In the England of his time there was no personality more attractive, nor any more characteristic of the country, than Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster. England is the only European country in which such a figure could have appeared, for it is the only country in which a man may hold a high ecclesiastical post and yet be regarded by the nation, not specially as an ecclesiastic, but rather as a distinguished writer, an active and influential man of affairs, an ornament of social life. But if in this respect he was typical of his country, he was in other respects unique. He was a clergyman untouched by clericalism, a courtier unspoiled by courts. No one could point to any one else in England who occupied a similar position, nor has any one since arisen who recalls him, or who fills the place which his departure left empty.
Stanley was born in 1815. His father, then Rector of Alderley, in Cheshire, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, belonged to the family of the Stanleys of Alderley, a branch of that ancient and famous line the head of which is Earl of Derby. His mother, Catherine Leycester, was a woman of much force of character and intellectual power. He was educated at Rugby School under Dr. Arnold, the influence of whose ideas remained great over him all through his life, and at Oxford, where he became a fellow and tutor of University College. Pa.s.sing thence to be Canon of Canterbury, he returned to the University as Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and remained there for seven years. In 1863 he was appointed Dean of Westminster, and at the same time married Lady Augusta Bruce (sister of the then Lord Elgin, Governor-General first of Canada and afterwards of India). He died in 1881.
He had an extraordinarily active and busy life, so intertwined with the history of the University of Oxford and the history of the Church of England from 1850 to 1880, that one can hardly think of any salient point in either without thinking also of him. Yet it was perhaps rather in the intensity of his nature and the n.o.bility of his sentiments than in either the compa.s.s or the strength of his intellectual faculties that the charm and the force he exercised lay.
In some directions he was curiously deficient. He had no turn for abstract reasoning, no liking for metaphysics or any other form of speculation. He was equally unfitted for scientific inquiry, and could scarcely work a sum in arithmetic. Indeed, in no field was he a logical or systematic thinker. Neither, although he had a retentive memory, and possessed a great deal of various knowledge on many subjects, could he be called learned, for he had not really mastered any branch of history, and was often inaccurate in details. He had never been trained to observe facts in natural history. He had absolutely no ear for music, and very little perception either of colour or of scent. He learned foreign languages with difficulty and never spoke them well. He was so short-sighted as to be unable to recognise a face pa.s.sing close in the street. Yet with these shortcomings he was a born traveller, went everywhere, saw everything and everybody worth seeing, always seized on the most characteristic features of a landscape, or building, or a person, and described them with a freshness which made one feel as if they had never been described before. Of the hundreds who have published books on the Desert of Sinai and the Holy Land, many of them skilful writers or men of profound knowledge, he is the only one who is still read and likely to continue to be read, so vivid in colour, so exquisite in feeling, are the pictures he has given. Nature alone, however, nature taken by herself, did not satisfy him, did not, indeed, in his later days (for in his boyhood he had been a pa.s.sionate lover of the mountains) greatly interest him. A building or a landscape had power to rouse his imagination and call forth his unrivalled powers of description only when it was a.s.sociated with the thoughts and deeds of men.
The largest part of his literary work was done in the field of ecclesiastical history, a subject naturally congenial to him, and to which he was further drawn by the professorship which he held at Oxford during a time when a great revival of historical studies was in progress. It was work which critics could easily disparage, for there were many small errors scattered through it; and the picturesque method of treatment he employed was apt to pa.s.s into sc.r.a.ppiness. He fixed on the points which had a special interest for his own mind as ill.u.s.trating some trait of personal or national character, or some moral lesson, and pa.s.sed hastily over other matters of equal or greater importance. Nevertheless his work had some distinctive merits which have not received from professional critics the whole credit they deserved. In all that Stanley wrote one finds a certain largeness and dignity of view. He had a sense of the unity of history, of the constant relation of past and present, of the similarity of human nature in one age and country to human nature in another; and he never failed to dwell upon the permanently valuable truths which history has to teach. Nothing was too small to attract him, because he discovered a meaning in everything, and he was therefore never dull, for even when he moralised he would light up his reflections by some happy anecdote. With this he possessed a keen eye, the eye of a poet, for human character, and a power of sympathy that enabled him to appreciate even those whose principles and policy he disliked. Herein he was not singular, for the sympathetic style of writing history has become fashionable among us. What was remarkable in him was that his sympathy did not betray him into the error, now also fashionable, of extenuating moral distinctions. His charity never blunted the edge of his justice, nor prevented him from reprobating the faults of the personages who had touched his heart. For one sin only he had little historical tolerance--the sin of intolerance. So there was one sin only which ever led him to speak severely of any of his contemporaries--the sin of untruthfulness. Being himself so simple and straightforward as to feel his inability to cope with deceitful men, deceit incensed him. But he did not resent the violence of his adversaries, for though he suffered much at their hands he knew many of them to be earnest, unselfish, and conscientious men.
