  in  original 
disposition  and  temperament,  in  moral  and  emotional  affinity, 
than  in  intellectual  affinity  properly  so  called.  For  if  with  all 
my  general  sympathy  with  the  Poetic  Thinkers  I  was  never- 
theless repelled  in  points  by  peculiarities  in  them  with  which  I 
was  not  (owing  to  this  personal  equation)  in  sympathy  ;  in 
Carlyle,  by  what  to  me  was  his  excess  of  puritanic  morality, 
his  querulousness  and  fault  finding,  and  by  his  absence  of 
form ;  in  Emerson  and  Goethe,  by  their  absence  of  vehemence, 
indignation,  and  fire ;  in  Bacon,  by  his  over  worldliness  and 
absence  of  personal  pride;  I  was  repelled  still  more  in  Newman 
by  a  piety,  devoutness,  and  unworldliness  with  which  I  had  no 
natural  sympathy,  a  lack  which  far  from  extenuating,  I  desire 
to  apologize  for  as  a  regrettable  deficiency  in  my  own  nature, 
much  as  the  absence  of  an  ear  for  music  would  be,  but  which 
if  Goethe's  dictum  that  a  man's  philosophy  is  often  the  supple- 
ment of  his  character  be  true,  must  have  made  it  impossible  for 
us  to  unite  in  our  moral  estimates,  in  our  estimates  of  the  value 
of  institutions,  or  indeed  in  the  approval  of  almost  any  given 
course  of  action  or  conduct,  however  much  we  might  agrete 
from  the  most  abstract  and  purely  intellectual  point  of  view. 

With  these  preliminaries  which  1  have  entered  into  mainly 
with  the  view  of  giving  the  reader  some  hint  of  the  personal 
bias,  the  '  personal  equation '  which  I  brought  to  the  solution 
of  the  question  of  the  Problem  of  Life,  and  which  it  is 
necessary  to  be  in  possession  of  if  allowance  is  to  be  made  for 
whatever  in  one's  nature  is  calculated  to  deflect  his  mind  from 
the  pure  dry  light  of  truth,  I  am  now  in  a  position  to  return  to 
the  Poetic  Thinkers  just  named,  with  the  view  of  indicating  in 


410  THE   PERSONAL   EQUATION. 

what  particulars  I  was  helped  and  supported  by  them  in  my 
search  for  the  lost  Ideal,  and  what  under  the  new  intellectual 
conditions  thrown  into  the  Problem  by  Darwin  and  Herbert 
Spencer,  was  left  for  me  to  do  for  myself  if  I  was  to  recover 
again  this  Ideal  from  out  of  the  intellectual  confusion,  the 
materialism,  and  the  scepticism  of  the  time. 


CHAPTER      IX. 


THE    POETIC    THINKERS. 

\  LTHOUGH  the  Philosophers  whom  we  have  just  passed 
in  review  are  in  many  ways  so  widely  different,  I  have 
classed  them  all  under  the  one  head  of  Poetic  Thinkers, 
inasmuch  as  they  all  agree  in  those  particular  modes  of 
regarding  the  world,  which  as  the  outcome  of  our  study  of 
the  Metaphysical  Thinkers  proper,  we  saw  to  be  a  necessity 
if  the  highest  truth  accessible  to  man  in  his  present  stage  of 
development,  is  to  be  attained. 

In  the  first  place  they  one  and  all  perceived  the  absurdity 
of  attempting  to  explain  either  the  World  or  the  Human  Mind 
by  any  principle  or  combination  of  principles,  by  any  law  or 
combination  of  laws  which  the  human  mind  with  its  limited 
number  of  senses,  has  up  to  the  present  time  discovered  or  is 
likely  to  discover,  as,  for  example,  the  Persistence  of  Force 
and  the  laws  of  mechanical  motion  deducible  from  it,  by  which 
Spencer  explains  them,  or  the  triple  movement  of  Spirit  (or 
the  '  Notion ')  by  which  Hegel  contends  that  all  things  have 
been  evolved.  Not  that  the  natural  man  by  himself, — a  poor 
ephemeral  and  palpably  intermediate  product, — would  have 
dreamed  of  the  possibility  of  explaining  this  shoreless  Universe 
from  whose  depths  he  has  been  cast  up,  and  on  which  he 
swims,  were  it  not  for  the  intellectual  inflation  which  has  been 
produced  in  him  by  the  discovery  of  the  law  of  gravitation, 


412  THE    POETIC    THINKERS. 

a  law  which  as  being  coextensive  with  the  infinitely  vast  and 
superficial,  flattered  his  poor  intellect  that  the  same  or  a  like 
law  might  be  made  to  explain  the  infinitely  small  as  well ;  that 
because  it  had  explained  the  movements  of  the  mass,  it  might 
be  made  to  explain  the  workings  of  the  particle  and  of  the 
utmost  particle — quite  a  different  matter.  Indeed  to  imagine 
that  a  being  like  man,  who  but  the  day  before  yesterday 
emerged  from  the  slime  and  yesterday  from  the  kingdom  of  the 
brutes,  should  with  an  eternity  before  him  in  which  to  develop 
into  a  higher  form  of  being  with  new  and  higher  faculties 
superadded,  possibly  have  drawn  all  the  threads  of  Nature  and 
Life  to  within  the  circuit  of  his  own  small  brain,  so  as  to 
anticipate  what  in  all  probability  can  only  be  known  in  its 
entirety  to  the  intelligence  developed  at  the  end  of  the 
evolutionary  process;  to  imagine  this,  I  say,  and  then  to  go 
farther  and  aggressively  declare  as  Spencer  and  Hegel  do,  that 
they  have  found  the  key  to  it  all,  is  arrogance  and  presumption 
of  spirit  rather  than  intellectual  insight  and  penetration.  One 
would  almost  as  soon  believe  that  the  problem  of  existence  can 
be  solved  by  manipulating  and  combining  such  principles  as 
are  open  to  the  intelligence  of  the  anthropoid  apes,  as  that  it 
can  be  solved  by  man  at  his  present  stage  of  development  and 
culture. 

The  law  of  the  evolution  of  spirit  again  (or  of  '  the  Notion,' 
as  I  have  elsewhere  described  it)  which  Hegel  identifies  with 
the  evolution  of  the  Universe  both  physical  and  spiritual,  is  at 
best  only  an  evolution  of  the  categories  of  the  Logical  Under- 
standing, namely  quantity,  quality,  cause  and  effect,  organic 
unity,  self-consciousness,  and  the  like,  not  the  categories  of 
the  Sentiments,  Imagination,  or  Heart.  For  the  problem  of  the 
World  it  must  be  remembered  concerns  not  merely  the  abstract 
fact  of  quantity,  but  quantity  of  what  ?  not  of  quality,  but 
quality  of  what !  not  of  self-consciousness,  but  self-conscious- 
ness of  what  ?  It  is  a  problem  not  of  the  framework,  but  of 
the  contents,  not  of  the  casket,  but  of  the  jewels,  not  of  the 


THE    POETIC    THINKERS.  413 

form,  but  of  the  inner  nature,  not  of  the  forces  involved,  but 
of  their  function,  colour,  and  life.  And  it  is  evident  that  a 
law  which  professes  to  explain  only  the  abstract  categories  of 
quantity,  quality,  relation,  self-consciousness,  and  so  on, 
cannot  explain  a  difference  which  is  part  of  the  content 
of  self-consciousness  and  which  gets  all  its  emphasis  from 
self-consciousness,  the  difference  namely  which  the  soul  makes 
between  selfishness  and  unselfishness,  between  heroism  and 
self-indulgence,  between  love  and  lust,  between  what  is  high 
and  what  is  low  in  motive  or  intention.  And  yet  the  whole  of 
life  turns  practically  on  these  distinctions.  Hegel's  law  can 
only  assume  them,  it  cannot  explain  them  or  deduce  them  from 
the  other  categories,  and  so  is  but  an  imperfect  solution  of  the 
Problem  of  the  World,  getting  any  appearance  of  completeness 
it  may  have,  by  leaving  out  the  Prince  of  Denmark  in  the  Play 
of  Hamlet. 

Now  the  Poetic  Thinkers  have  seen  all  this  from  the 
beginning,  and  have  avoided  it  as  a  deadly  pitfall.  Bacon  struck 
the  key-note  when  he  said  that  Nature  was  more  subtle  than 
the  mind  of  man,  by  which  he  meant  to  convey  that  at  no  point 
of  time  can  the  scientific  laws  discovered  by  the  human 
mind  with  its  limited  five  senses,  equal  the  subtlety  and 
complexity  of  the  web  of  Nature  which  it  has  taken  countless 
ajjes  of  evolution  to  weave,  and  which  these  laws  are  called  on  to 
explain,  but  that  in  her  last  recesses  Nature  must  for  ever  elude 
our  search. 

Goethe  follows  Bacon  in  this,  and  is  constantly  repeating 
that  the  origin  and  the  original  principles  of  all  things  are 
incomprehensible  to  us ;  and  far  from  imagining  that  any  one 
principle  or  law  or  method  will  explain  the  world,  he  confesses 
that  if  he  is  to  find  any  harmony  in  it,  he  must  occupy  not  one 
physical  or  metaphysical  standpoint  but  several,  must  use  not 
one  method  only  but  many,  not  one  part  of  the  mind,  the 
understanding  proper,  but  the  imagination  and  heart  as  well. 
And  hence  he  declares  that  while  as  a  Scientist  he  is  obliged  to. 


414  THE   POETIC    THINKERS. 

be  a  Materialist,  as  a  Poet  he  must  become  a  Pantheist,  and  as  a 
Religious  Thinker  a  Theist. 

Oarlyle,  again,  is  never  weary  of  denouncing  those  who 
imagine  that  they  can  fully  explain  the  Universe  by  the  few 
threads  which  up  to  now  man  has  succeeded  in  drawing  out 
from  the  great  mesh  or  web  of  laws  of  which  it  is  constituted ; 
and  contemptuously  compares  such  thinkers  to  those  minnows 
who  while  they  have  a  very  complete  knowledge  of  the  pebbles 
and  the  nooks  of  their  little  inland  stream,  can  have  no 
knowledge  at  all  of  the  great  ocean  tides,  the  trade-winds  and 
monsoons  by  which  their  little  home  is  liable  from  time  to  time 
to  be  upset.  For  while  admitting  that  a  knowledge  of  the 
Physical  Laws  of  Nature  is  of  the  utmost  value  in  enabling  us 
to  control  the  world  around  us  for  our  own  use  and  comfort,  and 
while  admitting  further  that  it  is  of  even  greater  value  in 
upsetting  those  superannuated  superstitions  and  retrograde 
religious  Cosmogonies  which  have  hitherto  been  accepted  as  the 
explanation  of  things,  he  declares  that  when  these  physical  laws 
are  elevated  into  the  sole  instruments  for  explaining  the  mystery 
of  existence,  they  become  at  once  pernicious  and  even 
poisonous. 

Emerson,  too,  is  of  the  same  opinion,  and  in  order  to  escape 
from  the  limitations  which  our  beggarly  five  senses  impose  on 
our  understandings,  and  which  restrict  so  greatly  the  number  of 
the  laws  of  Nature  which  we  can  possibly  discover,  as  well  as 
forbid  us  to  understand  the  nature  of  the  forces  engaged,  (in  the 
same  way  as  a  dog  seeing  a  man  looking  through  a  telescope, 
might  understand  his  movements  but  not  their  motive),  is 
constantly  looking  out  for  the  appearance  of  some  Seer  or 
Mahatma  as  the  Theosophists  would  say,  who  by  the  possession 
of  some  extra  or  additional  sense  or  faculty,  shall  tell  him  the 
inner  meaning  and  nature  of  it  all. 

Newman,  too,  is  so  strongly  convinced  of  the  impossibility  of 
getting  aught  but  blank  Atheism  out  of  the  world  by  the 
-exercise  of  our  natural  faculties  when  left  to  themselves,  that  he 


THE    POETIC    THINKERS.  415 

is  obliged  to  fall  back  on  Revelation  to  help  him  out.  But 
instead  of  looking  forward,  as  Emerson  does,  to  the  advent  of 
some  new  prophet  who  by  the  possession  of  higher  powers  will 
be  armed  with  the  authority  needful  to  show  us  the  hidden 
powers  and  processes  of  Nature,  he  still  thinks  that  all  that  is 
necessary  for  us  to  know  beyond  what  our  natural  powers  can 
teach  us,  can  be  had  from  the  old  revelation  of  the  truth  by 
Jesus  Christ,  as  expounded  by  the  Catholic  Church  and  its 
Supreme  Head. 

Now  although  one  and  all  of  these  Poetic  Thinkers  have  thus 
resigned  all  hope  of  satisfactorily  explaining  the  "World  by  any 
principle  or  combination  of  principles  which  it  is  open  to  man 
in  his  present  stage  to  discover,  and  so  have  cut  themselves 
off  entirely  from  the  Materialistic  and  Metaphysical  Schools ; 
and  although  by  doing  so  they  have  avoided  the  danger  of 
ruining  their  representation  of  the  World  by  cutting  it  down 
so  as  to  make  it  fit  these  poor  and  imperfect  principles,  they 
nevertheless  all  agree  that  the  visible  and  tangible  world  of 
Nature  stands  in  some  relation  to  an  invisible  world  behind  it, 
and  that  relation  they  conceive  to  be  to  represent  or  symbolize 
the  Spiritual  World  which  is  its  Cause;  and  so  to  teach  us 
things  of  deepest  import  in  reference  to  it. 

Bacon,  of  course,  appearing  as  he  did  before  Modern  Science 
had  made  serious  inroads  into  those  vitals  of  the  faith  which 
were  bound  up  with  the  Mosaic  Cosmogony,  frankly  accepted 
the  prevailing  view  that  the  world  and  all  it  contains  was  made 
by  God,  and  that  the  most  essential  part  of  what  we  ought  to 
know  was  contained  in  Revelation.  But  that  the  world 
throughout  was  the  manifestation  of  Spiritual  Power  generally, 
was  otherwise  evidenced  to  him  by  the  fact  that  as  the 
multiplicity  of  the  world  is  traced  back  further  and  further, 
things  disclose  behind  their  physical  unlikenesses  spiritual 
affinities  which  the  finer  eye  of  the  Poetic  Thinker  detects,  and 
which  cause  things  that  have  no  outer  resemblance  that 
Physical    Science    can    take   hold   of,    to   leave   an   identical 


416  THE    POETIC    THINKERS. 

impression  on  the  mind ;  thus  proving  to  him  that  physical  and 
material  things  must  have  their  source  and  origin  in  the  unity 
of  some  Invisible  and  Spiritual  Power. 

Goethe,  again,  was  so  saturated  with  the  conception  of  the 
spiritual  nature  of  things,  that  he  wrote  the  ' Elective  Affinities' 
to  show  that  the  attractions  and  repulsions  of  the  chemical 
elements  are  paralleled  and  reproduced  for  self-conscious  beings 
in  the  attractions  and  repulsions  of  the  sexes;  thus  showing 
how  Nature  speaks  to  us  as  one  spirit  to  another,  the  great 
Poets  and  Poetic  Thinkers  acting  as  interpreters,  and  catching 
her  meaning  without  the  medium  of  language. 

As  for  Carlyle  again,  his  '  Sartor '  is  one  long  illustration  of 
the  truth  that  all  visible,  material  things  exist  to  express  and 
represent  spiritual  realities,  and  like  the  uniforms  of  soldiers 
and  policemen,  the  robes  of  magistrates  and  judges,  and  the  flags 
of  the  nations,  stand  for  ideas,  and  are  as  much  their  expression 
as  language  itself  could  be,  in  the  same  way  as  our  bodies  are 
the  clothing  of  our  minds,  and  with  their  movements  and 
gestures  exist  to  represent  us  to  each  other  and  to  express  our 
thoughts  and  feelings.  The  material  and  visible,  that  is  to  say, 
exists  to  represent  the  spiritual  and  give  it  expression.  He 
recognizes  of  course  as  clearly  as  the  Materialist  that  this 
clothing  or  vesture  which  we  call  Nature  and  Man,  can 
doubtless  be  accounted  for  by  scientific  laws,  did  we  only  know 
them,  but  like  Bacon  he  still  contends  that  no  merely  human 
faculty  is  equal  to  the  full  or  complete  inventory  of  these  laws. 
It  is  enough,  he  thinks,  that  these  scientific  laws  should  be 
sought  for  the  practical  purposes  of  life,  for  health,  for  digestion, 
for  locomotion,  for  comfort,  for  food,  for  everything  in  short 
except,  as  we  have  said,  for  the  Mystery  of  Existence,  to  which 
they  are  unequal  and  for  which  there  is  nothing  for  mortals  but 
reverence  and  wonder.  And  it  is  because  he  regards  our 
present  knowledge  of  these  laws,  and  our  little  lives  lived  in 
accordance  with  them,  as  but  a  little  bright  sun-lit  isle  of  light 
swimming  on  an  infinite  unsounded  sea  of  mystery,  that  he  feels 


THE  POETIC    THINKERS.  417 

that  the  utmost  man  can  do  is  to  try  and  paint  or  represent 
some  small  section  of  Nature  or  History,  but  by  no  means  to 
imagine  that  he  has  fully  explained  it.  And  hence  it  was  that 
he  himself,  great  philosopher  as  he  was  or  might  have  become, 
dedicated  his  life  to  giving  us  Rembrandt-like  pictures  of  the 
world  and  of  human  beings  here  and  there,  histories,  biographies, 
and  so  on,  but  not  a  systematic  Philosophy  aiming  at  a  full 
explanation  either  of  the  External  World,  of  Man,  of  Society,  or 
of  the  Human  Mind;  while  the  dark  background  of  mystery 
behind  and  beyond  it  all,  his  Puritanic  temper  led  him  to 
represent  as  a  background  of  gloom,  not  to  be  penetrated,  but 
to  be  referred  to  vaguely  and  with  awe-stricken  solemnity  as 
the  region  of  *  the  Immensities  and  the  Eternities.' 

With  Emerson,  too,  as  with  the  rest  of  the  Poetic  Thinkers, 
the  visible  world  is  the  clothing,  garment,  mirror  and  outward 
expression  of  the  invisible  world  of  Spirit,  or  say  rather  its  very 
life,  as  the  leaves  and  blossoms  of  a  tree  are  the  outward 
expression  of  its  life,  and  exists  not  merely  to  feed  and  clothe 
us  but  to  discipline  and  teach  us  what  we  are  to  think  and 
believe,  do  or  avoid.  It  is  there  to  give  us  the  images  which 
in  turn  give  us  the  language  by  which  Ave  teach  one  another ; 
and  to  show  us,  as  Goethe  says  first  love  does,  that  there  is 
Beauty  at  the  heart  of  things ;  as  well  as  to  teach  us  by  its 
reactions  and  compensations  that  it  is  bi-polar  and  double- 
edged,  and  so  that  the  Soul  of  the  World  is  just.  And  finally 
Nature,  by  the  way  in  which  she  responds  to  our  moods  and 
takes  their  hue  and  impress,  teaches  us  that  we  all  have 
precisely  the  world  that  corresponds  to  our  own  souls,  and  that 
as  we  drink  deeper  of  the  divine  springs  she  herself  will  appear 
more  beautiful  and  ennobled,  until  at  last  should  we  ever  again 
come  to  the  primitive  state  of  purity  and  innocence  fabled  of 
man  before  the  Fall,  the  evil  we  now  see  will  disappear,  and 
to  our  hypnotized  eyes  and  soul  all  will  seem  '  very  good ; '  the 
snakes,  the  spiders,  and  beetles  which  now  repel  us  will  seem 
to  us  when  we  are  no  longer  afraid  of  their  bites  or  stings,  as 

DD 


418  THE    POETIC   THINKERS. 

they  did  to  the  First  Man,  or  as  they  tend  to  do  now  to  the 
•eye  of  the  entranced  physiologist,  beautiful  adaptations  merely, 
and  not  evil  at  all.  And  hence  he  concludes  that  all  we  have 
to  do  to  make  for  ourselves  a  Heaven  here,  is  to  purify  our 
own  souls.  And  in  this  way  he  anticipates  the  man  that  is  to 
be,  and  expresses  not  what  was  true  of  Adam  in  Paradise,  but 
what  shall  be  true  of  our  descendants  in  remote  ages  of 
evolution. 

Newman,  too,  holds  by  the  same  general  ideas  and  lives  in 
the  same  great  thought ;  but  Christian  Theologian  as  he  is,  he 
gives  the  facts  an  altogether  different  complexion.  In  hie 
'Apologia'  he  tells  us  he  carried  about  with  him  habitually  the 
impression  that  men  and  things  as  we  see  them  around  us, 
were  but  half  real,  that  they  were  but  spirits  walking,  the 
symbols  and  incarnation  of  spiritual  realities  and  verities ;  not 
however  of  the  powers  of  Good,  but  as  in  bondage  to  the 
powers  of  Evil;  that  they  seemed  veiled  and  weeping  as  if 
bemoaning  their  lost  Eden  and  bewailing  the  Fall,  and  as  if 
awaiting  another  incarnation  of  the  Good  to  restore  to  them 
their  innocence  and  purity  again.  Coming  to  Nature  not 
as  Emerson  did  from  the  Greek  standpoint  of  a  joyous  and 
unsuspicious  innocence  and  purity,  but  from  the  Hebraic 
conception  of  disobedience,  all  things  seemed  to  him  to  speak 
of  Sin  and  of  the  necessity  of  another  incarnation,  of  another 
Spirit  made  flesh,  who  should  bring  forgiveness  and  reconcilia- 
tion with  him  ;  thus  supporting  Emerson  in  his  doctrine  that 
we  make  our  own  wTorld  of  Nature  and  Life,  according  to  the 
bias  and  complexion  of  our  own  souls. 

Now  not  only  did  these  Poetic  Thinkers  all  avoid  the  first 
great  error  into  which  we  have  seen  the  Materialists  and 
Metaphysicians  have  fallen, — namely  of  attempting  to  explain 
the  Universe  of  Mind  and  Matter — by  keeping  to  the  safe 
ground  of  showing  that  the  one  was  the  expression  of  the  other  ; 
but  as  a  consequence  of  this  they  were  enabled  to  avoid  the 
second  great  error  of  these  Materialists  and  Metaphysicians, 


THE   POETIC    THINKERS.  419 

namely  of  making  out  of  the  few  principles  by  which  they 
professed  to  explain  the  World,  an  artificial  eye,  and  then 
bringing  this  to  the  observation  and  explanation  of  individual 
things ;  in  this  way  seeing  all  things  falsely  and  out  of  focus, 
perspective,  and  proportion.  Instead  of  doing  this  the  Poetic 
Thinkers,  on  the  contrary,  have  regarded  the  Mind  as  an 
organized  whole  as  the  natural  eye  through  which  alone  things 
can  be  seen  in  their  true  bearings,  and  have  used  the  separate 
faculties  of  the  mind  as  instruments  merely. 

Bacon,  we  saw  concerning  himself  (before  making  his 
observations  on  Life  and  Nature)  rather  with  clearing  the 
natural  intellectual  eye  to  keep  it  free  from  fog  and  illusion, 
than  with  attempting  to  replace  it  by  any  artificial  eye  whatever, 
of  what  principles  soever  composed ;  and  Goethe  never  for  a 
moment  neglects  to  keep  separate  intellectual  instruments  of 
truth ;  using,  as  we  have  seen,  the  understanding  for  purely 
scientific  purposes,  the  sympathies  and  sensibilities  for  poetic 
and  religious,  and  the  mind  as  a  whole  for  co-ordinating  them 
all  and  giving  them  their  true  bearings  and  relations. 

So,  too,  Carlyle  in  the  '  Sartor '  is  constantly  reiterating  in 
one  form  or  another  that  to  look  at  the  World  with  the  view 
of  interpreting  it  through  the  laws  of  Physical  Science  only, 
is  like  looking  at  it  through  a  pair  of  spectacles  behind  which 
there  is  no  eye ;  and  compares  such  an  instrument  to  the 
Doctor's  head  in  the  Arabian  tale,  which  if  set  in  a  basin  to 
keep  it  alive  would  answer  quite  as  well  and  would  go  on 
grinding  out  such  laws  for  ever,  without  the  shadow  of  a 
heart. 

Emerson,  too,  is  firm  on  the  same  point.  He  insists  that 
the  World  as  a  whole  cannot  be  properly  explained  by  any 
addition  or  subtraction  or  combination  of  Physical  or 
Psychological  laws,  as  particular  things  or  processes  like  the 
phenomena  of  digestion  or  of  a  disease  of  the  brain  can  be ; 
but  only  by  bringing  the  whole  mind,  as  it  were,  with  all  its 
special  powers  and  faculties  in  free  and  vigorous  exercise,  full 


420  THE    POETIC   THINKERS. 

on  every  point ;  as  one  can  only  get  the  relative  bearings  of 
objects  in  the  landscape  by  bringing  to  each  and  every  point 
of  it  the  complex  unity  of  the  organized  human  eye. 

Newman,  again,  in  his  '  Grammar  of  Assent,'  it  may  be 
remembered,  makes  the  mind  as  an  organic  whole,  with  its 
sentiments,  intuitions  and  all,  compacted  into  a  unity,  his 
organon  for  the  discovery  of  truth,  under  the  name  of  the 
f  Illative  Sense.'  But  his  error  lay,  I  think,  in  his  carrying 
this  organon  which  was  so  true  for  the  world  as  a  whole,  into 
those  special  problems  of  life  and  society  where  purely  scientific 
methods  and  instruments  are  alone  in  place,  or  where  in  the 
event  of  a  conflict  of  evidence,  the  decision  should  rest  with 
them ;  the  difference  in  this  respect  between  him  and  the 
Scientific  Materialists  being  that  whereas  they  fell  into  error 
by  using  an  instrument  suitable  only  for  special  departments  of 
research,  for  the  problem  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  he  used  an 
instrument  proper  to  the  problem  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  for 
the  solution  of  problems  falling  under  special  departments  of 
Physical  Science  and  Psychology.  And  indeed  if  we  consider 
it  well,  to  employ  anything  less  than  the  whole  human  mind 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  would  be  to 
stultify  the  entire  ground-plan  of  Evolution  which  proceeds 
on  the  assumption  that  the  organ  or  instrument  which  it  has 
taken  ages  to  evolve,  is  the  fittest  organ  or  instrument  for  the 
work  which  it  has  to  perforin.  It  would  be  as  absurd  to 
expect  to  get  a  harmonious  view  of  the  World  as  a  whole  by 
cutting  off  any  power,  function,  or  faculty  of  the  organized 
human  mind,  as  it  would  be  to  expect  to  get  a  harmonious  and 
all-round  impression  of  an  external  object  by  cutting  off  the 
evidence  of  one  or  more  of  the  senses. 

Now  the  consequence  of  this  use  by  the  Poetic  Thinkers  of 
the  mind  as  an  organic  whole  in  all  their  studies  of  Life  and 
Nature,  was  such  a  number  of  profound  observations  of  the 
world  and  of  life  as  is  not  to  be  matched  in  the  writings  of  any 
other  body  of  men,  and  as  you  would  in  vain  look  for  in  the 


THE   POETIC    THINKERS.  421 

writings  of  the  Theologians,  the  Metaphysicians,  the  Materialists, 
or  the  Psychologists.  The  works  of  these  Poetic  Thinkers  one 
and  all  are  distinguished  for  this  wisdom  of  life,  this  insight  into 
human  nature  and  motive,  this  knowledge  of  the  ways  of  men, this 
prophetic  insight  into  the  drift  and  trend  of  events ;  Bacon  and 
Goethe  proverbially  so ;  Emerson  and  Carlyle  scarcely  less  so ; 
while  none  understands  better  than  the  Theologian  Newman,  the 
motives  and  principles  of  action  of  the  men  of  the  world  and 
politicians,  or  the  points  of  view  of  the  average  sensuous  man  of 
the  market  and  the  street ;  or  has  better  characterized  and 
described  them. 

It  is  only  when  we  come  to  the  practical  problem  of  what  we 
are  to  do  and  to  whom  or  what  we  are  to  look  for  guidance  in 
this  world,  that  we  find  these  Poetic  Thinkers  differing  widely 
among  themselves.  They  all  agree,  as  we  have  seen,  that  the 
world  of  Nature  and  of  Human  Life  exists  for  our  guidance,  is 
here  to  represent  a  spiritual  Reality,  and  to  teach  us  what  we 
are  to  do  and  to  believe.  But  the  world  of  Nature  and  of 
Human  Life  is  a  large  and  varied  area  from  which  to  make 
choice  of  our  counsellors  and  guides;  and  it  is  mainly  on 
differences  in  temper  and  personal  bias,  that  the  differences  of 
choice  in  this  respect  among  these  thinkers  will  be  found  to 
depend. 

Bacon,  of  course,  accepted  Revelation  pure  and  simple  as  his 
guide  for  the  higher  things  of  the  spirit ;  trusting  to  knowledge 
of  the  human  mind  (mainly  on  the  shady  side)  for  government, 
state-craft,  and  policy;  and  to  the  Physical  Science  of  the 
future,  for  all  progress  in  the  arts  and  comforts  of  life. 

Goethe  here  as  elsewhere  is  the  most  many-sided  and  free 
from  theory  or  personal  bias  of  any  kind,  and  uses  with  equal 
indifference  every  instrument  that  comes  to  his  hand,  for  his 
great  end  of  Culture — Science,  Nature,  Art,  Books,  Men, 
History  and  Biography,  Action  and  Contemplation,  Religion, 
Self-Renunciation,  and  the  practice  of  a  moderate  and  regulated 
Asceticism.    It  is  only  when  we  come  to  Carlyle,  Emerson,  and 


422  THE    POETIC    THINKERS. 

Newman,  that  the  effects  of  special  training,  of  personal  bias, 
and  of  certain  elements  of  theory,  in  restricting  this  equal  and 
all-round  sympathy  of  Goethe,  are  seen. 

Carlyle's  position  is  the  logical  outcome  of  a  mixture  of  all 
three,  of  special  theory,  of  a  particular  training,  and  of  personal 
bias.  To  begin  with  he  has  a  theory  that  Society,  like  the 
World  in  general,  although  always  changing  never  advances. 
He  sees  that  all  tilings  work  together,  and  that  the  results  of 
one  generation  are  transmitted  to  the  next  by  tradition,  but  he 
believes  that  like  Nature,  Society  swings  backwards  and 
forwards  in  perpetual  flux  of  ebb  and  flow  of  moral  and  spiritual 
activity,  and  swims  like  Nature  herself,  in  an  unknown  direction 
over  unknown  seas  of  mystery  and  darkness.  The  consequence 
is  that  as  he  can  find  no  definite  line  of  tendency  along  which 
Society  as  a  whole  is  advancing,  which  may  furnish  him  with  a 
guide  to  Action,  he  is  obliged  to  fall  back  on  individuals,  and 
the  question  becomes  on  whom?  To  answer  this  he  starts 
with  the  assumption  that  the  great  masses  of  men  are  incapable 
either  of  culture  or  morality,  and  if  left  to  themselves  without 
guidance,  would  soon  relapse  into  barbarism  ;  and  accordingly 
he  has  to  look  out  for  appropriate  leaders  armed  with  the 
requisite  power  and  authority.  And  on  enquiring  as  to  what 
the  power  is  by  which  men  are  willingly  led,  he  answers,  by  the 
power  of  their  own  imaginations,  that  is  to  say  by  what  they 
imagine  they  see  behind  the  outward  and  visible  clothing  of 
men,  behind  their  personal  appearance,  their  manners,  their 
words,  and  their  actions ;  and  he  concludes  that  as  the  words 
and  deeds  of  Great  Men  have  ever  been  the  most  calculated  to 
impress  and  enchain  the  imaginations  of  men,  (as  indeed  they 
may  be  said  to  be  the  best  *  clothed '  intellectually,  morally, 
and  physically)  so  it  is  but  right  and  natural  that  the  Great 
Men  of  each  age  or  generation  should  be  chosen  as  its  guides, 
counsellors,  law-givers,  and  leaders.  Whether  the  Hero  shall 
be  military  or  political,  prophet,  priest,  or  philosopher,  will,  he 
thinks,  be  determined  by  the  particular  form  which  the  Age 


THE   POETIC   THINKERS.  423 

most  requires ;  and  he  gets  over  the  difficulty  that  a  multiplicity 
of  heroes  of  variously  different  kinds  may  be  required  at  one 
and  the  same  time,  by  another  theory  on  which  he  lays  the 
greatest  stress.  It  is  that  the  intellectual,  the  spiritual,  the 
moral,  are  all  sides  of  one  and  the  same  power,  and  are  inter- 
changeable. Now  this  theory  although  perhaps  true  abstractly 
or  in  tendency,  is  not  so  in  actual  practical  fact,  and  is  in 
consequence  a  broken  reed  on  which  to  lean  in  the  affairs  of 
life.  But  Carlyle,  nothing  daunted,  pushes  it  home  to  its 
utmost  conclusion  and  boldly  declares  that  the  Hero  who  is 
great  in  one  direction  is  potentially  so  in  all,  that  he  can  turn 
his  hand  to  any  kind  of  work  if  required,  can  be  prophet, 
priest,  philosopher,  or  king,  according  as  the  exigencies  of  the 
time  demand.  Hero-worship,  accordingly,  is  his  universal 
panacea  for  the  necessities  of  each  and  every  age.  But  when 
he  goes  on  to  consider  practically  in  what  form  among  so  many, 
his  hero  shall  appear,  his  personal  bias  begins  to  show  itself. 
Holding  as  he  very  justly  did,  that  without  morality  society 
cannot  hold  together  at  all,  the  excess  of  emphasis  which  his 
Puritan  temper  laid  on  religion  and  morals,  caused  him  to  lop 
off  from  the  all-round  requisites  which  Goethe  demanded  in 
his  fully-equipped  man,  most  of  the  scientific,  and  practically 
all  the  artistic  and  aesthetic  culture,  and  to  restrict  the  equip- 
ments of  his  Hero  to  two  mainly,  namely  Religion  and  Action. 
The  Hero,  accordingly,  in  his  capacity  at  once  of  Prophet  and 
King  was  the  leader  who  in  the  eyes  of  Carlyle  was  required 
for  the  necessities  of  society  not  only  in  our  own  but  in  all 
times. 

Emerson,  on  the  contrary,  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have 
restricted  on  any  side  the  sympathy  and  tolerance  of  his  mind, 
which  was  as  many-sided  almost  as  that  of  Goethe  ;  but  even  he 
had  his  theory  which  derogated  from  his  general  influence 
although  not  interfering,  as  we  have  seen,  with  his  practical 
penetration.  Agreeing,  as  he  does,  with  Carlyle  that  the  world 
of  visible  Nature  exists  as  the  representative  and  exponent  of 


424  THE   POETIC   THINKERS. 

the  Deity,  he  denies  that  any  one  species  of  excellence,  even  the 
Great  Man  himself,  is  worthy  to  constitute  itself  His  repre- 
sentative, but  believes  that  as  it  takes  the  whole  landscape  to 
give  us  the  poetry,  so  it  takes  the  whole  of  society  to  give  us  the 
excellence  which  our  ideal  demands.  He  declares  that  each 
individual  has  his  peculiar  quality  of  excellence  which  is 
inalienable  and  not  to  be  appropriated  by  another;  that  each 
man  has  something  to  learn  from  all,  and  all  from  each ;  and 
that  in  consequence,  as  the  welfare  of  society  consists  not  in  the 
aggrandizement  of  one  person  but  in  a  general  excellence,  each 
man  should  rely  on  himself,  and  make  the  most  of  his  own 
particular  gift,  humbly  submitting  himself  for  the  result  to  the 
Divine  Will.  And  lastly,  as  each,  in  his  theory,  lies  open,  as 
we  have  seen,  on  one  or  other  of  his  sides  to  the  whole  mind  of 
God,  as  the  waters  of  a  bay  do  to  the  ocean,  so  in  the  last  resort 
he  can  fall  back  on  that  Divine  mind  and  be  fed  by  it  as  from 
an  inexhaustible  fountain,  without  other  extraneous  aid ;  neither 
Hero,  nor  Church,  nor  Society,  being  necessary  to  him,  but  only 
that  Divine  Voice  with  which  he  is  ever  in  communication,  and 
from  which  if  he  listens  in  all  humility,  he  will  hear  the  right 
word. 

With  Newman,  too,  as  with  the  other  Poetic  Thinkers,  the 
visible  world  of  Nature  and  of  Life  exists  as  the  representative 
and  exponent  of  Spiritual  Realities,  but  participating,  as  it  does, 
in  Adam's  Fall,  it  stands  there  as  the  representative  and 
embodiment  of  Evil  rather  than  of  Good.  Instead,  therefore, 
of  Nature  and  Life  being  our  teachers  and  guides  as  to  what  we 
are  to  do  and  to  follow,  they  are  witnesses  rather  of  our  guilt, 
and  warnings  as  to  what  we  are  to  avoid.  Since  the  Fall,  and 
until  the  advent  of  Jesus  Christ,  God  had,  he  thinks,  with  the 
exception  of  certain  Prophets  sent  for  special  purposes,  no 
visible  representatives  of  Himself  in  the  world  of  Nature  or  of 
Human  Life.  And  since  the  Advent  of  Christ,  no  series  of 
merely  Great  Men  appearing  from  age  to  age  were  to  be 
recognized  as  our  guides,  as  with  Carlyle ;  nor  was  the  infinite 


THE   POETIC   THINKERS.  425 

unfathomed  sea  of  Spirit  to  which  our  souls  have  access  and  on 
which  they  can  draw  at  will,  to  be  our  monitor  as  with 
Emerson ;  but  Jesus  Christ  alone.  But  as  the  life-in-the-flesh 
of  Jesus  as  of  other  mortals,  was  but  a  transient  phenomenon,  it 
is  evident,  says  Newman,  that  if  His  teaching  and  influence 
were  to  be  enduring  he  must  leave  behind  him  some  visible 
representative  of  Himself.  Not  a  mere  Book,  for  that  must 
either  be  so  literal  and  inelastic  as  to  be  useless  as  a  guide  for 
any  age  but  that  for  which  it  was  written,  or  so  spiritual  and 
elastic  as  to  be  able  to  support  any  doctrine  or  course  of  conduct 
that  is  found  to  bring  spiritual  comfort  to  the  soul ;  nor  yet  a 
series  of  isolated  men  in  every  place  and  time  grounding  them- 
selves on  the  Book,  for  owing  to  the  infinite  diversity  of 
temperament,  personal  bias,  or  spiritual  affinity,  they  would 
soon  be  found  to  split  themselves  into  infinite  differences  of 
opinion  as  to  what  the  Book  required  under  every  fresh 
combination  of  circumstances  that  arose,  were  it  not,  indeed, 
that  the  simple  Cross  of  Christ  and  the  tendency  men  have  to 
go  in  groups,  were  constantly  knitting  them  together  again. 
But  the  simple  Cross  of  Christ  is  of  use  only  for  the  temper  of 
mind  it  produces  and  for  the  comfort  it  brings  to  the  private 
heart,  not  for  guidance  and  direction  in  the  complex  and  ever- 
varying  situations  of  practical  life.  And  for  this,  besides  the 
Civil  Power,  nothing  less  than  some  Institution  founded  on  the 
life  and  teaching  of  Jesus,  armed  with  his  authority,  and  made 
infallible  by  the  direct  and  constant  communication  of  his  Spirit, 
could  avail — an  Institution  in  which  the  transient  individual, 
however  great,  is  absorbed  and  lost,  and  that  abides  while  all 
else  decays,  an  Institution  that  is  sacred  through  and  through, 
and  that  like  the  hem  of  Christ's  garment,  radiates  the  grace 
originally  communicated  to  it  by  its  Founder,  not  merely  from 
its  priests,  its  martyrs,  and  its  saints,  but  from  the  meanest 
utensils  consecrated  in  its  service. 

Such  an  Institution  did  Newman  with  his  personal  piety,  his 
Hebraic  temper  (deeply  conscious  as  he  was  of  sin  and  of  the 


426  THE   POETIC   THINKERS. 

need  of  reconciliation  and  forgiveness),  demand  for  the 
satisfaction  of  his  nature ;  and  believing,  as  he  did,  that 
material  and  visible  things  were  not  only  the  symbols  and 
expression  of  Divine  things,  but  that  they  were  the  instruments 
of  communicating  them  as  well,  so  that  images  and  relics  and 
all  else  to  which  grace  had  been  communicated  by  contact, 
could  by  contact  communicate  it  in  turn  to  others  in  faith ;  he 
found  that  a  consensus  of  probabilities  sufficient  for  certitude 
pointed  to  the  Catholic  Church  with  its  sacraments,  its 
hierarchies,  its  mysteries,  as  his  true  guide,  and  which  after 
long  and  weary  wandering  brought  him  to  his  home  at  last. 


CHAPTEK    X. 


MY  CONTRIBUTION. 

T)UT  in  spite  of  my  agreement  in  method  and  point  of  view 
"*"^  with  these  Poetic  Thinkers,  these  master-spirits  of  the 
Modern  World,  who  represented  each  in  his  way  the  height  not 
only  of  the  mental  power  but  of  the  culture  of  his  time,  there 
was  no  one  of  them  whose  practical  solution  of  the  World- 
problem  precisely  met  the  particular  difficulties  with  which  I  was 
confronted.  From  the  time  of  my  reading  of  the  Metaphysical 
Thinkers  I  saw  that  although  the  faculties  of  man  were  equal 
to  all  the  problems  of  practical  life  that  were  likely  to  arise 
from  his  situation  and  environment,  it  was  hopeless  to  attempt 
to  explain  either  the  World  or  the  Human  Mind  by  any  law  or 
combination  of  laws  open  to  him  in  his  present  stage  of 
development,  with  his  limited  number  of  special  senses  and  a 
range  of  mentality  which  unless  all  evolution  is  at  fault,  can 
only  be  on  the  way  to  higher  stages  of  thought  and  existence. 
I  saw,  too,  the  absurdity  of  making  an  intellectual  eye  of  these 
few  laws,  and  then  insisting  on  reading  the  history  of  Man  and 
Nature  through  the  eye  so  made,  as  was  done  by  Darwin, 
Spencer,  and  Hegel,  although  at  the  same  time  I  fully  admitted 
the  value  of  the  widest  generalizations  as  preliminary  hypotheses 
for  suggestion,  for  the  opening  up  of  new  fields  of  research, 
and  for  bringing  as  wide  a  tract  of  territory  as  possible  under 
the  dominion  of  natural  law ;   and  I  could  only  conclude  that 


428  MY   CONTRIBUTION. 

the  mind  as  an  organized  whole,  using  its  separate  parts  as 
instruments  for  special  purposes,  was  the  one  true  Organon  or 
method  for  a  just  insight  into  the  World  as  a  whole.  And 
lastly,  I  saw  that  although  you  could  neither  explain  Mind  by 
the  movements  of  Matter,  as  Spencer  attempted  to  do,  nor 
Matter  by  the  movements  of  Mind  or  Spirit,  as  Hegel  did,  you 
could  as  a  matter  of  fact  indicate  the  relation  existing  between 
the  two;  and  that  you  were  on  the  safe  ground  of  observed 
fact  in  declaring  with  the  Poetic  Thinkers,  that  Spirit  or  Mind 
is  primary,  and  that  (on  any  hypothesis  as  to  how  they  were 
specially  connected)  Matter  and  all  visible  and  tangible  things 
exist  to  represent  these  spiritual  things  and  to  body  them  forth, 
for  our  instruction,  guidance,  and  discipline. 

But  agreeing,  as  I  did,  with  the  Poetic  Thinkers  in  their  great 
general  principles,  I  found  myself,  as  I  have  said,  unable  to 
accept  their  practical  solutions  of  the  Problem  of  the  World, 
owing  mainly  to  two  great  difficulties.  In  the  first  place,  like 
the  Metaphysicians  they  all,  with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of 
Goethe,  represent  the  mind  as  an  entity  existing  apart  from  and 
independent  of  the  mechanism  of  the  brain  and  nervous  system, 
thus  ignoring  a  doctrine  which  has  been  growing  in  favour, 
indeed,  for  the  last  hundred  years,  but  which  has  only  been 
put  on  a  scientific  basis  since  their  time,  chiefly  through  the 
works  of  Spencer  and  the  Physiologists  and  Psychologists. 
Bacon  and  Newman,  as  Christian  Thinkers,  accepted  as  was 
natural,  the  doctrine  of  the  separate  and  independent  existence 
of  a  soul  apart  from  the  body ;  so  too,  did  Carlyle  and  Emerson ; 
Carlyle  regarding  the  body,  in  the  s  Sartor,'  as  a  garment  of 
which  the  mind  could  as  easily  divest  itself,  as  the  body  itself  can 
of  its  clothes ;  while  Emerson  so  scouts  the  idea  of  the  state  of 
the  brain  being  any  bar  to  thought,  that  he  figures  man,  as  we 
have  seen,  as  having  an  inlet  to  a  Universal  Soul  on  which  he 
can  draw  at  will ;  thought  and  emotion  depending  not  on  the 
condition,  state,  or  quality  of  the  brain,  but  on  the  height  to 
which   this    Universal   Soul    rises   in   the   individual,    as    the 


MY   CONTRIBUTION.  429 

mercury  rises  in  a  thermometer.  With  an  ocean  of  soul  on 
which  to  draw,  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  find  the  ideal, 
whether  it  be  of  God  or  Immortality;  indeed  by  taking  a 
sufficient  draught  of  it  you  can,  as  we  saw  Emerson  doing,  get 
rid  of  Evil  altogether. 

If  the  Poetic  Thinkers  had  thus  like  the  Metaphysicians  an 
easy  task  in  finding  their  Ideal  in  the  mind,  by  ignoring  the 
main  difficulty  with  which  I  was  confronted,  namely  the 
dependence  of  mental  phenomena  on  physical  and  material 
conditions  of  the  brain  and  nervous  system,  they  failed  me 
altogether  in  my  main  desire  which  was  to  find  the  Ideal  in 
the  world.  For  they  one  and  all  regarded  the  world  as  con- 
stantly changing,  indeed,  but  not  advancing,  as  changing  its 
vices  from  age  to  age  rather  than  making  steady  progress  in 
virtue  and  morality.  From  which  it  followed  that  as  Evil  had 
always  been  in  the  world  to  cast  doubt  on  the  existence  and 
reality  of  the  Ideal,  so  it  always  would  continue  to  be ;  and  I 
saw  that  unless  I  could  show  that  the  world  was  continually 
advancing,  continually  throwing  off  its  own  evils  and 
impurities,  and  that  things  were  slowly  but  surely  ascending 
towards  the  heights  where  the  Ideal  reigned, — towards  Justice, 
Beauty,  Goodness  and  Truth, — there  would  be  in  the  absence  of 
a  future  state  of  perfection  and  bliss,  no  chance  of  finding  the 
Ideal  either  in  this  world  or  the  next,  and  no  reason  for 
believing  that  there  was  a  Divine  Mind  behind  things  at  all. 
And  if  there  were  no  Ideal  in  the  world,  then  I  saw  that  the 
Goethe-Carlyle  solution  of  the  Problem  of  Life  by  Self- 
renunciation,  was  good  only  for  those  persons  who  wanted  to 
know  how  they  could  be  blessed  while  living  in  this  world,  of 
which  they  had  to  make  the  best  as  of  a  bad  bargain,  but  not 
for  me  or  for  those  like  me  whose  main  concern  was  whether 
there  were  anywhere  in  this  world  or  another,  any  Ideal  in 
whose  service  or  in  the  contemplation  of  whose  excellences 
life  could  be  made  worth  living  at  all. 

Accordingly    when   I    took   up    the   problem   on   my   own 


430  MY   CONTRIBUTION. 

account,  and  under  the  new  conditions  imposed  on  it  by  the 
Materialists  and  Psychologists,  I  had  to  find  the  Ideal  anew 
both  in  the  mind  and  in  the  world.  I  had  to  find  it,  not  as 
the  Poetic  Thinkers  and  Metaphysicians  had  done  in  a  mind 
existing  independently  of  external  conditions,  but  in  a  mind 
chained  to  and  dependent  on  the  material  organization  of  the 
brain  and  nervous  system,  that  is  to  say  on  Matter,  in  which 
no  Ideal  can  be  found.  Not  only  so,  but  I  had  to  find  it  in  a 
mind  in  which  not  only  the  old  stand-bye  of  Conscience  or  the 
Moral  Sense,  but  Reverence  and  Love  also  had  been  reduced 
by  the  Metaphysicians  and  Psychologists  into  forms  of  self- 
interest  or  selfishness  merely,  variously  disguised. 

Now  to  find  the  Ideal  in  a  mind  which  on  the  one  hand  was 
but  a  function  of  Matter,  and  on  the  other,  if  the  Psychologists 
were  right,  was  but  a  subtle  and  complex  organ  for  the 
furtherance  of  self-interest,  or  at  most  of  race  interests  merely, 
I  saw  that  several  things  were  necessary.  In  the  first  place  I 
saw  that  I  should  have  to  find  something  in  the  mind  that  was 
not  of  the  mind,  if  one  may  say  so ;  in  the  second  place,  that 
I  should  have  to  find  something  that  was  not  an  organ,  or 
faculty,  or  sentiment,  but  that  gave  to  the  organs,  faculties, 
and  sentiments  their  fixed  relative  positions  and  ranking;  and 
lastly,  something  that  was  not,  like  the  moral  sense,  decom- 
posable into  the  form  of  some  other  function  or  faculty,  but 
that  remained  ever  itself  and  unchangeable.  What  I  wanted, 
in  a  word,  was  something  that  would  answer  in  a  way  to  the 
Judge  in  a  court  of  law,  who  although  in  the  court  is,  as  it 
were,  not  of  it,  but  is  the  representative  of  a  Power  distinct 
from  each  or  all  the  parties  to  the  suit ;  or,  again,  to  a  King 
who  confers  on  his  subjects  their  respective  ranks  as  nobles, 
plebians,  and  the  like ;  or  to  a  Light  which  proves  its  presence 
by  casting  shadows  from  all  objects  not  of  the  same  nature  as 
itself. 

