But to prevent all this philosophy and poetry from quite running away with us, and making us think with The Times, and our practical Liberal free-traders, and the British Philistines generally, that the increase of small houses and manufactories, or the increase of population, are absolute goods in themselves, to be mechanically pursued, and to be worshipped like fetishes,--to prevent this, we have got that notion of ours immoveably fixed, of which I [241] have long ago spoken, the notion that culture, or the study of perfection, leads us to conceive of no perfection as being real which is not a general perfection, embracing all our fellow-men with whom we have to do. Such is the sympathy which binds humanity together, that we are indeed, as our religion says, members of one body, and if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; individual perfection is impossible so long as the rest of mankind are not perfected along with us. "The mult.i.tude of the wise is the welfare of the world,"
says the wise man. And to this effect that excellent and often quoted guide of ours, Bishop Wilson, has some striking words:--"It is not," says he, "so much our neighbour"s interest as our own that we love him." And again he says: "Our salvation does in some measure depend upon that of others." And the author of the Imitation puts the same thing admirably when he says:--"Obscurior etiam via ad coelum videbatur quando tam pauci regnum coelorum quaerere curabant,"+--the fewer there are who follow the way to perfection, the harder that way is to find. So all our fellow-men, in the East of London and elsewhere, we must take along with us in the progress towards perfection, [242] if we ourselves really, as we profess, want to be perfect; and we must not let the worship of any fetish, any machinery, such as manufactures or population,--which are not, like perfection, absolute goods in themselves, though we think them so,-- create for us such a mult.i.tude of miserable, sunken, and ignorant human beings, that to carry them all along with us is impossible, and perforce they must for the most part be left by us in their degradation and wretchedness. But evidently the conception of free- trade, on which our Liberal friends vaunt themselves, and in which they think they have found the secret of national prosperity,-- evidently, I say, the mere unfettered pursuit of the production of wealth, and the mere mechanical multiplying, for this end, of manufactures and population, threatens to create for us, if it has not created already, those vast, miserable, unmanageable ma.s.ses of sunken people,--one pauper, at the present moment, for every nineteen of us,--to the existence of which we are, as we have seen, absolutely forbidden to reconcile ourselves, in spite of all that the philosophy of The Times and the poetry of Mr. Robert Buchanan may say to persuade us.
[243] And though Hebraism, following its best and highest instinct,-- identical, as we have seen, with that of h.e.l.lenism in its final aim, the aim of perfection,--teaches us this very clearly; and though from Hebraising counsellors,--the Bible, Bishop Wilson, the author of the Imitation,--I have preferred (as well I may, for from this rock of Hebraism we are all hewn!) to draw the texts which we use to bring home to our minds this teaching; yet Hebraism seems powerless, almost as powerless as our free-trading Liberal friends, to deal efficaciously with our ever-acc.u.mulating ma.s.ses of pauperism, and to prevent their acc.u.mulating still more. Hebraism builds churches, indeed, for these ma.s.ses, and sends missionaries among them; above all, it sets itself against the social necessitarianism of The Times, and refuses to accept their degradation as inevitable; but with regard to their ever-increasing acc.u.mulation, it seems to be led to the very same conclusions, though from a point of view of its own, as our free-trading Liberal friends. Hebraism, with that mechanical and misleading use of the letter of Scripture on which we have already commented, is governed by such texts as: Be fruitful and multiply,+ the edict of [244] G.o.d"s law, as Mr. Chambers would say; or by the declaration of what he would call G.o.d"s words in the Psalms, that the man who has a great number of children is thereby made happy. And in conjunction with such texts as these it is apt to place another text: The poor shall never cease out of the land.+ Thus Hebraism is conducted to nearly the same notion as the popular mind and as Mr.
Robert Buchanan, that children are sent, and that the divine nature takes a delight in swarming the East End of London with paupers.