His pictures of historical scenes are admirable, for with his interest in the study of character there went a large measure of dramatic power. Nothing can be better in its way than the description of the murder of St. Thomas of Canterbury given in the _Memorials of Canterbury_, which, after _Sinai and Palestine_ and the _Life of Arnold_, may be deemed the best of Stanley"s books. Whether he could, with more leisure for careful thought and study, have become a great historian, was a question which those of us who were dazzled by his Public Lectures at Oxford used often to discuss. The leisure never came, for he was throughout life warmly interested in every current ecclesiastical question, and ready to bear a part in discussing it, either in the press--for he wrote in the _Edinburgh Review_, and often sent letters to the _Times_ under the signature of "Anglica.n.u.s"--or in Convocation, where he had a seat during the latter part of his career. These interruptions not only checked the progress of his studies, but gave to his compositions an air of haste, which made them seem to want system and finish. The habit of rapid writing for magazines or other ephemeral purposes is alleged to tell injuriously upon literary men: it told the more upon Stanley because he was also compelled to produce sermons rapidly.
Now sermon-writing, while it breeds a tendency to the making of rhetorical points, subordinates the habit of dispa.s.sionate inquiry to the enforcement of a moral lesson. Stanley, who had a touch of the rhetorical temperament, and was always eager to improve an occasion, certainly suffered in this way. When he brings out a general truth he is not content with it as a truth, but seeks to turn it also to edification, or to make it ill.u.s.trate and support some view for which he is contending at the time. When he is simply describing, he describes rather as a dramatic artist working for effect than as a historian solely anxious to represent men and events as they were. Yet if we consider how much a historian gains, not only from an intimate knowledge of his own time, but also, and even more largely, from playing an active part in the events of his own time, from swaying opinion by his writings and his speeches, from sitting in a.s.semblies and organising schemes of attack and defence, we may hesitate to wish that Stanley"s time had been more exclusively given to quiet investigation. The freshness of his historical portraits is notably due to the sense he carried about with him of moving in history and being a part of it. He never mounted his pulpit in the Abbey or walked into the Jerusalem Chamber when Convocation was sitting without feeling that he was about to do something which might possibly be recorded in the annals of his country. I remember his mentioning, to ill.u.s.trate undergraduate ignorance, that once when he was going to give a lecture to his cla.s.s, he suddenly recollected that Mr. Goldwin Smith, then Regius Professor of Modern History, was announced to deliver a public lecture at the same hour. Telling the cla.s.s that they would be better employed in hearing Mr. Goldwin Smith than himself, he led them all there. The next time the cla.s.s met, one of them, after making some acute comments on the lecture, asked who the lecturer was. "I was amazed," said Stanley, "that an intelligent man should ask such a question, and then it occurred to me that probably he did not know who I was either." There was nothing of personal vanity or self-importance in this. All the men of mark among whom he moved were to him historical personages, and he would describe to his friends some doing or saying of a contemporary statesman or ecclesiastic with the same eagerness, the same sense of its being a fact to be noted and remembered, as the rest of us feel about a personal anecdote relating to Oliver Cromwell or Cardinal Richelieu.
His sermons, like nearly all good sermons, will be inadequately appreciated by those who now peruse them, not only because they were composed for a given audience with special reference to the circ.u.mstances of the time, but also because the best of them gained so much by his impa.s.sioned delivery. They were all read from ma.n.u.script, and his handwriting was so illegible that it was a marvel how he contrived to read them. I once asked him, not long after he had been promoted to the Deanery of Westminster, whether he found it easy to make himself heard in the enormous nave of the Abbey church. His frame, it ought to be stated, was spare as well as small, and his voice not powerful. He answered: "That depends on whether I am interested in what I am saying. If the sermon is on something which interests me deeply I can fill the nave; otherwise I cannot." When he had got a worthy theme, or one which stimulated his own emotions, the power of his voice and manner was wonderful. His tiny body seemed to swell, his chest vibrated as he launched forth glowing words. The farewell sermon he delivered when quitting Oxford for Westminster lives in the memory of those who heard it as a performance of extraordinary power, the power springing from the intensity of his own feeling. No sermon has ever since so moved the University.