Now  that  there  is  something  in  the  mind  that  is  not  a 
faculty  or  organ  of  the  mind,  was  manifest  to  me  from  this, 


MY   CONTRIBUTION.  431 

that  these  organs  and  faculties  and  sentiments  have  a  fixed 
ranking  among  themselves,  some  of  them  being  classed  as  low, 
others  as  high.  A  miscellaneous  collection  of  faculties  or 
powers  could  no  more  rank  themselves  without  reference  to 
something  outside  themselves,  than  men  can  make  themselves 
into  a  hierarchy  without  reference  to  some  outside  standard. 
That  this  something  was  not  of  the  mind  was  manifest  too 
from  this,  that  while  the  different  organs  of  the  mind  have 
different  estimates  put  on  them  by  different  people  or  at 
different  times,  conscience,  for  example,  being  at  one  time  or 
by  one  class  of  thinkers  regarded  as  a  finger  pointing  to  the 
Divine,  at  another  time  or  by  another  class,  as  a  mere  form  of 
expediency  or  self-interest ;  it,  the  something  of  which  I  speak, 
abides  as  an  unchanging  standard  to  which  appeal  is  made,  and 
which  while  judging  all,  is  itself  judged  by  none ;  in  the  same 
way  as  the  standard  against  which  boys  measure  themselves 
and  which  determines  their  respective  heights,  remains  fixed 
and  unchanging  in  spite  of  all  dispute.  And  lastly,  that  there 
is  something  in  the  mind,  which  is  not  of  the  mind  seemed 
clear  to  me  from  the  fact  that  while  in  animals  all  the  functions 
and  faculties  are  exercised  without  reproach  or  shame,  in  man 
all  the  lower  appetites  and  passions  and  all  that  is  ignoble  or 
base  casts  a  shadow  either  of  remorse,  or  shame,  or  reproach, 
thus  proving  that  a  light  has  been  introduced  among  them 
from  without ;  the  fact  that  some  of  the  higher  animals  exhibit 
the  same  phenomena  although  in  a  less  degree,  being  only  what 
we  should  expect  since  the  doctrine  of  Evolution  has  shown  us 
that  there  is  no  such  chasm  between  man  and  the  animal  as 
was  once  supposed. 

Now  this  something  which  is  in  the  mind  but  not  of  it : 
which  is  not  a  faculty  but  a  judge  of  the  faculties  ;  which  is  not 
conscience,  honour,  beauty,  reverence,  or  love,  but  which  gives 
them  all  their  credentials  ;  which  casts  shadows  from  all  that  is 
dark  and  low  in  motive  or  sentiment,  but  none  from  what  is 
high  ;  which  has  authority  over  all  and  gives  rank  to  all ;  which 


432  MY   CONTRIBUTION. 

approves  or  censures ; — this  something  which  like  the  pole  star  is 
fixed  and  abiding  while  all  else  changes  or  is  dissolved,  this  is 
the  Ideal  in  the  mind,  of  which  I  was  in  search.  It  mattered 
not  whether  it  were  the  Divine  itself  in  the  mind,  or  only  its 
representative ;  whether  it  were  immaterial  like  spirit,  or  had  a 
material  organ  as  its  seat,  which  would  decay  and  die  like  the 
rest  of  the  individual ;  any  more  than  it  matters  that  a  Judge 
is  a  man  like  those  whom  he  judges,  or  that  a  King  has  a 
house  in  which  he  dwells,  as  his  subjects  have.  Nor  did  it 
make  any  difference  in  the  essential  point,  whether  as  sole 
sovereign  like  an  Emperor  it  imposed  its  authority  on  its 
subject  faculties  against  their  will,  or  like  the  President  of  a 
democratic  State  it  was  itself  elected  by  a  committee  chosen 
from  among  themselves ;  in  either  case  it  represented  and 
implied  a  fixed  standard  of  excellence  outside  themselves,  by 
which  all  alike  were  to  be  bound.  And  if  that  standard,  (as  is 
alleged  of  one  of  the  organs  of  the  Ideal,  namely  the  conscience 
or  moral  sense),  is  there  only  as  the  representative  of  the 
interests  of  the  family,  or  clan,  or  race,  or  nation  as  against  the 
interests  of  the  individual,  as  the  organs  of  generation  re- 
present the  interests  of  the  species  as  against  those  of  the 
individual,  in  the  body  ;  this  only  shifts  the  Ideal  from  its 
position  in  the  mind  to  a  similar  position  in  the  world  at  large. 
For  observe,  it  still  stands  as  arbiter  and  judge  between  family 
and  family,  clan  and  clan,  nation  and  nation;  acquitting  and 
condemning,  and  casting  its  shadow  athwart  all  in  their 
relations  that  is  base  and  dishonourable,  as  it  has  already  done 
between  individuals,  and  as  indeed  it  must  continue  to  do  until 
the  whole  world  is  conformed  to  its  image  and  to  its  law.  For 
although  circumstances  make  it  more  difficult  for  nations  to  be 
magnanimous  and  honourable,  generous  and  just  in  their 
relations  with  each  other  than  is  the  case  with  individuals,  still 
these  virtues  are  none  the  less  applauded  and  revered  when 
circumstances  make  it  possible  for  them  to  be  shown  between 
nations,  than  when  they  are  shown  between  individuals     and 


MY    CONTRIBUTION.  433 

this  must  continue,  as  we  have  seen,  until  among  the  nations  as 
among  individuals,  justice  flows  like  a  river  and  mercy  like  a 
running  stream.  And  what  is  this  but  to  have  thrown  back 
the  Ideal  from  the  individual  mind  on  to  the  world  at  large, 
where  after  all  it  is  of  most  importance  that  it  should  be  found. 
But  as  my  conviction  is  that  it  is  primarily  the  representative 
in  the  mind  of  the  Divine,  and  not  like  the  conscience  a  mere 
organ  of  the  mind  which  represents  (according  to  the 
Materialists),  the  interests  of  the  race,  I  shall  have  a  different 
series  of  proofs  for  its  existence  in  the  world,  which  we  shall 
consider  further  on. 

In  the  meantime  when  I  came  on  this  Ideal  in  the  mind  I 
felt  I  had  struck  on  a  vein  of  purest  gold  that  could  neither  be 
depreciated  nor  undermined, — whether  limited  in  its  manifesta- 
tions, as  I  believed,  by  the  quality  and  condition  of  the  brain 
through  which  it  acted ;  whether  virtue  and  honour  were  but 
forms  of  subtly  disguised  selfishness ;  or  whether  conscience 
were  a  quality  bred  out  of  the  necessity  under  which  clans  and 
races  and  nations  lie  of  protecting  themselves  in  the  struggle 
for  existence ;  and  in  my  first  published  work,  a  pamphlet 
entitled  '  God  or  Force  %  '  the  fortunes  of  which  we  shall  see  in 
the  next  chapter,  I  called  it  for  want  of  a  better  title  '  The 
Scale  in  the  Mind.'  It  was  the  representative  of  the  Divine 
standing  in  the  mind  and  shining  there,  casting  a  shadow  on 
all  that  was  low,  ignoble,  or  base  in  thought  or  feeling,  and 
judging  men  not  so  much  from  their  actions  as  from  the 
motives  and  aims  by  which  they  are  prompted.  To  quote 
from  the  pamphlet  I  have  mentioned — 

'  This  is  the  deepest  fact  in  the  human  consciousness,  standing 
at  the  back  of  all  our  thoughts,  feelings,  and  impulses,  and  giving 
them  their  relative  dignities.  It  will  be  best  described,  perhaps, 
by  indicating  the  part  it  plays  in  our  intelligence  which  is  built  up 
and  organized  around  it  like  crystals.  The  havoc  that  would  be 
made  of  all  our  ideas  if  it  were  cut  out  of  the  mind,  attests  its 
importance.  Properly  speaking,  it  is  not  a  faculty,  but  is  rather 
the  measure  of  the  faculties,  giving  them  their  relative  subordina- 
tions.    By  it  Justice,  Goodness,  Truth,  and  Beauty  are  marked 

EE 


434  MY    CONTRIBUTION. 

high ;  while  the  physical  sensations,  appetites,  and  passions  are 
marked  low.  All  persons  and  institutions  take  their  ranking  from 
it,  and  the  hierarchy  in  the  world  and  in  society  is  but  a  better  or 
worse  reflection  of  this  hierarchy  in  the  mind,  and  without  it 
would  fall  into  chaos.  It  is  perhaps  the  most  important  distinction 
between  man  and  the  lower  creation.  Animals  have  no  scale. 
With  them,  nothing  is  either  high  or  low,  noble  or  base.  They 
follow  all  their  instincts  indifferently,  without  compunction  and 
without  choice.  By  the  Scale,  too,  we  get  the  idea  of  quality  as 
distinguished  from  quantity.  Hence  a  spark  of  high  virtue  out- 
weighs mountains  of  utility.  The  Materialists  attempt  to  show 
that  unselfishness  springs  from  selfishness,  that  reverence  and 
conscience  spring  from  fear,  and  that  beauty  springs  from  an 
aggregate  of  low  pleasurable  associations.  But  these  respective 
attributes  as  they  range  themselves  along  the  Scale  are  seen  to  be 
as  different  in  their  essential  natures  as  a  beautiful  flower  is 
different  from  the  unsightly  root  out  of  which  it  grows.  It  is  the 
Scale  alone  that  puts  the  immense  interval  between  force  of  mind 
and  force  of  gravitation  ;  and  without  it,  God  and  Force  were  one. 
It  forever  repudiates  the  boasted  victory  of  Science  over  Religion 
by  announcing  that  the  essential  truths  of  each  lie  on  different 
planes.  By  it  we  are  forced  to  believe  that  the  First  Cause  of 
things  is  not  only  more  powerful,  but  also  higher  than  ourselves. 
By  it  we  are  made  to  feel  that  Pleasure  is  only  a  means,  but  that 
elevation  in  the  scale  of  Being  is  the  end  of  human  existence.  It 
has  been  remarked  by  Carlyle  that  there  is  nothing  so  interesting 
to  Man  as  Man,  as  is  proved  by  the  large  element  of  personality  that 
enters  into  nearly  all  conversation.  I  might  add  that  in  conversa- 
tion respecting  persons,  there  is  nothing  so  interesting  as  this 
ranking  of  men  and  their  procedure,  as  good,  bad,  indifferent,  and 
the  like.  The  greater  number  of  adjectives,  perhaps,  in  every 
language  reflect  in  one  form  or  another  the  Scale  in  the  mind. 
They  express  different  shades  of  quality  and  attribute,  in  positive, 
comparative,  aud  superlative  degrees.' 

And  then  I  proceed  to  show  how  from  the  neglect  of  this 

Scale,  Modern  Scientific  Materialism  is  convicted  of  inadequacy 

to  solve  the  World-Problem.     '  It  professes,'  I  go  on  to  say  : — 

1  to  account  for  the  phenomena  of  life,  mental  as  well  as  physical, 
by  physical  laws  alone  ;  that  is  to  say  by  the  knowledge  which  is 
derived  through  the  Outer  Senses.  But  to  the  Senses  there  is  no 
Scale.  To  the  Senses  there  can  be  no  difference  in  dignity  between 
the  motions  of  the  matter  which  forms  a  crystal,  and  the  motions 
of  the  nervous  fluid  which  forms  a  thought.  To  the  Senses  there 
can  be  no  difference  in  nature  between  the  motions  of  the  brain 
which  correspond  to  a  feeling  of  magnanimity  and  self-sacrifice, 


MY    CONTPtlBUTTON.  435 

and  the  motions  which  correspond  to  a  feeling  of  self-love  and 
selfishness.  The  Materialist  therefore  cannot  assume  the  Scale. 
If  he  does  assume  it,  it  is  only  by  abdicating  his  own  standpoint 
and  working  out  his  theories  by  the  help  of  an  intuition  which  he 
professes  to  discard.  If  he  does  not  assume  it,  he  is  committed  to 
endless  absurdities.  For  without  it  he  cannot  show  that  man  is 
superior  to  the  vegetable ;  that  self-sacrifice  is  higher  than  selfish- 
ness ;  duty  than  dishonesty ;  reverence  than  fear.  Mr.  Spencer 
the  most  wary  and  far-sighted  of  the  Materialists,  when  he  is 
consistent  with  himself  ignores  the  Scale,  and  we  shall  now  see 
what  it  reduces  him  to.  He  gravely  asks  us  to  consider  whether, 
after  all,  there  is  much  to  choose  between  the  force  of  mind  and 
the  force  of  heat !  Mind,  he  is  willing  to  admit,  can  do  some 
things  which  heat  cannot.  For  example  it  can  invent  a  sun-glass 
and  bring  the  rays  of  the  sun  to  a  focus.  But  heat,  in  other 
respects,  has  the  advantage  over  mind,  inasmuch  as  it  can  melt  the 
diamond  which  is  placed  within  that  focus !  This  topsy-turvydom 
of  all  human  categories  comes  of  ignoring  the  Scale.  But  when 
the  absurdities  to  which  his  philosophy  reduces  him  begin  to 
thicken  around  him,  he  is  forced  illegitimately  to  assume  the  Scale. 
He  then  tells  us  that  Life  is  high  in  proportion  to  the  complexity 
and  extent  of  an  animal's  relations.  For  this  reason  a  man  is 
higher  than  a  beaver,  a  beaver  than  a  polyp.  But  unless  the  Scale 
is  assumed,  why  should  the  more  complex  organization  be  higher 
than  the  simple  ?  Why  not  the  simple  be  higher  than  the  complex  ? 
If  he  reply  that  the  more  complex  can  fulfil  a  greater  number  of 
ends  than  the  simple,  we  have  still  to  ask  why  that  should  constitute 
it  a  higher  thing ;  unless  indeed  the  ends  are  higher  ;  and  that  would 
still  involve  our  assuming  the  Scale.  Indeed,  except  by  assuming 
the  Scale,  it  would  be  impossible  to  show  the  superiority  of  Mind 
over  the  clod  of  Matter  on  which  we  tread.' 

And  I  continue — 

'  Again,  as  Materialism  cannot  assume  the  Scale,  neither  can  it 
account  for  it.  It  may  point  out  the  relation  that  exists  between 
the  nervous  structure  of  the  brain  and  our  thoughts  and  feelings. 
It  may  argue  that  difference  in  structure  necessitates  difference  in 
function.  But  although  in  this  way  it  may  account  for  difference* 
in  our  feelings,  it  is  impossible  to  account  for  the  fixed  ranking  of 
them.  It  cannot  be  accounted  for  on  any  Experience  or  Evolution 
hypothesis.  The  .Poetic  Thinkers  who  accept  the  whole  human 
Consciousness  as  their  standpoint,  can,  of  course,  consistently  assume 
the  Scale.  But  nowhere,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  have  they  brought 
it  into  the  foreground,  and  used  it  as  I  have  done,  as  a  philo- 
sophical weapon. ' 

If  for  the  Scale  in  the  Mind  in  the  above  extracts  we  read 


436  MY    CONTRIBUTION. 

the  Ideal,  the  considerations  I  have  just  advanced  in  its 
support  would  be  practically  the  same  as  I  would  urge  to-day. 
It  was  my  first  contribution  to  the  question,  put  forward  for 
the  consideration  of  the  more  advanced  Thinkers  of  the  School 
of  Materialism  to  which  on  one  side  of  my  philosophy  I 
belonged. 

My  second  contribution  was  to  show  that  even  if  it  were 
true,  as  I  believed,  that  the  manifestations  of  Mind  were 
limited  by  the  condition  and  quality  of  the  brain  and  nervous 
system,  still  Physical  Science  and  the  laws  it  discovered  were 
not  the  true  standpoint  for  the  interpretation  of  the  Problem 
of  the  World.  And  to  show  this  I  began  by  backing  up  the 
contention  of  Goethe,  namely  that  different  mental  problems 
require  different  mental  instruments  for  their  solution,  by  the 
following  argument  in  the  same  pamphlet  : — 

*  Although  the  faculties  of  the  mind,  like  the  organs  of  the  body, 
are  mutually  interdependent  and  form  an  organic  unity  ;  like  the 
organs  of  the  body  too  they  have  each  their  own  special  and 
appropriate  functions.  The  Senses,  for  example,  apprize  us  of  the 
vicinity  of  objects  that  are  to  be  sought  or  avoided,  that  are 
beneficial  or  injurious  to  us.  The  Understanding  or  generalizing 
faculty  of  the  mind  shows  us  the  order  and  connexion  of  these 
objects,  and  shapes  and  adjusts  them  to  our  necessities  and  use. 
The  Inner  Spiritual  Senses  find  their  sphere  in  the  world  of  beauty, 
beneficence,  and  omnipresent  Power  around  us  and  pay  homage  to 
these  in  worship,  art,  and  self-renunciation.  The  Spiritual  Senses 
cease  their  function  when  they  have  supplied  us  with  the  raw 
material  of  knowledge  ;  the  Understanding  when  it  has  given  order 
and  connexion  to  this  material ;  to  the  Inner  Spiritual  Senses  alone 
is  the  Soul  that  works  through  and  behind  all  things,  disclosed. 
We  have  many  hints  given  us  that  these  different  instruments  of 
knowledge  are  limited  in  their  range,  and  soon  discover  that  any 
mistake  in  their  application  is  punished  by  confusion  of  thought. 
The  eyes  are  adapted  only  to  a  limited  range  of  vision ;  the  touch 
to  a  limited  degree  of  fineness.  When  the  mind  (basing  its 
judgments  on  experience)  passes  the  finite,  it  becomes  self- 
contradictory,  and  can  neither  conceive  of  Space  without  end,  nor 
of  an  end  to  Space.  The  beauty  that  is  apparent  to  the  naked  eye 
vanishes  under  the  microscope,  and  the  landscape  pleases  only 
when  seen  from  a  distance  where  ugly  details  are  lost  to  view.'  .... 
'  The  secret  of  harmonious  insight  lies  in  knowing,  as  Bacon  says, 


MY   CONTKIBUTION.  437 

when  to  contract  the  sight  and  when  to  dilate  it.  To  discover  the 
Physical  and  Organic  Laws  of  Nature,  the  naked  Senses  alone  do 
not  suffice.  We  have  to  arm  them  with  instruments  which  like 
the  microscope  increase  their  power  and  delicacy.  But  we  must 
drop  these  instruments  when  we  come  to  investigate  the  broad 
relations  that  exist  between  one  object  and  another,  or  between 
the  different  parts  of  the  same  object.  The  function  of  the  biceps 
muscle,  for  example,  is  as  clearly  to  flex  the  fore-arm,  as  the 
function  of  the  eye  is  to  enable  us  to  see.  But  it  is  evident  that  if 
we  were  to  decompose  the  muscle  into  the  innumerable  cells  and 
fibres  which  go  to  form  it,  and  apply  the  microscope  to  each  of 
them  in  turn,  we  never  could  understand  its  function  at  all.  In 
the  same  way,  to  see  the  harmony  of  the  World  as  a  whole,  we 
must  take  the  higher  faculties  as  our  point  of  interpretation. 
While  in  Physical  Science  we  take  our  stand  on  the  Outer  Senses, 
and  use  the  microscope  as  an  instrument  of  research,  in  World- 
insight  we  take  our  stand  on  the  Spiritual  Senses  and  use  the 
Outer  Senses  as  instruments  of  research.  Physical  Science  by 
itself  can  never  see  the  harmony  or  the  unity  of  the  World.  Its 
generalizations  are  based  on  a  likeness  which  is  palpable  to  the 
Senses.  But  the  World  is  made  up  of  phenomena  between  many 
of  which  there  is  no  such  likeness;  as,  for  example,  between  a 
strain  of  music,  a  beautiful  flower,  and  a  poem.  It  is  only  when 
we  take  our  stand  on  the  higher  faculties  and  intuitions  that  the 
subtle  spiritual  affinities  which  unite  these  unlike  phenomena 
become  apparent.  It  was  the  perception  of  these  affinities  that 
gave  Bacon  that  breadth  and  vastness  of  understanding  for  which 
he  is  so  justly  renowned.  For  Analogy,  which  is  the  weakest  and 
least  significant  of  logical  or  scientific  relations,  is  the  most 
powerful  of  spiritual  ones.  There  is  variety  at  the  circumference 
of  the  World,  unity  at  the  centre.  To  the  Outer  Senses  all  things 
are  more  or  less  unlike,  less  so  to  the  Understanding  or 
generalizing  faculty  which  shows  laws  running  through  them,  until 
to  the  Inner  Spiritual  Senses  there  is  unity  or  sameness  of 
impression.  The  truth  is,  insight  into  the  World  is  got  in  much 
the  same  way  as  insight  into  the  minds  and  characters  of  men. 
For  how  could  1  understand  a  man's  mind  or  character  except  by 
the  reaction  which  his  words  or  deeds  leave  on  my  own  mind  ? 
Or  indeed  how  could  1  know  that  he  had  what  we  call  a  mind  at 
all,  except  in  the  same  way  ?  His  conscious  soul  cannot  be  seen, 
or  in  any  way  be  made  palpable  to  the  senses,  and  yet  it  can  be  so 
manifested  to  me  as  to  compel  my  belie/  in  it.  The  belief  in  God 
comes  in  the  same  way,  by  the  reaction  of  Nature  on  the  mind. 
As  the  physical  man  is  the  mask  that  hides  and  yet  reveals  his 
spirit,  so  does  Nature  hide,  yet  reveal,  God.  The  impression  that 
Nature  makes  on  the  mind  has  the  highest  reaction  on  the  Scale 
within   us.     What  more    could    a  visible,   palpable    God   have  ? 


438  MY   CONTRIBUTION. 

Scepticism  can  begin  only  when  God  is  embodied  in  a  material 
and  sensuous  form  and  degraded.  Otherwise  there  is  no  room  for 
Atheism. ' 

This  was  all  very  well  as  far  as  it  went,  but  as  time  went  on 
I  felt  I  wanted  something  still  more  radical  to  complete  the 
proof  that  the  Problem  of  the  World  could  not  be  solved  from 
the  standpoint  of  Physical  Science  alone,  and  accordingly  some 
years  later  I  returned  to  the  charge  in  another  connexion  in  my 
book  '  Civilization  and  Progress,'  in  a  chapter  entitled  '  First 
Principles ;  '  and  to  make  my  final  position  on  this  matter  more 
complete,  I  may,  perhaps,  as  well  set  it  down  here.  I  was 
engaged  in  the  attempt  to  refute  a  doctrine  of  Comte's,  namely 
that  there  is  no  need  to  believe  in  the  Deity,  because  he  cannot 
be  known  by  Science,  and  in  order  to  get  this  doctrine  at  an 
angle  at  which  it  could  be  successfully  met,  I  was  obliged  to 
lay  down  at  the  outset  that  for  human  beings  as  at  present 
constituted,  Truth  could  be  only  what  will  harmonize  with  their 
mental  constitution  and  with  all  other  truths  held  by  them. 
I  then  went  on  to  show  that  many  of  the  fundamental  truths  on 
which  our  ordinary  intelligence  rests,  although  they  must  be 
believed  cannot  be  known  by  Physical  Science,  and  then 
enumerated  the  following  six  as  instances : — 

'  1.     The  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  World  outside  ourselves. 

2.  The  belief  in  the  existence  of  mind  in  our  fellow-men. 

3.  The  belief  in  the  superiority  of  mind  to  matter,  of 

heroism  to  self-indulgence,  and  so  on. 

4.  The  belief  in  the  persistence  of  Force. 

5.  The    belief    in    the    co-existence    of    attractive    and 

repulsive  forces. 

6.  The  belief  in  scientific  Causation.' 

The  first  three  after  what  we  have  already  said  will  be  quite 
evident.  The  Outer  World  could  not  be  known  to  exist  by 
the  methods  of  Physical  Science,  because  all  we  scientifically 
know  about  it  is  certain  affections  of  our  senses,  that  is  to  say 
something    inside    of    ourselves    not    outside.     Nor    can    the 


MY   CONTRIBUTION.  439 

existence  of  mind  in  our  fellow-men ;  for  that  never  could  be 
discovered  by  the  Senses,  or  demonstrated  by  any  instrument 
of  physical  research  whatever.  Nor  yet  the  Scale  in  the  Mind, 
or  the  Ideal ;  for  the  parts  of  the  brain  that  give  rise  to  a  high 
motive  or  sentiment  cannot  possibly  have  any  difference  in 
dignity  from  those  that  give  rise  to  a  low  one  so  far  as  Physical 
Science  goes ;  and  yet  all  conversation,  all  literature,  all  our 
categories  of  judgment  of  men  and  things,  assume  this 
difference  in  rank  and  quality  between  one  motive,  action,  or 
sentiment,  and  another.  But  to  make  my  demonstration 
complete  I  still  had  to  show  that  the  very  laws  of  Nature 
themselves  which  Physical  Science  had  discovered,  depended 
for  their  proof  on  something  which  Physical  Science  could  not 
prove  but  had  to  assume;  and  that  that  something  got  all  its 
validity  from  a  belief  of  the  mind ;  and  therefore  that  Physical 
Science  could  by  no  possibility  explain  that  human  mind  which, 
by  the  hypothesis,  gives  it  its  credentials.  For  the  Laws  of 
Nature  with  which  Physical  Science  deals,  depend  for  the  proof 
of  their  truth  on  the  fact  that  the  quantity  of  force  in  the 
Universe  is  fixed.  For  as  Spencer  says,  ( if  the  amount  of 
force  in  the  Universe  varied,  there  could  be  no  certainty  that 
the  scales  and  other  instruments  by  which  you  test  the  truth  of 
your  scientific  conclusions,  might  not  vary  from  moment  to 
moment,  and  so  render  all  Science  impossible.'  In  other  words, 
Physical  Science  itself  rests  on  a  belief  of  the  mind,  the  belief 
namely,  that  the  amount  of  Force  in  the  Universe  is  fixed, — a 
belief  which  Science  cannot  prove,  because  it  is  the  basis  of  all 
scientific  proof.  There  is  no  logical  alternative  therefore,  but 
either  to  throw  overboard  all  Physical  Science  as  unproven, 
or  else  to  admit  that  its  truth  depends  on  the  mind,  and  that 
therefore  it  is  an  impertinence  to  attempt  to  explain  the  mind 
by  it.  But  there  was  a  still  more  striking  instance  of  what 
must  be  believed  although  it  cannot  be  known  or  explained  by 
Physical  Science,  in  the  fact  of  the  co-existence  of  attractive 
and  repulsive  forces ;  for  it  passes  the  human  understanding  to 


440  MY    CONTRIBUTION. 

realize  how  one  force  can  attract  another  while  resisting  it. 
Spencer  himself  admits  this  when  he  says  '  We  cannot  truly 
represent  one  ultimate  unit  of  Matter  as  drawing  another  while 
resisting  it.  Nevertheless  the  belief  is  one  we  are  compelled 
to  entertain.'  It  is  the  same,  too,  with  Scientific  Causation 
itself.  When  we  see,  for  example,  an  effect  represented  let  us 
say  by  the  number  four,  we  believe  that  two  and  two  or  three  and 
one,  or  some  other  equivalent  of  four  must  have  preceded  it  as 
its  cause.  If  we  did  not  we  should  be  tacitly  denying  the 
persistence  of  force ;  and  as  the  persistence  (or  fixity  in  amount) 
of  force  cannot  be  explained  by  Science,  although  it  must  be 
believed,  so  neither  can  the  Law  of  Causation.  And  in  summing 
up  the  whole  argument  I  go  on  to  say : — 

'  The  above  instances  of  the  truth  that  much  that  cannot  be 
known  by  Science  must  nevertheless  be  believed,  are  among  the 
foundation  stones  on  which  the  whole  of  our  intelligence  is  built. 
To  deny  the  truth  of  them  would  be  to  break  up  that  little  islet  of 
harmony  known  as  the  Human  Reason,  and  to  decompose  and 
shatter  our  organized  intelligence  to  its  base.  To  believe  that 
there  were  no  world  outside  of  ourselves ;  that  our  fellow- 
men  were  automata  without  minds;  that  Matter  ?vas  equal  to 
or  superior  to  Mind,  and  that  the  base  and  degrading  things 
of  the  world  were  as  high  as  the  noble  and  self-sacrificing;  that 
force  was  shifting  and  unsteady,  so  that  we  could  not  be  sure 
that  a  pound  to  day  would  weigh  a  pound  to  morrow  ;  that  events 
could  be  sprung  on  us  without  a  cause ;  to  believe  all  this  and  to 
act  on  it,  would  indeed  be  to  bring  chaos  into  the  World  and 
madness  into  the  mind.' 

In  this  way  I  threw  out  Physical  Science  as  the  Organon  or 
method  for  the  solution  of  the  Problem  of  Existence ;  thus 
supporting  in  detail  what  the  Poetic  Thinkers  had  always  seen 
in  a  general  way  but  had  not  fully  demonstrated. 

And  so  at  last  I  had  found  the  Ideal  which  I  had  lost,  and 
of  which  I  had  been  so  long  in  search  ;  had  found  it  in  the 
Mind,  where  neither  the  Psychologists  nor  the  Physical 
Scientists  could  find  it  because  by  their  methods  and  instru- 
ments it  could  not  be  brought  within  their  field  of  observation. 
But   the  most  important  part  of  my  task  lay  still  before  me, 


MY    CONTRIBUTION.  441 

namely  to  find  it  in  the  World  also.  And  here  my  old  allies 
the  Poetic  Thinkers  quite  failed  me.  They  all  alike  believed 
that  although  the  world  was  changing,  it  was  not  advancing ; 
Carlyle  openly  sneering  at  the  *  progress  of  the  Species,'  and 
declaring  that  Society  like  Nature  swam  on  a  sea  of  darkness 
and  mystery,  swinging  backwards  and  forwards  in  ebb  and 
flow,  now  an  age  of  faith  and  reality,  now  one  of  unbelief  and 
imposture ;  Emerson  believing  that  as  man  has  always  an  inlet 
to  the  Universal  Soul,  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  be 
more  moral  in  one  age  than  in  another,  and  openly  declaring 
like  Carlyle,  that  Society  as  a  whole  never  advances;  while 
Newman,  like  the  rest  of  the  theologians,  believed  that  the 
elect  are  probably  no  greater  in  number  in  one  generation  than 
another,  and  that  the  flowering  of  the  ideal  will  only  take 
place  in  Heaven.  But  I  felt  that  unless  I  could  show  that  the 
Ideal  existed  in  the  present  world  and  that  provision  was  made 
for  its  progressive  realization  here,  its  mere  existence  in  the 
mind  would  be  but  a  mockery  of  our  hopes,  and  the  Goethe- 
Carlyle  solution  of  the  Problem  of  the  World  by  the  blessed- 
ness of  self-renunciation,  but  an  illusion  and  a  dream.  My 
first  object,  accordingly,  was  to  get  rid  of  Evil  as  a  positive  and 
permanent  quality  demanding  some  Evil  Power  as  its  natural 
explanation.  This  I  attempted  to  do  in  a  perfunctory  way  in 
my  pamphlet  '  God  or  Force  ?  '  but  in  more  detail  and  on 
other  lines  in  my  chapter  entitled  *  Supernaturalism  and 
Science,'  in  '  Civilization  and  Progress.'  What  I  there 
endeavoured  to  show  was  that  evil  was  merely  an  instrument 
or  means  of  what  I  called  the  principle  of  Individuation ;  a 
necessary  instrument  if  the  world  was  to  reach  its  goal 
through  the  play  and  interaction  of  individual  things  and 
not  as  a  total  entity,  in  the  same  way  as  the  hand  subserves  its 
own  purposes  and  functions  by  means  of  separate  fingers  and 
not  as  a  single,  individual  stump.  I  urged  that  just  as  in 
animals  the  horns,  hoofs,  claws,  fangs,  stings  and  other  organs 
of  offence  and   defence  are  the  physical  means  by  which  these 


442  MY   CONTRIBUTION. 

animals  are  prevented  from  being  absorbed  into  each  other  and 
run  together  into  a  general  promiscuity,  so  in  the  mind  what 
we  know  as  evil,  sin,  envy,  pride,  jealousy,  revenge,  are  really 
the  same  instruments  transformed  into  more  refined  weapons, 
and  carried  to  a  higher  plane.  They  are  one  and  all  means  by 
which  men  defend  themselves  from  being  absorbed  by  each 
other,  and  by  which  the  original  ground-plan  of  Nature, 
namely  Individuation,  is  preserved.  Even  lying,  stealing, 
murder,  adultery,  and  all  those  '  sins  in  the  inmost  members  r 
which  never  come  to  outward  action,  are  the  same  means  but 
carried  to  excess ;  the  proof  that  they  have  not  the  absolute 
quality  of  evil  attaching  to  them  being  that  Society  has 
actually  provided  for  their  gratification  within  due  limits, 
so  that,  as  I  wrote,  '  if  your  sensual  passions  are  strong,  you 
can  marry,  not  commit  adultery  ;  if  your  desire  for  money,  for 
worldly  goods  and  prosperities,  is  keen,  you  may  work  for  them, 
not  steal  them  or  be  covetous  of  the  goods  of  others ;  if  you 
have  a  high  pride  or  ambition,  a  thirst  for  fame,  you  may  attain 
them  by  good  services  done  or  by  the  laudable  exercise  of  your 
talents,  not  by  envy  and  detraction.  If  you  wish  to  be  equal 
with  the  man  who  has  wronged  you,  you  can  appeal  to  the  law, 
not  to  murder  or  private  revenge.  And  thus  it  is  that  the 
very  same  thoughts,  passions,  and  impulses  which  in  excess  have 
the  special  and  positive  quality  of  sin  attached  to  them,  and  so 
would  seem  to  require  a  Devil  to  explain  them;  when  exercised 
in  moderation  have  no  such  positive  quality  and  require  no  such 
Deity.' 

Having  in  this  way  got  rid  of  Evil  as  an  absolute  essence 
inconsistent  with  the  existence  of  the  Ideal  in  the  world,  I  had 
now  to  show  that  the  great  Laws  and  Tendencies  of  the  world 
were  all  working  slowly  but  surely  for  the  final  expulsion  of 
evil  as  a  blot  on  the  fair  face  of  this  Ideal,  so  that  in  the  end 
the  Ideal  should  be  all  in  all.  I  had  to  show  that  if  the  world 
was  not  in  the  image  of  the  Ideal  to  day,  it  was  steadily 
working  towards  that  end;  that  it  was  not  only  evolving  and 


MY    CONTRIBUTION.  443 

changing,  but  advancing  and  moving  upwards,  ever  working 
itself  freer  and  freer  from  ignorance,  from  ugliness,  from 
impurity,  and  from  injustice.  I  had  to  show  that  just  as  a  man's 
nature  is  known  by  the  end  at  which  he  aims,  so  the  nature  of 
the  First  Cause  must  be  determined  by  the  end  towards  which 
He  is  seen  to  be  working — however  much  at  any  given  point  of 
time  the  means  adapted  to  that  end  (and  which  are  necessitated 
both  by  the  element  of  Time  and  by  the  ground-plan  of  the 
original  design)  may  seem  to  negative  it.  Otherwise  one 
might  argue  that  there  was  no  such  thing  as  Keason  in  the 
world,  because  at  a  given  geological  period  there  were  no 
creatures  in  existence  higher  than  the  monsters  of  the  deep. 
But  here  I  was  confronted  with  a  second  difficulty,  namely  of 
how  to  focus  the  vast  multiplicity  of  Nature  and  Life,  so  as  to 
bring  out  their  real  tendency  and  drift.  I  saw  that  here  I 
should  have  to  deal  not  with  individuals  as  such,  but  with  lines 
of  fixed  tendency ;  and  only  with  such  of  these  lines  as  should 
show  a  progressive  hierarchy  and  chain  of  means  and  ends. 
And  here,  perhaps,  it  may  be  as  well  to  pause  for  a  moment  to 
consider  in  what  relation  such  a  definite  chain  of  tendencies 
would  stand  to  the  Darwinian  Hypothesis.  To  begin  with  I 
may  remark  that  the  present  position  of  that  hypothesis  need 
offer  no  barrier  to  any  speculative  construction  from  the  point 
of  view  of  means  and  ends,  of  proximate  or  of  final  causes. 
The  original  theory  of  Darwin  —that  of  *  Natural  Selection  ' — 
by  which  the  infinite  diversity  of  species  both  of  plants  and 
animals,  was  referred  to  the  operation  of  the  struggle  for 
existence  among  them  in  selecting  such  chance  specimens  as 
happened  to  arise  and  were  best  adapted  to  their  environment, 
and  killing  off  the  unfit ;  has  now  been  degraded  by  Darwin's 
own  disciples  from  its  position  as  a  true  cause,  and  relegated  to 
a  quite  subordinate  one,  that  namely  of  mere  overseer  and 
scavenger,  to  carry  off  on  the  one  hand  by  starvation  or  death 
the  weak  and  inefficient,  the  wrecks,  and  all  the  waifs  and 
strays  that  fall  by  the  roadside,  and  on  the  other  to  keep  those 


444  MY   CONTRIBUTION. 

who  survive,  close  down  to  their  task  and  accurately  adapted  to 
the  special  work  they  have  to  perform.  As  the  originating 
cause  of  species,  it  has  had  to  be  abandoned.  Indeed,  as 
Komanes  points  out,  if  Natural  Selection  were  to  be  alone 
operative,  instead  of  the  infinite  variety  of  types  of  creatures 
which  Nature  seems  to  have  at  heart,  we  should  have  them  all 
lumped  and  aggregated  into  a  single  type.  To  get  the  infinite 
variety  of  species,  Nature  not  only  gives  rise  to  abnormal 
variations,  but  protects  these  variations  from  being  swamped 
again,  by  initiating  independent  variations  in  the  sexual  organs, 
which  shall  prevent  intercrossing  with  the  parent  or  allied 
species.  And  it  is  only  when  this  has  been  done,  that  Natural 
Selection  can  come  in  and  operate,  as  it  does,  with  the 
happiest  effect.  But  as  the  secret  causes  of  these  independent 
variations  both  in  general  structure  and  in  the  sexual  organs, 
are  admittedly  unknown,  the  question  of  the  origin  of  Species 
still  remains  an  open  problem  which  speculation  is  at  liberty  to 
treat  from  a  higher  point  of  view.  Natural  Selection  in 
reference  to  peopling  the  earth,  is  like  gravitation  in  walking, 
or  the  pressure  of  the  atmosphere  in  breathing,  or  the  beating 
of  the  heart  and  the  circulation  of  the  blood  in  the  continuance 
of  vitality.  It  is  automatic  and  almost  taken  for  granted,  and 
one  would  no  more  look  to  it  for  an  explanation  of  the  finer 
problems  of  species  than  one  would  look  to  gravitation  and 
pressure  for  an  explanation  of  problems  of  physiology  or 
chemistry,  or  to  the  functions  of  the  heart  for  an  explanation 
of  the  purposes  of  life  itself.  True  -as  far  as  it  goes,  to  erect 
Natural  Selection  into  the  sole  cause  or  even  cause  at  all  of 
Species,  is  absurd.  The  fact  of  evolution  is  true  on  any 
hypothesis,  but  Natural  Selection  is  not  necessarily  the  cause  of 
evolution.  It  is  true  that  it  is  everywhere  at  work,  but  that  is 
only  because  animals  have  everywhere  to  be  fitted  to  their 
environment  as  children  have  to  be  fitted  with  boots  and  shoes. 
I  had  gone  carefully  into  the  evidence  adduced  in  its  support 
from    the  beginning,  and  had  long  pondered  the  subject,  but 


MY   CONTRIBUTION.  445 

with  the  best  will  in  the  world  I  was  never  able  seriously  to 
look  to  it  for  the  solution  of  any  problem  which  was  of 
importance  in  its  bearings  on  life.  It  had  to  be  borne  in  mind 
and  reckoned  with,  in  the  same  way  as  we  bear  in  mind  the  fact 
of  gravitation,  but  that  was  all.  When  held  up  as  a  paper  lantern 
to  illuminate  the  mystery  of  existence,  one  felt  with  Carlyle  like 
kicking  one's  foot  through  it ;  and  that  with  all  deference  and 
respect  to  the  illustrious  author  himself  who  was  as  modest  and 
candid  as  he  was  great.  I  should  as  soon  dream  of  phrenology 
being  an  explanation  of  the  human  mind,  as  of  Natural 
Selection  alone  being  an  explanation  of  the  Problem  of 
Existence.     But  to  return. 

To  get  the  Laws  or  Tendencies  of  the  World  as  a  chain  of 
means  and  ends  in  an  ascending  hierarchy  in  which  the  Ideal 
can  be  seen  at  work,  we  have  carefully  to  choose  the 
intellectual  instruments  for  the  work.  And  to  begin  with  we 
may  say  that  as  the  question  is  one  of  means  and  ends,  that  is 
to  say  of  function,  and  not  of  structure,  Physical  Science  can  be 
thrown  out  altogether,  for  its  laws  only  concern  the  structure 
of  things  and  have  no  bearing  at  all  on  their  function.  But 
how  among  the  countless  functions  of  things  are  we  to  find  the 
hierarchy  of  those  that  are  means  and  ends  to  each  other? 
This  puzzled  me  for  a  long  time,  but  at  last  I  saw  that  just  as 
the  human  embryo  passes  in  its  stages  through  the  embryos  of 
all  the  great  divisions  of  the  animal  kingdom  that  lie  beneath 
it  and  have  preceded  it  in  Time ;  so  all  the  Forces  and 
Tendencies  of  the  world  have  their  condensed  summary  and 
epitome  of  general  function  in  the  body  and  mind  of  man,  and 
there  receive  their  interpretation.  In  the  pamphlet  above 
referred  to  I  thus  describe  the  way  in  which  I  conceived  these 
Tendencies  to  be  inter-related  and  brought  to  a  unity : — 

'  The  mechanical  forces  appear  in  the  structure  of  the  heart  and 
in  the  circulation  of  the  blood  ;  the  chemical  forces  in  the  dis- 
integration of  the  food  by  the  juices  of  the  stomach,  and  its 
combustion  in  the  body  ;  the  organic  forces,  in  the  secreting  organs 
and  in  the  waste  and  repair  of  tissue  ;  the  spiritual  forces  in  the 


446  Ml    CONTRIBUTION. 

mind.  Now  the  physical,  chemical,  and  organic  forces  are 
concerned  only  with  structure,  and  the  fact  that  the  functions 
performed  by  these  forces  are  unconscious  and  unobtrusive,  as  it 
were,  proves  that  they  are  only  subordinate  instruments,  and  that  the 
Physical  Science  which  deals  with  them  is  only  an  instrument  of 
investigation,  not  a  standpoint  of  interpretation.  The  heart,  lungs, 
and  stomach  in  their  healthy  state,  give  us  no  intimation  of  their 
existence,  their  action  is  attended  by  neither  pleasure  nor  pain, 
proving  that  they  are  the  necessary  but  subordinate  instruments 
for  higher  ends.  In  the  lower  animals,  Self-preservation  and 
Reproduction  occupy  the  largest  portion  of  conscious  existence,  and 
are  accordingly  the  highest  functions.  In  man,  they  occupy  but 
a  comparatively  small  portion,  and  leave  room  for  the  play  and 
expansion  of  intellect  and  character.  If  then,  the  physical  and 
organic  forces  are  concerned  only  with  structure,  and  with 
structures  that  are  unconscious  many  of  them,  we  may,  in  endeavour- 
ing to  show  the  ends  to  which  the  Tendencies  of  the  World  are 
working,  practically  leave  them  out  of  account,  and  restrict 
ourselves  only  to  those  tendencies  which  have  emerged  into 
consciousness. 

'  The  Tendencies  to  Self-preservation  and  Reproduction  are  the 
most  immediate  and  pressing.  They  are  ministered  to,  not  only 
by  the  special  senses,  physical  powers,  and  lower  appetites,  but  by 
pride,  envy,  vanity,  combativeness,  and  fear.  They  furnish  the 
warp  into  which  Time  has  to  weave  his  most  variegated  colours. 
There  must  be  this  continuous  web  of  existence,  for  the  Eternal  to 
work  out  His  designs. 

The  Tendency  to  Ascension  runs  through  all  highly-organised 
beings.  Everything  looks  upwards.  With  animals  Might  is  the 
test  of  Right.  Physical  Power  is  their  highest  distinction.  The 
strongest  have  the  best  chance  to  survive  and  propagate,  and  to 
them  the  females  are  most  strongly  attracted.  Women  love  the 
heroic,  strong,  and  wise  ;  and  Beauty,  in  the  last  analysis,  is  only 
Nature's  representative  of  these  high  qualities,  and  always  refers 
to  spiritual  attributes.  This  tendency  of  the  race  to  ascend  on  the 
ground  of  sexual  preference  is  secured  to  the  individual  by  his 
mental  constitution.  We  are  all  led  by  Imagination,  which  invests 
its  object  with  a  kind  of  infinitude,  and  leads  us  on  to  emulation. 
The  dullest  are  led  by  it.  It  is  neither  the  gold  itself,  nor  the 
mere  satisfaction  of  his  physical  wants,  that  dazzles  the  miser's  eye, 
but  the  undefined  region  of  delight  that  is  opened  up  to  his 
imagination.  This  leading  of  the  Imagination  appears  early  in 
life.  The  boy  sees  all  the  world  in  his  games  and  youthful 
contests,  and  works  for  the  prize  at  the  village  school  as  if  it  were 
a  kingdom.  The  enamoured  youth  sees  the  best  of  everything  in 
his  maiden.     The  man  falls  into  Hero-worship.     Our  admiration  is 


MY    CONTRIBUTION.  447 

the  thing  we  ourselves  would  wish  to  be,  and  to  which  we 
endeavour  to  elevate  ourselves.  What  a  man  in  his  heart  admires 
most,  gives  the  clue  to  his  character.  His  talents  all  minister  to  it, 
and  around  it  all  his  thoughts  and  feelings  revolve.  Ideals  are 
only  another  phase  of  this  ascending  tendency.  They  are  made 
up  of  the  complex  web  of  experience  and  imagination,  and  are  the 
stars  by  which  we  direct  our  course  through  life.  They  lie,  like 
glittering  points,  on  all  sides  of  the  horizon,  and  towards  them  the 
busy  world  of  men  are  seen  making  their  way.  The  part  played 
by  Individualization  in  the  upward  movement  is  no  less  important. 
On  the  circumference  of  the  World  is  the  immense  diversity  of 
things,  where  the  game  seems  to  be,  how  to  ring  the  greatest 
number  of  changes  on  a  few  fixed  principles.  These  separate 
existences  reflect  on  each  other  their  own  special  beauties,  and 
multiply  to  infinity  the  objects  of  aspiration.  The  love  ol 
personality  plays  an  important  part  in  our  education.  We  digest 
our  code  of  morals  from  it,  and  endeavour  to  embody  in  ourselve? 
the  special  virtues  which  we  admire  in  others.  Hence  the  chara* 
and  stimulus  of  biography,  history,  and  novels,  compared  wit! 
which  all  mere  scholastic  teaching,  which  does  not  sink  into  thf 
character,  is  trivial  and  superficial. 

'  But  these  ideals,  when  attained,  do  not  fill  up  the  heart.  The 
boy  outgrows  his  sports  ;  the  youth,  his  maiden  ;  the  man,  his 
idolatries.  Wealth  does  not  satisfy ;  place  and  power,  when 
attained,  lose  the  vagueness  and  brilliancy  which  dazzled  us  and 
drew  us  on,  and  shrink  into  littleness.  The  sensualist's  path  leads 
to  disgust.  Special  attainments  and  points  of  virtue,  too,  fail  to 
satisfy,  and  we  learn  at  last  that  there  is  no  rest  but  in  God. 
Thus  these  illusions  instruct  while  they  deceive.  But  unless  the 
mind  is  quick  and  apprehensive,  we  do  not  run  to  the  end  of  this 
chain  of  deceptions,  and  so  stop  short  of  the  goal.  As  long  as 
our  minds  rest  on  any  of  these  proximate  objects  of  pursuit,  we 
cannot  dedicate  ourselves  to  God,  for  two  opposite  infinites 
cannot  possess  the  mind  at  once. 

'  There  is  another  factor  in  Ascension  which  is  too  important  to 
be  passed  over  without  notice,  viz.,  the  antagonism  of  the  higher 
and  lower  forces  of  Nature  and  Mind.  For  example,  the  obstinacy 
of  earth,  wood,  iron,  develop  invention  and  mechanical  skill ;  the 
necessities  of  life  and  the  complexity  of  our  surroundings  call  out 
all  our  resources  ;  and  the  control  of  the  passions,  so  necessary  to 
social  order,  exercises  and  strengthens  virtue. 

'  The  foregoing  tendencies  exist  only  in  the  mind,  and  if  they 
rested  there  progress  would  cease.  How,  then,  is  the  world 
benefited  ?  Observe,  first,  as  a  connecting  link,  the  tendency  to 
Unity.  Give  a  man  time,  and  his  mind  will  become  a  unity,  and 
everything  he  does  will  be  significant.  His  actions  will  become 
one  with  his  feelings,  and  his  feelings  one  with  his  thought.     This 


448  MY    CONTRIBUTION. 

tendency  to  unity  makes  possible  the  realisation  of  our  ideals. 
Without  it,  life  would  want  definiteness  of  aim.  It  concentrates 
the  powers  of  the  mind  for  united  effort,  and  counteracts  that  love 
of  variety,  which,  if  persistently  indulged  in,  confuses  thought, 
relaxes  the  character,  and  dissipates  organised  effort.  To  reach  it 
is  the  unceasing  endeavour  of  the  mind. 

'  Connected  with  this  Tendency  to  Unity  is  the  Tendency  to 
Embodiment.  The  World  itself  is  the  embodiment  of  Spirit ; 
language,  facial  and  bodily  expression,  are  the  embodiments  of 
thought  and  feeling,  of  which  Literature  and  Art  are  the  more 
permanent  forms.  Character  is  the  embodiment  within  ourselves 
of  Thought,  slowly  built  up  and  consolidated.  Action,  too,  is  the 
embodiment  of  Thought.  In  the  pursuit  of  ideals,  we  pave  every 
step  with  work,  with  action,  and  thus  the  world  is  benefited, 
although  the  individual  may  be  sacrificed. 