Only, when they are perishing in their helplessness and wretchedness, it a.s.serts the Christian duty of succouring them, instead of saying, like The Times: "Now their brief spring is over; there is n.o.body to blame for this; it is the result of Nature"s simplest laws!" But, like The Times, Hebraism despairs of any help from knowledge and says that "what is wanted is not the light of speculation." I remember, only the other day, a good man, looking with me upon a mult.i.tude of children who were gathered before us in one of the most miserable regions of London,--children eaten up with disease, half-sized, half- fed, half-clothed, neglected by their parents, without health, without [245] home, without hope,--said to me: "The one thing really needful is to teach these little ones to succour one another, if only with a cup of cold water; but now, from one end of the country to the other, one hears nothing but the cry for knowledge, knowledge, knowledge!" And yet surely, so long as these children are there in these festering ma.s.ses, without health, without home, without hope, and so long as their mult.i.tude is perpetually swelling, charged with misery they must still be for themselves, charged with misery they must still be for us, whether they help one another with a cup of cold water or no; and the knowledge how to prevent their acc.u.mulating is necessary, even to give their moral life and growth a fair chance!
May we not, therefore, say, that neither the true Hebraism of this good man, willing to spend and be spent for these sunken mult.i.tudes, nor what I may call the spurious Hebraism of our free-trading Liberal friends,--mechanically worshipping their fetish of the production of wealth and of the increase of manufactures and population, and looking neither to the right nor left so long as this increase goes on,--avail us much here; and that here, again, what we [246] want is h.e.l.lenism, the letting our consciousness play freely and simply upon the facts before us, and listening to what it tells us of the intelligible law of things as concerns them? And surely what it tells us is, that a man"s children are not really sent, any more than the pictures upon his wall, or the horses in his stable, are sent; and that to bring people into the world, when one cannot afford to keep them and oneself decently and not too precariously, or to bring more of them into the world than one can afford to keep thus, is, whatever The Times and Mr. Robert Buchanan may say, by no means an accomplishment of the divine will or a fulfilment of Nature"s simplest laws, but is just as wrong, just as contrary to reason and the will of G.o.d, as for a man to have horses, or carriages, or pictures, when he cannot afford them, or to have more of them than he can afford; and that, in the one case as in the other, the larger the scale on which the violation of reason"s laws is practised, and the longer it is persisted in, the greater must be the confusion and final trouble. Surely no laudations of free-trade, no meetings of bishops and clergy in the East End of London, no reading of papers and reports, can tell [247] us anything about our social condition which it more concerns us to know than that! and not only to know, but habitually to have the knowledge present, and to act upon it as one acts upon the knowledge that water wets and fire burns! And not only the sunken populace of our great cities are concerned to know it, and the pauper twentieth of our population; we Philistines of the middle-cla.s.s, too, are concerned to know it, and all who have to set themselves to make progress in perfection.