He was by nature shy and almost timid, and he was not supposed to possess any gift for extempore speaking. But when in his later days he found himself an almost solitary champion in Convocation of the principles of universal toleration and comprehension which he held, he developed a debating power which surprised himself as well as his friends. It was to him a matter of honour and conscience to defend his principles, and to defend them all the more zealously because he stood alone on their behalf in a hostile a.s.sembly. His courage was equal to the occasion, and his faculties responded to the call his courage made.
In civil politics he was all his life a Liberal, belonging by birth to the Whig aristocracy, and disposed on most matters to take rather the Whiggish than the Radical view, yet drawn by the warmth of his sympathy towards the working cla.s.ses, and popular with them. One of his chief pleasures was to lead parties of humble visitors round the Abbey on public holidays. Like most members of the Whig families, he had no great liking for Mr. Gladstone, not so much, perhaps, on political grounds as because he distrusted the High Churchism and anti-Erastianism of the Liberal leader. However, he never took any active part in general politics, reserving his strength for those ecclesiastical questions which seemed to lie within his peculiar province.[17] Here he had two leading ideas: one, that the Church of England must at all hazards continue to be an Established Church, in alliance with, or subjection to, the State (for his Erastianism was unqualified), and recognising the Crown as her head; the other, that she must be a comprehensive Church, finding room in her bosom for every sort or description of Christian, however much or little he believed of the dogmas contained in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer-Book, to which she is bound by statute. The former view cut him off from the Nonconformists and the Radicals; the latter exposed him to the fire not only of those who, like the High Churchmen and the Evangelicals, attach the utmost importance to these dogmas, but of those also among the laity who hold that a man ought under no circ.u.mstances to sign any test or use any form of prayer which does not express his own convictions. Stanley would, of course, have greatly preferred that the laws which regulate the Church of England should be so relaxed as to require little or no a.s.sent to any doctrinal propositions from her ministers. He strove for this; and he continued to hope that this might be ultimately won. But he conceived that in the meantime it was a less evil that men should be technically bound by subscriptions they objected to than that the National Church should be narrowed by the exclusion of those whose belief fell short of her dogmatic standards. It was remarkable that not only did he maintain this unpopular view of his with unshaken courage on every occasion, pleading the cause of every supposed heretic against hostile majorities with a complete forgetfulness of his own peace and ease, but that no one ever thought of attributing the course he took to any selfish or sinister motive. It was generally believed that his own opinions were what nine-tenths of the Church of England would call unorthodox. But the honesty and uprightness of his character were so patent that n.o.body supposed that this fact made any difference, or that it was for the sake of keeping his own place that he fought the cause of others.
What his theological opinions were it might have puzzled Stanley himself to explain. His mind was not fitted to grasp abstract propositions. His historical imagination and his early a.s.sociations attached him to the doctrines of the Nicene Creed; but when he came to talk of Christianity, he laid so much more stress on its ethics than on its dogmatic side that his clerical antagonists thought he held no creed at all. Dr. Pusey once said that he and Stanley did not worship the same G.o.d. The point of difference between him and them was not so much that he consciously disbelieved the dogmas they held--probably he did not--as that he did not, like them, think that true religion and final salvation depended on believing them. And the weak point in his imagination was that he seemed never to understand their position, nor to realise how sacred and how momentous to them were statements which he saw in a purely imaginative light. He never could be got to see that a Church without any dogmas would not be a Church at all in the sense either of mankind in the past or of mankind in the present. An anecdote was current that once when he had in Disraeli"s presence been descanting on the harm done by the enforcement of dogmatic standards, Disraeli had observed, "But pray remember, Mr. Dean, no dogma, no Dean."
Those who thought him a heathen would have a.s.sailed him less bitterly if he had been content to admit his own differences from them. What most incensed them was his habit of a.s.suming that, except in mere forms of expression, there were really no differences at all, and that they also held Christianity to consist not in any body of doctrines, but in reverence for G.o.d and purity of life. They would have preferred heathenism itself to this kind of Universalism.