'  This  Tendency  to  Embodiment  is  further  assisted  by  the 
Tendency  to  Belief.  Without  this  tendency,  action  would  be  weak 
and  nerveless,  not  strong  and  direct.  The  belief  we  have  in  the 
beneficence  of  Nature  is  very  beautiful.  We  give  ourselves  calmly 
up  to  sleep,  and  rest  without  suspicion,  expecting  to  awaken  to 
renewed  life.  We  trust  ourselves  to  the  elements,  to  our  food, 
its  safe  passage  into  the  stomach  and  subsequent  changes  in  the 
blood,  and  conversion  into  strength  and  beauty.  We  trust  to  the 
continued  beating  of  our  hearts,  and  the  continuance  of  life  from 
moment  to  moment ;  to  our  continued  sanity,  although  the  chaos 
of  madness  lies  always  near  us.  We  trust  to  the  rotation  of 
seasons,  crops,  and  verdure,  although  the  earth's  surface  is  only  a 
beautiful  skin,  beneath  which  boils  a  cauldron  of  confused 
elements.  We  trust  that  a  man's  character  is  truly  represented  by 
his  sensible  motions,  although  his  soul  cannot  be  seen  ;  and  to 
the  immutability  of  God  and  His  laws,  although  He  himself  is 
hidden  from  us. 

'  The  Tendency  to  Co-operation  redoubles  the  force  both  of 
Belief  and  Action,  and  still  further  assists  in  keeping  the  visible 
world  following  in  the  track  of  the  ideal.  We  all  need  sympathy. 
The  high  thought  would  die  out  of  us,  did  it  not  meet  with 
recognition  from  our  fellow-man.  Society,  accordingly,  is  the 
arena  where  our  talents  find  room  to  expand.  The  bond  of  union 
is  always  a  common  sentiment  or  idea.  Friendships  are  founded 
on  identity  of  feeling.  Associations  of  men  have  always  some 
dominant  thought,  around  which  they  unite.  Institutions  are 
the  visible  expressions  of  those  thoughts.  Church  and  Govern- 
ment correspond  to  the  two  most  comprehensive  divisions  of 
human  interest — the  welfare  of  the  soul  and  the  welfare  of  the 
body  Society,  by  providing  for  the  lawful  exercise  of  all  our 
impulses,  diminishes  the  temptations  to  crime.  If  the  passions 
are  strong,  you  may  marry ;  if  the  desire  for  property  is  strong, 


MY   CONTRIBUTION.  44!) 

you  may  work,  not  steal.  Government  takes  retaliation  out  of  our 
hands,  and  leaves  no  room  for  private  revenge ;  and  by  affording 
protection  to  all,  gives  the  higher  faculties  of  our  nature  a  chance 
to  expand. 

'  But  how  are  the  accomplished  results  of  human  thought  and 
effort  secured  against  Time  and  Change  V  By  the  Tendency  to 
the  Conservation  of  the  Good.  Time  swallows  all  things  but  the 
Good,  which  steadily  works  on,  and  accumulates  from  age  to  age. 
Custom  is  one  element  in  this  tendency.  The  world  is  the  slave 
of  custom.  To  the  aspiring  youth,  Truth  itself  seems  powerless 
against  it.  On  our  entrance  into  life  we  are  dressed  in  certain 
customary  modes  of  thought,  feeling,  and  behaviour,  and  many  of 
us  wear  the  same  liyery  all  our  lives.  We  take  our  creeds  from 
our  fathers,  and  our  morals  as  well  as  fashions  from  Society,  and 
applaud  or  condemn  as  it  dictates.  These  things  are  in  the  air  we 
breathe,  and  this  atmospheric  education  influences  our  conduct 
more  than  any  other.  Conformity  to  custom  meets  with  the 
world's  applause,  and  in  every  drawing-room  appears  in  the  form 
of  stock-sentiment.  But  custom  subserves  a  good  purpose.  It  is 
the  break  on  the  wheel  of  change.  It  follows  thought,  although 
at  a  great  distance,  and  keeps  institutions  alive  until  the  good  that 
was  once  in  them  has  departed  and  entered  into  other  forms. 

'  Observe,  again,  how  the  best  modes  of  alleviating  physical 
labour  are  transmitted  from  age  to  age.  Manual  labour  is 
superseded  by  machinery,  and  inferior  machines  are  laid  aside 
only  when  better  come  into  use.  The  accumulation  of  scientific 
facts,  the  increase  both  in  the  number  and  the  delicacy  of  scientific 
instruments,  enlarge  our  knowledge  of  the  physical  laws.  This 
knowledge  reacts,  in  turn,  on  the  arts,  and  produces  still  further 
improvements.  These  results  are  the  slow  accumulations  of  the 
ages  which  they  have  survived.  In  like  manner  there  is  a  tendency 
to  preserve  all  good  books  and  all  good  works  of  art.  Homer  and 
Raphael  still  live  to  instruct  the  youth  of  the  present  day.  History 
preserves  the  memorable  experiences  of  the  world,  and  leaves  its 
daily  trivialities  to  be  forgotten.  And  thus  the  essence  of  the 
past  is  distilled  into  the  present. 

1  But  there  are  false  as  well  as  true  Ideals.  These  false  ideals  get 
embodied,  and  have  sometimes  dominated  whole  ages,  producing 
endless  confusion  ;  and  the  question  is,  what  prevents  the  world's 
retrograding  ? 

'Consider,  first,  the  Tendency  to  Justice.  Intellect  is  the  power 
of  discerning  the  Tendencies  of  the  World  in  their  natural 
subordinations.  The  observance  of  these  laws  is  enforced  by 
Justice.  All  civil,  moral,  and  social  codes,  are  but  better  or  worse 
reflections  of  this  dominating  tendency.  Nature  has  at  heart  the 
coronation  of  Virtue,  and  takes  a  short  cut  to  her  end  by  making 

FF 


450  MY    CONTRIBUTION. 

Might  the  test  of  Right.  This  is  the  tune  the  nations  have 
marched  to,  and  throughout  all  its  variations  (which  we  call 
history)  the  original  air  is  heard.  The  individual,  too,  if  he  sinks 
his  nobility  of  character,  loses  influence,  becomes  less  in  the  scale 
of  being,  and  must  submit  to  superior  domination. 

'  Again,  the  Tendency  to  Adaptation  puts  a  cushion  between  us 
and  the  rough  corners  of  things  that  have  been  jostled  from  their 
places.  It  enables  us  to  float,  when  otherwise  we  should  sink. 
We  gradually  adapt  ourselves  to  new  climates,  new  countries,  new 
manners,  new  morals,  and  new  modes  of  thought ;  and  die  when 
age  makes  us  too  rigid  for  new  and  wider  conceptions.  Then 
there  is  the  Tendency  to  Compassion,  which  breaks  the  force  of 
Fate  to  which  we  are  all  exposed,  and  cheers  the  heart  for  new 
endeavours.  The  sympathy  of  our  fellow-men  redoubles  the 
strength  of  all  our  active  powers,  invigorates  the  will,  and  gives 
fresh  courage  to  despair. 

'  The  foregoing  tendencies  all  unite  to  keep  the  world  following 
in  the  track  of  the  great  men  who  march  in  the  van.  And  we 
have  seen  that  these  men,  after  passing  through  all  proximate 
illusions,  find  their  ideal  in  God,  and  their  final  rest  in  reliance  on 
Him  alone.  This  is  the  consummation  of  manhood.  When 
attained,  it  expresses  itself  in  Heroism,  Worship,  and  Art,  which 
are  ends  in  themselves,  and  which  correspond  to  the  different  sides 
of  our  nature,  its  tendency  to  Action,  Contemplation,  and  Beauty. 

1  All  things  in  Xature  struggle  towards  Beauty  ;  and  deformity, 
like  evil,  is  the  result  of  Necessity,  and  does  not  lie  in  the  essence 
of  things.  The  artist  strives  to  restore  this  ideal  beauty  on  canvas 
or  stone,  and  its  pursuit  is  a  source  of  pure  enjoyment,  when 
cultivated  in  a  religious  spirit. 

'Worship  should  be  the  flower  of  Culture,  the  harmonious 
outcome  of  all  our  feelings,  chastened  and  refined,  and  not  a  daub. 
It  should  be  in  the  grain,  not  a  mere  veneering,  and  is  the 
expression  of  inward  peace. 

'  The  history  of  the  world  abounds  in  examples  of  Heroism. 
These  great  souls,  scattered  through  distant  ages  and  nations,  and 
quickened  before  their  time,  are  the  high-water  marks  of  humanity, 
and  announce  what,  one  day,  will  be  universal.  They  reached  the 
point  where  the  human  melts  into  the  divine.' 

In  this  way  by  taking  the  largest  general  Tendencies  or 
Laws  of  the  World  and  the  Human  Mind,  I  demonstrated  to 
my  own  satisfaction  (and  I  trust  it  may  prove  to  that  of  others), 
the  existence  and  progressive  realization  of  the  Ideal  in  the 
world,  as  I  had  already  done  in  the  human  mind,  and  although 
it  was  my  earliest  piece  of  writing  I  do  not  think  that  in 


MY    CONTRIBUTION.  451 

essentials  I  could  add  much  to  it  to-day  ;  my  later  books  being 
concerned  rather  with  demonstrating  it  in  detail  in  the  history 
of  Civilizations,  Societies,  and  States.  In  a  second  pamphlet 
entitled  '  Considerations  on  the  Constitution  of  the  World,'  in 
which  the  influence  of  Emerson  is  clearly  visible,  I  advanced  a 
stage  farther  and  showed  that  these  tendencies  can  be  so 
arranged  as  to  lend  support  to  the  great  Law  of  Polarity  on 
which  Spencer's  '  Philosophy  of  Evolution  '  is  based,  and  which 
runs  through  all  Nature ;  thus  demonstrating  that  the  same 
Unity  of  Plan  runs  through  the  Moral  and  Spiritual  World, 
which  he  had  exhibited  in  the  Physical  World,  and  from 
which  I  argued  the  Unity  of  the  Divine  that  was  at  the  bottom 
of  it  all.     The  following  is  my  summing  up  : — 

1  We  have  seen,  then,  that  the  World  is  constituted  of  a  series 
of  balances,  on  an  ascending  scale.  In  physics,  we  found  that 
action  and  reaction  were  equal,  that  there  was  an  equilibrium 
in  ebb  and  flow,  centripetal  and  centrifugal  motions,  in  the 
compensating  alternations  of  day  and  night,  sleep  and  wake.  We 
found  that  "all  mental  action  consisted  of  differentiations  and 
integrations  of  states  of  consciousness,"  that  the  balance  between 
these  two  opposite  states  is  necessary  to  health,  insanity  being 
nothing  but  fixedness  of  thought  without  change,  or  incessant 
change  without  rest.  We  have  seen,  too,  that  the  perturbations 
of  the  passioDS  in  nations  or  individuals,  were  balanced  by  natural 
reactions;  "  swanneries  "  of  opinion,  by  insight  ;  and  local 
idolatries,  by  change  of  association.  In  the  domain  of  Science  we 
saw  that  the  immense  variety  of  scientific  facts  was  balanced  by 
the  laws  that  underlie  them, — individual  facts,  by  generalisations, 
and  the  widest  generalisations,  by  unity.  Rising  still  higher  into 
the  region  of  the  Intuitions,  we  found  that  the  moral  sentiment 
was  the  balance  to  selfishness;  the  public  nature  in  us  to  our 
private  interests ;  benevolence  to  helplessness,  and  hope  to  fear. 
And  further,  in  looking  at  the  conversion  of  truth  into  action,  we 
saw  the  same  provision  made.  We  found  that  the  dangerous 
nature  of  the  elements  was  counteracted  by  science  and  art ;  that 
Custom  balanced  Innovation ;  the  Conservation  of  the  Good, 
perpetual  Change  ;  Conservatism,  Reform ;  Might,  the  resistance 
of  circumstances  ;  and  the  power  of  Adaptation,  the  changes  of 
the  environment. 

Such  being  the  Constitution  of  the  World,  I  wish  now  to  point 
out  the  Unity  of  Plan  running  through  the  whole,  so  that  begin 
where  you  will,   you  find  the  same  principle  at  work.     Take,  for 


452  MY    CONTRIBUTION. 

instance,  our  progress  in  culture.  We  observe  a  few  facts,  and 
throw  them  into  a  general  principle  of  belief.  On  this,  we  stand 
and  act,  while  acquiring  further  experience.  We  then  enlarge 
our  first  principle  to  balance  the  increase  of  facts,  throw  the 
whole  into  a  general  principle  again,  and  so  on,  throughout  the 
whole  of  our  education,  which  is  only  a  repetition  of  the  same 
process  carried  upwards  to  higher  and  higher  planes.  The 
progress  of  society  is  the  same.  Certain  ideas  are  in  the  air  and 
dominate  an  age,  balancing  its  acquired  experience.  These 
determine  the  form  of  government,  and  on  these  it  stands  and 
works.  Succeeding  generations,  with  wider  knowledge  and 
increased  power,  finding  themselves  cramped  by  the  institutions 
of  other  days,  either  slowly  stretch  or  violently  rupture  the  bands, 
and  throw  out  institutions  more  in  accord  with  present  needs. 
This  process  repeats  itself  through  the  successive  stages  of 
Despotism,  Monarchy,  and  Democracy.  In  religion,  too,  the 
same  process  is  seen  in  the  progress  of  Fetishism  and  Man-worship, 
up  to  the  most  refined  forms  of  transcendental  Theism. 

Again,  if  we  take  a  general  survey  of  the  World,  we  shall  see 
that  this  Unity  of  plan  is  not  fanciful  or  theoretical,  but  is  worked 
into  the  very  texture  of  things.  Take,  for  instance,  the  balance 
that  is  everywhere  kept  between  public  and  private  interests.  No 
leaf  is  suffered  to  overshadow  the  plant,  but  in  form  and  proportion 
is  chastened  into  harmony  with  the  whole.  Goethe  said  that 
provision  was  made  that  no  tree  should  grow  into  the  sky. 
Vegetable  and  animal  life  are  so  balanced,  as  to  keep  the 
proportion  of  gases  in  the  atmosphere  constant.  An  animal 
is  furnished  with  powers  of  aggression  and  self-defence,  but 
subserves  the  harmony  of  the  whole  by  being  the  prey  to  another. 
In  man,  the  nature  of  this  public  element  is  found  to  be  Moral. 
The  Moral  Sentiment  in  us  compels  us  to  respect  the  general  good, 
while  pushing  our  individuality  and  self-interest  to  the  farthest 
point. 

We  have  seen,  then,  that  the  world  is  an  ascending  scale  of 
balances,  with  Physical  forces  at  the  bottom,  Moral  at  the  top  ;; 
a  ladder  with  its  foot  on  Earth,  its  summit  in  Heaven.  We  have 
seen,  too,  the  unity  of  plan  running  through  the  whole  system  of 
things  to  the  remotest  fibre  ;  so  that  the  most  insignificant  object,, 
even  a  grain  of  sand  or  blade  of  grass,  is  a  microcosm,  or  mirror 
of  the  Universe. 

And  the  Divine  to  which  it  all  referred  itself,  I  characterized 
as  follows  : — 

And  now,  in  concluding,  I  have  to  point  out  that,  besides  the 
successive  planes  of  equilibrated  thought,  there  is  also,  in  the 
World  and  in  the  Human  Mind,   the  Divine.     This  is  the  deep 


MY   CONTRIBUTION.  453 

background,  the  mysterious  incomprehensible  Life  that  envelops 
us  all;  the  Spirit,  from  which  emanate  the  countless  myriads  of 
creatures  that  bloom  their  little  lives  and  fade  away  ;  out  of  which 
we  have  emerged  for  a  moment,  and  into  which  we  vanish  ;  a  thing 
of  wonder,  unspeakable,  awful.  Over  its  unfathomable  depths, 
the  endless  procession  of  life  glides  like  ripples  over  the  deep  sea. 
It  is  the  endless  generator  of  things,  the  source  of  this  perpetual 
becoming.  It  is  the  Public  Nature  of  the  World,  and  is  seen  less 
in  individual  objects,  than  in  the  landscape  ;  in  individual  actions, 
than  in  moral  order ;  in  special  talents,  than  in  genius.  As  it  is  in 
the  World,  so  it  is  in  the  Human  Mind.  It  is  this,  which  we  feel 
to  be  the  real  balance  power  in  the  constitution.  It  is  this  that 
gives  Truth  its  power,  Virtue  its  courage,  Love  its  sacrifice,  but  is 
itself  no  special  point  of  truth,  virtue,  or  love.  It  is  this  to 
which  all  men  appeal  for  justice  from  oppression.  It  is  this  that 
shines  through  all  the  fetishes,  images,  or  deities,  under  which,  in 
different  ages  and  stages  of  culture,  men  have  sought  to  embody 
the  Divine  Idea.  It  is  this  to  which  all  men  draw  nigh  to  worship. 
It  is  this  which  is  the  infinite  horizon  of  truth,  which  we  for  ever 
approach  and  which  for  ever  recedes.  It  is  this  which  inspires 
virtue,  but  before  which  each  particular  virtue  fades,  and  which 
lures  us  on  to  higher  efforts.  It  is  this  which  inspires  success, 
and  then  condemns  it  in  the  light  of  more  glorious  attempts.  We 
cannot  define  it  or  comprehend  it,  but  '  it  exists,  and  will  exist.' 
To  this  Being  we  have  &iven  the  name  of  God. 

Further  than  this  of  the  Divine  in  general  terms  I  have  never 
considered  myself  justified  in  dogmatizing;  as  any  attempt  to 
define  the  intimate  nature  of  God,  or  the  modus  operandi  of  His 
relation  to  the  World,  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  human  faculties.  So  far  I  am  an  Agnostic. 
Nor  did  I  consider  that  it  mattered  whether  God  were  within 
the  World  or  outside  of  it,  whether  he  were  a  personal  and 
distinct  Being  or  were  a  pure,  abstract  Self-Consciousness. 
But  at  the  same  time  one  was  intuitively  bound  to  assume 
a  Supreme  Will,  as  the  only  kind  of  Supreme  Being  or 
Unity  which  implicitly  contains  the  notion  of  self-conscious 
intelligence,  of  motive  and  personality,  and  so  best  meets  the 
needs  of  all  sides  and  aspects  of  the  human  spirit.  And  to 
myself  as  a  philosopher  this  was  still  more  imperative,  for  the 
only  real  conception  of  cause  is  that  of  will,  the  so-called 
scientific   causes  connecting  things  in  this  world,  being  but  a 


454  MY   CONTRIBUTION. 

series  of  orderly  effects  and  not  of  real  causes  at  all,  a  series  of 
mathematical  equivalents  which  are  causes  only  in  the  sense  that 
two  and  two  may  be  said  to  be  the  cause  of  four.  As  to  the 
relation  which  exists  between  God  and  the  World,  about  which 
nothing  can  be  known  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term  by  us,  if 
I  were  forced  to  make  a  choice  I  should  prefer,  perhaps,  the 
form  given  to  it  by  Hegel,  namely  the  form  in  which  God  and 
Nature  are  regarded  as  but  the  two  opposite  sides  of  a  single 
Absolute  Self-Consciousness  in  which  when  God  thinks  of 
Himself,  if  one  may  say  so,  He  is  God  proper,  when  He  thinks 
of  the  other  than  Himself  He  is  what  we  know  as  Nature ; 
although  even  this  when  pressed,  proves  as  we  shall  see,  to  be 
illusory  like  the  rest.  I  prefer  this,  however,  to  that  of  Goethe 
who  with  Spinoza  liked  to  think  of  God  as  Absolute 
Substance,  and  the  world  of  Mind  and  Nature  as  necessary 
modes  of  His  attributes  ;  or  to  that  of  Emerson,  where  God  is 
figured  as  the  life  of  the  tree,  and  the  World  its  leaves  and 
blossoms ;  or  of  Carlyle,  where  God  is  the  body  and  the  World 
the  '  clothing,'  and  so  on ;  inasmuch  as  these  latter  are  all  based 
on  categories  lower  than  the  category  of  self-consciousness 
which  is  the  category  used  by  Hegel.  But  then  it  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  while  Hegel  took  his  principle  of  the 
evolution  of  the  '  notion '  or  self -consciousness,  seriously,  and  as 
the  real  and  true  explanation  of  the  World ;  Goethe,  Emerson, 
and  Carlyle  were  too  wary  to  be  trapped  so  easily,  and  while 
using  the  images  of  tree,  of  clothing,  of  substance,  and  so  forth, 
did  so  only  as  metaphors  or  allegories,  seeing  clearly  and 
declaring  uncompromisingly  that  the  attempt  to  explain  the 
World  out  and  out  was  an  impertinence,  and  was  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  human  faculties.  For  to  bridge  the  gulf  between 
Mind  and  Matter,  which  after  all  was  the  real  problem,  was  as 
impossible  with  Hegel  from  the  side  of  Mind  as  it  was  with 
Spencer  from  the  side  of  Matter.  Hegel  attempted  to  do  it  by 
trying  to  show  that  there  was  not  that  absolute  difference 
between  Mind  and  Matter,  which  philosophers  and  the  vulgar 


MY   CONTRIBUTION.  455 

equally  have  imagined.  He  argues  in  this  way,  that  just  as 
there  is  something  common  to  all  material  things,  however 
unlike  they  may  be,  because  they  are  all  parts  of  one  world  of 
Matter,  so  there  is  something  common  to  Mind  and  Matter 
because  they  can  both  be  contained  in  one  single  act  of  self- 
consciousness ;  and  concludes  that  they  cannot  be  absolutely 
exclusive  of  one  another  but  only  relatively  so.  But  this  would 
be  to  throw  overboard  the  testimony  of  self -consciousness  itself, 
which  declares  them  to  be  entirely  opposite  in  nature  and 
attribute,  in  favour  of  the  mere  form  of  self-consciousness.  For 
just  as  the  two  poles  of  a  magnet  although  covered  by  or 
contained  in  the  one  magnet,  need  not  thereby  have  anything 
in  common,  so  mental  and  material  things  although  covered  by 
or  contained  in  the  single  self-consciousness  which  involves 
them  both,  need  not  have  anything  in  common  by  which  it  is 
possible  to  bridge  the  gulf  between  them.  They  are  contained 
in  one  self-consciousness,  it  is  true,  but  on  examination  it  will 
be  found  that  this  is  purely  metaphorical  and  for  purposes  of 
expression  merely.  At  bottom  it  is  a  question  of  relations  not 
between  Mind  and  Matter,  but  between  mind  and  mind,  or 
matter  and  matter.  When,  for  example,  we  say  'John  is  good/ 
we  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  extended,  material  substance 
John  has  anything  in  common  with  the  immaterial  mental 
quality  thought  of  as  good,  but  only  (if  it  is  his  body  that  is 
in  question)  that  it  has  some  material  quality  which  by  a 
metaphor  we  call  good,  otherwise  it  must  be  a  mental  quality 
that  is  intended.  But  if,  going  beyond  metaphor  and  purposes 
of  expression,  we  try  to  really  affirm  something  mental  of  a 
material  substance,  or  something  material  of  a  mental  one,  we 
shall  find  that  self-consciousness  will  no  more  cover  the  two,  in 
the  sense  of  proof  that  something  in  common  must  thereby 
exist  between  them,  than  it  wTill  cover  a  white  sound  or  a 
sweet  colour.  It  will  eject  them  summarily  as  incompatibles. 
Of  course  as  mind  and  matter  both  exist  together  in  the  world, 
self-consciousness  must  bring  them  together  in  the  mind,  but  to 


456  MY   CONTRIBUTION. 

imagine  that  because  it  can  bring  them  side  by  side,  it  has 
therefore  really  united  them,  is  a  dream.  And,  accordingly,  as 
we  should  expect,  we  find  that  Hegel  when  deducing  the 
categories  of  things  one  from  the  other,  jumps  as  jauntily  from 
a  mental  to  a  material  one  as  if  it  were  the  most  natural  thing 
in  the  world.  At  one  moment  we  find  him  engaged  with  such 
categories  as,  say,  *  force  and  manifestation,'  'substance  and 
accident/  '  inner  and  outer,'  etc.,  where  both  sides,  it  is 
evident,  are  material  in  their  nature,  but  suddenly  before  we 
know  where  we  are,  when  our  back  is  turned,  he  will  by  a 
sleight  of  hand  bring  us  out  from  under  the  hat  such  a 
category  as,  say,  *  soul  and  expression,'  '  idea  and  object,' 
*  Spirit  and  Nature,'  and  the  like,  where  one  limb  of  the  pair 
of  opposites  is  palpably  mental,  while  the  other  is  material. 
Now  when  our  senses  shall  without  sleight  of  hand,  find  a 
bridge  between  a  colour  and  a  sound,  a  sound  and  a  taste,  or 
other  incompatibles,  I  shall  believe  that  logic  will  find  it  between 
Mind  and  Matter, — but  not  before. 

And  so  at  last  after  long  and  weary  wandering  I  had  found 
my  lost  Ideal ;  and  from  that  time  onward  the  depression  from 
which  I  had  been  suffering  for  four  or  five  years,  during  which 
time  I  had  rarely  risen  from  a  book  without  a  sense  of  pain  and 
bereavement,  passed  completely  away.  And  then  I  saw  with 
Goethe  and  Carlyle,  that  for  those  who  longed  to  live  in  the 
Ideal  there  was  practically  a  boundless  field  open  and  at  hand  ; 
that  there  was  no  situation  in  which  a  man  could  be  placed 
that  could  not  be  idealized,  be  made  more  beautiful,  more  true, 
more  moral,  more  poetic,  according  to  the  side  of  the  Ideal 
to  which  he  was  more  especially  drawm  ; — and  all  with  the 
conviction  that  nothing  could  be  lost ;  that  if  the  work  itself 
were  destroyed,  the  thought  and  character  from  which  it 
sprang  would  not  die,  but  would  transmit  their  virtue  to 
others ;  for  if  the  ark  of  God  is  to  be  carried  by  the  men  of 
one  generation  to  the  point  where  it  is  taken  up  by  the  men  of 
the   next,   it   seems  reasonable    that   each  one  must  have  his 


MY   CONTRIBUTION.  457 

appointed  task.  And  believing,  as  I  did,  with  Emerson  that 
each  man  should  keep  as  far  as  possible  to  that  work  which  is 
most  congenial  to  his  whole  nature,  I  resolved  that  my  own 
course  should  be  first  to  make  known  what  I  had  found  to 
others,  and  then  for  my  life's  task  to  labour  in  those  parts  of 
the  field  of  truth  which  were  still  open,  and  mainly  in  the 
investigation  of  those  laws  of  the  World  and  of  the  Human 
Mind  in  which  I  had  hitherto  been  engaged,  and  to  the  study 
of  which,  by  nature  I  was  most  inclined  ;  with  the  feeling  that 
a  knowledge  of  these  would  be  the  best  alike  for  conduct  and 
morality,  for  action  and  contemplation.  And  with  this  view  I 
resolved  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  Goethe,  and  to  neglect 
nothing  the  study  and  contemplation  of  which  would  help 
me  to  my  end, — neither  Physical  Science  nor  Psychology, 
Sociology,  History,  Politics,  Religions,  the  lives  of  Great 
Men,  of  Religious  Founders,  of  Men  of  Action,  of  Mystics, 
of  Men  of  the  World,  the  Market-place,  and  the  Street. 


PART   II 


ENGLAND 


BOOK  III. 


MY    INNEE    LIFE, 

BEING   A   CHAPTER   IN 

PEESONAL    EVOLUTION    AND 
AUTOBIOGKAPHY. 


PART    II.— ENGLAND. 


BOOK    III.— LITERARY    EXPERIENCES, 

MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT. 

CIVILIZATION. 

STYLE. 

A   POLITICAL   INSTANCE. 

THE   DAEMONIC   ELEMENT. 

POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS. 

ISOLATION   AND   DEPRESSION. 


CHAPTER    I, 


MY    FIRST    ATTEMPT. 

A  LL  being  ready,  I  had  gone  down  to  Scotland  with  much 
"T^  trepidation  with  the  object  of  writing  out  the  small 
contribution  which  as  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter  I  had  made 
towards  the  solution  of  the  World-problem ;  and  after  three 
months  hard  work  on  it  there,  I  had  brought  it  back  with  me  to 
London,  in  the  shape  of  a  short  essay  of  about  twenty  pages ; 
and  was  now  looking  about  me  for  a  publisher.  When  in 
Scotland  I  had  been  told  by  one  who  was  reputed  to  know,  that 
if  my  essay  possessed  any  originality  at  all,  all  that  was 
necessary  to  ensure  its  acceptance  by  a  magazine,  was  to  drop 
it  quietly  into  the  Editor's  box !  Very  well,  I  thought,  I  will 
answer  for  the  originality !  But  the  more  I  thought  of  it  on 
my  return,  the  more  uncomfortable  did  I  become  at  the  idea 
of  dropping  this  precious  document  into  the  cold  and  remorseless 
jaws  of  the  Editorial  letter-box,  from  whose  dark  and  mysterious 
recesses  I  feared  I  might  never  see  it  again!  I  must  have 
further  advice  on  the  point,  I  felt,  before  taking  so  rash  a  step ; 
and  accordingly  one  fine  spring  morning  in  April  I  made  my 
way  down  to  Chelsea  to  see  Carlyle,  who  had  asked  me  to  come 
and  see  him  again  when  I  was  in  any  difficulty.  On  mentioning 
the  object  of  my  visit  a  shade  of  disappointment  fell  over  me  I 
remember,  when  instead  of  losing  his  composure  at  the 
announcement  of  so  important  a  piece  of  news  as  that  at  last  I 


462  MY   FIRST    ATTEMPT. 

had  laid  my  first  goose-egg,  he  took  no  notice  of  the 
circumstance  but  went  on  quietly  to  observe  that  he  '  had  now 
quite  done  with  editors  and  folk  of  that  kind,'  and  referred  me 
to  Mr.  Harrison  the  late  librarian  of  the  London  Library,  than 
whom  he  said  he  knew  of  no  man  of  a  more  encyclopaedic  or 
varied  knowledge  of  all  that  pertained  to  bibliography,  and 
especially  of  all  that  bore  on  the  commercial,  editorial,  social, 
and  other  concomitant  aspects  of  literature.  In  less  than  an 
hour  I  had  found  my  way  to  the  Library  in  St.  James'  Square, 
MS.  in  pocket,  and  into  the  presence  of  the  Librarian  himself. 
He  was  a  man  of  medium  stature,  of  genial  expression,  and 
with  a  clean-shaven  face  that  at  the  first  blush  reminded  me 
strongly  of  the  portraits  I  had  seen  of  Macaulay ;  and  I  was  at 
once  (by  the  association  of  ideas,  I  suppose,)  prepared  to  credit 
him  with  all  those  encyclopaedic  qualities  of  memory  with 
which  Carlyle  had  so  lavishly  endowed  him.  He  received  me 
pleasantly,  listened  attentively  to  what  I  had  to  say,  but  when 
at  last  I  came  to  the  point  by  asking  him  roundly  which  of  the 
editors — of  the  '  Nineteenth  Century,'  the  *  Contemporary,'  the 
'  Fortnightly,'  or  '  Macmillan' — ought  in  his  judgment  to  have  the 
honour  of  publishing  my  essay,  he  quite  dashed  my  spirits  for 
the  moment  by  rising  from  his  seat,  looking  benignantly  at  me 
over  his  spectacles  and  saying  in  his  kindly  way  'You  won't 
be  discouraged,  I  hope,  if  you  don't  succeed.  The  editors  in 
these  days  of  signed  articles,  you  know,  go  so  much  by 
established  reputation,  and  this,  I  understand,  is  your  first 
attempt.'  I  admitted  that  it  was,  but  fortified  with  the  simple 
idea  of  my  Scotch  friend  as  to  the  originality  and  the  editorial 
letter-box,  I  quickly  recovered  myself,  and  went  on  to  explain 
with  much  animation  and  naivete  (and  with  as  much  insistence 
as  if  he  denied  it ! )  that  my  article  was  really  very  original,  and 
that  I  had  been  given  to  understand  that  all  that  would  be 
necessary  would  be  for  me  to  drop  it  without  further  ado  into 
the  Editor's  box  !  He  did  not  seem  to  be  as  much  impressed 
by  my  assurance  of  this  as  I  could  have  wished,  and  in  reply 


MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT.  463 

only  went  so  far  by  way  of  mitigating  what  I  thought  to  be  the 
undue  rigour  of  his  judgment,  as  to  say  that  of  course  there 
would  be  no  harm  in  trying  them  one  after  another,  that  I  ought 
to  send  it  to  them  in  the  regular  way  by  post  with  return 
prepaid  in  case  it  was  not  accepted,  and  that  he  hoped  that  one 
or  other  of  them  might  see  his  way  to  take  it.  Upon  this  I 
thanked  him  and  withdrew,  somewhat  disconcerted  but 
comforting  myself  when  I  got  outside  with  the  reflection  that  he 
could  not  know  anything  of  its  contents  as  he  had  not  read  it,  and 
flattering  myself  how  surprised  he  would  be  if  he  only  knew  how 
really  original  and  important  it  was  !  And  then  began  for  me  the 
long  wandering  in  the  wilderness  of  literature,  the  weary  round 
of  offers  and  refusals  of  MSS.,  which  continued  without  a  break 
for  more  than  twenty  years — perhaps  one  of  the  longest  on 
record. 

I  began  with  the  'Nineteenth  Century,'  I  remember.  It 
had  only  been  started  a  few  months,  and  owing  to  the  support 
which  it  had  from  the  outset  received  from  the  members  of  the 
Metaphysical  Society  which  at  that  time  contained  the  names 
of  all  that  was  most  illustrious  in  the  thought  and  literature  of 
England,  it  was  carrying  all  before  it.  It  had  been  hinted  to 
me  by  the  Librarian,  that  access  to  its  columns  would  be  more 
difficult  perhaps  than  in  the  case  of  the  other  magazines,  but 
as  it  numbered  among  its  most  constant  contributors  Mr. 
Mallock,  then  a  young  man  like  myself,  I  brushed  aside  the 
difficulty  and  boldly  sent  the  essay  in.  It  was  returned 
promptly  and  with  thanks.  I  then  thought  of  sending  it  to 
the  *  Fortnightly,'  but  was  advised  that  the  tone  of  the  essay 
which  was  anti-materialistic,  would  operate  rather  as  a  bar  to 
its  acceptance  than  otherwise,  and  so  sent  it  on  to  the 
'  Contemporary '  instead.  In  this  I  was  wrong,  for  the 
4  Fortnightly '  was  at  that  time  under  the  conduct  of  John 
Morley,  than  whom  no  one  would  have  been  more  prompt  to 
detect  and  to  welcome  any  shade  of  originality  or  merit,  let  it 
come  from  what  quarter  it  would.     From  the  '  Contemporary/ 


464  MY    FIRST    ATTEMPT. 

too,  it  came  back,  and  I  then  sent  it  to  '  Macmillan's '  with  the 
same  result.  Further  than  these  I  did  not  go,  for  my  pride 
would  not  permit  me  to  send  it  to  any  organ  but  those  of  the 
very  first  water.  Some  one  suggested  '  Mind,'  but  as  this  was 
almost  entirely  a  purely  metaphysical  journal,  and  as  it  was 
against  all  of  the  older  systems  of  metaphysics  that  much  of 
my  after  work  wTas  to  be  directed,  I  did  not  feel  it  becoming  to 
send  it  in.  What  then  wras  to  be  done  ?  Here,  I  said  to 
myself,  is  the  outline  of  a  brand  new  system  of  philosophy,  the 
fruit  of  years  of  study  and  reflection ;  original  and  convincing 
too,  I  flattered  myself,  and  all  within  the  compass  of  twenty 
pages,  and  to  be  had  almost  for  the  asking !  I  wras  disappointed 
and  not  a  little  indignant,  and  resolved  that  I  would  call  at 
once  on  the  various  men  of  eminence  whose  published  opinions 
were  most  in  harmony  with  my  own,  to  see  if  I  could  not 
interest  them  sufficiently  in  my  new  doctrines  to  obtain  their 
help  with  the  editors.  Accordingly  having  looked  up  their 
addresses  in  the  Directory,  and  mapped  out  in  diagram  the 
different  localities  in  which  they  lived,  I  resolved  in  order  that 
no  time  might  be  lost,  to  make  a  descent  on  them  all  in  the 
course  of  a  single  morning  !  I  started  early  on  my  round,  MS. 
in  pocket,  ready  to  draw  it  on  them  at  a  moment's  notice  if 
they  should  give  me  the  slightest  encouragement ;  the  young 
lady  who  was  about  to  become  my  wife  accompanying  me,  and 
waiting  for  me  in  the  nearest  confectioners'  shops  while  I  went 
in.  All  received  me  most  pleasantly,  in  spite  of  the  gross 
interruption  to  their  work  which  a  morning's  visit  must  have 
entailed,  but  of  which  at  that  time  I  was  quite  unconscious. 

The  first  on  whom  I  called  was  an  illustrious  philosopher 
and  theologian,  of  great  age,  authority,  and  dignity.  Feeling 
that  time  was  precious  I  lost  none  in  beating  about  the  bush,, 
but  plunged  at  once  in  medias  res,  and  before  he  could  stop  me 
had  well  nigh  emptied  the  whole  contents  of  my  essay  on  his 
revered  and  devoted  head!  He  bore  it  in  his  gentle  way 
without  a  murmur  or  show  of  impatience,  and  when  I  at  last 


MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT.  465 

paused  to  emphasize  a  particular  position  which  I  had  taken  up 
in  opposition  to  Spencer,  and  which  I  thought  would  make  him 
prick  up  his  ears,  he  drew  me  on  to  my  after  confusion  by 
giving  way  in  a  weak  moment  to  an  expression  of  sympathy 
with  my  view.     The  point  in  question  was  one  which  I  had 
entitled  in  the  essay,  '  the  Scale  in  the  Mind ' ;  and  on  my 
explaining  what  I  meant  by  this  phrase,  his  face  lighted  up 
into   a   glow   and  he  exclaimed,  '  Why   that  is  precisely  the 
position  in  other  words  that  I  took  up  in  my  reply  to  Huxley 
in  a  debate  at  the  Metaphysical  Society/     So  overcome  was  I 
at  the  discovery  of  this  bond  of  sympathy  between  us  in  my 
then  state  of  tension  and  excitement,  that  before  he  had  time 
to  steady  himself  and  resume  his  gravity,  I  had  drawn  the  MS. 
from  my  pocket  and  presenting  it  at  him  like  a  pistol,  asked 
him  if  he  would  do  me  the  honour  to  read  it !     At  this  new 
turn  his  face  froze  instantly,  and  he  proceeded  at  once  gravely 
but  not  unkindly  to  assure  me  that  at  his  age  and  with  his 
time   so   much   occupied,   he    must  really   decline ;    and   then 
seeing  my  countenance  fall,  and  feeling  that  perhaps  he  had 
taken  a  sharper  curve  than  he  might  have  led  me  to  expect,  he 
rose   from   his    seat   and   walked   round    the   room    with   me, 
showing  me  some  new   books  which  had  been  sent  him   and 
which  lie  advised  me  to  read,  chatting  genially  all  the  while, 
and  finally  after  expressing  the  hope  that  I  would  get  the  MS. 
published  and  then  send  him  a  copy  which  he  could  read  at 
his  leisure,  he  accompanied  me  to  the  door  and  with  much 
cordiality  wished  me  good  morning.     When  I  got   outside,  I 
was  vexed  with  myself  for  my  gaucherie  and  indiscretion  in 
asking  him  to  read  the  MS.,  and  blushed  every  time  I  thought 
of     it,    and     altogether     felt     very     uncomfortable.       I    was 
disappointed  too ;  but  in  a  different  way  from  what  I  had  felt 
when  the  MS.  had  been  returned  by  the  Editors.     For  in  those 
youthful  days  a  new  idea  was  to  me  as  meat  and  drink,  and 
often,  indeed,  had  to  do  duty  for  the  same  ;    and  it  was  as 
incomprehensible  to  me   that   anyone   professing   to   live   for 

GG 


466  MY  FIRST   ATTEMPT. 

these  great  and  sacred  truths  should  be  indifferent  to  them 
when  thrust  under  their  very  nose,  as  it  were,  as  it  would  be  to 
a  miser  to  see  sold  thrown  at  the  feet  of  one  who  was  too 
indifferent  to  pick  it  up.  It  outraged  my  ideal,  and  was  a 
great  shock  to  me,  and  for  a  long  time  I  could  neither 
understand  it  nor  get  over  it.  It  did  not  occur  to  me  then, 
(what  experience  has  abundantly  taught  me  since),  that 
gifts  so  lightly  proffered  were  more  likely  to  be  of  imaginary 
than  real  value,  and  that  the  chances  that  any  truth  both  new 
and  important  was  likely  to  be  lost  by  refusing  it  when  thrown 
at  a  man  in  this  way,  were  very  small  indeed  ! 

In  the  meantime  I  had  started  off  for  the  house  of  my  second 
victim  (my  companion  making  desperate  efforts  to  keep  up 
with  me  as  in  my  excitement  I  stalked  along!)  and  we  soon 
became  so  intent  in  speculating  on  what  my  luck  would  be  on 
my  next  visit,  that  I  had  quite  forgotten  the  chagrin  and 
disappointment  of  the  last.  He  was  in  his  study  under  the 
sky-lights,  and  received  me  pleasantly  enough,  apologising  for 
the  length  of  staircase  I  had  to  traverse  before  reaching  him, 
and  settling  himself  down  to  hear  what  I  had  to  say.  I  did 
not  detain  him  long.  For  it  had  occurred  to  me  as  I  came 
along  that  the  reason  I  had  not  succeeded  better  with  the  old 
philosopher  whom  I  had  just  left,  was  because  I  had  emptied 
almost  the  entire  contents  of  my  essay  on  him,  so  that  the  poor 
man  was  quite  exhausted.  This  time,  I  said  to  myself,  I  will 
be  brief,  and  keep  to  a  few  main  points  only.  Now  it  so 
happened  that  I  had  digested  the  critical  parts  of  my  essay 
under  four  compendious  headings  which  I  accused  the  pure 
Materialists  of  having  neglected  in  their  scheme  of  the  World. 
To  these  in  their  naked  baldness  I  stuck  grimly,  telling  them 
over  on  my  fingers  one  by  one  slowly  and  deliberately  as  he 
listened,  and  sternly  repressing  the  almost  uncontrollable 
temptation  I  felt  to  let  myself  go  and  spread  myself  out  before 
him  at  large  !  But  to  my  surprise  he  did  not  budge,  nor  did  his 
face  betray  the  least  emotion  one  way  or  another  at  the  recital ; 


MY   FIRST    ATTEMPT.  467 

on  the  contrary  it  wore  rather  a  dazed  and  bewildered 
expression,  I  thought !  Nor  do  I  now  wonder  at  it,  for  when  I 
mention  that  the  four  points  in  question  baldly  stated,  bore 
such  enigmatic  legends  as  the  following,  some  of  which  the 
reader  has  already  seen, — *  the  Scale  in  the  mind,'  '  the  looking 
at  the  World  from  without  instead  of  from  within,'  '  the 
confusion  in  the  choice  of  the  instruments  for  the  investigation 
of  Truth,'  and  the  '  looking  at  the  World  with  too  microscopic 
an  eye,' — it  will  be  apparent  to  the  reader  that  had  he  been 
ten  times  the  philosopher  he  was,  they  must  have  been  as 
mysterious  to  him  as  the  hieroglyphics  on  Cleopatra's  Needle  ! 
No,  but  what  annoyed  me  was  that  he  did  not  even  ask  me 
what  I  meant  by  them !  Doubtless  he  saw  by  my  eye  that  I 
was  dying  to  empty  the  whole  bucket  on  him,  and  so  he 
skilfully  averted  this  danger  by  drawing  me  off  from  the 
subject  and  contents  of  my  essay,  to  the  more  practical  issue  of 
what  was  to  be  done  with  it.  *  Now,  I'll  tell  you  what  to  do,' 
he  said.  '  You  have  sent  it  you  say,  to  all  these  different 
magazines  and  they  have  returned  it.  Well  now,  break  it  into 
pieces  (I  thought  of  my  four  headings),  watch  your  opportunity, 
and  when  any  subject  turns  up  in  the  newspapers  that  will  give 
you  a  chance,  write  on  it  at  once,  and  tack  one  or  other  of 
your  points  on  to  the  end  of  it  as  a  moral ! '  At  this  point  I 
began  to  feel  a  kind  of  despair  creep  over  me,  and  was  getting 
bewildered  myself,  for  I  could  not  possibly  imagine  what 
conceivable  kind  of  newspaper  incident  could  turn  up  that 
would  lend  itself  as  illustration  to  either  one  or  another  of 
these  enigmatic  and  mystical  philosophic  abstractions  of  mine. 
It  was  evident  that  though  in  himself  one  of  the  most 
apprehensive  of  men,  he  had  not  taken  in  the  meaning  of 
what  I  had  said.  But  I  let  him  continue,  and  when  he  went 
on  to  say  'the  'Echo'  would  be  just  the  paper  for  it,  it  contains 
some  very  serious,  solid  articles,  you  know,  and  you  could  tack 
on  your  points  in  a  short  article  there  very  nicely.  It  is  what 
I  did  myself,' — the  humour  of  the  thing  tickled  me  so  that  I 


468  MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT. 

could  hardly  restrain  myself.  I  thought  I  saw  the  little  article 
under  the  sensational  heading — *  Child  Murder,'  '  a  Dynamite 
Conspiracy,'  '  a  City  Fire,'  '  a  Change  of  Government,'  '  a 
Political  Cave,'  '  Another  Local  Veto  Bill/  or  '  Engineers' 
Strike ' — and  the  face  of  the  reader  when  he  got  to  the  bottom 
to  read,  '  all  this,  Mr.  Editor,  proves  what  I  hold  to  be  a  great 
truth,  and  one  which  cannot  be  too  often  reiterated,  namely 
that  the  Scale  in  the  Mind  is  '  etc. ;  or  '  that  the  looking  at  the 
World  from  without  is  by  no  means  the  same  thing  as  looking 
at  it  from  within,'  or  '  that  you  cannot  be  too  careful  in  how 
you  handle  your  intellectual  edge-tools,  or  as  to  which  one  you 
pick  up,'  etc.,  and  '  that  you  must  not  put  on  your  spectacles 
to  look  at  the  moon,  or  take  up  your  telescope  to  investigate 
the  feet  of  a  fly ! '  It  was  like  the  patent-pill  advertisement  at 
the  bottom  of  a  column  of  newspaper  sensation ;  and  when  I 
got  out  I  laughed  aloud.  The  advice  was  most  kindly  given, 
and  was  in  itself  not  only  a  most  feasible  but  a  most  practical 
suggestion,  had  it  been  some  new  moral,  political,  or  social 
truth  for  which  I  was  anxious  to  get  a  hearing ;  but  for  these 
high  philosophic  abstractions  on  the  ultimate  structure  and 
constitution  of  the  World, — the  idea  of  it  kept  me  laughing 
most  of  the  way  to  the  house  of  the  next  on  my  list. 

This  time  it  was  a  lady  of  great  prominence  in  the  intellectual 
and  social  movements  of  the  time.  I  sent  in  my  card,  and  was 
shown  up  to  a  room  on  the  first  floor.  She  seemed  at  first 
annoyed  at  the  intrusion,  and  looking  at  me  without  moving 
a  muscle  of  her  head  or  face,  said  in  a  tone  of  military 
severity  l  To  what,  Sir,  am  I  indebted  for  the  honour  of  this 
visit !  '  But  when  in  a  half  frightened  and  subdued  tone  I 
proceeded  quite  innocently  to  explain  that  I  had  come  to  see  if 
she  could  help  me  with  her  advice  as  to  the  publication  of  an 
article,  she  was  all  geniality  in  a  moment,  and  after  listening 
patiently  to  the  points  which  I  thought  I  had  made  good  in  it, 
(by  this  time  I  had  become  quite  calm,  and  was  able  to  put 
them  quietly  and  without  the  danger  of  alarming  my  listener  or 


MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT.  469 

putting  her  to  flight!)  she  entered  sympathetically  into  all  1 
had  to  say  without  hurry  or  show  of  impatience,  and  ended  by 
recommending  me  to  see,  whom  ! — the  old  theologian  who  had 
been  the  object  of  my  first  visit  in  the  morning  and  who  she 
thought  would  from  the  similarity  of  our  views  be  most 
interested  in  what  I  had  just  been  saying.  I  was  too  ashamed 
to  confess  that  I  had  already  seen  him  that  very  morning,  and 
after  thanking  her  for  her  sympathy  and  advice,  withdrew.  I 
felt  I  had  had  quite  enough  of  it  for  one  morning,  and  made  up 
my  mind  that  nothing  further  was  to  come  of  this  particular 
plan  of  campaign.  My  circle  had  suddenly  got  back  to  the 
point  from  which  it  started;  the  situation  was  becoming 
serious;  and  I  felt  that  if  I  did  not  look  out,  I  should  be 
baulked  at  the  outset  in  my  lightly  undertaken  enterprise  of 
coming  to  England  to  conquer  the  philosophic  world  !  I  was 
indignant,  too,  and  having  unbounded  energy  in  those  young 
days,  I  felt  much  like  that  old  Ram  Dass  of  whom  Carlyle 
writes,  who  declared  of  himself  that  he  'had  enough  fire  in 
his  belly  to  burn  up  the  sins  of  the  world ! '  But  what  was  to 
be  done  ?  A  happy  thought  struck  me.  Why  not  publish  the 
essay  as  a  pamphlet,  and  send  copies  of  it  to  those 
representative  men  in  philosophy,  religion,  and  science,  with 
whose  works  I  was  familiar  and  who  might  quietly  read  it  at 
their  leisure  and  pronounce  on  its  merits  !  A  capital  idea,  I 
thought,  and  no  sooner  conceived  than  I  prepared  to  put  it  in 
execution. 