But we all know it already! some one will say; it is the simplest law of prudence. But how little reality must there be in our knowledge of it; how little can we be putting it in practice; how little is it likely to penetrate among the poor and struggling ma.s.ses of our population, and to better our condition, so long as an unintelligent Hebraism of one sort keeps repeating as an absolute eternal word of G.o.d the psalm-verse which says that the man who has a great many children is happy; or an unintelligent Hebraism of another sort keeps a.s.signing as an absolute proof of national prosperity the multiplying of manufactures and population! Surely, the one set of Hebraisers have [248] to learn that their psalm-verse was composed at the resettlement of Jerusalem after the Captivity, when the Jews of Jerusalem were a handful, an undermanned garrison, and every child was a blessing; and that the word of G.o.d, or the voice of the divine order of things, declares the possession of a great many children to be a blessing only when it really is so! And the other set of Hebraisers, have they not to learn that if they call their private acquaintances imprudent and unlucky, when, with no means of support for them or with precarious means, they have a large family of children, then they ought not to call the State well managed and prosperous merely because its manufactures and its citizens multiply, if the manufactures, which bring new citizens into existence just as much as if they had actually begotten them, bring more of them into existence than they can maintain, or are too precarious to go on maintaining those whom for a while they maintained? h.e.l.lenism, surely, or the habit of fixing our mind upon the intelligible law of things, is most salutary if it makes us see that the only absolute good, the only absolute and eternal object prescribed to us by G.o.d"s law, or the divine order of [249] things, is the progress towards perfection,--our own progress towards it and the progress of humanity. And therefore, for every individual man, and for every society of men, the possession and multiplication of children, like the possession and multiplication of horses and pictures, is to be accounted good or bad, not in itself, but with reference to this object and the progress towards it. And as no man is to be excused in having horses or pictures, if his having them hinders his own or others" progress towards perfection and makes them lead a servile and ign.o.ble life, so is no man to be excused for having children if his having them makes him or others lead this. Plain thoughts of this kind are surely the spontaneous product of our consciousness, when it is allowed to play freely and disinterestedly upon the actual facts of our social condition, and upon our stock notions and stock habits in respect to it. Firmly grasped and simply uttered, they are more likely, one cannot but think, to better that condition, and to diminish our formidable rate of one pauper to every nineteen of us, than is the Hebraising and mechanical pursuit of free-trade by our Liberal friends.
So that, here as elsewhere, the practical operations [250] of our Liberal friends, by which they set so much store, and in which they invite us to join them and to show what Mr. Bright calls a commendable interest, do not seem to us so practical for real good as they think; and our Liberal friends seem to us themselves to need to h.e.l.lenise, as we say, a little,--that is, to examine into the nature of real good, and to listen to what their consciousness tells them about it,--rather than to pursue with such heat and confidence their present practical operations. And it is clear that they have no just cause, so far as regards several operations of theirs which we have canva.s.sed, to reproach us with delicate Conservative scepticism; for often by h.e.l.lenising we seem to subvert stock Conservative notions and usages more effectually than they subvert them by Hebraising.
But, in truth, the free spontaneous play of consciousness with which culture tries to float our stock habits of thinking and acting, is by its very nature, as has been said, disinterested. Sometimes the result of floating them may be agreeable to this party, sometimes to that; now it may be unwelcome to our so-called Liberals, now to our so-called Conservatives; but what culture seeks is, above all, to float them, to [251] prevent their being stiff and stark pieces of petrifaction any longer. It is mere Hebraising, if we stop short, and refuse to let our consciousness play freely, whenever we or our friends do not happen to like what it discovers to us. This is to make the Liberal party, or the Conservative party, our one thing needful, instead of human perfection; and we have seen what mischief arises from making an even greater thing than the Liberal or the Conservative party,--the predominance of the moral side in man,--our one thing needful. But wherever the free play of our consciousness leads us, we shall follow; believing that in this way we shall tend to make good at all points what is wanting to us, and so shall be brought nearer to our complete human perfection.
Thus we may often, perhaps, praise much that a so-called Liberal thinks himself forbidden to praise, and yet blame much that a so- called Conservative thinks himself forbidden to blame, because these are both of them partisans, and no partisan can afford to be thus disinterested. But we who are not partisans can afford it; and so, after we have seen what Nonconformists lose by being locked up in their New Road forms of religious inst.i.tution, [252] we can let ourselves see, on the other hand, how their ministers, in a time of movement of ideas like our present time, are apt to be more exempt than the ministers of a great Church establishment from that self- confidence, and sense of superiority to such a movement, which are natural to a powerful hierarchy; and which in Archdeacon Denison, for instance, seem almost carried to such a pitch that they may become, one cannot but fear, his spiritual ruin. But seeing this does not dispose us, therefore, to lock up all the nation in forms of worship of the New Road type; but it points us to the quite new ideal, of combining grand and national forms of worship with an openness and movement of mind not yet found in any hierarchy. So, again, if we see what is called ritualism making conquests in our Puritan middle- cla.s.s, we may rejoice that portions of this cla.s.s should have become alive to the aesthetical weakness of their position, even although they have not yet become alive to the intellectual weakness of it.