As ecclesiastical preferment had not discoloured the native hue of his simplicity, so neither did the influences of royal favour. It says little for human nature that few people should be proof against what the philosopher deems the trivial and fleeting fascinations of a court. Stanley"s elevation of mind was proof. Intensely interested in the knowledge of events pa.s.sing behind the scenes which his relations with the reigning family opened to him, he scarcely ever referred to those relations, and seemed neither to be affected thereby, nor to care a whit more for the pomps and vanities of power or wealth, a whit less for the friends and the causes he had learned to value in his youth.
In private, that which most struck one in his intellect was the quick eagerness with which his imagination fastened upon any new fact, caught its bearings, and clothed it with colour. His curiosity remained inexhaustible. His delight in visiting a new country was like that of an American scholar landing for the first time in Europe. A friend met him a year before his death at a hotel in the North of England, and found he was going to the Isle of Man. He had mastered its geography and history, and talked about it and what he was to explore there as one might talk of Rome or Athens when visiting them for the first time. When anybody told him an anecdote his susceptible imagination seized upon points which the narrator had scarcely noticed, and discovered a whole group of curious a.n.a.logies from other times or countries. Whatever you planted in this fertile soil struck root and sprouted at once. Morally, he impressed those who knew him not only by his kindness of heart, but by a remarkable purity and n.o.bleness of aim. Nothing mean or small or selfish seemed to harbour in his mind. You might think him right or wrong, but you never doubted that he was striving after the truth. He was not merely a just man; he loved justice with pa.s.sion. It was partly, perhaps, because justice, goodness, honour, charity, seemed to him of such paramount importance in life that he made little of doctrinal differences, having perceived that these virtues may exist, and may also be found wanting, in every form of religious creed or philosophical profession. When the Convocation of the Anglican Church met at Westminster, it was during many years his habit to invite a great number of its leading members to the deanery, the very men who had been attacking him most hotly in debate, and who would go on denouncing his lat.i.tudinarianism till Convocation met again. They yielded--sometimes reluctantly, but still they yielded--to the kindliness of his nature and the charm of his manner. He used to dart about among them, introducing opponents to one another, as indeed on all occasions he delighted to bring the most diverse people together, so that some one said the company you met at the deanery were either statesmen and d.u.c.h.esses or starving curates and briefless barristers.
He had on the whole a happy life. It is true that the intensity of his attachments exposed him to correspondingly intense grief when he lost those who were dearest to him; true also that, being by temperament a man of peace, he was during the latter half of his life almost constantly at war. But his home, first in the lifetime of his mother and then in that of his wife, had a serene and unclouded brightness; and the care of the Abbey, rich with the a.s.sociations of nearly a thousand years of history, provided a function which exactly suited him and which const.i.tuted a never-failing source of enjoyment. To dwell in the centre of the life of the Church of England, and to dwell close to the Houses of Parliament, in the midst of the making of history, knowing and seeing those who were princ.i.p.ally concerned in making it, was in itself a pleasure to his quenchless historical curiosity. His cheerfulness and animation, although to some extent revived by his visit to America and the reception he met with there, were never the same after his wife"s death in 1876. But the sweetness of his disposition and his affection for his friends knew no diminution. He remembered everything that concerned them; was always ready with sympathy in sorrow or joy; and gave to all alike, high or low, famous or unknown, the same impression, that his friendship was for themselves, and not for any gifts or rank or other worldly advantage they might enjoy. The art of friendship is the greatest art in life. To enjoy his was to be educated in that art.
[16] A _Life of Dean Stanley_, in two volumes, begun by Theodore Walrond, continued by Dean Bradley, and completed by Mr. R. E.
Prothero, appeared in 1893.
[17] When J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1868, Stanley published a letter announcing his support, partly out of personal respect for Mill, partly because it gave him an opportunity of expressing an opinion on the Irish Church question, and of reprobating the charge of atheism which had been brought against Mill.
THOMAS HILL GREEN
The name of Thomas Green, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, was not, during his lifetime, widely known outside the University itself. But he is still remembered by students of metaphysics and ethics as one of the most vigorous thinkers of his time; and his personality was a striking one, which made a deep and lasting impression on those with whom he came in contact.
He was born in Yorkshire in 1836, the son of a country clergyman; was educated at Rugby School and at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1860, and a tutor in 1869. In 1867 he was an unsuccessful candidate for a chair of philosophy at St. Andrews, and in 1878 was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in his own University, which he never thereafter quitted. He was married in 1869 and died in 1882. It was a life externally uneventful, but full of thought and work, and latterly crowned by great influence over the younger and great respect from the senior members of the University.