But  just  at  this  juncture  a  friend  of  mine  to  whom  I  had  been 
speaking  of  my  bad  luck,  assured  me  she  knew  of  a  magazine 
that  would  be  glad  to  accept  it — if  I  remember  rightly  even 
before  its  contents  were  known!  It  was  called  the 
4  Churchman's  Shilling  Magazine,'  a  religious  publication,  very 
proper,  but  milk-and-watery  I  imagine,  with  little  circulation 
and  no  pay.  It  was  a  great  come-down  to  my  intellectual 
pride  to  have  to  stoop  to  this;  worse  even  I  thought  than 
tacking  it  on  as  a  moral  to  the  tail  of  an  article  in  the  Echo  ; 


470  MY    FIRST    ATTEMPT. 

and  at  the  first  suggestion  of  it,  like  Mark  Twain  with  the 
Constantinople  sausage,  I  resolved  to  '  pass ! '  But  on  second 
thoughts  I  agreed  to  accept  it.  What  decided  me  was  firstly, 
the  weak  youthful  desire  to  see  my  article  in  type  at  all  costs 
after  all  this  struggle,  but  mainly  that  before  the  type  was 
broken  up,  I  was  to  have  any  number  of  copies  I  liked  struck 
off  at  the  merely  nominal  cost  of  the  paper  and  binding.  The 
essay  appeared  in  due  course  in  the  magazine,  and  for  years  the 
copies  I  received  as  my  share  of  the  spoil,  formed  a  stack  under 
my  dressing-table,  on  which  I  regularly  drew  for  shaving-paper ! 
Only  one  review  of  it,  if  I  remember  rightly,  came  into  my 
hands.  It  was  from  a  Plymouth  paper  I  think,  and  the  Editor 
who  was  apparently  as  much  amazed  by  its  appearance  in  the 
pages  of  this  magazine  as  if  it  had  been  some  escaped  monster, 
went  on  to  inform  the  reader  that  if  he  wanted  a  tough  and 
knotty  piece  of  reading,  and  one  whose  digestion  were  present 
death,  here  indeed  were  the  article  that  would  give  it  him  ! 

In  due  time  the  pamphlet  appeared  as  printed  from  the  type 
of  the  article,  and  some  two  hundred  copies  or  more  were  sent 
by  post  to  nearly  all  the  representative  thinkers,  theologians, 
professors,  preachers,  lecturers,  writers  of  essays  or  books,  in 
England,  Scotland  and  Ireland !  It  was  nicely  got  up  and 
looked  quite  smart,  I  thought,  in  its  smoothly-pressed  slatey- 
blue  cover ;  and  I  was  quite  proud  of  it.  I  had  added  to  the 
original  title  of  '  God  or  Force? '  the  following  sub-title,  'Being 
an  attempt  to  give  a  harmonious  view  of  the  world  after 
showing  the  limitations  of  scientific  thought.'  This  I  thought 
sounded  well,  and  I  flattered  myself  it  would  be  very  effective ; 
besides  it  described  with  sufficient  accuracy  what  it  was  that 
I  had  attempted  in  these  pages. 

The  pamphlets,  then,  having  been  sent  off  in  flights  to  every 
quarter  of  the  three  kingdoms,  I  sat  anxiously  at  home  awaiting 
the  result.  I  had  not  to  wait  long,  for  almost  immediately, 
acknowledgements  came  back  in  shoals,  most  of  them  kindly  but 
formal,  but  a  few  which  proved  that  the  essay  had  been  read 


MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT.  471 

carefully  by  some  of  the  very  men  and  women  whom  I  had  most 
desired  to  reach.  One  of  them  said  that  I  had  got  hold  of 
some  points  which  he  had  been  teaching  to  his  students  for 
many  years,  but  which  he  had  not  yet  published;  another 
exj;>ressed  himself  as  interested  in  the  use  I  had  made  of  the  idea 
of  '  tendency  ' ;  another  in  the  considerations  I  had  adduced  to 
show  that  the  complex  tendencies  of  the  world  all  lead  up  to  the 
ideal  of  love ;  and  one,  while  generous  and  appreciative,  regretted 
that  I  should  seek  to  add  another  to  the  various  theories  of  the 
World,  and  was  not  surprised  that  it  should  have  been  rejected 
by  the  Editors  when  it  was  attempted  to  be  digested  into  twenty 
pages  !  But  when  once  all  the  acknowledgements  had  come 
in,  everything  fell  into  silence  again. 

Meanwhile  I  had  been  gradually  becoming  myself  dissatisfied 
with  this  crude  and  early  production,  over  which  I  had  spent  so 
much  time  and  been  so  elate.  It  was  mainly  a  critical  work, 
and  although  it  contained  constructive  elements  as  we  have  seen, 
its  effect  as  a  whole  was  rather  to  pick  holes  in  the  Materialistic 
System  of  Herbert  Spencer,  than  like  him  to  reduce  all  the 
complex  elements  of  Nature  to  a  single  Law.  Accordingly  I 
now  set  to  work  with  vigour  to  repair  this  deficiency,  and  after 
a  year  or  more's  work  upon  it  had  managed  to  produce  a 
compact  scheme  of  my  own,  with  a  single  law,  too,  running 
through  it  all — what  I  called  the  Law  of  Polarity, — and  the  hint 
of  which  I  had  got  from  Emerson,  as  Spencer  had  got  the  hint 
of  his  Law  of  Evolution  from  von  Baer.  The  two  laws  rested 
ultimately  on  the  same  principle,  namely  of  a  unity  of  Force 
everywhere  existing  in  Nature  in  the  opposite  forms  of  attraction 
and  repulsion;  but  the  advantage  which  I  claimed  for  the  Law 
of  Polarity  over  Spencer's  elaborated  law  was  this,  that  while 
his  law  with  its  materialistic  premises,  did  not  make  room  for 
the  ascension  of  things  but  only  for  their  lateral  expansion  and 
differentiation  on  the  flat  as  it  were,  as  a  stream  that  in  overflowing 
a  meadow,  breaks  on  its  margin  and  circumference  into  endless 
differentiation  of  eddy  and  foam  but  cannot  rise  higher  than  its 


472  MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT. 

source,  my  statement  with  its  spiritual  implications,  permitted, 
like  a  spiral  staircase,  of  the  ascension  of  things  from  chaos  up 
to  the  organized  forms  of  crystal,  of  vegetable,  of  animal,  and 
of  man ;  from  man  savage  up  to  man  civilized,  and  from  that  up 
to  the  disembodied  ideals  of  beauty,  morality,  and  love. 

This  new  essay  I  had  again  compressed  into  the  compass  of 
a  magazine  article  which  I  had  entitled  '  Considerations  on  the 
Constitution  of  the  World,'  and  was  now  prepared  to  make  a 
fresh  assault  on  the  close  preserves  of  the  higher  magazines, 
with  the  exception  of  the  4  Fortnightly '  for  the  reason  I  have 
given  above.  But  this  time  I  was  able,  I  thought,  to  approach 
the  Editors  with  some  decided  advantages  in  my  favour  over 
those  of  my  first  attempt.  For  in  the  meantime  I  had  written 
to  a  few  of  those  whom  I  have  mentioned  as  having  expressed 
their  interest  in  my  first  essay,  to  ask  them  if  they  could  be  of 
assistance  to  me  with  the  Editors  in  my  next  venture.  They 
all  came  promptly  to  my  aid,  some  of  them  writing  directly  to 
the  Editors  about  me,  others  writing  notes  of  recommendation 
which  I  was  to  forward  myself  to  the  Editors.  But  in  spite 
of  these  testimonials  the  MS.  came  back  from  each  at  the 
appointed  hour  with  the  regularity  of  Noah's  dove,  but  without 
the  olive  leaf  to  show  that  land  was  at  last  in  sight.  Not  at 
all  daunted  by  this  fresh  failure,  I  determined  again  to  reach 
as  many  disinterested  and  competent  judges  as  possible,  whose 
influence  although  unseen  at  the  moment,  would  be  ready  to 
appear  when  the  time  was  ripe ;  and  so  had  recourse  again  to 
the  medium  of  the  pamphlet.  As  before,  it  was  sent  to  the 
leading  men  in  the  three  kingdoms,  but  without  much  result. 
For  although  my  original  supporters  remained  firm  in  their 
appreciation,  their  number  was  not  1  think  to  any  appreciable 
extent  increased.  What  then  was  the  next  move  to  be  ?  The 
situation  which  had  been  getting  more  and  more  grave,  had 
now  I  felt  become  desperate.  I  had  used  up  practically  the 
whole  stock  of  my  original  ideas  in  these  two  articles,  and  was 
now  left  high  and  dry  and  exhausted.     Time,  although  really 


MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT.  473 

young,  was  I  felt  most  urgent  and  pressing ;  I  was  now 
twenty-nine  years  of  age,  I  reflected,  and  was  firmly  convinced, 
like  Coningsby,  that  if  I  did  not  do  something  before  thirty,  I 
should  not  do  it  at  all.  My  medical  practice,  too,  was 
practically  nil,  and  the  thousand  pounds  which  I  had  received 
from  the  grateful  patient,  and  on  which  I  had  not  only  subsisted 
the  while,  but  married,  was  beginning  to  run  low.  It  seemed 
to  me  more  clear  than  ever  that  the  one  object  to  which  I  had 
dedicated  my  life,  was  to  be  baulked  after  all  on  the  threshold, 
both  by  want  of  means  and  by  the  impossibility  of  gaining  a 
foothold.  I  had  determined  never  to  go  back  to  Canada  and 
confess  myself  beaten,  and  so  to  disappoint  the  hopes  and  good 
wishes  of  those  who  had  sped  me  on  my  way,  but  was  resolved 
to  fight  it  out  to  the  bitter  end  in  London  alone.  Meantime 
I  had  learned  one  or  two  things  for  my  guidance  in  the  future, 
arid  as  I  still  hold  them,  they  may  be  of  value  to  others  who 
may  find  themselves  in  a  like  predicament.  The  first  is  that 
now  that  the  signed  article  is  in  vogue  in  the  leading  magazines, 
an  Editor  although  open  to  accept  an  article  showing  originality 
.and  merit,  on  some  single  aspect  or  point  of  philosophy  or  life, 
from  an  unknown  writer,  is  not  likely  to  do  so  if  the  author, 
however  original,  attempts  some  condensed  scheme  of  the 
World  as  a  whole,  and  especially  if  he  attempts  it,  as  my  critic 
said,  in  the  short  space  of  twenty  pages  !  The  second  is,  that 
it  is  always  open  to  the  beginner  in  the  last  extremity  to  have 
his  article  or  book  printed  and  sent  to  the  best  judges,  with  the 
certainty  almost  that  one  or  other  of  them  will  see  its  merits, 
and  remember  it  when  the  time  comes.  The  third  is,  that  no 
recommendation  of  an  unknown  writer's  work  by  any  authority 
however  eminent,  counts  much  with  the  editor  in  the  days  of 
the  signed  article,  unless  the  authority  in  question  has  taken 
means  at  the  same  time  to  inform  the  public  that  a  new  writer 
has  appeared,  whom  it  would  be  well  for  it  to  hear.  And 
lastly,  that  the  pamphlet  as  a  literary  medium  is  now  dead,  and 
in  all  probability  never  again  to  be  revived. 


474  MY   FIRST    ATTEMPT. 

At  this  juncture  a  new  idea  occurred  to  me.  The  Editors 
and  the  public,  I  reflected,  although  they  look  askance  at  the 
abstract  speculations  of  an  unknown  writer,  may  still  be  willing 
to  listen  to  compendious  expositions  of  well-known  ones.  Now 
up  to  that  time  the  philosophers  by  whose  writings  my  own 
course  of  thought  had  been  mainly  moulded  were  as  we  have 
seen,  Plato,  Bacon,  Goethe,  Herbert  Spencer,  Emerson, 
Newman  and  Carlyle.  I  had  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that 
Herbert  Spencer  had  swallowed  up,  superseded,  and  embodied 
in  himself  all  that  was  true  in  those  of  his  predecessors  who 
had  materialistic  leanings,  and  that  Plato,  Bacon,  Goethe, 
Emerson,  and  Carlyle  had  summed  up  all  that  could  be  said 
for  the  spiritual  or  ideal  side  of  things.  I  accordingly  had 
pondered  the  doctrines  of  these  great  writers  with  more  care 
and  over  a  greater  period  of  time  than  those  of  any  other 
writers  before  or  since — with  the  exception  perhaps  of  Hegel 
and  Comte  in  later  years.  I  selected,  then,  as  subjects  of  my 
exposition  the  works  of  Herbert  Spencer,  Emerson,  and  Carlyle, 
as  being  at  once  the  three  most  modern  and  perhaps  the  most 
influential,  and  my  plan  was  to  present  the  reader  with  such  an 
epitome  of  their  speculations,  that  the  new  standpoint  which 
I  myself  had  occupied  might  be  clearly  seen.  I  began  with 
Herbert  Spencer,  and  my  object  was  to  draw  his  speculations 
to  the  single  point  or  focus  from  which  they  all  alike  radiated, 
and  having  grasped  this  firmly,  to  so  light  it  up  that  the  great 
central  weakness  of  the  scheme  would  be  seen  at  a  glance  by 
the  reader  for  himself.  In  this  way  I  hoped  to  clear  the  way 
before  starting  on  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  with  whose  bent  of 
thought  and  feeling  my  own  nature  had  the  most  affinity,  and 
to  whose  speculations  I  was  most  inclined.  I  could  then  so  work 
in  my  own  standpoint,  I  thought,  that  it  would  be  seen  to  be 
different  from  all  three  of  them,  and  in  a  manner  to  be  a 
composite  or  unified  synthesis  of  them  all.  For  I  had  come  to 
these  subjects  as  we  have  seen  just  at  the  time  when  the 
discoveries    and    speculations   of    Darwin    and    Spencer    had 


MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT.  475 

revolutionized  our  views  of  the  world  and  of  life  as  much  as 
the  Copernican.  Astronomy  had  done  before  them,  and  had 
made  a  return  to  the  old  points  of  view  forever  impossible. 
The  effect  of  these  new  views  on  older  Idealists  like  Carlyle 
and  Emerson  who  had  grown  up  under  a  different  conception 
of  things,  was  to  throw  them  into  an  attitude  of  almost  pure 
antagonism,  without  in  any  way  modifying  the  views  in  which 
they  had  been  brought  up.  The  Metaphysical  Idealists  of  the 
Universities  on  the  other  hand,  who  were  practically  all 
followers  of  Hegel,  had  already  reached  such  a  point  of  aloofness 
and  remoteness  from  all  things  natural  or  scientific,  human  or 
divine,  that  scientific  discoveries  and  cataclysms  sufficient  to 
call  into  existence  whole  new  worlds,  or  species  of  being,  or 
races  of  men,  would  have  passed  before  their  eyes  unheeded 
and  without  ruffling  even  the  fringe  of  their  skirts !  If  they 
had  stooped  to  notice  them,  it  would  only  have  been  to  point 
to  them  as  but  instances  of  the  law  before  which  they  bent 
with  religious  solemnity,  and  which  had  to  them  a  kind  of 
mystical  or  magical,  and  sacred  efficacy,  the  law  namely  that 
'  a  thing  must  go  out  of  itself  and  be  different  from  itself  in 
order  that  by  returning  to  itself  it  might  become  all  the  more 
itself '  etc. !  Of  the  Theological  Idealists,  again,  Dr.  Martineau, 
like  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  had  already  received  the  bent  of 
his  thought  before  Darwin  and  Spencer  appeared,  and  although 
no  one  more  quickly  and  with  more  power  and  thoroughness 
mastered  their  real  drift  and  tendency,  he  had  spent  the 
greater  part  of  his  life  in  clearing  the  ground  before  he  was 
confronted  by  the  new  elements  which  the  Darwinian  hypothesis 
had  thrown  into  speculation ;  and  it  was  not  until  a  very 
advanced  period  of  his  old  age,  that  his  great  constructive 
work  appeared.  The  older  Materialists,  again,  like  Mill,  were 
altogether  superseded;  being  insulated  and  floated  off  their 
old  base  by  the  larger  generalizations  of  Spencer ;  and  so  in 
spite  of  their  great  merits  as  transition  stones,  soon  disappeared 
from  view ;  while  the  early  disciples  of  Darwin,  like  Huxley 


47()  MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT. 

and  Tyndall,  were  so  entranced  by  the  new  scientific 
generalizations  of  their  Master,  that  they  never  thought  of 
seriously  reconciling  them  with  the  idealism  of  their  youth, — 
until,  indeed,  in  their  old  age,  when  they  returned  to  the  old 
idealism  ever  the  more  fondly  as  to  some  long  lost  friendship 
of  their  boyhood,  but  when  it  had  alas  !  become  too  late.  So 
that  when  I  began  to  write,  no  work  had  yet  appeared  in  which 
an  attempt  was  made  to  handle  anew,  and  from  the  Idealist's 
standpoint,  the  old  World  Problem,  now  rendered  infinitely 
more  complex  and  difficult  by  the  flinging  into  it  of  these 
great  unwieldy  and  unmanageable  boulders  of  scientific 
speculation  and  generalization.  All  sides  of  the  problem  were 
now  there,  and  were  fully  elaborated,  but  their  representatives 
were,  by  reason  of  their  contemporaneity  and  the  diverse  streams 
of  tradition  from  which  they  had  drunk,  at  daggers  drawn,  and 
incapable  of  either  properly  appreciating  or  of  assimilating  and 
doing  justice  to  each  other.  Carlyle  was  opposed  to  Spencer, 
and  Emerson  to  Darwin ;  Huxley  and  Tyndall  to  Martineau  ; 
Martineau  to  Carlyle,  Darwin,  and  Spencer ;  and  all  of  them 
more  or  less  to  Hegel  and  Comte.  But  from  my  boyhood  my 
room,  like  the  Chapel  of  Alexander  Severus,  was  hung  round 
with  the  pictures  of  them  all,  as  of  the  greater  gods,  and  to 
them  I  came  prepared  to  offer  an  equal  homage  and  love. 

Having  finished  the  essay  on  Spencer  from  the  point  of  view 
at  once  of  a  disciple,  and  of  one  who  at  the  same  time  regarded 
the  facts  through  the  differently  coloured  spectacles  of  the 
Idealist,  I  sent  it  in  to  one  of  the  Magazines,  and  was  at  once 
surprised  and  overjoyed  when  a  letter  came  announcing  what  I 
considered  to  be  its  virtual  acceptance  by  the  Editor, — although 
as  afterwards  appeared  he  had  only  used  the  words  that  he 
'  hoped  to  insert  it  when  the  pressure  on  his  space  should  have 
cleared  a  little !'  In  the  meantime  I  worked  hard  at  the 
parallel  expositions  of  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  especially  of 
Emerson,  whose  great  scheme  of  World-Thought  was  as  we 
have  seen,  owing  to  the  enigmatic  form  in  which  he  had  chosen 


MY   FIRST   ATTEMPT.  477 

to  cast  it,  and  in  spite  of  his  serene  practical  wisdom  and 
splendid  penetration  and  insight  into  life,  still  caviare  to  the 
general  mind.  But  as  the  months  came  and  went,  and  no  sign 
of  my  article  appeared  in  the  magazine,  1  thought  I  would  wait 
on  the  Editor  and  learn  from  himself  what  the  difficulty  was 
which  was  causing  the  delay.  Accordingly  one  afternoon  I 
appeared  at  his  office  in  the  city,  my  heart  beating  violently  as 
was  usual  with  me  on  such  occasions.  I  was  feeling  indignant, 
and  was  prepared  to  be  severe.  But  he  was  a  man  of  infinite 
self-possession  and  quietness  of  manner,  and  after  praying  me 
to  be  seated  he  began  so  quietly  and  pleasantly  and  with  such 
compliments  to  my  article,  went  on  so  frankly  and  by  such  easy 
transitions  to  the  difficulties  of  his  office,  and  the  pressure  on 
his  space  from  men  of  established  reputation  who  could  not  well 
be  refused ;  in  a  word,  he  so  stroked  me  over  and  smoothed  me 
down  with  his  exquisite  ingenuity  and  elaboration  of  phrase, 
that  I  began  at  last  to  consider  myself  the  offender  and  him  the 
martyr,  and  before  I  came  away  almost  felt  that  I  had  made  a 
sincere  and  disinterested  friend  !  But  once  outside,  I  saw  that 
all  hope  from  Editors,  in  my  then  literary  position,  must  be 
resigned ;  and  I  practically  made  up  my  mind  to  try  them  no 
more.  And  in  this  resolve  I  was  finally  fixed  by  a  circumstance 
which  occurred  soon  after.  It  must  have  been  just  about  this 
time  that  '  Frazer's  Magazine,'  then  on  its  last  legs,  passed  into 
the  editorial  hands  of  the  late  Principal  Tulloch  prior  to  its 
final  decease.  As  a  mere  off-chance  I  sent  him  the  article  on 
Spencer,  with  the  feeling  that  as  a  theologian  he  would  probably 
sympathize  with  my  anti-materialistic  point  of  view,  and  that 
as  the  new  editor  of  a  decrepit  magazine  he  would  probably 
give  welcome  in  its  pages  to  fresh  points  of  view  from  young 
writers.  The  essay  came  back  promptly  however,  but  with  a 
note  which  still  charms  me  by  its  frankness  and  simplicity.  It 
was  just  the  article,  he  said,  he  should  have  liked  to  publish ; 
my  point  of  view  was  his  own,  and  with  most  of  my  arguments 
he  was  in  agreement,  but  having  just  undertaken  the  conduct  of 


478  MY    FIRST    ATTEMPT. 

the  Magazine  he  was  obliged  for  the  present  '  to  look  out  for 
big  names  and  great  reputations  ! '  From  that  time  I  felt  the 
game  was  up  for  me  as  a  writer  of  philosophical  articles  for  the 
monthly  magazines;  and  that  there  was  nothing  for  it  now, 
unless  I  were  to  admit  myself  altogether  beaten,  but  to  collect 
the  essays  together  and  to  test  the  opinion  of  the  great  general 
public  by  publishing  them  as  a  book.  I  finished  up  the  essays 
on  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  and  on  a  wintry  morning  in  the 
December  of  1879  I  presented  myself  with  a  parcel  under  my  arm 
at  the  house  of  a  well-known  publisher  who  had  recommended 
himself  to  me  some  years  before  by  going  out  of  his  way  to  read 
for  me  and  give  me  his  advice  in  reference  to  my  first  essay, 
before  it  appeared  in  pamphlet  form.  Having  gone  carefully 
through  the  two  pamphlets  and  the  MSS.  of  the  three  other 
essays,  he  candidly  told  me  he  did  not  think  that  in  the  then 
state  of  the  market  they  would  repay  the  expense  of  publication, 
and  that  in  consequence  he  must  decline  bringing  them  out  at 
his  own  risk,  but  that  if  I  cared  to  pay  the  expenses  of  production 
he  would  be  very  glad  to  bring  out  the  book.  This  was  very 
straightforward  I  thought,  and  as  hope  was  almost  the  only 
possession  I  still  had  left  at  the  bottom  of  the  basket,  I 
determined  to  try  my  luck.  The  book,  consisting  of  the  five 
essays,  and  printed  in  the  reverse  order  to  that  in  which  they 
were  written,  was  brought  out  in  the  spring  of  1880  under  the 
title  of  the  '  Religion  of  the  Future  ' ;  and  with  it  the  first  stage 
of  my  literary  wanderings  ends.  In  the  following  pages  I  shall 
recount  as  faithfully  as  I  can,  the  ill-success  that  still  pursued 
me  for  so  many  years  as  a  writer  of  books  ;  and  shall  endeavour 
to  show  how  through  sheer  bad  luck  and  bad  management  on 
my  part,  together  perhaps  with  a  greater  amount  of  neglect 
than  was  altogether  deserved  on  the  part  of  reviewers,  as  well 
as  the  peculiar  philosophic  spirit  and  temper  of  the  time  which 
was  the  cause  and  justification  of  that  neglect,  I  was  so  long  an 
alien  and  an  outcast  from  the  literary  fold. 


CHAPTEE    II 


CIVILIZATION. 

TTAVING  found  at  last  my  lost  Ideal,  both  in  the  Human 
AA  Mind  and  in  the  constitution  of  the  World,  and  having 
in  my  '  Religion  of  the  Future  '  set  forth  in  the  most  general 
way  the  directions  in  which  it  was  to  be  looked  for,  I  next 
turned  to  Human  History,  with  the  object  of  discovering 
whether  the  Ideal  was  also  to  be  found  in  the  actual  progress 
of  Civilization.  Of  this,  however,  I  was  by  no  means  assured ; 
for  although  you  may  convince  yourself  of  the  curve  of  the 
earth's  surface  by  astronomical  and  other  proof  on  the  large 
scale,  you  may  not  be  able  to  do  it  so  easily  by  an  acre  to  acre 
survey  of  a  parish  or  county.  But  this  I  saw,  that  whether 
Civilization  were  steadily  advancing  and  ascending  (as,  indeed, 
it  would  be  if  there  were  an  Ideal  behind  it  all)  or  whether  it 
were  only  marking  time,  as  it  were,  on  the  flat,  could  only  be 
determined  after  we  had  discovered  the  connexion  and  interplay 
of  the  great  factors  of  which  it  is  composed — Religion, 
Government,  Science,  and  Material  and  Social  Conditions, — 
and  had  ascertained  whether  the  net  resultant  of  them  all 
were  an  upward,  a  level,  or  a  descending  line ;  in  the  same  way 
as  an  engineer  can  only  determine  what  the  gradient  of  a 
projected  railway  line  will  be,  when  he  has  reduced  the  irregular 
outline  of  the  hills  and  valleys  and  plains  through  which  it  is 
to  pass,  to  some  definite  mathematical  line  or  curve.     I  saw,  in 


480  CIVILIZATION. 

a  word,  that  as  indispensable  preliminary  to  the  demonstration 
of  the  presence  of  the  Ideal  in  the  course  of  History,  I  must 
enter  on  an  enquiry  into  the  general  Laws  of  Civilization. 
Now  this  problem  of  Civilization,  although  it  lay  in  the 
natural  line  of  evolution  of  my  studies,  was  not  taken  up  by  me 
on  any  definite  or  predetermined  plan ;  but  arose  in  my  mind 
when  I  was  engaged  on  the  essays  on  Carlyle,  Emerson,  and 
Herbert  Spencer,  which  formed  part  of  my  *  Religion  of  the 
Future.'  For  in  these  writers  I  was  confronted  with  two 
diametrically  opposite  views  of  society ;  Carlyle  so  conceiving 
it  as  to  estimate  the  value  and  importance  of  all  its  arrangements 
from  the  point  of  view  of  Order ;  Emerson  and  Spencer,  on  the 
other  hand,  from  the  point  of  view  of  Expansion  and  Liberty. 
But  to  me  their  reasonings  were  all  so  much  mere  abstract 
speculation ;  what  I  wanted  was  to  have  the  problem  presented 
in  such  a  shape  that  direct  observation  could  be  brought  to 
bear  on  it,  to  have  it  brought  down  to  particulars  that  is  to  say, 
or  in  other  words,  to  persons,  who  should  be  the  object-lessons 
in  which  the  opposing  principles  could  be  seen  imaged  and 
reflected.  And  first  of  all  I  wanted  to  ascertain  what  effects 
the  different  forms  of  Government  and  the  different  social 
systems  had  on  the  march  of  civilization,  before  considering  to 
what  extent  these  effects,  when  unfavourable,  could  be 
neutralized  or  thwarted  by  the  higher  factors  of  Religion  and 
Science ;  in  the  same  way  as  one  would  begin  by  considering 
the  effects  of  soil  and  temperature  on  the  growth  of  plants, 
before  proceeding  to  the  higher  and  more  complicated  problems 
of  intercrossing  in  their  bearings  on  the  characters  of  flower  or 
fruit.  And  for  this  I  was  peculiarly  and  happily  situated.  I 
had  been  born  and  brought  up  in  the  extreme  democracy  of  the 
Colonial  backwoods ;  and  on  coming  to  England  found  myself 
cast  into  the  midst  of  a  society  aristocratic  to  the  core,  but  one 
where  individual  and  personal  liberty  such  as  I  had  enjoyed  in 
Canada,  had  from  a  long  chain  of  historical  causes,  become  as 
much  respected  as  in  a  pure  democracy.    Nothing  could  have  been 


CIVILIZATION.  481 

more  favourable  for  my  attempt ;  for  the  problem  had  thus  been 
cleared  of  all  confusing  complications,  and  reduced  to  the  single 
question  of  the  relative  effects  of  Aristocracy  and  Democracy 
on  the  minds  and  morals  of  men.     But  just  here  I  was  somewhat 
hampered  by  my  own  personal  bias,  which  went  naturally  and 
strongly  in  the  direction  of  the  regime  under  which  I  was  born 
and  brought  up,  a  regime  which  had  done  so   much  for   me 
personally,  and  which  had  so  smoothed  the  way  for  me,  that  so 
far  as  my  advancement  was  concerned,  my  outward  situation 
and  environment  were  as  little  a  barrier  to  me,  as  if  I  had  been 
born  in  the  centre  of   an  old  civilization,  or  been  heir  to  a 
Principality.    For  I  had  been,  as  the  reader  has  seen,  at  the  first 
Public  School  of  the  time,  and  at  a  University  second  to  none, 
had   I    been   able  or   disposed  to  appreciate  its  instructions ; 
and  I  had  always  held  precisely  the  position  in  the   school, 
the  playground,  and  the  University  which  was  my  due  so  far 
as  merit  went,  neither  better  nor  worse ;    and  there   was  no 
position  to  which  I  could  not   have  attained,  had  I  had  the 
ability    or   the   character   to    deserve   it.     I   naturally   looked 
askance  therefore  on  a  form  of  society  where,  as  I  imagined, 
invisible   barriers   of   caste  were    erected   at    every  turn,  and 
where  men  were  labelled  and  distributed  in  separate  compart- 
ments like  sheep  in  their  pens ;  and  I  had  not  yet  been  long 
enough  in  the  country  to  learn  that  in  England  society  is  not 
a  close  aristocracy  as  it  is  in  Austria  for  example,  but  on  the 
contrary  is  so  happily  blended  with  democratic  elements,  that 
in  it  more  than  in  any  mere  democracy  as  such,  culture  and 
manners  and  their  natural  accompaniments  will  serve  as  the 
golden  key  to  all  that  is    best,  most  distinguished,  and  most 
refined.     In  order  therefore  to  clear  my  mind  of  this  personal 
bias  of  which  I  was  only  partially  conscious  at  the  time,  and 
being  determined  that  in  my  role  of  philosopher  I  would  allow 
nothing  to  stand  between  me  and  the  truth  of  which  I  was  in 
search,  I  resolved  on  a  course  of  first-hand  observations  of  the 
effects   of   the   aristocratic   regime   in   all  kinds   of   individual 

H  H 


482  CIVILIZATION. 

instances.  I  went  everywhere,  to  country  places  remote  from 
civilization,  to  the  streets  of  large  towns,  to  hotels,  to  theatres, 
to  music  halls,  to  debating  societies,  to  the  private  houses  of 
the  different  classes,  to  open-air  meetings,  to  race  meetings, 
to  Exeter  Hall  meetings,  to  East  and  West-end  sporting 
clubs,  to  political  clubs ;  and  everywhere  I  found  that  after 
making  allowance  for  obscuring  complications,  the  moral 
standards,  the  customs,  the  unwritten  codes  of  honour,  and  the 
like,  as  accurately  corresponded  to  the  aristocratic  conditions 
of  life  and  society  out  of  which  they  grew,  as  did  the  corres- 
ponding standards  in  Canada  to  the  conditions  of  a  democratic 
State.  And  so  I  had  found  what  I  most  wanted,  namely  the 
controlling  factor  in  civilization,  the  factor  that  is  to  say, 
which  prevents  society  at  any  given  point  from  flying  away 
into  the  sky  ;  which  limits  the  activities  of  all  the  other  factors  ; 
and  is  the  cause  why  things  make  their  own  morality  in  spite 
of  politician  or  priest ;  and  so  is  everywhere  the  break  on  the 
wheel  of  Progress ; — and  this  factor  I  found  in  what  may  be 
called  the  general  Material  and  Social  Conditions  of  the 
particular  age  and  time.  But  on  going  on  to  enquire  how  the 
balance  stood  between  Aristocracy  and  Democracy  in  their 
power  to  push  on  Civilization  to  higher  and  higher  stages,  I 
was  hampered  by  a  vast  array  and  complication  of  con- 
siderations which  detained  me  long  and  gave  me  much  trouble 
to  resolve;  but  in  the  long  run  I  ended  by  perceiving  as  I 
have  so  often  done  in  other  lines  of  speculation,  that  what 
actually  has  occurred  in  the  world  on  a  large  scale  in  any  given 
epoch  or  period,  was  the  best  thing,  the  right  thing,  the  thing 
wanted  there ;  and  that  although  Democracy  would  in  a  world 
destined  to  stand  still  and  become  stereotyped,  give  greater 
energy,  range,  and  expansion  to  the  spirit  than  Aristocracy, 
which  confines  its  finer  sense  of  personal  dignity,  its  more 
refined  culture  and  standard  of  manners,  to  the  few;  in  a 
world  intended  to  advance,  and  with  Progress  as  its  end  and 
not  stagnation,  this  need  not  be   so,  but  on  the   contrary  all 


CIVILIZATION.  483 

forms  of  Government  must  be  brought  into  requisition  in  turn 
according  to  the  necessities  of  the  place  and  hour,  and  the 
obstructions  that  have  to  be  cleared  away — now  a  military 
despotism,  now  a  limited  monarchy,  here  an  aristocratic,  there 
a  democratic  regime.  I  saw  that  for  great  political  designs, 
the  concentration  of  power  in  a  single  hand  or  in  the  hands  of 
a  few,  may  as  in  the  Greek  States  of  Antiquity  be  more 
important  for  the  after  civilization  of  the  world  than  the 
personal  liberties  or  moral  expansion  for  the  time  being  of 
innumerable  masses  of  men.  For  just  as  in  Nature  the 
individual  is  always  sacrificed  to  the  necessities  of  the  species, 
and  the  species  of  to-day  to  that  which  is  to  follow  it  to-morrow, 
and  as  this  must  be  so  if  the  world  is  to  advance ;  so  a  whole 
generation  of  men  may  have  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  designs  of 
a  single  great  man,  if  his  policy  lies  in  the  line  of  advancing 
civilization;  and  further,  the  effective  support  given  to  the 
great  men  who  initiate  fresh  advances  in  every  quarter  of  the 
field,  may  be  as  much  cramped,  it  is  important  to  observe,  by 
a  democracy,  as  the  general  expansion  of  the  masses  is  in  times 
of  repose,  by  an  aristocracy.  For  while  in  a  stationary  world, 
the  expansion  of  the  masses  is  the  primary  end ;  in  a 
progressive  world,  it  is  equally  or  more  important  that  the 
roads  should  be  kept  open  for  the  free  initiative  of  the  original 
and  seminal  minds,  so  that  they  shall  not  be  choked  and 
blocked  by  dead  masses  of  custom  and  hatred  of  change,  as  in 
close  aristocracies,  or  by  the  apotheosis  of  the  biggest 
acceptable  notoriety,  as  where  the  tyranny  of  the  majority 
prevails. 

But  at  any  rate  Society  as  Carlyle  saw  is  evolving,  even  if 
it  is  not  advancing ;  and  having  found  the  controlling  factor  of 
civilization  in  the  Material  and  Social  Conditions  of  an  age,  I 
now  had  to  determine  the  parts  played  by  the  progressive  and 
evolving  factors.  But  here  too  all  was  chaos ;  Religion, 
Science,  and  Government,  each  putting  in  its  claim  to  priority. 
But  after  wandering  about  in  this  jungle  for  a  while,  I  was 


484  CIVILIZATION. 

greatly  helped  by  the  works  of  Comte  which  I  now  read  for 
the  first  time.  For  in  spite  of  his  great  reputation,  I  had  been 
deterred  as  I  have  said  from  reading  him,  by  the  disparage- 
ment cast  on  his  work  by  Spencer  and  Huxley,  in  whose 
writings  the  science  of  Comte  was  made  to  appear  retrograde, 
and  his  classification  of  the  sciences  superficial  and  unsatis- 
factory. But  happening  to  pass  the  rooms  of  the  Positivist 
Society  in  Mortimer  Street  one  Sunday  evening  when  a  lecture 
was  being  delivered  by  a  distinguished  member  of  that  body, 
I  went  in  out  of  curiosity ;  and  was  so  interested  in  what  I 
heard,  that  I  at  once  procured  a  copy  of  Comte's  '  Positive 
Philosophy,'  and  set  eagerly  to  work  upon  it ;  keeping  up  my 
attendance  the  while  at  the  lectures  of  the  Society,  in  order  to 
saturate  myself  as  far  as  possible  with  the  working  spirit  of  his 
doctrines.  And  I  was  richly  rewarded ;  for  I  had  not  gone  far 
in  my  studies  before  I  came  on  some  large  generalizations 
which  opened  out  to  me  a  broad  road  through  the  thicket  in 
which  I  was  entangled,  and  gave  me  the  hint  of  a  principle 
which  seemed  to  me  at  once  so  central  and  commanding,  that 
like  the  law  of  gravitation  it  had  only  to  be  judiciously 
applied,  to  reduce  large  masses  of  disconnected  and  recalcitrant 
facts  to  law  and  order.  It  was  what  I  afterwards  formulated 
as  the  '  Law  of  Wills  and  Causes  ' ;  and  by  its  means  I  was 
enabled  to  draw  a  line  of  relation  between  Religion  and 
Science,  whereby  the  stage  of  evolution  of  the  latter  being 
given,  the  movement  of  the  former  could  be  foreseen.  And 
from  this  I  went  on  to  work  out  the  parts  played  by  the  other 
factors  in  their  cross-relations  to  each  other  and  to  the  whole ; 
until  at  last,  as  result  of  it  all,  having  got  the  Material  and 
Social  Conditions  as  the  controlling  or  limiting  factor,  Science 
as  the  progressive  factor,  and  Religion  as  the  conservative  and 
harmonizing  factor;  and  Great  Men  everywhere  as  the 
instruments  and  initiators  of  advance ;  I  felt  that  my  general 
skeleton  and  outline  of  the  progress  of  Civilization  was 
sufficiently  complete  to  justify  me  in  working  out  the  process 


CIVILIZATION.  485 

in  detail.  I  had  already  written  a  short  summary  of  the 
movement  as  a  magazine  article ;  and  this  after  being  refused 
by  the  leading  monthlies,  was  published  in  a  magazine  now 
defunct,  called  '  The  Statesman,'  of  which  a  friend  of  mine  had 
the  control,  but  without  any  immediate  result.  It  now  stands 
as  it  was  then  written,  as  the  last  chapter  in  my  book  on 
Civilization;  and  after  some  four  years  or  more  spent  in 
elaborating  my  theory  in  detail,  and  in  which  its  relations  to 
the  systems  of  Hegel,  Comte,  Buckle,  and  Spencer  were 
exhibited,  and  the  whole  brought  into  forms  by  means  of  the 
organon  which  I  had  introduced  for  the  solution  of  the 
problems  that  arose  in  its  course,  it  was  published  in  the 
Spring  of  1885  under  the  title  of  'Civilization  and  Progress'; 
and  now  forms  the  first  volume  of  the  series  which  I  afterwards 
systematically  planned,  and  of  which  the  *  History  of  Intel- 
lectual Development '  is  the  latest  instalment. 


CHAPTER    III 


STYLE. 

1  N  the  meantime  my  little  book  '  The  Religion  of  the  Future  ■ 
which  contained  in  condensed  outline  the  contribution  which 
I  had  ventured  to  offer  towards  the  solution  of  the  World- 
problem,  had  fallen  dead  from  the  Press ;  and  so  far  as  I  can 
remember  no  notice  was  anywhere  taken  of  it  for  a  year  or 
more  from  the  time  of  its  appearance.  But  my  friends  of  the 
pamphlet  days  stuck  faithfully  both  by  me  and  by  it.  One  of 
them  was  in  the  habit  of  energetically  recommending  it  in 
private  ;  and  another  was  good  enough  to  take  it  under  his  arm, 
as  he  told  me,  to  the  office  of  a  friend  who  was  editor  of  one  of 
the  leading  critical  weekly  reviews.  But  the  editor  in  question 
who  was  very  sensitive  on  the  point  of  orthodoxy,  had  on 
looking  it  over,  apparently  not  found  it  referable  to  any  of  the 
particular  forms  of  heterodoxy  with  which  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  dealing,  and  not  knowing  precisely  what  to  do  with  it  or 
where  to  place  it,  had  handed  it  over  to  one  of  his  subordinates 
by  whom  it  was  relegated  with  a  word  or  two  of  contemptuous 
comment  to  the  small-print  notices  at  the  end  of  the  paper. 
When  I  complained  to  my  friend  of  the  shabby  treatment 
which  the  book  had  received,  he  suggested  that  I  should  try 
again  but  on  a  larger  canvas,  and  with  less  concentration  in  the 
style,  and  more  illustration  and  exposition ;  adding  as  he  had 
formerly  done  of  one  of  the  essays  contained  in  the  book,  that 


STYLE.  487 

one  could  not  expect  much  notice  to  be  taken  of  a  work  in 
which  a  brand  new  theory  of  the  World  was  presented  to  the 
reader  in  a  couple  of  essays  of  twenty  pages  each !  Now  I  was 
just  starting  to  write  my  book  on  Civilization  at  the  time,  and 
this  opinion  of  his  gave  me  pause.  '  He  is  right,'  I  said  to 
myself  as  I  speculated  on  the  probable  causes  of  the  failure,  '  it 
must  be  the  style.'  The  matter  of  the  book  I  felt  to  be  right 
enough  in  its  way,  being,  as  we  have  seen  in  a  former  chapter, 
the  normal  evolution  of  preceding  Thought  when  regard  was 
had  to  the  new  difficulties  of  our  time  with  respect  to  the 
existence  of  the  Ideal,  whether  in  the  Mind  or  in  the  World. 
It  could  only  have  been  its  mode  of  presentation,  I  thought. 
Besides  I  had  had  my  suspicions  as  to  the  style  from  the 
beginning.  For  before  writing  the  first  chapter  on  *  God  or 
Force,'  with  the  exception  of  letters  to  friends,  I  had  not 
written  a  line  in  my  life ;  and  as  I  had  always  been  very 
backward  in  composition  at  school,  my  one  fear  all  along  was 
that  when  I  had  got  the  ideas,  I  should  not  be  able  to  express 
them.  Indeed  I  had  considered  the  enterprise  so  momentous 
that  as  the  reader  may  remember,  I  had  gone  all  the  way  to 
Scotland  to  undertake  it !  The  consequence  was  that  like  a 
man  trying  to  walk  on  the  edge  of  a  plank,  I  was  so  afraid  of 
diverging  a  hairbreadth  to  the  right  or  left  of  the  straight  path 
before  me,  that  I  had  compressed  and  condensed  and  indrawn 
my  exposition  almost  to  obscurity.  Not  that  I  then  felt  this  to 
be  a  fault  to  be  avoided,  in  the  same  way  as  I  should  now ;  on 
the  contrary  in  my  youthful  vanity  I  inwardly  flattered  myself 
that  it  looked  rather  distinguished  than  otherwise  !  For  I  was 
still  largely  under  the  dominion  of  Emerson ;  and  had  he  not 
said  that  great  Thinkers  were  in  the  habit  of  addressing  each 
other  like  Olympian  deities  each  from  his  several  peak,  quite 
careless  as  to  whether  vulgar  mortals  below  understood  them  or 
not  1  And  I  secretly  hoped  that  my  own  somewhat  lordly  and 
sententious  manner  in  these  essays  might  produce  something  of 
the  same  impression !     But  now  that  the  ordinary  reader  would 


488  STYLE. 

not  buy  the  book,  and  the  Olympians  themselves  had  turned 
their  backs  on  it ;  like  a  man  who  makes  a  joke  at  which  nobody 
laughs,  I  began  to  wonder  whether  there  was  not  something  the 
matter ;  and  whether  in  the  new  work  on  Civilization  on  which 
I  was  about  to  start,  a  little  more  expansion,  elaboration  and 
illustration,  a  little  more  accommodation  to  the  difficulties  of  the 
general  reader  might  not,  as  my  friend  had  suggested,  be  an 
advantage.  And  in  this  good  resolution  I  was  doubtless 
strengthened  by  the  refusal  of  the  editors  to  have  anything  to 
do  with  my  productions  (a  refusal,  I  argued,  which  meant  that 
there  must  be  something  wrong  somewhere),  as  well  as  by  the 
remark  of  an  American  friend  who  on  writing  to  me  in  reference 
to  the  book  said  that  if  he  might  be  permitted  '  to  drop  a 
thought '  as  he  called  it,  he  would  suggest  that  in  future  books 
I  should  give  more  rein  to  fancy  and  invention,  to  the  use  of 
metaphor  and  pictorial  illustration  than  in  the  last.  This 
decided  me  ;  but  on  thinking  over  what  he  had  said  I  could  not 
see  how,  even  had  I  been  so  disposed,  the  subject  matter  of  my 
book  on  '  the  Religion  of  the  Future '  could  have  admitted  of 
any  of  these  fine  flowers  of  rhetoric  and  fancy.  Who,  for 
example,  could  become  pathetic  over  *  the  Scale  in  the  Mind,'  or 
aught  but  serious  over  the  consequences  of  *  looking  at  the 
World  with  two  microscopic  an  eye ' !  Still,  I  felt  that  he  was 
right ;  and  for  some  months  my  mind  was  entirely  occupied 
with  the  consideration  of  the  important  question  of  style.  I 
read  copiously  from  the  great  Poets  and  Prose  Writers,  as  much 
for  the  purpose  of  diagnosing  the  excellences  and  defects  of 
each,  as  for  imitating  those  I  thought  most  praiseworthy.  But 
as  owing  to  some  trouble  connected  with  my  eyes  and  head  I 
was  unable  to  read  more  than  a  few  pages  at  a  time,  and  these 
very  slowly,  and  so  had  to  have  most  of  my  reading  done  for 
me,  I  was  obliged  to  depend  almost  entirely  on  the  ear  for 
detecting  the  subtler  shades  of  distinction  among  them.  I  had 
the  sentences  read  to  me  in  an  even,  measured  voice;  and  curiously 
enough  I  found  that  I  could  detect  differences  by  the  ear,  which 


STYLE.  489 

I  was  unable  to  detect  by  the  sight.  This  was  peculiarly 
marked,  I  remember,  in  reading  the  '  Spectator,'  where  the  point 
was  to  distinguish  by  the  style,  which  of  the  essays  were  written 
by  Addison  and  which  by  Steele ;  for  after  having  some  dozen 
or  more  read  aloud  to  me  as  specimens,  I  found  myself  able  in 
many  cases  to  assign  each  to  its  real  author  when  read  to  me, 
but  not  when  read  by  myself.  There  was  something  in  the 
sight  of  the  stops  and  periods  and  words  which  seemed  to 
interfere  with  the  purity  and  integrity  of  the  total  impression. 
And  accordingly  after  having  gone  the  round  of  the  great 
writers  in  prose  and  verse  in  this  way,  and  saturated  myself  with 
the  spirit  of  their  respective  styles,  I  had  come  to  certain 
conclusions  on  the  subject  of  Style  to  which  I  still  on  the  whole 
subscribe,  and  which  it  may  not  be  altogether  out  of  place 
perhaps,  to  briefly  set  down  here. 