In Puritanism, on the other hand, we can respect that idea of dealing sincerely with oneself, which is at once the great force of Puritanism,--Puritanism"s great superiority over all products, like ritualism, of our Catholicising [253] tendencies,--and also an idea rich in the latent seeds of intellectual promise. But we do this, without on that account hiding from ourselves that Puritanism has by Hebraising misapplied that idea, has as yet developed none or hardly one of those seeds, and that its triumph at its present stage of development would be baneful.
Everything, in short, confirms us in the doctrine, so unpalatable to the believers in action, that our main business at the present moment is not so much to work away at certain crude reforms of which we have already the scheme in our own mind, as to create, through the help of that culture which at the very outset we began by praising and recommending, a frame of mind out of which really fruitful reforms may with time grow. At any rate, we ourselves must put up with our friends" impatience, and with their reproaches against cultivated inaction, and must still decline to lend a hand to their practical operations, until we, for our own part at least, have grown a little clearer about the nature of real good, and have arrived nearer to a condition of mind out of which really fruitful and solid operations may spring.
In the meanwhile, since our Liberal friends keep [254] loudly and resolutely a.s.suring us that their actual operations at present are fruitful and solid, let us in each case keep testing these operations in the simple way we have indicated, by letting the natural stream of our consciousness flow over them freely; and if they stand this test successfully, then let us give them our commendable interest, but not else. For example. Our Liberal friends a.s.sure us, at the very top of their voices, that their present actual operation for the disestablishment of the Irish Church is fruitful and solid. But what if, on testing it, the truth appears to be, that the statesmen and reasonable people of both parties wished for much the same thing,-- the fair apportionment of the church property of Ireland among the princ.i.p.al religious bodies there; but that, behind the statesmen and reasonable people, there was, on one side, a ma.s.s of Tory prejudice, and, on the other, a ma.s.s of Nonconformist prejudice, to which such an arrangement was unpalatable? Well, the natural way, one thinks, would have been for the statesmen and reasonable people of both sides to have united, and to have allayed and dissipated, so far as they could, the resistance of their respective extremes, and where [255]
they could not, to have confronted it in concert. But we see that, instead of this, Liberal statesmen waited to trip up their rivals, if they proposed the arrangement which both knew to be reasonable, by means of the prejudice of their own Nonconformist extreme; and then, themselves proposing an arrangement to flatter this prejudice, made the other arrangement, which they themselves knew to be reasonable, out of the question; and drove their rivals in their turn to blow up with all their might, in the hope of baffling them, a great fire, among their own Tory extreme, of fierce prejudice and religious bigotry,--a fire which, once kindled, may always very easily spread further? If, I say, on testing the present operation of our Liberal friends for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the truth about it appears to be very much this, then, I think,--even with a triumphant Liberal majority, and with our Liberal friends making impa.s.sioned appeals to us to take a commendable interest in their operation and them, and to rally round what Sir Henry h.o.a.re (who may be described, perhaps, as a Barbarian converted to Philistinism, as I, on the other hand, seem to be a Philistine converted to culture) finely calls the conscientiousness of a [256] Gladstone and the intellect of a Bright,--it is rather our duty to abstain, and, instead of lending a hand to the operation of our Liberal friends, to do what we can to abate and dissolve the ma.s.s of prejudice, Tory or Nonconformist, which makes so doubtfully begotten and equivocal an operation as the present, producible and possible.