I can best describe Green as he was in his undergraduate days, for it was then that I saw most of him. His appearance was striking, and made him a familiar figure even to those who did not know him personally. Thick black hair, a sallow complexion, dark eyebrows, deep-set eyes of rich brown with a peculiarly steadfast look, were the features which first struck one; and with these there was a remarkable seriousness of expression, an air of solidity and quiet strength. He knew comparatively few people, and of these only a very few intimately, having no taste or turn for those sports in which university acquaintances are most frequently made, and seldom appearing at breakfast or wine parties. This caused him to pa.s.s for harsh or unsocial; and I remember having felt a slight sense of alarm the first time I found myself seated beside him. Though we belonged to different colleges I had heard a great deal about him, for Oxford undergraduates are warmly interested in one another, and at the time I am recalling they had an inordinate fondness for measuring the intellectual gifts and conjecturing the future of those among their contemporaries who seemed likely to attain eminence.
Those who came to know Green intimately, soon perceived that under his reserve there lay not only a capacity for affection--no man was more tenacious in his friendships--but qualities that made him an attractive companion. His tendency to solitude sprang less from pride or coldness, than from the occupation of his mind by subjects which seldom weigh on men of his age. He had, even when a boy at school (where he lived much by himself, but exercised considerable moral influence), been grappling with the problems of metaphysics and theology, and they had given a tinge of gravity to his manner.
The relief to that gravity lay in his humour, which was not only abundant but genial and sympathetic. It used to remind us of Carlyle--he had both the sense of humour and an underlying Puritanism in common with Carlyle, one of the authors who (with Milton and Wordsworth) had most influenced him--but in Green the Puritan tinge was more kindly, and, above all, more lenient to ordinary people.
While averse, perhaps too severely averse, to whatever was luxurious or frivolous in undergraduate life, he had the warmest interest in, and the strongest sympathy for, the humbler cla.s.ses. Loving social equality, and filled with a sense of the dignity of simple human nature, he liked to meet farmers and tradespeople on their own level, and knew how to do so without seeming to condescend; indeed nothing pleased him better, than when they addressed him as one of themselves, the manner of his talk to them, as well as the extreme plainness of his dress, conducing to such mistakes. The belief in the duty of approaching the people directly and getting them to think and to form and express their own views in their own way was at the root of all his political doctrines.
Though apt to be silent in general company, no one could be more agreeable when you were alone with him. We used to say of him--and his seniors said the same--that one never talked to him without carrying away something to ponder over. On everything he said or wrote there was stamped the impress of a strong individuality, a mind that thought for itself, a character ruggedly original, wherein grimness was mingled with humour, and practical shrewdness with a love for abstract speculation. His independence appeared even in the way he pursued his studies. With abilities of the highest order, he cared comparatively little for the distinctions which the University offers; choosing rather to follow out his own line of reading in the way he judged permanently useful than to devote himself to the pursuit of honours and prizes.
He was const.i.tutionally lethargic, found it hard to rouse himself to exertion, and was apt to let himself be driven to the last moment in finishing a piece of work. There was a rule in his College that an essay should be given in every Friday evening. His was, to the great annoyance of the dons, never ready till Sat.u.r.day. But when it did go in, it was the weightiest and most thoughtful, as well as the most eloquent, that the College produced. This indolence had one good result. It disposed him to brood over subjects, while others were running quickly through many books and getting up subjects for examination. It contributed to that depth and systematic quality which struck us in his thinking, and made him seem mature beside even the ablest of his contemporaries. When others were being, so to speak, blown hither and thither, picking up and fascinated by new ideas, which they did not know how to fit in with their old ones, he seemed to have already formed for himself, at least in outline, a scheme of philosophy and life coherent and complete. There was nothing random or scattered in his ideas; his mind, like his style of writing, which ran into long and complicated sentences, had a singular connectedness. You felt that all its principles were in relation with one another. This maturity in his mental att.i.tude gave him an air of superiority, just as the strength of his convictions gave a dogmatic quality to his deliverances. Yet in spite of positiveness and tenacity he had the saving grace of a humility which distrusted human nature in himself at least as much as he distrusted it in others. Leading an introspective life, he had many "wrestlings," and often seemed conscious of the struggle between the natural man and the spiritual man, as described in the Epistle to the Romans.