In  a  general  way  I  may  say  then,  that  I  was  of  opinion  that 
for  Narrative  admitting  of  a  varied  play  of  sentiment,  emotion, 
and  logical  continuity,  the  style  of  the  future  except  in  those 
rare  cases  where  the  subject  matter  is  of  an  unusually  elevated 
character  either  in  itself  or  by  reason  of  its  associations,  as  in 
4  Paradise  Lost '  for  example,  must  if  we  are  to  avoid  bombast, 
unreality,  or  insincerity,  be  Prose ;  but  with  such  large 
indulgence  and  license  in  the  matter  of  grammatical  con- 
struction, as  is  usually  accorded  to  verse.  Indeed,  except  in 
lyrics,  sonnets,  and  the  like,  to  which  the  poetic  form  is 
peculiarly  adapted,  verse  of  all  kinds  has  become  barely 
tolerable ;  even  blank  verse  in  the  absence  of  any  theme 
elevated  enough  throughout  to  give  it  a  sustained  and  con- 
tinuous appropriateness,  having  become  synonymous  almost 
with  bombast  and  unreality,  and  when  men  are  left  to  their 
own  initiative,  being  practically  unread.  Indeed,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Elizabethan  style  of  wit  and  humour,  now 
happily  out  of  date,  it  is  the  blank  verse  of  Shakspeare  when 
employed  in  the  dead  and  prosaic  passages  of  his  historical 
dramas  that  is  now  most  difficult  to  read ;  and  were  it  not  for 


490  STYLE. 

his  great  name  which  has  embalmed  these  passages,  and  for 
the  impossibility  of  cutting  them  out  without  mutilating  the 
plays  in  which  they  are  found,  they  would  long  since  have 
passed  into  oblivion.  His  prose  on  the  other  hand  is  in  its 
way  as  admirable  as  his  finest  blank  verse ;  and  there  is  no 
form  of  literary  excellence  exhibited  in  the  one,  which  does 
not  appear  in  the  other.  Even  in  the  greatest  passages  of  his 
greatest  plays  where  blank  verse  is  used,  it  is  noticeable  that 
when  he  wants  to  get  the  fall  necessary  to  bring  out  the  full 
pathos  or  beauty  of  a  situation,  as  for  example  in  the  deaths  of 
Hamlet  and  Lear,  the  foreboding  of  Othello,  or  the  soliloquy 
of  Cleopatra  on  hearing  of  Anthony's  death,  he  is  obliged  to 
break  the  line  of  his  iambics ; — and  what  is  this  but  to  desert 
his  verse  at  the  point  where  the  sentiment  of  the  moment  can 
only  find  its  full  and  perfect  expression  in  a  movement  and 
form  of  words  where  no  predetermined  length  of  line 
intervenes  between  the  author  and  his  theme  to  violate  the 
simplicity  and  integrity  of  his  thought.  And  why  not?  If 
the  elevation  of  the  sentiment  demands  it,  is  there  any  reason 
why  as  much  of  a  sentence  or  a  paragraph  as  is  necessary, 
should  not  assume  the  even,  lofty  tread  of  the  iambic  measure, 
and  so  the  absurd  necessity  be  avoided  of  cutting  these  iambics 
into  lines  of  a  given  regulation  length  to  begin  with,  and  then 
violating  the  metre  the  moment  the  fall  of  the  sentence  requires 
it  ?  It  is  only  in  the  more  loose,  flexible,  and  sinuous  move- 
ment of  prose  that  you  can  get  the  freedom  necessary  to 
express  the  coarse  and  the  refined,  the  bald  and  the  elevated 
sentiments ;  always  excepting  of  course  lyrics  and  the  rest,  to 
which  poetic  rhythms  are,  as  I  have  said,  peculiarly  appropriate. 
So  far  I  had  gone  in  my  reflections  on  Style,  when  I  found 
that  I  could  get  no  farther  until  I  had  settled  to  my  own  satis- 
faction in  what  it  was  that  literary  power  really  consisted; 
for  if  we  consider  it,  if  mere  ingenuities  of  metre  were  the 
essence  and  not  merely  the  appendage  or  accident  of  literary 
power,  then  indeed  were  those  old  writers  who  would  do  you 


STYLE.  491 

anything  from  a  sonnet  to  a  philosophical  treatise  in  metres 
cut  in  the  shape  of  crosses,  eggs,  or  yew-trees,  greater  than 
Shakspeare  himself!  And  the  conclusion  at  which  I  arrived 
was  that  the  core  and  essence  of  literary  power  was  pictorial 
power  in  the  highest  sense  of  that  term.  Not  the  power  of 
building  up  an  image  by  a  mere  linear  addition  of  particulars, 
as  one  might  the  image  of  a  room  by  the  inventory  of  its 
contents  in  an  auctioneer's  catalogue ;  for  although  this  in  the 
form  of  the  short  sentence  does  indeed  give  us  in  the  hands  of 
Macaulay,  for  example,  and  notably  in  some  of  the  great 
French  writers,  pictures  of  admirable  clearness  and  vigour, 
still  it  is  at  best  a  comparatively  cheap  and  easy  achievement, 
a  matter  more  of  taste,  labour,  and  time,  than  of  genius,  and 
consisting  rather  in  analysis  and  dismemberment,  as  when  the 
girl  in  the  fairy  tale  had  to  separate  out  the  different  skeins  of 
silk  from  the  tangled  ball,  than  in  the  compression  and  the 
constructive  combination  of  words  and  images.  Nor  again 
does  true  pictorial  power  consist  in  a  haphazard  aggregate 
of  high-sounding  words ;  for  this,  as  Macaulay  said  of 
Montgomery's  poems,  although  having  like  a  Turkish  carpet 
all  the  colours  necessary  for  a  picture,  may  still  present  us 
with  the  image  neither  of  anything  in  the  heavens  above  nor 
in  the  earth  beneath.  Nor  yet  again  does  it  consist  in  the 
dance  and  jingle  of  the  words  as  in  so  much  of  the  Minor 
Poetry  of  to-day  ;  for  this  although  a  virtue  in  Music,  can  only 
be  attained  in  any  high  degree  in  Literature  by  the  sacrifice 
of  that  perfect  clearness  of  the  sentiment  or  thought  which  it 
is  the  first  object  of  literature  to  convey.  No,  true  pictorial 
power  consists  not  in  any  or  all  of  these,  but  in  the  power 
rather  of  bringing,  as  Emerson  says  of  intellect  generally, 
all  the  radiances  and  elusive  lustres  of  the  world  to  a  unity, 
to  a  singleness  and  clearness  of  image  at  each  and  every  point, 
as  it  were ;  as  if  the  thoughts  were  to  run  from  the  point  of  a 
diamond  pen  fed  by  the  mingled  distillations  of  the  subtlest 
essences   in    Nature   as    from    a    fountain.      Now   were   this 


492  STYLE. 

easy  of  accomplishment,  we  should  all  be  Shakspeares;  for  it 
is  in  this  and  in  this  alone  that  his  purely  literary  as  distinct 
from  his  general  intellectual  and  dramatic  power  really  consists. 
And  yet  so  important  is  it  that  the  lighter  forms  of  poetry  at 
least,  should  be  enriched  by  new  and  lovely  combinations  of 
rhythms  and  metres,  that  just  as  in  the  breeding  of  animals 
where  a  total  harmony  and  perfection  is  aimed  at,  the  smallest 
approach  to  the  ideal  in  a  feature  in  itself  unimportant,  as  in 
the  form  of  the  ear  or  tail,  is  seized  on  with  avidity  by  the 
fancier  and  loaded  with  prizes  and  honours  far  above  its 
intrinsic  worth,  until  its  beauties  are  embodied  in  the  breed  ;  so 
new  felicities  of  rhyme  and  rhythm,  even  when  quite  divorced 
from  the  sentiments  or  thoughts  they  are  intended  to  express, 
may  for  a  time  be  accorded  such  importance  and  prominence 
by  the  critics,  as  to  quite  deflect  the  very  concej)tion  of 
literary  power  from  its  true  nature.  And  hence  it  is  that  purely 
literary  eminence  (apart  from  lyric  gift  which  all  would  admit) 
is  conferred  for  a  time  on  such  writers  as  Swinburne  and 
Rossetti  for  example,  who  give  us  complex  and  charming 
word-orchestration  without  real  images;  or  on  prose  writers 
like  Meredith,  who  has  truth  and  thought  indeed,  but  so  little 
pictorial  power  that  to  recover  his  meaning  from  out  the  wrecks 
of  his  expression,  costs  as  much  labour  as  it  would  to  recover 
the  image  of  a  ship  from  its  splintered  and  stranded  yards  and 
beams.  For  it  cannot  be  overlooked,  that  just  as  an  art  is 
enriched  and  raised  to  a  higher  power  when  it  borrows  the 
fringe,  as  it  were,  of  another  art,  as  when  Literature  borrows 
the  movement  and  fall  of  Music  to  help  it  out  in  the  clearness 
and  distinctness  of  the  thought  or  sentiment  it  wishes  to 
express  ;  but  is  impoverished  when  the  entire  body  of  the  one 
is  substituted  for  the  other,  as  for  example  when  the  accurate 
images  of  painting  are  attempted  to  be  transferred  to  music,  or 
the  impressionism  of  Music  to  Painting ;  so  it  is  to  wrench 
Literature  from  its  true  purpose,  when  the  peculiar  methods  of 
Music  are  substituted  bodily  for  its  own,  or  when  great  unhewn 


STYLE.  493 

boulders  of  wit  or  wisdom  are  flung  pell-mell  into  it  without 
expression,  proportion,  or  form.  But  this  confusion  in  literary 
criticism  must  continue,  I  presume,  until  writers  shall  arise 
who  combining  in  themselves  the  various  excellences  of  thought, 
expression,  and  form  in  their  right  proportions,  shall  bring 
Literature  back  to  its  true  model  again ;  after  which  the 
canonization  of  these  one-sided  excellences  (their  ad  interim 
function  being  over,)  must  decline  and  finally  cease. 


CHAPTEK    IY. 


A   POLITICAL   INSTANCE. 

IT  was  during  these  years  that  Lord  Randolph  Churchill 
appeared  as  a  portent  in  the  political  sky,  disturbing  the 
minds  of  men  like  a  comet,  but  giving  me  just  the  object- 
lesson  I  was  looking  for,  to  enable  me  to  resolve  certain 
difficulties  and  perplexities  connected  with  Politics  on  which 
my  mind  at  the  time  was  working,  but  on  which  I  had  not 
been  able  to  come  to  any  very  definite  conclusion.  On  one  or 
two  points  of  general  consideration  I  had  reached  a  certain 
degree  of  clearness  and  conviction.  I  saw  for  example  that  if 
the  world  was  destined  to  a  continuous  progress  in  civilization, 
its  Genius  or  Presiding  Spirit  was  not  going  to  make  its  way 
to  that  end  by  such  means  only  as  should  receive  the  im- 
primatur either  of  a  knot  of  '  superior  persons,'  a  plebiscite  of  the 
masses,  a  consensus  of  debating  societies,  or  even  a  vote  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  any  more  than  it  is  going  to  '  run '  the 
Universe  itself  on  the  few  cut-and-dried  mechanical  or  spiritual 
lines  of  Spencer  or  Hegel ;  but  that  it  will  find  its  way  to  its 
end,  as  it  does  to  the  cross-fertilization  of  flowers,  by  the  most 
unexpected  methods,  and  by  a  greater  complexity  and  ingenuity 
than  is  likely  to  be  foreseen  by  any  single  mind  or  combination 
of  minds  ;  and  further,  that  it  will  if  necessary  resort  again  to 
the  old  weapons  of  despotism  and  the  guillotine,  with  as  much 
sang-froid  and    indifference  as   it  will   to   the  propaganda   of 


A    POLITICAL   INSTANCE.  495 

Exeter  Hall  and  the  Peace  Society.  I  saw  too  that  if  Society 
were  to  be  arrested  and  stereotyped  at  any  given  point,  and  no 
provision  were  intended  to  be  made  for  a  further  advance,  the 
Democratic  form  of  Government,  which  aims  at  giving  each 
man  his  c  fowl  in  his  pot,'  his  '  three  acres  and  a  cow,'  or  what 
not,  and  which  affords  ample  room  for  each  individual  to  expand 
and  spread  himself  out  to  the  limit  of  his  nature  and  powers, 
whether  he  be  cabbage  or  flowering  aloe,  must  be  our  ideal ; 
but  that  where  on  the  contrary,  room  has  to  be  made  for 
further  advance,  where  complications  loom  ahead  dark  and 
menacing,  and  where  nations  are  everywhere  encompassed  with 
the  chances  and  dangers  of  war,  then  no  mere  democratic  form 
of  government  as  such  can  prevent  an  effective  autocracy  from 
being  concealed  somewhere,  if  not  inside  the  Constitution,  then 
outside  of  it ;  as  was  seen  in  America  in  the  days  of  Lincoln, 
and  is  still  to  be  seen  in  France  since  her  war  with  Germany. 
All  this  I  saw,  but  what  I  could  not  resolve  to  my  satisfaction, 
was  the  form  of  government  and  society  which  is  best  adapted 
to  meet  the  ends  both  of  a  stationary  and  a  progressive  state, 
both  of  present  and  of  future  material  and  spiritual  well-being, 
in  States  not  like  France  or  Russia  or  Austria  encompassed 
with  the  chances  of  war,  but  in  States  like  England  and 
America  which  have  no  immediate  fears  from  hostile  neigh- 
bours.  On  the  one  hand  I  saw  that  so  far  as  England,  for 
example,  was  an  aristocracy,  there  was  a  tendency  to  prevent 
the  expansion  of  the  great  masses  of  the  people  not  admitted 
to  its  privileges ;  while  in  so  far  on  the  other  hand  as  it  was 
a  democracy  there  was  always  the  fear  of  the  demagogue,  who 
by  echoing  the  wants  rather  than  the  true  interests  of  the 
people,  like  parents  who  encourage  their  children  to  eat  up  all 
their  cake  to-day  and  so  leave  none  for  to-morrow,  would 
beguile  them  into  drawing  on  the  capital  required  for  future 
progress,  as  well  as  on  the  interest  and  heritage  of  the  past ; 
and  I  was  inclined  to  think  that  if  an  Aristocracy  could  by 
severely  winnowing  out  false  reputations  prevent  this,  it  would 


496  A    POLITICAL    INSTANCE. 

have  gone  a  long  way  towards  neutralizing  its  own  drawbacks. 
Great  therefore  was  my  surprise,  great  my  curiosity,  and 
greater  still  my  indignation  and  disgust,  when  I  found  an  old 
aristocracy  like  England  adding  to  its  own  particular  vice  of 
repressing  the  energies  and  expansion  of  the  masses  (as 
Matthew  Arnold  was  so  fond  of  pointing  out),  the  peculiar  vice 
and  curse  of  democracies  in  all  ages,  the  vice  namely  of  giving 
encouragement  to  the  Demagogue,  as  seen  in  the  part  it  played 
in  the  rise  to  power  of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill. 

Now  on  looking  about  for  some  solid  footing  on  which  to 
stand  in  approaching  these  political  problems,  I  had  made  a 
particular  point  of  observing  what  may  be  called  the  rise  of 
reputations,  in  the  belief  that  if  I  could  convince  myself  that 
democracies  could  manage  always  to  place  their  best  men  at 
the  head  of  affairs,  they  had  nothing  to  fear  in  their  rivalry 
with  aristocracies  or  despotisms.  And  once  entered  on  this 
study  of  the  rise  of  reputations  in  its  bearing  on  Politics,  it 
was  not  long  before  it  had  extended  itself  to  the  rise  of 
reputations  in  every  department  of  life.  And  many  of  the 
results  at  which  I  had  arrived  were  to  me  most  interesting. 
In  watching  the  rise  of  literary  reputations,  for  example,  I  had 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  just  as  no  social  reputation  can  be 
said  to  be  firmly  established  until  it  has  received  the  im- 
primatur of  the  Court,  so  no  literary  reputation  can  be  said  to 
have  fully  emerged  so  as  to  be  reckoned  with  as  a  power  in 
moulding  the  opinions  of  men,  until  it  has  received  the 
imprimatur  of  the  Daily  or  Weekly  Press.  Carlyle  it  may  be 
remembered  complained  bitterly  that  after  preaching  to  deaf 
ears  for  forty  years,  a  trifling  address  of  his  to  the  Edinburgh 
Students,  which  happened  to  be  reported  in  the  Press,  and  in 
which  he  enunciated  no  idea  which  he  had  not  reiterated  ad 
nauseam  for  a  life- time,  gave  him  more  reputation  than  all  his 
books;  and  for  the  first  time  in  their  married  life  made  his 
wife  feel  that  she  could  now  present  him  to  her  friends  and 
sav,   '  You   see  I  have  married   a    success   after  all ! '     I   saw 


A    POLITICAL    INSTANCE.  497 

further  that  with  the  exception  perhaps  of  certain  close 
scientific  societies,  there  was  little  chance  of  a  man  receivino- 
the  recognition  of  his  own  intellectual  confreres  until  he  had 
first  attained  the  honour  of  recognition  by  the  Press,  and  still 
further  that  when  once  the  light-skirmishers  of  literature  had 
got  the  ear  of  the  Press  by  their  prominence  on  the  Railway 
Stalls,  they  would  soon  find  their  way  into  the  most  sacred  and 
closely-barred  haunts  of  the  elect  in  club-land  and  elsewhere, 
and  would  push  the  older  and  more  orthodox  literary  reputa- 
tions from  their  stools.  All  this  of  the  value  of  Press 
recognition  and  advertisement  had  long  been  a  commonplace 
in  professional  and  commercial  circles,  but  literary  distinctions 
were  still  believed  to  be  quite  beyond  its  reach ;  and  it  was 
amusing  to  note  the  naivete  with  which  those  whose  own 
reputations  could  be  palpably  traced  to  the  time  when  some 
trifling  incident  had  brought  them  into  publicity,  would  calmly 
assume  that  if  you  could  only  succeed  in  convincing  them  of 
your  merits,  your  own  reputation  would  be  at  once  assured  I 
One  of  the  most  interesting  phenomena  in  connection  with 
reputations  thus  made  by  publicity,  was  the  length  of  time  it 
took  to  bring  them  down  to  their  natural  level  again.  A 
theologian,  for  example,  who  should  succeed  in  raising  a 
controversy  in  the  Church,  which  should  get  into  the  Law 
Courts  and  the  Press,  might  count  on  a  popularity  and  reputa- 
tion of  a  decade  or  two  before  he  came  down  to  his  natural 
position  again ;  while  one  who  should  sufficiently  frighten  the 
public  by  his  predictions  of  an  immediately  approaching 
Millennium,  would  become  so  dilated  in  bulk  and  proportion  in 
consequence,  that  his  professional  brethren  would  step  aside  to 
make  way  for  him  as  he  passed.  A  preacher  whose  rising 
popularity  would  fill  a  good-sized  chapel,  would  if  some  one 
were  unfortunate  enough  to  be  killed  in  the  crush,  and  it  got 
into  the  papers,  be  able  ever  after  to  fill  the  Colosseum  of 
Rome  itself !  An  actor  who  could  throw  a  bone  of  contention 
among  the  critics  over  which  they  could  wrangle  in  the  Press, 

II 


408  A   POLITICAL    INSTANCE. 

might  be  assured  of  a  continued  popularity  of  a  generation  or 
more,  while  other  actors  of  equal  promise  perhaps,  but  who  had 
not  got  the  ear  of  the  Press  in  time,  would,  like  the  man  at  the 
Pool  of  Bethesda,  grow  old  waiting  in  the  outer  courts  for 
their  chance.  In  politics  the  man  who  should  get  the  start  of 
his  colleagues  by  going  on  the  grand  tour  through  the  country  > 
agitating  some  popular  cause,  the  details  of  which  should  be 
reported  from  day  to  day  in  the  Press,  would  by  that  fact 
alone  have  by  the  time  of  his  return  so  distanced  all  those  who 
were  his  equals  when  he  set  out,  that  they  would  not  dream  of 
disputing  the  palm  with  him,  and  his  position  as  leader  would 
be  from  that  time  unshaken.  A  young  poet  whose  work  had 
lain  for  ten  or  fifteen  years  neglected,  had  the  good  fortune  to 
be  '  discovered '  by  an  author  who  had  the  penetration  to  know 
a  good  piece  of  work  when  he  saw  it,  and  the  courage  to  say 
so,  and  who  immediately  devoted  a  whole  article  to  him  in  one 
of  the  Monthly  Reviews.  From  that  time  the  reputation  of 
the  poet  was  made.  At  one  time  a  word  or  two  of  commenda- 
tion from  Mr.  Gladstone  or  Mr.  Bright  happening  to  get  into 
the  Press,  was  enough  to  make  the  reputation  of  a  poet  or  a 
novelist.  In  many  cases  the  individuals  in  question  were 
really  worthy  of  all  praise,  and  the  incidents  associated  with 
their  rise  only  served  to  give  them  their  proper  chance,  but 
that  was  an  accident  of  the  situation  merely,  not  its  essence, 
and  as  often  as  not,  the  recipients  of  the  popularity  were 
1  wind-bags '  only,  of  the  cheapest  order. 

Now  it  was  while  1  was  amusing  myself  with  watching  the 
careers  of  these  Press-made  reputations,  and  was  arguing 
ominously  for  the  future  of  Democracy  from  them,  that  Lord 
Randolph  Churchill  appeared  on  the  scene,  and  presented  such 
an  object-lesson  to  the  political  thinker,  that  I  felt  it  ought  not 
to  be  allowed  to  pass  without  some  comment  to  point  its  moral. 
His  career  was  more  than  usually  interesting  to  me,  inasmuch 
as  it  illustrated  a  somewhat  different  relation  between  the  Press 
and  the   Public    than  the    one  I  have  just  described.     In   a 


A    POLITICAL    INSTANCE.  499 

general  way  the  Press,  as  we  have  seen,  gives  the  signal  which 
the  Public  accepts  in  good  faith ;  and  when  the  Press  begins  to 
flag  in  its  recognition,  the  Public  flags  also.  But  in  the  case  of 
Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  when  the  Press  had  unconsciously 
hypnotized  the  Public,  it  could  not  undo  the  spell,  and  the 
Public  then  turned  round  and  coerced  the  Press.  The  fact 
was  that  the  Press  in  this  matter  of  the  rise  of  Lord  Randolph 
was  quite  taken  off  its  guard.  For  in  heedlessly  recording  his 
vagaries  every  morning  for  the  amusement  of  its  readers  at 
their  breakfast  tables,  and  in  placarding  his  name  in  large  type 
on  its  signboards  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land,  it 
did  not  dream  that  it  was  hypnotizing  a  large  section  of  the 
public  as  completely  as  if  it  had  packed  them  in  a  room  together 
and  made  them  fix  their  eyes  as  a  mesmerist  would,  on  a 
dazzling  light  or  a  continuously  revolving  ball  or  wheel ;  much 
less  did  it  dream  that  in  this  way  it  was  fastening  him  as 
securely  on  its  own  neck  and  on  that  of  his  party,  as  the 
Girondins  of  the  French  Revolution  did  Robespierre,  when, 
relying  on  their  own  strength  in  the  Convention,  they  placed 
him  on  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety.  For  during  all  the 
early  years  of  his  rise,  it  may  be  remembered,  the  idea  of  his 
ever  becoming  a  serious  force  in  politics,  or  other  than  a  mere 
'  Political  Puck,'  as  they  called  him,  for  the  diverson  of  the 
House,  was  received  with  derison  by  the  serious  politicians  both 
of  the  Press  and  the  Party  whenever  it  was  mentioned.  But 
coming  fresh  from  my  observations  on  the  rise  of  reputations,  I 
thought  differently ;  and  in  the  chapter  on  *  the  Demagogue  ' 
in  my  book  on  Civilization,  pointed  to  him  as  one  who  was 
likely  to  go  far.  For  a  large  section  of  the  public  were  by  this 
time  fast  becoming  hypnotized,  and  when  at  last  they  were 
fully  under  the  spell,  they  turned  round  and  coerced  the  Press, 
which  by  this  time  had  awakened  to  its  mistake  and  was 
showing  signs  of  revolting.  But  the  mischief  was  done ;  and 
between  the  two,  Lord  Randolph  who  had  been  watching  his 
opportunity  the  while,  coolly  walked  into  power ;  the  old  watch- 


500  A   POLITICAL    INSTANCE. 

dogs  of  Literature,  who  were  in  the  habit  of  coming  out  of 
their  caves  periodically  to  air  their  Utopias  or  grievances,  having 
apparently  gone  to  sleep  with  the  rest.  It  was  a  strange  story, 
and  when  Lord  Randolph  had  arrived  at  last  at  his  goal  as 
Leader  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  quietly  picking  the 
1  precious  diadem  off  the  shelf,  had  put  it  in  his  pocket,'  all  that 
was  left  the  sensible  men  of  the  Party  before  bowing  their  necks 
to  the  yoke,  was  to  protest  and  vituperate ;  the  leading  organ 
of  the  Party  in  the  Press  on  the  day  of  his  ascendancy  order- 
ing him  to  begone  as  an  impostor  who  had  no  more  real 
knowledge  of  politics  than  an  overgrown  schoolboy,  and  was 
too  ignorant  to  know  the  full  depths  of  his  own  ignorance  ! 
But  this  was  superfluous,  for  it  was  not  long  after,  that  he 
ruined  himself  by  his  want  of  judgment,  and  so  deceased  from 
the  political  stage  ;  re-appearing  in  after  years,  surrounded  with 
all  the  halo  of  romance,  but  leaving  me  with  a  fear  of  the 
demagogue  not  only  in  democracies  bat  in  aristocracies  also, 
which  I  have  not  been  able  to  banish  from  my  mind. 

I  had  no  personal  dislike  to  Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  and 
although  I  felt  his  want  of  personal  pride  to  be  no  virtue,  I 
was  nevertheless  secretly  delighted  with  his  directness  of  mind 
and  his  absence  of  conventional  political  cant;  what  I  could 
not  bear  was  that  it  should  be  possible  for  any  man  to  rise  to 
power  by  vulgar  vituperation  and  abuse,  and  by  these  alone. 
But  it  was  an  object-lesson  in  politics  which  was  not  likely 
soon  to  recur  in  quite  the  same  form,  and  I  took  advantage  of 
it  to  write  a  little  book  on  the  subject,  entitled  'Lord 
Randolph  Churchill,  a  study  of  English  Democracy.'  I  had 
the  greatest  difficulty  in  finding  a  publisher  to  bring  out  the 
book  on  any  terms,  and  when  at  last  it  did  appear,  an  ominous 
silence  as  of  death  fell  upon  it,  and  oblivion  soon  gathered  it 
to  itself.  It  was  written  when  Lord  Randolph  was  in  the 
heyday  of  power  and  prosperity,  but  owing  to  the  difficulty  of 
finding  a  publisher,  it  did  not  appear,  much  to  my  regret,  until 
after  his  fall  from  power.     And  now  that  the  grave  has  closed 


A    POLITICAL    INSTANCE.  501 

over  him  also,  and  he  has  become  a  name  of  romance  merely 
to  the  younger  minds  ;  when  I  think  of  the  harm  my  book  did 
me  at  the  time,  the  unkindest  cut  of  all  is  when  some  old- 
fashioned  politician  who  remembers  the  incidents  of  those  years 
writes  to  me  to  say  that  of  all  the  books  I  have  written,  it  was 
the  one  calculated  to  do  the  greatest  amount  of  practical  good. 


CHAPTEE    V. 


THE    DAEMONIC    ELEMENT. 

TN  the  meantime  my  book  'Civilization  and  Progress'  had 
followed  in  the  wake  of  my  little  books  on  the  '  Religion 
of  the  Future  '  and  '  Lord  Randolph  Churchill,'  and  had  gone 
to  the  grave  with  them.  But  after  lying  unsold  on  the 
publishers'  shelves  for  more  than  three  years,  it  was  brought 
to  life  again,  contrary  to  all  the  traditions  of  the  trade,  by  a 
series  of  vicissitudes  which  in  the  history  of  books  sounds  like 
a  romance.  From  its  very  inception  and  birth,  what  Goethe 
calls  the  '  daemonic  element,'  or  that  power  in  Nature  which 
causes  the  *  best  laid  schemes  of  men  and  mice  to  go  so  oft 
aglee,'  seems  to  have  presided  over  its  fortunes  and  to  have 
intervened  at  every  turn  to  prevent  its  success.  And  if  I  may 
without  incurring  the  imputation  of  taking  either  myself  or  it 
too  seriously,  be  permitted  to  give  the  reader  a  short  outline 
of  its  history,  it  may  serve  as  a  stimulus  to  younger  writers  not 
to  despair  when  things  seem  at  their  worst,  but  to  treat  this 
same  '  daemonic  element '  with  the  indifference  or  contempt  it 
deserves.  The  book  carried,  as  I  have  said,  an  ominous 
shadow  with  it  from  its  birth.  The  first  publisher  to  whom  it 
was  submitted,  rejected  it  because  it  contained,  as  he  said,  too 
many  original  ideas  to  be  a  success !  A  strange  reason,  I 
thought ;  and  I  could  not  help  suspecting  it  was  meant 
ironically ;  but  on  writing  to  him  further  on  the  point  he  told 


THE   DAEMONIC   ELEMENT.  503 

me  quite  frankly  that  it  was  so,  and  that  it  would  tell  against 
its  success  with  the  public.  Now  although  I  was  greatly 
perplexed  and  disturbed  by  its  rejection  on  this  ground,  still 
that  it  should  be  hailed  as  an  original  work  at  all,  even  if  to  its 
detriment,  seemed  to  me  too  good  to  be  true  ;  and  I  felt  not  a 
little  jubilant  at  that  aspect  of  the  matter.  But  not  to  be 
published  on  that  account  !  What  could  that  mean?  and  how 
was  I  to  meet  this  new  complexion  put  on  literary  work?  when 
I  suddenly  bethought  me  that  a  work  might  be  original  without 
on  that  account  being  of  much  value,  and  then  my  complacency 
abated  somewhat,  and  I  was  left  almost  in  despair.  I  had 
spent  four  years  in  writing  the  book,  and  eight  or  ten  in 
collecting  materials  for  it  and  thinking  it  out,  and  then  for  it 
to  be  rejected,  and  because  it  was  too  original!  Well,  there 
was  nothing  for  it  but  to  print  it  myself  at  my  own  expense, 
and  to  take  chances  of  the  public  taste.  But  do  what  I  would 
something  always  intervened  to  prevent  the  public  getting  the 
chance  of  appraising  it.  The  first  mischance  was  due  to  my 
own  stupidity  ;  for  I  had,  to  save  expense,  had  it  printed  on 
paper,  poor,  thin,  and  blue,  thus  reducing  its  size  to  less  than 
half  what  it  ought  to  have  been  to  sustain  the  gravity  and 
importance  of  its  title.  Then  again  I  had  provided  it  with 
neither  preface,  index,  nor  table  of  contents  ;  and  had  withal 
encumbered  it  with  a  sub-title  so  momentous  that  it  would  have 
taken  volumes  to  have  done  it  justice,  being  nothing  less  than 
1  the  outlines  of  a  new  system  of  political,  religious,  and  social 
philosophy  ! '  Now  this  at  the  best  of  times  and  under  the 
most  favourable  circumstances  would  have  been  a  serious 
undertaking  for  the  ordinary  reader ;  but  on  the  title-page  of 
a  book  with  such  a  meagre  and  poverty-stricken  appearance  as 
this — it  was  enough  to  damn  it  on  the  threshold.  And  so  it 
was  not  surprising  that  the  first  public  mention  of  it  should 
have  been  in  the  '  Spectator '  under  the  heading  of  '  Books 
Received, '  at  the  very  end  of  that  periodical.  At  first  I  was 
delighted  at  this,  thinking  that  it  meant  that  the  book   had 


504  THE  DAEMONIC  ELEMENT. 

been  specially  marked  out  for  the  honour  of  a  review,  and  as  I 
hoped  an  early  one  ;  whereas  it  meant  only,  as  I  afterwards 
learned,  that  this  was  but  a  last  farewell  to  it  before  passing  it 
onward  to  oblivion.  And  after  waiting  long  and  impatiently  to 
see  what  the  reviewer  would  have  to  say  about  it,  and  no 
review  appearing,  I  became  quite  downhearted  ;  I  felt  that  I 
had  mismanaged  the  whole  thing,  and  could  not  be  surprised 
at  the  result ;  but  as  that  was  not  now  to  be  remedied,  I 
resolved  that  I  would  again  send  copies  to  a  few  men  of  the 
highest  eminence  in  philosophy,  theology,  science,  and  history, 
men  whom  I  thought  most  capable  of  judging  the  work,  and 
who  would  not  be  under  the  dominion  of  appearances.  I  was 
just  about  carrying  this  resolution  into  effect,  when  a  letter 
arrived  from  a  gentleman  on  the  staff  of  one  of  the  evening 
papers,  asking  me  if  I  had  written  any  other  works,  and  if  so, 
would  I  give  him  their  names,  adding  that  he  had  just  written 
a  review  for  the  said  paper,  but  that  his  editor  had  refused  to 
insert  it,  because  it  was  too  long  and  too  eulogistic.  He  had 
given  it  a  whole  column  when  the  editor  expected  only  a  short 
paragraph ;  the  '  daemonic  '  had  intervened  again,  and  I  was 
once  more  thrown  back  on  my  own  resources.  I  then  sent  out 
the  copies  to  the  eminent  men  above  mentioned, — '  the  thirty- 
nine,'  as  I  used  to  call  them,  from  a  strict  audit  I  had  made  of 
their  number — with  a  letter  to  each  in  stereotyped  phrase, 
explaining  what  I  had  attempted  to  do  in  the  book,  and 
indicating  the  new  positions  which  I  had  taken  up.  In  every 
instance  without  exception,  if  I  remember  rightly,  the  book 
was  kindly  and  courteously  acknowledged;  and  to  my  great 
joy  three  or  four  of  the  number  promised  to  give  it  reviews  in 
the  various  periodicals  to  which  they  had  access.  It  is  going 
to  emerge  at  last,  I  thought  to  myself;  and  yet  not  without  a 
shade  of  misgiving,  for  I  was  beginning  to  be  suspicious  of  my 
old  friend  '  the  daemonic '  and  was  not  disposed  to  be  so 
simple  and  trustful  as  formerly.  I  was  justified  in  my 
suspicion,  for  no  reviews  appeared.     The  first  of  *  the  thirty- 


THE  DAEMONIC  ELEMENT,  ^Sbb=~s=s   505 


nine  '  had  written  asking  if  he  might  review  the  book  in  an 
evening  paper,  but  the  Editor  was  on  the  Continent  at  the 
time  and  nothing  more  was  heard  of  it.  The  second  started 
on  the  review,  as  I  afterwards  learned  from  him,  but  he  found 
on  going  into  it  that  it  would  require  an  article  to  do  justice  to 
the  points  of  controversy  raised,  rather  than  the  column  merely 
which  was  at  his  disposal,  and  so  it  too  fell  through.  The 
third,  a  friend  of  mine,  wrote  to  me  to  say  that  he  had  just 
arranged  with  the  Editor  of  a  philosophical  magazine  to  give  it 
a  long  review  of  from  ten  to  fifteen  pages.  I  was  delighted,  and 
really  thought  I  was  now  assured  of  a  review  at  last.  But 
next  day  he  received  a  note  from  the  Editor  saying  that  on 
reconsidering  it  he  found  he  could  not  allow  him  more  than 
four  pages  ;  and  this  my  friend  declined,  on  the  plea  that  he 
could  not  even  break  ground  on  the  subject  in  that  space.  By 
this  time  I  had  grown  almost  desperate  with  the  tension  of 
these  repeated  hopes  and  disappointments ;  I  would  have 
welcomed  a  single  page,  half  a  page,  or  indeed  even  a  foot- 
note ! — and  could  have  kicked  my  friend ! 

A  year  had  now  elapsed  since  the  book  appeared,  and  no 
notice  had  been  taken  of  it  in  any  of  the  leading  periodicals,  or 
indeed  at  all,  with  the  exception  of  a  short  notice  in  the 
'  Scottish  Review,'  a  longer  one  in  the  *  Inquirer,'  and  two  or 
three  lines  in  one  of  the  popular  '  Monthlies '  intimating  that 
the  book  was  so  full  of  bombast,  that  without  detriment  to  the 
reader  it  might  safely  be  ignored.  'It  is  all  that  starchy-blue 
paper,  and  want  of  index !  '  I  said  to  myself,  and  prepared  to 
resign  myself  to  the  inevitable.  And  then  one  of  the  literary 
friends  who  had  stuck  to  me  throughout,  suggested  that  I 
should  send  a  second  copy  of  the  book  to  the  Editor  of  the 
'  Spectator '  with  a  note.  I  did  so  in  a  half-hearted,  half-desperate 
kind  of  way,  explaining  that  it  had  cost  me  many  years  of 
labour,  and  after  expressing  my  disgust  at  having  to  hawk 
it  about  in  forma  pauperis  in  this  way,  asked  him  if  he 
would  do  me  the  favour  to  glance  into  it  himself,  adding  that 


506  THE  DAEMONIC  ELEMENT. 

if  he  then  still  felt  it  unworthy  of  a  notice,  I  would  gladly 
abide  by  his  decision.  Not  many  days  elapsed  before  I  had  a 
note  from  him  expressing  his  sympathy  with  my  disgust,  and 
regret  at  his  own  oversight,  and  informing  me  that  he  had 
done  the  best  he  could  for  it.  In  the  following  number  of 
the  '  Spectator '  the  review  appeared,  but  although  highly 
appreciative  in  general,  it  was  hostile  to  nearly  all  my  special 
positions  in  detail,  which,  indeed,  I  was  prepared  for  from  the 
Editor's  well-known  views;  and  more  than  all  (and  here  was 
where  the  '  daemonic  '  again  came  in)  he  misunderstood  my  drift 
in  the  most  unaccountable  way  in  just  those  passages  where  I 
counted  on  his  full  support, — in  that  part  of  my  chapter  on 
*  First  Principles '  namely,  where  I  show  that  there  are  six 
distinct  principles  that  must  be  believed  although  they  cannot 
be  scientifically  known.  Now  this  as  the  reader  will  have  seen 
from  a  former  chapter,  was  one  of  my  contributions  to  the 
solution  of  the  World-problem,  but  by  reading  it  as  if  I  meant 
by  belief  something  less  than  knowledge,  whereas  I  palpably 
meant  by  it  something  deeper  than  all  mere  knowledge  properly 
so  called,  as  on  it  all  knowledge  ultimately  rests,  he  gave  such 
a  twist  to  my  argument  as  to  completely  stultify  its  character, 
and  so  neutralized  all  the  good  the  review  was  calculated  to  do 
me.  '  Sheer  bad  luck  again  !  '  I  said  to  myself,  and  now  at  last 
I  made  up  my  mind  that  the  *  daemonic  '  and  Fate  together  were 
too  much  for  me  ! 

And  then  followed  an  interval  of  two  years  in  which  no  more 
was  heard  of  the  book ;  the  entire  edition  with  the  exception 
of  the  Press-copies,  a  few  casual  sales,  and  the  copies  sent  to 
'  the  thirty-nine,'  slumbering  peacefully  the  while  in  the 
publishers'  vaults  ;  when  suddenly  one  morning  I  received  a 
letter  from  the  late  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  telling  me  that  she  had 
read  the  book  and  had  heard  that  it  had  fallen  flat ;  but  that 
something  must  be  done  to  revive  it;  would  I  call  and  see  her 
to  talk  the  matter  over  ?  Her  plan  was  that  I  should  bring  out 
a  cheap   edition  of  the  copies  in  the  publishers'  hands ;   have 


THE   DAEMONIC   ELEMENT.  507 

them  new-bound;  a  preface,  index,  and  table  of  contents 
added;  and  the  price  reduced  from  fourteen  shillings  to  five. 
The  publishers  who  also  thought  that  something  ought  to  be 
done  to  revive  the  work  if  possible,  agreed  to  the  project  but 
could  hold  out  little  hope  that  the  reduction  of  the  price  would 
really  make  it  a  success,  as  it  was  contrary  to  the  traditions  of 
the  trade  that  a  book  of  that  nature  once  fallen  dead  could  ever 
be  revived.  I  resolved  to  give  the  project  a  chance,  however, 
and  the  cheap  edition  with  highly  complimentary  extracts  from 
the  '  Spectator/  '  the  Inquirer,'  and  the  *  Scottish  Review,'  as 
well  as  a  personal  notice  from  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  herself,  all 
framed  into  an  imposing  advertisement,  or  '  signboard '  as  I  used 
to  call  it,  appeared  in  due  course  in  the  Spring  of  1888.  But 
here  my  old  enemy  was  again  lurking  around  the  corner  for 
me.  For  one  of  '  the  thirty-nine '  who  on  the  re-emergence  of 
the  book  had  written  a  eulogistic  review  in  one  of  the  evening 
papers,  found  to  his  surprise  after  he  had  sent  a  copy  of  the 
proof  to  me,  that  the  subordinate  in  charge  of  the  reviews,  had 
when  the  Editor  was  away  from  home,  struck  out  almost  every 
word  of  praise,  so  that  when  the  review  appeared  it  was  so 
colourless  and  insipid  as  to  be  barely  complimentary.  Dashed 
again !  But  not  to  be  outflanked  by  the  enemy  in  this  way,  I 
asked  permission  of  the  writer  of  the  review  in  question,  to  use 
the  parts  struck  out,  as  a  personal  notice  in  his  own  name ;  and 
to  this  he  assented.  As  he  was  on  the  staff  of  the  paper,  and 
had  never  before  had  his  contributions  overhauled  by  the  editor, 
the  whole  thing,  he  said,  was  to  him  quite  incomprehensible. 
To  me  it  was  clear  enough  ;  —  the  '  daemonic  '  again ! 

The  success  of  the  project,  however,  was  immediate  and 
decisive.  The  book  in  its  cheap  edition  with  its  cover  changed 
from  a  dark  blue  to  a  chocolate  brown,  with  preface,  index, 
and  table  of  contents  added,  and  its  size  stuffed  out  to 
respectable  proportions  by  the  insertion  of  the  publishers' 
catalogue  at  the  back,  now  presented  outwardly  at  least  a  most 
respectable   appearance;    and  in  little  more  than  a  year  the 


508  TUB  DAEMONIC  ELEMENT. 

whole  edition  of  nearly  a  thousand  copies  was  sold  out.  But 
new  difficulties  immediately  arose  in  the  wake  of  the  former. 
The  last  copy  of  the  book  was  sold  out  while  the  run  on  it  was 
at  its  height,  but  it  had  not  been  stereotyped ;  and  the 
publishers  could  neither  advise  the  price  of  a  new  edition 
being  suddenly  raised,  nor  could  they  see  how  the  type  of  so 
large  a  work  could  be  set  up  again  so  as  to  be  made  to  pay  at 
five  shillings.  There  was  nothing  for  it  therefore,  they  said, 
but  to  let  it  go  out  of  print  altogether  for  a  time,  in  the  hope 
that  if  the  interest  in  it  still  continued,  secondhand  copies 
would  rise  in  value  and  be  marked  '  scarce '  in  the  publishers' 
catalogues,  and  that  then,  if  they  rose  sufficiently  high,  we 
might  be  justified  in  bringing  out  a  new  edition  in  better  style 
at  the  original  price  of  fourteen  shillings.  They  proved  right 
in  their  forecast ;  the  second-hand  copies  rose  so  high  that  I 
had  myself  to  pay  ten  shillings  for  one  for  my  own  special  use ; 
and  I  was  then  advised  by  the  publishers  that  the  time  was 
ripe  for  a  new  edition.  And  so,  after  being  out  of  print  for 
three  years  and  a  half,  the  book  was  in  the  end  of  1892,  and 
eight  years  after  its  first  appearance,  again  printed  in  the  form 
and  style  in  which  it  now  stands ;  its  success  after  such 
history  and  fortunes,  making  a  kind  of  record  in  the  history  of 
literature. 


CHAPTER     VI. 


POLITICAL    ECONOMY. 

OCARCELY  had  'Civilization  and  Progress'  gone  out  of 
^  print,  when  a  suggestion  was  made  me  by  my  publishers 
that  I  should  write  them  a  book  on  the  Social  Problem, 
including  under  that  term  Political  Economy,  the  Problem  of 
Capital  and  Labour,  and  those  other  allied  problems  which  the 
Social  Democratic  movement  of  the  time  had  stirred  into  new 
life  and  activity.  To  this  proposal  which  rather  surprised  me 
by  the  confidence  which  it  seemed  to  imply  in  me  at  a  time 
when  my  other  works  had  been  so  unfortunate,  I  assented  with 
hesitation,  as  feeling  that  I  had  neither  the  knowledge  requisite 
for  the  enterprise,  nor  had  I  given  that  amount  of  thought  to 
the  subject  which  was  necessary  to  do  it  justice.  But  having 
at  last  agreed  to  undertake  it,  with  the  proviso  that  I  should 
be  allowed  to  drop  it  if  I  found  I  could  throw  no  new  light  on 
its  problems,  I  set  to  work  on  it  with  all  the  industry  I  could 
command ;  and  during  the  year  or  more  in  which  I  was 
engaged  on  it,  I  read  or  had  read  to  me  some  ninety  odd 
volumes  on  the  subject,  English  and  Foreign,  beginning  with 
Adam  Smith.  And  of  these  ninety  it  may  be  interesting  in 
passing  to  remark  that  with  the  exception  of  a  few  statistical 
works,  what  with  the  repetitions  of  each  other,  or  trivial 
variations  from  each  other,  and  what  with  exploded  theories 
that    no    longer    need    claim    the    reader's     attention,    they 


510  POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

might  for  practical  purposes  all  be  thinned  down  to  not 
more  than  a  dozen  or  so.  The  rest,  for  any  good  they 
were  ever  likely  to  do  anyone,  might  as  well  have  been 
allowed  to  sleep  on  their  dusty  shelves.  The  few  writers  on 
whom  I  found  it  necessary  to  concentrate,  either  as  giving 
some  fresh  turn  to  the  subject  or  as  treating  its  doctrines 
from  some  new  and  original  point  of  view,  were  (beginning 
with  Adam  Smith),  Ricardo,  Mill,  Jevons,  Ruskin,  Karl  Marx, 
Henry  George,  Boehm-Bawerk,  Gunton,  Mummery  and 
Hobson,  and  Mallock.  And  these  once  mastered,  I  felt  that 
all  the  points  of  view  necessary  to  be  kept  in  mind  before  one 
could  venture  to  enter  on  a  new  construction  of  one's  own,  had 
been  taken,  and  accordingly,  after  ruling  the  others  out  of  my 
purview  except  in  so  far  as  I  bore  away  a  general  impression  of 
them  in  my  memory,  I  concentrated  on  these  alone. 

Adam  Smith,  I  found  altogether  charming.  His  delightful 
excursions  and  leisurely  meanderings  over  nearly  every  quarter 
of  the  field,  the  large  amorphous  mass  of  pregnant  suggestion 
and  firsthand  observation  with  which  his  work  abounds,  his 
uniform  commonsense,  together  with  the  number  of  isolated 
remarks  which  can  be  culled  from  his  writings  to  support 
almost  each  and  every  School  into  which  the  Science  has 
since  differentiated  itself,  made  him  most  nutritive  reading,  and 
a  delight  to  return  to  even  to-day.  But  the  landscape  of 
Political  Economy  was  almost  a  virgin  forest  when  he  set  out 
to  clear  it,  and  although  he  went  over  the  greater  part  of  the 
ground  since  more  systematically  explored,  still  at  the  end  of 
his  labours  wide  tracts  of  territory  remained  swampy  and  only 
partially  reclaimed,  and  it  was  reserved  for  Ricardo  mainly, 
and  after  him  Mill  and  later  members  of  the  School  like  Cairns 
and  Marshall,  to  drain  the  diffused  and  somewhat  undefined 
doctrines  of  Smith  into  certain  large  clean-cut  generalizations 
which  afterwards  formed  the  staple  of  what  is  known  as  the 
Orthodox  Political  Economy  ;  and  in  which  the  Science  for 
a   generation   or   more   was    believed    to    have    received    its 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY.  511 

Apocalypse,  and  the  volume  of  its  Scriptures  to  have  been 
closed  against  appeal.  There  was  first  the  doctrine  of  the 
'  Economic  Man '  as  he  was  called,  a  mere  melodramatic,  stage 
villain,  a  creature  like  that  Doctor  in  the  Arabian  Tale,  of 
whom  Carlyle  speaks,  whose  head  when  placed  in  a  bucket  of 
water  would  go  on  grinding  out  hypotheses  for  ever,  without 
shadow  of  a  heart.  The  doctrines  which  emanated  from  this 
'  Economic  Man,'  and  of  which  he  was  the  soul  and  inspiration 
— the  Law  of  Population,  of  the  Wages-Fund,  of  Wages  paid 
out  of  Capital,  and  the  rest, — although  as  dead  and  mechanical 
as  the  pieces  on  a  chess-board,  still  had  their  different  parts  to 
play,  and  were  bound  by  Mill  and  his  followers  into  a  complete 
and  in  their  way  harmonious  whole. 

On  them  followed  Jevons,  with  his  new  departure 
transferring  the  problem  of  Supply  and  Demand  from  a 
movement  of  gross  quantities  of  dead  matter  moving  like  goods 
in  a  railway  train  from  one  point  of  the  compass  to  another, 
(and  which  had  to  balance  themselves  somehow  like  the  sides 
of  an  accountant's  ledger),  to  a  finer  internal  calculus  of  human 
motives,  which  had  as  its  fixed  point  what  he  called  the 
'  marginal  utility '  of  things,  or  that  point  at  which  a  further 
rise  of  price  would  destroy  all  inducement  to  buy  ;  in  the  same 
way,  for  example,  as  a  man  might  give  a  fortune  for  a  loaf  of 
bread  when  he  was  starving,  but  not  a  sou  for  a  second  loaf  the 
moment  after ;  and  so  affiliated  his  theory  of  value  in  a  way 
with  the  theory  of  Rent  of  the  older  School,  which  also  took  as 
its  fixed  point,  the  cost  at  which  produce  could  be  raised  on 
land  on  the  6  margin  of  cultivation '  as  it  is  called,  that  is  to  say 
at  the  point  where  the  return  is  such  as  will  no  more  than  repay 
the  outlay  on  it  at  the  ordinary  profits  on  capital. 

It  was  while  these  modifications  were  being  made  in  the  older 
doctrines  of  the  Science,  that  Ruskin  deserting  for  a  moment 
the  studies  of  a  life-time,  entered  the  lists  with  characteristic 
-enthusiasm,  like  a  knight-errant  on  a  forlorn  hope  ;  and  buckled 
on  his  armour  in  defence  of  the  doctrines  of  his  master,  Carlyle, 


512  POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

against  the  pretensions  of  the  reigning  School.  Like  Carlyle, 
his  great  aim  was  to  moralise  the  relations  of  industry,  now 
given  up,  as  he  figured  it,  to  the  godless,  inhuman  traffic  of 

*  supply  and  demand,'  where  the  bodies  and  souls  of  men  have 
little  value  or  much  according  to  the  state  of  the  market,  and 
men  with  'the  Devil  take  the  hindmost,'  as  their  motto,  scalp 
one  another  like  Choctaws.  His  endeavour  was  to  find  some 
reasonable  relation  between  a  man's  pay  and  the  work  he 
performs,  independently  of  what  happens  to  be  the  market- 
supply  of  the  place  or  hour,  and  some  approximate  standard  of 
fixed  remuneration,  either  in  money,  consideration,  or  repute, 
which  shall  express  that  relation  ;  and  he  drew  me  up  suddenly 
by  asking  the  pregnant  question  : — Why  if  two  men  present 
themselves  at  your  factory  gate  for  a  job,  you  will  give  the  one 
you  select,  say  sixpence  an  hour,  when  had  he  come  alone  you 
would  have  given  him,  say  ninepence  % — as  if  a  man's 
remuneration  were  to  depend  not  on  the  work  he  did,  but  on  the 
numbers  who  happened  to  want  to  do  the  work !  Now  I  had 
not  thought  of  that  way  of  looking  at  it  before,  and  it  sank 
deeply  into  my  mind  at  the  time, — and  I  have  never  felt  quite 
the  same  in  regard  to  these  matters  since. 