And so we bring to an end what we had to say in praise of culture, and in evidence of its special utility for the circ.u.mstances in which we find ourselves, and the confusion which environs us. Through culture seems to lie our way, not only to perfection, but even to safety. Resolutely refusing to lend a hand to the imperfect operations of our Liberal friends, disregarding their impatience, taunts, and reproaches, firmly bent on trying to find in the intelligible law of things a firmer and sounder basis for future practice than any which we have at present, and believing this search and discovery to be, for our generation and circ.u.mstances, of yet more vital and pressing importance than practice itself, we nevertheless may do [257] more, perhaps, we poor disparaged followers of culture, to make the actual present, and the frame of society in which we live, solid and seaworthy, than all which our bustling politicians can do. For we have seen how much of our disorders and perplexities is due to the disbelief, among the cla.s.ses and combinations of men, Barbarian or Philistine, which have hitherto governed our society, in right reason, in a paramount best self; to the inevitable decay and break-up of the organisations by which, a.s.serting and expressing in these organisations their ordinary self only, they have so long ruled us; and to their irresolution, when the society, which their conscience tells them they have made and still manage not with right reason but with their ordinary self, is rudely shaken, in offering resistance to its subverters. But for us,--who believe in right reason, in the duty and possibility of extricating and elevating our best self, in the progress of humanity towards perfection,--for us the framework of society, that theatre on which this august drama has to unroll itself, is sacred; and whoever administers it, and however we may seek to remove them from the tenure of administration, yet, while they administer, [258] we steadily and with undivided heart support them in repressing anarchy and disorder; because without order there can be no society, and without society there can be no human perfection.
With me, indeed, this rule of conduct is hereditary. I remember my father, in one of his unpublished letters written more than forty years ago, when the political and social state of the country was gloomy and troubled, and there were riots in many places, goes on, after strongly insisting on the badness and foolishness of the government, and on the harm and dangerousness of our feudal and aristocratical const.i.tution of society, and ends thus: "As for rioting, the old Roman way of dealing with that is always the right one; flog the rank and file, and fling the ringleaders from the Tarpeian Rock!" And this opinion we can never forsake, however our Liberal friends may think a little rioting, and what they call popular demonstrations, useful sometimes to their own interests and to the interests of the valuable practical operations they have in hand, and however they may preach the right of an Englishman to be left to do as far as possible what he likes, and the duty of his government to indulge him and connive as much as [259] possible and abstain from all harshness of repression. And even when they artfully show us operations which are undoubtedly precious, such as the abolition of the slave-trade, and ask us if, for their sake, foolish and obstinate governments may not wholesomely be frightened by a little disturbance, the good design in view and the difficulty of overcoming opposition to it being considered,--still we say no, and that monster processions in the streets and forcible irruptions into the parks, even in professed support of this good design, ought to be unflinchingly forbidden and repressed; and that far more is lost than is gained by permitting them. Because a State in which law is authoritative and sovereign, a firm and settled course of public order, is requisite if man is to bring to maturity anything precious and lasting now, or to found anything precious and lasting for the future.
Thus, in our eyes, the very framework and exterior order of the State, whoever may administer the State, is sacred; and culture is the most resolute enemy of anarchy, because of the great hopes and designs for the State which culture teaches us to nourish. But as, believing in right reason, and having faith in the progress of humanity [260] towards perfection, and ever labouring for this end, we grow to have clearer sight of the ideas of right reason, and of the elements and helps of perfection, and come gradually to fill the framework of the State with them, to fashion its internal composition and all its laws and inst.i.tutions conformably to them, and to make the State more and more the expression, as we say, of our best self, which is not manifold, and vulgar, and unstable, and contentious, and ever-varying, but one, and n.o.ble, and secure, and peaceful, and the same for all mankind,--with what aversion shall we not then regard anarchy, with what firmness shall we not check it, when there is so much that is so precious which it will endanger! So that, for the sake of the present, but far more for the sake of the future, the lovers of culture are unswervingly and with a good conscience the opposers of anarchy. And not as the Barbarians and Philistines, whose honesty and whose sense of humour make them shrink, as we have seen, from treating the State as too serious a thing, and from giving it too much power;--for indeed the only State they know of, and think they administer, is the expression of their ordinary self; and though the headstrong and violent [261] extreme among them might gladly arm this with full authority, yet their virtuous mean is, as we have said, p.r.i.c.ked in conscience at doing this, and so our Barbarian Secretaries of State let the Park railings be broken down, and our Philistine Alderman-Colonels let the London roughs rob and beat the bystanders. But we, beholding in the State no expression of our ordinary self, but even already, as it were, the appointed frame and prepared vessel of our best self, and, for the future, our best self"s powerful, beneficent, and sacred expression and organ,--we are willing and resolved, even now, to strengthen against anarchy the trembling hands of our Barbarian Home Secretaries, and the feeble knees of our Philistine Alderman-Colonels; and to tell them, that it is not really in behalf of their own ordinary self that they are called to protect the Park railings, and to suppress the London roughs, but in behalf of the best self both of themselves and of all of us in the future.