In these early days, before, and to a less extent after, taking his degree, he used to speak a good deal, mostly on political topics, at the University Debating Society, where so many generations of young men have sharpened their wits upon one another. His speaking was vigorous, shrewd, and full of matter, yet it could not be called popular. It was, in a certain sense, too good for a debating society, too serious, and without the dash and sparkle which tell upon audiences of that kind. Sometimes, however, and notably in a debate on the American War of Secession in 1863, he produced, by the concentrated energy of his language and the fierce conviction with which he spoke, a powerful effect.[18] In a business a.s.sembly, discussing practical questions, he would soon have become prominent, and would have been capable on occasions of an oratorical success.
Retired as was Green"s life, he became by degrees more and more widely known beyond the circle of his own intimates; and became also, I think, more willing to make new friends. His truthfulness appeared in this that, though powerful in argument, he did not argue for victory.
When he felt the force of what was urged against him, his admissions were candid. Thus people came to respect his character, with its high sense of duty, its simplicity, its uprightness, its earnest devotion to an ideal, even more than they admired his intellectual powers. I remember one friend of my own, himself eminent in undergraduate Oxford, and belonging to another college, between which and Green"s there existed much rivalry, who, having been defeated by Green in compet.i.tion for a University prize, said, "If it had been any one else, I should have been vexed, but I don"t mind being beaten by a man I respect so much." My friend knew Green very slightly, and had been at one time strongly prejudiced against him by rumours of his heterodox opinions.
So much for those undergraduate days on which recollection loves to dwell, but which were not days of unmixed happiness to Green, for his means were narrow and the future rose cloudy before him. When anxiety was removed by the income which a fellowship secured, he still hesitated as to his course in life. At one time he thought of journalism, or of seeking a post in the Education Office. More frequently his thoughts turned to the clerical profession. His theological opinions would not have permitted him to enter the service of the Church of England, but he did seriously consider whether he should become a Unitarian minister. It was not till he found that his college needed him as a teacher that these difficulties came to an end. Similarly he had doubted whether to devote himself to history, to theology, or to metaphysics. For history he had unquestionable gifts. With no exceptional capacity for mastering or retaining facts, he had a remarkable power of penetrating at once to the dominant facts, of grasping their connection, and working out their consequences. He had also a keen sense of the dramatic aspect of events, and a turn, not unlike Carlyle"s, partly perhaps formed on Carlyle, of fastening on the details in which character shows itself, and illumining narrative by personal touches. On the problems of theology he had meditated even at school, and after taking his degree he set himself to a systematic study of the German critics, and I remember that when we were living together at Heidelberg he had begun to prepare a translation of C. F. Baur"s princ.i.p.al treatise. As he worked slowly, the translation was never finished. Though not professing to be an adherent of the Tubingen school, he had been fascinated by Baur"s ingenuity and constructive power.
Ultimately he settled down to metaphysical and ethical inquiries, and devoted to these the last thirteen years of his life. During his undergraduate years the two intellectual forces most powerful at Oxford had been the writings of J. H. Newman in the religious sphere, though their influence was already past its meridian, and the writings of John Stuart Mill in the sphere of logic and philosophy. By neither of these, save in the way of antagonism, had Green been influenced. He heartily hated all the Utilitarian school, and had an especial scorn for Buckle, who, now almost forgotten, enjoyed in those days, as being supposed to be a philosophic historian, a brief term of popularity.
Green had been led by Carlyle to the Germans, and his philosophic thinking was determined chiefly by Kant and Hegel, more perhaps by the former than by the latter, for it was always upon ethical rather than upon purely metaphysical problems that his mind was bent. His religious vein and his hold upon practical life made him more interested in morals than in abstract speculation. Thus he became the leader in Oxford of a new philosophic school which looked to Kant as its master, and which for a time, partly perhaps because it effectively attacked the school of Mill, received the adhesion of some among the most thoughtful of the younger High Churchmen. Like Kant, he set himself to answer David Hume, and the essay prefixed to his edition of Hume"s _Treatise on Human Nature_. along with his _Prolegomena to Ethics_, are the only books in which his doctrines have been given to the world, for he did not live to write the more systematic exposition he had planned. These two essays are hard reading, for his philosophical style was usually technical, and sometimes verged on obscurity. But when he wrote on less abstruse matters he was intelligible as well as weighty, full of thought, and with an occasional underglow of restrained eloquence. The force of character and convictions makes itself felt through the language.