These  views  of  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  prepared  me  for  the 
Socialism  of  Karl  Marx,  who  was  the  next  Economist  I  had  set 
down  for  serious  study.  1  found,  however,  that  his  doctrines 
of  *  surplus  labour,'  of  '  socially  necessary  labour-time,'  and  the 
rest,  were  as  much  the  abstractions  of  a  mere  hocus-pocus  of 
logic-chopping    on    the    one    hand,    as    the    old    '  wage-fund,' 

*  wages  drawn  from  capital '  shibboleths  of  the  Orthodox 
School,  were  on  the  other ;  and  that  his  doctrine  of 
remuneration  by  tune  alone,  was  as  much  invented  to 
justify  the  yokel  who  used  the  spade,  in  demanding  the 
same  remuneration  as  the  inventor  who  in  an  equal  time, 
perhaps,  had  added  new  aids  to  civilization  and  comforts  to  life, 
as  the  old  '  Wages  drawn  from  Capital'  theory  was,  to  justify 
the  capitalists  in  their  exploitations.     And  as  I  had  already  seen 


POLITICAL    ECONOMY.  513 

a  whole  generation  of  men  led  by  the  nose  by  these  old 
academic  formulas  about  '  capital  and  labour,'  the  4  wage-fund/ 
1  supply  and  demand,'  and  the  like,  in  the  teeth  of  the  gluts  and 
starvation  which  existed  side  by  side  and  stalked  one  another 
over  the  field  like  ghouls ;  as  I  had  seen  them  so  hypnotized  by 
these  phrases  and  formulas  passed  before  their  eyes,  that  none 
was  left  wide  enough  awake  to  protest,  save  Carlyle ;  and  as  I 
had  not  yet  recovered  my  self-respect  for  being  myself  so 
cheaply  taken  in ;  it  was  not  likely  that  I  was  going  to  fall  a 
victim  to  these  catch-words  of  Marx,  which  I  saw  to  be  as 
hollow  and  as  unsubstantial  as  the  rest. 

It  was  while  I  was  standing  thus  perplexed,  that  Henry 
George  appeared  on  the  horizon  like  a  Prophet  of  old,  and 
impressed  me  as  he  had  done  so  many  others,  by  his  moral 
fervour  and  elevation,  his  transparent  truthfulness  and  simplicity, 
his  clean-cut  thinking,  and  his  clear  and  beautiful  style ;  and 
was  the  first  to  so  shake  the  boughs  of  the  Old  Economy,  that 
its  pinched  and  weather-beaten  fruits  still  clinging  to  the  tree 
long  beyond  their  date,  were  shaken  to  the  ground.  And 
although  they  still  continue  their  existence  in  the  old  Academic 
haunts,  long  after  their  life  has  departed,  and  are  even  yet 
arguable  as  elements  of  some  larger  conception,  they  can  never 
again  be  sacred  and  authoritative  as  of  yore.  And  I  have  often 
thought  that  had  George  at  that  time  been  able  to  have  gone 
farther,  and  to  have  united  his  forces  with  those  of  Marx  on  the 
question  of  Capital  and  Interest  as  well  as  on  that  of  Land, 
their  united  camp,  in  the  then  state  of  political  and  social 
ferment  among  the  masses,  would  have  gone  far.  But  by 
splitting  with  Marx  on  this  question  of  Interest  on  Capital, — 
George  representing  it  as  a  product  as  natural  and  legitimate  as 
wages,  and  the  Capitalist  as  a  necessary  and  justifiable  factor 
in  Industry,  as  much  so,  indeed,  as  the  Working-Man  himself ; 
while  Marx  regarded  not  only  Interest,  but  the  *  Wages  of 
Superintendence'  (as  the  share  falling  to  the  Capitalist  was 
called),    as   a   piece   of    exploitation    and    robbery   pure   and 

KK 


514  POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

unredeemed,  —  the  two  movements  neutralized  each  other, 
and  lost,  in  consequence,  much  of  their  authority  with  those 
interested  in  their  respective  schemes.  And  when  men  began 
to  realize  that  while  George  would  have  expropriated  the 
Landowners  without  mercy,  he  would  have  still  permitted  the 
Fund-holders, the  Company-promoters,  the  fraudulent  Directors, 
the  Sleeping-partners  and  other  Rip  van  Winkles  of  trade,  to 
pile  up  their  money-bags  in  their  vaults  without  let  or  hindrance, 
they  saw  that  there  must  be  a  huge  fallacy  lurking  somewhere 
in  these  prophetic  strains,  and  one  which  it  was  now  no  longer 
worth  their  trouble  to  explore.  In  the  meantime  while  rejecting 
George's  practical  proposals,  I  had  become  so  enamoured  of  his 
theory  of  Interest  that  after  pondering  it  for  some  time  and 
coming  to  it  from  various  angles  and  points  of  view,  I  was 
finally  inclined  to  accept  it.  This  doctrine,  I  may  remark  in 
passing,  was  based  on  the  element  of  Time ;  and  ran  to  the 
effect  that  as  all  things  having  value  can  be  turned  into  money, 
and  money,  again,  into  seed-corn  or  fruit-trees  or  timber-forests, 
and  as  these,  again,  yield  an  increase  when  planted,  quite 
independently  of  human  exertion  and  depending  entirely  on  the 
element  of  Time,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  money  that  was 
borrowed  to  pay  for  them  should  not  also  have  its  share  in  that 
increase ;  and  that  share  is  what  we  call  Interest.  Now  this 
certainly  looked  feasible,  and  I  was  inclined  to  adopt  it,  as  I 
have  said,  when  Boehm-Bawerk's  book  on  '  Capital  and 
Interest,'  with  its  comprehensive  survey  of  all  the  various 
theories  on  the  subject  of  Interest  that  have  appeared  in  the 
world,  fell  into  my  hands.  And  there  among  the  rest  was 
George's  theory,  which  had  been  put  forward  by  a  German 
Economist  named  Strasburger,  but  which  was  now  encompassed 
by  such  a  wilderness  of  alternative  hypotheses,  and  so  swilled 
and  washed  on  all  hands  by  a  sea  of  hostile  criticism,  that  I  no 
longer  felt  so  sure  of  its  truth  and  stability  as  formerly ;  and  I 
put  it  aside  for  the  time  for  more  mature  consideration  and  for 
further  light. 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY.  515 

By  this  time,  however,  I  was  beginning  to  feel  that  I  had 
almost  all  the  threads  of  the  subject  in  my  hands,  and  that  I 
was  now  ready  to  attempt  some  reconstruction  of  the  Science 
on  my  own  account ;  and  the  point.  I  remember,  on  which  I 
pitched  as  the  centre  from  which  all  the  older  fallacies  of  the 
Science  had  arisen,  and  as  the  rock  on  which  they  had  split, 
and  from  which  I  intended  to  work  outwards  until  if  possible  1 
should  find  the  fallacy,  was  the  phenomenon  of  '  gluts  ' — gluts 
of  shirts  in  warehouses,  with  bare  backs  in  the  streets,  which 
they  could  not  reach,  gluts  of  wheat  in  granaries  and  of  bread 
in  bakeries,  with  men  and  women  starving  at  the  doors.  And 
I  was  beginning  vaguely  to  see  that  the  difficulty  must  lie 
somewhere  in  the  relation  of  the  distribution  of  products  to 
their  production,  and  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Orthodox  School, 
with  its  tendency  to  sacrifice  everything  to  Production,  and  to  let 
Distribution  take  care  of  itself,  would  have  to  be  replaced  by 
some  doctrine  in  which  Distribution  should  be  given  the  first 
place,  with  Production  as  sequence  or  concomitant ;  when  a 
little  book  on  the  subject  by  Gunton,  an  American  author,  the 
title  of  which  I  have  now  forgotten,  convinced  me  by  the 
number  and  pregnancy  of  its  first-hand  observations  on  the 
subject,  that  I  was  right  in  my  surmise,  and  that  the  wheels  of 
industry  and  prosperity  can  only  be  kept  going,  when  wages 
are  high  enough  to  carry  off  the  products  of  industry  as  fast  as 
they  are  produced.  And  it  was  not  long  before  my  table  was 
littered  with  diagrams  in  which  I  was  trying  to  picture  to 
myself  how  the  old  economic  doctrines  would  have  to  be 
modified  to  fit  them  into  a  scheme  in  which  Distribution  and 
not  Production  should  be  the  centre  and  mainspring  around 
which  all  the  wheels  of  industry  revolved,  when  the  little  book 
by  Mummery  and  Hobson  on  'the  Physiology  of  Industry,' 
fell  in  my  way,  and  by  doing  for  me  once  and  for  all,  with 
masterly  insight  and  power,  all  that  I  had  been  so  lamely  and 
with  so  much  labour  attempting  to  do  for  myself,  took  the 
problem  for  the  time  being  quite  out  of  my  hands.     These  fine 


516  POLITICAL   ECONOMY. 

Economists,  I  felt  at  once,  had  begun  with  the  right  method 
and  at  the  right  end.  They  saw  that  before  you  could  put 
your  finger  on  the  disease  from  which  Industry  was  suffering, 
you  must  have,  to  begin  with,  a  clear  image  of  its  normal 
processes, — of  Industry  in  a  state  of  health,  as  it  were, — the 
processes,  namely,  by  which  the  raw  materials  of  wealth  are 
culled  and  collected  from  the  wide  domains  of  Nature,  and 
passed  through  the  various  processes  of  manufacture  and  retail, 
until  by  exchange  or  otherwise  they  are  returned  in  other 
forms  to  the  people  through  whose  hands  they  have  just 
passed,  and  who  have  been  employed  in  their  production, 
manufacture,  or  exchange  ;  and  in  such  quantities  and  by  a 
mechanism  so  self-adjusting,  that  there  shall  be  no  block  or 
stoppage  at  any  point  in  the  transit,  but  that  on  the  contrary, 
the  whole  shall  continue  to  circulate  in  an  endless  wheel,  as  it 
were,  from  the  producer  to  the  consumer  and  back  again ;  in 
the  same  way  as  in  a  healthy  body  the  food  taken  in  by  the 
mouth  is  passed  through  the  various  organs  and  processes  of 
change  and  manufacture,  until  it  reaches  the  ultimate  cells  and 
tissues  of  bone  and  muscle  which  it  has  to  renovate  and 
nourish;  and  in  such  form  and  quantity  that  the  organism 
shall  be  kept  at  that  point  of  efficiency  where  it  can  continue 
working  to  produce  the  food  which  it  has  again  to  send  on  this 
continuous  round  of  change.  The  authors  next  with  masterly 
penetration,  and  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  subject  to  which 
I  could  lay  no  claim,  put  their  finger  on  the  real  cause  of  the 
trouble,  as  the  first  step  towards  remedying  it.  They  showed 
that  just  as  when  Production  was  believed  to  be  the  vital 
factor  in  Industry,  saving  on  the  part  of  Capitalists  and  of 
Society,  was  the  master  virtue,  so  when  free  Distribution  is 
made  the  vital  factor,  spending  on  the  part  of  Capitalists,  in  its 
economic  form  of  high  wages,  is  the  remedy  needed  to  keep 
the  wheels  of  industry  agoing,  or  to  start  them  again  when 
they  have  become  clogged.  The  demonstration  as  an  abstract 
statement  seemed  to  me  complete ;  and  on  the  strictly  economic 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY.  517 

aspect  of  the  question  I  felt  I  had  really  nothing  more  to  add. 
And  when  shortly  afterwards,  Mallock  brought  out  the  book 
in  which  he  demonstrated,  incontestably  I  think,  against  the 
Socialists,  how  much  larger  a  proportion  of  the  wealth  of  the 
world  is  due  to  brains  than  to  hands,  1  found  all  the  positions 
I  had  intended  taking  up  already  occupied ;  and  so,  not 
without  a  sense  of  disappointment  and  chagrin,  was  glad  to 
resign  into  hands  abler  than  my  own,  the  task  which  I  had 
undertaken,  and  on  which  I  had  for  a  year  or  more  been 
engaged.  Should  I  again  return  to  the  subject,  it  will  be  in 
connection  with  my  work  on  '  Intellectual  Development,'  and 
should  I  be  fortunate  enough  to  see  my  way,  I  shall  attempt  to 
indicate  the  direction  in  which  these  doctrines  of  the  new 
School  of  Economists  will  have  to  be  modified  in  detail,  to 
enable  them  to  fit  harmoniously  into  the  framework  of 
Civilization  in  general, — in  which  Political  Economy  itself  is 
only  one  factor  among  many  of  equal  importance. 


CHAPTEE     VII. 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

TOURING  the  time  my  book  '  Civilization  and  Progress ' 
■—  was  out  of  print,  I  was  occupying  myself  by  writing  the 
earlier  parts  of  this  present  autobiography,  mainly  with  the 
idea  that  in  a  system  of  thought  of  any  complexity,  and  in 
which  the  reader  is  obliged  to  shift  somewhat  his  accustomed 
point  of  view,  there  is  no  way  in  which  he  can  more  easily  be 
led  to  an  understanding  of  it  than  by  a  detailed  account  of  the 
successive  steps  by  which  it  grew  and  took  shape  in  the  author's 
mind.  Besides,  since  it  has  become  generally  recognised  that 
there  is  no  finality  in  Thought,  but  that  more  and  more  light 
comes  and  must  come  to  man  as  the  ages  move  on,  the  most 
important  question,  perhaps,  in  reference  to  an  author  is  not  so 
much  the  amount  of  absolute  truth  of  which  he  is  the  possessor 
(for  that  can  be  but  small  at  best),  but  the  amount  of  truth 
relative  to  his  age  and  time,  and  more  especially  the  amount  of 
truth  which  can  be  affiliated  on  the  deposit  left  him  by  his 
predecessors  in  the  direct  line  of  evolution,  thus  leaving  as 
little  as  possible  of  surplusage  for  the  future  to  cancel  as 
irrelevant  or  retrograde.  I  had  always  felt,  too,  that  the  most 
interesting  form  of  writing  was  that  in  which  thoughts  on  the 
World  and  on  Life  were  presented  not  as  mere  abstract 
propositions  true  for  everybody  or  nobody,  but  as  they 
appeared  when  passed  through  the  alembic  of  a  single  mind 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY.  519 

which  had  been  variously  modified  by  them  in  one  direction  or 
another,  and  had  in  turn  reacted  on  them  so  as  to  colour  or 
change  their  complexion  or  form.  Indeed  it  is  this  which 
makes  the  novel  so  interesting  as  regards  all  that  round  of 
thought  and  sentiment  with  which  it  deals;  it  is  evolution 
within  the  limits  of  a  single  life,  rather  than  continued  through 
a  succession  of  lives,  that  is  all.  And  lastly,  there  is  no  way 
in  which  the  personal  bias  that  adheres  to  every  mind,  and 
which  it  ought  to  be  a  point  of  honour  with  the  Thinker  to 
give  the  reader  every  opportunity  of  allowing  for ;  there  is  no 
way  in  which  this  personal  bias  can  be  better  exhibited,  or 
in  which  it  will  more  surely  show  itself,  than  in  the  evolution 
of  his  mind  under  the  stimulus  of,  or  reaction  from,  ideas  and 
situations  agreeable  or  alien  to  it. 

As  for  the  more  personal  reasons  that  induced  me  to  enter 
on  a  work  of  this  kind,  I  felt  that  if  my  life-work  were  about 
to  be  thwarted  either  by  sheer  bad  luck  (as  at  that  time  seemed 
not  unlikely),  or  by  the  indisposition  of  the  public  to  consider 
unfamiliar  doctrines  when  put  in  a  purely  abstract  and 
impersonal  way,  it  still  might  be  possible  to  obtain  consideration 
for  these  doctrines  if  presented  in  a  different  form.  At  any 
rate,  like  Sir  Walter  Scott,  I  felt  that  some  fresh  shuffle  of  the 
cards  was  necessary,  if  my  work  were  to  go  on  at  all ;  and  in 
what  other  form  than  the  autobiographical  could  I  present  my 
ideas,  unless  indeed  as  a  Novel,  in  which  however  for  want  of 
space  justice  could  only  be  done  to  a  small  division  of  the 
subject?  And  once  having  satisfied  myself  on  this  point,  I 
felt  that  if  the  stages  of  my  mental  evolution  were  to  be 
detailed  at  all,  the  work  ought  to  be  entered  on  before  the 
vividness  of  the  original  impressions  had  altogether  faded — 
and  I  was  then  in  my  fortieth  year.  I  set  to  work  on  it 
accordingly,  and  with  real  enthusiasm,  and  before  I  set  it  aside 
again  had  written  the  chapters  on  my  *  Boyhood,'  on  my  *  Early 
Speculations,'  and  on  the  '  Lost  Ideal.'  And  it  was  the  number 
of  stages  in  mental  evolution  through  which  I  had  passed  in 


520  AUTOBIOGKAPHY. 

my  search  for  this  Lost  Ideal,  that  first  suggested  to  me  the 
idea  of  writing  the  systematic  work  on  the  '  History  of 
Intellectual  Development '  on  which  I  then  started,  and  the 
first  volume  of  which  has  since  appeared.  And  it  was  owing 
to  the  elaborate  preparation  necessary  for  this  undertaking  that 
I  brought  the  chapters  of  the  Autobiography  at  that  time  to  a 
close, — but  not  without  reluctance  and  regret ;  for  begun  as  it 
was  at  a  time  when  my  life-work  seemed  a  failure,  my  health 
broken,  my  hopes  desperate,  and  my  sky  clouded  by  isolation 
and  gloom,  it  was  and  still  remains  like  the  '  David  Copperfield ' 
of  Dickens,  the  child  of  my  heart. 


CHAPTEE     VIII 


INTERSTITIAL   THINKERS. 

PvURING  the  interval  of  work  on  my  Autobiography  I 
■r-/  returned  to  the  writings  of  some  of  those  recent 
Thinkers  whom  for  some  years  I  had  neglected  owing  to  my 
absorption  in  the  studies  necessary  and  preparatory  to  my 
book  on  Civilization,  but  who  in  the  meantime  had  been  carry- 
ing their  own  labours  into  wider  and  wider  fields.  I  allude 
more  especially  to  the  works  of  Matthew  Arnold,  Huxley, 
Hutton,  John  Morley,  Leslie  Stephen,  and  Ruskin.  I  have 
called  them  interstitial  Thinkers  not  because  of  any  necessary 
inferiority  in  them  to  their  respective  masters, — on  the 
contrary,  in  some  particulars  they  are  their  superiors — but 
because  their  best  work  was  done  under  the  inspiration  of,  and 
within  the  general  circuit  of  thought  marked  out  by  these 
masters ;  and  consisted  in  filling  in  the  gaps  and  interstices  of 
thought  left  vacant  by  them,  so  as  to  form  a  continuous  web 
applicable  to  nearly  every  side  and  aspect  of  Life ;  to  History, 
to  Politics,  to  Philosophy,  and  to  Religion. 

Matthew  Arnold  was  the  first  I  again  took  up.  He  was 
practically  a  disciple  of  Goethe,  and  the  bulk  of  his  life's  work 
outside  of  his  poetry,  consisted  in  the  endeavour  to  impregnate 
our  literature  with  those  parts  of  the  teaching  of  his  master 
which,  for  reasons  given  in  a  former  chapter,  could  not  be 
appropriated  by  either  Emerson  or  Carlyle ;  and  mainly  with 


522  INTERSTITIAL   THINKERS. 

his  great  doctrine  of  the  necessity  of  bringing  every  side  and 
angle  of  our  nature  by  an  assiduous  and  unremitting  cultiva- 
tion up  to  the  ideal  of  a  full  and  harmonious  Culture;  in 
opposition  to  the  English  and  American  ideal,  which  is  to  begin 
by  giving  each  individual  ample  liberty  to  clear  a  space  for 
himself,  within  which  he  may  then  spread  himself  out  at  large 
as  in  some  unweeded  garden,  with  his  angularities,  vulgarities, 
limitations,  and  eccentricities,  all  on  end  and  bristling  with 
sensitiveness,  in  the  full  flower  and  flush  of  life,  thick  upon 
him.  Indeed  practically  all  the  studies  of  Arnold  are,  in  one 
direction  or  another,  but  expansions  of  this  single  theme.  It 
is  this  which  lies  at  the  root  of  his  preference  for  an  Academy 
of  Letters  somewhat  after  the  model  of  the  French  Academy, 
which  shall  insist  that  no  work  shall  take  classic  rank  which 
does  not  combine  thought,  sentiment,  and  style,  matter  and 
form,  in  some  true  and  just  proportion ;  instead  of  this  rank 
being  accorded  as  with  us,  to  one-sided  excellences  and 
eccentricities,  and  left  to  private  taste  or  individual  caprice. 
It  is  this,  too,  which  accounts  for  his  preference  for  grace  and 
form,  over  essential  beauty  and  strength ;  for  a  general 
harmony  over  particular  excellences;  for  the  classical  models 
in  poetry,  as  Sophocles,  over  models  like  Shakspeare;  and 
which  is  the  main  reason  for  his  dislike  not  only  of  excess  in 
general,  but  even  of  excess  of  beauty  or  power,  as  is  seen  in 
his  disparagement  of  some  of  the  most  splendid  poetical  and 
rhetorical  passages  of  Shakspeare  and  Keats.  It  accounts  too, 
for  his  selection  of  French  authors  as  his  models  of  prose ;  for 
his  exaggerated  estimate  of  St.  Beuve;  and  in  general  for  his 
love  of  the  '  gentlemanly  '  in  style, — of  ease,  flexibility,  and  a 
kind  of  careless,  well-bred  grace, — rather  than  the  hard,  metallic, 
and  aggressive  note  of  the  literary  nouveau  riche  like  Macaulay, 
with  his  air  of  having  just  come  from  an  expensive  course  of 
instruction  under  the  most  approved  masters. 

It  is  this  note  of  a  trimmed  and  balanced  culture  that  in 
matters  of  Eeligion  and  Philosophy  accounts  for  his  hatred  of 


INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS.  523 

cut-and-dried  systems,  or  indeed  of  systems  of  any  kind, 
especially  of  German  Metaphysics  and  Theology.  It  accounts 
too  for  his  preference  for  Poetic  Thinkers  like  Goethe  and 
Bacon,  over  Thinkers  like  Comte  and  Herbert  Spencer;  and 
for  Political  Thinkers  like  Burke,  over  Thinkers  like  Mill ; 
and  in  general  for  the  impression  he  leaves,  that  a  man  should 
have  as  much  philosophy  as  is  befitting  a  man  of  culture  and 
no  more.  And  hence  it  is  that  he  is  in  love  with  such  light 
tea-table  thinkers  as  Senancour  and  Amiel,  who  in  con- 
templating the  problem  of  the  World  resign  themselves  either 
to  a  poetic  melancholy  or  to  a  charming  but  ineffectual 
moralizing  over  it ;  rather  than  with  those  who  have  stripped 
off  their  coats  and  energetically  set  to  work  to  bring  it  by  slow 
untiring  labour  a  stage  nearer  solution.  So  much  so,  indeed, 
that  in  his  excess  of  appreciation  of  the  dignified  and  well-bred 
utterances  of  Bishop  Wilson,  or  the  delicate  and  balanced 
phrases  of  some  of  his  French  proteges,  he  comes  perilously  near 
falling  into  the  patronage  of  platitude. 

In  the  same  way,  too,  as  he  prefers  an  Academy  in  Literature 
because  it  holds  up  for  imitation  only  what  is  best  and  most 
refined  in  matter  and  style,  he  would  have  in  Government  an 
Executive  that  would  represent  the  best  sense  of  the  community, 
and  not  the  various  party  shibboleths  and  crazes, — Temperance, 
the  Deceased  Wife's  Sister's  Bill,  and  the  like — one  that  would 
give  us  real  and  pressing  desiderata,  as  a  good  system  of 
Secondary  Schools,  and  so  on ;  and  that  would  preserve  for  us 
in  the  Church,  Establishment  with  its  uniform  standard  of 
University  education  for  the  Clergy,  and  reflecting  the  tone 
and  sentiment  of  men  of  culture,  rather  than  Disestablishment 
and  Dissent,  reflecting  the  thoughts  and  opinions  of  their 
congregations  merely.  And  hence  too,  his  special  aversion 
to  the  hugger-mugger  of  democratic  politics,  especially  in 
Foreign  Affairs,  where  the  Cabinet  takes  its  cue  from  the 
shifting  opinions  and  passions  of  the  man  in  the  street,  rather 
than  from  the  fixed  and  continuous  traditions  of  a  body  of 


524  INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS. 

specially-trained  officials,  with  whom  the  ideas  of  '  superior 
persons '  whose  minds  can  play  freely  around  these  questions, 
would  not  be  without  influence.  From  the  same  cause,  too, 
arises  his  good-humoured  contempt  for  the  Middle  Class 
Philistines  and  all  their  works;  his  raillery  of  their  aims  and 
ideals,  of  their  self-complacency  in  the  contemplation  of  their 
own  vulgarities,  their  boasting,  and  their  love  of  dwelling  on 
the  cost  of  their  wines  and  horses,  their  yachts  and  shooting- 
boxes;  and  his  marked  preference  for  the  Barbarians  (as  he 
calls  the  Aristocracy)  and  the  Upper  Middle  Class,  with  their 
quiet  tone,  simple  manners,  and  absence  of  boasting,  their 
freedom  from  all  allusion  in  society  to  money  or  expenditure, 
and  their  *  cheery  stoicism,'  as  Carlyle  called  it,  in  the  face  of 
misfortune  or  of  ruin. 

Arnold  has,  in  a  word,  the  same  literary  tastes  as  his  master, 
Goethe,  the  same  personal  bias,  and  the  same  '  sweetness  and 
light,'  but  has  neither  his  breadth  nor  power,  his  insight  nor 
penetration.  The  consequence  is  that  although  with  his 
lambent  flame  he  has  played  gracefully  around  nearly  all  the 
great  problems  of  the  world  and  of  society,  he  has  thrown  no 
new  light  on  any.  His  division  of  the  different  classes  in 
English  society  into  Barbarians,  Philistines,  and  Populace,  was 
pointed  and  happy,  but  expressed  distinctions  which  though 
true,  were  more  or  less  obvious ;  and  his  just  insight  into  the 
tendency  of  Aristocracies  to  repress  the  culture  and  expansion 
of  the  masses,  was  an  easy  deduction  from  it.  But  his  want  of 
real  penetration  is  seen  most  clearly  in  his  estimates  of  Thinkers 
and  Philosophers.  It  was  a  piece  of  literary  impertinence  for 
a  light  skirmisher  like  himself  to  characterize  a  man  like  Comte 
as  *  a  grotesque  old  French  pedant ; '  and  it  accurately  marked 
the  depth  of  his  own  soundings  of  Nature  and  Human  Life 
when  he  denied  to  Emerson  the  title  of  Philosopher,  and 
restricted  his  influence  mainly  to  *  the  stimulus  which  he  has 
given  to  men  to  live  in  the  spirit,' — as  if  he  were  merely  some 
modern  Marcus  Aurelius. 


INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS.  525 

His  works  on  Religion,  too,  show  the  same  limitations  in 
penetration  and  power ;  and  I  am  sorry  to  be  obliged  to  add, 
after  all  the  labour  he  spent  on  them,  have  little  or  no  real 
value.  Coining  to  him  as  I  have  since  done,  from  the  studies 
in  Biblical  Criticism  which  were  forced  on  me  by  the  necessities 
of  my  work  on  the  'History  of  Intellectual  Development/  I 
found  his  judgments  crude,  and  his  knowledge  both  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  New,  quite  behind  the  accepted  criticism 
even  of  his  own  time ;  while  in  his  general  reconstruction  of 
Religion  in  the  light  of  Modern  Culture  in  his  '  Literature  and 
Dogma,'  the  want  of  insight  displayed  in  his  making  the 
Religion  of  the  Jews  depend  on  Conduct  and  their  experiences 
of  Morality, — and  so  cutting  it  off  entirely  from  its  roots  in  the 
conception  they  had  formed  to  themselves  of  the  nature  of  the 
Personal  Cause  to  whom  such  conduct  is  agreeable  or  otherwise,. 
— was  such  a  putting  of  the  cart  before  the  horse  as  to  rule  him 
out  of  the  category  of  safe  and  sure-footed  thinkers.  That  he 
should  imagine  that  at  a  time  when  all  codes  of  morality  or 
conduct  whatever,  were  directly  dependent  on  supernatural- 
sanctions,  and  got  from  them  all  their  vitality  and  power — and 
were  not  as  now  largely  dependent  on  experiences  of  utility — 
that  he  should  imagine  that  the  Jews  alone  should  construct  a 
religion  so  fierce  and  intense  as  theirs,  out  of  the  mere  cold* 
blooded  '  experiences '  of  conduct  or  morality,  was  to  exhibit  an 
utter  want  both  of  penetration  and  of  historical  perspective, 
and  so  not  only  to  destroy  his  influence  with  Thinkers  and 
Scholars,  but  to  fail  also  in  convincing  the  great  general  public 
whom  it  was  his  main  object  to  reach.  The  one  thought, 
perhaps,  in  all  his  writings  that  struck  me  as  most  central,  and 
that  often  rises  in  my  mind  when  political  discussions  are 
going  on,  was  his  perception  that  the  reason  why  the  right  and 
just  thing  which  all  men  know  and  love,  is  not  done  now  and 
here,  but  still  lingers  when  all  apparently  are  longing  to  see  it 
realized,  is  that  under  the  circumstances  of  the  place  and  time 
its  realization  would  do  more  harm  than  good,  would  cause  more 


52$  INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS. 

trouble  and  mischief  than  it  displaced;  as,  in  his  pregnant 
analogy,  it  would  do,  if  pheasants  were  made  private  property 
like  fowls. 

Huxley,  with  his  direct  and  courageous  utterance,  struck  for 
me  a  more  manly  note  than  Arnold,  and  charmed  me  by  his 
downright  common  sense,  his  freedom  from  affectation,  and  by 
a  literary  style  which  if  less  chaste  perhaps  than  that  of  Arnold, 
is  more  brilliant,  terse,  and  sinewy.  It  is  as  graceful  and  easy, 
too,  in  its  way  as  his,  when  regard  is  had  to  the  limits  which 
Huxley  allowed  himself  for  the  expression  of  his  ideas,  and  the 
necessity  he  always  felt  of  grappling  with  his  subject  without 
waste  of  space  or  loss  of  time.  Like  a  French  posture-master 
bowing  you  in  and  out  of  a  room,  Arnold  occupies  so  much  time 
in  gracefully  skirmishing  about  and  sparring  for  an  opening  to 
his  subject ;  so  much,  too,  in  endless  repetitions  of  the  same 
thought  and  the  same  phrases ;  that  not  only  his  sentences  but 
whole  paragraphs  and  even  whole  essays,  are  as  loose  and  light 
in  texture  as  gauze ;  and  with  so  much  elbow-room  for  posturing 
in,  not  to  be  easy  and  graceful  would  indeed  have  shown  a  lack 
of  literary  power. 

In  the  general  lines  of  his  thought,  Huxley  works  within  the 
limits  marked  out  by  Darwin  and  Spencer;  but  with  less  of 
pedantry  and  cut-and-dried  theory,  especially  in  matters  political 
and  social,  than  the  latter,  and  with  a  wider  range  of  general 
culture  than  the  former.  But  both  his  Agnosticism  and  his 
Idealism  are  retrograde  and  out  of  date.  In  the  one,  he  goes 
back  to  the  position  of  Hume,  in  the  other  to  that  of  Descartes, 
while  the  one  really  great  coirtribution  of  Spencer  to  Philosophy 
— his  doctrine  namely  of  the  Persistence  of  Force,  in  its  bearing 
on  Causation — is  entirely  missed  by  him.  With  Huxley  as 
with  Hume,  Causation  is  not  a  necessity  of  thought,  but  has 
only  that  high  degree  of  jirobabilitij  which  the  uniform  absence 
of  any  experience  to  the  contrary  has  given  it — nothing  more. 
Spencer  on  the  other  hand  has  shown,  as  we  have  seen,  that 
Scientific  Causation  is  a  direct  deduction  from  the  Persistence 


INTERSTITIAL   THINKERS.  527 

of  Force,  and  that  the  Persistence  of  Force  is  a  necessity  of 
thought,  without  which,  indeed,  the  experience  to  which 
Huxley  refers  Causation  for  confirmation,  could  not  have 
existed  at  all.  For  without  a  belief  in  the  persistence  of  Force, 
not  only  could  you  not  depend  on  your  scales  and  measures 
(without  which  scientific  proof  were  impossible),  but  you  would 
not  even  be  here;  for  without  reliance  on  the  uniformity  of 
Nature,  which  is  a  necessary  deduction  from  the  Persistence  of 
Force,  no  animal  from  the  beginning  of  Time  up  till  now  could 
ever  have  learned  how  to  adjust  its  motions  so  as  to  catch  its 
prey ;  and  so  we  should  not  have  been  here  at  all !  The 
Biblical  Criticisms,  too,  in  which  in  later  years  he  was  so  fond 
of  indulging,  are  like  those  of  Arnold  of  little  or  no  value. 
They  were  all  taken  up  ad  captandwn,  and  without  sufficient 
insight  into  the  complex  web  of  circumstances  that  preceded 
and  attended  the  genesis  and  evolution  of  the  doctrines  or 
incidents  he  assails ;  and  besides  are  so  freighted  with 
theological  animus,  and  viewed  so  entirely  from  the  standpoint 
of  present-day  thought,  that  although  justifiable  when  used  as 
polemics  against  systems  which  still  profess  to  rule  the  minds 
of  men,  they  are  worthless  for  purposes  of  pure  historical  truth. 
Hutton,  the  late  Editor  of  the  Spectator,  was  in  his  way  as 
good  a  critic  as  Arnold ;  he  had  less  breadth  and  freedom  from 
personal  bias,  less  tact  and  polish,  perhaps,  but  more  ingenuity 
and  subtlety ;  and  was  besides,  as  strong  a  thinker  within  the 
limits  of  the  Orthodox  Creed,  as  any  man  of  his  time.  For 
although  neither  he  nor  his  master,  Maurice,  added  anything 
new  to  the  broad  theological  positions  of  Newman,  the  skill  and 
ingenuity  with  which  he  handled  and  applied  his  theological 
weapons  in  his  controversies  with  his  scientific  opponents,  were 
triumphs  of  dialectical  subtlety  worthy  of  a  Jesuit.  His  mind, 
in  fact,  was  ingenious  and  subtle  rather  than  massive  and 
comprehensive,  and  his  critical  faculty  more  acute  than  his 
observation  or  penetration.  For  the  microscopic  dissection  of 
a  motive  or  a  sentiment,  he  was  without  a  parallel.     The  more 


528  INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS. 

recondite  and  subtle  it  was,  indeed,  the  better  he  liked  it ;  and 
his  mind  could  turn  round  in  a  smaller  space  than  any  writer  I 
know.  His  public  function  as  editor  helped  to  keep  him,  like 
Gladstone,  broad  and  sweet ;  otherwise,  if  left  to  himself  he  would 
have  ended  by  dancing  theologically  on  the  point  of  a  needle  ! 
But  latterly  the  Higher  Criticism  was  getting  too  strong  for 
him,  and  his  articles  in  the  *  Spectator '  bearing  on  it,  were 
marked  by  more  hesitation  and  uncertainty  than  of  yore.  The 
one  theological  position  of  his  that  seemed  to  me  impregnable, 
was  his  taking  his  stand  on  the  turn  of  the  will,  if  one  may  so 
express  it,  as  the  point  through  which  spiritual  influences  and 
suggestions  of  a  supernatural  kind  can  enter  the  mind  without 
interfering  with  its  normal  and  regulated  activity  under  the 
dominion  of  natural  law-  It  was  a  fine  piece  of  theological 
strategy,  and  was  calculated  to  give  his  opponents  much  trouble 
in  dislodging  him — so  long  at  any  rate  as  the  freedom  of  the 
will  remains  an  open  question  in  metaphysical  speculation. 
For  even  if  his  hypothesis  were  not  demonstrable,  or  even 
probable,  it  always  offered  a  safe  passage  to  those  minds  that 
were  intent  on  finding  some  kind  of  .umbilical  cord  by  which  to 
attach  themselves  to,  or  nourish  themselves  on,  the  Divine 
Mind.  But  he  lost  his  critical  balance  at  last,  and  ended  by 
believing  as  he  once  wrote  to  me,  that  the  attraction  of  one 
piece  of  matter  for  another  was  due  to  the  direct  Will  of  God. 
His  purely  literary  criticisms,  however,  were  of  a  very 
high  quality  when  allowance  is  made  for  his  personal  bias, 
which  like  that  of  Newman  was  characterized  by  a  deep  and 
habitual  piety,  and  which  made  him  look  at  all  things  through 
their  bearings  on  morality  and  devotion.  Indeed  were  it  not 
for  this,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  modern  criticism  better 
estimates  of  Goethe,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Hawthorne,  or 
George  Eliot.  The  distinction  he  drew  between  great  novelists 
like  Charlotte  Bronte  and  George  Eliot,  whose  characters  have 
so  much  individuality  that  they  bend  and  mould  their  social 
medium  or  environment  to  their  own  natures,  and  the  ordinary 


INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS.  529 

run  of  novelists  who  give  the  general  social  milim  the  first 
place,  and  whose  characters  like  '  walking  gentlemen,'  have 
only  just  sufficient  individuality  not  to  violate  its  conventions, 
is  worth  cart-loads  of  ordinary  criticism. 

Of  all  the  thinkers  whom  we  are  here  passing  under  review, 
John  Morley  is  perhaps  the  most  of  an  independent  force, 
being  the  offspring  not  of  one  master  mainly,  like  the  others, 
but  of  the  cross-fertilization  of  two,  who  were  so  like  and  yet 
so  unlike  that  their  union  was  calculated  to  produce  the  best 
quality  of  fruit.  He  has,  in  a  word,  so  modified  the  concep- 
tions of  his  great  constructive  master,  Comte,  by  the  critical 
and  analytical  acumen  of  Mill,  and  has  so  watered  and 
nourished  them  both  with  the  practical  sagacity  of  Burke,  that 
his  own  writings,  as  the  product  of  this  complex  union,  may  be 
said  to  rank  almost  as  new  creations  ;  and  coming  to  him  from 
my  studies  on  Civilization,  he  was  the  writer  who  of  all  others 
came  nearest  in  my  judgment  to  a  true  estimate  of  the  relations 
of  all  the  factors  concerned  in  that  complex  product.  Like 
Comte  he  cares  little  for  metaphysical  speculations,  whether 
they  be  those  of  Mill  or  others ;  and  like  Comte,  too,  he  sees 
the  absurdity  of  attempting  to  explain  the  Universe  by  any 
single  principle,  physical  or  spiritual,  as  is  done  by  Spencer 
and  Hegel.  All  such  speculations  he  would,  if  not  forbid,  still 
rule  out  as  of  quite  subordinate  importance ;  and  would  confine 
himself  to  that  narrow  belt  of  territory  into  which  both 
abstract  Philosophy  and  Physical  Science  play  indeed,  but 
where  moralities  and  customs  and  traditions  and  social  systems 
and  races  and  classes  of  men,  all  jostle  each  other,  and  between 
which  as  between  the  members  of  Barnum's  '  happy  family  '  of 
cats  and  dogs,  rats  and  monkeys,  the  greatest  triumph  of 
intellect  is  to  keep  the  peace.  The  Social  Problem  in  a  word 
is  his  theme,  as  alone  being  in  the  power  of  man  to  modify  ; 
and  the  social  point  of  view  the  one  to  which  all  other  points 
of  view  must  be  subordinated.  Indeed  with  Morley,  as  with 
Goethe     and     Schopenhauer,     purely     abstract     intellectual 

LL 


530  INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS. 

curiosity  is  not  a  natural  product  of  the  human  mind,  but  an 
artificial  one  rather  ;  arising  originally  as  he  believes  not  from 
the  love  of  truth  for  its  own  sake,  but  as  an  instrument  for  the 
realization  of  those  complex  desires  of  men  which  can  only  find 
their  full   satisfaction  in    society, — hunger,  ambition,  love   of 
power,  fear,  hope,  and  the  rest — an  instrument  which  when  it 
has  enabled  us  to  gratify  these  desires,  is  relegated  to  its  sub- 
ordinate place  again;    the  sphere  of  Intelligence   being  thus 
limited  for  us,  he  considers,  by  the   purposes  and  functions 
which  it  originally  subserved.      A.nd  here  it   is  that  he  parts 
company  with  Comte.     For  although  he  agrees  with  him  that 
Intellect  is  but  an   instrument  to  guide  us  to  our  ends,  he 
recognizes  that  these  ends  themselves  are  not  determined  by 
the  Intelligence,  but  by  a  Social  Ideal  within  us  on  the  one 
hand,  and  by  the  Material  and   Social   Conditions  of  the  age 
and  time  which  prevent  our  realizing  that  Ideal,  on  the  other. 
The  difference  is  vital,  for  while   Comte  fixing  his  eye  on  his 
Social  Ideal  would  call  on  the  Intellect  to  realize  it  now  and 
here ;  and  in  consequence  with  as  little  chance  of  success  as  if 
in  building  a  bridge  he   should  begin  by  adapting  it  to  the 
farther  shore  instead   of   to   the    shore    on  which  he   stands ; 
Morley  would  begin  by  adapting  his  measures  to  the  existing 
conditions  of  society  on  which  we  stand  and  work,  and  would 
go  on  adapting  them  to  these  conditions  at  each  stage  of  his 
progress,  until  he  reaches  the  opposite  shore,  the  Social  Ideal 
itself.     But  just  as  in  the  bridge  no  one  part  of  its  girders  and 
beams  can  be  pushed  forward  until  all  its  collateral  supports 
come  fairly  up  into  line  ;  or  as  no  part  of  a  flock  of  sheep  can 
be  allowed  to  get  too  far  forward  or  too  far  behind  the  rest  if 
the  whole   flock  is  to   advance;  so    if   society  is   to    steadily 
progress,  no    one   or   more   of   its   complex   elements   can   be 
greatly  changed   or   pushed   forward,  until   the  rest  also  are 
brought   up   into   line.     It   is   clearly   a   problem   of    how   to 
harmonize  a  number  of  discordant  elements  and  factors,  rather 
than  of  giving  the  primacy  to  one,  or  of  aggrandizing  some  at 


INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS.  531 

the  expense  of  the  rest ;  and  as  these  elements — these  religions 
and  customs  and  classes  and  moralities — are  all  in  continual  flux 
like  the  waves  of  the  sea,  all  pushing  and  struggling  like  the 
sheep  in  a  flock,  the  question  with  Morley  is  how  are  they  best 
to  be  handled  so  as  to  secure  a  steady  and  continuous  advance  ? 
By  giving  them  the  fullest  individual  Liberty  of  Movement 
compatible  with  the  equal  liberty  of  all,  he  replies,  so  that 
when  they  do  unite,  it  will  be  like  chemical  atoms  by  their  own 
affinities  ;  thus  forming  staple  natural  divisions  with  which  the 
statesman  can  deal  as  if  they  were  single  and  compact  entities 
or  forces.  And  so  he  parts  company  with  Comte,  who  with 
the  remote  ideal  rather  than  the  next  immediate  step  in  his 
eye,  would  at  once  distribute  men  into  rigid  and  formal 
divisions  according  to  the  pattern  of  his  dreams, — into  castes 
and  hierarchies,  which  being  more  or  less  artificial  and 
premature,  would  like  type  that  is  boxed  before  the  revised 
4  proof '  has  come  in,  have  all  to  be  taken  down  again. 

Society  then,  having  been  given  the  fullest  liberty  to  group 
itself  into  its  natural  divisions  as  when  a  ball-room  prepares 
itself  for  a  dance  by  grouping  itself  into  sets  and  figures, 
something  further  is  still  necessary  as  preliminary ;  for  the 
groups  with  their  pushing  and  jostling  have  to  be  kept  from 
running  each  other  to  the  wall, — and  how  is  this  to  be  done  f 
By  Compromise,  says  Morley,  or  that  give-and-take  which 
shall  allow  each  to  be  kept  in  line,  and  shall  prevent  any  one 
division  from  over-riding  or  absorbing  the  rest.  But  this 
Compromise,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  is  not  a  mere  weak 
acquiescence  in,  and  tolerance  of,  all  the  elements  that  may 
happen  to  assert  themselves;  on  the  contrary  it  is  restricted 
only  to  those  which  are  vital  and  positive ;  and  so  is  consistent 
with  the  vigorous  repression  of  all  that  is  negative,  obstructive, 
degenerate,  or  pernicious,  —  of  rowdyism,  scoundrelism, 
monopolism,  organized  parasitism,  and  all  those  retrograde 
institutions  that  have  come  down  from  earlier  times,  and  are 
still  entrenched  behind  the  barriers  of  law  long  after  public 


532  INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS. 

opinion  has  condemned  them.  And  it  is  on  the  one  hand  in 
determining  what  has  to  be  lopped  off  as  superfluous  or  noxious, 
and  on  the  other  in  keeping  all  the  vital  and  positive  elements 
together,  as  a  shepherd  his  sheep,  so  that  they  shall  move 
forward  harmoniously ;  now  repressing  the  froward  who  would 
break  up  this  harmony,  and  now  urging  on  the  laggards  who 
threaten  to  fall  out  of  line, — it  is  in  this,  that  in  peaceful  States 
all  Practical  Statesmanship  properly  so  called  consists  ;  and  in 
the  endeavour  to  bring  English  Statesmanship  back  to  it,  with 
his  watchwords  of  Liberty  and  Compromise,  Morley  is  but 
following  in  the  footsteps  of  Burke.  But  in  States  that  have 
become  ultra-democratic  in  constitution  before  their  natural 
time,  or  where  pushing  politicians  making  the  nation  their 
milch-cow,  instead  of  urging  the  lowest  strata  to  earn  their 
franchise  before  they  exercise  it,  as  they  have  to  do  their  beer, 
would  throw  it  open  to  them  and  force  it  on  them  as  they  do 
their  tap-rooms  on  election  days :  when  political  brigands 
representing  overgrown  ambitions,  Tory  or  Radical, — military 
jingoism,  anarchism,  constitution-mongering,  eight-hour 
despotisms,  and  the  like, — instead  of  shepherding  the  flock, 
vie  with  each  other  in  swooping  down  on  it  to  coerce  or  kidnap 
it  each  in  his  own  special  interest,  and  so  instead  of  softening 
and  harmonizing  the  antagonisms  of  different  classes  and 
interests,  still  further  accentuate  them, — then  will  the  high 
statesmanship  of  Burke  go  to  the  wall,  and  the  reign  of  the 
Demagogue  will  be  near  at  hand.  And  if  Morley  fails  as  a 
practical  statesman,  it  will  not  be  from  want  of  penetration 
into  the  nature  of  all  the  forces  engaged,  nor  perhaps  from  want 
of  a  just  insight  into  the  measures  needed  for  their  harmonious 
working,  but  because  in  the  winged  flights  of  electors  to  the 
political  Utopias  and  Klondikes  which  are  held  up  before 
them,  there  will  not  be  left  a  sufficient  number  of  moderate 
and  sagacious  supporters  with  the  motto  of  '  Liberty  and 
Compromise '  on  their  lips,  to  enable  him  to  carry  them 
through. 


INTERSTITIAL   THINKERS.  533 

Morley's  historical  studies  of  the  men  and  events  preceding 
the  French  Revolution, — of  Rousseau,  Diderot,  Voltaire,  and 
the  rest, — are  all  written  from  the  Social  point  of  view,  and  are 
dominated  throughout  by  his  conception  of  the  march  of 
Civilization  in  general  and  as  a  whole  ;  and  in  them  all,  the 
influence  of  Comte  is  clearly  seen.  But  he  corrects  the 
one-sidedness  of  Comte,  by  a  finer  insight  into  the  part  played 
in  Civilization  by  the  general  Material  and  Social  conditions  of 
the  age  and  time.  He  points  out  for  example  that  the  French 
Revolution  did  not  absorb  the  whole  propaganda  of  the  great 
intellectual  movement  that  preceded  it  and  helped  to  bring  it 
on,  but  only  such  elements  of  it  as  were  demanded  by  the 
grinding  material,  political,  and  social  tyranny  of  the  time ;  io 
the  same  way  as  in  America,  the  watchwords  of  'Liberty  and 
Equality '  were  limited  to  the  white  population  alone.  His 
study  of  Burke,  which  is  marked  throughout  by  much  of  the 
political  wisdom  of  the  master  himself,  has  always  remained 
with  me  as  one  of  the  finest  studies  of  its  kind  in  the  language. 

Leslie  Stephen,  again,  acknowledges  no  particular  master ; 
and  his  role  has  been  mainly  to  sprinkle  cold  water  on  all 
political,  religious,  or  social  enthusiasms,  and  on  all  literary 
estimates  when  they  get  overheated  or  exaggerated.  He  is 
essentially  a  negative  thinker,  materialistic,  agnostic,  and 
good-naturedly  pessimistic,  but  with  a  fine  sanity  and  sense  of 
humour  that  keeps  him  in  all  things  from  exaggeration  or 
absurdity.  His  studies  of  the  thinkers  of  preceding  centuries, 
although  always  acute  and  vigorous,  have  the  common  fault  of 
being  dominated  too  much  from  the  standpoint  of  to-day, 
instead  of  being  exhibited  as  stages  in  a  continuous  evolution  of 
thought — without  which,  indeed,  all  time  spent  on  extinct  and 
exploded  systems  is  practically  wasted. 