Nevertheless, though for resisting anarchy the lovers of culture may prize and employ fire and strength, yet they must, at the same time, bear constantly in mind that it is not at this moment true, what the majority of people tell us, that the world [262] wants fire and strength more than sweetness and light, and that things are for the most part to be settled first and understood afterwards. We have seen how much of our present perplexities and confusion this untrue notion of the majority of people amongst us has caused, and tends to perpetuate. Therefore the true business of the friends of culture now is, to dissipate this false notion, to spread the belief in right reason and in a firm intelligible law of things, and to get men to allow their thought and consciousness to play on their stock notions and habits disinterestedly and freely; to get men to try, in preference to staunchly acting with imperfect knowledge, to obtain some sounder basis of knowledge on which to act. This is what the friends and lovers of culture have to do, however the believers in action may grow impatient with us for saying so, and may insist on our lending a hand to their practical operations, and showing a commendable interest in them.
To this insistence we must indeed turn a deaf ear. But neither, on the other hand, must the friends of culture expect to take the believers in action by storm, or to be visibly and speedily important, and to rule and cut a figure in the world. Aristotle says, [263] that those for whom ideas and the pursuit of the intelligible law of things can have much attraction, are princ.i.p.ally the young, filled with generous spirit and with a pa.s.sion for perfection; but the ma.s.s of mankind, he says, follow seeming goods for real, bestowing hardly a thought upon true sweetness and light;-- "and to their lives," he adds mournfully, "who can give another and a better rhythm?" But, although those chiefly attracted by sweetness and light will probably always be the young and enthusiastic, and culture must not hope to take the ma.s.s of mankind by storm, yet we will not therefore, for our own day and for our own people, admit and rest in the desponding sentence of Aristotle. For is not this the right crown of the long discipline of Hebraism, and the due fruit of mankind"s centuries of painful schooling in self-conquest, and the just reward, above all, of the strenuous energy of our own nation and kindred in dealing honestly with itself and walking steadfastly according to the best light it knows,--that, when in the fulness of time it has reason and beauty offered to it, and the law of things as they really are, it should at last walk by this true light with the same staunchness [264] and zeal with which it formerly walked by its imperfect light; and thus man"s two great natural forces, Hebraism and h.e.l.lenism, should no longer be dissociated and rival, but should be a joint force of right thinking and strong doing to carry him on towards perfection? This is what the lovers of culture may perhaps dare to augur for such a nation as ours. Therefore, however great the changes to be accomplished, and however dense the array of Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, we will neither despair on the one hand, nor, on the other, threaten violent revolution and change.
But we will look forward cheerfully and hopefully to "a revolution,"
as the Duke of Wellington said, "by due course of law;" though not exactly such laws as our Liberal friends are now, with their actual lights, fond of offering us.