His mind, though constructive, was not, having regard to its general power, either fertile or versatile. Like most of those who prefer solitary musings to the commerce of men, he had little facility, and found it hard to express his thoughts in any other words than those into which his musings had first flowed. Thus even his oral teaching was not easy to follow. An anecdote was current how when one day he had been explaining to a small cla.s.s his theory of the origin of our ideas, the cla.s.s listened in rapt attention to his forcible rhetoric, admiring each sentence as it fell, and thinking that all their difficulties were being removed. When he ended they expressed their grat.i.tude for the pleasure he had given them, and were quitting the room, when one, halting at the door, said timidly, "But, Mr. Green, what did you say was really the origin of our ideas?" However, whether they were or were not capable of a.s.similating his doctrines, his pupils all joined in their respect for him. They felt the loftiness of his character, they recognised the fervour of his belief.
He was the most powerful ethical influence, and perhaps also the most stimulative intellectual influence, that in those years played upon the minds of the ablest youth of the University. But it was a singular fact, which those who have never lived in Oxford or Cambridge may find it hard to understand, that when he rose from the post of a college tutor to that of a University professor, his influence declined, not that his powers or his earnestness waned, but because as a professor he had fewer auditors and less personal relation with them than he had commanded as a college teacher. Such is the working of the collegiate system in Oxford, curiously unfortunate when it deprives the ablest men, as they rise naturally to the highest positions, of the opportunities for usefulness they had previously enjoyed.
As his powers developed and came to be recognised, so did those slight asperities which had been observed in undergraduate days soften down and disappear. Though he lived a retired life, his work brought him into contact with a good many people, and he became more genial in general company. I remember his saying with a smile when I had lured him into Wales for a short excursion, "I don"t know whether it is a sign of declining virtue, but I find as I grow older that I am less and less fond of my own company." From the first he had won the confidence and affection of his pupils. Many of them used long afterwards to say that his conduct and his teaching had been the one great example or one great influence they had found and felt in Oxford. The unclouded happiness of his married life made it easier for him to see the bright side of things, and he could not but enjoy the sense that the seed he sowed was falling on ground fit to receive it.
Even when ill-health had fastened on him, and was checking both his studies and his public work, it did not affect the evenness of his temper nor sharpen the edge of his judgments of others. In earlier days these had been sometimes austere, though expressed in temperate and measured terms.
I must not forget to add that although Green"s opinions were by no means orthodox, the influence he exerted while he remained a college tutor was in large measure a religious influence. As the clergyman used to be in the English Universities less of a clergyman than he was anywhere else, so conversely it caused no surprise there that a lay teacher should concern himself with the religious life of his pupils.
Green, however, did more, for he on two occasions at least delivered to his pupils, before the celebration of the communion in the college chapel, addresses which were afterwards privately printed, and which present his view of the relations of ethics and religion in a way impressive even to those who may find it hard to follow the philosophical argument.
Metaphysicians are generally as little interested in practical politics as poets are, and not better suited for political life. Green was a remarkable exception. Politics were in a certain sense the strongest of his interests. To him metaphysics were not only the basis of theology, but also the basis of politics. Everything was to converge on the free life of the individual in a free State; rational faith and reason inspired by emotion were to have their perfect work in making the good citizen.
His interest in politics was perhaps less active in later years than it had been in his youth, but his principles stood unchanged. He was a thoroughgoing Liberal, or what used to be called a Radical, full of faith in the people, an advocate of pretty nearly every measure that tended to democratise English inst.i.tutions, a friend of peace and of non-intervention. In our days he would have been called a Little Englander, for though his ideal of national life was lofty, the wellbeing of the ma.s.ses was to him a more essential part of that ideal than any extension of territory or power. He once said that he would rather see the flag of England trailed in the dirt than add sixpence to the taxes that weigh upon the poor. In foreign politics Louis Napoleon, as the corrupter of France and the disturber of Europe, was his favourite aversion; in home politics, Lord Palmerston, as the chief obstacle to parliamentary reform. The statesman whom he most admired and trusted was Mr. Bright. A strong sense of civic duty led him to enter the City Council of Oxford, although he could ill spare from his study and his lecture-room the time which the discharge of munic.i.p.al duties required. He was the first tutor who had ever offered himself to a ward for election. The townsfolk, between whom and the University there had generally been little love, the former thinking themselves looked down upon by the latter, warmly appreciated his action in coming out of his seclusion to help them, and his influence in the Council contributed to secure some useful reforms, among others, the establishment of a "grammar" or secondary school for the city.