Ruskin  charmed  me  as  he  did  all  the  young  writers  of  the 
time  by  his  style ;  but  he  left  behind  him  besides,  a  solid  deposit 
of  thought,  in  the  original  turn  he  gave  to  the  current  Political 
Economy,  especially  in  the  pregnant  question  he  put  to  the 


534  INTERSTITIAL   THINKERS. 

employers  of  labour  to  which  I  have  already  referred,  as  well  as 
by  his  demonstration  of  the  nature  and  functions  of  the 
Imagination  in  his  *  Modern  Painters/  a  study  marked  by  great 
subtlety  and  penetration,  and  more  level  and  convincing  than 
his  judgments  in  my  opinion  usually  are.  As  Carlyle  once 
remarked  to  me  of  him, '  He  has  a  fine  sense  of  beauty,  but  has 
lived  too  much  in  the  ideal  to  be  quite  level  with  the  present 
world.' 

It  may  seem  strange  that  in  a  survey  of  the  seminal  thinkers 
of  the  time,  the  illustrious  name  of  John  Stuart  Mill  should  not 
have  been  mentioned.  The  truth  is  that  before  I  began  my 
studies,  his  points  of  view  had  been  so  taken  up  and  embodied 
in  the  larger  generalizations  of  Spencer,  and  such  an  extension 
had  been  given  to  them  there,  that  it  was  no  longer  possible  to 
return  to  him.  Besides,  in  spite  of  his  fine  and  noble  nature, 
his  love  of  truth,  his  beautiful  unconscious  simplicity,  and  his 
natural  affinity  for  all  that  was  great  and  good  ;  in  spite  too  of 
his  clearness  and  acuteness  of  mind ;  there  was  something  thin 
in  his  intellectual  views,  something  wire-drawn  and  metaphysical; 
and  although  his  unusual  scrupulosity  and  care,  and  his  openness 
to  all  that  could  be  said  on  every  side  of  a  question,  gave  you 
the  impression  that  the  subject  had  been  thoroughly  thrashed 
out  and  all  its  limitations  and  objections  duly  considered  and 
allowed  for,  still  you  were  always  left  with  the  feeling  that  the 
demonstration  was  not  so  much  a  living  and  humanly-convincing 
one,  as  a  logical  and  dialectical  one  mainly ;  and  so  you  were 
never  quite  satisfied.  There  was  a  want  of  the  sense  of  mass,  a 
feeling  as  if  the  subject  had  been  broken  up  in  some  artificial 
way,  so  as  not  to  be  altogether  free  from  the  danger  of  fallacies 
having  crept  in  between  the  interstices  of  the  logic,  or  at  the 
points  of  junction  of  the  fragments  ;  as  if  it  were  being  dealt 
with  in  threads  rather  than  in  the  web.  If  the  subject  were 
Political  Economy,  for  example,  it  was  torn,  as  Comte 
complained,  from  the  general  web  of  Civilization  in  which  it 
lay,  and  presented  by  itself,  as  if  it  were  independent  of  the 


INTERSTITIAL    THINKERS.  535 

great  mesh  of  custom,  tradition,  political  and  social  power,  legal 

status,  and  so  on,  with  which  it  was  encompassed  and  bound  up. 

For  although  his  *  economic  man '  was  admittedly  put  forward 

as  an  abstraction   to   simplify  the  subject,  his  arguments  and 

deductions  were  never  afterwards  modified  and  supplemented  by 

the  considerations  needed  to  bring  this  '  economic  man '  up  to  a 

reality.     Laissez-faire,  again,  which  was  originally  advanced  as 

a  temporary  expedient  to  meet  an  excess  of  political  interf  erence,. 

is  treated  with  as  much  respect  as  if  it  were  an  economic  maxim 

true  for  all  time.      If,  again,  it  were  a  problem  of  Politics  with 

which   he    was   dealing,  not   enough  allowance  was  made  for 

tradition,  custom,   environment,  balance  of  powers,  historical 

antecedents,  compromise,  and  so  on,  but  all  was  too  cut-and-dried, 

too  formal,  too  purely  logical  to  reflect  truly  the  tangled  web  of 

human  life ;  and  you  never  got  the  synthesis  necessary  to  make 

the  demonstration  correspond  with  the  reality.     Or  if,  again,, 

it   were   a   Philosophical  theme,  his  treatment   of   it   was  too 

metaphysical,  too  abstract,  too  analytical ;  while  if  it  were  the 

human  mind  that  was  in  question,  he  dealt  too  much  with  the 

debris  into  which  the  faculties  were  analyzed  and  decomposed, 

and  which  as  having  no  separate  existence  of  their  own,  could 

not  be  treated  as  independent  entities  or  powers  with  legitimate 

values,  and  so  could  not  be  made  the  subjects  of  constructive 

combinations  or  of  scientific  predication.     If  you  wanted  this 

you  would  have  to  go  elsewhere.      Indeed  with  all  his  clearness 

and  purity  of  intellect,  there  was  something  in  the  structure  of 

his  mind  which  seemed  to  gravitate  not  so  much  to  reality,  as 

to  logical  refinements  and  subtleties.    And  yet  when  I  think  of 

all  he  did,  I  am  not  sure  that  these  characteristics  did  not  result 

as  much  perhaps  from  the  age  and  time  in  which  he  was  cast, 

from   his   philosophic   antecedents,   and   from   the   species   of 

questions  that  were  thrust  on  him  (and,  in  consequence,  from 

the  marked  absence  in  him  of  the  sense  of  historical  perspective, 

or  of  any  adequate  conception  of  evolution  in  the  modern  sense 

of  the  term),  as  from  his  intellect  itself.     He  was  an  ad  interim 


536  interstitial  thinkers. 

thinker,  if  I  may  so  designate  him,  standing  with  one  leg  on  the 
old  and  the  other  on  the  new,  and  although  a  Colossus  in  his 
way,  was  condemned  to  stand  there  unable  to  move.  Indeed 
had  he  attempted  to  come  down  from  his  pedestal  to  join  with 
the  younger  men  who  walked  onwards  under  his  great  shadow, 
he  would  have  fallen  to  pieces.  In  Political  Economy,  one 
foot  rested  on  Individualism,  the  other  on  Socialism ;  in 
Philosophy,  one  foot  on  Locke  and  Bentham,  the  other  on 
Spencer;  in  Sociology,  one  foot  on  the  Encyclopaedists,  the 
other  on  Comte.  He  has  in  consequence  added  nothing  of 
permanent  value  to  thought,  and  has  left  no  School.  Although 
a  Materialist,  he  was  neither  prepared  to  accept  an  unified 
conception  of  the  Physical  World  like  that  of  Spencer,  nor  a 
physiological  basis  of  mind  like  that  of  Bain  and  the  Modern 
School  of  Psychologists.  He  has  in  consequence  added  nothing 
new  to  our  views  of  the  Outer  World  like  Spencer,  nor  to  the 
subtler  laws  of  the  Spiritual  World  like  Emerson  and  Carlyle, 
nor  again  to  the  laws  of  Society  like  Comte  ;  and  so  in  spite  of 
his  rare  and  beautiful  philosophical  temper  and  spirit,  and  the 
sweet  personal  aroma  he  left  behind  him,  he  must  remain  only 
as  the  most  powerful  of  those  who  smoothed  the  way  and 
bridged  the  gulf  between  the  Old  Metaphysical,  and  the  New 
Scientific  conceptions  of  the  World. 


CHAPTER    IX. 


ISOLATION  AND   DEPRESSION. 

TTAVING  exhibited  in  my  work  on  Civilization  the 
-*--*-  connexion  and  interplay  of  the  great  factors  of  human  pro- 
gress, and  the  way  in  which  they  have  pushed  up  the  world  stage 
by  stage  through  an  ascending  series  of  terraces  or  platforms 
towards  the  Ideal  of  a  perfected  Morality,  I  now  entered  on  an 
enquiry  with  the  view  of  ascertaining  whether  if  the  investigation 
were  carried  farther  still  into  the  minuter  details  of  history  and 
civilization,  this  ascent  of  morality  which  showed  like  a  series 
of  terraces  from  the  distance  might  not  on  a  closer  view  be 
found  to  rise  in  a  continuous  unbroken  line ;  and  if  so  whether 
this  continuous  evolution  upwards  towards  the  Ideal  was  to  be 
referred  to  the  normal  action  of  the  human  mind  working  after 
its  own  proper  laws,  or  whether  the  individual  actors  in  the 
drama,  however  prominent,  were  so  unconscious  of  what  they 
were  really  doing,  that  like  blind  men  struggling  strenuously  in 
the  darkness,  their  separate  actions  had  to  be  co-ordinated  and 
overruled  by  a  Supreme  Mind  presiding  over  all.  And 
accordingly  in  the  autumn  of  1892,  as  soon  as  the  re-printing  of 
*  Civilization  and  Progress  '  was  off  my  hands,  1  set  out  in  high 
spirits  on  the  new  enterprise  of  writing  a  detailed  history  of 
Intellectual  Development  on  the  lines  of  Modern  Evolution. 
This,  which  I  expected  to  fill  two  or  three  large  volumes,  and 
which  would  perhaps  occupy  the  greater  part  of  my  working 


538  ISOLATION   AND   DEPKESSION. 

life,  would  it  was  evident  require  an  immense  amount  of  labour 
and  research  ;  and  I  accordingly  provided  myself  as  if  for  an 
expedition,  with  a  formidable  array  of  books,  English  and 
Foreign,  needed  for  the  enterprise,  —  historical,  political, 
theological,  metaphysical,  scientific, — and  many  of  which  I  had 
afterwards  to  confess,  were  for  boredom,  triviality,  repetition, 
long-windedness,  and  absence  of  human  interest  generally, 
without  a  parallel  since  the  days  when  Carlyle  descended  into 
the  Serbonian  bogs  of  the  British  Museum  to  fish  up  out  of  its 
1  shot  rubbish '  if  possible,  something  human,  credible,  and 
authentic  about  Frederick  or  Cromwell.  But  I  had  not 
proceeded  far  on  my  way  before  I  was  overtaken  by  a  series  of 
disasters  which  well-nigh  cut  short  the  enterprise  at  the  outset, 
and  for  some  years  left  me  a  prey  to  nervous  exhaustion  and 
despondency.  Some  of  them  had  been  lowering  in  the  sky  for 
some  time,  but  had  kept  up  only  a  low  muttering  and  rumbling 
along  the  rim  of  the  horizon  ;  but  now  they  began  to  creep 
gradually  upwards,  until  when  they  were  quite  overhead,  they 
united  their  borders  and  descended  on  me  in  torrents. 

The  first  was  the  loss  of  a  large  part  of  the  income  on  which 
I  depended  for  enabling  me  to  continue  my  literary  work.  It 
so  happened  that  after  setting  aside  the  chances  of  a  consulting 
practice  as  we  saw  in  an  earlier  chapter,  and  refusing  the  offer 
of  a  first-class  general  practice,  I  had  with  the  view  of  getting 
for  myself  as  much  free,  unencumbered  time  as  possible  for  my 
writing,  bought  an  easily  worked  practice  within  a  short  distance 
of  my  own  house ;  and  for  ten  or  twelve  years  all  went  smoothly 
and  well.  The  neighbourhood  was  one  of  the  Estates  projected 
by  the  late  Lord  Shaftesbury.  It  was  laid  out  in  avenues  lined 
with  plane-trees,  and  flanked  with  long  rows  of  houses,  with 
projecting  porches  and  pointed  arches  overgrown  with  ivy 
and  creepers ; — and  all  most  sweet,  clean,  and  respectable. 
There  were  no  public-houses  allowed  on  the  Estate  ;  and  in 
the  school  hours  the  streets  with  the  exception  of  the  vendors 
of   coal   and   vegetables,   and   the   figures   of   curates,  nurses, 


ISOLATION   AND   DEPRESSION.  539 

scripture-readers  and  doctors  moving  in  and  out  among  the 
houses,  were  almost  deserted  ;  and  all  was  quietness  and  peace. 
I  enjoyed  going  in  and  out  among  the  people,  and  interesting 
myself  in  their  occupations  and  lives  ;  and  nothing  could  have 
been  more  congenial  or  satisfactory  than  my  work  among  them. 
My  income  was  sufficient,  my  consulting  hours  short,  the 
patients  all  lay  close  together,  and  the  visiting  could  be  got 
through  in  some  six  or  seven  hours  each  day  without  discomfort 
or  strain.  I  kept  an  assistant  who  did  the  night  work  and 
dispensing,  and  so  had  abundant  leisure  for  reading  and  study 
without  in  any  way  interfering  with  my  duties  to  my  patients. 
In  the  morning  before  my  round  of  visits,  I  read  and  made 
notes  from  my  books  of  reference  ;  in  the  afternoon  I  attended 
the  various  special  hospitals  with  the  view  of  working  up  certain 
subjects — the  nervous  system,  the  eye,  the  skin,  the  heart, — in 
which  I  was  more  particularly  interested,  and  of  keeping  in 
touch  with  the  latest  developments  of  Medical  Science  generally ; 
and  after  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening  I  was  free  to  work  in  peace 
and  stillness  far  into  the  night.  It  was  as  I  have  said  an  ideal 
practice  in  its  way  for  a  literary  man.  But  gradually  strange 
figures  going  from  door  to  door  with  note-books  in  their  hands, 
began  to  appear  among  the  well  known  forms  in  the  streets ;  and 
in  a  few  years  they  had  increased  in  number  to  such  an  extent 
that  the  neighbourhood  literally  swarmed  with  them.  They 
were  the  agents  and  advance  scouts  of  various  Medical  Insurance 
and  Medical  Aid  Societies,  as  they  were  called,  which  had  been 
started  as  commercial  speculations,  with  the  object  of  supplying 
medical  advice  and  medicine  to  all  and  sundry  who  cared  to  join 
them,  on  the  payment  of  a  small  sum  weekly  all  the  year  round, 
ill  or  well ;  and  naturally  enough  the  poorer  class  neighbourhoods 
were  the  main  centres  of  their  activity  and  propaganda.  They 
had  originally  appeared  in  the  Provinces,  and  after  tightening 
their  coils  around  the  neck  of  the  profession  there  with  the 
connivance  of  the  Medical  Council,  and  leaving  wide  ruin  and 
desolation  behind  them  in  the  homes  of  medical  men,  they  had 


540  ISOLATION   AND    DEPRESSION. 

advanced  on  London,  which  they  had  laid  out  in  districts  for 
their  operations,  and  were  now  prepared  to  lay  siege  to  in  force. 
Their  plan  of  campaign  was  as  subtle  in  conception  as  it  was 
simple  and  broadly  effective  in  execution ;  and  consisted  in 
holding  out  to  the  young  medical  men  who  had  just  passed 
their  '  finals,'  the  prospect  of  an  immediate  clientele  of  patients 
if  they  would  consent  to  become  the  Medical  Officers  of  the 
Societies;  representing  to  them  that  although  the  pay  was 
small,  this  was  more  than  compensated  for  by  the  admirable 
introduction  it  would  give  them  to  private  practice.  This 
seemed  feasible,  and  in  many  cases  the  bait  was  too  tempting  to 
be  refused ;  and  the  consequence  was  that  flights  of  young 
freebooters  fresh  from  the  Medical  Schools,  in  the  absence  of 
any  authority  like  that  of  the  Incorporated  Law  Society  to 
safeguard  the  interests  of  the  profession  and  to  prevent  the 
lowering  of  its  status,  descended  in  flights  on  the  practices  of 
the  older-established  men  in  the  poorer  districts ;  and  in  their 
capacity  of  Medical  Officers  to  the  Societies,  carried  them  off 
wholesale.  In  the  meantime  the  Societies  with  their  army  of 
agents  and  touts  in  the  field  and  canvassing  from  door  to  door, 
had  continued  extending  their  operations  until  whole  districts 
were  drawn  into  their  nets  ;  and  with  their  war-cry  of  *  Why 
pay  doctors  when  you  can  join  a  club  1 '  taken  up  by  Church 
and  Chapel,  had  soon  strangled  the  cries  of  the  outraged 
profession  and  reduced  it  to  submission ;  leaving  the  poor 
deluded  medical  officers  who  were  to  capture  remunerative 
private  practices  by  their  bargain  with  the  Societies,  standing 
looking  into  each  other's  faces  with  nothing  but  club  practices 
on  their  hands  (the  private  ones  being  now  practically  all 
absorbed)  ; — and  to  imagine  that  by  capturing  these  from  each 
other  they  were  going  to  make  a  living,  was  as  Utopian  as  were 
the  hopes  of  that  community  who  were  going  to  live  by  taking 
in  each  other's  washing !  And  as  each  in  turn  ruined  or 
disgusted,  threw  up  his  connexion  with  the  Societies,  you  had 
the  curious  spectacle  of  households  which  had  previously  been 


ISOLATION    AND    DEPRESSION.  541 

employing  the  private  doctors  of  their  choice,  now  handed  over 
in  batches  of  fifties  or  hundreds  at  a  time  from  one  medical 
man  to  another,  until  whole  neighbourhoods,  so  far  as  the 
possibility  of  making  a  living  by  the  practice  of  your  profession 
was  concerned,  were  as  if  an  army  of  locusts  had  passed  over 
them.  And  in  all  this  the  Societies  were  aided  and  abetted  by 
the  Medical  Council  as  I  have  said,  who  after  having  with  a  fine 
sense  of  humour  taken  our  registration  fees,  not  to  defend  us 
against  the  Public  but  to  defend  the  Public  against  us,  when  the 
cry  of  the  Profession  went  up  to  them  from  all  parts  of  the 
country  praying  for  help  against  the  tyranny  of  the  Societies, — 
and  especially  when  the  peculiarly  aggravated  case  of  a  Liverpool 
tea-merchant  who  was  advertising  the  services  of  a  medical 
man  gratis  to  all  those  who  bought  a  pound  of  tea,  was  brought 
before  it, — frankly  told  us  that  they  were  there  in  the  interests 
of  the  Public  and  not  of  the  Profession ;  and  winking  knowingly 
at  each  other  at  the  cleverness  of  that  tradesman,  passed  on  to 
1  the  order  of  the  day  ! .' 

Now  it  was  by  the  tightening  of  the  cordon  which  these 
Medical  Aid  Societies  had  been  gradually  drawing  around  the 
neighbourhood  in  which  my  practice  lay,  that  I  was  noosed; 
and  in  two  or  three  years  my  practice  together  with  those  of 
most  of  the  other  medical  men  in  the  district,  had  fallen  fifty 
per  cent,  in  value ;  my  more  purely  personal  practice  which 
was  scattered  here  and  there  through  all  parts  of  London,  not 
being  sufficient  to  enable  me  to  bear  the  strain.  The  effect 
of  this  on  my  mind  was  most  disturbing.  For  up  to  this 
time,  what  with  the  printing,  reprinting,  and  advertising 
of  my  books,  I  was  some  four  hundred  pounds  out  of 
pocket  after  all  my  receipts  from  them  had  been  allowed 
for ;  but  as  my  income  was  sufficient,  I  had  borne  the  strain 
without  serious  inconvenience ;  but  now  that  I  had  lost  a 
large  part  of  my  income,  not  only  could  I  no  longer  afford  to 
spend  money  on  my  literary  work,  but  as  it  was  I  was  threatened 
with    ruin.       I     had    been    writing    steadily,    or    collecting 


542  ISOLATION    AND    DEPRESSION. 

materials  for  writing,  for  over  twenty  years,  to  the  sacrifice 
of  all  professional  advancement,  to  the  injury  of  my  nervous 
system  and  of  my  eyesight,  and  had  received  in  return  neither 
honour,  reputation,  nor  money  ;  but  all  this  I  had  brushed 
gaily  aside  in  my  enthusiasm  for  the  work  which  I  had  set 
myself  to  accomplish.  And  now  in  the  middle  of  it  all  I  saw 
myself  threatened  with  degradation  and  beggary.  I  who  had 
never  owed  a  penny  in  my  life,  and  to  whom  the  face  of  a 
hostile  or  importunate  creditor  would  have  been  an  insult,  now 
saw  in  imagination  the  bailiffs  at  the  door ;  and  the  thought  of 
it  fell  on  my  mind  like  a  stain.  Not  that  I  felt  myself  beaten  ; 
on  the  contrary  I  had  not  yet  fought,  nor  had  the  chance  of 
fighting;  but  with  my  life-work  yet  unaccomplished,  saw 
myself  like  Swift  left  to  wear  my  heart  out  '  like  a  poisoned 
rat  in  a  hole.'  The  thought  of  it,  together  with  the  mental 
strain  incident  on  my  attempt  to  hurry  on  the  work  on 
1  Intellectual  Development '  before  I  was  quite  submerged  ;  all 
this,  with  the  death  of  my  assistant  by  suicide  after  being  with 
me  so  many  years,  brought  on  an  illness  of  exhaustion, 
prostration,  and  nervous  depression ; — from  which,  however,  I 
should  doubtless  soon  have  recovered  but  for  two  additional 
causes  which  as  being  of  a  more  intangible  and  immaterial 
nature  were  more  difficult  to  be  combated. 

The  first  was  the  position  of  intellectual  isolation  into  which 
I  was  forced  both  by  my  actual  opinions  and  by  the  particular 
role  which  I  had  assumed  for  myself.  Not  that  this  would 
naturally  have  affected  my  relationship  with  others.  For  so 
little  regard  had  I  always  had  for  what  are  called  the  opinions 
of  men  (whether  my  own  or  others'),  as  distinct  from  their 
sentiments ;  so  deeply  had  I  always  felt  how  poor  and 
ineffectual  were  all  our  efforts  in  the  discovery  of  truth ;  that 
the  best  were  but  a  scratching  of  the  surface ;  and  that  it  wras 
a  case  at  most  of  beggars  all ;  that  I  could  not  understand  how 
any  mere  difference  of  opinion  as  such,  could  cause  a  cleavage 
in  personal  relationships.     But  I  was  aware  that  this  was  not 


ISOLATION   AND    DEPRESSION.  543 

necessarily  the  case  with  others,  and  as  in  my  self-assumed  role 
as  philosopher  there  was  no  single  school  or  *  cause '  with  which 
I  could  identify  myself,  and  into  which  I  could  throw  myself 
with  entire  devotion ;  and  as  moreover  I  greatly  disliked  any- 
thing that  was  not  whole-souled  and  genuine;    I  felt  that  I 
must  not   be  by  my  luke-warmness,  a  wet  blanket   to  others 
more    deeply   involved   in   and    dedicated   to   their   respective 
i  causes  '  than  myself.     The  consequence  was  that  I  was  left  in 
a  kind  of  intellectual  isolation,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  and  with  no 
single  man  or  body  of   men  with  whom  I  could  unite  myself. 
This  had  always  been  a  great  deprivation  to   me,  but  after 
twenty  years  or  more  of  it,  it  began  to  eat  into  my  spirits,  and 
helped  insensibly  to  make  me  lose  interest  in  my  own  work.     I 
longed  to  unite   myself  with  somebody  or  some  '  cause/  but 
as  these   '  causes '   were   founded   usually   on   precisely   those 
intellectual  agreements  in   opinion  for  which  I  had   so  little 
natural  regard,  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  wander  about 
as   in   a   kind   of   desert,  with    no    companions    but   my   own 
thoughts — a  poor  equipment  for  a  long  and  difficult  campaign. 
I  could  neither  throw  in  my  lot  with  Orthodox  Christianity, 
deeply  as  I  felt  the  moral  beauty  of  its  precepts,  and  conscious 
as  I  was  of  the  great  work  it  had  done  in  the  world,  for  I  could 
not  accept  its  dogmas  in  the  sense  in  which  they  are  accepted 
by   its   followers ;    nor   could   I    throw   in   my   lot   with   the 
Materialists    and   Agnostics,  in   spite   of   my  being  one  with 
them,  as  we  have  seen,  on  an  entire  side  of  my  intellectual 
method ;  for  I  saw  that  as  taught  by  their  leading  exponents 
they  were  pledged  to  the  denial  of  the  definite  existence  in  the 
World  and  in  the  Human  Mind  of  an  Ideal  which  stood  as  the 
representative  of  a  Power  outside  both ;  while  as  for  the  old 
dogmatic  Atheism,  it  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  as  great  a 
piece  of  intellectual  arrogance   and  impertinence   on  the  one 
side,  as  the  claims  of  the  Priesthood  were  on  the  other.     And 
yet  at  the  same  time  I  had  a  sympathy  with  men  like  Newman 
who    were    convinced    of    the    necessity    of    some    kind    of 


ISOLATION   AND    DEPRESSION. 

Revelation  for  poor  human  souls,  although  it  would  have  been 
a  mere  hypocrisy  for  me  to  profess  to  believe  that  the  Bible 
alone  was  that  revelation,  or  that  the  Catholic  Church  was  its 
sole  interpreter.     If  I  felt  a  shade  of  contempt  at  all  (and  this 
was  naturally  foreign  to  me),  it  was  for  the  innumerable  sects 
who    would    split   the    world    on    a    question    of    baptism    by 
sprinkling    or   baptism    by    immersion,    or    some    other   trivial 
observance  ;  and  yet  even  here,  again,  I  was  bound  to  respect 
the  intellectual  basis  of  it  all ;  for  so  long"  as  the  great  body  of 
Christendom  professes  to  hold  that  the  letter  of  the  Bible  is 
inspired,  men  are  right  in  refusing  to  have  its  literal  interpreta- 
tion whittled  away  by  the  first  sciolist  who  comes  along,  and 
who  because  he  imagines  that  he  or  another  has  discovered  that 
the  Fourth  Gospel  was  not  the  work  of  the  Apostle  John,  or 
that  the  second  epistle  of  Peter  was  not  a  genuine  production, 
thinks  that  therefore  the  whole  significance  of  Holy  Writ  must 
be  resigned  as  worthless.     On  the  other  hand,  again,  I  saw 
that  so  long  as  the  old  Mosaic  Cosmogony  and  its  concomitants 
and  adjuncts  were  permitted  to  hold  the  field,  the  Cosmogony 
of   Science   wTith   all   the  truths   it   carried  with   it,   would  be 
discredited,    and    Science    itself    degraded.     Again,   I    had   a 
sympathy  with  those  who  tried  to  liberalize  the  Church  and 
its  Theology  while  still  remaining  within  its  fold,  as  well  as 
with  those  who  held  that  if  you  did  not  fully  accept  its  dogmas 
you  should  go  out  of  it.     Indeed  there  was  no  side  or  aspect 
of  current  thought  or  speculation  with  which  I  had  not  some 
sympathy,  and  yet  none  which  I  could  accept  whole-heartedly 
and  without  limitations  and  reservations  fatal  to  a  closer  union ; 
whether  it  were  in   Religion,  Politics,  or   Society.     I  was  a 
Theist,  and  yet  not  precisely  a  Bible  Theist ;  an  Agnostic,  and 
yet  not  accepting  the  Agnostic  point   of   view  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  mystery  of  existence  ;  a  believer  in  Revelation, 
and  yet  not  in  the  Gospel  Revelation  in  its  accepted  sense,  to 
the  exclusion  of  other  forms ;  a  man  of  Faith,  if  I  may  say  so, 
and  yet  not  of  any  of  the  special  faiths  in  vogue.     In  Politics, 


ISOLATION   AND    DEPRESSION.  545 

again,  I  was  a  Radical,  but  averse  to  precipitating  radical 
changes  before  the  time  was  ripe  or  all  the  collateral  forces  had 
come  up  into  line;  a  Conservative,  and  yet  as  seeing  the 
necessity  of  constant  change  and  continuous  progress ;  a 
believer  in  most  of  the  advanced  'causes,' — Temperance,  the 
elevation  of  Women,  leisure  for  the  Working-man,  the 
socialization  of  industries  and  of  public  functions,  and  the  rest, — 
and  yet  would  not  give  effect  to  them  until  men  had  been 
educated  up  to  them  and  were  prepared  to  appreciate  them. 
I  Avas  an  Imperialist,  and  yet  a  Municipalist ;  a  Cosmopolitan, 
and  yet  a  Patriot ;  a  believer  in  Might  being  Right,  and  yet 
that  Right  and  not  Might  would  ultimately  prevail ;  a  believer 
in  Peace,  and  yet  as  seeing  the  ultimate  necessity  of  War ;  an 
ardent  defender  of  Individual  Liberty,  and  yet  as  seeing  the 
necessity  of  occasional  Despotism.  I  believed  in  Preaching 
and  in  Legislative  Interference  ;  and  yet  saw  that  things  them- 
selves would  make  their  own  Morality  and  their  own  Laws,  in 
spite  of  Politicians  or  Priests. 

With  this  incapacity  for  union  with  others  there  was  evidently 
nothing  for  it  but  to  continue  steadily  on  with  the  work  which 
I  had  mapped  out  for  myself ;  and  yet  this  had  now  become 
very  irksome  to  me.  Not  that  I  was  not  interested  in  the  work 
itself ;  on  the  contrary  it  bristled  everywhere  with  just  such 
problems  as  those  with  which  I  had  all  along  been  accustomed 
to  deal ;  and  everywhere  there  was  room  for  more  adequate  and 
harmonious  interpretations,  as  well  as  for  fresh  points  of  view. 
No,  it  was  not  the  character  of  the  work  of  which  I  was  weary ; 
what  poisoned  my  mind  and  was  my  constant  theme  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  time  in  which  I  was  engaged  on  the  '  History 
of  Intellectual  Development,'  was  the  feeling  which  had  now 
become  settled  and  habitual  with  me,  namely,  that  nobody  any 
longer  cared  for  any  of  these  things;  and  to  this  hour  I 
cannot  tell  how  much  of  this  was  true,  and  how  much 
of  it  was  due  to  the  isolation  in  which  I  found  myself, 
and   to   the   depression  under  which  I  was   labouring.      My 

M  M 


546  ISOLATION   AND   DEPRESSION. 

literary  friends  were  for  the  most  part  novelists  and  journalists, 
and  their  interests  as  was  natural  centred  largely  around  current 
politics,  the  stage,  or  the  latest  works  of  fiction ;  and  I  must 
have  seemed  to  most  of  them  with  the  best  will  in  the  world,  a 
literary  outsider,  or  a  fossil  of  an  extinct  species.  If  I  sent  a 
chapter  of  one  of  the  books  I  was  writing  to  a  Monthly  Review, 
(and  first  or  last  I  sent  nearly  every  one  that  contained 
anything  novel  either  in  treatment  or  point  of  view),  it  was 
invariably  declined.  Indeed  it  was  not  until  just  twenty  years 
after  I  had  sent  in  my  first  paper  '  God  or  Force  ?  '  that  I  had 
an  article  accepted, — my  chapter  on  '  Jesus  Christ' — in  the 
'Fortnightly  Review  '  for  September  1896.  And  as  I  had  never 
at  any  time  had  the  least  suspicion  that  the  Editors  had  any 
personal  objection  to  me,  what  could  I  think  but  that  there  were 
no  longer  a  sufficient  number  of  readers  interested  in  these 
things  ! — unless,  indeed,  it  were  (as  one  of  the  Editors  expressed 
it),  that  my  writings  were  '  wanting  both  in  point  and  lucidity.' 
For  years  I  had  thrown  all  this  gaily  aside,  and  had  put  it  down 
to  bad  luck,  or  '  the  daemonic/  as  we  have  seen,  but  now  that 
I  had  fallen  into  a  state  of  depression,  I  could  only  attribute  my 
persistent  failure  to  a  want  of  interest  in  serious  subjects 
generally  ;  and  the  original  stock  of  energy  and  light-hearted 
buoyancy  which  had  never  once  flagged  during  nearly  twenty 
years  of  obscurity,  isolation,  and  disappointment,  received  a 
blow  which  it  could  not  parry;  and  which  left  abiding 
traces  on  my  mind.  And  yet  I  cannot  feel  sure  whether 
there  ever  was  the  interest  in  these  subjects  which  in 
my  youthful  enthusiasm  I  imagined ;  or  whether  if  there 
were,  it  had  really  declined.  But  there  were  several  reasons 
outside  my  own  personal  feelings  which  seemed  to  support  my 
conviction  that  there  was  now  no  longer  the  interest  in  these 
matters  that  there  was  at  the  outset  of  my  literary  career.  For 
where  now  is  the  interest  in  Philosophy  and  Theology,  in 
Materialism,  and  Atheism  and  Agnosticism  that  there  was  in 
my  College   days,  and   which  made  our  discussions   far   into 


ISOLATION   AND   DEPRESSION.  547 

the  night,  like  the  feasts  of  the  gods?  Gone,  I  thought, 
or  declined  in  the  public  mind  from  the  high  severity  of 
doctrine  and  philosophy  which  then  characterized  these 
discussions,  to  trivial  disputes  on  the  details  of  ritual  and 
Church  ceremonial.  Where  now  is  the  old  interest  in 
Political  Economy  1  Gone,  too,  and  its  books  except  for 
College  and  examination  purposes  unsaleable.  How  different 
in  the  days  when  John  Stuart  Mill  was  king  !  Where,  too,  is 
now  the  old  interest  in  abstract  Politics, — in  Socialism,  the 
Franchise,  Popular  Rights,  the  Ballot,  Representation  by 
Population,  and  the  rest?  Why,  political  clubs  that  once 
would  have  been  packed  to  hear  a  lecture  on  politics,  can  now, 
I  am  assured,  only  be  filled  when  the  subject  is  something 
popular  and  amusing ;  while  as  for  Sociology,  it  has  come  down 
to  the  Sex-problem,  and  to  as  much  only  of  that  as  can  be 
distilled  into  the  public  mind  through  the  Novel  or  the  columns 
of  the  Press  in  the  '  silly  season.'  Even  in  History  and  the 
more  popular  forms  of  serious  literature,  the  interest  seems  to 
me  to  have  so  palpably  declined,  that  I  have  often  thought  that 
had  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Macaulay,  Buckle,  Mill,  Lecky,  Spencer, 
Morley,  or  Arnold  started  publishing  their  literary  work  to-day, 
they  would  have  been  practically  ignored ;  and  the  Clubs  that 
were  founded  with  the  object  of  recognizing  and  representing 
serious  literature,  and  which  hailed  and  heralded  these  writers 
from  the  very  outset  of  their  careers,  would  to-day  know  them 
no  more.  The  only  form  of  serious  work  which  still  flourishes 
is  the  purely  Scientific  ;  and  this  is  because  it  embraces  such 
an  immense  number  of  workers  that  they  form  a  public  by 
themselves  separate  from  the  general  public — which  no  doubt 
would  have  given  them  as  short  shrift  as  the  rest,  had  they  been 
obliged  to  appeal  to  its  suffrages. 

Now  in  endeavouring  to  trace  this  decline  in  the  interest  in 
serious  thought  and  literature  to  its  true  cause,  I  have  sometimes 
thought  that  it  was  owing  mainly  to  the  dim  and  but  vaguely 
conscious  acceptance  in  all  ranks  of  cultured  society  of  the  great 


548  ISOLATION   AND   DEPRESSION. 

doctrine  of  Evolution,  which  like  a  kind  of  Fate  lays  its  iron 
hand    on    the    shoulders  of   the  individual  worker,  and  keeps 
him  down  to  the  accumulation   of   facts,  and    of   them  only, 
permitting  him  no  free  initiative,  or  unencumbered  flights  of 
speculation.     And  I  have  sometimes  imagined  that  it  was  this 
that  accounted  for  the  excessive  specialization  of  Science,  and 
for  the  absence  among  all  its  army  of  workers,  of  any  interest  in 
merely  general  views  such  as  were  so  popular  in  pre-Darwinian 
times;    and  of  the  restriction  of  its   honours   and  rewards  to 
specialists  and  to  technicalities  which  are  caviare  to  the  general. 
It  seemed  to  me  too,   to   account  for  the  comparative  want  of 
interest  among  Historians,  in  histories  mainly  literary  like  those 
of  Macaulay  or  Froude  ;  and  in  general  for  the  precedence  which 
is  given  to  the  Germans,  with  their  industry  and  plodding  care  in 
every  department  of  Science,  History, Theology,  and  Philosophy, 
over  the  same  class  of  workers  in  either  England,  France  or 
America  ;  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  nearly  all  the  great  seminal 
ideas  have  been  English  and  French,  and  not  German.     Even 
literary  criticism  and  questions  of  style  are  relegated  now  not 
so  much  to   men   of  general  fineness   of  literary  taste,   as  to 
specialists  of  the  different  periods ;  and  as  much  on  linguistic, 
grammatical,   or   etymological  grounds   as  on  purely  literary ; 
so   that    you   have    critics   of   special   periods — Old    English, 
Elizabethan,   Queen  Anne,  or  Early   Victorian — as  you    have 
scientific  specialists  of  the  Glacial  Period,  of  Fossil  Fishes,  or  of 
the  geology  of  the  Cretaceous  Formations.     Even  the  success 
of  popular  papers  like  '  Tit  Bits,'  or  of  popular  Monthlies  like 
the  '  Strand '  Magazine,  is  due  to  the  same  desire  to  come  at  the 
actual  facts  of  human  life,  free  from  all  theory  or  prepossession. 
And  lastly   the    belief   in  evolution   accounts  largely  for  the 
practical  absorption  of  all  literature  in  the  Novel,  or  of  as  much 
at  least  as  can  be  squeezed  and  compressed  into  it ;  for  as  I  have 
already    said,   what   is   the   novel    but   the    evolution   of    the 
individual  mind  on  certain  only  of  its  sides  and  aspects,  and 
mainly  on  those   that  can  be  made  of  interest  to  the  general 


ISOLATION   AND    DEPRESSION.  54i> 

reader  1  And  it  was  chiefly  due  to  my  still  but  partially 
conscious  perception  that  nothing  now  was  interesting  but 
evolution  in  one  or  other  of  its  forms,  and  to  a  large  extent 
that  nothing  was  so  really  instructive,  that  I  determined  to 
write  my  '  History  of  Intellectual  Development '  on  strict 
lines  of  evolution,  with  as  few  gaps  and  interstices  in  the 
flowing  web  of  events  as  possible,  and  with  no  general  theory 
of  any  kind, — except  indeed  such  as  should  arise  naturally 
out  of  the  facts  as  their  aroma  or  essence,  and  not  be  put 
into  them  beforehand  to  colour  them  like  a  dye. 

Now  although  this  permeation  of  the  public  mind  with  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  was  the  first  explanation  that  rose  in  my 
mind  when  I  thought  of  the  decline  of  public  interest  in  serious 
literature,  still  I  of  ten  wondered  whether  it  might  not  be  largely 
referable  to  a  cause  so  different  as  the  decline  of  religious  belief, 
and  especially  of  the  belief  in  a  future  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments. For  if,  as  Comte  and  Schopenhauer  thought,  the 
intellect  exists  only  for  the  better  realization  of  our  desires, 
and  has  no  special  love  of  knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  the  fear 
of  Hell  must  have  been  a  most  potent  stimulus  to  intellectual 
curiosity  in  reference  to  all  things  bearing  on  religion,  whether 
of  a  theological,  philosophical,  or  historical  nature, — as  indeed 
was  seen  in  the  wide  extent  of  region  explored  in  the  search 
for  the  so-called  *  Evidences  of  Christianity,' — and  the  decline 
of  that  fear  must  it  is  evident  have  sooner  or  later  been  attended 
by  a  considerable  falling  away  of  interest  in  all  these  things. 
And  the  fact  that  a  School-Board  election  should  lately  have 
turned,  as  it  did,  not  on  whether  the  moral  precepts  of 
Christianity  were  to  be  taught  or  not,  (for  on  that  all  parties  were 
agreed,)  but  on  whether  the  old  Mosaic  Cosmogony  with  all  its 
incredibilities  and  historical  adjuncts  (in  which  no  party  really 
believed),  was  to  be  taught  or  not,  seemed  to  me  to  indicate  a 
want  of  seriousness  on  these  matters,  or  in  other  words  an 
indifference  to  intellectual  truth  for  its  own  sake,  which  could 
not  have  existed  twenty  years  ago. 

NN 


550  ISOLATION   AND   DEPRESSION. 

But  whether  the  decline  of  interest  in  serious  thought  was  due 
to  one  or  other  of  the  above  causes,  or  whether  it  existed  only 
in  my  own  imagination,  certain  it  is  that  the  belief  in  it, 
combined  with  the  depression  from  which  I  was  suffering,  made 
me  quite  lose  interest  in  my  work,  and  I  no  longer  cared  to  go 
on  with  my  '  History  '  as  before.  I  had  now,  too,  passed  my 
forty-fifth  birthday,  and  had  like  Charles  Lamb  for  some  time 
seen  the  *  skirts  of  the  departing  years'  with  a  kind  of  horror ; 
and  now  that  like  Tolstoi  I  began  to  feel  that  I  was  fighting  on 
a  declining  day,  I  had  no  longer  any  wish  to  protract  the 
struggle  any  further.  I  had  lived  for  an  ideal  in  which  no  one 
now  seemed  to  believe ;  and  I  was  too  old  to  embrace  a  second 
love  ;  the  best  of  life  had  been  drunk  already,  and  like  Macbeth 
there  was  now  nothing  left  but  the  lees  to  brag  of.  I  grew 
restless  and  dissatisfied,  and  the  rounds  of  my  medical  practice 
which  had  been  so  great  a  pleasure  and  relaxation  to  me,  were 
now  as  odious  and  monotonous  as  the  rounds  of  a  prison-yard. 
My  first  impulse  was  to  break  through  it  all ;  I  often  longed  to 
return  to  the  wild  life  of  my  boyhood ;  and  when  I  heard  of  any 
mischief  afoot  in  the  Cape  or  elsewhere,  could  I  have  had  my 
youth  back  again,  and  been  free  from  family  ties,  I  should  have 
embarked  without  delay.  At  times,  and  especially  when 
chased  by  the  hell-hounds  of  fear,  and  when  I  imagined  I  saw 
degradation  and  ruin  in  the  wind,  there  would  come  over  me  a 
vision  of  death,  soft  and  gentle  and  persuasive  as  sleep,  and 
bringing  with  it  a  composure  and  peace,  if  only  for  moments, 
which  were  infinitely  restful  and  refreshing  to  me — a  vision 
which  seemed  to  enfold  me  in  an  atmosphere  sweet  as  that 
which  exhaled  from  a  statue  of  Love  which  used  to  stand 
in  my  boyhood  in  an  open  glade  at  the  entrance  to  a  wood,  and 
which  with  the  fallen  autumnal  leaves  that  mingled  at  its  feet 
seemed  to  breathe  peace  and  rest  on  all  who  entered  it ; — and 
with  Whitman  I  could  have  chanted  an  ode  to  Death. 

In  the  meantime  I  was  pushing  on  by  day  and  by  night  my 
*  History  of  Intellectual  Development,'  which  had  now  become 


ISOLATION   AND    DEPRESSION.  551 

ix'ksome  to  the  point  of  nausea ;  fully  determined  that  if  the 
first  volume  of  it  did  not  succeed,  I  would  not  go  on  with  it. 
But  the  immediate  success  of  the  work,  and  the  assistance  and 
encouragement  given  me  by  the  Treasury,  seemed  to  lift  the 
clouds  that  had  so  long  encompassed  me,  and  I  was  soon  myself 
again.  I  started  at  once  collecting  materials  for  the  second 
volume,  but  again  the  strain  began  to  tell  on  me.  This  time, 
however,  it  was  my  sight;  mists  began  to  appear  before  my 
eyes  ;  and  I  was  advised  that  to  arrest  the  progress  of  the  disease 
and  give  myself  a  chance  of  recovery,  entire  rest  from  reading 
was  necessary.  It  was  then  that  to  employ  myself  I  set  to  work 
to  finish  this  Autobiography. 

Before  closing  this  volume  I  had  intended  to  attempt  some 
forecast  of  the  probable  direction  of  Keligious  Thought  in  the 
future,  now  that  a  return  to  the  older  forms  of  Supernaturalism 
is  impossible,  and  Science  is  unable  of  itself  to  satisfy  the  souls 
of  men.  But  on  second  thoughts  I  have  felt  that  it  would  be 
better  to  reserve  this  for  the  last  volume  of  my  '  History  of 
Intellectual  Development'  where  the  whole  course  of  evolution 
that  leads  up  to  it,  and  on  which  the  judgment  is  based,  will  be 
before  the  reader. 


The  End. 


INDEX. 


PAGE 


Addison,  '  Spectator  '  of  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  215 

Apologists,  '  evidences' of         328 

Aristocracies ,  characteristics  of . . .         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  268 

Aristotle,  astronomical  conceptions  of ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  319 

Arnold,  Matthew 314 

the  great  doctrine  of  ...         ...         ...         ...  522 

,,  on  Shakspeare,  Keats,  St.  Beuve,  Macaulay       ...  522 

,,  preferences  of  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  523 

his  estimates  of  Comte  and  Emerson         ...         ...  524 

on  the  religion  of  the  Jews 525 

, ,  a  central  thought  of . . .         ...         ...         ...         ...  525 

Autobiography,  why  I  wrote  an  518 


B 


Bacon,  Macaulay  on        ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    295 

Metaphysicians  and        406 

Worldly  wisdom  of         407,421 

on  Nature...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    413 

method  of 406,419 

on  World- problem  415,421 

Baer  vcn,  Herbert  Spencer  and 471 

Balances,  law  of 451 

Bawerk,  Boehm,  '  Capital  and  Interest'  by 514 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  preaching  of    ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    183 

Belief ,  six  instances  of ,  not  knowledge  ...         ...         ...         ...    438 

Bentham  on  moral  sense...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    357 

Berkeley,  theory  of         337 

Bible,  early  associations  with    ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         159-162 

Bronte,  Charlotte  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    314 

,,  Hutton's  estimate  of  ...         ...         ...         ...    528 

Buckle       179 

Butler's  '  Analogy '  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    177 


554 


INDEX. 


C 


PAGE 

Cairns,  Political  Economy  of    ... 

510 

Carlyle,  '  Sartor'  of         

181 

,,        '  Latter  Day  Pamphlets '  of 

377 

Style  of    

378 

Morality  of         

379 

,,       on  World -problem 

381 

, ,       visit  to 

383 

,,       portraits  of 

384 

,,       on  doctors 

385 

, ,       on  Mill  and  Buckle 

386 

, ,        on  his  home  life ... 

387 

,,        on  Christianity  ... 

388 

,,       on  Spencer 

389 

,  ,       his  '  Life  of  Sterling '    ... 

389 

„       Secret  of  diatribes 

...        390-392 

, ,       on  '  Characteristics ' 

.391 

, ,       on  transition  ages 

391 

,,       on  age  of  machinery 

392 

,,       method  of 

419 

, ,       on  '  Heroes ' 

*     ...    423 

,,        on  Action 

422 

,,        God  and  Nature  according  to 

454 

, ,       I  ask  advice  of,  on  publishing 

462 

,,       I  select,  and  Emerson  to  write 

on      474 

,,       address  of,  to  Edinburgh  Stud 

ents 496 

,,       Ruskin  and,  on  Political  Ecor 

Lomy 512 

Causality,  organ  of           

139 

,,         what,  depends  on 

204 

Causation,  Scientific,  rests  on  belief 

440 

Cause,  Will  as      

453 

Church,  Catholic,  and  Platonism 

321 

■„               effect  of  Science  on 

...         ...    322 

,,                leans  on  metaphysic 

Lans      ...      <    .; 358 

,,                Newman  on   ... 

426 

Churchill,  Lord  Randolph 

494,  496 

, ,                       the  Press  ai 

id        499 

Civilization,  I  study  problem  of 

480 

,,            Carlyle  and  Emerson  on 

.'.    480 

,,           factors  in     

482,484 

, ,           effect  of  forms  of  Govern 

ment  on          482 

'  Civilization  and  Progress  '  failure  of 

503 

,,                       the  «  Sped 

:ator'  reviews...         ...         ...    506 

Classical  education 

212,  214 

Comte,  I  begin  study  of  ... 

484 

INDEX, 


555 


Condillac,  system  of 
Conscience  as  proof  of  God,  etc. 

,,  Materialists  on 

'  Country  Parson,'  Recreations  of  a 


PAGE 

338 
341 
358 
183 


D 


Daemonic,  the 

502 

Darwin,  '  Origin  of  Species ' 

of 

241 

,,        Natural  Selection  oi 

,  degraded 

443 

Democracies,  Characteristics  of            

265-267 

Descartes,  theory  of 

332 

Dickens,  works  of 

216 

Diderot  on  Moral  Sense  ... 

357 

Divine,  the 

452 

Dundas,  Sir  David 

... 

400 

E 


Eliot, 

George        

314 

>  > 

Hutton's  estimate  of 

528 

Emerson,  difficulty  of  understanding  ... 

182,  394 

» 

on  '  Experience  ' 

395 

> 

Key  to  '  Experience  ' 

366 

7 

quotations  from 

397 

» 

Carlyle  and     ... 

399 

? 

Seer  looked  for  by 

414 

, 

World  problem  according  to 

417,  419,  424 

, 

on  Action 

424 

J 

God  and  Nature  according  to 

454 

Essaj 

rists,  style  of,  compared 

304-308 

Evil  $ 

is  instrument  of  Individuation 

441 

Evoli 

ition,  effects  of  doctrine  of,  on  present  d 

ay  litei 

ature...         ...    548 

Feeling,  connexion  of  Observation  and 

204 

,,       Power  of  Language  and          

206 

, ,       Relation  between  Intellect  and 

207,  294 

Feelings  of  the  mind       

...    192 

Fichte,  system  of  ... 

42-344,  347 

,,       failure  of  ... 