But if despondency and violence are both of them forbidden to the believer in culture, yet neither, on the other hand, is public life and direct political action much permitted to him. For it is his business, as we have seen, to get the present believers in action, and lovers of political talking and doing, to make a return upon their own minds, scrutinise their stock notions and habits much more, value their present [265] talking and doing much less; in order that, by learning to think more clearly, they may come at last to act less confusedly. But how shall we persuade our Barbarian to hold lightly to his feudal usages; how shall we persuade our Nonconformist that his time spent in agitating for the abolition of church-rates would have been better spent in getting worthier ideas than churchmen have of G.o.d and the ordering of the world, or his time spent in battling for voluntaryism in education better spent in learning to value and found a public and national culture; how shall we persuade, finally, our Alderman-Colonel not to be content with sitting in the hall of judgment or marching at the head of his men of war, without some knowledge how to perform judgment and how to direct men of war,--how, I say, shall we persuade all these of this, if our Alderman-Colonel sees that we want to get his leading-staff and his scales of justice for our own hands; or the Nonconformist, that we want for ourselves his platform; or the Barbarian, that we want for ourselves his pre- eminency and function? Certainly they will be less slow to believe, as we want them to believe, that the intelligible law of things has in itself something desirable and [266] precious, and that all place, function, and bustle are hollow goods without it, if they see that we can content ourselves with it, and find in it our satisfaction, without making it an instrument to give us for ourselves place, function, and bustle.
And although Mr. Sidgwick says that social usefulness really means "losing oneself in a ma.s.s of disagreeable, hard, mechanical details,"
and though all the believers in action are fond of a.s.serting the same thing, yet, as to lose ourselves is not what we want, but to find the intelligible law of things, this a.s.sertion too we shall not blindly accept, but shall sift and try it a little first. And if we see that because the believers in action, forgetting Goethe"s maxim, "to act is easy, to think is hard," imagine there is some wonderful virtue in losing oneself in a ma.s.s of mechanical details, therefore they excuse themselves from much thought about the clear ideas which ought to govern these details, then we shall give our chief care and pains to seeking out those ideas and to setting them forth; being persuaded, that, if we have the ideas firm and clear, the mechanical details for their execution will come a great deal more simply and easily than we now [267] suppose. And even in education, where our Liberal friends are now, with much zeal, bringing out their train of practical operations and inviting all men to lend them a hand; and where, since education is the road to culture, we might gladly lend them a hand with their practical operations if we could lend them one anywhere; yet, if we see that any German or Swiss or French law for education rests on very clear ideas about the citizen"s claim, in this matter, upon the State, and the State"s duty towards the citizen, but has its mechanical details comparatively few and simple, while an English law for the same concern is ruled by no clear idea about the citizen"s claim and the State"s duty, but has, in compensation, a ma.s.s of minute mechanical details about the number of members on a school- committee, and how many shall be a quorum, and how they shall be summoned, and how often they shall meet,--then we must conclude that our nation stands in more need of clear ideas on the main matter than of laboured details about the accessories of the matter, and that we do more service by trying to help it to the ideas, than by lending it a hand with the details. So while Mr. Samuel Morley and his friends talk [268] of changing their policy on education, not for the sake of modelling it on more sound ideas, but "for fear the management of education should be taken out of their hands," we shall not much care for taking the management out of their hands and getting it into ours; but rather we shall try and make them perceive, that to model education on sound ideas is of more importance than to have the management of it in one"s own hands ever so fully.
At this exciting juncture, then, while so many of the lovers of new ideas, somewhat weary, as we too are, of the stock performances of our Liberal friends upon the political stage, are disposed to rush valiantly upon this public stage themselves, we cannot at all think that for a wise lover of new ideas this stage is the right one.
Plenty of people there will be without us,--country gentlemen in search of a club, demagogues in search of a tub, lawyers in search of a place, industrialists in search of gentility,--who will come from the east and from the west, and will sit down at that Thyestean banquet of clap-trap, which English public life for these many years past has been. Because, so long as those old organisations, of which we have seen [269] the insufficiency,--those expressions of our ordinary self, Barbarian or Philistine,--have force anywhere, they will have force in Parliament. There, the man whom the Barbarians send, cannot but be impelled to please the Barbarians" ordinary self, and their natural taste for the bathos; and the man whom the Philistines send, cannot but be impelled to please those of the Philistines. Parliamentary Conservatism will and must long mean this, that the Barbarians should keep their heritage; and Parliamentary Liberalism, that the Barbarians should pa.s.s away, as they will pa.s.s away, and that into their heritage the Philistines should enter. This seems, indeed, to be the true and authentic promise of which our Liberal friends and Mr. Bright believe themselves the heirs, and the goal of that great man"s labours.
Presently, perhaps, Mr. Odger and Mr. Bradlaugh will be there with their mission to oust both Barbarians and Philistines, and to get the heritage for the Populace. We, on the other hand, are for giving the heritage neither to the Barbarians nor to the Philistines, nor yet to the Populace; but we are for the transformation of each and all of these according to the law of perfection.
[270] Through the length and breadth of our nation a sense,--vague and obscure as yet,--of weariness with the old organisations, of desire for this transformation, works and grows. In the House of Commons the old organisations must inevitably be most enduring and strongest, the transformation must inevitably be longest in showing itself; and it may truly be averred, therefore, that at the present juncture the centre of movement is not in the House of Commons. It is in the fermenting mind of the nation; and his is for the next twenty years the real influence who can address himself to this.
Pericles was perhaps the most perfect public speaker who ever lived, for he was the man who most perfectly combined thought and wisdom with feeling and eloquence. Yet Plato brings in Alcibiades declaring, that men went away from the oratory of Pericles, saying it was very fine, it was very good, and afterwards thinking no more about it; but they went away from hearing Socrates talk, he says, with the point of what he had said sticking fast in their minds, and they could not get rid of it. Socrates is poisoned and dead; but in his own breast does not every man carry about with him a possible Socrates, [271] in that power of a disinterested play of consciousness upon his stock notions and habits, of which this wise and admirable man gave all through his lifetime the great example, and which was the secret of his incomparable influence? And he who leads men to call forth and exercise in themselves this power, and who busily calls it forth and exercises it in himself, is at the present moment, perhaps, as Socrates was in his time, more in concert with the vital working of men"s minds, and more effectually significant, than any House of Commons" orator, or practical operator in politics.
Every one is now boasting of what he has done to educate men"s minds and to give things the course they are taking. Mr. Disraeli educates, Mr. Bright educates, Mr. Beales educates. We, indeed, pretend to educate no one, for we are still engaged in trying to clear and educate ourselves. But we are sure that the endeavour to reach, through culture, the firm intelligible law of things, we are sure that the detaching ourselves from our stock notions and habits, that a more free play of consciousness, an increased desire for sweetness and light, and all the bent which we call [272]
h.e.l.lenising, is the master-impulse now of the life of our nation and of humanity,--somewhat obscurely perhaps for this moment, but decisively for the immediate future; and that those who work for this are the sovereign educators. Docile echoes of the eternal voice, pliant organs of the infinite will, they are going along with the essential movement of the world; and this is their strength, and their happy and divine fortune. For if the believers in action, who are so impatient with us and call us effeminate, had had the same fortune, they would, no doubt, have surpa.s.sed us in this sphere of vital influence by all the superiority of their genius and energy over ours. But now we go the way the world is going, while they abolish the Irish Church by the power of the Nonconformists"
antipathy to establishments, or they enable a man to marry his deceased wife"s sister.
THE END.
NOTES
201. +John 18:36. "Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence." King James Bible.
219. +Proverbs 26:8. "As he that bindeth a stone in a sling, so is he that giveth honour to a fool." King James Bible.
241. +Arnold refers to fourteenth-century priest Thomas a Kempis.
The Benham translation and a modern English translation of the Imitatio are currently available from the College of St. Benedict at Saint John"s University Internet Theology Resources site. See also the Benham text link.
243. +Genesis 1:21-22. "And G.o.d created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and G.o.d saw that it was good. / And G.o.d blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth." King James Bible.
244. +Deuteronomy 15:11. "For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land."