One of the last things he wrote was a short pamphlet on freedom of contract, intended to justify the interference with bargains between landlord and tenant which was proposed by Mr. Gladstone"s Irish Land Bill of 1881. It is a vigorous piece of reasoning, which may still be read with interest in respect of its application of philosophical principles to a political controversy. Had he desired it he might have gone to the House of Commons as member for the city of Oxford. But he had found in the Council a field for local public work, and apart from his const.i.tutional indolence and his declining health, he had concluded that his first duty lay in expounding his philosophical system.
Green will be long remembered in the English Universities as the strongest force in the sphere of ethical philosophy that they have seen in the second half of the nineteenth century, and remembered also as a singular instance of a metaphysician with a bent towards politics and practical life, no less than as a thinker far removed from orthodoxy who exerted over orthodox Christians a potent and inspiring religious influence.
[18] As I have referred to the American Civil War, it is worth adding that there were no places in England where the varying fortunes of that tremendous struggle were followed with a more intense interest than in Oxford and Cambridge, and none in which so large a proportion of the educated cla.s.s sympathised with the cause of the North. Mr. Goldwin Smith led the section which took that view, and which included three-fourths of the best talent in Oxford. Among the younger men Green was the most conspicuous for his ardour on behalf of the principles of human equality and freedom. He followed and watched every move in the military game. No Ma.s.sachusetts Abolitionist welcomed the fall of Vicksburg with a keener joy. He used to say that the whole future of humanity was involved in the triumph of the Federal arms.
ARCHBISHOP TAIT[19]
England is now the only Protestant country in which bishops retain some relics of the dignity and influence which belonged to the episcopal office during the Middle Ages. Even in Roman Catholic countries they have been sadly shorn of their ancient importance, though the prelates of Hungary still hold vast possessions, while in France, or Spain, or the Catholic parts of Germany a man of eminent talents and energy may occasionally use his official position to become, through his influence over Catholic electors or Catholic deputies, a considerable political factor. This happens even in the United States and Canada, though in the United States the general feeling that religion must be kept out of politics obliges ecclesiastics to use their spiritual powers cautiously and sparingly.
England stands alone in the fact that although the Protestant Episcopal Church is, in so far as she is established by law, the creature and subject of the State, she is nevertheless so far independent as a religious organisation that she retains a greater power than in other Protestant nations. State establishment, though it may have depressed, has not stifled her ecclesiastical life, and an interest in ecclesiastical questions is shown by a larger proportion of her laity than one finds in Germany or the Scandinavian kingdoms. A man of shining parts has, as an English bishop, a wide field of action and influence open to him outside the sphere of theology or of purely official duty. And the opportunities of the position attain their maximum when he reaches the primatial chair of Canterbury, which is now the oldest and the most dignified of all the metropolitan sees in countries that have accepted the Reformation of the sixteenth century.
Ever since there was a bishop at Canterbury at all, that is to say, ever since the conversion of the English began in the seventh century of our era, the holder of that see has been the greatest ecclesiastical personage in these islands, with a recognised authority over all England, as well as an influence and dignity to which, in the Middle Ages, the Archbishops of Armagh and St. Andrews (primates of the Irish and Scottish Churches) practically bowed, even while refusing to admit his legal supremacy. To be the most highly placed and officially the most powerful man in the churches of Britain, in days when the Church was better organised, and in some ways stronger, than the State, meant a vast deal. The successor of Augustine was often called a Pope of his own world--that world of Britain which lay apart from the larger world of the European continent. Down to the Reformation, the English primates possessed a power which made some of them almost a match for the English kings.
Dunstan, Lanfranc, Anselm, Thomas (Becket), Hubert, Stephen Langton, Arundel, Warham, were among the foremost statesmen of their time.
After Henry VIII."s breach with Rome, the Primate of England received some access of dignity in becoming independent of the Pope; but, in reality, the loss of church power and church wealth which the Reformation caused lowered his political importance. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, there were still some conspicuous and influential prelates at Canterbury--Cranmer, Pole, Whitgift, and Laud the best remembered among them. After the Revolution of 1688, a time of smaller men begins. The office retained its dignity as the highest place open to a subject, ranking above the Lord Chancellor or the Lord President of the Council, but the Church of England, having no fightings within, nor anything to fear from without, was lapped in placid ease, so it mattered comparatively little who her chief pastor was.