350 

Flaubert,  realism  of         

405 

Force,  persistence  of 

253-256,  527 

556  INDEX, 


G 


PAGE 

George  Henry,  Political  Economy  of 513 

,,           ,,         theory  of  Interest  of    ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  514 

Geulinx,  theory  of            ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  333 

Gladstone,  '  Vatican  Decrees '  and       ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  408 

God  and  Nature  according  to  Hegel,  Goethe,  Emerson,  and  Carlyle  454 

*  God  or  Force,'  I  publish,  at  last         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  470 

Goethe,  on  problem  of  life         401 

special  doctrine  of         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  401 

Carlyle  and  Emerson  could  not  assimilate    ...         ...         ...  402 

my  attitude  towards      ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  404 

great  themes  and           405 

on  practical  problem      ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  421 

varied  standpoints  of     ...         ...         ...         ...         ...        413,  419 

God  and  Nature  according  to...          ...          ...         ...         ...  454 

Gunton,  Political  Economy  of  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  515 

H 

Hartmann,  von      ...         ...         ...          ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  364 

Hazlitt,  as  critic 307 

,,       style  of 308 

Head  Master         117 

,,  teaching  of  the      ... 213,214 

Hegel,  system  of 350-356 

,,     Spencer  and,  compared 355 

,,     conception  of  the  Deity 356 

,,      on  Ideals 356 

,,      on  Mind  and  Matter        354,368,455 

,,     Bacon  compared  with 406 

,,      on  '  the  Notion  ' ...         ...  412 

,,      on  God  and  Nature         454 

,,     aloofness  of  disciples  of             ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  475 

Hell,  fear  of,  effect  on  present  day  literature  of        549 

Helvetius  on  conscience 357 

Historians,  I  read  the     313 

,,           no  help  on  World-Problem           ...  313 

History  the  way  it  was  taught 213 

Hobson,  Mummery  and,  the  Political  Economy  of 510.  515 

Hume  on  moral  sense 357 

Hutton  as  critic  and  thinker      527 

,,       his  strongest  theological  standpoint    ...         ...         ...         ...  528 

,,       his  literary  criticisms 528 

Huxley,  '  Lay  Sermons  '  of         242 

,,        Scale  in  the  Mind  and 465 


index.  557 

PAGK 

Huxley,  Tyndall  and,  and  Darwin's  disciples 476 

, ,       Matthew  Arnold  and ,  compared         ...         ...         ...         ...  526 

,,        Agnosticism  and  Idealism  of ,  retrograde      526 

,,       on  Causation      526 

,,        Biblical  Criticisms  of   ...         ...         ...         ...  ...         ...  527 


Ideal,  effect  of  Herbert  Spencer  on  the           261 

Modern  Philosophy  no  support  for       ...         ...         ...         ...  328 

how  to  find            373 

my  search  for  the...         ...         ...         ...         ...          ...         ...  382 

how  Poetic  Thinkers  found  it  in  the  mind      429 

to  find  the,  in  the  mind 430,433,440 

to  find  the,  in  the  World  432,441 

the  Scale  in  the  Mind  as  the      433 

when,  is  found      456 

the  ascent  to  the 537 

Ideals,  false           449 

Immortality,  my  belief  in ,  shaken         274 

,,           belief  in,  depends  on  theory  of  Soul     319 

Irving,  Washington         ... 215 

Isolation,  my  intellectual            542 


Jacobi,  system  of 344 

Jevons,  Political  Econony  of 511 


K 


Kant,  <  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  '  of 236 

,,      system  of 339-342,347 

criticism  of  350 

,,      Bacon  compared  with      ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    406 

Knowledge,  metaphysicians  on 331-334 

Hegel  on      351 


Law  of  the  mind,  to  discover  a 186,198 

,,  as  standpoint  of  interpretation      186,210 

,,  compared  with  physical  law  191,194 

what  I  mean  by  a 192 


558 


INDEX. 


Law  of  the  mind,  why  metaphysics  cannot  give  insight  into  a 
Law  of  Polarity,  advantage  of,  over  Spencer's  law  of  Evolution 

,,    of  Wills  and  Causes  

Leibnitz,  scheme  of         

Linton,  Mrs.  Lynn,  advice  of 

Locke,  scheme  of... 


335. 


PAGE 
193 

471 
484 
336 
506 
338 


M 


Macaulay,  limitations  of ... 

293 

, ,         curious  theory  of 

296 

,,          his  criticisms  ... 

297 

,,         style  of           

298,  491 

Malebranche,  theory  of 

333,  337,  346 

Mallock,  Political  Economy  of 

517 

Marshall ,  Political  Economy  of 

510 

Martineau,  Dr 

475 

Marx  Karl ,  Socialism  of  . . . 

512,513 

Material  and  Social  Conditions 

482 

Materialists  on  Beauty,  Love,  etc. 

...    357 

Medical  Aid  Societies      

539 

Medical  Council 

539,541 

Medical  practice,  my  choice  of  a 

538 

Medicine,  compared  with  Philosophy   ... 

278 

,,          method  of        

282 

, ,          eif ect  on  mind  of 

284 

Meredith,  George 

492 

Metaphysics,  no  insight  into  laws  of  mind  by 

193 

,,             lectures  on 

236 

Metaphysicians,  modern,  and  the  mind 

329,331-338 

,,               on  Knowledge... 

331-338 

,,               method  of         

359 

,,               criticism  of  method  of 

366 

,,               weakness  of  scheme  of 

368 

Mill,  John  Stuart 

180 

,,               Superseded  by  Spencer 

475 

,,                Political  Economy  of 

510,  535 

,,               intellectual  views  of  ... 

...    534 

,,                characteristics  of 

...    535 

,,               position  of      

536 

Mills  the,  on  the  moral  sense 

357 

Mind,  how  can  Matter  act  on?  ... 

332 

,.,      Spinoza's  attributes  of     ... 

334 

,,      as  cause  of  Matter 

336,  337 

,,      Matter  as  cause  of 

338 



PAGE 

342 

348 

350 

,455 

371,  420 

,436 

373 

529 

530 

531 

.. 

532 

533 

..   510, 

515 

INDEX.  559 


Mind,  Fichte  on,  and  Matter 

,,      Schelling  on,  and  Matter  

,.,      Hegel  on,  and  Matter     

,,      whole,  as  standpoint 

, ,      whole,  needed  to  find  Ideal 

Morley,  John,  writings  of  

,,  differences  between  Comte  and 

,,  on  Compromise  ... 

,,  as  a  practical  statesman  

,,  historical  studies  of 

Mummery  and  Hobson,  Political  Economy  of 

N 

Mature,  laws  of,  rest  on  belief 439 

Newman.  Cardinal,  a  Poetic  Thinker ...  408 

why  I  was  not  in  sympathy  with  409 

falls  back  on  Revelation 415 

'Apologia 'of        418 

<  Illative  Sense  '  of  420 

method  of  interpreting  World  of  ...        418,  424 

method  of ,  compared  with  Materialists  ...  420 

on  Catholic  Church  425 

his  practical  solution  of  World-problem  ...  424 

Newton,  my  admiration  of         130 


O 


Organon,  Physical  Science  as 436,438,440 

Othello       195 


Pater,  Walter,  on  Plato 325 

Personal  Equation,  the 232 

,,  effect  of,  in  my  own  case...         ...         ...        409,481 

,,  to  let  the  reader  see  the    ...         ...         ...         ...    519 

Phrenology,  discrepancies  of      146 

,,  metaphysics  compared  to  ...         ...         ...         ...       165,193 

,,  influence  of...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    176 

,,  my  forecasts  of  men  by     ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    187 

,,  my  rejection  of       ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    198 

Piety,  my  want  of  , 409 

Plato,  why,  useless  for  my  purpose      ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    318 

,,      effect  of  scheme  of ,  on  Immortality     320 


560  INDEX. 

PAGE 

Platonism,  effect  of  Science  on 322 

Poetic  Thinkers,  mode  of  regarding  World  of  411,  419 

,,  consequence  of  Method  of   ...         ...         ...         ...    421 

,,  differences  of ,  on  practical  problem  ...         ...    421 

,,  why  they  could  not  solve  the  problem  for  me      ...    428 

',,  Mind  according  to     ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    428 

on  the  Ideal  in  the  World 429 

Political  Economists  to  be  read!...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    510 

Press-made  reputations 497 

„     Public  and  the       499 

Professors,  teaching  of  the         226,235 

Punch,  cartoons  of  129 

Q 

Quincey  de,  Macaulay  and,  compared 304 

, ,  literary  style  of      . . .         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    306 

Quotations,  my  favourite  309,312 


R 

Kea,  Lord 400 

Religion,  my  indifference  to       ...         ...         ...         ...           159,  178,  109 

'  the,  of  the  Future  '  I  publish         478,486 

of  the  Jews,  Matthew  Arnold  on 525 

Ricardo      510 

Romanes  on  '  Natural  Selection '          ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  414 

Rossetti      429 

Ruskin  on  the  '  Mill  on  the  Floss  '        405 

,,      on  Political  Economy 512 

,,      Carlyle  on            ..          ..          534 

S 

Scale  in  the  mind,  the     ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         -••  433 

,,                    Materialists  cannot  assume     435 

, ,                    Materialists  cannot  account  for         435 

,,                    Spencer  ignores            ...         ...         -••         ...  435 

Schelling,  system  of         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         •••  347 

,,         criticism  of      349 

School  Board  Election  and  Mosaic  Cosmogony         549 

Schopenhauer  on  the  Will          360 

,,            system  of  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         •••         •••  361 

,,            on  the  Ideal         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         •♦•  362 


INDEX.  561 

PAGE 

Self-Consciousness  as  cause  of  external  world  342-344 

,,  Hegel  on  the  351 

,,  of  Hegel  and  Kant  compared      ...         ...         ...    352 

Self  Help,  Smiles',  effect  on  me  of        130 

Shakspeare,  Lectures  on...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    235 

,,  blank  verse  of         490 

,,  Matthew  Arnold  on  522 

Smith,  Adam,  on  moral  sense     357 

„  Political  Economy  of       510 

Spencer,  Herbert,  '  First  Principles  '  of  242,255 

,,  Principles  of  Psychology    ...         ...         ...         ...    256 

,,  on  the  moral  sense  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    357 

,,  Bacon  and,  compared  406 

, ,  the  Scale  in  the  Mind  ignored  by  . . .  ...         ...    435 

law  of  Evolution  of,  compared  with  law  of  Polarity    471 
,,  why  I  wrote  on         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    474 

,,  my  article  on,  almost  accepted      476 

,,  on  the  '  Persistence  of  Force '      ...         ...         ...    526 

Spinoza,  scheme  of  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...        333,  346 

Stephen,  Leslie,  as  a  Thinker   ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    533 

Students,  my  fellow         228-232 

Style,  literary        299 

,,  dependence  of,  on  feeling         294,  297,  326 

,,  faults  in  my         487 

efforts  to  improve  my 488 

,,  the,  of  the  future  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...    489 

,,  depends  on  pictorial  power       491 

,,  borrows  from  other  arts  ...         ...         ...         ...    492 

Swinburne...         ...         ...         ...         ...  ...         ...         ...         ...    492 


T 


Tassie,  Dr 117 

Tendencies  ...        442,  446 

Tennyson  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  314 

Thackeray 129 

,,  his  love  stories  ...         ...  ...         ...         ...         ...  405 

Tolstoi,  realism  of  405 

Tulloch  Principal  as  Editor       477 


U 

Unity  of  Plan        452 


H  Classified    Catalogue 

OF  WORKS   IN 

GENERAL    LITERATURE 

PUBLISHED    BY 

LONGMANS,  GREEN,  &  CO. 

39    PATERNOSTER   ROW,    LONDON,    E.C. 

91  and  93  FIFTH  AVENUE   NEW  YORK,  and  ^2  HORNBY  ROAD,  BOMBAY. 


PAGE 
IO 


BADMINTON  LIBRARY  (THE)  - 
BIOGRAPHY,        PERSONAL        ME- 
MOIRS,  Sec.                -        -        -        -      7 
CHILDREN'S  BOOKS          ...     25 
CLASSICAL  LITERATURE  TRANS- 
LATIONS, ETC.         ....     18 
COOKERY,     DOMESTIC     MANAGE- 
MENT, &c. 28 

EVOLUTION,        ANTHROPOLOGY, 

&c. 17 

FICTION,  HUMOUR,  &c.  -  -  -  21 
FUR,  FEATHER  AND  FIN  SERIES  12 
HISTORY,       POLITICS,        POLITY, 

POLITICAL  MEMOIRS,  &c.    -         -      3 
LANGUAGE,    HISTORY   AND 

SCIENCE  OF 16 

LONGMANS'    SERIES    OF   BOOKS 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

MENTAL,  MORAL,  AND  POLITICAL 
PHILOSOPHY 14 

MISCELLANEOUS  AND  CRITICAL 
WORKS 29 

MISCELLANEOUS    THEOLOGICAL 
WORKS 32 

POETRY  AND  THE  DRAMA     -         -     ig 

POLITICAL   ECONOMY  AND  ECO- 
NOMICS    .--. 

POPULAR  SCIENCE  - 

SILVER  LIBRARY  (THE) 

SPORT  AND  PASTIME       - 

STUDIES     IN    ECONOMICS 
POLITICAL   SCIENCE   - 

TRAVEL   AND   ADVENTURE, 
COLONIES,  &c. 

VETERINARY  MEDICINE,  &c 


FOR  GIRLS       --.         - 
MANUALS    OF    CATHOLIC    PHIL- 
OSOPHY     16 


AND 


THE 


26  !  WORKS  OF  REFERENCE 


INDEX 

Page 


Abbott  (Evelyn) 

(T.  K.)       -        - 

(E.  A.)      -        - 

Acland  (A.  H.  D.)     - 
Acton  (Eliza)    - 
Adeane(J.  H.) - 
^Eschylus 
Ainger  (A.  C.)  - 
Albemarle  (Earl  of)  - 
Allen  (Grant)    - 
Allingham  (F.) 
Amos  (S.) 
Andre  (R.) 
Anstey  (F.) 
Archer  (W.)      - 
Aristophanes    - 
Aristotle   - 
Armstrong     (G 
Savage) 


-  14- 


(E.J.  Savage)  7.19.29 
Arnold  (Sir  Edwin)  -    8, 19 

(Dr.  T.)     -        -  3 

Ashbourne  (Lord)    -  3 

Ashby  (H.)  -  -  28 
Ashley  (W.J.)-  -  16 
A  telier  du  Lys  {A  uthorof  )29 
Ayre  (Rev.  J.)  -        -        25 

Bacon  -  -  -  7,  14 
Baden-Powell  (B.  H.)  3 
Bagehot  (W.)  -  7,  16,  29 
Bagwell  (R.)     -        -  3 


OF    AUTHORS     AND     EDITORS. 

Page                                        Page  Page 

14    Browning  (H.  Ellen)         9    Coolidge  (W.  A.  B.)  8 

Buck  (H.  A.)     -        -        11     Corbett  (Julian  S.)  -  3 

Buckland  (Jas.)         -        25     Corder  (Annie)         -  19 

Buckle  (H.  T.)  -                  3    Coutts  (W.)      -        -  18 

Buckton  (C.  M.)        .        28    Coventry  (A.)  -        -  11 

Bull  (T.)    ---        28    Cox  (Harding)          -  10 

Burke  (U.  R.)   -        -          3    Crake  (Rev.  A.  D.)   -  25 

Burrows  (Montagu)            4    Creiehton  (Bishop)  -  3,  4 

Butler  (E.  A.)  -        -        24    Crozier  (J.  B.)  -        -  7,  14 

(Samuel)  -        -  18,  29    Cuningham  (G.  C.)  -  3 

Curzon  of  Kedleston 

(Lord)    -        -        -  3 

distance  (Col.  H.    -  12 

Cutts  (Rev.  E.  L.)    -  4 


8,  10 
n.  32 


27,29 
19 
29 


Bain  (Alexander) 
Baker  (Sir  S.  W.) 
Balfour  (A.  J.) 
Ball  (John) 

(J-  T.)        - 

Baring-Gould    (Rev 
S.)  -        -        . 

Barraud  (C.  W.)       ■ 
Baynes  (T.  S.)  - 

Beaconsfield  (Earl  of)  21 

Beaufort  (Duke  of)  -  io.ii 

Becker  (W.  A.)         -  18 

Beddard  (F.  E.)        -  24 

Bell  (Mrs.  Hugh)      -  19 

(Mrs.  Arthur)    -  7 

Bent  (J.  Theodore)  -  8 

Besant  (Sir  Walter)-  3 

Bickerdyke  (J.)          -  n 

Bicknell  (A.  C.)         -  8 

Bird  (R.)   -       -        -  32 

Bland  (Mrs.  Hubert)  20 

Boase  (Rev.  C.  W.)  -  4 

Boedder  (Rev.  B.)     -  16 
Boevey(A.  W.  Crawley-)  7 

Bosanquet  (B.)          -  14 

Boyd  (Rev.  A.  K.H.)  29,32 

Brassey  (Lady)         -  9 

(Lord)           3,  8,  11,  16 

Bray  (C.  and  Mrs.)  -  14 

Bright  (Rev.  J.  F.)  -  3 

Broadfoot  (Major  W.)  10 

Brogger  (W.C»       -  8 


Cameron  of  Lochiel 
Campbell  (Rev.  Lewis) 
Camperdown  (Earl  of) 
Cannan  (E.) 
Channing  (F.  A.)  - 
Chesney  (Sir  G.)  - 
Chisholm  (G.  G.)  - 
Cholmondeley-Pennell 

(H.)        -        -        - 
Churchill  (W.  Spencer) 
Cicero 

Clarke  (Rev.  R.  F.)  - 
Clodd  (Edward) 
Clutterbuck  (W.  J.)- 
Coleridge  (S.  T.)      - 
Comparetti  (D.) 
Comyn  (L.  N.) 
Conington  (Tohn)     - 
Conway  (Sir  W.  M.) 
Conybeare(Rev.W.J.) 

&  Howson  (Dean) 


Dallinger  (F.  W.) 
Davidson  (W.  L.)  14 
Davies  (J.  F.)   - 
Deland  (Mrs  )  - 
Dent  (C.  T.)      - 
Deploige  (S.)    - 
De  Salis  (Mrs.) 
De  Tocqueville  (A.) 
Devas  (C.  S.)    - 
Dickinson  (G.  L.)     • 
Diderot     - 
Dougall  (L.)      - 
Douglas  (Sir  G.) 
Dowden  (E.)     - 
Doyle  (A.  Conan) 
Dreyfus  (Irma) 


4 

1  16,  32 

18 

21,  26 

II 

„  I7 

28,  29 
3 
16 
4 
21 
21 
19 
31 
21 
30 


INDEX     OF 

Page\ 

Du  Bois  (W.  E.  B.)-  4 

Dufferin  (Marquis  of)  n 

Dunbar  (Mary  F.)    -  20 

Eardley-Wilmot  (Capt. 

S.)      -        -        -  8 

Ebrington  (Viscount)  12 

Ellis  (J.  H.)       -        -  12 

(R.  L.)       -        -  14 

Evans  (Sir  John)     -  30 

Farrar  (Dean)  -        -  16,  21 

Fitzwygram  (Sir  F.)  10 

Folkard  (H.  C.)         -  12 

Ford  (H.)  ...  12 

Fowler  (Edith  H.)    -  21 

Foxcroft  (H.  C.)       -  7 

Francis  (Francis)     -  12 

Freeman  (Edward  A.)  4 

Freshfield  (D.  W.)   -  II 

Frothingham  (A.  L.)  30 
Froude  (James  A.)  4,  7,  9, 21 

Furneaux  (W.)          -  24 

Galton  (W.  F.)          -  17 

Gardiner  (Samuel  R.)  4 
Gathorne-Hardy  (Hon. 

A.  E.)         -        -  12 

Gerard  (Dorothea)   -  26 

Gibbons  (J.  S.)          -  12 

Gibson  (Hon.  H.)     -  13 

(C.H.)       -        -  14 

(Hon.  W.)         -  32 

Gilkes  (A.  H.)  -        -  21 

Gleig  (Rev.  G.  R.)    -  8 

Goethe      -        -        -  19 

Gore-Booth  (Eva)    -  19 

(SirH.  W.)       -  n 

Graham  (P.  A.)         -  13,  21 

(G.  F.)       -        -  16 

Granby  (Marquis  of)  12 

Grant  (Sir  A.)  -        -  14 

Graves  (R.  P.)  -  7 

Green  (T.  Hill)          -  14 

Greener  (E.  B.)        -  4 

Greville  (C.  C.  F.)    -  4 

Grey  (Maria)             -  26 

Grose  (T.  H.)   -        -  14 

Gross  (C.)         -        -  4 

Grove  (F.  C.)    -        -  11 

(Mrs.  Lilly)       -    '  10 

Gurdon  (Ladv  Camilla)  21 

Gwilt  (J.)  -    "    -        -  25 

Haggard  (H.    Rider)  II,  22 

Hake  (O.)  -        -        -  11 

Halliwell-Phillipps(J.)  8 

Hamlin  (A.  D.  F.)    -  30 

Hammond  (Mrs.  J.  H.)  4 

Harding  (S.  B.)         -  4 

Harte  (Bret)  22 

Harting(J.  E.)  -        -  12 

Hartwig  (G.)     -        -  24 

Hassall(A.)       -        -  6 
Haweis  (Rev.  H.  R.)    7,  30 

Heath  (D.  D.)  -        -  14 
Heathcote  (J.  M.and 

C.  G.)          -        -  11 
Helmholtz  (Hermann 

von)  -  -  -  24 
Henderson  (Lieut- 
Col.  G.  F.)  -  7 
Henry  (W.)  -  -  n 
Henty  (G.  A.)  -  -  26 
Herbert  (Col.  Kenney)  12 
Hewins  (W.  A.  S.)  -  17 
Hill  (Sylvia  M.)  -  21 
Hillier  (G.  Lacy)  -  10 
Hime(Lieut.-Col.H. 
W.  L.) 


19,  26 

14 
30 
22 
30 
25 
16 
17 
5,  22,  30 
14 


30 

Hodgson  (ShadworthH.)  14 

7 

18 
22 
18 


Holroyd  (Maria  J.)  - 

Homer 

Hope  (Anthony) 

Horace 

Hornung  (E.  W.) 

Houston  (D.  F.) 

Howell  (G.)       - 

Howitt  (W.)     - 

Hudson  (W.  H.) 

Hullahd.) 

Hume  (David)  - 


AUTHORS 

Page 
Hunt  (Rev.  W.)        -  4 

Hunter  (Sir  W.)      -  5 

Hutchinson  (Horace  G.) 

Ingelow  (Jean 

lames  (W.) 

iefferies  (Richard)    • 
erome  (Jerome  K.)  ■ 
.  ohnson(J.&  J.  H.) 
Sones  (H.  Bence) 
ordan  (W.  L.) 
owett  (Dr.  B.) 
oyce  (P.  W.) 
ustinian  : 

Kant  (I.)  14 

Kaye(SirJ.  W.)       -  5 

Kerr  (Rev.  J.)   -        -  11 

Killick  (Rev.  A.  H.)  -  14 

Kingsley  (Rose  G.)  -  30 

Kitchin  (Dr.  G.  W.)  4 
Knight  (E.  F.)  -        -    9,  n 

K6stlin(J.)        -         -  7 

Ladd  (G.  T.)     -        -        15 
Lang  (Andrew)  5, 10,  IX,  13, 
17,  18,  19,  20,  22,  26,  30,  32 
Lascelles  (Hon.  G.) 

10,  11,  12 
Laughton  (J.  K.)       -  8 

Laurence  (P.  W.)  -  17 
Lawley  (Hon.  K.)  -  11 
Layard  (Nina  F.)  -  19 
Leaf  (Walter)  -  -  31 
Lear  (H.  L.  Sidney)  -  29 
Lecky  (W.  E.  H.)  -  5,  19 
Lees  (J.  A.)        -        -  9 

Lejeune  (Baron)       -  7 

Leslie  (T.  E.  Cliffe)  -  16 
Lester  (L.  V.)   -        -  7 

Levett-Yeats  (S.)  -  22 
Lillie(A.)-  -  -  13 
Lindley(J.)  -  -  25 
Lodge  (H.  C.)  -        -  4 

Loftie  (Rev.  W.  J.)  -  4 

Longman  (C.  J.)    10,12,30 

(F.  W.)      -        -         13 

(G.  H.)       -        -11,12 

Lowell  (A.  L.)  -        -  5 

Lubbock  (Sir  John)  -  17 
Lucan  -  -  -  18 
Lutoslawski  (W.)  -  15 
Lyall  (Edna)  -  -  22 
Lyttelton  (Hon.  R.  H.)    10 

(Hon.  A.)  -        -        11 

Lytton  (Earl  of)        -        19 

Macaulay  (Lord)  5,  6,  19 
MacColl  (Canon)      -  6 

Macdonald  (G.)  -  9 

(Dr.  G.)     -        -  20,  32 

Macfarren  (Sir  G.  A.)  30 
Mackail  (J.  W.)  -  18 
Mackinnon  (J.)  -  6 

Macleod  (H.  D.)  -  16 
Macpherson  (Rev.  H.  A.)i2 
Madden  (D.  H.)  -  13 
Maher  (Rev.  M.)  -  16 
Malleson  (Col.  G.B.)  5 

Marbot  (Baron  de)   -  7 

Marquand  (A.)  -  -  30 
Marshman  (J.  C.)     -  7 

Martineau  (Dr.  James)  32 
Maskelyne  (J.  N.)  -  13 
Maunder  (S.)  -  -  25 
Max  Miiller  (F.) 

7,8,15,  16,  22,  30,  32 


(Mrs.) 

May  (Sir  T.  Erskine) 
Meade  (L.  T.)  - 
Melville  (G.  J.  Whyte) 
Merivale  (Dean) 
Merriman  ^H.  S.)      - 
Mill  (James)      - 

(John  Stuart)    -  1 

Milner  (G.) 
Miss  Molly  (A  utlwr  of) 
Moffat  (D.) 
Molesworth  (Mrs.)    - 
Monck(W.  H.  S.)    - 
Montague  (F.  C.)     - 


AND     EDITORS 

I  Page 
Montagu  (Hon.  John 

Scott)         -        -  12 

Moore  (T.)        -        -  25 

(Rev.  Edward)  -  14 

Morgan  (C.  Lloyd)  -  17 

Morris  (W.)       -    20,  22,  31 

(Mowbray)         -  11 

Mulhall  (M.  G.)        -  17 

Nansen  (F.)  9 

Nesbit  (E.)        -        -  20 

Nettleship  (R.  L.)    -  14 
Newdigate  -  Newde- 

gate  iLady)         -  8 

Newman  (Cardinal)  -  22 

Ogle(W.)-        -  -  18 

Oliphant  (Mrs.)  -  22 

Oliver  ( W.  D.)  -  9 

Onslow  (Earl  of)  -  11 

Orchard  (T.  N.)  -  31 

Osbourne (L)    -  -  23 

Park  (W.)  -        -         13 

Parr  (Louisa)    -        -        26 
Payne-Gallwey    (Sir 

K.)  -  -  -11,13 
Peek  (Hedley)  -  -  11 
Pembroke  (Earl  of)  -  11 
Phillipps-Wolley  (C.)  10,22 
Pitman  (C.  M.)  -         11 

Pleydell-Bouverie  (E.  O.)  1 1 


Pole  (VV.) 

Pollock  (W.  H.) 

Poole  (W.H.  and  Mrs.) 

Poore  (G.  V.)    - 

Potter  (J.) 

Praeger  (S.  Rosamond) 

Prevost  (C.) 

Pritchett  (R.  T.)       -        11 

Proctor  (R   A.)       13,  24,  28 

Quill  (A.  W.)    -        -        18 

Raine  (Rev.  James)  -  4 

Ransome  (Cyril)        -      3,  6 
Pauschenbusch-Clough 

(Emma)      -        -  8 

Rawlinson  (Rev.  Canon)    8 
Rhoades  (J.)     - 
Rhoscomyl  (O.) 
Ribblesdale  (Lord)   - 
Rich  (A.)  - 
Richardson  (C.) 
Richman  (I.  B.) 
Richmond  (Ennis)    - 
Richter  (J.  Paul)      - 
Rickaby  (Rev.  John) 

(Rev.  Joseph)    ■ 

Ridley  (Sir  E.)  - 
Riley  (J.  W.)     - 
Roget  (Peter  M.) 
Rolfsen  (N.)      - 
Romanes  (G.  J.) 

8,  15,  17,  20,  32 

(Mrs.)        -        -  8 

Ronalds  (A.)  13 

Roosevelt  (T.)  -        -  4 

Rossetti  (Maria  Fran- 
cesca)     -        -        -        31 

(W.  M.)     -        -        20 

Rowe  (R.  P.  P.)        -        11 
Russell  (Bertrand)    -        17 

(Alys)         -        -        17 

(Rev.  M.)  -        -        20 

Saintsbury  (G.)         -         12 
Samuels  (E.)    - 
Sandars  (T.  C.) 
Sargent  (A.  J.) - 
Schreiner  (S.  C.  Cron- 

wright) 
Seebohm  (F.)    - 
Selous  (F.  C.)   - 
Sewell  (Elizabeth  M.) 
Shakespeare 
Shand  (A   I.)     - 
Sharpe  (R.  R.)  - 
Shearman  (M.)  -  1 

Sinclair  (A.) 
Smith  (R.  Bosworth) 
Smith  (T.  C.)   - 


-continued. 

Page 
Smith  (W.  P.  Haskett)  9 
Solovyoff(V.  S.)  -  31 
Sophocles  -        -        18 

Soulsby  (Lucy  H.)  26,31 
Spedding  (J.)  -  -  7,  14 
Sprigge  (S.  Squire)  -  8 

Stanley  (Bishop)  -  24 
Steel  (A.  G.)      -        -        10 

(J.H.)        -        -        10 

Stephen  (Leslie)       -  9 

Stephens  (H.  Morse)  6 

Stevens  (R.  W.)  -  31 
Stevenson  (R.  L.)  -  23,  26 
'Stonehenge'  -  -  10 
Storr  (F.)  -  -  -  14 
Stuart-Wortley(A.J.)  11,12 
Stubbs  (J.  W.)  -        -  6 

Suffolk  &  Berkshire 

(Earlr.f)      -         -  11 

Sullivan  (Sir  E.)       -         11 

(J.  F.)         -        -        26 

Sully  (James)  15 

Sutherland  (A.  and  G.)        6 

(Alex.)       -        -  15,  31 

Suttner  (B.  von)  -  23 
Swinburne  (A.  J.)  -  15 
Symes  (J.  E.)    -        -        17 

Tacitus  -  -  -  18 
Tavlor  (Col.  Meadows)      6 

Te'bbutt  (C.  G.)         -  11 

Thornhill  (W.  J.)      -  18 

Thornton  (T.  H.)     -  8 

Todd  (A.)-        -        -  6 

Toynbee  (A.)  -  -  17 
Trevelyan(SirG.O.)      6,7 

(C.  P.)        -        -  17 

(G.  M.)      -        -  6 

Trollope  (Anthony)  -  23 

Tupper  (  .  L.)  -        -  20 

Turner  (H.  G.)  -  31 
Tyndall  (J.)        -        "7-9 

Tyrrell  (R.  Y.)  -        -  18 

Tyszkiewicz  (M.)      -  31 

Upton(F.K. and  Bertha)   26 

Van  Dyke  (J.  C.)  -  31 
Verney  (Frances   P. 

and  Margaret  M.)  8 

Virgil         -        -        -  18 

Vivekananda  (Swami)  32 

Vivian  (Herbert)       -  9 

Wakeman  (H.  O.)     -  6 

Walford  (L.  B.)        -  23 

Walker  (Jane  H.)      -  29 

Wallas  (Graham)     -  8 

Walpole  (Sir  Spencer)  6 

Walrond  (Col.  H.)    -  10 

Walsingham(Lord)-  11 

Walter  (J.)  8 

Warwick  (Countess  of)  31 
Watson  (A.  E.  T.) 

10,  11,12,13,23 
Webb  (Mr.  and  Mrs. 

Sidney)       -        -  17 

(T.  E.)       -        -  15,  19 

Weber  (A.)       -        -  15 

Weir  (Capt.  R.)        -  11 

Weyman  (Stanley)  -  23 
Whately(Archbishop)  14, 15 

(E.  Jane)  -        -  16 

Whishaw  (F.)  -        -  23 

White  (W.  Hale)      -  20,  31 

Whitelaw  (R.)  -        -  18 

20     Wikocks  (J.  C.)        -  13 

14    Wilkins  (G.)      -        -  18 

17  i  Willard  (A.  R.)         -  31 

Willich  (C.  M.)         -  25 

10  I  Witham  (T.  M.)        -  11 

6,  8  !  Wood  (Rev.  J.  G.)    -  25 

10  !  Wood-Martin  (W.  G.)  6 

23  I  Woods  (Margaret  L?)  23 

20  J  Wordsworth  (Elizabeth)  26 

12  ''  (William)  -        -  20 

6  I  Wyatt  (A.  J.)    -        -  20 

,  11  J  Wylie  (J.  H.)    -        -  6 

Jg    Youatt  (W.)      -        -  10 

4    Zeller  (E.)         -        -  15 


18 

23 

13 

18 

12 

6 

31 

31 

16 

16 

18 

20 

16,  25 

8 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


History,  Polities,  Polity,  Political  Memoirs,  &e. 


Abbott. — A    History    of    Greece. 
By  Evelyn  Abbott,  M.A.,  LL.D. 
Part  I. — From   the   Earliest  Times  to  the 

Ionian  Revolt.     Crown  8vo.,  ios.  6d. 
Part  II. — 500-445  b.c.     Crown  8vo.,  105.  6d. 

Acland  and  Ransome. — A  Hand- 
book in  Outline  of  the  Political  His- 
tory of  England  to  1896.  Chronologically 
Arranged.  By  the  Right  Hon.  A.  H.  Dyke 
Acland,  M.P.,  and  Cyril  Ransome,  M.A. 
Crown  8vo.,  6s. 

Amos. — Primer  of  the  English 
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Jackson. — Stonewall  Jackson  and 
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Luther. — Life  of  Luther.  By 
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and  4  Facsimilies  of  MSS.  Translated 
from  the  German.  Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6d. 
Macaulay. — The  Life  and  Letters 
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Sir  G.  O.  Trevelyan,  Bart. 

Popular  Edition.    1  vol.    Cr.  8vo.,  2s.  6d. 

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Cabinet  Edition.     2  vols.     Post  8vo.,  125. 

1  Edinburgh  '  Edition.     2  vols.     8vo.,  65. 
each. 

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Max    Miiller. — Auld  Lang  Syne. 

By    the    Right    Hon.    F.    Max    Muller. 
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Bacon. — The  Letters  and  Life  of 
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Bagehot. — Biographical  Studies. 
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Boevey. — ■  The  Perverse  Widow''  : 
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Crozier. — My  Inner  Life  :  being  a 

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Digby. — The  Life  of  Sir  Kenelm 

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Newdegate. — The    Cheverels    of 

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Place. — The  Life  of  Francis  Place, 
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RAMARRISLLNA  :  His  Life  and 
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Rawlinson. — A  Memoir  of  Major- 
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Reeve. — Memoirs  of  the  Life  and 
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Seebohm. — TheOxford  Reformers 
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Shakespeare.  —  Outlines  of  the 
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Shakespeare's  True  Life.  By 
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Verney.  —Memoirs  of  the  Verney 

Family.     Compiled  from  the  Letters  and 

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House. 

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Royal  8vo.,  425. 
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With  10  Portraits,  etc.     Royal  8vo.,  215. 
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Revolution.  1660  to  1696.  ByMARGARET 

M.  Verney.  With  Ports.  Royal  8vo.,  215. 
Wakley. —  The  Life  and  Times  of 
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Sprigge.  With  2  Portraits.  8vo.,  65. 
Wellington. — Life  of  the  Duke 
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Wollstonecraft. — A  Study  of  Mary 
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Arnold. — Seas  and  Lands.  By  Sir 
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Baker  (Sir  S.  W.). 
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Region,  South  of  the  Rhone  Valley,  from 

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Bicknell. — Travel  and  Adventure 
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Brassey. —  Voyages  and  Travels 
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Brassey  (the  late  Lady). 

A  Voyage  in  the  '  Sunbeam'  ;  Our 

Home    on   the    Ocean  for    Eleven 

Mo  a  THS. 

Cabinet  Edition.  With  Map  and  66 
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1  Silver  Library  '  Edition.  With  66  Illus- 
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Sunshine  and  Storm  in  the  East. 
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Three  Voyages  in  the  '  Sunbeam  '. 
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Browning. — A  Girl's  Wanderings 
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Churchill. — The  Story  of  the 
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Plans.     Crown  8vo.,  35.  6d. 

Froude  (James  A.). 
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Howitt. —  Visits  to  Remarkable 
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Knight  (E.  F.). 

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Where  Three  Empires  meet:  a 
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Macdonald. — The  GoldCoast:  Fast 

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Crown  8vo.,  75.  6d. 

Max  Muller. — Letters  from  Con- 
stantinople. By  Mrs.  Max  Muller. 
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Nansen  (Fridtjof). 
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Eskimo  Life.  With  31  Illustrations. 
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Olive  r. — Cra  gs     a  nd      Cra  ters  : 

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Smith. — Climbing   in  the  British 
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THREE  IN  NOR  WA  Y.      By  Two 

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Tyndall. — The  Glaciers  of  the 
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Vivian. — Serbia  :  the  Poor  Man's 
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A  Treatise  on  the  Diseases  gf 
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1  Stonehenge.' — The  Dog  in 
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henge '.  With  78  Wood  Engravings. 
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Youatt  (William). 

The  Horse.  Revised  and  Enlarged 
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The  Dog.  Revised  and  Enlarged. 
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Sport  and  Pastime. 

THE  BADMINTON  LIBRARY. 

Edited  by  HIS  GRACE  THE  DUKE  OF  BEAUFORT,  K.G.,  and  A.  E.  T.  WATSON. 

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DRIVING.  By  His  Grace  the  Duke 
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MESSRS.   LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Sport  and  Pastime — continued. 

THE  BADMINTON  LIBRARY— continued. 


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22       MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


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Hope.— The  Heart  of  Princess 
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Hornung. — The  Unbidden  Guest. 
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Jerome. — Sketches  in  Lavender: 
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Lang. — A  Monk  of  Fife  ;  a  Story  | 
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Lang.      With  13  Illustrations  by  Selwyn 
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Levett- Yeats  (S.). 
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8vo.,  35.  6d.- 
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other  Stories.     Crown  8vo.,  6s. 
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Doreen.      The  Story  of  a  Singer. 

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Wayfaring  Men.     Crown  8vo.,  65. 
Hope  the  Hermit  :  a  Romance  of 
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Max    M tiller.  —  Deutsche    Liebe 

{German  Love)  :  Fragments  from  the 
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Muller.  Translated  from  the  German  by 
G.  A.  M.     Crown  8vo.,  55. 

Melville  (G.  J.  Whyte). 

The  Gladiators.  Holmby  House. 

The  Interpreter.  Kate  Coventry. 

Good  for  Nothing.  Digby  Grand. 

The  Queen's  Maries.         General  Bounce. 
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Merriman. — Flotsam:  A  Story  of 

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Morris  (William). 

The  Sundering  Flood.  Cr.  8vo., 
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The  Water  of  the  Wondrous 
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The  Well  a  t  the  World's  End. 
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The  Roots  of  the  Mountains, 
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A  Tale  of  the  House  of  the 
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A  Dream  of  John  Ball,  and  a 
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News   from    Nowhere  ;     or,    An 
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Newman  (Cardinal). 
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Convert.     Crown  8vo.     Cabinet  Edition, 

65.  ;  Popular  Edition,  35.  6d. 
Callista:    A    Tale    of   the    Third 

Century.     Crown  8vo.     Cabinet  Edition, 

65. ;  Popular  Edition,  35.  6d. 

Oliphant. — Old      Mr.      Tredgold. 

By  Mrs.  Oliphant.     Crown  8vo.,  25.  6d. 

Phillipps-Wolley.— Snap:  a  Legend 

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23 


Fiction, 


Raymond. —  Two  Men  o'  Mendip  : 
a  Novel.  By  Walter  Raymond,  Author  of 
1  Gentleman  Upcott's  Daughter,'  etc.  Cr. 
8vo.,  65. 

Rhoscomyl  (Owen). 

The  Jewel  of  Ynys  Galon  :  being 
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of  the  Sea  Rovers.  With  12  Illustrations 
by  Lancelot  Speed.     Cr.  8vo.,  35.  bd. 

For  the  White  Rose  of  Arno: 
a  Story  of  the  Jacobite  Rising  of  1745. 
Crown  8vo.,  6s. 


■)■ 


Sewell  (Elizabeth  M 
A  Glimpse  of  the  World 
Laneton  Parsonage. 
Margaret  Percival. 
Katharine  Ashton. 
The  Earl's  Daughter. 
The  Experience  of  Life 
Cr.  8vo.,  15.  bd.  each  cloth  plain, 
each  cloth  extra,  gilt  edges. 


Stevenson  (Robert  Louis). 

The  Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll 
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is.  bd.  cloth. 

The  Strange  Case  of  Dr. 
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Fables.     Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6 d. 

More  New  Arabian  Nights — The 
Dynamiter.  By  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son and  Fanny  van  de  Grift  Steven- 
son.    Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6d. 

The  Wrong  Box.  By  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  and  Lloyd  Osbourne. 
Crown  8vo.,  3s.  6d. 

Suttner. — Lay  Down  Your  Arms 
(Die  Waffen  Niedcr) :  The  Autobiography 
of  Martha  von  Tilling.  By  Bertha  von 
Suttner.  Translated  by  T.  Holmes. 
Cr.  8vo.,  is.  6d. 

Trollope  (Anthony). 

The  Warden.     Cr.  8vo.,  15.  6d. 
Barchester    Towers.      Cr.    8vo., 
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Nan,  and  other  Stories.     Cr.  8vo., 
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2S.  bd. 
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Amy  Herbert 
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Walford  (L.  B.). 

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Leddy  Mar  get. 
Iva  Kildare  :  a 

blem.     Crown  8vo, 
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Crown  8vo.,  65. 

Crown  8vo.,  65. 

Matrimonial  Pro- 
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Watson. — Racing  and 'Chasing:  a 
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E.  T.  Watson,  Editor  of  the  '  Badminton 
Magazine  '.  With  16  Plates  and  36  Illustra- 
tions in  the  Text.     Crown  8vo.,  7s.  bd. 

Weyman  (Stanley). 

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A  Gentleman  of  France.  With 
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Shrewsbury.  With  24  Illustra- 
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Whishaw  (Fred.). 

A  BOYAR  OF  THE  TERRIBLE  I  a 
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First  Tzar  of  Russia.  With  12  Illustra- 
tions by  H.  G.  Massey,  A. R.E.  Crown 
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A  Tsar's  Gratitude  :  A  Story  of 
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Woods. —  Weeping  Ferry,  and  other 
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24 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


Popular  Science  (Natural  History,  &e.). 


Beddard.  —  The  Structure  and 
Classification  of  Birds.  By  Frank  E. 
Beddard,  M.A.,  F.R.S.,  Prosector  and 
Vice-Secretary  of  the  Zoological  Society 
of  London.  With  252  Illustrations.  8vo., 
215.  net. 

Butler. — Our  Household  Insects. 

An  Account  of  the  Insect-Pests  found  in 
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tions.    Crown  8vo.,  35.  6d. 

Furneaux  (W.). 

The  Outdoor  World;  or  The 
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Illustrations  in  the  Text.  Crown  8vo., 
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trations in  the  Text.     Crown  8vo.,  75.  6d. 

Life  in  Ponds  and  Streams. 
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Hartwig  (Dr.  George). 

The  Sea  and  its  Living  Wonders. 
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The  Tropical  World,  With  8 
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The  Subterranean  World.  With 
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Heroes  of  the  Polar  World.  With 
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Wonders  of  the  Tropical  Fores  ts. 
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Workers  under  the  Ground.W ith 
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Marvels  Over  our  Heads.  With 
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Sea  Monsters  and  Sea  Birds. 
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Denizens  of  the  Deep.  With  117 
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Hartwig  (Dr.  George) — continued. 

Volcanoes      and     Earthquakes. 
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Wild   Animals   of   the    Tropics. 
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Helmholtz. — Popular  Lectures  on 
Scientific  Subjects.  By  Hermann  von 
Helmholtz.  With  68  Woodcuts.  2  vols. 
Cr.  8vo.,  3s.  6d.  each. 


Hudson  (W.  H.). 

British  Birds.  With  a  Chapter 
on  Structure  and  Classification  by  Frank 
E.  Beddard,  F.R.S.  With  16  Plates  (8 
of  which  are  Coloured),  and  over  100  Illus- 
trations in  the  Text.     Cr.  8vo.,  75.  6d. 

Birds  in  London.  With  17  Plates 
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Hook,  A.  D.  McCormick,  and  from 
Photographs  from  Nature,  by  R.  B. 
Lodge.     8vo.,  12s. 


Proctor  (Richard  A.). 

Light  Science  for  Leisure  Hours. 
Familiar  Essays  on  Scientific  Subjects.  3 
vols.     Cr.  8vo.,  5s.  each. 

Ro ugh  Wa  ys  ma de  Smoo th.  Fami- 
liar Essays  on  Scientific  Subjects.  Crown 
8vo.,  35.  bd. 

Pleasant  Wa  ys  in  Science.  Crown 

8vo.,  35.  6d. 

Nature  Studies.  By  R.  A.  Proc- 
tor, Grant  Allen,  A.  Wilson,  T. 
Foster  and  E.  Clodd.  Crown  8vo., 
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tor, E.  Clodd,  A.  Wilson,  T.  Foster 
and  A.  C.  Ranyard.     Cr.  8vo. ,  35.  6d. 

*#*  For  Mr.  Proctor's  other  books  see  pp.  13, 
28  and  31,  and  Messrs.  Longmans  &>  Co.'s 
Catalogue  of  Scientific   Works. 


Stanley.—  A  Familiar  History  of 
Birds.  By  E.  Stanley,  D.D.,  formerly 
Bishop  of  Norwich.  With  160  Illustrations. 
Cr.  8vo.,  35.  6d. 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS         25 


Popular    Science    (Natural  History,  &e.) — continued. 


Wood  (Rev.  J.  G.). 

Homes  without  Hands:  A  Descrip- 
tion of  the  Habitations  of  Animals,  classed 
according  to  the  Principle  of  Construc- 
tion. With  140  Illustrations.  8vo., 
ys.  net. 

Insects  at  Home  :  A  Popular  Ac- 
count of  British  Insects,  their  Structure, 
Habits  and  Transformations.  With  700 
Illustrations.     8vo.,  75.  net. 

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Nests.  With  18  Illustrations.  Cr.  8vo.,  25. 


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chitecture. By  Joseph  Gwilt,  F.S.A. 
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terations and  Considerable  Additions  by 
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World.  Edited  by  George  G.  Chis- 
holm,  M.A.,  B.Sc.  Imp.  8vo.,  £2  2s.  cloth, 
£2  12s.  6d.  half-morocco. 

Maunder  (Samuel). 

Biographical  Treasury.  With 
Supplement  brought  down  to  1889.  By 
Rev.  James  Wood.     Fcp.  8vo.,  65. 

Treasury  of  Geography,  Physical, 
Historical,  Descriptive,  and  Political. 
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ledge. By  the  Rev.  J.  Ayre,  M.A.  With 
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Works  of  Reference. 

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Roget.  —  Thesaurus  of  jEnglisb 
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Ideas  and  assist  in  Literary  Composition. 
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Buckland. — Two  LittleRuna  wa  ys. 

Adapted  from  the  French  of  Louis   Des- 

g  noyers.     By  James  Buckland.    With  1 10 

Illustrations  by  Cecil  Aldin.    Cr.  8vo.,  6s. 

Crake  (Rev.  A.  D.). 

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Brian  Fitz-  Count.  A  Story  of 
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Abbey.     Cr.   8vo.,   2s.  6d. 


26 


MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


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edges,  65. 

Lang  (Andrew). — Edited  by. 
The  Bl ue  Fairy  Book.     With  138 

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104  Illustrations.     Crown  8vo.,  6s. 
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ments.    With  66  Illustrations.     Crown 

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Lugau. 
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Priory.        By    L.    N. 


Atherstone 

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Dorothea  Gerard. 
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Grey.  

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MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


27 


The  Silver  Library. 


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28         MESSRS.  LONGMANS  &  CO.'S  STANDARD  AND  GENERAL  WORKS. 


The  Silver  Library — continued. 


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retary to  the  Council  of  the  Charity  Organi- 
sation Society,  London.     8vo.,  45. 

Comparetti.  —  The  Traditional 
Poetry  of  the  Finns.  By  Domenico 
Comparetti,  Socio  dell'  Accademia  dei 
Lincei,  Membre  de  l'Academie  des  Inscrip- 
tions, &c.  Translated  by  Isabella  M. 
Anderton.  With  Introduction  by  Andrew 
Lang.     8vo.,  165. 

Dreyfus. — Lectures  on  French 
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Irma  Dreyfus.  With  Portrait  of  the 
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Evans. — The  Ancient  Stone  Im- 
plements, Weapons  and  Ornaments  of 
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With  537  Illustrations.      Medium  8vo.,  28s. 

Hamlin. — A  Text-Book  of  the 
History  of  Architecture.  By  A.  D.  F. 
Hamlin,  A.M.  With  229  Illustrations. 
Crown  8vo.,  75.  6d. 

Haweis. — Music  and  Morals.  By 
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Hime. — Stray   Military   Papers. 
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Hullah. — The  History  of  Modern 

Music;  a  Course  of  Lectures.      By  John 

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Fed  Deer.  With  17  Illustrations 
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Wood  Magic  :  a  Fable.  With  Fron- 
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Kingsley. — A  Handbook  to  French 
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Lang  (Andrew). 
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Modern  Mythology  :   a  Reply  to 

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Madden. — The  Diary  of  Master 
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Marquand  and  Frothingham. — A 

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ture. By  Allan  Marquand,  Ph.D.,  and 
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Max  Miiller  (The  Right  Hon.  F.). 

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Orchard. — The  Astronomy  of 
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Rossetti. — A  Shadow  of  Dante: 
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Stevens. — On  the  Stowage  of  Ships 
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Rama  Krishna  :  His  Life  and  Say- 
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14  DAY  TT^F 

**TURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

tOAN  DEPT. 

to  immediate  recall. 

322 


2^6 


^S^ 


JUL  6     1973 


LD21A-20m-3,'73 
(Q8677sl0)476-A-3l 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley